#izzy is at his limit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladyluscinia · 1 year

Text

I really cannot make it clear enough that the only people who think Izzy Hands has a massively outsized following in the OFMD fandom are people who aren't paying attention and probably get annoyed by every positive mention of Izzy Hands.

Those of us who do post about him / read fics about him / enthusiastically ship him / whatever are far more likely to quip about how there are whole dozens of us in our corner because that's a hell of lot closer to the reality. But if plain statistics on fics or repeatedly pointing out that tumblr notes are the same people hitting that same reasonable average of double digit reblogs... Idk. Maybe a more descriptive exercise would make this clear?

I'm sorting AO3 by most kudos, looking at OFMD fics with Izzy's character tag (aka the one place he really outstrips the other side characters in numbers). A few observations:

Izzy's name appears in a fic summary for the first time on Fic 6, with "...and Izzy getting disrespected several times." Not much of a mention.

First Izzy/OC ship is Fic 7 (Hell or High Water - a title I recognize but have never read)

First Izzy/Other Character is Fic 17, with Izzy/Lucius, which also appears to be the first Izzy focused fic

Fic 22 is the first appearance of BlackHands as part of a SteddyHands fic

46 Fics in we get the first one Not Technically Ship Tagged with BlackBonnet (a Lucius/Izzy with a "background blackbonnet" tag), and at Fic 63 we get the first Actually Not Ship Tagged with BlackBonnet (a Stizzy fic about bonding over hating Calico Jack).

I think Fic 215 is the first mention of Sam Bellamy? I'm trying to find something specific and it's taking a while...

Oh wait there it is! 216 Fics by Kudos into the "Israel Hands" character tag (out of 7785 total) we have the first BlackHands fic that doesn't have Stede involved. Prior to this there were a lot of BlackBonnet fics, and notable numbers of SteddyHands and Izzy/Lucius. Hell we even hit Izzy/Frenchie and Izzy/Captain Flint before getting to this point.

I'm just really trying to illustrate here that for all the snide accusations and defensive worrying I see about all the sinister Izzy fans trying to make the whole show and fandom about him, "Izzy" content (which this ought to demonstrate is hardly all about Izzy) is just not that overwhelming. Izzy content that excludes or ignores the Revenge crew even less so. Like, run this exercise with any side character and you'll get pretty similar results - seeing as the dominance of BlackBonnet above all else is still ridiculous by fandom standards - but that's kinda the point.

Izzy is a popular side character, which is a thing that tends to happen when side characters get speaking time, characterization, camera focus, exploration of their current and potential relationships (conflict counts), etc. You know, things that Izzy gets a bunch of as an antagonist? Izzy having more content than Oluwande is not really more weird than Oluwande having more content than Buttons or Wee John? I'm not going to pretend that fandom spaces don't drop the ball on content for characters of color pretty often, but the tagged content breakdown in this fandom is not far off from what you would expect by character descriptions alone.

Like the list goes Cool Protagonist / Love Interest -> POV Protagonist -> Live-In Primary Antagonist -> Side Fun Guy with a Death Cliffhanger / Fanfic Gap Ending -> Side Pirate Assassin with a Subplot -> Assassin's Side Love Interest... I mean, maybe Lucius is a bit higher than Jim even for what "Lucius in the walls" fics can account for, or Lucius / Izzy have a bit bigger of a lead than they would without white identifying bias, but that's like? Unprovable speculation at best???

Not remotely comparable to, like, "Star Wars Sequel Trilogy" where Kylo Ren is 46.3% of fics while the two non-white protagonists are only in 35.7% (Poe) or 29% (Finn). Like Poe is technically behind Hux's 35.9%, which is absurd for a secondary antagonist no matter how fun I found his blatant evil. It's like if Chauncey Badminton was neck and neck with Jim or even Edward. That is a content percentage you should question, and the numbers might be worse in "Star Wars - All Media Types" (though Kylo does at least lose to Obi Wan).

