#trevenbran

[trevenbran]

Im drawing again after more that 3 years! Of course it’s the Dominoes.

But wait there's more!

POV you are captain Rex and your Tal'sooranii boyfriends are watching you change a lightbulb.

This is now the cover art for 'with eyes to see'.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/71966936

[boltlightning]

#23 cat

For Norrington and sparrow

23. cat

Norrington was not, apparently, the only scruffy beast dragged aboard the Pearl; from the streets of Tortuga, he and Elizabeth both had conspired to rescue an abandoned litter of kittens, and add them to the Pearl’s new ranks. “This was not exactly the sort of bright-eyed initiative I expected when I hired you, ex-Commodore,” Jack says flatly. Norrington, with a kitten dozing draped over his arm like some sort of exotic bracelet, says, with no fear or respect as is due Jack’s rank, “Nonsense, Captain,” — sneering this word, petulant wastrel — “these are loyal members of the crew, and can take care of the rat problem.” “And I assume these rats are…literal, yes, not a metaphorical bogeyman?” Norrington smiles without teeth, scritches the purring kitten under its wretchedly adorable chin, and says nothing.

send me a prompt, get a drabble ✨

[trevenbran]

here's a follow up on my vampire Dominoes gif with more detail.

this was the unaltered base.

here's a slightly sped up version of the gif.

and here's the eyeshine frame.

in the fic, they would never be so chill if they had actually just eaten someone. the image revealed by the dark is meant to represent the looming threat of their monstrosity.

With Eyes to See

[trevenbran]

Bury your gays.

Then dig them back up so they can haunt the night and get even weirder with it.

[trevenbran]

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

wrote a fanfic for for @cupcakeshakesnake 's au. it's an AU in which most of the characters are children playing an elaborate roleplaying game, and the rest are the adults in their lives. Norrington and his lieutenants are teachers, and norrington in particular tends to work at various temp jobs during school break to the shock and amazement of his students. swann is the mayor, beckett is the local branch leader of a shipping or fishing conglomerate, davy jones is, inexplicably, still a cursed squid man.

[trevenbran]

i really love monstrous regiment. of course there is much to be said on the story's handling of gender, and indeed much has already been said on the topic. but one thing i don't see discussed much is something i picked up on my second read.

the dichotomy between Jackrum and Blouse.

on the first read through, the book was largely a comedy to me. the snark and absurdity, and of course i was too taken with Maladict's hypnotic insouciance to be paying as much attention to the themes of the book as i should have. but on the second read, the book became much more serious, and the themes of war and politics made themselves known. i also came to understand Jackrum and Blouse much better.

jackrum is not just a jolly old soldier keeping his lad's secrets and having a bit of a laugh on the side. he is a hard man, and ruthless. by real word standards, a war criminal (maybe by discworld standards too. i do not know if the disc has a geneva convention to violate.)

and Blouse is not just a clueless schoolboy in a uniform. a bit naive, and inexperienced certainly, but genuinely intelligent, and most crucially, open minded.

jackrum represents the past; tradition, the way it's always been done. he held in his mind the key to progress, but did not use it. preferring to stick to the game he knew, than to attempt to change things for the better. an authoritarian in an authoritarian institution.

Blouse on the other hand, was a force of change. he studied history, sure, and had a respect for the great generals, but he undertook those studies with a mind to innovation. he was consistently thinking outside the box and coming up with strategies that utilized the resources at his disposal (that he knew of) to their best potential rather than fall back on standard army procedure.

indeed it was this that created the most friction between him and jackrum. he refused to play by the rules, and jackrum seriously considered killing him for it. and if he had? the regiment would not have fared nearly so well, and at the end, no one would have been there to insist that they be treated as soldiers, it was Blouse that stood by them as a stalwart ally. so that when jackrum finally arrived on the scene, change was already in motion, and he had no choice but to see his lads through it safe. had their positions been reversed, jackrum would have tried to smooth things over and keep everyone in the closet.

but if jackrum hadn't been there, they wouldn't have survived at all. it was his experience and cunning that saw them through to the end, and his reputation that forced Blouse and the regiment to be taken seriously.

so it's not so simple as jackrum = bad and blouse = good. you cannot have the future without the past, and what are past battles for, if not to secure the future. jackrum lost sight of that for a while, but his little lads reminded him. so on the foundation he laid, Blouse and his soldiers brought a new day to Boragravia, as glorious as a great big fish.

[trevenbran]

As I'm reading through tumblrs outrage at van Helsing failing Lucy specifically because he did not communicate his suspicions, a thought occured to me.

Helsing is stoker's self insert. And I believe that he was written 100% unironically. Oscar Wilde had just been convicted of sodomy and stoker himself was probably what we'd think of as gay. Wilde's trial had stirred up a moral panic, that in many ways made it more difficult to exist in Victorian society if you felt same sex attraction. This is how stoker believed a hero should deal with a scandalous threat; with discretion. He should always avoid saying the quiet part out loud, and by no account should he draw attention by going public with lurid details.

Never mind that the emergent story was that a woman died because of this circumspection. Stoker genuinely believed that the other characters would react negatively if Helsing revealed the truth. And given what he likely witnessed during the trial; of perfectly civilized and friendly people turning on even loved ones if it was suspected they were gay, it's not hard to see how this particular hangup came about.

[trevenbran]

I dreamed I was in neverland

Captain Hook needed a break because he was 100% done with pan's bullshit, so I took over as captain of the Jolly Roger.

Turns out with a suitably strong will and a vivid imagination, you don't need pixie dust to make a ship fly. Or phase it through solid barriers. It was a joy to sail in neverland, just for sailings sake, but I was looking for something.

we were looking for a magic item and some treasure, a pocket watch or something.

And I needed permission to sail into the tribal waters, because my destination could only be accessed through a straight they gaurded.

Tiger lilly and the Victorian depiction of native americans had been replaced in my dream by a Maori cheiftaness with one eye and a huge Waka taua along with a fleet of other war canoes.

She thought it was annoying that the jolly Roger was so cumbersome compared to her own vessels, but she allowed me to sail her waters under escort. We parted ways amicably at the edge of her territory.

Eventually I found the pirate tomb where the treasure was supposedly hidden. My crew were extremely superstitious and would not help open it. So I used my will to dig through the stone with my hands. It was a sensation akin to digging through cold, sandy mud, as I forced the stone to yield with my mind.

When the seal was removed, the pirate ossuary was revealed; the only grave in neverland.

Inside, there was an old tarnished skeleton watch. It was stopped. My crew told me that winding it and starting it once again was how a pirate died. The crew member who wound it would have untill the watch wound down again to live.

Hook stepped out of the shadows then, and asked for it. When I gave it to him, he tucked it into his vest pocket and thanked me for finding it for him. I do not know when he intended to use it, if at all. Perhaps he just wanted to have it nearby.

I'll probably never know. With a sad smile, Hook thanked me, and the dream ended.