So F**king Earnest

Our Flag Means Death and Avengers (UK). Stede Understander, Ed Defender. Gentlebeard Armada

[celluloidbroomcloset]

Stede is gonna be mediocre at sex with Ed? Like that man doesn’t pay attention to the smallest detail down to Ed’s pinky nail and wells of psychological trauma? Like that man hasn’t spent months putting together strings of words that burrow straight into Ed’s soul as soon as they’re found? Like that man doesn’t have a lifetime of repressed desires just bursting to get out of him? Like that man doesn’t know exactly how Ed feels from moment to moment, has since the first time they met, and has taken a Master’s level course in The Study of Edward Teach since?

Like, good sex ain't pure mechanics. It’s being attuned to your partner's needs and desires and listening to what they like and what they don’t. There are plenty of people who have tons of sex but aren’t really good at it because they’re more concerned about their pleasure than their partner’s.

And it’s also about the partner. Ed’s not just lying there letting Stede get on with it. He’s guiding and talking and responding and giving Stede pleasure too. Not to mention encouragement, and you know that Stede Bonnet responds well to positive reinforcement.

So while he may not be 100% competent with the mechanics yet, you better believe Stede is listening to every goddamn sound Ed makes, and every goddamn reaction his body has, and making an exhaustive list of exactly How to Make Edward Teach Come So Hard That He Blacks Out And It’s Actually Kind Of Scary For A Minute that he will dictate to Lucius the next morning.

Stede’s whole thing is that what he lacks in mechanical skills he makes up for in empathetic wisdom, whimsical enthusiasm, and a wholehearted dedication to the bit. Like, you think that little man so pocked with self-esteem issues would be so goddamn smug the next morning if he didn’t KNOW he had just fixed Ed’s lower back?

I think we lean into Stede being a cringe-fail dork while sometimes ignoring that he does actually have a strong skill set that includes emotional intelligence, planning and innovation, and being in love with Ed.

Tl;dr: Stede Bonnet, Worst Pirate of the Caribbean, made Edward Teach see colors in a whole new spectrum. And that was just their first time. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

[googoogojob]

[crowleyholmes]

"I'll never leave you. I'll never leave you again."

[celluloidbroomcloset]

Y'know, it's weird. We know that the crew murder Ed - literally shoot him, attack his body, beat him to death with a cannonball - because they are being harmed and feel they have no other choice.

Why would this not also be extended to the harm that Izzy causes Ed? Ed shoots Izzy because he is being harmed and he feels he has no other choice to make the harm stop. This is after years and years of abuse, as well, with Ed suffering things that no other pirate captain or crew would permit. Hell, the crew of the Revenge plan to murder Izzy after one day. Zheng would have chucked him overboard years ago. Ned Low, Hornigold, Spanish Jackie, Calico Jack, Mary Read, Anne Bonny...you can't convince me those people would've put up with him bullying, threatening, and psychologically torturing them for years.

Yet Ed...does put up with it. Ed is so afraid of his own capacity for violence that he resists doing it until he's pushed so far to the edge of his own despair that he feels he has no other option, then proceeds to plan his own suicide.

Yet Ed is somehow a monster for it, and the rest are just...what? Pirates?

[castieldelamancha]

you actually don't get how important and vital it is to me that edward teach gets to be as soft and gentle as he wants to be and as he was never allowed to be before away from the violence the world imposed on him since he was born and that he has someone that loves him back as he is and that can be gentle and soft right back at him

[edwardyouinhere]

[jeste4feir]

I watched ofmd for the first time, it's sooo....

[adoptourcrew]

Check out Rhys Darby doing "the ol' Captain Stede Spin" on Bear Grylls is Running Wild!

[celluloidbroomcloset]

It’s all well and good to go “just ignore bad takes,” but then the bad takes multiply and they get racist and homophobic and misogynist and we know what happens when you just “ignore” that shit. We also know who gets the luxury of constantly ignoring it because it doesn’t affect them directly, and who it cuts down by degrees.

