#Benjamin Hornigold

[saltpepperbeard]

"I actually thought about, uh, opening an inn."

[burningvelvet]

someone write a 50 page psychoanalytical essay about eleanor guthrie so i don't have to. about her rotating list of uncomfortably eroticized paternal figures & the chokehold they have on her & how she can never fully be close to any of them although she wants to (especially flint) & her unconscious repression of self & her unending need for approval and recognition etc etc etc and how its poetic that she died in the 2nd spanish raid of nassau when her mother died in the first and so she was literally disconnected from maternal influence by the invasion of violent men in more ways than one since she was pregnant when she died - & how she dies as a heroine saving the life of another woman when she couldnt save herself and her potential daugher - & how she dies in flints arms never getting to tell him all she feels or thinks but how they have a silent understanding & how flint has known her since she was an adolescent and saw her grow up and how she's one of the only people he ever smiles at or talks to with respect and how miranda told eleanor that "i feel like we're old friends . . . james talks about you all the time" and also about how they almost kissed when flint was drunk but then he kissed her on the forehead and left because he didn't want to jeopardize their existing dynamic and knew she had an unhealthy relationship with men as it was... and how...

[starlithumanity]

I'm having a fascinating time rewatching Our Flag Means Death with the knowledge that Ed sees Izzy as a "safe" mentor/family figure ("safe" because Izzy is Ed's subordinate aboard the ship, which creates a more balanced power dynamic) upon whom Ed projects his many unresolved daddy issues. That stated interpretation from David Jenkins does work, even in season one!

Most of the fandom conceptualized season one Izzy as a power-hungry subordinate to Ed and a "co-parent" to the crew (paralleled with the Stede/Mary marriage) who has an understated masochist lust for the Blackbeard legend. All of that is true too, because Ed and Izzy's relationship is incredibly complex and fucked-up. I know from personal experience that this kind of layered toxic relationship is completely possible, though it might seem contradictory on the surface.

In season one, Ed considering Izzy as a mentor/family explains more why Ed let his first mate be so insulting to and controlling of him and still kept wanting Izzy to stay beside him. It adds more meaning to how Ed veers super hard into the violent Blackbeard role after feeling cornered and threatened by Izzy at the end of the season. (This also has further weight for those of us with family members who have disapproved quite loudly of our queer relationships.)

There is a strong parallel that I noticed previously between young Ed's reaction to his father abusing his mother and season one Ed's reaction to Izzy dueling Stede. Stede is linked to Ed's mother through the red silk and through the fact that Stede and Ed's mother--and Lucius--are the only people we see treating Ed with compassion/softness in season one. It thus makes sense for Izzy to be mirroring Ed's father.

Then there's another parallel in how Ed responded to Izzy mentioning Stede in a mocking way ("pining for his boyfriend") by choking Izzy, like how Ed had once responded to his father threatening his mother by strangling his father. In this moment, Izzy touched Ed's face with an intimate kind of familiarity and said, "There he is." Ed clearly found this unnerving, which some people read as sexually harassment, but it makes just as much sense for it to be his daddy issues getting triggered.

(GIF Sources: captain-flint and divineandmajesticinone)

I think part of why this dynamic was unclear in season one is because the writers wanted us to see that, even though Izzy is a mentor figure who taught Ed certain skills, Ed is a grown man who is fully competent on his own. He had likely started building the Blackbeard legend by the time Izzy met him, he has a clever mind that's constantly coming up with new plans, and when Izzy himself was left as captain, Izzy proved to not have the necessary charisma and compassion to lead the crew. Ed is the star power; Izzy is the manager, so to speak.

However, Izzy overestimates his importance and often talks about himself like he's a martyr to the Blackbeard legend, working so hard to keep both Ed and the crew in line. He claims that he's been "clean[ing] up [Ed's] messes... my whole life," which feels like a very parental complaint to me.

Ed fuels this martyr complex some in season two by physically harming Izzy, but notably, Ed doesn't threaten this kind of harm to the rest of the crew (though he isn't very careful with them either) until he's in the suicidal spiral of driving the ship into a storm. Before that, Ed threatens Izzy specifically, both because Izzy threatened him and Stede in season one and because Ed's trying, in his own fucked-up way, to prove to Izzy that he's following Izzy's guidance and "being Blackbeard." The toe-cutting also has some metaphorical weight: Izzy demanded that Ed "cut off" the gentler pieces of himself to be Blackbeard, so Ed starts cutting off literal pieces of Izzy in return. When it becomes clear that this isn't satisfying Izzy either, that's when Ed really goes off the deep end. ("I loved you the best I could," but I never could be enough to fit your expectations.)

