sun-rays

may the sun find you in the darkest of corners

[ezra-didntreallyfall]

To anyone who's upset over the finale and misses Aziraphale and Crowley:

"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"

- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[the-depressed-comedic-relief]

Gandalf during the Hobbit: good god I wish Bilbo was more naturally in tune with his Took side I feel like I have to force it out of him

Gandalf during Lord of the Rings: TOO MUCH TOOK FUCK FUCK FUCK WHAT IS WRONG WITH PIPPIN

[squigglyworms]

love the end of the two towers where gandalf looks into the sunset talking bout "yea frodo had to go it alone it was his destiny and there is no changing it he will be ok 😌✨" and aragorn is like "sam went with him btw" and gandalf is like "oh fuck thank god"

[cobbbvanth]

6000 years. they'd been friends for 6000 years and spent the whole time pretending they weren't. they loved each other more than anything else in the universe and they only got a couple of years to live without heaven and hell breathing down their necks after saving the world. they didn't get any time at all to live together with everything out in the open. nightingales might have sang in berkeley square again but they weren't there to hear them. they never got to be an us. after all that.

[thedeepmiracleperfection]

On another note, how can you have all of season 1 be about Adam choosing not to destroy the world and instead leave it the way it is, with heavy themes saying one person doesn't have the right to choose the fate of everything else, but Crowley and Aziraphale choose to destroy their world? What the fuck was any of it for?

"But they did it they freed humanity" everyone in their world is dead. How is it different from the apocalypse in season 1 that wanted to wipe out earth? Why couldn't God free humanity from heaven and hell's influence and leave them alone? They never properly explained that. They're God they can do literally anything. Such bad writing.

[rofell]

We are living in a timeline where the GO finale involved Aziraphale and Crowley never properly making up, spending a grumpy day together, and then dying.

I need to keep reminding myself of that. Because this outcome was so unimaginable to me. In the 990 days I spent waiting for the finale I never once considered this possibility.

This is the ending that we got. I'm getting closer to accepting it, but I'm not quite there. That's why I'm making this post - not to rile up the fandom that I know is divided. I love the positive takes too, keep em comin'. I just... need a little more time to accept that this is what we got.

I think on the other side of it I will be able to say: Yes, that was a show I loved. Didn't love the ending. But that's true for lots of shows. You've just gotta exist in the moments before that end and in all the art that comes after.

Edited to add: For me "accept" does not mean "like it" or even "internalize as canon". I don't think I'll ever do either of those things. But for me accept means stop feeling shock that this is what happened. That this is the story that was written, that was filmed. That they teased us for years, Rob showed us dolls kissing, Amazon shared fan art of them kissing, nothing but positive messaging when actually the finale was a tragedy.

[sunraysss]

[depraveddame]

The finale Aziraphale was not our Aziraphale.

I keep thinking about how Aziraphale, when Crowley did not immediately leap to his feet to help him, just turned around and walked away.

He didn’t try to help him up. He didn’t crouch down to his level. He didn’t even look remotely pressed, and he left Crowley lying there, depressed and dirty and drunk and barely conscious, like he was a piece of trash. Like he meant nothing. (I also haaaaate what they did with Crowley here, but that’s another post entirely)

To think they made Aziraphale into the villain so many people thought he was post s2, and for what? To what end? For what reason? It feels so unnecessarily cruel. So callous. So very much not Aziraphale.

“But Crowley told him to go away! Aziraphale was just respecting his boundaries!”

Nah. No. I mean maybe if Crowley was just chilling having a drink somewhere all upright and not covered in shit and mired in despair, then fine. But he’s lying on the fucking street in the alley muttering that nothing matters anymore. I would argue that when someone you care about is THAT depressed and THAT deep in a dark, dark place, that is precisely the time to ignore their attempt to shove you away. At the very least you reach out to them, anyway.

Was that angel the same as this one? This soft but fiercely tenderhearted sweetheart?

Are we supposed to believe this was that same angel we watched walk away from the same demon he guided through that Edinburgh cemetery with firm but careful hands before he was snatched down to Hell?

