#unhinged ranting

[corpupine]

I've been doing a lot of thinking...and I feel like I need to scream this out somehow even though I'm sure it's been talked about before (and I'm putting it under a readmore because it gets long).

No matter what, in any playthrough you do and any timeline you create.

UNDERTALE is a game about guilt.

You have Toriel, so guiltridden she couldn't protect her own children that she devotes herself to never letting another child leave again. And then they do!! over and over again, that guilt compounds until it's the center of her life and every choice she makes!!

And obviously Asgore, so guiltridden that he couldn't protect his own children from humans that he spends the rest of his days trying to get out and get revenge on them--as if that will stop the voices in his head saying, if you had been out there with them you could have stopped it, you could have stopped those humans from killing your children, and maybe he could have!! Or maybe not!! He'll never know and it eats him from the inside out!

Alphys, oh my sweet summer child this fandom does not deserve you!! Alphys, so guiltridden from her own perceived failures as a scientist that she began to try anything, anything to make the King happy, and it seemed to be working at first, and then it was so everlastingly worse, how can you cause something worse than death?? without even trying??

And it shows up in little ways, silly ways, too! Ways you wouldn't even think about as guilt! Undyne! She feels guilty that she won't let Papyrus join the Royal Guard so she gives him cooking lessons instead! Papyrus feels guilty that he's not in love with you after one date so he'll "keep being your cool friend and act like this never happened!"

SANS MY BOI don't even get me started. His guilt isn't as physically obvious but he made a promise to toriel, he promised her he would keep the human safe, and in timelines where you save everyone he follows you pretty much all throughout the Underground (even if he doesn't do anything to help smh) because he'd feel guilty not doing it, and in timelines where you kill everyone he feels guilty for not stopping you, AND in those SAME timelines he feels guilty for stopping you because it means he's breaking his promise to Toriel to keep you safe I!!! This boy can fit so much cosmic guilt in him!!!!

Asriel! FLOWEY!! Do you ever wonder if he feels guilty about being the one to wake up again? The one to survive, when Chara had to die twice?? He sits at their grave and he will do anything, anything to drown out those thoughts so he befriends and kills and torments and it's all the same and it's all useless!!

And their guilt compounds each others'! Toriel makes Sans make that promise because of her own guilt, which increases his! Asgore's guilt is what pushes Alphys so far past the limits of ethical science, because he increases hers!

And all of this, all of this, ALL OF THIS pales in comparison to you!!!

You!! The player! You return to the Underground after maybe accidentally killing Toriel or a few others because you didn't know, you never wanted to hurt them!! You listen to Flowey and you come back and you save them all!

You! The player!!! You cry at the ending and you'd feel guilty, so guilty about letting them all go, wouldn't you? So you ignore Flowey's pleas to let it alone, and you come back again, you say hello to your dear friends but this time it isn't the same, this time you kill them all because you want to see everything this game has to offer, might as well get your money's worth, the fights are cool, right?? And then you get hit with the most unsatisfying atomic bomb of an ending and the only thing left is your own reflection staring back at you from the black screen of your computer as the horror dawns, what have you done???

YOU!!! The player! You go back again even though there is no Flowey left to tell you to, and you save them all again because I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, nobody deserves what I did to all of you, and it's all good, nobody remembers, and then you get to the end. The game knows what you did!!! It never forgot, and it'll make certain you never forget either!! Guilt!! Guilt, guilt!!! It's baked into the code of this game!!

Anyways tl;dr, maybe it actually did make sense to give this game to the pope

[tomcat-radio]

I rewatched Bottle Rocket last night and I’m becoming increasingly upset how little Wes Anderson fans talk about it. Pre-Fantastic Mr Fox Wes Anderson doesn’t get enough love as it is but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone except for myself or close friends of mine showing any appreciation for Bottle Rocket

Every now and then I hear people describe Bottle Rocket as “Wes Anderson before he was Wes Anderson” and I personally believe this statement is completely incorrect and as with many things comes with a fundamental misunderstanding of Anderson’s style. Many pillars of both the way he does visuals and cinematography and how he writes characters and narratives are entirely present in Bottle Rocket. It undeniably feels like a Wes Anderson film, having a certain charm to it in the way it doesn’t hold itself to any standard except its own. You can feel the enthusiasm of everyone involved in every shot, something that I’ve hardly ever seen repeated.

