#go meta
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Why are Shax and War so similar?
That's it. That's the post.
#good omens 2#art director talks good omens#good omens meta#go season 2#go meta#good omens season 2#good omens season two#good omens#go2
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Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality
Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.
I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.
Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,
We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.
I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.
Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)
That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.
Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.
But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.
And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.
I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)
But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.
Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).
Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.
(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)
At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.
“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.
Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.
Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.
But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.
Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)
Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.
Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”
____
In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.
Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.
Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.
And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.
And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.
#good omens#good omens 2#ineffable husbands#it's kinda like capt america: civil war#with Azi as Tony Stark: traumatized and trying to do the right thing#and Crowley being Steve Rogers: fuck the establishment let's go rogue#gos2spoilers#good omens meta#good omens 2 meta#go s2#michael sheen#go s2 meta#go meta#*mine#*mymeta#ineffables husbands#ineffable soulmates#*mybest
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I'm very normal about the fact that Crowley said he "didn't really fall" that he "sauntered vaguely downwards" and being damned is "not so bad once you get used to it" but then also when he's lamenting alone talking to god he says "i only ever asked questions" "that's all it took to be a demon" and then when he's alone drinking and grieving over his murdered best and only friend he says he "never wanted to be a demon" and that he "took a million light year fall into a pool of boiling sulphur" I'm normal about the fact that he lies to Aziraphale about how badly he feels about being a demon
#im not done but imma let this sit for a bit first#good omens#good omens 2#aziraphale#crowley#ineffable husbands#gomens#go2#mine#go meta
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Okay, this post has me thinking.
What if those totally Aziracrow-coded suits are a Clue for not only what's coming at the end of S2E6, but I'm hopeful that it's about their future, too. Because look at them. LOOK AT THEM.
They are even separated by the window pane! The art department is so crazy for this.
We've got a beautiful black suit, perfectly tailored, absolutely stunning, and ready to go. Then we have Crowley. Beautiful, knows who he is outside of Heaven and Hell. Knows what he wants (Aziraphale, obviously). He's ready for the garden, ready for their cottage in the South Downs.
And we've got a light colored suit, that still seems to be in-process of getting ready. Hard to tell from this image, but it looks like it still has an unfinished collar, and is waiting for a sleeve to be sown on? It's not finished yet, but it's getting there. If that's not Aziraphale, I don't know what is. He knows he wants Crowley, but he can't quite separate himself from Heaven. He needs to go back and learn more about himself, to realize he doesn't fit there, that Heaven isn't the place for him any longer. And then maybe he'll be ready, too.
The suits are a METAPHOR.
This show kills me with every single detail.
#good omens meta#gomens meta#go meta#gos2 meta#good omens s2 meta#good omens s2 spoilers#gos2#crowley#aziraphale#ineffable husbands#aziracrow#ineffable idiots#crowley x aziraphale#aziraphale x crowley#foreshadowing#good omens art dept#az fell#anthony j crowley#aj crowley#good omens 2#good omens
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There’s never just one ant
So there's a great Thai restaurant in my neighborhood called Kiin. Yesterday, I searched for their website to order some takeout. Here's the Google result.
That top result (an ad)? It's fake. It goes to https://kiinthaila.com, which is NOT the website for Kiin.
The *third* result is real: https://kiinthaiburbank.com
Fake site:
Real site:
I got duped. I placed an order with the fake site. The fake site then placed the order - in my name! - with the real site, having marked up the prices by 15%. Kiin clearly knows they're doing this (presumably by the billing data on the credit card the fakesters use to place the order). They called me within minutes to tell me they'd cancelled the fakesters' order.
I could still come pick it up, but I'd have to pay them, and cancel the payment to the fakesters with Amex. Actually, as it turns out, I have to cancel TWO payments, because the fakesters DOUBLE-charged me.
Here's what that charge looks like on my Amex bill. See that phone number? (415) 639-9034 is the number for Wix, who provides the scammers' website.
How the actual FUCK did these obvious scammers get an Amex merchant account in the name of "KIINTHAILA" by after supplying the phone number for a website hosting company? What is Amex's KYC procedure? Do they even call the phone number?
And why the actual FUCK is Google Ads accepting these scam artists' ads for a business that they already have a knowledge box for?! Google KNOWS what the real KIIN restaurant is, and yet they are accepting payment to put a fake KIIN listing two slots ABOVE the real one.
To be fair to these scammer asshole ripoff creeps who are trying to steal from my local mom-and-pop, single location Thai eatery, they're just following in the shoes of Doordash and Uber Eats, who did the same thing to hundreds (thousands?) of restaurants during lockdown.
