Ed Teach - Blog Posts

#look at where we are. look at where we started

STEDE & EDWARD ☾ OFMD 1.05 | 2.05

↳ @lgbtqcreators battleship bingo: parallels

HOLY SHIT ☠

they used betta fish as reference for merman stede's tail in ed's dream and i made the terrible decision of looking up the symbolism of this fish now i don't know what to do with what i discovered (i'll probably kms or something like that)

I feel like this would work with stede and ed

Cas: *trying to flirt* you have lips

Dean:

Cas: I have lips

Dean:

Cas: …interesting

ed when someone doesn’t immediately fall kitten mitten smitten with stede the gentlemen pirate bonnet

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Our Flag Means Death (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Relationships: Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet Characters: Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Stede Bonnet Additional Tags: Dubious Ethics, Masturbation, Nipple Licking, Gentleness, Unconsciousness, Season 1 Episode 4, Ed Being a Gentlemen as Best He Can, Ed was Half in Love with Stede Before They Even Spoke, Stede Looks so Soft and Touchable, Stede Would be Scandalized and Flattered Summary:

Ed generally doesn’t make a habit of feeling up feverish, near gutted men, and he especially doesn’t make a habit of touching men who are too unconscious to touch him back. He knows this isn’t something he should be doing.

But the knowing is abstract, swirling oil black in water. The touching is intimate, and real, and when Ed slips his palms over Stede’s shoulders, sliding them until his fingertips settle in the dips of Stede’s ribs, he marvels at how right it feels. How good, how correct. The idea of wrong is at the bottom of the fucking ocean.

-

Or: Ed doesn’t keep his hands to himself while watching over the injured Gentlemen Pirate.

lucius: are you a big spoon or a little spoon?

ed: i’m a knife 🔪

stede, from across the ship: he’s a little spoon

Dear Ed: things are terrible.

Our Flag Means Death season 2 episode 1.

didnt feel like drawing the other arm🤟

Fine Things

Collage for Ed and Stede from Our Flag Means Death.

not ed singing whitesnake

[ WIP - 3/7 ]

COMING SOON @ ARCHIVECON || 6/21 - 6/23

Blackbonnet headcannons

Stede’s feet are incredibly ticklish and Ed loves to tickle him until they’re both an out of breath mess of giggles

Ed likes being scratched under his chin like a cat, and Stede is more than happy to oblige

The first time they make love, Ed wears Stede’s red dressing gown to give it a rebirth, free of heartache and pain

For the first week after they’re reunited, they sleep wrapped completely around each other because they can’t bear to stop touching for even a second, even while they’re sleeping

Even though Ed insists that he doesn’t need the help, Stede loves to wash the other man’s hair for him, giving his head little scratches as he goes

Stede has definitely worn Ed’s leather outfit again, in the bedroom

More than once, the poor crew has happened upon them skinny dipping when they’ve docked for the day

Ed likes to have Stede read to him

Even years later, Stede is fascinated by Ed’s tales of piracy and likes him to tell him them as bedtime stories

in ofmd ep 4 when stede shows ed the picture of blackbeard in the book, ed says the drawing looks like “a vampire clown”. the first known conception of the vampire was in the 1819 short story aptly titled “the vampyre”. so basically what i’m saying is that ed canonically invented vampires

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