Call it “unpolished” “weird” “amateur” or “definitely a first attempt” but more than anything it feels incredibly genuine. It’s fun, it’s chaotic and even touching at times and it truly holds up after over 27 years. It’s a good fucking movie and I’m not afraid to say it. Bottle rocket is good, it’s great. It’s a great movie.

It’s a movie that we as a fandom even in our small numbers need to give so much more attention to, it deserves to be talked about and shown some love. So Wes Anderson fans I urge you, back me up here, we need some bottle rocket appreciation.

[kawaiimunism]

So I follow Politico specifically because it's an unpaywalled way to keep tabs on what the liberal thinkpiece sphere is churning out, I fully expect it to annoy me and brought this on myself, but this piece particularly pissed me off.

emphasis mine throughout:

From California to Krakow, young voters who are losing faith in democracy have been spurred in part by a surprising cause: high rents and rising property prices. ... And across North America and Europe, the shortage is pushing voters, particularly younger ones, toward populist leaders...

Right off the bat, the author constructs rhetorical opposition between democracy and populism, which is silly enough on its face, and further is a way for the author to build to...

...populist leaders who promise to address the problem by targeting an issue already key to their platforms — though not necessarily the main one driving the problem — increased immigration. “If you can’t afford a place to live, you want to point fingers at someone, and incumbent politicians make an easy target — as do migrants,” Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance’s Michael Shank told POLITICO. “It’s a simple rhetorical flourish, but one that’s politically powerful and palatable to a public that’s understandably upset that they can’t find an affordable home.”

one of these things is not like the other holy shit

“If people think markets are rigged and a democracy isn’t listening to them, then you get — and this is the worrying thing to me — an increasing number of young people saying, ‘I don’t believe in democracy, I don’t believe in markets,’” Michael Gove, Britain’s housing minister, warned in February. Indeed, opinion polls over the past few years have been consistently suggesting that millennials and Gen Z are much more disillusioned with democracy than Generation X or baby boomers were at the same life stage. In some Western countries, the scarcity of affordable housing is fueling anger with high levels of migration. And populist politicians have been quick to capitalize on that, including Donald Trump, who says he wants to “stop the unstainable [sic] invasion of illegal aliens which is driving up housing costs.” ... But reducing the housing crunch to just a problem caused by migration does a disservice to understanding the full complexity of the causes. Ultimately, it comes down to the rich world just not building enough housing. But there’s a stew of contributing factors for that, with the ingredients differing by country, according to Edwards and others working in the housing field. Yes, migration has exacerbated the problem; but so, too, has a spree of buying by well-heeled foreigners wanting second or vacation homes in some European cities and desirable semi-rural and coastal areas.

Like, the obvious goal here is to portray any and all anti-establishment, anti-market anger wrt housing scarcity as reactionary. "Oh, mad you can't afford a house? And you don't think the solution is building an endless supply of luxury apartments? Sounds like someone's a fascist little baby who doesn't understand the market and just hates immigrants!"

I'm further convinced this is the goal here because this is the header photo they chose:

Yeah, I'm sure this crowd of rent-control supporters (a policy that would also benefit poor immigrants seeking housing) wearing red and carrying signs that say "People Before Property" and complaining in Spanish about high rents are anti-migrant reactionaries /s. A quick DDG search didn't turn up specifically what protest this was of or who organized it (I was able to figure out that it happened in Sacramento, CA in April 2018, if that rings any bells to anyone), but, like, there's no shortage of archive photos of actual fascist anti-immigration protests they could have made this point with, but they specifically chose a photo of what is clearly some local socialist org protesting for rent control. The author is trying to paint all anti-market housing advocates with the same reactionary brush, even as they admit in the article that anti-immigration fash shit is actually getting traction among liberals:

“It’d be naive to pretend that volume wasn’t impacting housing. But there’s so many other factors,” [Canadian Immigration Minister Marc] Miller told POLITICO, including a lack of new construction in growing cities. Miller acknowledged, though, that tough conversations about immigration and housing have seeped into Liberal caucus meetings. Those “can be quite heated,” he conceded.

