#like when stede killed badminton lol

[furylad]

hear me out but OFMD actually makes perfect sense if you accept two simple facts about the world it's set in:

it's an alternate universe to ours (duh)

(less obvious) magic exists. it usually works in subtle ways. this also extends to metaphysical forces like fate, destiny, luck. it's not just "haha no real world accuracy", it's that the laws of physics are outright different than ours, and are also influenced by the whims and emotions of the people in that world. "clap if you believe", is an actual law of the universe. (think back to the lighthouse fuckery.) we're basically in Neverland for gay adults.

part of me expects them to double-down on the existence of magic eventually because of the sea witch arc with Buttons idk.

I'm not insane.

[ragingstillness]

Ok so I just finished the episodes and by a cruel twist of fate I once again have to work in the morning so here’s my quick thoughts:

Calypso’s bday was clearly a pride celebration and I love that for them

I actually picked up on it surprisingly fast, like literally when Frenchie left the galley to go prepare for the party

Izzy’s voice is of course always tops, we knew Con could sing but man he really belted it this episode

Ned Low is a dick and deserved what he got

I now stan Hellcat Maggie

Not surprised murder turns Stede on, frankly it was smtg I was always expecting

While their previous two kisses have been sweet and romantic I was happy to see one with some passion

Izzy, Jim, and Wee John in drag mean everything to me

Poor Roach, he seemed to be enjoying his torture

Wish we’d seen whatever torture there was that “turned Izzy on” lol

Can confirm, people who play violin are assholes (source: I am a violinist) /jk

Ngl the episode felt a tiny bit rushed idk if that was just me

Ricky’s a dick and his speech immediately made me think of a gay priest who is denying himself and condemning homosexuality (for which specific priest, just take your pick there are a lot of them)

As much as I like Ed trying to encourage Stede not to “kill in cold blood” I think that ship has totally sailed on both their parts. Even if you don’t claim Stede’s killing of the Badmintons as “cold blood” he did totally set that ship of French aristocrats on fire

I like that the show’s acknowledging that jumping right into sex especially after trauma is not necessarily a good idea no matter how much some part of my shipper heart is like ugh why are they fighting again let them be happy

The second episode in particular Stede spends kind of acting like a dick and knowing Djenks and his team this is on purpose but it’s still unpleasant to watch

I feel like Stede’s fallen into the trap of now that he’s back with Ed he thinks everything is going to be fine and he’s turned Ed into this idealized figure again and is ignoring the actual things that Ed says

That being said, I do agree with him that Ed is being a coward by running off to become a fisherman as if he wasn’t a bloodthirsty pirate who still hasn’t made up for his actions to the crew.

Ed becoming a fisherman is clearly a “I was happy fishing for the first time in a long time I want to hold onto that feeling” decision

Essentially both Ed and Stede are running from their faults and pasts and I think they need to talk it out

Ed seems to be trying to say to Stede that he wants to have time to love himself before falling headlong into a relationship but he missed the mark a bit

Izzy briefly plays Lucius’ role in congratulating them on sleeping together and giving Stede advise

It fits him like an over large suit but I understand they needed a character to fill that role and Lucius has his own plotline now

I do think Izzy is being remarkably calm and that might not last, he’s probably bottling it up

Has the Jim/Olu/Archie polycule expanded to include Zheng? I’m so confused by it all. I don’t disapprove in any way I just feel like some of the relationships in that square are qpps and some are romantic and I can’t really nail down which is which

Fang and Roach bonding I kind of ship them a little

The Paper-azzi hysterical

Jackie’s new outfit: yes queen

The Swede’s new look: bitchin’

I feel like most of the cast have gotten hotter over the season. Shows what a few modifications in costuming can do (note, I said in costuming not in body or face or anything I’m not shaming anyone)

At one point I straight up thought Izzy was a ghost the way he kept popping up near Stede and Ed and giving commentary, idk if that was intentional

Izzy is still dealing with his alcoholism and I’m glad they didn’t pretend that’d be solved in a few days

RIP Ed’s leathers, you were hot

I knew there was smtg up with those clocks but I thought there was some sort of secret message in them not that they’d explode. That might be just because I considered it an anachronism. The earliest I can find evidence of a time bomb with a little googling is 1776 but that may be wrong

Who was firing on the republic? Was it Ricky or did the bombs somehow set off the canons on Zheng’s ships?

