@icestorming Original Art 🔥

It's them!!

Why all the ducks? 🦆

Good Omens has always been my favorite book. I've seen some posts from people wondering about the prevalence of ducks. I wanted to share my interpretation of why the ducks keep popping up* so that other people can appreciate how clever the writing in my favorite book is.

The word duck is in the book a lot. Aside from the actual ducks in the duck pond, there are several references to popular expression about ducks. Notably all the duck quotes are botched or incorrect in some way, so the reader has to know what the correct expressions actually are in order for the joke to work. For example:

Crowley forgetting the phrase "like water off a duck's back": "Ducks!" [Crowley] shouted. "What?" "That's what water slides off!" Aziraphale took a deep breath.

The same phrase is referenced later: whenever she tried to think about him beyond a superficial level her thoughts slipped away like a duck off water.

And we have "like a duck to water" to describe Aziraphale's dancing while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it

The English language has a lot of expressions about ducks and the book expects the reader to be familiar with them. The one that I think is significantly conspicuously absent from the book is "If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it's a duck." I think that the point of the other duck expressions is to evoke this one, since it's the whole thesis of the book. Good Omens is about humanism and self determination. Adam isn't human, but he is shaped like a human so grows into being a human. He looks like a human and quacks like a human. He is a human. His parents are his parents. His hellhound is a cute dog. And he chooses to keep it that way. Aziraphale and Crowley get so used to being human shaped they'd prefer to keep doing that. They don't have to be enemies and can determine their own fate, just like Anathema and Newt and all their other mirrors. So by choosing humanity and embracing what I guess you could call human performativity, they all get to be what they want to be. So I think that's the significance of the ducks. *despite Crowley dunking them

Back on the bench

And again, and again…

The sheer amount of guilt Aziraphale experiences is utterly tragic. But what's interesting is he rarely feels guilt for the things humans usually feel guilt for - indulging in food, wine, books, comfort (which is marvelously subversive because it shows none of these things are actually worthy of guilt but, in fact, what make existence worthwhile).

No, he only truly feels guilt when he does the Right Thing.

Or when he realizes too late what the Right Thing is.

All of his guilt is attached to things that are, in fact, Good and Right, but in opposition to the black-and-white doctrine of Heaven.

Which makes the guilt he is so clearly experiencing here:

hit like a goddamn freight train.

Because loving Crowley is Good and Right.

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Crowley's charcoal portrait

Bonus:

[Help me keep making more art by donating to my ko-fi]

Crowley in traditional Thai dress.

When ineffable husbands become tsum tsum ;)