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#our flag means death rant
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OFMD Season 2 Finale Spoilers
That was THE MOST DISSATISFYING ENDING
Now granted, I'm usually dissatisfied with endings that wrap everything up in a neat little bow, because some stories just work better with an open-ended ending.
For example, one of my favorites will always be Labyrinth. Sarah goes back home, but the goblin king keeps his kingdom and power.
Let's talk about WHY I'm so disatisfied (and honestly, maybe that's the point, it sort of seems like they want the fandom to be like that in order to fix it later one, but idk) 1. Stede Fucking Bonnet STEDE DID NOT BECOME A PIRATE FOR ED
This ending is unsatisfying because why would Stede give this up?! Stede LOVES being a pirate, it's Ed who's disatisfied with that life. Stede CHOSE this life, Stede loves this life, for him to leave it for Ed is fucking ridiculous.
STEDE BONNET IS MORE THAN EDWARD'S BOYFRIEND HE'S HIS OWN GODDAMN CHARACTER AND HE'S THE MAIN CHARACTER FOR FUCK'S SAKE
His pirating is what attracted Edward to him in the first place! You can't take that away from him! It makes him a shell of what he is! Stede never wanted the good peaceful life- he had that. He hated it. Now he just has it with Edward. And sure, he loves Ed, but that's not gonna fix his disatisfaction.
-Now granted, this does seem intentional. It could very well be that this inn ending is intentionally there to show both Ed and Stede, that a part of them really does love the seafaring life, and that they want to return to it.
-You know, like a callback to when Stede returned to Mary and realized what he really wanted was Ed. Instead Stede and Ed are going to try the quiet life and realize what they always wanted was the sea. It was just that they wanted the sea with each other.
-If that's the route they take in Season 3 (or a similar one), I can totally get behind it, and I think it'll fix the Stede Bonnet Problem. [For the record, I think they handed Edward's arc CRAZY well]
2. Izzy Fucking Hands
-. . . Guys. . . One the one hand, the monologue he gave when he died NEEDED to be given.
-Izzy does things more with actions than words, and Ed needed to say how much Izzy meant to him, along with Izzy needing to say how much he loves this crew.
On the other hand- way to kill your guys. Way to immediately fall into old tropes and make us hate ya, Dave. Granted, in the past he has played with tropes intentionally, so this COULD be that (in which case he's sitting back and laughing maniacally like the BASTARD that he is-) Where he's making us believe Izzy is gone for good only to bring him back. [I HAVE HOPE DAMN IT]
-There seems to be this idea that Izzy was the last remaining bit of Blackbeard, but Izzy is his own person and he got to grow into his own person during this season.
Of course, now that he has no thematic relevance, to kill him off is fucking pathetic. NOW we kill him, he's of no use to us. Why keep the disabeled gay? We don't need him anymore. THAT is the vibe that we've been given. Now that he's grown, we're done with him. (as if anyone truly stops growing at any point-)
-Buuut, on the one leg that Izzy has remaining,
-This could be a really good way to tie into Edward's story that he is and always has been Blackbeard. That Blackbeard was never Izzy's creation, but rather a part of himself. And he gets to choose what to do with it.
BUT EVEN IF THAT HAPPENS IZZY JUST DIED FOR EDWARD (Sure, what the character always wanted- but not what he deserved)
-If Izzy comes back from the gravy basket (Maybe with Buttons? lmfao-) with a newfound sense of independence and growth (maybe he learns to love again, idk.), this could be beautiful. A beautiful way to fuck with tropes and to show other shows how people SHOULD be handled. Bury your gays, then bring them back fuckers.
If he doesn't, this fandom will never be the same. Nor will it ever forgive it's writers. We deserve better, man.
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chrisflemingslegs · 2 years
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I think a good part of the reason that Our Flag Means Death is so successful is the lack of an attempt at perfect historical accuracy. 
As an English major I see a lot of articles/papers/opinions that focus around literature that “might have been queer, but we have no proof one way or the other so for safety’s sake we’ll claim it was ambiguous or same-sex friendship”. 
Shakespeare’s sexuality is a constant point of contention amongst many scholars. Chopin, Rose Cleveland, Isadora Duncan, Marilyn Monroe and so many other lost voices have left behind clues about their queerness that go ignored by the larger narrative. 
