#Alma Bonnet

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

This little flashback scene from the Pilot continues to haunt me.

Stede’s separated from his family physically reflecting his feelings of isolation, but I also think there’s a further psychological theme here. It’s a play within a play, and Stede is the audience. He’s watching a version of childhood which he never received.

Mary is a nurturing mother. She is interested in her children’s opinions. She asks questions, listens to their answers, and validates their responses. Children’s worlds are different to adults’, so discussing a favourite horse might seem trivial, but to a child it’s important, pitched at their level. Mary understands this and engages appropriately.

Alma’s response is a lovely one. She likes Halifax best because he’s ‘very pretty and very fast’.

Mary validates Alma’s response, but Stede doesn’t or can’t do this. It’s not that a parent shouldn’t offer their opinion here on a favourite animal, but it’s how Stede does it. He interjects in a way that interrupts Mary and almost overrides Alma’s answer. In fact, the way he just shouts out, is more in keeping with how Louis might respond, agewise.

I think there’s two things going on here. Stede never had this kind of parenting, it’s never been modelled to him. No one ever sat around a dinner table when he was a boy and asked him his favourite animals. Nobody asked Stede his opinion on anything. So when he sees his own children being nurtured, the broken child within him jumps in awkwardly with his own response. It’s an arrested development as well as possibly being linked to neurodivergence.

The second interesting thing is his answer. Stede perceives himself not to possess the qualities of being ‘pretty’ (good-looking) or ‘fast’ (athletic), but I think he knows he is ‘kind’, or has the potential to be. And so his favourite animal displays those qualities or is projected to have them. It’s an attempt at self-validation. But further, it’s what Stede is looking for too. He is yearning for kindness in life. His blurting out is a cry for help. And so a fun conversation becomes all about Stede’s trauma.

The family stare at him, not so much because of the answer, but because it is such a gut response, out of sync with the tone and power dynamics of the conversation, with Stede aligning with the children. Stede, as many broken people do, has moved the conversation away from his own children and onto himself and his unmet needs. Not because he’s selfish, but because he’s hurting and traumatised.

Mary doesn’t know what to do; so after a stare of contempt and confusion, she ignores Stede, and redirects back to the children with a conversation about favourite pigs.

And Stede’s just left hanging. A still broken child. A stranger in his own life.

Link to how Stede wins at life in the end

[kiwistede]

OFMDWEEK2023 - Day 3: Recurrent themes/symbols - The Petrified Orange -

[41protons]

Alma and Izzy’s Sword-Fighting Lesson

They’re having fun my liege, I swear. Pay no attention that one of them is a blood-thirsty pirate and the other one is a tweenage girl

You can find me on Patreon!

[smudgeandfrank]

Mary, Alma, and Louis kitties are a happy lil’ fluffy family (without Stede kitty present)! 💖🐈‍⬛✨ The kittens have adjusted to their father’s absence far better than expected, and Mary cat has started her painting career! She knocks over paint and walks through it. 🎨🐈‍⬛✨

[magniloquent-raven]

this is how i cope with waiting on s2

✨here be memes✨

[sherlockig]

[milkovichy]

stepdad Ed truthers, rise up

[saltpepperbeard]

Stede + His Babies

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

one thing about me is that i do enjoy a good Dad Stede fic or fics where stede’s kids (and mary and doug) are important figures in his life and he has a great relationship with them, i like reading abt stede trying so hard to be a good dad

but at the same time i do not consider this to be stede’s canonical characterization. canon stede is an incredibly subpar dad to his biological children. not only does stede not know how to interact with said biological children when he’s not sharing his interests with them but also it has never once occurred to him that he should do other stuff with them. stede probably doesn’t even realize it’s possible to do anything with his kids aside from play pirates. he also does NOT have the emotional maturity necessary to handle when a toddler is throwing a tantrum, and thank fucking god he got out of there before they reached their teens. in s1 he mostly felt guilty for leaving them bc he did it in the middle of the night without saying goodbye but also because he still felt tied to the social obligations enforced on him by society. he still felt like he had a responsibility to be a Socially Acceptable Man, which includes being a husband and a dad, even tho trying to be a socially acceptable man made him fucking miserable. when he realizes at the end of the season that his kids and his wife are legitimately better off without him he leaves again without looking back.

