#good omens for blacklist

[kaesaaurelia]

You know, I like those posts going around about how thinking about your blorbos can help you with stuff you don't wanna do and that's definitely helped me in the past (I got a guy to stop bullying/threatening a homeless man bc [old old OC from my first real fandom] would NOT have let that happen.) but I'm just standing here dealing with a week of depression dishes, not having eaten, wishing I could be not hungry and reading my WIP for editing and all I can think is:

"That bitch Aziraphale has never washed a dish in his whole life. This sucks."

[ranseur]

actual scene as it happened in the show

[tonydaddingham]

there are so many screenings coming up and im BEGGING everyone to use #good omens spoilers or #good omens 2 spoilers

[googledocsdyke]

the THING is that when aziraphale says “i forgive you” he means “having been utterly re-brainwashed by the supreme and intoxicating force of Approval from a Higher Heavenly Authority to validate my prior life as Good and Righteous and True, i, wracked with newly-reborn self-loathing about ever having turned my back on heaven, forgive you, whom i love and must therefore surely be good and worthy of forgiveness, for rebuking the chance to ascend righteously into heaven with me” and when crowley hears “i forgive you” he hears “crowley i forgive you for the crime and moral lapse of desiring me, of wanting, of kissing me, of giving me love that i cannot possibly respond to nor reciprocate, of being who you are which is someone who is not only a demon but, much worse, wants me.” If you even care. (And for the record you shouldn’t)

[mrghostrat]

Idea: Aziraphale fixes the “Welcome Two Hell” sign to say “Welcome To Hell” and in revenge Crowley replaces all of Aziraphale’s sugar with salt and when his cake gets burnt on stream it’s the first and only time chat will hear Aziraphale swear (at Crowley, not at the cake)

ththpthfhptgh

no additions, except the sign is constantly changing back and forth between "two" and "to" to the point that anathema makes a counter for chat to keep track

edit: NO WAIT I HAVE MORE: aziraphale pretends he's over it because he remakes whatever dessert crowley fucked up with his ingredient swapping, but of course he saved a serving of the shitty salty version to give to crowley and makes him try it on stream

[azirafuck]

so how are we feeling after that crazy night good omens fans

[riverswater]

[agerefandom]

A Good Omens S2 Review

Hello everyone! I lied and watched the new season of Good Omens and because I have thoughts on it, I thought I'd write a little review. This is from the perspective of someone who was a book fan for over a decade before the show came out, so it is quite critical of the show, so please keep that in mind! I expect that it's much more enjoyable for folks who didn't spend so long invested in a different version of the characters.

Short/Spoiler-Free: Season two was a fun time with excellent new characters, but the finale sets them up for a disastrous third season, and making Crowley and Aziraphale the main characters really does dilute the original message of the novel.

The rest of the review contains spoilers and is over 1,300 words because I was an English major in Uni. Carry on for those curious!

Let’s start off with the things that I liked about the show!

1.The actors for Crowley and Aziraphale are continuing to kill it with their performances: the physicality they bring to their characters is a delight, their timing in the comedy sections is impeccable, and I enjoy watching them do their thing.

2. Gabriel as a comedy relief character was amazing for me. I usually don’t enjoy comedy (and didn’t enjoy a single joke in the flashback scenes, but that’s entirely my fault probably for not liking humorous TV) but Gabriel really did tickle me.

3. Loved the terrifying Jane Austen ball where Aziraphale just messed around with everyone’s brains! Very chilling show of angelic power, potentially wasn’t played as horrific as it could have been, but still very nice! I like when Aziraphale is scary.

4. Muriel is my child and I love them with my entire heart. They were a delight of a character. Really brought new life to the show, and a new person to learn the message of the book (humanity as divinity). (Although the second season didn't really... carry that lesson for Muriel or for anyone else, so never mind that.)

5. The new human characters were also enjoyable and very sweet. Their dynamic was believable and real and that was good to see.

6. The writers really did just decide to make every side character gay and half of them use they/them pronouns. I have mixed opinions on it, but ultimately I did think it was a lovely little detail, especially with the angels/demons who are more separate from human genders.

Okay, now let’s get into the rest of things.

I think my overall conclusion from this season is that Crowley and Aziraphale were not, at all, made to be main characters. Even in the first season, I felt that they overemphasized them. In the book, the focus is split between them and the larger plot, with lots of little side vignettes to make sure the reader is kept grounded on Earth, with the humans, who are the emotional centre of the book. Aziraphale and Crowley play as foils to human nature in Adam and they are not the main characters, though they are, of course, the main marketing force.

