Our Flag Means Death: Thread 3. It's still utterly brilliant. We are still obsessed.

[TriceratopsRocks]

Ahoy again mateys! Set sail aboard thread 3 where we still wax lyrical about our favourite show, its cast, its music, fan edits, fan fiction and more 😁(there may also be just a little obsessing over our fabulous leads - pictures extremely welcome)!

If you haven’t yet seen Our Flag Means Death, what are you waiting for? Go watch it (on BBC iPlayer), then come back here and join us. But be warned, some of you may find yourself as hooked as we are 🎣.

You may have heard that this is a comedy about pirates and think it's not for you. But it’s actually a show about self-discovery, healing and found-family with a love story at its heart. The joint leads are both damaged by abusive backgrounds and want what the other has. The show is about their healing and their respective journeys. It’s tender, romantic, funny, emotionally intelligent and utterly refreshing. It subverts genre expectations. There is comedy, absurdity and a good amount of heartbreak and despair - sometimes in the same scene! The acting is outstanding (Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby especially). But the writing, music, costumes, sets, the sheer attention to detail – for a show with only 18 half-hour episodes it is still keeping us talking, two full threads and many re-watches later.

If you think this might appeal, do watch it and come back and talk to us. It would be lovely if more were to join our crew. But it's a show that needs time. The 2nd lead arrives in episode 3, so you need to give it at least 4 episodes as that’s when the tone changes and the main story starts. It still took me several more episodes to fully appreciate what I was watching, but by then I was hooked and had to immediately watch it all over again. If you like Good Omens, What We Do in the Shadows, Ghosts or even Bridgerton, this might be the show for you.

(I’ve kept this spoiler free, but if you scroll down you will no doubt find many, so beware!)

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5008593-our-flag-means-death-its-utterly-brilliant-and-i-am-obsessed?reply=135294204
Thread 2 : https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5076581-our-flag-means-death-thread-2-still-utterly-brilliant-and-we-are-still-obsessed?reply=136060611

I think, and this is very therapy, that the loving space the crew gave him whilst he was still objectively terrible was crucial to him being able to face how terrible he'd been.

@TriceratopsRocks Cut off the leg, cut off the toxicity of traditional piracy and the life that Izzy has cultivated for years.

It’s a symbolic castration. It’s a repeated motif, the same as when Izzy breaks his sword in Stede’s body in 1.6. It’s a subversion of traditional masculine power dynamics. It’s why Izzy can’t cope with Stede ‘penetrating’ Ed at the start of 1.6. The ‘effeminate’ shouldn’t penetrate the ‘masculine’ according to Izzy. There’s a hierarchy. And then when Izzy ‘penetrates’ the ‘effeminate’, the unthinkable happens: his sword breaks.

I think the loss of Izzy's leg is symbolic of him letting Blackbeard go. When Stede asks him for his vote on Ed's banishment, Izzy replies that the "leg's got to go" to cut out the poison and stop it affecting the rest of the crew. He believes that they can't heal with the leg attached, it'll kill them.

Izzy's redemption arc starts when he shots Ed and saves the crew and himself from wrecking in the storm. Izzy starts the mutiny that has Ed beaten into a coma. He manifested Blackbeard/Kraken and then destroyed it when it became uncontrollable.

I think it's interesting that Izzy is awarded the title of New Unicorn by the crew. Again, something that's likely multilayered given both the traditional symbolism of unicorns and the contemporary meaning of a third person involved in a couple's relationship.

I've been trying to be good lately and not talk about Izzy much, because once I get going it's hard to stop 🤣. So apologies for starting again today!

Izzy's redemption arc starts when he shots Ed and saves the crew and himself from wrecking in the storm.

I do understand that view, but I've come to think differently, for two reasons:
First, I don’t think Izzy shooting Ed has anything to do with redemption, particularly if we think about how we got to this point. I did write some background here as to how Izzy’s years of abuse and deliberate manipulation triggered Ed’s self-loathing and made him actively suicidal. And that after Izzy refused to kill him, this led to Ed’s last ditch attempt to die by sailing into the storm and trying to goad the crew into killing him. But I decided to spare you all 😇 and just say for now that when Izzy shoots Ed, yes it’s about trying to stop him, but for me it’s also the culmination of his years of abuse. He deliberately and cynically turned Ed into the Kraken and having lost control he tries to kill what he created. I don’t think this has anything whatsoever to do with redemption.

Second, and more importantly, the first step of redemption is an awareness of why you need to be redeemed. It needs a recognition of what you have done wrong. Izzy only acknowledges his actions on his deathbed. He continues to model the same toxic attitudes right up until that last episode, proving that he either still doesn’t understand what he has done (very generous interpretation that I don’t actually believe!), or that he does understand but is choosing to continue that behaviour anyway. In S2, because of Stede’s influence, the crew are offering Izzy a view of what redemption looks like, but it can’t be the start of any actual redemption because Izzy hasn’t yet recognised or acknowledged what it is that he has done wrong. And that doesn’t happen until his deathbed confession.

