Xxprincess1x

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
saltpepperbeard
saltpepperbeard

man. like.

to know that s3 would be about what so many of us hoped it would be about, ie the "okay, we've made it past the honeymoon period and have to deal with all the subsequent ups and downs" narrative.

and to know that there would be the parallels we hoped would exist, ie with ed and stede falling into that place of monotony and having to deal with that.

and man, monotony was such an antagonistic presence in s1 for both of them. they were both struggling something fierce with it. so to see them struggling with it again but still choosing to love each other anyway? to see them actually working through it together because they love each other that much? and to figure out the deeper parts of their relationship and what it means to be long-term with each other?

MAN.

i need it 🥺🥺🥺 our flag means death
merryfinches
merryfinches

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Dear Ida @bizarrelittlemew , I love your beautiful Hockey Boys gif so much that I Gentlebearded it for you

I wanted to finish this for your birthday, but I didn’t quite manage it in time, so please have this rough draft as a treat 😘

🥰 HAPPIEST OF DAYS, MY DEAREST! ❤️

haven't seen the other show but this is perfect!!! ❤️❤️ I've missed seeing your work Kylie gentlebeard ofmd fanart our flag means death
amuseoffyre
littlefingies

In 1x6, Ed says "that's why I don't have any friends" and he's telling the truth. But if you'd asked him if he had friends before meeting Stede, I think he would have said yes, or at least "I did once". He's never had a friend like stede before who cares about him without asking anything in return. It totally reconfigured his vocabulary. And that's beautiful.

AND.

Ed is nearly 50. Look at these hugs. Look at the secret handshake. These are friends, or as close as his pre-Stede Pirate Life allowed him to get. He doesn't have to think about that secret handshake for a second.

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Originally posted by futuremrscameron

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Originally posted by snake-snack-stede

Anne and Mary aren't perfect people, but Ed is comfortable around them. He clearly knew them when he was young - they call him "Eddie" and "Teach", never "Blackbeard." Narratively, they function to force Ed and Stede into a conversation about Stede leaving.

Thinking about this more today, I like Anne more and more in this episode. She's bonkers, sure. She loves drama. AND:

  • She tests Stede - does he want to get back together with Ed? If so, is he still willing to kiss someone else?
  • She makes sure at that dinner table that Ed knows that Stede went back to his wife.

Honestly, that's pretty close to bestie behavior for a pirate. By the time Ed leaves that house, he knows that Stede didn't kiss anyone else when given the opportunity, and he knows the truth about where Stede went.

I think about this line a lot:

"A lot of your friends are troubled, aren't they?"

"Yeah, well, they're all pirates."

Ed is my favorite character, I love thinking about him, I want to know everything about him. We can learn a lot about his past from Anne and Mary.

(Plus, if we don't want to learn about it from Anne and Mary, who does that leave? Izzy? No thanks. We can think about younger Ed without giving someone else the lead in his story.)

It doesn't diminish Ed's love story with Stede to acknowledge and think about what made him the man he is now. It doesn't make Ed and Stede's sexual relationship any less meaningful and loving to believe that Ed's had times in the past where he slutted it up a bit (especially pre-Blackbeard). We don't slut shame in this house.

I have a personal headcanon (that I know I saw @teeny-tiny-revenge mention as well) that Ed didn't have a lot of opportunities to relax as Blackbeard. I like to think that every few months, when things got to be too much, he would fuck off for a week with Anne, Mary, and/or Jack to party and/or get laid. That's why Izzy thought to send Jack in 1x8 - when Jack shows up, Ed fucks off for a week. That's what happens. Only it doesn't work this time, because Ed doesn't need an escape from himself when he's with Stede; he's not keeping up a performance.

Anyways. I just wanted to gush about Ed's pirate friendships, which may or may not have included sex. (I'm aspec, btw. But I don't think Ed is.)

zombee

oooh i love all of this, especially that headcanon at the end. my vibe for Jack is like Las Vegas - fun as hell for a finite amount of time and then you come back to the real world, so that's perfect.

i also think because Ed is having Bad Sad Tub Time when he says "i have no friends" he's being a weensy (okay, more than a weensy. a... woonsy) bit dramatic. not that he doesn't believe it in that moment, but in a more stable headspace he'd acknowledge that is objectively not true. in the throes of my teenage depression I'd often think "i have no friends" and that simply wasn't accurate. maybe it's that I had no friends of the capital-H heart. i loved many friends as a younger person but it wasn't until my 20s I had friends of the Heart, so i think that's a possibility here too. not every friend can or should see inside your soul and vibe with it and that doesn't mean their friendship is less real or unimportant. it just means when you're having Emo Bath Time you might forget about them a little.

amuseoffyre

It's also very significant that Ed has never felt safe enough to tell anyone about his father before. In the gravy basket, he says he never told anyone and his own subconscious taunts him that he told one person, who then left him: Stede.

His childhood made him guarded and wary anyway and then he ends up on Hornigold's crew, a place where violence and brutality were watchword from the top down.

My headcanon is that's when Ed really started keeping people at arm's length emotionally because when Hornigold mentions a cabin boy (without using his name), Ed immediately defensively says "His name was Felix. He was a really nice guy."

Calling him a nice guy, when Hornigold is referring to him as a boy, suggests that Ed considered him an equal which means he and Felix were probably both around the same age. We've got canonical references to pirates cutting rations as punishment, so I wouldn't be surprised if Felix was stealing rations for Ed and Ed remembering that kindness (so much meta about Ed and food in the context of the show. SO much), only to see him get killed for it.

Better not to let anyone see you care about anything or be nice or let anyone be nice to you or you might end up with a live crab forced down your throat. Better get tougher. Don't act like you feel pain. Laugh when you're whipped in the balls. Go to extremes for fun and profit. Even with the chaos trio, as much as he clearly adores them, Ed still does keep his defensive walls up.

Stede, who is so different and so weird and so everything Ed has never known before, does like those parts of Ed but he also takes the parts of Ed that Ed's never been allowed to like or acknowledge before. For once, Ed unexpectedly finds he can lower his guard and trust someone with pieces of himself he's kept hidden and safe for a lifetime. And more importantly, he wants to.

amuseoffyre

Also need to add a shout-out to his friendship with Jackie.

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His relationships with Anne, Mary and Jackie are so familiar and comfortable. They talk sex and drama and roast each other to pieces and they're clearly friendships that have been there a long, long time.

These are the friends who he came up with and as much as the friendship is still there, like any old friendship, people grow in different directions with different vibes and different goals.

ofmd meta our flag means death
edwardteachswombtattoo
edwardteachswombtattoo

Anyway I love all the relationships in OFMD. Jackie and her multiple husbands, Pete and Lucius's "we don't own each other", canonically married Anne and Mary, the Jim/Archie/Zheng/Oluwande polycule, also canonically married The Swede and Jackie, whatever Fang and Roach have going on, Mary and Doug.

I appreciate this show for having such a variety of romantic relationships, all of which fall outside the typical monogamous hetero-patriarchal standards set by popular fiction.

our flag means death