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#BLACK SAILS SWEEP
max-nolastname · 1 year
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BLACK SAILS FANS NEVER LOSE
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cemeterything · 7 months
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I feel like The Terror and Black Sails have similar vibes (homoerotic men on boats) but I've never seen The Terror, would you recommend??
i wouldn't say the vibes are especially similar beyond surface level but if you liked black sails you will almost certainly like the terror because it also has devastating monologues that will forever raise your standards for storytelling, filthy sailor guys with every disease, a guilt riddled rage-fuelled captain who can't stop lying and alienating the people around him, strong and well written anticolonial themes, a cunty second in command who steals every scene he's in, schemes that go horrifically wrong with tragic consequences, homoeroticism, and boats.
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cursemewithyourkiss · 7 months
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memecatwings · 1 year
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its actually SO in character for captain flint to wage a reign of terror on the pirate-battle tournament become ungovernable etc etc
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runawaymarbles · 1 year
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"Black sails fans hate OFMD fans” hypothesis incorrect: black sails fans do NOT hate OFMD fans. we watch them with the moderate resentfulness of a milf queen listening to everyone praise the beauty of the teenage princess and how gorgeous she looks in a dress she borrowed from the queen's closet. Hope that helps.
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spacebronco · 7 months
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boatmediatourney · 6 months
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weekly reminder to submit sad soggy boat guys here
even if you think your guy has already been submitted feel free to submit him again bc it helps me with bracketing :)
happy midshipman monday!
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everythingispirates · 7 months
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in my brain there's a big crossover battle of the bands between all the pirate media I know btw potc gang does not win bc while they are all decent at their respective instruments the band is constantly collapsing in on itself because of really fucked up drama thank you and goodnight
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patternoticer · 1 year
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why doesn't max, the one who walks between the walls of the narrative, simply eat the other characters. well
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blacksailspolls · 7 months
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🏴‍☠️ BLACK SAILS EPISODE BRACKET: ROUND 3 🏴‍☠️
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TONIGHT !! OCT 14, 11:30PM SGT
🦜 MORE INFO ABOUT THIS BRACKET MAY BE FOUND HERE
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clitfisto · 13 days
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man. episode v huh.
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darkdemeter · 2 months
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𝐒𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐍, 𝐁𝐄 𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐄
— BUCKY BARNES COLUMN (ONESHOT)
Dark Pirate! Bucky Barnes x Siren! Female Reader
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—- not my gifs, credit to original posters! -—
| A/N | DISCRETION |
A/N — Yes. Yes... YAAAAS! IM DOING IT! I'm frickin' writing a pirate Bucky! Mmmm! Fuckin' love pirate stuff, I'm just living for Bucky being a hotto potatoh commanding a vessel on the high seas.
Pirate Bucky — semi dark Bucky — submissive/soft captive reader — possessive Bucky — SMUT 18+, Minors DNI! — P in V sex — memory loss/wiping via magic (reader affected) — light use of physical and sexual acts to avoid conflict — indirect breeding kink? — pet names — brief consumption of alcohol — I think that's it?
| SUMMARY |
He is your captain. There is no place you'd rather be than by his side, nothing you could ever want for that is not him. You owe everything, your entire self, to him. Yet overboard and on the tide you sail across, in search for a great and ancient treasure, a song continues to seep through the cracks of your heart and soul… a song so familiar yet unknown. Forgotten. Bucky reminds you yet again that there is no place else for you that isn't beside him, that there is nothing out there.
*4.1𝐤 ────────────────┘
| M-LIST | TAGLIST:
@identity2212 @sebastianstansqueen @openup-yourmind @kandis-mom @calwitch @cjand10 @ashdoctor @missmarvelophilic
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  There lays a song forgotten in your heart and soul, distantly faint as the receding tide to the shore. With each spare moment of peace you were given to dwell beneath the lapping waters, you spend a portion of it in search of that song. And what time remains within the falling sand’s glass, you bask in the blue and faded black abyss. 
  Tonight is no different. You could not remember the forgotten song that lulls you tenderly, pulling through skin and scale, calling you somewhere far, much too far, away from the balancing hull above. 
  You could not abandon your captain. Betray the trust between you both. After all, it was he who found you washed atop the rocky crevices of the island, who rescued you from a fate of drying out in the sun’s merciless heat. Who took care of you when there was nothing left of the life you once knew. 
  To break that earnt trust, to betray him, you can’t think of anything far more heartbreaking than that. 
“Time’s up, my Siren,” the voice of your captain beckons you. He calls you to the surface. 
