#if izzy knows ed doesn't kill his shit with fang and ivan and not expecting ed to ask him is weird and/or terrible

[knowlesian]

like the research nerd i am, i decided to get together all the evidence (aka: all the scenes where izzy and ed talk about death, stede’s or otherwise, since you always need the whole data set on this kind of thing to sort out the answer) to try to suss out if the text tells us whether izzy knows about ed’s fine line on killing.

just to make it easy on myself, i’ll start with breaking down the scenes first, in order from e3-6.

e3 - 

- izzy asks if “we” should attack/kill/feed to the sharks stede and co; this could imply ed would take part, but it could also mean the rest of the crew sans ed, so inconclusive.

e4 - 

- the talking tough way ed mentions the spaniards dying seems a bit odd if izzy knows ed never kills directly/feels morally weird about the subject, but also inconclusive.

- “what’s the plan”/“the ushze” conversation about the revenge’s crew is again on the ambiguous end; it doesn’t really give us much on who would be doing the executing.

- until a little later! when izzy casually orders ivan and fang to kill the crew for him. this doesn’t give us much re: ed, but it does show izzy offloads his own killing as well and isn’t the Ship Executioner as a matter of course.

- during their first conversation about stealing stede’s identity ed implies he’ll be doing the killing, and izzy doesn’t appear to assume otherwise/show any surprise or shock ed would break a decades-long rule.

(which to me is the first potentially slam dunk piece of evidence: the natural response to finding out something like that would be anything but easy acceptance, if izzy was aware this would be the severest of breaks in pattern for ed. it’s like... we all have that one friend who orders the same thing every single time they go to a restaurant, and if they ever switch it up people go OH SHIT, THO. this is more than that— this is like a lifelong vegan ordering a whole rack of ribs without warning. essentially: when you know somebody’s rock-solid established patterns and they up and break one, you don’t go yeah sure okay. i have no shock.)

e5 -

- ed tells fang to kill the french captain for him and again there’s no shock or indication this is unusual, so it’s definitely not just izzy doing ed’s killing either way.

e6- 

- opens with izzy’s internal monologue that after two weeks of spending 24/7 living up each other’s assholes he’s “beginning to suspect” ed himself isn’t going to kill stede. which seems odd, if izzy has any idea ed doesn’t kill— why would he be surprised ed’s getting cold feet at all? and if it took him two weeks to be like, wait. ed’s maybe NOT gonna kill this guy??? even though he knew killing was a line for ed, that seems a weird way to say that/approach this situation. 

(on a formatting note: the fact that this is the single moment of internal thoughts given as voiceover/monologue on the series— eta, forgot about mary! overall point stands, but accuracy!!! refining arguments is always best. this is also interesting since stede’s narration is given via his narration to lucius in-world which makes mary and izzy the unreliable/reliable no in-world explanation for the monologuing pair, anyway back to the action— and worth thinking deeper about. the writers made sure to establish even in the privacy of his own head, izzy isn’t thinking to himself anything but ‘huh. maybe ed... isn’t going to do it????’ and that it took him literally two weeks to suss out ed’s flirting, not getting ready to do a murder. 

they also juxtapose the monologue with ed being obviously flirty and enjoying himself— so obviously that Fang and Ivan can see it—  so on the emotional intelligence/reading the room and seeing things he doesn’t want to see side: if izzy’s been with ed for years and it took him two weeks to notice ed was playing footsie vs plotting murder, that’s another mark against the idea that he can read ed like a book.)

- then we get a direct line into the scene where izzy tells ivan and fang ed is for sure gonna kill stede, he promised. so unless we’re meant to take away that izzy is aware this would be huge for ed and is simultaneously not running cover/setting up things to pressure ed before he ever offers to do it himself (or even thinks he’ll have to!) this feels like more evidence he has no idea. (because the use of internal monologue just told us izzy isn’t lying to ivan and fang here: he 100% expects ed to do it, and not that he’ll want or need izzy to step in.)

