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

[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.