#the other just wants to make Aziraphale suffer

[princip1914]

Oh boy we are really in it now.

[tenok]

.

[lenaellsi]

“Crowley is still an angel deep down” “Crowley is more of an angel than any of the archangels” “Crowley was only cast out because he needed to play his part in Armageddon, he's not a real demon” “Aziraphale wants to rebuild Heaven to be more like Crowley because he’s what an angel should be” no. Stop it. This is exactly where Aziraphale went wrong.

Crowley is 100% a demon. He's not actually a bit of an angel, and he's not cosmically better than any of the other demons we see in the series. He's much less vicious than most of them, yeah, but he's also much less vicious than most of the angels, because how “nice” a celestial being is has nothing to do with which side they're technically on. Crowley's kindness comes from him doing his best to help people despite the hurt he's suffered himself, not any sort of inherent residual or earned holiness. He was cast out just like the rest of the demons, and that's an important part of his history that shouldn't be minimized, excused, or, critically, 'corrected.'

Being angelic is not a positive or negative trait in the Good Omens universe. It's a species descriptor. Saying that Crowley is still an angel deep down because he helps people is an in-character thing for Aziraphale to think, certainly--Job and the final fifteen showed that in the worst possible way--but it's not something Crowley would ever react well to, and it's the main source of conflict in the entire "appoint you to be an angel" fiasco.

We know that Aziraphale thinks Crowley's fall was an injustice, but why? Well, because Crowley is actually Good, which means his fall was a mistake, or a test, or a regrettable error in judgment, or…something. Ineffable. Etc. The point is, he’s special, much better than those other demons, and if they can fix him and make him an angel again, everything will be fine! (So once Job's trials are over, everything will be restored to him? Praise be!) Aziraphale has to believe that Crowley's better traits come from traces of the angel he used to know and not the demon he's known for 6,000 years, because that’s how he can rationalize his incorrect view of Heaven as The Source Of Truth And Light And Good with his complicated feelings about Crowley's fall.

But Crowley's fall was not an injustice because he's actually a Good Person who didn't deserve it. Crowley's fall was an injustice because the entire system of dividing people into Good (obedient) and Bad (rebellious) is bullshit. Crowley is not an unfortunate exception to God's benevolence, he is a particularly sympathetic example of God's cruelty.

And really, Crowley doesn't behave at all like an angel, especially when he's at his best. All of the things that he's done that we as the audience consider Good are things that Heaven has directly opposed. (See: saving the goats and children in defiance of God in S2E2, convincing Aziraphale to give money to Elspeth despite Heaven's views on the "virtues of poverty" in S2E3, speaking out against the flood and the crucifixion in S1E3, tempting Aziraphale to enjoy earthly pleasures because he thinks they'll make him happy, stopping Armageddon.)

Heaven as an institution has never been about helping humanity. And that's not an issue of leadership, as Aziraphale seems to think--it's by design. Aziraphale's first official act as an angel toward humanity was to literally throw them to the lions. Giving them the sword wasn't him acting like an angel, it was just him being himself. Heaven doesn't care about humans. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to win the war against Hell, with humans as chess pieces at best and collateral damage at worst.

Yes, it's easier to think that there are forces that are supposed to be fundamentally good. It's easier to think that Aziraphale is going to show those mean archangels and the Metatron what’s coming to them and reform Heaven into what it "should" be, and that God is actually super chill and watching all of this while shipping ineffable husbands and cheering for them the whole way. And of course it's easier to take Crowley, who Aziraphale (and the audience) adores, and say that he deserves to be on the Good team much more than all those angels and demons that we don’t like. But that's not how it works. People are more complicated than that, even celestial beings.

Crowley is a demon, and the tragedy of his character is not that he's secretly a good guy who is being forced to be evil; the tragedy is that he's lived his whole life stuck between two institutional forces that are both equally hostile to the love he feels for the universe and the beings in it. There are no good and bad guys. There are no "right people." Every angel, demon, and human is capable of hurting or helping others based on their choices. That is, in fact, the entire fucking point.

[justhereforthemeta]

Romantic expectations and the story we didn't see: A magic trick hiding in plain sight

Here's a hopeful meta for all my fellow celestial brainrot sufferers out there. Cheers! :)

This idea started as a dead end, trying to track the movements of Crowley’s sideburns/tattoo because I thought time travel shenanigans were afoot. I had to abandon that theory when it was pointed out that David was simultaneously filming as the sideburns-having Fourteenth Doctor, and in-universe Crowley can do whatever he wants with his facial hair whenever he feels like it. But hey - null findings are still findings!

On the bright side, pausing the show to make notations in a spreadsheet forced me to slow down and notice other changes I'd overlooked the first time around: acting choices, costuming choices, references to book lore. And possibly a few surreptitious flicks of the wrist, in places where we’re meant to be focused on the magician’s other hand.

@amuseoffyre and @ineffablefood had a great exchange recently about romance and “the significance of misdirection and three-in-one (magic) tricks” throughout the show. I suspect Neil has done something brilliant with the audience’s long-standing expectations (since the 1990s, really) for the love story between Crowley and Aziraphale to develop. And while it is a wonderful story indeed, playing to this expectation lets Neil distract his audience from the blink-and-you'll-miss-them seeds he's planting for the final chapter.

Continued below the cut...

Let’s start at the beginning of Episode 2. First, context: In the previous installment, Crowley stormed out of the bookshop, was whisked away to Hell by Beelzebub where he learns about the Book of Life threat to Aziraphale’s existence, then returned to the bookshop to dance a little apology dance and hide Gabriel with an unintentionally massive joint miracle. In S2E2, we and Shax catch up with Crowley as he's snoozing in the Bentley.

Shax: “You’re in trouble”

A. J. Crowley, cool as a cucumber: “Obviously. Former demon, hated by Heaven, loathed by Hell. How will our hero cope?”

Interesting! Sarcastic? Yes, absolutely; but that’s also a good 4500 years and an averted apocalypse away from “I’m a demon. I lie,” wouldn’t you say? Someone is sounding a whole lot less depressed and aimless and navel-gazey (do snakes have navels?), and a whole lot more like he’s got a project to focus on, since his "what's the point?" ruminations on the park bench in E1.

And of course we all noticed the costume change right away. Hello, black turtleneck. Feeling cute today, thought I’d cover up my graceful long neck? That sounds unlikely. Let’s put a pin in this one.

There’s also an interesting acting choice going on here. Crowley speaks to Shax in a funny, drawling, too-cool-for-you voice that we haven’t heard in a while. Specifically, not since 1967. If you go back and give the S1E3 scene in the Dirty Donkey a listen, you’ll hear it (and if you know of another instance of it that I've missed, please let me know!). In S2E2, he keeps up this odd voice (if anybody knows what kind of affect this is supposed to be, please do tell!) throughout this dialogue with Shax, except for the brief moment when she first surprises him about the joint miracle having been detected.

1967 was a fun year. Crowley masterminded a heist! And seemed like he was having a ball doing it, right up until his little caper was called off after Aziraphale brought him the thermos of holy water. Crowley spoke to his co-conspirators in that same funny, very 60’s-caper-film voice. He wore a hip 60’s turtleneck. He bought petrol for the only time ever, so he could get those sweet James Bond bullet hole decals for his car (per the book, seen on the Bentley in the show).

Those James Bond bullet hole decals would of course have been part of a promotion for this 1967 release, which you just know our film-enjoying demon went to see in the theater:

Starring this suave, be-turtlenecked guy:

And now - begging your forgiveness - a brief rant.

There are a number of posts out there that refer to Crowley’s S2E2 turtleneck as a flirtatious sartorial choice - actually, ‘slutty’ seems to be the favored accusation. There are even a few posts floating around commenting on how sweet it is that Crowley swaps out his slutty, kinky, throw-me-over-your-desk-and-take-me turtleneck for a more dressy and appropriate collared shirt specifically to attend Aziraphale’s Jane Austen ball. 

Now this is all in good fun, and Crowley does indeed look fantastic here, and I do love a good fangirling sesh as much as the next person. However, fandom’s collective tendency to interpret what we are seeing on the screen through the lens of romantic expectation can, at times, give rise to a kind of blinkered enthusiasm that obscures the original text in a haze that is part Mandela Effect, part unrestrained horniness, and part in-group code talking and identity reinforcement.

Respectfully, Crowley’s black turtleneck does not appear at all in S2E5: The Ball. In fact, it never appears again after the end of S2E2.

For Someone’s sake, let’s collectively pull our heads out of the romantic fog/gutter for a moment and focus on what we are actually seeing in the book and on the screen. For Crowley, this is an uncharacteristic within-period costume change. There is a surreptitious flick of the wrist happening here, out in broad daylight, and we are all missing it.

So here’s a thing. Aziraphale appears to have settled comfortably into life on Earth, his neighborhood, his books, using Crowley as an outlet for sharing his good deeds that he would once have reported to Heaven. Meanwhile, at first glance, Crowley appears stuck in a rut. There he slouches on a park bench with Shax in S2E1: a guy who lives in his car, stagnantly clinging to old familiar habits, mulling over the pointlessness of it all.

Setting aside the bit about living in the Bentley (I’m going to attribute this to well-documented issues between him and Aziraphale, discussed in many other excellent metas, and move on), Crowley has at least two very good, proactive reasons for maintaining his contact with Hell through Shax. First and foremost, it’s a source of information he can use to keep ahead of potential threats to Aziraphale and himself.

But also, I would posit…he kinda likes it.

Recall that book GO was first conceived as a parody, with Aziraphale and Crowley as spy-against-spy (but not really) field operatives in an ages-old cold war between Heaven and Hell. Their entire book dynamic is rooted in the trope of two opposing agents who have been in the field for so long that they now have more in common with each other than with their respective head offices. Their St. James’s Park meetings among other spies and ministers trading secrets are a sendup of what was once a well-known Cold War-era cliché. 

Our contemporary Crowley still likes slick outfits and hellaciously expensive watches and high-performing vintage cars and pens that write underwater while looking like they could break the speed limit. He coaches Shax on how to blend in as a demon on Earth, and he helpfully redirects the wayward contact looking for the Azerbaijani sector chief. He loves improvising and getting away with shenanigans under the institutional radar. And boy golly was he impressed with Jane Austen: master spy, brandy smuggler, and mastermind of the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. 

