#brandy smuggler

[kneedecker]

Neil Gaiman’s Jane Austen spinoff series when?

#neil gaiman #jane austen #good omens #1810 clerkenwell diamond robbery #brandy smuggler #master spy #dark horse #she had balls #go2

[omens-for-ophelia]

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

-Jane Austen, Emma

hello tumblr! posting art here for the first time since i was a wee bairn, so enjoy some regency ineffable idiots!

inspired by @gingerhaole 's unbelievably perfect aziracrow fanart (& also colin firth's mr. darcy because duh)

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #ineffable idiots #gomens #aziraphale #crowley #jane austen wrote novels #jane austen aka the brains behind the clerkenwell diamond robbery and brandy smuggler #good omens fanart #ineffable partners #ophelia-draws

[arsillanola]

Guess who watched Pride and Prejudice last night

#Brandy smuggler. Master Spy. What a piece of work #good omens #my art #aziracrow #pride and prejudice

[izacore]

You remember Jane Austen? Yeah. I'm not gonna forget her in a hurry, am I? The brains behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Brandy smuggler. Master spy. What a piece of work. She wrote books. Novels. Jane? Austen? Yes! Whoa, bit of a dark horse. Novels, eh? Yes. They were very good. Good Omens (2019-) || Pride and Prejudice (2005)

#good omens #goodomensedit #ineffable husbands #pride and prejudice #good omens 2 #good omens season 2 #gomens #good omens spoilers #michael sheen #david tennant #aziracrow #aziraphale x crowley #aziraphale #crowley #my gifs #i hope you guys see my vision akjxj #i just couldn't get it out of my head #also i love how it took this concepted and subverted it and used it #there's crowley putting his pride aside in the final confession #but aziraphale is still prejudiced towards the hell and demons #convinced that heaven are good guys #also side note but finding a good quality pride and prejudice online was a piece of work #pls don't let it flop #edit: this post is officially neil gaiman like approved #i can't believe i got to write this

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Aziraphale: You remember Jane Austen?

Crowley: Yeah. I'm not gonna forget her in a hurry, am I? The brains behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Brandy smuggler. Master spy. What a piece of work.

Aziraphale: She wrote books.Novels.

Crowley: Jane? Austen?

Aziraphale: Yes!

Crowley: Whoa, bit of a dark horse. Novels, eh?

Aziraphale: Yes. They were very good.

Crowley: Well. No, I'm just surprised, that's all. You think you know someone.

later in Aziraphale's bookshop Crowley sees Jane Austen's books on a shelf and picks the Pride and Prejudice:

Crowley: Jane Austen. Wrote books too. You people, I will never get the hang of you lot.

Bonus:

#good omens #goodomensedit #david tennant #michael sheen #crowley #aziraphale #2ep2 #2i2i6 #2i2i7 #jane austen #1810 clerkenwell diamond robbery #ac #dirty donkey #aziraphale's bookshop #aziraphale's shelves #aziraphale's books

[vidavalor]

It occurs to me that Jane Austen as a brandy smuggler who knew Crowley & Aziraphale sometime circa 1810 means that she was smuggling *French* brandy-- so, cognac-- into England during The Napoleonic Wars and Aziraphale drinks brandy. He had a (more modern) bottle of Courvoisier open while he was calling Crowley in Good Omens: Lockdown. This is also prior to Jane becoming a famous author so she really was just Aziraphale's source for French liquor during the war, wasn't she? lol Good Omens coding everything French as romantic in Crowley & Aziraphale's secret romance and the future most famous romance writer to ever live--Jane Fucking Austen-- is how Crowley and Aziraphale were sneaking some cognac to have with their cognac while England was at war with France in 1810-1812. I love this show so very much.

#ineffable husbands #good omens #good omens 2 #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #jane austen #good omens meta

[weatheredlaw]

jane austen, the brains behind the 1810 clerknwell diamond robbery. brandy smuggler. master spy. what a piece of work.

#goodomensedit #dailygoodomens #good omens spoilers #tv: good omens #my edits

[noneorother]

All the music you didn’t hear in Good Omens. (And I found a new P&P reference) *Part4*

Part 1  l  Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4

The Bonkers Meta Series 2: Electric Boogaloo. It never ends.

So if you've been paying attention, you know that the number 2 is an incredibly important idea in season 2 of Good Omens. Well, I think it might be more than just the number two. I think it might actually be the concept of Double Meanings. Here's the first one I found.

When you google P&P Book you get : Pride & Prejudice, by our favourite Brandy smuggler: Jane Austen.

But when you google P&P Film, you get the life's work of ... Powell & Pressburger! Both prominent nods in the series that Neil and the gang seem pretty happy to talk about. This seemed like maybe it could be a coincidence to me, so I started looking up other nods in the series to see if my theory scans. Check this out :

P&P (1948) The Red Shoes Kate Bush (1993) P&P (1945) I know where I'm going Scottish traditional - Burl Ives (1941) P&P (1946) A matter of life & death / Stairway to Heaven Led Zepplin (1971) P&P (1949) The (Small) Back Room Van Morrison

P&P (1950)

Wild at Heart/Gone to Earth

David Sylvian

and here’s the P&P reference I think no one caught yet! Remember who Aziraphale learned the sleight of hand magic trick from in 1941? Prof Hoff.