Making them the main characters, especially in Season Two, meant dropping a lot of their character progress and giving them a lot more angst than they had in the novel. Both of them feel very young, where in the book they definitely seem more like they’ve been around for several millennia. I also feel that they aren’t totally allowed to be as fucked up as they were in the book? (Maybe that’s just a personal vendetta: I am furious that Season One took out the scene where Aziraphale kills his magician’s dove out of carelessness.)

Okay, two small things and then I’ll get to the finale.

First of all, interesting to get confirmation that Crowley was in the war on Heaven and actually took up arms? Feels contradictory to his ‘demon who sauntered vaguely downward’ description and also odd to his character that he would have fought directly against Heaven but I imagine that’s building to some other twist involving Crowley’s Fall in Season Three, so I’ll let it go for now. (I still think it makes show!Crowley very different from book!Crowley though)

Gabriel and Beelzebub were a very nice thing, although underdeveloped. It made me sad to see that they, as newly appointed side characters, can have a simple relationship, while Aziraphale and Crowley are now main characters and therefore need a more tumultuous and dynamic relationship that they didn’t have in the book, where they were actually relatively solid.

Now let’s go for finale time.

Ultimately, I absolutely hated two key things about the finale.

First of all, the kiss. I’m not sure if it was a direct response to the harassment about S1 being queerbaiting or if it was always the plan to have an explicitly physical relationship between the two, but I’m so mad about it either way. It just accepts the narrative that a physical relationship is the only stable one (ie. if Aziraphale had kissed Crowley back, it would have fixed everything and they could have been together). I also don’t really want my Good Omens show to be a religiously charged commentary on queer love, which it immediately became, especially with Aziraphale’s immediate response being “I forgive you,” which highlighted everything I didn’t want Good Omens to become.

Framing the kiss immediately as a sin is such a bad move, I don’t know what the writers were thinking??? Emphasizing that Aziraphale is an angel and however much he can want Crowley by his side, he can’t kiss him because he’s an angel and kissing is… something that needs to be forgiven?

However the line was supposed to be read, it really seemed like a religious condemnation and it hurt more than I care to admit. Aziraphale in the books is so comfortable with his perceived queerness, and his recoiling from it here with Crowley at the point where it becomes explicit… I didn’t care for it.

And secondly, the promotion.

That was so stupid on so many levels. My partner said that it wasn’t in character, since Aziraphale is not an ambitious angel and seems like someone who would turn tail and run from a promotion. I can’t say I remember his relationship with ambition in the books, but I respect and trust my partner’s opinion on that.

More importantly to me, it entirely muddies the message of the story and it reflects very darkly on what season three will involve.

Good Omens was never about ‘fixing’ Heaven or Hell. It was about honouring humanity as the truly divine mix of both, about not allowing them to end the Earth, and about finding a small place for yourself to live: a bookshop, a garden, a cottage, a town.

Aziraphale choosing to go and reform Heaven totally turns that on its head: now there is no ending for the show without either abandoning or fixing Heaven, and how is that going to work?? You can’t turn angels into an anarchy because it’s very clear they have no real natural inclination to ‘goodness’ but neither can you truly save Heaven, because what are you going to do? Declare that there’s no more cancer for young children? No more evil in the world? God has designed the world with evil in it, and there’s no rewriting that. Suddenly Good Omens has to grapple with what was once ineffable and almost unimportant to the lives of the characters: the true purpose of Heaven and Hell.

I have absolutely no faith in almost any TV show to tackle that question (The Good Place gets a minor pass), and no interest in watching the story be told through Aziraphale and Crowley, who have always been more grounded characters in a world of too much divine bureaucracy.

On the note of divine bureaucracy, I felt like it was lacking from the flashback scenes. While I enjoyed them overall and really appreciated some of my favourite book moments finally being adapted on-screen, they didn’t really address the paperwork they were covering for each other: seemed more like the two of them running around having almost random adventures, whereas in the novel they were often doing each other’s temptations and salvations in a much more ‘oh, check that off the list and write a progress report to the supervisor’ kind of way.

Again, this is because Aziraphale and Crowley have been made into Main Characters and their place as subordinates is now unimportant. They are making Big Decisions and causing changes in the world, and I truly don’t believe that’s what Aziraphale and Crowley were made to be. They were just an angel and a demon who tried to solve the apocalypse and didn’t end up doing anything because the anti-christ was a little too human for the whole plan to work in the first place.

And I miss them.

[sorrelchestnut]

finally saw Good Omens 2

...and I don't want to shit on something that people seem to have liked(???), so like, please by all means hit "J" on keyboard to skip to the next post and ignore my ranting, but...

holy fuck what a mess. I think Witcher Netflix S2 was better plotted and with more understandable characterization. I mean that genuinely, this is not angry sarcasm. That plot hinged on characters traveling hundreds of miles on horseback overnight, and it still made more sense.

