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cobragardens · 7 months

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Another Post About Crowley's Terrible Handwriting

Actually his handwriting here isn't terrible, it's just, like Anathema's spelling, 300 years too late.

So first, I posit that we can be reasonably confident this is Crowley's handwriting because he is very likely the only celestial being besides Aziraphale who can spell devourer correctly.

Crowley has taken more care than usual with his penmanship today because this is a Fancy Presentation, and there are some delightful things to note about it:

--The beautiful serifs on each letter and variation in width of the strokes (the lowercase r's especially)

--Enthusiastic but intermittent capitalization of nouns

--The L that ends "Hail" is a small capital like the ones used in the Bible to spell LORD; the l in Worlds is lower-case

--The lozenge shape of the letter o

--Both s-es are oversized and dip below the writing line

--The kerning is terrible, the script wanders off the writing line at several points, and the location of the writing line is not imagined consistently

I am not an expert in the history of handwriting, but every single point of this suggests to me that Crowley learned to write in English in the late 16th or early 17th century, between say 1570 and 1620, and he learned to do it by copying printed material, not somebody else's handwriting. And it looks like late 16th-century writing. Or rather, like somebody learned to write by copying late 16th-century print and hasn't practiced enough for his style to change significantly in the last 400-500 years.

This means Crowley would have learned using a quill pen, poor devil, and if that's true no wonder he doesn't do it more often. (I wonder if this is why he now owns a pen that looks like it can break the sound barrier; if the Bentley is a permanent replacement for the loathsome, buttocks-abusing horse, maybe he keeps the expensive pen as self-reassurance that he'll never have to write with a quill again.) Quill pens would explain the lozenge-shaped o's: quills can only make a downstroke, so writers who used them shape o's as lozenges made of four downstrokes. Someone who learned writing with a quill would shape his o's like a calligrapher.

16th/early 17th century is the earliest I think Crowley would have learned to write in English because before that there was no block print; there was no print at all, only handwritten scripts of varying legibility, none of which look remotely like Crowley's handwriting does.

Here's what print looked like in Germany in 1471 (printing does not arrive in England for another 5 years after this):

The printing press showed up in England in 1476. Between 1500 and 1600, England got its shit sorted out wrt fonts and typesetting and started turning out what we would recognize today as readable material.

Here's what English printing looked like in 1623, c. 150 years after the German one above:

Not bad, right? I've received Xerox copies less legible than this in classes I paid for. I think it is likely based on his handwriting that Crowley learned to write from printed material a decade or two older than this. The adornments Crowley puts on his letters are serifs, not ligatures: these are not letters that were ever meant to join up in cursive, but letters that were copied from typeset.

From the 16th through the mid-19th century, variations in how a handwriter capitalized letters were very common, and two of these variations show up in Crowley's writing as well.

First, English inherited from German the capitalization of all its nouns. You can see it in Titus Andronicus, above (1623). Due to variations in education and taste, this quickly shifted to capitalization of whichever nouns the writer (or publisher, or printer) felt were important to capitalize, as you can see in Paradise Lost from 1688, below. Hail the Great Beast, devourer of Worlds.

Second, It was also very common during this time to capitalize terminal letters of words, either as a sign to the reader that previous letters had been omitted or because writers using quill pens wanted to be sure readers knew what letter they were looking at through the smudges and weird spacing and general wretchedness of the reading experience imposed by quill writing. I think this latter reason may be why Crowley writes "HaiL" when his other letter L, in "Worlds," is both lowercase and carefully printed with a pretty serif.

Handwriters in English between 1500 and 1800 also had a major hard-on for abusing the letter s, which was shaped like a lowercase f (to contemporary eyes) or a loose S, either of which drop below the writing line. Here's an example in print from 1688:

Use of the long S in print fell out of favor and disappeared abruptly in the UK after 1800.

Crowley's S-es could be a holdover from this: they both drop below the writing line, and they're both oversized.

