#piracy was a way better life all things considered

[inthebeginning-rebellion]

i know everyone is assuming hornigold did the lashes on izzy's back but honestly given what he said about piracy and how he talked to ricky?

wouldn't surprise me if izzy, like so so many pirates of the time, was former navy

[campaignskyjacks]

The more I think about piracy, the more I believe it is the most structurally sound work situation under capitalism.

Every pirate ship was a worker owned company. If you were part of the crew, you were a literal shareholder. You got paid at least one share out of whatever venture you were involved with, and you got to vote on what the ship would do and who would be captain. That's already a pretty ideal situation, but it gets better.

The Captain is paid a double share as the position was seen as difficult and important work. But that is only twice as much as your general crew. Compare that to today's CEO and it's laughable how much more reasonable it is. It goes even further than that though.

The Captain is likely actually working way more than the rest of the crew. Most pirate ships were heavily overstaffed. The general strategy was you would catch up to a prize, board their ship and have like 200 guys. Merchant ships were staffed by capitalists, so they favored lean staffing. They wanted to pay as little wage as possible to maximize profit on the cargo they were transporting. A ship that would be comfortably staffed by 40 was probably being run by 25 to 30. Pirate ships would have way more people, so if they caught up to you there would be absolutely no way you could fight them off.

All of that means pirates didn't actually have to work that hard¹. There were way more people than actual things to do on a pirate ship. Even considering the fact that there is alot to do to keep a ship running, it's diffused over so many people that you really have a lot of down time as a crew. People like the Capitain, the quartermaster, the navigator, the doctor, or the cook all got somewhere between 1.2-2 shares, but they are working so much more than the average buckaneer.

I know some of you must be thinking "well that sounds very nice but the job gets pretty ugly when you're raiding." And the answer there is sort of. Pirates most certainly engaged in some pretty unsavory work and as crew you would be on the front lines of a lot of that. However situations where crew were actually getting in fights and putting their lives in the line were not the norm. A lot of the time pirates were hitting merchant ships, which once again were really understaffed. These people aren't crazy these people are hired to do a job so they're not going to throw their lives away over a couple dozen barrels of coffee or spice. Most of the time a pirate ship would catch up with a merchant ship, raise black flags, and and the captains of each ship would negotiate a surrender. Most of the time pirates were not requesting all of the cargo because the ideal situation is being able to hit the same ship over and over. You want to skim enough cargo that whoever commissioned the merchant ship isn't going to gripe too much about cargo being lost and complain to the navy. That way your crew can have a steady stream of whatever goods coming through to keep your vessel afloat. So most pirate merchant relationships were pretty transactional. The pirates would show up the merchants would give up abortion of their goods and everybody would go on their way.

Which means most of the time your average crew didn't have to do shit!

Pirates also had benefits. Remember when I mentioned you were going to be paid out "at least" one share? Well, if you lost a limb or something in the line of duty you would be afforded bonus shares to compensate the loss. They had entire systems of calculating disability compensation based on what injuries could be expected and how they saw it affecting your life. So if something bad did happen, you'd have pay to cover it.

It gets even better than this. The name "buckaneer" comes from "barbacoa" which was a type of mobile grill that was popular aboard ships². The folks who sailed were so commonly associated with these grills that people created a nickname for the profession based on the grills they used all the time. You'd see a privateer or a pirate at Port Royal and go "oh look, it's one of those guys who barbecues all the time."

Also, they were fucking queer. You've probably already heard that the term "matey" was a form of piratical gay marriage. If you designated someone else on the crew as your mate, if you died your share would go to them. I have to acknowledge that there is a slight chance that this isn't a 100% gay practice, there are conceivably reasons that someone might identify another person as their mate that doesn't have to do with romance or sex. Not a lot of pirates were literate and not many of them kept records of day-to-day life that really survived for historians to document. We can guess but in most circumstances we don't know for sure. But come on, grow the fuck up. These seadogs were banging.

Piracy and the type of sailing adjacent to piracy was a way for a person to make a life for themselves very far away from most of European society. And because of the way gender roles existed at the time, it's pretty much only men hanging out with men. If you happen to have desires that are unpopular at that time which involve other men, this is a pretty good situation for you.

So yeah piracy is a worker owned endeavor with reasonable compensation for management, benefits, frequent barbecues, and plenty of downtime to have all the queer sex you want.

It's one one those things that only exists because of capitalism, but as a response and a rebuke to it. These were endeavors that were so much more reasonable and fair then the legitimate businesses operating at the time.

And yes there were horrors. There was fighting and killing, torture, and worse. That is what the capitalists and colonizers would like us to remember. These things did really happen. However part of that was an effort to preserve and defend this better life people had made for themselves. To keep it alive inspire of the corporations and nations who would exploit or destroy their way of life.

So yeah, there was a lot about piracy that was violent and fucked up. But the truly wild thing is that it probably made more sense for the people involved then whatever you do right now. The next time you get bummed about your job or place in the world remember that piracy makes more sense.

Then go eat some barbecue and have queer sex.

¹This means in OFMD when Izzy was being a little piss baby about the Stede's crew not working hard enough he was 1000% wrong that's how the vast majority of pirates live their lives.

²Worth mentioning that these grills were originally used by native people, so this cool thing was adopted/appropriated by sailors. It did not originate with them.

[sarucane]

OFMD Spiral Parallels 51: Pinocchio

Intro: What I love most about how season 2 builds on season 1 of OFMD is the spiral narrative structure. Ground is repeatedly and explicitly re-trod from season 1 to season 2, but in season 2 everything goes deeper than season 1. Meanings are shuffled, emotions are stronger and truer, and transformation is showcased above everything. The first season plucks certain notes, then the second season plucks the same ones--but louder, and then it weaves them together to create a symphony.

---

In the very first episode, Stede reads the crew the conclusion of the story Pinnochio. Stede himself is, very clearly, a stand-in for Pinnochio: he felt like he wasn't "real," in his old life, like he was made of wood. He couldn't truly *feel* when he was swaddled by comfort. As a child, Stede wasn't able to experience life authentically or choose his path because of the abuse and censure he suffered from men and boys.

As an adult, Stede felt isolated within his family, and wasn't able to emotionally engage with them either.

He was wood, and he longed to be flesh--so he went and became a pirate.

But Stede isn't the only one who resonates with the Pinocchio story.

When the crew is considering mutiny, Olu points out that they won't know how the story ends if they kill Stede. And it's a compelling argument: the entire crew joins in demanding that Lucius "do the voices." They may not realize it yet, but they've already been affected by Stede's dreaming. They're already moving along with him into becoming "real," people who are comfortable forming deep emotional bonds and expressing themselves openly to the people around them.

Stede may be dumb in the pilot, but he's actually right: the guys really are actually "sweethearts" deep down, they really are carrying around trauma and hiding things about themselves behind beards and bluster. Piracy really doesn't have to be a "culture of abuse." They don't have to be wooden men.

And then the story returns at the beginning of season 2. And it shows just how much Stede's dreams have outrgrown him.

When Ed's darkness is spreading on the Revenge like a disease, Jim lights a lamp in the darkness for Fang. They don't have to do this. They could have just ignored Fang. But they did, and they used the story of Pinocchio to do it.

It's a very different story than Stede's was. After all, Jim's speaking from memory, telling the story through the lens of their own experience (which is how folktales work, the teller as important as the tale, the context as a key shaper of the story).

And Jim doesn't tell the story well--they accidentally start at the end, after the puppet has become a real boy.

Which is, after all, how they all ended up here. In this pain. They all turned into "real" people last season, and now they have to live with all of that, both the good and the bad. It's no surprise that in Jim's version of the story, Pinocchio is turned into flesh by a dark lord. No one on the Revenge feels like humanity is a gift right now. As Jim tells the Pinocchio story, Ed himself is telling a story about how he could run away from his own humanity, avoid the pain of being a soft "real boy" by never going back to land.

But while the impossibility of Ed's story leaves him balancing over an abyss, Jim and Fang laugh and are connected by their story. Archie is drawn in too, Stede's dream of a better way to live (as a "real" person, made of flesh) growing to include someone he's never even met.

The core of the Pinocchio story--as it is told through OFMD--is hope that people can change. That what people fear is the most immutable part of themselves, their wooden parts, can transform. That they connect with each other, and be accepted as changed.

And that having transformed, their lives will be better. Which is, of course, what happens to everyone by the time these 18 episodes conclude.

At the end of S2, Izzy calls Prince Richie "Pinocchio" when he sees Richie's painted wooden nose. It's fitting: after all, Richie set out to become a "real boy" and failed. Now he thinks he's "the ultimate pirate," but he's not. He's just wood. And Izzy, with his wooden leg binding him to both the past and the future at the same time, can recognize that better than anyone.

But here's the thing: Izzy wasn't there when Stede told the Pinocchio story to his crew, or when Jim told it to Fang. The meaning of this story has deepened and deepened, until it's part of the language of the show.

And when Izzy calls Richie "Pinocchio," everyone laughs in the face of death. Where there's joy and a shared story, there is hope that no darkness lasts forever. The story can go on. They pulled off change once; they can do it again.

[nonelvis]

2024 Hugos Best Novel nominees

(x-posted from Dreamwidth)

Am I gonna have time to read everything in all the main literature categories before voting begins? Very definitely not! But I did get through 5.1 of the novel nominees and have a few opinions.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sarafi, S.A. Chakraborty I devoured Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy, so I figured that her latest novel, this one about a retired pirate queen now living a quiet, pious life until she’s pulled in for One Last Job, would be up my alley. As ever, Chakraborty’s writing is breezy, fun, and hugely compelling. Sometimes you don’t need books to be deep and complicated; you just need a rollicking story with piracy and the spirit world and a truly evil antagonist. One of my top picks simply because I had such a blast reading it.

Starter Villain, John Scalzi This was fine. Laugh-out-loud funny anytime the dolphins were involved, but mostly it felt like it would have made a tighter novella than a novel, and it was already a pretty short novel. Also, only one major female (human) character in the entire book? C’mon, buddy, you know better than this.

Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh I think I may have simply read my lifetime quota of military fiction, even YA milfic with an intriguing plot element that means we get to revisit previous decisions and see the characters grow in ways they definitely wouldn’t have otherwise. Those elements are the reason I enjoyed this book more than I expected, but it’s still very middle-of-the-pack for me.

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera It took me a chapter or two to really grab me, but man, did this grab me. Chandrasekera’s lyrical prose and strong world-building and characterization drew a full and sharp picture of Fetter, child of a religious leader, raised by a mother whose life that leader destroyed, and tasked with carrying out her revenge. This is the most beautifully written of the six books, IMO, and it's also a top contender.

Witch-King, Martha Wells I got three or four chapters into this and DNF’d. I find Wells’ prose wholly emotionless, and it just doesn’t work for me. Sorry, Murderbot friends.

Translation State, Ann Leckie I feel like I knew long ago Leckie was working on another book set in the Imperial Radch universe but must have forgotten, because as soon as I opened this up and realized that it was going to involve that universe -- and more critically, the Presger -- I was hooked. There are three primary narrators, each skillfully drawn in just a few pages, and I had a very hard time putting this down. Drags a bit at the end, but I'm still considering it for the #1 slot.

So, if you've been counting, that's, uh, three novels I can't choose between for the first slot. There's every chance my vote will change before the deadline passes, but right now, this is where things stand:

The Saint of Bright Doors

Translation State

The Adventures of Amina al-Sarafi

Some Desperate Glory

Starter Villain

Witch-King

[focsle]

hello! i have a question: what draws you to whaling and that specific era of time in history? how long has it been an interest of yours?

Oh a much too big question for me to answer adequately in one ask. I’ve written tens of thousands of words on this history and the specific points of it that draw me. I’m pouring years of my life into a 400+ page comic about it. Catch me at 3am talking about reincarnation and how much I feel this all caught up in my soul-stuff. This will not be an answer that fully does my feelings justice. But I’ll link to some of my writings in this response that maybe do that better.

I’ve been deeply researching this history for over a decade, but I’ve always had a nautical bent to my childhood that probably sparked it. My grandfather was a Navy man. His house was covered in weird pirate sculptures and little creatures and art pieces he made out of shells and I think I inherited my sense of aesthetics from him. My mum was drawn to sea stories and things of that nature that was probably passed on to me in some way. Like most kids that sea bent manifested in an early interest in pirates, (tho the brief moby dick section of The Pagemaster was formative…it’s funny, I didn’t read Moby Dick until several years into my deeper dive into this history and then I was like ‘ohhhh….melville gets it). Learning about the Globe mutiny many years ago was a big spark to diving more specifically into said history. I first read a book about it where the writer’s (what I now consider, wobbly) thesis was that it was something about the industry itself that generated something within the perpetrator to choose a whaleship for premeditated slaughter, and the story was so rattling to me that I wanted to know what it was about that world that drove someone to something like that.

But instead I found a world that had so much humanity in it. It was one with a unique and isolated society that was unlike any other social sphere. Years on a ship that was a floating home, a floating factory, that had a relationship to the sea in a way that even other maritime trades did not. Fishing had/has some similarities, but not for the same isolating length or uniquely horrific and gruesome labor that whaling voyages held. The merchant trade had briefer voyages on more expected and well-trod routes. Even piracy followed the shipping lines of humanity more than anything else. With whaling your only destination was the sea, in a longer reach as the whaling grounds depleted and the industry stretched on to bring people to further and lonelier places. Where men would briefly touch land maybe every six months, and have liberty in port maybe even fewer times than that. That they were to go out there, and they weren’t to come back until they got enough oil to make the voyage worth it. It was an industry that drew men of so many different backgrounds and motivations, but the common thread tended to be that they were all very young, and that many of them were trying to find something in themselves or for themselves. An industry full of contradictions that I feel is most poetically expressed in scrimshaw, and one of the few places to see a preserved piece of art from an ordinary man. To see a small window into his emotional world and where his heart was in those long stretches of boredom. It was a space of brutal work, demoralizing work, and repulsive work, one where death was a constant shadow for both men and whales in a way that their lives were always inseparably on the same uncertain coin. But within that world, maybe despite that world, there was also a great deal of humanity, be it their music and sense of play, their whaler-specific social functions, their vulnerability. 

That whaling history luxuriously is a field where the words of hundreds of ordinary working class men have been preserved in diaries and logbooks means I get to know so many of them beyond statistics or names in a database. I get to learn about them on a personal level. I know what they worry about, what their favorite foods are, who they care about, when they have fun, when they’re miserable, sometimes what they find sexy, what makes them cry, and what makes them laugh, and what sort of man they hoped to be. In some of them I was reminded so much of myself, but in all of them I saw their unique and individual humanity, for better or for worse. So many of them carried a societal self consciousness within them that made me understand and feel for them. They often weren’t sure where they fit in a world that wasn’t a whaleship, even if that whaleship was a point of great hardship for them. So many of them wanted to be remembered in ways that they necessarily weren’t—few of them became historically important men, many of them died young or didn’t live to see home again, many of them may not have felt like they had anyone who cared about them, but they all had an existence they still clung to, that I feel compelled to try to honor and remember because I feel so much of them within me through that common thread of humanity.

This is a long answer, but as I said I still can’t express this in any way that isn’t shallow in this small space I have. It’s an interest that is both a personal, academic, and daresay spiritual one. I think to fully understand what draws me to it, you just gotta continually lurk in my awhalin tag and that ongoing comic of mine @goingtoweather. But hopefully this is a satisfying enough summary.

[gauntletqueen]

That person Nintendo went after was genuinely a very very bad and exploitative scammer, some reblogs on that post go into it in detail including how taking a portion of wages is a standard way to collect fines that cannot be immediately paid in full. I dont feel bad that he received legal action, but considering the total fine is so large he might have his wages taken from for life, I do feel like Nintendo is overreaching to scare others into not trying the same thing. Which I think is a really dumb and dystopian "we have the money to fuck this one guy up real bad so you better not try the same" situation that makes me think less of the company, a company I already disliked.

Bit of a meaningless ask, sorry, just saw a lot of people thinking he was some innocent modder and Nintendo was big and evil and scary, but really Nintendo just really screwed over one bad guy way more than was necessary and it was a gross misuse of power to scare others into not messing with them. No harm meant by this, just wanted to say this to someone, if you feel differently I'd like to hear about it

First off, yes, the story is more nuanced but Nintendo still comes out the villain with how insanely severe the punishment is. Second off, this isn't a single instance, Nintendo has a long and disgusting history of fucking over fans and creators. They are a built-for-profit corporation which does everything in its power to earn more and more each year, no matter what. It has been repeatedly proven that things like piracy and fan games don't really hurt sales, and for Nintendo to crack down on it again and again shows their disregard for the consumers beyond how much money they can extract from us. This should be taken as a harsh reminder of that if nothing else. The same goes for every other corporation, but Nintendo gets away with it the most because people are blinded by nostalgia goggles and the like.

To go more in-depth, Gary Bowser wasn't a "scammer". He ran a company that made pirating hardware for consoles, including the Nintendo Switch. Their products allowed you to run pirated and homebrew software. There wasn't any scamming there, the products functioned as advertised. The problem was that they contained DRM protection, preventing others from copying the software's code. Using an unofficial cartridge would lead to bricking the console, which is definitely hypocritical. It was also faulty and could, unintentionally trigger even in the original cartridges on rare occasions when you messed with settings too much for example. So yes, that is bad, BUT obviously Nintendo doesn't give a shit about that. All they care about is that someone used a Nintendo product or IP in a fashion which they did not ordain, profit or not, and they once again acted with extreme prejudice. It's highly likely that Gary Bowser will never, ever be able to repay the massive debt to Nintendo before his death, especially considering his poor health and age will make it hard for him on the job market in general. And there is no way Nintendo's lawyers didn't realise this, it isn't to recuperate any supposed losses. It is, as you say, a scare tactic, because Nintendo's higher ups care that much more about their money-making products over a human life which they have, effectively, destroyed. Regardless of how good of a person they might be. (all this info regarding the case can be found in the articles in the post I reblogged, and articles linked in the reblogs you mentioned)

[justsome-di]

The Fairest of All Stars: Chapter 13

Andy didn’t mean to become a pirate captain, but after killing the captain of her ship, she finds herself thrust into the role. Years after the incident, she is fierce and feared and recovering from a tropical fever that wiped out half her crew.

Just as they’re about to dock, they find an injured siren left behind by her choir. Andy, drawn to her, pulls her onto the ship and decides to keep her there until she recovers. But with the Navy hunting for both pirates and sirens, Andy has just made her ship an even bigger target for an iniquitous captain looking for revenge.

Warning for suicidal thoughts and violence. Will contain mature scenes.

Also available for free on Patreon (paid members are five installments ahead and will get exclusive bonus stories) and on AO3. If you enjoy reading Stars please consider leaving a comment on AO3, Patreon, or reblogging these chapters! Follow for more updates! (note: billing is actually paused for Patreon through the end of the year so new paid members cannot join until it turns back on)

Andy paced from one end of the cramped cell to the other. It took five and a half steps to hit the grimy, sweating wall.

The brig was horribly humid. Andy was soaked almost as soon as she had been pushed down the stairs. The air itself was thick, and Andy almost struggled to pull it through her mouth and down her throat to her lungs. As time dragged on, her chest became heavier and heavier and pressure in her head built until it felt like it could explode all over the walls.

While it would have been satisfying to spray Bettridge with her brain matter when he was miles away from having a proper bath, it wasn’t exactly the way she had hoped to go out.

The man sat next to her, outside her bars on a stool. He checked his pocketwatch with his good hand, his other draped across his knee. Andy pressed her face against the bars to get a better look at the scar that marked the skin between his knuckles.

Had she really done all that damage years ago? She knew that his hand wasn’t able to be used anymore, but she only knew of that through stories passed to her from acquaintances at bays. To see it for herself—she was impressed.

To cause such damage to a man made her flush with pride. She wished she could tell Syan the full story in detail now that it was all coming back to her.

She had been so young, and Bettridge loomed over her. Her arrest warrant was sitting right in front of her. She would be the first in a planned raid.

Bettridge had planned to make an example of her. She was so small, he said. 

