Beautifully Unfinished

Just another neurodivergent human trying to navigate a world that wasn't built for me 💜 . Avid reader, movie/tv lover, and very passionate about anything related to #GoodOmens, #X-Files, #OFMD, #NeilGaiman, #MattHaig, #JohnGreen, #Mysteriesofallkinds, #SciFi, #CSI, #CupOfTea, #Rainydays, #FanArt, #ArtHistory, #Drawing, #Writing, #Fall, #Pumpkinspiceeverything ❣️♈🪽😈👽🎃🎨📝☕🫖📚🍂🧬♊❣️

[twilightofthesandwiches]

‘Shipping’ or y’know, just, the concept of being invested in fictional characters getting together in a relationship, is so much about the specificity of the characterization and the dynamic. Wanting to see how the specific personalities they have formed over the course of their history and the plot interact and intersect, seeing what specific in-jokes they have together, watching how they deal with their specific flaws with their specific virtues and their specific love.

AUs are fun to play it, they can be fascinating experiments in character study, see the characters in different looks, with different dynamics, seeing what changes and what remains the same, but they’re not a replacement to the specificity of the actual characters, of the actual relationship. Flash them up enough, they just become kinda their own thing. Not unconnected from the original branch, but possessing their own uniquely beautiful specificity that developed from however their life story unfolded in that universe.

Re-reading through my old rotation of Comfort Fics composed almost entirely of post-GO1 Fluffy One-Shots, sometimes I can allow myself to sink into that mindset that GO2-3 aren’t any more canon then this 4000 word fic with Queen lyrics for a title and one misused ‘your’ that slipped through the Beta. But when I remember that ‘officially’ in ‘canon’ these stories or anything resembling them, none of these soft and happy moments, literally never could have ever happened, it is the dynamic that I mourn the most.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the idea that the Ineffable Husbands were gonna turn Human pre-S3. I’m honest enough with myself to say that I just liked the Wish-Fulfillment aspect of them being a Demon and an Angel, but my disappointment of that sort of ending would’ve been minuscule compared to what I have now. At least then they would still be them. All the little jokes and interactions and silly goofiness and affection and reminiscing and ridiculousness we read and wrote and drew and looked at and speculated and discussed and hoped for would still exist, even if it ‘invalidates’ the part of the fic where they sober themselves up with a snap of the finger or will the weather on their picnic to be better. At the end of the day, that wasn’t the truly important part.

Even if Asa and Anthony are their consciousnesses/souls reincarnated, even if you point out all the subtle similarities between them, it will never be a replacement for what I was hoping for and what I was expecting and what we lost. Asa can only get confused about modern technology to the level somewhat reasonable of a middle-aged man, not to the level of Aziraphale. Anthony can’t complain about Hamlet with the full knowledge he Miracled it into popularity. Asa can’t buy him ridiculous novelty sunglasses and have it Mean the same thing it would mean to Crowley. Anthony can't take off his sunglasses as a sign of emotional vulnerability and have it Mean the same thing either.

Maybe they named their cottage "A Little Piece of Eden", but if they did, that would just be some Cosmic Serendipity or Subconscious Memories and not an in-joke that they would be consciously playing into. If Anthony ever called Asa "Angel", it would not carry the same meaning or weight as Crowley's words, and the same is true if Asa called Anthony a "Wily Serpent", or if they ever make jokes about temptations or miracles or ducks or sides or going too fast or ineffability, if they ever buy anything for their Cottage leaning on the Snake or Angel motif. They can't reminisce about everything they experienced in their 6000 years, think back to Eden, or 1941, or 1862 or 2019.

Asa and Anthony just can't replace the richness of implications and history and love that Aziraphale and Crowley has. I mean, part of it is absolutely that they showed up for like fifteen minutes as a quick way to give this story a semblance of a "Happy Ending", so there's just no time for the complexities and friction and affection Aziraphale and Crowley had developed over 6000 years and two seasons but… Even if they had all the goddam time and character development in the world, it would have never made them 'replacements' for the Ineffable Husbands, it would have just given them their own uniquely beautiful specificity. Their own dynamic and in-jokes and history and intimacy.

And, you know, as many others in the fandom have said, I quite liked the old ones.

And they never really even got a chance to be…

[daily-crowley]

Crowley Of The Day: there was a time when this was the most painful thing we experienced

[vivi-theakuneko]

Fix it ver. It was all a dream.

[cops-beware-custard]

So we can all agree that the gang subplot was irrelevant, yes?

Might’ve worked for a show, definitely not for a 90-min special where there are a thousand more important things to discuss.

There were many other ways they could’ve had the Bentley obstructed, or better yet, just not obstructed at all, leave room for other things.

