Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Aziraphale (Good Omens)

Now before anyone goes, “Hold on, he’s an angel!”, let me point to the existence of Saraqael. If there are angels who use wheelchairs, it stands to reason that there are also autistic angels. And once I latched onto this reading of Aziraphale, I couldn’t let it go. (More on Crowley another day, naturally!)

Aziraphale simply radiates the energy of a being that doesn’t fully know how to behave. His actions, by and large, are firmly led by his principles—which always spur him to help others, even if his help is sometimes misguided—and his personal loves—from human magic tricks to fine food to Crowley. They’re the reason why he miraculously fixes Anathema’s bike despite the risk of being caught out, why he exchanges eight months’ rent for a single Shostakovich record, and why he refuses to believe that Crowley would kill Job’s children.

So those are Aziraphale’s actions. His behavior, on the other hand, is frequently a bundle of nervous casting-about for what he’s meant to be doing. Whether it’s interacting with humans in a way that won’t rouse their suspicions, trying not to give anything away to a demon who’s come poking around, or attempting to play the part of the dutiful angel in front of other angels, he gets stuck in his head and constantly second-guesses himself. He comes across as someone whose skin doesn’t quite fit right. He’s a little too eager, lays on his deceptions a little too thick, and is a little too slow to pick up on where the situation is heading.

Part of the issue is that, while Aziraphale has slid into “shades of very, very light gray” over the millennia, he’s still attached to rules and quite beholden to what other angels think of him. On Neurodivergent Alley, I often talk about not caring about society’s rules/expectations as a deeply autistic trait, but the converse can be true too. Aziraphale is comforted by the idea of rules and structure, of always knowing the “appropriate” way to respond, but 1) he can struggle to actually do what’s expected of him and 2) when Heaven’s edicts contradict his own moral code, he gets tied into knots.

His tendency to get flustered and paralyzed with indecision can sometimes make Aziraphale feel like the damsel compared to Crowley’s doer, but he’s far from helpless. When he can get out of his way and act—often prompted, once again, by those guiding lights of his—we see someone who’s both knowledgeable and capable. His deep love of books makes him an ideal candidate for going into research mode, and once his mind latches onto something, he’s like a dog with a bone until he figures it out. He can be compassionate to a fault, putting himself in danger for the sake of helping others, but once he’s given his word to help someone, he intends to keep it at all costs.

Lastly, I want to talk a bit about what Aziraphale likes. As an angel, he doesn’t need to eat or drink, but he adores fine food and beverages. He likes the ritual of dining, and eating/drinking is an indulgent sensory experience for him. His deep and abiding love of books has helped him fill his shop with favorite volumes, rare treasures, and homey comfort objects, to the point that he can’t bear the thought of actually selling any of them. And he loves human magic tricks, which are one thing guaranteed to bring out happy-stimming in him. The mere thought of performing magic makes him light up, and when he and Crowley visit the magic shop in season 2, you can see him all but physically bursting with excitement at every trick the proprietor shows him. His love for it is so guileless and unbridled, and it’s really lovely to see.

Favorite Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens)

Today, I'm staying home for my aunts and uncles.
 
After I wrote about Crowley, it was only a matter of time until I came back around to Aziraphale. While this dynamic duo is absolutely a matching set, they’re both great individually as well. Crowley is maybe more the instant crowd-pleaser as the sometimes-“good” demon (who doesn’t love a fun sympathetic baddie?), but pulling off the character of Aziraphale takes a steady hand, one that I think the miniseries manages beautifully (premise spoilers.)

Crowley’s angelic counterpart, Aziraphale has also been on Earth since the literal beginning of humanity. Charged with carrying out God’s divine and/or ineffable plan by inspiring humans toward good actions, Aziraphale, like Crowley, has been at it so long that he’s let his duties slip a little and has gotten distracted by the pleasures of the world. No, not like that – Aziraphale’s vices, chiefly, are food and culture. He has a weak spot for fine dining, and he’s a great lover of old books and beautiful music. These are all things that we as humans think of as an overall good in the world, but for an angel, they’re meant to be extraneous, not worth bothering about. Aziraphale’s collection of little earthly pleasures is an indiscretion on his part.