Stede deserved the beat down he got he was being a misogynistic dick

Also, it’s about time Stede detached from Ed long enough to realize that he hasn’t spent enough quality time with his crew to get them to stay with him when there are other options

Not surprised Ed didn’t kill Ned Low but a little surprised Izzy didn’t, as Izzy’s canonically killed everyone Ed couldn’t

Izzy mentioning how Ed shot him when he told him he loved him and Stede responding as if he’d heard that before I would have loved to see that scene

In general these two episodes felt a little rushed but idk if I’m perceiving that correctly I’m too tired

[laceratedlamiaceae]

Izzy for the ask meme.

(ask game)

asdgfklsdkf of course everyone sends me Izzy. I think I have enough to say about him to do it again though lol

favorite thing about them: his charming personality :) this is not a joke I really do find him endearing least favorite thing about them: his ass </3 we need to start a gofundme to get him some implants favorite line: "You will rue it long and you will rue it hard." Why are you, as a man, talking about something long and hard? Is there something else long and hard you want to talk about? hmm brOTP: I want him and Roach to bond over being disrespected by Stede. Izzy should try to kill him all over again when he hears about "it hardly tasted of orange" OTP: A convoluted polycule with Izzy at the center in relationships with Roach, Black Pete, Spanish Jackie, and Jack; friends with benefits with Jim, Lucius, Frenchie, and Buttons; and hatefucking Stede. (I actually made a chart of this once but I deleted in shame after I noticed I somehow forgot Roach lol). nOTP: uhh Nigel Badminton I guess, since I can't think of anyone else. (I could get into Izzy/Chauncey though tbh) random headcanon: I love projecting touch-averse Izzy. He's okay with Ed touching him as long as it's properly telegraphed but anyone else and he'll flinch so hard he elbows them in the gut by accident (and then again on purpose because fuck you, you're not allowed to touch me) unpopular opinion: I despise the genre of steddyhands fanart (and fics) where Ed and Stede are smiling while Izzy looks like he's being held at gunpoint. Not that I expect him to be smiling all the time but at a certain point it really starts to seem like he's being forced into it (which is something I'm just really sensitive to, as I've posted about before). song i associate with them: Cellophane by FKA Twigs. Both for the lyrics:

Didn't I do it for you? Why don't I do it for you? Why won't you do it for me? When all I do is for you

And I just want to feel you're there And I don't want to have to share our love I try but I get overwhelmed When you're gone I have no one to tell

and also because I like to imagine Izzy in the music video, looking like this:

favorite picture of them: He looks so heartbroken here I can't even stand it. It's not fair that he's fictional and I can't go over and give him a hug

[fleshadept]

smth I find interesting is their differences in like the Definition of murder. like stede didn't directly kill either of the badmintons, but he still thinks of himself as a vicious murderer. but Ed only directly killed ONE person, but indirectly killed soo many ppl, like when Jack says he lit the boat on fire, and he says technically the fire killed those people. my theory is stede hates himself, and has the whole time, so unconsciously he's grasping onto this as a reason for it, and Ed is trying to never think about those people he killed so he doesn't hate himself any more than he has to.... idk I just think its an interesting character detail :-]

the interesting thing to me is that stede did not feel bad At All for "killing" nigel. like he straight up told the elder guy that. the dude asked if he felt bad for killing him and he said Not really, he sucked even as a kid! and figured out that really the reason he felt bad was because he felt inadequate and nigel reminded him he'd abandoned his family (nigel reminding him of this is also how we, the audience, are introduced to the idea that stede left them for piracy) which made him feel guilty about THAT, so what you said about him displacing his self-hatred onto this is pretty accurate.

so he didn't really feel bad about being a murderer. it's why he could leave mind-nigel behind on the shore at the end of that episode. stede isn't as averse to murder as he is to violence, per se. we see in his flashbacks that violence has been associated with masculinity for his whole life, the specific kind of masculinity he's been excluded from, that violence turned on him as a result of his exclusion. also it seems like he just thinks it's gross lol

when chauncey died, it had the same effect: chauncey forced him to remember that he abandoned his family, he didn't really give a shit about chauncey dying, but he remembered what he'd done "to" his family (assuming they were worse off without him) and felt like he needed to resolve that. it had already been on the forefront of his anxieties from learning he had been declared dead, so chauncey just pushed him over the edge, so to speak.

it's telling that when he says "at some point, a man's gotta face the music for the things he's done and the people he's hurt" we get a shot of nigel dying at "the things he's done," a relatively neutral statement, and a shot of his family at "and the people he's hurt," because from his perspective, he really only cares that he (possibly) hurt mary and the kids.

