the rest of the day was quite easy.
i did all my jobs on my list
and enjoyed them and had some time over.
i love you. i'm glad i exist.
🕮
[independent rp blog for
sealand // est. forever]
We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.
I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.
It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.
(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)
Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.
My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.
When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.
We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.
Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.
The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.
I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.
Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”
Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.
But he’s trying to get me and my sister out to visit him. And plate mounts are cheap.
The rules of Gay Pirate Plate are simple by the way.
The plate must be clearly and openly displayed in a place of great prominence whenever it is in your possession. When it is not in your possession, the display piece must remain in place. This is where you would put your gay pirate plate, IF YOU HAD ONE.
No active steps may be taken to prevent the theft of the Gay Pirate Plate. That goes against the spirit of the game, as does attempting to hide it.
The plate MUST be stolen and cannot be gifted or removed with permission. Should you witness attempted theft of the Gay Pirate Plate you are required to intervene and return it to its place.
Every time your sibling successfully absconds with the Gay Pirate Plate, you must respond with indignant fury, as if you have not also repeatedly and blatantly stolen the Gay Pirate Plate.
If you find its utility, or novelty, runs out, please return your unit through official channels. A discarded Doll may cause ongoing issues.
Q: What if the loss was outside my control?
A: It does not know that.
(I quite like sketching with this 1px binary brush it kind of feels like scratching around with a mechanical pencil and activates an important part of my art brain)
Pillars and floats like that are pretty stable, compared to regular boats, so there’s even a research vessel, called FLIP, that purposefully capsizes itself to be more steady when conducting research.
i need you to say more words about Brutal Force Of Nature Sun Sealand
Okay so I had a good, well-formulated answer to this that Tumblr decided to delete. So, this is going to be the unpolished version. It may or may not make sense. I am not liable for any confusion that may arise. I am exhausted but want to talk about my Little Freak of Nature. This is likely not what you want, Anon, but it's what's coming out of my stream of consciousness.
There's actually a lot of background context to this that's been built upon in my micronation server, and specifically with @iced-coffeebean. But to understand what I mean in passing, I think it's important to grasp the foundations of how I view and characterize the micros.
1. They are basically their base nation's traits boiled down into their simplest form and shoved into a small package. Like espresso but with personality.
2. Given their general instability as personifications, the above factor can cause frequent issues. They are stuck in a schrödinger's box of existence. Are they human? Nation? Neither? Whatever tf Niko Niko was? I like to think that while full nations have a stronger connection to the people—since there's so many more of them—micros are more closely tied to their land (or medium of existence, in cases like Ladonia and Aerica). They all have an innate inhumanness that differs from a nation's inhumanity.
You also need to know some things about Sealand and my interpretation.
1. I interpret his manga panels to imply he is not technically the personification of Sealand alone, but of the actual structure. So, he used to be H.M. Fort Roughs, a Maunsell Sea Fort designed to defend England erected in 1943.
2. His canon characterization shows he's prone to fighting before asking questions, having an opportunistic nature (including a colonialism habit) and being kind of an ass in general. Like he means well! He does! He's just a jerk about it at times. He's also incredibly determined and, for better or worse, will not give up.
3. The actual Principality of Sealand was created on the basis of self-determination and personal liberties. They basically said "fuck you" to BBC and turned their ideas of a pirate radio station into an actual state. It is important to note that today, Michael Bayes emphasizes that Sealand is not anti-Britain. This more or less is a continuity of Sealandic history, though it has been strained at times.
When you combine these things—in my head, at least—you get someone who was literally created to never back down. He was designed and implemented to stand guard for as long as he needed to, and it succeeded! The fort is still in working shape, albeit a bit worn down. It no longer drives people insane (a phenomenon known as "fort madness").
Character-wise, he defaults to friendly diplomacy unless spooked, like with Seborga, or pushed to aggression like with Ladonia or TRNC. He tried to always present himself as a leader who knows what's best for everyone, even if he really doesn't. His methods are pushy and borderline obnoxious, but it's really not too surprising.
He takes after England, after all. He's his grandiose personality consolidated into a tiny "state". He's a can of Campbell's Condensed Big Ego Soup.
So. He's by nature built to never fail, to stand his ground no matter what, to be imposing and do his job. He has no problem resorting to threat and violence (which he's very capable of) if he deems it necessary. But nevertheless less he wants the best for everyone. He has friends and he wants them to succeed, though he supports them even when they fail. He's the reason the micronations formed a group at all. He is their Sun, and he's aware of it because he forced himself into that position.
