I need show only fans to understand that while Crowley saving Aziraphale on a grander, historic scale is canon, legit and amazing, on a smaller, more everyday scale Crowley is completely useless and Aziraphale absolutely ruthless. I mean, Crowley’s name and number are in call center databases who pester you with annoying sales and advertisements while Aziraphale makes mafia members who try to threaten his shop leave and forget about him.
Crowley is bashful, nerdy, clumsy, and awkward and desperately wants to look cool. He falls off horses, gets cursed out by ducks, stammers a lot, and his idea of Being Bad is to let the air out of car tires. He gets contrite if Aziraphale so much as clucks his tongue at him. While Aziraphale wields a flaming sword, Crowley goes into battle with a tire iron.
Aziraphale lies to God, scares people away from his shop, has people convinced he’s a murderer, and would be very stylish if time didn’t progress forward. He calmly insists that he and Crowley face down Satan himself.
And they both got swindled for decades by Shadwell.
Crowley glues coins to sidewalks and watches from afar to see if anyone picks them up. He’s irritating, at best
Aziraphale makes traffic wardens’ notebooks explode on his way past, apparently thinking that they were invented by Hell. In the show when the Bentley drives away and that poor guys notebook bursts into sparks, that’s him.
Crowley is, like, basically just mischievous and trying to pretend that he’s evil because celestial beings in the Good Omens universe have to pick a side and just aren’t allowed to be ‘basically alright but with a certain sense of humour and an open dislike of authority.’
Aziraphale tries to be good by heaven’s very absolutist ‘no-grey areas’ standards, but on an instinctive level (in the book at least, less so in the show) he has much less value for life than Crowley does. Crowley’s the one who starts worrying about what the apocalypse will do to the dolphins and gorillas and the like, Aziraphale’s the one who straight up suffocates a dove for the sake of his magic act.
In the book, Aziraphale is the one who first suggests killing the AntiChrist. And it’s not in the ‘as a last resort’ way that Crowley suggests it on the show— when he finds out where the real AntiChrist is his first reaction is basically “yay! Now we can kill the child!”
Essentially, the main reason he’s on the ‘good’ side and Crowley’s on the ‘bad’ side appears to be because Heaven and Hell judge morality based on how willing you are to follow orders blindly without asking awkward questions (which is addressed pretty well in the show, actually, when Crowley outright says he Fell because he asked too many questions), rather than on your actual behaviour or beliefs.
crowley took a century long depression nap in the 1800s and got drunk for weeks after he found out what the spanish inquisition was
aziraphale straight up possessed a televangelist and declared on live tv to millions of people that they were all going to die in the apocalypse and their god wouldn’t care if their corpses were part of the ruins His celestial army left behind
you guys wanna hear a sad story called ‘finn rescuing poe was a much bigger deal to poe emotionally than the movie let on’?
listen. i know that poe being the resistance golden boy is a really popular headcanon, but in ‘before the awakening’ we learn two things about him:
he hasn’t been with the resistance that long before the events in tfa. his mission to jakku is only the second mission he flies for leia
poe is a spy. a good one. sure, he’s also an amazing fighter pilot, but 90% of what he does in the book consists of retrieving items/intel from the first order while mostly using his piloting skills to get away before being caught.
so here’s the thing now. the political landscape around the time poe joins the resistance looks like this: the republic and the first order are engaged in a ‘don’t bomb us and we won’t bomb you’ sort of deal, with a neutral zone between their respective territories. for some incomprehensible reason the republic doesn’t think the first order is a big deal. the resistance, which the republic sooort of supports on the down low, thinks the first order is an enormously big deal and wants to stop them. the problem? they can’t do it by engaging the first order directly because it would violate the agreement with the new republic and potentially start a war.
enter poe dameron, disillusioned republic officer, who wants to do something about this. so when leia recruits him for the rebellion he’s 100% on board. but before leia sends him on his first mission she tells poe, with exactly zero sugar coating, that he can back down, but if he accepts and later gets caught he’s on his own. the republic, and by extension the resistance, must deny all involvement in whatever he was doing or risk open war with the first order.
on jakku, like on his first mission for the resistance, poe goes undercover, out of uniform and with a stripped x-wing
and he gets caught and tortured and has his secrets, including his ties with the rebellion, found out
all his snarking and posturing happens to the background of poe being acutely aware that no one is coming for him
if hux decided to livestream his torture directly to leia, she’d have to stand there and say she has no idea who poe is
the resistance isn’t going to rescue him, ransom him, or admit to having any connections with him.
poe is probably very aware that he’s going to die soon, alone and without having done much for the cause he believes in.
and then finn comes and saves him, knight-in-shining-armor style
On 8/17/2021, Zhang Qiling has now returned to Wu Xie and Pang Zi for 6 years.
Because I can’t visit Chang Bai Shan or Hang Zhou or Xi Zang or anywhere tbh for my first ever 817, I’m visiting Tumblr instead to post my rare thoughts. I wanted to dedicate my 817 post to these pictures from Episode 16 of Ultimate Note.
Let me explain why *hem hem*. The first two pictures are when Zhang Qiling exited the yun yu in Xi Wang Mu’s cave palace and lost his memory. Clearly, he’s in a disastrous physical state or else someone as fit and martially skilled as him would never lay in such a vulnerable position or have to be carried.
In the third picture in the desert though, he’s walking by himself. We know Wu Xie and Pang Zi would have carried him without any hesitation (I mean even Hei Yanjing and Xiao Hua carried (dragged) Tuoba out of the desert), so Xiao Ge must have been determined to walk by himself.
And we also know from the last two pictures that he wasn’t walking because he was fully recovered. The moment they exit the desert and reach safety, Xiao Ge is in a feverish coma state again and stays that way until after spending many days in the hospital. So he really was walking by himself in the desert not because he felt that much physically better but because he didn’t want to “burden” Wu Xie or Pang Zi and have them spend their energy on carrying him.
These scenes may just be a few minutes in a 36 episode long tv series or 10+ year fandom or thousands years long story, but they embody why Dao Mu Bi Ji and Tie San Jiao enchant me so much. I’ll never encounter zombies or raid a tomb or fight a powerful secret organization, but it’s so believable to me that the characters of dmbj exist somewhere. Somewhere there’s a Wu Xie stringing together the coin bracelet of a woman who wanted to kill him or setting out to rescue an uncle who has lied to him in every imaginable way. Somewhere there’s a Pang Zi holding the lifeless body of his beloved in his lap or making a nametag so his good bro can find his way home. Somewhere there’s a Zhang Qiling who’s willingly harsh to himself if it means his friends’ lives are a little easier.
Through the eyes of the live comment generator that is Wu Xie, I’ve been immersed into the spectacular world Nanpai Sanshu has created. Reading for pure fun is not something I do often, but the dmbj series made me want to read every single word with all my heart - if not for the plot, then just to make sure Wu Xie still has a tian zhen (innocent and naive) side, that Pang Zi is still lively at times, that Zhang Qiling returns from the too cold Chang Bai Shan, and to follow everyone else to the end of their written stories.
Ending with this line that perfectly describes the magical connection between a book and its readers: 两方世界山河共，一纸内外烟火同.
i’m never gonna stop being angry about guy gardner’s heroes in crisis interview what a waste of potential oh my god he has so much more to talk about than just “why was i the second choice for earth’s gl” like. god. what a WASTE
Big big same.
I keep thinking about this, and honestly, I wish it was gone more into in Heroes in Crisis, or just in general when it’s brought up, because there’s so much more there. I really don’t like when writers default to ‘Guy is mad because he was second and macho bruised ego.’
Guy being hung up on being second? Okay sure. But why?!? Explore why he is! Personally, I think it’s because his entire life he was always compared to his older brother. He was always second best, and considered lucky to even being seen as that. Guy fought that feeling of never measuring up so hard.
Then this cosmic ring shows up, and once again, he’s second. Logically he knows it’s because of distance. He was farther away or it would have gone to him. But emotionally? That had to feel like the universe itself telling him he was stuck at second place. That no matter how good he was or what he did, it’d never be enough. He was never enough. Someone else was always ahead, and he should feel lucky to even be considered for second place, or considered at all.
The more I learned about Guy, the more him asserting he’s the ‘best’ or ‘should have been first’, felt like it was him shouting at the universe that he mattered. That he was good enough!
