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annamarcellipalmer:
So, you discovered Good Omens, and perhaps you even loved it (much like I do). If you are anything like me (or, let’s face it, pretty much any fan of either the book or series, if the posters and cover designs are anything to go by) the culprits behind your newest obsession are Aziraphale and Crowley, a celestial odd-couple, angel and demon, forever secluded both from the rest of heaven and hell due to their earthly duties, and from the entirety of the human race due to their immortality.
It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to look at the description above and discern, somewhere between the lines, the very definition of the word soulmates. And, now that both one of the authors (Neil Gaiman) and the actors involved with the adaptation openly discuss the way GO is structured like a love story (no matter the type of love), I wanted to use this beautiful pair (that somehow manages to embody both the star crossed lovers and the old bickering couple trope perfectly) as a starting point, an opportunity if you like, to gush over my favorite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, and the way his over-the-top, satirical fantasy books are peppered throughout with tinges of unexpected romance.
Seeing the word romance coexist within the same period as STP’s name feels weird. Sir Terry never wrote romance, it was never the focus of his narratives, and while his characters were beautiful, multi-dimentional beings up against truly human predicaments, those fictional people usually found their happy endings though self-discovery, alone and hardly ever paired up with significant others. What many of his readers fail to realize, however, is that STP actually preferred to subtextually hint at those delicious sparks of spontenous romance bewteen unlikely people, under unlikely situations.
Which brings me to Good Omens once more. I remember reading somewhere that the authors didn’t, in fact, intend the book to be a love story. (the series, written exclusively by Gaiman, an author who doesn’t shy away from full-blown romance, is another story altogether; the series is eye-rollingly romantic in the best way, and this is the hill I am dying on, possibly defending Michael Sheen with my flaming pen, seeing as I don’t have, nor know how to use, a sword).
And of course they didn’t, because, after all, Good Omens is a book about the apocalypse, and about the end of childhood, and about faith. Incidentally, however, it is also a book that comes conspicuously close to being That Book About A Demon Named Crowley, because, if you squint, it gets really clear whose voice the writers channel a lot of what they intend to say through.
Which brings me to this: Good Omens as a Book About A Demon Named Crowley is, at its heart, a story about not belonging, about loneliness and self-acceptance. Crowley didn’t mean to Fall (nor, no matter how eye-wateringly well David Tennant shakes those hips in the show, saunter vaguely downwards.) He just asked questions, refusing to conform to whatever God’s plan was, because he has a dangerous penchant for actual, critical thinking.
Likewise, he is a disaster demon because his truly evil proclivities amount to, ugh, zero. As such, we can easily see Aziraphale for what he truly is to Crowley- not only his best friend, but his only friend as well, the only individual capable of making or breaking Crowley’s happy ending. Case in point: Crowley, in the book, is a pretty skittish person up to the point when he thinks Aziraphale is dead. Unlike the show, we don’t see him mourn, or declare something dangerously close to an admittance of feelings; what we do see is something far more potent, subtextually at least: we see him lash out and fight like he has nothing left to lose. (Hint: with Zira gone, he doesn’t).
And Zira? Zira is a self-righteous bastard, probably unaware of how much he means to Crowley. Neil and Terry didn’t write him, originally, to be a cinnamon roll, which comprises yet another caveat to any romantic readings of the book. And yet, subtextually again, this is far more potent. Let me explain why:
Zira chooses to fraternise with Crowley. There is nothing in it for him. Unlike Book Crowley, he is not the odd one out. The arrangement isn’t an escape for him, like it is to the demon who gets to perform the occasional miracle for the side of good. And most importantly: Zira hasn’t Fallen. Not yet at least. Thus, when he reaches out and takes Crowley’s hand during the climax of the Armageddon’t (yeah, this shit actually happens in the book, and it did more to my feelings than a thousand Romeos and Juliets killing themselves for lo- for lu- for whatever that fuckery was) he is, of his own free will, risking the much-dreaded Fall.