P&P (1951) - musical The Tales of Hoffman Opera by Offenbach (1881) I linked everything so you can go listen or read about the the movies/music in question. However, be warned the opera is over two hours. Clearly I’m missing one, because I’m a series of six episodes there’s now way they put five references in, but I’m having a hard time finding it. If you know what it is, please let me know!

My point - my point here, is that I think rather than trying to find the “right” interpretation of the story of season 2 with confusing facts and confounding dialogue, these double entendres serve as a guide to show us how “both stories are going on at the same time” can be analyzed separately AND together, and that they live right on top of one another.

Want to hear my analysis of both the movie playlist and the music playlist? It’s on the way!

#good omens 2 #go season 2 #go meta #art director talks good omens #good omens season 2 #good omens meta #good omens season two #crowley x aziraphale #good omens prime #good omens #good omens s2 #good omens spoilers

[desmyblank]

Illustration for the fic Literature and Liquor by @sitruunavohveli (Tossukka), as part of the @go-minisode-minibang 2024.

"The year is 1809. Crowley’s friend Jane is a master smuggler of both goods and information who seems to know exactly who people are and how they act. Meanwhile Aziraphale has been helping her friend, a brilliant author Miss Austen revise her novel manuscripts in the hopes that they could one day be published for the wider audiences. When Aziraphale accompanies Jane to a ball, they run into Crowley, and all three are surprised by the other two being acquainted."

I enjoyed a lot researching and designing the clothes and the appearances of both Aziraphale and Crowley in 1809. I wanted Aziraphale to actually sport some slightly outdated fashion choiches!

On top of that I also had the chance to draw one of the most important English authors, the one and only Jane Austen, aka the brains behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery, brandy smuggler, master spy :D Close ups under the cut!

What a piece of work that Jane Austen!

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #good omens 2 #good omens fanfic #good omens fanart #gomm 2024 #desmyblank

[jamesisasimp]

I just saw this fanart of a roaring 20s kaz and I need you all to know that urge to write a gilded era, mafia, brandy smuggler, owners of the most sought after gambling club and speak easy in all of the city kazper fic is strong

#kazper #kaz brekker

[monstersandmaw]

Laces for a Lady - 18th century poly shifter romance (Part one, sfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me. 

Well folks, here it is. You said you were interested, so I hope it meets expectations! Here's part one for you, of a multi part story. If you want to kno wmore about it, you can find some more info here, as well as a little 'mood board'.

Content: sfw, the daughter of a country gentleman from Sussex relocates to a sleepy fishing village in Cornwall in order to become the paid companion of a young widow, and meets some of the locals on her arrival. Wordcount: 3972

Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark - Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk. Laces for a lady; letters for a spy, Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by! ~ from ‘A Smugglers’ Song’, Rudyard Kipling (1906)

In the cool, lavender light of a late spring dawn, a gaff-rigged cutter drew into the sheltering arms of a small bay at high tide, and quietly dropped anchor. As if the soft splash had awoken him, a cockerel spluttered to life in a farmyard somewhere inland, but most of the villagers were already up and awake and steering their small, secret fleet of boats out from the golden crescent of sand beneath the cliffs to meet the waiting ship fresh from Roscoff.

Beneath the waves, where churning kelp moored itself in unyielding handfuls to the ancient granite of the sea floor, a long, serpentine shadow snaked between the stalks, and the currents of the coastline subtly shifted. Any revenue men trying to sail along the coast from Fowey to catch the smugglers would have found the wind and tide set dead against them, and in the subtle wake that wafted from the mottled, eel-like tail as it passed unseen, the waters of the secluded inlet calmed beneath the keels of the scurrying fishing boats. The drag of the oars through the waves lessened, and muscles already tired from heaving and hefting goods up the cliff moved a fraction easier for the unexpected boon.

Between them over the next hour, the gathered men and women shifted their haul of half anker barrels and dozens of crates and boxes of goods ashore. The small kegs of rich, French cognac would fetch a pretty price all across Cornwall, and along with the liquor came smaller luxuries like lace and silk, and bundles of tobacco and spiced tea, all meticulously wrapped in oil cloth to keep the sea and the salt and the water out.

And when the speedy, slender ship was riding noticeably higher in the water, the locals simply melted away into the countryside like so many mice from a late summer granary before the excise men even knew the ship from Guernsey had visited the cove at all.

Fifteen miles away, as the sun breached the horizon and cast its first rays of warmth along bellies of fleecy clouds and the flanks of blossoming hedgerows below, a stagecoach lurched and rumbled westwards along potholed roads, and a young woman stared out of the grimy window as the horses carried her into a new chapter of her life.

