#tw: Suicidal Blackbeard

[comment-exchange]

337. I Need You To Do The Things I Can’t (Our Flag Means Death)

Title: I Need You To Do The Things I Can’t

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52259410

Platform: AO3

Creator: kingstoken

Work Type: fic

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death

Rating: T

Pairing: Ed/Izzy

Word Count: 1012

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Number of comments: 7

Completion Status: Complete

Short summary/description: After Izzy is injured during a raid, Ed reminds him who he belongs to. Set during the time between seasons 1 and 2.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

something suicidal people do sometimes when they’re actively preparing to kill themselves is they get loud about it. like dragging furniture around, slamming doors shut, making a lot of noise in their apartment that all their neighbors can definitely all hear. because deep down they’re hoping someone will come see what’s going on, maybe knock on their door to tell them to quiet down, and that person will realize what’s going on and will get them help, get them to not go through with it. because deep down, they don’t really want to die.

and i’m thinking abt ed steering the entire ship into a storm and getting ready to fire a cannon through the mast and yeah, he’s definitely trying to goad them all into killing him. but also, yknow, deeper than that, he’s begging for someone to stop him.

[djarin]

you know what was so important to me about seeing ed spiral from his mental health in this season? his mental illnesses weren’t used for comedic purposes. they weren’t the butt of a joke, they weren’t there to “lighten the mood” by being ridiculed, and we didn’t see a demonization of mental illness. instead, what we got was edward being raw and vulnerable and lost in a way that was purely authentic and true to what he was going through.

all of that, along with the “let’s list the pros and cons of staying alive” is something that is so important to so many of us who have struggled with depression, anxiety, suicide, etc in our own lives. i know for a fact that i’m not the only one who’s had to sit down to think, “what are the good and bad things about staying alive right now?”

ed lists warmth, good food, and orgasms as his pros. “orgasms” is there to give us a good laugh, sure, but guess what? it’s also there because ed, unfiltered and desperate, is blurting out what makes him feel good, and therefore, want to stay alive.

it doesn’t have to be a massive list of pros and cons. sometimes, it’s the simple things that keep us going, and that’s more than enough.

[glamaphonic]

when you're just living your life thinking that ed teach couldn't possibly ever become more babygirl

and then s2 starts and you are bowled over by the fact that you are the wrongest you've ever been

him telling frenchie that he's going to be an impossible bird and frenchie immediately responding that that doesn't seem like something that can exist but ed knows that

he knows and that's the point

the depression the manicness the all but begging someone, anyone, to kill him

him getting everything in order before sailing into the storm! the absolute relief when jim is about to kill him

and the fact that through it all, that desire to survive is still there, bcs he couldn't bring himself to do it himself

hornigold being there to represent everything ed hates about himself

and him finally going over the cliff because he thinks no one's waiting for him

(but he's wrong; stede is; stede always will be)

anyway character of all time. i love him sfm and cannot wait to see the rest of his journey this season.

[desultorydenouement]

can we talk about red flags man. can we talk about it. ed handing izzy the gun, “good for you,” “it was good for me” (girl what are you saying and why are you saying it like that..), the eye contact, the wistfulness, the “im not cleaning up your mess i’ve been doing it all my fuckin’ life.” ed hearing the gunshot from izzy’s room. “i loved you best i could.” like for just a moment the genre changes into something realer and ed’s seeing through the fog, the two of them, izzy and ed both breaking through into something real because what they have is so old and so true that after all that happened it’s just them in a bitter old room, and then that gunshot and suddenly ed’s fucked up bout of penance-seeking is gone and it’s blackbeard again in a manic rage in the middle of a storm. and then ed’s absolute manic glee when he sees izzy’s the one who shot him, still alive, “you indestructible little FUCKER.” the line delivery, man. the pain. the ways they fuck each other up but keep coming back like it’s all they’ve ever known.

[confusedraven1]

i don’t think izzy fully came to terms with the fact that he shares the blame with stede for setting ed off on his destructive spiral until after he got shot.

when ed asked him to tell him why the vibes are toxic on the ship, that would’ve been a moment for izzy to admit that he was wrong to say what he did and apologize, but, instead, he said it was because ed couldn’t get over stede.

in the hidden room during That Conversation, ed tells izzy he had a dream that he killed him, shot him right through the skull (sidenote: not an actual dream, a plan). izzy looks at him almost in disbelief then says, “good for you. good for you for having fucked up dreams, why would you tell me something like that?”

“it was good for me. it’s just what the doctor ordered.”

that line is….oof. 😮‍💨 BUT it’s also a callback to s1 ep10 when izzy tells ed he wished he had been killed by the english, that death was better than how he was acting.

in this scene in s2 ep2, ed is saying, “you were right. i’m better off dead, and apparently no one else can manage it, so i’m handing the job off to you. and this is exactly how i want it done. izzy, i want you to handle this. i want it done right.”

