#AND it was written by neil gaiman.

[rayghosts]

imagine youre a teenager and one day you decide to steal a car because it looks fast and sleek and you want to travel on the road. so you go on a trip in your stolen car and you love it so much that you dedicate your life to the road. you spend your years travelling, visiting new places and picking up hitchhikers, all in the same car you stole, which at this point has become old and run down and needs refurbishing every now and then, but you never replace it because you live in this car now and it's your home. at one point your actual house was demolished and your family members are dead. the people you've hooked up with in your car have broken up with you and gone away. youve changed many times as a person, but your shitty car has stayed the same, the one constant in your hectic life. it's the last one of its model after they stopped manifacturing it: that's how old it is. then one day, your car suddenly breaks down in the middle of the road. you go out to get help and find a lady who weirdly knows all about you. she knows all the places youve been to and the people youve gone there with. as you talk with her more, you begin to realize that, somehow, the soul of your car—the one that's sitting broken outside—has transferred into the body of a human woman. your car is alive and now speaking to you, and she remembers all the moments you two have spent together, every word youve told her when you thought you were alone, every desire and complaint youve expressed to her in the middle of the night. your car is speaking to you, and she tells you that however much you love her, she loves you equally back. that you never really stole her all those years ago because she wanted to travel with you, and she wouldn't change you for anyone else in the world. you speak with your living human car, and you realize that, hey, she's kind of funny actually, and you might be a little bit in love with her, and she might be a little bit in love with you. but the desert you're stuck in is also sentient and evil, so your human car dies in your arms in order for her soul to transfer back into the machine and drive you away. so now you're back on the road with your car the same as always, except now you know she's sentient and maybe has feelings for you, so you sometimes let go of the wheel and let her take you wherever she wants. that's what happened between the doctor and the tardis in that one episode

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously :) (you can watch it here in US or with US vpn :) <;3) (or just this bit on youtube here :))

Terry Pratchett: One day he rang me up and said, "I've started a book and, I think it's good, but I haven't the faintest idea where it goes." So, I said, "All right, well, send me the pages." And I read it and wrote him back and said, "I don't know where it goes either, but I do know what happens next."

Neil Gaiman: I was pretty much nocturnal then, so I would write my chunk of Good Omens before I went to bed, and I'd go to sleep about five o'clock in the morning and I'd get up about one o'clock in the afternoon and my answering machine would be flashing on, and I'd press the button and a voice would say, "Get up, get up you lazy bastard, I've just written a good bit."

Terry Pratchett: We did it as a kind of holiday, because if it crashed and burned, nobody would notice.

[orchidsarchives]

I am kinda curious

What would Jason be like if the coffee Cafe owner!reader built in a small library in her Cafe just for him,like she saw he liked reading and went like 'yup. I am building a small library for him'

This is such a fun idea, but omg please forgive me, I went a little overboard. Once I figured out what to write, I couldn’t stop. I apologize for how long it is. But omg also, I was literally kicking my feet and giggling writing the end lol, Anyways enjoy!

Owning a cafe was a difficult job, there was always much to do— customers to attend to, drinks to make, and maintenance to do. You were always busy, but you loved your job.

You had spent a lot of time curating the perfect atmosphere for your beloved customers. The lighting was warm, with fairy lights and lanterns dangling from the ceiling. There was wooden furniture and two old couches that sat by the glass windows. The tiny space smelled of freshly brewed coffee and sweet bread. The cafe was always inviting. 

You had many regulars at the coffee shop, each one with their own story, a different purpose.

For the past six months, twice a week, every Thursday and Saturday morning, a tall man walked in. Jason, you recalled his name from the many times you prepared his drinks. He’d order the same thing every time, a small London fog and a walnut banana bread.

He’d sit at the table nearest to the entrance, his back never towards the door.

Every morning, he’d come in with a new book. You had seen him read Franz Kafka, Oscar Wilde and Jane Austen; he’d read a lot of Austen.

He was a mystery and you wanted to know more. 

You found Jason quite handsome. His skin was scattered with scars and you often found yourself staring at the permanent wound near his lips. You wanted to run your fingers along it, to trace it, to kiss it. 

His eyes were always kind, a deep shade of green, forest-like you’d think to yourself. 

He spoke with kindness. His voice velvety and rich, much like the espresso you’d brew everyday, except his voice was never bitter, almost always doused with honey. 

Sometimes you’d catch him looking over at the counter, at you, you’d hoped. 

Your coworkers were afraid of him, telling you to stay away, but you couldn’t help yourself. He was like an enticing book, waiting to be read. They’d warn you, “do not engage in too much conversation with the strange man.” But it was as if they were talking to a small child, their words would go in one ear and out the other.

“Strange,” you would never use that word to describe him.

From the small talk you had with him, to his choice in books, to even his taste in tea, you’d never describe him as strange.

Gentle was the word you’d choose.

He was huge, all height and muscle, terrifying to most, however to you, he was everything but that. You saw an angel and you didn’t even know him… yet, you’d tell yourself.

There were days, where you almost gained the courage to ask for his number, maybe ask for small detail, perhaps get a glimpse of his life. But each attempt was futile. Why was it so hard to speak to him for more than five minutes, you’d curse your inability to speak to attractive men.

-

You were beginning to give up on your dreams of getting to know the beautiful stranger, when he walked in through door.

The conversation began as per usual.

“Morning Jason, what can I grab you today,” you asked politely. He smiled softly in return and you stare at the scar by his lip as he begins to speak.

