#anyway i'm somehow both aziraphale and crowley in this it's great | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ineffable-sideburns · 1 year ago

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In this post, I'm going to tie numerous observations on screen together to make a single season 3 prediction

it relies on this premise, which i'm about to build a case for:

the way the characters interact with the story is informed by the mythical/historical figures they are directly and indirectly coded as, but it’s not always in the way you’d expect, and some characters are coded in more than one way. we can still use these relationships as Clues to postulate where the story might go and how the characters will interact with one another.

this is by no means exhaustive, obviously. i’ve seen people say that Crowley is coded as Jesus, Aziraphale as Mary, and numerous other figures. i’m just pointing out some things i’ve noticed that I haven’t seen brought up as often.

we’ll start with Crowley, then go on to Sandalphon and Saraqael, then Gabriel, then Aziraphale. yes, it'll all lead up to something and i chose these characters in this order for a reason.

Crowley

so we obviously know he’s coded as Ashtoreth when he dresses up as Nanny Ashtoreth in season 1. yes, we will note that in the book, it’s very vaguely implied that Crowley and Aziraphale both hired Ashtoreth and Francis

in season 2, when trying to get the deets on bae, Beelzebub offers Crowley a “hefty” promotion and then later tells him “you could be a duke of hell".

in researching Beelzebub, at some point I found out about Milton's Unholy Trinity in Paradise Lost, which includes Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Astaroth as the first heirarchy in Hell, and which has (seemingly) lent that idea to demonology in general.

Astaroth is often referred to as the "Great Duke of Hell."

so now with season 2, Crowley has been coded in the show as both the feminine and masculine demons derived from the eastern goddess Astarte.

note: coded != Crowley is literally Astaroth/Ashtoreth. it means we can infer things about the story through the coding

the obvious would be him becoming a duke of Hell somehow in season 3. i personally am not convinced the story will take that route, and it would be sad to see him end up back in hell. this coding is the least compelling for me. it could just be a Milton reference, or maybe, since at this point in season 2, we don’t know why Beelzebub wants Gabriel, this could be a Clue that Beelzebub was sincere. maybe it just shows how powerful Crowley could have been if he’d accepted the deal. or maybe it just adds weight to parallel the decision Aziraphale makes later when offered his own position of power. people have analyzed Crowley and Ashtoreth/Astarte before, and the book/show discrepancy is always brought up, so i'm ignoring that and just addressing the added layer of Astaroth coding. anyway, let's move on to the more interesting observations.

Sandalphon and Saraqael

i’m doing these two together because i’ve found what i believe to be a major connection between them based on Neil’s answer to this ask, a shared trait their mythical figures have, and Saraqael’s actions in the show.

when Sandalphon is introduced in season 1, we learn that he was smiting and turning people into salt during Sodom and Gomorrah. then we see the direct connection Saraqael has with Sandalphon at the end of season 2, when Michael asks her to turn Maggie and Nina into salt pillars and her hand flys up.

but that’s not secret, is it?

you know what is, though?

the fact that she immediately recognizes Metatron in his human form, looks scared shitless for multiple shots, and then proceeds to act like it never happened when he starts addressing all the angels. she doesn’t let anyone know that she recognized him.

do check out this post by @most-normal-eccles-cake-ignorer with more shots and analysis of her reaction to Metatron.

still don’t believe me and think that reaction is nothing?

well, let me tell you something both the mythical figures Sandalphon and Saraqael have in common.

they both saw Metatron in his human form.

according to one source, Sandalphon was Metatron’s twin brother, and Sandalphon, like Metatron, was originally human.

in the book of 2 Enoch, Sariel/Saraqael was one of the angels who brought Enoch (human!Metatron) to Heaven.

if Sandalphon had been in that room at that moment, he’d also be secretly recognizing Metatron.

obligatory: remember what I said at the beginning of this post? we are using this coding to analyze the story and how the characters interact with it and eachother. you don’t believe that Sandalphon or Metatron were literally human at one point in GO? that’s fine. i’m just giving a reason why the author may have chosen Saraqael and Sandalphon to serve the same purpose in this scene

it isn’t crazy to think that a lot of the historical lore was used to inform the characters, and if you think it is, at least read about Gabriel first.

Gabriel

Gabriel is being coded…as the actual archangel (fucking) Gabriel. (and as Lord Jim from the novel of the same name by Joseph Conrad - the book Aziraphale glances at before choosing to call Gabriel Jim. but you can google the plot of Lord Jim and how it relates to Gabriel on your own time. it’s too much to get into right now.)

Gabriel is an archangel with the power to announce God’s will to mankind. He is associated with messages, vision, telecommunications, and revelation…

…and in the Bible he announces the birth of John the Baptist, and later, Jesus.

30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS

Luke 1:30-31

"hey Sithis dude you will not believe this… God now grants that you may conceive seven more children…yippe!!”

let’s get back to that thing about him delivering messages and revelation though.

Gabriel starts off season 2 carrying a box to the book shop (that we think was empty but later find out had a fly in it as well as a message scrawled on the bottom about where his memory is)

he also tells Aziraphale that something terrible was going to happen to him so he had to give him something. you can take that as being the fly, and consciously it probably was, but throughout season 2 Gabriel is unconsciously and unintentionally giving other people messages.

ex.

technically, a message “delivered” (dropped) by Gabriel, found by Muriel

after Crowley not-so-nicely commands Gabriel to remember, Jimbriel says, in a voice that shifts to sound like God’s voice, “I remember when the morning stars sang together and all the angels of God shouted for joy." Crowley recognizes this as what God said to Job, and then another flashback of Job begins.

later, during another vision caused by Crowley mentioning the word tempest: "There will come a tempest then darkness and great storms and the dead will leave their graves and walk the earth once more, and there will be great lamentations... every day it's getting closer."

in the Hebrew Bible, Gabriel appears to the prophet Daniel, and explains his prophetic visions. in Good Omens though, Jim IS the prophet having prophetic visions through Gabriel.

when in the book shop with Aziraphale, Jimbriel starts to hum every day, which is what causes Aziraphale to search down the pub with the jukebox playing that song on repeat. we know from what Terry and Neil have said about every day that it’s the song of the apocalypse, but none of the characters know that, Gabriel included.

what does a song do?

each message the archangel of (fucking) messages delivers is unconscious. not how you’d expect him to live up to his name, right? of course, if they are actually God’s messages, it makes sense that they’re useless, vauge, and well, ineffable. one last thing: spiritually, Gabriel’s messages and prophecies are often believed to be delivered through dreams (or in other words, the unconscious)

edit: this post by @noneorother actually inspired me to look at the mythology of archangel Gabriel, so it’s crucial you check it out. i’ve also seen a post somewhere that posits Gabriel shouldn’t even have some of the memories that go by really quickly before the flashbacks of him and Beelzebub, but i lost the link to it.

edit II: just wanted to add this post by @drconstellation, which analyzes the symbols coded into Jimbriel's clothing.

Aziraphale

it’s hard to ignore the fact that Aziraphale’s name is similar to Raphael, and that we’re missing an archangel Raphael. i’ll link some analysis on the meaning of Aziraphale’s name and share a quote from Terry, but this has all been said before. i want to look at who Raphael is mythologically to see if there’s similarities in Aziraphale’s character, and i also want to see if we can find out the relationship between Gabriel and Aziraphale, and why the latter was a suitable replacement.

Terry said about the name's origin:

"It was made up but... er... from real ingredients. [The name] Aziraphale could be shoved in a list of 'real' angels and would fit right in..."

For instance, Islam recognizes the Archangels Jibril, Mikhail, Azrael (see also the annotation for p. 9 of Reaper Man ), and Israfel (the subject of Edgar Allan Poe's well-known poem of the same name), whereas from Christianity we get such names as Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel.

the excerpt above was taken from here

NOW that that’s out of the way, who is archangel Raphael, the mythical figure?

Raphael’s name means “god heals.” it’s believed he helps people heal and overcome their struggles spiritually, physically, and mentally, and that he protects people on their journeys. he’s also considered to be the angel of joy, love, marriage, matchmaking, and travels.

as an example, in the Book of Tobit, God sends Raphael on a journey with a man named Tobias so that he can meet and woo his future wife. Raphael is also sent to heal her and Tobias’s blind, ageing father.

all the people and things i can count just off the top of my head that Aziraphale has healed or protected:

Anathema (healed)

Anathema’s bike (healed)

the dove he accidentally killed (technically healed by Crowley in the book)

Jimbriel (literally tells Jim he promised he would protect him)

Maggie and Nina when the demons enter the bookshop (tells them he will protect them)

bonus: in a scene cut from season 1, he stops a baby’s stroller from crashing

…and one he couldn’t:

collection of gifs of Aziraphale being full of joy:

you just have to look at Aziraphale smiling, especially at Crowley...

...to know that he represents joy and lo--

oh, but wait, he’s known for hooking people up, right? in case you forgot: Maggie and Nina va voom? originally his idea

similarly to the book of Tobit story I mentioned earlier, who did Aziraphale protect on his journey to meeting his beloved?

remember: the characters don't know they're being coded as anything and they don't know what kind of story they're in, so while Aziraphale didn't know he was going to be reuniting two lovers when he protected Jim, he played the role Neil made for him. it doesn't matter that he didn't know in the same way that it doesn't matter that Crowley could have (potentially) been powerful, or in the same way that it doesn't matter that Gabriel's messages were delivered unconsciously.

one more thing. Raphael heals people spiritually, physically, and mentally, right?

so is it any surprise that Aziraphale thinks he can heal the *ahem* spiritual corruption in Heaven?

we're going to tinfoil hat theory-land now ya'll, but I swear all of these observations are leading up to something cohesive...

Why did Aziraphale replace Gabriel?

i'll spare you all the long theories about Metatron's reasons, although i quite like the idea that Metatron was listening in ever since Aziraphale opened the portal to discorporate the demons attacking the bookshop, and he saw Aziraphale use his halo to declare war in order to protect Maggie and Nina. this shows Metatron that when pushed into a corner, or when it means protecting someone, he can force Aziraphale's hand...even to war.

But can we find a link between Gabriel and Raphael mythically to explain it instead?

if you've made it this far, you know i've got an answer for you. i withheld one detail about Gabriel earlier. in Christianity, he is often associated with blowing the trumpet at the end times to announce Judgment Day.

"okay, so?"

well, do you remember the quote from Terry and the excerpt from lspace I mentioned earlier? when mentioning the origins of Aziraphale's name, the excerpt mentions both angels in Islam and Christianity. the counterpart to Raphael in Islam, is Israfil/Israfel...

who blows the trumpet to signal the Day of Judgment.

"but Aziraphale wouldn't do that!"

he wouldn't intentionally do it. he's not a villain.

you remember who didn't intend to start the apocalypse in season 1, but who was there and given a role to play, regardless of whether he wanted to?

…the one who said no to heaven and hell and refused to be their pawn this time around when offered powerful positions by both?

Aziraphale, after nuking some demons with his halo, with painful foreshadowing: "I think I may have just started a war."

obligatory reiteration: the way the character-coding manifests is not literal, and it isn't always in the way you'd expect. there may be no literal trumpet. but i'm just pointing out the potential symmetry with season 1 in it being Aziraphale who "starts" apocalypse II.

one last thing: Raphael protects people on journeys, and helps them overcome their struggles — but now Aziraphale is on his own journey, and he will have to overcome his own moral struggles (ironically what Crowley helped him with)…alone.

#good omens theory #good omens season 3 #good omens speculation #good omens 3 #good omens analysis #good omens meta #good omens sequel #good omens spoilers #good omens #good omens clues #gabriel #aziraphale #anthony j crowley #crowley #sandalphon #saraqael #raphael

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era-of-ages · 1 year ago

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Okay... so here's the thing... (short fanfiction post for Good Omens)

After watching the entirety of Good Omens for the first time ever in approximately two days, seeing countless posts about it, and while I'm not usually a fanfiction reader, actually skimming one of those too. I feel like I need to at least dip my toes into this a little bit. So here's my short(ish) take on after season 2.

///

"Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could he possibly be so stupid? He was an angel, the smartest of them!" Crowley's words only fell on the uncaring mass of liquor bottles scattered around the floor. "Although," he refrained, "if he was so smart he wouldn't be an angel. Certainly not a supreme archangel."

That's mean, you know it is. A voice in his head told him. You know he's smart, you know he's brainwashed. You're just angry right now.

"Oh shut- SHUT UP!" He bit back. "I can be angry all I damn well want to I'm a demon for hell's sake! Maybe I've done the nice thing here or there, but I AM STILL A DEMON!"

We both know you've grown beyond that, Crowley. Far beyond it. The voice taunted him. It felt like taunting anyway. What kind of smug bastard did it think it was anyway? But he couldn't shut it up. Crowley, you can pose all you want. You've been doing it for 6000 years, after all. But you know better than anyone that being human comes with human emotion. Love. Anger. And knowledge that those emotions affect you. You know what knowledge can do, Crowley.

"And so what if I do?" He hissed. "You think I care? There's nothing to care about anymore. Azi- Azripha-" he couldn't speak it. Not without those damned tears. Who invented those anyhow? Oh right, God. The same bastard who caused all this. "He's gone." He finally managed to say. "It's too late. Always has been."

I'll tell you what you're missing. The voice in his head had taken to sounding like Nina. You're so full of that human spirit, that emotion. So where's that human hope, huh? If there's one thing Aziraphale did have, it was hope! So where's yours?"

"It went with him."

///

Muriel's steps were awkward and heavy, even still. Everything having weight here on Earth was so confusing! No one had actually ever told her how Earth works when she came, but all the books were still on the shelves, so she figured that she must be doing well. It was quiet in the book shop as well, and she started to think. Everyone had always said she hadn't done much of it before, so what better time to learn? She started to think of the shop as her friend, like it was alive. It liked her well enough, but it missed Aziraphale. It would perk up when Crowley passed by, which he did every single day, but he never came inside. Never even looked anymore. She always thought about calling out to him, asking him how to make tea or how to pronounce some of the words she had read, but she hadn't done it. Not yet anyway. She hoped one day she would.

The bell was a new sound. Muriel remembered it meant that someone had come into the shop. She said a few stalling words as she ran down the stairs, still careful to balance her feet correctly so she didn't trip again. "I'm sorry for the wait!" she said, smiling to herself about the correct use of phrase. "How can I help... you?"

"I just... just came to see it again."

Aziraphale looked terrible. Nothing like a supreme archangel. He didn't glow, she was fairly certain he used to. There were dark circles underneath his eyes, which meant he hadn't slept. But if he didn't need to, why did he have the circles? And he was smiling at her, except it wasn't really a smile. What was that phrase she had liked? Right! He wasn't smiling with his eyes. His eyes were sad.

"The shop's missed you." She said, coming to stand beside him. "Would you like some tea?"

He turned to her. He looked... defeated, somehow. "I think I would like that."

"Great!" Muriel clapped her hands. "Except... oh I don't mean to sound silly, but I don't know how to make it."

"Oh that's alright then," Aziraphale said. "I'm alright without it."

"No no!" She held up a hand, careful not to touch him. "Wait, I can figure it out! I can read things now! And understand them! Just uh... wait right here!"

She hurried off to what she knew for sure were tea implements. They had kettles and things like that in the books she'd read. Oh it was so exciting! She was going to be just like those book people! Making tea! She giggled as she set a teabag ever so carefully into a cup, then slowly poured water inside. The water started to change color! It was beautiful! She wondered why every angel didn't come to Earth, it was so full of amazing things!

