OFMD fandom:

Stop minimizing the severity of harm and manipulation that happens to people in cults by comparing a small fandom subgroup (literally, there are fewer than you're imagining) to cults. Stop acting like people disagreeing with YOU means they're incapable of seeing another point of view. Stop acting like people disagreeing with you is somehow policing you. Stop. . . just. Stop.

For the love of all that is good and joyful in this world just. If you don't want to see Izzy fans or the Canyon then just. Stop. Leave them the fuck alone. Get out of those tags. Stop commenting on their posts. Stop sending them rude shit (or ANY shit) in their ask boxes. Stop making up hypothetical Izzy fans/Canyonites to get mad at. Go get mad at your boss or your government officials or something actually productive instead.

I do genuinely wonder if the more normal people in the fandom see any of this and like. Question this behavior because. Like. Jesus fucking christ.

appalled but also not surprised at the amount of people who think ed is textually izzy’s domestic abuser and their problem with this is that in the season two izzy dies and apologizes to ed in his final moments. but they apparently are fine with the entire premise of the show being a relationship between a white man and an indigenous man and the indigenous man is written to have had a violent and abusive father and who then continues the “cycle of abuse” with his first mate/subtextual wife. i can’t imagine watching and supporting this show while thinking that the entire foundation of ed’s character was reinforcing such shitty racist stereotypes abt poc.

if we wanna talk about ed and being an abusive boss to his crew that’s one thing. but when it comes to izzy, from 1x10 to 2x02 we are not seeing an old, routine pattern of behavior from ed where he uses violence to control izzy. we’re seeing izzy’s attempts to push ed back into being blackbeard (we’re seeing izzy’s attempts to control ed) backfire on him, we’re seeing izzy feeding this poison and then getting the poison turned back on him. and it has been sooooo incredibly predictable to watch a huge chunk of this fandom reframe the intended reading of this show to victimize the white side character and demonize the indigenous protagonist.

I'm taking no prisoners, so,

Shout out to our winner - 'every bad choice Ed makes is Izzy's fault, actually, and every good choice he makes is down to Stede's influence :D No we can't see how denying a MoC any agency over his own flawed decisions and acting like white men make all of his choices for him is actually kinda fucked up :D'

hey crew i need your help

as you might have seen, my pal quill @edandstede has been getting some absolutely vile transphobic asks. this abuse is coming from one or more self-described izzy fans who are targetting quill bc they've taken offence to some mildly izzy critical posts and his ongoing top surgery fundraiser. these anons are persistent - turning off anon means they pop back up whenever it's re-enabled. blocking them means they make burner accounts to continue the harassment. it's a really fucking nasty situation that has understandably made quill feel threatened and unable to enjoy being on tumblr. he's now had to turn off asks altogether.

fuel has been thrown on the fire today by the izzy-anti-archive account openly admitting to block evading and posting screenshots of quill's blog in the name of defending the canyon, as if the main issue here is the canyon's feelings and not quill's safety. none of these screenshots are censored, quill's url is plainly visible, and as a result the archive has basically put up a neon sign advertising that quill is 1. receiving transphobic hate and 2. 'wrongly' blaming the canyon for this. which really isn't great and has made quill feel even worse considering it invites yet more harassment of somebody who is already facing way too much of it.

do me a huge favour will you x

1 - report this post

the more reports the post receives, the more likely it is that staff will take a look at it

2 - block the archive

quill is not the first person to be harassed by the archive and unfortunately he probably won't be the last. blocking them reduces their reach and also means it's less likely to be you next

3 - donate to quill's top surgery fundraiser if you can

donate here

share the fundraiser here

thanks guys stay groovy x

thinkin about the people who think Ed's fanon disability, which exists only in headcanons, is more important than Izzy as actual canon disability rep and just

can you imagine the hate I would get if I claimed that because half the fandom headcanons Izzy as trans, he's more important canon trans rep than Jim sdfklgjdlkghkdlsfhglkdsfhgkldfshgkdsflg

:stares at the ceiling:

Once again Con O'Neil went on a stage and said how much he loves the writers and director of OFMD, how much he loves filming his death scene and how he understood that Izzy needed to die and once again the Canyon are tying themselves up in knots about it and completely disregarding his words. No, he is not being forced to say these things for fear of blacklisting. Babes, this is the guy who posts FUCK THR TORIES on a daily basis in comic sans on Instagram. Do you really think he would give a shit about blacklisting? Be for fucking real. At some point you just have to accept that the guy who played your blorbo DOESN'T THINK LIKE YOU. And thank fuck for that actually.

