The fact that Sherlock Holmes is so often written as homosexual or is written in such a way that others constantly assume he is (in the bbc version almost every single episode has either John denying it or someone else assuming they are a couple) when in the book he is clearly not interested in sex or romance is a clear example of how asexuals and aromantics are constantly ignored and given no representation with the assumption that if they love someone that must ‘fix’ them and give them sexual/romantic desires. It is also emblematic of how queer representation is treated in the media as a direct port from book to screen would have a Sherlock that could have been a major source of representation for a group often treated like we don’t exist, but instead it is switched to gay-baiting even when the writers specifically say that there is no way the characters will ever enter a relationship or any kind, but they still gay-bait rather than providing good representation. In this essay I will...
sometimes i have strong opinions but they're also so inane that halfway through writing a post i'll be like "yeah, this is Absolutely not worth the energy it's taking" and delete everything. but then the opinion is still in my head. and i still want to share it. so within five minutes i go "you know, i bet i can phrase it more succinctly this time" and anyway. you all see where this is going. sometimes i do this four times in a row before i give up on the specific inane opinion and instead write a vague post about the concept of opinions as if that'll satisfy the urge to post the entirety of my inner monologue online. may or may not be relevant to what you're reading right now. and now all our lives have been enriched. you're welcome
As I follow the #Good Omens tag, naturally I have seen a lot of really intense takes on the Good Omens Season 3 The Movie Finale in the last few weeks. I feel like there has been some missing of a major intended point of the work, and I haven't seen anyone else say exactly what I am taking from it, so you all have to read it now. 🤷
Content warning: One million billion words.
My context
I read the book many years before the Amazon Prime series happened. It's by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I've read a bunch of stuff by both of them, including some non-Discworld Pratchetts, and every time I've read it I've reflected on how Pratchetty it is. I get really strong Pratchett vibes but not so much of the Gaiman flavour/tone, and I think that is in part because Pratchett has such a specific, iconic and distinctly recognisable tone/voice. Not to say that the book is more Pratchett than Gaiman, just that I hear Pratchett's voice very strongly when I read it.
In terms of themes/patterns, Pratchett bumps into the issue of religion/deities often in the Discworld series (with Small Gods being the novel that really focuses on it), and he's very funny about it, and of course always with his stuff there is the anger underneath. And American Gods by Gaiman shares some attitudes, you can see how Pratchett and Gaiman connected there.
I can't speak to Gaiman's works so well because I just haven't read his stuff as much, but in Pratchett's Discworld:
Gods are capricious and fickle and can't be trusted. They have little empathy for mortals on the whole.
Gods are created by people through belief. The more true believers a god has, the more powerful the god is.
A god has the characteristics that the believers see them as having, for the most part.
The god of a big, popular religion can wither and die if all the followers are just going through the motions without actually having faith and believing in the god.
As you can see, he doesn't hide his views at all and his metaphors are not subtle.
Discworld books are all about personal power and personal choices and being smart and thinking for yourself and such. Mindless followers of a religion who use a god they don't believe in as an excuse for cruelty are the baddies. It's super duper clear that he thinks religions and gods only have the power that humans give them and we can choose to participate in that or not.
Discworld is a fantasy place and there are gods, specifically so that Pratchett can play with religion as a topic and make u think. And I never really thought about it for a long time, but when you're reading his work it's hard to imagine that he is anything but an atheist. So, when I found out that in real life he was very vocally an atheist I was like, tell me something I don't know. A testament (oh no) to his ability to pour his whole self into his writing.
Good Omens (book)
Good Omens is a standalone book. What we know from interviews is that a sequel was roughly plotted out, but never written. We don't know if it was going to be a trilogy, I think? (If that's wrong, hit me with a reliable source in the replies.)
Pratchett (and, following his death, his family) has always been very committed to faithful recreations for the screen, to the extent that a Tiffany Aching movie nearly happened but then Pratchett didn't like her being turned into a Disney princess and noped it. Gaiman's vision was clearly in line with that idea, because the TV adaptation of the book is very faithful in tone and plot.
