#so he wouldn't have gotten as mad about ed and stede

[gydima]

Since OFMD let us down, sometimes I imagine this is Izzy instead of Cliff.

Just think how much conflict could have been avoided if Izzy had just been getting laid on the reg during season 1. 😔

[brigdh]

Ed and the mortifying ordeal of being known

Ed does not like revealing his feelings. He is incredibly consistent about lying,

hiding

displacing,

distracting, or just outright denying what he's feeling instead of actually talking about it. This is a consistent pattern of behavior with him. There are a few exceptions – most significantly, I think, the bathtub scene where he confesses to Stede about killing his father – but they are a) rare, and b) occur under unusual circumstances, such as a PTSD flashback. In general Ed goes to great lengths to prevent people from recognizing the truth about him.

I don't really blame Ed for this habit, to be clear. He went through an abusive childhood, and though we don't see a lot of the exact dynamics in baby Ed's house, it's very common for abused children to become hyper vigilant of both their own and others' emotions. It's an attempt to exert some, any control they can over the situation, as though they can prevent setting off the abuser if they just always say and do the right thing.

Ed escaped into piracy, but in terms of talking about his feelings, I don't think it was much of an escape. Piracy in OFMD seems to be a place where the idea of having friends (though not the reality – I'd argue Ed might not use the word 'friend', but has had close relationships) is to be scoffed at. "We're all just in various stages of fucking each other over!" says Calico Jack, and being open about your emotions, plans, hopes, etc would just make it all the easier to be betrayed. On the other hand, lying, obfuscating, or just telling everyone about Plan A and then instead pulling off Plan B makes you look like a double-crossing genius who outthought everyone around you. So I'm not surprised that's Ed's learned to be manipulative and uncommunicative. I don't think he's ever been in a situation where emotional openness wouldn't be a disadvantage.

Regardless of why he does this, it's very clear that it's a pattern of behavior for him. This is one reason why I don't think Sad Robe Ed back in Episode 10 was healing – healing requires addressing and dealing with your feelings, and Ed was very much not doing that. I've already written a whole post going through that episode and laying out how Ed never once mentions Stede, or love, or heartbreak, or anything related to what he's going through, so I'm not going to do it again here. In brief, Ed's putting on a performance of sadness for the crew, but it's a generic, vague sort of sadness, without any connection to his personal, specific pain.

Who finally brings up Stede in Ep 10? It's sure not Ed. Izzy:

Which brings us to Season Two. How is Ed doing now?

He's once again making a performance of his pain, and once again keeping it vague, not letting any of his true, personal hurts be revealed.

These:

Are performances of his pain and sadness, but just like before, they're generic, unspecific. This is "Mad Devil Pyrate Blackbeard", not heartbroken, human Ed. Who is it that brings up the private reality of what's causing this toxic atmosphere? Once again, not Ed. It's Izzy, just like before. And this time he gets shot immediately for saying Stede's name, and Ed doesn't even look at him.

In all three episodes, Ed mentions Stede directly only once, and very pointedly, it's when he's alone:

I'm glad Ed has decided that he wants to live, but that's the beginning of a journey, not the end. What I really want to see in the next couple of episodes is Ed finally, for once, opening up. He doesn't want to be vulnerable, but the lack of emotional intimacy that constantly lying and performing has gotten him is, quite literally, killing him.

Ed can't get over his own, very real pain until he's willing to admit that it exists. I want to see him acknowledge where he hurts. He needs friends. He needs love. He can't get those without being honest.

I hope he does. I hope the show will have him do this work instead of skipping him ahead immediately to the happy ending, no behavioral change required. I think they will. It's kind of their motto, after all: talk it through as a crew.

Now if the co-captains would just follow their own advice...

[cannebady]

I've seen a lot of commentary going around regarding whether Izzy's death is a "bury your gays" trope, or if it was a cheap plot device for Ed's absolution, and that's not what this post is about.

Another criticism was that the crew, as well as Stede and Ed, didn't really grieve - it was just wham-bam funeral-wedding-inn ma'am, and that is what this post is about.

To be entirely honest, grief is a weird experience. I had a pretty traumatic year recently which involved, among other losses, the death of my parents a handful of months apart. In the immediate aftermath of both incidents, I did not react the way I would've thought. Where I thought there'd be sobbing and unending tears, a lot of time there was just silence, and a lot of staring blankly, and, quite frankly, a lot of just getting on with it.

I think that's the thing people don't tell you about grieving. Your world kind of stops and starts moving slow, but the world around you goes on as normal. While you get a slight reprieve while taking care of services, mostly the world expects you to just kind of carry on. Death makes people uncomfortable, so we're tacitly taught not to talk about it. People don't know what to say, so they say nothing. So you have this whole experience going on in your head where your world is fundamentally different, emptier, than it's ever been but it isn't something we're given the script to talk about.

