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June reading #667: Good Omens
June reading #667:
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
I re-read this for the first time in maybe a decade after almost having memorized it as a teenager. So there goes my last excuse for not watching the show yet. Good news: it has only very lightly been visited by the Suck Fairy!
There is one (deeply disconcerting) bear.
There is no yuri, and not even really any good potential for it - I don’t think it even passes the Bechdel test.
10 things that are true about GO, the book, that I want to remember going into TV canon:
1. The bit with the Queen is not some kind of curse or demonic influence, and it’s not because Crowley has some kind of affinity for Queen. It’s because, in the late 80s and the 90s (possibly before then, I can only speak from personal experience) any tape (or, later, CD) left in a car for too long did turn into a Best of Queen album, even for perfectly normal humans. I still have one of the Best of Queen albums that appeared in the car when I was in high school (note: before I ever read the book) and I have no idea where it came from, I barely knew that Queen was a band at the time, and it was not in a Best of Queen case. It’s in the same category of magic as single socks disappearing and ballpoint pens spontaneously generating (which, tbf, Crowley may have taken credit for.)
I don’t really know how to translate that for people who only know the era of MP3s and streaming in the car; and music in general has become so diverse and accessible that there’s probably no equivalent to Queen that would appear for everyone anymore, anyway. The closest thing I can think of is what happens if you hit “shuffle”, especially if there’s someone you particularly want to impress in the car, or you have a headache, but that’s not really the same, and it doesn’t involve physical artifacts manifesting. It may be one of the very special period bits of GO that just won’t translate to the 21st century well.
Or maybe modern-Crowley keeps Queen tapes in the Bentley because when he tries to put digital music on shuffle, it just keeps playing “Take Me To Church”.
(It’s actually pretty strongly implied in the book that Crowley has fairly well-educated and well-rounded musical tastes; the sound system in his flat is one of the few things that’s actually used, and the Queen curse only applies to albums in vehicles. And he keeps trying to buy other music for the Bentley…)
2. Aziraphale’s bookshop isn’t especially special, either. Oh, it is in how long it’s been around with one owner - much like the Bentley - but I’m fairly sure it’s connected through L-Space to half a dozen of my other favorite bookshops, whose proprietors are equally skilled at driving away casual customers and not making any sales.
3. Honestly, there are a lot of things in the book that the fandom treats as strange but are just ordinary things? Or at least were ordinary things in the 80s. I had this same problem with WTNV fandom: it works because these aren’t strange and supernatural, not because they are. :P
4. Crowley likes food. IDK where or why they decided he doesn’t eat anymore, but he’s just as tempted by a good canape or cake as his counterpart.
Also there’s no evidence he actually does anything terrible to the plants. Other than repot them.
5. Angel’s wings and demon’s wings are the same, except that demon wings are frequently better groomed.
This, admittedly, has been the source of at least 30% of the fights in GO fandom historically, especially since the book doesn’t specify much else about them, and admittedly the fanwank that angel wings have always come in different colors and Aziraphale’s just happen to be white and Crowley’s just happen to be black is fine as fanwanks go, but I don’t really like it. I’m sure the way the show did it was great, but imagine what you could have done if we’d gone the whole journey without seeing Crowley’s wings and when they were finally unfurled they were exactly the same as Aziraphale’s. (I have always voted for eyed Pride wings, like a Van Eyck angel, but snowy white is acceptable if boring.)
It’s important because a huge part of the theme of the book is that the duality of Heaven and Hell isn’t a duality, it’s just a bunch of people dividing themselves into sides because they think they’re supposed to. And therefore Aziraphale and Crowley isn’t about opposites coming together or about choosing a third way between the two, it’s about Aziraphale and Crowley accepting that they aren’t opposites and were never really apart and dualities are constructions, not essential qualities. And I think that’s super important because the duality story is a hell of a lot easier to play out, but choosing the there-never-was-a-duality story instead is one of the things that makes GO so special.
6, Angel are sexless unless they make an effort.
(Admittedly this is the source of the *other* 70% of arguments in the fandom, but you can interpret that however you want - as long as they aren’t allosexual. That much seems pretty inarguable. Too bad we didn’t have that term for most of the old arguments!)