#our flag means death #izzy hands ofmd #statistics are good and fun #and before someone comes in with a hot take about how izzy and darth wannabe's tag percentages are so close #izzy is hitting his upper 40s in comparison to edward's *78.6 percent* of fics - leaving him firmly in the side character range #while top character rey is only in 53.3 percent meaning that a 46 for kylo is 'clearly a fandom favorite' levels #context matters. fandoms tag differently. ofmd has a very limited cast who all live together #also ofmd has a fairly popular 'crew of the revenge' character tag - like 1600 fics #which i doubt is used in place *izzy* nearly as often as it is in place of *oluwande* in fics where they are both just around #ladyluscinia

58 notes · View notes

fist-amidst-the-hands · 1 year

Text

hi I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this all day so. what if ed had admitted to izzy that he’s bored out of his skull even slightly earlier. before stede. what then. ‘is this all there is?’ what if izzy responded with ‘it doesn’t have to be’ what if what if what if

#ofmd #blackhands #ofmd au #(kinda)#i just... this is like an entire other major plot point that COULD have happened (shh yeah yeah I know it couldn't but it COULD)#okay because we all know ed can NOT keep his focus on the same thing forever. babygirl just gets bored and he can't help it #and honestly good for him because same #but I kind of want to / need to / carnally desire to know: would izzy alone have ever been enough?#could they find enough new ground and cover it /together/ or would they settle into patterns and get 'boring' (read: comfy) again??#is there a limit to izzy's patience for ed's shenanigans (we've seen yes in canon but! is that because he felt ed was slipping away??)#is there an expiration on ed's need for new and exciting people places challenges etc. (so far in canon not really but will he settle?)#(btw no i don't think he'll settle because isn't that the joy of older characters? not that they can't change but moreso that they've #discovered who they are and what they need or want from life)#really what it boils down to is that while i want to explore every little branch of what these blorbos could be put through one that i want #to know very strongly is what would have happened without stede in the picture #would ed reach a breaking point with his wild erratic moods and get himself (or izzy) killed or would izzy snap first and force them to come #up with a solution that a) doesn't involved death b) cures the boredom and c) maybe just maybe gives blackhands a real shot #just a little post

11 notes · View notes

whsprhouse · 2 years

Text

izzy grew a beard out of pure rage

#just angry trans man things #ok now that the silly post is made. serious thoguhts in the tags.#izzy's toxic masculinity comes from him overcompensating for his own gender insecurities and needing to be seen as a real man #also bc its almost sunday: when having sex he has major dysphoria unless he's being fucked in the ass #it's not a HARD limit but he has to really trust the person. i like i think ed is the only person he would ever allow it from #╰┈➤ out of.

4 notes · View notes

periphrasis · 1 year

Text

echoing skipping rocks on an empty lake

that stretched out forever when we were younger

until everything froze over. crack the ice trying to skate,

blink away snowflakes to stare up at headachingly fake

northern lights, billboards glimmering like suburbia, hell

my spilling salt tears eroded landscapes for you

etching jagged lightning into your freckled quartz

heaping up mountains out of nothing at all. we stretch

out rocky dorsal bones and splinter each other’s space

always, you said. even with shivering hands i would raise hell

cold burns the palms of chapped red hands remembering

how lemonade ice cubes stick in your throat shockingly cold

as July crawls on. something chilling hides under skidding cheap metal

against December ice burning figure eights behind my

eyes reliving a labyrinthine (only makebelieve) hell

#ok Google play the gold Phoebe bridgers version #i don’t really know what this is about #i guess mutual pain and unplaceable guilt #growing out of a version of yourself who still exists for SO MANY PEOPLE #and who you sometimes see in your hands and in the mirror #hi 17 year old izzy #izzy writes #also suburbia comma hell is meant to imitate how people write city name comma state name #but the pond is fake. my suburbia body of water is the creek near my house where I would always go to be emo and listen to Frank ocean @ 16 #WHY IS THERE A CHARACTER LIMIT ON TAGS I HAD TO CHANGE AT TO AN @#!!!!

1 note · View note

piratecaptainscaptainpirates · 3 months

Text

I do appreciate that not only were the writers of OFMD kind to us, making sure to give us a hopeful, happy ending just in case, they also had their damn priorities straight. They had a limited amount of time, but they made sure we know:

Stede has horny dreams about Ed, so often and loudly that it frequently annoys others

Ed would still look amazing in a literal potato sack

When Izzy cries he just stares into the middle distance and whimpers like a kicked dog

Ed likes when Stede uses The Captain Voice and he gets a cute lil kitty cat collar. Not beating the submissive and breedable allegations

Stede FUCKS. Stede fucks so good it made Ed throw all his clothes off the boat

And I love them for all of that.