Doug Rushkoff says that the ethic of today's "entrepreneur" is to “Go Meta” - don't provide a product or a service, simply find a way to be a predatory squatter on a chokepoint between people who do useful things and people who use those things.
These parasites have turned themselves into landlords of someone else's home, collecting rent on a property they don't own and have no connection to.
There's NEVER just one ant. I guaran-fucking-tee you that these same creeps have 1,000 other fake Wix websites with 1,000 fake Amex merchant accounts for 1,000 REAL businesses, and that Google has sold them ads for every one of them. Amex and Google and Wix should be able to spot these creeps FROM ORBIT. Holy shit do we live in the worst of all possible timelines. We have these monopolist megacorps that spy on and control everything we do, wielding the most arbitrary and high-handed authority.
And yet they do NOT ONE FUCKING THING to prevent these petty scammers from using their infra as force-multipliers to let them steal from every hungry person patronizing every local restaurant.
I mean, what's the point of letting these robber-barons run the entire show if they're not even COMPETENT?
ETA: Dinner was delicious
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actually... one of the bits that kills me the most in 2.06 is after crowley's 'tell me you said no' and aziraphale says 'if i'm in charge, i can make a difference', crowley just goes
with this long moment of realisation that it's aziraphale's good nature and good intentions and naivety that's motivating him and he sort of.....
.... pivots
because he thinks having a honest conversation about his feelings and their relationship might make aziraphale change his mind. cause he knows trying to stop him from seeing the best in heaven (when they/it doesn't deserve it) is futile.
and then....
#good omens#gos2 spoilers#good omens spoilers#anthony j crowley#aziraphale#aziracrow#ineffable husbands#aziraphale x crowley#go meta#he KNOWS him
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i think it's fascinating how crowley has never ever actually forced or even pressured aziraphale into anything.. like he knows exactly which buttons to push and how to well. tempt him but he's always playing a very careful game, knowing full well how far he's allowed to go and how far aziraphale wants to go. vs the entire confession scene where their whole dance goes out the window and he begs and pleads and kisses him because he's given up on the slow and safe games and it's all so desperate and uncalculated and human
#like that's why i spent years convinced that if they ever did kiss (which I didn't for a second believe they would)#az would have to be the one to initiate it coz c would never dare to make such a massive leap like that#i underestimated just how sad and tired and desperate he is fr :-((((((#good omens#gomens#go meta#crowzira#crowley x aziraphale#good omens 2
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Do you ever think about what would have happened if Mary Hodges (formerly Mary Loquacious) hadn’t interrupted Crowley and Aziraphale’s “intimate moment”?
Because I do. I think about it a lot.
First off, the way that this shot is set up is perfect. Mary - Mary who had a key role in the whole “Antichrist shuffle” fiasco, and who is a walking reminder of the approaching apocalypse that will separate Aziraphale and Crowley - is literally coming between them. The show is full of these beautifully simple, yet easy-to-miss moments that only last a few frames.
Now, on its surface, this part of the scene mostly plays as humorous because Crowley and Aziraphale are sexless-by-default, non-human entities who just happen to come across to most humans as a very aesthetic queer couple. So naturally, Mary makes the same assumption as every other human that so much as glances in their direction, and isn’t that a laugh?
Except that…she’s not actually wrong about it being an intimate moment. Not just in the physical sense, although I think this is the closest we see them physically get in the whole first season (not counting being literally inside each other’s corporations, I suppose).
But it’s intimate in the emotional sense too, because Crowley is worried and stressed about having lost the Antichrist, and now on top of everything else he’s got Aziraphale calling him “nice” and poking at some very old wounds (if he’s so “nice” then why did he Fall?). And Crowley is also probably *frightened* - they’re inside a former Satanic convent that kept regular contact with not just Crowley himself, but also Hastur, and probably other demons too. For all Crowley knows, someone from his side could still be lurking about; they could overhear and get them both in big trouble.
And as if all that weren’t enough, I don’t think I’m imagining a healthy dose of frustration with Aziraphale in the mix either. Just a few minutes prior, the angel essentially tempted Crowley into miracling the paint stain out of his coat, and then broke their rules by saying “thank you” for it. Aziraphale has spent at least the last few centuries sending him some very mixed signals and we can see that Crowley is done with them dancing around each other. That game was more or less fine before, they had time, all the time in the world. But now, in just a few days, all the time in the world will be ENDING. And yet here’s Aziraphale, playing the same game as always, acting like nothing between them has changed, even though they both know better.
