Rec Roundup

Oct. 1st, 2025 08:03 pm
delphi: A handwritten note reading "For the New Unicorn" (izzy unicorn)
[personal profile] delphi posting in [community profile] ourflagmeansgay
Cross-posting a couple of recent-ish recs from my journal:


Until It Doesn't Hurt by [youtube.com profile] CATastrophy
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Characters/Relationships: Izzy Hands + Ed/Izzy breakup and background Ed/Stede + elements of Izzy/Lucius
Medium: Vid
Length: 2:49
Rating: SFW (some scenes of violence, including a non-fatal self-inflicted gunshot)
My Bookmark Tags: angst, ambiguous ending, former relationship, fights & breakups, injury, heartbreak, self-harm
Song: "Until It Doesn't Hurt" by Mother Mother
Note: Contains some flickering and flashing lights.

Excerpt:
I want to fight, I want to bite / I want to swallow all the light
This is just a gorgeous three minutes of angst that perfectly captures Izzy's s1 and s2 journey away from Ed, with the way he swings between wanting to lash out and ruin lives but always coming back to just having to bear being left and being hurt. It's a great choice of song paired with crisp editing, making perfect use of moments of fire and self-isolation from the show without ever being too on the nose.


Legacy by [archiveofourown.org profile] SpaceCadetGlow
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Ship: Izzy Hands/Benjamin Hornigold
Medium: Fic
Length: 2184 words
Rating: Explicit
My Bookmark Tags: PWP, happy ending, established relationship, backstory, fantasies, genderplay, breeding, foot fetish
Summary: Captain Hornigold has a habit of fucking Izzy before raids. This time, though, he seems overly concerned about his legacy, if anything should go awry.

Excerpt:
"Nothing in this life is guaranteed. Do you ever think about legacy, my dear?"

Izzy shakes his head. He'd been twelve when he'd joined up with the Navy, or so he'd told them. That'd put him around twenty-four now – less than half of Captain’s age, he'd guess, and without any of the status in society that makes a man inclined to worry about things too far down the road.

"The mark we leave on the world," Captain continues. "The proof that we were here." He steps out of his boots and trousers. "For many men, it’s children. But I have not been so blessed."

Izzy has a feeling he knows why, as he perches naked on the edge of the Captain's bed.

This is a scorching-hot and wryly funny story about Hornigold springing some new kinks on Izzy, who's a little more preoccupied with the fact that they're about to go into battle. It's the kind of character-driven PWP I love, where Izzy's pragmatism and lack of an imagination leave him fundamentally unable to get on board with the elaborate narrative Hornigold's weaving, up until something physically clicks for him and his horizons expand. Izzy's point of view is wielded masterfully here, painting a vivid picture of Hornigold's psychology both through what Izzy is capable of understanding and what he isn't. This one left me snickering and swooning in equal measure.

book rec: Emily Skidmore's True Sex

Sep. 30th, 2025 06:00 pm
the_shoshanna: cartoon figure happily reading (reading)
[personal profile] the_shoshanna
While I was in Wales, when I wasn't hiking, collapsing after hiking, drinking local beer after hiking, or blogging, I read Emily Skidmore's True Sex, and I recommend it highly to those of you who are interested in queer history! She traces the lives of eighteen American trans men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which is fascinating in itself, but part of her focus is that, while queer history has tended to focus on cities and the development of queer communities in them, these men pretty much all lived in small cities, towns, or rural areas, and clearly did so by choice in most or all cases. I mean, many of them moved around a lot; they could have moved to Chicago, but they stayed in Nowheresville. And they could sometimes be welcomed and treated as men there even when their communities knew they were AFAB.

Also, of course, a significant number were only publicly revealed as AFAB after years of living as men, sometimes only after their deaths. Skidmore doesn't spend a lot of time on this, but to me that means that there were a lot more stealth trans men who never got found out at all.

I did want her to dig deeper into racial issues, She often ties the ability to live as a man to white privilege, but I think that tie is weak without a discussion of the experiences of, and community acceptance of, black (or other nonwhite) trans men, which she doesn’t really offer.

Her research is impressive, and it's smoothly readable, not jargony. I recommend it highly!

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