anthony crowley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
demonicmiracle) wrote2021-09-18 10:07 pm
demonicmiracle) wrote2021-09-18 10:07 pm
Entry tags:
(neon requiem) application
OOC:
Player Handle: justine
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
batsecretary
Pronouns: she/her
Invite/Current Player: Invite Link
Other Characters: n/a
IC:
Character Name: anthony crowley
Age: physically late 40s/early 50s, mentally has existed since before time
Canon: good omens (tv)
Canon Point: end of season 2, after aziraphale leaves for heaven
CRAU: n/a
History: Wiki link
Personality: Describing a demon should be simple. They’re evil, they’re violent, they’re destructive. That’s how they were made to be and honestly, there isn’t much they can do about it. Free will is for humans, that was part of the point with the apple.
Ironic, then, that the one demon who seems capable of truly exercising free will is the one responsible for all that apple business. Enter: Crowley, an angel who didn’t so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards, although the truth of how he was cast out of Heaven tends to change to suit his moods. The crux of it seems to be that he never quite meant to, and never quite settled into to being a demon the way other fallen angels did. Some part of him seems to be innately complicated compared to other demons, a fact that isn’t helped by his time on Earth.
He’s gone a bit native, you see.
This isn’t to start saying that Crowley is by any means a shining beacon of goodness, or that he should’ve remained an angel, that would be inaccurate to say the least. Crowley is a fairly selfish being, most of the time. He’s fascinated by humans, openly admires their creativity and cleverness and does care about humanity as a whole, but he has little concern for them on a one-to-one basis. This is practical in a way, and it’s not that there can’t be exceptions (he seems to have struck up a friendship with Leonardo Da Vinci). But still. He shows almost no regard for pedestrians while driving, including when he does hit someone, acting more put out by the whole business instead of expressing concern for the woman who went flying over the front of his car. And while he isn’t willing to do the deed himself, he’s more than happy to try to talk Aziraphale into killing a single child to save the rest of the world. Most of the time, Crowley is looking out for himself. Someone’s gotta do it, after all. And while he does express distress and anger with God for testing humans too much with the apocalypse, his primary motivation for trying to save the world is that he likes it there. Once things turn sour for him on Earth, he's willing to abandon any chance at saving it to save his own skin, instead (as long as Aziraphale goes with him).
There’s also the fact he’s spent a considerable amount of time making sure that as many humans as possible were as miserable as possible. Crowley has a job and he’s rather good at it, it just so happens that job is trying to tarnish people’s souls so they end up in Hell. The difference between what he does and what a regular demon does is that he likes to leave it all up to the humans, how they deal with whatever negative emotions he inspires. Crowley isn’t the devil on someone’s shoulder talking them into committing a sin, he’s just that bad day you had, because the phones were down, because there was too much traffic, because your ex’s new girlfriend looks really good on instagram, and then you take that bad day out on someone else, and a little bit of goodness is lost.
But there’s still free will. That’s important to Crowley.
Of all the characters in the show, even literal angels, Crowley seems to be one of the few with a strong sense of fairness, of right and wrong, which maybe makes sense, considering the whole apple nonsense. He questions why Adam & Eve were kicked out on their first offence, he balks when informed that God plans to drown everyone, including children, all because She’s displeased with a bunch of humans, and he seems particularly perturbed by the worst of the violence that humanity can come up with. It’s this sense of fairness that seems to drive his acts of Hell ordained wickedness on Earth, it’s the reason he tries to maintain the importance of free will in everything he does.
The one place he isn’t fair is with the plants in his flat, a recreation of a garden, where they’re held to an impossibly high standard and destroyed for even the smallest mistake. But we don’t have time to unpack all that.
Let’s focus back on all those messy human things. Those emotions.
