#I just watched season 2 of Good Omens

[retro-memo]

My soul has been smashed into a million pieces and I dunno if I'll recover. I blame @potatoqueensays for this

[p4nishers]

i think it's time i admit i have the biggest fatest crush on 1941 crowley. like dude.

[jicklet]

(S2 Teaser)

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant and Michael Sheen on working with each other in Good Omens Season 2 (and talking with their hands)

Source [ MovieWeb ]

[feathered-serpents]

I’ve said before that my mom, while pretty okay with queer stuff overall, sometimes has trouble grasping that straight actors can play non-straight characters. And seeing her go through this with David Tennant as Crowley has sure been something

I think the funniest thing my mom ever said in her scandalization that David Tennant was playing (I know not technically but in her mind) a gay man was when I told her Crowley was in love with Aziraphale and she straight up responded

“No that can’t be true! Crowley did things with women that proved he was straight!”

And I am still. Trying to solve the mystery of what the fuck she meant by that because I can only remember Crowley having three meaningful interactions with women in the show

One he put in a catatonic trance

One he hit with his car

One was possessed by Aziraphale

[janeway-lover]

y'all it just hit me

NO WONDER NEIL WAS SO FUCKING PISSED ABOUT THE LEAK

[sentientsky]

will i ever be normal about michael and david’s acting choices here?? (no. not ever. holy fucking shit i am unwell)

[snek-eyes]

Queen instrumentals playing in Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death

(instrumentals arranged by Eos Counsell)

(insp. / template / BoRhap breakdown)

[pommegrantaire]

Tell me, tell me you'll meet me Tell me, tell me you'll keep me

[lunarharp]

if i just told you i love you would this world change

[the-cloudy-dreamer]

taking the skrungly entities away from mr gaiman and putting them away on the top shelf until he learns to treat them better and writes them a happy ending (or the bottom of my sock drawer whatever they find comfiest)

[p4nishers]

i need s3 to start with crowley throwing up into a dumpster then sliding down the wall and crying hysterically which cuts to aziraphale doing nothing but spying on him with his little gay ass telescope exactly like this

[actual-changeling]

No you dont understand listen. listen. the hand. the HAND.

yes for a few moments aziraphale kissed back, held him, steadied him, but have you ever thought about what that did to crowley?

he feels aziraphale's palm press against his shoulder, feels him reciprocate the kiss, all he experiences in that moment is him, entirely and exclusively. his world narrows down even further to aziraphale, to him and just him.

for that heartbeat, that split second of oh, crowley hopes.

he hopes that maybe aziraphale changed his mind, this is it, they will stay on earth together, be together, be an us. everything he has ever wanted (which, let's be real, is aziraphale safe and by his side) is suddenly an option because he is kissing me back.

and then he stops. the hand lifts. he pulls back and that tiny, fragile spark of hope burns hot enough to destroy itself, any evidence erased when aziraphale looks at him and offers forgiveness - to crowley, he is offering forgiveness for loving him, telling him to stop, and that is the final crack that breaks him.

yet the last physical memory crowley will carry with him now is one of love and warmth and life, but all it symbolizes is a loss greater than anything he has every experienced.

[deramin2]

I don't know how to really express this except to come across as a "kids these days" scold, but so much of the criticism of queerness in Good Omens would simply not be a thing if kids these days watched more 20th century queer media. Or more complex indie queer media in general.

People seem to want a show that's like the straight stories they grew up with but gay. Or the gay fanfiction they grew up with. But that's not really the tradition it's coming from. First off the novel was released in 1990. Queer film classics of the time are Dead Poet's Society (1989) and Torch Song Trilogy (1988). The TV miniseries Tales of the City (1993) wasn't made until 3 years later and it was so far out there it never had a huge audience. Philadelphia (1993) is also 3 years out and was basically the first big studio queer film. The first fluffy queer Hallmark-style romcom wasn't until Big Eden in 2000, a full 10 years after publication.

Queer stories from the time it was written were about complex and often fraught relationships between people who the world was trying to force apart. There is an incredibly strong tradition in queer films of relationships with no guarantees they will work out both in the face of their personal baggage and the weight of the world. Take a film like Torch Song Trilogy that's about the two great loves of Arnold Beckoff's life over 9 years and how homophobia shapes them. Both externally (especially Allen) and internally like Ed struggling with his bisexuality and being terrified of being publicly out. Written and starred in by Harvey Fierstein, who identified as a gay man at the time and only came out as nonbinary last year.

The Boys In The Band (1968 play, filmed 1970 and 2020) was a monumental moment in Broadway history where finally there was a play about gay men in their own words where no one died and very strongly showed that homosexuality doesn't make people miserable but homophobia sure does. But that homophobia also throws their personal lives into constant turmoil and none of them are in happy relationships, although Hank and Larry are devoted to each other in their own fucked up way.

