#i hope i’m being original here

[erme-aeterna-arts]

jack rackham and the breaking of the fourth wall

(not really, but it sounds cool and you’ll see what i mean)

jack, silver and flint are the three characters most aware of the presence of the narrative. everyone else is opposing/upholding the system, the empire, their personal enemies, but these three target the narrative itself, hence all the soliloquizing about stories, narratives, names, history, art. they approach the subject very differently, but they are all very conscious about the narrative being the center of the show.

the only ones to be so, just like they were the only ones to see the wrecks of the urca with their own eyes and to know where the gold was buried later.

but i digress. jack is different from flint and silver because he also seems to be the one most aware of them all being in a prequel to treasure island, of himself being forever remembered due to a general history of the pyrates (the books itself is even shown while he finishes his speech).

jack rackham, as the real life dude, is said to have invented the jolly roger flag, which which may or may not be historically accurate (see wiki), but our jack definitely did do it and no wonder that it was him (jack: a story is true, a story is untrue, they said i made this flag, so yeah it was i).

the process of the creation of this flag is carried out from s2 till s4, which is a lot of time and signifies it as incredibly important.

in s2:

JACK: We all have the same swords out there. We all have the same guns. But, great art, has felled empires, and therein lies all the difference.

FEATHERSTONE: I don't, understand what that means.

JACK: No, but I do. So not to worry.

in s4:

JACK: A story is true. A story is untrue. As time extends it matters less and less. The stories we want to believe... Those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition, and progress. Those are the stories that shape history. And then what does it matter if it was true when it was born? It's found truth in its maturity... Because what's it all for if it goes unremembered? It's the art that leaves the mark. But to leave it, it must transcend. It must speak for itself. It must be true.

i think, actually, this is the most and probably the only hopeful point in the finale, that reminds us that all that was not actually for nothing. we keep talking about the characters being doomed by the narrative, about the promised revolution that did not happen, because it was not supposed to happen, because we know the history and we know that the events of treasure island are meant to come to pass after we say our goodbyes to the black sails. but every story about stories is very aware that it is, in fact, a story. jack is the one who carries the knowledge that he is talking to us, the audience (hence the title of this post…), and i mean who else could he be talking to since most of the time on-screen characters tend to not listen to his rants and not understand what he refers to (because he says not for them, but for us!). and the fact that we are watching a show about queer people, about people resisting colonialism and deconstructing the very idea of the empire, is the proof that silver may have cancelled the revolution, but the pirates still have won.

we and everyone before us loved these stories. and if one spends enough time with these stories, enough time with the pirates, they might just start asking the right questions. like abigail ashe did, by the way. and that’s the only way for the world to know the truth.

and for that you indeed need to be remembered, to leave a reminder, a notion to all that you’ve been there. that we’ve been here. and always will be.

and jack was the one who understood that.

[gatoburr0]

This might be a bit of a dark question about the fuzzy AU but.. was Acht alone when they died? I'm assuming timeline wise that side order didn't happen pre Grizz winning (unless it did) so did they spend their last few days(?) alone in the Deepsea Metro with no idea what was happening to them or did something less heart wrenching happen?

Man that is a massive plot hole I completely forgot about and did not see coming. Honestly I think I can make it so somehow Acht already met Callie before getting fuzzed up? Because if not it wouldn’t be so interesting (and most importantly there wouldn’t be enough angsssssst).

Also yeah this post is a bit sad so just sayin’.

Acht and Callie already knew each other and went out together constantly, but they got fuzzed up when they were far from each other. Acht couldn’t get out of wherever they were in, because they were just so weak, until it was too much to handle and they died, alone, nobody knew they were struggling with it.

Callie often gets flashbacks about the time they spent together, however her memory gets blurred by her instincts and she doesn’t seem to be affected by them that much anymore. But she does remember them vividly, being probably their first true love.

She sometimes stays up at night thinking about them.

And the saddest part is that she still thinks they’re doing okay somewhere around.

(Read tags)

[thirdeyeblue]

“Nine would have treated Martha better than Ten did”

I need to talk about this argument that never seems to stop circulating.

Note: Not a venomous/anti post. There’s more than enough of that across fandom spaces as is, and this is supposed to be a place for ✨sweet, blissful escapism✨

When making this argument, people seem to envision a scenario in which Nine never met Rose.

While I can appreciate a good hypothetical, recognizing Rose's significance to the Doctor (Nine and Ten) is essential to understanding why things with Martha played out the way they did in the first place.

In the third series, the Doctor is grieving. This grief is deliberately threaded into nearly every script, whether spoken aloud or not (and these are just a few examples):

He's burning in Rose’s wake the entire time Martha travels with him, which is why it’s so frequently called upon: It’s 100% deliberate in framing his grief. He grieved as Nine too, of course— having been fresh on the heels of the Time War — but then he met Rose, which changed everything.