there are some inconsistencies that i hope they explore later, like stede burning that ship of aristocrats alive but looking taken aback when calico jack said ed burned a ship of people alive (with the crew still trapped inside? perhaps that was the difference).

ed's philosophy is harder to parse because we haven't spent as much time with him. he clearly sees violence as monstrous. the only person he's ever killed was his dad, which he did as a last resort to keep his mom safe after his dad was violent, and we don't know for how long that went on. after that he "always outsourced the big job," which seems like a pretty straightforward way to rationalize necessary violence. he didn't skin that guy, fang did. same end, different means.

the fact that he constructed the myth of the kraken around killing his dad is VERY interesting. not only does he outsource actual killing to his crew or other external forces, he took his one true murder and turned it into a horror story he uses to scare people, saying it's the only thing that scared him. it's hard to tell if he genuinely believed in the kraken until stede's fuckery triggered his real memory or if he knew the whole time. either way, he clearly was traumatized by killing his dad and that led him to his current philosophy, whatever the extent of that is.

looking forward to season two, it seems like they're foreshadowing ed dropping this philosophy entirely by not just going back to being blackbeard but declaring himself the kraken, the part of himself he invented to rationalize his one and only murder. which, of course, implies he'll be doing more murdering. we'll see!

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

The main joke of stede's character is that he's an idiot boss. Like yes he's the romantic lead, but it's a *workplace* romcom. He's basically more deliberate and focused speedran Michael Scott to the nth degree, an idiot (and even bit of an jackass) boss unaware of his privileges treating things like a game and acting like their family, the employees don't like learn to care about him as we learn of his issues and that he does truly mean well and is slowly learning to be better and gaining confidence. The arc doesn't work if he isn't a bit of an ass. The show never makes Stede a joke in bad faith, like the bullying or harassment of the Badmintons'. It's only teasing him or pokes fun of him when he's being a foolish or a jerk. Sometimes you tease your mates, it's all out of love and fun. That's what the show does to Stede, because it likes him and want him to learn, but also knows he's not perfect. It's not fair to Ed to have a partner that doesn't grow and is perfect, and it's not fair to Stede's character arc and growth to simplify him. I do not get why stans of any character are so adamant that the story being told is not allowed to be a story it is telling.

lol i thought i'd posted it already but in my drafts i had a post i was working on abt the "workplace comedy" angle on ofmd that i never finished:

idk if this is just my take but i feel like the "it's a workplace comedy, on a boat!" thing was supposed to be, like. a joke. and then people started actually incorporating it into how they analyze character dynamics in this show. like. this is not The Office. they're not clocking into a 9-to-5 here. they kill and steal for a living, and when they're not killing and stealing, they're stuck in the place where they make their living. the Revenge isn't like, an office building, they fucking live there. it's their house. the setting of a goddamn pirate ship in the middle of the ocean in 1717 is very fucking different from the setting of an office building in a small town where everyone can drive away when work is done. the atmosphere on the Revenge is a LOT less professional than the settings of actual workplace comedies. and more importantly, the relationships and the character dynamics on the Revenge are different from what you'd expect from professional coworkers in a modern setting. what i'm saying is that some of the ofmd analysis i've seen seems like… really focused on putting everyone into "boss" and "employee" categories. and like, to a certain degree, thinking about it that was is helpful—if you think of izzy as a shitty middle manager for a different company, it makes sense why none of stede's crew ever fucking listen to him. but trying to analyze these characters like they have normal modern jobs and trying to look at the power dynamics between these characters like how you'd analyze the power dynamics that exist between you and your boss at McDonald's is like, extremely reductive. and also wrong???

idk where i was going with this post anymore lol BUT im going to use it here to say that anon... please don't compare my beloved blorbo stede bonnet to michael scott ever again fhsgjkhfdjgfj

[kissingcullens]

