A Good Omens blog. Mostly other people’s lovely fanart, and occasionally my own scribbles. Main account is @figworm. 31, she/her, bisexual. TERFs begone. No reposting my work, please.
Hi there 👋 I just wanted to echo what others have been saying and express how sorry I am that you've had such negative experiences within the fandom. To be honest, the grief and loneliness I've been feeling since the finale has been pretty hard to deal with. I too am disappointed at how little allowance there's been for differing opinions. It just sucks that not only is there this sense of loss at how things ended for our favorite characters, but we also have to contend with a loss of community. The whole thing has been rather alienating if I'm being honest.
I appreciate your posts. As unfortunate as it is that this is happening, at least I know I'm not alone. I hope that with time we'll be able to find joy and community within these online spaces again, and I sincerely hope that the love we all share for this series and these characters never diminishes. In the meantime, you're doing the right thing by caring for yourself and prioritizing your mental well-being.
Ohh, thank you so much for reaching out. 💚
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve also been struggling with loneliness and alienation. You certainly aren't alone in your grief. I wish I could offer comfort.
The fracturing of our community has been hard to bear. It hurts when the space that is meant to be your refuge becomes hostile. I like to think we can forge new ways forward, and I do think it will be possible for parts of the fandom. But I am also admittedly reluctant to be in community with certain folks from here on out. Sometimes you need to know when to bail.
I still love Good Omens and the relationships I've made in this community. I hope that we can all find joy in this story again, whatever shape that takes. And I hope that the loneliness doesn't last for you. 💚
I just wanted Aziraphale to be happy and loved as himself. That's it. I don't see why that was asking too much of Good Omens 3. I wanted him to finally get to live freely and happily with his beloved as he deserved. He fought like mad to do the right thing, and he earned his happily ever after.
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.
I haven’t painted anything in months and I feel like I’m quite out of practice, so have a very loose repaint of La Gimblette by Jean-Honoré Fragonard I made today to get me back into painting.
The thing about Good Omens is that it wasn't just at its core about humanity in a vague general sense, but about human agency. Adam was able to defy his destiny because he was human. War, Pollution and Famine were created by humans and a bunch of human children were powerful enough to tell them to fuck off. A prophecy written by a human gave an angel and a demon the clue they needed to survive the wrath of their own kind. They were willing to risk their lives for Earth and humans, and in the end it was humanity that saved and protected them. Their happy ending was tied to the fate of the world, not a trade-off for it.
So it's wild that in the finale not only were human characters pretty much removed entirely from the story, but the choice of erasing and rewriting the entire universe was handed over to a couple of immortal beings to make on behalf of humans. (And also every other angel and demon who might have had an opinion about getting snapped out of existence.) These guys who started out as supporting characters among a human ensemble, whose relative narrative insignificance was a running joke, got elevated in the end to having godlike powers over all creation, and humanity became not the subject of the story but an object used to say something about their character. Sacrificing themselves for humanity became not about humanity but about their sacrifice; the final narrative beat in their story. That's what feels so ass backwards about the finale to me.
Hello hello! Just sending you a quick thank you: I came across some of your comments and answers in various recent GO discussions and really appreciated how thoughtful and considerate they were. And your art is wonderful 🤍🤍🤍
Oh goodness, thank you so much! 🥹💚 I really appreciate this lovely little message.
I know many of us are feeling intense emotions around GO right now — I certainly am. There’s been a lot of hurt all around, but I think it would serve us well to at least try and be gentle with each other during such a conflicted time.
I hope you have a pleasant dream of whatever you like best tonight. 💕
Also, WAIT @books-and-omens — I knew your name was familiar! You wrote the fic “a lighthouse (burning).” That’s one of my absolute favourite fics! I love a good lighthouse story and I happened to read your fic while I was in Nova Scotia, which was a wonderful backdrop for it.
Thank you for writing such an incredible story. Now more than ever, I think we can all appreciate what writers like you make possible for us as readers who love the world of Good Omens. I have no interest in returning to the story we got in GO3, but I know I’ll be revisiting stories like yours for comfort in the days to come. 💕
Hello hello! Just sending you a quick thank you: I came across some of your comments and answers in various recent GO discussions and really appreciated how thoughtful and considerate they were. And your art is wonderful 🤍🤍🤍
Oh goodness, thank you so much! 🥹💚 I really appreciate this lovely little message.
I know many of us are feeling intense emotions around GO right now — I certainly am. There’s been a lot of hurt all around, but I think it would serve us well to at least try and be gentle with each other during such a conflicted time.
I hope you have a pleasant dream of whatever you like best tonight. 💕
Hey, I just wanted to say that I saw your post on BSKY, and I’m so sorry that it all has become so toxic. As a finale-not-enjoyer myself, it was so lovely of you to ask genuinely about what the finale-enjoyers did appreciate about it. I read through a lot of those responses and you were always so level-headed and kind with your inquiries. I’m sorry that some folks took advantage of it.
You are a fantastic artist, and I love every time that you post your work. You are a cornerstone GOmens artist for me, but if you need to take a step back from it all, please do. The good parts of the show and the fandom will wait for your return, and even if you don’t decide to come back in that capacity, know that your art and your impact was felt across it all 🤍🖤
Oh gosh, what an incredibly kind message. You’re making me tear up. Thank you so much for reaching out. 💚
Today is not the first time I’ve felt let down by the Good Omens fandom on Bluesky. It has become increasingly difficult to voice anything but positivity about GO3 among other fans on the platform. On several occasions now I have tried to articulate the grief so many of us are experiencing after the finale, only to become the subject of vagueposts that twist my comments to make me sound unreasonable, followed by concentrated waves of folks blocking me (this info is visible on Clearsky). Everyone has the right to block others on social media, of course, but this specific pattern has admittedly unsettled me. I don’t want to play that game anymore.
I persisted on Bluesky for longer than I should have because I wanted to be a voice for fans who are grieving. I tried to build bridges and express my point of view in level-headed conversations with folks who feel differently. It turns out that effort was not worth it. Some folks have been kind, and I do genuinely appreciate it. But for my own peace of mind, I needed to remove myself from that environment.
I really do appreciate your message. I hope I can find my creative spark again soon, because this story and community still mean a lot to me.
And what if I never needed their souls to be 'intertwined by fate'? What if all that I needed is for them to love each other because they have known and understood and shaped each other for so long? And what if I never cared about them ‘finding each other in every universe?’ What if all that I wanted is for them, in this universe where the odds were so stacked against them, to choose each other?
I have a suggestion for fandom shorthand that might be helpful for us to use when discussing whether one thinks Asa/Anthony are the same characters as Aziraphale/Crowley or not:
Something really gross about how Agnes Nutter is literally the only titular character and how all of her efforts and relevancy in the narrative is rendered null and void by this 'sequel' when she was the narrative, her prophecies were the throughline that connected everything.
Agnes Nutter thought the world was worth saving, so I'm with the Witch on this one guys.
It’s definitely suspect to me how Agnes and her memory completely dropped out of the narrative after season 1 and then became utterly irrelevant thanks to season 3’s resolution.
Terry Pratchett has gone on the record saying that Agnes Nutter was solely his creation: “By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine.”
In retrospect, it’s probably not too surprising that Neil Gaiman wanted nothing to do with a kooky old witch beyond what Terry had already written for her.
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