Piracy was no profession for a woman.

He could tell she was a woman. That was the thing. It was what violated her the most. He could see how her chest curved out despite her diligently binding her breasts so tight her ribs ached. He could tell by her smooth face—quite odd that a boy at sea didn’t have even a bit of a beard.

There had been a deal, she recalled. She could go back to England with him. She could work within the Church and have all charges dropped. And then, she could work for God’s forgiveness.

Returning to religious life and, even worse, ending up in England, frightened Andy so terribly then. God had never done anything for her, really. And England was the setting of the horror stories her father had told her. The English were monsters, and her father left Ireland. They had taken his family’s faith, their land, and when he was the only one left, he fled. Changed but always holding onto some grudge.

She had been scared.

She felt for her father’s pocket knife in her jacket.

Bettridge droned on and on about her chance for rehabilitation, at the life she could live. She would make a nice wife for a nice man someday. Have children. Didn’t she want that type of life? Didn’t she want that safety?

He laid his hand on her arrest warrant. It seemed scary, he knew. But he wanted to help her. He wanted to get her out of the trouble she had gotten into.

Andy pulled out her knife without any more thoughts and didn’t hesitate for even a second before she plunged it down on Bettridge’s hand.

Bettridge jerked at first, not realizing yet that his hand was pinned to the table with Andy’s knife.

Blood welled up around the knife, spilling over the top of Bettridge’s hand and onto the scuffed, stained table. Dirty red blossomed across the arrest warrant, spreading out like how milk danced in the tea Andy’s mother used to pour for her.

Bettridge finally screamed. He finally grabbed his wrist with his good hand and barred his teeth and kicked his feet against the floor, stomping onto the wood so hard that the table rattled.

Andy ran from her room. She ran past the concerned innkeeper and then to the rest of the crew at the bar. She pounded on their backs with fists and grabbed the backs of their coats, pulling them out of the door with her.

That night Eli patted her on the back and told her she had done a good job, but all Andy could think about was how she should have grabbed the knife. Her only memory of her father was gone.

But it had trigged something wild in her. Something that made her think, at every turn, how she could stab another man. How she could possibly tear them apart with her bare hands. She questioned her own strength, her own limits. Were there any? Would the only thing that stopped her from ripping someone apart be her own mind telling her not to?

Everyone was an enemy after that. Anyone who commented on killing a man was immediately suspect. Andy stole a gun from Pinkey—he had so many in supply and always offered to show her better self-defense which annoyed Andy greatly—and kept it under her blanket at night. During the day, she kept it in her waistband.

In the tarnished mirror, she could barely recognize herself. The changes were in her eyes. In her hair. Every fiber of her had been altered, tainted, improved.

She was thankful for that wildness soon after. Eli had pressed her about why Bettridge had cornered and how much he knew. To find her specifically, to only be there to arrest her before a bigger raid—why her? Why then? What did he know?

Andy, in her feigned deep voice, said she didn’t know. She didn’t ask him questions. She stabbed him and ran.

But it was then that Eli grabbed her chest, digging his fingers into her sore breasts. He stroked his thumb over the mound she still couldn’t conceal—and she had tried binding her breasts tighter and tighter ever since Bettridge.

“You’re no boy,” Eli had said.

He reached for her waist next, with his other hand, and then for her crotch. Between the bandages wrapped around her chest and her panic, Andy couldn’t get a single sip of air past her mouth. She grew light-headed.

“I don’t allow women on my ship,” Eli said.

He had removed his hands after his crude inspection, but Andy still felt the sensation of his fingers groping and digging at her hidden body. The nerve endings all over her tingled as if they were about to explode. To her shame, her crotch felt warm.

She stumbled back as Eli listed her options. He could throw her over for being a fraud essentially—tricking his men and such. Or he could dump her at the next bay. Somewhere in the south. She could work in a brothel, he said.

“I’d even visit you from time to time.”

Her gun was hot against her waistband. It would be easy, she thought. This was what pirates were meant to do.

Eli reached out and stroked her hair. The gun burned her skin. It would be so easy.

And it was.

Eli leaned in an inch closer, and Andy pulled out her gun and shot. It was shaky and slow, and Eli tried jumping back to dodge her.

It was nothing like how she had stabbed Bettridge.

She ran from the cabin and vomited and the crew rushed into to see Eli, half-dead on his cabin floor.

Andy looked at the way the skin puckered on Bettridge’s hand. It created a line straight to his knuckle, like a map.

“Do you know what the best part of capturing you is?” Bettridge asked.

Andy didn’t want to talk to him, but she was a touch curious.

“What?”

“I get a handsome reward.”

“That’s not exciting.”

“How about this? I get to watch you be executed.”

“Better.”

“Watching your neck snap and your legs flail—“

“Oh, don’t have me be hanged. I don’t want to be hanged.”

She hated thinking about her body swinging. If she didn’t die right away—it was just an awful image. She imagined herself trying to flail as if she were swimming but with no water, she would only convulse and jerk around while slowly choking.

“What do you want then?”

“Tie bricks to me and drown me.”

Bettridge chuckled. Andy laughed back—loud. She forced cackles out of herself despite her aching lungs. They filled the tiny jail cell and flooded out into the whole brig. They hit the walls will full-force, Andy’s forced hysterics smashing into the bricks.

They turned into a rough cough and then a wheeze.

Andy sank to the ground. The grimy, sweating floor wet her already damp hands. Her fingers were pruning.

She was exhausted. Painfully so. It was inevitable that her fever would come back soon. At this rate, she wouldn’t make it to England. She would be a corpse before then. Bloated and reeking on the brig floor. There was only a sliver of satisfaction knowing that Bettridge wouldn’t get his grand execution and would instead have a maggot-infested body to dispose of.

“I don’t want last rites,” Andy said. Her voice caught in her throat.

“Why not?”

Bettridge sounded genuinely curious.

“I grew up with a lot of the God stuff, and it didn’t really do anything for me,” Andy said. “Not after I got older.”

“Mm. How old?”

“I don’t know.” Andy rested her head against the bars. It was fuzzy in her head if it was before or after her dad left. “I was still a child.”

“That’s a big thing for a child to question.”

“I was a smart child.”

Andy coughed. Her throat stung. She grimaced and tried clearing it.

Bettridge unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out a flask from an inside pocket. He passed it to her through the bars.

Andy took a cautious sip, but she knew that Bettridge wouldn’t kill her on the spot. He wanted the pleasure of watching her be prosecuted and executed. He wanted his twisted justice to be completed.

It was a fine whiskey. Andy would have felt honored that he was sharing it with her if she wasn’t in his jail cell. Rather than the diluted, sugary spirits kept on the pirate ship, Bettrdige’s liquor was like drinking a warm fire. It sizzled as it settled in her belly. It hurt, and it was nice. Aged well. Expensive.

“Cheers,” she said, passing it back.

He took a sip for himself. He screwed the top back on by holding the flask between his knees.

“You know,” he said, buttoning his coat back up. Andy didn’t know how he could stand to be in his thick uniform in the humid brig. “I think I might almost regret letting your ship go.”

“You made a deal.”

“I know. I know. And I am a man of my word. But I can’t help but wonder if you had anything stowed away.”

Andy shook her head. “We lost most of our crew to a fever, and we’re flat broke. There’s nothing of value on that ship.”

Except the people.

“A slave,” Bettridge said, almost like he was humming, “I thought I saw.”

“No.”

“Really? Interesting.”

Pinkey wasn’t enslaved. Never had been. He had just roamed from ship to ship to continent to continent until Andy met him in an inn where he was mopping floors. He did as he pleased. He moved from jobs when he was bored of them. Andy was lucky to meet him when he was bored.

Bettridge sighed and leaned back in his chair. “That woman I saw—“

“What about her?”

“Was she there willingly?”

Andy bit her lip.

“She was. She wasn’t going to stay with us long.”

“I should have grabbed her, too. I hate thinking about her alone on that ship with all those men. She was beautiful.”

A bite of nausea nipped at Andy’s belly. No, she trusted those men. She knew they were better than that.

They had pieced together what Eli had done to her—tried to do to her. And they had clapped her on the back or given her space. Pinkey let her keep the gun.

Tobi should have become captain after the incident, but the crew argued for Andy. Someone who had the guts to kill the current captain deserved the position.

“She’ll be okay,” Andy said.

“I’d pray for her.”

If Bettridge had known, he wouldn’t have let her stay on that ship. He would have dragged her back with a lot less grace than he had afforded Andy.

Bettridge pulled a knife from his pocket. Andy gasped. It was her knife.

He pulled a length of wood from his other pocket. With the weight of his bad hand, he held it down on his knee and began shaving down the sides with the knife in his good hand, whistling as he did it. He was making some sort of animal. Andy couldn’t tell what the blob was supposed to be.

Andy closed her eyes. It was like he was taunting her.

“Can you tell me,” Andy rasped. “I’m curious. What does the Navy do with sirens?”

“Sirens?”

“I’ve heard rumors. Haven’t you caught some?”

Bettridge cut out a chunk of wood, flicking it to the floor. “We’ve caught some. Why?”

“I just want to know. My dad would tell me stories when I was a kid. And I always remember seeing posters when I was a little kid. Of all the offers for rewards if the local fishermen caught one.”

“Mm. Yes. We offered rewards.”

“And what do you do with them?”

Bettridge turned to her. “We run experiments on them. Try to find if we can use them for our benefit.”

“What benefit? What would they even have to offer you?”

“That’s why we experiment on them. We’re still searching for an answer.”

Andy clicked her tongue. “Deranged. Not a single man in the Navy has an ounce of empathy.”

“And pirates do?”

She couldn’t argue.

“What a waste of a living thing to just kill it through meaningless torture.”

Bettridge set his knife and wood on his lap. He folded his hands over the knife. His bad hand was on top. Andy watched as he tilted his head in thought.

“Their tail meat,” he said, “is very tender and buttery. Pairs well with roasted potatoes and a red wine.”

The air around Andy chilled. Bettridge’s words, said so casually, plunged her into an icy river. Her head swam with anger and fear.

Eating sires was a horror she hadn’t even dreamed of. She had expected something awful like torture or experiments, but eating was on an entirely different level of foul.

