#much like neilman himself...

[fagziraphale]

ineffable husbands is a bad ship name but it is funny to see people be upset by it bc "theyre not husbands theyre nonbinary" as if they don't use male-gendered terms for themselves all the time. why do you want to control what words nonbinary people are allowed to use so badly

[llycaons]

ep5 notes:

this is a fun episode and I like it

shax is funny

aziraphale learning french the human way is so charming honestly

nina commenting on az and crowley looking like a couple is so much more pleasant when it's not a joke meant to mock the idea of it with no intention of canonizing it

she knows there's no way he's into women lmao. nina is probably my favorite new character. she's got a great personality

the subs for this episode SUCK

YOU ROMANTIC

they act SO much more in love this season honestly when they're not adhering to the book plot and playing up the demon/angel enemy bit so much

is going to confess THIS episode?? 👀👀👀

I also love them!!! they're cute!!!

it's really cool that there are now ninbinary humans as well as otherworldly beings

this looks cool

oh I heard about this. really shitty that sex work was being censored in aziraphale's ball. MY aziraphale would never do that

I refuse to believe aziraphale is so naive as to not know what sex work is. book aziraphale wouldn't have done this and I don't even like him

aww so happy. he loves love

YESSS ITS REAL AND ACTUALLY UNDENIABLY ROMANTIC

honestly this is all I wanted

CROWLEY RULES-LAWYERING. it's so cool to see him being himself not constrained by hell's expectations. I was mad about some choices made in s1, but show crowley is my little skrunkly man

AND NOW THEY'RE ACTUALLY RECOGNIZING IN THE SHOW HE'S NONBINARY??? up until now he's been entirely indistinguishable from a cis man. well, may be a stretch to call this confirmation of him being canonically nonbinary, but fuck it if it's more than I expected

OH MY GOODDDDD

I don't want to give neilman too much credit because he's a piece of shit and I hate him, but I just think the difference in how many (not all) sensitive topics are handled is remarkable - it's not trying to ape the humor of a book written in 1989 anymore. s1 has some really jarring tonal shifts and fit awkwardly into a story set in the 2010s, and s2, as stupid as it's been, is kind of allowed to be it's own absurd thing

[abeautifulblog]

I have strong feelings about Hob Gadling and his girlfriend Peggy who is sometimes his boyfriend Jim

(aka, A Rundown On How Hob Is Also Canonically A Bit Queer Or At Least Queer-Adjacent)

So Hob is only in a handful of issues of The Sandman. His introductory issue, “Men of Good Fortune,” is basically identical to episode 6 of the show, with most of the dialogue lifted verbatim. (Including “It is a poor thing to enslave one’s fellow man.” That was not inserted for 2020s wokeness points, it’s been there all along.)

(The only change is that the comics were set contemporaneously, in the late eighties/early nineties, so Dream didn’t miss their 20th century appointment. But oh man that wound up working so well—because in the comics, they did still have that fight in 1889, but it hits so much harder then when Dream doesn’t show in 1989.)

Anyway, another Hob appearance is the issue “Hob’s Leviathan,” in which the viewpoint character is a cabin boy named Jim, born in 1899 who ran away to sea when he was thirteen, and a few years later finds himself assigned to be the erstwhile manservant for a passenger named Robert Gadling. Some random stuff happens—

(Including a part where a guy is expounding on HOW FICKLE WOMEN ARE, EH?, to which Hob is like, Mate—humans are fickle, and men tend to get more opportunities than women to misbehave.

Hob is Not Here for your misogynistic bullshit.)

—and then in the end it comes out that Jim used to be Peggy before they ran off to sea. It’s actually a scene that makes me wince a bit, because Mr. Neilman is a bonafide ally, but he is also occasionally very cishet and this was one of those times. Sir, trans people don’t find it cool or cute when someone casually reveals that they clocked them from the get-go, and then asks for their “real” name. >_<

But!

Aside from that hand-of-the-author faux pas, Hob is super chill with the whole gender thing. Like, he says to Jim, verbatim,

“You are not the first, nor even the fiftieth such person I have met.”

So yeah. Hob? Said trans rights in 1914.

