#tool of creation

[musingsofmaisie]

The Magic Trick You Didn't See

@ariaste I just finished reading your analysis. Interesting. Not sure I'm completely on board with your primary hypothesis, but you raise some very interesting points. Kudos for doing it.

Link to @ariaste piece here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IXS11XN46lziHRb6eUpM17yK0BQkRqke1Wh64A_e0/edit

I do have a few places where my thinking diverges from yours though.

First, on Aziraphale and Angel now-Crowley's meeting in Before the Beginning: I think the primary purpose of this scene was to establish that Crowley still possesses a Tool of Creation (that in S1 we assumed was merely a part of his exploded Bentley) and that this will be important in the denouement. He KISSES it, for goodness' sake. That, and of course that Angel now-Crowley was a joyful and precious innocent who didn't deserve his fate.

Go back to S1E5 when he mentions Alpha Centauri and "I worked on that." We are also given the distinct impression that Crowley was an angel of considerable rank and power. Seeing Crowley in Heaven with Muriel and the way he was treated by the leadership-can I get a "deferentially" here?-is a setup for the reveal of his identity. There are files! Aziraphale can request them! Aziraphale finding out the truth is to me the macguffin that will 1) make him realize that heaven is not the place of "truth, light and good" and 2) catalyze whatever action that brings the tale to its conclusion.

When Crowley interrogates Jim-the "It hurts!" "I KNOW! Do it anyway!" and "Yeah, like the places where the furniture used to be" both strongly indicated to me that Crowley was speaking from experience-that he had had his memory wiped when he Fell-and has recovered some, but not all of it. Hence the offer of a hot chocolate. Empathy. (I think this what he meant by "Ask him properly.")

Later, when he tries to explain Gravity to Jim, I got the feeling that that was one of the places where the furniture used to be. (And also not remembering Saraquiel and Furfur).

Second, in the story of Job, it's being told directly from Aziraphale's point of view, that's why I assumed, in his recollection, that Crowley Bildad the Shuhite was wearing cool shades. And this is also where Aziraphale makes reference that he knew the angel Crowley used to be. Before the Garden of Eden. And Crowley says "the angel you knew is not me". Rather harshly, I thought.

Currently rereading "the Crow Road" and annotating it. There do seem to be some compelling parallels so far. Makes me wonder when Muriel will get to Aziraphale's journals. Like you, I suspect that's where we're going next. I can't figure out the timeline, though. It seems like the next scene has to take place many years from now.

This is getting too long so I'll wrap up by saying that I'm convinced that NG would not foist on us a plot device that wraps up S3 like Bobby "It was all a dream" Ewing from the last season of Dallas. It would be a violation of his own writing ethos and his commitment to doing something that would make Terry proud. The Metatron is literally a Deus ex Machina, but I don't think that NG would rely solely on him-or that technique-to conclude the story.

We all want our heroes to get their happy ending. But knowing Neil's knack for the twist in the storyline, I' don't think I'm not sure that it will look like what we think it will.

Cheers,

Maisie

[luetta]

[musingsofmaisie]

Yes to this. In the book Crowley uses a tire iron, IIRC. So the crank handle was Neil's idea.

So it was easy to conclude in S1 that the crank handle was just part of the Bentley that survived the explosion, and ignore the symbolism of Crowley actually kissing it.

But "Before the Beginning" made it clear that the handle is actually a Tool of Creation. It might be a mystery how Crowley still manages to have it.

As far as the Bentley goes, it has keys. And when Crowley leaves at the end of S2E6 he reaches down on the dash to start it. So maybe he modified it. He never puts gas in it either, don't forget.

The Bentley Handle Easter Egg

[Author‘s note: This humble mini-meta was liked by Mr. Gaiman himself which makes me not only feel very honoured but also believe that my guess at the end could just be true, heh. Thanks, Neil!]

I‘m probably not the first one to notice this but I still feel compelled to post it because it puts a smile on my face every time I see it:

We all know that the Bentley Handle is somehow Crowley‘s instrument to stop and start time in S1E6 when the world‘s about to end. It‘s one of only two of the remains from the burning Bentley.

So, you can imagine my surprised frown when I watched the first scene of S2E1, In The Beginning, and:

… there she is again! Starting time for, well, the very first time.

It‘s definitely the exact same handle, which means that Crowley got to keep it (or secretly took it with him) post-Fall. And then probably kept it hidden/stored away in different places over the millennia, including in the Bentley.

What a neat little piece of easter egg shell! Thank you Neil!

[astrhae]

crowley used the metal tool in season 1 to start time, and we learn that he's used it first to start space. to create the stars -- he still remembers how. he still remembers all of heaven's passwords: in the book crowley is described as an optimist because he has the "utter surety... that the universe would look after him". not god, but the universe. and of course he does: he helped create it and he's looking after it, too.

think about it: aziraphale had a sword, but crowley is about to face satan who wants to destroy the world, and crowley's only weapon is a tool of creation

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[ionomycin]

Welcome home

[musingsofmaisie]

Disagree. Heaven wipes memories with impunity. there's folks on here who postulate that memory wiping goes on ALL THE TIME and that Heaven and the Metatron are constantly fucking with people's memories. Not sure how far I'll pull that thread, but I have no doubt that Crowley's memory was wiped when he fell, and that he's been able to recover parts of it, at great effort.

