MellieDM

🏳️‍🌈 Lesbian AuDHD She/her 🏳️‍🌈 ♦️ Opinions My Own ♦️

[obsidianbit]

I love this gay ass show with its literally life ending injuries that heal immediately, but only when convenient to the plot, and its ridiculous use of modern phrases, and its laughing in the face of historical accuracy, and its kissing the face of the fans instead of trying to outwit them, and the way everyone involved in the show seem to go 'I KNOW RIGHT! I'M EXCITED TOO!' instead of mocking the fans

[obsidianbit]

well. this aged poorly.

[pirategrime]

[blue-b-bro]

So

Piracy is about belonging and they're good

But also it's bad and should be left behind

But they killed Izzy as a death to the old piracy

But he described the new piracy in that belonging speech and he himself lived by this

But he said you can kill him, because his stories will live on

But it's the end of the old piracy

But it was about the crew building Izzy anew

And when he internalized the healthier mindset he was killed so Ed would realize he's loved by the crew

But it was Izzy who was loved by the crew atm

And they finally let them to talk honestly and openly just before Izzy died

So Ed could metaphorically left piracy behind

Izzy said Ed should be just Ed, that people want just Ed (which he could say without dying)

But then Ed doesn't go with his family so what's the point of suddenly calling them his family

Guys help my head hurts

[melliemd]

It’s so wild when the thesis of the show seems to say that the new piracy = the queer community but the happy ending is not Stede showing that to Ed and Ed realizing he can be happy and a pirate because pirate doesn’t just mean One Thing and is instead well we Must Leave the Community because why would we want to belong to something or fight for something or have a family when we can just have Monogamy but that’s a “happy” ending

[orbiten]

steddyhands shippers, IT'S OUR MOMENT (source)

[melliemd]

oh this did not age well

[dragonmuse]

Keep It In The Box : An Essay on OFMD Season 2 and the Failure to Heal

(here in is my season two reaction. It contains many many spoilers. It's also about 3k words long so you know what you're getting into.)

“See, I have a system for dealing with all the terrible things I've seen. There's a box in my mind, and I put the things in the box..” -Frenchie, Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death

…..and then he never opens it. Chekov’s locked box has no key in season two.

On first watch, it seemed clear to me that Frenchie’s declaration was a narrative plant. Clearly the whole season would be about that box of pain and trauma being opened, sorted through and at least the beginning of healing. The show had developed a reputation after season one of being kind and focused on queer narratives of healing from childhood. Ed and Stede’s parallels in their childhood traumas were frequently on display through season one and were repeated in flashback throughout season two. Jim’s season one arc about becoming someone who doesn’t think just of revenge and can now forge meaningful connections was profound, beautiful and often funny. Izzy is an antagonist because he doesn’t want Ed to move on or stop acting like the trauma-response version of himself. The antagonist wants to stop healing. The point is to grow, to change, to learn how to love. It’s one of the things that made season one work for me at the time, despite reservations about pacing and tone.

So naturally season two should follow suit. It’s a kind show! About healing and falling in love!

For the first several episodes, the remaining crew on the Revenge go through a gauntlet of trauma, forced to do and receive violence at Ed’s whims as he careens from self-destructive behavior to self-destructive behavior. This is the wounding setup. It was dark, but it seemed like it would have a payoff and at first it did.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful moments of the season comes in one of the small respites in those early episodes as Jim recounts Pinnochio to Fang to soothe him through his grief. That was the show that I expected. The kindness of that moment struck me very deeply. It gave me some understanding of Archie too, who seems to fall for Jim right at that moment.

That scene is the show season one promised. Season two led with packing Frenchie’s box full to bursting. Here is the fight to the death between lovers, there is a first mate who is mutilated and rotting in the very walls (the rot of the Revenge itself), and there is the storm of Ed’s rage and pain that threatens to consume all of them.

So surely these remaining episodes would concentrate on finding the humor in healing from those moments. That is the setup. Frenchie has a box. The box must eventually open.

Except time and again, all the characters who suffered are told that the only way to deal with what they’ve been through is to stick it in the box and never open it again.

Pete tells Lucius that he’s unable to move on and needs to let it go. Izzy has a story about a shark. Ed’s apology to the crew which doesn’t even contain the words ‘I’m sorry’ is just…accepted. I kept waiting and waiting for a meaningful apology to the people Ed had hurt the worst with his actions, but it seems all we get is Fang saying ‘eh, no problem, I got to hit you back so I feel better’.

