{"id":7308,"date":"2018-04-07T01:17:43","date_gmt":"2018-04-07T01:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2018\/04\/07\/i-am-genuinely-sorry-to-bother-you-with-this-but\/"},"modified":"2018-04-07T01:17:43","modified_gmt":"2018-04-07T01:17:43","slug":"i-am-genuinely-sorry-to-bother-you-with-this-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2018\/04\/07\/i-am-genuinely-sorry-to-bother-you-with-this-but\/","title":{"rendered":"I am genuinely sorry to bother you with this, but I am hoping you can help settle what is becoming a very unpleasant multi-fandom argument-is Crowley canonically gay? Some people feel he is, some people feel he may be bi\/pan, but there is quite a lot of nastiness floating around Tumblr aimed at people who wish to write fan fic about Crowley having romantic interest in people other than Aziraphale. Any insight you could offer into these characters would be much appreciated. You’re a treasure. <3"},"content":{"rendered":"

neil-gaiman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

elniboristo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

neil-gaiman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I suspect that I\u2019m about to step into something I would be wisest to keep well away from. But what the hell, it\u2019s that time between Christmas and New Year\u2019s. And nobody\u2019s yelled at me over the internet since I said that the TV Aziraphale doesn\u2019t use a cell phone. *<\/p>\n

Canonically, which is to say using the text in the book, you don\u2019t get any description of Crowley\u2019s sex life.\u00a0The only thing the book says is \u201cangels are sexless unless they specifically make an effort\u201d.\u00a0 You can infer, and (more to the point) you can imagine, and lots of people have chosen, not unreasonably, to ship him with Aziraphale, but you are still Making Stuff Up. It could be Making Stuff Up that happens between paragraphs, or Making Stuff Up that isn\u2019t mentioned at all, but it\u2019s still Making Stuff Up.** (And using the kind of eagle-eyed textual analysis that Bible scholars used to decide exactly what a piece of four thousand year old verse definitely meant also counts here as Making Stuff Up.)<\/p>\n

Which is the fun of fanfiction, and part of the tradition of fanfiction. As is, I\u2019m afraid, grumbling at people who do not see that your ship is the only true ship, and choose to ship anyone else with anyone else.<\/p>\n

If anyone decides that The Relationships in Their Fanfiction Are the Only True Fanfiction, it seems to me they are missing the point. The point is Fanfiction exists so that you can imagine, enjoy and fill in the gaps. The point is that you can change things and have fun with them. And the stories are absolutely true\u2026 for you.<\/p>\n

The TV series gets deeper into Crowley and Aziraphale\u2019s relationship. It\u2019ll be canonical for the TV series, and not canonical for the book.***\u00a0<\/p>\n

If I were to Pronounce on things that are not explicitly stated in the book, I still wouldn\u2019t be telling you if Crowley was Canonically Gay. I would be telling you what I think, because it\u2019s not canon unless it\u2019s in the book. It won\u2019t be TV canon unless it\u2019s on the screen.<\/p>\n

So, do not worry what other people think, and do not worry about what they say. These are not things on which people can be right or wrong, or on which anything can be \u201csettled\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Make fun fanfiction. Enjoy yourself. Make things up. Share them. That\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

*People would only bother him on it. And if anyone gave him one as a present, it would be still be in its box, on the same shelf as the still-unboxed Kindle.<\/p>\n

**Which was what Terry and I did when we wrote the book. And what I had to do for the TV scripts when I needed to take the story into places the book hadn\u2019t covered.<\/p>\n

***They don\u2019t contradict each other, but there is territory covered by the TV series that isn\u2019t covered by the book, particularly about Crowley and Aziraphale in bygone years. Also the Present Day in the book is probably the early 1990s, and the Present Day in the TV series is 2019ish, although 11 years ago in the book wasn\u2019t particularly 1978, and 11 years ago on TV is post-ubiquitous cellphones but pre-smartphones.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Then again, Good Omens is just Black Books fanfiction and there\u2019s no denying it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not just<\/i> fanfiction, but the special magic kind of fanfiction you can only make happen when you write it over a decade before the thing that it\u2019s fanfiction of exists. That\u2019s what makes it so special.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

neil-gaiman: elniboristo: neil-gaiman: I suspect that I\u2019m about to step into something I would be wisest to keep well away from. But what the hell, it\u2019s that time between Christmas and New Year\u2019s. And nobody\u2019s yelled at me over the internet since I said that the TV Aziraphale doesn\u2019t use a cell phone. * Canonically, … Continue reading I am genuinely sorry to bother you with this, but I am hoping you can help settle what is becoming a very unpleasant multi-fandom argument-is Crowley canonically gay? Some people feel he is, some people feel he may be bi\/pan, but there is quite a lot of nastiness floating around Tumblr aimed at people who wish to write fan fic about Crowley having romantic interest in people other than Aziraphale. Any insight you could offer into these characters would be much appreciated. You’re a treasure. <3<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1215,297],"class_list":["post-7308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-perfect","tag-thank-you","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}