#I have too many feelings about kraken ed

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

So I was thinking about Ed and Blackbeard and the Kraken, as you do, and I thought "Blackbeard is a mask, and the Kraken is a shield for Ed to hide behind", but that's not it, either. Blackbeard is the shield. The Kraken is a sword.

Blackbeard is, and I'm dying on that hill, Ed's biggest and best fuckery. Blackbeard is a carefully curated performance of everything Ed has to be to be successful and secure as a pirate. Blackbeard is cool and edgy, he's scary and fearsome, he's the best sailor and pirate out there. And everything Ed is and wants that doesn't fit that image gets carefully hidden away behind it.

But Blackbeard's origin is closely tied to the Kraken IMO. The Kraken is Ed's fear response. Ed goes Kraken when he's hurting and feeling threatened. The Kraken is the part of Ed that lashes out to protect him.

Ed's initial reactions to being scared or hurt or out of his depth aren't Kraken-y. He cowers and hides from his abusive father, makes himself small and silent. He fawns. Until it gets too much to bear and he snaps, and then he uses the violence he grew up around to protect himself and his mother.

Ironically, that's the only thing Ed's actually afraid of. The Kraken. The thing he turns into when he's at his worst. Ed's afraid of very few things (Stede dying, and I think that took him by surprise), but his worst fear is becoming the Kraken. It's something I think he feels he has no control over, and Ed's all about plans and strategies and knowing all the next steps and having a tight control of what's going to happen, and I don't think there's much of that left in Kraken Ed.

And I think when Ed grew up and became Blackbeard, he ended up in a world that worked like his family home: the most scary and violent person is on top of the pecking order, and Ed became that, and that's what kept him safe. What keeps him safe. People are terrified of Blackbeard the Fearsome Legend, and we are shown glimpses of Ed's fuckeries engineered to create, support and maintain this legend. Blackbeard's head is made of smoke, he's got eyes of flame, sailors flee at the sight of him stumbling to his knees halfway into a panic attack and arguably at his least fearsome, he doesn't even have to be on the boat. The fuckery of Blackbeard, the mask, the shield Ed built to hide behind and keep himself safe is working so well it ends up stifling him, but it means he hardly has need for the sword of the Kraken anymore. I don't think he's needed to raise it in years, perhaps decades. Nobody dares to threaten Blackbeard.

And then Stede comes along, and Ed allows himself to look out from behind his shield, to lower it, first gradually and then he just chucks it overboard altogether. He's ready to give it up, to be Ed, to stop hiding. He makes himself super vulnerable, and then that comes around to bite him. Stede abandons and ghosts him, breaks his heart, and Izzy tells him to his face he's loyal only to Blackbeard and that Ed would be better off dead and will have to watch his fucking step or else Izzy might see fit to finish the job the English didn't.

And the problem is, Ed isn't really Blackbeard anymore, is he? Not to Izzy in any case, not fully and without question, and that would be important here. Blackbeard worked as a shield built of respect and fear, and none of that is left. Not much, at least.

So in a tragic repeat of his youth, Ed, lacking a proper shield, picks up his kraken sword and lashes out, and then he reconstructs the Blackbeard shield from the scraps he has left. He paints on a fake beard, he puts the leather uniform back on, and he performs the acts of violence he rarely needed to perform anymore as Blackbeard before. He maroons, he throws people overboard, he gets rid of anything to make him vulnerable, hastily putting the wall back up. But he isn't safe behind Blackbeard anymore, he can't ever slip up again, he has to hold tight to the shield and the sword both now.

There's meta and fic floating around where Blackbeard and the Kraken are considered, like, two different things, two different elements of Ed's personality, but I think they really aren't? I think the Kraken is Blackbeard's origin, his source, and Blackbeard is mostly just toned down elements of the same things that bring out and characterise the Kraken, just not so out of control. The Kraken is a trauma and fear response of Ed protecting himself by hurting what hurts him. Blackbeard is an Ed who isn't in total crisis mode who has internalised the ways of his world and knows exactly how fearsome he has to be for nobody to dare fuck with him. There are a lot of Kraken elements in Blackbeard once you look for them. Blackbeard is the performance of "you can't hurt me if I hurt you first" and "you know I could do terrifying things and that's enough, I won't actually have to do them". And Ed has perfected that! But I think he hasn't genuinely been scared or threatened in forever.

You know, I think the person who is the most scared of the Kraken is still Ed. Izzy is happy, he got what he wanted, that's the Blackbeard he wants to see. Fang looks so sad to me on that final shot of him at the wheel? He knows Ed is hurting. Jim clearly isn't scared at all. Frenchie is, but Frenchie was scared or at least wary of Blackbeard in the beginning, too. Like all of the crew, this behaviour Ed, full of dread of himself, calls the Kraken must be much closer to what all of them expect Blackbeard to be like than what Ed's been doing the couple of weeks he's been on the Revenge.

I think nobody but Ed will see the Kraken as a separate entity to Blackbeard at all. That's all in his head, and that's something he'll have to work through eventually, but what in Ed's head is "I am a monster, I am the scariest most horrible thing there is" is more likely to be "so yeah Blackbeard had a breakdown and a rampage" to everyone else. The Kraken as a concept is Ed's own way to frame his trauma, and nobody currently on the Revenge is privy to any of that.

Stede is privy to the Kraken imagery Ed uses there, so I think there needs to be a moment in season two similar to the bathtub confession scene where Ed can give voice to the fact that the thing that scares him most in the world is that part of him that exists to keep him safe the only way he ever learned how and where Stede can reassure him again that yeah, that was bad things he did, but we can move past that if you want to try.

[beelzeballing]

actually i dont think ive posted my thoughts on ofmd s2 overall here yet have i?

ok here goes: i think it had incredibly high highs, and at some parts i genuinely enjoyed it more than i did the first season, episode 6 being peak imo. however, it had equally abysmal lows with some glaring writing-, tone- and pacing issues that all came to a head in the finale.

i once read someone say that, if you ever feel like a finale ruined the whole story, maybe you should take another look at the story. there were most likely cracks and problems all along, and the finale did nothing besides dashing the hope that these would perhaps be addressed later. very rarely do genuinely well written stories go completely off the rails in the finale and ruin the whole thing.

i think this is applicable here in some ways, SPECIFICALLY in regards to edward. good god edward was a MESS this season, and it's so sad because i loved the starting point! the kraken era was absolutely terrifying and iconic as FUCK but... they shouldn't have leaned so hard into the drama and trauma of it all. don't get me wrong, i loved that it did. it's one of my favorite parts of the season and i'm so glad we got it. but if they wanted this arc to work with the overarching plot as they wrote it, they would've had to lighten up the tone here CONSIDERABLY. had they played the kraken era for comedy then sure! edward's bad youtuber apology would've been funny. his fast redemption would've been less jarring. the lack of consequences less disturbing. but as it stands in the show, this arc is too dark to function with the later episodes.

i feel like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too here. they wanted the gritty drama of ed coming off the hinges entirely but also didn't want to deal with the aftermath of such a heavy arc in their silly pirate romcom. be that due to time constraints and budget cuts or because they were simply unwilling to, doesn't really matter in the end. the result is the same either way: a very tonally messy season with some accidentally troubling implications regarding abuse.

and mentioning troubling implications regarding abuse; izzy. my poor, poor izzy... his arc was absolutely glorious. i liked izzy the second he showed up in s1 and i was absolutely EATING this season up in that regard. and i think in this case, they genuinely did fuck it all up in the finale with that one stupid choice:

choosing to kill izzy was the DUMBEST thing they couldve done here.

ive talked about this over and over and over again. ive reblogged so many meta posts. and still i am left absolutely flabbergasted by how stupid of a decision this was. the fridging, playing at the fallen woman trope, killing the beating heart of the season and the character who delivers what is essentially a thesis statement, killing off the character whose arc is about coming to terms with his disability, having him die in edward's arms, comforting him and apologizing after an entire season of finding community and love outside of edward, the absolutely godawful pacing of it all, the extremely easy and obvious solution of just having IZZY become the new captain of the revenge to mirror s1 and hammer home how much he has developed since then in one go... i could go on. and i have. it was a stupid writing decision, completely fucked the tone and pacing of the finale and took away attention and time from things that really would've deserved a better wrap up (lucius and black pete deserved better)

now. the whole prince ricky & zheng plot line... yeah that shit sucked ass, sorry. they bit off more than they could chew here. i honestly think those are the arc words of this season:

✨️ bit off more than they could chew ✨️

right off the bat: i think he was good as a concept. bringing in a foil for stede who just doesn't Get It as stede does could've made for very good comedy and drama (and to be fair there is some of that). but that shit got away from them extremely quickly. nothing about how he's implemented past his first episode works, and i think this is very specifically because he's mostly played as the comic relief in his debut episode. making this completely bumbling fool, who gets his nose hacked off on his first job, the main villain of your entire season is... definitely a choice. idk. he didn't work for me at all.

ok wow mentioning shit getting away from the writers. this definitely got away from me. this was supposed to be a short lil post. well. i guess tl;dr i loved this season but jesus christ there was a lot wrong with it. if you want to hear more thoughts. ask box is open. be my guest. i have more to say so even if you dont ask i might add more to this at some point but im tired and have work tmrw.