The playful theme of ‘pirates are just violent sometimes’ from season one becomes a grinding horror machine in season two when every atrocity visited on someone is forgiven because the narrative needs it to be. Ed and Stede spend more time making amends with each other over the bloodless night on the beach than either of them spend trying to repent for their actions towards anyone else.

And let’s talk about Ed. Arguably this season pivots on his narrative, on his path to healing and growth. A path that starts at a very low point. His moment in the gravy basket, deciding he wants to live because there are still things to live for is so great! So one might assume that what would follow would be him pursuing those things, making amends, making connections. He and Stede have a wonderful moment, talking about being whim prone and how they’ll work to avoid that, build a relationship by going slower.

Yet, at no point do either of them stop following whims. They never heal or learn from what’s happened to them. They both keep running from thing to thing, particularly Ed. It’s a whim to sleep with Stede, it’s a whim to run off to fish, and the finale gives us just more of their whims. Ed drops fishing as fast as he picked it up. He finds those leathers in the ocean, murdering the symbolism of leaving them behind. Even the inn is a whim, one of those things Ed decided he’d be good at without evidence. And Stede joins him in that without a single on screen conversation about it ahead of the moment.

Ed needs to heal himself and to do that he needs to confront what he’s done and do the work to heal the wound. Instead, he doesn’t meaningfully apologize to anyone, besides Stede and Fang. Despite Izzy’s dying words (we’ll get to that), not only do we never see the crew caring about Ed, working to make him family in the same way they do with Fang and even Izzy, he also doesn’t choose to stay with them. So what is the point? Where is the healing? Or does even Ed, beloved main character, have to live with it all stuffed in a box?

He ends the season in the leathers he threw away, in a relationship that’s barely stabilized, going to live in a house which we are told by the narrative (in that they are very very clearly paralleling Anne and Mary with Ed and Stede or why do we even get that whole Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? episode) will only end in them setting fire to each other to stay warm.

But Vee, I hear you cry, it’s a ROM-COM. This is all meant to be ha-ha funny and you are taking it so seriously!

Cool beans. Then why the hell isn’t it funny? Healing is often filled with comedy because people deal with pain with humor. You can heal and laugh at the same time. The finale especially is almost entirely devoid of laughs, almost entirely devoid of joy until the last minute for that matter. The episode that should show off with a flourish how far everyone’s come, mostly serves to show that no one has grown.

Okay that’s Ed. I want to talk about Lucius next. Our former audience surrogate (that’s taken away in season two when he doesn’t get enough screen time to perform that role and no one takes his place) really goes through the wringer. He experiences many many terrible things, including sexual assault (which is made into a grimace-laugh line that doesn’t take away from it’s seriousness because oh hey, that can be done as it turns out). He’s nervous, he’s smoking, it’s clear he’s suffering.

There’s a beautiful moment where Pete tells him ‘hey, I was also in pain. I grieved’ and that’s great. It’s good that Pete sets a boundary about Lucius not obsessing over the past to the point of occluding their future.

We even get our comedic moment where Lucius pushes Ed off the boat (still not apology, but I’d lost hope for that by then) and that doesn’t help enough. So Izzy comes in with a shark and the advice that you just have to move on.

Just…you know. Play pretend. Forget.

Shove it in a box. Ed didn’t take my leg, a shark did. Ed didn’t kill you, a shark did. Live with the person that tried to murder you because it’s your fault you dangled your leg over the side of a boat. That is the show’s message. I thought on first watch, that surely this would also come back up and be explained that you can’t live that way, that that is no way to heal. That it would become clear that this was no way through. You cannot make everything into sharks.

Lucius can move forward and still carry pain. He can still want a meaningful apology and still want to talk to his lover about what he’s dealing with while moving forward toward a brighter future.

And what of the flirtatious promise of relationships and connections being the way to heal? Look to Oluwande and Jim, whose heartfelt romance from season one was relegated to the bins of history in favor of a narrative that made him a brother Jim once had sex with. They could have had Archie AND Oluwande, who in turn could also have Zheng, but that never seems to be an option. With a single short conversation, they are broken up with, despite a brief tease at the birthday that they still ‘dance’ together, it never actually manifests. Jim and Archie never talk about what they went through. It’s swept under the rug as fast as knives are lowered.

