#good omens 1967

[cinnamonthearsonist]

Things the GO fandom as a whole have just accepted as canon

Crowley's favorite word is "ngk-"

They kissed in 1941. That's why the vibe was so awkward during the Holy Water scene in 1967.

The fire extinguishers in s2 are all from Crowley because of the bookshop fire in s1

Aziraphale is a huge flirt. Crowley gets flustered easily.

They adopted Jimbriel and Muriel

Crowley steals all the genders but Aziraphale is content with the lack of them

Crowley would go to bars and rant to Hozier, not knowing it was him, then hear his songs on the radio and break down because the lyrics understanded him.

He was also besties with Freddie Mercury

Oscar Wilde was in love with Aziraphale

Gabriel is Kenough

[brainwormcity]

I've seen people remark on how awkward the 1967 scene is and that is so frustrating because, for me, it is one of the most emotionally resonant flashbacks in the entire series. It is so multifaceted and ripe with implication and that assertion is baffling. As though just because this conversation appears to be hard for them, it must mean that there has to be some sense of weirdness or awkwardness between them?

This scene feeds heavily into my theory that 1941 ended in some sort of aborted romantic moment between the two, most likely initiated by Crowley. Aziraphale can barely stand to look at Crowley because the very first moment he looks him in the face, he can't stop himself from giving him this hooded eyes, barely contained look of longing.

The next thing we see is Aziraphale immediately launching into a statement about his fear for Crowley's existence that is as brutally sincere as it is heartrending. His eyes are wide, his voice is heavy with emotion, and it's clear that he is terrified beyond belief to lose Crowley. Even as he acquiesces and gives him the holy water, you can see that he wants to take it back and deny him it all over again.

Then, of course, Crowley asks if he can give him a lift, which is definitely something that they both know is a totally different question than what lies on the surface, given that they're mere feet from the bookshop and at first Crowley frowns so deeply that it's almost cartoonish but a moment after Aziraphale turns him down you get this glimpse of very real sadness:

Aziraphale sees it for what it is and in an attempt to comfort him, without being able to do what currently seems impossible to him, shares a fanciful but resigned fantasy about spending time together unbothered and unrestrained, all to the tune of these tight little, loving smiles:

When he asks again, you can just see Crowley's desperation for Aziraphale not to go. It's hard to say how long they'd been apart, but it's safe to say that for them, that previous interaction likely is very fresh in their minds.

Aziraphale has always been more fearful than Crowley when it comes to their feelings for each other. You could even potentially look at the holy water as a metaphor for their relationship. In his expressions of concern about The Arrangement, Aziraphale has always been remarking on how Crowley could be destroyed, similarly to his words here. So when he's telling him, "You go too fast for me, Crowley," what he's really saying is, "I'm terribly afraid and I'm not ready to take that step if it means that I could lose you." And it's plain to see by the wistful look on his face that it pains him greatly to say it:

The scene so quickly cuts to Crowley looking intensely at the holy water after Aziraphale has left the car (as if trying to convince you that that was the real point of the scene) that it's easy to miss this devastated expression on Crowley's face:

There's no look of perceived rejection on his face. Just a somber look of resignation. There are so many barriers in front of them, and I think that Crowley was willing to risk it but understood that Aziraphale wasn't ready to.

This is the most honest and laid bare we ever see these two be when it comes to their emotions. There's so much being said without being said and even their actual words (i.e. Crowley remembering exactly the amount of time when the 'fraternizing' conversation happened) are so full of emotion that it might even be a bit hard for some people to watch.

It's not awkward. It's just that the scene is just so incredibly earnest and heavy with coded language that it's easy to be swept up by the fact that the two aren't engaged in their typical banter and bickering. What we truly have here is an incredibly difficult and loving conversation between two people who are stuck in a seemingly impossible situation.

[rodyartt]

Cute ✨❤️

[beebopboom]

y’all- it’s the SAME FACE as 1967

excuse me while I never recover from this…

[innefableidiot]

Finally got around to drawing more duck omens so here is 1941, 1967, and 1970 crow-duck!

Also how would you put a mustache on a duck

[actual-changeling]

History repeats itself. Somebody says this. // Richard Siken

-

aaaaand we're back to siken. sorry guys. playing around with colour visions and 1967 works so well

[thewitchoflove-art]

"A forbidden kiss" in 1967

I'm so sorry🥲

[knifeforkspooncup]

1967: The Velvet Underground releases their first bebop album. Radio pulsars (neutron stars) are discovered. Britain decriminalizes homosexuality.

And somewhere in Soho a demon gets cockblocked by an angel.

[vidavalor]

hi there 👋 i love reading your good omens metas. i'm wondering if you have any thoughts on aziraphale's line to crowley in 1967: "i can't have you risking your life, not even for something dangerous". this always sticks out as odd to me. obviously he doesn't want crowley risking his life for any reason, so why this weird qualifier?

Hi @mybelovedismine Thank you so much. :) I am so sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. Love me some 1967 Crowley & Aziraphale and this question is great. Cheers.

1967/Holy Water Era/some S2 Aziraphale meta under the cut.

If you go back-- and I mean way back-- to the very opening bit of GO 1.01, it opens with what seems at first like it's just a quirky, funny scene introducing God and her sense of humor and the show's sense of humor. It is all of that but it also contains what I think is a really important piece of information-- especially with relation to the 1967 scene-- which is the date that Earth began in the GO universe. Crowley and Aziraphale don't know exactly when the end of the world will come but they know "about" when-- and that is a ticking clock running in the background for them for millennia.

