The old school lack of transparency on tumblr is amazing because you assume the people you follow must all be equivalent to you and then you see someone write “I brought my youngest to college today” and someone else write “my mom wouldn’t let me listen to Ariana Grande when I was a kid” and then your head explodes

I came across a few posts noting that Ed should not have told Stede not to kill Ned Low, which got me thinking...

I don't really agree with that. That entire scene, both Ed's decision and Stede's decision, is complicated with a lot of different things, but none of them quite so much as the shared knowledge, and pain, of both men. (Yeah, I'm not capable of not writing an essay.)

Stede is the only one who knows about Ed's father. Ed tells himself-as-Hornigold that he never told anyone about killing his father, and Hornigold reminds him: "But you did, though, didn't you? And he left you." Stede is also the only one who knows Ed really doesn't kill - that he, by his own admission, outsources the killing to others. The murder of his father is the center of Ed's self-loathing, and is the thing that he relates, in his conversation with Hornigold, most directly to Stede leaving him.

Low's insults don't affect Ed much; he's heard them before, he knows what's behind them. But Stede has been watching Low hurt people and things he loves - Ed, the crew, the ship itself - without being able to do anything about it. He successfully uses his "people positive management style" to get Low's crew to turn on him, but the problem of Low himself remains and cannot be eliminated in the same way.

Low calling Ed a "lowborn dirtbag" is what finally makes Stede snap, and one could argue that his response is more or less automatic. It's certainly emotional. There's nothing he could say to Low to put him in his place, as he did with the aristocrats in "Dressing Well." It wouldn't work; he cannot meet Low on a level playing field and use the same weapons against him, because Low's whole thing is being a bully and Stede is not a bully. Everyone, including Ed, is surprised when Stede actually draws his sword. But by the time he's done it, there's no going back.

Low obviously reads people quite well, and like many bullies he can suss out the places that will hurt others the most - he knows that torturing Stede will hurt Ed more than torturing Ed. He knows that insulting Ed will hurt Stede more than anything he could say to Stede himself. And he hits on Stede's fears about his masculinity and especially Ed's feelings about him. Low is another in a long line of bullies (Nigel, Chauncey, his father) from Stede's class, and he manages to hit exactly the sore spot, the fear that Ed only loves Stede because of his "bumbling amateur status."

Stede absolutely believes the things that others say about him. In the moment, Stede reads Ed's statement not to kill Low in exactly the way that Low wants him to - as a desire to keep him docile, pure, a pet. Not a real pirate, not a real man. He struggles with it - having gone so far as to hold Low at swordpoint and to force him onto the plank, it's hard to back down. His crew egg him on - Low does indeed deserve to die for what he's done. But when Stede kills Low, to the cheers of the crew, no one but the audience can see his face - the horror and shock at what he's done, as the memories of his childhood shoot across his mind.

As soon as Stede's actually committed the murder, he realizes the true meaning behind Ed's words, and it's this, combined with the shock of having truly, directly, and deliberately killed a man, that sends him running back to his cabin. Stede sees himself as a child, the boy who just wanted to pick flowers, splattered with blood from "men's work." He cannot go back now; he's made a choice, and he murdered a man. He does exactly what he's done each time his own shame has become too much for him, and hides himself.

But when Ed comes to his room, he directly relates it to his own trauma - "I was a wreck after my first kill as well. Well, it was my dad..." He's there not to shame Stede either for his violence or for his self-perceived weakness, but to be present for him.

That traumatic past is part of what unites them. Stede was forced to witness death and was told it was what men do; Ed committed murder, and has been haunted by it ever since. Ed sees the potential of the same thing happening to Stede - being so overcome with guilt and shame at actively committing murder that he suppresses and remakes his self to avoid coping with the horror of what he has done. It doesn't matter that Stede is a grown man and Ed was a child; Ed knows how badly it can warp someone, and Ed knows better than anyone how the abused child becomes the traumatized man. He tries to warn Stede first, recalling their past, and then he shows up for Stede in a way that no one did, or could, for him - not until Stede himself extended his hand and said, "I'm your friend." Ed is there at the door within minutes, asking if Stede is OK, offering his support, not letting him hide alone if he needs someone to hold him.

