marinvolk

[marinvolk]

The "Stede is actually in the gravy basket" theory for episode 8 is killing me because it literally banks on the idea that the writers wrote a bad episode *on purpose*. Guys..... Show writers don't do that..... It's just bad writing....

[marinvolk]

Since grandmaster honorary queer man David Jenkins taught us all that things like genre and tone are apparently irrelevant now, I’d like to bless you all with my first ever attempt at writing fan fiction. I present to you:

The Night is Dark and Full of Muppets

Stede threw his arms up. “You can’t blame Izzy every time you smash something when you’re upset, Ed!”

“There’s a darkness inside me,” Ed said from the dining room table, glaring daggers at the broom handle lying in two pieces on the floor; he’d broken it against his knee when Stede had mentioned wanting to talk about his anger management issues. The broom had been in his hands because he’d been sweeping up a broken kettle, which he’d broken because it had been ‘giving him a funny look’. “Izzy won’t let me be Ed. He wants the Kraken. You wanted me to be Blackbeard. Remember when you said how fugly I looked without my beard?”

Stede rolled his eyes. “I did not say that. Come on, Ed.”

“Your eyes said it. They looked at me and said, ‘you look so fugly, not-Blackbeard.’ It’s Izzy’s fault I broke the broom.”

“Really, Ed? I don’t know if you remember, but we buried Izzy. It quite literally cannot be his fault—”

“Then it was Pop-Pop’s fault.”

Stede did a double take. “Who is Pop-Pop?”

“My fisherman dad. He and my fisherman brother—I never gave him a name because I never actually had a brother—took me in when I left you at the docks. For a time, I was happy again, loved, content.” Ed’s eyes watered. “I was Ed.”

Stede scoffed. “Ed, you were gone for a night.”

Ed banged his fist on the table. “I was Ed! Pop-Pop made me go get my leathers!” Ed sobbed. “Pop-Pop made me!”

Stede’s face crumpled into a very muppet-like expression. “What?”

“You just don’t want me to be Ed, do you? You think Blackbeard’s better! Pop-Pop told me to go do the only thing I was good at, so I had to go be Blackbeard again! It’s all your, Izzy’s, and Pop-Pop’s fault that I can’t be Ed!”

“I want you to be Ed, I just don’t like when you throw all our things at the wall!”

Ed snapped, “I wouldn’t throw things at the wall if they weren’t there when I get mad! Maybe we just need a maid!”

“Christ, Ed! We can’t afford a maid because we bought too much fishing equipment—”

They both stilled as lightning split the skies beyond the window of the shitty inn by the sea, darkness falling like a heavy shroud. The candles went out in a hissing puff.

Stede glanced to the door. “Do you hear that?”

Something on the porch. A footstep? No, something thumping. Strange. That had almost sounded like…

The door creaked open.

Silhouetted against the moonglow, a man stood clad in black. A seagull perched upon his shoulder with knowing, very hex-filled eyes.

A voice that sounded like someone was whispering cigarettes said, “The night is dark and full of muppets.”

Stede glanced at Ed. “That isn’t…?”

Ed swallowed, taking a step toward the door. “Izzy? Is that you, man? How? We buried you!”

“You took my ring. You took my cravat. You took my leg. You took my redemption arc. You took my family.” One gold-painted unicorn hoof slid forward as a familiar face loomed from the darkness. “Now, I’m taking it all back. Edward Teach—born on a beach—prepare to taste lead!”

Izzy whipped out an AK47 from the darkness. A maelstrom of bullets thundered through the inn, peppering Ed’s body until he was flailing back and forth like Kermit the Frog. Meanwhile, Stede hurled himself to the floor and scrambled under the table as Buttons shot laser beams from his beady seagull eyes, destroying the remnants of a porcelain vase that Ed had hurled against the wall only just the night before, when Stede had yawned too loudly for his liking.

The whisper-cigarette voice said, “Stede Bonnet, you fooken twat. Get up, muppet. We got a ship to catch.”

Stede crawled out from the table, staring up at Izzy with wide eyes. “What are you, oh, sea prince who was promised?”

“Me?” Izzy pulled out a pair of sunglasses, put them on, and said, “I’m the motherfooken unicorn.”

No, I will not be taking any critique, you media illiterate cretins. This is 100% plausible because DJ never actually said that seagulls in this universe can’t shoot laser beams from their eyes. Also, the fact that Izzy knows a song from the 1940s is in fact proof that he’s also a time traveler, therefore the AK47 is officially canon appropriate. In fact, this is so plausible—remember, genre and tone are no longer important—that it’s basically just the new ending.