“Uhh surprise me,” you look at him confused, he’s never done that before and he finds himself smiling harder. “Just kidding, I’ll just the take the usual please,” he says as he places his copy of Jane Eyre on the counter to take out his wallet.

“Brontë, why am I not surprised,” you reply, gazing at the book. You take the cash from his hands and your heart drops. Shades of purple and crimson coat his skin. They’re bruised, again.

“What can I say, I’m a man of taste,” he smirks. You roll your eyes and giggle.

“Now who told you that,” and he shrugs. Then there’s a lull, you don’t know what to say now. It isn’t awkward, but you find yourself starting feeling a little uneasy. God, if you only you could come up with something else to say. You shake your head slightly and begin to warm up his banana bread.

You turn around and wait for him to leave, but he doesn’t walk away to his usual table this time, instead he takes a seat next to the counter. Odd, you thought.

Jason’s gaze doesn’t leave you for a second, he watches you in admiration, you don’t quite catch on.

If you thought Jason was handsome, then he thought you belonged in a museum. You were a work of art in his eyes. The kind of beauty they wrote poetry about. Absolutely stunning.

He wanted to get to know you, speak to you, but he was afraid. If you didn’t reciprocate his feelings, then he may never be able to see you again. The trips to the cafe would no longer be necessary and he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

However today, Jason pushes his fears aside, he feels bold. He finds his confidence and he speaks.

“Do you read much,” he asks suddenly. You place his cup of tea and bread in front of him, and nod your head.

“I do, but not what you read,” you reply and he stares into your eyes, curious. “I mostly read magazines, you know Vogue and stuff,” his smile drops a little, he’s trying really hard to not look judgemental. Cute, you think. “Kidding, I read fantasy mostly,” and his face lights up again.

“So like J.K. Rowling,” he questions.

“No, Harry Potter’s good, but I’m not really a fan of her, you know as a person. I’ve been reading a lot Neil Gaiman recently though,” you say.

“Oh fuck, yeah, she’s said some pretty crazy stuff huh,” and you nod again. “Gaiman though, I don’t think I’ve ever read his stuff before, he any good,” he asks and your eyes go wide, you’re excited.

You spend the next hour of his visit speaking to him about books, about the things that you both like.

You only part from the conversation when there was a customer.

You’ve never felt this way before, all the assumptions you made about him were true. He was an angel, a kind and gentle one.

-

A month goes by and you notice your relationship with Jason change. Now, instead of sitting by the entrance of the cafe, he sits near you, back against the door. A sign of trust, you assumed. He smiled more, he showed his teeth and he laughed, hard. You loved the sound of his laugh. His eyes looked brighter, greener, emerald-like. He still walked in with a new book, but when the conversation began, it was long forgotten.

You watched his bruises heal and you watched new ones appear, you were always curious, but never had the courage to ask. He’d tell you when he was ready.

As time went by, you found yourself wanting to do something for him, you wanted him to know that you cared. You thought that if your words were going to fail you, then maybe your actions would prove otherwise.

-

Working a closing shift at the cafe on a gloomy Tuesday evening, you find yourself thinking of different gestures you could do.

Ideas came and left, nothing felt good enough. He deserved the best. Trying to busy your mind elsewhere, you begin to sweep the floors and that’s when inspiration hits you.

There, in the coffee shop, lies an empty corner. An odd spot, not necessarily small, but also not large enough either.

A perfect fit for a decently sized bookshelf. A library, for the community, but most importantly for Jason. You smile to yourself, proud at the thought. He’d love this, you knew he would.

The next morning you find yourself drilling holes into the pale walls of the cafe, trying attach the large shelf you lugged down to the shop.

Once everything was fixed into its rightful place, you begin adding the books, by genre and then by the authors’ last names. You add many of Jason’s favourites, multiple copies of Austen. You add children’s books, comics and something for yourself.

The shelf fits right into the ambiance of the cafe, elevating it honestly. The corner looked cosy and you found yourself wanting to sit by one of the couches with a book and a cup of hot chocolate.

You stare at the shelf once more, proud. Now, you just had to wait.

-

Jason walks into the cafe the next day, he’s late. He arrives near closing time. It’s just you and him in the cafe, most of your staff left for the day and not many people stayed this late. It’s quiet, the only sound coming from the machines on your side of the counter. He’s holding another book in his hand, but he has no intention of reading tonight.

His hair is slicked back, and there’s a small cut on his forehead. He’s dressed in a white dress shirt and black pants. He looks like he’s coming back from a big event or maybe he’s going to one later. Either way, he looks pretty like this, his arms look more defined and you can make out the muscles on his back when he walks around the room, waiting for his drink.

His eyes wander around the cafe before settling on the bookshelf nestled in the odd corner. His eyes soften, he’s never noticed that before, it must be new, he thinks.

“When’d you get this,” he asks, his fingers running along the spines of the books. He’s smiling, there’s so many books.

“Yesterday, it’s for you,” you say, holding your breath. This is it, the moment you’ve been preparing for.

“For me,” he looks over at you as you settle his tea on the counter. You begin walking over to his side, slowly, riddled with nerves.

“Yes, since you’re always here, I thought you’d like having a book shelf here. It’s like a library, you take a book and then you-“ he cuts you off suddenly.

“You made a library for me in your cafe, are you serious,” he’s trying to hold back a smile, you can tell. His scar gets more prominent when he does that. “Why,” he as asks, his voice is soft, it feels like warm milk with honey, comforting.

