dimplyowl

[dimplyowl]

The notion that I see repeated about how Ed “should have loved” Izzy is honestly very concerning. Even if Izzy were the kindest, loveliest person in the world, no one is owed the love of another person. That’s incel rhetoric.

And Izzy, in his anger at not being loved as he “deserved,” abused and harmed both Ed and Stede. He’s an abuser, not a tragic victim of unrequited love.

[dimplyowl]

Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers MARVELous - A Risqué Parody

[dimplyowl]

Here's another thing: for a good bit of Season 1, Ed does not know if Stede returns his feelings. He obviously gets mixed signals, he's obviously confused by Stede's behavior. He saved Stede's life, but at NO POINT does Ed appear to believe that Stede owes him anything. In fact, when he starts to think that Stede doesn't return his feelings, and that he's getting in deeper, he decides that maybe now is the time to leave.

Ed doesn't own Stede. Stede doesn't owe Ed love, even though Ed has done a great deal for him. Ed knows this. He never tries to force Stede to love him.

Even to the point that he kisses Stede for the first time, Ed is waiting to be rejected. And there's never an indication that he will take this badly or violently. He will be sad, but he doesn't believe that Stede is leading him on or doing anything wrong. His heartbreak after Stede leaves him is because Stede said that they would go away together, and then doesn't show up. And even then, Ed is hurt and he has a right to be hurt, but he doesn't turn this into Stede owing him anything. At most, he's hurt because it seems like Stede lied to him.

This show goes out of its way to depict what a real loving and consensual relationship looks like. There's no possession, no desire to possess. At every point, they choose to be with each other. They value each other's personhood. They don't own each other; they love each other.

If you look at that, what the show is actually depicting, and think that Izzy's toxic and possessive "love for Ed" is the real and desirable kind, I'm honestly quite concerned.

[dimplyowl]

I wonder if Ed thought Izzy was testing him

We all remember Izzy basically saying “Be Blackbeard or I kill you”, right? Catalyst for the original toe thing we’ve litigated this to death. Izzy threatens his life.

So when he suddenly starts saying “can we talk it through?” it’s reasonable that Ed thought this was a litmus test. Was Blackbeard as back as he claimed to be, or were pieces of Stede’s Ed who wanted to throw a talent show still in there? If Izzy found them, would he follow through on his threat.

When Izzy mentions Stede’s name, Ed takes that as proof that Izzy’s seen through him. Knows that deep down he’s still the guy who fantasizes about marrying the love of his life and does arts and crafts with cake toppers.

So he eliminates the threat. Shoots him, appoints a new first mate who he thinks is loyal to him.

“No more booze, no more drugs, no more Izzy” was Ed committing to recovering, similar to episode 10. He was removing the threats to his mental and physical health from his life. Getting rid of Izzy would allow a fresh start.

Then the crew saves Izzy’s life. The man who had never been anything but a dick to them. They band together to keep him alive. From Ed’s perspective, they take his side. He’s got no one, they chose Izzy.

I don’t think “treacherous liar” was some random insult. Ed’s been betrayed again.

Is it any wonder he sails into the storm? He thinks he has no one. He thinks he’s unlovable.

[dimplyowl]

This poll uses "gay" as an umbrella term to include gay, lesbian, bi, pan, etc.

This poll is asking about orientation only, not transgender identity.

Anon is aroace and doesn't really consider themself to be gay or straight. They don't feel attraction to anybody and are still working through what it means for them to be aroace.

Obviously there's more to sexuality than just "gay or straight" but they are curious if others think of orientation as being a complete dichotomy (there are only two pools and everyone falls into one pool or the other) or as more of a spectrum.

