#Good Omens (1990)

[bugbugboy]

We're travelling the world, you and I. What's next, alpha centauri?

[saddleseatollie]

i've been thinking a lot about how neil gaiman has said that season 3 will be based on an unpublished sequel to the original book. i can't stop wondering if that means that he and terry pratchett had always planned for crowley and aziraphale to be romantically involved. because their dynamic was different in the book, and i felt it was more of an "unlikely friendship" story rather than "secretly pining for 6,000 years" like it is in the show. whether it was originally planned or not, i'm obviously very happy that neil chose to take it in that direction for season two, but i can't help but be curious about it, especially since the book was originally published in 1990 and obviously it was a different time where having queer representation like that was rare.

[fumblebee]

THERE, RIGHT THERE! 🫵

"So to that extent I suppose he does symbolize humanity." -TP

"so you can actually tell them things, give them messages, get terribly, terribly serious, and terribly, terribly dark, and because there are jokes in there, they'll go along with you, and they'll travel a lot further along with you then they would otherwise." -NG

Where has this post BEEN all my life iv been looking for interviews EVERYWHERE.

Anyway, this is what I MEAN y'all, when I say good omens is a story about humanity and the choices we have to make while we're alive. This is what I'm TALKING ABOUT when I say that theme is really presented through layers of humor and fantasy. this is exactly what I mean and too get so close to saying and thinking exactly what the authors have said before, and to do it by accident? Is extremely cool lemme tell ya. Very validating.

I know this probably would be obvious or you've seen this post before or in some way this is not as big of a deal to you but it certainly is to me.

It means I'm doing something right.

And I'm also trying to get more into Terry Pratchett's other works and get a sense of his voice and him as an author, and this being the one of the first things iv read of him actually speaking about something has been very nice.

Very very proud to say I picked up exactly what they were putting down, as that is a rare occurrence for me, a person prone to vast misunderstandings.

From Locus in 1991 on tour, Terry Pratchett & I talk about how Good Omens was written...

Pratchett & Gaiman: The Double Act

Neil Gaiman: “The first radio interview we did in New York, the interviewer was asking us ‘Who is Agnes Nutter? What is her history? Is Armageddon happening?” and so on and so forth. After a while, we twigged he hadn’t realized this was fiction. He thought he’d been given two kooks who’d come across these old prophecies and were predicting that the world was going to be ending.“

Terry Pratchett: "Once we realized, it was great fun. We could take over the interview, since we knew he didn’t know enough to stop us.”

NG: “And at that point, we just did the double act.”

NG: “We’re working on seeing how many smart-alec answers we can come up with when people ask us how we collaborated.”

TP: “I wrote all the words, and Neil assembled them into certain meaningful patterns… What it wasn’t was a case of one guy getting 2/3 of the money and the other guy doing ¾ of the work.”

NG: “It wasn’t, somebody writes a three-page synopsis, and then somebody else writes a whole novel and gets their name small on the bottom.”

TP: “That isn’t how we did it, mainly because our egos were fighting one another the whole time, and we were trying to grab the best bits from one another.”

NG: “We both have egos the size of planetary cores.”

TP: “Probably the most significant change which you must have noticed [between the British and American editions] is the names get the other way 'round. They’re the wrong way 'round on the American edition [where Gaiman is listed first] –”

NG: “They’re the wrong way 'round on the English edition.”

TP: “Both of us are prepared to admit the other guy could tackle our subject. Neil could write a 'Discworld’ book, I could do a 'Sandman’ comic. He wouldn’t do a good 'Discworld’ book and I wouldn’t do a good 'Sandman’ comic, but –”

NG: “– we’re the only people we know who could even attempt it.”

TP: “I have to say there’s a rider there. I don’t think either of us has that particular bit of magic, if that’s what it is, that the other guy puts into the work, but in terms of understanding the mechanisms of how you do it, I think we do.”

