#ohhhhh stede you make me so sad

[ltlemon]

Watch me scream about OFMD episode 7 for a little while (pt.2 to the first post, now with more italics) (this is just me live blogging the whole episode, so major spoilers obviously)

ok here we go boys! (gn)

wait hold on before I start I'm gonna make an educated guess here and say its gonna open on ed and stede in the morning, just hanging out in bed/maybe having breakfast. I'm calling it.

ok so not OPEN OPEN, but lets just say we're getting that in a short bit here (little sad I didn't get it right)

OHHH baby.... :(

he's throwing his old clothes overboard. :(

HE IS WEARING STEDE'S RING THOUGH. That's a good sign.

'bye-bye.' pleaase that's so cutee 🥺 he's finally letting go :')

WAIT IS THAT TOAST ON THAT TRAY??

I GOT IT HALF RIGHT THEN, IT OPENS IN THE MORNING DURING BREAKFAST

aaa he's carrying it in his mouth

wait where's he going

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOLY SHIT HE MADE-

HE MADE IT!!!?!? FOR THEM TO EAT TOGETHERQ?!??!?!?

I WAS RIGHT!!!! I WAS FUCKING RIGHT!!!!!!!!

YES!!! I AM NOT COMPETITIVE IN ANY WAY!!

okokokokok I need to watch this

ADHUYg HE DIDN'T HAVE TWO TRAYS FOR THE BOTH OF THEM HE JUST STOLE A BITE OF STEDES TOAST

he's so cat coded istg

god that is nothing. that's like,,,one piece of bacon that you broke up into three pieces.

he's trying his best

yeah what's with the twine.

omfg

I love him

HOLY SHIT HES TELLING HIM ABOUT THE MERMAID DREAM????

FSTAYFDSJAYHSGBMH IM FREAKING OUTAAAAAAA

THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR

HDJGHSAYDGHDJ SASSY IZZY??????

HE FUCKING CONGRATULATED THEM!?!?!?!?!

?????

(He's jealous)

I'm dying here

ohhhhh that title card is my favorite so far <3333

Ricky gave you a whole ass clock?????? wow he really is weird huh.

hi frenchie <;33

'knobs with a red knotty doo-dad' that sure was a sentence

HEEHEE YESS ADD ANOTHER TO THE POLYCULE

YEAHHHH!! WADDUP!?

not Archie pointing at Olu lol

poor dude :(

EEEEEEEEEEEE they're at a little table!! so small!!! so cute!!!

'I've never been stabbed 😌👆' wow 😃 that's a first 😁'

eeeeheeeheeeheeeheeeeeeee yeesssss talk about your letters little man !!

oh bbg you know what kind of letters, just look at him.

'just letters 😀'

BREAKING NEWS: HE LOVES IT!!! HE LOVES THAT HE DID THAT!!!!

oh hi who are you 🥺 I like you a lot

AWW stede's little 'what??' is so precious

THEY DIDN'T PAY!!! EEEEEEEE

THEYRE SO WHOLESOME!!! GAH!!!

OMG HES TRYING TO MAKE SURE HE STAYS SAFEAA

'not just my face 😬' 'oh wow 😮'

'yeah someones definitely gonna try to kill you 😀 enjoy the night! 😁'

this is reminding me of when they switched clothes and ed used that opportunity to show him how bad being Blackbeard could be. 'you wanted this, this is what it's like' sort of thing.

whooo Jackie looks good!! love the hair.

WHOAH THE SWEDE LOOKS EVEN BETTER! THE JACKET, THE HAIR??

He slays.

just like his wife 🥺

HAHAHA EVEN LUCIUS AGREES, HE GETS IT

god I love love love Lucius's mannerisms they're so fun

not frenchie starting another pyramid scheme 😞

sigh...ed's so pretty....he's not even doing anything right now and yet he is the most beautiful man ever

that is his man and he is famous

aww stede listened to himm, he's excepted like three different drinks and has only sipped them.

'Why you dressed like a dirty ass orphan?'

Jesus Jackie you didn't have to bash him that hard

aww their interactions are really sweet actually

OK NVM THE SWEDE BASHED HIM HARDER ('oh, Blackbeard...are you a poor now?')

JUST NOTICED THE SWEDES JACKET IS A CROP TOP THATS AMAZING

aww...stede's slowly turning into him, but ed knows how that ends...he's happy that he's opening up, but he's mostly worried for him....

aww no olu....

AWW JIMS VOUCHING FOR HIM

(Archie too, but her influence may not be helping....)