So yeah, it all comes to a head in that moment, and Crowley (sort of understandably) loses it a bit. He won’t actually hurt Aziraphale and they both know that, but he has to get across to the angel SOMEHOW that he’s experiencing some Big Feelings. And he doesn’t have a whole lot of options as to how to do that. He’s too worked up to communicate effectively. So he goes with the wall slam. This causes an emotionally charged situation which we’re primed to think will have an emotional payoff - the camera pulls in close, a dramatic transition, drawing us in to the tension of the moment right along with Crowley and Aziraphale.
And then there’s Aziraphale, who…doesn’t defend himself at all. Aziraphale, who is kind but far from defenseless, who used to guard the gate of Eden with a flaming sword, who was supposed to fight in a platoon of angels in the final battle. He’s no pushover, and yet he lets himself get literally pushed over. It doesn’t even seem to occur to him to stop Crowley, not even as he’s wrinkling his precious coat.
And maybe this is just my read of this scene, but Aziraphale’s reaction to Crowley coming into his personal space is interesting in and of itself. He doesn’t act as if this is the first instance of Crowley being that close to him - and it is CLOSE. Their lips are centimeters apart. Their noses are touching.
And one might well say that all of it happens so fast that Aziraphale is caught off guard and freezes up, but as so many have already pointed out about this scene, just after Mary interrupts he looks…blatantly longing, and then more than a bit put out.
And after Crowley lets him go, he casually fixes his clothes and goes straight back to bickering. Which may be partially a defense mechanism, because they don’t have time to talk about what just happened, there clearly won’t be any emotional resolution right now. But really, wouldn’t “you go too fast for me” Aziraphale be more rattled if that were truly the first time they had crossed that physical boundary and shared space like this? He looks affected, certainly, but quickly shakes it off.
And, to take it one step further: Aziraphale knows Crowley. He knows what words are likely to set him off. He has an established pattern of having Crowley do things for him, based on Aziraphale’s own prompting (see also: wordlessly asking Crowley to help Hamlet become a hit). Aziraphale does as much tempting to get Crowley to do “nice” things as Crowley does to get him to do “naughty” things. All of which is to say, Aziraphale may have actually been baiting Crowley here, but the bait is just a little too effective, and Aziraphale isn’t fully prepared for the intensity of the response he gets. But there’s a strong case to be made that by calling the demon “nice,” he’s looking to get a specific reaction out of Crowley. Again, not the healthiest form of communication, but it’s what they have in this context, because honesty would be too dangerous.
Which brings me back to my point: it IS an intimate moment, in more ways than Mary could have possibly realized, and what if she hadn’t walked in on them? How would Crowley have finished his sentence that got cut off, and how would Aziraphale have responded to it, to Crowley’s outburst of emotion, or to their proximity?
Maybe he would have gently and politely pushed Crowley away - but to me, something about his expression and body language says he wouldn’t have. Because Aziraphale is tired of dancing around this too, actually, and in the heat of the moment, he may just have closed the distance. Especially if they’ve had “intimate moments” before this one.
And between you and me, I think they did, and I think it was after Crowley saved Aziraphale and his books during the Blitz. It’s a solid explanation for the increased tension between them in the holy water scene.
Anyway. This meta has been sitting in my drafts since before the first trailer came out, S2 is only nine days away, and I’m clearly very normal about all of this.
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some analysis of this scene from 2x02, because i am going absolutely insane over it:
first up: it's 2 500 BCE. They've known each other for around 1500 years at this point, but they haven't been meeting up very often; it's implied at this point, that they've only met at the Garden, and the Flood, and now here (as well as in Heaven, but there's varying interpretations about how much they each remember of Heaven).
(worth noting that these meetings are all bible-related meetings)
So, they don't know each other very well at all. This is why Aziraphale approaches Crowley so cautiously (apart from the fact that he thinks Crowley's going around murdering goats and soon kids). He doesn't know what happened to Crowley when he Fell, how he changed when he fell in with Lucifer, how God's rejection has warped Crowley's perspective or changed his morals (their meeting at the Flood seemed quite short, not enough time to get a definite picture.)
Aziraphale is still seeing Crowley as demonic, although there's already that thread of doubt - can you really see him trying to talk Hastur or Ligur out of this the way he does Crowley?
Aziraphale clings to the memory of Angel Crowley - Crowley gets quite defensive.
Here, Crowley reinforces that he's changed - personally I don't believe that he did fight in the War, but his views of God's Plan definitely got more extreme than "thats terrible god should get a suggestion box".