And if you look at it a certain way, for as long as Crowley has considered himself to be on “[his] own side” - going at least as far back as Job - he could almost think of himself as a sort of double agent. It’s actually a very romantic sort of notion, befitting our hopeless romantic of a (professedly former) demon; but it’s romantic in a very different way than we, the audience, have been primed to watch for.

In other words, in a very “on my own side” kind of way, Crowley really gets a kick out of being a spy. Or at least, dressing up and accessorizing as one, and moonlighting as a good-doing double agent when he can get away with it. And also being a plotting criminal mastermind. Two sides of a coin, really. Just look at Jane Austen.

My point is: No, Crowley did not wait around for Shax to come find him in a turtleneck so that he could go flirt with Aziraphale later. He’ll flirt with Aziraphale no matter what. No, this:

is actually this:

Much like the one he wears to the Dirty Donkey in 1967: 

whilst holy water heist-plotting. Here's a clearer shot with gratuitous Bentley, because I love them:

…and which he'll wear again, with appropriate camouflage, while infiltrating Heaven in S2E6:

That is the 1967 planning a HEIST turtleneck for committing ESPIONAGE and STEALING THINGS in. Because turtlenecks are what modern human master spies wear to get their hands dirty - after all, he saw it in a movie once. 

Crowley dons his tactical turtleneck sometime during the first major break in the action (which doesn't happen until after the joint miracle to hide Gabriel) after he learns about the threat the Book of Life poses to Aziraphale. Loverboy started mentally preparing himself to go after that book immediately upon learning that it was in play as a genuine threat. 

Now let’s pick up at the S2E2 Dirty Donkey scene, reading the story from this angle. Of course, Crowley enables Aziraphale’s delusions about Heaven by hiding information from him, and does not disclose the Book of Life threat when they meet again. They go into the pub, Aziraphale shamelessly paws Crowley’s chest like the seductive Bond Girl he is, and Crowley gets to act all smooth and suave and intimidating as he chases off the interloping Mr. Brown (or Mr. Collins for the Pride & Prejudice fans, take your pick).

Ergo, theory: beginning in S2E2, Crowley is already thinking of himself as a Jane Austen/James Bond action hero (“How will our hero cope?”), psyching himself up to rescue Aziraphale by getting his spy game on and stealing the Book of Life.

Now, watch closely...This is where Aziraphale and Crowley brainstorm their plans to solve the problem they both know about: getting Maggie and Nina to fall in love and thereby get Heaven off their backs. Crowley’s vavoom plan is drawn from yet another movie (“Get humans wet and staring into each other’s eyes - vavoom, sorted. I saw it in a Richard Curtis film.”). But Crowley also implicitly shares his solution to the problem he hasn’t told Aziraphale about. And true to form, Crowley’s Jane Austen solution isn’t the same as Aziraphale’s Jane Austen solution. 

Two solutions that fail by the end of Season 2, and a secret third one that might still work...and there's our magic trick of three.

��“I’m lost. Am I doing a rainstorm?” Yes, babe. And a heist, too - just not until season three. Can I get a wahoo!? 

I won’t spend time on A Companion to Owls during this meta, except to note that in all three minisodes, we get to watch stories that involve Crowley acting as a double agent on “his/their own side” - successfully making Hell and Heaven think he’s fulfilling their will while saving Job’s goats and children; failing to fool Hell when he does a good deed in Edinburgh; and of course, collaborating with Aziraphale whilst evading detection as an infernal turncoat during the Blitz.

(Because this is getting long, I'll also skip over Crowley's interrogation of Jim in this episode - I'll probably come back to that in another meta. But interrogating is a rather spy-ish thing to do.)

When we catch up with Crowley again later, he’s already slipped out of the bookshop, having left Aziraphale to his biblical reverie about Job. He saunters snakily down Whickber Street as usual, but with a very pointed and swift glance over his shoulder (see pic above). This demon is up to something - possibly something we didn’t get to see, something that may have happened offscreen while he stepped out. In any case, knowing there’ve been unfriendly angels in the neighborhood that morning, he’s rightly concerned about being spied on.

From this point until the beginning of episode six, there isn’t a whole lot of opportunity for Crowley to make any next moves. He babysits the bookshop, during which time he manages to wring some crucial information out of Jim; he follows his Crowley’s Angel around like a puppy, and downs a bottle of red like a good old fashioned lovesick boy once that’s been pointed out to him. If any plotting or scheming is underway, this occult being is keeping stumm for now.

This has been a long one, so I’ll wrap up with Crowley’s infiltration of Heaven with Muriel. The turtleneck disguise works (Archer fans, be vindicated!) long enough to gather some information that will be crucial not just to the denouement of S2, but also to Crowley’s journey in S3 (previous post on Crowley's Fall, Saraqael, and memory wiping). And Aziraphale gets to enjoy that view exactly zero times. The point isn’t oh, a turtleneck! How flirty! So cunty! So cute! Y’all. Everything matters. The costume change was a deliberate choice. In-universe, Crowley’s decision to wear his special spy turtleneck for spying in is a signal that he is out doing spy things, even as we watch.

In sum: Beginning in S2E2 and continuing through the end of the season, Aziraphale and Crowley are actively living out the scripts of two parallel, concurrent, and completely different Jane Austen stories. But you and I, dear fellow audience member, we came here for a comedy with a hefty jigger of romance, and that’s what Neil gave us to focus on. And right up until the Final 15, that was the only story we saw.

Meanwhile, Special Agent A. J. Crowley doesn’t have time to mope around at the end of S2E6. He’s kicked down, but he’s not out. He's got a Book of Life to steal, a very serious bone to pick with a certain memory-wiping angel, and his Angel and the world to save. 

“‘Heigh ho,’ said [romantic, optimist, former demon, hero, master spy] Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway.”

[dalliancekay]

The 'Aziraphale Still Believes in Heaven' Take

Is one that I see so often. Too often. The way many fans (still) say Aziraphale is so naïve, he's never learned anything, he never changes, Metatron just offered him a promotion and he happily jumped on it. Happy to go back to Heaven. Still in their clutches. Leaving Crowley behind. Cos nothing lasts forever. Amirite? Poor long-suffering Crowley. So patient. Goes through so much. Aww. Takes that say that because Crowley never told Aziraphale about the venom in Gabriel's "Shut your stupid mouth and die already", Aziraphale has no idea that Heaven is not the good guys, that he still believes they are on the side of truth and light.

Takes that claim Aziraphale wants Crowley to come to Heaven and be an angel again so they can be happy like in the good old times. Takes that basically say that Aziraphale is stupid. And blind. LISTEN Do you mean this Aziraphale:

Who knew before Crowley did that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, that things are wrong and one can get in a lot of trouble for a thing as minor as a suggestion to improve things. Is this the Aziraphale that would seriously suggest to Crowley, who he was immediately deeply anxious over, to go back to 'good old times'? What good old times? How is Heaven a place of light when:

A bunch of angels comes down to Earth to bully and PUNCH ONE OF THEIR OWN?

Why would he think they are the light when they shame him for being who he is?

And yes, Aziraphale wants to do good. But that's not tied to him being an angel. And it's not a bad thing ffs! Crowley does good as well. Aziraphale might be the only one who knows, but he knows. Maybe getting humans out of the Garden to seek knowledge was always a (certainty) possibility, and maybe not, but it was Aziraphale's decision to arm them.

And She didn't make him Fall for it. And do you remember when:

Aziraphale first openly questioned that Heaven was actually doing what God actually wanted? He had a think after the Flood, didn't he. He did what he thought was right. He trusted Crowley over his fellow angels, with his own sense of rightness. He and Crowley saved the kids that Aziraphale triple checked the Archangels saw no problem in letting die to make things easier. And She didn't make him Fall for it. In Edinburgh:

Az re-evaluated the thinking he was taught and did a full 180 degree turn, trying in few hours to save the grave-robbing girl AND the possible future lives of children that could be helped via more learning. And when we come to Metatron and his threats, we don't see the full conversation, but don't we see enough? Aziraphale says that he's not interested. Metatron keeps nagging at him. Pushing the symbolic coffee from Coffee or Death at him. Flattering him with obvious untruths. After all, Aziraphale knows what Heaven thinks of him. He tried to reason with Metatron before. Metatron tells him they know how deep his disobedience lies:

Aziraphale is not a fool. He knows this is an offer of come quietly or we will find a way to destroy you and your demon this time. Aziraphale didn't have to hear Metatron's quip of: "For one prince of Heaven to be cast into the outer darkness makes a good story. For it to happen twice, makes it look like there is some kind of institutional problem." He knows the system is rotten. He knows for a LONG time. Did you see his face when he met Muriel and realised what a lonely sad existence they lead.

AND Crowley doesn't love Aziraphale despite the fact that he's being used to get out of trouble, being made to listen about random things the angel enjoys from symphonies to food and plays, and who continues to believe in goodness and kindness. CROWLEY LOVES AZIRAPAHLE BECAUSE OF THOSE THINGS AND because he sees Aziraphale for what he is, an angel who thinks for himself, changes his mind, learns, angel who is brave, who stands for the right thing, who sacrifices his own happiness for the safety of others, especially the demon he loves. They are the same. They are lonely. They are one of a kind. And they love each other.

Aziraphale wants to stay at home. In the home he built for himself and Crowley. On Earth where he's found so much to love. But he knows it is impossible. As Crowley confesses his love, Aziraphale struggles to stay on his plan to push him away, to make him stay. He'll miss Crowley terribly. He wants them to be together. For him, they were an 'us' the whole S2. However tenuously. Fragile existence and all that.

But even this was ripped away from him. And whatever he's planning, he knows he needs to do the first steps on his own. He can't submit Crowley to the torture that being in Heaven is going to be for him, an unwanted, despised angel. And that would be even worse for an unwanted demon. He had to push him away.

So he leaves. Furious. And determined. Whether it is to burn the place down or find God and ask Her all the questions to Her face I don't know. But his love will push him through.

And if I see one more simplistic take of the snarky demon is really good isn't he, so that means the stuffy angel is bad (and needs to change to be worthy of the demon) I will curse their dreams with lines about shades of grey. AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY ALREADY LOVE EACH OTHER

[vidavalor]

Crowley and Plosives

@kimberleyjean asked in my recent post on rings and apostrophes why it is that I think Crowley pops the consonants of words at times, as in "BooK. shoP", and if there is a technical term for what he is doing. There is.

Let's talk about Crowley's exaggerated plosive sounds--as well as his little "mmm" thing-- and what this all probably has to do with his hiss.