(GIF Source: livelovecaliforniadreams)

Meanwhile, we see Izzy starting to question things specifically in response to Ed saying that Izzy could be replaced as first mate. Izzy thought his place, as a mentor/family and self-professed "martyr", was more secure than that, and it challenges his whole identity.

Throughout season two, the mentor/family dynamic is further emphasized via the parallel between Izzy/Ed/Stede and Auntie/Zheng Yi Sao/Oluwande. Others have discussed this more, but there's so much meaning in the similar ways these characters carry themselves, in the tension of Auntie disapproving of Zheng Yi Sao's feelings for "soft" Oluwande, and in the way Oluwande finally teaches Auntie to soften herself some for Zheng Yi Sao.

(GIF Source: bizarrelittlemew)

Additionally, in episode five of season two, we see Stede turning to Izzy for mentorship, proclaiming that Ed himself had recommended Izzy as someone who "made him into the captain he is today." People have questioned that as being a false manipulation from Stede, but I think there's a good chance that it was true! (Ed probably said this to Stede sometime during season one, when the two of them got to know each other so well.) "Taught him everything he knows" is definitely a flattering exaggeration, but hey.

(GIF Source: ofmdaily)

Throughout this and other episodes, we see Izzy continuing to take on a mentor-like role with Stede and the crew (and eventually Ed) as he tries to recenter himself after the darkness of the first three episodes. It's clear that Izzy is most comfortable playing the gruff and politically incorrect old fighter who offers guidance, but now he's letting himself branch out more and connect to the crew in new gentler ways. He even metaphorically "gives his blessing" to Ed and Stede's first time having sex by providing the musical accompaniment, which is the perfect amount of weird for this show, haha.

(GIF Source: izzyfag)

Izzy's transformative arc in season two also involves a steady pattern of reversals, corrected new versions of his treatment of Ed in season one, as Izzy start coming to terms with the harm he did to Ed. Other people have discussed this in more detail, but I think the pace of this change is realistic to what you would see in such a situation. Ed's responses to this, too, are consistent with him seeing Izzy as a mentor/family.

(GIF Source: edwards-teach)

I should further note that Izzy and Benjamin Hornigold (another abusive father figure from Ed's past) are two characters mirrored by the fact that they call Ed "Eddie" in season two. I can imagine that being the nickname Ed used when he was younger, before growing out of it. Izzy seems to start feeling the echo of that memory of younger Ed when Ed comes to him scared, asking for Izzy to "fix [his] mess" by shooting Ed like Ed "dreamed" about.

(GIF Source: blairpfaff)

Right before Izzy's death, there's a scene where Ed is triggered super hard in his daddy issues by the fisherman "Pop-Pop." I think the writers wanted to remind us of the parental trauma Ed has been through before giving us some catharsis through Izzy's deathbed confession and apology. In that moment, Izzy takes full accountability for what he did, while Ed cries and says, "You're my only family." Izzy redirects him in a final bit of mentorly guidance, telling Ed that the crew is there to be his family if Ed will let himself be loved, truly, in the way Ed has often rejected and distanced himself from being loved.

(GIF Source: izzyfag)

Now, I do think Izzy's death was the right choice for this show. I like that DJenkins went with the classic mentor death trope, and he did a similar thing with Buttons, the other old-timer first mate! I agree likewise with those who have discussed Izzy's loss as being a necessary step for the narrative to move forward both from Ed's darker self/parental trauma and from the older age of piracy that Izzy represents. Izzy was always meant to be a dark reflection of and a narrative support/conflict for Ed, and this is the natural culmination of that. His complicated legacy will continue to be something Ed has to reckon with, however, although Ed is trying to compartmentalize that right now.

I very much hope to see, in season three (🤞🏻), how Ed continues to process his past, especially now that he's trying for a domestic life that will likely lead into marriage. Marriage, from what I've seen, often acts as a staging ground for whatever parental trauma you had growing up, because you look to your parental figures as an example of how to do "adult" things. This is going to be a huge conflict for both Ed and Stede, who has his own personal negative marriage experience. I suspect Izzy will continue to represent this problem in some form or another.

