#our flag means death season 3 rampant speculation

[triflesandparsnips]

HEY FOLKS GUESS WHO FINALLY WATCHED THE FINALE

it's time again for "is it really a good idea to post your uncensored thoughts hahaha just kidding FUCI IT WE BALL" screenshots of my episode livetexting.

Transcribed:

okay so I'm in the AD now

I like the "gong" sounds during the "last time"

then BOOM

also ugh I gotta rewatch the prev episodes on the BIG screen, there's so much happening

oh baby omg the sweet music omggggg

FISH

omg so much NATURE he HATED nature in his previous vibes

awwwww his monologue is PRECIOUS

FISHSCALES that's what FAKE PEARLS are made out of

whoooo the fuck are these PEOPLE

ommmmg lololol

"SIMPLE LIVES" "SIMPLE WAYS"

LOL PUNCH OMG

"I said I CAUGHT a fish ONCE" omgggggggggg

you PRECIOUS BABYGIRL

...........................okay hey omg tryin to be a housewife Ed, ilu

"If you were EVER GOOD AT ANYTHING go and do THAT you bum" -- "YOU GUYS ARE DICKS"

I love him so much

.............oh DANG the republic

wait-- pausing

Ricky is REVERSE STEDE here-- he's "become a real boy" with the praise of his superiors-- except he's the MONSTER Pinocchio from Jim's story

...okay unpausing

"NEVER BE SLAVES" o i see

some CHOICES are being MADE here

YEAH THEY ARE

OH WAIT

PAUSING AGAIN

NO BUT REALLY

HE'S THE REVERSE PINOCCHIO

HE DOESN'T HAVE A NOSE

..........while i die about that a little i'll unpause

"THE MAN I AM TODAY"

You are going to be insufferable about this, I can tell~

YES I AM

WOOOO

awwwwwww oh no, oh no, Auntie

"Did you? Well, don't want to split hairs" STEDE U DICK

awwwwwww he's saying the failure line to ZYS!

STEDE IS WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH

OH MY

FUCKING

GOD

HE SAID IT

HE ACTUALLY SAID TI

HE SAID IT WAS WEIRD

YOU WANNA TALK INSUFFERABLE YOU HAVE NOT EVEN BEGUN TO EXPERIENCE THE AGONY OF MY TOTAL ANNIHILATING RIGHTNESS

I SAID WHAT I FUCKING SAID

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST

.........................so anyway, about those curtains

they sure look great

I should climb them

see what the world looks like from up there

..............................................................I'm going to rewind and watch myself be SO GODDAMN RIGHT all over again

"IT WAS WEIRD"

HELL YEAH

omg he jumped on them!

"oh no!"

....pausing just to say, the closeup of his hand against the stone bridge was. unnecessarily.

good.

....for reasons.

whoops I accidentally rewound to him BEING WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH AGAIN

lololol

I fucking love that he jumped on them, such a delight

I'm checking to see if there's a closeup of his ring on that. very good. um. hand. pressed against the--- YEAH THERE IS

"or is it?"

"that went as well as I planned it" BABE

"to skin a prince" she says as she fixes her hair

[triflesandparsnips]

Welp-- I'm awake and I shouldn't be, and I'll definitely be asleep by the time the season 2 finale of OFMD drops, so-- FUCK IT LET'S DROP SOME PREDICTIONS:

Stede throws some STARK REVELATIONS at someone (preferably Ricky)

Stede and Ed are back together by the end of the ep but our blond blorbo is still not actually, like, okay (gotta save some trauma resolution for season 3 shenanigans)

POSSIBLY they're back together in a relationshippy manner, but the episode ends with them deciding to split up and regroup later for tactical reasons

Ed = Disney's Little Mermaid, now a human girl, good for u babe, love that journey for u

Ed reads one of Stede's bottle letters and it's somehow the Sweet Weirdo He Fell In Love With (and possibly also finally tells his trauma background, because it's easier to write about than say)

Extremely timely seagull attack

Izzy kisses someone (and it's Definitely Queer)

Izzy doesn't die, but he gets seriously wounded and his survival is left as a cliffhanger

Maybe a big damn album-cover shot at the end of our remaining pirate gang: Spanish Jackie, Ed, Stede, Zheng Yi Sao, plus background folk

Episode ends with a threat to Those We Thought Left Safe Behind in season 1 (Ed's mom? Stede's family? Jim's brother? SURE) -- gotta prepare for the upswing of "oh shit" forward plot momentum toward the final season

One last Big Damn Kiss (gotta follow our rule of three vibes, we've only had two, cmon now)

...................STEDE DOES SOMETHING WEIRD WITH TOUCH

[triflesandparsnips]

Lot of takes going around the internets about certain "deaths" in the ofmd season finale, so, uh-- guess it's time for me to try and lose some followers on tumblr dot com with

Some Thoughts on Why I Am Not Particularly Bothered or Concerned about Izzy's Apparent "Death"

Laying the groundwork first...

