rest requirer

the scene/episode that made me fall in love with frenchie..

also here have a bonus oluwande bc he’s adorable:

oluwande with an auxiliary wardrobe amount of shirts and sweaters, not because he is a clothes horse, but because his three partners who are all like two apples tall keep stealing his shirts and sweaters for Cozy Purposes

i imagine zheng and jim just cuddled together in a ball inside one huge fluffy olu sweater. that has to be the dream

Source (Season 1)

Source (Season 1)

Jim and Oluwande With Orange Blossoms

I’m back with Oluwande for day sixteen! One day left

Stede and Oluwande ✨✨

olu is just so beautiful <3

@thelighthouseandthekraken bringing out your tags because !!!!!! Yeeeeess!!!

I know I’m tough on Stede and I have relished in the gaps between his ambitions, vanity, and incompetence before. It’s what made him resuming his pirate training with Izzy and acknowledgement of his natural talents very fun for me (close that gap mono!) But I digress CUZ THIS AIN’T ABOUT STEDE

It’s not even about the collective softness he managed to put on a boat. This is about the CREW and the array of skills, talents, stories, connections, sensitivities, personalities, and creativities that got them on the Revenge in the first place. I just really like how season 2 has juggled the storyline of Ed and Stede’s relationship with the crew’s reconciliation with each other. Like, the writers and the cast have gone to great lengths to provide sweet little touch points that reveal how crew members feel about each other.

Even the short and deceivingly simple scene that starts with Roach showing Frenchie his new culinary invention (peanut paste!), Frenchie establishing that they share a common spiritual belief (thank the fairies!), and ends with Roach identifying a threat to their wellbeing (a curse on captain’s coat!) tells us SO MUCH about how these characters think about their time at sea.

Every vignette of the crew taking measures to manage the threat of the curse (Jim sharing info about curses with the crew, Boatmance Trio doing a protection ritual, Izzy advising Stede to take the crew’s fear seriously, and them confronting Stede about the coat) have so many tasty little tidbits that point to the gifts of care that everyone on the ship brings to each other.

Stede didn’t teach them to be like this, and I would go so far as to argue that they wouldn’t have even considered buying into the idea of “talk it through” with Stede’s open-concept staff meetings alone. It was the example of the crew themselves (particularly Olu and Lucius) practicing open communication throughout season 1 that likely had the biggest impact on the crew.

ALL OF THIS!

Like one of the the things i see in Season 1 (and I think this plays into the themes we explicitly know they're trying to explore in season two re: "Stede becoming a real boy" and the real moon in the kiss this time, etc.) is that in Season 1 Stede /is/ playing out a fantasy, and that limits his ability to really empathize with and also lead his crew. That's not to say that Stede lacks empathy or doesn't care, but I think takes about Stede teaching the crew empathy (or teaching them to "talk it through as a crew") give him way too much credit. Stede is playing out the fantasy of being captain, and he doesn't really acknowledge that he's only in that position beacuse he has money because his fantasy is to be a Pirate Captain! so he must be a godo captain! because that's how his narrative in his mind goes! And he definitely has moments where he addresses reality in season 1, but I think it's the crew that teaches him how to live in the present more than anything.

Part of how the mutiny doesn't happen in season 1 is the crew realizes/knows that wokring for Stede is an easier life and creates a safe space for them to do the things that they want. If anything, the crew is the one who teaches Stede how to actually talk things through/listen (forcing him to listen about being a pirate/what it means for this to not be a choice, everything that Olu/Frenchie do on the French ship, helping him work through his first break up with Ed, even getting him to understand that he needed to stop to get them oranges to treat scurvy, etc.). That theme of Stede learning how to be a real person, who accounts for how his actions affect others and learns to contribute rather than live in a narrative from his crew members who already have the skills and internality is carried through in his developing relationship with Izzy which also allows us to see more who the crew are as people outside of Stede's arch and it's beautiful.

got bored and just felt like coloring this one

Oluwande smiling <3

Just thinking about the fact that the first command Oluwande gives as captain of the Revenge is to execute Izzy. And not just any way, but in the way that Calico Jack told them about: tying him to an anchor and throwing him overboard. Fitting, given they must have worked out that he collaborated with CJ to trap them.

Oluwande is one of the people who wouldn’t mutiny against Stede, despite him being a terrible pirate. He was pragmatic about it all: Stede was going to be dead soon, but until then, they’re getting paid and fed and might as well take advantage of it.