~~

It’s often impossible to judge whether a particular historical person was a cis-but-opportunistic crossdresser, or what we today would consider trans, or genderqueer, or what. But that issue ends with Jim telling the story to a bunch of weird castaways after he’s been shipwrecked at the end of the world, and affirming that Jim is the name he wants to be called by, at least at that point. So clearly his gender choices are not entirely career-related.

(For lack of information on how Jim|Peggy self-identifies over the course of their life, I’m just going to use male pronouns when he’s Jim and female pronouns when she’s Peggy.)

~~

Because apparently she did go back to being Peggy at some point, and she and Hob met again and became romantically involved—though you only find this out in a comic set in the nineties, when he’s just buried yet another love (one that he’d had too briefly and lost too soon), saying that she was the first person he’d let himself love since Peggy.

(There is also allegedly an issue with Hob and Peggy in the London Blitz, but I have yet to track that one down, so I cannot speak to it. But if she died in the Blitz, that means he spent fifty years mourning her.)

~~

So there you have it! One of the great loves of Hob Gadling’s life was an AFAB person who was living/passing as male when he met them. Full stop. That’s canon. :)

I think that’s pretty fuckin’ cool, and I hope that fic writers setting their Hob stories in the 1930s/1940s will include Jim|Peggy, living their best genderqueer life, and make “Jim|Peggy (The Sandman)” a canonized character tag on AO3.

[alivehouse]

just wondering why you dislike Neil gaiman so much?? not trying to criticize or defend him, just curious

gghhhhh

(this is all just going to be based on good omens related stuff bc i havent really willingly interacted with any other work of his since i was like 12 he is not a great writer imo)

ok before i get into why specifically the way he uses his socials annoys me so much i just want to mention that good omens (tv show) has a serious problem with treating its characters of color poorly/as disposable (which this post goes into) and as far as i know neil has never so much as acknowledged this let alone apologize for it so theres that

but as for why i hate his social media presence specifically so much i just think the way he interacts with his fanbase is annoying & i dont want to use the term 'gaslighting' for something this stupid but i dont even know how else to describe his habit of like. pretending he wrote aziraphale and crowley in a relationship for the sake of clout?

^ he used to regularly regularly say condescending no homo shit like this but then when he realized he could get attention for pretending he wrote queer characters he pulled a 180 and started going 'ohhhh i DID write them in a relationship actually and also trans and also nonbinary i cant believe you didnt GET it just because its SUBTLE im sorry half assed vaguely subtextual scene #5 was not enough for you stupid fa- i mean people'

and he does this shit constantlyyyy and gets no flack for it. in fact a lot of his fanbase encourages it even bc were still stuck on begging for word of god scraps from rich straight men instead of engaging with work made by actual queer people i guess. (ALSO THIS TWEET SPECIFICALLY IS REALLY FUNNY bc like a month later he lied about there being a secret handholding scene in the show to send people on a wild goose chase zooming in on shit trying to find anything just to give him more streams i guess i dont know i think it was a stupid thing to even fall for honestly but it still strikes me as kind of cruel)

i mentioned this in tags before & idk if he still does this but he used to go look up his own name on here to find people talking negatively about him so he could reblog it and get them dogpiled which is why you see people talking negatively about him calling him 'neilman' so much instead of his actual searchable name. literal full grown man picking fights with random people on here bc he knows hell win since hes a famous author and will get backed up no matter what

and ok this is edging into fandom circlejerking (i think hes only said this one a few times but his fanbase brings it up constantly to shield him from any criticisms) so i wont go into this as much as i could but theres this Thing hell do where he says they cant be gay bc they technically arent men bc they arent humans (based on a bit in the book where they feel the need to specify that aziraphale is NOT ACTUALLY GAY after continuously subjecting him to homophobic language/aggression) and people will bend over backwards trying to interpret this as meaning they are canon nonbinary and Epic Trans Rep and hell vaguely encourage this instead of like acknowledging the extended man-in-a-dress evil nanny bit in the show and pointing out that it was fucked up? & honestly the whole undertone of that is like 'this character might go out of their way to look like and dress like and act like and refer to himself as a man but he cant REALLY be a man because he wasnt Created That Way' like how the fuck am i supposed to be treating this as a trans positive read of the situation lmao. not to mention the 'inhuman = nonbinary,' 'nonbinary = CANT be gay!!! there are no gay nonbinary people i guess' legwork going on here going on here i dont know its a whole mess

