#fleet meta

[fleet-off]

I will never be normal about this scene taking place after the end credits.

Because here we are, literally after the end of the story. And here is the comedic sidekick occasional-mentor, having survived his self-sacrifice for the hero at the end of Act II, having been torn open and loved in the dark, having emerged to realize that he can no longer be a blank moldable surface in his own life.

And here is the villain, having lost too early, having been cradled and seen and afforded grace, having emerged to realize that he cannot be the heartless evil he was made to be, having fought and failed and lived rather than died at the victors' hands.

After the story has been told, Pete is not a background character in service to someone else’s story. He is, in this place, the most important person.

After the curtain falls, Vegas is not a villain—and he is not lost, is not abandoned as comeuppance for his terrible flaws. He is a young man thoroughly, despicably, mutually in love.

Because after the finale has played out, after all the chess pieces have been tidied away until the next game, after the credits roll—the narrative roles Vegas and Pete were prescribed lose their sway. And they hold each other in the aftermath.

[mashandmartinis]

Adding on to my GFA thoughts: it reframes the entire show. Once you see it actually ending, once it's confirmed they actually do leave, that's it. You look back at a scene from 6 seasons earlier and while two characters are holding each other, you inevitably see their goodbye hug in the background. They're all they have in that moment but they'll leave and go their own way soon enough. You've known it all along, but now you've seen it too and that makes such a difference.

[ledgends-of-the-stars]

Alright! Lore Time!!! Let me introduce you properly to Captain Barnabus Bulkar! He was the Caretaker of the young Knights of the Star Table, being a Fatherly figure to them especially to the young Prince of Stars when his Parents met their untimely demise. Captain Bulkar would give the children advice and teach them the ways of Chivalry and Honor as well as what teas suit any mood!

Captain Bulkar has experienced so much, from watching the boys grow into fine young men, to the Fall of the GSA, to raising another young one of his own dealt with a bad hand. He misses those young Knights, unsure where in the Galaxy they are now. He did send for a search party, but nothing came of it. To honor their legacy, he has been surveilling the Galaxy for the many crimials that plague it! Tracking down Space Pirates, eradicating any Demon Beasts that may still be lurking after the war, yet despite the pain of grief and regret, he remained strong in his heart.

Even more so, he is motivated to raise his young new star. Determined to stay by her side and help her when she needs it.

I will share more about Captain Bulkar and his Little Star as well as his Crew, the Sol Fleet, once I get their refs and doodles done! ^^

But yee, L.O.T.S Lore starts now! Yaaaay

[moongothic]

I don't even know how to start this post, I've been just thinking about this concept of like... "Role Redundancy" in One Piece, regarding the OG Shichibukai. A lot of it does come from people just speculating about Crocodile's past and future role in the story, and how often I do kind of feel like certain suggestions/ideas feel somewhat too redundant, as the idea may have already been done with another one of the Warlords if not multiple. (An example of this could be the "former slave" theory, because we already have two former slaves amongst the OG Shichibukai; the fact that Crocodile would then be the THIRD one makes me less likely to believe the theory personally.)

And that just made me wonder even more about how, when you think about it, a lot of the Warlords do actually have stuff in common with one-another, but only to a limited degree. Like there is what almost feels like intentional redundancy amongst these characters and their roles, but it's done carefully so they're not too repetetive?

And to really visualize the connections... I had to make a chart

(Could've added a "Tried to kill Luffy" but literally the only characters who wouldn't fall into that bubble would be Jimbei and Kuma, so it felt a little unnecessary)

Now this is just what I could think of very quickly at the top of my head, you probably could figure out more "Role Redundancies" between these characters. But figuring out all the theoretical connections/similarities between the characters isn't as important as noting how, yeah, most of those similarities are only shared once or twice between characters. They get repeated, but not so much they become actually reduntant in the story (personal feelings/relationship with Luffy aside, that one is quite natural to repeat after all) Also interesting how Crocodile seems to have The Most Shit going on with him, to the point the only characters he doesn't really seem to have one-on-one similarities to are Moria and Hancock

I don't really have a point to this post, I just thought it was interesting to think about and try to visualize. And I do wonder if this could be used to like, try to predict where the story is going, somehow? But yeah, just something to chew on

[scarletphoenix15]

I don't know when, I don't know how, but Law is gonna join the straw hat fleet now that the Polar Tang is sunk. Probably Kid too but definitely Law.

