#(neither does Aziraphale)

[guardian-of-soho]

The more I think about the last minutes the more I’m sure Crowley was saying goodbye from the minute Aziraphale told him he’d said yes to Heaven. He doesn’t confess his love like he’s hopeful, he confesses it like a eulogy. He doesn’t kiss him to make a beginning, he kisses him to seal the end. He watches him go like it’s the last time.

Crowley knows Heaven. He knows they’ll want to either make Aziraphale just like them, or destroy him. Either way I think he believes he’s seen his angel for the last time.

[p4nishers]

random hc but. crowley being a plague doctor in the 16th/17th century bc he's supposedly "tempting people into death" but he can never, ever bring himself to actually do that so he ends up soothing their pain as best as he can and comforting them in their last moments. one night, after he held a little girl's hand as she passed away, he sits down at the banks of the river thames, with his plague mask discarded on the dirt, and he starts out over the water with tears in his eyes, wondering what the fuck is actually the point? it's not the first time he's asked himself the question nor the first plague he witnessed but, here, now after personally witnessing hundreds of deaths every day, he really wonders what actually is the point of him? why does he exist and why should he keep existing. why does he get to live when so many others don't? how is that fair? how is any of it fair? that's how aziraphale finds him, as he just got back from an assignment somewhere or other and hears crowley is in town, so he discreetly looks for him and finds him there, sitting in the dirt, now with his head in his hands, his shoulders silently shaking and is obviously immediately worried but doesn't know how to comfort him or what's allowed so he just sits beside crowley and watches him try to pull himself together. aziraphale's heart breaks, he put what happened together from the mask and the robes and he obviously knows about the bubonic plague but was convinced it was hell's doing and couldn't have even imagined crowley was out there everyday, helping people under the guise of hurting them. is he surprised? no, of course not but it still hurts to see crowley like this. but he's afraid to cross their unspoken rules so he quietly waits crowley out. he watches the water and doesn't dare look at crowley as he lifts his head and takes a few shaky breaths in. after a few minutes of breathing, crowley croaks out "her name was mary" and nothing else, and aziraphale understands, god he understands. it's one of the things they never speak about after it happens but aziraphale can't forget the night he sat with crowley for hours, till the sun came up, as he cried about a death of one little girl. he holds it close to his chest and never, ever forgets.

[i-only-ever-asked-questions]

I've been working on this post for a while and I am running out of time! So here goes: Today I want to talk about the dark side of Good Omens. This is a long post, sorry about that, but there are so many twists and turns. We all love GO, the romance, the banter, the comedy, the humanity of it. But it does a have a subtle dark side underneath which is usually overlooked. It has to do with the race to stop Armageddon, how their different views brought them to the bandstand conflict, and how Aziraphale ultimately came around at the airbase. It was a rocky road. In the book, when Crowley receives the basket and is on his way to the hospital, he has a thought. We didn't see this in the show so it may or may not have happened there, but it happened in the book. Ultimately Crowley didn't go through with it, but it did occur to him.

So Crowley kept driving and eventually came up with Plan A: Raise the antichrist together behind Hell's back. Surely as a normal, balanced human being the kid wouldn't want to destroy the world, easy and straightforward, right?

Aziraphale's orders are to keep Crowley under observation and so he does. But he also tells Heaven he will "influence the child towards the light". Heaven humors him as long as he keeps doing his job: monitoring Crowley and the antichrist.

However as the scheduled time gets closer, Crowley realizes that the only way to be 100% certain there won't be an Armageddon is to not have an antichrist at all (like 11 years ago). And he brings up Plan B: Kill the child, for the first time.

Aziraphale didn't like the idea of killing Warlock outright if there were other options. So he came up with Plan C: stop the dog. That... was very short-lived.

And here is where things will start to get murky. While both know they need to find the antichrist, they don't really know what to do afterwards.