After leapfrogging some two hundred miles or so along the staging stations that dotted the South Coast, with nothing but a small trunk of her belongings and a thrice-read, dog-eared novel for company, Eleanor Bywater was more than ready to see the back of that infernal stagecoach. Had it not been for the small but inconveniently bulky travelling case sitting at her feet, she might have hired a horse and ridden from the last staging inn at Plymouth to reach the secluded fishing village of Polgarrack, but given that the trunk held all her worldly belongings, she had not been quite desperate enough to escape the discomfort of hard seats and poor suspension to abandon it.

Bouncing along in the nearly-empty stagecoach, she studiously tried to ignore the older woman sitting opposite her. She’d stared intently at Nel since they'd left Plymouth behind that morning, and her scrutiny had begun to make that last twenty mile stretch feel much, much longer.

Finally, after jouncing over a pothole deep enough to start prospecting for copper ore at the bottom, Nel gasped and then raised her eyes to meet the woman’s openly curious stare. She found sympathy for her own discomfort, and a small degree of kindly amusement too. 

“Where are you headed, miss?” the stranger asked after Nel raised the hint of an eyebrow at her as the silence stretched.

“Polgarrack.”

At that, the woman’s grey eyes narrowed in confusion. “Now what takes a young miss like you to an old fishing village like Polgarrack?”

She looked to be in her fifties, though a life beside the harsh sea had weathered her features somewhat, and her wiry grey hair was covered by a simple linen cap. Her dress was dark and plain, though there was a hint of tired lace around the neck and cuffs. Her hands had the tough, reddened look of someone who scrubbed pots and salted fish, while Nel’s own hands were smooth and soft, if a little ink stained from sending a letter to her friend before leaving the inn that morning.

Nel laughed quietly and shrugged. “There’s no mystery to it,” she said. “I am to be employed as a companion to the widowed Lady Penrose at Heath Top House. I am expected there this afternoon.”

Given that only ladies of relatively high social standing themselves tended to become a ‘lady’s companion’, the older woman made a hasty re-evaluation of her fellow traveller, and her already ruddy cheeks flushed a darker shade as she cleared her throat and looked away.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” she said. “We don’t get many new faces in Polgarrack, is all. I didn’t mean to pry or cause offence with my questions.”

“No harm in a little curiosity,” Nel said, trying to put the stranger at ease to avoid any further awkwardness between them on the remainder of their journey. “I take it you’re from Polgarrack yourself then?”

“Oh, born and raised, miss,” she chortled. She eyed the forest green redingote Nel wore, with its rather masculine high collar, wide lapels and small, gold pocket watch dangling on a chain, and the contrasting sage green skirts beneath, and no doubt made one or two judgements of her own about the young lady. “And yourself? You don’t sound as though you’re from these parts at all, if I may be so bold.”

Nel smiled. “I’ve come from Sussex.”

The woman’s watery, grey-blue eyes widened almost comically and she gasped. “’at's a bloody long way, miss! And all on your own?” She shook her head but remembered herself and mumbled, “Begging your pardon.”

“You’re right,” Nel sighed, letting her gaze slide to the window to watch the countryside roll past in a blur of salt-bleached grass and vibrant yellow gorse flowers. “It is a bloody long way.” And her spine and backside felt every lump and bump and lurch of the stagecoaches from Sussex to Cornwall. With a warmer smile, she turned back to the woman. “My name is Eleanor, but most people call me Nel.”

“Agatha,” she replied with a grandmotherly smile of her own for the young woman. “But everyone calls me Aggie. My husband, Martin, is the village carter and smith, and we’ve got four boys, all of them either fishermen or miners. They all married too, so I’ve got nine grandchildren, if you can believe it!”

Nel offered Aggie her congratulations and another little smile, and then ventured to ask, “Will you tell me a bit about the place? I should like to know more about it, since it is to be my home for the foreseeable future.”

Aggie brightened even more and shuffled her plain, dark skirts, giving a wince and a grunt as the coach lurched over a pothole and the driver cursed audibly above them. Settled, if not entirely comfortable, she began.

“Well, see now. Folks has been fishing these waters for time out of mind. Pilchards is our mainstay, o’course, but the folks over St. Austell way mine clay, and obviously there’s copper and tin mines all over in the north of Cornwall. Mining here is as old as fishing, but it’s starting to dry up here and there now, o’course.”

She barely paused to draw breath before barrelling on, and Nel sat and listened while the older woman talked.

“Now, your Lady Penrose married into the Penrose family — see, she’s from Bath herself originally, though I can’t rightly remember what her family name was, but…” Nel let Agatha's potted history of the fishing and mining community wash over her, paying just enough attention to make polite sounds at the right pauses, but the discomfort of the journey and a decided lack of sleep was beginning to wear her attention span down to a single, fraying thread.

After two hours in the swaying, rolling coach, she felt woozy and weak-stomached, but with Aggie’s near-constant chatter, she at least had a better understanding of the politics of the little village than she’d ever have gained in six months on her own. She’d also learned why Aggie had been in Plymouth, since most folks never had any reason to travel further than the bounds of their own parish. Agatha’s sister’s husband had apparently been killed in the American Revolutionary War some ten years earlier, and since the widow’s health wasn’t the best these days, Aggie made the trip along the coast when she could to see her and take care of her.

