Send me Trick or Treat for a treat <3
A sneak peek of what I'm working on right now! Part of Be In My Eyes
Her conviction alone is enough to summon loud gasps of shock, followed by equally loud cheering as every member of self-proclaimed Vox Machina runs to their rooms and respective wardrobes to fetch their sweaters, cold gear and boots. They are all ready in less than 10 minutes, blowing warm breaths into their gloved hands in the park behind Greyskull Keep as the crispy air bites against their skin and the snow crunches beneath their feet. Keyleth is ecstatic like a child on Winter’s Crest morning, jumping around in circles, throwing herself against a particularly fluffy snow bank, and making snow angels. Her friends let her run wild with fond smiles, but no one looks at Keyleth with a more earnest expression than Vax, who would give all the clothes in his body to hold Keyleth in his arms and kiss the cold out of her.
“Keyleth!” Vex’ahlia finally calls for her attention, forming a cone with her hands so her roommate can hear her from the other side of the park. Keyleth’s head rises up like an alert dog and she trudges through the snow to where her friends stand in a huddled circle to combat the cold.
“Sorry,” Keyleth apologizes. Her face is almost as pale as Percy’s hair, except for the redness in her nose and cheeks. She huffs a few breaths, bent over herself, then turns to her friends and says, “Let’s have a snowball battle!”
Okay, buckle up! Because I have this idea for an Our Flag Means Death fic that I think about literally hourly, but won't have time to write until at least June due to how long it's probably gonna be and how much planning it's probably gonna take for the four different POVs I want to use and also how I'm moving 1200 miles in like a month. So, you know TM TM TM.
POV 1: Ed
So, that final episode, right? HOW EXCEEDINGLY RUDE TO JUST LEAVE ED US HANGING LIKE THAT. And in my head, obviously what Ed is gonna do is wallow a bit in private and lose himself in the armor that is Blackbeard in public so that no one asks him anything about any of it. Hard to try and give a guy relationship counseling when he's got a knife to your throat or any other squishy part of your body. And Izzy? Izzy's just gonna make it W O R S E.
Izzy's been sailing under Blackbeard as his right hand man for what feels like ages to him. The time before he admired this man for his strength and his terror and his planning feels like a whole other lifetime ago, and though his idol has become a little less bright over the last grip of time, he still has these dazzling moments of brilliance that remind Izzy of why he's there, of who he himself always wanted to be as a man. And so now that he's got Blackbeard proper back he's going to do everything in his power to keep him all tight laced up in the trappings of violent masculinity, because that is what Izzy knows and understands when it comes to a life.
And I do mean everything. I think at first Izzy offers himself up in that way and Ed balks at it, because he's so newly hurt, because this isn't what he wanted, to be trapped back into a toxic role in a toxic relationship. But Ed is a survivor, and Blackbeard can only feed Izzy so many toes (he only has nine left after all, and balance will start to suffer) before the man starts to foment some sort of attention on how Ed is spending so much time alone, how it feels like Blackbeard's heart has gone out of it even as the cruelty remains. So he gives in to some small physical things while still keeping his boundaries around the physical and emotional parts of him he most wanted to give to Stede and Izzy stops asking so many questions because this, this is what a man should be, all lust and terror, and Ed is a consummate performer.
All of this is, of course, in Ed's POV in close third, because I'm me, so there will be a lot of Thoughts about survival and maintaining legacy and probably some light disassociation as Izzy puts himself directly in Ed's way, makes up desires of Ed's to fill. And eventually they will carry on with the work of piracy in their small corner of the world, the one Ed was so ready to leave, but what is there for him out there if not love?
POV 2: Jim
The other POV on the Revenge is, of course, Jim. Given their druthers they would hightail it as soon as they could and find Olu, but there are a few extenuating circumstances for the time being: namely Ivan and Frenchie.
The first man has been tasked with going everywhere Jim goes and never taking their eyes off them as Blackbeard gives them orders to complete and sometimes when they're ashore, murderous missions to see through. Sometimes Fang takes over this watch, but it's hard to get the geniality out of him that they had seen glimpses of before. Everyone on the ship, it seems, is taking Blackbeard's lead in a way the original crew of the Revenge never would have taken Stede's. Jim has to give that to Ed, he knows how to get what he wants from a man.
The second man, well, Jim just doesn't want to leave Frenchie alone with this gang of leather daddies, because for all his intelligence and imagination, Jim doesn't see him being able to fend off more than a couple of the men if Ed's favor turns. Frenchie isn't Jim's responsibility of course, but they'd sailed together long enough that they feel something like friendship for him, and that can't be ignored.
