"You can stay at my place, if you like."

Remember this?

I was wondering today, why do (some) people still think that Aziraphale said this (and many other things he does/says) meaning that he doesn't want to stay at Crowley's place because he's still beholden to Heaven, it will be a sin etc etc.

Just as (some) people say he says I forgive you after Crowley kisses him because the kiss was a sin, a temptation and Aziraphale is offended by Crowley for doing this to him... I'm genuinely perplexed.

He's not saying, Oh, I don't think I should, Oh that would be wrong, Oh, are you out of your mind demon? He's saying: 'I don't think my side would like that.'

He spent 6000+ years worrying Crowley will get punished if their friendship/partnership/Arrangement/love was discovered. His first instinct here is the usual - I couldn't possibly, it would put you at risk.

We've seen how Heaven treats him. We have seen how he lies and deceives them repeatedly; S2 even starts with Aziraphale literally hiding his former boss from Heaven cos he knows he must be in BIG trouble to show up in his shop and he'll be damned (literally) before he gets them to do as they like with someone asking him for help.

So why do (some) people assume he's helping Gabe out of some responsibility TO Heaven?

It's not that Aziraphale not scared. He is. He knows Gabriel wanted to kill him a few short years before. He is not an idiot (this is a line I seem to be repeating in most of my posts).

He's not as dramatic about it as Crowley, but of course he's afraid. He is not missing Heaven in S2.

He's still terrified of them.

And that's why he's going there. That's why he's going to face his fears and save his life and his love or die trying.

*twirls into ur inbox* HELLOOOOOOOO i wanted to rant today about how ppl are like "aziraphale did mental gymastics in the final fifteen" because it annoys me so much. because what do you mean.

first off he's panicked because the m3tatron has just sprung this on him so obviously he's not going to be in a right state of mind. how do you expect himto be completely logical.

second off these ppl act like crowley wasn't completely off his head too. what the hell did he think would happen if aziraphale saidno? heaven would just leave them alone? those arent logical steps either.

third off he's honestly being pretty damn logical anyways. if he says no he's going to get smote or something. he has to say yes for his safety and for crowley's and for muriel's and for earth as a whole. and so obviously he'll at least try to get crowley to come with him. of course he'll beg, he wants crowley there with him to provide support and help him try to survive in heaven. what else was he supposed to do? tell me what the hell you would've done. tell me.

PERFECT! 💯 Nothing to add!

Here's one :\

We agree- this one's outrageous! Aziraphale is not to blame for doing what his all-powerful ab*sers coerced him into doing. It's not cool to expect ab*se victims to apologize to people for what their ab*sers forced them to do.

Thanks for the submission @little-lackadaisical

Metatron, is that you?

"Their separation was necessary"... *squints at OP*

Also "discover what he really wants"... << If he were free, if either of them were free, he and Crowley would have gotten their South Downs Cottage about a million years ago.

Please stop acting like he is cool with how heaven and hell treat him and Crowley or he's on board with heaven's agenda. We know he's not cool with any of it. We've seen it over and over. He's miserable and terrified and lonely. But he's trapped. He can't get away from them.

This may be a bad place to ask this question, but I have a bad headache and feel like making poor choices.

If some fans who have posited this turn out to be right-I will not feel surprised or that the story choice was unfounded or unearned- but at the moment I'm of the personal opinion that Aziraphale really did like the idea of going back to Heaven to fix it from the inside with Crowley and that his face at the end is a mixture of sadness about breaking up with Crowley and alarm at what Metatron has just revealed about the second coming.

If we take the story at face value-I am struggling to see why this would engender quite so much hatred of Aziraphale. In taking the narrative at face value as I am currently doing- I see a being desperate for approval and acceptance in an abusive system that they've believed in their whole lives and breaking out of that is really really difficult and sometimes there are setbacks. I guess one of the emotions I feel for Aziraphale right now is pity.

Given some recent blog posts of your's on my dash, I think there might be something I'm missing though?

This may be a bad place to ask this question, but I have a bad headache and feel like making poor choices.

Hi! Thanks for reaching out! It’s not a poor choice! We definitely want to keep these lines of dialogue open :) We try our best to be respectful when engaging in discussions like these! After all, our goal is to promote a more respectful and inclusive fandom.

