the poneappol doesn’t grow far from the ground

21 \\ they/them \\ i have many thoughts but none of the words to articulate them \\ art blog: kolumander \\ iwtv side blog: dargonfrot

[yamatuchi]

[poneappol]

glass animals doing anything but releasing the strawberry single

[poneappol]

it’s my birthday! my birthday wish is for mpreg to be real 🙏

[can-you-stomach-it]

The longer I think about the finale, the more it confuses me. The new thought I have is: S2 was conceived as a bridge between S1 and the "real" sequel. However, nothing in S2 ended up being important.

More below the cut:

The kiss. Crowley finally allowed himself to express his feelings and kissed Aziraphale. But they do not talk about it in the finale. They do not really address what this means for their relationship. Actually, right before dissapearing, Aziraphale does the weird kiss with his fingers that to me reads as giving Crowley his kiss back. Which is like. Undoing S2's finale.

The main characters' conflicting views. Aziraphale and Crowley's argument and separation comes from the fact that they have different views on Heaven. Aziraphale chooses to try and work within that system to help humanity, believing that being in charge means he can make a difference. Crowley believes that Heaven is irredeemable: that the only way for him and Aziraphale to live truthfully is being their own side. In the finale, they do have this argument again, but it is not meaningfully explored. Aziraphale never has this moment of being overwhelmed by how evil Heaven is. Crowley never gets to dwell on how "running away together" is not a choice that would make them happy.

Crowley's character development. S2's ending allowed Crowley to finally say no to Aziraphale's "I need you." He refused to go to Heaven with him even when his angel begged him for help. In the finale, he falls back on the same old dynamic almost immediately. It is even explicitly recognized in the text that yes, Aziraphale came back because he needed something. But it wasn't really explored as a problem that needed some kind of resolution.

This is related to the last point but. Aziraphale never accepts Crowley as Crowley. S2's ending was painful because Aziraphale asked Crowley to be an angel again, thus making him feel like he could never be worthy of love as he was. In the finale, Aziraphale calls Crowley "the best angel" and that really shows how this very important conflict was never solved.

Aziraphale being the Supreme Archangel. He sacrificed so much last season to have this role. However, we do not really get to see the challenges he faced (we are just told in passing about them) nor the choices he made. We do not even get to hear the speech he wrote for Jesus to read. Having him being the top angel actually substracts credibility from the plot: why wouldn't Michael delete him from the Book of Life much earlier? If we had this finale right after S1, Gabriel could have been murdered this way. Michael not targeting Aziraphale would make more sense, as he would no longer be in Heaven's radar (in S2 they only go to him because of his and Crowley's miracle to hide Gabriel).

The Second Coming. During S2, the big mistery uncovered by Gabriel that led to him deleting his own memories was the Second Coming. We do have some of that in the finale, but it goes nowhere. Jesus barely manages to give everyone pizza before dissapearing.

Job's minisode. Its existence really makes it impossible to accept the finale as a happy ending. Like. If you make a new universe instead of asking the current one to be saved, then it is as if Aziraphale and Crowley had let Hell kill Job's children.

Not to mention all the S2 characters that we do not see in the finale. Gabriel, Beelzebub, Nina, Maggie and so on. The Metraton is killed almost immediately. What purpose did introducing him even had?

I can perfectly picture how this finale could fit right after S1 with no need of S2 in between. In fact, it would be a bit less jarring, as we would not have all the unadressed baggage from S2's kiss.

[can-you-stomach-it]

Do you remember when Aziraphale said "I’m not giving you a suicide pill, Crowley!" Do you remember he was devastated by the idea Crowley would try to kill himself. Did any of that mean anything, in S3?

[fagnet0]

I bet magneto can palm a basketball like a mf. he’s got that insane grip strength from years of fucking a bald guy. he had to develop that skill, there wasn’t any hair to hold onto

[peachpulpeuse]

IF YOU SEE ANY PAINTING BY "EMILE CORSI" ON HERE, DO NOT REBLOG IT THINKING IT'S REAL AND FROM THE 1800s. IT IS AI-GENERATED AND EMILE CORSI IS NOT A HISTORICAL FIGURE

examples:

[tattedpetticoats]

And if you love the vibes and wish you could find something similar painted by a real person, let me introduce you to John William Waterhouse, on whose work the AI was definitely trained:

[wheeloffortune-design]

What I learned from Good Omens 3

other people have very eloquently expressed many of my thoughts over the finale, may it be about the themes, characters, or general grief that came with it. I have not read other books from Pratchett yet, and the ones I started from Gaiman I never managed to finish because he makes everything feel like a videogame (collect three artefacts to unlock the plot!). And that was before we all learned what a monster he is.

so, i'm not the best person to talk about theme and author intent. maybe i'm better placed to talk about the characters, having spent many years drawing and writing for that fandom. but i'm too sad to think about Aziraphale and Crowley now.

but I'm also a writer, and this finale taught me something important about endings.

