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#fallen-gabrielle thinks about something
fallen-gabrielle · 6 months
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CALLING TO ALL MY FOLLOWERS, and everyone else who will see this
Hello friends!
I started my Youtube channel, my current professional project, and I desperately need the minimum of 1'000 subscribers to monetize my content. I'm not exactly at ease with this, but it would be really kind of you all if you go subscribe to it. As of it now, I only have 25 subscribers o_o' Here on Tumblr, you are over 500 people following me, that would be a great start <3
I make mainly let's plays, but I will make other kinds of videos based on my favorite fandoms, Codename: Kids Next Door, Pokémon, Legend of Zelda... I do all the work: recording, editing, drawing the thumbnails, all that jazz. For exemple, I will make my own fake Pokémon region with my fakemon.
Don't only like/reblog this post, please support me on Youtube as well! And for those who see this post as part of a reblog, don't be shy and subscribe too! I've been dreaming for that project for over three years now, so I need the help of everyone to make this dream come true!
Thank you all in advence for your understanding and subscribing 💙💙💙
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muzzleroars · 1 year
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bundling up a war machine and a fallen angel so they don’t get cold in hell
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irispurpurea · 8 months
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So here’s what I’m thinking.
Good Omens was about Crowley being charged with delivering the Antichrist to earth and overseeing his upbringing.
The sequel, then, would’ve been about Aziraphale being charged with bringing about the Second Coming. A nice parallel to the first book.
But in order to get there, we would need a reason as to why it was Aziraphale, not Gabriel, who was charged with that. Traditionally it would’ve been Gabriel, right?
So Gabriel had to go away somehow, and Aziraphale had to become Supreme Archangel after rejecting and being rejected by Heaven. Hence, season 2, connecting the two stories.
And I love how Season 2 did this.
(and I have a lot of thoughts, so putting the rest of this long post beneath the cut)
First of all, “Gabriel leaves his job because he’s fallen in love with Beelzebub” is so wonderfully ludicrous, I love ineffable bureaucracy so much. Truly, this was an amazing choice.
But more important is how we get to Aziraphale replacing him. And this, the show’s way of taking us to that point, is brilliantly done. 
Because the whole season is about Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship. How it began, how it evolved, what it is now. We establish, throughout history and in the present day, that they love each other, that they’re the most important person to each other in the universe. That they’d do anything for each other, to keep each other safe, to protect this precious, peaceful, fragile existence they’ve carved out for themselves. That they’re partners, and they’ve denied that for thousands of years but they are and especially now that Armageddon’s done there’s no need or use denying it. Now they’re meddling in a relationship that mirrors their own instead of talking about their feelings like adults. Now they’re trying to solve a mystery that endangers them both because they’re desperate to protect each other from harm and preserve the life they’ve build together. The entire show builds towards their mutual realization that, oh, I need to tell him that I love him. This has gone on long enough, we need to sort our shit out. I want us to spend the rest of our lives together and obviously that means we need to —
— run off together, get away from Heaven and Hell, and live a quiet life on our own.
— take charge of Heaven together, rebuild it into an actual force for good, work to preserve this beautiful world and humanity we’ve come to love.
Wait, what?
Oh. Wait. The whole season was not only about their love, but also about their fundamentally opposing philosophies. We’re shown time and again that Aziraphale still thinks this is a problem of bad angels, bad leadership, while Crowley believes the entire system is broken and shouldn’t exist at all. Aziraphale sees Crowley as the exception to the “Demons are evil” rule, and Crowley knows that there’s no such thing as “Angels” and “Demons,” that that distinction was artificially created. Aziraphale thinks Crowley is Good despite being a Demon; Crowley knows he’s good because he wants to be, because that’s who he is. 
Aziraphale saw Crowley’s pure wonder and joy at creating the Nebulas, and hated the thought that that could get taken away from him if he asked too many questions. Crowley just wanted his stars to get a chance to be born, and hated that God would destroy something so beautiful for the sake of an Ineffable Game.
Aziraphale believes the system is broken and needs to be fixed. Crowley believes the system shouldn’t exist at all.
And they progressed throughout history, finding common ground with each other, falling in love with each other, seeing each other, and still holding onto these fundamental differences. At the end of their escapades, Aziraphale feels satisfied that they’ve been a force for Good, the real Good, the Good that must exist despite Heaven not seeming to uphold it. And Crowley feels satisfied that they’ve defied the system, and made the world a little bit better, all on their own, not Angels or Demons, just themselves. 
Then, Armageddon didn’t happen, and then Season 2 happened, and Gabriel and Beelzebub went away. And Crowley and Aziraphale finally saw their chance:
Aziraphale saw a chance to rebuild Heaven into the force for Good it should actually be, and took it. And Crowley being with him was important to that choice. Because the Metatron told him that he chose him for the job because of his understanding of humanity, and Crowley is intimately tied to that understanding. He and Crowley could do Good together, as they’ve always done, because that is what they’ve always done, isn’t it? Done the good thing, the right thing, even against the direct orders of their head offices? Now they can be the head office, and ensure that Good is done. Crowley can be an Angel again, with that pure and open wonder that Aziraphale so loves, and he won’t ever have to deny that he’s kind, but he can just be who he really is. And most importantly, they can be together.
Crowley saw a chance to follow in their bosses’ footsteps, to reject Heaven and Hell altogether and live a quiet life together, not as an Angel and a Demon, but as themselves. He could spend the rest of his eternal life with Aziraphale, with their plants and their books and their dinners, and they could just exist, the way humans do. He and Aziraphale could spend time with each other, love each other, as they’ve always done, because that is what they’ve always done, isn’t it? Sought each other’s company, wanted each other, relied on each other, been a team, been partners, even under threat from their head offices? Now, they can say fuck you to those head offices, and love each other freely and openly. Aziraphale can breathe, he can live, with that passion and ferocity that Crowley so loves, and he won’t ever have to deny himself what he wants, or that he wants at all, but he can just be who he really is. And most importantly, they can be together.
They have the same priorities, when it comes to each other. They’re on the same page, crystal clear. They’re in love, and they want to spend the rest of their existences with each other. They each ache to see the other restricting themselves, denying who they really are, because they each love who the other really is so much. They just want to be together. But they have fundamentally different understandings of what exactly the obstacle is that’s standing in their way.
And that is how Aziraphale can fall in love with Crowley over 6000 years, and still choose to become the Supreme Archangel of heaven. That is what makes season 2 so essential to setting up the sequel plot in season 3. That is the answer to the question, why is Aziraphale the one charged with bringing about the Second Coming? What could make Aziraphale actually want to replace Gabriel? Answer: the promise that Crowley could come with him, and they could be together. Because he loves Crowley so much and he thought they could have everything they ever wanted, and he was furious and heartbroken when Crowley turned him down. But he was wrong.
And really, Crowley sees things more clearly than Aziraphale does. It’s Aziraphale who’s going to have to do a lot of growing in Season 3. He’s going to have to learn that Crowley’s right, the system is broken beyond repair, and it shouldn’t exist at all. He’s going to have to admit to himself that all this time, all these millennia, he wasn’t thwarting Evil or striving to do Good, he was seeking Crowley’s company, because he wanted Crowley. He’s going to have to admit to himself that Crowley is Crowley and has always been Crowley, not an Angel, not a Demon who’s really an Angel at his core, but just Crowley. And that is what Aziraphale has always loved about him, and has always yearned for himself. And that he is not an Angel either, nor does he need to be, in order to be good. That he and Crowley can just be, they can just exist together, and it doesn’t have to be sanctioned by Heaven or condemned by Hell for it to mean something.
So we’ll begin season 3 with Aziraphale running Heaven, in charge of its biggest project, the Second Coming, but deeply feeling Crowley’s absence. He’ll be righteously angry one moment — Crowley left him, Crowley refused his offer to be together, to build a new kind of life together — and desperately sad the next — he just misses Crowley, needs him here, how is he supposed to do this without him? How could he have got this so wrong?
(I don’t know where we’ll begin with Crowley... I hope he’ll have made some friends, at least? Gone to stay with Newt and Anathema? But probably he’ll be even more depressed than he was starting this season. :( somebody please give him a hug. Or maybe he’ll just be asleep in his flat).
And then [something happens, because something always happens] and the plan goes wrong somehow, and against all odds and either of their wishes they’re both forced to work together to put it right. A nice inversion of the dynamic of season/book 1, where instead of them being on equal footing and agreeing to work together as part of their Arrangement, Aziraphale is the leader of Heaven and Crowley is nobody, and they’re forced to work together against their will. 
And over the course of the story, everything between them will finally come out, and they’ll ally themselves with humanity against the forces of Heaven and Hell, and we’ll end with them... meeting in the middle, somehow, I think. Not the quiet life out of everyone’s way that Crowley quite envisioned, and definitely not as the new commanders of Heaven, shaping the course of the world. Something like the life they’ve been leading all along, full of quiet moments where they can just exist together, and moments where they can have adventures and work together to put some good into the world.
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amuseoffyre · 8 months
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I’m emotionally ruined by the fact that Aziraphale hasn’t broken out of his heavenly conditioning. He still loves doing good. He gets happy when people tell him he’s an angel and says “it’s nice to tell people about the good things you’ve done now that I’m not reporting to Heaven”. He will literally put himself in harm’s way to make sure he does the Good and Right thing.
It can’t be understated how much Heaven’s influence still impacts on him. Aziraphale has been created, ordained and conditioned to believe it and he can’t just switch it off or walk away. Crowley didn’t get the choice. He was Fallen. He was kicked out and - as per the rules of toxic and terrifying cults - Aziraphale was always told for centuries and millennia, Falling was the worst thing that could happen. If you’re bad, you’ll be forced out. If you’re bad, you’re not one of Us. You’re one of Them.
When he did something he perceived as Right (ie. saving innocent children from death), but knew it wasn’t what Heaven intended, he broke down. Crowley found him a crying, shaking wreck afterwards because he was so convinced he was Evil. He was so convinced he was going to be dragged to Hell and that he was now a demon because he did one thing that saved some children but because it wasn’t a specific directive, it was Bad.
It shapes so much about him and it’s why the whole series looks like he’s having so much fun doing silly human things, but there’s this brittleness to it. He’s happy and excited and he’s doing his human-life things and having a lovely time, but he’s also constantly stressed because of the Need To Do Good. From the moment Gabriel turns up, he’s a nervous wreck and is trying to hide it by Doing Good, by Solving the Problem, by Fixing Things, by being so active and reactive rather than letting himself think about it. It’s a sign of exactly how frantic he is that he starts giving away his books and letting humans touch them.
Watch his face when the Archangels show up unexpectedly: that isn’t joy. That’s blind terror. He’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing in Heaven’s eyes, even though he made the active choice to do so because it was the Right thing to do. He’s a Guardian and he will protect, but he is so very afraid of the repercussions, even now. 
At the end of S1, Crowley said “they’re gearing up for the big one” so Aziraphale’s not oblivious. He knows a big one is coming. He knows something worse than the Antichrist will be on its way. And he’s trying so hard to pretend that everything is normal and fine and if he ignores all the looming bad stuff, it won’t happen. If we don’t say anything about it, nothing has to change.
But then the changes come knocking at his door holding a box and the choice is gone. He can keep trying to blinker himself to it, but then there are angels and demons in the bookshop and he’s had to use his halo and everything is falling apart.
So when he realises that he can get himself into a position where he can guarantee those repercussions won’t happen to Crowley? He will absolutely take it. He says himself “I don’t want to go back to Heaven”, but the instant the Metatron offers him a free pass for Crowley, to take Crowley out of both Heaven and Hell’s sightlines, to keep him safe (Another bee inside the hive, if you will), no wonder he grabs it with both hands.
The tragedy is that Crowley thinks that when they saved the world together, that was the end of Heaven’s influence in Aziraphale. When he was cast out the split between him and Heaven was sharp and clean. He doesn’t - he can’t - understand how deeply it has tangled around Aziraphale. It’s built into Aziraphale’s entire being and unravelling it isn’t that simple. Aziraphale’s trauma is a horrible, terrible Gordian knot and Crowley can’t understand that he couldn’t simply cut through it, because that’s just not how Aziraphale works.
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booksandmate · 4 months
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actually i think it’s important that they showed us that things weren't so good to begin with. even before gabriel shows up and complicates everything, there's already a certain sense of unease. crowley’s living in his car, asking what’s the point of it all, completely lost. aziraphale calls crowley every time he feels like talking about something good he did now that he's not reporting to heaven (note he's still not that comfortable with the freelance agent situation). things were just, not right. you would expect their lives to take a big turn after the events of s1 but they had more or less fallen back into their old habits. and it’s not really their fault, but they have no idea how to live outside the rules that have dictated their dynamic for their entire history.
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vidavalor · 7 months
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The *Original* Original Sin Theory or... why Aziraphale's "I forgive you"s really mean "forgive me" and just why he wants Crowley's absolution...
Will this break your heart in a good way and make the end of S2 hurt less? more? both? idk let's find out...
I want to talk about what the Before the Beginning scene does to the Eden scene and what all that suggests about Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship... because it might be enough to upend what we think this relationship is quite a bit, at least from Aziraphale's POV, if it goes in the direction that I think they are hinting at in S3, which I'm basing off of where they took it in S2 in these scenes.
This also contains an analysis of That Scene from 2.06 that ties into lots of other scenes and some other meta related to the show and it's a bit long-- like, the mother of all metas-- but there are pretty gifs and I brought snacks? Just letting you know it's a long post but tuck in with some tea if you're in the mood and thanks for reading. :)
Under the big cutty thing...
Before we get started, a couple of quick warnings: I curse a bit in here. It's in the show itself but just letting you know it's here a bit, too. I also mention *very* briefly suicide ideation in the characters and also very briefly (one sentence) Satan's mind-control of Crowley in S1 in a way that might be sensitive for a sexual assault survivor. There is general mention of religious trauma and abusive relationships (not Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship) all over this. If you are okay with the show, you should be more than fine reading this but just wanted to let you know up front. If you're okay with that, read on...
So, the Before the Beginning scene contains a twist, in that we learn that pre-Fall Crowley is naive to Heaven while Aziraphale is the one who is wary of it. This is especially interesting because, best we can tell, no angel has Fallen yet. There aren't *explicit* consequences for asking questions yet, as Crowley doesn't think it could get him into trouble to do so... but *Aziraphale* does. Heaven in S1 and S2 is shown to be basically a fascist state full of bullies jockeying for power where the ones on top dole out all sorts of abuses to maintain a sense of order among the rank and file. We see the emotional and even physical abuse they dole out to Aziraphale and how little they tolerate any sort of dissent, even from an archangel, based on what they ultimately do when Gabriel doesn't want to do arma-bloody-geddon anymore. Heaven is basically The Kremlin. Toe out of line and they'll toss you off a high-rise while telling everyone how sad it is that you recently had a spell of depression and heart troubles as a way of scaring everyone else into submission, right? What's surprising to us is that Aziraphale knows this *absolutely* Before the Beginning and he's terrified on Crowley's behalf, since this place functions as a kind of mafia state.
This implies something really kind of dark which is that Aziraphale knows enough to know how to toe a party line and keep quiet about any doubts he has. He knows how to survive in a way that then-innocent Crowley did not. He tries to tell Crowley that questioning things is going to get him angel-killed but Crowley has a faith in God that's different than Aziraphale's was even before the Earth was fully created. Crowley believed in Her more than Aziraphale does. He doesn't think anything will happen to him. Aziraphale knows what will and this implies knowledge of the abuse of the system and it completely changes our perspective of Aziraphale throughout the rest of the series. We often think of him as either willfully naive or just desperately optimistic regarding Heaven's goodness but, in reality, he's neither of those things. He's something else, entirely. His actions are not expressing naivete or desperate optimism or anything else.