–

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[dimplyowl]

Feb 4, 2025 - Thousands of Los Angeles high school students walked out of class and marched on the city capitol in third straight day of Anti-ICE protests. (Source)

PROTESTS ARE HAPPENING. THEY ARE JUST NOT BEING COVERED OUTSIDE OF LOCAL MEDIA OUTLETS. DO NOT RELY ON MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

There was a huge Trans-rights demonstration last night in New York outside of NYU Langone hospital in protest of their decision to halt gender-affirming care under Trump's order. (Source)

[dimplyowl]

As someone who has an MLIS and works in the field of taxonomy, this is a really bad decision. And as someone who’s a white person and has seen multiple poc talking about how weird it is to separate these two fandoms out, this is a really disturbing choice. I can see where the thinking is coming from, making it easier for fans to look for the specific Cap they want, but it doesn’t make sense when users can very easily do that simply by using character or movie tags.

If these were two different universes, obviously it would make sense to separate them. You already do that with MCU and Marvel Comics. But it doesn’t make sense to break up the same universe simply because it’s focused on a different character, and when you don’t do that for other fandoms.

For example, staying with Marvel, the most recent Spider-Man games (by Insomniac) are combined under one name, despite one of the games in the series (Spider-Man: Miles Morales) focusing entirely on Miles.

A particularly large fandom you don’t separate out by actor is Doctor Who. You have separate categories for the 2005 series and the 1963 series, but despite the fact that the Doctor is played by multiple actors during different times in the show with separate storylines, they are all contained within the umbrella of [Doctor Who (2005)] or [Doctor Who (1963)]. Users can then specify which eras they’re looking for with character tags. You could make the argument that since they’re all the same character, technically, they don’t need to be separated, but anyone who’s ever watched the show knows that there are distinct personality differences between the Doctors and aesthetic/style differences in the storylines.

It’s really strange to me, and many other people which you can see simply by skimming through the replies, that you feel the need to separate Steve Rogers Captain America and Sam Wilson Captain America, especially considering the race of each. These particular Caps are both part of the same storyline, the same universe, and in fact are intertwined in each other’s stories. What’s the need to separate them? Was this by request, or something you’ve decided to preemptively do? Why would you decide to break up a direct follow-up? Doctor Who fics are perfectly navigable by searching for characters, why would you treat another piece of media differently?

On Your Left! — Changes to Captain America Fandom Tags

Hello! In the near future, Marvel tag wranglers will be updating fandom tags on AO3 to separate the upcoming Captain America movies featuring Sam Wilson as Captain America from the trilogy of films with Steve Rogers as Captain America.

To do this, we will be renaming the fandom Captain America (Movies) to Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) and creating a new fandom named Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies). Both will be made subtags of Marvel Cinematic Universe and Captain America - All Media Types.

In summary:

Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) will refer to the 2011, 2014, and 2016 movies featuring Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, and Bucky Barnes. 

Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies) will refer to the 2025 movie Brave New World featuring Sam Wilson and Joaquín Torres. This fandom tag will also refer to any sequel Captain America movies starring Sam Wilson in the title role.

Fans interested in reading about both movie series can include both Marvel Cinematic Universe and Captain America - All Media Types in tag filtering. The current fandom tag for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV), which is a subtag of Marvel Cinematic Universe but not Captain America - All Media Types, will also be unaffected by these changes. We’ve included more details of our reasoning below, which better explains why we’re making this change.

Why are you making two separate fandom tags? Can’t everyone just keep using “Captain America (Movies)”?

Despite both having the superhero name “Captain America” and the same continuity, fundamentally the main character has changed between the original trilogy and the new 2025 movie. We also wanted to hopefully make it easier for fans to differentiate between which movies and continuities they’re discussing. Many Sam Wilson fans will likely want to filter for the movie where he’s the central focus; conversely, many Steve Rogers fans will likely want to filter out movies where he doesn’t appear. 

