I'm Just Here For Good Omens

[camelotsbi]

I found this analysis so interesting!!! It explains some of the messages and symbolisms I gathered during my first watch :)

You can't bite the apple twice.

How I learned to love the finale of Good Omens for what it is (and maybe you can, too).

[krummholz-go]

Beautiful, thoughtful take.

[books-and-omens]

Oh. Oh. I am having a moment here.

The *screen ratio* changes when we go from one universe to another. Up until the epilogue, we watch everything in cinematic widescreen, with black bars on the top and bottom.

And then when we reach the epilogue, those bars... they go away. We've broken through.

Oh this is brilliant.

[soloorganaas]

ib: @santacoppelia's tags on this post

[vidavalor]

[krummholz-go]

Just a couple of spooky fallen angel boys.

[inconveniently-discorporated]

I will never forgive myself for not immediately seeing that Aziraphale wasn't necessarily trying to change the Bentley (ergo Crowley), he was just taking off the shades.

Like. Come onnnnn.

Crowley uses his great big shades and demon persona to hide the fact that he's a great big softie when he takes it all off.

AZIRAPHALE WAS TELLING YOU TO TAKE THEM OFF ALL ALONG JUST LIKE YOU WANTED TO.

[krummholz-go]

😭😭😭

[vidavalor]

Crowley referring to Gabriel, Michael, and the others not as "angels" but as (the honestly more accurate) "angelic entities" in front of Aziraphale is such a wonderful bit of flirt.

Crowley very deliberately not using "angel" to describe anybody else as a nod to Aziraphale that Crowley's romantic pet name for him is a word that he sees as belonging just to Aziraphale is really sweet.

Romancing his angel and shading angelic entities have always been the twin passions of Bildad the Shuhite.

[krummholz-go]

What a lovely reading of this line!

[captainfantasticalright]

Miranda from The Tempest and A Companion to Owls.

I remember some time ago a fan pointed out that this scene was incredibly reminiscent of “Miranda” by John William Waterhouse and added Aziraphale on the rock contrasted with the first painting (1875). However, another version of the same painting exists; featuring a red-hair Miranda, which was painted afterwards in 1916.

The Miranda here is a character from William Shakespeare's The Tempest. She was detained on an island, together with her father, Prospero, for almost twelve years. This happened as a result of having been exiled from Milan by Prospero's power-seeking brother, Antonio.

The scene plays very blatantly with the word “exile” and Aziraphale fearing being cast into Hell (exiled from Heaven) and Crowley’s clear banishment from his position as an angel.

The picture has been painted in cold (red hair) and warm tones (blond), playing very much into the tones we get to see in A Companion to Owls. Aziraphale’s side on the rock, with the more conventional, peaceful look and Crowley’s with the rocks on the background.

A ship slices through the waves, causing a feeling of imminent loss; notice how that is exactly Aziraphale’s placement on the frame.

Unlike the paintings though, in Good Omens we get a view of both sides, of before and after the storm. The color palettes combine as both Aziraphale and Crowley are fitted into the frame.

Concluding with the wonderful shot directly mirroring their color palettes (sunnier on Aziraphale’s side; shadows on Crowley’s) again and reversing the order of the Miranda paintings (not chronologically, as we see red-hair Miranda appear later on, but in terms of placement and coloring).

[krummholz-go]

Something about David Tennant's red carpet BAFTA suit feels Tang suit-inspired to me: the long cut of the jacket, the beading around the wrists to suggest contrasting cuffs, the chain closure across the front to suggest a frog button closure. The red and gold beading is also suggestive of the Lunar New Year we just celebrated. And what year is it? The Year of the Snake!

(I know next to nothing about fashion or Chinese culture so please forgive any offense to either.)

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Georgia posted a black and white photo of David :D

[krummholz-go]

Georgia flat out trolling the fandom now

[krummholz-go]

Just looking at all the wonderful LCC pictures of Michael Sheen, noticing the beard, remembering they will soon start filming, and wondering if we will actually get bearded Aziraphale 🥹

[krummholz-go]

[agoodflyting]

Good Omens Historical Trivia That's Haunting Me Today...

So we all know A.Z. Fell & Co is located on the fictitious Whickber Street in Soho and was established in 1800.

Aziraphale has run the shop ever since then and was in contact with Crowley at least until the 1820's when they took their little jaunt to Edinburgh and Crowley got sucked down the tube slide to Hell. They meet up again no later than the 1860's, when Crowley asks for Holy Water.