Like, fuck all the way off to hell, goddamn. Liberals equivocating between populism and fascism to paint any illiberal anti-establishment politics as fascist is obviously pretty common, this is nothing new, but this specific example just really got to me. Guys, the fascism is coming from inside the house.

[homoquartz]

this post is not gonna be well put together but i am having feelings

mean girls is trending right now because the musical movie just came out and i feel insane. idk why i do, it was stupid of me to think that most people Got It, no one ever gets it, it was always about the memes and the aesthetic.

the first mean girls movie was based on a nonfiction book called queen bees and wannabes. it interviewed and discussed the social hierarchy system in teen girl friendships. how they hold each other to these insane standards of heternormative femininity out of sheer terror that they won't meet those standards themselves. the way they leverage their relationships for some small degree of power in a world designed to strip them of it, even if it drags other girls down.

the "you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week and on wednesdays we wear pink" speech was not an original creation for the script. it's a QUOTE from a real teenage girl. those were REAL RULES.

then the musical came, and it was one step removed from the intended messaging of the film. OG mean girls was not perfect (and was extremely racist), but it said what needed said. the musical leaned on the comedy more, but still left a heartfelt undertone, and still critiqued the systems in place. of course no piece of media is going to be perfect, but it was about the conversation.

then this new movie comes out and it is washed over in the veneer of white hollywood feminism so thick you can't see anymore. the problematic aspects of the original movie are taken out to avoid "offending" when the offense was the point. it becomes toothless, it becomes some other thing entirely. they changed karen's line "i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in" to "watch me as i run the world in shoes i cannot walk in." because choice feminism is in vogue, suddenly this character whose entire point is that she doesn't think deeply about WHY she does anything is suddenly hip to the fact that the world is against her.

i think of sokka losing his misogyny arc in the new atla. i think of the Heathers remake casting the bitchy, identical heathers as queer and hollywood-fat outcasts. as if the story, the meaning, the allegory is hidden in the sets and the jokes and the music. it's a whole new thing now, and it's a thing that means nothing in particular.

the plastics should not wear jeans. they should not have curves. their queerness should be suppressed, painful. their sexuality is not a slay, it's the only thing they think they have of value. the santa dance isn't sexy, it's shocking, it's mortifying - they are children.

they're not mean because "we are all mean." they are mean because they are girls in a world that brutalizes them and crushes them into a standardized shape. they are mean because the world is mean to them. they are mean because it gives them some power back. they are mean because it's the only weapon they have.

the landscape of femininity today has shifted to camera-ready makeup at the age of 10, stringent performative hygiene standards, and avoiding being caught on film while having a genuine emotion. the consumerism, the fatphobia, the racism, the classism, the homophobia remain. We could have had a conversation about that.

[elbiotipo]

I'm not a linguist and I find the whole excercise of conlanging, while I love it and respect it, beyond my abilities, but I do have one thing or two to say about linguistic diversity and how boring is to have a "common" or "basic" language in fantasy or science fiction without exploring the implications.

Being a bilingual speaker of Spanish and English, and someone that because of work reasons and entertaiment tastes interacts a lot with English, I tend to see English as the equivalent of those "common" or "basic" languages of speculative fantasy. As a useful tool for communication, science technology and commerce. In real life, however, as you are aware, the expansion of English tends to undermine local languages, it's considered more valuable to know English that to know the language of your grandparents, or learn any other language you just feel curious about.

The experiences of every multilingual person are different, but in mine I know English, I write and read and listen to English a lot. But I don't consider myself an English *speaker*, I speak Spanish and more to the point Argentine Spanish, that's the culture I identify with, and it's the language I use to express my feelings and inner thoughts. I can't imagine saying "I love you" to anyone in English, to me it's just a tool I use to access to knowledge or communicate through language barriers ("basic", "common"). But interestingly, by both writing and participating in the wider English-speaker internet culture, isn't it part of my own culture, as an individual, too?

