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This just feels like something that would've happened to Stede idk

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100% legit totally real facts about the historical stede bonnet

no the title is not a lie these are really REAL bc believe it or not, somehow the show made our stede MORE competent than the real one

sources: Real Pirates podcast (ep1, ep2, ep3, ep4, ep5), Dirty Sexy History podcast (with jeremy moss, bonnet's biographer, who LOVES the show, and said it changed his perspective on bonnet's and blackbeard's relationship PLUS he has the stedesrevenge handle on twt)

the library on the revenge was a real thing. the man really did that.

running away from his family to be a pirate

paying a salary to his crew

SHOWING UP IN NASSAU IN FRILLY GENTLEMANLY CLOTHES AND A POWDERED WIG

before bonnet's capture, he ran his ship aground and that's how the english caught up with him BUT the two english ships also ran aground (😭), so they fought each other with their flintlock pistols from behind their ships (until the tides turned and dislodged the english ships first. rip)

adopted an alias when he started pirating so people wouldn't know it was him but he raided ships near Barbados (where he's from), so that didnt turn out well. his solution? burning every ship from Barbados

he only succeeded in his early days bc merchant ships knew they would get off easier if they surrendered

ATTACKED A WARSHIP that whooped his ass so bad he almost died. the remaining crew steered the ship to Nassau where he met blackbeard

blackbeard stole the revenge from him but "allowed" him to stay on BB's ship (either as a guest or as a prisoner, it's not clear, but he def wasn't a crew member bc he didn't have any chores)

he was seen on deck running around in his gowns 😭😭

BB eventually reinstated him as the captain of the revenge and they sailed together for a while

"there is a 4 month period where stede and blackbeard kind of disappeared and no one really knows what they were doing" 👀

BB allowed bonnet to raid on his own which lead to him getting his ass beat by the Protestant Caesar. BB then proceeded to HUNT DOWN THE PROTESTANT CAESAR while flying the RED FLAG (which meant no mercy to anyone on board)

bonnet would raid ships and take what provisions he needed and give the other ship what he didn't need (essentially the library raiding scene lmaoo)

BB betrayed bonnet by raiding his ship and marooning his crew while bonnet was off getting a pardon

SO BONNET SWORE REVENGE AGAINST BB who was at the time, the most feared pirate

this led to him adopting another alias - "he also changes his name, at the time he goes by captain edward's. which is really interesting, I don't know if that's an homage to, you know, edward teach, but.. captain edward's with an "s", that's as if he's.. a possession of captain edward" ONCE AGAIN 👀👀👀👀

HE ESCAPED PRISON BY DRESSING AS A WOMAN

after escaping, he was promised a sloop by some rando. when the rando didnt deliver, bonnet "WROTE HIM A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER REPRIMANDING THE MAN"

that letter led to him being recaptured 😭😭

he was hanged while holding a bouquet of wilted flowers

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THE CAT REVENGE 😼🏴‍☠️

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I don't know if it's a slight comfort or only adds further insult to injury, but honestly there's probably nothing that could've been done after WB first pulled the plug.

I don't know how many of you keep up with other entertainment news, but I started getting worried when news of what went down with Coyote vs. Acme (the high-profile movie WB shelved that also got a lot of media attention) first broke, because creators tried to shop that movie, there were multiple interested parties, and they weren't even able to negotiate because WB shut it down instantly when interested parties didn't immediately meet a very high price point that wasn't even disclosed to them first. It's the same company, it's very timely, and it's probably the same reason: it's bad press and they'd rather see it gone than actually let it go.

OFMD did everything right. It's an excellent show with exceptional audience demand. Our renewal campaign was loud and largely very positive. The numbers were there. There's probably nothing that anyone involved could've done better, because illogical cooperate greed and simple hatred of good queer/poc stories won out here.

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I think about Stede seeing Ed’s face without a beard for the first time. He's getting hit with reality after living so long in this fantasy world. Mary has declared him dead. He’s not a pirate anymore. He's a prisoner. Then he sees Ed's full face for the first time and it shocks him.

Stede has a complicated relationship with Blackbeard, as the pirate that he idolized and then the man that he actually knows. Ed shaving his beard reveals what Stede already knew but what he perhaps had not fully come to terms with—that Ed is a man, and that the legend can be shorn away quickly. It frightens Stede in part because it brings home the reality of what’s happening. He thinks he has destroyed Blackbeard (which in many ways he has) and ruined something that he loved.