One of the most frustrating things that happened to this fandom wrt Izzy is that it's almost impossible to talk about the canon guy anymore.

Like. I love that guy. He's so fucked up. He compells me. His "ooh daddy" moment was simultaneously one of the most baffling things I've ever seen and completely integral to his character. I love how he takes his frustations out on the unicorn figurehead. He is completely fucking insane and I love him for it, and I love how Con O'Neill puts his entire heart soul and pussy into every scene he's in. His relationship with Ed, his need to control him, is absolutely fascinating. I want to put him in a little maze and watch him stomp around.

But it is impossible to talk about that guy in fandom spaces, because you've got the canyon one end, and they're very vocal and refuse to entertain any interpretation of Izzy that isn't "poor little baby who never did anything wrong and is a helpless victim always and is also a main character." But, and this isn't our fault at all, in spaces with people who actually watch the show and care about what it actually says (I love you mutuals <3), we also have trouble discussing Izzy because so many of us have developed a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the guy.

One of the reasons I didn't like Izzy's s2 character arc on first watch is because I was so anxious anticipating the canyon's reaction. I knew they'd interpret everything as being right about "Ed being abusive!!" when that's...not what the show was trying to say. It really dulled my enjoyment of it.

And every time I bring him up I'm thinking "am I gonna get called a slur for this" because the canyon really attracted some of the most racist-ass takes. It's incredibly frustrating that this show, which has some of the best anti-racist writing and characters of color I've ever seen in my life, has a fandom that can be so hostile to fans of color.

It's so wild that it feels like this small but extremely vocal subset of the fandom is talking about a new guy that they've just made up and doesn't exist in the show, and they're so loud and insistent about it that it makes it difficult for everyone else to talk about the actual guy.

It is upsettingly predictable and disgustingly telling that if you type "literate" while looking for tags to filter by on AO3 that the only one that pops up is for Edward Teach. It's unfortunately become necessary if you want to reassure readers who have been burned too many times, and probably only exists because enough writers have been in that same position as readers.

Every fandom has a racism problem. Not every fandom has this racism problem.

Man, y’know what? I’m awfully fucking tired of a handful of fans of the literal antagonist of a fucking pirate show hijacking shit to make it all about their personal oppression. I see them weaponizing therapy terms and mental health phrasing, framing defense of Ed as somehow both antithetical to the show’s message AND racist and ableist, in order to elevate their sad, wet white guy and make themselves appear the progressive ones. Banging on about safe spaces and fandom positivity when they’re challenged so that others are exhausted and don’t want to have the fight or apologize for making THEM feel bad. And then seeing how they harass people, screencapping posts to send others after posters, reiterating their racist, femmephobic bullshit in terms that frame themselves as victims and the real progressives and don’t you dare attack them by saying something mean, once again, about their absolutely unsupported “interpretations.” And enough well-meaning people outside of their weird little “canyon” fall into the traps and start saying that the bullies are the real victims, everyone be NICE to them.

First, it’s basic middle school bullshit being performed by a bunch of supposed adults, and second, it’s all in service of wildly toxic and homophobic, racist, misogynist views that this very lovely show is explicitly pushing back against.

Third, it is a fucking TV show. These people are launching harassment campaigns because other people criticize the fucking antagonist on a fucking TV show.

Look guys sometimes your favorite character dies and there’s nothing actually morally reprehensible about it. You’re just sad. You’re SUPPOSED to be sad. I actually really wanna write a meta contrasting Izzy’s death with Dean’s from supernatural. Which has striking similarities but actually was done with appalling incompetence and disrespect for the character’s growth.

No, OFMD did not 'promise' the viewers a safe time (only happiness, no angst or death) then 'betray' them with Izzy's death, as i've seen some complaining.

The show is called Our Flag Means Death and there is death and angst from season 1 episode 1. At no point did the showrunners promise us 'this is a show where all characters will remain safe'.

Being a comedy doesn't mean the story will be all joy and light. Comedies using upsetting topics and death is not unusual. It's actually quite common! If done well, comedy can give a contrast to angsty moments making them more heartbreaking.

The writers have a story they wanted to tell and have said since season 1 aired that there is a 3 season plan for the show. It's likely that they planned major plot points for each season (like Izzy's death) before S1 was filmed. They didn't change the plot to kill Izzy because they wanted to make the show darker or to spite fans. You are not owed a perfectly happy story when the writers have set out to tell something different.

If you're a person who can only handle stories where everyone is always happy, that's fine! Stories like that exist! It just makes no sense to watch a show with death in the title then blame the writers for 'betraying' you when death happens.

