#Tried NUMEROUS times to get Stede killed

[saltpepperbeard]

Want Stede and Ed to kiss the second they see each other again for a couple of reasons.

One, it would be absolutely lovely, cathartic, and incredible.

And two, I just know Izzy is going to see Stede dashing towards Ed and pull a "Heheheh Blackbeard is finally going to send Bonnet to doggy heaven 😈," only to see the two of them kiss and subsequently pull one giant "🧍‍♂️"

[suffersinfandom]

Controversial opinion (?): the Kraken Era wasn’t all that dark.

There’s a lot of meta and fic out there that portray Ed as a bloodthirsty, hyperviolent monster, and when that portrayal is challenged, the rebuttal is usually along the lines of, “I’m just doing what canon did. Did you even watch the show? It's racist, not me!”

I did watch the show, and honestly? I went in expecting far worse based on meta and fic I read during the hiatus. When I see people say they didn’t think Ed did enough to redeem himself or that he went past the point of no return, I just don’t understand.

I already went into this in my way-too-long meta about Ed and abuse, but I do think it bears repeating (in a shorter post) because it seems like Ed’s actions -- more than the actions of any other character -- are scrutinized and discussed outside of the context of a comedy about pirates. There’s tons of casual violence in Our Flag Means Death. Sometimes the violence is even funny! 

So what does Ed actually do in the first episodes of season two?

We see Ed directly harm someone twice in the first two episodes: first on the wedding boat, and then when he shoots Izzy in the leg. Kind of unimpressive numbers, yeah? I'd expect more out of a heartbroken Blackbeard.

The first instance involves Ed shooting a man during a raid. That man has a sword through his chest before Ed fires, leading me to believe that Ed’s still following his season one pattern of keeping himself a step removed from murder (technically, the sword killed that guy). We also don’t see the murder happen; the man tumbles offscreen before Ed shoots. This makes the action less brutal. If the writers wanted us to be appalled by Ed’s violence, we would’ve gotten a graphic kill or several.

And the second instance is Izzy. Ed shoots Izzy in the leg after he suggests that the shitty atmosphere is because of Ed’s feelings for Stede. Hot take, maybe, but I don’t think that was entirely out of line. Ed’s feelings for Stede are not the only problem; a significant chunk of the problem is Izzy. Izzy called in the navy and led to their capture. Izzy threatened Ed back into the Blackbeard persona the last time Ed tried to talk things through, and that was without an audience of potential mutineers.

We’re also told that Ed has taken more of Izzy’s toes between seasons. This isn’t cool -- bosses definitely shouldn’t be asking for their employees’ toes -- but there is a precedent for it. In season one, Ed told Stede that he used to feed people their toes for a laugh (yuck). For a laugh. This, to me, implies that it’s not a huge deal. It’s certainly not completely unexpected pirate behavior, and it seems more lenient than a keelhauling or a whipping. I think both of those things would've felt far more gruesome and dark.

As far as violent actions go, that’s not a lot. Like, numerically.

Things get darker in S2E2 when Ed becomes increasingly desperate for someone, anyone, to send him to doggy heaven. He’s unhinged and working his way up to a murder-suicide before he’s stopped. He hacks the wheel right off of the ship and threatens to shoot the mast. He orders Archie and Jim to fight to the death. He ignores anonymous crewmembers as they’re swept overboard in the storm. This is bad! It’s self-destructive and selfish! But it's also tragic and human and understandable.

In my opinion, the worst thing Ed does in these episodes is force his crew to do violence for him -- not because it’s violence (again, they’re pirates), but because the violence hurts them. THIS is what traumatizes them. Their trauma flashbacks are scenes of them hurting others, not of Ed hurting them directly. Ed didn’t physically torture his crew (with the exception of Izzy, and that’s complicated). His crime was driving them to do one violent raid after another, killing and plundering without any joy or theatrics. Ed feels trapped in the role of Blackbeard -- the role that he’s been desperate to escape -- and, in his heartbreak, he opts to trap his crew with him. 

Yes, Ed is messed up in the first two episodes of season two. I don’t blame the crew for almost killing him; it’s what needed to be done. I think that Jim, Archie, Frenchie, and Fang had every right to want Ed gone after Stede’s return. 

But I don’t think that Ed was a super violent monster who tortured his crew and murdered his way through his breakup. He engages in very little onscreen violence, and the person that most of his violence is focused on -- Izzy -- is the same person who told him to be violent. I think that anyone who says that Ed’s actions in the first part of season two are extremely dark is either looking at them out of context, misremembering what actually happened and just recalling the dark tone, or working with some kind of motive.

In conclusion: Ed is a man who, at his very darkest, was still operating pretty firmly within the bounds of "stuff pirates do" (but not stuff Ed has historically done, presumably).

Also look at him. Thank you.

GIF by unearthlydust

EDIT: Read the reblogs for some amazing and more nuanced additions!