I wish that got examined more, and I wish it was done without him having to reconcile with his dad. I want Guy to finally let himself connect why being second, no matter the reason, hits him so hard. And that he doesn’t need validation from someone who hurt him like his dad did, in order to fully heal. He can let go of that, and heal with help from his new family. He matters to them. They love him. He’s not second to them. He’s the one and only Guy Gardner, and they know their lives, the corp, the universe, is far better for having him there.
so i spent that entire scene between zerxus and mr. lord of the hells screaming at our pally there to stop literally making a deal with the devil but honestly the thing that really gets me is that it’s completely in line with what we know of zerxus’ character for him to act as he did??
like i think someone’s already written a very good meta on this but it makes sense that, in this time, gods aren’t seen as the powers we know them to be in exandria. i mean we talk of hubris (and don’t get me wrong, there IS terrible hubris) but the fact of the matter is that the ascension to godhood has been shown to be possible. why wouldn’t people then draw the conclusion that godhood is just another attainable level in the cosmic hierarchy? it’s a logical conclusion, just like how atheism is very much a logical conclusion to draw from the science in our world
and for zerxus, who already has zero reverence for the gods, who knows how to tap into divinity by being a champion of the people he’s sworn to protect, who is overall a kind person, an empathetic person… what else could he do when confronted by this broken, broken being in front of him (who has the incredible pain and genuine gentleness that brennan injects into his voice, who is wearing his husband’s face) but to reach out?
and god, that’s a STRENGTH of his! to be so compassionate and earnest among a city of egomaniacs that he can’t even bring himself to be intimidating to get what he wants and instead reaches out with sincerity, that he extends understanding to a paladin of a goddess that he and all his peers scorn, that when seeing his friend with tear tracks down her face and clutching a locket from his dead husband, his very first instinct is to comfort her. and it’s going to be his downfall. and it may be everyone’s downfall. and i’m still screaming
something something finding faith in someone who will hurt you, who will betray you, and you know it–but they reached out with a shaking hand to prove they’re real, and you’re jaded, hurt, desperate enough to take it something something corruption arc.
Man looking back near the end of the game it becomes really apparent just how much the society needed to go down one way or another.
Like the Golden Order formed a society that not only survived by destroying all other religions and peoples in the Lands Between, but they also are literally so superstitious that they believed the best way to deal with Omens was just, putting em in the sewers.
And if you’re not rich? JUST CUT OFF THE HORNS, IT’LL EITHER KILL EM OR SCAR EM PERMANENTLY. And the fucked up part is some of them still worship the Gods, because you can SEE SOME sitting in front of statues in peace, like these fuckers must have so much internalized hatred it’s insane.
And by the way, the literal King and Queen, the Elden Lord and Goddess of the whole thing? They sent their OWN FUCKING CHILDREN DOWN THERE, AND THEIR CHILDREN ENDED UP ABSOLUTELY FUCKED UP BECAUSE OF IT. LIKE MOHG BECOMES OBSESSED WITH HIS OWN DYNASTY AND FUCKIN’ KIDNAPS HIS OWN HALF BROTHER AND DOES SOME CREEPY ASS SHIT
And then there’s Morgott who is the KING of both Leyndell and Internalized Hatred, because he literally does nothing to stop the Omenkillers or help out the Omens, as they’re all still stuck down there in a civilization built on the bodies of others the Order has condemned.
And I mean that LITERALLY. THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF DEAD FUCKIN BODIES BELOW THEM. THE MERCHANTS YOU MEET? THEIR ENTIRE PEOPLE WERE SENT TO THE SEWERS TO ROT BECAUSE THEY WERE JUST ACCUSED OF HERETICAL BELIEFS.
All of this is culminated in Cohryn, because in the end of his and Goldmasks side quest, he literally goes insane because he was so fucking indoctrinated by the Order and believed that it was “Perfect” calling Goldmask a madman just for wanting something else. This dude is standing in the remnants of his entire culture, as the tree burns to the fucking ground, and he just LAUGHS.
And then there’s Maliketh who fucked up and was forced to feed on Death for circumstances he failed to prevent. And I get Marika was probably angry but the fact is that forcing the one person who was on your side the entire time you were an Empyrean to consume Death is fucked up, still
All of this is exactly why it is so fucking satisfying watching people like Gideon and Radagon fall, because the 2 of them are some of the most egregious when it comes to this, with Gideon being so boot-licky that he abandons his ENTIRE GOAL JUST CUZ MARIKA SAID THEY NEED TO STRUGGLE. And Radagon fucking left his wife, bastardized the symbol of their communion into a symbol of the Order, and endlessly tries to fix the Elden Ring because of how much he wants to Order to remain in power.
In conclusion: FUCK THE GOLDEN ORDER AND FUCK THE PEOPLE IN IT. THEY’RE ALL FUCKERS SO DON’T FEEL BAD FOR ANYONE IN THE HIERARCHY (Except for Morgott he’s just got issues that were caused by his mother literally throwing him in the sewer while his brother got to be one of the most beloved people in history. I’d say the same for Mohg but he’s… got a loooot more issues)
I feel like making the original Greek Olympians and Titans in FGO into alien spaceships was always kind of… controversial, but I never really had an issue for it. First off, because it really just impacted the original Olympians lorewise, it didn’t exactly change much when it came to their winding family trees. Secondly because it offered some pretty cool boss fights. And thirdly, because it offered an explanation as to why the Greek gods were the way they were, without compromising their characters.
It adds to their incomprehensible nature, but at the same time it emphasizes just how human the Greek gods were in myth, and how even then they managed to turn that ‘humanity’ into something even more incomprehensible and inhumane. The gods were petty. Arrogant. Loving. Lustful. When Europa talks about Zeus, she’s still describing Zeus that everyone read about. An overwhelming presence filled with an insatiable desire to be with humanity- and a love for humanity as he tried to string together his loved ones into constellations so they could be as eternal as him.
Even with the revelation that the Olympians are machines, you can still see that their Lostbelt selves, so dedicated to their ‘mechanical purpose’ are instinctually finding themselves drawn to how they were in Proper Human History purely through the complexities of love. Hephaestus still cares about Aphrodite. Demeter loves Persephone to the point of madness after being forced to kill her. Zeus, even being a tyrannical demiurge in his Lostbelt, cares enough about Hera to try and allow her to live longer through Europa, and cares enough about Europa that he can’t even bare to kill her personally after her betrayal. Artemis’ sudden epiphany once Orion manages to shoot her down from the heavens. Aphrodite’s last words being her crying out to her former husband.
Proper Human History Ares busts his way into a Lostbelt through both Chaldea’s ‘Aether’ plan and the connection that humans built with him, stating that despite being a machine god that was meant for nothing more than the horrors of war and combat, he was still given a purpose as a god, and owes them for their love- the love they gave for him as both ‘Ares’ and ‘Mars’.
And when the gods lose that humanity, it’s horrifying. Poseidon is lobotomized, made to be nothing but a mechanical drone that swims in circles. The power of a god turned into an oversized, broken-down, soggy Roomba that can’t even really be called ‘Poseidon’ anymore.
Love and lust are common themes in Greek myths, and they’re things that the gods partake in often, but don’t take lightly. Because many myths are self-contained, they can be summarized to ‘brief flings’. Apollo and Coronis. Zeus and Ganymede. But that sense of love, no matter how brief and fleeting it is, still meant the world to them. Hell, as twisted as it is, you can still see how much Poseidon cares for Caeneus- giving him his trident, essentially letting him become ‘Poseidon’s proxy’, Summer Caenis still has Poseidon’s implicit protection with his ‘Beach Crisis’ skill. It’s messy. Insensitive. Complicated and twisted. Awe-inspiring. Horrifying. It’s something that they’d have strove for eternally, but will never get right due to their nature- and yet it won’t stop them.
‘The love of the gods is heavy’, as Orion tends to put it.
It’s a clear message as to just how potent human nature is. Fate’s Olympians are ‘inhuman’, machines that appeared and simply pretended to be human enough so that they could integrate themselves with the rest of Earth, but eventually reached a place where they were no longer pretending, and found themselves longing to be just as human as the people they ruled over.
I find it interesting how, as Gabriel is arriving with his thunder and lightening, Crowley is the first to react well before everyone else.
This is everyone at the very first frame of Gabriel making his way to the everyone.
This is five frames later. Everyone else is reacting to the loud thunder that claps around them.
Any theories on why Crowley reacts to Gabriel’s presence much quicker than literally anyone else, even Aziraphale?
My favorite theory is Crowley has probably the highest level of Self preservation on this side of Heaven, hell and earth.
He is looking out for himself and an angel who was probably created to run face first and defend against danger as a Principality (who as shown in the show is way more concerned about Crowley’s death then his own). So Crowley’s thresh hold for ‘what in the room is going to kill me’ is probably Spidey-sense level or stronger. So An Archangel is probably high enough on that list that Crowley could feel The momentGabrieldecides he is going to come down to earth. Hell Crowley knows when Hell is checking up on him and when they aren’t looking at them. He knows when Aziraphale is in trouble. Crowley is ready for attack at any moment.
Meanwhile I really think Aziraphale is a 100% oblivious by creation to not think about his own death. He was created to protect. If you were terrified of your own death you wouldn’t be a good protector. He gave away his weapon because it would protect the humans, he has gotten himself into multiple scrapes, he let a demon under his wing and close to him. When him and Crowley fight it is never ‘Heaven is going to kill me’ it is ‘Heaven and Hell will hurt you’ this angel was sitting in a jail cell and he was more worried about paper work, he barely flinched at a gun being pointed at him. In the book he looked at Satan picked up his sword and prepared to for a Throw down with the devil even in the show his sword is up ready to launch at the devil if he tried to hurt Adam. So Gabriel isn’t on his radar like he is on Crowley’s. Because if it came down to it. Aziraphale would fight him too with out batting an eye.
