Y'all ever think about Crowley and Aziraphale’s standing threat level
Like, they don’t often act on it but their constant threat level towards humans is easily 10 out of 10 at all times.
Crowley canceled a woman’s free will with a snap, they both asked her (albeit harmless to her) questions that she had no ability to refuse, and Aziraphale REWROTE HER MEMORY of the incident.
Aziraphale vanished a man with a snap.
These are things they can just DO. No effort whatsoever. They miracle often enough without gesturing that it’s probably not actually necessary. They can think these things into being. The time stop obviously took a bit more effort on Crowley’s part but theoretically Time is a very large and difficult thing to push pause on.
But they can VANISH someone and TURN OFF THEIR FREE WILL and rewrite their MEMORY with a THOUGHT.
And they usually don’t obviously, but one HAS TO WONDER how often they’ve done these kinds of things because it was the most convenient route.
Idk. I’m not really going anywhere with this I just. Like to ruminate on this once in a while. They really are such incredibly dangerous beings to the humans around them.
Not only they are dangerous.
They have a low to middle status at best among their species. If it comes to force and sheer power, Hastur and Ligur could destroy Crowley easily. The only reason Crowley ever comes out on top is because he’s smarter, quicker, and more imaginative. We can safely assume it’s the same for Gabriel and the others when comparing them to Aziraphale.
Let’s not even start with Satan, who would have crushed everyone like bugs if it wasn’t for Adam.
All this power over humanity, and they don’t care about life on Earth at all. Why should they? The surprising thing isn’t that Heaven and Hell don’t care about humans, it’s that Aziraphale and Crowley do.
Which still wouldn’t stop them from rewriting the occasional memory. Or convincing someone they left the stove on and there’s really no time to buy that book.
Adam even scolds them for interfering too much in the book, warning them that there’s really been too much “messing around”, and a few paragraphs later they do admit they did mess around.
“Is it over, do you think?” said Aziraphale.
Crowley shrugged. “Not for us, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t think you need to go worryin’,” said Adam gnomically. “I know all about you two. Don’t you worry.”
He looked at the rest of the Them, who tried not to back away. He seemed to think for a while, and then he said, “There’s been too much messin’ around anyway. But it seems to me everyone’s goin’ to be a lot happier if they forget about this. Not actually forget, just not remember exactly.“
[…]
Aziraphale picked up the sword lately dropped by War, and hefted its weight thoughtfully.
“Gosh, it’s been years since I used this,” he murmured.
“About six thousand,” said Crowley.
“My word, yes,” said the angel. “What a day that was, and no mistake. Good old days.”
“Not really,” said Crowley. The noise was growing.
“People knew the difference between right and wrong in those days,” said Aziraphale dreamily.
“Well, yes. Think about it.”
“Ah. Yes. Too much messin’ about?”
“Yes.”
This is perhaps one of the most cryptic exchanges in the book (these two I swear), but I’ve always interpreted it as Aziraphale and Crowley taking responsibility, in a way. Acknowledging that they interfered and messed around with humanity’s free will and the consequences thereof since Day 1.
Honestly I could write whole essays about this last passage alone, but, my conclusion is, Aziraphale and Crowley 100% occasionally abuse their powers to make their life easier pre Armageddon.
The question is, will they make an active effort to stop doing that post Armageddon?
I think they’ll probably ease up on it a little, once they no longer have jobs to worry about. But sometimes… you know, it’s tricky being a supernatural being. You can’t let people just know. That’s what the whole rewriting memory / convince people to do something else trick comes from. It’s mostly a defense mechanism. Sometimes people see things you just… can’t let them have seen. And that will always be the case, I think.
It’s interesting to note that even then, they seem to have limits. Yeah, Crowley can put a human into a suggestible state. But the answers she gives are only the ones that come to mind (like an unhelpful answer about a baby’s toes). Aziraphale tells her ‘you’ll have had a lovely dream about whatever you like best’ which leaves it to her brain to fill in the rest. As for rewriting free will, it seems more like they put suggestions into people’s minds and rely on their natural reactions from there. Like, putting the suggestion that they left the stove on, that makes it likely they’ll run back home to check. It’s manipulative, but I wouldn’t call it canceling free will. I don’t think they can do that. Aziraphale couldn’t even force Madame Tracy to do something against her will while he was in her body. I think that’s one of the things they can’t fully override - it’s something She gave humans (and angels and demons too, whether they acknowledge it or not), and it can’t be taken away by a miracle. So what they do, when they need humans to Not Notice something for instance, is work around it.
Now, it’s definitely still Messin’ About, and probably has influenced the course of things to some extent. But a running point in the book is that humans are barely ever influenced by Heaven or Hell, that the greatest good and evil come from them, and that Crowley for instance barely has to lift a finger and half the time has nothing to do with what’s going on at all. So I don’t think the messin’ about had all that much effect, if I’m being honest. It’s not, you know, good that it’s a thing. But I don’t think the stance in the Good Omens universe is that ‘this is why things are the way they are’. No, things are the way they are because of us, angels and demons notwithstanding.
(Also, Aziraphale’s little side speech there is supposed to sound like a Boomer rant about the Good Old Days. It’s pretty insensitive in front of a demon and frankly insufferable, and I’m really glad he didn’t say it in the show.)
Anyway, back to OP’s original point about their threat level, yes. That is still absolutely true. I don’t think they can actually override free will, I think there are actually quite a lot of limits on their powers, but compared to us they’re still insanely powerful and the way they rewrite reality in small ways on a regular basis is terrifying. Even people they’re kind to, like Anathema, get their heads screwed with just interacting with them (again, to some extent I can see why this would be necessary in their position). They are eldritch beings who not only look like humans, but have come to mostly think like humans, while still being very much on another level. It’s something I love about characters like this. I almost never get drawn in to fully human characters - it’s almost always a mutant, an alien, a shapeshifter, a dragon-blood sorcerer… or an almost-human angel or demon. This sort of thing is my jam.
here’s a floor plan of crowley’s flat! it’s slightly simplified on account of all the weird ceilings and corners but this is the basic gist.
the light grey parts (other than windows and doors — see key at the top right) are all informed guesses. the black lines and colored shapes are things we see directly in the show.
i’m not including a whole key with images like i did for the bookshop since there just isn’t much going on in here, but if you have any questions or would like to see reference photos please let me know!
Valid take: Crowley fell in love with Aziraphale since he said he gave away the flaming sword, and has been holding out for that love ever since.
Also valid take, but less talked about: Crowley slowly fell in love with Aziraphale over the millennia, the same way Aziraphale did. Maybe with sliiiiightly more awareness of what was happening, because he doesn’t have as much repression and denial to wade through. But it still caught up with him unawares.
Hottest of hot takes that my brain won’t stop screaming about: the full force of Crowley’s feelings didn’t barrel into him like a flaming Bentley until Aziraphale gives him the holy water. That’s when it’s pedal-to-the-metal, no-stopping-this-beating-heart, holy shit I love him and he loves me, that’s what this has been this whole time.
Which means….AZIRAPHALE HAD HIS OH SHIT MOMENT….BEFORE CROWLEY
!!!!!!!!!!!
ANOTHER TAKE I SAW RECENTLY AND COULDNT GET OUT OF MY HEAD was that Crowley fell in love with Aziraphale at the wall of Eden, but he didn’t realize it until the BOOKSHOP FIRE
Which… makes sense because of the music changing from You’re My Best Friend toSOMEBODY TO LOVE.
So yeah, he was totally pining the entire time, and it was probably agony, but he didn’t know what he wanted that he didn’t already have.… until he thought it had been taken away for good.
That would imply Crowley had yet to realise it when they were with Warlock. In this scenario he thinks Aziraphale is his Best Friend, right?
Cue Nanny being quite worried when Warlock begins school, because surely 6 years old Warlock is way too young to have that kind of intense relationship
See, I don’t think Crowley has a hard distinction between friendship and romance. Like. How much basis for comparison could he possibly have? To him it’s just one long increasingly intense stream of emotional attachment, which begins when the angel proves just how different he is.
