#info-dump

[wealmostaneckbeard]

On the tension between the Adeptuses Ministorum and Sororitas

Excerpts of a lecture by Inquisitor-Professor Ziel Malthus of the Ordo Hereticus:

"Anyone who has been in a relationship or studied them from afar know that codependency is not a great basis for a relationship. Unfortunately, this toxic dynamic has been writ large across the Imperium with the Ecclesiarchy and Sisters of Battle. Without a constant external threat, both organizations become prone to mundane and extraordinary forms of corruption."

"Mundane activities provide the mental frame work that the weak willed use in dealing with the extraordinary. This is how diplomatic Xenos and Daemons are able to gain influence over our species. By presenting themselves as just another trade partner who will abide by local customs, they mute their victims sense of righteous disgust. Accepting a bribe from a recidivist is merely the first step on a path leading to making a pact with unholy warp-horrors. This tragedy is constantly occurring and being averted thanks to those who abide by the Pax Imperialis"

"As you already know, the Adeptus Sororitas can be divided into the orders militant, hospitallers, famulous, and dialogus. The first protects the God-Emperor's houses of worship. The second provides healthcare to the faithful populace. The third guides the nobility towards righteousness. And the fourth accumulates, disperses, and censors knowledge. Due to their culture of militancy and austerity, when the Sisters receive excess funding they tend towards over-preparedness rather than conventional decadence. That is no sin in this accursed universe and if more people lived like they did, we wouldn't have so many problems. But large caches of weapons, supplies, and useful information are difficult to maintain and secure. Inevitably something gets loose and causes havoc."

"The modern Adeptus Ministorum was founded at the same time as the Sororitas in the wake of the Vandire Heresy. The ministorum is meant to give the people a sense of purpose in exchange for their wealth and lives. Every cult of the emperor is unique but they must all pay their tithes to the Sisters. If they don't, they will be declared heretical and purged by the Sisters and any other imperial forces. This ensures that well organized and generous sects survive longer than fraudulent faiths. The flipside of this is that one cannot extract wealth from a cult if one does not know it exists. And so those hidden spiritual leaders who are best at keeping secrets also tend to tend to have more resources than those priests that are honest. As members of the Ordo Hereticus, unraveling these impious conspiracies will make up the bulk of your work."

"Without an external threat, the churches and sisters are like... It's like a pair of ourosbouros, the mythical xenos that feeds on itself for eternity... But mated together, if that makes any sense."

"The sisters will over extract from the churches in preparation for an invasion that never comes. That creates resentment in the starving masses and greedy nobles. They unite together to overthrow the faithful. They will fail and the Sisters will double down on tithes to prepare for another revolt, and in doing so, plant the seeds for another. This cycle is self-destructive, yet it does have some redeeming value in that it produces veterans with some combat experience."

"Apostate ministers will lie to the sisters, claiming diminishing returns from their coffers, while financing their own private institutions. Underfunded and austerity minded, a poorly led group of sororitas will make do with what they have rather than interrogate the matter. When crisis comes, the sisters efforts will be inadequate which plays into the apostate narrative. The sisters are portrayed as being useless and unworthy of the faithfuls support. And so the church leaders become ever more powerful while the Sisters are relegated to irrelevance. This can lead to the same societal power dynamics that allowed Goge Vandire to nearly ruin the Imperium."

"Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors and Adeptus Arbites Judges must be aware of these factors when they enter segments of the imperium ruled by faith."

[infoglitch]

Ok I've talked about magic and runes for Nexus. But now we're moving on to the fun stuff with the legacy continuity.

-----

Ya see legacy as a world, is about the impact of the past, and that's because the legacy is essentially a reinterpretation of Nexus.

So let's start off with the legacy arms and I actually have a pic for this.

Now there are 7 (AND I MEAN SEVEN) legacy arms all of which are either based off Japanese regalia, a weapon Takehaya Sussano'o used, items wielded by samurai, or in the red moons case, In lore a weapon used by the moon mother, kaguya.

Each weapon gives the user a unique power.

Kuma Sussano'o or the hailbeard of Sussano'o is the 7th of the legacy arms to be found and has the ability to summon and control water.

The thunder bow is the 6th to be found and can control lighting by firing out bolts whenever you pull back the string.

