#which does start to include the crew post kraken

[something-about-sunflowers]

Ooooooohhhhhhh now I’m thinking of an Izzy with an Ella Enchanted style curse on him hhhhhhhhhh

Read-more cause this got away from me lmfao

He keeps it fairly under wraps for most of his life, sets out to sea at twelve, gets picked up by a press gang at seventeen. He manages, its  expected, for a sailor to follow orders on a navy ship, after all (of course ‘no’ isn't an option available to him anyway).

They get boarded by pirates when he's about twenty one and he’s taken on as part of their crew, the captain is after crew more than loot, tells him he should join (saying ‘no’ would have just had him killed, and he's doing his very best to live).

Some time after, he's nearing twenty five, they’re raided by another ship, the Ranger. Benjamin Hornigold likes a ruthless sailor (a ruthless pirate) and Israel Hands has never allowed himself to be anything but. He decides he wants to keep this one. He offers, Izzy accepts. Ben tells him to kill his former captain (wouldn’t have said ‘no’ even if he could have, the man was a bastard).

He earns a reputation of being kind of a kiss-ass, he doesn’t really mind, it keeps most people from asking questions. But Ben’s got his pet projects Edward Teach and John ‘Jack’ Rackham and they’re both too sharp for their own good (though, Jack is better at playing dumb). They notice its not just Captain’s orders he follows to the letter, but everyone’s. They test him, subtly at first, but eventually they show their hand. Tell him that they know there’s more to Izzy’s obedience than he lets on.

He’s terrified for how they might use this against him (the usual ways, which most men abused without even knowing about his curse, easier, safer to let them think he wanted it) but they tell him they don’t want to take his agency from him like that. They offer to help him. He’s not sure whether to trust it (he knows, by rights, he shouldn’t) but he can’t say ‘no’ to ‘trust us, let us help’ (whether Edward is aware of the command, Izzy will never know, decades later Edward doesn’t even remember what he said to convince him).

So they stick by him, as best they can, if someone gives an order he doesn’t want to follow they’ll tell him, quietly as they can, not to. It works, for the most part. Though eventually, Ben notices Izzy’s not quite as obedient anymore (though he still never says ‘no’ to his captain’s orders). He doesn’t like that. He notices Izzy’s been spending more time around Teach and Rackham, decides they’re bad influences (he intends them to captain other ships in his fleet, they’re allowed to push back on orders, Izzy will never have a command of his own, he is not). He separates them. Puts Teach and Rackham on the Marianne with the flimsy excuse of ‘getting practice in’. (he sees them off with Izzy at his side, a claiming hand on his shoulder, Ed and Jack aren't sure how they manage it, but they don't try to kill him right then and there) They now only ever see each other when they all make port. Its a trying few months (for Ed and Jack, for Izzy. . .).

They meet at port one last time (apart, at least). Edward has a plan. They’re going to mutiny. They’ve been stirring the pot on the Marianne (whispers had already started before they got there, not too many of the crew were happy to miss out on loot just because Ol’ Ben had an apparent soft spot for the Crown). He presses his knife into Izzy's hands. Tells him, back on the ship, when everyone else is asleep, he’s to slip into the captain’s cabin and kill Ben, in his sleep, so he can’t order him to stop (Izzy is never sure if he would have said ‘no’ to that unintentional order, had he been able).

The mutiny goes off without a hitch (Ben wakes when the knife plunges into his throat, but he can’t give orders around the steel and the blood that choke him). Edward makes Izzy his first mate, gives Jack the Marianne. He and Izzy go on to create a legend.

Things are good, for a long while they're good. Edward is an inventive and charismatic captain, the crew love him and the loot he leads them to, and Izzy's position (and Edward's possessive protectiveness over him) means that anyone who dares order Israel Hands around, that doesn't have the title of 'his captain', meets a quick end.

Unfortunately, for Izzy, 'good' never tends to last. He'd hoped (and damn him for daring to hope) that he was free, as free as he could be, from his curse, sailing under Edward (Blackbeard), and he was. For a while. Its about a decade later when Edward starts to get bored. He never orders Izzy to do anything degrading or dangerous (more dangerous than he can handle at least) but it still hurts somewhere deep in his chest the first time Edward gives a casual order and doesn't look to see if Izzy wants to follow it.

They come across Jack every now and again. It always takes him a bit to readjust to Izzy, to remember he needs to phrase things as suggestions rather than orders, he always manages eventually. (that little pain in his chest digs a little deeper when he notices Edward avoids giving him orders when Jack is around, though he can't say why) Their crossing paths wind up fewer and farther between as the years go on. One notable visit involved Jack asking Edward to marry him and Anne Bonny ('why not just have your first mate do it?' 'Annie is my first mate, man, 'sides, I want my two best buds to be there for it!'). Izzy isn't sure what to make of Edward's renewed willingness to run into Jack afterwards (only knows that the pain in his chest grows all the sharper for it, and at seeing Jack, happy with Anne, he feels a bit monstrous about that). It doesn't matter much in the end, things go back to normal once Mary/Mark (depending on the day) Read enters the picture and (mostly) steals Annie away from Jack.

And suddenly Izzy finds himself at fifty five, on a beach, wondering ‘what kind of fucking idiot runs his ship aground‘. Edward is intrigued, Izzy can't tell him 'no'.

He hates the Revenge with every fiber of his being. None of the crew listen to him, Edward doesn't back him up (and neither do Fang or Ivan, following their captain's lead). The first time one of the crew gets it into their head to give him a mocking order he nearly passes out with the force it takes him to not jump to the task immediately. He retreats to his cabin later and vomits at the feeling of violation he hasn't felt in decades (he tells himself he hasn't felt it, Edward is his captain, above all else is loyalty to his captain, his own feelings don't matter).

He hates stupid fucking Stede Bonnet most of all. Hates him for putting a light back in Edward's eyes that hasn't been there for a long while. Hates his pompous attitude, his flippant disregard for the institution of piracy, how little he seems to actually care for the safety and well-being of his own men (leave alone the danger he poses to Edward). Most of all he hates that he calls him 'Iggy'.

So when he challenges him to a duel, and he accepts, its only for Edward's sake that he sets the terms at 'banishment' and not 'death'. When he loses he finds he rather wished it had been to the death. (he doesn't understand, Edward wanted this, he hadn't even told him to stop, hadn't ordered him to stop)

He retreats to Spanish Jackie'z to lick his wounds and to work out a plan to pull Edward out of the steady march towards his own demise that he faces aboard the Revenge. Jackie, Izzy is fairly certain, knows about his curse to some extent (he suspects she doesn't abuse the knowledge for the sake of having a bargaining chip, should she need it), she talks him out of any corners the navy bloke with a grudge against Stede Bonnet inadvertently walks him into. She also runs him into Jack Rackham (and Izzy realizes, at the sight of the silver starting to peek its way through his dirty blond, that its been nearly ten years since they've last seen each other, that pain in his chest not any duller for it) and the last piece of the plan falls into place. Jack tries to talk him out of it, says its not a good idea, even offers him a position on his own ship (not that its his ship to offer anymore, since Annie took over captaincy and made Mary/Mark her first mate, but they've both always had a soft spot for Izzy on account of Jack's soft spot for Izzy, they'd be more than willing), not once does he order though and Izzy can't let Edward keep doing this to himself. Jack will understand when he sees him, Izzy says. Jack goes.

(Izzy hears, when the navy gunners crow triumphantly about hitting the dinghy, the one that Jack and Edward were in, the one that Edward jumped out of, he tells himself not to let it show when that pain in his chest comes back twenty-fold at the thought)

Edward claims the Act of Grace. He and Stede Bonnet leave to lick the king’s boots. Izzy doesn't make it a single day as captain. Edward comes back just before he goes overboard with the anchor to follow. He comes back wrong. Izzy can't take it. Edward can't take it.

The Kraken wakes and Izzy is introduced to the concept of a living hell. (even the captive crew stop trying to give him orders, at the haunted look in his eye, when they see how the Kraken orders him around, when he discovers Spriggs alive, if a lot worse for the wear, he doesn't even need the order to keep it under wraps, he doesn't want to know what the Kraken would order him to do if the boy is found out, he shudders at the thought)

When stupid fucking Stede Bonnet (and his marooned crew) finds his way back to the Revenge Izzy allows himself a single moment to feel relieved. Until, at least, the Kraken orders him to kill the man. He can't. He fights. The crew are all shouting at him not to, it eases the strain. The Kraken levels his pistol at his head, the crew goes silent.

'Israel, I order you to kill Stede Bonnet'.

His sword is in his hand. Stede's gotten better with his own sword, is managing to hold his own against Izzy (in truth, its mostly due to Izzy straining to not follow the order, but there is a marked improvement). The Kraken growls 'Kill him Izzy, fucking- kill him!' Izzy loses his sword to the mast again (he's grateful this time), his knife is in his hand a second later. He's got less reach than Stede does but Stede is trying not to hurt him. Why is he trying not to hurt him?

'Bonnet. Bonnet, you have to stop me. I can't. I can't kill you. I can't let him do that to himself. You have to. Run me through. Right here-' he taps his chest with his free hand, the one that isn't swinging the knife around, the left side, right over his heart '-only way to stop this. He might even listen to you afterwards.'

