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dear apparently extant people who are calling Aziraphale and Crowley queerbaiting:
If one of them had been a woman, there would be no question from ANYONE that they’re in love
there is not a single solitary “no homo” moment - p much every instance of queerbaiting will have at least one
ok so they didn’t kiss? like… this wasn’t a ROMANTIC COMEDY, y’all, the romance was a subplot and a very pointedly done one. They added OODLES of content between the two of them that wasn’t in the books, that - if it were, again, a straight couple - would be heralded as “clearly the development of a romance”, and on top of that why do angels and demons have to be sexual to be romantic? Like, fuck off with that.
just because they call each other “best friends” does not mean their relationship is 100% platonic holy shit your idea of relationships is actually scaring me, my wife is my Best Fucking Friend, and yeah sure I would call her my wife before calling her my best friend, but I also haven’t spent 6,000 years pretending to everyone but her that I wasn’t even FRIENDS with her, let alone in love with her, so maybe you can take into consideration the fact that acknowledging the friendship was just as - if not moreso - important as the fact they’re in love, given context?
I just.
What the fuck show did you WATCH????
Yeah, this insistence on “But we need the creator to confirm that the dicks touch” is kinda creepy and he’s answered the question. A lot. Asking it over and over again isn’t going to change the answer. It’s uncomfortable to watch and it makes me kind of nostalgic for the days when we didn’t tell content creators about fanfic or headcanons.
(Do they even have dicks? THEY MIGHT NOT! “Sexless unless they really make an effort”! There’s plenty of room for interpretation. Why would angels an former angels need to adhere to human modes of sexuality?)
The other thing is, it’s a series based on a book that was written 30 years ago and it’s remarkably faithful to that book. Queerbaiting as we know it now it now really wasn’t a thing in 1990.
But it’s so clearly written as a romance in the series, and I just … I love it so much.
I wonder if there’s so much push back here because there’s an argument to be made that Crowley and Aziraphale are an example (perhaps the first one in mass media) of an asexual queer love pairing.
“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”
Good Omens, p. 133.
To address the ‘it was 1990′ comment: both Pratchett and Gaiman WERE addressing QUILTBAG issues in the ‘80s and ‘90s. See Pratchett’s Guards, Guards (1989), Men at Arms (1993), and Gaiman’s Sandman (1989-1996) for examples.
They didn’t only do it in their art, either. They were remarkable at the time for having openly gay characters. They talked - in public!! - about having non-straight friends!!!
Mr. Gaiman did an outstanding job as showrunner.
I especially liked the casting for Adam & Eve, adored the pup cast for Dog (it was PERFECT), and the classified ad placed for Terry’s hat, lost in a bookshop in Soho. 🥺
I am halfway through second watching.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have re-read the book itself.
Right, the 1990 comment was me trying to articulate (fuck, there is not enough caffeine) … the kind of queerbaiting that you get nowadays with like Sherlock? Where they’re purposefully framing some of the marketing stuff as “See they totally COULD be queer! But we’re saying they’re not. But we’re playing it up on purpose! But they’re not!” or like, Marvel’s whole “We have a canon gay character!” and it’s a 10 second bit … that wasn’t really happening at the time the book was written, and the series is an incredibly faithful translation of the book (with some added Aziraphale and Crowley it’s just SO GOOD).
And yes, as you say, they both had a lot of explicit queer rep in their work at that time, so it’s not like they’d be shying away from that or hinting around it. I recall reading that Gaiman got death threats over having a trans woman in Sandman. (Also Cheri Littlebottom is amazing.)
I’m getting really frustrated with the way the cycle of “Oh this thing is so good!” to backlash over “Actually it’s Problematic“ seems to get shorter and shorter and the whole “If the creator does not confirm my headcanon they are Bad” thing.
Also, yes, Dog was a very good puppy.
Yes! Yes to all of this! Oh my god, yes. For Christ’s sake, what show did you watch?! This was a capital L Love story. Aziraphale chose Crowley (And humans) over heaven itself! Crowley chose Aziraphale (And humanity) over an eternity of selfishness and (relative) freedom. These two have no one but each other now! Yeah, their dicks don’t touch. (Do they even HAVE dicks?) but oh my god the show was explicitly romantic. Right down to the music. Do I want more explicit queer content? Of course I do! But where the fuck did our sense of nuance go?!
Also that comment about it being the first asexual romantic love pairing? Yes! I think that the backlash the show is getting from some queer audiences reeks of aphobic, aces aren’t queer bullshit.
At the end of the show, did people assume there was a relationship starting between Sergeant Shadwell and Madame Tracy? What with her inviting him inside her apartment and him “popping the question”, etc.? Yes? Why? It’s implied? How? Because they are a man and a woman?
And yet Crowley and Aziraphale have so much more development between them. There are violins, damnit. The entire thing ends with them going on their first date.
(I find myself liking the idea of them being asexual, but most of all, I headcanon Aziraphale as the most demiromantic entity in the universe. It took him nearly 6000 years to realize he had fallen in love with the enemy.)
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