This is Stuff You Like, you can call me Ursa, and a lot of people ship Aziraphale and Crowley
from Good Omens, which, if you recall, we were talking about in the last episode.
Sometimes they ship them in a romantic but sexless kind of way.
Since angels are asexual unless they try really hard.
And this is nice, because there's not a lot of asexual representation in media.
Well, I mean...there's SOME.
But not a lot.
But in Good Omens, canonically, you have two characters who both have gender, sure, because
they’re both referred to as he, but who don’t actually have a biological
sex, but nonetheless are engaged in a relationship
which, even if it’s not romantic, is clearly very deep and meaningful to the both of them.
But of course there is also the graphic slashfic.
Because...angels do not have a biological sex, unless they try very hard.
There are so many reasons that they are so beloved as characters, and why they are a
lot of people's favourites, and frankly this isn't much of an analysis
episode, this is just a...list of reasons.
And a little bit of squee.
So...some reasons, in no particular order, why we love Az and Crowley.
Well the story of Aziraphale and Crowley is a story of two people on opposite sides who
have realised they’re not really so different.
Az and Crowley are both representatives of powers they don’t really understand,
and in Crowley's case, don't really get on with,
they're on earth pretty much alone, and the closest thing that they have to an actual
friend, someone who can commiserate with them over
being a supernatural being on an earth filled with humans,
is their opposite number.
We don’t SEE Crowley and Aziraphale developing The Agreement, it just comes to us as part
of who they are, and their banding together in the face of
management’s ineffability is kind of endearing.
That sense of shared similarity is EVERYWHERE in Good Omens.
There are parallels between characters, and there are parallels of those parallels.
The Good characters parallel the Evil characters, the humans parallel each other, everything
is parallel.
The whole book is about how similar we all are underneath the skin.
And that banding together in the face of shared similarities, and that development of a relationship,
brings up another question: Is it possible for angels to love?
Is it possible for fallen angels to love?
And I think learning to love in the face of impossibilities is something else that we’re
pretty keen on.
That question: can angels love?
gets right to the heart of what I love best about Aziraphale and Crowley and their relationship:
it's this very Pratchettian idea of embodied cognition and learned free will.
Both Az and Crowley have on earth in human forms for a very long time,
and they have LEARNED from humanity.
And one of the biggest things they’ve learned is a little bit of free will.
And I am really enamoured with the idea that they have decided to use this learning in
order to care about each other.
Now perhaps this isn’t so surprising for Crowley.
You'd expect him to be tricksy.
You'd expect him to grab whatever advantage he could from humanity including learning
about all their selfish look-out-for-number-one ways.
That is not the surprising thing about Crowley, but we'll come back to what's surprising about
Crowley in a minute.
But Aziraphale?
For an angel it does seem a little more unusual.
I mean, aren’t angels supposed to be innately good and pure and noble?
Isn’t the Divine Plan all that should occupy his mind?
Why is he running a rare book store, and why is he so obsessed with rare books?
But then again, he’s been alone, the only heavenly rep for Good,
on earth for a very long time.
And he has taken colour from his surroundings just as Crowley has.
But still, Aziraphale developing a little bit of free will, a little bit of human self-centredness
and self-interest, is kind of surprising.
The surprising thing I mentioned about Crowley is not that he’s had a crack at developing
free will.
Or even that he's been a little bit successful at it.
It's how developing free will has brought out his Good side.
I mean yes, he still turns out the expected amount of evil (you know: Manchester, the
M25, tying up every mobile network in Greater London for 45 minutes at lunchtime) but he
has a genuine love of the world, and of humanity.
And of Aziraphale.
In the book, at Warlock's birthday party, Aziraphale does a very very terrible magic
show, and accidentally suffocates the dove which he was going to produce from his sleeve.
And Crowley brings it back to life.
And this is not even commented on, like, nobody makes a point of this in the story,
it's just that Crowley brings this dove back to life.
Though I do absolutely love the suggestion that one Patreon commenter made, which was
that it used to be a peace dove, but it now mostly hangs around, like, places people are
getting divorced.
Similarly, in the paintball game, nobody whose paintball gun turned into a real gun actually
died.
"Oh, no one's actually going to get KILLED, they're all going to have miraculous escapes.
Wouldn't be any fun otherwise."
Crowley might have some skill at being a demon, but Crowley is much less evil than he lets
on.
And I mean, seriously:
“Aziraphale: deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking."
If that’s not a declaration of genuine love and affection, then I don’t know what is.
One of the reasons we love Aziraphale and Crowley and their relationship, whatever it
is, is because the reason they have a relationship is because they've become a little bit human,
and as I said last time, Good Omens would like us to know that humanity is a good thing,
and human is a good thing to be.
Also, that whole scene where they get hideously drunk and Crowley tries to explain the bird
and mountain metaphor is just amazing and beautiful.
Thanks for watching this aww it's so adorable aren't they sweet rambling episode of Stuff
You Like.
We will be back next time with a more usual review-type episode.
In the meantime, liking, sharing, subscribing and...Patreonising...those are all things
you can do if you want to!