When he says “you can’t be Blackbeard without your black…beard…” Ed seems to take this as him commenting on the beard itself, but it's more about how Stede has perceived Ed and a good bit about Stede's self-deception. The beard still separated them; it maintained the illusion of Blackbeard, and as long as it was there, Stede kept hold of some fantasy elements—that what was happening wasn't real. Now he's looking at Ed for the first time and he has to see Ed for who he is.

But the Ed both Stede and the viewer see is an Ed that’s momentarily free. His expression is open and innocent, and his voice has grown quieter and even. He’s finding a calm completely disconnected from Blackbeard. He’s not subdued or cowed; he’s happy to be with Stede, and happy to not be performing.

The beach scene isn’t just about that first tentative declaration of love, but all the feelings that Stede has been experiencing becoming real. Ed is Ed. There is no more Blackbeard playing dress up, or treasure hunts for petrified oranges. That kiss is real—it’s not a game or something that can be explained as pure friendship. The rush of reality terrifies Stede, which then culminates in Chauncey’s attempted execution of him. So when he runs, he’s running back to a reality that he knows, even if it was entrapping him and slowing killing him. It’s less frightening than the feelings that he has and the reality he's having to face.

I keep coming back to “His name is Ed” because it is such a poignant moment, and in this context it's also Stede awakening to reality and no longer fearing it. Mary would know who Blackbeard is, but Stede never mentions that name to her. What he says is that he’s in love with a man named Ed—that the man he met on the Revenge is Ed, the man who kissed him on the beach is Ed, the man he's in love with is Ed. And Ed is the person that makes Stede happy.

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Stede in 1x09: I'm...gay?

Stede in 1x10: I'm gay.

Stede in 2x01: I'm so gay.

Stede in 2x04: No thank you, ma'am, I'm gay.

Stede in 2x05: Oh, I'm fucking gay, let's go!

Stede in 2x06: I AM VERY VERY GAY.

Stede in 2x07: I'm the actual best at being gay. No one has ever been better at being gay than me.

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This is literally THE CAKE TOPPERS VERSION I needed in my life 👁️👄👁️

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IZZY HANDS in OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

↳ @pscentral event 21: growth [in/sp]

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What is happening on twitter??

For the peeps who are not on Twt/X: You deserve to be in on probably the single funniest result of fandom clowning I have ever seen. We got the official Astroglide account to start tweeting about OFMD.

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I'm not ready to give up, I will wear my clown makeup until i die :<

GIVE US SEASON 3!!!

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Them

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"Stede wanted to be a pirate and now he's not going to be one, which is bad."

Did he really want to be a pirate? Stede wanted to be a storybook pirate; he wanted to be the pirate in his games and his imagination, who had swashbuckling adventures. The entire first season deals with him learning what piracy really is. He sees what it has done to Ed, quite literally history's greatest pirate, within the first half hour of their meeting. Most of the fun he has, has nothing to do with actual piracy - it's playing games with his crew, going on treasure hunts with Ed, putting on plays. He likes making up plans, but he doesn't like actual piracy. When he accidentally kills a man, it horrifies him and haunts him, and continues to until the end of the season. He goes to therapy about it.

Into Season 2, the entire point of Stede's piracy is still not piracy. It's to get back to Ed. Stede's fantasy in the beginning is about being the storybook pirate who defeats the villain and runs across the beach to his one true love, who isn't mad at him and never was. It's a fairytale. And even there, reality is creeping in - dream-Izzy tells him, "I didn't make you leave him. You did that yourself." The reality is that Ed has gone into a suicidal spiral, and Stede finds him mostly dead.

The one time that Stede becomes a "real pirate" in the real world, it goes to his head, but it's not even because of his love of piracy. It's because he's suddenly popular. People are buying him drinks and clapping him on the back. No one's calling him "Steve." No one's making fun of him. And still, the only thing he wants to do when he does something cool is go tell Ed about it.