Obviously it wasn’t the gang subplot that led to us not getting that well needed talk, but I do find it to be one of many straws on this camel’s back of a finale, in which each and every straw was the final one that broke it.

[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...

[shroomwar]

I think what bothers me most about the human version of Crowley at the end is that he truly is nothing like the Crowley we know, because he’s like Angel Crowley. This whole finale pushed a rhetoric that Crowley never deserved to fall, that he was the purest of them all, and that’s just…wrong. Even as an Angel, Crowley had faults. Prideful, dismissive, certainly not aligning with the good Angel archetype they’ve posthumously assigned to him. This gets especially infuriating if we consider demon Crowley as, on many levels, a metaphor for the effects of trauma. Crowley has said many times that the Angel he was is not who he is now, and we see that so clearly over the course of the show. He’s hurt and angry and tired, he’s clearly been impacted by the events that happened to him and that all plays in to his character. So for them to decide that all of that is irrelevant and discard it in favor of a watered down human version that reflects a self Crowley left behind long ago, it really feels like a slap in the face. It’s like they took all of what Crowley thought Aziraphale was saying in the final fifteen and made it reality. You only get to be loved if you are an angel. You only get to be loved if we erase the past that has shaped who you are. You only get to be loved as a memory of someone who no longer exists. And I just think that sends a really sad message.

[dailyaziraphale]

Aziraphale of the Day: I mourn magician Aziraphale everyday

[bellisima-writes]

On Open-Ended Endings

PSA THIS POST IS VERY ANTI-GO S3 so if you don't like don't read please. Please protect yourself. I'm not here to change minds, just to exorcise thoughts.

LEAVE

IF

YOU

LIKED

THE

FINALE

OR

ARE

STILL

REELING

PLEASE

AND

THANK

YOU

AND A CUT FOR GOOD MEASURE

So, on this blog I try to stick to fanworks and discussions of writing. So I wanted to talk a bit about open-ended endings.

Confession - I hate open-ended endings, with very limited exceptions. This is my totally subjective and non-academic opinion, but they just feel lazy to me. I personally feel the storyteller's duty should be to tell the story they want to tell and tell it clearly. Now that does not mean say everything, it does not mean stare at the reader and mouth message at the big moment or big speech. It means give enough evidence on the page or screen so the reader at least understands what happens. How they interpret that is up to them and outside of the author's control, but the what happens should be agreed upon.

Now, in my mind the most obvious exception to this is the ending to Inception. When the credits start to roll, we don't know whether or not Cobb's token falls over. We don't know if the children he runs to are flesh and blood or figments of his imagination. But the entire point of the movie was that debate - does it actually matter? Is a dream more real than reality when the dreamer wishes it to be? It was asked MULTIPLE times, stated out loud and shown through the plot, so in the end it does not matter. Those are his children because he chose them. He was home because he chose to be. The end. The token falling or spinning into eternity has no baring on that ending.

The ending of Good Omens, I would argue, is not open at all. Universe remade, no angels, no demons, no god, no satan, everything left to chance. True free will. And then there's the Asa and Anthony scene, which makes no sense whatsoever if we trust the sacrifice made (which we have to, or the whole thing is even worse). They look the same, find one another again, are instantly attracted to one another and then go to a pub where every cast member of the show was present at that moment. The whole thing is statistically impossible. So in my mind, this was fan service. Angels and demons in human bodies? Jesus, born 2000 years ago, alive in London in present day having beer with Adam? Arthur and Deirdre would have Warlock Young. Adam would not exist.

BUT - INTERLUDE - Elizabeth Berrington can serve me drinks any day she wants.

That whole ending made no sense. Soulmates? Okay, but that clearly destroys the point of the sacrifice. Where is free will if someone is cursed to not feel fulfilled until they find their match? The demon Crowley who sacrificed his existence to free humanity would be devastated if this were the world that grew from that sacrifice.

So, needless to say, this "open-ended" ending fails because it not only does not live up to anything that was set up before, but it blatantly contradicts and negates it. Whether you liked it or not, the fact is it is not open ended in the least. It's confusing. It's contradictory. It is storytelling and fan service at its worst because it leaves the viewers arguing over which part of the end is more important based on their feelings or personal beliefs. And it's caused a rift in our community because of its negligence.

That is it's gravest cruelty.

I know there are many out there struggling deeply because of this ending, and I am so sorry. It feels wrong because it was wrong not only for the characters but for the story and for the way stories are meant to be told. I hope someday we can all move forward from this in whichever way works for us and find joy in the lives we've given them over and over and over again in our fanworks. There is one canon and tens of thousands of happy endings. The sting will fade, the bruise will heal, and they live on, because we will them to.

