(post-credits scene leg kick requested by @venusdebotticelli)

A Cheat Sheet for Krita on Android Tablets

NOTE: There’s going to be comments that make Krita sound like a pain in arse. Parts of it are. Parts of it are also really awesome, and Krita is also configurable – hence this cheat sheet for beginners to help minimise some of the pain of getting used to a new program.

TOUCH INTERFACE NOTES

The only thing I can think of (and not very coherently, I've been in brainfog hell for like three weeks straight now 🫠) is that it might be spoilers for a potential s3, just like they all insisted Lucius was tragically dead even when we all knew that was an obvious lie? Like, it was left so ambiguous and rushed in the version of s2 that aired that they don't feel in good conscience that they can actually say there was a poly storyline actually left there, so they'd like to actually develop it properly in a potential s3 if the show ever gets picked up again, so they've decided to just avoid any mentions of it for now, just in case???

In 1x6, Ed says "that's why I don't have any friends" and he's telling the truth. But if you'd asked him if he had friends before meeting Stede, I think he would have said yes, or at least "I did once". He's never had a friend like stede before who cares about him without asking anything in return. It totally reconfigured his vocabulary. And that's beautiful.

AND.

Ed is nearly 50. Look at these hugs. Look at the secret handshake. These are friends, or as close as his pre-Stede Pirate Life allowed him to get. He doesn't have to think about that secret handshake for a second.

Anne and Mary aren't perfect people, but Ed is comfortable around them. He clearly knew them when he was young - they call him "Eddie" and "Teach", never "Blackbeard." Narratively, they function to force Ed and Stede into a conversation about Stede leaving.

Thinking about this more today, I like Anne more and more in this episode. She's bonkers, sure. She loves drama. AND:

Honestly, that's pretty close to bestie behavior for a pirate. By the time Ed leaves that house, he knows that Stede didn't kiss anyone else when given the opportunity, and he knows the truth about where Stede went.

I think about this line a lot:

"A lot of your friends are troubled, aren't they?"

Ed is my favorite character, I love thinking about him, I want to know everything about him. We can learn a lot about his past from Anne and Mary.

(Plus, if we don't want to learn about it from Anne and Mary, who does that leave? Izzy? No thanks. We can think about younger Ed without giving someone else the lead in his story.)

It doesn't diminish Ed's love story with Stede to acknowledge and think about what made him the man he is now. It doesn't make Ed and Stede's sexual relationship any less meaningful and loving to believe that Ed's had times in the past where he slutted it up a bit (especially pre-Blackbeard). We don't slut shame in this house.

I have a personal headcanon (that I know I saw @teeny-tiny-revenge mention as well) that Ed didn't have a lot of opportunities to relax as Blackbeard. I like to think that every few months, when things got to be too much, he would fuck off for a week with Anne, Mary, and/or Jack to party and/or get laid. That's why Izzy thought to send Jack in 1x8 - when Jack shows up, Ed fucks off for a week. That's what happens. Only it doesn't work this time, because Ed doesn't need an escape from himself when he's with Stede; he's not keeping up a performance.

Anyways. I just wanted to gush about Ed's pirate friendships, which may or may not have included sex. (I'm aspec, btw. But I don't think Ed is.)

oooh i love all of this, especially that headcanon at the end. my vibe for Jack is like Las Vegas - fun as hell for a finite amount of time and then you come back to the real world, so that's perfect.

i also think because Ed is having Bad Sad Tub Time when he says "i have no friends" he's being a weensy (okay, more than a weensy. a... woonsy) bit dramatic. not that he doesn't believe it in that moment, but in a more stable headspace he'd acknowledge that is objectively not true. in the throes of my teenage depression I'd often think "i have no friends" and that simply wasn't accurate. maybe it's that I had no friends of the capital-H heart. i loved many friends as a younger person but it wasn't until my 20s I had friends of the Heart, so i think that's a possibility here too. not every friend can or should see inside your soul and vibe with it and that doesn't mean their friendship is less real or unimportant. it just means when you're having Emo Bath Time you might forget about them a little.

It's also very significant that Ed has never felt safe enough to tell anyone about his father before. In the gravy basket, he says he never told anyone and his own subconscious taunts him that he told one person, who then left him: Stede.

