#until we find the real ed at the end of the season

[boylikeanangel]

clinging onto these pictures like a fucking lifeline right now honestly. the pearl necklace. buttons' jacket. the slow but sure process of shedding the skin of blackbeard and becoming "just edward" once more. the proof that ed is not lost, it's a long road but he's finding himself again and most importantly he's trying. he's been forgiven by the crew, he's one of them again. they're lending him their clothes. he's wearing little gifts from stede. he's happy and he's healing and he has FRIENDS. he really is going to be ok ohhhhhhhh

[steddieas-shegoes]

deep penetration up the field

for @steddieholidaydrabbles prompt 'sports au' rated e wc: 992 tags: secret relationship, football player steve, musician eddie, dirty talk, phone sex (in the loosest sense of the term), masturbation

first, a huge shout out to @thefreakandthehair for basically coming up with the commentator's lines at the beginning of this drabble. and for encouraging me when it comes to a sport that isn't hockey. hope this is a very tasty meal for you 💖

and a thank you to the love of my life in another life @wormdebut, who may or may not have written a part two to this already because neither of us were satisfied with the level of tendernasty kinky shit they got up to here.

“Why are you watching the game? We are anti-football in this home,” Eddie crossed his arms over his chest as he took in what Gareth and Jeff had put on the tv.

“As if you don’t have the world’s most embarrassing crush on Harrington,” Gareth snorted.

“I don’t, actually,” Eddie said, distracted as he watched the man himself on the screen.

“Those tight ends, especially Harrington, they’re skilled at finding the holes and getting that deep penetration up the field,” an announcer said.

“Exactly, Mark. You need a tight end that can play both ways confidently, that’s what sets this team apart,” another announcer said.

Eddie barely bit back a laugh as they focused in on Steve’s face before the snap.

Eddie could just barely see the edge of a hickey on his neck and felt his heart stop.

“Looks like Harrington has no trouble finding willing women,” Jeff nudged Eddie as he left the room to get another beer from the fridge.

He secretly liked football, and probably worshiped the ground Steve walked on as he was most of the reason the Colts had been having an undefeated season so far.

Gareth, however, couldn’t stand any event with a ball, and would judge the hell out of Jeff if he found out he was watching for any other reason than to make fun.

Eddie watched as Steve got a touchdown, something he’d been doing in almost every game this season, doing his stupid dance in the end zone. 

Eddie hid a fond smile when he pretended to play air guitar and pointed at the camera that was focused in on him.

He could feel the heat on his face, knew he needed to get out of the room, but just as he turned to go, Jeff came back in and saw him.

“Are you getting sick, Ed?” He asked, genuinely concerned.

“Nope. Just gonna go finish packing!”

He rushed to his bedroom, closing the door and sliding down until he was sitting on the floor with his head against his knees.

They talked about telling the guys when they meet up in Chicago in two weeks. The Colts play the Bears and Eddie plays The Riviera.

But the more Eddie thought about what that would mean, that it would make it real, the more he wanted to wait.

Not because he wasn’t sure about Steve. Never because he wasn’t head over heels in love with him.

Because Steve came out of nowhere, a stereotypical jock in every way on the surface, an overwhelmingly adoring and adorable sweetheart the moment he was alone with Eddie. It was easy to fall in love with him.

And it happened fast.

One moment they were making it out backstage in a closet, the next Steve was whispering how much he loved him in their shared hotel bed the night before pre-season started.

Now, they secretly met up when they could until they could figure out how to tell the people that mattered.

Eddie would have to be more careful about the hickeys he left, though.

He managed to pick himself up and actually work on packing for Corroded Coffin’s Midwest tour, but couldn’t help smiling to himself when he heard Jeff yelling excitedly about Steve managing to block three guys for his team to get another touchdown.

When his cell phone rang an hour later, he rushed to pick it up, already knowing who it would be before checking the screen.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he sat on the edge of his bed as he spoke.

“Hey, baby. Doing okay?” Steve’s voice was still slightly out of breath, like he’d just ran off the field and called Eddie before anything else.

“I’m good. Are you?”

“Great. We won. I think if we keep it up, we’ll be favored to make the Super Bowl.”

Eddie’s brows raised.

He didn’t really like football, but everyone knew how big of a deal the Super Bowl was. 

“That’s great, Stevie. You heading back to the hotel now or going out with the guys?” 

“I’m hiding in the bathroom, we just got off the field. Think I’m gonna head to the hotel, though. Don’t really feel like going out.”

Eddie smiled to himself.

“Call me when you get settled?”

“Just to hear my voice or for other reasons?” 

Eddie could hear the smirk in Steve’s voice, felt himself start to smirk at the thought of what they could do on the phone later.

“You know I love hearing your voice, but I also love hearing you whine and beg,” Eddie’s voice dropped lower, more of a growl.

“Eddie.”

Steve sounded breathless, almost like when he…

“Are you touching yourself? In uniform?” He told Eddie he didn’t like to risk messing up the uniform, it was sacred, blah blah blah. But Eddie knew exactly where his hand was right now.

“Mhm,” Steve whimpered.

“Jesus Christ, Stevie. Can’t even wait until you get to the hotel? What if someone walks in?” Eddie knew what would happen if he kept talking like this, especially when he could hear the faint movements of Steve’s hand working his cock.

“Don’t care. Need you,” Steve gasped out, ending his words on a groan.

Eddie was hard, but refused to touch himself now, knew he’d be miserable if Steve had to suddenly stop and he didn’t get off.

“What do you think I’d do? You think I’d get on my knees in the locker room, suck you off in front of everyone?” Eddie shook his head when he heard Steve’s breath catch, slick noises getting louder. “Or would you wanna wait until everyone leaves so no one sees you begging to suck me off before I’ve even gotten your cum down my throat?” 

“Please,” Steve begged.

Eddie smirked.

“Go ahead, sweet boy. Make a mess.”

Steve bit back a loud moan as he came, panting into the phone as Eddie talked him through it.

“Later?” Steve asked.

“You’re insatiable.”

[neurosiscocktail]

Okay so here’s my pitch for the season 3 cold open-

We open to a close up of Stede’s face, he’s clearly concentrating, he’s sweating a little, and covered in blood. It’s pretty clear as we pan out to a shoulder shot that he just killed someone. He looks very sexy about it.

We switch to a close up of Ed’s face, sweaty, clearly has just been fucked. Maybe his top button is done up wrong. Who knows.

The shot pans out and we start hearing their conversation. They are outside the inn, digging up Izzy (stick with me)- they’re talking about how silly they feel for just now realizing this is the problem- OF COURSE Izzy has been so mad, they didn’t bury him with his ring! How silly of them! And they didn’t even notice until someone tried to rob them and Stede killed the robber (and they fucked about it). THAT must be why Izzy won’t stop haunting them. They tuck the ring into his breast pocket and start to rebury him.

Next shot- we find out that they think Izzy has been haunting them because of a the ~weird happenings~ at the Inn. The haunting does not stop after they bury the ring. This part of the episode starts very creepy, real horror movie vibes. However, we find out through the course of the episode that what they think is a haunting is just two whim prone chuckleheads with no experience running an Inn.

“All of the produce mysteriously went bad!” - Stede, whose experience with food preparation is putting marmalade on toast just left them too close to the fire and the heat did what it does to produce.

“The room keys keep going missing!” Nope. Ed simply cannot remember where he put them.

“The desk bell keeps ringing at night but there is no one there!” It’s buttons the seagull fucking with them.

They both think they’re responsible for the haunting and having a crisis about it. Idk, dealers choice about what they feel guilty about.

They are losing their fucking shit over this haunting. Maybe Izzy shows up once or twice in a Badminton style memory ghost.

We pan back to The Revenge. It’s a total parallel to what happened with the red suit.

They also think they are being haunted by Izzy.

The word “twat” keeps appearing carved into random places aboard the ship. Frenchie’s peanut allergy is back full swing. They keep sailing into storms by accident. Etc

They set sail for the Inn, desperate to ask Ed to control the ghost of his dead best friend or burn the body, anything to get rid of this fucking ghost.

It’s Jim fucking with them and dumb luck. (Except for the storm thing, it’s just impossible for anyone to read the weather as well as Ed)

They all meet up at the Inn, and now we have a Scooby Doo style episode where the ghost was the friendship and character growth we made along the way.

And then for an extra layer of comedy, maybe at the end of the season we see Izzy’s ghost just sort of old man loitering around the ship because he didn’t want to leave what I am affectionately deeming his kids.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

[caffeinatedattorney]

I don't go here but, I watched the batman forever movie again recently and their dynamic just, stuck with me.

I'm talking about riddler and two face ofc. They're so married but they're such losers and it leads me to imagine, they'd be the type of guys to think they're smarter than the other (Ed with general knowledge while harvey has more applicable knowledge) but the fact that they think they think they're better than the other turns them into even bigger losers?

Since we see Harvey and harv show Ed how to punch properly and fight, lust for power aside, do you think Ed and him bonded over logical puzzles? Tried to have a convo in Latin? Bonded over tailoring? Something something trivia about even numbers. Something something curious court cases riddler would never guess the resolution for.

Had they survived, do you think they would've sought each other's company again? Or would they have pretended not to want it, while trying to one up each other cause they didn't think they'd ever find someone they could go toe to toe with that wasn't the bat or themselves?

One more scenario: I like harvey and harv as these seasoned mobsters, real intimidating guys, big cat playing with prey energy, sitting at a table, surrounded by their bodyguards while they watch riddler talk endlessly with this look of either lust or murder. Riddler is unconcerned bc Harv and Harvey don't interrupt him until the end, and also Dent would never guess, but this whole plan is an elaborate plot to take them out on a date that will scratch their minds just right.

Just. Thinking about them.

[izzysillyhandsy]

Thoughts about the finale, and my utter confusion about Izzy Hands

What I hated about Izzy's death wasn't him dying. I love a tragic arc, and although Con O'Neill elevated every scene he was in, it would have been ok if they'd handled his death better.

To have him die with only 10mins of the episode left (and this might even be the last ever episode!) was the first terrible decision. Everything that was built up over 2 seasons had to be resolved in a few minutes, we don't see any repercussions for anyone Izzy was important to - Ed, the crew and even Stede.

