#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

[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”

[thedevilandhisbride]

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.

[dalliancekay]

Aziraphale, misogyny and the female character treatment

I don't know if anyone wrote a post about this but I see from time to time comments to this end - that Aziraphale is treated like the female leads in films often are, obviously especially romantic films. So I'm gonna try to point how I see this. I welcome further insights of course.

Say we take a basic premise of a romantic film: A girl is wooed by a bad boy for example. And she is a good girl, from a good, proper family and everything so she refuses his advances. This goes on through his various ploys to entertain and romance her, do things for her etc etc and frustrates us as the audience because we can see the bad boy is actually good, her family is oppressive and holding her back and that she (deep down) cares for him (if only she was brave enough to admit it to herself) and so we want her to open her eyes and say she is actually in love with him cos her life will be so much better should she (finally) give in and run away with him.

Familiar? Reasons Aziraphale is not her and the analogy does not fit (but that I so often see in metas and takes about her):

Aziraphale always knew her family is shit. Or at least longer than Crowley did. She was already anxious in Before the Beginning about what she thought Angel!Crowley could and could not say or do without getting into trouble.

She knows Crowley is good. She never doubted him. Whatever he says or does or pretends to do or must do for his job. Aziraphale knows he's inherently good and would always do good if he can.

She knows she's in love - I mean we can argue about when each realised this and also when each realised the other loves them back just as fiercely, but they both know. And they both love. And they both long to be together. Aziraphale is not ashamed of her feelings nor hiding or suppressing them for fear they are wrong or immoral or other BS like that.

Aziraphale doesn't need to overcome her love for her family/employer and finally make the leap to be with Crowley. They simply can't leave their bosses without punishment. Neither of them. They live in a dictatorship with nowhere to go. And just because Crowley experienced both sides, doesn't give him some huge insight that Aziraphale completely lacks. Both places are awful. Their separation isn’t about fear of societal judgment (or Aziraphale's unwillingness to give up Heaven, being seen as good, being an angel - and to what end, to Fall? I really don't know what takes like this want from her, it would not work anyway), it’s about survival in a system that won’t let them be together.

Aziraphale doesn't want to change Crowley. She never did. She asked for Crowley to come to Heaven as an angel because that was THE ONLY option she had for them to be together in any capacity at that point. It was NOT an attempt to “fix” him—it was a desperate bid for a way they could be together at all.

One thing I don't see as much anymore is the call for Aziraphale to change. Obviously she's pretty but she would be prettier if she lost those century old clothes maybe and started listening to something made after 1950? Be more cool to match Crowley? Less stuffy?

These kind of film premises are already pointless, offensive and make me roll my eyes, but to stick them all over Aziraphale and huff cos she doesn't do what the clever sexy man in dark clothes and sunglasses says she should - well that makes me angry.

And so do takes and mischaracterisations that ignore Aziraphale as silly, her worries as pointless, sometimes excessive - maybe she's just hysterical, you know? The one time she shows more emotion, in F15, she is so often completely ignored in her obvious distress just because Crowley is trying to confess his love at the same time and seemingly 'not getting through,' because Aziraphale is not reacting the way everyone expects. So many takes that always assume Crowley is right, no matter what. Even when he calls Aziraphale an idiot. If Crowley says that, it must be true. No matter that the book spells out in Terry's voice that the angel is extremely clever.

Aziraphale’s charm lies in her kindness, her love for books and knowledge, her whimsy, and her quiet courage. These qualities don’t make her naive—they make her resilient. She often hides how she truly feels, hides her grief, her pain, her true desires, hides what she really thinks; always always to protect herself and her beloved. She is often forced to say stuff she doesn't mean. Again. To keep the one she loves and their fragile relationship safe. But where people seem to catch on with that on Crowley's side, they don't with Aziraphale. She is fierce when pushed and will defend the defenceless (humans) and the ones she loves (Crowley) to her last breath (whether she needs to breathe is irrelevant right now okay).

She loves her bookshop. She built this home, full of knowledge for herself and her demon and you can take this HC from my cold hands. That she was forced to leave it, only emphasises how little choice she had in Final 15. Good Omens has two main, equal characters; who are both gorgeous and complex and deep and neither is right or wrong or in need of saving or learning some huge lesson to get to their goal and be together. What needs to change is the world, the system they live in. And they will change it.

Just look at her!! Anyway. I love her. P.S. Just to add, many, many (if not all) bad takes on Aziraphale are also bad takes on Crowley. They mischaracterise and misunderstand just how deeply and unconditionally he loves Aziraphale. How he adores her and understands and accepts her just as she is. He does not expect or want Aziraphale to change in any way. He knows why they are not together. And it's not Aziraphale's fault, it's because of circumstances, not because of her choices. Crowley would never ever want Aziraphale to suffer, he wouldn't expect her to come back from Heaven saying how sorry she is for what happened, how stupid and blind she was and how he was always right. That's just not going to happen. ------------------------------------------ @tenok I simply must highlight the awesomeness you put in hashtags!! EVERYBODY please read:

Thank you sm for this!!