YAYY they're succeeding in adding her to the polycule it seems!!

ohhhh that interaction with ed and izzy is so sweet though

izzy still hasn't gotten over him has he

HOLY SHIT !! ??

HE JUST SET A MAN-

HE JUST SET A MAN ON FIRE????

SO NONCHALANTLY?????

SIR??

AND HE'S LAUGHING ABOUT IT??? HOLY SHIT???

If ed was here he'd be getting war flashbacks

that man. is dead.

OH NO HES TELLING ED

AWWWW AW NOO BBG

again, he's happy for him, but he knows where this is going, and he knows his days with stede are numbered, it can't stay like this. everything's going to go to shit, and he knows it. he knows it deep in his bones.

!!

oh. oh here we go.

oh....oh no......

🥺

HE'S LEAVING???

To be a fisherman???

man catches a fish once and decides to make it his job, that is the most ADHD thing ever.

ohhhh, oh no, does stede think he's joking....?

'you liked that fish, you said it was a good fish...! 🥺' I'm crying

NOOOOOO I'm watching this to RECOVER from GOS2 not feel the pain again!!! AAAAA

!!!!!!!!

HE'S NOT A COWARD YOU BASTARD AA

Is frenchie seriously selling planks from the ship?????

or are they just random planks maybe

awwww nooo is he seriously coping with a breakup by talking to his fans

'fucking off, sir' is a really good line. (also I love whoever that guy is he's really tall and buff and I just think that's neat)

HE THINKS HE'S A GOOD FREIND !!

AWWW

OH. MY. GOD. THEY'RE BONDING OVER ED.

THIS IS HOW IZZY SHOULD BE USED FELLAS

THIS IS IT.

they. they smiled at each other a little bit. :'))

AWWWWW JIMMM <33 they're so sweet.

all that stuff about killing all of his friends was, I believe, indeed a little but intense.

aw <3

the- the hand!! POLYCULE ACHIEVED!!!!!! YAY!! good job Jim!

wait. no polycule...? that scene was a bit vague but olu did say 'I'm gonna go with Zheng now' so...no polycule...? if that is true then I'm actually really sad about that because he seems to really like Jim....Olu has two hands guys this is the best possible outcome.

WAIT, BUT JIM IS BRINGING UP SHARING ROOMS WITH THE FOUR OF THEM....??

aw come on stede you're interrupting the moment, they're figuring stuff out rn

I mean he is a little justified she did try to murder like all of them just a little bit ago

but also like

there must be a reason your crew is being friendly towards her, you should ask them about it instead of doing whatever this is

oh my godd stede why are you like thiss

oh poor izzy...he's just watching...he suggested they go back to the ship before any fights broke out but no...stede has to get up and go pick on someone right in front of him;

'I'm going to pretend you didn't just touch your sword 😁' yeah me too

OH DAYUM SHE WENT LOW FOR THAT ONE HOLY SHIT

oh he's PISSED

'who told you that.'

oh baby boy people can guess stuff like that pretty easy with you guys

THAT GUY'S NAME WAS STEAK KNIFE???

NOO STEAK KNIFE </3

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE A DUMBASS STEDE

BEARS GET KILLED.

'draw' live izzy reaction: 'oh, bonnet...'

aww ole's little 'nice' when Zheng draws her sword is really cute

HAH! Man threw a whole ass bottle at her

OH NO ARCHIE !!

GET HIM JIM!!!!!

YEAH!!

IZZY JUST HIT A MAN WITH A CHAIR????

the crew of the revenge really does keep screwing up jackies whole deal huh. yeah they should go outside. go outside.

stede's such a bastard!! god!! why are you like this!!!???

she just hit his ass with a plank????

OH. SHIT.

IS SHE DEAD???

??????????????????????

ohh, roach is really cute.

but uh,, uhm,, uh anyways as I was saying,

IS SHE DEAD???? 'CAUSE IT SURE LOOKS LIKE THAT!!

There's no way two people in a show can get hit in the head with a cannon ball and survive there's NO WAY.

anyways.

I'm really normal right now, time to wait a week. 😀

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #random #lemon's live blogs #lemon speaks

[knowlesian]

i’m crying over stede in the bar in e10 again, and i wanted to spotlight something i find endlessly impressive— the care these writers have when they’re landing big moments, and their laser focus on word choice.

really good writers are really careful with how they say what they say; it’s the whole “if i tell you i’m taking you to my cottage in the forest, things are probably going to be instagramable; if i say we’re going to my cabin in the woods, you’re gonna die” joke in action. the essential meaning behind those two examples is the same, the definition more or less the same, but because of word choice they drag incredibly different subtext/implications in with them.

i’m just gonna tear into it line by line, don’t mind me!