"I've got it!" she announced proudly. "I made tea!" Carefully, she handed it to the supreme archangel, smiling like a child as he held it. As he took it, his hands began to shake. His eyes became sad again.

Oh no! Muriel thought. I didn't make it right! He doesn't like it! She thought backwards through the steps of making tea. What tea should look like. A cup with colored water inside with a thin trail of steam!

"Oh! It's not hot!" She said. "Not hot at all! I'm so sorry!"

"Oh no! Oh no don't be sorry!" The saucer in his hand was shaking more now. "I'll just-" with a quick snap down the tea began to steam. "Here we go! It's alright. Would you mind if I just, walked around a bit?"

"Of course!" She smiled, though she still watched his hand. "It would be my honor."

///

It should have been raining. It was too nice of a day. Crowley snapped his fingers and began to feel the first drops of cold water coming down on him. By the time he reached Greek Street it was a downpour. He could feel Nina watching him as he walked past her shop. He didn't say hello. He hadn't ever and he wasn't going to start now.

He looked at the bookshop, not inside, but at it. He could sense that bumbling angel inside. He couldn't help but wonder how she was taking to Earth. She seemed the type to be too dim to be brainwashed by anyone. He resolved to go inside. Not to see her, but to take some of his things back that he had left. No doubt that plant was long past dead at this point.

///

The bell rang again! Muriel rushed to the front. Two people to come in on the same day! It was all so exciting! Even the bookshop was excited! It was the happiest it had been in months. "Welcome, welcome!" Muriel froze in her tracks as she saw who had entered. She broke into a grin, "Mr. Crowley!"

She had seen this before, in those wonderful books! Two people who are madly in love run away from each other, then they see each other again, realize they love each other even more and never should have run, and then they kiss! She could barely hold her excitement, but she kept quiet. She couldn't ruin this moment! They had to find each other.

"How's business been?" Crowley asked. "Doesn't look like you've sold anything."

"I haven't!" Muriel answered excitedly. "Not a thing! But I learned how to make tea!"

"Did you now?" He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. "Why are you so excited?"

"Oh curse me for lying, but I'm just so excited someone has come into the shop!" She giggled, bouncing around on her feet.

"Curse you for lying?" Crowley frowned. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I lied about why I'm so excited! But it's not going to be like the books if I just told you why!"

Crowley rubbed his temples. He didn't have time for this. Well, he did, but the more time he spent in this shop the less angry he became. He wanted to be angry. And the voice seemed to shut up when he was in here. "Look, I just came to get some of my things, alright? I'm not here to have a conversation or anything." He started for the stairs. No! Aziraphale was up there!

"Wait wait wait!" She grabbed his arm. "You need to have a conversation! It's the only way to-"

"Only way to what?!" He meant it as a threat. It came out as desperation. Muriel could see his eyes now. They were sad too.

"The only way," she said slowly. "The only way it's going to be okay." Something hurt inside of her. Knowing the Aziraphale was hurt, that Crowley was hurt. It hurt her too. Water started to come from her eyes. Something in her felt like it was burning. "What's happening to me?" she asked.

"Those are tears." Crowley's voice was cracking. "You get used to them after a while. They happen when you're sad." He looked at her. "Why are you sad?" What did she have to be sad for?

"I'm. I'm sad because the bookshop is sad," she stammered. "Because the happy ending hasn't happened yet. It was supposed to. He wasn't supposed to go to heaven and make you sad. That's not a happy story. And I... I don't understand why not."

///

Aziraphale let his hand drag across the shelves. Every second fight back the thought he had been thinking since he left. This bookshop was heaven. No, better than heaven. Those were wrong thoughts, he knew. But they had become so strong that he couldn't bear to stop them anymore. He missed his shop. He missed Earth. He missed... to even think of his name was already enough. He closed his eyes. You are the Supreme Archangel. You WILL NOT think wrong thoughts.

A sound from downstairs. Crying. Muriel's crying.

///

"Not all stories have happy endings." Crowley said. "Sometimes you just have to realize that and..." he couldn't say move on.

"But would you take him? If he came back?" Muriel wiped away her own tears. "Would you make it a happy ending?"

"I can't. I'd give anything to, but I can't." He looked down. "I tried. My way didn't work. I couldn't save him from heaven. They still took him away."

Hurried footsteps down the stairs. Her head snapped up. "What if I tried?"

"What?" Crowley tried to look up but she was gone.

///

"Muriel are you alri-" Aziraphale started to say.

"Hush!" She grabbed his hand and dragged him with all her might to Crowley. She was beaming. Rain! They needed rain! It was raining outside! She had them both by the hand now, by some sort of miracle the doors were already open. She threw them outside. It was a downpour! It was perfect! She couldn't hold her excitement anymore. She'd been dying to use this word. Not one in any of her books, but one the shop had said a million times.

"VAVOOM!!!"

///

Neither of them spoke. The difference between rain and tears didn't matter now. It was just them now. Looking into each other's eyes. They didn't need to speak.

"W-would the dance be acceptable here?" Aziraphale stammered.

"Oh Angel, shut up!"

Like puzzle pieces, the two of them fit perfectly together in each other's arms. Muriel squealed and bounced happily back and forth. She looked at Nina and Maggie across the street. They were clapping.

"About damn time!" Maggie shouted.

"It's not a happy ending until you kiss!" Muriel exclaimed.

You would have never heard it or seen it, but the nightingales were thrilled. They had been dying to sing.

#crowly x aziraphale #good omens #ineffable husbands #good omens 2 #crowley #aziraphale #fanfic #muriel #happy ending #asdfghjhgfdsdfgh #i love them so much #okay im done now

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thebikles · 2 months ago

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I worked so hard on this playlist enjoy

I wrote up a little explanation for most of the songs instead of actually writing fan fiction:

From Eden - Hozier

This one’s pretty self explanatory the whole song works so well for them

“Innocence died screaming, honey, ask me I should know / I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door” always gets me

I love how we have yet to actually learn about the details of Crowley’s fall - it’s this negative space holds so much weight in the narrative

while Crowley’s lines about ‘hanging out with the wrong people’ and ‘sauntering vaguely downward’ are quite funny they seems like a defensive sort of nonchalance

Does he perhaps?? Have TRUAMA????

I have this fic idea where in season 3 Azirphale finds the file on Crowley’s fall and THAT’S when he snaps and finally accepts that the system really is bullshit

Also the line “Honey you’re familiar like my mirror years ago” reminds me of the tableau of them on the gates of Eden in the very first episode

Too Sweet - Hozier

Another fandom classic

I like to envision it in Crowley’s voice in a ‘the lady doth protest too much’ kind of way

Pale Blue Eyes - The Velvet Underground

A BAND CROWLEY CANNONICALLY LISTENS TO

This shit kills me:

“Thought of you as my mountaintop

Thought of you as my peak

Thought of you as everything

I've had, but couldn't keep”

Shake It Out - Florence + The Machine

I imagine this one as Crowley re-inventing himself after he falls (also I just really like this song and wanted to fit it in somehow)

“And I am done with my graceless heart / So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart” —> a juicy unreliable narrator: Crowley WISHES he didn’t give a fuck but to quote David Tennant, “actually his problem is (...) there’s a bit too much heart really”

Also the line “damned if I do and damned if I don’t” isn’t particularly groundbreaking lyricism but it gets at Crowley precarious position of having to perform the aesthetics of evil while hoping that nobody notices as he helps people where he can

that aspect of his character really gets to me

Something about getting consistently punished for doing the kind thing and compulsively doing it anyway - particularly that scene in season 2 where he talks that girl down from killing herself and is immediately dragged to hell for it - a wild thing to include in a show billed as a comedy by the way

Stuck in the Middle With You - Stealers Wheel

I just love unlikely friendship stories I don’t know what to tell you man

As the World Caves In - Matt Maltese

One of my favorite songs just in general

Very somber - but also evokes Pratchett and Gaiman’s irreverent story telling style

“We’re gonna nuke eachother up boys till old Satan stands impressed” 100% sounds like something Crowley would say

A delicious sense of exasperation in both of these songs like “ugh we’re going to fall hopelessly in love what a terrible inconvenience”

Also extreme circumstances forcing prickly characters to rely on one another?!!?? I can’t get enough

What to Make of You - Olive Klug

A great song if you’re into indie folk

I really love the line “I thought I was immune to this kind of pining / but it lends itself too well to aimless driving” for Crowley

The chorus too: “I know that you don’t know what to make of me”

There’s a compelling resignation to that line made even more poignant by the ending of season 2

This subtle reference the cognitive dissonance Aziraphale lives with: ignoring his own moral compass in favor of what his bosses are telling him to do because he can’t quite give up his identity and security of being one of the ‘Good Guys’

Obviously Crowley loves asking uncomfortable questions but I like that this chorus implies a slight exhaustion with his role as the thorn in Aziriphale’s side because of course Crowley wants so much more than that…!!!

Puttin’ on the Ritz

No angst in this one just Aziriphale having a grand old time in the 1920s

It Will Come Back - Hozier

More evidence contributing to the headcannon that Crowley spilled his sad drunk heart out to Hozier one night at a bar - we already know he canonically inspired Shakespeare lines

“Don’t let me in with no intention to keep me / Jesus Christ don’t be kind to me / Honey, don’t feed me, I will come back”

Really reminds me of that scene at the satanic nunnery turned corporate retreat center in season 1 episode two:

“Shut it - I’m a demon, I'm not nice!”

Also I love how Crowley, despite all his aloof affectations, is always the one taking emotional risks - asking Aziriphale to run away with him to Alpha Centauri and of course the end of Season 2 - there’s this hint of desperation to him that I just can’t get enough of

“You don’t understand you should never know / how easy you are to need” UGH the YEARNING

Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy - Queen

I mean - come on.

I really wish they had played this song durring a more significant scene in season 2 but you can’t have everything

Or like a montage of Crowley getting ready to leave the house making sure his hair is perfectly greased would have been delectable

Somethin’ Stupid - Frank Sinatra

“Then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you”

I really need to write a fic inspired by this song

Love Crowley being deeply frustrated with what a sap he’s become

Once A Bunch - Adrienne Lenker

I mainly chose this song because of this line “Half a margarita, have a little dance / Let's fine dine the demons and give peace a chance”

There’s something deeply appealing to me about their dinner dates idk

Also these lines in Aziraphale’s voice

“I pulled you in, I pushed you out right from the start” (a reference to that scene in season 1, ‘you go too fast for me Crowley’) “I was leaving before I'd arrived” (something about Aziraphale always conceptualizing their relationship as a doomed one - but as we learned from the Beezlebub/Gabriel plotline NOTHING WAS STOPPING THEM FROM BEING VULNERABLE WITH ONE ANOTHER THIS ENTIRE TIME)

“your eyes magnetic, that moldavite flame / Stopping the traffic, all six lanes” (Crowley’s snake eyes , his 90 miles an hour in central london - anyways) “Calling me baby, barely saying my name /I was leaving before I'd arrived” something about how they skate the line between plausible denability so finely - playing a game of gay chicken for thousands of years

That line reminds me one from the song Middle Cyclone, which is also in this list “it was so clear to me, it was almost invisible”

“We're a team, a group. Group of the two of us. And we've spent our existence pretending that we aren't.” - I copy pasted this line from the transcripts online and immediately teared up this show has me in a CHOKEHOLD

I, Carrion, (Icarion) - Hozier

Speaking of breaking down in tears

I listen to a lot of sad music but I always have to skip this song on my playlist if I’m not ready to stare into the middle distance for a good fifteen minutes

“And though I burn, how could I fall? / When I am lifted by every word you say to me?” alskdjfals;dkfja;s

“Once I had wondered what was holding up the ground / but I can see that all along love, it was you all the way down” – Aziraphale as the thing that keeps Crowley from being entirely cynical about the world

Also the chord change on “I do not have wings, love I never will” (!!!!!!) as a reference to the end of season 2, Crowley refusing Aziraphale’s offer to become an angel again - but here its sung in a really sweet kind of resignation

Also I love the poetry of this song “If the wind turns / if I hit a squall / allow the ground to find its brutal way to me” the pleasing inversion: the idea of the earth as the thing moving as opposed to Icarus, and the word brutal wedged into the almost twee line ‘find its way to me’...

“if I should fall, on that day / I only pray / don’t fall away from me” hhhhhhhhh

This could be in either of their voices but I do have a particular weakness for Aziraphale-becoming-a-demon-after-the-end-of-season-one fanfics

Take on Me - a-ha

I’ve heard this song countless times but I never really listened to the lyrics…

There’s something about the lines “take on me / take me on” not the kind of lyricism you usually get from a pop song about a crush

Like yeah relationships ARE an emotional committment and that’s okay! I like how the speaker doesn’t dance around the idea of love as something you have to work for or that they themselves might be burdensome at times- they in fact embrace it

Really reminds me of the musical Company the way she sings in the finale with these epic yearning major chords “someone to crowd you with love / someone to force you to care / someone to make you come through / who’ll always be there”

What does this have to do with Good Omens you ask? Idk man something about Crowley knowing full well that being together would be difficult and wanting it badly anyway

“It’s no better to be safe than sorry”

Perfect Day

Aziraphale and Crowley sample fine wines throughout history!!!

“Just a perfect day, drink sangria in the park / and then later when it gets dark, we go home (...) oh it’s such a perfect day / I’m glad I spend it with you / it’s such a perfect day / you just keep me hanging on”

I love how simple the lyrics are in this one I think it’s the same reason why that image of Crowley sheltering under Aziraphale’s wing is so appealing

“Just a perfect day, you made me forget myself / I thought I was someone else, someone good” owww

Hide - Rainbow Kitten Surprise

A song about being closeted so it works pretty damn well for Aziraphale

I love this line:

“I got some radio wires soldered to my heart / you’re the only thing that’s coming in / I’m getting static from my better sense / nothing on the FM”

Also I like the dithering rhythm of these lines, feels like something Aziraphale would say “I hate you more than I miss you / that’s not true, I’d hate to miss you (...) you don’t call, you don’t write / you know I’ve been up for 40 days and 40 nights / and all my fears have multiplied / by the silence in your eyes”

Their fight after Aziraphale refuses to give him the holy water….

Nobody - Hozier

MORE HOZIER

“I once warmed my hands / over a burning Maserati” is such a badass line and so good for Crowley

Also the list of all the wild things he’s done always followed up by “but I’ve had no love like your love / from nobody” works really well since they’re both immortal

“I’d be appalled if I saw you ever try to be a saint / I wouldn’t fall for someone / I thought couldn’t misbehave” harrowing flashbacks to the end of season 2

News from Heaven - Runrig

Something something Crowley forgetting to be bitter for a moment

(I mostly just love this song)

Crystal - Katy Kirby

Okay this actually is my favorite song at the moment

Really helps when I’m feeling OCD

And I love it as a representation of their moral/philosophical debates throughout history

“You’re biting down on gold again / you’re grinding pearls against your teeth / spare me your obsession with that incorruptibility / The rhinestones on your baseball cap reminding me of when / the salt left crystal on the sunset of your sunburned skin”

FUCKING POETRY (of course it requires a bit of suspension of disbelief since Aziraphale would never wear a baseball cap but the sentiment still stands)

Also the repetition of “why wouldn’t that be enough” ow he’s really trying so hard

Origin of Love - Mika

“Love is a drug and you are my cigarette / love is addiction and you are my nicorette” Crowley trying to make their dates at the Ritz suuuuuper demonic

A bit cheesy lyricsm but I love this song it’s really sweet and such a bop

I think I read this in a fic somewhere - Crowley being pissed at Heaven on Aziraphale’s behalf, something along the lines of “he’s the best of them and they don’t deserve him!”

