The Magic Trick You Didn’t See: Being An Analysis of Good Omens Season 2
(or: Neil Gaiman, Your Brain is Gorgeous
But I Have Cracked Your Sneaky Little Code
And Have You Dead To Rights*)
(*Maybe)
***
Soooooo I just spent the last 48 hours having a BREATHTAKING GALAXY BRAIN EPIPHANY about Good Omens Season 2 and feverishly writing a fuckin16,000 word essay about the incredible magic trick that @neil-gaiman pulled off.
Yes, it’s long, but I PROMISE your brains will explode. Do you want to know how magic works? Do you want to know what Metatron’s deal is (I’m like 99% sure of this and it’s EXTREMELY FUCKING GOOD)? Do you want to know about the Mystery of the Vanishing Eccles Cakes and the big fat beautiful clue I found in the opening credits? Do you go through the whole inventory of Chekov’s Firearm & Heavy Artillery Discount Warehouse?
Here is the essay, go read it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IXS11XN46lziHRb6eUpM17yK0BQkRqke1Wh64A_e0/ When ur done u can tell me I’m an insane crackpot, and u know what, i won’t even be offended
In case you don’t know whether you want to bother reading the whole enormous thing on google docs, I’ve put the first couple sections of it under the cut. JUST TRUST ME OKAY, HEAR ME OUT, THIS IS VERY EXTREMELY COOL, NEIL IS GOOD AT HIS JOB--
Proem
A dark theater. The rustling of the audience: clothes, breathing, whispers of anticipation. The lights come up. A man enters, stage left. He is a magician—a master magician—and he performs for you a magic trick so good and so subtle... that you don’t even notice you’ve seen it.
You know there must have been a trick—after all, you came to the theater to see a trick performed, didn’t you? And he claims to be a magician. So there had to be a trick somewhere. There had to be.
But maybe there wasn’t. Maybe there was just a man on a stage, talking to you, telling you a story with a strangely unsatisfying ending you didn’t quite understand.
I know. This is a weird beginning to an analysis essay. But hear me out, because I have to explain the mechanisms of the stage before I can show you what the trick was, where the trapdoor was hidden, and how Neil Gaiman pulled the whole thing off so gently and elegantly that you didn’t notice a thing. Ready? Here we go.
The Facts As We Know Them
Let us begin by establishing a baseline—some fundamental, logical assumptions that underpin the magic trick. These will seem obvious as soon as I say them, which is precisely the point: They are self-evident, loadbearing foundations for my entire argument, and if I don’t point them out, I’m going to sound like a crackpot conspiracy theorist. (Which! To be fair, I might be. I could easily be wrong about all this—but I don’t think I am.)
Our baseline, loadbearing assumptions that preface my Grand Unified Theory of Season 2:
1. Neil Gaiman is extremely good at his job.
2. Neil Gaiman loves these characters and wants with all his heart to do them justice; likewise, he has a great deal of respect, love, and admiration for Terry Pratchett and is striving VERY HARD to write the show the way Terry would have been happy with.
3. The devil, as they say, is in the details: Neil Gaiman and the entire Good Omens cast/crew are fully capable of doing extremely subtle detail work, as conclusively proven in Season 1 Ep 6, specifically the whole sequence of the body-swap scenes.
With me so far? Great.
The Elephant In The Room
Season 2 was... odd. It was odd, wasn’t it. This isn’t a matter of whether you loved it or hated it—there was just something odd going on.
I spent the entirety of my first viewing very much enjoying myself and being very happy to be back with these characters and this world, but I was also liveblogging to my groupchat as I went, and a theme soon began emerging:
“Neil, what are you doing? Where are you going with this?”
“What in god’s name is going on here? I’m so lost lmao.”
“What is going on with the music situation?”
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE NEIL”
“zombies, ok, I trust u to pull this all together in the end, Neil, but I still don't know what you're up to”
“What is going on LOL”
“Incredibly what is going on here”
“NEIL! WHAT IS HAPPENING!”
