I’d like to talk about something that has been bothering me and I haven’t seen addressed anywhere else: Hell’s physical effect on Crowley.
There has been a lot of talk about how Heaven is generally emotionally abusive and controlling while Hell is generally less suffocating/paying less attention to their demons’ behaviour - except actually physically punishing them when found lacking. Regardless, I’m going to say Hell has a sort of constant latent physical aggression on Crowley, which manifests at least three times during the show and is frankly unsettling to watch:
1 - the hand burning in the graveyard when he signs the contract (more about it here):
2 - the passing of information about his mission shortly after in the car, which steals Crowley from consciousness to the point that he almost crashes into another vehicle:
3 - the Satan scene at the airbase, where Crowley is literally yanked to the soil, in pain, because Satan is coming to exact vengeance:
All of these instance look terribly creepy to me, especially considering that Crowley doesn’t quite belong in Hell. It feels like many small violations, forcing apart his defences and getting in uninvited whenever they want (especially 2; that never fails to make me cringe).
There are also subtler hints, like Satan and other demons randomly chiming in in the car radio, or Hastur and Ligur appearing in whatever screen Crowley is watching/in front of in order to bully him, hinting to the fact that they always know where he is - and can very likely spy him at his place; one could speculate that that’s part of the reason why Crowley spends so much time in the bookshop but not the other way around. Did he ever have to keep Aziraphale from buying a TV set?
Anyway, it makes you feel bad for Crowley, makes him look terribly vulnerable in that aspect, which makes his flippant exterior look more like a defense mechanism. One has to wonder how often he’s willing to go Downstairs and face THAT, and how scared he actually is when he does.
Now to my question: is this how Hell is with every demon down there? Is it just with Crowley because he is a cinnamom roll acting too kindly to pass as a real demon? Is it intentional at all from Hell’s part?
And yeah I made myself sad and I’m not okay and goodbye forever
