#but i don't think the kraken is all that evil | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladyluscinia · 6 months

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Ok, I think I might be exiting the "are you fucking kidding me?" period and ready to make a real argument, so lets talk about Three Act Structure!

Is OFMD S2 just the "Darkest Hour"?

A very common explanation I've been seeing for some of the... controversial... aspects of S2 is that it's meant to be that way. That the middle act is where the protagonists hit their lowest point. Where we get the big failure point. Where everything looks kind of shit.

S2 is supposedly just that point. It's The Empire Strikes Back. People have been making that comparison since before the first episodes even dropped, telling everyone to expect something that could be disappointing or unsatisfying - it's just a matter of needing to wait for S3 to pull it all together.

It's not a baseless framework to consider the show through - I'm pretty sure David Jenkins has mentioned it in interviews (or at least mentioned he planned for three acts / seasons) so it's certainly worth asking how he's doing at the 2/3rd mark.

So - quick summary of Three Act Structure:

Act 1 introduces our characters and world. It includes the inciting incident of the story and the first plot point, where a) the protagonist loses the ability to return to their normal life, and b) the story raises whatever dramatic question will drive the entire plot. Act 2 is rising action and usually most of the story. The protagonist tries to fix things and fucks them up worse, in the process learning new skills and character developing to overcome their flaws. Act 3 is the protagonist taking one more shot, but this time they are ready. We get the climax of the story, the dramatic question gets an answer, and then the story closes.

If you want examples, the Star Wars Original Trilogy is a very popular template. And, hell, he said it was a pirate story... the main Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy also does a solid job with their three acts.

Let's compare. (Spoiler: I'm not impressed 🤨)

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First thing I need to establish... Wait. Two things. First is that Three Act Structure is flexible, so we can't really analyze success or failure by pulling up a list of necessary plot beats that should have been hit in X order. Second is that if you tell me you are writing a romance with a Three Act Structure - where "the relationship is the story" - the first thing I'm going to do is ask you how you are adapting it. Because while there's not necessarily anything preventing you from applying this to a character driven plot, most people are familiar with it as plot structure for externally driven conflict.

Unless there's a reason the status of the main relationship is intrinsically tied up in the current status of the war against the evil empire, a standard Three Act Structure is going to entail either an antagonistic force that absolutely wants your main couple apart being the main relationship obstacle OR the romance aspect being a subplot to the protagonist's narrative adventure. None of those sound like how the show has been described.

So how is OFMD adapting it?

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Act 1

(Can't figure out how well Act 2 is doing if we don't start at setup.)

Right out the gate, OFMD breaks one of the main "rules" for a story where the Acts are delivered in three parts. Namely the one where the first Act is treated as an acceptable standalone story, with it's own satisfying yet open ended conclusion.

In Star Wars, A New Hope ends with the princess rescued, Luke finding the Force, Han finding his loyalty, and the Death Star destroyed. The Empire isn't defeated, the antagonists still live... the story is not over, but this one movie doesn't feel unfinished.

Similarly, Curse of the Black Pearl gives Jack his ship back, Elizabeth and Will get together, and Norrington has the English Navy let them all off the hook and give Jack and the pirates one day's head start.

OFMD's final beat of S1 being Kraken Arc starting is not that, even if Stede returning to sea is still a pretty hopeful note. Now... I don't necessarily think this was a bad call. At least, not if the story is the relationship. It's easy to close on a happy ending and then fuck it up next movie if the conflict is external and coming for them. Not so much if you're driving the story with your protagonists' flaws, in part because it should be really obvious at the end of setup that your main characters need development and can't run off together right now. I actually like that they were risk-takers and let S1 look at the situation clearly vs doing a fragile happy end, because it takes into account the difference between a character-driven and plot-driven narrative.

I think OFMD's Act 1 actually ends at maybe the Act of Grace? Well, there through the kiss on the beach, counting as our "first plot point" before everything goes wrong, basically.

At that point, they have setup the story and characters. We've been introduced to Edward and Stede's current issues. Signing the Act of Grace does make the intertwined arcs between them real - it's no longer a situation that either one of them could just walk away from like it was in 1x07 - and we narrow in on the (alleged) driving question of the show:

It's not about "Will Stede become a great pirate?" or "Will we develop a better kind of piracy for the crew?" - the show is the relationship and the big question is "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?"

Act 1 ends on their first solution, being together and making each other happy and admitting it's more than just friendship. Act 2 starts, appropriately, by saying both of them are currently too flawed for that to go anywhere but crashing and burning.

Now... looking back, what does Act 1 do well vs poorly?

I think it's really strong on giving us the foundation for BlackBonnet's characters and flaws. We aren't surprised Stede goes home or Edward goes Kraken (or at least... we weren't supposed to be surprised. There are still a lot of holdouts blaming Izzy for interrupting Edward's "healing" despite how at this point in the story it doesn't make sense for Edward to have the skills to heal... but I digress). The relationship question is compelling at the end of S1, the cliffhanger hooks, and the fandom explosion of fics did not come from nowhere - the audience was invested.

I also think Act 1 does a great job of settling us in the universe. We understand the rules it abides by, from how gay pirates are just a fact of life to how there's no important organs on the left side of the body. Stede has a muppety force field. Rowboats have homing devices, and port is always as close as you want it to be. Scurvy is a joke. The overblown violence of pirate life is mostly a joke, but we are going to take the violence of childhood trauma seriously.

Lucius's fake-out death, while technically part of Act 2, works well because Act 1 did a good job of priming everyone to go "obviously this show wouldn't kill a crew member for shock value, and we're 100% supposed to suspend disbelief about how he could have survived getting flung into the sea in the middle of the night." And we do. And we get rewarded for it.

Regarding antagonists - a big focus of any setup - the show is deliberately weak. The one with the most screentime is Izzy, and he's purposefully ineffective at separating our main couple. Every antagonist is keyed to a particular character, and they function mostly to inform us of that character's flaws and development requirements. The Badmintons tell us about Stede's repression and feelings of inadequacy, and Izzy tells us about Edward's directionless discontent and tendency to avoid his problems. Effectively - the show is taking the stance this will be a character driven narrative where Stede and Edward's flaws are the source of problems and development the solution. No person or empire (or social homophobia) is separating them...

...which leads me to something not present - there nothing really about the struggle of piracy against the Empire. Looking at Curse of the Black Pearl... we see piracy is in danger. The Black Pearl itself is described as the last great pirate threat the British Navy needs to conquer. Hangings are omnipresent - Jack is sentenced to die by one almost as soon as he's introduced to the story, when his only act so far had been to wander around and save Elizabeth from drowning. OFMD tries to invoke this kind of struggle in 2x08, but there's no foundation. Our Navy antagonists are Stede's childhood bullies, and so focused on Stede the crew isn't even in danger when they get caught. The Republic of Pirates is getting jokes about being gentrified, not besieged.

Even the capture of Blackbeard by the Navy is treated as a feather in Wellington's cap but not a huge symbolic blow against piracy... because we just do not have that grand struggle woven into Act 1. You only know the "Golden Age of Piracy" is ending if you google it, or have watched a bunch of pirate shows.

Overall, a solid Act 1, well adapted to the kind of story they've said they were looking to tell - a romance in the (silly-fied) age of piracy, instead of a pirate adventure with a romantic subplot.

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Now, Sidebar - Where is the story going?

The thing about the dramatic question - in OFMD's case: "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?" - is that a) there's normally more than one question bundled up in that one + sideplots, and b) while you aren't supposed to have the answer yet, you can usually guess what needs to happen to give you the answer.

Back to our examples... Luke's driving question is "Will the Empire be defeated?" Simple. Straightforward. Also: "Will Luke become a Jedi?" The eventual climax of our story from there is pretty obvious... the story is over when Luke wins the war for the Rebellion in a Jedi way. That's the goal that they are working toward.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a bit more complicated. We're juggling more characters and have a less defined heroic journey, but there are driving questions like "Is Jack Sparrow a good man?" and "Is Will Turner a pirate / what does that mean?" and even "Will the British Navy defeat piracy?" They get basic answers in Curse of the Black Pearl, and far more defined ones in At World's End. Still, this is another plot-driven narrative. They've laid the foundations for the Pirates vs Empire struggle, and when that final battle turns into the trilogy climax then you know what's happening.

OFMD is not doing a plot-driven narrative. To judge how they are doing at their goals, we have to ask what they think a happy ending entails in a character sense.

Clearly it's not the classic romantic sideplot, where the climax is the first kiss / acknowledgement of feelings. They've teased a wedding in Word of God comments a lot, so that's probably our better endpoint. Specifically, though, a wedding where both of our protagonists aren't ready to flee from the altar (big ask) and where they've both grown enough that their flaws / mutual tendencies to run away from life problems won't tank the relationship.

In Stede's case it's still massive feelings of inadequacy and being too repressed to talk about his problems. Also he ran away from his family to chase a lifelong dream of being a pirate - "Is Stede going to find fulfillment in being a pirate captain, or will the real answer be love?" Edward meanwhile expresses a desire to quit piracy and retire Blackbeard, but we also find out he's struggling with massive self-loathing and guilt from killing his father - "Is retiring what Edward wants to do, or is he just running away?"

If they are going to get to a satisfying wedding beat at the climax of their story, what character beats do we need to hit in advance?

Off the top of my head - both characters need to self-realize their flaws (a pretty necessary demand of anyone who runs away from problems). They are set up to balance each other well, but also to miscommunicate easily. They have to tell each other about or verbally acknowledge that self-realization so it can be resolved. Stede has to decide how much being a pirate means to him. Edward has to decide if he's retiring and what he wants to do. They both need to show something to do with getting past their childhood traumas given all the flashbacks. Through all this, they also need to hit the normal romance beats that convince the audience they are romantically attracted to each other and like... want to get married.

Oh, and this is more of a genre-specific sideplot, but once they demonstrate a behavior that hurts the people who work for them, they need to then demonstrate later how it won't happen again. Proof of growth, which is kind of important in a comedy where a lot of the humor is based in them being massively self-centered assholes. Stede doesn't earn his acceptance in the community until he kicks Calico Jack off the ship, making up for causing the situation with Nigel in the first episode. A workplace comedy can get a lot of material from the boss as the worker's antagonist, but if you want the bosses to stay sympathetic you have got to throw them some opportunities to earn it.