Out of all the possible things that could’ve happened in the finale— of all the possible endings and scenarios I thought about for months and months— one thing I never even considered to be remotely possible about this angel who always looked at Crowley like he was everything?

I never thought that Aziraphale wouldn’t help Crowley up off the ground.

And apparently, neither did Peter Anderson Studio.

Why that scene didn’t happen this way in the actual film, I’ll never understand. I’ll never understand pretty much any of the finale because it is so fucking nonsensical in every way, but they butchered the characterization so badly it’s almost impressive. It’s sickening. I have been trying to write a version of this scene that fits with the characters but the words won’t come. I’ll keep trying though.

[alisteravictoria]

War in Heaven | Charcoal Drawing.

[dustbunniees]

tbh my biggest problem with go3 is that aziraphale and crowley do stuff that affects the plot and actually makes a difference in the story #notmygoodomens. my ineffables do NOT save the world, they are there while the world is saved

you’ve taken the two most useless beings in existence and you made them make a decision. look at them. they’re suicidal now

[mervynbunter]

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

[olfactoryventriloquism]

So, I’ve been obsessed with Pratchett since I was 15. That’s 23 years for those keeping count. I just finished GO3 and these are my initial thoughts:

Crowley and Aziraphale becoming human: I don’t love, but you could argue that that was what he planned, and I would buy it. It does follow some of his themes.

But there is a knife’s edge that Pratchett balanced between fury and compassion. He absolutely loved humanity, but he also hated what humans did to each other out of malice, spite, or even laziness. Good Omens the novel was filled to bursting with that.

The end here lacked all of that somehow. God in S1 is unknowable, but God is S3 is just a capricious bitch who seems to have it out for Crowley specifically and through him Aziraphale. The viewer certainly gets angry at God, but the narrative seems to be that, while cold, she is doing the right thing and giving them their happy ending. And while Crowley expresses compassion for humanity, it falls on such deaf ears that the narrative doesn’t actually support that.

The closing sentiment seems to be that we can make their lives better by just erasing all their trauma and baggage. No. Sam Vimes did not pull himself out of the gutter and bodily hold himself out of it every day to be told that actually amnesia would be best. If you wanted to make them human: make them keep their memories. That would have been fine.

Terry would have Crowley and Aziraphale say “fuck you” to God and protect the earth as it was. The way they protected Job’s children. The way they did at Tadfield Airbase. Here they just throw in the towel and start a new universe. They accept their failure so quickly as to be farcical.

And you will never ever convince me that TERRY PRATCHETT would have allowed the words “a story shouldn’t live past its ending” to be spoken without the speaker being immediately eaten by a banshee.

[electricarpeggio]

The thing about South Downs that gets me is that it was the promise of them being retired. Good Omens started as a comedy about beings (celestial, human, and occult) who are bad at their jobs, and none more so than Aziraphale and Crowley. The two of them invent the entire Arrangement as a way to skive off work and have more time to hang out together! They mouth the party line, but neither one of them more than one-quarter believes it. They always just wanted to quit and hang out and day drink and putter around and goggle at the things humans get up to and occasionally get mixed up in them. The mistake everyone around them made was assuming that being an angel and a demon said something about their nature, but really it was just their job description. And it would have been such a fitting character arc, and perfect send-off, if the ending had gotten things to where they could have said "we are not those jobs anymore, we are just us" and gotten to spend the rest of eternity being themselves. And not working. Which they are very bad at anyway.

[laudnumdrinker]

Just saw this snippet of a Terry Pratchett interview about the reversal of the deaths in Good Omens and it floored me.

This convinces me more than anything that the ending we got is not what he would have wanted.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

By the way, it is SO fucked-up that, like, through Aziraphale’s entire relationship with Crowley, he was struggling with this precipice between self-indulgence and self-denial. Like, Aziraphale is already a very indulgent person who enjoys a lot of things that a Good Angel is not supposed to care about, and he’s not immune to feeling shame and insecurity about it when Heaven points that out…

But he could still convince himself that eating at London’s best restaurants every day is not only harmless, but actually Important to his job of blending in with and inspiring humanity. But then there was Crowley….

