#Two and a Half Pirates

[kacievvbbbb]

I just know Crocodile brought on Mihawk because he thought he would be sensible, calm and collected, low maintenance. He thought it was going to be them against the idiocy that is buggy. And it is to a degree.

What he failed to calculate is that Mihawk is just as bad as buggy.

Worse even because at least Buggy can be bullied into doing paperwork. I just know everyday Crocodile is astonished by the absolute commitment Mihawk has to his aesthetic. Walks into his tent just to find that he has somehow converted this circus ass tent into a mid century gothic castle. Somehow carpeted the whole thing end to end is burning more that a 100 candles for “mood lighting”, has a fully open fire pit and a sewing machine in the corner.

Like Crocodiles essentially a mafioso he can appreciate the wanting nice things. Still won’t prepare him for the day Mihawk’s brings him a wine budget, a tailoring budget and an embroidery budget all painstakingly itemized.

Won’t prepare him for having to replace every single wine glass because buggy drank out of one and he can’t break up a set but refuses to use a cup that buggy’s put his mouth on.

He’s starting to think that the real reason the Warlords were disbanded was because they simply could not afford to pay for Mihawk’s upkeep anymore and decided they’d rather pay in cadet lives than see one more wine budget.

He is essentially being held hostage, in his own guild, by the whims of a bored middle aged vampire, and a fucking clown.

[cozylittleartblog]

if i went one more day without drawing timeskip amity i was going to explode

[rui-drawsbox]

I like to remember my first stardew save whenever I can, so I kinda remade my farmer for my first playthrough of Coral Island kajdhjsk

[morrigan-sims]

Pirate Outfts

I was bored, so I started trying some different outfits on Zara... The last one might be my favorite, if only because I already used another swatch of the first one for Wolf, and I can't have them wearing the same thing... But I also love being able to see all her freckles in the 2nd one...

[martyryo]

I can't cook I lack ingredients and they cut off the gas

[daisychainsandbowties]

thinking a normal amount about a treasure planet au. Beatrice on her solar kiteboard, doing the daredevil flip sequence framed against the setting sun and then getting hauled kicking and screaming back to her parents’ house in manacles with a defiant expression on her perpetually dirt-smudged face.

climbing out the window at the first opportunity to go down to the dockside inn, making nebulous plans to steal her kiteboard back but ending up down at the edge of the dock staring past her boots and into the mists. gripping tight to the wood beneath her as she looks up at the sky and dreams of anywhere but here, of stealing a skiff to get off this planet. a reluctant twinge at the thought of going alone.

Bea with all her star maps and her intricate knowledge of spaceships and their solar sails and how to navigate out there where the artigrav net is all that stands between you and floating through nothing, forever.

startling when she hears the familiar sound of someone booking it down the pier on wooden crutches. night has already started to speckle the sky above, and as she listens to the thunk of the crutches on the pier, Bea thinks of the complicated metallic lattice she has on her desk at home, partly disassembled because she’s still trying to work out parts of the engineering. Ava’s birthday is in a month.

she has to stay that long, and then she’ll leave. she will.

turning to watch as Ava races towards her with soup stains on her shirt and messy hair jammed flat beneath a ‘pirate’ hat she bought off of a traveling salesman last year. the tricorn wobbles precariously on her head as she moves. Beatrice just waits, a slight smile on her face.

there are bruises high on each of her arms, from the pincer-like grip of the police bots, manhandling her away from her kiteboard to snap manacles around each wrist.

she rubs at the skin there, but ignores the bruises.

when Ava arrives, a little out of breath, Beatrice holds up a hand so she can help herself down onto the pier. there’s no water beneath them, only a few hundred meters of empty air and curling mist.

Ava keeps one hand on Bea’s and the other on her shoulder, letting the crutches clatter down between them as she sits.

“Mom says you got arrested again,” Ava says cheerfully. “She says they’re threatening to send you to prison.”

Beatrice shrugs, “I wouldn’t mind it, so long as my parents did not visit.”

Ava’s fingers are covered in bright red band-aids, from chopping vegetables all day with her poor hand dexterity. Beatrice watches the colours blur as Ava punches her in the arm, right on the bruises. “Liar, I know you’d miss me.”

her arm throbs painfully, but Beatrice’s expression is carefully neutral as she responds. 