NG: “There’s a level on which we seem to share a communal undermind, in terms of what we’ve read, what we bring to it.”

TP: “In fact, people that have read a lot of the 'Discworld’ books and a lot of the 'Sandman’ comics will actually find, for example, Neil put into one of the 'Sandman’ comics a phrase lifted out of a 'Discworld’ book. I spotted it in a shop and said, 'You bastard! You pinched my sentence. Everyone liked that line, and you pinched it.’”

So how did the collaboration on Good Omens begin?

TP: “Neil wrote several thousand words a couple of years ago, which was part of the main plot of Good Omens.”

NG: “I didn’t know what happened next, so I put it aside and I showed it to Terry. One day I got this phone call from Terry, saying 'Remember that plot? I know what happens next. Do you want to collaborate on it, or do you want to sell it to me?’ And I said, 'I’ll collaborate, please.’”

TP: “Best decision he ever made! I didn’t want to see a good idea vanish. It turned out, more and more things kind of accreted 'round it as the book was written. Also, Neil went and lost them anyway, so it all had to be retyped.”

NG: “I’d lost it on disk, so I gave him a hard copy, which meant he had to type it in. He kept changing it.”

TP: “I changed it so I could make the next bit work. The thing kind of jerked forward quite quickly, as both of us raced one another to the next good bit, so we would have an excuse to do it. Both of us cornered certain plot themes which we stuck to like glue.”

NG: “Like the reluctance with which I handed over the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse to Terry when they got to the airbase.”

TP: “I seldom let Neil touch any of the bits involving Adam Young himself.”

NG: “When we got to roughly the end, we could actually see which characters we hadn’t written. So we made a point of going in and writing at least one or two scenes with any of the characters that up until then we hadn’t written.”

TP: “Insofar as there’s any pattern at all, we worked out what the themes were and then we each took a theme and wove that particular strand.”

NG: “The other pattern, of course, was that you’d do your writing in the morning and I’d do mine late at night.”

TP: “Which means there was always someone, somewhere, physically writing Good Omens.”

NG: “It took nine weeks.”

TP: “We look upon Good Omens as a summer job. The first draft for nine weeks was sheer, unadulterated fun. Then there were nine months of rehashing, then there was the auction.”

NG: “When you have situations when you’ve got three agents, five publishers, all that kind of stuff….”

TP: “Our friendship survived only because we had other people to shout at. So I could say, 'Take that, you bastard!’ and hit his agent.”

NG: “One thing Terry taught me, when we were writing the book together, was how not to do it. Too many funny books fail because people throw every single joke they can think of in, and have an awful lot of fun, and eventually it just becomes a collection of gags.”

TP: “The big problem you face if you’re working collaboratively on a funny book is that you start with a gag and it’s great, it’s very amusing, but with the two of you discussing it, eventually it’s not good anymore. It’s an old gag from your point of view, so you avoid it and you take it further and further. What you’re putting in is a kind of specialized humor for people who work with humor. There’s an old phrase, 'Good enough for folk music.’ As you work, you have to stand back and say, 'Never mind whether we are bored with this particular gag, is the reader going to be bored with it, coming to it fresh?’”

NG: “One of the great things about humor is, you can slip things past people with humor, you can use it as a sweetener. So you can actually tell them things, give them messages, get terribly, terribly serious and terribly, terribly dark, and because there are jokes in there, they’ll go along with you, and they’ll travel a lot further along with you than they would otherwise.”

TP: “The book has got its gags, and we really enjoyed doing those, but the core of the book is where Adam Young has to decide whether to fulfill his destiny and become the Antichrist over the smoking remains of the Earth, or to decide not to. He’s got a choice, and so have we. So to that extent I suppose he does symbolize humanity.”

TP: “Bear in mind that we wrote Good Omens while the Salman Rushdie affair was really just coming to a boil in the UK. But no one’s going to go around burning copies of Good Omens, no on would think about that.”

