Nessicaa - ☆Ad Astra Per Aspera☆

needed that<3

For the ones that need it today

Do you believe that the chemistry between Aziraphale and Crowley feels as organic as it does because of the close friendship between Tennant and Sheen?

I honestly feel like any two other actors couldn't have created such a realistic bond between the characters the way David and Michael did. I'd love to hear what you think.

Well, they weren't friends before Good Omens. They had sort of met but they didn't really even know each other. And the chemistry turned up about 45 minutes into the first table read.

listen.

aziraphale made the only choice he could make. From a narrative perspective, yes, but primarily from a character one. He would never have been happy if he'd run away with Crowley. He wouldn't even have been content.

however much he loves Crowley, Aziraphale has never been the impetus in their relationship. It's always been Crowley, nudging, urging, pushing, tempting and Aziraphale, for all the progress he's made over the millennia, still retains a deep-seated and not wholly conscious horror of giving in to temptation. The more he wants a thing the more bad he believes having that thing would be, and while he can rationalise the food and drink and clothes and books as harmless earthly pleasures, to turn his back on his devotion and his duty and give in completely to what he wants more than anything--that remains unthinkable, impossible for him even to contemplate.

he's a true believer, and true believers cannot be swayed by arguments. The more convincing the arguments are, in fact, the more the true believer refuses to consider them. The only way Aziraphale can find his way back to Crowley is through a crisis of faith. He needs to see the truth for himself and independently reach his own conclusions. If he didn't then he would always feel, deep down, that Crowley had manipulated him, that what they were doing was wrong, and that he, Aziraphale, had failed by giving in. Those kinds of doubts are the ones that kill you, slowly, by attrition, and by extension destroy everything you love.

but just think how much more powerful it will be when (not if... projecting) in Season 3 Aziraphale chooses Crowley with full willingness and his whole heart. Not because Crowley talked him into it but because he knows himself at last and knows what he wants. And is finally unafraid to take it.

"i choose you" is, has been, and always will be the most powerful declaration of love.

Die Hard (1988) dir. John McTiernan

Okay okay things I loved. because yes I’m devastated but I loved SO MANY THINGS.

EPISODE 1, I LOVED the absolutely manic angel Crowley, brilliant and distracted. Loved the way Aziraphale introduces himself, while Crowley never does (fast forward to their meeting on the wall, “and you are…” “Crowley”.) Loved Aziraphale’s little eyebrow bounce on ‘you are gorgeous’ and his immediate embarrassment.

Loved Crowley’s miracle on the ‘inclusive’, pulling the miracle into the universe. That Crowley is the one to say ‘let there be light’.

And! Of course! Crowley shielding Aziraphale!

Also also. (I’m going to go into meta again, aren’t I.)

Aziraphale tells Crowley about the humans. Crowley is all about the stars, the nebulae, the mechanics of it all, but Aziraphale already cares about the future humans while Crowley is all ‘this is not just there to twinkle!’ Oh, Crowley will start to care about the Earth, a LOT, later on. But that’s how they are starting out.

And a curious note is, Aziraphale praises Crowley. Deliberately, pointedly. Well, it’s very pretty. And I think you’ve done an excellent job. Is that what you yourself have been missing, Aziraphale? Or is that what angels are supposed to do?

I love how interested Aziraphale is, and how he worries about Crowley already, and how much disquiet there is in their first conversation.

And I do believe that Aziraphale will carry it through all of time: how happy Crowley looked, back then, back there, putting the universe into motion. How absolutely, spectacularly happy.

Leon Dabo

I was thinking about Anthony J Crowley, as all normal ones do, and how it is that he seems to exist alone outside the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell. Crowley wasn't obedient enough to be an angel, he couldn't toe the party line, he wasn't deferential enough to God or any authority. But he's also not cruel, or apathetic enough to be a demon; he's too soft for Hell.

