Valid take: Crowley fell in love with Aziraphale since he said he gave away the flaming sword, and has been holding out for that love ever since.
Also valid take, but less talked about: Crowley slowly fell in love with Aziraphale over the millennia, the same way Aziraphale did. Maybe with sliiiiightly more awareness of what was happening, because he doesn’t have as much repression and denial to wade through. But it still caught up with him unawares.
Hottest of hot takes that my brain won’t stop screaming about: the full force of Crowley’s feelings didn’t barrel into him like a flaming Bentley until Aziraphale gives him the holy water. That’s when it’s pedal-to-the-metal, no-stopping-this-beating-heart, holy shit I love him and he loves me, that’s what this has been this whole time.
Which means….AZIRAPHALE HAD HIS OH SHIT MOMENT….BEFORE CROWLEY
!!!!!!!!!!!
ANOTHER TAKE I SAW RECENTLY AND COULDNT GET OUT OF MY HEAD was that Crowley fell in love with Aziraphale at the wall of Eden, but he didn’t realize it until the BOOKSHOP FIRE
Which… makes sense because of the music changing from You’re My Best Friend toSOMEBODY TO LOVE.
So yeah, he was totally pining the entire time, and it was probably agony, but he didn’t know what he wanted that he didn’t already have.… until he thought it had been taken away for good.
That would imply Crowley had yet to realise it when they were with Warlock. In this scenario he thinks Aziraphale is his Best Friend, right?
Cue Nanny being quite worried when Warlock begins school, because surely 6 years old Warlock is way too young to have that kind of intense relationship
See, I don’t think Crowley has a hard distinction between friendship and romance. Like. How much basis for comparison could he possibly have? To him it’s just one long increasingly intense stream of emotional attachment, which begins when the angel proves just how different he is.
But it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when anything shifts, partly because there are so many gaps in their onscreen history. Like, for my money, he’s showing full-on affection and is at least somewhat smitten by the time they’re at the Globe, but there’s such a gap before then, it could have happened any time in the last several centuries. But there are definitely romantic overtones by then. He’s just so damn weak to those puppy-dog eyes.
As to when he realizes it, that’s a whole other question. But personally… again, I don’t think there was actually a big ‘aha!’ moment for Crowley. I’m inclined to think that epiphanies are more Aziraphale’s thing, and that Crowley’s been low-key aware of how he feels for a long time. Like after he saves the books, he ducks his head and avoids eye contact before walking away. I think he’s well aware of the gesture he’s making there.
There is a huge impact to the holy water scene, though. Because I think - just my theory - that’s when Crowley realizes Aziraphale loves him back just as intensely. Az has always been so reserved about their relationship, keeping a distance, using euphemistic language, and rarely making the big leaps forward; it’s almost always Crowley making a move. And yet here he is choosing to give Crowley this immense gift, out of sheer concern for his well-being, in the most personal way possible (a fucking tartan thermos), before dropping that absolutely LOADED line. Yeah. I think that’s when it hits Crowley that his feelings might actually be reciprocated.
A clear distinction between friendship and romance might not be sensible to a being of an inherently sexless species. Even if they can feel a human-like sexual attraction because of their human-ish bodies (which I’m not sold on at all), it’s probably not an instinct that comes to them naturally. They are clearly naturally affectionate, aka do form friendship bonds (at Eden they’re both still fairly uninfluenced by humanity, haven’t been incorporated long and both clearly show signs of liking each other one way or another), but does the distinction humans make make sense? What is a romantic relationship if you take away sexual desires and expressions of affection? People make it sound like friendship isn’t love. But it is. You love your friends, and you especially love your best friend. People who say a best friendship isn’t as close and intense as a romantic relationship might not actually have had a real best friend before.
But I want to make a point aside of frustration with our society’s looking down on friendships, and that point is that both “friendship” and “romance” are human labels, and what is considered appropriate under either of those labels has been changing alot in just the last couple of centuries of human history. Crowley and Aziraphale have been around for all this time.
Romantic relationships were not always the most intellectually and emotionally intimate relationship for people to have. For a long time, marriages were formed not by affection, but primarily by political and financial concerns. To make sure there were heirs, to combine two farms or kingdoms, that sort of thing. You could hope to get along well with your spouse, and some spouses certainly grew to love one another, but marriage was often a bond made for practical considerations, rather than emotional ones. If you were a king or duke or whatnot, you might have an affair with someone you loved. The normal peasant couldn’t afford that sort of thing in the long run. Lots of trouble. Friendships and familial relationships like those between siblings were what you got your closeness and support from, either instead of or in addition to your marriage.
