just fucks me up to see how the show plays with the unreliable and putty like nature of memory with the single - and I think defining moment - of how both Ed and Izzy view the leg shooting incident.
What we know: Izzy tells him he loves him, Ed hurls a little, then Izzy tries to "talk it through as a crew", last time Ed used that phrase he threatened to kill him - Ed feels baited and cornered. Hello leg heaven.
What Izzy remembers: I don't think he was lying when he tells Stede that Ed took his leg because he told him he loved him. It's why he scoffs when Ed apologises because while the words were fucking hard for him to say, having Ed treat them as a sorry incident between them makes him feel utterly worthless. He has completely and in every way edited the situation in his mind so that it's easier for him to deal with. First it was "because I dared to mention your fucking name" and now it's become "because I told him I loved him". And to add insult to injury, the second Stede walks back into his life, Ed sways in the moonlight for him without even hearing the actual words. Without needing to. He just knows how Stede feels. Izzy doesn't realise Ed didn't hate the words themselves, he just didn't want to hear them from him.
What Ed remembers: Ed meanwhile is more than anything - embarrassed. Both for Izzy when it happens and, later, for himself when he shoots the leg. It's a regrettable incident to him, another one for the guilt room, which is why he aplogises to Izzy. See, like the talent show, Ed doesn't remember this entire fucking thing because I'm so fully sure he genuinely thought the love confession was part of Izzy baiting him into violence!! It's why he thinks he loved Izzy best he knew how (and never loved Izzy as a result).
and this fucking show takes this moment and flips it right on its head when Izzy comes to Stede and tells him this malleable truth expecting sympathy. What he ends up doing is clarifying the situation for Stede. Stede now understands why leg heaven has one extra room booked - because Stede knows that Izzy telling Ed he loves him was the biggest violence bait of it all and there was no world in which the leg would have stayed simply because Stede didn't. Because Ed needed to hear that from Stede and Stede wasn't there, and Ed did what he could to survive. And last night was a mistake, mistake, mistake.
Augha ahahaaha just got to episode 25 of season 2 and taylor just suggested that anime was the cure all to loneliness haha not going to psychoanalyze THAT