Mel @iamadequate1717 - Tumblr Blog

Stede's Strange Day

I want to talk about Stede Bonnet's very strange day. Let's look at the progression of just what Stede sees.

He spends the night with his boyfriend for the first time, and his boyfriend brings him breakfast in bed like Doug did for Mary. They talk about their reunion. Stede is very happy right now!

His boyfriend tells him that he envisioned him as a beautiful merperson and that he thinks he saved his life.

#ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd s2e7 #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #stede bonnet #miscommunication #stede did nothing wrong #ofmd #our flag means death #stede defense #ofmd 2x07

I moved on over here!

I've long thought that Izzy and Black Pete are analogous like Prince Ricky and Stede. They have surface level similarities, but there is an

Moving off to @iamadequate1 since Tumblr is driving me nuts. I can't uncouple from the primary blog I made this under, so it's time for a fresh start!

dalniente

What progress at home has biden enacted? What policies of his show that he is making progress that prove he is actually different than trump?

I like to pretend I have faith in humanity, so I'll answer as if you're asking this in good faith.

Biden's DEA has lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions to make appointments and assistance more accessible.

He put a funding package into place to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, as well as short-term and long-term housing.

He has attempted and is still attempting to get student debt relief through - this was blocked by Republican judges appointed by Trump, but he's still working on it.

Infrastructure repair - his administration has budgeted funds to actually fix some severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges.

Trying to expand access to healthcare to include undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children (Dreamers) under the Affordable Care Act. Support for Navigator programs and outreach has also been increased.

He has vetoed Republican-led bills that were attempting to overturn environmental protections - one that would have forbidden investment fund managers to consider climate change in their portfolios (I have two degrees in accounting and this is actually huge), and another that would have overturned restrictions on agricultural runoff into our waterways.

He and his administration worked for ages to get rail workers paid sick days.

This is just some of what he's been doing. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans want to criminalize the lives of LGBT people like you and me. They want to eliminate no-fault divorce and force births that will kill parents or devastate them financially. They have stated flat out that they want to install a military dictatorship in the USA. They attempted to put that in motion on January 6th, 2021. They failed once. They will do better next time.

One party wants to house the homeless and expand social safety nets, while the other one wants to criminalize homelessness. One of them wants a future in which I might be able to vote to change how much of a war machine my country is, while the other one wants to eliminate my ability to vote entirely. Those are not the same. Those literally are opposites.

At the end of the day, all you and I can do is choose to do the least amount of harm possible. You and I cannot choose to do no harm. This is the USA, we sell war, you and I cannot choose to do no harm. I wish we could, my god do I wish we could, but that is not an option. So we grieve for the harm we couldn't eliminate and work to minimize the harm that is done. Despite all the crap they support, Democrats are the minimum amount of harm right now. Acting like they aren't is exactly what brought us to an election where our options are a future where we are either wading in blood or drowning in it.

Not voting for Biden will not help Palestine. Not voting for Biden will guarantee a Republican president who will make the situation in Palestine WORSE. AND it'll hurt a lot of other places as well, both at home and abroad, because Republicans are about business and the USA is in the business of war! And I would very much like that to change someday! I would very much like to someday be able to choose to do no harm! And I know what I have to do to try for that future, so what are YOU going to do? There is no standing off to the side in this. If you aren't helping pull, you're the dead weight we're pulling. Are you going to dig your feet into the mud and blood and drown us there? Or are you going to get the fuck off your ass, grit your teeth, and help us pull free?

lacefuneral

GOLDFISH

cunty stede fancam ✨

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

i feel like auntie has all the character appeal that i spent months trying to see in izzy hands but just couldn’t. she’s gruff, grumpy, shouty, would highly prefer to see shit get done, supremely competent, clever, diligent, loyal, stoic, cares deeply about her captain despite giving her a hard time every so often, WHERE IS AUNTIE CANYON.

