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little sketch of the book husbands!!!!!! i love them so much

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Impeccably stated.

Good Omens & the Existential Art of Not Giving Up (or, When It's All Exhausting)

So many of us love Good Omens, especially Crowley and Aziraphale, with an intensity that our friends and loved ones may not understand. We analyze their choices, their relationship, their future. We cry over them. We speculate, create and enjoy fanfics about them, and await the conclusion of their story with all of our hopes and fears on the line.

For me, one of the biggest reasons I'm so attached to their story is because of the way they constantly fight to figure out how to exist as they are, in a universe that forces them be something they're not. They make mistakes, they get overwhelmed, and sometimes they totally screw it up. But they always come back.

They never give up.

Our world is -- tough -- to say the least. Many of us are struggling to figure out how to exist as we are. So many pressures and expectations, so much conflict and... Well, you already know exactly what I mean! Existential Exhaustion is real, and all too present.

Good Omens provides something much more important than an escape from those harsh realities. I believe it provides HOPE.

I lost hope for a little while. I've been away from Tumblr and my AO3 writing for months because of it. Good Omens was helping me keep my head above water in a chaotic, exhausting world. When the future of GO itself got chaotic, I lost something (for awhile) that helped me make sense of the world's chaos.

But these characters, Crowley and Aziraphale, are beautiful and brave and flawed and So Ineffably HUMAN... They show us what it is to fight and fall and fail and rise to fight again. They remind us that we can mess up and still be lovable, worthy of love. And, when they get it right, they show us what acceptance and fidelity can be.

Stories are usually about how people (and angels and demons!) respond to challenges. We only get to be privy to the story of Our Ineffables when their lives are about to get turned upside down. AntiChrist about to enter the world? Season 1. Their precious, peaceful, fragile existance together about to be threatened by a mysterious Something Terrible from Heaven? Season 2.

I love to imagine what Aziraphale and Crowley's lives together were like in that short time they had together in between. (It's why we love the flashbacks, right? An extra peek at their relationship!) That time was far too short, but they came a long way since that gentle night at the bus stop, and protecting each other's very existence from Hellfire and Holy Water the very next day. "To the World", they said. "To Us," it meant, and how much they love it and strive to protect it.

Like us, Our Ineffables are flawed fellows. They get overwhelmed. Aziraphale gets too anxious, and starts spouting off things he doesn't really mean. Crowley loses his temper, and likewise starts spouting off things he doesn't really mean...

They fight with each other.

They fight for each other.

And life stays hard. They get overwhelmed. Anxiety happens. Anger happens. Bad decisions happen. Existential Exhaustion. Doesn't put any of us at our best, yeh?

But they keep trying to figure it all out and make it right. For the world and for each other...

Maybe I believe in Our Ineffables so much because I need something to believe in that gives me Hope, something that helps me keep fighting. Because I do believe in them, both of them. They mess up, but they don't give up.

Maybe that's not such a weird thing for any of us to believe in.

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Incredible craftspersonship! Every piece you post is gorgeous.

Ineffable Matchbox necklace, sterling silver

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The apple is such a great touch.

I knew I wanted to make this as soon as I saw The Mug. Happy 35th birthday, Good Omens, and here’s hoping for a better year to this fandom filled with kind, funny, wildly creative and diversely talented people. 🖤

To our world. 🥂

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How do you do typography in metal simply and very quickly? I am in awe of this. The letters are perfect.

Yesterday I remembered about an hour before class started that I was supposed to make a small charm with a hinged bail for this week. So, I needed to do something very simple, very quickly, and the result is this, the silliest thing I have ever made.

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So, the thing that gets me about this, in the best way possible, is the hand-drawn illustration on the mug. It feels like the folks behind the scenes are celebrating getting to tell this story as much as we, the fans, are. It feels made with love and heart. And it makes me feel like it’s not just a job for the folks involved, which seems like something rare and bodes well for the story.

A CLOSE UP OF THE GOOD OMENS MUG!!!!!

The initials in hearts on the tree???? “We’ve come to a decision”

WHAT??!

I am going insane 🫠🫠🫠😱😱🤯🤯

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I joined this site for the Good Omens fandom more than two years ago. Since then, I’ve enjoyed the works of countless supremely talented fan artists, authors and theorists. As a hobbyist silversmith, I’ve spent the last year working on Aziraphale’s flaming sword ring using the lost-wax method. Progress photos under the cut.

Sprued and ready to cast.

Rough carving.

Concept drawing.

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I love everything about this, but especially “flaming like anything” on the reverse!

Aziraphale’s flaming sword reliquary pendant, sterling and fine silver with red brass and crystal quartz.

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Aziraphale’s boxer shorts and Crowley’s gray streaks. Ngk.

