#its the gay fantasy show to go with the gay pirate and vampire shows

[orionsangel86]

Watching The Sandman again for the hundreth time and I know everyone always loves to focus on Dreamling, but can we talk about Rose Walker for a moment?

The Sandman is often applauded (and complained about) for being an extremely gay show, but I particularly love how even the characters who aren’t canonically gay come across as extremely gay.

Take Rose Walker. The main character of The Doll’s House story. Neither the show nor the comics ever give Rose a sexuality, but there are some very glaring factors that heavily support her being queer.

The first time we see Rose is in episode 5 24/7. Judy, the lesbian at the diner who has had a fight with her girlfriend Donna, calls Rose and asks if Rose knows where Donna is. We know that Rose considers both Judy and Donna close friends and has a picture of Judy in her apartment.

Rose’s only other friend that we know of besides Lyta Hall (who she got to know via proximity since they were neighbours) is her friend Carl who she clearly is close enough with to let him house sit for her (even though he has sex with The Corinthian on her bed!).

So her closest friends are a lesbian couple and a gay man. I know I know straight people can be friends with queer people but statistically speaking queers flock together. Its more likely that Lyta is the token straight in the friend group than Rose AND Lyta both being straight.

I also question her choice of seeking out accomodation in Cape Kennedy. Isn’t it interesting how she ends up in a very strange B&B also managed by a gay drag artist and filled with colourful characters including Chantal and Zelda (I know their relationship is supposed to remain ambiguous but imo the show also leans more into them being lesbians due to Chantal’s dream where she calls them “soul sisters” and “gothic brides” and I dunno I just think the fact she refers to them as brides is pretty telling!)

Of all your accomodation choices in Florida, this in particular seems like the kind of place one would go to if they were specifically looking for somewhere advertised as “LGBT friendly”. All the characters staying at the B&B are either canonically queer or heavily queer coded.

Gilbert/Fiddlers Green isn’t technically human, but his whole aura is distinguished older gay man - he’s played by Stephen Fry after all!

Also I could go on about Barbie (who I theorise found the accomodation for her and Ken) but without revealing any comic spoilers, she also later surrounds herself with basically all queer people. I know in the comics she is strictly heterosexual, but nah she dreams like a queer theatre kid on speed or something lmao. That girl is a bisexual disaster all the way and yeah I may be projecting on her as a fellow blonde overly dramatic dreamer and disaster bisexual but I claim her for my own okay just let me have this.

So yeah, the queer friendship groups, the specific seeking out of an LGBTQ friendly b&b in Florida, and the fact that she literally wears rainbows in her hair and I think its clear enough that that girl is a baby queer if ever I saw one.

Due to the merging of Rose and Lyta’s stories in the Netflix show, we should actually get to see more of Rose in future seasons. In the comics, after the Dolls House book, she doesn’t appear again (unless she turns up in the Wake since I haven’t read that far ahead), but by making her Lyta’s companion in the show, we know she will appear again since Lyta and the baby (Daniel not that he has been named yet in the show) are reoccuring characters throughout the entire Sandman comic run.

Maybe I just crave more lesbian and bisexual women rep in my fave shows, but sitting here watching this show again it just tickles me that in the entirety of season 1, it is so easy to view practically every major female or female presenting character as queer. Joanna Constantine and Rachel, Judy and Bette, Lucifer and Mazikeen (bring on the make out scene in season 2!), Chantal and Zelda, and in my opinion, Rose Walker, Barbie, Lucienne, and Gault are all queer coded WLW.

(Lucienne and Gault is just a ship I love okay but you can’t deny there was some flirting in episode 10!)

It’s been such a crappy year for lesbian rep with lesbian shows getting cancelled left right and centre. I just think lesbians should therefore claim the Sandman as theirs. if nothing else, claim it out of spite. It’s a fantasy show with a pathetic wet cat emo boy as a main character who literally surrounds himself with lesbians, is probably in love with his best friend, and considers a slutty gay serial killer with teeth for eyes his greatest ever creation. It just seems to me like the kind of show that should appeal heavily to WLW okay! Plus there are more lesbians coming in season 2! Encourage your lesbian and bisexual friends to go watch The Sandman now!

