#me realizing everything in OFMD relates to everything else in OFMD
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hang-on-lil-tomato · 1 year ago
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Our Flag Means Death Conspiracy 😂
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saltpepperbeard · 10 months ago
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Be a Lighthouse - Fight For OFMD Season 3
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Hi everyone. The news of our cancellation is both incredibly devastating, and quite shocking considering the trajectory of the show and its fanbase. Everything looked like it was lining up in a positive fashion...only for the rug to get yanked out from under us.
I cried. I went numb. I stared at the wall for a while.
But then, something sparked. Like Ed who was resolved to his fate in S1Ep4 only to rocket back upwards, I was struck with a realization: we need to be a lighthouse!
Fanbases have campaigned before, and have gotten results. Sense8 was able to get a two hour finale to properly wrap everything up. Lucifer was able to get picked up by Netflix after being cancelled by Fox. Brooklyn 99 was able to get picked up by NBC after being cancelled by Fox. And many more examples.
Be it a proper renewal, a finale wrap that entails Ed and Stede's wedding, or the attention from another network, I say we fight that good fight. So, here are some ways we can be heard; if you think of any additional points, please feel free to add them!
If you don't cancel your Max Subscription, continue watching the show and leaving feedback on Max's online feedback form. I had a kneejerk reaction when cancellation was announced and pulled the plug...only to sit back and reconsider. I want them to still get my metrics. I want them to still see the show means something to me. And whether that's through words or statistics, I feel like that's something.
2. Follow @renewasacrew and keep up with their resources/campaigns. They're very active and passionate, and have already come up with different ways to fight for our show.
3. Sign the petition to give us just that little bit more of a chance to have our voices heard.
4. Stay active on social media, and stay positive. Continue sharing how much this show means to us. Continue creating. Continue loving. Use hashtags like-
#RenewAsACrew
#SaveOFMD
#RenewOFMD
#BeALighthouse
#OFMDSeason3
or anything equivalent on any and all OFMD-related posts. Keep the buzz about it going on social media. Comment on posts, keep spreading the word, and get the light burning.
5. Renewasacrew has given us another outlet; an official HBO email address. Write an email detailing your personal experience with this show, and how significant a third season would be.
6. Tweet/email other platforms to pique their interest. Be it Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, or whoever else, let's see if we can't catch someone else's attention. A romcom with iconic LGBT representation seems pretty enticing if you ask me!
This show means the world to me. Y'all mean the world to me. So let's show them why. Let's show them why, and get the proper ending we, the cast and crew, and the characters all deserve.
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ourflagmeansgayrights · 2 months ago
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found this in my drafts and i can’t remember what my point was here or if i was gonna add anything else to this. but i agree with everything i wrote so i’m just releasing it into the wild as-is
tangentially related to the first paragraph of this post only: the fact that there are little hints of a traumatic backstory for jack that make it possible to read him somewhat sympathetically (somewhat. he’s still a huge asshole lol) while there isn’t any canonical evidence of anything sympathetic abt izzy in s1 unless u personally rlly relate to being a mean manager or to handling getting friendzoned very badly is actually one of the main reasons why i am always wildly surprised when ppl say jack and izzy are equally shitty characters (don’t even get me started on when ppl think jack is somehow worse. insane take). other reasons are basically variations of “we see other characters enjoy jack’s presence at some point, something that literally nobody in s1 does with izzy.” like the big one is ed obviously, ed clearly likes jack and likes having fun with jack (at least in small doses lol) which is something we never see with izzy, in fact every time it looks like ed is having too much fun in izzy’s presence izzy tries very hard to make that stop. but also the crew think jack’s cool at first, which is a sentiment we never see literally any of them have about izzy. like jack is a piece of shit but he at least has the ability to be fun, something that s1 izzy is physically incapable of and is in fact something that i think the show is aware of. ofmd is very Pro Fun and supports getting silly, obviously the narrative also shows us that jack’s brand of fun runs sour when there isn’t respect for each other and no room to be vulnerable. but the characters in ofmd talk abt torturing ppl and getting tortured themselves as fun activities they enjoy doing and the show is not like “this is a bad thing” so i seriously doubt the show was trying to say “jumping off tall heights is a bad thing” or “blowing up random inanimate object is a bad thing” or “drinking and partying is a bad thing,” imo the show was saying “when the environment does not allow for people to pass on these activities without shame and mockery, that’s a bad thing.” and also “be careful with the things people care about. like their birds. take risks with your own life or with the lives of british ppl ur holding hostage if u want but for the love of god don’t put ppl’s birds at risk.”