They are expressions of guilt.
And the Eden scene tells us why he has that guilt.
The Eden scene introduces us to Crowley and Aziraphale and the series itself and it has Crowley posit the central question of the show regarding the nature of angels and demons:
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Objectively, when you watch this scene, you think this is about the tempting of Eve and the flaming sword. It is... but it's also not *just* about that. Because Crowley and Aziraphale are watching Adam & Eve venture off beyond the Garden of Eden in this scene. They're still within view so the flaming sword situation happened a matter of minutes earlier. Yet, when Crowley posits that central question of which one of them actually did the good thing and which did the bad thing, Aziraphale reveals that it wouldn't be funny at all if what Crowley is saying (that Aziraphale actually did the bad thing) is true. He's distressed about it and so Crowley, somewhat dryly, reassures him that he's an angel so he couldn't have done the wrong thing. (Crowley, of course, being a literal former angel punished for doing the wrong thing lol and that being the joke but also in there is also the layer of Crowley genuinely liking Aziraphale and trying to tell him that it's all okay and meaning it.) Aziraphale is relieved and this is the key bit here-- he says oh good "because it's been bothering me."
The tone of this is that this central question of whether or not he did wrong or right by Crowley and whether or not Crowley was wrong or right in his actions *has been bothering* Aziraphale and he phrases it in a way that implies he's been losing angelic sleep (so to speak) about it for a little while now. If this was *just about Adam and Eve* then Aziraphale's reaction here makes absolutely no sense because the camera also then cuts in their conversation to in front of Crowley and Aziraphale *to show us Adam and Eve still visible in the near-distance* fighting off the lion with the flaming sword. They literally *just left* so how could Aziraphale be all in knots for awhile now over whether or not he made the wrong call? He's not. You can argue that his decision here in Eden to help Adam and Eve by giving them his flaming sword-- by standing up and doing something in the face of God to help out other beings he secretly thinks might have been treated unfairly-- *is a direct response to what he failed to do back in Before the Beginning*...
... which was to stand up for Crowley.
Meaning: Aziraphale doesn't need to see Heaven's files to find out what happened to Crowley when Crowley fell because he was there. S3 is going to be about preventing the Second Coming and so plot allusions to the crucification (which had its own Crowley & Aziraphale scene in S1) will likely abound. Aziraphale was there when Lucifer and The Gang were tossed out of Heaven. To be fair to Aziraphale, there is basically nothing he could have done to prevent this and the best possible situation is that he didn't even have the chance to. The worst possible situation is that he's literally Judas and sold Crowley out, out of fear of being tossed out of Heaven himself. I tend to think it's more that he just didn't stand up and say anything in support of Crowley to prevent himself from being seen as on the side of the eventual demons. Still, just as Crowley thinks the punishment for Adam and Eve was harsh, Aziraphale thought that asking questions and being curious wasn't enough to send Lucifer and everyone around him to Hell to be damned for all of eternity but it caused an obvious existential crisis in him that he still struggles to totally resolve.
If he disagreed with the decision to cast out the suggestion box-happy angels, he was as "bad" as they were. If he agreed with the decision, he was condemning them and that didn't seem angelic, either. How to be a good angel, which is the only thing he had ever tried to be or knew how to be? He did what he thought must be right-- to follow what the other, more powerful angels said the word of God was-- and if it was Her will, then it must be what was right, even if it was *extremely difficult* to see how this lovebug here was really an evil, demonic creature of Hell...
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Not to mention that Aziraphale was in love with WhateverHeWasCalledPre-Crawly!Crowley. (We will just call him "Crowley" for this whole meta, because that is the name he chose for himself.) And maybe Angel!Crowley went after the more glamorous, daring guys. Heaven honestly seems like both a fascist state and high school at once (is there really a difference? lol). Crowley describes how he wound up falling in S1 as that he "hung out with the wrong crowd" and Aziraphale in Before the Beginning honestly seems like he's been flying around watching Crowley make stars for ages, trying to work up the nerve to or find an opportunity to introduce himself to the beautiful hot cool arty science-y guy who barely looks at him when his other option for a view are nebulas... or Benedict Cumberbatch's Lucifer/Satan, whose "stroke of demonic genius, dahling" bit in S1 and dark assault on his fave Crowley while Crowley was driving had a real "Angel!Crowley went for the bad boy who were so bad pre-Fall that they wound up fucking Satan afterwards and friend-zoned angels like Aziraphale" vibes. Alternatively, maybe he didn't totally? Before the Beginning seems to be the first time they met and maybe after that, Crowley and Aziraphale became close. It's just that Crowley canonically also wound up sitting at the cool kids' table because they were the only ones questioning things and he wound up damned for eternity for it and Aziraphale?
Aziraphale blames himself for it.
He has blamed himself for Crowley's Fall for six thousand years.
When they speak in Eden, Aziraphale is being confronted for the first time with what has come of his nebula-joyous, freshly baked blueberry muffin of an angel. He calls himself "Crawly" now-- or that's the name he's been given-- because who he was is dead. His eyes are yellow. He's now a snake. He's maybe a bit sarcastic, a bit dry, and a lot more guarded and aloof but Aziraphale sees flickers of Angel!Crowley in there. He's *kind* to Aziraphale. He's still inquisitive, in spite of it being what damned him to Hell. Aziraphale, God help him, is still wildly into him and, ugh, maybe even *more* so, in spite of everything.
And 'everything', for Aziraphale, includes Crowley being a demon being Aziraphale's fault.
They don't talk about it. Ever.
They don't talk about it because Aziraphale thinks that Crowley doesn't remember. Crowley's memory loss of a lot of his time pre-Fall is canon in S2-- something we, the audience, will need to understand the whole picture when/if we end up getting this revelation in S3 of Crowley's Fall and that Aziraphale feels he's at least partially responsible. What's even harder for Aziraphale is that because Crowley doesn't remember his time as an angel, he doesn't remember their full history together. He doesn't remember how they met and protecting Aziraphale from the first celestial shower and all the times they chatted after that and if they were in love back then, Crowley doesn't remember it. Eden then becomes, to Crowley, the first time they meet... but then look at how while Aziraphale seems to think that Crowley doesn't know him while Aziraphale knows Crowley-- the moment that he pauses so Crowley can introduce himself-- *Crowley* seems a little bemused. Why?
Because what Aziraphale has failed to consider is that the one memory that the demons are allowed to keep, most likely, is their Fall, which means that if Aziraphale was there when Crowley fell, Crowley actually *does* remember him. At minimum, he remembers Aziraphale being there and looking stricken by what was happening so even if he can't remember more than that, he knows he's safe with Aziraphale and that Aziraphale cared about him, which would explain why he risked going to talk to with him on the wall in Eden. He knows they were friends and that Aziraphale is good and he can trust him. It's also theoretically possible that if Crowley remembers his Fall and if Aziraphale was there, it's a trigger to him being able to remember all of his and Aziraphale's time before Crowley fell. Aziraphale might not know this and because these two idiots do not know how to talk-- and especially don't talk about this-- Crowley hasn't told him. In part because Crowley can't go back and he doesn't want them to dwell on Angel!Crowley when Crowley is who he is and if that's a demon, it's a demon, and the whole system can go fuck itself anyway, as far as Crowley's concerned.
Aziraphale, though, is still back on "it's my fault". He thinks he literally took goodness from the world; that he participated in the murder of his friend and the love of his life. He has never. In six. thousand. years. lol. told Crowley that he feels like this because he still thinks that Crowley doesn't remember Aziraphale betraying him and he is terrified that if he told Crowley he did-- if he told him that he was responsible, in part, for his Fall-- that Crowley would hate him and Crowley is Aziraphale's only friend in the universe and Aziraphale is madly in love with him. He couldn't bear the loss of him. He can handle their occasional spats and disagreements, knowing that Crowley always comes back, but this? If Crowley knew that his Fall was Aziraphale's fault? Aziraphale thinks Crowley wouldn't come back from that and he'd never see him again.
In reality? Crowley either already knows this and has the whole time or suspects it or if he found it out, would forgive Aziraphale for it. If he knows, he already has. His counter-argument is, like, what were you supposed to do to save me, exactly, angel? You alone versus all the hierarchy of Heaven and God Herself? I'm *glad* you didn't do something stupid and get yourself tossed into a pit of boiling sulphur. You don't deserve that.
Thing is, though, because they've never had this conversation because they DO NOT TALK lol, Aziraphale thinks he *does* deserve that. But look at what's happened since he made the decision not to save Crowley from falling...
...nothing.
Nothing has happened to Aziraphale. He didn't fall for it himself. He didn't fall for betraying the angel he loved and he wonders every. single. day. why he didn't and the only thing he can come up with is that he must have done the right thing. *It must be* that Crowley did the bad thing and Aziraphale did the good one because Crowley was damned to Hell for all of eternity and Aziraphale is still an angel of Heaven, six thousand years later. It's not for Aziraphale to question God. Her will is ineffable. It's ineffable because he cannot begin to understand how any of this can possibly be just and that just keeps happening over and over and over and over throughout the years to come in every situation he and Crowley find themselves in, from Job to The Flood to Wee Morag and Elspeth to Arma-bloody-geddon, right?
Aziraphale begins to lose count of how many times he's gone up against God at this point. Gives away his flaming sword to Adam and Eve. Saves as many as he could during The Flood-- *with* Crowley. (You know they did.) Lies to Gabriel's face in the eyes of God to save Job and Sitis' children... and learning that Falling was political, really, in the process. Nothing happened to Aziraphale for Job's kids. He suffered no consequence for lying to Heaven and God because Crowley was willing to lie for him-- to protect him from Falling, where Aziraphale couldn't protect Crowley himself ages before-- and nothing happened. Falling, suddenly, didn't seem totally God-ordained it it could be tossed aside by something as simple as having a demon just choose not to toss you to Satan. Crowley didn't take him to Hell because he didn't feel like Aziraphale belonged there. It wound up all entirely within Crowley's control, which then made Aziraphale begin to question if God was even really behind the Fall of Lucifer and the Gang or if it wasn't just the thugs in charge of Heaven who decided to toss them out... thoughts he was terrified to think and didn't dare voice aloud, at least not then.
In another era, Aziraphale and Crowley stood there together to witness the torture and murder of Jesus Christ in the name of God, in a parallel to the Fall. What happened to Jesus? He was betrayed by his closest friend, then tortured and murdered by those in the government who thought he posed a threat to social order. Heaven as Pontius Pilate. Aziraphale as a kind of Judas, in Aziraphale's mind, anyway.
Jesus as Crowley.
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Time goes on and he and The Demon Crowley form friendship in their own right, regardless of what Crowley might remember from before his Fall. They form their Arrangement off of that and Aziraphale learns even more that, often, no one is really paying attention to what they do. That no one seems to notice if Crowley performs an angelic miracle or if Aziraphale performs what has become termed a 'demonic miracle'... because, really, *they're the same*, though that's not something Aziraphale can fully admit. He cannot allow himself to believe that demons *are angels* because if there's nothing different between demons and angels than Aziraphale doesn't know anything at all.
Anything at all... He doesn't know what being an angel *is* and it's what he supposedly is so it means he doesn't know who or what he is, really.
He doesn't know what God wants or if he truly believes in Her.
He doesn't know what the purpose of all of this is-- why Crowley had to suffer, why demons in general have to, why the *humans* do. Why it all has to be destroyed eventually. To what end?
Aziraphale has the same questions Crowley does and sometimes, late at night, often a little drunk, he'll dare to ask them with Crowley, and every morning that he still wakes up and sobers up and finds himself still an angel when Crowley Fell for so much less than Aziraphale has ever thought or done, he wonders just *why?*
Why is he still an angel when he, really, is no different from Crowley? Why Crowley is damned? Punished for all of eternity for curiosity and innovation and imagination, while Aziraphale is still an angel, doomed to only have until the clock runs out on Armageddon before losing him for the rest of fucking *eternity* but, until then, stuck suffering watching him suffer while remaining an angel? Is being an angel at this point, really, his punishment for failing the apparently foul fiend he adores?
Does Aziraphale ever have any answers to these questions? Good God, no lol. He's six thousand years into this and he's in the same spot as Amnesiac!ArchangelFuckingGabriel in 2.01:
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...would be okay if you could just be one near particular person?
Of course Aziraphale knows what this feels like. Of course. We know he does. And that's why he hasn't been able to make a real move in six thousand years-- because it's his fault, as far as he's concerned.
Crowley's damnation is his fault. Crowley cannot really love him, or couldn't if he knew. Not because he's a demon, though Aziraphale might have thought that at one point but he definitely was cured of it by events in 1941. The more time that goes by, the more Aziraphale knows that Crowley loves him-- that he's *in* love with him-- and the worse it all gets for Aziraphale because every day that he hasn't told Crowley that he didn't prevent him from Falling is another day within the last *six thousand years* of them falling in love and the betrayal seems to get worse and worse to Aziraphale. The time to have this conversation was on the wall in Eden and it still hasn't happened. Still, over time, he starts to realize that Crowley, if ever knew, would forgive him.
Because his Crowley has the kindest of hearts. He really does, and that wasn't taken from him when he Fell and Aziraphale finds every opportunity he can to delight in seeing that and making Crowley reveal it.
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It goes against everything Aziraphale is supposed to believe.
Demons are not supposed to be good-- if they were, they wouldn't have Fallen. Yet, Aziraphale knows Crowley is. He never has truly believed that Crowley isn't-- even when he could have, at least at the start. He worried, maybe, that he had helped create a monster out of the most lovely being he'd ever known but Crowley just kept proving him wrong about that, time and time again. *Crowley* doesn't believe it about himself, really, because that's his own trauma from his Fall but Aziraphale believes it about him and that's often good enough for Crowley.
But, really, this is why they still haven't gotten together in six thousand years. This is why Aziraphale seems like he can never get beyond "I'm an angel and you're a demon", no matter what Crowley does or how he proves that there are shades of gray and also, that the entire system is bullshit. It is not that Aziraphale doesn't *know* that it's bullshit-- it's that if he admits that it is, if he stops believing in Heaven (even if he doesn't stop believing in God), then he's left with nothing but the crushing weight of guilt that he has for all the pain that Crowley has been through.
If he tells himself that Crowley Fell *for a reason* and that he (Aziraphale) was *right* to not interfere, to not try to thwart God, even if it would have likely failed, just on principle, to stand up for his friend... then Aziraphale doesn't have to deal with the fact that he made what he really considers to be a colossal mistake and that it has caused the continued pain and torture and eternal damnation of the being he considers his soulmate...
...which is why everytime that pain comes to the surface in something Crowley says or does, Aziraphale *cannot handle it at all whatsoever* and reverts to You'reADemonI'mAnAngel!Mode.
Example: Crowley's religious trauma on display in their bandstand argument:
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Crowley owns this, even if he's still traumatized by it. He's saying it sarcastically, making a joke on a song Aziraphale probably barely knows, if he knows at all ("Unforgettable"-- Nat King Cole). Aziraphale *aches* at Crowley saying this-- because it reminds him that it's partially his own fault. And he can't. Do. Anything. About. It.