[greenninjagal-blog]

You wouldn’t happen to have any Sanders Sides fics in an AU, would you? Fantasy, dystopian, magical. Y’know, the works. :)

Me, myself? All I really write are AUs tbh. So I'll throw down my favorites!

600 Pieces of Eight - A one shot where Virgil’s trading ship is attacked by pirates and instead of killing him, the Captain calls him pretty. (Anxceit)

Piece of Cake - A one shot au where Virgil steals a taste of a cake meant for the Prince and ends up poisoned within an inch of his life. (Anxceitmus)

To Know It By Name - A fantasy au where Logan is a Slime that has lived Its whole life in Its container and Its just now developing a moral conscious. Luckily Virgil is there to help It. (platonic Analogical, platonic Dukexiety)

Deja Vu -  Remus can see the future and it often involves his brother’s death. His does his best to prevent it, even if Roman doesn’t believe his power is real. (Demus, Anxceit, Anxceitmus)

Space and Everything In It-  A series in which Virgil is a human who made it to the other side of the galaxy only to find that humans are a) illegal, b) immune to basically everything and c) everyone’s worst nightmares. But hey, its better than back on Earth. Along with his new alien friends, strange new worlds, and a renewed lover, Virgil is on a mission to find the place where he belongs. (Anxceit! Demus! Anxeitmus! platonic everything!)

But there are so many more fics and au that I have around so if you're interested, here's a link to my General Writing Masterlist which has more Highschool/modern aus with other pairings.

Outside of me! I do have some recs for some fun fantasy aus! only doing a handful though, because I don't actually have a lot of time right now!

Until the Full Moon Rises - Werewolf Virgil has been in an out of foster homes for as long as he can remember really. Unfortunately this new home happens to be the den of a world renown werewolf hunter, Thomas Sanders.

Just a Touch of Necromancy - Virgil is a witch living his best life! Roman, Logan, and Patton are police detectives trying to track down a serial whose running around a small town! Virgil wishes they would stop thinking that just because he could see ghosts, he must be the killer!

virtus migrat in vitium - When the royal guards tie him to the stake and gather firewood at his feet, Virgil wonders which is the bigger crime: the fact that he was a witch, or that he fell in love with the prince.

Lonely Love - Janus is immortal and he's pretty sure thats a curse, since he watched the love of his life die centuries ago. However when he ends up being saved from strange mysterious monsters by a very familiar face... he can't help but allow himself to get close all over again. Also Magic. Vampires. Time Travel.

The Stowaway's Heart - After being imprisoned for stowing away on a boat, Virgil is saved by a group of selkies. Virgil tries to convince himself this is a good thing, but he can't shake a feeling that what he's been running from is going to bring harm to his new family.

Of Lips That I Am Yet to Kiss - Roman has been magically frozen in time, able to hear the world around him move on, but not able to react to anything. Luckily his newest attendant seems to be a vast improvement from the past ones.

Show Me Your Darkness - A series where a handful of gays are running around in medieval fantasy world with their own goals and end up impacting each other.

[bigskydreaming]

So just out of curiosity, what inspired the whole Beacon Bay idea? What kind of sharks and dolphins are they? This entire thing is very intriguing to me and I can't wait to see more.

So first off, anyone who’s ever played soundingboard to my original stuff like Moukie or Adam can attest to the fact that I’m ocean obsessed, so there’s pretty much nothing I’m interested in that isn’t a mere two or three steps removed from an ocean/merfolk/sea witch AU in my head. Gimme anything and like, five minutes, and I can make it ocean themed. Space operas included. I grew up near the ocean, been surfing for ages though of course I haven’t in years, blah, but like. I’m a big fan of the deep blue sea. Its just....neat. ghaskfhalkfhla

So I’ve always had a bunch of ocean-set concepts. This particular AU came about from like, smashing a couple of them together to preserve them when my plans for doing original stuff with them fizzled out, at least for the time being. Cuz the other thing about me is the way some people like, take their fanfic and file off the serial numbers to turn it into original novels, I more often do the reverse, lmao. When I have something I can no longer do something with original-content-wise, for whatever reason, but I still like the idea, I turn it into fanfic so I can still play around with it whenever I want and like, have purpose to that, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time by still ‘indulging’ in that concept or whatever.

