#Ofmd said yes the men are the main characters but you also get to have cool/insane/badass women! who most of them get to have love!

[crownspeaksblog]

I love the women of our flag means death!!

Mary: starting with the og! Got left by her piece of shit husband and just turned around and made a fantastic life for herself. Become a famous painter with a cool ass name, the widow bonnet! Found love. Was gonna kill stede for ruining her life (I love him, i didn't want him to die.. but also fair enough!)

Mary's eyepatch friend: wears an eyepatch. Owns a leopard. "Murder's a natural cause". (What else do you need!)

Spanish Jackie: business woman. Wooden hand. 20 husbands. Looks badass in a red suit and a gold sleeping gown!! Poison trained herself and her husbands. Abandoned 19 of husbands and joined the revenge with her 20th husband who gives great massages! "Let's go husbands"

Zheng: pirate queen. Conquered china. Can kill someone by hitting pressure points on their body. Can hold off like 10 English soldiers on her own! Also has an adorable hair style and turns into a shy, giggling teenager around the soft, sweet guy she likes! (Good for her!)

Auntie: can see what happened at a certain place, using vibes and taste only. Learned there's nothing wrong with being soft. Told her kid, she's proud of her!

Archie: She's wild! Was in a snake cult! (some people don't like that she just showed up and became a part of the crew.. I however love that! More wild women!)

Anne and Mary: insane sapphic pirates (duh!) Mary has axe on her, poisoned her wife (affectionate). Anne wore someones face to save mary. Burned down her antique shop that's probably been her life for years, just because she loves mary and wants to be happy, in love and go on adventures with her. Stabbed her wife (affectionate).

Hellkat Maggie: wears a noose around her neck. Has a beautiful name! (I want her to join the crew!)

Antoinette: she realized it's disgusting that her husband is her brother.. (we love character development!)

Olivia the seagull: avenged her husbands death by fucking with calico jack moments before he died (an absolute win in my book).

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/739381076510785536/so-it-seems-our-flag-means-death-has-not-been#notes

I liked OFMD and I'm sad it's not getting renewed, but I agree that the fandom was especially toxic, even by the standards of currently popular slash-heavy fandoms. I wanted to read fic after s1 ended the way it did, and I read a little bit, but along with it having all the tropes that I can't stand in a lot of what is currently big with the MSF crowd (and that I'd been happy to have a reprieve from in my current main M/M fandom), the toxicity of the online fandom discourse made me quickly realize it was one that I was going to discuss among my current-friends-from-other-fandoms who also watched it, and my sister who watches it, and pretty much ignore the rest of the Internet. It was such a perfect storm of everything awful, from people who are overly invested in it to an unhealthy degree (I think I realized I wasn't gonna be active in the larger fandom around a month or so before the s2 renewal announcement, when I saw earnest PSA tweets telling people to "stop threatening suicide in HBO's replies if they don't renew OFMD"), to bombarding and parasocial obsessions with the creators and actors, to all the classic "anti" and purity police crap that plagues anything that gets popular on here.

The fandom it reminds me the most of, honestly, is Yuri on Ice fandom at its peak in early-mid 2017. Again, a show I love, but a fandom I absolutely do not miss. In some ways they are kind of similar shows: ones with canon M/M romances where they were not billed as that, and they were hinted from early on but people didn't trust it due to years of dealing with queerbaiting, where that sort of thing slowly crept up on people and then became the defining feature of how it was discussed everywhere. I wonder if there's a particular level of insanity that that type of thing breeds in its fans - or maybe, more broadly, "canon M/M with a large female fanbase." Like, you don't see this kind of thing in canon M/M stuff that's mostly watched by queer men rather than women, but there are shades of the insanity I also remember from Glee fandom (I was more active on the F/F side of things there, which had its own unhinged drama, but the Klaine vs. anti-Klaine stuff was so explosive that it was hard not to notice it if you were anywhere in that fandom, like a mushroom cloud in the distance). But YOI and OFMD do seem very... singular in the particular kind of obsession that they generate.

And I really wish people would shape the fuck up, because if they're going to act like this over and over again, that's just going to de-incentivize showrunners to make shows like this for that audience.

Driving Con O'Neill off Twitter was one of the worst parts of it, too. There was something so refreshingly earnest about how much he embraced the fandom, even the weirdest parts - saying with regard to NSFW fanart that "art is art" and retweeting stuff like his character in a crop-top that said "babygirl." It was so nice to see an actor who didn't usually have that kind of following embrace it wholeheartedly rather than steering clear. ....And then people had to be awful and creepy and obsessive and he left Twitter. I bet he's going to be a lot more skeptical of dealing with fans in the future!