'Izzy. Izzy no.' In his shock, Stede lowers his sword. Izzy swears as he knocks it out of his hand. Presses close, crowds him against the doors to the captain's cabin, knife against his throat.

'Just fucking kill him already!'

A bead of blood wells under the tip of the blade. Izzy meets his own eyes in the polished reflection of his knife.

'Izzy stop fucking around and do what I told you to!'

His hands shake with the weight of the order. There are tears in his eyes, he can see them in his reflection.

A memory comes, unbidden: He, Edward, and Jack hiking through dense jungle to find a witch that Jack thinks might be able to break his curse, or at least tell them how to break it themselves. Her words 'I cannot break this curse Israel, this is something you must do for yourself. I can tell you this, however, to do this you'll need to face yourself. Face yourself and free yourself. That is all I can say, I'm sorry, I'd tell you more if I could.' They'd left disappointed, Jack cursing about scams and 'you can't even trust witches these days, man', Edward contemplatively silent.

Face yourself and free yourself. Izzy's eyes flick upwards to Stede's concerned face, back down to the blade. He meets his own eyes again.

'Izzy-' The rest of the Kraken's words go unheard.

Izzy tells himself, voice scarcely more than a breath: 'You will not be obedient.'

He feels, more than sees, Stede's gasp. He ignores it. His hand still wants to press the knife upwards. He tries again.

'You will not be obedient.' A little louder this time.

'The fuck did you just say-' Again.

'You will not be obedient!'

The knife flies across the deck, lands with a clatter. Silence (but for the sound of Izzy's labored breaths).

He turns, ignores the shocked crew, meets Edward's wide eyes with his own watery ones (when had the tears started falling so freely?).

'. . . Iz. . . ?'

Everything goes black.

[indestructiblelittlefuckers]

OPEN STARTERS MASTERLIST

here are some plots I have thought of (starting with izzy, then ed, then stede), along with links for their starters. DM if you want any info!

my muse: izzy your muse: someone from ed's crew during the kraken era. plot: one night that Ed is passed out drunk, Izzy manages to get the crew away, on a nearby island, probably at Nassau. Once he makes sure everyone is safe, Izzy tries to sneak out and go back to the ship, back to Ed. your muse catch him. the starter

my muse: izzy your muse: anyone plot: post kraken era. the idea is that your muse is trying to tell Izzy that Ed was the abusive little shit to blame for what happened and maybe they don't want him near Izzy etc the starter

my muse: izzy your muse: anyone in the kraken era plot: just izzy, trying to deal the starter

my muse: izzy your muse: anyone plot: a lovely au, in which Izzy survives the gunshot, and he is thinking about being a captain. co-captain to stede, too, if your stede doesn't just give up piracy. the starter

my muse: izzy your muse: anyone plot: after izzy dies, he becomes a ghost (buttons is still bringing him back at some point). he could either be stuck on the Revenge (since he died there) or near the cottage (since they buried him there). there might be other ghosts where he is, and they all think that no human can see them. until your muse does. the starter

my muse: edward your muse: izzy for plot 1, anyone for plot 2 plot: plot 1) izzy comes back any way you want 2) my ghosts wishlist thing! and if we go for this one, your muse can be anyone caught ed talking to the ghost.the starter

my muse: edward your muse: anyone (other than izzy). plot: ed joins zhang to take revenge. he is in one of his relatively good days, but...the starter

my muse: edward your muse: your muse could be Izzy or another ghost, so it's not fandom restricted. plot: a "b.bc ghosts" based starter (here), cause I need something fun. the starter

my muse: edward your muse: anyone visiting ed plot: a "b.bc ghosts" based starter (here), cause I need something fun. your muse could be stede or anyone visiting.the starter

my muse: edward your muse: anyone plot: have Ed going Blackbeard again after Izzy's death, because this would actually make sense.the starter

my muse: edward your muse: anyone that was there plot: looks like izzy has died. but has he? someone isn't ready to let go. And who knows, maybe Izzy comes back, maybe Zhang's aunt and/or buttons help! up to you! for now, have denial.the starter

my muse: stede your muse: anyone visiting or izzy plot: post s2, stede is talking to izzy's grave. open to all muses, really, even strangers or izzy coming back!the starter

my muse: stede your muse: anyone plot: this could be about Izzy almost dying, about him dying (in a better way tho), or everyone thinking that Izzy is dead. they are probably still on Revenge. could be at anyone on the crew, including izzy if he almost died.the starter

[itsclydebitches]

#ofmd#SO MANY WOLVES TEARING AT MY BRAIN FOR THIS ONE#bc (1) i kind of want stede to be an incompetent muppet forever it's funnier to me personally#so it is VITAL to my acceptance of this that stede bungle his way into wanted posters ass-backwards#(2) it is SENDING ME. THE IDEA OF JIM GOING FULL TEAM KRAKEN#NOT BC THEY ACTUALLY LIKE THE BLACKBEARD VIBE#BUT BC THEY ARE PETTY ABOUT HOW MUCH STEDE IS WORTH (x)

 @takiki16 I need your tags immortalized in a separate post because SAME HAT any future “pirate shenanigans” should have a distinctly Stede flavor to them imo. I’m working on a fic atm that includes a scene where Ed points out how insanely badass the events surrounding Stede appear... but only if you’re on the periphery of things/lack some crucial context/are hearing about it second-hand. The Gentleman Pirate has, apparently:

Ordered the killing and successful kidnapping of several British officers

Sent the bodies back to their ship in a blatant display of hostility

Personally murdered their captain, Nigel Badminton, by stabbing him through the eye

Was later seen entering the woods with his brother, Chauncey Badminton, in the dead of night. His body was found the next morning with a gunshot wound in the precise spot where Nigel was stabbed

Won a duel against the infamously talented Israel Hands. Twice!

Was rumored to have ordered Calico Jack off his ship, who has notably not been seen since

Ruthlessly set fire to a ship full of nobles with everyone still trapped on board

Broke Spanish Jackie’s prized nose jar and lived to tell the tale

Most importantly: has the legendary Blackbeard serving on his ship, with his crew, following his orders

Toss in the times when Stede is seen being legitimately badass — “Get off my ship. Now,” “Unhand me or bleed,” “Good. Because I rather enjoyed it,” “He does have the eyes of a madman” — and the general pirate populace’s idea of The Gentleman Pirate is potentially VERY DIFFERENT from the actual, Muppet-induced hilarity that has led to these outcomes. 

So The Revenge meets back up with Stede, under the impression that he’s done some insanely heinous, impressive shit... only to find that everything that’s happened has just been Stede-ified.

“Mate, what’s this about you blowing up the Royal Privateering Academy??”

“What? No! I just sent them a strongly worded letter about their terribly scratchy blankets and insistence on dictating how others present themselves. I quite like you clean-shaven, Ed, but you should have been able to decide for yourself whether you kept the beard or not.”

Hard cut to a “The Best Revenge is Dressing Well” situation where Stede’s letter just happened to be read by the right officer having a No Good Very Bad Day, who takes it out on some underling, which starts a massive brawl, which results in a fire, which hits their stock of gunpowder... but all any survivors saw was The Gentleman Pirate sailing away, whistling a merry tune, moments before the Academy goes boom.

The price on Stede’s head skyrockets and yeah, Jim is going all Team Kraken about it XD

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

Katabasis Patterns in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Or, in which I make use of my official Classics minor (and my unofficial film nerd minor) while ignoring my French major altogether.

Howdy, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of Extremely On My Bullshit!  Today we’re going to talk at length about how the trip to Davy Jones’ Locker in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End borrows elements from various classical narratives containing a katabasis, or a trip to the Underworld.  This will be a slightly Tumblr-ified version of an actual paper I wrote for my Classical Antiquity On Screen final.

Shoutout to this post by @charlesdances, which allowed me to infodump about Hades/Persephone parallels in Barbossa and Elizabeth’s relationship across the trilogy, and to @aye-tortuga for requesting this longer post, which I teased at the end of the aforementioned meta.

Right then, let’s get started!  Under a cut to spare your dashes from long post made longer still by screencaps and works cited (yep, it’s that kind of meta).  For the purposes of this meta, only the first three Pirates films will be considered canon as the later sequels contradicted elements of the established lore.

I touched on this in the first paragraph, but I’ll begin by defining two words which will appear throughout this meta: katabasis and anabasis.  Katabasis and anabasis are Ancient Greek terms which refer to “that narrative . . . that portrays the hero’s descent into, and ascent from, the underworld—the journey to hell” (Holtsmark 25).  (If you want to get etymological about it, kata is down, ana is up, and baino comes from the verb meaning “to go [on foot].”)

This katabasis narrative takes place in the first act of At World’s End.  If you’ll recall, Dead Man’s Chest ended with Elizabeth chaining Jack to the Black Pearl’s mast: she knew the Kraken was only interested in Jack, so she sacrificed him to give herself and the others a chance to escape.  However, at the very end of the film, Elizabeth and the crew of the Pearl pledge to retrieve Jack from his resting place in Davy Jones’ Locker (the Underworld), and Tia Dalma offers both herself and Barbossa as guides to those “weird and haunted shores.”