For a long while, people romantised friendships the way today’s culture romantises romance. Have you ever read epic Irish folk tales, stories of blood brothers and what we today would probably describe as platonic soulmates? Or for example the late 19th century novels of German author Karl May, full of characters in life-long best friendships that today’s readers will interpret more as queerplatonic partnerships or as homoerotic subtext, depending on how they squint at the text? Or the full blown love letters adressed to friends they found from the 17th to 19th century? At this time, in Western culture the concept of a “romantic friendship” came up, a relationship type that some researchers think has existed before, but then became more visible, because romantic relationships (the modern interpretation of them) came more into focus and especially physical affection between friends started to be considered weird (a trend that ended in what we have today).
Today, if you want to cuddle a best friend or hold their hand or share a house and a life with them, you’ll have to negotiate the relationship terms, because right now these things are monopolised by romantic relationships. That was not always the case, and it’s probably worth noting that it isn’t actually very healthy for humans to live that way. We’re capable of lots of different loving bonds and to limit emotional intimacy to one type of them might be one reason we have things like today’s loneliness epidemic going on.
But the point was historical relationship types.
Some of these historic close friendships were certainly homosexual partnerships hidden in more or less plain sight, but that doesn’t change that for centuries, it was quite normal to be a lot more affectionate and emotionally open about your close friendships. Crowley and Aziraphale casually reference events from hundreds of years ago. Time means little to angels and demons. The by comparison rapid changing of human relationship labels must be all sorts of confusing.
Is it surprising that Crowley doesn’t have a clear distinction? Or, that he chooses to call his attachment to Aziraphale “best friend”? It’s the much more long standing term for what they have. Angels/demons seem to naturally form friendships, so it’s probably a concept he was familiar with already (there were probably friendships between angels in Heaven before the Fall). And as a being to whom human-ish attraction of a more sexual nature might well not come naturally, he’s stuck observing humans and their relationships to make sense of the terms they use. Now, especially considering the history, observe a close knit friendship and a romantic relationship. What’s the difference? It’s not the emotional closeness. It’s more like the physical expression (kissing, sex).
Crowley and Aziraphale don’t kiss and have sex. At least not on screen. Whether or not they will do so after Armageddon isn’t relevant to the time during the series. Crowley looks at his relationship with Aziraphale, and goes “yes, he’s the most important being in my life, I’d do anything for him, he knows me best out of everyone in existence, even if the whole world ends in a puddle of burning goo, he’s what I’ll try to save, without him my life is meaningless, but we don’t kiss and don’t fuck” and concludes “best friends!” It makes sense, doesn’t it?
Excuse me for rambling. The above points aside, I do agree that Crowley grows to love Aziraphale slowly and over time, but is definitely at a near present day level of affection for him at the globe. He’s looking at him so fondly, and yes, so weak for the puppy eyes. (Which isn’t necessarily a romantic thing either; I’m super weak for puppy eyes from my sister and my best friend, and reasonably weak for it from other friends, so weakness to manipulation by puppy eyes is probably individually different and Crowley might just have a bad case of it.)
But I’ll buy Crowley being in love one way or another at the globe, and the thermos being his moment of “wow, he likes me back”.
No no, don’t apologise for rambling, it was delightful
Oh yeah, hard agree. I admit I have a knee-jerk reaction to characters being relegated to ‘just friends’ - not because that’s actually a lesser thing in any way, but because it’s been used as a method of queer erasure for SO long. But of course that only applies if you’re restricting the definition of friendship the way we tend to do now. Friendships from a couple centuries ago were like… well, let’s just say ‘no homo’ did not appear to be a concern then. Actually beinggay was a huge taboo, but you were allowed to kiss and hug your friends and sit on their laps, so it’s a very confusing time to look back on from the 21st century.
I myself am not clear on the distinction between romantic and non-romantic. I thought I had it more or less figured out, based on broad societal consensus, but then I read aro posts that clearly depict physical and emotional intimacy with friends, and was introduced to the ‘queerplatonic’ label, and now I’m pretty much dead convinced of what I’ve suspected for a long time: that we’ve been painting lines around relationships that have no objective basis whatsoever, that all of the distinctions are just shades on a spectrum instead of the separate categories they’re treated as.
