Words About Pirates, Words About The Sea

AO3: Navigatrix

[spookyghostcupcake]

A glorious 25th of May to all of you.

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg!

[nondelphic]

writing is 10% storytelling and 90% rearranging three sentences for an hour like you're trying to solve an ancient curse

[rustyanddustychevron]

Everyone keeps talking about "the writer's barely disguised fetish". But I still haven't heard about "the writer's barely disguised huge ass pet peeve"

[sharpnelshell-deactivated201905]

It had almost escaped my notice that it is now May, the month that dooms to a heartbroken death 99% of characters from folk ballads. So, if you suspect you may be a character from a folk ballad, for your own safety: 

don’t fall in love, don’t go by the river, don’t go to the sea, don’t talk to sailors, don’t gamble, don’t ramble, don’t go North, don’t go North-West, don’t stand in the wind, don’t dance with anyone named Sally, Sue, Mary, Ann, or Barbara, don’t go to the pub (but if you do go to the pub at least don’t drink, and if you do drink at least pay for your own drink, and if you are absolutely broke and have to let someone else pay for your drink then at the very least do try not to forget to toast everyone you know whom you think might be there very loudly and possibly multiple times), don’t lend money, don’t borrow money, don’t wish you had more money, don’t make plans to make more money, don’t start working for a new employer, absolutely do believe anyone who says they will try to kill you, curse you, or maim you, absolutely do believe anyone who says you might die, turn down every invitation to go a-hunting, horse-riding, or a-courting, be wary of flute players you meet on your path, don’t dance with satanic men in black coats, don’t marry off your daughters to the first man who’ll have them, and don’t promise your true love any herbs you can’t readily plant and gather in your own garden. 

There. That should just about cover you for 31 days. Heed the warnings and you may have a chance to last the month. Good luck.

[dinosaur-mayonnaise]

obsessed with characters who were written for one another. like, what do you mean the reason for my existence is to be by your side? what do you mean our divine purpose is to belong to one another, for better or worse?

[navigatrixnarrations]

Chapter 13 of Sharpe's Beacon: the disaster officers are reunited and their feelings bubble closer to the surface

[emilybeemartin]

as if learning french and recovering from a buckshot wound behind enemy lines weren't hard enough, suddenly you're reminded there's bagpipes

[navigatrixnarrations]

AO3 and Tumblr are currently not getting on, so here is a link to the latest chapter of Sharpe's Beacon done the old-fashioned way.

Chapter 12 of Sharpe's Beacon

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

British & irish folk music groups will have 2 albums that are no skip really hard to not sing along with start to finish bangers and then every single other song they've ever released is like now who thought it was a good idea or even socially acceptable to release this where other people can hear it

[dorsetgirl1]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64183651/chapters/165240016

Second (and final) chapter of Paying For Perfection now up at AO3.

[cloudselkie]

Fuck, no wonder my fic gets zero traffic. I didn't realize people hated Canon x OC fics that much.

That's...

Really demoralizing for someone who puts a ton of work into their fic.

[navigatrixnarrations]

They're not our audience, and that's their loss.

[dorsetgirl1]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64183651

I see the AO3-tumblr interface still isn't working - YET AGAIN. Anyway, chapter 1 of Paying For Perfection is up at AO3.

“Sharpe worried that it was all too easy, too perfect, that he'd pay for this one day” - (A Country Gentleman, Chapter 3).

A more detailed look at solving some of Sharpe’s worries, from Pat’s viewpoint. Set in October 1825, when the team have been in Broadhurst just over two months.

[uwudonoodle]

[lookashiny]

(via Pinterest)

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

I always feel insane reading this much into these books but the depiction of the paradigm shift in european warfare during the napoleonic period, here personified by the invention of rifles, in the sharpe books is so cool. both because [begrudgingly] the prequels do a rlly good job with depicting a before and after image with dodd using them, the depiction of their use at copenhagen, &c, and then how they're used in the peninsular war, and because the officers' nonreaction to + lack of recognition of the way that these developments basically kill most 18th century techniques of warfare in the space of 1 page is like watching the first step of the rube goldberg machine which would lead to the famous meat mincer of "20thc technology with 19thc tactics" in the first world war. really really interesting. and it's all so elegantly laid out in a series which also features a character who survives being thrown to tigers and then to elephants and then to snakes one after the other with zero explanation because the author I guess didn't know how else to keep him alive but still resolve the plots

[thatsbelievable]

[dorsetgirl1]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

However cold he got - and he couldn’t feel his feet on the dirty floor any more - Sharpe wasn’t going to die of it. That much control of his life he did have.