[amuseoffyre]

Mulling once again on Ed and presentation and how he tends to keep certain emotions and things under wraps when he's presenting a specific way.

Most specifically I want to mention his leather as his armour and when he's in armour, he'll play Blackbeard, he'll joke around with the crew, he'll banter, he'll be chaotic, he'll be scary. He'll be loud and cheerful and chaotic and terrifying, depending on the situation.

But the instant he is upset or emotional about anything, his instinct is to hide himself, close himself away or cover himself so no one can see him. That aesthetic, that whole performative presentation can not be seen to be emotionally vulnerable.

30 years of living in the world of piracy and he knows he can't show his emotions because they'll be used against him. We see it when Jack shames him into leaving ("I saved your life man"), we see it when Izzy confronts him in 1x01 ("some namby pamby in a silk robe, pining for his boyfriend"), we see it again when Izzy tries to break through his kraken spiral ("your feelings for Stede fucking Bonnet"), we see it with Mary and Anne roasting him and Stede ("that was so fucking earnest").

Even when he's back with the crew and the ship in S2, he keeps his heart-eyes and his softer emotions for Stede for when they're alone together, keeping a careful distance so no one can read too much into it. Not when he's dressed like this. Not when he's looking like this. The wall very nearly came down on Calypso's birthday, when they were going to dance, but then Low happened and everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Ned came after them because of him, because Ed provoked him. No. Blackbeard provoked him. "It's me you want" he says. It is also such a big part of why he abandons the leathers the next day: he brought this down on them as Blackbeard. He doesn't want to see Stede hurt again, even says they should stay away from life-or-death situations.

He sees the Blackbeard vibe and look and persona as something that can only be destructive and awful, because - in his mind - it just keeps making things worse for him.

It's one of the reasons I love the leather reclamation so much.

For so many years, he's been forced to hide his emotions while wearing it, but it's was never about the clothes. The clothes were just a symbol. As I said earlier, it's his emotional armour and he never believed he could just... be himself without it.

In the fight with Stede in the republic, he says himself "I don't even know who I am". He's spent so long dividing up the way he presents himself that he's fragmented and disorientated. He threw his leathers overboard because he wants to be able to be loved, but doesn't feel he can be while that whole presentation and reputation is hanging over him.

But then we get to a point where he needs said armour - he's going into battle to fight for the man he loves and going dressed as a fisherman just ain't gonna cut it. He pulls it back on, he rises from the waves, but - and this is a sign of things changing - the second he arrives on the beach and finds that letter, the tangible reminder that he loved, his emotions are fully on display.

For the first time he is expressing himself without hiding away or covering himself up. He's finally understanding that he can be Edward no matter what he looks like on the surface. He can be himself without keeping the mask up, even when he has his armour on.

Admittedly, he is still hesitant about expressing himself fully. At the wedding, he only glances sidelong at Stede and even when they're standing on the porch of the inn, some part of him still expects Stede to leave. He even gives him a chance and excuse - "having second thoughts?" and uses metaphors about the inn to explain his uncertainties. But he's getting there. He's figuring out how to deal with his stuff and become more and more himself.

[brascu]

ok I can't believe Imma write a piece of OFMD meta without even getting to the end of the season.

I NEED to talk about Lucius and Izzy. like, a lot.

But before we get to the spoilers and stuff, I need to go back to first season. Be mindfull that I won't tell you again this is going to have spoilers from season 2, up to the 5ft episode.

It's safe to say that Izzy is Ed's right hand and Lucius is Stede's right hand. Or better saying, Lucius is the left hand.

Not only because Lucius is, indeed, left handed, but because the left side is associated with feelings.

Lucius is the one character to be wearing red from the begining of first season. He is feelings, he is the one who records Stede's thoughts and feelings. He is not "useful" in a practical way, he is simply the person who observes and helps people figure things out.

He is literally the first one to see that Ed and Stede are falling in love.

I mean, there is a second guy who notices, but can't understand what is happening. Izzy.

Izzy is Ed's right hand. He is the one who taught Ed what he knows, he is the one who kills people for Ed, he is the one who guarantees things are going acording to plans. He is practical. He doesn't have time for feelings and romance.

Izzy wears black clothes all the way. He is in no way in contact with his feelings.

And from start he thinks he is better than Lucius, but yet we see Lucius owning him in first season. We see Izzy showing his queerness in a very uncomfortable way to him in his "ohh, daddy" scene. (god, I love that moment)

Izzy sees Ed falling in love with Stede, but only sees a problem. A rock on the way of their sucess. Feelings are useless.

Lucius sees them falling in love and gets the role of a wingman or something. He helps them out.

And Lucius is protective of Stede in regards to Ed, we see it on Calico Jack's episode and more recently when he seats down with Stede in Zheng Yi Sao's boat and tells him to be mindfull of the cruel shit his boo has been doing. He is somewhat afraid Blackbeard will hurt his friend.

Just like Izzy was afraid Stede was going to ruin his Blackbeard.

In season one, Izzy simply wants to separate them. He wants Ed all to himself. He hates Stede.

In season one, Lucius was a bit afraid of Ed at the beginning, but learned how to deal with him and appreciate him. When Ed looses Stede, Lucius is there to help him.

There is a reason he calls for Lucius while at the blanket fort. Lucius is emotion, is feelings. Lucius is able to help him in a way Izzy would never be able.

Ed gets out of his cacoon, fully in red, and sings his feelings out.

Izzy freaks out an threatens Ed. Izzy gets Ed scared. Scared Ed gets rid of his feelings for Bonnet, he gets rid of Lucius, the feelings.

And the Kraken spiraling he gets into hurts both right and left hand.

At first, Izzy thinks he got what he wanted. At first, Lucius thinks he is dead.

And both get ruined.

Ed, without his feelings being heard by himself, proceeds to destroy himself. Which, of course, includes destroying his right hand.

He hates himself and he needs the others to hate himself. He tortures and hurt Izzy too many times. To the point where Izzy, the one "without feelings" is whining on Fang's lap, scared like a little puppy. Dirty, scared, powerless.

We understand from what's been shown that the rest of the crew supported him, and that's probably where he started thinking about going against Ed's madness. Not for himself, but for the crew. Izzy learned to care.

Lucius, on the other hand, was alone. He went through hell without a friend. He had to tough it up to survive and he is fucking damaged.

He lost hope and trust and he is bitter as fuck, just like Izzy used to be.

Lucius starts this season hating on Stede and Ed. He blames them for the things he went through, and he has right to do so.

He thinks, just like Izzy used to think, that Stede caused Ed's madness.

For Izzy, Stede made Ed weak. For Lucius, Stede made Ed unhinged.

And while in season one we have Izzy getting mad that Stede and Ed are hanging out, Lucius this time is outraged. How could my bestfriend replace me with some sissy? How can my captain wellcome back this guy who almost killed us all?

Both Lucius and Izzy dress a bit diferently this season.

The red is gone. Lucius wears basic clothes, not colorfull at all, as if he doesn't want to get attention. He wants to blend in to the back.

Izzy has gold now, on his unicorn gold leg.

Both almost died from infections "caused" by Ed.

Lucius is bitten by Buttons after Ed scared them with his theatre, the one he was showing to entertain Stede. Izzy gets shot by the Kraken after he dared to mention Stede's name.

Lucius loses his finger, which makes it a bit more dificult for him to write, for him to keep doing what he was doing.

Izzy loses his leg, which makes it a lot more difficult for him to fight with a sword.

And although they still can do those things, they're not that needed anymore.

Lucius doesn't write Stede's diary anymore. We've seen Stede writing by himself, which lead me to think he doesn't need Lucius that much with understanding his own feelings as well.

Izzy is not Ed's right hand anymore. He is still somewhat of a first mate, he helps the captain, but in a different way. He teaches Stede things, but he still haven gotten to actually doing things for him on screem. We had someone trying to hurt Stede twice and Stede saved himself before Izzy even got his sword out.

Izzy is learning to admire Stede's way. He felt what Stede's absence did to his friend, to the crew and to himself. He is learnng to talk it through.

Lucius is still bitter. Lucius is obsessed with Ed, but he has help from someone that was hurt in a similar way.

Izzy, the practical, is helping Lucius, the emotional, to deal with his trauma.

They are getting closer, just like their captains, in a new way.

The scene with the little shark absolutely broke me. Izzy made him an artpiece. This is the first time we see him doing something artistic, and he gives it to Lucius. He gives emotion back to Lucius.

I can't wait to see where they go.