--

It's not just the canon m/m aspect: it's the wholesomeness.

Yes, yes, they're all evil pirates, I agree, but watching S1 did give me the feeling of something that was supposed to be very progressive and light-hearted in particular ways. I don't think that's bad, but it does tend to attract some very over-sensitive fans with some very rigid expectations.

It's sadly par for the course that one of the random side character actors is the fun one and people are jackasses and desperately want the leads they ship to be the fandomy ones and/or just start creeping on any actor they can get a reaction from.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

Hey! On your poll I was going back and forth between yes and secret third thing BECAUSE I do think Izzy displays homophobia in the show. However, I interpret the incident you referred to as mostly misogyny i.e. that "real men don't show feelings." I think the derogatory words and actions towards Lucius and Stede are way more homophobic, but they're connected for sure.

I think the emphasis on boyfriend is making fun of him for being emotional that a man he loves isn't there and he wanted to remind him that (to Ed's understanding) Stede didn't care enough.

Tldr - izzy is homophobic for reasons outside of this scene, but his gorilla grip on societal standards of men bleed into his view of queer men, especially those who aren't "masc" enough for him

anon my beloved i must apologize in advance bc i had a very weird and emotionally draining day today and i am very tired right now. so i don’t know that this is going to be coherent. but also i like this ask and i want to say words about it before that poll expires tomorrow so i’m just gonna slap some shit together here and hope it makes sense

so first thing’s first, i definitely agree that izzy does homophobia all over the show. the reason i picked out this scene and that line specifically is because imo “pining for his boyfriend” literally sounds like a dumb middle school boy bullying his classmates on the playground. which is to say that it sounds like the most simple-minded homophobic taunt in the world. like i always think abt this scene in the last season of the magnus archives when the main character and his boyfriend roll up to some dumb meathead bully type who goes “who’s this, your boyfriend?” and the whole fandom was like “wow i can’t believe this guy is homophobic.” bc even if the bully is literally correct and the guy is actually his boyfriend, saying “boyfriend” in that tone is saying “boyfriend” like it’s an insult. which, clearly, is homophobic.

so yeah mocking ed for the pining bit is kinda more on the “boys don’t cry” misogyny side of things like you said, but the way izzy tilts his head and draws out the first vowel in “booooyfriend” to me reads like the single most straightforward and undeniable instance of izzy being homophobic in the entire show. bc even if (and this is a big if) izzy doesn’t actually care abt ed having a boyfriend and is just trying to goad ed into being blackbeard again bc izzy needs blackbeard to feel safe, the way izzy is choosing to go about bullying ed into being blackbeard again is through grade school level homophobic taunting.

however you are not wrong that there is also misogyny going on in that scene. and that is because these things are all so deeply intertwined it’s impossible to say where one ends and where the other begins. and this is where i don’t think i’m going to be able to maintain coherency lol but i’m gonna do my best!!!

like the thing with homophobia is that at it’s core, it’s about men not doing gender right. bc gender roles in western society are a fucking shitshow and the expectations for how men and women are supposed to behave extend into every facet of people’s lives. like we all know the basic “boys don’t cry, women are caretakers, men are tough and macho, women are soft, men are hard, etc etc” stuff. but one of the biggest areas where society has strict expectations of how men and women should behave is about sexuality.

men are expected to be attracted to women, obviously. but also men are often expected to be overtly sexual. having a high sex drive is tied to many guys’s concept of their own masculinity and their sense of personal identity. like this should feel like common knowledge right, the idea that some guys build their identity around “getting bitches” or whatever?

(the societal expectations for women and sexuality are a whole other shitshow that people have written entire essays and articles and books on, but im not gonna get into that here bc we’re talking abt ofmd, and this show is focusing on challenging society’s ideas about what it means to be a man)

the other thing with gender roles, and with male gender roles specifically. is that of the two genders that western society has expectations for, manhood is seen as superior. so when a guy is unable to perform masculinity to society’s standards, he is seen as less than a man. and what’s less than a man?

a woman.

men who fail to adhere to a certain expectation of masculinity are insulted by being likened to women. it’s why guys will literally say “don’t be such a girl about it” when another guy gets emotional about something. hell, it happens to stede in the show!! calico jack calls him “the big gal,” the british describe him as “a heavyset woman in a silk dressing gown.” stede is someone whose gender presentation does not match what is expected of him At All, from his clothes to his crying to his picking flowers to just his mannerisms and how he is. and stede has faced constant ridicule because of this.

