rest requirer

hello hello i just had an absolute BRAINWAVE abt stizzy/steddyhands

basically, izzy was stedes proper gay awakening, not ed

so we're all agreed that pirating is an allegory for homosexuaity, right? stede is unconfortable in a married state as he says, he's uncomfortable being married to a woman and having to portray a proper heterosexual marriage. hes distinctly uncomfortable, and so he runs off to sea to persue a life of piracy, a life of freedom where he can do what he wants and be with whoever he pleases. as jack says, "anything goes at sea."

and finally, at sea, he does seem better. he looks happier, and his demeanour is insanely positive and optemistic. hes clearly a tea cup half full kind of guy. but as genuinely glad as he away from his family and out on the sea, doing what he wants, a lot of his happy attitude is... not quite fake, but definateky forced to be more than he really feels, because its not turning out quite like he'd hoped and trying remain positive.

up until the end of episode 2, stede is not having a very good time pirating. his crew dont respect him or share his values and have almost mutinied, he's terrible at fighting, he's run aground his own ship, lost hostages, and hes accidentally killed a man.

episode 2 is the first time that not only do we stede truly, genuinely enjoy pirating and being good at it, his ruse when negotiating hostages goes off without a hitch even against one of the most notirious pirates out there - which is of course, izzy. izzy brings that out. fucking with izzy is his first true and proper introduction to piracy. hes not fighting the english, hes not dealing with random people on an island, or poor fisherman on a tiny schooner, he's going up against - and winning against! - an actual pirate.

and he kind of enjoys it.

until then, piracy just hasnt been clicking, but it isnt meeting ed that turns it all around for him. izzy was stedes first taste of true pirating. sure ed teaches him the ins and outs, and ed is the one that stede falls for, but something clicks with stede when he meets and confronts izzy. izzy casts that first spark, that lets stede know he's on the right track and that this is the life for him, a pirates life, a life at sea - where anything goes.

1x01

Oluwande: me and Jim, we don't do this because we like it. we do it because we don't have any other choice.

Stede: oh I hear that. here we are, just the whole band of us just killing, and having to kill, and having to – k- to kill–

+

1x06 Ed: to be honest, I haven't killed another man since

(lies, but an ideal, because)

1x10 Ed: killing Lucius being the signal that He's Really Going To Be Storybook Blackbeard This Time

+

1x10 Stede's bloodcurdling scream when Chauncey dies horribly in the forest at his feet

1x10 Stede rowing back to make amends to Ed and take him away from all this

=

this all kind of adds up to 2x08, Ed retires

but it also adds up to "piracy is not great and tarnishes your soul" which is a weird way to conduct your pirate show, undermining its premise. as a genre show it's cool and fun becaude you like the cool and fun genre of swashbuckling! the silly swashbuckling shit is everywhere, and violence ranges from the somber/chilling mentioned above to the absolutely cartoonish (and, delightfully, both at once: 1x10 Lucius shoe pop death rattle)

anyway it means there's a very fine line to tread about "what is piracy" and "what does it do to your soul" in this universe and series end *does* need to answer these questions or at least address them both

and obviously, besides Ed's retirement (fair, foreshadowed), there's still the question of "what did Stede get out of this whole adventure" and "what the FUCK was Izzy's speech supposed to be about in the tavern then"

I've had thoughts about Ed using domesticity as a coping mechanism ever since that breakfast in bed scene.

Because yes, Ed bringing Stede breakfast is cute! He's added some twine!

But Ed is also trying to deal with a situation where he was completely powerless. He couldn't stop Stede from getting Ned killed. Ned still attacked the Revenge because of Ed's suicidal plan to break Ned's record, knowing Ned would come after him.

And Ed then tells Stede about how Stede appeared to him as a mermaid and saved his life. And about wanting to avoid near-death situations. Well done, Ed! You're talking about your feelings! Shame Stede is too busy enjoying that post-coital glow, though.

But overall, gee, I wonder where Ed might've seen 'feels powerless in an upsetting situation, turns to domesticity and put on a happy facade' before?