His childhood made him guarded and wary anyway and then he ends up on Hornigold's crew, a place where violence and brutality were watchword from the top down.

My headcanon is that's when Ed really started keeping people at arm's length emotionally because when Hornigold mentions a cabin boy (without using his name), Ed immediately defensively says "His name was Felix. He was a really nice guy."

Calling him a nice guy, when Hornigold is referring to him as a boy, suggests that Ed considered him an equal which means he and Felix were probably both around the same age. We've got canonical references to pirates cutting rations as punishment, so I wouldn't be surprised if Felix was stealing rations for Ed and Ed remembering that kindness (so much meta about Ed and food in the context of the show. SO much), only to see him get killed for it.

Better not to let anyone see you care about anything or be nice or let anyone be nice to you or you might end up with a live crab forced down your throat. Better get tougher. Don't act like you feel pain. Laugh when you're whipped in the balls. Go to extremes for fun and profit. Even with the chaos trio, as much as he clearly adores them, Ed still does keep his defensive walls up.

Stede, who is so different and so weird and so everything Ed has never known before, does like those parts of Ed but he also takes the parts of Ed that Ed's never been allowed to like or acknowledge before. For once, Ed unexpectedly finds he can lower his guard and trust someone with pieces of himself he's kept hidden and safe for a lifetime. And more importantly, he wants to.

Also need to add a shout-out to his friendship with Jackie.

His relationships with Anne, Mary and Jackie are so familiar and comfortable. They talk sex and drama and roast each other to pieces and they're clearly friendships that have been there a long, long time.

These are the friends who he came up with and as much as the friendship is still there, like any old friendship, people grow in different directions with different vibes and different goals.

Maybe with him I could be just Ed… 💔

Stede and Ed <3

Film Fortnight: Comedy What We Do on the High Seas (a.k.a Interviews With Some Vampirates)

My first fic for Disastercule Weekend is smut because that's all I've been brave enough to write so far 😅 but to be clear it's not specifically a NSFW or a romantic event. If people want to write gen fic, or explore platonic relationships between Ed, Jack, Anne, and Mary, or how they're rivals, that's welcome and encouraged!

For me the thing that's really exciting to me about this event is the opportunity to explore Ed's past without centering certain other characters, which tends to happen a lot. This is great news! I love Ed! I want to think about Ed at every age!

So if all you've been seeing about this event is about how they wouldn't be in a romantic or sexual relationship... okay! They don't have to be! You can explore how Ed and Anne and Mary met, or what Mary thinks about Jack, or do an Ed POV of Fun and Games where he reflects on what he does and doesn't have in common with Anne and Mary anymore.

The characters included here make this event fundamentally about Ed (to me). He didn't arrive in episode 3 a fully formed character. He lived a life to get there, and that life shaped him.

The full details are in the FAQ, but here's an excerpt that may be helpful:

[ID copied from alt text: What if I want to create a work focusing on these characters in platonic ships? Great! Platonic or romantic or otherwise, if it’s still focusing on at least three members of the Disastercule, then it’s very welcome! If you write something that’s platonic ships, we would encourage you to use appropriate tagging on AO3 (i.e. “Edward Teach & Mary Read”, which reflects a platonic ship, rather than “Edward Teach/Mary Read”, which reflects a romantic/sexual ship.) Allowed Content: Is there any content we are NOT allowed to include? No underage NSFW content is permitted. No transphobic, ableist, racist, homophobic, or sexist content. For any content that is permitted but may require a warning - including NSFW, whump, etc - please use appropriate tags and warnings. End ID]

Disastercule Weekend - February 20-23

Who's up for POSTIES!? Coming February 20-23, Disastercule Weekend is an event celebrating Ed/Jack/Anne/Mary. This event is co-hosted by @littlefingies and @halfeatenmoon. Thank you to Caly for the beautiful art!

[ID copied from alt text: Disastercule* Weekend - *Any 3+ of Ed/Jack/Anne/Mary - Feb 20-23 - Hashtags: #OFMDdisastercule #OFMDRareShips - Collection: Disastercule_Weekend - hosted by @ofmdrareships - art by @intheblanketfort

The aforementioned art by Caly @intheblanketfort.bsky.social is a beautiful illustration of Anne, Ed, Jack, and Mary. All are at least 10 years younger than we see them in Canon. They're naked, all cuddled together under a black blanket. Anne and Mary are looking towards each other, looking smug. Jack looks at the camera with a hand behind his head. Ed hugs the blanket to his chest, looking to the side with his hair fanned around him. End ID.]

