#we’re in a horrifying throuple actually

[sashisuse]

new phone setup #SLAYYYYYY

[quillyfied]

Okay next batch of episode thoughts that I don’t know that I can expand into real coherent thoughts so heck it we’re doing it live and cramming them together, no chronology just memory vibes, PART THREE:

- proud member of the “clocked those clocks” gang, literally said out loud “oh those clocks are bombs” AND!!!!

- And pair that with Stede’s “you never see the mediocre guys coming” SHE LITERALLY DID NOT

- Going back in time to the start of that endeavor, though, the tension and discomfort in watching Ricky and Zheng interact was just…it was a lot. Bc she’s trying her best to good cop/bad cop him, and it’s worked on every other person she’s tried it on (because she’s amazing at it and uses her own chronically overlooked charms as both a woman and a woman of color to make herself seem less threatening than she is until she drives home the point), but. Ricky is sort of a foil to Stede in that he’s an odd duck in aristocratic circles thinking that playing pirates will soothe something in him; the difference is that Ricky is an arrogant bastard down to his bones and has that Rich White Man thing of “if I can’t dominate this field then I will burn it down.” Zheng accidentally handing him the keys to destroying piracy is just. Oof. Ouch. Yikes.

- But!!! BUT!!! Zheng’s plan of “for a livable wage we will stop” is, to my memory, actually historically accurate!! China did have to pay her to stop. Twice, I believe. I might be wrong. I��ll be honest, I just watched the Puppet History episode about her when it came out and did no further research. But I should tbh.

- Patiently waiting for Calypso’s Birthday to be incorporated into the tumblr holiday pantheon. Wish we knew what day it was in-show.

- I looked up Ned Low bc I hadn’t heard of him (and oh the sweet irony in that), and was, I think, rightfully horrified and then greatly anticipatory for what was to come.

- And what do we get? Here’s another fancy lad who treats people as disposable and pokes right at Stede’s most vulnerable spots. And also has the most unhinged one-liners like I’m sorry your death was so well-deserved bc watching him verbally spar across the episode was a surprising delight.

- Not nearly as delightful as Stede dealing with the problem by unionizing Ned’s crew, and Lucius and Pete being the ones left to try and rush in and save the crew (thank goodness Stede had it handled, and OH MY WORD STEDE HAD IT HANDLED)

- Hellkat Maggie! A delight! And possibly historically real? One moment please.

- Holy crap she was! Not a pirate, actually an Irish American gangster in the mid 1800s, but heck!! Filed teeth and everything!

- And while I’m on Wikipedia: Zheng Yi Sao only surrendered/was paid to stop piracy once. But what a dramatic story that makes.

- Anyway can we stop everything to talk about how we got IZZY HANDS SINGING. AND WEE JOHN IN DRAG!!!!

- Also glad to see I wasn’t mistaken, Roach was actually laughing his head off for the torture sequence. Of course he was.

- Fang hanging off the side with the goat though ;A;

- Also a hearty congrats to all the fic writers who not only called that Ed would not handle Stede being tortured well, but who also called that the “going slow” thing. Maybe. Wasn’t gonna last. I have a whole emotional maelstrom going over that so let’s unpack it a bit at a time.

- First, though: the Boatmance throuple dancing. I cry.

- Second: Stede going defensive over not just Ed, but all of his crew. Like a lot over Ed, bc Ned was a grade-A racist classist dick. But Stede’s reaction was not JUST about Ed.

- Also the encouragement of the crew to kill Ned versus Ed’s quiet begging for Stede not to. Because he knew it wasn’t going to rest easy on Stede’s shoulders. And it doesn’t—maybe it’s just me but Stede looks devastated the entire time, not just angry. It’s a Lot. What happened was objectively a Lot.

