Had to turn off asks again, fucking spam influx hit my inbox the moment I opened it. Just message if you want to chat, I won't be opening the asks anymore
I’m having a meltdown. When I was 9 years old I read an article in a magazine called Backyard Adventures about how this antelope, the saiga, was on the verge of extinction. I enlisted the help of my best friend and launched a fundraising campaign called Save the Saigas. We sold lemonade, had bake sales, sold belongings, yelled at strangers as they passed in their cars. Our parents were able to match the money we made. Our school helped. It wasn’t much, it didn’t save them, but it helped the organization at least a little bit.
Y’all. The saigas have been saved. A little piece of my passionate child heart that has seemed hopelessly lost and endlessly disappointed for a long time feels so soothed. Maybe it’s not all hopeless. Maybe our efforts aren’t a complete waste. Maybe we keep trying and actually hope for the best.
Some thing you might have missed in the latest GOS3 promo photo: Musical Edition
While most people clocked the name of Crowley’s new Bentley ice cream truck "Scrumptious Quality Ices", you might not have noticed the connection to a beloved children's movie main character.
I'm not joking this is major spoiler territory.
Proceed with caution.
Well @havemyheartaziraphale did. Say hello to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's heroine: Truly Scrumptious.
What Does the only children's story penned by (Crowley's favourite) James Bond author Ian Fleming have to do with our beloved season 3?
Well for starters, Truly is a blonde haired blue eyed angelically sweet high status woman often dressed in white who drives a yellow vintage car. She's also the only heiress to a huge candy empire controlled by her father, Lord Scrumptious.
S2 original 2 door Bentley turned yellow & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Truly Scrumptious' yellow car.
Her partner in crime, Caratacus Potts, rebuilds Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (the car) and uses it to sail across the sky to find a kidnapped grandfather Potts.
Good omens s3, Bentley flying through space & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, (Gen 11) flying through space
Seriously, go read the wikipedia entry, the movie is nuts.
I watched the movie trying to comb for clues, and came up with a few nuggets
1. A story within a story
Good Omens is full of movie references, but season 2 took it to a whole new level. Two of the movies I've written about before, as well as three I haven't, fit the same basic premise as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:
Brazil
Tales of Hoffmann
The prisoner (TV series)
Wizard of Oz
League of Gentlemen’s apocalypse
They're all stories that present a real world, and then take you one layer deeper into an imaginary world that reuses facsimiles of the real world characters to play different parts. At this point it would be a little silly to think that they're not trying to tell us something about the structure of the story of Good Omens. Operas especially seem to hold most of the main plot elements between Crowley & Aziraphale in the Good Omens Tv series, with S1 closely mirroring Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Season 2 closely mirroring Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. As Chitty is a musical, could it be the template for Season 3?*
2. We might get a return to Tadfield?
Thanks to @theastrophysicistnextdoor who noticed that while singing the eponymous song, Caratacus & children actually drive through the same village used to film Tadfield in season 1 of Good Omens. That coupled with the Tadfield newspaper in the season 3 promo photo could mean a return to the most perfect village in England this time around?
Good Omens S1 & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang driving the family through Tadfield
3. The Child Catcher goes rogue and kidnaps Caratacus’ children with the help of and lolly and ices truck.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Child Catcher reveals his prison truck & Good Omens S3
This wild contraption used by the Child Catcher seems like the same kind of disguise the Bentley is adopting in the teaser photo. Gaudy, yellow, over the top, and hiding a suspicious amount of caboose room for.... kidnapping? He even promises "delicious ices, lollies and treacle tarts" to the children in order to lure them in. If I had to guess, I would say someone is going Jesus-napping in S3. Could it be Michael or Dagon’s role?
4. The final fifteen might have been a ruse after all?
One thing that I think is fascinating is that the final fifteen is in CCBB, and it’s clearly real emotions inside of a planned ruse. Let me explain.
So Caratacus has taken Truly and the children on a seaside picnic in Chitty, and the children ask for a story about pirates. Caratacus imagines an elaborate tale about a Bavarian pirate army come to steal Chitty for it's flying powers. While telling the children this story, we sink seamlessly into his narrative as it takes over the movie. We are now watching the movie on two levels: As his story time inside the car on the seaside with Truly and children listening, but also as they act out the fantasy he's spinning on-screen.
This is important, because when we get to the crux of the great plan to fool the king in the story, Caratacus and Truly's characters pretend to be automatons to entertain the king long enough to let a child army come and attack.
But watch the clip of their song and dance and see if you don't notice anything weird happening.
The Caratacus (Crowley) confesses his love to Truly (Aziraphale), but she has to refuse him as part of the ruse. But that's not all.