[darkfire359]

What could have been: sympathizing with Ed in season 2

I've talked before about how much I love Ed and all his complexity. I've written more fanfic about him and Izzy than any other characters, in my entire history of fandom. And unlike many people, I wasn't unprepared for the dark direction his arc took in season 2; I wanted him to commit MORE atrocities, and I happily made comparisons between him and another one of my favorite characters, Hannibal Lector.

But one of the key things I wanted after he committed atrocities was for him to feel bad about it. And I thought we'd see that! After all, S1 Ed was so tormented about killing his dad (who was abusive and violent towards) him that he never killed (directly) again! He was so broken up about trying to kill Stede in s1e6 that he ended up crying in a bathtub. Just like he cried in the window sill after committing all the kraken horrors in s1e10. It seemed like this was a guy scared of his own inner darkness, convinced he was a monster, who would go around saying things like "I'm not a good person" and "You were always going to realize who I am."

And so even when s2 went darker than anyone expected—when he cut off more of Izzy's toes, and shot him in the leg, and made crewmen fight to the death for experiencing love, and sailed the entire ship into a storm to murder-suicide his crew—I was still ready to accept all that moral ambiguity and give him a hug afterwards. Because of course, I figured that after Ed was brought out of that dark place and those suicidal urges, he would feel horrible remorse. How could he not?

I was looking forward to seeing him break down crying, convinced he was an irredeemable, unforgivable monster. (Which of course, would make it all the more touching when people inevitably did forgive him, and when he did redeem himself). Maybe Ed would even go too far with trying to atone, like in Mercy, one of my favorite post-s1 fics. Probably, I figured, Ed's quest for redemption would be one of the main themes in the second half of season 2.

So it was strange to watch e4, when Ed looked nothing but annoyed at everyone for chaining him up and banishing him, and then he went to hang out with his old friends like he'd done nothing wrong. When after the crew unanimously voted him out, Stede brought him back to the ship literally that same evening, and Ed saw no problem with that. Okay... maybe he's still processing?

Then e5 came, and that episode was about Ed's redemption. Yay! Except... Ed didn't seem to care? Other people made him wear the bag and the bell. He asked how long it'd take people to get over it, guessing "like a day." He gave an influencer-esque non-apology to the crew. He said "I took a man's leg" rather than calling Izzy by name. He literally doesn't remember the circumstances of pushing Lucius off the boat. He does ultimately give a real apology to Fang—for tormenting him years ago, rather than anything from his actual kraken era. I love e5 for the Izzy+Stede dynamic, but watching Ed be an unrepentant asshole here is painful. There is nothing about this that convinces me Ed wouldn't slide right back to being evil if Stede were to leave again.

And the thing is, it didn't have to be like this! We could have gotten Ed breaking down crying with guilt like in s1e6, and it would have made him much more sympathetic—not to mention the fact that Ed really is just an adorable cryer. Alternatively, we could have had some real deep diving about why Ed never apologizes (is he afraid of seeming weak?) or why he's so uncaring about others' pain (has he seen too many friends die over the years, to the point of going numb?)

By episode 6, it seems like most characters have moved on. Stede says something about Ed turning poison into positivity, which feels completely unearned. He pays for the party—but he'd previously tried to make the crew throw their cut of the loot into the ocean. He makes some attempts to best Ned and protect Stede, but Stede ends up saving the crew instead—from a pirate who only showed up in the first place because Ed was intentionally trying to piss him off. Ed is sad that Stede kills someone, and this would be a great time to again make Ed sympathetic! To have him talk about how he doesn't want that for Stede, because his own violence has weighed on him so deeply. But nope.

E6 does see Ed actually apologize to Izzy—and he's terrible at it. He's just like, "Sorry about your leg," makes no eye contact, and flees immediately afterwards. We do see some hints that this shitty apology isn't really indicative of Ed's true feelings, given how he has those flashbacks to the scenes of hurting Izzy seemingly haunting him; but it's very brief. It would be a great time to address Ed's horrific tendency towards conflict-aversion and avoiding awkward conversations in relationships—the same tendency that made s1 Ed never inform Izzy that the plan to kill Stede and the Revenge crew had changed. This would be another great opportunity to help us sympathize with Ed again—to have us see how it's not that he doesn't want to communicate these things, it's that these conversations are terribly stressful and anxiety-inducing for him. But nah, why would OFMD need to include those things for Ed?

E7 happens, and still nothing. If anything, there was a great opportunity for Ed to at least show himself to be a kind person to Stede—maybe nobly stepping in to save the day, even though he's annoyed that Stede's getting all this attention now. You know, like Stede did for him back in s1e5, when the situation was reversed. But nope, Ed runs off to be a fisherman, not having learned any of the earlier season's lessons about whims. He only stops being a fisherman because he's bad at it.

I was still hoping for something big in e8–some huge selfless, gesture that Ed would do to cover for all of his inability to do the little gestures. Ed is good at grand gestures! Swimming back to the ship after he left, then taking the Act of Grace in s1 was HUGE. Very selfless, very sweet! He could have done something like that for Izzy, Lucius, and the traumatized crew. Some kind of heroic gesture to help others more than himself. But nope. In some sense, Izzy dying is one of the greatest indications of Ed's wasted potential, because we narratively had a great opportunity for Ed to be able to save someone... but he didn't.

(Admittedly, Ed is not a complete dick here—he helps Izzy when he's limping, he says some genuinely apologetic stuff when Izzy's dying, and he finally gives Izzy his attention and care. But then after the funeral, he's still like "Well, that's that.")

It's so frustrating. It's not that I don't want to like Ed, or that I don't want to sympathize with him. I really, REALLY do! I don't even need Ed to successfully do anything to earn forgiveness! I'd take Ed trying and failing. I'd take him wanting to try, but being so convinced of his monstrousness that he never makes the attempt. But give me something. Anything other than the unexamined apathy that he has so much of the time.

The thing is, s2 lost the ability for Ed's mistreatment of people to be just another "of course he's violent, he's a pirate" quirk. They were pretty explicit about how abusive Ed was (Jim's comment in e1, the joke in e4 people assumed Ed had hit Stede) and how much he traumatized people (Lucius and the whole crew very clearly have PTSD in episodes 4 and 5). This is serious stuff, which he did to other main characters, which is going to make a lot of viewers look at him pretty harshly.

And that's manageable—Hannibal Lector managed to be most textbook-abusive asshole in the world, committing atrocities and generally being unrepentant left and right, and viewers STILL found him lovable and sympathetic. You can do that! But you need to:

a. make it clear that anyone with the relevant information calls them out for being awful, even multiple episodes later

b. make it clear that they care deeply and genuinely about their wronged loved ones

c. make them willing to actually make REAL sacrifices

I watched so many people start to dislike or outright hate Ed in season 2. It made me really sad. But I couldn't blame them for feeling that way. For all that Ed is supposedly one of the two protagonists in OFMD—a character whose mistakes should be the most understandable, whose mental state should be the most resonant—the show seemed to entirely drop the ball on writing him as such.

[scary-flag]

Underrated OFMD fics!

So I've thought of compiling a list of good but unpopular OFMD fics. There are many recommendation posts going around, but they mostly feature the same 10 authors (who are great, do not get me wrong!) - I have thought, however, that less popular writers need some exposure too!

I have tried to keep the selection varied, with different ratings, fic lengths and ships. Feel free to reblog to increase the exposure of these creative people! :)

The Recommendations:

Snubs and Explanations by MzDany - T, 1,7k words, Ed/Stede. A funny little fic in which a Dutch merchant is offended by the Revenge not attacking his ship and goes there to investigate..

Le Bel Homme sans Merci by GeorgieBlossom - G, 296 words, Ed/Stede. A poem based on John Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

The Winning Prize by Birdie_Lo_Green - M, 24k words, unfinished yet, Ed/CJ, Ed/Izzy (unrequited). A multichapter story set when Ed, Izzy and Calico Jack are young and stupid.

Sunkissed by Spineless_Lobster - G, 709 words, Ed/Stede. A short ficlet full of tooth-rotting fluff!

Scylla's arms, Charybdis' mouth by Wrizard - T, 1136 words, no ships, Trans Izzy. A fic in which the Kraken is an actual deep sea creature and young Izzy Hands is a sacrifice for him.

Windward Passage by Consultingcrybaby - E, 4.7k words, Ed/Stede. To quote the author: "In which Stede is astonished by the existence of buttfucking, and Ed really needs a cup of tea."

WHERE'S THE LOOT?! A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Game by glitterpig. T, Ed/Stede. It is literally a game!

A Demon Lived in My Brow by Bazzle. E, CW: some non-con, 8.7k words, Ed/CJ, Ed/OC, Ed/Izzy, Ed/Stede. Snapshots of Ed's relationships - and sexual experiences - before he met Stede.

Leather by Chocolatepot. G, 100 words drabble with Ed and Stede, taking place in episode 04.

To Make Pan-puddings by Whatthefoucault. T, 2.5k words, Ed/Stede. In which Stede find an old recipe and wants to cook it for Ed. Fluff!

