it’s interesting how both bridgertonandour flag means death approach the aristocracy and high society with almost exactly the same concept: “this is a space full of unspoken social contracts bound by unwritten rules of ‘correct’ behaviour, forged through traditions you will never understand, and if you deviate from it in any way, you will be socially punished”.
andbridgerton whole-heartedly markets this as the central premise for a ~*~romantic escapist fantasy~*~, where the fantasy is the fulfillment of those contracts through successfully navigating that society – sure, you can break rules to “follow your heart” but the key aspect of that escapism is still working to empower yourself within those social constructs, and within socially acceptable parameters of sexuality and gender expression.
meanwhile,our flag frames it as a space that systemically sets you up for trauma – where the punishment is a form of interpersonal violence, where the rules are a framework for abuse of power, where the victory is when you either defy it, defeat it, or escape from it. mary thrives in her widowhood, stede is completely freedwhen he fakes his death, and highest catharsis in episode 5 isn’t ed successfully navigating the social rules of the dinner party but when stede burns it to the ground. it’s the acknowledgement that these rules are made by power and are used as enforcementsofpower and to defy it is to take that power for yourself.
like. these two shows are, on a base-level, similar premises: historically inaccurate romance-centred lighthearted shows, but it truly demonstrates how the difference between queer-centric and straight-centric romance media is a ravine.
Okay, so I just finished watching the last episode of OFMD for the thousandth time and I just remembered a review I read before it came out that teased Stede getting a more comedic story in the episode while Ed got a darker one, and having watched that, it’s actually not 100% true, but it is super interesting because I thought the same thing until this rewatch.
The first two thirds of the episode, Stede is 100% the dramatic crux of the episode. After everything that happened in the last few minutes of episode 9, where his guilt completely overpowers him and we see him at his lowest so far in the whole show, it’s devastating to see him trying to force himself back into those strict social guidelines that we know he hates so much for the sake of two people who would clearly have been happier if he didn’t (Ed and Mary.) Seriously, this is probably him at his darkest. He pulls a knife on an innocent man. His family painted him out of their portraits. His wife wants to keep pretending he’s still dead. His daughter hates him and his son doesn’t know who he is. It’s depressing as all hell.
Meanwhile Ed is comparatively pretty lighthearted. He’s clearly heartbroken, but it’s not anywhere near as devastating as any of the stuff happening with Stede at that point. The crew are still supporting him in his awkward song-writing and crying in blanket forts. His talk with Lucius shows that he has an actual support structure for the first time in his life. And most importantly, for a while he actually seems to be getting better. He doesn’t immediately lose all his development from throughout the series. He gets genuinely excited about the crew putting on a talent show and seems like he wants to be a part of it. Most vitally, he asks them to keep calling him ‘Edward,’ which is as we all know the name he uses when he’s willing to be open and vulnerable with people.
The beauty of the episode is the switch we get in two consecutive scenes; Stede coming out to his wife, and Ed killing Lucius.
The coming out scene is unironically beautiful. It walks the line between being a revelation which was incredibly brave of Stede to do, and him just casually admitting a fact that he now knows to be true. When Mary hugs him, it’s really the apex of his character arc. He can finally let go of the guilt he feels about abandoning her, knowing she has a better life without him in it, and he’s no longer confused and tormented by his feelings for Ed. He finally lets himself be driven wholly by his heart and not by what he thinks is expected of him. By the end of the episode, this is probably Stede at his best emotionally. So from here, he gets a comedic arc where he gets to go all out faking his death. And it’s hilarious. The last impression we get of him in the series is him finally free, ready to return to his love, something unambiguously happy. And all of the comedy of the last few scenes with him is still present in the viewers’ minds, so we naturally associate his story now with all the lightness and brevity associated with the show’s humour.
In the meantime, immediately after the scene that gives us Stede at his best, we get the scene that gives us Ed at his worst. Him killing Lucius hurts so much, not only because it’s Lucius and we all love him, but because it’s so counter to everything Ed has shown himself wanting to be until now. He claims he doesn’t kill people in spite of evidence to the contrary, and out of the entire crew, he’s probably the closest with Lucius out of everyone minus Stede. He’s the one who convinces Ed to tell Stede how he feels about him. He’s the one who sees Ed crying in his blanket fort. He’s the only one who snaps at him when he’s making bad choices. So the sudden shift in their relationship portrayed so beautifully by Edward just smiling as he pushes him overboard is devastating, because if Ed doesn’t care about Lucius anymore, who does he care about?
The scene with Izzy immediately afterwards only makes it worse, because right now, he agrees with Izzy, but he’s still willing to mutilate him to prove a
point; he doesn’t care about anything anymore. And Izzy understands that. His glee immediately afterwards is proof that he’s won, and he knows he’s won. Blackbeard is himself again. From there, it’s all downhill as he kills off every part of Stede he has left, from taking his ship, to destroying his books, to leaving his crew to starve. Our last image of him is him alone in his room, after adding a bloodied heart to his flag as a literal way of expressing to the world that he will never love anything again, crying at a picture of Stede’s lighthouse, a parallel to the closing shot of Stede stood on his boat with one hand raised, emulating a lighthouse as he prepares to lead his crew away from danger, proving that even after everything he did to close himself off, he’s still fundamentally broken. Symbolically, our last shot of Edward is a man who has driven all of the light out of his life, and our last shot of Stede is a man who is returning with a newfound light in himself.
This structure was so well-done here, because honestly, giving all of the comedy to Stede and all of the drama to Ed would have been a disservice to both of their characters. Their arcs in this episode oppose each other perfectly, and the weight of comic relief is passed evenly between them, which is so much more satisfying on both a narrative and character standpoint
This is basically a longwinded way of saying, I love this show, we need a season 2.
Also I refuse to believe Lucius is actually dead. #LuciusLives.
In this essay I will … add to excellent discussion about the companion structures and themes of Episodes 07 and 08.
First, this is inspired by @bookshelfdreamsand@mikimeiko and dedicated to @speckled-jim (and a few other folks, you know who you are, who also like to scream about Izzy the Ratbastard).
As background, please consider this post (Mikimeiko) about Edward and Stede’s fear of losing each other and then follow up with this post (bookshelfdreams) about the themes of loss and abandonment in Episode 07 and 08. This is an excellent addition about Calico Jack’s role in the narrative and between the two of them you will be well-prepared to consider the following:
I will submit to all of you that Izzy Hands and his terrible life choices are the glue holding these companion episodes together, because Izzy planned this situationandhe used his deeply personal knowledge and understanding of Edward to instigate the breakup.
The full arc of these episodes is about loss, abandonment … and betrayal.
Izzy Hands is once again making everything awful and Making It Weird Forever (thanks @knowlesian). Ready to suffer? :D
Proceed past the cut.
Full Disclosure: This is the top-level summary or I’d be here all night.
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07 - This is Happening
A brief summary of the situation between Ed and Stede: they are still deciding whether or not to accept each other and what that means during the treasure hunt. We get the lovely improvisational restaurant conversation, Edward does his ‘please touch my beard’ flirting thing, and then – oh no! The map burns and is ruined!
Lucius helpfully clues in Ed to the fact that Stede has set up this very Stede-directed adventure for him. Edward has heart eyes 100% of the time because this is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever tried to do (while being a lovable pure idiot about it). God, Stede is the most cinnamon of rolls. And Edward makes an effort to be sweet in return (Lucius reinforces this; it’s so fucking brilliant that Edward still threatens to stab him in the ‘fuckin face).
Did you notice that it’s an Izzy-style threat? A bit softer and gentler, but still with admirable cursing and pitch-perfect comedic timing.
Which brings us to Izzy.
Izzy is conspicuous by his absence. Where would Edward go if Edward left? Back to Izzy and the ‘next adventure!’ And it wouldn’t much look like this very impractical treasure hunt with a petrified orange as the prize.
If we compare the prizes Izzy recently took: one of Stede’s hostages, a Spanish warship, and The Revenge, itself. All very respectable (except Stede; Izzy put him back!)
Izzy, after trying to ‘put Stede back’ post-duel scene: None of this is going how I planned. I hate my entire life and my best friend just banished me from the ship. What is a first mate going to do without a captain to serve?
“This is Happening” is where we see Edward and Stede begin to recognize their relationship while Izzy experiences the full-on terror of his identity being stripped away. Read: loss and abandonment. Izzy is experiencing both of these in the background, and it’s this terror of losing Edward and of contemplating a future without that relationship that prompts him to FUCKING CALL UP CHAUNCEY FUCKING BADMINTON.
Izzy. What the fuck.
08 - We Gull Way Back
Now for a quick linguistic aside on the episode title that you need to understand before we proceed further. “We Gull Way Back” is directly referencing three things:
1. “We Go Way Back” = Calico Jack is Edward’s old friend, buddy, and ex-lover.
2. “Gull” = the Death of Karl and Buttons’s fabulous ability to hex Calico Jack. It’s a weird reverse ex(orcism). Yes this is a pun. Shoot me.
3. “Gull” = an archaic term for “to trick, to subvert, or to fool.” This last theme is where Izzy Hands comes in and it’s a direct title reference to his role in this episode and in setting up the entire circumstances of this arc without being present on-screen. Because David Jenkins is brilliant.
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You may be wondering: Ferus, if Izzy doesn’t show up in this episode, what are you going to analyze?
Ready to be fucked up? Because this has been fucking me up all day. Brace yourselves. Recall all the previously cited meta about Calico Jack and the role he plays in questioning Stede’s identity and making Edward think Stede couldn’t handle the old days?
Izzy knew:
All of Edward’s history
What Edward’s reaction would be to seeing this old friend and ex-lover
What Calico Jack would think of Stede
What old hobbies Jack and Blackbeard used to share
The story of Blind Man’s Cove, that Jack once saved his life there, and that it had no escape routes
That neither Stede nor the rest of the crew would suspect this trap (because none of them know Edward and their history as Blackbeard as well as he does)
That this trap was calibrated specifically and personally to trick Edward into being the one who took Stede to a place where the English could catch and execute him
It’s fucking me up so bad, fam.
It’s not just a betrayal, it’s probably one of the most intimately personal and subtle betrayals I’ve seen depicted on screen.
What the FUCK, Izzy. No shit Edward was right to punch you right in your fucking face!
And it’s the first time we really see Edward lose his temper with Izzy, by the way. Foreshadowing the descent into The Kraken we get in Episode 10.
Izzy set up the whole fucking thing and he’s paying the price.
