#good omens rabbit hole

[phantomram-b00]

Fuck you pintrest- 😭😭 I hope you have a nice holiday

(Edit; wait I just realize I said the most aziraphale coded ever said nooo I’m proving I’m friend right everyday 🥹😭)

[0owhatsamsays]

Dark Horse - Good Omens

I am down the rabbit hole again.

Ever since I heard that phrase several times in s2, it bugs me. People keep saying "It's a common phrase". Yeah, I know. However, they repeat it several times, and there is an actual dark horse statuesque that Crowley leaves his glasses on.

I decided to look it up. Of course.

Besides the common meaning of the phrase - "someone who surprises you with some hidden quality", I didn't know exactly where this phrase derived from.

It comes from the book "The Young Duke" by Benjamin Disraeli.

The first thing that caught my eye here was the "Duke". So I searched the book. The second thing that caught my eye was that it was published by "Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley".

The subtitle of the book is "A moral tale, though gay".

I found out that the phrase is taken from Byron's Don Juan. But why?

There are several interpretations of the connotation the word gay had in the past. Quoting from an article that I read and to which I will add a link below if someone is interested in reading it, "(The world ‘gay’ did not carry its present connotation as relating to homosexuality, though an 1857 Punch cartoon reveals that two decades after The Young Duke it referred to prostitution). William Kuhn suggests, Disraeli associated ‘gaiety’ with cheerful disposition, although Kuhn finds ‘a hint of Byronic licentiousness in Disraeli’s quotation’ and speculates on his latent homoerotic fascinations with good-looking young men (104). In The Young Duke, Disraeli introduces not only episodes from his early adult life but also presents his passion for politics. He makes a satirical picture of the English aristocracy that indulges in a hedonistic lifestyle while avoiding its political responsibilities.")

Then I decided to check Disraeli, and forgive me, I am not from the UK and I didn't know, but it turns out he has been Prime Minister of the UK twice.

Also, he was the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, and Terry Pratchett is born in Beaconsfield.

Disraeli's sexual orientation has been questioned by others.

I read the article by William Kuhn that is cited above and this is what it says:

"Disraeli's previous biographers have noticed that there were some romantic irregularities in his past: he preferred old ladies to young women; he married late; he had a passion for male friendship. The standard explanation for this is that in those pre-Freudian days there was a Romantic cult of friendship and that love between men was sexually "innocent" (the underlying assumption being that sexual contact is "guilty"). Some of his earliest biographers (such as W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle) explained away Disraeli's odd history of affectionate relationships by saying it was due to the "oriental" part of his nature. By this they meant that he was Jewish and thus partly "foreign" and un-English. They were also hinting at a Victorian prejudice that sexual license, including same-sex contact, was more common in "the East" or what we would call the Middle East. Lord Blake, whose 1966 biography is still authoritative, hinted that Disraeli was a lot like Oscar Wilde, and left it there. Two more recent biographers (Sarah Bradford and Jane Ridley) have been more comfortable referring explicitly to the homoerotic element in Disraeli's personality, but neither has regarded it as important enough to give it more than a page or two."

Anyway, let's leave his sexual orientation aside and go back to the book.

The book plot: The protagonist of the novel, George Augustus Frederic, Duke of St James, is an orphan, who has inherited an enormous fortune. The young Duke becomes an unprincipled dandy who wastes much of his wealth on luxuries, debauchery, and gambling. He wears effeminate clothes and has adulterous affairs with women. Gradually, he becomes reformed by his honest guardian Mr Dacre, and his lovely daughter May, whom he eventually marries. May helps him realize that his privileged social position requires him an extraordinary sense of duty and commitment to society.

Basically, the story follows the Duke’s slow transformation, under the discreet influence of a beautiful and benevolent woman, from a self-indulgent, selfish dandy to a responsible aristocrat who takes part in the social and political life of his country.