They Haven't Made the Color Yet That'll Paint Over Every Part of Your Past by Parsnips (trifles). G, 1.4k words, Mary/Doug. A lovely fic about Doug and his love for Mary.

Orange You Glad by Lesspale. Not rated but imho G. 3.3k words, mostly Roach. A wholesome fic about the origins of the 50 orange cake!

Just Let Go, My Party Piece by red-sky-in-mourning. M, 4.3 words, Stede/Ed, some Lucius/Pete and Jim/Oluwande. A ficlet inspired by the well-known s2 bts photo of a possibly special necklace.

Two pints of Guinness, a packet of crisps (and a bag of cans) by Buoymehome (Lilibel) - T, 3.4k words, Modern AU, found family. Wee John and Stede go for a pint for St Stephen Day and Stede strikes conversation with the handsome looking fiddle player.

Lucius Returns by Scaredycattales - T, 367 words. Lucius, Ed. Screenplay format! Criminally underrated.

Learning Curve by Lwwyrd - M, 13k words, Izzy-centered. Young Edward Teach and Israel Hands meet, and the rest is in the hands of Fate. Written for the Fate & Fortune challenge.

The Night That Has No End by FrazzledWriter - M, 1.2k words, horror. Frenchie POV. Everyone on the Revenge is being driven into madness by a mysterious fog, and only a few are still sane. Ambiguous ending.

The Other First Mate by Dorie22 - G, 1.5k words. After episode 05. Ed is confused about his feelings and Stede, and Buttons turns out to be an unexpectingly good listener.

Room People by Moonandsunlight - G, 1.1k words. A short fic exploring the queerplatonic relationship between Wee John and Frenchie.

Much Ado About Something by Winter_of_our_Discontent - T, 528 words, Ed/Stede. Shakespearean AU. Super hilarious.

A Lighthouse To Each Other; or, Cracking Up On The Rocks by Zmayhem - T, 12k words, Mary/Stede. A fic exploring the relations between Mary and Stede after their 10 years of marriage.

What Makes The Man by Unovis - T, 12k words, unfinished yet. A fantastic character study of Stede and the conversations he has with his barber.

Wee John Feeney's Excellent Day by Activevirtues - T, 2.7k words. A criminally underrated fic about a fantastic day that Wee John has and the joy it gives him. Super wholesome!

The Saint of Never Getting It Right by Goldblooded - G, 3k words. Ed's POV. Interesting choice of formatting, adding to the story. A short fic about Ed and his emotional issues.

Skeleton Crew Drabbles by Tipsy_Kitty - mostly T, a collection of short drabbles written for a Halloween event. It has canon ones, and AU ones. Some hilarious, some a bit more emotional.

One Thousand Sea Creatures: a Buttons OFMD SMAU by Idiotatsea, Loopydangerfrom and Otsanda - T, 23k words. A Scollection of posts from Buttons' twitter account, his Moon Journal and other media. He does try to list 1000 sea creatures, and it is hilarious.

Nostalgia by HopelessScribe - G, 1.6k words. A BEAUTIFUL pre-canon fic about Roach's childhood memories and his North African background. Criminally underrated so give the writer your kudo!

More recommendations to follow next week!

[soupnwaffles]

i’m in a headcannon mood and after the emotional rollercoaster that was ep 6 and 7, i’ve decided to focus on my beloved boy — edward teach !!

so, here they are:)

- mostly falls on the younger side of regressing, anywhere between being a tiny baby to a bustling toddler !

- whenever stede isn’t around to watch him ed is usually in the kitchen w/ roach !

- he gets to help stir and lick the spoon after roach is done :))

- a very emotional boy !

- ed gets in his feelings about every little thing, especially when he’s little, so the crew makes sure to remind him he’s still the specialist boy ever !

- spoiled. rotten.

- half of stede’s auxiliary closet is filled with all the soft linens and the robes he wears while little !

- he doesn’t like making decisions when he’s little whatsoever !

- there’ve been multiple times when he started crying because stede asked him too many questions at once…

- makeup! he loves makeup whenever he’s tiny!

- while he’s big, no, but baby ed loves the feeling of wee john gliding the brush against his skin and all the pretty colors he can choose from:)

- he gets (forces) stede to dress him in his leathers whenever they’re going out

- despite being a total attention hog, he’s always trying to get izzy involved !

- he loves his iz to have the same chances he does

- cried once during storytime because stede forgot to do the voices…

- stede swore to never do it ever again

- has the whole of the crew wrapped around his finger

- stede makes him take an afternoon nap every day and he only goes whenever izzy sings to him

- he falls asleep especially faster if izzy also lays with him the whole time

- and stays with him till his nap’s over…

ugh i can go on and on about ed but i think i’ll cut it off here. i also have loads of headcannons for kraken!ed too, so those might make an appearance soon:))

[sixstepsaway]

right, so, here are my Thoughts about that whole thing now i've slept on it. probably won't be super coherent but here we go

i feel bad for stede. he got shoved, somehow, into the weird love interest role so many female characters find themselves in, where they are truly completed by a man and a romance not the things they've been striving for throughout the series so far. he's shown no sign of wanting to give up the pirate lifestyle he's just finally got back, and to accompany him giving that up with izzy's gorgeous "piracy is about family and somewhere to belong" speech from earlier just feels cruel. we joke about how episode 2 stede wouldn't care if lucius died but that changed, he got attached, his crew became his family. they were loyal to him and followed him even when they were just working at spanish jackie's for pennies. they respected him and loved him enough to let him talk them into letting ed back on board. this was, at least at this point in stede's arc, his happy ending. in fact, you can even argue he was happy without ed for a while at the start of this episode. his relationship with ed is important and it's icing on the cake, but it isn't something to complete him, or his only source of happiness -- nor should it be!!! and then for some reason ed shows back up, fishes up his leathers, kicks ass to save him, loses izzy and now they're leaving stede's ship and crew and found family to... run an inn made out of the world's shittiest fixer-upper? stede? stede twirly fancypants bonnett??? in that place? maybe at the end of a full run this might have felt like a good conclusion to his story, him realizing he wanted belonging, not necessarily to be a pirate, and maybe them bringing some of crew along to have their home somewhere safer and happier than the piracy they don't really enjoy but turn to because they have no other choice, but right now it just feels like... honestly like either he agreed to it to keep ed with him ("AITA for convincing my boyfriend to run an inn with me after leaving him two days ago because we were moving too fast? little backstory: this involved my boyfriend leaving everything in his life for me and no i did not apologize for running off to become a fisherman") or like, as i said up there, a matter of "actually all he needed was a BOYFRIEND all along" which... ngh. stede is more than his relationship.

idk why we bothered establishing that frenchie, jim and even archie were willing to put their lives on the line and lie to ed's murderous face to save izzy's life just for them to be stone-faced and have no feelings about his loss. like, okay, ed and he's stories are tied together and him dying in ed's arms makes more sense narratively than him dying in anyone else's, but also ed hadn't earned that and izzy deserved to die in the arms of someone who hadn't tried to kill him and shot him in the leg not to mention we went from fang's squishy hug and frenchie holding his hand to just... nothing? not a thing? roach, the ship's surgeon, did nothing to try and save him? it's just ed slapping his gunshot wound pathetically?

it strongly feels like they swapped izzy and ed's roles in his death scene sounds stupid but hear me out "you're my only family" would make so much more sense coming from izzy with ed dying in his arms. izzy's desperation to keep hold of ed, right down to accidentally pushing him down the kraken path at the end of season 1, being rooted in the feeling that ed is all he has in the world? ed responding that no, the crew love izzy. he's earned their love. he has a family outside of ed now, can't he see that? that makes so much more sense, considering izzy nearly died for them multiple times and spent the first few episodes trying to protect them and then being protected by them in kind he was their new unicorn!!! meanwhile ed said sorry to fang, izzy and lucius, and no one else has been shown to give any fucks about him since that whole thing, and like... rightly so? because he hadn't earned them back at all? and he fucked off on them too last episode lol dont forget he didnt JUST leave stede

we should have known better than to trust djenks when he broke jim and olu up for no reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk

nothing worth a damn happened this episode it was all running around and waving swords. idk how anyone got to where they were at the end. it was just poor writing.

the pacing has been off all season but they really shoved three episodes into one and hoped it'd work

i'm getting flashbacks to the timeless ~finale~ ugh

they spent so much time one ed's stupid fishing boat monologue instead of on ANYTHING ELSE

i ran out of thoughts

oh, here's another: the show walked a line between muppetry and things that were taken seriously lucius' finger, izzy's toes: serious ed getting bonked by a cannonball: emotionally serious, but not physically serious ed and stede both getting stabbed: not serious and what was treated as serious and what was treated as handwavy was dictated by what the storyline and the emotional needs were izzy getting shot to make it so they all had to run away yapping would have been hilarious, especially if he got back to the ship and went "nah eddie it's my left side, remember what i told you about the left? nothing important on the left" "your liver" <- roach, horrified but instead weird death scene because this was treated as physically serious, even though it...should not have been, really? and that is bothering me a lot too, because when lucius was thrown to his death, we looked at stede finding the crew on the island and went, "aha! lucius will be fine, because that's what the show logic is" and we were right, because the show had taught us that but that didn't extend to izzy for this and that's just weird

[izzysillyhandsy]

Some Too many thoughts about episodes 4 and 5 and "Moving On"

This got wayyyy too long and rambly... but I had to write this down because it's been bugging me since last Thursday.