Something about humanity and something about how genuine kindness doesn’t need all these self justifications

Or - sometimes going on a lunch date with your best friend is so much holier than a fucking cathedral

The Book of Love - The Magnetic Fields

In a very similar vein if you read the song as an allegory to the Bible

Bloodless - Andrew Bird

Aziraphale having DOUBTS

“I’m keeping mine with the altursits / putting my weight behind the dancer” (idk something about Aziraphale hanging out with Oscar Wilde) “ I know it’s hard to be an optimist / when you trust least the ones who claim to have the answer / it’s an uncivil war”

“Turn around and quote a well known psalm / don’t you worry bout the wicked? / don’t you envy those who do wrong?”

I like the double meaning of that line - if could either be read as a command or a question.

Into My Arms - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Flood

Absolute smaltz city I have no excuses

“I don’t believe in an interventionist God / But I know darling that you do / but if I did I would kneel down and ask him / not to intervene when it came to you / will not touch a hair on your head / leave you as you are / if he felt he had to direct you / then direct you into my arms”

I mean

Fuck man.

Thinking about the scene when Crowley finds the burning bookshop

Paul - Big Thief

I listened to this song thinking about Them and it *did* ruin me.

The whole song works really well I think so I won’t write out all the lyrics

But for some reasons these lines in Crowley’s voice really killed me:

“I'll be a real tough cookie with the whiskey breath

I'll be a killer and a thriller and the 'cause of our death”

It’s so resigned in the context of the song - I think that Crowley is very aware that he’s playing a role - and he does it with great flair and makes it his own, but it’s still limiting. CAUSE UNDER THOSE 15 LAYERS OF SPITE HE’S AN ABSOLUTE SWEETHEART.

“We were just two moonshiners on the cusp of a breath

And I've been burning for you, baby, since the moment I left”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! crazy.

“But I'll push you from my brain

See, you're gentle baby

I couldn't stay, I'd only bring you pain”

I don’t tend to read fics that interpret Crowley as insecure about being a demon that doesn’t seem in character to me - but this line GETS ME. I guess I don’t even read it here as insecurity so much as Crowley’s awareness that they can’t get too reckless with their ‘fraternization’ lest he get Aziraphale in trouble

No Big Deal (I Love You) -dodie

I knew I had to find a dodie song for them and I knew it was going to be devastating and I was right

“I don’t mind, say ‘I care, you’re the best’ / yeah you hold me like it’s already said / I don’t mind, I will do this dance / for the rest of my life, for as long as you want” hhhhhh

“On a Sunday, we’re together / god I love you, says not one of us ever / in the half light, where you tease me / god I love you would be far too easy (...) look at me like that hold your breath ‘cause we’re good / it’s no big deal”

I don’t know what kind of analysis to do with this it just really reads like fucking angsty good Omens fan ficiton

Something about Crowley’s nonchalance as an affectation

Someone about the way that Micheal Sheen chooses to play Aziraphale - his eyes are SHINING, all the time

Really reminds me of the scene in season 2 when Aziraphale’s so excited for them to dance together

Middle Cyclone - Neko Case

“Did someone make a fool of me / ‘fore I could show ‘em how it’s done” yeah 6,000 years of pining is pretty foolish

Also reminds me of the Maggie and Nina's intervention

“I can’t give up acting tough / it’s all that I’m made of / can’t scrape together quite enough / to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love”

THEY’RE SO REPRESSED I’M OBSESSED also side note I love how the plot line with Gabriel and Beelzebub reveals that THEY TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN TOGETHER THIS ENTIRE TIME

Like yeah Heaven and Hell are still barriers but a good chunk of the actual conflict is that they’re two deeply stubborn individuals who are bad at feelings

“It was so clear to me / that it was almost invisible” (!!!!) “I lie across the path waiting / just for a chance to be / a spider web trapped in your lashes / for that I would trade you my empire for ashes / but I choke it back, how much I need love”

Anyways. Feeling super duper normal.

Real Estate - Adam Melchor

Idk man I’ve just loved this song forever

Season 2 Crowley shooting his shot I’m sure it’s going to go really well for him

“I’m running out of real estate” (literally he’s living in his car) “tryna make all the right moves / I don’t wanna hesitate / I would bet the house on you”

Cue flashbacks of Crowley hanging around the bookshop all the time

There’s something so earnest about this song and about Crowley’s speech MY GOD I feel like I need compensation from David Tennant for the emotional damage

Love is an Accident - Flyte

Oooooo bitter Crowley

And honestly Azirphale this entire show - I’ll keep all my emotions right here and then one day I’ll die

This whole song works so well

“‘Cause love is an accident waiting to happen / to me and to you / so bite your lip and hold your tongue / and be so careful what you say / play the beat with muffled drum”

I love this line in particular and the accompanying chord change “So don’t you play that awful song / the one that cannot be unheard” for the end of season 2

Something To Beleive in - Madison Cunningham

One of my favorite Aziriphale/Crowley songs

Works as a great character study for Aziriphale, though also sung in Crowley’s voice: “you want something constant / and you want something sure / something you can hold / something secure (...) If you need something to believe in / you can believe in my love”

‘I mean, if Gabriel and Beelzebub can do it, go off together, then we can. Just the two of us. We don't need Heaven, we don't need Hell, they're toxic.’

“Well, I’ve spent my life looking / for a truth I can bear / but kingdoms are just sand / and a throne is just a chair (...) I’ve needed someone to believe in / can I believe in your love?”

I know that this story (especially the book) starts out as a comedy and we’re meant to read Crowley as perfectly fine with being a demon when we meet him on the Gates of Eden

But you can pry the headcannon out my cold dead hands that Crowley feels incredibly lost after his fall and that Aziraphale is the first one to be nice to him and treat him like a person

Afraid of Heights - boygenius

So proud of how devastating this is

from Aziraphale’s perspective during their fight at the end of season 2

“’Cause one man’s dream is another man’s death / I remember when you told me that / didn’t know what to say so I just laughed / but now I know it’s not funny” a;sldkfjal;sdkjfaskl

Another reference to their debates throughout history - the last line feels so in character for Aziraphale

“I know I was a disappointment / know you wanted me to take a risk / not everybody gets the chance to live / a life that isn’t dangerous” Crowley’s in pain because he feels he has nothing to lose and Aziraphale’s in pain because he feels he has EVERYTHING to lose. hhhhhhh

“ you called me a crybaby / but you’re the one who got teary / telling me what to believe” again I love when roles are reversed and inverted - Aziraphale is supposed to be the soft and tenderhearted one, but Crowley is always the one making himself vulnerable

“how we’re stuck in entropy / how it hurts to hope / how it hurts to hope for more / how it hurts to hope the future could be better than before”

I love this line - I think it’s slightly biased coming from Aziraphale in this moment - he thinks Crowley doesn’t want to go back to heaven because he’s stubborn and cynical (which to be fair, he is) but Aziraphale’s always been shielded from how cruel Heaven can actually be - he never saw (or didn’t want to see?) Crowley’s fall, he never saw Gabriel try to kill him

But at the same time - I don’t blame Aziraphale for accepting the position as archangel - he knows to some extent that he’s walking into a rigged playing field, but if there’s even a chance he could save the world then of course he’s going to take it

God I love flawed characters god I love conflicts where everybody’s wrong and everybody’s right

You Don’t Have to You Love Me - Dusty Springfield

This appears on the official Amazon Prime Good Omens playlist (It plays very faintly in the background during one of the scenes in Maggie’s shop I’m pretty sure)

And I know this isn’t a queerbaited show but I was still like “they’re allowed to do that??”

I love the DRAMA of this song

There’s this tragic bargaining in the lyrics

“You don’t have to say you love me just be close at hand / you don’t have to say forever / I will understand”

But I also always imagine the “I will understand” sung with the utmost venom and sarcasm

Bitter Crowley my beloved

All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields

I have so many songs for the end of season 2 that shit did something to me

“But I could never make you stay / Not for all the tea in China / Not if I could sing like a bird / Not for all North Carolina / Not for all my little words”

Something about how their love for the world is what brought them together, but it’s also the reason why Aziraphale feels like he has to leave

Good Luck, Babe! - Chappell Roan

I think that Crowley would slay in all of her outfits

Also if he’s crying to this song at the bar then that’s nobody’s business

“IT’S FINE, IT’S COOL / YOU CAN SAY THAT WE’RE NOTHING BUT YOU KNOW THE TRUTH”

It’s Over Isn’t It? - Steven Universe, Deedee Mango Hall

Verging into speculative season 3 territory

SAD CROWLEY

This song works so well - it feels very musical theater to me (I should really get around to watching Steven Universe)

I’m sure that the original song was about a romantic rival but I love how in the context of Good Omens the ‘you’ being referred to is GOD - the tragedy of it all that was never a battle that Crowley could win but he tried so hard anyway

“It's over, isn't it? / Isn't it? / Isn't it over? / You won, and she chose you / And she loved you and she's gone / It's over, isn't it? / Why can't I move on?” (that haunting last image of Crowley standing by the Bentley sunglasses back on because he tried being vulnerable that didn’t work)

“War and glory, reinvention / Fusion, freedom, her attention / Out in daylight, my potential / Bold, precise, experimental / Who am I now in this world without her? / Petty and dull, with the nerve to doubt her / What does it matter? It's already done”

It’s so villain monologue I love it

Promise - Laufey

Finally a song from Aziraphale’s perspective I’m sorry I’m very biased

I will basically end up writing the lyrics to this entire song but it’s IMPORTANT for the LORE

“I made a promise / to distance myself / took a flight, through aurora skies” (reference to heaven?? woah) “honestly, I didn’t think about / how we didn’t say goodbye (...)” ouch they DIDN’T say goodbye did they! “it hurts to be something / it’s worse to be nothing / with you”

Aziraphale holding back tears in that last scene???? Hhhhhhh I love these actors they should win all the awards

“So I didn’t call you / for 16 long days / and I should get cigarette / for so much restraint”

The image of a worn out, maudlin Aziraphale sneaking a smoke is EATING ME ALIVE holy shit

“no matter how long I resist temptation / I will always lose / (...) / I’ve done the math / there’s no solution / we’ll never last / why can’t I let go of this”

Notice how the last line here mirrors “why can’t I move on” from It’s Over Isn’t It? I love my job.

Strange - Celeste

Just a sad sad breakup song was listening to this in my brain rot era after season 2 and it stuck

In Crowley’s voice: “I tried for you / tried to see through / the smoke and dirt / it wouldn’t move / what could I do?”

Honestly would love to see an animatic of this one though

9/10 - Jeff Rosenstock

I’ll be severely disappointed if Crowley isn’t an absolute drama queen after season 2

“Nine times out of ten I'll be stoned on the subway (...) / Dodging eye contact with anyone who looks my way / Nine times out of ten I'll be thinking of you”

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now - The Smiths

very similar energy

I want to see Crowley in an absolute SULK listening to this song. He’s smoking ciragettes, mice are sleeping in his eye bags like hammocks, everyone within a 15 mile radius knows he’s a divorcee. He’s still wearing leather pants because he does have standards. He’s drinking espresso martinis at like 11 AM etc.

Bad Relgion - Frank Ocean

“If it brings me to my knees / it’s a bad religion” is such a raw line for Crowley. Also this song slaps, by which I mean makes me cry.

Girls Against God - Florence and the Machine

This is more of a fic idea than anything else. “What a thing to admit / that when someone looks at me with real love / I don’t like it very much / kinda makes me feel like I’m being crushed” I JUST THINK THEY WOULD BOTH BE TERRIBLE AT RECEIVING UNGUARDED AFFECTION.

“And I know I might not look like much / just another screaming speck of dust / but oh God you’re gonna get it / you’ll be sorry that you messed with us” In the music video in my mind it’s cutting between Aziraphale in Heaven and Crowley on Earth and them both absolutely going through it. Aziraphale is pulling off some excellent espionage and Crowley is just flipping off the sky.

August - Flipturn

OUGH one of my favorite songs ever

“WE DON’T TALK ABOUT IT / WE DON’T HAVE THE TIME / WE THOUGHT LOVE WAS SOMETHING / WE WEREN’T MEANT TO FIND” hhhhhhhhh I kind of like this interpretation of their characters better than like some of the hopeless pining written in fanfiction (and what I’ve been writing about this whole time I know) - that line ‘we don’t have the time’ is so very British - I kind of like that angle of understated tragedy, like neither of them are quite as heart broken as they could be because it didn’t occur to them to hope for more….

And the chord changes where he layers on “and I’ve loved you from the start” over the chorus????? In shambles

The Literal Start.

Shrike - Hozier

Firmly in season 3 headcannon territory

This one’s in Aziraphale’s voice

“I couldn’t utter my love when it counted / ah but I’m singing like a bird bout it now” hhhhhhh

After everything he’s been through Crowley deserves like 15 declarations of love

“I was housed by your warmth / and thus transformed / by your grounded and giving / and darkening scorn” SO POETIC and such an apt description of Crowley

And if you want to be REALLY sad you can interpret it as some sort of sacrifice on Aziraphale’s part: “remember me love / when I’m reborn / as a shrike to your sharp / and glorious thorn”

Side note I really want Aziraphale to get properly angry after season2 - my personal headcannon is that he finds the file of Crowley’s fall (a scene which has been conspicuously omitted throughout the show because surprise surprise it’s fucking tragic) and finally Gets It.

Up the Wolves - The Mountain Goats

What if they talked to God?? Would be difficult to pull of in a way that felt satisfying but it would be wild

“Our mother has been absent / ever since we founded Rome / but there’s gonna be a party when the wolf comes home”

CROWLEY: “There’ll always be a few things / maybe several things / that you’re gonna find really difficult to forgive”

I love how cathartically John Darnielle sings these lines “I’m gonna get myself in fighting trim / scope out every angle of unfair advantage / I’m gonna bribe the officials / I’m gonna kill all the judges / it’s gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage!!!” Crowley gets to have a little unholy rage as a treat – reminds me of the scene from season 1 when he drives through the flaming motorway

Your Face - The Lake Poets

This is definitely an Azirpahale pov

“I never want to go away again / I just can’t face one more goodbye” there’s something about the simplicity of these lyrics that really gets to me

“Out here I try my best to occupy / my mind with things that I should do / but in my heart and soul I recognize / there’s nothing I want more than you.” anyways.

I like the image of Aziraphale really holding out, keeping a stiff upper lip in heaven and then as soon as they’re reunited he’s like “OH CROWLEY IT WAS TERRIBLE!!”