She couldn’t stop from picturing Bettridge lifting slices of Syan’s tail, forked on polished silver cutlery, to his mouth. A filet of her tail, seared and steaming plated nicely by vegetables. Her scales crisped in oil. It would have to have had her scar tissue cut from it.

A glass of red wine by Bettrdige’s side. An equally grotesque dinner partner across from him.

Andy heard his lips smacking around Syan. Her meat getting caught in his teeth, him trying to pull it out with his tongue, violating her further and further.

It was sickening to think of Syan’s flesh, what she had held under her own hands so tenderly, being turned to mush and then sliding down Bettridge’s gullet only to be shat out later.

Her beautiful, beautiful siren turned to food for those colonizers. Her body chopped up into pieces. Fins being thrown out. Bone being ripped out. The top half of her body—

Andy gagged, a stream of sour saliva pouring dripping out of her mouth. Bettridge laughed at her retching.

“You’re fucking evil,” she said.

“You’re no better.”

“I think I may be.”

Bettridge tsked. That was the problem with his type. The power-hungry, high-ranking assholes of the world all thought they were playing a game everyone else was participating in. They dreamt up their own rules and their own goals and assumed they were normal no matter how deranged it all was. 

Everyone wanted what they wanted, they believed. Everyone was willing to do what they did.

Andy put her weight against the metal bars, no energy left to support herself.

She hoped that her crew was sailing away.

She hoped that Syan was safe.

[elbiotipo]

not a pointless rant, might be interesting to look at the history of obscenity laws in media. the Hays code in the US allowed some "immoral" acts to be depicted as long as it was portrayed negatively or "punished" in the story. maybe that led to more violence being more accepted in US media, both for not being deemed so immoral itself and for punishing acts that were? Japanese early 1900s obscenity rulings made a sort of test for whether or not something was explicit, which some argue led to unusual workarounds, and sexual material is still highly penalized. is that a group's values informing legislation or legislation as a tool for influencing values? relatedly imo, what language-cultural groups find obscene in the first place is varied. more powerful curse words can be related to sex, religion, or hygiene depending on the people group and their language. on top of all that, the political structures that create censorship or distribute propaganda have motivations to control narratives and demarcate "bad" people (dissidents and foreign actors) from "good" (upstanding citizens). I don't really have a point, you just got me thinking

No, this is a really important point. I'm not sure of our own obsecenity laws here in Argentina for example, but we've always been lax about that stuff, we always skirt the law so if they even existed I doubt they had too much influence in our art and only when (if) they were enforced, like when public decency laws were enforced against LGTB people, despite our constitution saying that the private lives of people are of no concern of the state (and this is also the basis of our current laws for equality of sexuality and gender). Which also is an interesting thing to consider; laws are only valid as long as they are enforced. For a silly example, I think TECHNICALLY piracy is illegal in Argentina, but you will not find a single example of the law being enforced, unless someone like the FBI really asks (yes, there's been a notorious case).

I digress. The main point that every culture has its own taboo topics. One interesting thing, though I might be incorrect since this is based in a conversation I had a long time ago: notice that there is virtually no depictions of drugs of any kind in Japanese media. Even in media aimed at adults. Compared to say, Latin American media where the depiction of drugs is so common is almost passé (negative, positive, just a part of life). But in Japan, as well as many other countries, this is not the case, drugs are very strictly controlled to a degree that we might find shocking, even with all the talk of "war on drugs" on the US and other countries.

Again, I digress. You won't ever find the perfect sweet spot of depiction of controversial or taboo topics that appeals to every culture and individual. There's some art that features those topics to shock or indulge, other to talk about it or have a conversation on it, other to pontificate about it in one way or another, other just because. I think it's better to understand why and how those topics are depicted, media literacy I think it's called?

[schismusic]

In the shadow of the horns: meditations on Team ICO's works – 1. Shadow of the Colossus

[DISCLAIMER: Since I cannot assume you people are all in the know and have played the game like five times, have gotten every extra item and found every last secret location, got all the achievements on the PS3 and PS4 versions of the game, have taken all seventy-nine steps to enlightenment, and are so obsessed with intersecting points that your bedroom wall looks like a re-enactment of the Pepe Silvia conspiracy theory, I have to tell you that the following article includes HEAVY, HEAVY, OH-SO-HEAVY SPOILERS for Shadow of the Colossus. Reader discretion is warned.]

[DISCLAIMER 2: you can absolutely bask safely in the knowledge that I have not done any of the things listed in the first disclaimer. I mean, I have played the game more than once, the first time on PS4 and the second on PS2. Whatever.]

It has at this point been a good five years or so since I'd last played the Team ICO games, so as I went to dust off my ol' trusty PlayStation 2 Slim I got reminded of how the world is a fucked up place and decay exists as an extant form in life, by way of the PS2 no longer reading discs. I mean, nothing I can't fix with a 1mm x 1mm square of duct tape or some isopropyl alcohol in the best case scenario, but I wonder: for fuck's sake, did it have to be now? At any rate, I decided to bite the bullet and finally download PCSX2 so I can play the games (and I promise, the BIOS and game ISOs are all mine, so no piracy involved this time). Playing these particular games on a PC feels especially weird to me, in that I can see the blocky ass graphics meant to be seen and blend in on a CRT in all of their squared glory, but not even that is immersion-breaking or ruins the aesthetics – which is a testament to the strength of the team's art direction and design philosophy. This is especially true considering I'd only played the PS4 Shadow of the Colossus before.

Since I can already hear the raging crowd under my window, let me clarify before I get drawn and quartered by an angry mob of PS2 purists.

I did, of course, get my first exposure to Shadow of the Colossus when it was but a humble PlayStation 2 technical marvel (and, later, a PS3 remaster of that same PS2 technical marvel). It was, in all likelihood, through an unofficial PlayStation magazine that was published here in Italy – even though the original format was technically bought from a Spanish publisher – by the name of PlayGeneration. I was always one console generation behind the rest of the world around me, so the magazine allowed me to stay in touch with new technological developments and new titles coming out. I ended up remembering the original critical reaction to, I don't know, your Deus Ex: Human Revolution or your Dead Space or even your Yakuza 4 (which was actually my first exposure to the series, about fifteen years before I actually got to play it myself) better than the actual games themselves, in a lot of scenarios. But what this magazine had, especially, was a whole two-page spread in every issue where they re-reviewed a number of PS2 games, usually showcasing relatively hidden gems – one that stuck with me particularly was their review of Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, a game that I went on to never play due to my absolute ineptitude at JRPGs. Every issue also included an archive of their older reviews, which for the longest time would reserve a cute little half-page to PlayStation 2 games, with the editors' definitive scores and one-sentence opinions on them. Among these was Shadow of the Colossus, 92 out of 100. I was fascinated by how, well, plain and effective the title was – a non-descript sequence of words that tells you nothing and, as I would later learn, still tells you everything you need to know about the game.

Symbolism of light and shadow, stories that seem to be coming out of children's books (it's always fascinating and, admittedly, quite funny to recall that the original Japanese title of the game is ワンダと巨像, "Wanda to Kyozou" i.e. "Wander and the Colossus"), a unique capability of striking the player in the teeth with a sense of anemoia welling up from somewhere deep within. A friend of mine who's currently playing ICO for the first time mentioned a great emotional response on his part upon revisiting the prison area of the castle – considering exclusively gameplay time, this is a place you're only shown once, about five hours before you come back to it. To better define this feeling for the purposes of this piece, I decided to replicate the closest thing I could achieve: nostalgia. Specifically, I pulled up some old articles I wrote for a gaming blog I helped run between the years of 2020 and 2022, re-read my old impressions of these games, then realized the more I read those (quite pitiful) articles, the more I was thinking "fuck, why don't I just play these again?", which of course led me to what I was saying at the beginning of this article. Running in circles already, aren't I?

One thing I will say: I still believe some of the points I made in those articles to be valid. Specifically, I like the idea of focusing on what the gameplay means. Story and lore analysis of these games is inherently encouraged by the games themselves and their presentation, and therefore way overdone, but I will recommend Leadhead's recent analysis of ICO as a metaphor for escaping an abusive household and Folding Ideas's classic on Shadow of the Colossus as "a game about letting go", as well as admit a certain fondness for the theory of the shared narrative universe as espoused and exposesd by Max Derrat. None of these things will necessarily be central to my own piece, but it's cool to have them, y'know? My main point will have to do with what the games themselves present as their case study. This means analysing and pointing out game mechanics, in and of themselves, as carriers of meaning and implications. As a consequence, for my own ease, I will borrow quite heavily from the old articles (the originals are in Italian, you can find them compiled here, and they are better read in order of release). Lastly, I had originally meant to make this only one article, but it seems to me like there's already enough material for me to stop yapping about methodology and start getting my hands dirty.

God's a short guy, you know, he started in the mail room and, y'know, worked his way up, invested well.

(Tom Waits, in this commercial for Franks Wild Years, directed by Chris Blum)

You're a short guy, as well: too short for your horse, anyway. You carry a special sword – which you stole – and a bow. There's a dead body bundled up in a big ass heavy blanket and you've got that with you, too. It takes a really long time and some seriously deranged route choices to get there, but what do you know – you're good enough to reach the Forbidden Lands, a land that is, well, forbidden, so you probably shouldn't be there. There's a creature, unseen, shouting orders at you out of a window that physically makes no sense architecturally, in two different voices. You have to destroy the statues on this temple's wall, but you can't do that directly, so you have to repeatedly stab gigantic, half-rock-half-flesh creatures that can and will swat you off their back like a mosquito. Only then you'll be able to bring this girl back to life – despite her cursed fate, and the fact that you're in a place called the fucking FORBIDDEN LANDS, and the fact that it hurts more and more to breathe with every colossus you beat.