But the main criticism is the 180° turn the show made for his character arc in the last episode (or more precisely, in Izzy's last scene) and in David Jenkins' latest interviews.

Since season 1, I kept asking myself the same two questions:

What function does Izzy Hands have in the narrative? What is the nature of his relationship with Ed?

And the answers changed drastically from S1 to S2, and got more and more complex and intriguing.

Until the finale.

Izzy Hands as a plot device for the main couple

In S1, Izzy was an antagonist. His function in the narrative was to stand in the way of the Ed/Stede romance, of Ed growing and finding happiness and to move the plot along. He brought a lot of humour to almost every interaction he was in - he was such a fish-out-of-water character, clashing with everyone and constantly losing.

He was barely human - he was a pirate cliché.

But there was also so much going on in the background - his quiet desparation, his obvious love and longing for Ed, and these hints of a fascinating backstory between the two of them. This is what many fans picked up on, and going into S2 we hoped that we'd get more of this (for me personally the most important thing was clarification on Izzy's importance to Ed).

And then S2 came along and boy, were all of our expectations exceeded.

Suddenly, Izzy wasn't a plot device anymore. He was one half of the most intense (and interesting, sorry Stede) couple in the show. It was even confirmed by the showrunner that he was in a love triangle with the main couple!

In the first 2 episodes, we got so much more than we ever expected. At the end of Ep2, Izzy broke the lifeline with Ed, both of them almost dying in the process. He went on a journey of discovering who and what he even was without Ed (and right up to his death he was still deeply unhappy and broken, even though he was on the right path).

Izzy suddely became a fascinating character in his own right, with his arc of healing and self-acceptance and his inability (for now) to keep himself from sliding back into this relationship with his other half. He was blaming himself for everything that had happened. He was still so entangled with this man he built his whole life around. He still had a long way to go and a lot to work through (the same also applies to Ed btw).

But he also became the crew's unicorn, doing Izzy things (still related to Ed, always to Ed) but you could feel him becoming more himself. Slowly, Izzy's real personality started to shine through and we realized - this man is fascinating on his own accord. He's a respected and very capable pirate. He came from nothing and fought his way up. He's a really good teacher. He's creative and sensitive. He also cares about other people than Ed a lot.

Viewers who hated him or were indifferent to him in S1 suddenly became interested - this man's journey was fascinating and, most importantly, it wasn't at all finished. There was so much yet to come, and we wanted to see it.

Does this sound like a plot device to you? If it doesn't, bad news.

At the end of the final episode, Izzy is suddenly back where he was in S1.

He dies in a completely unnecessary way - almost as if how he died didn't matter. And it didn't matter, because in the end, Izzy Hands' journey didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was that he died and how it affected the main couple.

On his deathbed, Izzy is saying exactly what Ed needs to hear to move on. He absolves him of any guilt. Ed is ready. Izzy has played his part, he's ready to die.

Notably, nothing is really resolved for poor Izzy. Even if Ed says he doesn't want him to go, it's because Ed is losing his only family. He doesn't tell Izzy he loves him, or that he's important to him as a person, as his oldest friend, as the one who knows him best.

In the end, Izzy's function in the narrative, even after everything that happened in S2, was to be an obstacle to the Ed/Stede romance, to Ed growing and finding happiness. He had to die to free Ed of his Blackbeard persona and because "it's nice that Blackbeard is upset by it" (WTF).

The problem is, for the rest of the season, that wasn't Izzy's role in this show at all and I felt completely blindsided.

More than a spurned, jilted lover

"I guess it's a journey of redemption, but I think it's more a journey of finding out, who is he to Blackbeard?" According to Jenkins, Izzy is "more than a spurned, jilted lover." "What is that relationship about? And I think by the end of the season it kind of becomes a little unexpected of who they are to each other and what they mean to each other." (source)

I also made a poll about that question after Ep3 if anyone's interested.

The answer is, apparently, the two of them were Blackbeard. Or, Izzy was the brains behind the operation. Or, Izzy egged Eddie on to give in to his darker impulses (which, I think, was alluded to quite strongly in the murder/suicide scene).

I mean, yes. That was one of the options on my poll that I was quite sure of, and I think most of us suspected this even in S1.

Izzy was Eddie's only family. Ok, I think family doesn't quite express what was going on between them in S2, but that certainly was one aspect of their relationship.

This is all fine. I can see that being built up to over the two seasons.

But.

"And then there was the realization that [Izzy] is kind of a mentor to Blackbeard and that he is kind of a father figure to Blackbeard. It felt nice to have him die and have Blackbeard be upset by it, because Blackbeard killed his father. But this is a father figure that he’s losing that it’s hard for him; it's sad and he doesn't want him to go." (source)

This is not fine. Not at all.

Izzy is not Blackbeard's mentor. Izzy is obviously in love with Ed (and Ed is fully aware of that). Izzy might have been a mentor-like presence in Ed's life when they were younger, but when we meet them in S1 Izzy is more like an overworked housewife cleaning up behind her disinterested husband. Izzy would do anything for Ed (apart from killing him) and is ready to die at one point because of him. Izzy is desperate, grabbing onto the scraps Ed throws his way.

Where, where does Izzy seem like a mentor to Ed in all of this? A mentor is supposed to be at least at the same level or above but Izzy is clearly not.

And in the death scene, suddenly, that's all there is left of their complex, intense dynamic.

Izzy took young Eddie in and fed his darkness. He was Eddie's only family, binding him to himself out of selfishness in the process.

So that's their unexpected "who they are to each other". Izzy taught Ed everything he knows (which is actually bad for him) and it'd probably been better if they'd never even met.

And don't get me wrong, I don't completely disagree with this take. As a part of their dynamic, this is a fascinating concept - but only if this wasn't the end.

Because there was so much more, so much promise of a complicated, mutually destructive relationship that nevertheless was also full of love. Those two seemed so intertwined (and I'll never forgive Stede for stealing that for himself and Ed). Ed is Izzy's missing half and Izzy is Ed's.

And I still believe that, without Izzy, Ed isn't complete.

And with this rushed conclusion, and all the mess left behind and never even looked at, Ed will never be happy.

Conclusion

I think what hurts the most is, that with Izzy dead and their last conversation being that reductive, all possibilities of an exploration of all these complex and fascinating aspects of their relationship are now closed. I know this show isn't about Ed and Izzy. But Izzy is a big part of what made Ed interesting, and he's a brilliant character in his own right. We could have gotten so much more (even if it's only allusions, we really don't need everything spelled out).

I guess I expected too much from this show - but with good reason. The actors gave it their all. S2 set up such an intricate dynamic (and it was probably overly ambitious with only 4 hours of screentime!). I've never gotten so much of what I wanted from an outsider character in any show.

And then it let us down in the last 10 minutes.

And even if we hadn't gotten a season 3 - the setup was all there for meta, for fanfiction. Why ruin it all with killing off Izzy for all the wrong reasons and making their last conversation all about Ed "outliving his mentor".

To quote Prince Ricky: "Oh, my goodness. You've just grown so tedious."

Still, I love everything they've done in this show except for the ending. I will watch it again, many times, and enjoy the drama, the humour and the complexity. But I will try to forget these interviews and convince myself Izzy's senseless death was just a dream :).

[plantsjustwannahavefun]

I honestly haven't realised until now that Izzy had become my main reason for watching the show. I've always been part of the Izzy Canyon, but in this season I've been much more invested in his arc than in the main Gentlebeard arc. At some point I started tuning into each episode waiting for a scene with Izzy. And to have this taken away...

I just don't get it. No, I won't be one of those people who rage at the writers and start insulting them just because they didn't get the ending they wanted. It's done, it's over, I'll just have to make my peace with it. But I just don't get it. Izzy had so much potential. It felt like he was only starting to discover it. He'd only just started finding himself and his place in the crew. He'd literally only just managed to extricate himself from Ed and become his own person. And all of it was taken away in a split second by, what, some stupid bullet wound? When other characters in the show had survive having their guts stabbed and getting tortured? When near-death situations have always been treated like comedy so far? When literally not a single character who wasn't a villain or had more than a couple of lines ever died?

Gonna be honest, I'm not even sure I'm going to watch season 3. Okay, yeah, I probably will, it's just what I'm feeling right now as of this moment, literally minutes after finishing the episode. I'm in an extremely emotional ranting mode right now. But it just won't be the same. I really do have a hard time not feeling angry at the writers, because the only alternative would be feeling angry at myself for falling for the delusion that Izzy had actually become one of the main characters alongside Stede and Ed. There was a time when we were collectively speculating that maybe Steddyhands was actually within the real of possibility in some shape or form. And now it's all gone. Izzy won't even get to kiss anyone, ever. Imagine killing off Con O'Neill's character before he got to kiss a man. All of that potential, gone just like that, as if this was Black Sails and not an ultimately wholesome rom-com after all.

And here I thought Good Omens S2 was devastating, but at least I know those two will get their happy ending in S3.

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

Initial reaction to episode 8:

Full spoilers. Don't read if you haven't watched. But don't be afraid to comment if you agree or disagree.

Izzy got 1 week (at most) of a life where he felt like he could be himself.

That's it.

This man lost so fucking much, clearly his family, his past crews, himself. So the show said, hey. Let's spend ALL season showing him he is loved, then tell the audience this is a good ending because hey, now Ed can be himself for no loose ends.

I know we might get zombie izzy. I know buttons is probably a deus ex machina(yes, I gasped SO FUCKING HARD when the seagul landed), but I am fucking livid.

I'm sorry this is negative right off the bat. I cried yeah, but it was at Izzy apologizing for not letting Ed grow. The 1 final sin he hadn't been punished for. He apologized and lost limbs for the British thing. That was IT. The only thing Izzy haters had against him. And here we are.

Now that izzy is dead, their old Unicorn, the NEW Revenge can go live on.

Ex-fucking'scuse me?

The worst part is I knew he'd get hurt with that speech.

Congrats, izzy, you got 'woman in the fridged'-ed. Your death now ends Ed's problems without him needing to solve them. Ed doesn't need to work on rebuilding relationships because there's nothing left. Stedes is not mad at Ed, so no hard conversations there, and the crew he hurt is gone now. Izzys gone. All wrapped up in a nice little bow.

