#maybe an Aziraphale will show up

[ineffablerainstorm]

When you’re in London and don’t know what to do with yourself for the evening: just go sit on the bench!

[girlbloggercrowley]

i am a believer in the s3 1941 kiss

[victorluvsalice]

Merry Christmas Ace!

@ace-of-tales You asked for Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens visiting Secundus, as you thought Aziraphale in particular would like all the inventions there...and then I mentioned him getting a taste of the March Hare's tarts, and you were like "YES THAT." XD So here that is! Hope you like!

--

“Oh, these – these are absolutely amazing! Crowley, you have to try some!”

Alice did her best to stifle a laugh as she watched one half of the newest pair at the tea table go to absolute town on the March Hare’s tarts. “I take it you’re pleased with the vittles on offer?” she commented, leaning on her elbow.

“I think it’s safe to say this is now his favorite part of our trip here,” Crowley replied, grinning at his partner over an untouched cup of tea. “Always been a bit weak for good food, haven’t you?”

Aziraphale shot him a playfully-scolding look. “It’s your fault,” he declared once his mouth was empty. “You’re the one who introduced me to it.”

“Yessss,” Crowley said, smirking back. “Best bit of temptation I ever did.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “I won’t argue with that.” He grinned over at the March Hare. “Genuinely, these are absolutely fantastic. I thought Jane Austen’s tarts were delectable, but these – ! Oh, you can simply taste the love.”

“I make every batch with as much love – and strawberries – as I can fit in them,” March said, beaming back and bouncing in his chair. “Delighted to hear they pass muster! Though not mustard. That’d be horrible.”

“It would,” Victor agreed with a little laugh.

“Oh, indeed – but instead, now you can tell everyone who comes by that your tarts are truly heavenly,” Richard added, giving March a nudge and a theatrical wink.

“Oh, I’m sure they’re much better than that,” Crowley said, picking up a tart and examining it. “You lot are a lot more – creative than Heaven or Hell. Part of the reason Aziraphale and I were so keen on sticking around on Earth – that and avoiding all the nonsense Upstairs and Down. Humans make some fascinating things, when they put their minds to it.”

“I’m a hare,” March pointed out, pulling up his ears for emphasis.

“I think he’s using ‘human’ to mean sapient creatures as a whole,” Alice said, patting his head. “After all, it doesn’t sound like they have anything like you, Dormy, or Cheshire where they come from.”

“Not that I’ve seen – our world is quite sadly lacking in intelligent animals with stupendous baking skills,” Aziraphale confirmed. “I don’t believe we have anyone quite like your ‘Touched’ either, which is a shame. Some of the inventions you have around here are fantastic – that clock tower, for instance, with the giant bird coming out of it on the hour. Most amusing!”

“Oh, Cuckoo Ben? That nearly scared the life out of me when I first heard it go off,” Victor admitted, grinning. “But it is funny, once you get used to it.”

“Me, I liked that motorized bicycle we saw the other day,” Crowley said, with a sharp-toothed grin. “The one that fellow was bragging could outrun any horse. Reminded me of the Bentley, the way he was zipping around. I could something like that while we’re in the city. Get us places a lot faster than that carriage we rented.”

“I’m – I’m rather content with the speed at which our horses move,” Aziraphale said, grinning nervously. “And that demonstration did end with the inventor going straight into a wall. I had to, ah, assist slightly in making sure he didn’t end up in the morgue.”

“I noticed – though I don’t know if you really had to,” Crowley pointed out. “Based on what we’ve heard, these folks could have just shocked him back again.” He frowned, turning his tart over in his hands. “Which – does feel like it should be causing more of a fuss on both our ends. Hell doesn’t like a sinner escaping.”

“And Heaven would be rather cross about the population going down,” Aziraphale agreed. “But I don’t know much about the local theology.”

“We’re still trying to figure that out ourselves,” Richard told them. “The recently undeceased don’t tend to remember much about their time on the other side. What little we’ve gotten out of them makes it sound like everybody gets chucked into a waiting room first.”

“Mmm – meaning the local versions of Heaven and Hell might have already compensated for our propensity for bring people back to life by not letting anyone in until they’re sure they’re dead,” Alice added.

