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.

[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.

[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.

[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.