It's not what you think.

Idle layabout, trying to be a responsible adult. ADHD, ace, seks+. She/her/they. 18++ Good Omens, Sandman, random stuff. Zennui on Bluesky & X, Ashtareth on AO3. You can block #goodomens and #sandman if you're sick of my obsessions. It will get worse

[oldblackhat]

Ok so I’m not being critical of Crowley’s decision here— I’m discussing the way it was presented to the audience.

Right so in this interview (<https://michaelmarshallsmith.substack.com/p/in-conversation-with-lisa-morton>) with Michael Marshall Smith. This paragraph is immediately after he discusses GO3 — i believe he’s still essentially talking about go3 here:

In my personal opinion fandom wars sometimes happen in part because something was left ambiguous.

In certain cases possibly something that maybe should have been less ambiguous?

I know the trend against subtext and towards wanting everything to be super duper spelled out is bad; and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with leaving some things up to interpretation.

That said, i personally think caution needs to be taken that — while one can justifiably use these arguments in cases where people are overreacting to a reasonable level of ambiguity — it can also be used to explain away ambiguity or plotholes where they maybe shouldn’t be.

God said “What do you want? Do you want me to put everything back the way it was?”

Now canon does explicitly tell us that the old universe as is does not have true free will—the game is rigged etc.

From what I have seen one major contribution to the divide we are currently seeing is the fact that many fans do not feel satisfactorily convinced of the following:

“Can the old universe be brought back — and can we find a way where humanity is free/has free will moving forward in that original universe (everyone lives, memories intact)?”

Now i understand that for many who like the finale the answer to this question is intuitively obvious, which is totally cool!

I would gently submit however that if a strong enough percentage of the fandom do not feel that canon sufficiently answers this question — that that may in fact mean that canon did not sufficiently answer it.

This is an extremely important question for many who did not like the ending because we are talking about billions of souls

While we understand that in the bookshop scene those souls (that were erased by Michael) do not presently exist.

Many of us also feel God saying: “What do you want? Do you want me to put everything back the way it was?” arguably at least raises the question of whether those millions of erased souls can/should be restored

This is not explicitly addressed in canon:

Whether the universe and souls can actually be restored.

Whether there is a way to satisfactorily solve the free will problem within the old universe.

And that i think more than anything is one of the single biggest causes of this particular divide we find ourselves in.

(I will remind here that from “what do you want?” To the end of the scene (into the Big Bang) Aziracrow do not explicitly mention anything at all about saving the old souls. God might have saved them through reincarnation but that was not explicitly negotiated by Aziracrow)

Is it possible that “can free will be fixed in the old universe” didn’t occur to anyone involved in the production? Maybe. I certainly know that many who love the ending were surprised the very first time they heard this question.

That said I was already asking this exact question on May13th before the credits even started rolling. I mean to say, I did not fully process my first viewing of Asanthony’s meet-cute because my brain was still too busy puzzling about “why didn’t they ask to bring back the old universe but just like abolish the afterlife and turn everyone human?” And just 5 days later Sendarya posted a video with the exact same line of thought:

<https://youtu.be/rC0BlZSw7T4?is=gy3RONq7xN7HQXJ0>

So I personally find it hard to believe that no one involved in the production at any point had the thought (even in passing) of whether some fans might wonder why not “restore the old universe in a way that fixes the free will problem”

I understand and respect leaving things ambiguous and up to interpretation. It can be a great narrative device that can be very effective.

Where I feel there is a misstep is that this question specifically maybe shouldn’t be left ambiguous?

And the reason why is that if there was a way to restore billions of erased souls — I’m not going to say that you have to save them — but I think it at least warrants having an explicit conversation thats acknowledging the question

And if the answer is “it is not possible to have God restore the billions of erased souls for xyz reason” then I think that is really worth making it into the explicit text.

I think that’s the biggest writing mistake in the finale and honestly one of the biggest causes of this divide. I personally think some things do really actually need to be explicit text.

