Ally, she/her, bi/demisexual, I've been off Tumblr for about 70 years, I'm here for gay pirates and other gay things, and I write about gay pirates too! Dimplyowl across all platforms.
Thinking Ed and Jack thoughts this morning because look. I don't like Jack. I've known a lot of Jacks, and I think he's a prick. But the story elements that he introduces are sooo juicy.
How do you handle it when you see an old friend after years and realize "oh lol did I only like you when I was drinking?"
What happens when you meet your partner's oldest friend and they kind of suck?
How do you reconcile both of those things being true and the knowledge that at one point, the friendship was good, was the best either of them thought they'd ever get?
What if they used to fuck? What if the sex was bad? What if the sex was good?
These questions are pretty much inevitable in every relationship and they're so fun to dig into.
Both of the following scenarios would fit with canon for me, and I think they're both fascinating:
Jack was trying to get Ed to leave with him, so he was worse to Stede than he would have been otherwise because he was trying to drive a wedge between Ed and Stede. If Jack had arrived in a different context, he would have been less cruel.
Jack was trying to get Ed to leave with him, so he was actually on his best behavior so he wouldn't piss him off. If Jack had arrived in a different context, he would have been more cruel.
Not to mention the scenario of, maybe a decade before canon, Jack pulling Ed aside and saying "bro your new first mate seems really fucking weird about the whole Blackbeard thing."
FASCINATING this is catnip to me.
This is my clarion call for us to spend more time thinking about Ed's backstory - his changing relationship with Jack is a chewy way to explore that.
What I adore is the way Jack uses underhanded and sideways insults (excellent passive aggression) to insult Stede in ways that Ed won't spot as direct insults. "Store bought pirate" is a perfect example.
Jack, despite being a chaos gremlin, also treads a very deft line of insulting, isolating and alienating Stede while not alerting Ed to the fact that this is what he's doing.
He knows exactly what he can get away with doing and saying wrapped up in his Jackish behaviour. He goes right up to the line to push Stede's buttons and looks at him to make sure his barbs have landed every. single. time.
He knows Ed expects him to be chaotic, so he weaponises it so well it can look like he's just joking around. He needs them driven apart and needs them either kicked off the ship or Ed choosing to leave of his own accord. When he realises his plan is failing, the killing of Karl was absolutely a calculated move ("I thought there would be more feathers") but made to look like a drunken accident.
It's very telling that when his plan works and he has Ed on the dinghy to actually get him safely away, he winds the attitude back in. It's only when Ed realises what's actually going on that Jack actually turns the mockery on him. "Took you long enough".
He's counting on Ed's nostalgia for how they used to be when they were younger and it works and Ed, in that moment on the dinghy, realises it.
Jack engaged in a very specific white on white kind of violence with Stede.
Izzy didn't involve him for anything less than the opening salvo to the very specific white violence he would engage in once the navy boarded the Revenge.
Zayre Ferrer and Nat Torres were asked about if anything was cut regarding garlic soup, and they discussed more material where Olu and Zheng are falling in love at the Republic of Pirates. Zayre specifically noted that Zheng recognized a softness in Olu that he'd never felt like he could express before. What are your thoughts on this re: what we know about cut polyamory plotlines in the show?
okay. listen.
i know i write a lot about cut material. when you do this, it is very easy to fall into the conspiracy-theory failure mode of a lot of fan meta where you convince yourself there's a secret good version of this season of tv that happened to do exactly what you wanted and every deviation from it is due to evil executive interference. i try to be careful to avoid this (although i'm sure there will always be people who think i'm doing it anyway, and that's a reasonable thing for them to think, because it's very common). usually i am talking about plotlines where we explicitly know something was cut because the writers told us outright, or else there's really clear evidence in what's left like an expensive set that's not used for anything important or something like that, and i'm just speculating about exactly what it was and how it fit into what's left. i try to make sure i'm considering alternate hypotheses and say explicitly when i'm speculating vs when i'm confident of something. and, importantly, i always start from taking the creators at their word.
i am going to break my usual rule and suggest that they are not being entirely 100% straightforward with us here. i do not do this lightly.
ok let's look at the evidence we have for what's going on with the garlic soup situation.
vico is poly and we know it's a big part of their life and something very important to them. we know vico wanted jim to have a polyamory plotline - during the hiatus before s2 they talked about thinking it might be fun if jim and olu each met other love interests while separated and ended up settling on a poly arrangement. we know after s2, vico's talked a lot about being into garlic soup.
we know the ofmd writers are aware of polyamory and not, like, opposed to it. even aside from what they'd know from vico, djenks has mentioned multiple times that he is a disastercule believer, he's talked about other movies where he reads the characters as a throuple, etc.
when anyone from the ofmd writers' room have talked about the s2 arcs for jim-olu-zheng-archie, none of them have suggested it was ever at any point a polyamory plot. david talked about the intent being that jim and olu broke up amicably and stayed friends, and his bsky holiday special seemed to have jim/archie and olu/zheng living in different places. when nat and zayre were asked explicitly about cut garlic soup material they only talked about olu/zheng, which is consistent with the idea that jim and olu were always supposed to break up and each find new partners. i think zayre even said something like "it can be whatever you like in your heart" which seems to imply that they want to leave poly headcanons open but they aren't canon. iirc alex and alyssa said something about jim and olu breaking up too at BOF1.
