Today on Book Riot:
I know that shipping pun about Our Flag Means Death is corny, but I’m corny sometimes! Thanks to my editors for letting me lead with that joke and pic.
I love how Stede invents little free libraries in the show by replacing the books he’s stolen with old ones he’s already read.
I also recently posted an OFMD fanfic on Ao3. Thanks so much to anyone reading my work and giving it bookmarks and kudos! Since I last posted here, OFMD has been renewed! Yay!
Speaking of ship names, on Ao3, romantic and sexual relationships are tagged with a slash /, for example: Skyler White/Walter White. Ao3 also separates 2 names for the same character with a straight line, NEVER a slash. For example, here are 2 characters from my fanfics tagged on Ao3. From OFMD: Blackbeard | Edward Teach and from Breaking Bad: Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman. If you’re new to Ao3, that may be confusing! Those aren’t relationships, just 2 names for each character!
spoilers for OFMD and my fanfic of it below:
As I Tweeted last year: work that’s actually published or premiered is understandably held to a higher critical standard than fanfic, which is just for fun. It’s often a safe place to explore scenarios the writers know would be traumatic or abusive IRL, or even in an original work. Fan fics are also distinct from interpretations, head canons, and predictions. I think my OFMD fic works as a prediction for how I’d like season 2 to start, but not all fanfics are like that. Fanfic had specific content warnings way before most mainstream, original fiction did, which is good. I like that fanfic writers often explicitly acknowledge when they know an aspect of a story is messed up.
I’ve read fanfic since I was a teen, so I’m not surprised that some OFMD fanfics apparently jump to Ed (as Blackbeard in full kraken mode) abusing or threatening Stede in some way for leaving him. They feel out of character to me, though, and skip over his inevitable relief that Stede’s alive and back! Sure, Ed’s heartbroken and angry at the end of the season, but I think he’s also grieving.
So, I hope Izzy’s over-the-top threats in my fan fic can be read as a parody or subversion of fics where Ed goes in that violent direction, or an exaggeration of Izzy’s triangulation in the show itself. I think we all agree: a Stede/Ed reunion will be highly anticipated and tense!
You know what is allowed on Ao3, but I think is legally iffy, unethical, and creepy? RPF (real-person fanfic). I don’t care that celebrities are public figures. Public figures still have a right to privacy. “Shipping” real people together crosses a huge boundary, potentially fetishizing and invading privacy.
As you may know, I’m also a Susan Sontag fan, and I basically agree with this great essay on how campy OFMD is. This explains why it’s so over-the-top, polarizing, absurd, ahistorical/anachronistic, and earnest at the same time.
Grace Lapointe 