[cops-beware-custard]

Aziraphale and Crowley are selfish, and that’s exactly why I love them

They were never supposed to be martyrs for humanity, and that was the point. Every motive they had to save the earth came from selfishness.

They loved through hedonism. They loved humanity, loved earthly pleasures, and more than anything they loved each other. They don’t even fully consider meddling in the apocalypse until Crowley brings up THEIR life, wines, restaurants, parks.

Aziraphale fully intended to blow up a kid to save his life on earth. Crowley took a pause as the world was ending, just to mourn his car, and even then, he only stops time to save the earth because Aziraphale had threatened to “never talk to him again” if he didn’t do something about it. Crowley asks Aziraphale to run away from earth with him, leave it all behind. Even in Aziraphale going to heaven, it was to keep THEIR lives safe, to prevent further action from Heaven that would sully their perfect life on earth.

The both of them disobeyed their superiors, time and time again, knowing it would likely kill them, all for their life together.

And that’s why I just don’t believe it, the end of it all. The idea that Aziraphale and Crowley, hedonistic, selfish, bastards worth knowing they are, that when faced with a choice between keeping their lives as they were, or complete and utter erasure, that they would choose the latter?

No. I disagree entirely.

Both seasons, 1 and 2, they have been established as these individuals, with these beliefs, and these convictions and what not. To just go against that?? Entirely??? If I had the responsibility to pick up a story that didn’t belong to me, getting the character’s beliefs right is like the FIRST THING IM DOING. I’m analyzing, I’m scouring, I’m getting that shit right, because if I don’t, then it’s not the same story, NONE OF IT MATTERS.

Perhaps that is the rant complete. To summarize my scatter brain, they have been established hedonists for both seasons 1-2, if there was any pair of characters across the characters multiverse I’d expect to NOT sacrifice their lives, it’d be Aziraphale and Crowley, maybe for each other, but for NOTHING ELSE.

So yeah 👍

[dalliancekay]

Crowley's depression

Everyone expected depressed Crowley in S3 because everyone expected Aziraphale made a big enormous stupid mistake by going to Heaven. The Book of Life was supposed to be made up. Aziraphale easily manipulated by lies. The job non existent. Aziraphale breaking them up for no good reason. Or because he still wanted to serve Heaven or something. Those were the main theories.

But that's not what happened. Aziraphale did become Supreme Archangel and he did stop Second Coming. He did have a good reason to go and he explains it too. If he had time (and help?) he might have even stopped Michael from getting hold of the Book of Life and destroying everything. If he wasn't relegated to just the side character, he might have made a difference to the ending.

My point being, Crowley is depressed in the finale because he gave up. They made him give up. Not because Aziraphale left. If Aziraphale stayed he would not be happier and Aziraphale knows that. Crowley must have known that. What would they be doing? Watching poor Jesus being paraded by Sandalphon, being forced to judge people on some random, arbitrary measures made up by Archangels who have no idea how Earth and humanity even work? Wait until Universe and Time is destroyed and only eternity remains? Crowley was depressed because the show decided that the universe is not worth saving, can't be changed and should be destroyed.

And I disagree with this Crowley and that ending.

The Crowley I know would have gone to help Aziraphale somehow. Like when he drove to Tadfield in a burning car after Aziraphale got accidentally discorporated and like he did when he realised missing Gabriel was not random and meant trouble.

Crowley knew Second Coming was on the cards and what it meant. He wouldn't have been blind drunk in an alley for years knowing Aziraphale is on his own, with all the awful Archangels who hate him and who tried to kill him in Heaven. He would have found a way.

They should have found Jesus and brought him along to argue with Mother and fool her at her card trick. They should have brought along some humans who would look at them like they are crazy for suggesting to not bringing the universe back and fight for it. Mrs Sandwich should have unloaded that speech at god and not the angel who tried so hard to hold it all together.

They should have kissed against the bookshelf while Jesus and Adam decided to get rid of the sides once and for all, cross out what was written and let the universe run for as long as it felt like it.

Depression is a bitch and can come on for all kinds of reasons and non reasons alike. But that's not what the story has done. It is a plot device. They made Crowley miserable because it served the ending they wanted. Because it served ruining the love story and story of hope that Aziraphale held onto for so long. That we all believed in.

[dalliancekay]

They can do huge miracles together. They always schemed against their superiors and got away with it. Aziraphale fooled Nefertiti with a caraway seed and three cowrie shells. He tricked Furfur of his proof. He won Bentley with a crossword. And then against God they just - give up?

And it's supposed to make sense? How?

Why is the finale full of tricks and cards and fooling the lady and then ... it leads to nothing? Is my beloved story a bad joke? Their universe is just erased? Everybody gone?

[dalliancekay]

Maybe GO3 would have made more sense if they didn't try to ruin their relationship and if they didn't give Crowley depression.