  A sigh ripples through the water and your head tilts up towards the surface, the darkened slits in your milky white eyes shrink away from the moonlight penetrating through the waves. The long limb of your tail sweeps back and forth, thrusting you upwards, skin and scales shimmering brighter as you near the barrier between water and air. The breach pulls a lungful gasp of the night's chillingly crisp air, the only warmth coming from The Avenger. 
  Hair drench-pressed and thinned forms a curtain over your features as you peer up at the looming figure pridefully arching over the ship’s wooden rail. The slivered slits of your eyes grow wider as they focus on him, with a lantern beside him, glass scorched and worn by smoke, it illuminates the upper portion of his body. His white shirt ruggedly wrinkled and loosened to showcase a muscled chest, skin tanned by the sun’s heated kiss, sleeves rolled to the elbow, black ink painted legendary stories over his body in memorabilia. Stories forged into his flesh for all to study and cower in fear.
  He summons you with a kink of his finger and you obey his silent command with an all too eager nod. Around you, the water spirals into a column and rises up, pushing you higher to reach the wooden railing. Aboard the ship, the crew is merry in their celebrations. Another successful day of conquest and battle on the high seas, another amassed sum of gold and valuables to add to hull and reputation. 
  Of course spirits would be high and cheerful tonight. And of course, what was a conquest without the captain’s prize at the end of it all?
  Gathering yourself over the rail and onto the deck, the glistening shine of your tail morphs into two shapely legs, the milky hues of your eyes and other remnants of your true body hide in their human disguise. Your eyes find the hourglass on his opposite side, the sand all gathered in the bottom glass pit. Your captain holds something out for you and you graciously accept his gift, pulling the thin veil of your robe over your naked body. 
  His ocean blue eyes scan you up and down, the left corner of his plush, chapped lips turns upwards. 
“Did you find what you were looking for?” He purrs his question and it brings a cold chill to run up and down your spine, your lungs freeze with what little breath they had at that moment. 
  He turns his body properly to face you, burly shoulders and thick muscles straining the fabric of his shirt. His eyes fold slightly into a sharpened stare of interrogation. 
  “I–I don’t…” You shake your head, breath hitching. “I don’t understand, Captain. I search for nothing that is not you.”
  “Aye?” 
  Your gaze drops to the limb of his remaining flesh hand, the other limb itself brings an uncomfortable yet hazy familiarity, you dare not to look at it up close when in the awoken presence of his intimidating stature. Often you would question its being there and admire its raw and unique - mystical - materials, when your captain lay beside you fast asleep. 
  Wrapped tightly over and under the callousness of his palm, the golden chain twinkles in the pale moonlight, the larger pearl at its centre holstered by binding gold and tinier pearls, beneath the gilded net a more refined shape of a pearl dances on its link. 
  However, your mesmerised pupils flicker up in an instant, brought to the attention of your captain awaiting your obedient answer. A noise is pitched in your throat with the answer but it dies swiftly before its deliverance. 
  Your vision focuses behind him then, up near the ship’s helm, her fingers lace slowly in their hypnotic movement as the fabric of her scarlet magic is weaved together. A warning. You do your best to hide the distressed visage of fear, batting your eyelashes and brushing aside the death of your verbal response, you bow your body forward submissively to his that towers over you.
  When your lips touch his, he almost instantly devours yours in a hungry kiss, the soft caress of your fingers tracing the curves of his chest brings pride and lust to possessively reel you into him, your nude front colliding against the hardened wall of his own. 
  Your hands run their course of exploration up the swollen bulk of his arms until they find purchase and entangle themselves in his dark locks. His own hands ravage your body, kneading the flesh and slim muscle of your hips.
  He groans when you submit to his overpowering will, mouth parting to his eager tongue that shoots forward like a fired cannon, aimed to dominate you in every sense of the word. Your soft whimpers beneath him bring him unimaginable pleasure, the sort that drives him to seek it evermore, with no seeming end to his insatiable hunger for what is you; your entire being. Wolves are known to be ravenous beasts. It’s why he’s known by the moniker as the White Wolf. 
  His tongue fiercely dances over yours, swirling and his bottom teeth tease you by nipping your lip, earning a high pitched squeal from you. He chuckles, the sound rich and dark in its intention. Your core comes alight, burning hotly and the once cool air dissipates as heat courses through every vein and nerve in your body, your mind swimming in the ocean pools of his eyes. Eyes that at times are the only thing you need to be connected to the sea. 
