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”.
ok, after actually looking up the term and doing some goddamn research (my goodness somebody on the internet actually decided to look something up before forming an opinion, dear god what a day), i can pretty safely say that everyone hitting this post with the “that’s just a friendship!” bit is wrong! and i can explain why! i myself didn’t get this initially! but after looking into it, i realized that it’s mainly due to the framework i was thinking in! Yeah, there’s actually merit to what these people are saying, this is stuff that’s been considered and these are indeed terms that exist! they were also coined by ace people specifically to describe their relationships!
So what gives? What does Queerplatonic Relationship mean? well i certainly fucking didnt get it at first, but it stems from attempting to define a kind of relationship that there arent really words for in the standard english lexicon! the poster above me is a TERF, and wherever i see myself agreeing with a terf i also see that there’s possibly some flaw in my logic or understanding of the thing. Basically (mind you this is only some very cursory and basic research, just type the term into google lol), QPR’s are a way of defining a relationship that has many of the same obligations and aspects of a traditional romantic relationship, without any of the explicitly romantic parts that come with having a spouse or romantic partner.
the idea of living in the same place, or jointly bringing up children, and performing many other tasks as a kind of unit that society would often mislabel as something done by two romantic partners in a union of some kind (i use that term to loosely define an exclusive relationship, not actual binding marriage, though this can include such). the idea of the QPR isn’t just “friends”, it’s very specifically “individuals in a platonic relationship that perform a number of the social aspects of a traditional romantic partnership”.
like, be real for a second. if someone described their relationship with someone to you and said “Yeah we own a house together, we have a kid that we adopted and take care of, we decided to get a dog last week and we file taxes as two members of the same household.”, you wouldn’t look at that person and assume that they arent romantic/sexual partners of some kind, because… well, traditionally, that’s shit that married people do. getting hit with the additional “Yup! And we’re not romantically or sexually involved at all! She has a boyfriend that she visits on the weekends and I’ve never had a romantic relationship in my life.” would throw you for a goddamn loop! What would you even call that relationship? and that’s where the term comes from: an attempt to define a very specific kind of relationship that certainly can and has existed, but isn’t commonly recognized or talked about!
so i think everyone shitting on these folks owes them an apology, i know i personally do for making assumptions that clearly weren’t true!
Actually QPR was coined by aromantic people but asexual people do also use it!
Finally I have a reason to reblog this after cringing every time it’s come across my dash.
Also that right there is a really good tutorial for how to react to posts like this: Resist the very human instinct to immediatly agree with opinions that are presented to you in this manner (unless you already have knowledge on the matter or have already formed a different opinion), instead look up the actual facts, think on why people might be agreeing or disagreeing with it and form your own opinion.
Like. It’s normal to just kind of instinctually agree with posts that are presented in this way that’s very “haha obviously this is bullshit”. It’s easy to just pile on, when presented with something you don’t understand and follow the presented opinion of “this thing i don’t understand is bad”. But it’s important to actively realize when you’re doing it and work against it.
it’s also worth noting: it Is a very genuine and targeted tactic for ace exclusionists to take everything involving asexuality and aromanticism and turn it into a joke because it’s much easier to spread their rhetoric that way
most people, when presented with an idea for the first time, are more likely to listen to “isn’t this outlandish idea presented without context Funny” than they would “isn’t this marginalized group undeserving of understanding? aren’t they Threatening?”
if you get it into people’s heads that aspec people are just a Joke, that nothing about this is Serious, then they’ll do the leg work of spreading your ideology to hook more people for you because it’s Funny and they’ll be more primed to eventually fall into the second bit. why do aspec people Need a spot in the queer community if they’re just a joke?
or, in the case of the argument presented in this post specifically, “why do aromantic people need a space in the queer community when they’re just Friends? obviously these are just Normal Straight People trying to force their way to spaces that they don’t belong by making up special words to describe normal things. don’t you agree? Don’t You Agree?”
that’s what makes it insidious, it primes you to believe something bigoted while giving itself plausible deniability. using the existence of people’s ignorance to spread it further than they could if they’d been honest straight away. and Because it’s presented like a joke and Because it relies on that ignorance they get to pretend that anyone pointing out that that’s what they’re doing is being ridiculous. like, say, Earlier In This Post.