In order to talk about why it likely is that Crowley pops specific consonants when he speaks-- with it being more pronounced at certain times than at other times-- we first actually have to talk about his hiss.

Crowley's hiss is less of a separate sound and more of a slur of what's known as a sibilant sound in phonology-- it's the sound of the letter s or the letters sh. If you say the word "sash" aloud, you're using sibilant sounds twice over-- once at the start and once at the end of the word. While Crowley could probably just hiss like a snake when he's in human form, we never actually hear him do that. We hear a hissing sound manifest in his sibilant sound when he is speaking-- which is to say when he's being a human over a snake. The same is true of Lord Beezlebub, whose fly buzz sound affects their speech. In their case, their sibilant sounds turn into the letter z to mimic a fly (as in, "It izzzzz written" on the tarmac in Tadfield in S1).

Sibilant sounds are part of a group of sounds known as fricatives, which are all softer in sound. They are grouped together based on how your mouth and throat move in forming the sounds and how much air is needed to move through them and in what way to say them. The letters k, p, t-- and sometimes d, b and g, depending on the word and the position of the letter in the word-- are "hard" sounds and are known as plosives. These are the sounds that Crowley tends to pop or to which he gives exaggerated emphasis in his speech. My theory as to why is basically that David Tennant decided that Crowley would feel the hiss is weak and react to it by popping his plosives to seem more intimidating, which really does go along with Crowley's psychology well.

Crowley's hiss is a feature of what of him is a snake and, as a result, will show up in the times that a snake would hiss. That means the slurred sibilant sounds show up primarily in situations in which he feels a sense of vulnerability. Snakes hiss when they're stressed or under duress and they hiss if you try to interact with them while they are digesting a big meal. In demon snake terms lol, it means Crowley is most likely to hiss in exactly the moment he does not want to (when he's anxious or afraid, which is usually when around other demons or angels). He probably cares a bit less about slurring sibilant sounds around Aziraphale after a big meal--or a "big meal"-- and Aziraphale actually probably likes it a bit as it's his life goal to keep that snake blissssssed out but the hissing around other people thing?

Crowley hates it. He haaaaaaates it. There is evidence of Crowley hating the slurred sibilants in a few scenes.

One is that when he shapeshifts into a monstrous snake to scare the guy at Tadfield Manor in S1, Crowley doesn't hiss at him-- he roars. Like a lion. (Lions are also on the arms and legs of his reason-for-therapy-alone throne chair in S1.) And this is his reaction when he makes the guy faint from fright:

He loves it. Ah, control...

Because Crowley is a lot of things, really-- he's a snake, yeah, but he's a big cat, he's a crow, he's a nightingale, he's a black swan, he's a horse... we could go on. To control the hiss when he wants to is to feel in control of himself.

We all know how much Crowley seeks as maximum control over how he's perceived by others as he's capable of generating. It's a normal response to all the trauma he's suffered. It's probably worth considering as well that Satan's attacks on Crowley render him incapable of controlling his own mind and body for the duration of the assault. He doesn't have the option to speak or, if he does, the words aren't his own. These are bodily autonomy violation issues and the result is that Crowley hates anything that makes him feel weak and the fact that he has in the hiss what amounts to a nervous tic that is a symptom of his anxiety disorder makes him feel out of control of himself.

Another example of him hating the hiss is when he intentionally slurs the sibilant s sound while mocking Heaven:

Crowley is not just talking about composers in this scene in general but using first-class composers as innuendo for sexual partners and mocking Aziraphale's potential choices if he gets stuck in Heaven for all of eternity. He does so by combining soft fricatives and his slurred sibilant hiss, showing how he equates the hiss with a sense of what he considers weak and unattractive.

The other scene that suggests this-- and shows how Crowley pops his plosives as a counter to the hiss-- is actually the end of the apology dance, when Crowley pops a t so hard, it's almost its own word: "You were righTTTTTT."

The apology dance scene and its hard T as the final note of the mock-submissive dance also makes it clear that, unsurprisingly, Aziraphale knows what the popped plosives are all about. Plosives are, well, explosive. They have harder, louder, more dramatic sounds. It seems like Crowley pops them both as a measure to counter his hiss and as a measure to try to control it. He's taught himself to respond verbally with intensive plosive popping instead of hissing, which is also why we don't actually hear him hiss all that often.

One of the only times is almost immediately after this:

Because saints and demons preserve us, it's Master Crowley, right? But then Satanic Nun!Nina interrupts them and Crowley starts slurring his sibilant sounds in sarcastic response to Aziraphale telling him that he didn't need to put the woman in a trance.

"Oh, oh, 'xcccussse me, ma'am, we're two supernatural entities looking for the notorioussss SSSSSon of SSSSSatan. Wonder if you might help us with our inquiries?'" How he controls the sentence, though, is really interesting. The extra-exaggerated sarcasm of the last sentence helps him regain control enough that the final 's' in 'inquiries' isn't hissed and he's back in control of it. He's also almost amping up the sibilant sounds he does slur sarcastically as well. Part of why it comes out here is that he allows himself to be less guarded with his speech in front of Aziraphale.

We've actually only heard him hiss his sibilant sounds about three times, if memory serves me correctly, and two of them are related to Heaven and Hell-- the two moments I mentioned above. They're examples of him trying to control-- and then sarcastically wield-- the hiss. (Particularly "celestial harmonies", which he did entirely intentionally.)

There's also one more positive instance of a sibilant slur though and that's this: "Yessssss, the 'Reign of Terror.'"

The long hiss of a "yesssss" in this scene is not one that bothers him because drawing out a sibilant sound during a sexy conversation with Aziraphale is a very different situation than one about or involving Heaven or Hell.

If you look back on the series, there are probably no more popped plosives than in Crowley trying to ascertain just wtf Gabriel is doing in the bookshop wearing nothing but their tartan bedsheet.

"WHaT. Arrre. You. DO. ING. In. THis. BooK. ShhhOP?" 😂

Crowley was literally terrified (and also losing it internally because he just jumped and basically screamed at the sight of Gabriel) and there's a very brief "shhhh" in "bookshop" that starts to slur and has him practically shouting the "OP" to finish the word without full-on hissing. It's a scene built around the plosives, really.

Gabriel probably understands Crowley's manner of speaking more than "Jim" did in this moment as Gabriel has his own affected way of speaking. His defensive speech has the same need for a sense of maintaining an appearance of control and dominance but is usually less about emphasizing plosives and more about conveying a sense of power through a perceived sense of "manliness" in a smug, corporate sort of way. The way he says "but as The Almighty likes to say: 'Climb Every Mountain'" in that 'CEO saying the bullshit company slogan to a junior employee at the company retreat' sort of way.

Gabriel usually uses intimidation through lower, more frighteningly measured tones that carry the sense that if you pissed him off, he would explode and it would not be pretty for you. It's what makes the moment when he does actually a bit shocking and that's when you hear the force come out in his speech a bit.

He pops plosives in the curse and owns the 'fucking' in that sentence as a result. That is top shelf use of a curse word, in that it's selective enough and pronounced in such a way as to give it real power. You know he's going to lose this round because he can't win it but you're still kind of afraid of him-- maybe for the first time.

But Jim? Jim has none of this.

Jim is a guileless lovebug who doesn't understand why Crowley would feel the need to speak-shout at him and pause dramatically so his "I. AM. DUSTING." response is priceless. Jim over-emphasizes all of the sounds because he doesn't know why Crowley only emphasizes the plosives and he pauses dramatically between the words more out of confused repetition of Crowley's speech pattern to try to relate to Crowley than out of understanding that it was meant to intimidate him. He uses the same sense of theatre that Crowley uses without any context as to why Crowley feels like he has to and, as a result, it guts Crowley's whole attempt to intimidate him to compensate for his own feelings of vulnerability.

Crowley and Aziraphale both are fascinated by words and the evolution of language and they speak every language in the world. This means that they both have the ability, in theory, to correctly speak in any accent in the world, which is necessary to be able to pronounce the words in every language. Between that and his self-conscious, trauma-adjacent, plosive/fricative issues, as well as just being interested in how things like pronunciation informs the evolution of language, Crowley is more aware than most of how he sounds when he speaks.

But there's also that his unique way of speaking-- when combined with his low, rumbly voice-- can be very sexy and he's aware of it, namely because it's clear that Aziraphale thinks his sounds-- all his sounds, along the full spectrum of them-- are hot. As a result, we also have scenes in the series wherein Crowley will sometimes heavily emphasize plosives-- and fricatives-- around Aziraphale just for fun because to do so has become a part of how he speaks and because the angel likes it. An example: the "lotsss of GooD DeeDsssss" bit of this:

That Aziraphale likes the full range of Crowley sounds is symbolic of the fact that Aziraphale likes the full range of Crowley, full stop. As a result, Crowley plays around with how he enunciates words, often drawing out parts of them in ways he knows Aziraphale will enjoy. His "oo" and "ou" sounds are often elongated into an "oooh"; he softens fricatives to a breath at times when speaking more gently. At other times, he amps up his RP accent and emphasizes certain words in a sentence with pauses and heavier enunciation ("canopy", "astonish") to maximize their appeal and to draw Aziraphale's attention to them, usually also for wordplay-related reasons ("did you smite them with your wrath?" in Lockdown, for example.)

Then, there is that part of their language thing also appears to be an interest in onomatopoeia, which are words that have derived in language not from a connection to other, previously-existing words but from the sounds of Earth. Crowley, in particular, loves onomatopoeia, and likes to weave words that are that into his conversation-- "frou frou", "whoop", etc.. The word "hiss" is onomatopoeia. Unlike other etymology posts I have written or will write, there is no "derived from the Old French x" or "from the Latin x" or the like for the history of "hiss"-- it's just literally that people heard a snake hissing and said that sounds like "hssss" and so we're going to call it a "hiss."

While Crowley has issues with his anxious snake hiss, though, he actively likes to make the pleasurable sound the humans (and angels and demons) can make-- the ultimate in onomatopoeia. The word that is actually more his anti-hiss than his popped plosives:

"Mmm."

"Mmm" is derived from nothing more than the human sound of contentment. It's an often almost involuntarily hum of pleasure-- the human sound of satiation. There is no other history to the word but that and there has not been since beings began to exist.