PLUS i just think its funny that hes said making characters gay would be disrespectful to his deceased cowriter but pulling an entire second out of his ass for that sweet amazon money apparently isnt lmao

and to finish this off just for fun heres him at the start of the pandemic when there was a crazy high rising death toll making it about his fucking book, + him answering another ask in response to that AFTER he had deleted the original post, to make the person asking him look like they were attacking him for no reason:

[everysongineverykey]

sooooo... my problem with all the gomens discourse, which i feel is relevant again in light of the news of the second season, is that everyone seems to be getting a bit mixed up with the difference between aphobia and basic representation.

i keep seeing all these posts that make the same point: that crowley and aziraphale don’t kiss or fuck in the series because they don’t need to in order for it to be a relationship, and that people insisting on that are aphobic. and i agree that physical intimacy/affection is not at all a requirement for a relationship, but… that’s not really the point here. neil gaiman himself has stated that he’s left their relationship “open to interpretation”, which means that canonically, they’re not romantically involved, or in a qpr, or anything like that. the open to interpretation answer is not queer representation in roughly the same way that podcasts having “aracial” characters is not proper representation for poc- they both leave the marginalized group in question to make their own representation out of the material, essentially left to pick out subtext from scraps. crowley and aziraphale don’t have to kiss or fuck, sure, but like… they should at least actually say that they love each other that way, in order to make it impossible for homophobes to ignore. because people keep saying “well, i saw very clearly that they loved each other and that they both knew that!” and… yeah, you saw that. because you chose to interpret it that way. but the fact remains that everything in the show can still very, very much be seen as purely platonic, and that’s not really proper representation- it’s just plausible deniability. this way, neilman can still make money off of both queer people and homophobes, both groups having enough evidence to support their own worldviews.

is good omens queerbaiting? that’s an entirely different argument. it’s complicated. i personally don’t think so, just because i don’t think it was born out of a deliberate attempt to get queer people’s money, but it’s somewhat of a grey area. but is good omens proper representation of any kind? no.

[yanyanderederechan]

How they kill

Warning- this contains delusional and obsessive yandere’s, so gore ahead + gender unspecified.

Kaya Sakrura

Kaya doesn’t leave the house much so when she does and she sees you with someone else she has a relapse

if anyone knows kaya its more than likely through shady means

shes your classic internet stalker 

so you best believe that when she sees you with someone else that shes already digging through all and any social media accounts you have to find out who this person is

And once she does she will make it seem as though they never existed

James Williams

Sloppy killer

Very messy blood everywhere

Lost the knife somehow

Nope it was hiding under his thigh out of his line of sight

Would use a gun if he owned one

Prefers to kill for himself rather than have someone else do it

He thinks it’s a lot more intimate that why

It also allows him to take out any emotion on the body

Calls his old friend from high school to clean up his mess

He knows kaya’s not too happy about it

Asks her to teach him how to clean up his own mess

She denies his request and doesn’t explain why

Marcus Anderson

The strength of this man

Not only can he get his victim alone with looks and charm

But he strangles them and they’re okay with it minus the slight struggling

Like tf

How does that work

He normally just dumps the body when ever he can

And when he can’t, he more than likely tossed them into his storage unit

Vrisk Taylor

It was an accident

Okay at first it was an accident

Everything from drugging to faking suicides

Shes done it

Anything to make her look innocent

After all, it was an accident

What could she have done to possibly cause it

Travis Neilman

He doesn’t pay rent

Or bills

Or dive

So what makes you think he’s gonna kill for you

He’d have someone else do it

Because to him, everything is just a phone call away

Which is why kaya just flat out ignores him sometimes

[kadywicker]

