"Stede wanted to be a pirate and now he's not going to be one, which is bad."
Did he really want to be a pirate? Stede wanted to be a storybook pirate; he wanted to be the pirate in his games and his imagination, who had swashbuckling adventures. The entire first season deals with him learning what piracy really is. He sees what it has done to Ed, quite literally history's greatest pirate, within the first half hour of their meeting. Most of the fun he has, has nothing to do with actual piracy - it's playing games with his crew, going on treasure hunts with Ed, putting on plays. He likes making up plans, but he doesn't like actual piracy. When he accidentally kills a man, it horrifies him and haunts him, and continues to until the end of the season. He goes to therapy about it.
Into Season 2, the entire point of Stede's piracy is still not piracy. It's to get back to Ed. Stede's fantasy in the beginning is about being the storybook pirate who defeats the villain and runs across the beach to his one true love, who isn't mad at him and never was. It's a fairytale. And even there, reality is creeping in - dream-Izzy tells him, "I didn't make you leave him. You did that yourself." The reality is that Ed has gone into a suicidal spiral, and Stede finds him mostly dead.
The one time that Stede becomes a "real pirate" in the real world, it goes to his head, but it's not even because of his love of piracy. It's because he's suddenly popular. People are buying him drinks and clapping him on the back. No one's calling him "Steve." No one's making fun of him. And still, the only thing he wants to do when he does something cool is go tell Ed about it.
And even then...it's hollow. Everyone around him are sycophants. Ed has left him. His crew are suddenly leaving him. It all ends with him getting his ass kicked by a real pirate. He didn't even like doing the thing that made him popular; he kills Ned Low and runs off to hide. The whole sequence at Jackie'z is a mirror of the sequence at the pub when he goes home - everyone thinks he's cool, but for none of the reasons that are authentic to who he is or what he really wants.
Stede wanted a family who loved him. He wanted friends who liked him for him. He wanted someone to play with. He wanted to marry for love. And he has all those things at the end.
He's not a pirate. He's not having second thoughts.
I'm not sure why this is hard to see.
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every time i rewatch the miracle aligner music video i am just flabbergasted. FLABBERGASTED. like. they really chose to make it like THAT. and by 'like THAT' i am specifically referring to:
1) “an attempt to extract the truth... approximately" *cue rosepetals and intense eye contact*
2) THIS being the opening shot of the two of them
3) miles legitimately spending the first minute of the entire video blatantly checking alex out
4) literal rainbow lighting around them
5) endless hand holding and twirling
6) that moment where miles's hand reaches ever so reflexively for alex's neck
7) the fucking closing scene?????????
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Sci beloved what do you think Peter and El's dynamic would be like?
el? gonna assume you mean eleanor... my darling... oh...
i'm honestly so obsessed with eleanor and peter's dynamic already - peter is just immediately fond of her. he just, he likes her right off the bat. she's charismatic, and brave, and peter knows it right out of the gate.
peter's so ready to sign those adoption papers. he loves eleanor already. she's everything that he loves in wade.
peter's perpetually in eleanor's corner - he's the soft-willed fun parent - if she can't get her way with wade, she'll run to peter and know that he literally cannot say no.
he thinks that means he's the favourite, but eleanor is a master manipulator just like her biological father and knows exactly who to talk to and what to say to get everything she wants. so if she knows she won't win with wade, she'll trick peter into her bidding. peter is but a naïve pawn in eleanor's games. he believes she can do no wrong, even though every ounce of wade wilson's wickedness courses through her veins. and sometimes eleanor double crosses peter. she has no loyalty. it shocks peter to his core, every time, but she's one step ahead of him, every time.
i can't wait for you guys to see how diabolical eleanor is going to be. oh my god. ohhh my god. see, peter and wade both have dormant supervillain potential within them that they suppress, but eleanor's supervillain gene is Active and she is a Horror.
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I've just realized what I need most from this season - it isn't an apology (from Ed and/or Izzy) or an earnest talk-it-through like I previously thought I wanted.
What I need is Ed realizing that he needs both Stede and Izzy in his life.
After all the heartbreak, I think it is so important that both of them know that the life they shared for so many years wasn't just a weight pulling both of them under.
I want Ed to realize that there are parts of Izzy's izzyness and their day-to-day life that are parts of who Ed is, and that there's something missing without him. I'd like Ed to (re-)learn that there are certain things which are just more fun with Izzy, or things he likes to share specifically with him because Izzy gets it.
At the end of this season, I need Ed to realize that while Stede makes him happy, to be truly happy and fulfilled he needs Izzy too.
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