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bowtiepastabitch · 8 months

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Let's talk costuming: Angelic Robes and The Unreliable Narrator

It's two am, I have to be up at six, but this has been fermenting in the back of my head for the past five hours I've spent doing homework and if I don't get it out I shan't sleep.

The costumes we see representing angelic character in Season Two are VASTLY different from those we see in Season One. (See my post on Aziraphale's Job Robe for an in-depth art history analysis of this individual costume piece.) In season one, the angelic flashback clothing we see is rather humble and uncomplicated. As all things in this show, this serves a very important narrative purpose.

Let's first compare these gorgeous gorgeous girls to their S1 counterparts, shall we?

Just look at the collar on that robe! In S1, we're introduced to Aziraphale in a very plain tunic-style robe with an unfinished neckline. Aside from a slight gold decoration and draping on the shoulders, this could easily be mistaken for rather primitive human garb. S2, by comparison, introduces angelic costume as non-ostentatious but still refined with a gold-trimmed gathered neckline and wide sleeves. The fabric itself, on a textile level, is much finer and softer. Overall, the robes give an air of innocence and angelic purity that is lacking from Aziraphale's S1 'fit. Let's look at another example:

Their Rome costumes are strewn with so many incredible details (check out this incredible post from 2019) but they still retain a bit of that historical ruggedness. Same for these:

The argument could be made for pure historical compliance, sure, but to claim a lack of anachronisms in this show would be a flat-out lie. No, S1 Crowley and Aziraphale are very distinctively human in their dress. The cloth has a wider weave, the ornamentation is minimal, all around it serves to highlight their fitting-in with humans and the humanization of their characters. They're 'going native,' as it were, no doubt about it.

So why, in S2, is Aziraphale suddenly showing up looking like he just popped out of a renaissance painter's wet dream?

Simple. Suddenly, Aziraphale isn't an angel among humans acting human, he's an angel being an angel doing angel things. We get to see the rest of the heaven gang in full angelic decadence as well, a bold departure from the starkness of 'modern' heaven. If this is, as many of you lovely folk have speculated, a series of flashbacks from Aziraphale's memory, the design choices designate very clearly Aziraphale's perception of himself as an angel. A perception which, mind you, would likely be influenced by later human ideas of angelic and heavenly aesthetics. As an unreliable narrator, Aziraphale is showing us not his actual wardrobe as an angelic being but his perception of his past self.

Crowley, too, is affected by this shift in dress. Bildad the Shuhite is everything S1 flashback Crowley is not: fashion-forward, smooth-talking, and impeccably well-dressed. We've got three different fabric textures (that's three times as many as any of his biblical S1 robing) and a definable silhouette. He's practically a fashionista.

If this were all taken as an objective narrative, the shift back to billowing-void peasant Crowley at Golgotha, where we next see her chronologically, would be strange to say the least.

So why is the costuming of the S2 pre-modern flashbacks so much more elaborate? There's three possibilities I can imagine for a change in costume design for any show:

Budget: this is highly unlikely an instant rule-out for me. I've seen what costumers can do on a shoestring budget, and besides the later period costumes make this demonstrably false.

Change in production design team: Technically possible, yes, but if there's one thing Good Omens does well between seasons it's continuity. I mean, they burned the fucking bookshop and then hand-painted tiles to recreate it exactly for the second season. This is not Harry Potter. This isn't it.

An intentional design: Everything, and I mean everything, in this show is intentional. While not everything the wardrobe team does is easily decodable (see Crowley's shapeshifting sunglasses) we've got a pretty comfortable bit of time to figure such things out. This is the only option that makes a lick of sense.

Wonderful, so we've established that this is a narrative choice.

So if it's a narrative choice, and it's distinct from the stylistic choices of Season One, then someone is lying to us. Or rather, we have an unreliable narrator somewhere along the way.

Most of the buzz on ye olde tumblr focuses on the idea of Aziraphale as narrator and memory-holder for S2, and that would certainly make sense from both a story and design. Of course he would see Angel Crowley as adorable and innocent and angelic (the hair is not helping his case either omg I love her), and of course he would see himself as grandly, exaggeratedly, almost dissonantly angelic at the major turning point in his faith.

If Crowley is narrating, then it calls into question why he would choose to remember himself this way. It holds a sort of nostalgic sadness, a memory of a joyful innocence permanently lost to God's cruelty. When we see Aziraphale in angelic splendor later, we're reminded again of what Crowley has lost. It echoes the aesthetic of his former angel self, the gathering and gold trim and bright white fabric, but also introduces a much more elaborate silhouette that reflects the shift toward heaven's new high-and-mighty attitude.

Finally, I'd like to point out that by contrast Season One focuses heavily on themes of humanity rather than ethereality. Narrated by God, no less, who probably has thoughts on their assimilation. While I think we can assume God to be a more reliable narrator than Crowley or Aziraphale, it's not out of the question that She would have her own story to spin about our Ineffable Idiots' shared history.