- which leads into izzy bringing ivan and fang in to push ed. (and being a bit of an unreliable narrator once again, as he speaks for ivan and fang despite the earlier scene where they push back on him and don’t agree with his desire move ed along.) if we read in that izzy knows ed doesn’t kill, this positions izzy as the kind of skilled manipulator that just doesn’t scan with the rest of what we see from him. the kind of sneaky/fucked up you have to be to know ed’s line here and only implicitly threaten that image while also bringing in fang to remind ed about the dog doesn’t fit with izzy’s blaring sirens/neon sign mode of persuasion. izzy sort of just says FUCKIN DO THE FUCKIN THING I WANT! FUCK!!! he’s not a sneak around corners dude. if izzy 100% thinks ed kills people then this is a scene of him getting more and more impatient about annoying foot dragging.

- then we get to: “i’ll happily end it.” / “no, it’s my mess. i’ll do it.” izzy only volunteers to kill stede for ed after two weeks of waiting and after pulling in ivan and fang and still getting nothing, and again he expresses no surprise or doubt at ed’s continued promises he doesn't need the assist, either verbally or physically. 

(this is also the only time izzy offers to kill for edward, in the entire run of the show, outside “you’re not doing this. so i must” before the duel begins. izzy says over and over he absolutely expects ed to kill and isn’t assuming it would be hard or a break from pattern, and only once in ten whole episodes offers to do it for him. these are very careful writers: i can’t imagine this is a mistake.)

- this is immediately followed in the same conversation by izzy saying “send him to doggy heaven” as a followup to the offer which... again, as ever, makes me die laughing. but also shows us: izzy still has zero real doubts ed himself is gonna do this, and has once again not acted like somebody who thinks this is hard for ed, or a change in pattern. he offered, but by the end of the conversation izzy is back to: yeah, of course ed will do it.

so, my baseline argument: just given what we see in the text, it seems far more likely izzy doesn’t know ed doesn’t kill. 

it’s either that or he’s somehow aware but not in any way confused/shocked/even vaguely suspicious that ed is changing this long-held rule out of nowhere, and is comfortable using it against ed despite knowing in a way that positions him as more of a manipulator and not just a guy trying to hurry ed along and get rid of stede, already. 

beyond that izzy never mentions ed’s choice not to directly kill a single time, even in his own brain or when telling ed he wishes he was dead in the finale; it seems a huge writing oversight to leave that out, if izzy is trying to provoke ed and/or prove his worth while enforcing what he assumes is ed’s natural state. if izzy understands ed is not actually that legend and in fact uses the legend to keep people from noticing what’s behind it on a practical level, shoving the legend in his face and saying it’s all ed is doesn’t scan.

and what’s more, we know ed has put on a good pirate show. he’s cut off toes before, he's maimed people, and he takes parts in raids just like everybody else: to be blunt, there are a hell of a lot of ways to hurt people reeeeeal bad without directly killing them. if you shoot or stab or whack somebody real hard and leave them there and they die like, twenty minutes later when you’re already gone, that suits ed’s definition of not killing just fine. there’s a lot of hard to notice ground between ‘leaves to die’ and ‘doesn’t kill’.

which leads me into the human nature argument, and the fact that the show establishes ed is the kind of person who thinks about how to conjure and use fear to control people, and thus needs to understand people in order to accurately assess their fears. on ed’s side, if you make yourself known to be the sort of man who cuts off poor bastards’ toes for a laugh or sets ships aflame and all that, people don’t ask themselves: wait, does this guy kill people though? 

it’s part of why we have the whole ‘but he seemed like such a nice/quiet/etc guy!’ trope whenever somebody does some fucked up shit. most people don’t notice a lot happening around them, because they aren’t looking for it and don’t expect to see it. people fail to notice things on the scale from infidelity to a serial murder habit in their intimate circles alllll the time.