Nothing more was written involving Pratchett, so season 2 and the movie finale are all Neil and there's nothing to be faithful to aside from Neil's memories of their conversations about it.
Good Omens (season 1)
In the book, Aziraphale and Crowley and their complicated relationships (to humans and each other and their "sides") is a strong plot thread, alongside the story of Adam and the Them. The TV adaptation gives them each the right amount of screentime I think, but Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship to humans and each other in particular really steals the show for a lot of people, because David Tennant and Michael Sheen are both individually so good and also because together they have such incredible chemistry.
Naturally, Tumblr shipped them hardcore, because Tumblr loves to take two men with chemistry and make them smooch. Yes, absolutely, I 100% support that. BUT. At the time I said to someone who is not on Tumblr and is not very online that Aziraphale and Crowley would make a good couple and she could not see it at all, and I need to emphasise that her view at the time was vastly more common than Tumblr's. To her and almost everyone else, people on Tumblr pointing to particular moments in the book or making gifs of two men touching to support them being in (or even flirting towards) a sexual or romantic relationship look like conspiracy theorist/stalker levels of reading-too-much-into-it.
When you read the book without an Aziraphale-and-Crowley magnifying lens, their relationship and plot happens within a bigger story. Heaven and Hell are equally bureaucratic and terrible in their own way, humans are doing the work of both sides without heavenly or hellish input, and crucially, no one has heard from God in a very very long time. All of the celestial guys are just a complete waste of time and space, and they are portrayed as such. Adam (the Antichrist, son of Satan) is only a small part of a much bigger story that has lasted 6,000 years, intended to be a pawn/football manipulated by both sides to win a war against each other, because that's what religion is and what religion does. [Not saying this is my view, this is just the book vibe and by extension the TV adaptation season 1 vibe.] Crowley and Aziraphale are another small part of that story, showing how stupid it all is.
The story culminates with Adam, powerful Antichrist powers unintentionally moulded by kind human parents and regular human experiences. He chooses to be human and for Heaven and Hell to stop fighting because it's pointless. Crowley says he thinks it was all going to be a warm-up for a bigger war, "all of us [Hell and Heaven] against all of them [humanity]."
In the book (and I think in the TV adaptation as well) Crowley and Aziraphale were meant to be central, but they weren't meant to be front and centre. They were meant to be pawns of God as much as Adam was a pawn of Heaven/Hell. Crowley and Aziraphale, Adam and the Them, Newt and Anathema, and Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell all had equal shares of the stage, and that's because ultimately it's a book about people, peopling.
Good Omens (season 2)
Gabriel and Beelzebub had a secret romance since the end of season 1, and this season they reveal it and then run off together.
There are some mini-stories in which Heaven and Hell meddle in human affairs, God imposes choices that are cruel and callous, and we get to see what nonsense it has always been.
Crowley and Aziraphale kissed at the end. It was a last-ditch effort by Crowley to persuade Aziraphale not to go back to Heaven and maintain the status quo. The kiss was angry and messy and it didn't even work for its intended purpose. They just both got hurt.
Good Omens (season 3)
The romantic aspect of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is not central for the plot, because it wasn't even central for the characters themselves. I think that makes a lot of sense. They've existed for the whole of time, they kissed one time as a clumsy expression of, AND I CAN'T THINK OF A BETTER WAY TO EXPRESS THIS, a semi-political agenda?? Crowley was trying to persuade Aziraphale to ditch the stupid Heaven/Hell rubbish and prioritise their relationship, but it was as much about trying to get his long-held view across to Aziraphale as it was about the emotional part, and he had tried everything else.
But anyway, let's talk about it to get it out of the way. I do want to get to the rest of the plot as well though so keep going.