“You’re gonna make me say it,” you can’t see your face, but it feels hot, you can tell you’re blushing.

“Yeah, say it. Why is there a library in your cafe for me,” he says, enunciating the words “your” and “for me.” He’s smirking now. He knows the answer, he just wants to hear it from you.

The point of the library was to not have to say anything, for your actions to speak for you, but here you are. Ears burning and palms clammy.

“I…,” you trail off, you look around the room, anywhere but his face. He notices and walks closer, his hands gently make their way around your waist.

“Say it,” he exclaims, it’s not forceful, he’s smiling and shades of pink dust his cheeks.

You close your eyes shut, fuck, you’re going to have to say it.

“I really like you jas-,” and with that, his lips find their way to your own. You move in harmony, much like matcha and oat milk. His lips are sweet, he tastes like the banana bread, he decided to eat while pacing around the cafe. Your hands find their way to his shoulders, you pull back and smile. You peck his lips. Once where the scar is and once more on the centre. He grins.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear that from you,” he mumbles against your lips, waiting for you to kiss him again.

And you do, you kiss him again and again.

[taurielofmirkwood77777]

I have Crowley as my phone background (as one has) and someone standing near me noticed and asked me who that is. And after about two minutes of me explaining Crowley, the conversation went like this:

Person: "That sounds like a man written by a woman."

Me: "He isn't."

Person: "Really? I can't imagine him being written by a man."

Me: "Well, plot twist. He is written by two men."

Person: *error 404 brain not found*

[recoord]

Why Good Omens season 1 has already fulfilled Sir Terry Pratchett's wish

Why S2 and S3 are disrespectful to Sir Terry Pratchett's last wish.

Neil Gaiman said he wouldn't make a sequel to Good Omens

Neil Gaiman at SXSW in Austin, Texas in 2019:

[Gaiman also confirmed the series will only be six episodes, with no intention of trying to go for another season if successful. "The lovely thing about Good Omens is it has a beginning, it has a middle, and it has an end," he said to appreciative applause. "Season 1 of Good Omens is Good Omens. It's brilliant. It finishes. You have six episodes and we're done. We won't try to build in all these things to try to let it continue indefinitely."]

Source: Entertainment Weekly (2019)

2018 - Neil Gaiman on X- Twitter

Tweet link here

Also Neil Gaiman in 2023:

["It won't be confirmed unless enough people watch Season 2 to make Amazon happy...

...But obviously Season 3 is all planned and plotted and, if I get to make it, will take the story and the people in it we care about to a satisfying end."]

What happened?

Were the profits and ratings high enough to create two more seasons out of thin air? At this point, seasons 2 and 3 seem more like a greedy stretching of a beloved story already told in its entirety in the first season.

Has the first season already fulfilled Sir Terry Pratchett's wish?

As read above, Neil Gaiman himself said: "Season 1 of Good Omens is Good Omens."

Gaiman was very opened about how pleased he was with Season 1 and how he made it having Sir Terry Pratchett's wish in mind.

Interview for The Verge (May 30, 2019)

Link : Neil Gaiman had one rule for the Good Omens adaptation: making Terry Pratchett happy

Interviewer: Do you feel pressure from knowing this has to be the definitive best adaptation it could be?

Gaiman: No. All I wanted to do was to make something Terry would have liked. It wasn’t like, “Make the best thing.”...

...Gaiman: The lovely thing about Good Omens [the miniseries] is that it’s still Good Omens. If you loved the book, this is that thing that you loved. And I will make you fall in love even more with Sergeant Shadwell. I will make you fall even more in love with Newt than you thought you could, I hope. It does demonstrate that I do kind of know what I’m talking about, which is a nice thing to know.

...Gaiman: So with Good Omens, I feel like what I got to do was put the thing I made with Terry on the screen and then buttress it. What I added isn’t completely different from the original. It’s not out of left field.

Neil Gaiman on an interview for The Guardian in 2019.

Link: Neil Gaiman: ‘Good Omens feels more apt now than it did 30 years ago’

There are times, he insists, when “you make something you like so much that you don’t really care what anyone else thinks of it.” There’s a clue to this, perhaps, in the show’s final frame, which reads “For Terry”. “He didn’t believe in heaven or hell or anything like that,” Gaiman says, “so there wasn’t even a hope that there was a ghostly Terry around to watch it. He would have been grumpy if there was. But I made it for him.”

Why was Good Omens season 1 so good and you could really feel Sir Terry Pratchett's contributions?

Gaiman himself has already told us the answer:

...Gaiman: So with Good Omens, I feel like what I got to do was put the thing I made with Terry on the screen and then buttress it. What I added isn’t completely different from the original. It’s not out of left field.

Neil Gaiman for The Verge (2019).

There was original material to work with (Good Omens, published in 1990), on which we certainly know that Sir Terry Pratchett himself actively worked from start to finish.

Is there a proper sequel to Good Omens the book on which to base 2 more seasons of the series?

Neil Gaiman says the following on an interview for GQ in 2019.

Link: Neil Gaiman Says No to Adapting His Own Books—Except This Time

...But with this, it was like: Okay. Terry is gone. He wanted me to do this. He wanted me to do it for him. And that gave me a kind of weird impetus. And it meant that I felt very much at liberty to take every conversation that Terry and I had ever had about Good Omens. Not just the book, as written, but everything beyond it. We planned a sequel, never written, so I got to steal the angels from the sequel. I got to steal from every conversation Terry and I had about how we would do this. It felt very personal, and I guess kind of… holy. If that doesn’t sound too ridiculous. But it was a mission.

