#and so should paragraph breaks!

[arsenicflame]

It's a time-honoured tradition- every time Sam comes across Izzy (and Ed) in their travels, he asks Izzy to marry him. And every time, Izzy turns him down.

At this point, Sam is asking more for the sake of it than any belief Izzy will ever say yes, a remnant of childhood dedication touched with 30 years of heartbreak and regret- though even now, a small part of him still holds out hope. Sam's promises have only got more extravagant over the years, from a job as his first mate, to a captaincy, a fleet at his command, a whole fucking island if that's what Izzy wants- but he knows it isn't though, not really. If Izzy was ever going to agree to marry him, to leave his life and go with Sam, it wouldn't be for anything Sam could offer him. Izzy never did care for flashy shows of wealth, for a ship or to be captain. The only thing that ever mattered to him was loyalty given, and loyalty shown in return. 

It all comes to a head after Stede left and came back, after Izzy lost a toe, lost his leg. Sam hasn't seen him since before things with Ed started to really slide off the rails, before stress permanently set into the lines of Izzy’s face. So, when he sees a dishevelled man with a hoof for a leg in a no-name port, he doesn't even consider the idea that he might know him. It's only when he turns towards him, and Sam catches a glance at those oh too familiar tattoos, he realises this is Izzy, his Izzy, that stands before him.

Knowing Izzy's discomfort with pity, he doesn't treat him any differently than he would in years gone by, positioning himself in Izzy's line of sight before approaching and sweeping him up into a bone crushing hug. 

��Israel-goddamn-Hands!” he exclaims, as Izzy grumbles back a begrudging “Samuel-fucking-Bellamy”, a tradition almost as old as their friendship itself. Izzy might not hug him back, but he can’t keep the corner of his mouth from twitching, just for a second.

(If Sam holds Izzy a little tighter and a little longer than usual, well. That's his business)

By the time Sam lets go, most of the crew has appeared in the town square, drawn in by the commotion. They may have given Izzy his leg and welcomed him as one of them, but still there’s an underlying tension, with nobody quite ready to set aside everything that happened before the Kraken. Seeing him cosying up to an unknown man sets everyone on edge, unsure whether to come to their first mate’s aid, or to assume that they've been betrayed once again.

When Ed sees that the yelling was Sam, his hand goes tense where it's held in Stede's. He knows the routine, has seen it more times than he can count, but as he watches them part he realises that this is the first time in a long time he's unsure of what Izzy's response will be.

Knowing that something’s different, knowing that Izzy's feeling vulnerable already, Sam doesn't go for the same flashy proposal he’s been giving for years. He doesn't promise Izzy the world, he doesn't cause a scene (or, any more of a scene than he already has, anyway). He looks at the fractured man in front of him, takes his face in his hands, and says the exact same thing to him he said when they were little more than boys. “Israel, I have to ask you. I know what you'll say, but I have to try. Come with me. Marry me and sail away with me. I'll keep you safe”

And Izzy… hesitates. He glances over at Ed, at Stede, and says to Sam “...We’re staying in port for a week. Ask me again then”

That's the moment Sam knows there is something deeply, horribly, wrong. He's not just looking at an Izzy who got seriously injured in a fight and is struggling to cope, this is something so much bigger than that- and that Ed has something to do with it. Izzy wouldn't even be considering leaving if he didn't. Whether it was negligence or something more sinister, Sam doesn't yet know, but he intends to find out.