💕

tell us about one of your favorite characters and why you like them! cROWLEY...... BABY..... i know everyone loves crowley this isn’t new but FUCK i love crowley guys. he’s so. clenches fist. i like him bc he’s not afraid to argue w things he thinks are wrong. he asks questions. he demands answers from higher authorities. he has his own set of morals and he follows them with conviction! he’s also so devoted and caring and Good like i kno maybe we aren’t supposed to take that away (it’s obvious that neilman still thinks of him as the Cool Suave Demon and maybe crowley thinks of himself that way too) but it’s There and i love him for it. he also loves aziraphale so much like???? holy shit??? he never once tries to push him too far and he’s always willing to step back and give him space even when it’s been 6000 years and he’s given him all the space anyone could possibly ask for. but at the same time he still values other things as well like humanity and the earth. i also love, on the more surface level, his rambling and his stupid walk and the fact that hes trying SO hard to be cool but he’s just incredibly dorky like. love that for him. 

media hyperfixation asks! (for good omens or doctor who)

[anthonycrowleymoved]

(1) Anyway this is a weird ask but this post I saw has been haunting me and I have no one to talk to about it. The post in question was talking about A/C's possible queer Identities which cool,, very good!, i want more! but at the bottom it made sure to specify that Azira and Crowley could N O T ever be Straight or Gay and that they were gay but not Gay gay...The cherry on top of course being that Neilman himself liked this post.

(2) What...what is the message behind this? That being gay holds the same social status and weight as being straight? That being gay isn't a queer enough identity ? i dont even know where to b e g i n with Gaiman liking this. like i get the post was meant to be a rallying point for diverse queer/lgbt interpretations (which is why i was reading it since im I'm bi & ace) ... but uh do they have to be homophobic to accomplish that. I hope I misunderstood something they were saying because oof

okay yeah i saw that post and. look. i’m trying not to complain about neil as much. but. on twitter a while back (soon after the show dropped please don’t make me look for it) someone asked him if they were gay and he responded with this kinda weird answer where he was basically like ‘no because they don’t understand the human concept of being gay’ and then someone asked ‘but are they in love’ and he was like ‘yes.’ and there’s. a lot to unpack there. not even getting into the fact that he didn’t. have to answer that question at all because he gets a ton of messages every day. i could get into the fact that aziraphale and crowley not understanding what being gay is is hilarious because the entire point of the narrative is that they’ve ‘gone native.’ but i guess. that tweet i think is what op was referring to. and that’s. fine. but. look. i’ve said my opinion on this like, reverse nuqueerbaiting thing gomens has going on where it’s ‘got representation’ but only if you look at outside sources. and. look. i headcanon them as gay and ‘making the effort’ no matter what neil says. i just do. i have for a while. i would never say anything bad about people who have other opinions. it’s our book collectively. and it IS cool that even neil at this point is like ‘well they aren’t straight’ and i subscribe to ‘death of the author except when i like what you’re saying’ so like. it’s fine. but i hate that he’s still like ‘well they still aren’t gay so meh’ and i feel like that post is kind of. representative of the problem. like. i know this is kind of rambly but. anyway. i don’t LOVE that post is what i’m getting at

[arofili]

Just curious what your point is then, (in that post about Good Omens rep) that you think the person who replied was missing? Because my own "no, not like that!" about the supposed lgbtq rep in Good Omens is precisely what I think they were getting at too: none of it is truly explicit, and i see no proof of intent in crafting it from Gaiman or anyone else officially creating for the show, and Gaiman himself sees it as just one way to interpret the text.

hey! thanks for being polite :) i may not have been as clear as i thought i was, lol.

from what i’ve seen there’s been no shying away from the “homoerotic” (for lack of a better term) tension between C&A, not from the actors or from neilman? i have seen gifs of tennant and sheen talking about C&A as a couple (i may be misremembering! but that was the impression i got) and neilman’s affirmation of queer interpretations since before the tv show was in the making is proof of intent to me, at least.

(side note: whatever sheen and tennant were acting, i don’t think that in and of itself is makes the rep canon...it’s about as canon as the hobbit fandom seems to think bagginshield is, lmao, which is to say “better than nothing but still not much”)

i’m not super plugged in to twitter, but neilman’s acceptance of everyone’s interpretations to me says: “yes, i am fully aware this reads as very queer; we may not have intended that when writing the book but we knew about it coming into the show and deliberately included it; however it would be inappropriate to claim that we planned this when writing the book and want to remain faithful to that aspect.”

