ghibliomens

[ghibliomens]

This sucks. This sucks so much. I have been, up until recently, what I call a fandom lurker. I’ve written lots of fanfiction, made lots of fanart, but I never felt confident enough to share any of it. It was genuinely because of the warmness of the Our Flag Means Death fandom that I actually started sharing my art and my writing.

This show means so much to me. I watched it during the process of figuring out I was nonbinary (Thanks partially to Vico) and during a huge battle with depression. I found comfort in the queerness and the lightheartedness of the show. I adored its exploration of real emotions and real mental health issues. The truth is, all of us DESERVED this representation. That kiss in season one changed the way the LGBTQ+ community started to view queer media. If something like this could be done, it wasn’t enough for other shows to give us vague hints and then kill one of them off in the end. We DESERVED full love stories like what Our Flag gave us. And we deserved a goddamn season 3. But here we are, with queer shows still getting cancelled despite success and rave reviews because we don’t matter to corporations. But this show will always matter to us.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s3 #david jenkins

[ghibliomens]

Crowley Rejecting Aziraphale’s Offer Was Complicated

Most common consensus amongst Good Omens fans, especially after first watch of THE scene, is that Crowley got most of us kids in the divorce. He’s the most easily understandable. But there’s a lot going on with him in this scene.

1)Crowley is really goddamn tired. Coming to this from an Aziraphale apologist side, there’s a lot of confusion over why Crowley consistently attempts to run away from heaven and hell, leaving humanity to their own devices, instead of wanting to help. The answer is he’s tired of putting up with heaven and hell’s bullshit. He doesn’t see either side with rose-tinted glasses. He sees both as corrupt forces egging each other on in an even more corrupt system that would have to be entirely dismantled for any change to be seen. He and Aziraphale have already been trying to clean up their messes for the majority of their careers, and frankly, he’s done. Especially after Armageddon, he and Aziraphale have done enough. Why shouldn’t they run off together and finally get some well deserved rest? Gabriel and Beelz got to do it, and they were part of the problem! 

2)He knows Aziraphale’s plan won’t work. This is probably the main reason we all agree with him. He’s 100% the rational one in this situation. Aziraphale can’t fix heaven. The entire system has to be dismantled and Crowley knows the Metatron is manipulating Aziraphale. It’s obvious that the Metatron won’t actually let Aziraphale do anything. Aziraphale’s hopes are futile, and Crowley doesn’t want to see him hurt. He just wants to be happy with him.

3)He doesn’t see why Aziraphale still ties his sense of self to heaven. Crowley says multiple times: He doesn’t see them as two different sides anymore. They are, or they should be, “an us”. No longer belonging to heaven and hell, but to each other. To him it means love and rebellion and all of those things he thinks he and Aziraphale have been fighting for all this time. Turning that down feels like a romantic rejection to Crowley. He doesn’t see that Aziraphale still struggles with having been told all his life that he NEEDS to be a good angel to amount to anything at all because Aziraphale didn’t tell him that. Just like he didn’t tell Aziraphale that he’s grown beyond being an angel, or even a demon.

In the end, Crowley kisses Aziraphale in a last ditch effort to show Aziraphale exactly what he thinks this argument is about. It’s about the two of them, finally being in love and getting their rest. He doesn’t mean for it to shock Aziraphale so badly or for it to appear like an emotional dagger with which to end the argument.

(Despite Aziraphale’s shock he still reads “I forgive you” as a condemning rejection, and why shouldn’t he? He didn’t hear “do it again” as much as Aziraphale wanted to say it.)

#aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #good omens

[ghibliomens]

Aziraphale Leaving Crowley Was Complicated

Aziraphale left for two main reasons.

1)Aziraphale left to make heaven better. This is often argued as being a selfless decision by Aziraphale apologists, and as one of them, I think part of this decision was selfless. He very much wants to make sure humanity doesn’t have to fear heaven. One of the main reasons Crowley’s pleas to run away with him never appealed to Aziraphale is because it implied they would just leave humanity behind to suffer, and Aziraphale is against that idea. Additionally heaven has also been a danger to Crowley, and that is basically unforgivable. He wants to make sure heaven isn’t looming over Crowley’s shoulder anymore.