“I miss you so much I can’t think straight / I miss you so much I can’t sleep / when I get home, I’m never leaving again / I’m yours and I’ll be yours to keep”

Me and the Devil - Soap&Skin

Idk Azirpahale deserves a badass moment

But I also feel like it would be a Legally Blonde scene where he whips out some bureaucratic loop hole that lets them go free

And then they get to stride away to this song

Like Real People Do - Hozier

Conflicted about including this one - on the one hand it’s a little icky in the context of Neil Gaiman writing them as asexual because of their status as non-human entities and their ensuing romance made possible by their shared affection for the human race (though thankfully that reading is muddled by Beelzebub and Gabriel’s plotline) – veers a little too close to shitty “sex is what makes us human” discourse online

THAT BEING SAID as an aspec person I fucking love this song so let’s all just be cool and chill about it

I think you could read the line “we should just kiss like real people do” not in the literal sense but more like ‘let’s pretend just for a moment that we aren’t hereditary enemies tasked with saving the world’ and some other tragic fantasy of that ilk

Also I like setting this song somewhere post season two

“I will not ask you where you came from / I will not ask and neither should you…” – I would love a scene where their both still mad and have some shit to work through but right in that moment they’re just so desperately happy to see one another

Alexandria - Katy Kirby

Obsessed with Katy Kirby

FINALLY a happy ending song

“I’ve gotta hand it to ya / it’s even better than I thought it would be” 6,000 YEARS OF PINNING anyways.

“Baby you’re off the hook / for every promise that you couldn’t keep” hhhhhh

“I’d crack open my chin / before I would let you, let me / pull you over the edge” just kidding this song is still sad - I love fics about Crowley being paranoid that he’ll accidentally cause Aziraphale to fall

Also I love this line in Crowley’s voice: “I run my thumb through your hair / like a stack of hundred-dollar bills I think I’ll keep”

Lights Are On - Tom Rosenthal

tooth rotting fluff - I think they deserve to rest and be ignored by middle management for a little while

“God stood me up / and I don’t know why / lights are on / but nobody’s home / there ain’t no love / like our love”

For You - Laura Marling

“I thank a god I never met / never loved / never wanted / for you” is such a devastating line for Crowley

No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can - Laura Marling

I have no excuses for this purely mushy bullshit

Also the string arrangements in this song are to die for

#good omens #Spotify

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tonydaddingham · 1 year ago

Note

LWA: I'm going to be reactionary today (not to you), because I've now come across this persistent if small subset of viewers who are outraged that Aziraphale directly asks Crowley for things in S2. This despite S1's plot engine being driven predominantly by Crowley directly asking Aziraphale for things, one of them unjustifiable, and getting him to say yes to all of them. (S1 has Aziraphale indirectly asking for HAMLET, paint removal, and handcuff removal.) It's parallel structure that uses the dialogue shifts to open up new avenues for characterization...

Anyway, to avoid just grousing, I'd like to tie this into the question of greyness. Because despite our haste to endorse Crowley's position on living within grey areas, the script insists that he is not always correct or even good at it (any more than Aziraphale is always correct or good at it). Moreover, while I don't think the series has any profound or even accurate engagement with the concept of yin-yang, the fundamental point that the two characters embody necessary and complementary forces is crucial to the series' argument. (It's not an accident that a yin-yang symbol appears right behind them in the coffee shop during their ep1 conversation.) So, Crowley's asks:

The Arrangement: the Arrangement is a pragmatic exercise that enables them to engage in their favorite activity, namely, being lazy. The high comedy of this is that being lazy is the most moral thing they could possibly do in the GO universe. The full moral implications of the Arrangement are not visible to either character in both novel and series, although Novel!Aziraphale is much more aware of how it fractures the Good/Evil binary than TV!Aziraphale is. I know that the fandom likes to think of Crowley's work as being somehow noble, "giving humans choices" and all that, but the Nuremberg Defense he drops on his foot at the end of the novel calls this interpretation into question. Doing their jobs is "messing about" by the novel's moral standard, and the series is heading in that direction by the end of S2. Humans make choices just fine without Crowley intervening. In other words, the Arrangement is an apparently grey choice ("that would be /lying!/") that leads to a moral absolute in the novel and appears to be heading in that direction in the series--namely, that supernatural interference with human free will is wrong, full stop.

Averting Armageddon: AKA treason. Everything in the script obviously endorses Crowley's request and Aziraphale's agreement with it, although TV!Crowley has a potentially fatal moral lapse along the way (see #4). The plot structure of s1 is yin-yang in action, as Crowley loses most of his narrative drive after ep3 and Aziraphale correspondingly gains it.

Holy Water 1862/1967: for Aziraphale, the resolution to the Holy Water argument in 1967 is a true grey decision in which there is no good resolution from his POV, just a less bad one. It might have been less grey if 1862!Crowley had managed to restrain his immediate emotional response to Aziraphale's refusal and just denied that it was a suicide pill (cue the end of s2ep6 for Crowley deciding the emotional marriage proposal was a better option than relaying what he had discovered in Heaven). 1967 doesn't resolve the problem--yes, Crowley responds to Aziraphale's obvious pain, but is he responding in the way Aziraphale needs him to?--and the characters apparently never return to it. But the point is that Aziraphale can, in fact, negotiate grey areas successfully, if at great cost to himself.

Kill the Antichrist for me, as a treat: at some point you're going to ban me for discussing this! Here, both the novel and series are emphatic that /there is no grey area/. You cannot kill children, no excuse, doesn't matter if they're the Antichrist, still can't kill them. What's interesting is that TV!Crowley is 100% in the wrong here for committing a hit-and-run against Aziraphale with a trolley problem, but Aziraphale's initial response is /also/ wrong: it's "I've never killed anything before," not "killing children is wrong." Aziraphale falls victim to the trolley problem because he's /not/ in full right/wrong binary mode here! Crowley screws up by misclassifying a non-grey problem as a grey one, while Aziraphale also screws up by substituting a subjective objection for an absolute one. Ironically, that is, the problem in that subplot is not that Aziraphale is too different from Crowley, but that he's tiptoed too close to him. Meanwhile, Crowley shows himself unwittingly capable of risking Aziraphale's life--which is what he's doing here--for his own convenience. Like the Holy Water argument, the underlying problems in this conflict are never resolved.

And now Aziraphale in S2, where Aziraphale is learning how to ask for things:

Help with Gabriel: Aziraphale's decision to help Gabriel is an act of radical charity that brings him close to holy fool status, I think. It's possibly dangerous, there's no real reward, and Gabriel tried to murder him (erm, yes, that); then again, Gabriel-as-Jim is in full factory reset mode and is entirely helpless. Like a child, in fact, so see #4 above. I don't think "liking" or "not liking" Aziraphale's choice is relevant to the moral problems raised by the entire situation, which are extraordinarily difficult and stretch across multiple philosophical, theological, and political domains--what do you /do/ with a bad person in trouble?--and left for the viewer to chew on. My own reading is that the script endorses Aziraphale's decision to help despite the total lack of benefit to and potential danger to himself (he's still unsure how "awful" Gabriel/Jim is). Crowley, by contrast, does not ever appear to fully understand what Aziraphale is doing. His agreement is not an agreement, since it involves concealing the actual reason for his willingness to participate, and his initial response is to just abandon Gabriel/Jim. Of the two, it's Aziraphale who negotiates the extreme greyness of this particular grey area with more success. You can certainly argue that Aziraphale should have been more attuned to Crowley's anxieties, but then Crowley's decision to give away the whole darned body swap suggests that maybe Crowley should also have listened more to Crowley's anxieties.

Taking the Bentley: this exchange is Aziraphale reverse-Crowleying Crowley. In the Gabriel ask, Aziraphale is clear but doesn't do a good job arguing his case, and Crowley resorts to glowering silently. When he convinces Crowley to let him take the Bentley, though, he tries out the same kind of experimental button-pushing that Crowley does in s1ep1. No, he shouldn't have changed the Bentley when he drove it, but it's unclear how many of those changes are the Bentley's doing, and he had no way of knowing that Crowley could feel the alterations until Crowley yelled at him. A more significant problem is that it's not clear if Crowley fully /hears/ what Aziraphale is truly asking, which is for Crowley to acknowledge that they are sharing each other's lives. It would be easier for Crowley to hear that if Aziraphale would just come out with it, but...

Come to Heaven and be an angel again: now, /this/ request is definitely wrong, and Crowley correctly refuses. Crowley's refusal is in contrast to s1 Aziraphale, who sacrifices his own boundaries to Crowley in the Holy Water incident. (If you can see where I'm going here, between the Holy Water and the child killing, I think the problem is not Aziraphale refusing to give Crowley things and then giving in, but Aziraphale needing to learn that sometimes /Crowley/ should get an absolute no.) This is the bad side of Aziraphale's binary thought process on full display. The decision to go to Heaven on its own, though, strikes me as much more in tune with his decision to help Gabriel regardless of personal danger or potential reward, and the extraordinarily ambiguous closing shots are about as grey as you can get, right down to the lighting.

i can’t tell you how excited and trepidatious, in equal measure, i got at the words “going to be reactionary today”, LWA✨ - but it usually means some excellent Hot Tea is heading my way though, and this is no exception!!!

(i would never ban you for discussing your Favourite Bugbear, perish the thought!!! but i may well start cataloguing them in my favour for an apology dance, so proceed with caution)

at some really interesting points in the story, i think crowley betrays his own narrative, and the image that he holds of himself. i noted something - and this is quite tangential to your ask but humour me - from the coffee-shop scene, specifically in the part where bohemian rhapsody (BR) is playing at the time of him questioning aziraphale about what’s going on, and if he needs help.

BR is a swift but a fairly complete story that follows the relatively basic hero-narrative structure. rundown to help illustrate my point: hero has issue, hero decides to solve said issue, hero goes on adventure, hero has conflict of conviction, and hero prevails. well, i don't think it's particularly accidental (because - of course it probably isn't) that the dialogue from "listen, something big is going on in heaven", up until crowley downs his caffeine nightmare, is overlayed with the section of BR that seems to fit best with the adventure mark of said structure, and that the rest of the song is missing. i'll come back to this in a minute.

i like the note that crowley loses a lot of his narrative drive after ep3, but i'm wondering if it potentially happens earlier than that - specifically in ep1? his (as we know more solidly now from s2) tendency to insert himself as the hero? to my mind, his 'hero-narrative' in s1 is derailed quite quickly after inception, specifically in the main antichrist plot. he’s given the antichrist and delivers it (issue), wants to stop armageddon and enlists his counterpart to help (decision to resolve) and they decide to meddle in warlock’s childhood to ensure that the apocalypse never comes to fruition - so, by this point, we’re pretty much on par with the adventure mark in the structure.

but then we get to the bench scene, and crowley offers up the dilemma of the hellhound and… record scratch. aziraphale is obviously alarmed by this detail, one that has a direct bearing on how the rest of the narrative will go, and that crowley wouldn’t think/remember to share it at this point. crowley tries to claw it back, says that it won’t matter; if they’ve done their jobs right, because it will be sent away unnamed. he doesn’t consider that whilst they may have influenced the kid, the kid is ultimately going to do what it likes, and potentially unravel it all anyway.

aziraphale however does propose this eventuality (which by-the-by also serves to indicate perhaps how much aziraphale might understand humanity a bit more than crowley does - that a human child is of course going to name a stray dog and want to keep it), and crowley instead jumps straight into a solution that involves tempting aziraphale to kill a child. this is, loosely, crowley’s mark of having a conflict of conviction - that their plan will work - and he chooses a solution to that. whilst that solution would resolve it, it doesn’t take into account the world, and people, around him, nor indeed the consequences (harking back to our last chat).

what occurs thereafter is arguably aziraphale leading the overall story with his hero-narrative instead - from the point that he shakes off crowley’s suggestion, and proposes instead to stop the dog himself - and crowley’s grasp on his hero-narrative disintegrates (albeit the two re-converge in ep6). the precipitating events in s1 would not have occurred if aziraphale had not reached this proposed solution, or at least not in the way we ended up seeing them - as you said before, LWA, it’s highly doubtful that aziraphale would have survived, in any way, killing an innocent child.

(we see him distraught at the prospect of lying to god to save job's children, and bowing to the 'inevitable' of falling (despite him knowing that he likely did the right thing) - for him to actually kill the child antichrist would be bad enough, but to find out later that warlock wasn't the antichrist to begin with? aziraphale would surely have bypassed falling entirely and walked himself straight into hellfire)

the coffee-shop scene in s2, imo, suggests much the same; crowley learns of the “naked man” (issue), downs coffee (decision to resolve said issue), and abruptly leaves the table to go play hero (adventure). the rather aggressive overlay of BH, specifically the part of “will not let you go (let me go)” suggests to me that this is where we, and crowley, need to anticipate the upcoming conflict of conviction beat, and ask: what will crowley decide to do?

so we head into the bookshop, he discovers gabriel, and the So Did I argument ensues... and crowley resolves to storm out. he doesn’t explain to aziraphale why helping gabriel is a hard-no for him, and - again, as far as the narrative indicates - essentially abandons him. it isn’t until he learns of the book of life that he even resolves to go back to the bookshop, and fakes an apology to insert himself into the narrative that aziraphale is on… but what would have happened if he hadn’t learnt of the book?

that’s considerably unknowable, but regardless - the missing last verse and outro of BR arguably spells it out for us. by crowley walking out, abandoning aziraphale and betraying the narrative he set himself on, the result would have been the exact same as what we see at the end of s2. just like those lines in GOFLB later on in the episode, i think it’s rather telling that they were cut/left out.

so - in s1, crowley attempts to drag aziraphale along on his story where he gets to play hero, and immediately cocks it up with the antichrist ask, alienating aziraphale for the majority of the narrative up until aziraphale reconciles that heaven is not on the side of humanity like he and crowley are, and he immediately goes to bring crowley back into the fold. in s2, crowley drives himself back into the narrative a bit more successfully than his attempts in s1 (with calling aziraphale for check-ins, meeting up at the bandstand, etc) but arguably the damage has been done in s2, and aziraphale and he continue to be at odds for the rest of the show - not necessarily in ways that relate specifically to the gabriel/jim plot, but crowley abandoning aziraphale sets the tone for what's to come.

the thing is - and i may be skewered for this - i don’t think crowley operates in the grey as much as he likes to think he does. it’s all very well that he intellectually understands beyond a moral-dualistic concept, but he doesn’t always put his mouth where his money is:

it's fairly clear to the audience that he cares for aziraphale at the very least, and is concerned largely by his wellbeing and safety - and yet won’t tell him important information that would make aziraphale amenable to, or more receptive to, crowley playing hero and asserting his protectiveness. that, and the fact that he completely forgets to safeguard aziraphale when confronting jim in ep5.

he considers it wrong to hurt the innocent or cause them suffering, but drops graveyard guards down a huge shaft in a completely disproportionate response of self-defense, and only remarks that he might have “slightly overdone it” (oh, and attempts making his best friend kill a child - arguably still innocent regardless of their origin - so he doesn’t have the stain on his own conscience).

he is vocal of his vehemence of heaven/hell having any interference in his existence on earth - and that of aziraphale’s - but does not once stop to consider the moral implications of messing about with nina and maggie, or with warlock... or with any other humans as a supernatural entity, for that matter

as an example of the other way around - crowley obviously hates gabriel being in the bookshop, and the risk that it confers onto aziraphale's safety. and yet, in ep3, he is clearly showing some level of acceptance, patience, and camaraderie with him. this is probably subconsciously showing his recognition that jim is entirely innocent, but i dont think it's out of crowley suddenly understanding aziraphale's charitable, altruistic perspective in ep1 on protecting him; instead, it's perhaps because his level of thinking still slips into the binary: jim = good, gabriel = bad... something that i'm personally not convinced is completely fair in the first place (but that's a different post).

that’s not to say that aziraphale is any better - of course he’s not, and in some instances aziraphale is even worse in this regard - but the hypocrisy of crowley’s assertion that he exists beyond heaven and hell’s machinations is manifestly unsupported by his own actions and choices which, as he confirms in job, he has the free will to decide for himself.

i’m not quite sure how it’s possible to miss, in this respect, that regardless of interpreted historic trauma, that crowley (speaking specifically about tv!crowley here) is altogether not entirely a good person, grey or otherwise. he doesn’t really demonstrate a whole lot of that greyness - balance - with any great consistency. his decisions and attributes appear to be entirely based on his own agenda; saying in job that he’s on his “own side” is probably as close, for me, to true self-description as he gets as of the end of s2.

aziraphale on the other hand just doesn't seem to grasp what the greyness actually means. his intellectual analogue is very much on the dualistic, binary scale, and it's certainly not something he truly understands by the end of s2 either. whilst i do think he's able to separate heaven from god, and separate them both from angels, and then separate himself from all of it, he still holds to the belief that there is superiority in the absolute concept of good.

his comment on hell being "the bad guys" notwithstanding (which, given the events of ep5/ep6, is not a wholly incorrect assessment to be fair to him), it's his assertion that heaven remains the side "of truth, of light, of good" that gives pause. whilst he may acknowledge that it hasn't embodied this in some time, he at least believes that it was always meant to (which, to me, is odd, if you consider that 'heaven' was probably never meant to be good before the fall - because hell didn't exist to given heaven that level of definition - and was just meant to be). but aziraphale may have always considered god to be good. this is again not something supported in the narrative whatsoever; at 'best', god is completely amoral.

and even more interesting, as you said LWA, is that aziraphale is the one of the two of them that seems to land himself in predicaments that are grey, and is able to navigate it better in certain circumstances. those circumstances - the suggestion of killing the antichrist*, the giving of the holy water, the protecting of gabriel/jim, and returning to heaven to make a difference there - all pose a dilemma to aziraphale where it pulls into question what he fundamentally believes in morally. the fact that by proximity to crowley in s1 that he essentially betrays that (goes to shoot adam, gives crowley the holy water), but in s2, after some distance has been established between them, he sticks to his metaphorical guns (protects gabriel, goes to heaven), i think shows the true essence of where their dichotomy lies.

