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Aug 16, 2023

I WOULD LOVE TO READ YOUR UNHINGED RAMBLE ABOUT QUEER THEORY AND ASSIMILATION AND CROWLEY AND AZIRAPHALE

In True Tumblr Fashion, I was never notified about this ask, so I’m sorry for only answering now! (Also omg thank you for reading my long long tags on that post)

For anyone curious, this is about this post

Right, okay let’s go!!

I‘m already sensing that this will be an essay so

1. What am I even on about and some general thoughts on S2

So before I really get into it, let me just say that while I had a lot of issues with the second season, which I will talk about in a second, I loved it.

HOWEVER

I also kind of struggle to see it as a fully coherent continuation of the story of Good Omens, which is not a judgement of the story or of Neil Gaiman. There‘s a couple reasons for that, which might be just very personal to me and I completely get why you might not agree with it:

To me, Good Omens is a finished story, the text is written it is done and it‘s not possible, to give it a sequel or incorporate it into a trilogy in a way that would actually add to the story of Good Omens. It is like trying to lengthen a knitted sweater by unraveling the seam but having to do it with a different wool than the original because the original isn‘t being made anymore. I hope this analogy makes sense. Now this, as with most of my points on this, is obviously because Terry Pratchett died before they could have ever begun a second good omens story. Terry and Neil could have added to the original text, Neil alone cannot. A similar situation may be the Sixth book of Hitchhiker‘s guide to the Galaxy, which was written years after Douglas Adams died and is in fact an authorized sequel by Eowin Colfer. It‘s a good book, but it is not part of the original trilogy told in five books. (At least to me, this is again p personal)

tonally it was very different to the first season, this is once again to be expected since there was no finished book to work from, only what Terry and Neil had come up with and I don‘t think it‘s bad that it was very clearly a Neil Gaiman show, the man has a distinct style, but some of the absurdism from the book and the first season was missing and the cast of background characters was to me not nearly as distinctive and engaging as in the book/first season

Imo the second season undid some of the character development and the conclusion of the first season in a way that didn‘t feel satisfying or coherent if you regard s2 as part of the same text as s1, like a lot of the conflict was about stuff that had already been resolved in a conclusive way in s1 (especially the whole Aziraphale losing his loyalty to heaven thing) I know there‘s an argument to be made that Aziraphale is not recovering from trauma in a linear way but again, to me the events in S1 seemed like the final straw in a long series of doubt, so I don‘t think it was really necessary to go back on his development again… like most of the arguments he and Crowley had this season were the exact same ones from s1 despite them having been resolved by the end of the season; tldr: look what they did to my boy!!!

All of this is just kind of my takeaway from watching the season and I’ll admit I have not watched it again yet, but I also didn’t binge it and instead watched one episode a day, so I did sit with it for a while.

Now again, this is not me saying the season was bad for those reasons but it was a thing I struggled with. I don‘t necessarily view S2 as part of the Good Omens text (might change with S3), this doesn‘t mean I don’t consider it canon tho. I view it more in the way that comics work, as in Good Omens is finished and now a new writer is doing a new run with the same characters in the same universe building on previously established canon. So keep in mind that this is a critique of the Gaiman run of Good Omens.

I‘ll get to the queer theory dw, I just thought it‘s important to say that I am viewing s2 on its own keeping in mind the way it builds on good omens itself. It‘s also kind of important that this is part of the mindset with which I went into e6

Alright so viewing s2 as its own text, here are some of the issues I had with it as well, these will come up in the queer theory thing in a bit!

The pacing: now this might of course be because Good Omens 2 is not a finished text and cannot be viewed as such without s3, but putting aside the times where it was clearly setting up things that were not going to be resolved in this season, there are still some problems. I think a summary of this would be that i can almost pinpoint the moment when in e5, I suddenly had the very clear thought of „Surely the plot should start any second now.“ And yes, a lot of things happened and yes the plot thickened but it wasn‘t really clear where the fuck the story was actually going, were we building up to be big reveal of what happened to Gabriel and would there be time to resolve that with only one episode left? Would Maggie and Nina get together? Would them getting together actually be important? Cause heaven clearly didn‘t buy that lie, so why are we putting effort into it anymore? Where is this going?? Will the doctor from the Scotland flashback be important? Will the Gabriel Statue play a role? Will it come to live? Is Gabriel‘s memory stored in it?? Is this statue a Macguffin, or just like a fun fact? Ya know, stuff like that

