#ofmd fanfic

[cobaltaugustao3]

My constant struggle when writing PWP

[umulata]

I think we all need a bit of weepy edizzy lovemaking as a treat given the circumstances. comm for Magziraphale on twt based on their Kinktober '23 fic

+ extra moist detail

[myflagmeansace]

omg the potential of "Jeff's Inn by the Sea" banter between Ed and Stede 🥺

it could've gone something like this...

"Oh, hello there, sir. Welcome to Jeff's Inn by the Sea. How can I help you?"

"Yes, hello there, fair innkeep! What a fine establishment you have here. Loving your desk setup. Oh, and what a lovely boutonnière on your shirt there."

"Thank you. The owner makes us wear them."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, he can be a dick sometimes."

"Well, I'm sure he runs a tight ship, or rather inn. But I've heard it's the best one on the island."

"It is. We're booked up every night for the next four months."

"Oh, well, I hoped you might have a vacancy by any chance? You see, I'm a weary traveler with nowhere else to go and would love a place to rest my head for a bit."

"Mmm...let me check if we have anything available."

"Oka-."

"No, nothing available, sir. Sorry. But we do have an opening in four months. Our vista suite, comes with complimentary towels and a fishing equipment voucher you can use at the bar and grill next door."

"Oh well, I am rather tired. I don't think I can wait four months for a room."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir."

"It's fine. I should've known better than to expect a fine inn like this to have any available beds to sleep in."

"I didn't say that."

"Mmm?"

"I didn't say there weren't any available beds you could sleep in."

"Oh, I thought you said..."

"Perhaps I could interest you in a different sleeping arrangement? Maybe a bed with silk sheets, fluffy pillows, and exquisite cashmere blankets?"

"Ooh, yes please!"

"You'd be sharing it, of course."

"Sharing it? With who?"

"Me."

[edscuntyeyeshadow]

I literally keep running into this shit it’s so annoying

[soupbtch]

Ed notices Stede tucking flowers through his powdered wig in the captain’s cabin as they get ready together. He grows quietly fascinated watching Stede’s fingers as they sort through the flowers scattered on the desk, picking the smallest, brightest ones to loop gently into his wig. He’s never seen anyone handle anything so delicately before.

He steps closer, and Stede looks up and asks, “Would you like some in your hair, as well?”

Ed’s eyes widen at the question before he remembers he’s not attending the party tonight as Blackbeard. He can be anyone he wants. He can be someone who wears flowers in his hair. He might even like it.

“Yeah, sure,” he huffs in a small voice, and Stede gestures for him to take a seat.

Stede reaches around to pluck a flower from the pile. “May I?”

In the past, Ed has never liked people touching his hair; and though he barely knows Stede, he finds himself trusting him anyway.

Stede begins gently placing flowers in Ed’s hair, weaving the stems through his waves. No one has ever touched Ed so tenderly, with such great care as if he were reverent and beautiful and delicate. He feels himself melting into the soft press of Stede’s fingertips against his scalp.

“There,” Stede says quietly. “Go have a look.” He doesn’t need to find a mirror to see how he looks – he can read it on Stede’s face.

From then on, trusting Stede becomes an easier decision to make. Then something natural and instinctual, like breathing. Ed trusts Stede again later that night as he slips the red silk from his fingers, and once more a few days later when he asks Stede to run him through on the deck of the ship. Inhale. He trusts Stede with the next ten years of his life. And still, as he waits at dawn with his feet dangling over the edge of the dock. Exhale.

His vision tunnels. He’s cold. Suffocating.

“Like treading water,” Ed had said a lifetime ago. “Waiting to drown.”

Miraculously, he breaks through the surface. He has to force the air back into his lungs, will them to deflate and hope his body remembers how to fill them back up again.

“Breathing the same air,” Stede says to him. And it’s painful, and he hiccups and chokes, but slowly, gradually, it gets easier. He whispers his goodbye to Blackbeard as Stede lays him gently down on the bed. But his breathing is still jagged, irregular; one step forward before stumbling back.