Basically, he is doing the inverse of a JKR: not claiming retconned representation but actively encouraging queer interpretations. that doesn’t mean he’s going to dunk on people who see them as straight (though interpreting them as straight is...Beyond Me) because he’s not, idk, an Asshole,

i think neilman patting himself on the back in his responses to thanks from queer viewers is...egregious, tbh. but the backlash i’m seeing, claiming C&A as queerbaiting and neilman as homophobic, is fucking Always in response to him endorsing an a-spectrum reading of C&A’s relationship. some folks just Dont Want Aces And Aros To Have Nice Things!

looking at their relationship, i cannot say it is anything other than queer. the specifics of that queerness are left up to interpretation, but it is so fucking queer. and yes! explicit queer rep is good and important! but queer vagueness can be good representation too. that’s what i think this is, queer vagueness, not queerbaiting.

i find comfort in vague queerness, and queercoding too to some extent. as an aromantic asexual nonbinary person, the odds of me getting something to represent me in all those areas is Extremely Unlikely, so instead i cling to “vague” representation and implications.

it’s rare that i see queer vagueness done intentionally like it is in Good Omens; usually i end up projecting onto characters like Legolas or Luke Skywalker &etc that are also easily interpreted as gay but not written that way on purpose. (which is another tangential subject i have a Lot of opinions on, but let’s stay in our lane why don’t we)

i think we’ve focused so much on explicit queer rep (which again! is a good thing!) that we ignored characters and relationships that fall into gray spaces that are still very much nonnormative. those are good too, those are wide-reaching and provide ground for transformative works, those are also wonderful places for questioning people to experiment.

representation shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. we should have lots of options. i see now, after writing this mini essay, that i jumped into that post with the idea that it was obvious that there’s more to representation than labels, but it isn’t obvious, and i hope my explanation makes sense.

also: there is ample canon evidence (within the book) for queerness on the part of C&A. aziraphale intentionally presents in a way that aligns himself with the gay community; angels and demons don’t have sex or gender unless they are really trying; the lack of sexual feelings is apparent and imo if you’re going to interpret their relationship as romantic (which is cool, even if it’s not my personal headcanon) you have to acknowledge that this is the only time either of them have had this experience (making them arospec)

ignoring all those things and getting mad about them not kissing is reductive of the queer experience. not every kind of queer is gay. nonbinary, ace, and arospec representation is queer representation. and there is more to any queer identity than just kissing; queer is identity and rebellion and community and self-expression and refusing to fit into the norm, all things that both crowley and aziraphale represent and embody. that in itself is (vague) queer representation, outside of their relationship.

i’ve written too many words and need to focus on the actual essay i have to turn in for class tomorrow, but i hope this makes sense!

[thenightling]

I know I said I wouldn’t post on this anymore but I don’t like being falsely accused of lying.

Someone told me this was said.  “Show me evidence where I said I block Neil Gaiman.”

Well, Xe’s friend, Impy, had claimed xe had “Blocked Neilman too” when I said the reason I didn’t want to delete those posts was because one was liked by Neil Gaiman and they aren’t sexual shipping posts anyway. They’re about intellectual / emotional connection.

I don’t know how to make this simpler since they seem to have so much trouble following how I word things. 

When I said the post about Morpheus and Daniel that xe wanted me to delete (which is NOT a sexual post at all, by the way) was liked by Neil Gaiman, himself, as being accurate to the intended interpretation of the characters of Morpheus and Daniel (which was pretty much affirmed by the Q and A in the Sandman: Overture deluxe edition) I was told by Xe’s impy friend “Oh, xe has Neilman blocked too.” (apparently for “being a homophobe.”)  I can get screen grabs if you want.   You can find it in the notes where they first said you told them I “ship a three-year-old with an old man.”  Backpaddling much? 

It started in the notes here.

https://thenightling.tumblr.com/post/189897662798/the-bullshit-i-had-to-deal-with-on-tumblr-tonight

And then the conversation moved to private message but retrieving those requires taking you lot off block and I really don’t want to.

