David Tennant

[SidewaysOtter]

I’m gutted, I’m such a huge fan of his. I’ve been hugely looking forward to the second series of Good Omens.

And now this. When challenged on it, apparently he said “I’m OK, TERFs can’t climbs stairs”.

How very disappointing.

I've watched the second series now, must admit that I started watching with "Yeah, but David Tennant and that bloody t-shirt" at the back of my mind. But I got over that and enjoyed the series. It's not as good as the original - but then that's such a brilliant book that the new series had a Herculean task to match up to it - but it's still pretty good. The door is clearly open for a third series.

It’s a bit preachy. Turns out some people are gay and that’s ok

thanks for that John and Neil

but despite that it is awfully good

The writers are playing to their audience with the rainbow preachiness.

The entire fanficdom on places like fanfiction.net, Tumblr, Archive Of Our Own, Wattpad, etc is based on the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley looking like a gay couple, even though they are not even human, to the point that Gaiman was criticised for betraying the (presumably gay) "community" by some "fans" (I use quotes because real fans recognise that they don't own the work and don't act entitled to tell creators what to do) when he reminded us on his Tumblr that A and C aren't human so the labels "gay" and "straight". The fanfic is like the old Kirk/Spock erotic fic writers from the nineties, with an added dose of "sometimes one (usually Crowley) or both of them puts a vulva on". The (book) canon ability of angels and demons to choose their apparent sex makes the GO fanficdom a magnet for TQ types because they can indulge their wishful thinking with one hand down their pants about changing sex. Except that you can't change sex in reality, and I think that overindulging in such fictions makes reality harder to accept.

I remember Rihanna Pratchett telling people to Read. The. Books because Sir Terry would certainly have agreed that anyone could be anything they wanted.

But I did read the books (all of them, repeatedly) and what I got from them was a more gritty 'be the version of yourself that makes you happy, but realise you're doing it and don't lose sight of the truth'. I always felt he'd be a kindly GC, tbh.

Unlike Gaiman, whose books I love but doesn't seem to have ever met a bandwagon he didn't want to jump on.

My interpretation of Monstrous Regiment and Going Postal was that Pterry understood full well about the difference between sex and gender. He makes fun of the post office worker who thinks that it's not OK for a sexless golem or a female dwarf to enter the women's loos unless they dress in a stereotypically feminine way. He highlights the PTSD of the girl who keeps setting fire to things, with a very strong implication that she's been sexually molested in something like a Magdalene laundry, and the likely consequences of being pregnant in combat for the girl who seeks the father of her child. The PTSD and pregnancy are because they were born girls. Pterry skewered the notion that the girls should have to disguise themselves as boys to be taken seriously. The women of MR are a beautiful tribute to James Barry and Joan of Arc.

People interpret Cheery Littlebottom as an analogy for gender transition, ignoring that she is female and has nowhere to transition to and from because dwarves don't have gender. It becomes clear in Thud! that her situation is more akin to that of a woman from an orthodox religious community who wishes to adopt some of the attire of the dominant culture. When the grag (a priest-like figure) calls her "undwarf", he is accusing her of heresy and betrayal of her culture, not of gender non-conformity. The dwarves don't have two genders, which would be required for her to be gender non-conforming. When she adopts she/her pronouns, she's adopting a language feature of the dominant culture. Pterry skewers the idea that sex could practicably be invisible and the idea that sex plays no part in attraction when he mentions how dwarf courtship requires an awkward early conversation to make sure that the two dwarves are of each other's desired sex.

Rihanna, like Gaiman, is jumping a bandwagon here and ascribing an opinion to her father that there's no evidence that he held to do so, in a similar vein to all the recent post-mortem transing of James Barry, Joan of Arc, Mike "Marsha" Johnson, Stormé Delavery, etc etc.

Ah well, I'll still be watching Good Omens. I've still enjoyed music/films created by or featuring men who have done much worse than wear a mean t shirt.

See, I can't watch New Tricks ever since one of the lead actors admitted to hitting his wife and pulled the "look what she made me do" card live on air.

