the beast who sets the world aflame!

Loathe as I am to mention this, but we all remember "Dumbledore is gay", right? An off-hand, out of canon moment made to retroactively represent the series as being more diverse than it actually was, that apart from brief flashback scenes in later films after the detail was added, bore no relevance to the plot or identity of the character. That's... honestly kind of the situation here.

"But Vex!" You may be saying, "the fact that they're genderqueer is mentioned in the books! It can't have been added post-humously!"

And my response to that is: is it?

Yes, the book here combats the idea that Aziraphale is a man, but only on the basis of sex, and whether or not this makes Aziraphale a gay man.

As an aside: He Who Shall Not Be Named Nor Complimented was always very combative and, I've always thought, smugly avoidant about ever referring to Aziraphale or Crowley as being "gay" for this reason. It's a pedantic line in the sand that I always thought was not his place as a cishet man to be making, one that none of the queer people I've ever known have drawn either. I don't think you'll catch many people outside of transphobes getting particular about the word "gay" meaning "gay cis males only". All of the non-binary couples I know would probably call their relationship gay - it, in all honesty, exposes a lack of knowledge on his part about the language used in the queer community, despite getting smugly pedantic about it.

Moreover, angels and demons being sexless is more because they're not human than a specific and intentional representation of genderqueerness. It could be argued here that this makes Good Omens fall into the "Non-Human Non-Binary" trope, but since the book defines "sexless" and not "genderless", and is more about angels and demons having no real reason for reproductive organs and thus not having them, I hesitate to mark it with that problematic trope as it's not intended to other non-binary people or imply that a non-binary identity only makes sense if someone isn't human.

This is a fun detail, one that makes sense for the worldbuilding of Good Omens and that classifies Aziraphale and Crowley as being a solid win for the non-binary community, two of a very small handful of canonically non-binary characters who present in an outwardly masculine way.

But are they GOOD representations? I don't think so - because their genderqueerness is never allowed to exist overtly on-screen.

Crowley specifically is genderfluid. Our only confirmation of this is He Who Shall Not Be Named Nor Complimented, who said that Crowley was going by she/her pronouns during the time Jesus was being crucified, and whilst being Nanny Ashtoreth.

Nanny Ashtoreth, to me, is a reach in terms of representation. It's patently a disguise, and while yes this does count as an expression of a genderqueer identity if Crowley was entirely identifying femininely during that period - does that read to an audience not in the know? Aziraphale refers to her with she/her pronouns, but since this never happens again, someone who watches the series and carries on with their life would never know that this was a real part of Crowley's identity and not something Aziraphale was going along with for the sake of the disguise.

The same can be said of Crowley during the crucifixion. Yes, he's wearing feminine clothing - of the time. Sure, if you look in the background, you see only women wearing the same thing that Crowley is, but it's a detail so easily missed I can hardly count it. The look, a robe with a cloak over the head, doesn't read as particularly feminine to a modern audience either. The reddit thread about the detail is 90% people saying they never would've caught it because they don't know anything about 33AD era fashion.

This goes again for what Crowley's wearing in the modern age - people have pointed out that he mixes clothing meant for women with clothing meant for men, but again, does this at all read? It honestly looks like a really standard alternative masculine outfit to me.

And it's a confirmation of a genderfluid presentation (hidden in an easter egg at that), not a genderfluid identity. Even if you caught that Crowley was wearing feminine clothing here, presentation doesn't equal gender.

As for Aziraphale, we don't get anything at all beyond the mention in the book. He calls himself "Mr. Fell" at multiple points - yes, a form of disguise, but he clearly aligns himself consistently with a masculine presentation enough to willingly identify with the term "mister".

So now onto Season 2, our post-"confirmation that Aziraphale and Crowley are genderqueer, and that Crowley is genderfluid and uses all pronouns" season. Does the show make it any more explicit?

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh.............

