"A Joy In Celebrating Whoever You Happen To Be... And That's Just A Message Of Kindness And Openness,

we do not talk enough about the moment right before crowley puts his sunglasses back on. the "nothing lasts forever" is devastating and if you're like me your eyes were so full of tears you couldn't see the screen the first time you watched it (just like crowley, look at us all twinning in sadness!).

there is a shift that happens in his eyes and i think it is absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time.

we begin with crowley averting his gaze from aziraphale's face and staring off into the distance instead, and you can see his spirit break. that crowley just lost the one thing in the world he cannot live without and we can see it written across his face like a neon sign.

then, as you'd expect, he gives into the need to cover up his pain, to try and make himself less vulnerable, and even before he lifts his glasses he looks down so aziraphale can no longer see his eyes.

now, the next part is what would not let me out of its grasp all day. we know it happens because of his demeanour afterwards and up until the kiss, but you can actually watch as crowley makes himself numb to the world.

i am intimately familiar with dissociation as a trauma and stress response, and while you can never fully control it, you do eventually find the switch in your mind that makes you snap back into the haze. crowley has had six thousand years to get really, really good at leaving reality behind when he needs and/or wants to.

that's exactly what he does.

he still looks sad, and yet there's just something distinctly distant in his eyes, the shift from openly heartbroken to "i don't want to feel any of this let me leave".

glasses? on

emotions? off

hotel? trivago

i have stared at those four frames more than any person probably should and i don't know if it's the light, if i am going insane, or if there is a single tear sliding out of his right (our left) eye. i'm probably insane and the light is a bitch so if anyone has some high resolution shots or anything that could answer that question without a doubt PLEASE do add it.

by now you are probably ready to threaten me with a knife in a dark alley but before you do that or drive your car off a cliff, let me tell you the best part:

aziraphale notices.

they might be communicating on two different frequencies but aziraphale knows crowley. he knows and loves him, and, most importantly, over the last few years he has gotten used to seeing crowley without his glasses. aziraphale could probably write a book on the expressions in his eyes alone and watches that shift happen and is devastated.

look.

he tries to make himself hope the same second, tries to convince himself crowley is putting on his glasses so they can leave together, but he knows.

aziraphale sees the light leave crowley's eyes, sees crowley leave, knowing that he is quite literally running away from him. you and me against the world, angel, but in that moment crowley firmly pushes him back to "the world" (or tries to, anyway).

the entire season we see crowley take off his glasses whenever he enters the bookshop to the point where he's running around without them on in broad daylight with jimbriel right there.

can you imagine how hurt and confused aziraphale must be?

because what crowley is telling him, if we really, really break it down, is that aziraphale is no longer a safe person for him. and repairing that trust is going to take time and work, no matter how much crowley loves him, how badly they love and need each other.

anyway to seal this off and really rub in the pain - how it started vs. how it ended. <3

oh one last thing: now crowley no longer has a single person he can be himself around, no one that knows him, no one he trusts. no one in whose presence he can take his glasses off.

and outside of the bentley and his own flat, he no longer has a place to do so either. the bookshop was theirs. with aziraphale gone, is it really a safe place anymore? is it somewhere he can just let himself be knowing he will be looked after and protected?

easy answer: no.

alright, off i go. see y'all on the next angst post or in the tags.

The thing is, Aziraphale does see Crowley. He can see Crowley is on edge, he can see he isn't happy. There are many ways in which he is adept in reading expression and gesture (all those years through dark glasses), and the things Crowley does say, with the indirect speech they've both been forced to adopt. Aziraphale sees him and he knows he's not okay.

But they've switched roles, and Aziraphale doesn't know how to be the one who comforts and reassures. Partly it's because he's spent his whole life being afraid, and Crowley mostly wasn't -- Crowley was always the one saying never mind, they never check, they don't care who does the job so long as it gets done. Now Aziraphale is finally at a time in his life -- oh glory -- when he thinks he doesn't need to be afraid, and he doesn't know what to do with Crowley's fear. Just like he didn't know what to do with it when Crowley first asked for holy water.

And that's the other thing about Aziraphale: he's not okay with not being okay. Negative emotions are not okay. You don't feel them, you don't acknowledge them, you certainly don't discuss them. "Buck up, Hamlet!"

