Takin' Over The Asylum Is 30 Today!

I absolutely cannot stop thinking about the version of Crowley we get to see from before the Fall. He smiles differently, he speaks differently. There's so much oppenness in his expression. He loves what he does! Is genuinly mournful when he learns it will be destroyed.

Compared to the Crowley we see after years of solitude, abuse and treading on eggshells around his bosses. Closed off, furious, suspicious. I do truly believe that after he was called back to Hell in the graveyard that the next time Aziraphale saw him was in 1862, when he asked, in that feeble, broken down voice, for Holy Water. He has spent so much of his existence in survival mode, is desperate to cling to the peace he's found.

Nina describes him as the "hard bitten one" who can't trust anyone ever again, and it sort of gobsmacked me that she could see that!!! that Neil Gaiman would have someone say that!!!!! But, of course, she is in many ways the same.

Whatever happened to Crowley after the Laudanum incident certainly wasn't a one-off. He was certainly punished again and again for deeds seen as too good. Enough so that when he is called kind, when he is called good, when he is thanked, his response is violent panic.

It's easy for us to believe that maybe he's always been like that. But no. Gaiman gave us incontestable proof that there was a time where Crowley smiled freely, where he looked with wide and joyful eyes at the parts of the world he created. The difference from that, to the numb and deeply lonely Crowley that we see with Job, the anxious, repressed and angry Crowley that we see in the present day, is one of the biggest tragedies of all.

David is wearing an older version of a Safe Space Hoodie ($35), with Stanley Tucci Green Collection Dutch Oven Cookware ($299)

Before, during, after

Aziraphale and Crowley don't communicate and it stems from their first meeting.

Let me explain.

Before the Beginning, Crowley is at his most honest and his most vulnerable. He tells Aziraphale so excitedly all about stars and how long it's hoping to take for them to form.

Aziraphale is also bluntly honest (a trait he never really loses but does learn to temper) in telling him about the 6K year timeframe.

Crowley then mentions creating a suggestion box and Aziraphale frets over him, concerned already, and we all know how much trouble Crowley got in for asking a few questions.

This sets the tone for everything after.

Crowley stops being honest - "I'm a demon. I lied." - which also means Crowley has been disparaging his own demonhood at least since Aziraphale looked at him askance on a wall and said, "You're a demon. That's what you do."

Aziraphale stops trusting him, but he never stops being polite. Crowley doesn't attack him, so he doesn't attack either. Not at the Ark, and not with Job's goats. Aziraphale is still vaguely seeing the angel he saw in the stars.

Crowley even gives him the permit so he can doublecheck that everything's above board, so to speak. Then we've got Crowley lying straight to Aziraphale's face about killing Job's children because Crowley still sees the angel in the stars who told him the world and his nebulae were going to prematurely end.

The angel who let kids die in the Flood.

Yes, the angel who shielded him on the wall and gave away a flaming sword, so there's some comfort that he won't instantly get smote - "smitten" 😇 - but still the angel who staunchly toes the party line.

After all's said and done and Aziraphale cries about being fallen - cries over being just what Crowley is, even after seeing Crowley circumvent Hell's rules - Crowley tells him he won't tell anyone.

Crowley is good at not telling anyone things, but so is Aziraphale.

Season 1, we get this. Crowley doesn't tell Aziraphale about the hellhound until the last minute. Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley about finding Agnes's book. Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley he's meeting with Nazis, and Crowley certainly never tells Aziraphale how he knows them. 

Season 2, we get more. 

Things Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley:

• Deringer in a carved out book and gun license

• Drivers license he's had for 90 years - as long as Crowley's had the Bentley

• Why his French is so bad (not until he's asked a direct question)

• He knows Crowley likes to rescue him

Things Crowley doesn't tell Aziraphale:

• Beelzebub dragged him to Hell and made him an offer

• He'd never shot a gun before

I'm sure there are more things I'm forgetting, but those are some of the big ones.

More evidence of their continued lack of communication after the Apocanot is the apology dance. (Although I love it and do need to see Aziraphale do it too.)

Crowley is not wrong, and Aziraphale is not right. They are both both. But that never gets discussed, which is why Crowley never has to talk about being brought to Hell. He never talks about Aziraphale being threatened by Extreme Sanctions.

Aziraphale doesn't know why Crowley comes back, but he very likely assumes it's because Crowley wants to do the right thing after all. Aziraphale is still thinking about the angel Crowley was (season 1, "You were an angel once") and sees every single instance of good as PROOF that Crowley could/should/wants to be an angel again.