[ladyluscinia]

Genuinely hurts my heart how many people heard "I loved you... Best I could" and decided that meant he actually didn't love him at all and at best pitied him or at worst was disgusted by him, instead of thinking maybe the guy at the bottom of a spiral so dark he thinks he just drove the guy he's confessing to the air about to put a bullet in his brain (and is about to try and murder-suicide his entire crew about it) feels he might have not loved him very well, on account of all the stuff. Like maybe he's having a bit of a crisis about self-loathing and considering himself unlovable and poisonous to others. Like maybe that's not the best headspace to give or accept love no matter how genuine the feelings. Like maybe he's not actually saying that just to get one last sadistic dig in at the ghost of someone who loved him, but because he actually cared once and still does, even if it's buried under the darkness he's giving up on escaping from

Like maybe he just loved him the best he could, and right now it doesn't feel like he did a good job of it (for fairly obvious reasons)

[bougiebutchbinch]

It baffles me that some people think the only reason people talk about the awful things Ed did in canon is because they hate him

not because he's... y'know..... a SUPER INTERESTING CHARACTER

Redemption arcs are freaking delicious, man. But in order to have one, you need to actually have done... bad shit.... to begin with??

Like how Izzy was a bossy bastard to Stede's crew in S1? Then stepped up to protect that crew from Ed, when Ed turned on them all and Izzy started to see 'the kids' as his crew?

The redemption arc of Ed - a man who's done genuinely bad abusive shit that was certainly influenced by his atrocious mental health - would have been even more fascinating. If it had been handled well.

As anyone who suffers with severe mental health issues knows: this shit is fucking ugly. It's not about pretty sadboy aesthetics or quirky 'teehee so chaotic' bouts of hyperactivity. Sometimes you fuck up. Sometimes you fuck up, badly. Sometimes you hurt people. You lose friends and push away family and may even end up isolating yourself through cruelty to others as a form of self-harm.

Before the inevitable bad faith actors wilfully misinterpret what I'm saying: Mental health problems don't cause abuse.

But they can be one of many contributing factors. If you have a disorder like my own (which I certainly headcanon Ed as sharing!) where you are incredibly sensitive and reactive to any hint of negativty or rejection, you have to expend genuine time and energy on learning techniques to control yourself, for the sake of others. When that doesn't happen... well, I was excited to see the consequences depicted graphically on screen.

But no matter the cause, you still have to take responsibility for the harm you perpetuate?? And I want to see that on screen, too!

If you were physically mutilating a guy repeatedly over whom you held power as his captain (and no, Izzy did not 'deserve it'; get your victim-blaming bullshit out of here), and you kept everyone else in a perpetual state of fear in the hopes that one of them would snap and kill you..... you still did that? Even if you were motivated by suicidality?

If you forced two people who deeply cared for each other to fight to the death, because your mental health was so awful that you couldn't believe that love was real......... you still chose to hurt them in such a deeply personal way?

If you chased a guy around with a knife For Funsies and made him constantly break down in tears because you were so engrossed in your own issues that you genuinely didn't realise you were traumatising him... You still traumatised him!

Exploring what comes next is incredibly interesting. It could have made a great plot about accepting accountability for one's actions - but also understanding that even people who've done terrible things can change and heal (although obviously, their victims owe them nothing).

Like. Excuse me for wanting to explore such a complex, fascinating, multi-faceted storyline centred on mental health issues near and dear to my heart for one of my favourite characters? And for being disappointed that the show and half the fandom took the simple & boring way out by pushing all of The Atrocities under a rug, because they struggle to love a character who has done abhorrent things?

[thebasementgirl]

I remembered something today and wanted to thank OFMD for doing it:

When a person in a deep state of depression, apathy and irritation wakes up one morning suddenly smiling and calm, this is a very serious sign that you should be concerned

[insteading]

So I've only watched 2.1, 2.2., and 2.3 once each so far, but I can already tell the music choices are going to wreck me this season. I figure lots of people will have things to say about the use of Kate Bush in 2.3, so I want to focus on the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony #7 in 2.2, "Red Flags."

First, this movement has been a banger since it existed: at its first performance, the audience demanded that the second movement be repeated after the symphony concluded. It's a funeral march, and per the notes accompanying the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie of Bremen's gorgeous recording, it was likely heard as responding to collective grief:

The premiere performance of Beethoven's Seventh was at a benefit concert in Vienna in December 1813 for wounded soldiers and their families. It came only two months after the Battle of Nations near Leipzig. The German name is "Völkerschlacht" (Slaughter of the Peoples), one of the most catastrophic wartime events in human history. It also marked the liberation from Napoleon's forces. The sad, beautiful quality of this piece makes it very different from the other three movements of Beethoven's Seventh. Endlessly mournful – but also uplifting, it is still played at funerals today.

For those of us who were in music school at a certain point in history, it is also the soundtrack for characters experiencing suicidal ideation, courtesy of the 1994 film Immortal Beloved.

Its use underpinning the conversation between Ed and Izzy is self-explanatory: Ed's way of expressing self-loathing is to goad the people around him to hurt him. He feels a kind of ambivalence toward his own life that we saw last in OFMD's pilot, where Stede cannot firmly answer Oluwande's question, "Do you want to live?!"

