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@lightbluetown
anyway headcanon that jim suggested the name and nobody had the heart to tell them abt the time the british made izzy captain and wee john made fun of the name izzy picked so izzy threatened to withhold his rations and then everyone unanimously agreed to kill izzy. also i think the crew would have a good laugh over renaming their ship after traveler’s diarrhea
Today, on the anniversary of OMFD (our mean fag's death), I'm thinking about Ed and Izzy and closure.
In s2e2, when Ed tells Frenchie that he's grateful for the opportunity to get closure with Izzy right before he sails the ship into the storm, I do not think he's lying or joking. From Ed's perspective, what has just happened is he's gone to the man who triggered the kraken spiral in the first place, without whom they would not be in this position, and said "I cannot do this anymore. I would rather die than be Blackbeard any longer, and you have already told me that I'm better off dead than being Ed. I'm asking you to finish what you started."
And Izzy laughs at him, mocks him for being scared, tells him he's not "cleaning up [Ed's] mess." It's shockingly cruel, even coming from Izzy. And when Ed leaves, he thinks he hears Izzy shoot himself. "I loved you, best I could - " Ed could never, ever satisy Izzy.
In the gravy basket, Ed remembers Izzy one time. He remembers Izzy laughing at him after Ed asks him to kill him. Izzy tells him he "has love" for him; Ed remembers him as proof that he's unlovable.
I don't think Ed was lying when he said he found that conversation with Izzy to be some kind of closure. I think it felt like proof to him that he was making the correct decision in choosing this method of suicide, that Ed is fundamentally broken and unlovable.
The actual closure, of course, comes when Izzy actually dies, and it refutes what Ed had so firmly believed was true at the start of the season.
Because Izzy, so far from calling Ed's extreme suicidal ideation "[Ed's] mess" and mocking him for being scared to do it himself, so far from talking about him like a wild dog, an insane animal that needed to be put down...Izzy finally takes some responsibility. He tells Ed that he was terrible to him for years, and was terrible to him knowingly, selfishly, fully aware that was deeply hurting Ed.
And that's the closure Ed needed from Izzy. There's no way, now, that he can think back to the kraken spiral and those awful dark months and be afraid it was all his fault or proof he's broken. Izzy got better throughout this season, but I do think that the only way this apology ever would've hit right if it was a deathbed confession, a literary trope that we know is always associated with honesty and closure and clarity. This closure allows Ed to finally, finally, just be himself, and set out for his new life with Stede knowing that he's a person, not a monster, and he's going to be okay.
one of the things that rlly gets me abt the whole izzy obsession is that he’s just such a swagless character. not even in like an earnest and endearing way like his aesthetic vibes are just boring and lame not bc he’s just kinda a plain guy but bc he’s just so committed to his role as an uncharismatic sidekick that he doesn’t change out of his work uniform even when the uniforms are supposed to be getting a badass upgrade. not even when he’s literally doing drag!! he has a goatee and wears his hair slicked back and the costume department literally gave him the rudy giuliani hair dye drip bc this guy’s vibe is so visually unimpressive and borderline repulsive. i have often praised how the characters in ofmd all have actual Character Designs in a way that a lot of live-action television targeted towards adults usually doesn’t and like, in terms of the wide variety of character designs izzy’s is one of the least appealing. i thought this the first second i saw him on screen and my opinion has not wavered. because nothing about this character’s costume changed.
See LITERALLY. Literally. He is literally the only character in the main cast who hasn't an earnest bone in his body, and beyond his purpose in the narrative as a character who externalizes Ed's issues wrt masculinity and gender performance, there's just so little to him that he only gets one Look
And I don't care if people like him, that's obviously fine, there's nothing wrong if he's the one you want to project onto or whatever. But I think the fanon version of him (where he's actually loyal and has a heart of gold etc.) is only so common precisely because he was never given much depth at all. By the end of the show, once he's grown a bit and is helping to reinforce the show's message that anyone, even the most vocal spokesman of toxic masculinity, can unlearn it...Izzy doesn't really have a personality at that point, beyond a sort of bland sweary abrasiveness. And he doesn't even look swagful while he does it
I know that not all Izzy fans are Canyon, but it does just…I find it wild that people watched this show full of diverse, hilarious characters, including two leads who are funny and heartbreaking and complex, and then latched on to the humorless, homophobic asshole who hates them all.
Also: there is zero indication, at least in the first season, that Izzy is queer. None. He’s the straight-coded villain in a queer Disney movie in upside-down land.
"You balance each other out."
'Rope swinging. Looks easy, but everyone fucks it up.'
I sometimes think about how Stede is often the recipient of violence, both psychological and physical—he’s mocked and berated, he’s stabbed, stoned, hung, grabbed, threatened, slapped, punched, burned, stood up before a firing squad. Where Ed is almost always the recipient of psychological and emotional violence, Stede’s body is often directly violated by “masculine” men. I feel like that also feeds into the times where they both resort to violence—Ed being psychologically and emotionally abused until he breaks, then told he is monstrous for doing so, Stede being physically violated and mocked for putting up with it, for in fact FAILING to fight back.