*i personally still consider this to be a grey decision, because i can see why crowley suggests it; the weighing up of one against the many. the issue i cannot reconcile is the tempting aziraphale into doing it instead of crowley... imo, don't suggest a grave, horrendous action if it's not one you're prepared to consider doing yourself, or at least communicate why you can't do it... but that's my personal take.

#the issue with LWA asks is they so neatly and beautifully sum up everything that i literally have nothing to add #but the effort they put in deserves a response so i end up going on tangents and discussing something arguably completely different #and look one day theyre probably going to run out of things to send to me so i have to make the most of them right :')#anyway yeah have a lukewarm take #good omens #ask

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trashboatprince · 1 year ago

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A Frankensteinian gentleman and hubristic sciencer creating a creature but upon its fateful awakening finding they are not quite as expected?

Wanna know something funny? I was just reading a Frankenstein-based one-shot yesterday morning. Containing content that would get this blog into a lot of trouble, but that's fine. :)

Warning: unethical experiments, please imagine Crowley with his Scottish accent while reading this

On with the fic!

"It WILL work this time, I just know it!" Dr. Crowley grinned, looking under the sheet. "My calculations are much more accurate this time."

"Did you remember to carry the three this time, dear boy?" Doctor (if you could really call him that) McFell sniffed, turning the page of his book, a bored expression on his face.

Crowley glowered at McFell and stood up straight. "Do not be doubting me, McFell! I actually finished school!" He saw the nasty glare he was getting, yet pushed on anyway. "Unlike you."

"I am still more accomplished than you. I am not the one that decided that to solve the crop death problem was to implant seeds into the rodent population in order to-"

"Blahblahblahblah! That was... an attempt!" Crowley waved his hand about. "But this time, oooh, this time, we shall get everything up and runnin', McFell!"

With a sigh, McFell set aside his book, but kept his glasses on his face as he approached the table, throwing back the sheet to look at the rather creepy sight underneath. Using only the freshest of corpses, and with a lot of plant matter, liquids, and detailed work (along with a long night spent carefully infusing a whole hell of a lot of cloroplaste into a reconstructed blood system), Crowley's latest attempt at solving Scotland's recent poor growing season was ready to come to life!

It had been a very long discussion of whole the hell this could even work between him and McFell, considering that it wasn't exactly natural, but at this point, desperate times called for desperate measures.

That, and when you drink your weight in wine and somehow draw up anatomically and botanically accurate models of a plant man that can release healthy seeds into soil... well...

You kinda have to go with your gut and at least attempt to make this stupid idea a reality.

"Are you sure tonight is the night?" McFell asked.

"Very sure!" Crowley said as he made sure the metal in certain parts of the monster were sturdy, ready for the bursts of power they were about to receive. "At least 96% sure!"

"Only 96%?"

Crowley paused and looked away. "Yeah, let's go with that. Alright! No time like the present!" And he bonded off to the switch that allowed for their lab's roof to open. He flipped the next switch, the table started to rise, and out into the storm it went.

"If this works, I owe you a bottle of something drinkable." McFell said from where he stood.

"And I you if it doesn't!" Crowley grinned and stared at the storm, watching as lightning danced across the sky. He let out a whoop when a bolt struck the metal rods around the opening and there was a bright glow from the table.

McFell watched in wonder and Crowley felt so smug. He turned when there was a horrible screeching sound from the metal slap and before he could lower it, something rolled off and fell thirty feet to the ground.

With a very, very loud, wet splat.

McFell and Crowley looked at the greenish mess all over their stone floor and Crowley sighed. "Well, it was alive, so we know it works."

"Yes." McFell nodded, frowning as he looked at the goop on his shoes. "Though we should probably install some safety guards around the table the next time this happens."

"Nn... y-yeah, good point. Well, we both won and lost, wanna get sauced?"

"Yes please, after a quick change, I'm covered in..."

"Yeah. Me too. Uhg."

Probably not a spooky fic, but there was something so funny about having Crowley and Aziraphale similar to how they were in 1827 to me cause, ya know, grave robbing for science!

Also, I can't get over Dr. McFell, great name.

#good omens #john's drabbles #aziraphale #crowley #anthony j crowley #ineffable husbands #ineffable spouses

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atlas-hope · 1 year ago

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AZIRAPHALE'S PLAYLIST (6)

Since I’m joyfully suffering from an immense amount of Good Omens brainrot, I’ve been collecting all of my Thoughts™ regarding the list of songs that Prime gave us before Season 2 came out. Now that these songs (and the events of S2) have been churning around in my brain for a few weeks, I feel like I’m able to put my thoughts into words. This will be a series of posts!

Angeleyes

Oof. OOF. That summarizes most of what I have to say about this song choice. OOF. I’ve had to gather my thoughts together for WEEKS on this song. Before Season 2 was released, this was a pretty quirky and goofy choice of song, given the fact that it’s a peppy Europop song (and Aziraphale is not the half of the ineffable duo who is known for their striking eyes). AFTER Season 2 was released, this song choice is UNNERVING (and more than a little painful).

A lot of the verses don’t seem to directly apply to Aziraphale, like the ones below:

Last night, I was taking a walk along the river, And I saw him together with a young girl. And the look that he gave her made me shiver, 'Cause he always used to look at me that way. Then I thought maybe I should walk right up to her and say, "Ah-ha-ha, it's a game he likes to play."

Do I think Aziraphale will show up with a new best friend/romantic interest in Season 3? Will Crowley have to witness the angel bestowing his affections upon another? NO, I don’t think so. That’s why I don’t think these verses are meant to directly apply to Aziraphale.

HOWEVER, I have a small theory. If you stretch the metaphor a bit, the lyrics appear to connote that Aziraphale is more duplicitous than he seems.

Let me explain! After the ending of Season 2, we could be tempted to immediately assume that Crowley has the role of the singer in this song. After all, Aziraphale seems to have performed an immense betrayal. No matter his good intentions, he’s left Crowley on the Earth alone.

I’m here to suggest that the singer COULD be someone else, in this verse specifically. Could the singer be the personification of Heaven's opinion of Aziraphale? He’s certainly infamous Upstairs. Even Muriel, a 37th Order Scrivener, knew who “the Traitor” was, and about his relationship with “the Demon.” I’m saying that there might be a certain amount of mythology around Aziraphale and Crowley up in Heaven, post-ApocaNope. After all those years of fooling the heavenly host, there has to be a great number of angels that gawp down at the ineffable duo’s relationship, marveling at the deception that they had managed.

That being said, I DO believe Crowley is the only feasible singer for these next lines:

Look into his angel eyes, One look and you're hypnotized! He'll take your heart and you must pay the price. Look into his angel eyes, You'll think you're in paradise! And one day you'll find out he wears a disguise. Don't look too deep into those angel eyes.

Need I say any more? This face says it all:

Anyways, back to the lyrics.

Sometimes when I'm lonely, I sit and think about him. And it hurts to remember all the good times, When I thought I could never live without him. And I wonder, does it have to be the same, Every time? When I see him, will it bring back all the pain? Ah-ha-ha, how can I forget that name?

I believe that we will see the ineffable duo mourning the demise of their relationship in Season 3, on both sides. I can’t wait to see what will happen when they finally see each other again. It’s definitely bound to be painful.

On a lighter note, let me reiterate that I still think it’s utterly hilarious that a disco Europop song was put on Aziraphale’s playlist. Somehow, even though I didn’t expect it to, it totally fits his vibe.

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#good omens #aziraphale #good omens 2 #crowley #metapost #good omens 2 spoilers

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plantanarchy · 6 years ago

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On Flora

good omens fic, crowley & aziraphale, 1.2k, mostly meta

summary - a stroll through one botanical garden or another. aziraphale doesn’t trust a single one of the leafy bastards. that’s it. that’s the fic.

(sorry to anyone on mobile who the cut does not work for!! didn’t have anywhere better to dump this)

“Geraniums,” Crowley says with a soft g, a drawn out 'awww' and a disdainful snarl. “Whoever authorized those ones should feel very bad about themselves. They're like tottering old men who can't find the restroom. They're like the plant equivalent of a beige knit jumper.”

“It's Ger-ain-iums, my dear,” Aziraphale says. “And I think they're quite lovely for a plant. Very sensible.”

“Guhr-awww-niums,” the demon says with exaggerated aplomb. “Of course you like them, you love beige knit jumpers and tottering old men.”

“I'll show you tottering old men.”

“Angel, you are one.”

“Anyway, I am certain it's pronounced Jer-ain-iums. In this part of the world at least. Though there really are far too many names for the lot of them.”

Aziraphale gestures widely at the multitude of plants that surround them. They're in one botanical garden or another on a fine, sunny morning. Botanic gardens in no way come close to The Garden, but it's amusing to see the small ways human being have attempted to claw their way back there one carefully crafted display of blooms and foliage at a time. The angel prefers to keep a fair distance between himself and the botanical kingdom, but Crowley's barely-disguised affection for plants has led them on frequent trips and visits to the various gardens and collections of the world.

Aziraphale has always found it charming that, despite initial instructions containing no stipulation about naming the plants as well as the animals, the humans had gone and done it anyway and with vigorous enthusiasm.

Most animals were given only their respective names in each of the many languages of the world, but plants were bestowed with proper names and common names and folk names and alternate, updated scientific names until some had dozens each and a new one every decade or so.

Aziraphale doesn't blame the humans for their superfluous and erratic naming practices. Plants are wily, devious, and endlessly hard to pin down, even for angelic beings such as himself.

Though plants are distinct and sentient entities, their initial purpose in the grand scheme of creation, as far as anyone could tell, appeared to be Scenery. Part of the backdrop same as the sky and the stars and the mountains, so that the birds and the beasts and the humans didn't have to enact their roles in the great and ineffable divine plan in a flat, blank plane of nothing.

After the Fall, they took on a different role, but the nature of that role exactly is still not quite clear. Both sides claim many plants as angelic or demonic agents, with some even pointing out that the humans had apparently cultivated many agents of their own. But very few from Heaven or Hell have had much success in maintaining communication with plants in any meaningful way so as to ascertain what they are plotting.

And they must be plotting something, Aziraphale thinks.

After all, there is still some debate about whether the Forbidden Fruit was the Almighty's idea or whether the tree itself came up with it unbidden. Or perhaps was tempted into it along with the first humans. (There is an ongoing, unrelated debate about the exact variety of tree itself, since no one had yet thought to name it.)

Crowley, for his part, has gone to greater lengths than many when it comes to fraternizing with plants, but he has never been as wary of the chlorophytic creatures as Aziraphale is and so never seemed to ask the right questions. Granted, the domesticated versions Crowley tends in his little flat are eons removed from their wild cousins.

You may have as much luck asking a toddler about particle physics as trying to discuss the Amazon rainforest with a Philodendron living in a London flat. Let alone a discussion about their role in the greater scheme of things. When Aziraphale had last tried, the viney creature simply shivered in confused silence for a beat before asking please sir may I have some more of the nitrogen water, maybe a touch of phosphorous, a sprinkle of magnesium, thank you, sir, much obliged.

Crowley was not behind the concept of houseplants as a whole so much as he was responsible for the continued popularity of many of them.

“Snake Plants,” he says in the botanic garden, pointing out a plant that grows in a cluster of spear-shaped leaves. Or pointy, serpent-tongue shaped leaves, if you may. “Now those are reliable, upstanding plants that can still have a bit of fun.”

“I don't trust them,” Aziraphale says. “You could have a fake one right alongside and be hard-pressed to tell the difference.”

“Devil's Ivy,” Crowley says, gesturing to a Pothos climbing its way up a scraggly palm tree. “Never have to worry about that one causing a fuss. Never a leaf out of place.”

“Angel's Trumpet.” Aziraphale beams as they come upon a tree with drooping flowers. “Now have you ever seen or smelled anything more heavenly?”

“One of ours actually. Highly hallucinogenic. Prime temptation material.”

“Ah,” says the angel.

“Though Devil's Trumpet is a bit of a toss-up surprisingly,” Crowley says. An upturned, white flower glows on a sprawling shrub. “You know, on account of the witches.”

“Right,” Aziraphale says. “Witches.” Most human witches he trusts about as much as plants, mostly on account of their ilk certainly having been in cahoots with the most untrustworthy of herbs and towering trees and various devious flora for centuries.

They step through a scalloped archway into an outdoor section of the garden, where verdant green grass stretches for hundreds of yards away from them, broken up occasionally by curly-cue swirls of beds teeming with annual flowers.

Turf grass, Aziraphale is fairly confident, is on a similar unholy tier as some of the most diabolical of demonic entities.

“Lawns,” Crowley says, drawling the word with disgust.

“Certainly your side's doing.”

“No one's claimed responsibility,” the demon says. “You'd think something as truly evil as uninterrupted turf grass would earn big whopping promotions Down Below but nada. Zilch. Mum's the word.”

“Crysanthemums,” Aziraphale says. “I do like those somewhat.”

“Dreadful. Absolutely abominable. Preposterously untenable in every way.”

“Tell us how you really feel, my dear.”

“Have you ever looked up close at a Crysanthemum? Really looked?”

“I don't believe I would ever dare.”