The red moon is the 5th to be discovered and is the main weapon of the protagonist, Jacob lilim. The red moon can absorb attacks until the blade turns bright red, then in which you can sheath the sword before quick drawing and doing a massive cut that deals major damage to whatever it hits, the slash also releases arcs of red hard light that can hit enemies at a distance.

Grass cutter is the fourth of the weapons that was found and can control the wind and used to essentially extend the reach of the weapon as well as just in general can be used for long distance cuts.

The sun mirror shield is the 3rd to be found and is interesting, it can create a hard light shield that whenever struck can retaliate by releasing a burst of scorching light at the attacker, and normally that's all it does, but it can also combo with the other legacy arms, for instance when combined with the red moon the arcs of hard light gain the property of also being 1,000 °C in terms of heat, which raises the idea that this arm is intended to be used alongside the other arms instead of being it's own stand alone arm.

The jade arrows are the 2nd discovered of the legacy arm, they were originally a single jade magatama that split into an almost infinite number of arrows despite the fact that when seen there's usually only 9 or 6. These arrows can be used by themselves as they float and attack on command of the one who uses it. But interestingly it also combos with the thunder bow, as when fired from the bow the arrows can target an opponent and seek them out, dealing massive damage and electrocuting the opponent.

The destroyer armor was the first to be discovered and not only can it be called on at will and fly horned and around the user but the owner is also impervious to any physical damage essentially making it act like a shield when not worn and simply just floating around. Please when one the user can call upon storm clouds and even walk upon them. Along with this comes the ability of creating mist and summoning Spears and swords made of lightning bolts. Along with this the armor has the unique property of being able to command the other arms, as whoever wears it can wield the other legacy arms

but why is that so notable?

well the legacy arms are magic and magic can only be wielded by the Kami however theoretically humans can use magic but they can only use a finite amount.

But the legacy arms also have a unique property in which they bond to the first person to use them making it so that the weapon is loyal to them and them alone.

With the armor being as such the fact that it can command and be used on side other legacy arms is very interesting as an implies that it has such a unique connection to its former user who would have assumed to have been a kami that the armor holds that same authority as its prior user.

The legacy arms are also very important outside of their combat usage as they detail the ancient history and what happened during the age dubbed "the stormless age".

However they also have the ability of allowing the wielder to move during the 13th hour which is also known as The witches hour, in which all time stops to rest meaning no one without magic or a legacy arm can move nor even think during that hour it is a time of total stasis. Until the hour passes in which time proceeds as normal.... Except there are other beings who move in the thirteenth hour and can only exist during that time. Star crawlers, also known as basilisks.

No research has been made on these creatures due to the fact they can only exist during the 13th hour before vanishing and whenever one is killed during the 13th hour their body dissipates into Ash.

But what is known as that these creatures have a singular goal to take the legacy arms and destroy them.

Now that is all the time I have today I will return to explain the power system of legacy evolution the sequel series to this story.

Have a good day.

[stargazer-sims]

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna info-dump again (about Ginger and Stephen this time), so if you don't want to read a huge, rambling thing about my OCs, then don't click on "keep reading". That's the reason I'm putting this under a cut, so people who don't want to see it don't have to.

Gold stars to anyone who gets through this entire chaos post, though! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Also, for anyone who is interested, here is the long info-dump post that includes Nikolai, Beth-Anne and Mishka (although it's mostly Nikolai. Beth-Anne should really have her own).

Anyway...

__________

The quick backstory on Ginger is that she was born in the UK and she's an only child who had almost no relationship with her parents who were (and still are) very wealthy and very busy. Ginger's childhood was defined by a string of governesses, tutors and household staff who took care of her much more than her parents did. She loves her parents and they love her. They were never mean or abusive to her and they always made sure she had the best of everything. They simply didn't spend enough time with her to build up the kind of relationship most other kids have with their parents.

Ginger didn't have friends growing up. She had acquaintances and kids she would hang out with, but Ginger didn't understand friendship because, again, she never saw that behavour modelled in her household. She spent a lot of time lost in her imagination and liked to write stories to entertain herself (usually in which she was the main character).