“I might.”

she stays with Ava that night, both of them reading her old book with its floating images of ships and canons and pirates leaping from vessel to vessel. Captain Flint, materialising out of empty space to steal away gems and gold, “the loot of a thousand worlds.” Ava traces the projected lines of the solar sails with her fingers as they flicker into being. 

Beatrice has repaired the book over and over, making the colours brighter and sharper. the tiny shapes of pirates all made up of light. Ava has the book open on Bea’s chest as she lies next to her, legs all entangled in the sheets they’ve kicked off because the night is so warm.

she seems oblivious to how Beatrice’s breath hitches at almost every touch.

they’re almost asleep when they hear the explosion, a ship crashing into the cliff-side, tumbling over and over before they hear the pop and hiss of heated metal. a bloom of smoke outside the window.

Beatrice gives Ava a piggyback ride down the stairs just before Ava’s ‘mom’, Suzanne, emerges with her pulse-rifle primed, hair loose around her shoulders.

they stumble into the yard and discover a pirate, a robot, still bleeding from a wound in his abdomen, crawling from the wreck of his ship. Beatrice heaves a shard of twisted metal away from him and finds the surface slippery with blood.

behind her, Ava sways a little, shivers in the cold air, but she’s still standing when Beatrice turns back to her.

the dying pirate tells them almost nothing useful. he’s half-mad, cluching at Beatrice’s shirt until the seams tear at the collar, then turning to Ava. he fetches out a lockbox from his ship, blood spilling onto the ground at the movement. unlocks it and takes odd sphere from inside.

it drops into Ava’s palm as he rasps, “Whatever you do, don’t let them find it.”

then he wheezes, shudders, stills.

they stare at him, Ava’s free hand finding Bea’s, holding tight.

“Is he… dead?” Ava’s voice in the silence and the dark.

“I think so.”

then, in a burst of light and sound, in a shockwave of displaced air, a ship plummets down out of the clouds, pulling up an instant from the ground.

this second ship looms down out of the sky, pirates dropping from it and suddenly Suzanne is screaming at them to “GET INSIDE” from an upstairs window as she takes potshots at the misshapen shapes swarming down lines of hempen rope.

the air lights up with orange and yellow as explosions ripple down towards the crashed ship, towards the inn. Bea flings one of Ava’s arms around her neck and sprints for the door, Ava holding the sphere (or map?) tightly against her chest.

she sets Ava down gently onto one of the bar stools, runs back to barricade the door. her face is flushed, streaked somehow with engine grease and robot blood, which is black and slightly acidic. 

they exchange a wide-eyed look, too much meaning in it to parse as explosions rock the floor. Ava has both hands clutched around the sphere. 

they both almost scream as Suzanne runs down the stairs in a blur of dressing gown and gun. she has Ava’s crutches in one hand and her rifle in the other. she kisses Ava quickly on the forehead, “Thank the tides you’re safe.” leaves her with the crutches and then goes to fetch an ancient-looking blaster pistol out from behind the bar, presses it into Beatrice’s hands. “You know how to use this?”

“No!”

“Aim it away from your own face.”

and then there are pirates all around the house, glass breaking and fire crackling. Beatrice takes up the rear, pistol pointed at the front door as it bulges under the pressure of pirates flinging their bulk into it again and again. 

they climb out of a window, Suzanne producing a kitchen knife and jamming it into the neck of a pirate loitering uncertainly outside the bolted shutters. there, covered by a tarp, is Suzanne’s old motorcycle with a sidecar attached. lantern-bugs scatter out from under it as Suzanne throws the old tarp away, gestures for Beatrice and Ava to climb in as she covers them with her rifle.

there’s a roar from somewhere in the dark and Suzanne fires a shot, hops onto the motorcycle and revs the engine. then they’re moving, pirates parting before them like the ocean neither of them have ever seen, the vast bodies of water that don’t even exist on this planet.

they seek refuge with Jillian, an archaeologist who frequents the old inn, claiming that she can’t make her coffee taste of anything but soap. she examines the orb, reluctantly passed into her hands by Ava, her and Bea wrapped in an old blanket, sitting by the fire in Jillian’s immense study.

Jillian fiddles with it for an age before sighing, looking almost angry with herself.