Ultimately, I think it's safe to say that whatever's going on in costume design is a Clue to the story we're being told in S2 and the one we will be told in S3.

#I would commit unspeakable crimes to work wardrobe for this show #just let me sew on some buttons and I'll be happy as a clam #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens season 2 #good omens meta #good omens analysis #good omens costumes #costume design #ineffable husbands #unreliable narrators #angel crowley #go2 #neil gaiman #nerd shit

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ao3cassandraic · 7 months

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Angels, demons, language, and culture part 4: Literalism and metaphor

Part 1 (angels are never children, and that matters), Part 2 (written language is mostly coded human rather than ethereal/occult in Good Omens), Part 3 (human writings contain useful social rules, which is partly why Aziraphale values them)

It may be time to restate @thundercrackfic's original questions?

How good is Aziraphale’s reading comprehension? How much does he understand subtext and metaphor? Because his behavior this season struck me with the impression that he didn’t really understand the books he collects. He’s clever at puzzle solving, and contains vast knowledge; but he always seems to take things at face value (when he’s not willfully misunderstanding), and refuses to give up black-and-white thinking, which would make it very difficult to analyze texts.

I think there are definite reasons to believe that reading comprehension of human literature (as defined in the question) is difficult for Aziraphale. One of them, as stated in part 1, is that Aziraphale doesn't get the tremendous advantage of childhood and its brain plasticity, which (among other things) is known to help with learning language. I'm not surprised his French is pretty bad. Learning another language from the ground up as an adult can be a cast-iron PITA (yes, experience speaking).

Another is simply that Aziraphale is not human. He's an outsider to humanity. He's fairly empathetic, and he does learn (unlike almost all his fellow angels!), but that leaves him without much of a yardstick to gauge when human literature is being literal and when it's not. There also seems to be a general angelic tendency to believe what they're told? Muriel definitely has it, Michael seems to as well, and even s1!Gabriel can only (and barely) muster skepticism on one occasion that I recall (the photo incident). I can see this making Aziraphale's reading, especially early in his existence on Earth, a good bit harder for him than reading is for, say, me. I'm used to unreliable narrators and figurative language and other sorts of clever fun productive lying. Aziraphale's acquaintance with lying is -- well -- his lies don't usually involve much metaphor? I suppose one could argue that "big sharp cutty thing" is a kenning, but not really in the human way of kennings because he only uses it the once.

Moreover, it appears (based on the s1e3 cold open, mostly) that he bops around the world quite a bit until finally settling in London (with the occasional jaunt elsewhere when he gets peckish). Nothing at his creation other than the auto-polyglottism She bestows on Her angels seems to give him any tools for navigating the bewildering variety of human cultures and customs... and literary metaphor (along with lots of other literary things) is commonly culturally-bound, culturally-specific.

I mean, if you read something (maybe in high school (or analogue) or college) that was written A Long Time Ago and/or Very Far Away, didn't it probably have a ton of what lit-critters call "apparatus" in it? Explanatory introductions, bibliography, and above all footnotes/endnotes/margin notes, many of which explain figures of speech that otherwise wouldn't make sense? Not to mention stuff like (just as an example) which local then-current political morass Dante threw this particular historical person in this particular circle of Hell for. Stuff that if you're not there, not embedded in the culture and the time, you're just plain gonna whiff. Hell, even Shakespeare editions have a ton of apparatus, and Shakespeare's in Early Modern English for pity's sake!

(Which is not to say that something has to be ancient or not-from-here to benefit from some apparatus. What is The Annotated Pratchett File if not apparatus for Discworld?)

So our peripatetic angel reading literature of whatever time he's actually in (which mostly won't have apparatus he can rely on for help) will often find himself not clued-in enough to a given human culture to completely understand its literary figures, metaphors included. And sure, that's going to lead to some misreadings and misunderstandings and overliteral takes! I can't read Dante's Inferno and understand everything in it! It takes Italianists years, if not decades, to do that!

And to make the problem even more difficult, literature feeds on itself, and on other arts as well. (Hi hi hello, comparative literature major, I totally studied various flows of literary and artistic influence in college and wouldn't trade that major for anything ever, it was the best major.) Think about all the time and effort GO meta-ists have spent of late teasing out callbacks and allusions and references in GO s2. That kind of work is also part of what Aziraphale has to do to understand fully what he reads... and it's a lot of work, even for a reader as voracious and possibly sleepless as our angel.

So yeah, in sum, I don't think Aziraphale has a perfect -- or even good -- track record on understanding what he reads. I adore him because he reads anyway! He never gives up on trying to understand! That's absolutely praiseworthy! (Crowley has something of an analogue to this in his love for human inventions. He doesn't understand how anything actually works, for the most part, but he loves it all the same.)

