#I think I should have realized when the only reason I would watch PotC: on stranger tides was for the mermaid content

[freebooter4ever]

i talked with jilly bean for as long as her kids would let her today, and she's been trying to undo the guilt i feel over grandma telling me i should just choose to not be sick and stop seeing doctors. anyway i was describibg the 'elemental' diet to jillian and she said she would fly down to LA to work here remotely and take care of me for the two weeks it takes to kill off the bacteria if i end up having to do that (i still have two rounds of back to back antibiotics to try first). so that might be my early november right there.

but as i was crying a little over how during the bad hours i cant do anything like read or even watch tv because its hard for my brain to follow, she was asking if there is anything i do that even is remotely comforting or distracting. and i was like LOL. well. and admitted that ive been scrolling through old hockey gifs and pictures and i was like this is evgeni and sent her the video:

Ok so some backstory jilly bean and i grew up together, both of us living in the same little neighborhood for 18 years. And our high school football team was like...state champions the entire time i think ( i say think because the only time i realized i should have the 'high school experience' and actually go to games was as a senior ) ( we definitely won state that year lol ). Except like... Our graduating class was some of the first championship years so the football field was more rudimentary and only the popular kids and band members and families could get seats on the bleachers (the yellow arrow):

The entire bit circled in blue did not exist in my day lol. anyway my point is if you were kind of a weirdo and didnt have friends to give you seats you just ended up wandering around the track (the bit i colored purple). I never paid much attention to the actual football game i was just there to support jillian who desperately wanted to feel like a normal teenager. She was the sports fan, i was the nerd who forced her to watch lord of the rings.

Jillian would make up dances while we walked back and forth on the endline to stay warm. We were not cheerleaders by any stretch of the imagination - this is washington state in the fall and winter, back then 90% of the time it was raining, we were bundled up in jeans and sweatshirts. But my favorite of her 'cheers' was the 'ewok dance' which consisted of humming star wars music and a lot of less flexible leg lifts. Watching geno's uncoordinated jumping around and waving the towel took both jillian and i back about twenty years i think, lol.

ANYWAY my point is she approves:

🤣🤣🤣

See turnabout is fairplay though because even longer ago when we were extremely awkward preteens in middle school, while i was transitioning from my historical pirates phase to my elves phase, jillian was becoming increasingly obsessed with baseball. It wouldnt be until POTC was released that finally our interests collided and we both decided pirates were the coolest. In the meantime, 12 year old jillian went online searching for a brett bo*one desktop background for her family's computer. This story could end really inappropriately because 90s internet but instead jillian just happened to find a relatively tame photo edit that stuck boone's head on top of an extremely musclar angel with feathered wings and wearing nothing but a diaper. I mean you think sports fans are creative now...thats nothing compared to early 90s geocities. She made this 'boonie angel' her family's computer background much to the amusement of her computer scientist father.

'boonie angel' quickly became an inside joke. At one point jillian ended up with a lifesize sticky cut out on the wall of her room of actual boone hitting a home run. And the only reason i ever went to seattle baseball games was to support jillian's ridiculous crush (our other friend nuri only came for the stadium sushi which was all the rage during the ich*iro era). And i would randomly gift jillian with cards depicting the signature stick figure 'boonie angel' like this guy enjoying the rose garden yesterday (note the diaper, that was important for his modesty):

Keep in mind boonie angel was like...a thirty year old man. Nothing about this made sense, to this day i have no idea why jillian latched so hard onto this player. But back then preteen me was crushing hard on fictional elves who were immortal thousands of years old so i couldnt exactly judge (my favorite was kyrtian from elvenborn who was this reclusive military genius with a heart of gold who tried to hide behind a veneer of 'madness' to avoid the evil elves and was suddenly thrust into the spotlight when the rich and powerful elves realized they could exploit kyrtian's academic talent)(he was so much more complex and interesting than legolas and also he shared my daddy issues).

So what im sayin is i enabled her ridiculousness, and i should have known she'd be more than willing to enable mine lmaooooo.

ok but now im wondering what geno would look like as an angel with a diaper....

[selinakidreams]

pairing: merman! dabi x gn reader

warnings: nameless character deaths, a singular mention of nausea + throwing up, unfortunately a lot of blood mentions, near death experiences, SHARK! THERES A SHARK IN THE WATER ! (I SWEAR this is supposed to be pretty but the warnings make it seem otherwise) slight soulmate au?, dabi had a SINGULAR moment of softness.

a/n: guys I don’t even know what this is and it’s unedited,, but welcome to my contribution to mermay ! I had two scenes plain as day STUCK in my head and I just needed to get them out,,, honestly this was just supposed to be a short lil thing but I’m invested,, so here this is

ps, though this may not be edited... I would like to thank all my monster fucking moots who helped me to piece together the perfect mer version of dabi— I love you guys so so so much.

looking out into the darkness of the night, unable to locate the horizon from your position at the edge of the ship- you lift your gaze to the sky with a small sigh.

an unimaginable amount of stars litter the atmosphere, the clear view above could never be tiresome.

the city was no place for you; too crowded, full of men who were trying to court you for your fathers money and your beauty, not enough adventure. the ocean offered a type of freedom land could never- granted, the ship wasn’t much different from the bustling towns in the sense that all the soldiers would eye you like you’re a slab of meat.

the only difference given at sea is that you’re able to put those undesirable fuckers in their place. given your ranking, your power obsessed father wasn’t completely useless.

escaping to the empty deck had been your big feat today; everyone below was gulping down wine by the barrel when you managed to slip out. it was much colder out here, the chill of the salty wind was refreshing, sobering you up quite a bit- but still mentally fuzzy enough to tempt yourself into discarding edict and loosening up your tighter garments.

your drunken attention span shifted from fiddling with your bow in the back to the inky deep water...

what was that?

ripples were quietly dancing on the surface, the warm light reflections coming from the ship’s sconces moved along with them.

it had been really fast, so fast that you were almost left to wonder if you had actually imagined the most vibrant blue eyes you had ever seen... bobbing in the ocean.

two days. it had been two days since you had first “spotted” them and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. the sailors still went about uglily gawking at you, your captain of a father was still behind the wheel, barking orders at everyone, while you went about your business. Sighing, the image of the eyes still fresh in your mind, you prepared to be lowered into the shallower sea.

upon hearing that there was a small island not too far from your current coordinates, you commanded a stop be made, needing to take some time away from the close knit quarters you constantly share with those horrific pigs. thankfully, no arguments surfaced and you headed straight for the dinghy. it had been surprisingly easy.

the trip wasn’t too long; you patiently waited for the tip of the boat to breach the soft sand, excited for what awaited you. it was such a lovely sunny day, big puffy white clouds dotted the expansive blue sky while the palm trees at the base of the beach greeted you with a steady sway.

once your boots sunk into the wet sand, you turned to the two other men who had escorted you and informed them that you were not to be followed- but to wait right there- which in retrospect, was not a good idea. that was too much trust and responsibility that was placed in their incapable hands.

you wasted no time trudging through the lush greenery to get to the other side of the island, wanting to be as far away from the crew members as possible. 

it couldn’t have taken you more than two hours for you to reach an elaborate array of tide pools sporadically placed on a flat uneven rocky surface, some being lapped over by waves while others sat calmly- living in their own little world.

you had to look in each and every one of them.

wide eyes and mouth open, looking at all the lives in the crystal clear pools was an absolute marvel. some only held a few small sea anemones of different colors while others not only held the soft flowery plant but also housed fighting crabs of all sizes, large chunky starfish, and even a fish or two!

you took careful steps towards the end of the rocks, towards the ones where the waves were constantly restocking the pools with new life, your heart flipping in your chest at the colors of the crashing waves.

peering down into one of the deeper ones, you found it hard to take your sights away from the glistening sun streaks that cut through the water; a small gateway to the open ocean was at the bottom of this pool. it’s like you were hypnotized. making yourself comfortable, you laid yourself down next to the glistening water and began to break the calm surface with your finger tips, eyes trained on the tiny ripples.

“they left you, you know.”

you felt so at ease with the sound of the waves crashing around you, you almost didn’t hear it. it wasn’t until the nagging feeling that you weren’t alone hugged you in all the wrong places, that you looked up... only to be met with nothing.

scrunching your brow, the tranquility you were feeling before suddenly slipping through your fingers. you sat up, but not before you held a lingering glance at the glowing water once more. that’s an image that will stay in your mind; you almost wish you had your sketch book.

your mind went blank when you saw something block the light as it swam by... something big. the next few minutes happened in a blur. after scrambling up to get away from the pool, a huge body washed up on a nearby rock plateau and by no means was it graceful. your heart dropped to your stomach as you watched the lifeless body get smacked with harsh waves.

he was wearing your ship’s uniform, now drenched in blood.

nothing came up when you fell on your knees and lurched over, your eyes squeezing shut- the gruesome image of the crew member engrained in your mind.

“they got what they deserved.”

this time when you whipped your head up to follow the velvet voice, you fell into an almost trance. those breathtaking turquoise eyes you had seen a few days ago were now staring right at you, not too far away.

you couldn’t help the gasp that you inhaled as you fell back. looking at him in his entirety- you must have been hallucinating. growing up hearing the tales of deep sea monsters and nasty magical land creatures could never have prepared you for what laid in front of you.

it was such a drastic change; going from looking at something so appalling to something so... flawless... it was indescribable.

on display, your eyes followed the curled figure- wet white hair flopped against a pale forehead, the tips of his pointed finned-ears peaking out from the wet hair. there were deep dark purple markings starting underneath his eyes, slightly mimicking bags that then restarted at the bottom half of his face- all the way down his neck, ending at just the top of his chest. the markings then continued down his arms, right up to his knuckles contrasting the pale thin slightly webbed fingers that merged to sharp claws, gleaming in the sun. his toned chest eased into a pearly type of color around his hips before submerging into a black ragged tail- but it did the strangest thing. when the sun reflected off of it, a blue so royal- that you’ve only seen it on the most expensive of garments- came to life. the dorsal fin looked just as rugged as the tail did, but his odyssey fluke was splayed out so beautifully, you didn’t give it a second thought.

it wasn’t until you took a second glance that you noticed there was a red tint to his claws that you put into context what was said earlier.