Lucius also no longer flirts with other people, the solution to his pain is to propose and get married (but not too married, lest we forget that they’re two men, they don’t even get to be husbands or even the more respectful mates, no. They’re mateys.) This season proposes that the only happy endings are monogamous ones, where no one talks about anything painful that went before.

To ensure that message, beyond assuring the success of Oluwande and Zheng’s relationship, Jim and Archie almost entirely disappear from the narrative. Sorry you guys were given layers of trauma and no growth and not even much to do this season, we need to make sure that everyone remembers Oluwande is the break in Zheng’s day so when he says that to her five minutes later we know exactly what he’s referencing. No time for Archie to learn what an apology is or for Jim to get one line in with Oluwande that isn’t affirming their newfound broship. Must do more flashbacks to things we just did two episodes ago!

The show even dangles the conversation of the Revenge being a safe space. Why would any of them ever feel safe when the man who tortured them is allowed to walk among them and they are expected to forgive and forget? What’s safe about that? The ship is never made safe for any of them, but that’s never addressed.

And Zheng! Amazing, hysterically funny Zheng! She loses her ships, her entire way of life, the kingdom she built for herself and then…she doesn’t even get to captain the Revenge. We don’t know what becomes of her fleet, of her plans, her ambitions. Don’t worry about it, she has a romantic partner and isn’t that what every lady wants in the end?

(But Vee, I hear you cry again, there will be a season three! Maybe it will be All About Zheng! To which I say: then why did they present us with the most series finale feeling episode ever? If there’s more, I have no idea where it’s going. BUT VEE: BUTTONS AS SEAGULL ON THE GR- Fine. It’s time.)

Let’s talk about Izzy Hands.

Izzy manages more healing than anyone else this season. He reaches his lowest point, suicidal in the bowels of a ship that’s become a prison (very much in contrast to Ed’s suicidal low). The person he loves most in the world has shredded him physically and emotionally (and if you’re in the camp that thinks Izzy deserves the abuse that Ed gave to him, I would really like you to sit quietly with yourself and ask why you think there is ever anything anyone can do to deserve that treatment). He’s low, he shoots Ed to protect everyone, and then seems to plan to drink himself to death, mourning his losses.

And then another beautiful moment! The crew move past their own pain to help him. They work together for the first time and it’s to give Izzy mobility back. He treasures it. He cries over it. He uses that kindness extended to him to reach a new understanding of Stede and help him succeed, doing the work to make real amends. He sings in drag, he’s vulnerable and beautiful, celebrating the side of himself that he must’ve loathed in the first season. He’s an elder queer man, coming into himself.

He never gets an apology though. (‘Sorry about your leg’ without eye contact is not an apology. There is no responsibility taking, no acknowledgement of the weeks of torture that came with it.) Izzy also never really has an honest conversation with anyone about what it means that the man he loves punished him so severely for the crime of trying to protect the crew (yes, lest we forget, Izzy lost his leg because he was trying to keep Ed from re-traumatizing the crew and himself).

Izzy does all this work, but even he’s not allowed to take it out of the box. It’s a shark, not Ed. Ed is just ‘complicated’ (the language of abuse here is so upsetting and I think not even intentional).

And then he dies. His last act? To apologize to the man who tortured him and shot at him. To have done all this work, to take on all the blame. And then die.

In a rom com.

This show ends in a profoundly unfunny moment of telling the audience: this is the one character that did the work, that made amends, that tried his hardest to accept the parts of himself that he had a hard time embracing and formerly embittered him. He’s fully accepted his queerness and turned it into beautiful music. He’s disabled, and he worked hard to accept that. The man he loves will never love him back, so he worked hard to make Stede able to meet Ed on an even playing field. The Giving Tree gave up its limbs and its trunk, and it’s not even allowed to be a stump to sit on.

Kill the queer elder, who has managed to figure out how to live and in his own way how to heal. Kill him before he manages to teach anyone else how to meaningfully move forward (he almost gets it with Lucius, almost, but it’s meant to be rule of three, you know. Cigarette..shark…and then…and then fuck it, Lucius doesn’t even get to say a word at his funeral).

The message of this season again and again is that there is no healing, just moving forward. Like a shark. Like a bird that never lands.

That is not a kind show.

Season two is not a kind season.