But it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when anything shifts, partly because there are so many gaps in their onscreen history. Like, for my money, he’s showing full-on affection and is at least somewhat smitten by the time they’re at the Globe, but there’s such a gap before then, it could have happened any time in the last several centuries. But there are definitely romantic overtones by then. He’s just so damn weak to those puppy-dog eyes.
As to when he realizes it, that’s a whole other question. But personally… again, I don’t think there was actually a big ‘aha!’ moment for Crowley. I’m inclined to think that epiphanies are more Aziraphale’s thing, and that Crowley’s been low-key aware of how he feels for a long time. Like after he saves the books, he ducks his head and avoids eye contact before walking away. I think he’s well aware of the gesture he’s making there.
There is a huge impact to the holy water scene, though. Because I think - just my theory - that’s when Crowley realizes Aziraphale loves him back just as intensely. Az has always been so reserved about their relationship, keeping a distance, using euphemistic language, and rarely making the big leaps forward; it’s almost always Crowley making a move. And yet here he is choosing to give Crowley this immense gift, out of sheer concern for his well-being, in the most personal way possible (a fucking tartan thermos), before dropping that absolutely LOADED line. Yeah. I think that’s when it hits Crowley that his feelings might actually be reciprocated.
A clear distinction between friendship and romance might not be sensible to a being of an inherently sexless species. Even if they can feel a human-like sexual attraction because of their human-ish bodies (which I’m not sold on at all), it’s probably not an instinct that comes to them naturally. They are clearly naturally affectionate, aka do form friendship bonds (at Eden they’re both still fairly uninfluenced by humanity, haven’t been incorporated long and both clearly show signs of liking each other one way or another), but does the distinction humans make make sense? What is a romantic relationship if you take away sexual desires and expressions of affection? People make it sound like friendship isn’t love. But it is. You love your friends, and you especially love your best friend. People who say a best friendship isn’t as close and intense as a romantic relationship might not actually have had a real best friend before.
But I want to make a point aside of frustration with our society’s looking down on friendships, and that point is that both “friendship” and “romance” are human labels, and what is considered appropriate under either of those labels has been changing alot in just the last couple of centuries of human history. Crowley and Aziraphale have been around for all this time.
Romantic relationships were not always the most intellectually and emotionally intimate relationship for people to have. For a long time, marriages were formed not by affection, but primarily by political and financial concerns. To make sure there were heirs, to combine two farms or kingdoms, that sort of thing. You could hope to get along well with your spouse, and some spouses certainly grew to love one another, but marriage was often a bond made for practical considerations, rather than emotional ones. If you were a king or duke or whatnot, you might have an affair with someone you loved. The normal peasant couldn’t afford that sort of thing in the long run. Lots of trouble. Friendships and familial relationships like those between siblings were what you got your closeness and support from, either instead of or in addition to your marriage.
For a long while, people romantised friendships the way today’s culture romantises romance. Have you ever read epic Irish folk tales, stories of blood brothers and what we today would probably describe as platonic soulmates? Or for example the late 19th century novels of German author Karl May, full of characters in life-long best friendships that today’s readers will interpret more as queerplatonic partnerships or as homoerotic subtext, depending on how they squint at the text? Or the full blown love letters adressed to friends they found from the 17th to 19th century? At this time, in Western culture the concept of a “romantic friendship” came up, a relationship type that some researchers think has existed before, but then became more visible, because romantic relationships (the modern interpretation of them) came more into focus and especially physical affection between friends started to be considered weird (a trend that ended in what we have today).
Today, if you want to cuddle a best friend or hold their hand or share a house and a life with them, you’ll have to negotiate the relationship terms, because right now these things are monopolised by romantic relationships. That was not always the case, and it’s probably worth noting that it isn’t actually very healthy for humans to live that way. We’re capable of lots of different loving bonds and to limit emotional intimacy to one type of them might be one reason we have things like today’s loneliness epidemic going on.
But the point was historical relationship types.
Some of these historic close friendships were certainly homosexual partnerships hidden in more or less plain sight, but that doesn’t change that for centuries, it was quite normal to be a lot more affectionate and emotionally open about your close friendships. Crowley and Aziraphale casually reference events from hundreds of years ago. Time means little to angels and demons. The by comparison rapid changing of human relationship labels must be all sorts of confusing.
Is it surprising that Crowley doesn’t have a clear distinction? Or, that he chooses to call his attachment to Aziraphale “best friend”? It’s the much more long standing term for what they have. Angels/demons seem to naturally form friendships, so it’s probably a concept he was familiar with already (there were probably friendships between angels in Heaven before the Fall). And as a being to whom human-ish attraction of a more sexual nature might well not come naturally, he’s stuck observing humans and their relationships to make sense of the terms they use. Now, especially considering the history, observe a close knit friendship and a romantic relationship. What’s the difference? It’s not the emotional closeness. It’s more like the physical expression (kissing, sex).
Crowley and Aziraphale don’t kiss and have sex. At least not on screen. Whether or not they will do so after Armageddon isn’t relevant to the time during the series. Crowley looks at his relationship with Aziraphale, and goes “yes, he’s the most important being in my life, I’d do anything for him, he knows me best out of everyone in existence, even if the whole world ends in a puddle of burning goo, he’s what I’ll try to save, without him my life is meaningless, but we don’t kiss and don’t fuck” and concludes “best friends!” It makes sense, doesn’t it?
Excuse me for rambling. The above points aside, I do agree that Crowley grows to love Aziraphale slowly and over time, but is definitely at a near present day level of affection for him at the globe. He’s looking at him so fondly, and yes, so weak for the puppy eyes. (Which isn’t necessarily a romantic thing either; I’m super weak for puppy eyes from my sister and my best friend, and reasonably weak for it from other friends, so weakness to manipulation by puppy eyes is probably individually different and Crowley might just have a bad case of it.)
But I’ll buy Crowley being in love one way or another at the globe, and the thermos being his moment of “wow, he likes me back”.
No no, don’t apologise for rambling, it was delightful
Oh yeah, hard agree. I admit I have a knee-jerk reaction to characters being relegated to ‘just friends’ - not because that’s actually a lesser thing in any way, but because it’s been used as a method of queer erasure for SO long. But of course that only applies if you’re restricting the definition of friendship the way we tend to do now. Friendships from a couple centuries ago were like… well, let’s just say ‘no homo’ did not appear to be a concern then. Actually beinggay was a huge taboo, but you were allowed to kiss and hug your friends and sit on their laps, so it’s a very confusing time to look back on from the 21st century.
I myself am not clear on the distinction between romantic and non-romantic. I thought I had it more or less figured out, based on broad societal consensus, but then I read aro posts that clearly depict physical and emotional intimacy with friends, and was introduced to the ‘queerplatonic’ label, and now I’m pretty much dead convinced of what I’ve suspected for a long time: that we’ve been painting lines around relationships that have no objective basis whatsoever, that all of the distinctions are just shades on a spectrum instead of the separate categories they’re treated as.
And if anyone knows that, it’s Aziraphale and Crowley. They both pick up a LOT from humans and emulate societal changes to some extent, at least on the surface. But I don’t think it sinks in for them. The same way that Crowley presents as what we call genderfluid, but probably doesn’t identify as genderfluid, because he doesn’t have a gender identity at all in the sense that human beings do… they also have no need to make distinctions in relationships as humans do. And they’ve been watching our distinctions evolve for millennia, so they know we’re just making it all up.
For my money, their relationship falls under the current western colloquial definition of romantic. They literally follow the beats of a love story all the way through. But individual definitions of romance might require more touching, or an element of sexual attraction, or solid declarations of ‘I love you (in that certain way)’, all of which are lacking here. So it’s very much a subjective call. Basically I think that… well, in the same way that they aren’t technically autistic or ADHD, because they don’t have human neurochemistry, but they functionally are, because they have their own weird wiring that produces analogous results? By the same token, they aren’t bound to human relationship labels, but their feelings are more or less analogousto romantic ones in humans - or, what would be broadly defined as romantic in today’s setting. Because, again, ultimately it’s all made up.