But, I also believe that here, Crowley is reinforcing that he is no longer an angel, and therefore no longer has to play by angel rules. He can do what he wants. He's a demon, it's in his job description.
And of course, that he is a demon, and he is Evil, and of course he would kill goats.
(more under the cut, because I just can't stop talking)
This shot is very yellow. Crowley's hair being the season 1 orange rather than red, the yellow walls, all accentuate the colour of Crowley's eyes, highlighting the physical reminder of Crowley's demonic nature.
I couldn't be bothered to gif it, but here, Crowley leans forward into Aziraphale's face. There are two reasons for this:
Get his yellow Demon Eyes right in Aziraphale face, just to hammer home his point.
It's an aggressive action, moving into someone's personal space like that. Saying, I could hurt you, I'm violent and aggressive and dangerous, I killed those goats, the kids are next.
The way the light hits Crowley's eyes in the above shot and the below shot also make them a very bright yellow. (Edit: I think someone pointed out that Crowley is making his eyes glow, but the overall yellowness of the scene serves to highlight this)
Clever wording on Crowley's part, because as we will find out, he faked the destruction of the goats to keep them safe, while making himself sound very evil.
You'll notice the repetition of "blameless"; this makes him seem even more evil, hurting the innocent, but also gives deeper insight into one of Crowley's biggest issues: hurting the innocent. What have they done to deserve this? Nothing.
This ties in quite nicely with what we have seen before of Crowley and free will; he gives people the option to sin. It's their actions that decide whether they end up in Heaven or Hell; they get what they deserve for their actions. He just makes it easier to choose Hell. (see: phone lines being down making people crankier and encouraging them to be horrible to each other, but it still being their choice, setting the holy water bucket above the door, so it's Ligur's choice to come in after Crowley that gets him killed.)
Note also the use of "long":
Aziraphale says to "tell me you want to do this". "Long" has rather stronger connotations than "want", but also rawer, more fundamental. Crowley is reminding Aziraphale that he is a demon, and that he has the traits of a demon, this is what he is now. He longs for violence, for destruction.
Aziraphale looks quite sad here. If you watch the video I linked, his previous conviction that Crowley doesn't want to do it is very strong. He fully believes in Crowley, that all he needs to do is reframe not killing the kids as within the rules of Hell, the way Crowley so often comes to do for Aziraphale ("Then you can't be certain that thwarting me isn't part of the divine plan too. I mean, you're supposed to thwart the wiles of the Evil One at every turn, aren't you?" "If you put it that way, Heaven couldn't actually mind me thwarting you.").
Aziraphale believed Crowley was still good, that the angel he remembered was still in there. But Crowley rejects it - and it hurts. Crowley has become what a demon should be.
Crowley looks quite sorrowful here, too: he already cares for Aziraphale (he fell in love at the Garden), and it hurts to decieve him, to disappoint him, to hurt him.
I would argue that here, Crowley is scared.
He's in shadow, which dims the yellows; his undemonic nature is about to be revealed.
And that is not safe, because Hell does not send rude notes. And here, Crowley is not doing just any temptation, but trying to help Satan win a bet (supposedly). And out of every demon in Hell, Satan is the one you want to piss off the least.
But here, Crowley is scared because Aziraphale could reveal him - because Aziraphale is on God's side, and because it is revealed that Crowley is not nearly as demonic as he makes himself out to be. He's vulnerable. Aziraphale could scorn him, hurt him. But instead:
Aziraphale is incredibly smug. "I knew I was right", he says. "I knew you were still good".
And here is another issue: Aziraphale conflates God/Heaven/angels with good, and demons/Hell with bad.
And Crowley does not see Heaven as good. He doesn't want Aziraphale to see his angelic core past the demonic exterior. He's on his own side.
This, for Aziraphale, confirms that "the angel you knew is not me", is not correct.
And I think, out of the three minisodes, it's this one that does the most for fleshing out Aziraphale and Crowley's frames of mind this series, and why they choose what they choose in ep6.
Aziraphale has been proven right about Crowley's angelic nature, and that he wants to do good, but can't, for fear of Hell's retribution.
And Crowley does not see Heaven as good. He recognises that being an angel again will not allow him the freedom to do good. (as Aziraphale had to try and talk a demon into helping him save the kids from God.)
#good omens#crowley#aziraphale#meta#good omens meta#job minisode#ineffable husbands#aziracrow#go meta#good omens analysis#late.meta
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Nothing Lasts Forever - META
It's just really struck me how utterly bizarre the line "nothing lasts forever" is, considering that it comes out of THIS GUY'S mouth:
Don't get me wrong, this line has never sat right with me, it felt oddly placed and off - almost everything else he says and does in that scene could potentially be keeping in character with who he is, his arc, his trauma... but not this.
