#i think that’s my piracy tag LOL

[reity]

oh no i dropped 3ds hacks guide oh nooo oh no you totally shouldn’t hack your 3ds/2ds noo don’t commit piracy noooo don’t go to r/ROMs after to find a bunch of pokemon and old nintendo games nooo don’t do that

[tsarjozinzbazin]

Greetings,

I am a little obsessed with your Rossier pirate AU now. I was wondering whether you'd be willing to share the long version of it (the short version in the tags was already excellent)!

All the best

Ps. Because I sometimes think I am funny:

John Ross, having the Admiralty on speed dial: Why is my nephew fraternizing with this Irish guy??

William Edward Parry (their captain, basically), covering for them: Lol, idk what you mean, man.

Sorry this has been sitting here for a while because I didn't exactly know what to write so my pookie @vykerr helped me :))) and I also wanted to draw something for it so here we go!

Yippee!!

After coming back from the Antarctic expedition, Crozier is wracked by jealousy that his beloved Ross is getting married, even though he knows they cannot be together. Unbeknownst to him, Ross is using the marriage as a cover to protect Crozier, as he knows what the admiralty would do if they found out the Irishman was also a sodomite.

When Crozier is passed over to command the expedition to find the northwest passage, he finally snaps. He takes a small crew, sneaks onto the Terror, and commandeers her, sailing south instead of north. In the southern hemisphere he grows his crew by visiting various ports and taking on other naval officers and seamen that have been left out to dry by the admiralty. Then Crozier begins to engage in acts of piracy, though only against British naval vessels. He is somewhat of a master tactician, and the Terror being a warship also helps. The men on these crews who survive his raids and surrender are offered a choice between joining his crew or being dropped off at the nearest port.

The admiralty of course wants to send someone to apprehend Crozier and bring him to justice. Ross volunteers, wanting to make sure no harm comes to his beloved Francis, to try and bring him home safely and then he will try and protect him from the harsh hand of the admiralty. But Crozier knows Ross too well, and Ross won't risk killing him, and Crozier uses that to his advantage in their battles. Though of course, Crozier won't risk killing Ross either. He always manages to escape somehow, usually by disabling Ross' ship and then hightailing it out of there.

It gets to the point where despite Ross' insistence that he will eventually be able to capture Crozier, the admiralty no longer think he is capable of it. So they send in the Erebus, captained by Franklin with Fitzjames as his second. Franklin is cocksure that he will be able to take down the Terror with his superior vessel. However, his confidence turns out to be unfounded, as Crozier soundly thrashes him, his men boarding the Erebus and cutting down most of the men. Crozier indulges in killing Franklin himself, revenge for stealing his command. Some of the Erebites surrender, such as Fitzjames, who is taken captive by Crozier. In this case where these men attacked him, Crozier keeps them prisoner.

Crozier has also amassed a large enough crew now for two ships, so decides to take control of Terror's sister, spreading his crew out across the two ships mixed in with a few Erebites who are forced into working for him. The other crewmates teach them all about being pirates. But Crozier takes an instant liking to handsome Fitzjames, and decides to keep him as a personal prisoner in the great cabin.

phew! so many words! Everyone thank Vyker for helping me out because my ass cannot speak English this well!

[mangokabuto]

Proof of Usopp and Nami being Luffy’s vice/co captains? I would (genuinely!) love to see your thoughts and evidence, bc big agree

(Context:)

Hello anonymous tumblr-using friend!

As someone with a lot of knowledge of & a great passion for real-life historical piracy, I have VERY STRONG OPINIONS about how the Strawhat crew would fit into an actual golden age crew structure. When I said "I have proof" I was jokingly referring to my knowledge of historical piracy and how the characters slot into those trends, not any sort of "in-anime/manga proof" of Usopp and Nami being ""co-captains"" with Luffy, so if that's what you're here for then sorry lol.

BUT if you want to learn a little about golden age western-world piracy, (and my "au" of sorts for how each crewmate would be recognized in that context,) stick around! :)

(extremely long explanation under cut LMFAO)

First off, as i said in my heated/j tags, "captain" did not usually mean what Oda makes it mean in OP's world. I am ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN Oda is just as passionate about & did plenty of research about historical piracy, and is clearly pulling a little from wakō history, but mostly from golden-age western piracy (specifically mostly the post-spanish succession period, to my estimation).

That being said. Why he puts so much emphases on Captains and First Mates is BEYOND me, because irl they were not as important.

The captain WAS important, don't get me wrong, but they weren't the sole reigning commander of a ship. They were more like a figurehead, most of the time. This is a sortof flimsy metaphor, but think of Captains like the modern-day king or queen of England; They're hyped up as the #1 leader, they're an important charismatic face for the group, and they technically have last-say on important matters, but they are beholden to two other groups (like the cabinet and the prime minister).

During the golden age of piracy, most crews were commanded by a group of three people. These three people were usually the Captain, the Quartermaster, and the Bosun. Each filled a different role on the ship, and all three were democratically elected by the crew. In all important matters, the three would discuss together how to proceed/solve the current problem, and though the Captain COULD overrule the other two at any time, that typically got him handily shoved overboard via mutiny. By technicality there was a heirarchy of power between the three stations, (with Captain usually being the top dog, then the Quartermaster, then the Bosun just above the rest of the crew,) but in practice they held equal sway in decisions that would effect the entire crew.

HOWEVER, outside of "big crew-wide decision-making moments" where you needed to assemble the three leaders, they didn't always have to coordinate. Depending on what situation the crew was currently in, one of them would be de-facto in charge of the crew, and the other two would step back unless the one currently in charge did something that needed to be challenged, like they made a bad decision or (in a more extreme case) broke the articles.

The Captain was in charge during times of battle. The captain's primary role was as a fighter, performer, and military commander! If the crew was attacked or about to attack someone else, the Captain would immediately take charge. (Now, real pirates weren't actually violent in practice as frequently as pop culture would have you believe, but that's a whole other topic. The reason "performer" is listed in the Captain's "jobs" is that part of their responsibility as a captain worth their salt was to scare enemies into surrendering without a fight through theatrics and reputation.)

The Bosun was in charge when the Boat was damaged or needed upkeep. The Bosun was not always the greatest carpenter or shipwright in their own right (in fact, in larger crews, they usually weren't either of those things), but they would be the one to get together with the shipwright and worksmen and assess damage, organize repair teams, and keep the boat running as well as possible. The crew followed their lead during repairs, and they were the go-to authority on any matters concerning the physical boat.

The Quartermaster was in charge the rest of the time. The way the Bosun is in charge of the physical boat, the Quartermaster was in charge of the crew. They were responsible for enforcing the articles, dealing out discipline, and the crew's general well-being outside of battle. In that same way that a bosun didn't have to be a shipwright, a quartermaster wasn't usually a doctor or cook, but they worked closely with them. Being in charge outside times of battle meant that the Quartermaster was also in charge of headings and navigation, and more often than not they were the ship's navigator, or head navigation/deck officer if their crew was large enough to have more than one nav. They also usually handled the crew's finances/pay and cargo. Is this starting to sound familiar yet.

So. After establishing the roles. I don't think I have to persuade you that while Luffy is most definitely the Strawhat Captain, Nami is our Quartermaster and Usopp is our Bosun. At the VERY LEAST this is true on the Merry Go.

You could possibly persuade me that Franky takes Usopp's place as Bosun once they get the Thousand Sunny, but I would be hard to convince. (I could be persuaded that Usopp loses his position as bosun on the Sunny, but Franky does not behave like a bosun as much as a head carpenter, and Usopp functions like his carpenter's mate. It's almost like, post-timeskip, they don't have a bosun anymore, and Zoro fills the newly empty position on the leadership trio?)

Now, these roles are not concrete, and they didn't always make up the "management trio" on a pirate ship. Some very small crews just didn't have enough people that they needed to single out their three favorite guys; they could just all vote on important decisions together. Sometimes the management trio included the surgeon or the first mate instead of the bosun. There were many crews where the Quartermaster was considered the top-dog highest authority instead of the Captain at all times. Even during the golden age pirate crews varied greatly, but the Captain/Quartermaster/Bosun trio was most common.

As for the ship hierarchy, there was a trend you could rely on no matter who the "three leaders" were. Everyone was generally considered of equal importance on a crew, (hence the elected offices and avenue for mutiny,) but there was a chain of command of sorts? Or at least people who would be shown greater respect and responsibility based on what they provided for the crew:

Captain and/or Quartermaster

Bosun and/or Surgeon/Doctor, and sometimes the First Mate

Everybody else, including captain's other mates.

Speaking of Captain's Mates... On larger crews, every important role on the ship had a "mate," or an apprentice chosen by the person in question to replace them if they should die, or otherwise be out-of-commission. Quartermaster's Mate. Bosun's Mate. Doctor/Surgeon's Mate. Carpenter's Mate. Etc. However, the Captain had MULTIPLE MATES, because his job was front-line combat focused. Ergo, he could easily die and need a replacement. Quickly. And his replacement could need a sudden replacement! So, depending on the size of the crew, the captain could have anywhere from two to eight mates, who were ranked by number. That's why the captain's highest-ranking mate is called the First Mate. Because there was usually a Second Mate. And then some more of em.

The First Mate's job is to be a good ass fighter, and back the Captain up on whatever they're currently doing. They hype the Captain up and enforce the Captain's decisions, no matter what that decision is. This is why they were usually not put in the management trio on most crews, cause you could imagine. The conflict of interest. (There's supposed to be three of them so that no one member has too much sway. Which could be sabotaged if two of the three are captain and captain's favorite soldier LMFAO)

I have no idea why, in the world of One Piece, all of the emphasis seems to be on Captains as the end-all-be-all leaders of their ship and the First Mate as the second in command. Especially when Oda clearly KNOWS about the other roles, since he's written characters that fall into them like perfect puzzle pieces!