The date that God gives us for the creation of Earth at the opening of S1 means that 6,000 years exactly would math out to October 21, 2004... but we also know that they don't know if it's going to be *exactly* 6,000 years. It could have been 5,900. It could have been 6,500 or anything in between. It winds up the super-cruel 6,004 years, beginning in 2008 in S1. What is clear to Crowley & Aziraphale is that their experience is closer to that of humans in a way because even though 6,000 years would be a very long time to humans, it's "nothing", as Angel!Crowley put it in Before the Beginning, to Crowley & Aziraphale... and there has always been a very good chance that it's all they will ever have together.

Their relationship is like someone turned over an hourglass on the wall at Eden and it's been dripping sand steadily in the background this whole time. It's partially why their relationship accelerates a little faster over the last few centuries, imo. There is a chance they're running out of time together. Armageddon means the Great War between Heaven and Hell and they are an angel and a demon. Whatever side wins the war is the one who will live on for all of eternity. The other one won't survive it-- or, even if they did, they won't be able to be with each other. Not to mention that Armageddon means that, regardless of who wins the Heaven and Hell war, Earth will be destroyed and their life on it together will be over.

Aziraphale always thinks Heaven will win. He always thinks it's him who will have to spend eternity alone. Part of this is because he has to tell himself that Heaven is still the side of good, even if it's flawed, because he can barely deal with the guilt over being part of the machine that's caused Crowley so much pain. Aziraphale also thinks, though, that maybe when the time comes, they can find a way out of it all, somehow.

In close to 6,000 years, the best plan they've got for dealing with this is Crowley's plan to just run away to Alpha Centauri and hope that no one notices that they're deserters. (So, not a great plan, but also they're up against the will of God here so kind of hard to try to work out a way around that.) In S2, Aziraphale is so desperate-- SO desperate-- for a way to not have to lose Crowley that he is willing to entertain the idea that he can trust The Metatron's word and beg Crowley to come to Heaven with him and be an angel again just so that they can be together forever. Aziraphale doesn't need Crowley to be an angel to know he's good and to love him-- he already knows and feels those things. He loves him so much that he can't bear the thought that he could lose him. He's never been able to bear that thought.

In 1967, they were running out of time and it's something that became increasingly intense for them the closer the years got to 2004 and the day they would hit 6,000 years since the Earth's creation.

In 1967, they were down to 37 years until 6,000 years were up, so the end of the world was, to them, a moment away.

It's not hard to see how Crowley wants to carpe diem and go for broke, in case it's all they'll ever have. He wants to be a little less careful. To try for the things they haven't been able to give each other while they've had to be a secret for so long. 'Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all', right? And they have loved, do love, are loving in 1967... but Crowley feels the time slipping away and his anxiety is dialed up to eleven under that cool exterior and Aziraphale knows him like he knows the back of his hand and he can see where this is all going... and it's not where either of them want it to go.

Think of this from Aziraphale's point of view...

Aziraphale is an angel. His soul is saved. He is meant to survive Armageddon. That, to him, is actually something of a curse at this point because it means that he'll live for eternity. For *all* of time. An absolutely incomprehensible amount of time. Neverending time. The kind of amount of time that would make 6,000 years feel like less time than it took you to blink while reading this sentence. And if everything goes according to what they know of God's Ineffable Plan or Great Plan or Whatever The Fuck It Is lol, he's going to live through all of this time alone.

Without Crowley.

Forget even the end of Earth and humanity (and that's hard to forget lol), Aziraphale is slated for a post-apocalyptic return to Heaven and a celestial cubicle and spending all of time with Michael and Uriel and Sandalphon and no food and no books and no music and even all of that, he could stand, if only he could just have Crowley with him and he can't.

Because Crowley's a demon. He's fallen. He's eternally damned. Heaven has socialized angels to believe that the war between Heaven and Hell that Armageddon triggers will be the big triumph of Heaven over Hell. Aziraphale tells himself he believes it but he's honestly more *terrified* of it than devoted to the idea. Heaven triumphing over Hell could kill Crowley. It's what Aziraphale is *supposed* to want as an angel but it's actually *the exact opposite* of what he wants. He adores Crowley. He will never-- in all of the infinite time to come-- ever get over Crowley and he knows it.

Even if Crowley somehow survives The Great War 2.0, Earth will still be gone and Crowley's fate is eternity in dark, cramped, literally painful damnation in Hell. There is no way for them to be together without thwarting the will of God and Aziraphale is an angel-- his entire purpose as a being is to serve God. It's what he was made *by God* to do, as far as he's been taught, and he mostly believes it... it's just that he also thinks he was made for Crowley.

This isn't just what Crowley thinks. Crowley isn't wrong that this is a mutual feeling:

Aziraphale felt that then, too, and he's never stopped feeling it. It blends sometimes with his faith in God-- something that, ironically, he sometimes thinks Crowley somehow has more of than he does. If God made him and God made Crowley and if God made them for each other, then it can't really be just to take them away from each other after such a short time, can it? Maybe they're meant for some other purpose in all of it?

But this is the same God that Aziraphale knows can be cruel...

Aziraphale has gone up against the will of God countless times over the years now and he is, for reasons he doesn't understand, somehow still an angel.

It seems unjust and honestly pretty profane to him that *he* is the holy one when Crowley's been through--quite literally-- Hell, for thousands of years, and his biggest sin is being curious. It is very hard to be told that you were created for the purpose of representing the side of good in a war against good and evil but to then, over and over and over, find yourself believing that the good guys are maybe not so good... all the while falling deeper in love by the day with a being your side calls 'demonic' and 'evil' but whom you know to be a sweet, romantic, smart, gentle, funny, kind cinnamon roll. Crowley is a demon and he's the best angel Aziraphale knows.

