#I just think there's different qualities to the 'What?' with which Ed answers Lucius' 'OMG this is happening!' & the one Stede says

[adickaboutspoons]

The thing with Mother Teach is that it's SO interesting & layered, because it IS her trying to temper his expectations as a way of protecting him from a society that WILL punish a brown boy for aspiring above his "God-sanctioned station" in life, but that doesn't mean that it's not abusive. She is perpetuating the religious abuse inflicted upon her by unquestioningly accepting her assigned-by-providence caste & indoctrinating her son to believe the same. Yes, things sure do SEEM unfair, but we aren't allowed to question it, because the people in charge of disseminating the Word of God (who almost certainly also happen to be white & part of the colonial power structure) said it's right, & therefore we just have to accept that we're wrong to suppose it's not. It's using religion as a cudgel to keep people in their place, & discourage both social mobility & reasonable questioning of the status quo (&, considering that we know that Grown Ed HAS accrued the wealth his mother claimed was not for people like them & yet is still barred from the social position that should accompany it, the show gives us a beautifully subtle critique of this iteration of what is essentially the prosperity gospel). I just feel like fandom would do well to come to terms with the fact that a parent can do their very best, try to protect their child, & still be abusive. (I'm going to go a little further & throw Nana under the religious abuse bus & say her portrayal, & Ed's mom, present a more nuanced & realistic take on the abuser than the unrelenting monsters that were Ed & Stede's dads. They're complicated; loving & supportive (as long as you're Acting Correctly), often coming across to outsiders as likable & sympathetic, thus it's not immediately obvious what total shitstains they also are & what devastation they have wreaked upon their child's sense of self-worth). In re: point 3, the princessification babygirlifying of Ed has long troubled me, because it sands away &/or ignores the less acceptable parts of his personality in order to make him sufficiently demure to be palatable. Yes, he fancies a fine fabric, but he ALSO enjoys a good maim. He was visibly excited about the prospect of hobnobbing with posh knobs, but also clearly had a blast with Calico Jack's macho bullshit. It's not an either-or prospect. Focusing on one to the exclusion of the other is detrimental to the complexity & depth of his character (I'm looking at you, DJenks, & your "Ed is a soft uwu baby who can't be arsed to do any of the hard work it takes to actually run an inn" fic. While we're on the topic, I don't love how babygirlifying Ed not only perpetuates racist ideas that a MOC needs to be made completely nonthreatening to be lovable, but the princessification also perpetuates racist stereotypes of lazy POC who need a Strong (White) Hand to keep them in line). I also don't love the "Ed wearing the depression robe/painting himself as a bride is canon confirmation of his preferred gender presentation/he is canonically trans" take. Quite aside from the insipidity of the position that Ed painting himself as a bride = Ed literally wants to be a bride (OP's Doylist breakdown above is god-tier, but even from a Watsonian perspective, it's not like he had another groom doll to paint. FFS, did you expect him to whittle it down until his dolly had trousers too?), the idea that Ed wearing the depression robe is him dabbling in feminine presentation is troubling. Multiple times in S1 Stede is called a woman when he's wearing his robes, & we're ALWAYS meant to understand the person saying it was 1) wrong, & 2) a fucking bully gatekeeping the standard of masculinity. So if Stede can wear the exact same robe & we're still meant to understand him as Sufficiently Masculine, why would we be meant to understand Ed as Feminine? Are you not aligning yourself with the asshole bullies who derided Stede by thinking as much? What is different about Ed that makes him in the robe Feminine?

an incomplete list of terrible but extremely popular Our Flag Means Death takes that I would like to never see again please

(and I do mean popular, as in, lots of people seem to think they're canon, to the point where I feel slightly insane and like I was watching a different show to everyone else)

1. Ed's mum was loving and nice and supportive, if hampered by her bad situation

this comes up more in fic than analysis, to be fair, but good god, what show were some of you watching? this isn't to vilify her, because yeah, she's clearly a product of colonialism, white christian supremacy, and domestic abuse, but like. that doesn't make how she raised Ed good. clearly she was trying to keep him safe, but "we don't deserve nice things", and especially "it's not up to us, it's up to god", speaks to me of someone who squashes down any ambition on her son's part, has fully bought into the lies of christian colonialism, and tries to pass them down to her son.

as does happen in colonised communities, particularly among older generations. I know us white people like to think that every indigenous person is a perfect left-wing anti-imperial activist, but that's simply not the case, and Ed's mum is so clearly an example of an older conservative christian indigenous parent who had to believe the lies told by their coloniser in order to survive, but is now passing on that trauma to their children. and I just...

if I read one more fic where Ed's mum is a perfect loving supportive angel who always believed in her kid and always supported and protected him, I'm gonna scream. yes, it's sweet, and it's fun to sometimes veer from canon and give your blorbo nice things, but it's still veering from canon. and yet, I see very few people acknowledge that, or actually talk about the nuances of Ed's mother, and how she definitely tried to protect him, but was far from sweet, doting, and unconditionally supportive.

2. Ed's loving look when Stede is picking food from his beard in 1x07

like most of these things, I enjoyed it as a joke or exaggeration at first, until I realised that people were actually being serious. but every time I watch that scene, I see Ed looking absently-mindedly over Stede's shoulder, because a) that's what you do when someone leans in to pick something off you, and b) surely the point of the scene is that they're so comfortable and easy together that they don't notice the intimacy of what they're doing, but Lucius, an outside observer, thinks it's obvious. right?? I can't be the only one seeing it???

