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Pirate Media Recommendations

Along with Ryann Fletcher, Kate Heartfield, Juliet Kemp, and F.D. Lee, I'm going to be on the Queer Pirates panel at 3pm this Friday at EasterCon 2023!

Our Flag Means Death and other pirates: a panel discussion including fandom and canon of Our Flag Means Death and other series such as Black Sails. This item will start around 15 minutes after advertised start time to minimise clash with the Opening Ceremony.

You can still sign up for virtual membership of EasterCon here if you'd like to attend online, as there are going to be a great many panels and discussions throughout the con, which are gonna be great.

Coming up to the panel, I thought I'd make a list of some of my favourite pirate and nautical media to point people to, as I'm probably going to mention a bunch of it on the panel and this is a particularly fierce interest of mine!

So for Our Flag Means Death, we know that it's an interpretation of the historical relationship between Edward Teach and Stede Bonnet as a romance - two other famously queer pirates were of course Anne Bonny and Mary/Mark Read. I'm personally super excited to see if these figures will feature in Our Flag Means Death S2.

Podcast Episodes & Videos:

Ching Shih: The Pirate Queen, from Puppet History

The True Story of a Pirate Queen, from Ruining History

A History of Gay Pirates with Rebecca Simon, on the PRIDE Podcast -

Sailing Through Queer Pirate History with Rebecca Simon, on the PRIDE Podcast

Pirate Queens with Rebecca Simon, on the PRIDE Podcast

Were Some Pirates Poofters?, from the History is Gay Podcast - Going through Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Calico Jack, and Pierre Bouspet.

Queerness in the Golden Age of Piracy, from Queer as Fact

Books & Essays:

FICTION: The Aubrey-Maturin Series, by Patrick O'Brian - The Aubreyad is not about pirates, but is a nautical-historical series of 20 books set in the 1800s. I love these books a lot, they're ridiculous and very homoerotic with a lot of background gay dynamics - you can absolutely infer a romance between Captain Jack Aubrey, a hot slab of beef, and his doctor, Stephen Maturin. They're funny and they're rich with nautical descriptions, really immersing you into the language and feel of the period and the sensation of being on these vessels. While I'm not holding these books up as a bastion of queerness compared to other texts, Maturin is a fervent abolitionist and despite being a member of Aubrey's crew is actually vehemently anti-colonialist in his views, and those discussions do play out on paper again and again. Because of their realism these books do kind of poke a hole in the naval officers being held up as inherently noble or honourable, and particularly regularly criticises the actions and ideas of the state.

FICTION: J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan - I love Peter Pan, and obviously I talk and blog about it a lot. What's particularly dear to my heart is the relationship between Hook and Smee, which is such an intimate marriage even though it's not explicitly described as such, and it makes me very emotional. This book was written at the beginning of the 20th century, and I do want to warn anyone before going in about the racism inherent - the text treats the existence of the Natives to Neverland as part of an "adventure", and there's also anti-Black racism toward many of Hook's crew, as well as the description of Hook himself as "swarthy" despite being a white Etonian. Peter Pan is a story about working class white children in London whose parents has dreams of them ascending to middle class, and the children's fears of growing up are heavily influenced by economic anxiety, but also they desire a return to a time when as young white kids "adventure" would have been more accessible to them, as is typical in the classic adventure novel.

FICTION: Peter Darling, by Austin Chant - The Lost Boys say that Peter Pan went back to England because of Wendy Darling, but Wendy is just an old life he left behind. Neverland is his real home. So when Peter returns to it after ten years in the real world, he’s surprised to find a Neverland that no longer seems to need him. The only person who truly missed Peter is Captain James Hook, who is delighted to have his old rival back. The oft-recommended trans man!Peter Pan/Hook romance novel. Please don't talk to me about this one as I haven't and can't read it for some personal trigger readings, but it's recommended all over and is well-loved for a reason!

