John Silver in every episode: XXIX. We’ve come this far because when Flint and I are of the same mind,
there’s no obstacle yet encountered that we cannot surmount. I don’t know why that is. He doesn’t know why it is. But it is.
To elevate one of us over the other, even as a fiction, seems to me to be tempting fate in a most dangerous way.
When my father still lived here, this place was a fucking mess. Men just fucked in tents, threw their shit in the streets.I wonder if he didn’t notice everyone living like animals or if he just didn’t care. Why all this talk of your father? A man-o’-war was spotted yesterday. Royal Navy. What if today’s the day? What if Scott is downstairs right now waiting to give me the news? The British are back. Decamp from Nassau. And then what? Then they blockade the island, choke off trade. A few crews will resist, but how long can they survive without my father’s support? One by one their numbers will dwindle.The fort will be abandoned.Soldiers will storm the beach.By the time the smoke clears,my father will have arrived.First time he’s set foot here in five years waving the royal commission that his bribes purchased and lording over the place.Round of applause, the new governor. Somewhere in London, some foul fuck will get news of all of this, light his pipe and say, “Finally, all is right again in Nassau.” You say this as if it is certain. Perhaps you can buy this place. Nassau will need an inn. Max could be your partner. There is no finer host in the world.
How will Mr. Noonan feel when he hears of this plan? I think maybe soon what Mr. Noonan feels will be of no concern to me.
novels should start holding a “deleted scenes” section in last book of the series like movies do, just funny useless scenes where the characters mess up or joke around or a silly secret is let out. cute stuff to keep us not so sad after the book ends ☺️
I hadn’t done that one yet, but I’ve got some time now, and you’ve reminded me, so let’s see if I can get my thoughts in order here.
The thing I had about Lust’s death on that particular analysis list was that it was based on a misconception about Mustang. The thing I had about Pride’s was that it felt incomplete, oversimplified, and perhaps technically incorrect in one particular bit of wording.
If my memory serves, this particular one-line analysis of Pride’s death and the irony therein was that he was turned into a human, which he considered beneath him. Now, technically, if we take Grumman’s words into account when he visits Mrs. Bradley after all is said and done, little Selim is still a homunculus. He’s still an artificial human rather than one natural-born, which is a distinction of terms that may or may not matter much as he’s being raised as though he were truly human, presumably growing and changing in ways similar if not identical to one. So we’ll let that part go – Pride does indeed fall and winds up living the life of something he considered lower, being raised in kindness and humility.
There’s also the whole reason Kimblee interfered in the fight on top of that – it’s spelled out in both manga and anime for us that Kimblee objected to Pride willingly attempting to take on the form of a human to save himself rather than clinging to the sin he is meant to embody and damn the consequences, so that’s pretty well on the nose. Pride’s last moments as himself are also filled with fear and crying out for Ed to stop while images of Mrs. Bradley – the nearest thing he has ever had to a mother, by his own admission – flash in his mind, so hardly an arrogant ending in that way as well.
But there’s one more interesting aspect in Pride’s End: who did it.
Edward Elric ended Pride.
And to unpack that a little more, we go back to Ed’s own beginnings, the origin story of the Fullmetal Alchemist: his act of human transmutation. As a child, he looked at this bit of theoretical, forbidden alchemy, something considered both impossible to carry out and highly dangerous (not to mention illegal) to even attempt, and his thought was that surely he and Al could do it successfully. He thought, as a child, that he could do something that the entire history of alchemy deemed too difficult and dangerous and perhaps even morally wrong to allow. Faced with the Truth beyond the Gate, he demanded to see more, certain that the answer was in there somewhere and that if he could only reach it, he could solve everything.
He later likened himself to Icarus, who flew too close to the sun on waxen wings and fell to his death for his carelessness and pride.