Sensitive wings

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Once again losing my shit over the body swap. What do you mean Crowley sees Aziraphale as brave and kind and forgiving to the end. What do you mean Aziraphale sees Crowley as suave and silly and confident. They make me sick.

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I really like fictional couples that actually enjoy spending time with each other. It seems like such a simple, mundane thing. But, often, I see fictional couples who are completely enamored and dramatic and willing to die for each other, which is fine. But like… do they enjoy hanging out? Do they have private jokes and would they be friends even if they weren’t in love? It feels like such a basic thing, but it’s something that I actually don’t see that often. And it feels so refreshing and honest compared to these over-dramatic romeo and juliet-esque romances. Just two people who become good friends and because they enjoy each other’s presence so much it grows into a strong attraction. It feels more real and tangible than two attractive people meeting and “falling in love at first sight” - like, of course, you fell in love at first sight! You’re both supermodels! Sorry, can’t relate.

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Wow. I missed this entirely the first time around.

Aziraphale's bookshop colors 💛❤

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Might have teared up over this.

Aziraphale is perfect.

Because he is not.

Aziraphale is SUCH a wonderful character.

He has many, many traits today's culture deems wrong or less than. And many stem from his introvert-like, autistic-like traits (saying that cos he's an angel, not a human, and I like that) and his deep seated anxiety (because he lives in a world that does not understand him, he does not fit in it, a world that wishes he changed or was eliminated to make things easier and he stopped being a problem).

He has 'boring' hobbies like books, classical music, his clothes are old and he does not change them cos they are comfortable and he does not see the point of change for change's sake. He loves, prefers, to be on his own, but has a few friends, acquittances, knows quite a few people actually and is liked by most because he is truly kind and good.

On the other hand, some find him cold, aloof and unreadable as they don't take the time to look in deeper. He is not quick to act, does not have fast, witty responses, his humour is deeper, more cutting than that. He can be a fantastic leader cos you can rely on him to give everything a deep ponder before he answers or decides on anything but rarely would anyone see that in a world where loud, pushy, obnoxious people (I'm looking at you S1 Gabriel) are seen as the leader material.

He's unselfconscious about failing (at magic, French) because for him it's the process that's important, the learning, understanding of it where we live in a world where we are often made feel bad for doing something badly or not on 'professional level' (cos if you are not making money of it, what are you making things for).

And last but not least, Aziraphale is not tall, dark and skinny (which apparently for some - the world at large, is a fault).

But - I adore when the fandom truly embraces Aziraphale as not conventionally perfect (and NOT striving to be perfect) as the world would have him, HAVE US. He does not care that he 'should be' more skinny. He moans around his desserts and his demon looks at him as if he could not be more wonderful if he was a literal God chiselled out of gold.

And that is why Aziraphale is amazing. He's simply himself, he's soft and silly and giggly and adorable and awkward but also a bit of a bastard who likes to get his way. He's strong and brave and righteous in the best ways. He has deep trauma of the kind we can't even imagine but is always determined to see and find the best where he can. In a world full of cynicism, Aziraphale thinks hope is the best weapon we have.

I wrote this over on Bluesky and thought I'll share here as well.

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“Not even for something dangerous” always seemed to me to be such a bizarre, even sloppy, line of dialogue. But we know everything about the ineffable husbands’ story is meticulously crafted. Thanks for providing the context I had missed!

Dangerous

"I can't have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous."

If there's one scene in Good Omens that doesn't make a lick of sense without considering hidden language, it's this one.

What, exactly, might Aziraphale be saying in 1967?

In the first part of the 1967 scene between Crowley and Aziraphale, Aziraphale uses the word dangerous in a way that we all would as well. He tells Crowley that he has heard that Crowley is planning "a caper" to rob a church and knows he's doing so in an attempt to obtain holy water. Aziraphale says that Crowley's plan is "too dangerous" and expresses alarm because "holy water won't just kill your body-- it will destroy you completely."

This first use of the word dangerous makes total sense, right?

We know that holy water can kill Crowley so Aziraphale using the word dangerous in expressing concern that Crowley's plan could result in him dead is an use of the word dangerous in its standard definition that is no different from the way we would. This is what makes Aziraphale's second use of the same word just a few seconds later stand out for its strangeness even more.

Aziraphale continues, saying: "I can't have you risking your life-- not even for something dangerous."

Suddenly, the second time Aziraphale uses the word dangerous, it has a completely different meaning... one that seems very weird to us. This meaning is positive in connotation. Aziraphale can't let Crowley risk his life, not even for such a positive reason, like for something dangerous?!

Not only does this sentence make absolutely no sense unless you consider that Crowley and Aziraphale have a hidden way of speaking with one another, the dialogue is built to support that very realization.

By having Aziraphale use dangerous in the first sentence ("Crowley, it's too dangerous"), they're emphasizing the weird use of dangerous in the second sentence by first showing us that Aziraphale absolutely knows what this word means by the way he originally used it.