He’s sputtering on salt water again when he finds a letter in a bottle. He finds the man who wrote it. He’s wielding a sword, and Ed trusts he won’t get gutted this time as he sprints towards him from across the beach. He inhales automatically as they intertwine, pressing their promises to each other's lips.

“Almost ready? Want me to put the flowers in your hair?” Frenchie asks.

“No thanks,” Ed exhales. “It may be our wedding day, but I trust Stede will be here any second now to do it himself.”

[space-manatees]

is it me or did both neil gaiman and david jenkins really say “we read your fanfictions and we loved it” in these season 2s

[libroseitm]

Illustration for this wonderful, sensational, downright DELICIOUS fic by mediocrepirate on A03, @impossiblebird on here.

I cannot properly express my love for Alice's writing. It's like a dream. Go read this fic, and then all their other fics, right the fuck now.

See it here on A03 [x]

[bragginball-z]

David Jenkins did not know what he was about to unleash upon the fandom when he put Ed in a cat collar and had Stede use his captain voice on him

[aha-my-villainous-thoughts]

A little gift for @bizarrelittlemew, one of the kindest and strongest people in the crew 💜 if you haven't read her heartwrenching fic Five Birthdays and a Funeral, you haven't lived 💜

Here's a sun dappled Stede at a picnic, charming his way into Ed's heart with star facts and definitely not booty shorts, Lucius, they're a perfectly reasonable length!

[mxmollusca]

It's been two months since the completion of Wave Hello to the Void and @zacharybosch and I miss our boys so much. If you haven't given our cryptid hunter multimedia AU a chance, now's the time! It's 78k weird, wonderful words, and @eefaevie's art is mind blowing!

Also available in podfic form from the wonderful @loopydangerfrog!

✨🔴〰️🔴✨

[bougiebutchbinch]

I just think it'd be so fucking funny if Izzy was like 'I've met better men than you, Bonnet. Better fighters. Better shooters. Better dick game'

Stede makes a whole bunch of offended noises and is like 'exCUSE me, how would you know??? anyway' :puts on his bitchiest voice: 'Ed certainly wasn't complaining last night'

Though Izzy cries a little inside, outwardly, he rolls his eyes like 'puhLEEEEEEASE!!! Ed's eyes are so fucking pink-tinted whenever he looks at you, you look like a raw hunk of salmon. He is down bad. That man would fake an orgasm the moment you poked his dick. You can't take his enjoyment as proof of your prowess in buggery. I, on the other hand, am a neutral fucking party. I see you for what you are - an inexperienced fop who thinks enthusiasm can make up for his abysmal deficit in skill'

to which Stede raises his eyebrows and says, 'oooooh, you wanna bet?'

and anyway, that's how Ed comes back from his fishing excursion to find [adults only under cut!]

Stede just fucking buried face-first in Izzy's pussy. Giving him what is possibly the sloppiest, least skilled, most aggressive and dementedly determined oral of his life. We're talking tongue and teeth. Absolutely fucking dripping with it.

Stede's been at it for an hour and his mouth's gonna feel like rubber tomorrow, but like shit is he stopping for anything - even Ed walking in. This is a matter of pride, dammit. And no one's able to fire him up and piss him off quite as much as the little gremlin bastard under him - who even now, is refusing to get off against Stede's mouth and admit Stede's blatant superiority in the bedroom! The gall!

Izzy, meanwhile, is biting the pillow and trying not to fucking scream. He can't let on that he's already cum three times and he's skyrocketing towards the fourth. Bonnet's so fucking oblivious he doesn't even realise. He's so fucking hell-bent on making Izzy get off once that it doesn't click that he's making him multiple and oh god, Izzy will die before he lets him know and concedes defeat. But it's too much, it's so fucking much, he's gonna die anyway just from Stede fucking Bonnet's fucking tongue plunging in and out of his aching cunt -

Ed's just like. Hm. Nice. Keep at it, boys. And settles in a nearby chair to watch.