#ofmd #our flag means death #also respect for my friend roach who invented peanut butter and spas

883 notes · View notes

forpiratereasons · 7 months

Text

ok so here's the thing about izzy imo. narratively speaking, izzy's adoption into the crew in eps four and five is more about the crew than it is about izzy.

the crew is at each other's throats, suspicious, angry, ready to snap. conflicted. they only come together and work through their trauma by coming together and doing a craft project to help someone who clearly needs some help. it's not that izzy especially earned their acceptance or their adoption or their forgiveness. it's that the crew chose all these things regardless. that's healing for the crew. they saw someone hurting, who needed help, and they helped him. offered community. offered stability. they could still do that together.

even stede does this imo. the whole "training montage" thing, when you really look at is, is like, pretty limited? izzy tries to teach stede two things and stede is not at all shown to improve at either. i would eat my shoe if ed actually said izzy taught him everything he knows. frankly i'd eat my shoe if ed had actually said anything to or about izzy since izzy shot him. but izzy is only happy (...in his own way) when he feels needed, or useful. stede knows that he and izzy aren't in a place to have a conversation that would end in a helpful place. instead stede lets izzy feel needed and useful, puts him in a position where he can prove to himself that he's still worth something.

why?? why bother?

because they recognize that izzy's suffering. because they recognize izzy devolving into his own kraken era. because they've learned something about people in crisis through ed's experiences, and they're trying to do something to help. because they're the kind of people who help. because they're embracing stede's culture of kindness. because it heals something in them to do it.

sometimes, and i don't mean all the time, god knows, but sometimes. life will give you people who need to be forgiven even though they haven't earned it, maybe even when they aren't sorry, because you need to do that for your own self. sometimes you need to do it to heal, or for closure, or to cut off the last thing tying you to an ordeal. sometimes you need to do it to prove there's still something inside you that's capable of it. that you are still capable of goodness or kindness or even just fucking. moving on. this isn't true for every case, not for every person or every truth, but sometimes. and izzy is that sometime.

notably, this does not extend, thus far, to ed. ed and izzy have not spoken since izzy shot him. i guess i would be surprised if ed and izzy didn't eventually have A Conversation About Alla That, but at the start of ep 4, neither ed nor izzy were in a position to have that conversation. ed needs to do his healing with stede. izzy needs to learn how to exist as a separate and distinct entity from ed and from blackbeard. izzy could never have gotten there without being shown that he can be that by the crew; his arc is not, for lack of a better term, self-powered. they show him how it can be and he allows himself to be brought into change. then ed and izzy can heal what they need to heal. to stop hurting each other.

the narrative is just setting the two of them up to get there.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers

844 notes · View notes

blakbonnet · 7 months

Text

it's important to me that people understand how much of ed's violence is a fuckery - his best one so far - a fuckery designed purely for himself. You wanted me to become blackbeard, you wanted the Kraken, sure have at it now. The entire routine is a suicide spiral he's on where he's begging his friends to kill him for himself and put an end to his misery. And he keeps escalating - he keeps thinking that eventually he'll hit that limit on their patience where izzy or Jim or someone would fucking do it for him - and then they don't and he's devastated all over again - until he finally fucking pushes them to the brink and yeahhh there it is. But the beauty of this fucking writing is that no one is truly a lost cause - more so to themselves, inherently. He decides to untie the rope off his waist, he decides to give himself another chance.