One may argue that, hey, he wasn’t really thinking straight (pun intended, duh) because it was more likely than not that they would not get to see another day. This, too, does not hold up, not when Zira, still the one with things to lose out of the two, chooses to spend The First Day of The Rest of His Life with a demon, of all supernatural entities. The cherry on the literary sundae? Their joint arc ends with dinner at the Ritz, while a nightingale sings, because this is one of those books where everyone gets a happy ending, and apparently, they are each other’s happy ending.
So yeah, of course Neil cannot do more than he already has with the Zira/Crowley dynamic,and nor can he say more, because this book, the source material behind the series, was co-written with his dead best friend, who can no longer offer his own insights. As such, to tread into a more explicitly homoromantic (homoerotic?) territory would be to betray Sir Terry, who is no longer here to give his thumbs up or thumbs down to all of this. The same Sir Terry who didn’t do romance, not, as I said, explicitly.
And yet, look at what he helped give us. As a reader, I am fascinated by the story between the lines as much as the one printed on paper, and for me, the writers who can perform this kind of magic, effectively putting equal gravitas on the word that is and the word that isn’t, they are just one step below God. So yeah, we cannot call Book! Ineffable Husbands a romance. But you know what?
We can very much call them a prime example of how Sir Terry wrote what I call Love in Unexpected Places. Because this is what this is. He does it a lot, and in many different ways, in his stories. To anyone who is interested in discovering Discworld, I will give another wonderful example, and a thinly disguised go-read-it-now recommendation: Reaper Man.
You see, of course Reaper Man, a hilarious story about Death, Life, beauraucracy, and the withdrawal of important public services (such as the reaping of souls), with its many characters and subplots has absolutely nothing to do with anything resembling a love story. And yet it’s right there, one of the most tender relationships STP has ever conjured up, wholly platonic but childishly tender. I won’t spoil it for you. Seek it. Discover it. Find out for yourself what I am talking about and what holding hands or spectacularly failing at buying flowers can do to your feelings. See if you can come up with a more unlikely interaction. Learn nuance from the very best, or at least try to while bawling your eyes out.
Εdit: Did Neil just-
-like my brain vomit?
Terry Pratchett wrote the best asexual romances.
annamarcellipalmer:
So, you discovered Good Omens, and perhaps you even loved it (much like I do). If you are anything like me (or, let’s face it, pretty much any fan of either the book or series, if the posters and cover designs are anything to go by) the culprits behind your newest obsession are Aziraphale and Crowley, a celestial odd-couple, angel and demon, forever secluded both from the rest of heaven and hell due to their earthly duties, and from the entirety of the human race due to their immortality.
It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to look at the description above and discern, somewhere between the lines, the very definition of the word soulmates. And, now that both one of the authors (Neil Gaiman) and the actors involved with the adaptation openly discuss the way GO is structured like a love story (no matter the type of love), I wanted to use this beautiful pair (that somehow manages to embody both the star crossed lovers and the old bickering couple trope perfectly) as a starting point, an opportunity if you like, to gush over my favorite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, and the way his over-the-top, satirical fantasy books are peppered throughout with tinges of unexpected romance.
Seeing the word romance coexist within the same period as STP’s name feels weird. Sir Terry never wrote romance, it was never the focus of his narratives, and while his characters were beautiful, multi-dimentional beings up against truly human predicaments, those fictional people usually found their happy endings though self-discovery, alone and hardly ever paired up with significant others. What many of his readers fail to realize, however, is that STP actually preferred to subtextually hint at those delicious sparks of spontenous romance bewteen unlikely people, under unlikely situations.
Which brings me to Good Omens once more. I remember reading somewhere that the authors didn’t, in fact, intend the book to be a love story. (the series, written exclusively by Gaiman, an author who doesn’t shy away from full-blown romance, is another story altogether; the series is eye-rollingly romantic in the best way, and this is the hill I am dying on, possibly defending Michael Sheen with my flaming pen, seeing as I don’t have, nor know how to use, a sword).
And of course they didn’t, because, after all, Good Omens is a book about the apocalypse, and about the end of childhood, and about faith. Incidentally, however, it is also a book that comes conspicuously close to being That Book About A Demon Named Crowley, because, if you squint, it gets really clear whose voice the writers channel a lot of what they intend to say through.