It splinters people up and jams them back together without purpose or reason. It tells everyone who experiences pain that they should shove it in a box and not deal with it. No one who really needs one gets an apology of any sincerity. No one puts in the work to gain forgiveness. (Ed wearing a onesie is not The Work. Ed fixing a door is not The Work. Ed broke people that the show wants us to care about. Ed never does the work of making those amends. He fires off a Notes app apology at best. After all, it’s what he told himself via Hornigold in the gravy basket: you move on or you blow your brains out! Good thing he took his own advice and therefore had to change nothing to get his just rewards.

I would’ve taken just fifteen minutes of Ed trying to actually make amends. It could’ve been hilarious! Imagine awkward Ed trying to dance around what he’s doing with Jim and the two of them having a knife throwing competition about it. Or him and Frenchie attempting to make music together, writing a song about the raids they went on! It’s not just the crew robbed of their healing because of this, it’s Ed himself. He never meaningfully changes or makes amends. How is he any different at the end of the finale then he is standing on the edge of that cliff with Hornigold? He hasn’t moved on, he hasn’t healed. He tried one thing (fishing) that doesn’t fucking work and then he runs right back.

No one leaves this season better than they went into it. They’ve lost an elder queer, they’ve lost their joyous and queer polyamory, they’ve lost a chance for meaningful reconciliation with Ed and Ed lost any chance of looking like he gave shit if they did. Stede grows enough to accept the crew’s beliefs as important and then leaves them behind without a care.

Izzy gets a beautiful speech about piracy being larger than yourself. Ed and Stede, within twenty minutes of that speech, leave piracy. They are incapable of giving themselves to something bigger, apparently. They haven’t learned to be a part of a community. They haven’t healed from their childhood trauma or their fresher wounds. They are still just following their own whims.

Zheng’s life work is in tatters, but it’s fine, she has love. Oluwande and Jim aren’t together, but it's fine because they both have dedicated monogamous partners. Lucius was deeply scarred by what happened, never recovers much of his first season personality, but hey he got-well it’s not married exactly- but you know good enough!

Frenchie, who has a box forever locked in his head, is captain. Because the key to success is to lock it all in a box and never open it. What a message. What a show. Conceal, don’t feel. Smile because it’s a happy ending. Don’t mourn the dead, don’t try to tell people what happened to you (they will literally run away or cry too hard to listen and really you’re just bumming them out), and any meaningful change you make is only rewarded with death.

Frenchie is now a pirate captain with a box in his head full of trauma that’s never been opened, leading a crew with more wounds than scars. Wonder how that could turn out? Wonder how many years before he might want to retire and then happen to run across a gentleman pirate. As if no one learned anything at all.

[tizzyizzy]

4 Ways Izzy Could Have Died That Would Have Been Less Shit

1

Izzy is fighting alongside the crew, but they're outnumbered and losing. Izzy stands his ground, but then he's hit and mortally wounded. With renewed determination, they rally to his side and push back in a righteous fury. Someone cheers "Izzy's Revenge!" as they battle. After, Izzy dies surrounded by the crew, with Fang holding him and Frenchie squeezing his hand.

2

Ed and Izzy team-up, and we see them fight side by side like in the good old days. They're in perfect sync, predicting each other's movements and saving one another's lives, finally completely reconciled. Izzy is struck down, maybe protecting Ed. Ed avenges Izzy, and Izzy dies happy in Ed's arms.

3

Izzy is fatally injured during the escape. Ed desperately tries to rescue him, but Izzy is dying and the Navy are closing in. Ed is frantic and crying, refusing to leave Izzy. He tries to take the wooden leg off, so Izzy will be easier to carry. Izzy tells him to leave it. Ed tells Izzy he loves him, that he's sorry, that he can be better, that he'll save Izzy and never take him for granted again. Izzy kisses his forehead and tells Ed that, out of all his regrets, staying by Ed's side-the man he loved-was never one of them. Ed leaves Izzy a gun, and Izzy goes down fighting while a devastated Ed escapes.

4

Izzy provides a distraction to save a cornered Ed and Stede, proving his declaration he wouldn't die for them in s1 false. They try to convince him not to, but Izzy smiles and says there is no greater honor as a pirate than dying for his captains. Ed tells Izzy he loves him. Izzy says, "I know, you idiot." He tells Stede to take care of Ed and the crew or he'll haunt him and curse all his nice clothing forever.

