skrifores - Tumblr blog

[skrifores]

If your response to a show with healthy BIPOC representation is transplanting the BIPOC lead's personality onto the white antagonist to have meta and fanon discussion, allowing fanon that has the BIPOC lead turning to the slave trade and serial killing and constant irrational anger (while the white antagonist is turned much reasonable) to replace canon, not seeing any issue with in canon the white antagonist setting up the white romcom lead for execution and taking custody of the BIPOC romcom lead as reward, declaring that the white antagonist was just being "mean" when he said the BIPOC romcom lead was too openly gay and soft and needs to be more performatively violent to justify their continued existence, frantically agreeing with between-season-speculation that the white antagonist is going to have to "protect" all the characters from the BIPOC romcom lead's "rage", nodding along to takes that declare the BIPOC lead to be abusive instead of discussing what the show is actually trying to tell us, pushing takes that the BIPOC lead is definitely going to abuse (or worse) their white partner (and call them "the next victim") just after the season closes on the canon main couple's happy end scene, thinking that it just made sense for canon to break up the BIPOC lead's romance by handing their white partner to the white antagonist as a reward or to add the white antagonist to it, declaring that your ships with the white antagonist and the lead(s) are just as valid as the canon main couple in the romcom centered on the canon main couple and discussions on the ship don't need CWs in general chats, refusing to criticize this behavior in fandom (and thus tacitly enabling it) because the people saying it are on your "side", etc. is "Stop calling us/me racist! That makes us feel bad!" or "Ship and let ship" or "The showrunner/creator should've changed their story to accommodate our fanon because it means so much to so many!".... is the majority of the fandom "bullies" and making you feel "unsafe/uncomfortable/unwelcome" for getting tired of that and wanting distance from you?

[skrifores]

it’s so weird to me how there’s cliques and hierarchies within fandom spaces these days like. we’re all just fucking nerds. how are you gonna try to be popular amongst the nerds. how are you going to feel superior over your fellow nerds. at the end of the day you’re still a fucking nerd bestie

[skrifores]

no matter how many times i watch episode 10, the “namby pamby in a silk gown pining for his boyfriend” line never fails to completely turn my stomach.

the entire scene is probably one of the most enraging moments of television i’ve ever witnessed tbh. this show is so good at making you feel shit oh my god.

“i should have let the english kill you. what you’ve become (queer/feminine) is a fate worse than death.”

nobody besides ed in canon knows that this is what actually went down. and nobody besides ed ever will! because They Cancelled My Fucking Show!

punching a wall

[skrifores]

Finally left Twitter for good because I couldn't stop seeing the "Ed is irredeemable" takes. Like, yeah, in the real world cutting toes off is a bit much, but this is the same show where Ed begs Stede to stab him just because he wants to be held. The show doesn't ask us to take this violence the same way we would irl.

Plus, like. I'm on Ed's side here, obviously. S1e10 frames Ed as the victim in the whole situation. If someone told me to stop fagging it up or they'd call the cops on me again, I don't think I'd react half as patiently. Frankly, I applaud Ed for his restraint. I feel bad that Ed's obviously triggered and deeply hurting, but it still is definitely satisfying to see him get to fight back against a man who abused him and not be a perfect victim, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

[skrifores]

I adore Izzy and Stede's interactions in s2e3, because they're so consistently proving to Izzy that he does not know Stede like he thought he did.

Going into s2, even as Izzy begins to realize that he fucked up by threatening Ed until Ed went so hard back into the Blackbeard persona, Izzy has two big assumptions.

he knows Ed better than anyone else

Stede Bonnet is his rival

And in s2e3 Stede is just consistently responding to those with "??? wtf is your problem?"

Izzy telling Ed that he knows him better than anyone else was already laughable. At this point in his arc, he's still talking about Ed like some crazed animal with erratic, unpredictable behavior. He does not talk about or treat Ed like a person with feelings. But when he starts in trying to tell Stede about how Ed was a "wild dog" (that line still makes my lip curl, jesus) and makes Ed out to be wildly cruel by saying deserting him "was better than he would've done for us" despite how Ed literally did just that in the s1 finale, Stede consistently meets him by thinking of Ed's feelings, not taking the bait, and feeling awful for how much his actions hurt Ed. He thinks of Ed as a person and refuses to conform to the language Izzy uses.

Izzy, in s1 and at the start of s2, sees Stede as a sort of romantic rival at the same time as he clearly considers Ed and Stede's love for each other as a whim, a passing crush. Neither Ed nor Stede think of Izzy in romantic terms, this is abundantly clear, and Izzy (world's most repressed man) doesn't have a fucking clue what love looks like. Izzy spends so much of this episode trying to get a rise out of Stede, pretending he was the one who slashed up the painting, challenging Stede to yell at him after Stede sees what he thinks is Ed's dead body. And Stede doesn't give him fucking anything. He's just constantly kinda fed up with Izzy. His mental energy is elsewhere - he doesn't even look at Izzy when Izzy tries to thank him near the end of the episode.

Absolutely fascinating to think about where Izzy's mind must have been this episode. He learned he was expendable to Ed in s2e1, here he's learning that he doesn't take up literally any space at all in Stede's brain, either. Stede constantly proves him wrong by making thoughtful, empathetic guesses about Ed's mental state, and when he brings up the "doggy heaven" reference, something he wouldn't have known about had Ed not told him, it confirms that he was a confidante for Ed, something Izzy never was. Izzy never understood either of them, and this episode is him getting to realize that.

