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thesherrinfordfacility · 9 months

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LWA: I'm circling back to the problem of trying to somehow identify Crowley's Angel-identity from extant Biblical precedents, and some posts from yesterday about novels that have inspired or will inspire aspects of S1 and S2--TALE OF TWO CITIES, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and THE CROW ROAD--have accidentally highlighted what's bothering me about this (even though I fell into it myself!).

There are so many ways that novelists, filmmakers, etc. can rework their literary antecedents, and assuming that we can go back to the Biblical (or Miltonic, Dantean, etc.) source to decode what Gaiman is doing rests on assumptions about how Gaiman--and Pratchett and Finnemore--are engaging with other texts. That /is/ something you can do with, for example, Akira Kurosawa's Shakespeare films (THRONE OF BLOOD/MACBETH, THE BAD SLEEP WELL/HAMLET, RAN/KING LEAR), where the films are extensively in conversation with Shakespeare, fundamentally share Shakespeare's plots, inhabit the same tragic mode, and have characters who can be mapped directly onto Shakespeare's. And yet the films /aren't/ Shakespeare, but Shakespeare reinterpreted through Japanese cinematic and theatrical genres (jidaigeki, Noh), cultural and historical referents, and twentieth-century preoccupations. They often signal differences through inversion--the gender-flipped characters in RAN, the silent protagonist in THE BAD SLEEP WELL--and they experiment by pulling threads. How would we reinterpret KING LEAR if Lear had a backstory? What happens if you pull a major character out of HAMLET?

But this is not how GOOD OMENS--the novel, S1, or S2--works with its own antecedents. Instead, it invokes antecedents to fracture them and then shoot off in its own directions; they appear in the text or series to establish expectations that are then abruptly undercut. You can't do an extended reading of GO's "conversation" with THE OMEN, because it isn't having one (in S1, the major points of contact are done with in ep1). Instead, we have THE OMEN banging up against the JUST WILLIAM series, THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, John Le Carre, the Bible...The genres and modes deliberately don't shake hands. Characters may or may not be parallels, but they are at best partly so and the analogies soon break down. In the series, yes, A TALE OF TWO CITIES inspires the appearance-swap at the end of S1, but it is so wildly different that it doesn't help the reader interpret what GO is doing. (Among other things, Sydney Carton /actually/ dies--obviously!--and Charles Darnay doesn't, meaning that it's a true self-sacrifice; Carton's underlying motivations are different; Darnay is upset by the proposal and effectively forced into it by being knocked unconscious; etc.) It's less a conversation and more a starting-point for play.

Similarly, S2 invokes and plays with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, but it /isn't/ PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. (This time, PRIDE & PREJUDICE bangs up against Richard Curtis films, the cozy mystery genre, the Hollywood Biblical epic...) If anything, Aziraphale's ball serves as a metafictional warning to /not/ try to force an interpretation of events through P&P's lens. (It's also a bad misreading on Aziraphale's part, since Jane and Bingley fall for each other at the ball, but the protagonists exit it disliking each other!) Aziraphale and Crowley absolutely occupy aspects of Darcy's and Lizzie's roles, including the "both right/both wrong" problem and the relationship meddling (which is the opposite of Darcy's strategy with Bingley), but the series is far more invested in miscommunication as a problem than the novel is. The plots don't track and character parallels break down pretty quickly. It's impossible to maintain a good analogical "fit" between Heaven vs. Hell and wealthy vs. relatively-impoverished gentry (among other things, pursuing the analogy would leave us with Crowley eventually deciding to return to Heaven, which, no). Aziraphale and Crowley are nowhere near the same emotional space that Darcy and Lizzie are during the proposal scene, and while Darcy has not adequately communicated his intentions to Lizzie in the lead-up to his first proposal, the problem /during/ the proposal is that he's being a jerk and she has every right to be aggravated with him, not that they're mutually misunderstanding each other. The stakes, narrative contexts, and mental hang-ups are different. Etc. Presumably Gaiman will invoke and then disrupt THE CROW ROAD in the same way.

So, again, with the Bible. We can't use the Bible to predict anything that will happen in the GO universe because we have no way of knowing what GO will declare to be /wrong/ about the Biblical record. In S1, we discover that it's a Principality guarding the Eastern Gate, and that there's a minor matter of a missing sword; we also find out that the Flood is local and that Crowley felt that Jesus just needed a bit of a vacation break. (If you've read the novel, you also know that Aziraphale is dismissive of Revelation, thanks to John's addiction to shrooms.) In S2, we have the Job minisode, and it would take a really, really long time to break down just how far that minisode departs from the Book of Job (and this ask is already long enough!). The point, as Crowley might say, is that we approach the series with expectations set by the Bible, but then we discover that the series never takes the Biblical narrative as set. It's unpredictable (as Crowley also says).