And on some level he always knew that being with Crowley and loving Crowley were the things that made him the happiest, but he also ‘knew’ that this was wrong, bad, evil. Crowley is supposedly his ‘hereditary enemy’ and Ontologically Evil. But as always, Aziraphale can’t keep himself away from temptation and joy, but it’s just that sense of guilt manifests as the self-righteous moralizing and the emotional distance he still put between them.

And then he finally got the reaffirmation that the supposedly ‘selfish’ and ‘unheavenly’ things he wanted, Crowley and also all of the earthly delights of the world and avoiding the War, were actually the real Good Things all along. And now he can live with Crowley in a… not exactly the Happily Ever After they 100% wanted deep down, but definitely the happiest and closest mutual co-existence they ever had.

There was still tensions, Aziraphale’s desire to do good still sometimes clashes with Crowley, the end of the world was coming up again and neither of them had a good idea for stopping it, and while Aziraphale’s indulgent selfishness is not as inherently bad as he always believed it was, it did have a dark side that was making him take Crowley for granted and ‘take’ too much in their relationship. But… it didn’t seem like anything they couldn’t resolve between each other eventually.

… Until the Metatron comes in with the temptation of a lifetime, what if instead of unlearning your shame and your indoctrination and needing to balance the Greater Good with your desire to be with Crowley Happily Ever After, you really could just have it all? What if you could make Crowley the Thing You’re Not Ashamed of Loving and the two of you could fix Heaven and save the world together? Maybe even make the world a Better Place? But by taking that bait, he just hurt Crowley and drove him away from him. But he still chose Heaven, over his actual happiness with Crowley, because he convinced himself that was actually the good, selfless thing to do.

He sacrificed everything that actually made him happy, again.

I think Aziraphale's GO1 Storyline makes for a perfect narrative all on his own. Unlearning guilt and embracing 'selfishness' only to realize your supposed selfish desires are aren't only okay, but are actually way more Good than the thing you were trying to 'selflessly' sacrifice for in the first place, is a very good throughline for this story about satirizing Christianity and embracing moral grayness and Queer Love.

But since GO2 really tried to make a Thing about the idea the amount of self-sacrifice in the relationship was unbalanced... I really wish Aziraphale’s arc could conclude with him being able to lean balance, some actual shades of gray, between the importance and beauty of his ‘selfish’ love for Crowley and also not expecting him to be the one who sacrifices everything in the relationship. Instead, by the time he finally embraces the fact that nothing makes happier than simply being with Crowley and learns to not take him for granted and actually give him something to show his love… apparently the one thing Crowley wanted, the actual ‘Greater Good’, not only requires them to not be together, but for neither of them to even exist.

And Aziraphale ends this arc of his basically at the same place where he started, believing that his happiness with Crowley is antithetical to Doing the Right Thing and that he should sacrifice it all. Only this time there's nothing stopping him from actually going through with this...

[isleofthewesternocean]

No but seriously what the fuck did Merlin and Arthur talk about on the way home from the Labyrinth of Gedref. Did the two of them just ride back to Camelot in dead silence waiting for the other to bring up that they're now seemingly prepared to to die for each other no questions asked ???

[thedeepmiracleperfection]

Finale got us so collectively fucked that no one is even acknowledging it's (TV) Good Omens's 7 year anniversary.

Anyways here's to a show that gave us one of the most heartfelt, moving, complicated, humanly flawed and hopeful queer love stories of the century. Here's to a show that brought so many people together. Here's to a show that motivated artists and writers to create some of the most beautiful works of art ever known to man. Here's to a show that celebrated being human. Here's to a show that so many queer folks saw themselves in and affirmed for them that being themselves is the most powerful act one can do. Here's to a show that taught us that our world is messy and complicated and awful and wonderful and worth saving and most of all that it can and should be saved. Here's to a show that taught us people are rarely good or bad but just people, and even though we make mistakes along the way we still deserve the opportunity to decide for ourselves who we will be. Here's to a show that at its core is about love and hope being the things that bind us together.

Here's to you all and all of us who are not going anywhere. Here's to the world.