  The prominent tent of his erected endowment presses against your stomach and lower abdomen. You finally pull away, however, in his caging embrace it’s not very far you’re able to move back. 
  “Wait for me in my cabin, little Siren,” he orders gruffly. Your mouth falls agape and you sputter in your rattled confusion. 
  “But I—” Still he penetrates you with that cold stare. It prods at you with radiant intensity, it matches the ominous scarlet glow that now burns brighter now as it moves down the upper deck’s stairs. Your eyes dart between the woman who controls the rolling waves of red magic and the ferocity of your captain’s hardpressed gaze. 
  Your head bounces quickly. “Yes...” 
  A few words of compliance are cut off by a gasp. As you attempt to follow his order and return to his cabin, he halts you within his metallic grasp and pulls you back in, curled lips mere inches from your own, in the clutches of his brazen hold, he commands your attention. Your hands are forced to rest over his chest. 
  He drawls with a warning growl, “Yes?”
  “Yes, Captain Barnes.”
  Bucky nods his head once and lets you go, his eyes flicker between the cabin door and you, silently instructing you to hurry along. Your bare feet barely make a sound over the wooden deck in your traversal towards the cabin, where you would await your captain to claim his prize. Treasure that he greedily gets to have all to himself. The conquest he takes glee in ravishing himself full of. 
  Once you’re tucked inside, exactly where he wants you, Bucky scratches at his stubbled jaw, his recent shave already beginning to grow in again. Wanda approaches his side, the fabric of her magic ceasing at her fingertips like embers passing over into lowly ashes. 
  “That was a close one,” Bucky growls, his tongue that savours your taste runs over his teeth. She hisses with a hushed tone, “With each outing she is given to delve into the sea, my magic weakens, Captain.”
  His eyes roll to glare at the woman beside him. She sighs with a bow of her head, eyes downcast as to not provoke him into thinking her words a challenge. 
  “All I mean to say is that you must reinforce her rules. She’s beginning to suspect far too much, and with each piece of recollection, my power is sapped by her own. Enforce her rules once more.”
  Bucky’s shoulders shrug upwards with an all too arrogant huff, haughty in his conviction. He idly tilts his flesh hand, admiring the piece of you he has wrapped up in his iron grasp. 
  “She will do well to keep in mind her place. She’s intimidated.”
  “She’s conflicted, Captain.” Her words bring about a scowl to Bucky’s face, lips coiled into a snarl and nose wrinkling, eyes thinning. “And it will be a matter of time before she is free of you, and you will be known as the captain who lost his siren.”
  The bridge of this knowledge leaves Bucky in a state of strife. An aspect to his notorious reputation was garnered by your captivity. The White Wolf known by all as the fearsome pirate captain who tamed a siren; held you in the oyster of his clutches. If he did lose you, then his reputation would be suffering a heavy loss. As if to sense his change of demeanour, her hands raise up with her glowing, magic tipped fingers. His nostrils flare and the harsh prestige that made him a force not to be trifled with, he commands,  “Do it.”
  Bucky struts off with a roll of thunder beneath his leather worn boots, swiping up a half drunk bottle of rum and swallows an animalistic gulp, joining in on the festivities of his crew. Wanda observes her captain for a moment before diverting her attention towards the cabin. Her hands fold over one another, and with her palms outstretched, the scarlet hue dances through the air in a thin, cloudy blanket, searching and finding the miniscule gap beneath the wooden door. 
  He pummels into you until your back pushes far into the mattress, eliciting sharp whines and sultry moans from your parted lips, breath caught in a pattern of shallow pants. He chases after his second high as he drives his cock deep into you, the sound of skin slapping skin perverts the cabin’s air and already you begin to feel your core tremble in its own pursuit for its fourth orgasm. With each powerful snap of his hips, his throat chokes out a grunt in his exertions, the girth of his cock sinks deep into the channel of your hot, velvety cunt. 
  “Fuckin’ hell,” he growls lowly with a hiss, “so fuckin’ tight! You feel so good, you’re— taking me so well.” 
  With an exceptionally powerful rut of his hips and he has you on the precipice of screaming, thighs quivering in their hold around his waist, heels digging into the dip of his large, muscular back. Any coherent thoughts and words die on the vine of your vocal cords, only able to procure sounds of pleasure, to chant his name over and over again. 
  “Captain Barnes!” you mewl with fervour. Bucky’s chest vibrates with a husky chuckle. “That’s right, scream my name, let the crew hear you, Love. Let them hear how drunk you are for my cock.” 