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Additional Disclaimer: If you’d like very specific dialogue and scene examples of how all of the above is working, my ask box is always open for screaming about Izzy Hands. My word is not definitive in any way, shape, or form. If you also like to scream about Izzy Hands please know that I am very friendly and open to being challenged, contradicted, dismantled, or otherwise appropriated with or without credit and/or reference. I love OFMD a totally normal amount.
you know how there’s this whole thing in golden age romcom 1999 hit the runaway bride about how the julia roberts character likes her eggs? when she’s with one guy, she likes them over-easy, same as him. when she’s with the next guy, she likes them scrambled, same as him. with the next guy, in an omelette, same as him. and in the end, she can’t marry richard gere because she still doesn’t knowhowshe likes her eggs. it’s not until she’s gone off on her own for a bit and built her own life and discovered how she likes her eggs without anybody else’s influence that she can finally allow richard gere back into her life with hope for a real future.
what i’m saying is this. calico jack takes his eggs scrambled. izzy takes his eggs hard-boiled. stede takes his eggs over-easy.
not canonically of course, what i mean is, each of these men in ed’s life have different views and expectations of who ed is, and ed is so desperate for love and acceptance that he is willing to turn himself inside out to meet this expectations. calico jack wants a party; ed will party. izzy wants fearsome; ed will cut off his toes. stede wants a softie who will talk it through with the crew; ed will talk it through with the crew.
ed leaves with jack because he knows jack does this to him, and he knows jack went too far, and he knows he allowed jack to have enough power and control over him that he allowed jack to go too far. ed concocts terrible plans with izzy in order to try and control the power izzy wields over ed - by keeping up with him, instead of letting him take control. ed allows izzy to duel with stede even though, under command, izzy should have stood down. stede is a gentleman and a silly adventurer, and ed tries to become a gentleman and a silly adventurer.
these are all different theses about who Edward Teach can be. all suggestions. even stede, who we often speak about as being really good for ed and allowing him to be who he wants - it’s impossible to ignore that on some level ed is also trying to form himself around what stede wants him to be. this is imo most obvious in ep 10 where ed virtually hangs himself in front of his own crew by erasing the fear they have and thereby abdicating any power. izzy’s threat is the most upfront demonstration of this, but right after that we hear the crew on deck shouting for eddie to come give them another song. ed has no control. he has no respect. izzy’s a dick throughout, but his threats before were always to leave – now he’s threatening ed himself. ed has put himself in danger trying to be what he thought stede wanted.
so, okay. those are the theses. then we get ep10 dark ed. this is the antithesis. this isn’t who anybody wants. he’s not a fun time. he’s not a fearsome pirate. he’s not soft. he’s not weak, and he will cut any weakness out. he is the kraken.
what we need from the narrative now is the synthesis. the discovery, for ed, of what ed really wants. how does he take his eggs.
ed can’t do this as dark ed. he has to come out of dark ed in order to remember the taste of eggs. he can’t do this as any of the standard theses either, because then he just ends up mirroring whoever has the most power of him at any moment, including stede. he can’t do this as the boy who wanted red silk or who killed his own father. he can’t do this as a king’s privateer. he can’t do this as anybody but himself.
what i’m saying is: i am so fuckin ready for ed to have the pirate version of his eat pray love self-discovery journey off alone with no one who knows him so he can decide for himself how he likes his eggs, and then when he and stede meet again–he’ll be ready.
in conversation about this with the excellent good beans @kai-art and @leilakalomi about how ed really does seem to be the most himself with stede, and i am here to add:
when ed is with stede, stede asks. SO many questions. do you fancy a fine fabric? have you ever considered retirement? everything all right? i couldn’t help but notice. May I?
he doesn’t ask all the time. but he spends a lot of time sort of sussing ed out, trying to put into words what he observes about ed and asking for a confirmation, that sort of thing. and ed is responsive for a lot of it! he has room with stede to be himself - he will threaten, for example, the french officers with no problem, he will be kind of a dick about the treasure hunting and protecting his reputation, he will tell ghost stories, he will let stede see him vulnerable in the bathtub scene.
it’s only after stede leaves that ed really veers hard into the thesis of what he thinks stede wants. it’s only after stede leaves that ed completely abandons his leathers for stede’s clothes and stede’s marmalade and stede’s comfy cushions and blankets. he does his little performance, he asks to be called edward.
stede never rejects blackbeard. blackbeard is, for stede, always a part of ed.
but in the absence of stede, and in the wake of stede’s apparent rejection, ed leans in hard and dramatic to what he believes is stede’s ideal. worth noting that even stede doesn’t live up to stede’s ideals - he never talks it through as a crew! he’s not all soft all the time (in fact stede is kind of an ass lmao) and when stede and ed are together, he doesn’t ask ed to be.
so when i talk about stede’s thesis of what ed can be, there is a divide also between how stede actually treats ed in the show and what ed thinks stede wants in the show, and i think that divide is where stede’s thesis, this ep 10 softie, lives. given the cyclical nature of things, i also think that divide is probably where ed’s final synthesis lives, but without the pressure and expectation of what ed believes stede wants him to be.
in the end i think it comes down to: stede needs to want ed to be ed, just himself, and i don’t think stede is 100% of the way there yet given stede’s upset in ep 9 over his perceived ruin of ed (that’s another post). and ed needs to realize he can’t be anybody other than who he actually is.
and in all that, there has to be synthesis. they’re setting ed up to take bits of everyone he is and everything he can be and to finally decide for himself, instead of for anybody else.
There’s a post going around talking about how much people appreciated Blackbeard’s leg brace as a mobility aid in a character like him and it got me wondering how many people watching the show are familiar with Mad Max beyond the most recent installment. I know that there is a general awareness that Blackbeard’s outfit is an homage to Mad Max but like…is everyone APPRECIATING what a brilliant choice it is on multiple levels???
Mad Max’s Road Warrior look is an iconic bit of 80s action movie nostalgia. It comes from the second Mad Max movie and is, in and of itself, a brilliant piece of visual storytelling (a hallmark of Mad Max movies as a whole) because it sums up Max as he is at the end of the first movie: a man in mourning whose physical and mental trauma is made explicitly visual by the knee brace that alludes to the climactic showdown of the first movie.
However, because the broad cultural understanding of any character will always sand off the details of that character, the popular read on Max is that he’s a cool action hero. So, Blackbeard’s clothes are pretty instantly recognizable and immediately give the viewer, at the very least, an idea that Blackbeard is supposed to be an ass-kicking bad-ass. So far so good - we’re tapping into the persona that Ed wants to present as Blackbeard.
What people tend to forget is that Mad Max is pretty explicitly a series of stories about a man who does NOT want the role he’s been given in the story. Max is not mad-as-in-angry, he’s mad-as-in-crazy (there’s a whole other conversation to be had about how those movies handle mental health but that’s another kettle of fish). Trauma breaks Max and the rage-fueled revenge bender of the first movie leaves him at his lowest point, providing no catharsis. It actively makes him worse in every way and the movies never suggest otherwise. He doesn’t even begin to heal or move past that until arguably the third movie, but more realistically the fourth. Throughout all four movies, Max is defined as a character who is trapped in the role thrust upon him and largely cannot form close connections with the people around him because of that. He is not a person, he is violence personified and he hates it.
The Mad Max movies have always been, at their core, about masculinity and its relationship to violence and heroism. Part of the reason Max is read so incorrectly in pop culture is that the movies do have a lot of blood and violence and Max dishes out his fair share. These are the parts that stick in the mind long after the movie is over. The problem is that every other moment in the movies makes it clear that doing these things is harmful to Max. After the first movie he goes out of his way to avoid violent confrontation. In fact, he even actively avoids helping people who are presented as “good” because he knows that the weight of their problems will fall solely on him, without regard for what it does to him.
Ed’s entire arc in OFMD is about his relationship to his own masculinity and his relationship to violence, the latter being something that is explicitly performative for him. He embodies a persona of toxic hyper-masculinity but claims that he’s never killed anyone since killing his father. He’s willing to utilize violence but it’s clear that he doesn’t enjoy it the way people’s mythologized conception of Blackbeard would make it seem like he should. He sheds some blood, lets other people do the killing and no one notices the slight of hand involved there - the fuckery, if you will - because he’s so good at presenting himself as the kind of man they want him to be.
Not for nothing, Mad Max is also a series of movies that is very interested in gender, sexuality, and queerness. Not necessarily always in a positive way, but certainly it is a central theme through all of the movies, because sexuality is inextricably tied up in white, Western views of masculinity. I’ve long felt - and I think the text does support this, albeit perhaps more through accident than intention - that one way to read the original Mad Max is as a movie about a man struggling to accept that he may not be straight. I personally read Max as bisexual but that’s a whole other post to make.
All this to say: I don’t think Blackbeard’s Mad Max look is just a funny gag and the visible mobility aid is just one part of a broader context that it’s working in. It’s an incredibly astute allusion to another piece of media that has grappled with the central themes of Ed’s character and provides us with a ready-made visual to signal exactly what we need to know about Ed as a person.
i was asked about my second favorite joke and i have finally decided: it’s the exchange about the oranges, because holy shit is that a textbook example of a slyer, more character-informing sort of joke construction than the set-up/escalation of the crystals.
(no shade to the crystals, which i wrote about here: it is my favorite for a reason. it is maybe The Perfect Joke.)
that said, tiiiiiiiiime to over-analyze.
shoutout to the leadup, which lampshades lucius pulling absolutely acres of emotional weight for the people around him (and then makes it even better by stede just jumping in to do it himself and lucius not actually having to lift a finger, wooden or not) and the deadpan chorus of ‘it’s a rock’ in response to stede’s delusional glee.
secondary shoutout to how ed starts to clean off the orange despite verbally letting down stede easy— if stede’s superpower is being oblivious to reality and sometimes that makes him do things like run the fuck off without fully explaining himself, it’s also what makes him beautiful and so fucking ready to evolve.
stede is A Lot, but he’s family. his ability to look at the world and say ‘actually, i think it would be more fun if we did it this way and as such: i will be dragging those around me into my delusions that life and the world can be better than it currently is’ is fucking… i mean. what a gem, you know?
so ed says: it’s a rock, it’s a piece of shit, and he still rinses it off carefully anyway to answer this irrepressible ‘but what IF’ because just being around stede seems to allow people to assume these emotional risks, either through proximity to his privilege or his open-bedroom door management style (in a way stede can’t quite seem do for himself until he goes back to fix things with mary the writing on this SHOW my god) and then ed makes the best face when he realizes that once again, stede’s delusional belief in his ability to make things work has panned out: the rock is an orange.
like jim says: the old tree still had some fruit to give after all.
(sustenance frozen in time? a family legacy? jesus fuck if i start asking myself what is the orange, really, in specific relation to the tree itself i will not GET TO THE JOKE JESUS FUCK I HAVE NOT EVEN GOTTEN TO THE FUCKING THING YET. okay: the orange. like nana and stede and everybody else on this show, it’s a lot, but also it means a lot and i love it.
i cannot speak of the tree. the tree is this whole other insane post in the making. everything on this show means like six things at once on TOP of the actual plot and i’m mad at it. all the time, mad at it.)
finally: the actual joke.
I suppose you should have it. It’s your land.
It’s cool. Finders keepers.