Why?
I mean, we're talking about Aziraphale here!
The one who literally collects ancient first editions and preserves them...
The one who wears old, worn clothes because they're comfortable and he likes them...
The one who almost killed a little kid because he wanted the Earth to carry on just a little bit longer...
The one who has desperately fought to keep his demon alive and away from the threat of Hell by any means necessary.
These are not the actions of someone who believes nothing lasts. He has spent his existence protecting the things he wants to last, often going to extraordinary measures, even going against his own moral code, consistently showing that he does, in fact, want it all to last forever.
So why say it?
The only explanation that makes sense to me is Aziraphale is trying to wave a warning flag in front of Crowley's face. Hes saying: "You know me, I know you do, you know me better than anyone and you know I would never say this."
The old "if you ever hear me say these words, you know I'm in mortal peril" bit.
The only problem with this, of course, is that Crowley has just confessed - all the things Aziraphale never ever thought he would hear him say, at least not yet, and not so openly... and it's the wrong timing, the worst timing ever, because Crowley is too wrapped up in his own emotion that he can't see what Aziraphale is too scared to say overtly (lots of sideways glances to Metatron just outside the window).
Aziraphale is waving great big "I am not okay help me!!" signs at him, saying all the things he would never say - "you're the bad guys" and "you can be my second in command" and "just like the old times"... and the big one, "I forgive you" instead of the "I love you" they both know it should have been.
The worst part is that Aziraphale expects Crowley to pick up on his signals, and is so hurt and frustrated when he doesn't... not just because it means he is putting his life at risk but because maybe Crowley doesn't know him after all. Maybe they aren't what he thought they were.
But can I leave this on a happy(ish) note?
With this in mind, I'd like to bring you back to the final scene with 'A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square' - most people believe that either Crowley queued it up to take Aziraphale to the Ritz, or the Bentley did it...
But if all the above is true, and Aziraphale has been desperately trying to get Crowley to see his coded messages, I humbly submit the theory that it was actually Aziraphale who set up the song to play.
One last attempt to show Crowley what he couldn't risk saying out loud.
Let's hope he got the message.
#good omens meta#good omens#crowley#aziraphale#neil gaiman#ineffable husbands#aziracrow#good omens 2#david tennant#good omens fandom#michael sheen#fuck the metatron#go meta#die metatron die#no nightingales#nothing lasts forever#aziraphale defense squad#aziraphale defender
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This maybe has been said and I missed it but in s2e6, I’m pretty sure Aziraphale thinks Crowley has been sucked back into Hell after escorting the humans out of the bookshop. From Aziraphale’s perspective, Crowley has left with the humans into the street and is surrounded by demons. He doesn’t return, and Aziraphale becomes desperate to stop the attacking demons - “desperate measures must be taken.” In 1941, Aziraphale says “I knew you’d come through for me - you always do.” Crowley tries to run from his problems, but he always comes through for Aziraphale. Aziraphale knows Crowley wouldn’t just leave him, unless something happened. In Scotland, we saw Crowley helping the humans and being sucked back into Hell as a result. When Crowley comes back from Heaven, Aziraphale says “you came back” and you can hear the relief in his voice. His expression and tone of voice when he says he “did the thing with the halo” reads as “I got desperate because you didn’t come rescue me and I assumed you were gone.” Aziraphale knows Crowley will always come through for him, so since he didn’t this time, something must have happened to him and the most logical in this instance would be that Hell took him. They never get to talk about how Crowley was actually in Heaven, so this assumption never gets addressed.
Why does this matter? The Final 15. Throughout the series, Aziraphale says, out loud to Crowley, that he is worried Hell is going to destroy Crowley. And it appears that that fear has come true at least a little bit, and at least one time, in Scotland. So if Aziraphale thinks that Crowley has been captured and tortured by Hell again, and someone told him “if you come work for me, I’ll make it so Crowley is never under Hell’s power ever again by reinstating him as an angel,” I have a hard time believing that Aziraphale would say no. The love of your eternal existence has been in danger for millions of years, and someone offers you a way to keep them safe? Right after you think they’ve suffered from that very danger? I would take that offer, too.