[sigh]

anyway. finally, the really really big one:

3. Ed is a soft uwu babygirl princess femme bottom sub who loves her cat collar and is teaching Stede how to dom him in the "say you're the captain" scene

I mean, there's not much to say except to link to duke's absolutely phenomenal twitter thread about "how the 'babygirlfication' and infantilization of ofmd ed teach is an extension of racist perceptions of indigenous men being inherently violent and thus needing to be emasculated to be considered sympathetic"

but especially That One Fucking Scene, good lord. talk about taking shit out of context. everyone looked at a slowed-down gif of one shot in the trailer and cried "babygirl!! he's such a simp, he just wants to be dommed!!", when actually that scene is about how a) Stede is cringefail and terrible at being a typical harsh, commanding pirate, and b) Ed is lovingly embarrassed by this. he encourages Stede to assert himself (and give Ed something to do during his probation/help him make amends with the crew), but like. normally. he's acting perfectly normal in that scene, and mostly annoyed by the outfit and embarrassed by how badly Stede fails. but just because he's sitting down while Stede is standing, and he happens to take a breath in that one shot (because, you know, people breathe sometimes), everyone's doubled down on their "submissive babygirl" bullshit, and I can't get the fuck away from it.

which - listen, it's fun for me, too! it's fun to explore exaggerated aspects of a character, it's fun to read/write/draw that angle in smut, I get it! but I keep seeing people keep claim it's literally canon, and I cannot stress enough that that is Straight Up False. for the love of god, please just watch the show without your (potentially kinda racist) bias glasses on, and remember to treat the characters with respect instead of projecting onto their every interaction a shallow dom/sub binary just because you find it hot.

Our Flag is a show very specifically about masculinity, and what it means to be a man; how assumptions about that can harm and restrict men; and how men can grow beyond them. it's a nuanced and sympathetic examination of this. the whole point is that Ed is allowed to like nice fabrics and be tired of violent piracy and still be a man. the point is that two men fall in love - equal, honest, sincere love - and are still men, still exactly who they are.

(on that note, insisting that Ed is canonically trans or femme because of these things often ends up just leaning into gendered stereotypes: men are harsh and active and dominant, and women are soft and passive and submissive, and if Ed's not the former, he must be the latter, right? it also tends to hetero-ify the central relationship, casting Stede as "the boy" and Ed as "the girl", needing one to be masc and one femme. not always, and again, I understand and have enjoyed transformative works that take those elements and run with them, and explore what the story could be like if Ed were trans/nb/etc - but it's still a transformative interpretation. it's not canon.)

relatedly: those fucking wedding toppers! it seemed blatantly obvious to me that half the point of those scenes was that Ed is distraught and blaming himself for Stede leaving because he wasn't the ideal partner. it's his entire arc for the first half of season 2! Ed hates himself and believes there's something wrong about him that makes him unlovable. so he keeps and then discards the wedding toppers, painting himself onto one of them, because he's projecting himself onto an image of ideal/successful romantic love that he thinks Stede wants, and in which he doesn't fit. he's trying to mould himself into someone else to make himself lovable, not realising that Stede already loves him for himself.

so it's important to the whole narrative that Ed's yearning for/projection onto the wedding toppers is false, and born from his insecurity. he gets drunk, and play-acts a stereotypical image of romantic happiness into which he doesn't fit, but real love looks nothing like that, because real love isn't found in stifling hegemonic cultural structures, but honest, emotional connections between people allowed to be their whole, vulnerable selves. Stede is not like the groom, and Ed is not like the bride, because they shouldn't have to be. Ed should not (and does not) have to warp himself into a demure bride in order to be worthy of love: he's already lovable and loved exactly as he is! that's the point!! of the scene!!!!!!

like, it's important that the groom figure isn't actually like Stede, either. yes, it's blond and has a nice, peach-coloured suit, but a) Stede was very specifically unhappy in the posh, heterosexual, married state the figures represent, and b) Stede by this point looks nothing like that figurine. it's directly contrasted with the image of him in the rowboat, scruffy and plain and earnestly in love, rather than fancy, cold ceramic.

[EDIT 29/12/24: I ended up writing a whole Twitter essay about the wedding cake toppers that I then gussied up for Tumblr; so if you want a clearer, more substantial, and better supported argument about those, check that out!]

but no, I have to wade through swathes of art and fic and meta about how badly Ed wants to be a sweet little demure kitty princess, how he wants a wedding night and a ring to prove he's Stede's property, and acting as if this is somehow canon, because people on the internet have zero reading comprehension and are scared of brown men.

the whole point of Our Flag is that you don't need to compress yourself into prescribed social roles, and in fact, doing so will only make you miserable; and that racist, patriarchal, colonial institutions should be resisted and dismantled at every opportunity.

so tell me again why the ultimate message is that Ed and Stede should get married under an arch in front of an altar and their lined-up friends, with flowers and rice falling around them, all dressed in white, one in a suit and one in a dress, with rings and a kiss and a honeymoon after, before they move into a detached house with a yard and a fence and re-adopt the kids that Stede abandoned? and this isn't about promises, fidelity, or even monogamy - I'm specifically talking about everyone in this fandom who seems to think that the ultimate goal is the most stereotypical 20th century cisheteropatriarchal christian wedding, but with the name "matelotage" slapped on top, as if that takes away all of the underlying baggage.

just - I know we're all meant to hate men and masculinity and yadda yadda yadda, but actually, to be earnest for a second, men deserve respect too, because all people and all genders do. and two men are allowed to be in a relationship and still both be men - complex men, with their own, layered relationships to their gender - without having to fall into neatly-arranged dom/sub masc/femme roles, or seal the deal with a hegemonically-approved ceremony.

so please, stop reducing an indigenous lead character to a caricature of a femme uwu princess bottom just because he has long hair, wore a robe once, and you're too scared of brown men to imagine him with proper agency. and then please, for the love of god, stop claiming that that interpretation is canon.