Yesssss
A very interesting thing is that, according to the book and the tv script, Crowley basically runs on fear.
He’s deeply aware of the fact that he’s not a very powerful demon. He’s scared of Hell, he’s scared of Hastur and Ligur, he’s scared of Satan, and he lives in a world where the first old lady with a bottle of Holy Water could kill him.
Admittedly, he’s a bit more jumpy in the book, but I suspect he just hides it better in the show. A bit more “fight” on the “flight or fight” scale, but I think the essence is the same. This demon always knows where (and when) the threats are, because he was literally terrified into always knowing.
Meanwhile Aziraphale only ever brings up Crowley being destroyed or humans getting hurt. He brings up discorporation to criticize Crowley’s driving, but even then it’s more scolding than real, genuine fear of physical harm.
I don’t think we ever see Aziraphale scared of physical harm, in fact. And part of it it’s definitely that he used to be an angelic warrior and was created with little self preservation. And in the book that’s probably it.
But in the TV show, I suspect he actually… doesn’t think himself worthy of protection? Or, well, no, that’s not right. But it’s not just that’s he ready to throw hands, it’s that he genuinely doesn’t seem to realise that he doesn’t deserve to be hurt and get into trouble?
Like, he’s so happy when Crowley comes to the rescue. Is Crowley the only person who ever stood up for Aziraphale? How much of it it’s Aziraphale being created with no self preservation, and how much it’s Aziraphale not realizing he has a right to stand up for himself, after millennia of emotional abuse?
I am sorry, I am doing a terrible job at explaining what I am thinking, I just have lots of feelings right now
We don’t know much about how angelic/demonic perception works, but we see Aziraphale asking Crowley if anyone is looking before they swap back on the bench in the park. There’s an implication there that Aziraphale can’t check for prying eyes as well as Crowley, otherwise he could do it himself, i.e. there is the implication that Crowley’s senses for angels or demons being around is better/sharper/more sensitive in some way.
Crowley also always finds Aziraphale anywhere no problem, especially when he’s in trouble, and he can sense (smell?) the Hellhound having found his master all the way from London. Whether it’s a honed skill, built after centuries of fear, or at least partly an innate skill, a natural sensitivity, Crowley picks that sort of thing up much more quickly than anyone else. He is also the first to react to Satan’s arrival at the airbase, and his reaction is by far the most violent. He’s in stabbing pain, as the Script Book says.
Aziraphale is sensitive to Love. Nobody else among the angels or demons reacts to that.
We know that angels and demons’ miracles work based on belief and expectations. We know these expectations shape reality around them, unconsciously usually. How much do their expectations and emotions shape the angels/demons themselves? I mean, how much does Crowley’s state of constant terror, however much he tries to hide it under a helping of Cool, shape his very nature and how it interacts with the world? How much will Aziraphale’s focus on love being maybe The most important thing on Earth shape his ability to perceive it? Maybe Aziraphale feels the love in Tadfield so intensely because he believes love is so important, and this belief creates or at least greatly boosts the sensitivity?
And, in that vein, how much does Aziraphale’s belief he isn’t really worth saving inform his lack of fear to be hurt? You’re absolutely right, @whispsofwind, Aziraphale seems to have very limited self-preservation instincts, to put that mildly. Aside of his complaints about Crowley’s driving, he never seems to care for his own well-being? Saving himself from getting beheaded is a frivolous miracle. Being shot will be paperwork. Aziraphale worries for everyone else’s safety, very noticeably for Crowley’s (“they’ll destroy you!”), but not for his own.
And that’s entirely Heaven’s fault? I’m sure Crowley is indeed the only person to ever give any value to Aziraphale as a person, who tries to keep him from harm, who tries to help him. None of the angels care about him at all. He’s just a foot soldier, and his posting on Earth isn’t even considered active duty by Gabriel. Six thousand years of work, and nobody cares about the results for real, let alone about the hardships encountered on the way.
The same is true about Crowley and Hell. Crowley’s role, as we learn early on, is to be “a tool” (in the glorious destiny of bringing about Armageddon). A tool. Not a person. Not an instigator. Not an agent. A tool. A thing. That’s the value Crowley is given by his superiors.
It’s never said with those words about Aziraphale, but it’s obviously the same thing. Nobody cares about them as people. They only have each other.
This ties in to what I said the other day about different angels and demons having different gifts or knacks or tricks, however you want to put it. I think they vary as much as we do, regardless of their allegiance. Crowley and Aziraphale sense very different things, and have very different reactions to them.
Of course, in Crowley’s case I’m 100% sure his hypervigilance is trauma-induced. I doubt he’s always run on fear and prey-animal wariness. But he sure as hell does now.
In addition to this shot, we can also see it in his reaction to the gun going off, and in the background when Satan yells at Adam. (I’d love to be one of those awesome people who can string together a gifset, but alas.) He’s got a very strong GET AWAY response to anything that poses a threat. It’s completely reflexive. He doesn’t think about it, his cool guy mask is nowhere to be seen, he doesn’t even look embarrassed about it. He just throws himself away from danger with every noodle muscle in his body, and if he can’t (like with Satan), he jerks and flings his arm up as if fighting off the urge. This guy is a survivor. There’s a reason he suggests running away, when Aziraphale would never think of it. They’ve developed very different skills, and this is Crowley’s.
All of this makes it really amazing that Crowley is even capable of being protective of anyone else. But he is, he’s legitimately watchful over Aziraphale. Always tries to keep him out of danger as well. That’s not innate. That’s him fighting his baked-in self-preservation response because if he flees, if he escapes and Aziraphale doesn’t, then it’s not bloody worth it. There are worse things than pain or death, even for Crowley. He’ll run, yes. But he won’t run without Aziraphale. And he’ll stand next to him when he clearly wants to get the hell out.
(Also when he’s prowling the bookshop, he’s got the stone-cold wariness of someone who’s not only looking out for threats, but is prepared to do something about it if he finds one. That expression on his face kills me. If the bookshop isn’t safe, he’s going to make it safe. We almost never see him like that and I’ll never be over it.)
On my umpteenth rewatch of Good Omens and screaming again over the fact that Aziraphale has an autographed collection of books of prophecy in his shop because even though he says it’s the divine ineffable plan that we are unable to question he WANTS to know and he NEEDS answers but as an angel he can’t ask questions so instead he flocks to the humans who might be able to give him the answers that God can not
Yes! I was thinking about that when I read the book the last time, because in the book there’s this bit about human prophets actually being right, to the point where Heaven runs interference on whatever cosmic energies they pick up on, to make the visions and thus the prophecies less accurate. It’s not necessary most of the time, because the visions drive the humans mad enough on their own, and they end up self-medicating with mushrooms and what have you to deal with them, but, humans can potentially see the future correctly, and Aziraphale will know that. So by studying the human prophecies, and trying to filter out what’s madness and what’s Heavenly noise, he has as slim chance to actually work something true out.
Because yes, he needs to know. He has so many questions, and he can’t ask them. He needs humans (and Crowley) to do it for him.
Aziraphale lives in a world that makes no sense, that runs on rules that make no sense, but he (and everyone else) is supposed to follow them. Already in the Beginning, when Crowley says he can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil, also Aziraphale doesn’t know or understand. And he’s worrying about it. And it just goes on and on like this. Heaven are supposed to be the good guys, but they drown children and allow murder without a care in the world, while the only demon Aziraphale frequently interacts with isn’t the foul, evil creature he’s supposed to be, but a kind person who cares about humans and becomes the only angel, Fallen or otherwise, to care for Aziraphale. Like, Aziraphale is told the world is Like This, but everything he actually sees for himself is completely different. Aziraphale lives in this huge cognitive dissonance, his reality makes no sense, it’s completely bonkers once you stop and think about it, and his way of coping is to cling desperately to the Ineffability thing, because that at least means it’s nonsensical by design. It’s meant to be incomprehensible, because it’s ineffable. He isn’t supposed to understand it.
But he wants to. I think it’s an overlooked sad Aziraphale fact that he’s desperate to understand things. He’s smart. He can make complex logical deductions and draw conclusions and connections in record time, as he does with Agnes’s prophecies. It has to be so frustrating to not understand things. He can’t let himself dwell on it, can’t ask questions, because you know what happens to angels asking questions, and he’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing, but the Ineffability that he uses for comfort has to be such a source of distress at times, too. Of course he’ll pick up human prophecies and hope he’ll find some clue. Any clue at all, because he’ll get nothing from Heaven, and he knows that. He doesn’t want to see it, but deep down, he knows he’s on his own there. (On a side with the other beings who want to know, with humans and Crowley, but he can’t commit to that, can’t admit that to himself for so long.)
So in a fit of a random thought following another random thought, I ended up needing to listen to “I’ll be Your Mirror”, because that’s one of Crowley’s favourite songs according to Neil, and I’m sure someone else will have dissected this with more musical knowledge and other relevant expertise, but I’m having Feelings and I intend to share them.