[onlyjaeyun]

i'm gonna log off for a while because i'm really mentally drained from constantly hearing how unhappy and disappointed some of you guys were with both SB and CH'snendings and developments.

i know some of you guys come from a good place and mean no harm but imagine working on something for so long and then you yourself are already sad about how things ended but you wanna use it as a way to do better next time but people constantly tell you how you should do better next time and its always "i was so excited but it never came" and "i wished things would have gone this way" after you spent days crying out of frustration because your brain didn't corporate.

people who have never written (one shots or series doesnt matter) don't know the burden of leaving unfinished works up there. i keep telling you guys that i tried so hard to somehow give you guys an ending because if i hadn't you guys would have never received ANY ending so i tried to make the best of it.

i dont take the hate to heart anymore bc i couldnt care less and i know as a writer i should be open to criticism but i'm a little tired of my work being constantly nitpicked when i do this for fun.

i know updating daily was what burnt me out pls stop telling me that i obviously overestimated myself i fucking know.

whatever, it actually doesn't matter anymore because CH is over and i dont think i'll ever write smaus that long ever again bc the criticism is so not worth the mental effort and stress.

i do this for FUN. you know how artists doodle in their notebooks, this is what this blog is to me. i make mistakes, i over/underestimate things and myself bc this is life. it's just..not that deep for y'all to constantly camp in my inbox and make me feel bad about it when i already accepted it.

i'm gonna do some self reflection and think about it all so take care babies 🤍

[n7punk]

maybe i shouldn't outline at 1:19am

[milk-ducts]

I'm so glad to have encountered a fellow Cecil stan. I freaking love coming up with headcanons for Cecil, platonic or romantic, because he's such an interesting character. For real though feel free to dump any Cecil headcanons (platonic or romantic) on me anytime.

AWAAAA!! YES HAII OTHER CECIL AFICIONADO !!! im so glad theres more of us sprouting out here. my wife is so underappreciated, you have no idea how much he means to me. i'd love to req n swap headcanons anytime !! I have so many thoughts on that morally ambiguous gilf.

[messy, disorganized surface level autism rambling ahead. this will be just random scenes and characteristics i like of him]

BUT YES .. cecil's character is just so interesting to analyze. he does unethical, necessary things. But he doesn't subscribe to idealistic notions of "the greater good" or justifying his actions to make himself sleep better at night. He knows the harsh reality that someone has to make the difficult decisions, no matter how unethical. The psychological toll it takes to calculate how many civilian lives can be spared, and how many are inevitably lost in order to achieve the optimal outcome. He doesn't celebrate after victories like the other heroes do. After the dust settles, his mind is already racing - calculating, strategizing how to prevent future catastrophes. How to minimize casualties next time.

his methods are...questionable,, as ive said,, but there's a hint of nobility to it that just makes you respect him, A SHADY GOVERNMENT CHAR that does the dirty work and takes in all the heat for it so no one else has to? SIGN ME TF UP! i love exploring his character and all the little glimpses of humanity we get to see from him,, especially with debbie, SO SOFT FOR HER, there's so much depth there. that old fuck would MOVE mountains for her if he could,, TRUST. EVEN though he doesnt deserve her .. <<

LETS CONTINUE TO CIRCLE BACK TO S1 with his confrontation w Nolan in the desert, the way he entrusted his survival to the skills of his team operating that teleporter watch (I'm aware he can control it himself, I think this was just my interpretation of it since the employees seemed directly involved here). The margin for error was nonexistent. One miscalculation, one millisecond too slow, and Cecil would have been reduced to a red smear across miles of sand. MY WIFE HAS BALLS ON HIM. (also love walton goggins breathy lil giggles here .. hwaghffhh)

All this, All the whilst Nolan could have ended him with a casual backhand, as easily as swatting a fly. And for what? For humanity's (mostly his) right to know the truth. For Debbie's right to understand what she had truly married because Cecil respects her that fucking much for her to have a part in all of this, and what fate may lay in store for her son.