I have some issues with the last two episodes, episode 4 and 5, regarding, of course, my favourite character Izzy Hands and his relationship with Ed in particular.

Don't get me wrong - there was so much great stuff. I love Izzy finally being able show his feelings without having to pretend everything's alright - all it took was fucking things up so spectacularly that even Izzy didn't care what everyone thought of him. One could argue that the Kraken phase was necessary to "burn it all down" so to speak - Izzy and Ed needed this cathartic event to get out of their mutually harmful relationship.

But still... there is this underlying unfairness of it all, the disproportionate hate and aggression, the destruction of Izzy's whole life, sense of self and reality. What even are you?

Was this really necessary? Or, in other words, did Izzy have it coming? Did it serve him right?

And now that Izzy has decided to keep on living and has to deal with the trauma of being literally taken apart by the love of his life - is the only option available to him to completely distance himself from everything that happened (blow your brains out or move on)?

What happened in the first 3 episodes wasn't just Ed lashing out in anger, a payback for Izzy's betrayal. It wasn't just Ed going off the rails as a reaction to his most trusted friend pushing him towards violence at the lowest point of their lives. This wasn't "just" cutting a toe off in a moment of desperation and emotional breakdown.

No, Ed kept on going with destroying everyone and everything around him (and it was Ed, not whatever "Blackbeard" is supposed to be - Ed can clearly switch between the two and it is a concious decision to put on the Blackbeard mask to distance himself from his own cruelty).

And the person who he targeted almost exclusively was the person he was closest to, the person with obvious love for him (and of course Ed knows this), the person who kept falling apart before his very eyes and still tried to be there for him and, in his way, keep him safe.

I'm still not over the fact that Ed kept kicking Izzy who was already down, and just didn't stop until he was literally on his deathbed. And even then it wasn't over, there was one more act of cruelty left. Izzy killing himself felt natural and logical (and isn't that absolutely horrible?), almost a relief - "quick and clean" as Izzy'd put it.

Only the most ardent Izzy haters would still insist that Izzy deserved this (fucking hell, nobody deserves this, ever). Also, the show absolutely didn't frame it that way, Taika and Con (and the rest of the crew) didn't portray it that way - in my opinion, what Blackbeard did to Izzy was supposed to be seen as unforgivable (as opposed to other instances of casual violence depicted in the show).

So, as happy as I am with Izzy moving on to discover who he actually wants to be without Ed, episodes 4 and 5 left me confused and a bit frustrated. After all that happened in episodes 1 and 2, Ed can just go off be soft with Stede? He immediately comes back to the ship after being banished and gives the most half-arsed apology in history, then has fun showing off to everyone how nice he is now?

(Disclaimer: I love Ed, I love all the Ed/Stede scenes, that's not the point)

Where are the fucking consequences, show? That can't be it surely? Ed almost gets rewarded for just being Ed - contrast this with how the narrative (and parts of the fandom) kept on punishing and condemning poor Izzy for much, much lesser transgressions.

And it's apparently got to Izzy too, because now he blames himself as well:

Don't know what you're talkin' about. A shark did this. Dangling my legs over the side of the ship. Served me right, too.

NO IT DIDN'T, IZ. You thought you knew this man.

It actually makes sense that he'd see it this way, though.

Izzy's last conversations with Ed were his "I have love for you" (Come on) and Ed's "I dreamt that you killed me" (It was good for me - It wasn't even like that) where Izzy realized that nothing is/was as he thought it was.

Up to the end of S1, I believe this is what Izzy's whole life was built on:

a. Ed and Izzy are a team, captain and first mate, relying on one another. They've been together for a lifetime, they love and care for each other - not in so many words, not romantically (at least not for the last years or so, if ever) - but Izzy knows he would do anything for Ed (and I'm sure he has, many times), and Ed would probably do anything for Izzy (I'm not sure if Izzy's belief here is based on concrete events in the past, but I very much hope so).

b. It is Izzy's job to see that Ed is content and, above all, safe. Ed wouldn't trust anyone else with this.

c. Izzy talking back and challenging Ed's decisions is not only tolerated but expected.

d. They trust each other above everyone else, they know each other better than anyone has ever known them, noone can really come between them.

Now, it seems like:

a. Ed has/had no use for Izzy's love and concern.

b. Izzy has failed his job, and noone else could have failed as spectacularly.

c. it is Izzy's fault Ed lost his mind and will to live because Izzy dangled his legs over the side of the ship.

d. Ed's kept Izzy around because he's useful and convenient, but he's not irreplacable ("the hands that kill" if you excuse my pun, even used one last time to kill their master), and it only took a few weeks with fuckin' Stede Bonnet to make Izzy redundant.

In Izzy's mind, his whole life was a lie - he was never loved, appreciated, or even safe. And it was his own fault too.

DJ said in an interview that Izzy shooting Ed was him finally breaking up with him, and I agree (very generous of me, I know).

Izzy goes through the breakup phase alone - at first, he thinks Ed is dead, then he believes he has nothing else to say to Ed and Ed's said everything there was to say as well, no apology needed or expected. It's done.

BUT.

We know this isn't true, right? What kind of conclusion would that be to the most important relationship in the series (apart from that other guy, I forgot his name)? After all of this, all the implied backstory, all of Con's and Taika's brilliant acting choices - there must be something more satisfying coming then Yeah... well... Not movin' on is worse.

I hope I'm worried for nothing and the next 3 episodes will address this (but there's so little time! And there is so much else going on!).

Also, I'm fully aware that in episode 4 and 5 Ed was 100% in his arc with Stede (we had the Ed/Izzy arc in episodes 1 and 2 after all). Ed and Izzy didn't interact at all in both episodes (excepting the one look during the apology). While Izzy was shouting at headless unicorns, himself and an indifferent universe with his hair attractively in his face, Ed wasn't even on the ship. Izzy moved on without any confrontation, apology, without any contact to Ed at all. To keep on living, he had to distance himself from all the trauma and throw himself at Stede.

I just felt a bit drained after episodes 4 and 5 - for me, Ed and Izzy are the central relationship of the show, Ed and Stede are like an added bonus. And after the first 3 episodes, I felt the showrunners kinda went in that direction as well (not as completely as I did obviously). And then they put Izzy on a different path and decided not to waste time with Ed actually thinking about poor Iz at all.

I really, really hope they don't drop this fascinating dynamic just to make Izzy accept that life is great without Ed and Stede and Ed running off into the sunset. Izzy (and us) have invested too much energy and love into that relationship. I want them to come to an understanding, an acknowledgement of what they were to each other, and what they are now.

Some healing stuff, or whatever. To quote Hornigold, of all people: You gotta move on, ya know? Or... you blow your brains out. Or, we could just make some soup.

(Also, Ed has to suffer because of (losing) Iz. It's only fair.)

[little-fandom-dump]

got in my feels and wrote a lil drabble about jim going to comfort izzy after the events of calypso's birthday. basically, everyone can tell ed and stede are fucking, and jim decides to check on izzy. romance between jim and izzy is not really intended, more of them building trust and friendship post-kraken trauma.

cw for alcohol abuse, mentions of manipulation/torture from blackbeard, spoilers for season 2 (up to e6). no explicit sexual content, just short offhand references to relationships between crew members. kind of an off handed homophobic comment from izzy? but he’s a repressed queer too so yk

-

it takes only four pints of rum and an old flagon of whiskey to bring israel hands back to the quiet contemplation that fits him as well as his time-softened leather glove. as trustworthy as the tide is izzy's penchant for isolation- whether skulking or simply lost in thought, it is hard to tell. but once again, he stands at the prow, face as distant and unmoving as the figurehead before him.

the moon hangs high in the sky, shedding her soft, even glow over the remnants of the night's festivities. flowers and old brandy alike are spilled over the deck of the revenge. there is no urgency to clean it-- lord knows that the captains have enough on their minds (and hands) not to make a fuss about it until tomorrow.

and so, the deck is empty. empty but for israel hands, lone sentinel at the head of the ship, makeup and melodies long since drained from the old man's bones. christ, he is tired. it is little surprise when the footsteps make their way softly towards him from behind. he knows their owner easily, and he holds no fear of their approach.

jim wordlessly takes the space next to him, the two standing in the shadow of silence. it isn't uncomfortable- both have been long accustomed to occupying a space without a need for words. tonight, though, something hangs heavy on izzy's mind. the sharpness of his breaths drawn-in, the hesitation every movement costs him. jim knows how to study people, and moreover, they know their ship's first mate. they've never been great with these kinds of things, admittedly, but izzy has made such an effort to provide for the crew lately; isn't it only fair that jim check on him too?

