“You could try rubbing it on certain body parts and I might come faster”.

Like, it's still here. It's still going strong, 10 years after the show finished. It's loved and cared for and treated with respect, unlike Destiel which just became a joke, and Johnlock which... well anyway.

Destiel and Johnlock were both queerbait ships. It definitely felt like the creators/writers of Supernatural and Sherlock were — at least at times (read: many times) — toying with the audience, even mocking them. The creators would throw in something very clearly queer (like the drunk scene between John and Sherlock, or *gestures vaguely at the entire homoerotic/religious symbolism of Dean and Cas’ relationship*) and then follow it up with some horrid, ultra-hetero or ultra-macho bullshit, basically screaming NO HOMO at the top of their lungs and laughing in the audience’s face. It felt like they were almost playing a game with the audience.

Merthur is not like that. The Merlin show creators have said they “genuinely thought of it as a love story between two men”; they didn’t treat the audience as a joke. While Merlin and Arthur don’t canonically get together in the show, it’s not (in my opinion) queerbaiting the audience. For one, the love story is prominently there throughout every episode (not dangled occasionally in front of the audience as bait): they are each other’s destiny, they are ‘two sides of the same coin’, and at the end, it’s Merlin’s arms Arthur dies in, and it’s Merlin (not Guinevere, not anyone else) that waits a thousand years or more for Arthur to return to him. (Goddddd….that’s ROMANCE, bby!!) The show is very clearly a story about two men, and their relationship to, and with, each other. The weight of their relationship is not subtext; it’s literally the backbone of the entire story.

And two, as the audience we can assume with a strong amount of certainty, from the start, that they’re not going to be portrayed getting together; the show is based on Arthurian legend, so we know Arthur marries Guinevere—and also, it’s based in medieval Britain, so it would be wildly out of context for Merlin and Arthur to have an open homosexual relationship given that Arthur is the prince/king. Even if they had explicitly shown a romantic relationship between Merlin and Arthur, Arthur would still have had to have married a woman; whereas with Sherlock and Supernatural — both shows that are set in the 21st century — the only reason the characters can’t end up together is homophobia, basically.

yup yup

jealous!george

— You can do anything you want when u sexy ;) by Zorse_not_here (teen | comp. | 1k)

George jelly a girl getting up in his manz face, fuck that hoe George sits on Dream lap and smack a kiss on dem lips ;0 Greg do be starting fights for his white boy huh. I swear it's not a crack fic I wrote that summary at 4am

— Sorry not Sorry by krypo (teen | comp. | 1k)

Dream's phone pinged for the 12th time today as he sat at the lunch table with his friends. He sighed as he took it out to check. "Who's that?" George asked, leaning over to see Dream's phone. Dream handed his phone over to his boyfriend. "Some guy I met at the coffee shop this morning. I think he was trying to ask me out." George scrunched up his nose as he read through the messages. "Why did you give him your number?" "I didn't, that's the scary part."

— burnt espresso on your tongue by effervescentlies (teen | comp. | 6k)

There are a lot of things George hates about the new barista, Dream: 1. He sucks at brewing espresso. 2. He's, like, distractingly hot, in the way that makes George want to slam his head into the espresso machine. 3. He's got a thing for using pick-up lines on customers — and George. The worst part is, the pick-up lines are starting to work. George wants to kiss him. He hates it.

— The Fear of Losing This by mayameu (gen | comp. | 9k)

Despite George's inability to hold and kiss his boyfriend in public, he's sure practically everyone knows that the two are together. It's not like everyone somehow misses their domestic banter, how they spend almost every minute together, or how they've been closer in a new way than before they started dating. But then again, there seem to be a few people who just didn't get the memo.

— Yeah, no. by laura_ann (gen | comp. | 2k)

someone makes Dream uncomfortable and George is 100% not having it

— what a shame i'm not there by flickerfonds (teen | comp. | 1k)

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.