  His one palm is laced with sweat, thick and roughened fingers squeeze yours in a passionate display of his dark possessiveness over you. Your captain could be very jealous when another’s eyes lingered on you for even a second too long, many others had suffered the brunt of his fury - weapons ablaze - and you in the end suffered the brunt of his envy with his cock pounding into you for the next several hours. 
  To remind you to whom it was you belong to. 
  His lips suckle one of the erected peaks of your breasts, moaning as his tongue leaves a wet trail around it before passing over to the second to repeat the treatment. Your head turns to the side sharply when the head of his cock splits you open even further than you could previously imagine, hitting a hidden crevice that leaves you without breath. 
  He gauges your reaction, the colour of your eyes blurring, phasing between the natural milky white canvases and the hue of your disguise, your canines and incisors now elongated, all because of the pleasure that pools at the junction where your bodies meet. But for a moment, you catch the glimmer of gold still wrapped around his hand, glimmering metal gnawing and rubbing across his skin, you’re torn between your euphoria and clouded curiosity. 
  “Say it again,” he grunts with a hard thrust that makes his muscles ripple insanely beneath his skin.
  “C’mon, say it for your captain, Love.” 
  Your lips and tongue drag across the flesh of his wrist, the pulse of his racing heart beats through, you can almost taste the rhythm. His sweat tastes strong with his musk, a strong flavour of the salty sea, sandy beaches and gunpowder. 
  You moan softly, almost in a whisper, “Captain… C-Captain Barnes.”
  The effect you have on him is indescribable to him. Never has he been able to put it into words, all he can do is feel it; carnally. The repetitive pounding into that deeper and sweeter spot has your back arching up, the smooth layer of your sweat covered body rubs against his, able to feel each defining muscle, he uses his metal hand to grip hold of one of your thighs, angling you so that you’re spread further apart for him. Your eyes begin to fall heavy and roll back into your skull in your drunken haze, the shimmer of scarlet presently blooms from time to time in them.  
  “That’s right. You belong to me, little Siren. It’s my cock that has you dripping wet.” His thrusts become faster, losing the precise edge he had before, his climax inevitably as close as your own. Your nails embed crescent moons into the skin of his one hand while the other bites into his shoulder. 
  “I’m the only man— fuck! The only man who gets to have you like this. Shit… shit. ’M going to fill you up.” 
  “Please, please… Cap—”
  “Aye, I’m going to fill you up, have you nice ‘nd full until my cum is leaking out of your little cunt, Siren. Fuck… you want that, don’t you? I know you do.” 
  You gasp with each attempt to breathe, each push and pull of his cock strikes you like a match to light the powder keg, the explosion of your climaxes comes as a white hot flash in your vision, momentarily blinding you. Your hot walls squeeze around his large endowment, forcing him to thrust back and forth even harder, grunting hot breaths against the shell of your ear. 
  His seed is flushed into the channel of your pussy in thick, seething spurts that paint your walls that milk him for every precious drop. 
  What he gives makes your lower abdomen weigh a little heavier, a little bit fuller than you were before. His hips grow slower with each dissipating explosion from his tip. His large chest expands hugely with every intake of air to his lungs before deflating as a pleased groan. 
  In his reverie of contentment, having had his fill of his prize - for now - he withdraws his softening cock from your pussy, a moistened pop echoes in the emptiness of your thoughts. Bucky rolls off of you to lay at your side, atop the furs and silken drapes of the bed. Before you can make a move he uses his metal arm to drag you in closer, tucking you into his side, the coldness of his fingers skimming the delicate texture of your arm. 
  The soothing rock of the ship is enough to lull you to sleep, the lids of your eyes inching closer and closer together. 
  “Still deny that you found nothing?” 
  His question only brings your brows to knit together. You shake your head and huddle closer into his side, basking in the comforting warmth of his body. Why on earth would he ask you such a silly question? As if there was anything of importance that outranked him, by being at his side. 
  The answer you give is instant in its resolve, “I don’t understand, Captain. I needn’t find anything out there… I have you.” 
  Your answer, though unable to see it from your position, pleases him and his lips curl into a toothy smirk, long sweeps of his dark brown hair tousled about in his post sex state. You lay your head against his chest to hear the steady thrum of his heartbeat, eyes closing to seek rest and refuge in the arms of your beloved captain. The man that grants you safety, that promises you nights of passion followed by the comfort of his body next to yours. All he asks in return is your loyalty. Your devotion.
  For you to be his siren. 