My ideal would the Hearts creating a subsect of the Staw Hat Fleet that's essentially like an ambulance for the rest of the Fleet. Luffy is never going to run the Fleet like a well oiled machine, I think it'll ultimately just become a guerilla force for chaos and freedom that's loosely aligned, so appointing Commanders within it he can trust to do the right thing will be essential. And Law has been set up to be that.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

for all the dramatics in my meta, i do think shanks could’ve very easily kept buggy satisfied & committing minimal war crimes as a member of his crew. just:

say you can’t go to laugh tale until you’ve met certain reasonable criteria, like “have a strong crew,” “acquire a ship that can handle new world weather,” or “stand toe-to-toe with whitebeard and live”

make a mildly homoerotic promise to meet those criteria… together

do the work to meet those criteria (through recruitment, training, etc.)

while you're level grinding, provide buggy with enrichment by way of Treasure Maps and supervised Treasure Hunts

supervised, ostensibly so the others can acquire any Underwater Treasure he may find, or to help buggy carry All The Treasure back to the ship, but actually to keep him from wandering into naval bases and getting arrested

[haxae]

so, we’re ditching meta…

and making the decision to come back to our roots. at least i am anyways

hi, i’m haley and i doodle from time to time. i was posting my art on instagram but made the decision to hop off of there. someone said all the posts are feeding an AI program so basically everything is being stolen

this piece is based off the song White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes. to me, this song signifies the loss of innocence and the feeling of your childhood being ripped away from you

i’m not sure how frequently i’ll be posting here, but i wanted to test it out and see how it all works!

[befuddled-calico-whump]

This is a genuine question: I know you enjoy lady whump as you have some characters that are female and are whumpees. I enjoy it too, sorta. Truth is that I feel guilty.

I know it’s kinda problematic to see lady whump as taboo and immoral but I can’t help but feel like it’s wrong, I come from a country that HATES women (shocker all countries hate women but I mean mine has a huge femicide problem) and I know how stupid I sound “I can’t feel but it’s wrong” like duh it’s whump! But I honestly don’t know how to get over those feelings, it hits too close home.

My question here is did you ever got those feelings of guilt and if you did, how did you get over those?

It's understandable to feel guilty at times, especially when creating or enjoying dark content (and especially if it's something that hits close to home)

Initially, I had some reservations about lady whump, since in mainstream media, violence against women tends to be a sensationalized thing that exists for shock value or to motivate the male lead in some way

(it's worth noting that the media has a history of doing this to trans, gay, and otherwise queer characters and non-white characters as well)

Initially I was squicked out by the idea of lady whump because I was so used to seeing it through that lens (not to mention, as you've said, the real-life examples)

However, I've seen again and again that whump as a genre tends to handle that material well (with all genders, not just females). Instead of the shock value, whump focuses a lot on the emotions, how the harm affects the character being harmed, and more often than not gives that character a fulfilling recovery arc

Personally, that's what shifted my opinion on it

Even then, if it's something you're uncomfortable with, you're not at fault for avoiding or disliking it. It all comes down to personal preference, and whether you'd like to explore it more or just stay away, it's your choice, and you shouldn't need to explain yourself (/gen)

[iniziare]

