Good Omens Google Books
Raymond Freedman
A more accurate novel summary is this: Shortly after his 11th birthday, Adam Young starts displaying mysterious powers. As various supernatural forces gather around him, he and his friends (the Them) decide if their world is worth saving.
Again, for emphasis: Only 60 of 369 pages feature Crowley and Aziraphale interacting with one another. That means for 309 pages, the book is about something else. That's 84 percent of the book in which Crowley and Aziraphale as characters, let alone as characters with any sort of relationship, don't even factor in at all.
And reading that story as obviously gay isn't even up for debate to me, even without gestures of physical intimacy or sweeping declarations of love (except, there is, even then: What else would you call Crowley shouting "We can run away together!" if not a declaration of love?).
And there's the way Crowley looks at Aziraphale when the angel says he gave away the flaming sword, and the way Crowley looks at him whenever Aziraphale indulges in human food, and the way Crowley looks at him when he invites Aziraphale to stay at his place when the bookstore burns down. And the way Aziraphale looks at Crowley when he wants the stain off his jacket, and the way Aziraphale looks at him when Crowley saves his books, and the way Aziraphale looks at him when Crowley pushes him against the nunnery wall, and the way Aziraphale looks at him when he says, "You move too fast for me, Crowley." Basically any time either of them looks at the other, which is all the time. These men-shaped creatures are in love, people.
These heart-pounding, wish-fulfilling, "OMG-just-kiss-already" moments are what really hooked me on the show. Partly, the appeal is about queer visibility, the chance to watch what is essentially a good-girl-meets-bad-boy rom-com that isn't heterosexual, but more than that, I love their love because it's (basically) right there on the screen. Even if it's not sealed with a kiss (which is troubling criteria in the first place for making a relationship real), there's a ton of canonical support for this couple. So many fan-favorite ships are never fulfilled even to this extent (I, personally, will die waiting for Legolas and Aragorn to figure it out). Plus, the will-they-won't-they anticipation of it all is really good fun.
Since I watched the show before reading the novel, I couldn't wait to dive into all the queer goodness surely waiting for me in the book (thinking, as Book Folks do, that novels go much deeper into relationships than adaptations). What was obvious, but unspoken, in the show would finally be spelled out! (Aka, I wanted to read all the gooey lovestruck thoughts in Crowley's head when he asks Aziraphale to run away with him.)
"Where is the queer love story?" I asked as hundreds of pages went by without any scenes of Crowley and Aziraphale together. It's there, sort of, if you squint: Anathema assumes they're a couple when she gets a ride in the Bentley and hears Crowley say to Aziraphale, "Get in, angel." Crowley often calls Aziraphale "angel" (it's literally true, but as TV Tropes points out, the name has certain implications), while Aziraphale frequently refers to Crowley as "my dear" or "dear boy." Still, it isn't at all as present as it is in the show.
In the nearly 30 years that have passed between the publication of the novel and the premiere of the show, how did Crowley and Aziraphale go from being "men-shaped creatures" that had merely grown "accustomed to the only other face that had been around more or less consistently for six millennia" to becoming the sweeping love story at the heart of the miniseries?
Partly the amplified queerness of the show can be attributed to the medium itself: screen adaptations have the advantage of visual and audial cues (like love songs playing in the background) unavailable in text-based stories. The chemistry between actors, too, is a big factor. As Jef Rouner notes, even if the on-screen relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley is supposed to be "fairly sexless and fraternal," that becomes impossible because "well, David Tennant plays Crowley, and there is just nothing sexless or fraternal about David Tennant, ever. Especially not when he is sauntering around in black skinny jeans."
The most exciting part about this is that the fandom had the power to shift the narrative of the original text. Think about it: The novel was not that gay and there were a lot of characters getting more attention than Crowley and Aziraphale. Fans write thirty years' worth of gay fanfiction and ignore the other characters. Then the adaptation comes out focusing almost exclusively on Crowley and Aziraphale and it's super gay. That's just cause and effect!
This fans-causing-writers-to-reshape-their-text sensation has happened before, to varying levels of success (like when J.K. Rowling retroactively changes Harry Potter canon in response to fan questions). I've dubbed this the Jack Sparrow phenomenon.