  Behind the blurry curtain of sleep layered over your eyes, you awaken and by your estimation, only for around an hour or maybe a little more. The morn still hasn’t risen over the ocean’s horizon, the moonlight shimmering and shining over the waves. The candlelight that bathed the cabin with a sensual atmosphere had now burnt out. 
  Breaths of deepened sleep sound next to you, the chiselled sculpt of his chest you’d used as a pillow takes steady form, as he sleeps. It makes you wonder as to what he dreams about, sometimes a scowl is etched into his attractive visage and he becomes restless, leaving you to somehow comfort him. And other times, mostly after he’s spent drawing orgasm after orgasm from the two of you, he finds respite. 
  You take the time to thoroughly yet delicately rub your eyes, robbing the tiredness of its hold to take you once more. With a tilt of your head, hair coming over your shoulder to graze the top of your breasts, his other hand lay out over the bed, residing just over the edge. 
  The mysterious object that somehow you know is linked with you, but as to how or why, or its significance to you in any case, is still laced around his calloused palm. Despite its odd gleam of familiarity, you believe this is the first time you’ve seen it before, however, the tiny voice in the back of your mind says otherwise. Then you must have seen something like it before somewhere. 
  Something deep in the recess of your heart, you have to know. Is this somehow linked to the estranged longing to a home you can’t remember? Does this necklace bind you to the lost melody of times erased from your memory?
  You take caution in moving carefully, inching your way to lean over the sleeping form of your captain, skin brushing skin, you slowly rotate your hips and hoist a thigh over his waist. Heated crimson flushes into your cheeks as you analyse your newfound position, but also from the way his body stirs lightly, still enraptured by sleep yet his body adjusting to your core lining over his naval. 
  Thawed from your frozen idle of panic, you take a moment to calm the racing of your heart that hammers vigorously against your chest, your nimble fingers reach out towards his flesh hand that clings protectively to the mysterious necklace. 
  This almost feels… too easy. You swallow a silent gulp, fingers grazing against his palm when his body shifts, bumping up into yours, you pull your reach back so fast, your hand slaps against his ribs, doing your best to cover up your true intentions. His stills beneath you once more and your shoulders fall lax with a sigh of relief. 
  Again you dare another attempt to grab the necklace, this time you don’t risk breathing, holding it for what seems like forever until your lungs begin to swell with an ache that makes them feel like bubbles about to burst. 
  You work the chain until it's loosened and finally allow your held breath to escape you, the strain to remain silent proving far more difficult than you would have liked. The weight of your body shifts backwards, now sitting up, you allow your eyes to take in every detail of the object in your hands. The gold chain is light, ghostly as it graces your hands, your fingers lace and loop it around amidst the process of your conjuring thoughts. 
  Like a puppeteer pulling the strings you raise the necklace up by its precious thread. The pearl encaged by its makeshift net swings from side to side, as though even when you are completely still, it has a soul of its own accord. 
  Everything you knew about pearls is forfeit, the identity of this one brings the bevel between your brows to form in thoughtful wonder. Therein lies the piece of some puzzle, the missing notes to the melody to which you only recall the faint rhythm of the song. 
  It has to mean something of greater importance. But if it did, then why is your captain so adamant to dismiss your curious nature to find the answers?
  As if the pearl itself is the key, you hear within your heart and soul the song. Voices sing a tone that is calming to your senses, a sweet and endearing lullaby meant for you to hear whenever you find yourself in the loneliest of places, in the darkest reaches of the ocean, the connection will bring you somewhere you call home. 
  But your home is The Avenger. Aboard the ship with Captain Barnes. The man known as Bucky to his closest inner circle. So why do the voices mingling with the tide call you away from all that? With each passing second you become ensnared by the spell of the pearl, the voices of whom you somehow find solace in become louder, the softened chorus of their song echoes a hundred times over in your head. 
  Before you even give pause to reason, your own voice becomes paired with the orchestra of sirens. You have no words, and maybe you never did, all you did need is the pearl to help guide you in remembering the melody. The uncertainty of your humming eases, the unforeseen instructors aiding you, your voice is soft within its deep reverie when it all comes to an abrupt pause, a gasp severing the tune. 
  He has you by the wrist, fingers bruisingly tight and giving you no choice to pull away from him, as he often did whenever he saw you retreat from him without his say so. 
  Bucky’s eyes bear into yours, penetrating the barrier of the necklace, he stares you down the way a wolf does the lonely prey in its path. His eyes match the brooding darkness of a storm at sea, a breed of villainy that threatens those who dare to try him. 