We’re specifically using “Chris Evans” and “Anthony Mackie” in the fandom tags as they’re the most recognizable and consistent aspect of the movies. There’s no consistent set of directors between all Chris Evans Captain America movies, and actor names are much more recognizable than including multiple years in the fandom tags. This style of making fandom tags named after actors is similar to other fandoms on AO3. For example, there are many James Bond movie fandom tags which differentiate via the actors’ names. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is also not the only time Captain America has been adapted to the big screen: there’s a 1944 movie starring Dick Purnell, a 1979 movie starring Reb Brown, and a 1990 movie starring Mat Salinger. The current fandom tag Captain America (Movies) is worded in a way that technically encompasses these unrelated movies as well. It doesn’t make sense for these unrelated continuities to share one fandom tag, so we would have changed the existing Captain America (Movies) tag to be more specific regardless of the release of Brave New World. 

Like we mentioned above, fans interested in reading about both MCU movie series at once can filter for both Marvel Cinematic Universe and Captain America - All Media Types.

Why Mackie Movies instead of Brave New World?

The movie title has already changed several times in between promotion and release. It’s also highly likely Marvel will make sequel movies. Formatting the tag as Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies) prevents the disruption of renaming the fandom tag in the future. 

We will be creating an Additional Tag for Captain America: Brave New World, similar to how there are Additional Tags for Movie: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Movie: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). We hope the Additional Tag will help fans filter for specific movies within the broader series of movies.

Why does Brave New World get a separate fandom tag while First Avenger, Winter Soldier, and Civil War would still share? 

Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Captain America: Civil War all encompass the trilogy centering around Steve Rogers. While Captain America: Brave New World is also set in the same continuity, the main character and actor has changed, and the role of Sam Wilson has changed from being a supporting character to the main focus.

It’s likely that Marvel will release sequel movies to Brave New World, which will not receive separate fandom tags and would instead also be covered by the new Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies) tag. We hope that separating the fandom tags now will prevent the messiness of renaming tags again in the future, and also allow fans to filter for works that focus on the specific Captain America they are looking for. 

(From time to time, ao3org posts announcements of recent or upcoming wrangling changes on behalf of the Tag Wrangling Committee.)

[dimplyowl]

There's something that's been sticking with me about Izzy's insistence that he "manages" Ed for the past two years, something that's always landed a little sideways for me, and I've finally nailed down what it is.

Of course, even on a surface level, this insistence is bullshit. It's nonsense. Izzy acts like Ed should be grateful to him for "managing" him, as if Ed is a large stupid toddler who is not perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Izzy doesn't even do what he claims to do, besides - he goes around blaming anything the crew doesn't like on Ed, and it's clear from how he talks to Ed throughout the show that what he's actually doing is trying to force Ed's emotions to fit what Izzy wants.

And here's the thing - it's backwards. Izzy acts like he deserves gratitude for "managing" Ed, and it's entirely the other way around. The biggest part of captaining that we see Ed do by the time he joins the show is managing Izzy.

We see Ed having to convince Izzy to just follow his orders in his very first scene. He has to tease out information, later, as Izzy is just straight-up lying to him (how well Ed understands that Izzy is full of bullshit is up for debate; he's got no other frame of reference so my take is he probably doesn't realize just how fully Izzy tries to control narratives Ed isn't there for). Izzy acts entitled to Ed's emotions and time and is prone to nagging and throwing tantrums when he doesn't understand what Ed is trying to get at - he assumes that Ed is just dicking around at the start of s1e4, even though talking about clouds should be a pretty obvious lead into something for any sailor, and Ed spends a large chunk of the episode trying to placate Izzy. He's always having to worry about Izzy's feelings, Izzy's reactions, the harm Izzy might cause if he gets upset.

And it's just another way that Ed is recreating his trauma with his father, isn't it? Just another angry white man who Ed needs to manage?

It's honestly pretty fucking brilliant how OFMD turns your expectations on their head here. Our media landscape has conditioned us to genuinely expect a dynamic with a brown man and an angry white man behind the scenes who actually controls everything, and OFMD gives us the exact opposite.