So Jim and Frenchie stick together, listening and waiting, and plotting, mainly through long looks and head tilts and finger twitches. Even if they had the materials to write or draw to one another, they wouldn't want to risk it being found by the eyes that are always on them. Keeping as much as they can in their heads is the safest bet. Until one evening when something from within the wall whispers to Jim in the middle of the night, just as Ivan has started to snore, and it turns out that Lucius is actually alive.
In the face of their current precarity, three conspirators are better than two. Especially when one of them has unfettered access to the musings of their captor--being the only person who is ever close to Ed because Ed doesn't know he's there--and can write notes to be passed off to people in ports for the purposes of leaving a trail, just in case anyone might be on it. So they keep their heads down, and they listen, and they bide their time.
POV 3: Oluwande
The rest of the crew is, of course on the trail, and Oluwande is the first one to receive a message, from Spanish Jackie of all people. He hadn't even gone into her place, couldn't bring himself to without Jim, but she had a way of finding what she wanted. When they did meet she looked him up and down with wide-eyed pity and gave him a folded slip of paper and a bag of coins. Oluwande can't read the paper, but he knows both Lucius's handwriting and Spanish doubloons when he sees them and he takes them both back to Stede where the man is down at the docks stubbornly trying to purchase or borrow a ship with nothing but the rings on his fingers and his wide smile. It is...not going so well.
Thinking fast, Olu presents the bag to his captain as if it is a small portion of a very large spoils they had stashed somewhere and he'd been asked to retrieve it. He explains to the owner of the ship that they only need help getting to this fortune of theirs (borrowing from Frenchie's pyramid scheme) and the owner of the small vessel comes around the minute the bag hits his hand, Olu having palmed several pieces to use for food later. Stede feels quite proud of the accomplishment, telling Olu that see, faith was all they needed, and Olu heaves a long suffering and under appreciated sigh and goes to pull the rest of the crew from the bars and whorehouses they'd scattered to so they can get this underway.
It takes them days to convince Stede that not only could they not get to China in this vessel before starving to death (for it is larger than a fishing boat but smaller still than the Revenge had been, and the Revenge hadn't even been the size of Queen Anne's Revenge, let alone a vessel made for such distances), but that they know Blackbeard isn't headed there. Lucius's note had been somewhat educational for Stede it seemed, but it had been necessarily vague and not educational enough to knock his love struck nonsense back into sense. Olu can sympathize with this somewhat, given how much he misses Jim, but he cannot condone the way Stede talks about Ed at all hours of the day as if they're schoolboys, so he makes himself the most scarce first mate in history.
The doubloons, even though they no longer had them, had also been a clue. There were constant rumours about Blackbeard. Those hadn't even stopped when he was aboard the Revenge with them, and now that he had escaped conscription they were getting even bigger and more wild. Blackbeard had taken on a full English Fleet. Blackbeard had deposed the King of Spain. Blackbeard's ship was made of storm clouds and his beard was now tentacles that could strangle a man without him even having to lift a hand. It was hard to separate the plausible sightings from the weird, but there had been a smaller rumour that Blackbeard had recklessly taken on a Spanish galleon with only half a crew and the doubloons, it seemed, had been proof. So they manned the new ship and headed into the wind to, as Stede had once said, "get their damned men (and them) back."
POV 4: Stede
Stede loves and respects his men more now than he ever has before. They're fearless, they're intelligent, and by god they're getting so much better at communication skills! The morning the hull of Stede's old ship/Blackbeard's current ship breaches the horizon he calls them together on the deck of their purloined boat and gives them the grand speech he's been writing over and over in his head about destiny and fate and love. And not a single one them holds back on telling him what they think! What they think is quite a bit more negative than he was hoping, but baby steps. They are all convinced, it seems, that they're going to die.
For his part, Stede is sure that as soon as they hail the Revenge and he can just explain himself to Ed there won't be any trouble at all. It's a belief he firmly holds right up until one of his own damn cannon balls breaks the point of the forepeak off of their ship way too close to the hull for comfort. Buttons gives Stede a rundown of who he can see above decks through his looking glass, including Jim and Frenchie, but Blackbeard appears to be nowhere in sight and Izzy is at the command. This rankles Stede to no end and he leans into being the obnoxious, dogged terrier of a man he knows he can be.
They don't have any weapons, a folly Oluwande had pointed out several times in the last several weeks, but they are lighter, faster, and more maneuverable, so Stede does the only thing he can think of, the thing he's spent all of his time doing since he left home a truly free man. He tries to get as close to Ed as possible as quickly as possible. The gall of it really takes Blackbeard's crew by surprise, and there are some more shots with cannons and guns and, when he realizes they don't have a dinghy either (perhaps he'd paid too much for this collection of boards after all), Stede strips to his stockings, breeches, and shirt cuffs and dives right overboard to make a swim for it.