“Literally what is happening”
“Neil Gaiman why have you constructed a regency au for mystery VIBES reasons”
“just????????? lesbians????????? dancing what's HAPPENING. just all the background characters are gay here ok sure sure sure NEIL GAIMAN WHAT IS HAPPENING--”
“mmmmmmm neil what u doin”
All these are copied verbatim from my liveblogging, and apparently I am not the only one to have this reaction. And to be clear, I was having a good time! I came out to this theater to see a magic trick, and this Neil Gaiman guy on stage is a master magician—but I didn’t see the trick, even though there must have been a trick.
At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the season. I wanted to like it! Indeed, there were many things that I liked about it! But I felt a bit muddled and jumbled up and confused—I felt like there was something I didn’t understand about it, and so I couldn’t yet understand how I felt about it either.
I started chewing on this question in a friend’s DMs: Why is season 2 so fucking odd? What is going on here, Neil? What are you up to? The matter of whether he was up to something was never in question. I knew that he had to be up to something. Writers are always up to something, and as I watched season 2, it was as if I was watching Neil scamper around the room with a mischievous expression as he messed with things here and there and made little tweaks and adjustments to the arrangement of all the Chekov’s guns he’s stockpiling on the mantelpiece.
You see, Season 2 has some very bad writing in it. HANG ON, DON’T ARGUE WITH ME YET! THIS IS NOT A JUDGMENT CALL!! This is the rug that the trick’s secret mechanism is hidden under!!! This is the hidden mirror that makes the trick work!!!!! This is the trapdoor in the stage!
Yes, of course I will explain myself.
Neil Gaiman is a master magician, but I am a pretty damn good magician myself—I’m a professional fantasy author who has published nine books, and I teach workshops for apprentice writers online and at universities—and if there is one thing I have learned about the process of achieving mastery of your craft, it is this:
Regardless of what medium they’re working in, the apprentice artist is concerned primarily with achieving realism via an expansion of their control—control of their brush strokes as they paint a photorealistic eye; control of their deck of cards, the mechanisms of their magic tricks, and where the audience’s attention is being directed; control of all the little factors of voice, plot, character, setting, suspense and surprise that go into writing a good story. However, the master artist has achieved that control—so much so that it often looks effortless to an untrained eye—and sometimes the master artist returns to a messy, amateurish style simply because they have control even over this too.
As an example, consider Picasso and his entire body of work. He begins as an apprentice focused on achieving control, doing portraits of people that look like people—like what we expect a portrait of a person to look like. Then, as he grows in skill and gradually achieves mastery, he pulls away from realism. He develops a style, he experiments with faces that don’t look like any human alive colored in ways that do not appear in nature. He expands his control. His work becomes abstract. Towards the end of his life, he starts experimenting with what’s called “Naive art”, something that a 5 year old could theoretically draw... but you have to achieve mastery before you can do it on purpose and have it look good.
On one hand, Neil Gaiman is extremely good at his job. On the other hand, Season 2 has bad writing in it.
What does that tell us?
Well, we know from our Baseline Assumptions that Neil Gaiman is simply too good of a writer to fuck up through garden-variety clumsiness and lack-of-control the way an apprentice writer would. Additionally, he cannot fuck up by accident in this case because I am positive that the man is scrutinizing his work on Good Omens far too closely to let anything slide—for Crowley and Aziraphale’s sakes, for David and Michael’s sakes, and especially for Terry’s sake. The stakes are sky-high, and he cares too much to write a weird, kind of “bad” season by accident.
Which leaves only one option: He did it on purpose.
(Am I sounding like a crackpot conspiracy theorist? Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I’m gonna get SO MUCH MORE CRACKPOT.)
If he did it on purpose, then the natural question to ask is: WHY!?!?!??
It’s a great question. Not “Why?” in terms of why he as an individual person with emotions would decide to do that, mind you. More like, “What purpose does this serve for the structure of the narrative?” There is a story he is intending to tell, and out of all the choices he could have possibly made, for some reason this one was necessary and correct in order to achieve that end goal—so what was that reason?
See? Intentionality. He knows exactly what details he left in, and he did it on purpose. (Editing! It’s important!)
So there has to be a reason. It’s like when a master magician “casually” rubs an itch on his nose—why did he do that? What is he sneakily slipping into his mouth by hiding it under the excuse of this little gesture that does not even register to you as meaningful? (If you haven’t watched enough stage magic to know what I mean, watch this.)
