the direct connection here might be so ephemeral as to be no more or less important than any other one you could establish between episodes (keeping in mind that 8, sadly, must also serve as 10, and same-numbered episodes always have a connection). but i was never able to get these 2 images out of my head and i know now it's because of this connection, and i feel confident the music supports me. bear with me.
so in the bedroom scene, stede is speaking his truth out loud and it is a coming out, yes, but it's still within the safety of his own four walls. despite finding out he was about to be murdered 10 minutes ago, he's warm and safe, inside (that's really a distillation of the show's tone /pos). the only person who hears him in that moment is mary, even if the courage gained from this act will allow stede to embark on a new journey and act on what he just said. and obviously during the time at jackie'z and on the red flag he couldn't exactly shout it at ed's face, but zheng told him "sometimes action is better than vision" and he takes that to heart later and makes his actions about fixing what he messed up. the letters in a bottle really are his way of speaking his truth into the world as part of that (this has already been explored better and more succinct than i ever could in this post by @asneakyfox).
moving on. obviously there's also a lot going on in the beach scene, and again, i have to simply direct you to others who've already said the part about ethnicity and violence out loud so wonderfully, such as @edwardteachswombtattoo.
but this is where the music comes in and why the scene destroys me sm personally. the part just before ed ambushes the british navymen, when we flash back to (a possibly romanticized version of) stede standing at the beach, his voiceover taking over from where the navy guy started, we get the infamous 2nd movement from bach's orchestral suite in d major, the one that some bloke later arranged for violins and piano, forever dooming us to an endless barrage of ironic slow-mo movie scenes and commercials. it's one of the most recognizable and celebrated pieces in the european classical music canon, to the point where even people who don't usually listen to that kinda music have heard it several times in their lives. the point is that it's a bit cliché, so to speak, to put it into a triumphant love scene. but ofmd doesn't care about clichés (thank god), so here it's more of a metaphor for stede's romantic heart, all the yearning, the sadness, but also the hope and above all else the love, and yeah, i do think it's tiny wink at the audience. this guy eh?
however, the moment ed's knife lands in the extra's shoulder, the music changes to be dominated by the familiar, heavy cello notes we've come to associate with blackbeard, which very quickly incorporate the kraken theme (aka the swede's voi che sapete rendition) for the choking portion, but only for a split second (pretty much it's gone as soon as ed's read the line in the screenshot above). i think underneath all that old johann is still going, yearning, declaring love, because ed's holding the letter where stede does so. it's like the show is giving us a speedrun through the character beats, because as awesome as it is to see ed choking out 2 colonizers while barely even paying attention, we're really here for the non-violence part (i'm getting there, stick with me).
we cut to stede holding one of the bottles he sent out to sea, and bach's no longer humming beneath a scene of triumphant violence, he's now accompanied by the first couple of notes from gnoss no 5, forming together a sum greater than their parts with the other instrumentation (just as the voiceover layers the lovers' voices on top of each other when ed reads "joined to one another, intertwined"). but there's more going on here music-wise, so we really need to cover our bases before moving on.
as far as i can tell, the 2nd movement from bach's suite is only ever heard in TWO other places in the whole show: s1e2 and s2e1 (bach was big on mirroring, so i don't think the mirroring here is accidental, either). in season 1, it comes in, rather strongly, once the tribe elder starts saying "you're more gentleman than pirate", and even tho the first couple episodes are more comedic in tone and the scene is comedic towards the end when the elder warns olu that stede is gonna get them all killed, i don't think the usage of the 2nd movement is ironic here either. the classical music on the show is kinda like. it pilfers from the entire famous repertoire of western baroque and modern romantic compositions, and on any other show it'd be like selecting papyrus from the dropdown menu, but because the rest of the soundtrack selection is so earnest in favoring emotion and vibes, the same is true here too.
stede's arc in episode 2 is really all about coming to terms with the fact that he hates himself for having left his family and not fitting in, and about battling with a world (and a part of himself) that tells him he's not a "real pirate" (i.e. man), that he's not and will never be enough. so at first listen you'd maybe think there's not much that fits the hopeful or uplifting tone in that interaction per se, given that the elder reinforces what stede has already heard so many times: "you should give up trying to be a pirate because you're too soft, you'll only endanger others by trying to be something you're not".
but the thing really is. stede IS a pirate (artist, lover, man). to me "i'm a man" is as much a part of the s2 soundtrack as it can be without actually being in it, and i'm confident that if they had been allowed to have s2 go for as long as would be ideal, it would've been in there (or in s3). as david said, that's THE stede needle drop. and as much as the song is about reaffirming that your mode of masculinity does not make you any weaker or less of a man than others, it's also about having the confidence to shout your romantic, queer love for another man. loudly. from the rooftops if you have to. you can see where this is going.
