They’re Scheming

so this is me basically yapping about my queen’s complexity😊 regina mills they could never make me hate you

ANYWAYS. one thing i absolutely ADORE about her complexity is her voice. lana parrilla’s voice consistently changes depending on her scenes and i think it is done absolutely BEAUTIFULLY.

when she’s with cora, her voice is sensitive and quiet, as if she’s afraid to get yelled at but still looking for approval and validation.

with henry, her voice is firm but still caring. it’s her SON, after all.

with daniel, it’s free and joyful and you can just tell the difference when she speaks to him vs to anyone who’s not her family.

her voice is so powerful in so many other ways. it shows weakness, strength, fear, love, and it’s all portrayed and executed in a way that’s purely majestic.

next thing is the parallels.

regina’s greed is eventually fully explained, she loses everything, but something i’ve noticed is that everything she loses is everything she’s never actually had.

her mother’s approval, daniel, henry, hell even graham. something archie says in s2 is that everything she loses is because of magic. i think that’s true and they should’ve extended that theory further throughout the show.

her mother never truly loved her — only taking advantage of her daughter’s weakness, her need for love.

i’m not sure if this is stated, but i’ve always interpreted this way. i don’t believe she and daniel were together very long. yes, long enough to fall in love, but in ouat, that normally seemed to happen rather quickly. anyways, regina was this close to marrying daniel until cora killed him. she never truly had him in the way she wanted — and we all know nothing happened in the way she wanted.

with henry, she, again, never really had him. he was never her son, not in the way she needed him to be. he was always emma’s son, even if it felt like he was hers. yes, henry loves her, he cares about her, but at the end of the day, his determination to stick with emma in the earlier seasons always seems to overcome that.

the last one is obvious but graham could not feel anything. meaning, whatever regina felt for him, whether it was love, lust, or nostalgia, was not real. which, equals in false hope, false love, all that. (i say nostalgia because in my mind, regina sees daniel in all her past/current lovers.)

so, in conclusion to this little yapping session, regina goes several seasons with absolutely nothing. it hurts to say it, but that’s just the way her life was portrayed. now, i’m leading up to how her greed is involved in this, along with her almost drug-like addiction to magic.

she consistently goes after things she cannot have. an example of this is her attachment to children. in later seasons, regina takes away her fertility with magic to piss her mother off. this soon comes to bite her in the ass and leads to her adoption journey with henry.

maybe three times she tried to take someone’s children as her own. yes it sounds bad but there’s an explanation for that. since she can’t have children, regina’s greed for one only grows stronger. the first time she did this was with owen, a little boy who managed to get inside storybrook with his father — whom she framed for drunk driving and i believe child neglect when owen refused to live with her and abandon his father.

another time was with ava and nicolas, at the time known as hansel and gretel. after retrieving the iconic apple from the blind witch, hansel and gretel come back to regina’s castle and as a “reward,” she tries to invite them to live with her. she basically tried to bribe them, but their love for their father was so strong, so out of spite she uses magic to separate the twins from their father.

and lastly, throughout season one, she attempts to kill or frame emma several times. this is because of her attachment to henry — which this time is somewhat explainable. for once, she finally has the child she deprived herself of and all of a sudden, after years of trying to fully connect with her son, she loses him. as she did several times before. hence why i said henry was never truly her child.

ANYWAYS.😊 regina mills you are a being of majestic and conflicting things that make you the woman you are and i absolutely LOVE IT.

I'd have renamed it. Like...you conqueered it, what's the point in keeping the original name? Though the name is definitely important, so it's strange they didn't specify it in the show. Even if I've noticed they generally haven't given too much importance to the ships per se (Urca being the exception) or to the captain/ship relationship as much as one would find it in other pirates story. I mean, they are important for who owns them or for the action they are brought into but there's not really that... almost "personification" of the ship (what brings us to use the "she" pronouns for them after all). Don't know if it's clear what I mean, it may be only my perspective of course, but like...poor Walrus gets wrecked once, almost destroyed twice (if not more) and burned in the end, and they barely spared her a though in season 4 (when Silver talks to Billy about her resilience). So that's probably also why the man 'o war disappears. Like...it wasn't important, they didn't need it anymore and the show just...forgot about it😂

The Man O'War

One of the mysteries of Black Sails is where the Spanish man o’war captured in season 1 vanishes to after Captain Flint and his crew return to Walrus…but another mystery is exactly WHAT is this ship. I’ve seen her referred to as a frigate, but now that I’ve captured a good screenshot (season 2, episode 4), that this is definitely no frigate.

The man o’war has three full gun decks. Counting gun ports, it looks like each has approximately fifteen guns, plus a short gun deck back aft near the main deck. This averages to 45-49 guns per broadside, which makes this grand bitch not just a ship of the line, but a first rate ship of the line. That's the age of sail equivalent of a battleship! Take a look at the gif below of the man o’war savaging Walrus and Ranger.

(Frankly, if she was a frigate, I don't think Flint would've worried much; Walrus has the throw weight of a sixth rate frigate and would've stood a good chance; with Ranger along, they would've been just fine and no one should've panicked.)