[eefaevie]

here’s a crop of the chapter 10 art from wave hello to the void, a completed gentlebeard OFMD cryptid hunting AU by @mxmollusca @zacharybosch and myself — 78k words, explicit, romance/comedy/horror (but don’t let that deter you! this is the most tender monster-loving you’ve ever seen — I guarantee it)

[izzyhandslightofmylife]

Official statement on why Izzy's death affected me so much

Our Flag Means Death, is, at it’s core, is a show that focuses on queer joy- a form of therapy for those that have been raised on queerbaiting, shipping minor side characters, or watching, when nothing else is available, queer tragedies. You know how it goes- the two main characters, both male, have chemistry. They say things to each other that seem weirdly like declarations of love. They look at each other with love in their eyes. You see these things and the main man gets married off to a badly written, unfinished female character and is left feeling empty. The best friend dies for the main character to live. When everyone talks about how cute the main couple are, you want to scream all of a sudden, because nobody can see this love story play out except you. It’s queer, it’s tragic, and nobody else can understand it. 

Not Our Flag Means Death. From the moment it aired, it was praised as a show with unabashed queer joy, which means more than I can possibly say. The two main male characters meet, they have chemistry, and they fall in love. It’s not implied, or hinted at, but blatantly obvious. Their romances and the queer romances around them attracted so many queer fans who felt that after so many years, this type of show was a vindication for what they had been through with other media. 

In this show, piracy itself was that of a found family. Though Stede Bonnet and the crew of the Revenge start off with many differences, the core of the show centers around a theme that many queer audiences are attracted to: found family. The Revenge was depicted as a safe space, where everyone could express themselves freely, a refuge from a world of judgment. Queerness was not only accepted but normalized on The Revenge. No homophobia, no coming out, no typical complications of queer romance. Just love and safety. Warmth, which was Ed Teach wished for in purgatory. Which was what he found on the Revenge. The ship was a safe space that so many queer audiences had dreamed of. 

Well, a safe space except for one person: Izzy Hands, Blackbeard’s First Mate, who was a man painfully stuck in the wrong genre. This is the general consensus by both fans and the cast: Izzy, Edward and their crew had been in a gritty action movie, whereas Stede and his crew were in a muppet movie of sorts. While the majority of Blackbeard’s crew quickly acclimates to and celebrates the change, Izzy doesn’t. 

And right away, many fans felt a deep attraction to Izzy. The reason that Izzy couldn’t get Edward to love him was because, in the end, the only way that Izzy knew how to love was through blood. To give and receive pain in an action movie is one of the greatest forms of love, but Izzy fails to realize that Ed is not in an action movie anymore. He is happy with this stability, and the reason that so many people felt Izzy’s presence so was strongly was that he wasn’t. 

So many queer people are, in a way, addicted to tragedy. Tragedy is all that is represented in queer media for the most part, or was until very recently. Take Achilles and Patroclus, one of the most celebrated and recognized queer love stories of both ancient and modern times. Why that one? There are other greek love stories, many of them queer. The tragedy of it- Patroclus’ death and Achilles’ rage- made it all the more appealing. Many in the audience of Our Flag Means Death were not comedy fans, they were horror or drama fans, attracted to a comedy because of the love story. But Izzy, to them, was a physical representation of who they were, carrying an awareness of homophobia, of blood and pain that so many queer relationships had previously been illustrated by (i.e. Hannibal). Though Ed may not have understand this type of affection, the audience did- Izzy’s Otherness from the crew despite it’s safety, his expressions of love and his unrequited love story were all things that the audience were familiar with feeling. 

If Ed and Stede were good queer representation, Ed and Izzy, for example, were a foil of that. They were evil, messed up, and fed into the worst parts of each other because it brought them closer. This is a theme present in a lot of queer media, and by extension, queer lives: “if you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand”, is an excerpt classic queer poem about unrequited love that fits the situation. The very reason Izzy stuck in people’s heads because he was of a different genre. His grittiness and bitterness made sense to the audience. They saw Izzy and saw what was familiar. He was exquisitely written, simultaneously making even casual audiences both hate him, and against all odds, find him oddly endearing. The idea of this man sacrificing every inch of himself for an unrequited love was a concept of tragedy, leaking into a comedic show. 