so for the the 2nd movement to come in atp with all it's long, drawn-out chords and expectant rhythm and basically say "hey don't listen to what these other people are saying. por qué no los dos? you're a gentle man (space in between those words is important) and a pirate", that's about the closest we got to having jobriath sing it out loud for us, i think.
the second instance is where this fucks me all over (in a good way), because bach doesn't start in s2e1 the first time we see stede write/send his letter. that first shot and the voiceover are embedded into a more comedic sequence that's very reminiscent of s1e1, and it's read by the actor in the same sort of voice he used for his letter to mary. the show even calls attention to this with editing and writing. "hope you are as well" is something you write to like, a distant aunt. but then there's a pause, bach starts playing, stede looks up, and here's where his real voice is heard. "i think about you all the fucking time. i need you. i don't want to give us up." he goes on over the cut to ed and the ship, over the bleeding heart flag, over ed's tattoo that says "trust no one". "i know i fucked up. idc if it seems hopeless and dumb, i'm throwing a bottle into the sea that will likely never reach you or anyone else." it's his own way of winking at the other guy and going "never left". it's his mode of being a man in love out there in the world.
and all of that is right there with us, through the music and imagery of the letters, when ed reads it. it's not happening within the warm safety of a bedroom. this is happening in the cold (figuratively speaking) outside and these 2 are literally fighting for their lives to love together again. the traces of what ed went through, what he's doing at the moment and what he's done in the past, are starkly called to focus, because all of this, everything i wrote above, this is ultimately all flowing in at the emotional conflux that is ed in this scene (and the following one). the show is about many things, it isn't even really only about a singular romance, and you can feel this here because all of stede is also there, and everything that he went through and everything that the crew went through. he bared his entire being and heart with the letter = the show is yelling at you that it is baring its entire soul to you rn.
ed's wet and stained from the sea, from going back to a brutal side of himself he chose absolutely freely this time, which indeed he has power over because he controls it, and not the other way around. he's clad in the leathers not because he's "working for blackbeard", but because he's killing those who mock and oppress himself, jobriath, stede. at long last, we see his face as it should've been all this time: no beard groomed to scare off others and live up to an illustration in a book. no charcoal to hide the lines of his face. no interruptions to the beauty he finds in being true and seeing the truth reflected to him. he realizes he's loved, in every aspect or form, with everything that that entails. can't have the violin without the piano. that's air on the g string.
(also look at how squiggly and messy stede's writing is, how many words are crossed out or blotched by ink...babes, they invented the romance genre, i'm afraid.)
no actually fuck keeping this in the tags i'm not done. djenkins in that one bof talking about how they closed the set for this, frontloaded by an infodump about how heat is one of the greatest yaoi classics of our time almost entirely against the movie's will (amen), and then barely being able to contain his excitement and glee as he recounts how nervous his 2 ken dolls were for the scene and reiterating how theater tricks the body into believing it's real (amen), is the EXACT same energy ppl (me) have when they go apeshitt about the blurring line between real and fake. like, he gets it, the way you get a disease. he has the disease (this is a compliment). he'd fucking LOVE ntbts can anybody hear m-
for the most part the german localization of the episode titles is ass bc it takes away a lot of the themes communicated in those titles (straight up erases the mermen in the last ep for example lol), but "möwe die macht mit dir sein" for "we gull way back" is kinda cooking
("möwe" (seagull) sounds kinda like "möge" (may); the sentence "möge die macht mir dir sein" is the german version of "may the force be with you" from sw so the title roughly translates to "may the seagull be with you")
it's tiiiiiiiiiiiime to be mentally ill about rhys' acting choices in the 1x09 kiss again because mama oooooooo that lil inhale he does right before he gets smooched is perhaps? among my favorite things? in the entire show? when he starts believing and his face does the ghibli bloom into genuine happiness for once? (and by the way....when this comes back later when ed says in s2 he only hangs out with cool pirates and stede is literally smiling....he's bound and about to be tortured and he's literally smiling..........leave me in this cellar to rot) it's such a small moment and it doesn't even really mean anything beyond "he genuinely, truly had no idea ed was gonna hit him with that earth-shattering 'you'" but it means the world to ME
This piece was made for the OFMD craft fair to benefit the American Immigration Council. It will be one of the later drops, likely available March 8th. https://fandomcraftmarket.carrd.co/
i really liked uproar (2023). it's not completely competently made and i wish it would've been slightly longer so it could've elaborated on some relationships and characters more (gimme the 4 hrs director's cut /hj), but i found that when i had finished watching i wasn't bothered by these things as much as i thought i would be. it's got several nice messages and the heart in the right place, and i enjoyed that above whatever nitpicks i had. driver is a mom, quite the complex character and she plays her expertly. dennison was very convincing as a young man trying to find his place in life. rolleston knocks it out of the park yet again, i'm really impressed by how versatile he is. and as a bonus you get rhys as a cute teacher who has a nice and wholesome relationship with the protagonist. what's not to love?
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