Crowley makes the sound unconsciously but he also makes it consciously at times when speaking with Aziraphale because he knows Aziraphale likes the sound of it. Case in point: the very obviously intentional "mmm" in the Edinburgh phone call (and the heavy, exaggerated plosives emphasis on what followed it):

"Mmm" is also something of an etymology joke as well because, at last count, I think I had at least twenty-five instances in a note file here about intentional wordplay between Crowley and Aziraphale that focuses on frequently confused words and phrases (to founder vs. to flounder; whoop vs. whoomp; wittering vs. withering; to get a wriggle on vs. to get a wiggle on, etc..) which I bring up mainly because, especially when written, "mmm" is frequently confused with "hmm", and the etymology of "hmm" is pretty funny from a Good Omens perspective.

While "mmm" is a sound of pleasure, "hmm" is a sound made of consideration, a kind of pause in a sentence to acknowledge something that was spoken and to either suggest you're giving it thought or to show hesitation over what was said-- or, possibly, both. While "mmm" is a contented sound derived from the human body, "hmm" is onomatopoeia because it is imitative of a different, very specific sound in nature...

...it comes from the droning sound of buzzing bees.

To Crowley and Aziraphale, "hmm"-- the sound of hesitation and reflective contemplation-- is a sound of the insects that are symbolically the angels and that's amusing to them since the humans frequently swap it out with their signature sound of pleasure while Crowley and Aziraphale do not find much about Heaven very arousing.

Crowley's new favorite hobby in S2 is making dirty jokes that are going over Muriel's head-- some of which, like his handcuff innuendo while getting Muriel to take him to (literal) Heaven, are a bit on the surface. Others, though, like the frequently confused words wordplay of using "mmm" in protest of Heaven instead of "hmm" in the "mmm, bees" moment after successfully getting one over on the angels-- are examples of just wordplay jokes that Aziraphale would have found funny that Crowley was amusing himself with in the moment.

Crowley is definitely not the only one of the two of them amping up those mmms though. The only bee who has his attention is playing right back...

...and the mmm thing is not exactly new, either...

...like for him to mmm his way through an entire barbecued ox five minutes after this...

Original post that prompted this response:

[venus-light]

Good Omens S2’s ending is so agonising, but I do think it’s going to make Aziraphale’s development significantly more impactful in S3! As a second act this has every painful, fascinating ingredient that made Zuko’s arc in ATLA so outstanding, and Aziraphale’s core conflict/fatal flaw draws from the heart of his character!

He loves Crowley deeply but he’s still clinging to Heaven’s brainwashing, and he’s never actually treated Crowley as an equal or sought to understand Crowley’s perspective yet.

Aziraphale still seems to believe Crowley is just a ‘lost, confused angel’, rather than recognising what Crowley is actually doing: rejecting the system entirely and trying to do good on his own terms. Aziraphale still believes the desire to be Angelic and the desire to be good to others are the same thing, therefore if Crowley is good (as he’s shown himself to be) he must be secretly want to be an Angel and is betraying that whenever he argues against Heaven.

Aziraphale still hasn’t listened when Crowley explains over and over again that he DOESN’T WANT TO BE AN ANGEL. He’s still desperate for Heaven’s validation, even after he chose to leave, and there’s a deep void in his identity! He wants so desperately to be seen as “Good” (regardless of the actual morality of his actions) that it’s used over and over again to coerce and manipulate him! He also wants desperately for Crowley to be “Good” too, because at this point Aziraphale couldn’t ever let himself trust or accept Crowley if he wasn’t.

Aziraphale’s ‘angelic superiority’ is still constantly used to prop up his own identity, and he still considers deviance from Heaven (both in himself and others) as something shameful, embarrassing and in need of being ‘Corrected’. He also still believes Crowley needs/wants to be “Forgiven” by Heaven and that angels are inherently superior to everyone else!

Aziraphale’s default response to suffering being to make it about Heavenly purity rather than empathising with others also makes him extremely blind/self-centred in some situations. He’s proven that he’s willing to adopt empathy - the force that drives Crowley to compassion and forgiveness - if it helps to do good for others, but it’s still a very undeveloped skill in him.

At the start of this season Aziraphale lets Crowley sleep in his car for God’s sake, and apparently only calls Crowley when he wants something! He takes Crowley’s devotion to him for granted, and dismisses Crowley’s feelings and perspective on Gabriel instantly! Whenever they disagree on anything Aziraphale just assumes that he is Good and Crowley is Evil, therefore Crowley’s perspective isn’t worth taking seriously. And Crowley loves Aziraphale so much and is so afraid of losing him that he just… concedes. Over and over again. And keeps on forgiving him without Aziraphale ever realising how deep he’s cutting Crowley. Even now, Aziraphale still sees everything as a dichotomy between “Good” and “Evil”, “Angelic” and “Demonic”, with no middle ground or space outside of it. A worldview that fundamentally misunderstands Crowley’s entire life, moral compass and identity.

Aziraphale does love Crowley, but he still hasn’t reckoned with Heaven’s brainwashing. He still won’t ever be able to understand Crowley’s perspective until he gets the outcome he thought would fix everything, and realises that it won’t.

[actual-changeling]

i think one of the reasons why crowley and aziraphale stuck together for six thousand years is because when it comes down to it, they have pretty much the same problems—they're just at entirely different stages of dealing with it.

aziraphale sees god and wants to be what he thinks she wants him to be. everything they've been told as angels amounts more or less to the same personality blue-print, and he is trying to fit himself into. unfortunately, as even he realises, there is so much wrong with the standards and ideologies, his goal is not only unachievable but also fundamentally fucked up.

his current solution for that is to compartmentalise the parts that don't make sense to him and otherwise try to get as close to it as possible without abandoning what he has of himself.

meanwhile crowley never fit into that shape to begin with, not even remotely, and he fell from grace because of it. all that pain, rejection, and suffering, but there are still standards, simply different ones compared to before. if you don't fit into one shape, you're supposed to squeeze yourself into the other—but he doesn't want to.

crowley wants his freedom, to be him, whatever that turns out to mean, and he wants aziraphale there with him, and yet he cannot fully let go of god.

they're both looking at the sky and screaming love me back.

aziraphale continues because i can be what you want me to be, while crowley says i'm still your child, i still want to be wanted but for myself—you made me like this, love me like this.

they're both terrified of the way the other is dealing with it, which is why they split; it was never about miscommunication, it's a fundamental difference in beliefs that cannot be combined.

crowley could never go back to obeying that way and aziraphale cannot fathom giving up on it just yet (though in season 3 he hopefully FINALLY will).

[brokendoor16]

I know that this has probably been said to death atp, but the most heartbreaking part of The Final Fifteen (™️) is that THEY WERE BOTH RIGHT.

All Crowley has ever wanted is to run away with his angel, whether it's to Alpha Centuries or just Aziraphale's bookshop. He was RIGHT to say that heaven and hell are toxic. He was RIGHT to say that they don't need them. He was RIGHT to say that he's better than that, that THEY'RE better than that. Crowley's a demon for a reason; he doesn't have faith in innate goodness, he knows that heaven and hell will break their promises. He's suffered SO FUCKING MUCH at the hands of both, and watched Aziraphale suffer for heaven's sake, and he's RIGHT to know that they deserve better.

But as much as he loves Crowley, Aziraphale could never give up on something without at least trying to fix it. There's no way that he could've just left, because that's not who he is and that's not the Angel Crowley loves. He believes SO DEEPLY in the good in the world, in the potential for change, so he could never pass up the opportunity to 'fix the system' - to make heaven a place where no one has to feel like he did again. Whether or not it works (and it will, in small, seemingly insignificant ways like the scriveners getting new offices, and the rules on who can go to earth loosening, and that little bit of rebounding kindness cycling around and around even the most toxic place), he had to try because THAT'S WHO HE IS. He's an angel in the best sense of the word, and he was RIGHT that he could make a difference. And, as much as we all hate to admit it, the metratron was RIGHT. Aziraphale will be a wonderful leader.

So I like to think that, once they get past the initial anger, despite the heartbreak they're both feeling, they understand each other.

And they're proud.

Aziraphale is proud of Crowley for acknowledging his worth and, in a smaller, guiltier way, for telling Hell exactly where to shove their job offer. He's proud of him for knowing that, even alone, he's better than that.

Crowley is proud of Aziraphale for still being the angel he fell in love with, and he's praying to someone other than God that Aziraphale is making the Metatron's life HELL (pun intended). He's proud of him for his kindness, and selflessness. He's proud of his determination to break the cycle.

[whatthedamnhelldude]

This maybe has been said and I missed it but in s2e6, I’m pretty sure Aziraphale thinks Crowley has been sucked back into Hell after escorting the humans out of the bookshop. From Aziraphale’s perspective, Crowley has left with the humans into the street and is surrounded by demons. He doesn’t return, and Aziraphale becomes desperate to stop the attacking demons - “desperate measures must be taken.” In 1941, Aziraphale says “I knew you’d come through for me - you always do.” Crowley tries to run from his problems, but he always comes through for Aziraphale. Aziraphale knows Crowley wouldn’t just leave him, unless something happened. In Scotland, we saw Crowley helping the humans and being sucked back into Hell as a result. When Crowley comes back from Heaven, Aziraphale says “you came back” and you can hear the relief in his voice. His expression and tone of voice when he says he “did the thing with the halo” reads as “I got desperate because you didn’t come rescue me and I assumed you were gone.” Aziraphale knows Crowley will always come through for him, so since he didn’t this time, something must have happened to him and the most logical in this instance would be that Hell took him. They never get to talk about how Crowley was actually in Heaven, so this assumption never gets addressed.

Why does this matter? The Final 15. Throughout the series, Aziraphale says, out loud to Crowley, that he is worried Hell is going to destroy Crowley. And it appears that that fear has come true at least a little bit, and at least one time, in Scotland. So if Aziraphale thinks that Crowley has been captured and tortured by Hell again, and someone told him “if you come work for me, I’ll make it so Crowley is never under Hell’s power ever again by reinstating him as an angel,” I have a hard time believing that Aziraphale would say no. The love of your eternal existence has been in danger for millions of years, and someone offers you a way to keep them safe? Right after you think they’ve suffered from that very danger? I would take that offer, too.

To be clear, I don’t think Crowley should have taken the offer. He’s been abused by both Heaven AND Hell, and they are both better off without them. I also think that, just like Crowley doesn’t quite say what’s on his mind - he doesn’t tell Aziraphale what he saw of Gabriel’s trial or that what he really wants isn’t to run away but to love Aziraphale openly as a couple - Aziraphale doesn’t quite say what’s on his mind either - he doesn’t care about either of them being angels but he does care about keeping them safe. I also want to be clear that I don’t think Aziraphale wants to be angels together in Heaven. I really think this boils down to keeping both of them safe and, bonus, they get to stay together.

