#the bentley

sigridkaffen:

thegoodomensdumpster:

cadhla-marie:

ineffableplan:

cadhla-marie:

slytherkins:

cadhla-marie:

cadhla-marie:

it’s so strange to me to see how many people in the fandom simply aren’t aware that crowley doesn’t like queen, and that’s a big part of why it’s so funny that they’re pretty much all he’s been able to listen to since the 1970s.

like. nothing against people who do like queen, but our demon boi does not.

Do we know whythe Bentley turns everything to Queen? He’d had that car for decades before Queen even existed. Before Queen, did the radio stations all, say, turn to Bluegrass in the Jazz era? Was it a punishment, or has his radio always been haunted? Did that just happen when he installed his first 8-track player? If it was the former, what transgression did he commit that this was inflicted on him? Or was it just an inexplicable phenomenon resulting from his gayness for Aziraphale? Like the Bentley just absorbed the radiated gayness for decades and now is expending all the pent up gayness in the form of Queen music, like the body releases excess chemicals through its pores, because Queen music is the most pure expression of that gayness. Does it play Queen because Crowley expects it to, and so it does? And what first caused him to expect such an odd occurrance? Could he not convince himself otherwise and cause it to stop? 

I just….I have so many questions.   

It’s not just the Bentley. All tapes left in any car for more than a fortnight turn into Best of Queen. So, canonically, every person in the Good Omens Universe with a car faces this problem, not just Crowley (though he gets the most angry about it and notices it more than most other people). You do pose a good question, though: what did it turn into before, if anything?

i mean, we don’t actually ever see it happen to anyone else, it honestly could just be that Crowley believes it does, even he knows he unconsciously influences reality

ido want to know when it started though

That’s true! We don’t actually know that it happens to anyone else. The line in the book says that it’s alltapes left in acar, implying any and all cars, but we also know the narrator isn’t a fully reliable one. We can assume it happens to everyone else and no one else pays enough attention to know or care except Crowley and a select few others. Or it could be, like you said, only happening to Crowley, and he just assumes it’s a problem everyone faces.

Personally, I think Crowley probably heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” one too many times and was like, “You know, this shit is so annoying. You know what would be even more annoying? If everyone who was dumb enough to leave their tapes in the car too long had to listen to it.” And he forgot he is someone who is dumb enough to leave his tapes in the car too long, and has had to listen to it ever since. So…at least since 1975, since that’s when that particular song was released.

I’m personally of the opinion that Crowley doesn’t hate Queen so much as he just can’t stand listening to it anymore. He would like to be able to have other options when it comes to music, but it’s been several decades and now he’s pissed.

I think this is a joke which makes more sense to those of us who are older, and possibly of British location (I’m Australian but a lot of things extend to here from the UK). To me it’s funny because back when we had tape players in cars, it was highly likely the car you were in HAD a Best of Queen tape in it, it was just… ubiquitous.

So the thought that it used to be a different tape and just transmogrified over a period of time was both funny and plausible. I always took it to be all cars, and also that yes, Crowley definitely doesn’t like Queen because he’s heard it so many times (like lots of other normal humans who wonder how this tape ended up in their car when they don’t remember buying it).

tl;dr it’s an early 90s joke which makes sense to people who were adults at that time. Cassette players man, what a concept.

Yes, exactly! It’s a funny little bit that not only got lost in translation from book to screen, but is also a relic of the time when the book was written. It was meant to be one of those very relatable annoyances in life that are funny to explain through supernatural means, like the fabled portal to an alternate dimension in the laundry room where all your missing socks end up.

It feels like more of an absurdist non-sequitur in the show, especially since there is absolutely zero attempt to explain what’s going on. By all appearances, he’s just an unfathomably ancient demon who happens to blast thematically appropriate Queen songs wherever he goes.

Is there anything more iconic in Good Omens than David Tennant driving a flaming Bentley down an English road while Bohemian Rhapsody plays?

Possibly, but it’s still an awesome moment.

Especially when our lanky demon steps out, swaggering like an action movie star here to save the day, giving the one-liner he clearly spent half the journey thinking up: “You wouldn’t get that sort of performance from a modern vehicle.”

I wrote “In Love with My Car” because Crowley loves his car, period. It’s his home, in a way his flat never really is. When filming it’s final destruction, David Tennant’s only acting direction was: you are the Doctor and you just saw the Tardis destroyed. (Side note: that is the perfect kind of direction to give DT, not because he used to be the Doctor, but because he’s a huuuuuge Doctor Who fanboy and has probably written that fanfiction.)