I want to eat glass

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd spoilers #ofmd meta #Edward teach #tw suicide #meow speaks

779 notes · View notes

ourflagmeansgayrights · 7 months

Text

i love how fang's the only one to get an actual apology out of ed and also there's like ZERO teeth-pulling Cancelled Youtuber vibes in this apology at all bc ed apologizes to fang for something different, he apologizes for the Knife Parade game they used to play because ed genuinely didn't realize fang was terrified back then

because ed is not the kind of person to fuck with his crew like that for shits and giggles. ed doesn't want to hurt his crew. when he realizes that a game he used to play with one of his crew members scared him, he's instantly and effortlessly apologetic. and yet ed didnt give a proper apology for what he did in his kraken era yet. and that's because the kraken was something different. ed still didnt want to hurt his crew, but hurting the crew was all part of how he went about hurting himself

everything ed did from pushing lucius overboard to steering his new crew into a storm was a result of ed's hatred for himself outweighing his care for other people's wellbeing. in e10, izzy's job in the narrative is to verbalize ed's worst fears and insecurities. he pushes until ed snaps and chokes him out and then he responds to being choked out by gently stroking ed's face and telling him, "there he is." and ed believes in that moment that he is a monster, less than human, unworthy of love and joy.

so he pushes away a boat full of people who might care about him. he makes his crew miserable running raid after raid every day in a row. and the lower he gets, the more miserable he is and the more he hates himself, the more ed is willing to hurt his crew in more ways than just psychological. ed put everyone's lives at risk when he steered the ship into a storm and got rid of the wheel because that was the point when his self loathing was SO STRONG he was willing to put everyone's lives in danger in his effort to hurt himself.

and the thing is that ed doesn't need to learn that it's wrong to push his employees past their limits and create a toxic work environment, he doesn't need to learn that he can't take out his own issues on other people, he doesn't need to learn that his actions have consequences. because he knows that already. that was literally why he did it!! he was trying to PROVE he's an unlovable monster. he was trying to goad the crew into finally putting him out of his misery because he hated himself so fucking much.

and THAT. is a MUCH harder thing to apologize for. when you're still slowly unlearning that you don't deserve to be happy.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd season 2 #ofmd 2 #edward teach #ed teach #edward teach born on a beach #blackbeard #fang #ofmd fang #s2e05 #ofmd meta #txt #meta #mine #og

542 notes · View notes

immabitqueer · 7 months

Text

They fucking loved each other and it wasn't enough. I haven't stopped thinking about that shit for hours. Imagine being Izzy in all this. Seeing Ed lose interest only to feel like he's getting replaced by an insane reckless man with no maritime skills. Imagine being Ed, truly at one time having love for Izzy but monotony stealing all the joy he had in anything, including his relationship (even if it wasn't offical) with Izzy. Finding someone he thought was compatible with him only to belive Stede abandoned him. Izzy insulting Ed and pushing him to his limit. Ed physically assaulting Izzy and devaluing him over and over again until they destroy each other. The love was there, and at very least Izzy's is still there to a degree. The love didn't fix anything, if anything it made some things worse for them. But it was there and it's important to both of them it was.

#ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #edward teach #izzy hands #ofmd s2 spoilers #our flag means death season 2 #blackhands #edizzy #israel hands #ofmd s2 #ofmd spoilers

834 notes · View notes

arenee1999 · 7 months

Text

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

You are all, once again, completely missing the part where these are PIRATES. They are not good people. They are villains. They are sympathetic because we are viewing the story from their viewpoint. And guess what? Villains are often victims. Aside from Stede, you don't become a pirate by choice, you become a pirate because society leaves you no choice.

Anyone that thinks Edward isn't capable of being violent and abusive is either extremely naive or being willfully oblivious. He didn't become the most feared pirate in the Caribbean by being nice and polite. He did it by torturing and murdering his way to the top.

The difference is, when Izzy threw down his ultimatum and drew out the worst parts of Edward's personality he fully expected Edward to turn his violence to the same victims he's always aimed it at. The navies and other pirates and merchants. Izzy is fully willing to stand by and watch (or help) as Edward tortures, abuses and murders other people. But unfortunately for Izzy, Edward isn't limiting his torture and abuse to outside targets he is dumping it directly onto Izzy as well.

Neither Edward or Izzy are innocent in this. They are stuck in a codependent circle of violence and both of them are victims of the circumstances they created.

I will not take sides between them. They are both right and they are both wrong in equal measure. And they have both behaved reprehensibly. Neither of them deserve what the other has done to them. But neither of them have behaved unpredictably either. They are pirates. They are villains. They just happen to be villains we love.

