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I am not over (and probably never will be) these two parallels. And no one talks about it enough, so I had to draw it (forgot to post it, surprise) for my own sanity. Does it help? Absolutely not, not at all.

Let's talk about it for a bit, okay?

The first drawing is the scene from the end of the 4th episode of the 1st season, right after Ed's and Izzy's (first mate at the time) conversation about plans with Stede, the full crew of the Revenge, and the future. We can see Ed's expression and OH BOY. He is hiding under the mask of Blackbeard to survive. He is exhausted, bored, empty and so done being "The dreadful pyrate Blackbeard". He just wants to be Ed, who fancy fine fabrics and sweet and soft things. It's completely opposite to Izzy's expression, who is behind him and smiling, clearly delighted by Blackbeard's persona and his great plans. On top of it all, the song "The empty boat" by Caetano Veloso playing in the background (I love love love this song), and it fits so well with Ed's emotions.

The second drawing is the scene from the 1st episode of the 2nd season, right after Ed and Frenchie (now first mates) spoke about future plans. Ed let himself be soft and got hurt because of it. Now he's trying to be Blackbeard again, trying to fit in some "norms" of "manly man," trying to survive in a world where liking soft and being soft means dead, and he is failing miserably. He is everything he doesn't want to be. Also, even Stede's name is not mentioned, you know it's all about him. Ed is hurt, tired, and heartbroken. Ed is not the only one who see this. Basically, the whole crew can see how unstable he became after coming back to Blackbeard/ The Kraken persona. Frenchie´s expression shows it all. He stands behind him on his right side, the same spot where Izzy stands in S1. But his expression completely different from Izzy's - sad, afraid, unsure. Once again on top of the scene, the song "Pygmy Love Song" by Francis Bebey (one of my favourite songs from S2) perfectly shows all Ed's emotions.

I am so sorry for this long, boring post. I simply LOVE these two scenes and everything about them, and I needed to share my thoughts with you. I hope it makes sense and my grammar is not too bad.

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114 comments of people being annoyed at Max, love that! Good job 🫶 ☠️🌈

Via tiktok

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Not me forgetting that Izzy does not, in fact, encourage Stede to go find Ed or to repair their relationship in "Man on Fire," but to "get back on the ship" and then later (unintentionally) plants the idea of Zheng poaching his crew into his head.

Hm.

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One of the things that still really frustrates me is how we know the crew of OFMD were so intentional with cutting off any "Ed is abusive!" allegations at the knees.

There are three things from Ed's kraken spiral that we know for a fact did not make it into the show. One of them (the scene of Ed throwing a knife at Izzy) even made it into the trailer before it was cut; the other two I'm thinking of are the bts footage we have of Ed drinking heavily the night he has his last fantasy of looking at the cake toppers and a still of Ed making the bride cake topper push around the groom.

I think all three of these things were very wise to cut and it's obvious why they did it. The drinking and throwing stuff ran the risk of making Ed look too much like his abusive dad (not to mention heavy drinking tied to abusive behavior runs into deeply uncomfortable stereotypes about indigenous men like Ed), and when all we see of Ed is him gently caressing the cake topper that reminds him of Stede, it reinforces a core aspect of Ed as a person, which is how he would never, ever hurt Stede and wants nothing but gentleness and tenderness for and from him.

And it's incredibly frustrating that these things weren't enough. We're shown over and over again that Ed during the kraken spiral, right up until his mutiny-as-a-suicide-attempt, is doing normal piracy (that's why Archie is here! The only characters who are emotionally affected are the ones who know what life was like on Stede's ship!), and the only person who is actually physically harmed is Izzy (for good reason in Ed's mind; he was the trigger for the whole thing and Ed lists him along with booze and drugs as destructive influences on his life). We even get other characters say things to Stede like "do you think Blackbeard is gonna murder you" and Stede, who explicitly knows Ed better than anyone, is always like "what the fuck are you talking about? Of course not," and he's obviously right.

