I adore Izzy and Stede's interactions in s2e3, because they're so consistently proving to Izzy that he does not know Stede like he thought he did.
Going into s2, even as Izzy begins to realize that he fucked up by threatening Ed until Ed went so hard back into the Blackbeard persona, Izzy has two big assumptions.
he knows Ed better than anyone else
Stede Bonnet is his rival
And in s2e3 Stede is just consistently responding to those with "??? wtf is your problem?"
Izzy telling Ed that he knows him better than anyone else was already laughable. At this point in his arc, he's still talking about Ed like some crazed animal with erratic, unpredictable behavior. He does not talk about or treat Ed like a person with feelings. But when he starts in trying to tell Stede about how Ed was a "wild dog" (that line still makes my lip curl, jesus) and makes Ed out to be wildly cruel by saying deserting him "was better than he would've done for us" despite how Ed literally did just that in the s1 finale, Stede consistently meets him by thinking of Ed's feelings, not taking the bait, and feeling awful for how much his actions hurt Ed. He thinks of Ed as a person and refuses to conform to the language Izzy uses.
Izzy, in s1 and at the start of s2, sees Stede as a sort of romantic rival at the same time as he clearly considers Ed and Stede's love for each other as a whim, a passing crush. Neither Ed nor Stede think of Izzy in romantic terms, this is abundantly clear, and Izzy (world's most repressed man) doesn't have a fucking clue what love looks like. Izzy spends so much of this episode trying to get a rise out of Stede, pretending he was the one who slashed up the painting, challenging Stede to yell at him after Stede sees what he thinks is Ed's dead body. And Stede doesn't give him fucking anything. He's just constantly kinda fed up with Izzy. His mental energy is elsewhere - he doesn't even look at Izzy when Izzy tries to thank him near the end of the episode.
Absolutely fascinating to think about where Izzy's mind must have been this episode. He learned he was expendable to Ed in s2e1, here he's learning that he doesn't take up literally any space at all in Stede's brain, either. Stede constantly proves him wrong by making thoughtful, empathetic guesses about Ed's mental state, and when he brings up the "doggy heaven" reference, something he wouldn't have known about had Ed not told him, it confirms that he was a confidante for Ed, something Izzy never was. Izzy never understood either of them, and this episode is him getting to realize that.
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my least fucking favorite thing is absolutely rank smelling people sitting at the table next to mine in a cafe.
in this case a fucking smoker.
like i understand as someone extremely prone to scent-based sensory overload (can't focus, building nausea, if i dont get away from the smell soon enough migraines) that like. it's a part of life. You can't reasonably avoid ALL strong smells, nor can you be reasonably accommodated for that.
Especially when it's not just bad smells like sweat and cigarettes but even 'good' smells like perfume and cologne or even like. febreeze shit. If the smell is strong it WILL fuck me up and expecting the whole world to cater to that... disability? of mine? like using disability feels wrong but also i literally get migraines so maybe that's just my anxiety of being perceived as In The Wrong acting up but like.
Logically the whole world can't cater to that for me.
But also. Please. There are open tables elsewhere. Please. Sit fucking anywhere else. I can't handle this.
I'd move myself but there is only one table in this entire cafe that has an electric socket and my computer dies if I don't keep it plugged in so I don't have any other options unless I go to a different cafe.... :(
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Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :
Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources
Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)
Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women
Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women
Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)
Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)
Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community
Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS
Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough
Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media
Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards
Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories
Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")
And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue
Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)
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All I'm saying is any rule, any law, any social convention, anything where there's some kind of reprisal for transgressing against it... just make damn sure you're careful with it lest it be used against you
Every freedom you give up in the name of making a better world, really double check it's worth it and narrowly defined
I mean some freedoms are worth giving up, for instance I don't have the freedom to kill people who annoy me, and I shouldn't have that freedom. I lose very little while gaining a great deal both personally and for society as a whole, and there are a lot of places like this where it's 100% worth it to ban something outright
Similarly, there absolutely are reasons to socially shun people, like you don't have to put up with every last thing just to be nice. Influencers who do stuff like harass people to drum up attention or record and post every second of their kid's lives, I don't think we should be engaging with people like that unless it's to keep an eye on them, I think they do a ton of harm
All I'm saying though, is shit like the Patriot Act drummed up support because it was going to protect people, keep people safe... and look what actually happened, look how it's used. It's state surveillance against the people it claimed to protect and that's about it
I'm not gonna tell you which things are wrong to shit on people for, or which policies you should oppose. I don't want you to just mimic what I believe, even if I thought anyone was gonna
I just want you to look at stuff, and think about it, and really decide if that thing you want gone is harmful in a concrete enough way that if you do something to try to remove it, it will only remove that instead of spilling over in to stuff you didn't want it to
I just want you to check in your head if anything you're cracking down on either legally or through social pressure might lead you to losing something you care about down the road if bad actors skew how to interpret things
I'm not saying that's how it's gonna go, I'm just saying think first
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