NG: “Yet everything is blasphemous. Technically speaking, Good Omens is blasphemous against religious order, as blasphemous as you can get. And Gollancz have just bunged it in for the big religious award in the UK, which we find very strange. They actually asked the archbishop of Canterbury to send vicars 'round to have serious tea with us.”

(More at http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/1991_Gaiman_Pratchett.html)

[wdapteo]

it's actually way funnier to believe with your whole heart that Crowley and Aziraphale were indeed inspired by Dan and Phil. what, you think it's impossible that Sir Terry Pratchett took a peek into the future and used these gays' love story as source material? I wouldn't put it past him.

[crikey01]

why would i sleep when i can be thinking about 1990 Eddie Kaspbrak as Aziraphale

[wheatormeat]

we're really returning to the mid 2000s with the angel x demon fics

[spacekooks]

Former Angel of the Eastern Gate.

GOOD OMENS 2x04

[meatballlady]

I'm actually really glad we'll have another writer(s) for S3. S1 was missing something, and I really believe it's because Pratchett wasn't able to be there to personally bring out more of the vision. My favorite parts of s2 were from John Finnemore, and the minisodes were really cool. I was disappointed initially when the original plan for s3 only one writer because...

It's always been a collaborative effort. It's always been more than one person. It's actually really awesome that we'll have even more creatives adding to the story. I'm really excited y'all.

[penguinpower1101]

Random shower thought.

If I had a nickel for every time an autistic dealer of rare books stopped the end of the world with the help of his taller, lankier, equally Autistic husband and then later "Wasn't on speaking terms." with said husband, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, But it's weird that it happened twice.

[angelasiol]

It is often said that Crowley and Aziraphale did not speak from 1941 until the 1970s, but I believe that they did have communication. 1. They had an agreement where they had divided the work by cities. Each one acted by performing miracles and temptations. This way they respected each other's work, and did not intervene in each other's work. The assignments had to be communicated in some way. 2. In the book and series they say that they usually met in a park to talk. 3. It can be said that from 1941 until the 90s they had not met again in the bookstore since they had a pending emotional issue that did not materialize, but they did meet in other places.

[intenseperpetualbrainrot]

David Tennant showing up to Doctor Who's set first day: are you gonna set me on fire

big Russ: no??? Wtf? You're aware you have rights?

DT: interesting... Are you gonna recast me

Big Russ: as what? and I wasn't planning on it

DT, reading: ... Five fennec foxes in a trench coat

Big Russ: no? What's Neil Gaiman been doing to you?

DT: I'm just not sure this project is going to work ou-

Big Russ: I'll let you work with Catherine Tate

DT: out to be bad. It won't be bad. Mhm.

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

Those of you voting for tenrose in the David Tennant (doesn’t) Fuck™️ poll… I have not forgotten the pain and disrespect Tennant gave to Martha Jones and I will not give that goofyass bug-eyed Doctor a goddamn thing. He knows his sins. Martha has suffered more than the Gay Angels ever have 💅

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

Whenever I make a post that includes a reference from the Good Omens book, I always use my hardcover for the text picture. It's not a first edition, but it was printed in 1990 and it just feels like it has all of those years in it somehow.

I'm not saying it's old. I have older books by far. It just feels... loved. Like even before it made its way to me, it was special to someone else.

I adore the picture on the back cover, that it's visible from the outside, and especially that it clarifies which author is on the left and right. I love that they're dressed in black and white, each posed against a contrasting background.

It's almost always face down on my desk and the sight of that photograph always brings me joy.