[dimplyowl]

who wants to see a deeply cursed item that I need with every fibre of my terrible and sticky being

[dimplyowl]

(This has been in my drafts for over a month [<- written in the summer of 2022 lol], let's just finish chewing this thing ...)

Part of the reason I'm obsessed with Our Flag Means Death is the magic of hyperfixation, but there's also something about it that just ... certain scenes, certain gifs, I see them and I absolutely melt. And I'm no stranger to romantic media, especially historical romance, so I had to ask myself why this, so much?

And I think the thing that really gets me about the romance in OFMD is that it's so entirely different from mainstream het romance (and again, especially historical romance) and that mainstream het romance is so often lazily written.

How often do you go to read/watch something where the protagonist and love interest immediately have a positive rapport, understand each other, smile at each other, admire each other, have fun together? And in contrast, how often is the love interest marked out by having immediate hostility with the protagonist, sniping, irrational disagreement, disapproval?

I watch Sanditon and Bridgerton mainly just to be aware of what's going on in them, because like it or not I'm kind of a Regency historian of sorts, but I can't really stand them. In the first season of Sanditon, the heroine, Charlotte was presented with two potential love interests, Sidney Parker and James Stringer. The former was the classic "we act like we hate each other because of our sexual tension," the latter was really adorable and full of smiles and care for each other. And ... Charlotte barely seemed to realize that Stringer was a real possibility, all narrative heft was given to her plotline with Sidney and of course they turned out to be in love. Then the second season rolled this back and brought in two new love interests, again with one having a positive relationship with her and the other constantly arguing and criticizing; the apparently positive one turns out to be a creepy Wickham while the one she initially dislikes turns out to be a good Darcy with manpain to deal with. (Same thing with her sister's love triangle.)

And there are loads of other examples where a potential love interest who is immediately pleasant turns out to be deceptive/meh while a potential love interest who spurs fights is endgame. Basically, this is because you need some kind of obstacle to stop the characters from getting together immediately. In historical romance written in the present day, social class and money aren't acceptable obstacles unless there's a pressing need for them written in (hence the prevalence of "father gambled away our fortune and you must marry well, my dear, to save us from the poorhouse" plots), and "we met in an awkward way and will not get over it" works, narratively, as an obstacle.

In contrast, what goes on in OFMD s1 is so much more complex - the characters liking each other but having internal reasons not to recognize their feelings or act on them gives more room for showing why they actually are good together.

[dimplyowl]

me when other people tag me in things: this person??? thought about me???? i'm so flattered??????? 🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕

me when i consider tagging someone in a post: i am annoying!!!! i am overstepping every single boundary!!!! i am making an absolute fool out of myself!!!!!!

[dimplyowl]

I've been wanting to do a poll like this for AGES, thanks to @dracothelizard for inspiring me to finally do it (and go take their poll too!)

Keep in mind with this poll nobody needs to have a dick or even be human. When I say prefer I really mean it, so like, if your favorite is mostly bottom stede but he tops on special occasions, that's bottom stede.

To be very clear, this isn't about meta, this is about porn

Optional bonus in the tags (because it's super personal) what did you pick and what's your own preference when you're fuckin.

Basically I'm curious how closely our smut preferences align to what we actually like. Why? Thanks for asking it's because I'm

deeply unsure of my sexuality

[dimplyowl]

New Rhys Darby's selfie for OFMD S2 archive!

[dimplyowl]

So many brilliant background characters in OFMD, but the two who always get me are the “fucking racists” guy who ABSOLUTELY has a massive crush on Olu (gotta respect that) and just has the absolute best comic timing and facial expressions (also he’s hot and wears a loin cloth, don’t judge me, but YUM)

And the other is King George (and his gay little scribe) He’s has, like, two minutes of screen time, but he OWNS the scenes and is just so detestably funny, his mannerisms, his voice, snorting coke off his fingernail. I always forget about him, but then he makes me chuckle every time.