#good omens magic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kimberleyjean · 2 months

Text

Notes on Magic and Good Omens

Note: Do Not Show Fan Theories To Neil

This whole post started was inspired by the post I've linked here which names each card trick performed in Season One. If you haven't seen it before, please check it out as it's what the rest of this post is based on:

I was interested in digging into these card tricks more and it led me down a small rabbit hole. To start, here's a little more information on two of the tricks featured above.

Three Card Monte (via Wikipedia)

"Also known as find the lady and three-card trick – is a confidence game in which the victims, or "marks", are tricked into betting a sum of money, on the assumption that they can find the "money card" among three face-down playing cards. It is very similar to the shell game except that cards are used instead of shells." (Note: this reminds me very much of Aziraphale's three cowrie shells).

"When the mark arrives at the three-card monte game, it is likely that a number of other players will be seen winning and losing money at the game. The people engaged in playing the game are often shills, confederates of the dealer who pretend to play so as to give the illusion of a straight gambling game. As the mark watches the game, they are likely to notice that they can follow the queen more easily than the shills seem to be able to, which sets them up to believe that they can win the game."

George Joseph Muck

The George Joseph Muck, also known as Hand Mucking, refers to switching cards in play. George Joseph was the author of a popular book on slight of hand and card palming. Here we see a a King of Hearts switched for an image of the Beast (similar to the one we see later on the wall of Anathema's cottage).

Strange Coincidences or Happy Accident?

Here's where my little rabbit-hole sidetrack happened. On the Wikipedia page for sleight of hand, David Copperfield is named as being particularly skilled in this area. I was interested in why he picked that name - apparently he just liked the sound of it! But what I didn't know is that one of his famous tricks was making the Statue of Liberty disappear (which just so happens to be a big theme in Nina's Cafe). Just to add to the Good-Omens related oddness, did you know that he was in a movie called 7 Days in Hell which also features Michael Sheen? News to me.

A Dash of Creative Thinking...

Back to our card tricks, I just want to speculate a little on the amount of tricks being played here during the baby switch in S1.

We're lead to believe that we know where all the babies have ended up by the end. If that's the case, then where is the magic? In the Three Card Monte, the idea is to fool the mark. So if the magician does his job right, should we have been fooled? Yes, the parents in the show were fooled, but they aren't the ones being shown the card trick - the audience is.

Is there some reveal on the horizon to do with the baby switch? I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, so I thought it might be interesting to float the idea. If Neil was going to expand on the original Good Omens book, this could be an interesting direction to take it in.

#good omens meta #good omens card tricks #good omens magic #good omens season one #david copperfield #statue of liberty #michael sheen #good omens speculation #good omens baby switch

28 notes · View notes

greenthena · 4 months

Text

2023 Bucket

This is a bucket. Anything you don't want to take with you into 2024, feel free to drop it in the bucket. I will be burning the contents (with Hellfire) at exactly 11:59pm on New Year's Eve.

You don't have to type anything, at all. Just reblog the bucket and your intentions will be known by the universe. Or the bucket. Or whatever you like.

#not even the littlest good omens #new years #holidays #bucket #good magic #black magic

31K notes · View notes

nickydraws · 5 months

Text

Yeah, I'm normal about him

#i am not normal about him #at this point every sketch magically turns into crowley #or aziraphale or them together #thin dark duke #good omens #good omens fanart #crowley #david tennant #art #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands

18K notes · View notes

sboochi · 7 months

Text

*sips tea* it's dumb crossovers time

I guess here King Arthur was a real dude who became legend after his death (in which demons and angels might have been involved). Our heroes now have a mystery to solve, with the help of a certain sorcerer.......

Part 1 >> Next

#what is magic in this au you ask?#*shrugs*#good omens #merlin #aziraphale #crowley #arthur pendragon #also this is canon divergence i think??#idk i didn't give it much thought #magic omens au #(i know i know)#my art

18K notes · View notes

illustoryart · 2 months

Text

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett ❤️‍🩹

#discworld #terrypratchett #gnu terry pratchett #my fanart #illustration #discworld death #the colour of magic #mort #good omens #fanart

5K notes · View notes

fuckyeahgoodomens · 2 months

Text

#good omens #mickey ralph #bts #magic shop #ventriloquist dummies #fun fact #pranks #oh no

5K notes · View notes

magicomens · 6 months

Text

Strap in folks, we're gonna have a minisode!!!

First >> Prev >> Next

#good omens #bbc merlin #comic #art #magic omens au #arthur pendragon #merlin #aziraphale #merthur #i promise crowley will have more screentime next part #@ all the people who tagged with lol never seen merlin but I dig this #yes those all are things they've said to each other #do you get it now DO YOU GET IT

7K notes · View notes

captainfantasticalright · 2 months

Text

In 1985, one of the only persons interested in an interview with a “new” writer called Terry Pratchett, after his publication of the Colour of Magic, was one Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman was writing for Space Voyager at the time. "The Colour of Pratchett" was the name given here:

It ran exactly one page inside the June/July issue of that year. The interview took place in a Chinese restaurant in London.

Here is Neil many years later holding that issue. You can see it here if you want. Warning: extremely emotional video.

Neil arrived wearing a grey homburg hat. “Sort of like the ones Humphrey Bogart wears in movies” he later wrote. (Before saying that in fact he did not look like him, but like someone wearing a grown-up’s hat). Terry Pratchett, photo courtesy of one @neil-gaiman, was in a Lenin-style leather cap and a harlequin-patterned pullover. At this point, Terry was already a hat person, although not that hat.