Like. Guys.
Lyrics for reference:
I’ll be your mirror,
Reflect what you are,
in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside, you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
‘Cause I see you
I find it hard to believe you don’t know
The beauty you are
But if you don’t, let me be your eyes
A hand to your darkness so you won’t be afraid
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside, you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
‘Cause I see you
I’ll be your mirror, reflect what you are
In many ways, that’s what they are to each other, isn’t it? From a plain outsider perspective, they seem opposites. Black and white, modern and old fashioned, speed demon and angel who looks rather car sick whenever forced into a car with that demon, inhabitants of a meticulously clean, minimalist, dark flat and a stuffed-to-bursting, dusty and dingy bookshop, demon and angel. Opposite sides.
But they aren’t. They’re two side of the same coin. If you strip the veneer, if you look closely, they are quite similar. All of their main differences are just appearance. Beneath them, they are on common ground. They’re on Earth. They love the humans (more than either of them should). They care about earthly delights, like good food and drink, music and plays.
Both of them have ethics that don’t agree with their jobs.
“When you think the night has seen your mind, that inside you’re twisted and unkind, let me stand to show that you are blind, please put down your hands, ‘cause I see You.”
It’s easy to see this being something Crowley needs from Aziraphale. Crowley’s job, his role as a demon, wants him to be cruel. He’s supposed to enjoy being cruel, and we see him struggle with trying to be a proper demon, because what else is he gonna be? An ardvaark? But Crowley isn’t cruel, and underneath his denials, his “I’m unforgivable”, Crowley knows that. Crowley is horrified that Heaven kills children, grieves over Heaven’s and Humanity’s cruelties at Golgotha, gets drunk for a week over the Spanish Inquisition, gets drunk over dolphins being destroyed, too. Crowley is a good person with a kind heart, and he’s not allowed to have that heart and not allowed to be kind, or even think of himself as kind, because that’s dangerous, and he needs to hang on to his tenuous self-image of demon, because that is what he has to be, even if he doesn’t want to. Crowley cannot ever let himself admit to his own kindness. He needs Aziraphale to do it for him.
He needs Aziraphale’s eyes to look at him and see him for what he is. Also Aziraphale often sees the demon first, but Aziraphale is also free to see the decidedly undemonic sides of Crowley. Aziraphale gets to see Crowley’s horror and grief, Crowley’s delight with humans and their inventions, he gets to see Crowley’s many gestures of love and friendship directed at him, and he can say that. Yes, Crowley grumbles, and hisses, and sometimes throws a fit, because he can’t be kind, he can’t, he isn’t, except that he is, and he needs to hear it. There has to be that one person in his life who knows Crowley, who knows these secret, forbidden things about him, and who’s going to like that about him. Who’s going to see him. (And sometimes someone who’ll put up a light to his door, too, so he can find home to a bookshop backroom.)
And then, once you’re here, you know… The beautiful thing is that it works just as well the other way around. Aziraphale needs that from Crowley, too.
Also Aziraphale has a job that doesn’t always align with his moral code. I think it’ll be less extreme for day to day minor things (Aziraphale is allowed to save babies from being run over without having to worry about this being unangelic conduct), but the big picture stuff Heaven does is as awful as what Hell gets up to. Heaven drowns thousands of innocents, gets the unicorn extinct, rains down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, let’s Jesus be killed, doesn’t interfere with wars and plagues, probably condones crusades and suchlike. We see some of Crowley’s reactions to that. Crowley is allowed to be horrified, he’s allowed to rage, probably even to try and oppose Heaven’s plans, because they’re the other side. We also see Aziraphale’s reactions. The quiet grief, the denial, the attempts to cling to the doctrine, the “it has to be for the best somehow, in an ineffable way, I just can’t see it, but Heaven is Good, so this has to be something Good, too”. Aziraphale isn’t allowed to rage and grief out loud and question all this cruelty. Aziraphale has to be quiet and obedient. Aziraphale is afraid. And Aziraphale is a good person, with a soft big heart, who loves people, and that means that underneath that quiet and obedient denial there lies an abyss full of guilt.
What if this isn’t the right thing? What if Heaven really is as bad as his gut tells him (should he ever stop to listen to it, which he won’t, because that would be as much of a disaster as Crowley admitting to being kind)? What if all this is wrong, what if Aziraphale didn’t do the Right Thing? What if it’s him who’s twisted and unkind? Not the kind thing to let the poor humans drown because Heaven said so. Is he a terrible person, a terrible angel, for following orders, or for not following?
None of the other angels ever support anything at all Aziraphale does. Not once. They don’t listen to his input when it comes to policy decisions, although he’s the ground agent on Earth. They belittle his personal choices, like his food or his books. Gross matter! Material objects! Report back to active duty, because six thousand years on Earth wasn’t actually properly duty?
And then there is Crowley, who looks at Aziraphale and sees a person. A person who’s a good person, and sometimes a bit of a bastard, and who is clear about loving all parts of him. Who indulges his hobbies, who sticks by his side, who comes to his help, who forgives him after they argue. (I think the matter of forgiveness is a Big Deal in Heaven and by extension Hell’s culture, but that’s besides the scope of this post.)
Anyway, Aziraphale needs Crowley to see him as much as Crowley needs to be seen.
“I’ll be your mirror, reflect what you are. ”
That’s what they’re doing for each other. They treat each other like, well, like people. Nobody else does that for them. They both occasionally doubt their own personhood, their worth outside of their jobs, their, well, their humanity. But they keep showing each other that “yes, you’re a person, I see all those things about you, and I like what I see”.
Like. I’m having Feelings send help.
On a different sort of meta note, in case you want Feelings, too, I have some more: release date for the song was March 12, 1967.
Yes.
It’s the cold season, the 1967 scene we see. They are wearing coats and gloves and things. Is it early in the year? Or late? Either way, on a time scale for immortal beings, either “I’ll be your Mirror” gets released shortly after the Holy Water Thermos Incident, or it has just been released.
We’ve discussed the Thermos Incident to Hell and back in this fandom of course, and no matter which interpretation you prefer, it’s a pivotal point in their relationship. It’s Aziraphale admitting out loud that Crowley means a lot to him (please don’t take the suicide pill) and that he wants their friendship, although it scares him and he isn’t ready. This is a super important moment in Crowley’s memory, and there is this song that came out at that time that reminds him of his relationship with Aziraphale and that’s his favourite song and -
I’ll be here in my corner with my feelings if anyone needs me.
i think the bit about “i lost my best friend.” “so sorry to hear it.” is loaded as fuck, WAY more than people give it credit for despite having been analyzed to hell and back, because:
when we get to “i lost my best friend,” aziraphale has NO IDEA that the bookshop burned. he fully thinks crowley is talking about their fight. and that crowley abandoned his plan to leave earth just because aziraphale disavowed their friendship.
aziraphale senses that he needs crowley’s help here, if he’s willing to give it. deep down, though he doesn’t know what they’ll do when they get to the airbase, aziraphale’s faith truly lies with crowley. that’s why he called him immediately when heaven put the kibosh on his request to stop the war. and it’s why he asks if crowley went to alpha centauri - to find out what his plans are.
and crowley appears to be available.
but.
aziraphale has been trying to protect crowley.
that’s why, at the bandstand, he switches so fast from “you can’t leave, crowley” to “there is no our side.” as soon as he realizes crowley does technically have a plan he can go to if armageddon happens, he assumes that he must sever their connection so crowley won’t hang around.
so when he finds out that crowley changed his plans because aziraphale tried to cut him off, aziraphale is thinking that his attempt to sacrifice their relationship for crowley’s safety has failed. he says “i’m so sorry to hear it” because he’s not just hearing crowley’s sadness - he’s also facing his own failure, and also having to admit he misread crowley when he believed that cutting him off would make him leave.
AND he’s about to ask crowley to make another sacrifice: to come to the site of armageddon, face to face with a lot of people who want them both wiped out of existence.
he knows he needs crowley’s help. and he knows crowley is loyal enough to give it.
he is about to ask crowley to join him in sacrificing themselves to save the earth.
with all that in mind, i don’t think aziraphale would be in a headspace where he could either apologize or have a deep heart-to-heart about friendship. he is doing what it seems he has to to keep even WORSE things from happening. but i think aziraphale still does not feel like he is being a good friend and feels too guilty about it to start openly embracing this notion of friendship at this moment.
Yes, to all of this.
Aziraphale really has no idea the shop burned, plus he has no idea Crowley thinks he died, so yes, from Aziraphale’s perspective, Crowley is this wrecked over Aziraphale ending their friendship. And that’s awful for Aziraphale on so many accounts, because I’m with you, he did that in a last ditch desperate effort to keep Crowley safe. Crowley was going to run away, and running away would keep him safer than Aziraphale could provide, and Crowley’s safety has always been his priority, so he breaks both their hearts in order for Crowley to go and safe himself.