Two conclusions can be drawn:

1) Informal conversations about the plot of a sequel do not equate to an officially written sequel.

2) Neil Gaiman has already used many of the ideas he and Terry Pratchett had planned for a never-written sequel to Good Omens and those ideas were largely added to and executed in the TV adaptation of Good Omens (2019).

Why keep stretching those ideas if the co-writer is no longer able to actively contribute and help to create a proper sequel?

If Gaiman were the sole creator of Good Omens we'd have a different conversation, but that's not the case. The first season of Good Omens was already a beautiful homage to Good Omens and Sir Terry Pratchett's work on the book.

Did Terry Pratchett write around 75% of Good Omens?

Link for the post here.

Link for the post talking about the video and sharing the video here.

Edit: I wanted to bring this point up to point out Terry Pratchett's important contribution to the making of the book, not to highlight it as an excuse to distance Gaiman from the novel. We will have to accept that he also contributed to the creation of the book.

Sir Terry Pratchett's last wish

2017 - Rob Wilkins on Twitter (X)

Terry Pratchett’s Unpublished Work Crushed by Steamroller

By Sophie Haigney - The New York Times

Terry Pratchett, the well-known British fantasy author, had a wish fulfilled two years after his death: A hard drive containing his unpublished work was destroyed by steamroller.

Mr. Pratchett, a wildly popular fantasy novelist who wrote more than 70 books, including the “Discworld” series, died at 66 in 2015. That year his friend, the writer Neil Gaiman, told The Times of London that Mr. Pratchett had wanted “whatever he was working on at the time of his death to be taken out along with his computers, to be put in the middle of a road and for a steamroller to steamroll over them all.” Mr. Gaiman added at the time that he was glad this hadn’t happened.

Now, though, it has. Mr. Pratchett’s estate manager and close friend, Rob Wilkins, posted a picture of a hard drive and a steamroller on Aug. 25 on an official Twitter account they shared.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Wilkins wrote that the deed was done.

I have not been able to find the exact reasons why Sir Terry Pratchet wanted his unfinished and unpublished works destroyed, but we can respect his last wish as a way for him to have control over what he felt he was ready to share with the world and what he was not.

Is Good Omens the exception?

With all that has been presented so far, I can only conjecture, but not be sure. I can believe that there was Terry Pratchett's permission and desire to make an adaptation of Good Omens, the original book published in 1990, but to my mind, creating two more seasons of a never-written sequel doesn't fit as part of Terry Pratchett's desire.

He is not among us to actively participate in a sequel and if his last wish was to destroy his unfinished works, I can't believe that he would have wanted to give his approval to something new published under his name and without his supervision.

Sir Terry Pratchett talking about a never-written sequel to Good Omens

“Neil and I thought about a sequel an awful lot initially. We talked about it on tour. And I think it was a big relief to both of us, when one day we looked one another in the eye and said, 'I thought you wanted to do a sequel.'..

Interview for the Magazine Locus. Locusmag archive page

This is me speculating, but I don't think there was real enthusiasm for creating a sequel until Gaiman alone saw profitable potential in the TV adaptation....

Good Omens also belongs to the those who love the story

I think it's okay to still love the story of Good Omens. Personally, I will always be grateful with the story and the characters for giving me confort in troubling times, but I find seasons 2 and 3 as some kind of excuse from Gaiman to keep profiting and benefiting from the story (more now than ever due to the SA allegations*).

Aziraphale and Crowley will always live happily in a lovely cottage as long as we want to. Even before season 2 was announced, many of us had already accepted that. Many artists have imagined lovely endings for our innefable husbands and in my eyes their works won't be any less valuable than whatever Gaiman had planned.

Note:

I don't like talking about Season 3 of GO without mentioning the current 5 SA allegations against Neil Gaiman (Main writer of seasons 2 and 3 and showrunner), so in case you want to know more about the allegations against Neil Gaiman. Here there's a great Round Up link (Podcasts links, transcripts, etc.)

Credits for the Round Up link to Muccamukk. Thanks a lot!

*more thoughts on supporting season 3

[plounce]

astoundingly self-centered and awful thing from someone i just unfollowed. girl what the fuck. like are you referring to quotes from the woman who was abused??? because those were most of the quotes in the article!!

[saltlickmp3]

i just read Neverwhere and oh my gosh i love it so much i love books with a magical underground world and there was this cool eldritch angel and mushroom people and magic doors and and and

[daily-crowley]

Crowley Of The Day: I was talking to Edie and now I want them to fight too. I want Crowley to realize he has a little dignity left and since he’s been pining for 6000 years and got is heartbroken he’s not going to easily forgive Aziraphale. He’s going to have to work for it.