1. Narratively speaking, Izzy's been a dead man walking since the start of the season. Babe shot himself and got a rebirth-- but he still definitely intended to die. Every minute he was still around was borrowed time.

Did he have to die? Maybe not. I know I could've written a version of the show where he didn't. But then that would be my show-- not theirs. I can't know exactly what themes, bugbears, bête noires, catharsis, or artistic Vibes are driving that writers' room, and until the credits run on the finale of the third season, none of the rest of us can either.

2. Izzy spent the season being in a liminal state-- and there's nothing in the story saying that he can't continue doing that. Izzy spent the season having one foot in one space, one hoof in the other, and himself halfway through the door, a chimera of mirrored things right up to his "death": pirate and ship, hard and soft, old ways and new, etc etc. But "the gravy basket" is a weird little liminal space between life and death, a place that both Ed and Buttons have found (and returned from) before. We don't know where Izzy "is" right now-- he could be there.

(tbh, I wonder how much poor feeling we'd be having about all this if we'd gotten a final tag of a blue-washed Izzy staring down at a bowl of soup while helplessly saying "but this isn't gravy, what the fu--")

3. I think there is an unfortunate belief that "it's not real unless you see the body" is a universal -- or perhaps inarguable -- "fact" of storytelling. But it's not. It's just a bit of narrative shorthand that got popular, and now we're too ready to fall into the trap of believing the inverse is true too-- that if there is a body, then there must therefore have been a "real" death.

This season has spent quite a lot of narrative time and effort telling us that its story is using a different model, with different shorthands; specifically, that magic is real, that there is at least some kind of existence after death, and that the dead can be resurrected.

And that brings me to the meat of why I'm not particularly bothered or concerned about what, at this stage of the story, could still very well be just a minor setback--

4. This whole show, and particularly this season, is a fairy tale. It's a story that works with fairy tale logic and tropes, and it's in conversation with other fairy tales too, ones that the OFMD audience is likely to know well enough to spot their narrative beats in action. So "Pinocchio" gets mentioned a lot? Cool-- the audience applies what is commonly known of that story to this one ("a real boy", the mirror-opposite being a puppet with no nose, etc), and finds some Cool Shit. Then they're primed to keep looking for fairy tales, even unnamed ones, in case there's another little nugget of reward-dopamine for finding a connection.

So the fact that we saw a mermaid? Suddenly, I personally am noticing "Little Mermaid" motifs all over the place. That Ed was in a "sleep like death" -- after fucking around with a spinning wheel -- until his prince came to wake him? Well fuck, man, that's Blackbeard playing "Sleeping Beauty" for us all.

And bringing it all back to a "dead" Izzy Hands... when I add up a "dead" body surrounded by a bunch of laborers mourning the person who nominally kept their living space nice AND who was wanted dead by an authority figure for the crime of being the "better" version of what that figure wanted to be...

...well fuck, idk about the rest of you, but to me that all adds up to Izzy's story being Snow fucking White. Waiting for someone to come pull the bullet poisoned apple from his body so he can live again.

5. This is a second season. Of three. And Izzy Hands is the writer's favorite chewtoy, so there is lots of time, space, and incentive to bring him back. If there's a third season, we have a pile of ways he could be brought back over the course of hours of literal viewing time and possibly months of in-narrative time. That's ages.

And the solutions don't have to be difficult! For instance, we still have canonical hallucinations from Stede-- that's one route. Or fuck it, we could have Izzy's (very solid-looking) ghost be the embodiment of their being haunted by the Sea, that would work too.

And even barring all that-- his grave is right there with our heroes. The ship is out there hunting down his murderer. Even if you're happy he's dead... bad news, friend. He's all over the third season landscape. (uh oh, it's GNU Izzy Hands)

But those are just a few options that leave his body rotting but his character still alive. I happen to think we could all dream a little bigger, darlings. For instance:

A. You cannot tell me that these writers, on this show, with these actors, would not absolutely go all in on a zombie-esque hand thrusting out of the dirt mere hours after burial. Look me in the eyes and tell me Con O'Neill wouldn't pull off an entire digging-out scene only to end with himself panting beside the hole, looking around, hearing Ed and Stede being weird in their haunted hut, and wearily say, "Are you fucking kidding me."

B. Don't like zombies? Want to stay closer to the Snow White vibe AND introduce a love interest for him? One hyphenated word: body-snatcher. Gotta dig those bodies up fresh for the Definitely Historically Accurate anatomists of the time! But oh, says this New Guy, this corpse is-- wow, it's weird that they buried him with a rose and really amazing makeup and a truly extraordinary number of whittled whales, plus what's with that horsey leg grave marker, this guy must've been fucking fascinating, man, I wish I could've met him-- --at which point Izzy's hand shoots out and chokes the guy half to death and the lads come tumbling out of the house and ta da, mission accomplished, Izzy resurrected in 5 minutes or less with his horsey leg conveniently beside him and an entire season for himself and everyone else to Deal With It, amazing, fantastic, no notes from me.

