i wish ppl on this website, and within leftist circles in general, were a little less gung ho about making jokes or statements like “billionaires arent people” “nazis arent people” “police arent people”
there is no level of evil where a human stops being a human. if you decide to kill them for their crimes, then you are killing a human. and sometimes that is justified! oil execs and war profiteers have destroyed countless lives in service of their own sick greed, and given the chance to enact that same violence on them, id probably pop their heads like a pimple.
but it is important that we do not shy away from the reality of that choice. it is a human life that is being ended. a person with interiority, feelings, family.
if we stop considering any group as people, even a group defined by their own evil actions, then we are drawing a line to divide society into persons and non-persons, and stating that those non-persons do not deserve to live.
i hope i dont need to explain why that is a dangerous position to take.
these people and all of their evil, their greed, their hatred, are just as much a part of humanity as art, culture, language, food. they are a part of us that has grown malignant and cancerous, and like a cancer, they must be excised for the sake of the whole–but they are still a part of us, made of the same stuff as us, down to their cores.
I wanna talk about The Angel Who Would Be Crowley.
Because I had a certain set of expectations, which got thoroughly trashed in the first five minutes of S2, and my genuine response is, “Oh, fuck, yup. You’re right. That’s WAY better.”
Looking around at GO fandom, I’m not alone in this. So let’s talk about it.
Basically, a lot of people (myself included) believed that he was a high-ranking angel, and therefore as chilly and remote as every other powerful angel we’d seen at that point. We pictured Crowley-To-Be as long-haired, regal and imposing –and the fanart at the time reflected this. I’d link some if Tumblr didn’t hate links.
Something like this:
We were collectively drawing on a few things –mostly, Crawly’s appearance and general bearing in the Biblical scenes of S1–
–But also scattered hints of his importance, backed up by conspicuous absences in Heaven and a few profound displays of power. That’s all better covered elsewhere, so I won’t reiterate the arguments here. All I’m saying is: I think our headcanons were justified.
But it turns out he was this:
!!!
With his curly little–!!
And his neat white–!!
IT TURNS OUT, he was an angel who squeaked and squealed when he was happy; who flailed his arms around and made explosion noises with his mouth to explain nebulas; who preened when told his stars were pretty. Furfur, who knew him before the Fall, says:
“You used to jump on me back, little monkey in a waistcoat…”
(The use of a diminutive there, ’little’…oh, that fascinates me.)
In a pretty huge subversion of expectations, we’re given these glimpses of an angel who was sweet, and joyful, and heart-meltingly silly.
In sum…an innocent.
(Perhaps innocent to a troubling degree.
We see how he troubles Aziraphale, during their first conversation. He starts looking around and behind them, checking to make sure that no one can HEAR the blithe and reckless things coming out of this angel’s mouth. This angel who talks like he’s never been reprimanded in his life; like it’s never occurred to him that anyone would want to hurt him.
Before the Beginning, Aziraphale understood Heaven better than he did. The danger is plainly occurring to Aziraphale.)
So now, we the viewers are in on a cruel joke that Aziraphale has known all along, which is that this –THIS– is the angel who–
*checks notes*
–did a million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulphur. For asking questions.
…Imagine you are Aziraphale, and everything inside you wants to believe Heaven are the Good Guys, and God is Good and Everything She does is capital-R Right…and now try to reconcile that. Keep trying. I don’t think he ever totally managed it in 6000 years.
All this gets further complicated when we learn that, despite all of the above, we were still right. That sweet excitable babby up there?
He WAS a powerful and high-ranking angel.
That much is explicitly confirmed, with significant evidence that he could have been among the mightiest of archangels…
…Who apparently accosted his fellow angels for piggyback rides. And was remembered millennia later by those (now fallen) angels as something ’little.’
What does that tell us about who he was? Is?
Hell, Aziraphale has known to be wary of the archangels (and the judgements of Heaven in general) since before the Fall even happened. He chooses to believe they are Good; he can’t fool himself into thinking they are Safe.
Yet he’s absolutely certain that Crowley won’t hurt Job’s children. Enough to stand in a burning building and say to them, “I can’t save you, but don’t be afraid. I won’t need to.”
And what reason does he give?
(“I know you.”
“You do not know me.”
“I know the angel you were.”)
What does that tell us about who he was? Is?
(“The angel you knew is not me.”
But how is Aziraphale supposed to believe that, when he can see him all the time?)
tl;dr –yes, this is better. I love the tragedy of it.
Heyyyyyy I’d really like to talk more about the ball, who’s with me.
Because for all its glitter, the ball is dark. No, seriously, it’s dark. It’s eerie, it’s disturbing, and the narrative doesn’t shy away from showing us just how much.
As in a classic fairytale, mortals are being spirited away into another realm to dance through the night. Here, however, we see exactly who is orchestrating the dance, and why.
And we empathize with him, but watching Aziraphale has never been so painful or so unsettling.
Nina arrives distraught and is immediately hit with the realization that she doesn’t feel distraught, even though she knows she should be feeling it. She confronts Aziraphale and he just tells her: oh yes! :) no long faces tonight! And she is disturbed throughout the ball, thinks she is losing her mind, questions and fights the enchantment… but from time to time, the enchantment still takes hold.
And just—
Aziraphale. Aziraphale, you do know that manipulating people is wrong, don’t you? You… do know that? And yes, of course, neither Crowley’s nor Aziraphale’s approach to morality is human. They are eldritch, they are otherworldly. It was Crowley who changed the paintball guns into real guns in S1, though of course, the humans still had choice in using them.