  “Captain…” Your throat bobs with a nervous swallow.  “I– I wasn’t—” 
  Out of pure instinct to not tempt his fury, your hold on the necklace ceases and it gathers in the roughened pad of his palm, large thumb that has caressed your sensitive nub plenty of times now works against the spherical shape of the pearl, brows heavy in their judgement to assess your punishment. His movement is sudden upon the brink of your awareness, a sharp gasp that cuts into the tender muscle of your chest as he plants you flat on your back, hands both of flesh and metal pin your wrists on either side of you until the bruising ache becomes far too unbearable. But you do nothing to voice the level of your pain. He would not hear of it. His newly erected shaft ghosts over your entrance, the beginnings of your slick painting his already drooling tip.  “I’m beginning to think you like breaking my rules, Siren.”
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spacedace · 9 months
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Had a dc x dp brain worm, feel free to use as a prompt <3
Sidenote, I decided to get fancy with the Ancients titles because of course I did lol
Shifting Where = Space (Danny)
Eternal When = Time (Clockwork)
Ever Onward = Speedforce (Ellie)
---
Bruce watched the footage again.
And again.
Again.
It didn’t make sense.
A week ago every television, radio, computer, phone - even the LED billboards - had been taken over to deliver a message. Across the United States. In every territory it held. Every military base. Down in the depths of the oceans where American submarines tried to creep past Atlantian patrols. In the endless cold white of Antarctica. Even far above in the International Space Station. Any place the United States Government had control over, any place one of its citizens found themselves. There was the message.
The face of an entity, human in shape but not in form. Hair as gleaming white as starlight, eyes bright as the twisting dance of the Aurora Borealis, skin as cold and blue as the tail of a comet. The entity wore armor as black as the depths of space with a crown to match, the later glinting and shifting with the twisting birth and death of galaxies. A cloak of nebulae danced down his shoulders, eclipsing the world beyond the entity entirely.
He named himself, jaw tight, expression serious.
High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms.
The Shifting Where. Son of the Eternal When. Father of the Ever Onward. His Epitaphs many and ever growing. The True Balance. The Bridge Between. The Devourer of Dark. The Last Child of Between. The Great One.
King of the Dead. King of the Infinite Worlds. King of so much more than Bruce had ever even known was possible.
King who had declared war. Who marshaled his endless armies. Who spoke of warnings, of efforts to reach a peace, of trying again and again and again to find a way to not plunge into violence and bloodshed. All things living come to call him King in time, he had no want or need to go out and hurry that along. But there were no options left to him now. He had tried for peace. He had been denied.
He would not see his people suffer any longer. Would not see those he’d sworn to lead and protect imprisoned by fools who had sworn themselves enemies to all the afterlives. Would no longer permit the vicious cruelty to continue.
The message was a final warning.
A final offer.
Three days, Phantom said. The United States government would have three days to release their prisoners, to begin the process of dismantling the laws that made death itself an illegal act.
If they refused, he would lead his endless armies personally in the war to come.
It had not been an idle threat.
Three days after the message, after Bruce and the rest of the Justice League scrambled to try and figure out just what it was it was all about, after Justice League Dark’s members shakily took turns explaining just how powerful the being that had gave that message was and how much danger the world was in should he and his armies march upon their world, war came.
Of all places, it began in a town in Illinois.
The sky shattered like broken glass above, Lazarus Green beyond, and the Dead poured out.
It started in Illinois.
It did not end there.
Bruce watched the footage of it all, eyes burning as he watched every second of CCTV footage, every shaky phone camera video, every news broadcast.
Most of them looked human enough. Changed in death, but recognizably human once. A pair of glowing teenagers on a motorcycle, a writhing shadow twisting about at their command sweeping chaos upon the battlefield. A young woman dressed to perform with hair a literal flame, burning bright blue and snapping furiously as she played devastation upon her enemies with her guitar. A child with corpse gray skin and luminescent green hair, flickering in and out of Bruce’s ability to see as if fighting against a law of existence to be visible, screaming orders to a skeleton crew from his place on deck of a 1700s ship that sailed through the sky, disappearing into clouds before raining down attacks from above.
There was more. Glowing skeletons dressed in the fashions of war spanning every culture going back millennia. Robots with weapons far beyond the technology they had even in the League. Creatures of myth and legend. Things of nightmares.
Leading them all, as he had promised, was Phantom.