It's his flavor of traumatic upbringing, of course, but some of it is specific to Aziraphale himself. At heart, he's an idealist. Aziraphale believes in better. It prevents him having a fully reciprocal relationship with Crowley or even with himself, because only good things should be allowed, and if things aren't okay, then by God (yes), he will make them okay.

I knew that! Flipping conspiracy!!

end of time secret ending (the bbc wont tell you about this one)

thing is - and hear me out - if s3 does by any minute chance incorporate any suggestion of a sex scene, it is imperative for me that they commit to the bit. i need crowley to nearly topple over trying to get out of his jeans, i need aziraphale to complain that they cant do anything downstairs because that would be scandalous, and i need them to trip over going up the stairs because they keep getting distracted. i need one of them to accidentally get an elbow to the face, i need them to have a long forgotten book digging into one of their backs, and aziraphale is horrified when crowley launches it across the room, and i need there to be hard cut to whickber street having a huge power surge, lines sparking, all the power going out, and every car alarm in a 2-mile radius start screaming, i don't need it to be explicit or overly romantic but i do need it to be fucking funny

I'm not really getting the Aziraphale hate because even without all the pressures of religious brainwashing etc etc we've literally just seen through his eyes:

- Crowley radiating joy at the sheer wonder of the universe only to be crushed by orders from up high

- Those orders being the ONLY reason Crowley fell. Aziraphale knows (and has always known) that Crowley fell simply because no one wanted to listen to his ideas.

- 6000 of Crowley clearly aching to do good in defiance of his own nature

- Crowley admitting how desperately lonely that defiance is for him

- Crowley being BETTER than Aziraphale at morality and making Aziraphale better as a result

- Evidence that no one is ever going to be chill with Angel/Demon relationships unless they are too powerful to be stopped and/or willing to vanish

- That they are never going to escape the monitoring of heaven/hell (they literally were *stalked* by both sides the entire season) so they can't just live unnoticed among humans

- Even during their last few years of 'freedom' Crowley has still been desperately unhappy. He's at the 'what's the point of it all???' stage BEFORE anything bad happens in S2. For all he talks about the preciousness of their life, Crowley is radiating misery during his freedom whereas Aziraphale actually seems happy.

Like why WOULDN'T Aziraphale see this offer as the perfect solution? Crowley can get what he always wanted - to do good without anyone stopping him, with Aziraphale helping. It can be exactly like the nebula scene forever - only this time Aziraphale can just bask in Crowley's joy.

From his pov he is sacrificing his own life on Earth for THAT.

Oof we are in the last 20% of a very angsty slow burn, kiddos.

Same here. It's funny and lovely - and somehow different from the whole lot of other funny/lovely funart.

A pre-show commission from Thoughtbubble 2019

crowley and his golden nail polish

an angel and a timelord walk into a bar……..

Here’s the thing about the big fall-out: Crowley and Aziraphale are operating under very very different interpretations of what has just happened in the bookshop.

From Aziraphale’s point of view: Gabriel turned up on his doorstep and told him that something terrible was going to happen to him. He vaguely alluded to things being better if you were just with that one other person. He hummed a love song. Then the dukes of hell and archangels all arrive and the big reveal is that Gabriel and Beelzebub are in love. He doesn’t see Gabriel’s memories or anything that would explain it otherwise.

The archangels/demons tell them “If you leave you can never come back”, which is - based on Aziraphale’s past behaviour and experience and fear of being cast out - would suggest that this the bad thing Gabriel was referring to.

Aziraphale assumes Gabriel is being cast out because he fell in love with a demon.

From Crowley’s point of view: He knows that heaven and hell are hunting for Gabriel and doesn’t know why. He knows that Aziraphale’s life will be in danger from both sides and that’s why he agrees to hide Gabriel, as much as he knows “it’s too late now. It’s always too late”.

And then he goes to Heaven to find out wtf is really happening and discovers that Gabriel not only defied the commands of Heaven and his designated role of Supreme Archangel, but that he was about to be stripped of his memory and authority, pared back to the lowest of Scriveners. Gabriel was about to lose everything because he decided to stand against Heaven’s plans.

