THE FALSE NARRATIVE THE AUDIENCE WERE LED TO BELIEVE ABOUT CROWLEY (part 1)
Yeah, since I did Aziraphale, it's only fair and natural to give Crowley his own rant too. I love them both equally and hated how both of them were mischaracterised through out. Here goes...
1. Crowley is soft on animals and people.
Book canon: Crowley did the following: Drowning ducks (it is implied that he had done this before and he admits he does it when he "forget himself"), tried to run over some animals on the road, yell at people while he was speeding on the street, don't forget "it's knows the risk it's taking!", scared some humans with his a demonic/maggotty form. giving people real guns in the paintball game. That's the ones I remember at the top of my head.
(Honorable mention: Radio Crowley killed 2 cops, paved the road to Hell with door-to-door salesmen lmao)
The Job Minisode: If it was Book Crowley, sure he would save the children and helped Job. But the animals? BookCrowley would have gladly catapulted those goats off a cliff lmao. Maybe he would make a game out of it. He probably was happy to have permission to do all this to Job's livestocks. Aziraphale can't stop him muahaha.
He used saving-the-humans as a chance to coax his angel to forming an alliance and foil the plans of both Heaven/Hell. I love the Job Minisode for this. The final scene of Crowley and Aziraphale talking about being lonely together was top notch. The only GO2 scene that made me cry. I wish the rest of the story did more of this.
My belief: Does he have a soft spot for humans? Yeah, but not as soft as the fandom made him out to be. He's still pretty much a pain to be around if you are a human. One thing for sure, he doesn't feel bad killing animals.
What does this mean with GO3 in the picture? Ah, guess TVCrowley had always been such an angel. He's so soft and caring, ya'll. Aww.... This brings me to my next point!
2. Crowley cared for humanity/was the only one who cares.
The narrative really tried to push this in Go3. Many people after watching the Finale talked about how Crowley's always had humanity in mind and how beauiful his sacrifice for humanity is.
Firsly, this is one of the things they took from Aziraphale and gave to Crowley. If anyone who really cared about human lives, it had been mostly Aziraphale. Like when in the book, Aziraphale was freaking out over the paintball guns becoming real guns and tried to tell Crowley to stop it. Or when Aziraphale told Crowley to watch out for pedestrians etc. That was Season 1/Book.
Secondly, Crowley wanted to save the world in the book/S1 because the two of them wanted to do fun things instead of an eternity with either Heaven/Hell. Crowley never said "Let's save humanity." He said something like "If we don't stop Armageddon, there would be no fun". In addition, "If this all turns to goo, we could run off together."
At the Tadfield Airbase, Book Crowley was going to run off when he heard Satan was on his way. He was so ready to leave all those humans to die to save himself. Aziraphale had to persuade him to stay!
-> He loved humans but wouldn't sacrifice himself and Aziraphale over humanity.
Since Season 2, there weren't much hint of Crowley being pro-humanity either. Even when you take the Before the Beginning scene as canon, Angel Crowley never expressed that he cared at all about the humans. He was actually upset because his beautiful stars were just fancy wallpapers for humans to look at. He was upset about the End Times because his stars would be gone too soon (by angel standards).
Suddenly, come GO3. Crowley apparantly cared so much about humanity all along. Like some sort of troubled heroic figure. Aziraphale said "you were the only one who cared." (Since when??? I don't think Crowley was the only one to ever cared. Because you cared too, Aziraphale! You gave your sword away because you cared for the first humans' safety!)
And then, Crowley asked the love of his life, his angel, to be erased forever from existence with him. This was not Crowley. The fact that he mentioned a real world implies the love he and Aziraphale had for each other wasn't real. All God's plan? What?
The Crowley we know and loved would have said fuck this and tried to find other options!
3. Optimism and Imagination
Speaking of other options.
I know this had been repeated over and over by other people who shared my distaste for the Finale but it's always worth bringing up again. Louder for people in the back!
Book Crowley: After Aziraphale was nowhere to be found, and a terrible threatening message from Hell, thinks "The universe would look after him" that he "would come out on top."
TV Crowley: After Aziraphale was nowhere to be found, gets drunk and larment about his Fall. Only until Aziraphale showed back up did he gets back on his feet.
Mind you, Book Crowley did think of "getting completely and utterly pissed out of his mind while he waited for the word to end."
The seed of mischaracterisation was already there in Season 1. But since NG said it was because he now understand what losing his best friend was like, we all gave it a pass. (His GO3 script killed the character that represent his best friend, btw.)
TV Crowley talking to Shax. "Do you ever think 'what's the point'?" "it's all pointless." Cool. Cool. We have the first sign of his depression arc. I can totally see Book Crowley going through this, but he would be able to find himself a better way to deal with this. That being: talking to Aziraphale. Ranting about his thoughts. He always feel better after talking to his angel. So why not?