Now imagine you've all those conflicts and you're running out of time and staring down the end game of all of this and when you've got maybe, if you're lucky, a century and a half left or so worth of sand is still in the top half of the hourglass (mid-1800s), Crowley starts to pull away from you.

He's honestly never done it to this extent before. He trusts you with a surprising amount of himself and has since early days and, in recent centuries, you were happy together-- as happy as your situation would allow and that was more than you ever thought you'd have. This is the same being whose willingness to push through his fear of being vulnerable to have something honest and intimate with you has had you in awe of his bravery since you met. He taught you how to do that and now he's putting up walls you can't scale and slamming shut every open door.

You were happy together and then, you went on a date in Edinburgh in 1827 and suddenly, the centuries of peace and of getting away with it all ended in a literal second when Crowley got dragged to Hell two feet away from you. Hell didn't find out about the two of you or about Elspeth-- they were pissed about the human grave guards that Crowley accidentally sent to Hell for shooting Wee Morag-- but Crowley comes back a couple of weeks later and it's like it's all over already.

He's badly shaken. They hurt him. He spent time in Hell not sure if they had found out about you or if you were still alive. The anxiety, depression, and PTSD he has from being cast out of Heaven and a lifetime of trying to survive being a demon of Hell goes into overdrive and you don't know what to do. You've always been good at helping him. Nothing works. The bookshop-- your home but his, too, in your mind, the safest space he can go to to get away from Hell and get some rest-- isn't enough. He's not coming around the way he used to. He doesn't want to talk about any of it. The connection between the two of you-- emotionally, sexually-- feels like it's eroding. It hurts more than you want to admit. Your relationship de-evolves for almost 35 years as you watch the spark seem to go out of him. You don't know how to fix it and you try everything you can think of. You can understand how the ticking clock makes it all hurt more and you don't want him to be in any pain-- ever-- and you'd go away entirely if it was what he really wanted but neither of you know how to say goodbye because you both know that neither of you actually want to.

He's your best friend. He's the only one like you in the universe. You're both miserable and lonely without each other and it seems stupid to spend the last years you might ever get together apart but it also seems impossible to ever get back to where you were. Then, one day, after *years* of this, he asks you for the one thing that can *kill him*...

In the moment, all you can think about is that he wants to die because he's seemed like he does for decades now. All you can think of is that he is in so much pain and he wants nothing from you but the means by which to end it.

He's your lover. Imagine being told by the being with whom you've spent countless pleasurable hours in bed that all he wants from you now is a suicide pill.

He used to laugh. He used to be silly and hilariously dry-humored. He used to flirt with you and gaze at you from the couch on the bookshop, all pretty yellow eyes and lounging limbs, and now he's spine-straight stiff, like the pain is what's holding up. He arranges meetings in the park instead of coming over. He wears his glasses, all the time. You can't remember when the last time you saw his eyes was.

All of it says to you that you aren't enough and then he asks you to give him a suicide pill and you're broken-hearted-- you're just broken, period at the thought of him in so much pain-- and you're angry. You're furious. How dare he do this to you? You've been in love for millennia. He is your best friend. How dare he shut you out and leave you alone when you are going to be alone without him for the rest of bloody time?!

You're so in your feelings about him shutting you out that you know you have been failing at caring for him and not really helping the situation for awhile now. Your defenses have been up for awhile. Years, probably. You're caustic and, frankly, pretty bitchy in your bitterness. It's a little twisted but you've tried everything else and maybe if you could even just make him angry, it'd at least be something. He's barely spoken above a whisper in thirty years and sometimes you think about him off his head on laudanum in Edinburgh, drawing you to him magically by your bow tie to look at you over his glasses, inches away, and how you didn't know that was going to be the last time he ever really flirted with you.

So, when he asks you for holy water in 1862, you do your best to piss him off, since he won't accept anything else from you lately. You used to be wildly compatible and now you're broken and you're angry because God was always going to break your heart by taking him from you but he was never supposed to. He was supposed to love you-- those things neither of you say-- to the end.

You did get him angry. You both got angry. So angry that it felt over.

It wasn't. You saw each other again in the interim and it didn't just magically heal itself, like you wished it would, because you regretted how you reacted to the request for holy water but somehow talking about it felt too much.

Because you thought you might have understood it more afterwards.

Because you began to understand that he felt vulnerable. That he needed to feel like he could defend himself and, if it came to it, you. That maybe he didn't want to die-- maybe he wanted to live. That this was him asking you to help him figure out how to feel safe again-- something you've actually always been good at-- and you were so afraid, too, that you handled it badly.

Maybe one of the things you were afraid of in the moment was the way he talked about it going wrong, going pear-shaped, about him wanting insurance... about how there wasn't a way to reframe that in your mind to not mean that he meant he was willing to kill a demon in your defense or his-- which could kill him. It could send a legion after him and destroy him. There was so much that could go wrong. No matter what Crowley wanted holy water for, his death felt like it was the end game. You would throw yourself into Hellfire before you did anything that could cause him harm.

He had been pulling away for years but there he was saying I would kill for you. I would die for you. and that was the closest either of you had ever come to saying I'm in love with you. and you weren't sure what was more dangerous: saying those truths you both knew and felt or holy water.