Most demons seem capable of only a handful of emotions, namely things around anger, pride, confusion (only one person in this show has a brain cell and it’s Pepper, the 11 year old) and hate. By contrast, Crowley runs the whole gamut of emotions, from fear to hope to anger to loss to love. He’s one of the more emotionally open and emotionally vulnerable characters in the show, and that comes from an apparent willingness to expose himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Unsurprisingly, this mostly happens around and because of Aziraphale, but in general Crowley shows a range and depth of emotion that other demons just completely lack. Even from the beginning, there’s a surprising tenderness to the way he talks about Jesus, empathising and sympathising with someone who should be his enemy. Crowley shows disgust at learning about the Flood, he’s anguished over his Fall, he's quick to anger, especially if the topic is something he's sensitive about, and his anger occasionally leads to violent outbursts and petty grudges. He also gets a strong sense of satisfaction from his work, and he breaks down when his best friend is killed. He’s even kind and gentle on occasion, although that’s definitely more reserved for Aziraphale. Crowley craves companionship, he goes out of his way to seek it, and he seems to understand that in order to truly have it, he has to be open to a) having emotions and b) admitting them. Multiple times in the show, he puts himself and his emotions on display in the hope that they won’t be tossed aside.
They are, but he picks himself up and tries again anyway. The thing about emotions, though, is that they're difficult and complicated and honestly, Crowley just isn't that great at regulating them, when it comes to emotions of the negative side of things (anxiety especially). It comes through in the anger, but it also comes through in how quickly he gives in to despair once he thinks Aziraphale is gone, in his anxiety while trying to find the Antichrist, in the way he withdraws from his only friend for decades because of a minor disagreement. Fairly consistently, his feelings get the better of him, leading to some kind of unfortunate consequence. Crowley pushes Aziraphale too hard out of panic at losing him, and he messes up delivering the Antichrist because he's too focused on worrying over the coming apocalypse. His fears doesn't necessarily stop him from getting things done, but it drives a lot of his actions, especially as Armageddon approaches.
All that said, the stuff about free will, the fear, the mortifying ordeal of being known, the whole mess with being cast out of Heaven. It could speak to someone who takes themselves far too seriously, but while Crowley certainly has his broody moments, mostly when alone, he’s clearly also enamored with the world and with experiences, and isn’t shy about indulging himself or having fun. His sense of fun may be a little skewed, considering it once involved turning paintball guns real, during some company’s team building exercise, but it’s still fun. He likes comedic plays, he cultivates a collection of music, he uses words like wahoo, he gets drunk and rants about how smart dolphins are, despite apparently not knowing quite how dolphins work. There’s a playfulness to Crowley, an edge of dramatics, a bit of flair that suggests he does know how to enjoy himself. Even when he’s facing imminent destruction, he takes the time to leap up on a chair and put on a bit of production to trick a Duke of Hell, a being more powerful and dangerous than he is. There’s creativity there, an imagination, something else that most demons lack. It’s all very free will of him. It’s very human of him, which is also the point. By extension, he’s a lot better at interacting with other humans than most demons are, being perfectly of capable of developing professional relationships. In the book, he’s described as Hell’s most approachable demon, and while not exactly a high bar, it does say something about Crowley. He’s fun, he can be charming, he’s cool. Or at least, he likes to think he is, the actual effectiveness of any coolness he tries to cultivate is varied.
See: the aforementioned wahoo. And just the seventies in general.
He’s doing his best. For whatever that’s worth.
SO
The above is all true, however he just went through the demonic version of a divorce and is going to be kind of a mess about it for a while, since he doesn't really have good coping methods that don't involve alcohol or setting things on fire. He'll probably be fine but he might be a little extra volatile and nasty, at the start of things.
Abilities: Sorry...... there a fairly comprehensive list here that details Crowley's (and Aziraphale's) use of powers. It's book canon, but there's only minor differences between the two
The best way to summarize angelic/demonic power is to say that they’re reality warpers. The world is shaped by their thoughts — Crowley's refrigerator runs simply because he expects to it, despite it not being plugged in, and his plants are sentient because he wants to be able to yell at them effectively. He kept a burning car driving for an hour through sheer force of will and imagination. He can wish clothes and other items into existence from raw firmament/matter. He can kill animals & resurrect them with a thought — this could apply to humans as well, as Hastur is able to do at least the former. Physics doesn’t apply to demons or angels — according to God "size and shape are simply options" — they're capable of travelling through phones lines & instant teleportation (of themselves and others), and shapeshifting (Crowley can turn into a snake, for example, and seems to have some control over his corporation).
