#I think Neil may have some internalized homophobia he is still dealing with tbh

[ingravinoveritas]

How do you feel about the fact that angels and demons are non-sexual beings in Good omens?

Anon #1: Well, this is a great question and I appreciate you sending it in for me to answer. Including the other Anons here since they are relevant.

I actually have a lot of feelings about angels and demons being non-sexual beings in Good Omens, which I will do my best to explain. I think the first thing I have to do is make sure I understand what you mean by non-sexual. I know Neil has said that angels and demons do not have genitalia "unless they make an effort," so by that measure, we can say angels and demons are genderless beings (agender or genderqueer perhaps as well, depending on the angel or demon). That, to me, is distinctive and not the same thing as non-sexual, which I consider to be beings who--by design or choice--do not engage in sexual intercourse.

The other thing we have to consider is the distinction between book!Good Omens and TV show!Good Omens. I have not finished reading the book, but it is my understanding that Neil (and Terry, of course) established the angels and demons as genderless in the original text. When the show was adapted for television, 30 years had passed since the novel was published, and so much had changed in that time, so a lot of things were updated to have Good Omens more align with the sensibilities of the modern era (one example is Neil talking about Crowley's aesthetic as an early '90s "Wall Street" type and how they had to figure out what the equivalent of that would be in the present day).

One thing that hasn't changed very much, however, is the portrayal of gay/queer people in the media. For much of those intervening 30 years, gay and queer people were shown as stereotypes--flamboyant, one-dimensional caricatures who existed as "sidekicks" (the "gay BFF") or object lessons for the straight characters (I would say this was especially the case in the late '80s and '90s with the AIDS crisis).

By this time, gay and queer people could exist on TV, but only if they were non-sexual/sexless. One example of this is Blanche's brother Clayton on The Golden Girls. After he comes out to Blanche, he brings home his fiance Doug in a subsequent episode, which has Blanche indignant. "I don't really mind Clayton being homosexual, I just don't like him dating men." Another example is Will & Grace, which aired in the late '90s. Will was a gay man who was one of the main characters, but while we constantly saw Grace falling into bed with random men and all sorts of escapades related to her sex life, we were never shown Will in any sort of similar situation. He could be gay, and he could be Grace's BFF, but he couldn't have a sex life of his own. It was this idea that gay people could exist in abstract terms, but not in the concrete reality of what it meant to be gay. Homophobia disguised as "acceptance."

So when I see/hear the word "non-sexual" in relation to gay and queer people, this is what comes to mind. What I also think of is that the absence of gay male sexuality (as for the majority of the show, Aziraphale and Crowley are male-presenting) is not the same thing as the presence of asexuality. I think it's been remarkably easy for Neil to take credit for that when it doesn't seem to have been his actual intention, and it also removes from him the responsibility of portraying that specific aspect of a non-heterosexual love story.

One thing I want to be very clear on is that I am in no way trying to put down anyone's head canon or what any reader or viewer may see in these characters, and I will never say that anyone's head canons are not valid. But when we are talking about the canon--in other words, what is actually on the screen--I feel like there is a tendency to overlook what Michael and David are actually doing with these characters.

In addition to what I mentioned above about gay characters on TV in the '80s and '90s, the other thing you absolutely could not do as a gay or queer person was fall in love. This is alluded to more in the example above from The Golden Girls, where Blanche is horrified that her brother wants to marry a man, until Sophia finally helps her understand:

Blanche: "Oh, look, I can accept the fact that he's gay, but why does he have to slip a ring on this guy's finger so the whole world will know?" Sophia: "Why did you marry George?" Blanche: "We loved each other. We wanted to make a lifetime commitment. Wanted everybody to know." Sophia: "That's what Doug and Clayton want, too. Everyone wants someone to grow old with. And shouldn't everyone have that chance?"

Here we are now, over 30 years later, and some people still don't want everyone to have that chance. Some people think two people of the same sex can't love each other the way a man and a woman do. Because queer love--and especially love between two men--is still looked at as "less than" and inferior to straight love.

This is the world Michael and David grew up in. This is the social and cultural climate they saw and navigated their own sexuality and identity in--'80s Britain, Margaret Thatcher, Section 28. Where being gay or queer wasn't just immoral, it was illegal. Your very existence alone was stigmatized, pathologized, and criminalized. And they are bringing that lived experience into the roles of Aziraphale and Crowley, albeit in different ways.