[frosthetix]

I would not want to be Neil Gaiman’s ask box rn

[cupids-fiction]

every damn time i sit down to watch a nice fantasy show that i suspect has some queer elements ITS FUCKING NEIL GAIMAN AGAIN

[douglasfeiffel]

“You can’t say jk Rowling was a bad writer because she had problematic takes!” She named the only canonically East Asian character Cho chang, her worldbuilding was ass and filled with plotholes, there was a plot line that was just the activist character “overreacting” to literal slavery (aka trying to free the slaves), and it ended with the revolutionary characters all becoming cops with no real systemic change in what caused all the problems the characters faced for seven books . Like yeah it was in some ways a product of its time but like. They were never groundbreaking or particularly well written books 💀

[beanie-twink]

As someone who has experienced domestic violence sexual assault etc FUCK some of you bitchass fans of gaiman’s work. Every single time some abuser gets outed (especially if they happen to be in a creative industry) you guys bend over backwards to try to reclaim the work. Yall did this with harry potter so much, trying to find guilt free ways to enjoy what they put out. You prioritize assuaging your guilt rather than thinking about the victims who deserve recognition and to be supported right now. I understand these works were formative and important to you. But there is a bigger picture. And by your immediate jumping to this, you’re showing other victims of said person AND anyone who is a victim in general that as long as someone puts out good work, their atrocities don’t fucking matter in the end. You say they do, but your words (and actions) show otherwise. Do better.

[charcubed]

I NEEEED people—especially those with unfathomably large platforms???—to start doing just a tiny bit of internal evaluation before they log onto a blue website and say “I don’t want these queer characters to fuck in canon” or “I’d be fine if these characters never kissed again” or whatever.

This is a post about Good Omens and the prospect of Aziraphale and Crowley potentially having sex in season 3. It's a response to a tweet that I'm crossposting, but let it be known the above statement and this topic applies broadly across multiple fandoms too.

But anyway, in regards to Good Omens specifically:

I am seeing this take that essentially boils down to "Canon has now made it clear that these characters want to have sex with each other through subtext (i.e. Aziraphale and the ox), but I don’t want that to reach narrative completion because the idea of them having sex makes me uncomfortable or isn’t my personal preference” and it is, to put it mildly and delicately, A Very Bad Take.

This is rhetorical (and I do not expect or particularly want an answer), but: explain to me how and why queer characters who are unavoidably visibly queer (aka 2 "man-shaped beings") fucking on screen wouldn’t be a net positive, especially when you can indicate how canon has set it up.

Presumably, some people say things like this because ~they want to see them as visibly ace.~ Okay. But by some of these people’s own admission, there IS more evidence in canon now to indicate these characters crave sex with each other (vs arguing otherwise)... yet people would rather that be ignored/erased all for the sake of them feeling comfortable or feeling better about what canon shows or doesn’t show explicitly??

I’m sorry, but���speaking as an ace person, to be clear—your personal preferences for the story shouldn’t / don’t affect anything here. There’s too much in this.

Yeah, I understand on a personal level not having “representation.” I almost never see myself or my unique experiences and identity reflected in stories. And yet, I also understand that that doesn’t change any story or the world in which we live. Things like this are not said in a vacuum.

Any queer characters having sex on screen IS a net positive. It is rare and impactful, and openly calling for or hoping for otherwise when canon points to its potential is a detrimental alliance with purity culture, whether intentionally or accidentally. Because we live in a Goddamn society!

Who knows (other than Neil Gaiman) whether Aziraphale and Crowley ARE going to fuck on international TV. None of us do! But the subtext right now blatantly says they’re starving for it. And you don’t have to like the prospect of that, but honestly? We SHOULD get to see it play out. There’s no truly legitimate reason we shouldn’t ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whether you "prefer" it or not.

And my ultimate hot take is… if someone balks at the idea of that or doesn’t understand the importance of it, despite even seeing the subtext… then they should perhaps unpack that? Just a thought.

Truly the way fandoms are managing to hit either “subtext doesn’t count :/ ” or “let’s keep it to subtext so it’s ‘open to interpretation’ :) ” nowadays depending on what corner one visits is MADDENING. Whiplash-inducing. Surreal. And so much nonsense you can’t pick where to start.

So! I do genuinely hope I'm not kicking off discourse but I felt this Needed To Be Said (and on more than one site). Because posts like “even if they never kiss again, we’ve won <3 “ make me want to be like…

These characters are YEARNING. Do not doom them and us to it. For once, we can reach for the stars and maybe–against all odds–pull them down. Embrace it!

---

[Update: after more discourse has occurred, I have somewhat elaborated on this further, from the POV of the significance of the queer themes in Good Omens and more specifically how they center illicit pleasure/desire]

[v4mp1res3verywhere]

Shout out to Neil Gaiman for the emo bf material, bless 🙏🏼

[santacoppelia]

Of fandom, age, and David Tennant being our own personal Time Lord

I read the fantastic post that @davidtennantgenderenvy wrote about David Tennant and aging (if you haven’t yet read it, go for it!) and, as a fan who is closer to DT's age range than to what seems to be the rest of the fan base's age (yeah, being well over 40 is A THING), I had an interesting mix of ideas and emotions. I was going to just reblog her post with some of these musings, but when this started getting longer (and I started searching for bibliography, ha), I decided that I was not going to hijack her post, but rather cite it (and reblog it on its own right, really, read it). I should say that this is a long essay, and it comes peppered with references to one of my preferred fields of study (but I make it light and fun, promise).

Becoming an “old geek”

The first time I came into the idea was when I found a thirst TikTok with that very nice audio that goes “I think I need someone older…” and clearly, the thirst was there, but also… David is 8 years older than me, and when you are 45, thirsting over someone who is 53 doesn’t feel as “edgy” (and thinking about “needing someone older” starts verging on thirsting over people well over 65, which is absolutely fine, but a very different category over all for the rest of TikTok). So yeah, it was weird. You see someone who you feel is "in your range" and everyone is calling them "old"… And you start thinking about aging, inevitably.