It's just so disheartening that there can be this much intentionality in making sure it's next to impossible to read a man of color as abusive and it will still happen. White fandom has such a tendency to center itself and white characters that it doesn't even matter how much effort they put into taking the audience by the shoulders and saying "this guy isn't abusive, he's being an imperfect victim in response to being abused himself," up to and including having the white guy in question say on his deathbed "sorry for abusing you for years." And people still wonder why fans of color are sick and tired of this shit to the point where some of us just want to leave fandom altogether.

[some-anonymity-preferred]

My first watch through season 2, I growled and wanted to throw things at the screen every time Izzy appeared after ep 3. (Same in the first three eps, tbh, but at least then he was mostly being treated in ways commensurate with his behavior. The crew’s ignorance and intervention aside.)

The apology was a relief, and it still sat wrong with me because of Ed’s reflexive rejection and reversal. At the same time, I recognized that as an all-too-realistic beat: how many times had I tried to placate my mother, even up to apologizing to her, when I’d called her out and she cried about it? Two different flavors of the same thing.

But that beat does really unlock what you’re talking about, doesn’t it? The sheer continued self-centering, even at the end of Izzy’s presumed redemption arc. The deathbed confession and apology (when there’s literally nothing more the victim can say to you); the self-centering in the text of the apology; Izzy’s intrusions in Ed’s, Stede’s, and Ed-and-Stede’s business throughout the back half of the season; Izzy’s intrusion into Wee John’s moment.

Izzy improved, he was never redeemed. It’s wish fulfillment for Ed, and it is still grounded in reality. The more I think about it, the more I believe this was all deliberate on the part of the writers room. Ed needed an apology, and Izzy gave the only apology he was ever going to be able to give. Ed got some acknowledgment and closure, but only to the extent that he was ready to accept at that moment. That leaves so much space for Ed’s continued healing and growth, and for the continued development of The Relationship that is The Show.

Season 3 will be a banger.

Typing this, I realized that mistaking Izzy for the main character, as some people do, is a really logical extension of buying any of Izzy’s bullshit at all. Too bad it’s based on a laughably false premise, and that it reeks of a need to center the masc white guy. It doesn’t give me any more sympathy for those folks, but at least it’s consistent. 🤷🏽‍♀️

light dawns on Marblehead

didn't want to clog up the Izzy thread from @xxprinces1xx and @celluloidbroomcloset so I'm keeping my brain fart here.

I've been incensed by Izzy's death scene because I've been reading it as part of his redemption arc. I'm beginning to think that his messages to Ed are actually telling a different, more realistic story. Yes, it's amazing that Iz acknowledged how he damaged Ed, but then he does an incredibly narcissistic thing by giving Ed 'permission' to be himself.

I've been struck by the 'don't do as I do, do as I say' aspect of the moment but for the wrong reason. It's a clever, outstanding piece of writing to show that even in making amends, shit doesn't always line up nicely. Old habits die hard but they don't all change at once.

Narcissism is a big theme in OFMD as a foundation of toxic masculinity, and it shows how those tendencies can be radically different depending on the character.

I'm not an expert in that personality state, but there is a continuum from the healthy narcissism all humans have to the malignant state of a Homelander or Orange Jesus, and there's a lot of expressions between those end points where Stede, Izzy, Ed & co. exist.

Izzy is trying to apologize to Ed in the only way he knows how to, which is to tell Ed who he is, just like always. It's perfectly in character and shows how complicated growth is, especially in middle aged people.

Now I'm going to rewatch that scene with a fresh perspective. I might even have some empathy for Iggy after all.

All that to say the OFMD writer's room is where I dream of spending the afterlife.

[some-anonymity-preferred]

This is a PSA to my fellow OFMD fic readers out there. This fic is one of the funniest & most in character things I have ever read and it’s insane to me that it doesn’t even have 1K hits. What if Mary’s book club found Stede’s letters?

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Hi! List five things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox of the last ten people who liked or reblogged something from you (no pressure) ☺️

The fact that the vendor ID in our database for the vendor Fat & the Moon is FATANDTHEM

The piglet puppy blepping in her sleep on the couch next to me.

