(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Someone asked about shipping Captain Flint and Timothy in the Facebook Arthur Ransome group. It went about as well as you would have expected...

Comments

[wychwood]

Did... did anyone not ship them??

[nineveh_uk]

I didn't at the time, but I was 8 and found Timothy annoying.

These days, I read the name Captain Flint and thought "Black Sails", which I am in the middle of watching, and had a very confused moment.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, you see, homosexuality was illegal at the time, so obviously no-one was gay.

[wychwood]

I wasn't particularly invested in it, but I do think I just sort of... assumed they were a couple!

I think the Black Sails Captain Flint probably gets shipped a lot more than Jim Blackett, though :D

[wychwood]

Oh, oh, right, obviously I should have realised.

(As I said above, I didn't have particularly strong feelings about it, but I think I did more-or-less assume...)

[liseuse]

I have just finished a re-watch and had exactly the same moment of confusion.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ha!

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I think I did, too.

[perennialanna]

Because obviously if you make things illegal, like driving for eye testing purposes and fleeing to tiny northern cities to check into small local under-resourced hospitals, they just don't do them. Didn't Ransome report on Oscar Wilde's trial?

[perennialanna]

I didn't when I was 10 but once the suggestion is made to a grown-up (filthy) mind, one can't not.

[white_hart]

I didn't, but I was also 8 (or even younger). Watching the 1974 film a few weeks ago was actually a blinding moment of revelation about Captain Flint's sexuality (which I imagine would have been obvious had I been older when I first read them, or less steeped in nostalgia on subsequent re-reads).

[white_hart]

(Also, for some reason the nickname "Squashy Hat" gave me the impression that Timothy basically looked like Snufkin, rather than being a normal man in a soft felt hat, which probably contributed to not really thinking of him as a sexual or indeed entirely human being.)

[perennialanna]

I got to the bit about it being homophobic to assume that two men are lovers when they might just be friends and I think I know who wrote Cummings' defence yesterday.

[tree_and_leaf]

imothy basically looked like Snufkin, rather than being a normal man in a soft felt hat, which probably contributed to not really thinking of him as a sexual or indeed entirely human being

I am now really tempted to propose that as my inviolable head-canon and see if anyone takes it seriously :)

[wychwood]

For most of the book he's "??? armadillo" so I think confusion around species is fair!

[tree_and_leaf]

I think my favourite bit of bad reasoning is that the line "Give my love to Timothy" was put in purely to make it more plausible that they would think Timothy was an armadillo.

[tree_and_leaf]

Not quite, but possibly even better: Ransome wrote a book on Oscar Wilde in 1912, and was sued for libel by Lord Alfred Douglas (apparently because he thought it would be a way to get back at Robbie Ross). Douglas lost and was bankrupted as a result.

[perennialanna]

Definitely better.

[perennialanna]

They don't seem to get that if you have to argue that hard, it is possible that your take is in fact wrong.

[perennialanna]

I am shrieking about the fact that Captain Flint has healthy friendships with women so cannot possibly be homosexual.

It's bloody 1953 in there. Fascinating snippet from Roger Barnes though. Probably about to be drowned under "But he was married twice!". Once notoriously unsuccessfully, once rather unconventionally and I would not be in the least surprised if it was based on an attraction of minds and Evgenia's need for a passport.

[perennialanna]

And remember, Evgenia was very involved in the 1974 film. Especially casting.

[legionseagle]

But the book got pulped by nervous publishers, alas.

[legionseagle]

Given Roger Barnes was sufficiently batshit as to query my (I thought) absolutely uncontroversial assertion that fisherman's anchors were not well suited to fit in the anchor lockers of modern cruising yachts, him being the voice of moderation, commonsense and liberality says it all, really.

Healthy friendships with women

[legionseagle]

There's people who need to be introduced to the phrase "safe in taxis" (and its converse.)

[legionseagle]

Apart from the two individuals who were mentioned in the same comment as having been prosecuted for it.

[antisoppist]

Has never occurred to me before but then until I was 42, partly informed by all my childhood reading, I thought everyone really liked their best friends from school best and would rather live with them in friendly happy companionship forever but somehow everyone was managing to put up with people of the opposite sex instead for procreative purposes.

When I was 8, I liked Timothy for running away from hordes of outdoorsy children.

[tree_and_leaf]

Alas. I’d forgotten that bit!

[tree_and_leaf]

Also, I feel that I’ve learned too much about the sexual predelictions of the person who thinks Missee Lee was obviously a dominatrix.

[legionseagle]

I think he did get to reissue the book as an amended second edition, but the whole thing seems to have quite unnerved him.

[legionseagle]

I think the person who went straight to "Is Mr Dixon a serial killer?" worried me more.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, I'd somehow read past that one. Yes, that is a bit worrying.

[legionseagle]

Especially since it's two comments down from the same person saying "Isn’t it a little homophobic to think that two men can’t be friends without they must be having sex?"

[caulkhead]

My first reaction was indeed 'But he's an armadillo!'

[caulkhead]

What? Why???

[mrs_redboots]

I didn't until quite recently. I do now, although as I said on the Facebook page, whether or not they expressed their love physically is their business, not mine.

[el_staplador]

It hadn't occurred to me before this fic, and then this other fic was the one that really sold me one it.

[legionseagle]

Because there is apparently no more justification for a gentle speculation as to whether two men (unmarried and in their forties, one of whom throws his home and boat at the disposal of the other, unintroduced to his family) might be in a relationship than there is for whether someone who stays up all night with a sick sheep, and in gratitude goes out of his way to befriend the boy who rescued it has left a trail of bodies under dry stone walls across Westmoreland, and each speculation carries equivalent moral weight.

[molniya]

I read this and thought for a moment that you were talking about shipping, as in travelling parcels... Clearly I have been out of fandom for longer than I thought :'D

[tree_and_leaf]

I can see why, but it's a real pity.

[tree_and_leaf]

I suppose it might have been intended as a hyperbolic claim to show how unlikely they thought it was, but I somehow don't think so.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ooh, good point.

[legionseagle]

They're still going.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh lor. I'm not sure I dare check back...

[lilliburlero]

Literally lol-ing at this I definitely had a very similar impression of his physical appearance as a child, though I don't think even that stopped me having the sort of cosy, but somehow excited, meanwhile knowing this was somehow unmentionable feelings about the friendship that were what passed for shipping when I was 8 or so.