#but when some called good omens queer bait I just have that fear

[echosdaffodil]

When the dead boy detectives show comes out and they keep it subtile with Edwin like in the Doom Patrol show and the comics just for people to call it queer baiting, I might consider staying away from the fandom entirely.

[sainamoonshine]

Just for the record the post doesn’t actually say that Good Omens is queer baiting and I specifically noted that S2 could still provide on screen confirmation. It’s also a fact that fatigued fans queerbaited by other shows are wary of GO going into S2, that’s not an opinion. No one called the core book queerbaiting. I merely pointed out that GO is part of the trend I’ve witnessed of fans no longer being excited by a tantalized relationship but more exhausted at the fear of being treated once again as a secondary audience. I don’t think GO is the problem here but I understand the exhaustion from some corners and I personally think that their wariness is understandable even if the show is nowhere near Sherlock or Supernatural “baiting”

No no I get it, I really do, and if people feel this way it’s totally valid. I’m sorry I came out so strongly.

But also I just don’t believe that those fans understand GO at all and I’m exhausted that they’re invading what has been my most relaxing, no stress no drama fandom for the past fifteen years.

There wasn’t ever even supposed to be a season two. The story is complete. It is done.

Whatever happens now is extra material, new stuff, a new story. And it shouldn’t be asked to confirm anything because there is nothing left that hasn’t already been confirmed! Just because it didn’t look the way people think it should have looked….. I mean, you understand why this is heart breaking, right? Full disclosure, I’m ace. To see people erase the very queerness out of a very queer show because it wasn’t clear enough, not out loud enough…. That stings.

And I mentionned the book, perhaps clumsily, to explain the context. Because we are not the secondary audience! That’s the thing! We are the core audience of the tv show! It was the opposite of queerbaiting, it was the showrunner explicitly taking this previously not-romantic relationship and making it romantic. For us! Because he knew that it mattered! Like, sorry for being such an annoying Gaiman apologist, but he has and continues to treat us as gently and tenderly as he can, while respecting the artistic integrity of the work he made with Terry Pratchett.

If people watched GO and didn’t get that….. if they saw — with their own eyes — the entire show, and still came out feeling queerbaited? Then yes, these are the same people who WOULD watch OFMD with a single kiss removed and miss that the romance is on purpose. Because the romance is as on purpose in GO, it just didn’t have a kiss. Only difference. It is not queerbaiting when it’s being done on purpose.

And I’m exhausted that « asking for queer representation » keeps turning into « asking for explicit queer representation because deliberate subtext and unsaid but obvious affection doesn’t count ». Because by that measure, my romantic life for the past 13 years doesn’t count either.

*runs hand down face* I’m sorry, I did it again. But like, yeah. GO didn’t belong on that list, is all. It’s not bad queer rep, it’s just queer rep that people are being shitty about because they refuse to understand why it’s written and structured the way it is.

[ileolai]

rant about growing up queer and so-called ‘’queer baiting’’ and why the Discourse re: Good Omens is getting under my goddamn skin below the cut.

Ok. So listen. 

I grew up during, and my entire existence as a queer person is inextricably shaped by, the atmosphere of the early 1990s. and the peak of the HIV plague, homophobia, and the media and conversation sorrounding it. I was very aware of it, all the time, because of particular circumstances in my life. 

And when i was a kid, we still had those grim reaper AIDS awareness PSAs on the television. That was my very first introduction to the imagery people associated with queerness, right? 

The grim reaper. 

The message being: your queerness is a death sentence. For you. For the people you implicate by existing around them with your affliction.

and in the 1990s, the media in the forefront of the public consciousness re: queer people, were things like Philadelphia and Boys Don't Cry. That is, gaunt men dying slow horrible deaths. or young queer people violently erased for the crime of existing as themselves. Those were the depictions of queer people that won Oscars and praise. That was the entire conversation about us.

And they weren't actually for us, it was never for us. it was all torture porn for straight people.

The stuff that was for us, that depicted the joy and value of queer identity and queer love in and of itself, got rated R18+ and shoved into the ''niche interest'' section of the video store, you see. Like, cute glittery romcoms about lesbians and gays existed, and would otherwise be entirely mainstream, but they got the same rating as Boys Don't Cry, which revolves around and culminates in the violent destruction of a trans man. Only the latter was Legitimate Drama worthy of an Oscar speech and national mainstream conversation, because it made straight people sniffle in the theater.

So. I was very aware, from a young age, of being both queer, and that my queer existence was seen as a threat. and people either wanted me to not exist, or would exploit the erasure of my existence while patting themselves on the back for their ‘’earnest and sympathetic'' portrayal of it. Ultimately, my primary value as a queer person was not existing at all, either way. 

No one wanted to see how we lived, or god forbid, found joy in being alive despite all of this, right?

there were some blips of relief like Priscilla and Queer as Folk and But I'm a Cheerleader and Hedwig, that i dug out of the ''niche'' section when i was old enough to be sneaky. and  i watched them alone, in secret, and never dared mentioning the joy of experiencing them to anyone else out of fear. because the reprisal was real and the kind of conversation you can have on social media these days did not exist.

And now. NOW. 20 long lean years after coming out. my god. Good Omens comes along, has a platform on a mainstream and accessible streaming service, and they're talking about it on the goddamn breakfast telly! and there is this constant stream of adoration for it on social media! The half a dozen homophobes pissed off about it are a JOKE!

And it's all about two queer people-- not just token gays in the background as ‘’representation’’ mind you, but THEM specifically and THEIR STORY-- celebrating the value of themselves and being alive and loving each other and how that, in itself, saves the world.

it saves the world.

it saves the world.

Listen. I want people to understand how completely fucking incomprehensible this is to someone who grew up with those grim reaper PSAs, and the whole existential nightmare plague and oppressive atmosphere of the early 1990s. and who had to find their identity, during adolescence, filed in ''the weird shit'' section. where it was given the same MPAA rating as rape and murder, but none of the ~artistic or ~cultural legitimacy.

Like.

I just want the ''queer baiting blergh'' and ''bad representation blergh'' contingent of things to. like. just try and understand for a sec. why some of us are foaming-at-the-mouth ecstatic for something like Good Omens and everything that it is. Because it’s not ‘’internalized homophobia’’ or ‘’apologism’’. it’s this.

There is nothing being denied or withheld to toy with queer people here. it’s explicitly a romance, with all the beats of a romance. and the romance is the entire story. from start to finish. It is very deliberately crafted as two queer people who survive literally everything you can throw at two queer people, from the beginning of time, and they choose each other, and it is

SPECIFICALLY their level of intimacy

that saves

THE WORLD!!!

so for me, what i am seeing, is this: a love letter. to people who grew up being told they were harbingers of death. that we only had value in not actually existing. that our struggle to be alive and find joy in existing and each other was some weird nonsense for the ''niche interest'' section in the video store. 

you understand?

so like. I don't need to be sneered at until I understand why it is actually Bad and I am a Bad Bad Homophobia Apologist for liking it, because they don’t touch hands or something. as if that is somehow the be all and end all of queer existence. as if queer intimacy begins and ends there. 

I can see exactly what I'm looking at.

And it is the life affirming, joyous, two-middle-fingers-waving response to the people who tried to tell me, for three full decades of my life, I was the plague, I was the grim fucking reaper, and any virtue i found in existing-- the strength I had in continuing to exist, to love my own-- was irrelevant to anything said about me.