So fans projected onto Izzy. He was a catalyst for the heartache, for the audience’s sheer inability to have a happy show. For one reason or another, some of the audience simply couldn’t live with a show that was all fantastical, which I theorize is because they couldn’t see themselves in it. So Izzy became the epitome of queer suffering: pining longingly after another man that couldn’t understand him. This projection of suffering, however, led to a new wish: happiness for Izzy. If Izzy in Season 1 was a tragedy, assimilating him into the found family in Season 2 would have elevated the safe sense of the ship all the more. It would have proved to so many of these Izzy Fans that yes, even though you view yourself as unloveable, even though you see yourself as Israel Hands, Villain, even he can be loved too. Why can’t you be? 

And Season 2, for the most part, delivered beyond our wildest dreams. Izzy had people who cared about him. And though the genre shifted into the darker, Izzy himself shifted slightly to the comedic side as well. His life, which had been centered for so long around a man that didn’t reciprocate his feelings, was gone. He started a new life, and this life, again, focused on queer joy. The queer joy from Season 1 was suddenly for everyone, even those like Izzy that couldn’t have understood it. He sang, he whittled, he talked about feelings, he dressed in drag. Many elder queer fans also saw Izzy as another metaphor, too: that queer joy can be attained overtime. You don’t have to have had it the whole time, but you can accept yourself even when you are older. The message of Izzy was one of resilience and stubbornness, one that the queer community needed to hear: that you don’t have to be like this, you don’t have to create pain for yourself. You don’t need to watch tragedies all the time. You, too, can heal from the past.

And then, the season finale happened. By this point, many argued that Izzy had stolen the show. Con O’Neil’s acting mixed with his general arc of self acceptance had made him a fan favorite. In the last episode, it is Izzy himself who sums it up perfectly, accepting that he belongs somewhere despite his pain and flaws. Despite the darkness within him, he was still accepted and loved. He says it right to the face of Prince Ricky, who thinks himself above it all. That piracy, a metaphor for otherness, wasn’t actually about being alone; it was about finding others that understood you when nobody else could. 

Listen, this show is known for it’s nonsensicality. In the finale of Season 1, Lucius is thrown overboard by Ed and survives by simply swimming to another ship. Stede reunites with his crew by sailing a rowboat. Buttons turns into a seagull. Stede stabs Ed for a comedic bit. Earlier in the season, Izzy himself gets shot and survives. This queer joy show was celebrated for being, well, joyful. Even when things like getting thrown overboard did happen, they were, ultimately, a blip in the character’s journey towards acceptance, healing, etc, which was what made the show unique. Our Flag Means Death, whose audience had been living for years off of the “Bury your gays” trope, was adored because it illustrated a world where things didn’t have to be that way. A place where the impossible, such as Izzy Hands being loved, could happen. This show was one of survival. 

But not for the one person that was seen to struggle with this concept the most. Not for the one person that was a metaphor for belonging in this place, who became, over the course of a season, the embodiment of the message itself. Not for the Unicorn, the very symbol of this magical, nonsensical ship. Not for the most stubborn, most indestructible, most enduring (queer) person in the show. Not for Izzy Hands. 

This trope, honestly, was one that many have seen before, both in mainstream and queer media. A character, previously shown to be a villain or else to have gone through a lot of pain, is shown to heal, to get better, and then to die in order to “complete their arc”. This trope is common: Loki, Cas. even Ted Lasso, who doesn’t die but goes back to the very place that broke him in the first place. But the reason that Izzy’s death, while it might have been expected in another show, felt like a betrayal in this one is because it was known for subverting those tropes. From the “Bury Your Gays” to the “Up For Interpretation”, it was known to look those tropes in the eyes and say “fuck you, these people deserve to be happy”. And this did happen! Except for the one character who’s healing journey was one of the most relatable, at least to queer audiences. 

