#i'm not going to reply to any of the tags i swg

[violinsolos]

Good Omens is Hays Coding you & you can recognize this and still like or relate to it

It's probably not worth it to make this post but it absolutely lights me on fire as an asexual person to see people using asexuality to justify the fact that Aziraphale and Crowley are not canonly romantic. As though it does something novel--as though it is somehow a more complex Queer narrative because it has coded romantic subtext (as though we have not already had to cling to vagueness, symbolism, and coding for decades as Queer people desperately sought mirrors to their experience). As though ace people are inherently coded, indefinable, or invisible to begin with, so the fact that GO uses subtext and does not make the A&C Queerness text is somehow to be lauded as MORE progressive than unapologetically open romance would be.

In 1930, Hollywood established The Hays Code to determine what could and could not be depicted in films. This code banned the portrayal of Queer people entirely, so filmmakers who wanted to express Queerness had to do so through codes--visual cues and vague references that could slip the censors but still express some small window into Queer experience.

Good Omens is a Hays Code kind of show. It has subtext and codes but the average viewer will likely not read it as romantic. The average person is not trained to read subtext, let alone Queer subtext. They've never had to reach into small windows and subtext to find themselves before.

I am also willing to bet Good Omens didn't have to change a thing to sell in countries where Queerness is illegal. And that should be the bar for Queer media imo: a complete homophobe from a country where it is ILLEGAL TO BE QUEER and has NEVER MET A QUEER PERSON needs to be able to recognize the romantic elements WITHOUT CONFUSION. This doesn't mean stories can't be subtle or nuanced--but the bar is just HIGHER for Queer stories than straight stories due to long histories of Queer invisibility in media thanks to things like the Hays code.

And no, it doesn't matter what Neil said on Twitter or whatever--what's in the text? That's the only thing that gets presented to the larger public! When he confirms it "off screen" that only means that he had to do that because it wasn't on-screen! He wouldn't have to do that if it was obvious to the average viewer and I think deep down you know it! Nobody has to ask if Ed and Stede are romantic by the end of season one and there's virtually nothing sexual about their relationship (yet? who knows lol). You could cut the kiss and it would still be clear.

We can still enjoy the subtext and even recognize ourselves in it! But that feeling you have of relating to and seeing yourself in A&C? An average audience member does not have access to those feelings.

So please for the love of god stop trying to deflate IMPORTANT critiques about vague or coded Queerness being insufficient in 2022 by using people like me. Ace relationships can be unique and complex and also clear even to a reader not already predisposed to interpret Queer subtext.

I absolutely HATE hearing how much I "deserve" the same coded, vague, could-play-as-straight-to-a-straight-audience-so-it's-not-risking-the-international-market crumbs that Queer people have fought so long to overcome. Oh, they don't kiss? Well that's for people like ME--an asexual person who can somehow only appreciate romance if it is as spectral as mist and I remember to bring my 3D decoder goggles to manifest the clues.

But mostly I feel sad--sad that we are so trained by the Hays Code to treat subtext as equal to text, because it's what we think we can get or deserve. That's why we absolutely cannot use spectres of acephobia to police and disengage from the important and historical disappointment that we feel as Queer people when we realize we have to find ourselves in subtexts rather than texts.

TL;DR: Good Omens is not an explicitly Queer text, it is a text with Queer subtext in the same tradition as the Hollywood Hays Code. It's not acephobic to critique this element of its storytelling and you can still enjoy it and ship them and even relate to them without insisting that this is the rep we "deserve." Signed, an ace person who loves romance.

#good omens #i'm not going to reply to any of the tags i swg #especially not if you use neil's tweets to make your point #his tweets are external to the text and not admissable #not all ace folks are a monolith obvs i'm not ace lorax speaking for the aces here #i am just tired of seeing posts about how I deserve this #a show no non-fandom straight person in my entire life has ever identified as Queer #so I don't want to debate this any further I just want to express how angry these posts make me as an asexual person