Like my Batfandom fic By Lost Ways, as I’ve mentioned before....that actually started out as an original high fantasy novel set in my ‘Tales of the Citadel’ shared universe. BUT the setting ended up being similar enough to a sci-fi project I wanted I to move forward with, ‘Waveriders’ (the one with the sky pirates and the ATLA-style benders only instead of evoking the four classical elements, waveriders could each ‘hack’ a different kind of wavelength, that one) like....basically, the projects FELT similar enough in setting and various superficial elements that I started to feel derivative of myself moving forward with both, so I picked Waveriders and then recycled the setting and a lot of the plot of the sky-set fantasy novel for fanfic, just for fun.

Same thing here, though Beacon Bay is basically the mash-up of two different shelved original projects. Basically, its the plot of a CW-style show about teen sirens and the sea witch making like the Fagin to their Oliver Twists, from a pilot I wrote years ago.....it got some interest but I refused to make it less gay because lol have you met me, so it ultimately never went anywhere but I still liked the plot. 

And then remember the werewolf books I mentioned awhile back, that had the mongoose shifters in them? LOL. Yeah, so I’d written two and a half novels in that series and had this whole expansive worldbuilding of twelve different shifter clans each with their own innate magic, patron deity/creator, etc, but all my agent and editor contacts at the time were like yeah sorry, shifters are over for now, and I was like wow, can’t believe cancel culture’s real and publishing cancelled werewolves, wtf, rude, and then I was like eh, still wanna play in this universe especially with the dolphins and shark shifters which I never even really got to in those books, so I’m just gonna air-lift them out of that and drop them smack in the middle of my CW siren plot and fanfic away to my heart’s content and call that ‘being productive’ when I feel like it.

Anyway, found family was a big theme of those books and the world-building I did there in general, because again, have you met me, I’m not predictable or anything (shhh, the word is consistent), and one of my initial things there was I wanted the various shifter types to all have innate magic, because for literally no real reason that I can discern other than Whimsy, I have always been Team Werewolf in vampires vs werewolves, and I was tired of werewolves always being by default the underdogs in those narratives. Even if that does make for a good pun.

SO, I wanted to come up with werewolf magic that felt natural and organic to werewolves, like nothing too flashy or obscure, but that would make them a legitimate threat even to other supernatural creatures. And I made it so each of the shifter types were granted an active and a passive magic by the god that created their type of shifter, and with werewolves, their active magic was that of the pack gestalt. I took the idea of ‘their whole is greater than the sum of their parts’ that TW kinda briefly touched on when presenting (but never really doing much with) the idea that the more wolves in a pack, the stronger that pack was.....and I decided okay what if being part of a pack upped stats all across the board AND all shifters have a SLIGHT innate resistance to magic, being innately magical beings themselves? 

So a werewolf pack, with enough pack members, would thus not only be formidable in strength, speed, senses and speed of healing....but compound that innate shifter resistance to magic, which in a single shifter is negligible, like, just enough to make them slightly harder to track with magic or curse or whatever.....but in a whole werewolf pack, that adds up to make the pack effectively immune to foreign magic. Vampires can’t compel them, demons can’t possess them, witches can’t curse them, etc. So a lone werewolf, not part of a pack, is formidable, but nothing another supernatural being can’t take on. But a lone werewolf who IS part of a pack....different story entirely, because now most other supernatural beings, no matter what their USUAL strengths, are reduced to taking on that werewolf hand to hand, as their own supernatural gifts or spells or whatever, like, aren’t gonna do them any good against these particular foes. And werewolves are USED to fighting with just brute physical strength and attributes, which gives them the edge against opponents who are more used to being able to fall back on magic in battle.

But as much as I like sticking to a theme, I like to diversify that theme where possible, so when it came to the other shifter types, I wanted to similarly come up with ways where ‘the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts’ but in like, entirely different ways.

