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echo-goes-mmm · 1 year ago

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Could you explain more about the gods and religion in your Ambrose & Elliot universe? :0 it seems interesting!

Oh buckle up anon cause you asked for LORE and I have SO MUCH

General Beliefs

There are six gods, and in order of most to least popular they go:

Emry, Mael and Maer, Cato, Kiah, Janus

The gods are usually seen as positive figures (except Janus and Kiah, who most people distrust and don't like at minimum), but not necessarily moral ones. There's no 'sinning' really, but if you cause harm or destroy 'sacred' things, people will judge you.

Atheism doesn't exist in this world, because the gods are just... around. It's not uncommon to see Cato in a large library, browsing books. Sometimes Maer is in the audience of a musical. And so on.

The concept of an afterlife is distinct from the gods, although it's generally understood that gods can visit the dead if they wish. Most people believe that souls do exist, and that there is a personal paradise for each soul after they die.

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Temples

'Temple' is a very broad term in this universe. Most temples' primary function isn't worship at all. The vast majority of temples are community supports. All of them do some form of charity, especially in rural areas.

Temples have two universal rules: they are open to all, and you cannot cause conflict inside one.

Temples are open to the public from sunup to sundown, with few exceptions (Cato temples are open 24/7). They’re free to enter, and you can stay overnight in many of them, also for no charge. Priests also make and offer free meals to the hungry, no questions asked.

Generally, these services are only used if you need them, but there isn’t any gatekeeping to determine if you do.

Every god has their own distinctive style of temple. For example, a temple to Cato is very different to a Kiah temple.

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Priests

Priests dedicate their lives or most of their time to serving the ideals of their chosen god. Many live at their local temples. Their jobs usually focus on community service.

All priests must be educated about their specific god, and some even know them personally. It also helps if you know how your god feels about the other gods.

Becoming a priest varies from god-to-god. Cato’s priesthood is often tied to your job or level of education. Anyone with a degree can be a priest to Cato, and librarians often are.

A priest of Emry needs no qualifications, but if you are in a temple that doubles as an orphanage, you must be vetted.

Mael and Maer also have no barrier to entry, but keep in mind that artists often come to temples for advice on their pieces.

Kiah has no barrier.

Janus, by his nature, doesn’t question the origins of his priests. However, he does judge you by your works and actions as a priest. He keeps the closest eye on them, and desires them to be compassionate. They also take vows not to reveal personal information about anyone who visits the temple, as many of their residents or guests don’t want to be found.

Note: In the Kitty Elliot AU, Catfolk are considered holy and often live at temples, cared for by priests. Janus’s temples are a favorite among them.

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Meet the Gods

Emry

Emry is the god of harvests, and a patron of orphans. He's most often worshiped by farmers and ranchers, and most people hold him in high regard. He's depicted as kind and generous, and he loves all creatures.

Sometimes he's connected to death, but specifically a painless, merciful end. After all, a god of harvests must slaughter the cows at some point.

Emry's temples are typically the smallest of the gods. They're usually larger houses that double as orphanages, and they focus on comfort over worship. A typical Emry temple has one offering box on the outside for donations and a modest wooden altar on the inside for small offerings.

A usual offering might be some strands of wheat, or maybe an apple, or perhaps some wool. Offerings typically come after harvests as a thank you.

Most farmers' homes have a shrine to Emry.

Mael

Mael is the god of visual art. He's the twin to Maer, and occasionally temples are dedicated to the both of them.

Mael's worshipers are far and wide, and most artists and creatives pray to him and his brother for inspiration or to bless their talents.

Mael's temples are usually grand and beautiful. Murals line the walls, and some temples paint over and make new ones every year. Beauty is more important than practicality in these temples. The most gorgeous ones are often tourist spots.

A typical offering includes a child's drawing, or maybe a tube of paint, or a poem. Offerings usually are a bid for attention, or asking for blessings on a future project.

All art schools are dedicated to Mael and Maer, and shrines to them are very common in artists' homes.

Maer

Maer is the god of performance art. Theater, music, and statues all fall into his domain (although Mael disagrees about statues).

Maer is also said to be the god of love and lust, and some think of him as Mael's "dirtier" counterpart.

In reality, Mael and Maer collaborate more than they squabble. Neither god can really separate their domains out as cleanly as the other gods can.

Note: in the kitty Elliot AU, Catfolk are one of these collaborative pieces between the two.

Maer's temples are usually also working theaters and auditoriums. Attending or working a performance is the same as worshiping him, and he's less concerned about image than his brother.

Because of his connection to theater, he's also a god of good luck.

A typical offering isn't physical. Dedicate anything to him, and he'll remember. Although, he does cherish children's clay figures.

Cato

Cato is the god of knowledge and discovery, and is a patron of scholars and scientists.

He doesn't care much for worship, and is more curious about what his scholars are working on. He's the most commonly seen god, wandering the earth with no thought to disguising himself.