So, after the cinematic fucking masterpiece that is the opening “Hoist the Colours” sequence (I also wrote a paper on that lol), we find ourselves in Singapore, where Elizabeth, Barbossa, and co. meet with the pirate lord Sao Feng in hopes of obtaining a map to the Locker.  The Singapore segment opens with Elizabeth piloting a lone craft along a murky river, evoking images of Charon with his ferryman’s pole:

As she poles the boat along, she sings a pirate tune with decidedly death-centric lyrics, tuning us in to the symbolism and themes at play: “Some men have died and some are alive / Others sail on the sea / With the keys to the cage and the Devil to pay / We lay to Fiddler’s Green.* / The bell has been raised from its watery grave / Hear its sepulchral tone . . .” (*A form of afterlife from maritime folklore)

At the end of this scene, we see something odd: Tia Dalma dressed as a blind organ grinder.

Plot-wise, this serves to divert the colonial soldiers’ attention from the pirates’ activity, but metaphorically, here she represents the blind seer Tiresias, whom Odysseus encounters when he first enters the realm of Hades (Odyssey 11.187-149).

When the pirates meet Sao Feng, the imagery starts to mix a little.  The filmmakers present Sao Feng in a somewhat Hades-esque (Hadean?) manner (steam, flames, and warm tones, with a skylight to imply subterranean depths):

However, while he is a powerful figure, he does not keep the Underworld itself (that duty falls to Jones); he merely keeps the knowledge of its entrance.  Barbossa attempts to gain this knowledge by presenting Sao Feng with a silver coin: a reminder of his duty as Pirate Lord as well as another Charon parallel.  Barbossa’s tactic does not work, but like in the previous scene, the imagery prepares viewers for the descent to come.

After getting Sao Feng’s navigational charts another way, the pirates’ journey to the underworld continues in earnest.  When Will expresses doubt about their path, Barbossa nearly quotes the Aeneid outright: “Trust me, young Master Turner: it’s not gettin’ to the Land of the Dead that’s the problem; it’s gettin’ back.”  This echoes the Cumaean Sibyl’s famous words to Aeneas: “Easy is the descent to [the Underworld]: night and day the door of gloomy Dis stands open; but to recall one’s steps and pass out to the upper air, this is the task, this the toil!” (Aeneid 6.126-129, tr. H.R. Fairclough).  Aeneas, guided by the Sibyl, passes through the mouth of a cave as part of his descent (“A deep cave there was, yawning wide and vast, of jagged rock” (Aeneid 6.237-238, cf. 6.262-263, tr. Fairclough)); likewise the pirates, guided by Barbossa and the charts, pass through a cave as they travel into stranger climes:

(Buuuut to be fair, this one is possibly just incidental or else more of a reference to Gustave Doré’s art for Rime of the Ancient Mariner rather than a reference to any specific classical text.  Doré’s artwork is used elsewhere in PotC, so it’s prolly just aesthetic.  Also caves are cool and the ultimate symbolic doorway.)

Next they come to a distant, shadowy realm with a misty sky and a sea tranquil enough to reflect starlight:

Again, this could also be incidental (and/or just a really cool homage to the sailing-to-the-moon scene in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)), but it does have a classical counterpart: “The ship took us to the deep, outermost Ocean / And the land of the Cimmerians, a people / Shrouded in mist.  The sun never shines there [...] Nor bathes them in the glow of its last golden rays; / Their wretched sky is always racked with night’s gloom” (Odyssey 11.14-19).

Both of these qualities—the cave and the darkness—fit Holtsmark’s observations on katabatic patterns: “The entryway to the other world is often conceived as lying in caves or grottoes or other openings in the earth’s crust into the nether regions, such as chasms or clefts. . . . The lower world is generally dank and dark, and the journey usually takes place at dusk or during the night” (Holtsmark 25).

At last, the pirates’ ship goes over the edge of an enormous waterfall and the screen fades to black.  Voices from the original Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride echo over the dark screen, ending with the ominous phrase “Dead men tell no tales.”  However, we shall soon see this proved very wrong, for the pirates encounter several souls with tales to tell.  As for these nameless voices, they may represent multitudes of “bloodless shades” (Metamorphoses 10.42) left to languish in other parts of the Locker/Underworld.

At this point, the narrative cuts from the pirate band to Jack in Davy Jones’ Locker.  Jack warrants special punishment from Jones for disobeying the rules of a bargain they’d once struck (*yells forever about the good parts of The Price of Freedom and the crimes wrought by the DMTNT retcons*).  Jack’s own special hell, recalling the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus (Odyssey 11.611-629), does include his beloved Black Pearl (explicitly stated, by Jack himself, to be a symbol of personal freedom), but now it rests completely beached upon an endless, windless salt flat.  Jack is utterly alone in this wasteland, save for a crew of his own imaginary doppelgängers.

(I’m gonna be real with y’all: I don’t care for this scene at all and it brings the narrative to a screeching halt, so let’s just take a moment to angstily reflect on how profoundly this affects Jack-the-character’s psyche/mental state for the rest of the film and move on to better things.  God bless RPers and fic writers who deal with this scene and its effects in a deliciously Watsonian way.)

Tia Dalma/Calypso’s crabs eventually come to bear both captain and ship back to the sea.  This could be seen as classical-type divine aid/favoritism (a semi-literal deus ex machina) or as awkward, oh-no-what-do-we-do-now screenwriting, take your pick.  The crabs take Jack and the Pearl directly to the rest of the pirates, who have washed up on the Locker’s desolate shore.  In a twist on the classical formula, Jack initially thinks his rescuers the dead ones as they recount their past experiences.  Additionally, Jack represents a sort of Eurydice figure as the dead-in-need-of-rescuing, while his Orpheus, Elizabeth, is ironically the one who “killed” him in the first place.  All the pirates (Jack included) finally set sail in the freed Black Pearl and attempt to escape this Underworld: the anabasis has begun.

On their way out, when the sky grows dark, the crew encounter scores upon scores of shades floating aimlessly upon the sea:

This parallels Odysseus’ experience (“Then out of Erebus / The souls of the dead gathered / . . . They drifted up to the pit from all sides / With an eerie cry, and pale fear seized me” (Odyssey 11.34-35, 40-41)) as well as that of Aeneas (“Hither rushed all the [ghostly] throng, streaming to the banks . . . They stood, pleading to be the first ferried across, and stretched out hands in yearning for the farther shore” (Aeneid 6.305, 313-314)).  Tia Dalma reveals that long ago, Calypso had charged Davy Jones “to ferry those who died at sea to the Other Side,” but he has since abandoned his duty, hence his current eldritch appearance.  This explicitly posits Jones as a failed psychopomp who has now left these souls stranded like the unburied men of the Odyssey and Aeneid.

The crew leave these shades in peace until Elizabeth spots a familiar face: her father.

At this point I must ask you to rewatch this scene so you can fully appreciate the parallels without me including a lengthy transcript in this already long post.

This scene comes directly from classical literature, as both Odysseus and Aeneas encountered dead parents in the Underworld.  Odysseus saw his mother: “. . . At once / She knew me, and her words reached me on wings: / ‘My child, how did you come to the undergloom / While you are still alive?  It is hard for the living / To reach these shores.  There are many rivers to cross, / Great bodies of water, nightmarish streams, / And Ocean itself, which cannot be crossed on foot / But only in a well-built ship’” (Odyssey 11.151-158).  Like Elizabeth, Odysseus had no prior knowledge of his mother’s passing (11.170).  His mother warned him of the dangerous situation which had sprung up during his absence, just as Weatherby Swann warned the pirates of the dangers of Davy Jones’ Heart.  Aeneas likewise encountered the spirit of his father, Anchises: “‘Have you come at last[?] . . . Over what lands, what wide seas have you journeyed to my welcome! What dangers have beset you, my son!’” (Aeneid 6.687-693).  Anchises, too, offers some advice for the future, for he “tells of the wars that the hero next must wage . . . [and] how to face or flee each peril” (6.890-892).  Having Elizabeth be the one to encounter a dead parent in the Underworld confirms her as the series’ protagonist, in case that wasn’t patently obvious from the rest of the trilogy (and the failure of Pirates 4 and 5).  Weatherby Swann’s warning also serves to remind the audience of the stakes.

Finally, the pirates make their way out of the Locker.  While the remainder of their journey takes more inspiration from Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Western European folklore than classical literature, the latter’s influence on the film remains quite clear.  When the pirates return to the land of the living, it is daybreak:

(*Lawrence of Arabia theme, but on a cello*)

So, too, does Odysseus emerge from the Underworld into a new dawn: “Our ship left the River Ocean / And came to the swell of the open sea / . . . Where Dawn has her dancing grounds / And the Sun his risings” (Odyssey 12.1-5).  The pirates thus complete their katabasis/anabasis, and with rather more luck than Orpheus.

In review: The pirates begin their katabasis in Singapore, which boasts a plethora of Underworld symbolism, including a death-centric song and images of Charon, Tiresias, and Hades.  They cross various waters in their descent, mirroring locations from Homer and Vergil, and Barbossa quotes the Cumaean Sibyl.  Elizabeth and the pirates retrieve Jack from the Locker’s punishments in a twist on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.  Like Odysseus and Aeneas, Elizabeth sees her dead parent in the Underworld, who warns her of things to come.  In the end, the pirates emerge from the Underworld into the light of dawn, signalling their return to life.  By borrowing from Homer, Vergil, and Ovid, At World’s End presents an Underworld narrative which is familiar in structure and yet easily incorporated into a new mythology: “Same story, different versions.”