so like. it all gets real tangled together. and a lot of the time it’s hard to say which is “more” present, homophobia or misogyny. insulting a man by calling him gay, insulting a man by comparing him to a woman, those things go hand in hand. having a gorilla grip worldview on how men “should” behave leads people to policing how men, both cishet and queer, perform gender and experience attraction.

so like, izzy’s general vibe of not caring if ed has gay sex, but absolutely caring if ed bottoms during that sex and caring if ed actually falls in love and cares about a man? that concept of masculinity, which calico jack is also shown to adhere to? homophobic. just like how his treatment of stede and lucius for being “less masculine” is homophobic.

[chocolatepot]

do you think the extend of good storytelling is by how gay it is, and how much shipping fanart can be produced from it? and yes bonnet was a massive racist and slave owner this isn't news

a1) I said nothing about good storytelling. Someone in the notes on that post complained about OFMD getting the fandom and hype that Black Sails didn't; I pointed out that fun + queer joy = fannish engagement. It sounds like you should go berate them for caring about not getting Hamilton/Flint fanart!

a2) As someone who actively likes reading, watching, and writing romances, yes, I do think that fiction with well-written and well-acted romance is more appealing than fiction where that's a super minor note.

b1) It seems like you don't understand historical fiction? The real Stede Bonnet was a slaveholder. The character named Stede Bonnet written by David Jenkins & co. isn't. Having an issue with that isn't exactly baseless, but for moral consistency you have a LOT of other fiction to object to as well, so you should get on with that to make it clear that this has nothing to do with being mad about one pirate show being more widely loved than another.

b2) You probably shouldn't rest your "down with OFMD, up with Black Sails" rhetoric on moral grounds, because all the characters in Black Sails are also pirates, and the real people many of them were based on (such as Charles Vane, Blackbeard, etc.) were rapists and murderers. Even on the show itself, one of these has his men gang-rape a main character.

If you just hate OFMD, that's mystifying to me but totally valid. If you hate OFMD and want to seize on an objective reason to declare the show to be Objectively Immoral and all its fans to be Bad People, that's childish behavior and you should really put your energy into creating the kind of fic or art you want to see for Black Sails instead.

[atomicrebelomega]

Oh yeah, PREACH, please. This fandom is S H A L L O W as hell. I could argue that half of the point of the show is body diversity positivity (the cast is so! diverse! both racially and physically) and yet, the fandom has latched onto the conventionally attractive cast members and missed the point completely.

I don't think anyone in the show is "conventionally attractive" which is something I adore because at the same time they're not normal and standard yet attractive in their own ways??

For example: Black Pete (And his actor Matt Maher) are men with cleft lips and heavy lisps that can make understanding them kinda difficult (Matt mentions having surgery and speech therapy) and are downright handsome to me tbh but not the standard for how actors should look. Especially if they're in relationships.

Pete, in any other show, would be mocked/a comedic relief character based on his disability. In another one of Matt's more notable roles, he voices Wade in GTA V, his disability isnt mentioned at all but his speech is used to highlight that his character is uneducated and naive with an added accent that makes it clear he's "trailer trash". In OFMD, Black Pete's speech and scars are not mentioned either, but yet Pete being an idiot when it comes to women and their roles and idolizing Blackbeard, you can feel that his disability isn't being used to accentuate those details. When Pete mentions it's problematic for Jim lead the mutiny because they're mute, no one says that Pete has a lisp/is hard to understand like it possibly would be said in another comedy to reach for an easy extra "joke". And yes Pete is a comedic relief as is literally everyone at some point, but he's still half of one of the three main couples.

I do not know how to explain how rare and special it is that not only is a visibly disabled man in a relationship that shows them kissing and shows kinda offscreen sex with noone judging them or asking why Lucius, who is not visibly disabled, is with him, but that it is a gay relationship on top of that. As queer media is more popular now than ever, we rarely seen "average/normal" looking gay men. We get abs and perfect skin and teeth and unrealistic bodies. Black Pete is attractive and he could be any dude walking around town. What I love is he and Lucius look like a normal gay couple in both looks and action but thrown in 1717. I think that was the intent as well.