And then the stupid demon doesn’t do it! No, it’s worse, he says he didn’t go to Alpha Centauri because stuff happened and he lost his best friend. This is Crowley saying “I won’t run away without you”. That means Aziraphale did that terrible thing to them both, you can see how much it hurts him, he’s nearly crying when Crowley leaves the bandstand, Aziraphale did that terrible thing, and it was the wrong thing to do, because that’s what made Crowley abandon his running away to save himself plans. This is, like, the absolute worst thing that could have happened. Not only did Aziraphale hurt Crowley, he was aware he was doing it, but he was telling himself it was the right thing to do, because it would keep Crowley safe (better safe and heartbroken than dead).
It would also give Aziraphale time to convince Heaven to stop Armageddon, which at the time of the bandstand argument he’s still convinced he can do. If only he can reach the right people, they’ll make everything okay again, and then he can go and bring Crowley back and apologise.
But now, he knows Heaven isn’t going to be swayed. God is unreachable. Her spokesperson thinks nuclear armageddon is a great idea. Everyone but Aziraphale wants the War. Crowley was right, Crowley was right all the time, Aziraphale lied to him and pushed him away for nothing, and it didn’t even do the one good thing he thought it would do: keep Crowley safe by making him follow his running away plans by himself. This is an unmitigated disaster.
One of the things Aziraphale always worries about is doing the right thing, and doing the right thing is always navigating a conflict of interests for him, too. He’s got his own internal sense of right and wrong, and this sense clashes with Heaven’s morals and actions sometimes, and with Crowley’s, and with humanity’s. He’s confronted with at least four different ideas of what is the right thing in a given situation. Sometimes some of them align, but hardly ever all of them. He has to choose whether to do right by Crowley, by his own morals, or by what Heaven wrote down in his orders. By pushing Crowley away, he thought he was doing the right thing by Heaven (no consorting with the demon), by humanity (can still save Earth because certainly Heaven will see reason), and also by Crowley (because he did what would keep Crowley save and is thus ultimately in Crowley’s best interest, even if Crowley doesn’t see it).
And unlike previous occasions, all of these were the wrong things to do! Heaven doesn’t want to avoid the War, he did nothing to help save Earth, he didn’t keep Crowley safe. This is everything going absolutely, catastrophically wrong for Aziraphale. That’s so much to unpack.
But they’re on a very tight schedule. Armageddon is hours away. He doesn’t have time to unpack any of that. He doesn’t have time to apologise to Crowley or to try and salvage their friendship. Aziraphale has priorities, and the top of the list right now is “stop Armageddon”, because if they don’t, none of the rest will matter. All of the hurt and damage will be in vain.
He can’t deal with Crowley’s obviously heartbroken state there, even though he thinks it’s his fault. They don’t have time. World ending. That’s the deadline of deadlines. So he does the minimum of what he can do at that moment: he acknowledges that Crowley lost his best friend, aka, that Crowley thinks their friendship is over, and he’s sorry to hear that, but they can’t deal with personal stuff right now, because the world is ending, and Crowley and him have been business partners way before Aziraphale himself dared consider them friends. Crowley wanted to save the world, that was Crowley’s idea, and they agreed to work together on that, this is business, this can be business even if they aren’t friends anymore, and he needs Crowley to listen to him and get to Tadfield, because if they don’t deal with business first, there won’t be any chance to settle the personal issues.
I’m fairly sure Aziraphale still thinks he ruined their friendship even after Crowley immediately agrees to come to Tadfield. He looks so poised for rejection at the bus stop, so disbelieving that Crowley is still all “our side” with him. He’s got all this previous experience of Crowley forgiving him, it’s not like this is their first argument, but he can’t believe it. In the pub, he sort of relies on Crowley’s loyalty and forgiving nature, but at the same time I don’t think he expects to really get it. He’s super confused that Crowley like immediately goes back to being his friend.
Yes! That actually reminds me…
At the bus stop, Crowley and Aziraphale are at another crossroad.
The world is saved for now. Adam has made his choice about Armageddon: it’s not happening. Aziraphale and Crowley’s “mission” is officially over. They didn’t set any goals for a post-Armageddon wherein their Sides would know about them. They had assumed that if their plan worked, their Sides would be none the wiser and the status quo would resume.
Therefore, they are now in danger that they didn’t plan for and have no other future in mind except to figure out how they are going to handle their Sides. Their options are pretty much to stay where they are or to flee.
Crowley has spent the last day or so talking about fleeing. Aziraphale has spent the last day or so refusing to flee.
By saying “I suppose I should have him drop me off at the bookshop,” Aziraphale is describing his own plan for handling Heaven: he plans to stay in one place, the place where he belongs, and face Heaven’s wrath head-on.
Aziraphale already knows Crowley was willing to flee to survive before, and now that the world is saved, maybe he can go into hiding. He’s a very smart, wily serpent. He’d be great at that. We even saw him looking at a globe, contemplating where he’d go, and he nixed the idea for Armageddon (which will destroy anywhere he could flee to), but not necessarily for escaping Hell.
But Crowley just comes out with “you can stay at my place” and “we’re on our own side.” Now maybe he already figured out Agnes’s prophecy. Maybe he already knows they have to swap corporations.
They only have to do that if they both want to survive, and it’s not a very straightforward prophecy so they could be wrong. The body swap itself is a risk, and whether they do it or not, Crowley will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of time.
There is time to make a calculated choice here. Satan is not bearing down on them.
There is nothing forcing Crowley to participate in any body-swapping.
Nothing except the desire to be together.
Aziraphale’s token resistance, “I don’t think my side would like that,” is a warning: “if they catch you with me, they’ll destroy you.” And as far as he knows, they will be caught, because he’s going to face down Heaven.
And Crowley’s answer, “We’re on our own side,” is a commitment and a statement of faith: “I will stay and face them with you. We will win.”
Do you ever write a whole essay and realize you saved the draft to the wrong blog? Sorry about that!
Agree with all of this
Also, with regards to Aziraphale not being able to apologize:
When he has Crowley look at his notes on Agnes Nutter, he says “it’s all in there. The boy’s name, address. Everything else. I worked it all out.” And his voice sort of trails off.
He’s remembering Crowley’s “have you found the missing Antichrist’s name, address, and shoe size?” From the night before.
And he’s admitting “yes, I knew, I knew everything and I lied about it.”
He’s expecting Crowley to be angry. To throw down the book and say he’s on his own. And why wouldn’t he? How differently would the bandstand have gone if Aziraphale had been honest from the start? At best they’re going to argue again, and you can see Aziraphale doesn’t have another fight in him. Not for this.
And what does Crowley say? “Wherever you are, I’ll come to you.”
Poor Aziraphale has serious emotional whiplash from this whole conversation, but I think Crowley just brushing that aside, just… not even wasting a moment on anger or regret or anything else?
That energizes him. Both of them, really. Crowley has a destination, half of a plan, and a chance to see Aziraphale again. That’s all he needs. And Aziraphale knows Crowley is still with him, and that’s all heneeds.
There’s only so much that this kind of unspoken conversation can do. Their exchange at the bus stop is also Aziraphale admitting that they do need to talk about it. And I assume they do, on the bus or back at Crowley’s flat. But Crowley’s “we’re on our own side” is also a promise that however that conversation goes, they’ll still have each other. That part isn’t going to change.
I’m not 100% sure what I’m getting at except that I love how much is unspoken, how much meaning is put into every line of dialogue.
i think the bit about “i lost my best friend.” “so sorry to hear it.” is loaded as fuck, WAY more than people give it credit for despite having been analyzed to hell and back, because:
when we get to “i lost my best friend,” aziraphale has NO IDEA that the bookshop burned. he fully thinks crowley is talking about their fight. and that crowley abandoned his plan to leave earth just because aziraphale disavowed their friendship.
aziraphale senses that he needs crowley’s help here, if he’s willing to give it. deep down, though he doesn’t know what they’ll do when they get to the airbase, aziraphale’s faith truly lies with crowley. that’s why he called him immediately when heaven put the kibosh on his request to stop the war. and it’s why he asks if crowley went to alpha centauri - to find out what his plans are.
and crowley appears to be available.
but.
aziraphale has been trying to protect crowley.
that’s why, at the bandstand, he switches so fast from “you can’t leave, crowley” to “there is no our side.” as soon as he realizes crowley does technically have a plan he can go to if armageddon happens, he assumes that he must sever their connection so crowley won’t hang around.
so when he finds out that crowley changed his plans because aziraphale tried to cut him off, aziraphale is thinking that his attempt to sacrifice their relationship for crowley’s safety has failed. he says “i’m so sorry to hear it” because he’s not just hearing crowley’s sadness - he’s also facing his own failure, and also having to admit he misread crowley when he believed that cutting him off would make him leave.
AND he’s about to ask crowley to make another sacrifice: to come to the site of armageddon, face to face with a lot of people who want them both wiped out of existence.
he knows he needs crowley’s help. and he knows crowley is loyal enough to give it.
he is about to ask crowley to join him in sacrificing themselves to save the earth.
with all that in mind, i don’t think aziraphale would be in a headspace where he could either apologize or have a deep heart-to-heart about friendship. he is doing what it seems he has to to keep even WORSE things from happening. but i think aziraphale still does not feel like he is being a good friend and feels too guilty about it to start openly embracing this notion of friendship at this moment.