But he also wants heaven to be what he always imagined they were in the first place. Good. This goes back to his religious trauma. He isn’t blind to what heaven is. The way they acted during armageddon shook him. He thought they would care, would want to stop the deaths of so many people, and they didn’t. He was horrified. But he doesn’t know who he is if he isn’t a good angel, and he doesn’t know how being a good angel is even possible if heaven isn’t Good. So making heaven Good fixes, in his eyes, this gaping wound inflicted on him during armageddon. He gets to fix the problems in heaven, chalk it up to poor management, and regain what little sense of self he has despite the fact that it was actually heaven who always told him he wasn’t a good angel.

2)To reinstate Crowley as an angel. Aziraphale nearly turned the Metatron down flat with mumblings about his bookshop and not wanting to leave earth, but then the Metatron pulled the Crowley card. Well, Crowley could be reinstated as an angel and Aziraphale could work with Crowley at his side! Problem solved! To Aziraphale this was huge. Not only would he not have to leave Crowley behind, but he could right what Aziraphale always saw as a wrong. Crowley is too good to be a demon, and heaven is Good so there’s no way they should have let him fall. Therefore, his fall must have been a huge misunderstanding and now Crowley could return to being the excited angel who was so happy to create galaxies. He failed to see that righting this wrong would effectively strip Crowley of who he’s become since the fall. He doesn’t want Crowley to change. In fact, he just assumes Crowley would be the same as an angel, just maybe a little less grumpy. But being a demon is part of who Crowley is. It’s definitely Aziraphale’s bad for missing that.

I feel so bad for Aziraphale because he made his decision because he believes that it’s right and he wants to believe that heaven can still be good. But he’s also struggling with his heaven-inflicted-trauma and self-confidence so much that he kind of projected that onto Crowley, and in the process, accidentally implied he wanted Crowley to change who he is. He only has good intentions here but the fact that he hasn’t communicated any of the issues he’s been having to Crowley (and Crowley hasn’t communicated his own point of view to Aziraphale) destroyed them all in the end.

(Also, Aziraphale not only breaks up with Crowley, but is told he is preparing for what is essentially another armageddon BEFORE he gets on the elevator. That’s most of his reasoning for going to heaven out the window. He literally just gets on in the end because his heart is broken and his hope that things can be different is all he has left.)

#aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #good omens

[ghibliomens]

More Illustrator art! Every time I sit down to do art it ends up being these two. I'm not mad about it, though.

#aziraphale #crowley #good omens #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #aziracrow

[ghibliomens]

Love how I can do Graphic Design work and still can't get these two out of my head.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #neil gaiman #terry pratchett

[ghibliomens]

I'll stop sketching them when I can stop thinking about them. Which will be never.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #neil gaiman #terry pratchett

[ghibliomens]

I just have to address this whole "Did everyone forget Aziraphale was going to kill Adam" vs "Crowley loves kids and probably saved as many as possible during the great flood" conversation because I'm seeing Aziraphale get very mischaracterized.

Aziraphale didn't want to kill Adam, and it wasn't his idea either. The first time it's mentioned that Aziraphale could kill Adam, Crowley's the one who suggests it. (At the time he suggests he kill Warlock because that's who they believe is the antichrist.) Aziraphale is immediately appalled by the idea and mentions that he really isn't sure he'd be able to kill anyone anyways. Then they have a huge argument about it at the bandstand where they, unsuccessfully, try to get each other to kill Adam. When Aziraphale inhabits Madame Tracy's body and prepares to kill Adam, it's very much a last resort. When it comes time for him to kill Adam, he hesitates again. He asks Crowley if they could maybe just wait. Crowley then has to encourage Aziraphale to fire the gun, and then, as we all know, Madame Tracy makes the whole thing obsolete.

This really isn't to say Crowley is the bloodthirsty one. He definitely encourages Aziraphale to kill Adam because he knows he wouldn't be able to do it himself. He even tells Aziraphale "I'm not personally up for killing kids" when he's trying to convince him at the bandstand. But Aziraphale isn't up for it either. Good Omens 2 shows him completely distraught when he thinks Crowley's going to go through with killing Job's kids. Tears in his eyes and everything. And did you see his face when he held the tumor from the little boy in episode 3?

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #neil gaiman #terry pratchett