An Ace Perspective on Good Omens Part 1: Exploring Aziraphale and Crowley’s Bond

Transcript Transcribed by Hannah E.

Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse, Royce. And together, we are The Ace Couple. And today, we are finally talking about Good Omens – specifically, the TV show. We have not read the book. But oh my word, we got so many requests for this once upon a time, closer to when the seasons actually dropped, because Aziraphale and Crowley mean a lot to a lot of Aces.

Royce: Which, it’s been a little over a year since Season 2 aired. I believe that Season 3 has been confirmed? Oh, I’m seeing — it looks like it was confirmed December of last year, but there’s no release date that I’m seeing, and that that is going to be the final season. But this is a case where Season 1 was a miniseries based off of a book that was published in 1990. It does deviate from it to some degree but largely follows the plot of the book. And I believe it got fairly popular, was fairly well received. So the next two seasons are more original content because the book ended at the end of Season 1.

Courtney: Yeah, and that’s what’s really interesting. I have had a weird history with this show because I wasn’t familiar with the book ahead of time. When the first season came out, it was everywhere in Ace discourse, in fandom discourse. It seemed incredibly popular, especially in certain online places, such as Tumblr. And so we watched that first season, and I didn’t hate it. I wouldn’t even say I disliked it. I just did not understand the massive amount of hype it was receiving. And then I got really concerned when I found out that the entire first season was the entire book and it was renewed for a second season that was just to be based on “People liked this show, I guess,” because usually that doesn’t bode well for shows. I really wish more shows just told the story they set out to tell. But, surprisingly, the first time we watched the second season — because we did watch it when it came out — I somehow kind of liked the second season better than the first one, which really surprised me.

Royce: I think this is one of those rare circumstances where what you liked about the first season were the deviations from the book.

Courtney: Which is fascinating.

Royce: Because I did look up an article that compared Season 1 to the book. And some of the major things that they pointed out were that our two main characters, Aziraphale and Crowley, were just regular characters in an ensemble cast in the book and were less prominent compared to where they are in the series.

Courtney: Mmm. Interesting. So, yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the thoughts we have about the first and the second season and the show itself, just with the two of us as consumers and our experience with it. Why this relationship and this show does mean so much to so many Aces — because, even if it didn’t land with us in exactly the same way, it’s very important. And I actually have some parallels with Interview with the Vampire to throw in, for those of you who have followed our little vampire series throughout the years.

Courtney: And then, I do not always think that what an author says outside of a show is important. In this case, there are some things that Neil Gaiman has said. He has been very active online. He’s been very active responding to fans on Tumblr, so we have a lot of anecdotes for how he responds to people asking, like, “To confirm, are they a gay couple? Are they an Ace couple?” Et cetera, et cetera. And in the broader scope of the conversation, I do want to bring those in, because I think it’s relevant to the broader discourse. And we’re not going to ignore the recent allegations against Neil Gaiman either. We’ll circle back to that when we start talking more about the author. But I want to get into the show first, because we first thought about doing an episode for this, like, at least two years ago.

Courtney: So, in preparation for this episode, we did actually go back and sort of binged both seasons back-to-back, and I think I retroactively liked Season 1 a little bit better the second time around. Which, there’s some precedence for that for me. I’ve mentioned that with BoJack Horseman — which is now, like, my favorite show of all time — the first season was not great, but now that I know the entire story, when I go back to rewatch it, the first season is retroactively better for me. So I think exploring the relationship more in-depth in Season 2 gave me more appreciation for what we saw in Season 1. And so, Royce, do you just want to give a brief summary of what the plot of Season 1 is, and then we can talk about the specific elements?

Royce: Yeah. So trying to hit this fairly briefly, this is the plot that’s covered in the book and in the first season of the miniseries — which, so far, both Seasons 1 and 2 were six episodes, so, not an enormous amount of content here. But it all centers around a plot to bring about Armageddon through the Antichrist. The miniseries starts out with a few demons scheming with an order of nuns that worship demons to do a baby swap. Crowley appears with a baby that has presumably been born in Hell and brought to Earth to swap with the child of a prominent US government official diplomat — I don’t remember exactly what his role is. But, setting a precedent for all of the deific beings in this series, they’re kind of bumbling and they make a lot of mistakes. And I think, at one point, the series says, like, “These plans didn’t account for humans being humans.” And mistakes happen, and the baby just ends up in a regular British family home. And the forces of Heaven and Hell are none the wiser until some number of years later — I want to say 12 years later — the prophesized day of the end times is beginning to come, and everyone starts to scramble to pick up the pieces and find the Antichrist and pull everything together.