What is Blackbeard like? Is he as bloodthirsty as everyone says?

He’s absolutely lovely!

so stede’s instinct is to say ed is lovely. there’s a lot of cool things happening here; stede stuck up for ed, stede got over his urge to just nod and agree and not cause a ruckus when he feels the need to please or impress someone, and stede embraced his first and truest impulse: to be lovely, himself. 

because that is unmistakably pushback, covered in a compliment and gently delivered as stede has been taught to handle these things: the men tell us he’s a monster, and stede says oh but he’s lovely. no he’s not, is the subtext here. you’re wrong about him, stede is essentially saying.

(and in my favorite way to turn the lighthouse/kraken metaphor angle, where it’s about life as both/and, not either/or, and to be a monster and a lighthouse at once is to embrace that which makes us awesome while also embracing that which makes us suck with eyes/heart wide open: stede is also unconsciously saying ‘even if you were right! no matter what he is! he is lovely and i love him, all the while.’)

the men, as i covered in my meta here, don’t want that: they want to hear about a cartoon monster, have some cheap thrills and confirm their worldview all at once.

because of what stede says next, i want to stress: he doesn’t want to do any of this. he’s gotten through whatever stories he told after they all cheered his very presence, and he is absolutely fine bragging about his duel with izzy— things are going good in his quest to Win At Terrible Social Situations. 

(sidenote: i love how stede just doesn’t ever feel his usual need to impress and hide his more unpleasant feelings or snippy side with izzy; from the moment they met, it’s like stede just went ‘i sense your purse dog energy, and i raise you i’m not scared of a fucking purse dog?????’ for reasons that remain partially a mystery but DELIGHT ME.) 

being asked to confirm the stereotype he knows ed hates feels wrong. he doesn't know it yet, but he loves ed, and thanks to everything they went through he knows talking about ed like that would be particularly hurtful.

but: he wants attention, he wants to feel wanted, he wants to win the game for the very first time ever. 

because he didn’t win the game, in e5; he realized the game is stupid and hurtful and overturned the table, instead, and it was A W E S O M E.

that night happened, stede learned what he learned and gained what he gained, and yet: here he sits, alone in a bar even while surrounded by assholes. and he knows, down in the pit of his stomach where these kind of painful things like to take root and fester: i have never once won this stupid fucking game, in my entire life of playing it. i found out i could just refuse to play, and doing that felt amazing, but i wasn’t alone then. i am alone now, i thought i was making the right choice by coming home but i am as unwanted as ever and i don’t know how to make these pieces fit into what the world reminded me is my place in life through chauncey, while he played my specific insecurities and self-loathing like a fiddle right before he repeated the last major trauma i experienced in a way that was comedic for the audience, but horrifying and triggering for me. i am angry and scared and i hurt, i think maybe i have made a mistake though i can’t allow myself to know it, not yet— and, most painfully of all: i spent my whole life training for this, i have played this stupid fucking game and gotten nothing but scorn for it for so long, i don’t know if i can take it again after knowing what life feels like without it.

stede looks at the way their expressions change, hears the evidence of the crowd turning on him, and does not so much think as feel: i have never, ever won. 

when you invest a lot of time and energy and care into anything, be it a system or a hobby or an ideal, the hardest thing in the world to do, even harder than walking away, is realizing: well, fuck. whatever i used to get out of this, if anything, i am not getting that now. i should stop. i don’t even like this. 

so when all the men’s faces fall and he starts to lose them (“disappointed murmurs”, the captions tell us, and choose to be helpful instead of their usual approach of generally scattershot on dialogue) stede scrambles to scoop the ball he knows he just fumbled back up, and uses his audience’s word choice in the kind of social/literal echoing guaranteed to get positive results:

Oh, and of course, a bloodthirsty killer.

that gets him their approval again, complete with wide grins and a bunch of nodding that tells us this is what they want: reflect their beliefs back, stede, or you not only don’t win this one you are going to lose, and lose hard. 

these men literally cheered the fact that stede was in the room, however many stories ago that was. we know he’s known one of them since childhood; we can assume he’s at least vaguely familiar with the rest. he expected their scorn, but received jealous admiration. he’s different and has things they don’t that they actually see value in, now, not just what they consider weird gay clothes and weird gay trinkets and weird gay interests and habits that make stede weird and gay in a way they very much want him to feel ashamed about. 