So what is Crowley? Not an angel, not a demon ("Former demon," he says in s2). But he's more than what he's not. Crowley is outside the Heaven/Hell binary because of who he is, the one identity that sets him apart from all other demons and angels: Crowley is the Serpent of Eden. The snake in the garden was the instigator of choice, the inspiration to humans to use free will. That's who Crowley is, and when he inspired Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, he aligned himself with the fate of humans.

Crowley doesn't belong to Hell, and he certainly doesn't belong to Heaven. Crowley belongs to humanity.

I think Crowley falls into two of the classic pitfalls of people who see that the problems are systemic long before anyone else around them does: impatience and despair.

(Yes yes I know, “Crowley was an optimist.” Book Crowley is an optimist. I don’t think that line is particularly useful for analyzing TV Crowley. Stay with me here.)

Let it be said that 95% of the time, Crowley has the patience of a fucking saint (ssh don’t tell him) around Aziraphale. He knows that Aziraphale needs to build his little plausible deniability rationales in order to do something that they both know he wants to do (because it’s right or simply because he would enjoy it) but Heaven wouldn’t approve of. And most of the time, Crowley is happy to help Aziraphale get there, asking the questions Aziraphale is afraid to ask, offering excuses and justifications until Aziraphale finds one he can accept. He does a lot of work of parsing out when “no” means “you haven’t convinced me yet, keep trying” and pushing through all the “I’m an angel, you’re a demon, we’re on opposite sides and mine is the good one” talk that Aziraphale gets up to all the way through s1. Because he knows that Aziraphale doesn’t really believe that stuff, right? He just needs some time to talk himself around his own cognitive dissonance, and most of the time Crowley is not only happy to facilitate that but sees it as part of his role in their relationship.

But then when the chips are down and Aziraphale is still dithering, that’s when he gets frustrated, because HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE what’s been blindingly obvious to Crowley for millennia, that Heaven is just as cruel as Hell and no one is going to step in and fix it because the system is working as intended. And that’s when he says things like “how can someone as clever as you be so stupid?” Which is a surefire way not to convince the person you’re arguing with of anything.

And then there’s the despair. I really think the running away thing is not about cowardice or selfishness or some kind of unhealthy level of avoidance of hard or scary things, but about hopelessness. They’ve spent their lives avoiding very very real danger, and of the two of them Crowley is much more constantly aware of the danger that they are in from both sides. Yes he’s hypervigilant but he is also almost always right about the amount of danger they are in. Trying to get as far away from danger as possible is not an irrational response, even if it’s not always the correct one for a given situation.

When you feel like you’re the only person who sees how rotten the system is, how it needs to be dismantled entirely, but you are also VERY aware of how strong the people in power are and how ruthless they are about crushing dissent because you experienced it personally…well that gets fucking depressing after a while. Because even if you think the whole system needs to go, that feels like a completely unattainable goal when it seems like no one else even sees the problem, or if they see it, they are too afraid to do anything about it. And can you blame them? You know exactly what happens to people who speak up.

So it’s very easy for your goals to shrink from systemic change to just taking yourself and the people you love and finding somewhere for them to be as safe as possible, for as long as the system will let you exist. Because reforming the system is a fool’s errand, and dismantling it entirely seems impossible. I think this is where Crowley is at. Even if on some level he knows it’s an imperfect solution, because both of them have enough compassion that they would feel guilty abandoning Earth and humans to save themselves, and because Heaven and Hell really can find them anywhere in the universe. He just doesn’t see another option.

And look, I think Aziraphale is 100% wrong that Heaven can be reformed. But he is not wrong to want to stay and fight to make things better, even if it means sacrificing the Earthly comforts he loves so much, and even if it means doing it without Crowley by his side.

Ultimately they both need each other. Aziraphale needs Crowley for his willingness to ask questions and to see the scale of the problem, even if it’s terrifying. But Crowley needs Aziraphale for his hope, his stubborn determination to believe things can and should be better, and to fight for that. In the right hands, hope is an enormously powerful weapon.