What I think we can say for sure is that he's not very good at writing s-es, so they always turn out bigger than he intends. The S in "Beast" is noticeably different at the left curve than the S in "Worlds," which I would expect for someone who hasn't written thousands of s-es yet, and the S in "Worlds" looks very much like someone has faithfully rendered a shape they have seen rather than written a letter. Since he can write a letter r elegantly but can't do a curved s, it suggests to me that he hasn't had as much practice doing the curved s yet as he has the other letters, which fits with someone used to writing a long s 75% of the time.

Even the kerning speaks to me of someone who learned to write with a quill: leaving (comparatively) large spaces between letters gives the ink somewhere to drip and smudge without rendering the letter illegible.

There's one other reason I think Crowley probably learned to write in English in the 16th century: He's lazy, and he probably wouldn't have needed to know before then.

The movable-type press arrived in England in 1476. The Protestant Reformation kicked off in England c. 60 years later in 1534 when Henry VIII declared himself head of the English Church. Prior to the surge in literacy among the wealthy and merchant classes in the 16th century, thanks to this intersection of printing press and Protestants (who believe it's important that each person read the Bible for themselves), almost no one knew how to read, including most of the gentry and nobility, and still fewer knew how to write. If you had a message, you sent a guy or you showed up yourself. If you had something you wanted recorded, you summoned a scribe. If you needed to know something, you found somebody who knew and you asked them.

By the time of Queen Elizabeth's accession in 1558, 82 years after William Caxton began operating England's first movable-type printing press, a fully literate royal court were passing each other and their spies and their assassins gossipy notes like everybody was a 12yo in math class. Elizabeth wrote letters and poems. Among the gentry gentlewomen replaced monks as the medical caregivers for their communities (bc Henry shut down all the monasteries), and they wrote and shared and copied multi-generational "receipt books" and herbals of medical and cosmetic treatments. In the space of a single generation, literacy--the ability to write, not just to read--became a prerequisite for functioning in the upper echelons of society.

So if he didn't already know by then, Crowley would have needed to learn to write in English in the mid-16th century. And he would have had to learn it with a quill. (Wearing black probably came in handy for all the ink he spilled or dripped on himself.)

Last to consider is the W in "Worlds," which has no serifs and is not written with any particular attempt at straightness or symmetry. To me this suggests that Crowley learned to write w's from a modern reference, not his original reference. And this makes perfect sense: w was very much in use in the 16th century in English, but nobody agreed on how to write or print it, so there were crossed v's, two capital U's, and this weird gothic lowercase n with extra tentacles. W, Crowley would have learned, always needs to be checked up on before you commit.

Crowley's spelling here is modern, which is frankly a huge achievement for someone who was present for the formation and transformation of all 3 English languages. The contemporary Modern English we use today was a going concern for over 2 centuries before anyone wrote an English dictionary, and it was three centuries before dictionaries became authorities on how to spell correctly and people started giving a shit about that. (Before that as long as people could read the word and understand what you meant by it in context, you'd spelt it correctly.)

Taken together, the W and the modern spelling suggest that although Crowley almost never writes by hand, he reads regularly. This matches with two Words of God I've seen from Neil Gaiman (which I am too lazy to find and link) in which he mentions that Crowley likes to read but won't admit to doing so or to liking books.

Aziraphale should get him a book about ducks for Valentine's Day.

#good omens #good omens fanalysis #crowley #crowley's handwriting

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moonfallss · 8 months

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moments before disaster...

#good omens #good omens 2 #crowley #beelzebub #hastur good omens #lord beelzebub #good omens dagon #pre fall crowley #good omens 2 spoilers #hastur and ligur #good omens fanart #I had to get this out while it was in my head sorry for the poor handwriting

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sentientsky · 4 months

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“Heel Turn 2” (slightly edited by me hehe), The Mountain Goats

hello my darlings, guess who is being Calm™️ about the mountain goats and emotional repression again :)

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unhingedpirates · 9 months

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There's something I need to talk about that I haven't seen mentioned.

First off, by 1827, Aziraphale has 603 VOLUMES OF DIARIES CONFIDENTIAL JOURNALS (with a lot of entries featuring Crowley, I bet). In the present day, he probably has a lot more.