Crowley also has a knack for controlling time, able to stop it with a snap of fingers, though he can't hold it long term.
As part of his general demonic-nee-angelic nature, he neither ages nor can die naturally, he’s considerably more difficult to damage than a human, has no need to eat/breathe/drink/sleep, has a set of black wings that just disappear when he doesn’t want them around, and is to be able to sense what humans want (unlike angels, who can sense love). They're also able to manipulate humans in various ways, from forcing them to answer questions, to making them unable to perceive them.
It's not specified in the show how Crowley is able to consistently find Aziraphale to bother him over the millennia, but considering Gabriel is able to sense that something evil has been in the bookshop, it seems likely that angels & demons are able to sense each other if they make the effort. Crowley probably just got very good at honing in on Aziraphale.
In terms of weaknesses, he can be hurt by consecrated items and would be completely destroyed by holy water, even a drop.
Oh I guess he can fucking call down lightning and control the weather. Once again: I apologize. Please trust me to nerf his ass appropriately.
Inventory: His clothes, his phone, his wallet. Nothing exciting.
Eternal Reward: Freedom from Heaven & Hell, for him and Aziraphale
Goals/Ideas: FUCK NASTY
No I'm kidding. Can I just link to my plurk because that really covers it. He's spent most of his existence circling Aziraphale and like, it makes sense, I'm not necessarily saying it's some shitty codependent thing, but they only had each other! There are other aspects of life that he enjoys but he always comes back to Aziraphale, it's what kept him going through very shitty situations. He thought his end goal was Being With Aziraphale! And now he's lost that, thoroughly. Aziraphale left him for Heaven.
So! He has to learn how to be a person separate from Aziraphale, because there's no Aziraphale to go back to, not really. This would've looked very different in London, on Earth, with constant reminders of the angel, but now he's here! Somewhere totally new! With no one who knows him or his history.
Kinda wanna see where that goes, you know? Maybe he'll make friends. Maybe he'll spend the entire time drunk and miserable. Maybe he WILL fuck nasty. Let's hold hands and go on this journey together.
Samples: Sample
Secret Code Phrase: All glory to the Neon Hypnotoad
Player Handle: justine
Contact:
Pronouns: she/her
Invite/Current Player: Invite Link
Other Characters: n/a
IC:
Character Name: anthony crowley
Age: physically late 40s/early 50s, mentally has existed since before time
Canon: good omens (tv)
Canon Point: end of season 2, after aziraphale leaves for heaven
CRAU: n/a
History: Wiki link
Personality: Describing a demon should be simple. They’re evil, they’re violent, they’re destructive. That’s how they were made to be and honestly, there isn’t much they can do about it. Free will is for humans, that was part of the point with the apple.
Ironic, then, that the one demon who seems capable of truly exercising free will is the one responsible for all that apple business. Enter: Crowley, an angel who didn’t so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards, although the truth of how he was cast out of Heaven tends to change to suit his moods. The crux of it seems to be that he never quite meant to, and never quite settled into to being a demon the way other fallen angels did. Some part of him seems to be innately complicated compared to other demons, a fact that isn’t helped by his time on Earth.
He’s gone a bit native, you see.
This isn’t to start saying that Crowley is by any means a shining beacon of goodness, or that he should’ve remained an angel, that would be inaccurate to say the least. Crowley is a fairly selfish being, most of the time. He’s fascinated by humans, openly admires their creativity and cleverness and does care about humanity as a whole, but he has little concern for them on a one-to-one basis. This is practical in a way, and it’s not that there can’t be exceptions (he seems to have struck up a friendship with Leonardo Da Vinci). But still. He shows almost no regard for pedestrians while driving, including when he does hit someone, acting more put out by the whole business instead of expressing concern for the woman who went flying over the front of his car. And while he isn’t willing to do the deed himself, he’s more than happy to try to talk Aziraphale into killing a single child to save the rest of the world. Most of the time, Crowley is looking out for himself. Someone’s gotta do it, after all. And while he does express distress and anger with God for testing humans too much with the apocalypse, his primary motivation for trying to save the world is that he likes it there. Once things turn sour for him on Earth, he's willing to abandon any chance at saving it to save his own skin, instead (as long as Aziraphale goes with him).