Kafka crossed my thoughts tonight at random, and so I wanted to re-post a little something here, with some minor edits thrown in. I just think it's often overlooked how... many human elements they've tied into her. A hungering sense of curiosity, the inherent sense of longing that clings to her being like a fever, and how she's caught (very humanly so) between the belief of we are tied to fate and thus it shall be, and the insistence on choice and how the Trailblazer seems to be inherently representative of its existence. And then I think of what being 'human' entails, and one could argue that it represents the experience of life, before one's end by the hand of destiny/fate. Is that... why she's so enthralled by all these human concepts? Because she's so firmly tied to fate? Yes, I still linger in the thought that she bears strong connections to fate, there are too many hints at the Moirai to me to ignore. But it's not even that, it's her Spirit Whisper, it's that her wanted poster made by the Devils that she used to hunt on her home of Pteruges-V, had to describe the ability and what it does— which tells ms that it's not native to there. But— I'm getting sidetracked, this isn't about any kind of potential nature that is far from humanity, it's about the evidence, even if she may turn out not to be inherently human at some point in the future of HSR, that she is drawn to, portrays and in some form, lives, very human concepts. And one of the ways I tried to make that clear before, was by talking about her in relation to her violin— or more specifically: the presence of its absence, the latter being which I will always firmly believe to be the eternal overarching narrative of Kafka's character. Any way, onto the babble:

I'll forever remember looking into the notes of someone's playthrough of HSR's first scenes, which is just something I like to do because you never know what kind of little treasures you might find. And there was a violinist tucked away in there, who I'd also seen in the notes of her main trailer, commenting on the intense accuracy of the movement of her fingers. And then on top of that, how they've usually been let down by the details when other games have tried to simulate it as well, but it was more so done to iterate how intentional this must've been for Hoyo to have focused on its accuracy so much.

So in that sense, I think it's close to a given that she knows how to play it, similarly to how I believe that she is someone who also plays or has played the piano. Where I differ however, is that I don't believe that she actually owns a violin at present, nor is she seeking to obtain one by her own means. Moreover, what and where I think the 'mimicking' comes from, actually, is from her memories and the emotional attachment that she once held for these instruments in them. Kafka's character, to me, revolves around and thrives within two concepts, that of intimate longing and that of loss (the pearl earring, the broken winged butterfly pin, and Blade's character story to name some) which plays intricately into the former. Now for me, her connection to the violin and the piano (primarily the former) play wonderfully into representing both of these, and thus can be drawn into these prevalent topics across the board for her incredibly easily. In simple terms, I think that there is a sense of longing to play them. Now, I feel confident in noting that Kafka does not come across as one who, if she had access to (in this case) a violin of her own, that she would crave to play it so intensely all the time, that when drawn from it for even the briefest of time, that she would enact the part of playing one during her separation from it. No, I think she's actively choosing not to obtain one, for one reason or another. Perhaps it's a memory that plays into the loss that her character seems to stray towards, or perhaps it's a lack of something else; I don't quite yet dare say. But there's something oddly wistful about it, if you look past the surface. All in all, I think her little moments of mimicking and humming, makes for an incredibly interesting "little" tidbit to me. It reminds me of something I wrote in an older post last year:

(...) And yet, and yet, I actively think if she were to find herself in a hotel room, even on her own, and there would be a piano right there— I can see her fingers tracing over the keys so very clearly, even as if she were touching the keys to play and yet she would never press down.

I still stand by this to this day. It's the ache to do something again, and yet for one reason or another, you can't bring yourself to do it. Whether it feels wrong, or there's something missing, something or someone; it doesn't matter, it's a longing of some kind. It really is the overarching topic and/or concept that I see in her character, and the fact that she's tied to such an inherently fragile instrument, only further solidifies it in my brain. But in that, I also feel a deep sense of melancholy when I think of her and that violin. And it plays into all of this, of course, but also the fact that I genuinely see no evidence in canon at present that tells me that she has one, and we know she could obtain one if she so wanted to,but she doesn't. Which tells me, on some level, that she doesn't want one. Which then has me entertain the concept of... if one were gifted to her, would that be different? Would that offer the person who gifted it to her a glimpse that no one else could ever get? The answer is a very likely yes, but I can't see it being gifted by most by any means; it'd need to be by someone who could come to grasp the significance of one, put in the appropriate research, who would know where to go, who to speak to, where to find the significance. And that, isn't most people.

