Okay, Just Curious If I'm Alone On This—I Kinda Don't Like The New TARDIS Interior. Like, I Get That

woke: the nazis recognized crowley because he was working for british counterintelligence 

also woke: crowley didn’t actually know exactly when and where aziraphale’s book deal was going down, he just had a vague idea, so he’d been busting into churches at random for about the past month and a half, hopping around on his burning feet, and each time he did it he Loudly announced his entrance like “here comes anthony j. crowley to save the day!” because he had a whole plan, he was gonna be so suave, but it was never aziraphale, and he ended up interrupting several other clandestine nazi meetings so that word got around in nazi circles of anthony j. crowley, the weird hopping church guy, and then when he finally did happen upon aziraphale’s deal, he was just so incredibly happy to see his angel that he completely forgot his smooth introduction, but the nazis recognized him as the weird hopping church guy so they did it for him.

Guys. Let's talk about the Eccles cakes. Shall we?

When Crowley orders six shots of espresso, Aziraphale considerately asks for something that "calms people down". Nina then suggests him to get Eccles cakes.

Now the word, "Eccles" originally means "The church". It foreshadowed the season finale where Aziraphale asks Crowley to join heaven. It is a callback to Crowley being the (sauntered-vaguely-downwards) fallen angel. Crowley was given a choice to join heaven again. To eat the Eccles cake. But he doesn't. He doesn't want to be calmed down and hushed. He has found his voice, his own side. He knows the truth about Heaven and Hell and God.

The Eccles cake is also called the "squashed fly cake' because the inside is filled with black currants. This could be a metaphor for hell. How Crowley was also asked back to hell and he said no.

Aziraphale ordering Eccles cakes shows the inner struggle that he is facing. He cares for Crowley. He wants to be there for him. But at the same time, he believes whole heartedly in heaven. He still thinks of God's plan as ineffable. As indubitable. He believes that Crowley and he will be happier in Heaven. He fails to see that even if heaven seems to be the side of "truth and light", on the inside it's all squashed flies. It's just as bad as hell. That when heaven ends life on earth it will be just as dead as hell ended it.

So shapely, innit?

I feel like a Victorian man seeing an ankle…

I just realized something.

Crowley is very protective over his car, something that represents him and his identity and his control over things.

Aziraphale gets in the car, and changes EVERYTHING about it, from the music to the horn to the color of the car to the travel sweets.

And then Crowley calls and sharply informs him, "You know I can feel that, right?!"

It's not just a car, it's him, it's CROWLEY. He's taken charge and changing everything about it that was Crowley, making it his idea of better. He literally tells the car, "There, now that's better isn't it?"

And this was after Aziraphale had said, "It's OUR car."

This is foreshadowing the end, and everything Aziraphale says to him.

"Well of course you said no, you're the bad guys." -- Of course the Bentley isn't going to want to speed, that's bad.

"I can make you an angel again, it will be just like it was before, only even nicer!" -- Oh, but Crowley, why the black when the yellow is so pretty?!

It really drives home (heh) how off-kilter everything is without Heaven and Hell. Before, they knew where the other stood. Perhaps they thought knew WHY the other stood where they did (e.g., "Well of course you're all dark and moody, you're a demon.") And now that that's gone, they suddenly don't have this backdrop.

Crowley seems to not realize that Aziraphale is silently screaming that he wants to be together, he's still stuck in the Heaven-era version of him saying "we can't really be an US". Even at the end, he tells Aziraphale, "We could have been us," and he only seemed to have barely recognized just moments before that they HAVE been an "us" for the last few years.

And Aziraphale seems to have trouble parsing the difference between what Crowley was because he was a demon, and what Crowley was because he was Crowley. At the end of the season, he's asking Crowley to hand over his metaphorical keys to join him in Heaven, so he can change everything about him in ways Crowley doesn't want.

It's THEIR relationship, but Aziraphale wants to change the terms, change everything about it so it can fit his bright and cheerful picture of how everything should be. And when Crowley angrily rejects this (just like he did when it was the car), Aziraphale is just as surprised he feels that way.

For there to truly be an "us", for the car to be theirs and not just one or the other's, they're going to have to learn who they really are on their own, and relearn who the other one really is deep down, then learn what they really want from each other (and what concessions they're willing to make) moving forward.

