#what do I do with the hole....

[finngualart]

♥

[batarangsoundsdumb]

hey fuckers im back on my shit gotham memes part 17

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[420technoblazeit]

ik it's been contradicted in canon multiple times but im still in love with the idea that after your last canon death your body stays instead of immediately disappearing

schlatt's body was not left in the caravan. hours after the war had ended bad stopped by to collect his parts, hesitant to let even him rot in that place where everything had begun. the funeral is a trainwreck. no modicum of respect is given to the man who had destroyed so many lives and in hindsight having an open casket service might have been a mistake. puffy, who had never met schlatt, winces as they treat him like a puppet, a prop instead of a dead body. she is an outsider. too late to bear witness to the death of someone vaguely familiar and yet not at all. but she still sees the bitterness behind quackity's words and the cold anger in his eyes and decides it is not her place to say anything. her chair is empty before anyone can notice. by the end of it even his picture is marked by arrows. and the casket holds less weight than it should

the button room becomes a tomb. once the knowledge of what happened there becomes known, it is sealed and avoided. and thus wilbur is not granted the honor that even schlatt was given. to have a grave, to be worthy of remembrance. it remains untouched for days until ghostbur stumbles into it, knees scraped and bleeding. he sees a man propped up against the wall. his hair is curled and matted against the hard stone, fingertips tinged by ash where ghostbur's are stained blue. a slight smile rests on his face. there is still pity left there, in those cold empty eyes that are and aren't ghostbur's own. it is not for himself. and with a shiver he stares at his own body and remembers that cold slick sword in his own chest and tears on his face. he does not remember if it was his or his father's. ghostbur's cheeks sting. and phil calls him from outside the room before he can ponder the matter any further

there is no rain when mexican dream is murdered. a boy and a tyrant are the only witnesses to his death and it would be poetic enough if his life were a story, a cautionary tale about the dangers of pointless disobedience and rebellion. but his life had been neither of those things. and now it is simply no more. tommy has only a moment to process his only ally in this place, the only friend who had bothered to speak up for him, being murdered in cold blood before dream is picking up the body and hoisting it over his shoulder. whatever items were spilled are collected into a chest. and tommy is forced to scrub the traces of him that remain from logstedshire as dream leaves. he is alone once more. and the sound of md's laughter does not linger

jack manifold is not the first to fall to technoblade's sword. he doesn't know what he was thinking, really. no one but dream is a match for techno's skill with a blade. but standing there in the shambles of a country he had given himself to a lifetime ago, jack didn't care. he remembers lunging with a sword he had only ever used to shield himself and a blur of movement. in the end he hardly even no felt the blow that killed him. jack remembers shock freezing him in place, followed by a sense of loneliness and anger. white hot anger that techno would escape unscathed, not even knicked by a sword as jack became just another notch on his belt. the second, least impressive one of the day. and then that rage was replaced by real heat as jack fell, grasping for something to stop his descent. something that would not be there. he does not know how long it takes to get back. but when he does it is in that same place he first died and his fingernails are splintered and cracked. there is still dirt under them and the flesh at his fingertips have turned rotten. and he limps home with broken ribs and burnt skin that will not be soothed for weeks

[mushroom-winners-proof]

no one must ever know

[belligerentbagel]

hey young blood, doesn't it feel like our time is running out?

[hellsite-users-blog]

Morning in Bag-end 🌄

[three--rings]

You know, Our Flag Means Death has reawakened my internal conversation about whether canon needs to be "good" to inspire fanworks and shipping and intense fan experiences or whether it's actually better if canon is kinda...questionable in quality.

Now, before I get strung up, let me explain. If you ask me, "Is OFMD good?" I'll automatically say, "Yes, omg, I love it so much!" And I do.

But also...when I rewatch the eps...there's jank, you know? There's something...decidedly janky and imperfect about this show. And like, that's not necessary a BAD THING, is my point. It's a show clearly made with a limited budget, run by people with limited experience (despite Taika's involvement lbr without him it probably wouldn't have gotten made). And the show improves a LOT as the season goes on. Like I feel like I need to warn people of that when I rec the show. There's big signs of learning as they go, as well as possibly saving budget for later eps.