Royce: And so, during all of this, the two main characters of the TV series, Aziraphale and Crowley, are a demon and an angel who have been on Earth for a long time and are familiar with each other, end up working together to stop Armageddon, because if Armageddon happened, then they don’t get to do any of the things that they enjoy about Earth anymore. And meanwhile, the child Antichrist is starting to come into his own power and ideations and, in at least the TV series, is riding the line of good and evil. He begins to have the power to manifest his own thoughts and desires in the real world — which, as a young boy, ends up being, like, manifesting the city of Atlantis and alien visitors and just all sorts of fantastical things.

Courtney: Also, it’s like so OP. Like, why can the son of Satan just do this?

Royce: Just modify reality. I mean, because that’s —

Courtney: Like, Jesus couldn’t do that. [laughs]

Royce: I mean, it’s because modifying reality is how this all resolves itself in the end. It’s how Armageddon is stopped, is the Antichrist tells Satan, “You’re not my real dad,” and then that becomes reality. And so Armageddon is averted because he’s no longer the Antichrist.

Royce: But I did see, when I was looking up comparisons between the TV show and the book, they made the Antichrist and his friend group much more morally aligned. Because in the book series, they — apparently, when they were going out playing, like, witch hunters, they drowned one of the members of the group’s younger sister.

Courtney: Oh!

Royce: They were doing the whole, like, witch dunking underwater thing.

Courtney: Wow. Well, isn’t that neat. Fun fact!

Royce: But that is the bulk of the series. There are a lot of jokes and puns or attempts to take something biblical and, like, retell it in a humorous way. The four horsemen of the apocalypse appear and ride to the Antichrist at one point. That’s the whole deal here. That’s where the whole season is going.

Courtney: So, the reason why it has meant so much to so many Aces is that a lot of people see Aziraphale and Crowley as basically platonic life partners. And at least in the first season, there was a lot of, like, romance optional, do you see this as romantic or not? Either way, it’s very much queer, and they’re very much in it together. So, there were some elements of this that I was like, “I see where that is coming from.”

Courtney: But at least in the first season, they didn’t let those moments really steep for very long. For example, watching it through the second time, one of the most endearing moments to me was when Aziraphale and Crowley were trying to basically scheme. This baby has been delivered. They don’t know yet it’s been delivered to the wrong place. But they’re just scheming to say, like, “Well, Crowley’s mission is to make sure that this kid gets brought up as evil so that he does what he needs to do.” And so Crowley sort of gives a wink-wink, like, “Man, it’d be a shame if someone thwarted me, huh?” And so they basically decide, like, “Let’s also put Aziraphale on the periphery of this kid’s life to be a bug in his ear for good and to try to foster empathy in him,” and all these things. And the way they present it is, “We’d sort of be like the kid’s godfathers,” and that’s what persuades Aziraphale, is that word. And he just sort of lights up and he loves that idea and he’s like, “Ah, godfathers.” It’s a very sentimental moment.

Courtney: And right there at that moment I was like, “Platonic life partners raising a child. Louis and Lestat. Got it.” [laughs] Immortal beings who, in the source material, are said to not be sexually active. I get it. I’m there. I appreciate this. But the thing is, I almost could have seen an entire season of their escapades trying to be this kid’s godfather, especially after Season 2. It’s like, some of the flashbacks of their escapades and their attempts to work together have actually been some of the best moments of the show for me. And we only got like one flashback of, Aziraphale’s the gardener and he’s saying, like, “Oh, respect the snail and respect all living things,” and then this little kid’s like, “Oh, but my nanny says horrible, evil things,” and he’s like, “Don’t listen to your nanny.” And then it shows Crowley reading him a bedtime story at night about, you know, fire and brimstone and be evil, and he’s like, “But the gardener says I should respect living things!” And it’s very funny, but it’s very fleeting. So while that “Godfathers!” moment was cute at the time, there wasn’t really enough of it to, like, resonate with me on that level.

