#If a snake is red and black it’s crowley | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

seven-stars-in-his-palm · 21 days

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analyzing some images (for fun)

so i found this pair of promotion images for good omens season 1 on the good omens reference library server and it’s hooked me so so bad im having feelings about it. we’re analyzing them now. not really for meta purposes just fun to see the parallels and differences :)

everything under the cut !

unique traits

aziraphale:

1) his plank background. its older, its crisp, it smells like wood from the screen. mmmm

2) the pencil shavings at the bottom. he does a lot of writing honestly, so i like this. also adds a messy and cozy vibe he always seems to have in that shop…. i like that blessed shop fr

3) his SUSHI. little soy sauce drops near it too—just the right amount of deliberate mess. our first formal introduction to aziraphale in the present day and beginning the Tomfoolery just happens to have sushi... i watch that scene and i go “yeah, that sums up aziraphale i suppose” very nicely. (they dont have sushi Up There) (im literally never gonna forget that)

4) the ray of light shining on the scene. tiny thing, but a bit of the heaven is peeking through..it also sort of blurs the whole image but i think thats just me.

5) and we’ve saved the best for last: the big whopper. the nice and accurate prophecies of agnes nutter, witch. I LOVE THAT BOOK!!!!!!! i cant remember if that ring stain was there but if it isnt in the show on the actual book i’d assume thats to add that ‘thy cocoa doth grow cold’ thing. ALSO. you know what’s being used as a bookmark in the pages?? a check for the ritz. he bookmarked their one chance for living . with a ritz check . MMMMMM. my GOD. that means so much to me even if i cant convey it in words. he KEEPS THE CHECKS 😭😭😭😭😭😭

crowley:

1) let me get my favorite out of the way. crowley’s glasses have fire in their reflection. we’ll talk about the glasses themselves later but the REFLECTION IN THEM. fucking FIRE, BOOKSHOP fire, PAIN, SRIVING THROUGH THE M-25, HELL, I DONT KNOWIM HAVING FEELINGS!!! i do believe this is a bookshop fire reference though, the flames feel too Familiar. the lengths people will go to to attack others 🤧

2) the leather seat background!!!!!!! probably meant to look similar to the bentley’s seats but i cant recall their texture, exactly. maybe just meant to convey modernness—unsure. still, its there <3

3) the tiny little crisp plant </3 its trying his damned best to stay perfect. it might a specific plant that means something, but i cant tell at thsi angle, so i’ll assume its a mini version of the ficus he keeps in the flat. its so SMALL and sitting in ANOTHER POT i CANT

4) the snake slithering!! black and red (in this image it looks orange lol) bellied scales!!!! slithering there, chilling, being crowley, showing hints. love it

5) QUEEN RECORD!!!!! TRYING TO OVERRIDE IT WITH TCHAIKOVSKY!!!!!! the tape over it does a reminisence to crowley’s handwriting, but in a clean ‘this made made to be a font’ way. not exactly just yet. ive become a fan of tchaikovsky recently. amazing darling wonderful crowley, trying to push the rock up the hill for eternity 😞

6) HIS LITTLE DEMON KEY THING. HOLDING A TINY LITTLE BENTLEY CAR KEY OHHH. thats how he doesnt lose the tiny key despite probably not needing one of those. and he CHOSE that intentionally probably. little wings and red circle….URGHHHHHHH

similarities

mmmmm now here’s the good shit. similarities! i’ll bullet point most of them but ohhhhh. ohhhh these. i’ll go from top to bottom as best i can….

1) one of their shoes, obviously. crowley has them iconic snakeskin shoes while aziraphale has his old loafers like the old loafer he is /pos

2) chateauneuf de pape wine bottle labels! (crowley’s is under his glasses, aziraphale’s is next to his shoe). oh my fucking god theyre MATCHING. the labels are old, battered, of course labeling the drink’s age, but mmmmm its these tiny details that get me going….