This question is, of course, impossible to simply answer out of thin air without any further evidence. It is a dead end—so we must adjust the question and come at it from a different angle.
The one I settled on when I was chewing on this was: Well, okay, what do I mean when I say “bad writing”? What is it about S2 that makes it feel so goddamn odd?
The Pledge, The Turn, and... The Conspicuous, Expectant Silence
There are three parts to a magic trick: Pledge, Turn, Prestige.
First, the Pledge: You show the audience something ordinary.
Second, the Turn: You make that ordinary thing do something extraordinary, like vanish.
Third, the Prestige: You bring the ordinary thing back.
To quote the 2006 film The Prestige just after its explanation of the first two parts: “You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet, because making something disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back.”
You have to bring it back.
When I teach apprentice writers, I call this a “setup-payoff cycle”. Achieving control and dexterity with this tool is crucial, because the setup-payoff cycle is the engine of the story—it’s what makes the story run. You can have a setup-payoff cycle at any scale—I have read ones that were a single sentence long; I’ve read ones that were two books long. Additionally, all jokes, no matter how long they are, are structured on a setup/payoff cycle. These cycles work precisely the same way a magic trick does:
You set up the audience’s expectations.
(Optional but generally considered stylish and elegant: You give those expectations a firm jolt to throw the audience off-balance.)
You pay off the audience’s expectations in a way they weren’t expecting, while saying “TA DA!!!!” really loud with your arms flung wide.
Audiences really like this. A setup-payoff cycle executed just right makes the audience’s brains light up like Times Square and hammers on their mental “reward” buttons like nothing else. It’s like you’ve personally handed them a cookie and a gold star. They go wild for this.
Here’s an example of a setup-payoff cycle, though it’s not a perfect one—and you’ve probably heard it before, so you’re not going to be throwing chairs and tearing down the theater from sheer glee:
The Setup: Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who?
The Jolt: (the joke starts over and repeats several times without reaching the payoff (aka the prestige) while the audience grows more and more annoyed and frustrated about the unfulfilled expectations, until finally...) Knock knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who?
The Payoff: ORANGE YOU GLAD I DIDN’T SAY BANANA?
Good Omens Season 2 feels so fucking odd because the setup-payoff cycles are incomplete—nearly all of them are, and the ones that do close the loop do so in really weird ways which, as a professional author, make me feel kind of, “Bwuh?????? But where’s my cookie? Excuse me??? Sir???? Neil????? My cookie, tho???”
When I realized this, when I finally put my finger on why the whole season was giving me some uncanny valley heebie-jeebies, a chill ran down my spine.
(The rest is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IXS11XN46lziHRb6eUpM17yK0BQkRqke1Wh64A_e0/ I’M GOING TO GO STARE INTO THE ABYSS NOW BYE)
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angelic alteration
om brothers x reader
wc : 1.k
warnings: nsfw, corruption kink based
synopsis : when Solomon and Diavolo can't fix the problem, it's up to Mc
a/n : thought the angel event (og) could use some more spice so I poured my entire spice rack on it
“Mc…I’m afraid we have bad news.”
You sighed into the receiver, “Yeah? You guys can’t reverse the magic, can you?”
“Nope!” Solomon chirped cheerfully, “Diavolo and Michael’s magic mixed together too strongly for us to reverse ourselves. You’ll just have to wait for them to go back to normal, or…”
“Or…what?”
“Well, this is just a theory, but what if you just corrupted the angelic magic and forced their demonic sides back out?”
“Corrupted, huh..? I like the sound of that.”
†
“I can feel the magic trying to stop me…how. stupidly. annoying.” Lucifer accentuated each word of his complaint with a sharp thrust, face pinched in concentration as sweat beaded at his temple.
He’d be damned if something as trivial as a hexed bracelet from the celestial realm kept him from indulging in you, the one temptation he would never dare ignore.
Your nails dug crescent moons into his shoulders, thighs squeezing at his hips tightly as you moaned and panted beneath him. “Lu-ci-fer! S-slow d-own!”
He growled and sped up in response, snapping his hips into you harshly, “How dare they try to turn me back? I am the Avatar. Of. Pride!” Once again, each word was accentuated with a thrust, making his cock hit deeper and deeper each time.