[cobbbvanth]

On this day, 305 years ago:

“They’ll never forget the eccentric Pirate Bonnet and his savage, insane, vengeful, pirate horde. See? He’s a pirate. A real, proper pirate.”

[youfriendlyneighborhooddisaster]

he's a minor prince btw

[fallenrocket]

I’m still thinking about how casually Ed invites Frenchie to join them on the boat party in 1x05. We know that Ed has been keeping to himself for who-knows-how-long, holing up in his cabin on the Queen Anne’s Revenge with Izzy acting as a go-between with his crew. He’s been getting more and more bored, lonely, and depressed, and when he tries to engage with Izzy, we see that he tends to get shut down or scolded.

And obviously, meeting Stede is revolutionary for him, someone whose playfulness matches his, someone he can be weird with, someone whose mind hums at a similar frequency. From the moment they meet, he gets to be Ed: he can open up about his feelings on piracy, savor fine fabrics, and explore wardrobes in secret passages.

But I think it’s important that we see Ed finding some level of community on the Revenge too. So even beyond the delight of the pyramid scheme subplot, I really like that it’s not just Stede and Ed who go to the party, and that Ed is the one to invite Frenchie. For a guy who’s spent too long sitting alone in his cabin, it means a lot to me that he takes pretty much the first chance he gets to ask someone else to hang out.

When Ed is in front of the whole crew, he tends to be in performance mode a lot. He is interacting/socializing with them, more so than he has with his own crew—“This is the most open and available I’ve ever seen him,” according to Ivan—but it’s largely as Blackbeard rather than Ed. The friendly but still slightly untouchable celebrity. Admiring the “wild characters on the high seas,” goofing around while keeping his hands on his weapons. Prefacing his ghost story with the detail that he “doesn’t feel fear.” Getting up to the sort of raucous, violent pirate fun he has with Calico Jack. And so on.

So his first steps of showing Ed to the crew come in smaller, more individual interactions. We get Frenchie and Oluwande at the boat party (though Ed and Olu don’t really interact much with each other,) which gives us such gems as, “I like the name Jeff, and accounting sounds fancy as fuck,” "They're such dicks about spoons!", and my beloved, “What’d they do to you, man?” We get Lucius on the treasure hunt, which gives us his great, “You don’t have to be a dick about it,” speech, and he speaks his mind when he drops off the box of Ed’s stuff after Ed leaves with Jack.

It’s the individual connections with these two characters that offer Ed the stepping stones to really drop his Blackbeard persona in front of the whole crew. When he comes back from the Academy, Izzy tries to hide Ed’s heartbreak from the crew, but Ed asks to see Lucius. Not to talk about his feelings, mind you! Just so Lucius can write down his lyrics…about sorrow and despair. But the song’s just about a fictional character…who, Lucius guesses, is struggling.

With Lucius’s gentle encouragement, and Frenchie’s accompaniment on the lute, Ed lets the crew see him as a vulnerable wreck. No “very cool” leather, no posturing, no calculated friendliness. Just a shambles of a man in Stede’s robe singing his heart out about hard life and sad death, in need of love and support. And the crew gives it. They’re a little weirded out and confused, but they’re there for Ed when he needs them. There to help him weather the storm in Stede’s absence.

All of that means so, so much to me. Stede changes Ed’s life in countless critical ways, but it’s better for them both if Stede isn’t Ed’s everything, and vice versa. They both need more than just each other. It makes me sad that things broke between Ed and many of the crew in season 2, even if I understand why, and while I adore Fang’s sweetness and caring throughout their fishing trip, I do wish we’d been able to see more of Ed’s relationships with the crew being mended. I hope they all have such good times together whenever the crew drops by the inn!

[itsnotacarepackage]

"I like Arthur, he had kind eyes," Stede says, feeling embarrassed.

"I get that," said Ed, making Stede's eyebrows lift in surprise. "My old Captain, Hornigold-, remember I told you about him?" Ed looks at Stede for a second to see him nod quickly. "Well, he was just like any other captain, bit of a dick, y'know? It is what it is, the crew get it. Anyway, every now and then, he'd get this look in his eyes. Like thunder and lightening brewin' up... like-," Ed looks up, trying to think how to explain it to Stede.