(GIF Sources: kiwistede and yenvengerberg)

[gntlbrd]

ed FREAKING OUT when being fed soup by hornigold really testifies to how horribly he must have been treated in that ship and it is just so sad

[googoogojob]

[jaskierx]

i need to rewatch to find all the parallels but they made it so clear that ed was deliberately trying to channel hornigold when he was trying to get the crew to turn on him

from the arbitrary punishments with terrible consequences (hornigold makes the cabin boy eat a live crab, ed tries to get archie and jim to fight to the death) to how hornigold calls ed 'old chum' after we've seen ed use this phrase for the first time when he's just given the gun to izzy

ed has had two father figures. one of them was so awful that ed killed him. the other was so awful that ed tries to emulate him when he wants to get killed.

[guthrie-rogers-place]

In the name of the governor of New Providence Island, the Honorable Woodes Rogers, "the time has come to bring a wayward child back into the fold," an island that rejected its parent empire, but that must long for the embrace of civilization once again. Be it proclaimed that any man on this island who will accept that embrace, who will renounce violence against the crown, who will renounce piracy, that man will be offered a full, complete, and unqualified pardon. No matter what you've done, no matter how irredeemable you believe it to be, your king and your governor wish to offer you a clean slate, a new beginning here in Nassau.

Bonus:

[gronnulv]

[sibmakesart]

Was thinking about @favouritefi s Hornigolds Izzy

And then i made myself sad

[disabledpirate]

Hornigold’s Boys:

[follows-the-bees]

Purgatory is endlessly fascinating in its layers and what they say about Ed's mindset.

We know the first half of the season has a soup theme; it symbolizes healing and it's significant which characters choose to eat soup and which ones don't.

When Ed wakes up on the beach, he doesn't know he's in purgatory, that his old captain is really a figment of his mind.

He immediately fights soup being fed to him. On the surface, this is due to his volatile relationship to Hornigold — who I'm gonna refer to as Hornighost in purgatory.

Hornigold represents the toxic side of piracy and Ed's trauma of abusive father-figures throughout his life. Ed doesn't trust that Hornigold hasn't messed with the soup, so he fights. Yet, he still gets soup.

In his mind, this is a different story. We know Ed was suicidal but can't do it himself, first trying to get Izzy to do it, and when that fails, trying to get the crew to do it.

Hornighost is the part of him that wants to heal, that doesn't want to die (which is why he can't commit the act himself), giving him soup. He's got a little life in him yet.

Then we get to the more metaphorical layer of everything. Ed fights his traumas when he's denying the soup, not letting that trauma feed him.

But as his time in purgatory adds up, the soup giving him strength, he starts to confront that trauma, talk to it. It's really his own therapy session with himself.

That trauma is a part of him, is him. And Ed starts to confront and talk to the figure that represents this trauma. He gets down to the root of it, how he "hates himself." But more importantly he talks about the things he likes in life: warmth, good food, orgasms. (All things we get to see later on in the show.)

His trauma tries to make a final decision for him, throwing the rock over the cliff. Because even when we talk and start to confront our trauma, that's only the beginning of the journey.

Ed goes through a lot of self reflection during his time in purgatory, fighting himself and not letting his trauma overtake him. Instead, choosing to live, to thrive. And in the end, he restarts that journey in the real world.

He gets hope from the love in his life that shines light on his inner self.

[saltpepperbeard]

something something hornigold telling ed he wants to be referred to as “just ben” ie dropping the legendary status that is his title because in ed’s subconscious he wants nothing more than to drop “the kraken” and “blackbeard” and be “just ed” something something

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

Season 2 OFMD: Replace Prince Ricky with Benjamin Hornigold

Hear me out.

S2Ep1: Introduce Hornigold in disguise to Stede. Make 'Ben' an old trusty sea dog who still knows a bit too much about Stede Bonnet. Have Ben compliment Stede in the same way Ricky did. -HAVE STEDE TRUST HIM- Ben being an old pirate who misses the life, the adventure, the brutality. Make Stede sympathise with him.

Make him wear a shitty disguise at Jackies until he's caught near the end of the episode (and gets away), because DUH. That's Benjamin fucking Hornigold, Jackie fucking hates him(we see her shoot at him as he runs). Maybe have Jackie tell Stede he's dangerous, only for Stede to reply 'that's just an old man' and brush off her concern.

NEXT WE SEE HIM:

S2Ep3: ED'S DREAM SEQUENCE

It's finally revealed to the audience through Ed's dreams that the old man they left behind is the infamous turncoat Hornigold. Change the line about abandoning Ed's body at a beach, to at a port town, and the 'Ed was mutinied' lie can be told like how it was in ep 3. But now we as the audience can catch hints that Ben isn't acting right. Ed still sees him as the brutal pirate and not the old man Stede met a few episodes ago.

