jeff-the-accountant

[jeff-the-accountant]

When are you guys going to realize that Ed's line in season 1 "I don't have any friends" was just him being a little dramatic and also devastated from the situation in that scene? Even excluding Jack and Izzy from the discussion (if we must), he clearly defines Anne and Mary as his friends!

Does he, though?

The thing is, it comes up twice. It's not just in s1e6 when Ed is so upset (though his meaning is perfectly clear, I don't just think it's him being dramatic - he doesn't think he has anyone he can actually trust with secrets like how he killed his dad). Jack also very explicitly does not consider Ed a friend (he's genuinely shocked and laughs at Ed for calling Stede his friend. "Pirates don't have friends, we're all just in various stages of fucking each other over!"). I don't think this is just a case of Ed being dramatic because it's reinforced for us over and over that piracy is not a culture where you get to have friends.

As for Anne and Mary...yeah, mate, honestly I don't think he'd consider them his friends, either. Don't get me wrong, he likes them! They have a history together and they enjoy each other's company. But it's along the same lines as Calico Jack, still. They are not confidantes for Ed. They are people he has a history with and whose company he enjoys, but their relationship isn't one of friendship - it's emotionally stunted, unavailable, more focused on getting a rise out of Ed than anything else. Like Jack, they have ulterior motives that completely ignore Ed's comfort and wants, instead trying to manipulate him and Stede for their own entertainment. They do not treat each other like friends and I think it's a hell of an assumption to say Ed would define them as his friends.

I don't think there's any reason to take Ed's statement that he doesn't have friends as him just being dramatic, and given that it's reinforced in s2e8, I can't imagine it was meant to be taken that way. Maybe in some other profession, Ed would have considered all the people he worked with his friends, but it's not the case in this one, and that's very much the point.

[jeff-the-accountant]

[jeff-the-accountant]

making silly stuff

[jeff-the-accountant]

attachment styles (coming from incorporated patterns, let's be honest) and childhood trauma so much in that (they stop love me if i make any mistake).

on one hand, i love how they don't feel the need to ask details or explain to each other, but on the other - shit, it feels weird stede may never know (but i don't believe it) what happened between the beach and kraken and ed doesn't know what happened between the beach and stede running back to barbados. and then them not talking about why ed said that it was a mistake.

but then i have no doubts they are on the same page and happy with how it is. maybe it is just my autistic need for clarification and knowing the reasons behind things affecting my perception.

but then, about stede knowing that ed loves him. i thought the same about the fiddle scene. i don't think stede has believed the poison outta ned's mouth for a split second at any point. i like the theory that stede killed ned mostly because he knew that he'd otherwise come back, so stede did it to protect his family - the crew, ed.

controversial take, but i think stede wasn't shocked or grieving after killing ned. he went through all of that much earlier. we see an extremely short sequence of his childhood; memories that he has processed long before. maybe this killing gave more weight to this path; added burden on stede's shoulders, but it seems to me he was just in a mood to be alone and grieving more over the lost sense of safety and the whole near-death situation than killing ned. (and i absolutely love the meta about sex being also comforting ed needed).

so anyway. stede seems to know that ed loves him very well, at least from 01x10 and never doubting it, even if he doesn't really know how to make it instantly work.

Something we don't really talk about with the "I love you/I know" scene.

It is not just important that Stede knows Ed loves him and has known since before they were even reunited. It’s that the last time they saw each other, they fought. Ed said their night together was a mistake. Stede said he was a coward. They yelled, and Ed stormed off.

And Ed has always thought that his emotions and expressing them lead to other people not loving him. That they make others frightened of him or repulsed by him. He's never been safe to panic (because Blackbeard doesn't panic) or be afraid (because Blackbeard doesn't feel fear) or be happy (because he looks crazy) or cry (because Edward better watch his step). And once again, his emotions have run away with him.

So he says sorry the moment he gets to Stede again. But Stede KNOWS. Their fight did nothing to stop Stede knowing that Ed loves him. Ed being panicked and emotional and saying things he didn’t mean did not stop Stede from loving him. They did not convince Stede that Ed doesn’t love him or want him around. Stede knows.

That’s really important, because they are going to fight and they will say things they don’t mean. Ed will panic and get emotional. So will Stede. But they know they still love each other. Ed doesn’t have to be frightened that his emotions will drive Stede away. He doesn't have to keep saying "I love you" when he gets upset, because Stede knows.