FICTION: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island - Treasure Island is of course, one of the archetypal adventure novels. What a lot of people might not know is that the TV series Black Sails is a prequel to Treasure Island! If you enjoyed Our Flag Means Death, you might be delighted to realise that the real life pirate Israel Hands features in Treasure Island, and fights with Jim Hawkins, the protagonist.

NON-FICTION: Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean, by B.R. Burg - In Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, historian B. R. Burg investigates the social and sexual world of these sea rovers, a tightly bound brotherhood of men engaged in almost constant warfare. What, he asks, did these men, often on the high seas for years at a time, do for sexual fulfillment? Buccaneer sexuality differed widely from that of other all- male institutions such as prisons, for it existed not within a regimented structure of rule, regulations, and oppressive supervision, but instead operated in a society in which widespread toleration of homosexuality was the norm and conditions encouraged its practice.

ESSAY: Our Flag Means Death and Queer Utopias at Sea, an essay by Seth LeJacq

TV Series:

Our Flag Means Death - Of course, duh! Our Flag Means Death, a queer romcom interpreting the historical relationship between Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate, and Edward Teach, Blackbeard, as a romance.

Black Sails - A "gritty" and brutal prequel to RL Stevenson's Treasure Island, exploring the tales of Long John Silver and how he came to be what he ultimately is in Treasure Island. There is a lot of gay shit in this and it's extremely anti-imperial in its outlook - with that said, I'm personally not a great fan of Black Sails to watch, for me personally it's either too upsetting or too dull to stick with, oscillating between the two extremes. If you haven't tried it and do want to, I do recommend sticking through at least the first season and seeing if you get into it! With that said, it's got particularly brutal onscreen treatment of its WOC, especially Max, a Black woman who is violently raped onscreen (as well as onscreen abuses of other women), and I would recommend treading with caution if this is something that will be difficult to watch.

Neverland - This miniseries is near and dear to my heart - it's not huge on the pirates, but it actually has Bob Hoskins reprising his 1991 role as Smee, and I find it to be an interesting and quite different exploration of the Peter Pan prequel that really explores class some. More importantly, it actually has Natives playing Natives, and features Q'orianka Kilcher as Aaya!

Movies:

Love, Death, & Robots: Bad Travelling (2022) - This is a short film that's part of the LD&R series, and it's really good nautical horror. That's all there is to it.

Master and Commander (2003) - Taika Waititi said this movie is his favourite romance movie, and he's so fucking right. Anyway, this movie is based off the first five of Patrick O'Brian's Aubreyad, and it's so loving and so gay.

Treasure Planet (2002) - There are so many adaptations of Treasure Island, but this is my favourite every single time, it's just so well-done, it's so full of care, it really captures the wonder and excitement of sailing and the sense of freedom, and honestly? Jim Hawkins is sooooo transmasculine, he even has an ugly shitty mullet haircut and a little gold earring, he is the blueprint, he is perfect. If piracy in space tickles your fancy, I also might recommend Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013).

Pirates of the Carribean: The Black Pearl (2003), Dead Man's Chest (2006), and At World's End (2007) - Listen. Are there technically other POTC movies? Yes. Should you watch them? Oh, fuck no. I have seen On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales/Salazar's Revenge and let me tell you: you do not have to, you do not need to, and you do not want to. On Stranger Tides tried to tell me that Hector Barbossa fell in love with a woman. My man. Hector Barbossa. A woman!? Please! Anyway, I grew up on these movies and unfortunately they are overwhelmingly and unrealistically white - there are some really cool characters of colour and I especially love Tia Dalma. Remember not to watch these movies legally, by the way - watch them on an old cheap DVD or do some piracy yourself. Fuck Johnny Depp.

The Pirates of Penzance (1983) - This is an adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, and it is so over the top, so ridiculous, so much fucking fun. Kevin Kline has some of the sexiest fits in this movie and so much thick, thatched chest hair, and the music is good, many of the jokes still land, and it's just fun.

