#i am having go2 flashbacks

[none-ofthisnonsense]

Don't! Feed! The! Pigeons!

[fazmid]

I can't believe I finished the OFMD finale like "wow that was a pretty enjoyable season of television, though it's a shame the ending felt a bit lukewarm bc they were clearly trying to balance the possibilities of the show ending at S2 and getting a S3, all with a reduced episode count. Still a fun time as always!" only to go online and find new levels of discourse happening in corners of fandom I've never interacted with. where are some of you getting all this rage from

[tio-trile]

Obligatory sorry if you're fed up with GO2 asks!

I'm a new fan of the show (like, a few weeks after season 2 came out a friend lent me their Prime acc to binge watch everything) and haven't read the book at all but!

It's like in S1 Crowley and Aziraphale exist in the world and in S2 the world exists for them kind of,, in S1 the point of view shifted almost constantly and at the end the plotlines converged together in a cathartic moment for all of our beloved characters, but in S2 it's just,, present Aziracrow and past Aziracrow,, which is fine, I liked that they showcased the way they were and are with each other but it would've been better if there were less of these moments.

Talking about these, I saw that a lot of people on Tumblr were excited to see Crowley as an angel and it could've been good but. I don't get why Aziraphale HAD to be here, or more like HAD to interact with him and remember/recognize him later, and I'm not really thrilled about the fact that Crowley is implied to be someone important! It just feels like Crowley and Aziraphale aren't equals anymore ; Crowley Always Knows Best he admittedly was someone pretty important in heaven before and he feels more Holier Than Thou than the literal angel he's with?? I get that he Fell so he already knows for sure that Heaven is corrupt but,, I don't know, I feel like Aziraphale lost agency and just Can't Do Anything Right anymore! (And Crowley Can't Do Anything Wrong anymore either??)

I found the flashbacks for ineffable bureaucracy quite adorable but it was all too sudden! It feels the Gabriel mystery just wasn't progressing at all during the season and at the last minute, ta-dahh here's an exposition dumb on what happened, no build-up for the now canon pairing. Not a big fan of amnesia in general but even less when the amnesic character just gets everything back for a dramatic reveal scene, maybe I would have felt like things actually happened in this season if Gabriel was slowly able to access some memories. We could have had the build-up of him and Beelzebub planning on escaping together in the flashbacks! (And I mean, I get that there was the fly and the song but,, It didn't really affect Gabriel/Jim so it doesn't feel,,, enough?)

I was completely indifferent to Maggie and Nina. Also could've worked better as a separate POV from Aziracrow. I just didn't get enough scenes to care for them or feel any chemistry. Nina was already in a relationship, and Maggie was just crushing on her. They didn't really get together at the end but they're involved enough in the idea of them getting together in the future to give Crowley love advice and for Maggie to wait for Nina. I just don't really get it? If the goal was Maggie and Nina getting together, then they needed more time and scenes. If the goal was that they would not get together because Aziraphale and Crowley were trying to force them to be, then why saying that they "only needed a little push," that Maggie is "willing to wait for Nina," why both give love advice to a guy they barely know when they barely know each other too?

Anyways, I really liked the show (and am still eager for a potential S3)! But I feel like Neil Gaiman's writing is missing a similar style to Terry's (though obviously I wouldn't know what his writing is like since I. Haven't read the book nor other books from this/both of these actually authors), and important reoccurring characters besides Aziraphale and Crowley.

Yes, I agree with a lot of your points! And it's very interesting for me to hear that we share a lot of the same opinions although coming from different places -- being an older book fan and being a newer show-only fan. "S1 Crowley and Aziraphale exist in the world and in S2 the world exists for them" is exactly right, and similar to what I complained about not liking them "being the main characters". And I completely agree with that even if we see Angel!Crowley, Aziraphale doesn't have to be there, and also not liking that Crowley was somebody important before. And yeah, I've said it before but the Gabriel mystery and even the Nina/Maggie romance have potential, but ends up falling flat. Thank you for the ask! Apology accepted.

[clara-kay]

So. I did it. I finally did it.

I'm talking about me subscribing to HBO so I can watch Our Flag Means Death.