Crowley probably thinks that whatever they do, they'll do it together, that Aziraphale will be on board with it. Aziraphale on the other hand still thinks Heaven are "the good guys" so he separately comes up with Plan D: Tell Heaven where the antichrist is. If Heaven gets rid of Adam, all will be fine. Heaven knows better and thy are going to win anyway. At this point, Aziraphale is fine with eliminating the antichrist, he just doesn't like the idea of doing the deed himself, let Heaven handle it. So he lies to Crowley about finding Adam.

And he lies again about having found the antichrist when they meet at the bandstand. Aziraphale has made his mind. As they talk, Aziraphale's reasons that if Crowley were to kill the child instead of Heaven, it would be a better solution for everybody. Again, he is fine with eliminating the antichrist, but not with doing it himself, Crowley can do it. Should this be a very short lived Plan E?

Crowley on the other hand, just like at the Crystal Palace, insists that Aziraphale do the deed. Aziraphale would not have it. Either Crowley does it or Heaven does it, but not him.

The book is more clear about how Crowley is afraid of Hell's punishment if he fails. In Crowley's mind, if Aziraphale kills the child it would be ok, Aziraphale gets brownie points in Heaven and Crowley gets punished for maybe only being incompetent.

But if Crowley kills the child, he would be in really BIG trouble, punished as the worst traitor there could be. (this quote comes from a later passage but it is the sentiment that counts)

Both agree that the antichrist needs to go. But Crowley won't kill the child and Aziraphale won't kill the child either. So they come to an impasse.

Aziraphale proceeds with his Plan D anyway and his conversation with the Metatron goes as pear-shaped as could. And this is where he decides to talk to Crowley and reconcile. That didn't work out either.

After a short trip to Heaven, Aziraphale finds himself on Earth and ready to follow Crowley's Plan B. However he still doesn't want to do it himself, so this time he is recruiting humans to do it (Plan F!). Humans are good at killing other humans, they have been doing it for a long time ;)

Said humans are on board with it until they realize that the antichrist is an 11-year old boy and Plan F goes up in smoke.

Crowley is not giving up though and Aziraphale, fully committed now that every other option failed, follows Crowley's lead. Third time is the charm, right? Aziraphale doesn't hesitate anymore and shoots when Crowley urges him to do so.

And, as we know Madame Tracy saves the day and Adam (although for all we know Adam is bulletproof at this point ;) ) So yeah, interwoven with all the fun there are these glimpses of hidden darkness, our demon who keeps pushing Aziraphale to kill the antichrist for lack of a better plan and our angel who doesn't want to taint his hands and keeps looking for other people to do the deed instead. There is certainly a lot more nuance to this, Crowley and Aziraphale are not selfish, detached entities who end human lives willy-nilly, not at all. But in a desperate hour, they will, if that means the survival of the whole world. As Crowley put it back at the Crystal Palace "one life against the universe". He was ready to sacrifice that life from the very beginning. Aziraphale meandered his way to get there, but at the end he got there and shot at the child.

It is certainly very fortunate that they were not very competent at this. It would have been awful killing Warlock and then realizing he wasn't the antichrist after all. And Adam is a nice and smart kid who found his very own human solution to the problem without intentionally shedding any blood. They both deserve to live, and our walking disasters deserve to get their world and their humans without having to pay for it with the life of a child.

[cineresis]

Angels in America

It's amazing how fast an evening at your favorite club can be ruined by someone keeling over and frothing at the mouth. The band never quite gets back into the swing of things afterwards.

"Angel," sighed one of the men, or nearest approximants, at the table next to mine, "why is it that I can never go anywhere with you without stumbling across a body?"

"Oh, come now," said his partner, a soft, fluffy confection in caramel and cream, rising hastily to make his way toward the source of the commotion. The first gentleman, dark, lanky, and excruciatingly chic, got up to follow him. "It's hardly every time."