obsessed-sketches

God they were so horny for eachother

Same artwork, different lighting.

obsessed-sketches

God they were so horny for eachother

Same artwork, different lighting.

always-rolling-my-eyes

Stop 😭

catmask

i will be autistic for a moment but living in a world where social expectations and standards are made by others and expected to be followed lest you be seen as a 'failed' person somehow when those standards are not based in personal happiness or autonomy or kindness to others makes me feel genuinely insane like daily

prepare4trouble

Does it bug anybody else how people seem to consider Ed and Stede to be old? I mean, they’re not kids, but Taika and Rhys are in their 40s. They aren’t ‘old men’. They’re at the beginning part of what most people would consider to be middle aged.

And maybe this is just a me thing, since I’m not that much younger than them, as I approach my 42nd birthday next week, but I’m not old. I mean, I’m not a kid, but I barely even feel like an adult most days.

And yes, I do know that for a pirate in those days, 48 or so would have been considered ancient. I know the real Blackbeard died in his mid to late 30s and Stede Bonnet at 30. But that’s reality, and OFMD is not supposed to resemble reality. If it did, it would be a very different show.

Anyway, I’m not having a go here, and maybe to younger fans they really do look like two decrepit, ancient, old men, or maybe people are just joking around, but more likely this just seems a bit like a byproduct of the film and TV industry’s obsession with youth. I think people are surprised (not in a bad way, just pleasantly surprised) to see people not in their 20s depicted as being in love, and having sex, and all those things that we’ve been indirectly told for years can only happen up to a certain age. And then to see it in a queer romance too, that just makes it stand out all the more, and compared to a lot of the other media people see, these characters do seem older. Because they are.

So I think what I’m saying isn’t, “Hey, stop calling them old!”, which I guess you’re welcome to do if you really must, it’s more something along the lines of, “It shouldn’t be unusual to see these kinds of relationships, and if it was more normalised then maybe people wouldn’t think they were old.”

But it’s also to remind people that calling them old perpetuates that idea that romance in your 40s and beyond is unusual, and that’s not a good thing to be telling people, even by accident.

suffersinfandom

Controversial opinion (?): the Kraken Era wasn’t all that dark.

There’s a whole lot of meta and fic out there that portray early season two Ed as a bloodthirsty, hyperviolent monster, and when that portrayal is challenged, the rebuttal is usually along the lines of, “I’m just doing what canon did. Did you even watch the show?”

I did watch the show, and honestly? I expected Ed to be so much worse than he was! When I see people say they didn’t think Ed did enough to redeem himself or that he went past the point of no return, I just… don’t understand.

I already went into this in my way-too-long meta about Ed and abuse, but I do think it bears repeating (in a shorter post) because it seems like Ed’s actions -- more than the actions of any other character -- are scrutinized and discussed outside of the context of, y’know… a comedy about pirates. There’s tons of casual violence in Our Flag Means Death. Sometimes the violence is even funny!

So what does Ed actually do?

As far as I can remember (I’ve only seen season two a few of times, so correct me if I’ve missed something!), we see Ed directly harm someone twice in the first two episodes: first on the wedding boat, and then when he shoots Izzy in the leg. Kind of unimpressive numbers, yeah? Tbh, I'd expect more out of a heartbroken Blackbeard.

The first instance involves Ed shooting a man during a raid. That man has a sword through his chest before Ed fires, leading me to believe that Ed’s still following his season one pattern of keeping himself a step removed from murder (technically, the sword killed that guy). We also don’t see the murder happen; the man tumbles offscreen before Ed shoots. This makes the action less brutal. If the writers wanted us to be appalled by Ed’s violence, we would’ve gotten a graphic kill (or several).

And the second instance is Izzy. Ed shoots Izzy in the leg after he suggests that the shitty atmosphere is because of Ed’s feelings for Stede. Hot take, maybe, but I don’t think that was entirely out of line -- definitely not for a pirate captain whose first mate is acting out! Ed’s feelings for Stede are not the only problem; a significant chunk of the problem is Izzy. Izzy called in the navy and led to their capture and, more importantly, Izzy bullied Ed back into the Blackbeard persona. This is what Izzy said he wanted.