Courtney: But speaking of sexless immortal beings, I want to talk about… We’ve talked about this before in analyzing other media, whether it be a human like Dexter, or whether it be vampires like Louis and Lestat. Anytime you do have especially an inhuman character that you are trying to make the main character, to make the sympathetic character, there’s always some means of humanizing that character. And we have strongly criticized anything that uses sex as a shorthand for humanizing a character. They did that with Dexter, who seemed to be completely Asexual literally from Episode 1. We were watching it giggling because just the things he was saying were very funny and very relatable and it’s like, I don’t even care that he’s a serial killer at this point because he’s got a point. But then, later in the series, they want to make him a little more human, and they give him more relationships that he actually seems to start caring about, and then he becomes sexually active. And it’s like, why is the sex being used to humanize him? Because that is where we get the negative stigma of, you know, “Asexual people are these horrible, immoral, inhuman beasts.”

Courtney: So, in the context of, like, Interview with the Vampire, the new AMC show added a lot of sex that the vampires were not having in the book, and there was a reason on the page why they were not having sex in the book: their anatomy did not work that way. But because it’s same-sex relationships, it’s been widely praised for, “Aha, it is gayer than ever now, and it is more queer, and therefore that is good.” And so we also reject sex equaling more queer.

Courtney: So, I think it’s a dangerous game when you use sex — and even romance, for that matter — as a means of humanizing someone else, because you don’t have to be romantically inclined to be a human, either, or to be a sympathetic character.

Courtney: And so at least this show doesn’t do that. They don’t add sex. But they do have humanizing elements in different ways. And so I want to use that as an example for “There are other ways to humanize immortal characters that isn’t ‘make them have sex with each other.’” In this case, food and alcohol consumption is one of them. It’s pretty well established that angels and demons do not need to eat. It’s pretty well established that they don’t really have a desire to eat, because all the other angels who are basically set up to just be pretentious assholes — this is a kind of story where, like, heaven and hell are both wrong. They’re both bad. So the other angels and the other demons are sort of looking down on Aziraphale in particular like, “Why are you drinking tea? Why are you eating food? That’s silly. That’s ridiculous.” But Aziraphale really likes his desserts, especially. He lights up when they can go out and eat crepes, and he’ll be seen eating a little pastry or having a tea, and…

Royce: There was one little offhand comment where he was trying to remember something from the past — something from, like, centuries ago — and he couldn’t remember who they talked to or what the deal was, but he remembered what food they were having.

Courtney: Yes. So that’s, like, a very, “This is an on-Earth human thing that he has come to appreciate.” And there are times when they’re both sitting around drinking alcohol. And they even get drunk when they drink alcohol, but it seems to be, like, totally a choice for them. Like, when they’re like, “Man, I need to sober up,” they just magically remove the alcohol from their bodies in an instant.

Royce: Yeah, Crowley ends up, like, magically decanting it back into the bottles. They also do have unusually high tolerances. Like, Crowley frequently just orders large cups of tons of espresso, for example. So, like, caffeine too. But they are definitely imbibing in —

Courtney: “Six shots of espresso in a big cup.” [laughs] Yeah. Which, yeah, it is interesting, because we know they don’t need that, but they have come to enjoy it. So that’s a thing that I like, but also makes me nervous. Because, in the Ace community especially, cake is such a big metaphor for us. Cake is better than sex. So we do, as a community, really appreciate food as something that can be a worthwhile desire, something that isn’t inherently lesser than a sexual desire. And so, especially when we have, like, as far as we know, sexless angel bopping around in this queerplatonic relationship of sorts that spans centuries, literally, and he’s just so delighted to have a little piece of cake: that’s very sweet, that’s very relatable. But the sort of “earthly pleasures thing” does scare me, because if you take that too far with the wrong author, that can turn into, like, “Okay, even though we don’t want to or need to, let’s just have sex and see what this whole thing is about.” Not saying that’s going to happen in the future. I hope it doesn’t. But, if it’s used as equally important and not a foot in the door to something else, I don’t mind those other types of senses, those other physical desires.