The fact is that English also has a culture(s) and a history and a corpus of literature. So when we write about "Common" or "Basic" languages in fiction we need to ask ourselves: where did they come from? How did they become the standard? Is there a literature, a canon, a culture of "Common" in your fantasy world? What about other languages, other cultures that aren't raised learning it and see it just as a tool? Because no matter the strenght of Anglophone cultural imperialism and the social value of learning English, I don't see Argentines, or for that matter Chinese, Italians or Russians abandoning their first language. And yet even in English and in all other languages (ESPECIALLY other languages, English is remarkably uniform) there is a variety of dialects. And we need to remember, once Latin was spoken only in a village in central Italy, and English in a rather remote rainy island. They weren't destined to have their future roles, history drives language.

So, when an author goes for the "universal language" explanation to avoid linguistic misunderstandings, for me, it raises more questions that I believe are worth exploring.

[jaewritesfic]

Everlasting Trio DP x DC Nobody Knows Au Pt 6

Part 5

Warning for very brief flashback implying vivisection

It is highly amusing to float to Red Robin's rooftop and see up close how intensely vigilant he's being. He looks like if a pigeon took off halfway across the city he'd fucking notice, but the ghost standing next to him and trying not to snicker goes undetected.

Poor guy. He really seems like the type to drive himself up a wall over a mystery - he's certainly been driving himself up a wall over Danny.

Danny has to force himself not to tickle the back of the guy's neck just to watch him flail.

He likes Red Robin, he really does. He didn't set out to torture the poor guy - Red did that all by himself, all Danny has been trying to do is help. 

They can't pursue him the way they have been and expect him not to try and get some entertainment out of it. It tempers the annoyance, making their obsession with finding him a game.

Danny considers the box in Red's lap.

He's been doing the same thing with each box they leave him from the beginning: grab box, open pocket dimension, yeet.

Not even Bat trackers can transmit from an entirely different plane of existence, it would seem.

And the thing Danny has discovered about having died when an entirely different plane of existence opened on top of him and merged with his DNA?

He is a pocket dimension, in a way. 

In other words, no need to expend energy to tear the fabric of reality to deposit his loot - all he needs to do is phase things into himself.

So Red will definitely notice when the box disappears from his lap and seemingly blinks out of existence, but at least he won't be seeing any neon green tears in reality open up in front of him.

That seems like a good deal to Danny.

He steps forward and reaches for the box-

NA NA NA NA NA NANA

Danny and Red Robin both curse and flail as the Ghostbusters theme rings out across the rooftop.

Red Robin nearly falls out of his lawn chair launching himself away from the sudden sound, almost dropping the lockbox in the process.

Danny frantically searches his pockets for his goddamn phone, pulls it out, has the fear of God struck into him at the idea of hanging up on Sam Manson and thus shoves it into his chest to go to voicemail somewhere where nobody can hear it ring.

In the dead silence that follows, Danny finds himself in something like a startled cowboy standoff where only one of the participants is actually visible.

Red Robin stands with feet braced shoulder width apart, lockbox in one hand and bo staff in the other. He is visibly bewildered and ready to throw hands.

He's staring at the space a little to the left of Danny's head, so at least he hadn't dropped his invisibility in panic.

Welp. No use trying to change plans now.

Danny lunges forward and grabs the lockbox, relishing in the squawk of shock and indignance Red Robin makes as it abruptly leaves his hand and blinks out of sight.

He doesn't anticipate how fast Red Robin will recover or move.

A hand wraps tightly around his wrist and jerks him back in an impressive estimation of where Danny might be occupying space.

Danny almost goes ghost right there. Not because he wants to, but because for a moment there are restraints around his wrists and ectoplasm on the table and bright lights and sharp blades and pain-

He swallows the growl that wants to well up in his throat as he turns and looks at Red Robin, teeth feeling a little too large and sharp in his mouth before he forces himself to calm down.

Red is staring him straight in the eyes despite Danny being able to see he's still invisible. Red’s hand looks to be wrapped around nothing.

“You're not going anywhere,” Red Robin says, voice low and slightly feral with the high of perceived victory. That, paired with the crooked smirk on his lips is kind of, uh- well. Hoo boy, that's all Danny has to say about that.

