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portraitoftheoddity:
I’ve been seeing a lot of Good Omens (TV) meta about Aziraphale’s assumption that Crowley wants the holy water for himself as a suicide pill instead of as a weapon. So here’s my take on why Aziraphale jumps to that conclusion:
In 6000 years, Crowley has never been a killer. Not directly.
Sure, he’s done things that led to people dying indirectly, but he’s always been a few steps removed, and he very clearly puts the actually fatal choices in other people’s hands, usually as a direct result of their own actions and associations: When he drops a bomb on the Nazis in the church, he gives them ample warning to run away. They don’t listen and continue instead to threaten Aziraphale, leading to their deaths at the hands of their own side’s bombs.
When it comes to the opportunity to kill people a bit more directly, however, such as changing all the paintball guns to real guns in the former convent, Crowley ensures that there are no actual fatalities. Part of this is also Crowley’s aversion to killing innocents – These people have some bad impulses, but aren’t actually evil, and thus don’t really deserve to die. Similarly, he balks at the idea of innocents – children specifically – being wiped out by the flood. (And in the book, when he finds out what’s going on with the Spanish Inquisition after being given a commendation for it simply for being in the area at the time, he gets so upset he goes and gets drunk for a solid straight week).
So in all this time, Aziraphale hasn’t seen Crowley as someone who would personally and directly annihilate anyone else. It doesn’t occur to him that Crowley has it in him. Leading him to the conclusion that if Crowley wants holy water, it’s for his own escape, not as a tool to destroy others – not because he especially thinks Crowley wants to kill himself, but because it’s so hard to imagine him ruthlessly killing others.
And curiously, even when Crowley DOES use the holy water, he doesn’t actually put it in the plant mister where he can pull the trigger with his own hands; he puts it all in a booby trap that Hastur and Ligur trigger themselves when they make the choice to go after Crowley. Once again, Crowley sets things up so that others are destroyed by the choices they make in pursuing their own wicked impulses when presented with the opportunity; it’s how he always operates. Temptation, Free Will, and the opportunity for choice between Good and Evil, since The Beginning™.
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portraitoftheoddity:
I’ve been seeing a lot of Good Omens (TV) meta about Aziraphale’s assumption that Crowley wants the holy water for himself as a suicide pill instead of as a weapon. So here’s my take on why Aziraphale jumps to that conclusion:
In 6000 years, Crowley has never been a killer. Not directly.
Sure, he’s done things that led to people dying indirectly, but he’s always been a few steps removed, and he very clearly puts the actually fatal choices in other people’s hands, usually as a direct result of their own actions and associations: When he drops a bomb on the Nazis in the church, he gives them ample warning to run away. They don’t listen and continue instead to threaten Aziraphale, leading to their deaths at the hands of their own side’s bombs.
When it comes to the opportunity to kill people a bit more directly, however, such as changing all the paintball guns to real guns in the former convent, Crowley ensures that there are no actual fatalities. Part of this is also Crowley’s aversion to killing innocents – These people have some bad impulses, but aren’t actually evil, and thus don’t really deserve to die. Similarly, he balks at the idea of innocents – children specifically – being wiped out by the flood. (And in the book, when he finds out what’s going on with the Spanish Inquisition after being given a commendation for it simply for being in the area at the time, he gets so upset he goes and gets drunk for a solid straight week).
So in all this time, Aziraphale hasn’t seen Crowley as someone who would personally and directly annihilate anyone else. It doesn’t occur to him that Crowley has it in him. Leading him to the conclusion that if Crowley wants holy water, it’s for his own escape, not as a tool to destroy others – not because he especially thinks Crowley wants to kill himself, but because it’s so hard to imagine him ruthlessly killing others.
And curiously, even when Crowley DOES use the holy water, he doesn’t actually put it in the plant mister where he can pull the trigger with his own hands; he puts it all in a booby trap that Hastur and Ligur trigger themselves when they make the choice to go after Crowley. Once again, Crowley sets things up so that others are destroyed by the choices they make in pursuing their own wicked impulses when presented with the opportunity; it’s how he always operates. Temptation, Free Will, and the opportunity for choice between Good and Evil, since The Beginning™.
(Your picture was not posted)
