#the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

knowlesian · 1 year

Text

I posted 5,713 times in 2022

That's 5,402 more posts than 2021!

745 posts created (13%)

4,968 posts reblogged (87%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@knowlesian

@chuplayswithfire

@spinecorset

@pearwaldorf

@the-stray-liger

I tagged 2,046 of my posts in 2022

#our flag means death - 217 posts

#my ofmd meta - 112 posts

#ofmd spoilers - 99 posts

#the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza - 39 posts

#yellowjackets - 24 posts

#blackbonnet - 16 posts

#the good place - 13 posts

#izzy hands - 11 posts

#oluwande boodhari - 8 posts

#abbott elementary - 7 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#my whole life i’ve always been vaguely confused when i’m like ‘the behavior was shitty’ and people go what you have to understand about the

My Top Posts in 2022:

call me crazy but i just think a megacorp buying up and owning all the media and then slowly smashing it together until it’s one giant franchise without end is Bad, Actually

5,010 notes - Posted July 10, 2022

stede bonnet is the elle woods of piracy i will die on this hill

8,428 notes - Posted May 11, 2022

honestly i am lowkey obsessed with how terrible we didn’t start the fire is at being a song while also being among the the catchiest songs ever

this is a song that includes a man screaming CHILDREN OF THALIDOMIDE and then the next lyric is buddy holly, ben hur / space monkey, mafia

it is just one man, listing historical events more or less in order with no context or end and then layering in a chorus so catchy you will BEG YOUR BRAIN to stop thinking about it

i just appreciate that level of aimless, technically skilled chaos for some reason

eta i know why he wrote it oh god please stop telling me, just because billy joel lived through these events doesn’t make them not historical events and i like the song you don’t have to defend it to me, billy joel even agrees, CHILL

31,215 notes - Posted August 7, 2022

not to be an old cranky leftist but going forward i think those of us who live in the us need to remember a protest is not a group powerwalk to register polite disapproval with those in power

a protest is an implied threat. a protest says there are a lot of us, and we do not like what you’re doing. we are giving you a chance to course correct before we take things to the next level.

if there’s no shared commitment to the potential of moving to that next level: a protest is useless and essentially just public performance art.

43,490 notes - Posted June 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

“why do i believe this” and “who benefits from me believing it” are the first steps to decolonization and we should all be doing this more

63,081 notes - Posted June 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#i promised to suck at tagging and by god i DID #i thought i tagged less than that tbh #so in some ways: gj me?#also jesus absolute christ that fuckin billy joel post i will never be free #also how the fuck did i get this many notes this year #fuckin weird man.#shoutout to my queue for making most of these posts for me tbqh #am i online? is it the queue??? who could say i am tag chaos and thus unknowable #i like that i got over my self-rb fears tbh #it helps i follow a zillion accounts but i made an honest effort to quit fearing the self-promotion reaper

7 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

has anyone done a gifset that’s just comparing izzy tearing up when ed chokes him/The Whole Toe thing?

i only ask because i need to stare at izzy ‘fuck you we were NOT MUPPETS YESTERDAY oh shit, oh fuuuuuck yes it’s happening, glory hallelujah my boyfriend captain is back, i’m done being gaslit by you wholesome felt twats’ hands experiencing the realignment of his fucked up little world on an endless loop.

I MEAN. if you think about it, izzy’s from the version of black sails Certain Oblivious People thought that show was before the “they’re gay pirates, harold, deal with it or be unable to watch this show because they’re getting their gay all over the main thrust of the narrative as we speak” beat dropped.

this means he is subtextually gay as shit for blackbeard in freaky/violent, public ways and even fucking gayer still for edward in ...also freaky/violent, but softer and more private ways and all the while textually speaking, They’re Just Good Friends forever and ever amen.

izzy is from a world where there is a rule: you work out the way you wanna fuck the guy you spend all your time with by stabbing things together. other people, each other, all phallic imagery is allowed and indeed, encouraged, so long as you use objects that evoke “soooo, this is supposed to be a dick thing, right?” but never push it beyond the realm of subtext. izzy can have loyalty and shared power, and as long as he cashes in his tokens sparingly meaningful gazes and clasping arms or patting each other on the shoulder and letting the touch linger juuuuust long enough to make it kinda gay are all on the approved list. in izzy’s world you bleed for each other, you kill and die for each other, you are the most important people in each other’s lives—as long as the text retains plausible deniability it’s Not Like That.

maybe you can have a lil it’s not gay if it’s in a threeway (or a love triangle!) action as a treat and if somebody almost dies/is thought to be dead a hug is allowed, but your love better not even fucking think about speaking its name.

honestly, even if izzy felt like pushing that barrier, what would he say? the sacred texts to translate what izzy feels for the man who becomes edward when they’re alone don’t even exist where he’s from. they have words for what he might want do in bed and what the world thinks of men like him, but love’s just not applicable. the songs he sings are not ones of love because not to put too fine a point on it, but: in izzy’s world, love is for men who don’t have boners you can see from space for other men. he’s swallowed all the lies the world told him about love whole and made them part of his identity.

with all that in mind, let’s look at how if you tilt your head and squint, ofmd is not just a joyful and affirming celebration of finding your community of equally if not identically bizarre fellows, but also a deeply depressing pirate love story as experienced by izzy ‘the only non-muppet around and not okay with it’ hands.

before i get into the actual meat of the two scenes, i want to stop and marvel at one specific part of the leadup and why ed decides to try and introduce the front of izzy’s neck to the back. quote time!!!!

Not some namby-pamby in a silk gown, pining for his boyfriend.

like, CHRIST. fucking WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE. why are they so good? i gotta take a quick structural analysis break to handle the way the writers packed like... a whole fucking essay on izzy’s deeply toxic pirate masculinity and summed up a point i will spend this whole insane post trying to express in one tidy line. i ache to be this efficient a writer.

i’m gonna break it into pieces, because they all deserve attention.

we start out with what’s edging into a gentle slur, but is ultimately defanged by being nowhere close to on par with the uglier ways a modern audience knows he could phrase that. i think it’s worth spotlighting how izzy never quite says anything on its face hateful that i can think of? he’s not supportive, that’s for fucking certain, but unless i’ve forgotten something (very possible, often true) this is the closest he comes to fulfilling the homophobic gay trope in the content of his speech and not just how he says things/his vibes.