(Please message me if you’d like to quote/reference this post in a paper and I can give you my name + details on the official version!  Plagiarism is shitty and unnecessary!)

WORKS CITED

Crispin, A.C.  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom.  Disney Editions, 2011.

Fairclough, H.R., translator.  The Aeneid.  1916.  By Vergil.  Theoi Project, www.theoi.com/Text/VirgilAeneid6.html.  Accessed 4 May 2019.

Holtsmark, Erling B.  “The Katabasis Theme in Modern Cinema.”  Classical Myth & Culture in Modern Cinema, edited by Martin M. Winkler, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 23-50.

Homer.  The Odyssey.  The Essential Homer, translated and edited by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 241-482.

Ovid.  Metamorphoses.  Translated by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2010.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.  Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Chow Yun-Fat, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2007.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.  Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2005.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.  Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2003.

[thekimthinks]

So I rewatched the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy again.

I say trilogy well aware that there are more movies by now but I feel like removing the main charachters and keeping one side charachter counts more as a spinoff. So before we begin I did watch these before once pretty much before they came out. I remember really enjoying the first one and the sequels overall being mediocre. Then over time I forgot why the sequels were bad and remembered a really cool story about magic pirates with a badass female lead. And now I have watched them again and they are bad. But like bad in their own special way. And the fact that they are bad doesn’t mean they don’t tell a cool story about magical pirates. So what I am going to do is go trough each movie in a semi structured way and tell you why they are bad but still tell a cool magical story about pirates with a badass female lead.

So when we start the second movie we get some exposition setting up the main vilian for both movies, It’s this new trading company dude who is looking to get jacks compass for some reason. Also this dude enjoys being an asshole so he imprisons elizabeth and sends will out to see to look for jack sparrow. What follows is what I like to call shenanigans. The pirates movies are not the only movie that employ the shenanigans trope but the trope can be sumarized as any action/comedy/general scene that doesn’t make much sense and does noting to progress the plot in a meaningfull way. (the defintion of the word meaningfull is subjective here but bear with me). The shenanigans the second pirates movie gets into include a very racist 20 minutes of Jack being a king of native canibals and having to be rescued by his crew and Will who was looking for him. Elizabeth gets her own shenanigans as she escapes jail. makes a deal with our main villian. Then in order to find Jack and Will she dresses like a man to tag along a trading ship. In her infinte cunning and wisdom that apperently dissapears because shenanigans she hides her dress on board of the ship. Wich then leads to her pretending there is a ghost on the ship and leading this ship to Tortuga. Now it can be argued both of these shenanigans progress the plot. Will finds jack and frees him. Elizabeth uses a cunning plan to get where she needs to be. Except both of these points rely on A. Jack got captured by natives that are there for no plot relevant reason. B. Elizabeth hides her dress on board of the ship she is hiding her identity and gender on. But ok half an hour into this movie and nothing has happened, fine. skip forward a few scenes and we get to Jack selling will to davy jones, will meets his daddy this is all pretty good. Refer back to cool magic pirate movie. Will escapes eventually and meets with Jack Elizabeth and suprise james norrington, you know the british navy villian from the first movie. (he is introduced earlier and better than I might suggest but this is already far too long.) So the boys fight over davy jones’ heart untill halfway the fight Norrington steals the heart out of jacks jar of dirt. After which the fight actually continues for quite a while. this entire fight can be summarized as shenanigans. So davy jones is angry because his heart got stolen and he sends the kraken after our heroes and something acutally suprising and interesting happens.

See Elizabeth and Jack have this conversation a bit before this, where Jack suggests that Elizabeth will become a scoundrel like himself because deep inside she is a pirate and wants to know how it feels (also this means they are going to make out). She retorts that she will not but that Jack will become a hero one day because deep inside he is a good man and wants to know how it feels. So the kraken atacks because Jack has Davy Jones’ heart and Davy jones generally wants him dead. This is when Elizabeth does something briliant. She kisses Jack and ties him to the boat making the kraken kill him so she can escape. She lost the argument, she became a scoundrel pirate. However Jack in the eyes of the group became a hero, sacrificing himself to save the team. In a way they are both right. Especially from elizabeth’s perspective as a scoundrel, A heroic man is good for nothing but leverage (this is a huge theme in the first movie.) So Elizabeth killed jack, the movie ends with everyone mourning jack at Tia Dalma’s place. Who reveals that Barbossa is alive, and that Jack can be brought back from Davy Jones’ locker. But only if they are willing to sacrifice everything, everyone agrees with an “Aye!” except for Elizabeth, who reluctantly says yes, which makes sense... she killed Jack.

Now why did I write all this down (other than this being the point of the blog), I wrote it all down because the third movie has some issues that facinate and frustrate me to no end. So Elizabeth is now a murderer, pirate, liar, and overall badass worth a milion of Jack Sparrow. But this is a Disney movie and hollywood can’t have women be competent without also being objectified sooo we start the movie with her singing the pirate antem forcing the pirate lords to gather. In order to make a deal with one of the pirate lords named Sao Feng. So far so good she is being cool. But in order to get in she needs to drop her weapons and clothes and Barbossa is there to take the lead. This actually makes everything confusing, Everything up to this point would make Barbossa and Elizabeth equals if not friends for the fact that Elizabeth achieved what Barbossa would have loved to do. Kill Jack Sparrow. But because the movie won’t allow a woman to be a main charachter entirely she doesn’t tell him. So he treats her like shit. We also get to see her weakness in this scene, namely that she still really loves Will making her actually interesting. (I am not going to debate on tumblr if her weakness being attraction to a dude is sexist or not.) So much of the first half of the movie is spent on saving jack sparrow from davy jones’ locker and one thing relevant to my story here that happens is that Elizabeth finds out her dad is dead, which upsets her inmensly and she needs to be stopped from drowning herself. (I am honestly not sure about this scene it makes sense in charachter but portraying Elizabeth this way is just sooo weirdly out of the badass pirate version of her... Whatever.) She eventually gets kidnapped by Sao Feng who thinks she is the god of the sea Calypso, and Sao Feng wants to release Calypso from her mortal prison. This is the same thing Barbossa is trying to do but he knows who Caplypso actually is. Sao Feng dies before this goes anywhere meaningfull other than making Elizabeth a pirate lord with his last words. So now Elizabeth is actually on the same level as Jack. And now we finally get to the scene where all of this comes together. The pirate council scene. All of the pirate lords have come together to decide what to do against davy jones who is now under control of beckett. They fight amongst each other like pirates are expected to do and Elizabeth scoffs at this. She proposes they go to war against Becket’s fleet, in order to flee the scene and live another day, the most ancient of pirate traditions. Jack wants them to stay holed up because he is a coward. Barbossa wants to go to war and release calypso. They figure out the only way to go to war as the pirate council is for there to be a pirate king But everyone always votes for themselves. So there hasn’t been one in forever. Barbossa pushes the vote and because he wants to go to war he votes for Elizabeth, (Also barbossa is a pirate lord for some reason even though he was Jacks first mate in the first movie, you’d think you’d have to be a captian to be a pirate lord?) So elizabeth is now pirate queen. They go to war, some more stuff happend that should probably get its own post but this is all the information required for me to make my point. 

Elizabeth as a main charachter is written as a badass pirate with clear motivation but isn’t allowed to be competent and as such the movies narrative around her gets really confusing. If elizabeth had known about the pirate council and the full scope of the code in the second movie, (which was largely spend on shenanigans and could have done with telling us more about the world the story takes place in, the pirate lords and clear details about calypso do not exist in movie 2)and barbossa’s motivation early in the third movie (easily obtained by gaining his trust revealing she murdered Jack), we could have seen this movie as a pirate exceeding her mentor (Jack Sparrow) fighting for the power required to survive, and provide her fiance (Will) with the means to save his father whilst manipulating and lying like literally everyone else.I am almost entirely sure this arc existed for her at some point considering this is what she builds to in the first movie, she adores pirates for their rebellion and heroism, is appaled by their lack of morals and manners, ends up learning how to manipulate them into doing what she wants. But thats not what happend, instead we spent a lot of time on shenanigans and flip flopping between pirate Elizabeth and emotional rich lady on a pirate ship Elizabeth. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading. This is one hell of a first post for this blog and I have basicly only written about Elizabeth. I feel like the other big thing i want to talk about is something in more movies and needs its own special post.

[phoenix-downer]

Pirates of the Caribbean in Kingdom Hearts 3: Story and Themes Speculation

Buckle in, because this is going to be a long one. Here be Pirates of the Caribbean spoilers, including a certain upsetting scene from near the end of At World’s End.

From this Famitsu article, we know that the the Pirates world in Kingdom Hearts 3 will be based on At World’s End, and there’s a lot for the KH3 team to work with from a story, lore, and character standpoint.

Let’s break things down, starting with the trailer itself.

My guess is that this scene happens pretty early in the world visit. It’s just Sora, Donald and Goofy, and it takes place at night.

Lighting wise, it looks a lot like the scene from the movie, when Will, Elizabeth and the rest are looking for a way into Davy Jones’ Locker to find and go over the edge of the world. Sora, Donald and Goofy will probably make it into Davy Jones’ locker by going over the waterfall in the same way. 