He's an all-powerful *angel* here but he can't change this for Crowley. He can't stop his suffering some six thousand years after his Fall. He's looking at sexy goth Crowley here and he's thinking about curly-haired, beaming, ball of light! Crowley and that they are *the same person* and Aziraphale *does* know that. He knows it and he loves him passionately and desperately and he is one of the most powerful beings ever in existence and he's standing there looking at the man-shaped-being he adores talking about how he still aches from the betrayal of his fellow angels and his mother God and *there is no way for Aziraphale to fix it* when he can mend broken bones and heal the sick and let their be light! all over the place. He can do proper magic and still, he cannot take away Crowley's pain.
This is Aziraphale's Hell. He didn't Fall but he's been in Hell anyway.
So when Crowley's religious trauma and pain comes out, usually in an argument like in the bandstand scene, Aziraphale does the only thing he thinks he *can* do, right? He's an angel. Still. Somehow. He's an angel and there must be some reason for that and an angel is not a demon-- an angel is a purer being, a healer-- and so he says "I forgive you". He doesn't mean it to be patronizing, even if it is. ("I am a *great deal* holier than thou," as he told Crowley at one point and that was the point, right?) He is trying to say "I am still of Heaven and if it's absolution you need, I can give it to you."
He is trying to say: You are not unforgivable to me.
The real lyric of the song Crowley parodies in the bandstand is what Aziraphale means, whether he knows that song or not...
Unforgettable/That's what you are...
*Crowley*, though, doesn't know about Aziraphale's inner turmoil because *heavy sigh* FFS TALK, YOU IDIOTS *breathes* lol, so *he* hears:
I still think I am better than you and you are Fallen, so you're not worthy of me. I can't love you, not the way you want. I love all beings because I'm an angel and I you know I'm in love with you but I can't *allow* myself to be because it goes against the nature of an angel and I've only done eleven thousand things that should have made me Fall over the years but letting myself be in love with you is the rubicon I won't cross, apparently...
Crowley knows by the time they're having the bandstand argument enough about Aziraphale's general religious trauma (not necessarily about how it pertains to Crowley's Fall but about it in general) to know that he spits out hateful garbage when he feels cornered and how to just call it bullshit and move on. ("I don't even like you."/"You doooo.") But he understandably walks away when Aziraphale pushes him away past a point he can handle-- and Aziraphale knows how to do that. He does it *intentionally.* The "I forgive you" is sadness because it's all he has to offer Crowley but he also knows it'll piss Crowley off enough to end the argument, so he says it intentionally to get Crowley to go away. In this scene (which parallels the end of S2 quite a bit, as many have noticed), Aziraphale is trying to deal with it all on his own, right?
He knows where the antichrist is. He's just not telling Crowley yet. He's trying to deal with it to keep him safe. He's doing it because he thinks he should-- that maybe, when it's something of this level of importance, that his job should be as an angel first, above his side with Crowley. (It's also worth mentioning here that Aziraphale is straight up terrified of Falling, not even just for being damned to Hell but because then, if he's no longer in Heaven, he has exactly zero power to even *try* to protect Crowley.) At the end of S2? With The Metatron?
Aziraphale does the same thing as with the antichrist for a time in S1, really.
The beginning of S2 shows us that Aziraphale has known that Heaven is North Korea since Before the Beginning so now marry that with its last scenes and see the arc that connects them-- Aziraphale does what he does out of guilt over what happened to Crowley to *protect* Crowley. He didn't want to do any of it without Crowley and when The Metatron finally offers that carrot, Aziraphale is suspicious as all hell (pardon the pun) and here we have this moment where part of him *wants* this to all be real, right?
Times change and sometimes, your parents who traumatized the living fuck out of you and didn't approve of your boyfriend, grow the hell up a bit and try to repent and mend fences. Maybe the trust is broken but maybe it can be healed and *as an angel*, Aziraphale is a being of goodness and hope and optimism. He's pure of heart, as Crowley put it to Nina. He *wants* that to be the case... but he also knows it likely is not.
Still... they can't run. There's nowhere that Heaven won't find them. It's no life for them-- no life for Crowley, in Aziraphale's mind, no matter how many times Crowley tries to get him to run away with him. "We can go off together!" begs Crowley, over and over, and Aziraphale's only really ever found that Crowley will only slither off if he's ticked off enough and only "I forgive you" ever really does that enough to work lol. He *means* I love you endlessly but you know this is impossible, you bloody maddening, gorgeous serpent! Will you stop reminding me of what we could have when it can never happen?! but that's not exactly how Crowley's taking it.
In the end, to Aziraphale, Aziraphale is an angel and Crowley is a demon and they are doomed to spend eternity apart and Aziraphale thinks he has no one to blame, really, but himself. If he had somehow saved Crowley six thousand years ago-- or had somehow been brave enough to stand up for him and Fallen alongside him-- they could have been together forever.
But he wasn't then and now The Metatron is here and it's time for Aziraphale to go back to Heaven and he knows, as he sits there drinking coffee with the being whose posse sent Crowley in a free fall into a pit of boiling sulphur, that Crowley will never, ever, ever, EVER go back to Heaven.
But he also knows that Heaven is here to collect Aziraphale and they are making it clear that there is no escape. There's nowhere to run. Everyday, it's been getting closer for six thousand years and going faster than a roller coaster for the last handful but a love like Beez and Gabe's will surely never come his and Crowley's way now.
It was always going to end like this. Nothing lasts forever. He told Crowley that, Before the Beginning. Six thousand years. That was all the time they had before the end of Earth, the place they'd come to call home. They found a way to borrow a few more years at the end of it since S1 and he got to dance with Crowley, their fingers brushing, and that is going to have to be enough because they're out of time.
The Metatron never needed say it directly but it was evident: they wanted Aziraphale to go to Heaven and they would say or do anything to get him up there and Aziraphale may have bought it for a moment but he's definitely figured out by the end of S2 that they need him up there not to become the Supreme Archangel but because his time as an angel is now over. The threat to Crowley is unspoken but omnipresent.
The Metatron makes it sound like he doesn't care if Crowley comes back up to Heaven with Aziraphale or not and he really doesn't and why would that be? Why would he be eager to have the two most troublesome beings in all of Heaven and Hell teaming up and getting in the way of his Second Coming plans, which he absolutely *knows* they won't support? Because they won't have jobs waiting for them up there. Crowley will not be restored to full angelic status.
They're going to kill them. Aziraphale knows it. He's known what Heaven is since Before the Beginning, even if he's been in denial about it for almost as long to try to assuage his own guilt over participating in it.
And it's a lot easier a goal for Heaven to accomplish if they separate them and just Aziraphale goes up to Heaven. If Aziraphale goes alone-- if he keeps Crowley from following-- then Crowley is not a threat to them if Aziraphale is gone.
They aren't as powerful apart.
Aziraphale knows that if Crowley comes to Heaven with him that they will kill him and Aziraphale thinks okay, this is it... this is my moment of redemption.
Six thousand years since Crowley Fell and I can finally make up for not saving him by saving him now.
I can go with The Metatron and let Heaven kill me and know that they will not threaten Crowley if they do because what they are threatened by is both of us together. One of us, alone, is less of a threat and the only problem here is that if I go... Crowley will follow me.
If I just go without telling him what The Metatron said and I don't come back right away, he'll go to Heaven, worried that something happened to me, and they'll kill him when he comes looking for me. He'll find out they've Book of Life'd me and do something stupid and my sacrifice to keep him safe will all be for nothing.
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So what's our tortured angel to do?
Bandstand 2.0, right?
He's got to piss Crowley off enough that Crowley won't follow him.
He's got to piss Crowley off so much that Crowley *will never come back* and the worst part is that Aziraphale knows *exactly* how to do it.
He makes his own plans and if things get drastic enough, he'll blow up that damn halo, metaphorically-speaking this time. To save Crowley, he will break Crowley.
It's darkly romantic, really. He'll sacrifice himself for Crowley but to be sure that Crowley will be safe and not follow, he'll have to break his heart a bit first-- to further their misunderstandings in a season based on "I don't think your exactly is my exactly exactly"-level miscommunications.
So Aziraphale accepts The Metatron's offer and lets The Metatron think he completely believes that the offer is legit and maybe a part of him is still hoping that it is but he knows it's really not and that this is a suicide run. This is Aziraphale's Holy Water arc...
...and speaking of Holy Water... that arc from the perspective of this being Aziraphale's mentality... Crowley, tortured by Hell for what he did while with Aziraphale in 1827, then refusing to talk about it, showing up with a cane, sullen and depressed, asking Aziraphale for the one thing that would kill him and Aziraphale's unwillingness to understand that it wasn't completely suicide ideation on Crowley's part but as a way to *protect Aziraphale* and keep him safe. Crowley wanted what could kill a demon not to kill himself but to kill one that might come after Aziraphale. All Aziraphale could see, though, was Crowley's physical and emotional pain, that he could barely keep hidden in that era, and how Aziraphale couldn't make it better. All he could see was how he failed him and led him to this suffering. All he could see in a note begging for "holy water" was Crowley wanting a suicide pill, wanting to destroy himself, unable to take any more, in so much pain that he'd leave Aziraphale forever to make it stop. Aziraphale is blinded entirely by guilt and fails to see what Crowley is really saying, which was, ironically, the last time Crowley began to try to tell Aziraphale how he felt, which was:
I've been thinking-- what if it all goes wrong? (What if I lose you? I'm terrified of losing you. I love you. I wake up from nightmares of you being destroyed by the demons who just spent a couple of decades after 1827 not that long ago torturing me. I didn't know for sure if you were still alive during any of it.) We have a lot in common, you and me. (We're a team. A... group of the two of us.) What if it all goes pear-shaped? I need you to get me the magical demon-killing stuff so I have a weapon against *my own fellow fallen angels* that I can use in case they come after us. I would kill another demon and send every legion of Hell after me to protect you.
Aziraphale: I like pears.
(My God, they are so stupid. Please. I can't take any more lol.)
So, yeah... it's Aziraphale's turn for the holy water suicide run here only with an actual suicide run...
It takes the books in The Blitz for Aziraphale to really understand what Crowley was asking for and what he meant by asking for holy water and by 1967, he gives Crowley the holy water, in the one moment when *they actually talk*, as much as they can, about how much they love one another, that exists prior to the end of its parallel-- the end of S2.
So, yeah, Aziraphale "goes to tell his friend the good news" with a look on his face like he's marching to his death *because he is* and he knows it. His last moments with Crowley, in some of his last moments in existence, he already knows will be spent upsetting the man-shaped being he loves. He's got it all planned out. Not exactly the picnic of his dreams but it'll redeem him and save Crowley and that's all that matters to Aziraphale in this moment.
He will sound naive to the threat of Heaven and because Crowley doesn't remember pre-Fall, he won't remember how Aziraphale warned him against taking on the brass in Heaven so Crowley won't be suspicious, he'll be *frustrated*, like he was in the bandstand. He'll get angry. Aziraphale's goal is to get him to storm out-- but it has to be a really, really, bad relationship-ending storming out.
He can't come back after he drives The Bentley around the block like he did back in 2.01 and say "okay, fine, I'll help you" and Aziraphale knows that if he plays this right, he can make it so Crowley won't because helping Gabriel was one thing but asking Crowley to become an angel with him and pretending like they can go fix the broken system of Heaven is going to be Crowley's bridge too far. It's *the only thing* that Aziraphale believes is Crowley's bridge too far where Aziraphale is concerned and isn't that heartbreaking as hell? That Crowley loves him this much? And they never got to be together the way they wanted? That they were just beginning to get close to trying to figure that out?
That, hours ago, Aziraphale was asking him to dance and trying to ignore the signs of trouble around the corner, desperately wanting more time with him? That they are semi-immortal beings that always somehow seem to be out of time?
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Truer words have never been spoken, Crowley. Little did you know, poor demon...
So Aziraphale goes into the bookshop and Crowley looks all worked up and wants to say something and some part of Aziraphale begins to hear warning alarms going off in his head because Crowley *never* looks like this-- is never this flustered, never this uncomfortable, never this nervous, never in a rush to say something-- and Aziraphale thinks no, can't be, we don't talk about this... even if, ironically, all of S2 shows that Aziraphale has been trying *for just that*. It was just a few hours ago that he was trying to Jane Austen a ball for them to use as a pretense to discuss their feelings because, in the height of ironies here, right?
Aziraphale was ready.
They'd had some time without Heaven and Hell breathing so much down their necks, even if the threat still loomed, and spent every day together and it was perfect and it was lovely and he knew Crowley would forgive him and Aziraphale was almost there, right, he was *almost* ready to tell him. He was almost ready to tell him he loved him and that it was him, all those millennia ago, who could have done something and didn't and he's so, so, so sorry and can Crowley ever forgive him? Is there any way that Crowley could ever forgive him after what he didn't say and didn't do when he should have? For all the times since that he's said things in anger when, really, he was madly in love and just full of his own issues to sort out? (Damn, Aziraphale, we're beginning to see your affinity for Austen heroes here...)
But he's out of time so there will be none of that now. Now is his karmic payback. Six thousand beautiful years with the being he loves and feels he doesn't deserve have led to Aziraphale's redemption being that he can sacrifice himself to save him. He can leave the world they love with Crowley and Crowley's *goodness* in it, as it should be. So when Crowley says he needs to say something, Aziraphale cannot-- CANNOT-- let him speak because he cannot bear it.
He suddenly fears that of course-- OF COURSE-- the one moment in all of these trillions of moments they've lived through where Crowley is about to directly say he loves him for the first time is the also the same fucking moment when Aziraphale has to destroy their relationship to save Crowley's life and Aziraphale will be dead after this and he cannot bear hearing what his life could have been. He can't hear Crowley say this right now or else he worries he might lose his nerve. He *wants* to hear it but if Crowley speaks first, Aziraphale might cave, he might be weak again like he was when Crowley Fell, he might fail him again, and he can't. Not after all this time. Not when he loves Crowley so much.
"What's that lovely human expression?! 'Hold that thought!'" he blurts out, in a callback to, of course, the moment Crowley saved him in 1941-- to that night where Aziraphale really realized for the first time that Crowley wasn't just capable of good or capable of being friendly towards him but that Crowley *loved* him and that he loved the Demon Crowley, whether or not he should. ("But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past," sings Frances McDormand as the Voice of God, from her apparent favorite film lol, "I must have done something good.")
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Ah, yes. Played for suckers. Here is where it's important to note that in 1941, Aziraphale had no idea that Rose was really Greta and that he, in fact, was the one being played for a sucker. By the end of S2, though, it could be argued that he very much knows that The Metatron is Fraulein Greta Klauschmidt-- someone who presented herself as Captain Rose Montgomery, an agent of anti-fascist good, who approached Aziraphale in his bookshop and told him that he could be an agent of change, too. He could help save the world and stop the global rising tide of fascism represented by the Third Reich. He could even do so using his books. They plotted a sting together, in which he'd bring his books to a church and seem to give them to Nazis to give to the Fuhrer, only for agents to surround them and arrest the Nazis. Aziraphale, desperate to *do* good and to *be* good, falls for this-- he fails to see that Rose is really Greta, a Nazi agent who fools him into working for the enemy and getting him to help destroy the world in the process. Pretty obvious to see here that Greta is The Metatron in S2... but it's likely that Aziraphale knows it and is playing along because it's his turn to save Crowley, unlike what happened in 1941, when Crowley saves him and his books.