C. Come to think of it, there is genuinely a non-zero chance that the crew just. Fucked up the burial. I mean... even though I was just arguing why we shouldn't see it as Law, we didn't actually see the body. We saw a grave. What did they bury him in? Was it a box? Was it some canvas? Did they definitely pick up the right one when it was time to bury him? Or did they maybe carefully make him an ahistorical safety coffin just in case a cat demon came to bother him and his corpse wanted to make a fuss about it, y'know, very common, could happen to anyone, and Frenchie just so happens to have Blackbeard's old collar bell right here--

6. Here's the bottom line, imo: The only thing that would keep Izzy really actually dead and completely removed from the story is a lack of narrative time and space-- and we have plenty of both. Stories are like Lego. If you've got enough time and you're willing to play with pieces from a whole lotta different sets, it's not hard to put the same elements together in different ways to get new, exciting configurations. It's why I'm actually rubbish at predicting exact details of stuff-- there are a lot of ways something could go, there are infinite doors out of problems the narrative seems to throw at us, and no two people will come up with the same thing because we're all different.

That, to me, is one of the big ways I personally enjoy and engage with stories. And it's why I genuinely can't be fussed about Izzy's death, not when we're only two-thirds through the story as a whole; observing someone setup and then try and execute a complicated narrative trick is my jam.

But my way of engaging with all this is by no means the best or only way. How we all interact with art, and what speaks to us, is extremely personal. If how this season and Izzy's death went just didn't work for you, that's okay. I'm sorry it wasn't the story you wanted it to be. That blows.

I just know I can't say yet that it didn't work for me. I won't know until I can take in the entire picture, just as I can't judge a finished Lego set by the one piece I step on midway through construction. I can see different ways Izzy's death/rebirth could absolutely work, but will the writer manage it? I dunno.

But I'm willing to wait and see if the stupid puppet can pull it off.

[triflesandparsnips]

PART DEUX:

Transcribed:

OH NO ED

ED AND TRAUMA

"STEDE"

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

HE'S GONNA GET WILD

OH SHIT

WHAT

HE KILLS FOR THE PEOPLE HE LOVES

AND HE HASN'T LOVED SINCE HIS MUM

OH SHIT

NO ED DON'T MAKE SOME RANDOM DUDE--- OH NO A FATHER -- MAKE YOU THE KRAKEN AGAIN

OH NO HE IS A MONSTER FROM THE DEEP OH SHIIIIIT

baby ur leather that is

that is going to chafe

are we in a fairy tale YES WE ARE

"and all your stories will be lost for the ages"

"I do love a good pirates' tale"

JESUS HI OKAY HIIIII-- oh. oh hey Izzy

omg

PINOCCIO

EXCUSE ME

EXCUSE ME WHAT

YES

YESSSSS

oh my fucking god

I mean, LEAVING ASIDE the part where it is clear that IZZY HAS HEARD THE STORY

let's all just sit for a moment

with how I just

keep

winning

That's what made me say you were going to be insufferable

and yet somehow you didn't think it would be the touch thing?

I don't pay as much attention to that as you do

you don't pay attention to my EXTREMELY IMPORTANT DATA SCIENCE i see i see

well

MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE DOES

* screeches from ceiling, shredding the curtains *

anyway, getting back to Izzy motherfucking Hands here-- my good bitch is a goddamn master of the dramatic lighting and artful poses to harass blond idiots, in this essay I will

okay unpausing

ohhhh I wonder if Izzy is deliberately distracting Ricky here-- that was an unpopular bit of meta, that he "takes stuff on" to save the crew from abuse etc, would be interesting to see if that'll be confirmed here

OH HEY IZZY AND CANDLES, U GONNA LIE TO SOMEONE?

...ricky, ricky are u going to try and badmouth Izzy's forgiven ex

"it's about finding the family to kill for when yours are long dead"

....................and is the theme in the room with us right now?

(and from the mouth of THE WRITER'S FAVORITE CHEWTOY, yup)

lololololololol

awwwww he-- he's flashing back to that one really happy scene on deck-- the one where HE was unhappy before, but he's RECONTEXTUALIZED it omg

"the good stuff" eh?

omg ocean

OH NO

BRITISH SOLDIER WHAT

THOSE ARE PRIVATE

daily baby

"hope that's okay"

LOL MURDERED MUCH

OH HEY look CONFIRMED BLACKBEARD CAN READ-- hello excellent, tick mark on that meta

OH HEY GNOISSENE

IT'S ED'S VOICE WHEN HE'S READING, STEDE'S VOICE WHEN THE CAMERA'S ON HIM

BECAUSE THEY FEEL THE SAME

oh hey lol but Ed still thinks Stede is dead so lemme just get a quick pic here one moment

Figure 1. Local man experiences fabulous beaches, lucious looks, total devastation

[phone picture of Ed looking heartbroken and also damp]

omg their SHARED NARRATION over the MUSIC

YOU WROTE ME A LOVELY LETTER as the music intensifies

oh god stede "I can go die by myself" "you can't do everything on your own! you need help!" -- are you. are you helping her to die? stede man cmon

"Oh I can do things!"

baby can u

OH MY GOD A BEACH

THE BEACH FROM THE PROMO

OH MY GOD SO MUCH ED KILLING PEOPLE

"ED!"

