Guardian isn't really a theory: the source text was explicitly gay, the protagonists have sex on page multiple times and end up as partners (who call each other husband and wife, which is a bit icky but I'll chalk that up to translation), and they could not show it on screen without Chinese censors coming down hard. Though, in doing that but still trying to signal the relationship, they somehow made it more queer. I don't particularly love the sex scenes in the book—partly it's a translation issue, but also some of the dynamics are quite problematic—and the eye-fucking that happens in the show really gives the sense that these two characters have been in a star-crossed relationship for 10,000 years, which feels more true emotionally to the core of the story.
With Good Omens, the show is getting a season 2, and you can kind of sense they might have been saving some things in case it got renewed, so I really don't think it's queerbaiting so much as testing the waters to see what they can get away with in the future. Neil Gaiman has said that they're meant to be in a relationship, all the beats are set up as a relationship, and we don't even get a No Homo decoy love interest for either of them to suggest that there is any possibility of another relationship in their lives.
But there is also the fact that 1) this is a slow burn love story with immortal characters, and 2) they're not human and don't have the same relationship parameters that we do. Canonically they don't have parts. Which means that the creator saying that they're queer and together, and everything in the show pointing to a relationship as the characters would define it, doesn't to me feel like queerbaiting at all. It just suggests a relationship that is not human and that evolves at a glacial pace.
I am also concerned, in GO's case, about the close relationship of the creators to fandom. Fandom really wants things to be explicit on screen, but fandom is not a unified body, and there are people who want to see the characters get naked on screen and fuck, presumably, and people who are clinging very hard to them as ace representation. I think both are very valid interpretations but going either direction cuts some possibilities off, and I hope the creators at least keep those details a little ambiguous, both for storytelling's sake (I do not want to see Awkward Representation Dialogue inserted in a story that really isn't about that), and to allow for imaginative possibilities for fandom to interpret.
I think I've mentioned this before, but my comparison is always my favourite het relationship in The Hour, where you have Lix and Randall alluding to a relationship that was definitely sexual during the Spanish Civil War—they had a child, after all—but never actually doing anything on screen besides touching hands and eye-fucking, and it's approximately 1000x more compelling than the main characters' relationship (which, don't get me wrong, is great). It's all subtext but done in such a way that it is obvious to the viewer what they are to each other.
It's interesting in OFMD that the creators reference Mulder and Scully, which IMO opinion was absolutely ruined by them getting together on screen. I think that could have happened in a satisfying way, but it was a result of fandom interference and you can tell.
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With Good Omens, the show is getting a season 2, and you can kind of sense they might have been saving some things in case it got renewed, so I really don't think it's queerbaiting so much as testing the waters to see what they can get away with in the future. Neil Gaiman has said that they're meant to be in a relationship, all the beats are set up as a relationship, and we don't even get a No Homo decoy love interest for either of them to suggest that there is any possibility of another relationship in their lives.
But there is also the fact that 1) this is a slow burn love story with immortal characters, and 2) they're not human and don't have the same relationship parameters that we do. Canonically they don't have parts. Which means that the creator saying that they're queer and together, and everything in the show pointing to a relationship as the characters would define it, doesn't to me feel like queerbaiting at all. It just suggests a relationship that is not human and that evolves at a glacial pace.
I am also concerned, in GO's case, about the close relationship of the creators to fandom. Fandom really wants things to be explicit on screen, but fandom is not a unified body, and there are people who want to see the characters get naked on screen and fuck, presumably, and people who are clinging very hard to them as ace representation. I think both are very valid interpretations but going either direction cuts some possibilities off, and I hope the creators at least keep those details a little ambiguous, both for storytelling's sake (I do not want to see Awkward Representation Dialogue inserted in a story that really isn't about that), and to allow for imaginative possibilities for fandom to interpret.
I think I've mentioned this before, but my comparison is always my favourite het relationship in The Hour, where you have Lix and Randall alluding to a relationship that was definitely sexual during the Spanish Civil War—they had a child, after all—but never actually doing anything on screen besides touching hands and eye-fucking, and it's approximately 1000x more compelling than the main characters' relationship (which, don't get me wrong, is great). It's all subtext but done in such a way that it is obvious to the viewer what they are to each other.
It's interesting in OFMD that the creators reference Mulder and Scully, which IMO opinion was absolutely ruined by them getting together on screen. I think that could have happened in a satisfying way, but it was a result of fandom interference and you can tell.