(though let us make no mistake here, his vibes are rock fucking hard homophobic gay. jesus christ with this one, bless his heart.)

i can’t tell if it’s a writer choice or character choice. my instinct says it’s both! anyway, either way i’m into it. could even be a subtle hint izzy’s closer to dragging the canon kicking and screaming into the dark where he feels more comfortable.

now we move over to izzy mocking edward’s dressing gown. this team HATES ME, because it’s not enough to just have him essentially say “take off that soft fancy shit and rub some dirt on it, real men don’t cry”. oh no, not for these absolute combopack monster/lighthouses! of course they have izzy leave off dressing and just say gown. of COURSE. we understand as an audience they don’t mean gown as in dress because the visuals fill that gap for us, but by deleting one word they effectively have izzy imply edward’s a big fucking girl without needing to have him actually say it.

i mean... come on. come ON.

pining and boyfriend are also excellent choices; pining implies weakness and fading from a former glory, and boyfriend is uh... boyfriend! what it says on the tin, but it also throws in tones of infantilization by leaning on ‘boy’ instead of a more adult-associated choice like lover.

anyway onto what i’m supposed to be doing: crying about how con is lowkey playing out a grand fucking greek tragedy in the background at literally every second he’s on-screen as izzy and i’ve gone down the rabbit hole about it. honestly they should give that man extra hazard pay, he could have hurt himself going this hard.

look at the way his face softens when edward chokes him. look at the tears in his eyes and the tremble in his hand when he reaches out, the un-fucking-bearable tenderness. the way he doesn’t fight ed’s violence, he encourages and leans into it. (because once upon a time in private, izzy was allowed to know that blackbeard could be edward; he was the only person who knew that, before stede rolled on up in his stupid fucking boat and his stupid fucking pants and unearthed ed and ruined izzy’s whole fucking life.)

speaking of:

Blackbeard is my captain. I serve Blackbeard, not Edward. Edward better watch his fucking step.

the way i feel about ‘i serve blackbeard’ does not even need to be EXPLAINED. if you’re bothering to read this shit you know the face i made when that line entered my ears and lodged itself in my brain, never to leave, because you made it too. i won’t profane even this Most Unholy post with my feelings about the use of that particular verb there. it’s good. i like it. well done team, no notes and the end. nobody fucking perceive me.

more high mindedly: i love how izzy uses edward here, not ed. it reframes the “using edward is a privilege i am given by my captain” to “saying edward is a gift i can take back until you prove you’re my captain again”. as far as izzy is concerned, ed doesn’t even exist. blackbeard’s his captain and always has been and thus commands his loyalty, but edward’s in the doghouse until he thinks long and hard about what he’s done.

there’s also a beat there that i think stands as what izzy considers Having a Talk About Their Relationship.

(...well fuck. well, FUCK. izzy thought they were dating, didn’t he? he totally did. holy shit that’s perfect. they were subtextually dating and stede started actually dating ed and that’s just another level of his reality stede broke. oh my god, this little ratman. this fucking IDIOT. his life is the worst. it’s amazing and so funny and also no-jokes sad. SO GOOD.)

so i guess that means in izzy’s world, that was how you say “we might still have to work together, but you’re sleeping on the fucking couch until i sort out how i feel about your little fling”. blackbeard is his captain and he serves him; that’s business. edward is his Subtextual Boyfriend, and from izzy’s perspective edward has been really shitting the bed lately.

honestly: awww, look at him go! trying to communicate like a real boy. that’s one mangled ‘you tried’ star for izzy.

all that would be enough to make me want to fling myself into the sun, it really would. i would still be screaming about izzy and the way con makes sure izzy’s gaze always comes back to rest on ed in every scene they're in together, no matter what else is going on, for the rest of my life.

but oh wait, it GETS WORSE. because here it comes: the toe scene. buckle up, get ready for this to Go Places because i am going full galaxy brain. let’s talk about love as consumption re: izzy’s feelings about doing the Weird Vore.

there’s the unavoidable jesus shit all up in this scene’s guts so i honestly could stop here and just scream WHY? WHY, WHY DO A FUCKING COMMUNION METAPHOR WITH HIS OWN TOE STANDING IN FOR THE HOLY HOST? YOU’RE SICK. YOU’RE SICK AND I LOVE IT!!! SIT AND THINK ABOUT YOUR CHOICES AND THEN NEVER EVER CHANGE, AND IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT: GO AHEAD AND GET WORSE for a couple hours instead of moving on, but i’ll get there eventually.

aka: if you ever thought to yourself ‘i wonder if anybody’s gonna talk way too long about the constant and super amazing queering and/or subversion of christian imagery and the religion itself in this show’ i got your back there, just you hold tight. ohhhhh baby i got so! many! thoughts! on! that!

for today though, i’m gonna stick with the way izzy processes love and his relationship with ed.

the way ed gets rid of lucius, layers his armor back on piece by piece, and then sees himself reflected in an implement of violence and names himself a monster, not a lighthouse, before he goes to visit izzy is... A Lot. i want to talk more later! but it felt worth mentioning here as his gateway between the new world he thinks stede denied him and the old world he used to share with izzy.

similarly, the way we get a shot of izzy’s bare, vulnerable feet and black loincloth thing-y before ed takes his toe makes me want to wade right into the proverbial sea!!! i hate this show.

the mix of tenderness and menace taika flips between here is just... like, i know this post is about con and izzy and i will GET THERE but because taika’s affect entirely changing here is important to izzy, i get to gush about it. he’s just so good.

anyway, izzy. izzy, who has a mouth full of his own toe and edward all up in his grill and thanks to the Weird Vore is having a religious and a sexual experience all at once. izzy, with a love song for broken men in his heart and tears in his eyes, because in this moment he is full of nothing but awe.

the way we use ‘awesome’ now is pretty casual; it means we like something. that something is good. my lunch was awesome, your hat is awesome, we had an awesome time. good, but not necessarily noteworthy. you forget awesome things that happen to you all the time.

in the bible, when something is worthy of awe, you drop to your knees and cry and beg for mercy because the glory and power of what you have just witnessed cannot be expressed by clumsy human tongues; to be in even an echo of the presence of god is to experience the overwhelming urge to absolutely shit yourself. edward’s hand around his throat gave him hope, but this clicks everything back into place for him because the violent, ugly evidence of edward’s love for him is working its way down his gullet. hurrah! life is good again, and by good izzy means horrifying.

so yeah, izzy is chock-full of awe. edward is the face of his god and real flesh his communion; this is a motherfucking religious experience. bow down bitches, because he is worshipping.

(also, he probably came in his pants.)

the thing that really takes me to “fuck it, i’m out, i can’t anymore” place is the way the method of consumption proves the lie of izzy’s ecstasy. edward isn’t providing him any real nourishment, ed is feeding izzy himself, shoving his own toxic notions of love down his throat and making sure he chews them real good first. he’s not consuming the man he loves, he’s eating his own fucking tail.

i just wanna talk to the person who came up with this idea. maybe i’ll beat them up in the parking lot of a denny’s, maybe i’ll cry on them forever. maybe i’ll buy them a fruit basket so expensive i will have to go into debt forever. who knows! i am both a monster and a lighthouse, myself.

the tatty scrap izzy clutches close to his chest and calls his heart might only exist in metaphor, but it’s just as red as ed’s and unlike our boy, the claret being spilled by izzy’s love most fucking certainly isn’t wine. violent and transactional, nasty brutish and short; these are the words izzy learned for the feelings in his chest. it’s like jack said before buttons took his ass out with what i can only assume is the power of having the most amazing facial expressions i have ever seen: pirates don’t have friends, and they don’t fall in love. they’re just in various stages of fucking each other over and in izzy’s sad, repressed world, they don’t even get to fuck each other in the bargain.

but that’s okay: he doesn’t need that. the story izzy lived in before stede ruined his life told him time and time again: it’s not about that.

so this is good, and this is right. with edward looming over him, subtextually fucking the shit out of him but not making it gay in a way a straight audience would be unable to ignore, the world makes sense again. he’s got the taste of his own flesh in his mouth and blood on his teeth. he’s home.

so long to that muppet bullshit about ‘talking out our feelings’ and ‘giving each other hugs’ and ‘oh my FUCKING GOD get some therapy you leather-clad sad sack who is 1000000% going to die alone in a puddle of his own piss if he doesn’t get it together’. fuck emotional literacy right in the ear! who’s she? izzy’s proud to say he’s never met her.

all that joy, the glimpse into a world where love is a word that could ever apply izzy was all a bad dream, and now he’s awake. this is the real world: this is as close to a love song as men like izzy can ever hope to shape with their untrained tongues.

hey la, hey la, motherfuckers. his boyfriend’s back.