How well everything is coming together for the chair/burlesque routine I'm debuting a week from now.

Yesterday's thunderstorm.

Smooches and cuddles and stupid jokes with my partner.

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Lucius Thoughts

I had an ask, from @carmillas-girlfriend I think, for my Lucius thoughts, but now I can't find it. Anyway, I did write them out, so I'm gonna post them anyway..

Oh Lucius. Our dear, beleaguered, "that wasn't sarcasm, I just talk like that," Every Queer.

At the start, he's there to let all us 21st century viewers know that the story knows what's up with Stede, even if he doesn't know it yet.

While Stede is busy being a clueless, closeted Liberace gay--flamboyant in clothing, speech, and gesture, with the oomph of a lifetime of wealth behind it, Lucius is at once his shadow, mirror, and foil. Stede's scribe and ghost author of his narrative (lampshaded). A fellow queer survivor of bullying and closeting who recognizes that in Stede. A younger queer (both in his age relative to Stede and in that the stereotype that he embodies is more contemporary to us than the one that Stede does), who is nevertheless more self-aware and infinitely more experienced (not least because he wasn't sheltered/trapped by wealth). The show dresses him like Stede and set up the red ruin of his borrowed white suit with blood and wine before Stede is gut-stabbed in his.

Because he is younger/more aware/more contemporary, Lucius gets to play all the gay beats that we expect but that Stede, for all his flaming, doesn't: self-aware simpering, quavering squeamish disgust, the rampant flirtation and sweet promiscuity, the absolutely fluid audacity that reduces Izzy to pudding in the C Plot at the same moment Stede is cluelessly domming Ed and primly reducing a bunch of bigoted aristocrats to self-immolation in the A Plot.

And then we get the first of Lucius' inversions of the Baby Gay/Gay Mentor trope when, by hitting the beats of the Gay Best Friend (on a ship full of queers), he becomes relationship counselor to both Stede and Ed.

And of course that's one reason he has to go overboard along with the rest of Bonnet's Playthings in the Season 1 finale. He knows Ed's softness, and Ed knows that Lucius will be a roadblock in his return to the hardness he's used to hiding his softness behind.But Lucius also has to go overboard and endure the horrors that he does between seasons in the service of his own growth and his development as a character, not just a narrative device.

Returned to us, with his beard and his fugue-state smoking and his anger and fear spilling out past his cute gay sarcasm, Lucius is hurt, and he's also becoming a real boy.

Stede sees Lucius's old defence mechanisms failing him, and they invert the Baby Gay/Gay Mentor trope again. Stede may not have success in love that Lucius lacks, but he has plumbed the depths of failure more completely. "Don't snark your lover away, Baby Gay," Stede says to him. "Go talk about your feelings. Learn from my mistakes."

And he does. And it works. It takes time, and repetition, and effort--and it works. Lucius and Pete once again echo Stede and Blackbeard, but both couples are more realistic in Season 2 than they were before.

I really wish we had back the time that Max execs robbed us of. I wish Season 2 had episodes with C Plots. I wish we had more time with the crew, with and without Ed and Stede. I wanted Ed and Lucius to truly talk it thorugh (and maybe have a gentle laugh at Pete's claims to have once sailed with Blackbeard). I wish Lucius had been the one to interrupt Ed and Stede's morning after, if anyone had to. I wish we'd gotten to see Lucius as Everyone's Gay Bestie in his new and changed iteration.

Le sigh.

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those tags, prev!

minor thing but another point against the "ed is just a naturally violent and temperamental guy whose moods switch on a dime" interpretation is that ed always warns people when they push him too far. he's honestly trying to set up a boundary. they just never listen.

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It frightens and discourages me how pervasive "tribal" stereotypes and imagery are in the fantasy and adventure genres.