Really, a lot of Ed’s story and character arc comes down to pride. It was the source of his greatest fall, and the thing he eventually had to overcome to win – truly win – in the end. Remember that he claimed victory over Truth by surrendering his ability to perform alchemy entirely – an ability that made him exceptional by most measures, one which he had built so much of himself around. Truth itself asked Ed if he was certain, suggesting that doing so would lower him to the status of a normal human.
I’m sure we remember Ed’s reply to that.
So really, Pride was taken down to his most basic form, his own truth, by a human who had himself fallen prey to pride before, and who had since learned a humility great enough to beat the being known to some as “God” at his own game.
But, then, it’s a little hard to fit all of that into a one-liner list of Homunculus deaths.
A thought in my head, which I am getting out by dropping it into the abyss of tumblr…
If you’re a fan of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga/Brotherhood, you’ve probably seen people analyzing the deaths of the homunculi and the ironies therein before, whether in full essay format or in super simplified lists. Gluttony is eaten by an ally/brother homunculus, Greed finds peace and satisfaction in self-sacrifice for the sake of the friends he always wanted and actually had in the end, Envy commits suicide after being called out on his jealousy of humans despite his outspoken derision of them, etc. etc.
I recently saw one of these simplified lists elsewhere online and one of the points this person put up bothered me. Well, two, actually, but the one about Pride is something I’d want to get into separately if at all.
This is about Lust’s death, and Mustang’s part in it. This is about the idea – held by some fans, but not all, I’m certain – that it was ironic because she was killed by a womanizer.
This is based on a misconception. I want to pick at it a little bit, for the sake of my own brain if nothing else. I’m sure others have made this analysis before. I’m going to do it over myself anyway. So, here we go:
Mustang was not, in actuality, a womanizer, or anything similar. He just made sure he appeared that way for his own reasons. For one thing, it made him seem less of a threat to senior officers as he climbed the ranks. A young officer with obvious laser focus on higher and higher seats, on more and more power, on getting into positions of command further up the chain and giving all he had to get there? That’s a concern. But a young officer with an almost lackadaisical attitude about him, one who, yes, does his job and all and even generally seems to do it well, but who primarily seems to have flirting and dating and general fooling around on the mind whenever he can spare a thought? Not such a big deal. Sure, he’s still getting promotions despite his relative youth, but it’s not like he’s gunning for them, right?
For another, it masks his information network, his alchemical notes, and the off-the-record missions he gives his closest and most trusted subordinates. Those dates he goes on, almost every time with a different girl? Totally just dates. He’s a young playboy officer. Everybody knows it. It doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Except…no. Not dates. Not girlfriends or romantic or sexual interests. Those are his adoptive sisters masquerading as the interest of the day, and those are information trading meetings masquerading as fun, easygoing, inconsequential nights out on the town.
His alchemy notes, encrypted as a harmless little black datebook. This is entirely in keeping with his persona. A cookbook written by a scientific researcher with no further explanation or apparent reason honestly stands out more. But Mustang’s datebook? Who’s going to think twice about it? For that matter, who’s going to want to sit and try to decipher whatever’s on the surface of that just on the assumption that there’s more to it?
And those missions. Everybody who knows of Mustang’s office habits knows that when Lt. Hawkeye is out on leave, Mustang takes it as an excuse to slack off and fool around on the job. Without her watchful, strict, no-nonsense eye on him, he feels free to call up his favorite ladies and pass the time in flirty chitchat. What an idle fool he is, unable to discipline himself and focus on anything other than pretty women and petty charms when left to his own devices, right?
Only on the surface, really. The readers and watchers of the manga and Brotherhood know better. We got to see “Elizabeth” on the other end of the line. We caught the double meanings of their conversations after that was revealed. But to an outsider, who doesn’t already know what’s up? Clearly Mustang’s up to his womanizing ways again, and there’s nothing more to it.
So that’s Mustang and womanizing. Now let’s bring it around to Lust and the lead-up to her incineration. Let’s look at Mustang’s motivations to crisp her down to ash and bones.