Just in case you wanted to say well, maybe this avid reader bookseller who has been on Earth for millennia doesn't know this basic word of dangerous 😂, they make sure there's no argument for that by having him use it in a textbook perfect way not ten seconds before then using it again in this more coded way. Furthering all of this?

If you start to realize that Crowley and Aziraphale often speak with one another in a cant-- a hidden language of their own design-- at some point, you're likely to discover any one of the series of keys to that cant that exist throughout the story. One of them is the very first things we ever see in the t.v. series-- the visual metaphor of words on a tv screen floating in outer space that sets up this very word-happy story. These are actually the first set of directions on how to understand this Nightingales Cant, which I went into recently over here. One of the words listed there as a Clue to help figure out how it all works? Is the word dangerous.

Kids! Causing Armageddon can be dangerous...

So, they're underlining and highlighting this very word that pops up in a strange way in this scene and one of the reasons why is to reinforce that if you notice that there's something weird about how Aziraphale uses the word dangerous in 1967? You're going to be uncovering some aspects of Nightingales Cant in the process of looking at why.

The very first rules of this thing, as I went into in that post linked above, are shown to us through the word war being the first thing we saw onscreen in the tv series-- but then that word war being revealed to be a word within the word warning. This is a visual metaphor for etymology-- the history of words and their meanings and relationships with other words.

What Crowley and Aziraphale have in common is that, from being on Earth since its beginning, they are both walking, talking etymological dictionaries. Their cant (hidden language) is built around coding their speech through using the history of words-- their original meanings or alternate meanings. As we saw in the opening images of the series, the words hidden within the words they're choosing to say are the ones they're actually trying to convey just as much.

In short? The easiest way to understand what they're saying is to look at both the words-within-the-words and/or the historical or alternative meanings of the words they've chosen to say. Just doing this alone will crack the code of Nightingales, open up what it is that they're really saying, and show you what these words they're frequently saying mean in their Nightingales hidden vocabulary.

So! If we take those guidelines and we apply them to the word dangerous, we can find out why something dangerous, in Nightingales, would be something positive and important for which Crowley would be willing to risk his life.

Just glancing at this word, you can already see a bunch of words within it but I want to talk about that last one first-- the word us.

Crowley and Aziraphale speak every language in the world but the one they predominantly speak on a daily basis is English. Within the English language, the word us, as we know, refers to a pair or a group but it is also used (lol) within a ton of descriptive words as the part of the word that emphasizes whatever the part of the word prior to it is saying-- i.e., something that is dangerous is full of danger.

Crowley and Aziraphale's Nightingales Cant is romantic; it exists to mask their speech when they're in public and have to sound like enemies. It was created as a way to really be flirting while it sounded, on the surface to someone who didn't understand it and who might have been listening, like they were at odds. They're both word nerds, though, and they love it, to the point that they fall into it when alone in many, many scenes-- including in other parts of 1967 besides just Aziraphale's use of the word dangerous.

This means that, when they're flirting in this very cant-happy sort of way, any word that they use between the two of them that contains the word us is being used between them as a descriptive word for the two of them together as a couple and their relationship.

Because there are a lot of words that contain the word us, there are a lot of relevant options to choose from when flirting with one another so different Us Words tend to come up pretty frequently. It adds another layer of humor to Crowley saying that he and Aziraphale need a little Us Time in S2.

So, for fun, what are some other Us Words that we've seen them use in Nightingales, before we have a fuller look at dangerous?

One of the most common is the word just-- meaning fair, equitable, and morally sound. One of its original meanings was also righteous in the eyes of God. Crowley, in particular, uses just in several scenes to describe their relationship and Aziraphale, from ones ranging to the very romantic ("just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing") to the amusing and euphemistically smutty ("why don't you just go by train?").

Perhaps the most significant use of just is actually the moment when Crowley clearly stops himself from saying it aloud, which is on the park bench in 1.01. When Crowley responds to Aziraphale about the antichrist baby with the even-funnier-after-Bildad-in-S2 clarification of "not delivered-delivered... handed it over," we can see his mouth start to form the word just but he stops himself from saying it.

Most of us would go for the more natural wording that Crowley almost says here-- we would say: "not delivered-delivered, just handed it over." But they're speaking in Nightingales in this scene-- and about Satan and the antichrist baby in this moment-- which is why Crowley visibly pauses and stops himself from using the word just in the sentence. It's because just is a romantic word that they use that just refers to him and Aziraphale and their relationship and Crowley would never use that word in a way that has anything to do with the very much unjust Satan situation.

Ok, what other Us Words? How about how Crowley's trying to get for Maggie and Nina a Vavoom like he and Aziraphale have-- say, a fabulous kiss...

...or a word that predates Nightingales Cant in its first usage but you just know Crowley's said about Aziraphale since: gorgeous....

