so we all know that Crowley can’t actually drive, he just makes the world around the Bentley shape itself around the car so he can go 90mph in London without getting into accidents
we also all know that angels get around on hover boards in heaven (and probably would on earth too? hmm.) and might just be standard issue to all angels, including Aziraphale
now I want you to take those two thoughts and put them together and imagine Crowley coming across Aziraphale’s hover board (tucked away in a cupboard somewhere behind a lesser bottle of wine and a (more inferior than most) inferior copy of the sound of music)
he steps onto the hover board and immediately crashes face first into the nearest bookshelf, bringing down a wall and taking out a lamp post, avoiding discorporation only by a small miracle
Look what I just spent two days making! Video editing turned out to be much more fun than I expected. Sound editing is still a little tricky, but not bad for a first fanvid of this sort, don’t you think?
OK, but there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of angels (of all shapes, ranks and sizes) in Heaven
So
Where’s the fic in which a couple (or maybe just the one, a young and impressionable little fledgling angel whose wings have barely started molting for the first time) listens to Gabriel briefing everybody on the Official Reason The Apocalypse Is Cancelled and thinks to themselves this is a load of bullcrap
(Bc you know. You just know Gabriel would say all the wrong things. Like, what do you mean ‘unforeseen circumstances’? We’re Heaven, our job is to foresee. Circumstances. And how could it be that an angel as wicked and evil as Aziraphale is still, you know. An angel? And hasn’t fallen? Something does not add up here).
And so the young fledgling starts to wonder
And they’re not alone
Soon, there are clusters of angels everywhere, heads bent together and talking furiously in low voices.
… gave away his sword …
… what? why? …
… thought they might need it …
… I don’t understand …
… love for humans …
… and demons from what I hear …
… but why …
… saving the world …
… more important …
… ineffability …
… good guys? …
… are we? …
… is he? …
… Fucking Gabriel that’s for sure …
And as the whispers spread (especially that last one), the young fledgling decides to delve into the Earth Observation Files to go see for themselves what Aziraphale has been up to in the past six millennia.
And there’s no time in Heaven, but if there was, it would take them a lot of it before they came out again, looking very thoughtful.
They spends some more not-time in a quiet corner (somewhere the harp music isn’t too obnoxious), a deep frown on their angelic face and eyes red-rimmed and shining. There’s a sniffle, occasionally.
And then, finally, they seek out the nearest Whispering Angel Cluster and tells them what they’ve seen. And the conclusion they’ve come to.
(One or two angels in the cluster gasp, unbelieving. They decide to take the matter to Gabriel, despite the fledgling’s protests and ask is it true? About Aziraphale and his demon, is it true that they saved humanity? Is it true that they saved humans? Not just from the Apocalypse, but many many many times before? Is it true?
And again, Gabriel scoffs and laughs and says exactly the wrong thing (’Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that naughty angel, sweet child. He and that wily serpent of his won’t bother us any longer.’) and that’s all the proof the young angels need that Something Is Not Right.
They return to Fledgling #1, wings drooping and head bowed. There are more whispers (… can we? … Gabriel would murder … Hellfire, they said… Should we?) and eventually, after eons of deliberation, a decision is made.
And so it happens that on a bright, sunny Saturday morning in SoHo, the door to a bookshop tingles open and half a dozen remarkably bland looking humans walk in. And after Aziraphale has called Crowley back to heel and has wrested the nice, leather bound and heavy first edition of the Principia Mathematica out of his demon’s hands, and after the angels have been persuaded to come down from the top of the bookshelves…
He asks them why they’re here. The answer leaves him confused and makes Crowley laugh so hard he almost cracks a rib:
Teach us
Teach us compassion
Teach us to be kind
Teach us about humans
Teach us about what we’re meant to protect
Teach us how to protect
Teach us how to be the Good Guys, like, for real
And Aziraphale is confused and touched (mostly confused), but he agrees. Under one condition: they will have to listen to the demon too, because Aziraphale knows he would be nowhere near the angel he is today if it hadn’t been for Crowley.
(Crowley goes oddly quiet at that for a moment, before he realises Aziraphale is basically giving him shared command of a mini Host. Then he starts howling with laughter again).
Then the rest of the fic is basically just Aziraphale, Crowley and their mini Host of fledglings getting into various kinds of (food and non food related) shenagigans.
(‘Angel, when they said teach us, I’m pretty sure they did not mean teach us about the best place to get Vietnamese Pho!’ ‘Shut up, Crowley. Also, don’t think I didn’t hear how you told Amriel about how you were aboard the RMS Carpathia in 1912. And let me just say, I knew it.’ ‘Shut up, angel.’)
At a certain moment, Gabriel and the others get wind of aforementioned shenanigans. But by then, it’s too late as the Mini Host has communicated all their efforts and findings back to the various other MIni Hosts that are still in Heaven and now everybody is thoroughly convinced Gabriel’s a fucking prick who Should Not Be In Charge. It’s not a second Rebellion, per se. It certainly involves a lot less sulphur and brimstone and screaming. But when all’s said and all’s done, Gabriel finds himself permanently retired, along with Michael, Sandolphon and Uriel, as a New Policy is put in place:
To Be The Good Guys, We Have To Be The Good Guys
‘Eloquently put,’ Crowley sniggers. Aziraphale tries not to laugh before he tsks and shakes his head. ‘They’re learning, dear. Give them time.’
“At least cars were better than horses. The internal combustion engine had been a godse- a blessi- a windfall for Crowley. The only horses he could be seen riding on business, in the old days, were big black jobs with eyes like flames and hooves that struck sparks. That was a de rigueur for demons. Usually, Crowley fell off. He wasn’t much good with animals.” – Good Omens, page 57
Hm. I wonder why so many white people are pressed about Adam & Eve being Black?
