catsconflictscopicsandchamomile:

converse-universe:

The amount of confirmation bias going around this place about Good Omens is really grating.

I love analysis and opinion but some people are commenting as though their interpretation is fact, or that what someone has said can only mean one thing…. No.

I’m not coming at this from the pro-ending or anti-ending stance. I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who enjoys a debate with actual meat behind it.

The most recent thing I have noticed is the quote by David Tennant going around. A fan asks him if Crowley got everything he wanted in the end. Tennant answers that he didn’t. He evaporated and then someone who looks a little like him meets someone who looks a little like Aziraphale, but that’s not the same thing.

People are using this quote as confirmation that Tennant did not like the ending. People are saying that this contradicts earlier statements he has made saying that the ending is perfect for the story.

Maybe Tennant did hate it. Maybe he really does think that it’s the perfect end to their story. This quote alone doesn’t actually prove either stance though and it ends up potentially putting a perspective on some of his work that he does not have.

The question was did Crowley get everything he wanted in the end? And Tennant was absolutely correct in answering that he didn’t. Crowley wanted humanity to have a shot at free will but of course he also wanted to be able to live and spend his life with Aziraphale - and he did not get to have both of those things. He didn’t get to live at all. Of course he didn’t get everything he wanted. His answer also differentiates that whatever your perspective on Anthony and Asa may be, they are not Crowley and Aziraphale as we knew them, and as they knew themselves and each other. It is not the same thing.

It is not a bad question and it is not a bad answer, but it also is not proof of what people are using it for.

Factually speaking, Crowley did not get everything he wanted in the end. Factually speaking, he doesn’t exist. Factually speaking, whatever your interpretation, Anthony and Asa aren’t the same thing.

I know people still have really high emotions when it comes to the finale - me too, friends, me too - and I suppose if reading this (or watching the video of it) in that light somehow makes you feel better then…I don’t know…I guess that’s okay?? It also means that you have to entertain the possibility that Tennant has lied in several interviews - print and on camera - about the finale, that there’s some serious PR stuff happening… and look - that is something that does sometimes happen, but generally speaking, Tennant tends to just be quieter and hold himself with a lot of integrity, rather than outright lie.

There is a lot of really wonderful analysis out there for why people feel the ending doesn’t work, that perfectly justifies how people are feeling. I don’t quite understand why people need the main actors to right at the end of it, to have hated a job they had for seven years, to validate those feelings. I’m sure having one of the creative minds behind it turning out to be fond of SA was terrible and jarring. I’m sure having the show cancelled and then returned but really, really shortened after having already read the original scripts was jarring. I’m sure the NDAs they definitely would have had to sign including not just plot points, but the conduct of one of the creators was not a great feeling. I think the end of this has likely been tainted enough. Does the hope that they also didn’t even like it actually help?

Sorry folks, I question the shit out of this stuff. Masters in Media Law - I can’t help it. I see how media gets misconstrued all the time and it’s just…I really am trying hard not to judge people when they feel highly emotional about this (I fully understand)…. But I just don’t think this quote is what people think it is… At least not singularly. He may very well not like the ending, but that isn’t actually the question he answered.

Please don’t rage at me.

I will very gently push back and say that I, personally, at least, have not seen anyone claim that this quote from David means he disliked the ending. What I HAVE seen is people who disliked the ending celebrating David’s statement, verbatim as spoken, because it validates one of THEIR REASONS for not liking the ending- namely, that Aziraphale & Crowley no longer exist, and that Asa & Anthony are not them.

This is something the ending was ambiguous about, and, sadly, that room for interpretation is something that A Certain Sect Of People Who Liked The Ending have weaponized against people who disliked it, to claim that the ending was entirely “Happy”, and to call people who disliked it bitter, impossible-to-satsify, sex-obsessed, ignorant of queer history, media illiterate, intellectually inferior, and (imho the worst one for how ironic and doubtlessly triggering it is) too narrow-minded and caught in their own willful anger to see the True Beauty, Love And Divinity Of The Ending, Of Immortal Souls And Divine Love And God’s Kindness.