So yeah, I don't think "dark horse" was just a used phrase. Nothing in GO is "JUST"

Link to article:

https://victorianweb.org/authors/disraeli/youngduke.html?fbclid=IwAR0fuLb1df0cow0xgwRoah5KegHArLf7-XCHsulME5q6oCWEoJBKWr7hNVw

[ezra-fell-and-co]

Aziraphale & Shostakovich

The moment in the record shop when Aziraphale said he was picking up a Shostakovich record I had So Many Thoughts.

The symphony he's listening to is Symphony No.5 in D Minor, Op. 47, composed in 1937 and premiered in Leningrad to a thirty+ minute long standing ovation. Prior to this piece, Dimitri S. spent many nights sleeping in the hallway outside of his apartment so that his family wouldn't see if the government police in charge of enforcing Stalin's brutal rule came for him in the middle of the night. His last pieces had been received harshly by critics and called unpatriotic, which was just about the worst thing a composer living during The Great Terror (1936-1938) could do. Those who were not loyal to the regime and explicitly portrayed it in their art were branded as traitors and sent to gulags or were straight up executed.

The San Francisco Symphony describes the 5th symphony as "the story of a fall from grace and redemption.". Shostakovitch has gone from being a golden example to being eyed as a traitor almost overnight, the 5th Symphony becoming his redemption back into good graces.

So basically Dimitri S. was a man with contrasting ideologies to the powers that be, so to say, who was living under the threat of death, torture, or excommunication from his homeland. Haha, so weird that Aziraphale would want to listen to his music specifically.

(If you've never listened to Symphony No. 5, I highly encourage you to go listen!)

To set the scene-

From The Houston Symphony's 2018 Fighting the Barbarian Artist article on Symph. 5:

"In January 1934, Dmitri Shostakovich scored one of the biggest triumphs of his career with the premiere of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, a work official critics hailed as the first great Soviet opera. Based on a nineteenth-century novella by Leskov, it follows the misadventures of Katerina, the illiterate wife of a well-to-do country merchant who is driven to murder in order to be with her handsome but unworthy lover, the laborer Sergei. By turns satirical and tragic, Lady Macbeth explored themes of oppression with a potent combination of sex, violence and some truly beautiful music that played to full houses for two years. Then on January 26, 1936, Stalin went to see it. Two days later, on page 3 of Pravda (“Truth”—the newspaper that continues to serve as the official mouthpiece of the Russian Communist Party to this day), Shostakovich found an anonymous review of Lady Macbeth headlined “Muddle Instead of Music.” One representative quote declared that the opera “tickles the perverted tastes of the bourgeoisie with its fidgety, screaming, neurotic music…”" ...

There is debate about if Stalin himself wrote the review to make a point, or if he just signed off on it being printed. It's also unclear if Shostakovitch was being targeted specifically, or just because of his notoriety to prove that no matter how big a name you are you're not safe if you don't fall in line, or if he was just being used as a pawn in the ongoing power struggles of the day.

Either way, he was very aware that he was in danger. A friend of Stalin's was vanished when he wrote to Stalin in defense of Shostakovitch's work after the fateful review.

The 5th was a result of Dimitri knowing he needed to get back into good graces, so he had to give them something that they wanted. Or at least something that sounded like what they wanted.

Symphony No. 5 is very sneaky in how it subverts the expectations and requirements of Stalin's Russia.

For one, it's form- a symphony is a very structured form and very Western, popularized by Beethoven and co. It's also instrumental, which allowed Shostakovitch to hide a lot of references, subversions, and musical sarcasm/critiques without the untrained critics and government officials being any the wiser.

D minor, the main tonality of the symphony, has been described by various music theorists about what kind of emotional experience it portrays. John Mattheson in 1713 described it as "Serious, Pious, Ruminating. Melancholy, feminine, brooding worries, contemplation of negativity."