AND what I particularly liked about that scene is that unlike most SHADY GOV CHARS ™.. Cecil isn't afraid to regularly place himself in life-threatening situations, and for that im just.. FKING obsessed. finally. a hyper competent gov char that gets shit done and occasionally by his own hands instead of always puppeteering in the shadows. Love u .. love u honey snooch, please stop putting yourself in danger for your crazy alien side-hoes .

but ahem ... back to s2.. and some flaws of his that i'm not afraid to point out. the way he's been treating mark is killing me. manipulating my son by comparing him to his dad then keeping him on lock by saying he's not like him??? The breadcrumming definitely didn't work out at all, cuz Mark is too damn stubborn to continue to be swindled by fear tactics he does not give a shit for anymore (homegirl DEBBIE taught him better) hes not gonna listen to a cranky skullet-having side bitch of nolans who clearly has been tryna manipulate him since s1. i HATED how he went "ur broke tyrannical bitch father felt the same way" in the last minute when mark tried to leave earth and yet i still lobve ceci cause ough,,.. my bastard wife knew something was probably up.

Him wanting to keep a short leash on MARKY could be summed up after all that has happened in s1. i'm not going to justify his scummy manipulations or paranoia,, especially after all the shit mark has done and endured to prove himself over and over again that he's not like his father BUT its somewhat understandable for cecil 2 be wary if you look from it in his perspective.

moving on from that, lets dive back into ep 2 ..

Debbie was semi-right in her deduction in s2 ep2, that this is what it's really all about for Cecil - being in control. Not of any situation, but of Mark. To ensure history does not repeat itself in the form of Mark becoming another Nolan. imo He likely doesn’t actually view Mark as his father, Not saying the possibility of it being a part of Cecil's subconsciousness is out of the equation but the way I see it? He was just exploiting that one weakness, that one insecurity Mark has - the fear of becoming like Nolan. And it’s a fear Cecil seemed to prey upon to keep Mark under his thumb and in the fucking GAME.

awaaaa :3 !!!! psychologically damaging teens by comparing them to their abhorrently shitty fathers !! FUCK YOJ STEDMAN (love you snookums..)

,,,,I'd also like to think in my warped deluded perception (aka hcs) that he sees Debbie in Mark, so he can't help but care for the kid too. IVE ALWAYS seen a lot of comparisons between Mark and his dad, plus the whole motif of this new season hasn't helped it allay. But Debbie and Mark share so many similar characteristics as well and i wish that was talked a bit more often &lt; 3 (I will go in depth about it at a later post.)

n umm like ...,,, bck to cici in gen. I guess the safety of earth is one of Cecil's redeeming qualities along with his compassion for side characters like Debbie. His pragmatism and utilitarianism define him. He lacks normal morals but has his own code that cultivates to his character. this ramble could not do justice to him ughfglg..,, what a compelling jezebel.. how can u captivate me so !!

My inbox is always open to discuss this multi-faceted rat man. here's to more cecil content in s2..,... hopefully with more of his dynamic with Debbie because I LIVE for that shit. though its unlikely their interactions could range to anything positive now since they may be hinting to cecil becoming an antagonist and/or taking extreme measures w/ mark. soo.. i dont think debbie's scolding was enough for that slut 2 take in ..

in the mean time i'll be catching up on the comics/re-reading them, look up more of his backstory and hopefully create 10 novels worth of google docs of analysis' of his character < 3 cuz .. he means .. that much 2 me.. and i want to prod at every crevice n brain matter he has inside that megamind head of his .

((hwaghhhhhh << hoping that one day the discord moots ive been keeping in my basement and most invincible fans fall victim to cecil stedman propoganda.. no one should be immune to my girlboss and his awful skullet.))

[the-somwthing]

Welcome to my little meta analysis essay called

Why do we misremember Flower Husbands as being “nicer” than it was?

Disclaimer: I’m not here to talk about whether or not FH is “toxic” or anything like that. It’s just a fact that many old fans rewatching FH POV and new fans who are watching it for the first time after seeing fan content tend to be surprised at how they actually behaved in the series compared to how everyone remembered them being back in the day. This will NOT go over whether or not I think FH is unhealthy or whatever and instead just discuss why I believe this phenomenon has happened.

So, if I try to make this a fancy well written essay, I’ll be here all day, so I��ll just get to the point. 3rd Life came out during the DSMP era of mcyt. MCRP has been around for ages, but the DSMP style of RP (which I’ll be calling “smp rp”) was pretty much popularized by DSMP, mostly towards the end of 2020. For reference, 3rd Life started early 2021, so there’s about a half a year between these two events, and DSMP kept going for years so 3rd Life was absolutely happening during the golden era of DSMP.