Now, my opinion of the ending is that this is a queer, often religious-trauma-survivor fan base who has already been through so much shit in this show while also living through a christofascist resurgence and rollback of queer human rights across several countries. Giving us an “ambiguous ending” where the difference between Yet More Buried Gays and Profound Eternal Love That Frees Us All depends on the viewer’s own irl belief in things like souls, reincarnation, God as merciful and the role of religion and magic in human existence….. is deeply, unspeakably fucked up. Not even on behalf of the characters but on behalf of the fans. I’m coming at this as someone with a deep academic interest in folklore, but I’m sure you’ve also seen the uncanny and swift recreation of Christian/Nonchristian (or Heaven/Hell) dynamics of prejudice and conflict between ending-likers and ending-haters.

So I hope you can see why, in light of all this, David’s answer is being celebrated by people who disliked the finale. We are not saying that we think he disliked it. We are celebrating the fact that the reason WE don’t like it is being validated, because of the extent to which “but they’re the same people!!!1!!” has been used to squash criticism, demonize(very intentional choice of word here btw) people who are angry or grieving about the ending, and overall (not to use a buzzword but) gaslight people into thinking that they only don’t like the ending because we’re making some sort of conscious, obstinate choice to see it in the worst possible light.

And it’s nice to hear from Actual Lead Actor David Tennant that that is not the case. Whether or not he personally liked the ending isn’t the point.

(also not to put you on the spot but MY GODS would I love to hear more of your takes on this situation, especially how the fandom reacted to the ambiguous ending by recreating the exact heaven/hell dichotomy it meant to criticise, and also, semi-related, the ethics of a show pulling so heavily from fanfic tropes for an ending without official crediting or consultation of The Fanbase As An Entity(if such a thing can be quantified at all). I’d also love to hear your thoughts on NG’s continued involvement, the parasocial horror of people claiming to know what Pratchett did or didn’t write or want, etc. I imagine this all must be so interesting and infuriating from a media law perspective. It certainly is from a folklore one)

hey-must-be-a-devilbetween-us:

Its just…maybe I was naive, maybe I should have known better, but I didn’t know how much I needed the finale to be okay.

like, not even great, not even good, but just okay, just safe, sad that it was over but happy that it happened, a closed book with a happy if mediocre ending.

and then it wasn’t, and it knocked me entirely off kilter, and the worst part was it completely blindsided me, it wasn’t just mediocre, or rushed, or boring, or disappointing.

It was all of those things and also tragic. It made me sad.

and the thing is…before that, I never could have imagined that Good Omens would make me sad, would have me break down in tears inconsolable days afterwards, it never even occurred to me as a possibility.

It was one of the few things I had that kept me safe inside my own mind, it was a talisman against sadness, it was where I walked when I needed sanctuary, and now it feels like there is a giant pit in the middle of my former haven that I have to worry about falling into and being trapped.

because Good Omens made me a promise, as a viewer and a reader 7 years ago, that the world is saved because it is worth saving, that everybody lives, everybody, even telemarketers.

That Anti-Christ’s grow up with their best friends in their Kingdom of Tadfield because that’s enough of the world for them, that Witches fall in love with Witchfinders, that Prophetesses make their own destiny, that Death and all his friends will ride motorbikes to the end, but not today, no not today.

Due in very small part, really just moral support, of a Demon and an Angel who wanted to stay, just a little bit longer, maybe another 6000 years, go for a picnic, dine at the Ritz.

That promise was broken, if this is the legacy that they want to give Sir Terry Pratchett I would say its as bad as spitting on his grave.

Shame on them.

dustbunniees:

tbh my biggest problem with go3 is that aziraphale and crowley do stuff that affects the plot and actually makes a difference in the story #notmygoodomens. my ineffables do NOT save the world, they are there while the world is saved

you’ve taken the two most useless beings in existence and you made them make a decision. look at them. they’re suicidal now

forensiccountermeasures:

pronouncingitwang:

tfemteach-deactivated20231124:

hollow-head:

tfemteach-deactivated20231124:

tfemteach-deactivated20231124:

