#this is about ofmd but it’s also about everything else

[scarrletmoon]

i never understood when people say “i miss our show” bc it’s right there!! just rewatch it!!

well i just finished rewatch number 363738 and i miss our fucking show

i know we’ll get s3 some day bc there’s no way a show this beloved just disappears unfinished into the ether, but i miss our show and i wish they hadn’t had to fight an uphill battle for s2

i wish we could see the dream version of s2 that had the bigger budget they deserved and the full episode count and no executive meddling. i’m proud of the work they did and how they absolutely made sure the story was about ed and stede like it should be. but we still deserved so much better

we’ll get it one day but it just HURTS that we’re in an era where diverse, creative, thoughtful TV and movies could be made, but they don’t get a chance to thrive. when does this shit finally end. when do we get to tell our stories again without being beholden to insanely wealthy people who want more insane wealth. i’m tired.

[arsenicflame]

Bootblacking is my favourite kink to give Izzy, because of course this guy would get his rocks off doing precise, repetitive, manual labour. OF COURSE he gets off on what is essentially just another chore on his list.

[areyoudoingthis]

there is absolutely reason for hope right now. it may still end up going nowhere, because hope isn't a guarantee of anything, it isn't certainty, but don't feel foolish for hoping. things are happening. good things may come as a result, or they may not, but I've had enough of being crushed and hopeless and defeated, so I'm choosing hope

[andoutofharm]

okay i have heard enough about izzy to last me a lifetime and then some. can we PLEASE talk about frenchie more

[yuenity]

OH MY GOD HES SO RIGHT

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

This isn’t actually a real problem it’s just a pet peeve of mine but every time I see someone write or draw Izzy and Ed as bright eyed bushy tailed kids(read late teens early 20s) on Hornigolds ship making dumb fuck promises to each other that they’re going to break/won’t be able to keep back before the world chewed them up and spit them out I die inside a little bit because there is a grizzled villain with a cold heart that plays that roll much better than Izzy ever could and it’s Calico fucking Jack. You are taking that roll away from my bestest boy.

Because like it or not there is canon evidence that Jack played that roll in Ed’s life and there’s no canon evidence that Izzy ever did, and in fact there’s evidence against it. I’ll start with the evidence against Izzy. It’s scant but it’s there. “I was honored to work for the legendary Blackbeard” is not something a man who has known Ed since before he was Blackbeard would say, but it is something someone who was hired on after the legend was already established would. everything about the way that Izzy acts about Ed being vulnerable all of a sudden screams that he didn’t know Ed before the Blackbeard mask.

Calico Jack on the other hand has textually known Ed since they first became outlaws. When they interact with each other they’re playing like they’re boys again, or at least much younger men. They drink like there’s no tomorrow, they put their bodies through hell in the name of fun, they line up empty bottles to shoot whip them of the fence boat railing, and they have a fun little name for everything. And while we the audience never see a softer side to Jack because he’s there with a specific nefarious goal and he is built to cause problems on purpose, we’re told it’s there by Ed. Ed, the one person on the ship who actually knows who the fuck Jack is tells us that “Jack’s always been a bit emotional, the two of you(Jack and Stede) actually have more in common than you think. I know he comes on a bit strong at first but he’s insecure.”

Like to me that establishes very clearly that they were friends when they were young and dumb, maybe not very close friends, but compatriots who bonded through the struggles they went through as young men who the world and their boss was beating down on, and that Jack at least opened up to Ed enough for Ed to know that he’s insecure. We also know that these two were fucking ambitious. They fucking grew up to be two of the most notorious pirates on the seven seas. If anyone was going to make stupid fucking promises to each other and then drift apart it would be them I can imagine Jack telling Ed that they’re always gonna be together and that the whole sea is gonna fear their names, and then at some point they out grow that. A ship only has one captain. The world chewed them up and spit them back out and made Ed bored, lonely, guilt ridden, and suicidal and it turned Jack into an alcoholic and a manipulative monster who believes that pirates don’t have friends and who chases his own pleasure at the expense of everyone else even himself. Like I can clearly see the through line to a relationship like I described with Ed and Jack but I have to really stretch my imagination to see Ed and Izzy that way. It just kind of annoys me when Izzy gets to have that spot in Ed’s life in the fandom’s mind when Jack is right there and that’s a good half of what makes Jack fun and interesting.