What also made it so jarring was that all the other characters got to be happy, except for the one that had struggled with the idea of happiness the most. In the scene immediately after Izzy is buried, Lucius and Pete get married. In the scene after, a montage of queer joy and found family is shown amongst the whole crew. In the final scene, Ed and Stede, our main queer couple, are shown healing themselves and starting a new life together. The last shot, however, showed Izzy’s grave, visited by Buttons the seagull while Ed and Stede had dinner. A tragedy in it’s finest. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Izzy to live. Because, in the end, his death meant nothing. His healing meant nothing. He died and was moved on from in a matter of seconds. He was, as I mentioned, the catalyst for tragedy, more specifically, queer tragedy. But because of this, of his genre, Izzy didn’t get to live. He had to die in order for the rest of the characters to keep living in this fantasy world. This death was, in a way, a preservation of these other love stories.

I maintain, however, that it would have meant more if Izzy had lived. If he had been  able to show to us that yes, despite what you have been through, despite what you may have inflicted upon yourself, you can switch genres. It’s possible. Izzy’s survival up until that point had been a profound testament to many that it is possible to heal, that queerness does not have to mean sadness. It would have continued to be a testament to that if only Izzy had lived. And so, this pirate that we latched onto, not in spite of his darkness but because of it, was buried on land on the side of the road. 

As a side note, many previous incidences in the story point to the idea even though Ed and Stede will definitely stay together, it’s uncertain if the inn would have worked out. It’s likely that, being a whim, those two might have chosen to move, or go back to the sea, or sail to China. If this is true, they would have left Izzy’s grave by itself, like a family pet buried in the yard. If this is true, Izzy Hands, a metaphor for belonging, would rot alone. 

Long live the tragedy addicts. Long live the Richard Siken poems. Long live Izzy Hands. 

*When I talk about the "fandom" I am referring to the canyon.

[bbyteach]

Okay!! Recently read through Skinned Knees by @skrifores and I loved it so much I did art about it 💕 they managed to make a story like this so surprisingly wholesome?! Also a perfect thing to read for holiday szn

[oto999]

REVENGE

A comic about facing the kraken.

[naranjapetrificada]

In this weird wonderful AU Georg fandom that is OFMD we have so many beautiful options. I was never, ever an AU type until now, but I truly can't get enough. Just last night I stayed up entirely too late because I finally got into Wave Hello to the Void, which on its face should absolutely positively not be My Thing, but the AUs we're blessed with here seem to always break that rule (especially with mxmollusca involved because holy shit have you read In Favor With Their Stars yet???).

We're so incredibly lucky y'all. I've been in fandom spaces for a long time but I've never felt this lucky.

We get different takes on time travel. We get the multiverse (and in so many beautiful forms). We get thought-provoking fantastical allegories and devastating (but often hopeful?) prequels with fascinating studies of character and fascinating takes on soul mates. We get complete fantasy overhauls that are gem-like in the beauty and precision of their prose and world-building. We get darling modern AUs and heartwrenching (but still ultimately happily-ending) modern AUs and modern AUs in basically every possible permutation, including ghost stories.

We get dystopias and apocalypses and post-apocalypses, meditations on love and existence, metafictional experiments in Not-RPF that draw even the biggest RPF skeptics (*points to self*) in, leaving us to wrestle with fundamentally altered attitudes toward storytelling that we may never be able to reconcile. Hell, even the missing scenes, canon-divergence, and fix-its hit different. Not to mention westerns with outlaws and cowboys, an archetype which conveniently also manages to scratch the proverbial pirate itch.

Even though pretty much every fandom has these things, for me at least they've never felt quite so imaginative and well-executed. We're so lucky to be here, to be writing for each other and reading for each other and for many of us, feeling creative for the first time in years or even decades. The gay pirates did that for us, because good source material can be the key to great fan works. And whether or not we get a third season, as much as they can't take the show from us, they also can't take away the gift that getting to experience all these fanworks has been. That's something I'm going to keep reminding myself while we wait.

and idk maybe tell your cowboy fanart friends that Ed can also ride horses as a steppe warrior or whatever