The mystery was not compelling or satisfying. I don‘t want to sound like HBomberguy on my Good Omens meta post BUT we spent 5 episodes investigating a mystery, only for the investigation to not be important to the actual solving of the mystery because the mystery got solved by someone breaking into the metaphorical security office and watching the CCTV. This would have been fine for me btw, if that had been part of their plan to solve the mystery. Like if in the first three episodes they had realized Oh we‘re really getting nowhere with this mystery, we simply cannot find enough information… oh darn, we might need to break into heaven, e4 would have been a heist episode in a better world. Like this, all the mystery investigating just felt kind of pointless, because none of the clues you thought would be relevant actually were relevant to solving the mystery, like when the bartender implied he thought Gabriel was a Freemason and said there was a lodge closeby, I got super excited cause I was like OH ARE WE GONNA GET THE FREEMASONS IN GOOD OMENS??? DID GABRIEL LOSE HIS MEMORY BECAUSE HE CAME INTO CONTACT WITH THE PEOPLE WHO WERE PART OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT MOVEMENT THAT DECLARED GOD/RELIGION TO BE NONSENSE?? DID GABRIEL BECOME A FREEMASON????? But yeah no that didn‘t matter. Neither did the dumb statue. Neither did the doctor from the flashbacks (and since the final season seems to be about the second coming, I won‘t judge them for not adressing the wtf is a resurrectionist question, but a few clues would have been cool).

The romance was boring. This to me is kind of the worst bit, because I really wanted to like Nina and Maggie, I was super excited for them, but about two days after finishing the show, I realized that I knew nothing about them at all. They felt flat, two dimensional in a bad way. Like the walking embodiment of coffeeshop/recordstore/tattooartist/florist AU. Now the S1/book side characters were also two dimensional, but in a fun way. Sure they had no inner lives being explored on screen but they were so distinctive and stylized that it was more like watching a bunch of really fun caricatures. They were also great foils to each other and a fun ensemble to watch. Now why do I bring up the romance? Well this ties into the pacing and mystery issues, which is that neither the romance nor mystery were actually important enough to spend that amount of time on it. There was no real focus, like sure the romance was the sideplot but I feel like less time on the romance and more time on actually creating an engaging mystery/less time on the mystery (or no mystery at all) and more time on the romance would have benefitted the show. Especially since I think Nina could have been really interesting. I won‘t get into it here but I guess shoot me another ask if you want to hear my thoughts on Nina and Maggie lmao, but long story short, Nina and Maggie were not nearly interesting enough to act as parallels to Crowley and Aziraphale despite being set up to be.

Beelzebub was too pretty

Neil really gave the gays everything they wanted and sometimes expensive things giving the gays everything they want, is worse.

Now it‘s time to talk about Queerness, Assimilation and Respectability Politics.

2. Crowley said ACAB and Aziraphale became a cop or, how somehow, a kiss between two genderless non human beings was gay but not queer.

Remember that short video Sarah Z posted on November 5th? If not, it’s here. Yeah so that‘s kind of the same hysteria I went into in the last 20 min of ep6

And then they kissed and I actually had to pause and walk around for a few minutes and I remember muttering to myself „Oh no they kissed and I didn‘t like it oh no oh no“

Because this reaction was very unexpected, after s1, i would have been delighted by a kiss, but in s2 it felt very jarring somehow and it took me a while to put into words the feeling of „oh no they kissed but I didn‘t like it,“ and it took me longer to get behind what was bothering me.

Now the first Oh no Moment I had that episode was when I realized they were going to make Gabriel and Beelzebub happen. Again, this is very personal to me but I remember them being a crack ship back when s1 came out and I think them being suddenly canon made me go „Oh no, we‘re doing ships in the media now“ - as in it felt like fan service, because there was no build up to it in s1 or the book ever and almost nothing in s2 as well, it came completely out of nowhere (at least to me) and it genuinely felt more like fan service than anything else. I also think as a parallel to Aziraphale and Crowley it kind of cheapened their story. My thoughts on Gabriel and Beelzebub aren‘t fully fleshed out yet, I’m just saying this to let you know that alarm bells had already been rung in my head by how obviously this was supposed to be a parallel to Crowley and Aziraphale and by how obvious it made the fact that Oh ok s2 is literally about 3 couples.