Courtney: And then even just material possessions. Some angels, at one point, come into Aziraphale’s little bookshop that he runs, and they clearly just don’t even understand the concept of owning physical items. But they know it’s a thing human does — [mocking/correcting self] human does — humans do. And yet Crowley really likes his classic car. He doesn’t need to drive around in a classic car, because we see demons just teleporting places all the time, but he likes riding around in his old car and blasting… Queen?

Royce: Yeah, it’s Queen. I read in a comparison between the book and the TV show that, originally, any album that was left in the car for too long would turn into a Queen’s Greatest Hits album, and Freddie Mercury would be the voice of the car radio communicating to Crowley.

Courtney: And they do further illustrate Aziraphale and Crowley’s sort of humanized nature by putting them in stark contrast to the other angels and the other demons. Like, the other angels trying to pretend to be humans are very clearly not understanding humans whatsoever.

Courtney: Which, as you said previously, is basically the entire plot of this season. They put this whole plan in motion not knowing how humans would make individual choices in the moment. But the angels come in and they’re like, “Oh, hello, we would like to purchase a material possession such as pornography.” And Aziraphale’s like, “[weary] Okay. Like, okay. Let’s go in the back.” [laughing] And he’s like, “You guys are embarrassing yourself.” And they’re like, “Yes, we humans are very embarrassed. We must purchase our pornography in private.” And they think they nailed it. They’re saying this so loud to other people in the shop that are looking at these total weirdos. And they’re just like, “Yes. Nobody knows we’re not human. Perfectly emulated the humans.”

Courtney: Which, one of those angels is the Archangel Gabriel, and we’re going to put a pin in him because he is very inhuman, does not understand humans at all, doesn’t want to understand humans. One of the main guys giving guff to Aziraphale for indulging in human pleasures. But he gets humanized in the second season, which I have mixed feelings on.

Royce: From what I read, even his Season 1 depiction was largely made for the show. He was hardly a character at all in the novel.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: The Metatron was a more prominent angel.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: Although I did see that some of the stuff in the TV series — I’m not sure if it was the Season 1 or the Season 2 stuff — came from unpublished material, things that didn’t make the final edit of the book.

Courtney: So, another thing about just the nature of the angels and the demons is that, in the show, they say, “Size and shape are merely options.” And they sort of back this up with, you know, some angels who have a traditionally masculine name are actually played by a woman or have the appearance of a woman — like the Archangel Michael, for instance. So that kind of gives, like, an inherent air of genderqueerness. But there was a line that I kept seeing over and over in the discourse about how much this means to Asexual people — some, even, who had read the book, and it resonated with them in book form, long before the TV show ever came up — and I kept seeing the word “sexless.” People would say, “In the book, it says they are sexless.” And so I wanted to actually find what that quote was.

Courtney: Because then, in seeing how Neil Gaiman would respond to fans on Tumblr and Twitter, he’d often give very wishy-washy answers, especially if an Asexual person was like, “Did you mean sexless as in Asexual?” he’d be like, “Well, no. We meant it as in gender, but [sing-song-y] your interpretation isn’t necessarily wrong.” So, I wanted to see the actual quote, because I know this resonated with people before the show, but it didn’t make it into the show, either.

Courtney: And, as far as I can gather, saying that for their corporeal forms, that “Shape and size are merely options” is sort of the closest thing they got to this book quote. And the quote from the book is, “Many people meeting Aziraphale for the first time formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong. Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”

Courtney: So, first of all, when I was first reading that quote and the “way gayer” was used there, at first, I was like, “Oh, they aren’t even using gay as in homosexual or homoromantic. They are using gay as in, like, happy because high monkeys.” But then they use sexless as the reason why that’s not true. And it’s like, oh, you actually did mean… Oh, I see. Okay. [laughs] So, I don’t know how I feel about that quote overall. But, yeah, just reading this out of context, I, and I think a lot of other Aces, would see that as non-sexual beings. And I don’t think that’s an inappropriate conclusion to draw.

Royce: And much with the angels’, at least, overt reluctance to engage in really anything sensory or physical, I think that that tracks. There’s even a joke in Season 2 where, back in ancient times, they trick Gabriel because Gabriel thinks that he knows everything about everything, but only witnessed the first human birth — like, the creation of Adam and Eve.