Every core mechanic in this game is a display of strength: to hold on, to stab, to eat. As Mono – that is, according to the manual in the PS2 version of the game, the name of the girl whose corpse you brought here – cannot, in all likelihood, want anything anymore, it's safe to assume that all of the actions you, the player, undertake in the game are to be understood as the explicit will of Wander, the protagonist. This is a relevant distinction to make. Wander is not you, you are not Wander: why else would he refuse to jump off cliffs, or hesitate when you push him off of ledges? I've always liked thinking about Team ICO's work as a sort of hyper-stylized version of what games like Another World or the original Prince of Persia for the Apple II (even though Fumito Ueda probably played the Amiga port of the game, all things considered). Seeing it this way, the more evident influence these titles have had on Team ICO's game mechanics lends itself quite well to what I'm trying to say. The Prince and Lester Knight Chaykin are both painstakingly animated, frame by frame, in order to achieve a lifelike quality, but where both Jordan Mechner and Éric Chahi attempted a crude imitation of rotoscoping by frame-advancing VHS recordings of themselves or other models and model figures, Ueda and his team usually turn to hand-animation of their characters (or, in particularly bonkers cases like The Last Guardian, write up an algorithm to calculate feather motion in real time and burn a hole through your PS4). This seems to me like Ueda & Co. might be more interested in lifelike behaviour, as opposed to lifelike movement, and as such may be trying to conjure up a more psychologically driven type of narrative experience. And like all the best character pieces, there's usually very little people to deal with.

Let's look at it, and to do so we have to delve into spoiler territory, so reader's discretion is advised.

Agro, the only conventional living being other than Wander throughout a good 99% of actual game time, is a literal horse. As such, she does right by you, by virtue of you being, for whatever reasons you can think of, crucially important to her. Seriously, somebody else has already pointed it out: why is Agro so much bigger than Wander? Is it perhaps because they just happened to grow together and ended up adapting to one another, in ways more organic than getting a horse assigned to you by height? Judging by literally every single minute of game time, the two of them seem almost telepathically locked into each other's thoughts, and Agro goes so far as to allow herself to get killed (functionally speaking, at least: there's a reason they shot broken-legged horses in Western movies, and that reason is it hurts like a bitch and the horse simply never fully recovers for that, at least not with veterinary techniques from the eighteen-hundreds) in order for Wander to fuck off and turn into Dormin. Speaking of which, Dormin are the only other character who speak to Wander for a good 99% of cutscene time, and their only motivation seems to be coming back to this godforsaken earth to wreak havoc on those who sealed them – Emon and his guards, who also seem to be mostly interested in fucking you up specifically so that Mono does not get resurrected. Then again, who the hell asked Mono what she wants? I'm not exactly in the habit of directly asking questions to the dead.

…okay, I was lying, considering what my last two long-form posts were about. But I guess what I'm saying is: Wander is literally the only person who intentionally refuses to be open about his motives. Sure, he wants to resurrect Mono. But why? Had they ever met before she had to die? Did she openly express to him how she did not want to die? I hate myself for even considering this question, but what if her fate actually is cursed? How did Emon kill her, anyway – actually, did Emon kill her himself? What did Wander even do to steal the sword, since – considering Emon and his men literally rode all the way to a place they themselves have religious prescriptions not to defile – it must have been heavily guarded or kept in a secure area? A good number of the colossi are not aggressive unless provoked, too, so this means Wander intentionally goes out of his way to fuck with extra-planar powers beyond human comprehension. Ultimately: what if, beyond all the ad-catchphrase rhetoric of "how far will you go for love", this guy was just being a self-centered prick?

It's as good a guess as any, really – here's a piece analysing Shadow of the Colossus as a trans allegory, for instance. But since it's as good, it's worth entertaining it. I also don't plan to present it as an inherent stroke of genius: not per se, at least. What I like about considering this game a metaphor about pulling your head out of your own ass is that – in a spectacular demonstration of understanding what the fuck you're talking about, the likes of which are unprecedented (and nigh-unsurpassed, apparently) in the gaming world – the game never hits you with the "YOU SHOULD STOP PLAYING TO WIN" argument. This is Wander's doing, not yours, which is why the guy goes to the Forbidden Lands in the intro cutscene, before you have any agency at all. Now this guy's stuck in this (stunning-looking) pimple in the middle of the planet's buttocks, where a dark supernatural force's physical manifestation has been torn asunder into sixteen rock-and-flesh mechas and it's his ass on the line to give the dark supernatural entity whatever the fuck they want, otherwise the lady won't be reborn and wouldn't that be awful?, but that also means that you are, essentially, just invited to sit in, scream at the screen for a good ten hours or so at this motherfucking idiot climbing moving mountains, and partake in Fumito Ueda and his gang's own study on negative interaction in videogaming.

Negative as opposed to positive, of course – that would be The Last Guardian, which we will be talking about when I can be arsed to open up my PS4, drive the literal soot sprite motherships living amidst its circuitry out of the case, and then play the console-disintegrating performance-tanking game again. I swear I actually like that game, for fuck's sake…

Like I said, the game has mostly actions aimed at offense (admittedly you can, thank fuck, pet Agro both while standing next to her, and when you're on her back and she's standing still, which I think is actually a key mechanic to explain what The Last Guardian would later try to do), and it says a lot about Wander as a character. There is no contextual command near Mono, there is no interaction with any of the other animals in the Forbidden Lands (I think I saw a tortoise in the PS2 version a while back – did I dream it up?) that isn't hurting them or killing them or maiming them for your own personal gain or just as an accident on your journey to the next checkmark on the list or, potentially, just for shits and giggles. Essentially this guy barges in and destroys everything in his wake – including, whether he wants it or not, his sole companion. The immense irony of this is that Agro, essentially, sacrifices herself for some element of affection towards Wander: no special destiny, no sudden understanding of Wander's motives. Literally just the fact that this guy is her favourite human. But the game itself has to be taken to its gory, bloody end, through trials and tribulations, for it to reveal its actual statement on the matter.

Dormin is banished again in violence, the bridge pylons collapse by magic in on themselves as Emon and the guards make a hasty retreat out into civilised land. Wander is now a bawling, screaming horned baby – the first of his kind, some would argue: like a mark of Cain of sorts. But sure enough, the reborn Mono has no problem picking him up and, if we are to give credit to the special illustration in the Japanese PS3 re-release of the game, helping him grow into a healthy, beloved horned kid. And Agro, despite her broken leg, still finds her way back to the shrine of the cult, and climbs to the secret garden on top of the building, finding a fawn. An animal that means rebirth.

[thelastspeecher]

The Pirate Prince

I mentioned a little bit ago that in my Pirate AU, Angie and Stan's son Emmett eventually becomes the next Pirate King. Here's a sort of origin story for that.

——————————————————————————————

              There were some benefits to have a nervous nature, Emmett considered as he snuck into his parents’ bedroom.  His parents and siblings were all at a festival in the Gravity Falls town square.  Being anxious and uncomfortable in large crowds, Emmett had been allowed to stay home.

              I mean, it ain’t like I’m lyin’.  I really don’t think I’d enjoy the big kerfuffle goin’ on today.  But I did play it up just a tad to make sure they’d let me stay home.  With everyone out of the house, he could finally snoop in his parents’ room.  From the outside, they were straitlaced pillars of the community.  Angie cooked for the poor and sick, while Stan mentored young people who lacked parental figures.  But Emmett knew it was all an act.

              Behind closed doors, his parents taught all their children how to pickpocket, swore like sailors, had mysterious scars, and walked like they were ready for danger at any moment.  The last one, Emmett recognized because he himself behaved in that way.  He had a feeling, however, that his parents weren’t on edge because of severe anxiety.

              After all, Stan taught Emmett how to see through lies from anyone.  Even Stan himself.  And some of the lies Stan told were remarkably thin.  It was almost insulting, the expectation Emmett would believe his father changed his name to avoid sharing it with a pirate.  Or that Danny and Daisy’s early memories of time with pirates were just confusion over spending their first few years of life on a merchant ship.

              Emmett opened the door to his parents’ room and strode confidently over to the closet.  Inside were his ma’s many lovely dresses, though a few surprisingly masculine articles of clothing were hidden at the back.  Emmett nodded thoughtfully.  The trousers helped his theory, but they were far from conclusive.  His older sister Daisy preferred trousers, for one thing.  He knelt and began to stick his fingers in between the floorboards, looking for a loose one that could be pried up.  Underneath a box of bonnets, he found it.  It only took a small amount of effort to lift the board, revealing a chest below.  Emmett huffed.  His parents definitely weren’t making it easy.  But he had plenty of time before his family returned.

              He lifted the chest up and carried it into the bedroom proper, where he had better lighting to look at the contents.  Naturally, it had a large lock on it.  A lock that was swiftly picked by Stan’s best student.  Emmett set aside the lock and paused.  Now was the moment of truth.  He lifted the lid of the chest.  His breath caught in his throat.

              The lessons he’d learned in class came flooding back to him.  His twin was always fascinated by pirates, and asked question after question from their teacher when they discussed the ongoing piracy scourge.  The voice of his teacher echoed in his head.

              “The most famous pirate in recent memory was Sally McGowan, previously known as Sully McGowan, the last Pirate King.  Her blade, a gift from her first mate and rumored lover, Stan Pines, was named Wasp’s Stinger, a reference to the ferocity hidden under her small stature.  When she and her first mate disappeared, so did the blade that killed hundreds.”  Emmett cautiously picked up the cutlass that rested on top of the chest’s contents.  His fingers traced the letters that were etched into its blade.  He didn’t have the ear for languages that his younger sister Cadenza did; he’d never become properly fluent in the Irish his ma tried to teach her children.  But he knew enough to translate what was written on the sword.

              “The stinger of the wasp.”

              Emmett’s heart began to race.  The distinguishing features of Sally McGowan his teacher had told them about resounded in his ears, aligning with his ma’s physical appearance perfectly.  Blonde hair.  A large nose.  Eyes the color of the sea.  Shorter than average and very sensitive about that fact.

              He set aside the sword and continued to dig through the chest.  A few other weapons were there, including brass knuckles.  Brass knuckles were the reported favorite of Stan Pines, a former cabin boy who never properly learned swordplay and who, supposedly, looked eerily similar to Emmett’s dad, Stan McGucket.  The weapons were wrapped in more clothing, these bloodstained and torn, but apparently still full of sentimental value.  Hidden at the bottom of the chest was a pendant, made of an opal surrounded by gold.  Emmett frowned.