Adding credence to this theory, we see three figures on the bowspirit who look an awful lot like our three heroes. Credit to the-sis-blog for pointing this out in their post here. It looks like Sora, Donald and Goofy find Jack first, and then the rest of the Pirates crew find them afterwards.

Okay, on to the Pirates characters. First we have Jack. No surprise there, his character’s return was guaranteed with the world. As he’s in Davy Jones’ Locker, we can safely assume that at least some of the events of Dead Man’s Chest are also canon to the Kingdom Hearts universe. Namely, that he got eaten by the Kraken. 

Onto the next group of characters. Gibbs, Elizabeth, a very alive and well Barbossa (once again, Dead Man’s chest looks like it has already happened), and of course Will.

But, perhaps most interesting of all is Tia Dalma/Calypso. In her hand she’s holding a crab, just like the scene in the movie:

Why is she interesting? More on that later.

One very important character that is not in any of these scenes, however, is Davy Jones. But I have no doubt he’ll appear, because 1) he’s the main villain for At World’s End, and 2) Sora’s render has a pretty blatant clue: Davy Jones’ keys are a part of the keychain for the world’s Keybalde.

Getting into Davy Jones, in this scene from Dead Man’s Chest, we hear from Tia Dalma that he cut out his own heart and put it in a chest.

So yeah. He’s running around without a heart. He’s basically a Nobody. His heart is in a chest that can be unlocked by a key. Bet Jack wants access to a Keyblade more than ever now, because if anything else can unlock that chest besides the actual key, it’s going to be the Keyblade. So my guess is that Jack and crew enlist Sora’s help in finding and unlocking the chest to gain access to Davy Jones’ heart.

But that’s not all. One of the reasons why Davy Jones is such a great villain is because he was once human. 

He loved, and he still loves. 

He didn’t cut out his own heart without reason. In fact, he had a very good reason for doing it, which he explains in this scene with Tia Dalma here. 

She broke his heart, and so he cut it out himself because he couldn’t bear the pain but wasn’t ready to die, either. In the context of Kingdom Hearts, where have we seen something similar? Someone choosing to remove their own heart and inflicting a Heartless/Nobody status on themselves on purpose?

But while Davy Jones removed his heart out of heartbreak, Sora removed his purely out of love. Platonic or romantic, I think we can all agree that Sora was driven to make this sacrifice out of love, out of valuing Kairi’s life and safety so highly that he put himself through this for her sake with a smile.

I bring his sacrifice up because I think there are great opportunities for character interactions there. I can see Sora hearing about what happened to Davy Jones and at least taking pity on him, if not full on empathizing with him, because he knows how it feels to love. He understands why Davy Jones might be driven to such extreme lengths as to take out his own heart, because he did the exact same thing. Not for the same reasons (thank goodness!), as his sacrifice is portrayed as heroic and praiseworthy, whereas Davy Jones’ fate is piteous, tragic, but still.

This takes me into the themes of At World’s End and how they might tie into KH3. For one, this movie is... well, pretty dark. There’s no away around it. It opens with pirates being executed, then there’s that heart-wrenching scene where Elizabeth realizes her father is dead. 

And then, the worst offender of all:

I swear, if Square Enix makes us watch Sora witness Davy Jones stabbing Will through the heart, I think I might cry. It was bad enough watching Elizabeth and Jack witness it, I don’t want Sora to have to see it too.

It’s an important part of the story though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they included it in some way. And if it ties into KH3 thematically, uh... we might be in for some real heartbreak, everyone. At the very least KH3 might go to some pretty dark places that explores heartbreak and loss (as if we hadn’t had enough of that already...)

And that brings me to another focus of At World’s End. Love. Romance. Yes, that topic Kingdom Hearts has danced around ever since the first game and has divided fans over ever since. Because there’s no getting around it: between Davy Jones’ ill-fated romance with Tia Dalma/Calypso, and Will and Elizabeth’s epic wedding mid-battle, there’s a lot of focus on love in this movie. 

If Nomura wants to emphasize romance more in KH3, then At World’s End as a world is a pretty good choice for that. Not a guarantee or anything, just interesting to note.

And look at that storm going on around them. It would be amazing for the final battle to take place during it. So here’s hoping for that awesome maelstrom battle, a cool Davy Jones boss battle or two, and if we’re lucky, a Kraken fight before it’s dead. 

Okay, considering when the world is probably set, that last one might be a bit of a stretch. I can still hope though, right?

Last of all, how Luxord ties into all of this. 

Well, he was the Organization member for this world in KH2, so it makes sense he’d return. Listening to the dialogue, it’s clear he’s asked for parlay. Jack considers him to be a pirate, too - so does that mean he has help? A crew? If so, who?

And, most interesting of all, he tells Jack he’s looking for a box.

A box, hmmmm?

Okay, so he’s probably after the same box that Maleficent mentioned she’s after in the Kingdom Hearts III Orchestra trailer. Very possibly the box the Master of Masters entrusted Luxu with. No doubt Xehanort wants to get his hands on it for one reason or another.

But the way Jack reacts, it seems like he thinks Luxord’s after the chest that holds Davy Jones’ heart:

For all we know, Luxord might not even know or care about it, but I could see him racing the heroes to it because he thinks it might be the box he’s searching for. The final battle could very well be a three way clash over it during the maelstrom.

Well, that’s about everything. To sum up, there’s a lot they can do with this world, and I am very excited for its inclusion in KH3 and what it might mean for the story and themes of the game overall.

POTC screenshots taken from these videos: 1, 2, 3, 4. Back Cover screenshot from this video here, and of course the KH3 Pirates trailer is here.

Edit: fixed some details @gettachristalready pointed out

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Gosh, I never did post my con report for Ice and Fire Con, did I? Well, 3 weeks past, but hopefully not too late...

4/26, Thursday evening: Arrived in Columbus airport. While packing my big-ass suitcase for the con Wednesday night Thursday morning, I realized my white makeup had somehow disappeared, but I looked up a Party City in a Columbus suburb that had some. (Didn’t have time to go shopping on my way to the Chicago airport.) So, having figured that I could rent a car for the whole weekend for less than the price of a Lyft from the airport to the lodge, I did so, found that shop, bought that makeup, and had a lovely drive to Deer Creek State Park. Approaching the park, I found the name was very accurate, as a deer was crossing the road on the way there, in a very stupid way. “Should I jump the fence? Or go back in the road and wander everywhere? Durhurhur!” Finally he got a clue and I moved on, only for another car to zoom around me like I was standing still. That’s how you get deer through your windshield, son.

But anyway, got to Deer Creek Lodge by 9ish, got my room and registered and all, and started seeing people I’d met last year. Chloe (@liesandarbor) and Emmett (@poorquentyn) and Wendy (@wendynerdwrites) and Jim (@warsofasoiaf) and all, as well as others who I don’t think have tumblrs (or I don’t know them) but are excellent folk. And I heard there was an unofficial party that night, thrown at the cabin of the Chicago boys (who I don’t know actually), same as last year, so I headed down that way. This year the party was in support of one of their fellows who’s getting married, a Stag and Doe party, with raffle tickets and games, so it was extra fun, besides the drinking and all. :)

Picked up a raffle package that included a blue rose flower crown, and had a moment when I met Tara (@ageeksaga) and she thought I was Wendy, lol. I was like, nope, sorry, I’m the other short brunette Jewish fandom fave from tumblr who’s dating a guy named Jim. (And who sometimes wears blue rose flower crowns.) She was tired, it’s hard getting this con ready, I didn’t blame her at all, but lol. :)  Also at the party was Michael (@1000eyesandone) and his wife Adrienne, who are awesome people who I met at last year’s con, and ended up hanging around a lot with this year. Anyway, after a night of drinks and meeting people and drinking and chatting and drinking and games and drinking and winning tickets and putting them in the raffle prize choices (there were many cool prizes but only a few that I really wanted so I put most of my tickets in those), they had the raffle, about 1am I think, and I won a prize! Woo, chocolate and popcorn and bath bombs and other relaxing things. And then I was tired so walked back to the lodge with a bunch of other people, did a tiny tumblr update, and collapsed into bed.

4/27, Friday: The con officially opened today, and I got up late but made it to the second half of the ice breaker opening thing. They had the bingo where you’re supposed to find people who meet the qualifications for the bingo square (newbie to @iceandfirecon, newbie to cons in general, prefer direwolves to dragons or vice versa, have a particular fave house, are a shipper - I volunteered a lot for that one, and so on), and also that game where you have a name on your forehead and you have to guess who it is (I was Janos Slynt, joy), and I met some very neat people. Then I went down by the lake (or creek, I guess?) for my picture with a wolf! And here, some more pictures:

Logan is such a good boy. :)

Caught lunch with Wendy and Jim and Michael and Adrienne, then I went to the Q&A panel given by the Ironwood Wolves people, where they talked about the education work they do with their ambassador wolves, and what wolf behavior is like, and all that interesting stuff (watch the video, there’s a sweet sleepy wolf in it). Got some pictures of the lake, went to the History of Westeros meetup for a bit (I have a processing thing with podcasts so I can’t listen to them, but Ashaya and Aziz are the most excellent people), and soon it was time for the @asoiafuniversity meetup panel with me and Emmett.