“did you- di- you killed that man?”

his voice came out as smooth as silk, “I did.”

how could you be so dense? this was a creature that came from the sea- a ruthless underwater world. he was a predator. but wait-

“you can speak- you s-said.. did you kill them for me? are you going to-?”

“I killed those men because of all humans, the ones who betray others for their own greed serve no purpose.”

he didn’t tell you more than necessary in his opinion, but he was smart enough and old enough to know that you’re still going to ask more.

it seemed you were sitting on quite the pile of questions but he wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. it was clear that you were mulling over what should be said first.

“was it you I saw at sea the other night?”

out of all the things you could ask, that was the only thing your mind had on repeat- the only thought present.

“and if it was?”

after receiving two similar vague reactions, something in you was screaming for something to happen. the interaction seemed to be going nowhere and here you were, in front of a creature that you’ve heard so much about but never actually met- a drastic change in interaction was calling, and who were you to ignore it?

in hindsight, it was a terrible idea.

one minute you were on land, next you were shedding your heavy, restrictive clothing- the mer watching with a slight smirk and a heavy gaze- then seconds later, were in the violent push and pull of the ocean. luckily you were far enough to be out of the rocky reach, but the current was too strong. you were being swayed back and forth with too much force.

if it had been your first time in the ocean, you would have been a goner- you would have washed right into the sharp jagged edges; a terribly painful way to go. but thankfully, flowing with the ocean had been your specialty since you were young. incredibly masculine and dirty, but you simply couldn’t stay away. the watery depths have lured you in and there was no escaping the spell it had casted on you all those years ago.

maybe that’s why you dove in. or maybe you wanted to see what the mer would do. whatever the case, there you were in the lull of the tide and running out of air. breaching the surface was your main goal, urging your arms and legs to snap out of the shock of the cold water.

eyes on the bubbles traveling upwards, you finally get your arms to push through the current almost missing the dark shadow swimming closer and closer to you, getting larger and larger.

a quick sideways glance in the clear water showed something large with many many rows of teeth out on display, heading toward you and gaining momentum.

a shark.

a... shark.

of all the ways you possibly thought you could go... this was not one of them. it’s almost ironic- the one way you thought you wouldn’t go would end up getting you.

breaking the surface, you gulp your last breath of air- painfully waiting for the horrifying moment when powerful jaws clamp around your body... but it never came. all you felt was a strong current zip past your feet, slightly pulling you along with it.

you’re heart was pounding; adrenaline coursing through your veins, breathing choppy as you whip your head in every which way to see what was going on in the water beneath you. then you saw it.

blood.

just then, the gory image of the crewmate’s body flashed into your mind. there had been another sailor... the mermaid didn’t pull up two bodies- he wasn’t the only predator in the water.

before you could evaluate further, you were pulled by the ankle under the water and into a place where the blood hadn’t seeped yet.

not enough air was sucked in before you submerged, so you frantically searched for ways you could reach the surface again- not even thinking about the now-absent steady grip that dragged you under.

then you felt it. pointed claws lightly tracing up your sides before his handsome face was leveled with yours. if seeing him on land wasn’t good enough, seeing him in his element was nearly heart stopping.

but your lungs were going to collapse before your heart could-

or so you thought.

he flattened his palm around your waist, cupping it gently before he inched his face toward yours, lips slightly ghosting yours, as if asking for permission.

with his toned body pressed against yours, it was hard to think straight, but the most prominent siren going off in your mind was the fact that you were loosing oxygen, and quickly. you found yourself panicking in his grip. was this really the time?

his lips were on yours in less than a second, your struggling becoming more and more apparent- but it was when he got your mouth to open that you realized what he was doing.

A mermaid’s kiss gives you the eternal breath; the ability to breathe under water.

pulling away, he watched as your eyes went wide, the small smirk you’d seen before had appeared once more.

the sensation was otherworldly; though there was a heavy pressure in your chest as the water was filtering in and out of your system, you were breathing underwater.

slowed down by the new density, you lifted your head to look up at the mer- no doubt the most excited and bewildered expression on your face, just to realize the size difference. he was huge- how had you not noticed this on land?

the more human half of his body had to be around the six foot range, his muscular tail roughly adding another ten. the massive figure floating around you was... beautiful.

he had the softest gaze when looking down at you, it nearly shocked you more that the new incredible ability had. he didn’t seem like the type to be full of expressions; it was such a warm and familiar look, something that you hadn’t seen in a long time- and one you typically didn’t see on a stranger’s face, much less a merman you had only just met.

opening your mouth to say something-if you could, that is- his expression changed in a blink, fear now contorted his features.

everything was so fast with him; his arm wrapped around your waist in mere seconds before speedily guiding you through a passage of underwater tunnels that lead to somewhere you assumed to be in the middle of the island- a lush green grotto.

once you resurfaced, you inhaled a breath you didn’t realize you needed; the new air burned your lungs- you almost didn’t want to breathe.

“just keep breathing. it will get easier over time.”

he almost sounded... bored? a complete one 180 to what you had just witnessed in the water.

the mer guided you up to the pool’s edge, lifting you with ease until you sat with only your legs dangling in the water.

outwardly, it stayed quiet for a while. there wasn’t much noise around besides the occasional bird call and the delicate sound of waded water.

your breathing had slightly evened out but you weren’t too confident in your voice, so keeping your mouth shut seemed like the best option.

what now?

tag list: @zhongh-li

[julies-butterflies]

I must admit, sometimes I do feel like a ye olden solider, sending letters to my beloved across the waves during wartime. Oh my dearest Lydia, I hope the kudos and comments crops have been plentiful this season. Your last letter left me weeping. Why must you put poor Reginald through such pain?

(I gotta admit, I still can't believe that I'm talking to you. I've been looking up to your work for so long...it just feels a bit surreal, even now! Glad you like hearing my ramblings! And that you liked my vampire prompt! Did not realize you'd write back when I sent that in. Look at us now, huh?)

(Speaking of prompts, I sent those jukebox and willex ones too. And I loved them both so so much, I shall scream about them more when it is not 2 am because I need sleep)

(Oh and the update of If I Was You!!! Amazing, Stellar, Incredible, Reggie, Carrie, Julie shenanigans is my new favorite thing, DID YOU JUST DOUBLE THE CHAPTER COUNT, and I'm like 90% sure Trevor is in deep trouble with a certain angry jazz ghost. Seriously loving it)

I actually do not remember what it was like to send in 1/5 asks, because I did not get a Tumblr until very reccently! I've always been a nerdy person, but Jatp is my first time being really in a fandom. You gotta do something new in quarantine, right?

Ah yes. Luke and Emily. To me, it just seems obvious that there's so much love between them. Even with all the pain. You get it. You put it down so eloquently.

As for what kind of stories I like to read...it seriously depends on my mood.

I like niche aus, passion projects. Stories where you can just feel the author's love for the world they're inventing. But I tend to lean towards cannonverse. I like ghost stories, it's what drew me to this show in the first place. And I love exploring that concept. (Being forever gone, and always the same...it's just fascinating to me)

Platonic goodness is just WONDERFUL for this show. I will read anything with cuddles. I am touched starved and these kiddos are too, and I will cry about them puppy piling every damn day. Plus there's just some much POTENTIAL for future friendships! I love ones where Flynn and Carrie get to interact with the boys as well. And 90s content, from before and after the orpheum, just hits hard.

I really wasn't expecting to get invested in the couples on this show, but something about them is moving to me. So I do love to read about them. Watching two queer kids who lived during incredibly important areas of queer history find love together after death really hit hard for me, and there's just something so bittersweet about a girl and ghost deciding to love each other for the little time they're given.

I love family dynamics too. Anything with Ray and his seven disaster children, the band and Trevor.... I think Julie and Emily is one of my favorite dynamics to explore. A girl who lost her mother and a mother who lost her son, both grieving but with one able to speak to the dead...it's just very powerful to me.

(And of course, Luke and Emily, but I figured you already knew that)

Mostly...I like seeing the messy stuff. The unexpected consequences, the baggage. I want to see the messy emotions, the grief and anger, the jealously, the disorientation. I look for those glass shards, that might be too sharp to ever be addressed on the show. Not even the big, monumental plot lines just... the harder pieces of life, the little moments that don't fit neatly into a nine episode arc.

I just want to see them live you know? Love, laughter and loss all mixed together.

(One of my all time favorite tropes is "found family gets broken apart by trauma, only to find each other again and come back stronger than ever." I feel like this explains a lot of my taste in fiction)

Thank you for the writing advice. Your words were very motivating. I am trying to begin! I got up the nerve to start working on a little piece. Who knows if it will go anywhere. But it's been nice, to finally put some words on the page.

The POTC au is so freaking good man. The character dynamics are just on FIRE. Everything is broken and messy and the relationships genuinely tug at my heartstrings. It's such a fascinating story. Highly recommend, even with the cliff hangers.

OH HOW COULD I FORGET PAWPRINTER? Man oh man I love all her work. The wheelies art and steals universe is freaking amazing, not an avacado had me in tears (of laughter, till things got surprisingly sad). And All that Remains...slow burn Willex perfection. Jedi Alex and Pilot Willie have my HEART.

I don't think I've read firefall and weneedglitter (or if I have, I'm just not connecting the names to their pieces. I don't always remember author names. it's a problem). I will go look for them though! Cannot wait!

For more recs, I recently binge read We Found Wonderland. I was not mentally prepared for the sheer amount of feelings that gave me. Highly recommend, if you ever want an emotional rollercoaster with an incredibly satisfying end.

Going on to more serious subjects...I'm sorry your family doesn't see your grief for what it is: honest. Better to feel everything quietly, than make it an easily understadnable performance. Fake grief is so easy to spot.

I think of that scene from "Forever," when Buffy breaks down and tells Dawn that she has to keep busy, because if she stops, it means Joyce is really gone. There's a lot of truth there.

On a tangent here but.. there was a very long period in my life when I was told the ways I expressed my emotions were "incorrect". And I found that sometimes, no matter how you show your emotions, you'll always be criticized. Numbness can be called disinterest, but sobbing can be called attention-seeking too. Too big, too small: that jury was impossible to please This may not apply in your situation but...it's okay to feel however you can. It's the only think you can do, really.

