Blackstede - Blog Posts
Pairing: lesbians!Steddyhands
Summary:
The other woman was giving her a pleasant smile.
Izzy decided she didn’t like her.
Idk how tweets go to the right algorithm or maybe I'm a terrible writer but I have a lil snippet of something I've been working on!
NSFW, wlw steddyhands !!
Imagine a modern AU where Stede enters "Blackbeard's Bar and Grill (and Other Delicacies, and Delights, And Fishing Equipment)" and raves to the waiter about how he loves the food, adores the gift shop, even though the waiter said the owner was worried about bad reviews, but Stede LOVES IT, and this whole time he didn't realize he's been flirting with the owner the whole time.
Lucius: So are you a big spoon or a little spoon
Ed: I'm a knife
Stede*from across the room*: hes the little spoon!
i love david jenkins so much, he really said “the gays won’t care about the logic of time and space so long as we give them pirates who kiss” and he was absolutely right. at this point ed could have his full beard back at the beginning of season two with no time jump at all and i would just say thank you. lucius could survive being thrown overboard due to the buoyancy of his wooden finger and i’d be like yup, makes perfect sense, no notes. i am willfully forgetting everything i’ve ever known for this show. i am not just suspending my disbelief, i am loading it into a cannon and blasting it to the heavens.
sketch by @2mucheyeliner you can find it in our RedBubble shop :)
some quick ofmd screenshot sketches
#they will always come back to each other
Our Flag Means Death season 2 episode 1.
ok everyone is talking about how amazing it is that mary just accepts stede when he tells her his love is ed, which is absolutely true. but it’s not that she just accepts him, she looks like SUPER happy. and I think we also have to consider what this meant for her in this moment. this guy she had to marry who she didn’t particularly care for never put effort in their marriage. of course mary didn’t like it either, but she always TRIED and was consistently frustrated that stede had given up from the get go. even tho they didn’t love each other, that shit probably hurt. mary must have thought stede hated her so much that he didn’t even see the point in trying with her, which would make anyone feel like shit. but now that she knows that stede was just gay and she could never give him that love and satisfaction, it shows her that she wasn’t doing anything wrong and explains his complete lack of effort. she understands now that it was stede, not her, and now they can both be happy
another OFMD post and she’s super long
there have already been a lot of takes about the really great way OFMD handles masculinity, but there is something i wanted to add. i think the thing that underscores stede’s personality and his struggles both in marriage AND as a pirate captain is the fact that he’s uncomfortable in masculine positions of authority. one of the first times we see this is in ep 1, with the flashback to stede’s home life. it shows him at the head of the table, with his wife seated all the way at the other end and the children seated right next to her. there is a literal and metaphorical gulf between them. mary and the kids are having a conversation, and stede looks both unhappy and uncomfortable when listening and trying to participate in the discussion. at first when i saw this scene i was bracing myself for another dismissal and butchering of women characters, but later in the episode, another scene changes this dynamic. it shows stede again seated at the table with his family, but he has moved down to sit by mary and the kids, and everyone is now smiling, laughing, and comfortable. by moving, stede literally and symbolically closed the gap between him and his family and removed himself from the head of the table, that place representing the authority of the man of the family. stede feels much more comfortable existing on a plane equal to mary and his family, yet his status and cultural norms prevent him from doing this. stede doesn’t feel completely uncomfortable around his family -- even though he is queer and him & mary were not a love match -- he is uncomfortable being in this traditional, patriarchal place of authority over them. this a more masculine space to occupy, and as the previous flashbacks about the dead animal and the flower picking show, stede is not very comfortable on a traditionally masculine plane. i think the fact that stede left without his family after mary rejected his idea to live out at sea shows this as well. he was the head of the household, the one with financial power, and could have easily made his family go with him whether they liked it or not, but he didn’t. he didn’t think the problem was his family, he thought it was where he was, the space he was supposed to occupy. to him, the sea represented a life of freedom and a realm outside of traditional society, where you lived by your own rules. he wanted his family to join him because he thought he would be able to be happy with them once they were freed from the confines of their restrictive aristocratic life. even though his marriage and family life was less than ideal for him, he still misses his family at the end of ep 1. and this leads into my next point. stede is pretty awful at being a pirate captain because, well, it’s another position of masculine authority! stede never felt comfortable being a mean and demanding captain – he always paid the crew, read them stories, encouraged them to talk about their feelings. he was able to be more authentically himself at sea – aka less masculine – but this made him a terrible captain in the eyes of the crew. the crew’s frustration with stede in ep 1 comes from the fact that they’re not doing traditional murderous pirate things, and buttons tells stede that they think he is weak. even though stede left for the sea to escape his masculine