Rules

[ID copied from alt text: Rules - The Disastercule is any 3+ of Ed/Jack Anne/Mary. You may include additional characters if you like, but please keep the focus on the Disastercule, rather than another character or pairing. - Full rules in FAQ - #OFMDdisastercule @OFMDRareShips. End ID.]

[ID copied from alt text: Do/Don't - Yay! - Tag NSFW/Archive Warnings - Any gender, sexuality, & relationship configuration - Make fanfic, fanart, meta, gifsets, edits, cosplay, playlists - be creative! - Use #OFMDdisastercule - Nay! - Underage NSFW content - Generative AI usage of any kind - Transphobic, ableist, racist, homophobic, or sexist content - #OFMDdisastercule @OFMDRareShips. End ID.]

Daily Prompts

The daily prompts are designed to be interpreted as broadly as possible.

* Consider using “Setting” to refer to not just historical era, but also where they're at in their lives! For example, you could do a “Pre-Canon” story in modern era where they’re sharing a house in their 20's.

[ID copied from alt text: Daily Prompts - pick one each day - use the whole column - play bingo - up to you! - Day 1: Feb 20 - *Setting: Pre-Canon - AU: Sports/College - Vibe: Enemies to Lovers to Enemies to Lovers - "We’re all in various stages of fucking each other over” / “I saved your life” - Day 2: Feb 21 - *Setting: Canon - AU: Western/Space - Vibe: Fun and Games - “Now that’s romance” / “You’re slowing down, old man” - Day 3: Feb 22 - *Setting: Post-Canon AU: Coffeeshop/Magic - Vibe: Hurt/Comfort "What if one of you grows but the other stops growing” / “A lot of your friends are troubled, aren’t they” - Day 4: Feb 23 - *Setting: AU - AU: Heist/Crossover - Vibe: Angst with a Happy Ending - “Never turn your back on a bastard” / “Artsy outsider was always your thing” - #OFMDdisastercule @OFMDRareShips. End ID.]

NSFW Prompts under the cut!

NSFW content is not required, but if you include it, please use all applicable tags and warnings.

Important Links

Keep reading for NSFW prompts/inspo:

also i have a longer post abt this cooking in my drafts but i’m so tired of ppl summarizing lucius’s 2.05 storyline as “everyone is dismissive of lucius’s trauma and tells him to just get over it” bc what actually happens in that episode is that everyone else has moved on and lucius is MAD AT THEM for it to the point where he becomes dismissive of their trauma. even pete is just concerned and confused up until the point where lucius snaps at him like “you have no idea what i’ve been through” and THAT’S when pete is like “dude!! i am also fucked up by what happened!!! you’re not the only one suffering!!!” and then izzy gives him the shark and is like “do whatever you need to do to heal but you do need to put in the work, it’s hard but not moving on is worse” which to me feels wildly ooc for izzy to have this much emotional wisdom all of a sudden but redeemed!izzy in general was just a completely different guy from the izzy i knew. i got off topic anyway the point is the show is not dismissing lucius’s trauma it’s addressing a specific type of a poor coping method that i like to call “wallowing in it.” it’s something im personally familiar with and it’s a very easy and paradoxically a somewhat comforting way to try and cope with trauma/mental illness but in the long run it only hurts you and the people close to you. healing is hard and it takes active effort but it’s worth it

I really love the Lucius and Pete interactions in this episode. If you want to be dismissive of Pete, sure, you can read it as "good vibes only, just put on a happy face!"

But if you have any faith in them at all (and I do), it's so clear that Pete is saying "I missed you, and now you're here but you're not here, please be here with me. I'm so fucking glad you're here."

