#9 years of red

[shit-talker]

I think a really fun idea to explore with Tim would be the idea of him having Hyperthymesia.

Hyperthymesia is an ability that allows people to recall almost every event of their life in great detail. It's extremely rare and honestly doesn't have that much research done on it, but recent studies have suggested that people with this ability are limited to autobiographical memories, people with HSAM sometime tend to show symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and may demonstrate obsessive tendencies.

I think it would be an interesting way to explain why Tim was able to recall his first meeting with Dick Grayson and connect the dots to seeing Robin. Tim does display a lot of obsessive behaviours, and while he doesn't really physically display compulsion (like someone with OCD would typically display) there certainly is a strong case to be made for him potentially having it.

But also, can you imagine how fucking horrible it would be for Tim to remember each and every traumatic thing that ever happens to him as a hero and those memories just never fading. Yes, it would make him a better detective and allow him to be arguably smarter than your average joe, but at what cost?

[b0bs0ndugnutt]

Because the “shrodinger’s queerbait” nonsense will never go away, indulge me an analogy (and a long post).

wlw ships are the “made from scratch” cake in a world where we only ever expect cake mix from the box.

Say you have a show where, in the first interaction between a male and female character, there is a red box. It could be a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. Because all it takes is just one smile — one wink — one raised eyebrow— and the fans don’t question it. We’re clearly making a cake here. The box is red.

Meanwhile, you have two female characters building their own relationship that have elements that could build to romance. There are eggs in the fridge. A few more episodes, there’s flour in the pantry. Sugar. Baking powder. Queer fans start whispering…we could be making a cake here. Other fans scoff “you will read into anything. They’re just eggs! Everyone has eggs in their fridge!” Maybe so, maybe not. They are written off as discrete ingredients, nothing to see here.

That red box is still sitting in the pantry. Obviously we’re going with that one, and it’s definitely cake mix. That guy and girl stood next to each other again.

The wlw relationship is now full-on batter. It was a cake recipe all along, but it’s not baked yet. The crowd that wrote off every ingredient is now saying the writers are just going to “squander” that box that could be ready-made cake mix or that they’re being “forced” to bake a cake with the very ingredients the writers deliberately bought and put in their pantry.

Now it’s in the oven, the cake is baking. That crowd will still insist it’s forced, or maybe its actually something else, or it’s rushed, or it’s pandering. Whether the writers painstakingly built a pantry to make the cake they truly wanted or they were cultivating good ingredients and realized they had the fixings for a more decadent cake and went there, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a recipe. One that fans who always have to piece together ingredients had hoped for or saw from the get-go, despite being scoffed at and disparaged. Just because that crowd didn’t see (or refused to see) those ingredients as part of a whole, doesn’t make it any less of a recipe.

And wlw fans shouldn’t have to keep writing essays to demonstrate that the wlw “cake” has all the ingredients every cake mix does, or keep pointing out that fans were ready to believe a cake was being baked when they saw a nondescript box, but that they’ll do anything to discredit or doubt the cake from scratch that’s now cooling off on the counter.

It is partly a function of heteronormativity from the audience in immediately seeing romance in any whisper of interaction between m/f characters and passing off all charged interactions between female characters are sisterly or platonic. And it also comes from writers, who are either being cautious so as not to spook corporate overlords or audiences, or who are preserving plausible deniability.

To take the analogy further, box cake mix is fine! It works! It is, practically speaking, what a lot of folks know by default. I thought I was a Duncan Hines girl once myself. Vanilla cake mix has the ingredients measured out, it’s a safe bet, it tastes like cake.

But it doesn’t mean every red box is cake mix. And it doesn’t make the cake that had to be pieced together from scratch due to censorship, caution, time, narrative build-up, what-have-you, any less of a cake.

[missmungoe]

I give you: The Navigator’s Map of Shanties for the Weary Voyager!

So my husband got the idea to make a timeline map of my Shanks x Makino series ("Shanties" for short), so that readers could better see how the different fics are connected, and while I should have been prepared, knowing full well how brilliant he is, I was not prepared for the end result. I mean look at it!!!

Some descriptions of key fics and planned updates below! The fics are listed in the recommended reading order on AO3, but feel free to chart your own course! Beware rogue whirlpools and dangerous straits, and remember that however dark and treacherous the sea, at the end of the voyage is always a safe harbour ♥

Hoist the colours! 🏴‍☠️

Heed the Siren’s Call // Shanks and Makino’s origin story, and the starting point of Shanties. Setting is pre-series to the timeskip.

Sailor's Folly // Siren's Call from Shanks' perspective. Includes the origins of Makino's sword, Siren.

Sea Songs // Sequel to Siren’s Call, set during the canon timeskip and after.

Scylla // Pirate!Makino AU, where Makino leaves East Blue with the Red-Hair Pirates at the start of One Piece.

Charybdis // Sea Songs AU, where Blackbeard destroys Fuschia and Makino goes on a trek across the Grand Line looking for Shanks, who thinks she's dead.

Mnemosyne // Kuja!Makino AU, where after Siren's Call, a pregnant Makino ends up on Amazon Lily.