Her one true passion was skating, which she started at the age of five. It soon became apparent that not only did she love it, but that she had an exceptional talent for it. By the time she was 10 years old and began competing, there was no doubt left in anyone's mind that she would have a bright future in the sport, provided she had the proper coaching and the best resources.

Her coach helped her do some research, and they made inquiries into potential coaches not just in Europe but all around the world. When former Olympic silver medallist Stanislav Kovac agreed to take Ginger as a student, she was thrilled. It didn't take much convincing for her parents to agree to send her to Canada and to pay for everything. Ginger was a few months short of 15 years old when she left home.

She lived with a homestay family during her first year in Canada, but then moved in with Stan and his wife Milena, where she lived until she was 20 and her parents stopped paying for everything. After that, she got a place of her own.

The summer Ginger arrived in Brindleton Bay, 16 year old Nikolai Pavlenko also arrived there, after his family had moved from another province. Nikolai's grandfather had arranged for Stan to be Nikolai's coach as well, and Stan agreed only because he wasn't sure Nikolai was as great a skater as he was led to believe. Stan intended for Ginger to be his main focus.

Nikolai and Ginger, the new kids in town, at the rink and at school, bonded almost instantly. They were both lonely kids, and neither of them ever had a best friend before. They found they had far more in common than skating, and were soon inseparable. Neither of them ever had a crush or any sort of romantic feelings toward each other; they were besties and honorary siblings.

During that first year, Stan gave Ginger her nickname (her real name is Vivienne). She liked it and felt it suited her personality, and started going by it exclusively.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Satoru Fujikawa (also known as Stephen) was also an only child born into a wealthy family. Unlike Ginger, Stephen had an amazing childhood surrounded by cousins and friends and parents who made time in their busy schedules to be with him.

Stephen also showed signs of being a gifted athlete at an early age. Growing up in the Mt. Komorebi valley, he had easy access to the mountain with its year-round snow, and his parents taught him to ski when he was around four years old.

Stephen became a competitive skier and distinguished himself by making it into the Olympics twice (at age 22 and 26). He won an Olympic silver medal when he was 22, but didn't finish in the top three on his second time at the Olympics. He attributed this to massive stress in his life outside of sports.

When Stephen was 18, he married J-pop idol Sae (Sarah) Ishida who was two years older than him. He'd known her since they were kids, and they started dating while Sae was actively pursuing her dreams of being a famous music performer and Stephen was still in high school. The reason they married so young was because Sae fell pregnant. She unfortunately miscarried, but fortunately was still able to have children. They had their son Sebastian two years later, when Stephen was 20 and Sae was 22.

Stephen and Sae divorced when Sebastian was six years old. It was a very messy and highly publicized divorce, and in the end, Stephen was given full custody of Sebastian. He retired from competitive skiing at that point so he could focus on his son, and he accepted a position with his father and aunt in the family's sports equipment company. Stephen and Sebastian had little contact with Sae after that point, and little Sebastian grew up without having much of a relationship with his mother.

Determined that his son shouldn't grow up without a sibling, Stephen applied to an adoption organization to adopt an older child. He ended up adopting a little girl only a few months younger than Sebastian. She wanted to have an English-sounding name like her new dad and brother, and they all settled on Sofia. Stephen raised Sebastian and Sofia almost entirely on his own, only engaging a nanny on a part-time basis.

While Sofia turned out not to be sporty at all, Sebastian excelled at sports in general and skating in particular. From a young age, he insisted he wanted to be a figure skater, and of course Stephen indulged him.

Fast-forward to 2014...

Sebastian and Sofia, now 14 years old, are sent to a UK boarding school so they can get an international education and perfect their English.

Meanwhile, back in Brindleton Bay, Nikolai is recovered from the injury that abruptly ended his competitive skating career. He's established as a skating coach after a highly successful period of time as a competitive athlete. Ginger has also decided to pursue coaching as her next step in life, after having retired from competition the previous year.

In the late summer & early autumn of 2013, Ginger had a whirlwind romance with a UK citizen, Liam Harris, who was working temporarily in Canada. They eloped at Christmas, and by early summer of 2014, Liam had convinced Ginger to return to the UK with him, with the promise that he'd help her find work once they got there.