Now if canon had explicitly answered that question would it completely solve the divide? Honestly probably not. But i can tell you as someone who didn’t like the ending — I personally think the overall temperature might have been at least a few degrees less hot.

[vivi-theakuneko]

Fix it ver. It was all a dream.

Click for continuation

[tweedfeather]

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.

[di-42]

This sounds very reasonable, thank you.

[ineffablepretzel]

Agreed.

I'll make sure to use the tag "#the decision" so ppl can avoid it!

[rainbowhyperfixation]

This illustrates some, not all, of my issues with the good omens finale. And yeah, I’m still grieving 😭🤬

[graywingssmua]

[great-tweets]

We just knew.

[awed-frog]

As a reminder, this is what she looks like:

[yougetsomekisses]

[larkiethings]

Also I hope everyone knows that Miette was fostered before she was adopted, and her foster mom loved that little kitten so much and always hoped she’d gone to a good home. this tweet got so popular that she recognized Miette and reached out to her current mom, and was able to share previously unseen baby pictures

[darthmelyanna]

You mean, she saw Miette was kicked like the football and did nothing to help put Mother in jail for a thousand years? I am appalled.

[tigerses]

her!!!

[madeofstarsandfairylights]

Baby Miette!!!

[ottermatopoeia]

Babe wake up new Miette lore just dropped

[devil-with-three-heads]

IT’S MIETTE!!!!

[joy-and-whimsy-official]

Joy and whimsy detected! Miette is joyful and whimsical!

[yetrop]

Too soon?

[depraveddame]

I’ve been hearing this in my head since May 13th 4:30am EST so now everyone else has to as well lol

[iforgiveyouprime]

@loveheartsandwich SOOO THIS

Three damn years filled with incredible breakdowns, meta-analyses of characters and events, gripping theories and speculation about where the plot would turn, how the personal Aziracrow conflict would fully unfold, what clever way out they would find again to trick the system and outmaneuver everyone, and what role the human characters from season 1 would play. Searching for symbolism and small details that could point to possible season 3 events that would explain everything and bring it all together.

There was a huge number of theories about F15. Every time I read them, I feel like I’m reading a scientific dissertation, and it’s wonderful! Everyone offered their own interpretation of what was happening, one smarter and more interesting than the previous/pos. Everyone rejected the most basic interpretation that formed in everyone’s minds after the very first viewing and were convinced that something happened there that we weren’t shown, something left unsaid, that there was something hidden and ambiguous. And I am absolutely sure that this was the case.

But the finale chose exactly that damn first and simplest interpretation of them all, showing that its own audience was smarter than a huge corporation with an army of professionals at its helm.

[yowlthinks]

It isn't even that we had so many amazing theories, it is that they set up so many hooks, and then... used exactly none of them.

That armoury of Chekhov's guns just hanging there, as we are senslessly pulverised by an atomic bomb.

[charlataninred]

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[meraarts]

Might I add:

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship

[eater-of-hopes-and-dreams]

The adventures of a space roomba

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head

[blitzlowin]

hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):

The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)

The Monster of Sentan

The Witch’s Cat

Raise Both Children

Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)

Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)

My Arch Nemesis Cynthia

Pirates and Mermaid

Eindred and the Witch

The Demon King

The Cornerwitch

Grandmother Beetroot

Apocalypse Daycare Worker

Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon

New Year Saga

A Story About Changelings

Ranger in the King’s Forest

The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit

Goblin Men (Canines)

[charlataninred]

I am in love with you /p

[inkvoices]

Adding Faceblind Prince Charming and Cinderella

[inkvoices]

21. The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship

22. The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

[lightningladybug]

adding the Doctors Without Borders one

[inkvoices]

I LOVE tumblr storytime, so here’s a bunch more your weekend reading. Enjoy!