- Now the juiciest piece of the episode: Going Not Slow (while Izzy sings La Vie En Rose IN FRENCH—side note but for the next installment of my fishing AU, I had it as a note for MONTHS that Ed and Stede would be slow dancing to that song, under a very different emotional context but THAT SONG, because I listened to it out of the blue one day and it just hit me how tender and romantic a song it is and how they deserve a tender and romantic thing, oh my LORD ALMIGHTY)

- First, the elephant in the room: the footage was flipped. Why was it flipped. Why did they do that.

- Second, not sure if Ed is actually nodding at Stede before the kissing starts, but I love to interpret it that way. It’s such a slight movement, could just be natural head bobbing, but. A nod makes it so much sweeter.

- The whole thing being sort of overlaid by the undercurrent of grief, though; Stede isn’t okay, Ed isn’t okay, they aren’t okay and maybe need some comfort and reassurance in and from each other. Certainly an enjoyable way to get it, but it seems to be a subtle theme of the show that words alone and actions alone don’t fix things. They have to work together. Which is how we get a THIRD BREAKUP OKAY GOOD GRIEF BOYS GET IT TOGETHER

- Ed tossing his leathers sort of loses its impact some when you know he’s gonna fish them back up later but. Also. Just sort of builds that anticipation. And deepens the narrative, too—Ed doesn’t want Blackbeard anymore, he doesn’t want that life, but. Other people, Ed included, might NEED Blackbeard for what’s coming. He’s a symbol. A violent and dark one, but that’s piracy itself, too—dark and violent but also a gateway to freedom. The two sides of that coin are a great asset against the coming storm. Because THIS is the storm, Ricky and his navy mates cracking down for good on piracy.

- Also the storm is Ed and Stede’s hurricane of a relationship but uh also life threatening exploding clocks and the Republic of Pirates a sitting duck with a ton of ships and buildings damaged.

- Ed isn’t wrong for wanting to retire though. And Stede isn’t wrong for wanting to continue piracy now that he’s just getting the hang of it. I don’t know the solution. Pretty sure the show does. And I’m even more convinced that with one episode left and the showrunners angling for a third, we’re gonna leave on a pretty big doozy of a cliffhanger, both emotionally and plot-wise.

- Feel a little cheated that we didn’t get to see Stede’s shirt and Ed’s jacket come off before the fade to black but also perfectly content with what we got, euphemistic fireworks and gauzy curtain draw and all. Have I stared too long at the gifs to know that Ed is down to his t shirt and Stede’s trousers fit his waist in a lovely way? Maybe. You can’t prove anything.

- Anyone else screaming internally about how they LEFT THE DOOR OPEN THOUGH.

- I want a full shot of Ed’s pretty teal robe, though. Yummy.

- The domesticity of Ed’s beautiful breakfast in bed is not quite overcome by Stede being half-uncovered while Ed is covered head to toe though. Something something emotional vulnerability states, something something trajectory of relationship

- Bout time Ed got scared by the pace, though. Ed and Stede have swapped places. It doesn’t really suit either of them, and my goodness was it kind of cathartic to watch Zheng beat the crap out of Stede. Because. Let’s be honest: he deserved it. But back to my original point: seems like Ed and Stede are overcorrecting at this stage in their relationship. Came from different worlds, met briefly in the middle, now swinging back out to opposite extremes before coming back to the middle. Other people have said it and will continue to say it better, but. That’s how it seems to me right now.

- The little quiet ways that Izzy is reaching out to Ed and Stede both, though. And bonding with the crew. I love that we get that for him. It would have been just as narratively appropriate for Izzy to sink deeper into his own muck and toxicity, but to show that once given the space to feel safe and vulnerable, it can turn even the most “piratey” character into an actual member of the crew?? Who cracks amazing jokes and does himself up in drag makeup with Wee John and SINGS??? Love that for him. Love the message of that. Love how much that’s reflected in the rest of the crew, too.

- Frenchie getting the crew going on multiple grifts, though. Nice. Niccccce. A+++++.

- SWEDE IS HOT NOW. LOVE IT FOR HIM.

- Jim and Archie helping Oluwande out with Zheng, though. I’m hoping this polycule thrives. Because Jim and Olu deserve so many nice things.