And he was so fucking proud each time he had you a moaning mess underneath him, crying out his name, begging him not to stop— you made his sin flood his entire body every time.
An electric charge cracked through the air for a brief second before the bangle broke in half, magic forcibly shattering under Lucifer’s sheer prowess.
He grinned sharply, capturing your legs against your chest in a mating press as he went even harder. His wings shedded to black, spanning out proudly behind him as the halo melted down into his horns.
“I’m going to ruin you, do you hear me? You’re not leaving this bed- not tonight, or in the morning, or maybe even until tomorrow afternoon…I’m keeping you until I’ve had my fill.”
†
The sight of Mammon’s blue eyes peering up while his mouth was busy pleasuring you had always been a pretty sight— the shimmering halo was only a little bonus this time.
But you wanted his horns to hold onto. “Just like that, Mams…doing so well, pretty boy.” Your hips rocked over his mouth, grinning down at him with gold flickering in your eyes.
He was all about giving now that the bangle had taken hold, which even before, Mammon always keened when you sat on his face and just used him.
The second born was moaning and whining and whimpering against your skin as his tongue lapped up everything he could, “Mmph- like this? ‘M I doing good, Mc?”
“Y-yeah, baby, fuck— so good…” you carded your fingers through Mammon’s hair, feeling him get more and more excited before you lifted up off his face.
And he was absolutely distraught with the lack of your taste, desperate cry leaving him as he tried to chase after you. “No, no, no! Mc, please, come back— wasn’t done, wanna taste you still, wanna make you feel good, please!”
The laugh you let out made him whine even louder, fingers gripping frantically at your thighs. It was like a switch flipped, magic being overtaken by his greed.
His eyes flickered gold like yours, a whiny growl escaping him. He forced you on your back within a second, mouth working at you even more desperately now as he held you down and took what he wanted— and he wanted to make you cum.
“Jus’ let me, please let me make you cum— you taste so good, Mc, I don’t wanna stop. Want you to scream my name and yank my hair, grip my horns, just give me more- more, more, more!”
†
A small shriek left Levi when you rammed against his prostate, hiccuped cries of your name following. His back arched, wings flaring out behind him, making you hit even deeper spots inside of him.
With his new attitude, he’d been letting everyone else spend time with you and he was finally feeling the built up envy creep along his spine, right beside the spikes of pleasure.
“Aww…look at you. So sweet for me, huh? Why so shy, Levi? Wasn’t this what you meant about strengthening connections?”
Garbled sounds left him, courtesy of your fingers stuffed in his mouth. His eyes rolled back, hands gripping at your hips desperately, though it wasn’t clear if he was pushing you away or pulling you closer.
“How am I gonna know I’m doing good if you don’t tell me, ‘vi? C’mon, sweet thing, tell me. Or do you not want me?”
It was like you asked the unthinkable. A loud whine left him and his tail returned, knocking the halo right off his head before it coiled around your abdomen.
“No! I want you, I want you so badly, please keep fucking me— don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop!” Diamond shaped scales scattered across his body as the magic wore out.
You cooed, thrusting into him sharply, making his body lurch, “Good boy, Leviathan..”
†
“Fuck!” Satan cries out, fingers digging into his white wings to try and keep them from fluttering. His back arched almost painfully, loudly begging you to keep going.
“Oh, look at you…” the coos that left you made him flush red, giving you a great sense of satisfaction. This was the most he’d been riled up since putting that ridiculous bangle on.
Your thighs were burning at the unforgiving pace you were riding him at, beads of sweat splashing onto his skin, so you decided to change the game a little.
“Come on, Tannie, if you want it, work for it.” You settled your weight on top of him, ceasing your movements as you cockwarmed him instead.
A displeased growl comes from the back of his throat, eyes snapping open with a glowing green. “Mc, move! Please!”
Slowly, the halo above his head began to flicker and dim before it shattered, dissipating in the air. Another growl escaped him as his wings followed suit, tail lashing out like a whip.
“That’s it— c’mon-!” You gasped when he yanked you forwards, chest pressing against his as his tail locked you in place. The only sounds that could leave you now were broken moans as he fucked you almost viciously.
