Dear Good Omens Fanfic Writers,

[bladespark]

Please stop writing God into your stories precisely the way you'd write a human character. If you're not writing God as at least slightly unknowable, at least a little beyond human, at least somewhat more in the know and less fallible than your angels, then you're doing it wrong.

I don't say that because I give a shit about blasphemy or because I think you can't write a God-character who's wrong. Pratchett wrote Small Gods entirely about a God-character who is deeply wrong about basically everything and it's one of my favorite stories ever.

I'm saying that the Good Omens Universe God, who doesn't play dice with the universe because She's playing a much more complicated game where She basically cheats is out of character the way you jackasses are writing Her.

She is the architect of the Ineffable Plan and She's meant to be inexplicable and confusing and yet somehow always kind of right about everything, and smug about that. Listen to the narration in the show. Read the book and remember that God is kinda the author(s). Pay fucking attention, and stop writing a weird woobie God who apologizes to Crowley for having made the wrong choice by casting him out of Heaven.

I am reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally tired of that one. Even more tired than of the "Crowley is Raphael and that makes him Gabriel's brother and the instant anybody says 'family' that heals the rift between them and makes Gabriel a-okay as a character and everybody just loves each other now." FUCK NO. If the archangels are Crowley's family, they are an abusive family, and it's actively disgusting to have them redeemed with nothing but "they're family!" as the reason. Ew. Ick. Ugh.

The only reason I don't hate that one more is that it doesn't seem to be super common, though it's commoner than I'd like if you're specifically looking for "Crowley is Raphael" fics. But even avoiding fics whose descriptions say they're about God, I'm still running into the woobie God thing a lot more than I can stand.

P.S. I actually am very down for a "redeem Gabriel" fic, but you have to actually do something about what a massive prick he's been, you can't just wave "family" over him and make everything a-okay.

Comments

[hitokage]

Wife and I finally started watching the show! And from the first ten minutes of the first episode, I could tell the fandom was going to be a thing I was probably going to have to mostly avoid because OH BOY HONEY (I'm saving up your fics for when I've finished the show because even though I read the book, well, of course there are going to be differences and didn't you say you were writing more from the show than the book?). Angels and demons and gods are just ... not something most fandoms seem able to do very well? And generally worse where the angels are canonical somehow? Or maybe I'm just jaded from years of Supernatural.

I mean, it's THE PLAN. Of course casting him out was always in The Plan, so why would She apologize for that? WHY IS LOGIC SO HARD? Oh right, because they want to woobify and magical fix-it and logic be damned because magical fix-it! >_>

[bladespark]

Honestly I've seen better angels and demons than I'd feared in Good Omens fandom, though there's definitely some terrible crap, but the book/show give a halfway decent framework that's not made of pure melodramatic nonsense. I have read some shit Supernatural crossovers, though. Maybe that's just coincidental. Maybe I'm not having as much fun because I'm not as familiar with the characters, though I know who they are, but I feel it's more that Good Omens' lighthearted and even outright silly take on Heaven and Hell doesn't really fit with Supernatural's mostly deathly-serious take. And also the people who try to fold both Crowleys into one character. *Shudder* They're nothing alike. They're have outright contradictory backstories. Good Omens Crowley was a demon before Adam and Eve, Supernatural Crowley used to be human. Come on, that doesn't work at all. Don't do that.

Ahem.

Yeah, I have Opinions about this kind of thing.

[hitokage]

I ... yeah, no, it would take someone with a deft hand to sell me a Good Omens x Supernatural fic, especially with the overall tone of the two canons being SO different. Not that it couldn't be done, especially since SPN has alternate universes mechanics in place, so it could even be easy, but WHY?

[thewayne]

My favorite "God" is from Kevin Smith's Dogma, incredibly bolstered by Alan Rickman's magnificent Metatron and the fact that Kevin Smith can be one of my favorite film makers. Not all of his movies are brilliant, but most of them are quite entertaining.