nevertheless, in what actually aired onscreen, jim and olu do not ever actually explicitly break up at any point. they have a conversation about how jim kissed archie but they don't actually talk at all, or even hint, about what this means for their relationship or whether they'll have sex again.
but we know it's not like we're supposed to forget about that. jim/olu shows up in the "last time on our flag means death" recap at the start of the season AND there's a brief flashback to the jim/olu almost-kiss right before archie kisses jim, which is the sort of thing you'd normally do if you're cuing the audience to be worried this is infidelity, not something you'd do if the intent is that jim/olu was just a casual fling that won't be relevant going forward. and then they just don't resolve that?
jim and archie go to meet zheng and encourage her to rekindle her romance with olu. there seem to have been a fair number of cut scenes building to this but even without them it happens onscreen.
during the conversation jim says they and olu are like family and archie adds "family who fucked." at this point jim's like "not helping" but nobody clarifies after this whether jim and olu are still fucking, which frankly is really weird information to neglect if you're trying to wingman for your ex and you expect monogamy to be an issue. (strangely the camera does not show us zheng's reaction to learning jim and olu had sex and we never hear her say anything at all about it.)
during this conversation jim also says they and olu are "like anchors for each other." "anchor partner" is common polyamory jargon for a long-term stable partner you're committed to even if you also have other partners. vico has talked about liking that line specifically because they knew how people familiar with poly culture would interpret it.
turning to cut material. we know there was a fair amount of cut jim-olu-archie stuff in 2x05 including a conversation between olu and archie about jim's attractive qualities.
here's the big one: we know that in the pre-interference version of 2x06 jim, olu and archie had threeway sex. we furthermore know this was not some kind of vague concept that was considered and discarded early on, we specifically have been told that was still in the script up till like a week before filming and there was work being done to figure out the physical blocking of the scene before it was suddenly cut after what would have normally been the script lock deadline.
look, this is fucking weird. it is not normal for tv to have a situation that's ambiguous like this. it is not normal to do a breakup plotline where the characters never actually unambiguously break up and they stay extremely closely involved in each other's love lives with new partners and there's dialogue tossing around suggestive but plausibly deniable polyamory jargon.
like i'm trying to take the writers at their word here. i could maybe buy that it's down to all the weird cuts for time that we never see jim and olu actually talk about how their relationship has changed. maybe the "anchors" line was an adlib vico snuck in without telling anyone what it implied, although i feel like that would be unlike them.
but the group sex scene? they were trying to write a storyline about an amicable breakup where you stay friends and it involved a group sex scene between the exes and one of their new partners? the arc of the season was at some point supposed to be that jim and olu meet new crushes while involuntarily separated, then they decide break up, then olu has sex with jim and archie at the same time and then they're still broken up and jim and archie go on a mission to get olu a girlfriend? i have tried really hard to game out in my head what that would even look like and every version i can come up with sounds wildly implausible to me. like, was the idea supposed to be that they were considering a throuple but decided it didn't work? does that make sense? does that sound plausible to you? what would be the point of that? was it just kind of a shaggy dog story? and then i'm supposed to believe that on top of that all the other stuff that looks like it's hinting at polyamory is just a series of unrelated weird coincidences? and all of this was done by a writers' room that was well aware of the concept of polyamory and knew one of the actors involved in the storyline was very, very interested in it being polyamory? and i'm supposed to believe not just that the version that aired isn't canonically meant to read as polyamory but that at no point in coming up all this were they even seriously considering just making it polyamory?
i'm sorry!!! i cannot buy it!!!!!
now that being said i am not here to tell you the true vision of the jenkins cut is a beautiful fully developed unambiguous polyamory plotline that was cruelly deleted by the forces of Big Monogamy (WBD). honestly the whole situation feels much too weird for anything that straightforward. it feels to me like there was some amount of disagreement or indecisiveness in the writers' room and very possibly some back-and-forth as the scripts were developed.
i actually think it's extremely plausible that the original idea was in fact a jim/olu breakup. like, i can see where that sounds like a good idea. jim's just decided to put their revenge quest to bed and they're figuring out what to do with their life for the first time, it makes sense to maybe not be ready to commit to the first person they kissed after deciding that. so maybe they start writing that and feel like it's just not coming together, sometimes that happens, sometimes an idea makes complete sense on paper but it just doesn't ring true. or maybe vico starts actively pushing for the poly idea and convinces them (this is extra speculative, but it would make sense if they agreed to it as sort of a consolation prize for vico when they realized they'd have to cut the doctor jim plot, leaving jim with very little substantial s2 material). so for whatever reason they try to pivot to polyamory and maybe the pivot comes late and there's not enough time to really flesh it out into something that works. or maybe there was actually some repeated flip-flopping back and forth. but for whatever reason they never get the polyamory arc into a shape they're really happy with either. and then wbd comes in and starts frowning over the amount of queer sexuality in this show...
however. if i am right at all about any of this. then it's really weird how consistently determined all the writers are not to breathe so much as a hint about it. it's normal to be a bit cagey about changes and exec-mandated interference but the thing is they are not acting like this about anything else, they talk openly about lots of other plotlines that were cut. and it's really weird if it's just that wbd didn't want to do a polyamory plotline and they don't want to piss off the company, because we're at the point where djenks is saying "canceled for being gay" openly, he's been plenty critical of stuff wbd wouldn't allow, so why is this such a third rail? nat and zayre pretty clearly knew that question was fishing for them to say something about cut material that would have made the polycule explicit; confirming they at least thought about it at some point would be saying what they know people want to hear. why such absolute consistent discipline across all the writers who've talked about this if i'm right?
i don't know, okay!!! something weird is going on!!!!! i don't know what happened! but i'm telling you the official party line does not make sense here!