Yes, they need to talk to each other and yes, some of Aziraphale’s comments were shitty (“you’re the bad guys.”). But I think the show is too well-written for all of Aziraphale’s character development to be thrown away and their long, long history completely forgotten in the last 15 minutes of episode 6. I think the world of Good Omens is too rich and deeply layered for that.

Let me know what you think!

[cillacantstudysosheshere]

I just saw a good omens analysis that made me think. So after the confession Crowley doesn't just leave, he stays outside the bookshop and outside the Bentley to look at Aziraphale leaving because he wants to see him getting away to fully believe what is happening and to show Aziraphale what he is losing right? WRONG

You see, we have seen Crowley getting upset a bunch of times both in season 1 and 2, and what does he do when he's upset? He leaves

We can go off together scene in season 1, he gets upset with Aziraphale and he leaves

I'm getting my stuff and I'm leaving scene in season 1, he gets in his Bentley and leaves

He finds out about Gabriel, he gets very upset and leaves

At the end of season 2 he's the most upset and hurt he's ever been so it would make sense for him to leave, to run in a way, to avoid further suffering. After all Crowley has always done this, he drinks to avoid suffering for example...so why does he stand there?...but then Aziraphale turns and looks at him and suddenly it's clear. In a way yes, Crowley is there because he is, to quote the book, an optimist and some part of him wanted to believe that Aziraphale could have changed his mind at the last second but I think it goes deeper than that.

He is not there to make Aziraphale question his decision, because he already tried that...he is there to reassure him, he is there because he wants him to know that when heaven will eventually turn out to be far from good he will be there for Aziraphale. He hates to see him go, and he hates to basically see what has happened to him happening to Aziraphale...but he can't help but to love him, to be there for him and to forgive his naivety because ultimately that's also what he loves him for.

Do you really think that after denying himself Aziraphale for 6000 years he could hate him for him not wanting to run away together? Crowley knows he goes too fast for Aziraphale and most of all, even though he doesn't respect heaven, he respects Aziraphale. He would never force him to do something he doesn't want to do, he loves him too much to do that. That is why the kiss was as powerful as it was, because for the first time Crowley was, in a way, selfish. Even though they both love each other and they both want each other, the kiss clearly showed who was ready for it and who was not. Crowley did that as a last resort because he knows deep down that Aziraphale wants him as well, but he also knew it was not the right time. The man was desperate and tired of heaven taking Aziraphale away from him...but even after all of that he stands there because he will always be there for Aziraphale no matter what. That hint of doubt in Aziraphale's eyes when he turns around to look at him just before leaving is all he needs because he knows him, and has seen this happening before...and even though he's hurt, he would never leave Aziraphale. Imagine the scene without Crowley: Aziraphale looks back and he doesn't see him and probably thinks "he left me, I made the right decision"...but no, he sees Crowley, standing there, not leaving even in that moment and that is what will, ultimately, bring Aziraphale back.

How? Well, we will have to wait and see I guess

[tenok]

The point (one of them) is that both Aziraphale and Crowley actually think they the smartest one in any given situation. And since I relate to Aziraphale much more today I get fixated on his brand of superiority. He starts his journey with rebellion from pretty tame "I don't get why they makes this desisions and it's look horrible on surface evel but I'm sure that they get best ineterests of everyone involved in their hearts and it's probably me the one that didn't get some oblivious detail" to "oh okay I'm sure it's some kind of misundestanding and we can all talk it out as adults because we there work on same goals" to frustrated "they won't ever listen to me and I will get in trouble for arguing and it will be better for everyone if I will make my desisions in secret and go behind their backs because I just can't let THEM make desisions that will destroy everything". It's not straightforward, I'm 30 and still circulate sometimes between "what if it's me the one that wrong aout everything" and "god HOW people can be THAT stupid", but I remember going throught this stages first as good and obedient kid with really stupid parents making stupid desisions and later with school, govermnet, activist spaces etc.

And the problem is, I was the smartest person in the room enough time to develop issues, and Aziraphale lives like his for 6000 years at least. I can only imagine how many times he thought "if only Starmaker listen to me and didn't Fall", "if only God listened to me and didn't make an Apocalypse happen", "if only Heavens listened to me and didn't did this or that that thing", "if only Crowley listen to me and understand in what kind of danger we can get", "if only that human listened to me and haven't dig the body", etc etc. It's awful, to be the one who always gets to say "I told you so", especially when there's such awful consequenses you can't even feel satisfaction, and you will be the one to clen this mess up (and Aziraphae will clean, or better try to prevent). Now, it's of course leads to issues. BIG issues.

1) It's really hard to stop being plotting and maciavellian and communicate things properly when you expect that person will at best argue with you, at worst punish you and double down on their stupid desisons and you will clean this mess up. It also really hard to stop trying to control everything because you already accepted that everything is your responsibility and everyone else would just make things worse. (as someone that relates to Aziraphale I think he did so much progress there, the levels or trust he shows Crowley are amazing for two beings that probably last time heard of psychotherapy when Freud was alive. but such trust is fragile thing, one misstep and you back on your "it will be better if I do everything alone" bullshit. I'm not saying it's good. I'm also not saying that it's bad. it's just how things work)

2) It makes you overstep other people authonomy, because, again, it would be better for everyone if they did what you think best for them. It works funny wih Aziraphale because yes he's all for free choices for humanity!! NOW GO AND DO SMART CHOICES DAMN YOU!!! WHY YOU DON'T PICK THE THING THAT WOULD BE SMART TO PICK I HATE YOU ALL. That's where me and Aziraphale difer a little because at least I somewhat good at stepping into other people shoes and understand why they do what they do. But angel there is autistic (or bad at this specific thing for other reasons), so I think when people he consider reasonable doesn't agree with him for their own reasons he ge's really baffled, like, there arE correct opinion and it's mine, WHY are you being difficult?? to spite me?? And I'm sure that half of the reason why Aziraphale's so comfortable with Crowley is that he perfectly happy to let him buly or manipulate him into doing things Aziraphale picks as right. Usually Crowley know where pick his battles and how to play long game to make Aziraphale agree for really important stuff he wants from him, but otherwise? Sure he will complain how he hates Hamlet but they will watch Hamlet, and Aziraphale will be very pleased with himself. (and than there goes final fifteen and we back at "but WHY won't ypu agree with thing I pick or us IT'S GOOD AND RESONABLE THING" and we should be happy that consent is something that imporant for our angel ok? he would be angry with Crowley for picking wrong but he won't make him do what he doesn't want. they respect each other like that.)

3) It makes you really really tired and tense. You control everything, unfortunately the longer you do it the more things starts really depedend on you, you can't let go, you don't know anyone that can share this burden with you because first they should prove that they won't blow his up and for this you should share at least something with them, but what is they would blow it up? Better be safe than sorry. And look when it's my problems it's credit cards and doctor appointmens and with Aziraphale we talk about people dying. Crowley dying. Now, as I said, he actually shows Crowley so. much. trust. for someone with such issues. Because Crowley was there for 6000 years, and he proved himself capable enough times. But still there's areas where let go and not worry would be impossible for Aziraphale, Crowley's safety being one of such things (you see, you can risk with your life when you deal with your problems because whatever you will clean shit up if needed, but if someone close to you hurt themself?? it's YOUR problem too but it will be SO MUCH HARDER to clean. I think when Aziraphale points to Crowley that hell would be harder on him than he can expect heavens to punish him, it's partially because he believes it's true and partially because he knows how to minimize harm when heavens angry with him but HOW can he do this for Crowley??). Anyway. Lol. The more I think about it the more I sure that Crowley without Aziraphale would be a miserable angry dick, and Aziraphale wihout Crowley would be dead, because it was the one person that kept him one tiny slip away from total burn out.

So yeah there's a lot of posts about how angry heartbroken etc Crowley will be with Aziraphale (I don't agree but that's for other post), less posts about how sad and heartbroken will be Aziraphale, but I hope to see Azyraphale being angry too (it they will be angry with each other at all). Not only for not picking him or leaving or making everything messy and emotional and wasting their first kiss at their fight etc, but also because Aziraphale was trusting him! Trusting that he get another resonable adult in team with him! Someone who he can trust to make resonable desisions and see his ideas as clever and him as capable and being willing to go to the end of the world with him with mild complaints and than!! When he did trust him to understand!! He was like everyone else!! Unresonable and emotional and angry with him and why he asked him at all he should've do it secretly and alone as always and it would've be as usual and it wouldn't hurt but it was Crowley that taught him to trust and to ask him for help!! Breaking his perfectly fine coping mechanisms!! It's all his faut if you think about it huh?? (but of course he's already forgiven. but also Aziraphale would do what he needs to do alone this time, as one and only capable adult in the world.)

Anyway it's not a meta it's just some late night thoughts. And it's in no way whole analizis there's so much more problems inside this angel. It's just something in particular that resonated with me today. Also it's not in any way critisizm of him, mind you, because a) he does really the smartest person in the room most of the time and b) I LOVE how fucked up in the head he is!!! I think he needs to become even more fucked up actually!!! and Crowley should love him for that and I will cheer for him from sidelines!!!

[fellthemarvelous]

Invisible scars

(TW: religious trauma)

Looking at me, you wouldn't know that I've survived religious trauma. The marks of religious trauma are seldom visible. In fact, I had no idea for the longest time that I had religious trauma (I thought it was a thing that happened to other people). I simply spent decades questioning the reasons I felt like I was so broken on in the inside. I kept trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and why I never felt happy or like I was never able to connect to anyone. I had no idea that my experience with the church as a small child is what shaped me into the anxiety-ridden, majorly depressed disaster creature I am today.

I spent 12 years learning inside of Catholic schools. It has taken me more than 20 years to process and deconstruct, and I am always going to be a work in progress. I was brainwashed into believing the very worst about myself, and I was always just beyond saving because I had the misfortune of being a woman in a church that taught us that women experience pain during childbirth as a natural consequence of Eve eating the apple, which is why they enjoy making us suffer in the first place. They taught us that Adam ate the apple because Eve seduced him, so even though Adam also ate the apple, his sin still wasn't as bad as Eve's because she did it first and used sex to get him to do the same. They placed the blame for Original Sin squarely on Eve and thus onto every single girl who entered the church. If a boy did something to me that I didn't like, it's probably because I did something to provoke him first.