Yes, to all of this.
Aziraphale really has no idea the shop burned, plus he has no idea Crowley thinks he died, so yes, from Aziraphale’s perspective, Crowley is this wrecked over Aziraphale ending their friendship. And that’s awful for Aziraphale on so many accounts, because I’m with you, he did that in a last ditch desperate effort to keep Crowley safe. Crowley was going to run away, and running away would keep him safer than Aziraphale could provide, and Crowley’s safety has always been his priority, so he breaks both their hearts in order for Crowley to go and safe himself.
And then the stupid demon doesn’t do it! No, it’s worse, he says he didn’t go to Alpha Centauri because stuff happened and he lost his best friend. This is Crowley saying “I won’t run away without you”. That means Aziraphale did that terrible thing to them both, you can see how much it hurts him, he’s nearly crying when Crowley leaves the bandstand, Aziraphale did that terrible thing, and it was the wrong thing to do, because that’s what made Crowley abandon his running away to save himself plans. This is, like, the absolute worst thing that could have happened. Not only did Aziraphale hurt Crowley, he was aware he was doing it, but he was telling himself it was the right thing to do, because it would keep Crowley safe (better safe and heartbroken than dead).
It would also give Aziraphale time to convince Heaven to stop Armageddon, which at the time of the bandstand argument he’s still convinced he can do. If only he can reach the right people, they’ll make everything okay again, and then he can go and bring Crowley back and apologise.
But now, he knows Heaven isn’t going to be swayed. God is unreachable. Her spokesperson thinks nuclear armageddon is a great idea. Everyone but Aziraphale wants the War. Crowley was right, Crowley was right all the time, Aziraphale lied to him and pushed him away for nothing, and it didn’t even do the one good thing he thought it would do: keep Crowley safe by making him follow his running away plans by himself. This is an unmitigated disaster.
One of the things Aziraphale always worries about is doing the right thing, and doing the right thing is always navigating a conflict of interests for him, too. He’s got his own internal sense of right and wrong, and this sense clashes with Heaven’s morals and actions sometimes, and with Crowley’s, and with humanity’s. He’s confronted with at least four different ideas of what is the right thing in a given situation. Sometimes some of them align, but hardly ever all of them. He has to choose whether to do right by Crowley, by his own morals, or by what Heaven wrote down in his orders. By pushing Crowley away, he thought he was doing the right thing by Heaven (no consorting with the demon), by humanity (can still save Earth because certainly Heaven will see reason), and also by Crowley (because he did what would keep Crowley save and is thus ultimately in Crowley’s best interest, even if Crowley doesn’t see it).
And unlike previous occasions, all of these were the wrong things to do! Heaven doesn’t want to avoid the War, he did nothing to help save Earth, he didn’t keep Crowley safe. This is everything going absolutely, catastrophically wrong for Aziraphale. That’s so much to unpack.
But they’re on a very tight schedule. Armageddon is hours away. He doesn’t have time to unpack any of that. He doesn’t have time to apologise to Crowley or to try and salvage their friendship. Aziraphale has priorities, and the top of the list right now is “stop Armageddon”, because if they don’t, none of the rest will matter. All of the hurt and damage will be in vain.
He can’t deal with Crowley’s obviously heartbroken state there, even though he thinks it’s his fault. They don’t have time. World ending. That’s the deadline of deadlines. So he does the minimum of what he can do at that moment: he acknowledges that Crowley lost his best friend, aka, that Crowley thinks their friendship is over, and he’s sorry to hear that, but they can’t deal with personal stuff right now, because the world is ending, and Crowley and him have been business partners way before Aziraphale himself dared consider them friends. Crowley wanted to save the world, that was Crowley’s idea, and they agreed to work together on that, this is business, this can be business even if they aren’t friends anymore, and he needs Crowley to listen to him and get to Tadfield, because if they don’t deal with business first, there won’t be any chance to settle the personal issues.
I’m fairly sure Aziraphale still thinks he ruined their friendship even after Crowley immediately agrees to come to Tadfield. He looks so poised for rejection at the bus stop, so disbelieving that Crowley is still all “our side” with him. He’s got all this previous experience of Crowley forgiving him, it’s not like this is their first argument, but he can’t believe it. In the pub, he sort of relies on Crowley’s loyalty and forgiving nature, but at the same time I don’t think he expects to really get it. He’s super confused that Crowley like immediately goes back to being his friend.
Yes! That actually reminds me…
At the bus stop, Crowley and Aziraphale are at another crossroad.
The world is saved for now. Adam has made his choice about Armageddon: it’s not happening. Aziraphale and Crowley’s “mission” is officially over. They didn’t set any goals for a post-Armageddon wherein their Sides would know about them. They had assumed that if their plan worked, their Sides would be none the wiser and the status quo would resume.
Therefore, they are now in danger that they didn’t plan for and have no other future in mind except to figure out how they are going to handle their Sides. Their options are pretty much to stay where they are or to flee.
Crowley has spent the last day or so talking about fleeing. Aziraphale has spent the last day or so refusing to flee.
By saying “I suppose I should have him drop me off at the bookshop,” Aziraphale is describing his own plan for handling Heaven: he plans to stay in one place, the place where he belongs, and face Heaven’s wrath head-on.
Aziraphale already knows Crowley was willing to flee to survive before, and now that the world is saved, maybe he can go into hiding. He’s a very smart, wily serpent. He’d be great at that. We even saw him looking at a globe, contemplating where he’d go, and he nixed the idea for Armageddon (which will destroy anywhere he could flee to), but not necessarily for escaping Hell.
But Crowley just comes out with “you can stay at my place” and “we’re on our own side.” Now maybe he already figured out Agnes’s prophecy. Maybe he already knows they have to swap corporations.
They only have to do that if they both want to survive, and it’s not a very straightforward prophecy so they could be wrong. The body swap itself is a risk, and whether they do it or not, Crowley will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of time.
There is time to make a calculated choice here. Satan is not bearing down on them.
There is nothing forcing Crowley to participate in any body-swapping.
Nothing except the desire to be together.
Aziraphale’s token resistance, “I don’t think my side would like that,” is a warning: “if they catch you with me, they’ll destroy you.” And as far as he knows, they will be caught, because he’s going to face down Heaven.
And Crowley’s answer, “We’re on our own side,” is a commitment and a statement of faith: “I will stay and face them with you. We will win.”
Do you ever write a whole essay and realize you saved the draft to the wrong blog? Sorry about that!
Crowley’s plants scene with stage direction notes from the Good Omens Script Book (a book I highly recommend)
“Crowley turned off the radio and bit his lower lip. Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared. And, suddenly, very angry. It was the way they talked to you. As if you were a houseplant who had started shedding leaves on the carpet.”
Yeah, according to the book, that’s how they talk to him in Hell when they’re displeased.
I was actually blown away by this scene, because in the book it’s very tongue-in-cheek. It plays up the whole “Crowley and Aziraphale don’t know how to human properly” angle. It’s a bad copying mechanism for the pervasive anxiety that plagues Crowley, but it’s still quite light in tone. I was expecting something similar.
Instead, we got this incredibly … darkscene. The music is tense, Crowley’s teeth are bared. It feels more tragic than funny, because. That’s how they treat him. That’s how he feels God treated him.
Like, imagine if he was treating a person like that, or even a pet. The only reason Crowley’s fury isn’t horrifying is because it’s directed at a bunch of plants, who don’t actually have feelings (I mean these ones do, because prolonged exposure to demon powers probably has weird effects on everything, but even then their consciousness is probably very limited).
It’s not a just copying mechanism for anxiety anymore, it’s a constant revival of his traumas. He has all this anger and fear and pain inside, and he redirects it on his plants.
He’s the plant
I love this scene for all of the above reasons. It’s the most striking example of ‘Crowley is a mess’ in the entire show. He’s so cold and cruel like… dude. You are getting waytoo into this. And yet he only directs it at plants, because he doesn’t have the heart to direct this fury onto anything else. It’s very contained, controlled, and private rage. It’s cathartic, but only temporarily, because he has to keep doing it.
This garden is a filthy secret, I tell you, and even Aziraphale hasn’t got a clue he does this. I’m not sure what he’d make of it, honestly. Nervous amusement? Worry? Horror? Heartbreak? All?
Yes to all of this. It is a brilliant and horrifying glimpse into his darkest depths. And I agree @krakensdottir Aziraphale doesn’t know about this. Not yet, anyway. I mean he might know the plants exist, but not that Crowley does this. Personally, I think Aziraphale will find out eventually. And he will immediately see what’s going on psychologically and he will be horrified.
For some reason I didn’t make the connection until seeing this- that in the book, the way Crowley treated the plants was how Hell treated him. In the show I was looking at it as him reliving/ projecting the trauma from his Fall, and thinking it was a way of dealing with his mommy-issue insecurity. And maybe it is, partly. But the book is pretty clear that the connection is with Hell, not Heaven.