3) their respective drinks in their mugs—crowley’s a black mug coffee (or what looks to be coffee) and aziraphale’s angel mug tea (or what looks to be tea). i think about that mug sometimes. where did he get that from?? mystery for the ages….

4) their glasses, of course. crowley’s iconic sunglasses and aziraphale’s reading spectacles. i cant really tell the reflections in this pair, but if its supposed to be fucking fire, im done with this. im giving up forever

5) their own watches! aziraphale’s is visibily older while crowley’s is visibly modern, but they function just the same. also, crowley’s is set to 2:56:59 (presumably PM), which is around the time we see when crowley starts checking his watch at warlock’s birthday party. its almost time for disaster to strike!! 😃

6) and finally….their ties!! they have their own ties!!! or more accurately, neck accessories, but i digress. i mesn i assume its crowley’s neck tie, because the fabric looks… different. either way, crowley’s neck thingie is very whispy and aziraphale has his funky little bowtie i love so much,,,

okay thats it. there’s no canonical implications, any fantheories, none of the sort. just saw a pair of images and my mind went GOD DAMN!!!!!! theyre very important to me. i need to look at more promo material 😔

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable spouses #dont have an analyzing tag so. this is it for now

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lonicera-caprifolium · 8 months

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Body-swap theory!!

okay, just putting this all together for ease of access, since it's been spread out across several posts now--

The day after it aired I watched the ending like actually 30 times and I became fully 99.999999% certain they switched places. I was initially thinking during the kiss, cuz of how the camera angle changes, but after watching an additional 20 times a few days later, I'm personally leaning much more towards them stopping time in the instance after "no nightingales".

Before the kiss, Aziraphale is saying "nice" things about the Metatron, but his face and voice keep switching to broadcasting distress, and they make it a point to show in ep 1 that Crowley can read him just from tone of voice

As they're pulling away after the kiss, they lock eyes and "Aziraphale's" expression shifts in the teeniest tiniest way, like a confirmation glance, before they shift back (and Michael Sheen is a master, so no chance it's not on purpose)

---(Like really, go back and watch how Aziraphale's expression shifts literally *a second* before "I forgive you" cuz the change is SO minute, but entirely different emotionally.)

Also the way he moves his jaw right after he pulls his hand away from his lips, is a bit from MS's Crowley (you can see it in the very last two seconds of this vid- link)

Aziraphale's hands -stay by his sides- after that, he doesn't clasp them at all, and it's particularly noticeable while he's walking to the elevator with Metatron. The way he walks is very stiff and precise, similar to after the swap in S1.

We don't see the underside of Crowley's jacket collar after the kiss, at any point (it is for sure red at the beginning of the ep, you can see it right before he changes in Heaven)

The Bentley drives away SLOWLY, which is how Aziraphale drives, and we're specifically shown that it only plays other music for Aziraphale

the seats in the Bentley are black as it drives away. They're usually brown, and the only other time they're shown to be black is when Aziraphale drives (@picturesque-about-it broke down the times so you can see-link)

---extra pic for anyone saying it's "cuz Aziraphale is lighter"-- the seats are still brown behind Crowley when he wears white

there's people wearing yellow in -every- part of the scene showing the Bentley both before and while it drives away! (link for pics/credit)

Aziraphale's smile in the elevator looks more like MS's Crowley. It's very similar to the trial during S1, but also (link)

This also explains why they're on opposite sides than they're usually shown while the end credits roll

Extra points--

many good points made by other folks here, about cues and snakes in beehives and swap motifs throughout the season-- link

The clock! Someone mentioned how the scene is so quiet you can hear it ticking, so I watched the ending a further 50 times to double check----I need to preface this by stating, I don't think this is a working clock, mainly cuz the hands aren't 100% where they should be between the minutes and the hours, like -a person- moved them to that time manually

