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Hey there,

You’ve got a lot of insight into Ed and his whole journey from S1 to S2. Apologies if you’ve covered all this already (and I’m not the most articulate of people so also apologies for any confusion), but I’m interested in your thoughts…

I get the impression that a basic debate here is that either Ed is a psychopathic sadist (who basically ‘reigns in his sadistic tendencies’ until he loses Stede) or he’s someone struggling with his own self loathing and the toxic environment he’s had to live in (or maybe I’ve missed the mark entirely).

If it’s the latter, do you think he becomes at all vindictive in S2? Or is he more going through the motions of what he thinks is expected of ‘the pirate Blackbeard,’ because he’s somehow trying to cut off his emotions or is just tired of even trying to be anything else (ie himself) anymore? Or maybe it’s something else?

Also, to me personally it seems like Ed is stuck in… how to describe it… a depressive stasis at the beginning of S1, like at least resigned to death but doesn’t actively seek it until the end of S1/beginning of S2. I can’t decide though if in S2 Ed wants to take the crew with him (because that at least means not dying alone, like the mother and the cat in Crimes of the Heart), or if he doesn’t mind one way or the other what happens as long as he’s dead, or if the goal is to actively make the crew despise him because he thinks hatred and death are what he deserves?

Again, sorry if I’m beating a dead horse here…

Thanks!

So a lot of people have written a good bit about this. This is just what I think (and my thoughts may change—I'm planning on rewatching "Red Flags" today).

When we meet Ed, I think he is depressive and perhaps passively suicidal—he's talking about how the one thing he hasn't tried yet is death, but he doesn't seem to be really looking to die, and meeting Stede makes him re-evaluate the life he's been living and what he wants from it.

Stede and the space of the Revenge make Ed feel safe to express the parts of him that he’d concealed within Blackbeard in order to survive (the whole bringing out of his mother’s silk and Stede giving him the space to wear it openly on his heart). He tries to find this again with the crew after Stede leaves him, and it is Izzy who tells him that he is not safe unless he is Blackbeard (by directly threatening him and telling him that he would be better off dead than being the person he is).

I think a lot of what he’s doing at the end of Season 1 and into Season 2 is malicious compliance - “You wanted the caricature of Blackbeard, well HERE HE IS!” By the time we pick up with the Revenge in Season 2, he's moving from passive to active suicidality - he has been unable to correctly perform (Izzy invoking Stede and the fact that Ed's feelings are what have made the atmosphere on the ship toxic - quite literally his inability to conceal those feelings have poisoned everything around them, according to Izzy. Ed's feelings themselves are poisonous). Ed cannot reconcile his past with what he wants to be with who he is, and he has lost the safe space to be Ed.

I don’t think he wants to take the crew with him - his first move is to try to get Izzy to kill him; when that fails, he tries to get the crew to do it. If anyone actually just pulled a gun and shot him, he'd not try to stop them. He’s goading them until they’re forced into a space where they either have to die themselves or take the initiative and kill him (hence his “finally” right before his death).

Ed has been working to become all the monstrous/demoniacal stories about himself, the ones that have been told by the English and by his trio of monstrous fathers. He hates them but he also wants their approval, and he’s transforming himself into the monstrosity that others say he is. His love for Stede and the things that he was allowed to access via his relationship with Stede are the soft, genuine parts of himself that he has been told are not him but that he's also now incapable of concealing. He’s not worthy of that softness, he’s not worthy of love, and so he tries to kill it.

He’s going to die on Stede’s ship, with Stede’s cravat around his throat, murdered by Stede’s crew, as a final confirmation that all the things he wanted to be, and all the love he felt, he wasn’t really worthy of, that Stede was right to leave him because look at what he’s done, and that the people who loved him should never have loved him. He’s dying like all his monstrous fathers have died, murdered by people who once cared for him and whom he should have taken care of, but failed to because he's a monster.

#ofmd

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im gonna do a bigger piece with merstede (im obsessed with him) but for now...

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Sorry for tagging your art with just # oogh or # oh. Just know this means im profoundly moved

#ough and augh are extremely deep feelings to me

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ofmd twitter crazy lol

#HUH??????? #wha???????

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Stede had expected to never forgive himself for letting Ed die alone. 

He could’ve done something, if he’d been there. Stopped it. Saved him. Bore witness, if nothing else. But the moment was inaccessible to him now. All that remained of it were the former crew’s cagey testimonies.

…And the body of the man he loved. 

No, Stede couldn’t rewind time to find his way to Ed’s side before the inevitable. 

But what a terrifying thrill it was, now, to be able to watch him come back to life.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd ficlet #my writing #marine blogs #this was gonna be part of a longer piece. my own end of/post 2x03 take. but i don't think that's getting finished #so im throwing this little bite out into the world on its own

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oh my god ok i think i’m done, this took way way too long lkdfjglkdfg

wweaughhg hopeful reconciliatory season 2 hongi ????  PLE A SE

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Good Omens with a Godfather mafia vibe to it. 🧐 Gotta make sure these two are on your side for the apocalypse!

#good omens

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all for me and none for you xoxo

#ofmd

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#ofmd

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I don't think Stede will ever tell Ed this or even be able to fully articulate it to himself, but for the rest of their lives sometimes he's going to lean in and it won't be a proper kiss really, it'll just be a kiss pressed to his bottom lip in particular. Whenever Ed's had a rough day, or he needs a little extra reassurance, he's just going to start to expect the softest kiss on his bottom lip.

Just something about Ed with his poor split lip when they first reunited, remembering the blood in his beard and the pain on his face, knowing that he couldn't kiss it better while it really hurt. And a part of Stede will always remember that and try to make up for it a thousand times over.

#ofmd

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Stede kissing Ed’s tummy and both of them being all giggly in pen A for the doodles

Kay

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Rock the boat

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ofmd as text posts | part 15

source

#ofmd

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It’s a lighthouse.

It’s a lighthouse.

It’s a lighthouse.

OFMD Parallels | Discomfort in a Married State | The Art of Fuckery

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Princess Ed and the Singing Rodents of the Caribbean.

❤️... with a dedication to friends, internet and otherwise ... ❤️

"I swear I will make the entire fucking Caribbean burst into song, see if I don’t. "

- Lucius, "The Dread Pryncesse Blackbeard by Winter_of_our_Discontent

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Hopefully how we find them a few years down the line 💖

#ofmd #the ribbons and tassels are so so cute #and the colors <33

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Wait... who's steering the ship?

#ofmd