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lisztful · 10 months

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GO Season 2 and fandom history ramblings

Spoilers for Good Omens season 2 to follow:

I've watched the second season of Good Omens twice by now, and several days later I am still thinking about it. I know many people are delighted, pained, moved, and excited by the storyline, but that's not the only thing that I keep coming back to. For me, it's the novel experience of seeing the subtext become text, after countless years of existing in fandom without any possibility of that occurring.

For context, I've been in fandom for about 15 years, which is certainly not as long as many other folks I know. There are friends in my circle who collected Kirk/Spock zines back in the old days of fandom, who watched Starsky and Hutch as it was airing and read in it the love that dared not speak its name. Personally, I was one of many people of my generation who entered slash fandom via Harry Potter and LiveJournal, and began writing in the Merlin fandom.

From the beginning of my time in fandom, it was exceedingly clear to me that slash pairings for these shows were never, ever going to be canon. Articles about the Merlin tv series touted the parallels between magic and gay identity as early as the first season, but the show included straight romances for just about every main character. I tend to characterize fandom from around this era in the following buckets:

Deny, create straight pairings.

Token queer rep.

Cultivate queer subtext

Queer story arcs

Good Omens season two, apparently a category of its own

***often one show can be in more than one bucket at once, or moves between them as discourse evolves.

(More below the cut)

Deny the subtext, create straight canon pairings to dispel slash undertones, express discomfort with the very idea of slash pairings, and sometimes downright mock the idea:

The paired actors from Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural, LOTR, and Sherlock did this, repeatedly denying, expressing discomfort, and sometimes even mocking slash at conventions and in interviews. So too Merlin, the Harry Potter films, etc. Hugh Dancy of Hannibal expressed this discomfort in a number of interviews, though notably Misha Collins and Mads Mikkelson, speaking about Supernatural and Hannibal respectively, were more open to the possibility of homoeroticism. All of these pairings were given heterosexual romance arcs.

In many examples, as the writers became aware of the subtext, the characters were actually separated to try to prevent any potential subtext from being read into their interactions. In Teen Wolf, Hannibal, Supernatural, Captain America, and the Witcher, character arcs separated pairings who previously spent a lot of screen-time together, physically distancing them to reduce any opportunity for subtext.

2. In the next category, there are the creators who write in minor gay characters in the hopes of appeasing fandom or shifting their focus from the main slash pairing. See JK Rowling making Dumbledore gay, Felicia Day's character in Supernatural, Jaskier in the Witcher, etc. This kind of redirection is often an attempt to say, see, we're not homophobic, but also we have no interest in alienating middle-America cable viewers by asserting that a traditionally masculine lead could in fact be queer. See Watson's queer sister in Sherlock, even while the writers denied any queer subtext between the leads.

A more contemporary subcategory of this category involves giving a character a backstory that hints at or includes queerness, but doesn't show it on screen or allow it for the character's present day arc. I think the Loki tv show is an example of this, as is Valkyrie in the Thor films, although I haven't seen Loki and I think there was a cut scene with Valkyrie that made her bisexuality canon for the film verse. WWDITS does this a little as well, though I think it's much more self aware and also, is an unfinished story arc. The main characters are revealed to be queer but the pairing is not thus far canonical, though both Nandor and Guillermo are shown having on-screen queer relationships with other (or in fact the same) people.

3. The next category, which I believe begins to push the boundaries of fandom, are those shows that purposefully wrote in or allowed subtext to flourish, likely for financial reasons. Again, there was no chance the writing teams were going to make a slash pairing canon, but they would certainly wink and nod at it to appease fandom. And, largely, this worked. Fans noticed it, we liked it, we worked it into fic. Did we also feel mocked and disrespected by it? Certainly. But those liminal spaces were where our identities were allowed to live, and so we took those seeds and turned them into the vibrant culture of fandom.

One particularly egregious example of this comes from the Teen Wolf television show, which produced a viral video featuring the members of the slash pairing. The video showed the actors cuddled close on a boat, and opened with one of the actors saying, "We're on a ship, pun intended." The ad was intended to garner votes for an award for the show, and purposefully capitalized upon slash fandom to that end. However, the show also simultaneously wrote out the possibility of these characters having a romantic arc.

Some subtler examples have surfaced often during unscripted Q&A sessions with actors, for example Hannibal's Mads Mikkelson reacting humorously during a panel discussion in which Hugh Dancy describes Hannibal and Will's love as platonic, indicating that he disagrees. See also Misha Collins saying, "Also, Cas is gay" in an instagram post, after a canonical declaration of unrequited love from Castiel to Dean in Supernatural (or requited if you believe the Spanish subtitles, though there's still plausible deniability for this to be platonic love).

