I love you so much. I love your resilience, and your strength and your power and creativity and your love of detail.Â
The stories I've read from this fandom are among the most eloqent, clever, breathtaking, heartbreaking, insightful and hilarious things I have ever read in my life.Â
Stories that inspired me to try new things, grow, see things from a different perspective, learn and feel with an enormity I couldn't have foreseen. It is simply amazing for me to see that a fandom centered around a story written by such a vile creature of a man can be so warm-spirited and welcoming, so resilient and full of force and it never ceases to amaze me. You've made me find a new joy in reading I'd never thought I could rediscover. Thank you.Â
I can't know what S3 will bring. I am hopeful that this story will find an ending which we can agree with. But I want to take a moment and appreciate the sheer abundance of stories and content that we have created and that can never be taken away from us. There are entire worlds out there that belong to us in which these characters find their happiness and a world of their own and we can all be so goddamn proud of ourselves for creating and cherishing that.
Somewhere Anathema Device caught a glimpse of something in Agnes Nutterâs second book of prophecies, gasped, pulled it out of the fire, got Newt to drive at top speed down the M25 (somehow magically free) dashes into Soho, runs into the bookshop, slams the book down on the counter in front of Aziraphale and Crowley and screams
âDonât you two FUCKING dare!â
And leaves.
Several large coffees, bottles of wine and a pile of Eccles cakes and a very long reading and interpretation session later Crowley sits back.
âBeelzebub and Gabriel, huh? Did not see that coming.â
âNever mind that, dear,â Aziraphale says, as he continues carving symbols onto the floor. âThere. That should do it. The Metatron canât get in here now.â
âAnd you?â Crowley asks delicately. Aziraphale stands up and primly clasps his hands across his stomach.
âI have no intention of going up to heaven under any circumstances and especially not now I know how it ends.â He says. Itâs his I Will Not Be Moved tone. Crowley knows it well. He is reassured.
âWell, maybe pop up and get Muriel. But after that we seal up that lift, agreed?â Crowley adds.
âAgreed.â
âExcellent. Dinner at the Ritz called for I think, to celebrate a very lucky escape. Coming, Angel?â
âOne thingâŠâ Aziraphale says, and Crowley notices the cheeks of his Angel have gone a little pink, and he is turning that ring on his finger round and round. âProphecy number 547.â
â547? Was that the one with the butterflies the size of giraffes?â
âIt was not,â Aziraphale says.
Crowley takes a step closer. He always did enjoy this bit of the temptation, although he was not quite sure who was being tempted right now.
âAh, the one with the Welsh Choir serenading the Kraken with excerpts from popular musicals.â
âNo, not that one either.â Aziraphale appears to have flushed a deep red.
Crowley takes a step closer now. He can feel it - the tingle in his fingers and on his lips.
Thereâs another first time coming. To add to the Wall, and the Temptation of the Ox Ribs and the Rescue of the Books and all those other first times that have led them step by step to this place.
A first time they had in any timeline, but this would their first time - they, Aziraphale and Crowley in this world, their world.
âOh, I know, the one with the crystal the exact size and shape ofâŠâ
âCrowley!â Aziraphale snaps. âYou know which one I mean.â
âOh,â Crowley says softly. âThe one where I tell you thereâs an us.â
âThatâs the one,â Aziraphale says, glancing down at the ground. âOf course, if youâd rather not, I understand, itâs asking too much, itâsâŠâ
âAngel,â Crowley says, and he steps forward, taking off his glasses, and looks down at his angel, his enemy and ally, his closest friend. His love since he knew what love meant. âWe have always been an us. We donât need a prophecy for that.â
And Aziraphale, a soft and gentle angel, not a soldier or a leader, becomes a hero for that moment, and clasps Crowleyâs collar and pulls him in for a kiss.
