#disabled blackbeard

[medievill]

here have some silly words about Ed and Stede* at Disney World

*season 1 style, but post-canon is coming

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47173750?view_full_work=true

[bougiebutchbinch]

"But Lucius is physically disabled and he survived, so it's fine to kill Izzy -"

As most of you know, I am physically disabled. Have to use a lot of very visible mobility aids, get stared at in the street, have kids asking uncomfortable questions, etc.

If you are also physically disabled and cannot see that there is a WORLD of difference between Lucius losing his finger in a way that was played as a joke and really didn't impact his character or plot, and Izzy having a hugely traumatic, majorly life-changing disability thrust upon him, becoming suicidal, using alcohol to cope, crawling along the floor, hating himself and feeling useless and worthless, thinking he's a burden to the people he cared about because of his physical inability to protect them...

Then getting built up again by that same crew, given a beautiful prosthetic that they made for him, accepted and loved, and learning to accept and love himself specifically as a queer disabled man....

THEN SAYING EXPLICITLY THAT HE WANTS TO DIE, AFTER ALL OF THAT BEAUTIFUL GROWTH

If you cannot see how that might be JUST A LITTLE upsetting to other disabled cripplepunk folks....

I honestly do not know what to say to you.

His WHOLE ARC was about self-acceptance and self-love as a disabled queer man. To have him declare that he wanted to die after coming to terms with his disability and queerness is, in fact, going to upset a lot of disabled queer people.

If you are not physically disabled, feel free to reblog but don't say a word unless it's in support.

[Edited to remove the parts about Ed being canonically disabled, as someone kindly pointed out to me that they were incorrect. I hadn't realised that his knee brace was just fanon! The creators shouldn't get credit for creating a 'disabled' main character if the disability is only really acknowledged by fans.]

[books-apples-socks]

(...) Silver had terrible hard work getting up the knoll. What with the steepness of the incline, the thick tree stumps, and the soft sand, he and his crutch were as helpless as a ship in stays. But he stuck to it like a man in silence, and at last arrived before the captain, whom he saluted in the handsomest style. He was tricked out in his best; an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, hung as low as to his knees, and a fine laced hat was set on the back of his head. “Here you are, my man,” said the captain, raising his head. “You had better sit down.” “You ain’t a-going to let me inside, cap’n?” complained Long John. “It’s a main cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside upon the sand.” “Why, Silver,” said the captain, “if you had pleased to be an honest man, you might have been sitting in your galley. It’s your own doing. You’re either my ship’s cook—and then you were treated handsome—or Cap’n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!” “Well, well, cap’n,” returned the sea-cook, sitting down as he was bidden on the sand, “you’ll have to give me a hand up again, that’s all.” (...) Silver’s face was a picture; his eyes started in his head with wrath. He shook the fire out of his pipe. “Give me a hand up!” he cried. “Not I,” returned the captain. “Who’ll give me a hand up?” he roared. Not a man among us moved. Growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled along the sand till he got hold of the porch and could hoist himself again upon his crutch. Then he spat into the spring. “There!” he cried. “That’s what I think of ye. Before an hour’s out, I’ll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour’s out, ye’ll laugh upon the other side. Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.” And with a dreadful oath he stumbled off, ploughed down the sand, was helped across the stockade, after four or five failures, by the man with the flag of truce, and disappeared in an instant afterwards among the trees.

[slow-burn-sally]

Can I just say how much I love how everyone in the cast of Our Flag Means Death (both seasons 1 and 2) is just HOT AS FUCK, but like in Queer and Non Standard ways.

[a-sassy-bench]

every friday at 5

[bougiebutchbitch]

on Ed's knee brace... ("knee brace")

I was originally a little saddened to find out it was there in the first place most likely only because Ed's costume is hesvily inspired by Mad Max (OR not fury road) and Max has a knee brace so they just. put it there, is what we can assume? I was still vaguely hoping maybe we'd get something on it to indicate it's not just a "oh that looks fun, lets include that" copying a look aesthetic choice........... and then they left it out completely for s2. I guess he could have had an acute injury 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 lmao it's amyhow so clear it was never more than an aesthetoc choice they didn't put much, or any, thought into.

I guess I should say good for me because I feel like I can project my own shit on him when I write him because there's nothing really going on canonically so even my mild shit is fine lmao

Yep. You get it. It was blatantly a fashion choice; there is never a single hint that it's anything else.

I will say, I love people projecting whatever disabilities they like onto characters, especially when it's personal! Headcanons are so important!

But when people pretend that a non-disabled character is canonically disabled - especially when they use that pretence to try to dismiss actually physically disabled people when they criticise the depiction of disability within the show - that's when it becomes problematic.