I knew. But I thought I'd be wrong. That Ed would get help. That izzy would apologize, lay their dying, and suddenly be alright via bird or someone would do SOMETHING. But no. I got to see Izzy die. In a fucking comedy show.

A comedy show about love and family and community and self acceptance. That kills of its 1 character this season who had a self realization arc outside of a romance.

Season 3 will be about either 1.) Stede and Ed being hunted and needing to fake their deaths or 2.) The crew of the 'new revenge' going on adventures. Or 3.) Zombie izzy getting the fuck out of there and finding love.

Now:I am in denial.

Con came out, mainly because of this community and this role. If he knew his character was dying, I don't think he'd have gone to cons/tied himself in with this community to the extent he has. You know? Like... if my role i got a ton of praise for was about to be offed, id smile at conventions, but already emotionally start distancing myself from the community. UNLESS-We know Jenkins would tell him the fate of his character, so...idk.

More ranting but-

I feel like we got more time watching Ed be silly than mourning his friend of potentially decades. I hate the fish plot. We already knew he had adhd and that this was a whim. 'Ed going out, catching dinner, getting kicked back' could have just been 'Ed rows out while the ship's blow up'. They didn't need Ed and stede to fight in episode 7, stede could have just gotten into a fight trying to defend Ed at the bar, maybe eds too drunk idk. Episode 7 was written like that just to have a cliffhanger resolved in the next episode. It's just...

I loved every fucking izzy scene and both love/hate that we get a flash of the shot that kills him. It's real, yeah. Izzy dies here because he was still originally in that pirate drama he made up in his head. Izzy dies a normal death. Ed asked if he needed help so many times. But izzy didn't want it.

Izzy hands wanted to die this entire time. He wanted it. That's how I'm interpreting this bullshit. He still tied himself to blackbeard, and wanted to die with him.

Maybe that's romantic, but I think it's gross and a mishandling of his character. If izzy believed that i wish we got to see it as the audience, Especially how some forms of suicidality can be expressed by 'one last hurah'.. But they didn't. All that, and the show wants us to believe he's moving on up to episode 7, until now we know izzy was jealous this whole time??? So this izzy was just izzy waiting until Ed was accepted by the crew to die. Till Ed didn't need him to be his punching bag anymore. When Ed healed he saw no point in living. 🙃 that a character who was suicidal's good ending is offing themselves when they aren't 'needed'?

Maybe izzy will come back, totally himself, ready to try to live a happy life. But I have very little fucking faith.

Getting personal: but izzy was my fucking guy. I related to his struggle to be seen/heard/taken seriously. To be liked or seen as worthy of time and attention. A character who was trying his best for the people he cared about. Who had valid concerns and was talked down to. Who craved belonging. Enough that he's desperate for scraps of friendship. A person who was feared but never understood.

To give him 'love' by a community and then have him die TWO DAYS LATER-

I hate it. I genuinely hate it. Fucking hell. Especially how quickly everyone moved on. Izzy would have been wrecked or at least shaken up if his crew died yet. WE'RE MAKING JOKES RIGHT AFTER HES BEEN BURIED. ON TOP OF HIS FRESH GRAVE. I hate that izzy got buried on the land (in general. Bro should have been buried at sea) especiallg the labd ed and stede now get to peacefully live on. I hate that con was fucking smiling, the calmest most authentic he could and ATE that fucking scene.

The thing that gets me is izzy is the cliffhanger. But at the same time, Buttons' turning into a bird represented change and acceptance. Think, we had Buttons' turning scene, the song 'seaguls', then izzy standing on deck reading the note. There's a real chance this is implying that izzy is free now.

I don't hate the show. I don't, but i fucking hate THIS. Con did Such an amazing job. But I hate that I won't know. That izzy being alive will be confirmed in a year when con accidentally posts something revealing he's on set, or Jenkins on Twitter telling us he's dead, us not believing him, then we watch all of s3 and cons not there. That I could spend the next 2 years of my life writing about a character who won't get mentioned again.

THEY COULD HAVE CONFIRMED IT IN THE END CREDITS. SOMETHING. Ground shaking, some hint early in the season about rebirth and brining back the dead or have the sword fall. Idk. SOMETHING.

I'm just.... not doing great. I'm 'excited' to watch it again :/ but fucking hell. I don't know if I want to. I still have a fic to post that I started pre season 2, but after that I might need time. I just...Izzy wasn't me, duh, but he was, you know?

Izzy didn't deserve death for being harsh, or fucking up, or living. The fact his redemption happens after they sand down izzys rough edges feels gross. Like. "Here you go audience He's 'good' now, NOW feel sad about his death!"

And I'm sorry. But fuck that. I have so many mutuals who say they didn't like how quickly izzy became soft. This fucking hurts.

Because izzy has been a dead man walking for years. Ever since Ed and he grew into whatever this is. He could have been given a chance. He wasn't. All because our protagonists are Ed and Stede. WHO I ACTUALLY LIKED THIS EPISODE. But I can't think about that because I just see Ed finally treating Izzy like an EQUAL as he's fucking dying. I was always okay with the idea of Izzy dying. But not like this.

So yeah...sorry if this is rambling, had a shit day before I watched the ep and the ep didn't fucking help! But here's to all us izzy fans hoping for a better s3 for him (my guess now is izzy is actually dead, I have absolutely 0 faith he'll come back, as izzys death was framed as a positive thing for Ed. Yes the framing is there. Izzys body is safe under Ed and Stedes watch and not drowning. But still. 0 faith. If we dont get s3, then izzy is just dead and everyone moved on the SAME DAY)

Side note- I hate the only mention of Izzys given name 'Israel' was by Ricky. Fucking...okay. add that to the pile

[canonizzyhours]

183 is exactly right and it's something I was worried about all along. I'm a jar guy who loved actual canon Izzy from the start and back during summer 2022 when the Izzy woobification took off I started getting really worried about all the demands for a redemption arc, because I knew the only two possibilities for Izzy were that he'd stay a villain and stick around until the end of the show or he'd get a redemption arc and have to die at the end of it, and I didn't want him to die.

The thing the canyon types thought they were asking for was an arc where Izzy redeemed himself and stayed a happy friendly member of the crew but that was absolutely never on the table as something that could make sense as a follow-up from the story established in season 1. Redeeming Izzy that thoroughly and convincingly would have taken more focus on him than we were ever going to get - honestly, I can't imagine how staying on the ship long-term could possibly even be a good thing FOR IZZY, he'd have needed to get away from Ed in order to find himself, and he wouldn't have done that voluntarily. He couldn't have really fulfilled any narrative role in the show once he became a good guy either, because just like 183 said, season one established no personality traits that he didn't have to discard in order to be fully redeemed - even his "loyalty" wasn't a positive or healthy kind - and after giving him so much focus he was too prominent to just fade into the background as a crew member.

But this just sort of circles back to the reason this blog exists, the reason the canyon thought they wanted Izzy redeemed was because they thought Fanon Izzy - the version of him that was actually a really nice guy who loved the crew all along and sincerely cared about Ed in a healthy positive way and had never really done anything all that bad anyway, and was always destined to be a main character on the same level as Ed & Stede - was a real character in the show. That guy could have had the kind of redemption arc they were imagining. But that guy was never actually in the show, and it would have been a narrative betrayal of what was actually set up in season 1 - and of those of us who actually liked the character Izzy was in season 1 - to suddenly pretend he was.

And it just makes me mad, because I DID love the character Izzy was in season 1, and I didn't want him to die, and I knew if the canyon got what they were asking for it would mean he had to die. And now they did get what they demanded and they're angry about it. It's not David Jenkins' fault that he thought you understood what you were asking for.

#186.

related posts: #183

[wordswhisperinthedark]

WAIT.

(stuff from Link Click S2'S first 2 eps mentioned below the cut!)

Aren't this season's op and ed also kind of like warning us to not believe everything we're seeing? Especially if the current theory going around that not everyone is from the same time line holds true?

We start with s1's intro about the rules of their jumps, and Lu Guang's warning to not meddle with the past, or worry about the future. Which then gives us a quick run of the first season's events, focusing on the final overarching plot line — a plot that occurs because CXS wanted to change Emma's fate.

Yet now we've learned that LG hasn't actually died, but Liu Min, and we're given this small comfort the trio are all together, they're ok, they're going to work this out.

But Chen Bin, one of their allies, has died (and in the first episode!! with a pregnant wife waiting for him that was so twisted of them, but I had a feeling their introduction was a death flag), bringing us back to reality: the game isn't over. There are new players, new pieces that we have yet to see where they fit — even how do current pieces fit, with all the new knowledge.

So. What do we trust?

Episode 2 reminds us no one is safe. It even ends on a cliffhanger of Lu Guang already in trouble, directly crossing paths with Red Eyes. Does he die for real this time? 2 funerals still seem to be going on, so is one for Chen Bin and another for Lu Guang (especially with the outfit in that obscured picture)? Or will they actually focus on Liu Min, someone who is shown to not be appreciated by his father?

Also, knowing CXS, he will probably try to find a way to save everyone, to get justice for everyone — and if we are to take the imagery from the ED, new knowledge of their powers could help him do that. At a cost.

Like, these lines from VORTEX:

Where do we end up when we save the world?

Wanting it all / And the whole world will crumble and fall

It's as if there will be a point this season where it seems like they've done it. Like they've won. But the rules of time remind them that they can't have everything. That everything as they know it will crumble if they get what they want.

What if reality fractures, timelines converging and distorting the truth, until we don't know where one timeline ends and another begins; which timeline each character belongs to.

Shattered mirrors our reflection

So this is where The TIDES comes in. If VORTEX is a song that blends determination to "win this silly game" with warnings of what happens when you play with destiny, The TIDES seems reflect uncovering the truth about the powers held in this world and its inner workings.

Open your eyes... passing through lies.