Crowley didn't bring it up again and neither did you. You're useless without one another so you saw each other again within the next couple of decades. The Old West in America. Back in London in the 1920s and times in between. Neither of you ever discussed the Holy Water fight or what it meant. You secretly learned to drive, for the future, just in case, when he turned up stupidly in love with a car in 1928. You would die for that dumb car if only because of how Crowley smiled when he turned up to take you for a ride.

Over time, Crowley seemed to get a bit better and your heart burst just looking at him, even if it also ached with the knowledge that you had made it harder and hadn't known that time how to help when he needed it.

Then, 1941. The Blitz. Bombs raining down over London and the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation and maybe, just like the humans, you both thought this might be it. Time slowed to surviving each night and every moment felt like it could be the last and maybe that's why you both wanted a different ending.

Crowley always did prefer the funny ones.

In the middle of it, Crowley joked about holy water-- the first time either of you had mentioned it in 80 years-- and you heard it there, woven into his quiet, coded but undisputable, confessions of love. It was for you, it was about you, it was to keep you safe... it was because you were two feet away from me when they took me and I want to be with you to the end and it's the only thing that can help me keep you safe from them.

He doesn't ask you for it again. You know why. Things are good. He doesn't want to fight. He doesn't want you to reject him again. He doesn't want to admit again that he feels unsafe. You think about giving him some after 1941 more than once but you are now afraid of what it might say to him if you do.

Because you could both be almost out of time, if everything goes pear-shaped when the clock runs out on about 6,000 years, and Crowley wants to try for more.

You both want forever. You both aren't sure that you'll even get tomorrow. The world is speeding up in 1967-- has been for decades now-- and you think Crowley is caught up in it. You both live in London, in SoHo, you'd be as safe as you could be. You'd blend in enough. It's too dangerous, though. It's not the humans you're afraid of, really-- not that the human world has ever been safe for your and Crowley's kind of love and you aren't sure that it will get there before it's all over. What you're afraid of is that you'll get caught by Heaven and Hell and you'll lose him before the about 6,000 years is up-- and then you will have no chance at all, whatsoever, of forever.

Crowley doesn't think he'll make it. He doesn't say so but his actions say so and his situation suggests it. He wants to go faster. He doesn't demand it, doesn't pressure you, but he periodically gently asks and you have to let him down somehow, you have to get him to slow down. It's not that you don't want him. If there were no risk to him, you'd never try to put up a speed bump. It's just that you are hopeful.

Ironically, you're hopefulness-- your optimism-- it comes from him.

He's brilliant. He's clever. Maybe, somehow, the two of you will find a way out of this.

You don't want to watch the world burn. You don't want to watch billions of humans and a whole planet and a whole solar system-- Crowley's nebulae-- destroyed for no reason and as much as you should be willing to go along with the Almighty's will, it's fucking ineffable and you secretly aren't sure if you believe in a God that would do this. You struggled during The Flood. You struggled over Job and Sitis' kids...

...if you are honest with yourself (and you are more than you care to admit), you struggle to be faithful to a God who has caused Crowley so much pain.

You think that, somehow, when the time comes, you and Crowley might find a way around it. How? You have no idea. None. But you think there is a chance that you could figure it out and so long as there is a chance-- even one, single, tiny, chance-- that somehow you and Crowley could survive it all and be together forever, you are not going to let him do something stupid and get himself killed trying to be together now.

You are not letting your far-sighted lover trip over his snake legs and go head-first into a faunt of stolen holy water that you could have given him safely 105 years ago, when he asked for it, and you fucked it all up...

You make him some. You use your powers and your essence and your body and turn water into a weapon for him. The real thing. The holiest.

You understand what it is to him now. It's not death; it's life. He doesn't want either of you to be in pain. He doesn't want to be left alone. He wants to feel safer. To be able to protect you from what Hell put him through and worse. He doesn't want to leave you. He wants a chance in Hell at surviving what's to come and an out for if it all goes pear-shaped and you want him to live and not to suffer and only you can give that to him.

You understand that now. It was never that you didn't trust him. It was that you didn't trust yourself.

You put it in a tartan thermos that silently says your anxious, emotional ass best thing of me before you ever decide to use this.

It also says this is for you to keep and it is of me and I know that's a risk if you ever get caught with it. I trust you to keep it hidden, like you do us, and protect me. This is for you and it looks like me and you know when the tartan started and why... you know it was because of our night in Edinburgh in 1827... you know it was the night they took you and I didn't know if I'd ever see you again and you know I've been wearing this pattern of us for 140 years and that I always will.

It's just that you also can't let him think that giving it to him is an assent of sorts. If Heaven or Hell ever found out you did this, they'd destroy you both.

So you rushed over with holy water, your tie undone, catching him before he can go any further with his scheme to pay humans to steal him some and you waited for him in the safety of The Bentley, one of the only places the two of you can actually talk with some expectation of privacy, and when he asks, you have to talk him out of it. You have to break his heart a bit. You have to disappoint him. You have to try to protect him from himself a bit or you'll lose him.

You tell him that you're giving him the holy water because you can't let him risk his life "not even for something dangerous." Dangerous is trying for more between you than there already is. You aren't rejecting him outright and he knows that. You never have, really. You see each other in secret. You have been for more years than either of you can count. You rely on each other to help each other to the right speed.

You need him to tempt you into giving yourself permission to do what you want and need but aren't sure you can or should. He needs you to help him keep from spiralling from anxiety.

He gets you to go a little faster-- not too much, at a pace you feel comfortable with. You get him to slow down-- gently, tenderly. You are both able to trust each other with your vulnerabilities and that's why it works.

