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.
I read a lot of GO fic and meta and what-have-you that focuses on how unfair it was that Crowley Fell, that it was a mistake, etc. Some of it is really, really good fic/meta. But, fundamentally, I think it ignores a major point of the book and miniseries. GO’s version of Heaven and Hell/Good and Evil are just names for sides, and at the end of the day, they’re the same thing with different names.
Hell is creepy and violent and gross, and Heaven is creepy, violent and sterile. Other than basic hygiene and general aesthetic, the difference between having Ligur or Sandalphon as a coworker is pretty negligible. The series, especially, drives home the point that no one in their right mind would want to actually live in Heaven or Hell.
Anyway, where I’m going with this is that while I enjoy playing with the idea for angsty fic purposes, I don’t actually think Crowley regrets Falling except in that it puts him on the opposite team from Aziraphale, which is why he spends the whole story trying to get them on the same team instead.
Heaven & Hell: The Devil You Know (Bonus Best Buy DVD)
I found this in the street while I was on my way to work. I can’t believe someone would throw this out. Although I have the album which is becoming increasingly harder to find, I’ve always wanted the deluxe edition with this DVD as it contains a mini documentary that details how the band got back together and the recording process of the album. What I found most interesting was how the each band member described the soundof the album. It was mixed. Every band member said something different. Dio would say that the album was similar to Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules in certain moments, while Vinny Appice said it wasn’t as dark as their previous releases. The only one who got it rightwasGeezer Butler who described it as a continuation of Dehumanizer which is exactly what I thought when I first gave the then, new album a listen. I’m so glad I found this. I really enjoyed it.
thanks to your advice, I decided to translate my first novel into English to allow as many people as possible to read it.
the first translated chapter has just been published and I will try to publish a new one once a week or so (my studies could alter the schedules, please be understandable).
after saying that, I leave you the link below of the English version of the book.
every little support is appreciated, I care a lot. hope you like it.
Heaven - lie ins, satisfied smiles, matching stationary, movie nights with popcorn and friends, fluffy socks, having breakfast in bed, naming houseplants, big comfy jumpers, the smell of freshly baked cookies, skincare routines, bullet journals, the studyblr tag, stretching when you wake up, cute group chat names, pastel colours, blowing nails dry, curling your hair, FaceTiming friends for hours on end
Hell - thick eyeliner, sarcastic smirks, getting drunk with friends, safety pins, making bad decisions because you’re prepared for the consequences, ‘it was worth it’, trying not to laugh in formal situations, exploring abandoned places, acting fearless, staying up late and watching horror films in the dark, 3am, tarot cards and ouija boards, layered necklaces, sage sticks and crystals, middle fingers
Heaven in the world of Good Omens is way scarier than Hell.
Hell is…well, the thing is, Hell is obvious. The demons have all got bugs and frogs on their heads and they feed each other to hellhounds for sport and they all live in that grubby basement where your day job’s corporate records are slowly moldering to plausible deniability. They’re bad and they know it. Yeah, they might kill you, but what do you expect? They’re demons. What you see is what you get.
But Heaven…Heaven is fucking terrifying.
It is filled with things we’d recognize on Earth as signifiers of power and wealth, but they’re the kind of signifiers that are always presented in the most obnoxious, deliberately intimidating way possible. It looks like the top floor of a luxury Manhattan apartment building where all the apartments are owned by billionaires who live there two weekends a year. It’s clean, but in a sterile, featureless way. The spaces we see are almost totally empty.
The angels are schoolyard bullies who dress like oil company lawyers coming to seize a small village’s fishing waters through eminent domain. You get the sense that Aziraphale was always the weird kid they loved picking on, and they almost always travel in a pack when they go to meet him, two or three or four against one.
Demons are the kind of creatures who have sketchy informants passing information in dark alleys. Heaven has mass surveillance. And (this may seem like a small point but I think it’s important) they use mass surveillance the way repressive states use it. They don’t actively watch everyone all the time, but when they decide someone is now “suspicious,” they have more than enough passive data collection to dig up any dirt on them.
The differences are really highlighted in the two “trials” that take place in Heaven and Hell. Neither is exactly a model of jurisprudence, but there are important differences. Crowley’s is a demented show trial. There’s no defense and the standard of evidence is…not rigorous. But there’s at least some vague pantomime of it being a trial of his peers, of there being the at least theoretical possibility of multiple verdicts. Demon mob justice may not seem that great, but if nothing else, it’s witnessed. (It’s deliberately set up to be witnessed, in fact.) Someone will know it happened.
Aziraphale just gets disappeared. Gabriel calls Aziraphale’s kidnapping an extraordinary rendition and laughs about it. There isn’t even a mockery of a legal process to be had. There’s just a summary execution, already waiting for him.
But Heaven is scary not just because the angels seem to be more ruthless and more powerful than the demons. The angels are scary because they are doing all this stuff while absolutely, unwaveringly convinced that they’re the good guys, and that everything they’re doing is good and right and justified. What’s a little smiting, the drowning of a few children, the destruction of all life on Earth, when it’s For the Greater Good, when it’s all part of some grand plan they are all very confident they know the details of?
This is the logic of atrocities. The demons are two-bit gangsters and thugs. The angels are ready to commit genocide.
The point is not to avoid the war, after all. The point is to win it. Even the Voice of God says it.