But it's also clearly made with SO MUCH LOVE by people who really care. It's to a pretty great and obvious extent made by outcasts about outcasts, to rephrase that one post by Taika.

And like so many other shows that have inspired love (Star Trek TOS, Old Doctor Who) there's just this heart and strong characters that shine through.

Notwithstanding that they set out to tell a story that hasn't really been told much in Western media, an actual explicit queer romance (I mean many of them but of course the focus of the plot is Stede and Ed.) And on so many levels it was executed well.

But on a level of pure, objective "quality" is it comparable to say, Black Sails (which I consider one of the highest quality shows ever made)? No, of course not. It's not the same genre, it's not the same prestige, it's nowhere near the same budget, and it's not trying to do the same thing. (Except for when it IS, cough ep 10)

But do those two shows rhyme? Yes. Do I have way more desire to consume and create fanworks for Our Flag Means Death than I do for Black Sails? YES.

And yeah, I think it's partly because yanno OFMD was designed with fandom in mind. It references fanfiction IN THE TEXT. And partly because there is jank in there. Imperfect places to fit in fix-its and jam in headcanons. It says "hey we did a whole episode on treasure hunting with a few palms, some sand, and a rubber snake, you can also do whatever you want."

It's not slick and overproduced hollywood nonsense. It's just some people making art in a messy way and being overexcited while they do it. And that's beautiful.

[veronicathegoddess]

wanna tie her to my bed and a tape a vibe to her cunt and leave her there for a few hours until she passes out from the overstimulation and i get to use her and take advantage of limp body however i want 

[paradisetemporarilymisplaced]

So I was being a basic bitch the other day and listening to my true crime podcasts when it occurred to me just how suspicious Nile’s “death” would look to everyone not in the Guard, leading me to a train of thought that, 2200 words later, absolutely got away from me but I can’t let go so I’m inflicting it on all of you!

To set the stage, we know the movie takes place over approximately a week. Here’s what happens to Nile from the military’s point of view:

She dies is very seriously injured

She heals without a scratch

Just before she’s supposed to be shipped out to Germany, she vanishes, leaving two men concussed (and presumably reporting being knocked out by a woman with short hair wearing civilian clothes)

She goes AWOL for several days

They get word from the CIA that she is to be reported killed in action (details unclear)

So, at the beginning of this very weird week, the USMC has to tell Nile’s family of her death critical injury. What her family was told depends on how long she was dead – a Google search tells me that family will be notified in person within 8 hours of a soldier’s death, but we don’t know how long her first death lasted. For an injury, however, they’d get a phone call to notify them and the unit would arrange for them to visit as soon as the soldier is transferred out of a combat zone. Like I remember when I was in high school, a guy from my church who was a Marine was really seriously injured in a helicopter crash in Iraq and from what I could tell, his parents were told immediately and were flown out to Germany to see him, so it stands to reason that Nile’s family would have been informed relatively quickly after her throat was slashed, one way or another.

And then, she goes AWOL. Her family would be notified while the USMC tried to figure out where she went, not least because the military would want to know if she’s contacted them. (And it’s possible that her family may have been on the way to Germany to see her since we know that’s where she was supposed to go!) So for several days:

Nile’s mom and brother have no idea where she is

They know she was seriously injured and most certainly should not have been moving around on her own

They can’t get a hold of her

The military can’t tell them anything

And the next thing they know for sure is that she was “killed in action.” After being injured and vanishing into thin air. And they presumably cannot produce her body or any concrete evidence of her death. In any case, something sketchy is going on, so they’re like. SMELLS LIKE A MILITARY COVERUP.

In a surprise to probably no one, there is a well-documented legacy of mysterious US military deaths, particularly of women of color (TW for sexual assault in these links). The cases of LaVena Johnson and Vanessa Guillenin particular have made national news because of their families’ persistence in seeking justice. Likewise, Nile is a Black woman, and her mom and brother are most certainly hypercognizant of (a) state violence against Black people and (b) these high-profile cases of suspicious military deaths. So her family are seriously side-eyeing the situation, knowing that (a) the military has a serious incentive (and a documented history) of covering up things that make them look bad and (b) nothing about Nile’s disappearance and supposed death are adding up.

