And – Aziraphale is good with details, with getting all the little puzzle pieces to fit. Crowley is a big picture demon. He has imagination. He has sharp leaps of insight that leave everyone else behind.
I love how Crowley and Aziraphale are different kinds of intelligent. They’re both super smart and idiotic at the same time, but in different ways and it’s beautiful.
Aziraphale is book smart. He knows obscure facts, history, literature, math. He can do calculations and understand Old English easily. If you give him enough time, he can analyze situations well and come up with an excellent strategy. Remember, he was the one who realized something went wrong with the baby swap, and he wasn’t even there when it happened. He’s also the first to suggest being at Warlock’s birthday party and works out all the details about the Antichrist.
Yet he can’t pick up on sarcasm to save his life, walked right into the trap the Nazis had set for him, and thinks Major Milkbottle is a real person.
Crowley is street smart, or social smart. He can read a room and think on his feet. When Aziraphale is confronted with angels, he turns into a stammering mess, but when Crowley is confronted with demons, he comes up with an escape plan on the spot. He may not know whether ducks have ears or who Agnes Nutter is, but he can tell when someone is lying or doesn’t have good intentions. He knew which kid was the Antichrist despite never having seen any of the Them before, that the war was still on despite the Horsepersons disappearing, that Greta wasn’t who she said she was, and who to bribe for his M25 plan. He can also read and understand Aziraphale better than anyone else. And that’s not even getting into his ability to keep up with and use the latest technology, design, music, and fashion.
They may both be idiots, but they’re also intelligent in ways unique to them, and it makes them perfect for each other.
It is another way they make a brilliant team, actually.
Exactly. It’s even visible in their lying / self-defence styles (which are essentially the same thing in the context of Heaven/Hell). Aziraphale cannot handle any deviation from the “script” and is easily flustered, but he always has a script and just the right wording to go along with it to avoid appearing inconsistent. So, when presented with something unexpected, he especially feels the pressure of not being allowed to get it wrong. Hence all the nervousness. For him, preparation is a “crutch” that he thinks he wouldn’t manage without. Yes, it makes him feel more comfortable, but, as evident from several scenes at the end, he’s also capable of improvising.
Sometimes that improvisation has hilarious consequences, though: for instance, in the “sorry, right number” scene, when he’s so overwhelmed by his sudden discovery that he ends up blurting out the truth instead of coming up with a more conventional (and far less suspicious) way to end a phone call (therefore, you could say that the “phone call” script has failed due to the high anxiety levels :D).
On the contrary, Crowley is naturally comfortable with improvisation. He’s capable of remaining cool and collected. He lies confidently, sometimes even smugly. Unlike Aziraphale, he doesn’t trip himself up by practicing phrases and, therefore, cutting off other potential escape routes. He trusts himself to figure out the right thing as he goes.
And one more ironic thing. Crowley is careful and calculating when needed, but not even once did he thought to question Aziraphale’s odd behavior after their Tadfield outing and doubt his words. Why? Because he’s trusted Aziraphale for thousands of years. Because, intuitively, Aziraphale is not someone to whom words like ‘suspicion’, ‘deception’ can apply. If the roles were reversed, I don’t think Aziraphale would suspect Crowley of something like this either, but remarks like ‘You are a demon. That’s [lying] what you do’ prove that he doesn’t discard this fact (possibility) altogether. Yes, again, intuitively he knows that it’s Crowley and that he would trust Crowley with his life, so this is basically Aziraphale trying to convince himself of things (in this case, suspicions) he doesn’t feel, but it’s still something that goes through his mind (as a cautionary tale, a warning if you like) and enters his speech. What he does here is apply conventional, “safe” scripts to reality and repeat them from time to time to ensure they are not forgotten and/or overlooked. They are also what he bases his defence against Heaven on.
