All I care about is gay pirates

[chocolatepot]

Watched Our Flag Means Death a second time. The thing that keeps standing out to me is that basically up until they kiss, it is completely believable that they wouldn't, because that kind of queer subtext leading up to "we are such good friends" is so common ... I am really resistant to labeling stuff "queerbaiting" because it's more reasonable to me to expect that that's what will happen, it always seems somewhat delusional to me think that some network show or major studio movie is going to suddenly have two leads or even supporting characters of the same gender be romantically involved. (One of the few exceptions is Good Omens, where I was genuinely disappointed that they amped up the explicitness of A/C but cheated at the end with no outright declaration.) But at the same time, while I believe the motives are different - they're not trying to build up a slash fandom, they don't care about the intricacies of fandom beyond people liking a franchise = more money - they do deliberately take the "language" of romance and use it to develop supposedly platonic character relationships and I'm just so tired of it.

Anyway, studio meddling could have easily been like "take out the kiss" and left it all ambiguous and subtextual. And I'm so glad they didn't. (Taika would never have allowed it.)

---

I've come to the end of my rough draft of my still-untitled H/C Exchange fic! Now I'm going back through to fill in the [write more here] bits - there are only a couple left; I also made a few notes for myself about concepts and characters that need to get introduced earlier or need to be thought about more on the page.

The [write more here] thing really works! I've always been resistant to it because I worry that if I skip things, a) I won't introduce stuff when it needs to be introduced and b) I won't be interested in coming back to fill it in. But what I'm finding is that once I've gone through everything I really want to write, my brain lets me write these transitions etc. It might mostly work because I only do it for short jumps - I don't know if I could competently write really disparate scenes and stitch them together. (A) is still potentially an issue but that happens with normal writing anyway.)

The one problem I do have with it is that I'm kind of good at writing scene openers, and I tend to write openers for whatever picks up after the [write more here] and you don't really want that a lot of the time if you intended for an actual transition rather than one scene ending and another beginning. So I sometimes have to scrap the initial sentence.

Comments

[danabren]

I disagree about Good Omens. Prachett and Gaiman know that celestial beings are unsexed (regardless of physical manifestation of form), and there is no reason for Crawley and/or Aziraphale to need to engage in physical expressions of affection when they have had several thousand years of tolerant and Very British Friendship in which to comfortably settle.

Would it be sweet and adorable? Yes. Would it run completely counter to their very creation from starstuff and deific/malefic expectations? Also yes.

Oh, hey, candy colored button on my end. I didn't know that was there, sorry!

[chocolatepot]

To be clear, I completely agree about A/C in the book. I do think what Pratchett and Gaiman did together was pretty damn perfect, exactly the right amount of showing rather than telling etc. I sort of assume that the characters know in the book that the Understanding is effectively a romantic relationship, but they're basically beyond needing to define it as such in part because they've been together so long and in part because, as you say, they're not humans.

My issue is with the show, and the decision to add a significant amount of development pointing toward a romantic relationship in episode 3 (which shows that Crowley knowingly wants to have one with Aziraphale, but Aziraphale has been oblivious at times and deliberately putting on the brakes at others), but then to step back and end the season with a scene that essentially makes it clear that Aziraphale is now on board with reciprocating, but without explicitly saying it. It doesn't come off to me like the characters don't say "I love you" because they're beyond that, but because the studio wanted to maintain a sliver of plausible deniability that they're just platonic friends who care a lot about each other. A kiss (like in OFMD) is good because it's more explicit and less able to be seen as a bromance, but just saying "I love you" is perfectly fine (and can be done in ways that don't really leave the door open to reinterpretation) and is really all I would expect from something like Good Omens in terms of the specific characters and the overall tone.

That being said, I'm not writing it off and I strongly suspect that the next season is going to have some sort of undeniable clarification. I just think the final restaurant scene would have been perfect if it had contained it because it was so adorably, unbearably romantic.

[danabren]

For the sake of social morés and 21stC acceptance of all (not "alternative", that is rude) lifestyles, I will agree with you that an onscreen kiss at the restaurant, even just Crawley (it will always be Crawley to me lol) taking Aziraphale's hand and kissing it, would have been lovely.

For my own self, and knowing how Cyborg watches me with the same bemused expression as he sits back and watches me tear into a plate of food, I know it's love.

For the sake of men everywhere, the fact that there is no explicit expression of queer love makes it an example of men being non-fucking-toxic with each other.

[chocolatepot]

I absolutely know it's love as well - I think that's the main saving grace of the scene, that even though the closest they come to saying it is "to the world," it is still so clearly about the two of them loving each other, the way they look at each other (the way DT looks at MS through the entire show, lbr), the tone of their voices, the way it's filmed, "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" playing ... it's all hella romantic. The first time I watched it I don't think I had as much of a problem, it was the second where I started feeling strangely bereft.

It really comes down to how one reads the intentions of the producers/showrunners/studio, and to me it smells like "we can't be more than 90% explicit about this, they're the leads and we're scared of the backlash." It's true that there are a lot of good aspects to how it shook out, I just have a very hard time believing that if everything were exactly the same but Aziraphale were incorporated in a woman's body, there would have been even a remote possibility that they would have ended without an explicit confirmation. (I suspect that the positive reaction to A/C is going to make them ease up and that's the main reason why I think the next season is going to be more explicit about it.)

Ten to fifteen years ago, I would have thought it was amazing, "they know that we ship them and they're acknowledging that but of course they can't have it really-for-real happen onscreen." Now ... I'm a bit more jaded, and more media is out there with actual queer relationships for comparison.

[danabren]

<3