If some fans who have posited this turn out to be right-I will not feel surprised or that the story choice was unfounded or unearned- but at the moment I'm of the personal opinion that Aziraphale really did like the idea of going back to Heaven to fix it from the inside with Crowley and that his face at the end is a mixture of sadness about breaking up with Crowley and alarm at what Metatron has just revealed about the second coming.

It’s certainly possible. I don’t blame him for wanting to believe what the Metatrash said - after all, ever since Crowley fell, Aziraphale has never for one moment imagined that there’s any possible scenario where he and Crowley could be safe together, so no wonder he leapt at the idea of them both being able to be in heaven together (assuming that’s what happened and he wasn’t, idk, bluffing or something - but I’m not even gonna open that can of worms lol). Also, I don’t personally think it’s wrong of him to want to try to fix heaven from the inside, either. It’s not like he has any other choice, after all.

I am struggling to see why this would engender quite so much hatred of Aziraphale. Us too! :)

In taking the narrative at face value as I am currently doing Fwiw, I don’t think anyone is or isn’t taking the FF “at face value”. It’s very clear there’s a lot of the FF we didn’t see and a lot of things about it that were deliberately meant to be confusing. It makes sense that some people think Aziraphale was happy at the idea of Crowley going back to heaven and some people don’t and some people think Crowley stopped time and some people don’t and some people think the whole thing was planned and some people think Aziraphale had a bullet in his mouth and some don’t, lol! :)

I see a being desperate for approval and acceptance in an ab*sive system that they've believed in their whole lives That’s definitely one possible explanation and if that is what was going on in Azi’s brain, that’s FINE and NOBODY has the right to condemn him for it.

But here’s the thing: We saw that Metatrash could hear what was being said in the bookshop and that Aziraphale knew that.

Given that, it’s a very safe bet that the conversation was very different because Aziraphale knew he was listening.

(We also have the extremely unsubtle “coffee or death” metaphor and we saw that Metatrash tapped the Coffee or Death logo which just happened to be facing toward Aziraphale and that Aziraphale saw him do it. Metatrash was holding a gun to his head.)

Is it possible that Aziraphale wants Metatrash’s/heaven’s approval and acceptance / still believes in him to some extent? Sure. HOWEVER. We should never assume victims believe the things their ab*sers force them to say. As a survivor, I can attest that that assumption is exceptionally painful and burdensome for victims to have to live with and multiplies the psychological harm. (And sadly, the assumption is rampant in our culture. There have been studies that show that people think victims in hostage videos who read statements prepared by their kidnappers with a gun held to their head actually believe the things they’re being forced to say. It’s deeply troubling. Not saying this is what you’re doing just to be clear lol!)

Victims get into this horrible mental pretzel of thinking that they’re as bad as their ab*ser and must secretly like and/or deserve and/or "cause" the ab*se, and so on, yada yada yada. It plays into the ab*ser's goals of causing alienation from friends and loved ones so that the victim has to depend completely on them for physical and emotional reasons, and of eroding the victim's sense of self, by making them think they're a bad person. (E.g. Victim thinks "I must be a bad person, because if I were a good person, I wouldn't have let [ab*ser's name] make me say that my friend is fat" etc etc). It’s really one of the most depressing aspects of ab*se.

Given that, I think practicing giving Aziraphale (or whatever character) the benefit of the doubt and defaulting to the interpretation of his motives that attributes as much influence as possible to the literal gun to his head lol (i.e. he’s going back to heaven because he doesn’t have a choice and needs to do it to protect Crowley, slash also to save the world, because, let’s face it, it’s not like they have any other options; they were only able to interfere with Armageddon in S1 because Crowley’s official position working for hell gave him an in) is good for us to get into the habit of, so we can make sure we extend the same respect and dignity to real-life victims/survivors. (At this blog we are HUGE believers in the idea that the way we behave toward characters informs the way we behave toward real-life people, and also reflects it).

and breaking out of that is really really difficult and sometimes there are setbacks.

Absolutely. The physical setbacks (i.e. “my ab*ser will kill me if I leave” &c &c) are far too often underattributed, however, with far too much of victims’ motivations for staying being put down to “psychological confusion” or “emotional ties” or whatever. I wish we as a society would pay more attention to how to solve the problem of ab*sers committing ab*se in the first place, and then why they are so much more likely to kill their victims if they try to leave, rather than the question of why some victims are still in love with their ab*sers and so on and so forth. Because that is the only way we'll ever find a solution. Whether you’d want to stay with the ab*ser even if you had the choice to leave is completely irrelevant when you can’t leave because they’d kill you if you did.