As noted earlier, Crowley is good at developing ideas from scratch. Whereas Aziraphale, it seems, is more likely to operate in the established context. His creative (and ultimately world-saving) interpretations of ineffability (more evident in the book rather than in the series) are a proof of that. In a way, he simply doesn’t have the luxury of discarding anything he’s been taught and coming up with something different. He has to function within the system to survive. And so he does.
I like to think this is why the Arrangement worked so well for them, too. If they traded jobs not at random, but according to their unique skills, they’d get better results than doing everything themselves (aside of the benefits of not doing the things at all that would cancel each other out or only one having to travel). By their different intelligence types and ways of thinking, there will naturally be tasks that are easy for Crowley, but difficult for Aziraphale and vice versa. I imagine Aziraphale will be great at following along with the tasks that come with a more detailed script, while still bending the rules given in the assignment into something more desirable for him. Likewise, Crowley improvises all the time. A vaguely worded assignment will probably stress out Aziraphale, because he doesn’t know what is expected of him, but Crowley will strive on the freedom of interpreting it as suits his ideas. On the other hand, given too much freedom to be creative, Crowley will end up with one of those ridiculous complicated schemes that backfire on him as much as on everyone else. I can’t see that happening to Aziraphale. It’s not just that they balance each other out as friends/partners in a social context; they also really make a great working team.
If they played out their individual strengths right, they don’t only get to avoid some of their work, they also get better results. I don’t think this is something they’ll have been able to do from the start, they’d have to get to know each other’s working style and strengths first, but the Arrangement was on for a full thousand of years. Aziraphale is rather a good analytical thinker. Crowley is creative and puts in lots of effort to get the best credit he can while putting in the least amount of work possible. They’d figure out who does what best eventually.
It’s also something I think would give them an edge in a post-canon confrontation, should it come around. Not only do Heaven and Hell not really know them very well, but both of them also have lots of experience doing each other’s job, bending the rules and thinking outside the box. Heaven and Hell would be facing an angel who has been doing temptations for a millennium. A demon who knows how to do a blessing so well nobody ever caught on. Their (former) superiors don’t really know what they’re up against.
The new-TV-GoodOmens fanon tendency to take Aziraphale’s very-soft presentation as unadorned truth is be/amusing to me.
He was the angel left to guard one of the Gates to Eden and he did in fact have a flaming sword. He is also the one who WOULD have shot Adam, had Madame Tracy not intervened.
He is also the angel who’s response to “wait I need to get back to Earth to stop Armageddon” is to do something that clearly SCARED THE SHIT out of the other angels who watched him do it, with a malicious-glee-glint in his eye, who hopped disembodied down to earth, and then floated around to try to find the right place.
He also, well. Fucked around with Heaven at all. There’s such a thread of comic corporate-absurd involved that it can be easy to miss, but what we’re shown is that the hierarchy of Heaven is just as happy as that of Hell to murder, torture, restrain, make captive and otherwise punish its own in the most horrible ways possible and in fact they’re far more effective at it. They just have a lot of Rules they follow, whereas Hell acts on a whim.
And there’s Aziraphale running around lying to them and pulling the wool over their eyes and so on. Something which, very clearly, none of those other angels are interested in doing.
Fundamentally Aziraphale is a stone cold agent of divine wroth.
He just doesn’t want to be.
He doesn’t like being like that. He doesn’t likesuffering, his own or other people’s. All those times Crowley saves him, it’s important to keep in mind that Aziraphale’s in no more fundamental danger than he is when he loses his corporal form in the bookshop fire: if Crowley hadn’t shown up to save him in the church, for example, all that would have happened is that either a) he would have been discorporated and had to wait in line for a new body (or risk being reassigned) or b) Aziraphale would have had to do something Nasty to the Nazis there in order to save himself that trouble.
He doesn’t like either of those options! Those are both crappy options. But they’re not existential threats.
I’m the nice one he snaps when Crowley’s too busy having his Moment over his Bentley to take care of dealing with the soldier.