Ginger became an assistant athletic director at a private school; the same private school where Sebastian and Sofia Fujikawa were attending. She quickly discovered that Sebastian was a skater in need of a coach, and since she was already certified as a coach, offered to train him. Sebastian recognized her from watching numerous skating competitions, and was excited to have someone like her coach him.

Ginger met Stephen via video chat soon after. Their first meeting was all business, as they worked out the details of her coaching his son. They met face-to-face for the first time when Stephen came to get his kids at Christmas.

After two years at boarding school in England, both Sebastian and Sofia were tired of living there and asked their father if they could return to Japan to finish high school. Stephen agreed. Sebastian, who'd become incredibly attached to Ginger by this point, begged her to come back to Japan with them and continue being his coach.

Ginger's personal life was in shambles, having recently gotten divorced from Liam. He hadn't turned out to be the Prince Charming she'd thought he was. He was manipulative, and emotionally and psychologically abusive, and Ginger had had enough. Unfortunately, divorcing Liam meant that she'd needed to get a place of her own and essentially start over, but at least she still had her own income and her freedom. Deciding she had absolutely nothing to lose at this point, she agreed to go to Japan.

Stephen helped her get her immigration paperwork in order, and he offered her a place to live as well, which happened to be a small cottage on his own property. The little house used to be servants' quarters back in the day, and Stephen had been using it as a guest house whenever he'd have overnight visitors. Since overnight guests weren't a super frequent occurrence, he felt it'd be better put to use if someone were to live in it full time.

Sebastian was thrilled to have Ginger living across the courtyard. They'd grown close in the two years she'd been coaching him, and he secretly thought of her as his adopted mother. Having a mother figure in his life was something he didn't realize he was missing until Ginger came along.

At first, when she wasn't working with Sebastian or going to language school to learn Japanese so she could integrate into the community and take on other students, she kept mostly to herself, and Sebastian would come to hang out with her in her cottage. But soon, he was practically begging her to come over to the main house to spend time with him and his father and sister. It didn't take long for her to feel at ease in the main house, and before too long, she was spending more time there than she was in her cottage. As time passed, she started doing things around the house like cooking for the family, ironing Stephen's clothes (a task he hated) and helping Sofia with her various personal projects. The whole family spoke Japanese to her so she could learn faster, and in the generally happy and relaxed environment of the Fujikawa home, she thrived.

Stephen was highly impressed. He'd never asked Ginger to do anything apart from coaching Sebastian, and he certainly never expect anything from her beyond that. It seemed to him that Ginger was doing those things because she wanted to, because she cared about his whole family and wanted to help them.

Ginger had been there for about a year when Stephen began to realize he was falling in love with her. The problem was, he didn't know how to tell her, or even if it'd be appropriate to tell her. Plus, he didn't think he could be successful in a romantic relationship. He'd certainly messed up the first one, and he was scared to try again. Also, a western woman like Ginger, from a wealthy and prestigious family, would never be interested in somebody like him, would she? To Stephen, she seemed unattainable.

Years went by, in which Stephen and Ginger got to know each other very well. Stephen thought of Ginger as part of the family. He invited her as his "plus one" to numerous social and business events, made a big deal of her birthday every year and brought her along on all the family's vacations.

For her part, Ginger settled into her role as a member of the family and soon found that she had feelings for Stephen too, but there was always that thought at the back of her mind that Stephen was, for all intents and purposes, her employer and a relationship with him might not be appropriate. Also, not unlike him, she's always felt that she's not the most skillful person when it comes to relationships.

Being a natural actor, she never had much difficulty in not letting her feelings for Stephen show, and she did her best not to pay too much attention to his awkward hinting.

At one point, while Nikolai was in Japan with Eden and Eden's brother Charlie, Ginger and Nikolai experimented with a relationship beyond friendship, but it ultimately didn't work out because they could never get past thinking of each other as siblings. They love each other deeply, but not in any sort of romantic way. Mishka is Nikolai's true love, and both he and Ginger realized it within a few months of starting their experiment.

Stephen, however, was not at all happy about what he perceived as a romantic relationship between Ginger and Nikolai. He doesn't know Nikolai very well, but that didn't stop him from feeling jealous about the situation. He was only too glad to see Nikolai leave Japan.

