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knowlesian · 2 years

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having hit two notes (izzy’s and stede’s, twice over) in this fucked up three part finale harmony: it seems only fair to close it out and finally get to do the one that hits me in the face and says ‘you are going to cry about this until the day you die. now say thank you’.

ed’s turn at the pain wheel.

so: it’s been a tough week for him. a real fuckin’ tough week. ed offered more than his heart to stede— he offered himself. he told stede the truth, again and again. he gave things up. he was willing to fold socks and lick the king’s boots; he was ready to run away to china and kill the men they used to be, to be new people together.

these were things he was ready to give up, and he very much wanted that life together: but the way they were about to obtain it would have ruined it for them both in the end.

i’d like to think, down in the part of ed’s soul that understands it is fucking imperative he keep an eye on all the exits in dangerous situations and had to build up an immunity to this sort of thing, he knows poison fruit from a poison tree when he sees it. that’s why he turns melancholy, not angry; he lost the thing he wanted most, but that life wouldn’t have lasted.

half-truths you build out of half-lies start to taste sour, once you get down to the rind. ed of all people knows that.

so he’s sad. he’s ready to listen to taylor swift alone in his blanket fort and cry, until lucius introduces him to the healthier version of what ed proposed to stede on the beach: what if, every single time we take a breath, the version of us that lived before that breath is gone?

what if that isn’t just dying? what if it’s... finding our way into this newest, complicated self, and living again?

and, in ways that break my heart, in ways olu and jim would understand and in some ways, their reunion echoes: ed hears every fucking word. they understand each other; lucius cries for his pain, and ed glimpses a pathway out.

twigs and all.

he sings his sad little breakup ballad on the deck this time, in full view of the family he’s trying to guide in stede’s absence; it’s so real it kind of makes me cringe, but in the way where i want to shield him from view because i too have been trained that when you are open like that they hurt you.

watching ed sing his song makes me feel the way i feel when i can’t deal with my shit enough that i lose it and cry in public, and i mean that as a compliment. you’re not supposed to do that outside your bedroom or the shower in a pinch. we can only get that open where people can’t see us, my training says.

my heart is happy for ed, my instincts say: look out, baby, they are going to hurt you.

which is why i both hate and entirely understand what one mister izzy big ol’ motherfucking duffel bag of shit hands does next.

he looks at edward, the man he’s built his self-image and career around, considers losing it all in one go, and thinks: look out, baby, they are going to hurt you.

(is the you in that sentence izzy, or is it ed?

yes.)

and then. ohhhh, and then.

izzy decides, why the fuck not. one more hold his beer moment for the road. and then this dumb motherfucker goes nuke-ya-ler, dubya style.

ed has no idea it’s coming. izzy was clearly not thrilled by his performance: but hey, he’s perfectly aware izzy spends a lot of time being not exactly thrilled with shit ed does. still. ed saved him from from meeting the devil at the bottom of the deep blue sea for a reason.

for better, but mostly for worse: izzy’s been there. izzy has been his sad, violent version of loyal, and when you do the emotional math as edward shows he is capable of, again and again he knows: in izzy’s mind, he licked the king’s boots for ed. can’t you see? i did it for you, edward. i did it for us, and if you want me to stay with you by fucking god you’re going to have to stay down here with me, fucking silent and fucking violent until we fucking die, hand in unlovable hand, is the desperate sad ballad izzy’s singing here. and edward can’t be edward but only in private with izzy if he’s edward in public, too.

fear, turned outward through anger and devastating words and made a weapon. jealousy, trauma, pain, all melted and formed into a shield that grows into a wall and becomes a weapon all its own: what do we mean, when we say violence?

because what comes next sure feels like violence to me.

ed’s trying to clean up: he’s talking to izzy like they’re still the unit they were before stede rolled up, but in a way that incorporates the more authentic man he’s trying to feel his way into being.

this is what fucks me up most on a long list of things that fuck me up about these two, if i’m honest. izzy makes me think in ways that are uncomfortable and very valuable about certain parts of myself i am less fond of; and as a fictional exercise in ‘why are we all so grubby and weird and why do we ruin our own lives sometimes????’ case studies, he is Peak. for a million reasons, he makes me sad.

