#so I’m feeling conflicted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fuckyeahisawthat · 8 months

Text

“I don’t think that is what God wants. And I don’t think you want it either.”

This line of Aziraphale’s in the Job minisode keeps sticking out to me. Because this is the heart of the problem, right? This is how Aziraphale can see Crowley so completely and also not at all.

Because yes they suck at open communication and yes it’s because they had to hide their relationship for thousands of years and have so so so much trauma and fear to work through. But ALSO they actually do have a profound difference in how they see the world that keeps coming between them, and it’s not just theoretical but deeply personal to both of them.

Because Aziraphale still wants to believe that God is good. He can’t let go of that because his whole identity is wrapped up in being an angel of the Lord, and if God’s not good then what has he been doing for his entire existence?

And so when bad things are happening he falls back on This cannot be what God wants. The whole of season one, he refuses to believe that God could really want the world to end—even though we now know he knew this was a possibility before the world even started. He keeps going up the chain of command, trying to find someone to intervene. “That’s why I’m going to have a word with the Almighty and then the Almighty will fix it.” As if God doesn’t have all the information or hasn’t been paying attention.

And really, the events of season one reinforce this worldview for him. Because if the Archangel Fucking Gabriel isn’t sure what God wants, then maybe God did want them to stop Armageddon. Maybe it was Aziraphale and Crowley who were doing God’s work after all.

He’s gotten as far as realizing that Heaven’s orders are not the same thing as God’s will, but he still hasn’t detached the concepts of Good and Right from God in his worldview.

Crowley is a good person who does the right thing so he must still be an angel deep down. “I know the angel you were.” The only way Aziraphale can conceptualize Crowley saving Job’s children is, “Come on, you’re a little bit on our [God’s] side.” So Crowley’s fall was a mistake; Crowley belongs in Heaven, where he was so happy before the Fall. Why wouldn’t he want to be an angel again? And yeah maybe Heaven sucks now but God is still good, so there’s hope that the system can be reformed with a change of leadership, and Heaven can be made to actually do good, the way God always intended.

But that’s not how Crowley sees the world at all. He is operating with an entirely different understanding of reality. Because he figured out a long time ago (at least by the time of the Job job, but probably long before that) that you can’t base your sense of morality on what you think God wants. Not just because you don’t know for sure, but because sometimes God’s plans are fucking awful. God in Good Omens is not kind to Her creations. She doesn’t tolerate questions or doubts or disobedience. She’s capricious, turning on the creatures She made and killing a bunch of them when She’s in a bad mood. She punishes indiscriminately and disproportionately. She wagers human lives like gambling chips. The kids were supposed to be dead no matter who won the bet.

I think it’s interesting that Crowley is the one who introduces the idea in season one of “What if the Almighty planned it like this all along? From the very beginning.” That’s probably a comforting thought to Aziraphale, soothing his anxieties about going against Heaven right when he is feeling acute distress at the idea of no longer having a side. (And, in that particular moment, no longer even having a bookshop.)

But it’s not a comforting thought to Crowley. Have you seen what happens when God has a plan for you? It fucking sucks. Woe betide you if you’re the Barbie God decides to play with today. (At bare minimum, you’re coming back with some burn marks and a weird haircut.)

I’ve brought up the line “There are no right people. There’s just God, moving in mysterious ways and not talking to any of us” before, and I tend to focus on the “there are no right people” part. But also, there’s just God.

Aziraphale tends to draw a distinction between God’s will and Heaven’s orders when it suits him, and collapse that distinction when it doesn’t. Crowley almost never differentiates between God and Heaven. There’s just God, and She’s not going to explain why this is happening or listen to pleas for mercy (although Crowley still tries). You can’t trust Heaven or Hell, and you can’t count on God to show up and make everything all right. Sometimes God is in fact the reason that things are not all right. You’re on your own.

(And. Look. Crowley is right on this one. There are certainly aspects of their relationship where they’re both equally responsible for things being a shitshow, but the text is pretty unambiguous about Crowley, a demon, having the most accurate read on the nature of God in the world of Good Omens out of any of the metaphysical characters.)

Crowley rebuilt his entire sense of self, alone, after the Fall. He created himself anew and developed his own moral compass and sense of identity independent of both Heaven and Hell. “The angel you knew is not me.” When Crowley does the right thing, that’s not his angel-ness shining through; that’s just Crowley.

And from a like, trauma recovery point of view, it’s actually very healthy for him to have the realization that sometimes God’s just kind of a dick. He didn’t do anything to deserve getting kicked out of Heaven. None of them did. Just God messing them about because She didn’t like being questioned, or She wanted to see what would happen, or She needed two sides for Reasons and didn’t much care who was on one or the other, or She’s playing some fucked up little game for Her own amusement. (And if there was some Great Plan that required Crowley to fall…well, that is also fucked up. Because it doesn’t matter if there was a reason. It still hurt.)