*gestures at his parents*

English prisoners are on historical record as being baffled and kind of upset that pirate captains aren't segregated from the men like English naval officers are – anyone can eat with the captain? The captain sleeps where they sleep, he has no special quarters

Canon Ed, of course, has his own special quarters. I've decided that it's a perk that Ed and Izzy have quietly persuaded Blackbeard's Usual Crew to accept (because Blackbeard's so cool and great!) as a way to give Ed the space to be mentally ill in private.

we really need Blackbeard to stay cool and great.

can we just talk real quick about how when Ed was telling Izzy "Ooh, now there's an idea, I haven't done that (died) yet." he pulls out his fucking knife

which he then is holding out-of-shot as he says "Haven't died yet, have I? Maybe we should try that."

what’s a little murder-suicide between husband and wife?

izzy's face is so frozen in this whole scene and it's hilarious to me because like. i know that someone on twitter was making this comparison earlier, that ed/izzy are just like hook/smee

but izzy doesn't even look surprised. ed has absolutely casually brought up suicide before, and izzy has had to learn to Not React

and i'm just thinking of when they're super married in Hook (1991) and hook is gonna shoot himself in the head while ordering smee not to stop him, until smee stops him, and then hook blames smee for not intervening soon enough and smee kisses him and tells him it's gonna be alright:

if ed/izzy were even remotely as healthy as the hook/smee marriage they'd be FINE

This scene gets 10x sadder when you realize that's the reaction Ed was trying to get. He wanted Izzy to wrestle the knife from his hand and tell him it was gonna be alright. He wants to be comforted but doesn't realize that Izzy's broken in exactly the kind of way that prevents him from understanding this. So Izzy just sees an "erratic", "half-insane" man who he thinks says all this stuff to get on his last nerves; and Ed just keeps pushing Izzy's buttons, slowly chipping away at whatever's left of the two of them, desperately trying to be seen :(

i loooove Ed and Izzy so awkwardly feeling each other out like teenagers in the schoolyard after a big falling out except they're grown men fresh off the implosion of a decade-spanning relationship & Izzy pushing so hard to keep the tone away from anything earnest or vulnerable & go back to old habits & Ed taking the bottle after "mopey twat" like shaking on it & still pushing back with the apology & how that's really as far as they can come each step being such a bewildering mile &

I've seen people put down this scene as too little but I think it's perfectly them. it's too little and it's as much as they can give.

the issue is (as with many s2 scenes and their respective storylines) that it doesn't get the follow-up it deserves - and has the burden of wherever they're supposed to have progressed next placed on it retroactively. and I'm just choosing not to do that. the rest of the season is the rest of the season's problem

Tally of the times Stede walked/ran away from stressful and/or upsetting situations:

Boy has a clear stress response and that stress response is “DO NOT BE HERE. LEAVE. LEAVE NOW.”

Okay okay okay I saw these tags and went ooooo

#the stressful person he doesn’t run away from is izzy in this essay i will -#ofmd#stede bonnet 

Because Izzy doesn’t stress him out, which is hilarious. Izzy annoys him :D Even with Izzy’s sword at his tits, he isn’t scared of or intimidated by him and it drives Izzy up the wall. You’re meant to be afraid when someone threatens you. You’re not meant to compliment their sword skills :D

And I think it boils down to the fact that Izzy is direct. Izzy calls a threat and threat and doesn’t hide behind politeness or manners or passive aggression. It’s the first time Stede’s had someone who is bluntly rude to him and realises that he can be rude back.

Every other situation in his life he’s had to follow this code of conduct and has been constantly and loudly made aware that he doesn’t fit. We see what it looks like with his father and Mary in the flashbacks and again when he’s forced to invite Nigel aboard the ship and play host, fake-smiling and being uncomfortable and tense and then you have Izzy who doesn’t do any of that. Who snarls right in his face and slashes his shirt to ribbons and tries to kill him.

And it’s refreshing. There’s no masking needed here. And it’s especially interesting because Stede is only ever that blunt with his own crew when he gets agitated and wound up. Even when they’re upsetting him, he tries to play the Gentleman, but with Izzy, he doesn’t. They’re snap in each others’ faces and openly express their contempt and it’s great.

actually i'm just gonna assume Ed knows french. in S1E5 where he demonstrates "oomph" by threatening the french captain, it doesn't seem to be an issue for him that the captain answers in french. also why not

I do assume that all the pirates speak multiple languages, at least well enough for basic conversation, because the Caribbean is such a meeting place of multiple cultures that you'd really need that just to get by. So, yeah, Ed or someone on his crew probably knows some French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Miskito Coast Creole, various West African languages (arguable which ones would have been most common in the Caribbean at the time; Akan, Efik, and the Gbe family are some good guesses), etc, etc. It was an extremely multilingual place!