As I've said before, Grief is such an odd trickster.

Don't you ever get tired of missing people... This past year, I've been so weary of grief. Sometimes it can be so sharp, but it's that dull ache. That ball and chain, no longer cutting through your skin, but rubbing it raw, weighing you down.

And people don't like to talk about that part, because it's long and tiresome, but oh, is it there. I find it hard to talk about my grief, because sometimes there's just so much of it. I could drown in it, and that fear keeps me from looking to close. To incorrectly quote Jane Austin: "If I missed you a little less, I might be able to talk about it more."

(Sometimes it's faceable. But sometimes you just can't bear it. And that's okay.)

But what you wrote in that eulogy...the love is there. It's in every word you write. I cried reading that section. I feel honored once again to see some of your jagged pieces. You're sharing your heart, and there's just so much love.

In the wise words of an author I know, "Love is like the snow Reggie. It never goes away."

And don't worry, I'm always with you.

Sending Love,

-LydiaStan7845 (aka Vampire Anon)

So...that Reggie and Nicky prompt

my god

my GOD

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

I think it's safe to say congrats, you've officially destroyed me! I was not prepared for that at ALL. I should know better by now I guess.

I can't get over that even though they all take place in very different universe, all your stories just feel so connected! The way this talked about those headphones, which you mentioned in the first chapter of Kill Your Heroes...it's just so cool. All the characterization and backstory is just so well thought out, and it genuinely blows my mind.

I didn't think I could love Nicky Peters more. I was wrong. The way you write about him...even though you never go into exactly what happened to him after Reggie's death, you can just feel how much it's shapped him as a person. And the trauma around his father, and how he fears becoming like that, was just so beautifully written. He's just so lovable and flawed and trying so damn hard and you made my heart ache for him. Again.

You always take these genuinely crazy situations and...you just make them feel so real. I love you explore the strains such a revelation would put on Nicky's own life, it just makes everything so compellingly messy. It seriously feel like I was watching a real-life account of a family trying to deal with such a massive complication.

That porch scene had me in tears both times I read it. Reggie's just always a big brother, even though Nicky is more than twice his age now. My heart was shattered, and then you slowly mended it, piece by piece. And for absolutely no reason at all, you wouldn't happen to have a reference for the porch, would you?

Just wow. Hope you're doing well. Sending love and applause

-Vampire Anon

i’m not even gonna reply, but i want these documented... on my blog... for posterity.  ( for any curious onlookers, i’m dating this anon now!! )

[carewyncromwell]

A continuation of that POTC AU (previous part here) -- here’s Captain “Carey Weasley” (AKA Carewyn Cromwell), with Captain Orion Amari’s First Mate, the one and only Murphy McNully! This is my first time trying to draw McNully, and uh...DUDE. You make a SICK pirate, mate. <33 His outfit is inspired by Joshamee Gibbs’s (whose role he kind of fills here, alongside Quartermaster Skye), and his chair is inspired by this model used by Sir Thomas Fairfax in the 17th century, which was one of the first self-steering wheeled chairs ever made -- later in the 18th century, a nicer model called the Bath chair was developed and soon became the standard, though it remained only in the hands of the wealthy until the end of the century. (I could see Orion putting in the work to steal one for his buddy, once he catches wind of them, though. XDDD)

McNully’s carving himself a new prosthetic wooden leg, since when Orion’s pirate crew first moved to take over Carewyn’s ship, she cut Murphy’s left wooden leg off with her cutlass while trying to beat the pirates back away from her crew. (McNully lost both legs above the knee, so his wooden prosthetics are made up of two pieces with a metal joint secured together with two leather straps, sort of like this.) Fortunately things have been smoothed over a bit, now that Carewyn and Orion have realized who the other is and Orion has similarly let McNully in on the revelation too. McNully then assumed the responsibility of “watching the prisoner” while Orion, Skye, and some other crew members headed ashore to Tortuga for supplies. It didn’t take long for Carewyn to migrate up to the railing of Orion’s ship so as to get a better look at the infamous and completely filthy pirate haven, and Murphy rolled up beside her so they could talk.

“It’s funny, really,” McNully said with a wry smile. “It was me what suggested we try capturing you next.”

Carewyn glanced at Orion’s First Mate in surprise.

“There’d been a lot of talk about Carey Weasley, the youngest Captain in the entire British Navy, and the respect he’d garnered from the crown for his heroism fighting the Spanish,” McNully explained. “I reckoned capturing someone that well known would be a real blow to the Navy, and by extension, Cutler Beckett and his Company. Your capture on its own would likely hurt their morale by a good 35%.”

McNully’s expression then turned more thoughtful.

“...I almost regret it now, considering you seem to be a decent sort -- and I can’t reckon this whole thing will reflect too well on you. There’s a 42.5% chance you won’t advance in rank much further, and worse, a 15% chance you’ll be actively demoted, if they catch wind you surrendered without a fight...even if it was to save your crew, which was objectively a very noble thing to do.”

He smiled a bit guiltily. Carewyn offered him a small smile in return.

“If you hadn’t suggested going after me, though, I wouldn’t have ended up here and found out Orion was alive,” she pointed out reassuringly.

McNully smiled a little more fully. “True!”

He looked out at the horizon briefly, as if checking to see if the jollyboat was returning. Then he returned his focus to Carewyn.

“You know, though...there might be a way for us to use our new truce strategically, so that we both make it out ahead.”

Carewyn turned around, leaning her back against the railing and crossing her arms.

“Oh?”

McNully’s smile spread into more of a smirk. “You’re a well-respected officer of the Navy...and yet you’re no friend of the East India Trading Company and, more importantly, you don’t want Orion or any of us to die. We’re pirates, but our Captain is fond of you, and quite frankly, we could do with some allies, in the face of everyone trying to kill us. So here’s what I propose -- we let you escape. We sail through waters the Navy’s going to passing through, supposedly to go pick up medicine we couldn’t find on Tortuga -- and while we’re engaged in sea battle, you bust out of the brig, help the British soldiers ‘fight us off,’ and then swing over to their ship. We then retreat because we lost our ‘cargo’ -- namely, you -- and we can tell we’re losing. We keep the Navy ship from following us...but they still get one of their greatest heroes back, crashing onto the scene in a blaze of glory. If we play our cards right, I reckon there’s a 48.3% chance you might even get a promotion when all’s said and done...that is, if you think you can manage escaping the brig on your own.”

Carewyn gave a light scoff, her lips spreading into a small smirk of her own.

“Yours wouldn’t be the first one I’ve escaped. You should probably lock me in irons, for good measure -- it’ll be more convincing that I escaped, if I still have one on my wrist when I make it up on deck.”

The plan went into effect once Orion and the others returned to the Artemis and they set sail away from Tortuga. Although Carewyn had expressed confidence in her ability to escape the brig, it didn’t startle and impress Orion any less to see Carewyn up on deck after having been locked in a secure cell with both of her hands locked together in the heaviest shackles they had. She even ended up using the shackle on her wrist as a weapon, knocking out three of his men with it before she reached Orion at the ship’s railing.

Orion couldn’t help but think he’d never feel such vivication again as he did in that intense, wonderful sword fight they had upon the deck of the Artemis, parrying and slashing their swords at each other as they migrated up to the helm, leapt up into the rigging, and balanced on the edge of the Artemis’s railing before Carewyn finally got close enough that she could leap over to the HMS Dauntless.

Orion slammed his sword up against hers, pressing Carewyn back against the ropes. Although to most any clueless observer, it looked like they were still hotly engaged in battle, Orion’s voice was very soft when he spoke.

“This is your chance,” he murmured.

“Yes,” said Carewyn.

Orion’s free hand had grabbed onto the ropes to stabilize himself over her as their chests touched. His heart rate quickened, even as he kept his dark eyes squarely on hers.

Now that the moment had come for them to part, the little time they’d been able to share seemed far, far too brief...

Carewyn’s own blue eyes rippled solemnly.

“Be safe, Orion.”

And without taking another moment to breathe, she brought up her foot and kicked him full on in the stomach. The blow threw him off her with a grunt, and she leapt up into the rigging, grabbed a loose piece of rope, and swung over to the deck of the Dauntless.

Orion cradled his stomach as Skye ran over to help him up.

“Captain -- are you okay?”

A small, fond smile flickered over Orion’s face.

“Yes.”

He then shot to his feet with a much more grim and urgent expression on his face. He had to make this retreat looking convincing, after all.

“All hands, fall back! Fall back!”

Carewyn’s return to Port Royal -- as McNully had predicted -- was full of honors and acclaim, including a promotion to the rank of Commodore. It seemed that her being the only officer who had managed to escape the infamous Captain Orion Amari’s captivity made her a hero in the eyes of the British Empire. Portrait miniatures had been painted of her and sold both on and outside of Port Royal, and soon quite a few ladies were sending love letters and throwing themselves at Carewyn in an attempt to woo her, enthralled with her fame and handsome face. The overabundance of attention greatly amused Carewyn’s surrogate brothers Bill and Charlie, once they’d gotten over the anxiety they’d felt when she returned safe and sound. Percy in particular had taken Carewyn’s capture very hard, given that he’d been her Lieutenant at the time, and had resolved to make sure that no pirate ever felt bold enough to do something like that again.

The most prominent pursuer of Carewyn’s hand, however, was Port Royal’s Governor, Alphard Farrier, who was once again determined to arrange a marriage between her and his daughter, Jules. @cursebreakerfarrier With Carewyn now a well-respected Commodore of the Fleet known for breaking out of a heavily locked pirate brig and facing off against Orion Amari single-handedly, he knew it would be advantageous both to his family and to his own anti-piracy policies to have her in Port Royal permanently as his son-in-law. He even went so far as to have Jules arrive at Carewyn’s promotion ceremony in the fanciest, most fashionable dress he could get shipped in from London, in the hopes that it would catch the young Commodore’s eye. It did -- but not for the reason the Governor had hoped.

“Might I have a moment, Miss Farrier?” said Carewyn, inclining her head and back in a polite bow.