but what ed shows here is a flickering attempt to build himself up into the sort of hearthfire olu gives jim. (and why i think olu and jim and ed and izzy carry a lot of sad/dark mirror narrative beats together.)

come with me, iz, the subtext here says. can’t believe we were living like this.

if i can save you i can save me, if i can save me i can save you: we don’t have to do this, you know that right? stede didn’t want me; stede left. he didn’t want to be new people with me.

i’m so fucking sick of just surviving. i want to have space to be new people, ed keeps begging everyone around him. lucius heard what he meant, and gave him the words for it. now he’s offering to share with izzy the kindest, most beautiful gift ed’s ever been given; even more beautiful than stede’s finery, or his unsure confession of happiness and desire, because ed thinks it was a lie.

all that happened, and ed still has the courage— the generosity, the need to not be alone, the fear and the altruism all wrapped up in one very beautiful and very complicated man— to clean up the evidence of his grief bender and say to izzy, a lot of shit has gone down lately, but why not. let’s do this whole new people thing together.

he’s sad; he’s healing. he’s still off-kilter.

and here comes the push.

I should have let the English kill you. This... whatever it is that you’ve become... is a fate worse than death.

the way ed’s face falls as he hears the man he’s lived alongside for years say he wishes ed wasn’t alive; he draws in this little breath and it’s almost like he can’t quite process izzy’s actually said the horrific thing he just heard. it stabs me in the heart, every single time.

because here's the thing; there are a million killers. there are a million sailors and a million first mates and a million cranky lil boat guys who want to serve under a legend.

i’m sure a lot of them would have been the kind of yes-men who would have also hated stede, and hated this change; they would have dealt with it and shut the fuck up, or left, or done a million things but do izzy’s sad and gross version of fighting like hell to keep his subtextual man.

i think it’s that sad and gross fight that spells out the answer to the obvious: so why keep him? question.

because they saw something in each other. and because emotionally, ed got something he needed from izzy; and emotionally, izzy got something he needed from ed. people will do horrible, painful things to get what they need, if they think that’s their only way of getting it.

for years they did those kind of things to themselves, and to each other.

ed kept izzy around for all this time, his purse dog-slash-middle manager from hell sidekick, and now he would like to keep him around in this new world. for better; again, mostly for worse, they kept each other safe at the same time they kept each other in pain.

and izzy just said: i wish you were dead. i wish i hadn’t done it. my years of loyalty and my recent betrayals, the ones you understand i considered both unsavory duties to my captain and sacrifices made for the man my captain becomes, but if and only if he is alone with me; i will take all of it back if you keep trying to be new fuckin people, edward, izzy is telling him. if you won’t stagnate here with me, be my monster and my subtext boyfriend, you can go ahead and just die. these are your options if you want to keep me in your life.

(and what kind of life could you have, without me in it?)

ed thinks stede could only want him when he’s a gentleman like stede is a gentleman— like he was a gentleman, before he entered and exited the underworld of his original flavor toxic masculinity, entirely unknown to ed— and now he knows: unless izzy ever figures his shit out, he will only want ed when he’s a monster.

and then, quiet part horrifyingly loud: izzy says what whatever he is now? this beautiful complicated man with his soft underbelly and heart on display at once, finally, who is taking such extreme emotional risks despite very recent disappointment? who is braver right now, breathing deep in the face of izzy’s fury, trying to keep it together and stay open, than he has ever been in his entire life?

(because make no mistake: ed has had to be very, very brave, for his entire life.)

better ed be dead than be... this. “whatever it is”, the writers choose to have izzy say, and throw in vague tones of dehumanization via ‘it’ as well as the way they have izzy refer to ed in terms that imply he holds dominion over ed’s life and death. (which sets up their later use of ‘boyfriend’ even better.)

not i wish they had; not they should have. i should have let them.

these writers are precise and very, very mean.

so ed pulls back, trying to salvage some of his power and assert who he is while dealing with that fucking... load of soul-crushing pain, all without losing sight of the path lucius revealed to him.

Well... I am still Blackbeard, so...