It's Jim who pulls him up over the railing and they and Frenchie stand between him and Izzy Hands while he catches his breath and leaks sea water onto the deck. Izzy looks like murder and Stede can feel it reflected in his gut. He's about to step around his crew mates and take the pound of flesh he's been dreaming about when suddenly everything goes very still and Ed (Blackbeard? Blackbeard) appears from the doorway to the captain's quarters. It takes Stede's breath away for several reasons, each more inconvenient than the last.
The very public reunion goes south fast, not at all the way Stede had envisioned, and Blackbeard gives an imperious look that sweeps over both ships and proclaims that he will be meeting with Captain Bonnet in his quarters and that not a shot is to be fired until one or both of them emerges. Stede shoots one last look at Izzy as he follows Ed inside and the man is so red Stede wonders idly if his head will explode and save him the trouble of having to remove it himself.
Anyway, there's a lot of pleading on Stede's part and then shouting on Blackbeard's part and then silence on both of their parts and little by little Stede watches as Blackbeard slips away from the face of the man he loves and all that's left is Ed, gutted, lonely, empty eyed Ed, and Stede's heart breaks in two like the orange for what he's done to this man he loves so dearly. Love. He can't even do that right it seems. Not even when he really wants to.
The End
It's a high seas miracle! All couples are reunited and get their own happy scenes of reconnecting with each other and filling each other in on their lives. Izzy and most of Blackbeard's crew are sent off on the smaller ship to meet up with the rest of his fleet where they're off causing other pain and suffering. And probably there should be a sex scene or two for our heroes to make up for all the Izzy I made people endure in the beginning. Something tender and forgiving, exactly the opposite of who Ed had to be the entire time he thought Stede had abandoned him. He still wants to go to China, just the two of them, but he'll settle for other adventures, as long as he can have them as himself, in Stede's arms, and they steer clear of any and all lighthouses.
[Send me a 📓 and I'll tell you about a fic I haven't written yet, but daydream about.]
ID: a banner for the Haven New Year’s Recommendation List— 2021: A Year in Review with a background of hazy sparks flying from a sparkler, all in shades of gold. The text is navy blue, and there is an art-deco style frame around the text.
The Haven New Year’s Rec List
This year has been truly godawful, but we wrote some great fanfiction this year, so here is a partial year in review from a collection of writers on Haven.
ooh okay so that one's one of the documents with multiple fics/works in progress contained within! this one's "wulf-centric content that's technically happening at the same time as the jennastrid fic" and i very much want to finish up the first one soon. but again, i write like a snail, so ^^;;;;;;;
anyways, what if wulf went on a penance road trip to the blooming grove.
*
“I’m sure it’s also nice to be able to do things because you want to, not because you have to.” Caduceus’ deceptively placid gaze drifts sideways, eyeing him.
Eadwulf shrugs.
“Gardening, though,” Caduceus says. “That’s great. You can learn a lot about yourself and the earth by gardening. Have you been tending anything in particular?”
“Useful things. Potatoes.” It feels like spitting in the face of everything Ikithon stood for to put a vegetable garden in the shadow of his former tower, which is exactly why Eadwulf did it.
“Beans?”
“...not yet.” Eadwulf blinks. “Is there a significance to beans?”
“They’re good.”
He can’t tell if Caduceus is fucking with him, but he finds he’s okay with that. Back in Rexxentrum, hardly anyone interacts with him without some undercurrent of subterfuge — hiding ulterior motives or fear or both, seeing the Scourger first, the archmage’s arm candy second. The only person who sees him for him is Astrid, and, well. That’s an entirely separate tangle of complicated honesty.
Hey, it's me, the random person who was posting about the this is how you lose the time war fic the other week. It's up! Also, someone else is writing one (which I haven't read yet, to avoid cross contamination), but two cakes! archiveofourown (.) org/works/31256738
OH! OH!
This is so wonderful!! Thank you for bringing this to my attention!! I will read it as soon as I get my brain in order again!! And best of luck with your writing! You’re making such a gift. <3
Easy access link for fic that I’m so stoked about!
@operafloozy SDKFJGHSLDKH WAIT IS THAT ACTUALLY A THING? oh my god all i have to do to make sure people dont find and reblog posts i dont want them to reblog is add a PORN tag??? i’m sure that would help the bots find me but like who cares about them. that is literally THE funniest thing i’ve ever heard. i’m too chickenshit to try it on a critical role post because critical role fans keep sending me mean asks but like...i gotta test it. that’s so good
yasha post-canon temporary amnesia (probably tharizdun-related somehow) ft. beau trying very hard to take care of her/figure out how to help her (bonus: beau going to a temple to the stormlord and shouting at the altar to fix this), gardening as therapy, memories slowly filtering back through dreams, an interesting dynamic shift with kingsley, plenty of angst and hurt/comfort. i have this as a bulletpointed concept for day one of by week so there's a... slight chance that i will actually write it!