But we hear the first notes of Beethoven before that scene ever begins.

That the music begins here, rather than when Ed enters the hold to press Izzy into killing him, highlights as much as anything we've seen so far how traumatized Lucius is: not just by being pushed overboard, but by all the trafficking and abuse he experienced before encountering his former crewmates, which he barely starts to detail in this episode. "If I start, I don't know what's going to come out." The stories Lucius shares may have an over-the-top quality, but they're scored like tragedy.

[oldmanffucker]

Love making fanfic that is so utterly divorced from the source material

What do you mean this is a 25 chapter character study of izzy stede and Ed grappling with grief through art after they’ve met at a ceramics happy hour at the Queen Anne clay studio? What do you mean this is a steddyhands exploration of suicide, sibling loss, and parent loss through clay and freaky trans sex?

[edema--ruh]

Hey, I'm begging you to stay

My dark side won today

My heart keeps breaking over and over

Hey, don't let me out your sight

Can't trust myself tonight

My heart keeps breaking

Can you talk me off the ledge again?

Bring Me The Horizon | DArkSide

[krakensarefriendsnotfood]

Someone else probably already mentioned this, but this shot seems to confirm Ed throws himself into to the water. With a huge rock tied around his waist or foot, no less! Ed, what are you doing, babygirl?! Is that guy/ghost/hallucination talking him into offing himself or is this some kind of test, or what? What is happening here?

[reallyafairy]

The more I think about it, the more Blackbeard attempting suicide makes so much sense.

He wasn't very on board with trying to stay alive pre-Stede. Post-Stede, he's just doing the same thing as he was before but now he has this terrible heartache constantly. The thing that gave his life color and new vibrance is causing him terrible, terrible pain. It's worse than it was before, ever, by a billion.

"So you're saying I should just curl up in a ball and die?"

He's done waiting for death. Izzy isn't with him to keep him from it. He's going after it himself.

He wasn't interested in staying alive until he found something worth living for. It LEFT him. He can't have it back as it was, It simply isn't achievable. He thinks Stede sees what they had a something so much more surface-level and shallow than it was to him.

Fuck, if that's not a mood. "I loved him more than he loved me." Isn't that always so scary? The idea that you care MORE about someone else than they do you?

His confidence in whatever he thought Stede felt for him is in the negatives. So Lucius said Stede liked him a lot, guess he didn't. So he seemed to be giving him signals all along, guess that was misinterpreted. So he KISSED HIM BACK, so FUCKING what? He left. Nothing matters because he left. We are not at ground zero, we are in the Earth's crust.

[multifandom-fanfic-writer]

you know how in episode 2 ed suddenly 'cleans up' and becomes sort of deleriously happy as he forgives frenchie and steers the ship into a storm?

from what i know, this uptick in maniac-like happiness often happens to people who've been suicidal a long time and finally decide to 'really' do it. which makes sense, as ed both seriously tries to have izzy kill him - used to izzy follow orders - and when that doesn't work, makes either the storm or the crew kill him.

it's honestly so well written!

[a-dotrivenitupontop]

why you should vote for david brittlesbee in the @epicdivorcemantournament. a powerpoint presentation (tumblr post) by me:

•in just the pilot episode of mythic quest david gets excluded from company meetings, has his assistant abandon him for another guy and calls one of his workers ‘mom’

•he’s the boss at a video game company but the divorce fucked him up so badly no one accepts that he’s even a boss (this kinda shifts in s3 but eh. spoilers)

•oh yeah his parents also got divorced. so. y’know double whammy innit. just one divorce after another for this poor little meow meow

•“are we at your divorce trial right now? because i just watched a hot asian chick rip out your heart”

-brad bakshi, s1 e10

•my man CONSTANTLY uses divorce to project onto his workplace. whenever the main characters fight david always draws comparisons to his divorce (especially in s2)

•to score david a date the aforementioned brad had to train him to talk to women using a simulator called ‘divorcee dance party’

•he did score a date though. only he forgot her name and the relationship lasted like six episodes. the reason they broke up? he got down on TWO knees and BEGGED for marriage. slay queen

•also before using the dating sim david used pictures of his wedding day on his dating app profile. and a video of him reviewing bikes. that’s a crucial piece of information too

•his ex wife kicked him out of his own home forcing him to live in motherfucking cerritos (op in br*tish and has no idea what a cerritos is but assumes it’s something to describe as ‘motherfucking’)

•“you know who didn’t have trouble finding a man? your ex-wife”

-poppy li, s1 e2

•in an episode where each character got given a workplace animal personality thing david got wolf and spent the episode bragging about it. only he did the test the wrong way and turned to be a butterfly. this isn’t directly related to divorce but i do think it’s pathetic of david

•when two of his employees (amongst a couple others but they’re irreverent rn) quit to work at a new company in the basement david was so fucked up by this that he was implied to have almost attempted suicide. we stan a depression-ridden mess who would rather kill himself than lose his found family and relive the trauma of his divorce. heart emoticon

•anyways here’s a compilation of david being Pathetic for your entertainment