But Our Flag Means Death turns that totally on its head. Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, one of the most iconic names in the masculine mythos? Yeah he’s wearing silk robes, singing indie music, and kissing fops now. 
Is there any historical proof to suggest that Bonnet and Teach were ever lovers? Not really. Did the cast and crew give us a beautiful series of diverse romances and friendships that focus on healthy communication, growth, and mutual understanding? FUCK YEAH.
I love that historical revisionism has snapped back at those who want to silence queer voices, stories, and identities. There had better be a season two because this show and what it stands for are too fucking important to lose any momentum.
We are one community, regardless of who you are or what labels you use/don’t use. We have always been here, whether or not the world wants to acknowledge us. 
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scary-flag · 1 year
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The Kraken vs a typical pirate approach to violence
To all the people saying that the Kraken is only a defense mechanism and Ed would never do anything violent if he was not a poor, heartbroken baby.
I get the sentiment and YES, the Kraken is a defense mechanism coming from his traumatic experiences, BUT let me show you something else as well:
Ed is a pirate, and pirates - despite usually avoiding unnecessary violence to avoid injuries and the risk of damaging the ship - weren't really the most pleasant guys around.
He literally told Fang to skin a man alive with a snail fork (ep5)
"a bit more oomph"? (ep5) I get that scaring people is not the same as killing, but it is still a form of violence that was a kinda casual thing for him.
Canonically, he did set a ship on fire with its crew still inside. (we don't know the reasons, however)
What would be considered unnecessary violence now, did not have to feel unnecessary back then, especially on the open sea when someone getting killed during pillage wasn't really that unusual.
He fully endorsed his crew doing all the stuff they did to the Spanish (ep3) and on the merchant ship (ep5), even knowing that its crew was basically unarmed.
Probably more but I'm not gonna list it as I'm at work now lol
I get it, I love a complex, angsty character just like everyone else, but let's not act like every single violent action from Ed is the Kraken taking over. The dude's a fucking PIRATE and some level of violence was simply what you did. Yeah, pirates injured people, made them walk the plank, keelhauled their crew members, and much more, so let's not act like Ed was an angel that was misunderstood and would never hurt a fly.
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avelera · 6 months
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Man, there’s all these little beats in OFMD S2 1-3 where people keep EXPECTING Stede to be upset or horrified about Ed’s actions and then he’s just. Not. In a way that reminded me of how a lot of fanon kept softening Stede into someone who doesn’t swear and is horrified at Ed for setting those ships on fire when imo to my eyes he was horrified for Ed because Ed was still so clearly distressed about it.
- Zheng Yi Sao asks Stede how he’s doing now that he knows Ed did horrible things to his crew and there’s this beat and Stede just pivots to, oh yeah, sometimes Ed is troubled. Like it didn’t occur to him to be upset on the crew’s behalf he’s worried about Ed.
- Izzy keeps trying to spare Stede’s feelings and cover up Ed’s spiral, but Stede clocked what was going on with Ed immediately and wasn’t the least bit intimidated or bothered. The knives brought the room together. Of course Ed’s trying to burn the world down or die trying. Duh. And I genuinely don’t think the STUFF in the Revenge mattered even a fraction to Stede as much as the signs of Ed’s breakdown broke his heart. It’s just STUFF, who cares.
- Lucius had to SPECIFICALLY call out Stede for not being surprised or bothered by what happened to him. What Ed did. Stede has to almost consciously remind himself to express polite concern. He just doesn’t actually care, instinctively or automatically, about what happened to Lucius. Part of it is he blames himself more than Ed. Part of it is he just doesn’t care, Ed is the priority.
They’re little blink and you’ll miss it pauses in some cases. Micro-expressions. The absence of a reaction. But honestly, I will scream it to the end of time, Stede is not some nonviolent creampuff scared or upset by Ed’s evil ways. He wants to join Ed in the atrocities. The man ran away to become a pirate. He asked if Lucius was taking notes during a murderous raid.