Oh thank god! I didn’t want to give it to you. I think this is my new favorite thing!
jesus christ they do so much heavy fucking lifting with so few words on this show. all the time forever, they pack a whole essay into the words they use and how they use them.
okay: i’ll start on the surface, where it’s not even about words. stede is dressed for a cartoon safari. that outfit is calling up some very purposeful imagery, and it’s about one pit stop shy of him having on a literal pith helmet for no reason.
so just visually, we have stede looking like he’s ready to go discover someplace people have lived for centuries, literally digging shit up on jim’s ancestral land, and wanting to take it home with him.
stede: the new face of the british museum!!!!
(don’t @ me, i know i know be accurately mad. ‘the new face of the new zealand museum’ just didn’t have the right ring.)
because they’re really good at this shit they take that obvious visual gag and use it to show stede’s grown as a person since the party; he immediately sighs and tosses the orange off to jim. he knows the right thing to do here.
then we get jim getting to solidify/close a character arc chapter with tossing it back: they’re all good. they’ve got olu, they’ve got nana, and family isn’t something they need concrete evidence can exist for them anymore.
(plus: it’s very obvious stede wants it.)
this last part is where it gets very, very cool: stede’s response.
one of the rules for writing comedy (if you want to maximize storytelling alongside the jokes) is that your jokes need to inform character. ofmd is a fucking masterclass on that.
level one: stede is saying the quiet part loud. someone telling the truth in a socially inappropriate way is a staple in comedy: always has been, always will be. it’s just funny that he’s brightly like oh good!!!! i never wanted to share at all!!!! fuck you guys i want this orange, come to orange papa!!!!!
comedy math is comedy math.
it’s reminding us that stede is evolving, but he’s still stede: he pulled back the impulse to go full main character syndrome and ignore the part of his miraculous orange discovery where the orange didn’t belong to him just because he dug it up while jim asked him what the fuck he was doing, but he really goddamn wanted that orange!!!!
which takes me down to the next level: stede doesn’t just love nice things, he defines himself by his love for/ownership of them. the first part’s fine and good with the narrative, while it seems pretty solidly against the second.
sidenote: ed chucking stede’s generational wealth overboard is also ed giving them a space free of stede’s old life where they can figure their shit out together under the gaze of mary’s lighthouse, one day. i’m mad at the writers. VERY MAD.
if i had to guess where the show is going with this stede still loving/one day re-obtaining fancy pants and having plans to match won’t be an issue, so long as he knows who the fuck he is without those pants.
(…i did not intend that to be a sex thing but i stand by it now that i have made it so, your honor. tits AND ass, your honor: we want them both.)
stupid sex jokes aside, here’s where it gets really cool: this fucking miracle of a metaphor of an orange is now stede’s favoritething.
not his riches; not his fancy pants. not something he bought with money he lucked into and inherited from his shitty father, not a symbol of wealth or class or status.
a humble orange. (consider: the humble lighthouse orange. fuuuuuck this show.)
a humble orange he obtained through honest means: jim gave it to him because stede’s a lot, but he’s family, and because stede’s fuckup with the oranges gave jim their family back in the form of nana knowing who they really are and accepting them in, cake and all, but in the form of olu basically professing eternal love in the most wonderful way possible.
if stede wasn’t a dumbass with a fancy ship who picked jim up and didn’t know why oranges were crucial and wasn’t desperate to impress ed and the treasure map didn’t burn up because lucius was busy watching his dads fall in love right in front of his snake, does jim ever get this closure (or stede this orange)?
probably not. they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the shore party, they did NOT think they’d find a welcome here.
and then: they did. nana had cake waiting, nana is more concerned about murder stats than pronouns, and nana absolutely loves olu. without this day trip, jim might have spent the rest of their life wondering if family was unconditional, or if family ends where honesty begins.
that orange is a gift; that orange is a thank you.
and now thanks to all those dominoes stede has this orange, granted to him because of the two sides of his habit of forgetting reality exist, not in spite of one of them, and because a lot of the time stede forgets the rules the world tells him he should care about are actually supposed to matter to him.
stede defines himself by things: he is entering the next part of this story with the orange that means family and love that embraces nuance instead of wanting to hide or smooth it over as his favorite thing.
The choice should not be Ed or the Kraken. Just as the choice shouldn’t be Stede or Izzy.
OFMD is about self actualisation through the love and support of community. Characters are rewarded for doing things which allow them to be themselves, and (generally speaking) when they cage away parts of who they are or repress themselves the narrative throws negative consequences at them.
This is why is can’tbe Ed or the Kraken. Because bothare Edward Teach. It’s also why the choice can’t be Stede or Izzy as epitomised by Stede brings out ‘soft Ed’ and Izzy brings out ‘harsh Kraken’.
Because if Stede is going to be the love interest Ed needs (and this is a love story, so he’s going to be) then he cannot be just an opposite version of Izzy. He cannot be a person who brings out one side of Ed and punishes or ignores or berates Ed for the other side. It won’t work. That’s Izzy’srole, as an antagonist who is fighting against letting Edward self-actualise. Stede can’t be in that boat too.
No, Stede needs to fall in love with allthe parts of Ed, if Ed is going to be able to chose him in the end. And no, this doesn’t mean Stede should forgive him for the whole…crew thing, because like I said, another very strong theme is about love and support through community and Ed was destroying his own community in his heartbreak. But like. Stede can’t be Izzy 2.0. It won’t work. It won’t be suitable.
Edisviolent, he doeslove a good maim. He also cries in bathtubs and fancies a fine fabric. He likes fuckery, and can make friends easily, he’s charismatic as fuck - but he’s also scary enough that he managed to build up a legend where people see him and immediately surrender or throw themselves overboard rather than deal with him. He is both.
And I think this also comes back to why we love Stede/Ed in the first place. Ed ADORES all these things everyone else in his life has belittled him for, the secret wardrobes and books and the fanciness. He’s immediately interested in pretty much anything Stede has to say, listens to him, laughs with him. And he shares his own life with Stede; fuckery, raids and yes, that soft part and Stede loves all of that too. But Stede has to give him that in return! He has to! He has to love all the pieces that don’t fit right in everyone else’s books which includesthe Kraken and Blackbeard. AND I feel if Ed finally does feel accepted for both, he’ll no longer be so liable to these intense swings because he’ll stopseeing himself as fragmented pieces. Like. Stede leaves him and the last conversation they had Stede said ‘yuck’ about making people eat toes - so Ed IMMEDIATELY makes someone eat a toe when he ‘switches back’ to his old persona because he’s trying to PROVE SOMETHING instead of just like. Being himself.
IDK man, I just. I think it’s way more complex than some people are making it out to be with an Ed vs. Kraken, Izzy vs. Stede thing with Ed’s identity. It’s very similar to what the Dragon Age fandom does with Iron Bull vs. Hissrad actually. But Ed is both.And for their love story to work, Stede should accept him that way.
The choice should not be Ed or the Kraken. Just as the choice shouldn’t be Stede or Izzy. There isn’t a choice. It’s just Ed, and who is gonna accept Ed enough for him to be who he actually is, all of it, not just a few pieces.
We need to talk about anachronism and queerness in Our Flag Means Death. One of the funniest parts of OFMD is the creative use of anachronism. Instead of dutifully following historical accuracy like many other period pieces, OFMD plays into campy anachronism for the sake of the joke. In the year 1717, Oluwande wears Crocs on the beach. Roach hits Izzy with a deli sandwich. Stede reads his crew Pinocchio, a story not written for another 150 years. OFMD far from invented comedic anachronism, (Monty Python, A Knight’s Tale, etc. have also fully committed to the bit) but OFMD has unleashed anachronism on a far more powerful frontier: queer imagination. By releasing itself from the chains of “but that didn’t really happen,” OFMD creates space for queerness yet unseen in period pieces, especially comedies. Queer people have always used fiction as a method to represent stories lost to the ages (think Portrait of a Lady on Fire), but OFMD takes queer representation to a completely different stage by committing to the anachronism and fully imaging alternative ways of being.
Jim obviously represents the real historical phenomenon of people assigned female at birth dressing and living as men on pirate ships, but instead of deliberating over how these people might possibly identify today, OFMD imagines a world where Jim uses they/them pronouns, and no one blinks an eye. In this queer playground of a world before modern transphobia but with addition of modern trans identities, Jim allows the audience a peek at what the world could look like. Jim has a romance, a revenge plot, a tragic backstory, all completely distinct from their identity as a nonbinary person. The creation of nonbinary identity as a non-issue is so funny, but it is also radical. The radical potential of imagining nonbinary people outside of transpobia cannot be overstated, and we need to talk about it.
Stede’s reconciliation with Mary turns the tragic marriage trope on its head. Instead of marriage ending a queer episode in one’s life, as it often did in reality and often does in fiction (again, Portrait of a Lady on Fire) or alternatively, falling into the misogynistic trope of the evil wife, standing between a queer love story, Stede and Mary speak openly about their respective lovers. Throughout the entire show, when faced with queerness, the show dares to ask: why not? Oluwande is literally in Crocs, so why wouldn’t we imagine queer liberation that includes wives not as stand-ins, but as allies and accomplices in the creation of queerness? Breaking the rules of history and television and narrative, we imagine a world where a gay man can conspire with this wife of arranged marriage to fake his death so they both live happily ever after.
Knowing (as we do from David Jenkins’ tweet where he told everyone to follow the writers) that at least 4 of the 13 writers on OFMD are nonbinary people of color, it invokes the queer of color perspective on scenes that anachronistically look at race as well as sexuality. During my personal favorite scene of the show, A British Navy officer tells Frenchie to be “quiet, slave” and to stop his “uppity” behavior, and he gets a knife through his hand as a result. In any other show, the fact that the Black members of the crew had to pretend to be servants to trick the Navy would likely have been an unfortunate necessity (if there were any Black pirates included to begin with!) but OFMD treats that racism as a reason to blow up the entire ruse and just start killing people. Because why not? Why imagine a world full of fanciful pirates and gay romances if they still have to bow to racism? And the next time they meet the aristocracy, the trope is flipped further, with Olu pretending to be a king in a trick that ends with all the other servants/enslaved people on the ship riding off into the sunset while their supposed masters die on a ship in a blaze. I won’t get into the INCREDIBLE indigenous representation in Episode 2, since much of that is actually not anachronistic and rather correcting historical falsehoods, the depictions of race in OFMD are delightfully anachronistic and intrinsically queer.