Do you know what I learned to do at a very young age just to be able to cope with that?

I learned to use humor to deflect when I was struggling. I smile when I don't want people to know I'm sad. I laugh at inappropriate times, especially when I'm uncomfortable. I learned to bottle up all of my emotions because expressing anything other than happiness is bad. I learned to compartmentalize. I taught myself how to pull out the right emotion for the right occasion because I was always striving to be who I thought everyone else wanted me to be. It was exhausting.

In the midst of all of this, I'm trying to figure out which parts of me are really me and which parts of me are things that were put into my head. If you've experienced indoctrination, you know what I'm talking about. They pulled us apart as small children and placed us in specific boxes and told us that deviating from the norm was bad.

Crowley is a fallen angel. His change from angel to demon is drastic on the outside.

You know he fell and that his wings turned black and he ended up in a pool of boiling sulfur. It's the reason Crowley is so easy to sympathize with. He suffered unfairly because of arbitrary rules that deemed him unforgivable. He's accepted that part of himself. He's clever and creative and it has helped him find ways to get out of doing his job for centuries. Hell doesn't care how jobs get done just as long as someone does them, and at this point humanity is doing more to damn themselves than the demons are able to keep up with. They're tired and overworked. Hell is overpopulated even though it should be infinite in size. Crowley wants no part of that system because he sees it for what it is, just as he sees Heaven for what it is. He has the marks to prove that he is one of the damned, but that has given him all the perspective he needs to see that both sides are fucked up and toxic and "irredeemable" (just like him). He has yet to fully let go of the hold Heaven has over him because of how badly he got hurt.

Aziraphale is still an angel.

He never fell, and he doesn't know why. He has lied to God. He has lied to Gabriel repeatedly. He lies to protect Crowley. He lies to protect humanity.

Remember, Crowley and Aziraphale started off in the same place.

They both started off as angels who were created to do God's bidding. Aziraphale is the one who told Crowley what he'd heard about everything shutting down in 6,000 years. He was simply trying to make conversation. He didn't think it was something Crowley would object to. Angels were just supposed to go along with God's plans, but Crowley had a different opinion and was vocal about it. Where did Aziraphale get his information in the first place? Why does nobody ever ask this question?

Aziraphale knows Heaven is toxic. He's not blind. We need to move past this idea that because he still has love for God that he doesn't know Heaven is fucked up. He never fell, and it's something he still fears because who the hell doesn't fear the thought of eternal torment, especially if you know it's real? God has never cast him out of Heaven though and he doesn't know why. It's probably something that hangs over his head like the Sword of Damocles.

Letting go is not an easy task. Aziraphale has always been an angel. He didn't have his identity ripped from him the same way that Crowley did. Crowley had to adapt to a brand new way of existing because he was cast out of Heaven.

Crowley's trauma is evident on the outside. Aziraphale's trauma is hidden on the inside. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

Crowley was an angel and then he was a demon, but he doesn't want to be labeled as either.

Aziraphale has only ever known how to be an angel. He's only ever known the ways of Heaven.

I'm only in my early 40s. It has taken me 20+ years to undo 12 years of religious abuse. Aziraphale is immortal. He and Crowley have abandoned their jobs, but four years in the space of millions isn't a lot. No one overcomes indoctrination in four years. Especially when you had millions of years of blind obedience indoctrinated into you. It simply does not work that way no matter how much you want to believe it can.

It has taken me more than two decades to learn how to stop hating myself. I still have no idea how to love myself, but it's something I'm trying to learn.

My entire identity was wrapped up in what the church told me it would be. Once I fully denounced it and all organized religion, I found out I had no idea who I was. No one had prepared me for a life outside of this one very specific identity and role that I was expected to fill based on a very specific box I was placed into.

I still struggle with black and white concepts. It's hard to unlearn when you have no other basis for comparison, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. It means that these changes do not and will not ever happen overnight.

The fall didn't just affect the demons though. It affected the angels as well. Look at how tightly wound the angels are. They're always trying to do the good thing, but they have no idea what that actually means, and you realize this when Uriel asks The Metatron if they had done something wrong. They are scared of making mistakes, but none of them know what they are supposed to be doing since Gabriel disrupted the status quo. You can see they are unsure of themselves and of each other. The concept of free will is so foreign to them, but Aziraphale showed all of them that it was in their grasp when he allowed Gabriel and Beelzebub to decide where to go so they could be together.

It takes a lot of audacity (and sheer ignorance) to dismiss Aziraphale as power-hungry and abusive.

Aziraphale did nothing to punish Gabriel and Beelzebub. He allowed them to leave because they were in love with each other, and he knows what that feels like. He thought he was about to get the same fate with Crowley until The Metatron showed up and refused to take no for an answer.

He doesn't want to fix Heaven because he thinks it's perfect. If he thought it was perfect he wouldn't want to fix it.

Aziraphale is going back into the Lion's Den. He knows what he's going up against. He's been humiliated and belittled and abused by Heaven for thousands of years.

His scars are there even though you can't see them, and he hides his pain with humor and silliness.

When I see people advocating for Aziraphale to suffer even more because they don't think he has suffered enough, I find myself sitting back in one of those classrooms in Catholic school being told that I deserve the bad things that happen to me because I somehow failed to measure up to some impossible metric. The cruelty of that mindset aimed at Aziraphale is kinda the reason Crowley hates Heaven in the first place because he's been there too.

And as someone who is processing religious trauma, it's disheartening to see people say that because Aziraphale has yet to fully let go of Heaven that he deserves harsher treatment. Crowley would definitely not agree with that sentiment.

[aziraphales-library]

Hello, hello, hello!

First off, I wanted to say thank y'all for all you do in the fandom, you guys are the main way I find new fics to read :D

Secondly, sorry if this has been asked before but is there any fics where Aziraphale is talking negatively about himself and Crowley is having none of it?

Once again thank you, y'all are the best!!

You'll want to check out our #insecure aziraphale tag for loads of fics like this. Here are more to add...

Thou shalt not seek release by StormIn_A_Bottle (E)

"Say it, angel. Repeat what you said earlier." "That I was fat. And unattractive." "And what did we decide about that?" "That I would be punished for telling lies." - Another contribution to the Spring Kink GOAD event, this time with the prompt "Orgasm Denial"

And Aziraphale Cried by Wintersprings23 (NR)

Aziraphale knows what he’s doing is bad. He knows that he shouldn’t do it, but he also knows deep down in his gut, that he deserves it. He’s seen how much harm he has done, by being ignorant, thinking he was better than these humans. And he has tried to make up for it, he really has, but he still lies in bed at night thinking about what he could have done. Who he could have saved. Aziraphale had done so many blessings, but sometimes they hadn’t worked. He had seen so many humans shorten their already short lives, hollow eyes and wounded body beyond saving

You're beautiful by Between_stars_and_Nebula (NR)

Crowley and Aziraphale have been living together as lovers for six months. Everything is going well but for the last two weeks, Aziraphale seems turned off, tired and depressed. Crowley decides to figure out what's wrong with his handsome lover “Crowley had his nose buried in his angel's perfumed hair, tears in his eyes at this violent suffering that he did not understand. The muscles ached from holding Aziraphale as hard as possible against him in the hope of calming his trembling. " What's wrong ? ", he whispered softly, almost more to himself than to the angel, "What's happening to you? What can I do? " "

Insecure by White Queen Writes (T)

When gaggles of women start flooding his shop on their lunch hours just to gawk at his sexy husband, Aziraphale begins to succumb to the new doubts and fears that come as a result of going native. Luckily, Crowley has a cure for that.

There is strength in your softness, Angel by Cuppa_Rosie_Lee (G)

A soft little drabble about a soft angel. Crowley and Aziraphale return to the bookshop after a date at the Ritz. Aziraphale becomes self-conscious about his weight, but Crowley is having absolutely none of it. All the feelings and a ridiculously soft demon in love.

I won’t stand for it by Dancer_in_the_rain (T)

“Look, if you don’t want to see me again, that’s fine. I just would have liked to know what I did wrong. But if you don’t want to talk about it, I guess I’ll just-“ His hand started slipping from Aziraphale’s and in a sudden rush of panic the angel gripped onto the demon tightly. “No!”, he gasped, the thought of his beloved leaving indefinitely suddenly feeling like a crushing weight on his chest. Crowley looked back down at him, his expression confused and hurt. “Tell me what’s going on here then, angel. What has suddenly gotten into you?” Aziraphale worried his lip between his teeth, unable to meet the other’s eyes. He could feel his heart beating up his throat. Was he really about to tell Crowley? Well, yes. Crowley deserved his honesty. If anything he didn’t deserve Aziraphale throwing him out and not even giving him a reason. Even if it was a good reason. He felt like fainting when he looked back up again into the face that he loved so much. The face that he felt so undeserving of loving. “Would you… do you think I should get a new corporation?” Or: Aziraphale overhears Crowley reprimanding his plants and starts to wonder if he’s even good enough for his demon.

- Mod D

[onceuponapuffin]

Fanatic Intervention Part 5!!

Hiya! Sorry about the delay! Life got in the way there for a bit ^_^" But I am here! With Part 5!!

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*************

Crowley had liked Hozier (although Take Me To Church, predictably, wasn’t his favourite), and after whining at Aziraphale that it’s nooooooot ‘bebop,’ you finally managed to get an admission that all right, it wasn’t all that terrible. You took the win.

But the dance party couldn’t last forever. There’s still a world to save, after all.

And so, all of you sat, thumbing through Revelations. Well, Aziraphale and Muriel were. You and Crowley had given up on the fancy Bible-ness of it and googled the Cliff Notes version.

“Ugh,” You say, “John really hated the Romans.”

“Well, yes,” says Aziraphale, “He had decent enough reason, though, as far as humans go.”

“What, he hated indoor plumbing and heated floors?”

“Actually, he hated people of the Christian faith being arrested, tortured, and killed for their beliefs.”

“Oh��.yeah that makes sense,” You say, and after a moment you add “...Sorry.”

“That’s quite alright,” Aziraphale replies kindly, “He wrote Revelation as a way to reassure Christians that all of their suffering would mean something in the end. That it must be part of the Great Plan.”

“The Ineffable Plan, you mean,” chimes in Crowley with a smirk. Aziraphale rolls his eyes.