"the breeze came in cold tonight, eh?" they ask, noting the flask in his hand, and the waiting bottle of dark liquor beside it.

izzy says nothing. nods. takes another swig. almost mechanical in his rhythm.

"you, uh. you got a good voice on you, boss. never heard you sing like that before." even as they speak, jim follows izzy's half-vacant gaze to the waves breaking gently against the ship's starboard side. madre de dios, this was going to be harder than they thought.

"well, it was a special occasion," he finally drawls, lips taut with unspoken emotion. much as he wants to hide it, it pulls at the corners of his eyes, his lips. he takes another drink, then leans bodily against the railing.

a moment. then another.

"what is it you want, jim?" the words are cold, clear-cut-- but his tone is not. if anything, it is rank with weariness. the younger pirate feels a little pang in their chest, almost wanting to place their hand on his shoulder to comfort them. they do not.

"crew and i thought it would be best if someone, er-. well, we wanted to check on you." it is a clumsy sentence, but there's no expectation for great flowery prose between the two of them. honest truths, borne plain. that was something the two knew all too well.

"why? cause the captain and his twatty boyfriend finally grew balls enough to shag each other with?"

this time, the sentence is cold. bracing. jim winces, but not at the vulgarity. izz's words reek with exhaustion, or maybe something closer to desperation.

"uhm. yeah." that is the most fitting response that comes to mind. izzy would talk about how he felt or he wouldn't. or, more likely, he'd insult jim to their face like he had so many times before. they were intelligent enough to know it was less about them and more about the first mate's own feelings.

"you want to know how i'm feeling, is that it, jimenez?" izzy asks, finally meeting their gaze. jim holds steady but silently urges themself not to notice the dampness that threatens the edges of the first mate's eyes. they remain silent once again. a slight tilt of their head, an almost-nod.

"fuck you, that's how i'm doing." he scowls, but the venom is removed, has been removed since the new leg was offered at his door. they glance own at it now, gold paint casting a soft gleam in the moonlight.

"izzy," they say gently, a hand now actually reaching for his shoulder. to their half-surprise, the first mate lets it. as he does, tears well gently at his eyes, pushing and pushing and finally breaking over the surface of his cheeks. his gaze fixed on the mangled corpse of the ship's unicorn now.

"can't blame a dog for biting the handler who starves him, jim. y-you can't." he speaks softly, a low tremble moving throughout the hollow of his words. jim doesn't ask who is the dog, izzy or blackbeard. they don't wonder or read too deep into the words; they are for izzy to understand.

what they do do, however, is move their hand down his arm and past his wrist, gently cupping his fingers with theirs. a simple squeeze, just once. no implications behind the gesture, no secret alternative. just a small slice of comfort offered between two people who have weathered the storm of outrage and consequence together just a few weeks prior. izzy doesn't return the gesture, but he doesn't let go, either.

together, the two of them stand, taking in the brine-soaked breeze before them. hand returns to shoulder, and the old man passes his flask to his crew-mate. no, his friend. jim takes a slow swig and sets it back in izzy's palm. this, jim notes, is the most affection either of them have ever trusted each other with in the months of their acquaintance.

jim thinks for a moment on the rest of the crew: groups of bodies breathing lightly against each other, whether in rest or some other unspoken thing. jim thinks on olu and archie, waiting sleepily for their return to the shared room below deck. lucius and pete, no doubt still caught in the thrill of the days' events. frenchie and wee john, roach and fang. jim even recalls on the swede, and buttons, wherever those lunatics have made their own ways off to. finally, they think of stede and blackbeard, (no, not blackbeard, a voice that sounds too much like stede chides. ed), and the sounds of their pleasure heard halfway across the boat, those that prompted this conversation.

and jim thinks of izzy. the word love hasn't come up between the two of them when jim is able to approach him about his feelings for blackbeard, but it doesn't need to. jim believes in action, in tangible deeds they can see. and they know what lengths iz has gone to for years to get his captain's approval. his attention.

at last, izzy drains the last of the flask and tucks it into the black leather of his vest. slowly, he grabs the unopened bottle on the floor and presses it into jim's hand, the order clear: take this and keep me from drinking more than i need to. jim obeys and removes their hand from his shoulder with one last squeeze.

izzy once again meets their eyes and holds in his gaze a silent thank you. what comes out of his mouth, though, is a less-than-brash "now piss off." this turns the corners of jim's wry mouth into a slight smile, and they shrug.

"sure thing, boss." they turn and start to walk away as one last remark spills from their lips. "you should keep practicing, huh? maybe you could team up with frenchie, start a band."

izzy tosses the empty flask at them, but jim notices the small smile that holds itself in the corner of his eyes. "fuck off!" jim smiles too, then traces their steps back below deck.

tomorrow, izzy will enter the captain's quarters and report of the ship's passage to the republic of pirates. tomorrow, he will joke and try to shake off his jealousy like an old coat. it will stay, but the crew will be gracious to him.

for now, though. for now, israel basilica hands breathes in the damp wind that slides off the sea towards him. tonight, he sings the same sad lament to himself under his breath, and he finally lets himself mourn.

[ritalacochona]

So I am going to try to parce through my Our Flag Means Death Season 2 premier.

Episode 1: Impossible Birds

The dream sequence is amazing. I love that his subconscious will not let him get off light. Izzy saying "I didn't make you leave him" like the most spurned lover. Aaaah. Ed never actually saying they are OK.

So much in this episode. So many moving parts. I like Stede’s working but I am surprised he still appears to be the defacto leader despite Olu being named captain.

Olu and Zheng Yi Sao: I want to like them. I really do but they don't have time to flush out this little flirtation. I think they should pick Olu and Zheng or Jim and Archie to focus on. They have such little air time to have them catch up to the last seasons canon couple chemistry/back stories. I also hope that her motivation saving the crew was more than her crush on Olu. She is such a power house it feel incongruous that she would be so easily swept up with no build up to their thing. I like Auntie though.

Jim is so good this season. They were the least likely too, but they actually bought into what the Revenge did. They care for their crew mates, even Izzy. The little wooden boy voice for Fang! Their fighting, the new look! The only thing I am still not sure of is Archie. So far I haven't gotten much from her personality other than she likes Jim.

Frenchie is amazing. Funny, and yet he has these moments where the cracks bleed through. Especially after he is made first mate. So good.

Fang is breaking my flicking heart. He has been with Ed even longer than Izzy.

The Kraken. When I first saw the spoilers especially Izzy scene that was sent out I was worried they would not be able to balance how bad he was with his emotional core, but boy was I wrong. Taika Waititi paints this hopeless sorrow that you can feel. He is so funny when it's called for but he is truly beautiful just him, the camera, and his expressions.

ED AND IZZY. WHAT! YOU HAVE LOVE FOR HIM! WHAT! In my wildest dreams I never thought they would go in so hard with these two so fast. I remember reading angsty fic about their dynamic and thinking " they would never make it this dark." Actually the " take off your boot" scene is so traumatic/sad/slight sexy 🫠 😳 😔 . I am screaming. I knew Con and Taika had chemistry but they are so good together, their scenes are electric.

Stede Bonnet you beautiful bastard. I love that everyone keeps thinking he is stalling for fear of being killed but the truth is he doesn't want his hope for reconciliation dashed. What everyone warning him away doesn't understand is that he is a man who is experiencing breath-stealing, soul binding love for the first time in middle age. His devotion to Ed is unmarred by what he has done.

Spanish Jackie as always is amazing. Her use of "husband" is similar to Nandor (WWDITS). Her getting Swede is great too. I love Leslie Jones. Only issue is because the episode is so full you could almost take the Olu and Zheng storyline and put that over the Jackie bits or vis versa.

Prince Ricky...I am not convinced. So far he just seems like he has all of Stede worst traits. If he is going to be the big bad this season it's going to have to be some big twist.

Overall I loved the episode. I am so looking forward to more time with my pirates and I NEED more Izzy.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Hello! I’m relatively new to the fandom so I’m sorry if you’ve talked about this before. Your post on Ed and Stede in 204 actually made me stop to think for a moment. I love what you said and I agree, the way the show handled the resolution of their conflict fits so well with who they are as characters and as a duo, and as a viewer it was great to see. We still had tension, we still had pettiness and hurt feelings, but there was so much progress, communication … in so little time and it didn’t really feel odd or ooc? Especially because we know they are still being hesitant after that episode, still trying to get back to how things were. Their reunion felt so them.