The only thing I can think of (and not very coherently, I've been in brainfog hell for like three weeks straight now 🫠) is that it might be spoilers for a potential s3, just like they all insisted Lucius was tragically dead even when we all knew that was an obvious lie? Like, it was left so ambiguous and rushed in the version of s2 that aired that they don't feel in good conscience that they can actually say there was a poly storyline actually left there, so they'd like to actually develop it properly in a potential s3 if the show ever gets picked up again, so they've decided to just avoid any mentions of it for now, just in case???
for the record, a lot of people commenting on this situation clearly don't actually know what they're talking about, so take their posts with a pinch of salt. not mine tho mine are all true and correct and also sexy.
If you are a fanfic writer or a fan artist who creates NSFW contents, how would you feel about it when/if one of your audience told you they masturbated to your works?
I'm a fanfic writer. I'd be honored / I'd have positive feelings about it
I'm a fanfic writer. I wouldn't care / I would have no strong opinions on it
I'm a fanfic writer. I'd rather not know / I'd have negative feelings about it
I'm a fan artist. I'd be honored / I'd have positive feelings about it
I'm a fan artist. I wouldn't care / I would have no strong opinions on it
I'm a fan artist. I'd rather not know / I'd have negative feelings about it
I'm both*. I'd be honored / I'd have positive feelings about it
I'm both*. I wouldn't care / I would have no strong opinions on it
I'm both* I'd rather not know / I'd have negative feelings about it
I don't create NSFW contents
I'm not a fanfic writer or a fan artist. Poll does not apply to me
Voting ended onJan 12
*I'm both = I'm both a fanfic writer and a fan artist
This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).
My first fic for Disastercule Weekend is smut because that's all I've been brave enough to write so far 😅 but to be clear it's not specifically a NSFW or a romantic event. If people want to write gen fic, or explore platonic relationships between Ed, Jack, Anne, and Mary, or how they're rivals, that's welcome and encouraged!
For me the thing that's really exciting to me about this event is the opportunity to explore Ed's past without centering certain other characters, which tends to happen a lot. This is great news! I love Ed! I want to think about Ed at every age!
So if all you've been seeing about this event is about how they wouldn't be in a romantic or sexual relationship... okay! They don't have to be! You can explore how Ed and Anne and Mary met, or what Mary thinks about Jack, or do an Ed POV of Fun and Games where he reflects on what he does and doesn't have in common with Anne and Mary anymore.
The characters included here make this event fundamentally about Ed (to me). He didn't arrive in episode 3 a fully formed character. He lived a life to get there, and that life shaped him.
When someone in fandom claims to be open to conversation from people who disagree with her and then makes a post about how said fandom is being aphobic by calling her out for her shitty behavior and then you respond because you’re ace and you don’t appreciate her making your identity an excuse for her shitty behavior/pretending she’s at all defending a-spec people and then she immediately blocks you
It is painfully obvious what y’all mean when you call something “puritanical” and it’s got fuck-all to do with puritans or real concern for queer discourse.
It’s also abundantly clear that this fandom’s concept of queerness is based in prizing queer sex over love rather than granting them equal value or embracing personal autonomy and choice in expressions of sexuality. If people - both real people and characters - don’t hit certain queer sex markers, then they are not “true queers.” They are not truly a part of the community.
It’s antithetical to queer liberation, it’s exclusionary, and it’s called gatekeeping.
No. You don’t get to act like your fixation on Ed and Stede being hypermonogamous and being disgusted by them being paired with anyone else or having prior relationships is in defense of a-spec people. If them being shipped with other people is something that bothers you, that’s your issue to deal with, whether that’s by blocking or ignoring or whatever.
You’re being called “puritanical” because of your insistence that Ed and Stede have this magical pure love that transcends any other form and that no one else can or should be added into the equation. If that’s how you want to enjoy them, that’s fine! But time and time again you’ve called any kind of polycule involving Ed and Stede, or any reference to the fact that Ed in particular has clearly had enjoyable sex (really? Edward “one of my three reasons for living is orgasms” Teach???) prior to Stede as “hateful” or “cruel” or that people who enjoy reading that somehow aren’t actually fans of the show, and that’s just wrong.
Again, if that’s the relationship dynamic you prefer, that’s fine! Good, great! But just because you in particular find it distasteful doesn’t mean that it’s hateful or cruel to post about or enjoy mixing some other people in there. It doesn’t make their love any less important or impactful to acknowledge or explore or play with them having meaningful prior relationships or polyamory. That is such a small portion of the content that’s out there for ofmd anyway. I promise you that there is plenty of monogamous gb out there for you to enjoy.
Read what you like, ignore the rest of it, and if you can’t ignore whatever slips past your blocks, then that’s something that you need to work on with yourself, because if seeing people talking about Ed and Stede engaging in sexual activities with other people is truly that distressing to you, there’s something else going on there that’s your responsibility to deal with.
But do not. Do not. Pretend to be acting on behalf of a-spec people. Especially when you’re completely excluding aromantic people with your implication that it’s wrong to prioritize queer sex over queer love or that sex and love are intrinsically tied together (which btw is not just arophobic but also acephobic) and that its impossible to fathom that someone could ever have meaningful sex without love. There are so many ways to be queer and express it and yeah this fandom is intensely horny but that doesn’t need to take away from the way people celebrate Ed and Stede’s love.