To be clear, I don’t think Crowley should have taken the offer. He’s been abused by both Heaven AND Hell, and they are both better off without them. I also think that, just like Crowley doesn’t quite say what’s on his mind - he doesn’t tell Aziraphale what he saw of Gabriel’s trial or that what he really wants isn’t to run away but to love Aziraphale openly as a couple - Aziraphale doesn’t quite say what’s on his mind either - he doesn’t care about either of them being angels but he does care about keeping them safe. I also want to be clear that I don’t think Aziraphale wants to be angels together in Heaven. I really think this boils down to keeping both of them safe and, bonus, they get to stay together.
Yes, they need to talk to each other and yes, some of Aziraphale’s comments were shitty (“you’re the bad guys.”). But I think the show is too well-written for all of Aziraphale’s character development to be thrown away and their long, long history completely forgotten in the last 15 minutes of episode 6. I think the world of Good Omens is too rich and deeply layered for that.
Let me know what you think!
#good omens season 2#good omens#ineffable husbands#aziraphale#crowley#brain rot#good omens meta#go meta
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Anybody else ever lie awake and think about how they placed plant photographs in the kitchen behind David Tennant, and removed the background behind Michael Sheen for the last shot of Staged so that it would look exactly like the last shot of Good Omens? Just me? Okay.
Good Omens Season 2, Episode 6 (2023)
Staged Season 3, Episode 6 (2022)
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Thanks for rewatching it with me @ghstptats @embracing-the-ineffable @thebluestgreen! Xx
#good omens meta#good omens 2#art director talks good omens#go season 2#go meta#good omens season 2#good omens#staged#david and michael#bbc staged#michael sheen#david tennant
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Defining Ineffable Love (or, Aziracrow Learn the Rules of Romance)
(In response to this ask about ineffables and asexuality)
One of the major threads this season was Aziraphale and Crowley asking themselves what exactly is their relationship. Not what it is in terms of how much they love each other. (That's a given.) But what it is in terms of the human implications of their love.
Crowley and Aziraphale definitely come at the relationship with different perspectives, in terms of what they’re willing to admit to the relationship being. I don’t think we can entirely interpret it in human terms.
–David Tennant (source)
For 6000 years, they’ve never put a name on their relationship. They didn’t, because they’re inhuman, genderless, sexless beings and they didn’t grow up (as it were) with labels. And even when they did learn them, they couldn’t say it was love, because admitting that was a death sentence.
All of Aziraphale’s heart eyes and pining could live comfortably in his mind if he never admitted what that said about him as an angel (trauma compartmentalization). Crowley tries desperately to be cruel and nasty to add white noise around the blatant reality of his constant loyalty to Aziraphale. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real and they can’t punish you.
After the Not-pocalypse, for all rights and purposes, Aziraphale and Crowley chose humanity as their identity. We see Aziraphale “playing house” in various human roles (as a landlord, a private eye, a magician).
We even see Crowley intentionally taking on human behavior to handle emotional issues: “Just breathe, that’s what humans do.” They’re slowly and intentionally enculturating themselves into the world they want to belong––earth.
Yet it’s setting up Maggie and Nina that makes Aziraphale and Crowley start thinking about their relationship as a human construct.
Because fundamentally, Aziraphale and Crowley are not human. Like Neil Gaiman tells us constantly, they can’t be defined in human terms when it comes to gender and sexuality. They can shift and move through each and any of those markers at will, purely for the pleasure of the thing: “angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”
IMO that makes them originally asexual, in the sense they were created without the need for sex. And it makes them fundamentally transgender and genderfluid, because while on earth, their sexless, eldritch spiritual bodies take on human, gendered forms and clothing. What gender (and sexuality) they identify with while on earth varies through the eras. Crowley definitely has a fluid gender identity, while Aziraphale appears to have settled on gay man (aka THE southern pansy) for his internal typology (although all of these identities are subject to change).
In the midst of all this fluidity, it’s no wonder Aziraphale and Crowley haven’t thought of their relationship in human terms before. There’s just so much different in them and their bodies than what they see in humanity. And there are no books and songs that show the kind of love they have, in the malleable, sexless bodies they have, with the background they have; it’s all ineffable.
Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t start out thinking they were in a romantic relationship. Whatever feelings they had were long repressed, redefined, and shuttled away. But they did love each other, without question. And it was that love which scared them, because it was bigger than anything they saw among humans, a love that was beautiful and blasphemous and unfathomable.
Kinda like what David Duchovny said about Mulder and Scully in The X-Files, “I don’t know if they’re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.”
Now take this profound, ineffable love and drop it into the little boxes and labels human culture has created for itself.