This, for the record, is better. It's the closest we get to explicit confirmation within the series, this is a definitive win. It's a nice touch, it'll signal to the people that missed it and who would benefit from it that this is a character who, although doesn't outline any specifically identity, at least doesn't identify as a "lad".

It's also like two seconds.

And my mum interpreted it as being a joke about him being 6000 years old (i.e. not a "lad" in a "young boy" sense). She has a trans son (me) and a non-binary child, so she's not clueless about this sort of thing.

He Who Shall Not Be Named Nor Complimented had many opportunities to make Crowley's genderfluid identity more overt in this particular season, as the one where the writing was entirely his. A flashback scene, a scene of Aziraphale just using different pronouns for him, anything. And this is all that we got. Allegedly there was a planned scene with female Aziracrow in New York, but that was cut, so it doesn't count.

It's why I draw the comparison between Crowley's supposed genderfluidity and Dumbledore's gayness. Yes, you can count both characters as being the things their creators state them to be, but when it comes to actually representing that, to an average audience, it would totally pass them by. Fuck, I actually think even Dumbledore being gay was more explicit than Crowley's genderfluidity!

I appreciate, as someone who got his gender identity from Crowley (a man but in a non-human, demon way - I haven't yet coined a term), characters who are genderqueer and who just Exist. I love when characters can just be queer and not turn to the audience and give them queerness 101 lectures. Good Omens as a whole is a good example of that, there are lots of queer characters in Whickber Street and they all just exist being gay.

But there's a difference between that and depicting your characters queerness near exclusively in asides that mean your general audiences aren't confronted by anything they don't understand, in a way where the identity of your characters are easter eggs for a dedicated audience and not the out-there representation that they frankly should be, especially with the self aggrandising way The Elephant talked about them.

I outline ALL OF THIS because the reaction to Asa and Anthony has been bothering me. Deeply bothering me. They present largely no differently to how Crowley and Aziraphale do. Anthony is in all black, Asa in shades of cream and yellow. Sure, both look more "normal", but that's because they're both wearing clothes that are a little more grounded than Aziraphale and Crowley's outfits and general look that I've personally always compared to cartoon character design. I don't think anything particularly hostile was meant by it, it's just a shorthand to let the audience know that these are different people with a different background, that they come from a more normal life (and don't have the money for snakeskin boots).

But in regards to this presentation, a presentation that is no different to what we've gotten previously throughout the entire series, save for brief moments only made clear outside of the episodes themselves, the reaction from the fanbase has been frankly transphobic.

Someone on Shitter said: "they just became two white middle aged MEN erasing the intrinsic gender queerness that they have. not even became them tbh these two nonbinary gay people just died and instead we got to see the happy ending of a random gay male couple... if you don't explicitly say that they are nonbinary without actually saying so representation in media only counts when it actually represents the people it's trying to represent".

And that comment wasn't the only one of it's kind. I brought all of this up because I think we've been affected too strongly by fanon in terms of the way Aziraphale and Crowley's identities have been depicted, and are now parroting transphobic talking points in the name of defending a representation that, frankly, never existed. There really was no "intrinsic gender queerness" in their original presentations, there was no explicit confirmation of a "nonbinary" identity, just that Crowley alone was not a "lad" and even that has room to be misinterpreted. I'm sure many nonbinary and otherwise genderqueer people have seen themselves in Aziraphale and Crowley - but I'd argue against the idea that Good Omens "actually represents" them in any meaningful way.

We see Asa and Anthony for 5 minutes, not nearly enough time to ascertain that any of their genderqueerness has been stripped away, and it's so insanely backwards to imply a nonbinary identity doesn't exist because of how somebody looks. We see them in one outfit and dressing gowns.

People can be genderqueer whether they're wearing womens jeans and a snake belt, or a duffel coat and a button up polo. To imply otherwise is so regressive and frankly embarassing from this fandom. It's an immature take that reveals an internal bias about how queer people are supposed to look.