I got lost in the trap of time lapse / Cut through the night

The lyrics seem to act as a reminder to remain vigilant with what we are seeing, to not take things at face value. That the characters must cut through the darkness, to find their way out of the traps of the various timeliness. That there is a truth to be revealed to place all the pieces together.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[do-angels-dream-of-starry-seas]

@naranjapetrificada tagged me in a very fun game: write 8 predictions you have for the 8 eps of ofmd s2, then tag 8 people (sorry if you were already tagged by someone else if I do)

Spoilers under cut??? Maybe?????

1. I agree with Naran, as I think the crashed wedding is gonna be the first thing from s2. It will be such an introduction too, my god!

2. As a parallel with ep 1 and 2, I think Lucius will be revealed to be alive at the end of ep 1. And then ep 2 starts with his perspective, going through everything up until whatever present moment were on (maybe he knocks out and kidnaps Izzy or something lol)

3. Of course, ep 3 parallels, Stede and Ed will reunite at the end of the ep. And STEDE IS GONNA RESCUE ED

4. But now, I think by what we've seen so far, Anne Bonny and Spanish Jackie will show up during Stede's journey back to Ed. It would be funny if the reason Swede is there with Jackie is to throw her off, taking one for the team XD

5. That purple party though... must be related to Susan I think (and I think she's gonna be Ching Shih). But I am absolutely down for a Ed and Stede slow dance

6. As much as I want my "Stede and Ed deserted on an island bottle episode", I think what's gonna happen is Ed is "accidentally" swept overboard during a storm (we find out though he wasn't planning to fight out of his circumstances), and he has a little journey by himself. Hornigold ghost, maybe a pearl necklace swept up to shore? And hey, it could be a one-man play with Taika as a bottle episode still

7. But here now, I'm gonna upset people - I think one of the main supporting cast members is gonna die. Gonna be a real dramatic moment, an All Is Lost story beat. And I said it before, but I think it's gonna be Buttons - he's loyal to Stede and the crew, and would not hesitate to sacrifice himself if it came to it. I'm just suspecting, and I hope it isn't true, but the show has proven there's no plot armor

8. Omg Naran, I am taking your idea now of that cliffhanger. Because if Stede and Ed have a "our last night together" sex scene?????? I will combust, I swear. Even though I am still certain that a blackbonnet sex scene will not come until s3, I am hoping now for your theory to come true, because that would be the most emotional shit (and I mean, I am hoping for a slightly funny but more emotional love scene). I AM though, also certain there's gonna be a cliffhanger for the season. Hopefully not causing Stede and Ed to separate, it could just be like, them looking at the new danger (Lieutenant Maynard), then cut to black

Tagging @xoxoemynn @chocolatepot @jellybeanium124 @sherlockig @chuplayswithfire @artgirlfunkel @alabastermask @glamaphonic

[steveharrington]

Oh yeah I mean. Barb vs Chrissy is very distinct Barb is treated like a normal character introduced fairly naturally over the course of two (?) episodes, I don’t think we even learned her last name until season 2 with her parents (which makes sense. I don’t say my last name often in conversations). Meanwhile season 4 is like. Here’s Chrissy. Cunningham. She’s a brand new character! Here’s everything about her from her interests to her family to her dickish bf to her traumas. Here’s a fun middle school anecdote that doesn’t make sense with the timeline we’ve already established. Then she dies after existing for like, 30 minutes of screen time (most of which she wasn’t in). NONE of that felt natural. And the only characters who had any real reason to care were Jason and to a much lesser extent eddie (maybe max at a stretch. But neither of them really knew her. Her major role in the season was to cause problems for the gang by turning Jason into a secondary antagonist) who were ALSO introduced at the beginning of the season and dead by the end so she’ll basically have no lasting impact on the show. She could show up as a vecna vision and most of the characters would have very little idea who she is

They might try to wring some out bc she was kind of well-received (obviously the duffers rely on fan feedback in the worst way. Kali I will avenge you) but it won’t be earned AT ALL.

Chrissy managed to have a developed personality but ultimately I think she kind of failed the sexy lamp test. Like if Eddie had allegedly stolen and broken Jason’s prized possession the story wouldn’t have changed much she existed SOLELY to die (which is why I think too many people are like. Giving credit for how Chrissy was vs Barb. Barb was an actual minor character Chrissy was a list of traits tortured and killed for real reason, though gender plays a heavy role in how both were written and received. )

hmmm i don’t really agree :/ personally i don’t think chrissy was poorly written/introduced into the show at all, esp within the context of the season. all the things you listed that feel unnatural for us to know about her (her interests, her family, her boyfriend, her traumas) have an inherent place in the story because they matter when unraveling the mystery of vecna. we know about chrissy’s trauma from her mother and her ed because that’s what vecna takes advantage of. it’s showing us this to establish that he targets people who are already struggling with an internal conflict and plays on their fears/traumas. the exact same thing happens to fred! we meet him as fred benson, editor on the newspaper who likes nancy and has this traumatic past involving a car accident for which he feels a lot of guilt. it’s just the way new characters who will soon be vecna’d are introduced this season because it gives context to why they’re vecna’d. if anything, i think chrissy and fred were treated wayyyy better than patrick in terms of humanizing them and giving their trauma screentime. patrick is the Only vecna victim to not have his trauma delved into and explored beyond other characters talking about it.

as for stuff like learning about her relationship with jason and her little backstory with eddie….idk i think that was also fairly well executed and not unlike other character introductions we’ve seen? stranger things loveeees to have two characters recount a past shared experience from long long ago. mike and will at the park, joyce and hopper under the bleachers, jonathan and will as kids playing with legos, robin and steve in click’s class, etc etc so i don’t think chrissy and eddie reminiscing about middle school to find some common ground during an awkward meet-up is that out of place. i know there’s some conjecture about how old chrissy is supposed to be and if that would line up with her and eddie being in middle school at the same time and tbh i don’t know Much about it but she’s wearing an ‘86 necklace which i assumed was her graduating year, making her a senior and eddie two years older than her which isn’t that much of a stretch for them to have been in middle school at the same time

i don’t think chrissy could be replaced with an object to evoke the same reaction out of jason. really if i’m being honest i think jason is almost sympathetic for an st villain (i say almost because the whole spiral into puritanism and the tackling of erica just got. weird.) like……..he is under the very justified impression that eddie killed someone. a body was found in eddie’s house. the body of his girlfriend! i know jason is a shitty guy and very much douche who doesn’t respect women coded, but there’s really nothing in canon that explicitly suggests that he didn’t actually love chrissy. i’ve seen people be like “well he thought she would never do drugs, he didn’t really know her!!” yall eddie was also surprised by her doing drugs. it was clearly her first time buying drugs. no wonder jason wouldn’t think she would do that BUT i digress.

i think st does have trouble writing women sometimes, but i personally think those problems manifest mostly with nancy. i’m not trying to be a duffers apologist but i really didn’t find issue with chrissy’s introduction and characterization and death, mostly because she’s treated the exact same way as fred, a man, and treated better than patrick, a black man

[voidify333]

Got a lot of OFMD vibes from Good Omens s2???

BIG spoilers for both GO S2 and OFMD S1 under the cut

Like, this isn’t a situation for the copied homework meme format, I believe it’s just same braincell on a really juicy story beat to create drama in a high concept romance, but I find the similarities fascinating so I’m gonna post about them. (What’s funny is that the thing that actually got me to watch OFMD in the first place is the promise of Stede being like aziraphale and blackbonnet being like A/C…)

The main thing is how the ending of ep 6 reminded me of OFMD ep 9.

The central pair kiss for the first time— letting any remaining oblivious audience members know this isn’t just a bromance, and alienating any homophobes in the audience who weren’t already alienated by the queer supporting characters. (That last bit is actually the biggest other “ofmd vibes” thing I picked up— how the very queer supporting roster served both to let homophobes know the show isn’t for them, and to reassure the queer audience that they’re allowed to hope for the main pair being Outright Canon)

But they also enter their divorce era— specifically, what happens is this:

The sunshine bookworm has a scene with a character the audience recognises as antagonistic (completely different scenes though— Stede’s traumatic experience with the bully in the woods vs Az being emotionally manipulated by metatron into thinking coming back to heaven is a good idea)

This scene, combined with his existing insecurities, causes him to return to a life that he won’t even find fulfilling (we know this bc he stepped away from it in the first place!) but he’s been convinced that it’s The Thing He Has To Do

In the process, he abandons his black-clad true love and breaks his heart

But here (in addition to all the obvious differences in context and execution), the season cliffhanger cuts away BEFORE “episode 10” as it were.

And… I don’t think “episode 10” is going to happen immediately for Aziraphale when lights go up on s3. Like, the “love epiphany” part may come in an early episode (we saw the way he touched his lip), but he’s certainly not getting the “plan to leave” part until some time further into s3, because the life he’s mistakenly gone back to isn’t with a Mary figure who cares about him but wants him elsewhere as much as he secretly wants to be elsewhere— instead, it’s with Heaven, an abusive cult that is planning to use him to destroy Earth, and has the power to destroy him on a whim.

Aziraphale’s key insecurity is his need for authoritative reassurance that he is Doing The Right Thing. This is what allowed metatron to use the offer of heaven to manipulate Az into hurting Crowley’s feelings and then abandoning Crowley. The tone demands an eventual happy ending (my faith in this is why the ending of e6 didn’t even make me mad), but Az is going to have to work through those issues before the happy ending can take place— Nina basically spelled this out.

The next place this comparison led me was to the thought “can I connect a red string on my cork board between post s2 crowley and ep10 Ed?”