[still-the-seventh]

It's not that they killed Izzy Hands. I get how that works for the narrative - even if I'm sad that Izzy didn't get to live his own life and find his own love interest apart from Blackbeard.

It's that the ending was so rushed it felt like none of the characters cared.

There was more shock and sadness and mourning shown for Karl's death than there was for Izzy's. We got a deathbed scene. Cut to funeral. Cut to wedding, sailing off into the sunset, and starting an inn.

Immediately. No pause. No reflection. No shot of Fang needing to be comforted or Lucius picking up his wooden shark or Jim being held by Archie and Olu or Frenchie staring steadfastly at the horizon while he boxes this up in his mind. No Ed, absently asking Izzy to do something and then remembering.

There was just no reaction. That's what's so devastating.

And yes, time constraints, limited budget, packing a hell of a lot into barely any screentime, all of that. But they could have done it. They could have shaved 30s off from Ed's foray into fishing. They could have skimmed seconds from other scenes.

One minute. Just one minute of quiet sad music and devastated crewmates. That's all it would have taken to make Izzy feel loved and honoured and respected as a character.

[sunnibits]

rip to izzy hands, so wife coded he even got killed off for a man’s development <3

[bemusedlybespectacled]

just the fact that this is a show where people get stabbed in the gut multiple times with no long-term health problems and not even real pain, someone gets tossed overboard in the middle of the night and manages to get onto another ship without drowning, an entire island of people gets found and rescued by a dude in a rowboat who doesn’t even know they’ve been marooned, someone lives despite being in a coma and beaten with a cannonball, and A GUY TURNS INTO A FUCKING SEAGULL but oh no THIS time this guy is dead after getting shot even when he didn’t die from blood loss or infection or a fucking gun to his head earlier like ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

[literallyaflame]

“the end goal of fiction is (of course) to collectively identify and consume only the good things. good stories make you a good person and bad stories make you a bad person” you guys literally sound like the 2nd grade teacher who told my mom not to let me read the golden compass

[literallyaflame]

not to swing the bat 360°, but i’ve seen a lot of weird, condescending nonsense on the other side of this as well

look, the end goal of strong literacy skills isn’t to have perfect taste and be right all the time. i frequently enjoy things that have objective flaws. i frequently fail to enjoy things that most people would consider flawless. sometimes, i fall for propaganda. sometimes, something makes me uncomfortable, or confused, and i have to pause to figure out why. that’s life!

the more comfortable you are navigating the relationship between what a story wants to say, what it is saying, and how that affects you, the easier your life will be. you are free to criticize the things you love and celebrate the existence of the things you hate.

i say this with all the compassion of a person who went through years of therapy for OCD—your gut reactions do not define you, and you don’t have to worry about The Bad Media turning you evil

[unfvzed]

hi barbie! 👋🏿 💞

[talkingtothewillow]

Watching Barbie watch as Ken takes over barbieland, takes her dream house and turn it into his own property, ruins her things whilst she cries in despair and suddenly I’m six years old again pleading my brother to be gentle with my toys as he throws them on the floor and against the walls. The hundreds of dollars in dolls that my parents spent for birthdays and christmas, told me to be careful with and showed me how to play nice destructed and destroyed as my brother grabs at anything and everything, tosses them around, stretches their plastic joints and pulls at their heads while I scream for him to stop seemingly wasted in seconds. He throws one down for another and I’m too small to grab them off of him. Easily toppled over as he pushes me aside and I’m wondering what I ever did to him to deserve it.

On top of it all, he’s still surprised when his torment breaks one of them, the legs snap out and he pauses as though he’s remorseful. I cry at the loss of my doll and despite how it was him who broke it. Him who threw it around. Him who pulled until the elastic snapped..

I am still told I should’ve been more careful with my toys.

[azuremist]

I find the fact that the Barbie movie is simultaneously being criticized by the right as “too radical”, and criticized by the left as “too nice to men” and/or “too pandering”, quite funny, given that America’s WHOLE SPEECH was about how, no matter what women (like the director of the Barbie movie) do, it will simultaneously always be too little and too much.

[mikalovesmusic]

Actually sobbing. When will I ever get a short butch who'll kiss me to practice her lines for Romeo and Juliet 😔😔

[o-chitose]

nerosporus

[wildsflag]

[butchered-icarian]

Hobie Brown cosplay at Anime Expo 2023 by whoachriswhoa.