Crowley, in the bookshop back at the end of S2 in our present time, stops speaking at the "hold that thought", looking like he's about to be ill, and has to also be thinking of 1941 and the church now that Aziraphale has referenced it. Maybe, in some way, it's an unconscious effort on Aziraphale's part to convey to Crowley that this is a charade-- that he doesn't mean this, that it's an act-- but he really doesn't want Crowley to figure that out. It would defeat his goal. But he also doesn't want to hurt him because he loves him but this is the only way that Aziraphale can see to save him. So he starts gushing about his coffee with The Metatron, right? We all remember this pain lol.
Maybe I've misjudged him. (Aziraphale, we suspect you know that he tossed Crowley into hellfire and stole Gabriel's memories so honestly, the worst part of all of this is that you're so traumatized that Crowley is *buying* what you're saying here...) And guess what?! He wants me to be the new Supreme Archangel! And he said you can come! And you can be an angel again! It will be so fun! We can have a slumber party, Crowley, after days of doing good, and braid each other's hair!
Crowley is like jfc fml are you even serious right now? Which, of course, is what Aziraphale *was going for.* It's the "I don't even like you" and the "we're hereditary enemies" and the "I'm an angel, you're a demon" way of trying to intentionally push Crowley away but the new version of it because none of that flies with S2 Crowley-- most of it barely flew with him in S1-- because Crowley *knows.*
He knows that Aziraphale loves him. And he knows that Aziraphale knows him, which is to say he knows how to hurt him, and that's what this is but also Crowley just sees it as how much Heaven has hurt them both. How much they've hurt Aziraphale. Because just as Aziraphale looks at Crowley in the throes of his religious trauma-- "Unforgivable. It's what I am", etc.-- and wants to help and save and protect him, Crowley feels the same way in return when Aziraphale is like this. Frustrated, sure, but in just as much pain at how much pain Aziraphale is in and feels powerless to stop it but will do whatever he can to try to, yeah?
For Aziraphale, this is all going fairly well (it's miserable but in terms of goal, it's working) through "tell me you said no" but the problem is that Crowley is still pleading. He's still trying to work through it because they're an *us* now and also ironically of course this is when Crowley's been trying to do better with storming out lol so he's trying to couple-solve this. He's not just *leaving* like how Aziraphale had hoped. He had been trying to sell to Crowley that he could pick Heaven over Crowley and Crowley is just kinda... not believing it so much at first and, instead, is trying to approach it like a problem for the two of them to solve together, instead of as a decision that Aziraphale has made for his life that he's stating that Crowley can take or leave.
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Which calls back to this scene in 2.01 at the start of this arc, when Crowley calls their life *his* life and Aziraphale counters with that he thought *they* had carved out a life for themselves *together* and Crowley answers: "so did I!" Because they haven't had a discussion about what they are, exactly, at that point, Crowley still cautiously calls *their* life *his* life, retaining a sense of autonomy, as if he's only making decisions for himself when, in reality, they are a couple who are trying to make a life together and have been doing so consciously since S1. Crowley calls that life "precious" and "peaceful" to Aziraphale-- beautiful, lovely things that they both treasure and want and find with one another-- but also "fragile". The threats to them still loom large in the background and they are still so afraid to go much further in their relationship because, in part, of those threats and how terrified they are of losing one another... which just makes the end of S2 even more brutal, really.
(*mantras* cottage in the south downs cottage in the south downs...)
So back in That Scene later in S2, Aziraphale is then just kind of stuck trying to figure out how to get Crowley to be so angry with him that he storms out and never comes back in the face of Crowley trying to very much not do that and then Crowley starts saying that he needs to say what he was going to say or he never will and Aziraphale *knows*, ok? He knows what Crowley needs to say. He just literally cannot believe this is going to happen right now. He honestly can't believe it's happening at all but right now?!
He knows before Crowley begins speaking. He probably knew when he told him to "hold that thought" a few moments before but he *really* knows now. Crowley has no idea that Aziraphale has planned for this to be the last time they ever see one another and to go sacrifice himself to Heaven for whatever they want to do with him to keep them away from Crowley. Crowley looks like he's about to pass out from nerves and can barely speak and just...
...six. thousand. years...
...I know we have all looked at the heartbreak of this scene from Crowley's POV here every which way to Sunday, okay, but just imagine you are Aziraphale, who has loved this being since before the literal beginning of time, and you blame yourself for his pain and suffering, and he's standing here, braver than you've ever been with him, looking into your eyes and telling you that he knows that you love him and that he loves you and he knows you both have known this for basically the entirety of your existence together and he can't pretend anymore. He doesn't want to pretend anymore. He knows things have changed over the last few years between you and he wants more of that. He wants to be with you.
The two of you are not even human, just human-adjacent beings who have gone native from the stars and clouds here, who live and love like humans, who know that maybe the angels and demons have it backwards and God's great creatures are the humans-- that it should be the good in them that you should be trying to emulate-- and Crowley had never been more beautifully, impossibly human than while he's standing there looking ready to pass out while asking you if, after six millennia, it might be alright for him to not hide how much he loves you.
How many times has Aziraphale imagined this by this point? A million? How many different ways? There's at least half of them when he imagines that he's the one who gets up the courage first but there are so. many. Crowley. fantasies. Ones in every time period. But always *a fantasy*, at least up until maybe very recently. Why?
Not even just Heaven and Hell and the threat of being caught but the fact that Aziraphale believes that Crowley doesn't know Aziraphale didn't save him during The Fall and how could he ever really love him if he knew? How could Aziraphale ever go to him like this and give Crowley everything he knows Crowley has desired for so long without telling him the truth about Aziraphale's role in Crowley's Fall-- but then, Aziraphale assumes, he'd lose Crowley forever? So this has always been a pipe dream for Aziraphale-- fantasies from a world where they ever stood a chance of being together-- never really something that could be reality and here it is, starting, happening *now*...
...after six. thousand. years. of living with this guilt and in the last moments in which he will ever see Crowley before he heads to his likely death, with no time to tell him the truth and beg for his forgiveness, no time to ever know what their lives might be like if they could be together.
As Crowley, unbeknownst to Aziraphale, mused dramatically, if not inaccurately, earlier in the season... it's always too late.
It's punishment, in Aziraphale's mind. That's what Crowley's proposal, his confession, is now. It's his Fall, whether he falls or not when he leaves the bookshop for Heaven. It's karmic retribution-- it's God, finally saying something, and what she's saying is:
Look at what you've done, Aziraphale...
Look at how he loves you.
He was never unforgivable.
You are.
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Aziraphale might be erased from existence once he gets to Heaven and he knows that's a possibility but he basically is dying here. Crowley is killing him. Crowley has pointed that silver bullet gun straight at his head and fired but he's missed and the bullet isn't in Aziraphale's teeth, it's gone through him.
Crowley, here, tears in his eyes, asking for whatever time they have. An eternity? Impossible, unlikely. Angel and demon. One day, the war will begin again-- another war to end all wars, like all the ones they've fell more and more in love during throughout history-- but it might be the one where Heaven or Hell wins and they're doomed to spend eternity apart. Crowley has said before he thinks the real war is humanity versus Heaven and Hell and that sounds like he thinks there's a chance they could survive it but who knows? They don't know. They're immortal beings who live like humans and that's, of late, included a sense of mortality. They don't know how much time they have left and Crowley is asking for all of it. He is asking for whatever time they have left to be spent together, openly loving one another, and what he doesn't know is what Aziraphale knows:
That they're already out of time.
Crowley is proposing marriage unaware that Aziraphale is dying. It's always too late, Crowley had stated earlier but had hope that maybe it wasn't but it is. And Aziraphale?
Gah. Aziraphale...
He's never loved him more. He's never wanted him more. He wants to tell him that he wants that, too, that they can have it, that Crowley can have anything he wants, but it's not true. It's not true because they could run out the back door of the bookshop now and hop in the Bentley and end-of-Grease it up to Alpha Centauri and Heaven will still find them. Heaven and Hell will still be after them. Running away solves nothing and Crowley always, ultimately, anyway, comes back and this time-- this time-- for Crowley's own good, to save his life, Aziraphale needs him to leave the bookshop and never come back.
And the moment that Crowley confesses that he loves him and that he knows Aziraphale loves him in return and that they've both known this, forever, and asks him if he can be allowed to just love him, Aziraphale loves him so much in return that he'll break his heart to save him from dying.
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Dying is... not on, as High!Crowley put it in 1827 lol, but suicide-ish attempts are, if it's Aziraphale's turn this time.
So he twists the knife. He hides the goats as pigeons and he looks at Crowley and does a bit of this:
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...only with the exact opposite intent. In the Job minisode, Crowley cannot speak aloud his true intentions. (Something he can finally do in the S2 finale, when he declares his love for Aziraphale.) He cannot tell Aziraphale outrightly that he had zero desire whatosever to kill Job's kids and animals and doesn't plan on actually doing it and, in fact, is actively engaged in a bit of bait-and-switch to make it look like he's doing what he's supposed to be doing as mandated by Heaven! this time as well as Hell (a nice little extra bit of paralleling to the end of S2 and Aziraphale, there.) He wants Aziraphale to believe him enough to allow him to pull it off because saving the kids and the pets (and protecting Aziraphale from any harm that might come to him if he gets in the way of what Crowley's been asked to do) matters more to Crowley than Aziraphale believing him...
...and believing him here means believing *in* him. Believing that they are on the same side and it's their own side and they're in it together. Crowley has to lie to him here *and it works for a moment*. It's really important to note that *it works*. Aziraphale believes that Crowley can do this and that he wants to-- that he not only can but he *longs* (lol) to "kill the blameless kids of Job"-- but it's all in Crowley's wording. He isn't *actually* lying. He *does* long to kill the blameless kids of Job like how he killed the blameless goats of Job-- because he "killed the blameless goats of Job" by turning them into pigeons. So he's really saying to Aziraphale that he longs to *fake the deaths* of the blameless kids of Job and plans to in the same way that he did the goats. In that moment, though? It didn't matter if Crowley was lying or telling the truth. There was only one goal--
--to get Aziraphale to walk away.
To get Aziraphale to leave, for his own safety, and let Crowley handle this. Better that he misunderstand Crowley and be disappointed in him and think him a lost cause than to get himself into trouble. Crowley out here loving Aziraphale that much in the days of Bildad the Shuite. (This poor mfer. Six. Thousand. Years lol.)
So what caused Crowley's plan to save Aziraphale in the Job era to not work?
One of the pigeons bleated, right?
Aziraphale heard it and realized that Crowley hadn't been lying so much as he had been trying to protect Aziraphale from his plan of subterfuge against the Almighty and Satan. The difference is that there are no bleating pigeons in the S2 finale... there's just *a whole certain famous other kind of damn bird instead* and its *absence* from the scene is the big emotional gut punch moment. And we all know it but I'll gif it anyway since this is already a depressing meta (cottage in the south downs cottage in the south downs...)...
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...and that *is* the point. Because unlike back in the Bildad the Shuite days, there is no bleating pigeon (at least, not yet) to make Crowley realize that all is not what it seems and that Aziraphale is trying to lie to him and get him to leave to protect him from Heaven.
As Aziraphale is like mortally wounded here by Crowley's confession of love and is so not going to recover from this, he's now got to not only get Crowley to leave feeling like Aziraphale rejected being their own team for Heaven, he has to now do it with all of it out in the open-- with Crowley having openly confessed love for him, with him having asked for them to be together. He's not just going to have to frustrate Crowley more than he ever has before and get him to leave more angry than he was before, he has to, instead, smash into little tiny bits the very beautiful, very passionate, beating heart of the being he has loved since he met him *making the stars* in the bloody sky here...
The only way to get Crowley to go now is to make Crowley think he's rejecting the idea of loving him. Aziraphale honestly can't even sell the idea that he *doesn't* love Crowley because Crowley won't believe it-- he knows Aziraphale does and he's said as much in his whole marriage proposal here. So it has to be that Crowley thinks Aziraphale chose Heaven over loving him. Chose being an angel. That he really meant all of those 'hereditary enemies' and 'you're a demon' moments and to sell that, he sells it.
(You're a dark horse, Mr. Fell, Nina said of him in 2.01... the same turn of phrase Crowley uses when surprised by the secret skills and narrative power of Jane Austen later on in the pub.)
Aziraphale does love himself a bit of theatre. A bit of a disappearing act. The West End, The West End...
...our Nefertiti-fooling fellow...
He sells it with:
Well, of course you said no, *you're* the bad guys...
Come with me... I'll run, it you can be *my second-in-command*...
We can be together. *Angels*. Doing *good*...
...oh, Crowley... nothing lasts forever...
For his final act, The Marvelous Mr. Fell will saw his ineffable husband's heart in half by spewing a litany of everything he can think of to say that will piss him off enough to make him leave the bookshop broken-hearted enough to never come back.
Only someone put a miracle blocker on here because, try as he might and good heavens (pardon the pun), Aziraphale is *trying* here...
...this turnip is not turning into a damn inkwell.
Crowley finally starts to go-- it's looking promising. Finally, Aziraphale thinks, this misery might end. Six thousand years of wanting to speak of all of this between them and hoping for some happiness when-- if-- it could maybe someday arrive, if it even could-- and it's the worst moment of Aziraphale's existence and he knows it is the same for Crowley.
Crowley stops and the "do you hear that?" And no, Aziraphale doesn't hear anything, he just has never been more upset and Crowley needs to just go because Aziraphale can't handle another moment of this, how could it possibly get worse?
Nightingales. Of course.
A call back to S1's "no more world-class composers/little restaurants where they know you/gravalax and dill sauce/old bookshops" but this time, it's "no nightingales". There's Armageddon coming that neither of them know about in this moment. It's still a 'someday, they'll try again' concept to them in this scene, not an extremely immediate threat, as Aziraphale doesn't learn about The Second Coming until after this. So the end of the world that Crowley references here is the end of *their* world and that means no nightingales. No romance. No *them*, together. Worth remembering that Crowley thought, up until maybe what? Five minutes ago? That they were headed to breakfast at the Ritz together. They should have been sitting there together *in this moment*, is what he's saying. Miracling the pianist to play "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and gazing at one another over teapots and mimosas and croissants.
That's gone, since you chose Heaven instead, is what Crowley states and Aziraphale knows it because, God help him (no, literally, GOD HELP HIM! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO OFF TO THIS SEASON, FRANCES?!), it's what he's *trying* to make happen.
You idiot, says the once-Bildad the Shuite, who thought he was taking his beloved to the ox rib special this morning and not getting dumped for an old floating head and the cinematic world's most contentious to-go cup of coffee, we could have been... us.
Not really a part of the theory here, just the observation that Crowley's confession/proposal begins with him unable to say "a couple", in case this all goes pear-shaped and he needs to have never said something that romantic, so he says instead "a team", "a group-- of the two of us". He says it without saying it. But, by the end? He just says "us." He *present*-tenses it. He's like forget everything else, angel, we could have just kept on being us because we both know what we are. We don't need to find the right turn of phrase or even the most specific human word for it. We are just *us* and we could have kept on with that but you chose the mentality of your abusive family and asked me to be what I'm not and I still love you because I *know* you but I can't be with you like that and *you* know that.
And he kisses him. Because Franny McD says you ain't suffered enough yet, Aziraphale lol. Should I just gif it while we're miserable? If you've read this far, a month has passed and hopefully, you've taken breaks and I do apologize but I'm gonna gif it because yeah. Here we go, folks...