...Well, okay, I have some idea. This is a shonen series for teens and being the captain/king/etc is wish fulfillment, and wouldn't be as cool for the projecting readers if you were part of a leading council with two other mooks. But. I can still be salty about it LMFAO <3

[thisbelongsto-nohbodys]

quick question that might have a long answer.

Who are all the major characters in your space story... also what's the name lol

Assuming u mean the comic with my oc Leilana, to answer the 2nd part: No name atm, just using "Leilana Gorloxa" for the tag, but I'm trying to find a good title (I'm bad at titles)

To answer the 1st part, I'm gonna try and not ramble too much and only go off of the characters I can remember off the top of my head:

Leilana Gorloxa- main character, female Zetawellian Adventurer of the G.A.G. (Galactic Adventurer's Guild) and part-time pinup model for Pin-up Planet magazine. She is a good adventurer but can be lazy at times, her sense of wanderlust made her perfect for the job as she mostly just wants to be able to travel and explore other planets. She's Bisexual but tends to lean more towards women.

Ilxton Gorloxa- Leilana's father and professor of Human Anthropology at Zoxulia University. He raised Leilana on his own since his wife disappeared in space when Leilana was 2 1/2. His class isn't the most popular and is usually seen as a free credit class but he still tries to make his lessons fun. He supports his daughter and wants her to be happy but is still a dad and so makes bad attempts at setting up dates for her.

Moylala Necromull- A centuries old vampiric/gargoyle alien hybrid and manager of Leilana at the pin-up magazine. A former model herself she uses that knowledge to help her clients the way she wanted to be helped when she was a model. A romantic at heart she has an on-again-off-again romance with her boyfriend that she hopes one day will propose.

Lance Casanova- Human male Adventurer of the G.A.G. and youngest member of the Casanova family. A overconfident human who is more then happy to tell tales of his adventures. His main goals are 2 things: Become the 1st human to become one of the 10Stars (Highest Rank within the Guild), and sleep with at least one member of the alien species within the G.A.P. (Galactic Alliance of Planets). He has a slight crush on Leilana (who doesn't return the feelings) and owns every pinup issue she was in. He is ashamed of his family and is considered the black sheep due to his xenophilia. He considered his sidekick, Avalon Boxford the sister he always wanted.

Avalon Boxford- female Human Adventurer and sidekick to Lance Casanova. A former experiment to a shadowy organization that kidnapped, genetically altered and trained a bunch of human children to be the ultimate weapon. Avalon was found naked in a box in-transit to a client when Lance found her and helped her escape from the org. Together they took it down and while adventuring are searching for the other kids to help them. She is Leilana's current crush.

Prince Xahlfor- A spoiled prince who is playing at piracy because he knows that he can get away with it. He has an all-female crew and while he considers them to be a part of his harem, they don't. He has an intense hatred for Leilana due to her being one of the few people in the galaxy to actually punish him for his actions (she'd often steal back the stuff he stole).

That's all I can remember in terms of major characters. Granted that because it's a comedy adventure series that takes Leilana to many different planets all the time, I make up new often one-off characters that I might bring back if I can think of something else with them but these are the ones that I usually return to (as often as I can within the 4 4-koma strips a month and sometimes weekly sketches).

[teenagefeeling]

actually while im here i think i made a post along these lines months ago but i've learned a lot since then and so here is my updated list of software that u need to make hq gifs:

im gonna kinda gloss over this one because there are one william piracy tutorials already out there, but you'll need to download the thing u wanna gif first. the only really important thing to keep in mind is quality. larger dimensions = nicer looking gifs

ffmpeg (& optional: video editing software). my preferred method is to trim the video in davinci resolve (which i specifically use because it allows you to seek by frame which makes it wayyyy easier to cut out a very specific few seconds), then use ffmpeg to rip the frames from each clip into a labeled folder. you can also just tell ffmpeg the timestamp u want the frames for, but for me that takes longer and i somehow always fuck it up and grab too many frames. but like ymmv and other free video editing software is also available

GIMP!!!!!!!!!! gimp my beloved <3 i must admit there's a learning curve to gimp, but it's extremely powerful and completely free. there's tonssss of plugins available (plus you can use photoshop plugins), but i recommend starting by going through ofnuts' scripts and downloading whatever calls to you (you need export layers for batch editing and interleave layers for adding text to all the layers of a gif) and everyone's holy grail plugin: gmic (also for batch editing)

honorable mention to photopea, which, being a browser-based application, is not all that good at editing 50 layers at once. but for smaller gifs i have used it and there are some nice features that photoshop has that gimp doesn't. idk i probably wouldn't recommend it for making everything, but i wouldn't discourage anyone from giving it a try

gifski. gimp is capable of just exporting all your layers as an animation, but gifski is a lot better at it. i think they might have a version of it with a ui? but like use the command line version it's way better and more powerful (and don't be intimidated by using console commands—it's super easy!)

and that's it! u basically need 3 things and they're all free. other free things to make it slightly quicker or easier are also optional.

and while i've got you here, here's the tutorials i basically follow for making actual gifs: A, B, C. of course i've tweaked (or straight up ignored) some of the steps to work better in gimp and just with my own personal workflow, but i think those people all made better instructions than i could lol

if you're still reading this i challenge you to go make a gif of something you like! and tag me!

[asurrogateblog]

Cannibals, Pirates, and PhDs: How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned in some tags earlier that I’ve only actually been a real fan of Pink Floyd for under a year, and that the confluence of events that led up to it is pretty absurd. Some interest seemed to be taken in this, so I though I’d elaborate.

I didn’t know how to shorten this timeline and have it make any sense, so it’s... long. But idk, I think it’s pretty funny. If you’re nosy like I am this is for you.

My Backstory Timeline:

early childhood: my parents essentially mainline me and my little sister with The Beatles. I know almost no songs written past the 70’s until at least sixth grade. I develop a childhood crush on Paul McCartney, a joke that the universe really decides to play the long game on.

2014: my dad calls me over one night, and gravely tells me he’s been waiting to share something until I’m old enough. I brace myself to be told about sex or secret half-siblings. Instead, he tells me I need to listen to The Wall. Irritated at the idea of wasting an hour and half of my night, I nevertheless comply and go up to my room and put it on. I do not come back from this, clearly having inherited some sort of generational curse.

Around the same time, I am also secretly watching Hannibal every time my parents send me upstairs because Game of Thrones is “too gory”. This will trigger three important things: an interest in psychology, a love of horror media, and a classical music phase will train my attention span to last well past the three minute mark.

2014-2023: Over the intervening years, I become a casual fan of Pink Floyd, but make a deliberate point not to learn anything about the band. I like being able to imagine my own meanings for the songs. Also, I am motivated against this by a childhood memory of being deeply frightening by a picture of old Paul McCartney (LOL). I do not want that to ever happen again, so no learning.

Cut to April of 2023: I am finishing up my first year of my PhD program studying media psychology. I am in a bad place mentally, and am going through another horror movie phase to fill the hole. As a result, I get very into American Psycho. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a fan of superficial 80’s pop music, particularly Genesis. I decide to start listening to Genesis to see if I agree with his tastes. While researching “best Genesis albums”, I come across The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I listen to it, and am blown away. I had no idea that the Phil Collins band made music like that. This sends me down the prog-rock rabbit hole. I still won't learn any lore.

Summer of 2023: MEANWHILE, I am also going through another pirate phase. I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 18th century piracy (and am still quite active in the Black Sails fan community). Around this time, I get really obsessed with this one random guy named Dennis McCarthy who was hanged in 1718.

I decide to work poor Dennis into a science fiction story I’ve been working on. The premise is essentially that the universe is an abandoned simulation, and a ‘glitch in the matrix’ starts to, among other things, bring people from the wrong time periods back to life. The format of the story is vaguely monster-of-the-week, in which the characters have to solve various problems caused by mistakes in the code. I think, “hey, you know what would be perfect for this? that fanfic I wrote about The Wall in high school.” Said fic (which that stupid fucking beatles movie stole from me) is about a world in which Pink Floyd never existed, but a wannabe rock-star discovers a box full of their records and decides to copy them. While he is touring his plagiarized version of The Wall, he realizes that the events of the album are starting to happen to him in real life. By working this concept into my new story, I go through another one of my periodical The Wall phases. It's in full swing when fall rolls around.

September of 2023: This semester, I take a grad-level narrative theory class in the English department. I decide it would be helpful to follow along with a specific example, so I choose The Wall. Using the terminology I am learning in the class, I start to realize that The Wall is…. incredibly narratologically fucked up. To help orient me, I watch the bootleg concert recordings, and the trick with the surrogate band sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore.

This is where the two plot-lines converge. I don’t remember which came first, but around this same time, I think to myself “hey, if Genesis was hiding such an incredible album under the 80’s pop, what must Pink Floyd be hiding?” On that whim, I put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which equally sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore. I needed to know what the fuck happened to get them from Piper to The Wall.

September-November: In the two months between the onset of this and finally making another sideblog, I dedicate all of my free time to learning as much about Pink Floyd as humanely possible (and writing a 20 page essay for that narrative theory class). As you can imagine, this is a lot to unpack all at once for someone who didn’t even know who Roger or Syd or any of the rest of them were. Luckily, I am over-educated enough to be a very fast learner. Aside from the band lore itself, I of course also fall in love with the rest of Pink Floyd's discography musically-speaking. Having this interest to latch onto genuinely pulls me out of my depression.

Cut to February 2024: I am really enjoying myself, and want to keep this going as long as possible, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on Pink Floyd lore. I decide I need to feed the fire by supplementing with lore from another band. The Beatles seem to have a strong fan presence on tumblr, why not revisit a childhood favorite? The universe laughs at my expense.

That about brings us up to date. I have gone through so much character development over the last eight months, it’s crazy. Pink Floyd is definitely one of those things that is less of a “phase” and more of a permanent part of my mindscape. Weirdly enough, since I am studying media psychology, all of this has also been really good for my career? I never took an interest in -real- media figures (as opposed to fictional characters) before, and I feel like I have a much clearer sense of things now. It's definitely influenced my research, so whatever domino effect this has on my future is bound to get even funnier.