and mark my fucking words he is never seeing those kids again. he said “two messed up kids, probably” so he’s at least somewhat aware that running out on his kids like that will most likely cause lasting psychological damage, but by god his children’s abandonment issues are not his problem. doug and mary can worry about that, he left them plenty of money to afford ye olde therapy if they need it down the line. and louis might’ve said “who are you, again?” but the truth is that stede only knew louis was his son bc he was sitting for breakfast inside stede’s house. that man could not pick his kids out of a lineup if his life depended on it. to quote @jaskierx, stede said “two messed up kids, probably” as in “my kids are messed up. and i think there were two of them”

[ask-louis-bonnet]

i know a lot of people are really sad right now, so i’m gonna share some moments from the inn visit that i forgot to share.

i saw mom and stede sitting outside talking about something important. i dunno what they were saying but it looked really pretty so i drew it.

here’s wolf and stede the 16th.

sorry i stacked them. but it might make you smile.

here’s alma fighting off the ghost from our closet. that may sound bad, but sir unicorn seemed like he was actually having fun.

here’s alma cheating winning at cards. Doug was laughing.

and finally, me. the reigning champion of stede-stack.

i have more moments that i can share so feel free to ask me about them.

I hope this cheered you guys up a little,

And remember, art has always been something that keeps on growing. Even as we lose moments together, we gain a new path to make more. bouncing ideas and growing closer to ourselves, our community and our species as a human by creating and coming together. making art, no matter how much we have to sacrifice, will always be worth it.

… idk what that has to do with anything, and idk why i said all of that, but it’s true.

[girlbossblackbeard]

new headcanon: in episode 10 alma ripped that petrified orange in half with her bare hands

[choco-cherry-chunk]

Had a dream about this and I’m adapting it to fit. Thinking about if Alma and Louis were brought on board the Revenge for whatever reason (I doubt there are any Mary haters in the fandom, but if there are, I’m not engaging). They come to adapt to the pirate lifestyle to a degree, coming to care for and connect to the various members of the crew. But especially Izzy, mainly because he’s one of the few that engages in some degree of “normal parenting”.

To some degree, the usual Steddyhands trio has been together for a bit, but communication is still as mediocre as ever. Izzy thinks he’s mostly there as someone to have sex with and he is fine enough with that, because it means he’s close to Ed and Stede. Ed is maybe throwing himself too deeply into things, struggling against the fear of being hurt again and the desire for love he’s never known before. Stede is scared of repeating his past failures and of falling into too familiar of a domestic state.

At some point - because this is one of my ideas - Izzy gets pregnant, but says nothing about it. Maybe he’s convinced it’s not going to keep, maybe he struggles to figure out how to tell them. But he is. When he finally settles on an evening to build up the reserve to tell Ed and Stede, he heads up on deck to talk to them, only to find the pair alone in the moonlight. Ed is in the middle of some speech, so Izzy tucks himself behind a mast. He listens to Ed wax poetic about Stede and their time together, and peeks out just in time to see Ed get down on his bad knee and bring out a ring he’d stolen from a previous raid.

It’s like he’s been cut open, reached inside of, and had his heart smashed with a mallet. Izzy clamps a hand over his own mouth and does his best to move quickly and quietly back to his quarters. So much so that he’s oblivious to who’s just seen him hurt away. Two children who snuck on deck to see what was happening and, oblivious to the stakes, wished to eagerly tell Izzy what they saw. So why is he hurrying away like that?

[madstheintrovert]

Ok so ao3 has fully convinced me Izzy is not dead at this point. Why you may ask. Let me enumerate.