I mean what did you expect? It's a queer show on a streaming network, queer shows on streaming networks die all the time!

a n y w a y

if you can't see how 'if you are masochistic you can't physically be abused' and 'if you are in a shitty relationship where you both treat each other poorly and aren't perfect people, then your partner starts to physically and emotionally abuse you, you actually deserve everything you get' are terrible takes, I don't know what to say to you

I know my last experience with a season ending on a note everyone hated and unanimously tore to fucking shreds for destroying the story on every level was... atypical. Lockdown. 6 month mass hysteria at minimum. Conspiracy theories that were, like, real things we had on camera. There was a Twitter wedding. Creative fervor that broke 100k fics on AO3.

Like. I know this is not a rational point of comparison and I'm not going to expect anything in my lifetime to match it 🤣

But.

If that was the highest high of post-season fandom engagement built on a cocktail of tasting everything you ever wanted AND the absolutely lethal levels of spite and swearing to eat showrunners' hearts in the marketplace, then whatever the fuck is going on after OFMD S2 is the opposite of that.

OFMD S1 was a huge fandom explosion. One silly little streaming show that had a gay kiss and then it skyrocketed. Fic numbers were soaring, high activity fic and meta engagement lasted for at least four months, it was constantly trending and flooding the dash... Like, fucking hell, over a year and a half after the immediate finale fervor it beat Stucky in the top ships bracket?!? To the point I was willing to give it what felt like due credit toward its potential as a future juggernaut ship. Not guaranteed, of course, but the potential was there.

In that context, new content should be a blow out party. Which it kinda was pulling off as it was airing, but looking back now? Not even quite a month later?

The effect of S2 on the fandom is like... a blip. Possibly over already.

New fic numbers started dropping off the moment the finale aired and have returned to deep hiatus levels. It's dropped off trending and streaming leaderboards... I'm very curious to see the first tumblr Week in Review since the finale, though we're still waiting due to the holiday.

Like, I've even popped on to scroll a few Izzy hater blogs that I know loved the finale out of morbid curiosity what they were up to, and I'm telling you... if I hadn't just watched the new season I'd think they were still over a year into hiatus. Saw some standard bitching about the izcourse / Edward takes (aka the one thing that kept them going all hiatus), they're currently passing around posts mocking one specific long OFMD version of TJLC I'm just hearing of, the same BTS gifsets everyone else is thrilled by... But barely any new meta or discussions. There's like 2 people posting actual analysis of S2 that's getting reblogged and they aren't even names I recognize from the hiatus. Nor is it particularly interesting to read. 🤷‍♀️

In July of 2022 I could pop onto a random OFMD blog and scroll through a dozen enthusiastic Stede or BlackBonnet metas about jacket colors or that moth from 1x07 or lighthouse symbolism or whatever. Now the new stuff has the same energy as posts from June 2023. It's borderline dead. And this is what it's like when there's an active campaign to engage fandom and Renew as a Crew?

(I will say fanartists are bringing some energy and there's some lovely pieces being passed around, which I do think the Renew as a Crew campaign is helping to boost?)

Even the hundreds of people saying it was a beautiful season and they loved it so much don't seem to be finding it a very engaging or inspiring season.

It's such a turn, like, what the fuck.

This fandom continues to be the absolute worst.

Just because a character is canonically a kinky masochist does not mean they 'want' to be abused.

Masochism =/= deserving abuse.

Even if Izzy got off on The Toe Thing (which I certainly believe he did in the first incident!) it was in no way consensual. It happened while he was sleeping.

I hate to break it to you, but people can orgasm while being raped or assaulted. Physical bodily response is NOT the same as consent, and I really hoped we were at a stage in 2023 where that was common knowledge. Apparently not.

As a one-off in Season 1, Ed's mutilation of Izzy was immensely fucked up, but still not a pattern. In Season 2 it became........ blatantly acknowledged on-screen as repeated physical abuse from a guy in a position of power over his subordinate? That Izzy did not enjoy in the slightest, but couldn't escape? That made him break down crying in Fang's arms while Frenchie held his hand? Like...??? How do you see that and interpret those scenes as proof that Izzy 'wanted it'?

Sometimes I'm reminded forcefully of how uneducated people are about kink, abuse, victim blaming, and consent in general. If you think people who enjoy pain in the bedroom are inviting abuse and 'deserve what they get', then frankly, I think your ignorant, kinkshaming, puritanical bullshit shouldn't be welcome in this fandom. It's genuinely harmful.

There is something deeply hilarious about this still appearing on the same day someone writes a whole fic where Stede threatens Ed's life in the most graphic description possible if he "makes Izzy cry again"