“what are you a cop” is bookaziraphale’s entire mindset btw. “is it very angelic to hoard books and be mean to customers” what are you a cop? “should you really be married to your adversary” what are you a cop? “should your husband be parking his car there” ah you ARE a cop. explodes your ticket notebook with his mind. like in his mind if the lord herself doesn’t come down to tell him off he’s doing just fine. because he’s doing it. and if she DOES come down (where is the flaming sword I gave to thee) well then. what is she a cop

no so true. in fact I think this was a key experience in his conviction that he is correct about everything ever. after all she did not ask him again

book Crowley: you’re an angel, you can’t do the wrong thing
book Aziraphale: you are absolutely right. everything i do *is* the right thing

book aziraphale really took ‘do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ and ran with it

[ID: The first add-on shows tags from pronouncingitwang reading “#it is soo fucking important that not only did he lie to god #he thought it was so important that he wrote it in as a correction to the bilton and scaggs bible he wanted that shit printed+distributed” and the last add-on shows tags from indieninja92 reading “#MY BOY #as i like to say ‘aziraphale did nothibg wrong… but not through lack of trying’ #the greatest angel ever to sincerely attempt to shoot an eleven year old in the face” /end ID]

And when he knows he’ll HAVE to help the cops, he’s desperate to leave so that he WON’T have to help the cops!

[ID: A snippet from the Good Omens book. It reads “There was the sound of a siren outside, abruptly broken off as a bullet hit it. Aziraphale nudged Crowley.” The next part is highlighted, and reads “‘Get a move on,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be knee-deep in police at any moment and I will of course be morally obliged to assist them in their enquiries.’” /end ID]

thepixiepojmansky:

embirush-art:

They wrote their own story.

✨️some thoughts under the cut, feel free to ignore it and just enjoy the picture✨️

Keep reading

Wholeheartedly agree. And to those who want to keep making excuses for GO3, here goes my rant.

A counterargument to the chiastic structure “catch all” of GO3

This is a response to this essay, which some of you may find soothing. I hope you do.

The essay is beautifully written, it exhudes hope and, very much like humanity and GO3, is fundamentally flawed. The essay may be less a critique of the finale than a grief-processing machine, turning disappointment into meaning because the alternative is too painful. And I’m okay with that. I truly am. But since the author invites intelligent criticism and exchange, here we go.

Let there be light.

(TLDR: If Good Omens is about loving the world enough to save it, then ending by deleting the world and replacing Aziraphale and Crowley with gentler echoes is not the ultimate fulfilment of its humanism. It is the betrayal of it. The problem with the “their souls find each other again and again” reading is that it smuggles religion back into a universe supposedly liberated from religious control. Souls are not just a romantic metaphor here; they are the mechanism by which the essay avoids admitting that Crowley and Aziraphale have been erased. But if the new world has no God, no Heaven, no Hell, no Book of Life, and no divine machinery, then what exactly is a soul? What preserves it? What recognises it? What lets it pass from one reality into another? Remove the theological architecture and the reincarnation reading collapses. Asa and Anthony may echo Crowley and Aziraphale, but echoes are not survival. They are what remains after the original voice has stopped.)

The essay’s central move is: yes, the finale is rushed and structurally damaged, but the brokenness reveals a deeper thematic design. That’s emotionally generous, but also very vulnerable. The essay seems to mistake production damage for textual intention. It builds an elegant reading around absences, dropped threads, and emotional gaps, but those may simply be the scars of a six-episode story crushed into a feature-length compromise.

The essay claims Good Omens is “chained to a chiastic structure”, a literary palindrome in which events mirror each other in a divinely stacked deck. That is a beautiful argument, but it needs much more proof. In its current form, it’s a catch-all: any repeated image, reversal, echo, or callback becomes evidence of structure. Mirroring is not the same as chiasmus. A show can contain callbacks, reversals, visual rhymes, the Eden imagery, and repeated moral dilemmas without being governed by a rigorous ABCCBA architecture. This essay asserts a totalising structure, then uses that structure to excuse or dignify almost every (bad) narrative choice.

The essay argues that, because the story is a macro-level creation myth, queer love could not have ended in a conventional happy ending “inside of this macro-level creation story.” A story about free will should not defend its ending by saying the characters had no narratively satisfying alternative. The finale could have given them free will as themselves. It could have broken the cosmic game without erasing the existing universe. It could have let them retain memory, identity, continuity, and a South Downs future. The essay says “creation would have always required a destruction”, but that is not demonstrated. It is imported from the essay’s own mythic framework. It’s self-soothing, and that’s valid, but it’s not true. It could’ve ended in a conventional happy ending.