I like to think that, at least on some level, he does so out of obligation as well as arrogance. He was built for it. He's "real", so isn't it his responsibility to lead and take charge? Who could do it better? He was born a shield and remains a tool despite his self-proclaimed independence.
I hope this makes sense. I doubt it does, to be honest. I don't feel well in general and spent most of today a bit hungover, so my Sealand thoughts aren't too coherent atm.
TL;DR: Sealand was built to survive and protect at all costs. He does, but he's an asshole. He's England but if you steeped him too long in a tiny teapot.
God, how he wants to argue. If no one takes it half as well but he still has to admit it was lonely, then why not have a few people out? Toughing through the elements is infinitely easier when softened by the warmth of company, after all. There has to be a better way to go about it, one that might spare Peter or anyone else the dreaded isolation, but rather than brainstorming a solution, it's brushed over as being how things had ought to be, nothing more, nothing less.
Maybe Raivis can figure something out before he leaves or convince Peter to come with him. He wouldn't mind hosting him back at Riga for a while, even if it couldn't be the whole winter. Peter probably doesn't want to be away from his home for so long, especially since someone needs to be around to keep Sealand claimed. A stand-in for a few days or weeks, tough weather or not, has to be doable, right?
But if he pushes the issue, he might upset him. The topic is changing, with "enough of all this" acting as a firm barrier between what should and should not be spoken about. They're onto Peter's skills as a host, and Raivis needed to drop the concerns. "Um-" Right, offering things. Food and drink, just like Raivis would do were the positions reversed.
"C-Could I, ah... Do you have herbal tea? The green and brown bag is actually, um- We can bring that with us, to the kitchen. I brought some fresh food." The canned rations necessary for living at sea are far better than the alternative of starvation, but it's nothing compared to a home-cooked meal. "I mean, is mostly ingredients so I can, um - I was thinking we could cook together, if you want? As a fun activity? O-Or I can make it myself, if you don't like working in the kitchen! The only pre-made thing is a tin of gingerbread cookies - biscuits? - I made for the trip."
Is he rambling? He probably could have said that he brought food and explained later, but the details come stumbling out without thinking, gaze flickering over to the gulls.
"If I knew you had so many friends, I would have brought dried sprats..."
Peter swivels to face Raivis, dazzling at him as though his guest contained within him the sum total of worldly kindness. The bag slung over his shoulder swings wide from the momentum, and Peter snaps out of his surprise to still it.
"Did you actually? No, no, I'd absolutely love to help out-- I'm complete rubbish, but I can at the very least follow your directions-- that sounds so fun, I normally never bother with ingredients-- they're such a hassle and all I do is muck 'em up anyway!"
"Never mind the flock, they've got to look after themselves," he carries on, hauling open the heavy riveted front door, now doubly eager to get inside. "I much too much offer 'em half my hauls of whitebait typically anyway."
On the outside, Peter's home sort of resembles a condemned building. On the inside, though, it looks instead like a condemned soul with a warm cosy knit jumper on. That is to say, a hollow rusted and haunted thing, but with charming decor decisions. Such as the floral print theming in the lounge Peter had been so eager to assert the merits of before.
"Erm, okay, you've got the Row which is this here-- the big hallway..."
It's a swift left turn into the kitchen. Despite his earlier flurries of anxiety-tidying, Peter can't much help but suddenly notice so many more small, embarrassing details of his home, the sort of thing only ever noticed as soon as somebody you wish to impress is already present.
(To name a few: the tape holding his address to the mailbox gone dirty and curling at the edges; bare wires stuck out in places from the ceiling like cords of tendon; the walls of the kitchen were off-white in need of repainting, with rust-stains gathering around screws in the wall; and the absolutely garish yellow tablecloth that he’d been meaning to replace for at least a decade, and has just never gotten around to it.)
Currently taking up the majority of the kitchen table is a miniature robot looking thing, with its blocky exoskeleton half built and half in pieces, the tiny parts still to be constructed all fastidiously sorted around it. (For those in the audience who could have recognised it by sight: yes, it's a Deathscythe gunpla.)
The bag he'd taken from Raivis earlier is not here but one room over, where Peter had before hurriedly placed it down to rush back outside. Peter shrugs down this second bag from his shoulder, sitting on the floor to open it up straightaway.
"Does any of it need to stay cold? Not that that's necessarily so urgent, now that I think about it."