Jules rather quickly took Carewyn’s offered hand and let the new Commodore lead her away from her father. Carewyn didn’t speak again until they were up on the wall of the fort beside the large ship’s bell, looking out to sea -- in other words, when they were well away from everyone else.

“Are you all right?” muttered Carewyn. Her eyebrows had come together in concern.

Jules’s face grew much less lady-like and polite, betraying exhaustion and some irritation.

“...Not...exactly,” she gasped lowly. “But when you’re -- stuck in this kind of...torture chamber...I guess that’s -- appropriate...”

She indicated her chest, which looked quite a bit more restrained than usual, as she fanned herself a bit faster.

Carewyn’s eyes narrowed and she sighed in aggravation. “For goodness sake -- ”

She glanced around. Even if she’d managed to get them away from prying ears, she could still see plenty of people watching them, even if they quickly looked away when they saw she’d noticed them -- no doubt they were trying to discern if there was an engagement in the works.

‘Damn,’ Carewyn swore to herself. ‘I can’t try to loosen anything, while everyone’s gawking...’

“Try to focus on your breathing,” she advised under her breath. “We’ll talk slowly. Bit by bit. That way you can make sure you’re taking deep breaths.”

Jules smiled slightly in gratitude. “...Thanks, Carey.”

Jules, like the Weasleys, knew that Carewyn was really a girl, but couldn’t help but call her that, even when they were in private. She’d figured it out after mentally connecting “Carey Weasley” to a young red-haired peasant girl she used to hear singing in the streets outside her window in the Governor’s mansion in the evenings.

“You were always so far off, so I never got a good look at your face,” Jules had explained with a smile when Carewyn and Bill asked her how she’d figured it out, “but I remembered your hair and how much it sounded like you were smiling, when you were singing. I hear it when you’re talking a lot of the time, too. I don’t hear a lot of people’s smiles like that.”

After that, Jules had become one of Carewyn’s closest friends. It also prompted Bill and Jules to reach out more to each other, which resulted in Bill ending up head over heels in love. Carewyn suspected Jules’s feelings were just as strong as well, but given that Bill was a priest who didn’t even have a full congregation of his own yet and didn’t come from money himself, it was likely he was biding his time to court Jules properly, until he knew he had a chance of convincing her father.

Jules took several deep breaths. Once Carewyn was sure her friend looked a bit more steady on her feet, she folded her arms behind her back in standard Navy posture and spoke again.

“Bill sends his regards.”

Jules’s dark eyes sparked a bit.

“He does?”

She took another two deep breaths before adding, “...Is...that all he said?”

“Well, he did say as an aside that he couldn’t stop thinking about you during service the other day,” said Carewyn with a wry smile. “Apparently the mention of ‘the beauty of Heaven’s angels’ kept bringing your face to his mind.”

Jules’s face flushed. Carewyn chuckled lowly through a closed smile, so as not to cover her mouth with her hand like she might normally -- she knew the gesture appeared rather lady-like.

“It’s a shame your father has such tunnel vision on me,” Carewyn said coolly. “There’s a far better Weasley to select as his son-in-law, were he only to look.”

Jules grimaced.

“I know,” she said. She took a few more deep breaths. “And well...the only reason he is so focused on you...is because you were able to escape Orion Amari.”

“Captain,” Carewyn slipped in before she could stop herself.

When Jules blinked in surprise, Carewyn turned toward the horizon with the most offhand shrug she could manage.

“Captain Orion Amari.”

Sensing Jules’s discerning gaze on her face, Carewyn kept her gaze on the sea. Behind her back, she rubbed her thumbs along her healed palms absently.

“...Carey...” said Jules quietly, “...is something wrong?”

Carewyn swallowed. She hadn’t told anyone else the full story of what had happened -- after Percy had reacted so hostilely toward her being captured, she hadn’t dared tell Bill or Charlie everything while he was present, and she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to talk to either of them alone, with how quickly her promotion ceremony was thrown together.

Her blue eyes flickered over her shoulder at the bystanders behind them. They were far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to hear, even if they were still looking over so avidly...

“...Captain Amari...” she murmured as softly as she could, “...let me escape.”

Jules looked surprised.

“It’s a long story...but we knew each other once. I bandaged him up and hid him from the Navy, when we were young. When he discovered who I was...he and his crew agreed to let me go.”

Jules stared at Carewyn, her dark eyes wide with amazement. Then her gaze softened visibly and she smiled.

“...He must’ve been grateful for what you did for him.”

Carewyn’s blue eyes softened upon the sparkling sea. 

“It wasn’t gratitude. Orion...is simply a good man...pirate he may be.”

The memory of him bandaging her hands -- of his rippling dark eyes as they bore into hers -- floated again over her mind.

“I can’t act like I knew, or even thought seriously, that our stars would align again…but even with that…I’d imagined a life much better than this for you.”

“Well,” said Jules with a smile, “it seems like those two things...shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.”

Carewyn turned her gaze back to Jules at last, smiling wryly. “Better not let your father hear you say that.”

Carewyn and Jules talked casually for the next half-hour, with Carewyn taking care to make sure their conversation was spaced out enough that Jules could catch her breath. After a while, it seemed the length of their conversation had attracted the Governor’s attention (no doubt he was getting a bit restless, not being sure if things were going according to plan), and had asked Carewyn to give Jules and him some privacy. And so Carewyn reluctantly left Jules and the Governor alone on top of the wall of the fort.

It could only have been about ten or fifteen minutes when Carewyn was alerted by Governor Farrier’s screams. Jules -- clearly not having been able to catch her breath properly, while in the midst of a quick-paced argument with her father -- had fainted right off the fort’s wall and landed in the water below. Her heart racing with panic, Carewyn led a battalion of soldiers down to the dock below, desperate to reach her friend.

When they arrived, they found Jules choking up water on the deck, her fancy dress discarded, her horrible corset cut off, and three men standing around her. Two of them were red-garbed British soldiers -- the other was a man with dark brown dreadlocks under an emerald green bandana and black kohl around his rippling dark eyes.

Carewyn’s heart leapt into her throat when their eyes met.

It was Orion.

[lannister-slings-and-arrows]

I was tagged by @rzrcrst to share five things about me so we all can get to know each other better. Thanks sweets! :D

I was raised in a tiny house with six other people and a bigger side of medium sized dog, I thrive on noise and chaos lol. I am loud, opinionated, have a lax standard when it comes to boundaries, and don’t take personal offense easily. (Do I get Angry? Yes. I have a Temper that I really should see someone about lol, but I don’t take personal offense if someone gets mad and calls me an idiot or steals the last of the pop tarts.) That being said, I am well and truly satisfied being by myself, making my own noise however and whenever I see fit- I think it’s the novelty personally, it probably won’t ever wear off lol. That’s not to say I don’t miss those chaos days. Getting back together with all of my siblings is my favorite thing to do. No one can quite match me screaming opinion for screaming opinion as they can lol. In the line of my friends my siblings will always come first, they’re built in bffs that you never have to worry about pretending with.

I’m sure that at some point very early on in my life I must have made a conscious decision that my big brother was The Authority on Everything That Is Cool and Awesome, but it must have been VERY early because I don’t remember it. All I know is that the standard by which I have always measured if something is Cool and if I should Like it/Do it has been if Kevin has either done it before or also thinks it’s cool lol. Kevin did karate, so Meghan did karate. Kevin wore flannel shirts over tee shirts? Meghan STILL does that lol. He got sick of the more age appropriate boy bands I was listening to in jr. high so he burned me CDs with bands like Blue October and The Tea Party and Rammstein and Korn et al on them and said they were cool. And So It Was lol. And that hasn’t changed- to this day I’m still not really sure if I actually like all the things I like or if I just accept that I do bc he does lol. Honestly it hasn’t been all bad, in fact it has some pretty great advantages. I’ve never been in a Terrible relationship in my life; the second Kevin doesn’t like someone they’re gone- it’s been pretty damn useful having a guy look out for all the shitty things that guys do and point them out so I can head that mess off at the pass lol.

I think I was probably 12 when I wrote my first fanfiction? It was this LONG ASS multi chapter behemoth that was written in I think four of those black and white notebooks? The marble ones? You know what I’m talking about? It was about the characters from the movie Gladiator lololol. It didn’t go on the internet (fandom online was in its INFANCY back then and I wasn’t a part of it until years later) and no one besides me read it. Like NO ONE. I’m honestly not sure if anyone besides me actually knew that I wrote this lol. I kept it hidden in different places all over my house, my back yard (zipped in those gallon freezer bags lol), and a few times my grandparents basement lol. Every week like clockwork I would move it’s hiding spot- I don’t know why I felt the need to do this but whatever lol. Unfortunately (maybe fortunately) the first time I smoked pot in high school I came home so fucking paranoid that I took it out of its spot in the shed in the back yard and burned it. Just set it on fire lol. I was convinced someone knew where it was and was going to read it so clearly the only thing to do was destroy it before my secret could get out. That was also the time I realized that pot makes me too paranoid to function and I should not be allowed near lighters when I was high lol. Thankfully for all you I have become much more lax about letting people read my writing since those early days.

When I first saw Pirates of the Caribbean I, of course like any decent human being, fell in love with Jack Sparrow. Who wouldn’t. But for some reason I could not put my finger on every time I thought of or looked at or had to talk about Elizabeth Swann and Kiera Knightly I got so MAD. Like unexplainably FURIOUS. I HATED her and I really didn’t have any good reason to. About a year later my brother introduced me to the original Lara Croft movie (the Angelina Jolie one) and I watched it constantly- I LOVED it. And then came the Kate Beckinsale Underworld movies which I couldn’t get enough of. It was okay to say that those two women were hot cause Kevin said so too right? And I just kind of branched out from there? I didn’t deliberately identify as bi, I just kind of started taking it for granted that I looked at women and thought they were gorgeous the same way that I did men. My mental block about Kiera Knightly finally lifted sometime in college and I can now finally admit that the first girl I ever had a crush on was Lizzie Swan in POTC lol. (Not that I will EVER tell my mother or the adult members of my very Catholic, very conservative Republican extended family that I have, in fact, kissed girls and liked it lol. There are some things that even I am not stupid enough to do lol.)

