#fallenrocket

But other than these brief moments to keep the supernatural tension heightened? This is a movie that takes its time. We get to know everyone. The story follows these characters for a single day, and we learn who all of them are and how they operate, what they dream of for themselves, and how they interact with one another. We learn parts of numerous backstories and deep connections. We hear about money woes and family struggles and lessons about how to please a woman.

By the time the vampires descend on the juke, we care so much about these characters. We know them, we see them, we root for them. When the big battle happens, it's chaotic and fast, so much death so quickly, but each one hits hard because the first half of the movie does its job so well.

Thinking about Claudia’s words at the trial: “Don't know why I bother. You didn't come here for me. One more round in the stormy romance of you two! Never been about me. I was just a roof shingle that flew off of your house.”

I understand her words and the pain that comes with them. And on some level, she’s exactly right. In the play the TdV have written, she’s been cast more as an object than a subject. Claudia is the tragic victim who was turned into an unallowable monster at the behest of “reckless,” “selfish” Louis, in total disregard for the Great Laws. Louis is the real focus of the play, the real target—she’s mainly there as a plot device. And that’s been true for much of her relationship with the coven, who entwined themselves with her as a way to keep Louis in line.

And I understand it with Louis, at least as far as Claudia’s feelings are concerned. From her perspective, Louis has always chosen Lestat. She’s seen Louis stay behind when she wanted to leave. She’s seen him stay even when Lestat hurt him. She’s seen him nearly back out after they agreed Lestat needed to die. Meanwhile, here in Paris, she’s seen him getting all cozy with Armand even as Armand forced her to play Baby Lulu night after night, making her live in that costume for daring to want a less infantilizing role. Even though Louis did help her kill Lestat (or tried to,) did follow her across Europe looking for other vampires, did continue to associate with the coven (albeit at arm’s length) despite his misgivings, I won’t deny that Claudia feels like he never chooses her.

But it’s a tragic viewpoint, because Claudia is so deeply loved by Louis. He cherishes her, and when he’s in danger, his first thought is often of her. When he and Lestat are fighting, Louis tells Claudia to stay back, reassuring her that it’ll be okay. When Armand is supposed to kill Louis on the night of Claudia’s induction into the coven, Louis pleads for her: “Don't give up on her. Tell her she's beautiful. Tell her that every morning.” When they’re taken by the TdV, he’s desperate to reach out for her, to know where she is, to do whatever he can to protect her. And after he’s taken his revenge on the coven, when he goes to find Lestat, Louis has very little to say about what Lestat did to him. Instead, he’s entirely focused on Claudia: “[Why you] burned your daughter alive? Why you rehearsed a play that would burn your daughter alive? Why you crossed an ocean to rehearse a play that would burn your daughter alive?”

For the most part, the only queer characters my mom has been able to handle are "sanitized" token characters in mainstream media (Cam and Mitchell on Modern Family, Colin on Ted Lasso, etc.) While she's worked hard in recent years to unlearn some of the queerphobia ingrained in her from our evangelical Christian background, there's often this kneejerk discomfort that kicks in when I've gently helped her dip her toe into queer media in the past. She knows how much I love OMFD, and I made a deal with her that we'd watch up through 1x06, at which point she could decide whether she wanted to keep going. She loves Ted Lasso (which I maintain has a lot of overlap with OFMD in its humor/tone/themes/etc.) and really likes Taika in different things she's seen, so I was convinced she could like it if that discomfort could get out of the way. I figured the first six episodes would be enough to for her to decide if she could get on board with it, and it would make a reasonable stopping point if she didn't.

She loves it. She enjoyed the first three episodes, but after seeing Stede and Ed together in 1x04, she was all in, worriedly asking, "Blackbeard's not really gonna kill Stede, is he? It seemed like he really liked him!" She loved how Stede stood up for Ed on the boat party, she sighed with relief when Ed came back as the British navy ambushed the Revenge, and she cried, "Oh no!" when Stede left Ed waiting on the dock. At the end of season 1, she exclaimed, "How could Izzy be so mean to Ed? He deserved to have his toe cut off, and have to eat it!" She loved their reconciliation in 2x04 and their thumb war in 2x05, and she thought their reunion in the finale was soft and sweet. Beyond that, she enjoyed Jackie and her 20 husbands, she liked when Pete made Lucius a wooden finger, she fretted when Oluwande and Jim were separated at the end of season 1, she felt for Lucius and Pete when Lucius was struggling with his trauma, and when she saw Olu, Jim, and Archie dancing together during Calypso's birthday, she immediately asked, "Are they like a throuple now?"

I think of the notion that, the more specific something is, the more universal it is. It's why non-Black folks loved Black Panther and why non-Asian folks loved Everything Everywhere All at Once. When the story isn't watered down to appeal to the "majority," when the characters are allowed to be fully human and complex and endearing and messy, when the relationships are depicted with honesty and heart, people respond to the humanity of the story, even if they're not part of the community whose story is being told. OFMD doesn't cater to cishet people and wasn't made "for" them, but anyone who opens their heart to this weird, wonderful little show can be affected by it.

Like, the crew "cons" Stede into throwing a big party, using the treasure from Ed's guilt room to pay for it. (Not fully a con, since Ed immediately clocks what they're doing and tells Stede, who decides to throw the party anyway.) It makes sense that they'd spend money on rum and food, which they do. If I'm correct that Frenchie's guitar was a Calypso's Birthday purchase, that would make sense too, so they have entertainment at the party. And given that at least several of them canonically love explosions, it makes sense to splash out on fireworks for the occasion, rather than just firing the cannons or something.