7. Good Omens isn’t a book about Aziraphale and Crowley. Sorry, I wish it was too. Yes, they are major characters, but there’s a whoIe (excruciating) third of the book in the middle where all Aziraphale does is read a book for two paragraphs and then make a phone call, and Crowley doesn’t even do that much.
It’s not really a character-driven book in general, and character-driven books are so ubiquitous these days that people don’t really know what to do with the other sort except try to read them as if they are. But it’s as much the Adam’s story or Anathema’s story as Aziraphale and Crowley’s, and it’s more The Story Of The Apocalypse That Wasn’t than any of those.
(A & C are by far the best characters and the best part of the book, partly I think because they aged a lot better than some of the other characters, and partly because fandom has kept them alive enough that I didn’t notice as much how dated they are. But also because they’re just really great characters. You can have great characters in a non-character-driven story, that’s one of the things fanfic is *for*, really.)
8. It’s also very definitely not the story of Crowley and Aziraphale’s epic sphere-crossed love affair. I mean, I’m not going to try to argue that they aren’t having one, but it’s not what the book is about, and tbh, it’s not really all that relevant to their arcs in the book. What is driving their choices is their love for humanity and Earth, not their feelings for each other.
You might say that their relationship (however you read it) is important in that it lets them be more effective in their efforts to stop Armageddon except that would require them being effective in any way whatsoever, so, no.
But I also think that if you try to re-write canon so that it is about Crowley and Aziraphale choosing each other above Heaven and Hell, you actually lose some important parts of the story. There’s three main pairs in the book (C&A are definitely a pair in the book’s structure, regardless of how you read the relationship) : Anathema & Newt; Shadwell & Tracy; Crowley & Aziraphale. And it’s actually, I think, really important that none of them are passionate romances: they are *com*passionate with each other, and making the best of things, and finding love where it’s offered, and it’s a very human (and humanist) sort of love, and maybe they’re not idealized romances, but they’re all being careful not to hurt each other, and in the long run that’s more than passion.
Crowley and Aziraphale are two people who’ve slowly realized they get on with each other better than with anyone else, and who have each other’s backs when it’s important, and that’s what matters, and that’s what’s human. The question of pining and passion is secondary.
….I am really really ace sometimes. But then so is this book. :P
9. The characters in GO are all built as mirrors of each other: the obvious one being the mirroring of the Them and the Horsemen, and the Horsemen and the other Horsemen, and the Them and the Johnsonites. And the three babies in the three-way baby switch, which starts it all off. But there’s also the mirroring of Aziraphale and Crowley with each other, and Newt and Anathema with each other (the thing that sells me more than anything on their relationship is their cross-referencing their newspaper clippings with each other on the fly), and Newt and Anathema with their storied ancestors, and Shadwell and Tracy with Newt and Anathema, and Adam's two fathers (I don't think I realized before this read that the whole thing kicks off because Mr. Young is sufficiently good at lurking while emitting stinking vapours that Crowley just assumed he was from Hell) and so on and so forth.
And, of course, Shadwell and Tracy with Aziraphale and Crowley. (If you want to sell me on Aziraphale/Crowley as intentionally canon, pointing out the parallels with Shadwell and Tracy’s relationship is the best way to do it...)
10. The third baby lived. He breeds tropical fish and will someday discover American football and be truly happy. Adam considers him (and Warlock) a friend. You should always read the footnotes.
Anyway if you’re on Spotify, here is what I am calling A Good Omens fanmix that will make you wish it was Queen after all, consisting of songs that got stuck in my head while I was reading.
(What are the cool kids doing with fanmixes these days? Spotify is easy, but if you have a free account you can only listen on shuffle, and I always cared about track order. I know it was 8tracks for a while, but I think that broke, and nobody seems to be uploading .zips anymore.)
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
I re-read this for the first time in maybe a decade after almost having memorized it as a teenager. So there goes my last excuse for not watching the show yet. Good news: it has only very lightly been visited by the Suck Fairy!