Now,Aziraphale I think has ‘aha!’ moments, but that’s because of repression and his impressive capacity for lying to himself. It has nothing to do with being tangled up in human labels and everything to do with not even being able to admit that he likes Crowley in any way, because that would make him a truly Bad Angel.
Yes, hard agree in turn. I hate the “just friends” thing, yes also because it’s queer erasure, but for the most part for the very personal reason that as an ace person who engages in neither kissing nor sex, all my significant relationships end up being called that, and consequently disregarded as “not so important or meaningful”. So, I’ll acknowledge that there’s personal baggage here.
Kinda also in terms of personal baggage, I’m really with you about it being shades on a spectrum rather than clearly defined lines. I have never seen the lines. The lines are arbitrary and meaningless from my perspective. If you remove sex, what’s the difference? And, sex is in no way equal to emotional intimacy and closeness, no matter what society wants us to think.
I love takes of them that don’t lock them into all those human categories. I love to see them in a friendship that’s also romantic, because really, why did the silly humans get rid of it? It was such a good concept. There’s potential for fic where they just confuse the hell out of humans around them, because they’ll refer to each other as friends, but then Crowley will sit in Aziraphale’s lap like he belongs there, or they’ll be holding hands in public, and people around them think they’re just messing with them.
I also love a Crowley who’s like “Gender? I’m a demon. I don’t need one of those. If humans think you need to pick your clothes based on something silly like that, it’s your loss, watch me wear high heels with tight lady jeans and a cool men’s shirt and tie, suckers”.
Arguably, also categories like autistic or ADHD are limiting boxes. Even in humans, it’s probably a spectrum, and things that are helpful for people inside one box might be also helpful for people who don’t quite fit into it, but almost. Interestingly, also autism and ADHD are relatively new labels, historically. The conditions of being that way are as old as humans, but the names, the categories, are relatively new. Just a few decades ago, they published medical texts on how autism is caused by bad parenting. The echos of such nonsense unfortunately still linger today, even though we have a much better understanding of things now. And in ten years, today’s understanding might seem stupid. Given that, you gotta wonder how long-lived beings like Aziraphale and Crowley feel about this type of thing?
You use a good term in saying “analogous”. “Analogous” really works for me, for the relationship labels, the gender, and the autism/ADHD-like attributes. Not the same as it is for humans, but analogous to it. :-)
Agreed about Aziraphale, too. Aziraphale’s main mode is denial, so he doesn’t topple the house of cards that is his world view, in which Heaven is Good and he’s a good angel and Crowley is a demon and obviously up to no good at all times, because if the house of cards does topple, what is he going to do?
Aziraphale’s story is not one of slowly growing to love someone more and more and then being befuddled about the exact nature of the affection, but more one of queer denial. He has his aha moments about his feelings for Crowley, but he keeps shoving them down. Analogous (love that word!) to a human stubbornly trying to convince themselves they are straight or cis, because it’s terrifying to consider they might not be.
We laugh about Gabriel (“material objects”, “pornography!”) being utterly clueless about human things™, but then there’s Aziraphale, who spent 6000 years among humans and still thinks other humans might be able to sense Adam, because he’s part human.
It’s as if he goes “as an angel, I can sense other angels”, and applies that same concept to humans. In 6000 years, he didn’t really grasp what types of senses humans have.
It’s kinda funny. Then again, who would tell him otherwise. He can’t really walk up to someone and ask them “do you sense other humans”, and if he did, it’s unlikely he’ll get a useful answer.
i guess it’s not really surprising, is it, that Crowley, the person who’d been banished and tossed away, whose entire identity for thousands of years was predicated around being “cast out,” whose arguably most important contribution to human history was tempting Adam and Eve to be cast out, would assume that leaving, getting out, was once again the only way to cope with Armageddon.
But, then, it also fits that Aziraphale, the guardian, the one who was put at the gate of Eden and told to STAY, would plant his feet in one place and refuse to move. Of course he’d cope with Armageddon through stubbornness, a stubbornness that gives Heaven far too many chances but still never abandons the world.
In the end, Crowley’s contributions were mostly about motion, going, leaving the garden, moving forward, encouraging change. But his character arc resolved with him staying with Earth, finding a home, finding a world from which he’d never be cast out. And Aziraphale’s contributions were mostly about staying, stubbornness, caution, being protective, avoiding danger. But his character arc resolved with him leaving Heaven, diving out of its cold and uncaring halls into a less-predictable, more-loving world where the things he loves can flourish. And they landed together.
I’ve seen several posts discussing how Hell overestimates Crowley. And lots of posts on how Aziraphale and Crowley don’t actually do anything to save the world, that they’re just kind of there.
On that tangent, personally I think the other characters don’t actually do all that much more. Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t the only characters who seem to do less than you’d expect in the end. Anathema comes to England expecting she’ll have to save the world. In the end, all she really needed to do was be there, lose the book so Aziraphale can read it, and take Newt to the airbase so he can break the computers. Even the Antichrist doesn’t defeat the horsemen by himself, he’s got his friends with him who do it. And while Adam defeats Satan by refusing to accept him as his dad, he didn’t think he could do it alone. He needed reassurance and support. The end of the world is stopped by many small contributions, not one big heroic act. That’s part of the charm, I think.
But, I’m rambling away. I was going to write about how Crowley is or maybe is not overestimated by Hell, and how Aziraphale is looked at by Heaven in turn.
A common fandom opinion seems that they’re both rather bad at their respective jobs. But, their superiors don’t seem to think so, and that’s interesting to me.
Hell gives Crowley a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition, although he had nothing to do with it, and is completely horrified by it (at least in the book, but you can just as well see it for the show). They also commend him on the French Revolution in the show, and accept his claim that he started the second World War. They like his M25 scheme. Not everyone understands it, demons like Hastur don’t agree with Crowley’s methods (and personally just don’t like him), but you get the idea that they do indeed think he’s doing a somewhat good job. They give him the very important Antichrist delivery job, too (when two Dukes of Hell were up there anyway and could have completed the job). Hastur, while admittedly not the sharpest tool in the shed, for a moment actually believes Crowley’s Dark Council bluff. He wonders if maybe Crowley is more than he seems. Hastur hates Crowley, but he doesn’t think him incompetent.
Hell is shit, yes, but Hell also respect Crowley’s work. Or at least what they think Crowley works on. Crowley has rather successfully tricked Hell into thinking he’s actually more competent at demoning than he really is. He is clever enough to hide his weaknesses (like his rather undemonic moral code, his dislike of killing or his friendship with an angel), and he’s learned to play the system to his benefits.
I first thought Heaven thinks rather more lowly of Aziraphale, because of how patronising they treat him. They look down on him. They ignore his input. They bully him. They invade his personal space, they treat him without respect. It’s easy to assume they also think he’s incompetent.
But. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
Firstly, there’s the deleted bookshop opening scene where they wanted to give him a medal. Were they trying to get him replaced because they thought he sucks at his job? Was it actually a promotion for a job done well? It’s hard to tell.
Or maybe, and I think that’s my point, were they trying to replace him with someone they trust more?
Heaven doesn’t trust Aziraphale. Over their power play it’s hard to spot, but they don’t. And it doesn’t start once they get suspicious about his comments regarding the Antichrist. It’s there from the start.
Gabriel and Sandalphon show up in the bookshop well before they start to actually investigate Aziraphale’s contact to Crowley and involvement in Armageddon. They walk into his shop, shout about pornography, and corner Aziraphale in the backroom. They keep him between them, like in a particular nasty cross examination. Sandalphon blocks the doorway. Gabriel casually reminds Aziraphale of Sandalphon’s happy smiting of entire cities. They are there to threaten him. You don’t threaten people you think are incompetent and stupid. You threaten people you’re worried you might not have under control.
They are belittling and don’t take him seriously when he comes to talk to them about the opposition having possibly lost track of Adam, but once he’s gone, they start thinking. This isn’t the behaviour of superiors who think their underling is daft. They think Aziraphale dangerous enough to worry he could be up to something. They don’t know what, but they’re quick to get suspicious.
