madmadeline

ofmd 🏳️‍🌈

[bookishpedia]

*Kenji and Juliette sneaking inside the house at 4am*

Nazeera: *sitting on the sofa* Where were you?

Kenji: We were helping Aaron.

Aaron: *turns on the light* Try again.

[madmadeline]

thinking about starting an ofmd themed animal crossing island. i welcome ideas

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

the person reading this is going to survive the rough patch they’re going through

[argetlam007]

ok now i need a scene in which izzy sings and plays piano to the crew of revenge, and everyone losing their absolute minds over the fact that izzy fucking hands knows how to play a damn piano

Credits: Con O’neill Facebook page <3

[madmadeline]

don’t mind me while I listen to this for the rest of eternity

[madmadeline]

Just wait until Ed discovers bubble baths.

[madmadeline]

drop what you’re doing and go watch Good Luck To You, Leo Grande on Hulu (US)

It’s powerful, intimate, and healing

[triflesandparsnips]

The thing I am fucking feral about today: this shit.

Look. Look at this.

Stede, by and large, is not a Toucher. (That’s a whole separate essay.) He’s hesitant as fuck about it, and tends to initiate contact, if at all, through some intermediary: clothing, air, etc. Later, with Ed, he’ll do incidental touches, little things that could be explained away like the brush of arms together, etc.

(THIS IS NOT THAT ESSAY.)

But look at this shit. “May I?” Stede asks, and he gives it a moment but Ed doesn’t actually hand it over. He doesn’t even answer.

And Stede just reaches out, takes an end of the silk, and

slowly

drags it

through Ed’s fingers as Ed fucking tilts his eyes upwards in complete silence, his gaze clicking from spot to spot as his heart gets unwound from his lax – but not relaxed – grip.

And while I like the meta where Stede has NO FUCKING CLUE ABOUT HOW SEDUCTIVE HE’S BEING, I also like the idea that for the first time in his life, because this is a Queer Situation, Stede has the glimmerings of Game. Because, my god, the forwardness of it. He didn’t wait for Ed to give it to him. He just reached out and took, but in such a syrup-slow manner that Ed could’ve said no, could’ve just tightened his fingers if he didn’t want to let Stede take this precious thing– and Stede’s giving him that time while simultaneously also making some pretty great allusions, intentional or not, to how exactly he’d make his move, if a move he ever made.

Like, “May I?“ Stede would ask, and Ed (Blackbeard) wouldn’t move, wouldn’t say a word, but he wouldn’t step away either, would just watch Stede with a clicking gaze as Stede stepped forward, raised his hands, and drew Ed syrup-slow toward him, every moment one where Ed could turn away and every moment clear that Stede was here, wanting this, wanting him, and deliberate in his want.

So my god, the pure queer seduction of this scene: the intermediary object as a stand-in for themselves; the plausible deniability; the silent consent (a subgenre of plausible deniability); coded language; “innocent” touch as protective camouflage…

(It’s a little distressing to consider how much queer romantic context comes from trying to be both Open to a possibility while simultaneously trying not to get the shit beaten out of us for being wrong. It’s a powerful language. It’s a tragic one. It’s what makes it feel so special if it goes right.)

Anyway. Stede may have no idea the levels he’s playing at here, but he’s a man who was explicitly and in canon abused for displaying a particular flavor of non-masculine behavior. Even if he doesn’t know he’s queer, he knows the need for the language of safety; he’s been learning it since childhood. So he speaks it– and Ed, who engages in at least “when at sea” levels of queer living, picks up on it like the Stede-radio he’s been tuning for ages now to find a signal that explains him has suddenly gone from static to the crystal-clear notes of Gnossienne No. 5.

Is it any wonder that Ed’s oh no moment is fucking palpable here? Is it any wonder that Stede comes away from this scene a little more certain of himself around Ed, able to argue him into staying, pull him into a treasure hunt, touch his bare arm against Ed’s when they become co-captains?

GAH these fuckheads, look at them.

[douwatahima]

two months later and i still can't believe ofmd spent THREE WHOLE EPISODES hammering home how lame stede was and how uncool everyone found him only for THE LITERAL BLACKBEARD to show up and spend a whole episode going "look at all this cool shit this guy has" and "omg you're telling me you have a second closet?!" and "holy shit bestie, you READ?!?!?! 😍😍😍" 10/10 show of the century

[fuckyeahisawthat]

While we like to joke about Izzy being in the wrong genre, I would argue that there are in fact at least five distinct genre universes in the world of Our Flag Means Death, and all of them have different rules.

Stede Bonnet, and his crew when they’re around him, live in a Muppet movie. I didn’t come up with this analogy but it’s so accurate. Insane physical comedy and comedy-action where no one really gets hurt. Mild peril but you know everything is gonna work out. Terrible puns and sight gags, but room for sweet, genuine emotional moments too. The rules of time, space, probability and logic will bend for a good joke.

Izzy Hands is in a grimdark action/drama where if someone gets stabbed in the gut they will behave normally and fucking die. (Probably slowly and painfully, of sepsis.) Crucially I think Izzy also lives in a genre where you can only be subtextually queer, and violence (done for or with or to each other) is the only acceptable form of intimacy between men. This is why being forcibly dragged into Stede’s world, where everyone is busy having silly low-stakes misadventures and being gay and emotionally available all over the main text–and seeing his Subtextual Boyfriend go into this world and love it–sends him round the twist.

The British, Spanish and other imperialist militaries are in a Master and Commander-style naval adventure where they’re the heroes. This is why they all take it completely seriously when Stede (unintentionally) kills Badminton and takes hostages, even though we can see that he bumbled his way into it ass-backwards. This is also why Stede is so shocked to get actually for real stabbed aboard the Spanish ship. (“Did you mean to do that?”) He didn’t realize until that moment that he’d stepped into a different genre. The stabbing is one of the first Surprise Genre Switch moments we get and in retrospect it’s very important for setting up that in this world, the threat of getting hurt or killed is very real–which we need to understand to know that there are real stakes much later, when Stede almost gets executed by the British.

Keep reading

[things-with-teeth]

So I was thinking about how it’s pretty thoroughly established that Frenchie can’t read or write, but then we get to episode 5 and he a) identifies the party invitation and b) writes receipts as part of the pyramid scheme. The first one could be explained by what little we know of his background – he knows what a fancy party invitation looks like – but what about the receipts? I’ll admit, the possibility that Frenchie lied about his literacy level in order to avoid getting stuck with Lucius’ job was very funny to me, but I went back and looked and no:

No, he just drew pictures again. Which, first off, incredible, love that, but it does kind of make me wonder how he got away with it and the only thing I can think of is that he. That he told them the receipts were written in hieroglyphs. 

And presumably a bunch of aristocrats were like “that sounds fake but I definitely don’t know enough about Egypt to dispute it, one half a pyramid please.”

[abernathyvalois]

I am a museum girl. above everything I am a museum girl

[valc0]

[purple-confusion]

I was having Guillermo thoughts, see

[madmadeline]

please give me more Frenchie songs next season. The pilot gave us two absolute bangers and I know Joel Fry has it in him for more

[crowsummer]

“I could not stop wasting time. It was crazy. I wanted to do something with my life, but instead I went to sleep, or sung in the shower, or sat and stared at the wall. I couldn’t even tell you about anything that I saw. I didn’t talk to anybody. The cicadas kept dying outside, and as I dreamed, my mouth grew thick and venomous with silence.”

— Yiwei Chai, The Jacaranda Years

[charleslove]

this is the sweetest thing i've ever read