#raising the anticrhist

[redheadoldsoul]

#the house in the cerulean sea #house in the cerulean sea #arthur parnassus #linus baker #tj klune #queer humor #book humor #queer books #mlm #raising the anticrhist #good omens #ineffible husbands #island husbands

[they-handed-me-the-moon]

I won’t deny Good Omens is a mass of missed opportunities when it comes to Aziraphale and Crowley interacting with children. Their one fleshed-out scene  with Warlock is a disaster, every moment they are with The Them is wasted, and the fact that within the narration they don’t think of Warlock once after they realize he is not the anticrhist is one of my top five beefs with the book.

But disappointing as all that is, it cannot erase the fact that, faced with the probable end of the world, they decide that their best hope is to use their last years to raise a child together—and they are delighted to do it.

What really gets to me about the moment they decide to raise Warlock is that they don’t even dither over it. Aziraphale hesitates over the plan and questions whether it is possible to positively influence the spawn of Satan, but there are no objections to the idea of raising a child in itself. Neither of them lament ‘sacrificing’ what may be their final years on the earth they love to childrearing, there is no sighing over how they would have preferred spending that time visiting old haunts and eating at favorite restaurants.

In fact, they are discussing the idea in the abstract as a means to save the world rather than a concrete thing they will be doing for eleven years until the final few lines of the conversation, in which the following occurs:

Crowley says, “it'll be for the child's own good, in the long run." Supposedly this is still part of his bid to convince Aziraphale to help save the world, but the mere fact of his saying it means he’s thought beyond the cosmic implications to what this will mean for the child. He cares about this boy not being collateral damage.

Crowley then adds, “"We'll be godfathers, sort of,” in response to which “Aziraphale beamed.” He beamed. Aziraphale thinking about interfering with what he perceives as the divine plan is dithering and uncertain, Aziraphale thinking about playing a positive and meaningful role in a child’s life beams with delight.

Crowley finishes the exchange with, "It's not too bad, when you get used to it." And I don’t know how to argue for this exactly, but wishful thinking aside, coming from a character like Crowley who has a vested interest in pretending not to be excited about being a child’s godfather, even before I had a developed reading of his character this half-concession immediately translated to me as “oh, he’s excited for this too.”

So basically what I’m saying here is ... Aziraphale and Crowley, two immortal beings, conclude that the world is probably going to end and that their only chance of saving it is to spend eleven years raising the son of Satan. And instead of being dismayed at being constrained to spend their probably-finally years in this manner, they seem pleased as punch about it. They actually seem to think raising a kid together before the world ends is a Good and Fun idea.

And to cap it off, they then go and have a Good and Fun time doing it.

I realize that the magician scene is against me here, and the best I can say is that Crowley is distracted and my take on Aziraphale is that he can be good with children one-on-one once he has had time to learn them on an individual level, once he stops seeing them as ‘a child’ and starts seeing them as a particular person. But trying to entertain a crowd of children, most of whom he doesn’t know, is going to be far out of his element.

However the defining image of their time with Warlock isn’t one disastrous party, but Aziraphale and Crowley meeting periodically to discuss their progress and smiling. Granted they are pleased with their progress, but there is no hint that they are displeased with the experience. Their reaction to discussing their time with Warlock is, again and again, to smile.

And then, when they leave behind their old personas of nanny of gardener, the narration informs us that “Neither of them left with quite the same spring in their step with which they'd arrived.” (And for the record I’m going to assume this is actually Aziraphale and Crowley and not people they hired). Which besides the very important fact that they began this process with a spring in their step, at this point we’ve been given no cause to believe things are going badly in terms of the plan. Maybe this line was intended to imply that they were already aware things weren’t going according to plan, but the narration suggests nothing of the sort. This moment comes immediately after the line about them smiling over the whole process, implying that to their minds  all was well, and while we don’t know when Crowley began to suspect Warlock is ‘too normal,’ Aziraphale doesn’t seem to suspect anything until Crowley communicates his fears immediately before the party. Which is to say,  I contest that the most logical reading of the actual text that they are sorry to leave behind the connection they have built up with Warlock in their first forms, even though they are about to return with new ones. They aren’t leaving for good, and yet they are mourning the end of one means of connection with Warlock.

In conclusion, am I seeing what I want to see and reading what I want to see into ambiguities? Absolutely. But I don’t think I’m twisting the text—this reading is there and I’m taking it. Aziraphale and Crowley are almost certainly disaster dads, but they are dads and they Like It and they love their son. The End.

#sorry for the essay #i apparently have lots of thoughts and feelings about the #3 whole lines that support my determination to read immortal Dads into the book #good omens