So with dolphin shifters, their ‘passive magic’ (in quotes cuz that’s not quite the right word for it but whatever) is that they’re all empaths, with their more active magic being weather manipulation. Their empathy is a two-way street....they project emotions as well as just feel other peoples’, which ties into the fact that their patron deity was Dionysus. Dolphin parties....legendary. But in an extremely wild, dangerous and Bacchanalian kinda way. In terms of Beacon Bay specifically, this is a bit of a problem for the BB dolphins, as the closest thing they had to an official Triton (the dolphin shifter version of an Alpha) was Peter, but they were like nope, not loving this guy, and kinda drove him out of town in the AU S1 backstory of this ‘verse, which means Scott and the others are kinda just making it up as they go along, and don’t really know the ins and outs of BEING dolphin shifters. (Derek is....elsewhere, in this. Mostly). 

So bottom line is they have reputations around school for being loud obnoxious goofs and trouble-makers, constantly playing hooky and such, but its because they don’t really know HOW to safeguard against spilling their emotions onto everyone around them so they try and err on the side of being the life of the party whenever possible, as that’s better than the alternatives in their opinion. And when they’re just having bad days and bumming hard, the whole pod will just skip school and glomp around the bumming pod member whilst self-caring, rather than like, accidentally bum out the entire school.

But their weather manipulation magic is where the gestalt idea comes into play with them, as I love weather manipulating powers, but I didn’t want to make them all Ororo Munroe, y’know? Only Ororo Munroe can be Ororo Munroe. Don’t make me scoff. I’ll do it. I’ll scoff so hard. SO I went with the idea of weather control married to manipulating storms via song and was like, okay what if a dolphin pod is like, a symphony of shifters. 

Basically, its like each individual dolphin shifter is a single voice in a chorus, and there’s magical equivalents of being a baritone, an alto, etc. Like, none of them can whip up a storm on their own. Its more that each of them can summon or conjure a PIECE of a storm with their song, with it being different for each of them....symptomatic of their magic as an expression of them as an individual. So for instance, Scott’s song is ‘tuned’ to lightning. He can call down a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.....but he can’t summon so much as a drop of rain to save his life. Literally. Its an actual plot point at one point. Whereas Isaac’s song is all about calling down rain, Boyd’s is more of an arctic wind, and Erica’s kinda summons a pressure front that in harmony with the two of theirs can whip up a mean waterspout. And then Corey’s all about conjuring fog banks with low visibility while Liam can whistle up a strong, gale-force wind but sucks at using his song as a precision instrument. Etc, etc. But the real magic is when they all use their voices and magic in concert....as a group, they can summon huge magical thunderstorms.

Also, one thing I love about using different kinds of shifters is the opportunity to explore enhanced supernatural senses that aren’t just keen sight, smell or hearing. So the dolphin shifters aren’t like wolf shifters in being able to detect chemosignals or anything like that....in fact, their sense of smell isn’t much different from anyone else’s. But they do have an ability to use what’s effectively supernatural echolocation even above water, and their sight is adapted for optimal viewing underwater, making them particularly good at seeing in the darkness even on land. 

(Also, related but somewhat tangential to both the shifter senses and dolphin ‘voices’....all dolphin shifters have a strong talent for mimicry, but this isn’t technically a form of magic, more just a combination of their control over their voice and their keen senses of pitch, etc).

The shark shifters, on the other hand, have some of the keenest senses of all shifters. Not only is their sense of smell even better than a werewolf’s, they’re sensitive to changes in pressure, for one thing. Which means on land, they can even feel changes in atmospheric pressure.....so like, the shark shifters of Beacon Bay could be in math class and then ‘feel’ a sudden drop in air pressure and thus even before some strange weather phenomenon occurs, they’re groaning like ugh fucking A, what the hell did the damn dolphins do now.

Also, their magnetic field perception is such that they can kinda ‘sense’ when people are around, just by being aware of the approaching magnetic field of another living being.

