My problem with the way fandom does Former Archangel!Crowley

[terresdebrume]

I have further thoughts on the whole Raphael!Crowley semi-fanon thing that’s happening these days. See, my problem is not that it exists—it’s a perfectly understandable thing to think, and it was what I thought myself when I first read the book, so I’d be a hypocrite to say people shouldn’t headcanon Crowley as being Raphael’s new form^[1].

 

That being said, lately this fanon has been bugging me, not on the basis on its existence but rather because of the way the fandom (or what I’ve seen of it) seems to handle it. It feels/seems to me like as soon as that headcanon appears, the attention shifts away from Crowley and focuses on Raphael instead, like fans are so obsessed with who Crowley might have been that the stop thinking about who he is. It makes me uncomfortable, honestly, because every time I’ve given a ‘Raphael!Crowley’^[2] fic a go, the plot seems to revolve entirely on his former name...in fact, I’d even go so far as to call it his dead name.

 

 

Crowley’s story, for me, hits a lot of beats of the trans experience—at the very least, of my trans experience. We all start out asking questions, much like Crowley did, and an awful lot of trans people are reprimanded for asking too many (wrong) questions about the ~natural order~ of things^[3] much like Crowley was. He’s kicked out of Heaven, falls in with a bad crowd—which is not an automatism but not exactly impossible for actual trans people too—and spends a certain amount of time trying too hard to be bad until he realizes he can be somewhere in the middle—much like a lot of trans men go hyper masculine for a while until they re-accept some of their femininity or, I imagine, like trans women might present hyper feminine until they are in a situation where it is no longer as necessary to their survival.

So, yes, Crowley actually feels very trans to me^[4] and the obsession fandom has (or seems to have, from my window) with his past and who he was before he Fell, to the point where this discarded identity seems to be the main focus in every fic I’ve read that dealt with it^[5] makes me terribly uncomfortable, not because it’s malicious but because it’s pervasive and, frankly, very reflective of casually transphobic behavior.

 

And you know, I realize not everyone will have the same interpretation as mine and that’s fine I just thought I’d...put it all out there—see if maybe I’m not the only one who feels like that and/or if it sparks a discussion of sorts.


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[1]Though upon thinking back on this, I feel like the news of an Archangel Falling would have spread like wildfire, and iirc the book is like ‘no one knows what happened to Raphael’ so unless we assume Heaven was even more messed up than previously though (i.e. that the higher ups know but are covering it up) that’s not exactly an interpretation that works for me anymore. I like to image Raphael had a similar path to Aziraphale’s though, not Falling for whatever reason, but kind of walking away all the same, except faster and more purposefully.

[2]To be honest, I don’t even like the tag. I realize it’s a descendant of well-established tagging convention and much shorter (and thus, more practical) than any other option, but I know for a fact that Former Archangel!Crowley wouldn’t leave me with the same bitter aftertaste, even if I knew for a fact all of these fics referred to Crowley-as-formerly-Raphael.

[3]Not necessarily in a violent way, mind, but dismissing the validity of that kind of questions has the same effect. At least, I distinctly remember feeling reprimanded when my mother used to brush my comments about not feeling like a girl aside.

[4]Although funnily enough, I don’t think I realized exactly how much until I started writing this.

[5]Ironically enough, more than one of them more-or-less accidentally has Crowley react to angels trying to call him Raphael the same way I’d react to being misgendered and/or dead-named.

Comments

[nsmorig]

I hadn't thought about that at all! But it makes a lot of sense, and now it's been said it does disturb me a little; if Crowley clearly makes that distinction between Who He Was and Who He Is, it's a little creepy to focus on it as much as the fandom has.

My other issue with Crowley-as-an-archangel is that . . . the point that Az and Crowley are two basically admin-workers in the hierarchy of hell and heaven is so important to the message of the book? Little, normal, unimportant things are wonderful, even when those imperfect and ignorable things are angels and demons and young antichrists and failed software engineers. Making Crowley an archangel, I think, cuts away at that message.

[terresdebrume]

To be honest I can understand why a lot of people wouldn't necessarily click with it--trans themes aren't exactly mainstream even in fandom so it makes sense a lot of people would simply not realize, which is why I'm trying to remain understanding about the whole thing x)

But yeah, to put it in non-trans terms (because we were talking about it with a friend at dinner) it's like being thirty with a steady job and a full adult life and have people insist on gifting you tricycles and barbies because you used to love them before. In a way, it makes sense because these people are trying to connect with what they know of you (which is what happens in a lot of the Former Archangel!Crowley fics I've read) but on the other hand it's also not seeing who you actually *are* which is frustrating at best.

As for the whole hierarchy thing, I have to admit I hadn't really seen it but I agree with you about the importance of their being, well, unimportant. It's nice to have a work where cogs in the machine can have an influence once they remember that they are more than cogs, and I agree that Archangel!Crowley doesn't really fit that perspective.