But I was just thinking about how much PERFORMANCE and stagecraft there is in Our Flag Means Death; it’s really something else... layers... the Meta of it all...  It feels like almost every episode centers around a theatrical caper; The first episode, dressing up and having dinner with Badminton and the soldiers... Stede “surrounding” Izzy and tricking him on the island- The Lighthouse Gambit, The Pyramid Scheme, Godfrey and Jeff, The Art of Fuckery, Stede’s fake death...  And Blackbeard himself is SOOOO theatrical; he LOVES to perform, and he’s constantly showing off. (Omg and Stede? “I may be landed gentry, but I’m thrilled to be granted entry!” PLEASE. They were MADE for each other....) In episode 4... there’s obviously the Switching Clothes game, but also: Blackbeard clearly RELISHES getting to play the brilliant “Sherlock Holmes cracking the case” bit when he reveals his Fog/Full Moon Plan, and eats up the applause. He intentionally withheld the information from everyone, all so that he could do a bit of theater, and almost got everyone killed. (to be clear, I’m not criticizing him... I LOVE this about him... it’s both his personality AND a strategic move to solidify his own power...10/10 character, amazing) But yeah... he’s always showing off/performing/competing...  the way he’s so over-the-top and competitive and hammy at the French Party- going TOO far, really... and he’s so deeply wounded by failing and being laughed at. The way he hams it up so hard when he’s telling the Ghost Story about the Kraken- The way he arranges a full-on pyrotechnic show for the Revenge Crew show JUST to show off... And idk, I was just thinking about how the show is so much about performing Power and Masculinity, and the way it shows it’s all theate; an elaborate illusion that everyone agrees to, you know?  And then I was thinking about how the first thing that Broken-Hearted Edward does, is he writes a song and performs it live in front of the crew. I just think it’s so fun that his lingua franca is performance, you know? It’s so HIM. And then later, when he’s alone in his room and they begin chanting for him to “Give us another song!” You can see him just... give up.  He’s so TIRED of performing. What’s the point??? And I was thinking about the way it sort of parallels Episode 5, when suddenly he realizes that the Party Crowd that he’s so invested in impressing are fickle- -they love him as long as he’s giving them what they WANT, but their admiration is just a hair’s breadth away from contempt. Anyway, blah blah something, themes, blah... I just really love Ed lol Edit: Oh, and how could I not mention the significance of Ed telling Stede that he “Just wants to be Edward” a moment before kissing him for the first time? THE ROMANCE. The way he can stop performing and be HIMSELF with the one he loves. Edit #2: (Not to mention the bathtub scene omg: letting someone else see him huddle into a corner CRYING and confess: “I’m not a good person.”) THE INTIMACY!!!1111

[sixstepsaway]

Im rewatching ofmd for the first time and it's so funny how ambivalent most of the crew is about killing Stede??? Black Pete is the only one pushing for it and it's bc they're not being Good At Piracy not bc he's having a bad time. The rest are like yeah I guess we should be wanting to kill him by now, shouldn't we? Like they know it's expected but also Oluwande mentions they're having a good time having pinnochio read to them and that's that. Like Stede could have not gotten close to Badminton's ship and he'd still have until the end of the book at least before the plot started lol

LMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAO it's true!!!! And Buttons absolutely told him about the mutiny because he didn't want them to mutiny on him.

It's also funny to compare the proposed mutiny in 1x01 (in which they don't really do it and they let Stede fuck around some more and they're like ehhh but he reads to us!!!) against how fucking swiftly they mutiny against Izzy in 1x09 lmao. They got so used to Stede's people-positive management style and him reading them books at night and paying them fair wages and not actually putting them in a lot of real danger (the Spanish thing was, as I've said before, technically Jim's fault, and the English thing was because of Izzy directing them at the ship (and the crew were fine anyway)) and letting them do craft projects and sailing all their flags and defending their pets and generally adoring them and all of that, that when Izzy was a real pirate captain (and he was! He wasn't actually being cruel, aside from one no rations for you at Wee John who talked back to his captain) they couldn't hack it and they wanted to yeet him into the ocean.

It's so funny.

[diamondcitydarlin]

i got unreasonably frustrated with a post last night advocating for Lucius' death to be permanent for story reasons lol and the urge to counter this person's points are too great for me to ignore but I didn't want to just randomly go after someone entitled to their opinion I just wanted to argue with the opinion that it would be better writing if he stayed dead because I absolutely could not disagree more so I'm just putting this here to get it off my chest...and, mostly, to defend Lucius' right to say alive at this point (if you know which post this is addressing pls don't share it with the OP they don't deserve to see some random old lady whining about something they posted for fun)

The thesis statement of their argument that I will try to sum up as objectively as possible and as close to what was actually said without creating a strawman:

"Lucius should stay dead in season 2 because the moment where Ed pushed him off the side of the ship was a very shocking scene that I believe would be diminished if it turned out Lucius had survived. Ed shouldn't get a bandaid solution like that when he's a bad person who makes bad decisions. I feel like this show already shows us that not everyone is immortal and there are consequences for violence and having Lucius be alive would also diminish that. Basically I loved Lucius dying and I hope he stays that way." (and then also some frankly condescending suggestions that anyone who thinks otherwise maybe doesn't understand how television writing works)

Well. As someone who has had to write, edit, and make up concepts for professional scripts, I absolutely disagree that Lucius staying dead would be a natural fulfillment of anything the writing has planted beforehand. To a point, I'm not even really sure we were watching the same TV show because this stuff you're saying about how no one is immortal and there are always consequences for violence...uhm.

