Michael Sheen Being A Literal Angel

Collaboration I did with my friend on Instagram! I sketched it out and she colored it! We drew antisepticeye for the whole Halloween spirit! @therealjacksepticeye

Some of Jack’s whiteboard messages

I don’t wanna be free

Of these amenities

If I tried to live this good out there

I’d have to be a thousandaire

Just wanted to say Happy Birthday Jackieboy Man!! @therealjacksepticeye

Mark really gonna be like, "Hey guys, here's AHWM! Hope you enjoy!" Wait a week then throw us another cryptic series for us to understand. He and Ethan really gonna do that to us?

It's the coffee bean, @therealjacksepticeye I decided to add the filter that he used today since I felt like it fits him

Silhouettes in Good Omens

So I’m seeing on my dash some posts about a reporter asking Michael Sheen if he wore a fatsuit to play Aziraphale. There are all sorts of very astute comments on why someone would assume Sheen was heavier in the role than he actually was – Hollywood’s unrealistic body standards, him wearing a lot of layers and standing next to a snakey fellow, etc and so forth – but one of the biggest the fans are missing is deliberate costume design.

So for the sake of artists and cosplayers (or more likely, people who just like to read blog posts) here’s some shaping hacks that trick the eye in Good Omens. PS, these hacks tend to be geared toward traditionally masculine body types:

In the present day, Crowley wears modern slimming clothes in dark colors. The shoulders and overall body length are emphasized. He wears a structured jacket with wide, angular, straight shoulders. It’s short to make his legs look longer, but the waist is lower to make his torso look longer and his belly look smaller by suggesting his waist doesn’t start until his hip sockets.

Tight jeans, obviously, because unlike other kinds of tight pants, jeans have enough structure to be slimming. 

His jacket collar points sharply upward and creates a downward arrow-shape, along with his v-neck tee and long, narrow, loose tie-thingy that all lead the eye downward, tricking us into thinking there’s more length and less width. The fabric is cut close but hangs, doesn’t cling, from his midsection.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale is dressed in a very old fashioned style – that is to say when clothes were designed to make one look fatter wealthier:

In addition to oft-mentioned layers, he wears light-colored clothes in bulky fabrics. His frock coat is long, making his legs look shorter, but his waist is higher, firmly holding the eye higher on the body and drawing attention to the widest part of the stomach. His coat has large pocket flaps and its shoulders are on the narrow, round side, which not only makes his arms seem plumper but deemphasizing his shoulders makes his middle look wider. The coat has a wide, rounded, downward-pointing collar that tricks the brain into thinking the wearer is wider in the middle.

He wears a snug waistcoat with lots of buttons and a watchchain across his tummy that draws your attention. His clothes are rumpled and unstructured and tend to be baggy in the legs and back. Lastly, he wears a bowtie instead of a necktie, directing the eye once more toward width rather than length.

If you’re interested in drawing or cosplaying Aziraphale, you can use all the above information to get that soft angel look at any weight. You can even see some of it working for Crowley in his Elizabethan doublet.

i think one of my favorite things about good omens (the tv show), and aziraphale and crowley’s relationship, is how cheesily slow-burn it is. the two of them have been gradually falling in love with each other over 6 millennia of accidental meetings, wiling/thwarting, and clandestine drinks. they’re classic enemies-to-friends-to-lovers: an angel! and a demon!

but good omens the show also has a field day with aziraphale’s apprehensions about the whole thing. from his side of the relationship, aziraphale is continually in flux over whether he really accepts how important crowley is to him.

aziraphale’s development throughout the show is characterized by his ambivalence.

he’s an angel, a servant of god put on earth to do good. that does not include associating with demons on his checklist of holy deeds. repeatedly, aziraphale reasserts his role as the angel, taking shelter behind the straight and narrow that’s expected of him, whenever he feels that that particular sense of his identity is being threatened by his relationship with crowley.

of course, aziraphale then tends to undermine his own assertions.

funnily enough, it’s not the demon trying to play the long game of tempting an angel to fall. it’s the angel playing the long game of dancing the line—trying to maintain the best of both worlds: his identity as an angel, his loyalty to god and heaven; as well as his friendship with crowley.

and let’s be real. crowley has been well-aware of aziraphale’s uncertainty for a long time.

unlike aziraphale, crowley’s not interested in maintaining a healthy allegiance to hell or lucifer in the way that aziraphale continually turns back to heaven, to gabriel, and to god for approval or solutions. he does the bare minimum to keep himself bodily and metaphysically intact—and perhaps glean some personal satisfaction from a job well-done, even if it’s a somewhat malicious job.

