Good Omens/Headscratchers

• What's so gay about a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide? Not that there isn't anything strange about a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide, and not that it isn't fun to say, ^[1], but I don't see anything particularly homosexual about it.
  • Gay as in the (now archaic) meaning of 'happy'. A tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide is pretty happy.
  • In the case of bonobo chimps, who are promiscuously bi, it would be "gay" at least half the time...
    • Except those would be apes, and you never, EVER call an ape a monkey!
    • One dazed and impressed look to you for replying at roughly the speed of freaking LIGHT, and in that case how come the author made it pretty clear he meant the more modern meaning by explaining that angels don't have gender unless they make an effort?? Just screwing around with the words to mess with us?
      • Now that I think of it, I can see it playing on the older meaning of gay as happy, but I also wondered if the nitrous oxide was a reference to a high pitched stereotypical Camp Gay voice.
      • In a word: yes. It was wordplay - gay meaning both 'happy' and 'homosexual'. Consider who was writing that. (Also: I appear to have some sort of editing superpower. You're very welcome.)
      • This troper has often seen 'camp as a row of tents' used for similar purposes.
        • ...I like that. And not in the sarcastic way. It's an interesting phrase.
      • Also because it's not particularly denigrating on account of being funny as hell -- to go along with the painful kind of wordplay for which the authors are notable -- while getting the point across. You're supposed to chuckle at the line itself, then facepalm at the awful wordplay, then laugh because it was so painfully funny.
    • When'd I call it denigrating? I just didn't get the simile at the time.
    • In England and Australia it's common to describe a thing by using an alternate definition. For instance if you call someone crazy in Australia they are as "mad as a cut snake" because a cut snake would be angry, angry = mad, and mad = insane. It's sort of like cockney rhyming slang. Of course that's not the best example because "mad as a cut snake" is also used for just being angry as well but I think you get the idea.
      • A cut snake is a dead snake and should therefore have no feelings or mental stability one way or the other. If it is both cut and mad, it's probably undead and should have better adjectives attached to it then mad.
        • Do you die every time you get a paper cut?

• Was this troper the only one disappointed by a villainous Death? I mean, between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, I was hoping for a good to neutral one, but instead we got the cliched evil death.
  • What was so evil about him? He was just an entity doing his job.
  • I dont remember him doing anyting particularly evil.
    • The villainous Death who... compliments a delivery man on his dedication to the job, sticks around to collect the bikers who were stupid enough to try and make an impossible jump, and, confronted with the loss of the other Horsepeople simply states that he is necessary to the functioning of the universe and that the absence of the others means that it simply grinds down in entropy before leaving. ...What?

• Yes, I know they were replaced with expensive first editions (of the kind of books Adam likes) but I think it was ridiculously out-of-character that Aziraphale wasn't in the slightest bit upset about losing, among other things, a Bible in which the typesetter left a long paragraph about how much he hates his job. How could you not be upset about that being destroyed? Especially if you loved books as much as Aziraphale?
  • Aziraphale puts the loss of one good thing behind him and gets on with enjoying a new good thing that has just dropped into his lap. It doesn't come strange if you subscribe to the view espoused in Perelandra for instance - where Tinidril, in complete acceptance of the will of Maleldil, philosophises at Ransom's departure "We will meet again, or else some other good thing will happen to us instead".
  • I always thought he had some of his "rarer" old books still, but some others that were merely first editions of books still in print got replaced with different first editions.
    • I like that idea, and I'd like to add that Aziraphale notes that he looked up the prices on the children's books, implying that he could sell those and buy back the books he lost.

• Late in the book after Adam powers up he's encouraged to use his powers to do good things like restoring the whale populations. It might be intelligent to realize that this wouldn't stop humans from hunting them again except he never considers the possibility that at least it would help a great number of whales avoid extinction.
  • Which in turn could lead to the extinction of their food source from overeating, which would lead back to whale extinction except now you have at least two things gone forever. Also restoring the whale population would mean that Adam created life. God tends to get annoyed when you do things like that.

• I know we all like Action Girl and You Go, Girl! and all that, and it seems like the character archetype of the sweet and gentle Girl Next Door is dead or that people don't think there's anything interesting out of that character archetype (which I sincerely doubt.), but I have to ask here; Pepper apparently beat up three kids at once, one of them being The Antichrist. Yeah, how the hell did that happen realistically?
  • She's a tomboy, and two of the kids she beat up were wusses. The Antichrist didn't use his powers against her.
  • When he was young he didn't have power's those manifested when dog first arived.
  • The four kids are analogous to the Horsepeople, and she's the equivalent of War. This troper never needed more explanation than that.
  • It's actually explained in the book, too. The boys fight according to the timeless boys' code of honour; Pepper fights to win.
  • Fight, because even with honor, boys don't like to win? Double Standard.
  • The "timeless boys' code of honour" more or less means "don't really fight, just thump each other once or twice to make the point, then stop." Pepper wasn't playing by those rules, she was fighting to win the fight. You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that when friends scuffle, they're actually trying to hurt each other, which isn't normally the case.
  • I took it as an oblique reference to Pepper being willing to kick the boys in their crotches.
  • Well, she is The Them's counterpart to War.