"STEDE!"

oh my fucking god NINA SIMONE

HEY FOLKS GUESS WHO FINALLY WATCHED THE FINALE

it's time again for "is it really a good idea to post your uncensored thoughts hahaha just kidding FUCI IT WE BALL" screenshots of my episode livetexting.

Transcribed:

okay so I'm in the AD now

I like the "gong" sounds during the "last time"

then BOOM

also ugh I gotta rewatch the prev episodes on the BIG screen, there's so much happening

oh baby omg the sweet music omggggg

FISH

omg so much NATURE he HATED nature in his previous vibes

awwwww his monologue is PRECIOUS

FISHSCALES that's what FAKE PEARLS are made out of

whoooo the fuck are these PEOPLE

ommmmg lololol

"SIMPLE LIVES" "SIMPLE WAYS"

LOL PUNCH OMG

"I said I CAUGHT a fish ONCE" omgggggggggg

you PRECIOUS BABYGIRL

...........................okay hey omg tryin to be a housewife Ed, ilu

"If you were EVER GOOD AT ANYTHING go and do THAT you bum" -- "YOU GUYS ARE DICKS"

I love him so much

.............oh DANG the republic

wait-- pausing

Ricky is REVERSE STEDE here-- he's "become a real boy" with the praise of his superiors-- except he's the MONSTER Pinocchio from Jim's story

...okay unpausing

"NEVER BE SLAVES" o i see

some CHOICES are being MADE here

YEAH THEY ARE

OH WAIT

PAUSING AGAIN

NO BUT REALLY

HE'S THE REVERSE PINOCCHIO

HE DOESN'T HAVE A NOSE

..........while i die about that a little i'll unpause

"THE MAN I AM TODAY"

You are going to be insufferable about this, I can tell~

YES I AM

WOOOO

awwwwwww oh no, oh no, Auntie

"Did you? Well, don't want to split hairs" STEDE U DICK

awwwwwww he's saying the failure line to ZYS!

STEDE IS WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH

OH MY

FUCKING

GOD

HE SAID IT

HE ACTUALLY SAID TI

HE SAID IT WAS WEIRD

YOU WANNA TALK INSUFFERABLE YOU HAVE NOT EVEN BEGUN TO EXPERIENCE THE AGONY OF MY TOTAL ANNIHILATING RIGHTNESS

I SAID WHAT I FUCKING SAID

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST

.........................so anyway, about those curtains

they sure look great

I should climb them

see what the world looks like from up there

..............................................................I'm going to rewind and watch myself be SO GODDAMN RIGHT all over again

"IT WAS WEIRD"

HELL YEAH

omg he jumped on them!

"oh no!"

....pausing just to say, the closeup of his hand against the stone bridge was. unnecessarily.

good.

....for reasons.

whoops I accidentally rewound to him BEING WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH AGAIN

lololol

I fucking love that he jumped on them, such a delight

I'm checking to see if there's a closeup of his ring on that. very good. um. hand. pressed against the--- YEAH THERE IS

"or is it?"

"that went as well as I planned it" BABE

"to skin a prince" she says as she fixes her hair

[triflesandparsnips]

--okay, and also a follow-up game: After the finale, I'm gonna find those weird little sideswiped accuracies, because, like... I forgot that I literally used a bomb analogy when talking about the illustration of a bunch of pirate ships on fire, and like-- OKAY BRAIN, THANKS I GUESS

...also

also

if our lads do do a strategic separation

they're gonna switch rings

call it a promise, a marriage-coded moment, a "lost love return to me from the war and prove it by this yellow band" folk ballad moment-- pick your poison, I don't care, but that's some high-key romantic shit and I for one would applaud it

Welp-- I'm awake and I shouldn't be, and I'll definitely be asleep by the time the season 2 finale of OFMD drops, so-- FUCK IT LET'S DROP SOME PREDICTIONS:

Stede throws some STARK REVELATIONS at someone (preferably Ricky)

Stede and Ed are back together by the end of the ep but our blond blorbo is still not actually, like, okay (gotta save some trauma resolution for season 3 shenanigans)

POSSIBLY they're back together in a relationshippy manner, but the episode ends with them deciding to split up and regroup later for tactical reasons

Ed = Disney's Little Mermaid, now a human girl, good for u babe, love that journey for u

Ed reads one of Stede's bottle letters and it's somehow the Sweet Weirdo He Fell In Love With (and possibly also finally tells his trauma background, because it's easier to write about than say)

Extremely timely seagull attack

Izzy kisses someone (and it's Definitely Queer)

Izzy doesn't die, but he gets seriously wounded and his survival is left as a cliffhanger