However, for our purposes, Aziraphale is listening to the fourth movement, which is also the most political. (More excellent write ups about the entire work can be read here, here, here, and here. There is a PBS documentary about it here.) ((It also shifts to an ironic D Major as one point, which Mattheson describes as "Triumphant, Victorious War-Cries. Screaming hallelujah’s, rejoicing in conquering obstacles. War marches, holiday songs, invitations to join the winning team."))

The fourth movement is bombastic, letting the brass section loose right at the start. The main theme in this section is from an unpublished song that Shostakovitch had written as a setting for a Pushkin poem. The piece as a whole and specifically this movement is a direct critique of Stalin himself.

The poem?

With sleepy brush the barbarian artist The master’s painting blackens; And thoughtlessly his wicked drawing Over it he is daubing. But in years the foreign colors Peal off, an aged layer: The work of genius is ‘gain before us, With former beauty out it comes. Thus my failings vanish too From my wearied soul, And again within it visions rise, Of my early purer days.

Which I think speaks for itself in what kind of mentality Aziraphale might have listening to the symphony.

I'm not sure which recording he listens to, but in the record shop we are shown that it's a record with a blue label on the disk. There are several recordings that have blue labels including the 1972 Moscow Philharmonic with Kiril Kondrashin and the 1989 Scottish National Orchestra with Neeme Jarvi. Leonard Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic have a very famous recording as well.

But I think the most likely is the 1962 Vienna Philharmonic with Constantin Silvestri. Why? Well, here's the record:

[zeldahime]

I did math on David Tennant's hands (so you don't have to)

EDITED WITH MORE ACCURATE PHONE INFORMATION AND A DIFFERENT CONCLUSION.

I swear all I wanted to know was what kind of phone Crowley has in season 1.

See, I have an iPhone, and one of my gigs shares a building with an Apple Store. I was taking a screenshot of his contact picture for Aziraphale, and noticed that the camera on the back of his phone is laid out horizontal. Most iPhones aren't! So, I fell into this rabbit hole: what phone does Anthony J. Crowley have?

(The bit where you can see the cameras, immediately before the cool heart-in-flames picture he has for Aziraphale's contact, is basically impossible to screenshot; the phone moves very fast and reflects the environment. But his contact photo for his angel is so neat and I love it ❤️‍🔥)

I figured out very quickly the only iPhone with that camera layout is the iPhone SE series, but there have been only three generations: 2016, 2020, and 2023. Season 1 of Good Omens was released in 2019. The iPhone SE first generation was also Apple's "budget" phone. It just didn't make sense to me that Crowley would have an old budget phone, but the new SE wasn't commercially available so it also didn't make sense to me that the prop department could have given him a new phone.

The main visual differences between gen 1 and gen 2 are threefold: gen 1 didn't come in black; gen 2 has slightly more beveling; and they are different sizes. The first two visual differences are basically meaningless, because it's trivial for a props department to turn a white phone black and the beveling difference only is obvious in comparison. So I had to figure out what size Crowley's phone was.

We see Crowley's phone in s1e4 and s1e5, but the only thing in its environment we can really measure to get an accurate read on its size is... Well. David Tennant.

More specifically, we get a fairly good shot of the phone in his hands, held level with the screen, and thumb easily available to use as a reference.

But if anyone has done David Tennant Hand Math before, they weren't on page 1 of Google and therefore may as well not exist. So I took up this quest myself.

So first, I had to find a picture of David Tennant holding something of known dimensions. I am, first and foremost, a Doctor Who nerd. There's only one answer to that.

Another Doctor Who nerd on the internet went and figured out 10th Doctor's sonic screwdriver was about 160 mm and the head of the sonic from tip to the joint with the middle section was about 40 mm.

I then got out my actual goddamn fabric tape and measured this man's fingers on my computer screen. After converting the measurements back to scale, first to second knuckle on his middle finger was 54.55 mm.

Then to figure out how long his thumb is, I needed a photo of his hands. This one is courtesy of the GO Reference Server:

His thumb came out to being approximately 68mm long. (My thumb came out to 55mm long. Not relevant, I just got curious while I was doing all this measuring.)