24. The Queen with Three Cursed Children

25. Tiny Dragon with one coin hoard

26. Haunted house

27. Shark hero was about to go rogue

28. Grandma lives in the woods comic

29. A Different Aftermath comic

30. Battery (microstory but I love it so much)

31. It’s A Date comic

32. Supervillian kidnaps rival’s kid and they want to stay

33. Narrative Town

34. I have been hired to clean the wizard tower comic

35. Robot Apocalypse

36. The Statues That Do Not Weather

37. Kushiel

38. Tooth Fairy

39. Alien abduction

40. Felonious wish-granting

41. When humans met actual space orcs

42. Space cousins

[dannnnnnnnnnnnex]

WAIT REBLOG THIS VERSION INSTEAD

[kreaterka]

In every universe, time after time

Can you spot Aziraphale and Crowley in every universe? Here, I’ll help you…

the spider planet was little bit tricky

[zenkitty714]

I ought to be done with this. Just quit putting my time and energy into something that's broken and done. I was fixated on it for 3 years, and like the original universe, it was all pointless and wasted in the end. I need to quit giving it so much of my own limited life. So many people being so awful about it, is not helping me keep believing this is worthwhile. I'll probably be unable to resist coming back and trying to hold on to something good from it, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just done.

[copperplatebeech]

GOS3 Thoughts

Nope. Nope - even if I laughed at moments, and found the ending scene sweet, because how could David and Michael not be? I enjoy an AU as much as anybody, but if anyone deserves their love confession, their kiss, their happy ever after, it’s the canon characters who've been through so much together, not a pair of stand-ins.

I know the line forms to the left. Here we go anyway.

What I got from the original book – and specifically the parts that Pratchett obviously put into it, the underlying theme, the humane perspective – is that the world’s not saved by grand heroics, by the procurement of a McGuffin like the Book of Life or the killing of an Antichrist. It’s saved, little piece by little piece, through the compounding effect of small, good things, of kindnesses performed by imperfect beings and the love of random beauty and the cherishing of the day-to-day. Aziraphale and Crowley thwart the Apocalypse not because they feel the call to be heroes, but because they’ve gotten used to humanity with all its flaws; because they love a bookshop and a car and gravlax and bebop and little restaurants where they know your name. The things that multiply and intertwine in our lives, that hold us and our world together the way roots fix the soil. The shared meals and the do-you-remembers, the problems muddled through, the arguments made up; the love of a child for his home and his friends, for a familiar wood and apples stolen from a neighbor’s tree. How does it save the world if you destroy the world?

(I’m old; I was born in the Fifities, and oh, I remember the  heavy irony of “we had to destroy the village In order to save it.” But that’s just what this story did.)

Saying “this is all broken and wrong, and the only thing to do is wipe it all out and start over from the beginning”: that’s been the recipe for some of the worst horrors of the world. That was the entire fucking message of the original book. The world is flawed, the systems we live under imperfect and even cruel in their origins, but it can be healed, bit by bit, if you love enough – even if you love in seemingly trivial ways.  Good Omens is about mending – mending the consequences of folly, mending friendships, mending the damage people inflict on one another, like an angel mending the spine of a beloved old book. Mending the error in the assumption that sides mean more than individuals, leaving two beings like Aziraphale and Crowley free to treasure all the small things about each other, as friends or lovers or however you choose to see them. The meet-cute of their human counterparts in the remade, blind-watchmaker universe is, well, cute, but it doesn't reward the characters we came to love, who evolved along with humanity, became who they are by outgrowing the artificial opposition imposed on them, and bonded through rising above it. (And neither couple ever gets a tender kiss to cancel out the angry one that left us all ravaged in 2023; more articulate voices than mine have gone to town on the way that narrative choice dilutes the queer representation that stunned us with its promise in the original TV adaptation).

So I see the whole progress of the sequel series as misbegotten – most likely, for all the usual reasons of cupidity and vanity – leaving us with a couple of pieces of tone-deaf fan fiction that literally lost the plot. Good moments here and there, clever bits of banter and comic turns; two lead actors with dazzling chemistry that most of us would pay to hear read the phone book for ninety minutes; but all in all a disjointed story compounded of fan tropes, that did not seem to love its characters or have a point beyond churning them around for ninety minutes.