To me, Michael is playing Aziraphale as a repressed gay man. A man who--much like David--grew up in the faith and was made to believe that his natural feelings, attractions, and desires were wrong, shameful, and disgusting. We see this with Gabriel deriding Aziraphale for eating sushi and enjoying other Earthly pleasures, and it would be logical to think that it's taken a long time for Aziraphale to feel comfortable with the foods/drink/books he likes and the pleasure they bring him. Similarly, it's taken Aziraphale a millennia to find the one being who makes him feel comfortable with the desires he has. The being who is the exception to every rule Heaven ever laid out, who encourages Aziraphale to be himself in every respect. And that's Crowley.

In this scene in the Bastille (which I know has been analyzed a thousand times and a thousand ways), when Aziraphale looks at Crowley like this, the desire rising up in him is more than obvious. The wide eyes, the heaving bosom, and of course the smoldering up-and-down glance all speak to this--he is, quite literally, checking Crowley out, without shame, possibly for the first time ever. Even though that desire is not outwardly expressed in GO season 1, it does not mean it doesn't exist--only that Aziraphale letting himself feel this (and Crowley being the one entity who allows him to feel this) is the first step in a very long journey away from that lifetime of repression.

In terms of Crowley, I feel that David is playing Crowley as a gay man who is afraid of commitment because he has been hurt in the past. There is a feeling of impermanence to Crowley--that, despite being a celestial, immortal entity, he doesn't like to hold onto things because deep down, he believes they will eventually be taken away. He knows who he is, but is all too aware of the consequences that come with it. So he does not get attached, because to him, attachment equals pain, and he believes nothing is worth that risk.

In the church scene in 1941 (which, again, so much has already been said), Crowley saves Aziraphale's books from the wreckage. It's been said by many that Crowley fell in love long before this (which I do think is true), but for me, I feel like this was where we saw that Crowley was truly "attached" to Aziraphale. He rescued Aziraphale from the Bastille, and he saved Aziraphale from the bombs of the Blitz, but in grabbing the books, Crowley isn't just saving Aziraphale's body--he's holding onto a piece of his soul. For the first time ever, Crowley has found something that isn't temporary, and after a millennia of cynicism, Aziraphale is the one entity who makes him feel fully and wholeheartedly ready to commit to something.

This is what I have seen and perceived in the portrayals of Aziraphale and Crowley that Michael and David have given us. I absolutely do 100% believe that asexual folks deserve representation--representation that is clear and specific, not just a side effect of Neil not wanting to show these characters expressing outward sexual desires--but I do not believe that is how Michael and David are playing the characters. It's not enough--or at least it shouldn't be--to have characters of marginalized backgrounds just standing in the room, or to say, "This one's gay," "This one's nonbinary," "This one's asexual." Including these identities in the fabric of the story means doing what Michael and David have done, which is showing these people or beings as three-dimensional, as fully realized characters who happen to have that identity, rather than as ticked boxes representing a certain identity on a checklist.

And to the Anons mentioning the Radio Times article (which seems like it came out a hundred years ago now)--Anon #4 particularly--I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me, but I could not disagree with you more.

First of all, I have no idea where in the world you got that Aziraphale and Crowley's romance was explicit in season 1, because it was absolutely anything but. Three days after they posted that, RT posted another article seemingly backtracking on everything they'd previously said (as if we'd all somehow pulled a Gabriel Jim and forgotten everything about the first article). The phrase "Could romance be on the cards after all?" is in the bloody headline of article #2, which to me says that RT is going to go in whichever direction the wind blows--to create engagement and generate clicks--but also that it is very clear what they meant by "conventional" in the first article. I do not get the feeling that Radio Times--a mainstream publication that seemingly publishes any story they can farm from social media--was thinking of ace or aro identities or relationships when writing that. Even a tiny little bit.

Even a queer-centric media outlet like Pride today published an article saying the first season of GO lacked LGBTQ+ representation. Obviously, I do not at all agree with this or with several other things mentioned in the article. But what I am challenging folks to do is think about what this is really saying. By the end of GO 1 season, everyone accepts and assumes that Madame Tracy and Shadwell are a couple. She makes eyes at him, they have dinner together, and no one questions them being a couple, even though they are not shown being physically affectionate. Aziraphale and Crowley do exactly the same things, but no one (speaking of the larger public, outside the hardcore fan base) assumes they are a couple.