There’s also the fact he’s spent a considerable amount of time making sure that as many humans as possible were as miserable as possible. Crowley has a job and he’s rather good at it, it just so happens that job is trying to tarnish people’s souls so they end up in Hell. The difference between what he does and what a regular demon does is that he likes to leave it all up to the humans, how they deal with whatever negative emotions he inspires. Crowley isn’t the devil on someone’s shoulder talking them into committing a sin, he’s just that bad day you had, because the phones were down, because there was too much traffic, because your ex’s new girlfriend looks really good on instagram, and then you take that bad day out on someone else, and a little bit of goodness is lost.
But there’s still free will. That’s important to Crowley.
Of all the characters in the show, even literal angels, Crowley seems to be one of the few with a strong sense of fairness, of right and wrong, which maybe makes sense, considering the whole apple nonsense. He questions why Adam & Eve were kicked out on their first offence, he balks when informed that God plans to drown everyone, including children, all because She’s displeased with a bunch of humans, and he seems particularly perturbed by the worst of the violence that humanity can come up with. It’s this sense of fairness that seems to drive his acts of Hell ordained wickedness on Earth, it’s the reason he tries to maintain the importance of free will in everything he does.
The one place he isn’t fair is with the plants in his flat, a recreation of a garden, where they’re held to an impossibly high standard and destroyed for even the smallest mistake. But we don’t have time to unpack all that.
Let’s focus back on all those messy human things. Those emotions.
Most demons seem capable of only a handful of emotions, namely things around anger, pride, confusion (only one person in this show has a brain cell and it’s Pepper, the 11 year old) and hate. By contrast, Crowley runs the whole gamut of emotions, from fear to hope to anger to loss to love. He’s one of the more emotionally open and emotionally vulnerable characters in the show, and that comes from an apparent willingness to expose himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Unsurprisingly, this mostly happens around and because of Aziraphale, but in general Crowley shows a range and depth of emotion that other demons just completely lack. Even from the beginning, there’s a surprising tenderness to the way he talks about Jesus, empathising and sympathising with someone who should be his enemy. Crowley shows disgust at learning about the Flood, he’s anguished over his Fall, he's quick to anger, especially if the topic is something he's sensitive about, and his anger occasionally leads to violent outbursts and petty grudges. He also gets a strong sense of satisfaction from his work, and he breaks down when his best friend is killed. He’s even kind and gentle on occasion, although that’s definitely more reserved for Aziraphale. Crowley craves companionship, he goes out of his way to seek it, and he seems to understand that in order to truly have it, he has to be open to a) having emotions and b) admitting them. Multiple times in the show, he puts himself and his emotions on display in the hope that they won’t be tossed aside.
They are, but he picks himself up and tries again anyway. The thing about emotions, though, is that they're difficult and complicated and honestly, Crowley just isn't that great at regulating them, when it comes to emotions of the negative side of things (anxiety especially). It comes through in the anger, but it also comes through in how quickly he gives in to despair once he thinks Aziraphale is gone, in his anxiety while trying to find the Antichrist, in the way he withdraws from his only friend for decades because of a minor disagreement. Fairly consistently, his feelings get the better of him, leading to some kind of unfortunate consequence. Crowley pushes Aziraphale too hard out of panic at losing him, and he messes up delivering the Antichrist because he's too focused on worrying over the coming apocalypse. His fears doesn't necessarily stop him from getting things done, but it drives a lot of his actions, especially as Armageddon approaches.