Crowley knows that the terrible thing that was about to happen to Gabriel was his demotion and erasure of his memory for defying Heaven’s plans, but he doesn’t have the time to tell Aziraphale because everything is happening all at once in the bookshop.

And this is where the tragedy comes in about their misunderstanding.

Aziraphale’s assumption that a demon and angel being in love and being together means being cast out, alone, exiled to who knows where. So when he’s given the opportunity to guarantee they will be somewhere safe together with the means and position to keep themselves safe, he is absolutely going to take it.

But Crowley never saw the Gabriel/Beelzebub relationship like that. He knew Gabriel was being cut down because he decided to take a stand against heaven. Heaven didn’t know about the Beelzebub relationship. That was a non-entity in Gabriel’s demotion. Crowley knows that if Aziraphale goes back to Heaven, it’s the same Heaven that cast out both him and Lucifer (as well as the legions of the damned) and would have cast down Gabriel if it wouldn’t have been awkward for them. As they said, it’s an institutional problem.

If Crowley had had five minutes alone with Aziraphale to explain what he saw in Heaven and why it really all happened, before the Metatron turned up. But the Metatron showed up just in time to begin the mind games.

And by the time they have a few minutes alone to talk things through, both of them are too wound up and on edge. Aziraphale is giddy in the belief he and Crowley can be safely together and make things better in a Heaven that Crowley knows for a fact is still murderously corrupt and will turn on them both as it has before. They both want the same thing: to keep each other and themselves safe, but neither of them realise the other doesn’t have all the details of what’s happening.

“You don’t understand what I’m offering you,” Aziraphale says and he means safety, security, protection. “I think I understand it better than you do,” Crowley replies, because he knows what a toxic cesspit Heaven is.

You Say Potato, I Say Excellent! Or blocking, accents and legacy of morality tales in ‘The Resurrectionists’ minisode PART II

Alternate title: how Aziraphale’s naivety in this episode was supposed to make you a bit outraged

I have to shout out to @bowtiepastabitch for their AMAZING historical analysis of this minisode - it prompted me to finish this long ramble that has been drifting in my notes. Anyway, I have a major obsession with the ways blocking and dialogue interplay in Good Omens - you can check out my analysis of the blocking in the flashbacks in S1. But The Resurrectionists is really something special. This got so long I am splitting it into two parts. 

What we see in this minisode is a morality tale - a genre of children’s literature that was extremely popular in the early 1800s where the minisode is taking place. Catch up on the historical background in Part I.

When looking at this minisode, it is really important to look at two complementary narrative tools - Crowley’s accent and the placement of Aziraphale in relation to Crowley. Through the minisode, Crowley switches between his standard English accent and a delightful Scottish accent. But the switching isn’t random!

Scottish lines =  character Demon Crowley, who moves the plot of the story along

English lines = Crowley, the moral guide leading Aziraphale

Additionally, the two of them swap sides in their blocking frequently in this episode. Their standard placement is A/R + C/L but the swap to C/R + A/L is almost the norm in this minisode.

Analyzing Blocking and Dialogue

We open in the graveyard, with Aziraphale and Crowley in their standard placement, observing the statue of Gabriel. But then they notice Elspeth, digging up a corpse. When Aziraphale approaches Elspeth to inform her that her actions are Not Good, he actually ends up swapped with Crowley and finds himself on the left because what he is doing - making moral judgments on the actions of Elspeth with no understanding of what led her here - is doing Good, not good.

The next scene finds Crowley helping Elspeth cart the corpse away from the graveyard, while the trio debate all the other ways Elspeth could make money - Aziraphale suggests running a bookshop, farming, weaving, giving the standard Good party line about hard work blah blah blah. Aziraphale remains on the left - after all, those supposed options are completely unrealistic, unobtainable professions for someone in Elspeth's socioeconomic position. They aren't remotely helpful suggestions.

Aziraphale only finds himself back on the right when he and Crowley are introduced to Wee Morag, and have some time to listen and observe the reality of their situation.

