The Massive Continuity of Ducks

amuseoffyre:

One bit of representation I haven’t mentioned thus far is the presence of Buttons. I cannot understate how much I adore this character, not least because it’s possibly the first time maybe ever that a show made in America did not make the Scottish actor tone down his accent.
Honestly, I have so much trouble with a lot of Scots actors performing with the muted or smoothed down accent. The acting often takes a hit because so much work is going into making sure they’re understood by an international audience.
And along comes Ewan Bremner as Buttons and not only is he talking with a cheerfully broad Scottish accent (Portie Edinburgh no less!) but he actually gets to use one of my favourite Scots words :D (Also, fyi, Scots is a separate language from English. Scottish accents and Scots language are two different things)
This subtitle is 100% wrong. What he actually says is “Ya glaikit foppin’ twats” :) Glaikit is such a lovely versatile word for stupid, and the strength of the stupidity entirely depends on the context in which it’s used. Safe to say that Buttons is being very rude here :D
So in summary, I - a non-binary queer neurodiverse middle-aged Scottish person - likes this show a lot because of many many many reasons :)

spyderfyngers:

sixstepsaway:
spyderfyngers:
Okay, so, class.
Hello, published historian here.
As much as I love the headcanon that maybe Izzy is nobility etc, I have bad news about the British class system pre-Industrial Revolution and even a century or more post-I.R.
Our Flag Means Death is of course a rubberband reality. But.
That boy’s highly likely going nowhere, my guys, he is vocally Liverpool-by-way-of-Wigan. He dresses functionally-but-smartly, but he curses, he spits, he’s comfortable walking alone in dangerous spaces and talking to the people who live there. He’s consciously coded as a skilled working class man. What that means in 1717 is… congratulations, you have one trade that’s been passed down to you and that’s your place, do not move, you do not pass Go.
Stede Bonnet? That’s the guy who can beat you to death with legal impunity. You probably brought it upon yourself.
Even a full century after Stede Bonnet’s reign of incompetency, a skilled and clever working class man could rise in the ranks of the British army - if he were an anomaly - but socially he would be shunned by his peers in rank. HARD.
A lot of young men fell into piracy the way most of us now fall into retail. We need money, it’s there.
So Izzy is a man who’s been born, grown up, and matured amongst people he knows with similar abilities and if he runs away before that (people rarely upped sticks with a full family pre-Industrial Revolution) he’d better have a marketable skill. A reliable way to learn or hone that skill? Boarding a ship as a child. And does that suck?
Oh boy, does it suck. We’re talking likely violent or contagious death, not to mention all the other things that can happen to unattended children. But at least you can learn. You can rise through the ranks. But society? Forget it, you dirty slag.
Because it gets worse! Stede fucking Bonnet, despite being the creme-de-la-creme of Barbados society, would have zero chance - I mean NONE - of being accepted in London by those he considered his equals. He was a dirty colonial, despite all his ruffles and marmalade and wealth, so imagine what Izzy had to look forward to. An unmarked pauper’s grave? Yeah. And space was at a premium, so as a working class person you could safely expect your bones to be turfed out into the river if someone else needed the plot. During a period when Resurrection was accepted doctrine, what this meant in spiritual terms was that poor people had no souls.
Have a go at tracing the grave of an ancestor from c.1700s Britain. Good luck.
So as much as it will be super cool to find out Izzy had a past in the Royal Navy etc etc - which would be super interesting and definitely plausible - it’s highly unlikely he’s anything other than bog standard working class. Maybe a working class boy who’s beaten the odds.
But if I were a young man in 1717 and a rich clueless dude boarded my ship with zero prior experience and wanted to take charge… I’d kill him.
I’d kill him so hard.
All of this is amazing, especially the historical commentary and the precise nature of “Liverpool-by-way-of-Wigan” because I knew it was Northern, but I couldn’t pin down the exact area and yeah you nailed it. I’m from that area, ha.
But I just want to highlight this one particular bit:
Stede Bonnet? That’s the guy who can beat you to death with legal impunity. You probably brought it upon yourself.
It is utterly and disgustingly fascinating to bear witness to this being re-perpetuated in real time, in 2022, in this fandom.
After all, a lot of people elevate Ed high above Izzy and then argue that he brought his maiming upon himself.
Thank you! I wrote this after sharing three bottles of wine at a party, so I’ve been terrified ever since that I’d just gone on a drunk rant.

Something I would add in the cold light of sobriety:

Obviously, Ed’s pain and sense of rejection is class-based but intersectional with his race, and you can’t separate the two. But assuming Ed and Izzy had similar upbringings in terms of class, hence their closeness and years of trust, it puts Izzy’s warnings and frustration in an interesting light.

Under the flag of Blackbeard, there’s power that transcends class. Blackbeard scares the shit out of everyone, and even though they don’t accept him, they respect him. Doesn’t matter if you’re an officer, a merchant, or a fellow pirate - you treat Blackbeard and his crew with awe. They’re still scum, but they’re scum that’s taken seriously, and that’s the best they can hope for.

So when Stede Bonnet comes along with zero experience, lots of money, and a belief that he deserves a place in the world of Blackbeard, it’s funny at first. “What kind of fucking idiot—?” But it’s also really, really insulting. You’ve got everything they’ll never have, Stede! Fuck off home to your servants! (Quick note: many gentleman referred to their housemaids as ‘Mary’, regardless of their real names, because who gives a shit what their name actually is.)

And then the unthinkable happens: Ed slips under Stede’s influence. It’s a worrying step down in Izzy’s view, and it’s a step down that gets people killed right from the start (that’s an important note - working class people will always die for the benefit of their social betters, and it’s worrisome that Ed doesn’t give a single shit). It’s reasonable for Izzy to think that this flight of fancy Ed’s got himself into will result in Ed’s death and the death of the legend of Blackbeard which has served as their only route to a higher place of esteem.

And this is all for a gentleman. Not an aristocrat. Stede is just a couple of notches up from trade, which somehow makes it worse because Ed has fallen for the first posho that’s shown him anything but disdain, and he doesn’t even have a title.

The tragedy of Ed wanting to learn the ways of an aristocrat is that he’s not even learning from an aristocrat. It’s cosplay. Izzy knows that, Ed would know that if he had a clear head, and Stede knows that but is too naive to consider it a problem.

Stede believes piracy equals freedom, and in a way he’s right. But that freedom comes with the price of death hanging over your head at all times. Stede can choose to walk into that world because he has the financial means of his class, and he can - however comedically - guard his class by calling himself The Gentleman Pirate and protesting that he’s working by different rules to all those other grubby guys. Even if Stede goes to jail for his crimes, he will be given better treatment, because he can buy it. (That’s how prison worked in 1717, you purchased bed, food, toiletries etc, and fuck you if you couldn’t afford it.)

Ed and Izzy and their crew don’t have the same luxury in reverse. They have to guard their legendary status violently, because unlike gentleman or aristo status, it can be taken away.

When Ed willingly signs himself away to the Crown and Izzy is visibly disgusted - “You want to lick the king’s boots?” - all of this is knocking around inside his angry little head. It’s revolting to him that Ed seemingly wants to capitulate to the class system and let himself fall to the bottom of the pile. He and Izzy have spent years together giving the class system the finger. And now this.

Ed encapsulates the sadness of realising no matter how brilliant you are, you’ll never rise above the station of your birth. Izzy is the rage of knowing that.