Just trying to make sense of GO3

[cobragardens]

Idk where people are getting this "Good Omens iS sUpPoSEd tO bE a CoMeDY!!!" thing. No it isn't. No one ever said that.

The fact that a story is funny does not make it a comedy. Good Omens the novel has a horror ending for Aziraphale and Crowley (a fact everyone seems to conveniently ignore), and the motifs and themes of the novel are 100% cosmic horror. The show lays out cosmic horror allusions, motifs, and world mechanics from the very 1st episode. It's written by a horror writer. No plot points or story outcomes were revealed after S1 .

"Good Omens is a comedy!" is a bullshit idea the fandom made up instead of paying attention to the material in the novel or the show, and now people are melting down bc reality didn't conform to their baseless belief.

I expected more reasoned responses and a much higher degree of literacy from fans of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Watching the fandom shit itself with entirely unjustified outrage has for me been the most shocking and painful part of Good Omens 3 by far.

[rainbowhyperfixation]

Not only did we not make it up, but here’s what I assume is enough proof (although there are many, many other instances of everyone calling it a comedy) since it’s apparently needed:

Good Omens is a fantasy comedy television series - Wikipedia

IMDb (owned by Amazon) classifies it as both “buddy comedy” and “dark comedy”, among other things.

It won an award from comedy.co.uk for Best TV Comedy Drama and Best Comedy of the Year in 2019 and the former again in 2023. That ^ link is from TP’s website.

It was nominated for a GLAAD award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2024.

David Tennant was nominated for a BAFTA TV award for Male Performance in a Comedy in 2024.

David and Michael were both nominated for an Astra award for Best Actor in a Streaming Comedy Series in 2024.

People on tumblr created at least two polls asking if it was a comedy after season 2 aired and NG (🤬) confirmed it was a comedy. CW: there’s a video of NG accepting the award at the top of the post linked above ^^ There are screenshots below the cut for anyone who wants to see the relevant parts without his face. They still show two extremely short (6 words or fewer) posts from NG.

[the-oxrib-and-oyster]

You Go Too Fast For Me: Stop Telling Me To Chill Out About GO3.

cw: suicide

You know, Good Omens was an umbrella. It was a safe gathering space, a shelter and a haven for queer and traumatized and outcast folk for more than 30 years. Some of us are survivors of unspeakable horrors, and having to watch our comfort characters suicide onscreen with absolutely no warning, no toll free numbers and no consideration-- after a heavy barrage of seemingly intentional catfishing and misleading-to-outright-false advertisement from literally everyone involved in advance-- was simply devastating.

Coming up against smug, rude bullying, disdain and hate from long-beloved peers inside my own fandom for reacting emotionally to a trauma and continuing to struggle to reconcile the finale has been... fucking ass. Some of you are so nasty, so damn cruel. I'm thrilled it's just a show for you; my inbox is full of people who are having to go/back on psychiatric medications, triple booking therapy they can't afford, enduring fresh bouts of intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. Several people I know vomited at the end of go3 and were unable to keep food down for days after. I cannot say it strongly enough. It was a savagely cruel thing to endure for many, including those who have experienced loss of loved ones from suicide, for example, like myself.

These fresh-- and old, retraumatized-- wounds require airing out, at a minimum. And sometimes that's uncomfortable for those around us, I know. But for Christ's sake, could you take a swing at a little empathy for us? Block the tags and let us grieve. We have been brutalized newly in a place we believed we were safe, where we had been actively promised and previously shown we were safe-- a place we trusted.

I'm sorry our agony isn't moving along fast enough for you. Personally, I have had three years of intensive healing torn out of me, and have thirty years of wasted love for my ineffables to grieve.

So, if you all don't mind, I'm going to be a goddamned minute.

[nythrasglitch]

As someone someone else who has lost loved ones to suicide. Two infact. My own mother when I was young, and more recently, my stepson and half brother to my 3 children. This is a call out for those who think telling someone to go get help is showing compassion. It's not. We are a global fandom, and not everyone has access to help. Suicide hotlines exist to access someone's immediate danger of suicide. Their job exists to determine if the police need to be called. They aren't there to show compassion or provide resources to someone who is a suicide Survivor.

Not everyone lives in an area where help can be easily accessed. I myself have been on waitlist to get into therapy since last fall. I did get a crisis appointment today but the person clearly was suffering from compassion fatigue in an underserved area and deserving of a long vacation. I barely got a chance to tell them why I made the appointment. Not everybody can afford therapy even if there are therapists available.