The very person who informed me xe was telling people I ship a three-year-old (who actually is THIRTY with eight billion years of memories and knowledge and looks like a twenty-nine-year-old!!!) with an old man (another version of himself and physically in his thirties...) also said xe “blocked Neilman too.”    They had said this when I said the reason I didn’t want to delete my Morpheus and Daniel posts is because the main one had been liked by Neil Gaiman.  The characters’ creator... 

Xe’s “impy” friend is who said they blocked Neil Gaiman too, and I can provide screengrab proof if you want it. 

Note: This DOES explain why that friend ordered me to stop showing what they were saying to me if they were out-right lying and or trying to feed the flames of hate with false information for some weird sport.

Now finally what part of leave me alone are you not getting?

“I want to report them for harassment.”

   You’re the one posting about me.  It’s not just “venting” that you are doing.  Everything I have posted has been in defense of myself.  That’s not harassment, that’s defense against slander, something we are obligated to do when people lie about us.  

[antibioware]

it feels like any time someone comes up with a possible interpretation of a/c's relationship that makes neilman /not/ come out as a homophobe he immediately latches on like yes that was what i intended, brilliant interpretation

I agree! Every screenshot that is people telling him he's right he immediately jumps at the gun with "yes! that was my objective writing that! obviously!!" to the point in which I've seen him agree to completely contradicting stuff in different replies to twits. He's grasping at every occasion to get praised for something he very much did not write intentionally (because he wrote intentional gaybait-y subtext, you can't circle around that) to protect himself from criticism

[xueyangapologist]

i like neilman a lot and i love his work and you don’t need me to tell you that he’s a culture-making icon and i think he’s a lovely guy and he’s been responding to everyone who says the show means a lot to them with thanks and love regardless of their take on it, because he wants to acknowledge the support for a show that was a big labour of love and something he did for terry as much as himself (as well as promote it). i also have no proof of this but i know in my soul he’s never seen the word “queerplatonic” before in his life. i’m worried that some mob mentality nastiness is growing against him, which on one hand is kind of the risk you run being a public figure and i’m sure he’s aware of that, on the other hand if this becomes a big ugly thing it’s going to be annoying and embarrassing for everyone, so let’s. try not to do that. that all being said i think putting your foot down on your characters being read as gay because they’re technically not human is not only a very limp take but a strange hill to die on. i think there is internalised homophobia behind this, the kind that straight people mostly have zero idea they’re exhibiting because society is unfortunately just Like That. this has already been dissected to death so i have nothing to add except that like everyone on this melting planet neilman is just Doing His Best. but the core issue under all this bullshit is that the show absolutely undoubtedly queercoded the hell out of its characters, far more than the book did. so everyone has the right to read them as gay, and also to ask why the fuck we’re still playing this game in 2019. but let’s not blame my guy for the ace discourse, there’s nothing more out of his hands than THAT.

[good-omens-classic]

Some thoughts on the notes and comments on this post

pinkestpigglet

This is a really intresting take. I think I personally prefer the right to be weird theme as an asexual neurodivergent person who's constantly being told she makes the groups she belongs to look bad. And like, I'm not allowed to join the military. For a very stupid reason. I don't want to join the military but like chose non violence doesn't apply to me when Id have to fight for the right to chose violence.

This makes a lot of sense! I think this illustrates perfectly why the differences in themes might make one version or the other appeal to different groups. Casual readers/viewers probably will not care about this, but. Well. We aren't on tumblr because we're casual about it.

botanycrewmember

#kudos to op for pushing back against the reading of aziraphale and crowley being 'quirky' instead of downright rebels

#also a huge part of the original work is the constant reference to the cold war

#a&c's rendezvous is constantly being compared to ussr agents meeting with nato agents

#the novel is outright mocking the rigid definitions of Good and Evil

#and A&C are fighting to stop innocent people becoming collateral in a cosmic arms race

#good omens

#uncle terry i miss you neilman is pulling out the teeth you put into your book

I think this is actually a really relevant point to bring up, because Neil Gaiman himself has said in the past that the novel was in 1990 and satire of the cold war, whereas the TV show in 2019, nearly 30 years later, is about much different anxieties. He said that the changes were to make it more about modern concerns about things like large corporations and bureaucracies. This isn't necessarily wrong, but it is different.