[stevethehairington]

i keep seeing people saying that they killed izzy for shock value a la game of thrones and i just— not every character death is there for shock value?? just because you don't expect it doesn't mean it's specific purpose is to garner shock value.

izzy very clearly represented piracy. he was steadfast and staunch in his ways and he held onto the traditions of piracy with a TIGHT fist throughout the first season and the start of the second. not to mention, s2 was ALWAYS leading to this theme of "the end of piracy". the clues were there the whole season!!! and by that logic, if izzy = piracy, then end of piracy = end of izzy.

im not happy about his death!! im disappointed hes gone!! i loved him, he was probably my favorite character this season!! BUT i do understand why djenks did it. and it was NOT a "for shock value" kind of thing.

some people are reeeeal quick to like get super defensive and jump onto this "omg it was for shock value! there was no other purpose! what bad writing! what a bad writer!" bandwagon when things they don't personally like or agree with happen on their favorite shows, but honestly not everything you don't like is "bad writing" or "just there for shock value" or "purposeless". maybe take a couple minutes to think critically about it and to like analyze the choice within the frame of the whole season and the whole show and its themes before making those kinds of (oftentimes baseless) accusations?

it's one thing to be upset with something that happened and to not like it, and it's another thing entirely to then blame it on bad writing or a clueless, vicious writer who doesn't care about their characters or their story or their audience.

[mossiestpiglet]

Frenchie pressing in close but keeping Fang’s arm between him and Izzy is such a smart and kind move. He understands that no one but Fang can hold Izzy like that and have it work, but he still wants to express his support with physical proximity. He gets as close as he can while still affording Izzy the barrier that is Fang, and it’s so gentle and shows an emotional and situational awareness that is integral to Frenchie as a character.

[edsbacktattoo]

obsessed with the fact that Oluwande can speak spanish fluently. man can’t read but he’s bilingual. my heart beats for him and him only. i’m so curious about it too. does he have family that speak spanish? did he learn because he wanted to, or needed to? did he learn for Jim? i gotta know

[fist-amidst-the-hands]

okay picture if you will: wealthy businessman stede bonnet in a rivalry with the badminton brothers. through some series of events stede's next move is to buy up a big commercial building row along with all the businesses in it. the problem? one owner israel hands won't sell no matter how ridiculous stede makes his offer. the twist? his business is a strip club, the type of business which stede has tried his hardest to avoid ever since that one uncomfortable experience... (it wasn't the stripper's fault, she was quite polite about it but well, you know) and the driving steddyhands factor is israel's top performing employee who apparently brings in over half of their entire revenue: one edward teach. if stede has to take matters into his own hands to get what he wants he'll just have to start paying some regular visits to the (very male, which he didn't know was a thing) strip club

[martymcflown]

Can I say something controversial about OFMD?

What the FUCK was that Stede mermaid? Watching that at 430am was a mistake, he's my new sleep paralysis demon.

[arsenicflame]

why does it feel like the only options anymore are babygirl ed teach into oblivion and pretend like he never did anything bad, or make him the worst person on the fucking planet and incapable of doing anything to earn any forgiveness (not that he even tries)

[actual-changeling]

even if for some miraculous reason we in fact do not get ofmd s3, at least we went out with a fucking BANG.

this matters.

this matters so much, not just for ofmd but for every single queer show out there and the ones yet to come. it's not just hbo seeing everyone's efforts, it's other studios and other execs, it's showrunners and people trying to get theirs off the ground who can now point at our flag means death and go people want this.

i remember the campaigns for b99, lucifer, warrior nun, and everything else, but i think getting fucking time square ad space and plane banners is a first. incredible. so fucking insane but awesome.

also i really hope i am right about this cause i am 99% certain that if hbo sticks with their choice, david jenkins will be getting offers from other studios that are less idiotic and see the potential.

