#like thinking of him playing aziraphale

[et-in-arkadia]

this is such incredible advice for creating any kind of art i have to put it over here to remind myself

[ingravinoveritas]

My contribution to Azirafeast 2024 (albeit a few days late):

One thing that I really, really love about Good Omens and particularly Aziraphale is that he is a truly one-of-a-kind character. Crowley is wonderful, but he’s somewhat of an archetype of that cynical, tough on the outside/soft on the inside character that we’ve seen in other shows and movies (though of course given a uniquely delightful touch in both the writing of the book and by David in the show).

But Aziraphale broke the damn mold.

I’ve been in a lot other fandoms and one thing that's common to all of them is questions like “Which Disney character would [Character/Actor/Band member] be?”. Yet if I attempted to do the reverse, to choose any band or characters from another medium and say which GO characters they are, I don’t think there could ever be an analog for Aziraphale, because he’s just too him.

Aziraphale is too him to be another Gabriel clone, too him to put a piece of paper over and try to trace his outline on someone else. (And that’s in no small part due to the brilliantly nuanced performance of Michael Sheen, who brings Aziraphale to fully-realized life, takes that certain indefinable quality that makes Aziraphale who he is, and cranks it up to a thousand.)

Aziraphale is incredibly special to Michael, and now he's become incredibly special to us. Aziraphale is indelible, unforgettable…and absolutely one-of-a-kind.

[parttimesarah]

Bleach this man’s hair and that’s your David Tennant Aziraphale right there!

[thesaintofnevergettingitright]

Wait. Hold on. I just finished my second watch of season two and I have a theory…

I think Aziraphale knew he fucked up before he ever got on that elevator.

HEAR ME OUT!

I think the moment that he heard that his big project would be the Second Coming, he instantly realized Crowley was right. As soon as the Metatron mentions the Second Coming, Aziraphale looks directly to Crowley with what I think is very-well-concealed panic. I don’t think that was a wistful gaze at what-might’ve-been. I think that was an instinctive entreaty for help from the person he trusts most in the world, followed by the immediate realization that he can’t ask for Crowley for help without letting the Metatron know something’s wrong.

Because Aziraphale KNOWS that the Second Coming is just a different flavor of Armageddon, it’s literally the rapture. There’s no planet where our boy has changed so much that he’d be willing to bring about the end of humanity, and the fact that he didn’t object to the idea instantly is important. To me, it means that Aziraphale must’ve made a split-second decision to play along. He didn’t have time to tell Crowley what was wrong, and even if he could’ve, he didn’t have enough information to put a stop to it.

Basically, I think that in the moments after the Metatron mentioned the Second Coming Aziraphale realized several things in quick succession

Crowley was right.

He and Crowley were going to have to save the world again.

If they were going to stop another apocalypse, they needed to know what they were up against.

The only way to know was to have a man on the inside.

There wasn’t time to tell Crowley any of it.

Now the question is, how does Aziraphale let Crowley know what’s going on?? Because he can’t stop Armageddon 2 (Electric Bugaloo) by himself.

[spider-avenger22]

Crowley: God didn't just break the mold with me after I Fell, she shattered it into places and scattered them across Creation. And because of that, there's some lovable dorkish Scottish DILF running around with my face playing all these characters who are absolutely nothing like me I swear to God because it's her fault I'm asked every time I go somewhere populated with fucking nerds that ask me if I'm returning to Doctor Who. I'm a demon. I'm way cooler than some ADHD-ridden alien in a fucking blue box who really has a thing for London for some reason. I mean, come on dude. It's really not that interesting. Plus, the traffic is terrible, and people get pissed when you almost run them over. Okay, but did I actually hit you, or did you survive unharmed with the lovely bonus of having your entire life play out in your head right before you think I'm about to send you to your maker (who isn’t really that great, trust me). Hmm? At least I know who to drive and take care of my vehicle. I don't leave the parking break on like a fool.

The Plants: *shaking* Doctor who?

[sysig]

New dream OCs drop (Patreon)

[killing-hannibals-body]

You know, in season one, it always sat weird with me when Aziraphale demanded that Crowley do something at Armageddon lest Aziraphale would never talk to him again.

It kinda felt like Aziraphale was being selfish, refusing to act out of cowardice or fear.

But now - now - I see it. Turns out, it was mostly out of inability. Crowley is a demon who used to be an angel of incredibly high rank. Aziraphale was a lower rank angel, and he knew that Crowley had the capability of doing something drastic, something BIG, something Aziraphale could only dream of doing.

Aziraphale remembers Crowley creating nebulas and stars. He knows how Crowley was involved in creating gravity and other incredible forces.

He had no doubt that Crowley was capable of something miraculous, and he demanded that Crowley remember who he was and what he was capable of.

