"In a story about Armageddon it's stupendous marvelous writing to actually let armageddon happen it defies the expectations GENIUS!!!!"
I don't know you, but what I'm expecting from a story that is a comedy about stopping Armageddon, is that despite all the odds, Armageddon gets stopped. Possibly in a humorous way.
Having Armageddon happen and call it defying the odds and expectations is fundamentally not understanding how stories work: you give me an ineluctable outcome, then our heroes triumph despite everything. That's defying the expectation. Transforming a comedy that had already defied the odds into a pointless tragedy that is a bad copycat of the previous story? It's boring storytelling.
Letting everything go to kingdom come IS the expected outcome, am I supposed to be positively impressed lol?
There's a quote from TP on stories and hope that lives rent free in my head, long before this finale even came out, it just explains what I love about stories and books in general.
Yes, I'm aware it looks like Azi is holding his boobs. I noticed and specifically decided not to change it hehe 😌🫶
When I scripted this comic a month ago, I was so giddy at the chance of adding Death! This is specifically Death from Discworld who is my fav character in the series so far (I only read two DW books atp tho oops). Not only do I think he'll fit the role he'll play in this comic nicely but I wanted to add him as a little nod to Terry :)
>>A guide to all my Good Omens AUs and comics!<<
🪴 Support me on Patreon and read my comics ahead, get early access to my other art and extra content 💜
🪴 Commissions on my VGen are open!
🪴You can get, stickers, charms, stationary and other things at my online shop!
On the matter of tags: an earnest attempt to communicate
As a random member of the Good Omens fandom community, I’d just like to toss my hat into the ring and attempt to clear up some misunderstandings. I also want to encourage some honest, good-faith dialogue in a severely fractured fandom.
This is not an attempt to convince anyone to interpret the finale a specific way. This is a practical conversation about how we discuss the finale in fan spaces.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will be focusing on tags as they are used on social media platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram. AO3 tagging is considerable more complex and warrants a whole convo in its own right, so I won't focus on that here.
THIS POST INCLUDES DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE.
So, tags. Tags have become a thorny issue in the Good Omens fandom. I suspect this issue is so pertinent now, two months after the finale aired, because most of us have dropped “GO3 spoilers” tags, which people would have been filtering out if they did not wish to see anything from the finale. The finale is no longer a fresh commodity, so we are all trying to determine for ourselves what the next phase of our engagement with fandom will look like.
In fandom spaces, tags are a courtesy. No one can force anyone to use tags, of course. But tagging is a long-running standard of fandom etiquette across multiple online platforms. Tags are tools that help us find or filter out specific content. But what happens when we disagree on what tags should even be used in the first place? When tags themselves are a battleground?
I have seen assumptions that finale dislikers are demanding that all content with Asa Fell and Professor Anthony Crowley be tagged with “suicide.” It's possible that I’ve missed some significant conversations, but as someone on the disliker side, I have not seen anyone demand that Asanthony shippers use a "suicide" tag on all their posts featuring Asanthony. If anyone has asked that, I agree that it would be unreasonable! But I strongly suspect this perception comes from a game of fandom telephone in which different conversations are being conflated.
What IS being asked:
All content featuring Asa and Anthony should be tagged with their names or their ship name, Asanthony.
The "ineffable husbands" ship name should not be used for Asanthony.
Content warnings are strongly encouraged when sharing visuals of the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale’s request to be removed from existence, specifically the moments as they disintegrate, as this decision is interpreted by many fans as a suicide.
Let’s address that first point now.
Tagging Asanthony as "Asanthony" makes sense. I think most people are already doing this. If you’re not doing this, well… I strongly advise you to reconsider. Tags aren’t just for those filtering out content, but for those seeking it. Someone who doesn’t want to see Asanthony can use this tool to avoid them, and someone who is specifically seeking out Asanthony content can use the tag to find them and share some appreciation.
Where we have some disagreement is the second point listed above: whether Asanthony deserve to be tagged with the general “ineffable husbands” ship name as well. I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on this one. Some people do see them as the same ship, and others do not. Personally I’m someone who does not see Asanthony as "ineffable," but I am okay to concede on someone using the general ship tag for them, as it really does boil down to one's own interpretation. In my view, so long as "Asanthony" is also used, tag them as you see fit.
Now for the third point. This is where I'll be talking about suicide.