“Maybe,” Crowley shrugged, and took an experimental bite of tart. “Not like I’m going to – oh.”

He stopped, blinking behind his sunglasses. “Oh wow,” he continued, sounding lightly stunned. “This is good.”

“What did I tell you?” Aziraphale chuckled. “Congratulations Mr. Hare – you’ve won over the agents of both Heaven and Hell with your cookery.”

“Excellent – though it does feel like those should cancel each other out,” March noted, rubbing his chin. “Guess we won’t know until I die, though! And get past the waiting room.”

“Which hopefully won’t be for a long, long time,” Alice said, patting his head. “Anyway – is there anything else you two wanted to see while you’re visiting?

“Well...” Aziraphale grinned. “I did hear something about a restaurant where the food literally rains down from the sky...”

[charcubed]

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE YOU & I a Good Omens season 2 playlist

Quiet, gentle, romantic, and a little bit devastating – roughly in story order. For being lonely together across 6,000 years and aching for the freedom to love.

On Spotify Here

(Previous editions: Soft To Be Strong – Good Omens season 1 | Crowley/Aziraphale upbeat song dump)

[bumblingbabooshka]

If Uriel said I think too much I'd get a lobotomy

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

so i'm writing an 8th year fic and h&d are taking a muggle studies class together in which they read one of shakespeare's plays, and i'm trying to write a final project (for which they are partners) but like. hogwarts academics don't seem all that uhhhhh rigorous to me (like we see the students complaining about having to write a foot of parchment which is essentially ONE PAGE HANDWRITTEN) and i'm a little worried that my assignment is too rigorous.

it involves a lot of like. thinking analytically and using your imagination wrt the motivations of people unlike yourself, and that's not rlly something they do much at hogwarts as far as i can see. BUT it is muggle studies, and like. they could definitely all use some practice at those skills, following the recent implosion of their society.

[idliketobeatree]

to the tune of queen's you're my best friend: oooh you make me sick

[eugeniedanglars]

some of you need to learn to be less personally offended by writers saying “canon is just the things that explicitly happen in the show/book/movie”

[friendlyhostile]

cant get the thought of aziraphale having a 'younger' or 'more time appropriate' human form out of my head.

just imagine our angel looking and being dressed like an early 2000s teen, or even a 1980s young adult. you cant tell me that, with how much aziraphale reads, he wouldnt want to try and experience as much as what is described in those books as possible.

clubbing? frat parties? college? highschool? going on stupid adventures with other teens? the drama of being a teenager/young adult in school would absolutely draw him in

i dont think he used wouldve used that form a lot, but he used it enough times for it to be slightly broken in and for him to slip into a different mindset when wearing it.

this also brings me to where my brain goes everytime i think of this. and that is:

what if azi, experiencing the joys of young adulthood, trying to learn about it and getting fully into it with other people in hopes of trying new things and influencing them to choose fun for the sake of it bringing joy and goodness, ran into our beloved beatles haircut crowley in the 80s while at a bar?

this has been floating in my head for about a week and a half now. the beloveds being in different, but similar, bodily forms. i can imagine crowley having one as well.

im rotating this in my mind like a rotisserie chicken btw

[kits-ships]

told myself that i dont care for any of the goo/d ome/ns theories out there but for some reason my brain just went

[snakeeyesandangelfeathers]

Soo, could Maggie be a demon?

Still can't get over that one scene where her wrong spelling is literally Pointed out.

You know. By Aziraphale. In the first scene post-prologue.

It is overshadowed heavily by this scene coming in right after the highly important pre-fall!Crowley bit, meaning the viewer is still distracted by it as to disregard this small piece of info.

But. You know that rule 'if a gun appears on screen, it will at some point fire'? Shows don't tend to use their limited and very expensive screentime to throw in random stuff?

Might be just a joke thrown in by Neil to confuse us, in which case, hi sir, good job *waves*. However, if you look at all we know about Maggie from the demon-theory view, there's a few more bits a pieces that seem to fit?

Aziraphale's miracle does not work on her - the most obvious one. Honestly dismissed it on the first few rewatches as 'I guess it's just the gae girl power of Spirit', however. I guess an angel would not be able to miracle-hypnotize a demon either?