Now, can the "We don't own each other." line be read as poly? Sure. It can also be read as many other things such as:

Black Pete doesn't dictate what Lucius does, like nude sketches. We have no confirmation Fang and Lucius has sex. Nudity isn't inherently sexual AND Lucius did flirt just to get out of work. We also see even after they first get together, they give each other space and aren't glued to the hip immediately. Yeah they are close to each other in many scenes but they go off and do other shit with other characters and its so refreshing.

At the time, they are not officially together, so Lucius can sleep around. In the next episode Pete shows he truly cares for Lucius and gifts him the wooden finger. At this point they could have become officially but once again we have no confirmation so maybe they still aren't "together".

Lucius and Pete are in an open relationship but they are each other's primary partner. This is what many believe but keep in mind we have a vague line that is the only ammo to this idea.

I like all these ideas, but I'm worried about fanon getting so out of hand that anyone who doesn't believe in poly!Lucius is gonna be called out/treated as if they're anti-poly. Which honestly in the grand scheme of things who cares, but things get out of hand in fandoms unfortunately and we have already had slip ups.

One issue I have is the big influx of Izzy/Lucius shippers. I like all our ships, even find their dynamic compelling but definitely not a romantic one. I wouldn't give it a second thought if it wasn't for the fact that many in the fandom seem to favor Izzy and Lucius fucking/being together over Pete and Lucius. Even "poly!Lucius" supporters rarely give Pete a second thought. They don't even add Fang, who they argue Lucius slept with/is also seeing, into the mix. Its as if they want the toxic relationship with two "closer to able and pretty" characters to get together rather than the established couple where one is visibly disabled and actually healthy. It's irking me to see this and slap the label of polygamous over it as an excuse.

Anyway enough ranting, just wanted to put it out there because no one seems to mention this much but yeah I agree.

[malvolios-yellow-stockings]

Yeah, same. Because a lot of shows that queerbait the "main" relationship give us queer side-characters in a "see, you dumdums, this is your gay representation and you better be grateful for this 10 minutes of screentime per season character or alternatively, the main character's best friend who's safe to be gay because they're not a fan favourite" kind of way. When you're so used to, be it first-hand or second-hand (and by second-hand I mean hearing about the experiences of other mostly queer people who watched this show you haven't), being made fun of by the actual fucking text (something like BBC's Sherlock springs to mind) of the show, you just become extremely cautious.

And the thing is, shows like these still had a huge queer following because although the showrunners made fun of the queer pairings, if not in the text itself then in interviews, they also played into it just enough to make people believe something might just happen.

Fuck these shows man.

And then Our Flag Means Death waltzes in, guns blazing. I had the same experience as you did OP. I thought, okay, so Lucius... I like him a lot, he's confirmed to be gay, so that's it, right?

And then, OFMD says actually no! Because Lucius finds someone and gets into a relatively healthy relationship and that felt revolutionary enough.

And then, Jim happens. Now, I have (mostly) nothing against "grlboss in disguise" plots, but when Jim was asked whether they're a woman and they said something like Yes. I guess. I don't know. I knew something queer was afoot.

And that was enough! And then to see Jim being canonically non-binary and be in love with a guy? Damn, this show is amazing. And then the canonically gay character Lucius feels attracted to them? Nuance people, nuance.

So I was preparing myself to forgive the show for setting up something romantic between Ed and Stede and bailing on it last second. And I was maybe holding out for a vague enough confirmation in the form of a cast interview a few years later, after the last season airs or something (which seems so absolutely fucking insanse in hindsight, but proves how burnt by queerbait we've been). And then, again, OFMD just doesn't do that? But delivers a multilayered story of two traumatised older men who haven't fallen in love before fall in love?

And that's just the queer rep, there's also a lot of racial diversity (and how racism is dealt with should be discussed further), body diversity (and the fact that different body types can be desired), positive representations of masculinity and nontraditional masculinity...

Gah, this show kissed me on the forehead and provided me a full course meal. Cheers to season 2!

And I'm not saying OFMD is the only show ever, a lot of other shows featured revolutionary queer rep, but the difference is, OFMD is first in-demand and has dethroned so many hyped TV shows out there. And it's so rare, in my experience, to see a show skyrocket in popularity as much as OFMD has, after the first season aired. The popularity of it, even the critical acclaim, I guess, and the things I mentioned beforehand along with the sheer fandom/fanbase activity be it meta or art or something else, contribute to the show's "revolutionary" feel.

Starting ofmd I assumed blackbonnet was a queerbait but knew I'd love it anyway.

When Lucius stated that he is gay in episode two I thought he was the token gay (actually I thought so from the moment I saw him). I was just thrilled to have an openly have character.

Everything else... Holy shit I did not expect that.