Anyway, that’s my backstory!

[cpcwiki]

⚠ WIKI AD INCOMING ⚠

Hi, everyone! @mechanical-clown here on a new blog! That's right, it's the Real Official CPC Wiki Social Media Account here!! B) Unfortunately I do not have good news to deliver

It's been a hot minute since my last ad and I do want you all to know I'm still sorry for doing this. Unfortunately, again, how bad I feel making another ad is outweighed by how much the wiki needs more help. I've been feeling especially desperate lately because of the fact that CPC is ending soon, and there are many tasks that will be made harder if it's put on daily pass. So, in my cry for effort to get help, here's an explanation of what I believe is our biggest issue and a rundown of things that currently need to be done! Again I am sorry. This could take a while

If you were fortunate enough to not have seen this post last time, the Cursed Princess (Club) Wiki needs help if it wants to be complete any time soon. Kind of a lot of it. As we all know, cpcblr's very active and prolific in content and the wiki's typically... not. To seriously get into this, the only three active editors in the past month or two have been me, @the-neighbors-kid (aka cursed-princess-club), and Ama (not sure if she wants to be tagged but we all know her!). Shoutout to you two because you are actually the best thank you I love you /pl <3

Anyways, there are already a lot of things we need to do to fix up the wiki. Thankfully, accessing any episode for any information you'd like is easy! And it will continue to be that easy after CPC ends, because Webtoon doesn't feel the need to limit how many episodes a person can view, right? Right? ...Yeah, so, uh, daily pass exists.

As of the time I'm writing this, there are ~10 episodes left in CPC (forgot the exact number lol). Assuming there are no hiatuses, that's only 10 more weeks, or 2 and a half months - and that's pretty soon! While there is a chance that CPC might not have daily pass after it ends, it's a small one. And, to me, that sounds like a huge problem!! If CPC is put on daily pass, accessing episodes will become much more difficult. Looking for a certain character's appearances, adding images, even just finding a single reference - it'll take a day to unlock the needed episode, and that episode will be gone in 2 weeks. The best solution to this problem would probably be to just use physical copies of CPC to find things, but those aren't available to everyone.

And adding images with daily pass episodes? As a reminder, screenshotting while viewing an episode on daily pass is taken as a sign of piracy. Screenshotting, the way we get images for the wiki. I've tried poring through Webtoon's terms of use to find some answer about whether publicly posting such screenshotted images would be illegal, but there's no mention of daily pass, and the text is so dense it's hard for me to tell. (I want to say I'll take a second look at it sometime, but that's probably just going to go into my list of permanently-unfinished priorities. I doubt the physical copies would be a good alternative to screenshots, either.) Regardless, I don't want to take any chances with the law, or see however Webtoon would punish us on the chance they find our frightening screenshots. Thus, another top priority of mine is to add more images and complete more galleries before CPC ends.

Oh, yeah, and that's barely even scratching the surface! Here's more stuff we need to do, presented in an appealing (classic Mocha iykyk) bulleted list:

A major thing is filling in episode pages. Episodes 40-around 110 are basically blank - no synopsis, character list, summary, or extra information. This is the task that would likely be least burdened by the addition of daily pass, but in my opinion, it's still of the absolute highest priority.

Galleries, which display images of characters, locations, or episodes. While not generally that important, I do think it'd be a good idea to fill out mostly empty ones now - you know, since taking screenshots of CPC may become illegal in the future! Most characters have a good amount of images on their pages, thankfully (the pastel sisters have so many they were the first to get separate gallery pages); some, including Jack and Leland, have very few. Episode pages and locations often have way less, though those aren’t as important

Relationship sections for a number of characters. These involve write about characters’ relationships, though in a way that mainly describes their interactions throughout the episodes without expressing any specific opinions. Some major sections that need to be written/updated include Jamie and Leopold; Jolie and Nell; Leland and really everyone on his page but especially Jack; Jack and Lilyth; Suzanna and Lance/Lorena; the Plaid Princes with each other; and more! Many more!

History sections for a number of characters. In a similar vein to relationship sections, these just detail a character’s appearances in the story, as well as their past or other mentions of them. Examples of (mostly - Isolde's isn't fully updated yet) completed history sections include Whitney’s, Isolde’s, and Monika’s! Examples of incomplete sections include virtually everyone else’s.

You might be wondering why I, a wiki admin (in case I haven't said it enough) am not doing any of these things! That’s because I'm neglectful and pretty bad at my job. I will not sugarcoat that part anymore. As much as I love the wiki (it's where I met my best friend after all, and while I'm writing this they just went offline so he can get fucked /j) I don't have motivation to work on it very often. Really, I don't have motivation to work on much nowadays! Ama's been doing the virtually thankless job of keeping the wiki up for the past couple months, and I've been mostly absent. The wiki is only remotely as active as cpcblr because of her. I feel terrible about it, but I'd rather be writing this 9-paragraph cry for help than editing, so, uh... yeah this is a public apology to Ama. I am so sorry. I know this isn't very professional but I'm incapable of being professional about the wiki tbh

TL;DR: As CPC is ending soon, the impending threat of daily pass could take away the ability to look at episodes whenever you want, which would make wiki editing much harder. We seriously need editors to join us in finishing the wiki. Please at least consider helping us!! Any way you can is appreciated - even if you can only make very few edits, I'll be immensely grateful for your support :)

If you have any questions about anything wiki-related, contact me!! My Discord's at musicitself, and you can also always DM me on here! And here's an invite to our wiki Discord server, too!! Of course, you don't have to become a wiki editor to join, but (as was the point of this entire post) I would really really REALLY love if you did. Thank you so much for reading this long, and have a great day!

[stardustdiver]

BASICS

Name: Wintgeim Slafzedyrwyn / Winter Gem, Daughter of Sleeping Cedar

Nicknames: Wint, Geim, Gem, Winter

Age: 20 (ARR), 26-27 (EW)

Nameday: 9th Day of the First Astral Moon

Race: Seawolf Roegadyn

Gender: Female

Orientation: yes

Profession: ex-pirate, ex-maelstrom and crystal brave, scion of the seventh dawn, warrior of light

PHYSICAL ASPECTS

Hair: short blue with seafoam green highlights

Eyes: blue

Skin: Mid-dark grey

Tattoos/Scars: scar on her forehead from when she fell out of a tree as a kid (excuse the old pink wint screenshot lol)

FAMILY

Parents: Mother - Sylbmoen (Silver Moon), Father - Slafzedyr (Sleeping Cedar)

Siblings: one (undetermined specifics) post shadowbringers maybe, after wints parents reunited after Slafzedyr was lost on a shipwreck before wint was born (wip thought, still up in the air @ specifics and whatever but i think it sounds cute and whatever)

In-laws/Other: Merlwyb is Sylbmoen's sister, and as of endwalker Theia sort of unofficially gets adopted into Wint's family

Pets: there is that seagull that follows wint around limsa, ready to steal her sandwiches and biscuits and cakes from toddlers..

SKILLS

Abilities: swimming (saved alphinaud and urianger several times), dual welding rapier and musketoon, advanced swordplay favoured over casting red mage spells

Hobbies: making friendship bracelets, sailing, gemstone collecting

TRAITS

Positive: will always protect those she cares about, extremely loyal

Negative: hard to gain trust, once trust has been lost once its nigh impossible to regain

LIKES

Colours: blue, purple, colours of the ocean and the sunset

Smells: cedarwood, bergamot, sea breeze, nice hot food

Textures: soft and fluffy fabrics, she likes how fluffy clouds look, crunchy, soft bread

Drinks: rum, is soup a drink?, tea, nice crispy cold water

OTHER DETAILS

Smokes: no

Drinks: yea, particularly rum, not a whole lot but she can also handle it pretty well, will probably end up all "did u kno,.,,. ur my best frjend and i love u" if she has a bit too much to drink

Mounts issuance: Maelstrom Chocobo (Kweh!, very good at names she is), SDS Fenrir (bikes cool, she got it off ebay)

Been arrested: Yea, pirate life after all (not for anything intense like murder. just a little bit of petty theft and piracy in limsa)

tagged by @whatsthisascianbullshit

tagging: @oneiroy @elizabethrobertajones @caorann8 @capriccio-ffxiv

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

Hey,

I just wanted to make sure: have you been in the ofmd fandom during s1 coming out? I'm very interested in meta from that time (I'm not asking for any links, I can search myself, don't want to bother you, unless you would like to recommend something, that would be great of course)

(Forgive any spelling errors for now, im in bed on my phone lol)

Hello! Yes I have! I started watching the show a few days after s1ep7&8 came out, and watched eps 9&10 the moment they came out!

During the early days of fandom meta, you had a lot of straight up show analysis. Songs, motifs, symbols and explaining characters actions and the like. Back then I don't think I ever posted, just reblogged some stuff relating to Ed/Stede.

For that, I'd recommend looking up the topics I listed from lighthouse symbolism, music in certain scenes. Bare bones, but fun stuff! The tags 'ofmd meta' 'Edward Teach meta' or character + meta. That or ofmd symbolism, ofmd mental health, Ed's heart(referencing the red cloth), Oranges, Oluwande's earing.

My biggest draw here is I just love characters and analyzing character arcs in stories. So I have always been on the more meta sides of fandom.

I started posting light meta for Ed and Izzy maybe around June ish of 2022? Maybe? Nothing big, but from then on I focused mainly in the Izzy spaces. FOR ME: I was more intrigued by the meta on the cycles of abuse, classism, refrences to historical piracy, and just sheer angst and heart and emotional honesty of the Meta on this side of the fandom. I grew up and still live in a very red very rural US state and cant safely be visibly queer, so i latched onto Izzy's caution around visable queerness/vulnerability and habit to cling onto the established norm vs. Stede and Ed's story on 'The Love Shack' Carribean eddition. (and the fact Izzy's side treated Ed and Stede like characters that COULD still make mistakes.)