Courtney: Well, that’s why he thinks he knows, because he’s like, “I was there for the very first birth. Like, I know childbirth.”

Royce: And so Aziraphale and Crowley are able to get away with lying directly in front of him by exploiting his ignorance of, you know, basic human anatomy and reproductive faculties.

Courtney: Which is also really fascinating. Because Season 2 opens with Gabriel walking butt-naked through the streets of London holding a box and showing up at Aziraphale’s bookshop. And everybody’s shocked to see this naked man just wandering up and knocking on this bookshop door. And he even, at one point, like, drops the box and turns around, and everyone reacts like, “Ahhh,” but it’s like, is he anatomically correct down there? They don’t say he’s not, so I assume he has to, because I think the reactions would have been a lot stranger if he was just, like, rocking a full Ken down there.

Royce: I mean, I assume so. We also see Gabriel fascinated by a very articulate statue of himself. So, like, even if the angels hadn’t caught on, they probably figured it out from the Greeks and Romans.

Courtney: [laughs] So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say that the show doesn’t necessarily erase the sexless nature, but it does make it a little more vague. And even their saying, like, “Shape and size are merely options” confuses me, because I don’t think the show is consistent with that throughout both seasons. Because in Season 2, when they have to change actors for Beelzebub, for instance, Beelzebub’s just like, “Yeah, I was bored of my old face, so I picked a new one,” which, it’s like, of course. Of course a demon can just do that.

Royce: Yeah, we don’t really see characters do it much. There are a couple of occasions where they change size. And this is explained in one scene where Crowley goes, like, atomic size to slip into the electrical wires, to move as the electricity do to escape another demo. And that’s kind of where, in the TV show, the size transformation was shown. There’s also a bit in Season 2 where, while intoxicated, he accidentally gets way too small and then way too big. But it isn’t utilized very often. We don’t really see it happen.

Courtney: Well, and we see him sort of turn his head into a snake head at one point for, like, a, you know, scare someone kind of moment. But then they get so concerned about being discorporated. Like, it’s like, “Now we need to add stakes, and oh no, you have to drive through a fire! Uh-oh! But your body’s going to dissolve. What are you going to do?” It’s like, all of a sudden, you don’t have magic that can circumvent that? Or, like, Aziraphale, at one point, does get discorporated. And in heaven, they’re like, “We issued you a body. What happened to it?” And they’re, like, upset that he was negligent with the body that they issued to him. So it’s like, did he not get to choose what his body looked like, because he got assigned this one? But other people…? It’s very inconsistent.

Royce: Yeah. That’s confusing. Part of it, too, is, I mean, there are different rules for angels and demons. And I don’t know what are heaven’s resources? Why do you have a limited number of bodies? What does it take to create a body? These are questions that are not answered.

Courtney: Yeah. So, it’s like, we say this is how this world works, but we’re not going to look at it too carefully, because if something else fits our narrative better later, that’s what we’re going to do. So it’s a little bit of sloppy world building, in my eyes, if we’re being honest.

Courtney: And so, throughout this first season, their relationship is definitely affectionate. It’s not labeled, and it’s certainly not physical — which, in and of itself, can be entering into this queerplatonic realm that is very familiar, resonates with a lot of Aces. And, as part of this, other people around them start to sort of rib them and mention, like, “You aren’t just colleagues. You aren’t just friends.” And sometimes it’s a bit of an accusation. Like, one of the angels refers to Crowley as “Aziraphale’s boyfriend in the dark glasses.” So, like, someone else looks at them and uses the word “boyfriend.”

Courtney: Which is fascinating, because sometimes that happens in real-life queerplatonic relationships, too, where other people will sort of see and impose a sexual and/or romantic nature on it, because that’s sort of the only way that a lot of allos can perceive a relationship as having deep meaning. Or sometimes, people who sort of find their own individual queerplatonic dynamic before they necessarily have the words for it, before they do put any sort of label on it, might have other people in their life that see that this is something bigger and deeper, so they’ll be like, “Okay, yeah, you’re basically partners, right? Maybe you didn’t use that word for yourself, but we’re kind of vibing this.” So that that does actually happen. But I do think it’s interesting that other people will say, like, “Oh, yeah, your boyfriend.” Or in Season 2, someone was like, “Oh, I heard you two were somewhat of an item.”