Of course, I "don't feel old", but most of my friends are younger than me, and I'm the oldest person in many of my "fun activities". Take, for example, my lightsaber combat team, where every sponsorship is pitched to people under 30, and you should be training at least twice a week and following a strict diet to reach the expected “competitive or exhibition” level (enter the “old lady” who is taking this training just for fun, who needs to take care of her joints and who is not going to be invested in becoming Jedi Master General or anything of the sorts in the near future). Or we can talk about the expectation about fandom in general being a “teenage phase”, and thinking about everyone who still is into it actively after certain age as “immature” or “quirky” at best (hi, mom! Hi, work colleagues! Hi, students!).

Society, aging and social constructs

Of course, this has a lot to do with societal expectations. For almost 80 years, popular culture has been built around "youth" and "young people": before rock & roll, most things (music, clothes, movies, art in general) were targeted to “adults”, and you were expected to be “a functional adult” since a younger age. There was a seismic shift in the way popular culture was built when consumer culture decided to see and cater young people: trends became shorter, being “hip” was desirable, staying younger for a longer period was a nice aspiration (a good, light reading to get a deeper view around this is “Hit Makers” by Derek Thompson. It is written for marketers, but that makes it an easy historic overview and I like that). This has a lot to do with the change of our view about old people, too: while being old 100 years ago (yup, 1924 still fits the bill) made you “a respected elder” and you were expected to be wise, to know best, to be the voice of reason and an expert, nowadays not even us older people like being seen as “old” or “older”.

Frequently, culture becomes entrenched in binary oppositions. The binary opposition between “young” and “old” is… well, old! And while the opposition is sustained, the meanings around it change over time (that’s what the past paragraph was about, really). If in the 1940’s being old meant “mature, respectable, wise, responsible” and being young meant “inexperienced, immature, foolish”, after the 1950’s those meanings shifted a lot: being young became “fun, interesting, in the now and in the know, attractive”, while being old was about being “boring, dusty, passé, uninteresting, dull”.

In reality, being young can be a mix of all of these things (inexperienced and fun and foolish and attractive), and being old can be, at the same time, being responsible and wise and a little dusty and dull, because that’s life *shrugs*, and the wonder of lived experience is that, even if we simplify it, it is complex and rich and sometimes contradictory in itself: we can be old and foolish and interesting and boring, or young and dull and inexperienced and attractive. But, as we need to make “social sense” of things, simplifying them is… easier. That’s why we build stereotypes, and why we use them! We need to have a “base” of signifiers to build upon, so we usually take what we have on our environment and run with it. If you find this idea interesting, welcome to the world of cultural semiotics! *takes her Iuri Lotman picture out of her pocket and puts it on the desk*

(Iuri Lotman, people. He is my "patron saint").

Pop culture versus “real culture”

Another cultural opposition that piques my interest in this area is the notion of “pop culture”, of course. It is opposed to “real, serious culture”, the sort of thing that everyone expects "older, mature people" to enjoy. In the sixties and seventies, there were a lot of studies and writing about "high brow" and "low brow" culture, trying to keep this distinction between "things that make you familiar with the now, but have no intrinsic value" and "eternal things that cultivate your mind, soul and spirit".

Evidently, if you ask me, this is a whole load of horse manure: probably useful to fertilize other things, but with little intrinsic value on its own. My main point is not dolphins, but the idea of culture: historically, it has used to mean a lot of things; from the notion of (exactly) fertilizing something and making it grow to make it come to fruition, to the hodgepodge of practices that a social group creates when they are together and are trying to make common sense of things.

I like the latter better (that is the one I’d ascribe to if this was The Academia TM, but this is tumblr!), but another popular definition, which comes from the Illustration and has been quite prevalent, is the notion of culture as the set of cultural practices that make you a better, more intelligent, far more educated person. For example: if you want to have real culture, you have to read Shakespeare and know what a iambic pentameter is, rather than watching “10 Things I Hate About You”. You must read real books, not listen to audiobooks, and “real books” should be written by “serious authors” like (insert old white Western European or American cis men, preferably born before 1960).

Here comes the notion of “cultural canon”, grinning widely. Yup, that set of practices becomes an expectation of what and how you should experience any area of the human experience, and they become a sort of “nucleus” of the whole experience, with people playing “defense” around them and culture shifting all around and sometimes across them. This is not exclusive to “high culture”: Have you ever heard about “gatekeeping”? Yeah, same fenomenomenon (Shadwell, of course). Whenever something gets this “shape”, it becomes a “norm”, the “common” thing, the “rule” if you participate in that set of cultural practices.

As every cultural set of practices tends to generate its own “canon”, they also have a lot of practices surrounding it, which are ever changing, shifting, learning from new and old practices, and redefining what everything means in their common/shared space. For example: Neil Gaiman, my beloved, was part of the “comics” frontier when Sandman first appeared, but as he and Alan Moore (yeah, I know he did it first, but Gaiman is my study focus right now, so let me be) and other very talented and interesting people started creating fascinating stuff that hadn’t been done, and they found people who loved it, they not only redefined the world of comics, but became part of the new canon themselves. And then, Neil’s presence in the world of literature and fantasy became widespread and recognized and then revered… And then he is doing it again by adapting his own work to a streaming platform in a serialized way… I hope this explains why I’m growing an obsession with studying Neil Gaiman as an author who crosses through different media: a transmedial auteur, an anomaly in his own right. But that is not an essay for tumblr, but a thesis, one that I don’t know if I’d ever have the time or mental resources to write (being a runaway ex academic with ADHD who works on their own is hard, people). Besides, this was about aging and David Tennant, so let’s cut this tangent short and start talking about our Time Lord and Savior: David Tennant, the king of frontiers.