Now, I learned more than I really ever thought I’d need to know about vintage cars while researching this story, but for those who have not, in the book Crowley has a 1928 Bentley, and on the show a 1933. This is rather a big difference.

I mean the ‘28 is cute and all. It’s like an old timey cartoon of a car. If I saw one of these on fire driving down the road, I’d be like “no, that’s fair, I expected that.”

The ‘33 is, if nothing else, much more in line with modern ideas of what a cool car should look like. Graceful, curving, solid. This was a car that was made to have good performance - above average, but you know, not German automobile levels - but also made to make you look rich and awesome in a decade where most people were not.

But book or TV show, it does NOT change the fact that Crowley loves the Bentley. Perhaps even more so in the book - like scroll back up and look at that thing. It’s like a sports-tractor. Book Crowley is very concerned with always having the latest, coolest flashiest things, yet he has a car that looks like it frequently gets outpaced by snails. Even TV Crowley, with his fondness for mementos and antiques, is constantly changing and updating his look to match the height of cool in every era, and the vintage Bentley look probably peaked in like the 1960s in the James Bond era.

What I’m saying is, if the point was to just look cool, both Crowleys would probably be driving some model of Jaguar at the very least.

But also in both - though you can obviously see it better on the show - the Bentley performs like a modern Jaguar (or, whatever). Like, Crowley shouldn’t be able to do 90 in Central London for the simple fact that a vintage Bentley can’t reach those speeds. The ‘33 could, as its max speed, under ideal circumstances which included “going downhill” and “perfectly smooth and straight road.” But Crowley drives it, screeching up the road, handling corners perfectly, at speeds that would make any driving instructor pass out.

But the Bentley is the Best Car. Crowley knows this, believes it, feels it in his soul. So when other cars start getting better, the Bentley does too, to match them. No fancy foreign Ferrari is going to outperform his awesome Bentley!

There’s been a lot written about how Crowley interacts with the spaces in his apartment. He keeps everything clean and open and minimalist, because space is such a luxury in Hell. He shouts at his plants because he’s reliving the abuse he suffers in Hell, and the rejection he received from Heaven.

The Bentley, though, represents the face he shows the world. Dark and powerful and cool and a little out of place but full of so much unmistakable style that really you have to question what every other car is doing wrong by not being a Bentley. This is exactly the kind of being Crowley wishes to be. The kind that turns every head when he comes in a room, the kind that always handles everything with effortless grace and style, the kind that everyone makes space for and just watches pass in utter awe.

Even when he talks to the car, primarily during the bits where it’s on fire, he’s encouraging it, telling it how good of a car it is, how it can do this utterly insane thing that it really, really can’t. It’s the complete opposite of how he treats his plants (degrading and berating them when for every tiny failure), because while the plants represent a part of himself he’s trying to distance himself from, the Bentley allows him to be who he wants to be.

And that is something that he would never, ever exchange for any other vehicle.

Anyway, you can read more about my thoughts on Crowley’s thoughts on his car in my fanfiction, “In Love with My Car” over on AO3!

(Note to readers: looking like a very good chance of no update this week. I will post this evening with current progress on my upcoming stories.)

whispsofwind:

tsilvy:

captainclickycat:

thegoodomensdumpster:

ilarual:

thegoodomensdumpster:

cadhla-marie:

ineffableplan:

cadhla-marie:

slytherkins:

cadhla-marie:

cadhla-marie:

it’s so strange to me to see how many people in the fandom simply aren’t aware that crowley doesn’t like queen, and that’s a big part of why it’s so funny that they’re pretty much all he’s been able to listen to since the 1970s.

like. nothing against people who do like queen, but our demon boi does not.

Do we know whythe Bentley turns everything to Queen? He’d had that car for decades before Queen even existed. Before Queen, did the radio stations all, say, turn to Bluegrass in the Jazz era? Was it a punishment, or has his radio always been haunted? Did that just happen when he installed his first 8-track player? If it was the former, what transgression did he commit that this was inflicted on him? Or was it just an inexplicable phenomenon resulting from his gayness for Aziraphale? Like the Bentley just absorbed the radiated gayness for decades and now is expending all the pent up gayness in the form of Queen music, like the body releases excess chemicals through its pores, because Queen music is the most pure expression of that gayness. Does it play Queen because Crowley expects it to, and so it does? And what first caused him to expect such an odd occurrance? Could he not convince himself otherwise and cause it to stop? 

