#the books were burned July 12 1562 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jelly-o630 · 9 months

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Idea for a good omens fanfic I’ll never write but if someone is inspired by it feel free to use this as a prompt I guess

At least once every few I weeks I cry over the burning of the maya codex and get further upset over the fact that only one of them is even in the Americas so this is about that (this is honestly less of a prompt and more of a rough outline but eh)

After reading about the works of Bartomule De las Casas (Dominican friar who advocated for the end of all kinds of slavery in the Americas and argued that natives ARE people actually) and even writing to and encouraging Las Casas himself, Aziraphale convinces Crowley to head to the new world with him to take him out of his depressive slump after learning about the Spanish Inquisition. Aziraphale (a bit overly optimistic with how effective Las Casas works are) thinks if Crowley sees how much better humans are doing at NOT doing slavery it’ll cheer him up (and they’ll get to go on date nights in this “new” land they’ve never explored). Also I wanted to add that at this point the crown did have conversion protocols that tried to steer away from violence too after realizing that forcing people to convert doesn’t make them and their families very devote Christian’s and they’ll go back to native practices pretty quickly. These were unfortunately largely ignored. Moving on

He further manages to convince Crowley by being all like “you know keeping these native people from converting would be soooooo sinful and hell would definitely approve of you helped preserve native religions and stuff *wink* *wink*”. Azirphale plans to travel with a missionary Diego De Landa under the guise of an another missionary helping him I guess. It starts off fine at first, with aziraphale being really happy that De Landa is embracing native language and learning various customs to aid in conversion and being so dedicated to job (and for more shipy stuff Crowley finds a cave where the locals worship/ occasionally bury the dead and shows it to Zira as a sort of hang out spot for the two of them (a real place actually)) but their trip starts to sour when De Landa more violent tendencies start to show up. (Maybe there can be a scene where either aziraphale or Crowley overhear Gabriel and the other angels convince De Landa to be more aggressive with his conversion tactics idk)

While Aziraphale tries to calm De Landa down from all his “all Mayan written works are of the devil” bs by showing him some of the local people’s works and that they’re mostly family records (while ignoring the fact that a lot of them practiced ancestor worship) it only angers De Landa further and he threatens to burn all the idols and records people have. Threats that become promises when the cave that Crowley and Zira have been meeting up in is discovered and De Landa begins a campaign of torturing the locals to find out more about this place of worship.

Meanwhile hell discovers that our favorite demon has left his post in Spain but is once again commending cause he’s doing such a great job at tempting all these friars to sin- they give one last announcement that at that night when the friars burn all the codices and wooden figures they’re going to turn into hellfire so not even that pesky angel that followed him there will be able to save them, meanwhile Aziraphale is likewise commended for encouraging the friars to go all out with their faiths and they’re so excited to watch the burning tonight (at the same time part 3 the letters Zira receives from de las Casas are all about how much he hates what’s happening in Mexico and how he wishes he could stop it and eventually how deeply regrets the burning)

Crowley and Aziraphale separately (cause we all know they don’t talk to each other) try (and fail) to save various texts while accusing the other allowing everything to happen before realizing they’re both trying to do the same thing (on the same side 👀) but it’s too late and they’re only able get save a handful of codices and relics before De Landa and his men start burning everything- this doesn’t stop aziraphale from trying to run into the fire as a last ditch effort to save the texts only to held back by a Crowley yelling to him that it’s hell fire and will permanently discorporate him

The next morning, they secretly meet up with a few of the native people and tell them of what little they managed to save the night before- those people distraught and fearful of what happened last night tell them to take what they have and hide away from the Spanish so they won’t burn what little text they have left, Azriacrow agree with their idea but insist on leaving the shortest of the codex they saved and so with a couple of other treasures (a mask, knife handle, rope, and child’s sandal were what was found with the Grolier codex) they hide the codex in the very cave they’re been meeting in and where the people have been worshiping and leave for Britain again soon after (the actual cave the grolier codex was found was in a completely different state of mexico but that doesn’t match the narrative as well)

They do end up hiding the codices across Europe- one is given to De Las Casas which ends up being the Madrid codex, another is hidden in a library in Paris (the Paris codex), and the last is sold to an Italian collector whose fascination with the text assures the group that he won’t let it out of his collection for a long time (Dresden codex)- the selling of the Dresden codex is to date the only time Aziraphale has ever sold a book (well up until season 2 at least)

While that’s the end I do wanna add another through line one of a kid that either Crowley or Aziraphale (probably Crowley tbh) befriend and sort of learn everything from that dies either during De Landa’s torturing of the natives or commutes suicide after the burnings (which many people did- a lot of the figures were representative of family members mind you) and that’s where the child’s sand comes from- just as an extra layer of angst to this whole outline I’ve written (928 words that’s a lot more than I thought)

Anyways I hope whoever reads this enjoys it and feel free to make an actual fanfic or whatever from it you like- I don’t mind and uhh tell what you think

Edit: if someone does decide to write something based on this outline please tell me!!! I’d love to read what you write ❤️

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