I don't know if there is a name for the trope we saw. "Let's erase everything magical in our universe and make it that is was actually real life all along!"

It feels clever, to make it that it was our universe all along. To bring it to our reality, the viewers and readers. It's not clever. It's just sad.

Emptying a whole universe from its magic and whimsy to make it "real life" is just sad.

When you start planning a story, one of the first things to decide is the emotion you want to leave your public with. That decides your ending. The ending will influence how the public perceives your whole story.

(Look at How I Met Your Mother. Look at Game of Thrones.)

Emptying your whimsical universe of its magic is sad. Removing the memories of your characters and make them whole new beings while erasing the ones we grew to love, is sad.

I have many stories in mind, and with some of them I've been playing with the ideas of amnesia, of erasing everything and starting over, just to see if it works. I'm not gonna use those endings anymore. I don't like how they feel.

Good Omens 3 taught me how not to end a story.

[cobbbvanth]

mad again. crowley's whole point is that humanity doesn't deserve to suffer for the crimes committed by heaven and hell, so his solution is to create a new universe without angels or demons. sacrificing themselves for humanity, sure, I get it. but what about all the humans who were wiped out with the book of life? god gave them the option of returning all those humans, and instead his solution is to start all over a la the great flood, something crowley was staunchly opposed to. so not only is there no happy ending for crowley and aziraphale, but there's no happy ending for recently corporeal jesus, or mrs sandwich, mr arnold, nina and maggie, adam and the them, newt and anathema. it's job's kids all over again. they didn't want the new children the angels offered them, job and sitis wanted their children back. it's the same choice they gave adam. he wanted things to go back to normal with heaven and hell behaving themselves so he could play with his friends. how could crowley and aziraphale be happy sacrificing their existence knowing it condemns all of the humanity they know and love?

[goodbyevanny]

I just think that the versions with all the trauma, suffering and history deserved a happy ending. I don’t think the take away should be that the only way to get a happy ending is for those things to have never happened to you.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

Today's vent:

[aanakin]

I don’t ever say that. I like spooky. Big spooky fan, me.

[sunrisesinthesuburbs]

How Good Omens lost its heart (and didn’t even fight to get it back)

I distanced myself from the Good Omens fandom lately, and i’m sure this is not a surprise to many of you reading this post. i want to be very clear: neil gaiman had a lot to do with it. I didn’t want to show my support for a show made by an abuser. And yes, i see and hear people claiming Good Omens belonged to the people and the fans, but realistically the rights and royalties belong to ng, and participating in the promotion of it all just felt wrong to me. So, my choice was to love my favorite characters of all time from afar, and for free: reading and writing and engaging with fanworks.

That being said: I really fucking hated the fuckass movie. I wish i didn’t see it, i wish the show stopped at season 1, and if you liked it, good for you. I did not, and I want to tell you why. Feel free to ignore me.

Is that a hole in your plot?

The writing was bad. Content aside, what I wanted for this characters aside, my feelings on ng and the other writers begrudgingly aside, it was a badly written piece of television. I counted too many plot holes in the first thirty minutes aside, but i will point out what felt the biggest to me.

The opening flashback: it was hot, and that was it. Where does it fit in the timeline we already know about? It doesn’t fit with their first meeting as angels, nor with their first meeting on the wall. Why keep rewriting the first time they met? We already know how they met, twice, and besides the sexual tension, what did this new flashback bring to the story? Arguably, nothing; another case of bad wigs, maybe, nothing more. Perhaps, another instance of contradicting the book and the first ever episode: “it starts, as it will end, with a garden.” Well, apparently not.