Nel’s ticket took her as far as Whitcross, a desolate intersection of paler roads on a clifftop overlooking the tightly-nestled fishing port below, and away across the heather and tufted grass of the heath, she could just see an old manor house in the distance, flanked by tall copper beeches and ash trees. It looked slightly further away than she had anticipated, and she glanced apprehensively down at the travelling trunk at her feet.

Still, she was aching for fresh air and to be free of the sickening motion of the carriage, so she took the driver’s hand and allowed him to guide her safely down onto the hard-packed surface of the road before he lifted her case down for her as well.

From inside, Aggie peered out and scowled disapprovingly. “Now just you wait a moment,” she barked at the driver, who cocked an eyebrow but did pause. “Did they not send someone for you, dearie?” she asked Nel, still leaning out of the doorway and peering about like a disgruntled badger, and using the endearment freely. Apparently, two hours of talking non-stop at Nel had removed any pretence of formality or sense of social distance. Nel might as well have been adopted into Aggie Carter’s family as a niece by that point, and she couldn’t help but smile at the warmth it conjured in her chest.

“I… I never thought that far through,” she admitted, with her hand atop her bonnet as the wind gusted up from the sea below, soaring delightedly over the edge of the cliff and racing on inland as if to continue the momentum of the great rolling breakers that foamed and thundered against the shore. The coachman glanced at his pocket watch and groused something about a schedule that was almost immediately lost to the next inward gust.

“No, no, dearie,” the old woman scoffed. “No, you must come into the village. It’s far too far to go all by yourself, and with that case as well. Here, let me —”

“I can manage the case, I assure you,” Nel said with a gentle smile as Aggie half-toppled, half-leaned out of the coach to pick up the case. “How far is it to the house?”

“Two miles up that hill yonder,” Agatha said, pointing with one gnarled and arthritic finger towards the house on the rise to the north. “Come to the Lantern, and we’ll have one of the lads take you up once you’ve caught your breath.” The Lantern, as Nel now knew thanks to Aggie’s detailed prattling, was the inn at the centre of the village, right on the water near the harbour.

She had been about to protest, but with a sigh, she simply nodded. The constant journeying and jolting had worn her down more than she cared to admit, and while she wasn’t the kind of wallflower she’d met any number of times in London during the Season, a life led mostly indoors with few opportunities for physical activity had not prepared her for a two mile walk in heavy, too-fine clothes, carrying an unwieldy case in gusty conditions. Her family had been invited a number of times to Goodwood House to walk the large park there, and she had frequently ridden a rather spirited mare through the parkland of Lavington Hall with her dear friend William, so she was not entirely unused to the great outdoors, but she did have to admit that her experiences had been rather more curated and sanitised than the wild expanse of heathland visible on all sides of the stagecoach from Whitcross.

“You’re kind, Agatha,” she said, and let the woman heft her case into the otherwise empty coach.

The thing about a tiny village was that an outsider stood out a mile, and a young lady in her mid twenties and dressed in impractical, rich green clothes, stood out like a beacon in a dark night. Everyone turned to watch her as she disembarked from the coach. At home, she had barely garnered a look from anyone. Being the centre of everyone’s curiosity there was novel and, in a word, horrifying.

She almost blurted aloud that one would think she was a revenue man come inspecting for smuggled goods, but she bit it back just in time. Cornwall’s so-called ‘free trade’ and smuggling rackets were absolutely none of her concern as an outsider, infamous though they may be, and it would do her no good to start sticking her nose where it did not belong.

The Lantern was a half-timbered, two-storey building that faced the walled harbour. Its painted sign was peeling and sun-bleached, and it squawked something dreadful as it swung back and forth in the squalling wind. Mullioned windows glinted and shimmered, though the small, diamond panes were caked with a haze of salt spray, and alongside the inn, a hand-cart rumbled down from a narrow side alley towards the harbour beyond, where fishing boats bobbed on their mooring lines at the lapping high tide.

Agatha pushed open the black-painted door but came to an abrupt halt as someone appeared to be leaving the inn at the exact same moment, and nearly barrelled into her and Nel.

“Oh, excuse me,” came a young man’s hoarse tenor, and he stepped aside within the inn’s small porch to allow the two women to enter before he left.

Nel noted briefly that he wore well-made but plain clothes, and carried a hefty looking cane in his left hand, upon which he leaned while he waited for them to pass. He was pale and thin, his undyed linen shirt hanging loosely off his shoulders, and his light brown hair was tied back at the nape of his neck into a horsetail. The moment he met her eye, he inhaled in surprise and almost immediately looked away, his large, dark brown eyes turning shy and uncertain. “M’lady,” he mumbled without looking up.

She didn’t have time to correct him and tell him she had no such title, because the moment she had stepped inside, he was off out into the day beyond, limping markedly on his right leg as he went.