I guess one of the emotions I feel for Aziraphale right now is pity.

Us too!

Given some recent blog posts of your's on my dash, I think there might be something I'm missing though?

Hope this helped! :) Again, thank you for a very thoughtful ask! It gave me an opportunity to revisit some points that I think bear re-iterating frequently on the blog anyway, so I appreciate that!

'Aziraphale needs to do the apology dance' no Aziraphale needs to be hugged and told that he's doing a great job, actually

Aziraphale was such a little bastard (/affectionate) for giving Jim hot cocoa to drink when he knew his old boss's opinion on sullying the temple of his body with "gross matter."

He did the same thing with Muriel, offered them tea knowing what they probably thought of it and then amiably watched them to see what they would do with it.

He's gone rogue, people. He's corrupting Heaven one politely offered hot beverage at a time.

It's much easier not to end up in a pile of burning goo than to end up in a pile of burning goo.

Those were his options.

Guess which one would have happened if he'd "said yes to" Crowley?

finally get to make my first submission :')

_____________________________________________________

Welcome, and thank you for submitting! :)

You have chosen well, my friend! This is a ripe one lol <<

I reiterate, fandom, that it is a mistake to assume that literally ANYTHING Aziraphale says re: Heaven WHEN THEY ARE LISTENING is a reflection of his true feelings. (Not to mention, tying to guess what's going on in his brain is an exercise in futility when there are significant missing portions of the both the Final Fifteen and the rest of that week that we have not seen, and that could easily throw everything we have seen into a completely different light. And for that matter, trying to speculate on what a victim thinks or feels about their ab*ser, as though it matters to how we should feel about said victim, feels... a bit problematic?) So I'm not going to comment on that portion... except to say that the "stop them from trying to destroy the Earth" is kind of the opposite of "forget heaven's war crimes"? (Lol) And running away like Crowley suggested was much more like "forgetting Heaven's war crimes" than what Aziraphale suggested? (Not that Crowley was wrong for wanting to run off and spend whatever time they have left together. It shouldn't be Crowley and Aziraphale's responsibility to fix heaven/hell's bullsh*t, considering how powerless they both were - and how powerless Aziraphale may still be, we'll see - so it feels pretty unfair to put that expectation on either of them. But I digress.)

Even setting all that aside for the moment, however, this meme seems to have overlooked one crucial detail.

Fortunately, I happen to be extremely proficient in Photoshop. 😏 I am therefore able to present to you a slightly edited version, below:

Hope this clears some things up, folks. 😝

Love,

Mod X

Istg if one more person attributes Aziraphale’s ambivalence about their relationship to conflicting feelings about *Crowley* when it can be one hundred per cent explained by their circumstances and the fact that Crowley would be destroyed if they ever openly acknowledged their love for each other…

Look, contrast his behavior in S1, when heaven and hell constantly have a sword suspended over them, and S2 when they’re relatively safe for the time being. In S2 he drinks in the sight of Crowley like he wants to drown in him. He’s been starving for the sight of him and he can finally, FINALLY openly look at him.

Gutting.

EDIT: LMAO this was NOT the gif I meant to add!!! (I'm bad at reading facial expressions, but not THAT bad 💀) I'm SCREAMING 🤣 Thanks subway wifi 😭

THIS was the gif I meant to add, y'all:

Hey. Sorry I can’t find the actual post cuz I forgot to save it sorry but anyway it was basically talking about how Muriel is annoying and helpless.

How do you feel about this cuz I’m appalled Muriel is an angel. I feel like anyone that has that take is not a real fan

(Also sorry ik you usually talk about bad aziraphale takes, hence your name.)

Thanks if you answer this

Thanks for bringing this up! All the belittling of Muriel bothers me too. I think there might be undertones of anti-Autistic bias in it, because a lot what we see Muriel doing is trying to function in an environment where the social rules aren't obvious to them. Saying someone like that is annoying and helpless is... well, I can't think of any *good* explanation for an attitude like that, let's put it that way.

The angel thing is a good point. I've seen this same attitude with (the very Autistic-appearing) angel-Crowley as well and it's like... um, hello, she CREATED A NEBULA? <<

Just because they are cute, do not underestimate them! They could both kick our asses 😅

And no problem! We welcome all bad (and badass :) takes as submissions. I actually at one point toyed with the idea of changing our name to @badgoodomenstakes, because really our raison d'être is to call out bigoted takes in the fandom in general, rather than to plug for any one specific character. :)

PLEASE DO NOT TAG OR SEND TO NEIL GAIMAN

I made you a gift!