after all, the evil deeds that he favors? well…

take hastur and ligur, dukes of hell and model representatives of what the place idealizes. their deeds on the day they deliver the antichrist are tempting a priest with lust and compelling a politician to accept a bribe. hastur gleefully kills a nun and sets a convent on fire, while ligur thinks favorably upon the idea of ripping a person’s right arm off. they’re up close and personal. direct responsibility over the corruption and destruction of individual souls.

crowley doesn’t favor that style. when he corrupts, he doesn’t shove a train off its tracks with his own hands. he creates a highway that radiates waves of general ill will, or shuts down london’s mobile phone network to make everyone just a little bit more irritable. when he acts upon his duties as a demon, crowley doesn’t do any more than any other normal human might encourage as a by-product of living in the same world. his deeds are the equivalent of someone cutting you off in traffic, or your cell signal cutting out from non-occult forces.

he preserves free will. sure, he made your day a bit worse, but really, the only one making the choice of taking that out on the people around you is you.

and don’t ask crowley to kill anyone. because frankly, judging by his distaste for god’s flood, jesus’s crucifixion, being the one to eliminate the antichrist? he’d really rather not.

he gave the paintball competitors real guns but ensured they wouldn’t kill anyone. he set a bucket of holy water on top of his door to kill whichever demon chose to come after him but didn’t put any in his plant mister.

crowley doesn’t have an ounce of real dedication to hell. he was and has only ever been the fallen angel who sauntered vaguely downwards.

so in this, he’s the antithesis to aziraphale’s vacillation. crowley has no ties holding him back from committing fully to a relationship with aziraphale. time and again, crowley is the one who initiates their interactions, who does him favors first, who saves him from discorporation, for no other benefit except companionship. and this frightens aziraphale.

it takes millennia for aziraphale to let down each barrier. and crowley remains patient. he understands his reluctance to leave the welcome arms of heaven behind. even after their 1862 fight in st. james’s park, crowley reappears out of nowhere nearly 80 years later to save aziraphale and his books and rejects the thanks he tries to give. on the day of the apocalypse, aziraphale yells to him that their friendship is over, and crowley still comes back begging him to run away with him to alpha centauri.

but at the same time… crowley refuses to make it easier for aziraphale.

some of his pushback to aziraphale’s generosity can definitely be attributed to difficulties with self-esteem. he’s still done hell’s work, after all, and coming from a place with demotivational posters that are basically depression on paper won’t do wonders for one’s ability to accept compliments.

but being a demon—being a fallen angel—is still central to who crowley is. while he may not hold any loyalty to hell because of it, he’s also not interested in returning to heaven. why would he be, when they cast him down into a pool of boiling sulphur only for asking questions? when they’re just as comfortable as hell with killing innocents and starting wars?

so when the end is nigh, and aziraphale is trying to imply his own solution to saving the both of them…

aziraphale has just gone begging to heaven to put an end to the apocalypse. and they told him no. the war has to be won.

he still doesn’t have the nerve to openly disobey heaven’s commands. and in his certainty that heaven will indeed win if the apocalypse happens, the only option that will allow aziraphale to remain on heaven’s side while preserving crowley’s life is if crowley returns to the host.

this suggestion, though, is not one crowley is willing to take.

a relationship with aziraphale is something crowley deeply values. but he won’t settle for an aziraphale that hasn’t accepted the full ramifications of what that entails—whether it’s the fact that crowley is a demon, full stop, with all the implications therein; or that to love him is reprehensible to heaven.

aziraphale’s blind loyalty to heaven and his relationship with crowley are incompatible, a fact that he’s spent the last 6 millennia ignoring. crowley has been patient, trying to allow aziraphale to come to terms with it in his own time, but aziraphale couldn’t balance the knife’s edge between them forever. as the apocalypse approaches, so too does the conflict in their relationship come to a head.

crowley demands that he make the choice.

and once again, aziraphale chooses heaven’s will over crowley.

it’s only when aziraphale tries to reason with heaven one last time, talking to the voice of god themself, and has utter failure spelled out to him in the sky, that aziraphale finally accepts that heaven has no interest in the compassion and love that he and crowley value so dearly. the choice between heaven and crowley—was never really such a difficult choice after all.

good omens the show is not only a 600k slow-burn between two mortal enemies, it’s a very human tale in which it’s not the demon that struggles with accepting their desire for love and companionship, but the angel. while good omens the book is as fabulous a piece of source material as a show could wish to have, the show is the story that flips the archetypal denial of one’s love on its head. it’s the being of “evil” that offers the outstretched hand and waits patiently for the being of “good” to take it.

aziraphale and crowley face down against their respective superiors together, against lucifer, against holy water and hell fire.

and a nightingale sings in berkeley square.

here is the blessed thumbs up jack, reblog to have good luck for a year

Wanna be musically serenaded by both Yancy and Mark??? It’d be better if youse wear headphones.

Yancy: Right

Mark: Left

Who do you think sang it better?

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