There is one (deeply disconcerting) bear.
There is no yuri, and not even really any good potential for it - I don’t think it even passes the Bechdel test.
10 things that are true about GO, the book, that I want to remember going into TV canon:
1. The bit with the Queen is not some kind of curse or demonic influence, and it’s not because Crowley has some kind of affinity for Queen. It’s because, in the late 80s and the 90s (possibly before then, I can only speak from personal experience) any tape (or, later, CD) left in a car for too long did turn into a Best of Queen album, even for perfectly normal humans. I still have one of the Best of Queen albums that appeared in the car when I was in high school (note: before I ever read the book) and I have no idea where it came from, I barely knew that Queen was a band at the time, and it was not in a Best of Queen case. It’s in the same category of magic as single socks disappearing and ballpoint pens spontaneously generating (which, tbf, Crowley may have taken credit for.)
I don’t really know how to translate that for people who only know the era of MP3s and streaming in the car; and music in general has become so diverse and accessible that there’s probably no equivalent to Queen that would appear for everyone anymore, anyway. The closest thing I can think of is what happens if you hit “shuffle”, especially if there’s someone you particularly want to impress in the car, or you have a headache, but that’s not really the same, and it doesn’t involve physical artifacts manifesting. It may be one of the very special period bits of GO that just won’t translate to the 21st century well.
Or maybe modern-Crowley keeps Queen tapes in the Bentley because when he tries to put digital music on shuffle, it just keeps playing “Take Me To Church”.
(It’s actually pretty strongly implied in the book that Crowley has fairly well-educated and well-rounded musical tastes; the sound system in his flat is one of the few things that’s actually used, and the Queen curse only applies to albums in vehicles. And he keeps trying to buy other music for the Bentley…)
2. Aziraphale’s bookshop isn’t especially special, either. Oh, it is in how long it’s been around with one owner - much like the Bentley - but I’m fairly sure it’s connected through L-Space to half a dozen of my other favorite bookshops, whose proprietors are equally skilled at driving away casual customers and not making any sales.
3. Honestly, there are a lot of things in the book that the fandom treats as strange but are just ordinary things? Or at least were ordinary things in the 80s. I had this same problem with WTNV fandom: it works because these aren’t strange and supernatural, not because they are. :P
4. Crowley likes food. IDK where or why they decided he doesn’t eat anymore, but he’s just as tempted by a good canape or cake as his counterpart.
Also there’s no evidence he actually does anything terrible to the plants. Other than repot them.
5. Angel’s wings and demon’s wings are the same, except that demon wings are frequently better groomed.
This, admittedly, has been the source of at least 30% of the fights in GO fandom historically, especially since the book doesn’t specify much else about them, and admittedly the fanwank that angel wings have always come in different colors and Aziraphale’s just happen to be white and Crowley’s just happen to be black is fine as fanwanks go, but I don’t really like it. I’m sure the way the show did it was great, but imagine what you could have done if we’d gone the whole journey without seeing Crowley’s wings and when they were finally unfurled they were exactly the same as Aziraphale’s. (I have always voted for eyed Pride wings, like a Van Eyck angel, but snowy white is acceptable if boring.)
It’s important because a huge part of the theme of the book is that the duality of Heaven and Hell isn’t a duality, it’s just a bunch of people dividing themselves into sides because they think they’re supposed to. And therefore Aziraphale and Crowley isn’t about opposites coming together or about choosing a third way between the two, it’s about Aziraphale and Crowley accepting that they aren’t opposites and were never really apart and dualities are constructions, not essential qualities. And I think that’s super important because the duality story is a hell of a lot easier to play out, but choosing the there-never-was-a-duality story instead is one of the things that makes GO so special.
6, Angel are sexless unless they make an effort.
(Admittedly this is the source of the *other* 70% of arguments in the fandom, but you can interpret that however you want - as long as they aren’t allosexual. That much seems pretty inarguable. Too bad we didn’t have that term for most of the old arguments!)
7. Good Omens isn’t a book about Aziraphale and Crowley. Sorry, I wish it was too. Yes, they are major characters, but there’s a whoIe (excruciating) third of the book in the middle where all Aziraphale does is read a book for two paragraphs and then make a phone call, and Crowley doesn’t even do that much.
