Wow has there been some heavy shit lately. Today, I’m switching it up with one of my favorite books/TV shows of all time, the aptly named Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett. If you’ve never read it or seen it, I highly, highly, highly recommend that you get a copy and read it.

Then after you’ve read it, go watch it because the show is absolutely wonderful, and it’s just slightly different from the book in the best way.

Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett are both brilliant authors, and if you haven’t heard of them, I also highly recommend that you read their stuff. If you’ve heard of Coraline, that was Neil Gaiman. I’m not into creepy stuff, so I haven’t read it, but it is a fan favorite.

Anyway, Good Omens.

This is a brilliant book all about the end times, the ones written about in the Bible. And it’s a whole new take on how things will end and why. The mechanisms driving the events that lead to the biblical apocalypse are delightfully satirical, and the foils which prevent the apocalypse from going to plan are nothing short of hilariously comical.

I love it.

I didn’t think I could like anything that had to do with the fables of the biblical apocalypse, but Good Omens is exactly that, and it’s actually amazing.

The set up for the story is the relationship that develops between an angel, Aziraphale, and a demon, Crowley. Neither one is especially good at or committed to what they do, and they blur the lines repeatedly as they stumble upon one another through the centuries, starting when they met after Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden.

Eventually, they form a sort of alliance where they operate in gray areas — not perfectly holy or not perfectly unholy, as applicable. Aziraphale bends the rules of righteousness, not always doing as he’s told, and Crowley bends the rules of chaos, performing small acts of kindness at times.

From this alliance comes a sort of tentative friendship, where they look forward to seeing one another and getting away from the monotony of heavenly or demonic beings, respectively. Neither one wants to admit it, but they’re friends, and everyone knows it!

It’s adorable.

Anyhow, this story is told mostly from their perspective since they play a huge role in how apocalypse goes down. And if you don’t want spoilers, STOP HERE.

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OK I think that’s enough of a warning.

So the story is actually how the two of them fuck up the apocalypse, the coming of the anti-christ to kick off all of the warring between the angels and demons.

And the reason they fuck it up is not because they are incompetent.

They fuck it up on purpose.

Because they like Earth. They like humans.

They like the luxury of living with humans. There’s so much variety, so much they can experience and enjoy. And what did the humans do anyway? Let them live, dammit.

They make such delightful things like food and drink and music and books.

Personally, I think it’s true that they like Earth and humanity. But I think it’s more than that. I think they like each other. That they want to maintain their friendship, not fight each other on two different sides of a pointless war. The book doesn’t say that, but the way they so hesitantly say goodbye when they tell each other they have to go to their own sides to fight, as well as their beautiful friendship they’re both in denial of, I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to lose one another to a silly, pointless war.

Don’t get me wrong, they still did what they were “supposed” to do. As the anti-christ was growing up, Aziraphale visited him to teach him to be righteous. And Crowley visited him to teach him to be a little asshole. Aziraphale was trying to stop him from being completely evil, and Crowley wanted to make sure he grew up to be the most entitled he could be so that when he was presented with the power to destroy, he would do so without a second thought.

But when the two of them get word that the apocalypse had actually started and that they had to play their part in joining their respective forces, they realized they didn’t actually want the world to end. So they came up with a crazy plan to stop the apocalypse from happening.

They decided to stop the hellhound from finding and bonding with the anti-christ because this is when he truly becomes the anti-christ. No anti-christ, no apocalypse. Pretty logical.

A few problems with what they’re doing.

1. Hell is bugging Crowley to join up with them and help them find the anti-Christ since he’s the one who placed him on Earth 13 years ago when he was born. But Crowley is not especially gung ho about the apocalypse, and they grow suspicious. He ends up having to fight them off in the most horrendous ways. One of them, he fries away with holy water. And the other one, he traps in the answering machine on the phone in his office.
   
   A brilliant ploy. One which can only be understood by reading the book and watching the show.
   
2. Heaven is bugging Aziraphale to join the heavenly armies in heaven so he can fight in their righteous war. They’re also asking him about the flaming sword he was issued several millennia ago, and he is unable to procure it (he gave it to Adam and Eve when they got kicked out of the garden. He felt bad for them!) Because Aziraphale keeps putting them off, they grow impatient and suspicious as well. He puts them off as long as he can without being called up to heaven, but eventually, his hand is forced.
   