Nel turned back to find Agatha waiting for her, watching. “That there was young Edmund Nancarrow,” she supplied as Nel caught up with her. “Local lad. Lots of Nancarrows in this area,” she chuckled. “Can’t move for tripping over a Nancarrow. He was a shy, skittish thing even before he went off to war in the Colonies and came back with a bad leg,” she added. “But he’s a sweetheart if ever I saw one. Tailor’s ’prentice he is now.”

At that, Nel just nodded. Something in her ached when she realised she probably wouldn’t have much to do with the folk from the village once she was ensconced up at Heath Top House, and she half wised she could. They already sounded far more interesting than the Lady Winnifred Penrose, with whom Nel had only exchanged a short flurry of letters before becoming formally engaged as her ‘companion’. 

Still, an unmarried woman of Nel’s age and social standing was considered almost past her prime, and given that the few marriage proposals she had received had faded into the mists of her very early adulthood, she had had to find another respectable way to support herself. Hence, Heath Top House.

Aggie bustled her into the main room of the pub, and their arrival caused a flurry of activity that drew the eyes of a good few patrons. 

Seated at the wooden bar inside, hunched over a pewter tankard, sat a tall, bulky man in his late-thirties or early forties, with long, thick, dark grey hair shot through with a shimmer of silver white. He had it tied back off his face in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck and as he turned to regard Nel’s arrival, she met unusually deep green eyes surrounded by a web of crows’ feet lines in a tanned, weathered face. His scowl was dark and full of suspicion, but even the storm clouds in his expression couldn’t mask the fact that he was handsome, in a rugged, rough-hewn kind of way.

When she saw where Nel’s attention had snagged, Aggie let out a little gasp and snatched her by the upper arm to steer her towards an empty table in a bay window, about as far from the wooden bar where the man still sat and glared at them as it was possible to be. 

“And that’s Locryn Trevethan,” Aggie hissed as she saw Nel settled into a seat. “Can’t say as I’ve seen him in here more than a handful of times this year though. He’s usually out on the water. Lives alone in an old stone cottage round the bay from here, up at Pilchard Sands. You’d probably best be giving him a wide berth, miss. Not that he should give you any trouble, mind,” she amended carefully, “But he’s not for the likes of you to go mingling with.”

Nel smiled at the protective tone in the older woman’s voice, and nodded once.

With her warning given, Aggie raised her voice and called over to the old man behind the bar. “’ere, Tom! This young lady needs a ride up to Heath Top. You think you can arrange that for her?”

The stoop-shouldered, white-haired man nodded and knuckled his forehead at Nel across the space. “Not the finest, but we got a cart.”

“If you have a horse, I could ride,” she said, trying to be helpful.

“Ain’t got a saddle for a lady,” he said regretfully.

Memories of galloping through the leafy trees of Lavington Hall’s parkland with William flashed across her mind and she suppressed a smile. She certainly hadn’t ridden the grey mare side-saddle while keeping up with her childhood friend, and although it had been a year or so since she’d sat astride a horse instead of side-saddle, she thought she could manage well enough. “I know how to ride a man’s saddle,” she said, “But I do have a travel case I’d need to send someone back for.”

“I could get one of the lads to bring that up for you after,” said Tom, “But it’s almost as much effort to hitch up a cart as it is to tack up a horse for riding, ma’am.”

“Whatever is the least trouble for you will do fine,” she said, and the stoic, weather-beaten old man’s red cheeks darkened and he ducked his head.

While Tom left to sort out transportation to the house, Aggie flapped about getting some refreshments for Nel, leaving her to wait at the table alone.

In the wake of the hubbub and pother Agatha left behind her, Nel took a long, deep breath looked around to find Locryn Trevethan still staring across the room at her. Taken aback by his directness and the intensity of his glare, she tried to smile, but his expression remained thunderous beneath strong, dark brows, and she quickly looked away, embarrassed.

In a face turned to leather by the sun and sea-wind, wide cheekbones and a heavy brow framed his piercingly green eyes. Never mind that marked crow’s feet around his eyes that made him look like he would rather have been laughing; the contrast between the dark, hostile glower and the soft laughter lines unnerved her and made her feel off-balance, as though her stranger’s presence in their local pub had unknowingly raised the ire of a usually gentle man. 

He had a short, neatly-trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard around full lips that were currently turned down at the corners and which bore a silver-pink scar across the middle. Despite the warm day, he wore a fisherman’s dense, woollen sweater, and when she risked another look back at him, she found him still frowning openly across the bar at her.

Nel didn’t relax until Aggie returned, at which point the man snapped abruptly out of his trance, slammed a coin down on the bar, and strode from the pub on long legs that were thick as tree trucks at the thigh. The door bounced back off the plasterwork in his wake and his boots rang on the flagstones outside.

“Not one to welcome strangers, I take it,” Nel muttered, and downed half of the cheap, watered-down wine that Agatha had set on the table for her.

“Oh don’t you pay him no mind, miss,” Aggie scoffed, settling herself down into the seat opposite her like a brooding hen and glaring at the pub door. “He don’t seem to like no one in Polgarrack save for sweet Ned Nancarrow, strangely enough. Then again, I ain’t met no one who’s taken a disliking to sweet Ned. Now, Tom will have the horse and cart ready for you in just a moment, but you just take your time and recover after your journey.”