And even then...it's hollow. Everyone around him are sycophants. Ed has left him. His crew are suddenly leaving him. It all ends with him getting his ass kicked by a real pirate. He didn't even like doing the thing that made him popular; he kills Ned Low and runs off to hide. The whole sequence at Jackie'z is a mirror of the sequence at the pub when he goes home - everyone thinks he's cool, but for none of the reasons that are authentic to who he is or what he really wants.

Stede wanted a family who loved him. He wanted friends who liked him for him. He wanted someone to play with. He wanted to marry for love. And he has all those things at the end.

He's not a pirate. He's not having second thoughts.

I'm not sure why this is hard to see.

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remember when we all thought lucius would be the wise mentor to babygay stede but instead s2e2 had stede hit lucius with the i'm older than you and i know more, i've fucked up my life and hurt people real bad, don't be like me

and he was right

and they both mentored each other, in a way, helping each other understand themselves and their relationships?

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Izzy knew how important his last moments were with Edward. They say your life flashes before your eyes just before your death. Well, Izzy saw a life full of love stunted by fear and trauma and repression. And he needed Ed to know that he had seen that he was growing and changing before Stede even came into the picture, but he was afraid. So he kept pushing the darkest parts of Ed.

Izzy needed Blackbeard to be who he was, because as much as Blackbeard was a creation to protect a traumatized and vulnerable Ed in a vicious world, it also became something Izzy needed to protect himself. Hiding behind his ruthless and bold captain, because he too couldn't handle the idea of being vulnerable. Of showing his feelings.

But then, increasingly over the time on the Revenge and desperately so in his dying moments, he realized that Ed needs to let that go to survive. And in those moments telling him to let that be. Izzy went from being so repulsed and afraid of Ed’s vulnerability because it threatened his own walls, to recognizing that it is the thing that will allow Ed to live without him and not end up dead within the fucking week.

And most importantly to their relationship, Izzy knew that Ed has spent decades hiding away in locked rooms while sobbing alone because he couldn't stomach the vulnerability and the open hurt. And then we, Ed, and the crew see Izzy watch Ed sob in broad daylight on deck, and he smiles and essentially tells Ed, “I see you. This is you. Thank god you’re here. Thank god I get to see the man I was so afraid of all my life in my last moments. Thank god I don’t have to die in Blackbeard's arms. Cold and angry and yelling for revenge. I get to go out with family.”

"There he is" goes from being taunting and cruel to being so warm and earnest and full of genuine vulnerable love.

If Izzy Hands taught Ed everything he knew about how to be a pirate, Ed (and Stede and the crew of the Revenge) taught Izzy everything he knew about love. And he got to show him that.

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I've come to a realization about the current Izzy discourse.

A lot of us have been joking that a certain subset of Izzy fans have been watching a different show than we have, and I actually think that's quite literally the case. I saw a post talking about how good the song Run From Me by Timber Timbre was in s2e2, and there were comments talking about how it was "a perfect Ed/Izzy scene!"

That made me realize something. The scene where that song plays, if you remember, is when Ed is miserably, longingly staring at the cake toppers that look like himself and Stede, imagining getting married to Stede and making his choice to commit suicide while pushing the figures off the ship. Izzy is not there (it also plays at the end when Ed is goading the crew to mutiny on him, and Izzy is only in the last part of that scene). The song is, very obviously, textually meant to represent that Ed desperately wishes he could be with Stede but doesn't believe he deserves it. To believe earnestly that, in the text of the show, it's an Ed/Izzy scene means you have to be working everything in the entire show through the lens of this one side character and twisting everything to be about him.

Apply that same concept to a lot of the other things we've been seeing. The outrage that a main character (who is apparently the only member of x group on the ship, even though Izzy genuinely has few traits ((be they queer, disabled, whatever)) that are not shared by other characters) was killed off. All the fanfics about Ed and Stede failing at running an inn, and all the comments about how a bad ending as they're consumed by grief and incapable without Izzy "is the most likely outcome" for Ed and Stede, as if they're not the leads of a romcom. I'd been so confused about these takes because they're not something I think most viewers would even be able to take away from the show I watched.

It's literally that simple. It's like we're not watching the same show at all. You're not crazy if you think Izzy's death was a satisfying part of the narrative and a good symbol of Ed being able to move on from forcing himself to be Blackbeard; that's what the narrative wants us to think. We're literally just watching the show and getting the most obvious takeaways the narrative is pointing us towards.

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love this izzy analysis lmao