The record shop originally used to be 'in a corner of Aziraphale's bookshop.' - which would mean she has already been 'invited in' and can walk into the store, unlike all the other demons.

Not that sort of a teenager - maybe she is just a human who was never a party girl. Maybe she's a demon who had a completely different sort of childhood and teenagehood experience?

'I had brothers.' - maybe just a normal fam? or maybe other demons or angels could be the 'brothers' she is referring to?

'I've spent my life being scared of things, I'm done being scared.' - may be just a shy girl living an antsy life, scared of making a move on the girl she fancies? Or. Might be a demon, hiding on Earth all this time, trying to live a life away from Hell and Heaven and choosing sides, just like Crowley. Having had enough of living her life in fear, just wanting to be herself, express her love for her crush freely, not having to spend every second worrying someone might come get her, now finally ready to face the other demons?

Anyway. Might have just a crazy theory here. Might be something more. We'll see in s03, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[altruistic-meme]

ok i was going to put this in the tags but the more i thought about it, the more i wanted to say so i'm just going to add it as a reblog <3

op you are soooo right with this, and some more: he does the same thing (or something very similar, at least) with Gabriel!

in episode 5 when Crowley brings him hot chocolate, Gabriel - as Jim, who doesn't have any memories of Heaven or it's teachings - says "Thank you. You're really nice." to which Crowley replies "Don't thank me. And I'm not. Oh, nobody would believe you anyway."

he denies it, and unlike with Mrs. Sandwich he doesn't say thank you or anything, but it's said very softly. denying it is more like habit than a negative reaction. he doesn't like Gabriel, and i have no doubt that he would've been much more reactive had it been The Supreme Archangel Gabriel saying it to him, but he knows that that Gabriel is far from who he is talking to. "Jim" is much more human than angel right now, and his ideas of morality and good/bad are very basic but still more nuanced than Heaven's.

Crowley knows that Gabriel-as-Jim calling him nice is not the same as Archangel-Gabriel saying it, and he doesn't really mind it as much.

crowley visibly cringes and rejects aziraphale when aziraphale calls him good, calls him nice. he doesn’t want to be considered good or nice by (what he thinks is) aziraphale’s (heaven’s) definition of good or nice. not just bc he’s scared of hell’s retribution, but because he knows heaven’s definition of good and nice is wrong, is black and white.

when mrs sandwich calls him good, he doesn’t cringe. his rejection of “i’m not, actually,” is half-assed and cheeky at best, is his automatic response.

but then he says “thank you.”

crowley appreciates being called good by a human. he knows that humanity’s definition of good is nuanced and complicated. when a human calls him good, he sees it for what it is–a genuine compliment to his character and his actions, but not a divine declaration about his being as a whole. he reveres the morals of humanity more than he’s ever revered the morals of heaven and hell.

[actual-changeling]

So, I was rewatching the kiss scene frame-by-frame, as one does, and I realized something. First I thought, well, Alex, you probably saw that wrong, let’s keep going. A minute later, however, I was confronted with the reality of no, not mistaken. 

Maybe I am late to the party and everyone has already seen it and knows about it, but in case there are people that haven’t: Aziraphale not only puts his hand on Crowley’s back, he puts his left one on his waist BEFORE that.

Not just that, he slides it up and also uses it as leverage to pull Crowley closer. I could go through those few seconds one frame at a time, but that would take forever, so I will give you the highlights in chronological order.

His hands flutter around at first and don’t settle anywhere, which is actually really useful since it shows us what the angle for that looks like.

Now, the next time his left hand moves up, look at the progression. It does not go down the same way as before. Instead, it moves inward and against Crowley’s waist. And it STAYS THERE right up until he moves both of his hands away.

Look at the angle!!!! Look at how it moves INWARD and towards Crowley instead of straight down like before.

Still moving towards Crowley with a slight downwards drift because he is aiming for his waist.

Now it is too low for us to see but I think it is very obvious where his hand has settled. Maybe I am going insane after only thinking about this show for almost a month straight. Maybe not. Call me crazy but the angle here is DIFFERENT. The second one very much looks like he is holding onto Crowley.