So, in the movie, it's good that they're being a bit more open about how they feel about each other and what they want now, but there are so many conversations we can't see them have, because the fact that they kissed was actually very far down the priority list. The kissing can be credited with shocking them into a new state of communication, but the act of kissing itself was a tiny event in their history and it wasn't a nice, romantic kiss. It was both meaningful and not meaningful? It's good that they're being more open with each other about who they are and what they want, not for the sake of their capital-R Romantic Relationship but for who they are together in any relationship.
HOWEVER. There's levels, right? From a social justice, media representation point of view, Crowley and Aziraphale kind of became an Official Couple in season 2 by kissing (gays on screen!!), and then they broke up immediately, and then they died in the finale's climax before they could gay-kiss again. Okay yes fine alright let's talk about that.
I've seen this thrown around as an example of Bury Your Gays. I have to just immediately discard this.
Bury Your Gays is a trope characterised by the expendability of the gays. Aziraphale and Crowley did not die as expendable side-characters, and in fact were more central to the plot than literally any other characters - I would argue to the detriment of the story. Their self-sacrifice was the lynchpin to the conclusion of the story.
In order for the gays to be expendable compared to the straights, there have to be straights who are treated better than the gays, as part of a bigger picture. There were SO MANY QUEER CHARACTERS in the story who did not die expendably, and were in fact well-written, fleshed out and respectfully representative characters despite not being central to the plot.
Next: Are Aziraphale and Crowley queer representation? Yes, before they kissed and even before there was a hint of romance, they were subversive in the context of human society and in their native contexts. They didn't get into relationships or have sex with anyone, they secretly defied the norms of the cultures they came from in their lives and work, they were secretly in a close "platonic" relationship even though it was extremely against the rules, and the only reason either of them appeared to have any gender was an arbitrary and intentional choice of appearance on the part of the characters to blend in with mortals.
Their relationships with the world and each other is a reflection of real people having real relationships that exist in the real world right now and those people are queer. Whether the Pratchett and Gaiman were intentionally writing them as LGBTQ+ is unknowable and open to debate, but they were intentionally written as massive weirdos from the get-go. There are some people for whom season 1 Aziraphale and Crowley are the only representation of themselves they've ever seen on TV, you know? For some of those people, Aziraphale and Crowley became less representative when they kissed.
Yes, in a broader historical pattern, we do not have enough men kissing and then surviving past the credits on TV because of the Hays code and, I'm sure, many other influences. But men kissing is the lowest of low bars, and this show has queers coming out of its ears, and the kiss is extremely normative compared to the whole rest of the show. (Nonbinary people, sex workers, trans people, lesbians...)
AND FINALLY. The writers knew that in spite of all this they would be lambasted if Crowley and Aziraphale didn't end up together romantic-stylez after the season 2 kiss, so they added the human AU bit at the end. Plus it would have been way more of a downer if they'd just died, right?
I haven't seen anyone say that the human AU ending wasn't openly queer enough, just people retorting that actually it is queer enough thank you very much, because they're holding hands in their marital home/garden after decades of happy marriage. Also people say it doesn't count because it's not really them, and I agree with that on that level - but I also do not care at all, because statistically speaking they shouldn't even have existed in the new universe if God restarted Everything without influencing it anyway, right? So it's all arbitrary and why not have a bit of fluff at the end for people who are into that sort of thing.
BUT THE STORY IS NOT A ROMANCE AND THEY ARE NOT THE MAIN CHARACTERS. The queer rep and the kissing is incidental, AND THAT'S WHY IT'S GOOD REPRESENTATION. We have characters who are incidentally queer but their motivation, their driving force, the thing that makes them what they are and wanting the things that they want, is more important than their queerness. This is beautiful and what we have been aching for all along.
Zoom out, what is the actual plot?
Look, it's back to the atheism.
Season 1 is about humans being pawns for a capricious but silent God, and how they handle that, and then Adam (the most unintentionally human human) chooses human agency and puts everything right again. The finale movie thing introduces Jesus and the second coming, and the climax is where Crowley and Aziraphale choose humans so hard that they are willing to die for our freedom.
Season 2 is a blip.