Maybe what that means, then, is that "representation" that requires you to squint and turn your head in order to see it--like Aziraphale and Crowley holding hands on the bus--isn't really representation at all. And by Neil "not wanting to label" something, it seems to suggest that committing to a label or embracing that gayness is something he is not comfortable with--for any number of reasons--and is why we could have a meaningless love scene with a straight couple that does not have a real connection (Newt and Anathema), but couldn't have a meaningful love scene with a gay couple that does have a devastatingly profound and powerful connection.

So yes, those are my thoughts on the angels and demons in Good Omens being non-sexual, and what that means in a larger cultural/societal sense. I know that when GO season 2 comes out in a week, I could be proven completely wrong about everything I've just said, and I will have no problem with that at all. I fully trust what Michael and David will bring to the roles of Aziraphale and Crowley, but my hesitation stems from the limitations they will potentially be up against, in terms of the script/storyline (and is something I have felt from the interviews we've seen with them this past week).

I'm hopeful for the best, though (as always), so we'll just have to see what happens...

#anonymous #reply post #good omens 2 #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #creators are not perfect #I think Neil may have some internalized homophobia he is still dealing with tbh #but people are afraid to call him out in any way #and this was me trying to keep my response short #probably going to have to turn off anons for a bit while i answer the rest #dealing with RL stuff at the moment so a bit backed up #discourse

[yikesharringrove]

hello!! i was just wondering if there is anything like au’s, kinks etc. that you really don’t vibe with so that myself or anyone else won’t make you uncomfortable by asking you to write about it. much love 💕

Honestly, there’s not a lot I WON’T write. Even if it’s not something I’m into as a human (like kinks and stuff) I’ll still write it, even if it icks me out a little. honestly, my hard lines are like hard lines.

I also want to say who I’ll write. I’m a Harringrove blog, first and fucking FOREMOST, but I love Stommy, Keg Boys, and Buckleway, and would be down as hell to write Stonathan and Stoncy. ( I LOVE Jonathan, but I have trouble writing Nancy. Just can’t find her voice really.)

I’ll put them under the cut bc I’m gonna talk about stuff people may want to avoid, plus she’s LONG

So, I WILL NOT write incest. That includes Billy/Max bc in my brain and how I like to write them is as brother and sister, that they’ve fixed their relationship, so yes. Which leads me to...

I won’t write for any of the kids in a sexual context. Most of the actors are minors, are that makes me feel yucky to think about writing these characters that way. When I’m writing a sex scene between Billy and Steve, in the show, yeah they are teens and that IS underage, but you’re thinking of characters played by ADULTS. Joe Keery is like, almost thirty. He’s a GROWN MAN. That’s why I won’t write the kids like that. This includes writing kid/teen like Billy/Max of Steve/Dustin and aged up, because it just makes me feel weird picturing these real life CHILDREN somehow aged up in sexual situations.

As far as content, I’m okay with most things, including triggering topics. I try my best to give proper tags and warnings, and if it’s something I DON’T have experience with, I do A LOT of research for my fics. I’ve also gone through some serious shit and use writing as an outlet for it, so I don’t mind writing heavy topics. Things that trigger me specifically, are like super weird things (ex: the song Dancing Queen. Yeah. I fucking know. Used to love that song and now I can’t fucking listen to it) so I have the emotional energy to write pretty dark stuff.

I hate Karen Wheeler and fully refuse to write Karen/Billy (outside of like, Karen hit on Billy and it was grsss!) that’s BIG YIKES to me and their scenes made me v uncomfy. I don’t think I could write Billy/Hopper or Steve/Hopper either, they need him as a father, not a daddy.

I won’t write Harringrove as abusive. These two mean the WORLD to me, and tbh they’ve both dealt with enough abuse. Sometimes I’ll see dark fics where one of them is going through something and becomes abusive towards the other in some way, and that’s just not my jam in a pretty big way. I love fluff and softness for these two because they deserve it, and that’s what I write. Most of my angst has happy endings too.