“I can’t… seem to make this work.”  

Ava holds out her hand, silent. “let me try,” and Beatrice makes a face at Jillian when she hesitates.

the pirate gave the sphere to Ava; it’s hers. 

it seems much larger in Ava’s small grip. she looks down at it for a while before her fingers start to move, slow but gathering momentum as she presses the little grooves and switches and indents on the sphere. 

until it lights up, showing a map of the known universe, and parts of it that are unknown.

“Is that-” Beatrice feels her words drop away, like the ground beneath the pier where she has passed so many hours sitting with Ava’s hand in hers.

Ava turns to Beatrice, eyes bright as a pair of stars, “It’s treasure planet.”

[notemaker]

I come with some texture/brush practice and not one but two sea guys.

[peppermintpegis]

netflix one piece live action feels a little like fanfic in that it makes sure it hits all the important notes but doesnt do all the work to make them hit which works in fic where the reader is supposed to bring all the emotional story investment from the original but doesnt work in a multi million adaptation that is supposed to be able to stand on its own or even serve as an intro to the series. it even does this in service to have more koby and helmeppo gay moments in this essay i w

[ceruleanfuckup]

I'm so excited for my D&D campaign

[spookberry]

Alright who know about the people phantom gets along with, but What about Those hes frenemies or not on the best standing with? Is porter one of them cause of the whole graffiti thing?

Danny has such a weird relationship with his rogues gallery, frenemies really is the best way to put them.

Porter would probs lean more toward friend than foe. He causes trouble sometimes but is also completely harmless and I think is generally someone Danny would get along with.

Tho otherwise no one from MH know the Amity Ghosts on an individual basis. At most I think they'd have have heard about Ember, cuz of the popstar mind control thing.

[alicepao13]

I wanted to rewatch S06E09 before writing this, preferably with subtitles and a better rip, but someone's dragging their feet, so maybe I'll write another post at some point. Some good parts, some I didn’t care about, some that I personally wish they were different (not really bad but I had other thoughts).

So, in this NCIS Hudson and Rex episode:

The first shot seemed like kind of a small ship, it probably wasn’t but the shot made it that way. Sorry, Canada, I’ve been spoiled by all the aircraft carrier shots through the years lol. The one where it turns from day to night, I hated that. It seemed so fake.

The way Charlie’s dad kept criticizing him about everything got on my nerves. I also don’t love the casual sexism of him implying that it’s best if a wife stays home. Definitely shows that Charlie barely had meaningful interactions with this man. And to mention Sarah as Charlie’s “office romance”? Ugh.

This is where I decided that Charlie was raised by Aunt Miranda. It was a good thing that his dad probably missed quite a bit of his childhood.

“Charles” makes me feel like they should be inside the Buckingham palace. And truly, this is the only place I’d ever think they’d feed a dog using a toothpick. Poor Rex had to eat off a toothpick to satisfy that man! I kept hoping that he’d bite him.

Imagine this show having any continuity at all. Charlie would have to explain some of his latest adventures, the poisoning, the jail, etc.

I like that Sarah touches Charlie as soon as he tells her that the killer could be one of his dad’s sailors. She understands what this means for him.

Classic “found the killer the moment they appeared on screen” episode.

Sarah, we have chairs. (Nah, just keep doing that, actually.)

I didn’t know that Canada also had JAG officers. Now I can't help wondering who investigates crimes committed against Navy personnel lol

Here’s where Commander Hudson’s possible motivation doesn’t make that much sense: In most Navy ships, the higher ups barely know their sailors. So, he wouldn’t feel like he needed to protect them. He would most likely feel like he needed to protect the Navy's reputation from possibly harboring a killer. Having said that, I have no knowledge of how big this ship is. And the initial footage was kinda terrible. Understandable, because this isn’t that kind of show, but still terrible.

I love Rex's defensive reaction to the Commander throughout the episode. He can sense how much he unsettles Charlie and makes him change things about himself.

Charlie’s dad implying that Rex has an attitude problem when he is trying to cover up a crime… the nerve…

“...my boys” Oh no he did not. I know how much that can hurt.

The hilarity of the justification of sending troops in the other side of the world, to “keep the peace”… I expect this from military shows, I don’t expect it from shows like Hudson and Rex. And the triumphant music in the background… we get it.