It was a nice day. It would always be a nice day. There would always be a bookshop, and later a garden. Nightingales would always sing and there would be many many kisses to follow that first kiss.
what genuinely frustrates me is how the good omens fandom immediately dogpiled on the woman who was primarily doing directorial work, while the male writers who, as it turns out, are friends of neil gaiman and openly protective of him are barely being questioned at all. nobody seems interested in asking why theyâve stayed completely silent, avoided interviews, and refused to publicly comment on any of this. Itâs incredibly telling how quickly blame gets redirected onto women, even when they werenât the ones making the core writing decisions. meanwhile the men involved are allowed to disappear into silence without facing the same level of scrutiny or hostility. that double standard is honestly the most depressing part of the entire situation
Some thoughts on why Good Omens S3 felt so disappointing from a queer theory perspective; major spoilers below the cut:
I wanted to organize my many scattered thoughts after watching the new season today, and try to put my finger on just what made the finale so disappointing as a queer story.
I find Aziraphale and Crowley to be queer in four major ways:
1. Most obviously, they are both male-presenting beings in love with each other.
2. They are magical/incorporeal beings that canonically lack human gender.
3. They actively work to counter the dominant systems in control of their lives to forge their own way forward (especially Crowley).
4. Their story spans countless times and places, weaving through different eras of history and prehistory and defying linear time.
In order to explain points 3 and 4, I'm going to perform the classic trick of pulling out Jose Esteban Muñozâs Cruising Utopia. Part of Cruising Utopia examines the concept of queer time, which Muñoz characterizes as a time that is never fully arrived at due to its constant diversion from the status quo (which, of course, changes throughout time, rendering the queer experience ever-striving). Queer time is a continual process with no possible end, but one that is nonetheless carried out with hope and care despite its impossibility. It dovetails neatly with the philosophy of positive absurdism where, despite the chaos and cruelty of a random universe, the best thing to do is live anyway with all the love and kindness you can. This is a theme that is incredibly prevalent in Terry Pratchettâs parts of the Good Omens book, specifically the storyline of Adam coming into his powers as the Antichrist.
Adam is constantly cajoled by a thrum of deep voices goading him to start the world afresh. The world is rotten and falling apart, they tell him. The only thing to do is destroy it all and rebuild it in your own image. Itâs a selfish outlook, and one that is incredibly easy to fall into as humans with limited time on Earth. Thereâs no shame in having this outlook as far as Heaven and Hell are concerned. But Adam resists with Aziraphale and Crowleyâs help, insisting that the connections he has with his friends and family and the inherent messiness and complexity of humanity is precisely why the world should remain the way it is. Itâs a really beautiful sentiment (and a very Pratchett one). If we all gave in to apathy about changing the world and loving those around us, then we wouldnât be living much of a life at all. In encouraging Adam to make his own human choices, regardless of what Heaven and Hell (the status quo) want, Aziraphale and Crowley demonstrate a queer ethos and an alignment with queer time. They may never see humanity fully at peace, but they can do their best to shepherd them on that quest.
When God gives them the âchoiceâ to remake the world in S3, it doesnât feel like much of a choice at all. Throughout the book and the previous two seasons, Heaven and Hell are depicted as overstuffed, underperforming bureaucracies who often arenât aware of their own goals due to the indecipherable power structures. All they seem to be concerned with is sticking it to The Enemy. There are some occasional scenes where they are seen punishing humanity, but never on a scale strong enough to show that theyâre actually good at their job of policing human morality (and itâs almost always to prove their cruelty to each other, like when the story of Job ends up being a bet between the two organizations to see whoâs truly the best. Humans are just collateral in this eternal beef). When Aziraphale and Crowley opt to âremakeâ the world without Heaven and Hell dictating human actions, it feels like a foolâs errand. Heaven and Hell were never effective in policing humanity previously, and so it doesnât change much when they are erased at the end of S3.
Additionally, by doing this, Aziraphale and Crowley abandon their pursuit of queer time, no longer fighting against the status quo and essentially giving themselves up as sacrificial lambs. Itâs admirable that theyâre willing to be on each otherâs side so much that they will cease to exist, but it also means that their millennia-long pursuit of shepherding and loving humanity comes to an end. Itâs a really hard pill to swallow for me, personally, and I feel like I canât pass informed judgement on it with how short the scene was and with how out of character they both acted. (Itâs extra heartbreaking to have them decide to do this under an apple tree and then never delve into the significance of that.)
