the way that queerness actually is shown fairly historically accurate in the show but not to the point where the lgbt community feels like 1-dimensional victims instead of people. The world is still the same as ours, Homophobia is there, it’s just… quiet. It’s not constant aggressive action, or violence permeating every moment of their lives… it’s the background noise.
It’s in the bullying Stede endures for not performing the ideal masculine, but it’s also the simple expectation and eventually enforcement that he’ll marry a woman. It’s in “anything goes at sea” and the calm, almost practiced defensiveness that prompted such a statement. The small confirmation that Hornigold would lose his mind at Ed having breakfast at a table every morning with Stede.
It’s not just seen in queer sorrow but community as well, even joy. How Lucius looks after Jim, Stede, and Ed once their queerness is known to him. How Ed kisses Stede in a quiet place away from expected public, the refusal to discuss Blackbeard further when the truth of being “lovely” to another man garners unsavory looks. In the best circumstances, protecting one another in a world that isn’t built for us is like breathing.
It even comes from people with no ill intentions. Mary doesn’t mean anything by “what’s her name?” but it tells us something anyway, about the world these characters inhabit. About which ones can step comfortably through it, and which ones must think carefully before even revealing they lack such luxury. The quiet understanding in tossing a stone in that perfect path by saying “his name is Ed.” It means something that she reacts in surprise, pleasant surprise, but surprise none the less.
It’s not a show without homophobia, but it’s not a show about it either. It manifests in the narrative the same way it does for most of us day to day: the white noise of heteronormativity.
