#a whole ass lady

[canisalbus]

*carefully picks you up and peeks into your conch snail shell*

Ehm... Sorry to bother, but... Could we, maybe, possibly... see Vasco's wife and her lover pictured by your hand? Sorry again, thank you for listening. Take care.

*delicately lays you back into the water to prevent any stress or dehydration*

Unfortunately I don't have her lover figured out yet, but I think Ludovica looks something like this:

[chickensauras]

I think Laois and MY personal favorite creature, The Simurgh, would get along :]

[stbot]

Yeah, well... maybe I’m done being a Pink Lady.

[canarydraws]

Can’t believe I forgot to post the finished mermaid here 🙃 I had this finished right at the start of mermay i swear.

[thefatesofspring]

Credits to: creativelbd on TikTok

Remember when I said a little while back that I can’t believe people think that Eris was the same age if not slightly younger than Mor when in reality he was no older than 10-11yrs old?…well Sam has done an amazing breakdown of how old Eris was actually likely to be & guess what…he’s younger than even I stated…

Please watch it & understand that realistically it’s not possible for Eris to have been in his teens or Mor’s age.

[143-rememberthosedays]

this is the first time in this whole show someone has reacted in a sane way to this relationship

[tarnussy]

Titty armor fancam

[oscarp81astri]

…I’m speechless

[sarucane]

Ed Teach's Stories

From practically the moment we meet him, Ed's identity is unstable. We know who is he (Blackbeard) from context, from the story told by the the room around him, by Izzy and the flag his crew. But the thing is, Ed doesn't fit the story of the Mad Devil Blackbeard. Two of his first few words are "good" and "love" for crying out loud. He's called "Blackbeard," but his beard is grey.

This instability exists because Ed himself isn't sure what story he's telling--or wants to tell. "I shouldn't be bored, I'm fucking Blackbeard!" All through his early episodes Ed is in increasingly desperate tension with his own identity. He's trying to tell stories within stories, wanting all the stories to be true at the same time, yet aware of the reality that the world is constantly trying to wipe one or another of the stories away. And not really trusting that he can tell the whole story of who he is.

In the first season of OFMD, Stede wears a different outfit every episode. Yet Stede remains the same: despite his internal tensions (almost despite himself) there's a stability to his identity. But all through both seasons of OFMD, Ed putting on a new outfit means he's trying to tell a completely different story about himself.

And underneath this cacophony, there's Ed. And Ed is himself a chorus of stories, a living contradiction. A patricidal murderer who was protecting his mother; a paragon of masculinity who longs for softness and fluidity; a man renowned for violence and madness who has in fact carefully cultivated that reputation and is extremely careful with his violence; a killer who doesn't kill, yet who does kill all the time just at a bit of a remove; a half a dozen names and personas and yet always Ed; unloveable, yet deeply loved.

At the beginning of the show, Ed isn't actually good at telling his own story. He's good at listening to other people's stories, and conforming himself to them often without conscious effort. But when he tries to really tell his own story--asking Stede to run off to China, singing his break-up song song, going to become a fisherman--he fails. We don't understand in the first season why his judgement clouds, why he becomes weak when he tries to tell his story. But in the second season after spending half an episode in Ed's mind, a painful truth is undeniable: Ed, like Stede, doesn't think he's worthy of telling his own story.

So instead of telling his own story, Ed let other people tell his story. In the first season, Ed built off what Izzy told him he had to be. But he couldn't lose himself in Blackbeard, no matter how hard he tried. So in the second season, when Ed couldn't face living with his contradictions anymore, he wrote an ending worthy of Blackbeard.

All this, because Ed thinks he can only be "himself" by telling one, single story about himself. By denying his contradictions, rather than embracing them. Splitting himself in two to tell himself a story, rather than telling the story himself.

What Ed doesn't believe or trust is this: For Ed to really be himself, he has to be impossible. Two contradictory things, at the same time.

The second season of OFMD is about learning to embrace all these contradictions. In each episode of OFMD, character look at the same object or situation (a wanted poster, a unicorn, a velvety suit, a relationship, a past trauma) and they tell two completely different stories about it. Sometimes one of those stories turns out to be wrong, but more often than not both are true, and something else--something beautiful-- is born from the place where those contradictions meet. And the characters, Ed most of all, learn to accept and balance this dissonance.

Thematically speaking, I'd argue that's why the second season of OFMD is more fantastical than the first: fantasies are contradictions, real and not-real at the same time. And isn't that what transformation is, in the end? What you are and what you are not, meeting and becoming "you"?

Transformation isn't all good. At first, Ed's fantastic stories hide his pain or invoke despair

But later, the fantasies make their way into reality. The impossible begins to shape reality--and opens a way for hope.

In the last episode of S2, Ed emerges from the waves as the kraken--but there's 3 musical tracks playing, three themes: the kraken, Ed, and Blackbeard. Then he reads a love letter, and has a deeply romantic moment with his boyfriend. He puts on a new outfit to escape the British, yet his personality doesn't change at all. When Izzy first apologizes to him, Ed says "I'm the one who should be apologizing," but then Izzy changes his entire understanding of their relationship. Becomes the first family figure to offer Ed permission to be himself.

Contradictions galore, and yet Ed is still Ed. Both who he was formed into by other people (his father, Izzy, Pop Pop) and yet who he is.