And we know that Lucius has faith in Pete, because he responds to that sentiment from Pete. He doesn't come back and say "I'll never be sad again", he comes back and says "I want to be here with you forever, actually" and I just. I just love them so much

the dialogue between these two in these scenes is so good actually because it’s not polished practiced therapyspeak and neither of them are able to articulate very clearly what they actually mean, but this does have the unfortunate effect of making it easier to interpret the dialogue in bad faith. pete doesn't say "it hurts me to see you so fixated on how blackbeard harmed you that you've been ignoring me when i just want us to be able to appreciate how you survived and we're together when we were both so scared we'd never see each other again" because that's hard to really put into words. instead he says "come find me when blackbeard isn't living rent-free in your head" which is funnier but also much easier for someone to interpret as "i don't want to hang out with you if you're still struggling to cope with your trauma"

idk that the bad faith interpretation here is due to lack of faith in pete so much as it is lack of faith in the ofmd writers themselves. as well as maybe personal experience with trauma? like i have experienced being told "why are you so miserable, just get over it" during periods of shitty mental health and it's something that really fucking sucks to hear, so i actually sort of understand how pete's words can be read as dismissive and how that might have been upsetting for some poeple when they were watching the season, especially on a first watch

when writing stuff like this, where characters are having complicated emotions and messy interpersonal conversations, there's a balance that needs to be struck between "making the characters communicate clearly enough for the audience to understand them" and "making the dialogue actually sound like something people would actually say in real life." pete doesn't say "i respect how much you are hurting but lately you have been so fixated on your own trauma that i don't know if you realize how much i was also hurt but what blackbeard did" he says "dude! blackbeard did this to both of us! for weeks, i thought you were dead. i cried every night! i'd wake up in the morning... thinking i Heard Your Voice." and lucius doesn't say "i didn't realize how hurt you were, i'm sorry my behavior made you feel like i didn't appreciate or respect your trauma" he says "okay, yeah, well obviously i've underestimated some stuff, i don't fucking know."

personally i think the show strikes that balance pretty well and i didn't have a hard time reading this conversation in a way that wasn't "pete tells lucius to get over it" but i can sort of see where that comes from. i can especially see why people would stick with this interpretation if they happened to have felt let down by season two as a whole, for whatever reason. but i am still tired of constantly seeing this take levied as a serious criticism of ofmd.

Albert Square, Manchester (1910) by Adolphe Valette | Contemporary Art (2015) by Emily Allchurch

the top is an original, from 1910, the bottom is a new version painted in 2015

THE BOTTOM IS A PAINTING????

also does a really good job reminding the view just how much air quality has improved since we stopped burning coal in every building lol

reject the western gaze!

mutual aid means no hierarchy between givers and receivers

a new mutual aid org, Bridge of Solidarity, has been established in the gaza strip by 17 year old poet yazan mohammed in response to the exploitative practices conducted by some charities and encouraged by the existing charity-based model of fundraising for gaza. according to BoS: "the western attention economy and pity economy plays a large role in who lives or dies in gaza." essentially, people need to make themselves marketable in order to receive lifesaving aid; people who are not marketable die. yazan himself wrote about the damage this can do to one's self image, which you can read here.

after trying for a year to respect his own privacy, my friend siraj was also pressured into posting images of his son's emaciated body in order to gain sympathy from westerners.

we cannot keep forcing people to do this anymore.

here's a declaration of their values from bridge of solidarity's most recent post:

this org will prioritize giving aid to people without phones or social media, who do not speak english, and who do not have outside support or living parents. these are the people who are not palatable to westerners but who deserve to live with as much dignity as everyone else

as of five days ago, BoS are working on a water truck delivery

Crawling out of my hole to remind people that with this current update to Firefox (version 144) they've gone and dumped in their lot with a buncha lil AI tools, namely Perplexity as a new search engine.

So if the sound of that leaves your mouth tasting of tar, here's what you want to do:

In the url bar, type in about:config

It'll give you a big scary warning page that you might poke holes in your browser. Good. You want to do that. Click continue.

One by one, you're going to need to put each of these into the search bar in the page, not up top:

Each of these are gonna have a lil toggle icon on the right hand side that looks like a funky double-ended arrow. Click that and the value next to it should change to false. It all auto saves as you go. Some of these might already be set to false by default and that's peachy.