Because what else was I gonna do? I mean, I subscribed to Amazon for Good Omens so that I can bingewatch it before Season 2 came out.

And at what cost? Getting my heart broken! That's what! Am gonna have constant last-15-mins-of-GO2 flashbacks for the rest of my life. Or until S3 comes out.

Anyway, OFMD. Yes.

I started this whole posy just to say that so far--I'm in episode 4--I love Blackbeard's energy.

That's it. That's the post.

[number1wah]

rambles on go2

I think GO2 feels a bit off for people (me included tbh) for a couple of reasons. The big one, obviously, is that it's mostly New Material and Sir Terry wasn't around to help write it, so it's only Neil's voice (and I'm sure at times Neil attempting in some ways to channel Sir Terry, which is just an impossible task), so it lacks that extra special spark that only Sir Terry could really bring it. And there's absolutely no way it ever could have, frankly. (A fact I'm certain everyone on set or in the writing room was aware of. Neil is a wonderful writer. Sir Terry was a wonderful writer. Together they made a particular kind of magic that can never be captured again.)

Secondly though, is that it feels like a bunch of side stories. While things do change and progress in many ways there's just this feeling, to me anyway and I think to others that struggled with it, that a lot of it doesn't actually go anywhere in particular. There's a lot of fluff that doesn't fully impact the story that we see currently (but I do think will enlighten us for next season)

Rather than pushing the story forward in some large way it seems more like it's just expanding on what was there. (Which is definitely not a bad thing by any means.) The first time I watched GO2 I had multiple moments where I straight up just said: "Wait why are we doing things? What's the point of this scene???" And a lot of that was Aziraphale and Crowley's 'minisodes' (which tbh i hate the concept of. why call them minisodes when they are interwoven with the episode?? idk thats a rant for another time). Like their whole bit in Edinburgh and body snatching has little if anything to do with the mystery of Gabriel and it's kinda weirdly thrown inbetween the Main Story in a way that I don't think hits the way they intended it to.

Again, It's not that I don't love seeing the backstory of the Ineffable Idiots but it's done in a way that gives you a bit of whiplash I think. The first season put all (or at least most of) the historical flashbacks in a contained episode, with the intent to show just a bit of the progression of this relationship.

Also, as much as I absolutely adore Azriphale and Crowley, this season focused so so heavily on them that the rest of the cast felt so small. Season 1 had a whole slew of characters that you were able to sit with longer, and I think that's missing here. (And that might also be in part due to filming in the middle of a pandemic) You saw Aziraphale and Crowley interact with each other but you also had a sense of the whole world around them and how they interacted with it more, and how the people in the world interacted with each other. Not just the two or three shops on Aziraphale's street. (And thinking of it now they do interact with people in the flashbacks but because they're one off characters for the episodes and not series regulars it just doesn't have the same impact)

Don't get me wrong, I had some issues with Season 1 (particularly some lines by Pepper that felt wild lol) but I think it was more balanced in it's approach to all the characters and their journey.

This also isn't to say that I dislike Season 2 at all, just that on first watch I can definitely understand why some people struggled a bit with it. I think the biggest thing that helped me appreciate GO2 was understanding that this was more of a "bridge" (for lack of a better term) to get to the sequel. That this was just ramping up to get people to that place. (They absolutely could have chosen to jump in to the sequel story and do some creative story telling to fill us in on the important bits and I am very grateful they chose to tell this story and walk with us to that jumping off point instead.) And I think a lot of trilogies struggle with the second part in particular because so often it is a bridge from the start to the conclusion, but this just feels like that x10 to me?? Because the first season is a complete story, even if there's room to grow from that, it's a closed book essentially.

Idk I'm very much rambling here and can't get my thoughts down in a very coherent way.

I do just want to say that I just finished my second rewatch and, again, I so thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I still think it fumbled parts in comparison to the first one. And I'm absolutely not mad at it in any way for expanding on the both Aziraphale and Crowley individually and together. I just think it may sit better with people when the 3rd season is out (fucking fingers crossed so help me) and the story is a complete entity again.

edit to add: I also don't really think TV executives have ever really given us this style of story before. (fucking especially with a queer couple jfc)Where you go from this crazy story of an apocalypse to a story very obviously about love. Like this feels very much like New Territory and I am so grateful to have it, wort's and all.

