#ofmd s2e8

[akans-dead-at-sea]

It's alright

30 second timelapse:

[thisflagmeanseverything]

Happy 1 year anniversary to "Mermen" and the series finale (for now 🤞) of the show that means everything to me ❤️

I'm alternating between crying that it ended and being happy that we got s2 and got what we did.

The beach scene, "I love you!" "I know, I know that" 🥹 BABE! Pete and Lucius marrying! Alex Sherman's ass! Fishing! Ed thinking Stede's dead. THE LOVELY LETTERS. We got sooo much and it's beautiful and lovely.

This post is a lovely letter to OFMD and how important and special this show is to me (us) still, even a year after it ended. Seeing these two older men find themselves and love after having rough lives is very special to me and gives me hope for the future.

But this lovely letter isn't just to the show but to all of you amazing, wonderful, passionate and caring and dedicated and talented artists, writers, fans and enjoyers of OFMD that helped carry the love of OFMD through two cancellations and to this special anniversary.

I adore all of yall and I'm glad you are still here ❤️

I'm going to tag a few people but this is to every fan of OFMD out there, it's been the best time sailing with you and I hope to keep going 🫡

🩵

@gentlebeardsbarngrill Abby, thank you for everything you've done, I appreciate you! @xoxoemynn you are one of the sweetest people I know @stedesbonnets thank you for accepting me and talking to me @romcomtelecom @follows-the-bees @celluloidbroomcloset I really enjoy all of your meta and ideas @lunarcryptidz you know 💜 @blackbeardsslutstrands thank you for being there to talk to after "Merman" last year @blatterpussbunnyfromhell @areyoudoingthis @saltpepperbeard @thescarvedinsect @spirker @soupbtch @merryfinches @xray-vex @piratecaptainscaptainpirates @bizarrelittlemew @blakbonnet @funforahermit @finethingswellworn @jellybeanium124 @naranjapetrificada @carmillas-girlfriend @teeny-tiny-revenge @jaskierx @scribophile @call-me-frosting-or-not-idc @forpiratereasons @ofmd-ann-main @captain-frenchie

I wish I could tag and give personal lovely letters to everyone (I have a bad memory and can't remember @ names) but just know yall are all appreciated and thank you 🥹🤗

[thetardigrape]

HEY.

Feel however you want to feel about the OFMD S2 finale but DO NOT make claims about a "straight white man" ruining the show. The writers room was mostly queer POC. Don't erase their skill, hard work, and representative voices just because you're upset. Show some respect.

[youshouldseemeinadeerstalker]

[unhingedpirates]

Guys, guys

Remember the new still?

The letter he’s reading is the first one we see Stede writing on episode 1.

But the letter we heard Stede reading left something out.

You can see the letter says:

“Dear Ed. The crew and I are safe and thriving. Still a bit unclear whether you intended (?) to leave them for dead? Or perhaps that was an oversight? As I’ve renounced my wealth, [we’ve] been forced to take up [temporary] residence on the [Republic of] Pirates…”

Stede, being Stede, is asking his classic ‘did you mean to do that?’ on whether he marooned the crew and left them to die or not 😂😂😭

[mossiestpiglet]

If anyone wants to see a satisfying season/series finale with a character played by Con O’Neill, I’m once again recommending BBC’s Uncle.

[piratesmyass]

Yeah, I'm normal about them. And I'm totally normal about Izzy leaning on Wee John in this scene. I'm so fucking normal about it. Can you see how normal I'm being?

[fogsrollingin]

Izzy will be in season 3, either thru flashbacks or as a ghost or hallucination.

His speech was foreshadowing - the show's gonna keep his spirit alive.

[the-very-darcy]

Okay.

I was mad about S2E8, but the fan response has me worried. I'm seeing people being very uncharitable towards each other and the creators. The fandom infighting I can live with. That's fandom for you. But I am concerned about how this could impact the creators. Rant incoming, be ye warned.

First and foremost, I hope the entire creative team behind OFMD turns off their internet for a while. I'm sure they're getting absolutely mobbed right now, and they don't deserve it. I want to trust them to understand how the internet works and tune out, because this is the kind of shit that damages people. I'm genuinely scared for them.

We have got to stop making it dangerous to tell Queer stories. It's hard not to lash out when something hurts, and the internet makes lashing out so easy to do. It hurts like hell when you (reluctantly) trust a creator, and they disappoint you. But I can't think of a Queer show or creator that hasn't faced online harassment from the Queer community, and that is fucking tragic.

I didn't like S2E8. I thought it was poorly executed, especially compared to the astonishingly high-quality writing in the rest of the show. But just because I didn't think it was good, doesn't mean it has to be evil. And frankly, I hope no one involved with the show ever sees my criticism of it. As a writer, I know what kind of feedback helps, and what just hurts. My venting and analysis isn't for them, it's for me and my fellow pirate enjoyers. My feelings have a place, and DJenkins' inbox is not it. Telling a story I personally disliked is not a crime. There should be no punishment for doing it.