He's blinded by the world changing in ways both exhilarating and also terrifying, by it breaking apart at the seams increasing his fear of running out of time.

You've been together for thousands of years.

You don't stay the night; you've never had breakfast together. You've never risked taking each other's hands in public. You've never directly said I love you.

If you can get him to see how dangerous it all still is-- because it is-- then maybe you can keep him alive long enough to have a shot of neither of you ever having to worry about losing each other again.

Somehow, it's not much different now than it was before the beginning. He's always been like this. Optimistic, progressive, free-thinking. Innovative. It might get you both out of all of it yet but it won't in 1967. He is caught up in the emerging new, human world and it's a heady cocktail when mixed with his existential terror. He's going to get himself fucking killed. You know better, just as you knew better before The Beginning. You know that too many questions, too much risk, will draw a metaphorical sniper's bead to his head. And you know that, on some level, he knows he needs you to rein him.

It's an era of freer sex and free love and wild, progressive music and art but... it's also an era of war and violence and assassinations... and Heaven and Hell are so far removed from Earth that it would take another 6,000 years to get them anywhere near close to this.

Crowley knows this, intellectually. You know he knows. He just feels the sand trickling faster and faster and there's hardly any of it left now.

You know how that feels-- you feel it, too. Every time you look at him. Everytime he slips away out the backdoor of the bookshop with a soft kiss and an even softer g'night, angel and you wonder if that was the last time.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Crowley sees All You Need is Love but you can see December 8, 1980 coming at some point down the road. You've both been on this planet long enough to know what they do to the first ones who break away, to the ones who go against the grain, and the humans are no different from Heaven and Hell in that way. You cannot tell him yes or you will be killing you both.

You put it on yourself a bit. He goes too fast for you, you tell him. It's not untrue. He does. It's just that if it all were different, you'd never refuse him anything. You hope he hears it as your issue, not his, though you doubt he will. It is so hard to look at him and tell him no when all he is saying he wants is the chance to love you more.

God, there are days when you think he might kill you if he were to love you any more than he does. You don't know what you ever did to deserve his love. You don't know how you survived before you met him or how you are supposed to if you lose him.

"You go too fast for me" is what you say and you know he understands that it means:

You'll burn us fast and bright and it will be amazing but it will *end*. They will catch us. They will kill us. I can't lose you. If I thought all we could ever have would be just a short, few years, then I wouldn't deny you but I think we could find a way to have forever. Somehow. I have hope for that. I get that hope *from you.* I need you to slow down because I can't watch you get yourself killed. I'm not strong enough to lose you. I need you to let me pace this for awhile...

You want him to know you understand, that you feel it all, too. So, you tell him of the things you'd like to do, if it was safer, not knowing if it ever will be. The things you choose are of all of these holy water years. A picnic-- one implied to be in the daylight, in this future you're both imagining, this world you hope to one day see emerge. He had tried to take you on a graveyard one at midnight in 1827. You know that had been what that would have been had you not ran into Elspeth. The two of you sneaking around in the dark, as always, but together. Alive. Maybe, you tell him now, you could one day have that picnic together under the sun. You think you can see that world. You have no idea how it arrives but he's not wrong. You can see some things changing here and there's always hope that things could change with Heaven and Hell. He has taught you to keep the faith in how he's survived the worst and remains optimistic.

Maybe, one day, you could be angels dining at The Ritz. It is intentional that you reference World War II. It is a way-- the only way you can right now-- to tell him you love him, as you both did in your own ways during The Blitz. It is saying:

I love you. I would love that life with you. I won't give up on the idea of it-- of having more than a short burst of it. That is why I need you to slow down and stay safe. It's too dangerous for more right now. Take the holy water and take a breath. You're okay. You have me. We keep *each other* safe, remember? Slow down. I need you with me forever.

[cobragardens]

Aziraphale's Ascot: An Analysis

What's most interesting to me about the ascot Aziraphale is wearing when he turns up in Crowley's car in 1967 is that it's very fashionable.

An ascot (American), or day cravat (British), is a band of material meant to be worn inside the shirt collar, terminated on each end with a long wide tongue of that same fabric.

The band goes around the back of the neck, and the tongues are tied in the front and tucked into the open neck of a collared shirt. An ascot displays a wide sweep of color just below the wearer's face to flatter their complexion and show their personality.

And the late 1960s was the ascot's peak of popularity. The Duke of Windsor wore them; the mods wore them; British Invasion bands wore them. Fred wears an ascot in the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Lance Corporal Shadwell wears one. They were a huge trend.

On the surface this doesn't seem like Aziraphale at all. His previous appearances indicate his stylishness in ancient Rome is merely serendipitous overlap of Roman fashion with his personal preferences for white robes, blond hair in a Brutus cut, and gold wing-themed jewellery. In 1601, 1793, 1941, and all contemporary scenes, his style is decades to more than a century off the fashion of its time. We know he's into bow ties by 1941, and he's hardly one to adopt a style merely because it's popular; so why the ascot in 1967?

One possible explanation is that Aziraphale misses the clothing of the Victorian period and leaps at the chance to wear something that harks back to a time when he felt at home, sartorially speaking.

I don't think that's it, though, at least not in Show Omens. For one thing, traditional ascot ties (what a British person would call an ascot or an ascot tie, rather than a day cravat) are not at all the same accessory as the ascots of the 1960s: they're formal rather than semi-casual daywear; they're made of thicker silk, often with a woven rather than printed pattern; and they're worn outside the shirt and collar. More importantly, we've got two scenes of Aziraphale in the Victorian period, and he's not wearing an ascot tie in either of them: he's wearing a long cravat tied in a wide bow, a precursor to his bow ties.

