Supernatural / Alien Creature Playing Mundane Life Role Slowly Gets So Into It That They Ultimately Choose It

I love this trope, I find it so interesting / fun. Spoilers in the second two entries in this post!

Examples:
– Good Omens – Crowley and Aziraphale
– Invincible – Omniman / Nolan (spoilers)
– The Old Kingdom – Mogget (spoilers)*

Explanations:

Good Omens – Crowley and Aziraphale

Crowley and Aziraphale are a demon and an angel, and they’re sent from their respective domains of hell / heaven to serve on Earth. On Earth they’re meant to try to convert souls to their side and prepare the world for the apocalypse.

However, they both enjoy living in the world greatly and form a kind of friendship through their shared love of living in the world.

When orders for the apocalypse comes, they decide to work together to try to thwart it and let the world stay moving and living.

That’s the basic premise of both the show and the book, and I can’t get more into it without serious spoilers, but I think it’s a great example of this trope.

Example quote: “But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start.”

Invincible – Omniman / Nolan (spoilers)

This is a complex one, as initially Omniman / Nolan holds to his task and roots. He’s a member of a violent, imperial, powerful alien species sent to determine if they can interbreed with Earth humans while still remaining very similar to their original abilities.

So he lives in Earth and acts as a superhero, marrying a human woman and having a son. When his son, Mark, manifests his powers, it proves that humans can be the source of breeding his species was looking for. Now his job is to make Earth vulnerable to attack, which his holds to at first by brutally murdering Earth’s most capable superhero squad. However, after later confronted by his son who has only known life on Earth, he abandons his task and goes on a journey to realize he truly loves his Earth family and life. It’s a lot more bloody and complicated than that, but that’s the quick summary.

I’ve only watched the show, but I think it shows this quite well. While Omniman is beating up his son for confronting him, it flashes back to raising his son, cheering for him at a baseball game. It shows us how Omniman / Nolan eventually took to loving Earth fatherhood even though his original culture / family is very different, much more brutal, powerful, and alien. Ultimately he chooses to protect Earth.

The Old Kingdom – Mogget (spoilers)

*Note: the trope mostly happens in the book “Abhorsen”, but the art above is from “Terciel and Elinor” because that’s the only official cover art featuring this character

Mogget (true name Yrael) never chose to take on the role of cat, but was rather a powerful, magical entity from before the beginning of the living world. The other powerful entities that decided to create the world choose to force him into a living shape because his existence as free-magic from before the creation of the world was potentially coercive / harmful to the ordered magic of the world that allows for life, and maybe for punishment for refusing to help create the world.

Mogget was also enslaved to the Abhorson, a family bloodline that protects the order of life and death. Some of the Abhorsons were cruel and others kinder as we see in the books, but regardless we see him often scheme to be free, asking others to remove the collar that helps bind him. He is usually restricted to a physical form, often the form of a cat.

Yet at the end of the book “Abhorson” he’s free and able to choose to let another entity destroy the world and some of the Abhorsons he was enslaved to, but chooses not to. This is because of the physical joys of life that he appreciated as a cat, and he doesn’t want to lose. Sardines, for example.

When he was asked why he choose to help save the world, the book reads:

“Life,” said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. “Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon.”