I think there's also an outstanding question about what Aziraphale gains from reading, a sense of social rules (Part 3) aside? Well, it's known that reading (especially fiction, especially fiction about characters who are Not Like The Reader) increases empathy. I don't know if Aziraphale reads specifically for that reason, but I'm absolutely willing to believe that fiction works on him that way, just as it does on us, even if he doesn't fully understand everything he reads. Did you fully understand everything you read as a child? Or even as an adult? I would never claim that of myself. Yet I certainly will claim that I picked up a lot of what I suppose I will call my character -- it runs deeper than personality -- and my general understanding of life (insofar as I have one) from reading.

If I had to answer why Aziraphale reads, though? I'd think back to my own childhood, as a bullied child with somewhat neglectful parents who held outsized expectations of me. Reading for me was peace, was escape, was enjoyment, was something to think about that wasn't my own unhappiness, was -- now and then, honestly not often enough -- seeing myself reflected in a book and feeling less alone. I hope and believe that human literature and music served similar purposes for our poor angel.

#good omens #good omens meta #aziraphale #language and culture

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thesherrinfordfacility · 8 months

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LWA: I was reading your conversation with @saryasy, and thinking that perhaps many of the problems we see in the narrative are solved if we ask ourselves, "but why /would/ they have these conversations?" This is not even a matter of character flaws. There are just a number of things that either they have no reason to discuss or they have had no opportunity to discuss, because, in TV!canon, they /have not spent much time together/.

This fandom tends to read Crowley's dialogue assuming that it doesn't contain discrepancies, outright self-contradictions, or ironies--I'm not the first person to notice this by a long shot--resulting in bizarre questions to Gaiman about why, for example, his multiple stories about his Fall don't add up. Answers: a) not as evil as Heaven thinks, not as good as he's making himself out to be, because b) he's an unreliable narrator. Given that S2 makes it canon that, yes, Crowley fought in a legion and wasn't hiding innocently in a corner during the Great War, the arc of the universe isn't bending towards Aziraphale discovering in S3 that Crowley was some sweet boo-boo who got done dirty through no fault of his own, but instead towards Aziraphale discovering that Crowley did something bad enough (hardly epic levels of bad, but bad enough) to disturb his assumptions about Crowley's innate goodness. I would argue that that would be much more important for the final phase of Aziraphale's character arc than "Heaven was unjust to Crowley when he didn't do anything wrong." Aziraphale /already/ knows that Heaven behaves badly; the whole point of his decision to accept the Metatron's offer is that he and Crowley, whom he thinks is good through-and-through, could become the "right people" and remake it to behave well. But what if Crowley really did do something that Aziraphale couldn't reconcile with "goodness"? How would he reconceptualize their relationship going forward?

I go off on that tangent because, as you know from my previous asks, I don't think we are supposed to take Crowley's assertions about their joint past at face value. In S1, Crowley's "How long have we been friends? 6000 years!" can only be taken with a straight face if you believe that Crowley has an extraordinarily shallow definition of friendship. They see each other so intermittently that in 537 AD Aziraphale can't even remember Crowley's name change (even though he flubbed it and then corrected himself immediately in Rome), and their interactions into the nineteenth century, far from being consistently friendly, let alone romantic, are all over the place. Crowley's conversation opener at Golgotha, "come to gloat?", is no better than Aziraphale's "so this is all your demonic work!" later on, and Aziraphale is so cold at the beginning of 1862 that I still wonder if something happened not explained by 1827. Even in 1601, when they've become close enough that Aziraphale can bring out the puppy-dog eyes, it's clear from Crowley's dialogue that their meetings are clandestine--they both expected to hide in the crowd at the Globe--and it's left ambiguous how many of their trade-offs in the Arrangement were arranged in person or by letter. In Book!Canon, where there's comparatively little surveillance, they appear to have had more in the way of casual interaction, but it's telling that the way that Crowley phrases it to himself in free indirect discourse is "an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend" (39). Gaiman's rewrite for the script eliminates the qualifiers and the ambivalent sense of distance, but the historical episodes ironize TV!Crowley's confidence.

And again, Crowley's attempt at a marriage proposal in S2 runs aground on multiple self-contradictions. We have just watched him flub a "Leave it to me/I got this" for the second time, in a way that was much less comical than the first (when the Bentley blew up), and his hyperbolic rewrite of Aziraphale's "we go back a long time" once again projects a consistency to their "team" contradicted by the combination of S1 and S2 historical episodes. As I said above, they don't even manage to be consistently friendly until quite late in the game. Neither of them appears to have an emotional "ah-ha!" moment until the twentieth century (definitely 1941 in Aziraphale's case, arguably 1967 in Crowley's). They haven't been concealing their feelings for each other for "their existence," because the feelings as such appear to be recent. The fandom likes to pity Crowley because Aziraphale took so long to fall in love, but if you start to break down what has been canonically represented about their relationship, a) Crowley wasn't in love either and b) to circle back to my opening point, their actual, one-on-one contacts with each other are relatively infrequent until the birth of the Antichrist. (That lines up with Book!Canon.) Crowley reimagines their relationship in a way that erases the inconvenient gaps, moments of dissension and outright hostility, and so forth. In his narrative, it is not a relationship that he and Aziraphale have to /make/, but something that /always has been/; he invents a stable past that they only need to confirm, rather than an uncertain future that they need to create.