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God, make it stop, pleads Aziraphale to literal God and here comes Crowley with the S1 wall slam parallel, all dammit, angel, I know you've wanted us to snog for centuries and this is our last chance.
I know people have opinions about this kiss and I know we're all posting them here, obviously myself included, but while I've seen a lot of like... 'Crowley knows it's the only time they ever will be able to because Aziraphale is leaving him for Heaven' and 'Crowley wants to remind Aziraphale what he's giving up and could have had' and 'Crowley tries the kiss to see if it'll change Aziraphale's mind' takes-- and I agree with all of those things and think they're all right-- I've not seen a lot of 'Crowley kisses Aziraphale *for Aziraphale*' and I think that's a big part of it, too.
Crowley really isn't stupid. Not when it comes to Aziraphale wanting him. It would be honestly hard to spend a zillion lifetimes on Earth and not get it after like...
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And Crowley understands Aziraphale's particular brand of religious trauma more than most, since he has a variant version of it himself. He understands that where his whole thing is that he's very much *not* an angel anymore, that Aziraphale's identity is wrapped up in being one and the conflicts he has with Heaven and while Crowley is not yet quite hearing what Nina said-- that she just got out of an abusive relationship and that she's not yet ready to be with Maggie and needs time-- and marrying that to Aziraphale and Heaven (especially because Aziraphale is showing exactly zero signs of trying to get out of his relationship with Heaven lol), Crowley wants Aziraphale to have had what he (Aziraphale) wanted, even if it was for only a moment. He can't go with him. This is the *one* scenario where Crowley cannot follow where Aziraphale goes, where he can't come to him and rescue him, because Aziraphale has said he doesn't want him to. Aziraphale wants to go and do this and the only way he'll take Crowley is if Crowley wants to become an angel again, which Crowley will not do.
And damned if there isn't a part of Aziraphale that thinks that if The Metatron can really be trusted, wouldn't that be something? That if he gets up there to Heaven and he really is made Supreme Archangel and if Crowley changes his mind, if he comes back, like he always does... if he storms out and leaves but then misses him too much and takes the elevator up... then maybe Aziraphale could make him an angel again and while Crowley hears in Aziraphale offering that you aren't good enough as a demon-- you're not good, period and even if he doesn't totally believe that Aziraphale really thinks that but knows Aziraphale has enough religious conflict that it's a problem for their relationship, what Aziraphale *really* means is... I could fix it.
I could go back and un-Fall you. I could take away your pain. I could stop your suffering. I'd have the *power* to do it when I don't right now and it kills me, every day. I could right the wrong I did, the sin I committed-- the real Original Sin-- six thousand years ago when I betrayed you, when Heaven betrayed you.
I could do right by you, the way She never did.
I am going to Heaven to either have the power to do that or to be obliterated into non-existence and I don't totally know which, though surviving is not looking promising, but all I know is that it's too dangerous for you to follow me right now until I do know so I'd rather hurt you than see you dead.
You want to be with me and I am afraid it will lead to your destruction so I need to say anything to put the breaks on your attempt and make you back off. To a lesser extent, I've done it before. Can do again.
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Only this time, no hope of the possible, future picnic, I'm afraid...
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It really is the worst possible Aziraphale nightmare here like... everything he's ever wanted. Six millennia of wanting to pull Crowley close and he has to reject him or Crowley could die. Fanfic season here said Coffee Shop AU and also a reverse-Fuck or Die for the ages. People complaining that it's awkward? YES. It's supposed to be. Crowley has no idea that Aziraphale is facing a round of sudden death here and was just hoping for his one fabulous kiss and vavoom. Even if it didn't change anything-- he wanted *Aziraphale* to feel that. To know how much he's wanted this for so long and to have it, even if they can't again. The intent is terribly romantic, as is Aziraphale flailing in the middle of it and giving in because he is made of strong, halo-exploding stuff here but he's wanted this forever. He goes up on his toes, he leans in, his hands flail around and he touches Crowley's back. He *shouldn't* do any of this if he's trying to meet his goal of getting Crowley to leave because it gave Crowley hope. It might have even been what motivated Crowley to stay outside and not go right away, or at least a part of it. But Aziraphale had to because he loves him and he couldn't help it.
Then, *sob*, The Michael Sheen eviscerating all of us here...
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For anyone who might still be saying that is an "I didn't want his kiss" face... hard, HARD, VERY HARD disagree. That is "I didn't want *this* kiss, like this, right now." That is a man-shaped being who was just kissed by the love of his life for what may have been the first time but, at minimum, is for what he believes will be the *last* time. (I'm still out here holding out some hope for Blitz, Part 3-- a nice first kiss after they kill some Zombie Nazis with Chekhov's derringer in the bookshop but I digress...somehow, even if this entire long meta is one long digression, I digress lol...)
It's the face of a man gutted by the fact that this, in his wildest dreams, was not supposed to happen like this and he's been alive for damn ever at this point so he's had *all* the wildest dreams. And a lot of them, let's be real, have centered around Crowley doing just this. Exactly this. Crowley ain't wrong with the 'grabbing him by the collar and kissing him senseless in the middle of the bookshop' thing. He's wanted to do it for centuries. And the middle of the bookshop bit? That's important, too. This is their home. It's *their* home, even if Crowley is technically homeless. It's safe for him in here and Aziraphale has made it so. It's where they've spent thousands of hours together, happy and safe in each other's company, and here they are, bouille-bouile-bouile-baby-ing finally and it's a complete and utter, unmitigated trash truck dumpster fire.
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Honestly, this was a better kiss than in S2 lol. S1 laying down though how long they've been dreaming about it (and having Crowley start listing animals that are in Aziraphale's nonsense magic spell, like he flashes back to 1941 when thinking about the end of the world and kissing Aziraphale in the bookshop... so you can see why I'm moderately hopeful that maybe they did kiss then, once, before then trying to never again until Crowley kisses Aziraphale in 2.06.)
I'm going to bring this back around now to the comparison I made above with Crowley and Jesus and talk about how 2.06's end scenes are also like the last temptation of Christ. Good Omens makes it pretty clear that Aziraphale is the tempter, really, of the two of them, in their relationship. Crowley can't say no to him and Aziraphale has learned it and loves to puppy eyes Crowley into anything he wants.
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Crowley knows it and is fine with it. He's smitten and happy to be wrapped around Aziraphale's finger. Crowley has tempted Aziraphale and we see that in S2 with the ox rib. He is, himself, just by existing, tempting to Aziraphale. But in terms of temptation carrying with it a bit of manipulation and *that* kind of tempting being what's demonic in nature? Then Aziraphale is, and always has been, the demon of the two of them. This is true into the end of S2, as while there is almost nothing that Crowley would deny Aziraphale, there is really only one thing and that's to change who he is for him. To become an angel again, to work for Heaven again, after what they've done to him and Aziraphale. So the end of S2 is then Aziraphale's temptation-- it's a test, of sorts, for Crowley, even if Aziraphale doesn't intend for it to be. Crowley resists the temptation. Even for Aziraphale, he won't follow the path of darkness for himself and become something he's not. Crowley-Jesus. (Aziraphale-Satan S3 incoming lol.)
And if you've been reading all of this right then you know what happens next and what it means from the POV of this guilt-ridden Aziraphale...
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I honestly don't think Aziraphale is really that angry *with Crowley* at this point-- I think he's just angry. He's reached his limit and then some. He has a lot of simmering, under the surface rage on a good day that only bubbles over when he's stressed by a situation he can't control and here is the ultimate one, really. He's a little mad at Crowley because they've waited countless years for that and in an argument, while ironically probably kind of perfect for them, is not really how *either* of them wanted it to be... but, mostly, Aziraphale is just angry that he can't have any of those moments at all. That they're out of time. That they had all this time and they never really could be safely together and that he's been haunted for six thousand years of the image of his fluffy cloud of redheaded sunshine, bloodied and stricken, and then tossed to Hell while Aziraphale was powerless to stop it. He's never seen those eyes since and he loves the snake ones. He loves all of Crowley with all he has but he's never been allowed to *have* him and never felt safe enough to try and now it's all over. And he still has to make Crowley fucking leave this bookshop for his plan of self-sacrifice to fucking work here so...
...I forgive you. It's the worst thing he can think of. The thing Crowley always hates. The thing that he knows makes Crowley feel lesser and demonic, even if Aziraphale has always, always meant it as an I love you. He even spits it out to Crowley with an almost self-deprecating, referential tone to it-- like "here we go again-- you say you love me and I say 'I forgive you' because I can't say anything else, can I?" The anger is laced underneath it and all the pain but he's intentionally referencing how this this the thing he says whenever Crowley says they can be their own side. He's trying to claim that nothing has changed in all of these years, when they both know that everything has changed since S1 and the bandstand. That's what makes it hurt both of them even more. Aziraphale chooses to say "I forgive you" because he knows that Crowley has never heard it for how Aziraphale means it and Aziraphale is a little bitter about it and lets it show in the moment, since Aziraphale's I forgive you always really means...
I can't stand to see you in pain and if there's any power in me as an angel to stop it, then I will do that so I forgive you and may that make it easier, may that make it all okay, even though I know it won't.
And just before saying I forgive you, Aziraphale's mouth works and he almost-- almost-- says I love you instead... what Crowley would really give anything to hear.
You can see the 'l' forming there, the beginning of "love", what he *really* wanted to say... what Crowley himself didn't even actually explicitly say. Crowley said it without saying it. He called them a couple without saying that word, asked for eternity without fully asking for it, said he loved him by acknowledging that they had both been pretending, but Crowley was terrified and so he said the things in a way that made it obvious what he was saying and asking for but, so unused to not speaking in code are they, that Crowley didn't say he loved Aziraphale, not directly. He did say it. He just didn't say it in those words.
And for a second, Aziraphale almost does.
He can't stand that he's breaking Crowley's heart. He can't stand that Crowley has kissed him and Aziraphale only briefly kissed him back, only barely touched him, when he really wanted to go at him like an ox rib and never let him go, and he starts to say the truth because no part of him really *wants* to be lying like this to Crowley. But he stops. And not even just because he needs Crowley to leave the shop to save his life but because, in the last four minutes, Crowley has confessed love and proposed and they've kissed and Aziraphale, pretty sure he actually died somewhere in the middle there and he's now stuck somewhere in one of Dante's worst circles of Hell lol, just cannot *also* have this be the moment where he says "I love you" to Crowley.
It's not even false hope that maybe they'll somehow have more time. With Heaven breathing down his neck in the form of The Metatron, Aziraphale has no real hope of that. He just always dreamed of telling him and not like this. He doesn't want Crowley to hear it like this, either, not as a part of a rejection. The anger, instead, surfaces, because why can't he and Crowley just *have* this?! How the hell did Gabriel and Beezlebub get to fuck off to Alpha Centauri after dating for ten minutes when he and Crowley have spent bloody eons in queer pining hell over here? What did they ever do that was so wrong to deserve this? Why was Crowley asking questions so terrible? Why have they had to spend thousands of years pretending not to love each other as if love-- the epitome of the angelic-- was unholy? Why, Aziraphale is wondering, now that they are out of time, did he ever spend so many years terrified when, in the end, it all ended tragically anyway?
How many of those years could Aziraphale have spent loving Crowley the way they ought to have been able to have and denied themselves of for so long?
And then Crowley finally does it. Tells him "don't bother" about the forgiveness-- about the love, as Aziraphale has always meant it-- and he leaves. It worked. The anger and pain and saying "I forgive you" after that kiss... it worked. And Crowley leaves and Aziraphale, alone, is a complete mess of broken and furious and broken some more.
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Crowley, as we know, doesn't get to see this moment. Muriel does! Great for fic! Hilarious by show standards that the new angel who is literally being ordered to take over Aziraphale's home against his will is who witnesses the aftermath of the intimate moment our angel has been craving, oh, just since before the dawn of humanity over here.
He touches his lips, his hand trembles... have you all noticed that Aziraphale is literally fucking *tasting and eating* what of himself Crowley left in his mouth here? He's pulling every bit of Crowley to his tongue from his teeth and *swallowing*, like he knows it's all of him he'll ever again be able to consume, like he's committing how he tastes to memory for the last like, who knows, ten? fifteen? twenty minutes? of his own existence that he knows he probably has left...
Jesus fucking Christ, Michael Sheen...
This is all without yet mentioning the single most under-analyzed line in S2 that calls into question a ton of stuff, which is this beauty from Shax, right off the top of 2.01:
"Beezlebub's put some of the lesser demons on half-rations."
What does this have to do with Aziraphale consuming Crowley's kiss like it's the most scrumptious thing he's ever tasted (because it is) and being furious that it'll be their last?
Because that Shax line casually confirms that demons eat. Do they eat human food or some sort of demon food or both? Who knows, really, but they're *supposed* to eat. Ok, but is it just a demon thing? No, because it ties to Crowley's comments in S1 about how he complained that the food wasn't really that good lately when hanging out with Lucifer and The Gang, which then implies that, at least back then, *angels* ate, too. Eating was a normal thing. Over time, though, we know that the higher angels have come to see eating as human and pedestrian and not something befitting of an angel. Some demons eat-- even Crowley eats, if less than and differently than Aziraphale-- but the angels think it's beneath them and if we have confirmation via Shax in S2 that they are supposed to be eating and basically only don't die because they're immortal beings and not human, even if they have human corporations, then the show is saying that all of these angels are fucking starving themselves.
They're doing what they're told and denying their own nature and their own needs in the process.
S2 also shows that with the ox rib, right?
Aziraphale went *at* that thing. He'd never eaten at all in a couple thousand years after being told it was un-angelic and so when he tasted food for the first time, he went so overboard that he's been Mr. Prim and Proper with his napkins and table etiquette ever since out of embarrassment over Crowley watching him food orgasm once-- and that's the metaphor there, as we've all figured out. Our show that has a sex worker named Mrs. Sandwich is all about its ongoing food-as-sex metaphor. S2 even opens with the hilarious turnabout from S1 as a "thank you for my pornography", "why do you consume *that*?" Gabriel shows up at the bookshop-- naked-- and has a food orgasm trying hot chocolate for the first time.
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Gabe, babe, Aziraphale does not need the play-by-play here....
Mah point is... mah point is that Tumblr is maxing me at 30 images per post and so you'll just have to picture Crowley slurring "dolphins" while I get to my actual point here...
Mah point is while this is a whole separate analysis almost and one that many of you have already done in different ways re: food & sex on the show, my point here is that starving yourself of food in Good Omens is analogous to being touch-starved or love-deprived and before someone yells at me about how angelic beings don't necessarily need sex or are by nature not into sex unless they make an Effort, I agree with you and Neil Gaiman. I'm just also saying the show is suggesting that they all have human corporations and that many of those human corporations are not sex-averse so for those of them that are not, they're literally out here touch-starved and/or sex-starved here in different ways. But, you say, maybe Crowley is hungry (goodness knows, Crowley *is hungry* lol) but Aziraphale eats all the time!
Yeah. Aziraphale eats *food*, all the time. But he isn't touched all the time. He doesn't have sex all the time. He isn't kissed all the time. The 2.06 scene shows him *physically* making that metaphor of food and sex real for us-- we watch him *consume* what remains of Crowley's kiss--showing that he's desperate for it and deprived of it. He's starved for it, to a point of trembling hands and rolling every bit of Crowley's lingering taste around his mouth like he's taking on every last bite of the best crepe he could ever imagine in all his days...