“Exactly.”

The pair wander the rest of elaborate gardens, elbows brushing at times, footsteps in sync. After a time, they stop beneath an ancient apple tree, its twisted boughs just beginning to be weighed down by growing fruit.

“Do you think it remembers?” Aziraphale asks. “Same as we do?”

“That's assuming it's even the right tree. Some say, you know, pomegranate.”

“Doesn't have quite the same cadence to it.”

“No,” says Crowley, and he stares in contemplative silence up at the gnarled tree, dappled sunlight flickering across his pointed face.

The mysterious presence of the tree looms before them, feeling as ominous and unknowable as it always has, even in that first Garden as the plants spread their first fronds, drank deep with searching roots from the first springs, and swept the first glimmers of sunlight up with their fresh pigment.

Seemed an awful lot of effort to waste on simple Scenery. Seemed an awful lot of weight to put on one, simple tree at the center of a Garden. Perhaps their true nature would remain always another of the Almighty's mysteries, never to be fully grasped.

“Absolute bastards, all of them,” Crowley says with distinct fondness in his voice, and Aziraphale, for once, can't help but share the sentiment.

#long post #good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #except this is mostly gen #if these two can ever really be gen #i'm fanfiction on main now i guess oh well #anyway i'm somehow both aziraphale and crowley in this it's great #and if i had my way this would be 800 times longer #it's relevant to this blog at least

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aziraphales-library · 2 years ago

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Can you recommend any oneshots that don't pass a 15k word count? I absolutely love a good plot, but getting absorbed in 100k+ word fics can be taxing and sometimes I just prefer something short. Pretty much in the mood for anything A/C with a good ending and some sort of plot. Any rating works.

We have some fics under 8k here that you might want to check out. And here are some fics I’ve enjoyed with a <15k word count...

From Beginning To End by entanglednow (M)

Aziraphale suffers the effects of a demon's venom, Crowley tries to help him as best as he can.

i can’t say the words, so i wrote you into my verse by mygalfriday (T)

Aziraphale blinks as it slowly dawns on him exactly what he’s looking at. Crowley has a tattoo. Well, another one anyway. Unlike the small serpent curled just beneath his temple, this one takes up far more space.

greatest hits by attheborder (M)

“But my dear, I just can’t believe you never told me that you had joined a musical group. I would have come out to support you— at your gigs!”

“First of all, never say ‘gigs’ again. Second of all, not my fault you never noticed when I showed up to dinner with a great big guitar case slung over my shoulder.”

(Aziraphale accidentally discovers Crowley’s secret: he was in a band in the 90s. And he wrote a whole album of love songs…)

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction by asideofourown (T)

Onscreen, the interviewer gave a blinding smile and then said, “Mr. Dowling, since I have the privilege of being the first to interview you, I get to ask— what inspired you to write your novel?”

“I had a bit of an odd childhood,” Warlock said slowly, his head tilted slightly. “While I was living here I had a nanny who took care of me for a few years, and she… inspired a bit about Ms. Cassandra in my novel. Likewise, inspiration for Mr. Felix came from my family’s gardener when I was a kid.” His lips twitched into a tiny, fond smile. “They were a bit of an odd pair, Nanny Ash and Brother Francis, but they had a pretty big impact on me. I guess you could say a little of the novel was inspired by what I wish my childhood could have been like— just a bit special and fantastical.”

The TV screen went black, and Crowley looked down at his fingers, frozen in a snap. He had miracled the news off without even realizing.

Crowley leaned back against the couch and then ran a hand over his face. “Bloody fucking hell,” he whispered.

[Warlock writes a book, and reunites with some old friends]

Angel’s Favor by PinkPenguinParade (T)

"I beg your pardon, dear girl, have you seen--ah."

She whirled at the voice behind her, off her knees in a flash, and found herself face to face with the kindest eyes she'd ever seen. "What are--?"

He was a bit taller than she was, pale and round and overwhelming and she couldn't look away from his eyes, like he knew everything and still cared and his eyes, his eyes--

He caught her elbow as she staggered. "Oh, I'm so sorry." He closed his eyes for a moment and shook himself, settling somehow, and when he opened them again his eyes were kind and a humanish blue, and she could breathe again. He glanced at the blackened shaft in her hand. "I believe you called me?"

moment’s lost, moments gained by commodorecliche (M)

With frantic, fumbling steps, Hamish hurries back to his car, grabs his radio, and alerts headquarters.

“Yes, uh,” He huffs with urgency, “This is PC Hamish Black; I’ve got two folks out here off the A30, both suffering from severe injuries and unresponsive. One burn and one… impact, maybe? I can’t tell. I need emergency units here as soon as possible.”

Hamish takes another look at the two men strewn across the highway, the rubble and flames surrounding them both. He vaguely hears headquarters responding to his alert.

“Please, hurry,” he mutters.

Crowley and Aziraphale are expelled from their respective realms when their partnership is found out, and find themselves waking up in hospital as humans, with no memory of their previous natures, and no memory of each other.

- Mod D

#good omens #ineffable husbands #short fic #mod d

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antikate · 4 years ago

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for the wip ask game, I'm v curious about Weight of the World [insert preferred eye emoji]

HEY CLAUDINE! Ok, Weight of the World is an almost complete, 30k fic I’ve had sitting in my hard drive for a stupidly long time, as it’s the second Good Omens fanfic I wrote back in the summer of ‘19.

The premise is that Aziraphale is kidnapped by some bad people who intend to sell him on the supernatural creature black market (as you do), and Crowley rescues him. I really like whump and hurt/comfort, and basically this is an excuse for a fair bit of that, along with Crowley reckoning with what it means to be demonic in the post-apocalyptic age, and some stuff about summoning demons and the language of hell, and possibly a completely gratuitous truth serum scene.

Unfortunately I feel like it needs a very very heavy rewrite, because I wrote it when I was still trying to figure out my voice and my control of tone and pacing was... not great. (I think I’m still working on both, but there’s a lot of kind of faux witty stuff in there I feel like is a bad Pratchett pastiche and doesn’t fill me with joy.) So it’s going to sit there for a while longer, I think.

Anyway, here’s a snippet that you didn’t ask for but I’m giving you nonetheless:

At some point, probably because Crowley was swearing about it, he became aware that he was still materializing his wings, and they were too big for the car. He felt Crowley’s hand running over the coverts, and thought (or maybe he said, it was getting very hard to tell) oh of course now it’s all right to do that sort of thing, when I’m basically an angel-shaped trifle, but also dimly understood that he needed to get them out of the way. He managed it somehow, and then found himself slumped on the passenger seat. Crowley leaned over him and did up the seatbelt, which for some reason made him giggle helplessly.

After an indeterminate length of time, which Aziraphale later hoped he hadn’t spent whimpering but was pretty sure he had, the car stopped.

“Let me look at those handcuffs,” Crowley said, drawing Aziraphale’s hands closer.

“Very embarrassing,” Aziraphale mumbled.

“Yes, you’re going to be so overjoyed with all this when you’re sober,” Crowley muttered. “You probably won’t speak to me for decades.”

“Why wouldn’t I speak to you? I love you.”

Crowley made a strangled noise, but he’d obviously realised that exhorting him to stop was utterly pointless.“That’s the fourth time you’ve said that since I got here.”

#asks!#wip game #lots of talking about my fics #that'll do I am sure

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vidavalor · 1 year ago

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Ah, I remembered!

My question was: what are your thoughts on Crowley saying ‘I lost my best friend’ when he’s directly talking to Aziraphale’s non-corporate ghost in season 1? I always thought that line was strange. Is it that he can’t say ‘I lost you directly’ because others might be listening?

Hi @procrastiel ooh, nice! I *love* this scene so I'm super happy to share an opinion on it. Thank you. :)

Meta on the meanings behind what they call each other, what they intentionally *don't* call each other, how they actually said they loved each other and came up with a shorthand for it in 1941, and why they still don't just use those damn words already...

This goes everywhere, just FYI lol. I think I started with "no nightingales" and took a scenic route through 1600, 1941 and bits of S2 before coming back to the scene you asked about but I've been told it makes sense. Thanks for indulging me. :)

There are certain things that Crowley & Aziraphale feel that they can't call one another and can't say to one another directly. It's not just because they could be overheard if they're in public, though that's always a concern. They don't say them when they're alone, either.

It's because it hurts too much.

They've always tried to be optimistic about surviving Armageddon and being able to be together somehow but they're terrified that they won't and the odds, in their minds, aren't great, being that it's the whole will of God and all. As a result, they've lived their whole relationship expecting it to end in tragedy. They could both live for all of time, forced apart by Heaven and Hell. One of them could die and leave the other alone for eternity with nothing but the memory of the other. Meanwhile, in the now? It's not a great situation, either.

They can't really be together. They are together but not openly and they can't promise each other everything and they absolutely would if they could. Heaven and Hell could literally murder them if they got caught together so they have to be careful and keep it a secret. This means that even as the human world they live in opens up and starts to change to a point that queer humans like them are living more open lives with one another, Crowley and Aziraphale still cannot at this stage in the story.

So, it all becomes then an unspoken question of: what would make this easier? (As if it could ever really be made easier?) They don't wish to cause each other any additional pain. What would make it easier, they think, is if they don't say certain things so that what they can't have now or what might be lost to them in the future is and will be easier to bear.

This is delusional but they're doing it anyway because it gives them some measure of control over things they can't totally control.

They think it is easier to deal with not being able to be together if they just never say directly aloud what they are in terms that are surface-level undeniable. They speak in a coded language with one another and they say all the things in those words. But the doublespeak gives them some cover. Not to ever deny any of it but it softens the edges of it.

It's also because they live with the fact that they can't fully be together but they also both are fundamentally optimists and want to think that maybe, someday, they could find a way to have what they want to have with one another. That's also why they don't say the things fully. A part of them thinks that if they just don't right now and they wait until some time comes when it seems like they could have a life together, then they still get to have those moments. They're almost saving some of it for a life they hope they get to have but aren't sure if they will.

As a result, they are romantic as all fuck towards one another but they don't use words like romance or love aloud. If they do find they have to talk about it, they've shorthanded it in a way that they both understand because it's based on their past together. We already can see bits of it uncoded-- nightingales, dining at the Ritz-- but there are more than that that we can see if we deep dive a bit here so let's do that...

What's evident in the scene in 2.06 wherein Crowley decides to try to abandon the doublespeak is how deeply ingrained this way of speaking is for both of them. Also, how they don't abandon it when they're alone (the 1967 scene also illustrates this.) Crowley actually reverts back to their doublespeak *three sentences* into his proposal. He doesn't get much further than establishing that they've both been on this planet for a long time before he starts evoking coded messaging. He flicks his hands between them during the "you and me" line in a way that is echoing how Aziraphale gestured at him to mean "couple" in 1941. He winds up using coded language all over the place, peaking with the "no nightingales" moment that is actually coded language twice over because of "nightingales" being their word for romance and the asking Aziraphale to listen for birds evoking the Job minisode and the moment in the courtyard when they came up with the doublespeak.

Part of why Crowley can't get through the proposal without it is because he doesn't want to do it like this. Both the doublespeak and the idea of someday loosening it a bit mean things to them. They like their private language. Maggie and Nina are not exactly correct in assuming that they never say how they really feel. They're not wrong, either, but they're not fully right. Crowley and Aziraphale do talk. They just do it in a way that hurts them less because they can't bear to hurt each other because they're batshit crazy in love with each other. Maggie and Nina are correct in saying that Crowley and Aziraphale don't say how they truly feel if saying how you truly feel means using traditional language but they are wrong to say that they don't express these feelings at all because we have literally been watching them do so this entire time.

Notice how Crowley, even risking more with breaking their code in 2.06, still doesn't say some things. Amazing how he said all of that and he didn't say I love you, isn't it? He could have. He is, in what else he's saying, but the words they don't say are still there on the table. Aziraphale, later in the scene, almost does. He almost does because he is a mess over the situation and he wants to give Crowley something but then he doesn't and he spits out a self-aware I forgive you instead. That horrid, complicated version of it that he's used before and is code they both kind of hate. He's angry that this is all happening the way it's happening because it's taking some of the things they leave unsaid for hopeful, better days and it's saying them in a less than ideal moment.

That they both leave out that I love you, though, is the most I love you thing they could have possibly done.

They think it will be easier to not be free to be together and unafraid in the present-- and to maybe lose one another in the future, if they eventually have to-- if they pretend they're not a team or a group of the two of them and one way to do that is to never say words like the one we were all silently screaming at Crowley to say in that scene in 2.06 lol: "couple."

Are they a couple? Yes. Are they lovers? Yes. Are they partners, the term Nina used? Yes. Do they refer to their relationship using any of the terms in this paragraph? Oh God no...

That is why Crowley freaks out when Nina tries to get him to use uncoded, normal, human person language to help her understand what Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is. She calls them partners and this is Crowley:

We're in agreement with Nina then when she responds with:

Nina isn't wrong here. She's just from a different world than Crowley. Nina lives in a world like ours in the year 2023 and she's puzzling Crowley and Aziraphale out through that filter. She doesn't know at this point that they are an angel and a demon who could be murdered by Heaven/Hell for being together. Her best rationale for why she's never seen Crowley and Aziraphale in her cafe together and didn't know until this week that the bookseller has a fella is her theory that Crowley is married and that he and Aziraphale are having an affair. To her, it explains why they've got chemistry for days but they're secretive. Crowley denies that-- defending Aziraphale's honor like the good old fashioned lover boy he is :)-- but the reason why he quickly denied that he and Aziraphale are partners, even if they absolutely are, is twofold. They are used to hiding it, it's dangerous for them to get caught out, and he probably feels uncomfortable with the idea of telling someone what they are exactly without talking with Aziraphale about it first-- that's all one reason.

The other reason is that he and Aziraphale don't use that word. It's not that it's an inaccurate one; it's probably the most accurate one, actually. They have a word, as we'll see, but partners isn't it because partners is the same thing as a couple and these are embargoed words to them. They don't use those phrases, even if that's what this is, just as they don't say I love you because if they don't call it love directly, they'll never lose that love, in their minds. If they don't know what it's like to hear the other say it, they don't ever have to bear the pain of never hearing it again. Better to hold those words back and only use them if they ever can somehow really be fully, openly together without fear. If Crowley doesn't use those words with Aziraphale, then he's not about to use them with the Coffee Shop Human he's only just recently met.

Along these same lines, they refrain from traditionally romantic terms of endearment on the surface. No my love, no darling, no sweetheart. Angel was there at the start and it stays because while it's always really angel (romantic), it's also angel (species/occupational), so it works well enough with their code. But its equivalent in reverse is Crowley. It's intimate, in the sense that only Crowley and Aziraphale know what it means. Only they were there in Job's courtyard. That's the coded layer of it-- it's Crowley's name to everyone else on the surface but it's that and a pet name to Aziraphale. It's why Aziraphale just calls him that constantly. Crowley changed his name to something only Aziraphale also really understands, making the use of it by Aziraphale then a way of expressing affection. When Nina asks them both separately about their relationship, both Crowley and Aziraphale actually revert to using what they call one another in an effort to explain it, even though they know that it doesn't translate fully in human terms without more words. Crowley says Aziraphale is an angel he knows; Aziraphale says:

Ironically? They are actually making it all *more* intimate by speaking in their own, private, coded language. They can't give each other everything but this they can, right? The language is their own, little world and not being able to explain their relationship to humans that well in 2023 doesn't mean they don't know what they mean to one another, which is more important. Since they can't make each other promises of forever that they can't keep and they can't have a life in the present that they'd choose for themselves, something they can do is use their little language to be sweet towards one another and they do. By having to work a little harder at conveying meaning through doublespeak, they wind up with something ironically actually at least as romantic as the traditional words, if not more so.