Aziraphale doesn’t like having to be cruel, or mean, or scary, or stone cold. He doesn’t enjoy it and given the choice he will in fact choose not to be.
What Crowley saves him from, over and over again, isn’t actually being killed.
Because what interests Crowley in him, and we see that, all the way back, is that very first instance of Aziraphale choosing not to be that person. That first time when what Aziraphale was supposed to be was Stern and Frightening and Judgemental and Harsh and Terrifying … . and instead he chose to court potential punishment (and actual existential threat) to give the people he was supposed to Terrify a way to protect themselves from all the scary things.
Aziraphale doesn’t want to be an instrument of judgement and wrath and what Crowley keeps saving him from is having to be. Crowley condemns the bloodthirsty executioner, so that Aziraphale doesn’t have to; blows up the Nazis so Aziraphale doesn’t have to.
Lets Aziraphale be the nice one, in fact.
Which I think is frankly far more fucking adorable.
But never let it make you think that Aziraphale is the safe one, or the helpless one.
He’s the one who, when faced with the apparent choice between killing a child and the end of the world, chooses to kill the child. Actually chooses to do it - not just plan, not just talk about, not just contemplate, but do it - and is only saved from having done it by sharing the body of someone who won’t let him.
Aziraphale is soft and slightly silly and gentle and non-confrontational and all of those things because that’s what he wants to be. He has fought for a long time to get to be that.
This is important.
Yes, this! That’s it, and it’s written out so well, too.
Good Omens is about choices. That’s a main element, this free will idea. You’re not defined by what you are born to be or told is your role. The guardian angel chooses to give away his sword and to be soft. The demon chooses to cause minor inconveniences rather than death and terror, and then he chooses to stop the end of the world, too. The Antichrist chooses his friends over the horsepeople, his home over ruling the world, the father that was there over the satanic father who was not. The professional descendent who lived her whole life following the words of a five hundred years old witch chooses to burn the next batch of prophecies instead.
Good Omens is about defining one’s own destiny and identity. That’s probably why it clicks with so many queer people, too. You aren’t what others tell you to be. You aren’t what you are expected to be. You are what you are most comfortable being.
All the ace and aro people marking out over Good Omens and its amazing love story is rather lovely and awesome
It’s kind of weird, right? Seeing a genuine, undeniable love story presented in the mainstream media that doesn’t canonically involve (or REQUIRE) romance or sex? And it is in no way whatsoever treated as “less than”, or less significant, meaningful, or real? Good Omens is al o v e s t o r y.Unequivocably. Unquestionably. Unilaterally. Even though it doesn’t have many/most of the generally established hallmarks of what a love story “should” look like.
And… And… And people get it?????? Nearlyeveryonegets it???
I’ve been into Good Omens almost a year now (yes, a bit late to the party), and I’m still not over this. For the first time in my life, I can identify with a love story on screen. It’s hard to believe.
This may, possibly, be my favorite scene in the entire series. Because I know it’s played for comedy, and Tennant really hams it up, but like many things in Good Omens it’s a well-executed joke covering up something much deeper. And once you take off the comedy veneer it’s incredibly sad.
The thing is, it’s so out of character for what we know about Crowley at this point. For all his “ooh, I’m a DEMON, I’m not NICE, I’m BAD,” his brand of “evil” is mostly mischief, minor annoyance and a little chaos. It’s giving the paintballers real guns but not letting any of them kill each other, because, quote, “that wouldn’t be any fun.” And while he can be scary in a pinch and violent when he needs to be, he’s not cruel. What is he even doing in this scene? He’s not performing his demon-ness to impress anyone here. He’s in his house, alone, yelling at plants, which–the magic of cinema has somehow been able to convey to us–are afraid of him.
Exercising total power over things that can’t fight back, exacting disproportionate, irreversible punishments for minor failings that maybe aren’t even their fault…that doesn’t sounds like Crowley, does it?