But then it got me thinking about how so many people imagined a much more violent and bloody reunion. It’s in so many fics. Headbutt aside, which imo was just Ed’s only way of communicating after basically being in a heavy coma, the show didn’t do that. That left me wondering where the idea of Ed trying to kill Stede upon seeing him again came from. Ed was mad and hurt, sure, but to the point of doing that to Stede? The Stede he’d always been so gentle with before he even woke up? I know he was full Blackbeard when Stede was away, and that he tried to murder Lucius… but it’s Stede we’re talking about. It’s making me scratch my head a little. Maybe audiences are so used to romantic pairings doing too much, tearing each other apart for the sake of dramatic moments that they can’t envision any other ways reunions could happen? Do you have any ideas or do you know why fans thought that at the time?

Bless the show for not doing that though.

I'll admit I'm with you in wondering why that became so popular, too!

Charitably, I'll usually concede that a lot of it is probably down to two big factors:

The people like angst and a more violent, drawn-out reunion is really juicy for a lot of people to write and read about

The gap between seasons meant that some people kinda forgot that this show is a comedy, and I think as a result it was easy to lose sight of how this romcom probably wouldn't use up their entire second season on having Ed and Stede be at each other's throats

However I'd be lying if I said I don't think some of it wasn't just down to the usual culprit: sometimes people are really racist about Ed and assume that his reaction to any negative stimulus is always stabbing and shooting it. There is an unfortunate trend in some vocal circles of this fandom to sometimes see Ed less as a grown man with feelings and more of a big violent toddler (as @asneakyfox once very aptly put it). There was definitely a trend for a while there of depicting Ed's Kraken era as A Natural Way He Was Always Going To Turn Out instead of as a direct response to his life being threatened for being perceived as soft, so the trend of Ed reacting by trying to kill Stede followed from that.

[izzyeffinhands]

“try and get some sleep. i’ll stay right here- i won’t let anything happen to you, i swear.” (Frenchie, elyrianinspo. Sorry if this is too many sent! You definitely don’t have to answer it if you’re not feeling it. Hope you feel better ❤️‍🩹 I’m a slut for frenchie protecting Izzy during The Bad Times (kraken era))

“ I don’t want to sleep, Frenchie. “

Izzy was tired. He was so tired, so fucking drained and so very sore after everything he was going through. Never in his days had he truly thought he might hate Edward Teach, but as of right now.. well. Pathetically, Israel still straddled the border on love. What would it take for the first-mate to have enough? What would Ed have to do for this codependent bastard to stop trying to love him? Well.. he’d find out eventually. Soon, was more like it.

Why was it that this old sea dog was at his most beautiful when he wept? Izzy’s eyes were glossed but he hadn’t permitted a tear to fall. Fuck, he’d wanted to save Ed. That was HIS mate, then that blonde came along and ruined everything. .. but he couldn’t really hate Bonnet either. Izzy was just so numb in the depths of sadness he wasn’t sure he’d crawl out from. So many feelings swirled in his mind. Izzy loved Ed, even now as he threw knives at him, as he cursed, as he mutilated him over and over. .. how many toes has he lost now? He isn’t even sure in this moment, he’s so fucking tired.

All of this abuse truly proved his worth as first-mate and quartermaster. This crew, minus Ivan and Fang, the bilge dogs that had thrown him off The Revenge? He was protecting. It was his duty, or what he told himself was his duty. Izzy had found out about Lucius sometime ago. Maybe this was his penance for not being able to save that boy. Maybe he was protecting the rest, despite things they’d done to him, in order to make up for it and every wicked thing that …

“ If I sleep the nightmares ‘ll come. “ That was when his voice choked, letting his head fall to the side so he could cast his eyes up at him as he sat in his bunk. He hadn’t even turned his head, he’d simply let it fall. He didn’t even know how he had the energy to keep going, but he was. He sniffed. “ And I can’t tell anymore if I’m asleep in the nightmare or if I’m awake.. it’s all just the same now.. “

Izzy often burned his flesh in a candle prior to The Kraken. He wasn’t beyond self harm and he was a bit of a masochist anyhow. But now the pirate took effort to lift his palm and raise it over the solitary pillar candle on the table at the bedside. He didn’t even flinch as his hand moved within the flame. Izzy had burned himself so much he had callouses, but this was his palm, and he had it cutting through the middle of the dancing light.

Eyes were on Frenchie as flesh sizzled and finally those welled tears began to drip down his cheeks. “ .. am I even alive? “

[demonsonthemoon]

Here As I Am

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death Pairing: Israel Hands & Edward Teach Word Count: 1610 Rating: Gen Summary: “It's not even that bad,” Ed says. “Stop,” Izzy protests weakly. “Stop! Stop it. Eddie, just-” Ed feels tears gather in his eyes, but he listens. For once in his life, he listens and stills his scurrying hands, waiting to hear whatever it is Izzy has to say to him. “Stop trying to save me. Stop pretending you care." Notes: Hello, hi. Mmmmmh........ so that ending, right? I didn't like it. I felt like it wasn't earned. So I wrote the set-up for a more tragic version of an ending that would lead to an entire arc of heart-wrenching internal conflict. I'm so much fun at parties. Title from "Because the Night" by Patti Smith

Read it on AO3.

There's so much blood on his fingers as Edwards calls out for help. He's not used to that anymore. He's gotten with his persona as someone that's above getting his own hands dirty.

Stede gets up to grab bandages and Ed can tell from his tone that even he doesn't believe that it will do any good. But Edward pretends he hasn't noticed. He can't let himself notice. Because if even Stede, blindly optimistic Stede who raced the oceans after Blackbeard after he had stranded his crew, if even the Gentleman Pirate cannot believe anymore...then there really isn't any hope left.

“Great, Bonnet's in charge. I'm definitely fucked,” Izzy says. Snarking still even as he bleeds out under Ed's hands.

The joke should be reassuring. Izzy is still Izzy. Can't be anything too wrong with him if he's still capable of sarcasm.

But Ed knows better these days. Izzy might have kept barking at the crew half the time, but the rest of his days were spent nursing a bottle. And there wasn't any shouting whenever Edward was on deck. The truth is, Ed already knows that Izzy isn't the same man he used to be. Edward made sure of that, butchering his body as he saw fit.

The toe hadn't been the first time Ed had marked easy. But all his other marks had been gifts. Those news scars... They weren't anything like that.

Izzy might be acting sarcastic, but there's no warmth in his eyes to let Edward know that he's in on the joke. There's just pain. So much pain. And Ed might not have ever seen that face before, but the Kraken has.

There's a certain tiredness there as well that pulls at Ed's heart.

“It's not even that bad,” Ed says. It's a lie. It's just another lie, the umpteenth one in his long career as a pirate. He knows it and Izzy knows it. His first mate has always been able to read right through him.

“Stop,” he protests weakly. “Stop! Stop it. Eddie, just-”

Ed feels tears gather in his eyes, but he listens. For once in his life, he listens and stills his scurrying hands, waiting to hear whatever it is Izzy has to say to him.

Fuck. He has so much to say to his First Mate. So much to explain, so many things to apologize for. He's been such a dick for the past few months and, sure, Izzy's been a dick all of his life, but he's always been there.

And now he might not-

And Ed can't-

And-

“Stop trying to save me. Stop pretending you care. We both know the choices that have led me here, and if you must take everything from me, at least leave me with the dignity of dying a pirate's death. It's the least you can fucking do.”

“Izzy, what are you-”

“I love you.”

Ed feels the tears run down his cheek. There's a finality to Izzy's tone that brooks no argument.

“Izzy, I'm sorry-”

“No. Don't. Don't you dare say that. I love you, and I hate that I still want to fucking say it when I'm about to fucking die because of you. This is because of you, Edward. All of this. Because of my love for you, and don't you dare apologize because you fucking wanted it.”

The hand that he had slipped behind Izzy's neck to keep his head from the deck suddenly grips into a fist. Izzy smiles through gritted teeth, and it feels like he's biting into Ed's skin.

“We called it loyalty, but we both knew what it was and you let it grow, and I won't let you apologize. Reap the fucking fruits you've sown. It's about damn time you face the music for your actions, captain Blackbeard.”

“No, Izzy, no. I'm sorry.”

“What are you even sorry for? Do you know?” The smile is softer this time, but it doesn't matter. Edward is already flayed open.

“I fed your darkness, Blackbeard. It was supposed to protect us. But you decided you'd outgrown it. Did you even think about what it left me with?”

Ed doesn't want to hear this. Not now. Not like this. Izzy is his best friend. He can't die like this, words of hate in his mouth and reason enough for them to be justified. He can't die with the name Blackbeard on his tongue, Edward's name another thing that got stolen by the greatest pirate of the Caribbean.

It's not fair.

“I need him. Blackbeard... It was us. I needed you. And you left me.”

Ed thinks of Stede. It's the worst moment. The man still isn't back with the clean bandages and Izzy is dying in his arms and Ed is still thinking about Stede anyway.

About waiting for him on the docks.

About waiting for him on the ship.

