Let’s just take a minute and talk about the quietly amazing thing happening in the GO fandom: creators and actors are treating fans and fannish works with respect, love, and even admiration. I’m on the periphery of this fandom thus far, but it’s obvious even from afar.
This is how change happens. and this, THIS is how you treat people if you find yourself in a position of power or influence.
When I started out in fandom 20+ years ago, if you wrote slash, or drew slash art, you couldn’t tell a soul. god no. Taboo in the extreme.
I watched for 20 years as actors, writers and showrunners did press tours. And invariably someone in the media would pull out a piece of racy fan art to provoke a reaction. Look at these hysterical, sex-crazed shrieking fans, can you believe this? Like fandom was a freak show.
Those of us in the Sherlock fandom remember the moment when Caitlin Moran insisted on reading explicit fanfic to Benedict and Martin at a press event. It was horrible and humiliating for all involved.
Look where we are now.
Neil Gaiman openly saying he wrote the TV relationship as a romance. David Tennant giving a relaxed smile and talking about the A/C love story. Michael Sheen telling everyone who will listen that he was inspired by fanfic when he approached the part of Aziraphale.
This is important: it’s one thing to say “it doesn’t bother me that fans are writing romance.”
It’s another thing do to what Michael Sheen has done in the past few weeks, and not only let everyone know he’s okay with it, but to say he likes it. That he loves the community. To even acknowledge specific fics that he’s read. (!!)
I can remember when it felt like a big deal for creators just to give their blessing to fanfic writers. But this is different. This is more: Michael Sheen isn’t afraid. He’s showing his peers in the industry not to be afraid of fans who write stories or create art. He is shining a light on a group that very recently was the butt of every talk show joke. A group with a huge number of queer and female-identifying participants.
No talk show host can freak him out with fan art, because it won’t surprise him. No one can make him uncomfortable about this. Because he gets it. And not only does he get it, he’s not afraid to talk about it. Neither is Neil Gaiman, or anyone else involved with the show, as far as I can tell. They are absolutely fine with fielding questions on this topic, and because they are so respectful, so kind, and so relaxed about it, they are setting an example.
This is how to respond to an enthusiastic fandom.
I hope everyone in the industry looks at Good Omens when they want to understand how to engage with fans. I hope everyone involved with the show itself knows how much this is appreciated. It feels like a brave new world.
I have been thinking about these very points all week, and you have expressed it perfectly. It is, dare I say, a fandom miracle!
The TV adaptation of Good Omens was a love letter as much as it was a love story.
It was a love letter not to the readers who picked up the book in 1990 (or not just to them) but to the fans who kept the story alive, who spun Good Omens into something greater than the sum of its pages, who saw an infinite variety of possibilities in the original work.
When Neil wrote the script, he didn’t say, “Okay, this time, we’re making it clear that NO HOMO.” He didn’t toe the Hollywood line of “this time around, we’re making damn sure the world knows this show is for cishet white boys first and foremost! Just throw in a little queerbaiting to keep the fangirls happy.”
Instead, he and the cast gave us the whole damn TV adaptation.
The book was, to steal a phrase, “just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped.”
In the TV adaption, instead of putting walls and boundaries around that potentiality, Neil and the actors tore down the walls that were already there (1990 publishing, time change, etc.), welcomed us inside, and and told us, “Have at it.”