But despite Aziraphale sometimes slacking on the heavenly job and being more interested in pastries and musical premieres than he’s strictly supposed to be, he is also very genuinely capital-G “Good.” “Good” characters can be hard to do well, or at least there’s a prevailing impression that they’re hard to do well. Drama requires conflict, and it’s tempting to think of “Good” characters as boring. People clamor for inner demons and moral ambiguity. But as shown by the likes of Steve Rogers, Chidi Anagonye, and Kara Danvers, “Good” can be engaging and watchable too, and in Aziraphale, Good Omens brings that across very well.

This is shown in little ways – right from the start, Aziraphale takes the flaming sword he’s supposed to use to guard the gates of Eden and gives it to Adam and Eve, worrying about their well-being when they’re cast out of the Garden, and when Crowley accidentally hits Anathema on her bike, Aziraphale not only uses some of his miracle mojo to repair it, he also upgrades with with speeds it didn’t have before. More than anything, though, I think this comes through in Michael Sheen’s performance. Aziraphale spends plenty of the story being kind of a fussbudget, but when he’s not so tightly wound, he’s capable of the most earnest, delighted smiles known to man, easily making you believe he cares about nothing so genuinely as the person and/or sunglasses-wearing demon he’s sharing the screen with at that moment.

One key to a successful “Good” character is to make sure they’re still flawed, and Aziraphale checks out there as well. Honestly, his worst quality is probably his most heaven-approved: he can be a stickler for rules and expectations. It’s what gives him pause when Crowley suggests they team up to avert the apocalypse (after all, who’s he to get in the way of God’s ineffable plan, even if it does mean the destruction of the Earth and all the people in it?), and it’s why he’s often the more reluctant of the two in his relationship with Crowley, knowing he’s not “supposed to” like a demon. For Aziraphale, then, his personal growth calls for him to worry less about what heaven will think and act because it’s right, not because it’s prescribed. And watching him come to grips with that is anything but boring.

A Few More Thoughts on Crowley & Aziraphale (Good Omens)

The last time I talked about Good Omens’s central relationship, I discussed Aziraphale and Crowley’s unlikely dynamic as an angel and demon who, over the millennia, have ultimately become very close and team up to save the world from Armageddon. I’m circling back around to them, though, because I want to talk a little about shipping (spoilers.)

I’ve brought up slash ships on this blog before, and I’ve written about plenty of male-male relationships on shows and in movies that are very popularly shipped but non-canonical. But for me, watching Good Omens, I didn’t see a non-canon ship. I instead saw a relationship that, while it remains unexplicit, is pretty definite. I would be very hard-pressed to believe that Sheen and Tennant weren’t playing it like their characters are in love with each other (come on, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the Tenth Doctor give that exact dreamy smile to Rose,) and the dialogue and story aren’t far behind. When they argue to the point of hurting one another, it’s with the intensity of a breakup, and when they’re at their best with each other, they have such a surprisingly-tender way about them.

I know that they don’t say the words “I love you” or “you’re my boyfriend,” and I know that they don’t kiss or hookup, but it still feels different to than something like Steve & Bucky or Sherlock & John. It’s hard to articulate what it is about them exactly, but I know it when I see it. It’s in the way Crowley cries when he thinks Aziraphale is dead, in the way Aziraphale knows that vowing never to talk to him again is the way to spur Crowley to a world-saving idea. It’s in how Aziraphale keeps seeking Crowley out even as he frets about Heaven finding out about his “fraternization” with a demon, in how Crowley insists one moment that he isn’t “nice” and in the next does something nice for Aziraphale just because.

That said, just like I don’t see it as ship-teasing or queer-baiting, I also don’t really see it as a “make it gay, you cowards!” situation, a la the “subtle” (read: barely-existent) approach taken with Dumbledore. Part of it, maybe, is just the fact that they are an angel and a demon, so I don’t necessarily need to apply human labels or expectations to their relationship. But for whatever reason, it’s plain of day to me that Crowley and Aziraphale love each other, and good luck convincing me that the production didn’t want us to believe that.

I’ve seen some online who champion the idea of them as asexuals, either as romantics or as aros in a platonic partnership. I could totally get behind one of those interpretations, leaning more toward romantic aces for me (I wouldn't go as far as to write an Asexual Sighting about either of them, but I can definitely picture them that way.) Because, even without the usual physical signs of affection, the love between them just doesn’t seem like something that’s supposed to be up for debate. There’s no nervous backpedaling when someone insinuates that they’re a couple, no women shoehorned in toward the end to provide a convenient proof of heteronormativity for one or both of them. What we have instead are the way they look at each other, the way they bicker like two celestial beings who’ve literally known each other since the the world began, the way they argue like the world’s ending (even when the world really is ending!), and the way they keep coming back to each other, no matter what happens between them. It’s so lovely, and I’m thoroughly glad that this relationship exists on my TV.