I fucking LOVE science fiction. The camp-iest, the cheese-iest the better. I love space travel/adventure sci-fi the best, I’m sorry I don’t care what ANYONE says, Flash Gordon is a cinematic masterpiece and I will fight anyone who says differently. I love Firefly and Star Trek and oh my god the Riddick movies are so fucking great. And when you can combine my love of sci fi with my pure and unadulterated THING for cowboys (I don’t know where that came from by the way I just. I have a cowboy kink that cannot be stopped. I need professional help lol) you have right there a double threat of Meghan is gonna love this. (I unironically STAN Cowboys and Aliens ok. And Pacific Rim.) I’ll read sci-fi, I’ll watch it, I’ll listen to it, you put it in front of me and I will consume it.

I’m tagging @spacegayofficial @youmeanmybrain @pajamasecrets @pascalispretty @stevieharrrr @keeper0fthestars @zeldasayer @hystericalmedicine and frankly anybody who sees this and wants to share. Tell me about your interesting selves!! :p

[funkymbtifiction]

The joys and wonders of being a 1-6 with low Te

I find myself struggling with the same vicious circle a lot: being a 1, when I plan my study for an exam I practically don’t leave space for relaxation and fun, because deep down I’m convinced that I wouldn’t deserve it until I’ve finished everything I’m supposed to do for school. Moreover, when I do actually force myself to stop studying and do trivial activities, I feel this black hole of anxiety in my stomach that makes me want to run back home and go back to studying, so I don’t really enjoy myself and relax (say hi to my phobic 6). The downside of this is, of course, that I can’t possibly focus and be productive for 24 hours a day, human brains don’t work that way, so I actually find myself wasting so much time instead of studying, for example watching stupid youtube videos and doing activities that let me shut off my brain and forget how anxious I feel about that exam. But when I get to the end of the day and I find myself with 90% of my daily load of study still undone, of course the anxiety comes back at full force and I feel even less deserving of free time for the following day, so the cycle begins again. I only manage to break it when, instead of going to bed, I spend half of the night awake to make up for lost time, because I don’t know why but I focus more at night (maybe I’m less distracted because there are less stimuli both from the outside world and from social media/internet, I don’t know). This applies to therapy as well: I know perfectly well that seeing a psychologist would make me less anxious in the long run, but I’m so anxious about “wasting” time that I give up on the idea altogether. So… Help? Please?

(You don’t want to wind up disintegrated into 4 like Norrington in POTC 2. ;)

You have several issues going on, which I’ll address individually.

First, Tritype issues – the curse of double-productive fixes (1 + 6). I suffer from the exact same issue, which compounds low Te into demanding “results” for my time and guilt-trips me into not taking “down time.” The solution is to set reasonable goals per day, achieve those, and quit working, forcing yourself to walk away and go have a good time, because you have “earned” it by finishing your task or at least making a dent in it. If you are anything like me, even when you have major demands on your time (work / school), you may face the temptation to be productive in your down time. I am notorious for heading into my big work week (it demands lots of Te/Si, which is draining) and not stopping my writing, which means I “work” myself into exhaustion, rather than taking a break from writing for a week. It’s stupid, but I compulsively attempt to do both and exhaust myself. So, you have to self-discipline yourself enough to fill self-preservation “rest” needs.

Second, Enneagram 1 issues. 1s have issues with relaxation and having fun. They often feel they aren’t deserving of these things, and should not take time off to rejuvenate. You have to work toward integration (moving toward 7’s ability to have fun / relax / enjoy life), which means, again, carving out time to enjoy yourself, guilt-free. If you have to adopt a mantra of self-talk (“I deserve this free time and fun, I am not going to beat myself up for taking it or guilt myself into going back to work”), so be it. But focus on working toward integration.

Third, low Te blind spots. High Te is logical. It knows the body can only take so much, and over-working produces lackluster results. Logic tells you your body needs rest, food, and mental down-time to keep you on top of your game. Low Te’s generally superficially are aware of this, but keep going anyway, since they don’t take it too seriously and/or assume they can wing it forever.

If you are incapable of taking mental time off, this means you are likely also: not eating right or taking care of your physical needs. Do you know what “brain foods” are? Are you eating breakfast? Are you doing most of your mentally-heavy work in the morning when your brain is optimal and refreshed? Are you getting a full 6-8 hours of sleep every night? Are you limiting your “blue light” exposure in the evening, by not texting / surfing on your phone / staring at your laptop until you fall asleep? Are you exercising? Etc.

Low Te overdoes Te, meaning FPs wake up one day, usually in their 20’s, and realize how much time they “waste” and think they need to grow up, get serious, and mass produce things all the time. Thus, you wind up with looping / gripping FPs. To disengage a loop or a grip, which means you are out of balance, you must re-engage the missing function. Se/Ne or Fi. What does this mean? Get off work / school, and go find something to do that uses one of those functions, rather than falling into Te “I need to get back to work” thinking.

You are tired. STOP.

Therapy is not wasting time, if it’s helpful to you. You only get one of you, and you get to spend your whole life with yourself – you owe it to yourself to “get better” and get professional help for the things you cannot overcome yourself. Spending time in therapy now to stop compulsive/harmful behaviors will save you a lot more time later on after you have hit rock bottom and burn out.

- ENFP Mod

[purplemoonfox]

Watch the damn video. The title is upsetting but the video is good.

IMHO, yes and no to the tinfoily possibility of why this film flopped as presented by the video’s maker. I’ll explain why. Basically I agree wholeheartedly, but I don’t go in for conspiracy theories as such. One of these days I’ll write down my thoughts on Star Wars, fandom,society, and the early 2000′s. It’s part of my continuing if unwritten theory on All Else Aside, Why Advertising Should Be Heavily Regulated, closely related to Corporations Are Not People, Fuck Off Don’t @ Me. Also closely related to Ethics: The Class No One Likes In Business School Which Is Hilariously Ironic For A Lot Of Reasons. Little under grad me was sitting in a business school once and my friend walked over laughing. Apparently he’d overheard some business kids whining about how boring and useless ethics class was.

I’m a bit of a misanthropic shit with a bone to pick if you can’t tell.

Anyway--

If you asked me whether Disney had some grand, literally planned out conspiracy in torpedoing this movie, just so they could welch on a deal made with one of the previous execs, I’d say you’re reaching. Frankly, as they say, Disney is a business. Regardless of whatever face it puts on, Disney is a business. If they wanted it to flop they didn’t want a $70 million plus deficit. That’s why it freaked the fuck out after Solo flopped, which isn’t fair to Solo since poor Solo, which grew on me massively since I was somewhat bewildered by it at first (if anyone’s curious I’ll talk about that later) was in a somewhat similar situation when it went up at a weird time of year against DP2, the marketing was absolute shit because they’d practically given up after the backlash against a young Han Solo full stop, and they used a filthy casual generalist’s character (Han Solo) to showcase some very specialist in fandom’s details like (SPOILER?) Maul being alive again. But I do like the point the video maker made about the DVD release and winter movies, and the release environment. 

So let’s re-establish some points that the video maker made.

1. This was a personal passion project from the beginning, not a studio or company thing.

The directors struggled since 1987 to get this thing into motion and it was on an agreement made with an exec that it was ever put in motion.

2. This film spared no expense. 

The visual animation in this film is very well done. But it’s basically Disney animation tossing out all the stops. Which, honestly, was what they generally do when innovating, but...this is an animator’s and director’s movie. In a sense it’s an art film done by masters of their craft, but marketed by someone who is more interested in what sells. You want to know when we’ll get less Star Wars and MCU? Stop buying quite so much of it all. I say, as I’m going to run out and get me some sweet Dooku comics. Shut up. It’s not hypocrisy if I know what I’m enabling...LOL.

But here’s another thing that the video maker lauds, but forgets that studios can be really fucking finicky about this kind of off the wall risk-taking---

3. It’s anomalous in a lot of ways. 

That’s going to scare people in the industry because it’s not the tried and true that often wins the Benjis the easiest for the least effort. There’s a reason we now see so many franchises with long-running film series and remakes and sequels and so on--they have established characters in established universes that makes marketing have an easier time of establishing rapport with an audience and attracting attention. They don’t have to make anything new; new doesn’t even make as much money. Treasure Planet came out in 2002 for reference, POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl came out in 2003, so it was in that time period when movies didn’t necessarily have interconnected franchises and were instead relatively more separate iterations unto themselves, kind of like Rocky or Rambo, so it was a little before the era of massively planned out story arcs. I don’t think Marvel ever really had a plan to make the MCU as we know it today, I don’t think George Lucas knew what the fuck he was kicking off when he released TPM in 1999, which is to say the resurgence of Star Wars in concurrence with the rise of modern fandoms starting with the release of Pokemon in 1996 and continuing to play a big part in the lives of Millennials nostalgia is one of the few marketing techniques that work on us...and yes I can show studies. But studios chased that profit relentlessly and it eventually coalesced into something like a plan oh god I’ll move on or I’ll go into Star Wars and we’re not here for that.

I think people rely too much on the assumption that there must be some kind of dedicated conspiracy to bring outcomes like these, like they’re never the product of an unhappy outcome of multiple issues going on independently and congruently. Sometimes that involves personal issues on the part of the people making the decisions that affect something. Roads to hell and all that.

Okay.

The company wasn’t excited about it, it was something those newer CEOs couldn’t pull the plug on once they inherited it. And the company may not have wanted to make the second? Yes, all possible. Even likely. I’m also strongly reminded of Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives, which got him banned from directing for life and established the supremacy of studios over directors forevermore.

Risks too many risks are anathema to a moneymaking entity in the black. These directors may have dragged Disney out of the shitter but now they were sitting comfortably on a pile of cash, and risk is a lot less costly--when you want to take it. When.

I’ve read some, not much, about social economic status and behavior. Rich people have less to lose when taking risks, so they can say cute things like “well just go off and do it and see what you get!” and possibly just face a setback, when for someone in a lower income status the possible outcome of risk is actual destitution. The former sees only potential benefit, the latter only danger.