But the ball is still different.
We’ve never seen Aziraphale do anything quite so disturbing before, or go so obviously deep into his own delusion. There are moments during these scenes when even Crowley, permanently frustrated, is very nearly disturbed. (“Angel! What are you doing?” or “Making it rain is one thing, but a BALL?”)
I fully think that by that point in the story, Aziraphale is not all right. He is in an anxiety spiral, denying reality fiercely, obstinately, disastrously, not listening to any of Crowley’s hissed warnings. Yes, yes, he is giddy, he is in love. It’s so very important for him that everything go RIGHT this night, the night he gets to dance with Crowley. Is he even aware of everything he is conjuring up, of the enchantment he has woven? The humans who step through the doors of the bookshop change: their clothing, their mood, their speech patterns… By this point, is Aziraphale doing this consciously at all? Or is reality conforming to his expectations, forcing everyone into a replica of the nineteenth century while Aziraphale himself, distracted and smitten, works himself up to inviting Crowley to dance?
In the first few episodes, as fear and danger grow, as Aziraphale is faced with the danger specifically to Crowley (I don’t see why he would risk his existence for you, Shax tells him in the car), Aziraphale only denies reality all the more fiercely, only holds on to his plans tighter, only puts more force into them and exerts more control (really, rather like the archangels with their Great Plan).
And the ball, beautiful and otherworldly and eerie as it is, is also a dire warning.
In the morning, it will be Crowley, not Aziraphale, who will get told off for manipulating Nina and Maggie. Aziraphale won’t reflect on this. He won’t be forced to reflect, and Metatron will manipulate him in turn.
There is a plan to follow. The show must go on.
GOD the ball is so dark.
Ooh yes I LOVE this take! Thank you!!! The Ball gets creepier the more I watch it. And Aziraphale is genuinely unsettling in that scene.
Aziraphale is single-mindedly clinging to his version of reality. I will have a ball and it will make Nina and Maggie fall in love and everyone will be happy and safe and Heaven will leave us all alone. Everything will work out exactly as I need it to.
His sheer stubbornness is on full display here. Stubbornness to the point of delusion. Stubbornness to the point of harm. (He really is “just enough of a bastard” isn’t he?). And I love his stubbornness, I love his steel, but here we see how easily he can take it too far.
And it beautifully sets up his final decision! Where he decides that he’ll take over Heaven and it will bend to his designs. It will change for the better, he will make a difference, through the sheer force of his will. (And Crowley will come with him, because Crowley always comes with him, and everything will work out exactly as he needs it to).
And when Crowley says he doesn’t want that, when he says he wants them to be an us, in an altogether different way than Aziraphale has envisioned for them, what does Aziraphale do? Shake his head, plead with Crowley, beg him to see things his way, refuse to hear what Crowley is really saying. Grips his version of reality even tighter, and he can’t force Crowley to come with him (imagine if he could? I shudder to think), so he lets Crowley go.He lets his entire world go. For the sake of this grand vision the Metatron has given him.
That unnerving smile in the elevator? That’s him forcing his own mind to its new sole purpose. Don’t think of Crowley, he’s abandoned you. Don’t think of your bookshop, taken away. Don’t think of how your entire world has just fallen apart. You’re going to Heaven now. And you will remake it, make it properly Good.
I think we’ll see even more of this dark side to Aziraphale in season 3. Aziraphale doggedly ignoring that his whole world has fallen apart, single-mindedly focused on remaking Heaven. I think he’ll eventually reach some breaking point where he absolutely can’t ignore that any longer. And then I think he’ll turn that stubbornness into strength. Into an ability to stand on his own, stand firm in his morals and convictions, and not constantly second-guess himself and agonize over whether he’s doing the Right Thing. He’ll strike a true balance, figure out how to be soft without being helpless, and how to be steely without being stubborn. In short, he’ll figure out exactly who he is.
I’d call them dumbasses again, but they just escaped an exploding church and Crowley’s been shot by a nazi, so maybe I should give them a break just this once. >:3c
The drawing started as a joke, but now I can’t stop thinking about Crowley who has a desk in hell and paperwork to do, but he absolutely hates being in hell and hates officework even more. He puts it off as long as he possibly can, years or decades, usually to the point of a higher-up crackling their way into his radio program, threatening to come up to earth and drag his ass down into hell themselves.
But when he DOES go, he takes an ever-increasing determination to be as annoying as possible. He is the entire Malicious Compliance subreddit in a single being. He has to go shuffle papers around, but he’s not going to do so quietly. He emails everyone in hell (any demon who doesn’t use or understand computers gets a paper memo on their desk automatically) about pretty much everything he’s doing and how he’s doing it. He chugs coffee, red bull, and whisky the entire time. He basically turns every project or paper into an opportunity to annoy every demon in hell for the crime of making him come down to deal with it.
Each time, he ends up able to put the whole thing off for another couple decades, because nobody in hell actually wants him there anymore. But even with the other demons avoiding putting things on Crowley’s desk, he’ll inevitably have to come back down again at some point. But at least he has the courtesy to announce to all of hell when he has arrived… even if it means Beelzebub has to deal with a flood of completely unrelated field work requests from every demon in hell.
something else underrated about good omens I think is that it’s never been about how immortality drains the joy out of everything . it’s been 6000 years and these fools are still drinking and dining and seeing the world and listening to the nightingales and learning to dance and there’s always newness and challenge and joy and idk maybe it’s the mental illness or the crushing weight of the world talking but that’s just really precious to me