Feel your own feelings, have your own opinions and preferences, but don’t ascribe morality to people who have other opinions, and speaking as an ace person, do not use aphobia as your excuse.
i was thinking about how ofmd and good omens are similar and then i remembered what happened with ed after stede left. he killed/attempted to kill his friends and himself and eventually did die.
crowley could do this. he probably wouldn't. but yk the attempt to kill himself bit? possible...
He didn’t kill anyone and he didn’t die, tho. And it was not a response to Stede leaving but to being violently bullied and abused and trapped in a persona he hated.
he did try to kill ppl and himself (and like a lot of innocent ppl ig but they're irrelevant) w like sailing into the storm and shooting izzy. he kind of died when he went to the gravy basket but he came back. imo it was a response to being trapped in the persona but he was staying in the persona bc stede left? idk
You’re actually just saying things that are either untrue or inaccurate, and you’re making Ed out to be something he is not. He stayed in the persona explicitly because IZZY THREATENED HIM WITH DEATH IF HE DID NOT.
It’s interesting because Ed’s “murderous nature” is a lie told by 1) Izzy, and 2) the British Empire, and you’re effectively parroting racist propaganda rather than paying attention to what happens on the screen.
Stede didn’t cause Ed’s spiral. Ed does not directly kill ANYONE ON SCREEN, nor is it implied that he does (except by his wanted posters, which, again: racist propaganda). That’s kinda the point of that element of his character. Ed is suicidal and is desperately trying to get his crew to kill him to save themselves. Ed famously does not kill Izzy - he shoots him in the leg. Ed famously does not even die; he literally has to choose between life and death and he chooses life.
I was going to stay out, but I feel the need to back up:
OP, you danced around Izzy's culpability in the story in order to pin things on Stede. Let's be clear: Stede is not responsible in any way for Ed's spiral: people are allowed to leave relationships, and it is not someone's responsibility to stay in a relationship just to not be "responsible" for their (ex-)partner's reaction. In OFMD, also, we can see Ed's actual reaction after Stede left: he sulks, cries, and eats marmalade, and after a few days, he finds support of the crew and starts coming out of it. That's what Stede "did", and Ed had a perfectly normal reaction to the breakup. He was NOT stuck in that persona because Stede left. Let's stop that nonsense. Even though Izzy tried to say "we did this to him!!!", that doesn't make it true. Stede has empathy and concern for his boyfriend, but that doesn't make Stede "responsible."
The show is not subtle on why Ed went into a spiral. In his first episode, before he met (or rather, got to know or get attached to Stede), he said directly that he was a ghost and was "treading water waiting to drown", and he was blithe when talking about his death. Oluwande in the pilot told us directly that most pirates were in that life because they had to be, and Ed reenforced it with his introduction. The life was killing him, and he couldn't take it anymore.
Again, do not pin everything on Stede. Ed was passively suicidal when he met Stede, but in getting to meet Stede, a relationship with Stede isn't the only thing he gained! He gained a community! A community that was helping him when Stede left! If you watch the "namby pamby" scene again and toss the disgusting "fucking hot!" goggles, you'll see how Ed covers himself up again, and you'll also notice how the scene ends: he feels like he's lost that community (or never had it!) as he was just told he's only good enough for the performance he gives people and the crew is calling him to deck to sing again.
Fuck, Izzy, really. Why weren't you delighted when Ed shot him? It was a culmination of S1 Izzy's behavior and an example of what happens when an abuser can't be gotten to back off by using words. Do you sob and rend your clothing over Nigel falling on the sword in the pilot, too? Nigel actually died!
And again, where are you putting responsibility on Izzy for any of this? You play into the racist stereotypes that Ed MUST be violent, or you play into the white LI stereotypes that they "made" the violent savage act a certain way. The show itself is very clear: Ed states directly he is trapped in the pirate life and wants out and doesn't even know what retirements is -> he starts seeing life as something else besides a relentless and crushing grind to the grave -> he takes a stumble when Stede leaves -> he's getting better -> Izzy tells him he's better off dead and he'll fucking kill him if he doesn't go back to using the persona that was killing him -> Ed thinks he's lost his community -> Ed resumes his spiral. Why no blame for Izzy? Why are you trying to only represent Izzy as a "victim" of Ed's "violence"?
I think the fandom (and some people who worked on the show) forget that racial identities are a huge part of Ed's character. The wanted posters are heavily racialized, the legends are racialized, the "ohhh he's so violent1!!!1" insistence is heavily racialized, his interactions with people outside of the pirates (excepting Izzy) are heavily racialized, his reputation (that Izzy wants to enforce!) is heavily racialized. I wish Jenkins and company had used different names for these fictional characters because Ed is not analogous to the real life Blackbeard, and real life Blackbeard being white says nothing about the show's turn of their Ed being an indigenous man in a show with a lot to stay about colonizers. Reducing Ed down to "oh, he's so violent!" is not cute.