And I know some disabled people are very attached to that headcanon - which is fair enough! But if you are genuinely satisfied with that level of so-called 'disability representation'.... I beg you to demand a bit more from the writers. We deserve better.

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today’s disabled character of the day is Edward Teach (Blackbeard) from Our Flag Means Death, who uses a knee brace

Requested by Anon

[Image Description: Photo of Taika Waititi playing Blackbeard. He has long black hair, beard, and mustache with gray streaks. He is wearing a black leather short sleeved jacket, belt, and finger less gloves. He is also wearing brown leather pants and black undershirt. He has brown eyes.]

[disabilityshowdown]

[ultravioletjester]

The Kraken

[crunchybutter]

Someone tag Blackbeard’s knee brace right meow

Something something about Ed’s knee brace being gone in this new season and thinking about stede massaging Ed’s knee/encouraging more self care overall/etc etc

[medievill]

Chapters: 7/? Fandom: Our Flag Means Death (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet Characters: Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Stede Bonnet, The Badminton Twins, Fang (Our Flag Means Death) Additional Tags: Autistic Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Blackbeard | Edward Teach Has ADHD, Autistic Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard's Home Renovation and Restoration, Bonnet Creek, Warning: Badminton Twins, Slow Burn, because they're both idiots (affectionate), Blackbeard | Edward Rides a Motorcycle, Stede Bonnet Has a Motorcycle Fetish, Disney World, Epcot, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Work In Progress, no beta we die dramatically like Spaniards, Disabled Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Māori Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting Summary:

This guy’s so fucking pretty, is the thing.

He says, “You work for Blackbeard?”

Ed frowns a second, then looks down at the Blackbeard’s Home Renovation and Restoration logo on his t-shirt. He says, “Yeah. Yeah, suppose I do.” He sticks out his hand. “Name’s Ed.”

“Stede.” His hand is soft, but not soft like dough. Soft like silk. A fine, expensive thing that's treated that way. Ed’s got to let go before he bends over and rubs his face against it like a cat.

[ziggyandleo]

If I ever become a law professor, the hypos I give are just going to be fandom based and unhinged.

If my torts professor can write an entire exam based on the Magic School Bus, I can one day aspire to write one based on Our Flag Means Death.

[subway-tolkien]

Okay, this is 1600 words of (positive!) meta regarding the OFMD finale. Included is character analysis and a treatise on why a certain trope people keep throwing around does not apply here.

This is of course just my take, and I'm sure people will disagree, but I needed to get this out. Apologies if it comes off disjointed, I've had like no sleep.

Spoilers within, obviously. You have been warned. Heed the tags. I didn't tag any characters because I consider it a spoiler, but you know who this is about.

Listen. Listen.

Let me start off by saying I have been where you are. I’ve had beloved characters die, either because it was important to the narrative or for shock value. I’ve been there, so I’m not coming at this without empathy. I’m not an Izzy hater. I loved him as a character. I’m truly sad to see him go.

But from what I’m seeing around Twitter and tumblr, some of you do not understand the role of an antagonist in a story.

Izzy was always meant to die. The moment he said, in the first season, “the only retirement we get is death,” I knew he was meant to die in the end. The foreshadowing ran through both seasons. Izzy was the true antagonist of S1. He was there to keep Blackbeard tethered when he started pulling away, and yet he also set the plot in motion. He inadvertently introduced Blackbeard to the person who let him be just Ed. He put Ed on his own path to redemption without even knowing it.

S1 ended with Izzy getting what he wanted as Ed lost everything he had. S2 was about Izzy coming to terms with the fact that he’d gone too far, he’d turned Ed into a monster. It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted Blackbeard back, just like old times. Instead, he got the Kraken, and it was more than he bargained for.

Especially after it cost him his leg and he realized how far gone Ed really was. The conversation that ended with Izzy’s half-assed suicide attempt was the final blow to Izzy—Ed really didn’t seem to care anymore. Where Izzy wanted him to stop giving a shit about his silly boyfriend, he instead got a Blackbeard who didn’t care about anything, and he was apparently now included in that category.

(I said half-assed suicide attempt because Izzy wasn’t meant to die then, THAT would have been an empty, pointless death. It wouldn’t have taught Ed anything—in fact, all it did was make him more self-destructive, which was Izzy’s purpose to the narrative, but not his endgame. That Ed thought Izzy killed himself pushed Ed to the brink. Ed wanted to die and take every scrap of Blackbeard with him. Had Izzy successfully killed himself, Ed and the Revenge would be at the bottom of the ocean.

