#strange omens

[geopsych]

We just had 3 days of rain, a lot of it, sometimes with thunderstorms and ending in little white ice balls falling. Today we had an earthquake (which somehow I didn't feel even though it was pretty close to me). 3 days from now there will be a solar eclipse although not total here. And last night there was some kind of planetary alignment. If this were a fantasy story I would say they were being heavy-handed.

[joycrispy]

One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.

I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.

As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics, etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection of artist and inventor.

Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.

We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt each of them by hand. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --aside from getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'

...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'

Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship. Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.

Hm.

I'm also reminded of the M25.

The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.

That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication towards Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.

Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.

But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil Influence~ is spread nice and thin.

It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:

The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.

(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)

In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.

Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice... :)"

11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'

(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)

Hastur and Ligur don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.

Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.

It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:

He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.

(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?

...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale long enough to make poor Leo sick)

Apart from Aziraphale, Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of.

Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).

Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."

To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.

...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?

...Anyway.

There's also the matter of the crank handle.

This thing:

This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.

The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.

He made stars with it.

[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]

If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:

Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.

Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them: cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.

Stopping time. For instance.

(This is conjecture on my part, but, I like to imagine that Crowley has the ability to stop time for the same reason I can --and should-- unplug my computer before I perform maintenance on it. Time and Space are a matched set, after all, and in his designs in particular, one feeds into the other.)

I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity. One from long-lost days when he made beautiful things.

(And he loved it. Still loves it --he incorporated that metaphor into the Bentley, didn't he?)

Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?

He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.

Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.

Crowley was never that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He doesn't have a sword.

...And yet.

It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.

In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.

Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?

Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?

What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?

...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.

[songbird-is-crying]

my friend and i were talking about how strange it is to see young actors hit puberty in between filming and release so i passionately explained to her about how i am 99% sure that during a scene in good omens s1 where adam and brian were discussing the intricacies of atlantis people surviving with diving helmets on had adam's actor voice dubbed in "that's right" because of how 1) the camera is still on brian and we do not pan over to adam speaking the actual line and 2) adam's actor's voice sounds fairly deeper on that line compared to his voice in the rest of the season and my friend just responds with:

"i think you should put that on the adhd application"

i-

what do i do now.. having received the read of the century. get tested for adhd i fucking guess.

[arsillanola]

Happy Shuhite Sunday

[tapeworrmart]

Stranger

[phoannix]

i am confirming that this is real and i’m going insane

saw it on twitter (i refuse to calll it anything else than twitter fuck you elon)

and i decided to download the app

welp:

THIS CONFIRMES THAT SPOCK WILL BE WEARING EYESHADOW (i count this as a win bc ive been waiting for this one all my trekkie existence) AND THAT TENDI DOES HAVE A GAYDAR (she is stopping herself from calling spock a slur)

[bloodybarbrawl]

commission for "Bring It On! Occidental entertainment fan convention" 2023

[indecisivetomato]

i just wanted to draw something stupid and soft

[lalalvlove]

All the interests I've had this year in one drawing

Hope you all have a lovely new year!

List of characters/fandoms:

• Frog and toad (Frog and toad)

• Bob Belcher (Bob's Burgers)

• Donnie (TMNT 2012)

• Min-gi, Kez, Ryan (Infinity train)

• Superman, Batman, Robin (DC)

• Hobie and Pavitr (Spidey-Verse)

• Sean and Daniel Diaz (Life is Strange 2)

• Jeremy and Michael (Be More chill)

• Raph (ROTTMNT)

• Tulip, Atticus, One one (Infinity Train)

• Sunflower - but as a human (PVZ Heroes)

• Eli (Slugterra) (ft. Burpy, jewels, and banger)

• Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens)

• Spongebob - but as a human (Spongebob)

• Wander - but as a human (Wander over Yonder)

[astheturtlemoves]

Opening Tumblr on this fine morning as someone who loves good omens is a strange experience.

It feels like a dream where I'm late to school.

Something BIG happened but nobody is saying exactly what. I'm greeted at the gate by multiple persons running around and screaming " DON'T LOOK AT IT !! " ( look at what ?! ). The teacher is livid. Some people are crying in the corner. Apparently the world is ending ? Something is spreading ? Some people are dancing and laughing. A few people are calm but fed up, sighing tiredly that it doesn't mean anything without context or that it's not that much of a catastrophe. Some people are wholesomely trying to comfort the teacher, others are pointing at bad students in the "look at me I'm still one of the good ones" way. Everybody's trying to put down a fire I can not see. Nobody will talk to me and I will probably be ostracized by the whole school if I ask for this forbidden knowledge.

[gahellhimself-blog]

You wanted to see him dance?

Oooooooh Oh oh oh! I got a love that keeps me waiting..

I'm a lonely boooy!!!

[onlylurkingreadingstuff]

He gets used to that weight and pulls it on like a jacket. Like a placeholder for a real thing.

—Sleight of Hand Ch. 5/ Strange Moons

For @racketghost

Companion piece to Aziraphale in The Book of Ruth/ Strange Moons

Art by @onlylurkingreadingstuff

[xenocorner]

I was going through some oldish art and found something.

Posting this for one (1) mutual. You know damn well who you are 👁

[melonsharks]

les diré que llegue de un mundo raro. que no sé del dolor, que triunfé en el amor, y que nunca he llorado.

crowley version

[boycritter]

i love you aziraphale

[embracing-the-ineffable]

The ineffable discontinuity of time in ALL of Good Omens season 2?

There's Something Strange About Time, and it's not ONLY the end of the last episode, where the clocks are mysteriously jumping ahead faster than what's playing out onscreen... Look at this scene from season 2, episode 1:

The time is visible on Crowley's phone AND watch, as he stands in a very similar way as he did at the end of the season. We've seen parallel blocking like this used in other scenes to highlight common themes, Clues, etc.

Let's look closer at the times, and enjoy the way Shax's contact icon blinks at Crowley:

My technology could be fancier, but I adjusted the exposure and sharpened the pic of his watch to make it easier to read. If someone can get a better shot, that would be great! I'm pretty sure, though, that the watch says 11:35; the phone says 10:35. Why are they out of sync??! Are there time discrepancies woven throughout the entire season? WHAT DOES IT MEAN??!

The season 2 bookshop clock - which is not the same as the season 1 clock - is frowning for a reason...

And here's what I mean about the parallel blocking, or the way Crowley is positioned and filmed in a very similar way in both scenes. It seems meaningful that the season started and ended like this, with the time on his watch (barely) visible in each scene and offering evidence of Something Strange About Time:

Is Crowley manipulating time somehow? Something is definitely UP.

Want more Clues and metas? I have a huge collection!