When you lose someone, you loved,if if it's a fictional character, the last thing you need to be told is that you need to be more positive or you're bringing others down. Telling someone how long they should be grieving is the absolute wrong thing to do.

What does help is to just listen. Compassion isn't really that hard. You know what really helps? Talking about the good memories and helping to keep them alive. That's why so many of us felt betrayed that some of you easily left Aziraphale and Crowley in the dust for your new toys. Did we not all love the same characters? The show didn't just kill them off, so did part of the fandom.

So next time you want to tell someone they are wrong about the finale, some things you good say instead that might bridge the gap without comprising how you saw the finale are:

How are you holding up today?

I miss them as an angel and demon too.

Would you like to talk about them?

I saw this artwork of them as an angel and demon you might like.

Your grief is as valid as our enjoyment, and we are happy to make space for you.

What you don't get to do is act like the good guy and pat yourself on the back because you told a suicidal person to go get help when you don't know what's available to them in their area of the globe

[nythrasaglitch]

[adevilputaside4me]

On a meta level, Good Omens S3 was EMOTIONAL ABUSE.

... Meaning, I'm pretty sure Neil Gaiman did it ON PURPOSE, knowing how much it would upset the fans.

Neil knew how badly we wanted Aziraphale and Crowley (OUR version of Aziraphale and Crowley---the specific version of them we met in Season 1) to be together. He knew we wanted to see them resolve their issues and ultimately choose to be with each other in the end.

Instead, Aziraphale and Crowley forgo that emotional journey in favor of unnecessary pain. Neither of them experience real character growth in the finale; they are shown to be the worst and unhappiest versions of themselves, without getting a real shot at redemption. They never fix their communication issues. They don't express their true, authentic feelings for one another (don't @ me with that bullshit hand kiss thing). They never manage to get on the same page emotionally---even when they both agree to commit suicide (which I'm pretty sure was not the "one thing" Aziraphale wanted).

"Why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?"

EMOTIONAL WITHHOLDING is a common abuse tactic utilized by men like Neil. They enjoy creating ATTACHMENT in their victims and then "TAKING IT AWAY".

It's easy to see how much Neil enjoyed frustrating his fans in retrospect. He actively taunted us on social media with the catchphrase "WAIT AND SEE" and threatened to make Aziraphale and Crowley kiss---but in a way we "wouldn't like". He loved dangling the implied promise of a happy ending over our heads, which we now know he never planned to deliver on.

Neil was unkind to his audience. He was also unkind to his characters. Aziraphale and Crowley are treated as punching bags throughout the entire series---shown to be "messy" for the sake of entertainment, but not as a real obstacle for either of them to overcome. God herself says she enjoys seeing how much Aziraphale values his relationship with Crowley. And this turns out to be her justification for "taking it away". (Tell me THAT isn't some fucked up shit.) Aziraphale and Crowley experience real emotional pain as the result of her actions---and this is demonstrated by the incredible acting of Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Neil explicitly sold this as "a love story" when he created the show. Based on the tone of the book, an eventual union between Aziraphale and Crowley would have made the most narrative sense. It would have emphasized the overarching themes of love, agency, and the futility of "choosing sides". But that would have required Neil to possess the same ethos as Terry Pratchett---meaning LOVE AND RESPECT FOR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

We were never going to get a good love story out of Neil. Men like Neil get off on "PUNISHING" people for no apparent reason; he obviously did this with our beloved characters, to disastrous result. Nonetheless, we still manage to ascribe deeper meaning to Aziraphale and Crowley, thanks to the phenomenal acting team and the dedication of this fandom. Aziraphale and Crowley remain the greatest love story of all time, not because of anything Neil actually wrote, but because of everything that was projected onto them by the people who cared. We assigned their relationship a depth "Neil himself" never could have imagined---one that exemplifies our maximalist ideals of love and the decision to choose it again and again, in spite of everything. It is never going to "end" on Neil's preferred terms. In this rare instance, fan interpretation STILL MANAGES TO ECLIPSE THE SOURCE MATERIAL---and that is because LOVE is always a more powerful story than ABUSE.

[fellshish]

s1 crowley i’m so sorry for what they did to you (youtube link)

[rainbowhyperfixation]

They actually didn’t come back at all, but that’s part of the gallows humor.

