silliest girl award

izzy in the background is taking me out. they did it AGAIN 💀

new behind the scenes pics from director Fernando Frías on the set of OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH season two

I know the joke about Izzy is “human dropped into a muppets movie” but the tragedy is that he’s a queer-coded character from some 1940s or 50s popcorn flick dropped into a pride parade in a floating gayborhood & he flat out has no idea how to deal with it. We learn he’s a great swordsman in the most homoerotic way possible when he uses his skills to cut open a man’s shirt. We see him react more openly and with less inner conflict when Ed slaps him on the back and says “I need you here” than when Ed implies to him, a minute earlier, that he could be a captain. When he’s part of an overtly queer scene where other characters get the romance & he just gets the subtext, Con O'Neill’s body language stands out even more—go back to the scene where Izzy tells Stede that Ed adores him, the way he strokes his fingers down the curtain dividing him from Stede. There is literally no straight explanation for this choice, but there is also no explicit acknowledgement that the character is queer; in a different, older show or movie, that body language would be the acknowledgment. He imbues the character with the looks and pauses that you would see in, like, Ben-Hur or something, where everyone knew a character was gay but nobody could say it out loud. Keep in mind that in the comedies where these characters would exist, the subtextually gay man would sometimes be best friends with a Strong Leading Man who got the girl in the end.

We hear him say outright that there’s no retirement for people like Izzy & Ed, only death, which is itself a hugely loaded analogy next to the title statement “our flag means death” when you consider our history & our use of flags throughout. And Izzy’s so focused on pure survival that he ends up nasty, manipulative, violent—the only way men like him can survive in his mind, or in the genre he’s from, if they don’t have a Strong Leading Man best friend like, say, a Blackbeard to protect him from the narrative. When Ed starts to live in Stede’s world, Izzy is both losing his subtextual boyfriend and also acting as though Ed’s going to get himself (and Izzy) killed if he keeps going down this path.

I will never be sane over this. Izzy is a Celluloid Closet case study who’s been dropped into a Logo TV original, and so much of the conflict of his character comes from his trying to use the coping techniques from that world (including techniques used by queer coded villains! He’s not healthy!) in a world where these techniques are actively harmful rather than a way to survive.

#GOD when you frame it this way there is something so desperately sad about his character (via @fuckyeahisawthat )

To be honest I think he’s possibly the most tragic character on the show.

Ed & Stede are going through it right now, and it’s bad bad, but their happy ending has been telegraphed: steal some identities & ride off into the sunset after faking their own deaths. I’m pretty certain they reconcile & get the happily ever after (& I’m equally sure that they can only do that if Lucius is alive). The rest of the crew are happy under the co captaincy, Jim has made peace with their past to some degree & has Olu as well, etc. And very importantly, even though Ed also comes from the same place as Izzy, he lucked out and got a guide to the new world in Stede. He is starting to escape Izzy’s fate & likely will succeed, all because he has Stede.

Izzy? Izzy is on the other side of a glass wall, he can see the gay romcom but he’s under strict orders to never mention his own homosexuality. The references to masochistic tendencies are all he’s allowed—and to add insult to injury, he’s not even allowed to enjoy and embrace that part of his existence, a part that is in no way inherently bad as long as you’re engaging in it sanely and consensually. It’s just yet another case of coding with no fruition that in any other media would let straight audiences know he’s a Bad Gay Man.

It’s why I’m hoping the show continues to defy convention & figures out a happy-ish ending for Izzy. Even after (maybe even especially because of) everything he’s done, it would be exceptionally tragic if he didn’t get some way out of this hell, & by extension didn’t get to be part of the LGBTQ community that’s on the other side of that glass wall, on a show that’s a deliberate statement that we can live, thrive, get happily ever afters, and that our flag doesn’t actually mean death no matter what has been done to us.

“It’s about belonging to something.”

Would you look at that.

I have seen Calypso’s Birthday, and I have in fact been SCREAMING for the better part of the last 20 hours

Well, the season two finale is just over 15 hours away. They’ve given Izzy a journey of being the outsider to queer community on the ship (“have you ever been sketched”), loneliness, fear, lashing out at others in that fear, love that he feels can’t be accepted (“I have love for you”), an on screen suicide attempt (which they in no way warned for), a fear that he is nobody & nothing (“what even are you?”), alcohol abuse, finding community, literally getting support from that community in the form of a unicorn leg prosthetic, experiencing queer joy through learning about drag & engaging in his first ever performance for his new people, and accepting that he might have a future (“I’ve got one more song!”).

Let’s see how the end of this arc treats him!

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), dir. Arwen Curry

The next line of her speech is also great: “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

do not meet up with anyone from Massachusetts in real life

they could very well be a medium regular ice coffee from dunkin donuts

wise words

don’t forget this important gem

it’s been a very long time since i’ve done some painting without any inking but was thinking about the gay pirates again and felt inspired :)

Wee flag illustrations, one for each episode of Our Flag Means Death.

"Un-uhlaive? UN-UHLAIVE? Ma'am, that man has been killed. He has been MUHDUHED. To DEATH."

I kind of suck at tagging, so I made this infographic to help make it easier.

what is it about being on a plane that makes people go buckwild for ginger ale literally everyone be ordering it

ginger ale is supposed 2 help settle ur stomach if ur nauseous so ppl get it on planes if they get planesick

ginger grow in the ground so it keeps you connected to god’s earth while you’re thousands of feet up in the Heathen Tube

Spicy ground juice tastes crisper in the Heathen Tube

A short comic based on the epilogue of In Favor with Their Stars by @mxmollusca and the first part of “Absolute Lithops Effect” by The Mountain Goats

As you wish 🗡🫀

Back with more old stuff I forgot to post on here, this time with a Princess Bride crossover drawing

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH • S01E04 “Discomfort in a Married State”