There’s a big blank space in the narrative regarding what it’s like for Crowley in Hell. We know there are awkward PowerPoint presentations. But we ALSO see Hastur kill two demons (Eric the disposable demon fed to the hellhound, and the usher thrown into the holy water bath). Those luckless demons appeared to be terrified. The residents of Hell who were witness to the executions didn’t bat an eyebrow. So it seems as if Hell is the kind of place where violence and corporeal punishment between demons is common, which I’m sure we could have guessed, but this is Crowley’s home (work? Birthplace? Family?). This is the place he’s told he belongs- where he comes from and where he has to return. He’s a low-ranking demon in a place where low-ranking demons are tortured and terrorized, apparently for fun. It’s possible that Satan’s apparent regard for him affords some measure of protection, but we don’t really know.
Book!Crowley is very frightened of Hell, sort of the equivalent of how scared Show!Aziraphale is of Heaven. In the book, Heaven leaves Aziraphale alone, but Crowley does the “deeds of the day” thing with Hastur/ Ligur, gets messages during the Golden Girls, and has instructions dropped directly into his mind. It doesn’t seem like any of this is exactly uncommon. In the show, Heaven harasses Aziraphale more, but it seems like Crowley’s relationship with hell is about the same. There’s a lot of meta about Heaven-the-cult’s psychological torture of Aziraphale, but what I don’t see discussed as much is the fact that Crowley lives in concrete, physical danger. When he’s at work, colleagues get murdered (discorporated? Do we know what it means when a presumably bodiless demon is eaten by a hellhound? ♀️). How does that affect him? Just look at how he lives when he’s at home on Earth:
Desk and throne, the only place where we ever see him lounge, in full view of the TV Hell uses to harass him.
Barren. Bleak. Austere. Compare that to Aziraphale when he’s at home:
Yes, Aziraphale is scared of his bosses and anxious at baseline, but he can relax. Crowley never relaxes. We never see him peaceful. Not once.
Some of that is down to their respective personalities. Some of it is the fact that Aziraphale’s best friend supports and protects him, while Crowley’s best friend pretends he doesn’t know him- on a good day. But some of it might be because Crowley has been, and will likely continue to be, physically hurt by Hell.
Whe you’re trapped in a relationship where you’re being harmed, you don’t let your guard down. Crowley doesn’t. Hell can invade any part of his life, including his thoughts, if the “instructions-dropped-into-the-brain” trick is any indication. His coping mechanisms are cultivating his ultra-cool guy persona so he can pretend nothing hurts him, and projecting onto his plants. He snaps once at Aziraphale, which shows us he feels safer with him than anyone else (he never loses his cool with Beelzebub and he never exhibits anger at Hastur and Ligur- he’s mocking and sarcastic). He doesn’t feel that he deserves anything that makes him feel good. He doesn’t ask Aziraphale to treat him better because he doesn’t feel he deserves it. And it’s all mixed up in what does it mean to Fall; are the demons fundamentally changed in some way or does the harm they wreck on one another come from a dark place that all beings (angels, demons, humans) could access in the “right” circumstances (which is personally what I believe). It’s hard to untangle but the bottom line is:
Someone has done to Crowley what Crowley does to his plants. Up to and including the garbage disposal bit.
just thinking about how after 5,804 years - 2 million days - Aziraphale felt settled enough that he could create something permanent, that he could put down some roots, that he could join one specific community in one specific human location, that he could have a personal, safe haven for himself and his treasures
andthat was the day Gabriel and Sandalphon arrive to tell him he’s finally “allowed” to “come home”?
there’s no way that’s not deliberate. there’s no way that’s not malicious.
yeah and imo they weren’t giving him a medal out of recognition either, it was about messing with him
Absolutely. A reminder of where his loyalties SHOULD lie. The suggestion that if he just tries a bit harder, maybe one day they’ll give him the kindness and appreciation he needs…
The clue there is that Gabriel tells him “Keep the medal” at the end, when Aziraphale’s told to stay on Earth. If it was a sincerely given medal, of course Aziraphale would keep it. It’s his medal. He was awarded it. By saying “Keep the medal”, Gabriel clues us in that it was only ever a worthless and manipulative prop.
Just looked up the script, and the first thing Gabriel says isn’t even “You get to come home.” It’s “We’re bringing you home.”
Oh.
Of course that’s what’s happening.
For another thing, Crowley mentions at the Bastille in 1793 that Az was supposed to be opening a bookshop, so he’s had this plan for nearly a decade at the minimum. Even if heaven checks in rarely, it seems unlikely they don’t have a clue. So them showing up EXACTLY when he opens is even more damning.
That scene always felt a tiny bit off to me because it is (I’m pretty sure) the only time we see Gabriel, or any angel for that matter, compliments Az without some nasty undermining little dig on the side (“Gross matter”; “praiseworthy but doomed to failure” etc etc).
They didn’t have to be snide because the whole theater production was just about twisting the knife.
Although Crowley’s own bit of theater must have worked, because if Gabe really knew about the arrangement Az would have been outright punished. Maybe that’s what frustrates Gabriel about Az the most: he really can’t catch him making a major mistake. We joke about Az being a terrible angel, but the evidence is that he’s actually extremely good at his job (barring that one time in Eden); it’s his PERSONALITY that the angels hate (his cardinal sin of liking humans and all their creations).
The saddest thing about this is that Az does keep the medal, and even displays it, because no matter how disingenuous the angels were about awarding it, it’s still the only praise he’s gotten in 6000 years.
Theydo get in a dig though, at one point during the ceremony.
When they’re giving him the medal and telling him that he has to come home, Aziraphale tries to protest by pointing put that he’s the only one who can ‘thwart the wiles’ of the Evil Demon Crowley.
And Gabriel says, apparently to reassure him: “I do not doubt that whoever replaces you will be as good an enemy to Crowley as you are.”
Whoeverreplaces you.
Aziraphale’s just said that he thinks he’s the only angel capable of handling Crowley. And, as far as Heaven knows, that’s not an unreasonable assumption to make. Aziraphale has been on Earth for over 5000 years by this point, after all, and working against Crowley all that time.
(And probably has shown pretty good results, actually, if only because the Arrangement is pretty much designed to ensure that they end up with good results to show their bosses.)
And Gabriel has responded by basically saying “anyone could do your job.”
“We haven’t even picked a replacement yet, because that’s how low priority this is. Maybe it’ll be Michael, but it really doesn’t matter in our eyes. As far as we’re concerned you personally bring nothing to this job that we can’t get from any other rando we decide to dump down here.”
And this is during the fucking award ceremony.
(Note how Crowley’s response to this is to immediately let Aziraphale know, very plainly, that he doesn’t want Michael. That, for him, Aziraphale can’t be replaced that easily.)
But what always gets me is what happens after they come back.
I mean, look at the scene from Aziraphale’s perspective.
Gabriel and Sandalphon show up to award him his medal and tell him he gets to come home as a reward for all his good work. Let’s put on our Gabriel-glasses for a moment and pretend that he is genuinely delighted by all this.
Gabriel and Sandalphon then go to see Gabriel’s tailor, leaving Aziraphale alone in the shop. Maybe he’s meant to be taking it all in, or packing or whatever, but it’s hard not to see this as him being considered less important and worthy of attention than Gabriel’s new suit.
Then, the weird bit. They come back, tell him they’ve changed their minds, say he can keep the medal, and leave.
Admittedly we enter a bit into their conversation, but given that Aziraphale shows no signs of knowing what happened (and in fact is described in the stage directions as being confused by this turn of events) we can assume that they didn’t tell him about the incident with Crowley.
So, from Aziraphale’s perspective— leaving aside the fact that Crowley probably waltzed in about five minutes later and told him the whole story over drinks— he got told that he was going to be taken home to Heaven as a reward, and then about half an hour later had that reward unexpectedly revoked, with no explanation given.
As far as Gabriel and Sandalphon are concerned, they’ve gone from thinking that Aziraphale is just a bumbling idiot with a job anyone could do, to learning that he’s apparently the only thing keeping the Serpent of Eden from taking over the world. Yet despite this, they don’t give Aziraphale any extra praise, or acknowledge this change in any way.
In fact, by rushing out the door and leaving him behind, right after framing his return to Heaven as a promotion, they if anything imply that he’s done something to offend them. They’re effectively punishing him for being unexpectedly good at his job.
Yeah, Aziraphale himself doesn’t mind all this (and is probably very relieved) but if you consider what Gabriel thought he was doing— leaving Aziraphale alone and friendless, to be slowly corrupted by gross matter and the absence of other angels— it’s actually kind of horrific that he’d do this without even explaining to Aziraphale why he thinks it’s necessary.
And you know what I noticed? The music is not just relevant to the thing about Queen tapes in the Bentley, or Aziraphale and Crowley being best friends. The exact lyrics they chose to overlay with the exact imagery it used, is impeccably tragic.