Good Omens and OFMD really don't have anything in common besides being queer. In looking at characters in particular, David Tennant's character is a saniized self insert of Neil Gaiman, and bro, no, that is not comparable to Ed.
there's been a bit of a whisper network around how celluloidbroomcloset and iamadequate1 harass people in the ofmd fandom, and I find whisper networks tedious so I'm reblogging this post as a great example of that harassment.
celluloidbroomcloset and iamadequate1 have taken it upon themselves to police every single thought someone is allowed to have about ofmd, and they do this by searching the tag for posts with like 2 notes, projecting the most negative interpretation possible onto that post, and then drowning the op in a sea of bad faith analysis until they delete. it's an insane overreaction and it's why a lot of people who used to be really active on ofmd tumblr have left.
celluloidbroomcloset and iamadequate1 claim to be fighting racism in fandom, and it's possible they really think they are, but mostly they're just addicted to the sound of their own voices and because of that they are NOT helping.
Not to "gang up" or "bully" or whatever other term is going to be thrown my way for speaking out, but it really all does need to be said. Even when trying to give this thing a wide berth, it still leeches into all the different corners of the fandom here on tumblr. Whether you mute, or block, or simply avoid, it's something of a shadow hanging around the entirety of the space.
And when numerous people, new and old, have vocalized wanting to leave tumblr because of this level of incessance, what can be done other than pointing out the harassment? And when trying to discuss this sort of thing in any kind of capacity is met with vitriol and claims of "bullying/policing/ostracizing/BNFs ganging up," what can be done other than vocalizing on a direct example?
Speaking of which, what exactly is the definition of "policing?" Because, whenever this sort of fandom etiquette (or lack thereof) is brought up, it's immediately disregarded as "policing." But genuinely, how is that considered policing, and not this *gestures broadly to what was being said before Nat chimed in and every simple example before it.* How is going onto a completely innocuous post and starting an argument in an attempt to make them fall inline with your own opinion not "policing?" How is bashing against any sort of OFMD opinion that doesn't fall exactly inline with your own not "policing?" How is going after any post that's even remotely related to Izzy in attempt to start arguments and shut opinions you disagree with down not "policing?"
(Also, for the record, there's a huge difference between having important discussions in regard to fandom racism, and voicing your own intense, personal dislike of a particular character/actor/etc under the guise of discussing fandom racism)
It is just constant, and whether you want to call it policing or not, it is having a negative effect on others. Dare I say, the atmosphere on this ship is fucked.
And yes, call me hypocritical, because I am aware that people are allowed to say whatever they want on their blogs. But like:
Emphasis on "say whatever they want on THEIR blogs" here
It's really just basic fandom etiquette to leave the people you disagree with alone. And to pass by posts/art/fics/etc you dislike and focus on what you do like!
I of course can't tell people what to do, but if it's causing this much of an upset, it's really something to consider.
stede gave up his wealth at the end of s1 but s2 has this quiet motif of him repeating that decision over and over and over again.
wanting to earn a big ship to impress ed then forgetting about that once he realizes ed just needs him as fast as possible. getting the cursed suit and giving it up. getting his cool unique hero sword and then losing it without looking back.
and then there's all these little bits we know from the cut material that seem to gesture at this theme too. the fact that the earring was meant to be a bigger deal & then he was supposed to lose it by the end like the sword. the motif of slowly patching up the cabin that gets so much detail in bts set design photos but is barely visible at all in what aired. the 2x06 makeover plot too, which obviously would have been an arc about stede wrongly thinking he needs THINGS to impress ed and ultimately realizing he doesn't need that at all because ed thinks being stede bonnet is already the most impressive feat imaginable. and then there was super clearly meant to be a bigger arc about ricky as a foil for stede that was almost entirely lost to cuts, and one of the only pieces left seems to be about different attitudes toward wealth, ricky trying to appeal to stede on the basis of class solidarity - you and me, we know what indigo's worth - and completely failing because stede never related to his wealth or his class the way ricky apparently does.
idk there's just enough left to see the outlines of some kind of arc stede was meant to have about wealth, and attachment, and learning to get his self esteem from who he is instead of what he has or what he's done. but there's just not QUITE enough left to see the full shape of it or how it was meant to resolve.
all the claims that izzy was the main character of s2 are extremely funny given that you could entirely delete izzy from the plot of the season without the story changing in any way. listen i genuinely liked what he had going on at least in the first half of the season, it was fun, but he literally does not make any choices that have any effect on the plot or on any other character.
here is my honest best effort to come up with places where he could possibly be described as actually playing a role in the plot that has any effect on anything else:
poking ed enough to push him over the line from "passively self-destructive drug-abusing workaholic terrible boss" to "actively suicidal danger to everyone around him." i'm pretty unsure about this one though because we know some ned lowe stuff was cut from the first couple episodes, and i suspect the actual tipping point is supposed to be that he's broken the record and no longer has it as a distraction. i'm sure shooting izzy did not HELP his mental health though; you could read it as the inciting incident. on the other hand i feel like most of the people arguing that izzy played the most crucial role in the season don't mean it in the sense that izzy kicked off the plot by actively making everything much much worse right at the start.
firing the shot that started the mutiny. this IS an important moment, but it really doesn't feel like something that wouldn't have happened if izzy hadn't been there: ed very obviously WANTS the crew to take action and stop him and is stalling and stalling and doing everything he can to give them an opening, and jim is visibly trying to psych themself up to act by the time izzy comes out of the hold. so this is a significant plot-critical action izzy takes, but it's hard to imagine the situation wouldn't have played out exactly the same if izzy hadn't been there.
bringing the crew together in 2x04. this is the most valid one: this is actually his most load-bearing accomplishment in the season. it's the one and only place where, if you wrote izzy out of the season while trying to change as little else as possible, you'd have to come up with a completely different plot beat to go here in order to be the thing that reconciles the two crews. but the funny thing about this is that it is completely passive on izzy's part. it's not a choice he makes or an action he takes. he accomplishes it by being so conspicuously pathetic that feeling sorry for him distracts everyone else from feeling sorry for themselves long enough to collaborate on a group project.