Hannibal I think begins to push the boundaries here, and some fans will say that the Hannibal/Will slash pairing is canon. While there is a ton of space to read that in the show, especially in season three and in creator Brian Fuller's statements since the end of the show, the show utilizes ambiguity both for artistic effect and (in my opinion) to avoid ever making the subtext into text. See for example this much quoted line from the second last episode of season 3:

Will Graham : "Is Hannibal in love with me?" Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier : "Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes. But do you... ache for him?"

We quote this scene all the time and say, it's canon! Hannibal loves Will! I am personally a gigantic Hannibal fan and I love the room for subtext in this writing, but note that while it certainly SEEMS like Bedelia is saying Hannibal is in love with Will, she does not explicitly say that it is romantic love. Also, Will doesn't reply! We can read many emotions into his facial expression, but we don't have explicit canonical confirmation.

Similarly, the show's climactic ending is often touted as a romantic embrace, but I would say it is not undeniably, explicitly romantic. I feel it has strong romantic undertones, but the writers chose not to make the subtext into explicit text. It's important to mention that this show aired on cable, and as such was beholden to network censorship and the need to target cable audience for ratings. The next category of shows is different.

4. As television production has moved into the realm of streaming services, there has of course been a rise of well-received queer television and film, Orange is the New Black being one of the early examples. There is of course a financial market for this stuff, and it's easier to tailor content to sympathetic audiences. I do think this stuff is also just becoming vastly more visible in general (in politics, on tiktok, etc.) and as such we've seen more and more representation from TV shows. These shows were all, from their inception, intended as queer stories. This category includes Heartstopper (a show much beloved by me), Gentleman Jack, and notably OFMD. I think Our Flag Means Death stands out because it took pains to dispel many of the characteristic elements of fandom queerbaiting, which while evidently unintentional on the part of creator and writer David Jenkins, was almost certainly an intentional choice from the overwhelmingly queer writer's room for the show. But again, though many fans were surprised to see the pairing made canon, it was intended from the original arc of the show. I think the remake of Interview with the Vampire also falls into this category of more fandom-aware, intentional queer stories.

5. And then there's Good Omens. In season one, I think the show fit into categories 2 and 3, containing queer and nonbinary representation and allowing a lot of space for subtext. Michael Sheen stated in interviews that he was playing Aziraphale as a person who was trying not to show someone that he loved them, but never explicitly stated this to be a romantic love. I know fandom read it that way, including myself, but technically it was never explicitly stated as romantic love. It seemed reasonably clear in the landscape of season one, and the other shows that were being made at the same time, that slash pairings do not become canon. Much was made of a line from the Good Omens book, reiterated by Neil Gaiman on tumblr that angels are agender. Several of the characters are in show canon only referred to by gender neutral pronouns, though not Aziraphale or Crowley. Much more still was made of Gaiman's references to conversations in which he and Terry Pratchett joked? discussed? the pairing living in a cottage in the South Downs together after the events of the book. There was a great deal of room left by Sheen and Gaiman's comments, and by the subtext of the show, in which to imagine a queer romance.

As I prepared to watch season two, I remarked to a friend that I was curious to see what, if any, impact fandoms like Hannibal and OFMD might have had on the series. Hannibal fandom seems to have largely convinced Brian Fuller of the viability of a queer romance, though he has been cagey about if it would happen in a hypothetical season 4 of Hannibal (I've seen several interviews in which Fuller states that it might not happen in season 4 because "Hannibal would want Will to be able to consent, and he would not be able to in the planned storyline for season 4").

OFMD's success seems to have paved the way for story-lines containing queer representation and romance that are not in fact centered around the experience of being queer. OFMD, in addition to showcasing many different kinds of queer relationships, worked hard to write a story that was not a Heartstopper style coming out story. So too, Hannibal and Good Omens season one are compelling as stories that happen to contain possible queer pairings, not as stories framed around the experience of being queer.

Additionally, through each of his recent television series but most notably with Sandman, Neil Gaiman made an explicit statement about including substantial queer representation in his work. He did not seem to be overly burdened with the requirements from the Terry Pratchett estate, or with any personal fear of writing queer narratives. If ever there was a moment to make a slash pairing canon, it seemed to be now.

As I watched season two, I felt much as I had watching OFMD - filled with a sense of disbelief that after countless fandoms in which there was no eventual queer arc, the subtext seemed suspiciously close to becoming text. I kept reminding myself not to get my hopes up, because that has basically never paid off in the past! I assumed the show would hint heavily but leave some room for ambiguity.

But it didn't! And not only did it deliberately and explicitly state that the arc was a romantic one, it also referenced and validated subtext from season one, which I suspect was before anyone had a serious intention of making this pairing explicitly canonical. I cannot think of any other example of a fandom that began a story without an intended queer romantic arc for its main characters, and ended up writing one in. If there are any other shows out there I would love to know, but for now Good Omens stands alone as the first fandom I know of in history to do this. What a time to be alive, and part of fandom! I can't wait to see what happens next!

#meta #ramblings #GOSeason2Spoilers #Good omens meta #Hannigram #OFMD #this is exceedingly long

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