Where in this story are characters comparable to everybody that made the original so rich and endearing to begin with? The bumbling, sincere romances (Anathema and Newt, Tracy and Shadwell, even the wholesome marital bond of Lesley and Maud)? The tweenage energy and candor provided by  the Them? Eleven-year-old Adam Young faced a choice and protected the world because its simple joys were enough for him; twinky Jesus Mark II goes down an elevator and survives just long enough to learn a card trick, distribute pizza, and be disintegrated without addressing any of the events unfolding around him. And where the entire hell is Agnes Nutter, and her tart wisdom?

(....Remember Agnes? Are we to accept that she wrote two books of prophecy, guiding the angel and demon who were fated to thwart Armageddon – and that her descendant burnt the second, in order to start her new life without a roadmap – only for everything to go up a few years later, not in a ball of flaming goo, but in a corny Avengers Endgame series of sfx dust devils? This story seems to be happening in an entirely different universe to the one that was built between book covers or the opening and closing credits of Season One, and it's not because God rebooted it.)

I'll leave you with a bit of shameless self-promo: an imagining of Agnes’ take on the sequels, and a version of what Aziraphale and Crowley themselves might have thought of the narrative malfeasance, as I view it, of season 2 (both written before any of the uglier reports about NG surfaced). I don't know if this was a case of an author deliberately jerking around his fandom, a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth" when the project had to be retooled for a briefer air time, or just lazy reliance on a wealth of incident and fan service as a substitute for a story worth telling. All I'm sure of is that we, as fan creators, should feel completely free to ignore anything that violates the promise, the message, and the perspective of the story we fell in love with. To mend what went wrong, piece by piece.

[hollow-head]

A missing scene. Thanks for all the fanart and fic throughout the years, you guys

[copperplatebeech]

The End Of The Story - rated G, ~ 2000 words

A fix-it inspired by a comment on my Tumblr rant over... whatever that was.

Everything's gone but the bookshop. Satan's just appeared. Except... everything's not gone. Quite. Nor everyone.

God stared fixedly, for a long beat. “How did you get here?” She said. “Existence has ceased. This bookshop is all that is left of My universe.”

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “Something – the same thing’s happened before. I’m gone. And then I come back.”

“Habits are hard to break,” remarked Crowley. “I should know. Stock in trade.”

“You,” said the boy. “You taught me. How to see past what people pretend to be, to who they are. How to be gentle as doves and wise as serpents. How to turn anger into love.” He took a deep breath. “I’m angry now.”

“Who are you?” said God, low and threatening.

“Oh, Lord,” chuckled Satan, “don’t You know Your own son?” He smiled oilily. “So pleased to meet you. After Crowley’s reports, I feel as if I know you.”

Read on AO3

I'm back! It's been a while, I'll explain later, but... action was required.

Tagging in the replies as usual, let me know if you want to be added or removed on my tag list.

[locket-lyncis]

Yall need to fucking calm down

[paperclipninja]

Hey, fandom people, listen up.

Feeling things is good.

However you feel is valid and everyone is entitled to process and share those feelings and manage their own experience in whatever way is necessary.

That's literally why places like Tumblr exist.

But intentionally seeking out or responding to people involved with the show to dump your displeasure is not okay.

This is, quite literally, the real life version of "don't like, don't read", except that it's real people who poured their hearts and souls into a project that almost didn't happen - if you don't like the finale, they do not need to know about it. There is nothing they can do about it. There is no next season to change anything. If you think we are all filled with high emotion and mixed feelings, they undoubtedly have experienced that ten fold.

That doesn't mean you can't vent and share your views and be angry or happy or upset or some combination of all of those things, perhaps, and it certainly doesn't mean you can't post about it all online.

But jfc, the irony of humans behaving this way over an angel and demon who gave themselves for humans to have a chance at being better - feel however you feel, express it however you need to, but let the cast and crew have their moment, something many of them have said they're proud of.