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2

567 notes · View notes

xxbranch-dressingxx · 7 months

Text

thinking of how Izzy is a master swordsman but we see him here kinda dodging back and forth a bit frantically when he's being surrounded by these guards. Like he's not actually frantic he knows what he's doing but he's extending a lot of effort to do so

Vs this shot here where we see him do a lil ballerina spin on his horse hoof to get a MUCH broader stroke to his swing the undeniably cause more damage. in the first gif his other leg seems to get in the way but now its a direct asset to his fighting style.

I thought it was weird for a moment when i saw him do that little spin bc Izzy doesn't really do flair and i thought it was just for Stede who we see off to the side in one of the teasers but i think we're seeing Izzy whose not only adapting to his new limb but changing to not only accomodate his limitations but show himself what he can really do with some new tools at his disposal

(shout out to @piratesmyass for giving me the gif for this post!)

#ofmd #ofmd s2 #izzy hands #our flag means death

466 notes · View notes

lilyrizzy · 17 days

Text

continuation and happy ending for this break up fic. i fixed it! (and maybe did a sloppy job of it oops) BUT I hope this brings someone, somewhere joy.

When Daniel gets to the door of his apartment, there is a tall, cardboard box propped up against his door. He doesn’t know when it was delivered because he’s spent the last few nights since being back in Monaco bouncing between Scotty’s place and Blake’s, drinking more and sleeping less than he should.

It’s how he ended up in this mess in the first place; stuck in the minor injuries unit, bleeding and embarrassed, waiting for Max to come and rescue him. Because even now, six fucking months later, he still hasn’t changed his emergency contact information back to Blake.

Sighing, Daniel balances the box in one hand and fumbles with his keys in the other to get his front door open. Once inside he dumps the box onto the counter and pours himself a glass of water. Takes a sip, sets the glass back down, and feels lost.

The truth is, he doesn’t know what was worse. That he hadn’t expected Max to show up, or that he did, and even though Daniel saw him nearly every weekend still, like this it was- Different. Max with his mussed up hair like he’d rolled straight out of bed to come to the hospital for Daniel, reminding him of everything he didn’t want to remember.

Like how their kind of falling apart happened slowly, so slowly that the track limits crept up on them, and by the time Daniel tried to hit the break they were already in the wall. Small disagreements built on top of months of half-conversations, until resolution stopped being the goal. Instead, it was to get through a week, a day, a morning without cracking whatever tentative peace they’d found the last time.

Shaking his head is a bad idea considering he might have a concussion, but Daniel can’t stop himself from doing it. As though his brain is an etch-a-sketch from which the fights and the furious words he spat at Max regularly can be erased.

He groans out loud, tipping the rest of the water down the sink before turning his attention back to the parcel. Ripping it open gives his shaking hands something to do, gives his nail bed a rest from his anxious chewing.

A sweet smell hits him first, before his eyes can make sense of what he’s seeing, and-

Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t a bouquet of tulips and a small, hand-drawn card.

To brighten your day, Uncle Daniel, the note attached said, in Isaac’s messy scrawl, but he bet the wobbly hearts underneath were all Izzy. The words all Michelle.

It’s enough to put the smile back on his face for just a moment, even as his stomach churns with the same homesick feeling he’s been unable to shake since he left his and Max’s apartment. Placing the card down, he takes one of the petals between his thumb and finger, feeling the waxy smoothness against his skin.

They’re a bigger bouquet than the tulips he’d brought for Max one time, back when their fights could be so easily fixed. Daniel can still remember the pleased flush that warmed Max’s cheeks as he’d looked between Daniel’s face and the flowers, eyes wide like this was the most romantic thing someone had ever done for him.

At the time, it had made Daniel proud of himself. Now, it just makes him sad. The idea that crappy, half-wilting tulips brought from a supermarket in Monaco could mean so much when Max deserved the world.

But this had been the way things always went. Daniel would show up with a poker chip from Vegas, a guitar pick from LA, a seashell from Perth, and Max would beam at him like he was the sun for bringing him a gift. Or just- maybe just because Daniel showed up at all.

