So the James Webb telescope took a picture of a infant star!!
The small glowing blob is protostar L1527! Caught in the glow of its sunrise-like creation the baby is only 100,00 years old! It can take up to 50 million years for a star to reach the size of our sun. This infant has a long time to go.
Located 460 light years away this is one hell of a childhood photo!
STORIES TELLING: NED LOWE AND THE DEATH OF POOR REPRESENTATION IN OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH
In history, Ned Lowe was one of the most sadistic and violent pirates in the early 18th century, so he’s an obvious choice for a villain for season 2, episode 6 – Calypso’s Birthday. What is interesting is what the OFMD writers chose to do with him.
Lowe announces himself to the crew of the Revenge with great fanfare (cannon ball attack) and gets right to the point.
Ed is thoroughly unimpressed.
Cut to Ed and Stede tied up while Ned attempts to set the mood so he can monologue about why he wants to kill Ed.
Ed knows what’s coming. He is going to suffer but he still can’t be arsed to meet Ned with anything but vaguely bored dismissiveness (and Stede is happy to play along).
Up on the deck, Ned prepares the crew for his big, dramatic moment of symphonic torture.
Note that Revenge crew is tied down, braced by vices and generally unable to protect themselves from imminent torture and possible death, but their spirits are up. They don’t seem terribly fussed.
Then Stede uses his people positive management style to happily orchestrate a worker uprising in Ned’s crew.
Ned’s crew responds instantly; severing their allegiance to Lowe and telling him off.
The crew sails away and talks profit sharing while Ned dully threatens to hunt them down.
Ned is now a prisoner of the Revenge crew and seems entirely disinterested in his own survival.
And Ned sinks to the depths, without struggling at all.
There is a lot going on in this episode: pay and labor equity direct action, gay love engagement bliss, kink humor, Stede being a hero and saving his crew by playing to his strengths, then having to decide whether to kill in cold blood and feel the consequences of that choice. Ed having one more reason to be done with piracy (while being so impressed with and fond of Stede), and then watching his man make a fraught choice and having to deal with the fallout from that. (And, damn, I haven’t even mentioned the passionate sex bit.) Anyway, back to the point.
Now for the the meta part
The Ned Lowe sequences are perfectly in keeping with OFMD’s signature blend of madcap violence, humor, and big emotional gut punches. But something about Ned Lowe just strikes me as off for this show.
Ned is seriously threatening the crews’ lives, so why don’t they take him seriously?
Why does Ned have such a boring, throwaway backstory?
Why is Ned so nonchalant about his own death; like it’s a foregone conclusion?
Why does Ned have a silver violin and silver spurs on his slip-on dress shoes?
Why is Ned sartorially monochromatic?
And then I realized who Ned reminds me of.
This guy,
Earnst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever (1971)
And this guy,
Scar in Disney’s The Lion King (1994).
And this guy,
Xerxes, 300 (2006).
And it sure seems like Ned Lowe isn’t just an episodic villain. He is an archetype of the one-dimensional, stereotypical queer-coded villain that has been endemic in film and television throughout history. The OFMD writers have a lot to say about what to do with this kind of character:
Don’t respect him.
Feel free to openly mock him.
Don’t let him take your joy, even though he will hurt you.
He won’t disappear on his own. You have to throw something at him (take action) to make him go away.
Once he’s in the water, he’s content to drown. He’s not into what he’s doing any more than you are.
Oh and, just to be clear,
The LGBTQIA+ community has a very long history of turning shit media into better stories. So, hey, big media, prepare to have your crap characters wrecked (improved).
Now, back to our transformative pirate show with rich, complex queer characters and a multi-layered plot that surprises me every week and makes me feel big feelings - most of all, joy.
Final thought: I do wonder if Ned Lowe is monochromatically silver as a tribute to/poke at, Hollywood and the silver screen.
This meta was written before OFMD season 2 has fully aired. No idea what’s going to happen in the finale (and I’ve generally fled social media to avoid spoilers). I’ll be back, looking at everyone’s fascinating posts after episode 8 airs.
i agree with what’s said but the story is from canada and new brunswick specifically, these issues happen here too and i wish they’d be acknowledged
This is also happening in Saskatchewan. I admit I didn’t read the New Brunswick article but the law proposed in Saskatchewan requires a parents’ permission before a student can change which pronouns they use in school. Which would absolutely forcibly out trans kids and put them in danger.
Something about this is so genuine and funky. It feels so natural that if I heard the correct lyrics it wouldn’t process as right in my brain. This man yelling about his green tea and watermelon sour patch kids fits so well with the live music playing in the background, the atmosphere, the whole situation. It’s like some reverse slam poetry talking about how good life is and how the simple pleasures should be enjoyed. I’m in love with this tik tok.
old alt rock fans in the notes are like:
1) this slaps and actually sounds like a lot of the classics
2) if i went to a concert and they played this i wouldnt even question it. id be like FUCK yeah they were watermelon!!!
when i was training service dogs, i happened to get assigned to one dog who kind of has the same spooky, harrowed look about her that Minion often has
it did not help that she was a pale dog whose eyes were rimmed with somewhat darker fur, giving the impression that her eyes were kind of sunken and haunted
each dog in our program had a tag hanging on their kennel with basic information about them, such as name, sex, neuter status, breed, etc.
and then there was a space where the trainer could write in a description of the dog. this was mostly useful if we had two dogs in a kennel run who were hard to tell apart at a quick glance, so you could write in something like “small ears” or “short muzzle.”
most of us were pretty good at recognizing dogs, though, especially if they’d been there for a while. it was usually only really relevant when the dogs had just arrived and we didn’t know them yet. so it didn’t get utilized a lot, honestly
so i really didn’t think anyone would notice when i wrote in “looks like she sees dead people.” i thought that was going to be a silly joke just for me
then, slowly. i began noticing other training and kennel staff workers referencing the joke
i think at its peak, we were posing a group of dogs for promotional/fundraising pictures, and this particular dog was distracted
and so, of course, more than one trainer started excitedly chirping “DEAD PEOPLE DEAD PEOPLE DEAD PEOPLE!” to try and get my dog to look at the camera
and it worked
then one day i looked back through this dog’s paperwork and learned that the volunteer who was responsible for raising her actually abruptly died when the dog was still a puppy
and i still feel bad about that one 💀
the whole time she was just having a personal seance with Möther
anyway, she ended up being a fantastic dog. a little quirky for sure, but incredibly sweet and affectionate. very bright, too!
above all else, she loved to pick up and carry things on command. often when we were working on retrieving stuff, i would have to literally hold her back just so i had a chance to even say the command first. and then she would happily dive face-first onto whatever object we were working on that day
sometimes she would also bring me comically large, unwieldy things completely unprompted, just because she could. and then she would wiggle so, so proudly
she ended up being matched with the nicest fucking guy and is living her best Weird Dog life these days
*me plugging in my phone in the dark* dont think about it dont think about it dont think about it dont think abotu it dont thinka botu it donmt think aboiut it dont think about it dont think abotu it dont thihnk about it dont think about it dont think about it dojnt think abtiou it dont thi
Artist, Canadian, hanging on for dear life. This is a personal and fandom blog. I'm an inconsistent, and rare tagger. Sorry for that. I prefer to answer asks privately. Find my art at ParallelPenguinsArt.tumblr.com