              Don’t recognize that.  And it don’t seem like Ma or Dad’s style.  Probably somethin’ they plundered and decided to keep as a souvenir.  He set it aside as well.  Finally, wrapped in a fine white fabric that seemed like part of a wedding dress, he found a piece of wood.  His fingers brushed against it.  It smelled of the sea and had a mark where a limpet had been pried off.  Again, he wasn’t sure what it was.  Nothing about it seemed remarkable or worth saving.  But Emmett’s suspicions had been proven long before this point.  He glanced at the clock on the wall.  He let out a swear that would make most people gasp, but his parents would barely register as a bad word.  His family would be home soon.

              Emmett quickly put everything back in the chest, aside from a small dagger that he slid into his boot.

              It’s their own fault for teachin’ their kids how to steal.  They should expect us to “borrow” things here and there.  He lingered on the cutlass of the last Pirate King, but knew that theft would be discovered far faster than lifting a simple dagger.  With everything other than the dagger placed in the chest again, he locked it, put it back under the floorboard, and shoved the box of bonnets over it.  He quickly glanced around the room as he left.  It was like he had never been in there.

              When his family returned, Emmett was reading a book on the couch.  Caleb and Cadenza eagerly began to tell him all of what he missed.  Emmett smiled and nodded, but couldn’t stop thinking about his parents.  The unassuming woman and man who raised him had once been the scourge of the high seas.

              If they could do it…maybe I could, too.

[ooc-miqojak]

😩 In your opinion, what is one of the most wicked things you’ve ever done?

7️⃣ If you were to compare yourself to one of the 7 deadly sins, which one (or more) represent you?

😩 In your opinion, what is one of the most wicked things you’ve ever done?

"You know, others might list my approach to piracy, and keeping my identity as such from being found out: Dead men tell no tales. But... I don't regret those instances. I regret the early days of my corruption - I don't even remember if I was still on the demon's leash, or not, but I lost myself to the... the hunger. I was just...gone. Blacked out. I came to amidst the corpses of..." Here she pauses, and decides not to give specifics, " - of people who trusted me. Whose lives mattered to me. I've learned that I can't ignore the demonic needs that I have, or even worse things happen to those around me... and I don't have many people left. I can't afford to hurt my daughter, especially. The thought haunts me... so, better some schmucks out on the sea with booty to pillage, than anybody I actually know."

7️⃣ If you were to compare yourself to one of the 7 deadly sins, which one (or more) represent you? @unabashedrebel For also shooting me this one!

This one I'll just answer for her, since it's a more complex answer than it seems at first! I think I'd consider her being associated with Sloth and Lust, primarily! And hilariously, TV Tropes has the best layman's explanations for how I view them ( I don't just associate them with their major negative association - ie, Lust isn't just for sex, and Sloth isn't just about being lazy.) TVTropes Link here for more on all the 7 Sins - I like their nuanced but reader-friendly explanations.

Sloth

Even in the movie Devil's Carnival, the girl represented by Sloth was always a great look at how Pally!Lily was, in my mind. The 'doormat,' easily manipulated, never really able to say no. She's no doubt the 'Frog' here in 'The Scorpion and the Frog'. Like her, Lily was always willing to forgive a little too much. Willing to look away too often. (And a severe addict, who was always far too intimate with the 'bad boys' just like the little Frog, here - which leads us to Lust!)

Lust

Where do we start? It's not just about sex, with Lust - this one is kind of the whole bag, as opposed to her slothfulness. She's long been an addict - the fall of the Well was hard on a young Lily, and even after it was restored, she never really stopped chasing higher highs (much to her chagrin). She just... craves. Like they say here, it's hand-in-hand with gluttony - which can also encompass addiction and cravings. It's not a food thing with her (though the way she goes at pastries, you'd never know that), but just this craving. For more. None of it really tangible things, besides the fleeting nature of physical intimacy.

"Desire for Pleasure. It's the desire to know someone Biblically, but traditionally included all other sins of physical desire or luxury (such as drug addiction), not just sex. How evil this is depends often on the author's view of sex." - TVTropes

You might say that upon accepting that she's just... corrupted, now, she gave up on morals she rarely lived up to prior anyways, and decided... what's so bad about being a hedonist? What's wrong with doing what you want, and getting what you want... whenever you want? Laugh at everyone taking life so seriously, and just enjoy the ride.

[lady-jay]

Day 9: Lend an Ear

Cross-posted on Ao3 under Blue and Silver Entry rating: T

“Ever miss it?”

The question is unexpected- an introspective thing suddenly broaching the darkened silence that has lingered since they doused the candles. Souji rolls onto his side to face his companion. The mattress needs restuffing, he thinks idly for the umpteenth time as his hip digs through the padding and into the wood beneath. Or perhaps he’ll convince Dacien to simply allow him to purchase a better made replacement.

“Do I ever miss what?” he asks for clarification, staring to where he knows the other’s face to be, despite that he cannot see it now.

Dacien shifts, his bare leg draping over Souji’s. It is too hot for blankets or anything nearer than this. The elezen’s skin is sticky with sweat, no different than Souji’s own. Skin slides against skin in a way that he once would have cringed from before he became accustomed to a far rougher life.

“What ye were before all this. Back when ye were jus’ a new thing, startin’ out, an’ no one knew yer name.”

Ironic, how Dacien seems to know exactly where his thoughts have been of late. After the Endsinger. After the End of Days. After Golbez and the 13th. What now? What could possibly be next for the vaunted Warrior of Light, savior of worlds? It’s a title he never wanted, but here he is. He considers the question quietly for a moment, listening to the waves against the hull and the softness of his lover’s breathing.

“More often, now,” he confesses, “It was easier to keep going when I had so little time to rest. It was always just on to the next thing…”

“An’ now ye have time to be nostalgic.”

Souji feels him lever up onto an elbow, his mass filling a different part of the space before him.

“Mm, I think so. I feel guilty, missing it.”

There is no judgement in Dacien. There never has been. Perhaps that was why it was so easy to love him within those first meetings. To trust him, despite his history of piracy. There are no expectations of anything extraordinary, no dangers of disappointment. The elezen huffs and long fingers brush over Souji’s head.

“No use feelin’ guilty, love. Yer life’s been a turbulent thing- no shame in wishin’ for a time when it wasn’t. We all do. Get through the storm and can’t help lookin’ back, at the way things were before.”

His touch moves to Souji’s cheek, lightly caressing over the sharp bone just beneath his eye. The samurai lets himself relax at the touch, at the sensation of familiarly calloused fingers on his skin.

“The world’s saved- a few times over. Ye can rest now. An’ if the storm ever revisits ye, ye can tell me ‘bout it.”

Ah, so this is what this is. Dacien is ever observant and direct, but still has trouble with what he might think are the softer aspects of a relationship. An offer of support, an encouragement to move on from the long run of crisis after crisis.

“What brought this on?” he asks softly.

The pirate huffs again, fingers tracing over his jaw now.

“Ye’ve been quiet- more’n usual. Been starin’ at the horizon without really seein’ it. Ye’ve got wanderlust now that it’s all over. So it got me wonderin’ if ye missed it- jus’ bein’ a small fish seein’ where yer feet took ye. Now yer a big fish, and ye got no direction for the moment…so I guess yer back to where ye started, in a way.”

Souji’s lips turn up in a small smile. He catches Dacien’s hand, tugging it down to where he can press a short kiss to his knuckles. The elezen doesn’t stop him, doesn’t even give the surprised grunt that had once followed Souji’s little shows of affection.

“I am. And what about you, Dacien? Do you also have wanderlust?”

He can picture the other’s grin, even if he can’t see it. The way it slashes across his thin lips like and flash of a blade, teeth bared and sharp eyes narrowing further, unearthly blue glinting against the grey of his skin.

“Always,” Dacien’s leg sides to wrap around his own, tightening to keep him in place, “Want to wander t’gether?”

The small smile widens and he presses another kiss to his lover’s fingers.

“Always,” he repeats, “We’ve yet to be on an adventure together.”

“S’ppose we’ll need t’ change that.”

Souji feels the air shift again as Dacien settles himself, apparently ignoring the way the new proximity turns the heat sweltering.

“We will,” he breathes, releasing Dacien’s hand to stifle a yawn, “We’ll talk more in the morning.”

An affirmative rumble is his only reply. Souji is still smiling as he lets himself drift at last. He is fortunate, he thinks, to have Dacien. Observant and pragmatic, perhaps one of the few who truly understands his need to constantly be on the move. And certainly one of the few willing to listen without shying away or expecting anything of him.  

[radiomonkeys2]

"How about we settle this with a test 'a balls?"

"Tsk. I don't even have balls, and I'll tell you I got the balls."

Raza the Space Pirate stands off against Yulaan the Barbarian Warrior, taking place in the run-down streets of New York City, 1977. High on kung fu and wuxia grindhouse films, Yulaan enters a street fighting tournament set against the backdrop of the Great Blackout of 1977, and it's during the final moments of this tournament that a secret challenger enters— another Yaban! This one a nagoi named Raza, who has been eager to fight the Butcher of Gorta for years. And fight they do, showing off their superhuman qi abilities to the humans watching. But this is no fun, so what say they put away the magic tricks and do this like a couple of fellows— hand-to-hand, a pure secular fistfight in a Knife-Edge Deathmatch!

Raza is a space pirate, a vitakoze or deathkommando, one who raids interplanetary and interstellar vessels to sell the materials on them on the black market, but this is really just a front. All he's really into is a good fight and butchery, so he deliberately targets the most well-defended and hardest-to-penetrate ships in the cosmos for the sake of a great challenge. Indeed, because of the insane nature of nagoi piracy, they're often employed by warlords and mercenary groups to do the difficult missions no others will dare to contemplate, let alone try. Raza isn't a top-tier pirate— he's a small fry all things considering, but that's his lot in life. Unlike a lot of his compatriots, he's perfectly fine with staying small rather than advancing through the power structure, feeling that it keeps him close to the best kinds of action— those down-to-Earth sorts of fistfights that really get the blood pumping… often all over the walls.