[clairegregoryau]

Through the Looking Glass

From fairytale in Season 1 to stark reality in Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death- meta ported across from this Twitter thread by popular demand!

This thread contains spoilers for the entirety of OFMD Season 2

First OFMD S1 rewatch since S2, and holy shit, if you haven't done that yet... do that. A thing that it made instantly clear: they told us *all along* where this was going, but there was a reason we didn't see it. Because we were living in Stede's world then. Now it's Ed's.

I know that a lot of us have felt that the tone shift at the end of S2 was... jarring, compared to what's come before. This felt like a show that wouldn't go there. One where being run through was a temporary hiccup. We've travelled all the way from this to this.

But we haven't jumped there without a journey in between. And from the minute we started hearing about Blackbeard, the show never tried to hide what Ed's world and his specific life was like. Not once. In fact they told us over and over and over.

But Season 1 told us a lot of those things through song and story and fuckery. It blended reality with fiction.

Stede met the Blackbeard he knew through books and tall tales, and the real man was even more wonderful than he'd imagined.

We, along with Stede, were comfortable thinking that all those other tales were exaggerations and misrepresentations, and a lot of them very likely were.

The Ed Stede got to know was a person who was capable of whimsy and silliness and loved soft things and doing something weird. Yep, he was also capable of violence and rage, but when he was with Stede, he didn't feel it so much.

This was a vacation from that life.

To Stede he was absolutely lovely... oh, and also a bloodthirsty killer. And Stede loved (and loves) everything about him, and both of those things can be true. This is a perfect example of a spot where (in watching Season 1 without the benefit of hindsight) I assumed that everyone else in that pub was wrong, and Stede was simply trying to protect Ed's fearsome reputation by agreeing on the bloodthirsty bits. And I think from Stede's perspective that was largely true. I think that's how they wanted us to see Ed, through his eyes. Now, after watching both seasons, I think it wasn't the whole picture.

They told us, we heard it, we saw glimpses of it. But we (and Ed) were in Stede's run-away-to-sea fairytale the whole time. It wasn't until Stede left that we saw the reality- the Ed we knew had been, to a degree, a fictional character all along. I always saw this scene as Ed putting a bit of distance between himself and reality; it always felt like the Blackbeard of Stede's storybooks was the fictional one. But now it feels like the softer Ed that Stede knew was much the same- neither of them the whole story of who Ed was and is.

The one person who refused to live in Stede's fairytale was Izzy. I've seen people say it before, but he always gave off that vibe of the only human in the Muppets movie, or the guy who was in Black Sails while everyone else was in Pirates of the Caribbean. He saw the real risks clearly.

And in that light, the end of S1 has shifted an inch to the left for me, and I'm seeing it at a slightly different angle.

Izzy ripped away the healing Ed was doing, but in some respects he did it by tearing away the fairytale we'd all been living in, shoving Ed back into the Blackbeard story.

And that's where we pick up again in Season 2.

The fairytale reference came back in S2 in two notable places, those being Jim carrying that legacy forward in the darkest times, and in Izzy invoking the wooden boy against Ricky's efforts. Stede's made himself into a real boy. Ricky, nope.

Now that I've watched both seasons together, the tone shift doesn't feel so jarring at all, actually.

It feels like sliding through the looking glass, out of Stede's world, and into Ed's- a world that existed all along; we were just seeing it, la vie en rose, through Stede's eyes.

At the beginning of S2, Stede's gone, and we're seeing it unfiltered through Ed's reality.