But Izzy? Only a day or two under his command and the second they mutiny, Oluwande makes it crystal clear that Izzy needs to die. Everybody has their own style, he says, when Izzy begs to be spared.

And it fits with everything we know about Oluwande and exactly what the crew is looking for in him as their captain: someone with the crew in mind, not just himself. Looking at it from his POV, how did Izzy get their ship? As far as they know, he sold all of them - including Blackbeard - out. He worked with the English and took their captain’s ship by deception and betrayal. How can you trust someone like that?

Especially since he’s shown that if you throw him aside, he will come back and he will make things worse. The only safe way to deal with Izzy in this context is getting rid of him permanently and Oluwande may not have chosen this life or the role of captain, but he will do what he deems necessary for his people’s safety.

I love this reflection about Olu’s character in the sense that it’s an exploration of the ways in which Mr Oluwande “we do this because we have to” Boodhari can be as ruthless as any other pirate! How for all his gentleness, generosity, and kindness, Olu will put his survival and that of the people he cares about first.

This is what makes him both a natural choice as captain and a perfect foil for Captain Hands who cares so much about authority and recognition that he fudges thru one of the most critical aspects of effective leadership: helping your peers feel good about the work they do with you.

Ed does this naturally—his charisma, brilliance, and genuine interest in people makes his employees feel good about working with him. Stede made a conscious, admirable decision to incorporate “a people-forward management style” to his leadership even though his ability to empathize with his crew is severely lacking (very autistic of him. we stan). Izzy? He’s the archetypal “all business, no fun” middle manager who may have a great, if not decent, handle of how the business works and meeting the needs of upper management to run their shit well.

I may not like Olu’s decision to kill Izzy (I’ve seen folks propose a headcanon that he was just trying to scare the dude, which is an interesting take!) but in terms of Olu’s currently evergreen captaincy, it was a great call to increase team morale! They are pirates! And well… smash and gouge and stab and poke and choke you out, that’s a pirate’s life 😌

With regard to the “he was just trying to scare/get rid of him” theory:

Like, look at those ropes. Those are just gonna slide right off the second he actually tries. I swear he’s actually holding them on, if only to prevent them from noticing that he can get free at any second. And the ones around his legs are just as bad.

While I do agree Oluwande is putting his crew first, I need to point out, he did not order them to execute Izzy.

The meeting where he was voted captain was the meeting where the crew unanimously agreed to mutiny. They voted Olu captain after they realized mutinying on Izzy would leave them without a captain and they’d need a new one. The crew decided to execute Izzy, it wasn’t an order from Olu.

I would even venture to say that Olu is the kind of person who, as captain, would only very rarely issue orders at all. He’d mostly let the crew make their own choices, put things to a vote when there was disagreement, offer his opinion, and only when a decision couldn’t be reached any other way would he give an order.

Ohh, this is a good point! The crew DID unanimously decide to mutiny against Izzy–Olu was simply the appointed Captain who oversaw the mutiny. Granted, Olu *could* have made an executive decision to *not* throw Izzy overboard as part of their mutiny with his newly appointed position buuuuut he didn’t (for pirate reasons, as I stated above lol).

I really like your thoughts about the kind of leadership that Olu would exercise as Captain and I think we might agree that he has the temperament, sensitivity, and experience to be a very democratic, compassionate, collaborative leader. I do think that for all his genuine social awareness, he’s not the type to shy away from making executive decisions or taking measures to ensure that people are doing their jobs so they can reach their goals.

His role as ambassador between the indigenous elders and Stede comes to mind, where he independently advocated for Stede’s life to be spared even tho lol it didn’t make Stede look like the pirate captain that earned the respect of his crew. Olu didn’t once ask Stede “what do you think about how I’m approaching this?"Or at San Agustin, where he volunteered Jim to lead the expedition for oranges (which Jim was begrudgingly assigned to attend).

And, of course, the con with Frenchie, where he presumably held onto their joint earnings and unilaterally decided to give them to Abshir and his friends. That was a big call (and the right call, in my opinion) and, if the fact that Frenchie asked him what happened to the money is anything to go by, Oluwande did NOT consult Frenchie on it! Like. For all that quiet demeanor, Olu is very confident in his ability to make the right call in a group setting (which could get him into trouble as a leader if he has a habit of not checking in with collaborators before making big calls).

I’m really curious to see how S2 will handle the matter of Olu’s appointed leadership in relation to Stede’s assumed one.

got distracted by his disney princess energy