All that said, the stuff about free will, the fear, the mortifying ordeal of being known, the whole mess with being cast out of Heaven. It could speak to someone who takes themselves far too seriously, but while Crowley certainly has his broody moments, mostly when alone, he’s clearly also enamored with the world and with experiences, and isn’t shy about indulging himself or having fun. His sense of fun may be a little skewed, considering it once involved turning paintball guns real, during some company’s team building exercise, but it’s still fun. He likes comedic plays, he cultivates a collection of music, he uses words like wahoo, he gets drunk and rants about how smart dolphins are, despite apparently not knowing quite how dolphins work. There’s a playfulness to Crowley, an edge of dramatics, a bit of flair that suggests he does know how to enjoy himself. Even when he’s facing imminent destruction, he takes the time to leap up on a chair and put on a bit of production to trick a Duke of Hell, a being more powerful and dangerous than he is. There’s creativity there, an imagination, something else that most demons lack. It’s all very free will of him. It’s very human of him, which is also the point. By extension, he’s a lot better at interacting with other humans than most demons are, being perfectly of capable of developing professional relationships. In the book, he’s described as Hell’s most approachable demon, and while not exactly a high bar, it does say something about Crowley. He’s fun, he can be charming, he’s cool. Or at least, he likes to think he is, the actual effectiveness of any coolness he tries to cultivate is varied.
See: the aforementioned wahoo. And just the seventies in general.
He’s doing his best. For whatever that’s worth.
SO
The above is all true, however he just went through the demonic version of a divorce and is going to be kind of a mess about it for a while, since he doesn't really have good coping methods that don't involve alcohol or setting things on fire. He'll probably be fine but he might be a little extra volatile and nasty, at the start of things.
Abilities: Sorry...... there a fairly comprehensive list here that details Crowley's (and Aziraphale's) use of powers. It's book canon, but there's only minor differences between the two
The best way to summarize angelic/demonic power is to say that they’re reality warpers. The world is shaped by their thoughts — Crowley's refrigerator runs simply because he expects to it, despite it not being plugged in, and his plants are sentient because he wants to be able to yell at them effectively. He kept a burning car driving for an hour through sheer force of will and imagination. He can wish clothes and other items into existence from raw firmament/matter. He can kill animals & resurrect them with a thought — this could apply to humans as well, as Hastur is able to do at least the former. Physics doesn’t apply to demons or angels — according to God "size and shape are simply options" — they're capable of travelling through phones lines & instant teleportation (of themselves and others), and shapeshifting (Crowley can turn into a snake, for example, and seems to have some control over his corporation).
Crowley also has a knack for controlling time, able to stop it with a snap of fingers, though he can't hold it long term.
As part of his general demonic-nee-angelic nature, he neither ages nor can die naturally, he’s considerably more difficult to damage than a human, has no need to eat/breathe/drink/sleep, has a set of black wings that just disappear when he doesn’t want them around, and is to be able to sense what humans want (unlike angels, who can sense love). They're also able to manipulate humans in various ways, from forcing them to answer questions, to making them unable to perceive them.
It's not specified in the show how Crowley is able to consistently find Aziraphale to bother him over the millennia, but considering Gabriel is able to sense that something evil has been in the bookshop, it seems likely that angels & demons are able to sense each other if they make the effort. Crowley probably just got very good at honing in on Aziraphale.
In terms of weaknesses, he can be hurt by consecrated items and would be completely destroyed by holy water, even a drop.
Oh I guess he can fucking call down lightning and control the weather. Once again: I apologize. Please trust me to nerf his ass appropriately.
Inventory: His clothes, his phone, his wallet. Nothing exciting.
Eternal Reward: Freedom from Heaven & Hell, for him and Aziraphale
Goals/Ideas: FUCK NASTY
No I'm kidding. Can I just link to my plurk because that really covers it. He's spent most of his existence circling Aziraphale and like, it makes sense, I'm not necessarily saying it's some shitty codependent thing, but they only had each other! There are other aspects of life that he enjoys but he always comes back to Aziraphale, it's what kept him going through very shitty situations. He thought his end goal was Being With Aziraphale! And now he's lost that, thoroughly. Aziraphale left him for Heaven.
So! He has to learn how to be a person separate from Aziraphale, because there's no Aziraphale to go back to, not really. This would've looked very different in London, on Earth, with constant reminders of the angel, but now he's here! Somewhere totally new! With no one who knows him or his history.
Kinda wanna see where that goes, you know? Maybe he'll make friends. Maybe he'll spend the entire time drunk and miserable. Maybe he WILL fuck nasty. Let's hold hands and go on this journey together.
Samples: Sample
Secret Code Phrase: All glory to the Neon Hypnotoad