Michael considers the thought Aziraphale might work for Hell, as a double agent. Micheal, Uriel and Sandalphon again go to threaten Aziraphale, practically on his home turf. Hell sends Hastur and Ligur to collect Crowley (and threatens him rather badly in the book). In the show, three Archangels come to gang up on Aziraphale. They want to scare him. So shortly before the battle, three high ranking angels presumably have important things to do. They wouldn’t bother with Aziraphale if they didn’t think him worth some concern.
And then at the airbase, Adam stops Armageddon. Aziraphale and Crowley haven’t actually done anything to stop it yet. Their part comes in supporting Adam in stopping Satan. But that is later. At this point, all they did was go there. Yes, they conspired to stop the apocalypse, but they didn’t actually stop it. That was all the human characters.
But true to form, neither Gabriel nor Beelzebub think humans can do much of anything, and Gabriel naturally assumes it’s Aziraphale (and Crowley’s) doing. “At least we know whose fault it is!” And later, when they try to execute Aziraphale: “With one act of treason, you averted the War.”
By seemingly surviving their executions, Aziraphale and Crowley scare Heaven and Hell, sure. But it’s not scaring them out of the blue. Both Heaven and Hell were thinking they are more dangerous than they probably are already before that, and this might be why they buy it like this.
Crowley has a long history of surprising Hell with his schemes (not near all of which are actually his, but they don’t know that). Aziraphale has, somehow, made the Archangels suspicious of him already before they had actual reasons to be suspicious, and then a whole platoon of angels plus the quartermaster watch him jump down to Earth without body to possess a human. To Heaven and Hell, their final coup doesn’t completely come out of the blue.
On the contrary, with hindsight they’ll probably be even more wary. Imagine Hastur’s face when he connects the dots between Crowley being immune to Holy Water and his plant mister bluff. For all Hastur knows, Crowley had actual Holy Water in the mister. Imagine the hysterical screaming that follows the realisation. Imagine Sandalphon’s face when he realises he punched an angel in the gut who later breathed Hellfire at him. For all they can tell, Crowley and Aziraphale have been going easy on them.
Something I only noticed during my latest rewatch: aziraphale’s little smile once he understands the extent of crowley’s plan. he keeps his face impassive while crowley can see him, but in the end cannot hold back a smile. notice how as soon as he feels it coming he turns away from crowley so he doesn’t see, and tries to get his expression under control again.
i wonder if the smile is just prompted by the almost comically excessive grandiosity of crowley’s plan itself, or rather by the realisation that, despite their fight and almost 80 years of no contact, crowley still not only showed up to help him when he was in trouble, but also pulled out all the stops to do so. this isn’t just him sneakily miracling the nazis into forgetting about the whole deal with the books, or putting them into a trance like he did with sister mary loquacious and calling it a day. he diverted a bomb for this. there was absolutely no need to do something so showy, and yet he did anyway.
this is a big gesture, it speaks volumes, and i think aziraphale realises it and that’s why he can’t help smiling. i think this is where he realises that they’re going to be okay. that whatever there was between them hasn’t been ruined beyond repair. a quieter rescue could have been chalked up to one last bit of help for old times’ sake, perhaps. but this? this can’t be mistaken for anything other than what it is: crowley caring, caring so strongly, like he always has.
(… and all this is before the books, which, although technically a smaller gesture, is even more telling than the bomb. it’s no wonder all aziraphale could do afterwards is stare at crowley’s retreating back. what else can you do after so many beautiful revelations, all in the span of ten minutes? crowley hasn’t left forever. crowley still cares. that would be enough to bowl anyone over - but then there is more, as it turns out. crowley not only cares. crowley loves.)
Does anyone else think about Satan calling Crowley “darling” in the car “radio call”? Because it creeps me out. It creeped me out the first time and still creeps me out now…
Add to that the mind rape vibe of the entire downloading information into Crowley’s brain thing (which almost gets him discorporated by lorry) and it’s even worse.
Nah, that creeped me out as well.
Now, to be fair, I think the “darling” is there to mimic Freddie Mercury’s speech pattern.
But it’s the words, the fact that Satan is speaking them, the general mind-rapey vibes of the scene, and the fact that Crowley says “They love me down there” coupled with the fact that he’s also terrified of Satan.
It was even creepier in the TV show script, in the final version they cut this bit:
CROWLEY The M25. Yes. Well, glad it went down so well. Yup. Leave it to me.
SATAN (V.O.) That is what we are doing, Crowley. But if anything goes wrong, then those involved will suffer greatly. Even you, Crowley. Especially you.
Crowley nods. He’s terrified.
That’s… an interesting choice of words.
Plus, the song. Beware, this is overreaching so far my arms may fall off, but. While there are many interpretations of Bohemian Rhapsody, the show specifically chooses to play this bit immediately after Satan speaks:
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouche scaramouche will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning- very very frightening me
The Scaramouche is a character in Italian Commedia dell'Arte. He’s a clown dressed in black, and he’s either a sort of wily evil gentleman or an fiendish, boisterous but funny character. The fandango is obviously a dance.
You could therefore stretch the lyrics and the context enough to say that Satan, through Queen, is inviting Crowley to dance with the Devil.
There, I officially grasped at too many straws, someone please take the Internet away from me.
(But also the following part of the song they quote in the book literally goes “we will not let you go - let me go!” and those two are the only parts in a 5 minutes song referenced in the book. So maybe I’m not crazy after all.)
Oh yes. Ohhh yes. I’ve been wanting to dig into this for a while now, but I really wasn’t sure how to go about it. But now that it’s come up…
Of course this is all wild speculation since the only interaction we actually see with them is a brief conversation over the radio, and the airbase, where Satan is very much not focused on Crowley. Through the power of extrapolation, though, you can draw some very unsettling conclusions. There’s often a downside to being the head honcho’s ‘favorite’, after all. Especially if your boss is literally Satan.
Very interesting! There’s not enough in canon, of course, for set conclusions. But it very much seems that, at the very least—
Crowley doesn’t have any officially powerful position in Hell.
And yet, he is somewhat of a favourite with Satan.
Personally, I tend to attribute it to Crowley’s imagination. Satan saw that in Crowley and deliberately recruited him. He ensured that Crowley did not and would not ever obtain an official position of power in Hell because Satan saw all that imagination as a potential threat. Yet, he wanted to make use of it too. So stick him up on Earth where it could be useful. Keep him close and favoured. But also frightened and powerless.
Yet… there’s so much we don’t know. Plenty of room for interpretation.
Something big that stood out to me about all of this is the way people rarely seem to acknowledge how petrified Crowley is of Hell.
Satan is obvious, I mean look at the scene at the airbase. The second Crowley feels that the literal Devil is coming he falls to his knees and cries out. Most have concluded that was because he was in pain, and I think that was certainly apart of it, but I think a big part of it was also fear. I mean, Anathama felt him too and while it makes sense she wouldn’t feel it as much since she’s human, she didn’t even seem to be half as effected as Crowley. I think that’s because Crowley wasn’t only doubling over in pain, but because he was panicking and tried to curl up into himself.
Another thing to note is Beelzebub. When they show up at the airbase Crowley is a lot less snarky than he usually is. He seems to sort of give up until Aziraphale takes the lead. He’s practically shaking when he bows down to them and I think that bow was also a way to give an excuse to avert his eyes.
I appreciate @whispsofwind sharing that note from the Script Book too. In the car, when Hell is talking to Crowley over the radio, it specifically notes that Crowley is terrified. And there’s a lot of little notes like that in the book too.
So yeah. I think Crowley played cool and unbothered not only as a way to look seductive to the humans (and Aziraphale) but also as a sort of coping mechanism to bury the fear he was constantly dealing with all the time.
Oh yes!! In a nasty place like Hell is portrayed to be— all violence and mob rule— the last thing you want to do is show your fear. You have to play it cool to survive. But he is terrified.