Nel, who had felt ten times better the moment she’d taken her first proper lungful of sea air on stepping out of the swaying stagecoach, looked across the table into the older woman’s face and found a mother’s kindness and compassion in her wrinkled face, and something twisted in her gut. “You’re very kind,” she whispered, unable to muster anything more. “Thank you.”

She chuckled. “You know, and don’t you take this amiss, but you remind me of my niece a little, though she’s a little younger than you.”

Nel’s eyebrows twitched in wry amusement, and Agatha blushed at the impropriety of her words. Nel didn’t get the chance to reassure her because Tom shuffled back in and told her the cart was ready for her.

She laid a coin on the table for the wine and stood, following the innkeep out into the yard and clambering up with her case into the back of the cart. It was hardly a very dignified mode of transport for someone of her station, and when Tom said as much while they rumbled out of the inn’s yard, Nel just laughed and said she didn’t mind.

“Anything is better than that awful rolling stagecoach,” she beamed, and swung her legs back and forth like a child off the back of the cart bed while Tom clucked his tongue at the horse to hurry up.

As they trundled up the narrow, cobbled street from the harbour, they passed Edmund Nancarrow standing outside a tailor’s shop, talking with the beast of a man from the bar. Both men looked up and watched her pass like she was some kind of rare spectacle.

In a way, she supposed she was. 

Still, she smiled at them despite her nerves, and Edmund knuckled a non-existent cap at her with a shy smile, while Locryn just glared.

She sighed and wondered what this next chapter in her life would bring.

___

Next chapter ->

Well, what did you think of it so far? I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it, as always!

I hope you’ll consider reblogging as well as leaving a like if you enjoyed it. Take care, and I hope you have a lovely day/night wherever you are, and whenever you read this.

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#selkie #bucca #polyamory #polyamorous romance #poly story #o #historical fantasy #shifter romance #poly shifter romance #18th century romance #shapeshifter romance #m/m/f

[genderlessjacky]

Season 3? confirmed , skin? clear , crops? watered , depression? cured , suicide rates? at an all time low , teen anxiety rates? 0% , will to live? infinite , nightingales? singing , waist vest? worn out , dying? no more , off my head? on laudanum , actions? not responsible, humans? weird and it takes a few days to know they're in love , tea? fun to look at , naked man? in bookshop , met*tron? fuck you , crepes? eaten , church? burned , zombie? nazis, Jane Austen? The brains behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Brandy smuggler. Master spy. What a piece of work , a bit of a? dark horse ,  She wrote? books , Novels? Yes they were very good , she had? balls , we can be? us , gabriel and beelzebub? ran away , alpha? centauri , we can? go off together , be an? us , we can be? angels , just me and you? what do you say , he leans in? to the kiss , I forgive? you , dont? bother , we could have been? us

#good omens #crowley #crowley good omens #anthony j crowley #archangel aziraphale #aziracrow #aziraphale #aziraphale and crowley #aziraphale good omens #ineffable husbands #ineffable divorce #aziraphale x crowley #crowley and aziraphale #azicrow #good omens aziraphale #crowley x aziraphale #crowly x aziraphale #im going nuts #good omens season 3 #season 3 #gomens #good omens 3 #neil gaiman

[linipikk]

SO, I come here today to talk to you about Aziraphale, Jane Austen and the double life he lives.

Because Nina teasingly refers to Aziraphale as being mysterious and surprising as a dark horse

and you know who else is referred to as equally surprising, a dark horse? Jane Austen

and I like how with Jane, we get Crowley's AND Aziraphale's version of the same person, who we very well know wrote books.

From Aziraphale, we get the things we mostly know about Jane: A novelist who held cotillion balls.

From Crowley, we get her secret outlaw activities: Jane was the brains behind a Robbery, a Brandy smuggler, and a master spy.

And, as Aziraphale didn't know about Jane Austen's criminal career, Crowley didn't know about her artistic endeavors. Her good side is hidden from Crowley, and her bad side is hidden from Aziraphale.

But also, there are some interesting parallels between Jane fucking Austen AND Aziraphale.

The minisodes show us that Aziraphale was an unwilling alcohol smuggler in 1941

he can also fool everyone when the time matters to his side and to Hell's side. In fact, his job as an angel is basically being a spy.

But also, he wrote extensively, he has many diaries that are just lying around in his shop

And of course, he has organized at least ONE cotillion ball

And, the brains behind ...well, many plans at this point, including saving Job's children, manipulating the room to make the angels believe those are Job's new kids, playing his own game for thousands of years. Aziraphale is the one finding Clues and finding who Adam was back in the Armagedidnt. I wouldn't put it past him to be paying his own part in the three-dimensional chess by going back to heaven.

It is very deliberate that the minisodes show mostly Aziraphale backstory, from his own point of view, he knows very well what he has done, the good and the bad.

And that's exactly my point. I think Crowley doesn't get the full picture of Aziraphale just yet

We know they don't communicate very well. And even after all their years together, they still have very strict preconceived conceptions about what angels are supposed to be and what demons are supposed to be, even when they themselves transgress those all the time.