...and then being, understandably, full of rage that this is the only time he's going to ever have Crowley-- and all he's ever going to have of him, when Crowley just offered all of himself-- forever.
And then The Metatron comes back and is Aziraphale ready to go to his death now? And, Friends, Aziraphale...
...is absolutely not.
He's turned away from the door, barely containing tears. When the door opened and he turned, he half-hoped it'd be Crowley but it was grr That Bastard instead. He looks out the window and Crowley is still out there...
...he left but he didn't really *leave*... and it somehow then still isn't over and will someone please just take Aziraphale out back and angel-shoot him? He can't take any more of this.
What about the shop? he asks, in a moment of desperation and terror over what's to come and some blind, stupid hope that he can somehow get out of all of this with him and Crowley still alive and The Metatron, who anticipated this, tells him Muriel lives here now. Aziraphale looks around the home he's made for him and Crowley for the last 223 years and his favorite books and possessions. Crowley's hat from 1941 is on the hat stand, the horse statue is where Crowley put his glasses back when he trusted him, back when he let Aziraphale see his pretty yellow eyes whenever Aziraphale wanted in recent years... before he just put his glasses back on now and closed himself off again.
Aziraphale is never going to see those eyes he loves again. He didn't even get to kiss Crowley without the sunglasses on before it was all over.
Even Gabriel had something to take up to Heaven with him to remind him of the demon he loved but Aziraphale goes to Heaven and to his death empty-handed because he pushed Crowley away to save him from all of this and, in the final push, he looks at Crowley standing there by The Bentley, all that secretly optimistic, beautiful, romantic hope about him still in him from the angel Aziraphale first met, all the awareness there of Aziraphale-- the only being who really knows him-- and so he's still waiting, still hoping. It goes back a few hours to the ball.
I'll be back. I won't leave you on your own.
But it's Aziraphale's call now and he gets into the elevator. The Metatron wins because Aziraphale's love for Crowley wins. He'll die before he lets anything happen to him, even if he wants to run to that car and to him but where would they run *to*? There's no place to go. Crowley has always been wrong about that. They can't go off together. There's no place safe from Heaven for them.
So Aziraphale gets into the elevator at The Dirty Donkey, leaving Crowley alone in the street once again, just with less hope this time than in 1967.
So Aziraphale leaves the bookshop this time, instead of going into it like he did in S1, when he left Crowley in the street, standing beside The Bentley, while clutching a different book this time-- Agnes Nutter's prophecies in his hand versus The Book of Life and its threatened erasure hanging over Aziraphale like the specter that it is. What was predicted about the future versus erasure from the past and all time. Nothing to see here, Crowley! Everything is as it's seems.
Everything is tickety-boo!
Tickety-boo?
Yes, which is also what Aziraphale-as-Crowley said... when he was kidnapped by Heaven and Hell in S1, remember? When he was taken from Earth to be sentenced to death... along *with* Crowley.
This time, Aziraphale is shutting Crowley out again. Telling him 'mind how you go' again, this time a bit more, uh, emphatically lol. And on their heels, again, the end of the world. Arma-bloody-geddon 2.0: The Second Coming.
Aziraphale heard The Metatron saying that was the plan-- as, of course, our villain walked away and meant for it not to be totally heard, further implying that they have no plans to really make Aziraphale the Supreme Archangel and that this is all a remix of Fraulein Greta Klauschmidt. That then makes this all somehow *even worse*... because now Aziraphale gets in the elevator to ride up to his death to save Crowley but now he knows that it was all for nothing.
War is coming. The planet they love will be destroyed. Crowley, if he knows him well enough, will likely die trying to save it. When he does, he'll still be damned to Hell for all of eternity while Aziraphale thinks he likely won't exist at all once he makes it upstairs and Michael finally gets to Book of Life him. Let the other angels think he's been played for a sucker. Better they think him a fool than that they come for Crowley.
He doesn't want to Fall and doesn't wish for it. If they take his memories as punishment, and they almost certainly will, he won't remember any of the moments he spent with Crowley and even if they could have eternity together in Hell if the world is destroyed, he wouldn't wish Crowley the pain of being around him when he didn't remember anything.
Aziraphale only finding out about The Second Coming in the moment before he gets on the elevator-- *after* everything happens with Crowley-- is a million times worse because now Aziraphale is riding to his death knowing that everything they've done in six thousand years doesn't matter and that the events of S1 didn't matter because all it did was delay the inevitable end of the world and everything Aziraphale loves is about to be destroyed.
That, apparently, was God's ineffable, Great Plan.
All of that is what is on Aziraphale's face on the ride up to Heaven in the final splitscreen.
In that splitscreen, Crowley, for what it's worth, is visually echoing the driving back from Tadfield bit that leads to the "tickety-boo" moment of Aziraphale lying to him by omission. He looks close to a parallel to the S1 moment where he suddenly yelled:
"DUCKS!"
They're what water slides off of. In this context? They were also the thing itching at the back of Crowley's mind-- the not quite right thing, the puzzle he couldn't quite figure out, the question he coudln't yet quite answer... until he could. That's positive, actually. It means there might be something for him to realize, even if that realization might come too late in the short term. (They will solve everything and be fine, memory-intact, immortal beings in love who go off together by the end of it. This is all just until then.)
Ducks are also, sort of, the be all and end all of Good Omens. Crowley knows how to take care of them, after all, when others do not. You feed them frozen peas-- they are good for them and they love them, too. (Don't feed him coffee, you Metatron idiot! He only ever drank one mug of it in S1 and it led to the *points above* see: tickety-boo Aziraphale lying to Crowley paralleling sequence of scenes.) [The "do you have one, single, better idea?" scene is Aziraphale drinking coffee, for reference.]
So, yeah, by comparison here... Aziraphale, you are a duck lol. You have been fed bread by idiots for far too long when, really, you need to be eating frozen peas. Crowley knows this and he knows how to take care of you. With any luck, he's about to have his duck-moment-paralleling epiphany any moment now, though I fear you're already going to be memory-wiped and fallen to Hell when he does. That's okay, though, because this is the main scene that still needs a go-around in paralleling and we know Crowley knows where the dungeons are down there from unfortunate, personal experience.
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Cottage in the south downs, cottage in the south downs, cottage in the south downs, cottage....
Notes: Hi! If you have made it all the way here, thank you for reading. I hope it was worth the read for you. You all write such great stuff that I felt inspired to put my lit and film studies and psych background to use and jump in a bit. Thanks for indulging me. I also wish to note that there is a gif above that is by @fuckyeahgoodomens but for some reason, the credit was not working properly so I just wanted to make sure you knew who was providing us the visual joy.
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rineptune · 27 days
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Heeeeeyyyy pal
Can we get a continuation of that fic with the pregnant reader who's Lucifer's sister
Like what if her water broke at like, the *least* convenient time and Lucifer is freaking tf out, Alastors chill as usual and readers just like
:) "I'm just glad to be here" while having contractions
Love your work btw 🤗
inconvenient timing.
summary: inconvenient timing for your water to break, but what else could you do?
warnings: foul language, brief description of the horrors of pregnancy and labor
a/n: here it is n tysm!! the second part to devil’s paradise
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during your pregnancy, all is well. 
regular visits from the doctor became part of the routine, and alastor made the effort to be the one accompanying you to every last one of them, and on the rare occasion that he couldn’t accompany you, charlie—your ever optimistic and kind niece—was the one who came with.
the crew of the hotel treated you as if you were made of glass, not wanting you to lift too much on your plate, so they did their best to cater to your every need and demand (not that you needed much and bothered them often).
you took care of yourself, too.
though your belly had gotten swollen, you were feeling fine, as if you weren’t carrying the unborn child of the feared radio demon in pride ring. you thanked whoever it is you could thank that you didn’t experience morning sickness, however, you were no exemption from the fatigue and discomfort that came with being pregnant.
lucifer’s worry for your well-being throughout all of this still hasn’t completely faded away. you were his only sister! and his brothers in heaven would surely have his head if something did happen to you now that you’ve fallen from the skies and are now under his domain.
everything was going well, until it wasn’t.
you went with charlie during another meeting with heaven’s official court in place of your brother. obviously, all eyes wandered to your stomach because, how could they not?
a former angel pregnant? that stirred whispers and disgusted expressions from those who were from the court.
“as you can see, the population in hell is—“
charlie was cut off when the angels gasped in unison. confused, she turned to you, and her eyes widened when she saw the bottom half of your dress soaked. 
“oh my go—! aunt yn, your water broke.” she says in a panic.
“i see that, my dear,” you answer with an awkward cough. 
“it seems that i’ll be taking my leave early, uhm... excuse me.”
“wait! uhm, i’ll take you back!” she tells you. “we’ll be back another time, sorry! this is very important for us.” charlie tells the angels present at the court meeting.
alastor swore you were about to snap his hand into two.
“darling, are you nervous?” he asks smoothly.
“no? why would you ask that, al?”
“hmm.”
he glances at the hand that gripped his, remarkably so tight that he feels all the blood from that particular area stop flowing. your free hand caressed your belly through the hospital gown, taking slow and even breaths to somewhat soothe the contractions.
“i was only wondering,” alastor answers.
you may have a high pain tolerance, but when you’re having contractions, you might as well swear on every god and angel to spare you from the agonizing pain—promising to never think of having any children in the future again. 
because, god, it hurts like a bitch.
as calm as you were, lucifer, on the other hand, had no calm bone in his body.
“oh, god. gabriel’s calling,” lucifer says, looking as though he’s about to throw up.
“and the nursery still has renovations that need to be done—“
“i’m going to be an uncle, holy shit—“
“what if something goes wrong? what? no! i shouldn’t think that—“
“should i prepare the gifts—“
“where are the doctors and nurses? they should’ve been here by now—“
“i knew we shouldn’t have taken you to sloth ring, yn—“
“lucifer,” you breathed out. “calm down.”
“i am calm! fucking calm,” he said, wiping away the sweat on his brow. 
“you sound like a dying goat, my lord,” alastor smiled.
“fuck you, deerface.”
“ok, ok. no one should be fighting,” you amusedly sigh, groaning when you feel another sharp contraction that had you biting your lip.
this got the attention of the other two, and lucifer asked you if you were okay as alastor placed a comforting hand on your belly.
well, at least they got along when need be.
“look, she has your eyes and smile, al.”
after long, painful hours of labor and practically dying on your hospital bed due to the procedure of bringing a new life into this hellish world, a healthy baby girl was born.
she took on alastor’s ears, eyes, and smile, while she had your wings and charm. the little fawn was sound asleep in your arms after almost tragically biting off a nurse’s finger when he was checking for anything wrong with your baby—to alastor’s dismay, he wished his little girl had succeeded. 
nevertheless, she is perfect in his eyes already.
“our little fawn is certainly perfect, my dear,” he says. “she has your charm, too.”
“that she does.”
and you best believe charlie and lucifer cried when charlie finally held her baby cousin.
“charlie, dear, are you ok?” you ask, a bit concerned.
“allergies, auntie. allergies,” she sniffled.
nothing would ever happen to her, because anyone who dares even look at the niece of the morningstar fallen angel who was also the daughter of the infamous radio demon, would receive hell served on a golden platter without any remorse or time for rebuttal.
“it may have been inconvenient timing to have my contractions,” you murmur to alastor once you two are finally home and alone with your baby. “but i wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“i’m glad that you’re ok, darling.”
“mm, thank you, alastor.”
“you shouldn’t thank me for worrying about you. it’s only natural for me to do so, no?” he says.
“now, i have to take care of two, but i wouldn’t have it any other way either.”
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Bee fell first, Gabe fell harder
I've seen it described the other way around, but I really believe this is how it happened.
Okay, so.
Bee fell first.
That first meeting, at the bar in Russia (?)
Gabe seems annoyed to be there. He's disinterested, doesn't know why he's there.
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I don't think either is particularly interested in the other at this point. But it DOES start here. Well, it builds on something that happened at the airbase. Gabe realizes he has an equal who understands the frustration of being held accountable for all of Heaven, and so does Bee, with Hell. It's a strange feeling of camaraderie neither of them has felt before. Which is why Gabe gets flustered by the "Arma-bloody-gedon" and starts to joke about it. And Bee NOTICEABLY perks up when he's being a goofball about it.
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Gabe then quickly shuts it down, with the "pity we'll never speak again." I think he's genuinely saying that. It's a shame he won't feel that camaraderie again, since obviously the war is still going to happen. Or so they both believe.
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The next meeting. This was a HUGE jump. They went from "we're ready for Armageddon 2.0" to "how about no" in one meeting. Obviously we're given to assume that more meetings than we've seen have taken place. Gabe shows up at the bar and launches into his plan of no Armageddon. I think at this point he's intrigued by the way he feels when he's with them and if the war happens, he doesn't get to explore that more. Bee, on the other hand, is GONE for him at this point. The way they EAT UP his no-Armageddon plan immediately, and the way they're smiling at him?!
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AND. The most important bit. When they explain the music to him. They do it SO GENTLY. Bee, the demon who's usually yelling, usually insulting everyone around them. They explain the music to help him understand. And he's receptive to it, maybe not necessarily enjoying the song itself, but enjoying it because Bee likes it. Bee's enjoyment makes him happy.
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And the way they look at him when he says that. Head over heels.
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I would still argue that at this point, Gabriel is still merely interested in exploring all these new feelings he gets when he's with Bee. He's taking this much slower than Bee. But then he invites them to go look at his statue. Does he understand how vain that is? Probably not, but the fact that he invited them to see something that makes him happy? He took a big step here. Maybe bigger than Bee realizes. This meeting has no pretense, no motive like the previous ones did. Those were "we need to talk about the war" meetings. This one is PURELY for the purpose of meeting up with each other.
And how sad Bee looks when Gabe is talking about how much he enjoys looking at the statue? They want so badly for him to look at them like that, but I don't think they realize that he's almost there.
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How could they? They probably have feelings of doubt, of low self worth, because this is the Supreme Archangel Gabriel, they're a demon. He couldn't possibly reciprocate what they're feeling.
Could he?
But then they get their answer, at the pub, with the miracle. This is the angel who frowns upon frivolous miracles, thinks it's a waste of holy energy. He miracles the song to play for them. For no reason other than Bee. To make them happy, to see them smile. And smile they do.
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Gabe fell harder
Beelzebub jumped in to their feelings with both feet, but Gabe was more hesitant. He did have a lot more to lose, I'd argue. Bee has already fallen, Gabe probably assumes he could fall for being involved with a demon. Especially since Heaven is probably intensely watching for that after, you know, that other angel and demon. Which is a terrifying prospect, I'd assume, for the angel in charge of everything. And he's vain, he loves himself, loves being righteous, loves the authority of Heaven. So of course he's more hesitant. But he leaves all that behind when he admits to himself that there's something worth more than choosing Heaven.
Y'all. Not only was he ready to fall, he welcomed it. He didn't want to spend another minute in Heaven without Bee. Look at his face when Metatron says he's going to remain an angel. He's SO DONE.
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We're lead to believe that falling is the worst thing that can happen to an angel, and Gabriel is willing, no, insistent that he fall.
He wouldn't be falling because of Bee, he'd be falling for Bee.
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baggvinshield · 8 months
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"I knew I forgot one: Let there be Light"
so. I do think it's quite possible that Crowley was formerly the archangel known as Lucifer and I've written about how the narrative so far supports this theory (or at least hasn't jossed it yet) already.
I want to clarify what I really mean when I say "I think Crowley was Lucifer before he Fell". I think he was the angel humanity sometimes calls Lucifer.
