Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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Not only is it an outright romcom, it does the genre exceptionally well. It understands that a love story is in the details. They take the time to build the characters individually, to make us really feel where they are on their journeys and why each is exactly who the other needs. They were both utterly fascinated with stories of each other before they meet. It’s not just attraction. We get to watch genuine, specific affection develop. It’s first love for middle-aged men who’ve lived full lives. Neither has ever really had so much as a friend before. It’s about the two of them falling in love, especially as men raised on opposite sides of suffocating toxic masculinity, but it’s also an exploration of what love itself is. It is not an easy realization, especially for Stede, and that makes it feel all the more earned. Stede admires Ed’s freedom and his swagger, Ed is enamored with Stede’s reckless kindness. The storytelling makes it so palpable that they both find comfort in who they really want to be, within each other. It’s universal, but also a very queer experience, to meet someone with whom you can be the truest version of yourself.
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The entire story is one of deliberate compassion, it’s the very fabric of the show. From Lucius supporting Stede and Ed through their rougher patches to his healthy “we don’t own each other” relationship with Black Pete. Olu taking every opportunity to be thoughtful and gentle with Jim, his offering of “if you want…I could be family,” that’s the core of it—the very queer structure of a chosen family. Stede couldn’t be himself in a cishet family. He made room for honest emotions aboard The Revenge, and it didn’t take long for the rest of the crew to find belonging on that ship. Their dynamic is tender, and legibly queer—a challenge to the machismo and toxic masculinity of the rest of pirate culture, as well as an open critique of cishet white colonizer masculinity. Not only does the entire structure of The Revenge exemplify masculinities that make no space for toxic cruelty—including trans, gender non-conforming, body diverse masculinity—it renders that sort of behavior absurd and out of place. The show emphasizes that while Stede’s efforts are clumsy, the environment of kindness and support he creates is effectual, because it feels so much better than the self-punishment most pirates swear by.
✏️ I subconsciously thought of all this as I watched the show and realized, this is another Ted Lasso type of show. It was shocking to experience it here of all places, but here we have a non-traditional masculine leader trying to help his crew and found-family to be more nurturing and never toxic.
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This is a story about two men, both traumatized by their fathers, going through mid-life crises, and that makes the romance all the more potent. They’re desperately bored with their lives, both of them nearly ready to die with it. They’re functionally in the same emotional space, though they’re coming at it from opposing sides.
✏️ The connection points between the two
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Izzy, for Ed, is representative in many ways of what life with Mary was like for Stede—a place where men are punished for being themselves.
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Both of them were, with each other, the versions of themselves they never knew they were allowed to want to be.
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It’s not so easy to shake off the shape of who you once thought you always had to be. Ed wanted to run away from their previous lives because he doesn’t want to confront his trauma, the Kraken. Stede can’t run away with him because he has to confront his lighthouse, what he believes is his own monstrosity.
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Ed thinks he wants wealth and finery, Stede piracy and adventure. But what they both really want is to be seen and understood. On instinct, they protect each other. It’s a very queer experience, the tenuous way wanting to be each other eases into wanting each other.