#Like She saw how these two trouble makers caused some of the most amazing unintended things and just said 'that's good. I'll have that'

[pedulum-chronometry]

First, I need you to understand this post has permanently rewired by brain.

Second, this makes the scene where God gives Job a lecture for asking questions is like 120% funnier now. Like She had a plan. The original one was good, so good, but then well angels pushed back and She had to invent Hell on the fly to deal with things.

So now She moved on to The Plan 2.0 - special brimstone and fire edition and is trying to get on with it - with a diminished workforce no less. But here come Mr. Guilty-by-association, who for the record She really didn’t want to throw out but She draw a line and now has to stick to it, and this brand new demon just gives humanity knowledge as his opening gambit from the other side, like a fucked up wish you were here from a former friend. And God now has to do another Plan revision.

So She throws humans out of Eden and sends the flaming sword to keep it that way. Except, this angel sees the possible harm that could come to the newly pregnant Eve and in a completely loving and caring way just gives the flaming sword away to humanity. Like She didn't have reasons for keeping angel weapons away from humans in the first place. So the principality helped invent war instead of just standing there and looking menacing like he was supposed to!! Plan revision.

Now we move on to 'biblical times', the actual meat of the original plan only for the snake and the sword-giver to just keep showing up and messing with things. Noah's ark? was supposed to be a hard system reset to deal with the rampant war and strife introduced by history's worst guard and Her now favorite demon who She'll admit to Herself ONLY, has some good points, occasionally. Only it doesn't work. Plan revision.

So in comes Job. And he has questions. And really isn't that just the way things have been going from day one of this. And She lets him have it. The stress of having to account for constant changes to what was supposed to be a very straightforward Plan. Like how hard was this guys? I gave you instructions and all you had to do was follow them. Do you know how hard it is to rebalance the laws of the universe every time one of you just decides that it should work different? I made a fiery bush where the fire did not consume bush, I can do extraordinary and exceptional why do you keep drawing me back to the mundane and problematic? I'm trying to craft narrative and meaning here guys please stop messing with the constituent materials.

So people have knowledge and war and free will and God's just like "oh my me Jesus will you please come help me clean up this mess?". And he's just like "yeah mom whatever you need. What's this new draft you're working on? Apocalypse, fun name"

Like God is a frustrated writer who is BEGGING her characters to make different choices and just sitting there dumbfounded when they don’t. By the time we reach The Apocalypse (version 847626848.136-c final-final this time I really mean it!), She has given up on the direct approach. It clearly does not work for beings with free will. So She goes about with a much more light tough. Little bit of misinformation here and a dash of misunderstanding there and suddenly FINALLY She's got the plan going in the right direction.

Oh and those two trouble makers, her favorite snake and that angel he loves, those two deserve some payback. They like the world they way it is, don't want the end of the world? Go forth my children, expend effort only for your wheels to spin fruitlessly as you are thwarted from your plan's inception by other people and their godawful choices. You get to keep the planet but not before I mess with you two the way you messed with me. How do you like them apples? God out!

Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:

This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...

It. It kind of fucks. Severely.

And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.

I'll explain:

As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.

Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.

(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)

Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:

"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." --Genesis 3:24, KJV

Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.

(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.

...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)

So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.

But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:

The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.

Do you understand?

The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.

The flaming sword was given to be used against them.

So. Again. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell lures it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.

That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.

...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.

They're Crowley and Aziraphale.

(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)

In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.

It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.

...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.

And the Serpent--

(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)

--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.

As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:

"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization." --Robert G. Ingersoll

The first to ask questions.

Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).

And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.

And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--

(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)

--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.

To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.

Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel, and it's ~forbidden. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.

It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.

And then you keep writing.

And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.

(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).

It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)

...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:

I love this shot so much.

Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.

You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.

"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every single human being. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.

But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.

Godfathers. Sort of.