Stede’s at least a little on some kind of whackadoodle pirate comedy neurodivergence spectrum to the point where he actually really actually struggles to empathize with people, even people he cares about!, if their feelings conflict with his hyperfixation (piracy) and the love of his life (Ed Teach). He’s always, ALWAYS going to pick Ed over Lucius or Izzy or his crew or even his own feelings, if the option is there. He will literally throw himself overboard to get to Ed’s side. No pause. No consideration of anyone else or even his own safety.
Stede sometimes seems to have to consciously remind himself things like, oh yeah, the crew, I need to see to them. Not because he’s heartless or doesn’t care, but because it takes a bit of conscious effort for him to see beyond the laser-focused spotlight of what and who he does care most about, he has to remind himself of social niceties and other people’s feelings (just see him running away in the first place!) when he gets an idea in his head. It’s as if he had to train himself to consciously care about some things other people care about and as a neurodivergent person myself, that felt very familiar in a comedically writ large sort of way. I’d even argue that’s where all his aristocratic social niceties come from. They were his guidebook for how to do things “right” in a world that otherwise made no sense to him outside his hyperfixations. He practiced being a person through the aristocratic training because it was all so foreign to him from the start, including caring, actually caring, about the needs of others. Not because he’s consciously evil or consciously a jerk. The instinct just isn’t there unless he practices at it until it becomes reflex to ask how others are doing, because on his own his brain just doesn’t really notice or care.
I just… hope the fandom notes and has as much FUN as I do noticing all the little moments where even people inside the story of OFMD expect Stede to act in a normal way and instead he remains unhinged, laser-focused on Ed.
Stede’s not just an Ed apologist, he truly doesn’t blame Ed for any of it. He blames only himself. He doesn’t always voice this but he really really only cares about anyone else including the crew as a DISTANT second and he has to consciously REMIND himself to do so. He is able to rally to take action, to care about their physical needs like safety during the rescue, but he still struggles, deeply struggles, to remember to show empathy in a non-performative way for anyone except his special person, Ed.
Stede’s not a creampuff, not a nice guy, not some emotionally or morally perfect angel. He has to consciously practice caring about literally anything else but what he wants to do and his special person. And to me that’s a thousand times more interesting than shoving him in a box labeled “the blond, pacifist do-gooder good guy” in their relationship.
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queerly-autistic · 2 months
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I keep seeing posts on social media thanking the OFMD cast and crew for their work and not mentioning Taika, and it's driving me to distraction because Taika is absolutely fundamental to the existence of this show.
There's a huge chance the show wouldn't have been picked up at all if Taika hadn't attached his name to it. And he didn't just attach his name and walk away - he played a key role in developing the show. David has said that he was looking at the history with Taika and they both went 'omg Stede and Blackbeard were fucking' and decided to centre the show around that. Taika pushed for Rhys to play Stede. Taika saw Nathan's comedy on instagram and went 'yep that's Lucius'. Taika was desperate to play Ed, and fought to play him. Taika has spoken about how much he loves playing Ed, how it made him fall in love with acting again, to the point where he wears some of Ed's jewellery and has gotten some of Ed's tattoos actually inked on him. He poured everything he has as an actor into Ed (some of the stuff he had to perform, particularly at the beginning of S2, is difficult) and the show simply wouldn't work without it. Taika directed the pilot. He loved the show enough to juggle filming S1 with post-production on Thor: Love and Thunder. When the show's budget was slashed by 40%, and could no longer afford to film in LA, Taika would have been key to moving production to New Zealand - and if that hadn't happened, S2 wouldn't have happened. When a director went off sick with Covid during S2, Taika jumped in to direct half an episode and then didn't take a director's credit on it.
You do not have to like Taika. You do not have to agree with everything he does/says. But what we are not going to do is erase the absolutely key fundamental role that Taika has played in OFMD. This show simply would not exist, probably not in any form, but certainly not in the form we see and love, if not for Taika's continuing and multi-level contribution.
