GO meta Signal Boost: Something that’s been very interesting to me, in Good Omens...

[cimorene]

c-is-for-circinate posted: Something that’s been very interesting to me...

There’s a narrative fandom’s been telling that, at its core, is centered around the idea that Crowley is good, and loves and cares and is nice, and always has been.  Heaven and its rigid ideas of Right and Wrong is itself the bad thing.  Crowley is too good for Heaven, and was punished for it, but under all the angst and pain and feelings of hurt and betrayal, he’s the best of all of them after all.

That’s a compelling story.  There’s a reason we keep telling it.  The conflict between kindness and Moral Authority, the idea that maybe the people in charge are the ones who’re wrong and the people they’ve rejected are both victim and hero all at once–yeah.  There’s a lot there to connect with, and I wouldn’t want to take it away from anyone.  But the compelling story I want, for me, is different.

I look at Crowley and I want a story about someone who absolutely has the capacity for cruelty and disseminating evil into the world.  Somebody who’s actually really skilled at it, even if all he does is create opportunities, and humans themselves just keep living down to and even surpassing his expectations.  Somebody who enjoys it, even.  Maybe he was unfairly labeled and tossed out of heaven to begin with, but he’s embraced what he was given.  He’s thrived.  He is, legitimately, a bad person.

And he tries to save the world anyway.

This touches on something I was just discussing with perhael the other day and vaguely planning to write up into a post in the near future. It's more overlapping than covering the point I wanted to make, and my perspective isn't entirely aligned with this one, but it's a great post about a fascinatingly obtrusive issue in the emerging Good Omens Renaissance fanon that I've devoted a fair amount of thought to.

Comments

[magnetic_pole]

Aha! I saw that post and enjoyed it, too. I'm the most casual fan (I read the book in order to write fanfic for someone back in the day, and I recently watched the show), but it's interesting what fandom's done with A and C. They're both such cinnamon rolls in fic! I'm not quite sure what to make of it. M.

[cimorene]

I make several things of it:

- fandom loves to woobify characters, usually the more ridiculous the better;
- woobification of morally gray or dark characters is particularly prone to including intense manpain and abuse 'showing' in the narrative how none of it was their fault (eg Loki in MCU, Methos in Highlander);
- as OP said, fandom also loves the righteous underdog who emerges from under a hail of undeserved self-righteous abuse by what turn out to be assholes and is proven to have been better and more righteous all along (like Matilda or Jane Eyre);
- and fandom loves wish-fulfillment style The Chosen One stories where the hero who emerges from trials and hardships was destined, or else turns out to secretly be the crown prince or the most noble/magic/qualified of all, like Harry Potter or Merlin or the Princess Diaries (hence all fic about how Crowley didn't do anything wrong AND God actually secretly liked him more all along and that's why he was chosen for his special mission).

There's probably also just an element of the fact that it's easier in general, and for many people more fun, to use more tropes and cliches rather than less of them.

[daegaer]

That's a great post, thanks for the link!

I think the book underlines the importance of free will and the choice to do good more than the series, with Crowley at their last stand automatically reverting to selfishness and trying to escape before being reminded by Aziraphale that the've done enough "messing around" and need to try to save human lives. It's only then that the narration says that he finally feels free, and he chooses to make the stand. Having him rouse himself from despair in response to a threat of losing Aziraphale's company seems a slightly different sort of choice, perhaps.

[cimorene]

'perhaps', lol.

I agree that the changed emphasis in those scenes provides a different overtone. I think the two sets of emphasis aren't incompatible - like you can interpret them as more or less about the same events, theorizing that his motivation is a mixture of concern for humanity and more personal concern for his relationship with Aziraphale in both cases - but that arises more from looking at them side-by-side than from just looking at one or the other.

Although overall, outside of that scene, the importance of free will and the fact that being good is a choice in general are thematically central.

[daegaer]

;-)

Definitely free will and doing good as a choice is the important thing there, for both of them. Aziraphale has to choose action as well, and it's pretty clear that he's a fairly lazy angel, as well as idolatrous by official standards (he worships books, after all).

A really big difference, for Crowley at least, is what exactly he curses - in the show it's the Great Plan at the bandstand scene, but in the book it's everything:

"Wet and steaming, face ash-blackened, as far from cool as it was possible for him to be, on all fours in the blazing bookshop, Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above and Below."

He's renounced Satan and all his works - and everyone else and their works too. He claims more and more free actions after this, even if he might not recognise the freedom until the end. (He chooses first to desert, then changes his mind to try to get to Tadfield, to drive madly across London, under the Thames, etc, decides effectively to destroy the Bentley even before reaching the M25 and so on).