Suicide is obviously an incredibly sensitive and distressing subject, one that is highly likely to carry a personal resonance for many fans on all sides of the GO3 debate. I understand why people are upset to have to bring this subject up in their tags when they do not see the final scene that way.
But if you do find it upsetting to even consider using that tag... that means you agree that this topic is distressing, yes? The ineffables' decision was genuinely genuinely distressing for people who interpreted their choice as a suicide. I am pleading with you to understand this: there are members of our community who struggle with suicide ideation, and that scene genuinely triggered some of these people.
You don’t like to see this tag imposed. Well, others don’t like to suddenly come across visuals that in their view shows a suicide. Not seeing Crowley and Aziraphale's decision as a suicide is just as much an interpretation as seeing it as a suicide is.
We will never agree on our interpretations of Crowley and Aziraphale's final request to God and how it played out. The fact remains that the scene where they make this choice and it is granted is triggering to a significant portion of the fandom. This is not a niche opinion.
We won't be able to reconcile our views on this. But we do have to share fandom spaces together. Blocking others who have a different approach to discussing this scene is always an option. But maybe we can also attempt to reach a middle ground in the form of a tag.
I have chatted with others about this, and an idea I have seen discussed is for the fandom to come up with a neutral term for the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale's request, akin to how we settled on “the Final Fifteen” for the last fifteen minutes of season 2. This term should not favour one interpretation over another.
Some suggestions:
The Final Half Hour (or… the Final Twenty? How long is this scene? Anyone clocked it?)
The Decision
We’ve Come to a Decision (WCTOAD? Well, I do like toads)
Please chime in if you have other suggestions!
Like I said at the top, no one can force anyone to use tags. This is ultimately down to one's own discretion.
But I think it's fair to say that our fandom is currently in crisis. The community has fractured — or perhaps it is simply going through some very nasty growing pains. Maybe we can grow with it.
We will never be in a place where we all agree on GO3’s choices. Right now, we are all figuring out how we want to navigate this story and fandom we have all come to love. However we feel about the finale, we are all trying to find new ways forward.
We can argue about who’s right. We can block as we see fit. We can tag or not tag according to our own interpretation to make a point.
We can also decide to make productive choices that will help us all navigate our fandom spaces moving forward. Above all else, we can choose to be kind.
If you've read this far, thank you for hearing me out.
As someone who was triggered I’m begging you please, use tags. When I say triggered I don’t mean it made me sad or uncomfortable I mean it caused panic attacks, dissociation or a mental health crisis that required immediate support from my therapist.
I’ve had to leave bluesky entirely because the point blank refusal to use tags over there made using that platform unsafe for me. And I know I’m not the only one. Think about that for a minute. Some of you made what was a safe fandom space unsafe and unusable for part of your community.
I get it, some of you are sensitive about your head canons being criticised but your personal interpretation is not more important than someone else’s safety.
I keep seeing wildly ableist posts saying things like”You’re too mentally ill to be in fandom space” or that “You’re the problem so you should leave,” and you know what, no. I have been using online fandom spaces since Doctor Who rebooted in 2005 and I’ve been on Tumblr since 2007 and this has never been a problem. Why? Because people cared about supporting vulnerable people in their community. This community used to care about supporting vulnerable people.
On the matter of tags: an earnest attempt to communicate
As a random member of the Good Omens fandom community, I’d just like to toss my hat into the ring and attempt to clear up some misunderstandings. I also want to encourage some honest, good-faith dialogue in a severely fractured fandom.
This is not an attempt to convince anyone to interpret the finale a specific way. This is a practical conversation about how we discuss the finale in fan spaces.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will be focusing on tags as they are used on social media platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram. AO3 tagging is considerable more complex and warrants a whole convo in its own right, so I won't focus on that here.
THIS POST INCLUDES DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE.
So, tags. Tags have become a thorny issue in the Good Omens fandom. I suspect this issue is so pertinent now, two months after the finale aired, because most of us have dropped “GO3 spoilers” tags, which people would have been filtering out if they did not wish to see anything from the finale. The finale is no longer a fresh commodity, so we are all trying to determine for ourselves what the next phase of our engagement with fandom will look like.
In fandom spaces, tags are a courtesy. No one can force anyone to use tags, of course. But tagging is a long-running standard of fandom etiquette across multiple online platforms. Tags are tools that help us find or filter out specific content. But what happens when we disagree on what tags should even be used in the first place? When tags themselves are a battleground?
