#touches of navy

[inspiredlivingspaces]

IG beckiowens

[spacespheal]

Pirate au just bc I like the Halloween and PortFest outfits

[kacievvbbbb]

The devil works hard but the donquixote family graphic design team works harder.

Like look at the graphics on that, knocked it up on the fly and probably on some strange snail computer hybrid too.

Look at the flames in the background the posing. Where did they even get these pictures from. Amazing.

Call him evil, a war criminal even but you can not call Donquixote Doflamingo unprepared.

[beardedmrbean]

[rozeliyawashereyall]

New Eden ref yippeee

I love them so much I need to draw them more-

Basic rundown of their backstory cuz yeah.

Local enby has terrible parents, 3 okay siblings, gets into fights, is involved with gangs, met that eric guy, got taken out of the family will, got disowned at 18, loves the ocean, graduated and becomes a marine biologist, meets a fish guy, and now has to kill their boss.

They like sea snakes.

[missmungoe]

If you have a moment, you should go check out TricksterMelon on Twitter :) I hope you like it <3

I am speechless

[compacflt]

I was wondering if you had thoughts about how Ice and Mav's politics don't fully align with their actions? There was a post where you said Ice's politics are more socially liberal than Mav's but Mav is also the one who goes out to La Jolla to hit on guys before Ice, and later again when he's broken up with Ice, but Ice only goes out with women out of fear for his honor or whatever. Same with their respective thoughts on feminism, with Mav's mild respect for Charlie (telling Ice not all women fit the stereotype) but later Ice is the one who sends Juno to Mav's Top Gun class without telling him she's a woman and Ice has a respectful friendship with Juno. I think you said Ice is vaguely on the ace-aro spectrum (demi-homoromantic) which is a sort of fascinating irony that he doesn't have the words for it whereas Mav is the one with the theories about Ice's sexuality. Though with their hypocrisies and inconsistencies this all just feeds into their characterizations of the fact that they keep divorcing their actions from their spoken words from their identities.

okay going to take this point by point

1. yes i have addressed their politics in relation to their actions before, so maybe read this post and this post before you read this one, just to see where my other thoughts line up

2. gay republicans and conservatives do exist (at the very least certainly republicans and conservatives who have gay sex in secret)

3. before maverick is a political actor he is a human being, and the characterization that we are primarily given for him is that he is impulsive and reckless and doesn’t think through his actions. As ive written about many times before—from a story construction standpoint, his thoughtlessness is his number one most important character trait. He is both thoughtlessly dangerous (his hero’s “fatal flaw;” he can’t stop himself from making bad decisions) and thoughtlessly brilliant (the navy’s best and most daring and heroic pilot). He does what he wants without thinking about it; and he makes excuses and hollow promises whenever that plan doesn’t work out (“I know better than that. It will never ever happen again;” [it happens again] “I’m not gonna let you down. I promise.” [goose dies shortly thereafter]). His thoughtless impulsiveness overrides everything else. Maybe the act of having gay sex (to address your “he gets fucked in La Jolla before ice” point) is politically subversive, but for Maverick’s thoughtless character that we are shown in Top Gun, the most subversive possible thing would be to LABEL the gay sex and think through the consequences of it. To call a spade a spade and call himself gay or bi or queer or whatever. That would be the most subversive (and with mav, entirely unbelievable imo) possible thing. That takes conscious effort of thought, something maverick is near-incapable of doing. As long as he can get away with it without thinking about it, he’s politically in the clear, with regards to his character & character arc. If that makes sense. “Don’t think. Just do.” That’s literally his motto lmfao. He represents thoughtless action as an archetype; his politics come secondary to his desires

4. Their “respective thoughts on feminism” are divided into two camps: 1. “Professional as required by the law” and 2. “Sex pest mode.” They’re naval officers in the 1980s. Whether republican or democrat, that’s kind of par for the course. How men treat women can be a performance to other men. Any respect i made them show towards women had broader, more metatextual “need to move the conversation/story from A to B” reasoning behind it. See the first post I linked for much more on that.

5. i never said ice was on the ace/aro spectrum, or if i did i DEFINITELY meant it sarcastically. That could not be further from what i believe. This isn’t something I’ve ever discussed on this blog before, but a MASSIVE part of the philosophical discussion I’ve been trying to moderate within this project over the last year is the question— “do labels even work with characters under these very specific and extraordinarily extreme conditions and societal pressures?” It’s a question I took from my time studying early American history—the contexts of certain environments, and I would definitely count the elite officer ranks of the navy in the 90s and 2000s as one of these certain environments, simply Are Not Conducive to the easier (path of least resistance maybe) ways we civilians handle sexuality and friendship and trauma. There are so many variables and external and internal pressures within an environment like the upper ranks of career navy officers that sexual orientation labels lose all nuance and accuracy. I don’t think Ice (as i have written him) is gay. I don’t think he’s straight. I don’t think he’s bi. I think he’s an unlabelable product of too many variables for labels to have any effect on how he is perceived. Which, in our society built around labels and categories, is admittedly difficult to wrestle with. But doesn’t make it any less worth wrestling with.