No! This... this is Blackbeard.

they give this moment time to breathe in a way that kills me. izzy shoves the cartoon in ed’s face; ed stares at it. stares at the monster the world wants him to be; the monster izzy says is all he could ever be.

and i think maybe, deep down in his heart, ed thinks: the monster that stede might have actually wanted, more than the failed attempt at pretending ed could be a gentleman. izzy wants the monster, the world wants the monster. stede left, after seeing the monster’s a man, too; maybe that’s why.

maybe this is all they will ever want. all anyone will ever want.

the man he was falling in love with, and thought might be around forever left him; the man who has proved he will stick around forever, even when ed tells him not to, has just said he wishes ed would die if he won’t be what izzy wants. he’s found izzy’s limit, after years and years of spiraling into greater depths of toxic pirate bullshit together.

the limit: ed. being a full fucking person. ed, doing things he wants to do instead of things other people want him to do, because they want him to do it.

‘what have they done to your face’; ‘i should have let the english kill you’.

‘this is blackbeard.’ ‘a bloodthirsty killer, born of the devil.’

even in the dialogue, even when they don’t know they’re doing it, even when he doesn’t know they're doing it: people keeping this shit to ed. he is so, so tired of people doing this shit to him.

which leads neatly into:

Not some namby-pamby in a silk gown, pining for his boyfriend.

in the same way stede can’t know why ‘from the devil’ would cut so deep, i doubt izzy knows why what he’s just said is such a specific cut. the general surge: yeah, he knows. he’s trying to provoke ed; you provoke people by being provocative.

but silk. a silk gown, this sad and mean and in desperate need of therapy and like... so, so many more punches to the nose in this moment man said.

izzy thinks he is communicating, in so many words: edward. you're being weak. shape the fuck up and get with it again. it’s like a very smart sock once said: this is how the world works. those who do not hurt others get hurt by others, and i have chosen my motherfucking side of the knife here. have you forgotten how this dance goes?

ed is taking all that in, and on top of it seeing a red silk handkerchief and a mother who loved him as well as she could, but only in the ways she’d been taught; and she had been taught in so many ways that to yearn for more than your lot is to set yourself up for heartbreak. you reach: you fall.

and when you fall, it will be because god wanted you punished for the sin of thinking you could ever deserve more. whenever you hurt, whenever you suffer, whenever you have no family or food or shelter, not even an emotional place you can feel safe and call home: that’s where god finds his home, ed’s mother was taught. that’s where god finds his joy. your joy comes at the end of a life of silent, willing service to those god loves best.

god is not there, not when you are joyful; not when you are not serving them.

they own everything; why shouldn’t they own god, too? how kind they are, to share these scraps with us and teach us to call them the road to glory.

these are the things ed’s mother was taught; these are the things she taught him.

what do we mean when we say violence? the generational trauma forced christianity wrought centuries ago is still hurting us today. still keeping us trapped in these horrible, binary cycles.

one above; one below. how can god we own love us more, if he doesn’t love you less? that’s the secret at the heart of why the world needed ed’s mother to hold her child close, and try to convince him not to look violence in the face and call it what it fucking is.

and so ed explodes. hand around izzy’s throat, calling izzy the dog izzy implied ed might as well be, by saying he should have essentially allowed the english to put him down; and worse, izzy enjoys it. ‘there he is’, izzy says. breathless: worshipful. touch tender as his words weren't, one hand coming up to cup ed’s cheek; this is how we love, izzy thinks. i hurt you until you hurt me back, and once we slice each other to ribbons we can use the wounds as an excuse to touch each other gently and say it’s because we have to, not because we want to.

we could never want to. if we wanted to, what would that say about us?

this is not ed’s world; this is not ed’s love. not his tenderness. he’s used violence as a tool and been horrified by it. he’s been scarred by it in more ways than one. then he’s enjoyed it, sometimes, or at least acknowledged its helpful byproducts in his life.

it’s never his instinct. in one of the ways he makes up a narrative pair with olu, ed’s about community.

ed will hurt people; still, ed doesn’t want to hurt people. it’s a fine line, but like ed’s own distinction in canon it’s an important one.