He looked younger, smaller. Just a boy, really, a gangly teenager that hadn’t quite finished growing into himself. One holding power beyond anything Bruce could ever imagine, but still just a child as far as he could see, no older than Tim who’d just graduated high school. Frantic research found Phantom appearing as far back as human history, but those sightings had to have been after his death. Bruce can’t help but wonder how young the boy had been when he died, how much of that youth still clung to him through all these eons.
It wasn’t something he’d let him self consider normally, not with something like this.
A dangerous unknown appearing without warning and attacking with unimaginable power and seemingly endless forces. It was something that would normally eclipse everything else. Something that would make Bruce put aside the ache at seeing a face so young twisted in rage.
But.
He watched all the footage.
Civilians were put in the crossfire. Were shot at and endangered. Were left terrified and scrambling for safety in buildings that were rapidly being torn away by stray artillery.
But never by Phantom or his armies.
The dead, in fact, went very far out of their way to ensure civilians weren’t harmed. Sweeping people up out of the way of falling debris. Shielding them from attacks that would have most certainly killed a normal human. Some dead even helped evacuate, ushering a frightened and panicked populous to safety as gently as they were capable of. Some of the less human creatures - giant bear-like beings with horns and fangs and ice edging their burly frames - even rushed forward to offer medical aid.
When the sky shattered open and the armies of the dead swept in, they ignored the town below. They focused instead on what was discovered later to be the base of a secretive government agency. The dead’s fight focused on those individuals in sharp white suits, bearing weapons capable of actually injuring King Phantom’s people.
It was these agents that brought the fight to the streets to Amity Park. That fired recklessly and without thought or care to the casualties they could inflict. That didn’t seem to care if they killed a hundred civilians if it meant hurting just one of Phantom’s soldiers.
Bruce watched all the footage.
And again.
Again.
Phantom had declared war.
Phantom spoke in his message of being out of options, of attempting peace. Phantom gave three days time for the release of captives. Phantom lead armies who fought viciously but never once willingly harmed civilians.
Phantom declared war, but he didn’t want it.
“Amanda Waller has reached out.”
Bruce didn’t turn his attention from the screens before him, eyes burning as he followed Phantom as the King dove away from the middle of locked combat to shield a child from a pulse of green energy from something like a grenade another agent in white had carelessly thrown. The child was crying but unharmed. The left pauldron of Phantom’s armor cracked and shattered from a direct shot from the enemy he’d just been fighting that he’d turned his back on, a glowing green liquid uncomfortably like Lazarus Water dripped down from a smoldering wound.
Clark stepped up to stand beside him as he watched, face worn and tired. The League had missed the first battle, but they’d been quick to appear at the rest. Phantom and his army ignored them unless they put themselves purposefully in the way of the fight. They were, as Justice League Dark had warned, vastly out powered by the entities fighting. A hulking giant knight made of shadow riding a nightmarish steed had driven Clark six feet down into the dirt when he’d attempted to make his way to Phantom directly to try and talk to the king.
The depth Clark had ended up felt like a warning of what would happen if he tried to get close to the king again.
It probably was.
“She said they have intel for us.” A faint twitch of fingers, jaw clenching, voice flat in that way that told Bruce his old friend was fighting back anger with everything he had. “That she has options for how to deal with the insurgence.”
Bruce shut off the monitors.
He’d seen enough.
Now was time to get answers to just what, exactly, Amanda Waller and the US government had done to cause the Dead to rise and rage.
---
Part Two Part Three Part Four
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brightbluedot · 6 days
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goddddd black sails is still so good. the very last line of the first episode: we see max leave eleanor's bed, walk up to jack, and crawl into his lap. anne interprets this as a come-on and gets angry, and then max tells him: "i think i have something you might want to buy."
and like, coming from max, that could still be a come-on. when she's at work, sex is a viable business proposition -- the expected one, from her and her coworkers. jack's perception of the moment very well might not have changed yet.
but we as the viewers instantly know that she's referring to the page. we the viewers are also privileged in our knowledge that she just left eleanor's bed -- which was not strictly for work. she's just "the whore" to those around her, but look, her business proposition is all high-handed crew politics, and the last person she slept with she had personal motives for pursuing. there's a woman on your lap in a brothel offering to sell you something, and everything you think you know about her and sex and business is wrong in this moment. and she is still very much a sex worker, which we will see her suffer for and excel at and leverage to her own ends in a thousand different ways as the story goes on. it's not a simple rug pull, but a single layered, cohesive, portrait.
it's such a cool little microcosm of the way the show plays with expectations to add the depth and color that it does to those the empire flattens and sweeps to the side. nobody is ever just one thing, the reduction of themselves. and nobody is ever seen by those around them the way they are by us, who see all. and so much of the action stems from them being all too aware of the importance of that perception and the assumptions it carries. it's so refreshing to be invited to look so deeply and see more everywhere your eye could possibly land.
