#For my own organising :)

[monofazz]

Shattered Glass makes me violent and sick actually.

inspired by zorangezest and this set of tags in the reblogs in particular

[lydiaalin]

save me horror cowboy game ocs save me

[daenystheedreamer]

‘rhaenyra won’ she got eaten. she got chomped and eaten. all her sons died and one of THEM got eaten. the fourth got depression the fifth produced henry the eighth. and all the nuclear warheads went poof disappeared or got EATEN. do you guys think maybe the cannibal is like kind of a symbol. how theyre eating each other. ouroboros autofellatio. idk who knows

[shadesofredhood]

You know Jason should be the class conscious robin, but then dc would need to pull its head out of the rich's collective asshole and face up to their own classism so it will never be acknowledged in Canon.

[staries]

my professor layton photocards came just in time for my uk trip next month yayyy

[eulogium-red]

i like to think during blackwatch, gabe's costume-making (& prolly by extension, fashion sense) rubbed off on cassidy even if he doesn't show it. a latent learning type deal

he gives everyone the impression he don't care too much about fashion but he rlly does a little bit (he'll look at someone who's dressed professionally but then they're wearing 2 diff shades of brown for their belt & shoes & internally cringes a bit) but never shows it unless necessary

interactions like this he gets to release his inner diva just a bit ykn

[ravenclod]

"kohane doesnt deserve to be unit leader !! " rereadkohane3rereadkohane3rereadkohane3rereadkohane3imgoinginsane

please reread the event stories and come back and talk to me. and i mean READ them. just kohane focuses, or all of them idc. just please 😭

[anglerflsh]

get Apollo'd idiot @sheerunfilteredhubris

[dvdexe]

TENNA

[gnomeantics]

i think it's really important to have one piece of media you're absolutely certifiable for that nobody else you know gives two shits about. stewing in your own madness becoming essentially a one-person fandom full hermit etc. you can reach new heights of insanity

[summerblueringo]

Simi + Red Bull

[teal-tealwren]

just watched the meeting with the lord stream and oughghh i really love the way planet and zam interact with each other. planet is very uncomplicated in a way; they need to make a video for which they have a clear concept, and so their thinking is mostly out of character. and then you have zam, who is zam. and i just love the way the whole base plot thing goes. like i knew what the planet video was about but this was still a fucking emotional rollercoaster

i guess i just love how much zam takes everything to heart, how much he lets himself be affected. even though planet doesn't rp the same way, he goes along with zam, listens to him, actually gives him good advice. it doesn't matter how much or how little anyone does actual rp, their presence makes them part of the story. planet gained zam's trust and got his base. and then zam found screaming signs someone was there, and knows planet lied to him, and what can he do but spiral? he cannot let this be another castle. so fear is already eating him from the inside, and then the one person he let past his guard destroys his home in front of his eyes, and he doesn't know what to make of it. and he did truly trust planet. it was one of the few things he could hold onto and now he's slipping and he feels manipulated (hi team awesome!), and he knows there is something deeper going on and he's once again in the dark (hmmmm.... zam and getting left in the dark... this might be relevant later i think...). he feels so used and he looks at his hands, at the bloodied heart and the bloodied sword. and he wants to trust planet so bad but at the same time he cannot let himself believe any of the reasons he finds. but in the end he still cares, irrationnally, despite. he's not looking for more enemies. he needs to hold onto something.

still, the tension never really quiets for like. two hours. and then planet comes back to him and leads him through a burning nether maze (really cool visual...) and i knew what would happen but still i felt so relieved seeing the base oughh. love that planetlord did All That

anyway i really like how they have very different styles but they're both very dedicated to their vision and somehow they work so well together, and this gives planet a banger video with a really cool story (like this is a very extra reaction! and it's fucking great!), and planet's actions create some awesome character moments for zam and ughhh. big fan!

[turns-out-its-adhd]

An ADHD morning

7:30 am - First alarm

Roll over to sleepily take meds

Realise I left my water bottle in the kitchen last night when I went to refill it

Have nothing to drink to take meds

Fall back asleep

7:45 am - Second alarm...[third and fourth alarm...]

Manage to wake self enough due to need to pee

Take meds with me to bathroom and slurp water from tap to swallow meds

Hasty wash, brush teeth, makeup

Remove and re-apply smeared eyeliner job

8:20 am [Somehow... what‽]

Bus due at 8:50

*Panic*

Clothes/Dispense food to cat/Dispense love and affection to cat

Keys/Phone/Purse

Am I dressed warm enough? Probably... No? Yes it's fine

Get to door

Realise I forgot to grab cash for bus fare

Run back upstairs, get bus fare

8:42

Leave house

Power walk to bus stop

Get to stop just as bus comes round corner

Success!