...how about the word that means delicious and good enough to eat that's a particular favorite of Aziraphale: scrumptious...

...or perhaps amusing each other with art and music-- both songs and canting alike... or meeting in one of the rendezvous spots, like the British Museum or the No. 10 bus...

...it's in the original meanings of to use being to become familiar with and well-versed in and to experience, adding to it already being an amusing sexual euphemism. As in, Aziraphale's response to learning that Shakespeare!Crowley had taken his first name from the play his love poetry for Aziraphale had ended up in. The angel is willing to get used to it. 😂

...or the lotus flowers on the rug covering up the circle in the floor of the bookshop of these very mindful two...

...or perhaps the thing that is at the core of their relationship... trust.

So, what about this really big Us Word-- dangerous?

If we take this apart, there are a whole boatload of other words within the word dangerous besides the word us, including:

danger, anger, dan, ang, ange/d'ange, dang, rou/rous, gero and ero.

The two most obvious words here are anger and danger-- the danger that comes with trying to be together in secret and risking their lives to do so and their anger over it and the state of play in Heaven and Hell meaning that they are stuck living like this. There's more going on here, though...

At the beginning of the word dangerous are two different words that lay atop one another using some overlapping letters-- dang and the French d'ange.

Dang is a polite version of saying damn, an expression used to express another word within dangerous-- anger-- or frustration. To be damned, though, is to be condemned to Hell, which is what the demons are and what Crowley is.

Ange is the French word for angel, as many know from the French versions of Good Omens (and many fanfics 😊) having Crowley call Aziraphale "mon ange" or "my angel." As d'ange, it means of angel in French.

So, draped over one another together at the start of dangerous is a word that connects to Crowley-- dang-- and a word that connects to Aziraphale-- d'ange. These words are the romantic beginning of a word that ends with us.

In the middle of the word?

Ero-- from Eros and the root of the word erotic, referring to passion and a romantic, sexual love. Additionally, in the other words? Plenty of fish, food, and blasphemy-- the Holy Trinity of Nightingales 😉...

rou/rous-- homophone: roux, a French sauce; ang, a type of fish; dan-- the root of don & a title given to members of a religious order, as well as a noodle dish (dandan noodles); gero-- alternate spelling of & phonetic match to a gyro, a type of sandwich.

Additionally, gero is a root word related to aging, in a nod to how old Crowley and Aziraphale are and how their dangerous relationship goes way back. The root word within it-- ger-- also means to come together or to gather together.

Gero is also the title of a 17th century book on asceticism, which has some thematic connections to the story, particularly the same 1967 scene in which we hear this use of the word dangerous. Aziraphale's periodic fasting periods, which are highlighted in the 1967 scene, are attempts at a not-as-extreme version of a more Heaven-like, ascetic lifestyle.

So, this one word-- dangerous-- embodies so much of what their relationship is. All the conflicts-- both inner ones and the things working against them-- are present in the danger, the anger, the gero of the word... but so, too, is all of the love and passion they feel for one another in all of the rest of the words and its construction.

Aziraphale gives Crowley the holy water because he cannot let him risk his life-- not even for something dangerous. Not even to try to obtain something to protect them to try to make it safer for them to be more openly together. He can't let Crowley risk his life for them because he loves Crowley and doesn't want to lose him.

But there's one more Us Word that is relevant to this 1967 scene, too. It's the one that is more pronounced than spelled.

The thing in which Aziraphale gives Crowley the holy water is also a visual pun. It's an Us Word for the two of them from Aziraphale:

Thermos.

From the Greek therme, meaning hot, heat, and warmth.

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Crowley’s hand crank

“and you will be a tool to that glorious destiny.”

“Glorious Tool. Yeah”

Tool:

a handheld device that aids in accomplishing a task

something used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession

one who is used or manipulated by another

So it’s interesting that something Crowley has carried over from his time as an angel is his hand crank, a tool used to wind things up (such as a vintage car) 

A purpose that has been extended to Crowley in delivering the antichrist, winding up Armageddon if you will.

It really does make you wonder if God had planned it like this all along….

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I always considered the handshakes unnecessarily formal but this interpretation makes so much sense!

I love the fact that they still do this whole business handshake thing in agreement-- thousands of years into their relationship-- when they decide to work a little side operation together. In shaking hands on the deal they're making with one another, they're really recognizing one another as individual, autonomous beings. It's such a good, little example of them giving one another what neither of them really receive from Heaven and Hell-- especially Crowley.

We watch Crowley's whole night of horrors prior to this scene where it's made abundantly clear that being a demon means that their supernatural world views him as part of a collective that is all Satan's property. Then, in contrast, we have the scenes in the bookshop where Crowley feels safe and, in them, there's Aziraphale, offering his hand, and the handshake being one of many little ways of affirming that they make their own deals because they are their own people.