but back to the sympathy thing. like we get absolutely nothing abt izzy’s backstory aside from “worked for ed for years,” and then little characterization details like “regularly pulls fang’s beard, which fang hates” and “seems to be really exhausted and easily frustrated by ed,” and then his two motivations throughout the season are the textual “wants stede to be dead so ed will retire and then izzy gets to be the guy in charge (until the end of e9 when he realizes he’s not good enough to be in charge so he needs ed to keep being scary blackbeard so he gets to keep that proximity to power)” and the more subtextual “has the hots for ed,” and the first one is not sympathetic bc “guy who who craves power and is a dick about it” is a pretty universally hated type of guy, and the second one is not sympathetic bc if izzy did All That in s1 bc he’s in unrequited “love” for ed then that’s some fatal attraction incel bullshit TeeBeeEych. all of this makes izzy a great character and an insane little freak to rotate in my mind palace on occasion but it does not make me sympathetic to him in the slightest. and then the only other ways to read izzy sympathetically in s1 are to 1. make up a bunch of bullshit (example: izzy and ed are actually literally married and are in their divorce era and ed is leaving izzy for a new man, which actually just reads like more fatal attraction shit to me but anyway) or to 2. take izzy at his word that he’s the only one keeping this operation together and everyone else needs to stop goofing off and being silly and take this shit seriously (which is actively reading against the text bc ofmd as a show is vehemently opposed to the idea that ppl need to stop being silly and take work seriously, which is a stance i don’t actually 100% agree with irl but like i’m not gonna get mad at a tv show for not having the same exact life philosophies as me)
(also i’m not just saying izzy is unsympathetic in s1 bc i personally dislike him, i truly believe the writers thought so too and i say this bc of how they went about redeeming izzy in s2. bc by mid s2 the narrative is pretty clear that izzy is A Fully Changed Man now and the rest of what he does in the season is just a bunch of stuff to directly contrast with the shitty stuff he did last season. zero character development actually happens past like episode 4 or 5. and we never actually got an arc abt why izzy suddenly grew as a person bc they didn’t have the time or they didn’t care enough abt izzy to make the time for it. what we got instead was putting izzy in the narrative torment nexus. instead of getting an actual redemption arc abt learning that what he did was wrong, and instead of building on literally any of the character traits or backstory details izzy might’ve had in s1, the writers just put izzy through physical hell to make us feel bad for him now bc there was nothing from s1 they could spin sympathetically. it’s honestly kinda weak writing and i remember thinking this when game of thrones did the same thing to that one guy theon or whoever. however unlike game of thrones i think it’s funny that ofmd speedran an izzy redemption arc. the did it bc he was just not important enough to prioritize that much screentime to and i respect it)
calico jack sympathy is a very rich vein for emotional ed whump btw. not saying anyone needs to sympathize with jack at all bc he DOES suck and personally idc enough abt jack to sympathize with him for his own sake, but there is actually textual support for a sympathetic cj read. canonically he has the same traumatic pirate background as ed and the two of them went through a rlly rough time together. we have direct support from the show that jack’s rejection of anything “soft” or “weak” comes from hornigold—the very first mention of hornigold in the entire show is when jack sees the breakfast table set for ed and stede and starts teasing ed for it with “just the two of you? hornigold would shit himself.” plus ed tells stede “jack’s always been emotional” and “he can come on a bit strong but he’s insecure” which strongly implies that ed has seen a side of jack that we don’t get to see in the one episode where he shows up. it’s a side that very well might be completely gone now that jack’s a grown adult man but to me it runs counter to the text to claim that ed’s assessment of jack is completely wrong and this vulnerable side of jack never existed in the first place.
so anyway one possible angle here for sympathizing with jack as a vessel for whumping poor ed’s heart is the tragedy of two kids going through something awful together and not being able to count on each other during the whole experience. being trapped in a physically and emotionally abusive environment together and empathizing when the captain singles one of them out bc they know firsthand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hornigold’s ire, but at the same time they’re not able to ask each other for support bc what if they use that vulnerability, that plea for comfort, as a weapon against you? what if you try to offer them support and comfort and they push you away? what if, when you DO rely on each other for support, your captain sees that bond and uses it to torture you both even further?
and what do you do if you both comfort each other, you both take care of each other, and then one of you fucking dies? because that’s how it goes—most of the pirates ed knows are dead, a pirate’s life is short but nice, the only retirement they get is death, you’re not likely to avoid near-death experiences in their line of work, heading towards a raid with the one hope being that a certain death ain’t slow. and it’s not just raids, either: your captain might have you keelhauled for a minor offense, might starve you for a week if you laugh at him during a speech, might feed you a live crab for nicking some rations, or maybe a disagreement with another crew member could turn into bloodshed. maybe someone will push you overboard for shits and giggles. what do you if you’ve found comfort with a crewmate, and then that crewmate dies? how do you cope? you’re probably better off not letting yourself care for anyone, rejecting people’s pleas for support or intimacy or friendship, because it’ll hurt less when they inevitably end up dying horrifically just like everyone else you’ve ever cared about.