It's all over the place in classic literature. Crack open a Jules Verne novel and you're likely to find caricatures of brown people and cultures, even when the characters are sympathetic to the plight of the colonized peoples - incidentally, this is the biggest reason I can't recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to everyone, despite Captain Nemo being one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

You can't escape it in modern cinema, either. You'll see white heroes venturing bravely into jungles and tombs to steal from natives who don't know how to use their resources "properly." You'll see them strung up in traps, riddled with sleeping darts, forced to flee and fight their way out. Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, a remarkably inclusive franchise in many other ways, had an extended sequence of the white heroes escaping from a cannibal civilization in the second film.

And when fantasy RPGs want a humanoid enemy, the "bloodthirsty natives" are the first stock trope they jump to. World of Warcraft is one of the most egregious examples, with the trolls - blatant racist caricatures with faux-voodoo beliefs, cannibalistic diets, Jamaican accents, and a history of being killed in droves by (white) elves and humans - being raided and slaughtered in nearly every expansion.

It doesn't matter how vibrant and distinctive the real-world indigenous, Polynesian, Caribbean, and African cultures are. It doesn't matter how much potential these real civilizations offer for complex and sympathetic characterization. Anything that doesn't make sense to the white western mind is shoved under the same "savage" umbrella. They're different. They're strange. They're scary. They have to be escaped, subjugated, eliminated, ogled at from the safety of a museum.

Modern writers, directors, and developers don't even seem to realize how horrifying it is to present the indigenous inhabitants of a place as "obstacles" for non-native protagonists to overcome. "It's not racist," they say, "because these people aren't really people, you see." And if you dare to point out anything that hurts or offends you as a descendant of the bastardized culture, you're accused of being the real racist: "These aren't humans! They're monsters! Are you saying that these real societies are just like those disgusting monsters?"

No, they're not monsters. But you chose to design them as monsters, just as invaders have done for hundreds of years. Why would you do that? Why can you recognize any other caricature as evil and cruel, but not this?

This is how deep colonialism runs.

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Tybalt is great—he’s the inspiration for my drag persona. However, you yourself are omitting:

Miss ChiChi Rodriguez

soooooo sick of people on tiktok being like “bruno madrigal is voiced by the guy who voiced sid in ice age!” his name is john leguizamo and he didn’t play thee most repressed-homosexual Tybalt Capulet of all time in Baz Luhrman’s 1996 cult classic Romeo+Juliet for you to know him only as the annoying sloth from ice age

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I am honestly not being mature about other shows getting renewals. At first it started with looking at the HBO properties that did get renewals with open hostility, but now it's kinda everything.

Found myself trying to smile and nod through my parents and sister talking about how this milquetoast straight people show they watch started getting boring after the fifth season and I'm internally just seething. Like come on. We couldn't get three??? And you think these shows are better??? I have to laugh.

Fuck, we deserved one more season. Every time I try to watch anything else I get kinda annoyed because most shows just do not even come anywhere near the same ballpark.

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do me a solid and just reblog this saying what time it is where you are and what you’re thinking about in the tags.

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send an emoji to my ask box and I'll give my opinion on an Our Flag Means Death character:

🧜‍♂️- Stede Bonnet

🐙- Edward Teach

🦄- Izzy Hands

✒️- Lucius Spriggs

🍊- Oluwande Boodhari

🗡- Jim Jiminez

🐈‍⬛️- Frenchie

🐦- Nathaniel Buttons

🌧- Black Pete

💃- Wee John Feeney

🔪-Roach

🦷- The Swede

👃- Spanish Jackie

🐍- Archie

🐕- Fang

🍲- Zheng Yi Sao

🍃- Mary Read

🐇- Anne Bonny

🍺 - Calico Jack Rackham

🎨- Mary Allamby Bonnet

[some-anonymity-preferred]

@almostart: A lot of things had to be perfect for Thor:Love And Thunder to work. Temperature control was a big one.

If you haven’t seen the film yet…give yourself an uppercut. #thorloveandthunder

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if I had a nickle for every time rhys darby played a character who witnesses his costar get hit in the face by a sandwich id have two nickles which isn't a lot but its weird that it happened twice