Honestly, OFMD can only be understood as the result of finally giving QPOC a seat at the table, and that is why it’s been the top ranked show for five weeks, and #RenewOurFlagMeansDeath has been trending on twitter for just as long. I am so grateful to have a show that allows queerness to play and thrive in whimsical, but also serious and heart-wrenching, settings.
going feral over stede and the bar scene in the finale, send help.
because in some ways, this is a continuation of the party scene in e5; only now, ed’s not here. his pain is theoretical, and stede still thinks they’ll never see each other again.
ed would never know if he let it go, this time. no one would ever know.
it’s tempting. stede’s brokenhearted and feeling utterly alone, and these men are offering him attention alongside a fucked up poison pill masquerading as acceptance.
all he has to do is share a couple stories, so long as they’re the stories that confirm the horrible things these men so desperately need to keep believing, or realize they only thrive and profit off endless cycles of human misery. if that ever happened, they would be forced to make an active choice to keep perpetuating the misery or step away and become part of the solution.
which means: that cannot fucking happen. under no circumstances do they want to be in that very uncomfortable place. they like their lives, they like their clothes, they like their nice houses. they are just doing their best, they tell themselves; they do not go home at night and feel like they’re The Bad Guys.
so they do not want to hear about ed, who is lonely and confused and strong and super hot and very complicated and the most lovely person stede has ever met.
ed would fuck with their emotional economy. if ed exists and he is not subject to their definitions of the world and the reasons they made up and codified into science and law to explain why they have what they have, then hooooooly shit kids. holy shit: what the fuck else are we wrong about???
these are the thoughts they cannot think. world-shaking, identity-sundering thoughts. these thoughts fucking suck.
all they want is blackbeard. they do not want a man in all his beautiful nuance; the ways in which he is angry, the ways in which he is tender or silly or looks like an elvish prince or romance novel cover without the beard. ed, who kissed stede on the beach and was willing to give it all up for him isn’t the story they want.
they want a monster, born of the devil. they want to go gawk at the locals like the poverty tourist shtick from the republic of pirates, but without even having to leave the comfort of the home they stole. they already feel so fucking superior, but they want more.
the hunger that gnaws at them has nothing to do with the food they can afford to take for granted. they will always want more.
and now they want stede to feed them. they want him to show them that he had his wild fun, off with those little urban friends of his— now he’s back where he belongs, intemperate fit of madness over.
he’s still weird, and he’s definitely still gay and they still do not like that at all, no sir, but in this moment they decide: for right now, he’s one of them.
this is how he can do it. this is how stede can win, just this once. now, he can give them someone else to gleefully chew on and bask in the shared glow of keeping somebody else down.
because here’s the catch: stede will no longer be one of them if he defends ed even a little, their pushback says.
so make your choice, stede, these fucking assholes/the narrative says. what’s it going to be?
and because this show is very real and heartbreaking and understands that good and bad is not so much something people are, it’s something people do: stede slips up. the words come out of his well-meaning mouth, and he can’t take them back.
because mary hasn’t yet attempted murder with a skewer, stede’s still in his belly of the whale moment, so instead of remembering what he learned at the party (that now is the time to say fuck you fuckers, here or not ed would be horrified to hear this and thus i am horrified, because his pain is my pain now that i know it exists and then burn their lives down) he backpedals, but he doesn’t take it back.
ed’s a killer: the worst thing he could possibly say.
the secret ed told him—the secret i would guess ed has only spoken aloud to stede in that exact way— alone in their little bathtub confessional: he denied it. he knows that ed has hurt people and let people die, and while the morality hair is being split admittedly fine there along with the exact definition of murder, to ed that makes a difference.
and because stede is flawed and human and kind of an asshole sometimes but at the end of the day, so so wonderful: he knows that even if ed will never know he said this, it matters. stede will know it happened, that these gross men wanted to point and laugh at his friend and the man he doesn’t yet understand he loves, and that stede didn’t protect ed from that.
the world ed moved in means he was told the acceptable methods of protection only have to do with the physical world; you teach a man to fight, you shield him with your body, you fuck around and jostle. he was starting to test those limits and move outside his box to allow his other instincts and desires to surface alongside the parts of himself he allowed out already, but these men don’t care about any of that.
it’s supposed to be stede’s job to protect ed here, because ed is perfectly fucking capable but he shouldn’t have to, and because these are stede’s people — or more accurately, it’s everybody in the crew’s job to protect each other because that’s what a fucking family does, and without frenchie and abshir and the rest of his compatriots, stede wouldn’t have been able to do what he did at the party.
unfortunately stede left the crew when he left ed, even if he didn’t see it that way. they would have reminded him who he actually is again: the gentleman pirate, thieved plant and all. they know he’s a weirdo and he might misuse all the oranges again, but they love him. part of loving him is knowing he’s still on his way to figuring it out, and giving him a little more room to grow within their space. that’s what you do when you love someone: even when they drive you nuts, you give them way more benefit of the doubt than you would some asshole on the street. (or in a bar.)
because he’s worth that love and kindness and does the same for others, stede tries; he redirects, won’t say another mean word about ed (won’t say a single word about ed, in fact) but the words he already said ring in his ears. he lied in a way that would be a particularly rough blow to ed’s feelings, he didn’t stand up for ed enough after that, and he fucking knows it.
so he stumbles back into the party and is a real shithead to mary (while… acknowledging she should absolutely be mad at him… for being a shithead. stede fuckin bonnet, i fuckin challenge you to c’mere a second i wanna give your complicated, sad face a gentle hug) but what he says is very, very important.
the gentleman pirate, he called himself at the bar. ed called him that when they met; the crew went full sports movie locker room speech vibes confirming it in front of the royal fucking navy and thus probably god. stede finally believed it in that moment, that he was achieving his vision of forging a new path in piracy. maybe all the nice things people said about him were… not something to just brush off???? seems fake, but big if true!!!!
and then chauncey’s big dumb mouth and big dumb gun blew that rising thread of confidence to absolute shreds along with his big dumb face, so here stede is: yelling at mary and pretending he’s not just yelling at himself.
he says mary needs to give up her fake title: he means, i hate myself. i was never actually that strong and loved man. i was not a gentleman or a pirate and i did not have a family. i was pathetic, there and here, and i will never be anything other than that.
my father was right.
and then mary has fucking haaaad it and tries to STAB HIM! IN THE EARHOLE! and we get like, the most gorgeous move into a journey out of the underworld/reverse lot’s wife deal where stede’s sin was not looking back and it’s going back and dying that heals him and i am. i am honestly sort of lowkey forever wanting to chew on this show like old bubblegum but it never seems to lose any flavor!!!!
Okay I started talking about this on Twitter but I can’t with Twitter character limits. So onto tumblr it goes. Honest to god my absolute favorite scene in OFMD is Lucius drawing Fang. Every time I rewatch I’m struck by how sweet it is and how sincere it is. That one Daily Dot article goes into a lot of why from an Izzy context that scene is critical for the show, but I want to talk about from an Ed/Stede context, because this plotline actually parallels Ed and Stede in a lot of ways.
So when Ed and Stede meet, we get this shot of Stede in distress, and Ed staring down at him, politely curious and fascinated by him, though he’s not exactly hauling Stede up or trying to perform any first aid–there’s a definite tension in this scene. (hit my image limit and I can’t post Stede being half-dead, because all the other images are my favorites so that one didn’t make the cut)
When Lucius and Fang start off this scene: we have Lucius in distress, and Fang looking down at him, with the opportunity to lend a helping hand, though he, too, is not exactly rushing to Lucius’s aid–he’s actually there to stop Lucius from climbing back up.
Lucius sees an opportunity, and shoots his shot.
Then there’s a cute kind of reversal here, in that where Stede was flattered by Ed’s attention when Ed rescues him, Fang is flattered by Lucius’s and Fang rescues Lucius. In both cases, we have this very brief flicker of interest (and oh wow, sidenote, it’s so much fun to say that this MEANS SOMETHING, it’s genuinely not just me imagining things, this is a genuine spark of attraction between each of these pairs) where one person says to another person, I see you, I’m interested in you. And there’s a very sweet response in both cases. It’s relief, it’s joy. Stede smiles, Fang laughs:
And from here in both cases, we get a flip to see what it is that Ed and Lucius see. In Ed and Stede’s case, of course, it’s all of Stede’s fine things that he loves so much. In Fang’s case, it’s, um, his dick, but that’s okay! It’s okay to want to be admired and to be seen as sexy. Because Ed and Lucius see Stede and Fang, they know what the two men want. Ed seeing Stede’s model ship and his books and loving them is so deeply paralleling Fang saying “no one’s ever taken an interest in my form before.” Where Stede has been a subject of mockery, Fang’s been essentially invisible. And yet both of them here are being appreciated, and they open up to it.
The next scene in both cases–hey did you think about how Lucius always does his drawings in Stede’s quarters? I didn’t until just now–takes place in Stede’s room. (Why Stede’s room? If I were to guess, it’s because it’s where they can be themselves, where we hear the words “what if piracy wasn’t a culture of abuse?” It’s full of comforts and fine things, and it’s beautiful and well-lit, it’s everything that Blackbeard’s own ship is not.)
It’s where Stede and Fang are both seen and admired for the first time. Stede takes Ed on a tour of all of his things, and Lucius sketches Fang, and then there’s this line–
Stede and Fang have never met anyone who appreciated the parts of them that Ed and Lucius are appreciating right now. In fact, in Stede’s case, everyone who comes in mocks him immediately. It’s just… this line is so good. It’s so sweet.
And then, in both cases, there’s a definite exchange happening. Stede discovers that Ed fancies a fine fabric and that Ed is tired of pirate life, even as Ed thinks he’s there to observe Stede, and Ed discovers what he wants–he wants to retire. You can’t just look without being observed yourself. And Stede offers to help him get there, by the end of the episode!
Lucius sketches Fang, and Fang gets to be the center of attention, admired by Lucius and Wee John, and dish all the dirt on Izzy. (Lucius is a little bit more deliberate than Ed–Lucius knows exactly what he’s doing here, and does it on purpose, but, and this is key, it doesn’t derail the sincerity of the scene! Because Fang is still Lucius’s friend, even after this point. Fang’s not being taken advantage of here, and he will continue to help Lucius later on, when Lucius’s finger goes septic.)
The article goes into Izzy’s response to Lucius and Fang really well in-depth, so I won’t. Suffice to say that Izzy is horrified in both cases by the fascination. But where Ed lies about it (“I’ll kill him in order to let Blackbeard die so I can retire”) in order to keep doing what he’s doing, Lucius is honest with Izzy, yes, he drew Fang and it’s fine, and he wins, that’s our foreshadowing. These connections are going to save them. Izzy’s powerless here. Not only that, but he’s powerless because Fang’s trust and appreciation for Lucius gives Lucius info that he needs in order to drive Izzy off.
Of course, Ed and Stede don’t have that chance. Ed’s still trying to reconcile those two parts of himself–Blackbeard and Ed Teach, and Stede of course fails to maintain that connection the way that Lucius and Fang do, there’s a panic that happens and the trust is shattered. But the thing is: Lucius and Fang showed us it CAN be done, that the power of admiration, trust, and genuine connections can save the day. Hopefully Stede and Ed find that out next season too :)
Ed thinks that Stede will only love him if he’s the Edward Teach version of himself, the one who folds laundry and is okay with licking king George’s boots. That’s why he says “you were always gonna realize what I am” in the Calico Jack episode. He’s saying “I’m not this soft, vulnerable, happy version of myself that I’m with you, I’m Blackie, I’m Blackbeard, I’m the Kraken”. And he was so afraid of Stede finally realizing that and being horrified and unable to love him anymore, that he leaves first. Only to immediately come back when he realizes Stede is in danger. And in that moment, he gives everything up, he signs everything away. To save Stede he becomes Edward Teach, a version of himself he hadn’t been since he was a child.
