#the only time im using that tag

[tiofrean]

Oh boy... OH BOY... I was reading through comments and tags under that Flint vs. Stede post (and before that in Silver vs. Oluwande post) and OH BOY RANT INCOMING

Feel free to ignore. No, I'm prickly about this.

I LOVE how people are like "Black Sails fans are so mean why are they like that T.T ?" in the tags and comments.

LET ME TELL YOU.

So we have this show that has been marginalized and has been pushed to the side for years. A show that has excellent plot, wonderful intrigue, magnificent representation and well-written, 3D characters that are complex and relatable. You get your edgy queer men (whether you want to characterize Flint as gay or bi, doesn't change the fact that he likes dick whichever way), you get your edgy queer girls (Anne), you get your flamboyant whatever-the-fuck-Jack-Rackham-is (<3), you get sweet gays (Thomas), you get confused bisexuals (Eleanor, Silver), you get straight sweets (Miranda) and straight angery dicks (Woodes Rogers), and competent, edgy straights (Vane). Oh! A competent, master-of-the-house lesbian? Check (Max). You even have asexuals, or that is what I shall forever classify Billy as. You have a f/f sex scene in the first damn episode, ffs. You get threesomes (sexual, romantic), you get couples, you even have Silver in a brothel orgy.

But sexual representation is not ALL! You get goofy pirates (Jack Rackham), you get serious pirates (Blackbeard), you get balls of rage (Flint), you get chill, laid-back sea dogs (Gates), you get competent little weasels (Silver), you get incompetent rats (Dufrense). You also have marvelous extras and side characters (Beauclerc the marksman, Captain Fruit-Fruit, Idelle... OHMYGOD IDELLE <3333).

There's the political plot that's historically accurate, the story's plot that's Flint's big gay rage, there's the sociological context of being painted as a monster, there's the gold hunt, there are ships correctly operated by crews of more than five fucking people, there are guns, blood and realistic injuries. You get quotations and allusions to Shakespeare, Cervantes, Julius Caesar, Marcus Fucking Aurelius, a metric ton of other classical writers. You get so many tropes done right it's astonishing and too effing long to list them all here.

On top of that, there is the picturesque landscape, absolutely gorgeous ships and very accurate portrayal of how life looked back then.

We had to defend that show when it first came out, the actors had to fucking fight homophobic assholes upon the airing of season two (IMAGINE THAT), people who loved it had a hard time going around, although admittedly it's a "fandom" hard time, not a "real life" hard time. We persisted, we persevered, and now we're here, clinging to what's left of our fandom, because we are admittedly all over the place and we don't have "troops" on any one social media, which makes our numbers small in comparison to other fandoms, and makes fandom interactions very limited.

Now imagine that there aired a show... a pirate show promising a lot. And then the show turned out to be an office-type comedy with no lesbian/bi women representation (I may be wrong, but I did watch it out of curiosity, didn't see any, just guys). A show that the whole plot of is just a rendition of the Beauty and the Beast for pirate times with so many historical inaccuracies (couching your crew like a bunch of office workers? Plz. The way they speak and the concepts they talk of that weren't there? It's like they were sitting around a fire, holding hands and singing kumbaya). And don't get me wrong, there's place for those shows as well, and maybe it works for you (and great for you too!).

We tried to ignore it, really we did. We basically gave it the eyebrow-raise-huff-ignore thing that you do on the internet when you want someone to enjoy their stuff and are not interested in it yourself.

But you know what happened? Suddenly there were people on twitter tagging everyone and their dog from Black Sails with renditions of Flint/Izzy (Izzy who comes across as an extreme asshole at best and a homophobic shit at worst and you can't fault people for reading it like this). Let that sink in - our fandom babe Flint, who had his whole life ruined due to homophobia and homophobic assholes is suddenly being shipped with a guy who suspiciously fits the description a bit too much for our tastes. Wouldn't you get angry? Of course you would, we're all very protective of our babes. We are, you are, everyone is. We asked you not to do this, and while I admit that hurling curses your way might not have been the most polite way of asking you to stop, the message was clear enough. What does OFMD fandom do? They all double down. Double fucking down on fanfiction and tagging everything in BS again, pairing Flint and Izzy together, writing things way out of the realm of any possibilities because most of the writers didn't watch BS (I did read their comments on that. They weren't even sorry). If you take such character and throw him into a work of art that can and will be seen as controversial, you should at least have the decency to do your homework on the original work he comes from. Otherwise, to our eyes, you're taking the most wronged man from our beloved show, wronged due to his sexuality, and throw him together with a literal asshole just to see them fuck because they would look pretty (and that's an actual comment from one of the artists, I shit you not). Wouldn't you feel a bit angry about that? I bet you would.