Finally, the data necessary to the main event: the goddamn phone.

Using the thumb as a reference, the phone came out to 136mm in length.

The iPhone SE Gen 1 was 123.8 mm long; the Gen 2 was 138.4 mm long.

Given that I rounded quite a bit during my calculations to keep things at 2 digits or less, I'm very comfortable saying: Crowley had an iPhone SE (second generation) during the events of Good Omens Season 1, a phone that would not become commercially available until April 2020.

I don't know how the props people got their hands a phone that wouldn't be released for a full year and change after filming, but they did that for us. It's a character note that practically nobody noticed, for a prop that gets barely a full minute of screentime. They could easily have used an iPhone XR or iPhone XS Max, which were the newest iPhones actually on the market at that time and which people would have recognized when the episode aired, but they knew Crowley would have the newest iPhone before anybody else had the newest iPhone and by Jove, he did.

After I posted this in Discord, @giveintomay pointed out that the iPhone SE second generation used the same build as the iPhones 7 and 8, which came out in 2016 and 2017 respectively. So, he most likely had an iPhone 8, which would have been the latest generation while filming (as generation 10 became commercially available over the summer and fall).

[emotinalsupportturtle]

Keep seeing clips of that dude reacting to Good Omens and he is now loosing it over how “ruthlessly sexy” David Tennant is saying “I know the answer is going to be a resounding no, but am I the only one who finds him sexy?” You got that right brother

[mandaliciously]

[sandinthepipes]

You know what I wanna see? I want Crowley and aziraphale to start bickering, and at some point like Crowley, to make fun of the other, miracles himself with white hair and tan clothes and does a mocking impression of aziraphale. Or reverse.

Oof, it’d be so good

[froggyliciouz]

Maybe im reaching but perhaps he’s hinting at a flashback to Crowleys fall… as well as…

…possibly Aziraphales fall?

[metatronhateblog]

The Opening Sequence Pt. 3 featuring Duck Duck what the Fuck.

So I actually decided to skip my post taking a look at the backs of the theater chairs because I feel I don't need to reiterate something that's been stated and pointed out before. And I've skipped ahead to this thing that has been plaguing @lady-of-the-puddle and myself for who knows how long. Fucking ducks.

I have a lot of thoughts, and a lot of things kinda go hand in hand so it's either a make one really fucking huge post...or I go little by little in multiple parts. I'm going to try to keep these short(ish) and in multiple parts.

So bear with me, and here we go.

By now you probably know I've been tearing the opening sequence apart piece by piece to see what it holds. Well today I'm talking about the duck with the accordion.

'Why?' you might ask, and in a very Neil fashion I wave around my pages of notes and say 'wait and see.'

If I'm remembering correctly, Peter Anderson mentioned that there's ducks with accordions in the opening sequence as a reference to a newspaper being read in the Dirty Donkey. Nothing too bizarre, not on the surface I guess?

Here is the first point in the season 2 sequence where we see the accordion duck. Our little motley crew is continuing their march into the theater and lo and behold, right there in sight is the duck. Did you catch it?

If you did, good for you, I'm proud. Can you please tell me the relevance? If you didn't, allow me to zoom in...

Here he is, hidding under the bleachers/seats/whatever you wanna call them, in what almost looks like a hidden room. Phantom of the Opera vibes much?

But then as our waltz towards the end times continues on, we see our beloved little feathered friend join in with the march, possibly to give a little serenade to trudge along to.

Don't see him again?

Right here up front, next to our mains, Aziraphale, Crowley (who appear to be leading this march towards the end), and Jimbriel and Beelzebub. Now I know there's this seemingly habit of more people/creatures, and objects joining in our march to death as the sequence goes on...but why would the duck be at the forefront? Unless maybe the characters most relevant in an episode appear at the front, hence Crowley, Aziraphale, Jimbriel, and Beelzebub. In episode 6 they're pretty damn integral to our story.

But what is up with this duck?