There is an important difference between them, and it’s in kind of the opposite direction as the difference between Az-when-we-cut-away and Stede-when-we-cut-away

Ed has closed himself off to vulnerability completely after his heartbreak, and lashes out horribly, and we all know the reunion in s2e1 is not going to go smoothly

Meanwhile, although Crowley is heartbroken and mad… he is ultimately like Maggie on the “I hope she’ll be there when I’m ready but there’s no guarantee—” “there is” front. Aziraphale needs to work through his issues, and the plot needs to get to a place where The Real Big One is foiled and neither of them are in imminent danger of destruction, and once Az stops being an idiot he will need to do a great many “you were wrong” dances, but once all those prerequisites are fulfilled, we’re getting our second kiss (and I’m fanning myself just thinking about that hypothetical scene hoooooboy)

Maybe there will be a period of “angel I can’t forgive you. not yet”, that would be juicy drama, but the tone of the story demands that any such moment will be temporary

However, I do have a vivid mental image now, inspired by e10 Ed, of post s2 crowley standing in the bookshop and saying to himself out loud “oh, nothing lasts forever, is that right, angel?” and then going on a bender of destroying or giving away books (I lean towards giving away as it would leave less permanent fallout for later, and also be funnier, while still being just as potent a gesture of spite in the moment)

Anyway when OFMD S2 comes out and we get a better look at the blackbonnet divorce arc I’m going to try to use it as a divination tool to predict the events of the A/C divorce arc

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 158 Rundown

Spy X Family: So the season starts out with a banger as Yor gets shot in the butt and has to avoid doing butt stuff. Loid thinks she’s just in a really bad mood like that episode of Ed Edd and Eddy where Ed gets a rock stuck in his shoe, I do think it’s fun that the two immediately think they did something wrong whenever anything happens, like they’re basically always off but it’s quite considerate in their own ways. I feel like this could’ve been solved if Yor just said she threw out her back lifting boxes at work but then we wouldn’t have an episode and it’s a comedy so it’s alright. But yeah Yor eventually drinks some poison from one of her enemies that ends up solving her butt troubles (this is way funnier because we’re talking about Yor’s butt instead of her back or anything) and Anya has to stop the guy from building a bomb, somehow reading his mind about how to build it and doing it before he has a chance to even get there and setting up several Satoko Hojo-level traps along the way, no clue how the timeline of that works but point being it’s pretty awesome and she scares the guy off. Yor’s feeling better (until the morning at least) and they have a nice date where Anya finally stops tailing them and just fucking crashes it. I also kinda like that Yor has an immunity to poisons from her job as an assassin and Yuri basically became Shizuo Heiwajima from eating her cooking all his life so like it runs in the family but for two separate reasons. Seems like we’re back to the light stuff with mild idiot plots for comedy after the back half of season 1 had several heavier arcs in a row, personally I like more of the ones that at least make some logical sense and take up a whole episode as opposed to the ones that are half an episode with the clearly telegraphed gags and this one was probably half and half.

Inuyasha: So Naraku’s sitting there like ‘okay that was definitely Kikyo’s arrow that nearly killed me so she’s still alive so let’s smoke her out real quick before she keeps this shit up’. Kohaku’s doing his best to pretend to still be a coma victim and not reveal he’s regained his memories but Naraku and Hakudoshi are sharp enough they’ve probably already figured it out because despite not disobeying them he’s not doing great hiding his emotions or anything. Inuyasha goes to look for Kikyo but doesn’t find her and because Kagome can’t take that on faith despite her supposed character development last time she gives him like five Sits for no reason only for everyone to complain about how she’s being mistreated. Usually I love Kagome but this is something that happens throughout the series where the girls are abusive and sometimes it’s more warranted than others but sometimes it’s just for nothing and it’s a little psychotic, like I get it’s for comedy and like half the time it’s filler stuff the anime snuck in to add more gags to a scene because from what I know the manga supposedly does have the characters get less abusive towards each other as things go on and relationships progress and they have less of their gag spats. So yeah on to the main plot, Hakudoshi and Kohaku unleash a plague of Demon Rats on the world and like they steal the Infinite Rat Box from its master and just kinda… leave it open? Like idk why the Rat Master wasn’t doing that to begin with since there seems to be no downside to havening infinite rats but I guess he was rather weak and didn’t want to draw attention to himself or have someone destroy the box. It’s actually a moment where Miroku gets to be MVP because destroying them only makes more rats so he gets to play Human Vacuum Cleaner and suck them up since Naraku doesn’t have enough Saimyosho to give the whole rat horde an escort I guess. It’s kind of funny because Kohaku brings up this being how to smoke Kikyo out and Hakudoshi’s like ‘oh right that’s what we were doing, I was just having fun unleashing plagues on the world’ like he fucking forgot the mission and was just enjoying being rat boi. Kikyo’s smarter than that though and finds a way to lure the rats out without giving herself away and creates a big fuck off spirit tree for them all to climb while Inuyasha and Kagome head to the tree and Sango and Miroku try to find the Infinite Rat Box now that the stream is more focused. Sango eventually finds Kohaku in front of the box as he’s contemplating if saving the five guys the rats haven’t killed yet is worth blowing his cover with Naraku (it’s not) and Sango gets to play the ‘I have to kill Kohaku even though I decided last time it was best to let him live’ game for like the fifth times because character development in this series is a sequence of small circles.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke meets with Yomi and his proposal is one that’s kind of beautiful in its simplicity, and also the most Yusuke thing that could’ve happened: he wants to have another tournament. This time the winner will be the ruler of Demon World no questions asked and it simultaneously stops a bloody war and dissolves all the complicated allegiance shit Mukuro and Yomi had been planning, like Yusuke just snapped Game of Thrones in half and made it into DBZ and it’s kinda great. The beautiful thing about it is Demon World is a Might Makes Right place so if any of the kings refuse to participate they’ll look weak, Yusuke wrapped them in the Chains of Command without even trying. Kurama breaks off ties with Yomi to fight on his own side (not sure how that’ll affect him being blackmailed into his mom being murdered but we’ll see I guess) and Yomi eventually agrees too though he’s secretly hedging his bets with his kingdom’s fighters fighting in his name, while also growing his own little Meruem/Cell child that’s supposed to be ridiculously strong to cheat more. Still, a bunch of Raizen’s old sparring partners come to visit his grave and tell Yusuke about how they live more peacefully now after seeing Raizen literally die to avoid killing humans and Yusuke gets a measure of respect for him in  a way you only can by learning about how someone else sees someone you know, so that’s pretty cool even if Raizen’s backstory is still the stupidest shit. The power levels of all Raizen’s old drinking buddies doing a Half Blood Prince ending into the air gives Yomi and Yomi Jr. battle boners and they both decide to only go in for themselves after all. I can see why people would be mad about what was set up as a big convoluted Pirates of the Carribean arc of allegiances just turning into another Tournament arc but I kinda love it, like the power of Yusuke’s big dumb pride and confidence overthrowing centuries of ridiculous plotting and scheming is pretty cool.  

Jujutsu Kaisen: Gojo and Geto beat their big fights from the cliffhanger off-screen and are formally introduced to Riko who’s a bit of a chunni but I guess that’s kinda how you have to do this kind of character, like if you’re sending a demure quiet girl to her death it’s kinda both more sad because she’s just accepting it but also less sad because she makes less of an impact so this is probably how it has to be by writing law. Megumi’s dad’s just bumming around gambling on random shit, he seems to be trying an Arkham City approach and waiting for everyone else to bombard Gojo and Geto with assaults so they get tired and have divided attention but they seem to be literally having no problem with anyone and literally made a big criminal organization go defunct off-screen. Still we get a neat little fight of Geto owning an old man and Riko’s maid crushing a paper bag man’s dick with a mop so that’s fun, plus Gojo uses his still incredibly undefined powers to own the rest of paper bag man’s clones though he shows he hasn’t fully mastered the big kamehameha thing yet so he’s stuck on Almighty Push and Almighty Pull mode, also Riko’s maid has been kidnapped so uhh yeah that’s not good.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: So… Scott’s dead, short series right? The mini-boss guy is for some reason surprised that turning a guy into coins doesn’t make Ramona want to date him and kinda kills the party vibe but I guess you don’t self-identify as evil and devote yourself to stalking a single girl you dated for two weeks in high school by having social skills. Ramona dyes her hair a new color and heads over to Scott’s funeral where Knives Out is kinda mad about her being there since while she didn’t really have anything to do with his death she is the manic pixie ignition switch that got him punched into coins so she has a full Gorillaz makeover to show how angry she is. Also Envy Adams is there and she’s a model I’m guessing based on the billboards but also Scott’s ex and a weird Ragyo Kiryuin knockoff because she has an entourage and sparkles everywhere. Also I’m noticing that you kind of have to use someone’s full name whenever they mention someone like you use their first and last name even when they know who you’re talking about. Anyway Envy upstages a fucking funeral and for some reason they had an open casket funeral just to show off the fucking coins Scott got turned into so yeah it’s a fucking shitshow. The Evil Exes all get invited to their own lair and #1 is like ‘hey bro I just killed the protagonist so I should be in charge’ and #7 is just like ‘fuck you bro get out of here with your midboss vibes’ and also apparently one of them is dating Envy? Like if you’re currently dating someone why are you in an self-proclaimed evil league to win back another separate girlfriend? Is dating in-universe Lady Gaga just an automatic poly relationship? Anyway Gideon and Matt fight and they do this cool Tekken/Soul Calibur stage transfer thing where each part of the fight is in a different thematic location and both of them equally look like they’re fucking up at various points but Matt has magic Stand User cheerleader girls and Gideon’s… kinda good with swords I guess? So yeah, Stand Powers win and Gideon signs Kaibacorp over to Matt so he can fully Starscream it up and fuck things up with his new leadership position and ungodly amounts of wealth that Gideon probably shouldn’t have agreed to wager over a fight, like betting the League was probably enough. Ramona’s probably a bit more broken up about a guy she knew for two days dying but she did kinda get him involved in some supervillain shit on accident and her having seven exes in her early twenties does suggest she’s the type of person to fall for people easily. So yeah we end the episode with a suggestion from right out of Futurama that Scott’s still alive and only the woman he loves can help find him, I’ve seen this one it turns out Ramona was in a coma and she got all the space bee venom while Scott lives with a hole in his gut.  

Ranking of Kings: Okay as much as I’ve been ragging on the filler season, this one does actually answer a question I’ve been looking forward to: finding out how Hilling assembled her squad and recruited Ann, like it still amounts to ‘fight bandits’ with just the names and places changing like one of those Radiant Quests in Skyrim like half the stories have been this season but yeah it’s cool to see more of Hilling’s backstory back when she was just the white mage of a Frieren-esque party and Ann is cool but it’s still not much to talk about. The second story is about Daida learning healing magic and finally getting the hang of it after pushing Bojji off a comedically well-hidden cliff that’s like five feet from where they were playing. I like the detail that Bojji was initially going to meet his snake friends since he was hissing to call snakes before Daida jumped him but yeah otherwise pretty paint by numbers and kinda makes the big reveal of Daida’s magic during the climax of last season less surprising given half the cast should already know he has it but okay.