As far as kinks, that’s my hardest line. Like I said, most shit I will write. There’s a lot of kinks I don’t know much about, or would never be interested in trying myself, but I don’t mind researching it to write it. How I actually write kink is to find articles written by people who participate in and enjoy that kink so I can get more of an understanding of it, what it feels like, and why they participate in it/enjoy it, and then usually watch some porn of it. (which is SO FUNNY bc I’m watching like, hardcore kinky porn squinting at the screen with my glasses on figuring out how I’m gonna write and describe stuff lmao) so most kinks I’m fine with putting in the hours. With a lot of kink stuff I feel as long as everyone participating in it is consenting and in a safe environment, then go right ahead! So I’m not weirded or grossed out by much.

HOWEVER. Kinks I won’t write: -Shit. Usually I’m pretty live and let live, scat play is GROSS. Straight up. Full offense meant. Kink shaming is intentional. -Age regression during sex. I’m okay with writing Daddy Kink, and I wouldn’t mind putting in more research to write age regression outside of sex, but I DO NOT want to write something where they are actively pretending one of the participants is a child. That feels kinda questionable to me. Along with this is diapers and things like that in any context. From research I HAVE put into daddy kink, it’s not about actually pretending the dom is your father, it’s more about being taken care of. I am fine with all that, but to have the sub be pretending to be a child just makes something in me feel off when it is in a sexual context. Again, I’d be down to put in the research if you want to request someone who lives as a little or in a state of age regression and have the other person take care of them like a child. It would be pure fluff. I just wanted to make that VERY clear. -Blood in kissing. You’ll see in a lot of Harringrove when Billy has a split lip and they kiss Steve can taste the blood or something, that makes me feel REAL ick. HOWEVER, I’m a big dumb slut for vampires, and am good to write that, or gore, or even some murder boyfriends, it’s just when someone gets blood that’s not there’s in their mouth that’s pretty yikes for me. -Petplay is fine but I don’t want like, actually anthropomorphic

Honestly, I think that’s like, it? I was seriously thinking of kinks that like, personally I would NEVER want to try but like, I would write them. I don’t care. \

One thing you may or may not have noticed is that I don’t use the F-slur. I spent a lot of my life dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia. I identify as queer, (I always write Steve how I feel, where I fall in love with people above being sexually attracted to just like, a gender as a whole and personally, I can’t have sex without emotional intimacy, but that’s more of a trauma thing) I come from a really conservative place and struggled a lot with my sexuality and thought because I do like guys and have feelings for guys, I’m just straight and pushed down all of my other feelings for people of other genders away. It was actually really recently, after I went to college in a liberal city and met all different kinds of queer people I realized that 1. I have had feelings for LOTS of different people throughout my life (I was deeply in love with my best friend in high school in a SUPER gay way and just kept pretending I wasn’t lol) and 2. I don’t have to label myself if I don’t feel comfortable with that. So I call myself queer. Because I considered myself straight, literally until I was like, nineteen, I always thought of the F-slur as the same way I do the N-slur. I believe the word can be reclaimed by people in the groups it was used to dehumanize, but since I felt I WASN’T part of the LGBT+ community, I never used it. Even now that I have accepted that part of myself, the word just still feels very wrong for me to use. I don’t mind reading it, and it’s used really often in Harringrove fics bc Neil LITERALLY says it in canon, but I just can’t bring myself to type it out, so I just don’t. That’s a SUPER weird side note, but that’s why you may see in stuff I’ll skirt around Neil or Billy saying it.

So basically, I’m comfortable writing most things. Sometimes, requests may take longer because I NEED to put more thought into it, or more research or I want to get it right, for example the one I just posted with nb Steve and trans Billy, I did a lot of research and read a lot of things written by trans and nb people about their experiences and feelings, etc. as I’m a cis person and didn’t want it to be insensitive or fetishy or just straight up BAD. But I LOVE writing so FUCKING much, I will put in the time and do research to see your head canons and thoughts come to life.

One thing that takes me FOREVER is historical type prompts. I’m BAD at history, like remembering stuff in general, so while I LOVE to take prompts set in different time periods, please know it’ll take me a thousand years to fill.

If you read all this, thank you, and I’m sorry for going on weird tangents about stuff, I’m kinda weird and my brain doesn’t move in one direction lol. Please keep putting in requests and letting me into your ideas! I love it!