Rex’s barks as Charlie puts the guy in handcuffs could mean nothing other than “suck it, asshole”.

Charlie was a bit… I’m not sure how to put it… Not exactly himself during that interrogation. I imagine he knew his father was watching, but he seemed like he’d jump the guy, or his JAG lawyer, or both.

How did we get from “office romance” to “my son is a lucky man”? Who knows. I mean, Sarah is quite impressive, but this seems like some kind of witchcraft.

Well, at least they didn’t make the bad guy be the Lieutenant in an episode full of men with bad behaviors. Also, I didn’t know they pronounced "Lieutenant" the British way.

Charlie is learning Rex’s language (growl). I find nothing weird with this.

The scene with Joe was nice. But Joe, just put a damn pillow on that couch. You know that none of your subordinates actually sleep in their homes (which is one more reason we’ll never see a bedroom set *sigh*)

John Reardon’s voice drops another half octave when he’s lying down. Good lord. Also, I started praying for his poor neck in that position, at least he didn’t stay there for long. That would have incapacitated me if I stayed like that for even ten minutes.

“I let my issues with my dad…” Which are…? Please, elaborate.

Charlie beckoning Rex when neither of them has slept for a day. Leave the poor dog alone, you sadist. Dogs don’t understand the meaning of overtime.

So, I guess when Hudson men have sorrows, they literally run?

I wanted to keep hating his dad a little more. Why’d they have to reconcile them so fast?

Good episode. I’d have liked if Charlie said a bit more about what bothered him in his father’s behavior, and not regarding the case. It seemed like his father just wasn’t around as much and possibly considered his sailors as his children, maybe even more than his actual children, and Charlie seemed to resent him for that, understandably. But we were also already at the part where the two men were trying to mend fences, and although all the effort seemed to he made by Charlie at the start of the episode, it shifted towards the end to his dad making the effort.

Promo: The dreaded (by me) golf episode. Let me get this straight: The team went golfing and found a body? We can’t take these guys anywhere. 

Poor Rex! If that's a serious head injury, I’ll sue. That’s what we have Charlie's head for. But also, please allow Charlie to lose it a little.

Charlie Hudson is having such a bad time in this season, and I’m loving it.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray

fun YA adventure

follows a girl who’s seen as cursed because of her recently hanged notorious pirate queen mother, and runs away to the navy where nobody will recognise her

and her half-sister who’s desperate to find her before she’s arrested for using a fake name, to bring her home to their dying father & save the family business

both get on the bad side of some pirates and have to brave storms to find each other

aroace MC, sister relationships

arc from netgalley, out april 9

[howtodrawyourdragon]

This is another difference between Hiccup and Horrendous, I believe.

Here in the book, Horrendous (aged 10 still) believes the warning at the front and that's why he doesn't want the coffin to be opened. He believes in the curse to the point of panicking when his father opens a supposedly cursed coffin.

In the movies and shows, Hiccup is a firm sceptic. He's familiar with their rituals and their deities, but doesn't seem to believe in them. Certainly not as much as, say, Fishlegs who was ready to blame disappearing islands on the wrath of Odinn or Thor. Astrid, too, seems to believe when she recalls the tale of her aunt who had to sail off the edge of the world to satisfy Odinn or something.

The only moment we've seen Hiccup believe in any way is when he and his friends made that tribute for Thorr, hoping it would stop the thunderstorms above Berk, thereby keeping scrutiny off Toothless' back.

Even when bones rain down from the sky, he calls it "weird" and still doesn't believe in this Fog Monster that supposedly took Johann's boat in the Breakneck Bog episode in Riders of Berk. He needs hard proof before he believes in anything supernatural or paranormal. (That or Toothless needs to be at risk)

Even so, I still don't think he would've just opened a coffin. Not because he actually believes in curses, but rather out of respect for the person inside.

Maybe it's the difference in age- one is 10, the other 15- maybe it's because the books do hint at magic and the mystic being real. (Apparently, Httyd and TWOO take place in the same universe?) Either way, an interesting difference between the two, for sure.

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

I never did show you guys my last-minute Halloween costume

[tea-earl-grey]

there are three types of people in this world:

1) people who think Zagreus is the best dw anniversary special

2) people who have never heard Zagreus

3) people who have incorrect opinions