I enjoy fics in which his early success in the Garden has guaranteed his notoriety in Hell forever – but in a bit of a target-on-your-back way. Like, he’s just another run-of-the-mill demon, but because he made the right trouble early on, everybody knows his name and Satan thinks he’s terrific. So he takes credit for things he didn’t do and comes up with flashy presentations to keep them thinking he’s their very best on earth.
But it’s not exactly fun to get a lot of attention in Hell.
Best to stay topside, where his reputation can be a thing of legend down below and he rarely has to interact with his fellow demons, which might make them (like Hastur and Ligur) start to suspect he’s not all that.
Does anyone else think about Satan calling Crowley “darling” in the car “radio call”? Because it creeps me out. It creeped me out the first time and still creeps me out now…
Add to that the mind rape vibe of the entire downloading information into Crowley’s brain thing (which almost gets him discorporated by lorry) and it’s even worse.
So before I get into anything else, the simplest reason Satan calls Crowley “darling” is because he’s speaking “through” Freddie Mercury, and that’s how Freddie spoke. This is clearer in the book and very obvious in the radio show, where various demons speak through various radio personalities, taking on their particular vocal tics and so on.
In fact, this effect is quite downplayed in the show; twice Hell contacts Crowley through the radio (Satan and Dagon), and you can hear they sound nothing like those characters usually do. But also twice Hell contacts Crowley through tv/movies, and that’s just the characters (Hastur and Ligur) showing up as themselves, supplanting whoever SHOULD be there.
Which suggests that while Satan does take on Freddie’s voice and “darling” — he doesn’t have to. I’m guessing if he wanted to, he could easily have overridden the fake-Freddie vibe.
But he didn’t want to.
Which combines the general mind-rape vibe of the scene and the almost deadly negligence (really, gonna take over his brain while he’s driving??) with a bit of terrifying mystery (never 100% sure who you’re talking to when Hell contacts you) and the creepy horror of hearing your boss/enemy speaking through a voice that should be innocuous…
Yeah, I do think about it. For me it’s mostly the psychological horror, the sense that Crowley can never be 100% sure that no one is listening, or who will be listening when they tune in; the fact that almost every voice he’s heard on the radio and possibly tv has at one point or other threatened him; the fact that the threats and the praise are always so closely tied it’s never one or the other but always both.
I agree with the people that say Crowley is a “favorite” in Hell. I don’t think this necessarily has to be sexual (I know some people read it as a noncon/dubcon relationship with Satan) but I agree that all of his standing is solely based on the personal opinion of Satan and maybe a few other higher ups. He’s good at what he does. They find that amusing. The second they stop feeling this way, he is thrown back in with the other demons.
And I don’t think those other demons would be very welcoming. Whatever the correct process is for climbing Hell’s ladder, Crowley bypassed it, and I think a lot of them are waiting to take him down a bit.
And, bringing it back to the original point — regardless of the actual nature of their relationship, Satan using Freddie’s voice to call Crowley “darling” is a good way of reminding him you’re only safe as long as I continue to like you.
So yes. I also think about this.
Exactly! The favoritism is terrifying because it could be taken away. And Satan totally kept that ‘darling’ in there on purpose. The way all the conversations with Hell go - in the book, the script, the show - there’s ALWAYS a threat, even when there’s praise, this horrible mix of carrot and stick that informs Crowley he’s on the correct path as far as his boss is concerned AND reminds him that he’d better keep it up. And the casually intimate tone just layers it deeper.
I don’t see it as sexual either, but that should surprise no one, as the relative lack of interest in sex is a major component of angels and demons in my head. But he clearly likes control and has no respect for boundaries, perhaps even enjoys violating them. Why would he use cruder means for it when he can directly invade someone’s mind, or play their emotions like a fiddle? If anything, not being tied to physicality makes it worse - he can reach Crowley anywhere.
However, the show does lean heavily into corporate metaphors, even more so than the book - ‘head office’ and ‘job description’ used as euphemisms for the lords of Hell and the fate of the damned, for instance, not to mention Heaven and Hell being literal office settings. So that’s a strong theme here. Which in my mind translates Satan into a Creeper Boss™ who treats personal space with about as much respect as he treats mental privacy, which makes the (fortunately rare) in-person reports extremely uncomfortable on basically every level.
I didn’t mean it as sexual, either. It’s just that “mind rape” was the closest term I could come up with for this scene, and the more I think about it, this might be the most terrifying thing Hell does to Crowley on screen.
I mean, they threaten him with death and torture, they physically hurt him, they constantly exert their control and surveillance over his life, but this? I have a really nothing close to fleshed out draft for fic that adresses it and this “mind rape” thing gets described as “stealing your thoughts”. Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s taking over Crowley’s mind/brain. Rape, the sexual kind, is violation of someone’s body (although it’s always about power and psychological violence as much as physical). This thing, this thought-stealing, mind-overtaking act, it’s violation of someone’s most private part. Their mind. Their thoughts. And it doesn’t look like Crowley is surprised by it. It’s clearer in the book than the show. He hates it, but he knows to expect it, because taking over your brain is just something Hell can do, and thus it’s something Hell does.
It looks, compared to some other things, relatively harmless on screen. But think about the horror of it. There’s someone out there who can blank your mind and put any thoughts they want into it instead of your own, and you’re powerless to prevent it. It can happen anytime, anywhere, no matter what you’re in the middle of doing. Crowley just barely doesn’t get discorporated this time. Might not be lucky next time.
Imagine knowing that your thoughts, your mind, are never safe and never completely yours. Someone else, someone you’re terrified of, can intrude upon them, blank out your own thoughts and force feed you whatever they want. (I don’t think they can read his mind, but this is terrible enough without the additional further violation of privacy).
It can happen any time. No way to prevent it. This is extreme psychological torture, and obviously nobody in Hell has yet recognised the full potential. They could well not download instructions for a job into Crowley’s brain, but something worse. It puts a whole new, extremely terrifying spin on eternal tortures…
This is for all those people who don’t believe in the ineffable husbands.
I want you to analyze something with me.
Now, we have Aziraphale and Crowley.
We have the “good one”, that works against the evil forces, or what he believes is evil.
And the “bad one”, who works for Hell, for the dark forces; or at least he should. ‘Cause he’s not truly evil. He’s just a Demon that does what he has to do to survive.
They supposed to hate each other, and Aziraphale, the one that supposed to be incorruptible, tries hard not to fall into temptation, even if Crowley insists.
In the apocalyptic scenario they’re forced to work together in order to save the world.
In the end, they simply surrender to the fact that even being so different, they can coexist.
Their story ends with the two of them, sitting together, dining and toasting romantically. No kisses or confessions involved.
Just a bromance? Ok.
Now let’s analyze this.
We have Shadwell and Madame Tracy.
One of them works for the “light” and against the evil forces. He works for what he considers to be good, in this case he’s a witchfinder.
The other one uses dark magic, even if she truly is just a fake psychic, and she sins with absolutely no shame.
They supposed to hate each other, and Shadwell, the one that supposed to be incorruptible, tries hard not to fall into temptation, even if Madame Tracy insists.
In the apocalyptic scenario they’re forced to work together in order to save the world.
In the end, they simply surrender to the fact that even being so different, they can coexist.
Their story ends with the two of them sitting together, dining and toasting romantically. No kisses or confessions involved.
Now, this is my question:
Why does nobody AT ALL suggest that the one between Madame Tracy and Shadwell is just a bromance? Why are we all so sure that the straight one is in fact a romantic relationship, but we’re not sure about the one between two men? Even if we watched so many more romantic moments between Aziraphale and Crowley than between Tracy and Shadwell?
This is heteronormativity, guys.
You can be certain that there’s something romantic between a man and a woman even if they have literally four scenes together, but you doubt that Aziraphale and Crowley, that know each other since SIX THOUSAND YEARS, that spent their lives basically saving each other, that say sentences like “I know what you smell like”, “we are on our own side”, “we can go away together” can be involved in something romantic.
We don’t really need them to kiss or say “I love you” to know they’re a couple, just as we don’t need Tracy and Shadwell to do those things to know they’re a couple.