Additionally, some of the things they do say don't get heard. Aziraphale likes to tell someone he's doing good now that he's no longer reporting to Heaven. Crowley teases him for it twice, back to back. Tone of voice and "doing good again, angel?" after Maggie says something about the rent.

Aziraphale craves being told he's doing the right thing. Aziraphale has been pushed into a place where he won't get that from the place he always has because Heaven is out of reach. If he'd communicated this to Crowley, who is doing everything he can as always to keep him safe, that Crowley would keep teasing him? That Crowley wouldn't gesture to someone in need and say, "Right. Have fun, angel." Anthony J'acts-of-service Crowley would absolutely let Aziraphale have all the bouncy fun miracles in the world without shame. 

Also, when they discuss how to make Nina and Maggie fall in love. Crowley's idea - canopy, rainstorm, vavoom - is absolutely informed by his own experiences, but he doesn't leave it at that. He says he "saw in a Richard Curtis film." He won't let that uncomfortable truth live in reality, pushing it off to humans and film. The realm of fiction, as Aziraphale immediately latches onto.

They don't talk about themselves. They don't talk about being an US. They said their side without getting into the nitty gritty of what that means to the point where neither knows where the line is.

Aziraphale says our car and when Crowley refuses because my car, Aziraphale also says they both get use out of the bookshop. Our car, our bookshop. It's a melding that Aziraphale assumes is perfectly natural, but Crowley hasn't seen it that way. They haven't talked about it.

And when they finally do, Aziraphale is running on the assumption that because Crowley does good and was happiest as an angel, looking over a colourful nebulae - so happy with it, he didn't want to lose it and ended up Falling for it - of course Crowley would want to go back. Of course Crowley would want to be in charge (second in command) since it means doing what they do on a larger scale.

Crowley, however, is still keen to keep going as they have been. Alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz, fixing up the bookshop like nothing happened, getting Muriel away so it can just be the two of them. Crowley is ready for the status quo. Although he does have new knowledge that the car and the bookshop are theirs, he and Aziraphale still carried the plants back to the Bentley.

They are still not talking.

And when they do, it's too little and it's too late. And they never ask each other why.

Next season, they need to learn how to ask why. And I have faith they will.

Part 3 Voyage of the Damned

Crowley has a bad habit of being the architect of his own misery.

From what he's sure was Earth's first (and, in his opinion, worst) hangover, to shutting down London's mobile networks only to have to make an urgent call himself, or purchasing the cheapest plant mister and using it in a bluff only to have it leak giving the damn game away, Crowley is frequently frustrated and frequently so at himself.

Now is no different.

He's sitting alone in his car (it still smells like angel and yellow and good lord he didn't know he could be this miserable) with only his plants for company and running through the last few days in his mind and wondering exactly where he cocked the whole thing up.

There was progress, he's sure of it. There were touches, moreso than usual. Hell, he thought he was going to drag the angel off to, well, somewhere, when they were at the pub and he just oh so casually placed his hand over Crowley's useless heart.

He can still feel it, those thick, strong, warm hands that even through layers of fabric felt divine and it made him want things. Tangibly want.

Imminently want.

How was that mere days ago? How had it gone so pear shaped so quickly? He went slow, he did the right things, he tried to protect his angel like he's always done. Well, bugger him for a lark considering how all that turned out.

He knows things now, like the depth of commitment Aziraphale had to the almighty and certainly not to him.

He knows what it's like to love and hate someone in a moment in equal measure. Knows what it's like to have someone awfully close but never further away.

He knows how the angel tastes, the love of his damned pointless, interminable existence, but only when tinged with fury and betrayal and desperation. (It was never supposed to be like that, it wasn't). He knows how soft those lips really are and he knows how those hands would grab him and maybe, in the right circumstances, pull him closer and then maybe-

He wishes he knew less. He'd like to know nothing at present.

But there's nothing for it now, Aziraphale's gone where Crowley can't follow and for the first time in six millenia, Crowley is untethered and entirely alone. Not the kind that protects you but the kind the hollows you out.

He had always promised himself he'd never tell Aziraphale howhe felt, would never break that boundary. Now that he knows how it plays out, he can't help but think he was right, Maggie and Nina be damned.

For the original tempter, the being who brought knowledge to humans and defended that with his entire infernal being, he's currently questioning if this is just one, big, awful joke with him as the natural punchline.