When they're talking, the clock is at approximately 9:25 (?, again the hour hand isn't precisely set), then they walk across the room, and kiss, and immediately after that the clock is set about 15-ish minutes later (link to timestamps)

thanks to these bts shots, we can see that the clock on the opposite side of the room registers the SAME time difference before and after the kiss (link)

the first time Aziraphale looks "towards the window", I'm petty sure he actually looks further back towards the clock, *focuses on it* as Metatron walks up to him, and then spends the ENTIRE REST OF THE EXCHANGE blocking the Metatron's view of the clock

we're shown earlier in the season that Crowley can localize his time-stopping to a certain extent, like when he stopped the doctor and the rest of the room kept going, so it is possible he only stopped everything -outside- of the bookshop

---I KNOW Neil said it's a continuity error, but he also fully said "No" about there being a season 2 just days before they announced it was already written and in production, so. Take him at his word if that's what you wanna do.

---also I DID go back and look it over, and the clock IS consistently specifically set the entire rest of the episode as far as I can see. From the shots when you have a clear view of the clock, the angels and demons enter the shop at around 6, Maggie and Nina leave at around 7, the Metatron comes in at 8-ish, Aziraphale comes back in at that approximately 9:25

(insight from someone who works in production- link)

the music right before the kiss scene is the same leitmotif (Life After Death) used when they originally started formulating the swap in season 1! (link)

the movie Stairway to Heaven (1946) is featured as a poster in both the opening credits and in Maggie's shop (link)

the climax of the film has one of the leads willing to "take the place" of the other in heaven

(they also used a time-stopping mechanic, and the chess book Gabriel tests gravity with also plays a key role in the film)

and one last mention, extra food for thought--- the season's focus on their trusting one another, their history of performing "death (and heaven/hell) defying" feats together, and how they always get the trick right when it truly counts the most

that's what I've got so far!

If I'm right, they're apart now, but are actually more together then ever, and I find that terribly exciting. (And if I'm wrong, that's okay too! I'm just here to have fun.)

I'm not particularly concerned with very specific reasoning (that's for season 3 to tell us!), but I do think this theory is extra fun cuz pretty much any of the others could be the "why" driving it.

I'm not trying to convince anyone, or put down any of the other theories, so if you're not feeling it, that's okay! I'm just sharing what clues I'm seeing, so you can check if you see them too. 💕

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens s2 spoilers #Good omens s2 body-swap theory #long post #a snake in a beehive but this time -properly- disguised #there's a lot of little things and possibilities that make sense too #but this is just the main points I can see from things that are actually shown or featured #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale #crowley

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cobragardens · 7 months

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The Colors of Crowley

Black is the color Crowley uses to cover himself, red is the color that represents Crowley to himself, and yellow is the color that represents Crowley to Aziraphale. What each color symbolizes and how it's used give us important information about Crowley (and to some degree Aziraphale) and about the ineffable relationship.

I feel kind of dumb writing this post because I'm sure it's glaringly obvious to everyone else, but there's this Metro UK article of all things (the Metro is owned by the hardcore rightwing Daily Mail, btw, so please don't link to it) that mentions the red stitching on Crowley's gloves in 1867, and it made conscious some details I had only subconsciously noted, so fwiw to anybody else, here are my notes on the colors associated with Crowley in Good Omens and their significance in the context of the way each one is used.

I don't think we need to cover black-as-evil in Western color symbology. [And yet here's a long-ass paragraph about it anyway! --Ed.] Light:dark::good:evil has been a thing with Christianity since before Christianity was even Judaism. The Israelites picked it up from the Zoroastrians way back before YHWH had subsumed El as 'God,' which may have been before they were Israelites as well; I mean it was a LONG time ago. Good Omens has been using black and white to represent Hell and Heaven, respectively, long before the show. In the UK, the book was published in paperback with a choice of black or white cover with an illustration of the contrasting character in the contrasting color: Crowley illustrated in black, Aziraphale in white. The current hardcover is grey.