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memecatwings · 1 year
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oh my god pirate-battle is having an absolute meltdown.....
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Tolkien and long hair: what do the books say?
Any time Tolkien describes the length of Elves’ hair, it’s always said to be long:
- Glorfindel: ‘His golden hair flowed shimmering in the wind of his speed’ (FOTR - Amroth: ‘The wind was in his flowing hair’ (FOTR) - Celeborn: ‘The hair of the Lord Celeborn was of silver long and bright’ (FOTR) - Elves even made bowstrings from their hair: ‘A bow such as the Galadhrim used, longer and stouter than the bows of Mirkwood, and strung with a string of elf-hair’ (FOTR) - Celegorm: ‘Golden was his long hair’ (The Lays of Beleriand) - The Elves of Valinor: ‘With their gleaming hair in the wind flying’ (The Lays of Beleriand); ‘There blowing free unbraided hair is meshed with beams of Moon and Sun’ (The Lost Road) - The Teleri: ‘With their long hair gleaming like foam’ (Morgoth’s Ring) - Olwë: ‘The hair of Olwë was long and white’ (Morgoth’s Ring) - Thingol: ‘Elwë himself had long and beautiful hair of silver hue’ (The War of the Jewels) - Fingon: ‘He wore his long dark hair in great plaits braided with gold’ (The Shibboleth of Fëanor) - And then there’s this quote which implies that long hair was seen as desirable among the Elves: ‘All the Eldar had beautiful hair (and were especially attracted by hair of exceptional loveliness), but the Noldor were not specially remarkable in this respect, and there is no reference to Finwë as having had hair of exceptional length, abundance, or beauty beyond the measure of his people’ (The Shibboleth of Fëanor)
But it’s not just Elves—Men are also described as having long hair:
- Aragorn: ‘He threw back his hood, showing a shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey’; ‘His hood was cast back, and his dark hair was blowing in the wind’ (FOTR) - The Witch-king of Angmar: ‘His hair was long and gleaming’ (FOTR); in an earlier draft of the scene, Tolkien wrote that all the Ringwraiths had long hair: ‘Upon their long grey hair were crowns and helms of pale gold’ - Boromir: ‘They combed his long dark hair and arrayed it upon his shoulders’ (TTT) - The Rohirrim: ‘Their hair, flaxen-pale, flowed under their light helms, and streamed in long braids behind them’; ‘Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?’; ‘Their golden hair was braided on their shoulders’ (TTT) - Eorl the Young: ‘His yellow hair was flying in the wind’ (TTT) - Théoden: ‘His white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids’ (TTT); ‘The hair that flowed beneath his high helm was like snow’ (ROTK) - Men from the South: ‘They have black eyes, and long black hair’; ‘His black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood’ (TTT) - Faramir and Éowyn: ‘And so they stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air’ (ROTK); this would only be possible if Faramir also had long hair - Túrin: ‘For his garb was of the wild woods and his hair was long’ (The Book of Lost Tales)
What about Maiar?
- Gandalf is described as follows: ‘His long white hair, his sweeping silver beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend’ (FOTR); ‘His snowy hair flew free in the wind’ (TTT) - Even the Balrog is described as having long hair: ‘Its streaming hair seemed to catch fire, and the sword that it held turned to flame’ (The Return of the Shadow)
Interestingly, I only found a few instances of characters cutting their hair short, and all of them are women:
- Lúthien cuts her hair in The Silmarillion, although it does not say how short, but in The Lays of Beleriand, it says she ‘cut the hair about her ears, and close she cropped it to her head’  - Vána cuts her hair too in The Book of Lost Tales: ‘There follows an account of how Vána...cut short her golden hair and gave it to the Gods, and from her hair they wove sails and ropes’  - In The War of the Ring, Éowyn is described with shorn hair when she goes to war, although this was changed in the final version of ROTK: ‘In the passage that follows, Éowyn’s hair is described as shorn upon her neck’
In conclusion, long hair is clearly the norm in Tolkien’s books. No Elf is ever described as having short hair apart from Lúthien, and no mortal is ever described as having short hair except for Éowyn in the rejected draft. If anyone should have short hair, it’s certain female characters, not male Elves. Fight me!
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