Moneymaking institutions, on the other hand, tend to resist risk and change when the possible outcome is less money. If anything, they want just enough innovation to draw interest, but not enough to surprise or put people off. Side note: if Disney ever teamed up with Wal-Mart I’m going to call it Shin-Ra and no one can stop me. Disney in the shitter? Fuck yes, take risks--what we’ve got isn’t working and we desperately need to make money somehow. Disney not in the shitter? Fuck no, don’t take risks--what we’ve got is working and you’re possibly going to do something people won’t like so we won’t make money. Who cares if the two people at the head of the project are the reason you’re sitting on a mountain of cash right fucking now? A board without the risk of default only sees dangers, they’re not seeing potential benefits.

If anything there was a level of resignation and “fuck it, let’s let them do this because we kind of have to and see how it goes, this was their project, not ours” and a lot of “see, told you so! Now get back to work!” that went on. But it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that they won’t own up to, in that lack of an advertisement campaign in the run up to the release. They set the movie up to fail not because of a planned conspiracy but because of a risk-minimization impulse and...then make less than astute assumptions about what it was about the movie that caused it to fail--then plan off of all that.

Now. Going to change gears a little and go on a bit of a tangent, because it relates to that very last point--the part about moving forward.

Remember when this happened. The early 2000′s. What was emerging right around the early 2000′s? That’s right. CGI animation. Did Disney scrap their whole animation studios and pare it down to projection work after that spate of less-than-stellar performances before the Disney Renaissance? Did they blame animation itself for its faults? No they did not, but it would become a convenient whipping boy.

I got into a pretty unpleasant argument a few months ago when, having been asked what unpopular opinion one has on a thread, I said that I wished Disney hadn’t closed their 2D animation. I love 2D. I really do. Most of the people who replied were like “you do realize that isn’t an unpopular opinion kthx” and I was like “ok fair enough.”

But then this mouth-breathing chucklefuck that apparently can’t read labels thought it was cute to try and tell me why I’m wrong for me to have my own fucking opinion what a cute notion. He was a fucking twit, but I got a few salient points out of it to roll over in my head anyway. I strongly suspect he had something to do with the industry itself because of the points he made. He didn’t change my mind, but some points are worth thinking about.

1. Disney is for kids. Okay. Not if they don’t want to tap into more than just parents strapped for cashs’ pockets, but the movies are still made to be accessible and engaging for younger people, so I rolled my eyes and moved on.

2. Related to the first point, kids don’t like 2D animation anymore because they’re used to 3D because that’s what all their other entertainment is is. Why?

3. INNOVATION. EVERYONE WANTS INNOVATION AND GETS BORED WITHOUT 100% FULL THROTTLE VISUAL INNOVATION. YOU’RE JUST BEING A BITTER OLD NOSTALGIA HOUNDING HAG. 

Medium aside, the rest to a movie is really just window dressing; Moana had fantastic and original music as well as otherwise being visually stunning too, granted, because in no way am I hating on 3D itself; the point is it’s not an opera singer standing in for the voice actress, much as I love Beauty and the Beast’s animated soundtrack, but music can be played regardless of animation medium. And you’re damn right we could’ve had a Polynesian Princess before now.

Of the two I found the second point more interesting and less inane. The third was just...charming.

Now. Just to go back to Star Wars real quick to make a point; the OT is filmed in a way consistent with the time period it was made in. I’ve known people who tell me that they prefer the sequels and that ANH, ep 4 the one with the Death Star for anyone wandering in, not the one with Ewoks or Hoth, is boring. Why? Because it’s filmed like a movie from 1978, which means its pacing is different and so are the camera angles and so on. Because, uh, it’s a movie from 1978. What an original fucking concept. If you need a comparison for what was otherwise more or less the standard of SFX in the day, pop in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979 I’m not hating on Trekkies, I love you guys. Star Wars is phenomenally ahead of its time. For an older version, guys, I may loathe Citizen Kane with every fiber of my salty little being, but I will give it full credit for the innovations it made in camera angles and scene setting. 

All of this is not to forget The Princess and The Frog in 2009, which was great, but it didn’t smash through the roof like this was the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

So. We had Treasure Planet, whose release was a wretched cluster of fuck. We had Winnie the Pooh, which isn’t...well, guys, it’s not an original story, and then we had Home on the Range, which I’ve never seen. I enjoyed Brother Bear, but I swear the being a bear for most of the movie kind of killed the ability of a lot of people to put themselves in their shoes. Because let’s face it--if we’re going for blaming thematic issues, romance is still a part of the Disney theory, even if we’ve finally reached the point of questioning some of its normal tenets--not marrying someone you just met and why is everyone dancing come to mind oh Flynn Rider you fucking gem you. But none of that is made impossible by the medium of 3D. And why the fuck is everyone ignoring Mulan and Esmeralda in all this anyway. Well, poor Esmeralda always gets the short end of the stick. I swear though that woman did convince me that I could be fucking badass in a skirt though.

Meanwhile we see the rise of Pixar. In 1995, we had Toy Story my mother dragged us to see that movie seven times in theaters. Now that I think about it I shouldn’t be surprised that the woman was fascinated with the concept of a secret world anonymously devoted to the person that plays with them in a way that makes them literally dolls on shelves, since...reasons. Monsters, Inc., in 2001, Finding Nemo in 2003, The Incredibles in 2004, and Wall-E and Up in 2008 and 2009, respectively--after the acquisition by Disney in 2006. They haven’t done quite so well recently, their stock has taken on more sequels decently good sequels, granted, not the shitty made for video stuff that Disney put out, and some others. I’ll be annoyed if they make a sequel for Wall-E; I don’t know what that would look like. Maybe rediscovering the concept of competition over resources and nostalgia for the good old days of space. Nah. That just sounds like why Tolkien never wrote a sequel to LOTR.

I brought that bit about Treasure Planet (2002), Brother Bear (2003), Home on the Range (2004), and The Princess and The Frog (2009) up to mainly make the point that after Treasure Planet’s lackluster response until The Princess and The Frog, Disney gave it anything but relatively normal big-name projects...and then topped it off with Winnie the Pooh in 2011, which was never going to be a blowout hit. I like Winnie the Pooh itself enough to not disdain it, but I don’t like it enough to spend money on a fucking movie ticket. Mostly just tolerated it in Kingdom Hearts if not ignored it when I could. 

Now, you might think that the immediately previous statement basically made my point entirely invalid, but I also brought up that bit about the highly successful Pixar, which they bought in 2006. They pretty much lost interest and moved on to the shiny new thing; The Princess and The Frog really only got made because John Lasseter and Ed Catmull wanted to make it; Disney had meant to shut 2D animation down. Then it had some controversy, though to my knowledge the film did its best to resolve the issues. Furthermore, despite the fact that we were supposed to get more animated films because it did well, The Princess and The Frog, despite its success, we got the rug pulled out from under us when they didn’t get enough money.

Look. Every thirty years or so, somebody swears that they just invented 3D screens. While not on a television, they’ve had “how to make visual representation look 3D” since 1838. No, not 1938. 1838. It’s a stupid gimmick, and it will be a stupid gimmick the next time they bring it up, too. They have tried to sell 3D tv screens in the past, and it failed then, too. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes it’s not the medium that’s at fault, although some people in the industry itself seem to blame it for not being “new” enough, as if it’s not their failure to innovate effectively and then do their due diligence that’s to blame. Disney basically shot themselves in the foot over Treasure Planet and hand-drawn animation in general, and threw up their hands, affected to forget that any of that ever happened, and blamed the gun that they suddenly found sitting at their feet--not because Treasure Planet was fated to be a failure from inception, or that 2D animation is intrinsically inferior to 3D and/or is less interesting to small children because it’s just older if that were the case and frankly, that point about kids and 3D and preference...well, Paw Patrol isn’t every kid’s show in existence, there are 2D animated kid’s shows, and Pixar would never have bothered researching Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin for wordless language while making Wall-E.

[him-e]

Hi, I sent the original ask about a Celibate Rey ending, I don't know what discourse came out of it, I didn't see it, but I wanted to clear the air. I didn't mean to come off dismissive of female romance/sexuality or of your ship in my ask. I understand it can be exhausting to defend your perspective over and over to people who don't want to listen, so I totally get if you thought I was baiting, though. I'm sorry for the trouble or stress this caused you.

Not asking to troll or continue the discourse, but if you don’t want to continue discussing this topic please delete this. But how can you see a valid Celibate-Rey endgame going? If IX were to end with Rey on her own and to some degree happy (Since this is Star Wars, the ending has to be at least slightly happy or hopeful) what kind of an ending would it be? If Kylo dies or survives, either/or.

Hey, no problem at all, and sorry for my snappish answer (hopefully you realized I was being part tongue-in-cheek, though). Admittedly the “better off alone/celibate” argument is something that cyclically resurfaces in other ships of mine, particularly Jaime/Brienne, which made me skittish on the whole thing, particularly when it’s tied to *female agency* buzzwords and the assumption that it’s the shippers who are arbitrarily trying to force a romance on the character, rather than it being part of the character’s canon narrative (not necessarily your case, but it’s such a popular argument against the J/B ship that I’ve developed particularly nasty anticorps for it)

So re: Celibate Jedi!Rey—

Is it a technically possible endgame for her? Totally.

Is it something I would personally be okay with and find satisfying? Well, yes, if:

a) it acknowledges and gives closure to Rey’s feelings for Ben, and viceversa. This includes admitting a degree of bittersweet in the happily ever after final picture.

Just considering the force bond alone without its romantic implications, Rey and Kylo, just the two of them, are connected on a deep intimate level. This is kind of a big deal, especially for Rey, whose familial bonds were suddenly and irrevocably severed when she was little, after which she was left completely alone with no chance to find her way back to her parents (ironically, now she has a magical tracking device in her head that allows her to communicate with another person even across galaxies. From completely alone, to never completely alone even in her own head. Big deal, indeed). 

Even if the bond is broken (because Kylo dies, or else) and no overtly romantic stuff happens between them, it will still leave a mark on Rey, an empty spot where something magical used to be that can only be partially filled with familial or “muggle” love and the purpose of a “lone” Jedi path. That she would bury Kylo (or watch him leave never to return) and immediately go to join the Resistance’s party original trilogy style as if nothing sad just happened doesn’t make a lot sense to me. In fact, it would infuriate me, as I hate when characters are written as if they had some emotion switch hidden somewhere that makes them go from sad to cheerful in the blink of an eye (and tbh TLJ, for all I liked it, already went dangerously close to that, with Rey’s jarring post-proposal cheerfulness on the Falcon during the whole Crait sequence, imo). 