David Tennant as a Frontier Lord

David Tennant is another fascinating case in this sense, mostly because he is an actor who has been able to build a whole very impressive career through crossing symbolic frontiers. Through his massive filmography (161 roles just for screens, as registered in IMDb) and his stage career (I love this gifset for this exact reason), he has acted his way through almost everything, from classical Shakespeare to improvisational comedy, from procedural police drama to wacky fantasy sci-fi. This has a lot to do with his personality (he loves acting, he decided to pursue acting as a career thanks to his love for Doctor Who, but he is also smart and inquisitive) but, as it happens with a lot of “frontier figures”, it also has a lot to do with “unpredictable” circumstances: less of a strategy, more of an instinct.

David has talked many times about how his impostor syndrome made him feel, for the longest time, that he had to keep accepting roles, because you never know if there is going to be another one after. He is talented and open and curious (this is quite a good interview about his perspective), but this… anxiety? meant that he had also lower quandaries about saying “yes” to roles and projects that were “less consistent” with a typecast (which has been, for the longest time, one of the main strategies to build an acting career). Yeah, he has some defining characteristics that make a role “tennantish” (I’m not starting that tirade here, but yeah, you know that almost fixed set of quirks and bits), but he has also worked his way through many different genres, budgets, styles and complexities. And he has usually been as committed and as professional in a big budget-high stakes-great script sort of situation, as he has been in a highly chaotic-let’s see what sticks-small scale project.

That can be correlated by the way he talks about “acting advice”. “Be on time, learn your lines, treat everyone the same, never skip the lunch queue”… Acting is a job, and he treats it as such. Yeah, he looks for interesting projects anytime he can, but the “down to earth” attitude about it is, once again, not-usual, not-common: pure frontier. Then, when David talks about his own self (specially at a young age), he is pretty clear about his “outsider” or “uncool” status (this interview is fantastic), and how strangely disruptive it was to become not only recognizable, but cool and sexy and… everything else, thanks to Doctor Who. He went from living in the frontier to being put in the canon, but he is still, at heart, a person who is more comfortable not defining himself by that “expected” set of rules.

Him being a very private person, who insists on having a family life that seems, form this distance, stable, loving and absolutely un-showbiz just makes the deal (and the parasocial love and respect) easier to sustain; as does his openness to talk about social and political issues that interest him (passionately, again; against the norm for “well liked celebrity”, again). His colleagues also talk wonders about him, mostly because he is this sort of down-to-earth but also passionate about his craft and easy to work with. Again: not the “norm”, not the “rule” of being such a celebrity.

Many of his fans (should I say that I’m one? Or is it obvious at this point?) find this not only endearing, but comforting: he is a massive star, who has acted in a lot of terrific roles in huge productions… But he feels, at heart, as “one of us”. But he is, also, a well-respected thespian, a Shakespearian powerhouse, an international talent. He lives in a very authentic, but very unstereotipical frontier. And he seems happy about that and has made a career from it. Extensive kudos and all the parasocial love and the amateur-actress mad respect for that.

I should mention, just in passing, that a “natural” archetype for this characters that traverse frontiers… are tricksters. Think again about the “tennantish” characteristics. Here goes another essay I’m not writing right now.

Aging: The Next Frontier

This takes me to the original post that inspired the essay: living in a culture where the “norm” is “being young and famous is a desirable aspiration”, we have a fantastic actor, at peak of his craft, who is in the heart of middle age (past 50, nearing 55). Not only that, but he is an actor with whom at least a couple of generations have grown older: from the ones who feel him as “our contemporary” to the ones who grew up looking at him (like Ncuti Gatwa!).

David, being the frontier person he is, has been navigating this transition in a very “unconventional” way: he came back to the role that made him iconic (The Doctor, now with more trauma!), is starring in another fantasy series about middle-aged looking ethereal beings that at times is an adventure thriller, at times is a comedy of errors and at times is a romcom (having another beautiful trickster of a man as his co-star… There goes another tangent that is an essay); he is playing one of the quintessential Shakespeare roles for middle-aged men (Macbeth), and is, seemingly, having a lot of fun doing a lot of voice acting for animation roles (if you haven’t watched Duck Tales, you’re missing a whole lot of fun, really).

Traditionally, middle aged actors navigate that period of their career trying to reinforce their “still young, thus a celebrity” status (for example, doing a lot of action-packed movies and keep doing their own stunts while seducing women 20-30 years younger than them), or strengthening their “prestige thespian, so now a real culture person” position (fighting for more serious roles, going from comedy to drama, or working their way into The Classics©). Sometimes, they face the internalized societal expectation by also becoming a shipwreck in their personal life (yeah… the stereotype of “getting divorced, having an affair with someone half their age, getting another red convertible, getting in trouble…”) because we don’t have a good “map for aging responsibly” yet as a society. We have been so focused on youth, that we have forgotten how to age.

