#and one half of the couple is a supernatural being. and also. they're story itself is profound and great and god-defying

[angelsdean]

i'll be honest, i truly do not understand when people get all up in arms whenever anyone involved with spn describes cas's love for dean as beyond the human understanding of love, as if there haven't been posts made on here for years by fans literally describing cas's love for dean / destiel's love as akin to worship, a powerful force greater than god, cosmic, all encompassing, profound, etc etc. i thought the outrage was silly when jensen expressed the idea of cas's love being more than romantic back in denver con 2021 and i think it's silly now with these bedlund tweets. not to mention being more than and beyond something imo means it encompasses the romantic AND more. it's romantic, it's platonic, it's cosmic, it's worship, it's everything. and i think that's beautiful. and yes, it's exactly what their love is. a huge profound force that changed the narrative, that wasn't meant to be there, that kept breaking through anyway.

and i understand what people are saying about this language being used for a queer ship etc etc, but like, there's nothing inherently wrong or negating their love in saying that it's a greater love. if anything i think it's saying, hey, see these two? yea their love is bigger than what we can even comprehend. idk i'm just going to continue to take these statements in good faith. and also, until the reboot happens, they can't really say more about destiel beyond the bounds of the confession. jensen, bedlund, misha, etc can't speak to dean's feelings, for instance, or confirm anything one way or another, because if those feelings are a major plot point to be explored and acknowledged in the continuation then to speak about them now with any kind of definitive statement would be spoiling / jumping the gun, and it's not their place to make those statements yet, if we are indeed going to see more of dean and cas's story in the future (which i mean, at this point based on their statements about the reboot it's really a When not If situation).

[falconearring]

goood day! hope you're doing splendid

if you have the time, would you mind explaining a bit of the lore of your au so far? I'm very interesting in lot of mechanics of aus, and apart from whatever bits you've dropped about the gang and what they're upto, is there any specifics you'd like to add on as a note? this isn't about spoilers, and if doing so might reveal some then it's completely understandable!

I'm really interested in how your story progresses and if not the above, id love to hear what you think so far about it and what you think of the thoughts of people, like their interpretations if have any! thank you for taking the time for this and its completely fine if you don't want to answer

apologies if I came off as rude or too assuming, and for the rather long ask ahah

thank you again! have a great day or night ahead! take care

Hey thank you so much for dropping this in my inbox!! You taking interest warms my heart!

I'm gonna use this ask as a means to drop these headshots and notes. Below is every person who currently resides at the repurposed logging yard. They call themselves the Hermits. All of these people will appear at least once in the comic, and I'm going to do my best to include these little bits of info within the actual story too!

Other members of traffic/life smp will also appear, they just aren't associated with the group established here. So Scott, Lizzie, Jimmy, Martyn, Bigb, Scar and Grian are going to make an appearance later.

As for the setting, we're 2 years into the apocalypse at this point. There are safe guarded cities, but these places are far away from where the story is taking place. The Hermits have pretty much been living their lives completely isolated from other people as a means of keeping safe.

Weather in this universe can be a bit extreme, as the world faces an imminent climate crisis a few years before the zombies start appearing inexplicably. Space stations were in the midst of being established before the apocalypse, with hopes that humanity could reestablish itself in outer space. When it hit, much of the remaining human race was evacuated from the planet as a last ditch effort. The status of the shuttles that were sent up is unknown. The stations being set up really weren't ready to be inhabited so soon, so its kind of iffy whether or not things are going much better up there.

Early into the apocalypse, helicopters would fly overhead looking for survivors and escort them back to safe zones and launch sites. This stopped not long after though, and whether or not they're going to start looking for survivors again is unknown.

As for the zombies themselves, the 'science' behind them is beyond anyone's understanding. Upon being bitten, the body instantaneously progresses through the stages of decomposition and takes on a sickly kind of bruised look. As far as any one can tell, there is no brain activity beyond this point, but the bodies still move inexplicably. Kind of a night of the living dead situation. Important to note that much like a human, if the heart or brain is destroyed they will die, despite not having a functioning nervous or circulatory system. I'm taking a distinctly supernatural approach to them because I just think it's cool.

I have no clue what year this is set in, but the Hermits are residing in the wilderness somewhere in Canada. I'll touch on pretty much all the above within the comic as well, but I thought there was no harm in sharing anyhow because you asked so nicely!

As for the second half, people have said a couple interesting things. Sadly I can't comment on a lot of it because it dips into spoilers! Somebody said they find it funny that Bdubs is probably freaking out while Etho is just chilling and that's absolutely spot on and made me laugh.

Thanks for such a detailed ask, anon! And thanks for your patience, I had to think about what I wanted to say ^_^ Hopefully this is what you were looking for, hope you have a fantastic day!

[sunriseverse]

I'm picking random numbers for that ask thingy: 2 7 10 13 18

hi moth!!! thanks for the ask :)

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

for current wips, i'm most excited about tsl and sitwyltme; they're both fairly plot-centric, so that'll give me a chance to exercise those muscles, and also, tsl is what i've been planning for literally nine months now, and more or less counts as a culmination of all of my ongoing research for the setting, while sitwyltme is personally cathartic. for future projects, i'm working on a fem!tiesanjiao pre-canon fic, which i'm very excited about, half comedy, half sincere exploration of character issues, and i have a fun little tdj concept knocking about my head, where post-explosion, yohan goes into a coma and his spirit anchors itself to gaon, so gaon has to carry out his plans while being pestered accompanied by his boss' spirit, and also occasionally being possessed about it.