Courtney: So I really wanted to look at the words that they actually do use for themselves. And when Aziraphale’s bookstore burns down, Crowley arrives and gets heavily emotional, and he starts crying, and he says, “Someone killed my best friend.” And then “Somebody to Love” plays as he’s standing in the doorway of this burning bookstore, because it’s so often always Queen with him. And then later, when Aziraphale does arrive to him — discorporated, so he still looks like himself, but I don’t…

Royce: Why?

Courtney: Why? He’s somewhat of a ghost, I suppose? He’s not just, like, a floating ball of light; he’s not just a source of energy. He looks like himself, but it’s not a physical body, no. So he shows up to Crowley, and Crowley is, you know, struggling to sort of comprehend it, and he’s getting very emotional. And he looks Aziraphale in his non-corporeal eyes and says, “I lost my best friend.” And in that moment, Aziraphale kind of looks a little bit sad, like he doesn’t realize that Crowley is talking about him. He’s almost like, “Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Courtney: And then, in the middle of Armageddon, when they’re trying to stop this all and save the world, Aziraphale is holding this big sword, which has kind of been a gag for a long time, and he kind of threateningly looks at Crowley and he’s like, “Figure it out. Come up with something. Come up with something, or I’ll…” And instead of going — like, threatening with the sword, he hesitates and he backs off and he’s like, “… or I’ll never talk to you again.” And that’s what kicks Crowley’s ass in gear. And he gets up and he’s like, “Well, we’re not having that!” And so I do think it’s very cute.

Courtney: But the thing is, and the reason why I didn’t like the first season as much the first time I saw it, was I liked all of the interactions with Aziraphale and Crowley. I think a lot of their dialogue amongst each other, their character development, the actors they got to play them, I think, are all very good. I can’t say the same for any of the other characters in this show. And there are a lot of them! There are a lot of side characters that, very often, when they were first introduced as a character and as a concept, I thought it was funny and interesting, but then they just kept being characters without [laughing] continuing to be interesting, if that makes any sense.

Courtney: So, like, for example, there is a descendant of a witch who got burned at the stake hundreds of years ago. And I found it interesting to see the flashback of her ancestor to see what that looked like: this old witch writing this book of prophecies, and now this modern-day witch family who have been handing down this book, and, as a little girl, being told, like, “Oh, you’re part of this prophecy, so you have to learn all these prophecies, you have to study them and grow up and do what you’re supposed to do.” I find that interesting. And then, now she knows the end of the world is approaching, so she grabs her little prophecy book, and she’s like, “I need to stop this because I’m part of the prophecy.” I think that’s fascinating. From then on, she drives me completely nuts.

Courtney: And that’s the same pattern with all of the other characters. Because then, the descendant of the inquisitor who burned her ancestor at the stake is also a character. And when he’s first introduced, I’m like, “That’s hilarious.” He’s totally cursed, because every time he touches a computer it just, like, explodes dramatically. And I’m like, “Yeah, his family got cursed by witches. That’s hilarious. I like that.” And then he proceeded to also just be a lump [laughing] for the rest of the show. And he interacts with a guy who seems a little weird, seems a little off. He’s, like, yelling on street corners about witches, and he’s like, “Oh, we witch hunters used to be respected.” And, at first, I think that’s funny. He can’t get a job as a computer engineer [laughs] because he destroys computers. So, he just falls into the lap of this other witch hunter. I think, “Okay, that’s funny.” But then the witch hunter, after he’s introduced, after the novelty and the joke of him even existing and getting roped in in this way, just proceeds to be awful for the rest of the time. His neighbor is, like, a sex worker, and he’s awful to her. He constantly calls her “the harlot” and “the Jezebel.” And he’s so mean to her, despite her being like, “Oh, let me make you some tea,” and he’s like, “Get out of my house, harlot!” He’s terrible. And then he just continues to be terrible and no longer interesting.