The issue of there being no kiss is a really nuanced one. As someone on both the aro and ace spectrums, Iâm all for different expressions and explorations of what love can be. Aziraphale and Crowley are really interesting characters for this since they arenât human, and have been confirmed to be asexual/sexless beings. I enjoyed the novelty of the finger kiss, especially since Aziraphale has so many Victorian dandy-esque tendencies that could understandably lend themselves to such a gesture of affection. However, it felt incredibly flat and narratively unfulfilling for a few reasons.
Firstly, while there was potential for exploration of how an angel and demon might show their affection for each other in contrast to two humans, that was sadly never shown. Their love story was intentionally paralleled with a human one (Nina and Maggie in S2), so there was every reason to expect that they would mimic human social customs after living among them for so long.
Secondly, it perfectly encapsulates a major issue I have with the finale, which is that it is clearly a well-meaning story made by allies, but one that lacks any true queer substance. The finger kiss and hand holding happened without Aziraphale ever apologizing for his patronizing attitude towards Crowley and without him ever explicitly telling Crowley that he loved him. God states that They were always amused by Aziraphaleâs love for Crowley ever since the Beginning. Aziraphale states that with Crowley, he was complete, but that that was taken away from him after Crowleyâs Fall. All of this dialogue is clearly meant to be unassailable proof of their love for each other, especially when combined with the millennia of acts of service for each other. However, it doesnât actually delve into the heart of their love, and fails to give it proper substance. The screenplay is content to let the audience know that Aziraphale and Crowley love each other without actually showing us a moment where the two explicitly verbally confirm it. Again, this could be interesting if the angle of a queer connection outside of human customs was explored, but since that isnât delved into, the confirmation of their love ends up feeling rushed and unsure (and it never comes straight from their own mouths, which feels incredibly disappointing). Itâs yet another instance of an issue that has cropped up in recent years now that queer media is more mainstream, which I like to call Being Gay Is Fine As Long As You Donât Do Any of That Kissing Stuff.
Rachel Talalay, the director of this season, said in an interview that she, Michael Sheen, and David Tennant felt that showing another mouth-to-mouth kiss would have âthe same or lessâ impact as the one in the S2 finale. Complete mismatch of stakes aside, this quote shows a fundamental misinterpretation of how to depict queer intimacy. Talalay says in the same interview that âthey [the fandom] desperately want [a kiss], and they can write their whole sex scenes in fanfic.â In doing so, she equates showing a queer kiss or makeout scene with sexual activity, and subconsciously reveals that she feels that such queer intimacy is too âon the nose.â This feels to me like a clear watering down of queer desire in the service of what allies feel to be âmore meaningfulâ â aka These People Really Love Each Other (We Promise!) But Not Enough To Kiss Onscreen (Donât Be Ridiculous). Itâs a sort of unintentional infantilization and refusal to let queer couples stand on common ground with straight ones. (You never hear this kind of thing being said about cishetero couples.) This stings even more because she, Sheen, and Tennant are demonstrably great allies to the queer community, but this interview shows the fundamental disconnect between well-meaning allyship and true, firsthand queer experience (whatâs that Crowley said about the road to Hell?). Iâm in no way saying that anyone on this show had malicious intent, but the subtext of the season and cast/crew interviews is still very telling of the storytellersâ biases.
This is carried even further by choosing to reincarnate Aziraphale and Crowley as humans. In gaining corporeal, human forms, the queer significance of their nonbinary, magical forms is stolen away from them. The millennia of queer time they spent arguing and questioning and striving and laughing together is erased, and they are sentenced to a few linear decades of marriage, looking feebly up at stars they once created. I wonât lie and say that it wasnât touching to see an older gay couple have a meet-cute resulting in marriage onscreen. Itâs true that thereâs a beauty in the fact that theyâll find each other in every universe â but we only see two of those universes, and they wonât get to live in the one they helped create and cherish together. If thatâs the case, then whatâs the point? (And fuck that nightingale!!)
