#its ok crowley just take my hand ill take you to a nice doctor

[ineffable-suffering]

Trauma-Dumping on your plants: The Anthony J. Crowley Chronicles

This has been living in my silly head rent free for so long, I finally decided to slap it on here in hopes of thinking about it a little less (than three times a day. It's been years. I need to get over it.)

Also, I'm absolutely certain I'm not even remotely the first person to realize or post about this, since it's not the hardest of parallels to figure out. Alas, I still shall, because out of mind, out of sight and all that. So:

Let's talk about how Crowley is using his houseplants to work through his own Trauma of the Fall. Or, well, maybe not work through it per se, but more so roleplay it to give it somewhat of an an outlet because he never got over it. Lol.

It's not rocket science to figure it out and God Herself actually gives us a pretty spot-on explanation of it in her own narration.

Crowley's plants are perfect. They're, as God Herself tells us, the most luxurious and beautiful in all of London. He takes great care of them, waters them, mists them. Does any and everything to give them the perfect conditions so they won't have a worry in the world.

And yet, we're immediately shown that despite the seemingly perfect conditions they're living in, Crowley's plants still get *gasps quietly* spots. And we all know how Crowley feels about that:

It seems like such an unnecessary tiny thing to get upset about, right? Like, plants get spots all the time. They're not perfect, they're part of nature and nothing is ever perfect in nature. Crowley would know that by now. Imperfection is the whole point of nature. If everything had stayed exactly the way it always was, nothing would have ever changed or evolved.

Besides, Crowley is a demon. If it were merely about aesthetics to him, he could easily miracle away any spot with a blink of his serpent eyes. But he gets so angry about it, it's almost comical. At first we think it's just to show us, the audience, that, in contrast to Aziraphale, who cares very dearly and lovingly for his books, Crowley is a mean, mean demon who, instead of being outwardly nice to the things he loves (like Aziraphale does), yells at his plants because he's a mean meanie.

But! If you look at the whole scene and what God says, it's pretty obvious what he's actually doing is something else entirely: "What Crowley does is he puts the fear of God in them. Or, the fear of Crowley. The plants are the most luxurious and beautiful in London. Also the most scared."

Folks, this man dude serpent is literally roleplaying the concept of God/Heaven threatening angels with their Fall in order to keep them obedient ... with his houseplants.

Have I mentioned yet that I am absolutely obsessed with him and also desperately wanna get him a therapy voucher?

Because what does he do once he sees a plant disobeying his rules of perfection and acting out? The same thing God did to her questioning, equally disobedient angels (including Crowley): Parade it in front of the very scared rest, making an example of it ...

... only to then, well ...

... quite literally chuck it out.

To anyone else, this seems like a completely ridiculous thing to do over a tiny, minuscule spot. There would have been a bunch of other ways to go about fixing that spot.

Figuring out what it was the plant needed that might not have been given to it yet.

Taking care of it in a different, individual way so it would have been able to thrive again.

Listening to the plant and letting it tell you why its spot appeared in the first place.

Telling the plant, that loves and relies on you entirely, you love it too, despite it not being without fault, despite of it not fully living up to your unreachable standards of perfection.

Caring for the plant not because you want it to be perfect, but because you're okay with it being imperfect.

(We're no longer talking about plants here, as you are probably aware.)

Alas, this isn't what Crowley does. Because it wasn't what God did, either. We still know very little about Crowley's actual Fall and the Fall of Lucifer and the rest. But we do know that Crowley was never like or even with them.

All he did was ask some questions. A tiny spot. A seemingly insignificant blemish in the luxurious, beautiful flora of Heaven.

And yet, before he knew it, he did a "million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulfur". Cast out, chucked away, just like his little spotty plant. And for what? Well ...

... to keep the others angels plants check, for the rest of time.

***

(Addendum from the comments: If we go by what the book tells us, Crowley doesn’t actually end up violently throwing out the ‚bad‘ plants. He just finds a different place for them and makes sure they‘re looked after. So much to him being a big, bad, meanie-mean demon.)

#botany over therapy #harvest the garden of your emotional trauma #its ok crowley just take my hand ill take you to a nice doctor #crowley #good omens #good omens season 1 #crowley's fall #he's not even close to ever being over it #which is understandable #ineffable trauma #the plants are a metaphore #my own meta