And did you ever notice when Stede fights back, he’s praised by the audience, but when Ed fights back he’s labeled “uncontrollably violent” and “abusive” by…certain people. Hm. Wonder why that is. Wonder why that could be. Wonder wHY CERTAIN PEOPLE MAKE THAT DISTINCTION. WHATS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO MEN THAT MAKES THE SAME ACTIONS TRIUMPHANT FOR ONE AND REPREHENSIBLE FOR THE OTHER?
This is absolutely true, but I do want to point out that shooting Izzy is objectively one of the sexiest things Ed has ever done. Like, just mind-blowingly hot.
I’ve also never laughed harder.
what if in ofmd everyone in the british navy was trans. what if ed’s abusive dad was neurodivergent. what if nigel badminton was physically disabled. what if king george was demisexual. what if we analyzed the characters in this show by giving them random traits and identities they don’t have in canon. what then.
stede truly rewired my brain for the better. every time I think I’m being too weird or unpalatable, I say to myself, “well that’s how stede found his people. by never toning it down.” and I’m like YEAH I SHOULD BE WORSE ACTUALLY 🫶
I’m still thinking about this btw
“Let this witty, moving, sometimes-beautiful, and sometimes-bloody adventure series restore your battle-weary heart.” Thanks for awarding OFMD a Greater Goodie award, which are given to stories that illustrate the best in humanity, Greater Good Science Center!
Our contributors award our annual "Greater Goodies" to the TV shows that can help you be your best self.
ed: god stede is too good for me. hes so good and he cares so much, hes so innocent and sweet and could do no wrong. i hope he doesnt realize how awful i am
stede writing his to do list in glitter pen: assault theft fraud DUI breaking and entering solicitation armed robbery shoplifting aggravated assault on a police officer and more
I BEG YOUR PARDON 👀👀👀🤡🤡🤡
You know, if I have to read another take or fic that treats Ed ordering that racist French captain skinned with the snail fork as proof of Ed's anger issues, or, somehow bizarrely commonly, has Stede talk down to him about it, I'm gonna lose it. Both Ed and Stede indirectly cause some pretty major violence in s1e5, but only Ed's seems to be proof of a violent nature. Strange.
And I'm honestly a bit tired of talking around this, because when you look at what some portions of this fandom can excuse and what they can't, it becomes very obvious how this is really just a racism problem. I mean, in this episode:
Ed responds to racist abuse by ordering the French captain killed. It's in the context of him having already given the captain a chance to back the fuck off ("what's that supposed to mean," said very calmly considering we all know what "your kind" means), has to visibly hype himself up to start yelling, and is responding to being called a donkey. It's vile and Ed deserves to be upset, not to mention he knows he can't just let that slide when senior crew members like Fang are right there watching. Ed is visibly upset and shaken by this whole situation and what he thinks it says about him as a person.
Stede, upon learning that the party guests were cruel to Ed (in a passive-aggressive but undoubtedly racist way), is angry on his behalf, and also wants to retaliate, just as Ed did earlier. It's sweet that he's defending Ed, but this is surely also personal for Stede, who felt mocked and belittled earlier and has had to deal with a lifetime of that. We see the results of Stede's playing the crowd here, with the boat burning in the background and the screams of people jumping out into the open sea, and Stede is also visibly pretty stoked about the whole thing.
There's no way around it, I think: we have been conditioned to think it's morally superior for someone to "turn the other cheek" and "be the bigger person" in the face of racist abuse, and Ed doesn't do that, so that's why this is still such a big issue for some people. When Ed gets upset again at the party, unlike earlier when Stede was put off by Ed ordering the captain skinned, Stede validates his feelings and is the one to respond, and that's the difference in reactions, I think. In the second case, Stede has validated Ed's anger and pain - Ed's feelings have gotten White Permission to exist.
OFMD does something really very unusual in the current media landscape, and that's how it treats racism in itself as violence. It doesn't expect characters to look away, turn the other cheek, or try to make amends with racists when they're cruel to them. And the only problem here wrt Ed is that some viewers of the show, bringing in the biases of the society we live in, will get uncomfortable when Ed acts in accordance with the show's philosophy - it doesn't matter that Stede is much more gleeful about being the one to respond in a similar situation, it matters that Ed is brown, and we therefore expect him to have to put up racist abuse. The show doesn't ask us to pass judgment on Ed in this episode, and I think that if you're automatically more inclined to believe Stede's actions more "reasonable" and "justified" than Ed's, you just might need to unpack that.
what was stede's relationship like with his mother?*
she was loving towards him and supported his softness & eccentricities
she was loving but didn't fully appreciate/understand him
she could have been more loving but was under the thumb of her husband
she was generally ambivalent/not very involved
she was frustrated by his softness & eccentricities
she was actively cruel towards him
secret 7th option
*she appears briefly in the wedding flashback having purchased them a gift (graves) in which she seems much kinder than his father but this was also a public interaction on a particular occasion which she could be happy about for a variety of reasons (e.g. finally having married him off) so could still arguably fit into a negative relationship dynamic if that's your flavour
You ever think how Izzy came prepared to buy Ed? Like, he sent Jack to get Ed off the Revenge, but he obviously had it set up to purchase Ed from the English well in advance, as well as having the crew and the Revenge turned over to his command (has Chauncey calling him "Captain Hands"). That's not something he did in a panic after Jack failed to get Ed away; that's something he had to prepare for early on in the negotiations with Chauncey.
Sell out to the English, murder Stede, purchase Ed.