   The hilarity that ensues as he possesses a psychic medium in order to help Crowley save the world afterwards is irrelevant to the plot but hilarious nonetheless. Go watch it!! I promise, you will not regret it!
   
3. When Crowley placed the anti-Christ on Earth, there was a mix up. He was meant to be given to an American consulate and his wife. They were rich and important, but broken. The father was never around, the wife would become bitter, if she wasn’t already. And life in a big city in America with all the comforts of life and no one but support staff to support the child, it was the perfect household to raise the anti-christ.
   
   The book didn’t say any of this, by the way, about it being the perfect place to raise the anti-christ. But Pratchett and Gaiman are satirical geniuses, and it’s an obvious commentary on the American rich-kid lifestyle as opposed to the English countryside lifestyle. In the former, I could totally see the anti-christ being formed. A kid who didn’t have the love and support of his parents (a dad who’s always travelling and a mom drowning her sadness and bitterness in shopping, drinking, and who knows what) grows into an angry, sad 13-year-old who has no love for the world. He feels abandoned, afraid, and angry, the perfect vulnerability to play his role in the destruction of the world.
   
   I mean think about it. The only people who would have actually been around for this kid are the hired help. Not his family. His dad was on a freaking video call with his mom while she was giving birth to him. A couple doesn’t recover from something like that. But because of his career, the dad wouldn’t want a scandal. And because being in a position of financial and political power is “better” for her son, the mom would stay and be miserable.
   
   Wouldn’t you hate the world if you grew up like that?
   
   But he didn’t go with them.
   
   There was another family there that night when the American consul’s wife was giving birth. It was a family from a small English village nearby. A family with humble origins and a simple, yet fulfilling way of life. With loving parents and a down-to-earth approach to life. This is not where the anti-christ was supposed to grow up. But one of the nuns made a mistake, and she ended up giving the anti-christ to these parents instead.
   
   And so when they went looking for the boy at the American consul’s home, they did not find him.
   
   In fact, they had absolutely no idea where to find him.

So when they realize that he is nowhere to be found and that they have been coaching the wrong kid for the last 13 years, naturally they are befuddled. They have to go back to the nunnery (which is now a team-building paintball camp, of all things) where the baby swap happened to begin with. It’s here that they find out the location of the boy and go to find him.

While all of this is happening with Crowley and Aziraphale, some other things are happening too.

1. The four horsemen are mobilized: Famine, War, Pollution, and Death. They don’t have horses, though, they have motorcycles. They are notified of the beginning of the end times by a postage man who delivers parcels to them containing significant items signaling that it’s time for them to all meet at the designated place. Sadly, Death is summoned only when the postage man is killed, though he did so willingly by crossing the street in front of a hauling truck. The four are assembled this way.
   
2. There is a witchfinder who finds a witch. There is too much back story here which is entertaining but doesn’t change the plot, so I recommend you read the book and/or watch the show for all the delightful Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett madness, but the important part is that the witch is drawn to the village where the anti-christ, ironically named Adam, lives. And she gives him some magazines on the environment and how humans are destroying the environment, and in his sleep, as his powers are coming to him, he accidentally makes it so that a nuclear power plant has a small piece of candy, rather than the nuclear reactor.
   
   This draws the witchfinder to the town, where he meets the witch. The witchfinder landed on this profession after losing yet another job in his former career. His dream is to be an IT professional, but every computer he touches breaks. This is important later.
   
3. Finally, Adam and his transformation are followed. When the hellhound is released, it finds him immediately because he doesn’t use addresses, he goes by the scent of his master. Well at first, he is a ferocious, large dog with scary red eyes. But when he senses Adam, he transforms into a small, cute dog. Likely sensing Adam’s personality, which is full of love, imagination, and kindness, if not a bit of cheekiness. When they meet each other in the woods, he names him Dog, and the bonding process is complete.
   
   This is when his godly powers grow. He does the nuclear reactor thing, and at one point, he also controls his friends. But he quickly realized that what he was doing wasn’t OK, and he let them go. Later, they all become friends again after he apologizes to them. Not very anti-christlike of him.

So ANYWAY, all of these guys end up at an Army base where the four horsemen set off a bunch of nuclear missiles all around the world to go off and kill 90% of the world. Adam can sense it, and his friends follow. The witch and witchfinder follow a prophecy the witch’s ancestor left her to follow. And Crowley and Aziraphale find out somehow, I don’t exactly remember, but they end up there as well.