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blakbonnet · 5 months
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while you're misusing bury your gays, Ed is getting woken up by Stede kissing him lovingly and looking into his eyes and telling him he's the most lovable person in the world on the planet in the entire universe, and Ed is making him blush first thing in the morning, and they're badly running an inn together and pda'ing all over the falling columns of their shaky shack, and overcharging customers for salmonella stricken fish, and they're deliriously happy, by the fucking way
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demonsandpieohmy · 6 months
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Coping with eps 1-3
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your-local-vampire · 7 months
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you know what? i know all of tumblr is obsessed with ed (and I get it, the trauma and wet cat energy is captivating) but I am a stede girlie. i too harbor unmanageable amounts of guilt day after day for shit that doesn't matter anymore. i too am constantly trying to compensate for my lack of experience in a skill i love and i hate myself for it. i embarrass myself constantly. i dont know how to maintain loving relationships. i've been bullied more times than i can count for liking unconventional methods of presentation, or not knowing the inside knowledge and nuance of something, or most frequently just not being cool or tough or masculine enough. I am cringey. I am queer. I am insecure, scared, stupid, but I live on despite it anyways and i think that's such an important message to teach other queers, especially camp queers.
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Ed being all “I’m not just gonna melt back into your arms as soon as you come back” in ep4 then literally kissing Stede in the moonlight in ep5. King of willpower.
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I used to think that the reason I wasn't satisfied with Izzy's death was because I was too attached to his perspective as a character and couldn't focus on the big picture of the season and the main Gentlebeard relationship enough. I mean, I was still convinced that his death and the way it was carried out was a shit writing decision, but everyone else outside the Izzy Canyon circles seemed fine with it, so I was starting to think that maybe they were right.
So I looked back on the rest of the season and rewatched the finale... And realised something that I'd been trying to ignore because it was too painful to admit. A huge part of why Izzy's death hit so hard (in a bad way, not that delicious masochistic pain of having a beloved character die a good, narratively satisfying death) was because throughout this season he was the only character who actually had a satisfying arc and development. Practically no one else did. I didn't actually care for Gentlebeard this season, not the way I cared in S1. From episode 1 to 8 and a half, Izzy's arc was crafted with more care, kindness, subtlety and narrative weight than the main Gentlebeard arc which, in comparison, felt like a string of choppy beads badly tied together in an approximate shape of an arc, but collapsed as soon as you looked at it too closely.
Yes, we all know this season suffered for being 2 episodes too short, but I don't think that's all there is to it. This is starting to feel like GoT season 8 all over again. Would it have been better if it wasn't so rushed? Maybe. Or maybe it would have been even worse because this season just didn't seem to know what to do with itself or the characters. The themes and symbolism are all over the place and completely inconsistent. Ed and Stede's characters are practically back at the same place they left in S1. All they did was bounce off the walls back and forth with no real growth. As soon as they took a step towards fixing their relationship or growing as people, they either tool three steps back or it just got dropped. Stede letting fame get to his head? Interesting and realistic development. And how was it resolved? It wasn't. Stede and Ed being whim prone? I'm glad they brought it up. And then they just fell for another whim and it was presented as a satisfying ending.
Ed went from the Kraken, to taking the first steps towards being Ed, then suddenly all the way to being Ed by way of a Night of Magical Healing Sex that he he didn't actually want to happen because he wasn't ready. And then all of a sudden he pivoted to abandoning Stede and piracy and becoming a fisherman... for 5 min. And then back to Blackbeard again because two fishermen were mean to him for 5 minutes. And then abandoning it again to open an inn. How was any of this even remotely coherent or satisfying? They didn't even have a single conversation about any of it. Ed had more proper closure and communication with Izzy during his dying scene than with Stede and the rest of the crew put together. Izzy's arc got sacrificed to do the heavy lifting for Ed's arc and became nothing more than a shortcut to speed run his character growth. Except it didn't even lead anywhere. "Ed, they're your family, they love you" no they don't, he didn't even have a single positive conversation with any of them except Fang. Of course this could have been the point, and Ed could have seen Izzy's death, his own discovery of found family and his dying words as a pretext to repair his relationship with the crew. But he just left them and stayed with Stede instead.