Some fans prefer the romance of ofmd while others prefer the story of family/acceptance/angst. We as a fandom split pretty quickly after ep 10. Trust me.

I sadly can't recommend you anyone specific due to essentially texting this post rn (and if any fans at the time comment down below any notable meta writers they can remember, I'd appreciate it-im drawing a blank besides my mutuals-hell give yourself a shout out if youd like). What i can give you are the disagreements that split meta writing in the fandom during the hiatus. Hell some of these even have trickle-down effects to this day as to how the fandom portrays these characters TO THIS DAY. This is where I see the clear line between what ofmd fandom will call the Izzy 'canyon' of meta vs general fan posting.

1.) Did Izzy influence/order Ed to become the Kraken? [Ed meta: (to be a bit uncharitable) Ed felt like he was alone and he'd only be able to keep Izzy in his life is if he became the Kraken (or Izzy is somehow abusing Ed to make that choice to become the monster he feared)] [izzy meta: izzy wanted blackbeard back, his friend and captain, not the Kraken. He cares about Ed being safe, and for them, that means hiding behind the blackbeard shield. Even if it keeps them both stagnant]

2.) Does Ed want to kill? How does he frame killing? How does he moralize it? How does this trauma affect him as a character? How does he value the lives of his crew ('they're pirates, that's their job' s1ep4 vs his dad or the ship he lit on fire for example)

3.) Is izzy homophobic/racist/a colonist/more of a piece of shit beyond just being an antagonist(if i were you I'd also just stick away from a post if it seems like the writer is framing all of Ed's actions like Izzy is his 'puppet master controlling the strings'.)

4.) Why do Stede and Ed seem to struggle to care about anyone else in their lives beyond each other? (Not really popular outside of Izzy spaces unless discussing ADHD/AUTISM. Honestly I don't know how you'd look for this in a Tumblr search bar, but it's some good stuff)

5.) Edward Teach has Adhd/BPD/Depression or the cycle of abuse, Stede Bonnet has Autism/Adhd/emotional childhood neglect including some amazing meta on masking. I think I even wrote something about Izzy and autism actually....

If I were you this is where I'd start. The mental health discussions in this Fandom are intriguing. S2 did basically confirm the ADHD 100% for anyone who was doubting, and healed Ed's btd with stedes dick, but other than that. There's some really good stuff in there. An easy way to find some good writers!

>) ALSO: Does piracy represent masculinity?? (S1 says maybe, it depends. S2 throws that whole meta out the window, but it was fun to talk about equating Izzy and Ed's leather daddy ship and more masculinity presentations of queerness to traditional masc gender roles)

6.) Do you define Ed and his actions as his own or as that under labels? This one is super frustrating to me personally. It does nothing for me to look at s2ep1 and say 'see that's the Kraken, that's a mask, that's not Ed'. But a lot of the general wider fandom do see Ed masking as somehow putting on a role, like in a play, and carrying out his evil actions under a pseudonym. These people usually will also believe the 'Izzy is manipulating a mentally ill man' stuff. As if Izzy isn't also SUPER fucked up.

THIS lack of character direction affected our fandoms fanfic and fanart too. I look at Ed and see a man who is and has fucked up. But hell, go back to S1 fic and you can read a fic where izzy slaughters puppies and Ed stands by with 'sexy cow eyes' unable to stop him. Then the next read 'Ed/Stede slowburn post s1 where Izzy goes to get Stede and learns to be apart of the crew' in 40k words.

7.) Jim's religious trauma, what is up with Buttons, Lucius/Izzy and Polyamory dynamics, or other topics with side characters that are brushed off. I bet right now if you look at people writing S2 Frenchie trauma Meta, they wrote stuff for s1

8.) Also- was izzy turned on by the toe thing/getting slammed into a wall. Yes. This is still debated. As a con oneill fan, those are not his 'I'm hot for this' faces. But No. You will still see that interpretation today that he wanted Ed to do something to him only because he got off on it. Even after s2. (Izzy being a masochist however? Fan theory that was embraced and made into a refrence in s2 which was fun)

I've just rebloged a post with some meta from a writer I enjoy and I will tag you!! But yeah! OFMD mutuals if you can recommend any meta writers, don't be afraid to!! Thanks for the ask!!! ❤️(I will likely add to this post when I think of more lol)

[carlos-in-glasses]

Forgive me because I'm not asking this to argue for or against anything. Tthis is just something your tags on that post made me think. Isn't it also theft to take screenshots and download for purposes of gif making in the first place or making screen shot only posts like you mentioned? Where is the line drawn with this? Just wondering out of interest, that's all.

Hi anon. The difference is that nobody making gifs of shows and movies (or taking screenshots to aid meta posts etc) is trying to pass the source material off as something they created, whereas reposting gifs (or art or fic etc) completely eradicates the creator of those things.

It should be highly obvious that gifs are being made in respect of the source material, especially if they are labelled. Of course shows will come with IP and copyright infringement clauses (hence piracy being illegal; you wouldn't download a car or a pizza lol etc) but much of that is linked with commercial losses and in the case of IP, idea theft and plagiarism. Gif making provides value. I've never seen anything that indicates studios want to stamp out things like gifs, fan art, fan fic, all for utilising the pre-existing characters and images. Tumblr would have been snuffed out long ago, if so. Gifs benefit the shows/movies because it's essentially a jazzy version of word of mouth and free PR. I've decided to watch shows based on gifs, as I know many people have.

I hope this is an ok answer from my frazzled brain. I'm not a lawyer and I haven't stopped to Google it. All views are my own. I love gifs and fandom and the world would be darker place without them.

[jadeharleyinc]

#Yes!#generative AI is bad#but using it's carbon footprint as the main reason why not only neglect the nuance displayed here#it also encourages AI devs to simply make their training models more energy efficient#it's certainly not convincing anyone to stop making the models#I feel like the focus should be on the fact these are trained through theft 90% of the time#and the use of them noticeably rots a persons ability to utilise their own creativity and critical thinking skills

hi! i appreciate your interest in my number-crunching, but i have to correct some of the points you're bringing up in your tags.

(edit: this person blocked me for this addition, lol. ah well - this may be of interest to other people who would like to hear my perspective.)

is AI theft?

well, no, mostly because theft involves depriving someone of something and taking it for yourself. if i buy a game, make copies of the game files and distribute them on USB sticks for free, it's not stealing. however, it is piracy and copyright infringement. if i distribute an AI model file, am i redistributing stolen data?

does an AI model file contain stolen data?

the theft argument is, to begin with, just not true. it's not true on a technical standpoint nor an academic culture standpoint.

to create an AI model, the developer must collect a dataset, make a neural network analyze the data (training), and then output its conclusions (the model). the model is a file that sits on someone's computer like any other file, and doesn't actually contain the training data, only a bunch of statistical observations about the training data.

in more concrete terms- if you download an AI image model, you'll find the file size is in the ballpark of 5 GB. this isn't the file size of 1 million combined images, which wouldn't even fit on your computer. these images also cannot be recreated- it would be a revolutionary form of lossy data compression if so.

in some cases, an AI model model can overanalyze an image to the point where the analysis is so thorough, it can recreate the image from scratch. this is called overfitting and it's considered a bug. the most famous example is an AI model over-analyzing the Mona Lisa because it shows up like 10000 times in its training data. that being said, text AI (LLMs) is more prone to overfitting than image AI (diffusion), to a degree.

does AI training use stolen data?

i climb to the mountain's peak and ask the sage a question. "if i bake a cake with stolen eggs and flour, is the cake stolen?" "i don't- what nonsense is this??", says the sage. "as the buddhists say: mu. you ask the wrong question. maybe what's important is that the ingredients were stolen. also, how did you get into my house?"

you can argue that "theft" happens at the training stage: the AI's creator is collecting and using images in an unauthorized manner, i.e. copyright infringement. but this is a dangerous argument to make. are we arguing that a lost sale, a lost deal is theft? that logic is used against piracy or the Internet Archive.

"art theft", the unauthorized use or an image or a work, isn't bad by itself. a collage's source images are often used with no authorization, combined into an unrecognizable mess, with no credit or compensation. this is a much heavier use of these images than AI does. but collage is good! same goes for remixes, but also fanfiction.

there's good theft and bad theft, right?

"it's different, my fanfiction isn't theft", you might say. is this true? the distinction between artwork ("an image of super mario"/"a sample of mario music") and ideas ("mario's design"/"the name super mario"/"the mario setting") is a thin line: a character design and an image of that design are both creative outputs equally respected by culture, and equally protected by the law.

it's an oft-forgotten fact that fanwork is illegal, literally, full stop. the existence of fanwork is permitted by the generosity of corporations and the massive, organized efforts and risk-taking of rare fan-aligned organizations like Ao3. it'd be risky to undermine the foundations of collage, remixing, fanwork and similar fields to stop AI training.