just the opposite. they looked at him, and they cheered for his very presence. the feeling that gave him was a shadow of the feeling he got when he put on ed’s clothes and stumbled onto the deck in leather armor and ed said: if you motherfuckers don’t clap for my new half-drowned golden retriever of a boyfriend, i will BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND. CLAP FOR HIM OR FUCKIN SEE WHAT HAPPENS, but it’s still a balm to his very bruised soul.

here’s the seductive difference between then and now: ed made everybody clap for stede. ed’s legend, ed’s status. ed’s name they were clapping for, even if stede was the one receiving the attention and applause.

these assholes might be assholes, and i think stede damn well knows their approval is not worth all this because he doesn't actually think they’re his friends or like them much as people, but they know stede’s name. stede’s new legend and his status. 

they’re cheering for stede bonnet: gentleman pirate. the crew did that once and it felt so fucking good that stede started to believe in his own potential to be just that in spite of himself.

not play at pirates; be a pirate.

and now he’s here and the crew is not, mary is Not Happy he’s back and the kids are just as unimpressed. he came back for them; they don’t even want him around.

these men? these... really annoying, could do with some therapy themselves, stuck in a toxic rut men?

for the first time: he entered a crowded room, and the people who made up the crowded rooms he spent his life alone in were happy he was there. they were hanging on his every word, up until now; he’s so, so close to winning.

so stede adds:

Born of the devil, and all that.

i mean. ohhhhh, these writers. oh these very heartbreaking and careful writers.

what did ed’s mother say, when she fed him the poison she’d been convinced to believe was a cure to the deadly illness of reaching too far above one’s station: god doesn’t want us to have these things. we could steal them, or pretend we wear them well and find out if people believe us, but god would always see into our hearts and know we aren’t the sort of people who deserve fine things.

there are a lot of things the writers could have put in stede’s mouth that would have confirmed these men’s impressions of ed that weren’t a one-two punch of accidental pain; he’s a fearsome pirate. a brilliant fighter, capable of pulling off mad plans no mortal man would attempt. he taught me a thing or two about swordplay, actually, and now back to my duel with izzy—

he says none of those things. bloodthirsty, these men gave him; not one of god’s creatures, stede filled in himself. a killer, born of the devil.

now, stede himself knows the first part would hit ed in a wound so old it festers to this day; ed confessed to him that he takes care not to use his own two hands to directly kill, not since he used them to protect himself from a man unworthy of the title ‘father’. he’s hurt people, he’s brought their deaths about. he has not killed them, and it matters to ed that stede knew that. 

it’s a thoughtless moment; he’s not consciously thinking to himself, ‘i have just, in the span of so very few words, invalidated a core tenet of ed’s identity. if he heard me say this, he would be so, so hurt: i have accidentally done something very damaging and echoed some racist talking points without realizing it. oooooh fuck. ohhhh no, i fucked up i think.’ 

however, you know that pit of the stomach, ugly feeling when you say or do something you can kind of tell yourself isn’t a big deal, but you know it actually is? and then a little voice inside you says: you should feel shitty about what just happened, for valid reasons that have nothing to do with how you always feel shitty. this one’s on you, kid, and it’s going to be on you to fix it, too.

i think that’s what stede experiences there.

he doesn’t know all the complicated reasons why, just yet, which accomplishes a couple things at once.

on the writerly level, it calls back to ed’s past and fears and helps us as an audience understand why there’s a direct connection from what he says here to stede’s immediate move into a guilt spiral at mary’s art showing; he knows he feels gross about himself later because he didn’t stick up for ed about the killer part, but only the writers know about ed’s conversation with his mother and so they can reference it in a way that calls it out to us as an audience, but doesn’t pretend stede the character has knowledge he doesn’t.

on a sociological level, it displays a much more modern and coded racism from the bar assholes, as well as a general blindness to the same from stede: he’s thinking bloodthirsty as in pirate, and that’s the surface conversation. but floating underneath it, just like it did with the french captain when he called ed an animal and the way stede stood up for ed contained a subtextual dig about ed not having a tureen, either, is that ed is a pirate who is not white. i put it that way on purpose, because that’s the quiet part loud: it’s not about who ed is for these jerks, it’s about what he is not.

