#calico jack from ofmd is not blond | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

theclaravoyant · 1 year ago

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AN ~ For @fictober-event’s Fictober 2023 prompt: “Don't worry, I got you.” Set during s2, written pre-airing, insp. by that one clip of Stede getting White Girl Wasted and also this art by @dirkidork Masterpost of my Fictober OFMD fics

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death Characters & Relationships: Edward Teach, Ed x Stede. Tags: Drunkenness/Hangover, reference to vomit.

Drunk

“Hey, Teach,” Jackie calls after him. “Don’t forget your man.”

She points at a table where Stede’s blonde curls shine like a beacon. Curse him, Ed can’t even bring himself to object to her calling him his man. It’s not like he hasn’t been staring all night - so sue him, it’s nice to see the man cut loose, alright? Still, he’s not sure whether to be more impressed or pissed off that Stede has apparently decided his current absence of Captaincy duties means it’s time to get absolutely dance-on-the-table, arm-wrestle-strangers, knock-down-drag-out sloshed. It would be much easier to be impressed, he’s sure, if it wasn’t him who had to do the de-knocking-out part.

He sighs, and nods his farewell to Jackie before going to collect his man.

As soon as he lays a hand on Stede’s shoulder, the blonde curls bounce as he throws his head back as if pretending he had never been resting his eyelids down there on the table at all.

“Ed!” he cries, delighted. He beams, and it’s definitely the alcohol and no other reason that his eyes seem bigger and shinier than usual as Ed scoops him onto his arm so that he can support him as they stagger out of the bar. Stede isn’t putting a great deal of effort into walking. He boops Ed firmly on the nose.

“Te ataahua koe.”

Ed snorts. He can’t help himself from smiling, if only a little bit, and tries to pretend his heart didn’t just skip a beat.

“Where’d you learn that one?”

“Mary taught me. Not my Mary. Your Mary. Anne’s Mary? Cali-” he hiccups- “Calico Fucking Jack’s Mary, apparently, did you know that?”

He launches into a tirade about Calico Jack that so screams I had the biggest crush on you that Ed almost wants to be sick. But equally, he’s hanging on every single god-damned word as he all but carries Stede down the street. Oh, he’s in deep on this one. He’s well and truly fucked.

Suddenly, Stede stumbles, and pulls them to a halt. The words die in his throat and instead he weakly croaks -

“Uh, Ed?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t feel so good.”

A classic. Ed barely has time to scoop them toward the nearest garden-bed before Stede can up-chuck his largely liquid dinner all over them both. He avoids most of the mess, and focuses on trying to hold Stede up somewhat, patting his back sympathetically while he wretches.

“Don’t worry, mate,” he promises. “I’ve got you.”

#blackbonnet #gentlebeard #ofmd #our flag means death #fictober23 #who do i have to pay for te reo maori in s2 #translation: you’re beautiful #ofmd s2 #ofmd spoilers #clara's fic tag

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ourflagmeansgayrights · 1 year ago

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hello! saw you tagged me in the comments. i'm also not trying to start a fight, so i want to make it clear that everything i say is just my opinion of this show and you are under no obligation to agree with me etc etc you get the idea. you wanted to know my thoughts tho so here there are:

firstly, i think the show pretty firmly suggests that equating "crew" with "family" is a brand-new, never-before seen pirate management strategy invented by stede bonnet. we don't exactly see a lot of how the typical pirate ship is run, but we have a lot of dialogue to paint us a pretty good picture: "culture of abuse, floggings, keelhaulings" from stede, which is supported by buttons later in the episode when he suggests stede needs to try "an iron fist, something to really sink their teeth into, make them earn their keep." izzy grabbing fang's beard in episode 2 and fang saying that this is something izzy regularly does, that he hates when izzy does it, and that expressing his discomfort probably wouldn't stop izzy from doing it anymore. ed and calico jack in episode 8 recounting how horrible working for hornigold was, and jack later saying that pirates don't even have friends because they're all in various stages of fucking each other over.

and secondly: narratively speaking, the point of ^All That^ in the paragraph above culminates in episode 9, when we actually get a direct contrast between how the crew has come around to stede's captaining style, and how much izzy's captaining style does not include treating the crew as a family. we see the crew band together to save stede's life, and several minutes later we are shown them voting unanimously to mutiny and kill izzy almost as soon as izzy is put in charge.

i also don't consider izzy's line about "losing several of our men, by the way" to be indicative of izzy actually caring about the crew any more than ed does (which, imo, the weight of that responsibility does weigh on ed, as evidenced by what he says to stede when lucius is finishing up his countdown). to me, it sounds like izzy is annoyed they're going to have to hire more staff. if i was writing this show and i wanted to make a point about how much izzy is trying to defend his "family," i would have izzy like, at least name some of the people they lost? or maybe bring up this point again at any point during the rest of the show? but the unnamed dead crew members are never mentioned again.