and then on izzy’s side, we are shown a real lack of emotional intelligence and/or social observational skills over and over. it takes him two whole weeks to even begin to suspect ed doesn’t want to kill stede at all, he can’t really improvise or adapt to any sort of situation that breaks with his expectations of how things should go, he can’t manage the crew the second ed isn’t around (pre-canon and in canon) or tell a mutiny is brewing even though everyone but pete disappears to go plan it, he can’t stop said mutiny once in progress, etc etc etc.

he’s also built up an image of ed that isn’t about who ed actually is, and then built his own career and image around being Blackbeard’s First Mate. we really have to think of things from izzy’s perspective: blackbeard is a legendary pirate, izzy came into his service when he was already a legend, and izzy’s concepts of the world do not seem to include “it’s cool if you don’t like to kill people”. we are given absolutely zero evidence izzy would consider that anything but a sign of horrifying weakness, and lots of evidence he thinks ed is someone who does kill.

given all the evidence, everything we know of izzy’s character and how he processes the world/ed, and the fact that these are very good writers who know human nature and how to craft a story, i would say with a fair amount of certainty it’s more likely izzy has no idea ed draws that line.

#ofmd spoilers #my ofmd meta #(ish) #from a writer pov that bathtub scene is weird if ed's verbalized this before #and izzy is not... like this man cannot read ed #ed can read izzy! not so much the other way around #if izzy knows ed doesn't kill his shit with fang and ivan and not expecting ed to ask him is weird and/or terrible #i just do not see it #also if izzy knows: why not throw it in his face when he's willing to say 'i should havelet them kill you' #and why have so many versions of izzy expecting ed to kill with no reservations #and one single offer? #i feel like people are missing the forest for one single tree on this one ngl #i get why that assumption was made! but the evidence doesn't bear it out #even in the privacy of his own head izzy assumes ed will kill with ease #and if he knows ed doesn't kill... that just doesn't scan

[izzy-b-hands]

Keep trying and failing yet another new OFMD fic idea of the Revenge being crewed by all of six ppl after Ed maroons everyone else (i know in theory some of his old crew might be around to help, but it being just him, Ivan, Fang, Izzy, Jim, and Frenchie is much funnier.)

The whole thing being Ed only volleying between angry and violent during raids to sad and locked in his quarters otherwise, not eating or sleeping well

Leading to Izzy pissing Jim off because he's pacing constantly and here Jim I made cookies see if he'll take these, no it has to be you because he chucked the bowl of soup at me I tried to give him earlier and i think it's because I was the one to give it to him-

so Jim breaks into the locked quarters with cookies and is like. pls. Ed. Kraken. Edward. Blackbeard, I'll use whatever name you want just fucking eat something before i kill your first mate

Frenchie meanwhile is enjoying the rest of the leftovers from Izzy's million previous attempts to get Ed to eat with Fang and Ivan (they all agree he isn't a bad cook really. He needs to season things more and he's no Roach, but then again no one is so they gotta have reasonable expectations of this frustrated fearful man who keeps crying while trying to make Ed a quiche)

But then, Jim doesn't return.

Izzy is out immediately to Ed's room, yet another dish in his hand (its snake, and Ed likes snake and he made it using Ed's own recipe, so maybe, maybe he'll eat this)

only to find Jim and Ed sitting on the floor together, sobbing because they miss their boyfriends.

But, they're both eating, and the cookies are nearly gone

Izzy sits and doesn't intend to stay but they get talking and fuck he's so tired and he bursts out a confession of caring and love to Ed

Who's started in on the snake and stares for a minute before being like. oh fuck fr? Jack said you had a thing for me years ago but I figured he was fucking with me

Cut to all three of them crying now over the many Emotions filling the room, snacking away because sometimes food just Helps. It can be a warm hug when u feel utter shit.