1) Ed in the gravy basket. If Ed can survive a cannon ball to the head, Izzy can survive a shot to the gut. Izzy is a indestructible little fucker and he will dig himself out of that shallow ass dirt grave and scare the bejeezus out of Stede

2) Buttons sitting on his grave in seagull form. Buttons will screech his head off until someone comes and checks that shit out.

3) if Izzy does not emerge from this grave, he will show up as a fucking ghost giving wise advice and telling ppl to fuck off in stride

4) someone wrote a fic where the crew digs Izzy up and replaced him with a corpse (because yeah they’ve got those on hand) and bring Iz back to the ship to heal him and just yeah. Break that connection between Izzy and Ed, give Izzy a new start.

5) I also saw a fic where Izzy in ghost form talk to Al (trans masc Alma Bonnet) and did not know I would be so down for that but fuck yeah.

6) also at this point I am down to clown with Stede x Ed x Izzy. And man ppl are so talented at writing fanfic.

Thank you for listening to my Ted talk.

[smudgeandfrank]

AVAST, YE!! New Our Flag Means Death long cat vinyl stickers have arrived!! 🖤🐈‍⬛✨️ Get your favorite S1 and S2 kitties through the link below! And, if you buy the full set, you will receive a FREE set exclusive cat sticker! 🖤🐈‍⬛✨️

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[sherlockig]

(x)

[paleoleigh]

Thinking about Stede building the Revenge for him and his family. How he knew he was unhappy and so was Mary and probably so were the kids, but his first thought/plan A was for them all to go live at sea together instead of running away himself. A stupid plan based on a self-centered idea of what might make things better? Absolutely, he clearly had a monkey playing symbols in his brain listening to Mary talk about her hatred of the ocean. But he built the Revenge as a home for his family, with a room for the kids (Jim and Olu's room?) and a library which contained children's stories and secret passageways for fun, for playing games.

Having listened to a lot of true crime podcasts with shitty-father villains, it strikes me how the idea that Stede could have just taken the kids is literally never touched on. Yeah, he probably knew he couldn't take care of them on his own, maybe didn't want to (we only really see him interacting with them by playing pirates), but Alma and Louis remain the only people Stede has canonically said the words "I love you" to (yes yes he loves Ed he was about to say it to him in s2e4 and switched tactics, but putting them in a similar category with Ed is pretty telling imo). Like...it probably never once occurred to Stede that another man might have taken the kids with him to spite his ex or to live their happy life of playing pirates on the high seas. Mary said I don't want a boat, I don't hate our lives, and Stede went welp, guess I'm on my own then.

There's a lot that can be said about Stede as a distant father who abandoned his family. I'm not saying he's the bastion of perfect fatherhood. But he's so clearly torn up about leaving them because he knows, morally, that was wrong, and even after he sets things right, he still talks about them ("two messed up kids probably/ didn't fit in with Mary and the kids") which tbh, I thought we were never gonna mention the Bonnet family again after s1e10.

Idk. I think Stede loves his kids as best he can for someone who probably never wanted them, and ultimately helped them out in the long run by not having them have to grow up in a miserable household with unhappy parents and an emotionally distant father who simply couldn't do better than playing games with them.

Also, thinking about how a lot of OFMD is thematic rather than verbally explicit...I think it's incredibly telling how upset Alma was when Stede came back, and that she wanted split the orange so they would still be connected no matter how far apart they were. That in a show with pretty heavy-handed symbolism of physically/emotionally abusive fathers and cycles, the kids are never, ever shown to be afraid of Stede, that when they play together they're all happy, that Stede says he loves them even though they were asleep and didn't hear it, and that the one time they physically touch, it's Alma reaching out to tug Stede's hair in a playful way, and he responds in kind. That Stede breaks the cycle of emotionally distant and abusive fathers by A. Not belittling them ever and B. Leaving when he realized his presence was making things worse.

Tl;dr Stede Bonnet is objectively a bad dad, but he still loves his kids.