Crowley wears black, and the Bentley is black. At the metanarrative or authorial level this is obviously for the purposes of the black/white demon/angel contrast, but on the intra-narrative level, the Watsonian level, it's interesting to note that Crowley doesn't have to wear black. He's obviously not free to choose from the full color palette, but Furfur's shirt and sash are is dark emerald green, Dagon is in ultramarine (as befits a marine Elder God), and Shax has only been on Earth for four years before she's wearing head-to-toe oxblood. When she shows up later in battle dress she's got a lot of oxblood there, too. And yet Crowley wears black.

Authorial reasons aside, black suits Crowley for a couple intra-narrative reasons. For much of history, black was the most expensive color to dye and maintain in clothing, and as a result it has always been fashionable. And for several centuries in Christendom, wearing black was also a sign that you were in mourning, which was a social and religious obligation when someone close to you died. Whether you could wear other colors with it depended on how long ago that death had occurred.

Again: black is what Crowley chooses to cover himself, and as there is a sharp distinction between how Crowley presents himself to fulfill his obligations and who he thinks of himself as being, there is likewise a distinction between the colors that represent those two quantities as well.

Red is the color the show uses to represent Crowley to Crowley. The most obvious reason is his hair. This is another change from Book Omens, where Crowley is described as having hair that is "dark." A lot of fans in the UK hated the change when S1 came out because fans hate change and the British have a thing against gingers, but Crowley's red hair suits him better than dark imo because the Mother of Demons in Jewish religious literature, Lilith, is traditionally depicted with red hair. Red hair has been associated for more than a millenium in the Middle East and England and Wales with sorcery, witchcraft, demonic influence/possession, and satan-worship.

Crowley wishes his mom was this cool with snakes.

A good case can be made that Crowley genuinely likes the color red in addition to considering it demonically appropriate. I say this for three reasons. Firstly, because when he has a (limited) choice of (again, demonically appropriate) colors, he always chooses red. The marble of the desk in his apartment is not green or grey. He can have any color stitching on his gloves or lining of his jacket collar he wants, but it's always red. Secondly, it's not only red he chooses, it's almost always bright red.

We know Crowley's red isn't supposed to represent blood or violence, because we have another demon character whose use of red represents just that, and it's not the same red:

Compare Shax' oxblood and burgundy to

and

Crowley's red isn't just red, it's lipstick, cherry, crimson red. And in case we weren't sure that we should read this red as symbolizing passionate, romantic love:

Romantic symbolism aside, bright red is also the color of passion (romantic or otherwise), optimism, heat, vitality, life, (hell)fire, and warning.

Red and black says don't fuck with Jack.

The third reason I think we can safely say that Crowley actually likes the color red is that he hides it. It's always tiny little touches, some of which you have to look for to see. (I still don't know where they snuck in the red on his Elizabethan habit, e.g.) And we know this color is a risk for him, and that he is right to hide it, because Ligur, who doesn't approve of any of Crowley's less-than-fully-demonic embellishments and may share Hastur's opinion that Crowley has gone native, comments on one of Crowley's more noticeably colorful items.

And I think the red tells us one more thing about Crowley, too.

Bright red is the colorest of colors, you know? When we can choose only one color to represent all colors, to represent colorfulness itself, we choose bright red (even in cultures where red symbolizes other meanings than it does in Western art).

Remember how Aziraphale gives Crowley's jacket a tartan collar when he swaps bodies with Crowley and impersonates him in Hell because Aziraphale feels the need to maintain some small secret token of his identity, some tiny unremarked sign of something he loves and thinks is beautiful, when he is down there alone in the gloom among enemies?

Crowley is down there alone among enemies every second of every day and night, whether he's in Hell or on Earth. And he's already had his identity stripped from him once. If you were someone who said

about this

and then you got recruited by the fash downstairs bc the fash upstairs threw you out for not being fashy enough and you had to start wearing nothing but dark colors and more importantly had to hide everything that made you feel warmth or softness or joy, and that was it, that was the deal for eternity, but you could add one (1) little touch to everything you wore to remind yourself that there is some beautiful part of you left, something you loved once, that no one has yet been able to steal or brutalize out of you...what color would the stitching on your gloves be?