Got the first humans kicked out for stealing brain-healthy snacks
Convinced Leonardo da Vinci to draw a helicopter
Put an enormous amount of effort into making the orbital motorway around London a funny evil shape
Helped invent game shows
Patronizes fancy restaurants barefoot by making his feet look like shoes
Had to sob into his booze for a week when he got mistakenly credited with the Spanish Inquisition
Slept for a hundred years and made every depressed human jealous
Gets huffy because someone put some outdated 1950s tartan on his car from 1926
Tries to teach some corporate goons a lesson about their violent urges but refuses to actually let them hurt each other
Accidentally makes a duck sink when upset, can’t bring himself to hit a hedgehog, brings a dead dove back to life
Drunkenly cries about dolphins
Gets emotionally attached to an enemy agent, doesn’t seem to have any other friends
Says, “Gosh, I’m sorry.”
Gives humans the heebie-jeebies, for he has nothing else to give.
Protects himself from two bloodthirsty Dukes of Hell by desperately setting a trap like the kid from Home Alone, gets accused of premeditated murder by the fandom
If you still want to write him like some sexy amoral Twilight extra I guess you can but also like….why?
[FUCK IT I’M PUTTING THIS HERE: THIS POST IS ABOUT A BOOK FROM 1990 DAVID TENNANT FANDOM DNI]
Initially drove his car around without its headlights on at night, until he realised it made the humans upset
Stole a US military Jeep and magically installed a tape player because he likes a nice dramatic/calming soundtrack
Gave the non-melted Duke of Hell the equivalent of a time out to think about what he’d done
Gives humans the heebie-jeebies, for he has nothing else to give.
This one made me laugh out loud
Every. Single. Thing. in this post is Golden and the Truth and dare I say the Golden Truth but special mention to the DT fandom because that sentence personally murdered me. I can’t stop laughing.
That Home Alone comment killed me a bit, because now I finally know what it reminded me of. A water gun would’ve been cool. Maybe dangerous to fill, but cool. A bucket is super improvised for something he’d thought he might have to do for decades. But I think he never wanted to do it. He was realistic enough to know the risks and take precautions to defend himself, but he never wanted to be forced to use them.
People love Crowley because he’s so much… just a normal person, kinda? He’s supposed to be a demon, doing evil deeds. He tries very hard to be what he himself thinks is cool. He kinda fails at both of those things 90% of the time, atleast. Underneath the veneer, Crowley is just that guy trying to get by. Also, in both the book and the show he’s the character (especially out of the angels and demons) with the most functional moral compass.
Guys, how do we know it was actually God who sent the Deluge?
From where I’m standing, we really don’t. All we know is that Aziraphale heard the Almighty was going to send a flood and then put up a rainbow. From…somebody. My money’s on Gabriel, since Aziraphale later didn’t seem to recognize the Metatron. In any case, he definitely didn’t get it directly from Her.
And if there’s one thing we know about the archangels and their cronies, it’s that they’re a bunch of lying liars and pretenders who’ve been claiming all this time to speak for God and follow Her Ineffable Plan, when they’ve actually just been doing whatever the fuck they feel like doing and have no clue what She really thinks or wants. (And presumably stopped caring a long time ago.)
Here’s what we’ve actually got on God from the only reliable narrator in the whole series, meaning God Herself:
- The facts in Her opening narration about the beginning of the world and the ineffable game She’s playing.
- The fact that She did give Aziraphale the flaming sword to guard the gates of Eden.
We can also infer from Crowley’s prayer in Episode 4 that he actually heard Her say She was going to be testing humanity (though even that, from our POV, is still hearsay.)
As far as I can remember, that’s it. Anything else that somebody claims came from God is not to be trusted. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean She hasn’t ever taken a hand in human events, or that none of the things attributed to Her actually were Her doing…just that we don’t have any way to confirm it.)
So, maybe the Almighty really did send the flood and the rainbow. Or maybe the Heavenly brass took it upon themselves to decide that those darn Mesopotamian monkeys were just getting too rowdy, and something had to be done.
Select additional comments:
@niceandaccurategoodomensblogreply: Yeah I tend to think that the Good Omens God was involved at the beginning but then she left the Archangels and the Metatron in charge of Heaven and is now just an observer.
@aethelflaedladyofmerciareply: Fine jump all over the points I make in my fanfics. (or plan to make - speculating is so much faster than writing good dialogue!)
Seriously, though, even Crowley’s “you said you were going to be testing them” could be from some sort of official announcement of General Great Plan Stuff, from back when Creation was just getting started.
We have very little to go on. I work on the assumption that the Arcangels are basically running the show (I HAVE NOTES ON WHY).
If nothing else - everything we see in Good Omens that we can speculate to be God’s Plan is very circuitous.
Don’t give humanity free will, put it in the Garden in the form of fruit and wait for a demon to come along and trick them into it so he can also awkwardly flirt with an angel.
Don’t just tell the Arcangels to drop the apocalypse thing, set up an elaborate shell game where the Antichrist gets raised by a human family, rejects his infernal nature, then tells Gabriel to drop the apocalypse thing with the help of a demon and angel who are still on the awkward flirting stage of their marriage.
But Noah’s Ark? That’s pretty straightforward. Direct even. Doesn’t sound like Her style. And Aziraphale does say “WORD IS God’s feeling a bit tetchy.” Word via whom? Probably Gabriel.
Aziraphale threatened by Crowley vs threatened by Uriel
I love this contrast because even right when Crowley first grabs him he never looks scared, not even for a moment. With the angels though he’s terrified before they even touch him. Despite all his talk of ‘opposite sides’ it’s pretty clear through his actions who he trusts, and who he doesn’t.
Tbh it’s kind of sweet that Crowley even told Aziraphale that he gave all the humans in the gunfight miraculous escapes. He could have easily just kept it a secret. Could have given them all escapes to make himself feel better, but left Aziraphale all shaken because he was trying to teach the angel a lesson about “moral weight.”
But he didn’t. All Aziraphale had to do was disapprove hard enough and Crowley admitted his limits out loud. God, I love him. I love them.
He is Soft and Aziraphale brings it out of him like nothing else.
Yes. It would’ve been so easy to go with the badass edgy demon but no, he is a softie and when Aziraphale looks at him he just melts and I’m-
Like, OP is right, he has absolutely no reason to tell Aziraphale but then Aziraphale would be upset. And Crowley doesn’t want to admit out loud that he spared the humans instead of sending them into a murder spree, but he also doesn’t want Aziraphale to be upset so really, what’s a demon gotta do?
This is even more meaningful because I think Crowley only does it because of Aziraphale’s “moral argument” comment in the first place. To me, this isn’t Crowley doing “demon stuff”, this is Crowley being ticked off with Aziraphale’s parroting of dumb Heaven propaganda so he makes an example, let’s Aziraphale see how bad Heaven’s opinion is in real life. He doesn’t only demonstrate it, he even explains the morality (“Everyone got free will, including the right to murder!”).
But he’s not cruel enough to allow anyone to get killed, and he can’t keep up the façade once Aziraphale looks upset about it. I think he actually meant for it to at least sting (he’s flippant when he mockingly says the moral argument thing back to Aziraphale while he kicks in that door), but then Aziraphale looks troubled, and Crowley caves. It doesn’t even need a full on pout at this time.
Okay so here’s a thought, regarding Aziraphale’s ability to sense love:
I think, at least judging by fanworks, we may be looking at it wrong and missing out on important things to analyse in the process
What usually (always as far as I’ve seen, but I’ve hardly seen everything so I’m not ruling out the possibility that someone has addressed this already) happens in fic is that, well, either Aziraphale can sense Crowley’s love or he can’t. Regardless of which one it is, my point is that we always talk of Crowley’slove. The focus is always on the source - Aziraphale can or cannot sense love comingfromCrowley, or in his presence, in his aura etc etc. In other words, he can sense the act of loving.
But. That’s not exactly what we get from canon, is it? Aziraphale doesn’t sense Adamloving Tadfield - he just knows someonedoes. It doesn’t happen in Adam’s presence, he doesn’t sense it coming from the boy or anything like that. He arrives in the area and can tell that it is loved. The focus seems to be on the recipient - rather than the act of loving, Aziraphale seems to be able to sense something or someone being loved.