Sure, you could say this was only the second act of the story, and S3 will resolve everything. But the second act is still meant to move the story and the characters forward in some way. Yes, of course if we get S3, I imagine Stede and Ed's life as innkeepers won't exactly be idyllic. But the problem is that the conflicts they'd have will only be a rehash and repeat of the same conflicts they've already have, or were supposed to have, this season. Multiple times, even. We already know that Ed is simply unable to live with himself no matter what life he chooses. The title of S1 was literally "wherever you go, there you are". We already know Stede's love isn't enough to fix him. We already know their goals in life are completely opposite. Maybe they could have shown Stede realising, after his humiliating in S7, that piracy wasn't all it was cracked up to be or he isn't suited for it, and that's why he chose to leave it behind and open an inn, but that's not the explanation we were given. It was just another whim. They literally didn't learn anything this season. They had two baby conversations in E4 and E5 and didn't take anything from it, just kept doing the complete opposite of anything. "We're both prone to whims, let's take things slow" became "let's take things extremely fast by moving in together permanently and becoming entrepreneurs". They never talked about the actual, deepseated, longstanding trauma issues they needed to resolve before they could even begin to have a proper relationship. They literally got a heavy-handed glimpse in what their life would become if they just stuck together without addressing their own personal issues, and chose to do that very thing. It that's what S3 is going to address, then why were Anne and Mary part of this season instead of the next one?
I remember everyone saying they wanted Ed and Stede to reunite as quickly as possible in S2, and I get why. They have great chemistry together. The season is about them. But for it to work, spending more time apart is exactly what they needed. They needed to learn how to live with themselves and others, first. Romantic love alone can't fix you as a person. You have to fix yourself first. Community can help (as with Izzy's case), but you still have to put in the work. In retrospect, I'm glad that Izzy didn't get a love interest this season - because he wasn't ready yet, and had to learn how to have normal relationships and friendships with other people before attempting an intimate romantic relationship, lest he ended up falling head first unit another toxic mutually dependent relationship. That's what Stede and Ed should have tried too. Instead the show just ended up using Izzy's death as a quick surgical fix, robbing Ed of his agency and having to do the hard work repairing himself and his relationships with other people. There's a sad irony in getting exactly one character's arc just this, and then using it as a sacrificial lamb to patch over the main character's arc.
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antichrists-plus1 · 6 months
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Watching the dynamic between bonny and read vs stede and ed in s2 ep4 was such a rollercoaster cause it went from me thinking "oh no they're just like stede and ed but if they actually ran off to China together and had a loving happy relationship" to me getting further into the ep and thinking "oh no they're just like stede and ed but if they ran off to China together and their relationship turned fucked up and toxic cause that's what happens when two traumatized pirates run of to live in isolation with eachother on a whim".
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bookshelfdreams · 3 months
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ofmd wasn't "profitable" enough but I didn't even get the feeling hbo wanted to make money off of it. They didn't promote it when s1 dropped, and the promo for s2 was erratic at best. They don't sell merch. Or physical copies. There's no bts documentaries other than what actors (shoutout to Samba ilu) make themselves in their spare time.
It took more than a full year for me to be able to watch s1 legally! I still can't access s2 legally anywhere! It's not that ofmd is unprofitable, it's that hbo refuses to profit off of it, because - well, because profiting off of it would mean investing work and money into it.
And like. Of course, when you compare it to the juggernauts hbo holds rights to, like GoT, ofmd is small fishes. But.
How on earth do these clowns think cult classics happen?
A Game of Thrones was first published in 1996 and didn't make it on the NYT beststeller list until 2011. The first edition of the first Harry Potter book was 500 pieces. And yeah, TV shows are different, but if you look at today's media landscape, would things like Star Trek, or Buffy, or Doctor Who stand the slightest chance? These things take time, is my point. A piece of media doesn't become a massively profitable, beloved classic over night. It takes time and effort to build that kind of franchise.
And the thing is! Nobody who makes these decisions even likes stories. I'm convinced that whoever is in charge at hbo, at amazon prime, even at disney, thinks storytelling is dumb and for idiots. They think it's enough to just slap the name of something people love on whatever garbage they spit out, for it to be profitable. They think it's the brand that sells: Look this has "Lord of the Rings" on it! Look, this one has "Game of Thrones", you like Game of Thrones don't you? Watch my show, boy.
But this isn't how this works. It's not the name that sells (unless, I suppose, you're the MCU, and even there one gets the impression the trick is finally stopping to work), especially not when the product is bad. People aren't idiots.