And then with the sharks, I was looking for ways to lean into the associations we have with sharks and blood, but subvert them to be less macabre and more communal. And another big theme of mine in general is like, I am DETERMINED to go to my grave shouting at the top of my lungs “Its THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT IS THICKER THAN THE WATER OF THE WOMB, NOT BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER, HOW DID PEOPLE GET THAT SO BACKWARDS ITS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW ITS USUALLY STATED!”

Like, that’s just...HUGE pet peeve of mine. Its like nails on a chalkboard, lmfao, that drives me nuts. That phrase is usually cited by people using it to express like, the idea that there’s no greater force than family, specifically BIOLOGICAL, ‘blood’ relations, but its literally meant to be the exact opposite, that the blood of CHOSEN bonds, of covenants, of vows or promises, is a greater force than the water of the womb, ie being born of the same womb, as in biological siblings. The entire point of the phrase is biology ain’t shit, family is what we choose. And somehow it got turned ENTIRELY around.

(Note: Okay, so for the record, its not ‘somehow’, there’s actually a very clear reason for why that particular interpretation gained so much momentum, and that’s because for a long time it was conflated with an old German proverb from like a thousand years ago that basically translates to “kin-blood is not spoiled by water.” Which basically was meant to mean that nothing can ‘dilute’ blood relations, not time, not distance, not water. So that phrase DOES correspond to the idea that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Problem is, there isn’t a direct trace from that particular proverb TO most USAGES of ‘blood is thicker than water,’ which when you throw in the OTHER phrase, which in its entirety is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” what you end up with is a lot of people SAYING that one when they actually MEAN to say ‘kin-blood is not spoiled by water’ and that’s where the meanings get switched. But I fucking digress. Per usual).

Anyway. So combine that particular pet peeve with my found family fixation AND the fact that this is about magic and magic means I can do whatever the hell I want, fuck your biological connections mwahahaha.....I decided to base shark magic on the idea of the blood-ties of family....but CHOSEN blood-ties, as in blood of the covenant ties.

What I mean is okay, so it first of all just made sense to me to have shark shifter communities be heavily focused around adoption, because like....let’s be real, shark shifters going around biting people to change them into shifters, and then people magically healing from....shark bites....was going to attract a lot more attention than people turning after being attacked by other types of shifters. Not to mention the fact that not only are shark attacks always big news, part of why they’re big news is because they’re actually pretty rare.

So, shark shifter communities were never really gonna propagate via lots of random shark shifter attacks turning people. So the way they DO expand and grow is by, well, family. Both biological AND adoption...as well as of course shark shifter communities taking in people who ARE attacked by rogue shark shifters, when that does happen. 

But bottom line is, there’s an additional element in play in shark shifter communities, beyond just the gene pool....and that’s like, a magical tidepool of talents, let’s call it. Because I do love me some alliteration. But also tidepool of talents is just a cool phrase, IMO.

Anyway, the main part of shark shifter magic, and how THEIR whole is greater than the sum of their parts, is that any shark shifter can draw upon or channel the talents, skillsets or knowledge of anyone else in their communal family. And whenever that family gets added to, the talents, skillsets and knowledge of the new addition gets added to the pot, so to speak. So shark shifters are kinda all like Rogue, if Rogue’s focus was less on the superpowers of other people and more on things like Beast’s scientific knowledge, Cyclops’ strategic skills or Cable’s weapons expertise.

And then their ‘passive magic’ is a form of psychometry whenever they come into contact with blood. By touching even just a drop of someone’s blood, they can get a vision of how that blood was spilled or even get a sense of where the person who spilled it is now.

As to the types of sharks and dolphins they all are, for that I went with the thing about the shape you take reflects the person you are.....all the shifters here are full shifters, and there’s no genetic component to their shifting, its purely magical, so like....just because Peter turned the various dolphins of BB doesn’t mean they all turn into the same kind of dolphin he was. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of dolphin he was on account of I don’t really care tbh, lol. Whereas Erica’s an Atlantic spotted dolphin, Liam’s a pygmy killer whale which looks like an orca just tiny in comparison and is actually a dolphin, and I found that combination of factors hilarious, etc, etc.