All that sounds like a lot, but like - the relationship is the story, right? If we spend so much time on establishing flaws big enough to drive a story, we also have to spend time on fixing them. Which is where the turning point hits.

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Act 2: How it Starts

This is where the full story reality-checks your protagonist. Glad you saved your boyfriend and embraced new love in Act 1, but his repressed guilt means he's about to completely ghost you, and your own abandonment issues and self-loathing are about to make his dick move into everyone else's problem.

Again, it's a non-conventional choice OFMD has this start at the very end of S1 rather than with a sudden dark turn in the S2 premiere, but it's still pretty clearly that point in the Three Act Structure.

In Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back opens with a timeskip to our Rebellion getting absolutely crushed and hiding on a miserable frozen planet. The Empire finds them as the plot is kicking off and they have to desperately flee. They get separated. Han and Leia try to go to an ally for help and end up in Vader's clutches. It's a sharp turn from the victorious note that A New Hope ended on.

Pirates of the Caribbean's Act 2 starts dark. Dead Man's Chest opens with our happy couple Will and Elizabeth getting arrested on their wedding day for the "happy end" escape of the last movie. Jack has not been having success since reclaiming his ship, and we'll soon find out he's being hunted by dark forces. As for the general state of piracy, we get a horrifying prison where pirates are being eaten alive by crows, and a new Lord Beckett making the dying state of piracy even more textual. "Jack Sparrow is a dying breed... The world is shrinking."

The key here is making a point that our heroes aren't ready. This is the struggles part - things they try? Fail. The odds do not look to be in their favor.

Now, OFMD apparently decided to go all-in on flaw exploration, especially with Edward. The first 3 episodes of S2 are brutally efficient in outlining Edward's backslide. In S1 you could see he had issues with guilt and feeling like a bad person. S2 devolves that into a destructive, suicidal spiral where Edward forces his crew into three months of consecutive raids, repeats his shocking act of cruelty with Izzy's toe offscreen (more than once!), escalates it with his leg, and finally they state directly that Edward hates himself for killing his dad so much that he fears he's fundamentally unlovable and better off dead.

Stede's struggles are subtler, but most definitely still there. He's deliberately turning a blind eye to tales of Edward's rampage, half from simply being too self-centered to care about the harms Edward causes others, and half from being unable to face or fathom that he had the ability to hurt Edward that much. Upon reunion he wants to put the whole thing behind them, not addressing why he left in the first place. Very "love magically fixes everything" of him, except Stede is no golden merman.

Interestingly, here, BlackBonnet's relationship dysfunction has very clearly been having a negative impact on the surrounding characters we care about. Make sense, since it's the driving force of the story, but that also adds a lot more relationships we need to make right. Like... Edward is the villain to his crew. The show focuses on their trauma and poisoned relationships with him. And then draws our attention even more to Stede taking his side to overrule their objections to him.

For a story where the conflict and required resolutions are primarily character based, and the setup had already given the main couple a good amount to work with, dedicating a lot of S2 to adding more ground to cover was... a choice. Potentially very compelling on the character end, certainly challenging on the writing end... but not a complete break with the structure.

Bold, but not damning.

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Act 2: How it Ends

Now it is true that Act 2 tends to end on a loss. Luke is defeated by Vader and loses his hand, and Han has been sent away in carbonite. Jack Sparrow for all his efforts cannot escape his fate, and he and the Pearl are dragged to the locker.

But the loss is not the point. The loss is incidental to the point.

Act 2 is about struggles and failure, but it's also about lessons learned. There's a change that occurs, and our cast - defeated but not broken - enters the final act with the essential skills, motivation, knowledge, etc. that they lacked in the beginning.

Luke Skywalker could not have defeated the Empire in Return of the Jedi until he'd learned the truth about his father and resisted the Dark Side in The Empire Strikes Back. (Ok, confession, I'm using Star Wars as an example because literally everyone is doing so, but frankly it's a better example of formulaic Three Act Structure repeating within each movie because on a trilogy level - relevant to this comparison - it is a super basic hero's journey in a very recognized outfit and as such the Act 2 relevance is also... super basic "the hero tries to fight the antagonist too early" beat where he learns humility. Not really a lot going on. So, for the better example...)

Dead Man's Chest has a downer ending with the closing moment of the survivors regaining hope and a plan against an enemy now on the verge of total victory - a classic Act 2. But in that first loss against Davy Jones we get Will's personal motivation and oath to stab the heart, Jack finally overcoming not knowing what he wanted and returning to save them from the Kraken (being a good man), Elizabeth betraying Jack (being a pirate), Barbossa's return, and Norrington's choice to bargain for his prior life back. The mission to retrieve Jack from the World's End is the final movie's plot, but things are already on track to turn the tables back around as we enter the finale.

Now, relevant sidenote - one major difference between Three Act Structure within a single work vs across three parts is that Act 2 continues into Part 3, and only tips over into Act 3 about midway through. This is because obviously your final movie or season cannot just be the climax. That's why both movie examples start with a rescue mission. They have to still be missing something so they can get the plot of their third part accelerating while they go get whatever that something is.

But if you wait until the 3rd movie / season to get the development going at all - you're fucked.

Jack's decision in the climax of At World's End to make Elizabeth into the Pirate King goes back to the development we saw in the Pearl vs Kraken fight in Dead Man's Chest. So does Elizabeth's leadership arc. Will's whole arc about becoming Captain of the Dutchman gets built upon in the third movie, but it starts in the second. Not just as an idle thought - he's actively pursuing it. Already consciously weighing saving his father vs getting back to Elizabeth as soon as he makes the oath. Everyone is moving forward in Act 2. Their remaining development might stumble for drama, or they might be a bit reluctant, but I know that they know better than to let it stick, because they already faced their true crisis points.

I'm not sure we can say the same about OFMD.

S2 does a good job of adding problems, yeah, but there's not really any movement on fixing them. Our main couple stagnates in some ways, and regresses in others.

Stede opened Act 2 by running away in the middle of the night back to his wife without telling Edward anything. We know he did it because of feeling guilty and his core childhood trauma of his dad calling him a weak and inadequate failure. Now in S1 he actually speedruns a realization of his shitty behavior with Mary, but what about S2? Well...

He continues to not talk to Edward about... pretty much anything. My guy practiced love confessions galore but Edward only finds out about going back to his wife via Anne, and it gets brushed aside with a love confession. He seems to think Edward wants him to be a dashing pirate, or maybe he just thinks he should be a dashing pirate. Idk, it doesn't get examined. Regarding his captaincy, they give him an episode plot about Izzy teaching him to respect the crew's beliefs, but this is sideplot to a larger arc of him completely overruling their traumas and concerns (and shushing their objections) to keep his boyfriend on the ship so. That.

Stede kills a man for reasons related to his issues, shoves that down inside and has sex with Edward instead of acknowledging any bad feelings. At least this time Edward was there and knows it happened? Neither Chauncey's death nor his dad have been mentioned to anyone. He gets a day of piracy fame that goes to his head, gets dumped, and ends on a complete beat down by Zheng where he learns... idk. Being a boor is bad? He's still wildly callous to her in the finale, and spends the whole time seeking validation of his pirate skills. He reunites with Edward, kisses, and quotes Han Solo.

Where S1 ended on a great fuckery, his S2 naval uniform plan after they regroup is ill defined except to call it a suicide mission - and we don't get to see what it would have been because it devolves into a very straightforward fight and flee. And gets Izzy killed. Quick cut funeral (no acknowledgement of his S2 bonding with Izzy), quick cut to wedding (foreshadowing), quick cut to... innkeeper retirement? Unclear when or even if BlackBonnet discussed Stede's whole driving dream to be a pirate and live a life at sea, but I guess that got a big priority downgrade. Despite the fact he was literally looking to Zheng for pirate-based compliments in the post-funeral scene.

I guess he's borderline-delusionally dogged in his pursuit of love now - so unlikely to bolt again - but he's also got at least a decade of experience mentally checking out in a state of repression when he's unhappy. And he's stopped being as supportive and caring toward the crew in that dogged pursuit, while arguably demonstrating a loss in leadership skills, so, um, good thing someone else is in charge?

And if Stede is a mess, Edward's arc is so much worse.

As established, they devote the Kraken to making Edward worse. He literally wants to kill himself and destroy everyone around him in the process because Stede left, and this is fixed by... Stede coming back. That's it. The crew tries to murder him and then exiles him from the ship (and Izzy takes the lead on both, indicating exactly how isolated Edward has become), but it's resolved in half a day by Stede just forcing them to put up with his boyfriend again. Like they think he murdered Buttons and still have to move him back in???

The show consistently depicts Kraken Era as a transgression against the crew, but they also avoid showing Edward acting with genuine contrition. He admits he historically doesn't apologize for anything, and then mostly still doesn't. It's a joke that he's approaching probation as a performance (CEO apology), and then the only person he genuinely talks to is Fang - the one guy cool with him - and the only person who gets a basic "sorry" is Izzy - the guy he really needs to be talking to. Edward's primary trauma is guilt, but apparently he only feels it abstractly after all that? He's only concerned with fixing things with Stede, despite Stede being about the only person around who hurt him instead of the reverse.

Speaking of primary traumas, Edward hating himself doesn't really go anywhere after the beat of self-realization. Apparently Stede still loving him is enough of a bandaid to end the suicide chasing, but he doesn't like. Acknowledge that. Edward is maybe sorta trying to go slow so he doesn't hang all his self-worth on Stede again (you can speculate), but they a) absolutely fail to go slow, and b) he doesn't make any attempt to develop himself or another support structure. Just basically... "let's be friends a bit before hooking back up." And then we get the whiplash that is Blackbeard and/or retirement.