Stands to reason that between the 1820's and 1860's Aziraphale was in Soho doing Aziraphale things. Running his bookshop. Eating tiny cakes

Yeah... you know what else was going on in Soho during that time?

The worst cholera epidemic in London history.

If you don't know, cholera is a deadly bacterial infection caused by drinking contaminated water. Prior to the 1850's humans weren't really sure what caused cholera, but they knew it was terrifying and also that it was absolutely epidemic in big cities.

TW: this is gross - The main symptoms of cholera are agonizing stomach pain and non-stop watery diarrhea, eventually leading to the skin turning blue due to the thickening of blood from severe dehydration. Patients can lose more than 20% of their body weight in hours as they quite literally evacuate every drop of water in their bodies until they die of heart failure. - OK gross part over

Cholera symptoms show up as short as 5 hours after infection and could kill within as little as 12 hours. Cholera was especially terrifying because of how quickly and painfully it killed you, and because the patient maintained mental clarity up until the point of death. More than half of the people who contracted cholera died within a few days after consuming the bacteria-contaminated water.

And guess what water had cholera bacteria in it?

The public water pump on Broad Street in Soho in August of 1854

And this wasn't one of those epidemics that starts slowly and drags on. It hit like a bomb. It killed 600 Soho residents in ten days.

That's roughly 60 people a day in a 3-4 block area. Most of them died at home because the disease struck too quickly for them to to make it to a hospital. Survivors described hearses stacked with coffins 4-5 high going down the street nonstop all day long during the outbreak. Entire families were wiped out overnight.

What does that have to do with Good Omens?

Aziraphale's book shop was right in the epicenter of this outbreak.

Neil Gaiman has been pretty free about the fact that Whickber Street is a thinly veiled expy of the real Berwick Street in Soho.

This is a famous map showing the 1854 Soho Cholera epidemic. I highlighted Berwick Street and the public water pump that was the center of the contagion. The black bars (I circled a few in blue) on the map designate deaths. The thicker the black bar, the more people died in that particular house.

51 people died the week of the cholera outbreak on Aziraphale's Street alone.

Cholera was one of those diseases that provoked a lot of panic, not just because of how fast and painful it was, but because of the way it didn't follow common conventions about class or age. Children died while the elderly survived (often because the elderly had no one to gather water for them). Lower class houses were spared while their middle class landlords died. Churches were packed that week, because people in Soho had no idea who would get sick next. The epidemic pretty much burned itself out in a week and a half, since by that point everyone who drank the water had already died. I have to wonder what our resident Angel was up to during that time. Obviously cholera can't hurt him, but that's his neighborhood. There's no way hundreds of people, including entire families with children, are dying painfully in his neighborhood and Aziraphale doesn't notice. That means that in between this scene:

And this one:

Aziraphale would have watched one of the worst disease outbreaks in London history play out right outside his front door. I feel like there's great potential for a good story there if anyone better than me wants to write it.

[azeutreciathewicked]

Ooooh this is fascinating!

[ao3cassandraic]

Certainly adds a frisson to Aziraphale's refusal to provide killing water to Crowley.

[bildadthefuckingshuite]

Despite everything...

[speedlimit15]

why didn’t gandalf just carry the ring to mordor himself with these tongs

[speedlimit15]

like i’m picturing him being really careful and looking at it and carrying it exactly like this while walking or riding through the woods and across rivers and up mountains and through valleys and he doesn’t drop it even once except at the very end where he tidily drops it into the volcano. frodo sam and the crew and even gollum wholly undisturbed. sauron can’t find him bc of the meditative aura surrounding him which is generated by his immense focus on not dropping it

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

World's most tense egg and spoon race

[green-great-dragon]

this somehow became the funniest thing on earth in my head and I had to draw it so

[krummholz-go]

Making an exception to my Good Omens only content because this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen

[neil-gaiman]

What’s your favourite line from good omens?

The invisible and unbreakable one that joins Crowley and Aziraphale.

[krummholz-go]

One of the funniest bits of the Bark Ruffalo BAFTA sketch to me was how David Tennant kept asking people in the audience if they were good with dogs and they all reached to take the dog and David had to actively pull away from them because c'mon - when David Tennant offers you a puppy YOU SAY YES.