"I know what you mean," Stede surprises him with. "When the clouds pull together, just before a storm."

Ed wants to smile - this man knows what being at sea is like and Ed still forgets but he doesn't want Stede to think he's patronising him so he stows it below deck and nods. "Yeah, exactly. And you could feel the crew getting tight, 'cause a storm was coming but this wasn't outside the ship, all around us."

"You can't steer outta that one!" Stede says, with a dip in his brow and a stiffness to his smile that told Ed he was trying to seem like he understood but didn't.

"No," Ed says, looking down. Somehow, Izzy popped into his head, and not just one memory; years of tight smiles and heads down that spoke to bending to your captain, not understanding.

"My dad, as you know, was not the most forgiving," Stede continues, and Ed looks up; he knows Stede hates talking about his childhood so he makes sure to look him in the eyes when he does. "He always had this intensity around me... Maybe that's what he always looked like," Stede shrugged, looking down, "I wouldn't know. He looked at my mother the same, until her death, and I assumed that was how he was but one day I inadvertently walked into a meeting with his partners and he was laughing." Stede tilted his head a little and then looked at Ed. "I'd never seen that look on his face before. He was laughing but... so were his eyes." Stede laughed too, but softly, looking down and then up again at Ed, almost abashed.

Ed smiled, knowing that if he said anything about the rage in his dad's eyes now he might make Stede feel like he couldn't say anything about his life and he wanted to hear this stuff. It made him want to track down this Daddy Bonnet and slit him every which way he could but, since he was dead already, Ed could rest knowing that, without that piece of shit, this man wouldn't be in front of him, with him, right now, in bed, talking about their pasts.

Ed smiled. "Well, then I'm glad you had Arthur's eyes." He got to watch Stede's smile morph from unsure and sad to warm. Then they leaned into each other a little, before Ed asked, "Did you ride?"

"Oh, God!" Stede guffawed before Ed insisted there was a story behind it and that Stede had to tell him it.

Arthur had kind eyes and Stede was always good at seeing the kindness in eyes that no one understood. But that was okay. Ed knew that was more than okay.

[edwardteachswombtattoo]

My controversial opinion is that I don't think Izzy getting shot in the leg was that big of a deal.

Was it fucked up? Sure, in real life where an injury like that can't be healed with impromptu basement surgery. But this is a show where its established that getting stabbed in the left side magically protects you from damage and then this is never utilized or referenced again after the credits roll. This is a show where it takes less than a day to heal from a traumatic head injury after being beaten to death by your employees for creating an unpleasant work environment. This is a show where Lucius gets his finger chopped off and he's back to drawing dicks in a matter of hours.

Violence only matters when the show wants it to matter and even then it's often treated as less serious than emotional violence.

I also think it's worth considering that we're not supposed to feel an abundance of sympathy for Izzy. Season 2 literally opens with Stede fantasizing about stabbing Izzy to death. Archie and Jim start making out while covered in Izzy's blood. The crew fully thinks Ed killed Izzy and they're like "well maybe killing your First Mate is like popping a zanny so maybe he's better idk". Ed apologizes about the leg incident and it is never brought up again. Stede only really talks about it to Ed once, during the I'm your captain scene (which is really fucking hilarious actually) where he just casually lumps in the leg incident with all the other bad stuff Ed did during the Kraken Era and doesn't really engage with it as a uniquely fucked up thing. Otherwise Stede completely forgets Izzy is missing a leg the second Izzy leaves his vision except for when he's being bitchy (the victory lap comment).

Izzy also gives two contradictory explanations for why Ed shot him. First he says it was for mentioning Stede's name, then later he claims it was because he confessed his love to Ed.

Ed shooting Izzy in the leg was clearly meant to be read as a Not Good Thing because that entire scene seems to be intentionally reminiscent of when Ed sang his little song to the crew, except this time instead of singing a little song Ed is waving a gun around and instead of Izzy and Ed's little "his name is Blackbeard >:(" "actually my pronouns are they/them it's Ed now :)" interaction, Izzy gets shot in the leg.