But Stede wasn't lying when he said he loved everything about Ed. He made a promise to come back and find him- he went down into Ed's darkest place and reminded him that no matter how bad things got, there WAS someone waiting for him, ready to love him.

The contrast between S1's fantasy and S2's reality (excluding mermaids and actual bird guys and cursed coats) is stark, but it really is that.

We have the same settings, the same people, and very different ideas and outcomes at different times.

But it was always there.

Things do come back to a state of (precarious) balance once they're all together. Apologies are made, whether they're spoken out loud or through actions. Things go right, things go wrong. Healing happens. Izzy continues to have the steadiest, most real through-line in the story as he tracks toward redemption, finds acceptance, and to an extent finds himself.

Once again, I hate that they went here with the ending and I wish they hadn't. But it got a fraction easier for me looking at it not as a continuation of Stede's fairytale, but of the grounded-in-pirate-reality arc Izzy was always on, even while we lived in Stede's world.

Where does that leave us? We're not going back to the fairytale, but we're not going to be living in Black Sails for S3, either. We've hit a fusion point where S1 ended with each of them going to separate, miserable homes, but S2 ended with them in the same place, ready and willing to make a go of it.

Season 3 is going to give us their world, together.

I LOVED the moments in this season where the deep emotions were in balance with the silliness I've always adored about this show. Eps4-6 were wonderful like that. Clearly we're not done with drama, either, but like Ed and Stede, I think we'll find a middle ground.

Anyway in conclusion, a rewatch of S1 after S2 somehow made me love the first season even more, which felt impossible? It's now gained /even more/ layers of depth than it had before. No matter how you feel about S2 I think it's worth that rewatch.

Adding one more bit of clarity for myself: I think we got a bit (intentionally) seduced in S1 by the idea that the Ed of the storybooks, the Vampire Viking Clown with the nine guns, was a version of him that others saw, when Stede saw the REAL person who 'worked' for Blackbeard.

In hindsight I think it's clear the Ed Stede go to know was also not the complete version of himself- the reality is, there's a whole spectrum between the two, and they've landed in the middle of it now. Ed intentionally leaned into the unlovable Kraken image to protect himself.

It very much didn't work, just like being just... Edward hadn't worked to protect himself, either. This season has been very much about pulling those two extremes together and finding all the parts that make up Ed overall (another thread on that here on Twitter, which I'll also shift across to Tumblr soon!)

And I think one of my favourite things in S2 has been seeing the way Stede SEES that- he knows what Ed's done, everyone's told him, but he still loves Ed. sees his trauma and how it affects him, and believes he's a good man regardless. He IS lovable; he's not forever broken.

And together, they can heal.

[scarrletmoon]

i’ve seen tweets/posts from people saying that anyone who donated to the ofmd renewal billboard should get beaten with hammers and i just. come on, man

you want other queer people to die bc they spent, on average, $30 on something they really like. i spent about that much on a new sauce pan yesterday. should i also get beaten to death with hammers bc i bought guitar picks instead of donating to a charity your personally approve of. what’s the line here.

you have every right to be furious that the world seems to keep turning while there are horrific tragedies happening somewhere else. but like. how much of yelling at strangers on the internet is mitigating that tragedy. how much shaming is putting food in the mouths of starving people. what’s the point?

are you using your anger productively? or are you burning yourself out bc everything feels hopeless? are you lashing out at strangers bc you feel like it’s the only way you can have an impact?

what’s the point??

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Question: I enjoyed s1 OF OFMD, but for various reasons I never actually got around to watching s2 (pick up most of the plot from tumblr tho). What exactly went wrong in s2 that got so many people upset?

Oh, boy. Very long rant incoming.