It wasn’t until the crew left Izzy the unicorn leg that he realized the power of compassion, the incredible act of grace from a crew that suffered so much from Izzy’s own machinations and didn't need to forgive him. It moved him to tears, and it moved him to accept that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to let people in, to let himself be cared for. It was a foreign concept and something Izzy likely hadn’t experienced since losing his family (I fully expect a shit ton of fanfic of Izzy’s life before piracy).

Israel Hands found the capacity to let love all the way in and by god, did he pursue it.

But, again, Izzy was always meant to die, and I’m glad they stuck to the narrative they set out with instead of placating fandom and letting our influence dictate how they told this story That’s never good, trust me. Fandom should not influence a creator’s decisions regarding their own characters. It rarely if ever ends well.

[Stares in Voltron S8]

And I see a lot of people out here throwing the “bury your gays” phrase around—I beg you, please look up the definition of the trope. Izzy didn’t die because he was queer, he didn’t die because of his disability. He wasn’t one half of the only queer couple in the show fridged for shock value. He wasn’t killed off due to pressure from conservative viewers. He wasn’t the only queer, disabled character.

They didn’t kill off Lucius, or Jackie, or Wee John. Would you be as outraged if it was any of them?

Killing Eve is bury your gays. Supernatural is bury your gays. Pretty much any film, book, TV show, whatever, where a queer character dies because they’re queer, of AIDs, to further the narrative for a straight person, etc—that is burying your gays.

Izzy’s death was none of those things. Izzy’s death had meaning.

Izzy’s death freed Ed from the Blackbeard persona. It finally forced Izzy to say the things he couldn’t say until he realized it was his last chance. Izzy was also tired. I honestly think he stuck it out for Ed’s sake, because he was afraid to let Blackbeard go without making sure Ed would be ok.

He loved the idea of Blackbeard, but over time, he learned to love Ed. He finally understood what Ed tried to tell him the whole time.

“Fuck off, you twat. You’re surrounded by family.”

You’re safe. You’re loved. You don’t need me anymore. You don’t need to be reminded of who you’re capable of being, you need the people who will guide you to who you will become, and I’m not one of them.

I know a lot of Izzy fans are stung by his death, some of you are deeply upset. I get that. Like I said, I’ve been there. Sirius’s death made me throw that fucking book across the room. That Fucking Woman™ killed off my entire OTP, purely for shock value and, imho, a direct response to shippers. Trust me, I have felt betrayed by a creator for their decisions.

But I need you to understand that no, this was not a personal attack, this was not malicious, this was not “bury your gays." A show that celebrates queerness and diversity is not suddenly homophobic and ableist because your favorite character died and happened to be both of those things. But when the majority of your cast of characters is different in some way, and they’re in a show about 18th century pirates, you have to accept that one of them could, in fact, die. “Anyone Can Die” is also a trope and the more accurate one to describe E8.

If only being queer and disabled made you invincible.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

And no, I’m not an Izzy hater. I loved him, I loved him as an antagonist, and I loved his redemption arc. He was fascinating and Con put his whole O’Nussy into that part. I’m sorry to see him go, but as a mystery writer who often has to kill off beloved characters, I understand that he served the purpose he had from the beginning.

I swear, if some of you had your way, there’d be no conflict at all in any form of media. This what a steady diet of nothing but fanfic gets you. This is not a fluffy one-shot with magical healing dick and a happy ending where everyone sails off into the sunset. If that’s what you wanted, what you headcanoned, you did this to yourself. It’s not David et al’s fault that we took that character and babygirled him. That’s the risk we take when we decide to love a specific character, when we take a genuinely terrible person (in S1) and woobify him.

So, please stop harassing and attacking David, Alex, et al. David did not and should not change his story to placate us. The fact he went ahead with it despite the backlash I’m sure he expected makes me respect him as a creator even more.

Anyway, I’m going to revel that we have three (!) queer relationships with happy endings where one or both didn’t immediately die (again, the actual definition of “bury your gays”) and that we got at least two seasons of a little show that celebrated individualism, diversity, queerness, compassion, and love.

In the end, it all came down to love.

“There he is.”

Goodbye, Blackbeard.

Hello, Ed.

[emptymasks]

everything i find out makes me want to scream more

so not only was the plan all along to kill izzy in which case giving him this meaningful arc makes it worse, makes it seem like progress and healing means nothing cos you'll just get killed off anyway. to give him more trauma, try and over his abuse, give him a disability, have him finally finding joy just to kill him off for the sake of ed. AND HE DIDNT TELL CON UNTIL THEY WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF SHOOTING???!? CON WAS ALREADY FILMING SEASON TWO AND DIDN'T KNOW IZZY WAS GOING TO DIE?!?!

i'm at such a loss. of course he was taking it seriously. he cared. and he knew what izzy meant to people. beyond just him being a funny fan favourite, he was a representation of a lot of fans trauma, coming out, finding themselves, overcoming things in order to find a family and love and queer joy, disability representation and oooooo.

