soundoftherain - Tumblr blog

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say what you want about him but black pete didn’t miss even once this season. “oh look, running water” “you have impeccable balance, babe” “they must’ve been really into geometry” “you’re making it really hard to look up to you right now” “come find me when blackbeard isn’t living in your head rent free” “i never hear anything about the fact that you lived” “we’re sort of in the pre revenge window” just absolute bangers all around, no one is doing it like him

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hey so several people (@blakbonnet & @forpiratereasons at least) have noticed this by now

when this episode first aired nobody thought this was a particularly notable line, right? we all thought ed was just talking about breaking their own previous record or something. but it's now pretty clear that wasn't it; he was specifically talking about shooting for ned low's record.

but that's a weird way to bring it up, right? surely you'd think they'd indicate that more clearly up front. and we can actually be pretty sure they did, because there's at least one scene from the teaser that looks a lot like it was cut from the first episode, remember?

we thought originally the tally marks were days without stede bonnet or something like that, but they're not. those are raids. those are steps toward breaking the record.

so what we're looking at is a subplot that would have clearly established that ed was shooting for that record, and it was deemed unnecessary and cut for time. but i want to talk about how it would have changed our interpretations of the first episode if it were in there.

i don't think it was just there to set up ned low showing up later, or to make it ed's fault ned hurts the crew and stede; i think this is something that would have made both ed and izzy's characterizations in episode 1 much clearer, as thematically tying together multiple plot threads that run through the rest of the season.

you add in the stuff about ed chasing the record to 2x01, and it does all of the following:

it becomes much clearer that there is a hard break between ed's behavior in ep 1, where he is chasing the record, and ep 2, where he is chasing death. this is something that's still there in the episodes as they aired if you pay close attention, but it's a lot less immediately obvious. in ep 1 ed is absolutely monomaniacally focused on work work work, making everyone crunch to hit that milestone, taking stimulants (the rhino horn is an obvious stand-in for cocaine) to keep himself moving; he's treating the crew badly but it primarily takes the form of overworking them and ignoring their needs and creating an overall environment of generally rancid vibes, not lashing out at random and not trying to die. (his first reaction to hearing about poor morale among the crew is not to threaten or punish anyone but to ask in a slightly baffled, distracted voice if they know they can have cake and drugs, like the worst manager at your office thinking it's fine to make people crunch over the weekend as long as they get free pizza.)

he's doing this in a desperate attempt to distract himself from thinking about stede, which is why he reacts with sudden violent escalation to stede's name being brought up. but it's only in episode 2, once he's broken the record and no longer has that goal to distract himself with, that he spirals into suicidality and starts lashing out and provoking and endangering the crew in hopes that one of them will finally kill him.

thematically, this brings in the "pining for his boyfriend" scene that felt so conspicuously missing, and that would have set up izzy's apology at the end of the season. why is ed throwing himself into his work? well, he's trying to be blackbeard not edward, and blackbeard is his worksona. being blackbeard means working 100% of the time, never stopping, because when he stops he's edward, and edward better watch his fucking step (because edward's the part of him that can't stop thinking about stede bonnet). he is doing exactly what izzy told him to do, in a much more absolute and literal sense than izzy intended (who says he's bad at passive aggression), and it's extremely possible this would have been alluded explicitly in the cut material. but even if it wasn't, it would have been much more present as subtext.

this also more clearly explains izzy's reactions in episode 1. what makes izzy feel that he has to change the situation is very clearly ed casually threatening to fire him. izzy is, as con has said, a person who "only cares about his work" - the kind of man (it's usually a man, this is a form of toxic masculinity the show hasn't brought up directly before but it's a very common one) who sublimates all his emotion into his career. insisting that ed should define himself entirely through his work sounded reasonable to izzy because that's how he himself lives. and he needs edward to be blackbeard - the worksona - for not just practical but also emotional reasons, because the worksona is the part of ed who can value izzy, since izzy himself doesn't exist outside the professional sphere.

but then ed - entirely fixated on the record - threatens to fire him, which means blackbeard doesn't care about izzy either. in desperation izzy then tries reaching out to edward for the first time, asking essentially "if you don't value our professional relationship, what about our personal relationship?" and it turns out the answer is what about it.

this all much more strongly sets up ed's arc for the rest of the season, which relies pretty heavily on the understanding that he really, really doesn't want to be blackbeard anymore; we'd see exactly why, because he tried being blackbeard as hard as possible at the start of the season and it made him utterly miserable. it would also more clearly set up the themes i talk about here in the finale: emphasizing the record would show much more clearly how pointless ed's kraken rampage was, how all the violence had no purpose, how the record itself was an entirely artificial goal ed fixated on in his desperation to have something to give him meaning, and at the end of the season he doesn't need that anymore because he has accepted that love gives him the purpose he needs.

the most important thing that makes me absolutely sure this was supposed to be a throughline in the episode is the impossible bird speech. it's clearly thematically important, since it's both the button for the episode and the title - but in the episode that aired it felt a little out of nowhere: why is he suddenly talking about never making port? if you stop and think about everything you've seen, that he's been doing cocaine and there's all this talk about overworking everyone with constant raids, you can see the theme that he's been using work to distract himself from his heartbreak, but it's not super obvious immediately. however if you had this clear throughline about ed obsessively fixating on breaking a record the whole time, it would have made immediate complete sense that he was doing it to distract himself from thinking about stede, and now that izzy ruined it by bringing up stede explicitly and publicly he's determined to throw himself back into his coping mechanism even harder now.

in fact i suspect the impossible bird speech was probably set up specifically in the cut scene with the tally marks. my suspicion is that izzy would have said something like "the wedding was the second to last raid, boss, one more and we'll have broken the record. after that we can give everyone shore leave, right?" and ed would have said, what do you mean AFTER. there isn't any after, iz. we keep going. we keep going forever.