And if anyone knows that, it’s Aziraphale and Crowley. They both pick up a LOT from humans and emulate societal changes to some extent, at least on the surface. But I don’t think it sinks in for them. The same way that Crowley presents as what we call genderfluid, but probably doesn’t identify as genderfluid, because he doesn’t have a gender identity at all in the sense that human beings do… they also have no need to make distinctions in relationships as humans do. And they’ve been watching our distinctions evolve for millennia, so they know we’re just making it all up.
For my money, their relationship falls under the current western colloquial definition of romantic. They literally follow the beats of a love story all the way through. But individual definitions of romance might require more touching, or an element of sexual attraction, or solid declarations of ‘I love you (in that certain way)’, all of which are lacking here. So it’s very much a subjective call. Basically I think that… well, in the same way that they aren’t technically autistic or ADHD, because they don’t have human neurochemistry, but they functionally are, because they have their own weird wiring that produces analogous results? By the same token, they aren’t bound to human relationship labels, but their feelings are more or less analogousto romantic ones in humans - or, what would be broadly defined as romantic in today’s setting. Because, again, ultimately it’s all made up.
Now,Aziraphale I think has ‘aha!’ moments, but that’s because of repression and his impressive capacity for lying to himself. It has nothing to do with being tangled up in human labels and everything to do with not even being able to admit that he likes Crowley in any way, because that would make him a truly Bad Angel.
Yes, hard agree in turn. I hate the “just friends” thing, yes also because it’s queer erasure, but for the most part for the very personal reason that as an ace person who engages in neither kissing nor sex, all my significant relationships end up being called that, and consequently disregarded as “not so important or meaningful”. So, I’ll acknowledge that there’s personal baggage here.
Kinda also in terms of personal baggage, I’m really with you about it being shades on a spectrum rather than clearly defined lines. I have never seen the lines. The lines are arbitrary and meaningless from my perspective. If you remove sex, what’s the difference? And, sex is in no way equal to emotional intimacy and closeness, no matter what society wants us to think.
I love takes of them that don’t lock them into all those human categories. I love to see them in a friendship that’s also romantic, because really, why did the silly humans get rid of it? It was such a good concept. There’s potential for fic where they just confuse the hell out of humans around them, because they’ll refer to each other as friends, but then Crowley will sit in Aziraphale’s lap like he belongs there, or they’ll be holding hands in public, and people around them think they’re just messing with them.
I also love a Crowley who’s like “Gender? I’m a demon. I don’t need one of those. If humans think you need to pick your clothes based on something silly like that, it’s your loss, watch me wear high heels with tight lady jeans and a cool men’s shirt and tie, suckers”.
Arguably, also categories like autistic or ADHD are limiting boxes. Even in humans, it’s probably a spectrum, and things that are helpful for people inside one box might be also helpful for people who don’t quite fit into it, but almost. Interestingly, also autism and ADHD are relatively new labels, historically. The conditions of being that way are as old as humans, but the names, the categories, are relatively new. Just a few decades ago, they published medical texts on how autism is caused by bad parenting. The echos of such nonsense unfortunately still linger today, even though we have a much better understanding of things now. And in ten years, today’s understanding might seem stupid. Given that, you gotta wonder how long-lived beings like Aziraphale and Crowley feel about this type of thing?
You use a good term in saying “analogous”. “Analogous” really works for me, for the relationship labels, the gender, and the autism/ADHD-like attributes. Not the same as it is for humans, but analogous to it. :-)
Agreed about Aziraphale, too. Aziraphale’s main mode is denial, so he doesn’t topple the house of cards that is his world view, in which Heaven is Good and he’s a good angel and Crowley is a demon and obviously up to no good at all times, because if the house of cards does topple, what is he going to do?
Aziraphale’s story is not one of slowly growing to love someone more and more and then being befuddled about the exact nature of the affection, but more one of queer denial. He has his aha moments about his feelings for Crowley, but he keeps shoving them down. Analogous (love that word!) to a human stubbornly trying to convince themselves they are straight or cis, because it’s terrifying to consider they might not be.
labels, names and pronouns are like clothes. try them on if they sound nice. keep them as long as you’re comfortable with them. experiment with new styles you haven’t thought about before. always be ready to change.
1. You have an issue with labels. 2. You also have an issue with grammar. 3. Race and Ethnicity are not the same thing.
Ethnicity is defined as an ethnic group is a population of human beings whose members identify with each other, on the basis of a real or a presumed common genealogy or ancestry. Your ROOTS are not in Louisiana sweet girl. Even though your family history may be.