Kraken Era is Blackbeard but way worse, like no one who has known Blackbeard has ever seen him. In the Gravy Basket Edward claims he might like being an innkeeper, before destroying his own fantasy by having the spectre of Hornigold confront him over killing his dad. The BlackBonnet to Anne & Mary parallel says running away to China / retiring makes you want to kill each other - burn it all down and go back to piracy. Stede rightfully points out prior retirement plans were whims. Edward gets sick of the penance sack after a day and puts his leathers back on to go try "poison into positivity". But also claims to be an innkeeper (look - two whole mentions!) when trying not to send children to be pirates after teaching them important knife skills.

Killing Ned Low is a serious, bad thing that prompts ill-advised sex and then going hardcore into retirement mode - leathers overboard, talk about mermaid fantasy, get retirement blessings from Izzy, end up dumping Stede for a fishing job instead of talking about how he's enjoying piracy. The fishing job, however, is also a bad thing and a stupid decision because Edward is a lazy freeloader fantasizing about being a better person. We have an uncomfortable, extended scene of "Pop-Pop" weirdly echoing his abusive dad and then sending Edward to go do what he's good at - disassociate, brutally murder two guys, fish up the leathers, rise as the Kraken from the sea. He continues with comically efficient murder but also he's reading Stede's love letters and seeking to reunite with him so... wait, is this a good thing? Post makeout / mass slaughter he's trading compliments on his kills with Zheng so. Yeah. Looks like it. Murder is fine.

Wait, no, skip ahead and Izzy is dying and Edward suddenly cares a whole lot as Izzy makes his death scene about freeing Edward from Blackbeard. Now being a pirate was "encouraging the darkness" because Izzy - a guy who had little to no influence over Edward's behavior - just couldn't let Blackbeard go. Murder is bad again, and he is freed. Minus the little detail that the murder he explicitly hates himself over was not related to Blackbeard or piracy whatsoever, so presumably haunts "just Ed" still. Anyway he's retiring to run an inn with Stede now, as the "loving family" Izzy comforted him with in his dying moments sails away from the couple that can best be described as the antagonists of their S2 arc. Also Edward implicitly wants to get married. It's been 3 days since making out was "too fast". He's still wearing the leathers.

So most of the way through Act 2 and Edward's barely on speaking terms with anyone but Stede, who he has once again hung his entire life on really fast? Crushing guilt leads to self-hatred leads to mass murder and suicide, but only if he's upset so just avoid that. He's still regularly idealizing Stede as a non-fucked up golden mermaid person (that maybe he personally ruined a bit) because he barely knows the guy. His only progress on his future is "pirate" crossed out / rewritten / crossed out again a few times, "fisherman" crossed out, and "innkeeper ?"

Just.

Where is the forward movement?

It's not just that the inn will undoubtedly fall apart - it's that the inn will fall apart for the near-exact same reasons that China was going to at the beginning of Act 2, and I can't point to anything they've learned in the time since that will help them. I guess Stede realized he loved Edward enough to chase after him, but that was in S1! They should be further than this by now. You can't cram another crisis backslide, all the Act 2 development, and the full Act 3 climax into one season. Certainly not without it feeling like the characters magically fix themselves.

If they just fail and keep blindly stumbling into the same issues because they don't change their behavior, then Act 2 doesn't work. You're just repeating the turning point between Act 1 & Act 2 on a loop.

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Where Did They Fuck Up?

Actually... lets start on what they did right.

The one consistent aspect of S2 that I praised and still think was done well in a vacuum (despite being mostly left out of the finale) was the crew's union-building arc.

With only 8 episodes and more to do in them than S1, side characters were going to get pinched even if the main plot was absolutely flawless. That was unavoidable. With budget cuts / scheduling issues, we regularly have crew members simply vanish offscreen outside of one scene, meaning cohesive arcs for your faves was not likely. Not to say they couldn't have done better - my benefit of the doubt for the TealOranges breakup and Oluwande x Zheng dried up about when I realized he was literally just her Stede stand-in for the parallel - but something like Jim's revenge plot from S1 was realistically not on the table without, like, turning half the crew into seagulls to afford it.

The union building works around this constraint really well. They turn "the crew" into the side arc, and then weave Izzy's beats in so that they aren't just about Izzy. The breakup boat crew working together to comfort each other and protect him turns them into a unit, and Stede's crew taking it upon themselves to address the trauma vibes while the captains aren't in the way solidifies it across all our side characters. The crew goes to war with Stede's cursed coat and wins, they Calypso their boss to throw a party, and they capitalize on a chance to make bank with an efficiency Stede could only dream of.

We don't get specific arcs, but Frenchie, Jim, and Oluwande are defaulted to as leaders in just about every situation, and Roach is constantly shown sharing his inventions with different characters. Individuals can dip in and out without feeling like the sideplots stutter. Any sense of community in S2 is coming from this arc - even if there are cracks at the points where it joins to other storylines (Stede and Edward, Zheng, etc.)

So why does it work? Well, because it's a workplace comedy, and you can tell they are familiar with working on those. They know where the beats are. They know where to find the humor. They know how to build off of S1 because they made sure the bones were already there - an eclectic group of individuals that start as just coworkers, but bond over time in the face of their struggle against an inept boss who they grow to care for and support while maintaining an increasingly friendly antagonism because, you know, inept boss.

OFMD does its best work in S2 when it's being true to its original concept... and its worst work when it seemingly loses confidence in its own premise.

"The show is the relationship," right? It's a romance set in a workplace comedy. The setup of Act 1 was all about creating a character-driven narrative. So given that... where the hell are we getting the dying of piracy and a war against the English Navy?

That's not a character-driven romcom backdrop, it's an action-adventure plot from Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails. It's plot-driven, creating an antagonistic force that results in your characters' problems. Once the story is about the fight against the Empire, the dramatic question becomes the same as those adventure stories - "Will the British Navy defeat piracy, and will our protagonists come out the other side of the battle?"

Forget the wedding. The wedding is no longer the climax of the story, its back to the happy ending flash our romantic subplot gets after winning this fight.

Except, of course, trying to pivot your story to a contradictory dramatic question near the end of Act 2 can be nothing short of a disaster, because either you were writing the wrong story until now, or you've completely lost the plot of the real one. I shouldn't even be trying to figure out if they are doing this, because it should be so obvious that they wouldn't.

And yet.

What do the Zheng and Ricky plots add to the story if not this? Neither of these characters have anything emotionally to contribute to Stede and Edward - they truly are plot elements. It's a hard break from the S1 antagonist model, but it also takes up a lot of valuable screentime. This was considered important, but still Zheng's personality and motivation only gets explored so far as it's an Edward-Stede-Izzy parallel with Oluwande and Auntie, and they only need the parallel for Izzy's genre-jumping death scene. Which follows a thematically out-of-left-field speech about how piracy is about belonging to something good (workable) and how Ricky could never destroy their spirits (um...?). And then David Jenkins is pointing to it and saying things about "the symbolic death of piracy" and speculating S3 might be about the crew getting "payback"??? An idea floated by Zheng right before our temporary retirement, btw.

Fuck, the final episode of S2 didn't have time for our main couple to talk to each other because it was so busy dealing with the mass explosion of Zheng's fleet and Ricky's victory gloat. We get lethal violence associated with traumatic flashbacks until they need to cut down enemy mooks like it's nothing, at which point we get jokes with Zheng. The Republic of Pirates is destroyed outright, and it feels like they only did it because they got insecure about their "pirate story" not having the right kind of stakes. Don't even get me started on killing a major character because "Piracy’s a dangerous occupation, and some characters should die," as if suspending disbelief on this aspect makes the story somehow lesser, instead of just being a fairly standard genre convention in comedy. Nobody complains about Kermit the Frog having an improbably good survival record.

Did someone tell them that the heroes have to lose a battle near the end of Act 2, so they scrambled to give them one?

Just... compare the wholly plot-driven struggle in 2x08 to Stede and Edward's character-focused storylines in 1x10 and tell me how 2x08 is providing anything nearly as valuable to the story. Because I can't fucking find it.

At best they wasted a bunch of time on a poorly integrated adventure plot as, like, Zheng's backstory or something, and just fucked it up horribly by trying to "step up" the kind of plot they did for Jim. In which case the whole thing will be awkwardly dropped but damage is done. Otherwise, they actually thought they could just casually add a subplot like this because they've done something wildly stupid like think "pirate" is a genre on the same level as "workplace comedy" and can just trample in-universe coherency while you draw on other media to shore up their unsupported beats.

Bringing us to the most infuriating bit...

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"...end the second season in a kinder spot."

If this was the goal, the entire season was written to work actively against it in way that is baffling and incompetent.

The really ironic thing is that the reason that the Act 2 part typically gets a downer ending is because of the evil empire that OFMD did not have to deal with until they pointlessly added it. A plot-driven story has an antagonistic force - a villain - that the heroes need to defeat. Something external working against them. The story ends when they beat the thing, and it's not much of a climax if they do most of the defeating before you get there. Ergo, they have to be outmatched up to the climax. Ergo, the second part cannot end on them feeling pretty comfortable and confident going into the third.

The same rules do not apply in the same way to a character-driven arc.

We already established Edward and Stede declaring their love is not the end of the story. Nor, necessarily, is both of them confidently entering a relationship. Even once they've developed a bunch they will have to show that development by running into the kinds of problems that would have broken them up before and resolving them better.

David Jenkins keeps talking about this idea that S2 is getting a hopeful open ending and S3 will get into potential problems, and like... I don't see any reason why they couldn't have done that successfully. They didn't, but they could've.

If S2 grew them enough as characters and then had them agree to try again in the last minute of the finale, they absolutely could have had a kind and hopeful ending where you were confident they could do it. And then a potential S3 can show that. It's a bit rockier than they were counting on, but they have learned enough lessons to not break up. And then the overall plot can build to proposal (start of Act 3) and wedding (the romantic climax). It doesn't have to be a blow out fight to be emotionally cathartic.

(Hell, the main rockier bit that they overcome in the S3 Act 2 portions could be marriage baggage. I'm sure they both have some. It would work.)

In the same way focusing on our character's long term flaws and character-driven conflict makes an Act 1 "happy ending" more difficult, I suspect it makes an Act 2 "happy ending" easier.