They all square off against the four horsemen, and Adam takes a stand against them and for humanity. He doesn’t care about their war, but he won’t let them have it on Earth because he doesn’t want them to. He and his three friends beat the four horsemen, simply by taking a stand against them.

But the missiles are still set to go off, so all of them head inside to stop the missiles.

Which of course they accomplish by the witchfinder touching one of the computers and shutting the whole thing down.

Of course!

The humans, Aziraphale, and Crowley are quite pleased about this, but the angels and demons aren’t. Both sides wanted a war, and they didn’t care who got hurt or died in the process. You would expect this from the demonic side, of course, and it was a specific point to show that the angelic side had equally zero qualms about the loss of human life. They simply did not care about humanity, any of them. All they cared about was having a war so they could win.

The leaders, Gabriel the angel and Beelzebub the lord of flies, leave because Adam refuses to start Armageddon, and they don’t know what else to do. But they both blame Crowley and Aziraphale for what happened.

Unfortunately, then Satan is angry that the apocalypse has been stopped and wants to have a word with his son. Crowley can recognize his presence on the way to Earth.

At first, Adam seems shaken, afraid even. But then he does the most remarkable thing.

He changes reality. Again.

He stops Satan from coming to Earth.

This is Adam’s territory after all.

So instead of his “father” Satan coming to have a word with him, his real father walks up to have a stern talking to him for coming onto the base without permission.

Satan may rule Hell, but Adam rules Earth.

And that’s not all that Adam changed in reality. He restored a lot of things that had been broken as a result of the apocalyptic shenanigans.

Aziraphale’s bookstore, which had been burnt down, was restored.

Crowley’s car, which had been burnt to a crisp, was restored.

And my favorite, the postman’s life was restored.

There’s more that happens in the TV show than what happens in the book, so both are SO worth it! In the end, Aziraphale and Crowley not only escape punishment from their higher ups, they end up scaring the shit out of them, making them untouchable. For a time, anyway.

If you want to know how they pulled it off, then GO WATCH IT!!!

😀

But seriously, go watch it. Yes, it’s very entertaining, but it’s more than that. It’s an artful statement crafted by two masters of the literary arts.

This beautiful story is not really one about biblical end times. I don’t think so anyway. I mean it is, but it’s more than that. The biblical apocalypse is just the setting in which Gaiman and Pratchett explore a commentary on humanity as it relates to our world. We are the ones who rule here, magical anti-christ or no. No magical, fabled beings in mystical realms, no forces of good or evil.

We are all responsible for what happens to our Earth, whether good or bad. War and famine and pollution, and some of the death, it’s our responsibility.

We aren’t on opposite sides, we are all on the side of humanity.

Or we should be.

Some aren’t, or they don’t seem to be. They can’t wait for the time when they can supposedly abandon Earth, leaving behind destruction and misery.

Somehow, they are OK with wishing this kind of existence on the rest of the world who do not believe the same thing they do. And they are also OK with standing with a god that they believe would let something like that happen. Who would, in fact, cause it to happen on purpose.

And for what?

His glory?

There are so many issues with the Bible, but this is probably the biggest one. How it pits believers against the rest of humanity. It begets so much hatred.

And why? For what?

I don’t have an answer for that, and I’m not going to try to pretend to I do. I can’t fathom it, believing in something so messed up and calling it righteous.

I don’t get it.

But anyway, this post was supposed to stay away from heavy shit.

This book is brilliant, and I believe the TV show was produced and written by Neil Gaiman, so it follows the book pretty closely, and it’s a brilliant show. I can’t recommend them enough! One of my favorites, and it’s satire done right, in my opinion.

If you do watch it or have watched it, then you’ll get this reference that I will leave you with:

GROW BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

**READ ME (please)**
Two things!

One, please note that the names of everyone in this blog have been altered to protect the people I write about. My main goal is to explore my experiences and my growth, not air anyone’s dirty laundry out. Any likeness to people you know in real life are probably coincidental. (I mean what are the chances? It’s a pretty big world!)

Two, the thoughts and opinions I express in this blog are merely a result of my personal experiences to this point in my life. If there is anything I have misrepresented, overlooked, or have a blind spot for, feel free to leave a comment or email me at contact@livingbetween.net. (Yes, this includes typos. Let me fix my typos, please!) All I ask is that you always remain respectful.

Talk soon!
– Lynda –