I don’t understand, Daniel, why nothing with you is ever enough. Max had always thrown in his face whenever Daniel picked a fight as a plea for words, for attention, for affection. I am here, aren’t I? The more than you was always unspoken, but still deafening.

I’m always going to be here.

And he still was, living in their apartment that Daniel moved out of months ago. Still sending Daniel’s dad a bottle of wine on his birthday, still cuddling Izzy when he saw her at the grand prix last weekend. Still turning up to hospital waiting rooms for Daniel at four in the morning.

Why do I feel like I have to be a fucking games console to get the tiniest bit of interest from you, Daniel had spat at Max, another evening he’d come home to find Max engrossed in the sim. How am I supposed to trust that you love me when you hardly ever fucking say it?

For not the first time, Daniel wonders if maybe Max had been trying to all along, just not with words.

“Fuck, Maxy,” he says to the empty room. “Fuck sake.”

Rubbing his eyes, he paces to the window, wanting to press his throbbing head against the cool glass. He should go to bed, should crawl beneath the covers and sleep until he wakes up feeling strong enough to try forgetting Max all over again.

Needs to forget his worried eyes scanning over Daniel’s body as though trying to catalog where he might need fixing, the soft way he’d said Daniel’s name under the harsh glare of the hospital lights. His stupid fucking car, flashy even for the streets of Monaco, and far too fast at the same time, that-

That is still parked beneath Daniel’s building on the street below.

His eyes catch on it as they slit open against the rising sun, the sparkle of the paintwork against the tarmac. Daniel glances at the clock above his oven. He’s been home an entire fifteen minutes, and still Max hasn’t moved. If he’s not careful he’ll get a parking ticket.

Some things are worth it, he’d told Daniel when he’d warned him of the same thing, a million years ago now, picking Daniel up from the airport and lingering too long in the ‘kiss and fly’ lane.

In another life.

The life Daniel wants more than he can remember the reasons he walked out of it.

“Max,” Daniel finds himself calling out stupidly, even though it’s obvious Max can’t hear. He opens the balcony door, stepping out onto it and calling it louder. “Max!”

Though the traffic on the street below is quiet, almost non existent at this hour, Daniel’s shouts still don’t seem to carry far enough. There’s no sign Max has heard, no opening of a car door, no emergence of his blonde head from the drivers seat.

Daniel needs to do more, he needs-

Stepping back into the apartment, his eyes search his kitchen frantically until his hands grab the flowers on instinct. For a moment, he considers walking down the stairs and handing them to Max, an offering, an apology, a chance, but-

Daniel can’t let him drive away. He can’t risk running down the stairs only to find him gone when he reaches the pavement and steps back out into the Monaco sunrise. This moment is his tenth of a second, small but capable of making all the difference as long as he doesn’t take his foot off the pedal.

A split second of madness passes, and he finds himself back on the balcony pulling one of the stems loose from the bouquet. Before he’s thought about it anymore, he’s watching it hurtle off the edge towards Max’s car. It misses, landing just to the side by his front left tyre, Daniel isn’t giving up.

Stem by stem, he pulls the flowers loose, throwing them down onto Max’s car. His aim gets better, and soon nearly each one is landing on his bonnet or his windshield. Their petals make a soft sound as they hit the shiny bodywork of the car. Sunshine yellow against Ferarri red.

Finally, the car door opens and Daniel waits, arm suspended backwards in midair, still clutching a fistful of stems.

“Daniel, what the fuck are you doing?” Max shouts eventually, scrambling from the car looking pissed.

He covers his hand over his eyes to shield himself from the growing daylight, face screwed up as he squints up at Daniel. His expression should be a reminder of so many bad memories, and it is, but it’s also something Daniel doesn’t want to miss anymore.

“Maxy!” He shouts, letting the rest of the flowers drop to the floor in favour of leaning over the balcony. His heart is pounding so hard against his rib cage that he’s surprised the railing beneath him isn’t vibrating with it. “Can you- I love you. Can you come upstairs?”

For a moment, Max’s face just melts into blankness. The moment stretches, long enough that Daniel’s brain starts scanning for a joke to make, to backtrack, to just get out, but then-

Max smiles. A different kind of sunshine, but still so fucking bright.