role at home, that masculine authority is still demanded of him but in a different way as captain. here, the masculinity he fails to perform is killing, maiming, robbing, etc. he constantly expresses discomfort at the thought of himself and others doing these things, which masculine men should have no problem with. stede equates his queasiness with killing as a pirate to his queasiness with the killing of an animal as a kid, demonstrating an overarching fear of killing that makes people perceive him as less of a man. stede has the most fun with the crew when interacting with them and being among them, just as he enjoyed sitting near his family. and one of the redeeming qualities that stede has, according to the crew, is that he reads them stories and does voices. the crew likes him best when he is closing that masculine power gap between them, just as his family looked more happy to be around him when he sat near them. stede being a more traditionally authoritative and ruthless pirate captain may have made the crew respect him more, but it wouldn’t make them like him. stede, overall, is uncomfortable being in a traditionally masculine state of power, and is also REALLY BAD at being in this position. and then enter ed. ed is really soft-hearted and less macho deep down, but his problem is that he is very good at PERFORMING masculinity, even though he doesn’t like it very much. it’s easy for him to threaten and yell and inspire fear in people, but really it is all a performance. we see this through the various exaggerated illustrations of blackbeard and black pete’s ridiculous story about him. however, we learn that ed is very vulnerable deep down, deals with trauma, and cries multiple times. he doesn’t like being this fearsome pirate all the time. although they come to see and appreciate each other more fully as their relationship grows, stede is initially so enamored by ed because as “blackbeard” he’s able to PERFORM masculinity so well, which stede finds himself just unable to do. and ed is initially so enamored with stede because he’s incapable of performing masculinity and just kind of lets all his quirks and less masculine qualities be expressed. ok this was super long hbo pls renew the show so i can STOP
the red silk...
on my 49682th rewatch of OFMD and noticed something about the scenes with the red silk. the first time, when ed shows it to stede, and stede asks if he can see it, ed doesn’t hand it over. he kind of... loosens his grip and just lets stede take it out of his hands. then he puts it in ed’s breast pocket symbolizing his heart etc. but it’s important that ed doesn’t just willingly hand it over. this is representative of the fact that ed doesn’t just completely give himself and his heart to stede. over time, ed lets stede grow closer to him and lets him in, but he often doesn’t initiate this process. letting stede take the silk is the first example. in the next episode, when he’s in the tub crying, he doesn’t seek out the comfort of stede. stede finds him and ed opens up by allowing himself to answer stede’s questions. or in the next episode, when ed has snake in his beard, he doesn’t tell stede to get it, but when stede reaches over to do so, he allows it to happen. obviously i’m not saying ed didn’t initiate anything; he famously initiated The Kiss, but simply that stede is often the one making these apparently romantic moves -- whether stede realizes what he’s doing or not -- and ed is often left responding to them. this brings me back to the final scene with the red cloth, when ed gets rid of it. he gets rid of it in much the same way stede takes it -- he lets it go. we do not see ed throw the piece of silk to the wind in anger. he just loosens his grip and allows the wind to eventually blow it out of his grasp and into the sea. this is symbolic of the fact that it wasn’t his choice to throw away his heart, his love for stede. to ed, stede made that choice, so he just has to accept the fact that it’s over and let his heart/softness/love be taken away. to end on a lighter note i think it’s fucking hilarious how ed is the one with the fattest crush on stede yet here stede is being super romantic without even realizing
Surprise surprise another ofmd post! Listen I didn’t know which version I preferred cause they both have chaotic vibes so you get both 🎶 if you like that iconic cap you can get a similar one on adhdmemetherapy ‘s shop!
A couple of people asked, so there are prints of this thingie here on my Etsy now!
MASSIVE AGGRESSION 🤟 Is it too early for a #OFMD au...? Famous rockstar and long-time under-appreciated light technician fanboy au, to be more precise? Whooops. I COULD re-do this in the future and color it but I also could not. We’ll see. Hope you’ll like these!!
MASSIVE AGGRESSION 🤟 Is it too early for a #OFMD au...? Famous rockstar and long-time under-appreciated light technician fanboy au, to be more precise? Whooops. I COULD re-do this in the future and color it but I also could not. We’ll see. Hope you’ll like these!!
Do you fancy a fine fabric ?
Linart and detail !
Also : Symbolism, baby !
omfd and good omens
so as i’ve been reading fics for ofmd, yk, as you do, i can’t help but notice that a lot of the dialogue (especially from stede) in these fics is very aziraphale like? it almost feels like since we associate ineffable husbands with blackbonnet we’ve also just decided that the dialogue should look the same for them.
i can’t really pinpoint it better than this but the way stede says stuff like “dear” or “darling boy” in the fics because canonically stede doesn’t talk to ed like that. obviously i’m not against it but it IS exactly how aziraphale talks to crowley in good omens, canonically.
i think it probably has something to do with the cinematic parallels that everyone keeps pointing out between the two, but has anyone else noticed that?
thought it was interesting, anyway, carry on~