Full disclosure: I’m an asexual demiromantic person in a queerplatonic relationship, so I’ve done a fair bit of research on what romance is and how the rituals of romance are, in many ways, social inventions that vary from culture to culture. There’s love and then there’s romance, and they don’t always overlap. So my interpretation of Aziraphale and Crowley comes through this lens and the fact that Neil Gaiman has affirmed the validity of an ace-spec reading on our ineffables.
Which brings me back to my thesis: That only now are Aziraphale and Crowley thinking of themselves as a romantic couple, precisely because they are interfacing with humans and taking on their social rules.
I like this one asexual person’s description of their experience, which feels very much like our ineffables (from a very good article, I def recommend):
If there is a border between friendship and romance, then in my internal landscape, it goes right through a misty forest where no one has ever bothered to place signs....
Neither of us had intended to start anything even vaguely romantic, but the activities we did and the intense kind of immediate connection we had was coded as romantic in our culture.
That’s what Crowley realizes when Nina confronts him about his relationship to Aziraphale.
“It looks like that from here.” What Crowley and Aziraphale share is beyond definition, but Nina cannot imagine the anything beyond the human labels she was taught. The tragedy of an everlasting love is that it can only be conveyed properly to other humans if it is cast in such small human words––partner, boyfriend, husband.
Because when Crowley denied those human roles for Aziraphale, Nina slid down the path of thinking Aziraphale was just his “bit on the side,” because there were no labels left she could imagine for them. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real.
That’s the purpose of labels, to culturally validate a person's identity. Labels, of course, DO NOT create reality; people's experiences are always real, in all their varied ineffability. But labels allow a space for culture (ie other humans and political and legal society) to recognize formally your lived reality.
So Crowley started really thinking about him and Aziraphale, about the ineffable love between them and realized that in human terms, those would be the things he’d call Aziraphale, because those were the words that gave Aziraphale that place of importance in his life.
But with that realization comes all the human trappings and behavioral patterns around those words (the candlelit dinners, dramatic rescues, drinks at the Ritz, etc.) which Crowley had never thought of before, and yet… maybe romance is what he and Aziraphale have been doing all along.
That’s why this season centered so much around Aziraphale and Crowley using cultural artifacts (film and literature) to understand romance, because romance is so deeply socially-defined.
Aziraphale himself has been leaning hard into the romantic social cues (he’s more well-read in the cultural trappings of romance than Crowley is), especially post-Blitz. But when he watches Maggie and Nina dancing, he works up the courage to do something with Crowley that’s even more explicitly loaded as “traditionally romantic” than anything he’s done up to that point.
Because while risking their lives for each other and defying everything for each other is love in its purest form, dancing (specifically in Jane Austen’s world) is a public performance coded for potential marriage partners. It's an intimate ritual of the entire body. (And in British slang, dancing has been used as a euphemism for sex.)
Crowley's "We don't dance" is really telling, because it shows Crowley’s awareness of the unknowable devotion between them vs the human roles Aziraphale is asking him to fill, specifically its physical aspects. Aziraphale is asking to make their relationship more public, more physically explicit, more coded as romantic in a setting specifically intended to couple individuals.
While Maggie and Nina inspired Aziraphale to progress their relationship into a publicly physical direction, Maggie and Nina inspired Crowley to think of the emotional implications of their human roles: the commitment, security, and monogamy of a husband, a partner, an us.
That’s what he decides after Maggie and Nina confront him in the end. “You never say what you’re really thinking.” He wants to codify his relationship so they each become responsible to one another. Aziraphale has always been his soulmate, the one he could always rely on. But he wants to place a word and a role to their love that will bring with it Aziraphale’s commitment and dedication to him.
And that's another reason why Crowley kisses Aziraphale, because he knows Aziraphale was willing to make their relationship physical, and he wants that, too. To consummate this bond in the way humans do.
But Crowley doesn’t really know how to kiss; he’s not as worldly as he makes out to be. (It’s Aziraphale who owns the gun, and Crowley who’s never fired one.) He uses the kiss as a tool to get across to Aziraphale what he wants for them, in the physical language Aziraphale has been using, because "one fabulous kiss and we're good," right?
But it doesn’t work, because real life and real emotions don’t work like that; life and love don’t follow a script, despite the novels and plays and songs.
Aziraphale and Crowley spent this entire season trying to figure out what their relationship is and what they wanted out of it, trying to make sense of the unfathomable thing they share and the human implications of it, and not quite landing on the same page.
Part 2 of this Analysis, covering a correction in Crowley’s statement (“You don’t dance”) and the further implications of dancing/sex.