I stayed where I was for now, casting my gaze around the room as I went over my memory of the past twenty or thirty minutes. Too many people passing close enough to slip something into the victim's drink, too many others to watch at the same time, too many more opportunities to poison him outside my field of view. I was a detective, not God.

"Stumbling upon, once. Literally. Do you know what it's like to have to clean up after that sort of thing? It takes a personal toll."

"Hush, Crowley," chided "Angel". "People can hear you, and you know how queer they get about these things. Ooh, yes, that's strychnine, all right," he added cheerfully, pulling a small vial from his vest pocket and tipping it into his handkerchief. "Nasty stuff."

I got up. As I approached, I caught the faint, unmistakable chemical sweetness of ether fumes and gave them a wide berth, choosing instead to inspect the victim's plate and glass before turning to scan the room from this perspective.

"Now, just what might you be doing?" drawled Crowley.

I looked him over, too, while I was at it. In Crowley's case, this involved a lot of looking and not much over; he was easily more than six feet tall, even while slouching rakishly. The snake tattoo on his right temple suggested certain things about him. The dark glasses that he hadn't removed since he'd entered just suggested questions, since I highly doubted he was blind. "I'm a detective," I said, leaving the obviously at the end of that sentence to implication. "What are you doing?"

This response seemed to delight him. "So are we," Crowley answered, and grinned. "But if you want to get specific about it, I'm keeping you distracted while my friend saves this man's life. Let's see your license, then."

As I took it out, keeping at least one eye on him and his partner, Angel called out to the rubbernecking crowd around us, "I need someone here to run and call the nearest hospital, and a couple of strong men to help get this poor fellow someplace dark and quiet to rest. Best use one of the tablecloths for a stretcher," he added to the first volunteer who stepped forward.

Crowley leaned in closer to study my license. "Drake Silas Donovan," he read off. "'Silas', really?"

"What about it?"

"I've just always wondered what kind of parent would name their kid Silas."

"The kind who had a grandfather named Silas," I replied coolly, snagging my license back. "Your turn."

He obliged. Anthony J. Crowley, it read, licensed in London since 1905, the year before mine. I wondered how long he'd been at this; he looked too young for his apparent age, but then I looked too old for mine. "A. J. Crowley," I read his signature aloud. "Get asked if you're any relation every time, or just most?"

There's a certain motion a person's head makes when they roll their eyes. Crowley's was making it. "The man's an embarrassment to the side," he griped. "I made my name legitimately."

"And your friend?" It wasn't as if I couldn't put two and two together. There's a certain type of person who's got both a nose for trouble and the brains to prepare for it; if it walks, talks, and thinks like a dick, it probably is one. It was just that I wasn't in the habit of trusting people, and I'd be a real schmuck to neglect basic due diligence on the guy purportedly surrounded by bodies. 

Detectives are no better or worse than any other person. They just think it's usually more interesting to solve crimes than commit them.

"Oh, he's as legitimate as it gets." Crowley turned to his companion, who was getting to his feet, brushing his clothes off fussily. Beside him, the two volunteers hoisted the unconscious victim onto a tablecloth spread across the floor, momentarily dislodging the ether-soaked cloth before Angel caught it and laid it carefully back in place over the victim's nose and mouth. "Aren't you, Aziraphale?"

Angel — "Aziraphale"? — looked up, startled. "Pardon?"

"Mr. Donovan here wants to see your detective's license," Crowley explained, enunciating his words with malice aforethought.

"Oh! Yes. Of course I always have that with me. Now just where did I..." He started patting down his pockets, stopped suddenly, and took a lovely calfskin card holder out of his coat. "Ah. Here it is."

Beaming, he passed it to Crowley, who passed it to me with the comment, "You'll find everything in order, I'm sure."

I glanced down at the card, then back up at Angel. "Am I supposed to call you A. Z. Fell or Aziraphale?" I asked, pronouncing the Z correctly as zed.