And Andy’s right. Nile does come from warriors. And you know who else does? Her brother.

Don’t get me wrong. Nile’s mom would absolutely not back down. She’d know something was up and want to get to the bottom of it. But based on what I know about Gen X parents (mine), they’re not the most technologically savvy. Like they can use the internet, but they didn’t grow up with it the way we young millennials and Gen Z did. So Nile’s brother takes the lead. And what do zillennials do best?

Social media.

Nile’s brother starts going hard on any site he can, trying to get the word out to see if anyone knows what happened to his sister. He starts a Reddit thread. He starts a Facebook group. He reaches out to the media and true crime bloggers and podcasters à la Sarah Turney, getting loud and being a general nuisance in hopes of getting some answers. He gets his friends and Nile’s friends involved. Maybe eventually Dizzy, Jay, and others from Nile’s unit hear about it and reach out, telling him what they saw and how weird it all was. He’s drumming up interest, and soon “Nile Freeman” becomes a household name (at least among the true crime fans).

Copley is, of course, trying his best, but at this point there is just so much that it’s impossible for him to scrub everything. Sure, he can erase new footage of Nile and the Guard, but what can he do about Reddit threads and podcast episodes that are speculating something weird has happened? Maybe he could hack the sites and shut those things down, but honestly, that’s the last thing he’d want to do, because that only adds weight to the theory that Nile’s disappearance is a military coverup. So eventually he has to tell Andy what’s going on.

Andy, obviously, does not take the news well. However, she is also completely computer illiterate, because that’s Booker’s job and he’s the only one who ever bothered to learn what the internet is in any meaningful way. (She probably calls Booker for advice, and for the record, I think Booker would have no qualms about shutting down conspiracy threads, tinhats be damned, but Copley is too concerned about the consequences. He’s ex-CIA for crying out loud, he knows how it’ll look if they scrub every mention of Nile’s name from the internet.) Maybe she confers with Joe and Nicky but, let’s be honest, they’d be equally unhelpful. So at this point, she knows they have to bring in Nile.

But the thing about Nile is that she, too, knows how to use the internet (duh). Aside from her being a young millennial/digital native, we know from the cave scene where she’s giving Booker suggestions on how to track Copley that she clearly is even more computer savvy than the average person. And for that reason she almost definitely took over the day-to-day tech stuff after Booker’s exile. So I think it would be foolish to expect her to be unaware of what’s happening. She’s not contacting her family or posting on the message boards or anything, but she knows what’s up. So Copley and the team probably sit her down to “break the news,” but we know the girl does not have a poker face (see: literally shooting herself in the foot and not being able to play it cool whatsoever) and cracks immediately, telling them she’s seen everything about her case – she’s not interacting with any of it, she certainly didn’t instigate anything, but she knows. (And she is so goddamn proud of her brother.)

At this point, I’d like to pause and consider Nile’s role in the overall narrative of this movie. She’s set up as a foil to Andy, obviously, but she’s also a foil to Booker. Booker, who, like Andy, is a serious pessimist, but who, unlike Andy, still has very fresh memories and trauma associated with being the new kid, which have destroyed him. In his mind (and Andy’s), if Nile communicates with her family, she’ll become just like him in a century or two – bitter, alone, and stuck with her grief and memories of watching her family die and knowing they died resenting her. It’s a small sample size, but this is the only experience they have to go off of.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

There’s been a lot of discussion of TOG being a fundamentally queer movie – a group of people brought together because of something inherent about themselves that is different, that must be hidden, that causes others to hate, fear, and reject them. Booker’s backstory is the archetypal traumatic “coming out” story – his family learns who he is, hate him for it, and attempt to cast him out of their lives. He’s stuck with his trauma, his pain, his loss, and it consumes him.

But what if Nile’s family would be the opposite? What if her “coming out” to them as immortal is met with acceptance, love, celebration? What if her family is just overjoyed to have her back, and they don’t care what the circumstances are? I'm reminded of this incredible post from @shitty-old-guard-deaths a while back, where Nile’s mother hits Booker with a frying pan because “my baby let me believe she was dead for FIVE YEARS based on your bad advice???” (which may or may not have inspired this whole tangent). Nile takes the advice of someone who did the same thing she wants to do because she doesn’t want to risk her family’s rejection. She wants the good memories with her family and is afraid that showing them her true self will bring her unbearable pain, forever replacing those memories. But, with high risk comes high reward.