Peter Pan (2003) - Don't watch the Disney Peter Pan. Never watch it, it's garbage, it's ugly, it invented a bunch of anti-Native racism that isn't in the already racist original text, and you know, fuck Disney. Is the 2003 Peter Pan perfect? No. But is it better? Yes. Jason Isaacs is so hot as Hook, and while I am not the biggest fan of PJ Hogan's take on the book that's all about Wendy wanting to fuck her own dad on top of cutting the Hook/Smee dynamic back significantly, the Neverland aesthetics and the silly piratical ones are a lot of fun.

Hook (1991) - Spielberg's sequel to Peter Pan is glorious for one reason and one reason only: Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins were like, "hey, these two dudes are married. They're old queens in love!" and they played it like that, and they were so fucking right. Hoffman's Hook is so queer and so effete and so incredibly mentally ill and he is the biggest mood throughout, as is Smee trying to keep them both alive. I adore this movie to death, I really do.

Down Periscope (1996) - Okay. So. This movie is a little bit different. It's not set in the Golden Age of Piracy or even just after it - it's set in the 1990s, and is about a Yank Naval Captain doing wargames with other members of the navy. With that said, it's got a lot of pirate hijinks and a lot of found family dynamics with a lot of freaks and neurodivergents packing the crew - note that there's some misogynistic harassment in this for the only female crew member, but she's one of my favourite characters and she's so much fun, much like the rest of the crew. Listen. The captain has a tattoo on his dick. They all dress up as pirates while making one of their crew members walk the plank. Their ending credits feature the cast dancing and singing along with the Village People, to the iconic gay anthem, In The Navy. It's good, I swear.

And I've tried a bunch of pirate videogames, but none of them has measured up to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Unfortunately, this game is an Assassin's Creed game and all the AC plot stuff sucks, because that's what AC games are for.

When it's not doing their terrible meta plot in the "real world", though, this game has such excellent gameplay, it's great fun, and the soundtrack is tremendous. Even if you don't play the game, absolutely consider giving the sound track a listen, because it's just great!

An old album I would recommend is also the Robert Shaw Chorale Sea Shanties one! It's from 1960, and they do some really fun arrangements of different sea shanties - their Drunken Sailor is one of my absolute favourites!

If you'd like to see a different take on the sea shanties and would still love some more space piracy, I would also recommend Once Upon A Time (in Space), by the Mechanisms!

My Stuff

And separate to the general rec list above, here's some of my work that's relevant to my takes on queer pirates, and why I'm on the panel:

Communicating Want, by me, DictionaryWrites - 75k, rated E, Frenchie/Izzy. Izzy's just so buttoned-up, how is Lucius supposed to resist the urge to seduce him? It doesn't go well. Just a silly thing exploring sexual trauma and stuff with Izzy Hands! Love that bitch.

Our Flag Means Death S01 E01: Close Textual Analysis — Examining OFMD E1: Pilot in close detail and liveblogging/analysing the text. On Medium / / On Patreon.

Gerald Poole and the Pirates - A distinctly queer adventure full of internal conflict ensues when a gentleman and a sailor are captured by pirates. Read on Medium: Part I / / Part II / / Part III / / Part IV / / Buy as an eBook on SmashWords, $2.99 / Buy as an eBook from Amazon.

The Coffin at Sea — 400w. A vessel picks up a coffin afloat at sea. On Medium / / On Patreon.

The Pirate Accountant — 4.5k, rated M, MB. A quartermaster works up the nerve to finally mount a seduction on their accountant. Dark humour and biting banter throughout, between an exceedingly cautious and paranoid accountant and the quartermaster who’s finally worked up the courage to ask him out. On Medium / / On Patreon.

Saint Jude’s Kitchen — 20k, Rated M, MB. After an injury stops him working, a failing deckhand gets a new lease on life. Themes around cooking and nurturing, identity and sense of self, and complex family dynamics. Adapted from a TweetFic. On Medium / / On Patreon.

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