[mikansei]

trying to figure out hsr's timeline is just pepesilvia.jpeg

when dates are labeled "AE" does that mean the WHOLE amber era, e.g. 2157 AE is the 2157th amber era, which itself lasted anywhere from 76 to 240 years?

was the swarm disaster in the 1300s AE ~770 whole ass amber eras ago (e.g. 60,000-180,000 years ago) from the present in 2157 AE, because that is an insane length of time?

the xianzhou fleet set sail in search of Yaoshi ~8000 years ago (whose years in what system???), and Yaoshi didn't exist during the swarm disaster, so is there just a huge gap between 60k-180k years ago & 8k years ago?

but the founding of the IPC is listed as occurring btw 1357-1387 AE, involving the same people who were presumably mortal, pre-Yaoshi, and didn't live for thousands of years, so that HAS to be measured as 30 years and not 30 amber eras?

but also the IPC claims one of those people contemporary to the swarm disaster is definitely still alive??? i mean sure they could mean it symbolically or sth, but man

man.

i understand the history fictionologists now. i too am about to start just making shit up

[fleetsparrow]

I need to take a nap and not be a huge bitch rn but like

Genuinely hilarious to me.

[arctic-hands]

I can put audible books on my mp3 player right? That's like the only one-up to the library apps because the library audiobooks are copy protected

[moongothic]

Okay so it seemingly isn't impossible for people to travel the Grand Line on an over-glorified raft alone if they're just hardcore enough (either that or Mihawk has like a proper boat we just haven't seen)

That said, it would no doubt be easier to travel those seas if you weren't entirely alone. Having someone to keep an eye on the weather lest you get into a Random Grand Line Storm or attacked by a Sea King etc would be useful

But we know Mr Crocodile does not trust people (Nor did he seem to have a crew anyways? Just Daz during+post timeskip?)

So it is now my personal headcanon that Crocodile had/has a small (luxury) boat that's pulled by a bananawani. Like it can sail on its own, but the option for a bananawani to pull it is there. So the ship could keep on sailing while Croc's napping in relative safety and the bananawani would be able to defend it from Sea Kings

[loregoddess]

Ohhh for the ship ask game, what about G?

Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

Yeah, I have actually! A few, but my oldest is probably Midna x Link from LoZ: Twilight Princess, since that ship goes back to...sometime early middle-school/late elementary-school-ish for me? I didn't even know the term "shipping" back then, and luckily was not online at that point in my life (and wouldn't be like, really online until mid-to-late high school), so I got to completely miss the ship wars of the LoZ fandom that apparently happened around that time period as well, which is great bc I got to avoid so much needless online fandom drama that probably would have screwed me up a little if I had encountered it at a younger age.

It's still a favorite ship of mine too! Granted, I've come to appreciate the fine art of multishipping, and usually have multiple ships for characters that I enjoy, but midlink is still my #1 ship in that game specifically, and still brings me a lot of joy when I see it in fanart and stuff.

[belmorvejes]

td

answered / ic. starters / ic. open / ic. headcanons / ooc. meta / ooc. shitpost / ooc. my edits / ooc. musings / good riddance to all the thieves. to all the fools that stifled me. they've come and gone and passed me by. good riddance to all. ch. study / he was strapped to the wheel. a sacrifice to his own madness. visage / it is the colour of a bleached skull his flesh. as is the long flowing hair. two eyes stare crimson and moody. likes / a few things still brought him joy though it was fleeting. desires / it has never been that i suffered from lack of wanting. aesthetic / he admired the craftsmanship of his forebears. their work had an elegant cruelty. ship inspo / he had given up on finding any warmth for so often it was ripped away. yet he could not help but hope. wardrobe / he still dressed in the colors of valyria. the fools could not take those from him.

