#I'd love them to blend new and old elements not to mention his and stedes closets

[jeffsinnbythesea]

A post by @queerly-autistic got me thinking (thinking, thinking and drinking) about the main symbols representing the various personas Ed adopts in seasons 1 and 2. The way Ed yo-yos back and forth between rejecting and embracing things like the eponymous black beard, the leathers, etc. tells us a lot about Ed's relationship with his own identity at a given point in time, and more broadly, how his views on what people generally can and can't do, and who they can and can't be evolves over time, in fits and starts.

We get the sense early on that Ed's worldview is that people don't change and their path in life is more or less set. His mother tells him early on, "Well, it's not up to us, is it? It's up to God. He decides who gets what. We're just not those kind of people. We never will be." He learns about the Gentleman Pirate, a total oxymoron, and he's immediately fascinated. It knocks his socks off, it shakes his worldview, in which he is Blackbeard - just look at his black beard, and his leather getup, and his gun, etc.

Ed's very first act on the Revenge is to ditch those clothes and parade around in Stede's instead. The very next episode he's wearing Stede's clothes again but now he's Jeff The Accountant. However, each and every time he does this, he gets rebuffed. By Izzy, who tells him to knock it off, get real, and then by the French, who gas him up initially only to ridicule him in the end. Each time he resets back to his Blackbeard persona, back in the leathers, even though we know explicitly that he's totally over this routine. He wants to pack it all in, retire. And it isn't just because he's bored, though that is part of it. When he chooses the scariest story he can think of, he tells the Blackbeard origin story of killing his own dad. He knows Blackbeard isn't a Good Guy. But he already adores Stede - just ask Izzy. How could Stede like him, a murderer, a Bad Guy? But Stede says, actually I quite like you as you are, and you aren't a bad person. Ed feels seen and accepted in a way he probably never has in his life, or at least since becoming Blackbeard.

Calico Jack shows up as this interloper on the Revenge and Jack and Stede's characters clash so much that Ed figures, hey, this little adventure sure has been fun, but it turns out at the end of the day: "This is who I am, Stede. Can you see me now? You were always gonna realize what I am." That whole scene with the tub, and everything since, must have been a fluke. He thought he was being seen and accepted beyond the persona - the good and the bad all at once - but evidently not.

Fast forward to the Act of Grace. Unequivocally Ed makes this sacrifice for Stede, but outwardly at least, he takes everything in stride, especially compared to Stede. I'm not sure you can say that he shaves the beard for Stede.He says, "Now, it's time to accept our fate. Besides, kind of comforting, really, once you get your mind around it." He's folding socks, he's excited about soap! I think this is a man who is deeply relieved to be "forced" into doing the thing that he actually wants to do. Jumping forward, is that not what was going on with the whole end of s2e2 suicide-by-mutiny thing? The show has been telling us all season that Ed doesn't care about Being Blackbeard, he actively wants to stop being Blackbeard, but fundamentally doesn't believe there are alternatives, a belief reinforced because both times he dropped the Blackbeard persona for something else (haha, jokingly, but were they really?), it ended poorly.

Stede hasn't picked up on this and these factors come together and create this tragic scenario where Stede is mourning the end of the beard (the extremely obvious symbol for Blackbeard) because he thinks Ed has lost something integral to who he is, that he's in fact been ruined by Stede, while Ed comes to think that Stede is mourning the end of Blackbeard the myth, the legend, the celebrity, and perhaps he never wanted Edward at all, as pointed out by @queerly-autistic. I'm reminded of the Rita Hayworth quote that gets to that same feeling Ed probably has here: "Men go to bed with Gilda but wake up with me."

Ed goes back to the Revenge alone, heart shattered, but he doesn't immediately go "Well, Blackbeard's back! Business as usual!" Like Erin says, he escapes it briefly. He's got his hair down, he's wearing the robe, he's probably getting into a skincare routine. He says, "Actually, I do want to be called Edward from now on" and "Why are we even being pirates?" The scene with Izzy confronting him in the cabin after this is supposed to be horrible and uncomfortable to watch. It is violent and cutting and things spiral from this point through the end of s2e2. Ed has tried to shed or replace the Blackbeard persona numerous times over the season and each and every time he is rebuked by Izzy and his crew, by the rich jerks, and even by Stede. This final attempt to just be Ed rather than Blackbeard even comes with a threat on his life.