Well, he does have one other thing to say.

“Bet.”

The way Red Robin's face falls in disbelief when Danny phases out of his grip is nothing short of glorious. Danny's already floating off the roof and out of grabbing distance before Red finishes buffering.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Danny cackles, tossing him a salute he can't even see.

“Better luck next time, Angry Bird!”

“Son of a bitch!”

Masterpost

[tfp-is-my-lifeblood-lol]

Can we talk about this Rescue Bots episode (Spellbound) because I need to appreciate how TERRIFYING it is??? Especially considering it's cannon in the Aligned Universe. This is some A+ horror.

Like damn, some of Griffin Rock's technology is more powerful than even the Decepticon's tech.

Can you IMAGINE if those creepy mind-control cell phones were used in TFP?

Legit mind control that effects humans AND Cybertronians?

And it's SO UNSETTLINGLY subtle, too. The victim's voices sound like their normal selves but just SLIGHTLY off. *shutter* The voice actors did such a good job.

Just IMAGINE that in Prime.

I feel like Optimus would probably be immune (because the Matrix of Leadership is goated) but can you imagine the Jasper Trio getting mind-controlled, and all their guardians + Ratchet know SOMETHING is off, but not what? Then, slowly, the mind control spreads to the Bots? Or vice versa, the Bots go first, and the humans are like: "Something's up with my guardian."

Kinda wild that Invasion of the Body Snatchers shit 100% exists in TFP's world. Felt like I needed to acknowledge that.

Is this gonna be my next TFP headcanons post? Feeling inspired.🤔

[nebulaeyedfish]

greatly enjoyed Scar's most recent VOD

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Transcript: Machine, people want us to "do the do".

How would that even work, Machine?

We don't have lips with which we can tenderly kiss.

I suppose my hand could go down here and- Oh yes. That's nice.

Audio source (YouTube)

Audio Source (Twitch)

[vampireharpy]

Imagine just getting a taste and being so desperate for more you arch a whaler 🙄🙄🙄

[drenched-in-sunlight]

there's been one person with multiple accounts across 3 different platforms trying to harass me for the past 2 days now it's kinda funny... cuz it's very apparent that they try to change up their writing style to appear as a different person, but it's the exact same style with the same sentiment being copy paste again and again, so im like... oh hey it's you again 😂🫵

[x4ver1a]

[nonbinarypirat]

Okay okay, SO let’s talk about the latest chapter of Iruma kun because the lore is JUICY. Spoilers for chapter 358. This also leaves me with even more questions while answering some I had before. So I actually had a post planned where I was going to ask why Delkira received a special and sublime classroom to begin with. I wondered if maybe he was a previous demon king’s son and maybe that was why he was already revered. But NOPE it seems not likely. It’s still possible, I just got the vibe was that he was miraculous in his achievements and power. So it kind of answers that question but we still have no info on his family, the king’s classroom, or how he was able to achieve so much. On the other hand we got some VERY VERY interesting lore on Mephisto-pheles. It also explains why he gave this task to Iruma since he obviously sees the potential for him to surpass Delkira in the future. He wants Iruma to know what it takes to be in power, somewhat as an advisor role like he has been for previous kings. By assisting a king you can understand how to rule. And by building up a country, you can know what it takes to lead a country. I already guessed that since he was already interested in Iruma. But this just adds an extra layer to why he is as fascinated by him as he is. GOD NISHI IS SO GOOD AT WRITING LORE. I ASPIRE to write something with as much depth and intricacies as this manga. She is my inspiration truly 🙏🏽

Like, look at Mephisto’s face here compared to after he met Iruma. Different face but same vibe.

Now, going back to Delkira one, we get to see more of his personality and he’s so much like Iruma!!!!! No wonder everyone and their fucking mom keeps being like, “damn why tf do I see Delkira in him.” Neither strive for power for power’s sake, instead they strive for power because they see it as a step forward in their goal and desires. They both want to find their own path rather than it just being given to them. It really shocked me at first that Delkira turned Mephisto down but it actually makes so much sense why everyone is enamored by him. That is the most undemon like thing he could have done, he had the perfect opportunity to gain all the power in the world in a quick and easy way. Any other demon would have killed for that chance. They are so fucking alike and it makes me want to rage. I love it so much, I love that we are getting to see more of him as time goes on. Him and Iruma even have the same smile! Like come on.