[jeff-the-accountant]

fuck them very much

Just going to leave this here…

[jeff-the-accountant]

short trip into how my autistic brain sees the world around me lol

[jeff-the-accountant]

Blocking everyone who thinks that because I choose to talk (on my fucking tumblr exclusively about OFMD) about this extremely important and fucking life-changing piece of art means that I’m not involved in real-life shit too, like they are mutually exclusive or that art isn’t fucking important. Fuck you for belittling artistic expression. If my queer teens feel safer and more seen because of a beautiful tv show then it’s fucking worth fighting for!

[jeff-the-accountant]

Apparently this is a thing we can do, at Netflix here’s the link.

[jeff-the-accountant]

me about being hurt by zaslav and blows

[jeff-the-accountant]

ig i can review zaslav's balls now! and bloys' too! thank you @ask-mary-bonnet <3

Ok now that you’ve reviewed his dick can you review his balls

@ask-edward-teach How does one review balls? They're balls?

[jeff-the-accountant]

Dear OFMD,

I wasn’t sure who to address this to, at first. There are so many options, so many people instrumental in the creation of this show that means so much to me and so many others. David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, Vico Ortiz, Alex Sherman, and the rest of the producers, directors, writers, cast and crew. I did try to list out everyone, but it took up the whole first page. My social media follows exploded when I began watching.

The thing is, I’ve never quite been comfortable in my skin. I knew something was off about my gender as early as 8, possibly earlier, but eight is when I remember actually thinking that I wasn’t a girl for the first time.

I wasn’t a boy, either, but it was the eighties, and I didn’t know the term non-binary, or that gender was as much a brain thing as a body thing. So I shoved it down, along with the thought that the kids at my school should hurry up and learn the lessons already so we could go onto the next thing and that I hated wearing dresses, except when I loved it.

And then, I just . . . didn’t think about gender for a long time. Not when trans people were the butt of all the jokes in the movies in the nineties, not when trans stories, real trans stories started getting told in the aughts.

Someone gave me the word agender, once, when I was curious and asked what might describe someone who felt neither man nor woman, and never had, and I went with that. I still go with that, or enby, whichever I’m comfortable with in the moment. I was forty. Thirty-two years of not even knowing I was looking for that word, and I was.

And then a year or so later, someone talked me into watching Our Flag Means Death. 

I write. I’ve published. When you send a story out, you never know what other people are going to think of it, what symbolism they’re going to find, how they’re going to interpret this thing or that thing. So I don’t know if you realized when you finished filming the first season and sent it for edits, or finished the second season and watched us foam at the mouth for it, how the fans were going to react. 

There are a lot more of us out in the world that don’t feel quite right in whatever gender box we’ve been put in than anyone realizes, I think. And I think a lot of us gender-weirdos are fans of this show.

It’s not just Stede, and his love for fine things. It’s Ed, with his hidden silk, and his softly admitting to “maybe” liking “a fine fabric.” It’s not just Jim being outed, and everyone going right back to normal after they figure out that that’s what Jim wants. It’s not even just Wee John’s wonderful performance as Calypso.

It’s also Wee John sitting down to sew and saying he used to sew dresses with his mom. It’s calling Izzy the ship’s “new unicorn” and it’s also Izzy wearing make up. It’s everyone wearing flowers. 

It’s Spanish Jackie having nineteen husbands, and maybe some wives.

It’s a meme of any of the characters that’s just a screenshot and the word “gender” written across it.

It’s the concept of “assigned knives at birth” 

And it’s the community that this show created to let us feel free to explore all of this. We can bounce ideas off of each other, we can explore new identities, and you - the cast, the crew, the writers of this show - you have given us a safe space to do so.

I’ve been on the outskirts of a lot of fan spaces. I’ve never wanted to step into them because at their core, they seemed so toxic and gatekept. I’ve never felt that from the fans here (we’re not perfect, and there are a lot of very angry arguments over things that I hope you never see).

So yeah, this is my love letter to Our Flag Means Death, the show that helped me figure out, at forty-three, that my gender is, well, me. And it doesn’t have to fit anyone else’s label.

Thank you for creating it.

Thank you for writing it.

Thank you for acting in it.