From there things can go similarly as they already do in most fics - either Aziraphale can’t sense Crowley’s love (because he’s the recipient and can’t sense it on himself, or because Crowley can’t “broadcast”, so to speak, or for any other reason), he can sense it without any problems, or he can sense it with some sort of problem
There are various problems that can arise here - for one, if Aziraphale can sense love on the recipient, rather than from the source, and he himself is the recipient, then the feeling would be ever-present. If it’s always there, then it can be damn hard to notice, especially if it started small and intensified steadily through the years. Like the frog in slowly boiling water, except the frog is slowly getting pampered rather than killed. It just becomes the new normal and you can’t even tell that anything has changed.
Two - and this is the entire reason I’m typing this post - it could be that even if you do notice the love, it may not be possible to identify the source at all! And if so, it can be all to easy to make a mistake - especially if, say, you don’t expect the actual source would love you, or love you so soon, you know what I’m getting at. Especially if, on the other hand, you have people you are told - or want to believe - care about you.
God comes to mind, but I’m not going to go there because GO God is mostly a blank canvas everyone has their own interpretation of. But. Heaven.
Aziraphaledoeswant to believe that they’re good, that they care. Given ambiguous information, people often interpret it to mean what they want to be true. And early Aziraphale needs it to be true, otherwise pretty much everythinghe knows to be true would crumble out of the blue, with no alternative ideas to make sense of the world. Your brain will make you believe some really unbelievable things to not let that happen because that way literally lies madness.
It’d make sense why Aziraphale keeps believing that Heaven cares, that he can reason with them, that they’d listen, despite their actions making it obvious that they do not and will not. His very senses - coupled with a grave misinterpretation - would be telling him that they do. He’d be effectively, though entirely by accident, gaslighting himself.
Select additional comments:
@theniceandaccurategoodomensblogreply:That is very possible. Aziraphale knows he is lived. Senses it. Knows it through and through. Believes that it is God who loves him. And all along–the whole damn time–it is Crowley?
Yikes.
@autisticthassarianreply: of course, the other implication here is over the years he slowly becomes aware that someone, somewhere, loves crowley, and seems to love him more and more every time aziraphale sees him, but he cannot for the life of him figure out who
And wait- the moment with the books? Is that Aziraphale suddenly realising— hang on, it’s me?! I’m the one who loves him? He’s the one who loves me?
losyanyareply: I have not mashed reblog this fast in weeks. Galaxy brain meta, absolutely outstanding!! It clicks, it tracks, it makes perfect sense!
The idea of Aziraphale gaslighting himself is heartbreaking. But then I also thought of this quote in the new context..
“There seems to be this great sense of love. I can’t put it any better than that. Especially not to you.” (Aziraphale to Crowley, Good Omens book)
This quote is frequently cited as an example of Aziraphale’s lack of sensitivity toward Crowley, if not excessive harshness; it has been interpreted as evidence that (at least book) Aziraphale does not believe demons, and Crowley specifically, to be capable of love.
In light of the analysis/headcannon above, though, this quote can take an entirely different meaning, almost polar in character. If Aziraphale knows how love-sense works, with the recipient of love feeling awash with it, and he thinks Crowley shares the capability for love-sense, then at least by the time of the narrative Crowley should be feeling a great sense of love at all times. From him. Ergo, Aziraphale’s bafflement - “What are you not getting about sensing a great deal of love, this should be very familiar to you (because of my feelings); but I’m not going, I can’t actually spell that out for you.”
I’m not saying this interpretation is correct. I’m just saying it makes sense to me in the light of the proposed points, and also gives me feelings for days..
Newton Pulsifer is the smartest character in Good Omens. Change my mind.
I don’t think I can change your mind???
Out of all the characters, Newt is the one who is both book smarts (very good and quick at researching, able to draw correct conclusions with very little data, can think outside the box), and has some common sense (can be very practical if nothing else). He’s just very shy and awkward, possibly a bit spineless, and plagued by a curse that was funny in 1990 but actually quite upsetting in 2019 UK (just think how much is done online nowadays! Jobs, degrees, even healthcare).
Tracy is a woman of common sense but not exactly brilliant, Anathema is brilliant but limited by the narrow path set by her family, and Aziraphale and Crowley are incredibly intelligent and also incredibly dumb at the same time.
Newt is a smart cookie and deserves more love.
Newt compensates for being cursed in the 21st century by having the most actual practical intelligence of anyone in the story.
Now, obviously the celestial/infernal beings have some cognitive advantages over humans, if you’re going into what ‘smart’ means. If we were measuring breadth of knowledge and ability to bring it all together to solve complex problems, we’d be talking Aziraphale. If we’re talking creativity - especially as regards causing trouble, and then getting out of it - that’s Crowley. But both of them are also very used to relying on miracles, and so they’re prone to making very basic mistakes about how the world works.
Newt does not have that advantage. Newt is at a serious disadvantage when it comes to how the world works. So Newt makes the sensible decisions. Newt spots the obvious flaws. Newt knows when it’s time to Get The Hell Out. These are skills no one else in the story seems to have mastered. Newt is 1000% the only thing resembling a Voice Of Reason in Good Omens and I love him.
And he doesn’t even realize it! To be fair, I’m not sure if most of other characters are properly aware of their own brands of brilliance… Aziraphale doesn’t think highly of himself and his abilities because heaven messed with him for 6000 years, Crowley improvises so much, so it might feel to him more like he’s winging it… Anathema thinks she’s smart, but she also doesn’t trust herself to make actual decisions for herself.
Newt though! Newt looks like he’s bumbling about, but he’s really making the best of his less than ideal situations whenever we see him.
He also has the benefit of coming into the whole Armageddon thing as an outsider. Anathema studied the book her entire life, Aziraphale and Crowley are deeply involved in it as well, and they’re all stuck in their own perspective. Newt stumbles into it and first of all starts asking the right questions. He doesn’t go and discard any of what Anathema tell him as nonsense (which is what a lot of people would have done). No, he looks at what he’s dealing with and makes sensible deductions. “You can pick a card! Any card!” Anathema had based her whole life on following the book, but she didn’t consider something like that.
And even when he believes in the truthfulness of the prophecies, he doesn’t loose his critical head. He gets himself quite calmly worried about being shot, while Anathema is all “nah, Agnes would’ve told me if that were to happen” (when really Agnes is known to leave a lot of things out!). Anathema trusts the book. Newt trusts his own gut.
and then you turn up. late for armageddon, no flaming sword, not even a body you pathetic excuse for an angel.well, i suppose i am, really.
Ok but this moment though. Like this is when he starts REALLY going off book. This moment was just so intense. I really did think he was about to Fall For Real.
You can just see on his face that he is realizing that the rules separating what demons and angels can and can’t do are determined by their respective head offices instead of some ineffable cosmic rules. It’s arbitrary. He can’t possess someone because aren’t supposed to, not because he doesn’t have the ability.
I like this moment. It’s hard to see Aziraphale’s intelligence – he’s not as flashy as Crowley and it’s easy to overlook – but I love this moment of Aziraphale realising that demons and angels are the same basic stock, that if he can perform temptations and Crowley can perform miracles as part of the Arrangement, there’s more overlap in their abilities than Heaven or Hell wants to admit. The only thing stopping him is other angels trying to enforce rules.
He’s brilliant. But he was being held back by his fear of thinking for himself—terrified of any little innovation, any tiny step taken in the absence of orders. He’s a soldier, trained to trust and obey, and it’s essential that this scene takes place right under the eye of his commanding officer. He’s not just choosing to act on his own for the first time—every other time Crowley’s convinced him he was more or less in line with heaven still, and it did take convincing. He’s making a decision for himself here directly against orders. This is flagrant. This is mutiny. The minute he was convinced heaven was wrong, all his courage was available to him to do whatever he had to. And he stopped dithering. He became sure. It’s gorgeous.