...so yeah anyway, anybody seen that gifset?

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza #my ofmd meta #izzy hands #poor poor izzy.#i sat down to do a 'quick freewrite'#hours later i bring you: this insane shit #i call it the ballad of izzy hands: big dumb stupidhead who is not a muppet #why do i care so much?#why do i have so much to say about this?#i just do #anyway this happened #izzy makes my brain cry #he's so FUNNY #i want to laugh in his stupid tattooed face #i also want to pat his hand and yank him towards being a muppet #JUST FUCK LUCIUS IZZY #you wanna do it so much it makes you look stupid anyway #pete can come too tbqh #or watch or just hear about it the point is: maybe i WILL find izzy love???#yes the tags had to be like this they needed to match the energy of the post #ps: izzy's theme song is rabbit hole by natkills #i don't make the rules it just is #i abandoned the framing device SO FAST #yolo

2K notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

i’m obsessed with the way olu says “coming nana!!!! i’m coming for some caaaaaake” in e7 i don’t have anything deep to say it’s just so good. i laugh so hard, every single time i hear it. if we lived in an era of ringtones, it would be my ringtone. i want it played on an endless loop at all major events in my life from now on including my funeral. if people think it’s tacky, they don’t deserve to come to my fucking funeral.

#our flag means death #ofmd #everything about olu is gold tbqh #i'm in the middle of writing that other olu and jim thing but this just SENDS ME #i had to stop and say it #i am 100000000000000% serious i'm putting this in the will #okay now back to crying about olu's earring being teal #sidenote i swear to god if i get one color theory UM ACTUALLY THAT ISN'T TEAL ask #i'll laugh is what i'll do look kids i'm a words dummy who don't do art so hot #the earring is teal as far as my can't tell the intricacies of blue ass apart can tell #and if it's teal it makes me cry so i continue to be a teal earring truther #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

1K notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

for some godforsaken reason i keep having intense feelings about izzy “only human in a muppet movie” hands, the joke has officially infected my brain and morphed into being kind of sad for that incredible mess of a man.

as such: everybody gets to suffer with me.

if you think about the show from izzy’s perspective, he went to bed in a gritty pirate drama where nobody gets to be happy for long and if you gut-stab a motherfucker, they have the common decency to fucking die already. he had both feet firmly on the ground in this world: he understood his place in it. he knew the goddamned rules!

and then one day he wakes up and blackbeard says “say, how about you go fetch me a fancyman” and once he finds stede, somehow this incompetent little weirdo beat him with the power of friendship, chutzpah, and a well-chucked coconut.

and then blackbeard lets stede get away with it—not just get away with it, but he celebrated izzy’s deeply embarrassing loss to a bunch of greenhorns, and he’s allowing the source of izzy’s confusion and humiliation to parade around calling him ed.

(i feel like that matters a lot to izzy—it’s pretty clear in his mind, using edward is a privilege he takes seriously and something that’s Special and Just For Him. and now stede is all “ed this, ed that, ohhhh ed let’s have tea and cakes and wacky hijinks and be all tender and adorable and emotionally available to each other in a healthy, open way�� and ed doesn’t just let it happen. he likes it!)

lucius gets the better of him (using information only ivan or fang could have told him! O U C H), nobody wants him around now that they can have muppet adventures, and then it all culminates in blackbeard-now-ed going back on his plan to pull a single white female but make it none of those things actually and the duel.

ohhhh, the duel. where the final law of gravity izzy understands just... breaks. everything about his life is so very sad and it’s his own fault, but man. i can’t help it, i feel bad for the little freak.

he woke up in a different genre and whenever he tries to be like “okay, but yesterday i could have sworn linear time had meaning? and sepsis actually existed? is anybody else seeing this shit?????” everybody around him says “but izzy, we’ve ALWAYS BEEN MUPPETS.”

the choking/Toe Moment in the finale, beyond being disturbing as all hell/a kinkmeme fill on parade, carry a new resonance with that framing. he’s crying in happiness over getting to do the Weird Vore, sure, but this is a realignment. his world finally makes sense again!

(also he’s so in love with blackbeard he can’t do anything other than drown in it, but that’s another post too.)

anyway, all that to say: stede crashing into his life was basically a mindfuck so intense it was full-on eldritch horror times for izzy and i just think that’s neat!!!! also so, so deeply sad.

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #omfd #izzy hands #izzy 'only human in a muppet movie' hands is canon gdi #it's hilarious too! until you pull a me and think too hard about it #then it's sad AND hilarious #oh izzy you weird little freak i will not find you love #okay i should get back to writing about the finale i just had to stop and yell about izzy #everywhere i turn on this show: a feast for mine eyes #a fulfillment in mine heart #a marked increase in the silly/purple aspect of mine prose #my ofmd meta #since i guess this is just What I Do Now #this is who i am!!!!#anyway it's almost time for regionals.#the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

1K notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

quick thoughts: the way frenchie constantly comes back to sort of... Thematic Code Switching? i don’t quite know what to call it and i’m still working out my thoughts on it overall, but either way it’s deeply fucking cool.

i have been asking myself “why did ed keep frenchie? jim is a solid duh. they’re jim. literally anyone would keep jim for so very many reasons. and getting rid of lucius first is a horrible stew created by all the reasons lucius is precious and essentially Ship Therapist, so that scans... but why frenchie? i guess he’s kind of the second most useful one there, but there HAS TO BE A SOLID REASON I CAN PINPOINT, this teams exists solely to be so careful in their narrative that i never think about anything else again”. i was coming up real vague on it until i watched e4 again to talk about the closet, and the lightbulb came: it’s the code switching.

the most obvious/real world example comes at the dinner party turned conflagration, with “i’ve been in service” and the way the show contrasts olu’s discomfort at briefly inhabiting this deeply, deeply white world with frenchie’s ability to turn everything he learned bowing to the whims of rich fucking assholes in order to rob them blind (and then he DISTRIBUTED THE WEALTH AFTER???) i want to kill everyone involved with this (devoted for the rest of my life.)

but i think the more important scene might be in e4, when everybody is fangirling over ed. the whole muppet analogy serves to stand in as a way to talk about a lot of ways to end up ground under the proverbial bootheel of dominant culture as well as a literal logical framework. (...illogical? what is time, what is space, the ocean travel in ofmd does not know, people arrive when they need to arrive because it’ll be COOLEST so we invite you to fuck yourself if you care about figuring out any actual sense of scale on this, beloved monster/lighthouses, and just enjoy) ANYWAY. much like gonzo’s limbs when they put him on the rack and he likes it, the muppet framework can be bent and stretched into new forms pretty easily.

while everybody else is losing their minds because Leather Daddy Taika is here to show them his belly, frenchie wants to know if they're all about to bite it before he nerds out. he might be a muppet, but he’s moved between canons himself. he’s aware there are worlds out there where when somebody stabs you, there’s no cutesy “joke’s on you, i cleverly twisted to the side!” bullshit to save you. jim is ...jim, and thus a slam dunk, but i think the reason frenchie stays is because before he went ahead and nailed his shirt to the ship, he asked if they were all about to die.

damn, this show is good.

eta because this post is incomplete without @tothetrashwhereibelong’s more refined take.