Sebastian and Sofia figured out long ago that their dad has it bad for Ginger, and at least Sofia has figured out that the sentiment is mutual. The siblings wish their dad would just get on with it and tell Ginger his true feelings for her, so that their unofficial stepmom can become their official stepmom.

[theheadlesshorseman13]

Writing about Raki/ Raeder because I have writer’s block for B&R and I wanna write about them!

Raph and Saki love to spar together. Because of Raph’s unpredictability, you just can’t tell what he’s going to do before he does it, and after figuring out how Rockwell’s foresight worked, he thinks about the first thing that comes to mind when he is fighting. (Usually it’s a random made-up song that popped into his head). Saki finds his unpredictability interesting, and he sees fighting Raph as a challenge. Raphael loves the fact that Saki doesn’t go down easy, and Saki’s lasted the longest compared to anyone else he’s sparred against.

Saki’s fighting style is adaptable. If he makes the first move it’s to calculate his opponent’s reaction times and movement style. If he doesn’t, it’s to understand his opponent’s offensive patterns. Raph can change what he’s going to do in a split-second, and Saki needs to be even quicker than that to be able to either land a hit or dodge one.

When they fight together, they are unstoppable. Raph is a tank who is 50% bullet proof who hits like a freight train with the speed of a bullet train. Saki (being smaller in B&R) uses him as a shield when they are facing gunmen, and can use Raph as an excellent obstacle to put some distance between him and someone else. They work with each other’s blind spots. They stay close to each other, sometimes holding hands, and only separate to keep themselves from being surrounded. Raph’s biggest blind spot is his back, as he has a giant genetic bullet-proof hidey-hole on his back, and Saki does a great job in covering it. As I’ve mentioned, Saki’s weakest point is on his right side. Raph has started to keep on Saki’s right side after they had some story time about each of their scars.

Communication is important. It’s no secret that Raph in my series has been neglected. He gets left out of things, or told he wouldn’t understand things if he wasn’t. This is one of the many ways to get Raph angry, simply because it reminds him of how alone he felt after the dog attack.

Saki, meanwhile, is trust issues with legs. People lie to him constantly because they thought - especially when he was starting out as leader of the Footclan - he was incompetent. The Hamato Clan preferred using their fists instead of their words with him when he was a boy, and being left out of the loop makes him simply explode.

Raph and Saki have both agreed that even the smallest detail when it comes to something that may be troubling them or even remotely concerns the other will be stated and talked through. They have both been lied to, and they don’t want any grief to come in this relationship.

Coping mechanisms. I won’t say much here because I want to talk through this in TMNT: TM&TW, but they both have developed bad coping mechanisms for when they get angry or stressed or scared. In an, I suppose, ironic way, Raph and Saki are each other’s saviours. They both have life-changing trauma and tempers that could evaporate the sun, and they didn’t know how to get many healthy outlets for it. Raph’s only healthy outlets were knitting and singing, both he had to suppress and hide around his brothers for fear of being caught whilst doing it and being teased. Saki’s was beating the shit out of the punching bag in his quarters, or drawing (more on that in later chapters) but he never really had time for either because he constantly filled his days with work work work.

They also are suckers for the romantic stuff in my opinion, although they would rather bury themselves alive than admit it.

[ridersofbrohon]

everyone please look at this cat my brother found in the philippines - he's got 2(two) noses!

[lemon-wedges]

Sorry you're gonna have to repeat that

[rottmntrulesall]

Thinking about how this implies that izuku talks about katsuki when he’s with her

[selenekallanwriter]

Person: What's your book about?

Writers:

I'm both somehow 🙃

[wooneygoblin]

hey…

[lilybug-02]

Possession PSA.

Thank you @ferronickel for giving me this crack head idea.

[kaenith]

Winter's Delight (@fswintersdelight), day 26

Happy December! Hope everyone's been staying safe and warm (or safe and cool, if you're in the southern hemisphere!)

[magexii]

art req for svsss miraculous au that i most certainly did not get carried away with!

[vonspe]

I saw your cheeky tag and I request a cheesy gondola date for Valentine's day!

FINALLY the gondola date 😭😆 idk if it’s cheesy but there are shark facts

[joycrispy]

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.

[blended-ice]

There’s a middle ground eyeball size somewhere we just have to find it