I'm not so sure, the New Unicorn title did move Izzy, as did the crew's recognition that he was in an unhealthy / destructive relationship with Blackbeard /Ed. Ed was feeding the man his own toes and no amount of manipulation deserves that. Yet neither could kill the other. Even when beaten unconscious, Izzy kept Ed's body aboard.

I see redemption in Izzy's purposefully ignored "I want to thank you" to Stede when he included him with the rest of the crew in the escape from Zheng. I see him embracing this new inclusion from the crew in Calypso's Wedding with his serenade and make up. I don't think it was a deathbed epiphany, it grew from the moment Izzy realised he'd pushed Ed too far.

Sorry to lower the tone but I do have to say that it often occurs to me that, had Ed actually been dead, he would surely have started to whiff a bit down at the bottom of the ship in that part of the world.

Still there's no place for such realism in our lovely show.

I'm on the hunt for new fics if anyone has anything. Absolutely nothing involving any main character having sex with Izzy. I'll let him have his redemption arc but there are fucking limits, as he would no doubt scream.

You win the internet today. I so needed this 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Just to be clear, Ed is semi-divine. So dead or not, he only ever smells of yummy lavender or bergamot orange 🙂

@CarterBeatsTheDevil I should imagine you are more well-read on the fanfics than I am. I am currently working my way through all of Yellow Mustard’s fic. Another one I liked is Mile High Club. https://archiveofourown.org/works/46466989

Hopefully others might have some original recs.

Sorry this is rushed! The crew never knew about Izzy's abuse of Ed so their perception was extremely skewed. And accepting help you didn't expect doesn't = redemption. Izzy got off on being fed his toes, at least at first, as he thought it meant he'd got what he wanted. Stede is a far better person than I and Izzy is bloody lucky that's the case. What I didn't like about Calypso's wedding was that when Ed was depressed and sang for the crew, it was the catalyst for Izzy's 'namby pamby' goading. Yet when Izzy is in that same position, he leans into it and is feted for it. That cannot have been lost on Ed. And it made me angry. Grrrr! 😂This is why I try not to talk about Izzy too much! 😆

@CarlaH Lower the tone all you like 😁. I can't imagine keeping bodies would be a normal thing to do either. Especially not open to the air like that! I'll go with @MrsJellybee 's divine, sweet smelling Ed-ness.

I'll have a look for some more fic recs, @CarterBeatsTheDevil , but I think I've already given most of my recent ones. I'd agree with Mile High Club and Yellow Mustard - I love everything she has written. Most of them are short stories so they don't take too long. I'd recommend the spider one and the Ed can't sleep one. As well as all the others 😁You may have noticed I'm not so great at remembering the names of the fics I read! I have to run now, but will have a look later. Byeeee!

Brilliant. I have a beautiful (empty) bottle of bath salts which still smells lovely so I can't bear to throw it away. I shall label this 'scent of Ed, alive or dead'.

Yeah, probably best to back away from Izzy I reckon :D Don't want to kill the vibe here.

I think Zheng's leather and sweat (or was it BO?) is probably a more accurate description of what our lovely crew smell like :D Leather and sweat I can get on board with, mmmm.

Ed definitely wasn't dead. They use a dead body in Stede's jungle cat f*ckery and the corpse is grey. He's knocked out but Ed heard about the soup, I reckon the gingery pig was Stede coming on board and then Merstede was the light and declaration that he'd never leave him.

@2pence there’s a lovely fan theory that Stede bellyflops into the water at the same time that Ed hits the waters of the Gravy Basket. The timescales don’t match externally, but who’s to say how time works in the netherworld? I love that theory. It’s probably my favourite piece of non-canon symbolism.

God, the moment when MerStede turned up. Unbelievable television moment 💞

Side note: I really want to name a pair of somethings Stede and Ed. And the child wants a pair of guinea pigs. So I think we both know where that's heading.

Do mean when he washes up on the beach or when he hits the sea with the rock around his middle @MrsJellybee ?

The second.

You can actually buy pirate costumes for Guinea pigs!

@CarterBeatsTheDevil God, the moment when MerStede turned up. Unbelievable television moment 💞 I will never get over it. I commandeered my sister’s huge TV the other week and just watched it repeatedly. She thinks I’m nuts 🤪

Please name your Guinea Pigs Ed and Stede! If your little one protests, tell them I said so 🤣

Not my spot, but look what is in Kevin’s bedroom in ‘Time Bandits’… 😀

Oh we have guinea pigs - have had them for years. They are very cute but I'll be so happy when the cycle of replacement ends and I can have a piggy free living room again! We've said that the current lot will be the last, but if DD's still at home she may have other ideas. She wouldn't give them show themed names, sadly ☹️

This is a MUST, right?

That’s some going beating Station 19

‘Outstanding’ demand for our show in the UK

So how many times did you vote, @MrsJellybee ? I might have voted once or twice myself 😁. I'd never heard of Station 19 though.

I voted at least half a dozen times, maybe more.

If only it would achieve something!