I know I said it before, but... when the first season of TV Omens came out and decided to underplay Crowley's whole 'Modernized Methods of Spreading Sins" shtick, in favor of mostly making it seem like he was bullshitting his way through his work and stealing credit for Humanity's evil...
That felt like an understandable adaptational choice. With Crowley and Aziraphale being upgraded to the Actual Main Protagonists, their characterization shifting from "complicit agents of cosmic imperialism" to "victimized corporate cogs", the changing nature of humor from the 90's to Present Day making Random Cruelty seem less Automatically Funny and just generally the other changes Crowley's character making him even more ideologically disconnected from Hell then he was originally....
But, that whole concept of inventing random mundane annoyances was such a central part of Book!Crowley's character I just... didn't really accept the idea that aspect of his character was truly gone, I just thought it was downplayed. I mean, the M25 project still happened, Crowley is still introduced doing his infrastructure sabotage shtick even if the inner monologue explaining his logic for why this is a legitimately effective technique for temptations is cut, Crowley still claims credit for inventing the Selfie even if it's not as strongly confirmed as the random annoyances he created in the book...
I thought that, yeah, Show!Crowley doesn't even have the token cynical allegiance to Hell that Book!Crowley had, but he still likes inventing annoying taxes purely because he is a show-off smartass and because staying on Hell's good better side by being an exemplary employee was better for his self-interest even if he doesn't give a shit about how it benefits them. I even theorized it might be kinda connected to his new 'helped design Nebulas' backstory. Like creating shit like Manchester and Furbies is the closest equivalent to the joy of creating stars that he think he'll ever be allowed as a Demon...
But as we moved into GO2 and GO3, it became more and more clear that this aspect of the character was dropped pretty much completely in adaptation. The M25 was most likely the only large-scale Evil project Show!Crowley has done, he really is just bullshitting excuses for the phone things, and he was definitely just stealing credit for the Selfie. And it's just... a huge bummer I think. Again, this was one of Crowley's defining characteristics in the book, and a major running joke in both the canon and the fandom. It's true that, like I said, in the 2020's maybe you can't immediately introduce one of your Main Lovable Protagonists the guy whose job it is to make sure you had a shit day at work and he's actually kinda proud of it?
But I feel like there was a way to loop Crowley's projects back into the narrative, I've said it before as well but... it really does defang the point your story is trying to make about the beauty in moral ambiguity if you can't even allow one of your main characters to be the kind of guy (gender neutral) who enjoys hot-gluing coins on the sidewalk. It's okay if Crowley is a little shit or selfish in his own way. If he's got actual shades of gray and wasn't just 'too kind and caring for Heaven' and really grumpy about it. (On kind of a metatextual level, maybe retconning out Crowley's projects is the reason why Show!Crowley seems to be getting gloomier and gloomier every season... They unwritten one of his main hobbies and sources of pride out of existence).
I've been considering the idea of, like, what if the story just treated Crowley's mischief slightly more seriously... Like, just tried to explore this idea that yeah, it's funny and relatable and maybe even understandable that Crowley has been doing this minor mischief and inventing small frustrations just so his bosses will get off his back and let him go on dates with his boyfriend at peace and maybe because it's the closest he'll ever get to hanging stars in the sky ever again. But maybe we can also explore the perspective of the humans who used to get caught up in his shenanigans? Like, use this thread as a jumping-off point to explore the same sort of "it's just me and my Angel against it all" attitude that also keeps leading Show!Crowley to repeatedly suggest giving up on saving the world and fucking off to the stars?
I'd say there's even groundworks for that in the original book! Like, Crowley and Aziraphale are absolutely not the main focus of the book and don't have the same prominent arcs as their Show counterparts get in S1, but... if you look very closely, they absolutely do still have arcs.
Aziraphale has roughly the same Arc between the Book and the Show, just with the show turning up the drama waaaay up. Book!Aziraphale does start out notably more jaded about Heaven...