Gee, who in this story does it sound like? Oh right. Those are things God does. Those are things God did to Crowley.
And what does God herself say about Crowley’s plant terrorizing, when narrating this scene to us? “What he does is put the fear of God into them.”
I mean, on an existential level, the idea of Crowley playing God with his plants when God is an actual character narrating this scene to us is hilarious. But also…Crowley, my demon, please get a therapist.
This was the scene that really fucked me up when I first watched it. On second watch, I found the bandstand really hurt, but the first time around, this one hurt more. Because it’s so obvious what he’s doing, what he’s re-enacting there, and there’s God, bemusedly and detachedly narrating it. Just, ouch.
tbh both of these lines hit me like freight trains so I don’t think I could have physically handled an “I love you” moment anyway
they don’t say it, but they show it, over and over and over again
i’m content with that. I don’t feel cheated in the slightest.
Content with it doesn’t even begin to cover it for me. I’m grateful. It’s so much better as it is. “You go too fast for me” or “to the world” (especially given the way he says those lines) knock “I love you” right out of the park.
Before Good Omens happened to me, I was in the place of accepting that love stories aren’t meant for me. I never liked the romantic side arcs in movies or shows or books really. I could never get behind it, nothing ever clicked. It felt superficial. Hollow. Formulaic.
A lot of media is very bad at show not tell when it comes to relationships, especially the romantic ones. How often do you see characters hardly interacting, and then they suddenly kiss and say “I love you” and get married at the end of the tale? It leaves me sitting and scratching my head and wondering what happened. This way of showing relationships depends on us to see characters kissing, holding hands or saying their I love you’s and believing it without questions. It asks us to fill in the blanks. They kissed, it’s love, look at the cute ship.
But that doesn’t work for me. It makes “I love you” seem like empty words. Quickly said, quickly voided after, because there wasn’t much substance behind them.
Good Omens on the other hand is super show not tell about it. Through the entire timeline, from Eden on, in every single scene they’re in together, we can watch them grow closer. We watch them become friends, and by the time of the Globe scene, they’re just radiating fondness for one another. Their looks, their actions, it’s so obvious even without looking at a single line of dialogue. Just look at how Aziraphale’s entire face lights up at Crowley’s appearance in Paris, or the way Crowley looks after Aziraphale when he miracled the stain off his coat. Or, in what’s arguably their worst moment, look at Aziraphale’s face when he tells Crowley it’s over at the bandstand. He’s so close to crying. Look at that quivering lip and shining eyes. He’s hurting himself at least as much as Crowley.
And if you do look at the dialogue, you get so much weighty confessions of love, friendship, devotion, concern, care.
You get “you go too fast for me”. It’s a line I find more powerful with every rewatch, because there’s so much behind it. It’s not a rejection. Not at all. It’s “I need time”. It’s “I’m not ready now, it’s too much for me at this time, but I’ll be ready for it. I’ll get there. I want to get there.” It’s “please wait”. It’s “be patient with me”. I think it’s something that needs a lot of courage and trust to say, too. It’s not something you’re usually told is okay to ask for, but it’s such an important thing to feel like you can ask.
You get, a moment before, “I’ll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go”. This is the line that stood out to me more on my first watch of it. It’s an unconditional offer, and the way it’s said, you get the feeling that if Aziraphale asked to be driven to, say, Australia right then and there, Crowley would have dropped everything else and done it. This is “I’ll go anywhere, with you. I’ll do whatever you need of me, for you.” And he says it again, drunk and still not entirely over his grief in that bar. “Where are you? I’ll come to you, wherever you are.” “Wherever you are is where I want to be. Where I will be”. It’s a promise.
You get “We can go off together”. How much louder can you shout it, really? This is Crowley saying “you’re the one thing in this entire world I will pick to save if I can’t save anything else”.