I couldn’t decide which one I liked better, so you get both 😊

[rainbowhyperfixation]

Someone requested a reverse of the disintegration at the end with a promise to not do that again😇😈

[nythrasaglitch]

Thank you! I love it! This is exactly what I needed

[animulablandulavagula]

[emptypatrycja]

God made of nightmares?

Most of us agree that God in Season 3 feels different from the one in Season 1. I think that's because this version is an embodiment of how Aziraphale imagines God. After all, it is Aziraphale who summons God using the Book of Life.

To support this argument, note that God accuses Aziraphale of being lazy, gluttonous, and so on. These are things he has always been anxious about. And the mention that he was the first one to lie? That's another indication. God's description of Aziraphale seems to reflect his worst fears about himself. It reinforces the idea that he was a poor angel, or even THE poor angel.

Simultaneously, this God is still the one who made Crowley for him, right? The one who created his soulmate. If so, God must have enjoyed their love story. This adds up to me as well.

[Is God referred to as "her" in the finale? I can't bring myself to look for it. But if that's the case, it would be another indication, since those are the pronouns Aziraphale uses. Not Crowley.]

Now, if this interpretation is correct, help me understand why. Why did we need to witness this version of God? That's the part I don't understand. Honestly, it feels devastating if you think that this is what Aziraphale hears just before he evaporates. Was it meant to reinforce his fear that he is selfish? To push him into rejecting what he wants and follow Crowley without hesitation?

On second thought, I think it was there to let him confront his worst fears. He always struggled to accept that what he wants is not what God wants. That it is not GOOD. And for the first time, he actually stood up for himself. He disagreed with / rejected God's opinion. Then the apple tree scene just shows that he finally accepts who he is, I guess? That he will always choose Crowley? [For me this simplifies his character to a ridiculous degree. I don't like it one bit.] Well, even if this is the idea, the whole scene still feels VERY WRONG to me because of everything I wrote in the previous paragraph and in brackets.

[nythrasaglitch]

I theorize they lost the game because they summoned god before they really utilized the new BOL. What God told Job was never meant for Job, but for Crowley. "Come back when you can make a whale." They had it right there in their hands. They failed their last test

[aivelin]

A month ago, Good Omens tv ended on a sour note. Yet, our fandom has always been bigger than just a tv show. Whether you love the original book, the radio play, the book based first season, or even the whole tv trilogy, what unites us matters so much more. We are full of love.

[rainbowhyperfixation]

I originally wrote this extended metaphor about the Good Omens finale as a comment on a post:

I think for a lot of us it utterly failed and we are left with exactly that - a cruel writing choice that people tried to pad to make it a bit less hurtful. The analogy that’s coming to mind is cushioning broken glass with cotton candy so you can eat it. Like, that’s not how that works. If someone tries to feed you broken glass you refuse and then try to make sure they don’t do that again. And also cotton candy dissolves with the slightest moisture so it’s ineffective anyway.

I can’t really blame the cast and crew for trying to make the best of it. I think a lot of them convinced themselves that because they were trying hard and had achieved magical things before and the story wasn’t that bad because sacrifice is noble and look Michael and David get to pretend to be at the South Downs together, that they’d somehow made stained glass out of this cotton candy and broken glass. But I only saw the vase that we could have gotten, if the writers hadn’t broken it in the first place, and the patchwork result that had at least some blood mixed in with the cotton candy and glass.

[rainbowhyperfixation]

Now in comic form!

Worst kintsugi ever 😓

[adevilputaside4me]

On a meta level, Good Omens S3 was EMOTIONAL ABUSE.

... Meaning, I'm pretty sure Neil Gaiman did it ON PURPOSE, knowing how much it would upset the fans.

Neil knew how badly we wanted Aziraphale and Crowley (OUR version of Aziraphale and Crowley---the specific version of them we met in Season 1) to be together. He knew we wanted to see them resolve their issues and ultimately choose to be with each other in the end.

Instead, Aziraphale and Crowley forgo that emotional journey in favor of unnecessary pain. Neither of them experience real character growth in the finale; they are shown to be the worst and unhappiest versions of themselves, without getting a real shot at redemption. They never fix their communication issues. They don't express their true, authentic feelings for one another (don't @ me with that bullshit hand kiss thing). They never manage to get on the same page emotionally---even when they both agree to commit suicide (which I'm pretty sure was not the "one thing" Aziraphale wanted).