But he does talk himself (and allows Crowley to talk him) into believing Heaven would want him to prevent Armageddon...
Right until that talk with the Metatron, which shatters what little faith in Heaven he had left...
Which also leads to him swearing for the first time in four thousand years, and shifting from "Oh, we have to do something about the Antichrist.... but nothing too horrible obviously" to "I am going to lie-by-omission (and also just plain lie) these humans into shooting the 11-years-old dead for me".
Meanwhile, Crowley... there are definitely moments when you can say 'okay, yeah, these are the same story/character beats from the book, but with More Drama...
But while Show!Crowley has his Alpha Centauri stuff, which was an interesting way to add extra stakes, this possibility of a selfish escape from doom. Which would probably not even work in the Novel, in which the Universe is implied to not only be a much younger world that is scientifically indistinguishable from a billions-of-years-old universe as a Sick Prank from God, but is also a much smaller world that is scientifically indistinguishable from an infinite universe as a Sick Prank from God.
Book!Crowley, I think, has a thread regarding, much like Aziraphale, what he feels about his job. So much of the Crowley's perspective early in the book is essentially about him justifying and rationalizing what he does. I mean, humans do way worse then what I can think of anyways! It's all about Free Will! Which I don't even have, I don't have a choice but to do my job! Like, the observations about human cruelty and kindness and free will are meant to be poignant and important to themes of the story.... but they are also just kinda Crowley rationalizing why he keeps programming traffic lights with durations that are just annoying enough to tempt people to run the red light.
And then the M25 happens, and Crowley is finally directly faced with the consequences of his meddling, the fact that his job does have a real effect on people, and on him, and his narration takes on a very different tone...
Crowley ends up having to sacrifice the Bentley, his one most prized possession in the whole world, because of this mess. And then when Adam notices him for the first time and seem to supernaturally identify what Crowley and what he is done, and Crowley seems to instinctively know that he's got a lot to answer for...
Because Adam's relation and feelings about Crowley and Aziraphale are not straightforwardly positive as they were portrayed/implied in the show. Like, the metaphor here is Cold War spies, Crowley and Aziraphale are complicit in Cosmic Imperialism, even if they were mostly interested in minimizing their work and maximizing the amount of fucking about and General Hedonism they were doing. They were on the side of preventing the War from heating over because the Cold War status que benefited them, but that's not quite the same as being good for Humanity, as far as Adam is concerned. And while he calls both of them out equally, the narrative focuses on Crowley's emotional reaction.
although it did also affected Aziraphale as well, because all of this, Crowley's being faced with the consequences of his mischief and the way humans must feel about them, Aziraphale losing the last bits of faith he had in Heaven... That all leads into the closest thing in previous GO Canon to the GO3 Ending.
It is the culmination for their arcs here. The whole recurring thing about how Aziraphale is supposed to intrinsically always do the right thing and Crowley has no choice but to do 'Evil', going all the way back to their first discussion in Eden. Crowley and Aziraphale both realize that however inconsequential and/or benevolent their work might've seen to them, it did cause a lot of troubles for humanity, they are the main representative of Heaven and Hell on Earth right now, so they need to take responsibility for that, by sacrificing themselves to give the Humans time to escape Literal Satan.
Of course, the central joke here is that this is far too dramatic for a silly comedy like Good Omens, and that Crowley and Aziraphale are just not the Heroes, or even Anti-Heroes, of the story. So the actual protagonist, Adam, comes in and solve the entire problem for everyone causality-free...
And then they just... settle back into their old ways, more or less. Because, again, they're just a couple of complicit selfish hedonists at the end of the day (but it's okay because they're OUR complicit selfish hedonists uwu). The other joke here is that this whole story was about shades of grey, and it's kinda okay if Crowley and Aziraphale only ever wanted to help Earth and Humanity out of their own self interest. That's actually very Human of them. the main thing they actually seem to learn out of it all is Crowley’s new found realization (until he gets mindwiped) about the sheer Scope of God’s Ineffability and control of everything that happened. Which is kinda the other biggest set-up to GO3, but is played up much more… joviality here.