But it's not about making something good. It's not about making a meaningful piece of art, or telling an engaging story. ofmd served its purpose; it drew in all the subscribers it ever would, so there's no point in letting it go on. Even in the s2 that we did get, this is evident: the penny pinching is palpable, it's clear that the studio didn't want to spend any more money than absolutely necessary on it, and then cut the budget by 40%.
It's not about art. It never has been.
And it's not even about profit, because to be profitable eventually, stories have to be allowed to thrive first. You tell a good story first, and success happens later, often much, much later.
And ofmd was incredibly, astonishingly successful. It was the most in-demand series for weeks after the s1 finale. But even that wasn't enough, it's never enough, ofmd could have made record-setting profits and it still would have been cancelled, because -
Well, I don't know. Because we live in a bad time for art. Because Orwell was right, and stories have become commodities, like shoelaces. Because. Well. It's not about telling a story, is it?
What's the point of a story? What's the point of making something for the joy of making it? What's the point of a piece of art, existing, if it cannot be transferred into numbers for the stockholders?
idk how to end this. I hope David Jenkins finishes the story he wanted to tell, even if just for himself. I hope, against all odds, that weird, fun, heartfelt, beautiful little stories like ofmd continue to happen.
But goddammit.
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soapbubbles511 · 21 days
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A big part of the problem is not one studio has figured out how to make streaming a profitable business model. None of them. And they're all starting to realize this (especially post-strike).
Netflix is the only one who's kind of managing because they were the first and got a lot of subscribers early. But they also keep raising prices and cutting content and opting for cheaper content because they don't have a long term profitable business model.
They all threw tons of money at original content early on to build up subscribers. But then they realized infinite subscriber growth is not a thing. And the more streaming services there are, the fewer people will subscribe to any individual one. So they're cancelling things, deleting them altogether.
As much as I wanted someone to adopt our pirates, I'm not really surprised. They're all losing money. None of them know how to make streaming work. Pretty much everything has merged into a handful of massive conglomerates. And until something changes we're going to get a whole lot of hot garbage.
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sarucane · 4 months
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Why did Ed shoot Izzy then?
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Figured I'd go ahead and rant about this because once I started thinking about it, it took a bit to unpack, and someone might be interested? Eh, anyway
So the reason this is actually an odd moment is this: it comes across as careless, but Ed's real violence is never careless. Ed's violence is actually really precisely targeted. He has a reputation for violence, total strangers call him a "fucking madman," and he does do some stuff offscreen ("I have seen you maim a few people") but in terms of what we actually see on our screens Ed becomes violent himself very, very rarely.
But here, he shoots Izzy. A very violent act, done casually and to someone he knows personally.
Why? Izzy thinks it's because of Stede, says himself in this scene that the source of the poison on the ship is Ed's feelings for Stede, tells Stede Ed shot him "because I dared to mention your fucking name."
But that just doesn't track. Ed is clearly brooding over Stede at several other points, and he doesn't get remotely violent. He doesn't join in the fighting at the wedding when he sees the figurine that looks like Stede or throw it against the wall later, or even become violent in any of the scenes that figurine appears in. If anything, the evidence rather suggests that Izzy has mixed up "poison" and "cure": Ed gets notably more chill when he's looked at that figurine recently.
So why does Ed shoot Izzy here? And when Izzy came to him a few minutes before with "I have love for you, I'm worried about you," why did Ed blow him off, then get scary at something that did invoke Stede?
Well, because it's Izzy who's saying this. It's not Stede himself, it's the combo of Ed having Izzy and Stede in his head at the same time that's provoking violence.
Izzy set the terms for this relationship. Ed was vulnerable and open, and Izzy said that was a fate worse than death. Ed thought he was in a safe space, and Izzy threw shame and threats at him.
Ed conformed to Izzy's expectations, directly and completely. Izzy was clearly happy that Ed was cutting off his toe and making him eat it. Izzy set the rules, and Ed followed them. That's right down to the scene before this, when Izzy says that the crew are refusing to throw away the treasure and Ed says "and that's another toe." There are rules, they're being followed.
And then Izzy goes and tries to change the rules. Tries to encourage Ed to be vulnerable. Invokes the original source of the pain that made Ed vulnerable in the first place.
