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So like everyone else I have been loving Our Flag Means Death, otherwise the pirate show! It's so funny, it's so sweet, and the romance between Stede and Ed just blitzes me into bits. It's so romantic, and it's so tender, and I love everything about it. I'd never heard of Rhys Darby before this and I'd never seen anything that Taika Watiti had produced, both were a magnificent surprise to me.

So what I don't understand is why I'm feeling quite so alienated from the fandom. Part of it is just, well, I create fannish works to fill in a queer gap, and hey, no queer gap here, they are already extremely in love! Part of it is ( spoilers for ep 9/10 )

But actually I think it's a broader alienation which kind of saddens me. I am extremely on the Our Flag Means Death Delivers a Blow to Queerbaiting! train. (ship? on that ship.) and, like, this is just one of the many articles talking intelligently about it. I've seen so many shows where everyone tells you "they're gay for each other they love each other" and it's one hand-brush and meaningful look. Or a bromance. Or a tragic death scene. Or something, anything, that's not love, kisses and tenderness between two men, making plans for a future they hope to have together. Thank you pirate show no one was ever expecting. And everywhere all the queers, all of fannish queer culture, who have been waiting to see this story for so long come together and rejoice.

I mean... yes! And also... no.

Is this a fannish queer culture I was ever really part of, or welcome in? I mean, first of all I wasn't out. I come from a liberal-by-Indian-standards background but an Indian background. Me being out was not a concept for me as a teenager. I had a couple of girlfriends my parents never knew about, and then there was A., who happened to be a man bless him, and we've now been partnered for fifteen years. It's a queer partnership, but looks het to the straights. But going back to teenage me starting out, and then becoming established, in fandom--well, at that time, if you were a real queer, you had to be out. Of course you've got to remember the average age of fannish folk was much higher at that time. And if you were out, you were white. That's just... what queer community looked like. Certainly not like 16yo me keeping their head down and all the bits of their life in sections and boxes. (I've been nonbinary all my life, but hadn't got a frame of reference for that at aged 12 or 16. That's just one of the losses of a queer life, that age between 12 and 32.)

But then what about later? Adulthood, when I was out to everyone who mattered? Well, in my early twenties, this would have been the late 2000s, an older white lesbian fan, a very well-known BNF, told me that my culture was inherently misogynist and homophobic. When I said that might not be true, she said she'd read our holy book, and that that's what it said, and so that was the truth of the matter. I doubt she remembers it, though she is still active in fandom and our paths have crossed since. But I do.

So that put me in my place, right? And it just stuck with me, for way longer than it warranted. I cannot be queer because I am not white. Interestingly, I cannot be queer, also, because I'm not Black. There's Black queer culture; there's an aesthetic and a radical politics. I'm fucking milk-and-water curry-smelling dickhead over here. So that's how life goes during the period of migratory slash fandom. Fandom, mostly queer white women, moves from large pairing of white men to large pairing of white men, and is devoted to them to a degree that transcends their original degree of interestingness. (SGA, for example: massive outpouring of fannish love aimed at a character played by Joe Flanigan, who can act with the same vigour as Domestos bleach in its TV adverts.) I am not really a part of that, partly because my fannish engagement doesn't work that way, and also because I don't really trust white lesbians or white men or just, whiteness.

Some of those migratory fans are my friends though, and I have a lot of friends, so it's ok. And this is the time that fandom is suddenly no longer dominated by white lesbians--there's a few browns, though not many. Finally, bisexuality is a thing that you're allowed to be, have, occupy! Because of course, biphobia in life is the other thing that grates at your queer nerves. Well, if you're in a relationship with a man, do you really count... you've heard it. Of course, you've heard that song. It never stops. And bisexuality never shows up in fanfic to the degree it ought to, but at last seems to exist in the world. Cis lesbians still not acquitting themselves brilliantly, they've gone from racist and biphobic to also transphobic now which is awesome, but, to be fair, fandom does work hard to push back on that. I have cis lesbian friends now, though remain wary of them as a class. So things do move on. I'm hopeless at being nonbinary, hopeless at meeting nb norms, but I'm out about it at least.

And now fandom is mad about Stede and Ed and so am I! Sweet, foppish Stede, whose queerness seems baked into him at aged 12; lovely Ed, with his grumpy beautiful tenderness. He's Polynesian! He's starring in this show with a white guy and this is still a huge ship! That is amazing, I love it. Everyone loves them and they're not two white guys. It is wild and beautiful.

Still. When people say that we've all been waiting for a show to deconstruct queerbaiting, or that we queers think this, that or the other, maybe I have been, but I'm not we. Racism has been the alpha and omega of my life in fandom; I have not been to this party before.