“You know how I feel about you fucking. teasing. me. Feels good doesn’t it? Yeah? Cause I’m not stopping. ‘M not stopping until I physically can’t fuck you anymore— fuck, I needed you.”
†
Unabashed moans echo off the walls of Asmo’s bathroom as the fifth born writhes under your touch. The sound of water sloshing makes his cheeks burn fiery red and the sound of you moaning back at him makes it even worse.
“W-wait! You d-don’t have to— oh!”
“Shh, Azzy…’m just taking care of you. You were so hard and aching…could see it even though you tried to hide under the water.”
The white feathers ruffled with pleasure (slowly shedded away and turning back), hips jerking frantically to chase the pleasure. The bangle’s magic was completely buried under how hot you made him feel and the feeling of you licking along the edges of his leathery wings increased it ten fold.
“Yes, Mc, like that— don’t stop, just like that, just like that!” Amso curled over on you, horns knocking against your shoulder as he cried out even louder.
You fisted his cock harder and swiped your thumb over the tip relentlessly, “Yeah? Made you feel so good, you corrupted yourself, huh? Pretty little Azzy…come on, cum.”
The squeal he let out cracked halfway through, broken cries of your name following like a mantra. His hand encased yours, making sure you didn’t stop jerking him off.
“K-keep going, don’t stop! Wanna cum for you again ‘n again, gotta make up for when I was giving you away to the others, please, please, let me cum again for you!”
†
“H-haaah…ah! M-Mc…what’re you..o-oh..doing?”
“You said it made you happier seeing others get to eat, so…” you hummed, licking your lips before digging your tongue back into the slit of his cock, “I’m just..enjoying my meal…”
Beel had always lost his cool when you went down on him, finding your mouth to be too good at pleasuring him. The growl he let out was something only a demon could make.
The glowing of the bangle did nothing to deter you— in fact, you only laughed and peered up at him with the red sin of gluttony swirling through your irises. With another hum, you enveloped his cock in your mouth and forced your head as far down as you could, swallowing around him.
He tried so hard to not buck into your mouth or grip at your head as the magic worked to keep his ravenous nature at bay, but…that’s just not who he was anymore.
“C’mon, Beelie…want you to cum in my mouth, I wanna taste you..pretty please? Let me have it…”
A low groan fell past his lips, hips finally jerking up and accidentally making you choke. A rushed apology was given as his fingers tangled in your hair and gently guided your head at a faster pace.
The beating of his insectual wings was rapid as he got closer, magic completely dissipating when he let out a sound akin to a small roar, grabbing at his own horns when he came.
Watching you pull away with visibly stuffed cheeks, slowly working on swallowing it all (though drops still ran down your chin) made a sharp pang shoot through him.
“Thank you…you always make me feel so good, Mc…but..now ‘m hungry. Let me return the favor..wanna taste you too.”
†
“A-are you sure…this is o-okay?” Belphie chokes out quietly, hands pressing down on your hips to keep you pinned to the bed with your knees bent to your sides.
Your fingers curl in the sheets, body lurching forward at each thrust, “yeah, ‘s okay— feels good, doesn’t it? You’re doing so good, Bel…”
The clipped whines and gasps that Belphie was making made his cheeks flair with an embarrassed flush; but you were right. It felt so. fucking. good. And he didn’t think he ever wanted to stop.
Through the pleasure, it was easy to ignore the glowing bangle on his wrist and the voice in the back of his head telling him that he should have more reservations- that he shouldn’t be doing this— that voice wasn’t even his. Belphie wanted this, he did!
As your hands stretched back to claw at his lower stomach, you moaned out his name and wiggled your hips, begging him to go faster.
“Please, Bel…know you can go f-faster than this, want you to fuck me— please, please, please! Don’t wan’ you to be an angel, want you to be my demon again-!”
Magic cracked in the air, sending the hair on the back of your neck rising before a familiar tail curled around your stomach and yanked your lower half higher up, forcing your chest further into the mattress.
The attic bed creaked with the force he slammed into you at, whines mixing with growls now; his horns pressed against your skin as he rested his forehead against your back, making it arch even more.
“Yeah? You want me to fuck you senseless again? Couldn’t even go a couple days without having me play with you, fuck, you’re such a slut for me.”
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