Now I know there's a duck of sorts in the season 1 opening sequence, and it's a strange looking thing if I ever did see one.

Here is a...completely different duck in the season 1 opening, though it appears to be covered by something...a cloth of sorts?

And he makes his appearances throughout the season 1 sequence. Sometimes he's there and sometimes he's not...in some cases there's more than one.

Hello there? Who are you and who is your little friend.

And the first thought that comes to mind is that line God says in season one when she's talking about how the ducks know when people are having a clandestine meeting, and how that would be relevant here I'm unsure. But what if the ducks are more important than we realize?

I've looked it up and found some mixed results that I don't even know how legit they are, but don't really see them as worth sharing because they don't seem to fit? So again if you have any idea behind the symbolism of ducks, please tell me. I'm desperate.

But there's more to this than I've said here.

Keep an eye out for my next update.

The Opening Sequence Pt 1 and Pt 2

Special mention Mount Zion

[princip1914]

Babe, you OK? You're replaying the final 15 again...

[d1sheclectic]

the fact that crowley and aziraphale have been speaking in modern day english since the garden of eden will never not be interesting to me. you could argue that they’re communicating in a tongue only comprehensible to celestial (?) beings which is thus being converted into english for the sake of simplicity (because we’re watching the show), yet there are a myriad of instances in which common english idioms, expressions, and euphemisms would have been lost in translation if they were not, in fact, just speaking english. The earliest recorded use of english i said to have been around the 5th to 7th century A.D, but even then, the language hadn’t yet developed into the language we know today. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

As I was doing research concerning exactly what it is we know about linguistics in good omens, I came across an old ask on Neil Gaiman’s account which answers several of my questions, but incites just as many.

It makes most sense as both of these possibilities. This confirms 2 things:

1) Lead Balloons were somehow apart of God’s ineffable plan???

2) There’s a language spoken by angels and demons, and we are most probably only hearing a translation.

The amount of possibilities this opens up is insane. It makes you wonder what nuances are being lost in translation. It makes you wonder whether they have their own slangs and expressions both in the up and in the down. It makes you wonder whether there are different dialects of this supposed language.

But it’s impossible that Crowley and Aziraphale are never speaking english. And if they by some slim possibility really aren’t, does that mean that there are cuss words in both heaven and hell which have equivalencies to the ones we have?

It’s funny to think about when Aziraphale and Crowley may have transitioned from speaking in their “native” languages to just plain old english, since there is no doubt in my mind they were doing so in the later millenias. Crowley was probably so conflicted as to how to speak to Jim in season 2. Funny to think about whether he’d often fumble with his languages because the situation was just so darn confusing. Does all of heaven and hell eventually just completely forget about the language they used to speak? What ae the logistics here?

[inneffable-dumbasses]

If I had a nickel for every time fell in love with a genderfluid, masc presenting fictional character who was head over heels in love with her best friend but completely oblivious to the fact that he loves them back, who was also really dark but a huge softie underneath, I’d have 2 nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice right?

[dyketennant]

i just found an old(ish) good omens fan site and it genuinely feels like i've uncovered an ancient artifact. it was started in 2006, says the last new article published was in 2013 but one section in the FAQ acknowledges the 2019 show. the fanart in the header is the book husbands. they got the idea based on the harry potter lexicon and planned it all on a livejournal called "st james park." this livejournal no longer exists and i feel like i just stumbled upon the ashes of the library of alexandria

[spider-avenger22]

Therapist: American Michael Sheen isn't real. He can't hurt you.

American Michael Sheen:

[fear-is-nameless]

To say I'm a new fan of 'Good Omens' is an understatement, I only really got into it about 6 days ago, binging both seasons.

5.5 of those days have been immense pain.

I'm still new to these characters, world, story, theories, world, etc.

But I understand.

[spacedoutwitch]

Got a bit sidetracked by exciting things happening with various interests, but it's here! Blizzard and Worshipped! Have an Icewarden!