Ed is never himself, he doesn’t even know who that is, in fact. He’s a chameleon, he adopts a different personality depending on who he’s with or what he’s trying to pretend to be in that moment. This is made obvious in that scene in which they’re having breakfast and Calico tells that grim tale of Blackbeard burning that ship with everyone trapped inside, screaming. Stede is taken aback because “I thought you’d given up the killing”, because that’s what Ed told him in that vulnerable “that’s why I have no friends” moment in the bathtub. And he tries to justify it “technically the fire killed those guys, not me”. But I’m sure he didn’t try to justify himself to Jack when he did it, because that’s what he expected of him, although it wasn’t what Stede expected.
This scene has such an awkward energy, not just because Stede feels out of place, but because it’s one of those moments in which character A has lied to character B and character C is about to reveal it by accident so character A tries to stop them by saying something like “no, Stede doesn’t wanna hear about that” to make them stop.
Ed hasn’t exactly lied to either of them, but he hasn’t told the truth either.
He has killed people, indirectly, but Stede can’t know that. He hasn’t been able to kill anyone with his own hands since his father, but Jack can’t know that. (Izzy does but that’s another topic).
The thing, then, is. The real Ed is none of these people. You can see glimpses of him in all, because all of them are a part of him, but all of them are masks. He has needed them to survive. Edward couldn’t have survived in Hornigold’s ship, so he became someone else. Blackbeard couldn’t have survived at the pirate academy, so he became someone else.
What I can say for sure is that he has allowed himself to be a bit truer to himself with Stede than with anyone else (in the show). Not fully himself, he was still trying to cover up his murders, trying to be softer and good enough for Stede. But he allowed him to see him crying, because that’s a thing you can do around Stede, yes, but also because he trusted him. With Stede he wasn’t Edward, or Blackbeard, he was Ed. And Ed is the name I think he’ll end up choosing for himself. But, in the end, he was still trying to be a different version of himself, one that Stede could love. One that didn’t have space for the things about Blackbeard and the Kraken that are still very much parts of Ed. All of them have pieces of him, but none of them allows him to just be,they were all carefully curated for other people, not for himself. That’s what needs to change.
Now (you know…… in season 2) Stede needs to prove that he loves him, all of him, every version, everything. I’ve seen people talking about Stede cleaning Ed’s makeup, washing the Kraken away, but that’s not what I think needs to happen. Stede would love the Kraken, because it’s a part of Ed, full stop.
It’s Ed who needs to wash his own face. He needs to learn what parts of himself he needs to let go off, and what parts he likes. And learn to love himself, all of him, every version, even the ones that no longer serve him, but especially the ones that do. I don’t think either of them could have grown as people alone on a ship to China, as much as it pains me to admit. Stede needed to make peace with his old life and say goodbye, and now Ed needs to face the Kraken.
Ed has this annoyingly relatable tendency to swing SO overly hard in whichever direction he’s nudged. They’re captured and they could apparently very easily simply walk away on foot from the Academy with no consequences but Ed won’t even entertain it he’s just full on “there is no escape :) :) i’m a professional folder now :)” Then he kisses Stede ONCE and in practically the same breath he’s asking him to assume new identities and run away to CHINA. Not go back to the ship together, not even start a new life in like, Canada. Has to pick the most extreme far off destination he can think of. He doesn’t even take a beat to plan further, he immediately runs off the beach to get started and wants to leave TONIGHT. Poor guy sets himself up for failure at the docks because now he’s not just lost Stede, he’s lost this entire new life he’s constructed all in his head because he’s got so far ahead of himself.
He does it in his break up too like he puts on Stede’s robe for comfort and all of a sudden he needs to channel this exaggerated version of the parts of Stede’s personality that he loves or wishes he could have. Then the MOMENT Izzy tells him he wants Blackbeard back Ed just fully kills a man, severs toes, and rebrands himself to be the most evil version of himself yet. And by doing these things he just breaks his own heart over and over again because he’s constantly mourning these false identities and fantasies that he builds up in his head and has to abandon.
All or nothing thinking makes you feel like such a failure because nothing in life is all or nothing, including the ability to stop thinking about things as all or nothing, so it’s hard to even begin to start approaching things with caution or moderation because if you fuck up even once well then that’s it, I’m a lost cause I won’t even try to regulate myself any more and i’ll just make giving up & getting my hopes unrealistically up my full time job. We make (deserved) jokes about Edward “Guess I’ll Die” Teach but that’s exactly what this kind of behaviour is: I’m bored with my life so maybe I’ll just DIE ABOUT IT like jesus dude maybe there’s something in between “trying dying” and trying to become a completely new and different person either by literally assuming a new identity or metaphorically through intrinsically weaving his sense of self in with Stede’s companionship.
I struggle with this so much like i make the most wild impulsive dramatic life decisions sometimes because they feel like the easy solutions to big problems, and measured responses are boring, and boredom is intolerable.
Stede has the exact same problem I just think he’s at a different stage of learning how to break this pattern. He seems much more willing to bounce his ideas and impulses off of other people which can give you a lot of valuable outside perspective. He still makes dramatic unilateral decisions like running away to become a pirate and then running back home, but by the end of the latter I think he’s realized that there’s always a third option. I guess the lesson when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place of 2 extreme options is to remember (ironically) that there IS always an escape.
I’ve been thinking about whether Izzy is manipulative - yes and no, still pondering - and that led to how Izzy interacts with others, and then trying to suss out how Izzy functioned as a First Mate at all. So thoughts I’ve had:
First and foremost, in command Izzy functions as part of the Edward-and-Izzy unit (aka Blackbeard). He’s not equipped to function on his own, but neither is Edward. The difference is that Edward can hide that fact for longer because he’s the one with the instant charisma whose issues trip him up later, while Izzy cannot take control of a situation for the life of him but probably doesn’t suck once he has it and a clear goal. This is, I think, the root of why Izzy struggles so much on the Revenge. Edward effectively abdicates his role as unquestioned top of the hierarchy, which cuts Izzy off from the source of his authority.
And while Edward can keep riding charisma / the Blackbeard mythos / his relationship with Stede to stay on top anyway, Izzy is left to fend for himself in his personal hell.
real talk everyone: i know that for many of us, engaging with the characters of Our Flag Means Death through the lens of mental illness/neurodivergence allows us to explore not only ourselves (seeing the self in the other aka the fictional character) but also explore how characters we love can be like us, but especially for white fans, we need to talk about the appropriate ways to do this with characters of color, especially Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach.
there is NOTHING WRONG with interpreting Ed as a neurodivergent character. That is NOT what this post is about.
What it is about is the way that fans, particularly white fans, have been approaching their discussions of Ed and potential neurodivergence in a way that infantilizes and lessens him as a character by virtue of missing what he DOES in favor of listening to how other (white) characters talk ABOUT him
See, there’s this underlying idea that something is “wrong” with Ed. That he’s unstable, that he’s half-insane, that he’s a shadow of himself who needs Izzy or Stede to manage him, that he needs to be fixed, that he’s always on the verge of a breakdown - and I understand that these ideas are coming from a sympathetic and loving place, but they are 1) not accurate to what we see in the show and 2) really infantilizing to Ed as a grown man of color
so firstly, the elephant in the room:
Izzy is the character who spends the most time questioning Ed’s sanity and stability and we have to understand that Izzy is incorrect. Izzy is basing his judgements on the fact that Ed’s behavior does not make sense within Izzy’s worldview, not within the actual realms of reality.
What we see with Edward is a person who is performing at the highest peak of his professional field, with the respect of essentially all of his peers and enemies, with nowhere else to climb, and he is bored. We see that he has unfulfilled emotional needs in terms of wanting companionship, tenderness, and trusting relationships with others. We see that he finds his work an endless, boring grind without life or passion, and that the natural conclusion to that profession is death in the line or duty or in capture by the enemy.
In this context, Ed’s passive suicidal ideation makes perfect sense. His lack of interest in continuing his work makes perfect sense. He is not inexplicable, he is essentially a case study in what happens when a person is severely socially isolated and married to their unfulfilling job that they hate. Ed’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie and all the adrenaline has gone out of his work. He is seeking novelty and interest to respark his old passions.
This is deemed evidence of Ed being “half-insane” by Izzy because it fundamentally opposes Izzy’s own needs and worldview, and thus seems inexplicably incorrect. Izzy enjoys the fact that they don’t have to fight, that the surrenders are easy, that the looting takes little effort. To him, these are all signs of their great success, which makes Ed’s boredom a “mood” that he has to manage rather than a clash of needs and expectations.
Ed wants to meet a new person who’s different and unusual. This, to him, is a worthwhile pursuit, because piracy is boring and he’s already successful at it. To Izzy, it’s a nonsensical waste of time.
Ed is not actually unstable for feeling this way. He’s just not having his intellectual and emotional needs met by his environment, so he’s checking out of the things that bore and depress him. Thinking otherwise is generally just a failure to contextualize his attitude - if you think of Ed as a successful business owner with no challenges in his field, you’d see that he’s essentially repeating the same boring day in the office over and over, with no way out.
After all, retirement for a pirate is death. And Ed doesn’t even have the language to describe retirement until he meets Stede. So he just knows he wants things to change, or end, and death is the only end he can know to anticipate at this point in his life.
Ed also demonstrates that despite his boredom and depression, he’s perfectly capable of managing his day to day life. In Episode Four he makes astute observations of the world around him (correctly gauging the conditions of the clouds and the sea to determine when fog will occur), properly estimates when the Spanish should be closing in on their location, accurately assess a means of keeping track of time for his endeavor, and works with a partner to develop a back up plan. All while managing the emotions of his second in command, who’s flipping out and navigating meeting a new person he’s fascinated by.
If Ed were half as unstable as some posts postulate (or as Izzy assumes), then he wouldn’t be capable of all of this. Again, Izzy thinks that Ed is insane because he’s not in on Ed’s inner workings. He doesn’t know that Ed has a plan, he doesn’t understand that Ed wants to explore a different life (because Izzy can’t imagine a life outside of piracy), and he doesn’t understand why Ed sees anything of value in Stede. Ergo, he thinks Ed must be losing it.
But again, the story shows that Ed isn’t losing it at all, he’s just having fun. He doesn’t need to be managed, he’s managing himself just fine. He’s just not managing himself in a way that his coworkers are expecting.
Assuming otherwise is to disregard that he’s clearly still highly cognizant of the world around him and fully capable of interacting and engaging with it.
The bathtub scene is another area I’ve seen people bring up to support this, and I’ll be frank, it baffles me. The bathtub scene is not written as though this is a common occurrence in the life of Edward Teach. it’s framed as a PTSD flashback brought on by the trigger of the Kraken and the stress of Ed feeling as though he needs to commit his second ever murder, of a man he doesn’t even want to kill. The breakdown isn’t a regular occurrence, its a lowering of walls after a frightening reminder of what Ed clearly sees as his greatest sin - murdering his own father.