It really underlines how used we are to being queerbaited. I hardly know how to enjoy this gem, when I don't have to read into hints and details to find the gay. How do we write fanfic, when the best tropes are already covered? How do you get lost in the could have been when everything just was?

I think queerbaiting has broken me a little

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

Jim/Olu and Lucius/Izzy for the ship asks

(I like to send one that’s cute and good and one that will fill my mutuals with rage)

jim/olu

do i ship it: fuck yes baby this is actually the first ofmd ship i wrote fic for!!! i have not uh. finished. the fic. but some day i plan to!! anyway yes love these two so so much

why i ship it: LOVE how olu says he's known jim for "over a year" (instead of like, the very ambiguous "years" we get for izzy and ed) so we know they've known each other for less than two years which is not actually a lot of time??? yet they still give this vibe of ride-or-die having each other's backs doing anything for each other besties. genuinely obsessed with the idea of olu, reliable steady and everyone's best friend, stumbling upon this weird quiet knife assassin who comes off really stoic and aloof but they actually just lack social skills, and then the assassin is like "i want to kill your boss's husband" and olu is like "i'll help you with that. i'll help you escape, too. i'll follow you anywhere i'll die for you" and then the two of them just. stick together forever. i also find it hilarious how olu is jim's voice of reason and i also find it so fucking sweet that he's the little spoon. 10/10 ship wouldn't change a thing.

canon potential: i mean they're. literally canon. can't imagine the show permanently breaking them up for any reason. the happy ending of the show is almost definitely gonna include these two being together

fanon interpretation/fandom around it: there is a depressing lack of tealoranges content. like it's to be expected of a canonical side pairing that isn't two skinny white men but there's like nothing. they're always together in the background of fics (also to be expected) but like, i want some more jim/olu centric fics (i do have like one or two in my Marked For Later list on ao3 but i dont have the time to rlly read anything longer than 10k rn fhjghfkj). there's a decent amount of fanart tho but obviously not as much as any of our Main Ships

lucius/izzy

do i ship it: ok so it's not a no. but it's not a very strong yes??? lucius/izzy is kind of the only izzy ship i can tolerate, i guess. im always wary of ships that have izzy x any person of color bc 9 times out of 10 the content is just "person of color decides to spend their time and energy rehabilitating a white man" and the focus is 100% on izzy getting treated nice and like, NO mention of how the character of color feels or why they'd even be interested in izzy in the first place. blackhands is only good when it's izzy crying alone while masturbating sadly. stizzy could be fun if you really dug into the way the two of them fucking hate each other and never actually change that dynamic but nobody does this. steddyhands same as the last one but now with the added bonus of people's racism really jumping out in every fic. and then i guess i could tolerate izzy x any other white character but i'd just be making it up bc he doesn't interact with any of them except lucius. so like by default yeah i guess i kinda ship lucius and izzy.

why i ship it or not: the tension is there the potential is there and it would be so so good for izzy if he realized sub ≠ masculine ≠ top. i think if i could ever manage to write any of the fics ideas i have i would be shoving these two together in the background all the time just so that izzy can be magically fixed by lucius's dick and i can resolve that conflict easy (i don't actually think it's in character for izzy to get topped by lucius once and turn into a like, friendly and likable person, but the idea of it is funny enough that i would write it into a fic if i ever fUCKING WROTE ANY FIC AAAAAAH-). now all that being said. at the end of the day i just don't like izzy enough to have any strong positive feelings abt this ship. i'd be happy seeing izzy become normal but i'd probably be just as happy (if not happier) seeing him get fed to some sharks so like. this one is fine i guess. lucius has established himself as being very emotionally intelligent and also down to talk some sense into other characters so i can see it.

canon potential: the potential is there but idk if they're gonna do it or just keep all of izzy's horny sub energy purely subtextual until he fucking dies the end. bc the tension is fucking real in the "have you ever been sketched?" scene but will they commit to it?? only time will tell. i think if they redeem him it'll probably happen tho.

fanon interpretation/fandom around it: fan content of this one is good actually. art is cute, the fics are cute, i've never seen anyone break lucius up with pete (or fang) to make it happen. i also haven't seen any izzy dom content for this ship which would be the biggest ooc offense of all time so i'm ok with everything i've been exposed to. i mean most of the PWPs have izzy give in really quick once lucius just directly asks him to fuck which seems a little ooc, but it's for PWP oneshots so like i get it they're not dragging this out into a 100k slowburn.

ask me about more ships im bored!