evening (morning technically, currently at 0050hrs and will probably be done around 0300) LWA, hope you're good!!!✨

this is obviously far more eloquent, nuanced, and empirically evidenced than i could have ever put it, but im going to view this as going some way to being validation for the thought processes on a couple of theories/speculations that have been floating around in the wake of s2. meant kindly, i think the allegorical element of GO can sometimes misconstrued, and fans can sometimes get so caught up in what they believe is the only true inspiration for the story, and miss that it is a work of fiction. it is literally made-up. it stands to reason therefore, and has been demonstrated time and time again, as having been inspired at its core from lots of different places.

there is representation of so many things in GO, and it's truly one of the aspects that i love most about it. it is not representative of any one set rhetoric. specifically about your example of who crowley was before the fall; this caused so much underlying discourse that i fully appreciated and considered perfectly valid. crowley was described by neil as a jewish-coded character insomuch that he asked questions (tbh by extension from that the whole story could be described similarly?), and then, as ive since learned, a lot of the angelic names mentioned are hebrew in origin. since having a plethora of asks flood me contradicting that crowley cannot or should not have been an angel of christian origin, or otherwise, ive educated myself more. but im not going to go back on what i myself have speculated on because it is a story, and it can take inspiration, and rework that inspiration in kind, from anywhere. that, i think, sometimes gets missed. ive usually speculated and analysed based on where the narrative, to my mind, has been heading, taking cues from what we've seen so far, and then researched off the back of it what might fit or would support it - not the other way around.

religious representation is important. speaking personally- being someone non-religious and raised largely secular (as said many times) i will never fully understand what it means to have that representation portrayed in popular media... because how on earth could i begin to? but i would like to say i understand emotion and how people think, and i can understand why representation is important to people. that is valid, in every respect. but GO is not a reworked version of any one biblical text, as you said. inspirations not shaking hands, but flitting around each other in a dance. it pokes holes at, reimagines, and validates as well as invalidates elements of multiple religious texts and teachings (one of my favourite and imo funniest book lines was the mushrooms recollection, was gutted it didn't make the show in full!)

again, this is part of why i love it - because whilst these different allegories provide the backdrop to the story, it is not the story. the reason why the story is so important to me is because it is an examination of the human condition through the eyes of beings that are not human. the story could be told from the pov of a human-form pot plant and reach the same kind of conclusions, but the religious inspiration gives the story more consistent context, dichotomy and insight, more depth and philosophy. and it's much more entertaining. but yes - let the narrative be inspired by anything; bits and pieces from this, pinches and dashes from that... it creates a story that is so arguably unique that way, frames its own questions and problems, and remains to true to being a work of fiction - set to inspire and challenge in kind on to other present and future works - and so on and on the cog turns - isn't that the point?

GO is not the only religious-inspired work that ive loved for these reasons; favourite book (no offence to anyone by daring to type this sentence as a GO blog; it's sentimental to me) is andrew davidson's the gargoyle. it very scrupulously follows, at times, elements of dante's divine comedy and makes overt references to it given its a key part of the story, but it's manifestly allegorical too. but the best part of the story is how it interprets religion's often tumultuous relationship with mental health, love being flawed and discriminatory, and the concept of salvation. again, religious imagery and inspiration as the backdrop, human condition being the narrative.

i haven't really remarked on any else that you've mentioned, LWA, which is par for the course with me, so going to speedrun slightly.

P&P: when i watched s2 i must admit i was almost surprised that this work had so much weight, because i felt it had more relation to other austen works (emma and persuasion particularly) but then i remembered that was the Whole Point

Kurosawa: will admit that i haven't seen these but based on what im assuming is your recommendation i will duly add to the watchlist (seen Kagemusha, but that's it for my foray into his works!)

Le Carré: ah, im so glad you said this! when ive been thinking idly about the corruption in heaven and the risk in looking back on it with the metaphorical rose-tinted glasses, this is the same feeling as when i read his work - bits from TTSS, and constant gardener, but TLGW especially in my mind... not sure if you were referring to these works in particular and in this context, but huge fan of Le Carré and happy to see it mentioned!!!

richard curtis: i... yeah. this was a revelation for me. enough said.

ultimately im so excited about the unpredictable; i love speculating, and whilst it's fun to have gotten something right (s2 was not a good track record for me, the only things i got that were even a smidgeon near the truth were half-arsed shitposts and if that doesn't humble a girl, nothing will), i want to be taken aback by where the narrative has gone, the dilemmas that have been raised, dialogue and exposition choices... i want to be wrong, because that's infinitely more fun!

(0220 - not bad)✨

#good omens #this was a wild ride #not a shitpost but its good omens babyyyy #the legend of the longwinded anon✨#ask #and now i sleep: goodnight world #i cant fathom why LWA keeps coming back but im not gonna complain #i take so long to answer these bc i write a bit #reread what LWA has said #ponder the universe for ten minutes #then carry on typing #rinse and repeat

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