6. Yes, ice and mav’s hypocrisy is the linchpin of the entire story.

They’re both trying to have their cake (“honor” and moral superiority based on the harmful traditional subjective morals arbitrated by elite navy officership) and eat it too (a fulfilling relationship with the love of their lives). & the point is that they cant. they have to settle for one.

[just-horrible-things]

[ First | Prev ]

The transformation is remarkable.

Perhaps it should have been obvious that this would happen. Tacitus didn’t rise through the ranks of the heretics to a position of leadership by stammering and flinching and deferring to others, after all. It's just that after seeing him curl up over his knees in front of that wretched Inquisition woman, Soren has had a hard time seeing his old friend as anything but fragile, damaged and exhausted.

But all it takes is a week or two of adequate food and sleep, and the transformation is profound.

His candid smile is exactly as Soren remembers it. It has to be forced, but you'd never guess. The sparkle in those black, black eyes takes the inhumanity out of them. 

It can't have been long enough for Tacitus to put any real condition back on his bones, but somehow Soren stops seeing the hollows in his cheeks. The tremor in his hands, too. It's still there, if Soren remembers to look for it, but the impression is of steadiness. The same confidence adds breadth to his shoulders that isn't really there.

Only when the mask slips does Soren even remember that it is a mask at all.  And those vulnerable moments are rapidly becoming few and far between.

Even when the two of them have privacy, Tacitus is more often the suave, confident Scion of Soren’s memories than the terrified man who confided in him just weeks ago.

In front of others, Tacitus is different again, balancing self-assurance against solemn contrition in an ever-shifting ratio according to the responses of his audience. He makes it seem so natural that only when it's over does Soren think to wonder if Tacitus was always so… calculated with his mannerisms. 

Was the earnest candour Soren remembers just the face Tacitus wanted him to see back then, or was there a genuine honesty that's since been burned out of him along with so much else? 

For all that he’ll defend the man against the Inquisition, Soren isn't sure how far to trust Tacitus. The crimes he has confessed to are almost beyond imagining, and the weight of other, perhaps worse, deeds unspoken hangs always in the air between them. 

And the Warp has marked Tacitus, and Soren is not qualified to tell how much is the expected affliction of the Navis Nobilite, and how much is the corrupting touch of fell powers. Neither medicae nor astropaths have been able to advise him in this. His Navigators would know more, but Soren is loathe to inform them of Tacitus’ origins, and so he remains in the dark. 

The most concerning thing is how easy it is to forget – especially when Tacitus is talking – all those marks of inhumanity. And Soren doesn’t know whether it’s his own will that fails – his perceptions clouded by the memory of friendship – or whether something more sinister turns his mind from the contempt he ought to feel.

Tacitus deserves better than he is receiving, that much Soren doesn't doubt. But in the quiet corners of his mind, he wonders if he is being taken in by the self-confessed heretic's charm.

—

It remains unclear to Tacitus whether there is any future that has room for him. But he’s found more hope than he expected in Soren, and he never has been able to stop clawing for a chance at survival. No matter how remote. If he could bring himself to truly give up, perhaps he’d have caused less harm over the course of his brief life so far.

Then again, he also wouldn’t have been able to pull off that last betrayal that Soren keeps claiming makes a hero of him.

He did it for the right reasons, he thinks. But it’s hard not to see it as just another glory to the Gods. A grand betrayal, a scheme to unravel all the schemes of others. The Changer is laughing, tugging back Its contested pawn from the Prince’s grip once more…

It's hard to keep thoughts of the Gods from his mind. When he catches himself he turns his thoughts away, but he catches himself many, many times a day. Their presence feels very near always, as if the Veil is thinned by Tacitus' very presence. 

He is not at all sure that it is safe for anyone to keep him this close. 

Still, he can't keep from trying to claw out a place for himself. Trying to find the one timeline that threads the needle and allows Tacitus to survive a little longer. Soren talks about sending him away, finding some place for him to shuck his past and evade the Inquisition’s prying eyes. 

Tacitus' fearful skin says there is nowhere safe from the Inquisition – but his rational mind says that they are not half as competent as they'd like everyone to think. If they were, they'd never have deployed the utter clusterfuck that was the Fools Lament mission.

And fear is just another trap. When Tacitus isn't thinking of heresy, he's thinking of all the offended forces that are just waiting to catch up with him. Evading them all seems like an impossible task, and if he dwells too long on his unhappy odds he becomes a cornered rat, pacing the limits of his confinement just to remind himself that he isn't chained to the floor. Not yet.

It's a pleasant cell, outfitted to house a noble in luxury, and some days Tacitus is pathetically grateful for that. But it is still a cell.

Soren raises suggestions of powers that might shelter Tacitus, from fellow Navy officers to Navigator Houses that might still value Tacitus' tainted genetics enough to take him in. Tacitus weighs them all against each other and tries not to let the terror speak too loud when it tells him that nothing, nothing will work. 

It has been wrong before, it can be wrong again. There may yet be a way out.

And in the meantime he works to make himself indispensable where he is. He is the lead expert – the only expert – on the daemon Anima. He knows the warlord Monarch and the way he thinks. He is versed in the internal politics of the enemy. And he is helpful, so helpful, so eager to assist…

He knows that the Interrogator is still here, somewhere. Soren keeps her away from him, but she hasn't given up. Tacitus is – was – hers. 