Back then, he was still a rude, traumatized pain in the ass, but we watch Rose soften more of those jagged edges with every episode as they grow closer; as he lets his guard down and forms a deep connection with her.

He falls in love (against his better judgment) and it's game over.

And yes: provided S1E1 had been titled 'Martha', one can realistically assume things might have unfolded similarly to how they did with Rose. However, it wouldn’t have been that way just because the Doctor was Nine and “Nine was different” — it would be because he wasn’t already in love with someone else. The same can't be said for the start of S3.

Think of it like this: if Rose AND Martha had been in that cellar — if Nine had taken both of them along with him in S1 — we’d eventually be looking at the most melodramatic love triangle ever, what with him living in close quarters with two brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate young women... But Doctor Who is plenty “soap opera” as is with just one woman in the TARDIS.

(I certainly wouldn’t object to reading that fic, though)

Now, regarding the unrequited elephant in the room…

His inability to be romantic with Martha isn’t because he thinks her lesser, nor is it for lack of compatibility. It isn't because Rose is any better than her. It certainly isn’t just because he’s Ten.

It’s really only for one reason, which can't be denied — and now I’m a broken record:

He is still in love with Rose.

(cut from a tenrosedaily gif)

Nine is Ten, and Ten is only such a mess in S3 because he’s just lost the love of his life. Martha merely got caught in the crosshairs of a volatile Time Lord in mourning, and yes — it sucks. Absolutely.

But it also feels dismissive to chalk Ten and Martha’s relationship up to little more than some sort of mindless dance of pining, jealousy, and toxicity.

Ten trusted Martha with his life over and over again — and hers, with him. He constantly praised her brilliance, happily carting her around time and space with no intention of letting her go. In the BBC’s extended universe of novels/comics/cartoons/etc, there’s so much depth to their relationship: love and trust and trauma and sacrifice. They had their own special bond as mates, their own complexities — so it’s a bummer that it's forever overshadowed by the other things.

I’m not denying that there was a lot of stuff that sucked/was for sure toxic about Ten's S3 behavior, but so many of the things I've seen him catching flak for can be directly attributed to being A Clueless Fucking Alien Idiot (not a trait that’s unique to Ten) — as well as his flat-out obliviousness to Martha’s feelings.

So yes, I agree: if Rose never existed, he would have treated Martha differently as Nine. He also would have treated her differently as Ten. Certainly.

But Rose did exist, and when discussing canon, it matters.

“He tells me that he absolutely, 100% loves Rose... He tells me how my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful, clever little girl saved him from himself before… And he says that’s all because of me! I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”

-Jackie Tyler, Flight Into Hull!

Martha got the short end of the stick in S3. She came round at the wrong place and time, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. It doesn't mean the Doctor didn’t adore her. It certainly doesn't mean the time they spent together was wasted or worthless. They were brilliant!

Sure, he could be a twat, but let it be known that he was a twat with Rose as well, both as Nine and Ten. I’m sure Tentoo can be plenty infuriating, too. So while I'll defend Ten (and Tentoo) into the ground forever and ever and ever, I'll concede that he's fucked up.

The Doctor is a certified Pain In The Ass. It’s one of the things I love so much about this character — dynamics.

But never forget that Martha was goddamn tough as nails and overcame every bit of it. She moved on with her life, and the Doctor moved on with his. One can only pray that, when they inevitably drag her back onto the show (which feels inevitable if I'm honest), we see at once that she's been living her best life for all these years.

[eternal-moss]

When people continually whitewash my favourite characters.

[ID: A black and white, rough digital drawing of someone sitting at a desk and clutching their head in their hands. End ID.]

^thank you @describe-things

[sockeyesidequest]

Fursona fursona fursona!!!

[cuteniaarts]

The weight of the world is a heavy burden

Especially for a child

(Or, in slightly less dramatic terms – I imagine that the first of her past lives that Avatar Suiren [who is the Avatar after Aang instead of Korra in my AU, and also Ghazan and Ming-Hua’s daughter] gets to talk to is Yangchen, because she is too plagued by memories not her own [including Jetsun’s death, fun fact]. And Yangchen wouldn’t want another child to go through what she did on their own)

(Or maybe someone just needed an excuse to draw @katkastrofa’s latest obsession in a context that interests them as well, just in time to maybe cheer her up a little? You can’t prove anything)

[apolohgy]

hello beautifuls, i got a job offer last week in [redacted] and i’m so grateful and excited to be… making money again! and to finally have my own place and fix it up to my taste and get 2 cats 🥹 there’s a job in [redacted] w the same exact salary range and i’m really hoping i get it bc it’s a much more desirable hot girl walkable city. my final interview for that job is next wednesday send hot girl city job offer vibes my way pls