If you got this far, thank you so much for reading! I definitely have many more thoughts about the finale, but those are all the ones that pertain to specifically queer theory and queer themes throughout the show. Iâd love to hear what others have to say, whether you agree with my points or not! (But of course please be civil. I donât pretend to speak for every queer person. Variety is what makes us so beautiful after all!) Iâm really bummed that this is how the show ended after years of waiting, but it does provide interesting insight into how queerness is portrayed in pop culture and viewed by society at large, for better or for worse.
Ahhhhh thank you so much for this post!!! The loss of their queer identities made this ending even more upsetting to me. I would have loved to see different representations of them throughout time, their personalities linked to each other and woven into the fabric of the universe. That would have shown that there is more to them than two male presenting gay adults đđ
there are two wolves inside you: one is extremely upset about the good omens finale and the other actually kinda liked it and thinks it made enough sense. both of them are gay and depressed.
now when I think about crowley during the flood or land of uz or bastille or âyou go too fast for meâ or 1941 or ANY POINT IN HISTORY - if he had known there was an ending where humanity would survive AND aziraphale and him would be together, he would have chosen it no doubt and he wouldnât have cared if it was human versions of them
because being with aziraphale would have made him happy enough and knowing the humans would be left alone
and maybe that can be enough for us too đđđ
âIâd marry you, you know,â Crowley said once, barely a whisper against Aziraphaleâs skin in the dark, âif it were permitted for men like us.â
Very interesting approach to this ending! I do see it - I kept wondering why I was so against a human AU and it was mainly due to their immortality being a part of their characters. But as this person pointed out, the system would always demand things of them that they wouldnât do - even if it was dismantled and they would get rid of their jobs. Because in the end, what made them ethereal would be their doom and being human is what would make them free.
thinking about the difference between the GO2 and GO3 heaven outfits and that it was canonically Aziraphale that put him in that gay-ass outfit and put those streaks in his hair in GO3 because Crowley didnât have miracles
Crowley in S2: if I have to blend in up here Iâm going to look dumb as fuck
Aziraphale in S3: if you have to blend in up here youâre going to look gay as fuck
The silliest thing I find about this whole "they only got 30 years together in the end with no memories of their shared history so what was the point" is that EVERYONE THINKS THEY ONLY MET EACH OTHER IN THIS ONE SINGULAR LIFETIME REALITY instead of my immediate thought that as its architects, Aziraphale and Crowley were wound so deep into the fabric of the new universe that there is a version of them finding each other and falling in love every single generation for billions and billions of years??????
A Roman version and a French Revolution version and a WWII version and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND---
For goodness sake the song that plays over this version of them finding and falling in love is "Time After Time"! THE IMPLICATION IS THAT THEY WILL ALWAYS FIND EACH OTHER!!!!!! ***ALWAYS*** IN EVERY LIFETIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Right but WHYYYYY couldnât they have shown that??? Literally one still of them throughout time would have made the difference. And you wouldnât even have to shoot them in different costumes and sets, just symbols for their characters would have been enough!
The first gif is what we saw in the show. The second gif is Michael and David out of character in between takes (Michael is wearing his orange jacket, which Aziraphale/Asa is not wearing in the show).
Michael and David are holding hands in between takes and I am dying...
the problem isn't âthey didnât get the ship moment I wanted.â the problem is thematic incoherence.
season 1 and 2 kept hammering the idea that individual lives matter. not replaceable copies. not "close enough." actual people, with continuity and memory and history. Crowley and Aziraphale repeatedly chose imperfect, messy existence over grand cosmic plans. so ending with "the universe gets reset and everyone is replaced by alternate versions" isn't just horribly depressing. it's philosophically backwards. like the story literally abandoned its own argument in the final act.
the Job parallel especially points that out pretty cleanly. The whole emotional weight there was: replacement children are not the same children. new children (even if they had, by some chance, looked and acted Exactly The Same) doesn't fix the tragedy of losing the original children. that mattered to them. so yea, this ending feels less like "hopeful transcendence to tear down The System" and more like âcongrats on your happy ending! everyone is dead, but the cottage is cute!" bold creative choice ig. like serving tea with eccles cakes after detonating reality.
my frustration is basically: the story spent years arguing that personhood matters â memory matters, continuity matters, these exact souls matter. and then solved the finale with a cosmic reset that wipes out the very identities the narrative taught us to care about. very much like the nuclear apocalypse they were trying so hard to prevent. it goes against the very thing Crowley was staunchly opposed to during The Flood. against everything they did in the Job minisode. against literally the entire Jim/Gabriel narrative, about Jim not really being Gabriel without his memories. and also, to quote Crowley, "the angel you knew is NOT me."
