And What They Hear Isn’t Laughter After All It’s Just Your Voice Learning For Once To Stand Up Tall

tbh i talk a lot of shit abt how insufferable ed and stede are gonna be once they’re back together but yknow who’s going to be the most insufferable?

ME

cannot stress enough how much i love the way our flag means death portrays blackbeard in the finale. there is no mistaking that everything he’s doing is a facade. he doesn’t want this. he wanted to be loved. he wanted to be happy. but he’s come to the conclusion that that life just isn’t for him. he’s only ever been a monster, it’s the easy way out. but the final shot of blackbeard isn’t him sailing confidently to his next adventure. it’s him breaking down on stede’s bed, crying so hard that the makeup he’s using to mask himself is running down his face. he is broken. we all know that, and they’re not trying to tell us anything different.

Some of us won’t be coming back. Others may be wounded.

"It's never too late to become unhealthily obsessed with a niche television show that went off the air years ago."

(I searched high & low for the author of this original comic format and could only find reposts. I can only hope I made them proud. If you know who they are, let me know so I can credit them.)

One of the biggest moods of all time.

I also like to imagine a world where Elmo is Will's therapist.

joel fry as frenchie in our flag means death season one

#frederick Chilton #babygirled too close to the sun

young royals season 2 is actually a comedy

<insp>

Thinking about Stede, and how I've always thought of him as a character who deals a lot with self-loathing, and now I'm not so sure, because if Stede really hated himself, like if that were a core part of his character/personality, we wouldn't have this show.

Because throwing your entire life away for a shot at happiness isn't self-loathing behavior. There's another post going around about Stede thinking about himself as a child when Nigel says "and you cried all the time and liked to pick flowers" and Stede just looks a bit rueful and says "yeah, little bit." You can tell Stede loves that little boy, and really, what is buying a pirate ship and filling it with fancy clothes and chandeliers and odd characters if not trying to give that kid a life where he might have had a chance to fit in, a life he might have liked?

So Stede hates his life, not himself. He loves pageantry but not the people who would shun you for using the wrong spoon. He loves fine fabric, and knows anyone can appreciate them if given the opportunity. He knows there's a life for him out there, if he can just find the right people in the right place at the right time.

...but then, at the academy, while he is the midst of self-recrimination and guilt, finally having realized that he might have caused his family some real problems by leaving without a word in the night, and knowing that Blackbeard would still be the fiercest pirate in the Caribbean if he had never met Stede (debatable, since Ed was looking for an out anyway), Chauncey takes him into the woods, tells him that Stede Bonnet is not human, that he is a plague, that he defiles beautiful things.

And after 40-odd years of thinking 'I know I don't fit here, but that doesn't mean i can't fit somewhere,' Stede says, "I think you're right. In fact, I completely agree." Stede is the problem. He is wrong and the world is right. He could fit in if he weren't deficient. He could do all the things he is supposed to do if he weren't broken.

So he goes back to the life he hated, because it's what he deserves.