I'm not even angry about the ending - I mean, yes, I am, but not because it's a downer or a cliffhanger or not what I wanted, I'm angry because it makes no sense. If you're going to write a long-delayed sequel to a beloved piece of media, the absolute bare fucking minimum is to not immediately ignore all of the character development of one of the main characters without a word of explanation as to why you're regressing them. The rest of the plot was nonsensical with the worst pacing I've ever seen, but THAT is the part that left me so incredibly frustrated. Why even write if you dislike one of your main characters so much? I don't understand.

There were a lot of things I liked. The overall A-plot was interesting, what little of it actually happened on screen, Aziraphale and Crowley were charmingly codependent and weird as always, and Crowley's big speech at the end was genuinely one of the finer bits of acting I've ever seen DT do which is saying something. (I was almost grinding my teeth from frustration at that point and I still almost teared up because he sold it that hard.) Crowley's farcical attempt at an American accent was brief but memorable. Shax was a genuine delight.

But also, my husband fell asleep for almost the entirety of one of the six episodes, and didn't miss anything. Literally. Nothing happened that actually mattered to the story or characters in any sense in the ninety percent of the episode he slept through. And that wasn't even the only one! There were about three episodes - again, out of six - where you could sleep through most of the middle and not miss anything that actually mattered to the main plot of the season. Three times!

[hereforthepsycheassessment]

what is it with queer media where one person leaves the other behind at the end of the season? like first ofmd with ed and stede, then wwdits s3 with nandor and guillermo, and now aziraphale and crowley???? my little gay heart can’t take much more of this

[sunflowerphotodoesentpost]

Hello I have been meaning to start posting so I guess this is my introduction

Fandoms and fandom beliefs:

The Blacklist (redarina and Raymond Reddington fan)

The hunger games (Hayffie shipper)

I also like good omens but I’m not sure how much I will post about that so it’s mainly just the blacklist and the hunger games

[cloudmancy]

@leatherbookmark straight up yeah. good news for all the anathema/newt and madame tracy/shadwell haters they're literally not in this one LOL. and they keep giving side characters really gnc spouses

[hazbinbabbles]

The parallels of this season are slowly sucker punching me in the face, whenever I remember a new one: like Aziraphale in the very beginning of ep 1 going all 

And then the ending:

No Aziraphale, you’re not good at forgiveness, AT ALL. It’s been 6000 years and you still suck at “forgiving”.

[goodduckingomens]

Can we please all tag our S3 rants and other stuff properly with good omens season 3 or similar? Getting real tired of having like 1 out of 10 posts it works on. We did so well with S2, why not continue?

[raziraphale]

not to vague about the batshit gomens theorist types but "this season is so bad it must be bad On Purpose" as the basis of an entire theory is just so wild to me.

like. first of all. something bad on purpose is still bad. even if that were true (it isn't), intentionality isn't a free pass. not saying things can't be bad on purpose, but if it requires a half hour powerpoint presentation to explain, I don't think that creative choice accomplished its goal. insert satire clarity of purpose copypasta here if you like.

second and more importantly though, S2 isn't nearly so bad that I was expecting people to need to invent conspiracy theories to cope with it. have none of you watched a mid tv show before? I promise you S2 is really fun and enjoyable to watch if you're not stuck up the author's asshole so far that you can't just say things like "the halo thing was a lazy resolution with no set-up" or "this character felt underdeveloped" and move on with your life. you can even say "I don't personally think this character would say/do that". I probably don't agree with you but you can still say it. god can't stop you. it's free, too.

[sneakerdoodle]

hmmmmmmmmm.

the Job thing -> Aziraphale coming up against a decree by Heaven that he cannot force himself to be okay with, subsequently plunging himself into an existential crisis by falling prey to doubt and questioning and going as far as lying to an archangel, thus irrevocably corrupting his soul and no longer feeling 'holy' anymore

the Elspeth & Morag thing -> Aziraphale having a morality crisis over the intricacies of the human life and the net good of objective wrongdoings, attempting to paint things in overwhelmingly simplistic strokes that would fit things into the neat binary of 'good-bad', uncritically upholding the unhelpful sentiment of 'the blessings of poverty' but eventually being led to direct and powerful transformative action, and not the type that would truly take anything away from him, the entire conflict hinging on the fact that he had to overcome his internal misconceptions in a way that deserves to be written down, reflected upon, brought up again later in life

the??? finale for some reason??????????? -> "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys". "We're the good guys".