And why are so many men are pressed about God being represented as a woman?
I saw Neil Gaiman speak a few weeks ago, and he talked about this exact thing. It was really interesting listening to him say (paraphrasing) “We did that on purpose so that the wrong people for the show would turn it off. If Adam and Eve being blacm offends them, the show isn’t for them, and the rest of the show is only going to offend them more.” Really interesting choice, and it looks like It’s working just as planned!
For real though, It’s better that the bigots bail in the first five minutes. Can you imagine if they watched all of it and realized how subversive the plot is? How it turns most religious beliefs on their heads and is gay to boot? Chaos and never ending white rage. I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that.
Part of me wishes they’d turn it off and NOT complain, though…
The rest of me likes knowing who to block, because if they thought “Adam and Eve were black” and “God is a woman” were too much SJW diversity for them, I don’t want to find out how they’d feel about my neurodivergent queer genderfluid self! XD
Remember the time somebody on Tumblr sent Neil Gaiman a message being like “You shouldn’t be friendly with Stephen Fry because Fry is Jewish and those people can’t be trusted” and NG had to be like “Well, this is awkward, but the thing is I’m a fully-paid-up honest-to-goodness barmitzvahed-and-circumcised Jew myself, so…”
Folks let me talk about Crowley and sunglasses, because I have a lot of emotions about when he wears them and when he doesn’t, and Hiding versus Being Seen.
We’re introduced to the concept of Crowley wearing glasses even before we’re introduced to Crowley, by Hastur: “If you ask me he’s been up here too long. Gone native. Enjoying himself too much. Wearing sunglasses even when he doesn’t need them.”
Honestly Crowley’s whole introduction is a fantastic; we learn so much about his character in a tiny amount of time. The fact that he’s late, the Queen playing as the Bentley approaches, the “Hi, guys” in response to Hastur and Ligur’s “Hail Satan”. I like this intro much better than the one originally scripted with the rats at the phone company, but I digress.
Crowley wears sunglasses when he doesn’t need them. Specifically, he still wears them around the demons, and when he’s in hell.
You know where Crowley doesn’t wear glasses? At home.
We never once see him wearing glasses in his flat, except for when he knows Hastur and Ligur are coming. That’s an emotional kick to the gut for me. Here’s one of the only places Crowley’s comfortable enough to be sans glasses, and when he knows it’s going to be invaded he prepares not just physically with the holy water, but by putting up that emotional barrier in a place where he wasn’t supposed to need it.
An argument could be made that Crowley actually never needs glasses. We’re shown that it’s well within the angels’ and demons’ powers to pass unnoticed by humans. Crowley and Aziraphale waltz out of the manor in the middle of a police raid, and going unnoticed by the police takes so little effort that they can keep up a conversation while they stroll through. Even an unimaginative demon like Hastur apparently doesn’t have trouble with the humans losing it over his demonic eyes. The humans in the scene at Megiddo are acting like “this guy is a little weird” and not “holy shit his entire eyeballs are black jelly”
That means that Crowley’s glasses are a choice, just like Aziraphale’s softness. Sure, he could arrange matters so that nobody ever noticed his eyes, but he doesn’t want to. Crowley wants acceptance, and he wants to belong, and he’s never, ever had that. He didn’t fit in before the Fall in Heaven, he doesn’t fit in with the demons in Hell. With the glasses, and with the Bentley and his plants and with the barely-bad-enough-to-be-evil nuisance temptations, he’s choosing Earth. This is where he wants to fit in, perhaps not with the humans, but amongst them.
Even after Crowley is at his absolute lowest, when he thinks Aziraphale’s dead and he’s on his way to drink until the world ends, he takes the time to put a new pair on when the old ones are damaged. He needs that emotional crutch right now, even with everything about to turn into a pile of puddling goo he’s not ready for the world to see his eyes.
Which is why I swore out loud when Hastur forciblytakes them off.
It’s about the worst thing that Hastur could have done. Rather than leading with a physical threat, his first act is to strip away Crowley’s emotional defences. It’s a great writing choice because god it made me hate Hastur, even more than all the physical violence we see him do.
It’s also the moment that Crowley really truly gets his shit together, and focuses all of his considerable imagination on getting to Tadfield and Aziraphale to help save the world. He’s wielding the terrifyingly unimaginable power of someone who’s hit rock bottom and realised it literally could not get any worse than this. He doesn’t put another pair of glasses on after discorporating Hastur, and he spends the majority of the airbase sequence without them.
He puts them back on again, I think, at the moment that he really lets himself hope. When he thinks ‘shit, there may be a real chance that we get through this to a future that I don’t want to lose’.
The vulnerability is back, and he needs Adam to trust him. In Crowley’s mind being accepted by a human means he needs to have his eyes hidden. Someone give the demon a hug, please.
Interestingly, there’s only one time in the whole series that we see Crowley willingly choose to take his glasses off around another person. Only one person he’ll take down that barrier for, and even then he’s drunk before he does it.
Dear God/Satan/Someone that makes my heart ache. Crowley’s chosen Earth, but he’s also chosen Aziraphale. He’s been looking for somewhere to belong his entire existence, and it’s with the angel that he finally feels it.
When the dust settles and the world is saved and they finally have space to be themselves unguarded, I like to imagine Crowley takes off the glasses when it’s just the two of them; the idea of being known doesn’t scare him quite so much anymore.
also OH MY GOD THAT LAST GIF I NEVER NOTICED THE WINK BEFORE?????????