8:50 - 9:19

Zone out on bus [except to notice coffee shop we just passed]

9:20

Arrive, disembark bus

Do I have time for coffee....?

9:23

Stand in short but unexpectedly slow queue for coffee

9:26

Power walk to doctor surgery with emotional support coffee

9:29

Arrive at GP just in time for 9:30am psychiatrist appointment

Proud face

Approach reception, check I am at correct reception

Give details

No record coming up in my name

Told to sit and wait while receptionist checks for me

**PARANOIA**

Check phone calendar - appointment today @ 9:30am

****MORE PARANOIA****

Check through phone pictures for photo I think I took of appointment letter

Find photo of letter after many photos of my cat

Letter confirms that :

My appointment was last Monday at 9:30 am

[cuddlytogas]

an incomplete list of terrible but extremely popular Our Flag Means Death takes that I would like to never see again please

(and I do mean popular, as in, lots of people seem to think they're canon, to the point where I feel slightly insane and like I was watching a different show to everyone else)

1. Ed's mum was loving and nice and supportive, if hampered by her bad situation

this comes up more in fic than analysis, to be fair, but good god, what show were some of you watching? this isn't to vilify her, because yeah, she's clearly a product of colonialism, white christian supremacy, and domestic abuse, but like. that doesn't make how she raised Ed good. clearly she was trying to keep him safe, but "we don't deserve nice things", and especially "it's not up to us, it's up to god", speaks to me of someone who squashes down any ambition on her son's part, has fully bought into the lies of christian colonialism, and tries to pass them down to her son.

as does happen in colonised communities, particularly among older generations. I know us white people like to think that every indigenous person is a perfect left-wing anti-imperial activist, but that's simply not the case, and Ed's mum is so clearly an example of an older conservative christian indigenous parent who had to believe the lies told by their coloniser in order to survive, but is now passing on that trauma to their children. and I just...

if I read one more fic where Ed's mum is a perfect loving supportive angel who always believed in her kid and always supported and protected him, I'm gonna scream. yes, it's sweet, and it's fun to sometimes veer from canon and give your blorbo nice things, but it's still veering from canon. and yet, I see very few people acknowledge that, or actually talk about the nuances of Ed's mother, and how she definitely tried to protect him, but was far from sweet, doting, and unconditionally supportive.

2. Ed's loving look when Stede is picking food from his beard in 1x07

like most of these things, I enjoyed it as a joke or exaggeration at first, until I realised that people were actually being serious. but every time I watch that scene, I see Ed looking absently-mindedly over Stede's shoulder, because a) that's what you do when someone leans in to pick something off you, and b) surely the point of the scene is that they're so comfortable and easy together that they don't notice the intimacy of what they're doing, but Lucius, an outside observer, thinks it's obvious. right?? I can't be the only one seeing it???

[sigh]

anyway. finally, the really really big one:

3. Ed is a soft uwu babygirl princess femme bottom sub who loves her cat collar and is teaching Stede how to dom him in the "say you're the captain" scene

I mean, there's not much to say except to link to duke's absolutely phenomenal twitter thread about "how the 'babygirlfication' and infantilization of ofmd ed teach is an extension of racist perceptions of indigenous men being inherently violent and thus needing to be emasculated to be considered sympathetic"

but especially That One Fucking Scene, good lord. talk about taking shit out of context. everyone looked at a slowed-down gif of one shot in the trailer and cried "babygirl!! he's such a simp, he just wants to be dommed!!", when actually that scene is about how a) Stede is cringefail and terrible at being a typical harsh, commanding pirate, and b) Ed is lovingly embarrassed by this. he encourages Stede to assert himself (and give Ed something to do during his probation/help him make amends with the crew), but like. normally. he's acting perfectly normal in that scene, and mostly annoyed by the outfit and embarrassed by how badly Stede fails. but just because he's sitting down while Stede is standing, and he happens to take a breath in that one shot (because, you know, people breathe sometimes), everyone's doubled down on their "submissive babygirl" bullshit, and I can't get the fuck away from it.

which - listen, it's fun for me, too! it's fun to explore exaggerated aspects of a character, it's fun to read/write/draw that angle in smut, I get it! but I keep seeing people keep claim it's literally canon, and I cannot stress enough that that is Straight Up False. for the love of god, please just watch the show without your (potentially kinda racist) bias glasses on, and remember to treat the characters with respect instead of projecting onto their every interaction a shallow dom/sub binary just because you find it hot.

Our Flag is a show very specifically about masculinity, and what it means to be a man; how assumptions about that can harm and restrict men; and how men can grow beyond them. it's a nuanced and sympathetic examination of this. the whole point is that Ed is allowed to like nice fabrics and be tired of violent piracy and still be a man. the point is that two men fall in love - equal, honest, sincere love - and are still men, still exactly who they are.