#please see the part 2 listed at the end for an analysis Crowley’s “you don’t dance#good omens#good omens 2#ineffable husbands#go s2 meta#go meta#good omens meta#queer#asexuality#asexual#aromantic#genderfluid#gos2spoilers#go s2#good omens 2 meta#ineffable romance#*mine#*mymeta
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This is just a stray thought for now. It might turn into something more later. We do a lot of deep analysis on Aziraphale's relationship to heaven, and the push and pull it has on him, and how he sees himself in relation to it. We typically contrast that with how Crowley broke from heaven. But heaven and hell are two different levels of the same organization.
As I have mentioned before, Crowley's fall from heaven isn't what got him to being on his own side. It's his separation from hell too that got him there. I think there is a lot to say about Crowley's relationship to hell that's been getting lost when the focus is so heavily on comparing how Aziraphale and Crowley experienced separation from heaven specifically.
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in a season full of meta-commentary on Classic Romantic Tropes and How to Use Them™ it really is truly, truly ironic and tragic and fitting that Crowley tries to fix it with a kiss. it's like in the movies, like in the stories, make them shelter from the rain, make them dance at a ball, make them kiss, and it will all be all right, it will all be lovely, Happy End, and he doesn't really believe this when he kisses him, he knows it is (always already) too late, but he does it anyway, the human way, their way
#good omens#crowley x aziraphale#ineffable spouses#ineffable husbands#go meta#gos2#good omens season 2#my omens#fuckfuckfuck#it hurtsssss
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So I’m fascinated by the coffee, because I don’t think it affected Aziraphale’s decision in any way.
And I don’t think it affected his decision because his decision was completely in line with his character! I’ve seen the whole cyanide theory thing and it doesn’t make sense to me; he didn’t seem high or compromised in any chemical way. And his decision, as much as it hurts, makes sense with who he is and his (toxic) relationship with Heaven.
So why is the coffee so weird?
Maybe I’m just focusing on it because I was a barista for a long while, but I’m so confused.
First of all it’s slightly inconsistent. When the Metatron orders it (ha ha I’m so predictable my autocorrect tried to turn that into Mettaton), he orders it with ‘a dash’ of almond syrup, and when he hands it over to Aziraphale he describes it as having a ‘hefty jigger’ of almond. What?
Secondly, the Metatron is weirdly pushy about it. He comes up rather close, puts it in Aziraphale’s hands, there’s a bit of odd business where he watches him drink it.
Thirdly, oat milk. Why oat milk?
(I admit to being slightly and entirely irrationally biased against oat milk bc the people who wanted other milk substitutes we didn’t have were generally polite about being redirected to our three options, while the oat milk people were very “HOW can you NOT have OAT MILK” and then the chain replaced coconut, imo the best of the ones we had, with oat. But that’s not the point here.)
Point being why a milk substitute at all? Side-stepping the argument about whether veganism is actually good for the planet or for animals, it doesn’t really make sense for it to be an Angel Thing— they’re not interested in preserving the planet, they want to end it, and it’s not going to be out of respect for the fauna, because the whole “the stars are just there to look at” along with Job’s innocent goats make it pretty clear that this theology falls on the “the animals/everything else is there for the humans’ use/appreciation” side.
Fourth point, why coffee at all? Correct me if I’ve missed one, but I can’t recall a single point in the book or either season when Aziraphale drinks coffee. Alcohol, tea, cocoa, but not coffee. Even when he goes to Nina’s shop earlier in the season, all he gets is a plate of Eccles cakes nobody eats. Him asking if six shots of espresso will calm Crowley down also kind of suggests he’s not very familiar with coffee, haha.
So it’s been nagging at me a lot, and what it seems like to me is… the coffee doesn’t mean anything in universe. But it means something to us. It’s Doylist, not Watsonian. It’s weird. It’s just weird. The Metatron’s description of the coffee is a little inconsistent because he doesn’t give that much of a shit about minor truths. He’s pushy about Aziraphale drinking it because it’s a gift and he needs Aziraphale to accept it and feel grateful, it’s a signifier of the hierarchical dynamic between them. It’s an oat milk latte because that’s trendy and available across the street, and because the Metatron doesn’t actually care what Aziraphale is specifically fond of or interested in— it’s one of those human ingestables he likes, after all.
I think what the coffee’s there for is exactly what it did to me— it makes everything really uncomfortable, even before we really know why the Metatron’s there. It’s the first pang of anxiety as things turn from lovely resolution into everything going to shit. It feels weird and wrong because it’s weird and wrong.
I thought it might be anticlimactic for it not to mean anything in-universe, but… I actually don’t feel that way. What it’s there for is incredibly important, even if it’s just to illustrate where we’re going.
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