Relationship Spotlight: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)

Catching up on all the Good Omens rambling I missed over the summer because I hadn’t seen it then. Anyone who’s watched the miniseries adaptation of this novel can tell you that the real headline of the piece is Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale and David Tennant’s Crowley, particularly the combination of the two together. Most who adore the miniseries will single out these two as its greatest asset, and even many of those who dislike the miniseries will still admit that Crowley and Aziraphale are great onscreen together. Whatever way you slice it, this is what it all comes down to (some spoilers.)

Right from “in the beginning,” Aziraphale and Crowley have had a complicated history. After Crowley tempts Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and after Aziraphale gives the two exiled humans the flaming sword he was supposed to be using to guard the gates of Eden, the angel and the demon meet and aren’t altogether sure what to make of each other. They reflect on heaven, hell, God’s Ineffable Plan, and the possibility that they may have bungled which one of them did “the good thing” and “the bad thing.”

The series later takes us on a scenic tour of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship throughout history, hitting highlights such as Noah’s Ark, the Globe Theatre, the French Revolution, and World War II. Throughout, we get glimpses of this unseen tie that binds them. They’re ostensibly enemies, on opposing sides of a holy war, but every time they run into each other early on, they’re congenial with one another. And not only Aziraphale as you might expect, it being within reason that angels would be nice to everyone – Crowley is also thoroughly pleasant toward Aziraphale, going out of his way to greet the angel in a crowd and make small talk. As time goes on, however, they go beyond even that, moving from amiable acquaintances into becoming very genuinely important to one another. About halfway through that tour of history, we start seeing a pattern of Crowley seeking Aziraphale out, either to get him out of trouble or to proposition him for a two-celestial-being ceasefire (reasoning that he and Aziraphale, working for the forces of evil and good respectively, “cancel each other out,” he points out that they could just not bother and end up with the same result.)

But let’s focus on where Aziraphale and Crowley are in the main time period of the series, during the whole Antichrist/end of the world business. At this point, there’s very little that’s reluctant or tentative about their relationship. They regularly call each other, meet up for lunch or drinks, and discuss the work of their individual sides. Call them friends, call them lovers, call them frenemies, whatever you’d like – these are two celestial beings who are very decidedly in one another’s lives. While it’s not a relationship they’re keen to advertise to their own kinds, there’s no real pretense about them being actual adversaries.

This gets a little thorny for Aziraphale, though. As an angel, like I said, he’s pretty conditioned to be friendly and nice, but he knows he’s also not supposed to “fraternize” with demons. In their relationship, if one of them is going to shy away or pull back, it’s usually Aziraphale. He’s particularly resistant when Crowley suggests they team up to stop the apocalypse. It’s one thing for Aziraphale to let his heavenly orders lie once in a while, but it’s quite another to go against the Great and/or Ineffable Plan, especially working shoulder-to-shoulder with a demon. This is when he starts talking about sides and insisting that he can’t team up with Crowley. Even when Crowley wins Aziraphale over to helping him (after all, if the earth is destroyed in Armageddon, there won’t be any Stephen Sondheim premieres in heaven!), the angel spends a good chunk of the miniseries trying to deny what Crowley really means to him.

As with the “Aziraphale and Crowley throughout history” flashbacks, Crowley in the present day is pretty much all in, both on his plan and his relationship with Aziraphale, which I find continually surprising. For all of Crowley’s growling that he’s dangerous and not “nice” as Aziraphale repeatedly avows, there’s very little that the demon isn’t ultimately willing to do on the angel’s behalf, and he’s often the one fighting for the bond between them. It’s Aziraphale who continues to be unsure. He’s caught between all he’s ever believed in and this friend he technically isn’t supposed to have, one who keeps pointing out how all he’s ever believed in doesn’t actually line up with what he holds most dear. But no matter how often he tries to pull away, he can’t bring himself to cut that tie completely. Ultimately, it comes to him and Crowley standing together between humanity and the end of the world, and there’s no one the other would rather be standing there with.