Okay so why the fuck did the kiss feel so jarring? And by extension why did the rest of how their relationship was this season feel so off somehow?

@marauders4evr made a really good post about this that I fully agree with, which basically boils down to „why was the central conflict of the story Crowley and Aziraphale not realizing they love each other? They have literally known this since forever“

Now this is, I think, the reason why their story changed from being queer to being gay (SOMEHOW DESPITE THEM BEING GENDERLESS), and the kiss really was the culmination of that to me. Like the kiss especially turned their relationship just gay as opposed to it being queer.

Okay so what do I mean by this exactly? Well

2.1 what does it even mean to be queer?

So there‘s this idea in Queer Theory which is basically that a definitive criterium of queerness is that it is subverting and breaking norms. Specifically heteronormative hegemonic patriarchal norms. This thought poses queerness as the opposite of assimilation. Following the logic of this, the example I’ve seen most often is that a lesbian couple living in a suburb with 2,5 children and a white picket fence, which is perfectly assimilated and lives the exact same way as their het neighbors, with the only difference between them being the fact that they‘re a same sex couple, is gay, but not queer. Because they are assimilated. Respectable even. This sentiment is also echoed in slogans like gay as in happy, queer as in fuck you. The idea is that something can be gay, without it being queer. Assimilation kills queerness. This is the reason why some scholars in queer theory actually distinguish between using LGBT+ as an umbrella term and using Queer as an umbrella term.

Being completely honest, I don’t necessarily agree with this this theory completely because it is very inward focused while to a bigot even the most assimilated gay person will be a Queer at the end of the day.

But it is a useful thought to follow in examining Good Omens and specifically Crowley‘s and Aziraphale‘s relationship.

2.2 the Kiss and like all the other stuff

There are multiple factors to the queerness of Crowley‘s and Aziraphale‘s relationship that play into this (sidenote, this is p much just about the show now, it‘s been too long since reading the book for me to be able to accurately point things out):

They are genderless, sexless beings, they are not human and they don‘t operate in human categories. This has been confirmed by Neil himself.

Lack of physicality, their relationship was so asexual and at times even aromantic and at no point was it treated as less than because of it. It was so clear they loved each other in a way uniquely their own. This is not to say that asexual people cannot/don‘t want to be sexual, I myself am pretty aspec and really like sex, so please take this in good faith, To me, it was queer as fuck to see a relationship that was so purely on a mental level that it didn’t need physicality or pda in order to be understood. The only other time I can think of right now that comes close to it is maybe Spock and Kirk but not even that, because it wasn‘t done on purpose. Their lack of physicality and their lack of need for it subverted pretty much every romance trope, amatonormativity and heteronormativity. It was queer as shit and it was never treated as less than or something that needed definition. They were ineffable.

Their coded communication, this is again a point @marauders4evr brought up and it‘s a really good one, Crowley and Aziraphale communicated so much, they just did it in their own way, a code honed over millennia. I don‘t think i really need to point out why that is queer.

Okay so season 2 changed that.

It took away pretty much all of the elements listed above:

Instead of being literally non-human beings who don‘t operate in human categories, the way their relationship was told was steeped in standard tropes of human romance. Heteronormative tropes at that. Instead of them never actually fully catching on to the fact that people think they‘re a couple, since that category cannot apply to them as ya know an Angel and a demon, in s2 we see multiple instances of someone commenting on their relationship with the standard „he‘s your boyfriend right“ and then usually Crowley going Naaah it‘s not like that. I don‘t think I need to bring up which shows that reminds me off. Multiple times people are trying to put Crowley and Aziraphale into a box and instead of never even acknowledging that because it does not apply to them, this time, it gives Crowley pause, it makes him consider the box. Even though it has been established that they are above and outside of those norms.

In s2 their honed communication is treated as a flaw, they are not complying to the human standard of talking about things (which in the way the show treats it with the like „communication is the key to a healthy relationship thing“ also felt very much like when characters in fanfic talk like they’ve had years of therapy), so this is the problem with their relationship, this is why they have not realized that they were in love with each other the whole time (another human romance trope). Except they did communicate and they DID know that they loved each other. Aziraphale KNOWS how much Crowley loves him, that‘s why he threatens him with never talking to him again. It‘s the worst thing he can think of to do to Crowley. Crowley KNOWS Aziraphale loves him, it‘s why he keeps coming back, it‘s why he takes off his glasses around him, it‘s why he trusts him. There was literally nothing to say because they already KNEW and they already chose each other.