Instead they wrote an Act 2 that failed to convincingly start development and got confused on its direction, and then presented a rushed finale ending in a copy of the predictable disaster from S1 as though it's a good thing. They yanked the story at least temporarily into an awkward place where a romcom is trying to sell me on a bunch of serious drama / adventure beats that it has not put the work into, and inviting comparisons to better versions of those same beats in other, more suited media that make it look worse. The need to portray everyone as reaching happy closure overrules sitting with a major character death and using it for any narrative significance, while still letting it overshadow those happy endings because a romcom just sloppily killed a major character with a wound they've literally looked into the camera and said was harmless.

If I'm being entirely honest, Dead Man's Chest ends effectively at Jack Sparrow's funeral and then cuts to the British Navy obtaining a weapon of mass destruction, and it still feels kinder and more hopeful just because I leave with more faith the characters are actively capable of and working toward solving their problems.

OFMD S2, in contrast, has half-convinced me our main couple would live in a mutually obsessed, miscommunication-ridden horror story until they die.

---

Additional Reading

Normally I link stuff like this in the post, but that requires more excitement than I'm feeling right now. Here's my alternative:

Where I thought they were going with Edward - really outlines the mountain of character development they still have unaddressed

Where I thought they were going with Izzy - touches on a lot of themes that might be dead in the water & also context that's still probably relevant to why Izzy got a lot of focus in S2

My scattershot 2x08 reactions

An ask where I sketched out the bones of this argument, and another where I was mostly venting about the fandom response

This one, this other one, and this last one (read the link in op's post too) about genre shifts and failure to pull them off

The trauma goes in the box but it never opens back up - the whole point of Act 2 is that they needed to start opening shit like that - and also they focus so much on needed character growth and so little on following through

They can't even carry through on character growth that we got last season???

Why Izzy's death feels like Bury Your Gays ran smack into shitty writing

EDIT: Oh and this post is REALLY good for outlining the lack of change in way less words than I did

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd meta #three act structure #character arcs #blackbonnet #genre #blackbeard ofmd #stede bonnet ofmd #my meta #ladyluscinia #ofmd critical

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fangirltothefullest · 4 months

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Okay but now what if how you designed Remus but in as many words as you want, because I'm loving these design breakdowns

HELL YEAH!

Remus to me is full of chaos but he is also the antithesis of Roman with similar qualities but a total lack of self consciousness or bashfulness. He is freedom and he gives no shits.

Inspiration 1: Mad Madam Mim

I start with a disney character full of chaos and I am inspired by mad Madam Mim because she is wild and chaotic and i absolutely love how fun she is as a villain and the most important thing for me is that Remus is fun. He's bonkers and has terrible ideas but he's also harmless in terms of reality. He's like an annoying little brother that wants to show you the Weird Gunk he found in the trash.

Inspiration 2: Snidley Whiplash (or Dick Dastardly)

Remus to me is a guy who knows a lot of things and he's actually really clever but he wants to BE a villain like Snidley Whiplash or Dick Dastardly, including the moustache. He wants to tie people to train tracks because it's fun. His personality is "I found the dynamite and the roller skates! :D"

Inspiration 3: Wile E Coyote and looney tunes as a concept

If Remus is anything it's a creature that can be stabbed in the eye and come back fine. It's a person who can make acme-like contraptions that do not work and that's ok. He is, if nothing else, Wile E Coyote and he is having the time of his life. He should therefore have hair that is a littler wild and crazy and untamable like Wile E's tail.

Inspiration 3: Royal villains

We will look at Galavant and also OUaT again!

There's nothing quite as detailed in costume as evil royal villains. They always seem to be the most extravagant or at least have all the buckles and things and Remus has an outfit just the same. Like Roman I want his royalty to show with his clothes but unlike Roman I want Remus to look way less put together. More a culmination of his clothes he chooses to wear but only because he HAS to wear something so he's going to show skin.

Particularly though the one I associate with Remus is Captain Hook from Once Upon a Time.

Inspiration 4: Captain Hook / Pirate aesthetics

Roguish, half-opened shirt, details, dressed fancy, swashbuckling. Remus would make a great pirate because he has the swagger and charm of a drunken man sailing a boat with a pet giant octopus he calls Lil Pussy.

Speaking of octopus...

Inspiration 5: Kraken and hentai

He has an octopus on his belt and he deserves tentacles for a pirate feel but also for fuckin. Cause he's a raunchy bastard. Anything taboo is something he wants to think about.

Inspiration 6: Punk aesthetic

What easier way top buck against the norms than to embrace punk vibes? Jewelry, upside-down crosses, I don't like going overboard with it but I like giving him some. Fingerless gloves, chokers with spikes, those kinds of things work well for his "I am everything your religious grandmother hates, embrace it". His outfits that aren't standard could look like he made them himself or found them in the garbage and went "awesome!"

Inspiration 7: Weapon Master

Remus likes to hit things with his mace and while Roman has his sword, I imagine Remus is an expert at weapons or at least likes to use them so even if I am going to dress him up nice I want a weapon nearby somewhere.

Things that are a must:

So many details, Remus will not leave your eyeballs alone. If you think Roman has details nope, Remus wants your eyes to bleed with them.

Remus should have longer hair than Roman, wilder bangs and wilder curls. Shorter hair is fine but a ponytail is even more fun. Like the tie holding it'll break at any moment.

Weapons galore, arm this baby at every opportunity. Likewise, scars are acceptable but it's ok if they disappear at random because chaos loves chaos.

If Remus has his main garb off he should be showing skin to the best of his abilities and his collar should drape down wider than normal because let that man be a slut.

Tentacles should be numerous when shown and they should have a mind of their own doing whatever they want.

If Roman wouldn't wear it, Remus would. If Roman wouldn't think it, Remus would, and if Roman would be disgusted, Remus would love it.

Remus should have annoying little brother vibes.

Any non-standard outfits should look like he cobbled them together with duct tape and chewing gum.

So I came to this:

#tashiarts #sanders sides #inspiration for remus

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fandoms-and-salt · 9 months

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The main problem with Ruby gillman movie is that it sends a message that "bigotry is actually justified and your racist grandparents are right". The second, closely related problem is it's villain.

Firstly, if we look at the film without the spoiler-y marketing, Chelsea/Neressa is written as a twist villain. Like Hans Frozen type twist villain, with little foreshadowing and those "sympathetic" scenes that actually don't amount to anything and might just as well be a lie. Even with the marketing, i think the movie still tricked people into thinking that Chelsea might be a misunderstood villain or have a redemption arc or what not. And twist villains could work well, usually if their turn to villainy makes sense with their preestablished goals and personality (eg. Disney's Atlantis). Or a liar villain could work well if the audience knows of their malicious plans, but the heroes stay in the dark (eg. Scar from Lion King). In general, if the twist or reveal makes the story/conflict less interesting and/or didn't have proper foreshadowing, viewers are bound to dislike it.

Secondly, Chelsea is our only mermaid. And she is, well, evil. It would have been better if we had other good mermaid characters, but she is the only one, which, coupled with Gramamah's generous description of mermaids, makes it seem like all mermaids are as evil as she is.

Thirdly, yes, stories for young children about pure good fighting pure evil are generally fine, it teaches them right and wrong, so they can later consume media with more complex lessons. But in those stories the good guys are usually the underdogs fighting an oppressive evil. In mermaid vs kraken conflict, it's actually mermaids who are at a disadvantage. Krakens are big rulers ("protectors") of the ocean with superpowers. The characters themselves admit that Granmamah is a warlord. Mermaids are small, weak and need a magic trident to even match the power of krakens. Their only "advantage" is being popular with humans, while krakens are feared and hated, but humans have no effect on the story or the conflict. If the story was that mermaids are actually more powerful rulers of the ocean, or the kraken family were the just rules but got conquered/overthrown by evil mermaids, or if both species were of equal power ruling their own parts of the ocean and mermaids decided to go and conquer the peaceful kraken kingdom. Then the good vs evil conflict would have looked less like "how dare these evil inferior minorities challenge the rule of our superior race".

Speaking of which. Ruby's first instinct, even after finding out that "mermaids are actually evil" from her granma, is to judge Chelsea as her own person and assume that mermaids can't be actually evil. Which is, you know, a pretty fair and mature response. When she hears that mermaids suffer from terrible conditions, she actively tries to fight what she sees as injustice. But what lesson does she learn? That she should never question her elders, since they do know better. The story is fighting for the status quo to stay the same, while Ruby is punished to trying to change and improve it.

That's all i can say for now. Other complaints i have are:

humans are virtually useless to the story (including the love interest, tho he had some cute moments), they are just damsels-in-distress and trophies for Ruby to save and get approval from. This movie just as well could happen all under the sea with some minor tweaks.

The human designs are weird and uncanny. Otherwise the visuals are fine.

Ruby's arc is kind of all over the place with her main arc being the classic "believe in yourself", which she mainly gains through hanging out with Chelsea. But isn't Chelsea supposed to be the villain who "leads Ruby astray" from being a good citizen who is not skipping school, lying to her mom or ignoring her friends and crush? Make it make sense, movie.

#for the record i don't really care for Chelsea/Ruby ship (especially after that reveal)#or Chelsea having a “misunderstood mean girl” redemption arc that fandoms obsess over for some reason #sapphic fishgirls would be nice but i care about a good story more #damn that's a long post #ruby gillman teenage kraken #chelsea van der zee #ruby gillman critical #i guess #lovin rambles

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silversmoke-20 · 1 year

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The Cephalopod, The Mermaid and The Human.

Content: Yandere tendencies, dark content, no minors, possessive nature, gn!reader, cringe probably and Cat's are God's.

Yandere Teenage Kraken x gn!reader

Chelsea🧜

This girl wouldn't hesitate to destroy everything you care about, just as long she gets to have you all to herself.

Being a mermaid has it's many perks and that's the ability to manipulate tell you that your friends are jealous of you and you should cut ties with them.

She's the dominant one in this relationship and wouldn't even think twice about threatening to hurt your family.