All of which makes this exchange in 1x04 really funny to me:

Because Ed 100% either could talk to them himself or has someone working for him who can (to be fair, so does Stede), but he's not mentioning that because he wants to make Stede feel bad. And Stede's too panicked to realize! IDK, it sounds mean putting it like that, but it's just hilarious to me, very 'don't look behind this curtain'.

I've said it all before but thinking about the "Blackbeard has requested your services" scene between Izzy and Lucius in s1e10 again because the power dynamics in that scene are so out of balance, the precariousness of Izzy's authority over the crew now that Ed is back but hiding (you know, after they just proved he doesn't have any without Ed; and with Ed's authority, to Izzy's mind, on a similar knife edge), but particularly and specifically the precariousness of his situation with Lucius, who humiliated him even when he did have some (Blackbeard-adjacent) authority. who looked him in the eye and called out what he saw. Izzy can't look him in the eye again. ostensibly, Izzy has the power, but he's equally scared of Lucius. he can't look him in the eye again. and Lucius notices, and his face softens from contempt to confusion into pity.

like on the one hand Lucius is so scared and on the other he despises this man and he's trying so hard to stay cool and bitchy and not get killed in the process - they're both putting up such a shaky front when we've seen each do it so well - and Izzy is so terrified the crew will see through his front, which they do, but nobody's saying anything yet, and then Lucius does see him, and - nothing breaks, yet.

like there's the tension of this situation for everyone involved and then there's the ghost of the sexual tension ending in Lucius's victory over Izzy, and now this slip of personal vulnerability is threatening his formal authority. the whole thing hangs on a thread, because if Lucius took another stab at that wound, Izzy might be as helpless to retaliate as he was last time, and now there's more than his dignity at stake. obviously for Lucius, it might still risk getting himself non-metaphorically stabbed, but the possibility hangs in the air.

#something i hadn't thought of until comparing jackie's sick s2 outfit to ed's just now #is how ed's is very much the opposite of Fine Things #not sure we did enough with that. #penitent ed putting on his *own* sackcloth to signal... something... to everyone else #and then ??? putting on leathers in 208 #anyway ( @schmirius )

Oof, yes, this is a fascinating angle. It's also not random sackcloth clothes but specifically Buttons' outfit – Buttons who is now a seagull, something something 'change is possible', though that does hit up awkwardly against the return of the leathers, as you say. A sailor's outfit, but not a captain's, as a fisherman is also a sailor without name or identity or guilt or responsibility (not even the responsibility to catch fish, in Ed's own personal narrative lol).

If it's Ed's own sackcloth, it's after the imposed sackcloth of the unaccepted apology of 2x05, and after the leathers of the (successful? unsuccessful? at least a beginning?) apology to Izzy and interrupted guilt-money party of 2x06. Unlike two out of three of those, it certainly doesn't seem to be coming from Stede's advice; we don't see Stede to react to the clothing change at all.

It is, in Ed's own words, "a little break from the leathers", "might not be a phase", and "just trying something different"; it quickly hardens into a distinct identity – "fishermen and pirates are nothing alike". Visually (to me, at least), it's extremely reminiscent of the linen uniforms at the seamen's academy in 1x09, Ed's first attempt to escape to a new life. Also, significantly, both 1x09 and 2x07 are when the Ed/Stede relationship takes a step up, and as a result one of them panics and runs away.

But if that's a deliberate parallel, then surely so is Stede triumphantly returning to the ocean at the end of 1x10 and Ed emerging from the ocean (with leathers!) in 2x08 – both of them fixing the mistake of leaving, now out to search for their love. And yet, that's undercut ten minutes later by Ed (and Stede) leaving piracy again.

This shot right here is one of my favorites in the whole show, not only because everyone’s here but because it looks like it’s straight out of a stage play.

When you focus on the way they’re sitting, you’ll notice it’s not at all realistic. The crew is all sitting directly next to each other in a somewhat straight line, conveniently all facing the same direction - in reality, people would be facing one another, there’d be some small clusters, and they’d probably more dispersed across the deck.