So, here's the thing: even when we /do/ see them together, it's not an occasion on which they can have a serious personal conversation about, say, the Fall (the Flood? the Crucifixion? 1793? either 1862 or 1967? S1 1941? even in 1601, Crowley packs off immediately after they swap Edinburgh for /Hamlet/), or they have entirely different conversations that aren't personal (1827). Only Job and S2 1941 approach more profound personal questions, and S2 1941 still involves a lot of tap-dancing. We know they see each other outside of canon (Aziraphale's response to the miracle chime in the sushi restaurant suggests that there wouldn't have been anything untoward about Crowley appearing), but they don't seem to do so frequently, let alone live out of each other's pockets. Have they even racked up the equivalent of a couple of human years in each other's company before the Antichrist arrives? No wonder they're still in limerence! Moreover, they are still not having the aforementioned important conversations because neither of them thinks they need to. Crowley's whole schtick in their coffeeshop conversation, for example, is that he knows Aziraphale perfectly, and he therefore completely whiffs the thing that they absolutely need to be talking about (Aziraphale using him as a substitute for reporting to Heaven). But since, despite Crowley's protestations to the contrary, their relationship as a developing connection is uncharted territory, they don't know what they don't know until they hit their Mr. Darcy/Lizzie Bennet moment at the end of S2.

LWA hello hi good day to you!!!✨ im not going to pretend that this response is in any way coherent because im now once again firmly ensconced in the deepest depths of GO brainrot where i belong (thanks be to rob wilkins, madman) but lets give it a shot -

(for anyone else, LWA is referring to this rb here)

im not going to repeat everything you've said on how their relationship has developed through time (because let's be honest, it would only be regurgitating what you've already beautifully laid out in this and other asks) but it's so incredibly on point - looking back through their interactions, it's still very much a dance around each other, but one where they're steadily stepping closer and closer towards each other. they do not even start off on the same page as acquaintances, let alone having immediately fallen in love. the pre-fall scene is blatantly one-sided, as is then the eden scene (in the reverse), and then they basically just flit around each other until 1793, hopping in and out of each other's orbit tentatively and inconsistently.

they take digs at each other, snap at each other, and butt heads over their respective points of view on the great plan. as you say, job is arguably the closest they get to any actual cohesion between the two of them, but a) even then, it's done with some air of reluctance and hesitancy, and b) it appears to have sufficiently unnerved them both that they then, once again, break apart for 2533 years until golgotha (as canon shows us, anyway). there are definitely elements of fascination and intrigue between them, i don't think that can be denied, but like i said before - they're barely acquaintances this early on in their journey, let alone romantic interests or even friends.

so yeah - in all of this, where is there even the inclination or opportunity to truly talk to each other about anything personally meaningful? there isn't. and besides that, they conflate knowing each other for millennia with actually knowing the other person. to my mind, they don't - they know what they think they know about the other, the image of them that they have built in their heads, and conveniently ignore or shrug off any instances where they do or say something that doesn't conform to that image. this is crux of final fifteen for me, in terms of why they split apart - not any ulterior, external motive, but because they've been confronted with the fact that they do not know who the other truly is.

and i think a lot of that is a mess of their own individual makings. looking at the fall specifically, and the trauma that crowley is perceived to have suffered as a result. on this, i have a few specific thoughts, because i still do not think aziraphale was ever in a position where he would question the fall where crowley is concerned:

aziraphale does not know how falling works. we see this in job; he genuinely thinks that losing his angelic status is as simple as being escorted into hell by a demon. it doesn't even appear to cross his mind that the act would be more violent or sudden, even if just figuratively. crowley describes to the audience whilst drunk (and therefore id wager is more truthful than not, albeit not the whole truth) that he dived bombed into a lake of sulphur, but the story he gives aziraphale is a complete contradiction of this:

he tells aziraphale in 1862 that he "sauntered vaguely downwards"... !!!!!!!!!!! that is, as far as i can recall in TV!canon, the only thing he reveals to aziraphale about his fall altogether! he hammers home to aziraphale, specifically in 2019, that he wouldnt lie to him, not at least now at this stage in their friendship (ie. he proves in job that he has lied multiple times, but this is at a point where he has no reason to trust aziraphale, plus - in admitting that he lied, he is in fact telling the truth...) so why would aziraphale question this? why would he ever consider that crowley may not be wholly honest? it isn't until the final fifteen, given crowley's vehemence about being restored, that aziraphale would even consider that there is something more personal going on

this is a bit of a stretch, but we know that aziraphale has seen crowley's wings - we know from the book that demon wings are described as not being altogether dissimilar from angel ones, and are in fact better groomed. visually, we see this in the show too; they are black, but are whole and complete. there are no physical indications of pain, torture, or pain in the aftermath of the fall (ie. eden, although there is the caveat to be duely acknowledged that there is an indeterminate amount of time between the two points in the narrative), as crowley in this respect does not appear to bear any physical or indeed metaphysical scars