I’m not entirely sure how posting/reposting on Tumblr actually works, so I’m making a post of what was originally a response to this excellent post by ileolai I really think that Aziraphale is given quite a hard time for how he handles things in relation to Crowley leading up to the Apocalypse.
In defence of my BAMF boi Aziraphale (referring to the TV series as I don’t remember all the differences in the book):
No, he shouldn’t have told Crowley at the bandstand that they aren’t friends/are over, he should have told Crowley when he knew the location of the Antichrist, and he might have been naive to think that he could change the minds of God/the Metatron/a higher authority. I hate that he lies to Crowley after figuring out the location of the Antichrist.
Crowley’s (admittedly desperate) plan, however, was romantic af but not any better morally or much worse practically. It would not have worked long-term. It would have been selfish, short-sighted and cowardly and gone against everything they stand for and believe in.
If they HAD actually escaped (for all they know, at least, discounting Adam’s choices), Armaggedon would still have gone ahead, the War would’ve taken place, and one side or the other would have won. The winning side would realise either straight away or eventually that one of their own had deserted from the war. Whether the next day or in a few millennia, eventually, surely, someone from the victorious side would have come across them somewhere.
(Might’ve taken me three run-throughs to capture the screenshot because I kept getting too caught up in watching the scene.)
Also, again, there’s the sticky moral issue of the two abandoning Earth and all the creatures thereof to the sole custody of either Heaven or Hell. The world would have ended, Crowley and Aziraphale would have been together, yes, but always looking over their shoulder, and only for a limited time until they were discovered and punished for desertion/their relationship.
Now, it seems there were two other things they could actually do. First, Crowley’s other suggestion: Kill the Antichrist, murder a child. Comes with its own lovely set of moral dilemmas #utilitarianism. Not something either is particularly keen on doing, although it is Aziraphale who gives it a go: He IS willing, in the end, all other options exhausted, to kill in order to save them and the world. (Granted, it kind of makes sense that he should do it; he’d at least be thwarting evil whereas Crowley would be going directly up against “his side”. But still, it’s going directly against the Great Plan.)
The only option that could possibly, potentially, mayyyybe work is to convince a higher-up to actually get the whole Armageddon called off. It’s the only way to save everything - the world, humanity, Crowley, their relationship; the only potential long-term solution. So, he goes to see the Archangels, to get them to either call off the war or (possibly?) kill the Antichrist. Aziraphale tells them some of what he knows, but he is smart enough not to tell his superiors that he already knows where the Antichrist is. He lies to them too and keeps the information to himself until he knows what the Right thing to do is to save the world.
Don’t think I’ve seen this talked about this anywhere: While speaking to Archangels, he also tries out quite a clever plan to help out Crowley, whose massive cock-up and cover-up in the wrong Antichrist fiasco will be found out as soon as Warlock reaches Megiddo: He suggests to the Archangels that Crowley did it all on purpose to trick Aziraphale and keep the real Antichrist safe.
(adorbs)
He’s not exactly making himself look great here, but it’s worth it if he can convince the higher-ups that Crowley is really a demonic strategic genius who was actually protecting the Antichrist all along.
After the Archangels tell him to piss off and the Bandstand scene (RIP), where he declares that can’t be on their side anymore and Crowley is the one to leave, he tries to get to Gabriel once again, which obviously fails. After Gabriel’s “What are you?”, he looks at him running off towards the bandstand, which is in focus although it isn’t in the rest of the scene and reminds of us him and Crowley, and we get the lovely, romantic (?) “I’m soft”. It’s pretty clear already that he has no intention of fighting in any war (or against Crowley). Then, after telling Crowley’s he’s being ridiculous for wanting to run away (and Crowley saying he’ll run off and forget about Aziraphale), he tries once again to explain why the war shouldn’t happen to the archangel thugs and to get them to see what they, as angels, should be doing and why it is vital that the world (and A and C’s role in it) continue.
He is clearly terrified. The archangels clearly aren’t there with good intentions, and yet he Stands Up to them and tries to make them see reason: They shouldn’t want the war, that’s not what they, the angels are there to do - they should be upholding one side of the moral coin, letting humanity choose between good and bad. (As an aside, I love all the “Aziraphale is terrible at being an angel” fun, but I - and probably god, and possibly even Aziraphale himself - think that he is the best angel: Even with the Arrangement, he has actually been doing the exact job of Heaven and Hell, upholding this careful balance between Good and Evil, allowing people to choose, navigating via his own moral compass, and taking care of humanity ever since giving away the sword, as a good principality should). He’s already saying pretty clearly that he’s on the side of The World, that he doesn’t want the war.
His last hope for actually avoiding the Apocalypse (and saving his and Crowley’s continued existence together) is God herself. Obviously and beautifully, he doesn’t get through, and the Metatron is no better than the other bureaucratic, dogmatic, powerhungry arsewipes in Heaven. He’s exhausted all other options, all hope of a long-term real solution for him and Crowley, and so he calls up Crowley to let him know Adam’s location so that they can go off in desperation and try to stop/kill the Antichrist. It won’t save them, but it might just be possible for them to save the world.
After his discorporation, he takes a very public, burning-all-bridges stand in Heaven and gives a metaphorical two-finger salute as he yeets back to possess people like a demon. He finds Crowley and is very much set on the task at hand - getting to and stopping the Antichrist - even though he and Crowley clearly have a lot of personal shizzle to discuss. At the Airfield, finally, he’s the one who actually does try to kill Adam to save the world.
Also, Aziraphale comes up with the brilliant distinction between the Great Plan and the Ineffable Plan, which implies that Heaven and Hell might be going against God, and that he and Crowley (and Adam) might just under Her protection, and would give Crowley and himself an out if only their bosses were flexible/good enough to see reason.
When it works and Armageddon IS actually avoided, he greets Gabriel coolly and unwieldingly while Crowley tries out a sycophantic (and fabulous) grovelling bow.
He has Taken A Stand and he’s not moving. For all that he frets and wiggles, he’s the guardian; constant, secure with a steady, certain inner moral compass that is much too good and intelligent to constantly align with Heaven. Crowley is the snake; wiley, slippery, flighty, constantly moving (and I mean that in the best way, I love Crowley as much as Aziraphale).
He grounds Crowley. When Crowley is finally giving up, saying goodbye to Aziraphale, refuses to give up, knowing exactly how to get Crowley moving again - pulling out another card in his… infinite variety… of ways to surprise and touch and steady the demon.
Morally, it’s like that old philosophy conundrum, the trolley problem with more heartbreak: If you could only save one, would you save your loved one or a group of strangers? When push comes to shove, Aziraphale cannot let himself throw the random bunch of strangers to the wolves, choosing his own unhappiness over the unhappiness of humanity. Add to that the fact that avoiding the Apocalypse is also the only long-term way to possibly save Crowley their relationship. (TV) Crowley is more concerned with saving Aziraphale and himself. Not a bad instinct; a very human one, in fact. His world IS Aziraphale, he moves around the angel, grounds himself in him. Aziraphale’s own happiness and well-being is contingent on Crowley being in the world, but he is willing to sacrifice that to save the actual world. He IS committed to Crowley, it’s just that Crowley can’t be in Aziraphale’s world if the world doesn’t exist. Aziraphale might owe Crowley an apology for throwing him under the cart for this, but he’s a damn good person/being and a really damn good angel.
I was gonna tie this down better to this thought I’ve been thinking a lot, but this got so long that Imma just gesture vaguely towards it, it’s not hugely related to the events of Armageddon: Aziraphale has to be constantly selfless everywhere except for with Crowley. He gets to be selfish in his relationship with the demon. Crowley, on the other hand, can only ever be allowed to be selfless and good through his relationship with the angel. Aziraphale being selfish allows gives Crowley a space to be giving and loving (in whatever way) and kind.
I know there are already lots of lovely fics out there exploring these things in profound and beautiful ways, but I got started on this essay journey, and I was damned if I wasn’t gonna finish it too.
At last, the AO3 collection is set up! We have a few authors and artists who’ve posted their works. Go have a look! I’ll be checking submissions every now and then, too, in case more essays or art are added.
