twilightcitysky:theniceandaccurategoodomensblog:krakensdottir:whispsofwind:mizgnomer:Crowl

twilightcitysky: theniceandaccurategoodomensblog: krakensdottir: whispsofwind: mizgnomer: Crowley’s plants scene with stage direction notes from the Good Omens Script Book (a book I highly recommend) “Crowley turned off the radio and bit his lower lip. Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared. And, suddenly, very angry. It was the way they talked to you. As if you were a houseplant who had started shedding leaves on the carpet.” Yeah, according to the book, that’s how they talk to him in Hell when they’re displeased. I was actually blown away by this scene, because in the book it’s very tongue-in-cheek. It plays up the whole “Crowley and Aziraphale don’t know how to human properly” angle. It’s a bad copying mechanism for the pervasive anxiety that plagues Crowley, but it’s still quite light in tone. I was expecting something similar. Instead, we got this incredibly … dark scene. The music is tense, Crowley’s teeth are bared. It feels more tragic than funny, because. That’s how they treat him. That’s how he feels God treated him. Like, imagine if he was treating a person like that, or even a pet. The only reason Crowley’s fury isn’t horrifying is because it’s directed at a bunch of plants, who don’t actually have feelings (I mean these ones do, because prolonged exposure to demon powers probably has weird effects on everything, but even then their consciousness is probably very limited). It’s not a just copying mechanism for anxiety anymore, it’s a constant revival of his traumas. He has all this anger and fear and pain inside, and he redirects it on his plants. He’s the plant I love this scene for all of the above reasons. It’s the most striking example of ‘Crowley is a mess’ in the entire show. He’s so cold and cruel like… dude. You are getting way too into this. And yet he only directs it at plants, because he doesn’t have the heart to direct this fury onto anything else. It’s very contained, controlled, and private rage. It’s cathartic, but only temporarily, because he has to keep doing it. This garden is a filthy secret, I tell you, and even Aziraphale hasn’t got a clue he does this. I’m not sure what he’d make of it, honestly. Nervous amusement? Worry? Horror? Heartbreak? All? Yes to all of this. It is a brilliant and horrifying glimpse into his darkest depths. And I agree @krakensdottir Aziraphale doesn’t know about this. Not yet, anyway. I mean he might know the plants exist, but not that Crowley does this. Personally, I think Aziraphale will find out eventually. And he will immediately see what’s going on psychologically and he will be horrified. For some reason I didn’t make the connection until seeing this- that in the book, the way Crowley treated the plants was how Hell treated him. In the show I was looking at it as him reliving/ projecting the trauma from his Fall, and thinking it was a way of dealing with his mommy-issue insecurity. And maybe it is, partly. But the book is pretty clear that the connection is with Hell, not Heaven. There’s a big blank space in the narrative regarding what it’s like for Crowley in Hell. We know there are awkward PowerPoint presentations. But we ALSO see Hastur kill two demons (Eric the disposable demon fed to the hellhound, and the usher thrown into the holy water bath). Those luckless demons appeared to be terrified. The residents of Hell who were witness to the executions didn’t bat an eyebrow. So it seems as if Hell is the kind of place where violence and corporeal punishment between demons is common, which I’m sure we could have guessed, but this is Crowley’s home (work? Birthplace? Family?). This is the place he’s told he belongs- where he comes from and where he has to return. He’s a low-ranking demon in a place where low-ranking demons are tortured and terrorized, apparently for fun. It’s possible that Satan’s apparent regard for him affords some measure of protection, but we don’t really know. Book!Crowley is very frightened of Hell, sort of the equivalent of how scared Show!Aziraphale is of Heaven. In the book, Heaven leaves Aziraphale alone, but Crowley does the “deeds of the day” thing with Hastur/ Ligur, gets messages during the Golden Girls, and has instructions dropped directly into his mind. It doesn’t seem like any of this is exactly uncommon. In the show, Heaven harasses Aziraphale more, but it seems like Crowley’s relationship with hell is about the same. There’s a lot of meta about Heaven-the-cult’s psychological torture of Aziraphale, but what I don’t see discussed as much is the fact that Crowley lives in concrete, physical danger. When he’s at work, colleagues get murdered (discorporated? Do we know what it means when a presumably bodiless demon is eaten by a hellhound? ‍♀️). How does that affect him? Just look at how he lives when he’s at home on Earth: Desk and throne, the only place where we ever see him lounge, in full view of the TV Hell uses to harass him. Barren. Bleak. Austere. Compare that to Aziraphale when he’s at home: Yes, Aziraphale is scared of his bosses and anxious at baseline, but he can relax. Crowley never relaxes. We never see him peaceful. Not once. Some of that is down to their respective personalities. Some of it is the fact that Aziraphale’s best friend supports and protects him, while Crowley’s best friend pretends he doesn’t know him- on a good day. But some of it might be because Crowley has been, and will likely continue to be, physically hurt by Hell. Whe you’re trapped in a relationship where you’re being harmed, you don’t let your guard down. Crowley doesn’t. Hell can invade any part of his life, including his thoughts, if the “instructions-dropped-into-the-brain” trick is any indication. His coping mechanisms are cultivating his ultra-cool guy persona so he can pretend nothing hurts him, and projecting onto his plants. He snaps once at Aziraphale, which shows us he feels safer with him than anyone else (he never loses his cool with Beelzebub and he never exhibits anger at Hastur and Ligur- he’s mocking and sarcastic). He doesn’t feel that he deserves anything that makes him feel good. He doesn’t ask Aziraphale to treat him better because he doesn’t feel he deserves it. And it’s all mixed up in what does it mean to Fall; are the demons fundamentally changed in some way or does the harm they wreck on one another come from a dark place that all beings (angels, demons, humans) could access in the “right” circumstances (which is personally what I believe). It’s hard to untangle but the bottom line is: Someone has done to Crowley what Crowley does to his plants. Up to and including the garbage disposal bit. -- source link

More pics about