She loves to be in control. She's the one always taking the lead in makeout sessions, she's the driver, what you eat, dislike and like, and she's the one who decides what you should wear. She just loves to be the only powerful one in your relationship.

Chelsea hates... Actually? She DESPISES whenever you and someone are having a pleasant conversation, It makes her feel like she's not in control.

Gaslighting you into believing that ruby is the enemy and is trying to save steal you away from Chelsea's loving manipulative hands.

Overall? You're not escaping this evil Ariel looking ass mermaid.

"Babe? Can you buy those shoes for me~"

Ruby Gillman🐙

She knows she's obsessed with you and is actually fine with whatever outcome just as long she gets to spend time with you.

You wanna stay friends? Sure, she doesn't mind! Just don't date Chelsea and you won't have to find a bloodied clump of Chelsea's hair in your locker tomorrow.

You agreed to a date? Awesome! You wanna eat at the fishermen's cafe? Or spend time at the aquarium or maybe a trip to her grandmama's kraken kingdom!

Ruby always melts at a single sign or compliment of affection. Example? Just call her cute and watch her entire face turn into a purple mess and become a limp noodle. Kiss her cheek and watch her try and keep her balance while walking to her next class.

Overall Ruby Gillman is a simple easy yandere to handle, just give her a daily hugs or kisses and you're all set.

Strange? Whatever happened to that skater boy she was tutoring?

"So uh....Wanna watch the sunset at the beach? I know how you can get a HUGE view as well!"

_________________________________________

A gift for @hana-no-seiiki

Thought you might enjoy this and thanks for showing me a picture of your adorable cat!

Long live the cat empire!

#yandere #ruby gillman #ruby gillman teenage kraken #Chelsea #gn!reader #gn!mc #Platonic #Platonic yandere #Ruby Gillman x reader #Chelsea x reader #Ruby Gillman teenage kraken x reader #yandere Ruby Gillman teenage kraken x reader #yandere Teenage Kraken #yandere Teenage Kraken x reader #teenage kraken x reader

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ilovescaredysquirrel2 · 4 months

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Last movie review of 2023, Migration!

Okay I think this might be one of the best animated movies of 2023! "Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken" and "Under the Boardwalk" were the two best, and "Migration" and is the third best. These movies were so incredible and well done. I fell in love with the visuals and scenery, and the animation for Migration overall. The characters were definitely a 10/10 though! I mostly loved how Gwen was more than just the cute sidekick, but she was the cute sidekick who was also sassy and a little bit daring too. Her brother (i think his name was Dax?) was an optimistic and daring character too! He was fearless and also a good character too. I really loved how they focused on Pam and Mac as well, and made them good parents but also showed their struggles on protecting the family. Pam was so optimistic, she kind of reminded me Ginger from Chicken Run. She was such an icon! My favorites had to be Pam and Gwen! I also loved Delroy and Uncle Dan! They were so funny! Awkwafina also played a unique character too (she voiced a tough greaser pigeon).

I also would like to talk about the villain's design and personality. He didn't speak, they just had an evil chef who just growled and tried to get the ducks. They didn't show much human interactions in the movie but the only bad human was the chef character. He looked like the a super rich chef guy, with gold on him and stuff (He had white hair with gold bands). I liked his funny face too! Also, the other humans didn't seem to be that bad either, it was one person who wanted to eat the ducks. They weren't portraying all the humans as animal-eating monsters.

Another thing is that the art style and everything looked a little different from Illumination's usual movies, seeing really big eyed cartoony birds that were the main focus. Dreamworks, Illumination, and Aardman are dethroning Disney and I'm all here for it! I hope Ghibli does too when the "Boy and the Heron" dub comes out. I'm just happy that Illumination is going to be known for something other than annoying minions. Also, before you say anything, the short film that was before Migration WAS a Despicable Me one but it focused more on that Vector guy and him getting off the moon, as well as showing the minions as comic relief which was fine (tbh Vector himself is funnier). Seeing that animated short made me think of when Disney used to do stuff like that, and I'm happy that Illumination did that. I mostly just enjoyed Migration and I think it was beautiful!

Last of all, the thing I loved most was probably that salsa dance scene when they played that Beyonce song that goes like, "I'm a survivor" but it was a jazzy version of it and it just blended with the movie so well! Whoever chose that song deserves a raise! Also, that was such a cute scene between Mac and Pam. I love how they showed that adults have flaws once in a while, and focus on the adult ducks as much as the kids. This movie was so so cute!

Into 2024, I'm hoping that I would get to see the movie "Butterfly Tale", which according to my best friend who's in Canada and got to see it (I'm an unfortunate American who missed out). If you have any info about Butterfly Tale, please tell me! The best movies this year I'd say are Butterfly Tale, Ruby Gillman, Migration, and Under the Boardwalk. Tell me YOUR favorite animated movies of 2023! Go on! Don't be afraid to express your opinion in my comments, even if it's different from mine!

#migration movie #migration #migration 2023 #migration movie 2023 #migration illumination #illumination #illumination movies #2023 movies

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wee-snek · 7 months

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Good Omens S3 possibilities?

These are not predictions, or even really based on any actual evidence. Just thoughts that I’ve been thinking about.

In no particular order:

I would like to see more pre-The Beginning scenes. Specifically, the battle and the Fall. Something about how Crowley said "I remember going into battle" has just stuck with me and I want to SEE IT. (also, they got Benedict Cumberbatch to voice Satan in S1, and I feel like we deserve to see a proper bumblebee cumberbumble cameo).

I want to see how Aziraphale influencing the car/the car not being fully Crowley's anymore plays out. Angsty side of me would actually quite like to see the car refusing to play Queen and repeatedly giving us "Nightengales" to the point where Crowley lashes out and destroys the car. Would be peak breakup angst. Fully devastating.

What happens if Hell asks Crowley back now? I’m not sure they actually want him back, but what if he pulls a OFMD finale Kraken move and goes full demon. Heart broken, rejected, unloved, unforgivable: might as well prove them all right by finally being the evil demon they all told me I was when I wasn’t good enough for them.

(Right, now I’m picturing Crowley blowing up the Bentley and saying “fuck God and fuck Humanity” and going full feral. I don’t actually want this, but it’s not unlikely)

I really don't want a sex scene. I don't even want another kiss. I want there to be long, desperate hugs and intimate cuddles, but I want it to read comfort and safety rather than lust.

I think we're going to see more of 1941. I think what people have noted about the Nightengale song coming out around then is very likely relevant, as is the fact that this is the only footage we see twice. A long flashback in S1, expanded on in S2. I feel like this is going to come back again in S3. Whether it's to see more of that night specifically (like what happened to the photo and who took it home to stare at for 80 years) or whether we'll see the next day/week because when, on that night, would Aziraphale have had time to do the I Was Wrong dance?

I want more Muriel. Like, a lot more. They saw the bookshop breakup, and they looked pretty shook the first time we see them through the window. I want to see how they grow and learn on Earth when they're very likely not being supervised by any other angels. How long will Crowley sulk outside before he’s invited in/overcome with the urge to help Muriel?

I would like to see one or both of our main babes growing facial hair. I know we don't really see that much on angels or demons but it would be delightful to see. Equally, I would like to see one or both of our main babes full femme-presenting.

Something I don’t actually want, but well within the realm of possibility: not just memory erasure by Heaven, but intentional self-deletion as a coping mechanism. Thinking Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind here. Think, “I’m erasing you and I’m happy!” (spoiler: they’re not happy).

I will probably keep adding to this as I rewatch Season 2 a few dozen more times.

#ineffible husbands #crowley #good omens #ineffible #good omens 2 #good omens theories #good omens theory #aziraphale

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cursed-coat-of-homosexuality · 7 months

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A good is-Tom-Normal-About-That-Media? meter is how I deal with music related to that specific media. Unfortunately in OFMD's case it's ticking in the "Brain Rotted Pile of Clown Meat" zone, because I basically went through every song ever made by Nina Simone just to try and guess which two songs are playing in s2.

So you know what??? I'm laying out my predictions here, if any of these starts playing then I'm owed a Jenkins thumbs up or something like that. Idk. I spent four hours of my life on this, I need a hug. I threw the dice and this is what came out.

> These three are my favorites, I have a feeling about them, they smell like OFMD to me and my brainwaves bounce up a bit when I hear them (u know... like the sea.... ha...ha)

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Ed-Coded, sad, moody, it's frantic and helpless in a way that's also really desperate, and ohohoho the rhythm on this one tickles my brain a bit.

Feeling Good

A bit overplayed, basically in every fandom playlist but It! Is! There! For! A! Reason! And that reason is that it's reeeally good and very villain like. Could be Ed-Coded, I'd like to imagine that's him trying to conform into his Kraken/Blackbeard persona, could be other people too though. Use your imagination here.

Do What You Gotta Do

Are all of these Ed-Coded? You might ask. And the answer is, well.... maybe. It's not my fault Executive Producer David Jenkins based Ed's whole character on Nina Simone songs okay????? (I see what you did there you little evil man-shaped weasel. I SEE IT ALL.) But just.. here, look at me... listen to it and tell me it isn't Ed through and through.

> These ones are also very OFMD-like and I wouldn't be putting them in here after sifting through more than 100 songs just because. I also have a feeling about them, but it isn't the overwhelming sense of certain doom I get from the previous three.

Save Me

Ed coded. He loves Stede and he hates that with every fiber of his being. He's still very hurt, but cannot help being fond of the whimsical dipshit, poor guy.

I Shall Be Released

Ed coded, just give my man a break.

I Put A Spell On You

Overplayed one again, this one isn't really coded to any of them. But I feel like it would play after Stede tries to reconcile with Ed for the first time and fails miserably. Ed is still really hurt, and Stede is just realizing the extent to which he hurt him. It's after they just had a discussion, maybe it's raining, Stede is soaking wet calling "Yd! Yd! Yd please talk to me!" But Ed just keeps on walking. It's a romantic comedy staple and we need to have one of these.