I just….I have so many questions.   

It’s not just the Bentley. All tapes left in any car for more than a fortnight turn into Best of Queen. So, canonically, every person in the Good Omens Universe with a car faces this problem, not just Crowley (though he gets the most angry about it and notices it more than most other people). You do pose a good question, though: what did it turn into before, if anything?

i mean, we don’t actually ever see it happen to anyone else, it honestly could just be that Crowley believes it does, even he knows he unconsciously influences reality

ido want to know when it started though

That’s true! We don’t actually know that it happens to anyone else. The line in the book says that it’s alltapes left in acar, implying any and all cars, but we also know the narrator isn’t a fully reliable one. We can assume it happens to everyone else and no one else pays enough attention to know or care except Crowley and a select few others. Or it could be, like you said, only happening to Crowley, and he just assumes it’s a problem everyone faces.

Personally, I think Crowley probably heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” one too many times and was like, “You know, this shit is so annoying. You know what would be even more annoying? If everyone who was dumb enough to leave their tapes in the car too long had to listen to it.” And he forgot he is someone who is dumb enough to leave his tapes in the car too long, and has had to listen to it ever since. So…at least since 1975, since that’s when that particular song was released.

I’m personally of the opinion that Crowley doesn’t hate Queen so much as he just can’t stand listening to it anymore. He would like to be able to have other options when it comes to music, but it’s been several decades and now he’s pissed.

Additional suggestion/caveat: Crowley, as suggested above, started out indifferent to Queen. He thought some of their songs were bops and bought a cassette or two.

The Bentley, on the other hand? Loves Queen. And once Crowley’s brief interest in their music faded and he took the tapes out of the car, the Bentley (who by this point isn’t exactly sapient but certainly has developed some level of sentience at least after fifty-odd years in the possession of a particularly inventive demon) is just like “well that shit won’t do at all” and insists on morphing every tape Crowley brings into the car into Best of Queen if it’s left in their for long enough.

Crowley noticed the trend, assumed this was a universal quirk now, and his belief in that “fact” had a certain amount of influence over reality. But my god he would love to listen to literally anything besides Queen’s greatest hits, it’s been twenty years, he’s so tired guys

Just imagine when tapes went out of fashion and he could switch to CDs! He must have been so excited because, maybe the problem was just the tapes, maybe they were the ones that were cursed, but the CDs will be fine, and oh boy he’s gonna buy a Velvet Underground CD and he’s going to listen to it and it’s gonna be fantastic and definitely not Queen!!! … 

Cue to two weeks later, Crowley is driving, and silently crying while listening to the Velvet Underground Best of Queen on his brand new CD player.

Is it actually canon that he doesn’t like Queen, though? I reread the book with a view to it and it doesn’t seem to mention his personal stance on it much. I mean as a reading it’s perfectly respectable and I’m happy to be corrected, but I didn’t see it

Exactly. It isn’t, unless someone can point me to the bits that say otherwise.

In fact, it’s the other way around: there’s no evidence in the text that he likes Queen at all, although many people in fandom write him that way. But there’s little to disprove it as well.

The only indication that Crowley may not like Queen comes, I think, from his mortification when Aziraphale tries to play Tchaikovsky and Crowley is forced to say “you won’t like it, it’s been in the car for more than a fortnight”. Bit it’s a bit of stretch imo. There’s absolutely no line that I can’t think of that may indicate that he likes them. And that’s to say something because there is a lot of hints about Crowley loving a wide array of music in the book. So yeah, Crowley’s opinion on Queen is canonically ambiguous.

Personally I go with the above theory: he liked Queen well enough at some point, the Bentley liked Queen a lot more, and now everyone is stuck with Freddy through the power of a demonic car’s stubbornness and a demon accidental grip on the fabric of reality. Crowley regrets ever introducing the Bentley to “I’m in love with my car”

I think Crowley doesn’t actually hate Queen, but he’s fed up with it being the only thing he can listen to (other than the radio, because his radio works, outside of Hellish interruptions). His stance on Queen also really depends on his mood.

When we first see Crowley and the Bentley in the book, he’s listing to Best of Queen and doesn’t seem to mind it much. He’s wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon are - aka he’s idly contemplating the lyrics. He’s also rather relaxed and in a good mood in this scene. He’s enjoying the 20th century; he’s having fun messing with the police.

