i want to clarify a few things, because i've received a handful of questions in response to this meme and people seem unhappy with how i'm answering!!!!!
first, Neil is a saint specifically for how patiently he answers this shit and i never claimed to also be a saint!!!!! but more importantly:
unlike Neil Gaiman, i do not have a gender, so when you insist to me that gender can't just not apply or that there's nothing queer about not having a gender, you're actually being
✨️🏳️🌈directly bigoted toward me!!!!!🏳️🌈✨️
so if you're mad, my little chili babies, that i did not hold your hand through a gentle explanation like a kindergarten teacher, know that i am not fucking obligated to when your very question invalidates my existence!!!!!
now. since i would actually like people to understand, i think where people are getting stuck is the
core concept of the word queer.
so here is a very quick breakdown of what that word means to me.
queer isn't a box. it isn’t a label the way the other letters are labels. it's not a synonym for "LGBT+" or "gay" or anything. queer is a word that specifically evokes the nuance of identity.
heaven and hell in good omens, for all their flaws, are a queernormative soceity. in this society, gender is treated less as a box that you fall into when you're born, or even a box you get to choose, but rather as a buffet table. you walk over and decide which pronouns you want (if any), which identity label (if any), how you want to present.
in a world like this, any other labels become extremely nebulous. what is straight, what is gay, what is trans, when gender is a mosaic? when you deconstruct the very concept of gender, it queers everything. when you build a world where the concept of gender is this expansive, you can't shrink the characters down into the boxes our culture uses!!!!!
(now, when queerness is the norm, people within the society likely won't consider individual relationships queer [as many others have pointed out, from heaven and hell's pov, the angel and demon thing is a lot queerer than the both-mostly-appearing-masc thing], but remember we're watching and understanding through an earth 2023 lens and if we're going to talk about it it's going to be in the language our culture uses for such things, because that's how language and communication works. i've read and discussed a lot of fiction that takes place in queernormative settings but i think this is the first time anyone has demanded that i defend my "choice" to consider the relationships within the setting queer.)
you like memes? okay!!!!! queer means:
and i don't have to add or change anything about those last two because that's the point. queer means this entire concept is too big for my tiny human brain!!!!! queer means none of us are using these words in the exact same way. none of us are thinking about gender and sexuality in the exact same way and that's the point!!!!! we shouldn't be!!!!! IT'S NUANCED!!!!!
queer says the boxes aren't always big enough, or small enough, or flexible or permeable enough or close enough to another box you wanna stick a limb into once in a while so let's destroy them and let everyone make their own beautiful artwork to tell us who they are!!!!! we'll keep the labelmaker around for those who like the labels and want to add them but no one is obligated!!!!!
i think the final thing the fans who haven't been alive for as long as Neil and Terry have been writing queer characters aren't understanding is that this book came out in 1990 and THIS WAS NOT DONE IN 1990. THIS WAS GROUNDBREAKING.
YES, THIS MOMENT IS DIRECTLY FROM THE BOOK AND IT'S A HUGE DEAL.
to have a main character - a protagonist - in a book that isn't specifically, explicitly, and exclusively being marketed to The Gays™️ proudly declare himself THE Southern Pansy, simply was not something authors did!!!!! and it especially wasn't something authors who were then going to get mad that people read their characters as queer did!!!!! this was the height of the AIDS epidemic, y'all!!!!!
"but it was a joke" yes!!!!! a positive joke!!!!! an affirming joke!!!!! it's not even a little bit at our expense!!!!!
Aziraphale said oh no i'm not just gay i'm the fucking platonic form of queerness in nineteen fucking ninety and people are frothing because Neil won't use the word you want him to!!!!! and if you don’t think they read like a couple please read some Discworld and get back to me!!!!!
read other queernormative worlds and other older fiction where the queerness could only exist as subtext and try to understand the immense privilege you have had to grow up queer in a world that allows you to look at some of the best representation i've seen in my 36 years and declare it not queer enough for you!!!!!
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