Anyway. Nile and the team are trying to come up with a plan for how to handle this whole thing, but she’s not really participating because she’s too afraid to hope. Until finally, quickly, so she doesn’t lose her nerve, she suggests she reach out to them, knowing that, realistically, that’s the only solution before things snowball even further out of control. The team is shocked, but realize that she has a point. They decide that Copley should actually be the first point of contact, posing as a US government official to talk with them and test the waters.

So Copley goes to Nile’s family’s house to talk with her mom and brother. They’re probably distrustful and apprehensive, but nonetheless secretly ecstatic that their work has paid off. They talk and review all of the information that they’ve collected, including testimonials from the people on Nile’s base and recent sightings (along with photos) of Nile (with the same three people) over the last few years that people have sent them but they haven’t posted publicly. At this point, Copley’s like, yeah this is about to blow up, we gotta put our cards on the table. He convinces them to come with him to some safe house/black site/whatever he can get that is technologically impenetrable (I’m picturing them in like, an interrogation room at a police station kind of deal), takes their phones, locks the doors, and brings in Nile.

What follows is the most delightful reunion scene of all time, bringing Joe, Nicky, and even Andy to tears as they watch and listen from outside the room. With Copley’s help, Nile tells her mom and brother about her immortality and what’s been going on since she died (within reason, of course), and they are thrilled. They don’t understand why (because no one does) but they don’t question it and they see it as a gift from God – she’s been resurrected, she will live, and she has a purpose. Her mother and brother are so happy to see her again and are willing to agree with pretty much anything to stay in her life as long as they can.

So. They set up some complicated agreement (they bring in the other three for support/intimidation as needed) setting the terms of their relationship. They swear Nile’s family to secrecy, maybe bringing up the lab to show how high the stakes are, and they readily agree. They come up with some cover story for Nile’s brother to share on the message boards (maybe that the government has opened an investigation but because it’s an open case he has to shut it all down? Tells people to direct their tips somewhere else? Something to that effect). There’s still speculation, of course, but without Nile’s brother at the helm providing the energy, the hype dies down as news stories are wont to do without any movement. And Nile’s family goes to work for the team. The experience has taught them that Copley can’t possibly do everything himself, especially when it comes to social media, so Nile’s brother takes the lead on the day-to-day tracking/social media while Copley and her mom focus on finding jobs and scrubbing their traces afterward.

So there you have it: Nile gets to integrate her biological family into her found family and spend the rest of their lives with them as it should be, Copley gets some badly needed help managing the reality of social media, the team finally has a positive narrative surrounding outsiders Knowing About Them AND about interacting with people from their previous life, and the audience gets the happy ending to this very lovely and very queer story to counteract the pain associated with Booker’s family.

Plus, you know, I’m a sucker for both a good government conspiracy theory and for Nile getting every good thing she deserves.

[pluviatrix]

based on the very traumatic real story of when my cows got out and we found em in our front yard at breakfast 😩ah so goes the life of a country boy

[aggressiveglockenspiel]

it's you!

despite everything, it's still you.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i think if i. was an itty bitty suburban mole. living beneath a blanket of sad grass carpet. i would--i would carve out for myself. a little teeny cave beneath the sidewalk. just. just a cave. itty bitty soil cave under an inch of cement. damp & dark like a, tortoise shell. it would be. my Fortress. 

[black-and-yellow]

Eri tries to make Zawa feel better; Zashi gets his honey confiscated (for his own good); and Midnight forces her wasp friend to watch an educational spider documentary. 

[adhdandcomics]

having adhd is just living your entire life doing an increasingly long and convoluted series of fetch quests like a cartoon character

[oswlld]

@nanons: what are your top 3 eps? my brain: so, edit my top 3 eps? :D —  for context, my decisions were based on full rewatches

[americachavez]

oh wow….ok thinking now of a dean rowena body swap. either she flirts with cas or flirts with sam and both of these are horrifying to imagine for wildly different reasons. jensen ross what is it like in that bewildering mindscape of yours