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Every time someone comments on my old fic, i feel like I'm an old actor getting paid residuals. Appreciate you, old-fic-commenters. Key source of emotional income, tbh.

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Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

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Anyone have a source for the images used for the Davechella playlists? I'm moving over from Spotify to Tidal and would like to recreate them over there, Little's is the only one I can find at the moment...

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the thing is listening to funkadelic on psychedelics is so crazy good. no you don’t need to be high to enjoy funkadelic. but the experience is exquisite. explosions of sound and color, just letting the music fully take you someplace else.

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Cornelius Hickey (& Cornelius Hickey) + text posts

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Our Flag Means Death + Reductress headlines, part 2 (part 1)

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my cringe standard issue coping poorly with the events of the finale fanfic where instead of sublimating whatever the fuck they have going on thru unsafe bdsm ed just makes izzy spoon him bc he’s lonely. nobody has fun

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it's clear that a lot of Ed's self-image comes back to killing his dad when he was a boy, and i've been thinking about why it affects him the way that it does. because it's the thing he panics about on the night he almost kills Stede and it's what he subconsciously assumes has to be the cause of Stede leaving him when Hornigold confronts him. and not to say that it's not a big deal to kill your own father in self-defense, but i've been wondering why it affects him so much in such a stuanchly negative way, why it makes him think of himself as a monster.

because the thing about killing someone in self-defense is it almost doesn't count the same way. not to say that it's not a terrible thing to have to do, but it feels so obviously justifiable, and it's like Ed just isn't making that connection for himself. and that's it, i think: for Ed, he's not thinking about killing his dad as an act of self-defense.

don't misunderstand me, it was. it very obviously was. ed was a kid in an impossible situation and he finally hit his breaking point and did what had to happen so he and his mom wouldn't have to continue to endure abuse.

but Ed doing that wasn't a spur of the moment thing, though, was it? it wasn't a whim. it wasn't getting caught up in the heat of the moment in the middle of his father abusing them. i think if it had been, then Ed might be able to think about it differently. you can't think straight in that kind of situation. it's easier to think "it was either him or us." it feels very justifiable in a way i don't think Ed would've been able to ignore. i don't think he'd believe that it says so much about his character.

when Ed kills his dad, it's premeditated. he has thought it through and found the right tools to overpower someone bigger and stronger than him. it wasn't an accident, it wasn't spur of the moment, there is clear forethought and deliberation.

and that's where i think Ed's biggest problem with himself lies. again, obviously, to viewers it's clear this is justified and he is acting in self-defense. but it also demonstrates a capacity for controlled, calculated anger and using that to plan out and execute a murder, and i think that's what Ed thinks of it as. it happens in a way where he can't think of it as self-defense, it's murder. and that makes all the difference for him. I think if Ed killing his dad really had been a more straightforward "acting in the heat of the moment in a clear-cut case of protecting yourself," he'd be a very different character.

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Reading fic in other fandoms, and seeing "unsteady". Ah yes, a hint that the hands still need to be steadied - wait. None of those guys are here. And they would not improve this situations stability.

I have been trained to recognize the clues even when they are not there.

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Oh my god I never really absorbed how Ed has his head completely turned away when he shoots Izzy. He's still going for plausible deniability. If the bullet hits something vital and Izzy bleeds out, he can tell himself it was an accident. He can pull the trigger, but he can't make himself actually aim, actually choose to maim his friend in one specific way or another. He's trying so hard to make it look like violence doesn't affect him in the slightest, but he's so terrified of it he can't even look at what he's done.

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Thinking about how pissy Hickey looked when Goodsir tried to save Gibson and how more tense he got when Goodsir caressed Gibson's hair.. idk maybe im just delusional abt hickeygib...

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hey so i was rewatching "we gull way back" this morning and i have a question for the fandom here: do we think Calico Jack is even drunk at all during this episode?

might seem like an obvious "yes" but hear me out. i'm not sure how much of this is obvious but i know personally my initial impression of CJ was "oh he is aware of maybe 25% of what is happening around him" and that was allowed to carry over even as the episode progressed and we learned he had ulterior motives. even after learning that i let it color my perceptions of him in hindsight until i rewatched the episode more. because he really does just act like a barely-functional alcoholic!