"Relationships are complicated and hard to make work and sometimes a struggle against the odds" is an aesthetic of classic queer film making. Partly it was influenced by the Hays Code (although independent films were not bound to it), partly influenced by the rampant queerphobia in society at the time that was inescapable. But it's also an aesthetic choice to resist the banal and unrealistic relationship depictions of straight media. There are actual stakes to the relationship. Queer people were actively resisting a world that said "Romance is seeing someone across the room and instantly falling in love with each other and little conflicts happen along the way but ultimately they're destined to be together and everything is happily ever after." Recall that "stalking as romance" was a completely inescapable trope in 1980s straight romance films, and every goddamn movie was being turned into a romance film.

So queer people in film and television when they can make what they please have a long tradition of saying instead "People don't always realize the feelings they've developed for a queer partner right away. They may have reasons for denying those feelings that are both a reflection of the cruelty in society and of their own insecurities. People struggle with where they belong and their relationships reflect that. Loving someone doesn't mean they don't also drive you crazy and you might fight with them constantly. But that doesn't negate the love or that feeling that even if things aren't okay, they're better with that person around. But maybe that person can't stay around. The world may be against you. And also maybe you don't just want that one person in your life. Soulmates is a very flawed model. Sometimes the strongest love is a struggle with yourself and the world and your person. You have to overcome yourself first. Happily ever after is a lie. You may be happy for a while, and hopefully for a long while, but everything ends. And you have to be ready to love again. Also your platonic bonds are just as important and life-altering as your romantic ones. Sometimes those platonic bonds include fucking if you want them to. Real life isn't a bunch of platitudes and world-altering moments, it's daily work to better yourself and the world around you. Especially when things just fucking suck. But also remember to have fun and fuck the haters. People who don't support you can eat rocks and you should yell at them more to shut the fuck up."

That is a fundamentally different outlook on what a "good relationship depiction" looks like. Personally, I thought I hated romance movies and then I started watching queer romance movies and discovered I love them and watch them all the time. Because it turns out what I hated was relationships being shown that had nothing at all to do with reality and privileged incredibly toxic ideals. Finally there was complexity, there were stakes, and there were people who had to truly want to be together enough to fight the world for it and not because they happened to be there. There were people actually talking out their problems and looking for resolutions. (And sometimes that resolutions was "I can't fucking deal with this bullshit anymore and I'm out.") For the first time it felt real.

I'm an aroace trans gay man. Nothing about relationships or being in relationships has come easy to me, and the whole paradigm of straight patriarchal romance depictions makes absolutely no sense to me. It's completely alien. Queer romance stories actually feel human.

And that's the tradition Good Omens is coming from, even as it's being retold in 2019-2023 and hopefully beyond. Gaiman's work has always been based in that queer media paradigm. (I've been remiss and daunted and haven't read Pratchett but from what I do know his work also seems to sit more in that world view.) It's a beautiful cinematic tradition and it's baffling to me that people would resist it instead of embracing it for being honest.

And that's when I turn into a crotchety old man complaining about the youth not connecting with the history of their beautiful culture and instead begging for assimilation into a shithole allocishet media landscape that doesn't actually want them except for their money and has nothing at all interesting or valuable to say. But it's very funny (annoying) to me when people claim Good Omens is someone against queer culture when it's so thoroughly bathed in the best of queer media's storytelling traditions and what people are asking for is straight media with the serial numbers filed off. Like, stop being boring please and know literally anything about the culture the adults in the room lived through and were influenced by. The world didn't begin in 2015.

EDIT: I also want to add that in straight media arcs are linear. Traditionally in queer media arcs are cyclical. Queer media very often depicts people going around in circles relearning the same lesson over and over as they inch towards it sinking in. But every time they go through the cycle they gain just a little bit more enlightenment and slowly move towards a better place. From the comments this is an immensely important distinction. People don't actually have cathartic moments where suddenly all their past bad programming is shed and they saunter forward a new person with none of their old baggage. In reality people fall into the same patterns over and over even though they have had every opportunity to learn better. "People magically get better" is a trope of straight media that's an outright and frankly dangerous lie. Again, Good Omens follows the queer tradition not the straight one and it's depicted 6,000 years of that cycle. The world didn't end, and the wheel keeps turning, as it always has and always will. That's so fundamental to queer storytelling traditions I forgot to even mention it.

[alma-artts]

Crowley witnessing the abuse aziraphale has to suffer in heaven (cus bodyswap yk) is destroying my brain just a little bit.

[kazoozie]

Ok if you're like me and you're procrastinating watching dead boy detectives, I'm here to prompt you to watch it. It's seriously so good, I can take any relationship between characters and yell about it for hours. There's an insane witch who talks about the stretchiness of teen girls skin. Literally every character is so interesting, even the side ones who are only there for one episode. At least three people are canonically in love with a repressed edwardian ghost boy, and they're correct. The boy who fights with basically only a cricket bat is also one of the sweetest characters ever. The woman who walks around with meat cleavers is the closest thing to adult supervision these kids have. You'll want to marry/be best friends with most of the characters and hit the others with your car.