But what does DSMP have to do with this? Well, it sort of created this idea of “lore” and only specific things being “canon”. You can make fun of me for the way I worded that, but you know what I mean, DSMP was weird about that stuff. I don’t really blame them as it was kind of a new style of RP they accidentally spawned, but still, it was a confusing time for SMPs.

3rd Life was actually less like DSMP and more like the modern SMP RPs, where there’s no (known, lol) scripted events and the fandom itself deciphers what is or isn’t “canon” rather than it being told to them, with mostly everything being considered canon. HOWEVER, I do believe that DSMP’s style did still affect the fandom, specifically with the topic of this essay, Flower Husbands.

But why would it only really affect Flower Husbands? Now we get into a rough topic: shipping discourse. Back in those days, shipping in the mcyt fandom was heavily frowned upon. Moreso than it is today (I know it’s still around, but it was a lot worse the earlier we go lol). I’ve even seen old relics of ppl saying flower husbands should only be portrayed as platonic cuz it’s wrong to ship them, despite their team name literally being husbands. But more importantly, for A LOT of people, flower husbands was the One Ship people felt “allowed” to ship, BECAUSE it was canon. So they would allow FH and shun every other ship.

My point isn’t actually that, with it being the only “acceptable” ship everyone tried to make it more wholesome, though I suppose that could be a contributor. But my ACTUAL point is where all the things I laid out finally close in on each other:

Ships were a Dangerous territory in mcyt fandom, and ships being “canon” was something a lot of people weren’t prepared to deal with. People don’t want to get too close to RPF territory, but back in the day their ideas of c! vs cc! wasn’t as great, so they default to the DSMP Rule of “if it’s stated to be roleplay, then it’s canon to the characters, if not, it’s noncanon and just the CCs hanging out”.

You see where I’m going with this? When trying to follow this rule for a character relationship where they don’t explicitly state what is or isn’t RP, they hear “we’re married” and instantly mark that as canon to the characters since it clearly isn’t true to the CCs, and tend to block out anything else, otherwise you’re risking it not actually being true to the characters. Especially when it’s things like Scott saying something mean about Jimmy; that directly contradicts the “these characters are in love” thing, so it must not be canon, right?

But wouldn’t people still remember that these things happened, or did they actually straight up not process any of it? My answer to that is: of course everyone was paying attention, but with the context that it’s the CCs playing a video game, all of the teasing and other behavior seems WAY less serious. It just looks like average friends playing a hunger games smp together. And as I explained earlier, the fandom was ONLY processing this as a CC thing, so Scott’s treatment of Jimmy never stood out because that’s just how it is playing games.

Back to DSMP, I’m not active in that fandom anymore but I’ll see snippets sometimes, and I’ve seen the claim that beeduo was actually boring in canon and the fandom was the one that made it interesting. I feel like this is exactly what happened with FH. Nobody was actually expecting anyone to go hard into romantic roleplay, so the fans just take whichever pair says they’re getting married and fill in the blanks themselves. And that was normal back then, it wasn’t fans making stuff up for no reason, it was kind of expected of us.

So yeah, I personally believe that this whole confusion about FH is a result of its time. Whether you want to finally look at the actual substance of the relationship rather than following weird rules about what is or isn’t “canon”, or you believe that since FH was from a time where romantic RP was confusing and weird it would make the most sense to take into account the time period it came from and ignore the less appealing bits in favor of the fanon, I don’t really care honestly. But man isn’t this an interesting situation.