...but i don't think we even see him drink more than rare performative sips in the whole episode. and i think he's faking it to make himself seem more harmless (which obviously worked on me!).

especially on rewatches, it stands out how manipulative CJ is the entire episode. we don't see him drink a lot, but he's constantly encouraging Ed to drink more by reminding him of the rules of their games or even pouring alcohol directly into Ed's cup. he's constantly steering conversations in very pointed directions to either make Ed feel like a monster or demean Stede. there's the obvious example where he cries in front of the crew to turn them against Stede, then glances at Stede in such an obvious way where you can tell he did it on purpose. there's something so cunning about him and it just keeps happening. he hits Ed with a coconut right as he and Stede are getting somewhere in their conversation in just the right way so it's left cut short and they're on the wrong foot with each other, he even kills Karl the bird right as Ed is apologizing and trying to get everyone to bed. it all seems like an accident on first watch, but on rewatches he is so clearly pushing the whole episode to get Stede and Ed isolated from each other and make Ed feel terrible so when Stede inevitably cracks and tells Jack to leave, Ed will go with CJ.

laid out like that, i'm shocked i didn't see it more clearly on the first watch. but CJ is so good at acting like your average party bro! he feels like an immature guy who can be a bit of a bully but who is ultimately pretty harmless until the second he's got Ed alone and they're leaving and you realize he planned out every part of what happened, and he did it so effortlessly he made it look like an accident.

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hi my name is francis rawdon moira crozier and this is my son thomas and my other son thomas and my other son thomas and my best friend thomas and my best-friend-slash-wife james and my best-friend-slash-husband james and my annoying uncle-in-law sir john and my other annoying uncle-in-law sir john and

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lmaoo when stede said his piercing hurt like hell and it was a great day. ed's like ok freak 😏 and stede's just :D in the corner

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repo! the genetic opera is one of those movies where you watch it and youre like Damnn this would be so good if it was good

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Why I Edit As I Write (Even Though Everyone Says Not To)

hi. it's me. the writer who edits mid-sentence. the writer who literally cannot move on from chapter one until chapter one feels right. the writer who rewrites the same paragraph fourteen times before letting themselves move to the next. yes i've seen every single "just write, fix it later" post. yes, i love the idea of messy first drafts. and no i will not be changing

okay so listen everyone, here's the thing: i DON'T think editing as you go is inherently bad. it's only bad advice when people try to universalize it. writing process is personal. maybe for you it's a fast draft in November and editing in february. maybe for me it's hyper-fixating on every single sentence until the scene flows like water and then moving on with peace in my soul. BOTH ARE VALID. BOTH CAN WORK. both get the book done.

people love to say "don't edit while you draft" because, yeah perfectionism can slow you down. listen, i'm not editing for perfection, im editing for immersion. i need to feel like i'm inside the story or I'LL SPIRAL! if i know the voice is off, pacing is weird, or the character feels flat, i can't pretend i don't see it and continue. i can't push through. my brain physically will NOT LET ME!

when something sounds wrong or looks wrong, it breaks the spell. it kicks me out of the scene like a bad special effects in a movie. no seriously!! and once i'm out it's really hard pt get back in.

also, i'm gonna be real, i hate the feeling of finishing a draft and knowing the entire thing is a flaming wreck i now have to sift through. i HATE that feeling. it makes me never want to open that doc again. i need to be able to re-read my work and go, "okay yeah, this slaps a little." that's how i keep going. a little dopamine hit every few pages. if you call that toxic? i call it necessary.

side notes: there's a weird gatekeeping vibe around speed in the writing world. people act like if you're not cranking out 50k in 30 days, you're "not disciplined." but i'd argue that forcing yourself to write in a way that actively hurts your process isn't discipline. it's sabotage. if editing as i go keeps me working on a project long-term, keeps me engaged, keeps be BELIEVING in it, then it's a valid method

my best scenes? the ones i took slow. the ones i sculpted sentence by sentence. the ones i paused to read out loud, rework, and reimagine until the tension finally clicked. yeah it took hours. yeah it was annoying. but that scene still holds. it still makes me feel something. and that’s worth more to me than blasting through 10k of filler.

edit while you write. reread the last paragraph twelve times. fix that one clunky sentence before you let yourself go on. obsess a little. it’s fine.

rin t.

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something that I feel like is missing from fandom nowadays is the idea that you dont have to have a unified, chronologically/tonally consistent interpretation of your favorite work. your fics dont have to fit within the same version of canon, even if theyre all canon-compliant on their own. your headcanons can contradict each other. be a multishipper. write metas that take two totally different interpretations of the same plot point. write a character as a villain and then write them as the hero next time. write a character as a lesbian and then write them as straight next time! engage in hypotheticals and drop them when you get bored! make up the rules as you go!! have fun with it!!!