Jenn

[jeff-the-accountant]

(im sorry if those things are obvious, but i felt the need to finally talk about it)

the policing of activism engagement can get so ridiculous. sadly there is some reasons behind it, other than people being dickheads in the internet. as SJHR activists we often are driven to disbelieve our self-efficacy and our impact.

sense of helplessness in face of grave suffering, such as a gen0cide, can be overwhelming and ripping apart. we, as humans, need quick answers, need relief, need sense of agency and need cognitive closure.

SJHR work can be also very challenging, given the vicarious stress and the levels of commitment we have. folks are often unable to "stop working" and allow themselves some rest, feeling that rest is selfish. "if those people i am advocating for can't afford safety or rest, how could i?"

the way i try to manage is remembering, that you can't torch yourself in order to give light to others; that you need to put the oxygen mask on yourself first, before you are able to do more; that we can't only go on fueled by rage. not because rage is bad, quite contrary, but because after some period of raging we will be exhausted and there may be hard to find something to hold on to to sustain, not only to sustain activism but even own life functions. we need resources for ourself to feed on and build on in order to be able to go on. it is like with eating. even if it is hard, or you forget about it, you do need to do it. so this is what i try to do in order to be able to have some rest, i try to think that this rest and joy aren't entirely for myself, because i need them to go on as an activist for many days, years and fights to come.

after two activist burnouts, trainings and recovery and eventually picking up activist burnout for academic research, i still can't really manage my burnout patterns or be able to maintain balance.

on top of that, aside from often working with our marginalised identities, which is exhausting itself, we often face discrimination in our own organisations and are pushed to participate in an "oppression olympics". it is not uncommon for SJHR organisations to have sorta martyrdom culture, where burnout is a medal for a "good activist".

idk how it translates to people who think they are spreading awareness (or whatever the fuck they think) by mortifying a community that is already engaged in the cause, and i will certainly not excuse the hatespeech they talk.

writing it all comes from the point where to some extent i can understand the dissonance about being engaged in both calling against a gen0cide and doing a queer show renewal campaign parallelly. anyway, it all comes down to what i wrote few paragraphs earlier.

Not even going into the fact that there are multiple visible pro-Palestine actions initiated by OFMD fans, I'm genuinely baffled by the sentiment that renewasacrew is taking so much time, effort, and funding that it must mean the entire fandom believes renewing ofmd is more important than genocide. There is no situation I've been in RE participating in irl actions where people have stopped organizing to complain about tumblr and fandoms and TV show renewals and celebrities and i think maybe. There's a reason that doesn't come up among real people who are actually trying to do something effective and influence people who actually have the power to change things. But yeah, surely that pales in comparison to the organizing strategy of being kind of annoying to strangers who will ignore and block you on social media.

[jeff-the-accountant]

agreed. first i'll add this comprehensive analysis of the abusive behaviours of izzy towards ed.

tell me, how do people extend that ed was habitually and continuously torturing the crew throughout the years as a captain? even izzy doesn'T say ed have been doing it continuously as a captain, but puts it into his framing of kraken ed (uh huh how did he get there, interesting) "behaving like a mad dog" when lying talking to stede.

ik the counterargument is this weird lil speech izzy gave ed in 1x04 about "massaging this crew when they were worried about ed's judgement".

lol well ok, i will not extrapolate izzy's style of "massaging" from 1x02 ("the man is half insane. no one asked you to fuckin think") but i WILL take the fact the very moment izzy became a captain, he continued acting like a bag of dicks (well, he didn't have to anymore, right? since he wasn't anymore under the cruel ed?) and got almost in an instant mutinied.

congrats boy, i've heard you are a fuckin rockstar of mutiny prevention, tell me about that, what happened?

his behaviour then honestly made me doubting his speech about the crew later in 2x08. but right, then i understood, thanks to some meta, that izzy is just so self-righteous, white, mean prick and thinks He Is The Only One Who Sees The Truth And Does The Job, that he believed getting them by the short and curlies was just some "tough love". the only type of love izzy understands.

it is izzy who is the mean, wicked part of blackbeard. and it is him who is mediocre sailor and shitty leader. but it also happens it is him who is white. (more on that in this amazing meta)

