#btoab

It's called Boil the Ocean and Blood, and I'm going to start talking about it because maybe people would like to hear about it.

I'll start with the Windstorm Dead. They are a group of 6 guys who met one day and decided they wanted to be pirates. They went on a lot of cool adventures and got into a lot of trouble!

The interesting thing about them is that they are all cursed by something. Hunter has a cursed ring which drives him insane pursuing power, Red has a cursed dagger, which makes him immortal but makes him look like a skeleton. Para discovered a trident which cursed him to transform into a giant squid if he gets too emotional. (Btw Para and Red are romantically involved). Square has a cursed coin which has forced him to flip said coin for important choices, and whatever the coin says he must do that. Noah has a cursed bead that allows him to see the future when he's sleeping, but the visions are not clear. Lastly Shrigis has always been cursed, and none of the crew knows why (he's a little eldritch entity)

In the first story, the Windstorm Dead break up like some sad boy band because Hunter goes off on the others for not utilizing their curses to their advantage. Para gets worked up from the fighting and transforms into a squid, Square goes after Hunter and tries to reason with him, but the ring has been infecting his mind. It ends with them all splitting up.

The house of Viesatte celebrates a christmas kind of holiday they call Mistlefoe. Merry Mistlefoe everyone.

It consists, usually, of all the relatives of the family coming to visit for drinking, feasting, and brawling during the winter season.

Gifts are sometimes exchanged with the winner of Mistlefoe, but they're not super central to the holiday. For Viesattens, Mistlefoe is about one individual's power over another.

There is a sense of coming together in their brawling.

Some families hang mistletoe in their house over a central "fighting ring" to encourage combat as often as possible. Any two caught under the mistletoe must fight each other until one winner is declared.

It's a very intense and competitive holiday, and one might question how fighting would bring anyone together, but it's their tradition!

Sometimes family members pair up for fights. Husband and wife might fight their parents in law, and newly engaged children may fight their parents.

It's all about proving that through combat you can be unified, that you are strong. This holiday is usually when children seek their parent's blessing for marriage, which must be won in a Mistlefoe fight.

(Which singlehandedly caused me to start writing for my pirate story once more)

Also thank goodness for epic the musical, which has also been a big source of inspiration for this story. I really am just putting scenes to some of those songs, they're so good.

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Basically Ive been cooking up the backstory for one of my rebellion leaders who used to work for the royal navy and now co-leads a rebellion against it with his wife/fiance/girlfriend, who is also an ex-marine

There's a bunch of lore surrounding them, like the fact that theres a pirate religion based around them, which holds the five aspects as five core elements of the world.

The more current pirate crews usually align themselves with one of the houses, and there are a bunch of rules for cooperating with the other houses and "doing piracy".

Once upon a time the houses were united, but the Royal Navy shattered their unity by introducing them to the cursed items, which caused the pirates to start fighting amongst themselves.

Now the houses resent each other so there's still quite a lot of infighting, much to the Royal Navy's joy. If you can't tell, the Royal Navy is sort of the bad guys in this story.

Also one day I'm going to post the btoab chapters for everyone to read, probably to ao3 because it's convenient.

Angela followed James into his room. It was dark and neither of them turned on the lights, but she could see in shades of dark blue thanks to the light sneaking into the window from the streetlamp outside. She took his hand and led him to his own bed, sitting down on the edge of it, facing him. She tucked her blonde hair back into a ponytail and let out a small, nervous, hiccup-laugh. There were still plenty of things for them to learn about one another, but she felt ready to give herself to him.

  She studied his face in a focused, yet gentle way. She was close enough to see the freckles on the bridge of his nose and to make out each individual strawberry blonde eyelash. She let her eyes trace his ginger eyebrows and his strong jawline. Finally, she allowed herself to focus on his lips. She’d memorized the shape of them. Sometimes she dreamt about those lips with their dry little creases and upturned corners. When she noticed how wide she’d been smiling, she bit down on her lip.