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OFMD Meta Series Master Thread

My brain works in meta series for some reason, and a couple of my individual metas have been really popular! So in case you're looking for more of my stuff, or to read a meta related to one you already liked, here're my series. I'll update them as I go.

#ofmd #ofmd s2 spoilers #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd spoilers #ofmd meta

tens-girl

After a week to process (and a thousand different, wonderful posts explaining all the things that are wrong), I think it all comes down to one simple thing, for me.

Good Omens is a comedy. And what that Finale delivered us was a tragic ending.

In a basic, human, narrative sense, it went completely against what we had a right to expect and need from an ending. When I woke up a week ago, the one thing I was sure of was that I was going to see the characters I love be happy in the end; the entire storytelling history of humankind promised that. Instead, everything was destroyed.

sarucane

A comedy can turn into a tragedy, and that can make a good story. But then the questions become: how well is it earned? And at what cost?

Earned: This wasn't particularly well earned. The characterizations take enormous leaps and borderline get retconned to get to that ending. The basic logic of the final decision only works, I've found, if the characters are viewing everyone on Earth as already lost and themselves as dead 'men' walking. Existing key themes are trampled and new themes are underdeveloped.

Cost: This isn't just "one of the romantic leads dies," this is "everyone dies and the universe gets deleted." That is a HUGE tragedy, no matter what sweet gets added after the bitter.

There's the cost to the story. Look, a real argument can be made that ending like that is just a better story than alternatives. No pulled punches, no bullshit stakes. A tidy way to end the story--just like how God and Satan shake hands at the end. The original Good Omens was an experiment, an incredible organic garden. There were ambiguities about free will, uncertainties about what God really was. But in this, everyone just gets turned into characters in an author's book. A callous God, a queered/fantasized passion of Christ.

And there's the cost to the audience. I don't know about y'all, but I loved S2 in part because I thought the tragedy at the end was going to build into something ultimately deeper. But what we got was more tragedy, followed by something shallower. Good Omens has been a safe universe, a playground universe. This is way too much like the authors turning over the sandbox and saying "go live in the real world."

As for me, I just don't like it when comedies go full-on tragic to get more profound. Not my thing. Makes me less invested in the entire project, I'm afraid. And that fucking sucks.

#good omens #good omens 3

Recommending a Fanfic Good Omens Ending

Just finished Factory Settings, and I'd recommend it to anyone who was sad from the Good Omens ending (even if you kinda grudgingly get it, which is where I am).

It's a love letter to S1 and S2 and the characters. The characterizations are soooo good you can hear the actors' voices. It's lovely and only not-gentle in the service of getting us somewhere better, and it doesn't go too far out of canon baseline with the romance/sex stuff (plenty of respect for those who enjoy that but it's not my thing. It can be hard to navigate the fanfic world with that caveat but this one made it easy).

It's also a fan work in the loveliest sense: it explains things that are just taken for granted in the original (lead balloon/suggestion box), it tweaks the last 3ish minutes of S2, and it elevates a popular fan theory (Crowley as Raphael, which I never liked but now GENERAL AZIRAPHALE is canon so fuck it). At the same time, it avoids fanfiction tropes and just builds a good story, well told and often genuinely hilarious.

#good omens #aziracrow #aziraphale #crowley #good omens spoilers #good omens 3 #good omens season 3

I remember interacting with someone on here back during season 2 who said that Crowley was the only one who could see that the GO universe was a horror movie. I said "yes but also, it's actually a comedy, it's not as bad as Crowley thinks"

Seems I was wrong, it was meant to be seen as a horror movie

#good omens #aziracrow #good omens 3 #good omens spoilers #good omens season 3

Reading S2 Fix Fanfics Be like

Fanfic authors: Well without Aziraphale to substitute for having a life of his own, Crowley would spend years developing relationships with humans and look at his own motivations and maybe get a hobby other than drinking.

SO3 canon: Crowley would spend the whole time drinking and straight just waiting for Aziraphale within a 2 block radius of the bookshop, and only develop relationships with humans out of necessity. ('Cause they're all gonna die after all, if he had connections the to world it'd get in the way of him knocking the board over.)

#good omens #aziracrow #aziraphale #crowley #good omens spoilers #good omens 3 #good omens season 3 #good omens 3 spoilers

Validating Crowley's Depression

Ah, so Crowley's depression in S2 and S3 was meant to be JUSTIFIED because the universe was actually stacked against him and everyone, not something that highlighted how he needed some hobbies and connections to the world other than Az.

Well that's some bullshit, man.

#good omens #crowley #good omens 3 #good omens spoilers #good omens season 2

Good Omens Plot/Characters

I think the original Good Omens very much went "character->plot/theme." People being people led to the antichrist being mislaid (not to mention Crowley being Crowley). People being people led to the end of the world not happening. Characters drove plot.