Skipping all that nonsense in the middle (Aziraphale leaving crowley in the alley? Jesus having two lines after being promoted as the main focus of the season? The book of life burning not immediately snapping aziraphale and crowley away? Crowley having no reaction to Aziraphale confessing undying devotion to him?) let’s get to the very end. The decision the main characters come to is to erase themselves and all traces of their universe to create a new, fresh universe where angels and demons do not exist, and free will reigns above all. Two minutes after, the movie presents us two human versions of said characters meeting again, 13 something billion of years later, falling in love and all that good stuff. What we are supposed to take away from this is: they were destined to meet and fall in love in every universe, no matter the circumstances. Where is the free will in a soulmate trope? Where is the free will in this condoning of predeterminism? If they were meant to be, then free will isn’t ruling this universe. Fate is. Was it all for nothing then?

Who are these characters?

The characters fell flat. The side characters were useless at best, annoying at worst. Michael going rogue was predictable, Jesus was a nothingburger, the entire Whickber Street ensemble was just… not relevant. And the main characters were subjected to the worst character assasination my eyes have ever seen. The worst of it? That entire scene with God and Satan: Crowley never once looking at Aziraphale, not even at the most heartwrenching confession; Aziraphale talking about Crowley being amazing in the past tense; Crowley choosing something that’s not Aziraphale, after his whole entire monologue and character arc in season 2; Aziraphale accepting complete erasure after fighting 3 years in heaven against it, just because lobotomized Crowley wanted it. What the fuck?

Also, Asa and Anthony. They were cute. Adorable, really. Two cute old men (with bad hair, but i’m willing to move past this) falling in love and getting married. Cute cute cute. Who the fuck were they? They were not Aziraphale and Crowley: they were an English librarian and a Scottish professor, not the angel and demon I loved and yearned and was obsessed with for years. And again, if it were them, why weren’t they recognizable at all? In all the human AUs i enjoyed the characters were perfectly recognizable: Crowley was still moody and a bit rough around the edges, yet soft and almost overwhelming in his loveliness; Aziraphale was still witty and smart and a bit (or a lot) of a snob, yet kind and warm and loving to a fault. These two human beings were cute, but they weren’t them. Who are these characters?

The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall

The loser, in this case, being queer people everywhere. Put your daggers down and let me tell you this: it is not acephobic to think a kiss was needed in this finale.

You’re right when you say that physicality is not needed to show love and connection; in this case, however, physicality between them was already a given – they already kissed. Out of desperation, out of despair, out of sadness, but they kissed. They crossed that bridge and their relationship jumped to the other side of strictly platonic and now, for a simple rule of balance and equity in pieces of media, the ‘ugly kiss’ desperately (pardon the repetition) needed a ‘good kiss’. The finger thing could have been cute, but it lacked the depth and emotional weight to carry the conclusion of a third act.

If that was all the goobye we are going to get, it is simply not enough: they wrapped up 6000 years of history (a history they previously spend two seasons fighting tooth and nail to not erase, mind you) with a finger kiss and an awkward smile. Am i supposed to say it was good?

Also, implying that people wanted some physical intimacy between two queer characters (after it was already established) just to satisfy some sort of fetish is too disrespectful to even comment about.

A straight couple would have gotten a teary goodbye, an explicit I love you and a kiss before turning to dust. The gays get buried — or erased from existence, in this case.

Human incarnate, or the lack of it

All in all, the finale felt cheap, flat, soulless. A comedy desperately grasping onto the physycality of it but not really committing to the bit, a love story relying on the chemistry between the mains without letting them have a single meaningful conversation, a show about humanity reducing human beings to comedic reliefs, over-the-top antagonists and afterthoughts easy to erase with a snap of two fingers.

And no, no one got a second chance: Adam rewrote the universe for nothing, Aziraphale tried to fix Heaven for nothing, Crowley asked questions for nothing. It was all erased anyway, and the ones who get to live simply aren’t them. Some version of them that was paradoxically destined to meet, going against the free will they gave up everything for.

Good Omens was always about knowing your fate, and choosing your own anyway. Loving despite, loving because of, loving even if. The love between to immortal beings being what kept everything together. The characters I knew and loved would have kept choosing each other and their world, not another new one, despite everything, because of history, and even if it was the hardest thing.

They loved their world, their Earth, and deserved to live in it. On their own side. Just the two of them.

So I really didn’t like the movie, and the message it sent. I did not find it bittersweet, just bleak. And this is why.

Going forward, I’ll finish every fic I started. After, I don’t know. It may take me a while.

Thanks for reading. Fuck Neil Gaiman and all abusers. Protect and believe victims.