And then directly after comes a scene where Crowley seems very much not in favour of Queen. He’s been handed the Antichrist in his basket and is now driving away from the graveyard meeting with his bosses. He’s stressed, anxious and miserable. He fumbles around in his glove compartment for a cassette to listen to. Finds a tape marked “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons”, and thinks yes, soothing music, that’s what he needs right now. And he inserts the cassette and it’s Queen. Crowley’s reaction to this is telling, too. He’s not angry. He doesn’t turn off the player and throw away the cassette or something - which wouldn’t be entirely out of character or uncalled for, after all, he’s having a terrible day, Armageddon is coming, he has to deliver the Antichrist, he’s super stressed out, but he reacts with silent resignation. In some ways, he was expecting even his car to turn against him. He just wanted some soothing music to help him feel better, but he won’t get soothing music, because his soothing music was turned into that one tape he’s cursed to listen to on eternal repeat. This is a moment where I feel really sorry for Crowley (whether the Queen curse is his fault or not), and where I think he rather hates Queen.

When he drives to Tadfield with Aziraphale, I always felt it sounds like he’s put out with being stuck with nothing but Queen as well, but in the end both of them enjoy at least Fat Bottomed Girls.

And then at the end, when Crowley steals the jeep to drive them back to London, he unconsciously miracles in the tape deck, and a tape of Händel’s Water Music - and that tape stays Händel’s Water Music all the way home. Might be me, and yes, the narrator is unreliable, but it sounds like relief to me. Finally, soothing music after a stressful day.

More of a headcanon thing maybe, but Queen overall seems like music Crowley would enjoy. He is shown to enjoy a wide range of musical genres. He has a lot of classical music tapes in his car (although all of them seem to have been Queenified by now), he likes The Velvet Underground, aka rock, he has a collection of soul music, in the show we see him rather enthusiastically, if badly, dance to disco music, so he probably likes that genre as well, and his 1967 look has definite Beatles vibes, so presumably he enjoyed their music as well. Queen are a band that play rather a lot of different genres, but all of them are on the list of things Crowley seems to like, so I think he started out at least as something of a casual fan, and then got rather tired of it because he’s stuck with it.

Because above all else, Crowley is a being who enjoys variety. Crowley likes to try new things, change his clothes, his hairstyles, swaps out his computers every couple months. Crowley likes change. Crowley will be extremely bored listening to the same album over and over and over. How many tracks are on it? Fifteen? Even if it’s twenty, listening to twenty songs on constant repeat is going to burn everyone out, but it’s torture for a person who strives on variety and new experiences.

And on top of that, Show!Bentley is at least somewhat sentient and picks music inspired by the situation, and that’s another level of annoying. Playing “You’re My Best Friend” when he’s driving up to his best friend’s burning home, or “Somebody to Love” after this best friend just died a fiery death… It’s a bit cruel, isn’t it? It’s maybe entertaining for the audience, but for Crowley? That shit sucks.

I think if I were in that situation, I’d hate Queen a lot more than Crowley seems to do. He’s clearly resigned to his fate, he can deal with it most of the time, doesn’t even always mind Queen, because Queen isn’t actually terrible music, but then there are times when he’s just extremely done with his car’s bullshit.

lookitsstevie:

Hello people

(This is just a translated version of an old post)

fuckyeahgoodomens:

About Neil’s GO lore today :). What if Hell truly stops paying for Crowley’s flat and he has to move out? :)
I mean, there is this S2 bts pic with the Bentley that seems full of plants… :)

And now I’m imagining Crowley moving in, with his statues :D 

- A: This one seems familiar.
- C: That eagle? Oh that, yeah, ngk, yeah.
- A: And this one?
- C: Hell triumphs over Heaven, obviously.
- A: …

ineffable-writer:

ineffable-writer:

So. I was on the set today.

I have A Spoiler for you all.

There’s something really heartwarming about the reblogs on this. (Both here and on Twitter.) Like, there is NOTHING in any of the canon that says Aziraphale doesn’t drive. We just assumed that, because he’s a bit old fashioned and doesn’t own a car.

(And he doesn’t take the Bentley when he body swaps, but to be fair, my ex once drove my car without asking me first and I’m still mad about it.)

But when I took this picture, my first thought was “oh my god is that Aziraphale driving the Bentley?”

And then I posted it. And literally HUNDREDS of people all have that same moment. I’ve been really isolated over this holiday, so… honestly, it is really cool to watch people share in that same reaction.

I don’t necessarily want to create the next ‘Han shot first; debate, but it looks to me like Anathema really did hit Crowley rather than vice versa.