Then, off we go to complete our journey to sell the body. Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves having a debate about morality, but Aziraphale is again ON THE LEFT as he waxes poetic about the virtues of poverty - doing Good, not good again. What I loved here was you saw the clear purpose between Crowley’s two accents as he switched mid-line -

Crowley: (SC) Oh, I'm down with wicked! (EN) Anyway, is it wicked? She needed the money. 

Upon reaching the lodging of Mr. Dalrymple, FRCSE, Crowley and Aziraphale take their standard places but this scene has one really important moment that I want to highlight. When they open the barrel to find the rotted corpse, the look on Crowley’s face is so telling. He often finds Aziraphale’s machinations amusing even when they are annoying, but here he looks decidedly disappointed. Aziraphale might have done Good by rendering the body unsellable, but what good did it do? The body is still been un-interred. Elspeth has wasted her energy, and has made a terrible first impression of the surgeon whom she needs to pay her for her services. It looks like Crowley wants to say something, but he stops himself and clenches his jaw. The PATIENCE he is showing to Aziraphale - this is a quality that Crowley has in SPADES but we really see him exercise it here.

After the discussion with Mr. Dalrymple, in which Aziraphale realizes the importance of dissections for educating medical students and thus leading to better care for the living, he asks the right question - why should the poor have to risk death to obtain bodies? But he let's himself get sidetracked by a blatant appeal to his emotions...

At this point, Aziraphale goes all in on body snatching being Good. Which... it still isn't because it is based on a broken system that disadvantages the poor? FOCUS, angel. He even goes as far as to offer to help Elspeth and Wee Morag in obtaining another corpse but note that again, he is on the LEFT -

Remember, Wee Morag is deeply conflicted about the morality of body snatching, and instead of explaining anything to her (like, that having your body dissected won't keep you out of heaven would be start) Aziraphale just sort of joins Elspeth in pressuring her to join in - which is pretty awful and coercive, but gee if that isn't just heaven's playbook for doing Good, not good.

So we return to the graveyard, and this is where everything goes sideways. Aziraphale spends basically this entire sequence on the left. First, he notices the ingenuity of the grave guns but fails to acknowledge the travesty of so much energy being spent on protecting wealthy corpses while the poor suffer. Then, the tragedy strikes. After Wee Morag is shot, Aziraphale wastes time justifying saving her, resulting in her dying before he can act. And after all this, after the heart break of seeing her partner die, we see Elspeth come to the logical conclusion. If body snatching is Good, then might as well take Wee Morag off to Mr. Dalrymple, right?

What shouldn't be overlooked is what takes place when Elspeth gets Wee Morag's body to Mr. Dalrymple. Because while Aziraphale is very clearly illustrating the dangers of black and white morality through religion, Dalrymple is showing that black and white morality through science is just as bad. Dalrymple has unshakable belief in the power of science and knowledge to alleviate human suffering and sees his work at Good. He cares about preventing illness, but ignore his role in perpetuating poverty - an unfortunate side effect of rigid belief systems of all shapes and sizes. He is downright cruel to Elspeth.

This is already getting real long, so we won't go into the absurdist comedy of the scene in the tomb - suffice to say that the surreal nature of Crowley's bargaining with Elspeth smacks of a fantastic tales of pacts made with the devil. It's delightfully unhinged.

The one line I think worth pointing out?

"Do I sound like a goat?"

I think this line is key in the narrative connection between the three minisodes in S2. All three flashbacks show Crowley and Aziraphale engaging in acts of deception, but they all have important differences:

In A Companion to Owls, the two work together, and they manage to pull off the trick and evade punishment.

In Nazi Zombies from Hell, Aziraphale comes up with a plan and Crowley goes along with it, and they barely manage to evade punishment.

In The Resurrectionists, Crowley comes up with a plan and Aziraphale goes along with it, and Crowley is sucked down to hell.

I think it's worth noting just how silly Crowley is in the first two minisodes. Bildad and Scottish Crowley are FUN even when dealing real heavy shit. Just a complete joy to watch. And we never see that level of silly from him again. Whatever happened in hell was clearly really bad since the next time we see him in St. James Park he is asking for holy water. He may have moments, but he is never the same.

Questions, comments, additional thoughts? Lay them on me. I'd love to dig into new lines of inquiry on this minisode because I just love it so much <3