Alas, we were up against Quiplash in the big conference room, and I don’t think the schedule was that clear unfortunately, so we didn’t have many people showing. (Unlike last year where we got a pretty good crowd!) But for those who did come, we explained what we do, and discussed some meta topics, and it was really nice. Then I caught the end of Quiplash, which is kind of a Cards Against Humanity -type online party game where you write the answers and the audience votes... well, it’s fun, and I got to be in the last answer panel, and even had an answer some people liked. :)

Went over to the vendor room and saw so many gorgeous things, ASOIAF art and statuettes and cloaks and such, but the only thing I bought was butterfly fairy wing earrings. (Which I think takes my number of butterfly earrings up to... 10 maybe? I have a lot.) Then as it was starting to get dark I went back to my room and got ready for Shabbos (had the room key situation arranged with the hotel staff, since my Jim wasn’t at the con), and then... it was time for IaFcon’s first musical!

Inspired by the awesome performance of Tara and Brian last year in D&D’s “You’re Welcome”, this year the crew put on WESTEROS, a tribute/parody of Hamilton. And oh my gosh it was sooo good. You should watch it, honest. (@draganchitsa, I spent half the time thinking of you.) Of course the costumes and casting were excellent, and there were some truly fantastic lines, all telling the KL story from the start of AGOT to the Battle of the Blackwater... Including one last song for the shippers among us, heehee, oh gosh I was covering my face and blushing the whole time. :) :) :)

Then dinner with Wendy and Jim and Emmett, then back to the con room for karaoke. :D  As it was Shabbos I didn’t perform myself (didn’t want to deal with not using the mic and stuff), but I sang along with everybody, including when Michael did Head Like a Hole to the music of Call Me Maybe, which was hilarious. ;) That ended about midnight, and I headed back for sleep, as big day Saturday... or should I call it... Weirwood Day!

4/28, Saturday: Got up early(-ish) to get my weirwood tree costume ready. :) My makeup, since I’m not that often a cosplayer (like almost never), took a while (took forever, didn’t get to two panels I wanted to see, thankfully they’re on youtube now), and I had a panel I was actually on at 1pm and I still hadn’t put the bloody tears on at almost 12:30... So I dressed up and wigged up and leafed up, and headed out, got stopped on the way for a picture, got to the panel just a wee bit late... but still, it was an excellent panel, all about the animal symbolism in ASOIAF, lots of discussion of direwolves and how they interrelate to the Stark kids; as well as other houses, dragons, lions, krakens, bears, birds, trout... all that sort of thing. The panel’s up here on youtube if you want to see me as a white-and-red dorkus talking about direwolves. :)

Then there was the tourney, outside, which looked awesome, but it was coooold out and I still wasn’t quite done with my costume, so I went back to my room and had lunch and got finished up (occasionally glancing out the window since my lodge room had a tiny corner of a view of the tourney field), and finally... finally I was ready. :D 

Headed toward the con rooms with a big backpack full of art books for my panel (that was going to be after the costume parade, and I so didn’t want to go back and forth), as well as my bag full of ravens. :D   On the way, had a selfie with Ashaya (@buskerlenny), who had an excellent Danelle Lothston costume. Made it in time to catch the end of Emmett and Silas’s panel on Lovecraft Mythos and ASOIAF, listening while I checked that my leaves and ravens were all arranged properly. (Next time safety pins maybe?) And soon other cosplayers started coming in, including the lovely older lady who was such a perfect Old Nan last year -- this year she was the Ghost of High Heart, with a weirwood-print dress, and she was delighted to see me. :D  She had a photo taken with her sitting and me standing (as a tree) behind her, which I haven’t seen but hope shows up one of these days, it should be so neat.

And then the costume parade! So many amazing costumes, so much fun. While we were waiting to line up, I actually started tearing up (because of my contacts, eyeliner, mascara, god knows), but consensus among those who looked at me that it really didn’t hurt my makeup much and really fit the crying-tree look? so hey. :)  Last year in the parade people stopped to do performances, but this year they separated out the performances till after the parade (and the voting only for that), so it moved pretty quickly. But I got a lot of applause for my weirwood, especially when I lifted up my “branches” with the ravens on them. And I heard someone say that if they had been doing voting, I probably would have won, which is really really nice. :D :D :D

Then I sat down for the performances, and oh my gosh. There was a Rohanne vs. Dunk rap battle (with shoutout to Jaime/Brienne lol), a Brienne vs bear fight (set to the Bear and the Maiden Fair of course), Chloe did a parody of Free Fallin’ (with Lyanna and Ashara themes *wince*), and there was Michael as Tom O’Sevens singing Edmure’s Floppy Fish song that had everybody lol’ing... but the room went dead quiet in awe for Septon Meribald’s Broken Man speech. Damn. (And yeah, I cried some more.)

Group photo time!

All these amazing people. :) I’m kind of easy to find, though, lol.

And then there was my and Ashaya’s panel on the history of ASOIAF fanart, also with artists @sanrixian and @palewhiterabbit. It went really well, I think, lots of cool info... I brought my Art of Ice and Fire books, the D&E graphic novels, and some @kallielef and bubug prints (also one of @chaouenmadrid’s sansan books), Ashaya had Draw ‘Em With the Pointy End and another art book... but alas, we were up against the trivia contest in the big conference room, so again not that much of a crowd. (Someone asked me if I was cross-scheduled because Emmett and Wendy and I won trivia last year, idk lol, other people won too.) But anyway, the people who were there for the panel seemed to like it a lot -- not sure if it was filmed, but if it was I’ll put up the video eventually. Or maybe I could write down my mental notes, if you like.

Afterwards, I headed back to my room for dinner, and when Shabbos was over I took a few selfies (including some duckfaces for Kelly Sue DeConnick, whose costume inspired mine), and then washed up. Because party time!

(me and Wendy, at the party - I’m wearing little bird earrings and this tshirt)

I have few mental notes for the Flea Bottom Fete, alas. Just that it was a hell of a lot of fun, tons of great music (having a convo in the hallway, “oh wait this is my song, gotta dance”), people’s party cosplays were hilarious -- I recall Michael’s punk Bloodraven, there was a group of sexy Greyjoys, Tara had party Cersei, a bunch of girls came with a Qarth dress theme, and of course there was stripper RobbWind... and, well, there was a bar. :)  (And also someone brought macarons, nom nom nom.)

4/29, Sunday: I had to check out by noon. I had a panel to give at noon. I managed to get packed up, check out, put my suitcase in the car, and make it on time for this panel, coffee’d up and everything. I consider that a grand success. And then in the very excellent panel (on GRRM’s many other works, with me and Aziz and Amin Javadi and one of the con volunteers I didn’t catch his name augh), I managed to actually sell a few people on reading Wild Cards, I think. Truly a success. :D  And then the closing ceremonies were lovely -- and the wolf puppy from the photos that were taken Sunday even came, oh my gosh he was so cute... but sigh, alas the con was over for me.

I’d left a note on the Facebook group that I’d rented a car and could take up to 3 people back to the airport for an afternoon flight, and a few girls had contacted me that morning to take me up on the offer. So that was a nice trip. :) Returned the rental easy, caught my short flight easy, and was back in Chicago by Sunday evening to watch Avengers and get dinner with my @jimintomystery. A lovely weekend, full of ASOIAF and friends and fun, I truly hope to do it again next year!

(goddamn, this is long. no wonder I never properly wrote up last year’s con report...)

[officialotakudome]

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Section23 Announces August Slate

Section23 has unveiled it’s August 2021 slate:

HOUSTON, May 25, 2021 – Home video distributor Section23 Films today announced its August slate of releases which includes Sentai Filmworks warrior action series, Vinland Saga! Available on English dubbed Blu-ray August 31st with a Limited Edition Premium Box Set to be released soon.

Product details follow, in order of release

  Coming August 2021

  Title:                 MAOYU ~ ARCHENEMY & HERO

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         300 min.

Street Date:      8/3/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $49.98

SYNOPSIS:  For 15 years, mankind has fought the dreaded Demon King, but when the heroic warrior known as Hero finally storms the King’s Castle, he’s shocked to learn that the Demon King is, in fact, a Demon Queen, and she’s been waiting for him with a most unusual proposal! As both humans and demons are only united by their common enemies, she points out, it’s almost inevitable that no matter which side wins the war, the various factions of the victors will turn on each other. However, if the adorable “King” had a collaborator on the human side, together they could end the war in a way that would ensure lasting prosperity for both sides! It’s an idea so crazy that it just might work as the most unlikely of partners join forces in MAOYU – ARCHENEMY & HERO!

Title:                 THE MAGNIFICENT KOTOBUKI THE MOVIE

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         119 min.

Street Date:      8/10/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $29.98

SYNOPSIS:  On a barren world almost devoid of life, the only efficient way of distributing essential supplies and cargo between the isolated pockets of civilization is by using giant zeppelin-like airships. Unfortunately, these massive craft are also easy targets for the wolves of the air – sky pirates, who hijack aerial commerce and slaughter the crews. That’s where birds of prey like Kylie, Reona, Chika, Emma, Kate, Zara and their Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa fighters come in. In a deadly business where a single mistake can mean instant death, the lady falcons of the Kotobuki Squadron will outfly and outshoot anything else in the stratosphere! Get ready to venture where only Angels dare to tread as the epic TV series becomes a spectacular motion picture in THE MAGNIFICENT KOTOBUKI – THE MOVIE!