Vinland Saga: Thorfinn and Einar get properly acquainted and honestly for being a slave it sounds like a prtty good deal, they get their own plot and get to sell off what they grow and they’re free once they earn more than they were sold for. Like the guy’s using slaves to expand his farm and I get you can’t really do that indefinitely without recouping costs somewhere and the land is completely untended and this may turn out to be way more impossible than it looks but still kinda on the boat that this is a very doable deal if there aren’t any surprises (there will almost certainly be surprises). Thorfinn’s about as talkative as he was as a kid so Einar doesn’t get much out of him except advice to keep his head down about some of the local assholes and Einar gets too much of a boner for one of the local girls to remember to tell them off so it all works out. Meanwhile we get introduced to the lord’s son who’s kind of a whiny jackass but they also do a decent job of showing things from his side and how the expectations put on him weigh on him and how everyone just seems him as an extension of his dad and he’s caught up in the warrior pride BS that Thorfinn was on back in the day, it’s a good combo of wanting to punch him in the face but understanding why he’s like that. Einar gives us the usual ‘war bad’ speech but most importantly he tells Thorfinn about how the Danes burned down his village and it gives him a chance to reflect on when he was doing the burning and pillaging.

[writer-zie]

HOW WOULD OTHER BORDERLAND CHARACTERS GET MIRA KANO-ED IN THE Q❤️ GAME? SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!

(By Mira Kano-ed I mean like all the hallucination and manipulation crap that Arisu and Usagi had to go through)

WARNINGS: not-so-bad derealization, mentions of pills, child neglect.

Characters:

Niragi, Chishiya, and Shinrai (OC)

.▒█▒█▒█▒█▒█▒█▒ ❤️ ▒█▒█▒█▒█▒█▒█▒.

NIRAGI

(honestly I doubt he could have made it to the rooftop without bleeding out or just collapsing and dying cus he was dying for like half the season and coughing up blood and then he literally got shot but IF HE COULD—)

It says on the wiki that he was a game designer, and I took that and ran with it.

He definitely would be a tough one to break, seeing as he got burned, fell off a roof, burned again, and shot in the stomach.

That would be something he would be unable to forget, ever (because he's covered in 3rd degree burns, and has a hole in his stomach)

But experiences can be simulated, and so can pain.

He was a game designer, correct?

Well, his company had started to delve into virtual reality, and he was the first tester for the new VR lenses.

This one wasn't a headset, no, these were lenses, that were put into your eyes like contacts.

But it worked too well. The lenses latched onto nerves in his brain, and would not release him until the game was finished. (neuroscientists don't come for me TvT)

Borders? That's something that occurs in videogames, right? Lasers that come from the sky? That couldn't happen in any place other than a videogame.

*cue visual of lenses being taken out of the eyes*

Mira was one of the people in management at the company, and was working to remove the lenses. She was also the creator of the game, which she called "B🂡RDERLAND".

*cue Niragi realising he's in the "real" world again, but tied to a chair*

Mira tells him that they fear the experience may have altered some of his brain functions, and he needs to take these pills to end the games.

Niragi's always been suspicious of taking pills or consuming stuff that he doesn't fully know the effects of, or just taking consumables from people.

(because he got bullied)

So, he asks what the pills do, while trying to get out of the restraints, as they bring back bad memories, and Mira just keeps telling him they end the games.

He slowly begins to remember that the rules for the game were play 3 rounds and don't quit, and as he struggles against the restraints, and Mira just keeps telling him the pills stop the games,

*cue ripping sound effect*

As the restraints on his arms tear off, he finds himself back in Borderland again.

(we all know that in reality he would have tried to shoot her, and since he's not that rational, probably would shoot her, thus dooming himself (and everyone else I think), but for the sake of this let's give him some rationality.)

CHISHIYA

(just remembered that he's also bleeding out but he was barely fazed by that)

We all know this man wouldn't be affected by Mira's words and would probably manipulate her into letting him win.

Or it'd be a standoff manipulation battle between the two.

Ok, but let's think about what she could to to try (and fail) to get him to quit.

The one thing we've seen Chishiya be even slightly perturbed about was that one scene in the hospital where they had to give the heart to a guy who had made lots of donations to the hospital instead of this little boy whose mother he had promised her son would get better.

She'd probably start on about how the decision haunted him and he'd immediately say "um, no it didn't, sure, I was kinda upset about it, but like, all that taught me is that life is unfair and choices are cruel. Anyway let's play croquet I want this to be over."

Mira would immediately try and find some other memory, but Chishiya hasn't had much stuff to faze him. Like ever.

This man has only been mildly amused or slightly shocked at literally everything in his life.

Mira has nothing to go on here, so all she can do is stall, and keep trying to scan for trauma, but she's got nothing on him.

His mind isn't an iron fortress, it's just plains, with nothing on them. No spikes for hurt memories, no blood for pain, no holes for grief, no.

(If you cover spikes with dirt, it appears as normal ground.)

But anyway. Mira is, for once in her life, stumped.

However, when there is no trauma to prey on, you have to create it yourself.

She scans his mind for anything that could be used against him, friends, family,

All Chishiya's friends are people who he knows are safe, and his family? All his memories of them are locked in stone.

But even if she did find anything, he's fully aware of his situation now, and he's just sitting there at the tea table, grin on his face.

"Let's play croquet, shall we?"

(honestly, if I was Mira, I would be stumped too, because how do you hurt someone when you have nothing to hurt them with?)

SHINRAI (OC)

(I had a dream this morning about her backstory, and I just had to, if you don't want OC content, don't read. Also, TW: Child Neglect, because Shinrai is somewhere between the ages of 9 and 11 (no that's not meant to be a joke), um, yeah that's it, enjoy.)

Quick Before-The-Content:

Kid who ended up in the Borderlands, and has mainly survived because she is a child, and her very high IQ.

Partnered up with Chishiya for some time in phase two, they are kinda alike in personality and intelligence.

Despite being so young, Shinrai is extremely mature, but in the wrong ways, (as in she only got to be a child for 5-6 years before getting put into foster care, she has adult perception of the world, but is a kid inside, so all her emotion and interaction receptors are way massed up), she feels the world is cruel due to having terrible foster parents, who completely neglected her, except for basic needs.

However, one day they got a massive bonus from the company they worked for, and splashed out on expensive clothes and most importantly, a holiday overseas. Also, so she wouldn't complain, they bought her a crapton of toys.

Left for their holiday, leaving Shinrai alone in Tokyo, BOOM! Borderlands time!

OK THE CONTENT STARTS NOW

Shinrai wouldn't be a tough one to convince, as she has a hell of a lot of trauma for Mira to use.

Once the manipulation started, Shinrai would be back in her room, the one in her foster parents' house, surrounded by toys which she didn't have much need for, but had become pretty much her only source of entertainment.

She had built a Lego wall around the front of her room, and within that wall were numerous amounts of dolls.

A handmade doll with dark curly hair and dungarees. A boy in a plushy cat costume.

Herself, Chishiya.

A boy with spiky hair in blue and white clothes. A girl in mountain climbing gear.

Arisu, Usagi.

A strongman and another doll, which had partially melted, due to being stuck behind a radiator and catching fire.

Aguni, Niragi.

A girl in spy gear, and one in a swimsuit.

Ann, Kuina.

An ornate doll with long black hair and a twinkly black dress.

Mira.

Slowly, but surely, she began to realise. All these toys represented people she had met during her time here.

Even Mira.

All her life, her imagination had been hyperactive, creating wild worlds in her head, so was it possible, that this whole experience was something she'd created?

No. Surely not.

The Mira-doll spoke up.

"Your foster carers left you here, and didn't come back from their holiday. Food was running out, and you don't have keys. So, you distracted yourself with these toys."

"You created a whole world in your head. All of this is your doing. You even put yourself in the world." she said, hand moving towards the Shinrai-doll.

Shinrai would probably go into immense shock from this, because, well, it sounded plausible.

But that meant all her friends, all the relationships she'd built, they were fabricated?

"You don't want to live a false life, do you?" said the Mira-doll, eyebrow raising.

"N-No?"

The doll hopped off her pedestal, walk across the floor, and exit the wall through a Lego archway that didn't seem to be there before.

"All you have to do is step out." it said, extending a porcelain hand.

This would be it. Mira would win, and Borderland would continue until everyone's visas ran out.

A hand grabbed onto her trouser leg. She looked back. The plastic hand of the boy with spiky hair.

"Shinrai? Hey, it's me, Arisu! We're all real! Don't listen to her!"

The mountain climber girl came next.

"Yeah! Shinrai it's Usagi! You remember us? We're real!"

The girl in a swimsuit.

"You think all of this is fake? Hell no! Don't go, Shinrai?"

And finally, the boy in the cat costume.

"You think you could have fabricated someone as complex as me? Don't listen to her."

And finally, the illusion would end with Shinrai turning around to the masses of dolls looking up at her with determined eyes, and saying,

"No thanks. I'm staying with my friends."

(I hope you enjoyed this! Kinda got carried away, but I loved writing it, and I hope you liked reading it! Have a blessed day folks!)

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Into episode 13 of the FUBAR Radio Peacock & Gamble show. They talk about combat sports. I have opinions. That’s what’s here.

The first four guests they had on this show were all comedians. All four of them were comedians whom Ray and Ed had interviewed during their Edinburgh podcasts, clearly people they knew personally and could reach out to to invite on a radio show. Episode 5 had a porn star and that was a disaster, and nearly every episode since (except one that had a comedian I’d never heard of, who barely got to talk because they spent most of his interview on the phone with Daniel Sloss), they’ve had various non-comedians. It’s been frequently people who would seem sort of interestingly controversial in some way – a guy who was famous for being a convicted criminal, two episodes with drag queens (before the reality shows made them mainstream and more normalized), some swingers. I guess FUBAR let Ray and Ed pick the first four guests, and then said “We’re going to book them from now on, and it’ll be people who fit our promise of Uncensored Radio.” Sex and violence all over the place.