He's always thinking about what to say to her. What he wishes he could say, if he had the courage to do anything but fall at her feet. 

I'll serve. I'll be your creature. If it benefits the Imperium I'll do whatever you will of me if you'll only make use of me.

But if you put me back into storage it had better be well warded because I will open my soul to the daemonic again. I haven't the strength to refuse it, not since you broke my will. 

And there's little left of me now to hold off their corruption. Lock me away, and what you retrieve from that cell won't be human. 

She won't listen. Even in his fantasy of speaking plainly to her he can't convince himself that she would listen. She thinks she understands the forces she deals with, who has barely wet her soles in the Ocean Immaterial.

He shouldn't fear her. She's practically a child in these matters. If Tacitus could face down the attentions of the drukhari – and he did – he shouldn't fear her. He knows that he is stronger than any pain she can inflict. And yet. She has scarred his soul as much as his flesh, and he fears her.

He supposes he should add overcoming that fear to the list of impossible tasks he must accomplish to survive. It's a long list, and has been for months. No matter how many tasks he crosses off, there always seem to be more to come.

He brushes the clinging, unhelpful thoughts from his mind yet again, straightens his borrowed robes, and checks his reflection briefly for any hint of black flames. It's time for another interminable meeting with the tacticians.

Tacitus knows less of strategy than he pretends, but he is clever enough to keep pace with the experts, and they are all better versed in the glacial clash of voidships than the parry and riposte of conversation. They don't notice when he deflects from the evidence of his ignorance or inexperience. Some of them are beginning to grudgingly respect his contributions.

And he does contribute, he doesn't doubt that. It's some comfort, some more good he can do even as he accelerates down the path to his likely demise. He does value that opportunity.

But more than that, each of these meetings is an opportunity to subtly ingratiate himself to this cabal of decision makers. Soren is on Tacitus' side, and he wouldn't even have this opportunity without that, but the others view him with the suspicion and loathing appropriate to his position.

But for every hour they spend locked in discussion with him, conversing with him, suffering his contrition and his cautious, subtle humour, they are forced see him a little more as a person and a peer, a little less as a monster. Gradually, gradually he is wearing away at that well-earned contempt. 

It's the exact same way he wormed his way into the confidence of their counterparts on the other side of the battlelines, and the Gods must be laughing at that.

Worst, Tacitus knows that when They pull his strings and call on him to change his coat yet again, he is highly unlikely to choose anything but survival. It's what he always chooses. He can't make himself stop.

[hikeyzz]

age gap kink go brrrr

[namelessprince]

yknow sometimes i wonder how much of my main riptide theory is like. accepted by the rest of the fandom. guys what do you think is gonna happen in the hole in the sea?

[skyloftian-nutcase]

I have four scenes that are kinda fighting for supremacy? 😆

1. Twilight’s family finally taking that shackle off. 😭

2. Dot being there for Four. 🥹

3. Fierce Deity messing with Nabooru. 😂

4. (Healthcare AU) Legend going quiet when Time says that he’s gonna take care of him, since he isn’t taking care of himself. 💕

(🤣 And many other scenes from your fics like the Link’s Awakening one, that I’m not adding cause four is already way more than the one I’m supposed to proffer- …memories in my mind are like Pandora’s box a LOT all at once.)

jafjdsklajfklds the fact that so much of my writing sticks with you ahhhhhh <3 <3 <3

Oh this warms my heart

[rocketrouquine]

« Word would get around. I mean, in those days, had you heard the Blackbeard and Stede had opened up an inn, [you’d have] to check that one out. It’ll be like Planet Hollywood. »

😂

Regarding what Rhys said to our delusion of a happy ever after for Stede and Ed … SIR ! Don’t put ideas in scenarists’ heads (if they so much as think of killing them both, I will burn cities to the ground)

[b-kut]

I just got around to NL-4 and my god this was yuri. I need Vivianne and Margaret to kiss right this second. I can't wait to see how The Candle Knight will get fucked over in the rest of the event.

[doyouknowhowtowaltz]

I’m not particularly proud of this but it turned out pretty okay x I’m not really happy with the beast’s design in this soz, hope you like it :)

~*~

WOW! This is absolutely lovely! I truly cannot thank you enough! This is gorgeous, the grey dreary graveyard and the slanting rain, the chilling exterior and then the Beast and Enoch lit by the watercolor splash of light from Warren's cigarette, it's delightfully intimate and such a warm take on the scene! Enoch's earnest expression is utterly delightful, and Warren hiding his smile behind his hand under the guise of smoking is adorable. I always love seeing kiwi-ki's Enoch design! It's so cute, right down to his lil kitten pin!

[enigmasong]

The Buster Call was already being prepared against the Straw Hats as they entered Water 7 with the original terms being that they wouldn't be able to leave the island alive unless Robin surrendered herself.

So the implication here is that the Navy was completely prepared to bomb Water 7 out of existence before the call got swapped to Enies Lobby (which they also did not hesitate to do).