Black Sails Discord Server

yoyo-inspace:

Tumblr can be a really cool place. But sometimes it’s difficult to separate the kind of fandom interaction you want from what you don’t want.

For example, I love the Black Sails tag, and have spent more than three years sporadically interacting with it, and with the wonderful people I’ve met here. That being said, I, for example, can’t stand ship wars. But if I want to interact with the people in the tag, I can’t avoid it. If I go into the Black Sails tag, I’m going to encounter all things associated with the show, whether or not I was looking for it. No one tags ship wars, that’s not something you can blacklist. This often results in me staying out of the tag, and I have to miss out on the fandom interaction I wanted, if I want to avoid any temporary drama.

Which is kind of sad. (Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I love drama. And some drama can lead to good and important discussions. But it’s not something I always want to get in to.)

So I decided to do something about that. I created a discord server.

With a discord server, there can be rules, akin to a normal forum. Rules as in ‘no ship wars’ or ‘no character bashing’ or ‘no personal attacks’. On tumblr that doesn’t exist, and it’s everyone’s right here to write those things, even if I sometimes question why people have to, in whatever way they choose. On a discord server, it’s easier to structure it around what kind of community you want.

Now, I’m not suggesting this as a replacement for the tumblr tag. You can’t make gifsets on Discord, or write fics. But I wanted to create it as an alternative, where people can go and just have fun and discuss the show, or gush about their ships (both romantic and naval), live-chat the new episodes, etc, in a way that’s difficult to do on tumblr.

I’m also not trying to deny you of writing angry rants about the show when you’re upset and putting it in the tag (or ship wars for that matter). I think that has a place in fandom as well. But tumblr has no system for shutting that out when you yourself can’t deal with it. So do write all those things, I’m not telling you to stop. I do too sometimes. But if you want to avoid those things, maybe this is something for you. Or maybe you want to do both, but have separate places for it. Or maybe you just want to hang out in more places than one and have fun with other fans.

And please bring the interesting meta discussions with you, that’s something the Black Sails fandom has always excelled at, even though the majority of it is in tag form, and I’m expecting a lot of it in this server too, if people join it. Just don’t me mean, you know?

If that all sounds like your thing, here’s your official invitation to the Discord server.

Server invitation: https://discord.gg/SD9mFUt

It’s really easy, once you get the hang of it.

1. Create a Discord user
2. Verify your email
3. Copy this link, click add a server (big plus) and add this link, and you’re in.
4. I’d recommend downloading the desktop and/or the phone app. They’re rather easy to navigate, and much more easy to deal with than the browser window, imo.

Fun stuff that we could do:

• Have arranged voice-chats and rewatch episodes or watch a new episode together while live-chatting about it. seriously, that’d be so much fun
• Have specific channels for specific ships
• Find betas/offer your services as beta for a fanfiction
• Just fool around a lot in chat and have fun

My idea is that we’ll build it together, I’ve just created a very basic foundation. There will be rules in place, yes. You’ll have to be polite (unless something incredibly awful was going on). But if you have any issues with the version of the rules I’ve made, I’d be glad to have a discussion about changing them (piracy is a democracy after all. Ish). And if you’re interested in becoming a mod for the server (if it will even get that many people), be in touch! I’d love some help.

Hopefully, some of you will think this is a fun idea and come and hang. See you there!