[waitingforthekettle]

After letting go of some initial (and clearly unfounded) misgivings about a Good Omens story without Terry Pratchett as part of the process, I still keep coming back to the ways that his presence and absence feel throughout season 2. So much so that I'm starting to wonder if it isn't at the heart of the story under the story. (This is of course speculation on my part, with enormous respect to Neil Gaiman, John Finnemore, the GO2 production team and to anyone impacted by dementia.)

The first thing that stands out is a significant shift in tone and presentation from the first season. Not only does the reach of the story pull back in scope, season 2 lacks an omniscient narrator while featuring memory as a major theme. At the same time, we're told that in this world memory isn't guaranteed. It can be erased, or stolen, or even misplaced (the wipe threatened to Gabriel, whatever is hinted to have happened to Crowley, the looming presence of the Book of Life) and Self along with it.

The number of total locations, particularly outside of flashbacks, is also scaled back a good deal. I'm sure that COVID restrictions played into this, but the choice of how to use the locations, layering over the same spaces with different moods and purposes to make them newly unfamiliar, often entirely surreal as the plot accelerates, feels intentional. Maybe by design or maybe as a byproduct of the shift in narration style, these transitions are sometimes left feeling disjointed when compared against the first season - and yet not a single nuclear reactor has been swapped out for a sherbet lemon.

I'm sure there are in-universe narrative reasons for things to feel off (I've seen a couple of very well-considered explanations already from people a lot more clever than I am, and trust that Neil Gaiman will in turn be cleverer than all of us) and I look forward to watching that unfold in s3. But in the sense that fiction can be used to tell us something about our world in a way that's easier to take, watching a loved one 'looking at where the furniture isn't' is exactly the kind of gut punch I can imagine Pratchett himself slipping into the banana crate somewhere around the 3/4 mark of a Discworld novel; it's horrible, but here, have a banana and you'll feel better about things.

Season 2 of Good Omens feels like a story that has Terry Pratchett's spirit and humour in every inch of it - but it doesn't entirely feel like the story he would have written. It does feel like it might be the story about how he didn't write it, with our attention drawn to what's missing instead of trying to shuffle things around and gloss over the absence.

Either way, it's that much sweeter when we get to experience Gabriel 'coming back' at the end.

[shipaholic]

I’m rewatching the GO2 trailer, this time focussing on the parts in the middle that I haven’t seen as much speculation about:

- Statue of an angelic figure, surrounded by gravestones, with some large... stadium lights? TV screens? big rectangles mounted on poles in the foreground. Two figures stand in front of it, the taller dressed in white, the shorter either in dark clothes or in shadow. Gabriel and Beelzebub? The shorter figure has something on their head like a frilly hat. Could conceivably be B’s fly hat, but I’m leaning not. Or, it could be Crowley and Muriel during their infiltration of Heaven, and the colouring is ironic? The whole set-up looks weird and artificial. I am leaning towards it being a space in Heaven. Edit! I forgot about Shax. That could be her hat, but in that case I’m not sure who the figure in white is. Edit 2: what the hell, I’m going to guess it’s Shax and Michael.

- A spotlight shines on the statue, and we see in close-up that it’s Gabriel! He is hugging a cross while gazing out. He has Raphaelite curls (not to be confused with the archangel Raphael. may they never show up in Good Omens).

- shot of real!Gabriel’s eyes glowing violet. He has grown in some stubble while at Aziraphale’s shop. He also appears to have borrowed some of Aziraphale’s clothes. Aw. Also, in an earlier shot he is looking out of an upstairs window, wearing Aziraphale’s(?) tartan dressing gown and some blue pyjamas, suggesting that the bookshop has a bedroom and Aziraphale is letting him use it. omg he’s so considerate and, I assume, so deeply confused this whole time. Also, does Gabriel need to sleep while he has amnesia? It seems as if he’s been turned human.