Same thing with the shark shifters. Even among biological relations, there’s a ton of variety of shark types. Like the twins aren’t even the same type...Ethan’s a blue shark and Aiden’s a bull shark, Tracy’s a tiger shark and Hayden’s an angel shark. Danny’s actually a throwback to an unnamed prehistoric shark, not Megalodon big but big enough to shut up Jackson when he goes on about being a great white shark. Shark and crocodile shifters are the two oldest shifter clans, old enough that literal dinosaurs fall under the umbrella of their shifter type, and thus occasionally show up even in modern generations.

[thedisorganizationofelliot]

podcasts

This past year I’ve gotten really into podcasts as a way to help manage my adhd, so i’ve gone through quite a few of them and i thought about making my own rec post. obviously i have adhd and was putting it off lol but my friend expressed interest so here’s the list of podcasts that i’ve gotten through at least a full season of and loved.

The Bridge

10/10 erie atmosphere

"A podcast about the fictional Transcontinental Bridge, the people who live there, and the stories they leave behind. Oh, and monsters."

The Magnus Archives

holy crap this is so well done. it’s horror so i can’t listen to it to help me sleep but if you want fear and true spookiness this is great. the main character is a department head for an institute that deals in the paranormal. his job is to record ppl’s statements of the weird unexplainable things that happen to them. but he’s more on the skeptic side of things which creates just enough humor to get me through a horror podcast. queerness does happen in the background. 

The Adventure Zone

i feel like if you’re looking for fiction podcasts you’ve already heard of the adventure zone. three brothers and their dad play tabletop rpg. it’s hilarious and made me cry. when they accidently do something like say kill the first lesbian couple on the show, they actually do make up for it and apologize for not realizing. their solution was to keep giving us so many lgbt characters that i didn’t even notice that the first were playing into the bury your gays trope until i went back and listen to their the the adventure zone zone eps. 

Victoriocity

 do you want quirky crime solving steampunk adventure? bc this show will give you just that. It’s full steampunk victorian london shenanigans. reminds me of patrick carmen’s writing a bit if you read his books as a kid i’d highly recommend this. 

Inn Between

okay this is a show that’ll give you a toothache. it’s all found family adorableness. it takes place in the inn that the group goes to in between dnd adventuring. it’s very heartwarming and i adore all the characters. 

The Penumbra Podcast

if i only had the choice of listening to one podcast ever again, this would probably be the one i choose. its so goddamn good and so goddamn queer. they’ve given me my dream sci-fi world and fantasy. there’s a canon poly relationship that i love soooo much.

The Amelia Project

what does one do when they want to disappear? why call the amelia project of course! each episode starts with a phone call, involves hot coco, and crazy schemes to make ppl disappear. 

Girl in Space

i can’t say too much about this without giving things away. there’s a girl alone on a spaceship with a very important job and a copy of jurassic park. then suddenly she’s not alone and it turns out that her ship is full of something very valuable and isn’t technically hers.

if you want space adventures about friendship not romance this is one for you. seriously i love it so much.

The Strange Case of Starship Iris

this one is totally completed. it’s short. in my eyes it’s a better firefly. you’ve got your morally questionable main crew (and the pilot is an alien bc they’re not cowards) who take morally questionable jobs. they end up picking up the only survivor of starship iris and well there’s some fishy things that happened that everyone wants to figure out. 

We Fix Space Junk

do you fear corporations taking over the world and charging so much for things that you’ll be in debt for life? well this is your fears come true.  it’s lighthearted tone makes things even more unsettling at times. it’s main plot is between a women who’s been working off the debt of her ship for way too long and her new, previously an heiress, apprentice. 

Be the Serpent

three red headed fantasy authors talk about books and fanfiction and make dick jokes. i love them.

Death by Dying

i dont really know how to explain this one. it’s kinda got a pushing daisies style to it. the obituary writer goes around and sorta accidentally solves murders while he’s doing his research.

Eos 10

did you want a scrubs in space? bc this is scrubs with space pirates, a reluctant recovering alcoholic, a hypochondriac disposed alien prince who is now a dishwasher planning to a kitchen revolution, a nurse who’d could kill you but has, hopefully, decided to help you.  it’s pure shenanigans. they get into so much craziness. definitely has that found family vibe bc i know what i’m about.