I trusted the OFMD team to tell a good story. That trust has taken a dent or two, because a character I cared for died in a way that was, to my mind, trite, forced, unsatisfying, and unkind. That was disappointing. I am disappointed. I can live with that. But if the creators suffer for telling Queer stories, that would be unfathomably worse. And if that scares people off from telling Queer stories in future? That would be heartbreaking.

I wish I could rage and froth about the stories I care about without worrying about collateral damage. And if those stories weren't about marginalized people, I could. That's the kicker. That's the double standard. People who create and consume status-quo-ass-kissing media don't have to worry so much about this shit. Their icons can commit terrible real-world crimes and sell memoirs about it. Mine can't even make a divisive narrative choice without getting loudly condemned straight to super-hell.

TL:DR Creators of Queer stories get held to impossible standards. Please leave DJenkins and the team alone. Online harassment = bad.

(Note: Edited for more clarity and less sensationalizing language.)

[scarysanctuary]

im litchrally sweating, i just saw david jenkins tweet this

im going to be sick, is this a threat

[insteading]

The scene at the beginning of s2e8 of Our Flag Means Death is comic, but the resonance with s1e6 ...

So much of Ed's trajectory as a character is about grappling with his need to respond to his own father's violence. He walked away from piracy in part because safety in that life required controlled, strategic violence, which has had great personal costs to him forever.

"Control your Pop-Pop," as silly as it is, is a request for an intervention and protection he didn't get when he was younger. It's not that he can't protect himself-- we know he very well can-- but I think he wants a do-over of his interactions with his father that doesn't leave him feeling alone.

I think "Control your Pop-Pop" is also self-directed in a couple of ways: to his young self, who is still within him and traumatized, and to his current self, who is trained to respond to threat with a strategic violence that would be overkill here.

A little later, Ed makes his second Bond girl entrance of the series, emerging in the leathers he had just buried at sea. We've been hearing the noise in his head for a bit, since he sees the wreckage of ships in the harbor and immediately fears that Stede is dead. Among the static and the dim sounds of British sailors dying in his hands, there's a distorted version of Voi che sapete playing, which of course is what The Swede was singing the night Ed had a flashback to killing his father, behind Stede's narration:

Stede-- or Ed's fear for Stede, or horror at having promised to kill Stede-- calls up the kraken in s1e6, inadvertently triggering Ed. And it's Ed's fear for Stede in s2e8 that returns him to the scene where he buried his old life, to dig it up for the occasion.

Poor Ed has a lot going on in the season 2 finale, and I hope he's enjoying some restorative warm blankets, good food, and orgasms.

[ivory--raven]

Something something yes it matters that the character with such a powerful queer storyline got killed off as a culmination of his character arc but I also want to bring up that this was our main legibly disabled character and I think that matters. Disability is a part of this plot and this death. There's something about disability in texts where as part of the narrative disability must be dealt with - kill or cure - and as Izzy became legibly disabled he had to be cured or killed. I'm not saying I agree with this theory just that it exists. I want to talk about this more

[some-anonymity-preferred]

I just realized that yes, it’s amusing that Baby Gay Stede Bonnet is giving his former Gay Mentor Lucius Spriggs relationship advice in Red Flags.

But it’s more than that: Stede is counseling Lucius specifically to talk openly with his love about the trauma that is keeping them apart.

Stede is giving Lucius exactly the advice he himself needed in Act of Grace.

And then Lucius and Pete are the couple who marry at the end of season 2.

While Stede leans into Ed, who is making wife-me eyes at him.

I’m late to this party, and yeah. This show just broke me again.

Again.

🥺

[youshouldseemeinadeerstalker]

The powerful metaphor of piracy and the LGBTQ community/queerness was really well outlined and cemented in the finale of s2.

Izzys epic speech, the insistence on family, of being part of something, of belonging. The show really knows its audience. Izzy (and/or the writers through Con) were directly speaking to us with those lines.

"It's about belonging to something when the world has told you you're nothing. It's about finding the family to kill for when yours are long dead. It's about letting go of ego for something larger. The crew."

[unhingedpirates]

I love how fond Jackie is of the Swede as her husband as opposed to how she was with Geraldo.

[pleasedontmakemechooseanusername]

I read a post, sometime ago, that said that all the tricks Stede used during the duel with Izzy, didn't work on Zheng, because Stede had now killed a man and wasn't in his "Stede world", of good people and killing with kindness, where all stupid tricks worked, anymore.

Now, we got 2 seasons' finales, in 2 different worlds.

In season 1, they're in "Stede world", so of course Lucius can come back from the dead.

In season 2, we're in the real world, so there's no trick that can bring Izzy back.