Maybe a big damn album-cover shot at the end of our remaining pirate gang: Spanish Jackie, Ed, Stede, Zheng Yi Sao, plus background folk

Episode ends with a threat to Those We Thought Left Safe Behind in season 1 (Ed's mom? Stede's family? Jim's brother? SURE) -- gotta prepare for the upswing of "oh shit" forward plot momentum toward the final season

One last Big Damn Kiss (gotta follow our rule of three vibes, we've only had two, cmon now)

...................STEDE DOES SOMETHING WEIRD WITH TOUCH

[triflesandparsnips]

PART TROIS:

Transcribed:

they're running toward each other on the beach

oh my god

babes don't stab each other

KISS

KISS KISS KISS

YAY

"I LOVE YOU"

OH MY GOD

yeah okay I'm just gonna rewind that

.......aha, and look at that. Riiiiiight at the midpoint of the episode

it's like the warning rattle of a snake

like when you're reading a fic and your blorbos get together and you're super happy about it and then you glance at the chapter count and there are ten more to go

.......unrelatedly, I do love that Zheng had a "go to him" fic moment and it was while EVERYBODY WAS KILLING THE BRITISH

As it should be

back to narrative, though, ahahahahaha yeah this is the best it's gonna get, yay, and we've got another theme as well as the push to season 3's narrative "you're not a dick. life's a dick."

life is gonna separate these fuckos and it's gonna suck

.....okay restarting again

wait, no-- laundry

okay I'm back

and also I made soup, in honor of the soup that has not yet reappeared in the show so I mean I guess I gotta be the callbacks I want to see in the world

TIME TO RESTART THE RUNNING ON THE BEACH SCENE

One Beach in All of Ocean doing the work of All Dinghies Lead to Gays

I love how both of these guys are assholes

DIE MOTHERFUCKERS

FOR LOVE

Our Flag Means Death

who's under the HI AUNTIE

LIKE I SAID Auntie is the Izzy equivalent

...I love this whole thing where they keep referring to amazing fighting moves and effects that happened, like, just a minute ago. off camera. for reasons. but we definitely all remember it!

"BABE

"BABE" WHAT

"IT WAS INCREDIBLE BABE"

He did do a spin!!

LISTEN THOUGH

BABE

amazing

(Ed called Stede babe in Stede's dream!)

"I may have misjudged you. I mean... men have cost her too much." IT'S IZZY, EXCEPT MAYBE MINUS THE SEX STUFF

ONLY MAYBE THO

THE "AUNTIE" PART KINDA LAMPSHADES WHY NOT THO

"But you're not a man. You're soft." LIKE STEDE, LOOK AT ALL THOSE CHICKENS PARALLELS

"She needed more soft in her life and I see that now." HEY REMEMBER IZZY'S SPEECH TO STEDE (before he tried to get him to go back to the ship to fuck whoops) ANYWAY LOOK

(UGH, RICKY COCK BLOCKED THEM)

........for real tho, if I was a writer who's favorite little blorbo was Misinterpreted a Bunch by fandom and if I was a writer who wanted to maybe subtly correct the narrative without outright saying anything then maybe I would make a wee little parallel set of characters that don't have the same baggage and yet say the same things

BUT ANYWAY

"I just don't do soft."

"Maybe just try soft?"

(MAYBE PUT ON DRAG AND SING LA VIE EN ROSE, MAYBE GET A HORSEY LEG, IDK, U GOT OPTIONS BABE)

"I don't do soft" AND IT CUTS RIGHT TO IZZY okay man lololololol

HEY FOLKS GUESS WHO FINALLY WATCHED THE FINALE

it's time again for "is it really a good idea to post your uncensored thoughts hahaha just kidding FUCI IT WE BALL" screenshots of my episode livetexting.

Transcribed:

okay so I'm in the AD now

I like the "gong" sounds during the "last time"

then BOOM

also ugh I gotta rewatch the prev episodes on the BIG screen, there's so much happening

oh baby omg the sweet music omggggg

FISH

omg so much NATURE he HATED nature in his previous vibes

awwwww his monologue is PRECIOUS

FISHSCALES that's what FAKE PEARLS are made out of

whoooo the fuck are these PEOPLE

ommmmg lololol

"SIMPLE LIVES" "SIMPLE WAYS"

LOL PUNCH OMG

"I said I CAUGHT a fish ONCE" omgggggggggg

you PRECIOUS BABYGIRL

...........................okay hey omg tryin to be a housewife Ed, ilu

"If you were EVER GOOD AT ANYTHING go and do THAT you bum" -- "YOU GUYS ARE DICKS"

I love him so much

.............oh DANG the republic

wait-- pausing

Ricky is REVERSE STEDE here-- he's "become a real boy" with the praise of his superiors-- except he's the MONSTER Pinocchio from Jim's story

...okay unpausing

"NEVER BE SLAVES" o i see

some CHOICES are being MADE here

YEAH THEY ARE

OH WAIT

PAUSING AGAIN

NO BUT REALLY

HE'S THE REVERSE PINOCCHIO

HE DOESN'T HAVE A NOSE

..........while i die about that a little i'll unpause

"THE MAN I AM TODAY"

You are going to be insufferable about this, I can tell~

YES I AM

WOOOO

awwwwwww oh no, oh no, Auntie

"Did you? Well, don't want to split hairs" STEDE U DICK

awwwwwww he's saying the failure line to ZYS!

STEDE IS WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH

OH MY

FUCKING

GOD

HE SAID IT

HE ACTUALLY SAID TI

HE SAID IT WAS WEIRD

YOU WANNA TALK INSUFFERABLE YOU HAVE NOT EVEN BEGUN TO EXPERIENCE THE AGONY OF MY TOTAL ANNIHILATING RIGHTNESS

I SAID WHAT I FUCKING SAID

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST

.........................so anyway, about those curtains

they sure look great

I should climb them

see what the world looks like from up there

..............................................................I'm going to rewind and watch myself be SO GODDAMN RIGHT all over again

"IT WAS WEIRD"

HELL YEAH

omg he jumped on them!

"oh no!"

....pausing just to say, the closeup of his hand against the stone bridge was. unnecessarily.

good.

....for reasons.

whoops I accidentally rewound to him BEING WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH AGAIN

lololol

I fucking love that he jumped on them, such a delight

I'm checking to see if there's a closeup of his ring on that. very good. um. hand. pressed against the--- YEAH THERE IS

"or is it?"

"that went as well as I planned it" BABE

"to skin a prince" she says as she fixes her hair

[triflesandparsnips]

ET FINALE:

Transcribed:

....Izzy's bitchy "I'm going to destroy you with like five words the second you stop talking" face is. fantastic.

(.....ugh, now that there's been a Parallel though, now I'm worried about Izzy's fate)

(though not permanently. not for the author's Special Beat 'Em Up Boy)

though hey this show is actually one where you can see the body and it doesn't matter! still might not be dead!

eat your heart out, X-Files

"You're not a pirate, lad"

FIVE WORDS LOL

CALLED IT

lad

He's elaborating, but I stand by my nonsense, hooray

"because... we're good." WAIT HAS IZZY LEARNED THE POWER OF STORIES

"And you... are a rancid syphilitic cunt."

Thank you Con O'Neill for your service

wait, time for another pic, this is beautiful

Figure 2. Not sure how to end your heartfelt speech about the power of love and the stories you choose? Try this one easy phrase

[phone picture of Izzy looking heartfelt and teary-eyed as the closed captioning reads "are a rancid, syphilitic cunt"]

now let's see where we are in the timeline here, I'm betting this is getting a bit too close to the middle of the last third

oh no, the BEGINNING of the last third OH NO the last high point

Avast you scoundrels omg Stede can you never enter Jackie's normally

LOL POISONING

BYE BOYS

"is that us doing that" lol

EVERYBODY IS POISON-TRAINED

"yeah baby"

Jackie takes the best care of her husbands

"good job. I am proud of you" AWWWW

(That's why she was so pissed at Jim, I bet. Jackie has a reputation of care)

ALBUM COVER SHOT

"It's only suicide if we die"

STEDE

..........

oh my god

hot

also hot with the kissing

oh shit this music is GREAT

LOVE all our actors of color also "in disguise" as British soldiers, no fucks given

ahhhhh hello, Izzy who is shot

"I'm fine, fuck off" baby

"Izzy you okay" so good tho

HE WENT BACK TO HELP

FRENCHIE DID TOO

oooo, that's some GOOD death makeup

wait omg is THIS how we get the kiss

You're my only family

awwww Stede's crying

awwww dead blorbo

.....okay so yeah, they buried him POSSIBLY that means he's dead for real

UNLESS we get season 3 zombies

"He was a good one. Intense. Very intense."

awwwww THE MARRIAGE

ED LOOKING AT STEDE

............you know what, I actually think it's actually hilarious that season 3 is---- WAIT HEY BOYS

INNKEEPERS

omg I love them and their shithole inn

THEY'RE LIVING WITH DEAD IZZY

SEAGULL

HI BUTTONS

Buttons who is magic

...........AS I WAS SAYING... you know... if I was a writer who wanted to be kind of a bitch about people hating on my blorbo... I too would manage to have an entire final season somehow fucking revolve around him anyway

Stede and Ed with his grave, the Revenge out to get the motherfucker who killed him-- IT'S ALL THERE

and the sea witch who now knows where the body lies

............lol

HEY FOLKS GUESS WHO FINALLY WATCHED THE FINALE

it's time again for "is it really a good idea to post your uncensored thoughts hahaha just kidding FUCI IT WE BALL" screenshots of my episode livetexting.

Transcribed:

okay so I'm in the AD now

I like the "gong" sounds during the "last time"

then BOOM

also ugh I gotta rewatch the prev episodes on the BIG screen, there's so much happening

oh baby omg the sweet music omggggg

FISH

omg so much NATURE he HATED nature in his previous vibes

awwwww his monologue is PRECIOUS

FISHSCALES that's what FAKE PEARLS are made out of

whoooo the fuck are these PEOPLE

ommmmg lololol

"SIMPLE LIVES" "SIMPLE WAYS"

LOL PUNCH OMG

"I said I CAUGHT a fish ONCE" omgggggggggg

you PRECIOUS BABYGIRL

...........................okay hey omg tryin to be a housewife Ed, ilu

"If you were EVER GOOD AT ANYTHING go and do THAT you bum" -- "YOU GUYS ARE DICKS"

I love him so much

.............oh DANG the republic

wait-- pausing

Ricky is REVERSE STEDE here-- he's "become a real boy" with the praise of his superiors-- except he's the MONSTER Pinocchio from Jim's story

...okay unpausing

"NEVER BE SLAVES" o i see

some CHOICES are being MADE here

YEAH THEY ARE

OH WAIT

PAUSING AGAIN

NO BUT REALLY

HE'S THE REVERSE PINOCCHIO

HE DOESN'T HAVE A NOSE

..........while i die about that a little i'll unpause

"THE MAN I AM TODAY"

You are going to be insufferable about this, I can tell~

YES I AM

WOOOO

awwwwwww oh no, oh no, Auntie

"Did you? Well, don't want to split hairs" STEDE U DICK

awwwwwww he's saying the failure line to ZYS!

STEDE IS WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH

OH MY

FUCKING

GOD

HE SAID IT

HE ACTUALLY SAID TI

HE SAID IT WAS WEIRD

YOU WANNA TALK INSUFFERABLE YOU HAVE NOT EVEN BEGUN TO EXPERIENCE THE AGONY OF MY TOTAL ANNIHILATING RIGHTNESS

I SAID WHAT I FUCKING SAID

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST

.........................so anyway, about those curtains

they sure look great

I should climb them

see what the world looks like from up there

..............................................................I'm going to rewind and watch myself be SO GODDAMN RIGHT all over again

"IT WAS WEIRD"

HELL YEAH

omg he jumped on them!

"oh no!"

....pausing just to say, the closeup of his hand against the stone bridge was. unnecessarily.

good.

....for reasons.

whoops I accidentally rewound to him BEING WEIRD ABOUT TOUCH AGAIN

lololol

I fucking love that he jumped on them, such a delight

I'm checking to see if there's a closeup of his ring on that. very good. um. hand. pressed against the--- YEAH THERE IS

"or is it?"

"that went as well as I planned it" BABE

"to skin a prince" she says as she fixes her hair

[triflesandparsnips]

ASDFGHJK LOOK LOOK AT @cliopadra's VISION OF THE ZOMBIE-OPTION:

I hadn't even seen this when I wrote the above, THAT IS HOW STRONG THE "bet they fuckin would though" VIBE OF THAT WRITERS ROOM IS.

Lot of takes going around the internets about certain "deaths" in the ofmd season finale, so, uh-- guess it's time for me to try and lose some followers on tumblr dot com with

Some Thoughts on Why I Am Not Particularly Bothered or Concerned about Izzy's Apparent "Death"

Laying the groundwork first...

1. Narratively speaking, Izzy's been a dead man walking since the start of the season. Babe shot himself and got a rebirth-- but he still definitely intended to die. Every minute he was still around was borrowed time.

Did he have to die? Maybe not. I know I could've written a version of the show where he didn't. But then that would be my show-- not theirs. I can't know exactly what themes, bugbears, bête noires, catharsis, or artistic Vibes are driving that writers' room, and until the credits run on the finale of the third season, none of the rest of us can either.

2. Izzy spent the season being in a liminal state-- and there's nothing in the story saying that he can't continue doing that. Izzy spent the season having one foot in one space, one hoof in the other, and himself halfway through the door, a chimera of mirrored things right up to his "death": pirate and ship, hard and soft, old ways and new, etc etc. But "the gravy basket" is a weird little liminal space between life and death, a place that both Ed and Buttons have found (and returned from) before. We don't know where Izzy "is" right now-- he could be there.

(tbh, I wonder how much poor feeling we'd be having about all this if we'd gotten a final tag of a blue-washed Izzy staring down at a bowl of soup while helplessly saying "but this isn't gravy, what the fu--")

3. I think there is an unfortunate belief that "it's not real unless you see the body" is a universal -- or perhaps inarguable -- "fact" of storytelling. But it's not. It's just a bit of narrative shorthand that got popular, and now we're too ready to fall into the trap of believing the inverse is true too-- that if there is a body, then there must therefore have been a "real" death.

This season has spent quite a lot of narrative time and effort telling us that its story is using a different model, with different shorthands; specifically, that magic is real, that there is at least some kind of existence after death, and that the dead can be resurrected.