In episode 13, they’ve interviewed an MMA fighter, and a guy who’s making a documentary about MMA. And they’re so weird about it. It is really, really jarring to hear MMA treated the same as all those other things, as some weird, underground, intriguingly dangerous lifestyle choice. And I guess that may show some of my biases about those other things, that it seemed all right to treat them that way but not so much with MMA. Obviously porn stars and drag queens are also just real, regular people (though in my defense, the particular type of porn star they brought in – famous misogynist – is fucking seedy).

It seemed weird for this to be only ten years ago. I used to follow the UFC very closely, and the main years when I did that were about 2006 to 2014. When I first got into following MMA, it was considered a bit of a niche hobby, but you could go to pretty much any sports bar on the night of a UFC card, and find them playing it on the TVs (which my best friend and I did for every card, as the only other way to watch was to pay about $50 for pay-per-view). The sports bars were usually pretty packed on those nights. Packed with guys in their twenties wearing those awful Tapout and Affliction shirts. My friend and I used to joke with each other that the guys in Tapout shirts are usually just vaguely dumb and bro-y but ultimately harmless and friendly guys, while the ones in Affliction shirts are the real dicks. I realize I’m not exactly disproving my point about them all being regular people here, rather than violent meathead bros. Though as I write this, I’m also remembering that I definitely owned a Tapout shirt for a while. I wouldn’t have purchased that. I think I might have won it in a poker tournament hosted by a Muay Thai gym in 2009.

Anyway. The point is that when I first got into it, it was growing in popularity. In the few years before I got into following MMA, it was really underground. Hardly anyone knew about it. But by 2006, it had its own reality show (Ultimate Fighter – my best friend and I watched the first ten or so seasons together as they aired), it could pack every sports bar in the city. Most knew about it, a lot of people had an opinion about it, though not too many people actually watched it, aside from people within the combat sports community (people who actually participated in those sports), and meathead bros in Tapout and Affliction t-shirts.

In 2007 I got into an argument with my grade 11 English teacher about it. I remember it well because I hardly ever spoke up in class, but this annoyed me so much that I actually raised my hand to contribute an opinion for once, and then responded once he told me I was wrong, and went back and forth until we ended up arguing for about ten minutes. Because he presented this idea, for class discussion, of whether the growing popularity of MMA is a sign that humans aren’t really civilized, that deep down we all have barbaric primal instincts that we’re not as far away from as we’d like to believe, and the proof is that people gather in sports bars to watch violence every time there’s a UFC card.

I told him I thought he was wrong, I watched the UFC and I didn’t do it just because I wanted to see violent barbarism or whatever. I did it because I liked the sport, I wanted to see athletes who had mastered their craft showing off what they could do. I participated in a sport that was quite similar to MMA, had enough crossover so I could appreciate a lot of the technical nuances going on, but even in the parts of MMA that didn’t overlap with stuff I knew a lot about, I could enjoy watching people do something well, the same way a non-hockey player can enjoy watching a hockey game.

I don’t remember everything that was said in the argument, and I’m sure the things I actually said were a lot less eloquent than my memory of what I was thinking, but I remember I was really upset, because I liked my English teacher and I felt like he was saying horrible things about me. At one point he asked how watching the UFC is different from the people in ancient times who used to gather at the Colosseum to watch gladiators murder each other. I remember being so baffled by the idea of that comparison that I didn’t even know how to answer it. I know exactly what I should have said, which is that it’s the same as the difference between watching distance running in the Olympics, and watching people who are forced to run until they die in places where that sort of torture happens. The people involved have chosen to do it, and no one makes them keep doing it until they die. Obviously. I’m not sure what I said at the time.

I think pro wrestling gets people confused about this. They think anyone watching combat sports is just trying to see a violent spectacle for the sake of enjoying violence, because the most mainstream popular thing people associated with it (certainly back then, before the UFC got bigger) was pro wrestling. So people didn’t realize that MMA, and regular wrestling and any martial art, had much more in common with non-combat sports than they did with pretend wrestling. They weren’t crafted for the sake of satisfying the viewing public’s barbaric instincts. They were athletes applying their skills. Pro wrestling, on the other hand, has much more in common with performing arts than it has with regular wrestling. It’s a performance for an audience. People not seeing the difference has really messed up the mainstream perception of combat sports.

The argument in English class would have happened in 2008, and I think it was representative of the way a lot of people saw MMA at the time. My English teacher’s opinion wasn’t uncommon, then, and neither were arguments like ours. But a lot changed in the next few years. The UFC got more mainstream appeal, and most people came to understand that even if MMA isn’t a sport they like, it is a sport. Not a form of gladiator torture. More and more people showed up to sports bars on UFC nights. I started hearing people outside the sports bar or the wrestling rooms talking about UFC. They sometimes aired the fights on mainstream TV, not just pay-per-view.

By 2014, I was barely even following it anymore. I didn’t stop for any specific reason, I mainly just got much busier when I got into coaching, and competing at higher levels, and I didn’t have time to go to a sports bar every couple of Saturday nights anymore. But I know that by then, it was pretty much normalized, at least where I was. I could tell someone at work that I was into the UFC, and I wouldn’t wonder whether they’d see me as a weird and violent person for it (maybe for other reasons, but not for that).

So I find it weird that this radio episode (remember that thing that this post is meant to be about?) took place in 2014. I have two theories about this, and I imagine it might be a combination of both factors. One is that weirdly, there are hardly any combat sports in the United Kingdom. They don’t have any major wrestling teams. I don’t know of any famous MMA fighters who’ve come from there. This actually came up the other day, when I was at a friend’s bachelor party, and we went to a Canada vs. Scotland rugby game. Scotland obviously fucked us up, because there’s a lot more rugby in Scotland than in Canada. One of the guys at the party asked me if that’s true of wrestling as well, and I said quite the opposite, I’ve heard of maybe two wrestlers from the entire UK in my 20 years in the sport, and they’re both from England, I think there might be literally no wrestlers in Scotland. That’s what I meant to say, anyway. What I said was that I’m pretty sure I, personally could beat every single person in Scotland in a wrestling match, when then became a running joke for the rest of the night, by the end us all deciding that’s exactly what I’m going to do when I travel there in a few weeks.

Anyway. For one reason or another, I really don’t know why, combat sports didn’t take off there. Not wrestling or MMA, at least, as those are the two I know the most about. Maybe judo or some shit is really big out there and I’m just unaware of it. But that’s one of my theories as to why Peacock & Gamble brought an MMA fighter on the radio in 2014, and had 2008 arguments with him. Maybe the UK was about six years behind North America in normalizing combat sports. (Obviously the fact that they brought in an English MMA fighter shows there’s some amount of that there – but the fact that they brought him in as a curiosity on a radio station that bragged about covering “Uncensored dangerous stuff”, and he was promoting a documentary that seemed to just be about the existence of MMA in England as a weird thing that needed to be documented – supports my theory that they were several years behind.)

The other factor, I think, might just be that, you know, Ian Boldsworth went to theatre school. Peacock & Gamble are arts people. I sometimes forget, when listening to all this media, that arts people grew up immersed in a totally different part of society than I did. Maybe England normalized MMA in 2007, and they didn’t notice because they were busy doing art. This radio interview made me think of that Kitson show from 2018 when he met a guy in the front row who did boxing and Kitson also got really weird about it, asking the guy how he handles the risk of injury and repeatedly saying he could never imagine doing that. Kitson also went to drama school. I guess not a lot of drama schools have combat sports teams.

This is objectively silly, but the interview felt particularly odd to me because in my mind, they’re full of similarities. I listen to comedians talk about what comedy is like, and it makes me realize that a lot of stuff wrestlers say is specific to the wrestling community, is really everywhere. I was talking to my roommate about this last week. He was discussing a pair of teammates who’ve started to have that thing that happens, where the younger one is getting better and possibly overtaking the older one, and it’s an incredibly delicate balance for a coach to strike if you want them to maintain a positive enough relationship to keep being good training partners who make each other better, you have to really really carefully keep them out of competition with each other, never enter them in the same category even if they’re the same size, never do for one what you don’t do for the other, tone way down the level of joke that seems acceptable to make about their success or failures, or the whole relationship will fall apart and they’ll both be worse off for it, because that training partner relationship was making them both better wrestlers. My roommate was talking to me last week about this, how he’s trying to manage it with these two university-aged guys, and he mentioned that he was chatting to a guy he knows at work and happened to mention it, and the co-worker didn't really know what he was talking about, and he realized how specific this problem is to wrestlers. He said that story is one we see play out over and over, every year and at every level and it’s a massive part of our jobs to learn about it and we spend a massive amount of our lives discussing this problem, to the point where we sort of forget that’s not just a regular human experience. It’s just us, he said.

And I told him, I don’t think it is just us. It’s not everyone. But I think it’s everyone who’s part of some sort of community where everyone’s trying for the same goal, and that’s lots of people. I said I find it interesting how often I see the story play out when I’m listening to comedy (I’m… genuinely not trying to specifically single out Peacock & Gamble here, it clearly happens all the time to lots of comedians, and for that matter to lots of athletes and people in any sport or any art or anything else that can get competitive, and I could be talking about any of that, but obviously as I listen to that double act crash and burn in its last hurrah on app-based radio, there’s a particular example that comes to mind). My roommate found that interesting too, said it hadn’t occurred to him before that it could apply to something like arts as well, and he’d always felt that dealing with things like that was one of those things that’s specific to sports. And even fairly specific to combat sports, due to a number of factors about them (individual, direct one-on-one contact, a few other things). I said I think you get it in a few number of different communities. But not all of them. Definitely not everyone spends a massive amount of their life thinking about this, so it catches my attention when I see it.

