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.