You get Aziraphale’s “I forgive you”, right after Crowley tried to talk him into running off again and called him stupid. I think it’s not Aziraphale forgiving Crowley for calling him stupid. It’s Aziraphale referring to their previous conversation, to Crowley’s “Unforgivable, that’s what I am”. This is, even before Aziraphale gives up on Heaven (he still clings to hope at this point), this is Aziraphale saying “I don’t care if God condemned you, because I don’t. I forgive you.”
And “To the World” has to be the best of them all. To the World, to the world Crowley entire gave up on when he thought Aziraphale was dead, to the world they lived in together for six thousand years, to the world that’s the only place either of them fits in and the only place they can enjoy together.
No, “I love you” can stay right out of this. It’s been said a hundred times over, with looks, with actions, and with lots of better words.
The other one, though! Is it me or is this one somehow more cursed than the picture with the literal demon on it?
I mean, look. What’s up with this tiny fire? If you have a quote about surviving a fire by being more badass than the fire, you better have an impressive as fuck fire, otherwise I won’t be impressed. So you burned brighter than that barely sustainable flame in the sand you would be hard pressed to properly roast a marshmallow in? Like, wow.
The sky is brighter than the fire. The sky should not be brighter than the fire, obviously. Terrible composition. (Compare the Crowley version. Flaming like anything, that fire!)
The lighting on the model looks fake. It’s not light from the fire (because as we established, the fire is tiny and hiding in a hole on top of it). It’s orange enough to be from a sunset, but the sky is lightest behind the model, suggesting that’s where the sun would be, if it had not already set. The light on the rest of the sand in the background is a lot more blueish, supporting the theory that it’s past sunset. Conclusion: there’s a second fire next to the photographer that lights the scene, and they didn’t show us the cooler, bigger fire. No, the audience has to content with the tiny fire. We were cheated for the cooler fire, guys. (Alternatively, the light comes from an orange tinted lamp, but I’ll assume nobody drags a lamp to the beach.)
The model looks a lot weirder in this pose than Crowley. Understandable, after all she’ll have to make do with the correct number and arrangements of joints for a human body. Really, try sitting like this (hanging… slouching? I don’t even have a fitting word for this ridiculous pose). Her left foot is hardly on the ground weird as she’s pulling up this leg. It’s a miracle she’s not falling over. (Definitely a demonic miracle. Angels would not get involved in this type of thing.)
No pants but a thick knitted pullover. The pullover actually looks quite nice and warm. Not sure if it’s ideal beach wear, but, fine. But where are your pants, girl. If you can stand this warm pullover, your legs should be freezing. You’ll also get sand everywhere.
And that facial expression. I will allow the idea that it’s a sexy expression or bedroom eyes or whatnot and my ace ass can’t see it, so it just looks weird to me. But. Look at that million lightyears stare. Blank and distant. What did you see, pantless lady? (I am a little scared of the answer.)
I think I’ll give it 3/10. Nice fluffy looking pullover. Model has nice hair. Beach is a little boring, but pretty enough. Fire is rather disappointing. Model should a) go buy pants and b) see a doctor to make sure she didn’t damage any vital parts twisting like this.
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.
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.
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…
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.
This is a PSA to let y’all know that there is an Aziraphale Blend of tea available on Adagio
I just ordered it. If you ship it with the Crowley tea you get 10% off.
Ok so. Lessons learned.
Loose leaf tea is about 800% better than I remembered my God the flavors
A good ratio is a little less than 3 teaspoons of tea in this mug.
The Aziraphale tea has really great notes of sweet and bitter and spice. Possibly toss in a cinnamon stick?
The Crowley tea made me astral project into another universe. It was so good I forgot to eat chocolate after dinner.
Adagio is not kidding around when they say “high caffeine”
Do not drink both teas back to back.
Do not drink both teas after dinner.
Infinite energy does not mean infinite writing
I may have a caffeine hangover.
Good God I need more tea.
I still can’t get over the weirdly specific merchandise Good Omens has.