"if a fan does it it's good, and if a company does it it's bad" can serve as an individual's moral compass, but not society's. the law can't cleanly distinguish between me (indie dev), toby fox (small indie team, million dollar budget), larian studio of BG3 fame (big fish in a bigger pond), and microsoft (literally microsoft). it's blurry in my eyes too. can an indie dev steal from larian? toby fox? me?

but corporations can only make AI with theft, right?

well, no. everything i've outlined above is a distraction because the art theft argument is moot, anyway. early AI startups created their models via unauthorized scraping because, as unproved pioneers, they didn't own 1 billion images or enough cash to buy those. Adobe and Disney and Getty Images do though! and they're making their own AI, using 1 billion images they've acquired through fully legal processes, processes few people criticize.

what happens if you fight AI on the basis that it's theft? if these companies reinforce copyright law, making it illegal to train AI models without rightfully owning 1 billion images, while they train their own 'zero theft' AIs? AI becomes a monopoly, split only between the corporations that own or can afford billions of images.

in this scenario, there will be weak competition, i suppose: AI trained on the public domain (like CommonCanvas) or licensed art (like F Lite). so now we're in a society where you can use Disney AI (no theft - trained only on Disney Artwork) (TM) for $50 a month, or Super Public Domain Nerd AI for free. no theft involved. so what? artists everywhere are still screwed out of a job. seems bad!

it's also important to keep in mind that, at least in the USA, 2/3rds of working artists do not work for themselves. they generally sign contracts with companies, and have the accept the usual terms, which strip away any and all rights over their artwork to give those to the company. in a society where art can be owned and hoarded, the concept of "theft" benefit owners and hoarders, not creators.

basically "it's theft" is a dead end and i would not recommend heading there. this is not a battlefield that favors artists and creators.

does AI make you stupid? uncreative? bad?

short answer: no. long answer: also no. this is not true! this is vibes. we exist on the tail end of 3000 years of technological advancement where, every single generation, some technology or entertainment crops up that makes people's brains and critical thinking and creative spark rot. but this time it's really true for sure we swear.

video games make you violent. wikipedia makes students lazy. the internet makes you dependent. dungeons and dragons makes you delusional. photoshop makes you uncreative. scanners are ruining the photomanip scene. the camera is making painters stupid. all the way back to plato, 2500 years ago, who literally claimed writing destroys men's memory and paintings are illusory images that lead them astray from the essence of the truth.

so is this true? is there science about this, or are we maybe using technology as a scapegoat for existing societal ills? there has certainly been a study by microsoft cambridge and carnegie mellon university, which i've seen widely cited and misrepresented as proof of AI "atrophying the brain" and "rotting critical thinking skills".

examining the study for yourself (a very simple affair - it's a dozen pages and it's not paywalled - i have summarized the conclusions here if you'd like) reveals it's nothing of the sort. there were no tests. nothing was measured. it's simply a survey, analyzing people's beliefs and what issues they say they face when thinking critically about AI outputs at work.

does AI affect your critical thinking in some way?

according to the study, people who say "i'm having trouble thinking critically" do so for very specific reasons: they don't have the tech skills to verify AI outputs, they're asking AI about an unfamiliar topic they have no idea how to research, their job already involves producing mediocre information (AI or not), or they're just not getting paid enough to care.

the survey also suggests AI stimulates a different kind of critical thinking, one that involves less information gathering and more information analysis and verification. ironically, people online don't hesitate to repeat false claims about AI's influence on critical thinking skills, rather than exert or question their critical thinking skills.

what are some actual problems with AI?

"gee, that's convenient, so you can use AI and never have to worry about anything huh." well that would be easy. fortunately i hate AI companies and i like facts! here's what i care about.

for AI to analyze a dataset, it needs labels to understand what it's looking at. these labels are higher in quality when added manually by humans. the companies who train AI models rely on the exploitation of "mechanical turks" in the global south for this grueling, underpaid labeling work.

the companies that deploy AI to replace humans are jeopardizing the jobs of the working class in these fields, creating unfair competition. companies fail to provide compensation or alternatives for these workers. (in the USA at least, the efforts of unions like the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have seriously helped put creative workers in a position of strength, to safely negotiate and maneuver through the coming restructuring of their fields.)

using AI, people produce an immense quantity of Stuff. it's getting difficult to filter out the bad kind, let alone the dangerous kind. we haven't yet automated content moderation. the question was once "which one of these 100 gory photoshops is a real decapitation?", now it's 1000 AI-generated gore pictures. the problem got worse.

AI models are trained on datasets. this encodes the cultural biases of the society that created and collected the data into the resulting model. the model's biases then favor white americans, men, etc. and erases the marginalized. worse, AI bias worsen the existing biases of cops, companies and institutions who make racist, dangerous uses of AI for hiring, profiling and surveillance.

...and more, although most problems with AI are problems with the systems capitalism has created, now revealed by this disruption.

i believe AI, like all form of automation, is not innately dangerous- the parts added to make it dangerous can be identified and replaced. AI is a means of production that can and will inevitably be seized by the working class for the benefit of workers. hence why i'm not bothered by researchers' attempts to make AI less resource-intensive to use.

i hope this provides more context to what i think should be prioritized in the struggle against and for AI technology, going forwards.

the scale of AI's ecological footprint

standalone version of my response to the following:

"you need soulless art? [...] why should you get to use all that computing power and electricity to produce some shitty AI art? i don’t actually think you’re entitled to consume those resources." "i think we all deserve nice things. [...] AI art is not a nice thing. it doesn’t meaningfully contribute to us thriving and the cost in terms of energy use [...] is too fucking much. none of us can afford to foot the bill." "go watch some tv show or consume some art that already exists. […] you know what’s more environmentally and economically sustainable […]? museums. galleries. being in nature."

you can run free and open source AI art programs on your personal computer, with no internet connection. this doesn't require much more electricity than running a resource-intensive video game on that same computer. i think it's important to consume less. but if you make these arguments about AI, do you apply them to video games too? do you tell Fortnite players to play board games and go to museums instead?

speaking of museums: if you drive 3 miles total to a museum and back home, you have consumed more energy and created more pollution than generating AI images for 24 hours straight (this comes out to roughly 1400 AI images). "being in nature" also involves at least this much driving, usually. i don't think these are more environmentally-conscious alternatives.

obviously, an AI image model costs energy to train in the first place, but take Stable Diffusion v2 as an example: it took 40,000 to 60,000 kWh to train. let's go with the upper bound. if you assume ~125g of CO2 per kWh, that's ~7.5 tons of CO2. to put this into perspective, a single person driving a single car for 12 months emits 4.6 tons of CO2. meanwhile, for example, the creation of a high-budget movie emits 2840 tons of CO2.

is the carbon cost of a single car being driven for 20 months, or 1/378th of a Marvel movie, worth letting anyone with a mid-end computer, anywhere, run free offline software that consumes a gaming session's worth of electricity to produce hundreds of images? i would say yes. in a heartbeat.

even if you see creating AI images as "less soulful" than consuming Marvel/Fortnite content, it's undeniably "more useful" to humanity as a tool. not to mention this usefulness includes reducing the footprint of creating media. AI is more environment-friendly than human labor on digital creative tasks, since it can get a task done with much less computer usage, doesn't commute to work, and doesn't eat.

and speaking of eating, another comparison: if you made an AI image program generate images non-stop for every second of every day for an entire year, you could offset your carbon footprint by… eating 30% less beef and lamb. not pork. not even meat in general. just beef and lamb.

the tech industry is guilty of plenty of horrendous stuff. but when it comes to the individual impact of AI, saying "i don’t actually think you’re entitled to consume those resources. do you need this? is this making you thrive?" to an individual running an AI program for 45 minutes a day per month is equivalent to questioning whether that person is entitled to a single 3 mile car drive once per month or a single meatball's worth of beef once per month. because all of these have the same CO2 footprint.

so yeah. i agree, i think we should drive less, eat less beef, stream less video, consume less. but i don't think we should tell people "stop using AI programs, just watch a TV show, go to a museum, go hiking, etc", for the same reason i wouldn't tell someone "stop playing video games and play board games instead". i don't think this is a productive angle.

(sources and number-crunching under the cut.)

good general resource: GiovanH's article "Is AI eating all the energy?", which highlights the negligible costs of running an AI program, the moderate costs of creating an AI model, and the actual indefensible energy waste coming from specific companies deploying AI irresponsibly.

CO2 emissions from running AI art programs: a) one AI image takes 3 Wh of electricity. b) one AI image takes 1mn in, for example, Midjourney. c) so if you create 1 AI image per minute for 24 hours straight, or for 45 minutes per day for a month, you've consumed 4.3 kWh. d) using the UK electric grid through 2024 as an example, the production of 1 kWh releases 124g of CO2. therefore the production of 4.3 kWh releases 533g (~0.5 kg) of CO2.

CO2 emissions from driving your car: cars in the EU emit 106.4g of CO2 per km. that's 171.19g for 1 mile, or 513g (~0.5 kg) for 3 miles.

costs of training the Stable Diffusion v2 model: quoting GiovanH's article linked in 1. "Generative models go through the same process of training. The Stable Diffusion v2 model was trained on A100 PCIe 40 GB cards running for a combined 200,000 hours, which is a specialized AI GPU that can pull a maximum of 300 W. 300 W for 200,000 hours gives a total energy consumption of 60,000 kWh. This is a high bound that assumes full usage of every chip for the entire period; SD2’s own carbon emission report indicates it likely used significantly less power than this, and other research has shown it can be done for less." at 124g of CO2 per kWh, this comes out to 7440 kg.

CO2 emissions from red meat: a) carbon footprint of eating plenty of red meat, some red meat, only white meat, no meat, and no animal products the difference between a beef/lamb diet and a no-beef-or-lamb diet comes down to 600 kg of CO2 per year. b) Americans consume 42g of beef per day. this doesn't really account for lamb (egads! my math is ruined!) but that's about 1.2 kg per month or 15 kg per year. that single piece of 42g has a 1.65kg CO2 footprint. so our 3 mile drive/4.3 kWh of AI usage have the same carbon footprint as a 12g piece of beef. roughly the size of a meatball [citation needed].

[ashwilliam]

just remembered that I saw someone on twitter a few days ago say that people should start buying more physical media (they were primarily talking about films) and I was just like. stunned by the idea that people don’t buy dvds? a lot of people in the comments were saying they couldnt watch their favourite movies anymore because they were taken off streaming services. reblog and put in the tags if you buy dvds or not, I genuinely wanna know :D

[martsonmars]

How I found Carry On and its fandom – long answer because I love talking about myself.

I used to see Fangirl in bookshops all the time, when I was 14 or so, and I wanted to buy it every time, because a book about fanfiction? Sounded like my shit, but I never got to buying it for some reason.

While one of my best friends read and loved it, and when Carry On was published in Italy she read and loved it too, and probably told me “you should read it”. So it made my way into my TBR list, but I think I didn't really know what it was about, because when I grew older and deleted from my list all those books that I thought I wasn't interested in anymore (mainly books – at least the ones I hadn't read yet lol – that were super famous in the early to mid 2010s and all people in multifandom spaces seemed to have read but that felt stupid and boring to a 16yo me who was starting to read only Dostoyevsky), I deleted Fangirl and Carry On too.