The essay frames the new universe as hope: their souls transcend reality, they meet again, the old structure breaks, and love survives. A beautiful sentiment. But Aziraphale and Crowley do not get freedom. They cease to exist, and two adjacent, softened variants inherit their aesthetic. That matters. The emotional investment of the series is not merely “some version of them will always find each other”. It is these beings: the angel who gave away the sword, the demon who made the stars, the two who survived Heaven, Hell, Armageddon, loneliness, denial, and the final fifteen. If the coda gives us Asa and Anthony, that may be romantic as reincarnation myth, but it is also a dodge: the actual characters are gone. If the thematic goal was freedom, why could they not choose freedom, memory, love, embodiment, and continuity?

GO3 wants the new universe to be secular enough to free Crowley and Aziraphale from God, Hell, Heaven, judgement, prophecy, and cosmic authorship, but religious enough to preserve the idea of immortal souls finding each other across time. That is a contradiction. If the new universe truly has no God, no Heaven, no Hell, no divine Book, and no supernatural architecture, then there is no obvious mechanism by which “souls” persist, reincarnate, remember, recognise, or return. Aziraphale and Crowley never meet again because they’ve ceased to exist.

There is also a central ethical issue here with the erasure of the universe: who consented? Aziraphale and Crowley. Nobody else. The original Good Omens is fiercely anti-apocalyptic because the world is precious in its messy specificity. Destroying that world to create a cleaner one arguably betrays the novel’s central humanist instinct.

The finale was, as The Guardian puts it, “abbreviated to the point of incoherence” and its central storylines become “non-starters”. It did not earn a cosmic reset of that magnitude. Absence can be meaningful, but not every absence is an artistic choice. Sometimes the cupboard is bare. And that’s the case for this finale. We were short-changed, there’s no two ways about it.

The finale does not actually dramatise what free will means in the new universe. It simply has divine or semi-divine beings declare that this version will be freer. That is a problem because Good Omens traditionally proves its ethics through human mess: Adam refusing his role, Agnes being inconveniently right, Anathema rejecting inherited prophecy, Shadwell and Madame Tracy bumbling into usefulness, people choosing badly and kindly and absurdly. A metaphysical reset is much more abstract.

A finale about free will, humanity, and the Second Coming cannot sideline Jesus and humanity and then claim thematic success.

If the ending removes the messy old world and replaces it with a universe allegedly free from narrative control, the viewer has to take that on trust. And we’d be very silly indeed to trust Good Omens now.

The reading of Aziraphale lying to Crowley for Crowley’s own good is emotionally potent, but also feeble. We have just spent two seasons watching secrecy, paternalism, miscommunication, institutional loyalty, and “I know best” logic hurt them. Having Aziraphale lie again and framing it as love risks repeating the problem rather than resolving it. Aziraphale’s growth should arguably involve trusting Crowley with the truth, not manipulating him into the “right” outcome. If Crowley’s deepest desire is real choice, then denying him full information undermines the moral claim of the ending.

Then we have Crowley’s arc flattened into sainthood. Crowley’s love of humanity has always been tangled with selfishness, irritation, pleasure, aesthetics, wine, music, plants, stars, the Bentley, and Aziraphale. Turning him into the one who simply wants “people to have a chance” over-sanitises him. Crowley is not just a fallen angel with a buried divine vocation. He’s a demon who likes the world because it is ridiculous and alive. The essay’s reading is grand, but it turns him into a theological instrument of redemption, which is precisely the kind of symbolic imprisonment the essay claims the ending escapes.

And the absence of the kiss is unforgivable. It’s queer withholding. After years of coded intimacy, denial, separation, and one traumatic kiss, refusing a final mutually joyful kiss reads less like restraint and more like another instance of queer desire being made metaphysical, tragic, deferred, or displaced. We have enough of that, thank you.

The ending does not resolve Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship. It replaces it with an alternate-universe meet-cute. That is not inherently bad, but it changes the genre of the payoff. Instead of “they finally get to be together after 6,000 years”, it becomes “some echo of them gets a softer beginning.” For some viewers, that’s not fulfilment. And that’s valid.

