#or if the sexualities were different

[redysetdare]

"This fandom is so queer friendly!" This fandom literally hates, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and aspec people but ok.

[martyrbat]

rip to bruce but if i fumbled her i would literally kill myself

[lunarin64art]

That feeling when he can't stand to see you that way, no matter what you do, no matter what you say😩😭💔

[teddyedwards]

Here's my resignation, I'll serve it in drag! / All rock and roll is homosexual

Manic Street Preachers and My Chemical Romance on defying gender and sexuality norms

nicky wire photographed by mick hudson / gerard way at Riotfest / mama by mcr / born a girl by msp / richey edwards / gerard way by kenneth capello / frank iero / james dean bradfield / a version of reason by rob jovanovic / interview with gerard way / frank iero's pansy guitar / richey edwards fairy t-shirt

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

[ghosts-of-love]

i always wanted the Captain to be called Edward because it was kingly and was able to have cute nicknames (Ted, Teddy) but you know what? while it wasn't what i was expecting, I think James is just as wonderful. not only is it also kingly but it's also the name of a famously homosexual king!! perfect for him, actually, in my opinion.

[unimportant-ramblings]

I'm not calling out this specific person, but I have seen this take a lot since the girls have started doing press- i mean I've seen it since they were cast but it has been worse lately.

I don't care about who people ship but I think it is WEIRD that people will ship any two white men who stand next to each other and yet when one of those people is black? "They don't look cute together"? I think this one is kind of on people to examine why they don't think these two beautiful woman would want to kiss 🤷‍♀️

[prince-liest]

How did you figure out you're aromantic?

Oh, god, what a short question for such a long process, hahaha. First off, didn't figure it out until recently, age 27, but here was the approximate (and very truncated in the amount of internal conflict and introspection involved) step-by-step process:

Figured out I was queer in high school because I felt the same way about women as I did about men! Spent about 5 years thinking I was bisexual.

Figured out that I'm not actually attracted to men when I read a post describing the experience of compulsory heterosexuality and related with it intensely, which was a very freeing experience. Spent 6 years thinking I was a (nonbinary) lesbian!

Hooked up at parties a couple of times out of curiosity and then took up my best friend's offer to fuck and realized that I got the same amount of skin-crawling distaste about that as I did about sexual contact with men, thus realizing I was ace.

Let that domino tip over into the, "Actually, identifying as gay has for a long time given me the same anxiety as I used to feel when I thought I'd have to date a man, and also I'm 27 years old and have never, ever actually wanted to date another human being. When people ask me what my ideal partner is like, I start listing off ways in which they should not bother me or demand my time or be part of my life. Maybe I just don't want... anyone." domino, and the subsequent "I'M FREE!! (from trying to date women)" euphoria was identical to the "I'M FREE!! (from trying to date men)" euphoria, so.

That's where I'm at!

I'm a generally introspective person, but I'm also really great at gaslighting myself into ignoring my own discomfort, so largely it's been, haha, a diagnosis of exclusion. First I excluded men, then the discomfort with women grew large enough that I was able to exclude them as well. Reading about other people's experiences and realizing where they paralleled my own was immensely helpful! So was being close friends with a very poly person who slowly and fully unintentionally changed my perspective on how I view relationships in a very poly-and-relationship-anarchy-as-default way, which incidentally is extremely compatible with aroace queerplatonic ideals and definitely softened me up to be ready to accept that particular realization.

Also, please let this be a sign that just because you identify with one "thing" doesn't mean that you're committing to it forever! <3

[redysetdare]

It's all "you guys need to understand how SUBTEXT and CODING are usually the only confirmation of representation queer people get in media especially in older media" but once that subtext and coding is used to say a character might be aro or ace coded/have aro/ace subtext then suddenly it's not a valid way to claim representation. Then it's only "headcanon" or "not confirmed" like do you all hear yourselves? It'd be so much easier to say you hate aro/ace ppl at this rate!

[mantisgodsdomain]

Scrolling through OC ask memes is very funny sometimes because a good handful of them have questions that... we don't think apply terribly well.

Yeah, they're a bug, tattoos are a bit complicated. They can't swim because they're an insect. Their ancestry is Cricket and their blood type is green. They don't know what a car is.

[mostlymaudlin]

not responding directly to that post abt Neil’s demisexuality bc i have no ill will toward op or anyone reblogging it but also I have thoughts. it’s a very slippery slope to put rules on what’s ooc or not in fanworks. its nice to be able to see ourselves in characters and it’s totally fair to not enjoy portrayals of said characters that we disagree with. but when we find a connection with the source material, then imo that’s the end of where we get to claim any type of ownership of a character — fanfiction is the wild west and there’s no point in introducing morality to it when so much exists and it all caters to different audiences. to me, “ooc” is not a real thing, because every fic writer is going to portray the characters different than the source author does, because that’s how art works. so if people want to make neil more sexual in fanworks then that’s their right — we have the power to grimace and close the tab when we find fic we don’t like. it just means it’s not for us. but it’s not inherently wrong. esp with neil, his backstory and relationship to sexuality are so complex. he literally avoids thinking abt it at all in the books except for what’s happening right in front of him with andrew. there’s actually so much wiggle room! like, he literally says allison is “hot but off limits” at one point before spiraling into thoughts abt his mom — im not at all saying this proves he’s not ace/demi, or that he’s attracted to allison, but there’s lots of ways to interpret that. and there’s plenty of things about neil that people might connect with beyond sexuality — like, that’s not the only reason to be writing about him. fic writers might be more focused on exploring other aspects his character and that’s their right. and ofc worth mentioning that the aspec experience is soooooo vast like for me, i am aspec but if i vibed w someone even on a platonic level right away and they wanted to, i might smash bc im sex-neutral & it could be fun even if I’ve got a different relationship to attraction/arousal.

ANYWAY fanfiction is a contribution to a community, but individual works are not community-owned… we’re free to dislike anything, but i think it sets us all up for failure to make claims abt what’s a right or wrong way to portray characters in fic

[isitandwonder]

I have a question for the Alexander the Great Netflix series

WHERE THE FUCK IS BAGOAS?

Finally Alexander gets to kiss Hephaistion, but where is his (and Darius') persian boy?

We are now finally able to acknowledge that this blonde european prince conquered half the known world while having sex with other men, but we still cant admit that his asian adversary who ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen also liked to bed boys? Come on...

If you call Alexander a gay or bi icon, the same is true for Darius. No idea why netflix showed the one thing but not the other? Persian culture has a long homoerotic tradition, very likely as long as greek culture.

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

my pastor made a great point last Sunday when he said that, considering each Person within the Godhead is equal with the others yet has a different role to play, why should we be surprised when man and woman, who are made in His image, also are equal with one another yet have different roles to play?

[in-tua-deep]

Book recommendation for yall! Found this in the library and checked it out bc I was a curious. It’s a really interesting look at the lives of women in the UK and the lesbian community, and has lots of chunks of stories from the various folks who were interviewed

The stories are very honest and very interesting! It has a lot of different answers to questions such as “how do people conceptualize themselves when they don’t have the language to do so” and is super insightful, I think a lot of it is applicable to non-UK folk as well

If your local library has it, definitely give it a read!

[chemicalarospec]

For a solid month I used to keep getting recommended on youtube “this song sounds like you’re 14 and in love” and every time my honest reaction as an aromantic was: Y’all were experiencing LOVE at FOURTEEN???