Knowledge, it turns out, is a real heavy burden.

It might be an unpopular view but I don't want Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship to have been part of the ineffable plan. I don't want their love for each other to have been just another chess piece on God's board, destined, since their creation to fall in love. They deserve better than that.

If anything, I want their love to be in spite of the plan. For, just like their sense of right and wrong, their emotional growth together to be hard fought and all their own. I love the idea that it flies in the face of what is expected from an angel and a demon.

I don't want them to love each other because they are supposed to. That would be so diminutive. I want Aziraphale to love Crowley because he's Crowley and Crowley to love Aziraphale because he's Aziraphale. Divine plans and prophecies be damned. Being part of the ineffable plan would erase the agency and beauty from it. Their love is theirs.

(Almost) exactly my sentiment! Thank you so much for expressing it better than I ever could hope to do myself.

RTD explaining why he didn’t put Then-Three in Thirteen’s outfit, is not an excuse. It is his genuine thought process.

Nobody has to like it, I don’t like it, I understand his reasoning but I would still have done it anyway.

But no, damn it, the trans rights campaigner is not transphobic for fearing the British public’s transphobia.

Look. Have a moment of honesty with me right here. Is there not even a teeny-weeny bit of you that wanted Ten-Three in 13’s clothes because you think it would look a bit funny. Because it would have, that’s why we made funny art about it.

I do not think it’s beyond the pale, for Russell to know that would be the case, and go, ‘No. I don’t want that to be a laughing matter.’

The episode he’s got next has a trans character in it. Deliberately casted as trans. This will be a feature. Considering that it is something that will be handled seriously, him not wanting to start off on the foot of ‘ha ha man look funny in lady’s clothes’ is understandable.

Again, I think it would have been alright, but it’s understandable he is afraid of this. He has been incredibly vocal about trans people and trans issues, he has not been sat idly by as trans people are being attacked as Britain becomes TERF Island, please take a moment to understand what a gay man of his age is thinking seeing all this, people’s reactions, the legislation, he’s watching time run backwards.

Perhaps you had to be there, but even with Doctor Who’s drop in popularity, you should’ve seen the reactions to things like the pregnant man in Chibs’s first series. Russell knows his own joke with Cassandra that was just meant as a comment on her not remembering her life was taken and used by goddamn transphobes.

That he is afraid that your first reaction to Ten-Three in Thirteen’s clothes would be a giggle, is not unfounded, or unreasonable, and while I think he is catastrophising here, we are currently in a state of catastrophe over trans issues and depictions, that he is trying to make better, not worse, when he is aware that this moment will be ON THE EVENING NEWS. For every single Not-We to see.

He clearly is covering trans issues, we know he’s covering trans issues, doing so in an episode where he brings back David Tennant so literally everyone and their mum is going to watch and he knows it. And he wants to do everything right so that people do not just go into it with ‘man dressed as lady lol’.

We all would probably have taken the risk here. Felt that doing this might be more boundary breaking (positive) than funny (negative). But a moment of empathy for why he would choose to do this. Because we might have taken the risk and that turn out to have been the wrong move. That he wants to be more careful than risk adding even a splash of fuel to the fire is completely understandable, and if you don’t think so, you might not realise how much trans people in my country are already being burned.

some of my favorite panels from the gomens comic I made

No but like listen to me, the ENTIRE REASON that Gabriel could throw away everything he had for a happy ending with his demon love when Aziraphale couldn't is that Gabriel never actually cared. Abandoning heaven is easy if you don't believe in anything it stands for and were only ever in it for the power. But Aziraphale? Aziraphale is an idealist. Fundamentally, when he goes against the letter of heaven's law, it's because he believes that he's fulfilling a deeper obligation to heaven's true purpose.

Aziraphale's values and goals are good in the real sense of the word and not merely Good in the visible and performative way that most of heaven operates, but he still believes that heaven can and should epitomise that goodness. Conversely, Crowley (the one being Aziraphale has ever met who actually understands and shares Aziraphale's values) has given up on institutional salvation. He's seen both heaven and hell up close and knows they're functionally identical, except that heaven has nicer views. They want the same things, but they can't agree on how to get them.

Gabriel and Beelzebub don't have this conflict. Neither of them cared about anything enough to put it above their own self interest - it's just that their feelings for each other transformed that self interest into something softer, something that maybe grew into real empathy. This is why the path to their happy ending came easier for them, and Crowley and Aziraphale have to walk a more winding road.