and lastly, just on a general point. crowley is incredibly nonchalant about hell in general; even when threatened with literal Bad Things in 1941, he brushes it off as if it's nothing. aziraphale knows that hell is bad, and crowley doesn't negate this, but he also outwardly underestimates hell at multiple points, and never gives any* indication, in front of aziraphale, that he fears them. he also never suggests at any point that he feels anything towards heaven other than derision and condescension - he's fearful of gabriel in eps1 and 5, but not in a way that aziraphale would think has anything to do with the fall; only that gabriel is a wanker (true) and would smite him on sight. aziraphale is by accounts rather gullible (see: not stupid, but sees the best in people), and trusts a little too easily; possible noone more so than crowley.

and then yeah, consideration to be paid that it makes way more sense for there to be a reason for crowley's fall that simultaneously is empathetic because whatever he did was meant with the best of intentions/started off innocently, but then devolved to the point that he made a really objectively awful decision that, when aziraphale finds out, it rearranges everything he thought he knew (rip lucifer theory, you are sorely missed). in this respect, i would have loved to have known what happens between the two below points we see in ep6, that conversation would potentially have been a hoot:

but regardless of the potential character development this poses... it's just more interesting? as the audience?

*now, i lie like a rug here, because for me there is only one point where maybe crowley comes close to admitting anything about the fall and how it affected him, or where the topic is even entertained between the two of them; the bandstand.

i will freely admit that i find this particular bit of dialogue difficult to interpret, but let's have a go - to me, from crowley's perspective after aziraphale 'prays' for god's forgiveness over crowley's words, crowley remarks that being forgiven is forever lost to him as a result of his very nature. he's quick to clarify this last bit - that it's as simple as just being a demon, not because he feels that he is unforgivable. there's very little emotion to be gleaned from this; he says it as a statement of fact, with little to no implication of sadness or wistfulness.

from aziraphale's point of view, this is blatantly false - because whilst god herself may not be able to directly bestow forgiveness on crowley, in crowley's estimations, a) he was an angel once, and that has meaning and holds weight (which crowley immediately rejects as being so long ago that it essentially no longer counts), and b) even if god doesn't, won't, or can't forgive crowley... well, aziraphale can. aziraphale will always see crowley as worthy of forgiveness. he utterly disregards any suggestion or notion that crowley doesn't actually want forgiveness, and chooses instead perhaps to see this as crowley not only being deserving of it, because he is good "through-and-through", but also that he is able to give that forgiveness instead (and does just that in s1 ep4 and the final fifteen, even if that forgiveness is layered with a hearty helping of 'fuck you').

but in terms of how this relates to the fall, and whether aziraphale should have questioned it further? well, yeah, it probably is a point where aziraphale should have thought more critically about what crowley was saying; but crowley doesn't come across as necessarily regretting it. he very quickly dismisses, same as in job, any element of having once been an angel, that it could almost be inferred as a point of pride. aziraphale doesn't see it that way, obviously, and in any case - it is hardly an opportunity to suddenly have a deep conversation about crowley's further thoughts and feelings on the matter... and even if it were, could we be certain that crowley would even engage? is it even appropriate at this point to discuss it, both in the context of the plot (i mean, crowley does then immediately launch into resurrecting the suggestion that aziraphale kill the antichrist 💀), and also their arrangement?

look, my end thought process is that aziraphale has no reason to question crowley about the fall, and his reaction/'trauma' from it. not only are they not close enough emotionally for the overwhelming majority of their narrative, as LWA robustly highlights, but crowley literally lies to aziraphale about his experience/doesn't give any indication beyond nonchalance about the whole thing (to the point that, brass tacks, im not even fully convinced that what crowley solely as a character feels about his fall even is trauma - and isn't instead just pure anger, bitterness, and resentment) and there is arguably no good or appropriate time to address it.

to me, that's like saying that if i had a traumatic incident in my childhood, but i told my best friend that my childhood was idyllic and wonderful, and acted accordingly at all points where we interacted, my best friend should still psychically know that i suffered something terrible...? that, imo, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. there are definitely points where aziraphale should have picked up on issues in crowley's life (being homeless, fear around gabriel, loneliness), im not disputing that, but equally if you downplay your life as something uneventful and "just fine", the person that routinely takes your lies at your word because you assert that you do not - in fact - lie to them, and exclusively endeavours to see the best in you, is not necessarily going to think to challenge it... and tbh, they shouldn't be held accountable for that, either. a relationship is a two-way street, sure, and should be built of reciprocal communication, but crowley keeps blocking the way for aziraphale to even consider doing that.

also, because robyn (@teddybearbutchh) once again is so much smarter than me and i will absolutely not take credit for this:

let's move onto 1862 and get the speculation hat on again.