[The problem with TVOmens is that they DON'T TALK in the way BookOmens do. Even after "To the World", the two of them don't share more feelings with each other? I find that hard to believe. It felt to me that the writer wanted them to have drama and reverted their character developments from S1 for it.]
Anywho, Season 2 goes by. Season 3 comes hitting us all like a bullet train.
Crowley moping in an alley like a sad, wet cat. Ok, cute. I was fine with that because it's funny and dramatic. Crowley would do that. Then I find out that it had been 4 years or something. 4 FUCKEN YEARS!? That is too long a time for Crowley to be acting like this. (We will talk about codependent issue later.)
Crowley having depression? I can see that. He's been forcing himself to be optimistic for so long and is now crashing. It's ok. The problem is that he gave up at the end! The talk in the bookshop-garden went by so fast. Neither AziCrow suggested another option. Crowley gave up and made Aziraphale lose hope as well. This is not how they are.
Some people says the Finale makes sense because there was no other way. The universe was already gone. But get this...
Remember the whole Crowley's most powerful weapon is his imagination? He is supposed to be creative in how he solves problems. I do not believe for a second that an in-character Crowley would offer one single option (let's die) and then nothing else. That's not the Crowley who went through a ring of fire, fueled by just his imagination.
If they showed AziCrow going through a million options and decided there was no better one, then maaaaybe I will believe there was no other choice. That's not what we got.
And you can't tell me there was no way to revive everyone exactly who they were. The problem with having God being on the room and offering a choice is that you can ask for ANYTHING if you are specific enough.
Don't tell me Crowley had no other option.
4. Crowley is Codependent on Aziraphale.
OOooh boy. Since we were talking about how Crowley was so depressed in GO3, let's take a look at how the show changed Crowley from Book to TV in terms of his autonomy.
In the book, Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship is based on trust and neither of them are heavily dependent on the other to function. They were fine separated for years, because they believe the other would always be there when the time is right. The fact that Crowley owed Aziraphale lunch since the Reign of Terror might indicate that they don't see one another that often until recently.
In the show, Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship is tailored for drama. Oh they can't be separated or they are going to be so miserable. Which, fair, book Omens would be upset too. But the way they did Crowley get progresssively out of character.
After Aziraphale disappeared, Book Crowley came out of the burning bookshop with the book of Prophecy. He let the Bentley drive herself while he look at the book (probably thinking of his angel ): ) and he found Aziraphale's notes. Then, on his own, decided to continue his angel's legacy. While waiting in traffic at the M25, he recollected his thoughts and accepted that Aziraphale was out of the equation. It didn't stop him from trying.
TV Crowley would have continued drinking and moping until the world ended if Aziraphale hadn't shown up to talk to him. That's what it looked like to me. He probably wouldn't have read the book he grabbed from the fire.
That's the difference. Book Crowley didn't need to be told by Aziraphale what to do next. He figured it out, and moved forward. This was a minor complaint book fans had (When I joined the fandom, I got to interact with them and asked about the show. I wasn't a book fan in the 90s. I read the book after watching the show). It was a small change and we didn't take it too seriously at the time. But now after GO3, I do!!!
TVCrowley couldn't function without Aziraphale for 4 years. This is bollocks because they had been separated for even longer in their history. He was drunk, homeless, gambling himself away. I do see Book Crowley do this for a while, since I heard that's what James Bond do. But like, 4 year is an awfully long time for Crowley to be acting like this.
It removes all of his established autonomy in the book, where he was devastated by the loss of Aziraphale but kept pushing forward.
I had expected Crowley to have a plan of his own or at least looked like he moved on when Aziraphale came back. So he can be all pouty and sarcastic to Archangel Aziraphale, but end up falling back in love immediately once Aziraphale explain to him why he left for Heaven.
I feel like a part of the fandom treat both AziCrow (mainly the TV version) as woobified version of themselves. This is not their fault as characters, because the book version is right there. It is the fault of the writers of the show to potray them this way. Season 2 was like a fanfiction, I always said.
They are too nervous, too emotional, too dramatic. And they care too much about what Heaven/Hell think. Compared to Book Omens, they feel like a pair of teenage angel/demon who just started exploring their relationship. This does not make sense when you remember that these two have lived for 6000 years and had seen a lot of things throughout history.
BookOmens felt more mature. They had many problems figured out throughout their history already. They never put a label or confirmed their relationship, but the foundation was all there already. I imagine that post the ending of the book, if one of them suggested moving in together, then they wouldn't have a second thought about it.
(There is a second part that was supposed to be a part of this but it got way too long so I will work on that another time.)