Andromeda Unbound // Reverie Arc AU, where Makino, the Revolutionary Army, the Red-Hair Pirates, Straw-Hats and the Warlords join forces to crash Shanks’ execution.

On the Water // Pirate!Makino AU, where Makino and her child leave East Blue with the Red-Hair Pirates after the timeskip. Includes Shanks and Makino's floating bar, Siren's Call.

Salt Vows // Arrested!Makino AU, set during the current Egghead arc.

Tethered to Kinder Shores // Makino and the Red-Hair Pirates. Includes the origin of Makino's shanty, "Moored to Her Port".

Moon and Her Maiden // Selkie AU. Canon OP verse but Makino is a selkie.

Tideswept // Royal/Arranged Marriage AU.

Bind Me to the Tide // Soulmate AU, where soulmates feel each other's pain. Canon OP verse but with soulmates.

Love In Good Liquor // One-Shot collection set during the different Shanties verses.

Planned updates

This list is not comprehensive (meaning I have more fics that I plan to continue than the ones listed here), but it's the stories I'm focusing on right now:

Andromeda Unbound // Chapter 9/9 ✅ (Complete)

Bind Me to the Tide // Chapter 5/? ✅

Mnemosyne // Chapter 29/29 ✅ (Complete)

Salt Vows // Chapter 3/? ✅

Tideswept // Chapter 8/9

On the Water // Chapter 4/5

[thedreadvampy]

legitimately insane how to some people, "we should wipe out this ethnic group that we've violently constrained to a ghetto because they're just genetically more violent and dangerous" is a reasonable and justifiable statement but it's Nazi Rhetoric to say something like, "it's bad that Israeli civilians are being killed but acknowledging that as tragic includes acknowledging that the almost daily state-sanctioned murder of civilians by the Israeli government is also tragic and unacceptable"

btw guys speaking of Nazi shit - can we check in, alongside what's been done to Palestinians in the last 75 years, what's the Israeli government's take on the Azerbaijani government's newest round of ethnic cleansing of Armenians? oh are the Israeli government's actions maybe not determined by Jewish identity, but by a commitment to colonial supremacy which puts them on the same page as other violently genocidal states like Azerbaijan, the US, and the UK? god can you Even Imagine?

(framing speaking against Israeli war crimes as inherently antisemitic requires understanding the Israeli state as representing all Jewish people, when it doesn't even represent all Israelis.

framing Israeli war crimes as synonymous with Jewish identity is pretty fucked up if we're being honest. I don't think that controlling water and power and movement for a captive population and shooting children dead for throwing stones is an inherent value of Judaism, any more than I think the torture carried out at Guantanamo Bay is an inherent value of Christianity - in both cases they're atrocities carried out by a far right genocidal government using religious identity as a shield.

Calling statements like "Israel is committing genocide against the people it's displaced" inherently antisemitic is doing more to further the idea that all Jewish people are associated with Israel than saying "the Israeli government is doing war crimes," which is a statement of fact about a country that exists and does war crimes. Is criticism of Israel as a nation often used as cover for antisemitism? Absolutely. Does that mean the Israeli government isn't doing literal war crimes repeatedly, on record, while talking publicly about scrubbing an ethnic group off the map? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh well in the last 48 hours they've definitely cut off water and power to almost 600,000 civilians and allegedly used white phosphorus against civilians so in an extremely factual and unambiguous way yeah man those are Literal War Crimes whoever does them.)

[riumeri]

09. collecting the autumn leaves!

[non-un-topo]

Kind of obsessed with this nickname actually

[batfossil-fr]

Thuja - one of my bestest boys, a self hatch, and has one of my favorite bios I've written. You don't need to know a whole lot about the background story of my lore/the tab he's in (partially because most of it still only lives in my brain), other than there's an angry sun god (or two...) causing problems in my lair. ;)

[the-dragon-girl-27]

You are challenged by Pokémon trainer Red.

[robophantom]

Love the latest WFA episode for showing Tim and Steph being besties, and also for the fact that Damian is Tiny™️

[transcreamo]

hiii forget about america for a second. today is the 9th anniversary of my legal name change 🤘 those fireworks are for me

[lilidawnonthemoon]

9 years with Red Velvet 💗💛💙💚💜

[rosquinn]

akuma kun 2023 is like a well executed gacha life mini movie to me

[everywebkin]

could you do the pink poodle? ^^

pink poodle, released june 2006

[spotforme]

surely i could draw millions of parallers between Rimmer and the Captain but for now i can only focus on the fact that they both wear suspenders, (!!!!) the little rocking motion they do when they're smug, how they're usually already running away when a threat presents itself and "your oiled nipples and muscular chest don't distract me" vs "men, oiled up, naiked, kissing, probably" or words to that effect that they've both very much said.

[theladyyavilee]

not the edit I am actually making, BUT something about the mirroring via the hands on the ground has me TEARING MY FUCKING HAIR OUT AND SCREAMING AND CRYING AND CLAWING AT THE WALLS <3

[mutantenfisch]

Now we wait :)