Courtney: Because part of the way this all resolves is also a bunch of people get roped in, but no one seems to really have any active choice in influencing things, until Aziraphale and Crowley, at the end, happened to say the right thing. But other than that, oh, the descendant of the witch and the inquisitor are part of a prophecy, so they’re just walking the steps that’s already been predetermined and pre-written. And so, yeah, I found myself not liking any of these side characters.

Courtney: Even the group of kids I found very boring most of the time. And it’s interesting that you say, in the book, they actually, like, killed another child. Because, as awful as that is, that’s a little more interesting than what they got. Now, they’re just, like, playing games out in the woods. And it’s a group of all boys except one little girl, and she does the, like, “overly social-aware girl in the group of boys” trope that is increasingly bothering me over the years. Because she doesn’t talk like an actual little girl. They don’t seem like real characters, but they’re also not funny enough to be as campy and bizarre as some of the other characters, like the witches and the witch hunters. Because they’re supposed to just be, like, literal kids, and yet you have this little girl being like, “Speaking as the mother of future generations, the patriarchy is bad.” [laughs] And it’s like… It bothers me. It really does.

Courtney: So, anytime any of these side characters were on screen, I was like, “Let’s get back to Aziraphale and Crowley, please.” Because what they also do with all these other characters… They all get, like, coupled off in really upsetting ways by the end of the show. So, for instance, the descendant of the witch and the descendant of the witch hunter meet each other, and Armageddon starts. And it starts very catastrophically: there’s fires, there’s aliens in Atlantis, and there’s big gusts of winds — like, big torrential weather happening. And so, like, they’re like, “Oh no, the world’s ending! Quick, let’s hold each other.” And they do the thing — this nerdy little guy does the trope of, like, “Oh no, I’m about to die, but I’ve never even kissed a girl!” And so she kisses him. And then, in the middle of the world ending, they just start having sex. And… I don’t know. I don’t think any time this trope has ever been done — I don’t think it’s funny, I don’t think it’s charming, I don’t think it’s sweet or romantic or anything. I hate everything about it. So I’m like, “Okay, of course they’re doing that, sure.” And they have so little time to actually get to know each other, which, like, yeah, some people don’t need that before you have sex with someone else, fine. But then, once the world’s saved, she looks at him and is like, “Oh, this is my boyfriend over here.” And he beams, and he’s like, “Oh, boyfriend!” It’s like, you didn’t have that conversation. You don’t know each other very well.

Royce: It’s also important to note that her entire life has been prophesized to the point where she has very little or feels very little autonomy, and them having sex for the first time was prophesized.

Courtney: Yeah. She was like, “I know this is a thing that’s going to happen, because it’s in the book.” And she’s just like, “Alright!” Which is a very weird area of autonomy that I don’t think is often afforded to women in a lot of Neil Gaiman’s writing. But even when she says that — when she’s like, “Oh, my boyfriend over here” — this little girl rolls her eyes and is like, “Another deluded victim of the patriarchy.” And it’s like, I get that the writers of this show are trying to maybe make a point about the patriarchy, and yet, you don’t seem to actually know how to write realistic, autonomous girls and women. Like, this girl has more autonomy than, I think, any other… [laughs] any other character in this show, but we don’t see her very much. She’s not really a main character. And the fact that she’s overly social-aware as a very young child is kind of her only personality trait. You can’t make that the only personality trait of the one girl in the group of friends. I don’t like it. I don’t like it.

Courtney: But then, equally as infuriating as the witch and the witch hunter getting together, the older guy who is the witch hunter who’s super obsessed with witches and is trying to recruit other witch hunters and everything who’s just awful to his neighbor — they end up getting together at the end? For why? For why? She’s so nice to him, and he’s so terrible, and that doesn’t really change. The last scene we see of them, she’s like, “Oh, instead of me bringing tea to you, like I so kindly always do for some reason,” she’s like, “I set up a table at my house. Do you want to come over here?” And he very cautiously does. And he, once again, to her face, calls her a Jezebel. And then she, very softly and sweetly, is like, “I’m a retired Jezebel now.” And then he’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, that’s alright then.” And then they’re implied to get together. And it’s like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you making commentary on women’s role in society and the patriarchy or not?! [laughs]

Courtney: And so this thing of, like, “We are pairing everyone up even though they’re terrible for each other, and not even in an interesting way, just in an infuriating way” does indicate to me that, even though at least the angel and the demon don’t seem to have a sexual relationship, the show really, really does put an emphasize on coupling people up.