It’s just. I don’t know man, that’s not his every day. We learn that Ed takes precautions to ensure he doesn’t have to kill, and that he’s avoided that all these years. This breakdown is essentially because he’s revisiting that trauma again in a way that directly opposes the conditions of his original traumatizing incident. Where Ed murdered his father to defend himself and his mother from a terrifying aggressor, here he would be killing his friend who he has already started falling for and who treats him kindly for nothing more than selfish personal benefit (and peer pressure).
These are not every day circumstances in the life of Edward Teach.
And finally, his breakdown at the end of the series - Blanket Fort Ed is literally just going through the motions of a break up. He’s crying in the club (blanket fort) of comfort, wearing his exes clothes because they’re more comfortable than his, eating tons of marmalade, and writing bad, sad poetry. This is literally just Been Unexpectedly Dumped 101. That gets turned up to 11 though after Izzy confronts him and he hears the sound of the crew calling for him. Izzy has put Ed in a mindset where he must again hold doubt and mistrust for the people around him in his heart (thus interpreting the crews calls for Eddie to sing them a song as mockery) while at the same time making it clear that he’s worthless as an individual.
It’s a direct attack on his self-esteem, and his newfound sense of having a solid foundation gets ripped from under his feet. He goes on the offense, but now, back in a world that doesn’t satisfy his emotional or psychological needs, and having been made aware that it IS possible to have those needs met, but that HE, Edward Teach, simply isn’t allowed to have them met, he’s now in despair.
But despite all of this! He’s still not incapable of taking care of himself OR in need of a caretaker. We see that he’s still taking care of business, that he’s still active on the crew and directing change, and that he’s capable of planning and executing courses of action.
At no point in the series is Ed in need of a manager. Yes, in some ways, he directs Izzy to act as his hands (especially early on), but that’s more because Izzy’s job is to be his hands than because Ed needs someone to take care of things for him. He’s delegating the boring work he doesn’t want to do to his assistant.
There is a tendency in general to assume that people of color are less capable, less rational, less intelligent than white people. I doubt anyone is thinking of this intentionally when they suggest that Ed relies on Izzy for his day to day care, but that’s kind of what’s implied when it’s implied that Ed can’t handle his daily affairs without any evidence that he’s actually incapable. The assumption that Ed is being corrupted by Stede or led astray or can’t determine for himself what’s best are actually examples of Izzy infantilizing Ed too. Stede gets in on that in Episode 9 as well, when he agrees that he’s ruining Ed instead of acknowledging that Ed is a grown man capable of making his own choices.
Both of the main white men in Ed’s life think him incapable of making choices for himself. The difference is that Stede does it in a moment of trauma, and Izzy kinda does it because he doesn’t understand that other people can have different worldviews without there being a definitive right and wrong answer. There’s a racial element to it that’s absolutely intentional on behalf of the writing team, but that I don’t think is getting picked up by all of the fanbase.
Edward Teach is the man, the myth, the legend. When we talk about him, we have to consider his behavior from the perspective of the man, himself, not the myth or the legend as interpreted by the characters around him. When we write about Ed’s mental health and psychological state, we need to make sure that we’re centering Ed’s own behavior and reasoning and considering what actions he’s taking on screen, not the way he’s interpreted by the people around him.
okay brief moment of nerding out over ofmd deeply, DEEPLY understanding human psychology.
today it’s about ed and telling stede that he hasn’t killed anyone directly since his father.
(now, caveat: i do think there’s an element here of ed trying to find internal moral classification structures that make sense to him— clearly, killing is not something he enjoys and wants to associate with who he is, so there’s definitely a note at play here where ed is attempting to align what he’s done with his intrinsic values and desires, etc.)
however, i think the more important piece here is what does this say about ed: that he’s taken care to off-load his killing onto proxies, be they the other members of his crew or setting a ship on fire, for all these years, and that he still thinks he’s not a good person anyway.
so ‘is ed right about what murder means, is he actually to blame for deaths’ is a question we can all ask ourselves (and probably should!) but for ed as a fictional person, he’s done that calculus and decided that using his own two hands to kill is an act so fucking shattering and horrifying he did it once, to end his father’s abuse, and then could not force himself to do it again.
he expresses distaste about other specific acts of violence at several points throughout the season (and every so often, enthusiasm, though i would argue that’s far less sincere), but he is very, very clear about this with stede: as far as ed’s concerned, his first, last, and only murder happened the night he killed his father.
do we think he’s right about that? it’s kind of a personal choice, there. but if we’re looking to understand ed himself, what ed thinks and why he thinks it are the roads to travel. this show is so ridiculously good at crafting flawed, realistic human beings i could chew fuckin glass about it.
okay: so whether this is what ed and stede’s literal first time seeing each other in s2 is like, in terms of the first moment of emotional breakthrough here’s what i’d most want.
stede’s s1 arc has approx 272289 moving parts, but one of the deep ironies is the way his liminal space ship allowed everybody willing to take the chance room to emotionally grow and crack open their shells, but stede almost never takes advantage of the same chance in a way that involves him offering up emotional disclosures about himself.
(and when he does, they’re prompted by someone else going first or literally being forced, ohhhh stede. oh buddy. i love you: you’re a lot. you’re family, kiddo, but you gotta learn we can’t blame people for not knowing we want them to walk through doors we keep firmly closed and sometimes lock against them.)
and given stede’s upbringing on about… every level, it makes sense he’s this locked down. putting himself out there verbally and being vulnerable in that way, performing love that way: that’s gonna be hard for him. it’s also going to be one of the things that helps him keep growing, instead of clinging to the damage of his past and calling it Just How It Is.
beyond that, we can be fairly sure ed’s going to still be pissed off. if i had to guess, when this starts ed’s position is he does not want to hear it: he’s walled back up, he’s the kraken and he DOES NOT WANT TO HEAR IT STEDE
and then i don’t know, stede can apologize because he’s going to have to be inconsiderate once again: he really does need to say it, because maybe knowing why might help. not make it right: not take it back. just… help.
and then stede can explain he left because yes: it was late and he was scared and chauncey is a reeeeeal jerk who made stede an accidental murderer in an even more ridiculous way, and nobody makes great choices in those kind of situations.
but more than that: stede left because he thought he ruined ed, like he ruined his family. ed didn’t want to become a privateer, and he didn’t want to run away to china: he was doing those things because he thought he wanted to be with stede. what would happen, the day ed woke up and realized he’d been wrong and stede was nothing like ed had thought and he had been ruined. what would happen? he would hate stede, and he would leave.
at least this way, stede was doing something right. he was going back and being a husband and a father, but then mary helped him realize: he was a husband, and he is a father— well, was on both maybe! legally he’s dead, you see, there was this fantastic fuckery ed, you would have loved it. obtained a jaguar and all!!! and ed is like …i hate how much i want all those details, you mad fucker i’m so mad at you but i can’t seem to quit the other stuff i feel about you, too— but the way he could do right by them was to leave again, and go back to ed. the kids say hi, by the way! very excited to hear about all our adventures. mary, too, some of this was all thanks to her.
oh! like how she’s the one who showed me that i love you, he should probably add as a cheerful afterthought while ed is dealing with all that insanity at once.
and because ed deserves a little fuck you room to breathe, he could say: well fuck that. you left. taika would do something with his eyes i’ll yell about until i die, the works. maybe even go for the ‘yeah, well? i HATE YOU now’ gut.
and stede can say: i did. and i love you, even if it’s too late. even if you hate me! even if you threw away all my things, even if you marooned most of our kids. (though you will probably have to have THAT discussion with them, edward really i don’t suppose i have much standing here but really. not even leaving them some lunch???? an appetizer or two? you know how buttons gets about this, & etc) i love all of you, & etc.
and then honestly? i want ed to start the process of letting him back in. not just: well okay then. we don’t need to deal with it, because that was one of the mistakes that tripped them up after their breakthrough in the bathtub confessional: they never circled back and actually talked much more about it. if they had, maybe stede could have asked more, and ed could have done the same. instead, they wandered around with half-filled in images of each other, some based on what they learned by being around each other, but still holding onto their own individual baggage about why they assume the other has it made and doesn’t feel downright worthless sometimes.
part of the thing i find most interesting about where we leave stede at the end of s1 is that he’s faaaar from finished with his journey; he’s just ready to start figuring out who the fuck he actually is, now. ed’s had a setback thanks to mister izzy ‘what’s emotional literacy? is that some gay shit? is it about FINDING JOY???? you KNOW how i feel about finding joy and gay shit’ hands, but he was actually on the start of a similar road before shit went sideways.
so: because i’m a big sap but a realist, i don’t know that ed needs to say it back RIGHT then. i… wouldn’t hate it, because i think love is saying: sure, okay. come on in, kiddo, i got cake for us all, but dramatic tension is also a love language.
either way, i want stede to open the fuck up in a clear way, apologize, and profess love to any fucking version of ed alive, because ed doesn’t need to be making stede happy for stede to love him, and stede wouldn’t dream of demanding ed say it back. hope, dream? want? oh yeah. we all want that shit.
…honestly, here’s what my soul really wants: what i think ed probably wanted, when he left that afternoon with jack. the romance movie moment, the big declaration. the moment when somebody takes the risk and says: wait. i need you: don’t go.
if stede goes to leave and ed calls him back, open to trying again even if he’s not fully ready to trust again, that seems right to me. heal the mistakes of their past, do it right this time.
ok crew, i want to talk about myth and meaning making
(and originally petrified oranges but since i’ve already spent 2 hours of my life going red strings and thumbtacks about how that may actually be a possibility lets change course from steering to port and head starboard instead)
first, when i say myth i’m talking the foundation stories of social groups. religions have foundation myths, but so do governments, nations, companies etc.