I have seen assumptions that finale dislikers are demanding that all content with Asa Fell and Professor Anthony Crowley be tagged with “suicide.” It's possible that I’ve missed some significant conversations, but as someone on the disliker side, I have not seen anyone demand that Asanthony shippers use a "suicide" tag on all their posts featuring Asanthony. If anyone has asked that, I agree that it would be unreasonable! But I strongly suspect this perception comes from a game of fandom telephone in which different conversations are being conflated.
What IS being asked:
All content featuring Asa and Anthony should be tagged with their names or their ship name, Asanthony.
The "ineffable husbands" ship name should not be used for Asanthony.
Content warnings are strongly encouraged when sharing visuals of the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale’s request to be removed from existence, specifically the moments as they disintegrate, as this decision is interpreted by many fans as a suicide.
Let’s address that first point now.
Tagging Asanthony as "Asanthony" makes sense. I think most people are already doing this. If you’re not doing this, well… I strongly advise you to reconsider. Tags aren’t just for those filtering out content, but for those seeking it. Someone who doesn’t want to see Asanthony can use this tool to avoid them, and someone who is specifically seeking out Asanthony content can use the tag to find them and share some appreciation.
Where we have some disagreement is the second point listed above: whether Asanthony deserve to be tagged with the general “ineffable husbands” ship name as well. I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on this one. Some people do see them as the same ship, and others do not. Personally I’m someone who does not see Asanthony as "ineffable," but I am okay to concede on someone using the general ship tag for them, as it really does boil down to one's own interpretation. In my view, so long as "Asanthony" is also used, tag them as you see fit.
Now for the third point. This is where I'll be talking about suicide.
Suicide is obviously an incredibly sensitive and distressing subject, one that is highly likely to carry a personal resonance for many fans on all sides of the GO3 debate. I understand why people are upset to have to bring this subject up in their tags when they do not see the final scene that way.
But if you do find it upsetting to even consider using that tag... that means you agree that this topic is distressing, yes? The ineffables' decision was genuinely genuinely distressing for people who interpreted their choice as a suicide. I am pleading with you to understand this: there are members of our community who struggle with suicide ideation, and that scene genuinely triggered some of these people.
You don’t like to see this tag imposed. Well, others don’t like to suddenly come across visuals that in their view shows a suicide. Not seeing Crowley and Aziraphale's decision as a suicide is just as much an interpretation as seeing it as a suicide is.
We will never agree on our interpretations of Crowley and Aziraphale's final request to God and how it played out. The fact remains that the scene where they make this choice and it is granted is triggering to a significant portion of the fandom. This is not a niche opinion.
We won't be able to reconcile our views on this. But we do have to share fandom spaces together. Blocking others who have a different approach to discussing this scene is always an option. But maybe we can also attempt to reach a middle ground in the form of a tag.
I have chatted with others about this, and an idea I have seen discussed is for the fandom to come up with a neutral term for the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale's request, akin to how we settled on “the Final Fifteen” for the last fifteen minutes of season 2. This term should not favour one interpretation over another.
Some suggestions:
The Final Half Hour (or… the Final Twenty? How long is this scene? Anyone clocked it?)
The Decision
We’ve Come to a Decision (WCTOAD? Well, I do like toads)
Please chime in if you have other suggestions!
Like I said at the top, no one can force anyone to use tags. This is ultimately down to one's own discretion.
But I think it's fair to say that our fandom is currently in crisis. The community has fractured — or perhaps it is simply going through some very nasty growing pains. Maybe we can grow with it.
We will never be in a place where we all agree on GO3’s choices. Right now, we are all figuring out how we want to navigate this story and fandom we have all come to love. However we feel about the finale, we are all trying to find new ways forward.
We can argue about who’s right. We can block as we see fit. We can tag or not tag according to our own interpretation to make a point.
We can also decide to make productive choices that will help us all navigate our fandom spaces moving forward. Above all else, we can choose to be kind.
If you've read this far, thank you for hearing me out.
This fandom has gotten so pedantic and inconsiderate and antagonistic and just downright cruel that the definitions of "death" and "suicide" are being debated and flouted and disregarded for... what? Stats? To be "right" instead of being considerate and empathic and decent?