So if they want to go that route, they need to be ready to tinge their happy ending with a little melancholy, otherwise I won’t find it realistic at all. This especially if Kylo dies, but also if he leaves or they are separated for whatever reason. (if Kylo lives, and redeems himself, and stays, I don’t see any reason why he and Rey should not be together, tbh. I mean it’s not like there’s still a Jedi order around dictating what Rey is or isn’t allowed to do. Like Palpatine was the Senate, she is the Jedi Order now, she can make new rules, lmao)

b) it avoids attaching moralistic implications to this choice (?) of celibacy (”that’s what I’m really meant for”, or “that’s how I’ll live my life to the fullest and be truly happy”, etc).

The figure of the Jedi in SW is, at the end of the day, a caregiver. A magical warrior/monk who essentially devotes their life to other people, denying any sort of personal ambition of satisfaction for himself (self-drive is closer to the Sith way). While the extent of this self-abnegation can be reframed and repackaged in a more “progressive” light (say Rey rebuilds a Jedi order with different rules, or just chooses a different way to be a Jedi, see above), the essence of caregiving and selflessness will probably remain untouched. It’s really funny to me that the people who want this endgame for Rey are the same one who get their panties in a twist at the thought of Rey being “reduced to an emotional caregiver” for Ben (paraphrasing some anti post I’ve read recently). The point is, Celibate!Jedi Rey wouldn’t be simply choosing friendship/family/a career over romance, she’d actually sacrifice her individual (in this case, romantic/sexual) desires in order to become a caregiver for an entire community. And this isn’t something I’d consider an especially subversive or /empowering/ endgame for a female character, quite the opposite, actually. The subtext here needs to be handed carefully, particularly if her endgame involves rebuilding some sort of Jedi school for gifted children: the risk of elevating her to a self-sacrificial virgin mother archetype would be pretty high. It can be done, and it can imply Rey will find happiness in this life, but without any sort of hamfisted *inspirational moral message for little girls*, if you know what I mean.

c) it doesn’t frame Rey’s choice not to be with Kylo specifically (if it is indeed a choice on her part and not something dictated by external forces, aka Kylo’s death or the Willabeth endgame, more on that later) in a moral(istic) perspective.

no “I can’t be with you because you have been mean to people, ewww” bullshit, thank you very much. This sounds like the ultimate anti wet dream, Rey rejecting Kylo because he’s awful, and I think we’re WAAAYYYY past it with all that happened in TLJ.

I hope this clarifies things a bit!

Another anon asked me to explain what I meant with the Willabeth endgame, and:

in POTC III Will Turner kills Davy Jones, so he has to take his place as the captain of the Flying Dutchman, which is a curse for life. He and Elizabeth (who are now married) spend a last day together on an island (during which it’s implied they fuck like rabbits and conceive a child, lmao), and then, at sunset, Will says goodbye, leaving the box containing his heart to Elizabeth, to whom he says, “will you keep it safe for me?”. It’s heartbreaking and a bit sadistic tbh but also incredibly romantic.

How does this apply to Reylo?

Well, Kylo could be 

sentenced to lifelong exile on a remote planet, or 

imprisoned for life, or 

going on exile on his own will, or 

leaving to form a new order of darksiders (or something) as he feels he has no place among the Good Guys and has Redeemed Himself But Not Really, or 

sentenced to death and then promptly freed by Rey, who urges him to leave never to return, for his own safety, or

in general, literally or metaphorically cursed to live an existence separated from Rey as a form of atonement alternative to death;

and Rey obviously can’t follow him, because she can’t and won’t abandon her place among the Resistance, and they both know this, but it doesn’t stop them for wanting each other and swearing they will wait for each other forever, cue pants-dropping emotional final goodbye scene which, while offering complete closure, leaves the possibility of a future reunion entirely possible.

Why do I think it’s a valid scenario?

it’s a good compromise between endgame Reylo and Celibate!Jedi Rey;

Kylo gets to Suffer ™, as y’all hope for;

an unwritten but very common and wise rule of storytelling (whether or not you agree with it) is that a couple who can’t be together NOW is more interesting than a couple who is Just Together and chillin’ on the sofa or something, so this endgame leaves things open enough to be further explored in hypothetical tie-in canon material (comics, novels, tv adaptations, maybe even a standalone Episode IX-bis in five or six years from now, WHO THE HELL KNOWS?);

the fanfictions would SKYROCKET; 

the force bond, if it still exists at that point, would be an INCREDIBLY convenient plot device;

Reylo Sex Island

end

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Review

I finally got around to watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie: Dead Men Tell No Tales. My initial thoughts on this movie are...meh. I want to say that judging from this movie, perhaps I've just outgrown PotC. I want to say that but ultimately I know that's not the case. Because after I saw Dead Men Tell No Tales, it got me nostalgic so I popped in Curse of the Black Pearl. And I still find immense enjoyment in that movie. From the story to the characters to the adventure to the music score, I still love every second of that movie. Even Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, while admittedly not nearly as good as Curse of the Black Pearl, I still like them. They're still perfectly watchable. I clearly have not outgrown my love of those movies. So I'm forced to face the question. Why don't I love Dead Men Tell No Tales? Why is it that the only thing I can remember from Stranger Tides is that a clergymen fell in love with a mermaid? No joke. That's the only thing I remember from that movie. And what I've come to face is it's not the idea of Pirates of the Caribbean that I've outgrown. It's the writing. The writing of these new movies is what's actually failing this franchise. I feel like Disney is misinterpreting what made Pirates of the Caribbean so successful. While the funny mannerisms and antics of Jack Sparrow were definitely some of the best parts, that's not why I latched onto him as a character. He was interesting because he had all of these quirks, he was unpredictable, you never really knew what he was going to do next, and despite when things went wrong - things always had a habit of working out for him anyway. And underneath all of these things, you could still tell he was a good person despite him not wanting to be. It was that annoying itch he couldn't help but keep scratching. As much as I don't enjoy Pirates 2 and 3 nearly as much as 1, I still like them because Jack goes through this really great character arc in which he comes to terms with the part of him that is a good person. And I think that's why Pirates 4 and 5 are failing. The Jack we got in these movies is nothing more than a pale imitation of the Jack we got in Pirates 1-3. Pirates 4-5 Jack is this drunken, incompetent, kind of faking it till you make it character and whereas the antics can be funny at times, it leaves me with this hollow feeling. I'll laugh at the jokes but there's no longer that spark to his character. This character who at his core is a good person and that while he may stumble through life is still incredibly clever is nonexistent in these newer films.

And with this movie in particular, I realized why the characters of Will and Elizabeth were there and why they were so important to the central plot. I believe that a large reason for why these characters were written was to invoke a sense of seriousness to the story. Because Jack being left to his antics, one after the other, gets really boring after a while. Which is what happened to me in this movie. These movies, while they thrive on Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, they do require a certain level of tension and seriousness that Jack is not always able to deliver on. While the antics were funny, I was getting weary of them. It got to the point where I was more invested in what was going on with Henry, Carina and Barbossa. But because the antics of Jack Sparrow took so much screen time in this movie, I feel like a lot of the potential for Henry and Carina was lost. I did find them to be moderately interesting but because the movie spent so much time on the drunken antics of Jack, the character arcs of Henry and Carina were rushed and kind of lost on the wayside. Even the subplot with Barbossa and Carina felt forced because the movie just did not give enough time for it. It felt like it came completely out of left field.

Spoilers for Dead Men Tell No Tales so if you don't want to be spoiled stop reading.

The movie has this whole idea of it being Will and Elizabeth's son that's now actively seeking Jack to save his father from the curse of the Flying Dutchman. Which when I heard the plot sypnosis for this movie, I thought, "Cool." While we're going on this adventure, maybe we'll get some nice little moments about Jack reminiscing about his adventures with Will and Elizabeth. And I do enjoy Will and Elizabeth as characters. Granted they're not the most interesting or complex of characters, nor is their relationship at all groundbreaking in any way, I still liked them and I still wanted to see them succeed. I still wanted them to have their happy ending. So I was like, "Okay, Jack finding out Henry is their child should be pretty interesting. Or it could be a lot of fun for Jack to go back and teach Henry much of the same lessons he taught Will." And it gets to the reveal and nothing really happens. Jack makes a joke about Will being a eunch again and talks some more about the flirtation he and Elizabeth had and that's it. You know, he only went through a 3-movie character arc where he cared about these two people that culminated to the extent that he sacrificed his own potential happiness because he couldn't let Will die. Henry literally exists because of Jack. Henry would never have been born if Jack hadn't made that sacrifice because he cared about these two people. But instead we just get the same old jokes made. Even at the end of the movie when Will and Elizabeth are finally reunited, Jack is watching through a periscope and makes a joke about how the sight of those two kissing is revolting to him. I thought it would've been nice if he was just witnessing this, smiles to himself and then sails off into the horizon. You know, that he was happy that his friends finally got their happy ending and that he played a part in giving it to them. So much of this movie is like this where they go for the obvious joke instead of taking a couple seconds to be serious and give the film a little heart.

For me, PotC is something I enjoy not only because of the humor but the drama that enfolds as well. The reason I love Curse of the Black Pearl is that it mixes a little bit of everything. It's funny, it has adventure, it has fights, it has tension, it has heart. You care about the story being told and you care about the characters. Most of the time with Dead Men Tell No Tales, I was actively bored. Where the jokes may have merited a chuckle here and there, I found that the movie's overall humor to be much like The Hangover franchise's humor. Funny the first time but gets progressively less funny the more times you watch it. It relies on shock humor as opposed to long-lasting humor and that's what marks the difference between a movie that will fade out in a few years and a movie that will survive decades. In these newer movies, it relies too heavily on Jack being funny and not nearly enough on character and story arcs. And if there really is going to be 6th movie, I only hope they learn from this.

[skarletterambles]

Pirates of the Caribbean 5

I just got back from seeing Dead Men Tell No Tales.  I have thoughts.  Quite a few of them, actually.