Imagine season 1 (6 episodes) followed by season 3 (6 episodes, we can dream) with nothing in between. I think that pulls it all into focus.
We know a sequel was planned but we don't know that it was going to be a trilogy. I think the execs liked the idea of having three seasons of six episodes so that it would be "666", which is very satisfying and appropriate. And then it got broken by Neil Gaiman backing out and the execs deciding to reduce it to one movie as a compromise. But I think the story actually has two parts and the weird not-a-romance of season 2 is not relevant to anything else at all - it's just fun filler where we get to see proof that angels and demons, like Adam, can also choose to leave the narrative. And that's when Gabriel and Beelzebub run off together, Aziraphale and Crowley have nothing to do with it! (It does inspire Crowley, yes yes.)
What works, as a story, is that Adam and Jesus are given magical powers by Heaven and Hell, and then by sheer chaos of humanity are lost on Earth, to become shaped by humans into something extremely human, and then defy the narrative that religion has imposed on them and choose the side of humanity. Adam does it, and you know Joshua would have done the same in a heartbeat. In the TV adaptation start to finish we see humans' fumbling journey towards godlessness through the eyes of side-characters Aziraphale and Crowley, who have one foot in the divine and one on Earth.
I know I can't know how the story was originally blocked out. I know I can't know what Terry Pratchett would have wanted. I can say how I think the story should have gone but I don't think that's very useful.
But from what I know of Terry Pratchett and his work and his views on atheism and religion, there is not any other way the story could have ended, other than empowered humans having freedom from God and religion. Who chose it and why is not really important. The creators of the story gave us something to free us from religion so that we can make our lives, here and now, and make our own meaning, without having to think about God or demons or angels or Heaven or Hell. The result is all of the characters in the pub just being extremely human, free of God, having a nice time.
So
I really understand that people on here are very ship-focused and humans in the Western world are very romantic-relationship-focused, and as a result there is a tendency to see this story as a gay romcom. The second season was essentially a queer romcom, so I'm sure that didn't help.
I can absolutely see how Crowley and Aziraphale giving up their lives at the end would be a crushing disappointment if you were approaching the TV adaptation in that vein.
And also, this story is not that. It's a love letter to atheism.
I think Good Omens is Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman trying to give us something that they feel is truly wonderful. I think they're taking us on a journey, showing us what they think religion is (absurd and manipulative and sometimes cruel), and then giving us an alternative. They imagine for us a do-over, a world that they want us to be able to live in now, without gods or devils, free to just be humans and make choices and mistakes and life and destruction, all on our own.
Crowley and Aziraphale couldn't exist in a universe without God. Without a God to judge them, they don't have to pretend to be something they're not for 6,000 years. They simply meet and fall in love and get married and are happy.
The blurb said the shot was taken in Granada, Spain, by Agneta Fondén. No other info, so I have no idea how old, etc. There's a game (from 1988) that uses a similar pattern on one of its pieces, but this could predate it by at least a thousand years — or not. But the pattern intrigued me, so I made a texture map and used Blender's geometry nodes (no generative AI) to set up a hexagon grid with random rotations for the tiles:
That's all done with a single design:
You'd think this would have a name, right? (For its historical use as an architectural / decor tile — although I've found out more about its use in games, that's not what I'm looking for.) Like the Penroses do (and no, it's not one of those). But I've had no luck finding it, or any other info. Any (human only, please) help?
“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context
“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets
Took Ollie to the vet today. And I'm not gonna say who. But ONE of us had a panic attack immediately after the checkup and wouldn't get out of the sink
I see half the fandom characterizing Adrian as patient and selfless, and I see the other half characterizing them as bitter and unaccommodating, and I also see the joking and non joking 'what if Rocky were the trolley operator' fics and ideas, and I've come to the conclusion that you all are missing the beauty of the superior third option that is Adrian also being traumatized and feral over their mate.