So, for context, S2 had a significantly smaller budget, which necessitated moving the filming location to union-unfriendly New Zealand, reducing the number of actors/number of appearances of established actors, and cutting down the number of episodes from 10 to 8. In a show where each episode is only about half an hour long, that last one alone was enough to seriously hamper any character development or plot. I am very comfortable putting the vast majority of the blame on HBO because of these financial decisions.

The short version is that Jenkins et. al. needed to address and build on the problems left hanging in S1 while also getting the characters to the end of their character trajectories in case there was no S3 while also leaving room for additional episodes in case there was a S3, in a grand total of four hours, and failed.

The long version is that there were a bunch of what I'd consider small problems in isolation that came together and exploded in the S2 finale.

The reduced cast necessitated breaking up the crew (ex: having Swede marry Jackie and stay on land with her, so they don't need to pay Nat Faxon for all eight episodes) and not spending as much time on their relationships as S1 did.

The reduced time meant that the entire season was rushed (in contrast to S1, which takes place over at least several weeks if not months, most of S2 takes place in roughly five days), leading both to a lot of telling rather than showing (because they don't have time to show you), including vital character and relationship development.

This includes:

Having the Kraken half of the crew beat Ed to death after months of being abused by him – abuse that is clearly shown to have given them PTSD and a well-justified fear and hatred of him – only for them to be okay with him two in-universe days later;

On that note, having Stede dismiss the crew's concerns about Ed because he loves him and also we only have three more episodes left to fit in everything so we need to get over it really fast, even though Stede is supposed to be well-meaning and caring (even if he's not good at it all the time);

Resolving the issue of Stede abandoning Ed in one day, then having them "go slowly" in their relationship for two days and then have some spur-of-the-moment sex, and then the next afternoon have them break up over their diverging career aspirations, and then the day after that resolve that problem and retire on land while the rest of the crew sails off into the sunset;

Stede becoming a fantastic pirate captain over the course of one day, becoming wildly popular in the piracy world two days later, and then deciding the day after that to never be a captain again because he is retiring with Ed;

Having Ed and Stede decide to retire together as what is implied to be the end point of their relationship arc, when none of Stede's issues from S1, like his poor self-esteem, have been so much as mentioned by anyone, implying that he's either magically gotten over them or they don't matter all that much, actually, even though they were the catalyst for basically everything he did in S1;

Ed having two separate character crises – "I am an unlovable person" and "I want to do something with my life other than piracy" – not spending a lot of time on either one, having moments that clearly indicate he is still working on both problems and they have not been resolved, and then apparently having them both be resolved in the final episode despite nothing occurring to actually make that happen, and in regards to the latter, despite the story actively undermining it by repeatedly showing he can't do anything other than piracy;

Related to the above, Ed ending the series as allegedly being loved by the crew as a family (thus solving Crisis #1) despite this never actually being shown, demonstrated, or even fucking alluded to onscreen. If anything, it shows the exact opposite.

This last point is especially galling to me because of what is probably the most divisive issue in the fandom right now: killing off Izzy Hands after giving him seven episodes of character development.

The show begins with the Kraken crew clearly trying to use the skills they learned as part of Stede's crew to cope with their incredibly shitty situation and care for each other, which includes Izzy. Izzy, on his end, tries to protect the crew and speak up for them, which results in him being repeatedly hurt (both implicitly, as Ed at one point says "that's another toe" in response to Izzy advocating for the crew and we later see he's missing more than one toe already, and explicitly, as Ed shoots him in the fucking leg in front of the crew when he stands up for them).

This camaraderie is shown again and again and again. Frenchie, Jim, and Archie take care of Izzy while his leg is infected, at risk to their own lives. Izzy's misery over losing his leg is what unites the PTSD-ridden Kraken crew and the well-meaning-but-ignorant-of-PTSD marooned crew, who are initially at odds, to make him a new prosthetic leg. Izzy gives Lucius advice about forgiving Ed. Izzy is introduced to drag and opens up enough to sing at a crew party, and the whole crew is having fun together while Ed and Stede are in their cabin having sex for the first time. Izzy gives Stede pirate captain lessons and bonds with him when Ed leaves him. Izzy provokes the season's villain into focusing on him and then gives a big speech about how piracy is about belonging to something, giving the rest of the crew time to try to escape.