King Falls AM

did you also listen to nightvale in highschool but gave up on it after 20 or so episodes bc it didn’t really have a plot? then this is perfect for you. two dudes run a late night talk show in a perfectly normal town. it’s completely normal to have ghosts that move road signs, a lake monster, a vampire???, alien abductions, and calling your favorite local radio station about all these totally normal happening and how you can’t believe they’re interfering with the fishing tournament. 

i’ll be honest this was annoyingly boy heavy for me at first. the only women at first seemed to be the perfect librarian, the soccer mom,  and gwendolen the racist witch. but then there’s a plot about punching himminsts and all these women getting fed up. so i think it's totally worth it. THEY GET FLESHED OUT EVENTUALLY 

The Bright Sessions

for a podcast about a therapist to ppl with superpowers this one stresses me out. which is good. i mean there’s a lot going on and a shady government agency

The Ordinary Epic

a group of fictional ppl play as fictional dnd characters. Season one left me on kinda a cliff hanger and idk how to feel about it. It entertained me, so like a 6/10 maybe a 7? so far. 

The Two Princes

gaaaaaaaaay if you want a fairytale romance this is the place to be. 

[orionsangel86]

Reblogging this as I still sometimes see an attempt at superiority among Black Sails fans which appeared to grow in popularity as BS fans were annoyed by people treating OFMD like it was the first and ONLY show about gay pirates (which I guess is somewhat understandable if you feel your fave show is being overshadowed by a silly comedy).

As a huge fan of both shows I found that attitude to be quite ridiculous. The fact that both shows are about pirates, including gay pirates, is the ONLY thing they have in common.

BS is an epic drama series that gets very dark and violent at times. Even the lighter comedic moments don't shy away from the darkness and brutality of the world BS is set in. Its a brilliant show, but if you're going into it expecting lots of gay fun content you'll be disappointed. The gay content is subtle (except for the s1 lesbian sex scenes which I always feel are more for the male gaze than for actual queer viewers sadly - s1 has very strong GoT vibes) though it does form the foundations for the story.

In contrast OFMD is first and foremost a romantic gay comedy. The fact it is set in 1717 among pirates is an afterthought. It hardly ever takes itself seriously but when it does it is like a suckerpunch to the abdomen. The comedy and the romance take the lead, but don't underestimate the shows ability to hit you with symbolism and deeper meaning so profound you'll find yourself sobbing in a ball on the floor (exactly as you did after watching BS funnily enough).

Where BS focuses on gritty realism, OFMD goes for optimistic fantasy. BS is about gay trauma, OFMD is about gay joy.

The best way I explain how bizarre it is to compare the two is with an equally bizarre comparison. Take True Blood (a dark and bloody violent vampire drama series) and What We Do In The Shadows (a ridiculous and hilarious vampire series). Both have queer vampires, but the two shows are so extremely different in every other way that you can't even begin to compare them and you wouldn't pit them against each other in amongst the strange world of vampire related media!

Watch both shows. Do not compare them. Certainly do not pit them against each other and ignore anyone who tries to claim that one is better than the other.

i still haven't watched of*d, do you recommend it? (i've seen the last ask and now i'm worried it's actually not that good) :/ i'm a die-hard bl*ck sails fan fwiw

ignore that previous ask, it means nothing. ofmd and black sails are two wildly different genres so it's pointless to use either to base your expectations for the other. they are both about queer pirates and that's where the similarities stop. as a huge fan of both ofmd and black sails, i recommend it, of course, just don't go in expecting the kind of realistic and heavy drama of the bs world because ofmd is first and foremost a silly romantic comedy about gay pirates

[ajaegerpilot]

gayfandomblog replied to your post “gayfandomblog replied to your post: gayfandomblog...”