1x05 is weird here because that one episode has multiple points where izzy does stuff that like...ALMOST affect the plot? for instance it's tempting to count "training stede to do pirate stuff," but that doesn't actually end up being plot-critical since stede never actually uses his sword skills to DO anything in particular that ends up being important, they just allow him to briefly participate in a fight against some english soldiers for long enough to feel cool, and the fight wasn't even necessary for any plot reason, it's just backdrop to make the beach reunion dramatic. (plus if izzy weren't there i imagine you'd have handled it with a montage of different crew members each teaching stede their area of expertise which would actually be rad. i think archie should have taught stede how to wrestle a python for no reason.) similarly, the scene where izzy gives advice to lucius feels like it SHOULD count, but the advice didn't seem to actually get through to lucius at all; what made lucius realize he needed to move forward was his conversations with pete and the fact that pushing ed off the ship failed to make him feel better. the izzy-lucius conversation is there to show that izzy has let go of resentment and that lucius very much haven't, not to have izzy's counsel actually persuade lucius. (it doesn't even do anything to repair lucius' relationship with izzy himself! lucius actually seems to like izzy less than he did in s1.) i...guess izzy helped convince stede to give up the cursed suit?...but that seems pretty weak in terms of contributions to the overall season plot AND it's hard to imagine stede wouldn't have ended up coming to the same conclusion anyway with most of the crew already pushing him in that direction. ultimately you could still remove izzy from the episode without really changing anything except MAYBE some sort of gesture at somebody else training stede and even that's pretty handwavey.
i'm not saying this to be like "see, izzy's not important at all," i'm just saying the claims that he's the character who does the most to drive the plot, or really who does pretty much ANYTHING to drive the overall plot of the season, are total nonsense. but also it's something worth noticing about how the season's constructed, because it's honestly weird that he has so much focus and screentime while having so little actual effect on the plot!
like, jim gets less screentime in s2 than izzy did and less than most of us expected. but jim's arc still doesn't feel quite as disconnected as izzy's, because you can still see traces of the cut polycule plot - we all talked about it as the season was airing even though we weren't sure why it was like that at the time - and if that were there it WOULD intersect significantly with the main plot because it ties in heavily with zheng's choices, and zheng IS one of the characters actively driving the main plot of the season as it stands.
could izzy have missing material like jim? it's hard to imagine where you'd put MORE izzy content, other than the stuff we know about, the cut scenes with ed in 2x01 and 2x07 (which we know were brief and had no real effect on anything they hadn't already said to each other in other scenes, that's why they cut it) and the izzy-wee john plot in 2x06 which clearly would have been more about the crew's effect on izzy than izzy acting to affect anything else. i've said stede's big plan to escape the navy in mermen was obviously supposed to be more complicated than we saw, so maybe stede being competent with a sword would have actually mattered, or maybe izzy himself did something different in the original plan, i guess that could explain why ricky needed to not be disarmed - but that's very speculative.
the one place where it pretty clearly looks like izzy material was cut that we haven't been told about is his conversation with stede in man on fire, that was definitely supposed to be longer. and it feels like you could fit a beat in there where izzy says something to give stede insight into his temporary breakup with ed. the only thing that would really make sense for that something to be, imo, is if it were about how ed doesn't need stede to be the manly badass pirate from his 1x01 dream, he just needs stede to be stede - actually if izzy said that it would be sort of nice symmetry paying off his role in that dream. BUT whatever izzy said it couldn't possibly be anything that really got through to stede, because stede has to still get into his big dumb fight with zheng almost immediately after. so it's hard to see how that would really end up driving even the romance plot either.
it's very strange that izzy's arc gets so much screentime and yet is so completely disconnected from everything else! it almost feels like what you'd expect if they'd done all the storybreaking for the central ed/stede arc, the "action" plot about ricky, zheng, etc AND the garlic soup arc and only then tried to fit in an arc for izzy afterward. but that would be a bizarre way to approach things, surely "what do we do with izzy" was one of the most obvious questions about how to approach the season so they must have considered it very early. and it's not a case where you can see traces of a different izzy arc they started writing early on and then pivoted away from. maybe there was some disagreement within the writers' room on how to handle izzy and they took a while to settle on a plan? idk. it's very weird.
I’ve done some more thinking on the topic of Ed originally being tossed overboard after the mutiny and how it doesn’t make sense that the crew would have kept the body onboard board prompted by @asneakyfox here (but didn’t want to hijack that since what I’m going to say isn’t the point of the original post).
I think it does make sense that the crew would have kept Ed’s body onboard. Tossing him over is definitely the obvious and clearest answer in terms of a crew having just mutinied. But I think if we also take into consideration how much they do love Ed, how long it takes them to mutiny, the way they’re clearly haunted by the mutiny (scrubbing at the boards of the ship, talking about how they can still see blood; they’re pirates, they do murder all the time so that’s not what’s bothering them; it’s that they did it to someone they love), and that it’s clearly a moment of high emotion, fear, and exhaustion that cause the crew to finally snap, once the deed is done and the adrenaline starts leaving their system and I think it’s totally plausible that there would be this moment of “Holy fuck what did we just do?? What the fuck do we do now???”