I'm fairly convinced that Crowley's "You don't dance" surprised tone in the ball is carried from the idea that angels don't dance from season one, even tho we know from God's narration that Aziraphale does.

After 6k years Aziraphale not only is still surprising Crowley with cotillion balls and firearm licenses, and, as Crowley didn't know Jane's ordinary life, it makes me think Crowley really doesn't know about Aziraphale's diaries detailing their history together. (Bit of a Chekov's gun from Neil, imo)

note: From what I know, there is no such thing as the 1810 diamond robbery, it being entirely fictional but I am going deep into the suspension belief and run with it

#good omens #good omens s2 #ineffable husbands #lini writes #not even speculationfor s3 i'm just having a jolly good time #I dont know the first thing about jane austen i'm just reading the good omens text only #i like putting pictures in my metas :( sorry for making them long

[drconstellation]

Inside the Dirty Donkey

**Warning! This meta contains spoilers and speculation for S3. Do NOT tag Neil!**

Time to get comfy, folks. Get your drink of choice, be it a cupperty, coffee, or nip of sherry, and find a seat. You’ll definitely want to be sitting down for this one. We’re going to the pub!

The name is apparently a favorite of NG’s, used in his short story “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale.” And it also appears in the Sandman AU.

In the short story above the protagonist is a jilted lover who tries to organize an assassin for his fiancé who is having an affair with another man at their shared workplace. He meets the ‘salesman’ of the firm he contacts at a pub called the Dirty Donkey, and it escalates from there. The story is freely available online, so you can search it up if you really want to read it, it won’t take long. It mentions a pale horse, which is usually what Death rides in on, and is appropriate in the context of that story.

The question we need to ask is how does the name The Dirty Donkey apply to the Good Omens AU? Are there any context to the name at all?

There are several meanings for a dirty donkey:

Its a slang or joke name for a black horse (not particularly a dark horse, that has a different meaning altogether)

A cocktail

A sex position (I’ll let you look that one up yourself…)

Probably the first thing we need to talk about, though is an actual donkey itself, in relation to Jesus, as S2 is full of Jesus references and hints to the Second Coming in S3. Yep, it was all there in front of us, but we were too focused on other things. If you remember your Bible teachings, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, because he came in peace. In ancient times leaders rode horses if they went to war, or if they came in conquest. But arriving by donkey meant you came with peaceful intentions.

But Jesus didn't turn up in S2, you say. And certainly not on any hairy beast. Ah, but he did - metaphorically. Gabriel as Jim turned up - he came up the street, by (the Dirty) Donkey, walking through spilled blood tomatoes, then mentioned his arms were no longer sore (because he had been taken off the cross.) MrPeriod talks more about how Jim represents Jesus here, and it might be worth revisiting it at length another time, as there is quite a bit to unpack there.

There are also the two big golden lions perched on either end of the bar inside the pub, that look rather ominous. The lions are strongly connected to Jesus and his resurrection, representing his return. (I'm still planning to have a better look for more lions in both S1 and S2, but that is still a WIP at the moment.)

There is also the scene in 1941 where the Nazi zombies stagger into the Dirty Donkey and spy on Aziraphale and Crowley through the windows through to the book shop, but all they manage to get is “Banana, fish, gorilla, shoe lace with a dash of nutmeg.” It sounds a bit like a cocktail reference – well, the nutmeg is definitely a GO ref to a certain cocktail – but the cocktail called a Dirty Donkey has cinnamon in it, in the form of cinnamon schnapps, not nutmeg – plus chocolate liqueur and rum. So maybe not.

But perhaps the most important thing we have to examine is the conversation about Jane Austin that Aziraphale and Crowley have in the pub, in S2E2. Because its got so many levels you just about need a break for extra oxygen half way down. Ha! And you thought it was a couple of funny throw-away lines about how Aziraphale saw human romance...

OK, this is the section of dialogue we are going to look at:

AZIRAPHALE: If you're going to invoke fiction, you might as well do it properly. CROWLEY: Properly? AZIRAPHALE: You remember Jane Austen? CROWLEY: Yeah. I'm not gonna forget her in a hurry, am I? The brains behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Brandy smuggler. Master spy. What a piece of work. AZIRAPHALE: She wrote books. Novels. CROWLEY: Jane? Austen? AZIRAPHALE: Yes! CROWLEY: Whoa, bit of a dark horse. Novels, eh? AZIRAPHALE: Yes. They were very good. CROWLEY: Well. No, I'm just surprised, that's all. You think you know someone. AZIRAPHALE: She had balls. CROWLEY: Well.... AZIRAPHALE: Cotillion balls. People would gather and do some formal dancing and then realize they had misunderstood each other and were actually deeply in love.

Ready to dive into the levels on the Jane Austen conversation? Let's go...

Level 1: It’s a conversation about the novelist Jane Austen, and it sounds like they both met her, but they remember her in different ways – and Crowley’s memory is rather surprising!