and then the other big ed whump angle here is watching someone you experienced horrific trauma with not only fail to process the trauma in a healthy way but also become a worse person as a result of it. like ed knowing firsthand just how awful everything jack experienced was and remembering exactly what it looked like every time hornigold beat the spirit out of jack when he was ultimately just a vulnerable kid. ed hearing jack say some toxic macho bullshit and knowing exactly where jack learned that and how much it hurt for 20-something-year-old jack to absorb that lesson—and more than that, ed remembering when he used to believe that exact sort of toxic shit. and ed feeling like he can’t hold it against jack if he doesn’t grow bc he sees so many similarities between him and jack, and the only reason he was able to heal and become a better person is bc he met stede—and it’s not like stede was the only person in the whole world ed could’ve connected with, he had an entire ship full of kindhearted doofuses ready to offer him emotional support and he betrayed all of them because the recent back-to-back backstabbing compounded on a lifetime of trauma and made it impossible for ed to trust them. how can ed blame jack for rejecting opportunities to heal when ed did the same thing? when he can remember watching firsthand as years of abuse caused jack to gradually close himself off, the worst part of it being that it was like watching his own reflection as he also hardened under the pressure of just trying to survive another fucking day? how can ed judge jack, when jack is who he might’ve been if he’d never met stede?
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batsarebetterthanpeople · 2 years ago
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#i did see calico jacks passive aggressive remarks as going rigt over eds head but they go over the rest of the crews head too#it occurs to me that calico jack might be kind of an outlier in his fluency with underhanded comments#its really not something we see anywhere else in ofmd’s pirate culture. which kind of. makes me wonder about cj’s background#ik hes messy party animal frat boy coded but the thing about frat boys is a lot of them come from rich as balls families#anyway yeah stedes bad at communicating hy accident and#im not even sure i WOULD call izzy bad at communicating. he seems to communicate what he wants to say pretty well#its just everything he has to say is shit 😔 (@ourfag)
Friendo I'm sure you realized this when you talked about CJ in the tags of the post of someone with my pfp, but you have in fact activated my trap card. So I do and don't think that Jack's passive aggression went over Ed's head, he just misinterpreted it because he didn't have all of the context. The two times Jack said something explicitly mean in front of Ed was "Whose the big gal" and "Not like one of these storebought types." First with whose the big gal, I think that Ed didn't so much miss that as he did write it off as "just how Jack is" Jack calls Ed a dopey bastard, he calls Izzy a sentimental bastard, he makes fun of Ed for not wanting to drink first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Jack is mean across the board, including to people he's ostensibly on good terms with. Stede saw "who's the big gal" as bullying, Jack saw "whose the big gal" as a thinly veiled Jab at a guy he's already decided to hate before he met him, and Ed saw "whose the big gal" as light hearted ribbing that Jack uses to relate to people and an invitation for Stede to engage in the douchey frat behavior that could go real wrong real fast that he had to course correct slightly but ultimately not make a big deal of. No one is on the same page for that moment, but to Ed it's just his problematic bestie being problematic. Nothing to write home about.
As for "Not like one of these storebought types." I do actually think that that one might have gone over Ed's head, just because it's passive aggression and he's not super familiar with that, but I disagree whole heartedly with the assertion that it went over the crew's head. They're just on Jack's side, and you would be too. Like think about it, you're a very very poor person and you've resorted to crime in order to fucking eat, and here comes this fucking guy who's just doing crime for the love of the game. He's doing poverty tourism, and yeah he's paying you but also he keeps doing these things that are super annoying and betray that he very much doesn't understand what kind of financial pressure you're under. Then along comes this other guy who started out poor as dirt, but has done crime well enough that he now has money. Like he started where you are now and he worked his way up by being very very good at crime, and then he's mean to the guy who is doing poverty tourism about him doing poverty tourism, and even though you've come to like the rich guy, he fucking deserves to get bullied a little bit for being a rich guy who bought his way into it. Like on the one hand you're sort of friends but on the other hand fuck that guy a little bit. Like you'd defend him from the navy, and from homophobia, but when a poor person comes to talk shit about him for being rich, well he just has to take that because Jack is in fact right.
Also I don't think CJ is actually that frat boy coded, he's douchebag party animal coded, which is something that is highly associated with frats but is not exclusive to frats. Like rich kids who's dads are paying for them to go to college do not have a monopoly on getting very drunk and doing stupid shit, or on being bullies. Jack is working class coded (wayyyyyy more so than Izzy) a. because he's a dirty cowboy, B. Because he has a substantive class critique of Stede, and C. because it's heavily implied that he and Ed started out in roughly the same place when they got into piracy and Ed is explicitly rags to riches. His proficiency with passive aggression might cause someone to wonder but again, being a manipulative bully is not something that rich people have a monopoly on.
also you're right about Izzy
I think Ed kind of does have some issues communicating it's just that those issues aren't being bad at communicating they're "I operate at a certain level of honesty and I expect others to do the same" it's less of a "I can't read social cues" and more of a "why would I bother with that social cue when you directly contradicted it with your mouth? I'm just gonna go with what your mouth said." And honestly I think that this is the right way to communicate and we should start accusing Stede and Izzy of having trouble with communication actually. Like yeah Stede had a big neon "doesn't want to run away to China" sign directly above his head and it was flashing, but he said yes I will go to China with you so that's his problem for not clarifying.
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