So, what ship is this? The Urca de Lima was a real ship, though Urca was only a nickname for Santissima Trinidad, and she was part of a combination of two flotillas that made up the 1715 Treasure Fleet. This fleet consisted of eleven ships, of which at least two were ships of the line.

The first was ex-Hampton Court, a British built third rate ship of the line of 70 guns that was captured by the French then sold to the Spanish. Sources say that she was renamed Nuestra Señora del Carmen, but contemporary sources such as the governor of Jamacia, Archibald Hamilton indicate that this was a separate ship and the flagship of the second part of the fleet. (More on that in a moment.)

The second confirmed ship of the line was the French Griffon, which was the one and only survivor. (Cool fact: the captain of this ship was also likely the informant who gave Hamilton his information).

The third ship is the mystery ship that brought up the rear of the formation. This ship is harder to place, and was either a different "massive war galleon" or Nuestra Señora del Rosario, a third ship of the line. This may have been a third rate or fourth rate ship of the line, but sources make it very hard to tell. Given that the wrecks that have been found have never been positively identified, it's even harder to determine which ship was which.

Back to Black Sails. Historical evidence says that there wasn't a first rate ship of the line in the 1715 Treasure Fleet, but the show does also indicate that the Urca was traveling alone, so a bit of dramatic license says that we've got a first rater along for the ride. It's far from outside the realm of possibility, given the contemporary evidence that the Spanish definitely did use ships of the line as escorts for treasure ships.

I think it's safe to say that the ship isn't Hampton Court, however. An ex-British officer like James Flint would 100% recognize Hampton Court, who would've been captured (1707) after he left England but was a distinctly British design. Additionally, the characters continuously refer to her as a Spanish man o'war, which indicates she's Spanish-built.

Spanish-built ships of the line with three decks have 94 guns or greater. Until 1700ish, they frequently were referred to as galleons, a term that faded out of use and was replaced by navíos. If I'm going to be a real history nerd, Spain didn't really have a three deck ship of the line in this era; they'd scrapped the only one they had in 1705, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción y las Animas. But prior to scrapping, this ship was sent to the colonies to harass settlers around Panama, so she was on the right side of the world in the early 18th century.

Historically speaking, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción y las Animas (Our Lady of the Conception and of Souls) is the best candidate for the Man O'War in Black Sails.

In-universe speaking, that big bitch is a three deck, first rate ship of the line of somewhere between 94-100 guns, just based on the number of gun ports and the mincemeat she makes of two ships at the same time. Why did she vanish? Probably because it'd be hard as hell for anyone to beat Flint if you let him keep that ship, and Woodes Rodgers would've had a much harder time taking Nassau when she was protected by a ship of the line.

Have you seen this post before? Probably a close cousin of it. Dimwit me deleted my tumblr and had to remake it.

Additional sources:

1715 Treasure Fleet Information

Ship resting places, armament, and educated guesswork

Archibald Hamilton's information

My first fic in the Agatha All Along fandom💜💚

A self-destructive Sculptor!Rio smut depressing AU inspired by crying after sex by Xana

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63173374

Welcome to Swan Queen Supernova IV: To Infinity and Beyond!

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Poison Ivy #15 variant cover by Seb McKinnon

😘💋

I heard we're doing fancasting, yes? So. I've been waiting for this chance for months. I know the actresses probably won't be them but damn, I'd pay to make it so.

AKASHA : ANOK YAI give her a chance.

I know she is a model, ok? But just watch the Alien spot and then tell me if you wouldn't kneel and give her your life give her a chance.

Moreover, she already dressed as Akasha! I screamed when I found the pics. She was absolutely perfect, even if I hope the show will give her a different look than the movie one. I don't really like that dress, something closer to the book's description would be better.

But pics talk better than me, let me show you.

Last one is more how I'd like to see her. ANYWAY, I believe I have a point. She's so stunning.

GABRIELLE : TRICIA HELFER

I loved her Charlotte in Lucifer, and I admit that that role as Lucifer's mother probably influenced my choice a bit, but still...I think she would be great for the role also aesthetically speaking.

MAEL : JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER

Ok I'm already thinking to Queen of the Damned adaptation, honestly the thing is that I like him and I just wanted to find a role suitable for him and this came to my mind. However, I'd just like him to be a vampire.

And then we have CODY FERN and my previous words about Bower apply for him too. I just want a part for him. I think I'd have liked him as Nicholas, like this

but we already have an actor for that role and I think they won't change it.

Anyway, c'mon, this guy is too cool to not make him play a vampire role.

He would probably be great to play Astarion if there was a movie adaptation of that too.

What do you think about these actors/actresses? Who else would you suggest? I'm still seriously pondering the Mekare/Maharet question...

The Untamed x Harper’s Bazaar making

no the POINT is NOT that rio was the first person to ever show agatha love blah blah soft girlfriends battling the trauma of abuse NO

the POINT is that THE PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH saw a human being so DEVOTED to the act of living that they COULD NOT comprehend dying and fell in LOVE with her and that HUMAN BEING saw this entity that NO ONE is meant to survive and and fell in LOVE with her

the POINT is that they EXIST in PERFECT tandem and in COMPLETE contradiction to each other. the POINT, the IRONY, is that they give each other exactly what they need, but must take from each other the only thing they want.

you didn’t think i was gonna miss this, did you?

So beautiful❤