"Why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?"

EMOTIONAL WITHHOLDING is a common abuse tactic utilized by men like Neil. They enjoy creating ATTACHMENT in their victims and then "TAKING IT AWAY".

It's easy to see how much Neil enjoyed frustrating his fans in retrospect. He actively taunted us on social media with the catchphrase "WAIT AND SEE" and threatened to make Aziraphale and Crowley kiss---but in a way we "wouldn't like". He loved dangling the implied promise of a happy ending over our heads, which we now know he never planned to deliver on.

Neil was unkind to his audience. He was also unkind to his characters. Aziraphale and Crowley are treated as punching bags throughout the entire series---shown to be "messy" for the sake of entertainment, but not as a real obstacle for either of them to overcome. God herself says she enjoys seeing how much Aziraphale values his relationship with Crowley. And this turns out to be her justification for "taking it away". (Tell me THAT isn't some fucked up shit.) Aziraphale and Crowley experience real emotional pain as the result of her actions---and this is demonstrated by the incredible acting of Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Neil explicitly sold this as "a love story" when he created the show. Based on the tone of the book, an eventual union between Aziraphale and Crowley would have made the most narrative sense. It would have emphasized the overarching themes of love, agency, and the futility of "choosing sides". But that would have required Neil to possess the same ethos as Terry Pratchett---meaning LOVE AND RESPECT FOR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

We were never going to get a good love story out of Neil. Men like Neil get off on "PUNISHING" people for no apparent reason; he obviously did this with our beloved characters, to disastrous result. Nonetheless, we still manage to ascribe deeper meaning to Aziraphale and Crowley, thanks to the phenomenal acting team and the dedication of this fandom. Aziraphale and Crowley remain the greatest love story of all time, not because of anything Neil actually wrote, but because of everything that was projected onto them by the people who cared. We assigned their relationship a depth "Neil himself" never could have imagined---one that exemplifies our maximalist ideals of love and the decision to choose it again and again, in spite of everything. It is never going to "end" on Neil's preferred terms. In this rare instance, fan interpretation STILL MANAGES TO ECLIPSE THE SOURCE MATERIAL---and that is because LOVE is always a more powerful story than ABUSE.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

Today's vent:

[guineahenfritillaria]

Absolute perfection.

[iforgiveyouprime]

About Free Will and the Ineffable Plan

They love humanity precisely because humans have free will, the ability to choose who and what they want to be. Humans had the very thing Aziraphale and Crowley believed they themselves lacked — free will. But they had it all along. Otherwise, Aziraphale would never have lied to God, never given away his sword, never interfered with the divine plan by saving Job’s children, never made the Arrangement with Crowley, never chosen Crowley over and over again, never agreed to stop Armageddon in the end. Crowley would never have asked questions, never helped Aziraphale save Job’s children, never talked Elspeth out of suicide (which, ironically, he himself ended up committing in the finale), never saved his angel time and time again, never kept choosing Aziraphale, never done good deeds when he was explicitly told to do evil instead, never stood side by side with his angel to stop Armageddon. Free will always existed, absolutely. For angels and demons alike.

And free will doesn’t belong only to them. All angels and demons have it — it’s just that, unlike Aziraphale and Crowley, none of them spent enough time on Earth to become more human and fully realize that free will, enough to stand against the system that kept telling them they didn’t have any in the first place.

To me, Good Omens also reflected our own reality — how many people in positions of power use God and the “divine plan” as a shield for their terrible actions. I always saw God in Good Omens as something like a bored but merciful being who genuinely loves Her creations — and that’s exactly why She gave them free will. That was her original plan all along, otherwise, as Crowley himself said at the beginning of season 1, She would’ve put the Tree of Knowledge on the Moon, on a mountaintop, or simply never created it at all if She didn’t want humans to have free will. That is Her Ineffable Plan — to give humanity free will. When Aziraphale says in the finale that they want a universe where there is “nothing ineffable,” he is literally saying “no free will.” It feels like the people behind the finale heard the phrase “Ineffable Plan” but never actually understood what it meant.

And when She made the wager with Satan during the Job story, She already knew Crowley wouldn’t destroy the goats or kill the children. She knew Aziraphale wouldn’t allow it to happen either. She knew he would lie in order to do the right thing. Precisely because he has free will. She is omniscient — She knew everything from the very beginning. She knows what was, what is, and what will be. She is not cruel — the cruel ones are those who speak in Her name. The Great Plan does not belong to Her; only the Ineffable one does. The “Great Plan” was invented by those claiming to speak for Her.