Cato's temples are libraries first, and places of worship second. Open at all hours, they're a blessing to people who just need an answer at two am.

Students hold Cato in high regards, and often you can hear a flustered student muttering prayers on their way to a calculus exam.

Kiah

Kiah is one of the two... unpopular gods. His domain includes fear and new beginnings.

However, it’s important to know that Kiah is not the god of inflicting fear, and is a highly anxious person himself. More accurately, he’s the god of being afraid. Still, that doesn’t net him much positive attention.

Kiah is fairly shy, and is slow to act. However, righteous anger is a common theme in stories about Kiah. His most positive depictions are about bravery, i.e overcoming fear.

He is good friends with the other gods, but he often clashes with Janus. They have different worldviews, and their natures cause friction between them. But in rare collaborations, Janus and Kiah create war and justice.

Kiah temples are few and far between, and are quiet spaces with comfortable furniture and darker colors. If you suffer anxiety or migraines, a Kiah temple is a nice place to be.

Janus

Janus is the god of lies and secrets. Understandably, this makes most people wary of him and his priests.

But just like Kiah, there is more to Janus than is generally understood. To be more accurate, Janus is a protector god who chooses deception as the method.

Janus is a patron of the abused, specifically runaways. His temples take privacy very seriously, and you will be tossed out for disturbing residents.

His temples are also large and grand, and usually appear only in big cities.

Note: If a Janus temple is unavailable to a runaway, the next best is Kiah or Emry, although any temple will help.

Janus appreciates the finer things in life, and his temples often reflect that. High ceilings, lots of light and tall windows, nooks and crannies for privacy, rooms hidden behind tapestries, beautiful courtyards. All of these you might find at a Janus temple, but he loves and appreciates simple shrines just as much as his spectacular temples.

Politicians are the biggest donors to Janus, for less than savory reasons. The rumor goes that the more money you donate to Janus, the more he will bless you with his ability to flawlessly deceive and your career will flourish.

Janus himself started this rumor, and it never ceases to amuse him that the donated wealth of corruption not only built his temples, but feeds his priests and cares for those who need it.

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The Gods Themselves

The gods are immortal and ageless, though not unchanging. They’ve all cycled through appearances, genders, etc. many times. Sometimes they even pick up and put down minor aspects of their domain.

When not roaming the world, they spend their time in a small dimension they call “the realm”. Mortals can only enter when a god lets them in personally.

As far as they’re aware, Cato and Janus are the oldest of them, followed by Emry, Kiah, and Mael and Maer.

Mael and Maer consider themselves twins, but it’s all pretty unclear.

The gods’ relationships with each other are… complicated. While they’d agree they’re all friends, the intricate parts are hard to define.

Yes, they’ve all had sex with each other at some point. They’ve even paired off into relationships before. Basically any pairing was true at some point, and they’re all very casual about it.

When you live with and deal with the same five other people for all of time, past and present, static relationships aren’t going to exist.

Currently, Janus is in a monogamous relationship with Ambrose, and the others respect that.

#so sorry this took forever anon #LOOOOOORE #INFO DUMP INFO DUMP INFO DUMP #this got so long omg #ambrose and elliot #echo answers asks #anon ask

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joycrispy · 2 years ago

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One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.

I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.

As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics, etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection of artist and inventor.

Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.

We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt each of them by hand. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --aside from getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'

...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'

Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship. Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.

Hm.

I'm also reminded of the M25.

The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.

That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication towards Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.

Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.

But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil Influence~ is spread nice and thin.

It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:

The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.

(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)

In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.

Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice... :)"

11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'

(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)

Hastur and Ligur don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.

Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.

It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:

He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.

(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?

...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale long enough to make poor Leo sick)

Apart from Aziraphale, Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of.

Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).

Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."

To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.

...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?

...Anyway.

There's also the matter of the crank handle.

This thing:

This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.

The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.

He made stars with it.

[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]

If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:

Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.

Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them: cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.

Stopping time. For instance.

(This is conjecture on my part, but, I like to imagine that Crowley has the ability to stop time for the same reason I can --and should-- unplug my computer before I perform maintenance on it. Time and Space are a matched set, after all, and in his designs in particular, one feeds into the other.)

I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity. One from long-lost days when he made beautiful things.

(And he loved it. Still loves it --he incorporated that metaphor into the Bentley, didn't he?)

Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?

He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.

Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.

Crowley was never that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He doesn't have a sword.

...And yet.

It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.

In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.

Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?

Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?

What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?

...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #Crowley #Aziraphale #good omens 2 #good omens meta #unfortunately I do not have trains of thought #only long meandering strolls of thought #sorry about it #anyway tl;dr Crowley is a nerd #also I have a strange emotional attachment to the idea of 1500's Crowley...#...facedown in a pile of Mona Lisa sketches; drunkenly info-dumping about Aziraphale #and Da Vinci is just like. 'Ahhhh mio amico Antonio. You fucking simp.'

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