(on that note, insisting that Ed is canonically trans or femme because of these things often ends up just leaning into gendered stereotypes: men are harsh and active and dominant, and women are soft and passive and submissive, and if Ed's not the former, he must be the latter, right? it also tends to hetero-ify the central relationship, casting Stede as "the boy" and Ed as "the girl", needing one to be masc and one femme. not always, and again, I understand and have enjoyed transformative works that take those elements and run with them, and explore what the story could be like if Ed were trans/nb/etc - but it's still a transformative interpretation. it's not canon.)

relatedly: those fucking wedding toppers! it seemed blatantly obvious to me that half the point of those scenes was that Ed is distraught and blaming himself for Stede leaving because he wasn't the ideal partner. it's his entire arc for the first half of season 2! Ed hates himself and believes there's something wrong about him that makes him unlovable. so he keeps and then discards the wedding toppers, painting himself onto one of them, because he's projecting himself onto an image of ideal/successful romantic love that he thinks Stede wants, and in which he doesn't fit. he's trying to mould himself into someone else to make himself lovable, not realising that Stede already loves him for himself.

so it's important to the whole narrative that Ed's yearning for/projection onto the wedding toppers is false, and born from his insecurity. he gets drunk, and play-acts a stereotypical image of romantic happiness into which he doesn't fit, but real love looks nothing like that, because real love isn't found in stifling hegemonic cultural structures, but honest, emotional connections between people allowed to be their whole, vulnerable selves. Stede is not like the groom, and Ed is not like the bride, because they shouldn't have to be. Ed should not (and does not) have to warp himself into a demure bride in order to be worthy of love: he's already lovable and loved exactly as he is! that's the point!! of the scene!!!!!!

like, it's important that the groom figure isn't actually like Stede, either. yes, it's blond and has a nice, peach-coloured suit, but a) Stede was very specifically unhappy in the posh, heterosexual, married state the figures represent, and b) Stede by this point looks nothing like that figurine. it's directly contrasted with the image of him in the rowboat, scruffy and plain and earnestly in love, rather than fancy, cold ceramic.

[EDIT 29/12/24: I ended up writing a whole Twitter essay about the wedding cake toppers that I then gussied up for Tumblr; so if you want a clearer, more substantial, and better supported argument about those, check that out!]

but no, I have to wade through swathes of art and fic and meta about how badly Ed wants to be a sweet little demure kitty princess, how he wants a wedding night and a ring to prove he's Stede's property, and acting as if this is somehow canon, because people on the internet have zero reading comprehension and are scared of brown men.

the whole point of Our Flag is that you don't need to compress yourself into prescribed social roles, and in fact, doing so will only make you miserable; and that racist, patriarchal, colonial institutions should be resisted and dismantled at every opportunity.

so tell me again why the ultimate message is that Ed and Stede should get married under an arch in front of an altar and their lined-up friends, with flowers and rice falling around them, all dressed in white, one in a suit and one in a dress, with rings and a kiss and a honeymoon after, before they move into a detached house with a yard and a fence and re-adopt the kids that Stede abandoned? and this isn't about promises, fidelity, or even monogamy - I'm specifically talking about everyone in this fandom who seems to think that the ultimate goal is the most stereotypical 20th century cisheteropatriarchal christian wedding, but with the name "matelotage" slapped on top, as if that takes away all of the underlying baggage.

just - I know we're all meant to hate men and masculinity and yadda yadda yadda, but actually, to be earnest for a second, men deserve respect too, because all people and all genders do. and two men are allowed to be in a relationship and still both be men - complex men, with their own, layered relationships to their gender - without having to fall into neatly-arranged dom/sub masc/femme roles, or seal the deal with a hegemonically-approved ceremony.

so please, stop reducing an indigenous lead character to a caricature of a femme uwu princess bottom just because he has long hair, wore a robe once, and you're too scared of brown men to imagine him with proper agency. and then please, for the love of god, stop claiming that that interpretation is canon.

[brick-van-dyke]

So, I've been doing some thinking. This could either be a meaningless little ramble that no one will care about, or something seen as really dangerous and putting a target on my back.

So, what if we, those most weary of the far right created an international group of activists in light of the US election? See, the thing is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are very dangerous, but they are also very incompetent and could lead the government down a path that weakens it. It could create a very unique opportunity to address the far right problem and the US Imperialist system itself in one go. Or maybe I'm being overly ambitious.

This group I have in mind would have several purposes, such as keeping communities safe and protecting people from the harm the far right would do in the name of winning the election. Or, most importantly of all, connecting activists from all over the world and allowing us to dismantle the system as a concrete and united movement. Maybe it's just me being naive and hopeful, but maybe it's also something we've all wanted deep down but been too afraid to initialise? If so, maybe this is a sign to really stand up and start trying to make those connections.

[rom-hack]

Bomb and Dynamite petpet things i did for fun because i could