But of course the Master would buy pears! Not because he likes them, oh no, just to goad/irk/grate on the Doctor's nerves. Because that's how they are. Love that detail - and the Gallifreyan swirls above their heads, indicating that they speak (think?) in their native tongue.

Retired Timelords 😃

I'm seeing some confusion out and about over the title A Companion to Owls (generally along the lines of 'what have owls got to do with it???'), so I'd like to offer my interpretation (with a general disclaimer that the Bible and particularly the Old Testament are damn complicated and I'm not able to address every nuance in a fandom tumblr post, okay? Okay):

It's a phrase taken from the Book of Job. Here's the quote in full (King James version):

When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness. My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me. I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. --(Job 30:29)

Job is describing the depths of his grief, but also, with that last line, his position in the web of providence.

Throughout the Old Testament, owls are a recurring symbol of spiritual devastation. Deuteronomy 4:17 - Isaiah 34:11 - Psalm 102: 3 - Jeremiah 50: 39...just to name a few (there's more). The general shape of the metaphor is this: owls are solitary, night-stalking creatures, that let out either mournful cries or terrible shrieks, that inhabit the desolate places of the world...and (this is important) they are unclean.

They represent a despair that is to be shunned, not pitied, because their condition is self-inflicted. You defied God (so the owl signifies), and your punishment is...separation. From God, from others, from the world itself. To call and call and never, ever receive an answer.

Your punishment is terrible, tormenting loneliness.

(and that exact phrase, "tormenting loneliness," doesn't come from me...I'm pulling it from actual debate/academia on this exact topic. The owls, and what they are an omen for. Oof.)

To call yourself a 'companion to owls,' then, is to count yourself alongside perhaps the saddest of the damned --not the ones who defy God out of wickedness or ignorance, and in exile take up diabolical ends readily enough...but the ones who know enough to mourn what they have lost.

So, that's how the title relates to Job: directly. Of course, all that is just context. The titular "companion to owls," in this case, isn't Job at all.

Because this story is about Aziraphale.

The thing is that Job never actually defied God at all, but Aziraphale does, and he does so fully believing that he will fall.

He does so fully believing that he's giving in to a temptation.

He's wrong about that, but still...he's realized something terrifying. Which is that doing God's will and doing what's right are sometimes mutually exclusive. Even more terrifying: it turns out that, given the choice between the two...he chooses what's right.

And he's seemingly the only angel who does. He's seemingly the only angel who can even see what's wrong.

Fallen or not, that's the kind of knowledge that...separates you.

(Whoooo-eeeeee, tormenting loneliness!!!)

Aziraphale is the companion.

...I don't think I need to wax poetic about Aziraphale's loneliness and grappling with devotion --I think we all, like, get it, and other people have likely said it better anyway. So, one last thing before I stop rambling:

Check out Crowley's glasses.

(screenshots from @seedsofwinter)

Crowley is the owl.

Crowley is the goddamn owl.

Oh, I see. When something is gone, it keeps existing.

Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder (2023)

Aziraphale loves Crowley so much that he is willing to rebuild heaven for him.

He loves him so much he is willing to give up everything if it means there is a chance he might smile again

Aziraphale loves Crowley so much that he will rewrite existence if Crowley can make stars again

Crowley loves Aziraphale so much that he doesn't need any of that

He loves him so much that he doesn't need heaven, or happiness, or the stars

Crowley loves Aziraphale so much that he is Crowley's heaven, or happiness, or stars

They love each other so much that it blinded them, and they never asked the other how they wanted to be loved

Still stuck on how Aziraphale ate that meat like he was starving. Like he’d been starved for millennia, and he hadn’t even known it, because he’d never once been fed. But we know they don’t have to eat (nor sleep, etc.), so what he’d been starved for is pleasure. Being present in his body, feeling the joys and longings it could feel. Understanding what taste buds were made for. He hadn’t known; he’d never learned to miss it.

Now imagine what a kiss has done to him.

I'm not a "coffee theory" enthusiast but does anyone else feel like Aziraphale like, literally didn't hear and/or understand a word of Crowley's love confession? And I do mean literally - it seems Aziraphale did not get it at all. He never responds directly to a word that Crowley says about them. I mean Crowley says they've spent their existence pretending not to be a couple and Aziraphale doesn't address that?? Crowley says they can be like Beelz & Gabe and Aziraphale just looks at him like ????? Then Azi just goes "come with me!" almost as if Crowley hasn't spoken. What is this fuckery.