Just realized something about Our Flag Means Death— it’s Peter Pan.
Stede is Wendy, telling bedtime stories to his ship of lost boys (and Jim). He’s bringing romanticized English domesticity to the high seas— and Blackbeard is enraptured by him, particularly by *that* part of him: the hidden closet of outfits, the cozy library full of books Stede has actually read, the sense of wonder and newness Stede brings to Ed’s old boring swashbuckling world.
Ed wants to become part of Stede’s world— trying out thimbles and kisses, or fine clothes in this case. They gather a crew of lost boys (and Jim) and Stede’s influence changes and softens them, while Ed challenges, endangers, and inspires them; their dream of the biggest, baddest, bestest lost boy there is. He’s immature, he’s fickle, he’s utterly captivating; he never grew up and he will always be the kraken on the dock.
Captain Hook, or the British empire, chases Peter Pan across the waves— for Ed’s legend but also for the harms he’s caused them— and then they eventually recognize Stede’s importance and use him against Ed, too.
And like with Peter Pan, Stede eventually leaves both Ed and the pirate life: Stede abandons Neverland to go home and “grow up”— returning to Mary. And here’s where he breaks the pattern: unlike Wendy, he comes back.
But even that is more complicated, and in interesting conversation with the original story: there is no “real world” to go back to, really. There is no correct way to grow up.
Stede cannot “go back” and “grow up”— because that path was always a lie. Mary, in his absence, has discovered a new path for herself into her own wondrous, adventurous world; she’s up-ended the fantasy of Growing Up, being serious, or a “normal” life and adulthood. It’s wonderful! I love Mary. He could go back, but their old life and marriage was fake— that was the real game of pretend.
Mary hollows out her life and their world in Stede’s absence and says: these parts were nonsense, and this worth keeping, and this worth building. It gives Stede the bravery to go back, but also the clarity and the context to see that neither world is more real than the other— that his love for Ed is real, too, and not something to be outgrown. He refuses the moral. Wendy goes back to Neverland to find the lost boys, to find Peter.
But most importantly: this means Izzy Hands is Tinkerbell