He even has similar jesters to Iruma!!!! This flashback is making me rethink my theories about him and his connection to Iruma. Ughhhh, I’m so fucking happy about this. Also, this nothing to do with anything but look at Delkira’s cunty lil outfit. This sheer shirt? Rolled up uniform jacket he has popped open. These tight pants with a weird belt design? I would be Delkira’s number one supporter is all I’m saying. He’s babygirl just like Iruma. Maybe that’s the requirement to be the next powerful demon king, you have to serve mother fucking CUNT if you want to rule. Anyway, I think there was more I wanted to say but I got distracted with my rant lol. I just love this lore so much, I love how Nishi handles lore drops (especially with characters) and seeing more of Delkira because I am so fascinated with him and must know more.

[oddballsducks]

I fuckin hate dogfaces/dognoses/whatever tf they’re called

People are only okay with them because they’ve been normalized for the better part of a century

If they were introduced today they would be rightfully scourged and lambasted for the utter disgraces to character designs they are

Why are the Ducks the most popular? Probably because they are actually cute animals and not horrific human flesh monsters with wet black noses

They’re not even animals. They’re just humans with a button nose. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, they’ll get little floppy ears or a pronounced snout. But sometimes that only makes it worse. They don’t even have fur. Don’t tell me it’s fur, I’m not listening. That is fleshy, bare human skin.

I know why they exist. Artists, more likely than not, learn to draw by drawing humans, so it’s easiest for them to draw humans. But they can’t draw humans in a lot of Disney stories because the characters are supposed to be funny animals.

So they improvise by just drawing a human being and slap a little nose on them and have the gall to call them dogs? Dogs are cute, majestic, or just plain little gremlins. But dognoses capture nothing of what makes a dog a dog

How do so many people accept this lazy and ugly design infecting all of our lovely comics?

Anyway #CancelDognoses2025

[demonslayerunhinged]

Unhinged rant

I'm sorry but can we give the 'Kny female characters are sexualized' discussions a rest, like yes we can see their boobs and thighs yes, yes, yes, we get it already! 🙄🙄🙄

I came across this twitter thread talking about it and funnily enough when someone talked about male characters also revealing skin, surprise surprise they made excuses for them saying some bullshit about Sanemi's shirt battle tactics and Inosuke's sensory issues like what????

Now we've gotten to the point where we're now excusing male characters and shaming female characters for doing the exact same thing? Is that what we're doing? Really?? What is it about KnY female characters that makes people suddenly turn puritan???

Like can we move on? And talk about something else? Can we stop judging our female characters by their appearance but instead by their relevance in the story, goals, depth and character development? Is that so hard?

I've never seen a fandom filled with so much self-hatred as the KnY fandom, like just go watch JJK then where the female characters are absolutely useless but hey at least they're reasonably dressed.

[plantsjustwannahavefun]

I used to think that the reason I wasn't satisfied with Izzy's death was because I was too attached to his perspective as a character and couldn't focus on the big picture of the season and the main Gentlebeard relationship enough. I mean, I was still convinced that his death and the way it was carried out was a shit writing decision, but everyone else outside the Izzy Canyon circles seemed fine with it, so I was starting to think that maybe they were right.

So I looked back on the rest of the season and rewatched the finale... And realised something that I'd been trying to ignore because it was too painful to admit. A huge part of why Izzy's death hit so hard (in a bad way, not that delicious masochistic pain of having a beloved character die a good, narratively satisfying death) was because throughout this season he was the only character who actually had a satisfying arc and development. Practically no one else did. I didn't actually care for Gentlebeard this season, not the way I cared in S1. From episode 1 to 8 and a half, Izzy's arc was crafted with more care, kindness, subtlety and narrative weight than the main Gentlebeard arc which, in comparison, felt like a string of choppy beads badly tied together in an approximate shape of an arc, but collapsed as soon as you looked at it too closely.