The next best thing you can do for yourself is to set your default search engine to udm14 or Qwant, but for now, we're just tidying the garden a lil bit.

in the notes ppl have suggested waterfox as an alternative as its just firefox without AI and I'm gonna check it out for myself, but might be an easier alternative than messing with all this.

iFixit

iFixit is a wiki-based site that teaches people how to fix almost anything. It was started in 2003 by Luke and Kyle, in a dorm room at California Polytechnic University when they tried to fix an old iBook together. With no instructions, they tinkered, fiddled, broke some tabs and lost some screws. But they fixed it. When they decided to start selling spare parts themselves, iFixit was born. It now hinges around its step-by-step repair guides, which are free to download and use under Creative Commons licenses.

Now, anyone can create a repair manual for a device on iFixit and anyone can edit the existing set of manuals to improve them. The site’s founders say that thousands of people make use of the guides every day.

“We’ve heard repair success stories from forensic detectives, field translators, and even kids,” say the pair. “From New York to Alaska, Tibet to the Faroe Islands, people have used our guides to fix their stuff.

“Our philosophy is that if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Once you disassemble, repair, and put back together your laptop or iPod, you have a much better understanding of what goes into it. It’s astounding how just 20 minutes of work can make an iPod good as new – but most people have no idea that there are instructions available to make the work easy. And why should they? Apple tells everyone that the battery isn’t user-serviceable.

“That’s where we come in, filling the ecosystem hole that Apple created by manufacturing a device without an end-of-life maintenance and disposal strategy.”

Restart Wiki

This is a place where members of the Restart community share tips for mending appliances and gadgets with people who are starting out, or whose knowledge lies elsewhere.

This wiki won’t show you how to fix a particular make and model of device: they leave this to the various fix-it websites and disassembly videos. (You can also get help with a device on social media using #SOSRestart). Rather, contributors to this page concentrate on basic and widely applicable principles, for example soldering and how to stay safe while fixing things.

The site is aimed at anyone with a curiosity about how things work and how to fix them. No prior knowledge is assumed. In the spirit of spreading knowledge as widely as possible, everyone is welcome to read it – and to share it. Anyone is welcome to reuse anything on the wiki, under the terms of the Creative Commons ShareAlike Licence 3.0.

Cats by Jun'ichiro Sekino (Japanese, 1914-1988)

This is about Sci-Hub. yeah we get it.. gatekeep knowledge and protect the interests of capital…

Listen, this is serious.

Do not use the website called Sci-Hub!

It lets people access scientific articles for free. This is dangerous. It helps the free flow of knowledge and reduces the competitive edge of all the people who worked really hard to have been born into a wealth.

Like, it’s literally a website where you can type in the DOI of an article and read it, without ever having to pay the publisher who exploited the author.

So, again, do not, under any circumstance, use Sci-Hub. I mean, can you imagine a world where knowledge is free and easily accessible to everyone? Even, y'know, poor people?

Libgen also has many books online, including textbooks, searchable by name, author, and ISBN. Can you imagine textbook companies not getting their hard-earned income from poor college students? Here is the link just so you make sure that you never accidentally stumble across this horrible, unethical website.

Oh, and while we’re talking about books, if you’ve managed to stay clear from Libgen, definitely don’t go to zlibrary, where you can also find a lot of textbooks, but unfortunately they’re completely free.

Another inside tip from academia: Those papers in really expensive journals that are effectively inaccessible to anyone not in a university network? Depending on the discipline it’s very likely that same paper is on a “preprint” server somewhere, with no access restrictions.

Like if you want to read basically any physics, math, or CS paper, arXiv.org will have you covered, because everyone uploads their papers there before submitting to a journal (and generally updates it after peer review). I know all of my papers are on there. This is such common practice that journals have it baked into their licensing agreements that authors retain the right to upload their work to these places.

So the next time you get hit with that paywall, you may not even need sci-hub, just click the arxiv link on google scholar instead.

if for some reason none of this works, the old “send a email nicely asking for the paper to the author” is always a good trick. remember most scientists hate the commercialisation of scientific knowledge

Don’t mind me, just gotta share this with my bf so that he knows what websites to avoid

Many authors of papers are on ResearchGate! You can ask for papers there, if they don’t just post a copy to download. If they’re associated with a college, you can usually find their email addresses in the department directory, also.

Always reblog.