![]() ![]() Meanwhile the brother who was “not high,” and therefore short, Isadora concluded had to be the paltry Lord Minnow, known for his extravagent expenditure and outrageous fashion (He had once worn to a funeral a glittering top hat adorned with a fountain of peacock feathers). She reasoned that the first brother, who traded the meadows wealth, had to be Lord Ardagh, for he owned the largest swath of agricultural land in the province. ![]() Abigail therefore guessed the names based on what sounded nice in front of “Hawthorne.” Isadora, on the other hand, cunning for her age, suspected that he was not speaking of blood brothers but more likely a bretherin of other rich aristocratic men in the area. He had allegedly won his entire extensive estate in a game of cards (soul destroying to have been the loser of THAT wager) and no one knew of his parents, his brothers, or any family that had taken up with him. Abigail, taking the literal route, had badgered father about the Lord's lineage and what his brothers may have been named – but according to father, no one had ever seen Lord Hawthorne in person. Elouise believed it was a trick, that all three must be “Lord Hawthorne”, as naturally brothers would share a name and title. in the 1700s pirate hostile open seas, among their own fellow-othered. u knowīy nightfall, all three of your sisters had come to their own unique conclusions about what the riddle meant, with your ever generous mother stopping in to provide hints and encouragements (and to harass you into participating in the contest as well). the absurd horror and wretchedness of colonialism’s totaling stain on history is in fact the most surreal wasteland valley-of-death setting for a group of outcasts to go and find refuge in love, gay sex, hooligan shit, and jokes. and is meant to define the parameters of the world these characters are struggling in. but also perhaps a purposeful genre-aware moment among many other similar moments within a show whose historical/present context is very explicit. and yea, this is mainly the angsty climax part of a multi-act love story. blackbeard’s final act is a regression into that mythic dehumanization but rly it’s just him at his most heartbroken and lonely. you see the whites of his eyes peering out of a soot smeared face, a mirror of the savage native caricature that all 18th century western europeans held of their colonized pacific islander subjects. but whose tender humanity is brought into question against his own monstrousness. and behind his infamy is just some guy who’s traumatized, forlorn as all fuck, with insane daddy issues, etc. and there’s a scene where you find out the kraken isn’t real, that blackbeard is monster and man. british/spanish/french/etc colonialism.Ĭonsider: blackbeard’s voice in the show is just taika’s actual māori accent. but also, piracy as escape from the larger ills of societal outcasting and poverty as a result of. yea sure, from everyone’s dicey personal life dramas, sour romantic entanglements, the general banalities of life etc. and it isn’t even subtext? the whole show is about piracy as refuge. but they also work bc they’re all visually, clearly a little united nations survey of colonized peoples whose shit was fucked up by 18th century imperialists. in tone it’s present-haunted.Īnd the central motley crew here works bc they’re all dynamic, hilarious, flirty, grimy, etc. ![]() on paper the show is based on a true story. to the current forms of global imperial militarism and armed police states that took its place. there’s just the iterations of that violent legacy: from the trans-atlantic slave route, the pillaging of asia-pacific, etc. and in OFMD we get an eerie insistence that there is actually no post-colonial era. ![]() why not tbh? the Pirates Dicking Around genre has always been about 1700s western european empire. Is this more intentional than just an aesthetic choice? feels like it. it’s not just getting a kick out of leather gang + clipper ships + dramatic capture scene set to fleetwood mac’s the chain + british royalists in their stupid wigs. it’s that the obscuring of that timeline and ours allows u to perceive the setting of imperialism that the characters are playing in as both a past relic and present reality. One of the best things david jenkins does with OFMD is that when he fucks with the historicity of 18th century pirate-adventure genre, the effect is not just comedic. ![]()
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