so, to my mind, the narrative only suggests that crowley and aziraphale were overheard in the graveyard in 1827, particularly the comments about crowley being nice, crowley gets sucked down into hell, and then spat back out again going into 1862. crowley is shaken, makes contact with aziraphale, acts suddenly paranoid about being overheard, and asks for holy water. and aziraphale is miffed upon immediate arrival after the celestial equivalent of being ghosted for 35 years, only to be asked for the very thing that would threaten crowley's existence, putting not only crowley but aziraphale at risk too, and being a huge infringement on the tentative friendship they've built by this point.

and i say friendship because in 1827, aziraphale remarks that the only reason that crowley invites him to the graveyard, whilst they both coincidentally happen to be in edinburgh, is to show him the gabriel statue that would amuse him (and crowley was right - aziraphale is immediately tickled by it) - all indicating on some level that since 1793, they have gotten closer. add to this that crowley brought chocolates to his shop opening in 1800, and i think we can firmly say that 1793 appears to have springboarded a Development in their relationship, something that has been in the works since formalising the arenagement in 1601.

but there are things that contradict this slightly - book!crowley sleeping through most of the 19th century, for instance (except a visit to the loo in 1832). so we can surmise that if the show canon follows this too, crowley was indeed not in hell for as long a time as we'd otherwise infer. but for him to act so paranoid, and scared, and all but beg aziraphale for The Weapon, makes me think that whilst it wasn't a long time, it was a recurring issue. was crowley repeatedly brought down into hell, to report in what he was up to, to ensure he was playing by the rules that we now know exist (the internal code)? they presumably do not know how 'deep' his affiliation with aziraphale runs, given the reaction to their fraternisation in 1941 (and evidence of it being worthy of being brought before the dark council), so to my mind it's moreso that crowley isn't being very demonic. this would support why he suddenly has such adverse reactions to aziraphale's compliments from 1941 onwards. (and says more about possible trauma at the hands of hell, than alternatively at the hands of heaven...)

but in terms of how this relates to aziraphale, and why he is so cold in 1862 - if we consider as i said above that they are indeed getting closer by this point, if crowley they hypothetically turned around to aziraphale at some point between 1827 and 1862 and told him to stay away (again... *deep breath* to protect aziraphale without telling fuck all as to why), possibly even saying something deliberately hurtful to push aziraphale away for good, then aziraphale's behaviour would absolutely make sense. and would give even deeper context to "fraternising?!" / "well, whatever you wish to call it."

another thing that i thought of; furfur's little handy field guide to angels that walk the earth:

now to the best of my knowledge, the illustration of aziraphale is a rework of gustave doré's "an angel appearing to balaam"... let's run with the notion that in the canon that that is the same image; ie. that aziraphale was in fact that angel. i can't find an exact date for the illustration, but id tentatively suggest maybe around the 1850s? 1860s? the book goes up to confirming aziraphale as a bookseller, so we know it's definitely as recent as 1800, in any case. and then this excerpt:

which im definitely not the first to have highlighted is suspiciously well spelt, compared to "AVVOID" literally just above it, and refers to crowley by his chosen name (compared to the scribble remarking that it's detestable that he even did). so, we can assume this probably was indeed crowley that wrote it. but did he write it because hell was scheming some kind of harm on aziraphale in the 1800s? and crowley kept away, rebuffed him, to keep them both safe? only made contact with him when he hit his breaking point, necessitating the holy water? definitely plausible.

right, and then to round off: ive debated internally as to what crowley's 'aha' moment is, as to me it's not hugely clear, but tbh... i think you've answered exactly this when talking about crowley's skewed perception of how long he and aziraphale have been friends. as you go on to say, there's no reason why crowley wouldn't think the same when it comes to loving aziraphale, either. so, i think it's potentially a combination of moments - 1941, 1967, bookshop fire, "to the world", and then all culminating in what nina says to him about "love lives" in ep5. it's not quite the logical, cut-and-dry 'aha' moment that aziraphale has in 1941, but after speaking to nina, i also, same as you, think crowley instead scans back through all of their time together (as limited as it is 💀), and instead thinks, "oh, ive loved him all this time.", when objectively that is not the case at all.

and that's even more awful when you consider what he actually says to aziraphale right at the beginning of the confession:

(paying heed that crowley's confession might have been slightly different had he spoken first... but im not sure it would have been at all.)

because... a lot of this? is not... strictly true, not imo anyway. but the fact that crowley believes it, thinks that they have always been this way, and this confession was intended to just be sealing the deal, the "marriage proposal", as you put it (which after last night's Revelations is now giving me heartburn, thanks LWA💕), on what he now considers to have always been the case, is troubling. and it suddenly makes aziraphale dumbfounded expression made so much more sense... because it doesnt make sense. to my mind, crowley doesn't actually have an 'aha' moment, but confuses what he feels for aziraphale now with what he thinks he's felt all along, and i do wonder how much aziraphale knew that.