But the way they’re staged here is indicative of a theatrical production - everyone’s cheating out, posed carefully toward an audience. Not a camera, an audience.

The sails at the top of the shot even look like curtains, framing the scene as if it’s a stage. And Izzy lurking in the back, unseen by everyone else and looking like he’s ready to deliver a Iago-style monologue, adds to this interpretation too.

This shot feels very purposeful — I think the effect of “everyone in the crew is hanging out together” could’ve easily been achieved with different, more three-dimensional camera angles or staging choices but they went with this one and it makes my little theater geek heart happy.

I’ve seen some discussions about how OFMD follows a lot of the same story beats as Shakespearean comedies; I’d bet money this shot is an intentional nod to that.

One of the things I love about OFMD season 1 is how the whole season feels like a stage play.

The thing where someone can just hop in a dinghy and get where they want to go immediately? The fact that the one time we see Ed's ship it's obviously just the Revenge set with some skulls and spikes added? And then Ed's ship is presumably just off stage screen for the entire rest of the season? It all invites you to suspend your disbelief and play along with the story they're telling. It's the opposite of gritty realism. And it's charming as hell.

i know we love the alternative take in Ed's memory of "you wear fine things well" but can we also talk about how in Ed's memory of Stede stabbing him, while the footage is from the original episode, it's edited differently, cutting from the stabbing to Stede's stricken face in a way that belies the light-hearted way Ed presents the memory to Mary?

anyway Stede's face here is so tragic that on the first watch I thought it was a different take and had to go check - but it's there, in the art of fuckery; it just happens a few more lines into the dialogue, when Ed is talking about the liver. it's shocking how much the change of context changes the emotion it evokes. this is the face Ed remembers. had to make him do it. the timing of the line over this shot - not Stede rushing him, not Ed's own laughing face - is no coincidence. in his memory, it's not distress over potential injury on Stede's face but at having been forced by Ed into this act of veiled intimacy. he's so fragile, Ed explains to Mary, dismissively, but the visual betrays him to the viewer. it's almost like a subtler version of Stede's reality contradicting his narration to Ed in the first episode of the season, just a glimpse into the self-hate, shame and doubt Ed's weighed down by.

I am not over (and probably never will be) these two parallels. And no one talks about it enough, so I had to draw it (forgot to post it, surprise) for my own sanity. Does it help? Absolutely not, not at all.

Let's talk about it for a bit, okay?

The first drawing is the scene from the end of the 4th episode of the 1st season, right after Ed's and Izzy's (first mate at the time) conversation about plans with Stede, the full crew of the Revenge, and the future. We can see Ed's expression and OH BOY. He is hiding under the mask of Blackbeard to survive. He is exhausted, bored, empty and so done being "The dreadful pyrate Blackbeard". He just wants to be Ed, who fancy fine fabrics and sweet and soft things. It's completely opposite to Izzy's expression, who is behind him and smiling, clearly delighted by Blackbeard's persona and his great plans. On top of it all, the song "The empty boat" by Caetano Veloso playing in the background (I love love love this song), and it fits so well with Ed's emotions.

The second drawing is the scene from the 1st episode of the 2nd season, right after Ed and Frenchie (now first mates) spoke about future plans. Ed let himself be soft and got hurt because of it. Now he's trying to be Blackbeard again, trying to fit in some "norms" of "manly man," trying to survive in a world where liking soft and being soft means dead, and he is failing miserably. He is everything he doesn't want to be. Also, even Stede's name is not mentioned, you know it's all about him. Ed is hurt, tired, and heartbroken. Ed is not the only one who see this. Basically, the whole crew can see how unstable he became after coming back to Blackbeard/ The Kraken persona. Frenchie´s expression shows it all. He stands behind him on his right side, the same spot where Izzy stands in S1. But his expression completely different from Izzy's - sad, afraid, unsure. Once again on top of the scene, the song "Pygmy Love Song" by Francis Bebey (one of my favourite songs from S2) perfectly shows all Ed's emotions.

I am so sorry for this long, boring post. I simply LOVE these two scenes and everything about them, and I needed to share my thoughts with you. I hope it makes sense and my grammar is not too bad.