It's actually kinda admirable that Izzy does this. What he's doing is beginning to acknowledge how wrong he was before. But it's too little (he still thinks of Stede as a problem, not a solution) and far too late.
Ed's not going to take anything that hits him where he hurts from Izzy. He followed the rules--hell, he's still following the rules when he shoots Izzy, hits him on the same leg that was losing toes. He doesn't owe Izzy one iota of vulnerability. And more importantly, he can't become vulnerable with Izzy. The relationship is absolutely and completely entrenched. This story ends with one of them killing the other. And just like Izzy's the one who started them on the path of that story, now Ed's the one who's going to push it forward.
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mwesrik · 5 months
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Okay bit of a different post for the finale than my usual meme rant because I’m just done with everything today
Fandom is my safe space. It has been since I figured out what the internet was. And frankly I’ve been having a really shitty time recently.
And what the OFMD fandom is doing rn is frankly making me really fucking pissed
I understand being upset at character deaths. I understand being upset over budget cuts or lack of character development that you wished for. I understand being upset over the direction a show has taken.
But the way people are literally ABUSING the writers of a show that has been GROUNDBREAKING makes me sick.
YES! The budget cuts messed up the pacing and character development. You can think of Izzy’s death whatever you want. But to drag down a show, that has done so much for the queer community. With writers and actors and crew who have done their absolut best to make us feel seen and heard and to give us a mainstream story which is filled with queer joy. It just sets my teeth on edge.
I liked the finale. I cried over Izzy and wish HBO were less of a cunt firm and had given the show more episodes. I wish Ed and Stede had talked and I wish we had more episodes.
But I was overall happy. Because the main couple had their cheesy, happy moments. They literally said they loved each other for fucks sake. And everyone is fucking focused on Izzy and not even talking about the the main couple anymore. Not because they suck but because they’re not their blorbo they can project their angsty fantasies onto. And I like Izzy, I really fucking loved him but he was a side character. One that was quite obviously doomed to die since season 1. So saying the show is ‚literal dogshit now‘ is just such a wild jump to me.
His death was also obviously rushed because of the lack of time. It’s not the fault of the crew!!! that they had to adjust their script to the funds and time they were given.
I can’t come onto the internet to be happy about my favourite show being queer and dramatic and campy, and sure a bit messy because everything is fucking DRENCHED in toxicity and whinging.
Sorry if this offends anyone, if anyone even sees it but this really pissed me off today. My one thing that cheers me up made me even more depressed today because people have no inhibitions anymore as soon as their favourite media isn’t perfectly aligned with their image of how it should be.
TL,DR: I’m really over the OFMD fandom being toxic over Izzy and other issues while ignoring all the brilliant things this show has given us.
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queerly-autistic · 2 months
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You really can't engage meaningfully with Ed's story in S2 without firmly centring his mental illness and suicidality, because that's inherently what the story is: it's the story of a man having a severe mental breakdown and going to increasingly erratic extremes in order to achieve his end goal, which is to not be alive anymore...and then it's the story of his recovery from that.
And so much of my frustration with the way I see this being talked about (or, in many cases, not being talked about) reflects my more general frustration with how we talk about mental illness and neurodivergence, so buckle in because this got long (also I am going to be discussing suicide here, as well as very brief mentions of psychosis and ocd, so please take care). There's this trend when we talk about mental health: we go 'oh mental illness isn't an excuse' or 'mental illness doesn't make you do bad things' or variations thereof. These are, in my opinion, some of the worst things to ever happen to the discourse around mental illness. It's reductive. Absolutely mental illness can lead you to do things that you would not have otherwise done, even things that you would be absolutely appalled by, if you were mentally well. What do you think mental illness is if it's not something that impacts your brain and how your brain functions? If your mental illness doesn't directly lead to problematic behaviour, then that's fantastic, but that experience is not universal. It's not an 'excuse' - it's an explanation for certain behaviours that's vitally important to acknowledge and understand in order to try and mitigate harm.