#good omens #ask #i also wanted to talk about the bit where aziraphale replaces heaven with crowley bc i feel theres a bit of nuance to discuss there #i dont think its as black and white (ha) as that - plus this response was once again very crowley centric so maybe a topic for another ask?

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ao3commentoftheday · 4 years

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I’m not 100% sure of the etiquette for “whisper” comments, so please ignore this submission if posting “whisper” LLF comments on a comment blog goes against the spirit of that type of comment. But legitimately, this is the most amazing comment I have ever gotten, on any work I have ever written. I was super nervous about posting this particular fic, because it was a lot of firsts for me in terms of published fic – first time I ever posted a fic with explicit sex, first time I ever wrote about ace-related stuff, longest fic I’ve ever posted, etc. I cannot even express how happy this super long, amazingly detailed comment made me. I’ve been in a bit of a writing slump lately, but legitimately, this may end up being what it takes to get me out of it. Thank you so much commenter – you’re amazing, and you’ve inspired me to try and write more on my WIPs in this fandom!

Comment text:

Just listened to the podfic and _oh the Feels_ and you just used that switching POV so, so well. That moment when it went from Crowley POV to Aziraphale POV and he was over the moon about sex with Crowley and it was just so _heartbreaking_ and just ‘How could you!?!’ and all the feels, all the feels, you laid out this story _so well_ with all the unreliable narrator and how they _think_ they have things figured out about what the other wants/is on about, multiple times and they are just _so wrong_ but also _why_ they think that way and also Aziraphale’s moment when:

[“…Two hundred years,” Aziraphale choked out, finally, to no one at all. “Oh, I’m the worst sort of fool, aren’t I.”]

and then on the flip side you also have Crowley going:

[“You– You’ve been letting me fuck you… all this time… because you wanted a cuddle?!” Crowley voice was a strangled croak, and Aziraphale thought he looked… oh dear, he looked horrified.

“Well, yes,” said Aziraphale, and then immediately tried to correct as Crowley noticeably paled. “I mean, no! I mean… Oh, I don’t know, Crowley – I’m terribly sorry.”

“You’re sorry?!” said Crowley. “I’m the one who– who– Oh, Satan, I need to sit down for this.”]

also I _love_ the way you and the podficcer had me cracking up laughing in this whole awkward, serious, laying everything on the table scene, that covers hard topics but is also funny and so, so touching and just so _Them_. Second hand embarrassment is something that really squicks me and I did not have that at all throughout this scene or any of the scenes and I just got to enjoy it in full and have an amazing time at it and it was all just so brilliantly done. <3

Also the internalised acephobia which played out _so well_ thought the story first we had Crowley pushing himself and then we had Aziraphale sort of taking a walk in Crowley’s shoes in this unexpected twist on things but it’s also completly from his own perspective. And then we have the club and I was sort of waiting and hoping for someone to gently take Aziraphale by the hand and explain things to this poor lost soul. Which on reflection is really funny because of the role reversal but also just being like 'I want to take this precious child and explain things to him right now.’

And then there was the moment when he 'figures it out’ and realises it was only with Crowley he liked it (sex/cuddles) and he starts mentioning of Love and okay, okay that could be seen as a step forward but I was mentally screaming at him that 'God Damn it Aziraphale if you start chalking this up to just being a 'Love is Pure and sex is better with those you love’ thing, so help me!! … I mean he wouldn’t be _wrong_ exactly but he wouldn’t be _right_ either. Someone _please_ explain Demisexual etc. to him already.’

And just _all the feels_ because the _readers_ know what’s going on but the characters _certainly don’t_ and it’s awesome the way they have to muddle thought feelings and confusion and misunderstandings and Crowley’s frustration at being 'married’ to Aziraphale being too painful close and too far from what he wants while Aziraphale thinks one thing and then realises that 'Oh. Oh I have been _such a fool_’ and Crowley’s horrified reaction to it all coming out that they have _both_ been letting the other use them for sex (or rather that _Aziraphale_ has been letting him use him for sex). And that whole final scene and all the scenes in between and the journey they took to get there and the hand holding that meant nothing but also _everything_ after the apocalypse that wasn’t and just :flails

This was _awesome_ thank you. <3 :D

–

Link to fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776961

#ao3commentoftheday #submission

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codicesandflora · 5 years

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hellsingmongrel replied to your post “I just realized something… Maybe God has acknowledged that Crowley is...”

Honestly, my headcanon is that God knew she would need them together, fighting against their opposing sides in the end, so Crowley didn't particularly Fall, he was PUSHED. On a personal level, it seems cruel, but she knew he and Aziraphale would be happy together, in the end, and Crowley's suffering would mean that the rest of the world could saved from the Armageddon. In the end, it was the kindest option for everyone, Crowley included, even if he doesn't know it.

This leads into something I’ve been thinking a lot about: the question of free will of the characters versus everything being according to God’s “Ineffable Plan”.

Personally, I think another word I’d use to describe God’s plan aside from “ineffable” is “fluid”. It’s not static. It changes with each action, each decision, and each outcome.