I've always talked about vroda kvltvr because female characters are inherently interesting to me. But senja kvltvr is also interesting. Nagois are very manly as a rule, and they are still capable of brotherhoods— after all, "senja kagora" literally translates to "brother fellowship" or "fraternal chivalry," so they clearly have this capability. Indeed, nagois ought to have very strong brotherhoods because part of their spiritual dao is that of the ultramasculine huo combined with the feminine yin— but all the feminine third does for them is allow for that self-control and compassion for one another that makes fraternities so strong while also enhancing their destructive potential. Bollois are widely seen as lacking that sort of compassionate side hence why they make such effective butchers and assassins, but they still have chivalrous sisterhoods, so it makes sense that nagois will be males of unity and fellowship. Considering male friendship is a major manly theme on Earth, the manliness of nagois doesn't really need to be stated, hence why I tend to focus way more on the manliness of bollois.

But that being said, senja kagora is still not some feminine ordeal or anything. Nagois do manly things that often get homoerotic, and one of those things is a knife-edge death match, where these manly space warriors get to have their fun beating each other bloody between blades. Again, bollois do these things too— nagois and bollois share many behaviors in their fellowships. Indeed, Djuggesh and Ghojin are an undefeated winners of multiple knife-edge death matches. However, Yulaan had never actually heard of these things because she never had the chance to really get into vroda kvltvr before her war on Planet Gorta, hence why she's confused by the offer to fight in one against Raza. To be fair, he's also beguiled that the Butcher of Gorta has never been in a knife-edge death match, let alone heard of them. It seems more than a bit odd, like a badass mercenary with hundreds of kills having never heard of even the concept of honor dueling or underground fight clubs. So he teaches her via actually holding one.

And what better place to do it than in 1977 New York? A place of the cusp of post-modernity, where the chauvinistic and chivalrous machismo of the past still lingers on and triggers many bystanders to become so incredibly uncomfortable.

It can't be avoided as a subject: Yulaan is female. She may not be a woman per se, but she is indistinguishable from one, since Yabans are essentially that classic "humanoid alien" archetype. She looks and sounds like a woman, and she's female, so to these people, she might as well be a woman— indeed, it's common for people to call her a woman in many forms, such as "Yaban woman," and even "bolloi woman" because they don't quite get that "bolloi" alone works (it would essentially be like calling a female fowl a "hen woman" but made far muddier by the fact bollois are, as aforementioned, indistinguishable from women). She already upsets people by being so well-built and battle-scarred. Tossing her into a brutal bare-knuckle pit fight with an insanely muscular male just seems offensively obscene to these modern eyes. Not that everyone's against it.

Sure, some like Glenn and Michael think it's an afront to the Lord Himself for this to happen and Jennifer weeps, thinking that Yulaan's throwing away her beautiful face and shouldn't be doing something so toxically wretched— but then you have the amazed Jocko and Elf who, even though they also possess era-appropriate chauvinism (how could they know their general attitudes would make them villains to those two generations away in the future?), are more tolerant than they let on and certainly don't mind a lady going topless to fight. Plus the sheer audacity of such a fight is astounding, especially to Elf who sees it not as some mixed brawl but as a legendary struggle of will. Nor is Lori anything but awe-struck. Again, she'd never get involved in such a dumb sort of brutal herself either, and while the fight itself is so dumb to her, it's also awesome.

Alas, Yulaan and Raza couldn't care less about what the humans think of their fight. They're Yabans; this is just what they do. That there might be anything unusual or wrong about a male and a female fistfighting with such raw brutality is an alien concept to them— on Planet Kollidor, only the strong meet on the battlefield! Strength is all that matters. There is no "equality" on Kollidor; only strength and power.

Admittedly, causing that sort of discomfort is part of why Yulaan even heads back to the past, such as to 1950s Spain and 1960s America and East Asia. These time periods were eras of far stronger gender norms and far greater male honor in daily life. There's a natural clash between human and Yaban norms as a result. We humans expect our females to be tender, delicate, graceful, kind, compassionate, submissive, motherly, sensitive, emotional, and indecisive, even in modern times when such isn't "politically correct" to say directly and thus vastly moreso in past decades. Tradwives and tradwomen are supposed to be bearers of that sort of ultra-femininity. Yabans, by comparison, expect their females to be industrious, brutal, aggressive, unconcerned, logical, and cruel. In fact, a traditional bolloi or tradbol would be seen as completely lacking femininity to humans. As has been stated before, bollois may be the females, but the hermaphroditic yenois are the "Women," at least by traditional standards. Yulaan considering herself a "somewhat traditional girl" is ironic in that context considering that, by Yaban standards, she very much is so, and yet by human standards, we'd probably call her "ultra-Butch" and some certainly might consider her a "frigid feminist" as a result. Hence why it's so fun to thrust her into places like Francoist Spain, suburban mid-century America, 80s Japan, and more.

This is what happens when you take the Strong Female Character™ trope and run with it to its maximum possible extent.

Special thanks to Salvamakoto for the artwork!

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

I feel like there are two periods in Ed's life where a huge emotional piece that says TRUST NO ONE makes sense. This is reminder. It's a lesson for himself written in ink (hilariously in a place where he will not be able to read it). He got the hand spiders to teach himself to not be scared of spiders, and he got the back piece as a reminder to never ever trust anyone ever again.

Young adult Ed, just starting out in piracy, certainly made a lot of traumatising experiences, and something like "do not let your guard down, ever" and "trust no one" are lessons you can see being learned under a cruel captain like Hornigold.

I don't see it being something Ed would have done in the, say, decade before the show is set. Ed's whole thing in the beginning of season one is that, outside of all the trauma woven into the Blackbeard identity, he is stuck in a neverending circle of same old same old. It's nothing but the uzsh, over and over and over. There's no drama, no fucking life. "This role I have to play day in day out is stifling me and also I'm bored to death" isn't a state of mind I would assume produces a big statement tattoo that says "trust no one". The tired boredom is apathic. This tattoo isn't apathic. The event that made him get this one hurt.

When discussing it, we tend to point out two instigating factors in Ed's spiral into full on suicidal depression: Stede leaving him and Izzy threatening him back into the hated Blackbeard performance, aka a very new fresh pain on top of a lifetime of "I'm an unlovable monster" trauma. But that's a very psychoanalysis approach. This is what an outsider looking at Ed can say. This isn't what it'll feel like to Ed.

What happened to Ed is the following: in a span of maybe a week or two:

- His first mate of many years (who was a dick who made Ed feel bad frequently, but hey), whom Ed entrusted with tasks he deems important, first tries to increasingly unsubtly make Ed kill his new friend/crush (which Ed will consider his own fault because he said that was his plan), and when Ed says no to the killing, his long time first mate whom he trusted at least in a business kind of way, directly goes against his orders and tries to kill Stede anyway. (Betrayal Number 1 by someone Ed assumed he could trust!)

- An old not quiet friend but also not quite not friend (who saved Ed's life once and who is thus a person Ed feels endebted to and whom he must trust at least a bit) shows up for fun nostalgic party time! Except turns out he's being a dick and he makes Stede realise that Ed is a terrible person (and Ed's been waiting for this to happen, so he accepts his fate and leaves). Only to find out that this whole thing was a con and Jack drove a wedge between Ed and Stede on purpose. (Betrayal Number 2 by someone Ed assumed he could trust!)

- Turns out aforementioned first mate apparently used his self-inflicted banishment to sell them all out to the cops! And got Jack to betray Ed, too! And then he tries to buy Ed from the British! (That's at least two or three different types of betrayal in a trenchcoat!)

- Then Ed signs the Act of Grace for Stede, and tells Stede he makes him happy, and makes plans to run away because Stede wants plans, and then Stede doesn't show. First guy Ed ever really bared his heart to, he was all in and he gave Stede everything he could, and Stede didn't want it. And he didn't even say no, he said yes and kissed Ed back and then he didn't show up! (That's a big one that hurts, and it's number four to six, depending on how many separate betrayals we count for Izzy so far.)

- And then, when Ed dares to be vulnerable with the crew and with Izzy because he wants a better life even without Stede, Izzy goes "you are better off dead than openly queer". (There goes another Izzy betraying Ed's trust on the list!)

Ed, in the second half of season one, makes experience after experience where people he assumed he knew and could trust or at least could rely on betrayed him.

Isn't this an experience that would make you consider a big ass statement piece tattoo like this?

That it's in a vulnerable place is a bonus, really. Ed's mindset in the beginning of season two is "I was completely right about being unlovable and I need to die about it because my life will never get better". Ed wants to die! Most of this arc was cut, but I'm convinced the reason Ed even starts on the whole record breaking thing is that he knows it'll make Ned Low mad and he hopes a mad Ned Low will come after him and kill him. Ed then decides this is taking too long and he can't do this shit anymore so storm or mutiny is going to be the way to go, but, point being: Kraken Ed is not worried about being stabbed in the back by a tattooist. Kraken Ed doesn't even watch the battle around him during raids in favour of smoking his pipe. If a stray bullet hits him, whatever, cool, gotta die anyway. So if a tattooist tries to murder him from behind, whatever? Saves Ed a lot of trouble.

The TRUST NO ONE skulls and snakes tattoo is a huge piece that was painful and dangerous to get. It's emotional and dramatic and it's depressing as hell. This is a Kraken tattoo.

And I find that narratively juicy, too, because going on, Ed's life takes a turn for the much better. He stops being suicidal. He finds happiness and love again. But this reminder of his pain was also written on him in permanent ink, and it's going to stay there for the rest of his life. He can try to get some of it covered up with something new and more positive, but the dramatic depression tattoo will stay underneath it forever. And I find that... poignant? Because healing doesn't mean all the scars fade. It doesn't mean the hurt gets unmade. You live through a terrible thing, you survive and you bear the scars, and they will fade (like an aging tattoo) and you can cover some of them up, but they will never be gone because they're a part of you now. And that doesn't mean they define you or that they're all you are or that you'll constantly think of the bad thing from your past. Maybe it's on your back where you can't really see it without twisting around in front of a mirror. Maybe your loved ones will see it easier than you do. But in spite of all that, you get to have a good life, you get to be happy, you get to trust again. What if someone wrote Trust No One on your back and you trusted anyway? What if you thought you were unlovable, but you found love? What if life just begins again? You know?