Recall that Season 1 had some pretty well-established universe rules, one of which was that it runs on Muppet physics/magical realism. People can jump off yardarms, hit the side on the way down, and be perfectly fine. People can get stabbed in the liver and it's totally okay because it's probably not that important, and even can stay pinned to a mast all night that way with only mild discomfort. Buttons can talk to birds and see long distances without a spyglass and put hexes on people. Good people can be hurt (Stede is stabbed repeatedly), bad people can die (the Badmintons, Geraldo), but no one we care about is ever killed.

This is repeated in Season 2: Ed is beaten into a coma with a cannonball and wakes up like Sleeping Beauty after a spirit journey, with no injuries to his face or body. Buttons turns into a seagull after spending an episode doing a magic ritual and is never seen again (because they couldn't keep paying Ewen Bremner due to the budget cuts). Jackie microdoses her husbands with poison to build up their immunity, so that she can later pull a Dread Pirate Westley and poison the British with shared drinks.

So: in the finale, the villain of the season is taken hostage by the pirates (for reasons? unclear how that fits in the plan), happens to have a gun on him (no one checked??), shoots Izzy on the right side and then leaves with no repercussions. The entire crew stands around silently doing nothing while Ed cries over Izzy and tells him that he's his only family.

And Izzy fucking Hands, the guy who just spent eight episodes bonding with and protecting everyone, uses his last words to reassure Ed that him becoming Blackbeard/the Kraken was Izzy's fault and that the crew is Ed's family and they all love him. No one else says anything to Izzy or tries to comfort him or help him in any way.

I repeat: in a show predicated on the idea that bullies and bigots die stupid deaths while queer people and POC are basically magic, a show that was praised for being kind to queer people by not making them worry about their faves suffering or dying, a show founded on the strength of the relationships between the characters, the guy who went through a season-long arc of learning to embrace his pirate found family and his own queerness is shot for stupid reasons on the side we're told isn't important and dies while everyone just stands there. His last words are about the whole crew loving Ed when the only person that the whole crew has loved all season is him.

Anyway, never mind all that, let's cut to Lucius and Pete getting married and Stede and Ed retiring!

Complicating all this is that people who liked Izzy (or even said anything insufficiently mean about Izzy) were harassed for months in between seasons with insults, slurs, and actual fucking death threats. Izzy's growth was kind of a vindication for liking him: it meant that, despite all the harassment, we were right to like him and care about him as a character. Even people who didn't like him initially started to like him during Season 2.

And then he dies, and now there's a bunch of people saying that Izzy fans are big whiny babies who can't handle fictional death, and actually his death was so meaningful and beautiful and the only logical end to his arc, and it can't be bad writing because people die in real life all the time, and also he admitted he fed Ed's darkness so actually he was a terrible person all along anyway and they were right to hate him (and his fans)!

So, yeah, there are a lot of reasons why it's so hated, and I'm probably only addressing the problems of the pro-Izzy people (from what I can tell, BlackBonnet shippers who don't like Izzy think Ed and Stede's relationship is fine and dandy, but I'm sure that there are other criticisms they have that I have not addressed). I'm not even addressing the issues with Jim and Oluwande's relationship this season (and whooo boy are there issues).

It wasn't a universally bad season. There were episodes I really loved and still do. But the finale was a train wreck, and because it was a train wreck, a lot of people are looking back at what happened before the wreck and realizing that, oh, the train lost its brakes and steering because of the budget cuts and the engineers kept throwing fuel in the engine to make it go faster, and huh, now that I think of it, that part earlier in the trip was really wobbly but I didn't pay much attention to it at the time because I was sure the engineers had everything covered.