"A. Z. Fell is how 'Aziraphale' is pronounced in the King's English," said Crowley blandly, affecting a cut-glass Oxford accent on the last phrase. His partner seemed pleased by this comment, rather than annoyed.

"I'm afraid my progenitor bestowed me with a rather unwieldy given name," Fell admitted, raising fascinating questions about just how many syllables the British peerage could fit on a birth certificate when they really tried. "Aziraphale just sounds so much more euphonious, don't you think?" Crowley was right; I couldn't tell whether Fell had meant to say A. Z. Fell or the de-accented gloss. He'd lengthened the half-syllable between zed and Fell to a full vowel, but some people said zetta.

"I wouldn't know," I replied, handing the license back to Crowley, who was nearest. When Fell didn't take my bait, I added, "Lucky that you happened to have ether handy. I wouldn't like to imagine what might've happened if you'd decided to stay in tonight." I also lied when I said sorry, and when I swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Little white lies are the oil in the gears of civilization.

"Oh, I always carry that, too," Fell explained earnestly. "One gets into the habit after one's first run-in with strychnine, and of course ether has so many useful applica—"

"I wouldn't, angel," Crowley interrupted, sounding very amused. "Mr. Donovan thinks you're the one behind this."

"Oh," said Fell, nonplussed. "Gosh. Well, I — I suppose I can't blame him. He doesn't know me from Adam, after all, and has no reason to trust me — I did warn you about giving people funny ideas, Crowley, honestly. Of course," Fell turned to me, laying an elegant hand across his chest, "if you were to search me, you would find only a small collection of antidotes — oh, but a habitual poisoner would probably carry those, too, especially if he were the sort of voyeur with a penchant for playing the hero. I certainly wouldn't be convinced of my innocence. Yes, I can certainly understand whatever suspicion you might feel towards me, however misplaced it may be."

Crowley watched this thought process with an expression somewhere between fascination and agony. "Well, at least now he probably thinks that if you'd done it, you'd have been caught by now," he remarked, presumably because he was thinking the same thing. "You'll have to excuse my friend," Crowley added to me. "He still believes that the innocent have nothing to fear. Somehow."

"First time visiting?" I guessed.

Fell's bemusement answered my question before he did. "Pardon?"

"Never mind."

[nutria--oscura]

guess who just finished watchiing good omens for the first time

[hornylegushka]

Just wanted to show my Halloween costume

GO hyperfixation going hard rn.......

My friend had a wig btw!!!

[bullagit]

no take colder than any along the lines of "aziraphale needs to learn his lesson about going along with heaven and stand up to them" tbh

like even putting aside the gross shit that implies someone thinks about people stuck in toxic relationship dynamics (whether romantic, platonic, or familial) and the unfortunate cycles that can include, even putting aside the potential that his hand was possibly forced in some way in the final 15, it's so.

like where was your attention when he spent so much of s1 actively trying to stop heaven's plans through every possible avenue even when pursuing that got him threatened, seemingly cost him his friendship, and did temporarily cost him his physical body/earthly home/future??? when he literally stood in heaven and said he refused to take part in any war, went back down to earth, and headed for tadfield? rules lawyered directly to an archangel's face about the great plan vs ineffable plan??????

even when crowley was saying this is a lost cause and we should run away together? when satan was incoming and aziraphale stood there and said firm as anything we can't give up now? aziraphale who lied to save job's children even when he actively thought that doing so would make him Fall???? that aziraphale needs to learn a lesson???

nah

[trashworldblog]

i love putting cutesy adorable modern love songs on my aziraphale and crowley playlist because i KNOW crowley would think that they're too sickenly sweet and aziraphale would think that theyre bebop

[eugeniedanglars]

some of you need to learn to be less personally offended by writers saying “canon is just the things that explicitly happen in the show/book/movie”

[phantomram-b00]

Okay last post, but I caught myself having an Crowley moment where in HHN one of the character was trying to scare me and all I said was “hi 👋😀”

[thesherrinfordfacility]

https://www.tumblr.com/thesherrinfordfacility/725147876273094656/one-thing-i-dont-really-get-is-that-crowley?source=share

My point was more neither option is good by by dash seems to be acting like Crowley was making the right choice.