I therefore propose a different explanation for the ascot of 1967.

As Aziraphale has clearly never been anywhere near a polyester fibre in the whole of his celestial existence, and as he always affects an appearance of idle hereditary wealth, we must presume that this--

--is silk. (In fact in the 1960s, a silk ascot in light colors was a signal of upper-class status.)

And we know Aziraphale likes silk, because by 2023 he's been wearing a silk velvet waistcoat for 200 years.

I again advance the argument that, despite himself, Aziraphale is a voluptuary by nature: a person who directs their energies toward the pursuit and enjoyment of pleasure, especially (but not solely) sensual pleasure.

He can control his appearance at will, and yet he has a barber; that means he enjoys the pleasure of a haircut and maybe a hot shave. (I have similar suspicions about his manicured hands.) The barber has recommended new cologne, which means Aziraphale has an old cologne, which means he likes to smell beautiful scents. He eats for sensual pleasure. He drinks for sensual pleasure (much more so than Crowley, who drinks for the pleasure and escape of inebriation). He listens to music for sensual pleasure. He attends the theater for pleasure. Reading is as much a sensual pleasure inside your own head as it is intellectual self-stimulation (which is its own kind of pleasure in turn); and believe me, collecting books is as much a sensual pleasure as a logistical and a philosophical one.

Aziraphale even agrees to an Arrangement with a demon to give himself more spare time for his pursuit of human pleasures. And then he and the demon become friends, because what could be a greater pleasure than indulging yourself in the good company of someone clever and kind and beautiful, who flirts with you and tells wicked jokes you mustn't laugh at--except perhaps for the pleasure of making that person smile in return?

Fun fact: The silk of which casual ascots are made is finer than the silk of either traditional ascot ties or neckties, because ascots/day cravats are made to be worn inside rather than outside the collar.

In 1967, instead of his usual crisp bow tie around his usual tightly buttoned collar, Aziraphale wears an open collar and a day cravat because the fashion of the 1960s lets him keep silk against his skin.

And there's one other thing, too. Compare Aziraphale's ascot to Lance-Corporal Shadwell's, or to the standard ascot knot:

The edge of Azirapale's ascot sits below the edge of his shirt collar where it should sit above, and the cascade spills almost an inch in front of his Adam's apple instead of flush against his neck. Aziraphale has tied his ascot low and loose.

It allows him to bare more of his throat to Crowley than has been sanctioned by custom for 2,000 years.

How long after Aziraphale reverted to bow ties did Crowley think about that?

[wistfulnightingale]

Promises to Keep (or, When It All Goes Too Fast - Lost Picnics, Dancing, & Regrets)

Mini-Meta Musing #12

This may not be an original thought in the world of Good Omens Meta, but I was working on a little fluff fanfic, and thinking about Aziraphale's glowing, hopeful, but also pleading expression as he asked Crowley to dance in E5. You know-- the night their peaceful, fragile world really started to fall apart.

"You don't dance," Crowley responded, just before he was tugged onto the floor by his giddily radiant angel.

Aziraphale had desperately wanted to create a romantic evening for them both. (He's been criticized a lot for that, unfairly, I believe.) You can see the strain on his face as he watches his plan collapse moment by moment. I believe Aziraphale knew that it might be the last chance for romance that he and Crowley would have for a long time. (See my meta, Ineffables in Check). That alone is reason enough for the angel's seemingly "foolish" single-minded focus on dancing with his beloved demon.

But, what if it meant even more than a last sweet romantic evening before the chaos hits? What if a dance was meant to be a gift he felt was long overdue? What if, on a certain night in 1941, a song was played on the gramophone, Crowley had extended his hand in invitation... and Aziraphale didn't take it? And has regretted that decision every moment since?

"Perhaps one day we could... go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz."

Wished-for moments, hoping for a Someday, back in 1967. With the scrutiny and fears and dangers pushing them apart, it probably felt impossible to fulfill. But now... Maybe our angel looks at them as unfulfilled promises? A picnic, dinner at the Ritz, a special dance... What if the Ball was the way he hoped to fulfill another of those promises? Before the Powers-That-Be took away their chance. Again.

"You don't dance." Crowley stated at the Ball. In Crowley's world, it seems, this is a fact. Despite all their years together, the only dancing Crowley apparently has seen Aziraphale do is the Apology Dance. Even though they've been a couple since that night on the bus, after the almost-Apocalypse, they never have danced together! (See An Old Married Couple)

"You don't dance," Crowley had said dryly, head pulled back, chin pulled in, eyebrows raised. There's also a question there. His tone, and especially the way he physically drew back, makes me wonder. Is there a reminder in it? Does it recall a memory, long forgiven but not forgotten? Crowley, we know, is secretly a hopeless romantic, at least as much as Aziraphale. Oh how he wanted that downpour to cause a sweet va-voom kiss for Nina and Maggie!

"Shades of grey...?" Dark grey, light grey... So much teasing and gentle flirting that 1941 night as they toasted and dickered! Crowley started showing a bit of the raised chin and extended neck that slips into his countenance when he's feeling especially romantic for his angel. The gramophone is just a few steps away. Did one of them put on a record? Was it "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"?