The Guardian review makes a related point when it says the coda suggests Tennant and Sheen would be brilliant as a married couple in an ordinary romantic drama, “as different characters created by different writers”. But that is not Good Omens. It never was, and it never will be.

afrenchwriter:

I don’t think Aziraphale’s love for Crowley was is the most predictable thing in the universe.

I think it’s the opposite, actually.

Yes, Aziraphale is an angel, he loves, that’s what he does. But he’s not supposed to love a demon. Because of what he is, of who he is, he struggled with his feelings for Crowley for millennia. And yet, each time they met, he made the choice to speak with him, to protect him, to stay, to bond - to love.

In a universe in which angels and demons are supposed to be hereditary enemies, an angel chose a demon, over and over again (with a few notable exceptions, but we all know why - and he still loved him).

Messy? Oh, yes.

Silly? How can such a relationship, built on trust and affection, be silly?

Predictable? More like ineffable.

rikelister:

They’re having a romantic and wet date night 🍷

(I’m an unknown artist, please help promote my drawings. Thank you all!)

iforgiveyouprime:

Art by @wingly-coded

This is exactly what I wanted to see in the finale. The film was completely devoid of any emotion. They deserved at least an embrace. A desperate, long-awaited one, full of love, the desire to protect, and to love forever… Perhaps with tears, but tears of relief, as well as the longing from a long separation…

fellangel:

afrenchwriter:

I don’t think Aziraphale’s love for Crowley was is the most predictable thing in the universe.

I think it’s the opposite, actually.

Yes, Aziraphale is an angel, he loves, that’s what he does. But he’s not supposed to love a demon. Because of what he is, of who he is, he struggled with his feelings for Crowley for millennia. And yet, each time they met, he made the choice to speak with him, to protect him, to stay, to bond - to love.

In a universe in which angels and demons are supposed to be hereditary enemies, an angel chose a demon, over and over again (with a few notable exceptions, but we all know why - and he still loved him).

Messy? Oh, yes.

Silly? How can such a relationship, built on trust and affection, be silly?

Predictable? More like ineffable.

this actually bothers me so much.

God should NOT have approved of their relationship. Thats what made it so appealing to the viewers, right? That they weren’t supposed to be together. That literally everything, from the structures surrounding them down to their literal particles as a holy and unholy being, was trying to keep the two sides apart (“angel… demon… probably explode”) and that they were the only two cogs in the machine that malfunctioned and DECIDED to love each other. There wasn’t some string of fate connecting them (fuck you neil gaiman). We call them ineffable husbands because their love was something hard to understand and impossible to put into words. And they were always uncertain about it, they were always scared. ESPECIALLY AZIRAPHALE! But they CHOSE this love.

It would have been so much more powerful if God had told him that She disliked his love for Crowley and Aziraphale stood his ground and said “and so what?” We could have had a scene in which they choose each other over their oppressors. Instead, God planned everything and their love, that was interesting because it was unwanted, strange, unpredictable by Heaven and Hell became the goal, the norm across universes, the prediction. Oh they were actually soulmates all along. Who find each other in every universe because a higher being wants them together.

this ending is not The Lady. This is not escaping oppression, this is giving in to it and letting it happen and painting it as a romantic fate. What the fuck

rainbowhyperfixation:

depraveddame:

AND ANOTHER THING.

“Destined to find each other in every universe no matter what” is literally the definition of predeterminism— it’s the soulmate trope.

Is the free will in the room with us?

ALT

This was my comment when I reshared this meme I made about 6 months ago:

Yes, this. Fuck predeterminism, fuck god shipping people she’s torturing, fuck queerphobia even if it’s unintentional, and fuck Neil Gaiman

I didn’t love them because they were soulmates or “meant to be together in every universe” or because God shipped them.

I loved them because they were two lonely weirdos who found each other all on their own while getting by in a fucked-up little universe. I loved them as an angel and a demon who cobbled together something strange and meaningful between them even when they were never supposed to do that. I loved how they loved each other in spite of the great plan, in spite of a system intended to tear them apart.

I wanted their love story to be one of defiance, not compliance with destiny.