It’s not really a character-driven book in general, and character-driven books are so ubiquitous these days that people don’t really know what to do with the other sort except try to read them as if they are. But it’s as much the Adam’s story or Anathema’s story as Aziraphale and Crowley’s, and it’s more The Story Of The Apocalypse That Wasn’t than any of those.
(A & C are by far the best characters and the best part of the book, partly I think because they aged a lot better than some of the other characters, and partly because fandom has kept them alive enough that I didn’t notice as much how dated they are. But also because they’re just really great characters. You can have great characters in a non-character-driven story, that’s one of the things fanfic is *for*, really.)
8. It’s also very definitely not the story of Crowley and Aziraphale’s epic sphere-crossed love affair. I mean, I’m not going to try to argue that they aren’t having one, but it’s not what the book is about, and tbh, it’s not really all that relevant to their arcs in the book. What is driving their choices is their love for humanity and Earth, not their feelings for each other.
You might say that their relationship (however you read it) is important in that it lets them be more effective in their efforts to stop Armageddon except that would require them being effective in any way whatsoever, so, no.
But I also think that if you try to re-write canon so that it is about Crowley and Aziraphale choosing each other above Heaven and Hell, you actually lose some important parts of the story. There’s three main pairs in the book (C&A are definitely a pair in the book’s structure, regardless of how you read the relationship) : Anathema & Newt; Shadwell & Tracy; Crowley & Aziraphale. And it’s actually, I think, really important that none of them are passionate romances: they are *com*passionate with each other, and making the best of things, and finding love where it’s offered, and it’s a very human (and humanist) sort of love, and maybe they’re not idealized romances, but they’re all being careful not to hurt each other, and in the long run that’s more than passion.
Crowley and Aziraphale are two people who’ve slowly realized they get on with each other better than with anyone else, and who have each other’s backs when it’s important, and that’s what matters, and that’s what’s human. The question of pining and passion is secondary.
….I am really really ace sometimes. But then so is this book. :P
9. The characters in GO are all built as mirrors of each other: the obvious one being the mirroring of the Them and the Horsemen, and the Horsemen and the other Horsemen, and the Them and the Johnsonites. And the three babies in the three-way baby switch, which starts it all off. But there’s also the mirroring of Aziraphale and Crowley with each other, and Newt and Anathema with each other (the thing that sells me more than anything on their relationship is their cross-referencing their newspaper clippings with each other on the fly), and Newt and Anathema with their storied ancestors, and Shadwell and Tracy with Newt and Anathema, and Adam's two fathers (I don't think I realized before this read that the whole thing kicks off because Mr. Young is sufficiently good at lurking while emitting stinking vapours that Crowley just assumed he was from Hell) and so on and so forth.
And, of course, Shadwell and Tracy with Aziraphale and Crowley. (If you want to sell me on Aziraphale/Crowley as intentionally canon, pointing out the parallels with Shadwell and Tracy’s relationship is the best way to do it...)
10. The third baby lived. He breeds tropical fish and will someday discover American football and be truly happy. Adam considers him (and Warlock) a friend. You should always read the footnotes.
Anyway if you’re on Spotify, here is what I am calling A Good Omens fanmix that will make you wish it was Queen after all, consisting of songs that got stuck in my head while I was reading.
(What are the cool kids doing with fanmixes these days? Spotify is easy, but if you have a free account you can only listen on shuffle, and I always cared about track order. I know it was 8tracks for a while, but I think that broke, and nobody seems to be uploading .zips anymore.)
no subject
A belated thought: snake wings.
Which is to say: The way the book handles visual signalling with Crowley, on the whole, is by giving him the snake motif -- the eyes, the boots that might be his actual feet, and so on. That provides a supply of suitably demoniac signifiers without clashing with the big philosophical point, because in-story the snake thing is part of his specific personal history, not just Because He's a Demon.
So if somebody could somehow figure out a set of wings that made the audience look at them and go, "Oh, right, because he's a snake", we'd be set.