[aceofwands]

love this analysis - two things especially jumped out at me,

your point about "despite his father's perceptions of him as a contrarian, chakotay only rebels as a last resort" immediately made me think that it's precisely because his father labelled him a contrarian his entire childhood that adult Chakotay errs too far in the other direction, maybe because he sees this as the more mature choice (rightly or wrongly, since as you pointed out he often ends up being the one resisting the rebellious action even when he arguably should be for it)

and I feel like there are also some missing dots connecting his choice to become a tactical officer with the aforementioned Cardassian border wars - especially knowing that his home was on that border!! it doesn't feel like it would have taken much for Chakotay to be nudged into that tactical track in order to defend his home and the other Federation colonies on the border, even though as far as I'm aware (though I could easily have forgotten) we don't hear Chakotay mention fighting Cardassians during the war? but given that he served during those nebulous decades when the border wars were happening, it seems pretty logical that he would have fought them - and that that experience would also probably have been what drove him to join the Maquis, it would have felt like a complete betrayal to have spent his formative years in Starfleet fighting Cardassians instead of being able to focus on his true passion (paleontology etc) in order to protect these colonies only to be told that they (including his home) were expendable after all

buckle up folks, it's deep dive about chakotay hours!

season 2, "initiations"

@isthereintruthnobeauty1968 asked a question about chakotay in this post about the scene above:

for an infamous leader of an anti-federation rebel group he seems to firmly believe in its authority and ideals And to have (at least externally) adjusted to the blended crew seamlessly. what's the deal?

see, i don't think chakotay ever wanted to be a rebel, or even a leader for that matter.

he wanted to be a starfleet officer.

season 2, "tattoo"

chakotay enrolls in the acadamy as a teenager as young as he legally can ("tattoo"). he tells seven ("one small step") that he joined starfleet because of his love of paleontology, and he only turned away from that out of responsibility to the maquis and now to voyager.

[get a snack for this one y'all]

season 6, "one small step"

it doesn't come up often, but whenever chakotay talks about his pre-voyager starfleet career, it's always about first contact or archaeology. in "emanations," he compares their exploration of an alien burial moon to a mission he went on as an ensign, all while demonstrating his anthropology expertise. add that to him nerding out in "blink of an eye," "one small step," the dinosaur episode, and a bunch of other examples, he's a social scientist both by training and by inclination.

in the original star trek, they had an "A&A officer," a specialist in archaeology, anthropology, and ancient civilizations:

tos season 2, "who mourns for adonais?"

we never hear that term again, but that's the role chakotay often fills on voyager, and he's very happy whenever he gets to do it.

now, realistically, i don't know how much time pre-maquis chakotay would have spent in a blue uniform, because those skills would not make him an obvious choice to lead a maquis cell. ro laren sets up his character (unnamed) in tng as a tactical specialist who resigns to join the maquis:

tng season 7, "preemptive strike"

(which is a very polite and noble way to do it, as compared to eddington's defection in ds9.)

if he was in fact ro’s teacher (i think so, despite a stardate conflict in some later dialogue), it seems very in-character to me that chakotay could have started out pursuing a sciences path before showing an aptitude for piloting, strategy, and/or command. given what we know of him, regardless of his own passions or preferences, if a senior officer noticed his skills and encouraged him to change career tracks, he would do it.

teen angst era aside, he respects authority. he argues against dogmatic ideology when it's inflexible to the needs of the moment, but he likes working within a command hierarchy, and for better or worse, he is easily swayed by charismatic leaders.

season 1, "caretaker"

not only does he yield to janeway's authority on voyager before she even asks him to, and then molds himself into the kind of first officer he thinks will help her most, he does the same thing with annorax in "year of hell." tom is the voice of ethical conscience and reason in that episode, and he organizes the rebellion—against chakotay's orders!

there's so much going on here:

season 4, "year of hell part 2"

despite his father's perceptions of him as a contrarian, chakotay only rebels as a last resort. he would genuinely rather not. he clearly talked about the maquis cause with ro and others before he left—and i bet that's why he resigned to a starfleet admiral in person, to make one last appeal. his preference is to try and change systems from within.

not to west wing about it, but chakotay is only The Guy when he has to be—he wants to be the guy the guy counts on.