I’m sure this conversation has been had before but I have a shit memory and tumblr search function is ass so—

[obsessivevoidkitten]

A Plundered Pirate

Yandere Lobster Man x Gender Neutral Reader (CW: Pirates, piracy, lobster men, non-con, collaring, oviposition, general yandere behavior) Word Count: 1.4k (This was requested by the amazing @solariahalsey, who also helped greatly in developing the story, she is a long time friend so I let her cut the line with requests, she is also one of my two amazing beta readers, without her help and encouragement I would not post nearly as much.) You were a skilled pirate captain sailing the seas for fortune. You were on the hunt, waiting to ambush a small convoy of merchant ships that your intel told you would be passing through these waters. You had become very infamous, plundering ships large and small in a very large territory, evading capture at every turn, and all without having harmed a single innocent person. This job should have been a piece of cake for you and your crew, but that isn’t how things had worked out for you. Your intel had, ironically enough, been an ambush itself. At first you had no idea what was going on when you heard clicking and skittering all around you. But soon enough large lobster men climbed up from all direction onto the ship, surrounding you completely. There was no choice but to surrender. You cursed your informant for his betrayal. The oldest looking one, seeming to be in his mid forties, approached you. “You were a slippery one, they finally had to assign me to the task, a fleet admiral.” He stood proudly in front of you, he had four arms, all covered in a hard dark blue carapace, two ending in hands and two ending in claws. His hair was black and cut into the typical “high and tight” military style and he had an antenna sticking from each side of his head. His feet and legs were human like, but also encased in hard blue shell. He wore a wetsuit with the navy insignia and flag of the United World Government that covered his unplated chest and crotch. Though it left exceedingly little to the imagination.   He and his underlings bound up the hands of you and your crew mates before gathering you all in front of the fleet admiral. “Listen up pirate scum! I am Fleet Admiral Neelim. The only reason you are not being executed is because you never took the lives of your victims! However; you have still caused great harm economically, so a punishment must be given. Since the population of our species is at an all time low we have been given permission to use you all as mates and incubators. When the UWGS Ensnare arrives you will board the ship and then assigned your mate. You should feel honored to help contribute your services to such a worthy cause.” This wasn’t completely unheard, non-violent criminals given as mates for various monster races who’s populations were declining. But it was still a shock to you. Never in your life did you consider that you would wind up as an incubator for a lobster man. You rolled your eyes, you would find an opportunity to escape one day and by the might of Poseidon you would… eventually. For now there was nothing to do but wait and hope you got assigned to a one of these men that wouldn’t be too rough with you. You really hoped you did not wind up with Neelim. He seemed way too militaristic and proud of himself. Also… he was larger than the others and that scared you. Of course when you boarded the government navy ship you were immediately assigned to Neelim… He was the only one they would assign you to given your status as the pirate leader and your infamy. You had been a mighty pirate, a scourge of the sea… but now it was your booty that was in danger of being plundered by this uptight admiral… You were escorted to his quarters. Over the course of the next few weeks you got to know him better. He did not go straight to forcefully breeding you, most of your former crew were not immediately used as egg warmers, though you did notice more and more bulging bellies among them as time went by when you saw them in the mess hall. Instead Neelim actively courted you. Trying to woo you into being his mate. The lobster man would frequently bring you really nice food, better than what he and the other lobster men ate. After all, you would need the energy to carry his eggs. He brought you clothing, in blue, he wanted you match his uniform. You would have refused, but he had taken your other clothing and it had been dirty anyway so it was either this or nothing. Neelim made you wear a collar that said “(Y/N) Property of Neelim, if found please contact XXXXX.” Apparently it was standard practice for all people in your position, but yours of course matched him. After wearing the collar he was not so paranoid about one of his men without an assigned human stealing you. He was not overly strict with you as you had feared. But he was no pushover, every time you tried to make an escape you were punished. He would tie you up for a few hours and leave hickies all over you to remind you who you belonged to now. Neelim would laugh and mockingly call you his little pirate. He was much less serious and more sweet but mocking behind closed doors. Forcing you to sit on his lap while he held you close, teasing you about how cute you would look with a tummy full of his offspring, teasing you about the blush that appeared on your cheeks every time he told you how small and adorable and weak you were. He started to get less patient with you. You were his and you just had to accept that and being nice about it with you just wasn’t getting him anywhere. It was your fault you were given to him in the first place. Eventually, after coming back from a particularly stressful day of taking care of his administrative duties Neelim cracked and decided he was not putting up with your disobedience any longer. He cornered you in your shared quarters. You tried hard to squirm and thrash away from him but you were not match for his four mighty arms. He disrobed you easily, his pincers ripping your clothes away, and pulled you to his lap, his big blue cock already out and at full mast. It leaked copious amounts of natural lubricant so he rubbed and prodded your hole with the tip, massaging the thick slippery fluid into you. You continued to resist but it was a fruitless endeavor. He kissed you roughly as he pulled you all the way onto his eager prick. He was sorry he had to make you do this, but the future of his species relied on him to do his part and he expected you to do your duty as well. You really had no one to blame but yourself for being in this position. Neelim pushed into your well lubed hole at a steady rhythm, impaling you so deeply that your stomach actually visibly bulged out a bit with every thrust of his hips. You were like a living fleshlight. The lobster man felt you up with his hands as well as his antenna as he bred you, putting special emphasis on rubbing your soft thighs. He ignored your protests and eventually they transitioned into little moans and gasps of pleasure. This made Neelim happy, he wanted to make you feel good too. “My good little pirate~ So good holding my eggs for me~ You like it don’t you (Y/N)?” You shook your head in denial even as he sucked on your neck and his cock continued to delve deeply into you, coaxing a lewd moan from your lips. “No! I hate it!” In spite of your denial you started grinding into his cock in sync with each of his thrusts. As he bred you he continued leaking his lubricating precum into you and it felt nothing short of glorious. “But you’re doing such a good job and are making such nice noises for me!” The lobster said mockingly as he quickened his pace before holding you close with all his arms and driving his dick into you as deeply as he possibly could, causing you to cum as he started filling you up with egg after egg not stopping until he ran out and you looked heavily pregnant. The admiral nuzzled you and held you close, with you still on his cock. “See? That wasn’t so hard now was it?”  

[tardis-stowaway]

Concept: A streaming service releases a movie about a person caught in a time loop that ends not with breaking the time loop, but with the protagonist reaching peace with the new condition of their life, making a point of finding joy in small things and doing good works even if they don’t last.

It was a pretty good movie, so when you have a friend over who you think would like it, you watch the movie again. About 2/3 way through the movie, something starts feeling off. You didn’t exactly memorize the movie the first time, but it feels like some scenes are going differently. As the movie goes on, you become more and more certain that it’s not the same. The ending is definitely different. The protagonist still ends the film trapped in the time loop, but this time they’re in despair about it. This ending emphasizes the futility of trying to change controlling systems and the way people’s fundamental natures trap them in destructive cycles.

 You’re initially shocked not to see the movie you expected, but you realize that it must have two alternate versions, shown either randomly or in some designated order depending on how many times you’ve viewed the film. You wonder if there’s more than two versions, so you watch it again.

Broadly speaking, it seems like the same film you watched the first time, but even though you can’t put your finger on any specific changes, it feels a bit different, like maybe the film’s editor used different takes. In the jubilant final scene, you realize that the protagonist isn’t wearing a snazzy leather jacket like you remember, but instead a button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up their forearms.

 The fourth time you watch it, you get the grim ending again, except this time in the final scene the protagonist isn’t crying silently while staring into the distance, but wailing while covering their face with their hands.

 The fifth viewing, the protagonist goes mad by the end, though the film is clear that they’re mad within a time loop rather than imagining a time loop due to madness. The sixth time, the mood of the ending is stoic resignation.

 You finally get online to look for information about this film. There’s plenty of people talking about the film and its different versions. The streaming service has implemented some super-advanced anti-piracy technology, so no one can save clips, and even trying to use another device to film a tv showing the movie seems to just result in weird static. That makes it impossible for people to compare footage from their versions and figure out exactly how many there are, but it’s clear there are lots.

The director and cast did some publicity before the film was released, talking about the characters and the setting, but there was no mention of alternate versions. They haven’t done any press since the release. One person online claims to have run into the director at a Starbucks in Malibu and asked whether there were any alternate endings where the movie’s protagonist escapes the time loop.

“The structure of storytelling, at least as we understand it in Western culture, always calls for an ending,” the director said with a wink, then slipped out the door, clutching a triple-shot hazelnut latte. The online person reporting this encounter didn’t realize until too late that that wasn’t actually an answer.

You watch the movie again and again, usually several times a week. You take notes each time so you can better spot the differences. You start changing how you watch it: different times of day, on different devices, with different settings. Maybe there’s a trick to control which version you’ll get. It’s never exactly the same twice. (Just how long did they spend filming all these versions? You can’t find any information about the lead actors working on any new projects.) The repetition and lack of resolution are maddening, but every time you decide you’re done with watching this movie you only make it a few days before you give in and watch it again. You keep hoping to find the ending where the time loop breaks, but it never happens.

Finally, in frustration, you open a document on your computer. You stay up until 4 am furiously typing. Eventually you have it: a new version of the latter half of the movie where the protagonist successfully breaks the time loop. Your ending is true to both with the film’s worldbuilding and the protagonist’s character. It’s big and triumphant. You can’t remember the last time you felt so satisfied.

You go to sleep. The next day, you open up the streaming site. Your cursor lingers on the time loop movie you’ve watched so many times before, but instead you select a teen rom com that looks like it will take absolutely no narrative risks. You feel free.

The day after that, you have an idea for how the time loop film’s protagonist could break out of the loop in a super ridiculous way. Just thinking about it cracks you up. You don’t want to forget any part of this hilarious idea. You open another document and type it out.

Three weeks later you’re sitting in a Starbucks. You have another idea for how the protagonist can break out of the loop but with absolutely heartbreaking consequences. It’s painful to consider, but the idea won’t let you rest. You open your laptop and go to the folder already growing crowded with version after version of the protagonist’s escape from the time loop. You take a sip of triple-shot hazelnut latte and begin again.