First, there’s her part, however small, in Hughes’ death. Mustang’s been on the hunt for his friend’s killer since it happened of course, and while Lust wasn’t the one, she pretty much admitted in their confrontation that she was at least involved. She said it was too bad she couldn’t finish him off herself. That’s the first thing that set him off, even before attempting incinerations.
Second, she nearly killed Havoc, one of Mustang’s subordinates. She definitely paralyzed him, as we discovered later, but there was certainly intent to kill. That drove him to try to rip the stone from her very chest in an attempt to save Havoc’s life. She also attempted to kill Mustang after this, and, most cruelly of all perhaps, left him to slowly bleed out while watching Havoc do the same.
And finally, when Mustang caught up with her, she was about to kill Hawkeye.
Vengeance and protection, for the sake of his friends and loved ones. That’s what drove Mustang to go as far as he did. That’s why he reduced her to ash over and over and over again, until her apparent immortality ran out and she faded away forever.
Lust wasn’t killed by a womanizer. She was killed by someone who simply wore the mask of a womanizer.
Her death wasn’t ironic because she was killed out of lust, or even by a man who lusted.
It was ironic because she was killed by a man who loved.
Hi anon! Glad to see somebody interested in our traditions, that is always amazing. I hope this helps you.
Disclaimer, I’m not professional. This is just stuff pulled out of my own amateur research and love for balkan lore. Anybody with better understanding please pitch in.
First, to reiterate what likely everybody told you, Slavic traditions are very variable and unique, depending on which country you are looking at. While there is obviously much similar things, not all Balkan countries have same lore. So I would suggest looking up where your ancestors are from, and then digging in research ( sometimes there are differences even between like, villages in same country, which makes things both beautiful and amazing and irritating and bothersome).
Second, I am sorry to say that information can be kinda hard to come across when searching for Balkan sources. As result of most countries being ‘’still in development’’, (at least when compared to West), decades of communist regime which didn’t care much for spirituality, big influence of Christian church and being kinda small in population, there isn’t lots of people interested in such things, at least not openly. There has thankfully been revival and rise of interest in last years but ah still takes lots of work to find like minded people. You should have some luck searching through Tumblr and Reddit.
Rest of info under cut, keep on read more so we wouldn’t bother people with big wall of text.
There’s this feeling I sometimes get watching humans do the cool things that humans have been doing for thousands of years. It makes my chest expand and my heart thud and I love it. I love this.
^^^^ Yes exactly that. It makes me so inexplicably happy…
at last got around to draw my favourite characters from black sails, which, hands down, has the most emotionally fulfilling finale EVER. anyone else is still shook three weeks later? there’s not a day when i don’t think about it, if you ask me
So this is a totally useless rant, but as a skinny girl, I’m getting extra, extra tired of fat-shaming.
I work for a corsetier at a Renaissance Faire. We sell corsets. Not flimsy bullshit costume corsets; like real, durable, waist-training corsets. Today a woman came in with her boyfriend, so I helped her pick out a corset and try it on. While her boyfriend—who was decidedly enthused about the whole corset thing—sat watching me lace her in, he told me, grinning, “Of all the good jobs at the Renaissance Faire, I think you have the best.”
I shrugged in agreement. “I touch butts and reach down cleavage all day; I mean…” Because we like to be a bit rakish at the Faire, and, y’know, it’s true. Tying people into corsets pretty much invariably requires getting handsy.
The couple laughed at that, and the boyfriend said, “That’s the job I would want!” But then he chuckled again and said, offhand, “Or maybe not; while we were looking at the racks, there were some pretty big sizes on there!”
Our sizes are all done in inches, and the biggest we make is a 46. And you’d better believe our large sizes sell. For a second I wasn’t sure what to say to the guy’s comment, but I answered him casually. “We get a lot of beautiful big ladies in here.” Because we do. “We make corsets for real women, not Barbie dolls,” I added. Wasn’t trying to be smart, just kind of tossed it out there because that’s the line we like to use when people ask about larger sizes, and because, again, we do.