Do you know who decided Jack Sparrow was the real "heart" of the Pirates universe? 13-year-old me, for one. And also this woman who spent thousands of dollars transforming herself into Jack Sparrow and later married his spirit. And, in general, the overwhelmingly positive response from thousands of fans. Not the Disney executives, certainly. They were just responding to what had already been decided without them. The character became so iconic and beloved in the Pirates fanbase that long after Bloom and Knightley left the franchise, Disney kept making sequels (too many, but that's another subject) starring Depp, because for a while it seemed like Jack was the only truly vital component of a Pirates film.
As the legislative director and lobbyist for the American Humanist Association, I typically write about public policy, politics, and advocacy. While I love writing about these topics, I felt a change was in order as Amazon has made one of my favorite books from my teenage years, Good Omens, into a new TV show.
In theory, Good Omens has everything going for it. The writer of the show is Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the original 1990 book with Terry Pratchett and has spearheaded several successful adaptions of his literary works, from American Gods to Coraline to Neverwhere and Stardust. The fact that the writing would be close to the original seemed to be a surefire recipe for success, especially since the cast of the show is so strong and the production is well-funded (Amazon shelled out some big Bezos bucks to make this adaption happen).
Obviously, adapting any book to TV or film is challenging and the audience will always be displeased by some personal atrocity or another, but Gaiman has been especially good at crossing this divide in the past. Some scenes feel especially disjointed or even wrong, such as the infamous moment in which Crowley passes by a work outing for a local company at a paintball range, transforming the relatively harmless guns into real weapons, supposedly allowing employees to fulfill their innate desire to murder their coworkers. Even though Crowley ends up ensuring that no one really dies (an action Aziraphale attributes to Crowley being nice deep down) the entire scene feels horrid and out-of-touch in our current climate of school and workplace violence.
Thanks to my Jareth costume I knew I could get a decent leather-like texture from craft foam ironed with some tinfoil, so I labouriously wrapped my wooden box with my ironed craft foam, painted it, and built the inner compartments. Just as I was completing the last step (Adding the all important decal for the front cover), disaster struck. It turns out that the craft paint much preferred to stick to the vinyl transfer tape than the craft foam.
The idea could still work, but I think you would either need to get coloured craft foam to avoid painting it, use less sticky transfer tape, or just forgo the transfer tape in the first place. And it goes without saying that I would avoid using that wooden book box as your base. That or be sure to replace the cover with a better, less prone to warping, quality of wood. To further emphasize my point: I had held onto that failed first attempt for a few months while I was trying to think of a battle plan, and just from it sitting on a shelf (Presumably taking moisture from the air) the front cover started to bow.
I admitted defeat, but kept this project in the back of my mind as one I wanted to redo one day. As luck would have it, on one of my frequent thrift store jaunts I came across this pair of fake cardboard books.
I crumpled the tissue paper and smoothed it back out, to give the tissue paper a bit more texture. I then covered the book with mod podge and laid the tissue paper over top, smoothing it down to make sure there were no air pockets. I used a single large layer of black tissue paper which was really nicely opaque, it completely covered up the detailing on the original cover.
Once the paint was dry I used more mod podge to seal everything. My hope was that this would act as a protective layer that would prevent the paint from peeling up when it once again came time to apply the decal. I ended up applying two layers, and I think my second layer was maybe a bit too thick as I did lose some of the texture from the tissue paper.
Two things worth noting: The first is that I kept my brush strokes going in the same direction when applying the mod podge and that was a good choice to make, because as you can see in the above photo there are visible brush strokes in the dried mod podge.
I painted my slightly watery paint onto the book, then used some scrap fabric to wipe it off. As Jen mentions in her video, I used some additional water to lighten the aging anyime I needed it. Once I was happy with my aging I sealed everything with a quick spritz of satin spray sealant. This has the bonus effect of making the craft paint a bit richer in tone. Anytime I use acrylic paints, I always follow it up with a satin sealant.
Once that was done it was safe to work on the inside of the box. I wanted to line everything with felt because this keepsake box will be displayed vertically (Like an actual book), so I wanted to make sure there was a layer of something soft in there to prevent scratching.
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