There are a few things like that that come up in comedy. Also the way comedians talk about how they all know each other but they only know each other. In some recent radio episode I heard Ed Gamble say comedy is like a cult because he never hangs out with anyone who’s not a comedian. My friends and I have made running jokes since I was about 15 years old, that wrestling is like a cult, because there are lots of people in the community and we’re all aware of each other and we all gossip about each other and spend all our time trying to keep track of each other, and none of us can really communicate with people outside the sport. Because of things like what happened to my friend at work last week, they ask you “How’s your life going?” and you explain this really specific conflict that you’re trying to manage, and they just don’t understand why it’s a really big deal in your life that the younger one is threatening to enter in the same category as his partner at some mid-level tournament even though that could ruin everything. You have to talk to other wrestlers. No one else ever knows what you’re talking about.

All those things sound familiar to me in the way comedians talk about comedy, and I think that’s what made it feel so very jarring when Peacock & Gamble met a guy from combat sports, and apparently, the sense of similarity was not mutual. Ray Peacock asked so many weird questions.

They weren’t just weird in the way all Ray Peacock’s questions are weird. In fact, they were specifically not that. Ray Peacock is normally good at asking wild, left-field questions that catch everyone by surprise. But in this interview, he was making jokes like “Isn’t some of it just cuddling?”, which is a joke I’ve been hearing kickboxers and Muay Thai fighters make about wrestlers since 2006 – particularly about wrestlers who fight in MMA, and strikers want to dismiss their style by saying “stop hugging and actually fight!” They usually make that joke right before they ask us if we’re willing to train them a bit in wrestling, because they want to cross over into MMA and they know a strong wrestling base is the most important thing to have for that. I have helped a lot of strikers cross-train in wrestling for MMA. My wrestling club has benefitted a lot from that, actually, because most martial arts gyms know the value of having wrestling coaches on site who can help their strikers tune up their wrestling skills for an MMA fight, so they’ll let my club train for free out of their room in exchange for private lessons. Because of this, I’ve done a lot of cross-training in jiu-jitsu and MMA too, I know a lot of MMA fighters, you get a lot of crossover in the combat sports community.

At one point Ray asked the fighter why he can’t just be a runner instead, since he’d still be doing a sport, but that one’s safer. I don’t know, Ray, why don’t you just be a ballet dancer instead of a comedian, since it’s all performing arts? (Bad example, maybe, because you’d probably be more likely to get Ian Boldsworth these days to do ballet dancing than to do more stand-up comedy.) He asked the guy why he’d do something like MMA despite knowing the risks of brain damage. I don’t know, Ray, why do you smoke cigarettes despite the risk of brain damage? It’s fucking addictive, isn’t it? People take risks do things they want every day. (I am talking here specifically to Ray Peacock circa-2014; I have no idea if Ian Boldsworth circa-2024 still holds these opinions about combat sports, or for that matter, whether he still smokes cigarettes.)

Ray’s issue with combat sports seemed to be mainly that there was such a high risk of injury; and partly that thing that people like my English teacher thought, that you’re seeing a scary violent side to someone and that’s unpleasant (though to his credit, he made it clear that he didn’t want it banned or anything – I really do think the UK must have been behind the times, because I don’t think in 2014 North America, it would have even occurred to anyone to clarify whether they want MMA banned). The former argument is very odd to me, coming from Ray Peacock, because he used to play rugby. Statistically, there is a greater injury risk, particularly severe and brain-based injuries, from rugby than from most combat sports. The latter argument – saying he doesn’t like the idea of someone letting their fucked up violent side come out in an environment intended for that purpose – is odd to me, coming from Ray Peacock, because he’s not exactly made a career out of appealing to people who like acceptable and non-confrontational things, has he?

I can’t say that no part of my love for wrestling – or the various other combat sports I’ve dabbled in over the years I’ve spent in a shared combat sports community, including MMA – comes from enjoying the violent and aggressive side. I got into it when I was an angry teenager with no friends, I spent all day at school keeping my mouth shut, and it felt good to go to practice at the end of the day and get to knock some people into the mat. That was part of it. But I never set out to actually hurt people. There’s a huge difference between thinking it feels good to push someone around, and wanting someone to actually get hurt. I would argue, again, that Ray Peacock based quite a few things about his comedy career on the previous sentence being true.

That was only a part of it, though. I got into wrestling because I love the sport, as a sport, not as a glorification of violence. It’s fun. It feels good. When I’m in the middle of a really good match I don’t notice the time passing because I’m lost in only caring about the techniques and tactics of what I’m looking to do next, about how our relatively levels of strength are running into each other. I could get into flowery language here. I normally get annoyed with wrestlers who share Facebook posts full of romanticized prose about loving the smell of the mat, the feeling of someone’s wrist against yours, the sound of people falling and getting back up, the beautiful rhythms of the game, the feeling that this is the purest test of human physical ability and endurance, pushing yourself and your partner equally to be better. I roll my eyes at Facebook posts that get too into that because they’re fairly cheesy, but then I listen to a radio interview like this one, and it makes me want to say – “Okay, all that stuff is true, though. Some wrestlers can be kind of annoying and cheesy about it, but they’re not wrong. It is all those things. It's not all about meathead brutes who are some weird curiosity for a radio show to not understand.”

I also stuck with the sport for the camaraderie, the community, the fact that it was the first place I ever had friends. It was the first thing I was ever good at, aside from maybe writing. As a kid, I got compliments on my creative writing, and fucked up everything else, was years behind my peers in terms of social skills and never spoke to people, barely passed my classes besides English class, was absolutely awful at every sport we played in gym class. Then I started wrestling – actually I started jiu-jitsu, did that for two years before transitioning to wrestling – was actually good at it, felt good about myself for the first time in my life. Felt like part of something, like I actually belonged there.

And when I was done competing, I didn’t want to do anything with my life besides going into coaching so I could give to others a little of what the sport had given me. And I could give them a version with me in charge of it, so I could make sure it was done without all the horrible abusive coaching that the sport also gave to me, when I was younger. Because there is a lot of toxic shit in combat sports communities, I was subject to a lot of it, but that must mean that the sport itself – the actual, physical sport that exists outside of all the personal bullshit – its pretty fucking great, to have been worth sticking with it. I stepped back from the sport after COVID for a whole bunch of reasons related to the toxic stuff, and I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that if I never go back to it, then I’ll never again have the physical and psychological high I get from engaging in a wrestling match (even one in practice, which I still did as a coach, long after I stopped competing). I’ve tried to find other things in life that equal it, and nothing else does. Though the closest I’ve come was the feeling just after I finished doing my set the few times I’ve tried performing stand-up.

Right, this post got a lot more emotional than I’d planned. I might be dealing with some stuff. I'm not, like, genuinely furious at Ray Peacock or anything. I think I feel a normal level of annoyance toward him for having what I believe to be incorrect views about the nature of a sport - annoyance from which I can easily move on, now that I have expressed it in a Tumblr post (that's why this blog exists). All the emotional stuff is my own, separate issue. I'm doing fine.

[three--rings]

Our Flag Means Death Fic Recs

By no means meant to be a comprehensive collection, but things are being produced so quickly in such numbers, here are my favorites of what I've read so far. I've limited myself to one per author, but keep in mind many of these writers have written several fics for the fandom. In no particular order.:

Aftercare by @perkynurples (M, 32K, WIP) - I have a tendency to avoid WIPs in favor of finished fics, but this one is worth it. A reunion of Stede and Ed with a slow working-through of their issues, both individually and as a couple. There's so many insightful moments and symbols in this fic, I've been impressed so many times.

Time Makes You Bolder, Children Get Older by mtothedestial/ @summersteve (M, 13K) - I waited until this one was finished to read it and that was a lovely decision. It's a Persuasion AU, and ABO and Ed and Stede fit into this world and this story so well. The author has a good track record with historical fics and it shows. This is just lovely, romantic, sexy, and perfect.

we came untarnished by @propinquitous (E, 5K) - Smut set during the course of S1, but beautifully written smut. In this one, Stede is the more experienced because m/m sex was fairly common in the upperclass at the time.

on the bed of this blue ocean by kirkaut (T, 9K) - An Ed POV fic set after the end of S2, of him learning that Stede is dead, grieving him, and then deciding how to pick himself up and go on with his life. Deciding who he wants to be without Stede. Turning back from the Kraken and trying to reconcile himself into a more whole person. Only then to reunite with Stede.

Cleave the Pin by DarkIsRising (E, 7K) - Stede as he tries to return to Ed realizes he's never been very good in bed and worrying about it with his crew. Only to be reunited with Ed and finding out he shouldn't have worried. It's a very funny fic with a sexy resolution.

Break down, it's alright by rowenablade (E, 3K) - Just a really well done reunion fic with a good dose of angst and crying leading into soft resolution sex.

I'm Glad I Spent It With You by soft-october (T, 3K) - A reunion fix-it set pretty immediately after the end of the season, with the entire crew returning to the Revenge, reuniting with their lost crewmates, and an eventual conversation between Ed and Stede that leads to kissing. Definitely a comfort fic that includes everyone.

Close Quarters by FortinbrasFTW (E, 4K) - A pre-finale fic in which Stede and Ed are trapped in a small closet and Ed is claustrophobic and Stede manages to talk him out of a panic attack. And then there is kissing and fooling around and mild kink and nothing hurts.

Dryocampa Rubicunda by forestsprites (G, 2K) - Ed post-breakup working through his feelings, talking to a moth as therapy. Heavy on the angst without real resolution, but a well-done character piece.

Benediction by Springandastorm (T, 2K) -I can't possibly convey this fic better than by quoting the author's note: me seeing taika waititi play a silly little pirate: i need to write about him recontextualizing his traumatic relationship with his body through the divine act of being touched.

Unseen by Fyre/ @amuseoffyre (T, 4K) - Fyre has given so many gifts of fic to this fandom that it was difficult to limit myself to only one. But I chose what I think is my personal favorite, a fic in which Stede assists Ed in having a bath. It's just so soft and sensual and has so much sexual and romantic tension that it has STUCK with me.

Edelweiss by draculard (G, 2K) Stede's life, told through the language of flowers. Featuring angst and a reunion and resolution for Ed and Stede.

Bonus:

(I've literally never recced my own fic on one of my rec posts but I guess I'm proud of this one, and if it was someone else's fic I'd rec it so, fine.)

Slow Dance by threerings (M, 1K) Post-reunion fic in which Stede and Ed negotiate their sexual relationship, the dynamics and pacing thereof.