There's this moment where Caratacus looks in the mirror and realizes that he's inserted himself into the story, and he's basically confessing his real love to real Truly sitting with him in the car listening. And Truly's character buffets him in the head because they’re trying desperately to act like dolls to fool the king of the land (aka The Metatron) and overthrow him as he watches them dance. She gives him this look of "what are you DOING!? This is not what we planned."
And it's the same look we get here when Aziraphale looks just so confused about the way Crowley is talking during his confession.
Inside of Caratacus' story the whole confession is part of the ruse, but not his and Truly's very real realizations about their feelings that happen in that moment outside the fake dance.
We don't have the answers yet. I suspect, as most of you do, that we'll get the keys to understanding this interaction in S3. But this gives me interesting evidence even though the emotions were all real in the FF, maybe the interaction was part of some other plan.
5. Could a demon/human incursion into heaven be in store?
The climax of Caratacus' story comes after this dance, when the plan goes off and the banned children of the land escape the dungeon and absolutely smash the kings birthday reception with all the lords and ladies in attendance getting absolutely wrecked. Could a similar wrecking of heaven be in store, either by demon hordes, or human ones? Or is this just a rehash of the ball invasion from S2. Who knows.
6. A happily ever after is waiting?
As it is a comedy and a children's movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang does end in the most saccharine of ways, with all obstacles being removed, Caratacus announcing that he can finally be with Truly, and the long awaited kiss. But hey, I'm not complaining.
At least they kiss ankle deep in a duck pond. What remains to be revealed is whether we get the same kind of magical reality we do here, where Chitty flies off into the sky, this time without wings.
Only time will tell...
Thanks again to @havemyheartaziraphale, @theastrophysicistnextdoor, @dunkthebiscuit, @embracing-the-ineffable and all the @ineffable-detective-agency members who helped out. We're all excited to see if this theory pans out or not!
*Personally, I think it might end up being The Marriage of Figaro, but it's fun to explore anyway
By the way, this is a yellow Citroën 2CV, just like the one that belonged to Crawleigh — the main character from William the Antichrist who was split by Terry Pratchett into Aziraphale and Crowley as we know them today from Good Omens.
While not a part of the original Ian Fleming novels, this exact car model has also managed to make an appearance in the James Bond franchise. In the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, 007 hitches a ride in Melina Havelock’s Citroën 2CV after his Lotus Esprit Turbo self-destructs, leading to an impressive car chase with the unassuming yellow car as the star of the show.
After Melina rolls the apparently indestructible Deux Chevaux onto its roof, Bond takes the wheel and shakes off Gonzalez’s henchmen in two Peugeots. The brave little toaster of a Citroën barrels down lanes, lurches through a sleepy village (basically the Spanish equivalent of Tadfield), and literally sails through the olive groves. Probably would end up in space with some imagination and slightly higher budget.
Seriously though, this entire scene had been consciously written as a complete opposite of the typical James Bond car chase and an opportunity to remind the audience that the agent’s wits are far more important than an entire arsenal’s worth of high-tech gadgets. Think of Aziraphale and Crowley in their 1941 miracle blocker pinch — yes, the comedic factor is indubitably there, but so is the action character of the scene and the value of collaboration between two unlikely partners.
Following the tremendous success of the movie, Citroën marked the occasion by selling limited editions of 007 2CVs — 1000 cars similar to the one used in the movie, with the 007 number painted over the familiar yellow coat and fake bullet holes to boot. Sounds familiar?
Deux Chevaux actually means “two horses”, as in taxable horsepower (or the two black Marly Horses statues in Aziraphale’s bookshop), which might have seemed as an apt description of a design based upon the pre-war Très Petite Voiture that could travel over rough ground, had a low cost of ownership, and was supposed to help the French populace gain mobility in the late 1940s. Unfortunately, this pragmatic approach went hand-in-hand with below average visual qualities, and the car was quickly dubbed duck or ugly duckling across the European markets. Even nowadays it’s still commonly referred to as such.
It wasn’t much of a surprise that a van model of “the duck” had been quickly developed and became a go-to delivery car throughout Europe. Since the 1950s, some of them were commonly used as all kinds of food trucks and stands, scrumptious quality ices included.
listen to me, this is so so important: you've gotta get used to really giving it your 60% as a default. like don't half-ass it necessarily but try not to go over 70% or so of an ass. you'll feel better and live a happier more fulfilled life, and on the rare occasions where you do need to lock the fuck in you'll be able to pull off bullshit that the sad miserable wretches giving it their 100% can never dream off, because they're busy draining themselves dry and you have energy reserves to spare.
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