#yikes talks #yikes writes #Things I Won't Write #yikes won't write

[ingravinoveritas]

Crowley and Aziraphale always came off as romantic to me; both in the book and in the show. They have so much more chemistry than anyone else. And I always second guess me reading their relationship as romantic when I see the general public's takes. So then I go back over like, okay, if this was a man and a woman, how would this read. They do couple things all the time. They use pet names. The show leans more into pining but in the book it feels like they're already married. Both the narrator and other characters refer to them as a couple and its never contradicted. Is that subtext or just plain text. I wouldn't call it queerbaiting, but queercoding or representation doesn't feel quite right either. Are we reading too much into it or is media literacy dead.

Hi there! Thank you for sharing these thoughts in response to my post from the other day. What you've mentioned here (how this would read if it was a man and a woman) is something I have thought about as well--both in terms of Aziraphale/Crowley and Michael/David, as I have shipped them outside of the show for some time now, and especially given the increasingly fuzzy line between them and the characters (which both Michael and David themselves have talked about in multiple interviews).

I think what we're seeing is neither queerbaiting nor queercoding/representation, but instead a sort of incongruity between what was put on the printed page when Good Omens was first published and what was brought to life on screen when it came to TV. What I mean by that is I often see a lot of people point to the line "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" as proof (almost typed "poof" there--hello, Freudian slip...) that Neil/Terry meant for the characters (specifically Aziraphale) to be gay. But from what Neil has said, the main intention here was for this to be a play on words--so, "gay" as in homosexual, but also "gay" as in happy, which was the original meaning of the term. I'm then led to think that in the minds of two cishet men in the late 1980s, "gayness" conjured a particular, unserious image, which they then brought into the writing.

Fast-forward to thirty years later, and you have Good Omens finally becoming a television show. Terry Pratchett (Gnu) had sadly left us, and so the task fell to Neil to write the screenplay and honor Terry's last wish by faithfully adapting the story. And while Neil wisely decided to cast Michael for his goodness and angelic-like nature, what I think he didn't count on was Michael's long-held beliefs and ideas about the character of Aziraphale and how he would portray him, or his profound penchant for playing numerous queer characters over the last several decades. The gayness of Aziraphale on the written page was something that Neil could control, but he couldn't control the gayness of Aziraphale as interpreted by Michael.

So that led to Neil having to address some things that I don't think he was quite prepared to address, both about the show and inside himself. Mainly, that if we are to extrapolate that what we see in season 1 is a reflection (to some degree, anyway) of Neil's views on relationships, a straight couple with little to no chemistry can jump into bed together without any hesitation, but a gay couple with tremendous chemistry and who share a deep and profound connection can't express that, either physically or by simply saying "I love you."

Much discussion has been made about how it's not necessary for someone to say "I love you" to convey such a sentiment. But what I've noticed missing from this discourse is the age/experience of anyone who has been in a relationship where that wasn't said (or conveyed) by one partner and how painful that was for the other partner. And as I mentioned in my other post, even once gay/queer people started to exist in media, they still weren't allowed to fall in love. (The phrase "the love that dare not speak its name" even came into being because of this taboo, for crying out loud.)

So when we then look at the countless tweets from Neil about how Good Omens is a love story while considering the vastly different ways in which that love is regarded when it's straight vs. when it's gay, his words start to ring somewhat hollow. And if he repeatedly has to emphasize that something is a love story, then maybe it isn't coming across as a love story in the way he thinks it is. Maybe Neil being more comfortable with casual, meaningless sex than a deep commitment speaks to a larger issue on his part. Or maybe Neil was fine with the abstract idea of a gay love story, but suddenly less comfortable with the concrete, three-dimensional reality of it.

If I had to use a word to describe it, then, from a media/cultural standpoint, I think I would call it "queerplaying," which I would define as roleplaying queerness on a surface level without actually delving into the complexity and messiness of what it actually means to be a queer/non-cishet human being. (To be clear, I am applying this to the writing/the original GO text, not to what Michael and David ultimately brought to the roles as actors.)

I hope this all makes sense. Again, the second season could come out tomorrow/Friday and prove me completely wrong about everything I've just said here, which would be wonderful. But I'm glad that other people have felt similarly about what we saw (or didn't see) in the first season, and the disconnect between the perceptions of fans/the perception of the public vs. Neil's authorial intent. Thanks for writing in! x

#pavoptes #reply post #good omens #good omens 2 #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #neil gaiman #creators are not perfect #i think neil may have some internalized homophobia he is still dealing with tbh #but i'm glad we've had Michael and David as Aziraphale and Crowley #not holding anything back #can't wait for the second season #discourse