[ID: A digital drawing of Stede Bonnet and Ed Teach (Blackbeard) from HBO’s Our Flag Means Death. They are sitting side by side on a pink couch, holding cups of tea. Stede, a white, blonde man, sits primly in a reddish pink dressing gown and smiles awkwardly at his companion. At his side, Blackbeard, a darker-skinned man with long dark and gray hair and a bushy beard, clad in leather, sits laying back with his legs crossed, looking at Stede adoringly. Draped over the arm of the couch at Blackbeard’s side there is a golden dressing gown.
unstoppable force (gay people) vs immovable object (“run away with me” but it never actually happens trope)
I’ve actually seen some success gay run-away -with-me stories in period shows/lit!!
Maurice by E. M. Forster (+ the 1987 movie, dir. James Ivory) - Maurice Hall & Alec Scudder
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (+ the 2018 miniseries adaptation*) - Mike Fitzhubert and Albert Crundall; also Miranda Reid, Marion Quade, and Greta McCraw**
*I gotta be honest, I haven’t read the book or watched the 1975 movie adaptation but I’m under the impression that the 2018 miniseries brought the ever-present subtext between Mike & Albert closest to explicit text of the three. It’s obviously clear that they’re interpreted as gay in the series, even if they don’t say it, but the miniseries does explicitly focus on the canon queerness of the 3 girls who are the main characters.
**These three plus Irma Leopold all disappear at the Hanging Rock in search of freedom, especially freedom from the constraints of heteronormative society. While the mystery of where they disappeared to is never officially solved, a deleted chapter of the book suggests that the girls escaped through a hole in the fabric of space-time and into freedom. However, Irma is ultimately spurned by the Rock because she is not fully willing to give up society (representing historical queer people who followed compulsory heterosexuality for safety and status); her body is found and she manages to live a comfortable upper-class, if unhappy, life afterwards. Meanwhile, the aromantic/sapphic-coded Miranda and lovers Marion and Miss McCraw successfully escape and find freedom at the Rock. :)
Sorry, those qualifications got long! But they’re good, (mostly) happy examples of queer rep where the gays get to run away together :))
PINS UPDATE! Got the sample photos and video from my manu! They need to fix the color on the tops of the tentacles and the heart in the lighthouse, but everything else looks good! Also got the backing cards in and I am so in love with how they turned out.
PRE-ORDERS are now open for Shiver Me Timbers, a zine featuring a collection of Our Flag Means Death nsfw art I’ve done of Ed and Stede. It features 22 illustrations, including 5 new ones inclusive to the zine. Pre-orders are open until May 4. It will also be available as a digital download once I have the physical copies in hand.
