Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
the cutest things about jim and the things that make them very entertaining as a unit with their comically normal boyfriend are their extremely violent imagination and commitment to the bit. to this end i think jim & oluwande should do that half serious strangers meeting at a bar roleplay and i think jim should get really into their sexy but dangerous knife wielding rogue character to the point that they’re getting weird looks bc people think they’re genuinely threatening olu who’s like. babe it’s working for me but you have to dial it back like half way at least bc i think table 4 thinks i’m about to be murdered.
Oluwande Boodhari is amazing. He talked his crewmates out of mutiny for the sake of a bedtime story. He helped his work friend go into hiding after killing their boss’s husband. He poured boiling tea on a man’s crotch. He threw a rock at the crewmate of one of history’s most bloodthirsty pirates. He wears crocs in 1717. He was bullied into being captain for approximately 3 hours. He helped invent the world’s first pyramid scheme. He plays drums maybe? He keeps his beanie on during sex. He’s incredible. He’s my best friend.
aaaaand in a moment i am a weirdo and love, time to issue a correction to my own shit and say ‘whoops, i didn’t do a deep dive before i opened my mouth! got it wrong!’ (we gotta normalize saying i was wrong as a normal mode of social interaction, not a power transfer or moment of shame.)
i wrote about olu as a nickname being non-nontraditional and the setup to a joke (and i still think somebody laughing their ass off because everybody’s been calling olu god needs to happen in canon) and also about how these writers are smarter than me.
turns out i was wrong on the first! right on the second.
because this whole time, i made the mistake of relying on some surface info, ignoring my internal concerns over what i’d been seeing on language sites that contradicted that surface check because i couldn’t source them yet either, and then never just… going into wiki.
that last one would have saved me this moment to correct myself! because they’ve got a list of people who go by olu, on their wiki page for the same.
i’m just going to copy part of the page here, because it flips the use of olu on the show into not only a thematic note about truly unconditional love, but a historical nod to some deeply resonant (and relevant!) shit.
Since the name is applied to people, however, god in the sense of deity or lord is what is usually accepted, with the word even being used as a royal or noble title in certain parts of Nigeria, Benin and Togo.
so not only is olu an accepted/used and non-offensive diminutive for oluwande in the real world, this makes the party in e5 and frenchie giving him a fancy title other people can understand (even though i don’t know that canon wants us to think frenchie knows what ‘olu’ signifies in linguistic terms) like… a million fucking times better.
like i said! i feel pretty comfortable assuming these writers did their research and are smarter than me, and so far i’ve been right on that at least.
Ok, so the moment when the crew unanimously elects Oluwande as Captain? “It’s you.” “No other choice.” “The best Captains are the ones who hate being captains…”
INCREDIBLE. SHOWSTOPPING. And I’m thinking about how that moment ties together some of the biggest overarching themes of the season, ie: masculinity, power, leadership, violence…
Like… I’m thinking about the “Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis” story structure:
THESIS
The story’s beginning thesis is shown with STEDE’S leadership style. IE: “We talk about our feelings and do arts and crafts, etc…”
Stede’s stated goals establish the big themes of the story; gender roles, self-expression, masculinity, violence, etc… he’s expressing a desire to subvert toxic masculinity and abuse…