I can... understand the logic that if you're doing any sort of Good Omens continuation where Crowley and Aziraphale are the actual Main Protagonists, that means you have to circle again to the Sacrifice but this time actually going through with it. Like, I honestly believe there are very little story concepts that are Inherently Bad, it’s all about execution, the devil’s in the details, so to speak. TV Omens just failed to meaningfully build up to that ‘Sacrifice’ at the end of GO3 for so so many reasons. This post is already long enough as it is, I can’t even begin to list them all. But a big factor is that we kinda…. lost the arcs that led into it the first go around. They were both already kinda trying to retire from their jobs. Aziraphale had an arc about getting disillusioned with Heaven in GO1, only for the show to walk back on it and have him, even minutes before the supposed ‘culmination’ of his arc, still hold the perception that Angels = Inherently Good.
And meanwhile, Crowley got even less. The switch from “let’s just run away from it all and be happy together” to “we have to sacrifice ourselves for all of humanity” happened way too abruptly and with very little actual connective tissue. Partly because that connective tissue used to be made from all the rougher edges and sharper corners that were gradually sanded off TV!Crowley.
And like, if the point of GO3 is to kinda deconstruct GO1’s optimism about Free Will at the face of an omnipotent and omniscient deity… instead of pulling on these random Crowley Quotes in the Climax even though they kinda make the opposite point of what this ending is trying to say and make it seem like after all of this journey, we still can’t actually find something more insightful to say then what was printed in the start of the 1990 book….
Why not give these lines the full ‘Resurrectionist’ treatment? Like, take a bit that was presented in the Book in a more ambiguous manner and spend some time REALLY deconstructing and arguing against it?
Have Crowley start out espousing those lines about Free Will and how he doesn’t really have it but how Humans have it and that’s wonderful, then have an experience that gets him disillusioned with the concept, while also facing the realization he was kinda using this logic to Justify Being an Asshole (or because he genuinely felt he had to please Hell to be safe but also wanted to prove how Smart he is, or because it was one of the few outlets to his creativity he had left available to him or…)
Well, the big hitch with the whole thing is the whole ‘Universe Reset’ thing, the more involvement, even comedic intentionally silly involvement, Crowley canonically has in Mortal affairs the Weirder it becomes that the new godless universe is implied to be ours and is, on the surface, 100% identical to the original timeline. But, like… that aspect of the Finale also Sucked Ass for Many Reasons, so I certainly wouldn’t mind another excuse for dropping it. Just have Crowley and Aziraphale sacrifice their immortality and powers to make all the Angels and Demons human, that's a big enough gesture as it is.
I mean, this is just a random suggestion, mostly stream-of-consciousness. You don’t have to reintroduce Crowley’s Actually Doing His Job and Being Damn Good at it to make GO3 make sense. And I don’t think that exploring Crowley’s mischief means you have to build up towards a GO3 ending either. There are plenty of character arcs and character conclusions you can build off the idea of Crowley doing, and even kinda enjoying, his Job. (I do really think it works well synergizing with an arc about how Selfish the fantasy of abandoning the Earth for Alpha Centauri is. Crowley is absolutely capable of caring and kindness! It’s just that fear, of Hell, of the Apocalypse, makes him shrink down his world to just himself and Aziraphale).
Maybe if you tone it down enough you can even just keep it as just a silly little running gag even… Again, this story is about moral ambiguity and the beauty in moral imperfection, Crowley and Aziraphale are Human enough that they don’t need to be 100% morally upstanding all the time to be lovable protagonists! Having satisfying character arcs as main characters doesn’t have to mean overcoming every single personal foible!
It’s just…modernizing sin-spreading was such an important part of Book!Crowley character, it’s literally how he’s introduced to the readers, and I love him so much for it… There were so many ways to fold that into the show continuity and it makes me kinda sad to realize they just… gave up on it.
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