This is something that Neil Gaiman seems to like playing with in fiction, the idea of updating things for "modern times." This was a huge theme in American Gods, and it makes a lot of sense how the horsepersons were written in the book when you know Neil Gaiman wrote most of their scenes while Terry Pratchett wrote most of the Aziraphale and Crowley scenes.

This is pretty creative, but I...personally don't really like it that much, because it feels dismissive. I talked about that in this post a while back. (It feels extremely relevant because, for example, Neil Gaiman dismissed Pestilence as not really a big issue anymore...just before the COVID19 pandemic.)

I personally wouldn't say Neil "pulled the teeth" out of the story, although it definitely doesn't bite the same way it did on the topics in the book, it does bite on some new ones (Which I personally am not interested in, hence why the TV show doesn't really do it for me)

These tags from @blursed-disco from the other post about God being a woman are also relevant here

#tbh my main beef with tv!omens is how it waters down any political message the original held

#and making it into an individualistic narrative where god is just RANDOMLY a woman with no repercussions

#and aziraphale and crowley are just RANDOMLY the only supernatural beings capable of thinking creatively or forming attachment

I think you have a very good point about the adaptation shifting into a more individualistic narrative. The book felt very much like setting up a force for change for everyone, where Aziraphale and Crowley are just the first ones brave enough to speak up about how things aren't right, whereas the TV show makes it seem like they're literally the only ones capable of thinking this way.

The scene in the TV show where Crowley offers to run away to the stars with Aziraphale. Oh my lord do I have mixed feelings about that. I gasped when he said that. It's cute. It's sappy. It's heartbreaking. It's poignant. It's so out of character.

Crowley loves the earth. Aziraphale loves the earth. They love sushi and old books and old cars and humans being weird and good and bad and wonderful and horrible all at once. I've talked about this before, but acting like Crowley would be happy in space as long as Aziraphale was there is doing a disservice to the deeply loving and humanist nature of the themes in the original work. This is one thing I'm not gonna say is just my personal preference/appeals to people differently, because objectively Good Omens is about loving and celebrating the earth and humanity. It's going in my basket with "Crowley should have revived the dove" as things that fundamentally change what the story is about.

The TV show does feel a lot more individualistic. Which, as we saw in the first point by someone who prefers the new version, isn't necessarily bad, it's just a different story. Terry Pratchett, from my experience, is much more into writing stories like the book, whereas Neil Gaiman is more into writing stories like the TV series.

I saw a post a while back (which I'm not going to find and reblog because I don't want that OP to feel like I'm being unnecessarily argumentative or critical of their post) that said Good Omens (TV version) is about Crowley and Aziraphale fighting for the right to be harmlessly weird, and that's why it resonates with autistic people a lot

I think this is an analysis of the TV show that has a lot of merit, but I think it also illustrates how the miniseries adaptation very subtly changed the main themes of the original work

In my opinion, and the reason why I gravitated towards the original story, the book's main theme isn't about being "harmlessly weird," but rather choosing love, kindness, and humanity when violence and hostility is expected of you.

This is why the TV show being sort of a workplace or office resonates less with me. GOmens to me has been about soldiers defying orders, not office workers defying to make water cooler talk because their co-workers aren't understanding.

However it's not like the latter isn't a story worth telling and there's a lot of overlap because both are about rejecting conformity and the status quo

However I would quibble that challenge the status quo is not "harmless" and often causes trouble for the people in power.

To me the point of the story is "the people in power need to have trouble caused for them," rather than "we're not causing trouble for you, leave us alone."

I think this is probably, once again, because Terry was there for the book but not the miniseries. He has a way of writing rage-against-the-machine-by-choosing-kindness-and-understanding characters that I don't see in Neil's writing.