But GO3/the sequel reads to me as "plot/theme->characters." Like, it's a big beautiful idea "what kind of universe would the serpent of Eden create," but to get there you had to kill literally all the people like the antichrist was meant to, and muck about with the character motivations for the only survivors (Crowley's main motivation was never love for humanity I will die on this hill), so it's nice and all I guess but it makes everything feel less fun.

Honestly to me it kinda reads as a sequel problem: the first installment is fun little passion project and a surprise hit, the second has to be some kind of huge epic. Which, fine, but I don't like it. Like this is literally Pirates of the Caribbean somehow?

#good omens spoilers #good omens #good omens 3 #crowley

Wish Fulfillment

The more I think about it, the more GO3 feels like an elaborate wish fulfillment. GO1 and 2 were more about playing around in a sandbox, but GO3 is "what should the universe be, what SHOULD be true"?

Look, there's a deep beauty in that. A godless universe, where people have a chance and the game isn't rigged against them. Where Crowley and Aziraphale can be their truest selves, can plan a date out in the middle of the street and go off and live their lives, instead of having to cobble something together in the shadows. A world where everyone can just BE.

But for me, I'm not into it. To me, it misses out on the fun. On the core of earlier Good Omens: "If all this were true, what would we become? How could we be human/ourselves in the face of this all?" It was a sandbox world, nurtured up in an imaginative furor between two authors, organic and fascinating and fun as hell. And this is tipping over that board, and it feels almost cruel.

This end requires ranking: this version of the character lives a life that is "better" than that version of the character, it's okay that this old world was destroyed because it created something better.

And it required distorting a lot of character to get there. Crowley as an artist (ah right this is a Gaiman story) being propelled into the protagonist slot and being the mind and heart behind a new universe, when we literally never saw Crowley do art and he really never showed an abstract love of humanity on that level, more of a fondness. Aziraphale going from one extreme (I was right) to the other (you were right) with no explanation. Both of them moving VERY quickly from "we want the world here so we can enjoy it" to "we want the world better for other people to enjoy it."

So that's why I am coming to a place where I can accept this ending, but I don't like it, and it kinda makes me like the whole thing less.

#good omens spoilers #good omens 3 #aziracrow #aziraphale #good omens

polymona

Look, that Good Omens ending amounts to them saying "what we are shouldn't exist," and I think I'm just never going to be okay with that, no matter the context.

#aziraphale #aziracrow #good omens #good omens spoilers #ineffable husbands #good omens three #good omens 3 spoilers

inhonoredglory

So about free will, oppressive systems, and the ending of Good Omens 3...

OK let's talk thematics.

Because one of the reasons Good Omens resonated with so many of us is that Crowley and Aziraphale were like us, people who've been traumatized by oppressive systems that forced us into corners and destroyed our sense of self, ability to love, our free will, everything about us.

Good Omens taught us that we can find healing and bravery to overcome that trauma by bonding with other traumatized souls and DEFYING those systems of oppression.

Adam in GO1 wanted to destroy the world to remake it better, but that's not an option for us, is it? We can't eliminate homophobia or transphobia, we can't eliminate the abusers in our lives, we can't eliminate corporations that pollute our environment and we can't eliminate religious institutions or political corruption or fascism or racism and every other awful thing out there.

But we CAN take their power away from controlling us, by banding together and declaring NO. YOU will not define me. That is what Aziraphale and Crowley represent.

As angels and demons, they represent revolting against the systems that birthed them and telling those systems that they REJECT the identity foisted upon them.

That is why Good Omens 3 doesn't make sense thematically. Because it takes this metaphor and says instead that the only solution is to eliminate the entire system and start again. Something that is virtually impossible to do without mass destruction on a global scale (for example, an extinction event that takes us back to before civilization and the patriarchy began). This is exactly what Adam thought:

Adam: “We'll get rid of everything stupid and start all over again.”

But Good Omens 1 tells us that this thinking is wrong. It is wrong to nuke the world to forge a better one, because individual lives matter and we can try to fix it.

Brian: “You're going to burn all this away. Why? Because some adults mucked things up? That's a reason to fix it, not destroy it.”

Good Omens was always optimistic about how, despite the fact that humans can destroy the world, we can also make it better.

Everyone in Good Omens 1 made choices, created their own free will, by defying god. Not eliminating god. Defying god. Adam, by rejecting his birth and parentage. Anathema, by rejecting her inherited role. Crowley and Aziraphale, by choosing to love one another (and what a queer metaphor that is, to choose to love as your form of rebellion 🏳️‍🌈).

This works beautifully as a metaphor because we in the real world can also choose to make our own free will, despite the oppressive systems we live under. Even if it's difficult, even if maybe we need therapy and support to do so, we can choose to reject the abusive systems in our lives and forge our own identities outside of them.

So when Good Omens 3 comes along saying the only solution is to remake the world entirely because apparently there is no hope under ANY oppressive system?? It's basically a pessimistic outlook. It's saying, no matter how much support and love we find, we will never have freedom from those abusive systems. (and maybe that's true on a social level, but on an individual level?)