This is to say that, yeah, the show had some time constraints and budget issues which meant that they may not have been able to do as much as they'd have wanted. However, in the immediate aftermath of a loss like that, it may not look horribly different.

Someone is gone and you're carrying them with you, but there's work to be done, and things to be planned, and things to be celebrated that don't lose their luster because of the loss.

For me, grief was a mad-dash to get things settled before suffering another loss. It wasn't until many months later that it really hit me and the tears started and just wouldn't stop. And grief isn't the same for everyone.

So it may not be that no one cared. It may not be they didn't have time to show it. It may just mean that these characters haven't gotten very far into the grieving process and it'll take time for the more publicized versions of grief to manifest.

I think, instead, that the fact that Ed couldn't have Izzy far from him, even if he was giving up pirating, that the crew, even those like Zheng and Auntie who barely knew Izzy, made time for the funeral despite there being a veritable war going on against them, that everyone passed around the grave marker, are ways to honor a life they'll miss.

The funeral isn't the culmination of grieving, it's merely the first public confirmation of it.

Grieving is lifelong, and it's a testament to the love held for someone who's passed on.

There's no right or wrong way to view it, and this isn't a criticism of anyone who felt that it wasn't handled well (I'm devastated about Izzy and I hate that he was killed, for reference), just an opinion on how grieving culminates in a variety of ways. Perhaps, if we're lucky enough to get a S3, we'll see a bit more of how they're handling the absence of someone they loved, not just the loss.

[gemsofthegalaxy]

Also I talked about this in another post but it was a reblog of a sort of nicher post, and people don't always see the reblogged version of things SO i'm gonna say it again.

I can understand why Stede left Ed.

Especially with what the Badminton twin said to him, but it definitely has more to it than that. I think that interaction just solidified/named/emphasized some of Stede's fears, ones he was feeling since the moment Ed proposed running away- hell, probably the moment Ed yelled Act of Grace and got himself arrested for Stede.

From our perspective, Ed put everything on the line for Stede, we know that. We've seen Ed's journey, his boredom, the softness that he's tried so hard to cut away from himself & keep under wraps. We can see he adores Stede and we get the sense that this as a true fresh start and he's ready for it. Stede has seen some of this, too, though not every instance the way the audience has. There is still doubt, for him, that this is really what Ed wants.

And it makes sense he doubts Ed. Like, seriously, just a few days ago Ed was running off with Calico Jack, claiming "This is who I am, I am Blackbeard, I like to fuck around and cause chaos and hurt people for fun and I knew you wouldn't accept me like that" despite the fact Stede very much set a ship on fire for Ed not that long ago. Lol.

So, Stede is already in this sort of mindset that Ed wants to be Blackbeard. he likes being Blackbeard, Blackbeard is who he is. They had a mini breakup over it!

But now, a couple days later, Ed's come back and gotten arrested for Stede, he's given up that identity, the very one he said was truly himself and he wanted to lean into, and is offering to do that for good. It's huge, it's romantic, but honestly Stede seems hesitant even in that scene. I bet he's thinking Ed is going to realize he doesn't mean it and resent Stede for it. He doesn't think this is really what Ed wants (and I'm not sure how much Stede wants to run away forever, it's a romantic ideal but, if he does it, he can never go home to even see his kids, anything like that.)

Speaking of!

Stede has also felt immense guilt all season over leaving his wife and children. I don't think it's a "he loves Mary and wants to go back to her", I can see how Ed might think that if he were to find out, but it's made extremely clear in the show Stede doesn't love Mary, he just feels a duty to take care of her, to be the Aristocratic husband and father he was raised to be. So, going back to try to fulfill that duty isn't out of left field, it's been underlying the series the whole time, especially since he just learned that he's been declared dead. Yes, he's the one that left first, but it seems like he wasn't anticipating Mary to cut him off from the other end, declare him dead and be done with it. For one reason or another, he must have thought he would have the option of seeing his wife and kids again some day and I'm sure the idea of never, ever doing that, brought on so suddenly, was scary.

SO. Coupled with the fact I knew the show had an "Angsty end of season" ahead of time, when I heard Ed propose the idea and saw the look on Stede's face i was like "okay. yep." I wasn't surprised at all he decided not to leave with him.

But, at first, I didn't really get why. It seemed like the type of thing Stede would honestly love. He was craving the adventure enough to become a pirate, but honestly it sometimes seems like he could take or leave the violent aspect of it, he just wants to sail and have fun more than anything, but,

After thinking about it and considering the reasons above, I understand why he didn't go, why he would be honestly confused by Ed's proposal and really doubt whether it would work out long term, not to mention just get scared.... It's fucking painful, and I don't like that he hurt Ed in the end. But it makes sense, and it's built up over the whole season, I can't really be mad at him or Ed for the whole situation... which is ultimately brilliant and compelling writing and I really loved it, as much as it hurt.