Which brings me to this: Good Omens as a Book About A Demon Named Crowley is, at its heart, a story about not belonging, about loneliness and self-acceptance. Crowley didn’t mean to Fall (nor, no matter how eye-wateringly well David Tennant shakes those hips in the show, saunter vaguely downwards.) He just asked questions, refusing to conform to whatever God’s plan was, because he has a dangerous penchant for actual, critical thinking.
Likewise, he is a disaster demon because his truly evil proclivities amount to, ugh, zero. As such, we can easily see Aziraphale for what he truly is to Crowley- not only his best friend, but his only friend as well, the only individual capable of making or breaking Crowley’s happy ending. Case in point: Crowley, in the book, is a pretty skittish person up to the point when he thinks Aziraphale is dead. Unlike the show, we don’t see him mourn, or declare something dangerously close to an admittance of feelings; what we do see is something far more potent, subtextually at least: we see him lash out and fight like he has nothing left to lose. (Hint: with Zira gone, he doesn’t).
And Zira? Zira is a self-righteous bastard, probably unaware of how much he means to Crowley. Neil and Terry didn’t write him, originally, to be a cinnamon roll, which comprises yet another caveat to any romantic readings of the book. And yet, subtextually again, this is far more potent. Let me explain why:
Zira chooses to fraternise with Crowley. There is nothing in it for him. Unlike Book Crowley, he is not the odd one out. The arrangement isn’t an escape for him, like it is to the demon who gets to perform the occasional miracle for the side of good. And most importantly: Zira hasn’t Fallen. Not yet at least. Thus, when he reaches out and takes Crowley’s hand during the climax of the Armageddon’t (yeah, this shit actually happens in the book, and it did more to my feelings than a thousand Romeos and Juliets killing themselves for lo- for lu- for whatever that fuckery was) he is, of his own free will, risking the much-dreaded Fall.
One may argue that, hey, he wasn’t really thinking straight (pun intended, duh) because it was more likely than not that they would not get to see another day. This, too, does not hold up, not when Zira, still the one with things to lose out of the two, chooses to spend The First Day of The Rest of His Life with a demon, of all supernatural entities. The cherry on the literary sundae? Their joint arc ends with dinner at the Ritz, while a nightingale sings, because this is one of those books where everyone gets a happy ending, and apparently, they are each other’s happy ending.
So yeah, of course Neil cannot do more than he already has with the Zira/Crowley dynamic,and nor can he say more, because this book, the source material behind the series, was co-written with his dead best friend, who can no longer offer his own insights. As such, to tread into a more explicitly homoromantic (homoerotic?) territory would be to betray Sir Terry, who is no longer here to give his thumbs up or thumbs down to all of this. The same Sir Terry who didn’t do romance, not, as I said, explicitly.
And yet, look at what he helped give us. As a reader, I am fascinated by the story between the lines as much as the one printed on paper, and for me, the writers who can perform this kind of magic, effectively putting equal gravitas on the word that is and the word that isn’t, they are just one step below God. So yeah, we cannot call Book! Ineffable Husbands a romance. But you know what?
We can very much call them a prime example of how Sir Terry wrote what I call Love in Unexpected Places. Because this is what this is. He does it a lot, and in many different ways, in his stories. To anyone who is interested in discovering Discworld, I will give another wonderful example, and a thinly disguised go-read-it-now recommendation: Reaper Man.
You see, of course Reaper Man, a hilarious story about Death, Life, beauraucracy, and the withdrawal of important public services (such as the reaping of souls), with its many characters and subplots has absolutely nothing to do with anything resembling a love story. And yet it’s right there, one of the most tender relationships STP has ever conjured up, wholly platonic but childishly tender. I won’t spoil it for you. Seek it. Discover it. Find out for yourself what I am talking about and what holding hands or spectacularly failing at buying flowers can do to your feelings. See if you can come up with a more unlikely interaction. Learn nuance from the very best, or at least try to while bawling your eyes out.
Εdit: Did Neil just-
-like my brain vomit?
Terry Pratchett wrote the best asexual romances.