What's worse, people loving Black Sails and not liking OFMD usually point out how narrow the representation is, how improbable the show is and how they're not remotely invested in the plot. It's a cheesy show for your average Sunday afternoon, don't make it into something it's not. It's not a political statement any more than Guess The Tune is.

What's more, when I've seen attempts at people pointing out the obvious flaws in plot, in logic (how many people crew that ship exactly? How is he not dead after being stabbed clean through with a sword?), all we've gotten was "Oh it's not that type of show, OBVIOUSLY", "it's just a comedy, duh" and my personal favorite "you just DON'T UNDERSTAND IT BOOMER". (I'm a late Millennial, thx). Every attempt was chucked out the window. What got me most, tho, was the high praise of OFMD IS THE FIRST SHOW TO [insert whatever queer thing it did supposedly]. No, it's not. There was even a post on twitter that debunked all those claims one by one. I get it, you're happy that you got your gay pirates, good for you. But give credit where credit's due, otherwise you're gonna piss off a lot of people. People who watched our show struggle and crawl so that your show can run today and be fine and accepted widely.

And personally, I felt disappointed watching it because of the lack of representation. Disappointed that Ed turned out to be just as rainbowy as Stede. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against rainbowy, ultra-sweet characters that are big softies. I love them. But not everyone in the lgbtq community is like that. Actually, it's the minority. There are your sweets, there are your glittery rainbows, but the majority is on the more... inconspicuous part of the scale. And there are edgy people (like myself) who don't like glitter, pink, feathers, fluff and a shitton of other things this show had in abundance. You know what made me wince while watching? When I realized that the only person who I could remotely like for the way they weren't so glittery-rainbowy-sweet was Izzy, and I hated him because he was an asshole. Even Jim got the fluffy af oranges arch. So not my (and others') cup of tea.

So yeah, our recent anger and rabidity is not based solely on one post about an insignificant poll (that you're winning only because our fandom is significantly smaller and most people are dispersed between different sites). It's all those things combined and it's the result of them.

And no, I'm not going to finish it with a "please forgive us if we seem a bit angery, we're coping". Flint wouldn't.

[1alchemistart]

dont got much to offer for The Holiday but have these sillies!

happy valentines day :D

[weaselmcdiesel]

Do You Love The Color Of The 413?

[nicktoonsunite]

got your back

[machinerot]

[xxplastic-cubexx]

[right to left]

finally finished This Wip from Ever ago and so now i ask you ever look into another dudes eyes and suddenly want to do whatever he wants

[okthatsgreat]

fake screenshots of a dating simulator where it becomes extremely obvious that the romanceable characters murdered the previous protagonist and are trying to hide it from you

[yumedoca]

So yeah, 'Ranma 0.5' or something like that..

[getyinyusedtoit]

thinking about xie lian getting asked to stop dropping random facts, quotes, recipes, etc into the communication array by the heavenly officials because they find him annoying, meanwhile hua cheng is not only enraptured by everything xie lian has to say but he has his own 800+ years of random knowledge and trivia stored up and prepared to randomly share back.

[carcarrot]

columbo - "the most dangerous match"

[kat1nkulta]

I think there’s something wrong with my Mirror Dungeon guys

Reference and normal ver. below vv

Bonus

[bitegore]

Zionists want you to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Zionists want you to believe that Judaism cannot exist without Zionism and that all Jews are Zionists. Zionism would have Jews believe that a Jewish state is the only way that they can be safe from antisemitism and will point to any instance of antisemitism as proof that Zionism is the solution- so Zionism wants gentiles to be antisemitic in their support of Palestine. They want you to conflate all Jews with Zionism and the state of Israel, and they want you to treat all Jews regardless of political affiliation as the face of Israel. Antizionist Jews exist, and incidences of antisemitism ostensibly acting against Zionism will not help dismantle the forces propping Zionism up.

Don't do their work for them.

[stargatebarbie]

It’s my Stargate and I’ll make it pink if I want to

[morii-moth]

"this is me on day one of NO rendog !!"

[ryssbelle]

Mickey mouse cartoon reference go brrr

[iliothermia]

Small update that all of my keychains are on sale and the last batch of my patches are up. Patches/stickers/mini prints mail worldwide for $3 or less :)