Again, switching to the personal experience. I was raised as a female-shaped person (yeah, being queer is fun), so part of the experience of growing (and then growing old) has been closely related with that concept from the female point of view. I decided, pretty early on (but not so much, probably 25 years ago), that I wasn’t going to conform to the norm… And that included aging naturally. When I found my first white hair, it was a shock (I was 21 or 22), but I had already seen my father fighting his own hair being white since forever. I decided it was a loss of time, money and effort… And the judgement from people in my generation and in the one that preceded me (my mother, my aunts) was stern and strict: “it will age you, and it will date us. You shouldn’t do that”. Men could do it, given the right age (being over 50) but women must not. Same with wrinkles and sagging and gaining weight and getting “pudgy”. But when men grew older, they needed to make a “show off” of their ability to seduce, to “still be a man”. Aging, then, was undesirable by any standard.

As me and my peers have grown older, and my hair has gotten increasingly silver, there have been women that come to me saying that “I look great” and “they wish they were as brave as me”. I would like to state in front of this jury of my peers (hi, tumblr!) that the only bravery it took was deciding, somewhere between my twenties and my thirties, that I wanted to be as myself as I possibly could, so no bravery at all, just the same lack of understanding of social rules that took me to become interested in… you guessed it, cultural semiotics. We’ve come full circle with this. Now, let’s finish talking about what it means for an aging fan to have an aging star to look up to, shall we?

David Tennant as a cultural Time Lord

I am pretty sure that he wouldn’t have chosen this role for himself (as he wouldn’t have chosen being a massive star just by playing his favorite character and being so talented and charming), but he is, as Loki would say, burdened by glorious purpose. Being “the actor of his generation”, and him crossing so many frontiers with such ease and grace, without even thinking about it too hard, just because he is a hard worker and likes to try new things and is just so good at what he does put him in the exact cultural crossroad for it.

He is not in a sudden need to “resignify himself” as anything: he has already shown his very flexible acting muscles through his very long career. He is not bounded to “keep his public image relevant”: he likes to have his personal life clearly separated from the spotlight, and being married to the brilliant and funny Georgia, who herself grew up with a famous father, so she is no stranger to staying sane and in control in the eye of media, and who manages their social media presence with a good mix of humor and well-set boundaries.

Therefore, he is in a moment where he can (and probably will) chose to do whatever he likes. And he has the public support to do so: he is prestigious and respected, but likes to make fun of himself and is not self-important; he has a lot of awards, but he is also a very likable person with whom most people in the industry enjoy working. And he is up to do a lot of things: heroes, villains, morally grey characters; romance, drama, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi, procedurals, historical fiction, classic plays, silly parts, voice acting… We are going to see him aging on screen and stage, with no playbook: the playbooks were written for people that certainly are not him. And I have some evidence to prove it.

He is starring in a groundbreaking series (yeah, Good Omens) where the protagonists are two middle-aged looking entities, full of queer relationships, written by another trickster. This series, in an on itself, is a showcase for characters that are rule breaking in many ways: in the narrative, by being hereditary enemies who are inevitably linked to one another by a loving bond that may or may not be romantic, but that has been in the making for 6,000 years; in representation, by having the protagonists being represented by a couple of middle aged actors who are “not serious” and “not action” coded, in a role where they are delivering romance, banter, intrigue, joy and a whole other range of emotions that are “not your stereotypical” middle-aged male-lead coded.

He also delivered the baton on a relay race with Doctor Who: he came back after almost 20 years, to bring back the generation who grew up watching him in the role, and deliver us into the arms of Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, with the promise of taking a rest and working on getting better from all the trauma The Doctor has endured in 20 years Earth-time (which, as any Doctor Who fan knows, account for centuries of trauma in Doctor’s time). Not your usual Doctor Who Anniversary cameo, but one built to deliver some zeitgeisty emotional health promises that made the specials feel… healing. At least, for some of us.

Even when it wasn’t the hit series it deserved to be, his Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days” is also a great delivery of an unconventional middle-aged protagonist, who goes from meek and scared and too worried about societal norms, to a lovely, tender, slightly awkward and daring person, with friends half his age who look at him but are also his peers (another kind of relationship that is not very frequent in media).

And, with all fearlessness, he has played a lively old duck in Duck Tales! Scrooge McDuck has never been a middle-aged character: he is, quite openly, an old gentleman. An adventurer, quirky, with a lot of spunk… but also quite clearly an elder to Huey, Dewey and Louie, and obviously older than Donald Duck (who is also not a young adult himself!). When you watch that series, and if you have the opportunity to catch any glimpse of him behind the scenes while recording the part, you can feel the joy he got from playing the part (and he has said time and again that he IS Scrooge McDuck, so it will become his “recurring bit” for the future).

Hopefully, David (and some other actors and actresses, for sure) will dare to build that new “aging publicly without making an arse of myself” playbook, and I (and I can imagine, many other fans in our middle age, but also fans that are right now leaving behind the “young adult” stage and becoming “adults” fair and square, and others who will arrive to this place at a future time in their lives, so I hope) will be there to bear witness, support, cheer… and learn from the model. Because that’s what fandom is about, but also because that’s how culture itself gets shaped and changes, continuously. And that is exciting and a little scary, and that’s why it is better if we do this together.

And I'd love to imagine diverse (in the full sense of the word) role models for this process and this playbook, too!!!

If you read all the way through this, I'm very grateful, take a cookie, have a gold star and suggest names for our aging interestingly role models on the "non-white-male" side of things!

Class dismissed!!

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Your just mad that Stephen King is a successful writer and a family man, and you aren't.

lmao Yes. My ultimate goal--to be a family man who writes about child sex orgies.