First, here's the wiki on Lucifer. It's not a traditional angel name, but actually a Latin word for "the one who brings light". Lucifer has been both synonymous and separate from Satan, Beelzebub, and the Devil - humanity just can't decide or agree who this tricky one is!
As a former catholic school girl with years of qualifying religious trauma, I can say that I only know of one mention of the name Lucifer in the Bible, and it's something like "Lucifer, oh fallen angel, the morning star who struck the ground blah blah" whatever. In Revelation Jesus actually calls himself the "morning star" which is... funny in this context.
So not a lot of bible canon to go off. We could look at Milton, or Dante, or literally any other intentionally fictitious stuff about Lucifer to look for Clues!, but honestly? I think that's kinda pointless. I think only Good Omens canon matters.
And we've gotten exactly one name drop of Lucifer so far. By Crowley. While he's wasted, thinks Aziraphale is dead, and is waiting for the world to end. He's talking about his Fall. He says:
"I was just minding my own business one day, and then it's 'oh look here it's Lucifer and the guys'."
It's ambiguous if he's referring to himself or someone else.
But really, I'm not super interested in that, either. What's in a name, right? Crowley changes his all the time.
I don't think it matters if Crowley's Name was Lucifer. What I'm interested in is if Crowley is the fallen angel that humanity sometimes calls Lucifer. The things we sometimes attribute to Lucifer in western culture include: being the serpent of Eden, tempting Christ in the desert with the kingdoms of the world, and causing a third of all angels to Fall by challenging the authority of god.
I think Crowley was the other Prince of Heaven mentioned in s2. I think he was the former Supreme Archangel of Heaven. I think he was the/one of the Morningstars. I think he was God's first angel.
Aside from the scene where we see him literally creating the heavens (flowery archaic term for the cosmos), Crowley says he worked closely with "upstairs" on the design. He seems confident enough in his relationship with god to question her. He makes the statement "if I was running things" which is... hugely blasphemous and definitely something humanity has attributed to the fallen angel we sometimes call Lucifer.
I don't really think Crowley's angel name will ever be revealed, tbh? But I think enough about him and his former angelic identity will be revealed that we'll know. I think names, especially Crowley's, are super important in Good Omens as signifiers of identity, and Crowley's whole existence, the Point of him, is about casting off the identities others put on you, and forging your own.
Who cares what his name was? I wanna know why he's so certain that Aziraphale won't be able to make a single bit of difference by going back to Heaven, even as the Supreme Archangel. I wanna know why Crowley could access those high clearance files, why the actual archangels followed him around, listened to him, and seemed to give him a weird measure of respect, why Shax called him "arch-traitor", why he said "I know" when Gabriel said it hurt to try to remember, why he and the Metatron did That look, why he's so different from all the other demons and angels. What's the story there? What's he hiding from Aziraphale when he chooses not to tell him about any of this? Why does he give different accounts and reasons for his Fall? What's his secret shame, besties?
I think Crowley was the angel who inadvertently triggered a rebellion by asking too many of the "wrong" kinds of questions. I think he thinks he's responsible for the First War, and for the Fall, and by extension, for the different Sides.
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syzygy-yzygy · 4 months
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I feel like some of y'all are forgetting about the main, thematic point of Good Omens.
"Most human mistakes are made not from humans being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but rather from humans being fundamentally human." - the voice of god, episode 1x1. (sorry if I got the quote a bit wrong, I'm working from memory here.)The entire point of Good Omens season one, and what will undoubtedly prove itself to be the point of seasons two and three, is the wonderful chaos of humanity.
In the very first scene, Crowley says "not very subtle of the almighty, is it? A fruit tree in the middle of the garden with a giant 'do not eat' sign," a quote which is immediately followed by Crowley wondering if, in tempting humanity to eat the apple, he actually did something good.And the show will spend the rest of its run proving that he did. Not good by Heaven's definition, but good in the human sense of right and wrong, which GO also spends a lot of time distinguishing from one another.
Because ultimately, Armeggedon is stopped not by Heavenly ideas or divine intervention, but rather by the chaos of humans. By the utterly human need to disobey, to mess things up, to eat the apple just to see what will happen. And it's a trait that Aziraphale and Crowley have fallen in love with. Because Good Omens is a show about an angel and a demon, meant to be heaven incarnate and hell incarnate, who instead fell in love with humanity and each other. And so they became human incarnate.
I'm worried people won't get my reference so I'll quote it here. "I hoped you'd be heaven incarnate. I was worried you'd be hell incarnate. But you're better. You're human incarnate." Aziraphale to Adam, 1x5. Adam saves the world not by being good in a way that's simple and pure, but rather by being human, and finding, in that humanity, the mundane, chaotic, messy things that make us beautiful.
Finally, this theme is tied together in the final episode with three quotes. One from Crowley: "well, time to leave the garden, then?" One from Adam: "Dog. Don't you dare walk over that fence, because then I'd have to leave this garden, and that would be a very bad thing." And one from God's voiceover: "Adam didn't see why everyone got so mad about people eating their apples. And there never was an apple, in Adam's mind, that wasn't worth the trouble that you got in for eating it."
It's almost too on the nose, but I love it. And season two has the same themes, it's just a little quieter about them. The love between Aziraphale and Crowley as well as Gabriel and Beelzebub is a rebellious act; a moment of humanity that heaven tries to suppress. An "institutional problem". They're both breaking out of the roles they were supposed to play by doing the very human thing of wanting something entirely outside of strict ideas of right and wrong.
Good Omens is a celebration of the chaos of humanity and a condemnation of the Christian ideas of purity and original sin.
In this sense, I think it's incredibly fitting that the main characters, and the characters who are consistently held up as the most obvious example of this phenomenon, are a queer couple. A couple who refused to fall into predestined roles; arbitrary ideas of good and evil. A queer couple who fell in love with humanity and while doing that, fell in love with each other.
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foolishcatalyst · 8 months
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Okay this is going to be completely incoherent and in no sensical order but I've just seen the first two episodes and need the thoughts out of my brain before I explode so
SPOILERS FOR GOOD OMENS 2 EPISODES 1 AND 2
Crowley thinking that all it takes to make people fall in love is "standing under a shelter in a sudden rainfall" I AM DYING THAT IS LITERALLY THEF IRST THING WE SAW IN SEASON ONE
and then following that up with "get two humans wet and have them stare into each others eyes for a bit and BOOM" I laughed so hard
did we get Crowley's angel name?? idk i missed it but my partner thinks we did??? I just have to wait and see I guess
did Aziraphale and/or Crowley perform "a miracle that only an archangel would be capable of" or did Gabriel do something somehow
I felt so bad for Gabriel when Crowley made him remember and he was like "i can't hold thoughts like that in my head. not anymore" poor BABY
i'm glad we still get to see asshole Gabriel tho
there were flies buzzing in the bookshop the whole time? idk if it was just foreshadowing Beelzebub's appearance but hmmmm
I'm... not sold on Shelley Conn. I'm glad she's not just doing an impression of Anna Maxwell Martin but Beelzebub seemed a bit... i don't know, bland? we'll see, they were only in one scene anyway. I think that's literally my only negative thought haha.
Everything about angel Crowley was just so AAAAAAAAAAAAA
He was so innocent and naive and excited and adorable and I love him SO MUCH
Also THE CRANK tying back to him using the Bentley's crank to face off against Satan
Also that scene was really pretty I was worried about seeing TV budget CGI on the big screen but it looked great.
Everything about Jane Austen as Crowley knew her
"she had balls!"
I was slow to catch it but the book Gabriel read that started with "in the beginning" was that Good Omens??
Gabriel waving a discworld book around
I adore Maggie I love her so much with all my heart
"The car." "What car?" "Our car." kfhaklsngfkiadsngf;adjng;
Also the fucking implication that Aziraphale considers Crowley joint owner of the bookshop aljfbasjlbfasjklnfkladnflaksfnlak like he might only be saying it to manipulate Crowley but he still SAYS IT and this is AZIRAPHALE that MEANS SO MUCH
Aziraphale insisting on doing a driving test before driving tests were a thing i LOVE HIM
The way Aziraphale leaned against Crowley when asking him to get him a sherry.
Aziraphale miracling a table free then acting all surprised when the people sitting there leave the bitch energy is strong this season
Also a lot of "we"s getting thrown around I'm so fucking here for it.
"I haven't paid the rent in months" "Well I suppose that's my fault for not collecting it"
Jemima daughter of Job YOU HAVE MY WHOLE ENTIRE HEART I LOVE YOU
Also Ty Tennant was fantastic
Ennon fucking stroking Aziraphale
Aziraphale's FACE when he realised Crowley had turned the goats into birds the SMUGNESS
The entire scene where Aziraphale thought he had fallen my heart was trying so hard to burst out my chest
About as hard as Crowley tried not to laugh when Aziraphale said "I'm a demon" lmao
"You said it wasn't lonely" "i'm a demon. I lied" MY HEART
The whole entire "i'm on my own side" "you're on your own side" "you're like me" UGH JOHN FINNEMORE I GIVE YOU MY FIRST BORN
speaking OF. the childbirth scene. the theatrics. I was laughing so fucking hard the whole way through.
A few visibly disabled angels in the background which is cool but also SARAQAEL FUCKING MANIFESTING A RAMP IN THE BOOKSHOP it just felt so sassy but like of course the bookshop isn't accessible Aziraphale doesn't want people in there
"alphabetical order by author?" "what's an author? no, alphabetical order by the first letter of the first sentence" "but, but nobody will be able to find- ah yes, very well, carry on." lmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaao
the "i'm back" "i can see that" scene being EVEN MORE OVER THE TOP i didn't think that was POSSIBLE
the fukcing apology dance
Aziraphale had to do an apology dance in 1941????
Aziraphale listing all the times he did the apology dance is literally set-up for SO MUCH 5+1 fanfics
Aziraphale appearing through a weird crystal portal thing to thwart Crowley, seeing who it was and stepping out, then going back to it to start his whole speech again like even when Aziraphale is following the party line, it's all still a performance.
from the gasp when Gabriel turned around towards the crowd, he either has one hell of an effort happening, or something completely unexpected going on down there.
Job's wife referring to god as "them" singular they in 2500BC fucking SUCK IT
Muriel is adorable and I can't wait to see more of them
Muriel's outfit is one of my favourite costumes EVER the way the tails at the back of their coat are layered??? pleated??? idk i love it i can't wait to get a better look at it when i can pause to see
i loved the effect they did with the notes piling up around Nina when Lindsay's texts were coming in - this show has a lot of people in common behinds the scenes with Sherlock and it shows but in a good way.
Aziraphale knows Nina has a partner but she's trying to set her up with Maggie anyway so he doesn't get in trouble lmaaaaaaaao Aziraphale you bitch. We know Nina's relationship is bad but he doesn't.
Crowley tempting Aziraphale to try human food for the first time
Crowley drinking while watching Aziraphale eat for the first time
The "let me tempt you" thing from Rome is even better now holy shit
Nina and Maggie constantly seeing Crowley do weird shit this is literally outsider POV fanfiction
the PARALLELS between Nina and Maggie and Crowley and Aziraphale but especially Nina offering Maggie a drink and Maggie declining bc she doesn't like the test compared to Crowley offering Aziraphale wine and Aziraphale declining because alcohol is the root of all evil or whatever I-
i was worried about how the minisodes would be integrated into the episodes but i really like the jumping over and back between time periods they're doing, or at least did in ep 2.
the first scene transition in the flashback after Crowley triggers Gabriel's memory was accompanied by the sound of a page turning, i really liked that
i've heard the season 1 opening theme AT LEAST 150 times and it was really weird after that hearing the theme with the new sound effects added in.
Aziraphale stands really fucking close to Crowley all the damn time
Aziraphale popping up behind the car with the record he is SO CUTE
the whole "we carved it out for ourselves" argument is so good holy fuck "i was hoping you would help me take care of him" like they're raising a child or a puppy or something it's so different from their S1 arguments this time it's Aziraphale pushing and Crowley walking away but Crowley. Really doesn't want to walk away. He clearly fucking wants Aziraphale to beg him to stay the way he himself would. and then instead Aziraphale says "i would love for you to help me" LOVE. LOOOOOOOOVE. UGH.
Crowley walking into the bookshop and immediately jamming his glasses onto the horse like that's his routine now.
"you call me for three reasons. you're bored. you've done something really clever and you're going to burst if you don't tell somebody about it. or there's something wrong."
They WASTED good old fashioned lover boy like i'm glad they finally used it but it was chopped up and not for a particularly noteworthy scene and ugh its a little thing but i'm sad about it
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fallen-gabrielle · 4 months
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I'M SO HAPPY YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA GUYS
For some context: the Detective Conan movies never came out in theatres in France until the Scarlet Bullet (that was during the pandemic so I wasn't able to go see it unfortunately). The first five movies were dubbed and came out in DVD, done by Kaze but they stopped and I don't know why actually. Probably because some people thought it was "too violant to see dead animated bodies", even though the french episodes were super censored on the TV. The serie had actually belgian voice actors while for the movies it was french voice actors: so we have two different dubs for the francophonic audio of Detective Conan. Eurozoom (the new dubbing company) hired the original voice actors of the serie for the recent movies and it's great to hear my childhood voices back in present time.
The serie in France stopped being produced around episode 218 (and there's now over 1100), so in 2000. Yikes, we had no french content for Detective Conan for 21 years. I went to watch the Bride of Halloween last year and I brought my sister and bro-in-law for the Black Iron Submarine this year and they loved it, wanted to see the next one.
BUT! Since the francophonic public hasn't heard of Detective Conan for over 20 years (only the die hard fans from its airing days are probably the main remaining fans around here and went to watch the movies), there wasn't a lot of entries for the Detective Conan movies and Eurozoom had announced that they might stop the francophonic dub due to lack of said entries. So I was not optimist for the next movie, and even more disappointed to learn it was going to have Kaito in it.
I need to precise : for the serie (so belgian dub), Shinichi Kudo and Kaito Kuroba are respectively voiced by the same people who voiced Joey Wheeler/Jono-Uchi and Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! and that's the funniest part of the french dub of Detective Conan. Nessym Guetat (Kaiba and Kaito's voice actor) has such an arrogant voice you really want to punch the guy xD It makes his Kaito less likeable than Kappei Yamaguchi's, who has more of a mischievous arrogance in his tone that makes people fangirl over Kid. So if Eurozoom will keep Kaito's original french voice actor, it's gonna be epic !
SO HERE IT IS GUYS, IT'S OFFICIAL, I'LL GET MY FRENCH KAITO NEXT YEAR, I'M GONNA WATCH THE MOVIE BOTH IN JAPANESE AND FRENCH THIS TIME!! i just hope it won't come out in august like this year and we will be able to have the movie slightly earlier cuz i fucking need it so badly
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muzzleroars · 6 months
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What if during the Gabe and Micheal fight V1 was serveraly injured by Michael?
Like the fight originally wasn't Gabe vs. Michael but it was Micheal vs. V1
After all the shits that's happened in hell and the fall of his brother, he wants to avenge his brothers memory by killing the thing that made him fall.