(hot take: with how he rationalizes the calculated sacrifices annorax is making in "year of hell," i don't think chakotay would have left starfleet for the maquis if it wasn't personal. but it was personal, so here we are!)

maquis chakotay is a disillusioned idealist, but he's never that disillusioned. he believes in the stated ideals of the federation, sometimes more than janeway does.

season 3, "scorpion part 1"

and it's a fundamental character trait that he looks for the best in people and situations, often to his own detriment (tuvok, seska, annorax, that time janeway and tuvok and tom all lie to him for half a season, the list goes on).

and it's easy to see good in starfleet, especially when most of his career was during the height of federation utopia before "the best of both worlds," at which point starfleet remembered it's also a defensive force and started building the defiant—which was the very first starfleet ship ever designed solely for combat.

the cardassian situation in tng is shown as an aberration in a largely peaceful era. the off-screen "border wars" were fought by officers who expected to go their entire careers never firing a phaser.

tng season 4, "the wounded"

for decades since making peace with the klingons, and with the romulans keeping to themselves, starfleet has been mostly goodhearted nerds who are committed to exploring and making friends. even if chakotay was a tactical officer, that was the starfleet he signed up for and served.

and, in fact, the reason why the federation abandoned the colonists in the dmz in the first place and wouldn’t help bajor during the cardassian occupation is because the federation and starfleet are devoted to the ideals of peace and noninterference to a fault.

tng season 5, "ensign ro"

chakotay doesn't object to starfleet's actions, but its inaction.

which, side note, is why janeway's choice in "caretaker" makes it easy for him to rally behind her. by choosing to protect the ocampa, even though it's a huge sacrifice and puts her in a prime directive gray area, janeway specifically addressed the exact trust gap he has with starfleet.

season 1, "caretaker"

that's what he wanted them to do back home!

chakotay defends his starfleet uniform in the kazon scene that inspired this whole essay, and he believes what he's saying, because he's right: that's not what a starfleet uniform represents, either in theory or in practice. especially in the mid-24th century, regardless of the political issues, the federation and starfleet do not conquer planets or enslave alien cultures by force.

(of course, they wouldn't have helped the kazon free themselves either, but that's not the question on the table.)

to op's main question: it's an interesting (or boring?) doylist choice to make chakotay such a platonic ideal of a Starfleet Officer™️ (which, for the record, has always included going off-leash at the expense of one's career whenever ethics overwhelm regulations).

season 1, "prime factors"

star trek went to a lot of trouble to create the maquis for the voyager premise of two crews... and then quickly brady-bunch'd them into one happy family and let deep space nine wrangle the maquis problem instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

chakotay being so willing to put himself and his crew into starfleet uniforms (even though some members of both crews objected to it) cheated us out of some potentially rich drama, but it does hold water with what we see of him as a character on screen, and his relationship with starfleet. it has disappointed him, but he still believes that it's a force for good, and chakotay will always err on the side of seeing the good in something and thinking he can change it for the better from within.

--

tl;dr: chakotay is a starfleet officer by training and at heart, who was temporarily out of uniform because his family and tribe happened to be directly in the middle of starfleet's messiest ethical quagmire.

he made a personal, moral decision to join the maquis, not because he was anti-federation, but because that was the only way to protect federation civilians—which was part of his starfleet oath to begin with. he worked hard when he was younger to earn this uniform and i think, in spite of everything, he feels honestly proud to get to wear it again.