“this is who we are, and why we do things the way we do.”
and history is a myth too, albeit one reinforced by governments and scholars. and it usually focuses on people with the resources, power and affluence to order it to be recorded. which gets echoed in how Lucius was ordered to record everything,, except for, you know, mutiny and normal mundane things that have no bearing on Stede and his exploits (there really should have been some inventory done to check the orange supply at some point, like inventory and ship’s logs are actually pretty well recorded if the cargo breakdowns in Black Flags Blue Waters 2018 are anything to go by).
but between massive english illiteracy until very very recently, and the bias of what gets preserved and copied down or thrown out, it’s easy to see how the great man of history model was so easy to perpetuate. we don’t really have examples from anyone BUT the “great men” of history, at least not easily accessible or widely distributed. (museums are trying with the massive document uploads, but this is also what makes Anne Lister’s diary such a treasure for queer history).
if you’ve never heard of Jane Elliott’s blue eyes/brown eyes experience i highly recommend looking it up. in essence, school children’s ability to do timed math flash cards is directly linked to whether their teacher and classmates are telling them they are superior or inferior humans based only on the color of their eyes. (their self esteem also took a massive hit but the flashcards were actually trackable). basically, authority figure and peers say ur bad at ____ enough, u can’t perform at ____, even if you’re actually pretty good at it.
and this applies to friend groups too!
are you a mom friend because you are naturally that category? or because someone has labeled you that and you fill that role for them?
now! party time!
the amount of self-policing and pageantry and snobbery rolling off these rich people. who decided dining required a week of personal tutoring so you don’t get laughed out of the room? brutal. i’m with Ed here, these social customs make no sense and are designed to mark out who is wealthy, idle, and in-the-know from everyone else. as if to say ‘you will never be one of us you can’t even eat properly’.
it further underscores the flashback to Ed’s mom giving the 'people like us don’t get nice things’ speech. she’s parroting what’s been drilled into her until she believes it. now it’s her reality and her child’s too. but something in Ed wants to wonder…
hold that thought a moment.
there’s some awesome meta floating around about how Ed is a genre chameleon, or how his personality changes to fit the people around him. and if you listen, everyone wants to tell him who he is. what it means to be blackbeard. how blackbeard behaves. especially Izzy and CJ. they seem to think they have the difinitive take on who he really is.
and none of these versions have room for nice things as anything beyond something to horde or trade. a prize, but not one u can enjoy. they are constructing overlapping cages of identity for him, when humans are more of a constellation of traits influenced by emotions and circumstances. a galaxy among galaxies, all feedback loops and multidirectional gravities. to stop changing is death.
then there’s Stede. “you wear fine things well,” said so gently and without scorn or sarcasm. is there another option? when you have told yourself that you’re a monster, been told you’re a brilliant seaman by someone who wants a version of you you dislike. when you’re feeling at your worst and someone says something nice to you that actually resonates,,, no wonder it takes his breath away. maybe. just maybe. to be worthy of something fine.
stay with Stede a moment. because he says something late in the series that bears unpacking. “it’s a stupid idea. I only have stupid ideas”
who told him that?
was it his dad? badminton? did he decide it himself after the 300th time someone gave him a weird look when they couldn’t follow his logic? when did he lock himself away into “i only have stupid ideas”?
because Ed never thought so.
just like Stede never thought Ed should be deprived of fine things.
and Stede has never really had friends to tell him who he is to them. he’s had parents, wife, responsibilities. expectations. He has run away from those expectations to try to be the version of himself he wants to be. Stede never figured out how to ask what other people actually want or if their interests can be made to align. Ed may be the first person to visibly and consistently enjoy his company. no wonder he’s willing to overlook a little half-attempted murder.
maybe. just maybe. to be worthy of warmth without the weight of impossible expectations.
to find a little understanding. to just pass the time well.
i think ofmd might be a queer myth we’ve been needing. because it asks what happens when we let the myth blind us to the people in front of us. but even more so what happens when we let their myths blind us to ourselves, our possibilities.
it says:
if you cannot bear the weight of roles assigned by outsiders, there is a place for you. if you cannot live up to ridiculous customs, there is a place for you. if you long for a little comfort, a little adventure, a small section of deck to lay your head when the sea turns rough, there is a place for you. come take a turn at the wheel, at the rigging. there is work to do and all talents are needed. and later i will tell you how a little wooden puppet became a real boy, how a boy became a pirate, how a pirate became a myth, and how a myth was only human after all.
Oh my gosh this is wonderful thank you for writing this. I have been PLAGUED by this show, it’s completely changed something very fundamental in me and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
Recently I was at a queer punk show and I looked around at a room chock full of freaks like me and I was struck by a) how amazing it was to be all together but also b) how fucking rough out there it is to be a freak. How many people (personal friends of mine and people I never got to meet) who weren’t there because they are dead. How much of the overarching society wants us dead because we not only dare to dream that things could be different, but also we prove that they MUST be different. That the world NEEDS to be different, and that the freaks are the ones who can make it fucking happen, just by the sheer power of living differently and welcoming anyone who wants to come along to join us.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about Taika’s commentary about humor being an amazingly powerful tool to fight oppression- that through laughter we can break down so many barriers without really trying because people want to be in the room where all the joy is at.
thank you for your addition!
that sounds a lot like what i felt going to the trans march on Washington in 2019. to know we all have something in common and won’t other each other for it. and a lot of it was mourning too, but also the electricity of the collective demand to exist authentically.
i like where you’re going there too. how humor can take away a system’s teeth, show it for the unnecessary construction it is, but in a way that is disarming and inviting. an invitation to joy.
okay nope: one more thought because this show Does Things to me.
ofmd sort of… instinctively understands that to say a relationship is toxic isn’t necessarily a statement on the morality of the people involved, or their ability to do and be otherwise than toxic (whether that ultimately means separate or together)
instead, it’s an assessment of the overall net effect on the people involved.
they also understand that people stay in toxic cycles because they’re getting something out of it they can’t get anywhere else. it’s the feast/scraps metaphor in a new light, and the show allows so much empathy for the people trapped in their own versions of the cycle.
it’s interesting to me how lowkey passionate about all forms of restorative justice ofmd is, but how it might be easy to miss if punitive justice is any given viewer’s unconscious framework for how all this works because it’s sort of… part of the show’s overall mission statement, i guess, but also one of my FAVORITE NARRATIVE TRICKS TO PULL
aka, the audience litmus test. shit like this is a reflection turned outwards and sort of… forces accidental commentary and gets very We Live In A Society funhouse mirrors real fast
anyway: love it. love this insanely thoughtful team!!!!
on a basic human psychology level ofmd drives me fucking wild, news at eleven.
because, okay: in life, when it comes to choices people make without outside demands (job, trash must be taken out and you actually do it despite feeling like doing so would mean an effort vaguely on par with fighting a bear of the space variety complete with lasers, & etc) and accounting for how The Rainbow Brigade of Brain Gremlins Factor Keeps Making It All More Complicated and setting that part of it aside to go very general in scope, people only do things that give them something they need. even if it hurts them at the same time! even if the ways in which it fucks up their life seem to outweigh any possible gain to the outside observer.
sometimes even that person themselves is like ‘okay but: why do i keep doing this? i would so, so very much like to not be doing this. can’t seem to stop! goddamnit, me!’
if you ever want to know why any given person is doing something that seems anywhere on the scale of mildly counterproductive to dangerous and batshit insane, ask yourself: what are they getting out of it?
that’s always the answer. sometimes it’s right there at the surface, sometimes you have to force yourself to have a whole lot of empathy and consider life from some truly horrific or unfamiliar or uncomfortable perspectives to figure them out, but at the end of the day that’s where the why always lands on this issue.
similarly even the most self-aware people on the planet have two general reasons they make those choices: the reasons they know about, and the reasons that float under the surface, influencing them without their knowledge.
(i would not consider myself necessarily included in that first category, but i damn well know the rule is forever stuck fast to my deeply fallible and human reasoning process and/or soul.)
understanding characters in fiction requires doing this same general work of asking yourself: what are they ultimately getting out of this, followed by which reasons do they know about, and which reasons float under their surface?
ofmd is just… ooof. it’s a fucking feast in terms of what it gives you when you ask those questions. denny’s parking lot, this creative team, i will SEE THEM THERE.
Izzy Hands is Kylo Ren: Or, An Informal Exploration of Fandom’s Proclivity Towards Minimizing and Sympathizing with White Male Violence
i brought this undertaking upon myself by putting this thought out there (and getting cursed with the knowledge that this take makes izzy/ed reylo) without my full intent to write the post. my being cursed is my own fault, my own cross to bear, my own self made misery. however, i’m going to make this analysis EVERYONE’S problem now because jokes on all of us, i wrote the post.
notes for readers: this meta is just under 6500 words. i have tried to divide it into thematic sections determined by bolded lines. sometimes i will reiterate previous points with expanded discussion because i always have more to say. big thanks to @dragonzair@plotdesignerand@twelvemonkeyswere
so to get the ground work settled: obviously izzy hands is not identical to kylo ren, given that he is not the fallen son of heroes, nor directly a key figure of a fascist empire. however, in the context of our flag means death and its fandom, particularly the portion that favors izzy and takes him at his word without examining the underlying context of his scenes and dynamics with other characters, there is a LOT of similarity between the ways that the two characters enact violence, and in the way the fandom response is geared towards sympathizing with these two characters for said violence while also and minimizing their responsibility for it.
There is so much happening in the notes of this post that I already need to address whoo boy! Thank you for engaging, people, and also, let’s get right into it. I just went ahead and copied the text because I hate screenshots and they make anyone using screenreaders have difficulty anyway, so! responses under cut to avoid clutter dashes. yes i am long-winded. i love to talk. i will be deleting these replies after the response, because i don’t like a cluttered notes section.
While I’m not much of a meta writing person (though I love reading it), I just think it’s so interesting that something that I’m hearing again and again is how much Our Flag Means Death has resonated with “fandom olds” and are bringing people (like me) back to tumblr and fan fiction writing (and art and MVs etc) for the first time in years and I think it is! So! Interesting!
Something others have definitely discussed already that I won’t really touch on here is the fact that the writers didn’t queer bait us and that the seemingly subtextual romance was indeed TEXTUAL romance and I know that’s certainly part of it!
But I also wonder it has something to do with the ages of the main leads? As a thirty something, I’m still at the point where I love YA and adult fiction both, but I’ve started to deeply appreciate media focused on people in their thirties and forties and beyond. I think because of that deep-rooted, media-fueled idea that life stops after you’re twenty and as someone who’s no longer in my twenties, there is a specific joy I get from seeing people my age and older having adventures, discovering new things about themselves, falling in love, all of it. I just wonder if others resonate with this feeling and if this is partially why this show has gripped me (and so many others) so viciously (in a good way) by the throat.
So if The Chain was written about a loveless, hurtful relationship they couldn’t break out of, could it be about Ed and Izzy? “And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again”—Ed trusted Izzy to see his most vulnerable, heartbroken, trying-to-grow self, after he got back to the ship. Izzy bore it for a little while; but as soon as it became obvious he wasn’t going back to who he’d been when Izzy loved him, Izzy said he should have let him die and that Edward Teach didn’t have his loyalty. “Edward better watch his fucking step.” He hates Edward. He cannot see Blackbeard in Edward at all—he can’t seehim.
And yet “I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain”—Izzy won’t let him go, either. Emotionally, he’s chained to him. Ed really believes he’s alone without Izzy, since Izzy made it sound like none of Ed’s crew would have any loyalty to him without Izzy’s help (even though in reality we see him constantly complaining to them about Ed, and calling him unstable to them; he’s trying to make them believe he’s all that holds them together, too. Or to make himself believe it, maybe). Ed only knows how to be a pirate; he can’t imagine how to start again without the help of someone he trusts. Stede’s crew is kind, but fickle—he’s watched them hit the verge of mutiny repeatedly. And Izzy had always seemed steady; but he’s already sold Ed out to the British once when he sent Izzy away, and now that he’s tried trusting him again, Izzy seems willing to do any level of harm to him (“Edward better watch his fucking step”; “death would be better than this”) if he doesn’t act how Izzy wants. He’s essentially saying that if Ed won’t toe the line he’ll willingly watch him killed and see it as a mercy; his last act of loyalty to Blackbeard. Ed believes his threat of retaliation is real—as he should.