This wasn’t a planned mutiny that was well thought out, it was an act of desperation with no plan for what happens after. In a planned mutiny it’s a no brainer to toss the captain overboard (like their attempted mutiny on Izzy). But when you’ve just engaged in the murder of someone you love, someone who’s clearly hurting very badly, in order to protect yourselves I don’t think it’s as simple as tossing him over. I think they probably had a lot of mixed feelings over what they did and while in 2x5 they don’t necessarily want him around on the ship, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about him. It’s completely feasible to me that after they got everything out of their systems (we know from fang it wasn’t a quick thing, there was a lot of taking their frustrations out on Ed’s limp body 🥲) they would be conflicted with what to do with the body of someone they care about but who was hurting and in return hurt them.
If you think about it from that point of view, the idea of the crew having a discussion about what to do with the body and landing on the idea of keeping him on board, but out of sight. That way, they can maybe revisit what to do with it later as well as temper their guilt with “well, we may have beat him to death but at least we didn’t toss him overboard like he was trash”.
And as for “how did no one notice he was still alive?” 🤷♀️ How did Stede survive multiple severe gut wounds while Jim’s dad takes one little knife to the stomach and immediately dies? How did Jim get back to the ship at the end of s1? How did Buttons literally turn into a bird?? Honestly who cares? Something something magical realism. If it bothers you that much that it ruins the story for you, then just use Princess Bride rules. Ed’s mostly dead, hanging on for true love.
Anyway I just love The Innkeeper and the show was robbed by not even being nominated for an Emmy for that episode.
I mean, for a long time it was the practice to bury bodies with a pipe to the surface just in case they'd got it wrong. And, yes, life and death in OFMD are determined by vibe, plot needs, and love.
Very Princess Bride.
The Gravy Basket doesn't come for everyone, you know. But if you are lucky, you get a chance to figure out what really matters to you -- and it might be a great-looking and sparkly merperson, if you are super lucky and good.
P.S. I think either way -- thrown overboard or kept below, the reunion would have been lovely. But the lanternlight as Stede descends those steps, the couple inches of water he walks through, it's all -- wow. And removing the shroud? Necessary. So, I'm glad it happened this way.
Right? Being accidentally buried alive is rooted in things that have actually happened. And, yes, with dozens of deaths on the show, the Gravy Basket was a unique experience. (And, I agree with the original post in that NOT immediately throwing off the body of someone you care about is extremely plausible.)
With the overboard-vs-kept discussion, none of us have any idea when/why things were changed or what was actually affected in the scripts, but what we ended up with was perfect. The visuals and parallels of the dream-vs-reality are beautiful: the blue of both the water and the hold, Stede bringing the light in both, the shroud removal triggering Ed to start fighting, Stede's desperation, and Ed's love montage.
I have seen some meta before on the barefoot/shoe symbolism in the episode. I don't know how purposeful it is or how accurate it is, but I personally like that Ed is barefoot (dead) at the start of the episode, Ed puts on one shoe (half alive) at the moment Stede starts to be brought to him, and the shot of Stede's shoes as he reaches Ed (bringing life). It doesn't hurt anything to like it, so I like it.
All of the above. And sailors are a superstitious bunch. Are they really going to show the gods of the sea they murdered Blackbeard in cold blood (because he was unarmed and completely helpless at the end, they could’ve just tied him up)? They hide what they’ve done like scared children or naughty puppies. They don’t have the stomach to throw him overboard once their blood is no longer up. And also, it just makes a better story. Stede finding Ed washed up on the beach rather than in the hold with all of the imagery mentioned above… I know which I prefer.
Honestly, it’s not just the imagery of Stede in the hold (though that is a strong argument in favor of Ed not getting tossed over); the entirety of episode 2x3 — by far the best episode in the season imo — hinges on finding Ed’s body at the midpoint.
First in terms of the Zheng plot where she’s going to execute Ed’s crew for mutinying. It’s pretty clear in the first half that Zheng is highly motivated not to follow through with the executions. Both because she wants to keep Olu happy, and because tactically the best move for her here where she has Stede, Stede’s surprisingly loyal crew, and Stede’s battered but repairable ship is to gift Stede back his ship and crew on the condition that he joins her fleet, something he’s probably not going to be too keen on if she kills half his crew first. But as long as there’s the plausible deniability of oh, Blackbeard just retired, maybe he was volun-told to do it, but mutiny-adjacent at worst, she can be feeling kind of merciful today and agree to let them go. And then Auntie finds Ed’s body and it becomes undeniably mutiny, so Zheng locks them all up to be executed. Which is in turn what necessatates Stede planning his jailbreak and escape.
Then in Ed’s plotline we see it start with him seemingly washed up on the beach from which we (ultimately incorrectly) infer that he was probably tossed overboard after the mutiny we saw at the end of 2x2. It’s a little unlikely that he’d wash up on the same beach that his former captain is living on, but that’s not an unusual sort of coincidence for OFMD, so the audience probably isn’t going to question it (I didn’t at least). It’s only during the inn scene that things start to go a little weird, then really weird until Ed’s screaming what the fuck is going on and cut to Ed’s body. And that hits. It’s a very stark and sudden answer to Ed’s question, one you cannot replicate without his body being on board.