Yes, we all know this season suffered for being 2 episodes too short, but I don't think that's all there is to it. This is starting to feel like GoT season 8 all over again. Would it have been better if it wasn't so rushed? Maybe. Or maybe it would have been even worse because this season just didn't seem to know what to do with itself or the characters. The themes and symbolism are all over the place and completely inconsistent. Ed and Stede's characters are practically back at the same place they left in S1. All they did was bounce off the walls back and forth with no real growth. As soon as they took a step towards fixing their relationship or growing as people, they either tool three steps back or it just got dropped. Stede letting fame get to his head? Interesting and realistic development. And how was it resolved? It wasn't. Stede and Ed being whim prone? I'm glad they brought it up. And then they just fell for another whim and it was presented as a satisfying ending.

Ed went from the Kraken, to taking the first steps towards being Ed, then suddenly all the way to being Ed by way of a Night of Magical Healing Sex that he he didn't actually want to happen because he wasn't ready. And then all of a sudden he pivoted to abandoning Stede and piracy and becoming a fisherman... for 5 min. And then back to Blackbeard again because two fishermen were mean to him for 5 minutes. And then abandoning it again to open an inn. How was any of this even remotely coherent or satisfying? They didn't even have a single conversation about any of it. Ed had more proper closure and communication with Izzy during his dying scene than with Stede and the rest of the crew put together. Izzy's arc got sacrificed to do the heavy lifting for Ed's arc and became nothing more than a shortcut to speed run his character growth. Except it didn't even lead anywhere. "Ed, they're your family, they love you" no they don't, he didn't even have a single positive conversation with any of them except Fang. Of course this could have been the point, and Ed could have seen Izzy's death, his own discovery of found family and his dying words as a pretext to repair his relationship with the crew. But he just left them and stayed with Stede instead.

Sure, you could say this was only the second act of the story, and S3 will resolve everything. But the second act is still meant to move the story and the characters forward in some way. Yes, of course if we get S3, I imagine Stede and Ed's life as innkeepers won't exactly be idyllic. But the problem is that the conflicts they'd have will only be a rehash and repeat of the same conflicts they've already have, or were supposed to have, this season. Multiple times, even. We already know that Ed is simply unable to live with himself no matter what life he chooses. The title of S1 was literally "wherever you go, there you are". We already know Stede's love isn't enough to fix him. We already know their goals in life are completely opposite. Maybe they could have shown Stede realising, after his humiliating in S7, that piracy wasn't all it was cracked up to be or he isn't suited for it, and that's why he chose to leave it behind and open an inn, but that's not the explanation we were given. It was just another whim. They literally didn't learn anything this season. They had two baby conversations in E4 and E5 and didn't take anything from it, just kept doing the complete opposite of anything. "We're both prone to whims, let's take things slow" became "let's take things extremely fast by moving in together permanently and becoming entrepreneurs". They never talked about the actual, deepseated, longstanding trauma issues they needed to resolve before they could even begin to have a proper relationship. They literally got a heavy-handed glimpse in what their life would become if they just stuck together without addressing their own personal issues, and chose to do that very thing. It that's what S3 is going to address, then why were Anne and Mary part of this season instead of the next one?

I remember everyone saying they wanted Ed and Stede to reunite as quickly as possible in S2, and I get why. They have great chemistry together. The season is about them. But for it to work, spending more time apart is exactly what they needed. They needed to learn how to live with themselves and others, first. Romantic love alone can't fix you as a person. You have to fix yourself first. Community can help (as with Izzy's case), but you still have to put in the work. In retrospect, I'm glad that Izzy didn't get a love interest this season - because he wasn't ready yet, and had to learn how to have normal relationships and friendships with other people before attempting an intimate romantic relationship, lest he ended up falling head first unit another toxic mutually dependent relationship. That's what Stede and Ed should have tried too. Instead the show just ended up using Izzy's death as a quick surgical fix, robbing Ed of his agency and having to do the hard work repairing himself and his relationships with other people. There's a sad irony in getting exactly one character's arc just this, and then using it as a sacrificial lamb to patch over the main character's arc.