The original theme, free will as part of the ineffable plan, felt lost and replaced with cheap drama. What began as a comedic story with religious motifs that satirized the idea of total self-sacrifice for a “better” world instead of actually trying to fix things, ultimately ended with exactly that kind of sacrifice, along with a strange, inconsistent drama that doesn’t align with established characterizations.

The finale erased all of that, threw it away, and forgot about it.

[iforgiveyouprime]

And I have something to add. At the end of season 1, Aziraphale asks Gabriel and Beelzebub whether they are certain that everything that happened—the stopping of Armageddon and so on—was not actually part of the Ineffable Plan. Beelzebub and Gabriel only talk about the Great Plan, but Aziraphale and Crowley argue that no one can be sure that everything that occurred wasn’t part of the Ineffable Plan, because it is, by definition, unknowable.

God designed it exactly that way from the very beginning. She knew everything in advance. She knew they would stop Armageddon. That was her Ineffable Plan all along.

But in the finale, we see all of this being forgotten, crossed out, and literally erased.

@a-zira-ziraphale-fell I wonder what do you think about it, dear

[nythrasaglitch]

What if Aziraphale never flipped the bookshop sign to open, and Satan never entered the shop? I'd like to believe that was the only thing that allowed him in, and if he hadn't shown up, they could have had a real conversation eventually

[inahc3]

Still sorting out my feelings, have a gif.

[inahc3]

extended version:

[nythrasaglitch]

I just want our Angel and Demon. Ordered Aziraphale and Crowley from Amazon and got the Temu version

[ladybracknellssherry]

the difference between liking the finale and not isn't just down to the debate of media literacy and taste. because the problem really boils down to the experience of loss.

i keep trying to shout how much i reject the finale. i am filling up every space i can with all of the reasons it doesn't make sense to me, doesn't work for me, doesn't feel canon to me. not because i'm trying to convince myself of my position, but because i'm trying to convince myself that i will be able to move past this feeling by just rejecting it. but in truth i don't know how to unsee it. and i do not know if i can enjoy good omens anymore. because while those issues of taste and media literacy surrounding the convoluted philosophies about free will and reincarnation, and the whole not kissing or not saying "i love you" issues can all be debated as intellectual, matters of logic and judgement and comprehension... there's a big chunk of this schism that comes from perception and emotion, and not all emotional responses/reactions can be logic'ed or be correct or incorrect.

and one of the most impactful for me is what feels like multiple instances of extremely out of character dialogue and choices. and because of aziraphale and crowley's characterization and choices in the finale, i was very quickly drained of the feeling of comfort in them and their love. i can't love that aziraphale with how he speaks to that crowley. i ache too much for that crowley. i don't feel that their love as presented is that powerful or beautiful anymore because now it just radiates what from my experience feels completely toxic. and so i'm left with wondering why would toxic love save the universe. why is it good to get reincarnated back into a toxic relationship. and even if you try to make the logical argument that that toxicity is only there because of the angel/demon opposite sides thing, it doesn't feel like enough to excuse the fact that it happened. it destroys for me the beauty of it.

so even if "that is them," i don't know how to care about asa and anthony getting to be happy and in love if I wouldn't have been peacefully, comfortably happy with crowley and aziraphale getting together after what i saw in that episode.

and trying to look back at season 2 and season 1 and the book and the good old fics is a stab in the heart because i saw in that finale the devastation on their faces when they decided that all of the longing and want and pain of every disagreement and fight and miscommunication and every "almost" over 6000 years would never be rectified. that there was no payoff for all of that trying and wanting. that they were in pain for millennia only to sacrifice themselves for a new universe that i can't feel like was even a guarantee... because god's agreement doesn't feel like something that can or should be trusted. there's no comfort or joy there anymore. it doesn't feel safe. i don't feel held. reading and writing fic just hurts now. drawing, making gifs, editing video, all just hurt now. i can't talk to half of my friends because they're happy about something that broke me. i've lost my source of joy and i don't know if that feeling is ever going to come back. i don't know if i'll ever be able to unsee the finale and shed the visceral emotional reaction i had to it. and that kind of loss carries a whole different kind of weight and consequence and disruption to it than a straightforward or even bittersweet "i liked it."