What happened that night in 1941 remains a mystery. Most of us ponder and imagine and long to see more! I wonder, though, did Crowley gracefully rise and, playfully or gently or gallantly, offer Aziraphale a dance, and did Aziraphale falter? Did danger threaten again? We've seen so many times how the angel would pull back from Crowley, trying to protect him, afraid that admitting even their friendship would cause Hell's punishment. Lesser things than that certainly had drawn Hell's wrath. (See Anything to Protect Crowley)

Did this moment in 1941 become a regret that still shadowed the angel over 80 years later?

They eventually became a couple, and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" still became their song. (See The Nightingale DID Sing!) Yet, if they had never danced together in all this time, I can easily imagine Aziraphale blaming himself, and seeing that as a personal failing he'd want to make amends for. But life gets busy, and even now it's not entirely safe for them, and missed opportunities tend to pile up quickly when you're not looking -- even when you have the most loving of intentions.

You know how sometimes serendipity strikes, and you get inspired? A few unrelated events happen in sequence, and they link together in your mind to give you an exciting new idea? I wonder if that's what happened for Azi. Crowley is willing to do whatever it takes to make amends for hurting his angel, and does a reluctant but beautifully graceful Apology Dance. Then Maggie cries and Azi lies to protect Jimbriel, and he and Crowley contemplate romantic scenarios to try to turn the lie into truth. Va-voom! Aziraphale has a brilliant idea that's not reeeally just about his heartsick neighbors -- he can FINALLY make amends for a hurt he feels he caused long ago. He can gift his sweetheart with that long overdue dance.

If you listen to that va-voom conversation believing they are already An Old Married Couple, you can hear a subtle flirting going on. Crowley teases that he saw it in a film, but we all recognized the memory of Crowley familiarly sheltering from the first rainstorm under Azi's wing. Was that when he started to fall for the surprisingly daring and compassionate angel? Was he beginning to realize they were "made for each other"?

Aziraphale's imagery, though, isn't one we recognize. A ball? A dance? He acknowledges he's venturing into fiction. I don't think it's an actual moment from their history like Crowley's is. It's a retelling of what Azi wishes had happened. And Crowley's cynical response, "Now that's unlikely," doesn't sound light and teasing anymore. One dance together does not, in fact, fix misunderstandings. Are they remembering a dance in 1941 that did NOT actually resolve past misunderstandings, but deepened them instead? Did the angel refuse Crowley from the start, that long ago night? Were they interrupted by danger? Did Azi playfully accept, then realize their feelings were a bit too serious, too risky, and step back again?

"I- I'm sorry, I don't dance, actually," he might have stammered (not quite accurately). Could that be the specific moment he meant in 1967? "You go too fast for me, Crowley."

So Aziraphale plans a Ball. He KNOWS you can't miracle people into love and romance. "Miracles don't work that way," he told Crowley. He'll do his best for Maggie and Nina, stubborn and somewhat miracle-resistant though they prove to be. But the Ball is for Crowley.

"Don't look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we could, I don't know... go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz."

So much longing in Azi's expression, but only when Crowley isn't looking. He hates saying what he feels he must say to keep him safe.

They've dined at the Ritz, at least several times that we know of. The last time we saw was quite romantic, in fact. That's one promise kept. I suspect a picnic in a park would feel far too vulnerable and exposed to ethereal and occult forces for our Ineffables, despite having been "fired" by both. Perhaps that promise is still waiting. I think that would weigh heavily on Azi. But, A-Ha! Aziraphale also owes Crowley a dance -- and dancing can be done in the safety of the bookshop. So Aziraphale decides to make it especially memorable.

It would be a lovely gift to give to Crowley, one that Aziraphale may feel he's overlooked far too long. He's been forgiven for that night, but from what we saw in the bar, when Azi talked about dances healing misunderstandings, it's not an easy memory for Crowley. Giving Crowley this dance is Aziraphale's way of asking for that freely-given forgiveness, of acknowledging his regret for the hurt he caused. Add to that the angel's regret for all of their lost time. Even if it was time that they never safely could have had anyway. Because now, demons are at their doorstep, Heaven is watching again, and the Metatron is threatening their safe little world.

And Aziraphale cannot let it be too late. He will not accept it.

I just realized something, this moment. So I scooted off to make a dual photo. Serendipity. In both scenes, the lighting and tones are warm and red. Aziraphale's look is filled with longing, and his face is half shadowed.

There aren't many scenes, comparitively, where Azi's face is half in shadow. When it is, it seems to have been done meaningfully. Maybe these two moments are actually intentionally similar (?). One is a promise made, the other an attempt to fulfill an unkept promise, but both moments are shadowed by outside threats that make that impossible, for now. The past was more deeply shadowed and unpleasantly red -- they weren't together yet, hadn't discovered how much stronger they are together. Maybe it means there's more hope now.

(Also, the greatest threat in 1967 was from Hell. Red light. Now, the danger is coming from Heaven.)

Maybe I'm on to something more than a wistful little musing after all.

And I can't tell you how MUCH I need to see these Ineffable Husbands HAPPY and CONTENTED in their little cottage in South Downs! Someplace quiet, with a garden and a cozy kitchen for baking and plush sofas to cuddle on and an ancient tree to picnic under and a little duckpond nearby....!! (And a cat or two, lots of fluff and lots of cattitude!)

I'll meet you all there!

..........

I hope you enjoyed my speculative meta. Here are links to the other metas I mentioned, and another I think you might like:

An Old Married Couple

Anything to Protect Crowley

Ineffables in Check (from the Chess Moves Theory Set)

Finding Forgiveness

The Nightingale DID Sing!