But even if Ed keeps him on, allows him to keep “managing” him in the same way that left him miserable, unstable and isolated before, he will still be completely alone—since Izzy refuses to see Ed as the man he’s served all along, at all. Refuses to see the life he’s “managing” for them is killing him. Won’t believe they’re capable of anything better. Won’t let him go, won’t let him grow. That’s a hell of a chain.
Wait, even more importantly. Ed let Izzy see him heartbroken and vulnerable and Izzy bore it. But when did he stop being ok with it? It’s as soon as Izzy realized he couldn’t manage this alone and allowed Lucius to see Ed, and Lucius actually snapped Ed out of it—as soon as he started to clean up and make plans and trust people other than Izzy (“Call me Edward!”) and think about moving on from being a pirate. Then Izzy loses it. Because Ed’s straining the chain. Izzy can’t move forward, and Ed’s starting to go without him. Izzy can’t keep him from changing if Izzy isn’t the only person Ed allows to see him vulnerable. Izzy has lost control; so he yanks the chain and pulls him back.
And then and only then does Ed let his heart slide through his fingers. Only then does he give up hope that Stede ever cared about any of them (“farewell, Bonnet’s playthings”). Only then does he give up the sense of himself as more than just the Kraken, as the magic Blackbeard and the man Ed. Because if Izzy, who’s been with him for years, who’s been his just-you-and-me-against-the-world guy, who he trusted at his lowest—if Izzy can’t love him as Edward, how could he hope Stede had?
Up until then he says “Nothing makes sense,” but after that he thinks he’s made sense of it. Izzy doesn’t want him, only the myth; that must be what happened with Stede, too.
Something I haven’t seen anyone talk about yet is why Ed throws first Lucius off the ship and then Stede’s books. It’s not simply rage or wanting to get rid of things that remind him of Stede, it’s about his feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy because of his lack of literacy.
First, when the British almost execute Stede, Lucius’ ability to read and write saves Stede’s life when Ed’s plan has failed, as his appeal to the Act of Grace for Stede is not accepted. Then, when they’re supposed to sign the text of the Act of Grace, his illiteracy becomes highly visible, impossible not to notice, as he signs an x as his signature. It’s a small but heartbreaking moment because it’s an extremely significant thing in a world where some are literate and some are not.
Being able to read and write gives you an enormous advantage in terms of power over people who cannot read. He might be the most clever, resourceful, skilled pirate in the seas, but in the moment reading and writing come into play, he’s suddenly extremely vulnerable. He’s surrounded by men who hold enormous power over him in virtue of the mere difference in their levels of literacy, regardless of every other difference in abilities they might have.
Ed is going through something that shakes his identity - giving up his identity as a pirate, even his beard which is so symbolical of his identity as Blackbeard - and that feelings of vulnerability and helplessness hit a nerve. In the moment Stede doesn’t show up, and Ed thinks he’s been stood up, he’s bound to feel inadequate. Why did Stede stand him up? Because Ed is not worthy of him, after all. Because Stede is a literate, cultured gentleman and Ed is nothing. He might carry around a piece of fancy fabric, but that’s just something stolen from someone else.
At first he tries to hang on, having his lyrics written down (which, again, sheds light on the difference between him and Lucius), trying to act as a cultured gentleman of sorts, but that’s unsustainable in the long run, because he doesn’t actually think he can be that person. He’s actually drowning in feelings of inadequacy and helplessness, and does what he did as a child when overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and helplessness: becomes the Kraken.
In conclusion, something I really wish to see in season 2 of the show is for Ed to be taught how to read. Stede could do it, continuing on the trend of the two of them teaching each other things, or - an option I very much like - possibly Lucius, which would help Ed and Lucius get closer again after the, um, accident - and also considering that, in my opinion, Ed’s action is pretty much directly connected to Lucius’ literacy.
After all, what is the cutlery lesson but foreshadowing for actually more relavant and useful teachings in how to belong to Stede’s world? Silly manners don’t matter, but, pardon the reference, reading is fundamental. There will always be an imbalance of power between the two of them if Ed remains illiterate, and only filling that gap can make Ed feel like he’s not inadequate.
I haven’t seen a lot of discourse on it so thought I’d give it a go!
Gnossienne no. 5 is the sweet melody that plays whenever Stede and Ed share a soft moment. I’ve also read other interpretations of it, such as times when Ed feels good about himself because of Stede, or when Ed is being vulnerable with Stede, etc. Point is, the song plays when they have a Moment: when they share breakfast together the morning after being a lighthouse, still in each other’s clothes; the Moonlight “you wear fine things well” scene; a very quiet bit of it when Ed is crying in the bathtub and Stede comforts him; and of course, the “what makes Ed happy is you” kiss. The slow build up, the leitmotif, the incredibly soft and subtle moments, all culminating into canon romantic love between two middle aged men - this is fanfiction. This all reads as fanfiction, and I love it so much, and my heart hurts from that last episode. But I digress.
Gnossienne is a made up term invented by its composer, Erik Satie, to call a new type of composition he created: characterized by “free (lacking time signatures or bar divisions) and highly experimental with form, rhythm and chordal structure” (wikipedia). It is also often regarded as a dance, and no. 5, quite apart from the other Gnossiennes in the series, distinguishes itself with its relatively upbeat style, which to me sounds almost tentative and hopeful. It is soft, new, simple, gentle, with time signatures up for interpretation. And I believe this complements Ed and Stede’s love perfectly.
Stede and Ed’s relationship, to me, is one of first love: neither really certain of the feeling they have, as neither ever really experienced true romantic love before (my interpretation), so they are slow and uncertain - much like how Gnossienne no. 5 balances between hope and joy, with an undercurrent of wistfulness, sadness(?) that suggests it could easily tilt into melancholic territory. They develop slowly from a friendship (the tentativeness), and is something both incredibly new to them, in the show, and to us (the audience), who gets queerbaited all the time. This natural development of a queer couple who are also the two protagonists complete with their own backstories and character arcs and personality is an unfortunately novel phenomenon in media. And it’s just so SOFT. Much like how Gnossienne was new and experimental and free form, so is Ed and Stede’s relationship, and everything is so soft and lovely and believable and is everything queer representation could be.
Oh and one more thing - Erik Satie was reportedly influenced by Gnosticism at the time, which “emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institution”. You know. Queerness over heteronormativity, hegemonic oppression, etc.
On the importance of guilt: another reason why babyfying Stede annoys me is because he’s not stupid or pure or all sunshine and rainbows. Besides just being bitch sometimes the man IS also a lunatic, and has done some really terrible things. I mean the man glorifies pirating, he dreams of crime. He set a ship on fire and let an entire party burn alive and drown because like 7 people were mildly mean to his boyfriend. His main concern when Lucius was missing and possibly dead was that it would ruin the vibe.
I feel like this is so important to his character, particularly that he is objectively a Bad Dad. He left, there’s really no excuse for that. I’ve seen people talk about how hard it must have been for him to be rejected and ignored by his own children in the flashback and coming home, but they’re little kids. If they had that attitude towards him before he left, I have to imagine he was a pretty emotionally absent father, even if he had some positive moments with them. Mary has to remind him to play with his children because he’s got his nose in a book- I think we’re supposed to understand that’s how we was most of the time. Because of course he was, he engaged in so much escapism he ran away to become a pirate.
And I think it’s important the audience knows that the guilt he feels is justified and he should feel guilty, because Ed has also done unforgivable things. He steals he maims he sets ships on fire. That’s part of why there’s so much chemistry in their bond- they both have pasts they regret and are truly hard to look past, they both are arguably not good people in a lot of ways. But it’s for that reason that they understand each other and can look past it, and someone forgiving them for their unforgivable sins changes their self perception. They can start healing the parts of them that caused them to hurt others; heal their inner child whose fathers made the feel emotionally or physically unsafe. By seeing the other, really seeing them, they are able to become better people for each other, and for themselves.
These days I just oscillate wildly between thinking my ofmd hyperfixation is lifting and grabbing a stranger off the street to sit on the curb so I can get in their face to yell at them about my semiotic analysis of fabric textures or some shit
I thought about writing a meta comparing Izzy eating his own toes to Ouroboros the snake who eats its own tail but imagining earnestly diving into that idea actually just makes me laugh too much
You may have noticed that Ed wears Stede’s black necktie/cravat from the episode 4 clothing swap throughout the rest of the series, even after he becomes the Kraken. He threw away everything of Stede’s, he even threw away the silk his own mother gave him. He shed all material things with any residue of sentimentality on him, except for the cravat. Why? This has been interpreted in a lot of different ways, some have said it’s like a noose he wears carries around his neck, foreshadowing the death of Edward for the Kraken. Others have called it a collar, representing the chokehold that Stede has on him. Personally, I think it’s an albatross.
Quick spark notes time for anyone who didn’t have to read this in high school: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a late 18th century epic poem by Samuel Taylor Cooleridge. It’s thought to signal a shift towards modern literature, similar to the artworks referenced in Mary’s paintings which I did a deep dive into here. The significance of transitional periods and 1717 generally being a time of extreme political, philosophical and artistic change is something I might explore in another post.
Anyways,The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells the story of a sailor returned from sea. He was part of a crew trapped in the ice flows of Antarctica, when an albatross (a giant seabird with a 10ft wingspan) appears in the sky. The bird leads the ship to safer waters and is hailed as a good omen. But the sailor shoots it out of the sky, bringing a curse and misfortune to the crew. As punishment, they make the sailor wear the dead albatross around his neck so that he must carry the heavy burden of his sins. After a time, Death appears to claim the lives of his crew mates, while a ghostly woman named Life-in-Death claims the sailor, who gives him “a fate worse than death.” Time passes, and the sailor observes slimy sea creatures swimming around in the water. He begins to appreciate their beauty, which lifts the curse. He’s returned home, and is commanded to wander the earth to tell others his tale.
There is strong evidence that this poem was on the minds of the OFMD writers. A seabird is killed in the show, and for this crime Calico Jack is ostracized and cursed to die. But more to my point, the albatross has become a common metaphor in popular culture for a heavy burden that one must carry. Ed found something to lead him out of the life his was trapped in, and he thinks he’s shot it out of the sky by showing his true self and scaring it away. He wears this cravat, a gift from Stede, something that once belonged to him, as a burden of guilt for the crimes he’s done that caused Stede to reject him, as penance for becoming the monster he thinks he truly is, and as a reminder to never let someone close to him again.
The poem is also famous for the popular quote, “Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” When Ed returns to the ship, despite his heart break, he is surrounded by support and love. The crew literally surround him and listen to him sing about his feelings, they cheer him on for more. Lucius offers him the possibility of life after death. But Izzy tells him that for this he’s suffered “a fate worse than death,” just like the ghost who damns the sailor. Water, like love, is everywhere, but Ed won’t accept any of it. Not now. He will need to realize on his own that there is beauty in heartbreak and learning to love again. Maybe then he can lift the curse, and return home to himself.
