Thumbs Up, Baby 👎

Hello fandom babygirls (we trust you know who you are), this lovely letter is for you. 💌

among other things, Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death gave us, in canon:

Ed Teach who smokes pot and loves fucking

Stede Bonnet who not only Knows What Sex Is, he also Fucks

Jsyk I have bruised ribs and it hurts to laugh rn stop being so funny

there's a distinct lack of warmth in the gravy basket. it's tinted blue as if it's cold. ed's near-death is portrayed as him drowning in cold water. we don't see him with a robe or a blanket at any point in the kraken era, not even in private, even though we know these things comfort him. we don't see him having any physical contact with the crew - in fact there's often a large space between him and the others. he does not feel the warmth of other human beings.

in contrast, warmth is a key feature of times when he and stede work together well - they use fire to appear like a lighthouse in s1e4, stede burns the boat after the aristocrats upset ed in s1e5, ed is under a blanket when stede comforts him in s1e6, they enjoy the snake snack by the fire in s1e7.

when ed eats without stede, it's not 'good food' - either he's eating marmalade out of the jar or cake icing off a dagger because he misses stede, or he's using the wrong cutlery to eat a prawn and getting laughed at by the aristocrats. he ensures the crew get cake from the wedding raids, but does not join them to eat it. he accidentally ruins the fishermen's meal in s2e8.

when ed eats with stede, the meals are substantive and good quality - breakfast spreads, the snake snack, the meal they don't pay for. they take part in so many little social rituals associated with eating - making food for each other, clinking their teacups together, stede getting the crumb out of ed's beard. many of their major relationship moments revolve around food - stede bringing ed breakfast in s1e4, the cutlery being a turning point in s1e5, blackbeard's bar and grill in s1e7, jack interrupting breakfast and 'well well look who's eating seaweed' in s1e8, their reconciliation at the dinner at anne and mary's house in s2e4, the breakfast in bed in s2e7.

orgasms is in some ways an obvious one bc the only sex scene he has is with stede - but on a wider level, he has very little positive physical contact with anybody that isn't stede (other than his cute little friendship dance with anne) - even his interactions with jack feel somewhat forced and over the top. but ed and stede touch all the time, in a very casual way, and a lot of the moments where they touch are significant - ed holding stede's hand while he's unconscious in s1e4, ed throwing his arms around stede after the lighthouse plan works in s1e4, ed resting his head against stede's hand in s1e6, the foot touch in s1e8, stede trying to wake ed up in s2e3, ed reaching out to protect stede in s1e9 and s2e6, the way they wrap themselves around each other when they kiss.

in comparison, the ways that he shares contact with other characters is starkly different - fang describes desecrating ed's unconscious body, he indirectly loses autonomy over his body when he's forced to shave his beard at the privateering academy, ed and izzy's touches in s1e10 are either violent (e.g. ed feeding izzy his toe) or an uncomfortable violation of boundaries (e.g. izzy touching ed's cheek). compare this to stede's approach to touching ed - he asks ed to come out from under the blanket in s2e4 instead of pulling it away, he checks in with 'is this okay' when they're holding hands in s2e5, he waits for ed's nod of consent in s2e6.

I noticed it watching a compilation where the scenes where Stede finds Ed below deck were connected (as they're actually split through ep 3 and 4), that episode 4 colours are... Warmer. It's pretty noticeable that the first 3 eps of season 2 feel more gritty but they're literally more desaturated.

You may notice the second screenshot, when Ed wakes up and Stede is here is slightly more yellow-tinted.

Like, MY meta here would be that being bisexual isn't a big deal to Ed at all, he's had sex with Jack, he'd probably had sex with Anne, he's got drunk and fooled around with multiple people at once. Maybe been to an orgy- maybe he loved it, maybe he got a bit bored and went and made a sandwich, idk?

The thing is, it's hard to write meta about it because, at the end of the day, it's just headcanons, and its not really THAT important to who Ed is. Because, from what we see, he's very comfortable with his sexuality (whatever that is) from when we first meet him. He has MUCH BIGGER ISSUES that the series deals with. Stede is different, the whole first series revolves around his sexuality and the reveal (to himself as well as us) that he's in love with a man, and he would be happier not to be married to a woman. But Ed? All that *really* matters is that he is in love with Stede. And no amount of sexual farmers affects that.

They were us.

Like literally genetically they were US, just like. A while ago.

Like

Would you trust a TV caveman with a baby? Probably not

As long as homo sapiens have existed, we have had the same emotional and mental capacity as you and I do today. You nailed it. They were US. Even Neaderthals existed alongside and had offspring with Homo Sapiens for many thousands of years.

There's much evidence that cavemen would have had complex spoken language, culture (learned information passed down), symbolic interpretation, and I think they most certainly would have been able to handle holding a baby. In fact I have my suspicisions that an ancient homo sapiens mother may be a more present, attentive, and knowledgable mom than I could be today.

Do not let media trick you into believing we are the pinnacle of humanity. Unilinial evolution theory (google it quick I beg) is BUNK, GARBAGE, and the root of so much evil.

At the beginning of the next class, my teacher showed us a cave painting of a horse. And then he showed all of our horses, which he had scanned and put into the presentation.

He then pointed out all the ways that our horses looked similar to the prehistoric horse. Same features, drawn from the same angle, etc.

And then he asked us, "Isn't it cool that you draw horses the same way as someone who lived 20,000 years ago?"

Yeah. That stuck with me for a while.

Scientists are now pretty sure the scribbles were made by kids ages 3-6, more or less on their own. The adult cave artists were probably doing what any modern parent might do when they want to keep small children out of their hair for awhile: they gave the kids some drawing tools of their own and a small section of wall to work on, out of the way but still close enough to keep an eye on them, and let them have at it.

The team compared the ancient art with the developmental stages exhibited by modern children: the furiously scribbled circles and push-pull lines typical of 3-year-olds just learning to control their bodies, for example, or the wobbly, right-angled figures of slightly older kids beginning to master fine motor skills.

Both are apparent in the cave, superimposed on each other as though two or more kids were drawing at once. That’s a clue the Las Monedas marks were likely made by “siblings or a mixed-age play group within the sphere of safety around adults, but also within their own space,” says co-author Felix Riede, an Aarhus archaeologist.

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