There's also this thing that happens with discourse around mental illness where we assume that what you do in the grips of mental illness is reflective of something that's innate inside you. You were violent whilst in the middle of psychosis? Oh, it's because you're an innately abusive person and this just reveals who you really are. You have Tourette's and one of your tics is a racial slur? Oh, it's because you're an innately racist person and this just reveals who you really are. Your OCD is rooted in a fear that you're going to murder your family? Oh, it's because you inherently do want to murder your family and this just reveals who you really are. It's bullshit. What you do in your mentally ill state is not some deep philosophical reflection of your true character, and the idea that it is is something that causes really deep, dangerous harm to mentally ill and neurodivergent people.
So, now that that's over with, back to Ed.
Ed was behaving in ways that were acknowledged in canon as being extremely out of character whilst in the midst of a severe breakdown. Fang himself said that he'd 'never' seen Ed behave this way; even Izzy, who actively pushed for Ed to embody the extremes of his Blackbeard persona, ended up concerned because it became so extreme and out of character that it was impossible not to be concerned by it. The crew who mutinied on Izzy within a day didn't mutiny on him for months, not until their lives literally depended on it, because it's heavily insinuated that they were hoping he would get better. Because this wasn't the Ed that they knew (the Ed that we came to know in S1 - an inherently soft man who is caught in a culture of violence and is tired of it).
The show wasn't subtle about this. It didn't bury the lead. As well as the constant reminders that he was acting out of character in increasingly alarming ways, this was very clearly depicted as a breakdown, an almost total collapse of Ed's mental health. We saw Ed detached and numb and completely dissociated from the world around him. We saw him in private moments of despair, breaking down. We saw him behaving erratically in the grips of mania. We saw him display absolutely textbook warning signs of someone whose made the decision to die by suicide. We saw him smile and say 'finally' at the moment when he knew he was going to die.
The show basically painted a giant neon sign over his head flashing 'THIS MAN IS EXTREMELY UNWELL' in bright lights, and if you miss that, then it's because you're deliberately avoiding looking properly.
(And, important to note, that most of the people that I've watched the show with outside of fandom discourse absolutely took away from these episodes what the show was intending - they saw how unwell Ed was, they were devastated for him, and they desperately wanted him to get better.)
When Ed steered the ship into the storm, and threatened to put a cannonball through the mast, his clear goal was to create a situation where the crew had no choice but to kill him. I've seen people describe this scene as Ed 'trying to hurt the crew', and I think that's very much a misrepresentation of what the show was depicting. It was very blatantly a suicide attempt. He wanted to die, and he didn't care what he had to do in order for him to achieve that goal. That doesn't make it good behaviour, and it doesn't mean people didn't get hurt, but it does make it a very different situation than if causing harm had been his main intent.
There is a fundamental difference between 'he is doing this because he explicitly wants to cause harm to the people around him' and 'he's doing this because he's suicidal and beyond the point of being able to rationally consider who might be getting hurt in the process of ensuring that he ends up dead'. One of those is a bad person who enjoys causing pain - and the other is a deeply unwell person who can be supported and helped to recover and be better (and should be, for the good of themselves and the people around them).
And on that note, the failure to engage with this as a mental health story is also, I think, why I've seen some people get so upset about the show not doing Ed's redemption arc 'right' - because this isn't a redemption arc, and it's not trying to be. One day I'll do a separate post about how much I love that the show explicitly rejected a carceral approach, opting to essentially put him through community rehabilitation rather than punishing him, and even mocking punitive prescriptive measures (that rubbish youtuber apology speech was supposed to be rubbish and unhelpful), but that's one for another day.
The fact is that the show is telling a story about mental illness, and that inherently means that Ed's arc is a recovery arc, not a redemption arc. And if you're expecting a redemption arc, then you've fundamentally misunderstood the story that they're telling (and the revolutionary kindness at the heart of the show).
I have a lot of feelings about this because I genuinely believe that it was one of the best depictions of mental illness and suicidality that I've ever seen. Within the confines of it being a half hour, eight episode comedy show, they told a story about mental illness that was surprisingly realistic (with the obvious fantastical over the top elements of it being a pirate show - and piracy is explicitly depicted as a culture where violence is heavily normalised), and that didn't shy away from the messier, darker, more complex elements of mental illness (particularly of being suicidal).
And then, most importantly, after all that, the show took me gently by the hand said 'you are not defined by what you do in your lowest moment - you can make amends, you can recover, you are still loved, and you are worth saving'.
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