The music starts as he’s driving, and fades as he gets out of the Bentley and talks to the fireman. The moment he opens the doors to the burning bookshop the volume kicks back up to the line “you know I’ll never be lonely”. This is followed by a shot of the flaming gramophone playing “You’re my only one, and I love the things – I really love the things that you do. Oh, you’re my best friend.”
By the way, that’s not even the first verse of the song. It was purposely chosen (everything is meant) for that line and that music and that imagery.
After he realizes that Aziraphale isn’t actually in the shop, the music cuts out and it cuts to the ambient sound of a burning bookshop and dramatic music.
Like. Damn. Literally, damn, as in: this hellscape of Aziraphale’s burning bookshop and the sudden loss of his 6000-year-old ineffable husband has to absolutely be Crowley’s personal hell. Satan has nothing on the fact that Aziraphale is essentially the ONLY ONE who shows him any kind of kindness, decency, respect, and actual care. There’s also the fact that it’s not a one way relationship: he genuinely cares about and loves the angel, and he’s just gone suddenly while Crowley’s floundering to escape the Forces of Hell.
That again brings me back to the heartbreak of the scene in the pub where he’s drunkenly recounting how it all went wrong, as he sits there and essentially gives up for the first time in his existence on Earth.
So, anyway, I’ll be over here tending my broken heart.
A lot of people treat his breakdown at the pub as proof that Crowley is simply histrionic and prone to giving up at the drop of a hat.
That … isn’t really the case. In the book, there isn’t any scene at the pub, although there is a brief mention that he is very tempted to “find a nice little restaurant and get completely and utterly pissed out of his mind while he wait[s] for the world to end” after he leaves the flaming remains of the bookshop, and that it’s because he felt that “All was black, gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel – or if there was, it was an oncoming train.”
But immediately after that, it says, “And yet … ”
And it goes on from there to talk about the fact that at his core, Crowley is an optimist who fundamentally believes that he will always come out on top, and that the universe is looking out for him. He completely believes in himself and that has always sustained him through hard times.
Crowley is a demon. He survived his Fall without losing the parts of himself that make him so lovable to Aziraphale and to all of us: his kindness, his humanity. He’s survived all of Hell’s cruelty for as long as he’s been a demon. And not just survived, but found how to thrive. He’s clever, resourceful, imaginative, and he knows it. He is, normally, when there isn’t an apocalypse on, really quite sure of himself and his ability to get through anything.
And the fact that we know all this about him, and we see how much this breaks him, is really what makes it so impactful. He isn’t passive by nature. He isn’t weak and needy. He’s an incredibly strong and resilient person. It’s just that this was his kryptonite. His absolute worst nightmare come to life. The world and everything that has ever meant anything to him is ending, and the person he loved above even the world itself was, from what he could tell, destroyed. Everything that has ever given him a slight shred of happiness, gone.
I can’t remember where I read it exactly, but I recall at one point reading a mention by Neil somewhere that Crowley gets (some of?) his mail forwarded to the bookshop. There’s also a little line in the book where we’re told that sometimes Aziraphale has to gently hint to Crowley that it’s getting a bit late when a visit to the bookshop runs a little long. And we know that he doesn’t exactly consider his flat to be a home – it’s just a place he sometimes stays in. I think, to some extent, that the bookshop is almost as much of a home to Crowley as it is to Aziraphale. The Bentley’s his primary home, but the bookshop is also his home in the sense that Aziraphale himself is his home. The bookshop holds centuries of their memories, all lovingly preserved by the hands of his angel.
This is the moment where literally everything that’s ever mattered to him goes up in smoke in front of his eyes, and he takes one last, smouldering piece of the wreckage - one tiny little piece of Aziraphale - away with him to clutch as he waits for it all to end.
This is it exactly.
I think Crowley is prone to dramatics at times, but that’s part of their game! It’s their ineffable dynamic. They compliment each other, complete each other.
Sometimes they need each other. Sometimes they want to need each other. Like when Aziraphale is locked up in the Bastille going, “Oh no, whatever will I, an angel who can perform miracles, do about this?” Or when he’s got a stain on his coat and is so distraught because his coat could never possibly be the same again if he miracles it away himself.
Or similar to when Aziraphale says he’s not allowed to do something, when what he’s really saying is, “Please help convince me it’s okay to do something.” I mean, that’s what Crowley’s whole job is, tempting people to do things they ought not to be doing.
The mirror side of that is that, when Crowley gets those moments of overwhelming, volcanic panic, Aziraphale is the one to ground him and remind him that there are things worth fighting for, and that he can win against those challenges.
Crowley could always stop time. He does it in the Bastille, and it barely even seems like a big deal. But in that moment, he needed Aziraphale. Sometimes he needs someone to believe in him and believe that he’s worthy, because no one else does (I mean, he gets all those commendations from Hell, but at the end of the day they’ll throw a demon in a tub of holy water just because he’s the most convenient test subject). Even for someone who is completely secure, it’s emotionally exhausting to be the only one holding yourself up. Sometimes he needs a reminder of what he’s fighting for.
I didn’t know that Crowley gets his mail forwarded to the bookshop. That’s just one extra gut punch to know that not only does he not have anyone to go to anymore, he has nowhere to go, even if he did stop the apocalypse all by himself.
Wait, you mean people read the burning bookshop and the pub scene as being indicators of Crowley’s strength of character or his resilience or his commitment to saving the world? It’s a depiction of crushing grief, ’s what it is. And I like this depiction so much better than in the book, where Crowley doesn’t give up, because “he’s an optimist”? Even if he keeps going out of spite, this just… I can’t relate to that at all?
Show!Crowley lost his best friend. This is, yes, his personal hell.
He’s been losing before. The whole week has been a chain of losing things. The Antichrist, the hope they’ll be able to save the world anyway, etc etc. Crowley’s plan to stop Armageddon, which he was very invested in, after all, he came up with it in the first place, has failed. He’s running out of time, he’s out of ideas, and Hell is coming to punish him. Crowley is terrified and at the end of his rope, enough to give up on the world saving part. What doesn’t he give up on trying to save? Who doesn’t he give up on trying to save? Aziraphale, his best friend. Crowley won’t run away to save his own life, not if Aziraphale isn’t coming, because he can’t see his life without him.
And then he loses him anyway. Aziraphale is dead (it’s a lot more ambiguous if Book!Crowley thinks he’s dead, or just went up to Heaven and abandoned him). Crowley’s single most important person is gone. This isn’t the prospective loss of something big and complex and abstract as “the world”. This is the soul-crushing, direct grief of losing a beloved person.
That sort of thing pulls the ground out from under your feet. That wrecks you. This is rock bottom, and that’s exactly what happens to Crowley. I love those scenes, because what happens is authentic. It’s realistic. That’s what happens when you loose someone who means that much to you.
Actually, look at the way he looks on the floor of the shop. The dead inside shock on his face when he gets in the car, fumbles shakily for the flimsy comfort of a fresh pair of glasses. The way he is crying into his drink. And then Aziraphale comes back from the dead, from Crowley’s emotional perspective anyway, and yes, there’s a moment of shock and disbelief and then relief, but then he gets himself together right away. That’s actually pretty impressive? This isn’t just a rollercoaster of emotions, this is more like the billion light-year free fall of the Fall, then smacking into the ground and shattering yourself into a thousand pieces, and then you just hop up again and keep running, scoop the pieces all back up and glue yourself together again. In half a minute. That’s very cool? It’s a positive shock, Aziraphale not being dead after all, but a shock is a shock and Crowley can just shelve that. (For the time being at least.)
Anyway, great scenes, and underrated strength of character here IMO.
One of my favorite things about Thomas and Guy as a couple is how the inevitable power imbalance is leveled out by what can only be described as a ‘confidence balance’. I mean, Guy has the glamorous career, the connections, and the money. The house is his. He’ll technically be Thomas’s employer, so in terms of a marital arrangement he’ll be in the traditional bread winner position, at least at first. Of course, there are about a million different ways to set up that base financial arrangement, and that’s not even touching the possibility of Thomas taking a second job in his spare time, but the point still stands: Thomas doesn’t have much to bring to the table as far as power and wealth is concerned.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t bring anything to the table, though. What he brings is years of experience doing a job that he’s learned inside and out, and the confidence that comes with it. His job technically hasn’t changed: he will be running the house, taking care of Guy’s wardrobe, etc. Butler, valet, ‘gentleman’s gentleman’, functionally once you’ve learned a level you can move through all of those distinctions easily. Meanwhile Guy, International heart throb, star of screen, etc. can be quoted as saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing half of the time! Even though he’s successfully filmed a talkie – without being dubbed over – he’s not certain he has a career. In a time period when ‘actor’ still calls to mind the stage rather than the screen, he’s not even certain that what he’s doing constitutes as acting! If you wanted to claim he has a case of impostor syndrome, you’d have a good basis for it.
Guy is the financial/social support, Thomas is the steady emotional support. Once he adjusts to America and gets his feet under him, he will be a less-omniscient Jeeves to Guy’s less-charmingly-daft Bertie.