But it tells you everything about this crew that they spend a not-insignificant amount of Ed's money on decorations. So many flowers, both around the ship and adorning one another--Roach's apron, Frenchie's hair, etc! Colorful lanterns hung up all over the place to give the ship a soft glow! *Adorable* pirate-themed bunting that I'm guessing they took the time to make themselves, though they probably bought supplies for it!

Everything about Calypso's Birthday not only looks gorgeous, it looks lovingly arranged. They put time, effort, and treasure into making the ship beautiful for their party. In a way, this is the culmination of everything Stede has been trying to do as a captain, in more ways than one--after all, he later saves the day by talking it through with their captors (and Oluwande tries that strategy himself a little earlier.) When you look back on the crew who had some initial reluctance about flag-making but then got really into it, the crew who'd never heard of a vacation but then found ways to have fun, this is a capacity they always had inside them, but Stede encouraged them to let it out. He made it *safe* for them to let it out. And now, throwing a big party just because they want to, armed with Ed's money and let loose in the market, what do they do?

They make it pretty, just because they want to. I love it so, so much!

First of all, of course the Doctor wants to save them and gets desperate when they won't let him. Of course he does--that's just who the Doctor is. We've seen them save vile, self-serving humans before, we've seen them offer Sycorax and Rachnoss and Daleks a last chance. No matter how these people have treated him or what they think of him, he still wants to be able to save them.

I keep thinking about how his laughter gives way to a scream. That's very fitting for his Doctor in particular. For all of Fourteen's "rehab," it's clear that Fifteen still has his issues, and I've seen them in the moments where he shouldn't be smiling. The way he briskly tells Ruby that Gallifrey is gone, the way he seems to shrug off not knowing whether Susan was killed with the rest of the Time Lords. It makes a lot of sense to me that he would laugh before he would scream.

Then too, there's the laughter being in part due to his surprise. The Doctor knows they've been Black before, because Thirteen met the Fugitive Doctor and saw the hints of their pre-One past in the Matrix, but he doesn't have those actual memories of the experience of being Black. He's not used to walking around in this skin, with this face. I'm sure he noticed how rude and distrustful Lindy was to him, but he didn't catch why. Not until the end. And it's so dumb and hateful and pointless and absurd, and she's going to die because of it, so in that very first moment, what can he do but laugh?

Really, it's the Newcomers who keep this from being one of the shortest Games in history. With nearly all the tributes sticking together in one of two alliances, it wouldn't take more than one Career and one Newcomer being poisoned before everyone figured out not to eat the food or drink the water.

And so:

In both cases, our guys are again trapped in the suffocating lives they tried to escape. Their return is prefaced by a violent threat that cuts to the heart of their worst beliefs about themselves: Chauncey’s “you defile beautiful things” and Izzy’s “this is Blackbeard!” These threats try to strip them of the growth they’ve experienced, the new possibilities they found for themselves. They say, You’re wrong about everything. This is all you are, and all you can ever be.

Ironically, Stede returns to his old life in an attempt to break the cycle of what Chauncey says he is, what he believes himself to be. He goes back to Barbados with the hope of making things right with his family, but he discovers that his presence just makes everything worse. Meanwhile, Ed isn’t trying to fix anything—he has no hope of anything getting better. As he sinks further than ever into the endless repetitive grind of being Blackbeard, it’s an expression of despair. He feels there’s nothing left for him, nothing else he can be.

For both of them, it’s going back to a life that was crushing them. “You ever feel trapped? Like you’re just treading water, waiting to drown?” Only now, it’s even worse than it was before, because they just got to taste the possibility of something different, something better, and had it snatched away. For Stede, it’s become a prison with a life sentence. For Ed, it’s a living grave until he can arrange a more permanent one.

What really strikes me about this is that both Stede and Ed’s personal prisons wind up dragging in those around them. I don’t think it’s wholly intentional on either of their parts, but they’re depressed and lonely, and those moods spread like a stain. Stede is miserable, having given up the man he loves to “do the right thing” and put his family back together, so why shouldn’t Mary be miserable too? Give up the "Widow Bonnet” title, give up Doug? I think Stede (mostly) unconsciously resents her happiness and fulfillment, not because she found it without him, but because he misses his own recent happiness and fulfillment so bitterly. So he winds up taking it out on her, throwing his weight around as the white male patriarch, trapping her just as much as he is. But Mary isn’t prepared to give up her new life, and when she resorts to attempted skewering to prevent it, it’s the jolt both she and Stede need to break out of the destructiveness of their marriage. Both of them realize the only way ahead is to choose freedom, and Stede’s “death” to facilitate that is only an elaborate fuckery.

With Ed, it’s the monotony of being Blackbeard that was killing him at the start of season 1, and so that’s the prison the Kraken crew gets caught in, the grave they're pulled into. Constant raids to break Ned Low’s record, every day the same as the one before. There’s “no drama, no fucking life”—no reward even, not when Ed tells them to throw the treasure overboard to reduce the weight on the ship. And amid all the neverending drudgery, devoid of any meaning or interest, Ed’s depression also pervades the ship. Jim feels numb after the wedding raid. Fang can’t stop crying. Izzy, the man who'd wanted the “real” Blackbeard back to begin with, breaks down in front of the crew. Frenchie’s been locking his bad memories away in a box, but after being made first mate, he starts to feel the strain too. Ed can’t get the death he wants until he threatens to take the crew down with him. They mutiny to save their own lives, and once Ed reaches the gravy basket, he realizes he wants to survive too.

Our pain can hurt more than just ourselves, but here’s to choosing freedom, to choosing life.