Saying the only solution is to remake the world entirely removes the power WE have to do something within the broken systems we live under.

I get how Good Omens 3 works (sorta) from an atheistic perspective, and I fully believe it's the ending Terry would have wanted, but it just does not work from a Good Omens (or a realistic) perspective.

About the atheistic POV, just to say briefly: Does removing god actually fix all the problems in the world? Well, Good Omens already told us that humans are the primary drivers of evil. So god wasn't even responsible for that. And plus, it is humans who created god, and what we imagine god wants, and why we fight religious wars.

It's not god's existence that ruins society, it's the idea of god, and that's all humanity's creation.

So, no, eliminating god does not create a perfect world.

But!! Having free will to defy the oppressive systems that will invariably plague humanity is how you find freedom. Not a perfect world but free will, and the ability to act on it, is still how you define Who you are, that is how you defeat everything society wants you to be, how you CHOOSE who YOU want to be.

That is why Good Omens is so inspiring, because it speaks to all of us who feel oppressed and traumatized. It tells us there is hope despite what happened (and is happening) to us.

Good Omens 3 does not share that theme though, and that to me is the primary reason I can't get behind the ending.

Theory: a lot of reaction depends on which parts of GO were closest to you.

Book: probably into this ending

S1: split--people who were shippers first, prob not happy. People who loved the whole thing, more into it.

S2: NOPE (I'm here)

Thoughts?

#good omens #aziracrow #good omens spoilers #good omens three #good omens season 3

fellshish

now create the universe in which good omens is a romantic comedy and our aziraphale and crowley get their happy ending

sarucane

Fool on us for investing in S2's romantic comedy and being upset when S3 whirls to a tragedy

enemiestorivalstolovers

ashfae

On Good Omens Season 3

Some thoughts. I was going to wait until they were more in order but nope, just going to splat them on here. Hereafter follow spoilers, spoilers galore, here there be dragons, etc etc, though I'm going to babble about myself first (it'll be relevant) (at least to my mind it is) so no harm done if you look at the first few paragraphs. Still, Good Omens spoilers, here some be. Though honestly a lot more personal stuff than spoilers.

But I needed *their* happy ending too. The demon who once Fell from Heaven and is still angry about it and wanting to know why, the angel who loved humanity's foods and music and literature so much he surrounded himself with them constantly, both of the outsiders who found each other against all odds. And instead they and their entire world are just...undone. Replaced by a new version that looks like them and no doubt have their own stories to tell that are worth hearing. But I needed *their* ending, and I really, really wanted it to be something other than self-sacrifice for the sake of humanity. I suppose, given that Good Omens has always been a story about what it means to be human, I wanted to be about the humans choosing to make their own choices. I wanted the things the humans do to have meaning. So, Adam, again. Jesus/Yeshua/Josh couldn't have been exactly the same (though what would I give for th original six episodes which included Jesus and Adam meeting up and running around), we needed higher stakes, but...that much does feel wrong. Which is part of the point Crowley was making, that the human's choices *didn't* matter God's rigged game, I know. So again, it's appropriate that I'm frustrated. Life is frustrating. Existence is frustrating. It's all questions without answers but at least in their story now no one is mucking them about (except from a meta standpoint because the writers were and we will and actually it's ALL MUCKING ABOUT ALWAYS). I don't doubt Terry would approve of things not being all neat and tidy at the end. He was never one to shy away from a mess. But I didn't just want appropriate. I wanted to see them happy. Aziraphale and Crowley, happy and together. I'm grieving right now because I just watched my comfort couple and all their world, all the little details we as a fandom have taken so much joy in celebrating, get erased. And even if it's rebuilt a thousand times and a thousand times more, infinite Anthonys and Asa/Ezra/Alistair/InsertNameHeres, that hurts. It really, really hurts. I don't blame anyone for having a different reaction; anyone who's happy with the ending absolutely should enjoy it. I think I'm still glad to have watched it, there was a whole lot to inspire and delight me too, especially in the first half (where several things I predicted happened and one thing I'd feared didn't, so that's nice). I am glad for all the cast and crew who put their heart into it and saved it from not having any ending at all. I still wish we could've had the full six episodes even if it'd had the same ending. But I'm going to be grieving for a while.

aduckwithears

I miss the whimsy.

You know what I mean?

I can think of one (other) scene where Crowley's main motivation is *loving humanity* (if I squint): him saving Elspeth in the Scottish minisode. Maybe also him saving Job's kids, but that's super-underemphasized next to the developing relationship with Az.

Seriously, am I missing something?

*he has a scene ranting at god in 1.04, so that's more than I remembered but still not enough considering how often he tries to get Aziraphale to leave humanity to burn

#good omens #aziracrow #aziraphale #crowley #good omens spoilers #season 3 spoilers #good omens 3 #good omens 3 spoilers #good omens season 3

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