#theyre scary eldritch horror creatures
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.