When he is talking to Jim, when Jim says it hurts to think/remember, and Crowley says "I KNOW! Do it anyway!" and "Looking where the furniture isn't." Jim didn't say those things, that was Crowley SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE. And the gravity thing-for him not to care goes against who Crowley is-he never minds when people ask questions. He would have explained it if he could remember. He says it almost casually, like he knows where the furniture isn't. And it's why he is kind to Jim.

He may not remember Furfur, but it also wouldn't have been a good moment for him to acknowledge it if he did. ("I'm a demon. I lied.") With Saraquael, he may not remember-or he may have demurred given the situation (this is my opinion-I think Saraquael is going to be important in S3).

When he looks at the Big Book of Astronomy, he knows some of them, but doesn't remember all the ones he made. Which he should.

Heaven does this-wipes memories-and so of course they did. Casting out a high ranking Archangel-a Creator-they were not taking any chances.

For me the bigger mystery is how he managed to hold on to his Tool of Creation. (I think it's a Chekhov's gun, personally-and we have not seen the last of it)

Unpopular opinion - I don’t think Crowley has lost any memories at all? I don’t think he was mind-wiped in the fall, or otherwise. I think he’s just kind of… being a dick to Furfur and Saraqael? He’s just messing with them. And simply didn’t care enough to remember the details of gravity.

[innerward]

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[musingsofmaisie]

@pinkcalicoart The Metatron spoke only of "one Prince of Heaven" who was cast out. I'm pretty sure that was Lucifer. But many others, including Furfur and Beelzebub, allude to their status before the Great War. I think most of the Demons actually were angels once, because they were all created at the same time, before there was a Hell.

My theory is that Crowley's name is never given because his angel name was wiped when he Fell. So that angel sorta never existed. He does persist in Aziraphale's memory, but he doesn't have a name anymore. He had to have been a fairly high rank given the powers he had-and still retains, including his Tool of Creation (how he managed to keep that is a major mystery, at least in my mind). The fact that he and Aziraphale could do a miracle of such magnitude indicates to me that he was at least a Dominion, possibly an Archangel (although they were technically princes of heaven.

I'm betting we will find out more in Season 3. Crowley opening Gabriel's file like that seems to me a bit of a Chekhov's gun.

The idea of Crowley previously being a very powerful angel and still carrying around shards of that power is just so delicious to me. I'm a sucker for characters who aren't at all what they used to be. Underdogs who were obviously once a Big Deal, and you can't see it most of the time, until some improbable bit of classified knowledge or mention of higher connections leaks out. Especially if they really don't like to talk about it or dwell on who they were, if for one reason or another, they want to leave it all in the past.

I have had a feeling about Crowley since season 1. His position on Hell's hierarchy is relatively low, so it's not immediately apparent at first. But things stood out. How he bends reality to his will without seeming to even think about it, sometimes even without realizing. He decides it would be funnier if the paint guns were real guns, but also makes sure no one actually gets shot. This seems to take no effort or concentration on his part; it's done almost offhandedly. Or how he drives the Bentley through a wall of fire, keeping it from falling apart by sheer determination, while the much higher-ranking demon in the seat next to him is discorporated in seconds. Almost as impressive is how he negotiates London traffic, which from what I've heard is a borderline miraculous feat normally, let alone at 90 miles per hour.

And of course, the time stopping. Something even Aziraphale apparently isn't capable of. Something that, with a particularly fierce effort, literally stops Satan in his tracks. The sort of power wielded by a cosmic engineer who once needed it to do his job - 'I helped build that one,' he says, eyes a little distant as stares at a picture of a nebula - and he still carries it with him, skulking around on Earth, far from the cosmos he helped to create. Having let go of most of the rest, even the memories of it, burying them with the person he used to be. He's changed who he is but he can't change what he is, and if you cracked open that lowly serpent, you'd be blinded by the starlight within.

[johankasas]

oh no

there are now two of them

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[fallencrowkarma]

A bug-like being that won’t disappear, even after death

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Au where Baron isn’t actually a creation of Cassandra and is actually the creation of some other world endangering threat that the bad kids have to face off in their senior year when it starts making little tormentors for the rest of the bad kids

[rae-butter]

Something that is so important in fiction writing is your characters worldview. What I don’t mean is their religious beliefs or the views on politics—I mean how they view life as a whole.

When something unfair happens to them—some form of emotional pain—how do they react? How do they view themselves? What are things that commonly pass through their mind? Where do they run to when they need help, when they have good news, or when they need a place to relax?

It’s something that’s so obvious yet overlooked when fleshing out OC’s bc most OC creators are like “yeah, they would do x” but why they react that way is where most people are stumped. If you can trace that reaction back to a moment in their past, or an aspect of their personality, then that’s a fleshed out character.