#ps I haven't read the western ones yet but they're next on my list

[naranjapetrificada]

In this weird wonderful AU Georg fandom that is OFMD we have so many beautiful options. I was never, ever an AU type until now, but I truly can't get enough. Just last night I stayed up entirely too late because I finally got into Wave Hello to the Void, which on its face should absolutely positively not be My Thing, but the AUs we're blessed with here seem to always break that rule (especially with mxmollusca involved because holy shit have you read In Favor With Their Stars yet???).

We're so incredibly lucky y'all. I've been in fandom spaces for a long time but I've never felt this lucky.

We get different takes on time travel. We get the multiverse (and in so many beautiful forms). We get thought-provoking fantastical allegories and devastating (but often hopeful?) prequels with fascinating studies of character and fascinating takes on soul mates. We get complete fantasy overhauls that are gem-like in the beauty and precision of their prose and world-building. We get darling modern AUs and heartwrenching (but still ultimately happily-ending) modern AUs and modern AUs in basically every possible permutation, including ghost stories.

We get dystopias and apocalypses and post-apocalypses, meditations on love and existence, metafictional experiments in Not-RPF that draw even the biggest RPF skeptics (*points to self*) in, leaving us to wrestle with fundamentally altered attitudes toward storytelling that we may never be able to reconcile. Hell, even the missing scenes, canon-divergence, and fix-its hit different. Not to mention westerns with outlaws and cowboys, an archetype which conveniently also manages to scratch the proverbial pirate itch.

Even though pretty much every fandom has these things, for me at least they've never felt quite so imaginative and well-executed. We're so lucky to be here, to be writing for each other and reading for each other and for many of us, feeling creative for the first time in years or even decades. The gay pirates did that for us, because good source material can be the key to great fan works. And whether or not we get a third season, as much as they can't take the show from us, they also can't take away the gift that getting to experience all these fanworks has been. That's something I'm going to keep reminding myself while we wait.

and idk maybe tell your cowboy fanart friends that Ed can also ride horses as a steppe warrior or whatever

#fic recs #ofmd fanfic #i love everyone in this bar #ofmd au #fandom meta #but the good kind #fic writing #ofmd fic recs #ofmd fic #ofmd #our flag means death #edward teach #stede bonnet #gentlebeard #blackbonnet #hopefully I got all the links right #ps I haven't read the western ones yet but they're next on my list #hopefully they're as good as they seem like they'll be #soft self-promotion #ifwts #because it deserves special attention