- Bunch of demons assembled in the bookshop. They look menacing. Aziraphale is repelling them(?) with a glowing portal on the floor.

- Weird clouds, lightning overhead (or something glowing above, anyway). Nina and Maggie looking fetching under the stormy sky.

- Muriel lying on the floor in Heaven to look at a matchbox that says “Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.” Job 41:19. Getting The Beast Below vibes.

- Another shot of the Gabriel statue, this time unlit. It looks sterner. I double checked, and I don’t think its expression has changed, it’s just the lighting.

- Aziraphale in Victorian dress, looking at the sky, then Crowley(?) screaming and flinging himself towards him. Aziraphale also seems to be at the edge of a graveyard - I think that’s a tombstone in the bottom left of the screen.

- Magician!Aziraphale (in a very snazzy blue coat, I love it), and a crowd of people behind him - an older woman in black, and several dancing girls with huge red feathers on their heads. Is this also a flashback? Could be back when he first learned stage magic!

- Crowley speeding - tartan hills - Beelzebub sitting on their horrid little chair/throne surrounded by manky piles of old newspapers. I’m inclined to say the papers are just old junk Hell keeps around, but who knows, maybe they’re needed to solve the mystery. The tartan hills are super weird. It’s possible it’s just a jokey visual to let us know Crowley is in Scotland. If it’s not, then why is the landscape stealing fashion tips from Aziraphale?? If we’re getting a second go at the Apocalypse, is it somehow being caused by Aziraphale and/or Crowley, to the extent that it’s stealing things from their heads, like with Adam in S1?

- B’s teeth - Shax grinning - demons smashing the bookshop windows. When their ‘SURREND THE ANGLE’ projectile lands on the carpet, there is a woman’s foot in a high heel visible next to it. A customer? A fancy one? (It’s a nice shoe)

Errr, I don’t have conclusions about any of this, but it felt helpful to document it XD

I really love that so much seems to be happening. My only real concern about extending the story in future seasons of TV was that the story might end up being rather thin. But it seems like there’s tons of it! And that’s just based on trailer snippets that were selected for being not-that-spoilery! And we haven’t even got to the sequel that Terry and Neil planned!! It’s so much and I’m so happy.

[grassangel]

Thoughts on GO2

Spoilers ahead

So I might just be a bit pleased with myself that I read Bad Grace, oh, 15 years ago? Which I always muddle up with Manchester Lost, but is definitely the superior fanfic because it's actually kind of likely. And given the ending of GO2? Very definitely likely that like Bad Grace, the second coming of Christ is going to be a girl and she, like Adam, will agree that Earth's quite nice actually. (And be implied to get together.)

Which will make some fans complain that Gneil has been reading fanfic on the sly, but like. that's the hallmark of good fanfic: working with the same ingredients and stirring in a similar fashion landing you a similar dish. And the Good Omens fandom is over 30 years old, there's been plenty of time to experiment with technique and ingredient combos.

And possibly also why Gneil has emphasised he can't read fanfic, because yeah, this does happen often enough that writers/authors will tread the same path as fic writers and have to prove their independent working.

Am I a bit miffed that the third act isn't Heaven, Hell and humans waging war against God? A little. But I suppose my personal second act headcanon of Heaven & Hell vs humans as the official third/final act is good too.

Anyway, I did feel the six episodes was a bit too long for what Gneil admits is pretty much a bridging season to get everyone into position for how the sequel would have started. Even if having s1: 6 episodes, s2: 6 episodes and s3: 6 episodes all lined up read like 666 is very funny. I did like that we finally got a bit more of Crowley Questioning things, Aziraphale's awful 'the poor have more chances to do good!' stance and showing, if not saying, that demons are from angelic stock. (I might have been mentally shouting 'Angelic stock!' every time I saw Crowley in his heavenly disguise before watching this season.)

There was a lot of 'Aziraphale and Crowley through history' - which yes, we all loved the cold open in s1, but I at least liked it because it was a depiction of The Arrangement and how it came about - and these bits in this season were decidedly NOT about The Arrangement. (Though again, I did like how we were shown Crowley is skeptical of this whole 'God's plan' thing.)