Backed into a corner, still in immense emotional pain from Stede's rejection, and having his deterministic worldview confirmed again and again, is it any wonder Ed reverts to this worst iteration of Blackbeard, the Kraken? Why would he try something different when all of his experiences thus far tell him that it's futile? If Ed feels that way in his middle age, who knows how many times over the course of his life he might have tried and failed, or more likely, saw others try and fail for a different life, a better life? He tells us in both seasons that they're pirates - most of them are dead. As her post says, the Kraken armour is about survival, physically and emotionally, and it's about despair. He can try again and again to break free but it always. Comes back. To this. The only real escape is death. S1e10 is the beginning of the spiral that has a, I'm not sure goal is the right word, but all these acts of violence and destruction against himself and others are leading to his death and he knows this.

Jumping to the end of Fun and Games, Ed sums up his worldview very succinctly, in that resigned tone: "Buttons, people don't change, not into birds or otherwise."

And then Buttons changes! Dramatically! Ed changes, clothing at least. I think this was a really interesting choice by the show - to indirectly convey how the crew is feeling towards Ed by targeting the thing most symbolic of Blackbeard-turned-Kraken now that the black beard isn't really an option to take out of the picture and his face is washed clean. As for the cat bell, well we don't have time to delve into that. I can't help but observe that once again this is "forced" against his will, but is it? Ed probably certainly wouldn't choose to wear the Contrition Era sack, if nothing else it looks itchy, but I don't think he's moaning about not having the leathers.When they let him out of the sack, he puts on Buttons old clothes, not his own.

S2 is one big identity crisis for Ed. The guy essentially died. There's no going back to Blackbeard. That persona was one he was miserably tired of, but now it's well and truly poisoned by its evolution into the Kraken. Not to mention the trauma he feels from it, trauma from decades of piracy, from the violence done to him and by him. With the leathers put aside for now, other vestiges of the Kraken era are dealt with. The Guilt/Gilt Room is transformed into a celebration for the crew, a sort of apology and an opportunity to show the crew and Ed reconcile. Ned Low comes back as the final nasty nail in the coffin that he resolves to leave it all behind. The leathers are dumped overboard and Ed says good riddance to them, and good riddance to Blackbeard, and good riddance to that life. Burdened with the old trauma, and now the fresh trauma of Ed and Stede almost getting killed by this lifestyle again, Ed sticks to his guns and commits to leaving. Yes, it is impulsive and a bit cowardly, but the motivations behind it make sense. He and Stede haven't graduated to Communication University yet and are still working out the kinks there.

A lot has been said about Ed later diving in to retrieve those leathers and going on a bit of a rampage against the navy dudes. "The music, the costume, he clearly regressed back into the Kraken!" "The show is saying that being Blackbeard and piracy is the only thing he's good at!" On the surface, it might seem like yet again the universe is confirming Ed's original deterministic worldview that people don't change, that he's chained to this life. I choose to interpret this differently. For one, there is extremely little airtime given to the Ed scenes between dumping the leathers and retrieving them and I think the storytelling would have benefited from more, obvs. Bear with me on this part, but I think this is where the show says, you know what? Symbols-schmymbols. The beard, the leathers, the name, none of those things are what make Blackbeard Blackbeard, or the Kraken the Kraken. As people, we are not the clothing we wear. We are our actions. Ed can put on the leathers or the sack or a tutu for all I care but his actions are what define who he is.

"If you were ever good at anything, go and do that." Ed doesn't take this to mean go back to the worst version of yourself that you hate, it means loving and protecting Stede and the crew. Going with the moral system established in the show's universe, killing bad people might saddle you with trauma but it doesn't make you a monster, particularly when it's in service of the ones you love. Stede's parting words to him were that he's a coward. He is choosing to not be a coward. And that means not running away from Stede, or away from the British, or off to China, or from himself anymore. You can't run away from yourself. Wherever You Go, There You Are, right?

Essentially, he goes from:

I can't change. Nobody can change.

to:

Maybe I can change...but only if Blackbeard dies and all his symbols are dumped overboard. But subtract Blackbeard from Ed, and what's even left? And who would care about that guy?

to:

I am Edward and Blackbeard and the Kraken and the sum of all my past selves, and they all did good things and they all did bad things. That doesn't mean that I'm not capable of loving others or myself, or that I'm not lovable. Sometimes the things you hate about yourself can be spun into something good - poison into positivity

What you end up with is a complex and even contradictory person, but a whole person. He can reclaim his clothes, he can sport a beard, albeit much shorter and salt and pepper-y, and he can reclaim, or at least he's now free to create a sense of self, secure in the knowledge that he isn't alone. There are people waiting for him, and they're not having second thoughts.

"They love you, Ed. Just be Ed."

#I can't say what direction they will go with hair costume or anything else next #yes im saying will instead of would have idc #but I'm sure it will be a fascinating continuation of the established connection it all has with Ed's identity #I'd love them to blend new and old elements not to mention his and stedes closets #jfc i never have ANYTHING to say but when i do its seventy billion words long #im sure all of this has been well discussed already but its fine #ofmd meta #our flag means death