[moonage-tea]

the angel of the opera ! ☆

[rcreveal]

The Trouble with a Keen Manager-Ch7

A 1990's Through the Ages story set pre-Antichrist. Crowley and a keen new manager are getting deeper into a battle of paperwork while Crowley's been cut off from most of his demonic powers due to an Accountability drive in Hell. Aziraphale and other new Whickber St characters help out. (Terry Pratchettesque banter and hijinx)

Dave looked up from the bar where he was polishing a glass and pointed his chin to the kitchen when Crowley walked in. The hungry demon made a big plate of pub fare and polished it off before putting his dishes and the dirties from the bus bins into the industrial washer. He set about cleaning the kitchen since it wasn’t yet time for his shift out front.

After a while Dave came into the kitchen looking for Anthony, eyebrow raised at the unrequested industry of his unlikely new hire.  Freshly washed and shaved, the lad still sported his kilt and heavy soled boots, knobby knees and elbows poking out so the redhead didn't look completely filled out yet, despite his lanky broad shoulders.

“Good job, lad.  I like the initiative,” Dave set down an official looking employment form on the only dry, clear space in the kitchen pushing the paper and a pen towards the lad. “Just fill these out for me, so I can hire you officially.  Just the usual stuff,” he explained.

Anthony picked up the form like he’d never seen one before, reading it quickly, then glancing up at Dave, an awkward smile that seemed to be trying for shifty on his face.

“Do we have to be so ‘official’?  I’m happy to save you the extra paperwork and just take cash?” Anthony offered hopefully.

Grabbing the other kitchen stool, Dave sat across from the lad, “Sorry, Anthony, I don’t employ people under the table.  I’ll need these filled out with your National Insurance Number and copies of your birth certificate or passport, to prove you can work in the UK.  It’s a bugger, paperwork, but it keeps me open an’ operatin’, you understand.”  

Mouth open, the kid came up with a plausible lie on the spot, “I understand, Dave, I’ll fill it out.  I just don’t have my ID on me.  An’ I don’t have me National Insurance Number memorized, yet…”

Dave fixed Anthony with a measuring look, the lad was fairly vibrating with keen, terrible hope.  The kid obviously needed the job badly, surreptitiously scrounging leftovers while bussing the tables last night.  And he was making a good impression so far…

“Fine, lad. I can pay you cash until you can get your IDs sorted,” a relieved smile broke over the kid’s newly shaved (and nicked) face.  Dave held up a hand, “I can’t run it that way for long, two weeks, tops.”  

Anthony popped up from his seat and grasped Dave’s raised hand, shaking it vigorously. “You’ve got a deal!”

The next few days fell into a new rhythm.  Crowley slept in the Bentley, sometimes in alleyways, sometimes on the street in the Whicker neighborhood, sometimes as the Bentley moved around the neighborhood.  For some reason, the car didn’t seem to want to venture past Soho.  Crowley hadn’t walked to his Mayfair apartment, since the doorman wouldn’t let in the unfamiliar young Scottish kid.  Plus, there was no point.  Crowley didn’t keep any documents.  He’d never needed real, actual documents before, always pulling the appropriate official paperwork by miracle for whatever situation was needed.  Anyways, he’d always thought all that paper just cluttered up the place and didn’t go with his minimalist aesthetic.  Shame.

Everyday he went into the bookshop, which started a rumor that the new barkeep liked history, and was writing a book.  He certainly had some colorful stories to tell of historical events and left the bookshop everyday with an ever enlarging stack of computer printouts.  In reality, Crowley was running reports for Usher’s requisitions.  Waging a war by form, now with the additional Daily Standard Requisition for official identification documents needed for holding a job, and energy or monies to run a body.  Aziraphale was a canny help suggesting new requisitions, but Crowley couldn’t ask him to miracle documents for him, too obvious.  Unfortunately, Usher didn’t seem likely to break before the two week deadline was up. 

The regulars at the Dirty Donkey were taking a shine to Anthony, which allowed Dave to step away from the bar to pop upstairs to help his wife. If the lad didn’t have to work under the table, he’d truly be heaven-sent.

***

Shax collected another sheaf of reports from a less harried Furfur.  “Your department seems to have grown considerably, Furfur,” she observed.