So the kid was intent on trying his own key? . . . Admittedly, that was incredibly strange. Any normal person would have apologised for their mistake and moved on. So why not this guy? But Peter didn't have the presence of mind to think about how utterly bizarre that was. Rather, he was giggling and pulling his key from the ignition, waving one arm in an exaggerated motion for the other to come aboard.
"Well come on, then!" he called, shrugging his coat on over his bare chest to preserve some sense of modesty (now, where had his shirt gone?), and shoving his keys into one pocket. He moved further into the wheelhouse, clearing enough room in front of the doorway for the kid to enter the enclosed space.
Peter leaned against one wall, but perhaps a bit too much. The fiberglass groaned against his weight, eliciting a quiet, "Oop—" from the blond before spurring him to straighten up. He gestured to the console with a big, stupid grin on his face.
"G- hic- Go ahead, be my fuckin' gues'. Bu' wot's all this abou' leavin' you alone?" He rested one hand on his hip. "Yo're the one ou' here, accusin' mae o' stealin' my oon ship. Go' ih a lil backwards there, mate."
Some people will swear up and down that if one speaks and acts with sufficient confidence and self-assuredness, people will typically assume they're meant to be there, and that they are supposed to be doing whatever it is they happen to be doing. Even if it's, like, wildly illegal or stupid.
It's great fun, to pull off that kind of stunt. Just as it's a tad irritating, to see someone else trying to get away with it!
Peter storms up onto the boat and around into the wheelhouse, fighting down his own amusement at the situation with a somewhat forced annoyance.
Despite this smug lush choosing of his own free will to give Peter enough space to walk past, the boy still irritably waves him away as though he hadn't moved at all. It's not for any particular reason, and there's nothing accomplished by it, but it makes him feel better. That groan from the glass is a bit concerning, but he's not about to let himself get distracted.
"Right." He sits down with a huff, jabs his own copy into the key into the ignition, turns it and wakes the poor boat back up again. Well. That's good. They've at least not replaced his with a fake. If he weren't so cross, he might've been impressed; so far as he's aware, only one person's ever successfully pickpocketed him, and that particular individual had had centuries of practice being up to no good!
"There. See?" He turns around in the chair, not keen on having his eyes off this guy for too long. "I guess we're at an impasse, yeah?"
But talking over the noise when they don't have to is a bit of a pain, and if they're about to get into an altercation (you never know!), it'd be better not to have running machinery involved. He shuts the engine off.
"No dramas though. I've got an idea. Let's the both of us take this boat up to Solomon and he can get this sorted for us."
How do you think your version of the character would react to meeting their canon-self?
anon i have incredible news
whenever my sealand interacts with doubles he has a bad habit of trying to pick on them
however. "bully first, befriend immediately after" is a canon trait
in fact, imo its MORE evident in canon sealand than it is in mine
so it would definitely be on sight but i cant decide who would pick the fight first. this is actually so funny the more i think about it. i do think they could be very good friends (after all the mutual bullying is out of their systems) but mine would also be just . SO embarrassed by association. the Self Consciousness Gap between any teenager ever, and whoever they were a mere few years earlier, is gigantic. it works a bit different if youre immortal but the cringe is still there
What's it like to be immortal? Wrong answers only. No sad parts allowed.
Well... perhaps it's just me, but I already don't see much reason to be sad about it…
Imagine if you had a day where you had the entire afternoon and evening to do whatever you liked, and night never truly came and you never had to go to bed and wake up and go back to whatever it is you do every day.
I mean, of course I have things I've got to do every day! But I don't mean it quite so literally as that. It's more like, I never have the feeling that the time I've got to have fun and do as I please is limited, or will go away someday… I'll always have all the time in the world to read through a whole library, and listen to every album, and play every game, and hang out with every friend, and travel to every place… it's like that!
"I... yes, I live alone." Nowadays, at least. It was odd, to have something be at once a sense of pride and a discomfort. For centuries he was forced to live in other people's homes, other people's nations, and all that time he dreamed of what it would be like to be on his own. Now that he was, it was... mostly nice. There were times he missed having his brothers around, especially after multiple empires together. On the other hand, living alone meant he could interact with people when he wanted.
Raivis tilted his head from side to side slowly, weighing the response and trying to see what floated to that top as bothering him at the core of it all. Something wasn't settling right, and after a moment, he found it. "But I can go into town and see people there," he countered. "Um, my culture isn't really into 'small talk,' but even just seeing people has an effect, you know? If I spend too long alone, I still have to go to the grocery, or I can go to the library and ask about the newest books. I-I can still be having people close by. Out here, though..."