In the final scenes, Ed begins to finally accept the tensions of his life. He tells Zheng that yes, he wants to kill Richie--but he doesn't go on a revenge quest. And while before his forays into being someone else meant changing his name, his clothes and mannerisms, his whole story, he doesn't act like that at all in the last scene of the ep.

And Ed's been able to do all this, to come this far, because of Stede. Stede, who Ed was drawn to because he was a "fancy man who leads a brigade of imbeciles," yet had won a fight with Izzy. Stede, who looked at Ed at his lowest moment, after Ed had admitted that the entire basis of their friendship had been in bad faith, and said, "I'm your friend." Stede who, even knowing Ed wouldn't want to hear from him, poured his heart into letters about how their bond was unbreakable.

Stede is everything he is, all at the same time. And when Ed was drowning in his own contradictions, (a rope tied around him that he could not undo and yet had put on himself) trapped somewhere "inevitable, yet impossible," Stede appeared as a fantastic, beautiful creature and brought him home.

Stede lets Ed be everything he is, and sees it all as true and worthy of love. Even when Ed fucks up, it's all right.

And sometimes, telling two different stories about something doesn't lead to a fragmented self, doesn't drive people apart.

Sometimes, it means understanding. Means acceptance, safety, connection.

From discordance (contradiction), harmony. A gentleman can be a pirate. A man can be a bird, or a unicorn. Izzy can have been one of the good ones and a fucking nightmare. And Ed can tell all his stories, they can all be true--and he can still be Ed.

[velvet-red-void]

Did you know that cranes can symbolize good luck?

[trappedinafantasy37]

Gods, Agatha is such a diabolical cunt. Never did I think I'd ever love someone more than Wanda, but she's now my new favorite bitch of the MCU. Kathryn Hahn really knocked it out of the park with this one! Her line delivery is just impeccable, and she is marvelous at playing out the bloodthirsty sociopath that you can't help but sympathize with. Like, she knows what she's about and she's not ashamed of it.

I'mma talk about Agatha All Along real quick cause it's late at night and I just finished the show in a sleepy haze and I need to get all these thoughts out while I battle another insomnia episode. So SPOILERS!

I was shooketh to find out that the witches road never even existed and was never real. The original ballad was based on a song her and her son made up while traveling, and it twisted into the ballad of the Witches Road over time. But other young witches believed the ballad to be a real tale, so they came to Agatha and wanted her to guide them down the road. So, she turned the ballad into a bait to lure other witches into a trap and steal their powers. This is how Agatha became a legend as the "only known survivor of the Witches Road". Of course she's the only survivor of the road! She made it the fuck up and then murdered everyone!

Agatha was bitching to Rio about her tormenting her the entire time and making her life a living hell. I was so confused on why Agatha would say this or why Rio would be sticking so closely to Agatha this entire time since her son's death. But that's because Rio has been following Agatha for centuries down the "Witches Road" because Agatha was dropping bodies left and right. And Agatha hated this because she sees Rio as responsible for taking her son, but Rio was just doing her job. Hells, Rio even did Agatha a massive favor by allowing Nicholas to live at all and giving Agatha at least some time with her son. And the little moment Agatha and Rio have where Rio says "as long as I get my bodies" is because there has always been bodies during the "Witches Road" and it is what Rio is expecting of Agatha. Rio only gets directly involved with this one because Billy "broke the rules" and cheated death and she is here to collect him specifically.

It's of no wonder why Agatha seems so erratic and winging it during all of the trials because there has never been trials. The Witches Road has never been real. She gets so frustrated at the beginning trial and yells at the witches to blast her because that is how it has always played out, until it didn't and the road actually revealed itself. She clocked Billy really early on because she realized that he used his mother's powers, induced unnecessary suffering, and killed people to get what he wanted (even if he didn't know that was what he was doing).

The Witches Road only became real because Billy made it real using his reality bending powers. He made the same mistake Wanda did and conjured it into existence because he wanted it to be real so bad. He wanted answers and to find out how to get Tommy back. That is what he expected at the end of the road and it's what he got. And like Wanda, Agatha helped him figure out how to get Tommy and get him what he has wanted. And Billy unintentionally got 3 people killed in the process. But he also helped Jen unbind herself and get her powers back.

And also, Lady Death is now in the MCU!!!! She's literally one of the most, if not the most powerful entity in the entire Marvel creation. She cannot die, cannot be killed, and cannot be injured. And Aubrey Plaza is just *chef's kiss*. She managed to leave such a massive impact by doing very little. I could not have imagined any one better and I'm actually surprised it took so long for her to make her way into the MCU. I would be severely disappointed if this was the last time we ever saw Aubrey Plaza as Lady Death. I know we're gonna see Billy, hopefully we see Tommy, but I need Rio Vidal.

I initially thought Disney was gonna pull the rug out from us and this show was just gonna be another queerbait. But the evil lesbian witches actually kissed, even if it was the kiss of death.

[butchrindou]

i don’t feel like drawing BUT HELLO.

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

And that's why she's a Queen

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

Can we all pour one out for one of the most important unnamed characters of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and that's Dr. Seward's housekeeper. That lady must have had no idea what the fuck was happening and she still had to feed everyone.

[sistersofsilver]

scylla take mel out to dinner first my god

[imthursdaysyme]

stali ft. anger issues