Title:                 GAKKO*** SCHOOL-LIVE! ANOTHER STORY

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         111 min.

Street Date:      8/10/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $19.98

SYNOPSIS:  What does your school mean to you?  For a handful of students at Megurigaoka Private High School, the answer is going to be salvation as they start their worst day of classes ever.  It begins quietly, with only the fact that some students aren’t showing up for classes to hint at what’s about to begin.  Then the killing starts as the school’s student body start to turn into reanimated student bodies, taking an early lunch break to devour their former classmates!  By the time our group of female survivors realizes that they’re in the middle of a zombie epidemic, their only chance of staying alive lies in barricading themselves into the building.  What they don’t realize yet is that this is only Day One, and they may be living there for the rest of their lives in Gakko***SCHOOL-LIVE! Another Story

Title:                 MARIA-HOLIC!

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         600 min.

Street Date:      8/17/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $89.98

SYNOPSIS:  Kanako likes girls and guys literally give her the hives, so she thought that attending an all-girls school would be the perfect place to meet the perfect girl. Then her hot new roommate turns out to be a guy in drag. Yikes. And when the most popular girl in school catches Kanako’s eye, our poor heroine has to compete with all of the school’s OTHER similarly obsessed girls… which seems to be most of them! To further complicate things are her roommate’s rude maid, their cat-eared dorm leader, her roommate’s identical twin sister, and WAY too many other attractive girls, and the question is whether Kanako will die from frustration first, or her almost constant nosebleeds! Still, she may be the girl voted least likely to succeed, but Kanako’s not ready to give up on love just yet in the ultimate collection of MARA HOLIC!

Title:                 MY TEEN ROMANTIC COMEDY ~ SNAFU CLIMAX

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         300 min.

Street Date:      8/24/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $69.98

SYNOPSIS:  High school is coming to an end and a huge portion of Hachiman, Yukino and Yui’s world is about to change, whether they like it or not.  With that realization comes another epiphany:  even though they’ve spent so much time helping others, the three Service Club members still have issues of their own that need working out.  But even as Yukino decides to move back in with her parents and attempt to put that part of her life in order, she accepts the major task of helping plan the graduation prom.  Trying to accomplish such a major goal will be one of the hardest jobs the Service Club has ever taken on, but as long as they have each other to rely upon, they’re determined to see it through in the third and final season of MY TEEN ROMANTIC COMEDY SNAFU!

Title:                 VINLAND SAGA

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         600 min.

Street Date:      8/31/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $89.98

SYNOPSIS:  Raised in peace and on fanciful tales of a mythical far-off land without war, young Thorfinn dreams of someday traveling to the fabled Vinland.  That dream is shattered when threats from the legendary Jomsvikings put him in the path of a band of Viking mercenaries, forcing Thorfinn’s father to sacrifice himself to the band’s leader: Askeladd.  Alone and far from home, Thorfinn joins the forces of his father’s slayer, determined to compel a duel with the mercenary leader and avenge his father.  However, Thorfinn quickly finds himself ill prepared for a soldier’s life in the long war between Denmark and England…where the opportunistic Vikings earn coin by fighting for both sides.  Now he must learn how to fight and survive, even if it means facing friend and clan in battle in VINLAND SAGA!

About Section23 Films:

Section23 Films provides home video marketing and distribution services for a variety of companies, including Sentai Filmworks, Switchblade Pictures, Maiden Japan, Kraken Releasing and AEsir Holdings.  With its special focus on genre entertainment, Section23 Films distributes some of the very best anime, martial arts, and horror titles on the market today.

[gadgetgirl71]

Top Ten Tuesday 22 September 2020

Welcome to this weeks Top Ten Tuesday. Originally created by The Broke & The Bookish, which is now hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week it features a book or literary themed category. This weeks prompt is:

Books On My Autumn 2020 TBR:

Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo

What do you do when your fake engagement starts to feel too real…

Aspiring clothes designer Victoria Scott spends her days working in a bar in Chelsea, and her evenings designing vintage clothes, dreaming of one day opening her own boutique. But these aspirations are under threat from the new department store opening at the end of her road. She needs a Christmas miracle, but one is not forthcoming.

Oliver Russell’s Christmas is not looking very festive right now. His family’s new London department store opening is behind schedule, and on top of that his interfering, if well meaning, mother is pressing him to introduce his girlfriend to her. A girlfriend who does not exist. He needs a diversion. Something to keep his mother from interfering while he focuses on the business.

When Oliver meets Victoria, he offers a proposition: pretend to be his girlfriend at the opening of his store and he will provide an opportunity for Victoria to showcase her designs. But what starts as a business arrangement soon becomes something more tempting, as the fake relationship starts to feel very real. But when secrets in Victoria’s past are exposed will Oliver walk away, or will they both follow their hearts and find what neither knew they were looking for…

Breathless by Jennifer Niven

From Jennifer Niven, the New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places, comes an unforgettable new novel about a sensitive girl ready to live her bravest life–sex, heartbreak, family dramas, and all.

Before: With graduation on the horizon, budding writer Claudine Henry is making plans: college in the fall, become a famous author, and maybe–finally–have sex. She doesn’t even need to be in love. Then her dad drops a bombshell: he’s leaving Claude’s mother. Suddenly, Claude’s entire world feels like a lie, and her future anything but under control.

After: Claude’s mom whisks them away to the last place Claude could imagine nursing a broken heart: a remote, mosquito-infested island off the coast of Georgia. But then Jeremiah Crew happens. Miah is a local trail guide with a passion for photography–and a past he doesn’t like to talk about. He’s brash and enigmatic, and even more infuriatingly, he’s the only one who seems to see Claude for who she wants to be. So when Claude decides to sleep with Miah, she tells herself it’s just sex, nothing more. There’s not enough time to fall in love, especially if it means putting her already broken heart at risk.

Compulsively readable and impossible to forget, Jennifer Niven’s luminous new novel is an insightful portrait of a young woman ready to write her own story.

The Illustrated Child by Polly Crosby

Romilly lives in a ramshackle house with her eccentric artist father and her cat, Monty. She knows little about her past – but she knows that she is loved.

When her father finds fame with a series of children’s books starring her as the main character, everything changes: exotic foods appear on the table, her father appears on TV, and strangers appear at their door, convinced the books contain a treasure hunt leading to a glittering prize.

But as time passes, Romilly’s father becomes increasingly suspicious of everything around him, until, before her eyes, he begins to disappear altogether.

In her increasingly isolated world, Romilly turns to the secrets her father has hidden in his illustrated books, realising that there is something far darker and more devastating locked within the pages…

The truth.

The Illustrated Child is the unforgettable, beguiling debut from Polly Crosby.

Ghosts by Dolly Alderton

Nina Dean has arrived at her early thirties as a successful food writer with loving friends and family, plus a new home and neighbourhood. When she meets Max, a beguiling romantic hero who tells her on date one that he’s going to marry her, it feels like all is going to plan.

A new relationship couldn’t have come at a better time – her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone’s moving to the suburbs. There’s no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who’s caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.

Dolly Alderton’s debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.

Friends and Strangers by J Courtney Sullivan

An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics’ Pick).

Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms’ Facebook group, her “influencer” sister’s Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.

Enter Sam, a senior at the local women’s college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she’s always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She’s worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth’s father-in-law, the true differences between the women’s lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.

A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

Our Story by Miranda Dickinson

Otty has just landed her dream job. She’s about to join the writing team of one of the most respected showrunners in TV. And then the night before her first day, she’s evicted from her flat. Joe has been working with Russell for years. He’s the best writer on his team, but lately something has been off. He’s trying to get his mojo back, but when his flatmate moves out without warning he has other things to worry about. Otty moving into Joe’s house seems like the most obvious solution to both their problems, but neither is prepared for what happens next. Paired together in the writing room, their obvious chemistry sparks from the page and they are the writing duo to beat. But their relationship off the page is an entirely different story, and neither of them can figure out why. And suddenly the question isn’t, will they, or won’t they? It’s why won’t they? An epic and modern love story for our times, we will all see ourselves reflected in Otty and Joe. We are our own biggest barriers and this novel explores what happens when we get out of our own way. And it is glorious.

From Breath and Ruin (Elements of Five Book 1) by Carrie Ann Ryan

New York Times bestselling author Carrie Ann Ryan dives into a world with magic and sacrifice with the Elements of Five.

It is said the Spirit Priestess will one day unite the two Kingdoms of the Maison Realm. She will one day fight alongside Wielders and unlock the five elements of power.

It wasn’t until I nearly died that I realized they were talking about me. They tell me I have the power to save the world, and yet the war raging around me seems insurmountable. I must rely on those I thought shunned me long ago: a boy who isn’t who I thought, and a new realm of warriors who have come to protect me.

The darkness is coming, and the Queen of Obscurité wants to ensure that the King of Lumière can’t get his hands on me. And to make that happen, the Queen will sacrifice anything—including me.

Reflect (Reclaim Trilogy Book 1) by Jess Booth & Joanna Reeder

Their romance only lasted a short few months… but that was more than 100 years ago.