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

i think my writing characteristics are 1. being very verbose, and 2. realism. i really enjoy descriptive writing, and i have a hard time writing things not grounded in reality (in the sense of societal reactions/characterisation; i still write scif/supernatural/fantasy-esque settings, which aren't necessarily "realistic"). i personally like this about my writing, but i can fully imagine there's people out there that are ticked off by these tendencies of mine. "verbose" can easily be interpreted as "can't shut the fuck up" and "realism" isn't a far step from being seen as "pessimism".

10. How would you describe your writing process?

there's two processes, which often intertwine. the first is that i come up with a concept while busy with something, and then spend the next one to ten business days vibrating with a Need To Write until i manage to bang out the concept and toss it onto ao3. the other processes is coming up with a concept while talking to a friend, collaboratively losing our minds over it, helping me solidify my thoughts, and then i spend the next one to ten business days vibrating with the Need To Write until i finish it.

13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?

yeah my writing is on ao3 under the user OnyxSphinx (it's linked in my bio as well). sometimes i also toss half-finished, lapselock snippets of fics into my writing tag on here, but they're not really worth mentioning.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

uhhhhhh i'm trying to think. i think the only one i can remember is the gotham longfic i wrote ages ago. originally i had plans for it to be fairly complicated, but 1. i lost the drive to work on it, and 2. somehow i lost (never wrote down???) my notes for what exactly i wanted, so when i went back to it a couple years after i abandoned it to rework it, it wound up pretty different from the concepts that i could still manage to remember.

[the-breath-in-air]

So you're done with Our Flag Means Death, now what...

Whenever I come across a fandom praising a relatively mainstream show/movie for being Peak Gay or the Most Radical Thing Ever, I create a list of other queer media that fans might like. I love Our Flag Means Death, and its certainly doing some unique things. But it's a lovely, unique blend of things found in other media, not something radically new. Hence, this list of series that you might like if you like Our Flag Means Death.

In no particular order:

The Other Two (2019 - present) - The Other Two was marketed as a comedy about the antics of the jealous siblings of a Justin Bieber-like child star. But that's a bit misleading. For one thing, Chase Dreams (the child star) is written to be a genuinely good kid. For another, although it absolutely is a comedy, there's a family tragedy at the heart of the series that really grounds all characters even as they do ridiculous things. And the older siblings aren't really jealous; it's more that they're kind of disasters trying to latch onto Chase's fame to figure out their own lives. The older brother, Carey, is gay and although his character goes through a self-acceptance arc, he doesn't ever have to 'come out,' which is refreshing. The show also satirizes what it's like to be a millennial queer in Hollywood.

Everything's Gonna Be Okay (2020-2021) - Everything's Gonna Be Okay is a series written by Josh Thomas about an autistic gay man who becomes the guardian of his two half-siblings. There are multiple autistic and queer characters portrayed by autistic and queer actors. It's a comedy about dealing with grief as well as being about self-discovery, both for the teenagers and the adults in the story. It's also a story about family supporting each other through difficult challenges.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow (2016 - present) - Legends of Tomorrow is about a group of misfits who "screw up history for the better." It's really a hodge podge of DC characters (and original characters) that don't fit into a superhero series of their own. The cast changes frequently, but there is always at least one queer character on the series (and sometimes quite a few). It's full of a bunch of misfits who cause havoc and then try to fix the chaos they created. There is an episode with pirates, and a running gag about an electronic stuffed animal toy and eventually there are same-gender co-captains. The first season is rough, so maybe read a summary and skip to season 2 if you find yourself falling off it after the first couple episodes.

What We Do In The Shadows (2019 - present) - What We Do In The Shadows has been accused of queerbaiting, and not without reason. It's not Supernatural-level queerbaiting by any means, but season 3 seems to really be leaning heavily on the "are they or aren't they" tension between two characters. That said, the series itself is actually hilarious and there are a number of explicitly queer characters.The main characters are vampires and they'e all queer. They're also a found family of misfits and fuckups. And within that dynamic, the story finds real human (or vampire) connections between all these characters. The series style is (like the movie its based on) like a documentary, with interviews and everything. And there are some episodes that really use that framing well, with the fictional camera crew becoming part of the story.

Schitt's Creek (2015-2020) - Schitt's Creek is a comedy series about an obscenely wealthy family that loses all their money and has to move out to a small little rural down named...Schitt's Creek. One of the characters is David, who is pansexual. The story is basically about how this family learns how to love each other and actually be a family...and also come to value their relationships with the other people in the town. The series very deliberately depicts a world in which homophobia exists, but not within the town or amongst the townspeople.

Black Sails (2014-2017) - Black Sails is actually nothing like Our Flag Means Death. It's a pretty grim drama about a queer pirate captain who wages war against the British Empire as revenge for the homophobic violence the empire enacted against his lover. It's about other things too, but that's really the driving motivator of the main character. There are a number of other queer characters as well, though unfortunately only two of them are pirates. If Our Flag Means Death is a rousing cheer, then Black Sails is a roaring rage. Trigger warning for rape, blood, and general violence.