1) Stede and Ed casually get impaled, all the time, and yet are somehow completely fine by the next day even without modern medicine.

2) Both Roach and the Swede have jumped off the ship without lasting consequences.

3) Like literally anything else that happens on the show unless you're a Badminton in which case everything is permanent lol

But okay, let's humor the idea for a moment that OFMD pulled a game of thrones and decided to just perma-murder Lucius via a method that has yet to kill anyone else. What kind of significant effect do we think that will have on the plot? How will that move the story forward? Because Ed is the only one who knows what happened, and the revelation of what he did to Lucius wouldn't come out or be important until he and Stede crossed paths again and it (potentially) came out. I suppose it could give Black Pete some sort of motivation to do a revenge thing? But then he isn't a difficult character to give motivation to, he hardly needs someone PERMANENTLY dead to do an impulsive thing- in fact, even in this context it makes a lot more sense for Pete to just THINK he's dead. Beyond this I don't see how Lucius being permanently dead is supposed to have a more profound effect on the narrative than him actually being alive, I don't see why him being permanently dead is even a necessity for the aforementioned things to happen anyway. Because at least from how I understand this trope and how it works in scripted TV narratives is that the death has to be shocking, but it also has to contribute to the plot. A princess let's say being suddenly murdered without warning shocks the audience and brings about the potential of a war plot between the opposing kingdoms, etc. Stede and Ed also already have more than enough reasons to be at odds with each other and have drama (Stede left him, Ed marooned his crew and took his ship) and I'm not sure Lucius and Stede are close enough for his dismissive attitude about Lucius' possible death before to have changed all that much.

The main thing for me is that it's just too vague. All we really know for sure is that Ed pushed Lucius off the side of the ship and that he was still alive after hitting the water. Technically he did not die on screen and any assumptions that he might be dead are just that, because falling overboard gives a rather wide range of possibilities of survival and it's kind of missing the point of the show to go 'well it's not realistic that Lucius could find a piece of driftwood or get rescued by another ship or turn into a mermaid or just hold on to a piece of the ship or find a way to sneak back in etc' because uhm...yes, in terms of the rules of 'realism' that this show has established for its own universe, any of those things are absolutely plausible. I'm pretty sure getting impaled multiple times without significant health issues isn't 'realistic' either but that's not really the point, is it? Like these characters might as well be made of rubber I'm not really sure where the idea that consequential realism is a huge part of this show (maybe they were watching Black Sails instead or at the same time and got the wires crossed? idk, I'm confused)

also in my experience with Taika's works and works he is involved in, this is exactly the kind of chekov's gun that will come back in a big way later and the only way Lucius' 'death' as it is is going to have that kind of an effect is if he is in fact not dead at all, and yet FULLY aware of what Ed tried to do to him. It may take a couple episodes for him to pop back up but it's what makes the most sense to me. Really the only person that can give a quality, dramatic reaction with profound effects on the narrative as a result of what happened to Lucius is...Lucius himself lol. See, that's the problem. There aren't many preexsiting parties that could bring about much of a consequence to this action outside of him.

also ofc I take issue with the assertion that Ed is a 'bad person who does bad things' because, again, missing the point. If the show were trying to make a point about how irredeemably bad Ed is and how irrevocable Lucius 'death' at his hands was, why not have Ed strangle him before pushing him in? Stab him? Why not have Ed make some kind of effort to insure the job is done instead of falling back on that old pattern of 'outsourcing the job'? No it doesn't make what he did, as it was, fine and okay and undeserving of recourse, but the entire point of Ed and Stede's stories are that they flawed, nuanced characters, neither of whom are entirely 'good' or entirely 'bad'. The point is not and never has been to prove why one of them is completely irredeemable and always has been, otherwise those moments like the one in the tub were pointless and might as well have been cut. hell I'll even go so far as to say killing Lucius wasn't Ed's main priority, it was just getting him the hell off the ship so he could revert into Blackbeard without being called out on it by someone who knows better.

So, that all essentially gives Lucius access to knowledge that no one else has. Why would they plant all that with a character that couldn't bring all the dirty laundry back and make it everyone's problem?

Anyway, my basic point is that it's 100% okay to personally prefer that Lucius stays dead for your own reasons, but I don't think it's at all accurate to say that this has been the sort of thing the show has been leading up to all this time.