Anyone can call a lover darling and it can be lovely but can just anyone make my dear fellow romantic? Aziraphale can. This one was all him. He loved standing there in front of a dozen deadly human soldiers in the Kingdom of Wessex in 597 A.D., getting away with a pet name under the guise of stealing the "old sport"-style of male, moneyed, British speak and turning it romantic. This scene is great with the pet names because it opens with Aziraphale being a bit of a tease with "is that you under there, Crawley?" which he only does so that Crowley will roll his eyes and correct him. Aziraphale loves that Crowley changed his name to something coded between them based off of the moment they started their doublespeak. It was very romantic and this scene shows that Aziraphale sometimes, in earlier days, would call Crowley the old name just to get Crowley to correct him, which is all just a coded way of getting Crowley to say that, yes, he still feels the same way and yes, he still wants Aziraphale to call him that. This same scene, a few sentences later, then has Aziraphale's my DEAR fellow-- heavy emphasis on the 'dear'-- which is then answering Crowley's admission by just skipping any and all of Crowley's names entirely lol and calling The Black Knight my dear in front of a bunch of bloodthirsty soldiers and mercenaries.

The my [] fellow is perfect in their little language because of how it sounds all "I say, old chap!" on the surface but contains words that are romantic to them in their doublespeak. It's intentional that it's *not* "old chap" or "old sport" that they appropriated for their own purposes, it's my [] fellow. Fellow as in human, which is how they see their relationship (because it is) and that's something that comes up when Crowley uses a variant of this in 1941, which we'll get to in a second. My adds an intimate element to it of admitting that they are each other's in whatever ways they can be.

Aziraphale, like we said a moment ago, will sometimes sauce Crowley with the pet names a little and he does in S1 when he calls Anathema my dear when reassuring her in a scene in which he and Crowley are having a playful coded argument over Crowley's driving. Aziraphale miracles a bike rack onto the back of The Bentley and unnecessarily codes the word "bicycle" ("a perfectly normal velocipede"), smirking when Crowley grumbles "bicycle" at him. It's joking with him a bit at the lunacy of their little language *in* their little language. (Crowley playing back during this sequence is also calling Aziraphale angel (romantic) in front of Anathema, which was also a strategic decision to signal to her that he might look like a murder hornet but he's really just long-suffering gone on the sunshine-y one. Very we're just an old gay married couple, hen. We won't hurt you. in tone.) Anyway, Aziraphale using my dear with Anathema-- and his little smirks towards Crowley around it-- was really just underlining the way he uses my DEAR fellow with Crowley by using the same core phrase with a human in normal, uncoded, human conversation.

Other than this and the big one we're going to get to, there are really only two other things we've seen them use to refer to one another. In S1's Eleven Years Ago/2008, there's the moment when Crowley and Aziraphale have arrived back at the bookshop and Aziraphale is flirting with Crowley and says this, tongue firmly in cheek:

I mentioned this in another post about the wall slam in Tadfield but this is a very much intentionally blasphemous specific sexual request that is more at home in the sex meta post you all have me working on lol but for the purposes of this conversation, "foul fiend" is Bible for "wicked demon", so this is Aziraphale just kind of flirtily, jokingly calling Crowley a wicked demon in the one area in life where Crowley would probably happily own that description lol. It also has the other layer of humor in it in that Crowley calls Aziraphale angel (romantic) all the time, more often than he uses Aziraphale's actual name, and you'd think he wouldn't want to because Heaven hasn't exactly done right by Crowley and he's not especially fond of it. By calling Aziraphale angel with love behind the meaning of it, he's calling Aziraphale a good angel. He's saying that Aziraphale is what an angel is *supposed*to be, something that Aziraphale struggles with. It's both sweet and reassuring at the same time. As a result, Aziraphale has never just started calling Crowley "demon" for the same reasons-- he thinks if being a demon is being demonic and truly evil, then Crowley is a terrible demon because he's a lovely person. He is, however, positively wicked in bed, and Aziraphale likes to mock their whole situation with blasphemous Bible innuendo when requesting a little hellfire.

The other thing to briefly mention before we get into the friend discussion is a scene not long after the one we just talked about, when they're both smashed in the bookshop in S1. When he's drunk and attempting to say "bouillabaisse", Crowley gets distracted staring at Aziraphale for a moment and calls him baby before going back to his attempts at saying a word (in French, their romance language, per S2) and we get the "fish stew-- anyway!" segue back into the rest of the scene. Aziraphale was too drunk to notice enough to react so this opens up the question of whether or not the rules can get slightly more lax in bed. Does Crowley call Aziraphale baby in more intimate moments or does he just want to and it slipped out when he was drunk? It's a fairly normal phrase so it both would and would not be a surprise either way but it's still something of a question mark by the end of S2.

But there's one thing that they use that pertains to your question from the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene (told you we'd start to get here eventually lol) and that's how they use the word friend.

The rules of their language apply-- what is said on the surface is what one of the meanings of what they are saying is. It has to be what it sounds like on the surface to also be a coded thing. Aziraphale is Aziraphale's name and angel is what he is and Crowley is the name Crowley chose for himself. That angel and Crowley have hidden meanings-- that angel is given a tone that turns it from referring to Aziraphale by his species and more into angel (romantic); that Crowley is the name everyone calls Crowley now-- from angels to demons to humans alike-- but only Aziraphale knows that it's an in-joke referencing Crowley having to playact at being demonic and evil to hide his truer, sweeter nature... this is what makes these terms acceptable in their mutual language. My [] fellow is then also meeting the rules of the language because of the humor of taking a non-romantic phrase and using it for this romance of theirs that they don't refer to as one. It sounds like a perfect common thing for British men of any kind of relationship to use in conversation on the surface but it's romantic to them underneath.

So when they say friend, by their own rules of this language, it has to first contain the surface meaning. It has to be true on that level to reoccur in their language. So 'friend' does mean 'friend' in a friendship sense. They are friends. They are good friends-- best friends. Using the word is an admittance that they are each other's closest friends, which is both lovely in its own right and healthy in a romantic relationship. You want to be friends with your romantic partner. It doesn't mean you can't have other friends, of course, but if you're not friends with your partner, it's not really going to be a terribly satisfying relationship and since that is what they are-- the longest-running of long-term relationships lol-- that they are friends is important and a good thing. It's also a big deal for them to admit to it, since they are actually *supposed* to be mortal enemies. Their whole enemies-to-lovers thing never really got off the ground because they adored each other on sight but that they're friends despite the danger and the conflicts is a big thing in its own right.

But that's not the *only* meaning of friend to them, so let's look at how they evolved that bit of their language.

From what we've seen so far, it started in 1600 in The Globe Theatre scene with this:

In 1600, Burbage drops some human, queer coding into the secret language. Friend, the way Burbage is using it, is something that's actually implying lover. The surface word is technically related to friendship but the tone changes the meaning of friendship in this context to be that of a sexual relationship. Burbage's tone implies that he thinks Crowley and Aziraphale are fucking (which Crowley, laughing, silently agrees with is obvious, since he's been ignoring Burbage in favor of buzzing around Aziraphale and clearly trying to flirt his way into his bed).

Burbage is pissed that these two-- who, as we know, are basically the entire audience-- have been ignoring his monologue in favor of flirting with each other so when Aziraphale tries at a modicum of politeness (that somehow is even bitchier subtly than Burbage lol-- "I love all the... talking" is the best he can come up with), Burbage slings back by trying to drag Crowley into it by calling him Aziraphale's friend, with that loaded tone that makes the question really: 'and what does your lover think?'

Aziraphale gets the innuendo-- he's not exactly a novice at this in 1600-- but his immediate response is just to panic at the idea of anyone noticing him and Crowley together and, as Aziraphale does when stressed, he lies in increasingly absurd levels of untruth. (See also: the scene with Shax in The Bentley in S2, when he spirals up into ludicrously claiming to *not even know who Gabriel is* in an effort to say that he has nothing to do with his disappearance.)

Crowley is bemused by Aziraphale's increasingly desperate attempts to deny what is abundantly obvious to everyone around them and by Burbage's attempt to make a thing out of them to try to assuage his bruised ego. He chooses a little violence with this particularly amusing bit of go fuck yourself, you insecure little twerp:

Anyway lol what this scene then does is give us a moment in the story wherein we see them in a situation where friend (loaded) is defined as friend used euphemistically for lover and they both know it. This isn't coding they came up with but that they will wind up appropriating from the humans around them and repurposing for themselves, though they won't for awhile still to come yet.

What's worth noting here is that friend (loaded) in this human code is euphemistic for a pretty wide array of loaded friend relationships. There's no separation in it for friends with benefits versus someone you're seeing but aren't comfortable admitting that versus someone you've been with for awhile versus the person that is basically your secret spouse, etc.. All of these things are friend (loaded) in human code because the main purpose of it is to identify a pair of people who are involved as such without directly saying so on the surface, even if it's implied heavily via tone.

So what happens when Crowley and Aziraphale eventually decide to repurpose it for themselves?

They've got to be clear on what it means. They'll need to define it more specifically amongst themselves in order to use it.

For awhile still after 1600, they just aren't defining their relationship. They don't need friend (loaded) because they have things they call each other, right? They've got angel and Crowley and my dear fellow and the like. They're not usually around a lot of other humans together that are going to do what Burbage did and try to force a definition of it. (This changes, as we know, in the modern era-- especially S2-- but back in the day, it was true for them.) As a result, they've never had to define this and that's absolutely fucking perfect, as far as they're concerned.

Not defining this? Lovely. Yes. More of that. Makes the fact that they can't just call each other my love hurt a lot less, they're convinced. It helps now for sure and it'll make it less painful if they lose each other. They totally will not at all continue to spend thousands of years wondering what it would sound like if they said the things. They don't each have fourteen million fantasies about being able to use the traditional words and how they'd do it-- absolutely not lol. *Not* using the traditional words isn't at all making both the allure of those words-- and the ones they *do* use-- hotter and more romantic or anything. Not in the slightest...

So then we eventually get the Holy Water Arc, right, and in the middle of that scene, we see them run into a definition problem. In 1862, what actually causes them to fight isn't the holy water request. It's Aziraphale giving it all a word and that word being "fraternizing." First rule of We Don't Say It Club is that we don't say it... but it's also that if you're going to say a word that means the two of you and what you have, maybe don't use the one that Heaven would-- the one that means 'socializing with the enemy.' In Aziraphale's defense, they're both a mess and half-broken up in this scene and there's more going on it than we're going to get into here but the point is that suddenly not having a word caused big drama and caused the whole holy water conversation to de-evolve into an argument that broke them up for the eleven or so minutes that they can stay broken up.

But they still hadn't really resolved the whole holy water argument debacle by 1941, even if there is evidence in the show that they saw one another between 1862 and 1941, and the reason why they haven't is because holy water is irretrievably linked to defining what they are.

Crowley asking for it meant they had to consider what they are to one another and talk about it and 1862 proved their language didn't have words for that at the time. There is a level of panic to it because the request contains a certain level of acknowledgement about how they feel about each other. Aziraphale jumps onto holy water being a suicide pill not just because he's terribly worried that that's why a visibly anxious and depressed Crowley wants it but because if it's not what Crowley wants it for, then Crowley is saying he wants it for defense and whose defense, right? Not just his own, potentially. It's very much saying that he wants it to protect not just himself but Aziraphale from Hell and now we're talking about Crowley being willing to risk the wrath of Hell and maybe get himself killed trying to protect Aziraphale from harm and now, we're closer than ever to that I love you under the surface and they panic and they avoid it for 80 some odd years entirely until World War II...

...and then we arrive at The Blitz in 1941. We are now a scant one hundred years or so until 6,000 years being up since the creation of Earth and Armageddon was always going to happen in "*about* 6,000 years" so, for all they know, this is it... and Crowley in 1600 told you how he feels about sad endings:

So while rescuing Aziraphale is nothing new, Crowley turned up in 1941 with the intent of making a better ending, in case they had now found themselves at the start of the end of the world. They were almost out of time either way and he didn't want it all to end without them having said the things but also they didn't know *for sure* if this was it... and they still can't be together if it isn't... so Crowley can't just show up and be like so, angel, I've been meaning to tell you in the actual words for the last six millennia-- I'm madly in love with you. He has to find a way to do it in their language of doublespeak. And so, here's Crowley using friend (loaded) in front of the Nazis in 1941:

By using my friend in the church, Crowley is then actually euphemistically calling Aziraphale my lover by calling back to The Globe Theatre and stealing the human coded term that Burbage used. Crowley does not care what the Nazis think. The comment isn't for them; it's for Aziraphale. So is letting Aziraphale find out about his first name, which is also calling back to The Globe Theatre. ("Anthony", pronounced "Antony", as in Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra', the play in which Shakespeare put the love poetry he stole that Crowley wrote for Aziraphale.) So is referencing the unguarded holy water in the church, which is then trying to talk about it a little by connecting it to this romantic grand gesture here and acknowledging why they panicked over it all those years ago. It's all saying I'm in love with you in their little language in the best way Crowley can in this moment.

But what did we say about friend (loaded)? We said they have to define it, right?

Because it can mean different things. Crowley isn't wrong to use it and Aziraphale understands it the way he does in the church. He understands it to euphemistically refer to them as lovers, which they are. It's just that all of this combined with Crowley saving the books then makes Aziraphale realize that it's one thing to say my friend (loaded) but if you say it and then there's holy water referencing and then there's more of the Shakespeare scene in there with Anthony and the little "you don't like it?" pout and then there's the entered a church for you and... you put all of that together with little demonic miracle of my own and saving the books...

...and Aziraphale realizes that Crowley is taking the thing that they always were-- my friend (loaded)-- and using it in the middle of saying that he's in love with him.

Crowley is trying to give it a word.

The word he's using meets all their language rules. It's from a moment in their past. It has a true surface meaning and a loaded undertone and subtext for days. He's not asking Aziraphale to use it. He's not saying the actual thing, as that would be breaking their rules, but he is absolutely saying it in their language.

He's not asking Aziraphale for it in return. He's just saying that this could all be over soon and he needed Aziraphale to know and in some ways, it's an apology of sorts. He's sorry they fought. He's sorry they lost years over it. He's sorry for the pain of it. He was in love, you see. The sex while pining got to be a lot. All of this got to be a lot. You get it now right, Aziraphale? Yes? Good. Lift home...

The phrase my friend (loaded) takes on a different meaning after Crowley saves the books and after their conversation inside and outside The Bentley. That's the point of the two "shut up"s-- the one from Part 1 and the one right after it where Part 2 picks up. Why have this conversation twice? Because it's actually two different conversations.

The first one outside The Bentley is Aziraphale in a love stupor, just telling Crowley that saving the books was a nice thing and Crowley responding with a half-effort "shut up" while he cleans his glasses. It's the only scene in the entire series to date in which Crowley is cleaning his glasses and he is in this moment to give Aziraphale his eyes for a moment. But The Blitz, Part 2 shows us this again... and then gives us the scene in The Bentley with what starts out sounding like the same conversation on the surface to start. It is, though, not the same conversation *under* the surface...