Thank about it. Rocky's a spitfire and bounces off the walls at baseline and they looked at that little autistic, bossy ball of energy and went 'yes. that's them. the creature I want to spend the next 500+ years with'. They have to at LEAST match their energy somewhat. And if you think you wouldn't be a fucking ball of PTSD and bitterness at your culture and society after fifty plus years of not knowing they were alive or dead, you're fucking operating on moon logic. Honestly, Adrian and the other families were probably begging for a rescue mission that never happened for various political and logical reasons; and while it probably would have ended in mass fatalities as well, so thank goodness that figurative and literal ship never got off the ground, the fact that it didn't happen probably burns more than a little, reasonable or unreasonable.
So one day Adrian gets some Eridian diplomat on their doorstep, and they're expecting the formal condolences at long last, but instead they go into this whole spiel of ' so. So! Turns out twenty two of the original crew died, but your mate survived! When did they die? Oh, early on, so your mate was submerged in crippling and literal deafening loneliness for over four decades; and now he's back and acting weird, and he's become codependent with this weird fragile squishy human being that's the only reason he came back at all, and he's refusing to send down the cure unless we make the blob an aquarium. Could you come to the space elevator and tell him to stop being so unreasonable?'
If that were MY mate? I'd fucking lose it.
Just throwing things at this poor messenger and shrieking like " Oh! Oh!! So it's somehow Rocky's fault that you're refusing to take a few months out of the several hundred Eridian years we have left to ship the cure we already have to Threeworld before things actually become problematic to make sure one of the two saviors of our entire species doesn't die?! To give the sole survivor of the mission--my mate, who's been alone and in silence, with no one to watch him sleep, for hundreds of years--some sort of solace and peace?! And you're wondering why he's acting erratically?! Maybe you wouldn't be in this position at all if you'd sent the rescue mission for which we've pleaded for years at every single thrum! I don't care if this Grace thing is a literal giant space amoeba; get the fuck out of my house and tell the powers that be to give it literally everything it wants and needs!"
And they're all 'be reasonable' and Adrian's like " I've been reasonable for hundreds of Eridian years, and you would not be in this situation if you'd actually sent a rescue mission and not simply wrung your claws and hoped for the best, so fucking live in the nest you made. All I'm going to do if you get me on the radio with Rocky right now is tell him he's doing amazing and give him advice on how to properly parboil the Taumoeba so that you can't even recover even the slightest scrap of DNA if you don't give the flesh blob that saved his life and saved OUR lives PLURAL goddamn vitamins."
Like, they think it's bad that Rocky basically stands over Grace's sleeping body and hisses? Wait until they get the MUCH LARGER ERIDIAN doing that for Grace and Rocky. Wait until the much large Eridian leads the families of the dead twenty-two crewmates to the space elevator to riot because this sure sounds like a coverup to them!! This sure sounds like the deflection of blame on the sole survivor!! This sure sounds like the same paralysis that left them to die alone in space because you didn't want to admit failure!!
Yes, I know, I'm weaving some sort of political intrigue plot that probably doesn't exist in canon. All I'm saying is that you all are missing the delicious implications of a mission that went radio silent for fifty plus earth years with no word from the government and no obvious attempt at rescue, followed by your partner coming home with the only being that's been around to watch him sleep since the rest of the crew died forty-some years ago, and people are calling him weird and changed. You'd be horrified. You'd be sick.
You'd be pissed the fuck off at every body of power that let this happen.
name a more iconic thing to happen for the fictional qpr community than Donna Noble quite literally meeting her soulmate and being like hmm. there's no one I've ever wanted to fuck less
#i cannot get over how much she's like. #im crazy insane about this alien our lives and beings are intertwined #to be separate would and did require us to tear ourselves apart #and build back from the ground up #he is also completely and utterly unattractive to me. lol.
#anyways im so normal about this scene#like. your best friend is an alien who you can never truly touch because their atmosphere would kill you#and the one and only time you ever touch is under life or death circumstances#and the mark left behind is evidence of both the care you have for each other and the time you almost lost each other forever#something something platonic soulmarks something something drag path (tags by OP)