Maybe it would have worked better if they legitimately tried to change the system instead of fighting with each other and came to the decision by having had exhausted all options.

Instead we had everyone hating and blaming Aziraphale for everything under the sun and beyond and Crowley who just - didn't care.

And I am supposed to think this was - a good ending?

[momsspaghetti39]

Good Omens 3 pissed off/confused kind of rant incoming be warned

just saw a post making the connection that human Anthony Crowley is clearly meant to be angel Crowley, not demon Crowley, but instead of coming to the conclusion that this is stripping Crowley of his identity they said that this is a good thing because Crowley never should have fallen in the first place? I am so baffled. Crowley is the character he is because of the fall and the millennia he spent interacting with the world as a demon. He likes driving recklessly, being a low grade menace to humans, terrorizing his plants, engaging in sloth, and using his position to thwart heaven in their malicious plans. Crowley isnt a good person (just a little bit, deep down, etc.) despite the things that happened to him, but because of the them. Angel Crowley ("the angel you knew is not me") is not the character we know and love. Do you even like this character if you want him to be completely different???

idk i get the vibe from people who liked the finale that they have beliefs about trauma and identity that rub me the wrong way. Trauma sucks, obviously, but learning to cope and exist with it fundamentally changes you from the person you would be without it, and that isnt inherently a bad thing! Supernaturally removing the trauma from a person is not "saving" them, it's essentially destroying the person they worked hard to become. People with trauma can and deserve to be happy as the people they are today, not as some hypothetical version of a person they might be if nothing went wrong for them.

Maybe im also reading a bit into it as "Crowley is a good person (the best angel 🙄), so this bad thing shouldnt have happened to him" meaning "bad things only happen to bad people" which is probably not what they intend. Bad things happen to everyone; traumatic things can happen to anyone indiscriminately. They become part of your life all the same. Killing off your traumatized and depressed character and then creating a new version of "them" that acts completely differently and has none of the experiences of the original one and making the new one happy is just not sending a good message about these things 💀

[hoarder-of-dragons]

Crowley and Aziraphale shouldn't have been the ones who "saved" the world at the end.

Season 1, it's Adam and the Them, who stand up to Satan and the others. Aziraphale and Crowley literally do nothing and that's how it's supposed to be. The don't raise Adam, the switch wasn't their fault, it's the humans that save the world.

Season 2, we have Gabriel and Beelzebub. It's their story. Aziraphale housed Gabriel sure, but it's Bee's fly that has the memories, it's them standing up for their love. The biggest conflict there is just the accidental war that may occur with Gabriel missing, which again saved by them just leaving (though this could be a problem that can be considered to have been brought upon themselves but eh)

Now Season 3, the Second Coming and the whole word is in danger again. Remember;

"For my money, the really big one will be all of us against all of them. What? You mean Heaven and Hell against humanity?"

Against Humanity

What the fuck did the humans do in this season? Where did they give their input in their decision? Why did it all come down to Aziraphale and Crowley to make the decision behalf of them?

Now I would completely understand if it was Jesus (and or along with Adam). We see him interact with people, hear their worries and all that she-bang. I'm not the first person to say that he would make more sense to argue with God.

If you are going to showcase humanity in the form of Crowley and Aziraphale, don't make Aziraphale praise Crowley to be the best angel, don't make it as if the whole 2 seasons + book of learning that humans don't need demons or angels (seriously have we forgotten season 1), that free will doesn't exist when Anathema burns those pages, when Nina still not getting together with Maggie, are you saying they were not free will?

[twilightofthesandwiches]

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?

[twilightofthesandwiches]

… I think another thing that really hampers and harms the impact the GO3 ending tries to have is GO 2-3’s bad tendency to try and insert whatever paraphrased Book Omens quote had to be cut from GO1 into its dialogue… it’s kinda hard to see Crowley’s speech as this big meaningful climactic and uniquely insightful thing that totally justifies his and Aziraphale's sacrifice and sways God to change the rules of the game for the hell of it when he’s just repeating lines from the beginning of the original novel…

And mostly lines which are Crowley's inner monologue thinking about how little influence Heaven and Hell actually have on Humanity and how they already have free will!

And don’t get me started on how much it emphasizes the irony in having these four supernatural beings determine the fate of the universe and humanity with no feedback from Actual Humans and the irony in the story trying to pretend it has always been about humanity instead of underplaying this aspect of the novel in favor of the Ineffable Husbands Melodrama when Crowley starts using lines cut and stolen from Book!Adam.

[emptypatrycja]

The thing is, I could get over the fact that I didn’t like the finale. But I just cannot accept that, at least the way I understand it, it sends more than one harmful message. And that took me completely by surprise.