- Stede’s whole fame drunk thing was so painful to watch but ALSO is anyone gonna talk about how Stede was accosted by a Freddy Krueger looking dude?? I hope he survived his (frankly astonishingly hot, pun slightly intended) immolation bc I want him showing up later with knife hands to complete the reference

- Painful to watch but so understandable. Stede letting it all go to his head is so so SO like Ed on the aristocrat ship, just naive and full up on the attention and not ready for that rug pull later.

- FANG AND ROACH TAKING A SELF CARE DAY BY A STREAM I AM SCREECHING

- Ed is absolutely in a panic. Stede is also in something of a panic. They both said things they don’t mean because they both need to have the last word, don’t they. Fishermen and pirates are nothing alike, Ed what even are you talking about. (I know what he’s talking about, I’m choosing to nitpick his choice of metaphor to illustrate he is wrong on both a surface and metaphorical level)

- TALK IT THROUGH AS A CREW MY ASS, STEDE

- Is there anything as attractive as Zheng Yi Sao competently and confidently taking down not just Steak Knife, but Stede? She hasn’t been seen in action all season. Now we get it. And she’s just as banter-prone as Stede, I love that for them. And for us.

- rip steak knife. You will be missed.

- Can’t wait to see Ricky’s pomposity getting smashed in. He’s a mediocre man. You don’t see them coming.

- I know I’m glossing over probably a lot but that was SUCH an episode batch. Such an emotional whiplash. Cannot WAIT to see the finale, and how the story is gonna end with that third season we are pretty please getting please PLEASE.

[shih-coulda-had-it]

Toddler Kotaro accidentally gets teleported into the past and sees his past parents probably like months before they decide to have a child nana Torino and sakumo and the more time they spend with him they realize the child belongs to them 😂 nana lives au !

Ahhh not quite my style, anon, though it’s quite a visual! Nana Lives!AU is more or less free of space-time Quirks, and I aim to keep it that way.

Toddler Kotarou—so we’re talking like, pre-Quirk (WHATEVER his Quirk is, but maybe manga readers will find out in a month?), but still identifiable in personality/habits to mark him as a child of the Shimuras-Torino throuple…. because god knows he didn’t hit the anime protagonist appearance jackpot when he was a kid…

Cue one tiny Standard Japanese Toddler, bewildered and close to crying, when he recognizes his mom and Uncle Torino (Torino-jiisan!). They pick him up, are confused at being referred to in such a way (let’s place this… hm… early in the Shimuras’ marriage, a few years before they plan to have a baby), and are in the middle of processing paperwork to transfer him to a temporary foster home when Sakumo turns up to fetch his loved ones.

Sakumo, being possessed of wolf instincts only a fan fiction writer could know of, recognizes Kotarou as his and Nana’s AND Sorahiko’s (this latter because just before Kotarou traveled through time, was playing with him, which is hilarious and horrifying to think about, because uh oh, Sorahiko just lost his son). He convinces Nana and Sorahiko to house Kotarou for however long (less than 48 hours, to spare present-Sorahiko and Nana the stress) the kid is here.

The longer Toddler Kotarou hangs around them, the more they see each other in him—Sorahiko’s scowl, Nana’s smile, Sakumo’s easygoing (forgiving) personality—and then on the second night, he’s gone. No warnings, no dragged-out goodbyes.

… and then here’s the question. Did Kotarou ACTUALLY go back in time, and affect the memories of all involved? Or did he hop a universe and give the Shimuras-Torino the incentive to go ‘I need a baby RIGHT NOW’? Never mind the circumstances in which he jumped—Quirks provide.

What’s really sad to think about, though, is that Kotarou barely has any memories of his dad. So the person who saved him from a truly traumatic trip to the past, is someone who’s not even going to recall his face as anything beyond the handsome dead man in the family pictures.