I kept hearing about them from this friend (I didn't remember about it, but after reading WS I found out she has a rant about it on her Instagram page lmao) and on Instagram, but it never crossed my path intensely enough to convince me to buy it.

Then last year, around November or December, for a reason I don't remember Carry On was back on my TBR list – and it was on top of it! To the point that instead of remaining a book in a list, I even had it in my cart on some bookshop website. Maybe I had finally found out what it was about? Who knows. Anyway, I finally wanted to really buy it, but something kept stopping me.

Then last December this famous friend and I organised a “bookstagram” Advent Calendar – each day had a prompt and people posted a photo of a book that filled the prompt.

One day, someone posted a scene of RWRB. Now, RWRB had made its way to my list in the previous months, and that scene made me think “I definitely need to read it”. Put into cart, still didn't buy it.

Now we enter illegal book acquisition so yeah I hope David doesn't mind piracy hahaha. If he does mind I don't want to know

So, while RWRB and CO were in my cart waiting to be bought, I stumbled over a pdf copy of both of them. And one night at the end of January I started RWRB. It was the first, and up to now only, time I stayed up all night (like, not even going to sleep at 7am like I did the two times I was at a party/sleepover), and to finish a book.

I spend the following day, all day, explaining the plot to my best friend (not the CO one) because I needed to let it out and looking for fanart and incorrect quotes on Pinterest. And damn, I kept being bothered by stuff about Simon and Baz who are they can they kindly fuck off I'm here for Alex and Henry only. But from what Pinterest was showing me, they seemed interesting. So I googled and wow! They were the main characters of Carry On! And I had a pdf copy of it

Hence another night of intense reading (this time I didn't stay up all night – just up to chapter 61), followed by a day I spent finishing CO and reading WS.

And that's the story. But I'm not going to shut up.

Then I spent more time on Pinterest. And this time I kept being annoyed by a caption that read “you need to read rebel, rebel, it's the perfect fic”. I – as I've said many times – had never been a fanfiction reader, I could count the random stuff (that I read because I found it linked on Instagram or something like that) I've read before 2021 on my fingers. But I was curious, and needed to get my head off WS, so I tried it. And then I couldn't let go, I clicked on the Snowbaz tag and started reading most of the fic from the last published and backwards.

And I read, I read, I read, and I felt that I wanted to write fics again. (I had stopped writing fics intensely in 2016/2017, and the last last I'd written had been in 2018.) But I was in a phase where I thought “my writer block that started in 2018 doesn't even let write my original stuff, why should I waste time on other people's characters?”, so I resisted the urge to write fics. Until I read Every Line Lost by NineMagicks and I couldn't take it anymore.

I opened a doc and I started writing – in English, for the first time – a fanfiction masked by different names and some original details. (Like, I refused to write fics so I gave the characters new names but they were still Baz and Penny, and then I would've introduced Simon.)

And I kept reading fics until I finally gave in and started plotting a proper Snowbaz fic. Which brought me to Tumblr to look for beta readers.

And then I made a mutual, and we became instantly friends, and she offered to beta and then forced me to start reblogging and posting on Tumblr instead of lurking. And I did, and then I found one of aralias's invites to the Discord server. And I probably wouldn't have joined if the week before I hadn't played D&D with my best friend's friends, and they'd told me “since you don't live here we can continue the session on Discord when you're back home”, so I had downloaded it. So when I saw aralias's invite I was like, fuck it.

The rest is history.

Fellow snowbazzians, rb this and tell me how you came across the series. Mine was a stranger recommending it to me in a bookstore. Thank you stranger!!! (If one of y'all told a rando at Powells in Portland the summer of 2017* to read Carry On, thank you, you don't know what this means to me, or maybe you do ❤)

[amuseoffyre]

Strap in, my hardy crew! It's time for Sad Times With Fyre.

I did a post about Ed and Izzy's relationship the other day and a common thread that I've noticed in the tags and responses is that a lot of people had been wondering why Ed didn't intervene or step in or do anything during the duel.

While that particular post covers part of it (ie. whoops, Ed caught in a mirror incident of a thing he just had a panic attack about and freezing up), I'm a generous and giving soul and thought I would make it even worse for you while digging into Ed's lifelong trauma.

It all comes back to Ed's sense of value and worth in himself. The earliest memory we've seen of his was when his mother went "Look at all the nice stuff we can never have because lol God hates us". The fact this is a memory that recurs when he feels disrespected and belittled makes it clear that "we're not those kind of people and never will be" weighs heavily on him.

Then we have what we learn about his younger days as a sailor when he was fresh to piracy (my headcanon is that he had to flee for his life after his father's death because hanging offence and whatnot). He and Calico Jack laugh and joke about the fact that Hornigold used to stab and beat them and "treat us like dogs, no worse than dogs".

Ed has been told since he was a nipper that he doesn't get to have the nice things. He doesn't get to have the kindness and the softness and the pretty things. If he showed an interest, he was told no. If he showed any kind of weakness in later life, he was told no with violence.

Then we have the duel where he says to Izzy "we're not doing this" because he wants to keep this thing he has with Stede and Izzy, the living incarnation of the cruel and relentless society he's been brought up in, says "no, you're not doing this" and proceeds with the plan to remove another thing that makes Ed happy from his life. And some part of Ed believes he's right to do it, because he doesn't get to keep the things he likes. He doesn't get to have fine things and never will.

This replays again in the confrontation in the cabin when - even with Stede gone - he's enjoying the things he likes. He's in soft robes, making music, talking and listening to people and is genuinely at peace. And once more, Izzy comes in and tells him no. No, you can't have this nice, soft, gentle thing because I know what you are and what you'll always be, pressing Ed to breaking point.

That's why he not only dons his mask again but also gets rid of all the stuff in Stede's main cabin. Because (OH NO OH NO I JUST REALISED LUCIUS'S QUOTE RE. HIS FINGER RELATES TO THIS! GDI SHOW! I SHALL MAKE A PARALLEL POST) you can't take away his precious and beloved things, if there are no precious and beloved things to take.

Also oh fun, more trauma for the neurodiverse character who keeps on having things that stimulate him and make him happy taken away from him! Who has to behave as his peers dictate rather than how he truly wants to. Based on many neurodiverse friends, this is a common thread of experience - NT folk thinking it’s weird we like a thing and forbidding the thing or mocking the thing until we stop sharing our love of the thing. Oh that's definitely not going to leave a mark and make him hoard his precious things as much as he can in secret. I see you auxiliary wardrobe. I see that Izzy never learned about you. Clever little ADHD boy keeps the things he doesn't want to lose close and safe.

In conclusion, Ed is emotionally a complete mess. I mean, we knew this, but there are reasons behind it and the reasons are an entire lifetime of this kind of treatment, where his self-worth is ground to dust and any feeling that he deserves or even can have anything is a fiction that can be taken away.

This is who I am, he tells Stede. You were always going to see it.

[logicheartsoul]

Getting to know you Tumblr game

Copy prompts and tag nine people you’d like to get to know better

Wow, I got a lot of people tagging me! This is a first lol I was tagged by: @bisamwilson @sambambucky @writerkenna @samcky​ 

But now to the answers which I guess y'all are dying to read

favorite color: I had this convo the other day with Tiana (@redwingsupportgroup​) but basically asking me to choose a favorite color is too hard so I just go with rainbow (coz it has all colors at once lmao)

currently reading: Sadly, I have a huge backlog of books I need to read and the last few days I have either been too tired or too busy to read any fics. Might change tonight. (I don't think checking out this piracy guide would count as "currently reading" lol)

last song: Ride It by Jay Sean, which only is coz I was reminded of it earlier today and then I shared the song and the thought it inspired to @saryasy​ lol (It was a fic idea)

last series: Finished watching the last ep of season 3 of Never Have I Ever yesterday, though I did watch the latest Last Week Tonight with John Oliver a few hours ago (if that counts as part of a series)

last movie: If you don't include the Hallmark movie my mom had in the background earlier today, then Easter Sunday

sweet/savory/spicy: Depends on my mood, though usually I hover more between savory or sweet

currently working on: If you don't count my exceedingly large collection of written WIPs, nothing really though I also have a few gif sets as well -- the most current of that being cap sam from Avengers: Quantum Encounter. I did technically finish 1 tumblr header of cap sam but I want to make more variations but I can show y'all that too

screenshots of the gifset:

The header:

And a couple of random edits I made in the last week and a half but never really posted:

As for who I’m tagging, I suck at picking who to choose for these things, so whoever reads this and wants to do it, feel free

[izzy-b-hands]

Stede’s kids, aka two little shits lol, come looking for him. On their own. In a dinghy.

They truly are his children.

I guessed on their ages, so put them about idk, like 8 or 9, maybe 10 at the oldest for Alma and maybe five or six for Louis, somewhere about there. I may be wrong or off but I’m winging it for now until I find anything definitive re: how old they are in show canon lol.

A note, I did combine some historical stuff for Stede here. Mainly his first son, named Allamby, who had died by 1715 per Wikipedia.

TW for descriptions of child death re: Allamby (made up, because I couldn’t find much to give an exact cause of death, so I just rolled with it.)

I stared at this all day and I think I caught any accidentally a words or major fuck ups, but if I missed something pls let me know and I’ll fix it ASAP dsklfjaskl. Also, if any additional trigger tags are wanted that I missed, let me know and I’ll add them them right away!

---

“Another letter from the kids,” Ed said as he handed the envelope to Stede. “I’ll bet they still want to come out with us.”

“And I’ve told them their mother will not allow that at this time, understandably,” Stede chuckled. “But we’ll remind them.”

He opened the letter and started to read. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

Stede nodded and handed the letter back, moving to sit on a nearby barrel. He’d expected some whining that he hadn’t come back for a bit, or to allow them to sail with him for at least a week or two (Mary wasn’t entirely against it; she simply wanted them to be older before they did so, and that no raid would take place while they were aboard. Sensible requirements that Stede agreed with wholeheartedly.)

