I’m sorry I know it’s my own comic but I’m not even joking I cry EVERY TIME I read through it, I put so much feeling into this??
The way it starts with the night sky filled with millions of stars and singles in on just two boys...there is the background of WWI, the world in the middle of chaos, more strict and conservative life, the trials of Oscar Wilde having rocked society....but it’s just two men, sitting together in their little corner of the world, alone, having such human thoughts about their own love.
“Do you think they have to hide anymore?... Boys like you and me... long after we’re gone.”
We are always told that lgbtq+ people never existed before us today. And here is someone during those silent years—someone we’re always told by history doesn’t even exist—showing he knows we will exist for centuries to come.
“Do you think they love differently?”
This panel shows we love the same.
That there is no difference between the way two men loved centuries ago and now, laughing together, happy together, loving, expressions not pictured in period photographs, but out in fields away from prying eyes and on quiet nights in city flats.
“Has the world accepted us? Or will we always be a secret?”
This kills me. Feeling hopeless that the world is not meant for you, but wondering if in the future, is it better for someone else? That even if you couldn’t live happily, perhaps someone else in an indeterminable future is? Or are they in the same spot as you, looking up at the night sky and hoping someday it will be better?
“Do you think they even know we’re here?”
Do you think they even know we’re here? Yes! I’ve just coughed on my shattered heart dust! Some (blocked) clown in the comments to this had the audacity to say something like “Gay people then? How about gay people now lol”. How fucking dare you say that on this post. Do you even care? Do you know how fucking SAD it is that we can’t look back on ourselves and know who we are? That we exist only as fleeting memories and silent, nameless photographs and faces known only by the moon and stars we turned towards when we felt nothing but alone in a world that has shown us endless violence and cruelty?
I wrote this line because the conciseness of it still runs so deep: looking up at the stars, wondering how could individuals not allowed to share their stories ever be remembered? Is anyone looking back on you? Does anyone know what love you had? It’s just this simple yet crushing human longing to be known, to not be forgotten.
“Someone will remember us I say, even in another time.”
At the beginning, it moves from the stars to the boys. And in the end, it moves from the boys to the stars. Not only are we a part of the universe, but the universe is part of us. We are the faces of those who came before us. We share the same night sky. Feel the same sun. The same love. The same identities. We have always been here no matter what anyone says. And I know the world still isn’t the greatest now, but I can’t imagine how these boys would feel to have even just one glimpse at all of us today and see that yes, we are still here. And we know they were here too.