Aziraphale's Jubilant Smile (NOT the crazy elevator grin)

[inezrable]

I know that Muriel, the Bentley, and their one shared braincell are the children of the ineffable divorce, but y'all are sleeping on THE TARTAN THERMOS!! That thing is the child that knew that Mum and Dad were having problems, and didn't want to explain that to its siblings.

[indigovigilance]

Restoring Angel!Crowley was Aziraphale's hope for at least 2,000 years

inspo post by @waywardwendy

I'm going to briefly draw attention to a weird little one-off statement that generally only gets cited for comedic purposes, due to Crowley's quippy response:

Aziraphale: Still a demon, then?

Aziraphale has had it on his brain since at least 44 AD that Crowley's demon status could be temporary in nature. He's been waiting, hoping for that status to change. The fact that it hasn't isn't enough to keep him from tempting Crowley to some oysters, but it is his opener.

Flash forward:

In 1967 Aziraphale brings Crowley a thermos of holy water. Crowley offers him a lift, anywhere he wants to go. Aziraphale declines, but mentions that perhaps one day they could go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz. I argue elsewhere that it's a callback to A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square as they first heard it in 1941 (not yet canon).

But let's recall what those lyrics are.

There were angels dining at the Ritz And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square

Not "an angel and a demon."

Angels.

So taking a second look at Aziraphale's delivery of Metatron's offer:

AZIRAPHALE: He said I could appoint you to be an angel. You could come back to Heaven and... and everything, like the old times. Only, even nicer!

And his response to Crowley's rejection of that offer:

AZIRAPHALE: Good luck? Crowley! Crowley, come back, to Heaven! Work with me! We can be together! Angels... doing good! I... I need you! I don't think you understand what I'm offering you.

I'm not saying that Aziraphale was complicit in a conspiracy by Metatron against Crowley, but it seems to be indicated that Aziraphale saw Crowley being restored to angelic status as a solution to their relationship problems long before Metatron ever made his offer. The Metatron's offer was a fulfillment of a long-held secret (or not-so-secret) wish, and the perfect bait to tempt our angel.

[irradiatedwarlock]

[zeldahime]

Highway to Pail Day 2

[Day 1] [Next] @do-it-with-style-events

February 2: You can always trust someone who works at a music shop. They give sound advice.

Aziraphale had known dear Caroline for forty-five years, and he knew she was suspicious. Humans usually were, after about twenty or twenty-five years of acquaintance, and she was no mere acquaintance. To her credit and his relief, she kept her suspicions to herself, never so much as alluding to his corporation's failure to age a day while she herself grew from a confident young woman serving on the home front to a raucous grandmother and pillar of the community.

He also knew she was suspicious for another reason. A reason with beautiful red hair currently cut in an atrocious bowl cut, trying to get his long, delicate fingers on the only thing that could actually kill him. This was suspicion that he knew Caroline felt was well within her jurisdiction, as the unofficial denmother of Whickber Street. He was not really one of her charges, but as she had told him so many times, he was something close to family. And human families, he knew from millennia of living among them and hearing their stories, meddled in each others' romantic affairs.

Caroline and Crowley hadn't often met, but they'd pass each other on occasion, if Caroline closing up The Small Back Room coincided with Crowley coming round to the bookshop to collaborate on paperwork. Aziraphale had never introduced them, but Caroline had always been sharp as a tack. He'd been mentioning Crowley offhand to her for twenty years before they were reunited during the war, and the very first time she saw a red-haired man in a sharp suit enter the locked bookshop after curfew in 1943 and not come out again until morning, she'd cheekily gifted him a small cake and ribbed him gently about his night.

She referred to him as "your Crowley," when she spoke of him. It always made him feel a little warmer, even though it wasn't true. Crowley was Hell's, just as Aziraphale was Heaven's. What Crowley might want was irrelevant and what Aziraphale wanted was even less of a possible consideration.

Caroline had been the first person to ask him about Crowley's activities in Soho, a month ago. "Your Crowley," she had told him with raised eyebrows, "asked our Jenny if she knew anyone who could lever themselves down into a secure facility on a rope. She pointed him to the BDSM hall on Duck Lane." She rapped her knuckles on the desk. "What is he up to, Mr. Fell?"

He hadn't answered, but whatever look was on her face must have told her something, because she had just tsked at him a bit and said, "Whatever he's doing, Fell, he's going to get someone hurt. If this is about that fight you had that you talk about, the one before he left, it's best time to try to fix the root." She had winked. "And maybe that will keep him from leaving before dawn like he does. Everyone knows you've a flat upstairs; nobody needs to know there's only one bedroom in it."

Meddlesome old woman, his Caroline Service. Aziraphale adored her.

Aziraphale had asked around, of course; he knew already, but what he heard confirmed it. Crowley was planning to rob a church, get holy water.

Caroline was right. He had to get to the root of that fight in 1862, one hundred and five years before. Crowley had asked for the only weapon in Creation that could really hurt him. Did Aziraphale trust him with it?

Did Aziraphale trust Crowley with his life?

Well. That question had been answered in 1941, he had thought. But—

No, it hadn't been. Aziraphale trusted Crowley with Aziraphale's life, but that hadn't been the argument. The argument had been about whether Aziraphale trusted Crowley with Crowley's life.

He took his favorite flask, solid and leak-proof and decorated with his personal tartan, and headed to St. James' Park to gather some water from the duck pond to bless. If he was going to give Crowley a suicide pill, Aziraphale would at least make sure it was his own holiness that would kill Crowley, not the impersonal, clinical holiness of a Heaven that had already cast him out.

[objectiveunknown]

So… this is a painting by Francis Bacon

The brainrot is so real.