But your post was really interesting regardless, thank you for such a thoughtful answer.

no problem!!!✨

[cattatoir]

Absolutely sick on all the GO discourse slap a bad haircut on me and call it high school like I’m still doing superwholock

Aziraphale’s process behind falling for Metatron’s trick— is it a mistake or bc he believes in good and Crowley? like it’s not both

[neine]

Crowley doesn't need an umbrella???

[saraptor]

frothing at the mouth thinking of a beefleaf-esque story plot AU for aziraphale and crowley

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Pt III good omens but i STILL SOMEHOW haven't watched it (and i'm increasingly passive aggressive)

i'm now basically held hostage adopted as mascot by this fandom. it's fine i'm fine *SIGNALS FOR HELP DESPERATELY*

Alright fuckers I swear this time I'm going to get some shit right. Without further ado, here's my third attempt at a good omens summary:

Everything everywhere is queer all at once

Angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley on earth likey each other

The car is a bentley and it is BLACK not silver and everyone is very upset about this. my bad yall it was reflecting light therefore i guessed more silver than black but I'm not Anish Kapoor take your black.

Then it is yellow, and aziraphale likes it. crowley preferred the black because he's a flamboyant emo.

God is a deadbeat absentee parent and you are all children of divorce.

There's a naked archangel and they cause problems for the husbands somehow. By being naked? By being an archangel? By being at their doorstep? Who knows not me

They were actually married for 6000 years, they just are the last to know about it.

Crowley is on fire. Like, he's slaying for sure, but also he is literally on fire, like Aziraphale's bookstore.

The actors like I said before are Michael Sheen and David Tennant but this is the place where I finally admit that I don't actually know who is whom. I'm going to assume Michael is Aziraphale because Michael sounds angel-y and David is Crowley because uh Michaelangelo made David and was gay for him.

Terry Pratchett is not fictional.

He co-wrote the book with @neil-gaiman, who IS fictional, because he does not have social media. Several of you have assured me that he is in fact a fandom inside joke. I like to think he would be proud of me.

They adopt a preteen and Crowley gives him bad advice.

At some point a baby was delivered to someone and was exchanged for the son of Satan. Idk if the baby is the preteen, or the son of satan is the preteen, or neither. This could be a fanfic, I have no way of differentiating the fanfic from canon on tumblr, except that the canon is weirder.

Crowley does not go down a chute. He goes down a telephone cord after making himself microscopic to pole dance on a pin with shroom-induced backgrounds.

During this his stage name is Disco Tony. Get it king go slay you're making better life choices than I am tbh.

Aziraphale is a biblically accurate angel, and you have all gone to extensive lengths to prove this to me. I understood nothing, but there you go.

It's all very queer, just like the fandom.

Crowley is a retired demon but he still sins by breaking the speed limit.

They eat at fancy restaurants and bicker but like in a sexual undercurrent way.

Crowley gives Aziraphale a private dance that is not a lap dance, it is an apology dance, but not in a kinky way, until it is.

Their haircuts keep changing and range from 'this is acceptable and gay' to 'i let a drunk chimpanzee take gardening shears and a blowtorch to my hair'

It's all ineffably queer my good fellows

Everyone keeps trying to convince me Neil Gaiman is the villain yeah no guys I know it's really you. Y'all be like 'SEASON TWO BROKE ME' and then you're making headcanons to make it sadder yeah I see you mmhm.

There is a final fifteen. It is sad. What is it? No one told me.

The demon turns goats into crows and the angel turns them back and then children are turned into newts (does the angel turn them back? who cares not yall) and the demon was the snake in the Eden garden and everyone's furry game seems to be on point.