“I love you too,” he calls up, his voice more than a little croaky. “I think- I think it would be better if I told you this more, before, but- But also I think it would be better if you came home.”

Daniel’s trainers slap quickly against every other step on the way back down the stairs.

#for once i stuck to my word and wrote the happy ending!#and it was bloody hard lol so #sorry if it sucks!#fic #max/daniel #also ignore delivery logistics that dont make sens plsss lol

152 notes · View notes

celluloidbroomcloset · 5 months

Text

The more I think about it, the more heartbreaking the line: "I forgive you, by the way. For sleeping with Doug."

First, Stede doesn't talk about sex. He's angered by Calico Jack's questions and insinuations, and he's very clear that "Ed's past is Ed's business." He seems to have zero issues with his crew doing whatever they like with whomever they like, but it's clear he's not participating or particularly talking about it with anyone. We know his married life is loveless, and that he's a closeted gay man who's in love with another man for the first time ever, so sex is a difficult topic for him.

And the one time he explicitly mentions sex, to his wife, is to drunkenly and resentfully forgive her for sleeping with another man. It's harsh, and not just because he's drunk—he emphasizes it. He breaks the statement into two sentences, so that she's very clear what he's forgiving her for. She even seems shocked by it—this isn't something he does. From what we see of their married life he's oblivious and distant and awkward, but he's not cruel.

The whole sequence from the art opening onward is juxtaposed against the Ed and Izzy scene where Izzy bullies Ed back into becoming Blackbeard and eventually the Kraken. So this sequence is Stede's "Kraken" moment, as the scene escalates from the embarrassing meanness at the art opening to the cruelty in private.

But Stede lives in a different world than Ed, and his society is shaped by "cutting remarks." Where pirate violence is physical, Stede's is mostly verbal. He knows how to use language against people; it has been done to him, and we see him do it to the French ship, to Izzy, and to Chauncey. He’s very emotionally attuned and he’s adept at getting the knife in when he wants to. He uses it carefully, though, usually in defense either of himself or someone he loves. But if he were to become a bully, he’d be horrific.

We never see Stede being deliberately vicious to someone who doesn’t deserve it, and he's being deliberately vicious to Mary, a woman as thoroughly trapped in that marriage as he is (even more so, because she has very limited options for escape). What we know, which Mary doesn't yet, is that his viciousness is coming from the ache of what he left behind.

Stede was able to try to reconcile his return as "doing his duty" for his family, and what he finds is that his family have moved on. Not only that, but the wife whom he was at least imprisoned with, who at least shared in some degree his discomfort and unhappiness and was obliged to make it work with him as far as they both could, has found the love and pleasure that he's denying himself. He's isolated in a way he wasn't before. He wants to isolate her again so that at least he still has some kind of companionship, even if it's just in suffering.

Mary's fears are clear. If Stede decides that she can’t be with Doug, he has a LOT of power to stop her. He’s a wealthy male landowner; he legally owns her and the children. He can ruin Doug and he can make her life hell. He legally and culturally has a lot of control over her sexuality. I don’t think for one minute that Mary ever feared Stede their entire life and she fears him now.

It is cruel, and it's not Mary's fault. Nor is this who Stede is, or who he wants to be, though it's clearly a sign of who he can become. Again, like the scene at the art gallery, the scene between them is important to develop how repression and self-loathing can warp a person, even someone as genuinely kind as Stede. He is so desperate to “do the right thing” that he’s twisting himself up into the very kind of man who has hurt him. And beneath it is the longing for Ed and the love and passion that he’s denied himself.

That this all pushes toward a breaking point where Stede and Mary are finally able to understand each other, and Stede is finally able to say that he's gay and he's in love with Ed, makes that moment much more powerful. Mary was perfectly ready to hate him and at least save herself, but she helps him find the words to express who he is and what he feels, and who he wants.

The poison turns into positivity.

#ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #mary bonnet #edward teach #ofmd meta #our flag means death season 1 #ofmd season 1 #gif #long post #my wee thoughts #would love to hear other people's as well #i like mary #i like the arc that they give her and how she's more than just a function of Stede's arc #i like that she helps him too #and he figures out to be the best husband he's capable of being for her

302 notes · View notes