TW: in the next paragraph talking about abusive, controlling family behaviours

in 2x08 we learn one more thing. izzy thinks of the crew as a family. but what he thinks a family is for, is to kill for. read any person talking about an experience of being raised in a "strong family ethos" abusive family. or you can read me. there are families that don't focus on supporting each other or in general other members' needs. they will focus on controlling the "clan" and "protecting it" from the outer world. they will work as a siege - feeling constantly under siege and threatened; the amount of contact with outside world is strictly limited, if not physically then by manipulative framing of the outside to always be percieved as a threat. it is hard to get in, but you know what? it is hard to get out as well. this is what i hear, when izzy says that piracy is "about finding the family to kill for when yours are long dead".

and ok, i acknowledge there is more to this scene and that there are different readings of this; that this being my main reading is affected by my past. but i will still hear it and i will still see it in izzy's behaviours. even if i have sympathy for him for absolutely different reasons. welcome to fuckin nuance, izzy apologists of the tumblr.

posts going around saying it's an interpretation and not canon that izzy emotionally abused ed into staying blackbeard for years when izzy stared right into the camera and explicitly said on his deathbed that

he has been "terrible" to ed

he "fed [ed's] darkness" and "egged [blackbeard] on" even though he knew ed had "outgrown" the blackbeard persona (he is very explicit that he knew this at the time; it's not that he hadn't realized it)

this was going on "for years" (i.e. it is not something that started in season 1 but a pattern that was ongoing long before that)

he did this ultimately for his own benefit, because it was izzy who needed ed to stay blackbeard

he then touches ed's face and says "there he is" in a clear callback to the scene from 1x10 where he did the same thing and triggered ed's deepest trauma in a deliberate attempt to get him to start acting like blackbeard again, framing that scene as the culmination of the years-long pattern of behavior on izzy's part that he is apologizing for

in order to interpret the scene as not telling the viewer that izzy had been emotionally abusive toward ed in order to pressure him into staying blackbeard for years you have to assume that either

izzy is lying, for some reason, on his deathbed

izzy is not deliberately lying but we are meant to think he is wrong about some or all of this (which parts? how did he get to have incorrect beliefs about his own actions and intentions and motivations? most importantly, in that case what is the narrative purpose of having him say this stuff?)

izzy is telling the truth, but while he did treat ed terribly for years in order to get ed to live his life in a way that benefited izzy while hurting ed, it does not technically meet the definition of abuse (personally i have a difficult time imagining behavior that involves deliberately pressuring or manipulating someone else to live in a way that you know makes them miserable over a period of multiple years for your own benefit, and that can be fairly described as "terrible," but not as "abusive;" i guess definitions are subjective but that seems to me like it would be not a very useful way to define abuse)

the first two reads are pretty obviously in the category of interpretations that do not technically outright contradict canon but are clearly reading against the text. the third is the usual fandom habit of quibbling over semantics and doesn't change the material facts of what happened.

now i think it would be fair to say that while the narrative is definitely telling us izzy has emotionally abused ed into staying blackbeard for years you personally do not find that convincing, because the narrative portrayal of izzy's behavior toward ed up to that point read differently to you. or to say that while izzy treated ed very badly for years, ed's eventual response was sufficiently disproportionate that you feel it is misleading to focus on izzy's wrongdoings. or that you just really hate this development. if any of those things are what you think then i disagree very strongly, but it's in principle a valid reaction. but just denying that this is in fact how the narrative framed the scene is frankly silly.

prior to 2x08 i thought there was genuine ambiguity about this but then the writers really went out of their way to make it absolutely clear. the facts on the ground are that izzy spent years trying to pressure ed to cling to the blackbeard persona long before stede was ever in the picture; that he knew at the time this was not good for ed, but he did it anyway for selfish reasons; and that post-redemption-arc, he came to see his own previous behavior toward ed as having been terrible. how we should react to all this is something we can debate, but it's really not unclear what happened.

[jeff-the-accountant]

Our Flag Means Death is the creation of many many skilled and passionate artists working together to make something beautiful - a labor of love, not just another franchise churned out for money.

Art is worth fighting for!

[jeff-the-accountant]

aaand they remain silent as a shiet in the grass.

i am waiting for hbo profiles to not post anything about glaad awards because it would be too fucking embarrassing. or will they post? anyway we will be there, fucking seeing them and commenting.

[jeff-the-accountant]

awwwwwww yesss! thanks for doing that 💜 made me smile so much

Paws Little fists

Can anyone here think of any other moments in this vein?

[jeff-the-accountant]

rhys & david both posted this photo on instagram 👀🏴‍☠️