[diphowell]

listening to chopin’s nocturnes and getting excited when i hear op. 9 no. 1 in b flat minor from the hit video dan and phil baking- slime and sadness cinnamon rolls

[hjartasalt]

Mods are asleep post forbidden tits

[hjartasalt]

Huh

[hjartasalt]

Huh

[hjartasalt]

Huh

[hjartasalt]

Hhhhhhh

[anothermarkiplierfan]

Perfectly balanced as all things should be…

[0v9]

[lexeirikrleif]

[fruitloopghosty]

[offbrandbeethoven-blog]

i

[immortalcheesewedge]

balance

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

My thoughts about the Good Omens Finale

Note: I do not wish to convince anyone of my opinion or be convinced of theirs, I just want to write down how I feel about the finale. Also, I've heard that the creators are getting some hate messages, omg? Please if you have a slightest inclination to do that or to be mean to someone because you disagree with them then log off the internet and go for a walk... try to find a rainbow, feed peas to a duck ❤.

Simply put... I hated the finale. During while some things felt quite rushed I was thinking that it's because of the 6 episodes to 90 minutes shortening and even if it won't be perfect it will still be worth it because of the ending. And then came the scene in the bookshop with God and Satan and our ineffables after which they... died. And then we saw some two human clones who looked like them ending up together.

...

Crying, I couldn't have believed my eyes. The finale killed Aziraphale and Crowley and all the characters we came to know and love and replaced them with some random people who looked like them and we are supposed to care about?

Have I really just watch Soho struggle, learn that Mutt have died, Nina and Maggie had to leave, and people there were barely hanging on to be given a bit of hope by Jesus so they would be erased and this wouldn't matter at all?

I can't even start to begin to describe how much this is not Good Omens that I love. My words fail me and I am left stuttering and waving my hands erratically.

Not starting again but fix what we have has been an important point of Good Omens. Same as Job and his wife don't want some new children but the old ones. But somehow replacing the Earth is the ideal ending now?

The finale is trying to convince us that it's better because now there won't be any Hell and Heaven with their influences, but the big part of Good Omens was always that the humans do have their free will unlike most angels and demons - and all the big events on Earth like World Wars or Spanish Inquisition are created by humans, no matter how many coins Crowley glues on the pavement. If this was truly a problem then even a God's edict that from now no direct influencing people would do (not that we have that much reason to believe that there was that much influencing going on in the first place - most demons and angels kept to their dominions and Aziraphale and Crowley had The Arrangement), Aziraphale and Crowley could have been left on the Earth to make sure no such things was happening. But no, let's throw this all out, kill everyone and start over with real dinosaurs this time because it will surely be better... or will it? The humanity without Hell and Heaven seems the same to me in the ending. Hmm.

The whole scene with the God and Satan (what happens to him? who knows) where God calls Aziraphale lazy felt very very weird.

My brain is completely baffled why I should care about some random two men that look like Aziraphale and Crowley when I just saw my ineffables die. It's not them. It's like someone killed me and cloned me. I would not be very happy about it. And I know that some people like to say it is at least an imprint of them because they created the universe and they find each other in every universe over and over but nothing like is stated there, it is just wishful thinking of a broken heart imho. Aziraphale and Crowley are dead after Aziraphale spend years trying to make Heaven better and Crowley spent years in depression...

...which is another thing of itself:

Crowley is an optimist. (so seeing him in the finale makes me want to put the gif of from The Godfather: "look how they massacred my boy" here :D)

I hate this trend where you have an uplifting funny movie/season/book/something and you see that it is successful and people love it because it gives them comfort and hope and you go "oh but what if we make it drama where suddenly our characters full of hope and energy are depressed and see dying as the only option because surely that is what the fans of the original material appreciate". Fuck that.

I can't help it but the finale doesn't feel like Pratchett. At all. Perhaps there is a reason for that:

I have decided that I will consider only the book and S1 the canon in my head (perhaps with occasional visits from Bildad, Muriel or Furfur ;)). But I simply can't take this ending into my heart.

I have been waiting for the Finale to find out if it rekindles my passion for Good Omens, which sort of died away after the info about NG came out. I'm afraid it hasn't and I don't plan to update this blog much more anymore, perhaps sometimes if I see something that I want to share but I am not sure how much. Thank you for following me all these years, it's been a blast ❤.

(I still love Good Omens. I am going to The Ineffable Con 7 and I will look forward to meeting you there or at another opportunity. ❤❤❤)

[poneappol]

this fanfiction shit easy

[50shadesofoctarine]

Sketch done.

I'll fully render this at some point.

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