Take Care Of Business

Semi-Competent!Stede being the breadwinner of the family is one of my favourite hcs. Ed is really tired of The Pirate Life™️ and I bet he'd fucking love to be a trophy wife, man spent his whole life being the scourge of the seven seas, give him a break for christs sake.

Mr.Bojangles

just... listen to it

Just Say I Love Him

Is- Is that a... no, it can't be! Dios mio, It's... a Stede coded song 😱😱 *pain sounds* *weird bone cracking going on* *little bit of a fleshy sonority to it now* *crashing sounds* *cat meowing* *bone cracking again but this one is good I think*. Ok back to it, this is really just "I should just have told him how I feel" vibes, Stede made a mess, he regrets it. Etc.

That's it then. Did I do this just to prove I was right if any of them appears in S2? Pfft of course not! Who would even do that... lol... Also please feel free to add thinky thoughts to this if y'all are willing! I'd love to hear people's interpretations of the songs.

#i really wanted to put sinnerman in there #i really did #but it played on The Thomas Crown Affair so Idk if they'd put it in OFMD #also You've Got To Learn #ofmd #ofmd s2 #our flag means death #our flag means death s2 #our flag means death season 2 #ofmd blackbonnet #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #ofmd gentlebeard #ofmd stede bonnet #ofmd ed teach

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youngmoviemaker · 10 months

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Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken Review

Spoiler-Free Summary: Its cute, nothing grounding breaking, but cute. Had some issues with some plot revelations but otherwise was a sweet coming-to-age story.

My full thoughts below . . .

Okay so, main issue first, I didn't like that Chelsea turned out to the evil mermaid queen. Like, I really liked the idea of the daughters of two warring kingdoms trying to be friends despite the species prejudice the other holds. I think keeping with Chelsea being the dead evil mermaid queen's daughter would have fit the they were going for better. Ruby herself is kinda trapped between the expectations of both her mother and her (newly rediscovered) grandmother, why couldn't Chelsea have similar arc as well?

She could of been raised in the shadow of her mothers death, her people expecting her to live up to the queen's impossible standard, and take revenge of the krakens who did this. And while befriending Ruby, she slowly starts to enjoy being friends with her and thinking that maybe mermaids and krakens don't have to be enemies . . . Only to fall back on the evil mermaid stereotype and expectations, so she wouldn't disappoint her mother or her people. Cue betrayl and ending battle but after it all, Ruby still wants to be her friend.

Idk, I think it would be kinda cute, you know?

But with the film that was given was still enjoyable. The town and underwater venues were very pretty. I wasn't the biggest fan of the character designs of the humans, they kinda looked off putting to me but that could be on purpose, so IDK, just not my cup of tea. I thought with Chelsea being introduced as being the one to 'save' Conner, they were gonna have the main conflict become a Little Mermaid knockoff but was relived it didn't.

Over all it was a pleasant and cute feature. Definitely prefer watching this to that Little Mermaid remake any day.

#ruby gillman teenage kraken

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rubydoowhereru · 1 month

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You've made it no secret that you would rather Dreamworks not retcon Nerissa/Chelsea despite fans asking for it but can you explain why? I really want to know.

I've been mulling over this for a bit and honestly, I think it's because I'd actually like to see where they would take something Post-RGTK. Because with Nerissa no longer being able to charade around as Chelsea they can utilize her in completely different roles/directions.

Nerissa getting left behind in the dust by more powerful, more competent villains and now she's a comedic relief villain because she's really evil but so pathetic now. She tries to regain her power but all it ever does is just backfire in her face.

The mermaids moving on past Nerissa and realizing maybe being the kraken's enemies wasn't a good idea? You can do that. A good mermaid who steps up to the plate to actually try and fix things now that Nerissa's out of the picture? You can do that.

What about a villain who rises to power only because Nerissa has now been defeated and word gets out the mermaid queen is now stuck in Oceanside?

Or just perhaps you want to set up the possibility of an arc for Nerissa. Nerissa who no longer has anything and over the course of the film realizes this only because she's been beaten and lost the one thing she's wanted for fifteen years at this point.

There's so much you can do here and I think that's why I don't want it retconned. I know there are rocky things in RGTK but that's why I'd rather see a sequel or a continuation than a retcon that way the sequel can build upon what's already there and turn it into something great rather than just tearing everything up.

#ruby gillman teenage kraken #ruby gillman

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occasional-pyrrhon · 3 months

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I need to know your most unhinged headcanons about Pyrrhon. Idk if you already have a post like this, but I need to know.

YAY YAY YAY OK. OK EVERY THING I'VE EVER THOUGHT ABOUT HTIS GUY LET'S GO. MILLION PAGE LONG POST UNDER THE CUT

OK so what is this thang in the first place right. I think he's an alien. HEAR ME OUT GUYS HEAR ME OUT. So space seems really weird and vaguely eldritch in the worldbuilding right, the Kraken and the Pirates' appearances being robotic along with the Aurum, who apparently just Happened one day. I think he also Happened one day and just crashed landed onto earth meteor style, either coming from the sun itself or being the Aurum's flawed attempt at mimicking a god that got too out of control and developed free will. I mean he has bright green eyes and looks nothing like the other gods. Even HADES wears CLOTHES man. Fitting with space being mostly outside the domain of the gods, this weird little mini sun man was able to claim the Sun God title because no one else was using it, which is why the gods themselves are torn on if he's one of them. He isn't immortal but he does age slower than normal, he's a fairly recent annoyance among all the divine discourse

Him and Arlon are brothers! Sorta. They met as kids without any apparent families and Pyrrhon theorizes that they're connected, which Arlon goes along with. So they kinda *become* brothers in a way with my headcanons? Ja. They start out being kinda frenemies who don't really get along and are just sticking with this theory to figure out their pasts but they end up truly having the brothers relationships and being at eachothers' backs. Everyone else is shocked to learn about this every single time since they're such opposites. Arlon lends stability and Pyrrhon lends freedom and encourages leniency towards the whole "loyalty" thing, which evidently means less to him. 😌

The other popular headcanon I like is that his flame aura is controlled by his emotions. He can make it flare up for dramatic effect or cool it down if he needs to, but it's typically involuntary. It's usually not harmful to people, though he can easily burn things if he isn't paying attention and he's always warm to the touch. If he's calm it simmers down. If he's really, truly upset or hopeless it goes out. If he's excited or angry it burns brighter. If it turns white hot and hurts to the touch, you should probably run. :)

He's trans. "How is he 7ft tall?" Divine HRT will do that to you. "Out of everyone in the cast who would be way more fitting-" I like him. "Wasn't there something in smash about the gods' physical forms-" I do what I want always all the time forever.

OKAY so it's tough sometimes with characters who are intended to be insane with no further context because on the one hand that can be kinda fucked but on the other hand OUHHHHH. crazy guy who loses control to the orb was such a weird adhd awakening for me but baby if it wasn't an awakening. SO putting aside that it's obviously exaggerated and he was probably just intended to be insane with no nuance, I headcanon him as autistic and adhd with probably an array of Other Shit going on that I'm not qualified to pin down without feeling like it may be insulting. my mental illness pilled folks give your takes below or don't if you're uncomfortable with attatching stuff to characters like this because that's very justified I just hyperfixate on and relate to the worst specimens possible o7 you would not believe how many ocs I have that are just "let's do this bitch again and deconstruct all the dehumanization these guys always get while we're at it" follow my main artblog with my ocs plug plug plug plug

I think he would hate Hades as the apex of the irresponsibility and evil of the gods. HOWEVER Pyrrhon x Hades is just inherently super funny to me so its tough I kinda need to reconsile them. MY HEADCANON is that they dated for a bit when Pyrrhon didn't have a vendetta against the gods yet and was going after cred then when Palutena and Medusa yuri-divorced Hades felt the urge to one-up Medusa in some way so he ended things with Pyrrhon by saying he's homophobic. This in turn put Pyrrhon on a brief stint of homophobia that he thankfully recovered from when he started to listen to Limp Bizkit (unironically in every way of course) and decided that Fred Durst is the most beautiful man on the planet. Or will be. Kid Icarus ancient Greece with Nintendo you know how it is.

I'm growling and pacing ominously with a shadow over my eyes all the time over his underdeveloped motivations BUT from what we're given of his respect for Pit and his vendetta against the gods along with the heroic act I feel like he's kinda with Dark Pit on the idea of the gods constantly throwing everything off balance BUT the critical difference that turns him into a villain is that he thinks that if a true hero like HIM were the most powerful god he could fix all of this! See see HIS indulgence in the violence and warring is justified he doesn't WANNA incinerate the angel but it's just for the greater good. Fool tried to end the cycle of violence by becoming part of it!!!!!!! Everyone point and laugh!!!!!!!!

He's smart but he's also a dumbass but he can actually be a genius under the right circumstances but he's so so stupid. Right. He would put together a computer on his own from nothing but Vibes then think YouTube is a platform exclusively for fnaf letsplays because its the first thing he clicked on and he doesn't know how to search. He can determine his location by looking at the stars he also got lost in the department store yesterday. He can tell you about the Aurum for two hours he doesn't remember what he ate for lunch yesterday so he answers with som shit like the essence of heroism in the sandwich of destiny. He's so me he's all of us in a way .

He has mild psychic powers and he is NOT good at them 💔 he taught himself short range telepathy hence why he only really talks to the others in person until he gets his power up. He also tried to learn how to give visions and prophecies recieved upon touching his gem but it kinda just traps you in his adhd mindzone where he tries to keep up the illusion with cardboard cutouts on sticks.

Okay post canon time! Horray!!!!! The shorter more hyperspecific headcanons are after this. Tw for trauma and parallels to abuse until this section is done we're in projecting lane now.

A lot of details of what happens to him post-Aurum vary depending on what I'm drawing/writing at the moment like if he gets out on his own or has to be rescued after the war with Hades resolves, but generally he's trapped with them for a while with wavering control over himself. He develops an intense phobia of space and the Aurum afterwards despite them once being his biggest interests (<- PROJECTING.) His sense of personhood is very disrupted - he wasn't just controlled, he was assimilated and became one in the same with them with only shards of him holding on and resisting. He goes between never wanting to encounter them again to being nothing but a vessel who *must* return to them again no matter what it does to him, and he doesn't remember how to be a person without them controlling him. He completely stops believing he's a god in any way. He often zones out with the instinct that something else will be at the wheel until someone snaps at him and he's like huh wuzzat. Then probably plays it off as being inconsiderate since what people expect of him is easier than the truth.