But when Aziraphale starts writing we can see the previous entry (which is probably on purpose, because they could have easily made him start on a blank page).

That is what I think it says (sorry for the awful format lol). Does anyone know if Neil has said anything about this?

👀

#i reckon he's talking about crowley in that entry #and he's also talking about him in the one he's about to write #but what if the 603 volumes are about his adventures with crowley (lmao that would be so aziraphale)#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens s2 spoilers #gos2spoilers #good omens s2e3 #also! we know what airaphale's handwriting is like now!

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jmsclipart · 9 months

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request from my friend @sunshinetidings

normal post-breakup behavior

#i did not have to handwrite the letters on the jacket but alas #i dont know how to edit words on stuff #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens spoilers #ineffable husbands #ineffable divorce #<- thats a tag now lmao??#crowley #anthony j crowley #my art #kenough #barbie

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dykedarling · 3 months

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crowley with long hair and piercings is so special to me

#I need her to have long hair next season neil please hear me #sorry my handwriting is awful <3 #my art #artists on tumblr #procreate #digital art #doodles #good omens #art #crowley #ineffable husbands #david tennant #Michael sheen #go season 2 #good omens 2 #aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #aziracrow

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qwilanikan · 2 months

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Well, I’m politically against Valentine’s Day and hierarchical romance, but I make an exception for the ineffable idiots 😅

Happy Valentine’s Day all!

#good omens fanart #good omens #romance #valentines day #relationship anarchy #crowley #aziraphale #crowly x aziraphale #handwriting #cursive #digital art #azicrow #gay #fanart #digital fanart #my art

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skullfragments · 5 months

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in which Crowley performs one more lil' demonic miracle

i've had this idea for a while now, and i finally decided to do something with the sketch i made

full disclosure: my comfort level with digital drawing is about 0.5% and i'm still figuring out how to translate my usual drawing style which is the main reason why this looks bad i have yet to venture into full color!

ALSO zero experience posting said digital work on tumblr so if the quality sucks pls help me fix it thanks <3

#i'm being very brave!!!!#chants 'cringe is dead' to keep from spiraling lol #good omens #good omens fanart #good omens 2 #crowley #aziracrow #aziraphale #sorry about the sloppy handwriting #i'm making an art tag now #sara does art #!#this is supposed to be fun and cute #also me:#'yea sure i know what the bentley looks like i dont need a reference'#produces a scribbly car shaped object #i only used a reference for the top two panels and it shows

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ponk-fonk · 4 months

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Movie poster redraw for my Nanny McPhee Good Omens au

I have a bunch of unfinished drawings for this au with more characters 👀

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ozym4ndi4s · 6 months

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Guys reblog/reply to this with any or all Aziraphale handwriting samples that you have I want to analyze the fuck out of them

I want to psychoanalyze the skrunklio

#Good omens #good omens giddiness #Or just any handwriting samples from good omens #Please I want to study these characters under microscopes I'm BEGGING YOU ALL #good omens season 2 #good omens 2 #aziraphale #crowley #graphology #My autism skyrocketing rn #queue

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leon-swedfinqs · 6 months

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I’m knawing at the iron bars of my enclosure I wanna talk about my d&d Good Omens au so bad but idk where to START what do I TELL YOU PEOPLE fucking AAAAA I will throw sketches at you

#please for the love of god ask me things about these idiots #also ignore the fact that I draw exclusively on lined paper #and that you can see my handwriting for my class notes #ignore that #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens season two #crowley #crowley good omens #aziraphale #aziraphale good omens #ineffable husbands #ineffable idiots #god they’re idiots #good omens d&d au #good omens au #good omens fanart #mari doodles

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theboxdemon · 6 months

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It took me like a month to figure out the designs (mostly Aziraphale who was inspired by @asleepyy Aziraphale) but I did it and made refs at last. I wanna do a comic but it not gonna be the whole timeline of Good Omens just my favorite moments and some slice of life. It be posted here my insta and tapas (probably).