Africa is a continent that, has in fact gave way to a tremendous amount of WORLD ANCESTRY. There are numerous people, in various countries whose ancestry is in Africa, thanks to the slave ships who made multiple stops before coming to America. But, its not Black History Month, so I digress.
Oddly enough, Raven is defining herself as a RACE, which is social construct that refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics. Race is a man made concept which is exactly what a label is,which is precisely what she hopes to avoid.
I am a BLACK AMERICAN WOMAN who’s roots, at its core, are based in Africa. But because I am completely unable to find those roots, thanks to historical events that shall remain left unsaid, I trace it back as far as I can. Which leaves me to the post slavery and Native American history, thus making me identify as a black woman.
Moral of the story, define yourself however you want. But understand, that in defining yourself, you are in fact labeling yourself at the same time. Labels are apart of the world in which we live in. They can create a sense of commonality. They are only negative if you allow them to be. How easily we get caught up on a few things when there are billions of words we can define as.
It seems that Raven feels like labeling, in and of its self, is negative. To that I say, be bigger than the label. Be more than what people see. And what they may expect. I am Black American Woman, who’s ancestors where slaves. I am a Christian, I am educated, straight, a daughter, a friend, a dancer, and a host of other things. Nothing about that was negative. Actually seems pretty awesome.
Be the best you, whoever that is, whatever you define that as.
Well…aren’tyou a special little snowflake? If I tried to hone my craft down to one descriptor, I’d fail! It’d be an embedded paragraph!
=_=
@lexiscorner, I’d like to open up a friendly conversation about this because, in response to your tag, I’m a big supporter of labels if a person would like to use them, and I’m really curious about why (as evidenced by your tag) you don’t support labels. I feel like, if a person chooses to use a label, it helps them better understand who they are and helps other people better identify that person. I don’t feel like labels impose limitations at all (unless someone WANTS their label to do that, but that’s an immensely personal thing, as is the choice to use labels at all). For example, I label myself as a Christian witch. That is my label and that describes the kind of magic that I practice (magic that draws a lot of influence, strength, and energy from my religion and relationship with Jesus). As another example, I am also a healer witch, and that is another label I often go by. Neither of those impose limitations on me because even though most of my magic is related to either of the labels, if I see a spell that I want to do or an idea that I want to put into magic that doesn’t conform to those labels, I don’t ever think, “Oh, well, it doesn’t fit my labels, so I can’t use it.” Also, I think labels are a great way to help someone identify what kind of general witchcraft they are good at. Taking my example of a healer, that is the kind of magic I’m best at. Someone may be best at glamour magic, so they prefer to be called a glamour witch. I feel like, in this sense, labels can help build community and strengthen existing community bonds. So, I’m really curious why you feel differently and I’d love to hear your thoughts (and also anyone else’s who would like to jump in)! :3 With regards, Spark, the Guardian
[Tweet from @/fozmeadows: “human gender and sexuality are very much like animal taxonomy, in that both look structured and simple on the surface, but once you start investigating, it turns out there’s actually no such thing as a fish despite the fact that we all know what a fish is, and that’s okay”]
As a biologist, that is a fantasticcomparison.
We talk about “fish” (which, cladistically, do not exist, there is no monophyletic group of “fish” that simultaneously includes all organisms we understand to be “fish”-like while also excluding, say, humans) because, despite the utter fiction that is fish, it’s still a useful label when we talk about certain features that “fish” tend to have in common.
literally we need to get rid of the stigma of questioning once and for all.
call yourself gay. call yourself ace. call yourself a lesbian today and a nonbinary bi trans man tomorrow. its fine. literally no community has ever been harmed by someone thinking that label might apply to them and then discarding it later. anyone who says otherwise is drinking the exclusionary kool-aid and isn’t worth the time it would take to argue with them.
What’s in a name? In the witchcraft community, quite a lot. Your label can help you find others with similar practices, act as a shorthand for practices and values you espouse, and come with a lot of stereotypes or baggage. In this post, I discuss how I arrived at the label Wiccan and contemplate changing my label as my knowledge and practice has evolved. (more…)
I think we as queer people all know the “oh” moment where you realize you’re not straight/cis but no one talks about the “goddamnit not again” moment where you thought you completely figured out your gender/sexuality only for you then to discover another label and have to start the whole process over again