Fang wanders in shortly after with bread and marmalade to check on them, only to wind up sobbing in Ed's arms while Ed apologizes for what he made Fang do to his dog

Frenchie doesn't intend to do more than check in on them too, lute on his back and a plate of pastries in one hand and holy fuck Iz these are actually really go- oh god why is everyone crying

(edit to add that for Frenchie it's because he misses Wee John. So much it kind of hurts. He didn't think he could miss someone like that and unrelated he has this song he wrote abt how a room can feel so empty with one even if before it only held two ppl-)

cut again to poor Ivan as the final participant of the group cry and nibble session, bearing a few more plates of food (including the quiche, which isn't perfect but like. Izzy tried lmao)

He's not even crying over anything in particular, he's just been really fucking overwhelmed since Ed got back and needed the release of emotions

It's v sweet cuz they end up full and snuggly and emotionally exhausted, napping on the floor surrounded by plates

Which is why they run aground, but it's fine because it's the same one Stede managed to get the dinghy stuck in with the rest of the marooned crew, so happy coincidence!

#tw disordered eating #to be safe #i have three WIPS of this one idea so im typing this to just. get it Out because I doubt any of them are gonna get done lmao #soon as the six of them see everyone else tho u know they're all gonna burst into tears again #while offering stede and the rescued crew leftover quiche through their tears

[johannestevans]

musing on what we can expect of izzy's mental state and position within the plot in s2 and like

so fang and ivan never seemed to have tried to kill izzy before and they actually have a decent working rapport in the beginning - in the first few episodes when izzy isn't nearly as stressed, he's brisk and he's not likable as a guy, but no one has any trouble following his orders or instructions, and he does talk frankly to fang and ivan (and buttons) as coworkers

he lies, but there's a professional working relationship there

it's only as he freaks out more about stede getting them all killed that he begins to show more and more instability, and esp wiht the fact that stede's crew literally won't obey any of his orders and he doesn't know what to do bc he can't punish them and they all keep laughing at him, they fundamentally do not and will not respect his authority in that situation, if it ever arose, what would normally happen is that ed would speak up for izzy's authority

but he didn't. bc he was too busy fucking stede bonnet

so in s2 like, izzy is very much the acting hand of the king so to speak, he's executing blackbeard's will, but you can see very much that he's out of his depth, and despite trying to get them out of stede's muppets verse i think he was already beginning to accustom to it, it's too late for him to really get them out

and things are different now.

not just bc ed's broken up with stede and is grieving his sense of abandonment, but bc in the meantime, izzy fucking betrayed him. betrayed him to the fucking BRITS, at that!

and like, if you just think of all the stuf that's come out in the course of s1, i think especially when you consider his desire to impress stede but then shit like, all the racist bullshit on the french ship, all that awareness that ed is carrying with him about the way people view him that's so racially charged, and how those are old and constant wounds but it's all so much closer to the surface when izzy shouts into his face about embracing the racist imagining of himself that people have of Ed? like.

Izzy's always been like this with Ed, there's always been an element of condescension as Izzy embodies this toxic caretaking role, but I think Ed has almost taken it for granted and in many ways it was like, a trade-off he was making - yes, Izzy's awful, Izzy has weird fetishistic ideas of Ed that have a lot of racism buried in them, Izzy has a desire to control and care for Ed that is genuine but also has a lot of racial charge in it, bc you can't not have it

and so like... will we see Ed be more sensitive to it? will we see Ed lean INTO it, to the extent that Izzy becomes frightened but moreover... concerned? not just for his own safety and the crew's or even Ed's own mental state but also for the whole tenuous position they're all in, everything balanced on Ed's unstable mental state? will Izzy not know what this new problem is until fang and ivan are like "It's the racism, bro" and izzy's like WHAT how DARE you i'm terrible but i'm not RACIST

sure jan

as ed spirals and becomes more violent and lashes out, i think izzy is going to be super out of his depth trying to keep ed in check from the OTHER direction. most of izzy's job seems to usually be trying to distract ed from his melancholies and other stuff and get him to do his work - now he's going to be doing the opposite, trying to get ed NOT to play the role of blackbeard so vigorously bc it counts against them, it will make the crew nervous, it will put everything at risk

bc you cannot rule a pirate ship purely by fear.