that's the other thing: i don't "conveniently forget" that ed ordered a bunch of unnamed pirates to their death at the end of e3 so he could rescue this fascinating blond guy. i mostly don't ever bring it up, because the show doesn't bring it up, because it's not really important to the show. ofmd is not about reckoning with the full consequences of violence or about contemplating what it means to have to kill in order to survive. in a different show, ed getting his men killed would be a huge part of the story. in this show, it never comes up again. and the audience is free to analyze this show from whichever angles we want, but really honing in on the death of unnamed background characters is not particularly relevant if we're trying to keep our analysis somewhat aligned with the actual text itself.

so, since you asked me to try and make this make sense for you, here's how i personally read the whole situation with izzy's "safe space" and stede's "safe space" and whether ed's actions jeopardize izzy's "safe space"

in ofmd, piracy As A Whole is not really a "community" so much as it's just an extensive network of career criminals who have resorted to highway robbery at sea in order to survive. they're not radical freedom fighters, they're thieves who for the most part most likely try to avoid interacting with any european navy ships because there's probably not much to loot there but there are plenty of cannons and armed soldiers. also, izzy invites british soldiers into spanish jackie's bar; he's not worried about protecting piracy as a whole

now, if izzy was worried about his "community" as in ed's crew... first of all, why would they only be mentioned in passing once in the entire show. why does izzy never mention them again. second of all, what stede's doing on his own ship doesn't directly affect the safety of anyone except for himself and his own crew. stede's actions don't put any pirates on any other ship in danger at all. the only way that stede's captaincy affects ed's crew at all is in how ed chooses to interact and behave with stede. which is ed's decision, and if ed's decisions put people at risk then stede isn't the one izzy should be taking issue with (which he does, but for most of the show he blames all of ed's behavior on stede). but also...

...ed doesn't even have to be on the ship for blackbeard's crew to stay safe. we know this bc of what ed says in episode 4, and from how the dutch merchants in e6 react just to seeing blackbeard—and while ed is literally in the middle of having a panic attack! these days, the blackbeard flag does most of the work. ed barely has to do anything to maintain blackbeard's reputation

AND speaking of the reputation of blackbeard being the thing that keeps them safe: when ed suggests retirement and letting izzy be the new captain (not letting izzy be the new blackbeard, because remember, the plan is "what if blackbeard turned up dead?"), izzy does not seem worried about survival at all. he's excited for a promotion. the reputation of blackbeard will be gone at that point. and yet izzy does not seem concerned about this at all.

basically tho, the biggest reason i struggle with the interpretation of izzy as a "protector" of his "community" is that we aren't given hard evidence that izzy cares about any sort of "community" or that he's ever really done all that much "protecting." the closest thing to proof of izzy caring is him mentioning that they've lost men, but it really reads to me like he's annoyed by the inconvenience of it more than he's saddened by the death of people he cared about. when interacting with the revenge crew, ivan and fang's only real commentary on izzy is "yeah he's a real dick" and then later voting to mutiny against him. things like "well he must have killed all sorts of navy soldiers in the past!" or "as a first mate, his job would be to take care of the crew" are all perfectly plausible as possible theories and headcanons, but in this show where historical accuracy is a joke and even the laws of physics are often disregarded, anything about the life of piracy that's not explicitly shown or stated on screen can't really be assumed to be accurate.

more importantly: anything that might have happened off-screen or pre-canon that doesn't get mentioned in the show can be assumed to be not nearly as important to the characters or to the story as a whole as what we do see on screen.

and to me, what we see of izzy is someone whose coworkers do not like him (e2 beard grab, e6 ivan agreeing when roach calls him a jerk, e9 ivan and fang agreeing to mutiny), who wants to get promoted to captain (e4), who is annoyed when his boss is taking too long to retire (e6), who lords his power over his subordinates (e5, e9), and who, when he realizes that he doesn't have what it takes to be captain (e9), resorts to insulting and threatening his boss into behaving in a way that he deems acceptable (e10).

and that might change! s2 he might finally open up to the crew and consider them family and protect them fiercely. that would be really cool, i love me a good redemption arc. as of right now tho, i am going to have to continue to disagree with your opinion that izzy is a protector of anyone other than himself

Okay, one more thing re: Izzy being a protector of what he sees as his community.

Yes, he called the cops on Stede and it was a terrible thing to do. He betrayed Edward and got Jack killed in the process. He is fiercely loyal but he’s not very bright, we know that.

The thing is, he just didn’t see Stede and his crew as belonging to his community and deserving a place in his safe space. They were outsiders to him and I can understand being weary of outsiders.

Meanwhile Ed doesn’t care that members of HIS OWN CREW died in the raid to rescue Stede from the Spanish. He considers members of HIS OWN "family" disposable and their deaths unworthy of discussion as long as he gets his prize.

And yet the fandom conveniently forgets about this becasue he's the protagonist. I'm not really surprised Izzy gets terrified Ed is changing becasue his reputation was always a great tool to protect their safe space and yet here he is giving exactly zero fucks about losing people.

Please make this make sense because I am truly perplexed.

#txt #meta #mine #rb #izzy hands #edward teach #izzy critical #the izcourse

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