[cattatoir]

I mean honestly I love how Derek Jacobi portrayed metatron bc like it’s a master manipulation by Angel standards but by human standards (and probably Crowley’s) like he’s just really barely repressed menace and like…rage? disgust? Sure he waits til Aziraphale turns around to glare at Crowley but he’s not even looking or talking at Aziraphale with anything actually friendly

[joycrispy]

Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:

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

It. It kind of fucks. Severely.

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

I'll explain:

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

Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you understand?

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

The flaming sword was given to be used against them.

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

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

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

They're Crowley and Aziraphale.

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

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

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

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

And the Serpent--

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

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

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

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

The first to ask questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then you keep writing.

And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.

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

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

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

I love this shot so much.

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

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

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

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

Godfathers. Sort of.

[hi-i-just]

I think you'd also enjoy this meta op

Rescuing Aziraphale isn't what makes Crowley happy, not really. He doesn't want him to be in danger in the first place. He wants him safe. He wants him happy.

But he does like having an excuse to take care of him, to protect him, to dote on him in a way that's safe, acceptable and would be honestly illogical to turn away. Like Crowley walks into that church, burning his feet all the way and Aziraphale nearly shoos him away? (Because of the fight all those years ago, because he must be in league with these Nazis) But Aziraphale is in actual, real danger of being discorporated, of being sent back to heaven for who knows how long, so how can he actually reject Crowley's offer to protect him, right?

So every time Crowley does this, the whole "gallant knight swooping in to save Aziraphale from his own follies" thing, it's basically completely irrejectable, safe love Crowley can offer up to Aziraphale with no fear of rejection or overstepping the invisible line between them. Aziraphale can say "you go too fast for me, Crowley" a hundred times in so many varied ways and Crowley accepts this but he's never going to reject Crowley's love when it comes to him as a hand pulling him free of oblivion. That's what Crowley likes. Being able to love Aziraphale in a way that he knows will never be rejected.

[cassieno]

Crowley is a romantic. And they stole his love confession from him.

The confession we saw was rushed. I think Crowley could tell something was different. It was now or never. And that’s why he started to confess then. But

his original plan was to take Aziraphale to the Ritz. They would get into the Bently, yellow tulips on the backseat, like we can see. Because yellow is pretty, like the angel said before. And A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square would play, he had put it on queue, we heard it. And they would get to the Ritz, have a wonderful breakfast. He would give him the flowers, take him back home, give him a lift, like in the movies, and then he would confess. And they could kiss at the door before they went inside.

But instead his confession was rushed and desperate and not at all like what they show in the movies. It was painfully real and unmagical.

[mintcaboodle]

I need pathetic ex aziraphale. need him to come crawling back back but for a few episodes not admit how down horrendously he is. it would be funny I think.

[daisyomens]

Michael Sheen once said that TV shows are better than movies because there's real character development. And it's true.

Watching Good Omens again, I could see a slight difference between the Aziracrow of today and the Aziracrow of before.

Can't you see how Aziraphale is so much more haughty and arrogant during the Job episode than he is now? He raises his chin on many occasions, allows himself to roll his eyes, openly judges others…

Another example: when Crowley changes his name. I wouldn't say Aziraphale looks down on him, but it seems like it, maybe just jealous that he can change his first name so easily, maybe.

In comparison to Crowley who, if I dare say, clearly doesn't know how to behave with him: aka when he says "you? a demon? with your little curls" when it's clearly not the right time. We can also see his smile fall when he notices the angel's reaction.

Add to that his sarcasm, which seems to weaken over time. Indeed, if we pay attention, at first he is sarcasm all the time (if we exclude his angel time), then every other time, then almost no more or only when Aziraphale really wants him.

“You’re an angel I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”

“A new thing called a Rainbow.”

“How kind.”

“Come to make fun of him?”

“What a stupid question is that. What else am I gonna be ? An advaark ?”

That's why they need each other. They balance each other. They evolve together and become attuned to each other.

Crowley slows down his sarcasm because it annoys the angel, and vice versa for Aziraphale. Of course, there's the experience of their many years on Earth that plays a role, but other than that…

All this to say that Michael Sheen is right.

[tenok]

.

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[aheavenofhell]

Aziraphale raising his wing for Crowley hits so different with the S2 context. I feel like we all looked at it as, here’s this sweet little principality, he’s kind and naive so he’ll shelter even a demon—but it wasn’t really that, was it? It wasn’t just some random act of kindness.

It was a message.

When Crowley slithered up that wall, Aziraphale was nervous. Because he gave his sword to the humans, sure—but also perhaps because he was seeing this angel again for the first time since he had fallen. He learns Crawly’s new name (Crowley never asks him for his name, he knows it already) and they have a brief exchange that was probably a lot like the ones they used to have.

Then when the thunder starts, it’s Crowley who’s first to move to him, to shuffle hopefully to his side.

I think when Aziraphale lifted his wing up, it was almost a way to say I remember who you are, I remember the kindness you gave me. I’m still here.

He wasn’t just playing umbrella. He was letting Crowley know he hadn’t been rejected by all of Heaven.