The Split Subject

I’ve been seeing all these posts about how people are suddenly realizing how starved they are for happy endings as they try to understand why Good Omens took over their brains and hearts so fast and so utterly. It’s true; Good Omens takes the fucking Apocalypse and turns it into a story that genuinely makes you feel good about the world and people and love, which is some trick, and definitely something that should be recognized and applauded.I would like to briefly suggest something else that I’m pretty sure is going on here for me, and may partly explain the emotional impact of this storyline for some other people: that the whole Azirapahle & Crowley plot (put a / there if you want! For me they are both!) is a reworking, on a scale simultaneously cosmic and intimate, of a story that fascinates all of us who have been subjected to binary divisions: the reintegration of the split subject.[Before we move on: I was not aware, when I wrote this, that Neil Gaiman has apparently said that originally GO was intended to have a single protagonist but then they decided to have two. I am now, though.]