i tried 2 describe how bizarre my early tumblr experiences were but im not sure i can

dood meanwhile I’ve been writing an essay on my overall fandom experiences in response to ur reply ‘before lok book 3 hit me in the face w how good femslash is i was a superwhomerlock blog :( i want to froget’ . UNDER THE CUT for LENGTH:

as pretext: when i was like 10 I used to read archie comics a lot and I’d draw a lot of girls and I got gay panic over drawing girls and then I assured myself ‘well I’m attracted to boys too so even if I like girls I’ll never act on it and I’ll just be straight ladeedadeeda :))’

before tumblr i was a harry potter fan (11-12 years old). i read harry potter and started writing my own harry potter fanfiction before i knew what fanfiction was in a pirate game forum (I wrote in the forum because we had modem internet connection so I could never actually play the game) until someone directed me to harrypotterfanfiction.net and fanfiction.net. (ps: I also wrote fanfiction for sweet valley university when a new author was hired and wrote Todd really OOC so she could make way for her OC. writing fix-it fanfic has always been my instinct)

then I got my sister to get me copies of buffy the vampire slayer & heroes, shows I borrowed from our local library because we didn’t have TV, so I was into those for awhile. I had Bad Het ships. (12-13) hpff.net was my first taste of anything gay (to this day my heart still lies with remus/sirius). while I was interested in het in buffy, I steadily started moving into yaoi (CRINGE ALL YOU WANT BUT IVE GOT TO BE HONEST). I was still getting most of my media from the local library and reading manga on the internet. everything CLAMP made, and I tried to read a bit of naruto. I think there was no general fandom because when I was 14-15, just a large hodgepodge of me consuming media and then reading increasingly m/m fanfiction about it. (you don’t get it, its actually MORE heterosexual to read about two men falling in love because ahahahah there’s no girls amirite you don’t have to think about girls or your feelings about girls or why you stare at girls in dance class and take two dance classes and never dance ahahahaha PERFECT) (i still can’t dance)

then I turned 16 and got a tumblr. I think this might be due to me watching inception, searching up if there was eames & arthur fanfiction (since they’re white dudes of course there was), or perhaps that came after I got a tumblr, but I got a tumblr nevertheless bc of m/m fanfiction/fanart. then came teen wolf where I thought sterek was cannon. I briefly was Interested in this ...

.... but nothing ever came of it with myself or the show and now both characters are dead heterosexuals. about this time I tried to watch sherlock and I found a textpost early on my tumblr that said I was 92 on the waitlist. after 4 months I finally got the dvds and guess what. sherlock is boring with good cinematography, that’s it. the movies are more entertaining and elementary is more human.

steadily I moved from teen wolf to avengers. then came my tom hiddleston phase. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE FILTHY FANTASIES I’D HAVE ABOUT TOM HIDDLESTON for example: I was the director on a film he was working on and we got along great and went on jogs together :DD. I also got into SPN at this time too!! i still do hope destiel happens :)) I thought it was really cute how in one of the later episodes there’s like a play some fans in the show put on where destiel happens but it’s two butch girls dressed as cas and dean :’)) let it happen SPN Do One Decent Thing I’ll Never Watch You Again But Do It. by the way, Dean is a fucking bottom @spn fandom just because his actor is like 2cm taller than cas’s does not a top make, if you paid attention to the show at all you’d notice that in every single sex scene he’s submissive, straights have the weirdest fucking rules about who’s the top/bottom in gay relationships i SWEAR it pisses me off so much. in the meantime I was watching ATLA, LOK when I could, playing batman games.

and then. and i joke abt this is a bit but. I think I watched sailor moon one summer, the summer of 2014. and sailor moon. made me gay. or rather, sailor moon kicked off the thought process of ‘UM! the yaoi-fan argument that slash is the most progressive thing bc its gay is wrong and the het argument that het is better bc it involves women is wrong bc you could be writing abt women in love! and i’m going to do this and never pay attention to guys ever again because I’m a good Feminist and more Feminists in Fandom Should Do This It Doesn’t Make You Gay Obviously Because I’m Not Even Though I Was Obsessed With My Band Teacher’s Daughter And A Girl in Dance Class And Another Girl(s) I’m Just An Artist And A Feminist’

so anyway................ this is my life