I didn't know about that, but I Googled and I guessed right! 😀

I did find it a bit sad that Good Omens 2 has completely done away with the idea of long, satisfying friendship and replaced it with a sexual relationship.

Crowley and Aziraphale were friends, and were very important to each other on that basis. It's rather a teenage view to assume that people who have been friends for years and years and years want to have sex with each other. and rather sad too. I have long friendships with other women that bring me great pleasure. sex is not a feature.

it's as if Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg suddenly fell in romantic love (hah!). Just completely unlikely. Not what people do.

One of the great things about Terry Pratchett's books is that the characters behave like real people. This would not have happened on his watch, that's all I can say.

See, I didn't want to watch it because Tennant and, frankly, didn't i didn't really enjoy the first season. Then I did because Finnemore. Now I don't again. Really, Crowley and Aziraphale, fuck!? Was it based on a fanfic?

honestly, it's still good cake. the last episode is pretty daft. but everything up to that is good

the dialogue is miles lighter and better than the last series (the work of finnemore if I'm any judge)

and tennant and sheen are great actors and have a lovely on screen relationship

GUYS, SPOILERS :( :( :(

(Also, if that is the plot it sucks for all the reasons mentioned. There used to be a term "shippy" for when a good series started to be all about characters relationships with each other instead of the plots and characters. Buffy ended up there too. Usually hits later than season two though. Apart from anything else, people fucking people they despise, especially men, is hardly unusual. The devil and the angel.finding friendship is far more meaningful than the devil and the angel having the body hots for each other. Way to ruin a great fictional friendship writers!)

argh, so sorry re spoilers

also 'shippy' so true

Buffy just got so, so, so bad when that happened!

it's as if Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg suddenly fell in romantic love (hah!).

I can’t imagine Granny being bothered with romantic stuff. I know there was a dalliance with Mudstrum Ridcully when she was younger but she’d not hold with that sort of thing any more.

And Nanny was definitely straight - she’d buried several husbands (most of whom were dead at the time).

Yes, 'shipping'. Fucking hate it. It's so soapy.

Georgia Tennant gives me 'the mom in mean girl' vibes. She's just irritating.

GOOD OMENS SERIES 2 SPOILER ALERT

But they obviously don’t have sex in series 2, and there’s nothing in there which indicates they necessarily would have sex, even if they had run away together at the end (do we know if angels and demons are even capable of having sex in the Good Omens universe?). What is acknowledged is that they love each other, in a deep and profound way, and could be everything to one another. Which was already pretty obvious.

If they actually go to bed then I am definitely skipping series two, and I'm writing as someone who loved the sex in season one of the original late-90s Queer As Folk. (Yes, I am that old.)

The great thing about GO series one was that it was a little flirty (e.g. the wall slam scene where Az is looking at Crow's lips) but ambiguous enough (e.g. the night at Crow's flat being completely off-screen) that if you wanted to ship them, you could, and if you didn't, you could treat them as platonic besties. And the shipping was all the sweeter because you decided what the sex scenes looked like. GO is not QAF and there are times when subtlety is the sexier option.

so the labels "gay" and "straight" don't apply.

spoilers alert

Quite liked DT in Dr Woo but in GO, last episode of S2 especially, he's doing Bill Nighy from Love Actually and it's teeth gratingly awful. That plus terf t-shirt bollocks means I can v much leave him.

The kiss was jarring and unpleasant, presumably deliberately so.

Michael Sheen, on the other hand, is an amazing actor. That last shot of him ascending in the lift with a mix of triumph and despair flashing across his face is just extraordinary.

Tennant has always reminded me of a hyper-active child who's desperate for attention. I haven't been able to watch Good Omens and I'm not looking forward to his return to Doctor Who.

Quite liked DT in Dr Woo but in GO, last episode of S2 especially, he's doing Bill Nighy from Love Actually and it's teeth gratingly awful

that’s exactly what i said to dh

i do like tennant as crowley though…it was just the last episode or so i was getting Nighy vibes (love Nighy)

Completely agree on the Nighy thing - he always had a touch of Nighy but in the last two episodes he seemed to be doing a full on impression and it was just weird

Just another male supremacist then.