Courtney: But, that said, Aziraphale and Crowley alone: I think the way they end the season is very sweet. Aziraphale is reminded that his bookstore burned down, and so Crowley says, “Well, you can stay at my place if you’d like.” And Aziraphale says, “I don’t think my side would really like that.” And Crowley just says, “You don’t have a side anymore. We’re on our own side.” Because it’s been determined: heaven and hell are both wrong, they’re both bad, so let’s just go off and do our own thing and pave our own path. And then they decide to go out to lunch, and Crowley’s like, “Oh, I believe a table at the Ritz just miraculously became available,” so I don’t know what poor humans they just [laughing] kicked out of their reservation at the Ritz. But it shows them there having a wonderful afternoon tea. They have this very sweet conversation where Aziraphale says, “I’d like to think that none of this would have worked if you weren’t a little bit of a good person,” and Crowley’s like, “And if you weren’t enough of a bastard to be worth knowing.” And they smile, they toast, they celebrate the world still being intact, and the camera pans backwards as they’re just talking and laughing and enjoying their meal. And then a pretty romantic song plays as it fades out, and it’s “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” which actually does come up again in Season 2, so that is fairly relevant.

Courtney: So, all in all, with those two in particular, I saw that there were elements that are, in some way, similar to why The Vampire Chronicles is actually so Ace, but, like, in a wholesome way, because that is a fucked up gothic romance. This has potential to be, like, those elements that you appreciated, but with a more wholesome tone and a more healthy relationship. And so, I’m all in favor of having more dynamics like that. And Season 2 did give us more, and I do think I liked a lot of it better. It’s still not my favorite show in the world, so I still think, for me, it was very overhyped. But Season 2 is far more character-focused than plot-focused — which makes sense, because they didn’t have, literally, “Here’s the plot of a book that we’re adapting to television now.” But being more character-focused works when the characters are exceptional. And my problem with kind of both Season 1 and Season 2 is that Aziraphale and Crowley are exceptional characters; no one else is. [laughs] Gabriel was a lot more interesting in this season, but other than that, I think a lot of the new characters they introduced also just missed something for me.

Royce: Yes, like you said, Season 2 is much more character-driven, but I think that’s something we’re going to have to talk about in a Part 2, because this recording is already getting rather lengthy and we have quite a bit more to talk about.

Courtney: So saith Royce! That means it is time for today’s featured MarketplACE vendor, and we have one that is heavily relevant to today’s episode, which is always a delight when we have one of those. We are giving a big shout out this week to Nulliphy. And on this shop, you can find fan work as well as original artwork by an AroAce Autistic ADHD Agender artist. We are collecting As today, and gods and devils, do we love to see it.

Courtney: We especially wanted to shout out Nulliphy today because, for all of you who are tuning in as really big Good Omens fans, this shop has a beautiful Good Omens print. It shows Aziraphale and Crowley sort of sitting up next to each other — Aziraphale’s in this big comfy-looking armchair, Crowley is sitting on the arm — and they are touching each other: they’re arm to arm, they’re back to back. They’re looking at each other lovingly. Aziraphale’s poring over a book, and you can tell that this is taking place in the bookshop. And it’s a very nice piece of artwork that even has gold foil details, so hard to tell from just the picture on the website alone, but it sounds like in person, it’s a little bit shiny. It will reflect some light and radiate. Very, very pretty. And then there’s also a secondary piece of Good Omens artwork that is round. It’s very purple in color palette. And it’s the two of them stargazing with a half-empty bottle of wine sitting next to them. It’s very cute. If you are in the Good Omens fandom, you should definitely check out these pieces.

Courtney: But also just check it out if you have your own separate fandom, because there is a ton of fandom art on here. There are various Pokemon, there is artwork of Genshin Impact, Cult of the Lamb, and so much more. So, as always, a link to find Nulliphy is going to be in our show notes.

Courtney: And make sure to tune in again next week, where we will continue our Good Omens conversation! So we will see you on the other side. Goodbye!