“Yeah, lookit them all!  Workin’ away like maggots on a carcass,” Furfur looked proudly over the demons at ranks of desks with inkwells and fountain pens at the top.

“I see you found a solution to the pencil problem,” Shax said.

“Usher understands an empty ink bottle, and they stay put on the desks,” Furfur smiled at the inkwells locked into the desks, fingering a shiny new key.  A demon with a strange contraption attached to his back went around filling the inkwells.

Shax looked at the new ‘Inbox’ which had been turned into a chute that fed into a huge hand cart, like the kind for industrial laundries.  Sheets of paper with regularly spaced holes on either side and attached to one another on their short sides were continuously feeding into the pile while pieces of paper, scraps of receipts, scribbles on envelopes floated around them.

“Did Usher get more demons to manage?  There’s considerably more coming in from Earth.” Shax observed.

“Nah.  Actually he’s got less demons reportin’ in.  There’s more coming in by the reincorporator, and they tend to lurk around until they’re forced to go back out,” Furfur said, going over a report that one of the demon clerks handed him.

“They were discorporated? By angels?” asked Shax, an edge of anger in her voice.

“Some of ‘em,” explained Furfur, “But some of them by humans more often now.  Also,” Furfur looked shifty.

“Also, what!?” hissed Shax. 

“Some of ‘em have been goin’ quiet for days or weeks, then pop down here in the re-incorporator.  Said they lost the ability to move and just laid there til they dissolved,” Furfur shuddered a little.

“Why would that happen?” Shax asked.

“Dunno, but one demon’s making up for all the others and then some, an’ ‘e’s been asking for energy to run his corporation. He’s the one sending down the reports on that funny connected paper,” Furfur indicated the nearly continuous fall of white connected paper landing in the handcart.

“Who is it?” asked Shax, noting that Furfur seemed negatively disposed to whomever was managing to oppose Usher.

Face distorting in dislike, Furfur said, “Crowley.”

Ah, thought Shax.

“So Usher is giving Crowley energy to run his corporation and all his other requisitions?” asked Shax, thinking that any preferential treatment of Crowley was sure to pull Furfur’s tail.

Grudgingly, Furfur admitted, “Nooo.  Usher actually gives Crowley the least of all of ‘em.   Though he’s started giving some of the discorporated demons part of the “Standard Daily Requisitions” that Crowley requests.”

“The what?” Shax asked and Furfur handed over a piece of paper from his clipboard.

Shax looked down the list.

“Usher is giving the other demons requisitions, but not Crowley.  And Crowley’s still operating?”

“Bugger me how.  I’ve checked for help from,” Furfur pointed over their heads, “After catching him with that angel in 1941, but he’s not registering any angelic support,”  Furfur said.

Shax looked up from the reports at a sudden outburst.

“I won’t go back!” a demon with spider legs extending from their back came through from the reincorporator accompanied by a slender demon with hair raised into two vague horns. “You’ll be fine,” Demon Eric encouraged, “Lookit all the stuff we get to have this go!” 

“That’s the spirit, Eric!  Get up there and give ‘em hell!” said Furfur.

“Oh, I didn’t requisition for all of Hell, sir,” Eric said, walking by towards the transporter, “Imagine me requisitioning all of Hell,”  he said, shaking his head.

Eyebrow raised, Shax said, “I’ll take the reports.” 

Furfur turned back to his desk and handed her a full banker’s box, “Here ya go,” dropping it into her outstretched arms.

Shax easily took the weight of the box and clicked away efficiently.

Walking until she didn't feel any eyes on her, Shax ducked into an unregarded corner to read the reports.  Maybe there was a clue to how Crowley was doing it?  This was information that was sure to help her get ahead!

Thank you for reading! If you liked this story, there are more Good Omens fanfic at my Master List.

[a-typical]

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren’t deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors—doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren’t paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it.

And on the other hand, you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human.

Good Omens — Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman