#i have no hope the feral izzy fans will take anything from this except confirmation of their bias

[areyoudoingthis]

it's the scene with stede when they're finally on the revenge that does it for me. it's when he tries to shift the blame for what he did onto stede "you and me did this to him" because he can't accept that he did it, not stede, and he needs stede to absolve him (which he won't, not in a million years. it'd be antithetical to stede's nature to do that.) it's the contrast between "you know me better than anyone has ever known me, and I daresay the same is true for me about you", an assumption that has had the most fucked up consequences we've seen on this show so far, and stede's calm and assured "he was going to watch the world burn or die trying (and I love him and I don't care and I just want him to be fine)". it's the echo between "I'm here. I'm here. you're safe" and "I should've let the English kill you. This, whatever you've become, is a fate worse than death"

it's the way the show set up izzy and stede and their relationships with ed as narrative foils from the beginning and then said "watch what happens when each of them leads the dance." and then fed us a banquet