Would Peter go to shore even when the weather turned nasty, risking his own safety, or did he stockpile to keep him through the winter without need for supply trips? The internet made things better, surely, as he could video chat with his friends, but that quite frankly wasn't the same as being in the same space as others.
"I-It seems awfully lonely... And unsafe. If something happened to you, if you got your foot trapped in one of these holes or were too injured to be getting up, s-someone would know to come looking for you, right? Do you have people to at least check in often so they know to be sending help?"
The seagulls, cute though they may be, wouldn't be of much help should something terrible happen. Emergency plans for any situation were key; there was no telling how and when something could go terribly wrong. "Sorry, I know I'm, eh... n-nagging on this, I guess? I know, but it's worth worrying about, I think. I want to stay here with you for my visit - this is not about me leaving! - but I'm worried for you when I'm gone."
Peter stands still and patiently hears him out, though he has a pretty good idea of where this concern is going and where it will probably end. The wind turns, and his smile makes it feel as though the breeze is warmer from this new direction.
"I get that a lot too," he finally says, with a halfhearted shrug. He walks back under the shelter of the helipad, and leans his back against the wall, counterbalanced by the bag he's got slung over his shoulder, to re-tie his shoelace which the gull had undone.
"We used to have people who'd swing by and toss the daily papers up."
With the excitement of having been called fading away, all around them the flock is swiftly growing bored. A few of them take off, while the rest continue wandering about for something more interesting. Perhaps Peter had hidden something somewhere for them to find and eat?
"It's only ever unsafe if I don't pay attention and don't know what I'm doin'. I won't get hurt. And if I do, I will just have to get up and deal with it, won't I? I could think of it like, a chance to make someone proud of me, with how well I can deal with the situation... and that's only if one sees fit to present itself in the first place."
"... It is a bit lonely, though, yeah, at times."
He finishes tying his lace with a final authoritative tug, pulling it tight, and stands up straight again.
"But no one else takes to it half as well as me-- so why put someone else to the task of watchin' the place, when I don't have to? But someone's got to, and in the end it's worth it, right?"
The question comes out sounding not quite so rhetorical as he'd intended it, the answer not quite so self-evident as he'd hoped. It comes out like a question he may someday actually have to come up with an answer for.
"Enough of all this, I've not even showed you around yet, I've not even offered you anything yet! What sort of host am I, anyway? Besides perhaps one who's a bit out of practice." His home looks much nicer on the inside than it does on the outside, anyway; maybe it'll bring Raivis to not worry quite so much.
[Peter's startling has Fannar startling, although thankfully he doesn't mimic the noise his friend just made. Though, don't worry Peter — he's not going to draw attention to it!]
[Instead, he just holds his hands up apologetically, with a sheepish smile to match, although he's coughing into his scarf for a second.] Ah, s-sorry — I didn't mean to sneak up on you. That was my fault. Are you alright?
[Feeling very thankful he didn't get decked, he pushes his hands into his pockets, and noses a little deeper into his scarf.]
The confetti fell out of your hair, by the way. What did you do tonight? I missed most of the festivities. But, better late than never — that is the saying, right?
Ah, yeah! I'm good! Though -- let's not be silly, you didn't frighten me thaaat much. I just…
[ think fast think fast ]
… wanted to grant you some personal space! Is all. I only meant to be polite!
[ Though from the grin on his face it's pretty obvious that he's poking fun at himself here, and neither believes what he's saying nor expects Fannar to. ]
There was a party I wanted to go to but I wasn't allowed in, so, I was the entire time sat outside on the bench instead, but people would come out now and then to keep me company!
[He appears to have crawled out of his hole for the first time in a few weeks, since he's suddenly jumpscaring his nearest friend by silently siding up beside them. Where did he come from?]
You have confetti in your hair. Do you want me to get it out for you? Are you excited for the new year?
[ Peter leaps an arm's length away, whipping around while making the most uncool noise possible. (Imagine a squeak toy getting run over by a motorbike). ]
[ In fact, the sudden movement flings a few of the confetti flakes right off him! They flutter down in their expected harmless way, accentuating the silliness of his reaction. ]
Er... yeah!!!!! Of course I'm excited!! I'm havin' a great time!! Hence my, y'know, weird squawk, and, my... unwarranted dancin' around.
[ Upon closer inspection, he'd looked for a moment like he'd been about to punch whatever's scaring him, but he'd held back in time, and is now doing his best to play the whole thing off. ]
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stormborns
theartofmadeline
izzy806
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