“Yes, that one,” he replies. You notice the microscopic-Michael-Sheen-ian smile on his face as he says it. Honestly, the resemblance is uncanny. Aziraphale continues. “He wanted Christians to feel heard, and to encourage them to hold fast to their faith.”

You pause for a minute before saying anything. Then you remember a tumblr post or something from forever ago.

“Santa Claus,” You finally say. Crowley spurts wine from his nose, and begins to laugh. Aziraphale is confused.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s like Santa Claus,” You say again, “Like ‘be good, and you’ll get presents! it’s almost Christmas Eve! Santa’s watching!’ You know?” You look at Aziraphale imploringly. Crowley is still laughing. Aziraphale doesn’t look impressed.

“I think that’s rather an over-simplification.”

“Am I wrong?”

“…..It’s...it’s not...That’s not how it works!”

“Oh, okay, so I’m wrong then.”

“Sounds about right to me!” Crowley calls with glee from the other side of the room. Aziraphale looks all flustered, his face beginning to go red. Crowley hands him a glass of wine and Aziraphale downs it in one go.

Okay, winding him up is a great deal of fun, and so easy, but I’m guessing, dear Reader, that you love Aziraphale just as much as I do. You don’t actually want to hurt his feelings. Thus you decide to concede the point.

“So,” You say, “He said he had a dream about things getting really bad and then Jesus coming back and saving everyone.”

“In a nutshell, yes,” Aziraphale sighs, clearly relieved to be back on topic. You think back to old interviews with Neil and Terry about their back-then-hypothetical sequel would look like.

“Okay, well the only thing I know about it was something about it taking place in America. I read in an old interview somewhere that Jesus was meant to descend from the heavens in a private jet with a bunch of like...bodyguard angels or something.”

“America? Again? I mean really.”

You shrug. “Neil Gaiman really likes America.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” says Muriel now, flipping back through their notes, “You said that the sequel was never written, and the third...season?was still being written too when you left. And you said that book isn’t the same as what happened in the tv show, or the radio show, or the musical. So how do we know it would be the same here?”

They make a good point.

“Maybe ask that author of yours,” says Crowley, looking over from his drink, “You said he answers questions sometimes. Who would he be to deny,” he swishes his glass around with what you suppose is meant to be grandeur, “The Famous Crowley and Aziraphale?” He empties his glass.

“Anathema might be able to find him,” You say after a while, “Jesus, I mean. She did a good job finding everything in Armageddon Part 1. Or Adam. I mean, Jesus is supposed to be all about love, right? Maybe we can convince him not to, you know, end the world.”

Aziraphale hums to himself. “Revelations states that Armageddon is meant to be started by the seven angels of the church, bringing together seven keys. I mean, John could be wrong of course, but I wonder...Could one of you find me a map and search these names? I might have an idea why Mr. Gaiman wanted to set The Second Coming in America.”

Good Reader, guess which country contains cities named after 5 of these 7 angels. I’ll give you three guesses, but you’ll only need one.

And so now we have three directions we can take this story in.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 🖤

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[vidavalor]

Stars Crashing Down

For @tickety-bippity-boo and @thavron, who wanted thoughts on why the same musical cues play when Death spreads its wings as during the Jesus scene and the 2.06 kiss.

The questions posed to me were: What's the deal with Crowley and Death? Is Crowley Death? and the answer is... well, um... kinda... just read it and you'll see what I mean. 😉

You have sought The Black Knight, foolish one, but you have found...

...your death.

So, you do not have to read it first but, over here, I talked about the connections between why the same musical cues are playing in the 2.06 kiss scene and the Jesus scene. What we're going to do here is expand those thoughts out to include Death spreading its wings having the same musical cues and talk about why that might be.

The 2.06 kiss/Golgotha scene meta talks about how the show is using different meanings of the word passion and how Golgotha is contrasting romantic passion with the suffering and death of Christ, aka The Passion of the Christ. This isn't the only instance of a comparison between destruction and death and passion in the series. Looking at more of them will probably help clear up what's going on with the parallels between Death and Crowley (and Aziraphale) in the series, so, that's what I'll be doing here and you can let me know what you think, yeah?

Passion is, by far, not the only word that has such wildly, contrasting definitions, but it's one of the strongest examples of it because of how its definitions illustrate how people make comparisons between the experience of erotic love with the agony of suffering and death. The word is an example of something we could call a destructive sexual metaphor or sex and death.

Throughout history, humans have sought words to explain the experience of sex and many different common metaphors have arisen from this. Crowley and Aziraphale, for instance, also have a whole thing about one of the other most common ones in the arts, which is the sea. Linguistically-speaking, though, the most common ones have always been death and destruction. Why?

Well, some people see an orgasm as a rebirth of sorts and the closest thing a person experiences to death while still remaining alive. Both sex and death come with a sense of a lack of control. They are on the opposite ends of a spectrum when it comes to experience, with one being an example of intense pleasure while the other being possibly painful and an ending from which you do not return. This draws contrasts between them. Similarly, something being destroyed-- like a crumbling building, say-- is seen as metaphoric for the feeling of coming apart that can accompany an orgasm.

As a result, across many languages, there is a metric fuckton of linguistic overlap between words related to death, destruction and violence and words related to love and sex. The French phrase that means an orgasm, for instance, is la petite mort which, when literally translated means the little death. When Hozier sings the song that is on Crowley's playlist and offers his life in exchange for "that deathless death," the "deathless death" in question is an orgasm. He is using death as a metaphor for the sexual pleasure about which he is singing, which is currently one of the most well-known examples of sex and death/destructive sexual metaphor in modern music, if nowhere near the only one.

If you start thinking about slang words for sex, I'd wager quite a few of them are going to fall into the category of a destructive sexual metaphor because they're also words related to a sense of destruction. Bang. Smash. Wrecked. Nailed... Would you sleep with him? Yeah, I'd hit that... Even puppy love is destructive sexual metaphor, as it's a pash (short for passion) or a crush. The word that we use to say we have a little thing for someone-- a crush-- is the same word we use to say someone was killed within the rubble of a bombed building. Both a little disturbing and quite interesting, right?

If you've ever written or read erotica that was at least purporting to be a little literary 😉, you know that there's usually a lot of writhing and thrashing involved-- words that are originally rooted in flailing around in pain that are being used to describe how the body moves in the midst of sexual pleasure. These words, too, are a form of destructive sexual metaphor.

As anyone who has gotten back from seeing Deadpool and Wolverine improve the sales of Hondas for the foreseeable future can tell you, using violence and destruction as a metaphor for sex is not going anywhere. It's not new-- it's actually very, very, very old. How old, you say?

Well, how's this for homoeroticism: the word weapon comes from the Old English waepen, which was a word meaning penis, you guys. Dudes literally invented swords and the like to kill each other and then went 'this is just like my dick' to a point that they just called them the same fucking word. 😂

It's a truth universally acknowledged that nearly all Good Omens fans have seen Our Flag Means Death-- a tv show whose title is an example of sex and death happening, let alone the rest of the show. This also means you've all seen the most blatant example of destructive sexual metaphor on screen maybe ever and, if you have seen OFMD, you already know exactly what scene I'm going to say... 😂

It does not take much to infer that, perhaps, Stede's sword was standing in here-- so, was metaphorical for-- his cock and what Ed really desired here was to get done into the following Tuesday. The sword is a very overt metaphor for penetrative sex. This is what very blatant, destructive sexual metaphor looks like. More subtle ones exist-- it would be hard for them not to, by comparison lol-- but this is it a nutshell.

Ok, I can hear you saying: alright, I love the sadly departed queer pirate show, Vida, but what does this have to do with Good Omens?

As we'll see, Crowley and Aziraphale are fucking obsessed with death and destruction as a sexual metaphor, that's what, and sex-and-death is a theme of Good Omens.

Crowley and Aziraphale are supposed to be hereditary enemies. For thousands of years, when they've been in a place where someone could overhear them, they've had to sound like they dislike one another. To sound like a good angel and a bad demon, there needs to be talk of being on opposite sides of what is ultimately supposed to be a large-scale military conflict. Heaven and Hell are places of violence and destruction that are full of talk of war and Armageddon, right?

As we'll look at, you can use those words of death, violence and destruction to mean sexually euphemistic or, depending on the word, even romantic things... which is what Crowley and Aziraphale do.

Crowley and Aziraphale's language exists to mask their speech in public but the way they use it is to take those words of aggression and use them as flirtation. They're wonderful dorks who get off on seeing how cleverly they can wordplay each other into bed. Their little birdsong mating dance-- whether in public or private-- involves a ton of sex and death and destructive sexual metaphors. I've picked out a few of what I think are great examples but this is in no way all of them.

Receipts time. 😉

In 1.01, a drunk Crowley and Aziraphale are, on a surface level, talking about the destructive devastation that will happen to Earth when Armageddon happens. In reality, Armageddon here is a metaphor for a top notch time in bed. It's the end of the world so it's an irresistible metaphor for a really, really, good end, if ya get me.

Crowley flirts with Aziraphale with a bit of destructive sexual metaphor that is actually made even funnier retrospectively by 2.01's Before the Beginning scene and that's this bit here: "Stars crashing down!"

Making someone "see stars" is an example of destructive sexual metaphor in language because if a boxer takes a punch and starts to wobble, someone might say "oh, he's seeing stars"-- meaning, he's probably a bit concussed or, at least, disoriented from the punch-- but you can also want to make someone "see stars" in bed, which is descriptive for giving them pleasure. It comes from how many people see flecks of light when they orgasm. Crowley is taking this one step further by referring to them as the stars, which is made funnier by the fact that they set the stars in the sky and the first things he ever showed Aziraphale were literal fucking stars 😂.

And what are these stars doing? They're crashing down.

Crowley is comparing the stars falling out of the sky in the final destruction of Armageddon-- so, the destruction of the universe-- as metaphorical for the two of them in bed later on. Aziraphale gonna be so gone, he'll be like what are they putting in bananas these days? (The bananas are another post. Do not distract me while I'm on a roll here lol.)

Aziraphale comes back not long later when he's gotten enough drunken synapses to fire and he's got a destructive sexual metaphor for Crowley that wins at life by their standards because it also encompasses the sea which, as we looked at in the Fish meta (I'll link it later on in the post), they've been using to talk about sex seemingly ever since they first started having some literal and metaphorical oysters back in ancient Rome.