We’re also told that Ed has taken more of Izzy’s toes between seasons. This isn’t cool -- bosses definitely shouldn’t be asking for their employees’ toes -- but there is a precedent for it: in season one, Ed told Stede that he used to feed people their toes for a laugh (yuck). For a laugh. This, to me, implies that it’s not a huge deal. It’s certainly not completely unexpected pirate behavior, and it seems more lenient than, like, a keelhauling or a whipping. I think both of those things would've felt way more gruesome and dark.

As far as violent actions go, that’s not a lot. Like, numerically.

Things get darker in S2E2 when Ed becomes increasingly desperate for someone, anyone, to send him to doggy heaven. He’s unhinged and working his way up to a murder-suicide before he’s stopped, but he doesn’t lay a hand on anyone. He orders Archie and Jim to fight to the death. He ignores anonymous crewmembers as they’re swept overboard in the storm. This is bad! It’s self-destructive and selfish! But violent? Monstrous? I don’t really think so.

In my opinion, the worst thing Ed does is force his crew to do violence for him -- not because it’s violence (again, they’re pirates), but because the violence hurts them. THIS is what traumatizes them! Their trauma flashbacks are scenes of them hurting others, not of Ed hurting them directly. Ed didn’t physically torture his crew (with the exception of Izzy, and that’s complicated). His crime was driving them to do one violent raid after another, killing and plundering without any joy or theatrics. Ed feels trapped in the role of Blackbeard -- the role that he’s been desperate to escape -- and, in his heartbreak, he opts to trap his crew with him.

Yeah, Ed is messed up in the first two episodes of season two. I don’t blame the crew for almost killing him; it’s what needed to be done. I think that Jim, Archie, Frenchie, and Fang had every right to want Ed gone after Stede’s return.

But I don’t think that Ed was a super violent monster who tortured his crew and murdered his way through his breakup. He engages in very little onscreen violence, and the person that most of his violence is focused on -- Izzy -- is the same person who told him to be violent. I think that anyone who says that Ed’s actions in the first part of season two are extremely dark is either looking at them out of context, misremembering what actually happened and just recalling the dark tone, or working with some kind of motive.

In conclusion: Ed is a man who, at his very darkest, was still operating pretty firmly within the bounds of "stuff pirates do" (but not stuff Ed has historically done, presumably).

Also look at him. Thank you.

GIF by unearthlydust

celluloidbroomcloset

This is all true. There is an element of psychological violence, though most of the violence is...pirate violence. But even the psychological aspect is complicated because Ed himself is having trouble perceiving reality, and is tailoring a lot of this to get the crew to actively murder him (not an excuse, but an explanation). The only person who tries to talk to him is Izzy (because they're all scared of what is happening to him) and Izzy is the only person who will fail completely at talking Ed down in any way (and in fact makes it worse by invoking Stede's ethos and then blaming everything on Ed's feelings).

Someone mentioned this becoming a game with increasing stakes, and Ed's escalating insanity reads as exactly that - "This is the game you wanted to play! Isn't this fun?!"

The whole damn thing is meant to be tragic, because it is. It is a man, a pirate, having a very pirate-y breakdown that's going to end in suicide because all the joy has been systematically stripped out of him, exacerbated by the loss of the one person he thought maybe could see him as something more than a monstrous caricature. The crew keep waiting for Ed to get better because they know he's not that monster, and they let him come back for the same reason.

teeny-tiny-revenge

Honestly all the takes I come across complaining about Ed's excessive violence feel like they watched an entirely different show. Most of the time on raids he just... stands there? Looking scary maybe with his make -up and outfit and overkill amount of guns, but not doing much? He shoots one random guy who's already impaled on a sword, yeah. Outside of that he doesn't do anything but stare, and not even all the time. He spends a good deal of one raid lighting his pipe and not even paying attention to anything (wouldn't matter to him if anyone were to kill him while he isn't watching his back after all, he wants to die). He pays more attention to the cake than the raid on the wedding boat.

