#and then he goes to a privateering academy where he does enjoy folding socks and he's liberated from his black beard and hes cool with that

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

And another thing! Literally any queer story that takes place during the colonial age would have a huge gaping hole in it if it didn't have anticolonialism as a theme. Especially one that centers indigenous people. Like the reason that every culture had their own concepts of gender until something happened and then suddenly the gender binary was ubiquitous is because western European colonial powers made their view of gender the only acceptable one as part of christianizing and colonizing the world. You're not gonna have a show set in 1717 in the Caribbean where the love interest is a gay Maori man and the main deuteragonist is a non-binary mestizo catholic and just skip over colonialism. Like these are exactly the people who western gender roles are being forced on at fucking gun point during this era. Jim and Ed are both mixed race characters who's gender and sexual identities are in active defiance of the colonial powers that be. And this is the fucking Stede Ed and Jim show.

And there's something to be said for the fact that Stede's toxic masculinity plot line is internalized and Ed's struggle with toxic masculinity is largely external in the form a white guy who rubs elbows with the British Navy when Ed doesn't behave to his standard of masculinity. That choice didn't come out of nowhere and it shows a deep understanding of where homophobia comes from. That's not to say that precolonial communities of color were paradise for people that we today would consider queer but the rich tapestry of sexual and gender expressions that existed in those communities were erased in the name of colonialism. That's going to affect literally any queer person at the time when OFMD is set. These two things are inextricably linked.

Like when David Jenkins says a lot of what we're taught about being men is wrong, motherfucker who taught us what a man was. Who taught Ed what a man was? Who taught Stede what a man was for that matter? It's the white dad with the English accent who is violent (derogatory) and overbearing.

Like you get what I'm saying right? Like it's a silly little rom com but also it must necessarily be that deep because of who these characters are and when and where they exist.

#ofmd meta #Our Flag walks the line like a fucking tight rope acrobat and I'm not gonna let fake fans sleep on that #like they depict things aesthetically without actually depicting them sometimes #ill talk about the aesthetics of episode 9 all fucking day #in universe what happens is Ed signs a paper with an x either because hes illiterate or because he doesnt want to sign it #and is resting on the assumption that hes illiterate to get away with not signing it either as longform fuckery or to soften the blow #and he signs it to save his white boyfriend from getting fucking shot #and then he goes to a privateering academy where he does enjoy folding socks and he's liberated from his black beard and hes cool with that #everything is more or less his choice which makes it palatable and doesnt completely take the tone somewhere dark and harrowing #BUT ALSO what were seeing is the British Military forcing an indigenous man to sign a document and he does so with an x #and then taking him to a secondary fucking school ass school away from his community where hes forced to change his appearance #but also they let him keep his hair so that they dont step on that particular trauma #im vibrating what the fuck is this show #how do they do it? #Like seriously this has been a comedy show????? #And don't tell me I'm reading into it too much episode 2 primes us to think about colonialism