ID: Screenshot of tags that read, “frenchie is possibly the smartest out of all of them; definitely the most cunning; but also i feel the need to point out it was olu who distributed the wealth not frenchie; because i think it really speaks of olu’s character as someone who’s fundamentally looking for community before he’s looking for himself; while I think frenchie (esp because he knows how dark the world theyre living in actually is; better than olu does) would put himself first; which is not to say that frenchie is selfish because hes not; like for starters he let olu decide what to do with the money; but i think community is at the core of olu’s character in a way that it isnt for frenchie’s; ofmd; meta; frenchie; frenchie meta”. End ID

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #frenchie #honestly i could probably spend the next year thinking about this show and not come up empty #there is just... so much there #my head and my mind and my brain too!!!!#also the heart #also the pants #basically: i wanna roll in it i wanna chew on it until there's no taste left #just FULL old bubblegum this sucker #okay now to write about the Duality of the Closet #yes i am still on the duality thing!!!!#i will NOT move on #it is priority numero... many on a long list #the point is i like that stupid meme #my ofmd meta #why not i guess this is long enough to count #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

576 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

has anyone done a gifset of ed’s reactions to the duel between izzy and stede yet?

i only ask because i need to stare at just ed’s emotional journey throughout the fight on an endless loop.

i MEAN. the way ed backs away from the fight and then clings to the rigging as soon as things truly start going south. the way he turns his face to the sea when izzy says it’s the end of the road because he has sailed with izzy for years: he is absolutely pants-shittingly certain stede is about to die.

he can’t watch his soft silly little man, this naive weird butterfly in snazzy pants who burned down entire lives and then a whole ship with the power of passive aggression, go out like this. he can’t watch his mother’s words come true: he is not meant for finer things. stede was not for him. red silk and perfect tea and unconditional love; none of these things were for him.

the way he jerks at the ropes when izzy strikes and then sort of gently thumps his head into his fist because taika wants me to lose my life to thinking about the minutia of his body language i guess! so clearly i require that gif a lot!

but then it gets worse because all it takes to make ed look back, to watch the man he’s ass over ankles in love with die, is stede’s voice! asking if he did it right and then subsequently revealing he is a total fucking madman, just absolutely and inexorably batshit insane and he has just won a duel by being correctly stabbed against the fancy mast of his fancy ship (correctly stabbed because ed taught him how to do it! it must be stressed!) and in that moment, ed looks like a man who has just seen the face of god.

so yeah anyway: anybody seen that gifset?

#our flag means death #blackbonnet #jfc @ my feelings about this show #i love my alive gay pirates #i really do want this gifset tho #what if i just go ahead and devote the next month of my life to watching taika's eyes Do Stuff #what IF #my ofmd meta #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

468 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

one of the things that blows my mind about ofmd is the casual way it upends everything we have been trained to expect from mainstream romances and flings open the doors on who is allowed/supposed to find love.

i could write a million odes to lucius and pete and jackie and her husbands and i will probably do that later! my heart is full, my brain consumed. anyway, obviously then we also have ed and stede who are a whole fucking meal for the senses, but i just want to yell for a second about jim and olu.

jim and olu are a quiet revolution. i know that sounds hyperbolic but they Just Are. i don’t make the news, i merely report it. it is what it is and they are what they are, and what they are is beautiful.

between the two of them they effortlessly smack down barriers having to do with gender and racism and colorism and fatphobia and they do it by just fucking existing and loving and supporting each other! just two people, having Often Silly Adventures, not constrained by how the world outside their relationship would like to define them.

i think there’s a lot of value to narratives about the struggle and trauma of living in a society that loves to remind you at every possible chance that your very existence marks you out as Other, perhaps tolerated and at best embraced, but always different. to exist outside the accepted structures of the straight/white/cis/etc dominant culture is to live with the knowledge that you will be the first weed to be pulled from the garden when it comes time to “clean things up”. that feeling fucking sucks, and exploring that reality is important.

but alongside those stories we have a real lack of stories about how beautiful and fulfilling life can be when we find spaces where we can own that garden. where we aren’t just weeds, blown in by chance and allowed to stay; somebody planted us there on purpose because they wanted us to be there. it’s not that those stories don’t exist at all—it’s that they tend to often exist in the margins, through self-pub or on sufferance from a bigger house so they can tout it as a Diversity Win, so you often have to put a lot of time and effort into something as simple as finding a piece of media where a character just like you gets to be happy.

and then here comes david jenkins and co, with this fucking show. this mad, impossible, absurd gift of a treasure of a show. on hbo! not even marketed as For The Tumblr Set! it’s just a pirate show, they said. don’t worry, you won’t end up so obsessed your therapist who has not seen the show yet knows blow-by-blow recaps because you won’t shut the fuck up about it. it’ll be FINE.

l i a r s. dirty filthy wonderful liars.

i had no idea i needed jim and olu (and ed and stede and lucius and pete and all the Blessed Idiots running around this insane, joyful world) to exist, tenderly and hilariously showing the world love isn’t off-limits to people who exist outside the pre-ordained lines, but ohhhhhh boy. i did. i really, really did.

280 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

deep comedy nerd moment probably only i am this excited about, but the writing on this show is just so solid i need to be my truest explain the jokes self for a hot sec.

imo the “but women are bad luck on ships!” joke is the platonic ideal of the rule of three setup in comedy and a perfect teaching example for how that works.

okay, so! in the build of the joke, we go from

1. women are bad luck because of the crystals in their bodies

2. the crystals attract demons.

to finally

3. the demons attract misfortune

1 and 2 are solid jokes on their own! the whole “but the lady crystals!” is just absurd enough to make it funny, the step up into demons makes it even better and could also function as a punchline on its own, but the killing blow is “demons attract misfortune”.

that’s so dumb and absurd and i love it. demons aren’t the issue, oh no. the misfortune those demons attract, though? now THAT bears worrying about.

tldr the rule of three isn’t just about the numerical formatting, your third and final joke needs to be the most absurd/funny of the bit and they nailed BOTH those requirements.

i wanna kiss all these writers on the mouth. respectfully, of course.

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #I JUST LOVE GOOD WRITING #ESPECIALLY COMEDY #my ofmd meta #i mean kind of i'm just being a huge nerd #but whatever i'll throw this in the tag #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

327 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

gdi, apparently i still have more to say about muppets. i got that good brainrot, team.

i already covered how izzy spends the series in a skinner box from hell dedicated to finding out what happens when you take a character from black sails and drop them into muppet treasure island without warning, so i’ll just link it here and move along to our second pillar in this cursed metaphor i refuse to stop torturing: jim.

i have a longer and more emotional post in the offing about jim and why they’re our tim curry here (aka, a human so capable of becoming one with the rules of the canon and attaining muppetdom you go “hell yeah. what a muppet that is. i am seeing a muppet here, everybody, def not a human actor chewing the scenery to absolute shreds”) but the long and short of it for now is that the day jim met olu, they were offered a gateway into muppetdom. and because jim is lowkey the best character on a show where everybody on-screen at any given second is my favorite character in the entirety of all media, ever, they jumped at the chance.

i realized this morning there’s a third pillar holding this framework up, and it’s our boy ed. ed, who is izzy’s shadow twin: a muppet born into a gritty pirate drama. the narrative uses everybody who has ever met him to tell us over and over that blackbeard is singular. he’s known for being absolutely insane within his own context, pulling off plans that shouldn’t work and saying things like “if you get stabbed on the correct side, nothing bad will ever happen. livers, how do they even fucking work????” and apparently being right because he’s just fine the next day.

that’s some muppet shit if i have ever heard it.

which brings me to the part that’s actually pretty heart-warming. ofmd operating on muppet movie logic answers why sometimes stabbings require tender gazes and brow mopping and then sometimes you can go on a nature walk the next day and why getting in a dinghy and just starting to row can get you anywhere safely in approximately five seconds flat and there’s no risk of dying of sun exposure or thirst and starvation, sure, and it ten zillion percent enhances the absurd comedy, but i think there’s something deeper and more poignant at play here.

to be a muppet is to embrace the shit that makes you weird and different. it’s to be loud and joyful and part of a circus of the same glorious clowns, getting along together and appreciating those quirks instead of condemning them. what’s cringe? what’s shame? a muppet doesn’t fucking know, they’re too busy loving what they love unabashedly and authentically and finding a community of like-minded weirdos who do the same. (and since i can hear the 'well, actually's now: statler and waldorf always poking fun is part of it too! they are In On The Joke. doing the dozens is a valid form of love as long as everybody feels safe and supported and is okay with it, it’s only when teasing becomes a passive aggressive way of releasing issues you refuse to address openly that it Gets Weird.)

honestly, much like piracy functions as a textual haven for queer characters as well as a metatextual metaphor about how simply existing as a member of the lgbtqia+ community is seen as a transgressive act, the muppet metaphor works as a commentary on finding your joy when you are a part of the aforementioned alphabet soup.

(this is also why i honestly have some hope for izzy; if any show was going to give that wholeass wreck of a lone human amidst a newfound sea of felt a road to muppetdom and thus happiness, it would be this silly and tender love letter to those of us who really, really needed some joy right now.)

anyway, in conclusion:

ID: very dumb meme my very kind friend nicole made that reads “it’s about the muppets.” End ID

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd spoilers #izzy hands #jim jimenez #edward teach #i am STILL ON THE MUPPET THING #i will NOT move on #it is priority numero uno #but no seriously i think the muppet movie of it all is a decent framework to attack these themes #there's a lot to chew on here that requires more than a free write to do right and i'll do that later #i'm just Feeling Things #david jenkins why'd you do it?#why'd you make this beautiful revolutionary weird silly show #i love it. i love everything #my ofmd meta #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

348 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

if anyone needs me i will be screaming THEY KNOCKED BOOTS? THEY KNOCKED BOOTS??? THEY LITERALLY KNOCKED THEIR GODDAMN LITTLE BOOTIES TOGETHER OHHHHH HOW DARE YOU, SHOW, HOW DARE YOU in a pitch only dogs can hear

#our flag means death #i love this show FUCK ME SO GOOD #i thought it was just a silly little pirate show and now i’m crying about boots #say fellas is it gay to meet a man and realize he brings joy back to your life and you cannot bear leaving him #THEN YOU K N O C K. B O O T S.#thoughts and prayers to me from me in my time of hardship #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

323 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

part of what really gets at me about the deft way this team tells stories is how it might be one of the most intersectional shows i’ve ever seen. there are just so, so many ways this is true, but since i’m writing about ed and how class/race/sexuality can slam into each other, right now izzy and ed are top of mind. their Whole Thing needs a really long post of its own and that’s coming too, but just to get the barebones thoughts down:

on one hand, you have izzy. on the surface, izzy is playing out his own textual storyline about what happens when your own hatred for yourself and who you love and how you want to love them makes you into a Big Fuckin’ Terrible Grody Idiot, obviously, but given his narrative pairing/echoing of ed he also takes on a larger thematic role as… essentially, the narrative version of White Colonizer Jesus. he’s all up in ed’s shit, demanding ed fill the role he needs and act the way he wants. he is literally constantly telling ed to stop listening to himself and fit the brutal role izzy thinks is ed’s natural state; he is Making It Fucking Weird, forever, and he will kill or die in service of trying to force ed to fit into his stupid boxes. his sexuality only makes it even crunchier and more complex! it’s so good.

i would honestly not really care about izzy’s side of this at all if he was straight, because it’s just Not As Interesting. “what does it mean when the part of your identity that exists outside the understood parameters crashes into the ways you get to benefit from systemic injustice” is among the really challenging topics the show is more than ready to tackle. it’s also one of those questions i really do think anyone who cares about this stuff needs to sit with and think about, or risk being izzy.

(the stuff in there about the way masculinity needs to be understood as a history of “okay but what masculinity though? for who, and how?” is so good. you’ll run into a lot of people who think The Patriarchy just means men and that’s not… you know, literally entirely wrong but it’s not actually right, because when we say patriarchy we’re all mentally filling in a lot of qualifiers beforehand and the qualifier at the tippy-top top of that list is white. anybody who thinks about this stuff for more than half a second in good faith should square with that fact, otherwise we are never going to dismantle this shit. to live in a patriarchal society and be processed by the world as a man is to stand to be able to reap certain benefits, but narrowing the analysis down to a flawed and binary understanding is... you know. categorically Not Helpful.)

i’m going to talk more about this in the next analysis i do about ed and stede and the moonlight because it hits on gentler but very similar themes, but i wanted to quickly spotlight how ed’s beats with izzy are extra fucking fascinating when you factor in how izzy functions not just as a character in his own right, but a commentary on the brutal history of white men bringing their Weird Jesus shit everywhere they go and forcing it down the throats of the people who were already doing fine, thanks, please leave, you “discovered” fuck-all because we were already here.

(man, the toe scene is WILD on that end. i love this show.)

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #honestly i'm so fucking feral for this show in part because it's a framework for SO MUCH IMPORTANT SHIT #everything i really worry about and want to talk about ofmd is like we got you babe #and check it out we went SO HARD #you will have to do the fucking work to keep up with us #i love challenging media i love it SO MUCH #art as comfort and succor: so valid #but when a show can be affirming AND this challenging at once #ugh i just love it #my ofmd meta #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

228 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

time to Consider the Humble Lighthouse! i have been dying over this since the finale. i’m so angry at how many layers there are to the use of the lighthouse as a metaphor and connective theme tissue.

to start off: in a really interesting way, the lighthouse isn’t treated as a stede-mary beat which is then continued and turned into a separate stede-ed beat. i think there’s a less nuanced version of this show that would spin things that way—mary wasn’t stede’s perfect romantic co-captain, ed is, so we just pack up shop and take the lighthouse with us, leaving mary behind and making the lighthouse solely about stede and ed by the finale.

that’s a pretty traditional setup! we tend to elevate a narrow view of romantic love as superior to all else outside maybe an equally narrow definition of family, and writing off a first wife we are never allowed to see as a character in her own right as useless and a hinderance to a newer and more important romantic connection before shuffling her off, never to be seen again, is preeeeetty fucking staple in the history of... you know. stories existing.

the folks at ofmd don’t roll like that, though, so the finale officially cements the lighthouse as a mary - stede - ed thematic three part harmony instead. i’d lay down money the black cravat that ends up around all three of their necks is an extra nudge that we should be connecting them thematically alongside a visual representation of the way they function as a trio in the story. honestly until david himself says i’m wrong, as far as i’m concerned the cravat is tied to the lighthouse. the cravat is officially Part Of It.

the lighthouse is in the background of the first three episodes, but it’s first contextualized for us in e4, at mary and stede’s wedding. the use of “humble lighthouse” (especially when paired with the emphasis on how mary and stede’s marriage is about the ugly, soul-crushing machinery of inherited wealth and capitalism, placing authentic love in direct opposition to both) is driving me wild for reasons that need their own insanely long breakdown, but for now i’ll throw the whole quote:

Consider the humble lighthouse; a beacon, an unwavering light that guides.

despite ed’s later commentary, this is not actually an incorrect interpretation of a lighthouse. the beacon tells sailors land is near, and through that it guides them towards shore and safety. this all, as they say, scans. it’s an optimistic and metaphorical take on the lighthouse, but it’s not wrong.

you might say it’s the take of a man who lived his life between the pages of a book, never experiencing the reality of a lighthouse and only ever seeing the shadows their beacons cast on his walls, lovingly cradling the shape of the thing but never the actuality! interesting, that.

in that same vein, when mary tries to give him the painting of the lighthouse, stede isn’t able to see the things she could teach him if he felt like listening—his assumption the kids made it is a pretty textbook example of never wasting a joke and informing character through comedy, just as a structure nerd aside.

i need to write a post 100% about mary and how mary and stede’s relationship is crucial to the story in a way that thrills me, but for now i'll put it this way: even if he hasn't internalized what she told him about how to be a lighthouse for somebody else, in large part thanks to mary, stede carries the potential to be just that along with him when he sneaks away like a literal thief in the night. god love that selfish foppish nutcase. i really do adore him.

as a visual echoing of this, despite not understanding the lessons mary was already primed to teach him, the painting of the lighthouse is the only specific reminder of his family stede takes with him. the books matter for other reasons and he brings the trappings of his class status, all gloriously tailored to his specific comfort, but the lighthouse is the sole notable reminder he had a life and family before the ship and crew.

then we get to ed and stede’s first conversation about the lighthouse. i’ll slap that quote down here, too:

Well, technically, you’re supposed to avoid lighthouses. So you don’t crack up on the rocks.

despite what i said about the priest’s more upbeat example, ed’s not wrong either. a lighthouse also functions as a warning to sailors that if they don’t watch it, they might sail right the fuck into the instruments of their own demise.

you might say that's the take of a man who has never seen himself between the pages of a book, only knowing the dangers of a lighthouse and seeing grotesque caricatures instead of his true face projected in the low and flickering light, angrily avoiding pain while barred from enjoying the fantasies of a lighthouse’s more joyful potential!

these writers are The Worst. they want me to suffer and i love them like izzy loves the Weird Vore, i just want that on record.

the scene where stede and ed literally become a lighthouse together really deserves a lot more analysis all on its own and if you’re reading this there’s a 50/50 shot you could describe it to me shot for shot anyway so what i will say about it here is this: it’s fucking great. additionally, i will also say that in muppet treasure island, a muppet also imitates a foghorn. coincidence or proof of my grand unifying call to muppet theory? personally, i choose to believe.

off flogging my favorite dead muppet horse, the lighthouse then takes a comfortable backseat until the finale.

first, on stede’s end, we get his return to mary and realization/atonement. the careful attention the writers give his character there and the annoyingly good return from underworld cycle but make it fractured fairytale also deserves way more attention, but this is about the lighthouse. i can cry about greek myths later, because once stede goes through his requisite trials and nearly gets a skewer in the ear for it he’s finally ready to hear what mary’s been telling him all along.

it’s pretty obvious that for many reasons, including but not limited to the painfully obvious truth that this man is So Very Gay, stede was never ever going to be entirely happy with mary. but because he came back and validated her pain and set himself to making real amends she gifts him the ability to share her emotional intelligence: finally, stede knows how to be a lighthouse.

and thank god for it, because over on ed’s end of things he’s not doing so hot. he’s tossing perfect angels we must protect but who are simultaneously absolutely not dead, not even a little, It Shall Not Even Be Considered, overboard and crying alone in his cabin, staring at that damn painting. just like stede before he returned to mary and completed that leg of the journey he needed to take in order to be ed’s lighthouse, ed doesn’t know how to translate the answer in mary’s painting.

but because mary was the one to take stede’s sweet lil face between her hands and blow his fucking mind with some basic facts about love and how yes, he is allowed to give and receive affection and equipped with the revelation that the word love applies to him, he can spread the good news.

you know who else needs to learn that lesson? sing it with me if you know the words and you're still crying over ed throwing his heart overboard because if stede, the very first person to look at blackbeard and only ever see ed, couldn’t love him... who could?

(FUCK YOU, DAVID JENKINS FUCK YOOOOOU. ETC. part of me says i should have deleted this part of my outline but you know what? no. this is my tumblr. i do what i want. THE PRIMAL SCREAM STAYS. THAT WAS HURTFUL AND I AM HURT.)

when stede left he set mary free in a lot of ways, but he hurt her deeply at the same time. if the emotional consequences of leaving mary, a woman who didn’t love him, were hefty the emotional consequences of leaving ed are a million times worse. when he left ed, he gutted him. this will not be an easy fix, but the love stede brought into his life and the horrible pain has shredded blackbeard’s armor. for better or worse, he’s ed now.

this is where it gets really good. now stede’s return to mary ties him back to ed and in the same stroke ties ed to mary, through emotion and now basic story math they all own a piece of this lighthouse.

at the beginning of the season, stede left mary for the sea and though he didn’t know it yet, for ed. that places mary and ed in the same story position when it comes to stede, and now we’ve seen what happened when he returned to mary.

i’m only saying, team. blackbonnet public apology and stede accounting his sins while taika comes for my fucking neck because lbr, ed probably cries and wears an even more belly-exposing crop top: it’s coming. this is just math. and once it happens, i really don’t think he’s leaving again.

so, where does that leave us with the lighthouse? there’s a lot of stuff tied up here, and one of the more fascinating aspects has to do with stede and his evolution from Cosplay Pirate to Actual Class Traitor (we love a glow up, we truly do) like i brushed over above when i was nerding out about the use of humble, but the way this show interacts with class and capitalism is way too complex to do it any justice right now. i just couldn’t help shouting it out, because how fucking cool is this show? so cool. so very cool.

since i dealt with the way the lighthouse functions to connect ed-mary-stede and setting that Whole Other Kettle of Class War Fish/all its associated other kettles aside, i want to end on the lighthouse representing not only ed and stede’s relationship, but the idea of balance in a relationship.

if i want to get real basic and binary, ed brings the 'this is how it is’ practicality and life experience, stede the ‘okay, but what if it was different?’ imagination.

but i don’t want to do that, because i think that’s not entirely wrong but it’s also not quite right. if we take it a level deeper and get back to the text itself, the two takes on the lighthouse turn from an argument into a duet. a lighthouse, like a good partner, serves both as a guiding light to safe harbor and the best person to remind you that it’s like the good book says: in life one surely must check oneself, lest one wreck oneself.

that’s not a job for one partner, but a promise made by the people involved; giving and taking and meeting in the middle.

in this case, a promise made by two perfect co-captains.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me, i love this show.

( this monstrosity has a playlist that served as my writing music, because everything is gay pirates. this is my life now. find it here. )

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #blackbonnet #ahahahahaha fuck if you made it through this... hi #thank you? or i'm sorry?#i don't know it's been a long week #i am a mess #just a human mess #nearly 2k on the fucking DUALITY OF THE LIGHTHOUSE #i need to sleep #i fucking love this show #i love everyone in this big gay pirate bar #DRINKS FROM THE NOSE JAR ON ME #my ofmd meta #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

202 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

some deeply disorganized feelings about The Boot Touch and why i love ed and stede so much already despite having just met them yesterday. thrown together quick and dirty because i will actually explode if i don’t get this out.

- the way they both have contented smiles and relaxed posture KILLS ME. facedown on the deck, hands tied, and none of it even registers. it’s a moment of perfect connection and relief. “i’m looking at you, and i see you; you’re looking at me, and you see me.” let everything else fall the fuck apart, we’re together. that’s love, folks.

- “i love you BECAUSE you’re such a goddamned weirdo” is queer culture in fiction, i’m pretty sure. i’m half joking and entirely serious. i think it’s a longing/sense of lacking community via cultural comphet thing, maybe? either way it gets me every fucking time. ed’s not blind to what a weird little man he is in love with, it’s just that everything everyone else finds annoying about stede he finds DELIGHTFUL.

- ed constantly like look at this soft silly little man! (my soft silly little man.) with his yummy soap and his fine fabrics and scads and scads of books, good LORD does he love him

- ed reaching out and stede leaning into the touch i mean that’s just poetry.

- the knocking boots joke: a+ team no notes

- from the men who brought you “do i want to live? well, that’s a complicated question” and “god i am so BORED maybe i’ll try dying today” we now have a mutual and INTENSE need to stay alive, together

- THE REAL TREASURE WAS THE TIME WE GET TOGETHER ALL ALONG, lucius you were right

- i will die when they actually kiss. i will die. i will explode into a shower of glitter and literal human hearts and i will die. i accept this and feel about it the way every right minded person feels about getting stabbed by jim

#our flag means death #our flag means death spoilers #blackbonnet #is that we're calling them?#i need to watch this a million more times i am overwhelmed #my cup runneth over tbqh #like where do i even start with this show #LITERALLY WHAT CAN I DO BUT SCREAM HELPLESSLY #gay! pirate! romcom!#leather daddy taika Awakening Things #J I M #jim AND olu #everyone???#fuck me i am just yelling words into my own tags now #okay: now to rewatch #my ofmd meta #since apparently i am gonna need a tag for that now #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

277 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

so: the closet scene! i’ve been mad at this stupid closet scene for SO LONG. i still don’t entirely know how i feel about it, to be honest. whenever i do, i find a new angle i hadn’t considered and have to think about it that way. i’ve got a couple things i’m fairly steady about and a whole heap more that sound out there even to me, because my whole brain gives up on linear thinking and goes all-in on muppet-esque leaps of logic when i try to sort out any given thought.

i need to acknowledge the visual joke here before i even deal with taking it seriously. it’s so broad it’s like... i don’t know, a visual gag version of taking a pie to the face. this takes the implied knocking boots joke by the throat and says “i can do better.” stede 10000000% literally takes ed into his secret closet of fancy gay things. this sweet, sad little man who is so metaphorically closeted at the moment he’s in fucking narnia, is taking ed into his actual factual closet to hang out. and then they stay there even longer so they can be gay together away from izzy, #1 pooper of parties.

i mean, what am i supposed to say? that’s funny. it just is, i don’t make these rules. it’s really, really fucking funny.

then it’s not, because oh wait: what leads up to this moment in the closet makes the obvious “hah hah, two gay dudes in maybe the gayest closet the good lord ever did make” joke into something a lot more textured. they’re very good at this! i have said it before, and i will say it again. i will meet these writers in the parking lot of a denny’s!!!!

stede’s never been told anything he loves is right for him. none of it matters. it’s all soft and silly and frivolous and weak. worst of it: it’s fucking girly. because of some very stupid rules a bunch of dead people made up in part to make sure the generational wealth that gave stede these nice things stayed the fuck put where it was already at, he can’t get caught enjoying them or risk being shamed for it.

there’s something really sad and complicated and fucked up about that that won’t stop eating at me. maybe it’s the way they’re digging into the complications that arise when privilege and marginalization beat in same breast, maybe it's all the juicy class stuff, maybe it’s the nodding at toxic masculinity and the way patriarchy likes to stab a knife into its own emotional guts while reaping practical/systemic benefits at once thing. (i guess if the patriarchy had emotional literacy i wouldn’t need to know the word patriarchy, because it wouldn’t be such a fucking problem! love to live in a society, i really do.) i don’t know what i think it all actually means now, but maybe someday.

what i do know is the way stede says “rather exquisite cashmere” is unfair. because that’s what it is: cashmere that is rather exquisite. he’s describing the world as he sees it, and up until now every single response he’s gotten to saying anything like that has been “fucking... christ with this one, and his gay little scarves and shit.” sometimes they phrase it more kindly, but nobody ever gets it.

so stede holds his breath there, hoping he’s not going to be mocked, but his face when it’s even better than that kills me. ed doesn’t just nod and take stede’s way of expressing himself in stride; he repeats the words back to him. he decides he likes the way they feel in his mouth, far better than izzy’s demands he stick to harsher, guttural tones.

the way this show deals with communication and words as a method of love or shelter really does kill me. the jim and olu of it all is literally always killing me softly, and this just kicks my feelings up a notch.

on this show, to love someone is to find out you had the same words in your heart all along, you were just waiting for someone to understand them. that’s pretty fuckin’ rad.

anyway, then ed rubs the rather exquisite cashmere on his fucking face and the music gets all lighthearted and “this is the scene where they start falling in love, you know this cue, let’s ROLL, we are DOING THIS.” i mean... come ON.

and stede is so HAPPY! he loves his pretty things, his soft beds and fine fabrics, and he’s never had a single person reflect that back to him. and here ed is, not just listening, but agreeing; he does fancy a fine fabric. (the fact that at this point in the narrative stede’s self-concept is still pretty tied to his material goods and here ed is like “yes. fine fabrics. i like them. and since you feel as though your personhood is coupled with these fabrics, i also like you.” is Very Nice.)

(god, i can’t wait for s2. what's the version of this scene where stede is the one validating ed’s Whole Thing going to look like, i don’t know but god i need it.)

the little gasp stede lets out after “i think i do, yeah” is... mean. it’s mean. what if i never do anything but obsess over the little details of this insanely talented cast acting their faces off? that feels like a valid choice. the way rhys does this adorable little lean and looks like a kid about to show off his ant farm to the first person alive who also finds ants as interesting as he does, equally mean.

and the purple shelving in the closet? FUCK THIS CREATIVE TEAM. JESUS. the use of purple as ed grows more comfortable just being ed is fucking next level.

honestly, i know this level of textual analysis isn’t for everybody and a lot of my dear, dear friends are largely like “that’s nice, sarah, we don’t give a single fuck about the use of purple” but when a show like this comes along, it feels like a sin not to appreciate all the hard work they put into the little stuff.

speaking of: time for izzy to rock up and take things into the fucking thematic stratosphere.

there’s something really fascinating to me about the casting on izzy, and the general choice to make our one Homophobic Gay the white guy who looks and acts most like the fulfillment of patriarchal power fantasies but is actually a sad little gremlin idiot who wants to fuck other men so bad it makes him look stupid. izzy never heard the good word about how you can be a monster and a lighthouse if you want, depending on the day, because as discussed: he’s from a canon where the dicks don’t touch.