Like, teas for the radio show (why?). Perfumes based on the book (to smell like a flaming sword??). Nail polish based on the show (why???).
They could’ve made a notebook with Crowley’s snake symbol slapped on and we’d probably all happily splurged on it. People went on Amazon specifically to hunt down Aziraphale’s angel mug, which was already there and has nothing to do with the show whatsoever. That’s how starved for merchandise people are.
But no. They made red and blue nail polish, and nothing else. It’s so random, I love it.
If I remember correctly, there are some official pins on Discworld dot com, and a super cute official red umbrella given away at the TV Show premiere. And that’s all the official merchandise they did, I think.
Which is hilarious to me because the fandom has been here for 30 years and it literally exploded after the TV Show, you’d think Amazon would try to capitalize on such a fanbase more.
Omg it gets better, they have a HASTUR perfume
Now I’m convinced this is one of Crowley’s pranks.
What the actual fuck.
Whomakesthese?
I mean the tea is still kinda cool. Aziraphale at least likes tea. You can have it in the angel wing mug (which I was by the way convinced had to be merch).
Perfumes and nail polish on the other hand are the kind of merch they usually make for franchises that have everything else anyway, so you need a novelty to get people’s attention. This is the merch you get when everyone has their share of t-shirts, posters, mugs, duvet covers and what have you’s.
I was going to treat myself to something for Christmas/Survival of 2020, and I didn’t even find the teas and perfumes when browsing Amazon here (although they show up when using the UK and US sites). But nothing else shows up! I thought maybe everything already sold out or something, but you’re telling me there never was this kind of stuff?
So, where are my printed mugs, posters and duvet covers? They have these awesome designs on the series posters. These would look great printed out on cool glossy paper, or printed on mugs, or as notebook covers. They’re practically perfect for printing on anything and looking great.
Where is my skull and wings poster t-shirt so I can wear it to match the Crowley-ish sunglasses you can get on Amazon (also not official merch) and drink my Aziraphale tea from an angel wing mug?
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.
The interesting thing is that it’s really Aziraphale’s “wings” that are burning and Crowley’s that are lighter than the rest of the room. This isn’t a representation of Aziraphale being an angel and Crowley being a demon. Also, both of them have the same pair of “wings”. It’s like they’re sharing them. Crowley is spot on when he says they have a lot in common/aren’t so different.
This was the first scene I awwed at. Like, it’s so precious. Come here, I’ll take care of you. We’re in this together. It takes them so much time to come around, but they do in the end, and it was clear from the start by this image alone.
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.
Guys, sudden thought. Season 2 has parts set in Soho, apparently. The bookshop is on the teaser poster. But it burned down. Not in-universe, at least not permanently, but they burned down the set of it, including plenty of books and furniture and whatnot. They can’t reuse anything but the few items people took as souvenirs. They’re starting from scratch. They’re going to have to go through the work of finding all sorts of suitable clutter and books for Aziraphale again. When I look at the bookshop scenes, it seems wild they found this wonderful collection of Stuff once.
Kinda feeling sorry for whoever is in charge of putting together the set and gets to hear “no, we don’t have that anymore, it burned” half the time they ask if there’s a chance something is still in a storage cupboard somewhere.
I’d have to watch again
I’d have to watch again, but I think the area of filming is fairly cleared out and it looks uncluttered in the BTS photos. I think (not sure but I THINK) they cleared out a bunch of the more distinctive props, like the sofa and the gramophone and so on, before burning.
(And then chucked David Tennant in because why not.)
So that’s going to make their job easier.
But collecting all those books again? Making them over, re-binding them to look like old leather bounds? THAT is going to be some exhausting labor.
But, as someone pointed out, Amazon has more money than God and they aren’t spending it on their workers, so might as well send some of it to booksellers and carpenters in Scotland.
On the other hand, the approved-for-public-release descriptions of season 2 all seem to mention Aziraphale and Crowley both living in Soho. That could be the marketing team glossing over details, but if it’s not, then having your eternal adversary move in is a great excuse to not have to find all the old propsredecorate.