"but they found each other again! we got them back at the end!" no we didn't. that is NOT them. and to say that they are is kind of insulting tbh. they LOOK similar and maybe have some of the same interests, but just bc a blonde and a red head are into books and astrophysics doesn't make them THEM. their memories, their history, everything they went through together and fought for, the experiences that shaped their characters, those 6000+ years â that's all GONE.
Also. people keep saying stuff like "it was the only right choice" as if there were only two horrible choices? if the story introduces negotiation and moral choice, we'll naturally start imagining alternatives. once âGod offers optionsâ enters the chat, people will obviously ask, âwait. why was this the chosen solution?â when they could've gone for idk, literally anything else. God literally offered to put things back as they were. they could've chosen to have THAT universe, THAT world âTHEIR worldâ put back into place and then added their own conditions to tear down Heaven and Hell. they could've chosen to keep their memories. they could've chosen to make everyone human from then on if that's what the writers were so hellbent on. they could've chosen to make God erase her own memory for all i care idfk. but this ending feels like a bad consolation prize.
after EVERYTHING they did, and everything they went through, they deserved SO much better than this. THE WHOLE WORLD did.
New Earth isn't Earth. a Michael Jackson impersonator isn't actually Michael Jackson. The Other Mother isn't the real mother. those new people aren't their original selves. and whoever those guys are at the end are not Aziraphale and Crowley.
Crowley and Aziraphale spent years loving each other. What made that love theirs was that they did it in defiance of a god who disapproved--of a religious system that disapproved. And maybe I'm just too ex-conservative-christian for this, but the ending feels like a big ol' fuck you.
I'm not going to call it queerbaiting because it isn't. We saw two characters representative in some way of Aziraphale and Crowley be married.
But what it is is Amazon presenting us with a sanitized version of a queer relationship that we--the fans--previously knew and were fond of. They didn't say "I love you," we had no verbal confession in the finale, and the most we saw was them holding hands.
I think Aziraphale's little finger touch would've been a fine way to show affection, if we previously hadn't seen the final 15 kiss and Aziraphale's reaction to it. Aziraphale liked the kiss. He regretted his actions after the kiss, because he realized Crowley felt the same way. And--it goes without saying--Crowley would kiss Aziraphale with almost no hesitation at this point in the story.
So when all we get is something that is essentially a second-hand kiss? That feels like a gut punch. Not a hug, not even a hand kiss. Just a finger touch to Crowley's lips.
And this wasn't some tender moment, either. This was supposed to be their last goodbye. I'm not saying they had to fuck on screen, but at least a hug? Maybe a kiss on the cheek or forehead? A verbal declaration of love perhaps, by Aziraphale or Crowley, not a third party?
Maybe it's just my own experience, but the ending saying "these characters can't be themselves if they want to be happy. they can be different versions of themselves, in a different universe, sure. but they can't be themselves," feels. not great?
Especially when Antony and Asa were as sanitized as they were. We saw less from them than we did from Aziraphale and Crowley. Sure they got married, but we never got to see their relationship.
There was no hardship. No conflict (that I deeply related to) of "This is wrong. Loving you is wrong. We shouldn't be doing this but we are. Because I love you." Nothing that made it queer in the lived sense. Sure, there were the characters, but what about the lived queer experience of Aziraphale and Crowley? What about loving each other despite what others think? Despite what you're supposed to do?
And yes, they love each other in every universe. But they don't get to be with each other in every universe. They never got to be together in the universe we got to know and love. They were essentially told "because you are the way you are, you can't be together."
So, yeah. They should have kissed. Or hugged. Or done literally anything.
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