And finally Stede’s side of things. Like I already said, at the beginning of the episode the audience is led to assume that Ed is alive washed up on a beach somewhere, and Stede is given roughly the same impression. Izzy downplays the violence that was involved in getting Ed into that situation, but broadly we the audience and Stede are on the same page here. So we are also on the same page of absolute shock when Ed’s body is revealed. We, Stede, and Ed all find out that Ed is (mostly) dead at the same time by the sudden shocking reveal of Ed’s body.
And then the whole back half of the episode for Stede is about his grief. The way he silently rebuffs both Izzy’s goading and his attempt to apologize, the way he saves his crew, in spite of his grief and the certain knowledge that they killed the man he loves. And of course, the moment when he comes down the stairs into the hold and sits at Ed’s side, ready to let himself breakdown. If Ed’s body hadn’t been there, then Stede wouldn’t have been grieving. He would have held on to the hope that maybe Ed survived and was somewhere waiting to be rescued. I’m not saying an episode about grief is inherently better than one about relentless optimism, but it’s not a trade I’d be willing to make.
I’ve done some more thinking on the topic of Ed originally being tossed overboard after the mutiny and how it doesn’t make sense that the crew would have kept the body onboard board prompted by @asneakyfox here (but didn’t want to hijack that since what I’m going to say isn’t the point of the original post).
I think it does make sense that the crew would have kept Ed’s body onboard. Tossing him over is definitely the obvious and clearest answer in terms of a crew having just mutinied. But I think if we also take into consideration how much they do love Ed, how long it takes them to mutiny, the way they’re clearly haunted by the mutiny (scrubbing at the boards of the ship, talking about how they can still see blood; they’re pirates, they do murder all the time so that’s not what’s bothering them; it’s that they did it to someone they love), and that it’s clearly a moment of high emotion, fear, and exhaustion that cause the crew to finally snap, once the deed is done and the adrenaline starts leaving their system and I think it’s totally plausible that there would be this moment of “Holy fuck what did we just do?? What the fuck do we do now???”
This wasn’t a planned mutiny that was well thought out, it was an act of desperation with no plan for what happens after. In a planned mutiny it’s a no brainer to toss the captain overboard (like their attempted mutiny on Izzy). But when you’ve just engaged in the murder of someone you love, someone who’s clearly hurting very badly, in order to protect yourselves I don’t think it’s as simple as tossing him over. I think they probably had a lot of mixed feelings over what they did and while in 2x5 they don’t necessarily want him around on the ship, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about him. It’s completely feasible to me that after they got everything out of their systems (we know from fang it wasn’t a quick thing, there was a lot of taking their frustrations out on Ed’s limp body 🥲) they would be conflicted with what to do with the body of someone they care about but who was hurting and in return hurt them.
If you think about it from that point of view, the idea of the crew having a discussion about what to do with the body and landing on the idea of keeping him on board, but out of sight. That way, they can maybe revisit what to do with it later as well as temper their guilt with “well, we may have beat him to death but at least we didn’t toss him overboard like he was trash”.
And as for “how did no one notice he was still alive?” 🤷♀️ How did Stede survive multiple severe gut wounds while Jim’s dad takes one little knife to the stomach and immediately dies? How did Jim get back to the ship at the end of s1? How did Buttons literally turn into a bird?? Honestly who cares? Something something magical realism. If it bothers you that much that it ruins the story for you, then just use Princess Bride rules. Ed’s mostly dead, hanging on for true love.
Anyway I just love The Innkeeper and the show was robbed by not even being nominated for an Emmy for that episode.
I’ve debated making this post, because I don’t want to make what Atticus has done about me. The hurt and damage he has caused goes much further than this, particularly to POC members of our fandom community. However, I would like to explain my side of the story as it relates to his plagiarism.
In April last year, I published my story ‘Held in your hand’. I wrote it quickly, I was pleased with it, and it got a positive response. A big win for me. A few days later, it was brought to my attention that A had published a very similar story, with lightly rewritten passages and phrasing that were very close to mine.
Obviously, I was upset. I felt betrayed, by someone I had considered to be a friend. I was also informed that he had done similar to other writers, and had a reputation for rewording tumblr posts, etc. I was advised to block him, so I did. A short time later, A posted about how blindsided he was to be blocked, how upset he was and how puzzled. I decided to talk to him privately and explain what had happened.
Unfortunately, this was an opportunity to pull the wool over my eyes, and play on my emotions. He swore blind that it was a mistake, that he had no intentions of copying my work. He offered to take his work down, to do rewrites, whatever it took to make it right. He apologised in a way that I found genuine, and I decided to accept his apology. I unblocked him, and we went back to having friendly interactions, although I kept more of a distance after that, particularly from his writing.
I know that others have disagreed with my actions, that other people have wanted to do a public call out about his plagiarism in the past. I disagreed with that, and with the information I had at the time, I stand by my position. I don’t think I’m an idiot, or desperate for approval or popularity. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to be kind. None of us saw the race faking, or the fake brain tumour, coming.
I’m sorry to people who feel like they should have been told about the plagiarism, but I honestly didn’t think he was capable of this level of deception and betrayal. I hope this doesn’t stop anyone from wanting to participate in this fandom.
Sending love to everyone who is hurting right now <3
This lovely letter is for Ally @dimplyowl - one of my favorite people in this fandom, a good friend, a haver of great takes, and an incredible fic writer who deserves more love. Go check out her ao3 if you haven't!
on my mind today is ed telling stede he was "thinking of packing it all in" when they first met. in light of the conversations about retirement he has with stede and izzy later on in the episode. like had he actually never heard of retirement when he said that. not feeling great about the implications behind "packing it in" here
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