THEN(replacing Ricky's speech on that British ship):

Hornigold discusses how brutal pirate life is to the British sailors under his command. Focus on how best to hunt them down. We can even have another sailor remind Hornigold that he's a pirate hunter due to Ben's signing of the act of grace.

Him and Zheng on Zheng's ship: Keep the scene the same. Auntie points out that Ben betrayed his pirate crew to go serve the English. Have both captains talk about how pointless this all is, but make it clear that he's willing to negociate. Have Ben roll his eyes at the British's gifts(clocks), but say it's all a formality and they can 'sell them off if she wants'. Knowing that she won't have the time to in the next 24 hours and that this will be her ships downfall.

The Zheng and Stede Fight: I hate that she gives this whole speech about defeating idiot men, only to get defeated by Ricky- an actual idiot. From this scene on she's less 'Pirate Queen/Captain' and more 'badass side chick that fits in with the crew'. BUT in this write, she lost to a pirate legend. Who sold his crew out for his own freedom. She lost because she was outmaneuvered, and she SHOULD have known better. (seriously though, why did Zheng trust Ricky, he was a british fucking officer, GOD I hate that shit)

NOW THE FUCKING PAY OFF:

Hornigold captures the crew post ep 7. We can keep Stede and Zheng getting away. BUT HORNIGOLD AND IZZY INTERACTING? Izzy siting up and defending his family from a person from his past????

Look, we know Ed has been a pirate for at least 20 years (he's known Fang for 20 years), so there's a very good chance Ed and Izzy were together on his ship.

Let Izzy give the speech about crew being family, about how you sacrifice everything for your crew. Spitting in the face of the piracy Izzy himself once lived his life by. Of this dog eats dog world.

Also: Izzy would have absolutely searched Benjamin fucking Hornigold for weapons. Now. We can keep Ben killing Izzy, maybe he runs up and grabs a sailor's gun, I don't like it. (Izzy didn't need to die for the story to work) But at least NOW Izzy died to a man whose haunted his every life's decision. A person he said he would never be, and slowly did become through years of trying to survive. It's not a good ending, but now it has a bit more meaning than Ricky getting a lucky shot he didn't earn.

Make Ed furious over Izzy's body, but show him visibly holding back from getting revenge. That throwing himself back in won't fix Izzy. So he fixes himself. This also pays off the consequences of signing the Act of Grace. Showing that this might just be the end of piracy as Ed knows it if his former bastard Captain was willing to turn coat.

This also means a BIT more for Stede, as his blind trust in Ben in episode 1 meant a dangerous pirate got away. Maybe in episode 1 Stede tells Ben about Ed. About how worried he is his 'friend' has gone off the deep end. Ben of course, actively hunting down Blackbeard and doing anything to get to his old prodigy. Have Stede regret that his 'plan to sell off Hornigold to the English' got Izzy killed. Have Stede learn to hold his cards closer for next season, to be slower to trust people. This would be a better arc than 'stede learns to be an excellent captain for his family and gives it all up in the end as soon as he can get his dick wet'.

It's still REALLY shallow, and I don't like it. This season should have had a better villain than trying to introduce the possibility of Zheng hunting them down, Ned Low, AND the British. But now, at least it fits better thematically for Izzy and Ed's arcs as growing past the traditional pirate life and Stede for learning to control his ego, showing him that he STILL has a lot to learn.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

notes of this poll made me curious:

[paleoleigh]

Interesting how Ed remembers the Knife Parade game as something fun and goofy that surely everyone would enjoy, not realizing his crew (Fang) were scared of it. How the only other time we see Ed "playing" with a friend is with Jack, where Whippies and Yardies and Coconut War all involve physical violence against your peers. I think it says a lot about how the culture of violence he came up in both at home and on Hornigold's ship remained part of the pirate culture his whole life. How he wants to play and have fun, but the only acceptable ways to do that include pain in his world. How even the Hornigold in his mind rejected the idea of a soft, gentle, normal game like Jeff the Innkeeper.

And then, that also says a lot about how much Stede playing along with the clothing switch and Blackbeard's Bar and Grill (and Delights and Fishing Equiptment) must have meant to him. To have someone just...instinctually get what you're doing and reflect that energy and yes, and you? No wonder boy fell so fucking hard.

[favouritefi]

When the captain invites you to his cabin