From what I’ve seen, Neil said something more like “our adventure starts in Soho”—something that’s neutral on where Crowley is living.
At least one of the news articles went all in with “Angel and demon living in Soho.” Whether they misunderstood or are shippers, I don’t know.
I am utterly in love with the idea of Crowley either moving into the bookshop or spending so much time there he might as well have moved in, so I know where my vote goes
You’re right, @aethelflaedladyofmercia , the shop does look emptier when Crowley runs inside… Maybe we’ll see some returning items! (Who wants to come here for a nerd meeting and pick apart what items are new and which are obviously from Season 1 in a year or two or whenever this airs?)
The adventure starting in Soho could very well just be that’s where they’re hanging out when the story begins, and actually, I’d so be here for them just vibing in the backroom of the shop, getting drunk together after being out for sushi or something. They don’t need to have moved together to be together, after all. (They look very together under that umbrella.) I just.. want to see them relaxed and happy together, as they were at the Ritz when Season 1 ended.
Guys, sudden thought. Season 2 has parts set in Soho, apparently. The bookshop is on the teaser poster. But it burned down. Not in-universe, at least not permanently, but they burned down the set of it, including plenty of books and furniture and whatnot. They can’t reuse anything but the few items people took as souvenirs. They’re starting from scratch. They’re going to have to go through the work of finding all sorts of suitable clutter and books for Aziraphale again. When I look at the bookshop scenes, it seems wild they found this wonderful collection of Stuff once.
Kinda feeling sorry for whoever is in charge of putting together the set and gets to hear “no, we don’t have that anymore, it burned” half the time they ask if there’s a chance something is still in a storage cupboard somewhere.
So, if casting for Good Omens season 2 started 15 months ago and they’re at a point where they’ll start actually filming soon, can we all take a moment to admire how quiet everyone involved has been? In this day and age where every stupid little thing is leaked? And there wasn’t a peep! Nothing! Neil and everyone else have been writing and plotting and sitting on their plans while happily interacting with fans all over the internet, and they never slipped. Any smallish hints that there might be a season two at some point were so vague most people I know in the fandom didn’t actually believe we’d see it. Do you know how much dedicated discipline this must’ve taken?
CW below for a discussion that relates to homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, acephobia, and related subjects. no specific stories, the themes just generally appear. i hope i didn’t screw up and will fix it if i did.
so i was thinking about what makes Aziraphale and Crowley resonate as a queer love story, not just a “forbidden romance” (a trope that can be painfully cishet when it wants to be, which is often).
and i mean, obviously. there are a LOT of things. a lot. but something that didn’t occur to me before is their relationship to each other relative to their sides.
You pretty much summed up my own thoughts on their story as a queer story. Their relationship is queer in context of their culture, as you lined out, and their “lifestyle” is queer, too.
They chose each other (chose a forbidden relationship), but they also choose a life on Earth. That’s another way of breaking/challenging social norms. (Compare “You are an angel, why do your consume gross matter?” to “You are *insert assigned gender*, you shouldn’t *activity/chosen presentation/etc*”. Not very different, are they?)
They spent most of their lives in the closet. Denying their feelings, outwardly, and also often to themselves and each other. When their relationship is discovered, it’s used to threaten them.
You’re right of course, not every queer life has those experiences but it feels very representative to me personally, too.
Good Omens ruined me, in some very odd ways. I mean, I’ve been keeping houseplants for years, since well before I moved out of my parents’. I have been happily misting them, too, for years, without any odd thought about it. Then Good Omens happened, and now I can’t pick up the dang mister without Crowley’s voice going in my head “THIS IS A PLANT MISTER!” in this ominous and vaguely threatening tone. I am forced to stalk through my flat brandishing the thing at my palms and ficus and poinsettia while reciting this line to them. Send help, please.