And that brings me to the meat of why I'm not particularly bothered or concerned about what, at this stage of the story, could still very well be just a minor setback--

4. This whole show, and particularly this season, is a fairy tale. It's a story that works with fairy tale logic and tropes, and it's in conversation with other fairy tales too, ones that the OFMD audience is likely to know well enough to spot their narrative beats in action. So "Pinocchio" gets mentioned a lot? Cool-- the audience applies what is commonly known of that story to this one ("a real boy", the mirror-opposite being a puppet with no nose, etc), and finds some Cool Shit. Then they're primed to keep looking for fairy tales, even unnamed ones, in case there's another little nugget of reward-dopamine for finding a connection.

So the fact that we saw a mermaid? Suddenly, I personally am noticing "Little Mermaid" motifs all over the place. That Ed was in a "sleep like death" -- after fucking around with a spinning wheel -- until his prince came to wake him? Well fuck, man, that's Blackbeard playing "Sleeping Beauty" for us all.

And bringing it all back to a "dead" Izzy Hands... when I add up a "dead" body surrounded by a bunch of laborers mourning the person who nominally kept their living space nice AND who was wanted dead by an authority figure for the crime of being the "better" version of what that figure wanted to be...

...well fuck, idk about the rest of you, but to me that all adds up to Izzy's story being Snow fucking White. Waiting for someone to come pull the bullet poisoned apple from his body so he can live again.

5. This is a second season. Of three. And Izzy Hands is the writer's favorite chewtoy, so there is lots of time, space, and incentive to bring him back. If there's a third season, we have a pile of ways he could be brought back over the course of hours of literal viewing time and possibly months of in-narrative time. That's ages.

And the solutions don't have to be difficult! For instance, we still have canonical hallucinations from Stede-- that's one route. Or fuck it, we could have Izzy's (very solid-looking) ghost be the embodiment of their being haunted by the Sea, that would work too.

And even barring all that-- his grave is right there with our heroes. The ship is out there hunting down his murderer. Even if you're happy he's dead... bad news, friend. He's all over the third season landscape. (uh oh, it's GNU Izzy Hands)

But those are just a few options that leave his body rotting but his character still alive. I happen to think we could all dream a little bigger, darlings. For instance:

A. You cannot tell me that these writers, on this show, with these actors, would not absolutely go all in on a zombie-esque hand thrusting out of the dirt mere hours after burial. Look me in the eyes and tell me Con O'Neill wouldn't pull off an entire digging-out scene only to end with himself panting beside the hole, looking around, hearing Ed and Stede being weird in their haunted hut, and wearily say, "Are you fucking kidding me."

B. Don't like zombies? Want to stay closer to the Snow White vibe AND introduce a love interest for him? One hyphenated word: body-snatcher. Gotta dig those bodies up fresh for the Definitely Historically Accurate anatomists of the time! But oh, says this New Guy, this corpse is-- wow, it's weird that they buried him with a rose and really amazing makeup and a truly extraordinary number of whittled whales, plus what's with that horsey leg grave marker, this guy must've been fucking fascinating, man, I wish I could've met him-- --at which point Izzy's hand shoots out and chokes the guy half to death and the lads come tumbling out of the house and ta da, mission accomplished, Izzy resurrected in 5 minutes or less with his horsey leg conveniently beside him and an entire season for himself and everyone else to Deal With It, amazing, fantastic, no notes from me.

C. Come to think of it, there is genuinely a non-zero chance that the crew just. Fucked up the burial. I mean... even though I was just arguing why we shouldn't see it as Law, we didn't actually see the body. We saw a grave. What did they bury him in? Was it a box? Was it some canvas? Did they definitely pick up the right one when it was time to bury him? Or did they maybe carefully make him an ahistorical safety coffin just in case a cat demon came to bother him and his corpse wanted to make a fuss about it, y'know, very common, could happen to anyone, and Frenchie just so happens to have Blackbeard's old collar bell right here--

6. Here's the bottom line, imo: The only thing that would keep Izzy really actually dead and completely removed from the story is a lack of narrative time and space-- and we have plenty of both. Stories are like Lego. If you've got enough time and you're willing to play with pieces from a whole lotta different sets, it's not hard to put the same elements together in different ways to get new, exciting configurations. It's why I'm actually rubbish at predicting exact details of stuff-- there are a lot of ways something could go, there are infinite doors out of problems the narrative seems to throw at us, and no two people will come up with the same thing because we're all different.

That, to me, is one of the big ways I personally enjoy and engage with stories. And it's why I genuinely can't be fussed about Izzy's death, not when we're only two-thirds through the story as a whole; observing someone setup and then try and execute a complicated narrative trick is my jam.

But my way of engaging with all this is by no means the best or only way. How we all interact with art, and what speaks to us, is extremely personal. If how this season and Izzy's death went just didn't work for you, that's okay. I'm sorry it wasn't the story you wanted it to be. That blows.

I just know I can't say yet that it didn't work for me. I won't know until I can take in the entire picture, just as I can't judge a finished Lego set by the one piece I step on midway through construction. I can see different ways Izzy's death/rebirth could absolutely work, but will the writer manage it? I dunno.

But I'm willing to wait and see if the stupid puppet can pull it off.