[cockworkangels]

there’s a post going around saying that the finnish broadcaster yle is considering to drop out of the eurovision if israel is allowed to participate this year, but unfortunately it’s not entirely true!

what yle has said so far is that they have gotten ”hundreds of messages asking for boycott” and that yle has had discussion with the other nordic broadcaster and that they are ”following how the situation develops”, but there has been no talk about actually withdrawing.

i wish they would do it, but sadly i wouldn’t have my hopes up about yle potentially withdrawing.

you can see yle’s article about the situation here, if you want more information on their stance at the moment. unfortunately it’s only available in finnish but you can translate it if you want to read it

[un-pearable]

george lucas handed an overwritten mess in and then the fandom + otherwise involved creators in the extended universe and other supplemental media have spent the last decades ritualistically dissecting it and reworking it’s constituent parts into some of the most fascinating worldbuilding you can get. and the average person has no knowledge of this and just watched disney completely fumble it within an hour and a half of their first title crawl in The Force Awakens and proceed to completely fall apart within the next 3 hours . and that’s just what star wars is to them

[bushido-jack]

//my favorite thing lately has been scrubbing the internet for decades old samurai jack edits and amvs and watching them. there’s so much love for samurai jack in them, faith that he would be back to finish his tale one day, and it fits perfectly with the time it came out lol. the edits aren’t as great as they would be with technology nowadays and the music is often linkin park but there’s always an open love for Jack and the series in there. and there’s something about seeing people love Jack even when it’s not at it’s most angsty, when it’s just seasons 1-4, without the novelty, without anything else to focus on but what makes Jack Jack.

[boy-armageddon]

DUDE i Just started getting into the callous daoboys and im so sad i ignored them for so long there so damn good ... i love them so much already

(also is sysc from seattle ? i thought they were from cali but if theyre from near me thats epicness too:3

unless u were talking abt smth else . in which case i have embarrassed myself and i will now leave)

yesss same!!!! I’m going to a show of theirs in april funnily enough :3 also I was talking about the blood brothers being from seattle sorry <///3

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

i am god’s strongest soldier (tummy hurts in a new jersey airport)

[seilon]

got another job interview tomorrow. pray 4 me

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

Here’s my personal Player (they/them!) design in sprite form, a tweaked version of the few “”canon”” * iterations we’ve seen of them (such as in back cover’s intro and khux’s original app art)

Very happy that I got to make this! I almost always draw them like this so it’s nice to have a more cemented version of them that I can actually see rather than just envision

(Note: this is not my key kid! Further explanation here)

[jirachuuu]

2023 summary.

Tbh I wasn’t going to do one this year because I felt like I’ve barely drawn anything at all this past year. But somehow I managed to draw something at least once a month so that’s cool ig lol. Overall feeling very meh about my art and I hope to improve more next year 🫰🏼

[sukunasteeth]

Picking You Up From Work

Sukuna leans on the bumper of his Camaro, hoping a drop of rain doesn’t land perfectly on the tip of his cigarette and snuff it out. He’s pretending not to watch the front door of your workplace, like an anxious dog waiting for his owner to come home, but it’s ten minutes past the time you said you’d be out, and he was ready to take you to his apartment and settle down for the night. It had been a long day- he wanted to forget it in the taste of your whimpering on his tongue.

Customers pass him on their way into your workplace. Sukuna wonders briefly what has them whispering to each other and sneaking glances over at him: the nearly sixty year old car or the man covered in tattoos leaning against it?

Fifteen minutes pass before he checks his phone again. It was unlike you to be late, you knew Sukuna had a pet peeve of not being on time and, despite how hairbrained you were, he knew you tried to meet him halfway. Looking over his shoulder, he peeks at the flowers sitting on the passenger seat waiting for you. If he had known you'd be a minute, he would have put a splash of water in the bottom of the flower wrap holding the bouquet together. He clicks his tongue in disappointment, hoping they don’t wilt by the time you get to them.

“I’m sorry, I have to get going-” Your voice chimes through the sound of the rainfall like a cleansing bell, bringing Sukuna’s attention snapping back towards the exit of your work.

You're standing halfway between his car and the building, directly in the middle of the parking lot. A man dressed in a similar uniform to yours is standing a little too close to you for Sukuna’s comfort.

He flicks the ash off of the end of his cigarette and takes a drag.

~

“Are you sure?”

It’s been a long day.

“We could go get some coffee and just hangout for a bit-”

A really long day.

Granted: working customer service you expected long days. Grating days. Days in which you questioned your faith in humanity. But, that all usually ended when you clocked out for the night and headed home. You could easily forget all of it at the door. Tonight, however, the annoyance of having to save face continues.

You had been trying to give this guy a hint all day as he followed you around, desperate to catch your attention and doing anything to gain a brownie point. It was really starting to tick you off.