For me personally I liked the book but lost interest in the TV show because I grew up in a culture that expected me to honor violence and engage with everyone else with suspicion and not be weak and trusting. And unlearning that to understand other people, learn how to choose kindness and reject the idea that we have to fight took a lot to unlearn that brainwashing.

I hope people gravitating towards the TV show are having their own journeys with it ☺️

[consultingfujoshi]

ok serious time: the reason why "neilman" is primarily used by ppl that don't like him is because that was our nickname for him before the good omens show existed and more often than not the fans that were here before it blew up are the ones who are fully aware of how shitty neil is. neil has been extremely successful in marketing himself as a good ally who's super woke and wrote a gay love story (but not really because they're not gay) since the show released by quickly changing his tone regarding his attitude towards ineffable husbands fans, so fans who got into good omens as a result of the show tend to be the ones who are not as well versed in his terrible transphobic history and didn't live through the years of him denying that aziraphale and crowley were romantically involved while also being really rude to the people who asked him about it, and are much more willing to take his performative allyship at face value. that's the correlation between the nickname and its usage by anti-neil good omens fans,

not because it's a fucking slur we invented to oppress him with holy shit

PSA:  “Neilman” is not some cute Internet short-hand for fans of Neil Gaiman to use (At least not on Tumblr...)

To my fellow Neil Gaiman fans, I do not think this “Neilman” thing should be considered a good thing.

I ask you to look on the Tumblr search for what comes up when you search “Neilman.”

“Assigned not gay by Neilman”  and “Neilman, They’re gay!”

It’s a Nickname recently popularized by people who think Neil Gaiman is anti-Gay (he’s winner of GLAAD awards and has several LGBT+ characters but based on recent Google searches of “Neil Gaiman, gay” anyone can mistakenly think he’s somehow more homophobic than Hitler. Simply based on some of the rants being posted against him…)

“Neilman” is NOT a pro-Neil Gaiman nickname, at least not here on Tumblr.  It’s not something that was even remotely in common use before Good Omens the mini-series, and it only started to spread when kids who don’t know any better decided he must be homophobic for not using the term “Gay” for Crowley and Aziraphale.  

If you doubt me, just look on the Tumblr search.

Neilman is NOT being used as a cute / positive nickname, especially on this site…  There’s a reason it specifically cuts out the “gay” from his name.  

Look at this conversation.  The removed image was a picture of a character holding a gun and demanding Neil Gaiman give up the “Gay” from his name or else.

https://thenightling.tumblr.com/post/185498543228/i-still-cant-believe-a-homophobe-has-the-last-name

And yet another conversation where I tried to defend Neil Gaiman…  https://thenightling.tumblr.com/post/186082381428/sandman-is-one-of-the-most-homophobic-and

I don’t know if you missed it, but there was a long rant circulating a few weeks ago from some kids here on Tumblr about why Neil doesn’t deserve the “Gai” in his name “because he’s anti-Gay so we’re taking it from his name!  He doesn’t deserve the ‘Gai’ in his name!”  I replied to it with a list of all of his LGBT+ characters I could think of and it was a long list.  I doubt I even remembered all of them. only for me to get DMs telling me that Wanda is “Transmisogynist” and “Did you just google Gay Neil Gaiman characters?   Because if you really read Sandman you’d know how problematic it is.”   (My Tumblr avatar is Morpheus free falling / flying with style from Sandman: Overture…)   

Neilman was not a popular shorthand until it started to get used by the anti-Neil Gaiman people here on Tumblr who decided he must be homophobic, ignoring that he doesn’t even consider the apparently-hetero angel relationships in Good Omens straight either. (Context is your friend.)

Why am I posting this?  Because this morning I just saw a non-negative Neil Gaiman post, for the first time ever, use the “Neilman nickname” and the people sharing it seem to think it’s a cute and common pet name that was always in use.

No.  No, it really wasn’t… At least not the way this site has been using it…  For all the popularity Good Omens had received there has been an unpleasant surge of Neil hate, and Sandman bashing.   And I’m two-years into a Sandman obsession that isn’t dying any time soon.  

They don’t realize that for over three weeks now “Neilman” is the chosen anti-Neil / “Neil is homophobic” tag.   And what you get when you search it on Tumblr isn’t all that nice…