[skrifores]

Hey, if you're going through the social media accounts of the OFMD writers and snooping around trying to figure out which of them are queer, and then PUBLISHING YOUR RESULTS, you are a fucking cop. Have we learned nothing about snooping into the lives of artists and creatives and outing them? NO ONE OWES YOU THEIR COMING OUT STORY.

NO. ONE.

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Ed finally gave Stede his first tattoo and he's so fucking jazzed to show it off

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[skrifores]

I would give literally anything to see a director's cut of all the season 2 episodes where they're like even 45 minutes long. I can understand why a lot of the crew stuff was cut, at the end of the day - if you'd asked me to cut s1's episodes down, I'd probably trim the room people bit first, and so many cute little fluffy crew bits no doubt had to be cut for time. But this is a comedy, too, so there's a balance to think about - I'm sure there are some great dramatic moments that had to be chopped to keep things from feeling too heavy. And I would kill for even just a taste of what they originally had planned for Prince Ricky, who was so clearly set up as a foil for Stede.

My kingdom for a box set release with extended episodes

[skrifores]

So now we know what came before, Ed’s face in this scene is so hilarious to me.

(Gifs by @daria-meoi )

‘He just called me his boyfriend! Me! Boyfriend! Look how fucking hot he is’

‘Hold on, he’s saying something about a plan, better say something. Speak words.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Boyfriend. That’s him. My Boyfriend.’

Ed has zero idea what Stede has been saying.

[skrifores]

🔥💜🏳️‍🌈BOYFRIEND🏳️‍🌈💜🔥

🔥💜🏳️‍🌈BOYFRIEND🏳️‍🌈💜🔥

🔥💜🏳️‍🌈BOYFRIEND🏳️‍🌈💜🔥

🔥💜🏳️‍🌈BOYFRIEND🏳️‍🌈💜🔥

🔥💜🏳️‍🌈BOYFRIEND🏳️‍🌈💜🔥

(bts video courtesy of Samba Schutte)

[skrifores]

Something about having an Indigenous character pose as a concubine for a white character just feels wrong.

[skrifores]

none of this is activism. not a bit of it. it's all performance and moral superiority and fucking puritanism and it's helping nobody except yourselves

what did you do to help palestinians today? did you call your reps? did you go on a protest? did you give money to the relief fund?

'no but i thought about palestinians all day long! i yelled at anyone who gave the impression that they weren't self-flagellating by giving up all comfort in their own lives until all human suffering everywhere is over! i made lots of posts on the internet about how people who don't make the right kinds of posts about palestine are nazis and zionists and should kill themselves!'

and did that help anyone in palestine? did it encourage other people to help people in palestine?

'no! in fact it actively caused harm! but all my friends agreed with me and piled on the people i was yelling at, and i can sleep so well tonight knowing that i'm the most morally pure person on the whole of tumblr dot com :)'

[skrifores]

none of this is activism. not a bit of it. it's all performance and moral superiority and fucking puritanism and it's helping nobody except yourselves

what did you do to help palestinians today? did you call your reps? did you go on a protest? did you give money to the relief fund?

'no but i thought about palestinians all day long! i yelled at anyone who gave the impression that they weren't self-flagellating by giving up all comfort in their own lives until all human suffering everywhere is over! i made lots of posts on the internet about how people who don't make the right kinds of posts about palestine are nazis and zionists and should kill themselves!'

and did that help anyone in palestine? did it encourage other people to help people in palestine?

'no! in fact it actively caused harm! but all my friends agreed with me and piled on the people i was yelling at, and i can sleep so well tonight knowing that i'm the most morally pure person on the whole of tumblr dot com :)'

[skrifores]

I'm thinking about the scene where Izzy yells at and threatens Ed in s1e10 in the context of Izzy as a sort of father figure to Ed, because this adds another layer to Izzy's expectation of violence from him.

When Izzy threatens and mocks him in this scene, he keeps pushing until he hits just the right combo to goad Ed into choking him against the wall. This scene has to be intentionally framed against the earlier scene where we see Ed kill his father; the action (choking vs. strangulation) is very similar and we even have the lighthouse painting in the background to mirror the lighthouse in the earlier scene. It's not a coincidence that Ed chooses to strangle Hornigold first when he's in the gravy basket, either.

Izzy demanding that Ed perform violence is so similar to Ed's father requiring violence in order for Ed to protect his mother and himself. This is just what older White men in Ed's life require of him, and I think that's an essential part of what triggered Ed's kraken spiral so intensely. There's a sense of resignation to it, almost embarrassment, like Ed was foolish to think he'd be able to act any other way.

Ed first defined himself by an act of violence when he killed his father, making him think that he is a uniquely violent person and not a child protecting his family from an abuser. Hornigold and Izzy, later, both repeatedly reinforce Ed's reading of himself as someone who cannot keep his violent nature in check, even though we're shown over and over again that this isn't remotely based in reality.

Ed projects his daddy issues onto the older White men in his life, and then he expects them to require violence of him.

[skrifores]

love is embarrassing

[skrifores]

one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but their unhealthy parasocial relationships with one or more of the people who created it

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but some elaborate shared-universe subset of fanfic about it that's only barely related to the original at this point, and/or an esoteric reading-against-the-text reinterpretation of the source material (often if the canon is active and ongoing this leads to becoming actively hostile toward it for its inevitably increasing failure to conform to their preferred fanon)

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but the fandom itself and gathering clout within it, so that the source material basically only exists to them as a tool for scoring points in increasingly arcane fandom disputes

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts