Ofmd S2 Spoilers - Blog Posts

happily ever after

i'm so sorry

I'll never leave you. I'll never leave again.

Stede straight up launching himself off the ship to get to Ed

Guess who's back?

My reaction to this video is just

Hey guys I did a thing.

I've been working on this since October, and I'm glad to say it's finally done. With a heavy heart I say I deeply love this show and am sad there's no renewal.

That being said, I figured we all deserve to have our own pity party. So here's my new OFMD FMV

Our you can click the link here

This scene was giving hardcore YouTube apologist vibes like “abide by the guidelines”?! 🤔🤔🤔🤔 sounds rather familiar…

taika did not need to serve so much cunt in this oh my god??

Our Flag Means Death season two bts of Taika Waititi and Mark Mitchinson

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Exclusive teasers from Entertainment Weekly!

So I saw people talk about grey star jacket that Ed's wearing on the picture with Jackie.

And when I watched analysis of the trailer I noticed that Buttons is wearing the same jacket (and i didn't see anyone talking about it). So it might be a uniform or they were wearing the same thing at different points of time.

Also we saw Stede wearing a red cravat. And some people assumed it was Ed's cloth (maybe I'm wrong and I just thought that for a moment).

But I noticed that during the fight scene the guy who was punched by Stede is wearing a similar cravat.

I keep thinking about how Izzy used fiction to cover up his trauma. He knew that he would have to live with his tormentor on the same ship, so he had to pull himself together. The trauma was so strong that the only way to overcome it was to change the version of events in his head. Ed became a shark that Izzy exposed himself to. He certainly doesn't fully believe in it, because he admitted it to Lucius.

This is very personal to me and I completely understand Izzy's suffering.

I'm impressed by how Izzy's attitude towards Lucius has changed

I have so many thoughts but I at least want to address the "for the new unicorn" note. because first of all it's so incredibly gratifying for izzy to finally be accepted into a community. it was shown before that the crew cares for him in some way but it was the first time he really saw that. that he isn't useless and alone, that he still has a place on the ship. even more so the crew WANTS HIM to be on the ship. and also that they want him to embrace his disability which doesn't make them think any less for him.

but also the choice of words. because inherently it rings queer, unicorn as a symbol of queerness. and even if it may have a negative sound when you use it differently here it is extremely positive. izzy is not only accepted to the crew, he's also accepted to the queer community, to the family. the unicorn on the revenge was also the one that was leading the ship, so one can argue that they want him to take that role in their dynamic.

and you can see that he does so immediately. he puts himself together and starts helping the crew. he's still bitchy but no longer violent and cruel. he helps stede and lucius immensely because that is what he does now. he's part of the family. twat.

Devastated doesn't even cover it.

I'm never trusting a cishet writer of queer people again.

For someone who had given up on being happy, of being whole. For someone who only existed for someone else because there was no reason to be alive (I certainly wasn't worth anything beyond the service I could render to others), Izzy Hands gave me hope that it was never too late to be your true self.

He found love, acceptance, and he was beginning to take those tentative few steps towards being whole. He didn't need Ed. He was worth something all on his own.

And they killed him.

They killed the old, disabled queer who had lived a hard, lonely life where his only purpose was to be someone's loyal attack dog, and was finally finding happiness, a family.

"It's about belonging."

"This is a story about queer love, about queer joy."

But not if you're old, disabled, battling with the scars the world has left on you, had to do things to survive. The best you can hope for is to apologise to your abuser and then find peace in death.

Queer joy is only for the right kind of queer.

So, going into this tentatively because there are a lot of strong feelings going around.

People are so traumatised (and validly so) about queer/disabled character deaths from shows with horrible representation and queerbaiting that this has become almost the automatic response to the death of any queer/disabled character. In a lot of situations (cough cough spn etc.) this is absolutely the case.

HOWEVER.

What people are missing is that this doesn't apply to a show in the context where multiple characters are (respectfully) represented as disabled (Lucius, Ed, Jackie, Wee John, Prince Ricky) and nearly every single character is queer. The beauty of the intention here is that a queer/disabled character gets to just be a character. There's no tokenisation there. So when a character like this in this kind of context dies, it's just a character death.

Because of good representation, there is no malice in the death.

Add into this the fact that the death makes perfect narrative sense when viewed through the larger narrative lense of the main point of this season being Ed's emotional arc, it's actually very good story telling (can go deeper into this if requested). That's not saying that it doesn't hurt or that it doesn't feel unfair: that's what good story telling is supposed to do.

I think it's easy to, especially after the first 2 episodes of s2, try and villainise Ed, but I think that's a narrow understanding of what was going on. Yes, Ed was physically abusive to Izzy and the crew, but people overlook the fact that Izzy was emotionally abusive to Ed when he was in an incredibly vulnerable state, which was ultimately the catalyst for the events of S2ep1-2. They both did wrong and both deserved/needed to give apologies; there was no innocent party between them, a fact that Izzy acknowledges multiple times. That's why the parallel to S1ep10 ("there he is") was so beautiful and devastating because it was an understanding of wrongdoing on both parts and an acceptance that they no longer fit together.

Like Izzy said, THEY were Blackbeard, and Blackbeard needed to die for Ed to be able to move on and truly be himself - think the shift from ep 2 to 3 where Ed didn't want to die, he just didn't want to live being Blackbeard but had been convinced there wasn't any alternative. That was the overarching theme of Ed's arc and what Izzy was acknowledging in his final moments.

When you think about it this way, Izzy's death has been foreshadowed as a narrative necessity from the very beginning of the series. With this in mind, the journey that he goes on in the meantime goes above and beyond the acceptance of Ed's vulnerability that we needed to see for them to get to this point; we also see Izzy find his own vulnerability and strength within his found family and identity. THEY DIDN'T NEED TO DO THIS. They gave us this because they also love Izzy and wanted to give his character as much love as possible in the time up until his purpose as a device for Ed's character arc came.

And ultimately, this is what separates Izzy from Ed and Stede - his primary purpose has always been as a character based narrative device to challenge Ed. The fact that so many people love him in his own right is amazing but this has always been his main purpose. Of course he has intervals of brilliant character ingenuity and growth of his own, especially in this new series, but this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say we've been gifted this when we didn't need to be. Does that make the loss sting even more now that we've had it? Of course it does but that's the point. They went so above and beyond with him this series because they saw the potential in his character and Con's fantastic performances, and because they love him as much as we do. But the point still stands that he served the purpose of the character and device that he was always set out to be from the very beginning.

We know from dj that this was all very intentional and, although the analogy used can potentially be questioned, he stuck to his intended trope and executed it with dignity and beautiful parallels.

I guess I'm just saying that it makes me sad to see good writing be misinterpreted, but I completely get where the trauma response is coming from. I would hate to see us get into a situation where we lose this kind of amazing representation because writers are too scared of potential backlash to take the chance of including it when what has been interpreted wasn't narratively intended.

As always, this is written with respect, love and no ill intentions and everyone is entitled to their own thoughts ❤️

IZZY CRYING AFTER THE CREW GAVE HIM THE LEG

x

in his romantic hero era

*screams chaotically*

"THE LOVE OF OUR TWO GUYS"????

THE LOVE OF OUR TWO GUYS. THE LOVE OF OUR TWO GUYS THE. LOVE OF OUR TWO GUYS!!!!!!!!! THE LOVE. OF OUR!!! TWO GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!

NEW OFMD S2 BTS OF ED (source)