less flippantly, there’s also a lot to be said about how his dynamic with ed is exploring some pretty intense thematic waters re: the intersection of race and sexuality, the long and so-very unavoidable history of white people divebombing in and fucking up indigenous cultures and their understanding of gender and sexuality with weird repressed jesus shit, and how izzy who is a white man even while being gay and ed who is not have wildly difference lived experiences of the same sexuality. i need to rewatch izzy and ed’s scenes with that in mind to sort out any more eloquent thoughts other than ‘oh shit, they went there?’ and ‘holy shit, they go HARD’. not mentioning it’s in the mix feels wrong, though, so i want to at least point it out as something the show is doing really, really well.

i like it even more because we’ve got stede and lucius and pete knocking around also being super gay white guys, so that marks izzy out as particularly in denial and out of step with the times.

the whole 'and now we’re not just checking out your fun little room, we are officially hiding in the closet from izzy’ kicks into high gear when you think about it that way. the obvious “yes, we see they’re hiding from the one character who doesn’t understand the show he's now on”, literally closeted metaphor works there, but it’s not a despairing or fearful scene.

just the phrase “in the closet” is something that brings up a lot of weird baggage for some of us in the soup, especially those who have Been Around A While; there’s a vague sensing of shaming to the way I’ve most often heard it used throughout my life. we tend to heap our scorn or pity and Hot Takes on the person still lingering behind the doorway, because they’re a coward. they’re not being authentic. they’re weak, and they’re not to be trusted.

(and don’t even get me started on people inside our own fucking clubhouse outing people. the fact that perez hilton is still wandering around, pretending he’s all cute and refusing to reckon with the damage he did bothers me every single fucking day.)

why we do that shit to each other sometimes is a whoooooole thesis i’m in no way qualified to write, but: we do! we tear at each other, trying to yank open the door before someone else is ready.

so here these two men are, hiding in a closet; stede already spends most of his time in here, and ed doesn’t want to deal with izzy, striding around telling him it’s time to man the fuck up and Do A Toxic Pirate Masculinity. but since izzy needs ed to be the same as him so badly he’ll die trying to make it happen if he doesn’t get some fucking therapy and stop trying to enforce his rules on other people’s lives, ed hides in stede’s gay little closet with him and they enjoy the stuff they’re not supposed to enjoy, together.

i really like that. it’s not the more-familiar “it Doesn’t Matter, we are all Just People, so you should live your life in secret, being honest is shoving it in our faces so just be quiet and let us pretend you aren’t withering away” (which is the other nasty little barb we swallow on the whole scorn for the closeted thing; we don’t blame the team who built the damn house, we blame the person trapped inside it) but instead it’s allowing that sometimes you need these softer, secret spaces where people speak your love languages on instinct and you can figure out who you are while being sheltered, not locked away.

the whole “stede’s closet is accessed by a secret passage and when you think about it, this whole dumb ship is his closet, gayass unicorn and all so maybe NONE of this is happening in a closet, it’s a liminal space instead” angle feels like i’ll die if i attempt to parse it out with that spin in mind, so i’ll just say: jesus fuck. jesus fucking fuck, with this show.

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #blackbonnet #UGH THE SWEET BEAUTY OF THESE TWO #it kills me every single time #love is when you ask you seeing this shit too? and somebody says YEAH. EXACTLY. i guess #at this point i legit want them to find izzy a road to muppeting #because like... if they are tearing this shit up like i think they are #if izzy sucks a dick and admits he likes it and it made him happier we... beat patriarchy?#i think that math scans #anyway the point is this is a world where even men like izzy can Get It Together #which is way wilder to me than dragons and werewolves and shit #imagine: a toxic white man being like you know what #no #i can just... not fucking do this #that has ALWAYS BEEN AN OPTION #and maybe today i will try it #truly much more fantastical than a fuckin ice zombie #my ofmd meta #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

175 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

quick thoughts about the use of Wherever You Go, There You Are as an episode title because i really do think it ties in with the duality of the lighthouse (yes, i said the duality of the lighthouse. i will also be screaming about the goddamned lighthouse later believe you me) and the reason why this episode ended on stede’s hope and not ed’s despair and that really fucking matters.

okay so! ‘wherever you go, there you are’ is one of those litmus test statements where the meaning you pull from it depends on your own personal shit.

on one hand, it’s an acknowledgment that we can never truly hide or run away from the things that are eating us alive and keeping us up at night. wherever you go, there you are. your past, your demons. your ex-almost who kissed you back and cracked you open when you exposed your soft underbelly then left you there to bleed out into the sand. you know! typical gay pirate stuff.

so that’s obviously where ed’s at when the series ends. he’s got his adorable trash panda facepaint instead of breakup bangs, he’s thrown away his delusions of deserving finer things along with the scrap of red silk. he’s removed everything that would remind him ed still lives inside blackbeard (save the lighthouse, oh the DUALITY) and he is gonna be the goddamned krakeny-est kraken the world has ever seen. just you fucking watch him stede!!! and so on.

pretty fucking depressing, BUT WAIT.

Wherever You Go, There You Are is also a self-help book from the 90′s by jon kabat-zinn about mindfulness. the granular details aren’t super important here but given stede’s the character we end on and the rule of good writers care about scene placement, i think the overall message of the book matters and tells us where this story is going next for ed and stede.

honestly, let me just drop a quote from it here.

Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “Now what?”

so yeah: now what? to answer that question, we have to look at stede.

while ed’s hanging out in the belly of the whale because stede abandoning him is literal worst nightmare material, stede left because chauncey took his own worst fears out and put them on parade. (this writing team, man. fuck 'em all, what absolute monsters i love them but i just wanna talk, etc.)

left to his own devices ed spiraled off into fuckin’ izzy’s waiting arms and that’s ten kinkmeme fills in a trenchcoat and i love it, but i digress. ed ran to his evil ex, but thank god stede ran straight to mary and tried to correct what he assumed was his original sin: leaving at all.

and since mary is not an evil ex, she’s a fucking baller, she sets stede right. of all the things he fucked up, leaving’s not on the list. leaving the way he did, yes, but leaving to become a pirate was the best choice he’s ever made in his life. i’ve got a lot of feelings about the way mary functions both as a guide out of the darkness and autonomous character who gets to point out how hard she got fucked over that are (sing it with me) for another post, but essentially the symbolism of the way stede’s honesty set him free and the whole family participating in the fuckery after that is killing me.

all that is to say: ed’s still lost in the dark but stede, who has vacated the belly of the beast and literally killed the man he used to be, is ready to fight to drag ed back out. we can spin the metaphor wheel: stede has shed his skin, left the cocoon to become his truest bizarre butterfly self, he has entered and exited the underworld, he is an ex-ex pirate. even better, with mary’s help and her blessing tucked in his back pocket when he left he didn’t look back.

so, having passed go and collected his 200 emotional literacy dollars, stede has followed Wherever You Go, There You Are’s advice. he asked himself “now what?” and his now what is ed, so he’s off to tell the man he loves about the life he’s found outside the cave.

stede is about to be this man’s flashlight AND his treasure map. it’s gonna be so, so good.

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #blackbonnet #i spun the metaphor wheel and i chose EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.#honestly everyone is lucky this post isn't just all caps #i'm so fucking HYPED #god i just have so much to fucking say about this show where do i even start????#i need to talk about jim and olu and why lucius is alive literally zero chance he is dead #z e r o #anyway yeah #i gotta go like... eat food.#but then more screaming.#also if you didn't hear 'oh the DUALITY' like i was yelling oh the HUMANITY #you should have.#because i did #my ofmd meta #the silly/genius intersectional muppet extravaganza

138 notes · View notes