(and there's an excellent chance that's where you also got, isn't this what you wanted, izzy?)

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The letter is such a turning point for Ed I think because it's proof, tangible proof in his hands, that Stede thought of him and missed him and was trying to get back to him while they were apart. That he may have panicked and run, but that didn't mean Ed was just a whim to him after all.

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dj saying izzy was like a father figure to ed & then trying to connect that to ed killing his actual father is insane but specially, specially, when you remember that last episode stede & izzy had a pretty obvious moment where they came to an understanding about what it's like to be in love with the same man

that's not the kind of conversation and look you share with your ex's father figure. It's the one you share with your ex's ex while you're both still in love with him

Then the episode before that they kept cutting from stede&ed having sex to izzy singing a love song?

And the episode before that izzy stuttered and hesitantly asked stede what ed's been saying about him??

I know found families can have parental figures whom you may still feel a sexual and/or romantic attraction to, but at no point did either season ever show such a relationship between the two. I guess if you want to reach for it you could say that in early S1 there are times when izzy tries to look out for ed & guide him but even stede (fucking stede) clocks them as 'old married couple nearing the final stages of their divorce'

You could on a technicality apply the 'mentor dies at the end' trope to izzy but that's only if you assume that izzy's somewhat significantly older than ed and so probably looked out for ed at some point when they were working under hornigold together, which again is never shown in their dynamic (the only mention we get of it is through stede but I'm almost certain that most of what stede said was just him buttering up izzy to get him to train stede)

I feel like rather than 'father-figure/mentor dies at the end' it gives more 'even as we try to move on our existences are inseparably linked to each other and you're the last part of my old life that needs to die before I can finally be free to change and we both know that, even as it hurts' Yeah yeah izzy deserved to live a happy life away from blackbeard's influence the same way ed deserves to live a happy life away from izzy's (and I really wish he could have) but they've been unhealthily connected from the beginning (much more obvious in S2 seeing how neither of them could bare to get rid of the other's body) and it makes sense that eventually that's the trope & ending izzy fell into

point being:

david jenkins, sir, i respect your writing and love your show but that was absolutely NOT what was going on there

Izzy wanted to get fucked nasty but Ed's a bottom so it never worked out

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OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH Ed and Stede in 2x08 Mermen

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so wait let me recap. the new music we hear when ed emerges from the waves like a kraken having just strangled some guys and wearing his blackbeard clothes. uses the vocals of voi chi sapete. the love song that the swede sang when ed had his kraken flashback, leading to an unprecedented moment of vulnerability revealing the deepest guilt he carries avout violence to a man who told him he is his friend anyway. that song plays as ed, dissociating and killing and by all appearances fully back into his kraken and blackbeard roles, walks into stede's fervent written love confession and then getting to tell stede he loves him back and hear that stede knows and believes he is capable of that.

so not only is ed loved as blackbeard as the kraken as ed not only is he CAPABLE of love as everything that he is not only is the kraken, in fact, born out of love, but those parts of himself he is ashamed and afraid of have ALWAYS been lovable and in fact ALWAYS BEEN LOVED

and for one last musical gut punch, the lyrics playing as ed and stede reunite include "I love my baby ever since he was born"??

NOW WADDA HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT ALL THAT

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"As a black woman, being in the black community, our hair is so important to us. It's spiritual. It's everything. So, I was grateful to Rob Marshall for saying, you know, we're re-imagining this character, she should be allowed to have [Halle's] hair and wear her hair the way that it is in all of its glory. Just make it red because Ariel's hair is red." - Halle Bailey THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023) Dir. Rob Marshall

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‘V’ Slow Dancing

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Had intended to color this for the @ofmdcoloringevent a while back but didn't finish it in time. But @finngualart recently re-shared the line art, and I thought...why not? XD

This was super fun, @finngualart! Thank you for such an awesome drawing and the invitation to color it.

Line art by @finngualart, color by me.

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Dear Ed

you can tell I'm totally normal about this djsjjssj

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the fact that the tonal shift in ofmd happens when Stede decides to walk away from the story is driving me insane. Like we see him have an insane amount of plot armor during the season and we are being told the story (until about episode 9 or 10) through his (and by extension Lucius' eyes) and then he walks away from it and loses control and the story grows darker and darker until it's almost unrecognizable

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our flag means death but make it don bluth that ended up being a series apparently (bunch of these are available on my inprnt if you’re interested, shop link is on my description!)

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Gonna start some discourse:

By far the WORST part of S2 is that we did NOT get any glimpses of Ed’s BELLY!

Seriously, wtf??? So many opportunities and not only did we not get even a sliver of tum but the shirt was FULLY TUCKED IN 😡😡😡

I’m disappointed no one is talking about this travesty tbh

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Even the history's greatest, most fearsome pirate needs a hug sometimes

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EDWARD ’BLACKBEARD’ TEACH Our Flag Means Death: Season 2 Episodes 4-5

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i love one man

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Anyway, go ahead and blow your brains out, but your last act on this planet will be surrendering to a woman... Or we could have drinks.