[biggaybunny]

To me, in The Stanley Parable (Ultra Deluxe Edition), the bucket feels like the ultimate joke on the player. Everyone that I've seen play the game -- which is a statistically small number, but more than you probably think -- loves the bucket and immediately starts picking it up in every run once it's available. Which is, of course, what the game wants you to do. But that's the point; people who are playing the game for the first time, people who are coming back for the UD update, people who are aware of narrative tropes and what The Stanley Parable is about, and people who have never meta narrative they cottoned on to: they all go along with the bucket. The game tells you, over and over, what an idiot you are for loving the bucket, which of course makes everyone dig their heels in all the more. And I think that's the intended effect, of course. I can hear the game going "Not so contrarian now, are you?" The game has tricked you in to carrying around an ordinary bucket you are convinced is special, and it has done so without coercion. When first starting the game and coming to the two doors (you know the one), there's actually a decent split on players who choose immediately to balk at the narrator's instructions and those who choose to see where this is going. But if we relabel the doors "pick up the bucket" and "don't pick up the bucket", the game has shown that it can get you to walk through whichever door it wants, and convince you that it was your idea all along. Which could be a metaphor for a lot of things, but I mostly like to think of it as the game getting back at everyone who thought they were so clever for seeing through the "tricks" of the original.

[carlos-tk]

sometimes i can’t believe i was posting wips every single wednesday and sunday for literal months like who even was that person

[howdidigetbacktowritingwhat]

(CRAWLING OUT OF THE DEPTHS OF HELL) FOUR

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[deadpanwalking]

How to be less online? I hate the person I feel myself becoming when I stay too long on social media. Serious and earnest enquire because it’s been hard for me to quit.

I've said this before but Nathan Fielder had the right idea with the hot dog costume motivational gambit. Make some long-term volunteer commitments that you can't reneg on without looking and feeling like a complete asshole—you'll work alongside people in your community who share a common goal, which generally requires prioritizing conflict resolution over parasocial and interpersonal cat burning. Moreover, this will fulfill the two most neglected quotas of them all: low-stakes human interaction and doing something offline that—in some way—alleviates the suffering of other human beings. It might take a little time to set up, but once you commit to the bit, you'll find yourself logging on, scrolling down, saying “wow, I literally don't respect any of you”, and logging off.

[gregoftom]

pretty sure i’ve seen romance movies with scenes like this

[mer-se]

please pick friends u can argue or have misunderstandings with and actually communicate with immediately after like, it’s so fucking important

[springcatalyst]

i try to keep my narration within the realms of the narrator so like. my writing style changes slightly depending on who is narrating. i only give u information they have but i also only give u thoughts that they reasonably think like. however i am a liar because sometimes i break this rule to write neat prose

[mashmouths]

i really am not beating the adhd allegations my tabs currently look like this

[gibbearish]

so like i want to talk more abt what suicidal means but the problem is "suicidal ideation presents in two general forms, active and passive. the thing most people think of as suicidal is the active version, where the person *actively* desires to be dead and/or is making a plan to get there. the passive form however gets almost no attention in media so many people experiencing it are unaware they are even depressed, much less passively suicidal. some examples: not wanting to experience death but feeling like you wouldn't mind if you didn't wake up tomorrow or just stopped existing; feeling deeply exhausted with just the entire concept of being alive; even feeling like you want to run away, change your name, and start a whole new life; none of these look like suicidal ideation to most people because they don't involve actively doing anything to get from point a to point b, especially the more abstract ones like the start a new life thing - but remember that in order to truly start a whole new life, you have to destroy your current one. it's not suicidal as in wanting to actually DIE die, it's just. wanting something close enough to scratch the itch. but just because you haven't booked the ticket doesn't mean you don't still revisit the 'vacation activities at point b' tab occasionally to daydream, yknow?" is i think very informative and specific, but its also quite long and run on-y so people are v likely to tap out like a third of the way through it, whereas "suicidal doesnt necessarily mean wanting to die" is way shorter and therefore catchier, but is also the kind of nonspecific phrasing that gets you a thousand angry anons about how you said all suicidal people are just pretending they actually want to die or some dumb shit. so it's a fun line to toe

[navii-blaze]

Am I just aroace or is it because the writing is trash