Tired of the angst, now manifesting this attitude from Crowley when Aziraphale shows up next in S3:
"SuPrEmE aRcHaNgeL AzIRaPhAle"
"crowley will reject aziraphale in season 3" no u do not understand. He'll take him back no hesitation but he'll be a CUNT about it
crowley loves so much and so deeply, and while there can probably be made an argument that parts of that love are entirely selfish, i think it's more than that.
he sees creation as a way of giving things live, be it stars and nebulas or humans or plants, they all exist and thus have a right to live. i think the thought of his nebulas and the entire universe being shut down after 6k years didn't just make him sad because of the effort he put into it. he sees it as a living, breathing creature that deserve to exist on its own terms.
that is why he asked questions, it certainly played a role in why he fell, and it also puts him right in the moral grey zone because there's no way of thinking that humans deserve free will without questioning the black/white moral system.
having to play his part as a demon is entire counterintuitive to who he is as a person, and it's imo the reason why he barely has relationships with humans (and if he does, they go deep). the constant loss would kill his soul and in a way it already has.
"what's the point" is him having reached a point of depression and an impatience that has morphed into bitter resignation.
look at him returning to the bentley after his fight with aziraphale in episode one. he isn't just upset, he is tired.
what's the point in loving and trying to save those that he loves when over and over again he is told that no, everyone else matters more than you. fixing this is more important than finding the peace we deserve. helping someone who literally tried to kill us matters more than our love for each other. the universe will be created and then destroyed for nothing, you are breathing live into empty spaces and none of it will matter. in the end, the logical conclusion he undoubtedly came to is that he does not matter either.
he tried to find a purpose for his existence in aziraphale and their arrangement, in trying to be kind and do good despite everything - and see where that landed him.
rejected and alone because compared to heaven, he is worthless, and well if that isn't a familiar feeling.
i think aziraphale in 1862 has picked up on that and he isn't wrong when he thinks it's a suicide pill.
season 3 is going to be very, very interesting because i don't think crowley will go down some kind of rage and revenge path, he will just fall deeper into his depression until it threatens to swallow him whole.
crowley must have known that aziraphale was also in love with him, he tidied the bookshop, he was planning on taking him to the Ritz after his confession, he had their song queued in the car these are not acts of someone who wasn't sure what the outcome will be.
which makes it so much more painful that he still confessed his love for aziraphale with tears in his eyes and on the verge of a full blown panic attack, he left saying "don't bother" but he still waited by his car til the elevator doors closed. all because
So, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I keep seeing metas about how Aziraphale wants Crowley to return to Heaven and be an angel again because he wants them to be on the same side/be good/change/etc., etc., etc. but I don’t see that at all. I actually see it as the very opposite.
Aziraphale loves Crowley just as he is. But there’s something more. Something huge.
let's talk about it
ok here’s what i personally understood from the ending:
what crowley said: “You can’t leave this bookshop.”
what crowley meant: “Don’t leave earth, don’t leave what you love behind (don’t leave me).”
what aziraphale heard: “I don’t want you to give up the things you hold dear for the sake of heaven.”
what aziraphale said: “Oh Crowley, nothing lasts forever.”
what aziraphale meant: “(Gosh, you’re so sweet for caring) It’s okay. I’m willing to give it up for heaven, for the greater good. All I need is you with me.”
what crowley heard: “We weren’t meant to last, you’re no good for me like this (I’ll only have you if you’re an angel).”
both of them basically had a different conversation with each other. even when they finally talk, they hear things that don’t match their words. idiots.
there might be a few misses in this, in fact it might be completely wrong, but it’s the best i could do to articulate it.
#I need bloopers reels
The Fall - (2023)
Inspired by The Lament for Icarus by Herbert James Draper.
holy fucking shit
The way Aziraphale’s voice softened on “(we)… go back a long time” that emphasis on LONG I felt that in the core of my chest. Like a touching a hot stove if it felt good. My heart fluttered. For a split second I was back in June of 2019. This clip was 45 seconds long. 45 seconds gave me a full body reaction
I will not survive to see August
#i live there
I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.
Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,
We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.
I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.
Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)
That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.
Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.
But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.
And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.
I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)
But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.
Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).
Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.
(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)
At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.
“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.
Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.
Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.
But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.
Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)
Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.
Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”
____
In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.
Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.
Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.
And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.
And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.