Aziraphale kisses back. Fully kisses back. Somehow, that wasn’t enough for Michael Sheen, no, he had to fully commit to it and *close his eyes* when he reciprocates, too. Look at this!!! The way his eyes flutter shut when Crowley first grabs him, then open, and then CLOSE AGAIN when he starts holding him in return. Kissing back with his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around him. The last picture is right before he moves his hand to his waist/the frame after the camera angle changes.

Anyone else losing it right now? No? Just me? That’s fine, although I most definitely am not. Fine, that is. Michael Sheen I’m sending you my fucking therapy bills.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

SFX Magazine Issue 372 - Designing Good Omens ❤ 😊

PRODUCTION DESIGNER MICHAEL RALPH REVEALS HOW THE SHOW’S CENTREPIECE SET, WHICKBER STREET, WAS GIVEN A DEVILISHLY CLEVER UPGRADE FOR THE SECOND SEASON

WORDS: DAVE GOLDER

Invisible Columns And Thin Walls “The new studio is Pyramid Studios in Bathgate – it used to be a furniture warehouse. And unfortunately – or fortunately, because I accept these things as not challenges but gifts – right down the middle of that studio are a series of upright columns. But you’ll never spot them on screen. I had to build them in and integrate them into the walls and still get the streets between them. And it worked.

“There’s all sorts of cheeky design values to those sets. Normally a set like this is double-skin. In other words, you do an interior wall and an exterior wall, with an airspace in between. But really, the only time a viewer notices that there’s that width is at the doors and the windows. So I cheated all that. I ended up with single walls everywhere. So the exterior wall is the interior wall, just painted. All I did was make the sash windows and entrances wider to give it some depth as you walked in.”

GOOD OMENS HAD A CHANGE of location for its second season, but hopefully you didn’t notice. Because Whickber Street in Soho upped sticks from an airfield in Hertfordshire to a furniture warehouse in Bathgate, Edinburgh. It’s the kind of nonsensical geographical shenanigans that could only make sense in the crazy world of film and TV, and production designer Michael Ralph was the man in charge of rebuilding and expanding the show’s vast central set. “I wish we could have built more in season one than we did,” says Ralph, whose previous work has included Primeval and Dickensian. “We built the ground floor of everything and the facades of all the shops. But we didn’t build anything higher than that, because we were out on an airfield in a very, very difficult terrain and weather conditions, so we really couldn’t go much higher. Visual effects created the upper levels.”

But with season two the set has gone to a whole other level… literally. “What happened was that the rest of the street became integrated into the series’s storyline,” explains Ralph. “So we needed a record shop, we needed a coffee shop that actually had an inside, we needed a magic shop, we needed the pub. To introduce those meant we had to change the street with a layout that works from a storylines point of view. In other words, things like someone standing at the counter in the record shop had to be able to eyeball somebody standing at the counter in the coffee shop. They had to be able to eyeball Aziraphale sitting in his office in the window of the bookshop. But the rest of it was a pleasure to do inside, because we could expand it and I could go up two storeys.”

For most of the set, which is around 80 metres long and 60 metres wide, the two storeys only applied to the shop frontages, but in the case of Aziraphale’s bookshop, it allowed Ralph to build the mezzanine level for real this time. According to Ralph it became one of the cast and crews’ favourite places to hang out during down time.

But while AZ Fell & Co has grown in height, it actually has a slightly smaller footprint because of the logistics of adapting it to the new studio.

“Everybody swore to me that no one would notice,” says Ralph wryly. “I walked onto it and instinctively knew there was a difference immediately, and they hated me for that. I have this innate sense about spatial awareness and an eye like a spirit level.

“It’s not a lot, though – I think we’ve lost maybe two and a half feet on the front wall internally. I think that there’s a couple of other smaller areas, but only I’d notice. So I can be really annoying to my guys, but only on those levels. Not on any other. They actually quite like me…”

Populating The Bookshop “The props in the new bookshop set were a flawless reproduction from the set decorator Bronwyn Franklin [who is also Ralph’s wife]. It was really the worst-case scenario after season one. She works off the concept art that I produce, but what she does is she adds so much more to the character of the set. She doesn’t buy anything she doesn’t love, or doesn’t fit the character.