The boyfriend went quiet at that; I didn’t think anything of it, I just kept on lacing. A moment later, he said, a little awkwardly (but sincerely enough), “Didn’t mean to be offensive.”
I quickly smiled and brushed it off, said he wasn’t, said I was just saying. (Don’t want to make the customers uncomfortable, you know?) And that was the end of it. His comment had rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasn’t a big deal. Now, I wear a 20-inch corset. I’m a few cup sizes short of being one of the Barbie dolls. Like his girlfriend, I’m one of the “hot chicks”; he doesn’t have to worry about offending me by implying that I wouldn’t be fun to poke and pull at.
Honestly though, of all the people I fit sexy technically-undergarments to in a day, fat girls are maybe my favorite people to lace up. Because they are just so damn happy that we have stuff that fits them. They are so damn happy that the corsets we make in their sizes are all the same pretty, shiny colors and cool flower/dragon/skull/etc. prints that the smaller corsets are, not ugly beige and boring “granny” colors. They are so goddamn happy that at least one (of several on the grounds) corset shop carries things that they can wear, that they actually want to wear, and that they look fucking awesome in. This is only my second season working, and we’ve fit 60+ inch waists and double-K busts. The only people we’ve ever had to tell sorry, we don’t have anything that fits them, are twelve-year-old kids.
It’s half-wonderful, half-heartbreaking how excited those women get. Women who say with sad smiles, when we ask if they want to get fitted, “Oh, no, you don’t have anything that fits me,” and then are stunned when we’re 300% confident that yes we do, and we have options. Women who can’t stop smiling and looking at themselves in the mirror after we’ve got them laced in.
I had a lady last week whose waist I measured (cinching the tape tight, as per procedure) at 41 inches—honestly not all that big. So she picked out a 41-inch corset to try on. I could tell halfway through getting her laced that it was going to be a bit big for her, so I mentioned it and said she might do better to try a smaller size. She started crying on the spot. She was so overwhelmed; she couldn’t believe someone had just told her that a 41 was too big. She told me about how hard clothes shopping was for her, how her mother would tell her she needed an XXXL instead of an XXL, how she had recently lost weight but still couldn’t wear certain colors because they didn’t fit or she wasn’t confident enough.
She did end up getting her corset, and after I checked her out she asked if she could give me a hug, so we ended up standing there hugging each other for a minute. While we did, I told her, “Do not ever let anyone tell you any bullshit. You are gorgeous.” She said, “I have a new boyfriend and he keeps telling me that.” I told her he was right, and to just keep telling herself she’s gorgeous; it was okay if she didn’t always believe it, but to keep telling herself anyway. (That’s how I talked myself through shit when I had bad anxiety.)
We all know fat-shaming is bad. The stupidity, fatphobia, and misogyny of it has pissed me off since I first became aware of it. But working with clothing, especially as figure-hugging and precise as corsets, has given me a new perspective on it—how much it affects people and just how shitty it is. Like, what does it say that I had a grown, only average-big woman crying into my shoulder because she was so overjoyed not to be the uppermost extremity of what a manufacturer can clothe?
My job rocks and it’s really rewarding, but sometimes it highlights some of the ugliest shit about society. I’m so glad I work at a shop that’s not bullshit about body types and operates with more people in mind than just scrawny white chicks like me. The fat women I work with are a ton of fun to lace up, and they’re so much more than their size—they’re cool, they’re smart, they’re funny, they’re sweet, they’re great to talk to, and yes, they’re hot. I’m so damn done with them getting short-changed and shamed by petty fucks who refuse to make them nice clothes, who refuse to even try to work for them, who refuse to consider them pretty. This whole rant was useless and won’t get read, but I had to vent because it’s been driving me nuts.
So actually, screw you, random dude. Fat girls are the highlight of my job.
nightlilium 