Latching onto this, in s2 the fact that they never said it out loud and that they never confirmed it physically is suddenly an issue. The main conflict actually. Where before this was never treated as less then or something to be addressed or fixed, now suddenly it‘s a problem. They were not really together because it was never confirmed out loud or in action. Except what even is a relationship between a demon and n angel? Why do they need to firmly chose a box? Why do they need to „get together“ when they are literally not in those categories? This season treats their love as something that needs to be taken a step further, be solidified by putting a label on it, by them getting together and becoming canon AS IF THEY HADN‘T BEEN CANON THE ENTIRE TIME ALREADY JUST NOT IN A WAY THAT FOLLOWED AMATONORMATIVE OR HETERONORMATIVE STANDARDS AND SCRIPTS. Nina telling Crowley he needed to talk to Aziraphale was wholly unnecessary. Moreso because it came from a character we hardly knew or cared about at that point.

And now finally the kiss. The kiss shattered the thing that made their relationship so interesting and queer to me. Instead of their intimacy being so delicate and nuanced, portrayed by physical closeness, the way that they acted around each other etc, the kiss took all of that and said „no this wasn‘t enough, they do not love each other properly unless they kiss about it“ and I know the kiss wasn‘t a romantic conclusion or a getting together but the way the scene framed it still set it up as „there will be a good kiss where they finally get together properly“ in the future. And the kiss was still part of once again normative romance. And normative romance being portrayed as the way to go for these two characters. As the end goal of their story.

And yes there‘s a thousand ways them kissing or being physically intimate would work, for example if it was there to show them becoming more and more human, after ditching heaven and hell. If it was a thing Aziraphale found delightful about humans and kissed Crowley in the same way he wears his glasses, because he thinks they make him look spiffy.

Same thing with the saying the quiet part out loud, a development in the time of s2 could have been Crowley and Aziraphale realizing that they don‘t need the coded language anymore, that they don‘t need to hide their love behind The Agreement anymore.

But the way it was portrayed in the show felt more like finally making them canon after the will they won‘t they of s1 (I am exaggerating here obviously). There is also something to be said here about this weird obsession with things going canon and Going Canon seemingly being When they say the thing out loud and also kiss about it, which imo kind of bars the way for more complex and dare I say it queer stories and portrayals of love. There is also the fact that I just don‘t really like that S2 was half mystery half romantic comedy/romance because that‘s not what I like about good omens. Don’t get me wrong, I love Crowley and Aziraphale, but Good Omens was absurdist satire of religion and not a romance. (AND EVEN IN ABSURDIST SATIRE ROMANCES CAN BE DONE WELL, JUST LOOK AT BOOK FOUR IN THE HITCHHIKER‘S GUIDE TRILOGY, ARTHUR AND FENCHURCH WRECKED ME)

3. Conclusion

So basically what I’m saying is that the way Crowley and Aziraphale‘s relationship was handled in s2 assimilated them enough into amatonormative and heteronormative tropes, that their very very queer relationship, was suddenly just gay. Their queerness lay in the undefined nature of their relationship, where the only really defined, constant and unmoving feature was that they loved each other. Defining it, both in the meta narrative and in the In Universe narrative suddenly makes it tangible and defined and narrow and robs it of its queerness.

I know this is very very long, but to be fair you asked for it, thank you for enabling me lmao

Some reading on the Queer theory I’ve mentioned:

„What‘s that smell?: Queer temporalities and subcultural lives“: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/13678779030063005?src=getftr

„Challenging Queer Geographies“: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2006.00483.x

„Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: deconstructing queer space“: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132507085213

„In a Queer Time and Space“ by Jack Halberstam

Alright so I’m gonna go walk the dog now, I hope you enjoyed my unhinged ramble and feeble attempt at structuring it

#good omens spoilers #good omens meta #ask #carlsdraws #hopefully marauders4evr doesn‘t mind being mentioned here #Also sadly all of the literature I’ve mentioned at the end is behind a paywall because I found it via my Uni access when working on a paper #but there are ways to read them #sci hub bestie #okay byeee

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