I think the looking scary bit is key, because that's what Blackbeard is and has always been for Ed. He's relied on this image for ages on the job. He doesn't have to do anything on raids (doesn't even have to be on the boat, he says, he's fully aware of this effect). A bit of make-up, a tough looking outfit, that's all it takes because Blackbeard's image does all the work. People see him and scream, he doesn't have to do violence, because everyone will just assume he's going to, and the idea of Ed doing anything is more effective than Ed actually doing anything.

Ed is all posturing and playing a role (and he plays it well). Even with his crew he runs the exact same strategy. He's a whole lot of bark and to anyone other than Izzy pretty much no bite. We see him do two sorts of thing, in broad categories: on his own, he's having a depressive breakdown, does drugs and booze and spends all night crying. Some of the drugs and booze extent into interaction with the people around him, because that's how drugs and booze work, but, most of Ed's actions around the crew are all playing into the mad devil pyrate Blackbeard image. He doesn't lay hand on anyone but Izzy. He doesn't have to! Frenchie is clearly terrified of him, and the others aren't much better. And Ed means to be scary. He means to be so scary that eventually this fear will make the crew turn on him so he can get his suicide by mutiny. And it works! But even when he's in the middle of his suicide by storm or mutiny whatever comes first spiral, he threatens and postures. He waves around a torch. He tells Jim and Archie to fight to the death, and they do it at first. But Ed has no weapons on him. He's not even wearing shoes! He has a torch and a crazy expression on his face, and that's enough, because Blackbeard has always been about smoke and mirrors, and Ed is a master at his job. He can just tell his crew to fight to the death, and he has nothing on his person to enforce it if they say no. Nothing! The fight to the death is a provocation, just like the wheel and the "I'll shoot the mast next!" are provocations. He's bluffing. And he's so good at it, he plays exactly into the image everyone has of him, that it works.

He doesn't fight back when they beat him to death either. They're doing his bidding, after all.

What traumatizes the crew is the meaninglessness of the raids, the atmosphere of despair, the way life no longer seems to mean anything on this ship (because it means nothing to its captain). And of course killing their captain, whom they stuck with for months even through his depression spiral, who they didn't dare reach out to, but watched and hoped would get better. And then they have to live with the guilt of having killed him. They aren't traumatized because he tortured them. He overworked them, and he made them live in his own, empty world, and that one was torturing him most of them all.

Of course they let him come back, and ultimately forgive him. They aren't monsters either, and after all life means something on this ship.

suffersinfandom

These two additions are! So! Good!

Ed does rely on looking scary, being scary, having a scary reputation. I always think about the preserved pufferfish in his cabin on the Queen Anne's Revenge back in season one, and I hope that piece of set decor was intentional. It's so very Ed, making itself big and intimidating and pointy.

You both did a much better job of getting at what Ed was doing to the crew than I did. There is psychological violence, and that violence wears on the crew more than any physical violence they commit. There's just something so gutting about Ed dragging them into a joyless, meaningless version of the life he wants to escape -- hurting them in the way he's been hurting for who knows how long, baiting them into giving him the only retirement he thinks he can have now. It feels real to me. When you're in that kind of desperately hopeless mindset, you don't care about hurting people because your own pain is so all-consuming. If anything, you're motivated to hurt others so they'll give up on you in the same way you've given up on yourself.

It wasn't surprising at all that the crew let Ed back on the ship with minimal fuss. He's still pushing away from them when he's initially banished; by the time he comes back, he actually wants to do better. I also think that it's telling that the person we see fully, wholeheartedly forgives Ed (besides Stede) is Fang, someone who was there for Ed's entire downward spiral.