#I do not have access to a pirate ship replica so no maintop to yell from

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

This complaint also completely fails to listen to the actual claims about mental illness the show makes, and that's so puzzling because OFMD is very on the nose with what it says about mental health.

We are introduced in the very first episode to the things Stede implements on his ship to aid the crew's mental health: having healthy outlets for their emotions (rec room etc), being included in the running of the ship (agency over their lives), being paid regardless of performance (no fear of starving if they aren't at their best), "you could have shared it!" (being kind to each other), and of course the famous "talk it through as a crew" (support from people around you, not bottling up your negative emotions). We are continuously shown that these mental health improving measures work. They let Stede built a good relationship with his crew. They allow the crew members to grow as people and as a community. Stede gets over his initial guilt of killing Nigel Badminton through talking it through with the island tribe elder. Stede gets over his Chauncy trauma, the guilt of having left his family etc by talking to Mary and finding love and support with her. I could go on, because it's a very long list. The show's massage is "people do better and their mental health improves when they receive love and support from their peers". This is not difficult to understand! I think outside of the main romance plot, this is OFMD's central theme!

The statement "people's mental health improves when they receive love and support" comes with a natural, logical and obvious negative version: "people's mental health gets a lot worse if they do not receive love and if they do not have a support system they can rely on when they are struggling". Also this comes with various examples, for all of the crew, and especially for our two protagonists.

To say "Stede's dick love cured Ed's mental health issues" entirely ignores how this event fits into the overarching theme of "people strive when they have a support system and struggle when they don't ". Of course Ed got better quickly after Stede's return! There's finally someone who openly cares about him! There's someone who unconditionally loves him, even on his bad days! There's someone he can trust, someone he can talk to!

But, let's look at Ed's arc in its entirety (which is something the people making this claim seem entirely unable to do), and at important mental health events across both seasons.

Ed struggles with mental health issues already when we meet him. One of the first things out of Ed's mouth in the first episode he fully stars in is "You ever feel trapped? Like you're just threading water, waiting to drown?" Ed, as shown in this episode through several interactions with Stede and Izzy, is passively suicidal at worst, depressed and feeling stuck at best. In this episode, the focus of telling us about Ed's mental health is on how tired he is of his job that doesn't give him any challenge and joy anymore. In following episodes we learn about Ed's generational trauma of growing up poor and indigenous, we learn how he experiences racism and classism. We learn about his deepest, most formative childhood trauma: him killing his abusive dad to protect himself and his mother from his violence. We learn how this experience has shaped Ed's entire sense of self and of self-worth: he believes he is an unlovable monster and can never have any friends because of it. This belief founded in trauma is fundamental to Ed's later suicide attempt.

We are shown Ed's mental health improving during his time on the Revenge. He finds an equal and an instant friend in Stede, he tries new things, he enjoys himself. He opens himself up emotionally, not even only to Stede: Ivan and Fang notice that they have never seen Ed this open and available. The kind and supportive atmosphere Stede fosters on his ship also works on Ed.

(Tangent: it works on everybody. It also works on villains and antagonists: like the crew of Ned Low, or on Izzy eventually. That's part of Izzy's S2 arc: receiving support from the people around him even though he's done nothing in return allows him to become a better person.)

Back to Ed: Stede's abandoning him does not cause the mental health issues; they are already there from the start. The grief of the breakup worsens Ed's depression, and we see him going through peak depression and breakup moods and behaviours, like crying in a blanket fort, writing sad poetry and eating junk food. Ed's mental health improves when Lucius and later the entire crew offer him support, listen to his sad songs and include him in group activities ("A person's mental health improves when they have a support system" the writers are yelling from the maintop).

Ed's mental health absolutely tanks after Izzy tells him he's better off dead, threatens him and forces him back into both the job he hated so much that it made him feel depressed and into the overall role of Blackbeard, a hypermasculine caricature of a person who does not have any friends and who has to always remain isolated from everyone around in order to maintain the Mystique and the fear required to make Blackbeard work. ("A person's mental health gets worse if they don't get support and are told they should be dead rather than queer!" the writers yell from the maintop).

Ed's worst time is basically defined by isolation, and by him focusing on his oldest, deepest traumas: that he is unlovable, that he is the Kraken, that nobody likes Ed for Ed, that even the one guy who seemed to like him wasn't for real.

And then Stede comes back, and Ed receives unconditional love and support maybe the first time in his life. Of course he gets better!

He still struggles with the same old issues in the background. He still finds piracy awful and depressing, to the point that he breaks up with Stede to become a fisherman (the magic dick did not make him continue living a life that makes him want to die, so either it's not very strong magic, or the theory is very wrong). Something that's usually ignored when talking about this brief fisherman Ed stint is that Ed was happy with this life. He is not good at being a fisherman and he quickly fell out with pop-pop (who also reminded him of his issues with fatherly figures...), but I think it's important that the basic choice of "I'm going to leave piracy for a simple but safe life" is right for Ed (and directly informs his eventual choice of retirement and innkeeping rather than following Zheng). Like. This is not a guy who's only functional because of magic dick. He left the dick behind! Now, OFMD is a romantic comedy and the relationship is the plot, so of course Ed couldn't stay a fisherman and away from Stede, and I'm not saying either would have been good for him in the long run, but I want it noted that once he's recovered from the severe depressive episode in the beginning of S2, he is fully capable of being a happy and functional, self-contained human being outside of the relationship with Stede. To the point where he chooses his own happiness over the happiness of the relationship with the man he loves!

Ed's mental health improves again when he reclaims Blackbeard (and with it his own capacity for violence) in order to rescue or avenge Stede during the finale. Again, this event is triggered by Ed thinking Stede in danger or dead, but it is not about Stede at all, it's entirely about Ed and his self-image, and him making peace with all the parts of himself, the soft parts that he calls Ed (which love Stede and which want a quiet life) and the hard parts that he conceptualises as Blackbeard (the parts that kill to protect himself and/or those he loves, like Stede or his mother).

We once more see Ed much improved mentally when he is reunited with Stede and they can resolve their argument (it's never fun to be arguing with someone you love, of course that's good for him, and of course being together with a person he loves also makes him happy, that's what love is). He is in great spirits during the escape from the navy plan.

Izzy's death is a hard blow for Ed, while their relationship wasn't good for Ed for the majority of both seasons, they had started to become friends, and Izzy has been around a long time. Ed is naturally grieving (a confusing thing about grief is that you don't necessarily grieve less for people you had a conflicted relationship with). But he is not grieving alone. The entire crew are at the funeral, Stede is comfortingly touching Ed, and telling Zheng go back off and give Ed a moment when she wants to immediately go back to business. (Support system!!!!) Consequently, Ed isn't affected too badly by Izzy's death.

And then he gets to retire and become an Innkeeper (a long held dream of his we have been frequently told about) with the love of his life (self-explanatory why this is good for one's mental health).

I beg people actually look at the entirety of the narrative and what massage it is sending. It's not hard. We're beaten over the head with it again and again.

People's mental health improves and they grow as human beings when they receive love and support.

the whole 's2 was about mental illness being cured by magic dick' criticism is actually so fucking funny like how did we get to 'it's bad when a story has a depressed character who feels better when they're with someone who loves them'

my husband in real life: i'm sorry you're feeling sad :( i baked you a cake and i'm gonna cuddle you while you nap

me: okay i feel a bit better now :)

the canyon: smh disgusting narrative