Aziraphale's metaphor? The Kraken.

The Kraken is a mythological sea monster that was often seen as something of a sea serpent, even if historians believe that it was based on giant squid and octopi before those were more well understood. Hmm, I wonder what long-limbed sea serpent could be The Kraken in Aziraphale's metaphor here? 😉

And what's supposed to happen to "The Kraken" that is Crowley during Armageddon?

Oh, it's supposed to come up from the sea to the surface "in the end, when the sea boils." When it all gets too hot because the sea in the mother of all boils here and "the end" is in sight, The Kraken is going to come to the surface.

This is Aziraphale using Armageddon as destructive sexual metaphor. He's comparing sea creatures trying to escape the boiling waters of Armageddon and dying trying to Crowley's near-future orgasm.

They managed these drunk so imagine how filthy they are sober! 😂

We don't have to, actually, as there are lots more...

When Crowley and Aziraphale crossed paths in The Kingdom of Wessex, how did Crowley flirtatiously greet Aziraphale?

"...you have found (dramatic beat while he poses) your death."

Crowley is amusing them both by using the words he has to say to sound threatening while posing as the seemingly violent Black Knight to actually refer to the fact that he's not Aziraphale's literal death-- he would never harm him-- but he is very much Aziraphale's metaphorical death, in that he is Aziraphale's lover.

It's a play on death and destruction as sexual metaphor, in that Aziraphale arrived expecting an encounter with violence, potentially, and, instead, he's found "death"-- pleasure.

For a pretty basic example, there is Aziraphale's "sitting on it" joke and that smirk 😂 to Crowley...

...this is a pretty surface-level but still very funny joke equating the sword with a cock and illustrating that Aziraphale is making the comment innuendo intentionally for the amusement of his partner, who more than gets the joke. Hell, his partner originated the damn joke...

Destructive sexual metaphor is also why Aziraphale references The Titanic when promising a great time at The Meeting Ball and why the theme song to the 1997 movie is on his playlist in S2.

The Titanic is the greatest nautical disaster that has ever occured. By Crowley and Aziraphale standards, that makes it metaphorical for best of the best sex. (Unfortunately, Aziraphale accidentally manifested an actual disaster instead lol.)

One could also say that positively destroying some barbecue is destructive sexual metaphor, especially when one looks one's partner dead in the eye in the middle of it and uses it as euphemistic for other things onto which one might like to go down.

Whew. Good thing Crowley has the constitution of an ox...

Now, you might say... but what do these two care about death and destruction? They're immortal! Except... they're not. Not entirely.

Their relationship is dangerous as all fuck and if they got caught, they could be killed. They do fear actual destruction and Aziraphale uses the word destroy to refer to that with Crowley in earnest more than once when expressing his fear over it.

The spectres of holy water and hellfire looms over them because they could be killed if they are caught. How they end up surviving that risk at the end of S1-- swapping bodies-- is a sexual metaphor in and of itself. The point is that there is risk to them so they understand the human comparisons between sex, destruction and death.

This is really why Aziraphale is so excited about The Bullet Catch in S2. There is nary a more frequent example of a weapon used in destructive sexual metaphor than a gun and, as I looked at a bit in the Fish meta, The Bullet Catch is a metaphor for the history of their sexual relationship and Rome, in particular.

In 1941, The Bullet Catch was Aziraphale's answer to the destructive sexual metaphor Crowley had made when redirecting the bombs in the church by finding an equally sex-and-death magic trick that they could perform together. They both were well-aware of the metaphor.

Understanding this and destructive sexual metaphor in general helps to make clear what it is that Aziraphale actually mouths at Crowley:

When Crowley is struggling to actually fire the gun because he's anxious and, ya know, doesn't want to kill Aziraphale (kinda understandable lol), what Aziraphale mouths at Crowley helps him focus and fire the literal gun that they could not possibly be using more euphemistically if they tried (and they are trying lol.)

If you look at the above gif, you will see that "trust me" are not the actual words that Aziraphale was saying, as those words do not match the movements of his mouth. What he says means "trust me" to Crowley, as Crowley later states, but those are not the words that Aziraphale actually soundlessly said to Crowley on the stage.

Instead, it's pretty evident that what Aziraphale actually mouths is "come for me." He got Crowley to fire the literal gun with some words that do it for Crowley in the situation for which the literal gun is a metaphor. Aziraphale having a gun to his head and using language he'd use in bed is the most sex and death thing that has ever sex and deathed.

This is referenced in the Chateauneuf-de-Pape scene afterwards, when they're still talking about The Bullet Catch as if it was sex, both well-aware of why they spent their date night using a gun-firing performance as foreplay.

Aziraphale referring to what it was he actually mouthed:

Finally, if The Bullet Catch is the king of destructive sexual metaphor scenes between them, then the queen is The Seeds of Destruction.

On the way to Tadfield in S1, we have this scene in which Crowley was giving Aziraphale a few more details about when he dropped off the baby eleven years earlier and started to feel down about how the whole thing is a mess and Armageddon is days away. Aziraphale then starts in on this little monologue using a religious teaching to talk about the nature of evil that gets quite a response out of Crowley.

A lot of people already see the end of the scene for what it is, as it's fairly overt:

You don't have to be looking at wordplay too heavily to see that Crowley's saying that what Aziraphale just said has him hard and that is emphasized by the shot we hold on of Aziraphale to end the scene being that he is clearly checking out the fruits of his labors. So, what, exactly, about what Aziraphale says in this scene is so hot that Crowley is trying to be cool but is very glad in this moment that the car can drive itself?

What Aziraphale is doing here when they're obviously alone is using the slightly pompous angel voice he uses when they banter in their speak in public and he is paraphrasing a religious teaching-- one that Aziraphale doesn't believe in or else he wouldn't be here in this car in this moment-- as the basis for wordplay. What is he doing with that wordplay? He is dirty-talking Crowley in blasphemous destructive sexual metaphor.

Aziraphale sounds like he's talking about the religious teaching that states that evil will always falter, no matter what, simply because it is evil, which means that it is doomed to always cave to good. He is actually using that teaching as a metaphor for how he will "win out" over Crowley the next time they have sex. To do that, he adds destructive sexual metaphor to the very hot blasphemy of using religious language to talk about sex because raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and all that but if you mash up etymology, blasphemy, destructive sexual metaphor and the pompous angel voice, these are a few of Crowley's favorite things.

How does he use destructive sexual metaphor here?

Aziraphale is talking about how Crowley keeps the seeds of his destruction-- the impetus for what turns him on-- quiet and doesn't let people close to him and to know him is to know just what he likes and oh Aziraphale knows what he likes (like word flirting while he's driving lol)... and also that one of the things that Crowley likes to contain are the other way the "seeds of destruction" can be taken, which is the literal seeds of his destruction (yes, this is scene #543 to make an orgasm denial reference) but doing that, Aziraphale is saying? It's going to be no use, Crowley...

Among the wordplay in here is that Aziraphale is saying that Crowley might think he's going to last but he's wrong because, eventually, Aziraphale is going to have him metaphorically crashing on the rocks in a shipwreck ("founder on the rocks") and "vanishing"-- a word that means to suddenly disappear. A vanishing, in and of itself, is destructive sexual metaphor but the verb 'to come' is also the root of the words appear and disappear, making to 'vanish' doubly-euphemistic for a sudden, dramatic, ah... "disappearance."

Aziraphale is literally sitting there in the passenger seat chatting away in religious speak, wordplay-happy euphemisms, and with those he is saying, among other things: I know you and what you like and what you need and I'm going to have you dying for it and no matter how much you might try not to give in, eventually, you're going to give yourself up to me and I'm going to make you come so hard.

It's a little more detailed and more clever if you go word-by-word but, basically, that is, in summary, why Crowley is trying not to drive off the road at the end of this scene-- and it's destructive sexual metaphor to a point that there's a vanishing and a shipwreck-- plus, the word destruction literally in it.

Finally, the extent to which they use destruction and death as sexual metaphor is actually best summed up by a moment in which Crowley used it-- but not just as a flirtation.

In 1827, as Aziraphale debated healing Wee Morag, he thought he had more time than he actually did. Crowley, who could sense Wee Morag dying, tried to interrupt him to tell him:

Aziraphale continued for a second in which he says: "I will brook no argument"-- a phrase that implied through its use of a word that also means a type of body of water that he thought he had enough time to flirt with Crowley for a moment before doing anything. The whole exchange is only a few seconds long and Crowley knew that it was over before Aziraphale had even proposed healing Morag and that there was really nothing Aziraphale could have done.

He turns Aziraphale and they witness Wee Morag die. This is the first scene we've seen where the two of them see death happen before them, even though we know they've obviously seen it happen on Earth before. Both of them are understandably upset by Morag's death.

As Aziraphale then speaks to Elspeth, he starts to stammer, emotional over Morag's death and feeling guilty that he didn't save her. Crowley steps up to comfort him before moving to help Elspeth. Crowley wants Aziraphale to know it wasn't his fault and to not feel guilty for flirting while the young woman was dying, as there wasn't a way to save her. He does so by combining the comforting tone and pat of Aziraphale's chest with further flirtation, picking up where Aziraphale left off to show him he doesn't think badly of him.

The comforting flirtation? Is some sex in the face of death.

Crowley says something about grief to Aziraphale that also sounds an awful lot like something someone might say to a lover. The result of the scene is that it has the effect of sounding like Crowley is referencing something once said between them and that was likely something Aziraphale once said to Crowley after a very different sort of "death"-- likely, the first time they performed the The Bullet Catch together.

"It's a bit different when it's someone you know, isn't it?"

So, why does the same music play when Death spreads his wings and when Jesus is nailed to the cross as plays when Crowley and Aziraphale kiss in 2.06? Sex and death. Crowley is death in the sense that he's Aziraphale's death-- and Aziraphale is his.

These two are supposed to be thrilled to bits to one day defeat one another in glorious battle in the final war of Armageddon but they're really in love. They have no desire to hurt one another and every desire to give each other all the pleasure they can. They've developed and enjoy a mutual kink for figuring out increasingly clever and inventive, word-nerdy ways to say they want to fuck each other senseless by way of using words of God, violence, destruction and death to do so, underscoring a theme of sex and death in the Armageddon show.

After all, this is how Crowley once faux-told Aziraphale he wanted to commit murder, so... is it really a stretch? 😉

I'm pretty sure that is about neither goats nor kids, aren't you?