[janeaustentextposts]

In almost every period romance that has been written in the 21 century, couples have a sexual relationship very similar to the ones we have. Is that historically accurate? Did some couples have healthy sexual relationship that wasn't just the woman laying back thinking about England while her husband did all the work?

[cw: mention of rape]

I covered a little bit of something similar to this in my post about sexual education of the times, but basically…yeah. There’s absolutely no reason to suppose that Georgian and Regency couples weren’t having plenty of fun in the sack. Or the library. Or the stables. You get my point.

Georgians were delightfully, unabashedly bawdy. Yes, Fanny Hill was banned and from a modern perspective is a cavalcade of yikes yikes yikes in several respects; but when I say banned I mean just officially, and there was a slew of unregulated printings that got people access to forbidden and spicy texts. Plays had riotously sexual jokes, and even genteel ladies could get away with performing songs with rather saucy and sexualized lyrics (particularly if the ballad-singer is in-character as a Scotswoman or other ‘foreigner’.)

Of course there were dreadful intersections of ignorance and patriarchy to make things awful for many people, sexually-speaking. Marital rape was not legally acknowledged in the UK until 1991, and not explicitly made illegal until 2003. A 1736 treatise by former Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale posited “the husband of a woman cannot himself be guilty of an actual rape upon his wife, on account of the matrimonial consent which she has given, and which she cannot retract,” and this view was upheld in John Frederick Archbold’s 1822 Pleading and Evidence in Criminal Cases, which to this day is a leading text in criminal law–so this would have been the common stance of many people in terms of determining ultimate right or wrong, though no doubt anyone with a heart would allow that brutality towards one’s wife was at least unseemly…but then this is all behind closed doors, and even today there are large swathes of the population who have sex they don’t actually want because they feel that’s safer than pushing back against expectations, and would balk at calling such a thing rape, even if it is, by its simplest definition. If people struggle and resist the idea that they may have been raped by their partner in the present-day (and I get it! It’s a devastating concept to grapple with in the midst of what is already a painful and confusing and fragile circumstance! When an assault is non-violent, then acknowledging it as assault can start to feel like it’s something you chose or made happen, and that’s a mindfuck I’m still coming to terms with more than fifteen years after I was assaulted by someone I considered a friend--and let me tell you right now what my therapist told me...nothing you said or did then or now made it what it was: their choice and their actions did;) then how much harder must it have been for people who knew there was no legal remedy, even for the most brutal of intimate assaults? (And it’s not like legal remedy is more than a pipe dream for most victims, today. Fuck this broken system and the sickening culture that built it.)

Outside of heterosexual marriages, things could also be horrible. Raids on molly-houses and capital punishments handed out to cis men caught in homosexual relationships were ongoing in Regency London, and cases of divorce and adultery dragged through the courts became horrifying sensations, a-la Lady Worsley, so there were no doubt plenty of situations where people were oppressed or exploited and otherwise denied a healthy exploration and expression of their own preferred sexuality without condemnation.

But in terms of everyday people who avoided getting caught up in frightening public exposure? I can only suppose that their hearts were as tender as ours and their anatomies as wondrously made in all the variance we know, today, and I fully believe that healthy and satisfying sexual encounters between all sorts of couples (and throuples, and more open relationships where marriages were not always for love or monogamy,) were not uncommon.

The relaxation around modern sexuality in progressive cultures hasn’t stopped fuckboys of all genders and sexualities from being fuckboys, so while the proliferation of inclusive attitudes/language, understandings of consent, birth-control, and the effective treatment and prevention of STIs has made it easier to breathe and safer to bone as our libidos would like, history certainly didn’t have the market cornered on assholes; but for the rest of us, good sex is the sex we want to be having with ourselves and each other, and it’s always been in everyone’s best interest to aim for that.

And from a lot of what I’ve seen on reddit, there are still plenty of people who don’t get what a clitoris is for in the year of our Lord 2019, including people who have a clitoris, so we’re not out of the woods yet for making sure nobody ever has to think about England again.

(Unless England really gets your motor running, in which case, have at it.)