I've said a lot about the progress from the moment Ed appears at the door to the moment Stede closes the curtain here, but again I don't think it should be read as Stede proving his masculinity or Ed feeling sorry for him. Sex is not being treated frivolously here, either by the show or by the characters. It is an outpouring of pain and grief and deep, intense love between two men who understand each other's suffering at a fundamental level, who have shared things with each other that no one else knows, and who see all of each other, the darkness as well as the light.

Stunning - highly recommend

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!

✨🔴〰️🔴✨

I feel exactly the same. But I think we can still carry the story and characters forward with us, even though we don't get more time with them. I keep asking myself 'what would Stede do?' because I feel like I've never had a guide to learn from until him. We can still learn to get married even if we don't see them do it - we'll learn the way they would, with loads of mistakes and misunderstandings and idiotic choices, but by keeping on showing up with love and kindness.

I know this is a chronically online/too parasocial problem, but I was kind of using OFMD as inspiration and guidance for my new life as an openly queer person, and now I feel like I will never learn how to get married and live a domestic life (as a terrible innkeeper) ☹️

i just wanna say tho that it was all worth it. the energy and the passion and the refusal to go down without a fight were worth it. giving some studio executives hell was worth it. showing the cast and crew how much this show means to us was worth it. giving a shit about queer stories is worth it.

People do get more upset about the fish comment than about the fact that Ed told Stede, "BTW, our having sex was a mistake," and Stede looking like he'd been gut-stabbed again.

Ed sleeping in a flower

Like a bee or a tiny frog

or omg bee crew!!!

Harvest mouse Ed it is, anon!

When your stupid ex returns and expects you to take him back just because he has a sexy stupid beard and a cool stupid new outfit…

✨Angsty reunion✨ version 2

Now with a 100% more yassified Stede!

None of us are appreciating enough that Stede Bonnet read his little books and really decided he was gonna be a pirate just like the ones he'd read about...

And he fucking did it. AND he went to sea, met Blackbeard, beat Izzy hands in a duel, kicked Calico Jack Rackham off his ship, sailed with the pirate queen and stole his ship back from her, murdered the infamous pirate Ned Low and then topped Blackbeard to celebrate.

What a fucking legend.

Do you wanna be my boyfriend..?

🎶 Bobby Sox by Green Day 🎶

I'm afraid that the self-love this show has brought me will go as the fandom quietens down 😢

I don’t even know what to do with myself right now. Like, yeah there’s more to my life than this show, a LOT more. Like this is only a small part of the big picture.

BUT this show is such a light, it sparked something for me that I haven’t felt for so long, it made me start drawing again, it made me come back to this hellsite because I needed to share it with people. It’s about love and joy and queerness and acceptance and all of it, all of it! It’s been such a gift, and it’s still THERE , I know. But GOD THIS HURTS. This is the really horrible, raw, painful bit right now and it it awful and I feel really shitty, and it’ll pass, it will 💕 but right now I’m squarely in the what the actual fucking fuck this can’t actually be real stage and I am REALLY upset 😭

I feel like I'm losing a part of myself.

It's been a very, veeery long time I've been this upset about media. I'm trying not to cry. hbo what the fuck. This hurts so much.

Do you think Taika didn't want to do it anymore?

💔

(It would be valid if that was the case - not trying to stir any hate, just trying to find reasons the decision might have been made)

This made me actually cry 😢

They’re never going to get married 💔

I am too sad. Someone fetch Lucius, I need to write a song.

we need to hug it through as a crew right now

Found my new year's resolution!

The ultimate New Year’s resolution is to be more like Stede Bonnet. Earnest and cringey. Kind and forgiving, despite it all. Truly insane and bitchy. Gay. Complicated, hard-headed, really quite irritating at times. And now… free

YES THIS

Stede and Ed are made for each other because Ed says, "You appeared to me as a mermaid" and Stede's immediate response is "Awesome. Did I look hot?"

They're just each other's brand of weird.