He has the belief that the Aurum are attempting to take him again, even if they end up destroyed they're too powerful to him now to end that easily. They're *all* and they're *everywhere*. Since a lot of ptsd symptoms can feel like losing control it compounds quickly.

He has a habit of covering his mouth when he's upset. The feeling of those words and that smile stick with him.

I also think he'd have pretty messed up misconceptions towards "redeeming himself". With his broken identity he clings onto the idea of being fearless and acting the same way he used to, otherwise they "won". He would do stuff like accompanying Pit on a space mission and acting like it's no sweat while intermittently sneaking off to hide the breakdown. Why should he be afraid? It was *his* fault after all, and if he can't stop himself from being hurt it's just going to be *his* problem.

He starts wearing clothes to hide the scars he recieved on his chest, back, and limbs. He wants to look like NOTHING has changed, as much as possible. He starts returning to his old Nothingcore fit the more he heals from the events, because he doesn't like the feeling of clothes in the first place. he wears fingerless gloves and leg warmers because he can't stand the alternatives to either.

He also has a cane that's supposed to look enough like a staff to pass as one. His legs have been Pixels for the past couple years ok. Either way he's insecure about it and mostly uses it private, once again passing off his troubles in the department as his typical cringefail self don't worry about it 😁 👍

There's some mechanical alterations inside of him and like. I don't know how to explain my vision here except imagine the junji ito stuff turning into spirals story but with math and geometry and such. You can plug a bluetooth chip into his back scar and he's a literal wifi hotspot now. The quadratic formula is hidden somewhere in his femur as a fun easter egg. A lot of the changes are good for an impromptu living weapon but not for that weapon having an easy time afterwards, but it takes a while for him to reach out for help there, not just because of all previously mentioned but because he *hates* the idea of something going in and making "edits" to him again.

There's some more literal lingering effects from the Aurum - he can understand Morse code and binary and is compelled to read it out and translate it whenever he sees it, and sometimes those are the forms of communication that remain when the others go down, along with general detached computer speak. He *really* doesn't like others seeing this -- I like the idea of Arlon or Palutena teaching him signing to use in moments like this.

He is so touch starved my god. He probably wasn't getting much affection pre-canon in the first place but after being in space for 3+ years in a place where anything organic for miles is destroyed on sight, his body not being his own, and then going on to hide it all? Someone lays a hand on his shoulder and he just *melts*. He already feels like the affectionate back-breaking bear hug type in my mind so it's just. Auougghhhhhhhhhh. Yeah.

NO ONE IS HANDING HIM THE AUX CORD. EVER. His top artist on Spotify is Smosh. He listens to Lil Dicky and Your Favorite Martian. When it's a date and he needs to put on the more acceptable by society stuff he puts on ABBA and the Niel Ciceriga mashup albums. The ladder is most of his exposure to the wider music world he was BAFFLED when he found out hendrix wasn't actually singing about furries. I also think it would be really fucking funny if his main playlist with 2010 YouTuber Core has like Kid A interspersed in there. Thom York and the party rock guys are on the exact same artistic pedestal to him (you can decide if he's a real one for that)

Okay back to the less intense headcanons. All the main ones were at the top these are just little ideas or like stupid stuff.

He would NOT BE A MYSOGINIST. NO ONE GETS MY GUY. He's the most cringefail feminist on earth he was at the women's march tripping over the asphalt and face planting 30 times and when it was over they had to pick him up with a dustpan. HER PRONOUNS ARE THEY/THEM !!!

He figured all the fnaf lore out on his own but none of the gods gave a shit so he used the peak of his power to bestow maddening visions upon Markiplier's 20th removed great Greek ancestor. Hades did the same thing to MatPat's 20th removed great Greek ancestor just to muddy the waters and spite his ex

His favorite animals are snakes, cats, and dragons. When the others find out about him Going Through It post canon, Viridi begrudgingly makes immortal replicas of a snake and cat as gifts to him for emotional support

He would use his divine resilience to go out and hug poisonous creatures and beasts because he can

He would get so upset by like made up cartoon insults like in worlds where everyone's a dragon and they call eachother a pink-tailed coward and that kind of stuff right. If he got teleported into the geronimo stilton book universe and another mouse called him a chedderface he would have to be HOSPITALIZED.

He doesn't curse a lot and only does it under very specific circumstances that tick him off like if you called spongebob annoying he would curse you out

Talks to himself alone in rooms constantly. Has ytp verbal stims.

Has a thumbtack and string board not for like anything in specific its kinda just his replacement for a journal but for a guy who tries to find the connection between the weird waiter he met at girls' night to the Aliens

I have a genre of guys I call Stray Dog Youth who are just people I think would evoke a heroic pity response from him and the urge to take them under his wing and raise them into defenders of justice. Pit. Chicken Little. Fluttershy. Shadow the Hedgehog. Timmy Turner. Gohan. Malcom in the middle maybe I never watched it. But do you see my vision here. He respects this genre of person more than any god ever

STIM LORE 🔥 fist bumps, flying around in circles, saying him catchphrases and doing him poses, playing with fire in his hands and swirling it around. He's a hup and huh and woop and oops and wup kind of guy. Sometimes he yells CHOCOLATE STARFISH!!! to himself in fred durst impression.

He polishes his forehead gem a lot to be as striking and shiny as possible

His hair starts to turn ashy at the tips and hang down when it grows longer

He respects human life more than the average god. Protecting the earth is his ultimate goal but he'll justify many questionable sacrifices to achieve that

Panromantic Asexual 💪 he does not care about flirting or sex there are horrors to quell citizen. I mean even if he wanted to he couldn't so.

Oh yeah he uses citizens generally when talking about humanity and such, but citizen turns into a nickname for Pit in particular as a sign of respect.

He gives Pit exposure therapy training after returning to earth and learning about his pyrophobia. He also has talks with Palutena, one of the first gods he develops some respect towards and one of the first people to accept him back in, since they relate to eachother over the Chaos Kin incident.

He doesn't have a real temple and he's mostly a drifter, but he did set up shop at an abandoned human temple in the middle of nowhere. WORST crib imaginable. courage the cowardly dog style PC setup. Light up gaming in progress sign. Q-bert funko pop displayed like a treasured collectable.

He would be OBSESSED with old low budget sci-fi movies and similar genres of b-movies. He thinks The Amazing Bulk is the best movie ever made ever

He would be really good at games where the rules are just entirely decided by vibes and such he can understand them thoroughly. That one video of the guys using toy phones and xylophones like a card game with gamer rage mannerisms. Calvinball. Etc.

He can go a while without sleep. When he needs to he lays back in the sky and sleeps among the stars. This has led to many flock of owls attacks followed by meteor crash landing into a god's back lawn.

THAT'S ALL I CAN THINK OF FOR NOW but yeah those are the big ones 💞 thank you for opening the gates for me to be insanecrazy about my specialist guy on the planet 😁

#pyrrhon #kid icarus #kid icarus uprising #kiu #headcanons #not art

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izzyspussy · 1 year

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thinking about something very sad and violent and sad and upsetting and violent.

[CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, ED ON HIS KRAKEN SHIT]

thinking about them all on the breakup boat in the kraken era, and ed is fucking terrifying, but also sometimes he's just pathetic. like everyone knows he's evil now because he's sad as hell.

and this isn't at all what izzy wanted. we all know that. now the crew knows that too, and izzy himself. he wanted ed to be blackbeard, yeah, but only because he thought that was what was best (for both of them), and he wants ed to be... if not happy then at least not miserable. half content half the time, if that's the fucking best izzy can do. he's just trying his damndest now to figure out how to stop doing any worse.

so he brings back some fabric from a raid, and gives it to ed. it's not an outfit or anything, just an unrolled skein of the stuff really, not even hemmed. the raw stuff, the merchants were probably gonna sell it to a tailor or something what the fuck does izzy know. but it's nice. it's fine. maybe silk or velvet or something equally expensive and easily destroyed. and he offers it to ed without a word, because he doesn't know what words he could say, and anyway he thinks - he thinks - the fabric itself must surely say enough.

ed takes the fabric. runs it through his hands. lets the excess fall in curtains onto the deck. stares at it for a long minute. and izzy thinks he did it! ed likes it! and he got the message, that izzy just wanted-

but actually ed is furious. when he looks up he's angrier than izzy thinks he's ever seen him. his fawn fear response goes absolutely haywire and he starts stumbling unintelligibly over explanations and excuse, for now and for before and he just wanted-

ed interrupts izzy's babbling with, "tie him to the mast."

the ship goes as silent as a ship at sea can go. not a damn sound in the air but the lap of calm waves against the hull. everyone has stopped breathing.

because, yeah, ed has been scary this past while since stede's very memory was thrown overboard with all his stuff and left to die like the rest of his crew. but he's just been making threats he clearly means, constantly drawing attention to his weapons (which he's wearing more of than he used to) or pulling them on people to enforce his orders, lurking and looming and glowering and breathing down everyone's necks, and twice as brutal during raids than any of them have ever seen him. he hasn't done anything to any of them yet (as far as anyone but izzy knows).

but you don't get this far as a pirate without knowing when to follow a fucking command without questioning it, so even as izzy gasps, "what?" ivan and fang are hesitantly moving towards him.

when ed doesn't repeat himself or clarify, izzy stubbornly accepts his fate. he snaps, "i don't need to be tied," and starts frog marching his damn self to the mast to put himself in position to be flogged - a form of discipline ed hasn't used in years, and has never used on izzy before ever (except when he was the bosun on hornigold's ship and he was ordered to, and they both knew then he didn't want to, and in a way that was a hurt that they'd shared. not like this).