WHY WOULDN'T YOU TELL HIM DAVID? istg if it was that thought con might not like izzy's ending and not do season 2 and so dj didn't tell him to get to to sign the contract to season 2 and then told him about izzy's death after so now con couldn't back out of the contract istg. edit: drawing a line through that because i was being emotional and didn't mean to sound like i was seriously accusing david if trying to trick con. i just think he should have told him as soon as he decided he was killing off izzy at the beginning of filming and not later halfway through filming.

it just feels weird to have the show continue without izzy. and saying it needed to happen for blackbeard to die then shouldn't ed have died two? or they both could have lived and grown.

you really thought this was the best journey you could have given him?

[vexwerewolf]

-- HA Sunzi @ LL6 -- [ LICENSES ] HA Sunzi 2, IPS-N Blackbeard 1, IPS-N Vlad 2, SSC Mourning Cloak 1 [ CORE BONUSES ] Titanomachy Mesh, Improved Armament [ TALENTS ] Duelist 3, Vanguard 3, Combined Arms 2, Brawler 1 [ STATS ] HULL:4 AGI:2 SYS:0 ENGI:2 STRUCTURE:4 HP:20 ARMOR:1 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:9 REPAIR:5 TECH ATK:+1 LIMITED:+1 SPD:5 EVA:9 EDEF:8 SENSE:15 SAVE:14 [ WEAPONS ] FLEX MOUNT: Impaler Nailgun MAIN/AUX MOUNT: Chain Axe / Fold Knife [ SYSTEMS ] Synthetic Muscle Netting, Personalizations, Blink Charges x4, Accelerate, Blinkspace Tunneler

I call this one "These Four Arms Ain't For Nothing!"

This build exploits a very funny side-effect of the fact that the Sunzi can freely redirect its own teleportation at no cost.

Even when you control a Grapple, Grappling disables two important things: your ability to take reactions and Boost. Conveniently, however, the Sunzi's Blink Anchor is specifically stated to not be a reaction, and the Sunzi's Slip trait is not a Boost. This means that you can place your blink anchor down, run across the battlefield, grapple an enemy, and use Slip to redirect the teleport to the blink anchor. The end result is that both you and the enemy you grappled end up next to your Blink Anchor, circumventing the usual cost to redirect the teleportation of any enemy target.

Congratulations: you are now wanted by the DoJ/HR for abduction.

Our build largely just works to support this strategy. We have Synthetic Muscle Netting to make sure we're always controlling grapples, we have both Titanomachy Mesh and Duelist 3 to give us free Grapple attempts, Brawler 1 to make our melee attacks against grappled targets more accurate, a Fold Knife to potentially proc a free teleport, and an Impaler Nailgun to keep enemies immobilized in the spot we abduct them to.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I've come to a realization about the current Izzy discourse.

A lot of us have been joking that a certain subset of Izzy fans have been watching a different show than we have, and I actually think that's quite literally the case. I saw a post talking about how good the song Run From Me by Timber Timbre was in s2e2, and there were comments talking about how it was "a perfect Ed/Izzy scene!"

That made me realize something. The scene where that song plays, if you remember, is when Ed is miserably, longingly staring at the cake toppers that look like himself and Stede, imagining getting married to Stede and making his choice to commit suicide while pushing the figures off the ship. Izzy is not there (it also plays at the end when Ed is goading the crew to mutiny on him, and Izzy is only in the last part of that scene). The song is, very obviously, textually meant to represent that Ed desperately wishes he could be with Stede but doesn't believe he deserves it. To believe earnestly that, in the text of the show, it's an Ed/Izzy scene means you have to be working everything in the entire show through the lens of this one side character and twisting everything to be about him.

Apply that same concept to a lot of the other things we've been seeing. The outrage that a main character (who is apparently the only member of x group on the ship, even though Izzy genuinely has few traits ((be they queer, disabled, whatever)) that are not shared by other characters) was killed off. All the fanfics about Ed and Stede failing at running an inn, and all the comments about how a bad ending as they're consumed by grief and incapable without Izzy "is the most likely outcome" for Ed and Stede, as if they're not the leads of a romcom. I'd been so confused about these takes because they're not something I think most viewers would even be able to take away from the show I watched.

It's literally that simple. It's like we're not watching the same show at all. You're not crazy if you think Izzy's death was a satisfying part of the narrative and a good symbol of Ed being able to move on from forcing himself to be Blackbeard; that's what the narrative wants us to think. We're literally just watching the show and getting the most obvious takeaways the narrative is pointing us towards.