Of course, he also hates anyone pointing out when he has chosen to do something good or good(ish) :-)

[yvannairie]

This is actually probably the post that has done the most to convince me to give the book a try.

[princessofgeeks]

I agree with you that Crowley is much more interesting and the whole thing much more dramatic if he is actually bad and then does what we see him do.

[cimorene]

I'm not sure I'd agree with 'actually bad' as a value judgment, but in the context of her argument, I think I agree with it. As a being who has knowingly done things that were actually bad in the past and who is, as the post says, good at his job, that is.

*because then you get into debating good, bad, evil, the degrees of them and the space in between, which is coming close to the core messages and themes

[princessofgeeks]

Well, yes, I was trying for a shortcut. I am in agreement with your post, basically.

[cimorene]

I thought you were, but looking at her post again I'm not entirely sure the extent to which she means it as a shortcut. But also I've just read a post on Tumblr arguing that he's actually even kinder in the book because there are some lines revealing details of his compassion or kindness that were cut, so possibly I had a few surplus points swirling around in my head about it.

And also that is kind of the point I wanted to expand on myself.

[princessofgeeks]

I look forward to any further thoughts you have on the topic. The canon is extremely chewy and complex and it is totally fun to look at the details!

As a canon it's absolutely wonderful. Some canons are very thin and the fanon is the thing.

This canon will stand up to any amount of analysis and fanon. I love that. It's like LOTR in that aspect, only more modern and complex.

Thank you for being here.

[untonuggan]

here for both of these interpretations.

[krait]

This may be why I bounce off so much GO fic, or can only enjoy it in a really superficial way.

Because whether Crowley fell or sauntered (to borrow the book's own metaphor), at the time we meet him he's a demon. He is the kind of person who makes thousands of people's lives miserable on purpose, with sustained effort and personal involvement, and is proud of the result.

Working with that, not against it, can make characterisation more interesting.

[phosfate]

Crowley in the series is one of the demons who fucked with Jesus in the desert, so he is pretty high up there on Heaven's sinnin' list. He was also indirectly responsible for setting several thousand people on fire, though as Death would point out, they were just beating the rush.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale's plan for averting the Apocalypse was murdering an 11-year-old boy with a really big gun. Which would probably have only made Adam a bit angry, but still. Dude. No.

[cimorene]

At this point I'm gonna just place my bets on 'all the people who think Crowley has never done any wrong in his sweet life thought that Crowley was just being nice and making friends with Jesus' (there are multiple stories to this effect on AO3).

[phosfate]

Yeah, a Twitter kid I follow subscribes to this theory and I get all You dang kids and your Beanie Babies and your Trapper Keepers and your I don't know what, get off my lawn.

(My lawn actually has an amazing bit of public kid art, where they walk home from school and put their gum on it. All colors. It's a bit like one of those wishing trees people hammer coins into.)

[cimorene]

I don't have a lawn right now, but there are a lot of kids running and screaming periodically in the playground outside our windows and the other playground right outside our bedroom windows where they like to go and scream early in the mornings.

I don't think they do Trapper Keepers anymore - that was my generation - and Beanie Babies - that was my little sister's. My niece was into these creepy dolls made by the beanie baby company a few years ago - I found out later it was the same company - where the head is the same size as the body and they have giant eyes.

[phosfate]

One of the giant-eyed unicorns has a walk-on part in Good Omens, and it is terrifying.

It...it doesn't literally walk. That's just an expression.

[krait]

Oh, man, Trapper Keepers! I remember those.

Not to mention slap bracelets, pogs, those teensy purses in the shape of backpacks...

Beanie Babies and Tamagatchi came along a bit later, but I find the present-day Beanie Babies to be downright terrifying.

[krait]

I haven't seen the series, but even book!Crowley is pretty firmly in Heaven's bad books; I mean, he was the snake in the Garden! Arguably ever sin after that one is his fault. And he goes about making people miserable in job lots. Makes Hastur's "spend ten years corrupting one person" schtick look like small potatoes, really.

And yes, Aziraphale when it came down to the wire was willing to commit murder in the name of a Greater Good - not the Greater Good endorsed by his superiors, i.e. the end of the world, but no different in (heh) valuing the end above the means. The whole point is that they're both less pure [good/evil] than they think they are! An "X did nothing wrong" attitude practically misses the whole point of the characters AND the narrative.

though as Death would point out, they were just beating the rush.

Snerk! And this reminds me of Crowley sacrificing his beloved Bentley in the name of averting the apocalypse, which is also appropriate to the whole "nobody is a sweet harmless fluffbunny and nobody is an irredeemable villainous blackguard" message, too.