But I also don't think it's not meant to be Super Fucking Serious so if you wanna be like deserved <3 about Izzy getting shot in the leg that's totally fine and valid and I agree.

[mangoriottt]

SILLY SHOWS ARE IMPORTANT TOO

Silly shows can be deep!! Silly shows can teach us things!!

I'm extremely late to the party, but after finishing Good Omens, I watched Our Flag Means Death for the first time and I'm really sad that not one but TWO great shows didn't get the endings they deserved.

GO and OFMD are comedies that start off with very silly premises. An angel and a demon team up to stop the apocalypse. A wealthy man abandons his aristocratic life to pursue his dream of becoming a pirate. These premises alone are enough for some people to dismiss a tv show in its entirety, but that's because we often forget to take a closer look.

Why go against Heaven and Hell in order to stop the apocalypse? Why would an angel and a demon care about the fate of humanity? Because they love it! After living among us for thousands of years, they found something that was worth saving! They realized that we always have choices and that things CAN be better, and in doing so, Aziraphale and Crowley found love in each other, too. (Which is why the "free will" universe in the finale makes no sense, but I won't get into that.)

Why give up a wealthy life? Why risk everything for a silly dream where Stede will most likely die a horrible death? Because he wanted to be happy! Because even though people made fun of him, he believed in himself! Even his crew didn't have faith in him, and it took Ed a little while to really SEE Stede, but while doing the impossible, Stede found love and friends and family. And this helped Ed realize that he was unhappy, too. Stede's journey of self-discovery grew far beyond just him because his dreams brought his crew together.

These shows are about love and forgiveness and hope and patience. They encourage us to form our own identities and to find family everywhere we go. They remind us that we CAN fix our mistakes, our relationships, our systems, and ourselves. We can choose love and kindness over violence and hatred! We can and should ask questions and be curious! We should tell others that we love them and remind ourselves that we are loved as well!

I'm aware that GO and OFMD faced different obstacles. (Screw N*** G*****) I can only hope that the writers did the best they could with what they got. Personally, I'm okay with the ending of OFMD while I didn't really like the GO finale. However, in both cases, I really believe that we (audience, creators, and characters) deserved better. Queer shows with older protagonists deserve better. Silly TV shows deserve better.

[orangeandradios]

i wasn’t online when ofmd was airing what’s some bts, panel/interview, general info i might’ve missed?

[celluloidbroomcloset]

Two best, imo, are the FYC panel: https://youtu.be/Rj8vSrHX9Po?si=KQcnnnMqCetdqwj1

And Rhys and Taika’s lie detector test:

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

No, ‘Blackbeard’ isn’t ‘problematic’ and ‘toxic’, but Ed is someone damaged by a problematic and toxic world.

For those at the back who can’t quite hear, he has the triple disadvantage of being brown-indigenous, poor, and queer in a world where the dominant culture is underpinned by white patriarchal hegemony, and really starting to gain strength.

He is a highly-intelligent, sensitive and loving individual who has repressed so much of himself he has fragmented into parts.

He is persistently trodden upon by the jackboot of colonialism. He has to exist within a pirate subculture to even begin to use some of his talents and climb a hierarchical structure; and he is still repressed by white men within that who think they know better how he should behave than he does.

He is defined via racist stereotypes by both the imperialists and those closest to him. Only one ever sees Ed’s personhood, and he loses that individual for a time. When at his lowest, he desperately tries to claw himself out of the pit through self-care and a reframing of his identity, only to be told he is better off dead if he cannot be what white men say he should be.

Then he breaks.

If you blame Ed for his breakdown and for fighting back, then you are blaming the victim. You are no better than the bullies we saw in world politics this week who claim to be the hurt party when they carry all of the cards. Who try to manipulate an already-victim into doing what they want, and cry ‘foul’ when that individual airs grievances, or attempts to show agency outside of what they see fit. Who punch down shouting ‘crook’, ‘punk’ and ‘dictator’ because someone just wants their freedom from imperialist aggression.

You need to connect the dots. You need to get it.