And while Crowley in general is extremely patient with Aziraphale and his slow, halting journey away from Heaven…it’s gotta sting, every time Aziraphale doesn’t want to believe that God could be cruel, when Crowley is standing right fucking there. It’s gotta hurt when Aziraphale refuses to see something that Crowley knows to be true through his own lived experience. Because it should be enough. What happened to him should be enough to make someone who loves him walk away from Heaven and never look back. And it isn’t.

But of course Crowley is one hundred percent not going to talk about this, if he is even fully self-aware about having these thoughts, because it’s far too painful and vulnerable. (He talks to plants, goats, God, and no one in a bar at the end of the world, but never to Aziraphale.) And so he says “Tell me you said no” and “I think I understand a lot better than you do” because he can’t say Choose me. Just this once, choose me and he can’t say Believe me.

And Aziraphale is not going to think about all this and work it out for himself, because he has a massive lump of denial centered around exactly this thing, that sometimes God hurts people who didn’t do anything to deserve it. I’m sure he’s thought about the Fall in abstract terms, enough to be afraid of it, but not in terms of this is a thing that happened to a person I love. And he has certainly not allowed himself to draw any conclusions about the nature of God from it, because that is far too scary a prospect.

And so they’re stuck. Until they can figure out how to remove this massive landmine from the center of their relationship, they are going to keep having the same fight over and over again, and they’re going to keep hurting each other without fully understanding why.

#do you know HOW HARD it is to write genuine ideological conflict that also feels deeply personal?? and they did it SO WELL #i am in awe tbh #good omens #good omens s2 #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #heaven #hell #god #the god in good omens is not nice and you can’t convince me otherwise #is a tag i have from s1 and i’m sticking with it #fall thoughts

1K notes · View notes

twixfamily · 1 year

Text

i completely understand being relieved that the bus hijacking arc is over, but i disagree with a few posts i’ve seen calling it unnecessarily long. for manga readers it dragged on due to how spread out the time before each chapter was (trust me, i was ready for some change too) but i think that reading it back in one go is far more impactful and cohesive.

in a series called spy x family you expect and emphasis on the FAMILY aspect, so it’s strange to see them not interacting for months on end while the manga updates. however, in keeping with the SPY portion the readers need to be both reminded and informed of the political landscape they’re dealing with.

yuri’s plot seemed a little inconsequential, but it’s supposed to show you that the sss is operating behind the scenes where you might not expect AND that some of its agents disregard their orders to carry out their own version of justice. twilight removing his disguise at the end seems lame when he doesn’t have an emotional reunion with anya, but again we’re seeing that even the readers were unaware of the presence of wise agents AND that sometimes they don’t actually accomplish their intended mission. yor arrived later than the other parents to give anya a moment alone with damian AND to show that she’s strong and fast and dedicated but can’t possibly be there to save anya every time she needs it. billy squire exemplifies the evil that war can push people to AND his genuine desire for a fairer world for the non-wealthy. it’s all about revealing the fight for power that has steadily grown to be more convoluted than westalis vs. ostania.

to focus solely on the family relationships and relegate the political atmosphere to the background does a disservice to the series and to endo’s intended message. yes, family makes unrest and war easier to endure. had twilight’s parents survived he likely would’ve had an easier time emotionally and been less likely to engage in such heightened violence (the same could be said for yor). but that doesn’t eliminate danger, ESPECIALLY the danger that is often hidden from the public eye.

you’re supposed to feel exhausted reading this arc, you’re supposed to want it to be over, you’re supposed to long for an emotionally satisfying ending and feel somewhat let down at the lack of a grand reunion. but that’s their reality. they long for the same thing that you do. they can’t have it. so you have to wait and want and hope for a happy ending to the story right alongside the characters.

#to be a 6 year old held hostage with guns pointed at you and what you think to be bombs around your classmates’ necks #would that not feel like months #would you not feel that same agony of waiting for the next thing to happen #and hoping so desperately it’ll be better than the moment before #idk i’m probably reading into it but i’ve seen a bunch of posts saying ‘this is about FAMILY!!!’#twilight isn’t a spy for fun… yor isn’t an assassin for no reason there is MEANING behind both of their roles #like yeah ok skip the politic heavy arcs if you want but you’re missing such an important part of not only their stories #but the world around them #idk guys you’ve gotta toughen up before endo has twilight do something fucked up and we have to question his morals beyond what we have #this isn’t good guy vs bad guy there’s genuine nuance drawn from real world conflict #spy x family #twilight spy x family #yor forger #anya forger #spy x family manga spoilers #sxf spoilers #loid forger #sxf

124 notes · View notes