Lastly, Yellow represents Crowley to Aziraphale. I'm going to skip the chain of evidence for this bc I think it's obvious, but the way it's used also lends itself to some inferences supported in other areas in the show.

Here's where I think changing Crowley's hair to red from Book Omens' dark is a good decision in another way. Crowley always has red hair, and if he has any color in his clothes it's going to be red. Red is eye-catching; it always stands out, but it doesn't stand out as demonic. And yet the color Aziraphale associates with Crowley and calls "pretty" isn't red.

I suspect that when Aziraphale says he can make Crowley an angel again, Crowley hears "You're not good enough for me to accept you as you are, let me fix you" because these are words Aziraphale has said to him many times, and has meant some of those times. But

tells the audience differently. The color Aziraphale associates with Crowley, the color he calls "pretty," is the color of Crowley's only overtly demonic feature. Aziraphale doesn't love the angel he knew who isn't Crowley, he loves Crowley, the demon, the person he is now, his yellow demon irises.

Yellow appears in three other places in S2, and they're all symbolically significant, and in fact serve to establish another symbolic significance to the color yellow in addition to that of Yellow Is the Color of My True Love's Eyes.

One of them is a feather duster:

Crowley reacts to a feather duster like a cat confronted by an unfamiliar object

The other three are private conversations between Aziraphale and Crowley:

The walls that surround Crowley and Aziraphale when they speak openly about their situation and how they will handle it are drenched in yellow, and that is super interesting, because in Western color symbolism yellow is the color of fear. The archangel of whom Crowley and Aziraphale are both (rightly) terrified wields a tool the color of fear. The color of fear saturates the backdrop of conversations between Aziraphale and Crowley when they have to discuss their situation and their actions openly.

Remember how Aziraphale's voice shakes here?

Crowley realizes the crows have just handed an angel evidence the angel can take to Hell and use to have Crowley killed

Even the Bentley, that clear sign of Aziraphale's love for Crowley, is also a yellow coffin enclosing him. For Aziraphale, thoughts of Crowley are always entangled with fear, because Crowley is not just Crowley, he is also Crowley's Fall.

And I think fear is what Crowley's eyes themselves represent. For Crowley, fear is now a fundamental part of his perception, his nature, his identity.

The angel Aziraphale once knew is not Crowley, and yet from what we've seen, the chiefest difference in character between this sweetheart and this mischief-maker--

--is that the Starmaker does not know yet that he should be afraid, and the Serpent does. That knowledge and its fear has, shall we say, colored his view of the world.

Aziraphale learns that fear early by observing others rather than Falling himself, and knows enough that by the first time we meet him in the Before, he is already afraid.

Pink was once symbolically equivalent to red; in modern Western color symbology it is a color of innocence, youth, beauty, and first love. Hashtag just sayin'.

The cruellest thing this suggests to me is that, rather than rebellion or his propensity to ask questions, rather than the knowledge of good and evil, the Starmaker's Fall was caused by his innocence. it wasn't the questions that were the problem: it was that he didn't know any better than to speak them out loud.

Y'all, Crowley and Aziraphale do not suffer from communication problems. Despite both being male-coded and British, they don't even seem to lack emotional intelligence. What they do have is a universe of silence and fear they have to communicate within and around. What they lack is the safety to speak and love freely. The true color of Crowley is crimson, but someone gave him those eyes, and Aziraphale either watched that happen or knew about it, and now Crowley covers himself in black--which btw is also the symbolic color for mystery and secrets--and only lets Aziraphale see him as he really is now, because Aziraphale won't judge him for his yellow eyes (or punish and forsake him for his questions). Because Aziraphale carries that fear with him too.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens analysis #good omens crowley color analysis #good omens crowley color #crowley #good omens colour analysis good omens crowley colour #good omens colour #good omens meta #angel!crowley #starmaker

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