In this action he's thinking "gabe is gonna hate me for this but he needs it"
Granted V1 could totally beat Michaels ass he probably just caught him off guard and when he was low on blood.
michael likely would give v1 a pretty good fight - i tend to think that gabriel is an equal match for it with many of their sparring sessions being his win, i just like to think that v1 is particularly troublesome when one has no experience as it learns EXTREMELY quickly (beat it in a minute or it'll never happen!!) and it has an instant blood-healing mechanism. in that sense, michael would equal it as well as he's pretty similar in strength and skill to gabriel, BUT he's got a couple advantages that help level the playing field despite this being a first encounter, chief among them how he engages it with little warning already enraged. complicating this is the fact that michael is naturally very adept at harnessing his wrath as an advantage in battle rather than a detriment, so i think enraging sends him into a radiant state...which isn't a great set-up for a machine that's likely just rooting around for some soul orbs.
thankfully for v1, it's extremely difficult to actually catch it fully off-guard - it's learning about michael from the first move he makes, knowing he's a supreme angel like gabe but instantly scrapping much of its data to start from a clean slate. because he doesn't fight like gabriel. gabriel has a serene elegance to his fighting style, a grace in his movements that treats battle like a dance, and he LOVES to talk (being god's messenger puts a lot of words in his mouth). michael is a sharp contrast to that, entirely silent as he moves in vicious, staccato movements that reek of a brutal efficiency and a single desire to end the battle. whereas gabriel delights in the fight itself, michael is clearly only concerned about the victory. v1 can appreciate it for its distinct, cutting brutality, but it becomes an increasing issue that michael is an entirely foreign combatant with a very unique strategy - every so often, he seems to entirely change his fighting style. v1 knows there are always patterns, idiosyncrasies that betray an individual, but michael's are incredibly difficult to pin down in the limited time it knows it has. and so he continually resets its learning, frustrating its ai in a way that's paradoxically thrilling for it, but it knows now isn't the time. it decides to follow mike's lead instead, attempting to end the battle as soon as it can, but another problem arises that finally trips its alarms - michael's blood doesn't seem to work very well. it does repair it in some capacity, but it's about half as effective as it should be, similar in many respects to the old blood that runs in rivers through hell. put all that together, and v1 could easily make a mistake that turns disastrous.
michael knows he's doing a terrible thing to gabriel, but he would do anything in service to his brothers, and he would fully believe that playing the villain now is necessary. to him this is sickness, perversion, to love an object that michael believes has no sentience and certainly has no soul, marks the full degradation of gabriel. again, it is his fault. gabriel's faith had always wavered, and being worked to death by a heretical council has completely decayed his morals, with v1 the object of that fall. there is something selfish in michael, a part of him knowing he does this because if he eliminates this idol, perhaps gabriel could repent. maybe he can use purgatory to heal him, to save him, to pull a fallen angel back from the depths of treachery and restore him to his former glory. it's an abominable thought, he knows it's wrong, but if he can gather gabriel back into the fold, back to heaven and to himself, maybe his life lingering on like this still has value. it pushes him ever forward in battle against a machine far more capable than he would have thought, but god tempered him to fight anything in hell, in merciless pursuit that burned through his own divine fire. his strength is similar to that of gabriel's, but it has been honed for a singular purpose.
v1 knows when a fight is lost, michael has learned much the way it does (cheater!!) and he sees what it protects, he begins quickly to tear into its exposed blood ports (bullshit prototype). v1 is forced to be defensive, something it's much less adept at, but again michael sees just how it curls in on itself - while he likely gets nails driven right into his face for it, he grabs hold and rips open its chest plate. v1's very mind. it screeches at him so loudly it's actually disorienting, but there is nothing it can do with damaged insulation even as the blast of absolute zero instantly freezes michael's dead hands. the temperature is immediately too high, the particles kept in stasis suddenly moving at unimaginable speed and instantly destroying v1's ability to move, to think, to exist. a split second of its hud flashing garbled nonsense in dire warning before it all cuts offline, but by then gabriel's virtues have fetched him, begging him to come help. and a fallen angel at full strength, now blindingly enraged, isn't going to go well for a michael that's just struggled against the scourge of hell, especially when the fight would need to be much more delicate considering he's done all of this to save gabriel. but he can't understand. not now. but gabe doesn't really give two shits when mike simply vanishes, because he's not the priority and in fact would just be a waste of time.
because v1 is bled out on the floor, its body torn open with its computer exposed as its refrigerator desperately blasts out frigid air on emergency power. without thinking, gabriel takes what's left of his wings, ripping out his tortured feathers in shocks of agony that should render him motionless, and packs them inside v1's computer in delicate urgency. deathly cold, burning his own hypothermic body but just right for v1's needs, before he's done enough and can quickly switch to clawing up his own arms for the blood it now needs. it's all quick fixes, enough to hopefully keep it sustained until he can get it somewhere safe and he can revive it. because it's still intact enough and he knows it can live (v2 proved how surprisingly hardy they can be) but BOY if this wouldn't piss him off to an extreme extent with michael. like gabriel would know, in a calm mind detached from his personal feelings, that michael was doing what he thought right...but what does that matter when he's so willing to hurt the undeserving (like the ferryman) or those he loves? tbh between something like this and the ferryman, if mike returned too soon afterward they could get into a fight they both REALLY regret.
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woodchuck019 · 8 months
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Crowley was Raphael?
WARNING: MAJOR GOOD OMENS 2 SPOILERS
Ok, so in the last few years we all enjoyed the headcanon that Crowley was the Archangel Raphal pre-Fall. To be completely honest, in season one this theory didn't make a lot of sense because we knew basically nothing about Crowley as an angel except for the fact that he helped create the stars and fell because he asked too many questions. So, even though it was a nice and interesting theory, I thought it would remain that, a theory.
Well, seems like this theory is basically confirmed now at the end of season 2. But let's start at the beginning.
First, we have to talk about the Hierarchy of Angels in Christianity. This Hierarchy was theorized by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in his book De Coelesti Hierarchia (On the Celestial Hierarchy). Dionysius described nine levels of spiritual beings which he grouped into 9 orders.
Highest orders:
Seraphim
Cherubim
Thrones
Middle orders:
Dominions
Virtues
Powers
Lowest orders:
Principalities
Archangels
Angels
Now, a lot of people asked Neil why the Archangels have so much power if they are so low in the Hierarchy and he said that he and Terry actually tought of archangels and Archangels as different beings.
So we have the arch-angels, in thre sense of being just above the lowest Choir of angels, and then we have the Arch-angels, in the sense of being above all angels.
Actually, the term archangel itself is not found in the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament, and in the Greek New Testament the term archangel is used referring to Michael, who is called 'one of the chief princes,' and 'the great prince'.
The idea of seven archangels is most explicitly stated in the apocryphal Book of Tobit when Raphael reveals himself, declaring: "I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand in the glorious presence of the Lord, ready to serve him."
In Judaism the Archangels are given the title of śārīm, meaning "princes", to show their superior rank and status, so they are also called "Princes of Heaven".
In season 2 episode 6, when Crowley is in Heaven trying to find any info on Gabriel, Muriel gives him the missing Archangel's file explaining that even if they wanted, they couldn't show it to him, since only angels above the rank of Dominions could access it. Immediately after, without putting in any effort, Crowley opens the file, saying that he was an angel once and they never bothered to change passwords. (I totally read a fic like this btw).
When the Archangel Saraquel meets them and recognises Crowley, she says that they worked together on the Horsehead Nebula. So Crowley must have been pretty high up in the ranks if he worked with an Archangel.
When they show us the scene of the trial, Gabriel is ready to be cast down to Hell, but the Metatron stops him and says:
"You are not going to hell. For one Prince of Heaven to be cast into the outer darkness makes a good story. For it to happen twice makes it look like there is some kind of institutional problem."
So we know that one of the Seven Archangels has Fallen, and it could be Lucifer, even though in the bible it is never stated that he was an archangel, but wouldn't they have said so if it were the case?
Also in episode 2, when Shax tells Crowley that Heaven and Hell think Aziraphale has something to do with Gabriel's disappearence, she says:
"A miracle of enormous power happened last night. The kind of miracle only the mightiest of Archangels could've performed".
Reminds you of something? Raphael, one of the mightiest of Archangels?
I really hope they will confirm the theory in season 3.
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vroomvroomwee · 7 months
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I keep thinking about the Book of Life and how Heaven can easily rid themselves of Aziraphale. So why don't they? Why didn't they even in season 1? And I think it's a matter of cause and effect.
They don't really care about Crowley, that's Hells responsibility. But Aziraphale is theirs. And I think the reason that they didn't kill him with the book is because at some point in history he's probably done something or said something that benefited Heaven massively. Call me a theorist, but it was very suspicious how the Metatron entered exactly at the time Michael threatened to erase Aziraphale from the Book of Life. Almost as if he knows something Michael doesn't.
If Aziraphale is erased from life, then any interaction he ever had wouldn't have happened. Thus, Crowley would never have asked questions. If Aziraphale had never brought up the topic of Armaggedon then Crowley wouldn't have known and therefore wouldn't have fallen.
Say what you want but the Rebellion helped Heaven a great deal. Heaven gets it's power from Hell after all and from peoples fear of going to Hell. Note Aziraphales comment from the book "you can't truly be good unless you have the opportunity to be truly evil." Heaven can't truly be good unless Hell exists.
Also I think there is a bigger factor at play and I've mentioned this in a previous post, about how the only romantic pairings between celestial beings we see are between an angel and a demon (Aziraphale and Crowley, Beelzebub and Gabriel, and even the minor ships that aren't yet canon) and how when they perform a miracle together they are insanely powerful. It's just suspicious how they were devided, almost as if someone doesn't want them to be together and realise the power they hold.
And let's not forget, Aziraphale gave away his sword to humanity. The sword that saved Adam and Eves lives. Without Aziraphale humanity would probably never have existed in the first place. (And he did that as a consequence from Crowleys temptation. If Crowley never tempted Eve to eat the apple they never would have left the garden.)
Point is. Aziraphale and Crowley are so intertwined with humanity and history itself that erasing just one of them would have unpredictable and probably devastating effects.
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cyanide-cirby · 8 months
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Crowley is Raphael and you can fight me
im already doing a whole essay on aziraphale and why he made the choice he did episode 6 so i may as well do one on crowley too, and of course yall know what its gonna be about
i 100% believe that Crowley was the archangel Raphael before he fell, and here are my reasons why, broken down to make them a bit more easily digestible
spoilers abound
on archangels
in judaism and christianity (depending on your beliefs) there are said to be seven main archangels. who those archangels are varies between the two, but something interesting is that the show never confirms or denies, during the scene where we are at the crucifixion, whether or not jesus IS the son of god in this universe, so we don’t know for sure whether or not we’re talking judaism or christianity. however in both only four archangels are named consistently:
Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael
Sandalaphon is not an archangel in the scriptures, though he is in literature (some of his earliest sources actual say he is the prophet Elijah made into an angel interestingly enough) and Saraqael is another name for the archangel Sariel who isnt talked abt a whole lot but is specifically listed as one of the seven
michael, gabriel, uriel, sandalaphon, saraqael, that’s 5 archangels, we’re missing two
based on the fall itself and the fact that crowley attributes his falling to asking questions and talking to “Lucifer and the guys” we can assume he was the 6th archangel, and likely the head archangel before gabriel as the fall is usually attributed to lucifer being jealous that his spot as “favorite” was stolen by the earth
thats 6 archangels of the 7
considering Raphael is one of the most recognizable of the archangels, it’s weird that as of yet he hasn’t been mentioned At All as of yet in the book or series, yes?
(i would bring up the fact that raphael is the archangel of Healing but gabriel is head archangel fsr even though he should essentially just be an angelic hermes so i dont think that has much merit on the story neil is telling, but i could be proven delightfully incorrect so who knows)
on starmaking
even when it was first brought we knew that there was something Significant about the fact that crowley helped Create stars
i mean for one, nobody at that point had mentioned creation, aside from when talking about god creating the earth, and you would think, if it was a normal thing for an angel to Create, wouldn’t it have been mentioned before? wouldn’t we have heard about aziraphale Creating something?
so we knew it was significant, even if we didn’t know Why
then we got to see it happen, watch the incredible display of power, see the interaction between prefall!crowley and aziraphale, and we get a few more insights
it is certainly something that not many get to do, judging by aziraphale’s polite confusion the whole time he’s helping, and also crowley can do it by himself, which means he is both powerful and important most likely
this is further supported by the fact aziraphale does not ask him for his name and seems to already know who he is, even expecting him to know more than he does on the earth project
skip to when we’re up in heaven and we get even more evidence from saraqael when she states that she helped him build a nebula, but why, and this is based entirely on what ive seen of heaven so far, would a archangel help a regular angel build a nebula? wouldn’t the archangel be able to do it by themself?
crowley is able to do it by himself
on the file
speaking of the scene in heaven, he opened a classified file in heaven
while the fact that he’s able to open/touch it at all is amazing (and while i Can believe that heaven hasnt changed the passwords in the 6000 years since he’d fallen, i have my own theory on why he’s actually able to still access them) lets focus instead on the fact that he knew he’d be able to open it based on the info he was given
muriel, based on what she stated during gabriel’s demotion, is one of the lowest ranks of angel, thus she is unable to open the classified folder, stating someone would have to be at least a dominion in order to open it, and crowley then proceeds to nonchalantly open it
dominions are the highest rank of the second sphere in the angel hierarchy, which means that at the very least, crowley was an entire sphere above aziraphale when he was an angel (as principalities are the highest rank of the third sphere)
dominions however are meant to rule over the lower spheres and humanity, and if crowley were a dominion i believe he would’ve probably known a bit more about the earth project than he did and wouldve been focusing on that rather than making stars
(i would assume that meant that he was one of the first sphere ranks, a Throne, Cherubim or Seraphim, but if that were the case i believe they would’ve been mentioned specifically)
on the stars
ive already made a post about this but im gonna go into more detail abt it here, because the deeper you go the more real-life evidence starts to pop up and I think its cool
during the scene with crowley shielding aziraphale from the star shower with his wing, right above him is a very specific part of a very specific nebula. the Pillars of Creation, something the fandom joked about crowley having created it likely because of the name
what’s interesting is that the pillars are part of a nebula called the Eagle nebula, which is a part if the Serpens constellation, and the pillars themselves do actually do what crowley describes to aziraphale, making new stars from the gases and dust around
you heard me right, the pillars of creation are in the SNAKE constellation, and the specific snake the constellation is of lends even more proof to the theory that crowley is raphael
in greek myth (where we get most of our constellation stories from) the specific serpent that is portrayed in the constellation is that held by the healer asclepius, who is a son of apollo and greek god of medicine. he carries a staff wrapped with a singular snake called a asklepian (not to be confused with the staff wrapped with two snakes called a caduceus which is carried by hermes) which has become a symbol for medicine and healthcare in modern times
so the fact that he specifically made this area of space is either an amazing coincidence or neil specifically made it so that he made this nebula
on how it was presented
the fact that we didn’t get almost any info about crowley as an angel aside from the first episode, the bit from job that confirmed they remembered meeting, and the last episode to me was the right choice considering the story neil wanted to tell with this season
he opened with one of our most burning questions from the last season, gave us just enough to keep us guessing, established a major point in the dynamic (that they both remember), and then thoroughly distracted us until giving us more just-barely-info
each tiny kernel of info he gave us about prefall!crowley was tailor fit to keep our attention and show that while this question was not his focus for this season, he does have an answer for us its just not time yet. he gave us information that would make us Think and Theorize and Question and if that isnt such a crowley way to tease us with the answer
im done for now, i may add more at some point but this is all i got for the moment and i have to work more on my az essay lol
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