There's a reason why Aziraphale says a second time that saving the books was a nice thing. They're now in The Bentley, which is a little more private, and Aziraphale can't let this drop because he needs to know for sure what Crowley is saying with this and if Crowley's sure he wants to be saying what it seems like he's saying. This is basically Aziraphale's version of Crowley's "are you sure? are you sure you're sure?" in the magic shop later on. Aziraphale knows Crowley just said he's in love with him but Aziraphale also knows *Crowley*, right?

He's been with Crowley for a long time. He knows him very well. He knows that Crowley is anxious and emotional and hopelessly romantic and that the world is literally ending around them as they're driving through bombs raining down over London and part of Aziraphale is thinking of the fact that even in this seemingly apocalyptic Armageddon that could be starting here, Crowley was coded in what he just did. He left the traditional words on the table. He said the things in their language and that is, in some ways, even more romantic, but he's left them the things they leave out of hope for a better future, just in case. There's a caution to that and while Aziraphale appreciates the caution, he also can sense that Crowley was nervous about doing this. He is a little concerned that Crowley's going to have said he loved him and then regret it and pull away from him again and Aziraphale can't do the first bit of the Holy Water Arc all over again. He's really wanting to start to move into a lighter era here lol. He also really wants to be sure that he's understanding what Crowley is saying entirely.

And he wants to hear it again.

If Crowley isn't going to shut down on him entirely now, Aziraphale very much liked all of this and would like more of it but he first has to be sure he knows for sure what Crowley means and he can't just ask directly or he's both saying the things they leave unsaid and he'd be undoing Crowley's effort so he has to find a way to ask without directly asking and in such a way that an already sensitive about all of this Crowley won't take offense or be embarrassed and that gives them a way back from this if Crowley shows signs that he feels like he might have gone too far.

So Aziraphale offers Crowley an out.

He tells him again that it was such a nice thing Crowley did for him. He means this and it was a nice thing but this is also saying that he heard that I'm in love with you that Crowley was saying by saving his books and that he liked hearing it, that it was nice, that it was okay that Crowley did that, but that it's also okay if he feels like he made a mistake with it.

Crowley's response to again being told that it was nice is to again tell Aziraphale to "shut up", this one a bit more emphatically than he did outside The Bentley a few moments before. It's unclear to what extent this language, at this time, is sexualized, but by 2019/S1, this back and forth of Aziraphale calling Crowley "nice" and Crowley responding with some bite is a self-parodic sex game that they're playing in Tadfield.

Much of what happens in Tadfield is playing on other parts of their story-- think about the paintball bit with the gun but now with knowledge of The Bullet Catch in The Blitz, Part 2-- and there is a big difference in the ways Aziraphale calls Crowley "nice" in 1941 and in 2019. In Tadfield in 2019, Aziraphale is literally smirking in a way that implies that this is a little game they play and he's saying a series of things that he knows will prompt this intentionally outsized reaction from Crowley, who is playing it with him. The game is likely tied *to* this bit of 1941 that we see in The Blitz, Part 2 in S2, in that it's referencing it a bit (if very obviously going in a different direction lol), but also because Aziraphale's phrasing and tone in 1941 is not smirking. It's softer and quieter and not designed, through their language, to prompt a certain response out of Crowley. It's not yet a sex game, it's still a kind of conversation they've had in the past that will serve as inspiration for said sex game in the future.

While it's a bit unclear if a version of this already existed in 1941 or if 1941 is part of the evolution to what it becomes by 2019, there's a tone to it in The Bentley in 1941 that says that, at the least, Crowley suspects that Aziraphale is trying to lure him towards sex by calling him nice and that's reinforced by the next thing Aziraphale says, which continues it, but is also doing so to provide Crowley with an out to his confession of love, in case Crowley wants to take it.

Aziraphale's out comes in the form of offering him sex, which is absolutely what this is:

Oh, gee, Aziraphale, whatever could you do in this moment here in The Bentley? You aren't at all telling him you'd do literally anything he says he wants right now, right here, in his damn car, are you?

But while Aziraphale would so absolutely yes because lawd, 1941 Crowley is sldjwkejele... look at what he's *really* saying as well...

What he's saying here is we can pretend you just did all of that for sex, if you want to. I know you didn't and you know you didn't but we are good at pretending and if you're silently having an anxiety attack behind your glasses over there, we don't have do this...

Crowley's response?

The quiet "forget it, will you?"

Meaning: I don't want to take it back. I'm in love with you. I wanted to say it. I meant to say it. Everything might be going to go pear-shaped and I wanted to have said it somehow. I don't need you to say it. I don't know what I expected but I also maybe kinda didn't want the response to be 'aww, you're sweet... do you want a blowjob?' so maybe let's just drop this. We're going to never speak of this again now. Moving onto spreading the demon drink...

Crowley turns down Aziraphale's offer to make it about sex and, in doing so, Crowley says indisputably that it's about love. If he had taken up Aziraphale's offer in that moment, then it would have been agreeing to pretend that he's never said he's in love with Aziraphale and to instead pretend that the romantic-looking things were all an effort to get into Aziraphale's pants. When he turns down sex, Aziraphale smiles softly because, to him, *this* is then really the moment that Crowley said he loves him.

Aziraphale knows for sure now what Crowley was saying and my friend (loaded) now has a definition between them that means the whole deal. Since Crowley said the thing that meant lovers euphemistically as part of saying he's in love with him, then my friend (loaded) is now forever part of the night during The Blitz in 1941 when Crowley said he was in love with him, which means that they can't use any version of friend (loaded) with each other without that being part of it. Friend (loaded) always meant lovers (sexual partners) but now it also means lovers (romantic partners) as well. It's not that they just suddenly became romantic partners because it's been a romance all along but now they're acknowledging it in a way they can't go back from and they do so by giving what they are to one another a word in their secret language.

Aziraphale then wants to return the feeling. Crowley is saying that he doesn't need him to by telling him to forget it about it and wanting to move on from it but Aziraphale can't accept that. Crowley might be right-- this could be it-- and like Aziraphale's going to let Crowley potentially soon go to his grave without telling him he's not alone in how he feels. That's not happening. However you think the events happened to give Aziraphale the opportunity to rescue Crowley from the wrath of Mrs. H-- divine fate, Aziraphale miracling the bottles broken, The Bentley shipping it and helping Aziraphale, all of the above, etc..-- he gets the chance not ten minutes later and he takes it... and, of course, what does he use?

My good friend (loaded af lol).

They've already just redefined my friend (loaded) by this point, so to turn around and use it is to tell Crowley I feel the same way. I love you, too. This is Crowley's change in expression in reaction in that above gif. It's one thing when Aziraphale volunteers to help-- that is sweet and Crowley's all eyebrows raised in intrigued surprise. His whole expression then slips from that into being stunned when he hears my good friend and he realizes that Aziraphale is now grand gesturing *him*. He's realizing that the bit in the car really was just an offer of an out, not just that plus Aziraphale saying he was uncomfortable with what Crowley had said and needing it to stay a lot more hidden beneath a cover of sex. It was Aziraphale needing to be sure he understood and needing to be sure that Crowley was sure he wanted to make this change in how they are but now that he's sure on those things, Aziraphale is actually all in for it.

Worth mentioning that my good friend (loaded) is a mashup of my friend and my dear fellow, which makes it extra sweet. Just as Crowley started this by calling back to The Globe Theatre by using my friend (loaded), Aziraphale is calling back to the my dear fellow rhythm of what he's called Crowley for centuries. It says I love you and every 'my dear fellow' was not just fondness but an 'I love you', if you didn't already know. I've loved you forever.

It's also quite literally calling Crowley 'good', which is not something that he really believes about himself but is something Aziraphale believes about him. His good friend, as in close friend, but also his good friend, as in good person. He also does nothing to discourage Mrs. H's inevitable understanding that he and Crowley are a couple. He gestures between them to indicate it. He uses my good friend in such a way that it's just the same thing queer humans of the time would have said to someone low-risk (a theatre person) in London during WW2. It's completely inverted from his response to Burbage in a different theatre in 1600, in the moment this whole friend thing became a thing for them, which is also intentional. It's telling Crowley he understood all the things Crowley was saying in the church and he feels them, too.

Then, there's this, once they're back the bookshop:

Here, we're acknowledging what friends means now by pausing and emphasizing it. "That's what friends are for" is not a phrase that would require the pause and the tone on friends if friendship was all "friends" meant to them. It's not now and this is acknowledging that.

Note Crowley's little lip twitch/almost-sad-smile at what Aziraphale is saying. It's agreement. It's assent. This is them confirming that they understand what the other is saying and giving this new word a home in their language.

This is then what they call each other now when they need to talk about it and it's my friend on the surface and it's my love underneath.

There's a sadness to it. How nice it would be to just be able to say it... It's also a moment of realizing that they aren't sure they can use this word all the time. It's good to have a word and a shared understanding of what it means and they have no desire to take back these confessions of love here but while it's lovely to have said this now, it's also a bit heartbreaking.

Aziraphale's heartbreak, his little Crowley move of putting on his (transparent lol) glasses, his brave smile, and then how quickly they both transition from this conversation into The West End, The West End and I'm a lonely G.I... and The farthing *has vanished*! It shows you how accustomed they are to burying the pain under trying to live in the moment for one another.

A few moments after this, Aziraphale will be showing Crowley some of his human magic tricks in preparation for performing on stage and when they get to the point where Aziraphale is telling Crowley about Goldstone's Magic Shop, he then tells him that it's not for him because it's "for professional conjurers only."

This is somewhat unintentional metaphor on Aziraphale's part that Crowley then acknowledges and turns into coded language in his response. Aziraphale's love of human magic is metaphorical for his love of humanity and living in a way as to indulge his humanity in a way that angels have been taught not to do. The reason why Aziraphale's love of magic is this metaphor and not, say, his love of books or music or food, is because all of the other things that Aziraphale likes about the human experiences can be dismissed by him as relating to understanding the human experience *so as to be a better angel.* He's really not a student of humanity just to learn how to better guide them. He admits to Adam in front of Crowley in S1 that he thinks that humans are the ones who get it when he tells him that he hoped Adam would be good and worried he'd be evil but that he's something better than either of those-- he's human incarnate. Aziraphale can justify most of his indulgences as being related to learning human ways to relate to them to help them-- food, books (his home and his book collection can be justified as necessary cover for his angelic embassy), music, etc.... but the love of human magic?

Aziraphale just loves it. It's for him. It's his hobby. He thinks it's a little selfish and probably a lot unbecoming of an angel. He'd completely just want this for a job and he's not supposed to want a job other than to be an angel, which is supposed to be the bestest job imaginable lol. What kind of angel wants a silly human job? What kind of angel with actual magical powers is obsessed with human magic? Aziraphale is. He's endlessly fascinated. It makes him happy. It brings him joy. It's the part of living as a human that he's done in such a way that it's just for him and in such a way that it conflicts a bit with his role as an angel. The only other way Aziraphale loves like this, in this human way? The only other thing he studies at to be a better human over being a better angel?

Crowley.

So when Aziraphale says that he can't go to Goldstone's because it's "for professional conjurers only", Crowley knows that what Aziraphale is really saying is that the shop is "for actual humans only". He knows Aziraphale is admitting that he's sometimes insecure about his ability to be human because of how his humanity is tied to being an angel. Crowley knows that they're talking about Aziraphale and his human magic love on one level but that they're also talking about them and their relationship on another level. This is Aziraphale saying that he loves human magic with a passion but he's not sure he's as good as it as he could be or as he wants to be because maybe he doesn't know everything about being a human in the way that the "professional conjurers"-- humans-- know... and everything we just said he's unsure about with relation to human magic is also how he feels sometimes about loving Crowley.

This conversation is happening in an overlapping way with their friend confessions and Crowley hears that Aziraphale is saying in there that he loves Crowley with a passion but he's not always sure that he's studied enough, that he knows enough, about being human to be what Crowley deserves. He would love to go to this magic shop but he's afraid that it's not meant for him. He struggles, as Crowley already knows, with how he's not supposed to want it but oh he wants and he can't help but love magic and he can't help but love Crowley... all of which prompts Crowley to reassure him, using a now-familiar bit of their language:

"You, my Nefertiti-fooling fellow, are about to perform on the West End stage. If that doesn't make you a 'professional conjurer'... I don't know what does."

Meaning:

You, my human-passing man, are so good at this that you fooled the Ancient Egyptian Queen. You're about to perform your human magic on stage-- to make yourself vulnerable in a way that scares humans. You are always willing to take risks like that and try something new and learn more about being human and that makes you human. It's human to not totally know how to be human, I think. You're doing all of this tonight because you love me. It doesn't matter if you're a good magician or not. This love of ours is human and you're very good at it. You love me very well. If loving me doesn't make you a 'professional conjurer'... I don't know what does.

Crowley uses my [] fellow to emphasize my friend (loaded) by using the term of endearment that Aziraphale himself started that has human connotations to make the point that their love makes them human and to tell Aziraphale that he's very good at their love.

Aziraphale, understandably melting over that:

And then? They just keep using my friend. For decades. Through S2.

What makes it work for so long is the fact that it's human-coded in origin so if they run into a situation where they need to refer to one another like this, they can use it and it doesn't get a lot of questions. After the partners scene with Nina, Crowley uses my friend without thinking twice about it, telling her that she'll be safe in the bookshop because "my friend would never let anything happen to you." Nina already gets that they're friend (loaded) and she doesn't know what using friend means to them because only they know about 1941 but it's a phrase that they can use with the outside world if they need to but that mostly stays between them because only they know that, in their language, my friend = my love.

So when Crowley says I lost my best friend in the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene in S1, he means that he lost his best friend but he *also* really means I lost the love of my life.

The first thing my best friend means is just the actual, uncoded definition-- what the words really mean as they are. Aziraphale is Crowley's best friend. Whatever else they are to one another, they've always been that. The idea that he'd have to go through the end of the world and whatever came after without his best friend devastated him. In a lot of ways, it's sweeter than saying anything else, even if they weren't in a public space, because it's saying that what he'd miss the most is just having his partner in crime in life. The other layer of it is the coded layer. Since they are a couple that uses my friend in an euphemistic way for my love, then Crowley's my best friend in 2019 is the same thing as Aziraphale's my good friend was in 1941. It is my best friend on the surface and it is that but it's also my love beneath it.

This scene is also then the same thing in meaning:

And by S1's present of 2019, they're at a point of using it in an argument, which provides them the means to talk in a way they didn't have in 1862. Yeah, they have their dramatic little breakup spats but this is actually a marked improvement over where they were before the holy water mess. So now watch this bit of the bandstand again here below for the friend (loaded)...

Remember that Aziraphale lies increasing bits of absurdity when stressed and that Crowley knows that. He dismisses what Aziraphale says with that "you doooo" when Aziraphale tries the *utterly ridiculous* "I don't even like you" lol. They're both panicked about the end of the world here in Ineffable Divorce: Round One and Crowley's trying to get them to run away again, which is a terrible idea, but in the process of suggesting it, Crowley is calling them friends (now eternally loaded, as we just spent this meta proving lol) and...

...*how long* have they been friends does he say?

So, how long have they been in love, per their language, per Crowley in the bandstand scene?

Six thousand years.

Since the start.

Vavoom. Sorted. :)

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens 1941

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