so when stede upholds the legend of blackbeard in a way that would be a knife through the heart of the man behind it, the writers do a couple backflips and give us a whole essay on why and how this is happening without saying more than seventeen words and leaning hard on social cues and the kind of subtext ed understands damn well and stede has learned by now to recognize through watching ed’s response to the same— but again the writers know their shit, because they yanked stede away before he learned to decipher the code on his own and/or ed said to him in plain terms: baby, i love you, but that quiet part kept quiet stuff’s still racist. violence is violence, even when it’s the silent kind.

stede knows saying that was wrong; he can identify that he stumbled there, if not all the reasons why, and we know that because he immediately redirects. no more questions about ed at all is his boundary; and once again, the writers nail it.

the guy straight out of central ‘this one’s an asshole, folks, watch out’ casting (who made a face so excited it looked a little like he was getting off on stede saying ed was born of the devil) is no longer quite as satisfied with these stories.

he wants the monster. if ed isn’t just a monster: what’s the fucking point of this story? if stede isn’t ready and willing to throw ed under the bus, if he actually thinks ed is lovely: is he really one of them?

if ed’s not just a monster, and stede’s not just one of them: is stede the monster?

so he pipes up, you ever kill anybody? i want to feast tonight, and if you won’t give us ed you’ve always been next on our gross little menu.

that’s the other quiet part loud: stede is only safe if there’s somebody else they can all be above, together. once they’re done with ed... 

stede was never, ever truly safe among these men, is the point. he has lived his life in moments between these sorts of interactions, cringing in anticipation away from the next one before it even begins.

what do we mean when we say violence? because stede has known a kind of safety and comfort that make it easier to sleep on his nice mattress at night and supplies marmalade and fancy ships and gated communities: it has never once made him truly safe.

it has never even made these men asking stede to hurt the man he loves for their entertainment safe. it’s killing them all, bit by precarious privileged bit.

they can’t see it: stede can.

again, he doesn’t give them the answer they want. killing was unavoidable, not exciting. he’s seen death; and it changes you, forever, but not in ways these men want to hear. 

(there’s a fun thematic overlap here, between stede’s two accidental ‘murders’ and ed’s fine moral line that led him to the same sort of murderer once removed aesthetic: it’s not quite the same, but they are ideally equipped to understand the other’s situation, if only they would both open up at once and see what happens next.)

stede thinks he’s telling them killing sucks; they hear, killing is AWESOME. killing makes you a Real Man. probably it makes your dick bigger and harder, and if you kill people your horse will stop shitting itself all the time when you ride it to the bar to complain about your bitch wife with the boys and everyone will love you and you will never wake up crying in the night because you can never be satisfied.

now, they don’t actually want to do their own killing; that would be messy and hard and maybe kind of sad, but they can feed off what they consider stede’s confirmed manful glory and have a circlejerk over his proof that men like them were meant to rule the world.

another round is ordered, the cheers start up again: stede’s face remains deeply, deeply unhappy. they didn’t fucking hear him. he was so clear: they’re not listening. they’re writing their own story on top of his words, a story that isn’t about stede (or ed!) at all, and only serves to confirm what they already believe.

and he knows: ed would have listened. ed would have heard him, but ed isn’t here because stede left him behind, and to top it all off he forgot himself for half a second chasing the high of a win and said something terrible. 

seventeen words: it took seventeen words to remove any flavor from this for him.

in the end, it hurts like a motherfucker now, but in terms of character growth and stede pulling out of the cycle that’s a good thing: unfortunately but realistically stede needed to actually get the thing he wanted to realize, oh shit. oh fuck. ohhhh fuck. thanks: i fucking hate it. 

sometimes you gotta just touch that stove and find out: yes, it is in fact still hot.

god, this show is smart.

(and i don’t think it’s any mistake that before we follow stede’s depressed ass over to mary’s showing and he subtext yells I AM NEITHER GENTLEMAN NOR PIRATE, I AM SO SAD AND ALONE AND MAD AT EVERYTHING, THIS IS A CRY FOR HELP DELIVERED VIA BAD LIFE CHOICE-O-GRAM, I THINK I FUCKED UP???? we have izzy tearing down ed’s attempts to build himself back up with a similarly short sentence about what izzy thinks it means that ed is in a silk gown, pining for his boyfriend. the way this show uses narrative echoes and parallels without relying on the simple 1:1 absolutely kills me.)

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #my ofmd meta #ohhhhh stede you make me so sad #these writers are just so damn good at ...people!!! and all our dumb weird habits! #it's so fucking rewarding to watch this i really should just give in and do those damned recaps