Ever since his fiancé, Gemma MacLugh, was killed at the hands of a dragon shifter, vampire Leif Villers has mourned his loss. Still, a part of him never gave up on her. He could hear her voice, feel her love even through the grave, relive her memories over and over until they were stripped from him.

Now Leif has discovered the final piece to bring her back from death’s clutches. He carried her brooch, never knowing it held the key to resurrecting his love.

Too bad it’s now in the hands of the formidable kraken shifter who nearly destroyed the Shifter Academy in the recent vampire/shifter war and then slithered away, never to be seen again.

Across time, powerful selkie Gemma MacLugh–a magic user who can shape-shift into a seal–should have a wonderful, comfortable existence at her home in New York in 1897. But jealous sisters target her with their cruelty, making life miserable. If not for her Grandmother and her best friend and fellow selkie, Frederick, things might have been truly unbearable.

But when a mermaid seer foretells her upcoming death and opportunity arises to leave her home and travel across the country to a boarding house in Washington, she takes it.

To get away from her cruel sisters.

To escape her destiny.

But is it luck or fate’s final joke when she meets a tall, dark and handsome man by the name of Leif Villers?

Their love will challenge time and death itself, but can Leif get Gemma back? Can Gemma truly escape her fate?

**Reflect is the first book in the Reclaim Trilogy within the Shifter Academy Universe written by USA Today Bestselling Authors, Jesse Booth and Joanna Reeder**

The Trials of Koli (Rampart Trilogy Book 2) by M R Carey

The Trials of Koli is the second novel in M R. Carey’s breathtakingly original Rampart trilogy, set in a strange and deadly world of our own making.

Beyond the walls of Koli’s small village lies a fearsome landscape filled with choker trees, vicious beasts and shunned men. As an exile, Koli’s been forced to journey out into this mysterious, hostile world. But he heard a story, once. A story about lost London, and the mysterious tech of the Old Times that may still be there. If Koli can find it, there may still be a way for him to redeem himself – by saving what’s left of humankind.

The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams

The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives and A Certain Age creates a dazzling epic of World War II-era Nassau—a hotbed of spies, traitors, and the most infamous couple of the age, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires?

Or so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly—and even treasonous—reality. In fact, Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies, financial swindles, and racial tension, and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably, the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love.

Then Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace, and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe’s complicated family history: a fateful love affair, a wartime tragedy, and a mother from whom all joy is stolen.

The stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of espionage, sacrifice, human love, and human courage, set against a shocking true crime . . . and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.

Until next Tuesday

#JustForFun, #Top Ten Tuesday, #TopTenTuesday, #TTT

[daydreamtlife]

Omg D&D Nights with the Squads

Saw a post and now this is in my head. My paras form little families because they’re in different stories\realities—other madders get it I’m sure. If they played dnd...

JS, JG, ES, WT, HB, and Me:

JS would be a swashbuckler, JG would be a drunken monk, ES would be a fighter, WT would be a rogue, HB would be some homebrew shit to eff you up, I would be the DM. HB and JS would roast each other constantly, as they do out of game. WT would try to flirt with ES in character but she just wants to fight monsters and doesn’t even notice. JS would constantly try to do the craziest bs possible like disguising himself as a cleric to break into cults and trying to seduce literally everything to get out of problems. Including inanimate objects. Would also lowkey be trying to seduce the DM irl, which HB would call him out on as “cheating”, ES would be like “no let him finish” because she wants to win things, and JG would be irl drinking at the table making quiet snide comments. They’d probably end up as criminals, if they didn’t already start the game that way.

RT, ET, WD, PP, and Me:

RT would be some whimsical magic class, ET would actually want to play the game, WD would be a paladin or cleric, PP would be a Bard. If him and RT were both Bards they would bounce from hating that the other person is a Bard to teaming up and saying “it’s a bards only thing” “Bard Brothers Only” all the time. I would be DM. WD is only playing because PP is there and I wanted another girl in the group. PP tries to be less annoying because he knows I could attack his character—he doesn’t know I wouldn’t because I’d joke about doing so all the time. The group doesn’t like fighting very much, they prefer to rp more. They would cling to the first weird creature they found that wasn’t hostile and make it their mascot. Probably a green flying pig or something. RT would keep trying to use oneliners on NPCs but would never roll high enough to seduce, meanwhile ET wouldn’t even try and somehow succeed. WD would be super nice and kind to everyone, act as the moral compass. But if PP’s character is threatened, WD gon cut a bitch

GL, LF, and Me:

GL actually suggested the game at first, but once they’d played a couple oneshots he decided to run a campaign. It’s pretty monster-of-the-week but the banter between them makes it fun, and the unlimited alcohol they get for having it at GL’s tavern makes it even better. GL likes describing the fights so everything is really detailed and gorey, but that also makes it feel more badass when you kill something. LF is a Bard, I’m a Rogue, we have issues healing ourselves but I steal potions as easy as breathing. Sometimes GL will surprise them with cool magic items. Honestly OP, but just a fun hang out game and an excuse to get together.

DW, SW, CF, GA, CA, and Me:

DW acts too cool for it when it’s first suggested but then he is the DM and geeks out every game. I’m completely invested and love each game night. It’s less fighting than expected, a lot of mysteries, and a lot of hijinks caused by GA who picked Chaotic Neutral Trickster Cleric. SW loves his Wizard character and has the longest backstory. CA didn’t know a thing about the game at first but becomes a walking Rulebook after two sessions. Nobody is really sure how I convinced CF to play, he never seems truly happy to be there, but he also never misses a game. He goes out of his way to annoy the DM. He hasn’t told anyone anything about his backstory or alignment but multiple players are convinced he picked Lawful Evil. They’re right. He’s currently planning to tpk the party and I’m the only one who’s noticed. Instead of saving the others I have created an escape plan, ready to run at any moment. CF knows and is planning to kill me first as a result, but he’s waiting for the right moment to spring the plan. GA has a way for his character to come back to life so he doesn’t care. He spends the game trying to flirt with SW because it makes SW uncomfortable, although sometimes GA does genuinely flirt with me instead. DW ruins the moment. One time with a mind flayer. GA laid off the flirting for a session after that.

G&D Unit:

SM would be so good at the game that everyone thinks his dice are rigged, likely rolled more nat 20s than anyone has ever rolled ever. NJ is a tired DM boi in the end. SP also has incredible luck, but also tries to pull the stupidest stunts. Drinking games in-game are popular for the squad.

FBAWTF Unit:

The group is DMed by me, and it’s Pirate Themed. YN is the most excited to learn. YD has played before. YG tries to seduce every male NPC and ends up with a jealous harem in-game that becomes a plot point, much to his regret. YS is the sassy one-liner guy. All of them like to make fun of the pirate theme and joke about bringing in JD to voice the characters and embarrass me. It would never happen so it doesn’t annoy me enough to actually get me angry. They have a bout of bad luck and summon a kraken that ends up chasing them. YS ends up left behind in a rowboat to save themselves and has to roll a new character. He makes a pirate who wants revenge for a mutiny his crew committed, and stares specifically at YD (who first suggested leaving his character in a rowboat) every time his backstory comes up.

FB Unit:

JK DMs the game! NS chose a Ranger and took a small wildcat as his animal companion. It took TG a while to get used to how magic works, she took Wizard. QG took Cleric, I took Sorcerer. QG is the classic Lawful Good Cleric and is the moral compass usually, although none of us really want to do evil things. As a Neutral Good character sometimes I suggest stealing something to make stuff easier for us, but it’s 60/40 whether it actually happens. Everything is a debate. We like rp-ing, and JK does THE BEST voices. I’m honestly always laughing at his jokes even when the others don’t get it. QG tries not to meta game even though she can always tell what JK is planning. NS tries to adopt every single monster we encounter regardless of its alignment or if it has already begun to attack us. He succeeds nearly always, so we’re a lot lower level than we probably should be. But we have a pet dragon so goals.

DR, JPT, CO, and Me:

DR DMs the games and is always geeking out about it. Has extremely indepth world-building and a lot of intrigue plots. Not a lot of fighting at all, although JPT can get gung ho about it sometimes. CO is the healer and has the highest charisma so she deals with that. I’m the Rogue so I do a lot of recon. JPT flirts with everyone as shamelessly as he does in real life. Used to lay it on thick with CO and I but he realized that DR gets extremely flustered when he flirts with him, and that always makes me crack tf up, so he does that even more. He seems to live for making us break character. CO brings us back to the game. There’s one NPC that DR made have a crush on me and JPT always gets annoyed when he pops up again, and I’m suspicious that DR did this as revenge but he always looks so innocent about it I will never be sure. Despite the excitement, dnd night is probably the calmest part of our days.

SB, JP, RL, and Me:

I DM the game. RL comes up with the best strategies that almost always work. SB is the one—there’s always one—that tries to charm his way out of everything. He wasn’t sure he’d like rp but he’s a natural. JP plays an idiot and it’s hilarious. SB and him have formed a duo within their trio and they play off of each other beautifully. The entire game has become a classic comedy with RL as the straightfaced man to play jokes off of. They once went shopping for half the game and yet it was the funniest fucking thing that had happened so far. Although a highlight was SB and JP making a convoluted break-in plan where they almost both fell off a roof and RL just walking in and stealing the item they all wanted and walking out. It’s all very true to life.