And yes, this is still compatible with Free Will. There does seem to be this pattern of God setting up the choices and then people making them. Then God adjusts Her plans accordingly which leads to the next set of choices. There’s contingency after contingency set aside for every possible permutation of decisions made due to free will. Thus, it truly is an ineffable plan because of the sheer complexity involved with having a plan that is both dynamic and goal-oriented.

In that sense, Aziraphale was right. There has to be choices, that is at the core of the Ineffable Plan and is the intent behind God’s directives. He was mistaken, however, in thinking that this plan only applied to humans....

Because, I think God extended Free Will to Her servants in Heaven as well. Some of them used their Free Will to focus on obedience and strict adherence to God’s commands (in the letter of them if not in the spirit) and would include people like Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, etc. Others decided that their own will gave them the right to decide what is moral and “good” without anyone else’s input which is why Lucifer, Beelzebub, Hastur and their lot decided to stage a rebellion on Heaven (and ended up Falling).

Then you have Aziraphale and Crowley. Two people who demonstrate that God didn’t have a straightforward plan for all of Her celestial children.

My thought is that Crowley should be considered a bit of the classic Unreliable Narrator. Is he the sort of malevolent evil that Hastur or Beelzebub embody? No...but I don’t think he was completely innocent either. He says that he “only asked questions” or “only hung around the wrong people”. But I think he has a blind spot to his very real flaw of carelessness. He does things, sometimes brilliant things (well, brilliant in the sense that he’s good at his job), but he relies more on his wits to smooth out any difficulties rather than thinking carefully about the consequences of his actions beyond his immediate goal.

It’s why he gets foiled by his own demonic plots such as taking down the phone system (making it harder for him to get in contact with Aziraphale when he needed to) and the plot for the M25 (making it harder for him to leave London later on...not to mention the grand scale suffering humans experiences versus the low levels of bad vibes he had planned on). This even extends to his relationship with Aziraphale where he makes the (unintentional. granted) mistake of giving the most backhanded compliment he could (”how can someone so clever be so stupid?”)....which is the exact same sort of terrible treatment Aziraphale gets from Heaven All. The. Time.

This is why Crowley simply could not stay in Heaven. A being who is supposed to act as God’s agent cannot just “wing it” for the sake of getting things done with no thought of how they are getting done. I agree that Crowley did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards because he was never going to be able to direct his free will into complete submission. It is cruel in some ways, but forcing Crowley to squash the qualities that make him not compatible with Heaven is another, worse sort of cruelty.

With Aziraphale...it’s a whole other problem. Because, I think, he does have questions and did have them all along. I firmly believe that is part of why he’s far more welcoming to Crowley than other angels would be. It’s not just because he’s fundamentally good (and tries harder to hold to the spirit of God’s directives than his associates), it’s also because Crowley asks the questions that he thinks a lot about himself. He knows Heaven’s rhetoric for every occasion and will recite it to Crowley, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t wondered if Heaven is getting it right.

This gets to the heart of what I think Aziraphale’s main flaw is: his inflexibility. It’s a trait that doesn’t attract too much attention in Heaven as long as you’re staying with in the company line. However, it does make things so much more difficult for Aziraphale because, once he decides he is acting in the Best Interests of God, Crowley and all the humans on the Earth, he is extremely reluctant to revise that mindset....even when he makes himself suffer because of it....

Thus, he sticks to rhetoric he’s told in Heaven because he’s decided that God’s Will is good and so he shouldn’t question it. He knows that angels are supposed to consort with demons, so he draws a line between himself and Crowley and won’t allow himself to question if it’s necessary (and in spite of the fact that it’s definitely not what he wants and probably isn’t what he needs).

Even during Armageddon when so much is at stake, Aziraphale is still hesitant to go against everything he’s decided on a long time ago even though another part of him knows that he can’t just do what he’s always done. When he does yield enough to go along with Crowley’s schemes, he makes his own decision about how he’s going to handle it (”I’ll stop the Antichrist from coming into his powers, and if I can’t, I’ll ask the Almighty to fix things.” “I’ll keep up the Agreement, but I’ll also make sure to keep it on my head if anything goes wrong”.) Consequently, he wouldn’t confide in Crowley when he should have and he created far more heartbreak than ever needed to happen.

This is why Aziraphale needed to go to Earth. He simply has too many questions for someone so inflexible and is deliberately, consciously, too soft to execute the unyielding rule of law that Heaven often hands out. Whereas, on Earth (and with Crowley) he can learn about the necessity of not just questioning but also acting on those questions when needed.

Ultimately, Crowley and Aziraphale are the same (questioning the status quo, not really belonging in Heaven or Hell), but also different (one acting recklessly, one too paralyzed to act). They complement each other and are stronger together than apart.

In the end, I agree that it was God’s Ineffable Plan for them to be together and save the world, but they still had to rise above their flaws and act on their own free wills in order to get there.

#hellsingmongrel #good omens #replies #crowley #aziraphale

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