There are a rather lot of children. I have not seen them. But I am assured they are there. They are, guys. I assume they were turned into the alcohol Aziraphale and Crowley drink or something.

There was an apocalypse plotline. It was averted. It is not important. You don't talk about plotlines in this fandom, no sir.

Crowley doesn't want to go to heaven. Aziraphale is sad.

The kiss is not nice, just like this fandom. It is queer, just like this fandom. It is sad and desperate and masochistic, just like this fandom.

Aziraphale doesn't want to stay back with Crowley. Crowley is sad.

Season 2 ends. Fandom is sad.

Everyone's sanity is hinging on the promise of a happy ending in season 3. Good luck guys.

Y'all better appreciate this. I can't even boast to my mother about this legacy of mine, hey mum your son has been held hostage kidnapped inducted into a cult adopted by a fandom he's not part of look he's winning at life.

[vidavalor]

The pub scene is even funnier when you consider that poor Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets has likely had this longtime pash on Aziraphale and, like everyone on Whickber Street, he has no idea who exactly The Ginger Goth With The Old Car is. He knows the prevailing theory is mafia but Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets has seen Ginger Goth hanging around Mrs. Sandwich and her "Sandwich Shop" and also around the bookshop a bit and also some naked guy was also at the bookshop recently, so... what's the likeliest conclusion drawn by Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets? That the old bookseller's lonely and paying for it.

He sees them come into the pub and thinks Aziraphale is classy like that and is taking the sex worker for a drink first or maybe that's part of it-- he's gone the whole 'boyfriend experience' route. Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets sees Aziraphale with that chest stroke of that Thin Dark Duke he's paying and while Mr. Brown (of Brown's World of Carpets, just FYI) isn't here to judge and gets it as he's lonely, too... and while he does think the bookseller picks some hot ones... he wants to give Mr. Fell the real thing. The kind of love you can only get between two middle-aged, still-sorta-closeted queers like they are. He'll be someone the bookseller can talk to and find some genuine chemistry with, Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets will be, so he decides to shoot his shot and knows the bookseller is skittish from their past interactions, so he goes for the meeting option. He'll have to come over to drop off the chairs, of course. Give them an excuse to talk more, alone, when Mr. Fell is not, erm, entertaining.

And poor Mr. Brown--President of the Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association, Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets is-- fine, upstanding, boring as all holy fuck fella... He's met by Crowley coming over with drinks and a greeting that says this is neither the first time, nor, he doubts, will it be the last that he's had to Husband the bookseller but again, Mr. Brown of Oh, You Know By Now thinks this is a bit, so he's not intimidated.

"I was just absolutely hitting on him for real, unlike you," is what he basically told Crowley when explaining what they were chatting about.

And Crowley's like lol you got him flustered enough to host this meeting. Good on you, Mr. Whoever the Fuck You Are from Whatever Shop You Run. Look at you *go*. 😍 I've got a new favorite human, Aziraphale.

He's all "you astonish me" to Aziraphale, teasing him like you're leading the poor, balding bastard on, angel. I know it's hard for you to reign in your divine sex appeal but you should maybe try. His heart is only human, after all.

Mr. Brown still thinks Crowley's a sex worker though so he doesn't give up and is all like remember, Mr. Fell, our date is right after work on Thursday in a group setting to set you at ease but I'll see you first to set it all up because I want you and I want to make sure you know I'm not just here for the business meeting.

Crowley: That's it-- I'm adopting you, Ballsy Mr. Carpet. I like your style. But you'll never wear my angel down. We've been married for 6,000 years. I am definitely up for saving you from some demons on Thursday though and making it rain on you and literally any fruity, single shop owner in the greater metro area next season. You're on the deck after my shop lesbians. Now piss off, Mr. Barnes. We haven't been to the pub in ages and you're in my seat.