Terry offered Neil this : "An interview needn't last more than 15 minutes. A good quote for the beginning, a good quote for the end, and the rest you make up back at the office"*. (Terry Pratchett had worked many years in journalism by this point ).

But the meeting went terribly well. The two of them realized they had "the same sort of brains". So well indeed, that in 1985, Neil had shown Terry a file containing 5282 words, exploring a scenario in which Richmal Crompton's William Brown had somehow become the Antichrist. Was a collaboration in the cards as of that moment? Not really. But Terry found in Neil someone to whom he could send disks of work in progress and to whom he could pick up the phone sometimes when he hit a brick in the road of his writing.

Terry loved it and the concept stayed in his mind. A couple of years later, he rang Neil to ask him if he had done any more work on it. Neil had been busy with The Sandman, he had not really given it another thought. Terry said, "Well I know what happens next, so either you sell me the idea or we can write it together". **

And as you know, unless you’ve been living in Alpha Centauri, the rest is history. That was the beginning of what would become William the Antichrist and later would get the name Good Omens:The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. (Title provided by Neil Gaiman and subtitle by Terry Pratchett).

From the introduction to William the Antichrist: “In the summer of 1987 several odd ideas came together: (..)I found myself imagining a book called William the Antichrist, in which a hapless demon was going to be responsible for swapping the wrong baby over, and the son of the US Ambassador would be completely undemonic, while William Brown would grow up to be the Antichrist, and the demon would need to stop him ending the world. The unfortunate demon, whom I called Crawleigh, because Crawley was a nearby town with an unfortunate name, would have to sort it all out as best he could.

It felt like a story with legs.

Terry took the 5,000 words, and rewrote them, calling me to tell me what he was doing and what he was planning to do. The biggest thing he was going to do, he told me, was split the hapless demon into two characters – a would-be-cool demon in dark glasses (which was, I think, Terry’s way of making fun of me, a never-actually- cool journalist in dark glasses) who had renamed himself Crowley, and a rare-book dealer and angel called Aziraphale, who would embody all the English awkwardness that either of us could conceive.”

William the Antichrist being a direct inspiration of the 1976 film The Omen. If the baby swap had just been a little bit messier and the kid had gone off somewhere else he would have grown up as somebody else. “And then there was a beat and I thought, I should write it, it will be called William the Antichrist” says Neil. ***

“The first draft of Good Omens was a William-book. It was absolutely in every way it could be a William book. It had Violet Elizabeth Bott, it had William and the Outlaws, it had Mr. Brown”.

Over time they realized that they would have more creative freedom if they in their own words filed off the serial numbers. William and the Outlaws becoming Adam and the Them.

But the spirit of Just William was never far away.

The joy for Neil was to construct “perfectly William sentences”. The one when Anathema tells Adam that she has lost the Book, and he tells her that he has written a book about a pirate who became a famous detective and it is 8 pages long… that’s “a William sentence”.

Good Omens was also inspired by a particularly antisemitic moment in The Jew of Malta and John le Carre's spy novels. (Neil’s ask)

“When we finished the book we estimated that the words were 60% Terry’s and 40% mine, and the plot, such as it was, was entirely ours.”

(Here are some slides of mine where I go into some other details concerning the origins of Good Omens).

*Quote: from Terry Pratchett A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins, but said by Terry of course.

** All the quotes, facts listed here : see above.

***all other quotes by Neil Gaiman from various interviews and asks I’ll link.

#good omens #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #good omens fun facts #the colour of magic #the colour of pratchett #space voyager magazine

3K notes · View notes

felicitywilds · 9 months

Text

how many licenses do you think aziraphale has? hes got one for possession of a firearm, and made them give him a test so he could get one to drive a car. what else has he done in order get a silly little slip of paper that says he can do something cool with a Human Invention? like i know hes a literal angel of heaven but do you think hes ordained

#good omens #good omens spoilers #good omens season 2 #aziraphale #by me #ordained in the sense that you can go online and be certified #loving the suggestions in the tags #keeping in mind he ALSO took french and magic lessons #top

12K notes · View notes

livhowlett · 4 months

Text

I don't of anyone has notice but there's an 'Amazing Mr.Fell" poster in the magic shop

Right over Crowley/David's shoulder

#good omens #crowley #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #david tennant #good omens 2 #crowley x aziraphale #good omens season 2 #micheal sheen #amazing mr.fell #magic shop #easter egg #bts #crowley good omens #aziraphale good omens #aziraphale is adorable #aziraphale is a magician

7K notes · View notes

hg-aneh · 10 months

Text

💫 ~

oh, well I never, was there ever...🎵

#good omens #aziraphale #good omens fanart #aziraphale good omens #magician aziraphale #aziraphale magic act #if you get the reference pls come here and lemme kiss you #aneh draws #i forgot to add my own art tag bcs i got too excited about the referencebcnsncn #aneh wont shut up

7K notes · View notes

gahellhimself-blog · 7 months

Text

C. : "we haven’t finished the book.."

A. : "what book?"

C. : "the one u read at the park last month.."

A. : "aww do you want to go out and continue reading it?"

C. : "…yeh.."

Bonus

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens fanart #good omens fanwork #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #azirafell #illustration #ineffable husbands #inneffable idiots #the color of magic #terry pratchett #his favorite book

5K notes · View notes

ravenmelon · 1 month

Text

Angel of the Eastern Gate (and a certain snake)

2K notes · View notes

tagerrkix · 3 months

Text

WHERE IS HE D:

(sorry for deleting and posting this again 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️ one tiny insignificant thing was bothering me and when I edited it it wouldn't show on reblogs and that kinda made me go 😠😠😠)