It's a cheesy bumpersticker style nudge to STOP SENDING NEIL GAIMAN

- fan therories about season 2/3

- your own theories about season 2/3

- other people's theories about season 2/3 (ESPECIALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION)

- your wants for season three

- things you don't want for season three (other people might want that!)

- YOUR FAN FICTIONS OR FAN ART

He has repeatedly asked not to bring these things to him. And even though his answers can be funny it can get him into legal trouble if what ends up in the show is similar to fan art/fics/creations

Please! Stop!

Bonus

Feel free to spread these around I'm so tired of the second hand embarrassment

WAHOO!

I got Macbeth tickets!

🥺❤.

😭😭😭

What’s your favourite line from good omens?

The invisible and unbreakable one that joins Crowley and Aziraphale.

The autistic community in this fandom has repeatedly said that Aziraphale is extremely autistic coded. Maybe we should start listening. Let's go. *SIGHS*

There's so much I could talk about the critiques I see over this mostly pretty harmless scene, but I'll try to focus on the ableism here:

Aziraphale's playfulness is called "roleplaying" and "dismissive of Crowley's feelings" here. And I must say, as an autistic person, I find it offensive bc this is an extremely autistic coded moment where Aziraphale was unmasking in front of the only person he allows himself to do so and that usually implies he was inviting Crowley to do the same, he was most likely aware of Crowley's anxiety there and making himself vulnerable to him by unmasking, inviting him into his space and vice-versa. (I think calling his special interest, magic, "horrible" is also anti-autistic bias btw)

We never see Aziraphale acting like this with any other character besides Crowley, with whom he does this repeatedly. It's not a new situation. Crowley knows this, and he is used to this kind of behaviour from Aziraphale. And he loves to complain about it btw, and Aziraphale indulges him on that. This is love. This is intimacy.

I know it isn't perfect, I know it lacks verbal communication, but this isn't abusive behaviour in the slightest. Better communication is something they both need to work on after 6k years of having to hide their feelings bc they were being persecuted and abused, the story is telling us this. We have a whole other season for that, the story isn't over.

Now, regarding the second paragraph, the plot made it painfully obvious that the clue was real, so Aziraphale was not going to Edinburgh for fun. He had to go, and Crowley knew it (he never even argued against it), bc of the mystery of Gabriel's situation thay could backfire on them in the future. Who knows what Heaven was doing to their angels (and what they could do to aziracrow!! That's why Crowley had an informant. Didn't Metatron prove this in the end, that the threat was real?). Sure, Aziraphale had fun, bc he was bonding with Crowley through the Bentley and he loves him, so that makes him happy, but that's it. We're allowed to make the most out of a bad situation, guys. It's also a way to deal with stress. Aziraphale and Crowley have different ways of dealing with stress, and both are valid, they're different people, it's normal that they react differently to a crisis.

This scene was a very married moment tbh, filled with comfort with you partner (enough to unmask), an old known and comfortable dance for the both of them, and even an invite to take a step forward in their relationship.

Food for thought: I've been wondering why the fandom likes to say Azi and Crowley are like a "married couple" but some ppl at the same time hate when they in fact act like one?

And finally, again, this is such an autistic coded moment that I, an autistic person, had the exact same interpretation as Aziraphale. I had never noticed, until I read this take, that Crowley could've meant anything other than "you don't know how to drive" lol. Aziraphale was being himself here. His true confident unmasked self. Bc Crowley allows him that. Bc Crowley makes him feel like he can. He wasn't pretending or intentionally misinterpreting or manipulating anyone. Assuming the absolute worst of him bc he interpreted something in a literal way is anti-autistic bias. Assuming the worst of him bc he doesn't use the same code as you to communicate is ableism. Assuming his decision-making logic is invalid bc of the way he acts when unmasking is both.

The first time he said "I forgive you", Crowley had just called him stupid. For wanting to try to get heaven to stop Armageddon. (And let's not forget that Crowley's alternate suggestion, running away to Alpha Centauri, would result in them both dying.)

The second time he said it, Crowley had called him an idiot, kissed him without consent (as far as we know - unless they worked out some kind of plan beforehand), and made the hardest decision Aziraphale's ever made a million times harder (again, as far as we know).

"Didn't do anything to him that would need to be forgiven" my ass.