He thinks about the moment he realized that Stede wasn't coming back, that he had left.

He thinks about how he closed the door to his own feelings, put on the skin of the Kraken, how he stopped seein anyone around him because his gaze was entirely consumed by absence.

“Now I'm leaving you,” Izzy adds. He manages to sound triumphant even as his body is wracked by a cough that ends in a pained gasp.

“Izzy, you can't go. You can't leave me.”

“I wanna go,” Izzy responds.

It's like the ground is opening under Edward's feet. Like their ship is falling directly to the bottom of the ocean, not a drop of water in sight. And then it keeps falling, through layers and layers of earth and rocks.

Edward did this. He took the best thing that had been given to him – true friendship, loyalty that ran deeper than blood – and he twisted it. Made it devotion, made it worship, until – like all proper gods – he stopped even talking to the man he calls his greatest friend.

And now Izzy wants to leave. And now Izzy is leaving.

“No, please,” Edward cries out. “You're my only family.”

Izzy dies with a smile on his lips and Ed gripping his jacket and his hair.

Edward calls out his name. Once, twice. And then he crumbles into the other man's chest and screams.

The ship inside of him doesn't stop falling and he doesn't stop screaming. Everything he has kept trapped inside his chest for the past decade is coming out. All of the emotions he repressed, because Blackbeard doesn't show any emotions. All of the love he never managed to allow past his lips because he thought that it would only be met with scorn.

All of the words that he never said, and now it's too late. Now his best friend is dead.

He feels hands on his back, trying to comfort him. He doesn't move, even when his scream turns into sobs.

He hears Stede's voice, some shouting, and he notices movement around him, the crew getting to work to get the ship moving. He doesn't look at what's happening. He doesn't check whether they're doing things correctly. Those kinds of things are Izzy's job.

Let them strand the ship, let them capsize for all he cares.

He shudders as that thought registers. He recognizes the impulse for destruction, the one that powered him for those months he spent without Stede, running the crew ragged and sailing them directly into storms.

It had been some sort of drive then, something that could get him out of the blankness of his mind, out of the deep hole that was taking over it. It doesn't seem to build up the same kind of energy now. He's so tired.

Hands push at his shoulders. He resists. He keeps his face against Izzy's shirt, doesn't care if he gets blood all over his cheeks, doesn't care if it gets in his mouth.

“Edward.” It's Stede's voice, right next to his ear. Edward shudders again, hides deeper in his best friend's dead body. He doesn't want to face the other man, not right now. He knows that all he will see in Stede's face is the details that Izzy hates. Hated. Stede's wavy hair, the softness that is still in his eyes even when it has mostly disappeared from his body, the unconscious mannerisms leftover from his upbringing that he never quite managed to do away with.

“Edward, we need to move him. We need to clean the- to clean him. And you. You can't just stay like this.”

Edward whines. He's not Blackbeard in this moment. He's a pitiful little boy who only wants to hide in his mother's skirts, but he has already learned that it's not safe there.

Stede's gentle hands pull at him once more. He's too tired to resist. He gives up. That's the story of his life, lately. He lets himself be pulled away until he's sitting on his butt. Stede crouches in front of him and pulls him to his chest, and Edward keeps crying.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jim and Oluwande drag away Izzy's corpse.

“I'm sorry, Ed” Stede says.

Ed suddenly wants to move away. He can't hear this. Not coming from Stede. Not when Izzy refused his own apologies.

He hates himself for the part of him that longs to hear Izzy say the same words. To hear Izzy acknowledge the role he's played in Edwards own suffering.

But the man lost several toes, he lost his leg, and he still stayed with Ed until it got him killed. No matter what he wishes, Edward cannot ask for more. He realizes that now.

[naranjapetrificada]

As the "dealing with grief and other big feelings dredged up by the 🌟Gay Pirate Show🌟" thing appears to be sticking around I thought it was time for a master post about my new favorite thing:

Healing thru fanfic!

I should say up top that a) I usually prefer fic that's canon-compliant or only slightly canon-divergent, especially for healing purposes because I think it helps with immersion and b) the list is short right now but it's definitely gonna grow as time moves on. Anyway, recs beyond the cut:

Fallow Land & Bigger Sky: I've already mentioned before how reading (and sitting with and processing) Fallow Land & Bigger Sky was so incredibly healing but here I am, doing it again! And even if the emotional appeal doesn't get you to read it, you should try it for the beautiful imagery, poetic writing, and carefully and lovingly crafted (and canon-compliant) character study of one Edward Teach.

It's the kind of writing that makes contemplative manual labor, stunning vistas, a mischievous nun, a cute little black lamb, and gallons of homebrewed wine all feel as essential to the fandom experience as any other way we spend time with our blorbos. I literally cannot believe how beautiful and well-executed this story is sometimes.

Brace Yourself and Nestle into Me: I literally just read this one this morning, and it's actually what inspired me to make this post. The premise is that Ed and Stede figure out that they're into each other around episode 7, and they're deliriously happy to know that they feel the same way about each other. But Stede has some (understandable) sexual dysfunction around being queer thanks to the horrible society that he grew up in. Ed is a darling trying to help him through it all, and along the way he realizes he also has some of his own hangups he needs to work through together.

I appreciate that this one doesn't treat healing like a straight line because it never is, and emphasizes that trust can't just be implicit, you really have to talk it through as a crew, even if it's just a crew of two broken middle-aged men who are desperately in love with each other. It also gets into some of the stuff I've been talking about on here about grieving your former selves and the selves you never got to be, which was validating as hell. That sounds heavy and there are concepts that are literally part of modern therapy modalities woven into the story, but there are also warm and loving and hilarious moments too, including this gem:

“Also can you just imagine how proud little horny baby gay Stede would be know you would be to know that whatever he went through, today you’ve got your own ship and are getting completely railed by Blackbeard? I mean, just absolutely dicked down by the most famous pirate in history? He would lose his mind.”

To paraphrase the author notes, the "Healing Power of Gay Sex"  won't fix everything, but I put it to you as a reader that reading and thinking about it also helps. And sometimes it can shake something loose you didn't know you were holding onto! Which is great!

Adrift Between the Dreaming Seas: Based on my usual filtering on ao3 I probably never, ever would have come across this fic if it weren't for a recommendation someone posted on this hellsite. It's got fantasy elements, allegory, metaphors stacked on metaphors, talking animals, and so many other things that would have kept me from ever discovering it on my own. My life would be poorer for it.

Basically Stede is cursed to be a lighthouse keeper on an island that seems to move around the world. Animals show up and the ones who talk to him are members of the crew, and Ed is an actual kraken. It's all this symbolism about monstrosity and trauma and maladaptive coping and the messiness that is Stede's kindness scraping against his self loathing. I shed tears of many kinds along the way, and it made me think hard about community and recovery and the things we do to and for ourselves and others.

It's just a lovely little gem of a story that made me feel so much so deeply while also making me laugh much more than I was anticipating. I'm so glad I gave it a chance.

[that's it for now, more as I keep up my deep dive into the ao3 archives]

[darkfire359]

the way Ed's plot was written in season 2 felt like a fanfic that I'd start to read but stop halfway through because I thought his character felt too different compared to what we know about Ed from season 1. So many missed opportunities and scenes played the wrong way. They wanted a lovely romance between two main characters who we love and instead turned a lot of people against them for various understandable reasons. I don't personally hate ed now but his character did rub me the wrong way in scenes, like I was expecting more of the type of person he was in season 1, but with some progress or hope of progress to his character and state of being after he'd regressed to the depressed state he was in. Instead he felt too different in certain aspects that were so important and understood during the first season. Was it that so much progress was as skipped over and done off screen? Maybe that's part of it. But if so there was a lot of very important work done off screen. I think it just didn't happen, really, and that's worse. While I think everyone moving on and repressing what happened is fine, it should still be addressed as a big issue that needs some resolving. Ed feeling awful about what he'd done was played way too insignificant. He had one talk with Fang and that's really it. If Ed feels so bad and doesn't want to be a pirate because he dislikes the life it leads, we should SEE that like we did in season 1. We should see guilt and shame and a want to become better and not immediately come back to the crew with a scripted speech for the funnies and barely show his remorse throughout the rest of the show. It's like there was too much to address and so little time, but I have doubts that they would have addressed it given more time. I think they wrote the season as they wanted it and it just so happened that it was in a way that was really disappointing to me.

Agreed. I think they could have kept the flippancy of the response to the Kraken era if they would have dialed down the impact of the Kraken era—not having Ed take the extra toes and shoot Izzy, not having Lucius end up on ships that assaulted him, not having the crewmembers have literal PTSD flashbacks, etc. Plenty of people wrote post-S1 fanfic where they skipped right over it and magically had everyone hanging out happily as a crew again, because sometimes that's just what you want to focus on. And they could have kept the intensity of the kraken era if they similarly focused on the aftereffects of the kraken era.

Instead they mixed the two and it just feels dissonant.