that's the necessity of izzy's role as extension of the blackbeard persona in the first place - if ed was constantly doing the blackbeard act around his own crew all the time, people would leave for better crews, or he'd straight up kill them off, they wouldn't be able to trust their own safety and security and piracy is already a dangerous job so izzy is the like, acting hand on the day to day, and that means ed doesn't have to keep up the role constantly, but it also means that ed is so fucking lonely and isolated, and ALSO that like… the crew remain frightened of him, don't become used to him, but also ed doesn't do damage to the crew in the process

whereas in s2? he's fully thrown himself into the blackbeard persona when he's not sobbing emo-ly in his cabin. he's a danger to himself, he's a danger to the crew, he's a danger to anybody he crosses paths with

and that's going to send izzy into a conniption bc he wants to survive and he wants Ed to survive

izzy wants desperately to live but if he truly cared more about that than he does about ed he would have just gone elsewhere. he would have thrown himself at someone else's feet but he loves ed. he's terrible and controlling and their relationship is wildly erratic, codependent, fucked up, and charged on all sides with so many fucking traumas and inequalities, but if he really wanted to get away from him he would have taken the king's pardon, he would have left.

but he didn't. he put himself and everything at risk to try to get Ed out, because Izzy can't imagine his life without Ed. Ed is the sun to him, every time he says he'll leave it's a lie bc he can't leave and he knows it - and Ed knows it too, which is why he was so fucking surprised when Izzy did

i think what i would do, personally, is show ed spiralling more and more, show the crew getting ready to mutiny they go in to take izzy out of the equation before they go to Ed

when in these first few episodes we've been seeing the crew grow more and more uneasy, and a LOT of izzy unsuccessfully managing and trying to keep Ed stable but being isolated from anybody else, those two narratives side by side along ed's own breakdowns and problems

and to their surprise, izzy either gives in and says, yeah. do it. tie me up if you have to, i'l just let you do it, no fight

OR he joins in

before the actual mutiny/while it's happening obviously stede would arrive or they'd get attacked by the british or something, so you'd carry that narrative tension but you wouldn't let it reach its full crescendo yet

but yeah

either way i do think that s2 is likely going to mirror the narrative arc of s1 but from ed's POV instead of stede's, and to do anything else would strike me as… a strange choice fhsdgkjsj

there are other things that could be satisfying - filling in the gaps from the crew's POV

i SUPPOSE using izzy's POV (altho i think that would weaken his character and also weaken the central romance between ed and stede, which even if they were planning on a steddy hands endgame, which isn't impossible (we saw izzy metaphorically fuck stede in front of the crew just as we saw stede metaphorically fuck ed) like, the central crux of that dynamic SHOULD be ed/stede with izzy being pulled in)

but i think that mirroring Stede with Ed is the natural and most ideal decision, from a craft pov

but I do think that like, s2 mostly being from Ed's POV, with the supporting narratives of Jim and Frenchie and Fang and Ivan struggling with each other and the new state of beings, coupled with Izzy trying to manage Ed, trying to pretend everything's fine, when his entire professional and theatrical relationship with Ed is destroyed compared to before, but he can't admit that to the crew, in case it hurts him, in case it hurts Edward

Ed's POV means that I think we'll also see so much more awareness of Stede's racism and the impact of that on Ed and in general, but also like, i think the idea of Ed's life pre-muppetification outside of his childhood, and the ways that violence and grittiness impacts this new muppety world, except that the muppety world has faded back a bit since Stede's gone?

just. guh. GUH GUH GUH GUH GUH

so... much

#izzy hands #edward teach #our flag means death #long post