He hadn’t expected this.

“They’re looking for us?” Ed said, shocked. “They aren’t old enough for that. Are they?”

“How old were you when you left to be a pirate?”

“Sixteen, or about there,” Ed replied. “How old are yours again?”

“Not that,” Stede laughed nervously. “Oh god.”

“No, don’t panic,” Ed said. “After all, they’re your kids. Smart, good head on their shoulders.”

“And a proclivity to make rash, potentially dangerous and/or poor decisions?”

Ed paused. “Well. Yeah, that too.”

“Should we head their way and see if we can’t find them?” Stede asked. In his head, all he could see were two panicked children aboard a dinghy, in rough seas, potentially about to drown or starve if they somehow survived it-

“You’re picking at the thread on your jacket,” Ed interrupted the stream of potential catastrophes. “Take a breath.”

“I will, when we find them.”

--

“What else did the letter say?” Olu asked.

“They’ve bought their own provisions, weapons-” Ed read, then paused to laugh. “That’s wonderful! Not even my kids and I’m proud of them. Wonder what they picked up for that, because-”

“Ed,” Stede interrupted. “They likely stole money from their mother, oh god I hadn’t considered that yet. Forget being hung for piracy, Mary’s going to kill me first.”

“No one is getting hung for being a pirate, and I’m sure Mary will...” Ed hesitated. “You know, if we all go ashore, you’ll have a head start.”

“I think I need to lie down.”

“Children are much more resilient than you think,” Izzy offered. “They’re probably perfectly fine.”

“Or dead,” Stede chuckled. “I’ll make myself walk the plank if that’s the case!”

“I don’t think anyone actually does that,” Pete frowned.

“What, make someone walk the plank?” Lucius asked. “Or let their kids die at sea?”

Stede whimpered, and Ed wrapped an arm around his waist.

“Let’s not say dead unless we should find them that way,” Ed said. “And no, walking the plank really isn’t a thing. Sorry, love.”

“Right,” Stede nodded. “Then you can tie the anchor to me and drop me overboard! Maybe let Mary do it, that would only be right. And any loot could go towards funerals-”

He let himself drop out of Ed’s grip to sit on the deck, staring into space. He didn’t exactly want to take back all the years of playing pirate, but at the same time, maybe they wouldn’t have come looking for him if he hadn’t done so.

Ed peered down. “So, we’re going to take the lead on this, and I’m going to help Stede to bed. Sound good, Stede?”

He managed a nod, and didn’t fight when Ed and Izzy helped him up and more or less dragged him to their quarters.

“Try to rest, and think of something else,” Ed said as they dropped him into bed. “Read a book, distract yourself.”

He went to the shelves, and pulled out a book on the designing of children’s funerals, and dealing with grief.

Ed frowned. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Come on,” Izzy whispered. “Sooner we find them, sooner he’ll either be alright, or we’ll lock him in here so he doesn’t jump overboard.”

--

“Do we know what they look like?” Roach asked.

“No,” Ed replied.

“Names?”

“Alma and Louis,” Ed said.

“Anything else?”

Ed looked back to the letter. “Alma has very nice handwriting?”

The crew groaned collectively.

“None of that,” Izzy scolded. “That isn’t helping.”

“More information would be helpful too,” Frenchie said. “What do we look for otherwise?”

“It’s two kids in a boat, probably just out there floating!” Jim shouted. “The fuck else do you think we need to look for?”

“Whoa, okay,” Olu took Jim’s hand. “Good point though, there can’t be that many younger kids out for a jaunt on the sea without any parents or someone to keep an eye on them.”

Frenchie raised his hand.

“Yup,” Ed nodded. “Go on.”

“Does their mum know they’re gone?”

Silence.

Izzy opened his mouth, then shut it and looked to Ed for direction.

“Possibly,” Ed finally said. “They didn’t say in the letter.”

“So in other words, their mum and her boyfriend might also be out there?”

Ed pondered it in a silent panic. “Yeah. Yeah, they might be.”

“Actually then, we’re looking for four people,” Frenchie said. “Good to know. Really hope we don’t accidentally find them by running over their dinghies.”

“I know we’re all probably a little scared for all of them,” Olu said. “But we need to keep our shit together. Stede’s lost his enough for all of us, frankly.”

“They are his kids,” Ed said sharply. “Though I wonder about the oldest one. Why didn’t he go with?”

“Isn’t the daughter the oldest?” Olu asked.

“Thought so, but before he came back I went snooping through his things,” Ed said. “And there’s a mention of a son, Allamby. He’s the first kid listed on anything that mentioned his family.”

“Could be he’s old enough that he didn’t want to go,” Roach offered.

“Then why not stop the other two?” Frenchie asked. “They’d tell an older sibling at least before they left. I would, were it me. Brother won’t necessarily yell at you about it, even if he doesn’t like it, and he could have been the one to give them money too.”

“We’re wasting time,” Wee John said. “Let’s get to actually looking for them, and then we can ask them about all of this.”

“Capital idea,” Ed declared. “All hands then, let’s get the show on the road.”

“At least we know they’ll be dressed fancy, if they’re that much like Stede,” Frenchie murmured to Wee John. “Could spot a bright silk from a mile away.”

--

The first three days were fruitless. Stede ate when food was brought to him, drank when water was presented. At night, he walked the deck while the others slept, no matter how much Ed protested. He argued that he slept enough during the days to distract himself from the worst possibilities, the least he could was take the night watch to see if they might be spotted then.

On day four, Ed joined him.

“Can I ask you something?”

Stede nodded, still looking out into the dark at the far end of the deck. The sea was calm, and the moon bright. Perfect conditions to find one’s missing children.

“Why didn’t their older brother go with?”

Stede turned. “Alma is our oldest.”

“Who is Allamby then? I may have peeked at some of your stuff before you came back, and-”

Stede shook his head. “I sort of wish you hadn’t.”

“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have,” Ed said, and took Stede’s hand, reassured when he grasped back tightly. “I won’t again, not without your permission.”

“No, it isn’t the biggest deal in the world,” Stede sighed. “Allamby was our actual first. But he passed a few years ago.”

“When?”

Stede sighed again. “1715.”

“That’s only two years ago,” Ed scoffed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He’s gone and buried,” Stede replied. “What would there be to tell?”

“I’d imagine a lot,” Ed said softly. “How old was he?”

“Five,” Stede said, with another squeeze of Ed’s hand. “Very sweet. Liked picking flowers with me, to bring home to Mary. Wanted to study flowers, actually. Told me how he’d like to discover new ones, and he could name them after all of us.”

“Ambitious,” Ed laughed. “All that at five?”

“He had a plan for almost all of it,” Stede chuckled. “Didn’t really have any idea of how he’d make money to live of course, but truthfully I would have happily paid his way until he was on his feet. And even then, if ever he needed anything, all he would have had to do was ask.”

“What about playing pirate?”

Stede grinned, and finally turned to face Ed. “He loved it. Insisted we go down to the beach to play, the house wasn’t where a pirate would live! We’d walk down and he’d talk about everything involved with it: what weapons he’d use, what he’d most like to have as loot, even how he’d decorate his ship.”

“Flowers?”

“Lots of them. Painted on the walls, on the hull. Didn’t mind that it would mean repainting often. It was a worthy effort to him.”

He leaned into Ed, and Ed slipped his hand from Stede’s to wrap it around his waist instead.

“What happened? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Stede again looked to the sea. It was empty as it had been before.

“We don’t really know. He went to bed as usual, after two extra bedtime stories no less, and the next morning,” Stede’s voice caught in his throat. “He didn’t wake up. We thought he was having a lie in, since he did on occasion. Gave him an extra half hour to sleep or play in his room, whatever he was up to. Then Mary asked that I go up and bring him down for a late breakfast.”

Ed reached with his free hand to wipe a tear off Stede’s cheek as it fell. “Stede, if you want to stop-”

“No, he deserves to be known about,” Stede choked. “After we chose to not tell Alma or Louis about him, at least for now. That leaves only me and Mary and our parents, but they never did like him much. Too much like me, I suppose.”

He took a deep shaking breath. “I went up to get him. And it seemed awfully quiet, but he could sleep deeply. He’d played hard the day before too, all day at the beach, being the best pirate he could be!”

Stede smiled. “He would have loved it out here. I’m sure of it. Not that Mary would have wanted him out here either, but maybe when he was older, she would have...well. I suppose that doesn’t matter now.”

Ed nodded and tried to hold him tighter.

“I just thought he was sleeping deeply again,” Stede said. “He looked fine. Out cold, but fine. No blue in his lips, no gray on his skin. Not at that point, at least. But I couldn’t rouse him.”

Ed didn’t say a word, and waited for Stede.

“It was ridiculous, sitting on his bed, trying to shake him awake. Even went and got a glass of water and poured it over him, the poor thing!” Stede was openly crying now. His eyes hadn’t left the glassy water that surrounded them. “How he would have shouted any other morning if I’d done that! And it would have been deserved!”

Stede wiped away his tears, but they fell as fast as he could remove them. “Felt his forehead, expected a fever. He was cold.”

There was no wind, and the night was cool but not enough to chill. Stede shivered nonetheless.

“I picked him up and ran downstairs and called for Mary and to send for the doctor, or whoever could come by quickest that had any knowledge that might help,” Stede continued. “She knew before I did. Accepted it before I did, more like. She’d warned me before we tried for children, that there was always risk. They could die in childbirth and take her with them. Could have a horrid accident. Could be sick enough to die. Could simply die while in their cot, as a baby.”

He took a gasping breath. “But not at that age. Far too old to be a cot death. But it didn’t matter. Mary waited for the doctor at the door, and I stayed with him. Held him until the doctor made me let go.”

“And Mary?”

“Devastated as I was, but she didn’t fall apart like me until the burial. I think it really hit then. We spent days in the house, not eating, not sleeping. We talked once about what if we went to his grave and checked. Maybe he was really alright, and what if we’d buried him alive?! He’d be scared and want us and he’d think we had abandoned him.”