but ed grabs izzy by the hair from behind and yanks him back so hard izzy loses his feet. he snarls, "if i said tie you, they'll fucking tie you." he all but tosses izzy at ivan and fang, and they - still visibly unwilling, but not hesitating anymore; clearly there's no waiting for ed to change his mind - grab him. izzy lets them this time, walks between them as they lead him toward the mast to do as ed says.

but then ed adds, "fight it."

izzy's "what?" is something much deeper, much worse than shock this time. the look on his face hurts to look at - well, frenchie was already looking away, watching this unfold from the corner of his eye since it would be really pushing his luck to fully turn his back, but now jim has to as well.

ed isn't even looking at izzy. he's picking his nails with his knife or something, whatever. he's already pulled the whip, from fuck knows where, bonnet didn't even have one. he says, "i'm bored izzy, i already told you that didn't i? it's in your best interests to make this entertaining."

izzy doesn't do anything at first. he's having some trouble comprehending that this is really happening, like this, to him, now. after twenty years of loyalty and one bad call. after - not friendship, pirates don't have friends - something else, something more than simple friendship. or so izzy had thought, all this time.

so ed finally lets them catch eyes, and his are... dead. not flinty, not hard like steel, not cold as ice. they're just black. nothing there at all. but the affected boredom in his voice has gone even more sour, even more threatening, when he repeats himself, "i know you're prideful, iz-" the nickname stings like hell now "-but if you don't give me a show i'll double your count."

and, not knowing what the fucking count is to begin with, but not doubting now that it's plenty enough already, izzy puts up a fight.

izzy struggles and kicks up and twists around in fang's and ivan's arms. he even bites one of them, he can't tell which. he can't tell which way's up at this point, his heart hurts so fucking bad. his crewmates tie him by the wrists facing the mast, and he stops fighting with a warped kind of relief as soon as the rope touches his skin. one of them has shaking hands.

before the knots are all the way done, ed is at izzy's back.

"cry," he orders, and fuck at this point izzy was already about to, and his eyes fill up on ed's command. ed pulls izzy's head back by the hair again to check, and izzy makes a helplessly wounded noise at the sneering, empty look on his face.

"aaww," ed says mockingly. "are those genuine?" izzy's answer is just another heartbroken little whine. ed crushes his face into the mast.

he cuts open the back of izzy's vest and shirt with his knife. (he's unconsciously careful not to slice open izzy's back; deep, deep down underneath layers upon layers of rage and grief and resentment and apathy, he already regrets this; he's already burying it away in the farthest back of his mind to wretchedly Not Think About forever, right alongside The Toe Thing.)

so anyway. izzy never does learn how many flogs ed had arbitrarily decided on. he hardly feels them at all. but he keeps crying.

#jack facts #hc #my fic #ofmd #blackhands #like... not really. just because the Dynamic is more complicated than that.#but like. in terms of Actions that are Taken. yeah basically.#anyway. i'm sorry to this man.#abuse

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kaykebitez · 3 months

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Phaere Vrinn - Tav Character Sheet

The first of my character directories, since I figured it would be helpful for myself to have character sheets for all my Tavs in one place, and what better place than Tumblr lol. This bio will contain SPOILERS for A Sonnet of Spiders and my fanfiction universe, The Dark Minstrel, so if you're following along and don't want all the lore spoiled pls read at your discretion. <3

Name: Phaere Vrinn (Formerly: Phaere Melarn) Race: (Formerly) Lolth-Sworn Drow (Currently unaffiliated) Class: Bard (College of Lore in Game; More closely aligns with College of Eloquence) Age: 170 Sex: Female Pronouns: She/Her Alignment: Chaotic Good/Neutral (ish) Orientation: Pansexual Partners: Astarion & Halsin

Height: 4'11" Build: S m o l. Petite and lightly curvy. Skin: Dusty lavender with tons of FRECKLES Eyes: Pink (Volo eye Grey) Hair: Moonlight White with a bit of a teal-ish tint Tattoos: Amethyst purple Starpoint Glimmer Tat Favored Weapon: Hand Crossbow or Orin's Dagger Instrument: Flute or Spider's Lyre Favorite Spell: Shatter, Otto's Irresistible Dance Base Stats (I think) CHA: 17 WIS: 12 DEX: 15 STR: 8 INT: 10 CON: 13

Likes: Music, dancing, pomegranates, sparkly clothes, witty jokes, sweet wines, vanilla cake Dislikes: Drow Bullshit (TM), injustice, boring speeches, krakens, spiders (the irony), being underestimated Personality: Phaere can be a bit of a wildcard, but most of the time she's a charming, charismatic performer with a good heart. However, she can dish it as well as she can take it, so if you come at her with hostility, malice, or snark, expect to get it back tenfold. If you meet her with warmth or friendliness, she will absolutely bend over backwards to befriend you or at very least treat you with kindness in return. She reflexively helps the helpless and defends the defenseless, but gets easily angered by injustice, prejudice, or unfair treatment.

While she holds little love for her drow heritage, Phaere is not above using others' prejudices to get what she wants if it suits her. She can play a convincing, evil drow matriarch, even if the act turns her stomach every time she does it. She does have a bit of a cruel streak for those she deems 'evil' or 'deserving' of punishment, which is how she gets around the cognitive dissonance of (usually) not wanting to hurt anyone if she can help it. She would much rather entertain than kill, but if the situation calls for it... well... she can be incredibly sadistic. Anger is the emotion that gets the best of her most often, and when her well of patience runs dry... watch out. You don't want a tiny, pissed-off drow coming to mock you to death.

In love, Phaere is kind, attentive, and selfless, almost to a fault. She puts her partners' needs above her own and rarely asks for what she wants, but she's getting better about it with Astarion and Halsin's help. Her previous lover taught her how relationships work on the surface, and now with the help of her boys she's putting it into practice. Sensual but with a 'take it or leave it' attitude to sexual intimacy, Phaere is more interested in building connections of the heart rather than of the body. But well, she is very good at the bodily connection part, when the mood strikes. She is a bard, after all.

Backstory: (SPOILERS FOR SONNET OF SPIDERS)

Phaere was born in Ched Nasad, a drow city in the Underdark in 1322. The seventh daughter of Halisstra Melarn (or so she was told,) Phaere was ignored often as a child. The smallest of her sisters as well, Phaere was often left in the care of her elder brother, Rylbros, the only male of the family. (As Phaere knew him, he was technically her cousin, an illegitimate child of Halisstra's brother, Q'arlynd, but he was raised as her brother and she considered him as such. Little did she know that SHE was also an illegitimate child of Q'arlynd as well, making her and Rylbros full siblings.) Rylbros, a kind, timid boy with an incredible gift for music, became something of a surrogate parental figure for Phaere, providing her with the affection and care that she never received from her mother or sisters growing up.

Halisstra was tutored in the bardic art of bae'qeshel, and passed on the art to her three eldest daughters, despite none of them being very proficient in the musical arts. Meanwhile, Rylbros and Phaere were gifted in music, and practiced their own music in secret unbeknownst to the rest of the family. Q'arlynd, even though he was forbidden from seeing his son for the most part, even arranged for a private tutor to teach Rylbros the violin as a teenager--the very same bardic tutor that Halisstra had learned from.

Of course, Halisstra had the tutor killed after she insinuated that Phaere, even as a toddler banging on a piano, had more musical talent than all of the Melarn women combined.

Rylbros and Phaere, long since disillusioned with drowic society, made plans to escape Ched Nasad and travel to the surface as a bardic duo when Phaere was around 50 years old. However, during the Silence of Lolth in 1372, Ched Nasad was attacked by Duergar mercenaries, sent by the matron mother of House Melarn's rival house, House Zauvirr. The mercenaries were ordered to kill every last Melarn, and Rylbros and Phaere tried to escape the burning wreckage of their home during the attack.

Rylbros was captured, giving Phaere just enough time to run to freedom. Believing Rylbros to be dead, Phaere ran for days into the wilds of the Underdark, collapsing at the edge of Araumycos, a giant fungal structure located between the ruins of Ched Nasad and Menzoberranzan.

There, she stumbled upon a colony of Myconids. Delirious and dehydrated, Phaere played her flute for the Sovereign, unable to do anything else for fear of being killed. Instead, the Sovereign released rapport spores, and taking pity on the young drow, it decided to take Phaere into its colony. She lived with the Myconid colony through several cycles, working as a dedicated bard and tour guide for travelers and as a caretaker for juvenile myconids. It was through this 60-year experience that Phaere unlearned some of her drow teachings, earning a new appreciation for surface races through meeting travelers and building up a connection with nature thanks to her fungal family.

At the encouragement of the third Sovereign, Phaere left the colony at the age of 110, having grown restless and wanting to travel the surface world to spread her music across the land, as she and Rylbros had dreamed of doing in their youth. She wasn't very successful as a bard, however, until she made it to Neverwinter, where she met a 40-something human bard by the name of Robin.

It was love at first sight.

Robin started as a mentor for Phaere, and then as a confidante and friend, teaching her about the intricacies of life on the surface, as well as cultivating her musical talent with other instruments (piano and the lyre, mainly). Robin, with their infinite patience and kindness, opened Phaere's heart to more experiences as the two traveled across Faerun, performing and dazzling audiences in taverns, city squares, and inns alike. Eventually, the two began a romantic relationship, and Phaere stayed with Robin until their dying breaths at the age of 92. The two never married (Robin was not the marrying type) but were faithfully committed for nearly 45 years, even as Robin encouraged Phaere to seek other experiences outside of their relationship.

Phaere never did. She knew she'd have plenty of time for love later in life.

After Robin's death, Phaere traveled alone for 15 years, leaving behind a string of flings and only casual acquaintances, not quite ready to open her heart to friendship or love until the events of BG3. On her way to Baldur's Gate when she was abducted by the Nautiloid, Phaere received a rude awakening in the form of a tadpole, and thus decided fairly quickly (with some bumps along the way) that life was too short and too unpredictable to wallow in loneliness and misery. Robin wouldn't have wanted her to do that.

#bg3 #bg3 tav #baldurs gate tav #my tav #tav oc #kayke ocs #Phaere Vrinn #drow oc #drow tav #drow culture

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