I have seen Spiderman: far from home

The world building is still wonky and I get the feeling Marvel/Disney has a tendency to think character development is too complicated so they put more explosions in their movies rather than bother….

But overall I was okay with what they did with Peter’s character (less so about the 1st credit scene, which I felt was taking the ‘new Tony Stark’ thing too far) and MJ is still cool despite the er…semi sidelining of franchise-native characters in favor of SHIELD personnel and Happy.

Idk, I feel like individually the MCU movies keep themselves in the 'formulaic but mostly okay’ zone, which I suppose is to be expected. Can’t look at them too hard from a broader perspective or they fall apart though, which kinda sucks when Disney is trying to extend its reach to space :/

If it's not canon, it's not enough

So I’ve been giving thoughts to the idea of Good Omens and queerbaiting, because it’s been discussed a lot and. Uh

I don’t think Neil Gaiman was queerbaiting anyone, in the sense that he seems to have wanted to give us good rep. It isn’t perfect by far and I have my beef with the whole ‘they’re totally a romance but only in word of God’ thing, which I might go into later on. But, technically speaking, not queerbaiting.

Amazon? A different beast entirely. I have zero doubt that they saw this and thought 'perfect, queer viewers AND homophobes!’

Regardless of that though, and despite the things I’ve said in the past that might run contrary to this post, I’m going to say: this isn’t enough. Because we can say whatever we want about how Ineffable Husbands is canon, but at the end of the day the only characters who label Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship as romantic (or even queer in any way) are people trying to belittle them. This is not interpretation, it’s a fact.

I know there are people who saw themselves in the ambiguity, and I respect that. I’m glad people found something that was good to them. That still doesn’t change the fact that Aziraphale and Crowley are not canonically queer, not really, because anyone who refuses to see them as queer will still be able to say 'yeah but in the show…’ and right now we’re not in a cultural place where subtext is enough to make good rep.

This isn’t an attack on the show, or on Neil Gaiman. I know he’s been trying, even if his queer work is…well, it feels iffy to me. But it IS criticism though, and I really hope some queer person in his life will take him aside someday and let him know that. More than anything I hope he’ll listen.

Because he’s trying to do good.

But it’s still not enough.