“You, Me, We leave town together.”
And other phrases that launch multiple niche communities into insanity. Any given queer (or queerbait, but we’ll get to that later) romance has one specific scene, as tensions rise, the pairing will have the option to either run away, or to face the music. While most queer TV is tragic to a baffling extent, they generally choose to face their demons and then live happily, or until the Supreme Court decides to attack gay marriage.
Our Flag Means Death isn’t most shows. It follows through on all three promised relationships, even though they all invariably end sadly. Edward Teach (Taika Watiti) and Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) sign away ten years of freedom to serve the Royal Navy, but this sacrifice leads to feelings, a kiss, and an escape plan. Perfect! They escape, get back to the Revenge, and have a Matelotage, right? Nope. A revenge-seeking enemy kidnaps him and then accidentally shoots himself, leading Stede to question his decision to leave his unhappy marriage to become a pirate. Facing the music. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell Ed. He waits all night for his co-captain, then rows back to the ship alone, and heartbroken.
Moving on to a more biblical show, Good Omens is a sci-fi comedy from the minds of Neil Gaiman and the late Sir Terry Prachett. As my annotated copy was stolen by an english teacher, I will be using the show for reference. Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) is a Principality who is too attached to humanity, and Crowley (David Tennant), a demon too attached to free will and his 1926 Bentley. With the literal Rapture on the horizon, Crowley tells Aziraphale “[but] we can run away together. Alpha Centauri.” This ends in a fight, being their last interaction until Aziraphale’s bookshop catches on fire, leading Crowley to believe that someone killed his ‘best friend’. His immediate solution is to get absolutely hammered. He sees Aziraphale has only been “inconveniently discorporated” and cries tears of relief, finally with the motivation and will to live, they plan to meet in Tadfield for the end of times.
Last off, Hannibal. Yes, Hannibal as in Lecter (or Lector, Lecktor, depending on the film), or Hannibal the Cannibal (Mads Mikkelsen). He proposes an escape to Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), “We could disappear now.” He is literally suggesting they escape with their adopted daughter, Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl), and Graham’s seven dogs. Considering that Lecter is a serial killer, it’s expected that this won’t go well. Until this point, Will was framed by Hannibal for the murder of Abigail (long story), and didn’t know she was alive. He asks why Lecter didn’t warn him, only for the response to be “[W]e couldn’t leave without you,” and a stabbing with a linoleum knife. Hannibal kills Abigail (for real this time) and leaves Will bleeding out on the floor after embracing him.
How does it consistently go this horribly? While this trope isn’t solely used in queer, specifically MLM media, it sure ends up worse every single time. Even Baby Driver ends better than this. Honorable mentions to Killing Eve, probably Supernatural, and The Witcher apparently. This plays into even more tropes of all queer romance, canonical or sub-textual, being tragic. Gay men have an expectation to exist on screen to either die sadly, or to be fetishized by straight women. We never get to explicitly be queer, trans, or both, without it having to be a personality trait or motivation to die.
This highlights a question, “Why us, specifically?” The answer should be obvious by now, queer people haven’t been allowed in media as characters until recently. Before this upheaval, gay men were straight commodification. A diversity hire, a character to traumatize and kill, stereotype, or a villain. What lovely genres of humans, to be in a community focused on eliminating binaries, only to immediately be shoved into more boxes. I understand that it makes for a fun cliffhanger and you can have queer rep while also keeping oblivious straight people (who think they are just buddies) in the dark. Here’s a thought: stop forcing these characters to suffer in order to fill an already overdone, generally homophobic trope. It’s just tiring, let them run away successfully for once, or maybe, not have to run away at all.
The one time this trope has done its job well was in The Magnus Archives, where the character Martin (Alexander J. Newall) was being manipulated by an isolation demon. A genuine entity for the fear of being lonely. The characters’ sexuality happened to be completely irrelevant, and there were actual plot points to why it couldn’t happen that way; the apocalypse and the only solution to avoid surveillance was to gouge one’s eyes out. Very long story short, stop making the gay characters suffer from running-away-together-disease, or if you don’t, at least make everyone a little miserable: it’s disproportionately on us.