“But the things she put a lot of work into finding for season one, they were pretty much one-offs. When we burnt the set down in the sixth episode, we lost a lot of props, many of which had been spotted and appreciated by the fans. So Bronwyn had to discover a new set decorating technique: forensic buying.

“She found it all – duplicates and replicas. It took ages. In that respect, the Covid delay was very helpful for Bron. There’s 7,000 books in there and there’s not one fake book. That’s mainly because… it’s a weird thing to say, but we wanted it to smell and feel like a bookshop to everybody that was in it, all the time.

“It affects everybody subliminally; it affects everybody’s performance – actors and crew – it raises the bar 15 to 20%. And the detail, you know… We love a lot of detail.”

(look at the description under this, they called him 'Azi' hehehehe :D <3)

Aziraphale’s Inspirational Correspondence “There’s not one single scrap of paper on Aziraphale’s desk that isn’t written specifically for Aziraphale. Every single piece is not just fodder that’s been shoved there, it has a purpose; it’s a letter of thanks, or an enquiry about a book or something.

“Michael Sheen is so submerged in his character he would get lost sitting at his own desk, reading his own correspondence between takes. I believe wholeheartedly that if you put that much care into every single piece of detail, on that desk and in that room, that everybody feels it, including the crew, and then they give that set the same respect it deserves.

“They also lift their game because they believe that they’re doing something of so much care and value. Really, it’s a domino effect of passion and care for what you’re producing.”

Alternative Music “My daughter Mickey is lead graphic designer [two of Ralph’s sons worked on the series too, one as a concept artist, the other in props]. They’re the ones that produced all of that handwritten work on the desk. She’s the one that took on the record shop and made up 80 band names so that we didn’t have to get copyright clearance from real bands. Then she produced records and sleeves that spanned 50, 60 years of their recordings, and all of the graphics on the walls.

“I remember Michael and Neil [Gaiman] getting lost following one band’s history on the wall, looking at their posters and albums desperately trying to find out whether they survived that emo period.”

It’s A Kind Of Magic One of the new shops in Whickber Street for season two was Will Goldstone’s Magic Shop, which is full of as many Easter eggs as off-the-shelf conjuring tricks, including a Matt Smith Doctor Who-style fez and a toy orang-utan that’s a nod to Discworld’s The Librarian. Ralph says that while the series is full of references to Gaiman, Pratchett and Doctor Who, Michael Sheen never complained about a lack of Masters Of Sex in-jokes. “He’d be the last person to make that sort of comment!”

Ralph also reveals that the magic shop counter was another one of his wife’s purchases, bought at a Glasgow reclamation yard.

The Anansi Boys Connection Ralph reveals that Good Omens season two used the state-of-the-art special effects tech Volume (famous for its use in The Mandalorian to create virtual backdrops) for just one sequence, but he will be using it extensively elsewhere on another Gaiman TV series being made for Prime Video.

“We used Volume on the opening sequence to create the creation of the universe. I was designing Anansi Boys in duality with this project, which seems an outrageously suicidal thing to do. But it was fantastic and Anansi Boys was all on Volume. So I designed for Volume on one show and not Volume on the other. The complexities and the psychology of both is different.”

[neil-gaiman]

Hi, Neil

Just quick reminder, in case you've forgotten: TV shows are supposed to save us from hurtful reality, and S2 had a genre hurt/no comfort.

I really hope S3, if it ever happens (or a book maybe?), will take away all no-s, and transform them into yes-s. I refuse to embrace cruel reality of the end of Ep6. I even wrote a fix-it on Ao3.

Your heartbroken, saddened, crying ���� fan,

Lots of love and respect though, always,

Helen

I'm sorry. I thought that anyone who had seen Crowley and Aziraphale split up in the Bandstand and again on the Soho street, and the bookshop burn down and Aziraphale discorporate, in Season 1, had already experienced bad things happening to characters they love, especially at the end of act 2.

And no, I didn't ever think that I was only making comfort viewing. I was making thinking and feeling viewing too.

I love that it's making people write fix-it-fictions. That's always the best response to art: making your own.