a queer Black Sails zine

There are still a few hours to go until the deadline, but we thought we’d give you an idea of what happens next, because submitting to these things can be very nerve-wracking and we both know what it’s like to shout feelings into the void. So! What exactly are we going to do with your pieces once we have them?

Read them all. This one’s pretty obvious, but it’s also the thing we’re looking forward to the most, so I thought I’d put it in there.

Respond to you, thanking you for submitting and confirming that we did receive your submission, and checking in with you about things like bios, songs, and trigger warnings (should we feel there’s anything in your piece that might need them).

Organize and collate the pieces into a pdf. We both have strong feelings that the order and layout of things like this is important. We’re each going to go through and make a preferred order of the pieces based on theme, content, contrast, style, etc. Then we’re going to compare, and have a long, overly wordy argument about it (currently we’re researching how to get 18th century barrister wigs so that we can have this argument in proper style).

Write our preface, which will likely just be us crying onto a page about how much we love this show and all of you, but will also probably explain some of our organization process and reiterate the mission statement of the project.

Set up the download page and mechanism for donation. As a reminder, the zine will be free to download, with options to donate to the Trans Lifeline if our readers should choose to do so, and we want to make sure there is an easy way for that donation to be processed.

And then, on April 2nd, we’ll publish it, and post about it here and on our twitters! And then you’ll be able to cry about it just like we did.

Thank you, and godspeed.

We’re excited to see some of your pieces coming in! You have until midnight tomorrow to get them to us (including bio and a song for the playlist). If you have questions or need an extension, shoot us an email and we’ll chat.

We’ve got a question for you today: what music do you associate with Black Sails? Are there lyrics that are inextricably bound up with certain characters? Have you made any fanmixes?

The two of us began one in early season two that we’ve listened to a truly obscene amount of times. Recently, Jamie played part of it for a friend of theirs who deeply and immediately connected a song to a different part of the show than we had originally, which was a fascinating experience. 

For me, I have a few songs that are never going to be the same for me again—I’ll Be Good by Jaymes Young is the absolute perfect James Flint song, and if you can find a better Anne Bonny anthem than Master Hunter by Laura Marling I’ll be very impressed. 

Reblog this (or send us an ask/submission) with your song choices/associations, and we’ll put together a spotify playlist (with album notes) to be released along with the zine. Bonus points if the song aligns with your submission, but that’s for sure not required! Hell, let us know music associations even if you’re not writing/creating anything (but we do want to stress that you should really write/create something, even if you’re worried it won’t be good enough, we have literally already cried over some stuff that was submitted and there are still four days remaining, we have plenty of tears left).

Why we’re doing this zine: Penny’s version

Hi! I’m one of your blog mods and zine editors. We thought as part of the countdown to the submission we’d talk a little about why we’re doing this, and what this zine and the show mean to us. Here’s my reasoning:

I’m doing this because this show has given me a narrative so genuinely complex, exciting, and satisfying in a way that I am completely unused to as a queer person looking for queer stories. The breadth of queer experience in Black Sails, the complicated, thorny nature of queer relationships, the room the narrative allows for queer rage and sorrow and, ultimately, bittersweet, impossible joy is absolutely unprecedented, and I know I am not alone in feeling that way. Black Sails as a show unfolds as you watch it, starting in a shallow, shaky place and ending up somewhere challenging on an intellectual, philosophical, and emotional level and I want nothing more than to read endless explorations of it—so why not create a place for them to live?

How’s everyone doing? What’s everybody writing about?