Level 2: There is a mention of a robbery. This makes the parallel with the 1967 scene in S1E3 Hard Times, where Crowley has a secret meeting in the Dirty Donkey to plan a robbery to steal holy water from a church. The robbery in the above conversation involves diamonds (are you taking note/s? This is important!) from Clerkenwell, a district of London of some notoriety. It was famous for it watchmakers and jewelers, but it was also the home of Oliver Cromwell, who has a link to the 1650 date mentioned in S2E1 and the Eccles cakes, to Charles Dickens (author of A Tale of Two Cities, a book of note for GO) Oh, and both times Crowley is wearing a "Tactical Turtleneck", which others have noted he wears when he is doing his own master spy work, such planning or discussing robberies, or sneaking into Heaven to rob them of information!

Level 3: There is Aziraphale’s idea about how a romance should be conducted, by hosting a cotillion ball with formal dancing, because he's read all those romantic novels by Austen. And we get to see that played out in S2E5 in the eldritch ball. Crowley's idea of a romance was to get caught in the rain and kiss, then - vavoom!

Level 4: Why mention this apparently fictional side to an author of fictional romance? Well, on one hand, it’s an interesting but dark set-up for a joke later at the beginning of S2E6. I ended up discussing it at length here, but the short of it is that it is our usual human custom not to speak ill of the dead, and this is a form of extreme black-and-white thinking. Here, Aziraphale speaks of the good/white side of Jane Austen, that is well known, but Crowley speaks of the black/supposedly forgotten or unspoken bad side of Austen.

Level 5: Here’s the S3 information. Have you been paying attention? Did you take note? The parallels were the robberies between a church, and diamonds? That she was a brandy smuggler? Do you know where they smuggled brandy from? And do you know where Austen actually lived? On the South Downs, overlooking the Channel to France…

Whew. I think I need a drink after that. Cheers!

[Edit: I've recently finished a meta on the Bentley and how that relates to black horses, and it's occurred to me why the ethereal lift, or "hellevator," is in the entrance to the Dirty Donkey. Black horses are symbolic spirit guides between the worlds of the living and the dead, so this makes the perfect place to put the lift!]

#good omens #good omens 2 #crowley #aziraphale #good omens meta #good omens analysis #the dirty donkey #the pub #hard times #holy water heist #1967 crowley #jim as jesus #jane austen #cottage on the south downs #master spy #a sherry for me #tactical turtleneck #vavoom

[vidavalor]

What if Aziraphale wasn't trying to recreate a ball from Jane Austen's novels but a ball like ones thrown *in real life* by *Jane Austen* herself?

*She had* balls. Not that she wrote about balls in her novels (which she did but that's not what Aziraphale is saying here) or that the balls in her novels were full of romance but *she had balls*--

Jane herself had them, in real life.

Aziraphale and Crowley *both* knew Jane Austen herself personally. Timeline and location-wise, this makes sense. Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in 1817. Jane Austen would have been 25 at the time of the bookshop having opened and had already penned Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice just prior to the turn of the century, even if neither would be published for another decade, which might account for why Crowley remembers her more as the brains behind an 1810 diamond robbery, a brandy smuggler and a master spy. (That and that he's clueless lol.) But while Aziraphale knows she became known as a rather famous writer over time but he also probably didn't read too much of her work when they knew her personally, as much of it was published just a few years prior to her death. As a result, he could well be talking about actual balls Jane threw in the Good Omens universe-- where people danced and realized they had misunderstood one another and that they were in love... which means the balls of Jane Austen in the real life of the GO universe were basically the exact opposite of the conflict-ridden ones she wrote in her books.

Since Crowley knew her, too, there's a solid chance he and Aziraphale crossed paths at at least one of these balls and you just know Aziraphale has been waiting since, like, 1809 for a chance for it to be okay to ask Crowley to dance and have him realize that he'd misunderstood Aziraphale at times and that they were actually madly in love. These balls were romantic affairs for the humans and Aziraphale delighted in that but he and Crowley had more of an Austen novel experience during them in the past.

The irony of this then is that since we know that they didn't dance then at one of these balls because of Crowley's "you don't dance" reaction in S2, then Aziraphale ironically spent at least one entire real-life, Jane Austen-thrown ball *as an Austen character* more or less, pining after the dashing gentleman he couldn't have and with whom he had every damn Austen novel-y misunderstanding under the sun and then some... but he knows that for others/the humans, Jane Austen's real-life balls were the complete opposite. And in 2023, he wants to see if now maybe he can have that, too, as he tries to recreate one of Jane's soirees not just for Maggie and Nina but for him and Crowley. Times have changed a bit and our angel has been waiting, like, 200 years for this, so really Shax, did it have to be tonight?

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #crowley x aziraphale #jane austen #good omens 2

[amarguerite]

Ngl it is a good time for the Jane Austen girlie— not only did we get a great reference to the ‘95 Pride and Prejudice/ call out in Barbie, in Good Omens Jane Austen is apparently a jewel thief, a brandy smuggler, and a master spy in Good Omens Season 2.

#I’d believe it #such a keen observational eye would make her a brilliant spy