• How exactly is the incident with the blue circle the first time Aziraphale has sworn? He says "bugger" at least once in the book before that, and "What the hell is it?", and "bloody" if you really want to be strict.
  • It's actually stated that it's the second time he's sworn in an hour, and when he says bugger earlier, it's stated that it's the first time he's sworn in four millenniums. It's just that the "oh fuck" line was a lot more powerful than the bugger line.
    • Yes, but doesn't he also say "bugger" when they're drunk at the beginning of the book? And there's still the "What the hell is it?"... Oh well. Maybe he decides those don't count for some reason?
    • This might veer into Alternate Character Interpretation a little, but I have the impression that Aziraphale thinks he's much more good than he really is (just as Crowley thinks he's more evil than he really is). Him conveniently forgetting all the "minor" times he's cussed "because they don't count" fits neatly into that.

• If there's any time to tell a prophecy to piss off, it's "It says we only do it once."
  • I'm not sure what the question is. The whole point of that exchange was to show that to Anathema their, ahem, "activities" were nothing more than fullfilling a prophecy. Newton wouldn't have been able to convince her otherwise if he tried.

• How were Lucifer and the Horsemen defeated? I know Adam has reality altering powers, but both of these lost me. The THEM just confront the Horsemen with copies of their symbols and the Horsemen just disappear? Was it because Adam was siding with them and treating his friends as the true Horsemen instead of the actual four? And what about Lucifer? Considering he is Adam's father and his coming was treated as the equivalent of the end of the world how could Adam just handwave the whole thing?
  • Adam is an insanely powerful Reality Warper, and he doesn't know what the rules are, which mean they become whatever he thinks they are. The bit with Lucifer is a glorious example of this: he's told that His Father is coming to punish him, and he interpretes that in a way that makes sense to him ... so Mr Young arrives, and he's quite cross.

• This is entirely a matter of personal opinion. I know it continues the joke about Queen. And yes, Bohemian Rhapsody is an awesome song. But when I read that book, for that one scene, I substituted Bohemian Rhapsody with Bat Out of Hell and it was even better. I just wonder why it didn't occur to either Pratchett or Gaiman to use the song that had -- at least -- the obviously more appropriate title.
  • Because Bohemian Rhapsody has far more recognizable lyrics?

• According to the book, Anathema is sensible, so instead of protective amulets she carries a foot-long bread knife in her belt. But if she was really sensible, wouldn't she carry a weapon that's harder to injure yourself with (think about it, it's blade is a foot-long and it's just swinging around on her belt, she could easily accidently stab herself) and is easier to conceal (though you could make the argument that she wants people to know she's armed.)?
  • As I remember, she doesn't keep it in her belt normally, she keeps it in her handbag.
  • Maybe she made herself a scabbard for it?
  • Most bread knives don't have a point at the tip This is a typical example. It's actually pretty hard to injure yourself with a bread knife unless you are fairly careless when using it - because of the serrated edge, you have to apply a bit of pressure in conjunction with a slicing motion to actually cut. If you're going go carry a knife, it's probably the safest one (albeit not the most intimidating).
    • I think I've only come in contact with one bread knife that didn't have a pronged tip, and I've seen much older exampled of prong-tipped bread knives than I've seen on round-ended bread knives online. However, the prong-tipped bread knives were thin (but strong) and lightweight with extremely pointy serrations/scallops, which would provide a decent balance between maneuverability and damage ability. The prongs I've seen usually wouldn't go through a good pair of jeans from the angle where it could reach while tucked into a belt, unless you sat on it. The other was solid, unlikely to bend or break and good for a weapon that could bludgeon or do surface damage, and was the zweihander of kitchen knives. Either way, a bread knife is a decent example knife for someone who wants a bladed weapon that can scare off potential attackersm defend against attackers who aren't scared, and, most importantly, is legally available in Great Britain.
• I picked up on how the other Them are shown to relate to their respective Horsepeople, but I've never gotten how Wensleydale is supposed to correspond to Famine, unless it's a more metaphorical starved of imagination type thing. Have I missed something, or is that it?
  • I think it's mentioned that Wensleydale is very picky about his food and therefore doesn't eat a lot. I could be mistaken, though. Process of elimination?
  • Wensleydale is the practical, smart, bookish and neat guy of the foursome, which does have some similarity to Famine's persona as the head of a company that promotes his cause through mainly scientific means.

1. ↑ and not that I'm not waiting for someone to say the book sounds "gay" as a derogatory term so I can use that line