Not only that, you knew Sukuna was waiting for you somewhere in the parking lot and it was only a matter of time before this man was decapitated before your very eyes.

Dammit, you just wanted to go home.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’ve got someone waiting for me. Have a good night!” You try to wave him off, offering a polite smile before you turn your back to him.

"Who's waiting for you?" Sam calls out, still not catching the hint.

Before you can reply, a hand reaches around your waist, securing you to a familiar side- but you've been on edge all day, just waiting for your coworker to make one bold wrong move. On instinct, you snatch the wrist at your hip with a deathgrip before realization is able to save you.

Your eyes whip up to meet Sukuna's smirking gaze, his smile flashing into that serpentine grin that makes your fight or flight mode go off.

"Ohoho-" He chuckles, and there’s a mischievous darkness lurking beneath it. 

"'Kuna!" You ease your grip immediately, cradling his hand in sympathy. Part of you is instantly relieved he’s here to sweep you away, and the other part is sweating over how he’s going to handle this situation.  

Sukuna could be a bit possessive. 

"Good grip." He purrs, snatching up your own hand instead and continuing his original plan of tucking you securely into his side. "You turned your back to the scum bag, though." He tsks quietly. "My brat should know better."

Sukuna easily turns the both of you around, lifting you slightly to move without tripping you. You’re forced to face your coworker once again, although you notice that your unease has dissipated with Sukuna next to you now. 

“Is this...? A-Are you guys…” Sam sneers at Sukuna's sudden appearance, his poorly shaven lip curling up in disgust. 

Sukuna merely hums in response, “Every night while you’re wet dreamin’ about it.”

“S-Sukuna!” You interrupt, squeezing his fingers. Heat burns in your ears and you can feel them going pink under Sam’s now incredulous stare. “Is… my… yes.” You finish quietly, trying to avoid either one of the men watching you. Letting people into your personal life was not something you liked to do, even though you're sure your fiance would love it if you screamed it from the rooftops.

“Aw,” Sukuna makes a fond, sentimental noise and you press your elbow into his rib cage when you hear a mischievous lilt to his tone. 

“You and this guy?” Sam gives Sukuna an obvious once over, crossing his gangly arms over his chest in disapproval. “He’s not even your type!”

Oh.

Maybe this guy deserved a good beating.

Even you were too afraid to look at your fiance at that moment, you could tell by the look on Sam’s face that Sukuna wasn’t happy. 

The scariest part about Sukuna getting angry, was the lack of reaction. There was no glaring. No muscles going rigid. No shouting. There was only this overwhelming sense of danger, like a prey animal realizing it was about to meet its predator. 

Sam tries to fix it, sensing the murderous intent hanging in the air, but his ego still tries to bite: “Look, dude, I don’t mean any harm. I just think she needs a gentleman.”

…

Now that piques your interest.

You need a gentleman?

You almost completely forget about Sukuna for a moment, your head snapping in your coworker's direction with breakneck speed. 

“Gentleman?” You repeat, scoffing. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve been breathing down my neck like a fucking animal in heat all day. Practically begging for half a second of female attention in any form you can get it and you’re standing here-after trying to follow me to my car like some fucking pervert- and you’re trying to tell me you’re a gentleman?”

When you try to take a step forward, you're reminded of Sukuna's unrelenting grip on your hip bone, holding you in place.

“Calm down- all I wanted to do was walk you to your car.” Your ill-favored coworker rolls his eyes, although you can sense his discomfort in the way he takes a few steps away from you. His ego speaks again, and you see red. “You don’t have to be such a bitch about it.” 

What.

“Alright, alright” Sukuna is shoving something cold and jagged into your hands, distracting the sudden confused rage that washes over you. Before you can expel it, he unfastens his hand from around your waist and nudges you in the direction behind him. “Go start the car.”

You blink up at him, taken back by the entire situation. His keys dangle in your frozen fingers, clinking together. 

Sukuna knows you're mad. Knows the only thing on your mind is curb stomping the man in front of you. And you know he won't let you get anywhere near that.

“Come on, Duckie.” He purses his lower lip in a mock pout when you don't turn to leave immediately. There’s something dark glittering behind the faux playfulness in his eyes, reassuring you that nobody was going to get off easy, asking you politely to turn your gaze from what he was about to do.

His calloused thumb sweeps over your fingertips, gliding over the deep red nail polish there. The kiss he presses against your knuckles is one meant for royalty. Soft and sweet. And incredibly persuasive. “I just got these nails done. Lemme keep ‘em pretty for ya.” 

~

When Sukuna opens the driver side door and slides in, fifteen minutes have passed. There’s a smear of blood on his cheek that matches the one on his knuckles, the red catches his eye in the review mirror. He licks his finger, using his spit to try and wipe it off before he turns to meet you, smiling sweetly. 

“What should we get for dinner?"