#ooooo omens… what could it mean :3

[daybreak-clangen]

Moon 5; Bad luck and bad dreams

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[demonir]

Welcome to Adrian’s good omens thoughts while he’s half asleep again, on todays episode I want to talk about how important the gender expression in the show is to me

Don’t mind the typos I’m lying down without my glasses

I really appreciate how subtle they are about characters genders and stuff, characters with commonly male names being played by actresses and they still use stuff like “sir” or “lord” even if they also get referred to as they/them. They don’t make an intense effort to make them look incredibly androgynous either which like- idk it’s nice.

Knowing neither angels or demons have a defined gender also feels so so so nice because it comes paired with the fact they still choose to present in specific ways and use specific pronouns because newsflash bozo someone can be nonbinary or agender and still present masc as fuck or fem as fuck and use either he/him or she/her and if they wake up 2 weeks from now and change that they are still valid.

Which takes me to my second favorite point, Crowley’s change in gender presentation. I know we all know or at the very least agree he’s genderfluid but like I want to highlight the way he does it because it means so much to me. He has obviously chosen to be masc presenting through most of history (that we’ve seen, there could still be periods of time we haven’t seen where she’s been fem) and idk abt you but I was a tumblr teen years ago learning a very skewed version of gender identity and expression where if you wanted to be genderfluid you had to look very attractive as both genders and also PASS as both genders convincingly (as well as being perfectly androgynous when being neither, this also applied to nonbinary people), as well as change it like every 2 days or so and have no preference? That’s the way people would make it seem to me, that’s the way people would portray their genderfluid characters in fandom spaces and that’s the way my teenage mind came to absorb it.

Now, it’s 2024 and I’m sure all of us with common sense know this is bogus but still seeing Crowley just sorta… brightened my everything? Knowing nanny Crowley wasn’t just for the joke, knowing that during certain scenes she was indeed being fem… but the most important part to me is that no matter what he was still HIM, they could have gone the easy route and have an actress play fem Crowley and be like “oh well she’s a demon she can shapeshift whenever ooooo” like so many people do with their ocs (I was one at one point) but it is still obviously him, it is still David Tennant playing Crowley and nobody else and when she’s fem she’s still got the same features the same everything and that’s somehow just… so freeing to see? It’s realistic, it’s grounding. You can be fem and still have overly masculine features, you can be fem and still have facial hair, you can be masc and still wear makeup, you can be masc and not hide your chest.

Now I wish this was all just… more obvious to everyone, I know some of this stuff because I saw posts, I saw people talking about it… but not everyone is gonna go through a 3 hour post scavenger hunt for extra lore like I do and these things are simply not addressed in the show. There IS a certain freeing feeling to the gender stuff not being addressed, it simply happens, it passes by and you might not even notice, but also comes with the double edged sword of people simply thinking SOME of the characters have funny genders but the others don’t.

Sorry I’m distracted rn bc I can hear a fucking bohemian rhapsody cover coming from my moms tv the timing of this is fucking wild, anyways I’m gonna try to get my thoughts back on track

So yeah, to some people like for example my aforementioned mother, the nanny Crowley thing was merely a joke and nothing else, not a brief moment of gender expression but just a perhaps even nasty joke played at the expense of other people. To her every other Crowley before and after that has been strictly cis male and mlm despite the fact I did in fact explain to her that he’s not, same applies to Aziraphale and perhaps even harder because we only ever see him presenting masculine through the entirety of it and trying to explain otherwise to the woman that thinks she can use she/he on me because I’m bisexual will not work (and she refuses to use he/him on me anyways mind you, or my chosen name. Says it’s too complicated, but I know for a fact that if one of the characters had changed their name mid show she would switch to the new name instantly…..yknow… just casual transphobia for me only)

I would like just…a passing comment or a scene that lets everyone know the nuance yknow? Finally something that cannot be disputed by everyone, and you might say “well but Crowley says he’s neither when he gets called a good lad” and to that I say yes but people still dispute the meaning behind it, my mom certainly would. And again you might want to shake the nanny scene in front of me and again I’ll remind you of people thinking it was just a joke, a disguise, a singular haha funny. You might want to gesture towards other scenes or moments or passing phrases but the thing is they will or have already been debated on because people will try to deny it no matter fucking what and it’s FRUSTRATING, so perhaps it’s just me being petty or wanting to give them a good ol fuck you but I’d like it if either Crowley or Aziraphale or both just looked at the camera head on and went “we are not men, also Crowley is genderfluid” no ifs no butts no second meaning just straight to your face, a giant “shut the fuck up” to annoying people.

Now I’m not gonna die if this doesn’t happen, I’m fine with that… it just sorta feels depressing seeing someone in the wild genuinely saying shit like “why are you using she/her for Crowley? He’s a man” my brother in Christ I am about to hit you with the mallet of knowledge and you won’t be able to look at that demon the same way ever again.

The gender expression in good omens matters so much to me as someone who struggles with her own and Crowley and Beelzebub matter so much to me as a little afab genderfluid/nonbinary (I’m not sure yet) motherfucker, I need to go bite some fuckinf ccomcrete right now man, accidental typo but I’m keeping it.

[brightdeadthing]

Please say more about the airport essayyyyyyy!!!!! ✈️✈️✈️

ooooo hello was not expecting this!! but yes gladly hehe. i started rambling a bit ab themes n narratives (who could have seen that coming) so more stuff under the cut <3

so i wrote this essay as an assignment for one of my lit classes! goal was to write an observational humor/introspection piece in the style of foster-wallace's "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again" which just means a lot of footnotes and a lot of detail work lmao. since one of the key components of the original essay is dfw describing all these "supposedly fun things" he's doing on vacation and subverting expectations by showing how awful they are, i was like "aha! i will be funny and clever and subvert expectations again, narrating the part of my trip that's supposed to suck the most (the stress of actually getting there/airports) and showing that it's actually pretty great!" i did also have a brief little interlude to talk about the actual vacation but that was only there to like. rlly hammer the themes home, most of the focus was the airports. idk just trust me on this.

anyway it was a rlly fun essay to write and also honestly pretty goddamn funny if i do say so myself. but the reason i mentioned it in relation to that one post is bc i've got like... this obsession with juxtapositions and i think airports are literally THE blueprint for them. frantically rushing to make your flight vs doing nothing for literal hours bc of delays. ppl who travel for work and are numb to it vs families flying internationally to be reunited with hugs n tears. talking to your neighbor on a flight or in a terminal and learning their entire life story vs not giving a shit ab these random strangers or even registering them as real. the humanity vs the industry of it all. the possibility of connection in what is inherently a fleeting and transient space. etc etc etc.

(full disclosure that i probably romanticize airports way too much bc of my own experiences and also the opening and ending scenes from love actually. watching that movie as a child fundamentally altered my brain chemistry)

anyway yeah there was a lot of that going on in the essay too! which is part of what made it so enjoyable to write. i fucking love humor with a touch of genuine emotion and commentary on Big Ideas And Themes (looking at you good omens).

i don't think i'll ever post it bc there's some pretty personal/specific details in it but it's still one of my favorite things i've written. thank you for indulging me and my rambling <3