I would have appreciated more layering to the narrative and more parallels to Crowley and Aziraphale. Yes, we got Maggie and Nina, Gabriel and Beezlebub, but both of those pairings barely featured. Personally I'd have included Beezlebub in the Job sequence to further ram home the whole 'equal but opposite' thing. I'm surprised there wasn't a flashback to Jane Austen's heist with pointedly familiar people, and I would have rather had that than the WWII sequence, which rather lacked the opposite, but equally incompetent, heavenly snooping. Maybe have Nina and Maggie going around after Aziraphale and Crowley talking to the other shopkeepers about Nina's stance on the lights. Have a bit more demonic grumbling about Beezlebub - whether about her being a hardass trying to track Gabriel down or her not doing much since the Armagedidn't. Also, more of the fly and Jim being protective about it.

Because yeah, the last episode didn't quite feel earned. It would have felt more fitting to keep the general last 10 minutes, but like how Maggie and Nina aren't a certain thing, Aziraphale and Crowley aren't either so what is the point of the kiss? Like keep Aziraphale's notion of turning Crowley 'good' (please read that in the same way Michelle Gomez said 'good' in an extremely thick Scottish accent as Missy) and his extremely misguided belief that Heaven is good because they're heaven, but less kissing and more appealing that they're the same and humans don't need either demons or angels to do good or evil. (I personally love to hate Aziraphale being an asshole, and that was possibly the truest to the book part of the series.) (And while I do love a 'Crowley turns back into an angel' fic, I pretty much only like it when it's incidental/he does too many 'good' things/God decides to fuck around.)

No notes given on Muriel. I love her and want to be her friend.

[o-uncle-newt]

Not that it's REMOTELY any of my business, but I'm so curious to know to what extent this is intentional and why.

Neil Gaiman answered my ask about whether JF would be involved in promos/in BTS material by saying no, that he just did the writing and left. And he clearly hasn't been involved in the social media posting (except at the very beginning two years ago when he went on a whole spate of tweeting which was very well received- I wonder what made him stop) and tweeted more about Avenue 5 airing last year than he has about Good Omens. While he acted in A5 in addition to writing, he only got full writing credit on one episode as opposed to co-writing credit on all six GO2 episodes.

(I'd say that maybe some of it has to do with the strike; as as a WGGB member I don't think that he's allowed to strike but seeing as his paid work is done it's probably not a good look to promote material for struck studios? But even before the strike there wasn't really anything.)

I mean, dude has pretty significant (if smaller scale) experience as a showrunner for a cult fandomy show, and he handled it SUPER well (well enough that he was able to bring Cabin Pressure fans like me to his other projects!)- then again, I think the Good Omens people can be a lot wilder if only because there are more of them? And it would make sense that JF wouldn't want to be subject to all of the "wait so are they or aren't they romantically in love? either answer is potentially Incorrect" stuff that Neil Gaiman gets (though in fairness I think he brings it on himself). It might bring him flashbacks to his days in the trenches dealing with "so is Martin canonically bald" and all that. (And whatever Doodle-gate was? I genuinely have no idea.) And from reading his blog, he's obviously a private person- definitely to a much greater extent than Neil Gaiman has ever really been- and probably doesn't particularly want to risk anything.

That said though- as much as I know that JF doesn't necessarily promote his non-solo projects that much, I still kinda wonder, especially since he DID do that burst of tweets at the beginning. And he's got co-writer and co-EP (though presumably for compensation rather than actual producing) credit on an Amazon TV show- that's a bigger profile thing than he's really done before, as far as I can tell! I just have to hope that his lower profile because he's using Neil Gaiman as a meat shield from Good Omens fans than because he is distancing himself from the project, or being distanced from it.

(Anyway, I AM glad that his Twitter following has stayed manageable enough that he's even responded to me a couple of times about things, even if he still refuses to confirm to me whether the dog collar in This Is What You Do is a tribute to the dog collar in Gaudy Night by DLS)

Can we get a John Finnemore appreciation train going because he's an incredible writer who co-wrote S2 and has had so little attention in the build up to its release