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

[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.