This is what happened on screen at the end of Good Omens 3:
Aziraphale and Crowley requested that God annihilate them and create a new universe without them in it. Because apparently they were part of the problem. Then, 13.9 billion years later, Asa and Anthony, who looked like Aziraphale and Crowley and shared a handful of their traits but ostensibly none of their memories, met one another. Followed by a scene in which characters that looked like other angels and demons and humans from "the original" "fake" universe also appeared, with no indication they had any memories from or anything in common with their counterparts in the other universe. The final scene at a cottage in the South Downs twenty years later shows, what the content of the preceding 10 minutes indicates, Asa and Anthony stargazing and drinking cocoa. Anthony acknowledging the song of a nightingale nearby and Asa responding that "you wouldn't know a nightingale if it perched on your nose" seems to conflict with Crowley in S2 stating "no nightingales," as that implies he would know what they sound like. Asa asks if Anththony ever wonders if there's more out there - pointing to the sky - and Anthony's response is, in paraphrase, that it doesn't really matter to him, because he has Asa. This absence of Crowley's innate curiosity and questioning and answer seeking personality traits seem to indicate as well that Anthony and Asa have not gained Aziraphale and Crowley's memories/personalities.
If you want to get into semantics, I suppose instead of suicide we can use the term "elective euthanasia."
But at the end of the day, they still died. That is considered major character death. Even if it's "temporary," even if it's "a ruse," a request for death and the dissolution of a physical body would feel fairly cut and dry in any other situation. A ghost or a reincarnation or a lost soul adrift in the void with no memory of who and where it came from are all interpretations of what remains of someone after death.
Is this irony? Sorry, I'm not terribly media literate.
You can have the headcanon that Asa and Anthony are Aziraphale and Crowley. You can make the art and write the fics. Your fanworks deserve to exist just as much as those who do not share your interpretation of the ending. But, and especially for those of you who claim GO3 is #ForTerry, I do have to wonder why you continue to insist and force upon others that it is canon, and one that Pterry would want. We can't know. Terry Pratchett is no longer alive to tell us how he feels about the ending of GO3. And we have comments from various sources close to him with conflicting information about how Terry would have felt about it. But to me, the ending does not seem aligned with Pterry's own words.
"Dementia in its varied forms is not like cancer. Dad saw the cancer in his pancreas as an invader. But Alzheimer’s is me, unwinding, losing trust in myself, a butt of my own jokes and on bad days capable of playing hunt the slipper by myself and losing. You can’t battle it, you can’t be a plucky “survivor”. It steals you from yourself." - Sir Terry Pratchett
“I hate things that try to take away what you are. […] When you take away memories, you take away the person, everything they are.” - Sir Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith.
Please tag your fanworks appropriately, and thank you to those who do.
Crowley talks about taboos. if you have any questions about the lore, feel free to ask) if the question isn't addressed in the story, Crowley will explain it to you.
Frozen Peas: “the duck song” Good Omens style parody animation (no sound)
The only things I drew were Crowley, Aziraphale, the bowl of peas, the new letters, and the colors for the duck. The rest is from “the duck song” original, which you can see here
Inspiration from this reddit post: by @itzivyleaf201 (thank you!)
The dialogue between Aziraphale and Crowley is from this exchange in the Good Omens book:
📕Aziraphale tossed a crust to a scruffy-looking drake, which caught it and sank immediately.
The angel turned to Crowley.
"Really, my dear," he murmured.
"Sorry," said Crowley. "I was forgetting myself." The duck bobbed angrily to the surface📕
This video has NO sound 😅I was inspired to make this version by this drawing: https://www.reddit.com/r/goodomens/comments/1mljflo/got_any_fr
It has come to my attention that the character and pairings tags on AO3 have consolidated Aziraphale with New Universe Asa, Crowley with New Universe Anthony, and A/C with Anthony/Asa. I have put in a request to AO3 to have these tags separated out. But currently, if you search for A/C pairings, you will get fics that are new universe Anthony/Asa even if they are not tagged with A/C.
However, there is a way to fix this in your own searches.
When you search for fics with Aziraphale, and/or Crowley, and/or Aziraphale/Crowley, you can filter out anything tagged Asa and/or Anthony and/or "Fellony." You can, of course, do this yourself by simply setting the search parameters as such (e.g. if you wanted all Aziraphale fics and no Asa fics), but I thought it might help to provide you with an easy link for the pairing search.
This is a search for Aziraphale/Crowley fics that excludes fics that are tagged Anthony/Asa (either solely or additionally).