Ed gently prompted him to walk, to try and get him to their quarters or anywhere that he couldn’t watch the waves. At least for a few moments.

But Stede didn’t move an inch. “We nearly did it, too. Mary borrowed some of my old things, so she could move more easily. We were at the door, shovels in hand, and then we realized what we were doing.”

He sobbed. “And it would be pointless. He’d be as pale and lifeless as he’d been at his wake, in his coffin.”

It was by some grace that Izzy came out of his room, headed for the galley. At seeing them, he changed direction and strode over.

“Did we find them?” he asked Ed in a whisper.

“No,” Ed whispered back. “Could you help me get him to our quarters? I can take over the rest of the night watch.”

“You stay with him,” Izzy said. “I can do it. It’ll be nearly light before we know it anyway.”

With a bit more prompting and gentle pulling, they got Stede to walk away from the rail of the deck.

--

“Got something!” Frenchie called from the crow’s nest. “Small vessel, not close enough to see all who’s in it though!”

“Dinghy is ready,” Izzy said as he jogged past Ed towards it. “Roach?”

“On my way,” Roach hustled up behind him, kit of medicines and bandages and everything else in one hand. In the other was a small bag. “Got sandwiches and some jars of water in here. No offense to them, but I can’t imagine kids can estimate how much they’d need...”

“We fuck that up often enough ourselves,” Ed said. “And we’re old enough to know better.”

“And yet,” Izzy sighed, but it had no teeth behind it.

Ed tried to get a better look at the dinghy as they slowly made their approach. “I still can’t tell...looks empty.”

As they made their way beside it, he saw he was right. Still a jug of water and a basket of oranges, set by two daggers. But otherwise, empty.

“Fuck,” Izzy said softly. “Maybe they abandoned it and went ashore somewhere?”

“Why would they leave their supplies?” Roach asked.

Before any one of them could speculate, there was a ripple in the water.

Ed felt a hand grasp his at the edge of the dinghy.

Then, a face. “Oh shit! Louis, come back up!”

They watched as Alma dove back underwater and brought Louis up, a fish in his hands. “I caught one! Can we really stop somewhere to cook it and eat it? Can we go now?”

“No!” Alma looked over fearfully to them as she pushed Louis into their dinghy. “We don’t have anything you’d want! We’re looking for our dad, and he’s a pirate! Most fearsome to sail the sea, so if you’re planning to rob or kill us...”

She paused, clearly out of breath from swimming and panic. “Well, I would reconsider it!”

Izzy smiled, then broke into laughter. “Yeah, these are his. Fucking fuck, Bonnet.”

“You know him!” Alma pulled herself into their vessel, and moved her wet hair out of her eyes. “Where is he?”

“We sail with him,” Ed replied. “And he’s been a mess looking for you two, after he got your letter.”

“Told you he’d meet us halfway,” Louis said. “I told you!”

“Oh shut up,” Alma sighed. “Sorry about him, but he’s always like this, I should warn you-”

“I’m not like anything! I’m being polite and I was even going to offer to share my fish with them!”

“How about we tow you back with us, and then we’ll see about the fish,” Roach smiled. “I’m our chef and surgeon, so maybe you could help me cook it.”

Louis grinned, and set the dead fish on the bottom of the boat to hand over the rope tied to the dinghy.

“Curious,” Ed said as they started the trip back. “Did you two steal this?”

“Of course we did,” Alma scoffed. “We’re pirates.”

Izzy was still having giggle fits, even as he rowed. “Yes, yes you are.”

--

“Dad, ow. Dad! Help!” Louis cried out as Stede picked him up in a bear hug.

“Okay, let’s not suffocate him, metaphorically or literally,” Lucius said as he rushed over. “Hi! Your dad really missed you.”

“I can tell,” Louis said, voice muffled with his face jammed into Stede’s silk waistcoat.

“I was so worried about you,” Stede said as he finally set poor Louis down. “Did you tell your mother that you left?”

“I left her a note,” Alma said, then backed up as Stede moved for her. “Dad, I’m too big to pick up, Dad!”

He did all the same. “And look at you! Sailing in that dress! How on earth did you manage that?”

“You get used to it,” Alma said. “You’re squishing my lungs, I think.”

“Sorry,” Stede set her back on her feet. “I just. I thought you two were dead, and I had no idea how I’d tell your mother or what I’d do; it isn’t as if I’m likely to have any more children and...”

“Dad, you don’t have to cry,” Alma said, but she wrapped her arms around him and nestled her head into his neck.

“I’m hungry,” Louis said. “Mr. Roach, can we go cook my fish?”

“Yeah buddy, we can,” Roach replied. “Ed, if Stede’s looking for him-”

“I’ll let him know,” Ed interrupted gently, brushing away a tear of his own. “Let us know when dinner’s ready, hm?”

“Of course.”

The rest of the crew kept on with their various chores, but all of them stayed on the main deck, watching Stede lead Alma around to show her the ship. In return, she told him how they’d left, stolen their boat, how she’d been saving her allowance to buy everything from their food to their daggers.

No one interrupted directly, but there were smiles and soft giggles all around.

Ed was the only one following after them, listening in and silently cheering at Alma’s resourcefulness. Of all the Bonnets, she seemed the one who might not need any teaching about piracy. Maybe too young, but well prepared for it all the same.

“I am...” Stede sighed happily. “Your mother wouldn’t like to hear this, but I am so proud of you both. What you did was very dangerous-”

“You’ve said that like a hundred times already,” Alma interrupted.

“I know, I know, but I’m your dad. I have to say things like that, so you’re more careful in the future.”

Alma rolled her eyes, but smiled. “Fine, then we’ll board and steal a bigger ship next time.”

“Next time!”

“That or you come back and let us come with now and then,” she said with a little happy hop.

“While that would be a lovely achievement, I think it better I arrange with your mum something that would let you two come out and sail a bit,” Stede said. “If my co-captain is agreeable to it.”

He peered back to Ed with a hopeful smile.

“Absolutely! Say, how good are you two with those daggers?”

Alma blushed. “We aren’t. We didn’t get to practice before we left, and we’ve only used fake swords before.”

“Then I say we get you some lessons on knives with Jim before we take you two home,” Ed said.

“Which is Jim?”

He pointed out Jim, currently winning a knife-throwing contest against Frenchie and Wee John, with the Swede keeping score.

“Whoa,” Alma breathed out as Jim made their best throw yet. “Can I learn how to do that?”

“Jim can teach you that, and I’ll teach you how to take out an eyeball with a dagger, how about that?”

Her eyes shone. “Really?”

He looked to Stede, who chuckled. “I suppose. Better earlier than later, if you’re really going to be a pirate.”

She cheered and rushed away to Jim. They watched her tug on Jim’s coat, mouth moving a mile a minute as she pointed to Jim’s knife.

Jim looked back to them, seemingly waiting for permission.

Stede gave them a nod, and immediately Jim knelt down and handed Alma their knife, showing her how to hold it before tossing it.

“Think Mary’s still going to kill you?” Ed asked.

“Maybe not. Once we bring them back and work something out properly, and I’m sure they’ll need to promise not to run off on their own again. She might show mercy on me then.”

Stede leaned into him, arm at his waist, and they watched the rest of the knife throwing lesson in a contented silence.

--

“Roach said I did the best job he’s ever seen,” Louis told Stede proudly as they sat down to dinner. His fish was too small to share with everyone, but a portion were on his and Alma’s plates. “I bet I could learn how to be a ship’s chef from him.”

“He’s our surgeon too,” Stede said. “That means learning about bodies and blood and guts!”

Louis grinned. “Cool.”

“They get that from Mary,” Stede told Ed, sitting a spot away from him beside Alma. “She’s got an iron stomach.”

“You’re getting better with that,” Ed said. “Sometimes you just need to be around it more to get used to it.”

“Jim taught me how to throw a knife,” Alma leaned past Stede to Louis. “And Ed’s gonna teach me how to take out an eyeball!”

“Ew,” Louis giggled. “Can I learn too?”

Ed smiled warmly. “Stede, I love them. They’re awesome. I had never really thought about kids-”

“Is Ed like our stepdad like Doug?” Louis interrupted.

Stede looked to Ed with a chuckle. “Well, Doug said you two sort of decided if he was or not. What do you think about Ed?”

“Makes sense he would be,” Alma replied. “Cause Doug teaches us how to paint, and now Ed’s gonna be teaching us stuff too. Plus he’s dating you.”

They both blinked. They’d not so much as kissed in front of them yet.

“How do you know that?” Stede asked.

“I have eyes,” Alma said. “And you two act the way Mum and Doug do. You make eyes at each other.”

“I suppose we do,” Stede blushed.

“You’re literally doing it right now,” Alma said, and looked across the table to Jim. “Do they do this all the time?”

“Yes,” came a chorus of voices.

“We aren’t that bad,” Ed said.

“I bet they kiss like all the time,” Louis said.

“They do,” Izzy stage-whispered from his spot by Jim. “And hold hands, and-”

Alma and Louis broke into giggles, cutting him off.

“Alright, we have a decent feast tonight!” Roach announced as he finished setting down the last dish, covered by a high metal dome. “Hard tack, a stew that I think finally everyone will like, and-”

He lifted the dome off the dish. “Thanks to Alma and Louis, we had more than enough oranges for a cake!”

Louis turned to Stede, mouth open to speak.

“One piece for tonight,” Stede said before he could get out a word.

“Okay, but-”

“Stew first, then cake. It’ll taste better that way.”

Louis nodded. “And my fish before the stew!”

“Of course,” Stede said.

Dishes were passed from hand to hand, until plates were full. Everyone dug in, but Stede took the opportunity to take it all in.

Maybe, now and again, he could have both. His family at sea, and some of his family on land, together.

If he saved some cake for Mary, she’d be potentially more likely to say yes, and he made a mental note to set enough aside for her and Doug.

And maybe one extra piece, for Alma and Louis to share before bed.