I should preface this review by giving a bit of background on my involvement with this franchise.  I saw the first PotC movie in the theater seven times.  I saw Dead Man’s Chest three or four times and loved it.  I saw At World’s End exactly once, hated it with the passion of a thousand burning suns, and never saw it again.

I was--and am--a hardcore Sparrabeth shipper.  The canon status of Willabeth only explains part of my disillusionment with the franchise, however.  My biggest problem was how Elizabeth had an amazing character arc over three films, going from a prim-and-proper governor’s daughter to the ass-kicking Pirate King, pursuing her dreams in defiance of society’s expectations, outwitting both the EITC and legendary pirates, leading an armada in battle...and then had it all stripped away at the end of the third movie, where she is left literally barefoot and pregnant to wait for her man to come back.  I was--and am--livid.  I felt betrayed, both as a fan and a feminist, to see one of my favorite characters do a 180 like that.

So I have very strong feelings about these movies.  I’ve tried to get over it in the years since AWE, with limited success.  Against my better judgment I did see On Stranger Tides in the theater, and thought it was mediocre.  Since Elizabeth wasn’t involved I could just ignore its existence, for the most part.

Then the fifth movie was announced, and Will was going to be in it.  I had hoped that maybe, just maybe they could try to rectify some of the mistakes (read: character assassination) of the past.

They didn’t.  But they still came up with a pretty good movie.  Honestly, I’d even give Dead Men Tell No Tales four stars out of five.  I was riveted to the screen for most of it, and it was thrilling to hear the theme music and see the familiar faces.  It was exciting and entertaining, the special effects were impressive, and there were some good laughs.  Plus, zombie sharks!

Do I have issues with parts of it?  Yeah.  And I’m going to ramble at length.

**** MAJOR POTC: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES SPOILERS BELOW ****

Sequel creep is definitely at work, where each installment has to be bigger and zanier than the last.  The gags are broader, the willing suspension of disbelief gets even more strained, the stakes are higher, and it becomes almost like a Saturday morning cartoon version of itself.  

Thinking back to CotBP, we had to buy into the curse turning Barbossa and his crew into undead, but other than that the world operated on fairly realistic terms.  Yes, there was movie logic involved as far as coincidences, travel times, fast wound recovery, and all that, but it still felt more or less like the real world.  Stakes got higher with each sequel, until we have whatever the hell that “bank robbery” was in DMTNT.  

Don’t get me wrong; it was an enjoyable action sequence, but it felt more like a cartoon than anything that could happen under the laws of physics as they exist in our world.  That’s not inherently a bad thing, but the tone was noticeably different compared to the earlier films.

Moving on, I was glad Captain Salazar didn’t have that slurpy, blood-drooling voice through the entire film.  When I first heard that in the early trailer I was both grossed out, and concerned that he would be hard to understand.  Instead it was just that one scene, and he spoke normally the rest of the time.  He was a great villain, from his badass and scary entrance through to his delightfully ironic death.  He was genuinely threatening, which was kind of surprising considering the cartoony feel of some of the action scenes.  Javier Bardem killed it.  Thumbs up to him!

The legend surrounding the trident, and the map to find it, seemed cool until you thought about it for more than two seconds, and then it didn’t really make any sense.  Calypso is the Sea Goddess in this universe, so where did Poseidon come in?  How can his trident override curses that she put in place?  If it could be broken by a single sword blow, how did it stay intact under the sea for (presumably) thousands of years?  I mean, sure, maaaaaagic, but...eh.

And why did Will get all barnacley anyway?  Elizabeth waited for him, so that part of the curse shouldn’t have kicked in.

And what will happen to the souls of the dead without the Dutchman to ferry them to the afterlife?  

And what happened to Bootstrap Bill?  Did Will figure out how to free him and let him move on to the afterlife?

And if breaking the trident cancelled all the curses related to the sea, how did Davy Jones appear in the after-credits scene?  (Assuming it was him.  The gait, crab claw, barnacles, tentacley silhouette and the music box theme all pointed to it being him, anyway.)  I could almost buy him coming back to life when the curse was broken, but as a normal human again, not ol’ squidface.  The mythology makes no damn sense at all!

This review is coming across pretty negative so far, but I really did enjoy the movie.  I thought it was much better than OST, and felt like a return to the original vibe of the series.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching (almost) every minute of it, and I left the theater grinning and humming the theme music.  As a summer popcorn movie, it’s pretty great.  It’s just when the adrenaline wears off and I start thinking and analyzing that I see the issues.  And, like I said, I have a long history with this franchise, so overthinking it is what I do.

There were definitely some surprises, although I saw a couple of the twists coming.  The instant I realized Carina was Hector’s daughter, I was like, “Well, he’s going to die saving her somehow.”  And I was right.  It was sad (and that damn monkey gave me more feels than any creepy little primate has a right to), but at the same time I’m delighted at how his character grew into so, so much more than he was originally planned to be.  He was supposed to be a one-shot villain in CotBP, but Geoffrey Rush is so damn awesome, and he and Johnny Depp brainstormed a history between their characters, decided his first name was Hector, and one thing led to another and here we are, genuinely mourning him in the fifth movie.  It was a worthy sendoff for a memorable character.

One of the themes that got raised over and over in the earlier movies was the idea that it’s possible to be a pirate and a good man.  Bootstrap Bill Turner was.  Jack is.  Was Hector Barbossa a good man?  I don’t know if I’d go that far, but he wasn’t 100% evil, either.  And he was a lot of fun to watch.

Henry definitely reminded me of Will.  He had the same wide-eyed earnestness about him, as well as the tendency to charge into danger because it’s the Right Thing To Do without thinking through the full plan first.  Elizabeth’s legacy is a bit harder to see, except in the first two scenes.  Keeping a secret stash of pirate memorabilia and legends?  Totally Lizzie.  Back-talking authority figures?  Yep, Lizzie’s genes are in there.  And later, in the jail, taking Jack’s ego down a peg by scoffing at his legendary reputation in comparison to the reality of a scruffy, rum-soaked pirate?  Also from the Swann side of the family.  So I think they did a pretty good job of making Henry his parents’ son. 

I just wish we had more information on how he was raised, and where.  I always imagined him scampering around Shipwreck Cove and up the rigging of Elizabeth’s ship(s), the mischievous pirate prince.  Based on the house Elizabeth is living in at the end, and the fact that he was enlisted in the royal navy, I don’t see that happening in canon now.

When Carina was introduced I had a couple thoughts:

1.  “I wonder if she’s related to any existing characters...  No, don’t be silly.  This isn’t a fanfic.  They’re trying to move the franchise forward into the next generation.”  (Or not.) 2.  I don’t want to like her because no one can ever replace Elizabeth Freaking Swann the Pirate King as the best female character in these movies.  And that’s still true, but she definitely grew on me.  She had a fairly good balance of “smart woman who can take care of herself and doesn’t need a man to complete her story” and “too perfect to be likable or believable.”  I could have done with a costume that didn’t draw quite so much attention to her heaving bosom, but I suppose there’s some vaguely historical style going on.

Honestly, there’s a reason her backstory could have been lifted from a story on Fanfiction.net circa 2004:  those kinds of long-lost relative reveals can be a hell of a lot of fun.  Especially when you have Jack there to tease “daddy” Hector mercilessly.

I’m glad they didn’t have her be Jack’s daughter, though.  That thought crossed my mind, too, and that would have been...not good.

Pity Hector never got to introduce himself to Elizabeth and Will as the father of their potential daughter-in-law.  Awwwwwkward!  Bwahahaha!

Speaking of the dreaded Willabeth...  Jack saw them smooching in his spyglass, made a face, and announced that it was a revolting sight.  Same, Jack.  Same.

Therein lies my biggest complaint about the movie, and, as I mentioned above, it’s just the latest sprout on a tree of dislike that I’ve been nursing since the ending of At World’s End was leaked.  How in the seven hells they thought it was an appropriate, satisfying, logical plot development for Elizabeth Freaking Swann the Pirate King to end up standing around passively on a beach in a frilly dress and a fucking corset, waiting for the menfolk to do the important stuff, I will never, ever understand.  It’s a slap in the face of everything her character arc was over the first three movies.

“Sure, little girls, you can have adventures and play pirate for awhile if you want to, but in the end you still have to get married, grow up, conform to society’s beauty standards, put aside those dreams, and take care of your husband and children.”  Fuck that with a rusty garden trowel.

And here, when they had the chance to redeem that travesty, when they could have showed a glimpse of her at the helm of her own flagship, or holding court with the other Pirate Lords, or just simply wearing pirate-type clothes and carrying a sword, for the love of all things holy, did they do any of those things?  Oh, no.  No, they doubled down and had her be so passive that she didn’t even get to speak.  (Doesn’t that mean they don’t have to pay Knightley as much?)  Literally all she’s there for is to be a reward for Will upon his homecoming, and then sleep with him--on land in a fancy house that could have been in Port Royal, for all we know.  Any journey her character had is moot.  She’s back to square one, and it makes me want to throw things.

Oops, I was going to keep that rant short, and failed.  Oh well, it’s a sore spot, obviously.  I have never felt so betrayed by a franchise as I did when they did that to Elizabeth in AWE, and it still stings after all these years.

My ire didn’t even stem from my shipping preferences, although that certainly was salt in the wound.  If they couldn’t give us a series of movies with Jack and Lizzie, the best pirates in the world, having amazing adventures while flirting like they did in DMC, at least they could have given us a sort of open ending, where she, Will and Jack all sail in their separate directions, knowing that their paths would cross in the future in any number of entertaining ways.  I’m never sure if I should blame the writers, the studio, or the actors, or all of the above, but I would have bought, like, ALL THE TICKETS to see those movies.

But, alas, that’s not what we got.  We got OST and DMTNT instead.  OST was quite forgettable, but DMTNT packed a pretty good punch and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.  I won’t say it totally redeemed the franchise for me, but it’s got its head above water for the first time since DMC, so that’s progress.

Should you see it?  Yeah, I think so.  If you enjoyed the precious PotC movies, or just like pirate movies in general, it’s a fun couple hours.  Just don’t think too hard about it afterward (like I did.)