so he shoves izzy away, disgusted with everything going on right now. his life is hell; lucius promised him it could be better. that ed could be different. stede lied; maybe his playthings do nothing but lie, too. stede took a while to reveal himself, didn’t he? that felt so good at first, didn’t it? he thought he was safe then. thought he finally wasn’t alone.

and now here he is: alone again, anyway.

alone with izzy! who is fucking elated. this man is nearly crying with joy, he is staring at ed’s mouth, he is like... way, way, way too fucking horny on main. this is it: he can taste forgiveness resting heavy on the back of his tongue, even now. ed needs a little more pushing before he’ll do it right and let izzy breathe easy, but that’s fine. the end’s in sight, gory gory what a hell of a way to die. just a little bit more now, and they can forget it all happened and go back to the way it all was before. hell, it can be even better! because it can be even sadder, now, and a whole lot worse.

so izzy pushes ed again. blackbeard’s his captain, it’s blackbeard he serves. edward, on the other hand? edward better prove he’s worthy of being a man again when they’re alone, or izzy is going to keep this shit up until he does.

izzy thinks they’re connecting; izzy thinks this is how they keep each other safe. this is how they love each other.

ed looks at a man who loves him, but doesn’t see him. izzy’s love is conditional as god’s ever was; if ed wants to keep it, there are going to be rules he has to follow and boundaries he has to stay inside.

there has to be one above, and one below.

suddenly, the things ed thought he might have been wrong about start to settle back in.

when izzy leaves it there and stomp stomp stomps off in his little booties, unaware he is enjoying his last day on earth still in possession of all his toes, this battle is still only sort of won. because ed might have pulled it back here! maybe! if by the magic of things happen when we want them to, fuck you, ofmd definition of time, stede arrived then and confessed everything, maybe that would help. maybe lucius could have walked in; maybe ed could have had five fucking minutes alone to deal with izzy’s shit and not get immediately thrown into yet another reminder of his trauma.

instead of any of that, the crew calls for a song with a new, even more affectionate nickname. eddie, they call him, and ed does some emotional time travel as he’s thrown back to the party in e5. they pretended to like him, too; they said he could be funny without being a joke, if he was with them.

they were lying; stede fucked them up for him, but stede’s gone now and might have been lying, too.

is this the latest lie? are they making fun of him? is he a fucking joke again?

izzy just told him he’s better off dead if he keeps trying to be authentic; izzy has done the opposite of laugh at him. and izzy, for all his many... many flaws, has never entirely flat-out lied to ed. gone behind his back! obfuscated and left out key details in service of his own agenda! but izzy just looked him in the face and said the meanest fucking thing you can say— their shit’s aaaaaalllll out there now. so in a way: izzy has been honest and now he’s safe, for some very narrow and horrifying values of both words.

ed understands what izzy wants from him. what does the crew want?

moving through the world on his own, ed has learned he has two options: he can be an unthreatening joke, or he can be a monster.

ed also knows that when he doesn’t pick fast enough, the people around him will pick for him.

izzy just said it right out loud. he wants the monster, and being the monster kept ed safe at the same time it hurt him. he knows he can survive that pain.

what does the crew want? they want eddie to sing them another song. and they might want it because they’re laughing at ed’s stupid song and his stupid pain and his stupid reaching for better. how could ed ever know? how could he trust them?

that’s the problem. there’s no litmus test for love, and izzy has offered concrete evidence for his sad version of the word. the crew asks ed to take it on faith he’s not the butt of their joke.

the crew calls for him, inviting him to join them topside again and enjoy the stupid, silly, joyful things they can do and be together. this is what hurts the most: we as an audience know they love him more than they ever have, in this moment. they see ed: all they want to do is have some fun, with ed. none of their laughter would hurt. they love him: he could make jokes with them and not be a joke to them.

but stede left ed, and izzy has made it clear he’s out for good if ed doesn’t straighten up and fly right p-d-fucking-q; and you can’t know for sure people are lying when they say they love you, not until it’s too late.

illuminated by the window, ed makes his choice.

all right, then. monster it is.

monsters don’t need hearts; monsters don’t wear fine things well. and so: overboard goes the red silk, floating off into the stede-less moonlight.

(i want to do something else longer about ed and lucius so i will just paste this in the gap now: the way lucius is confident in his ability to call ed by his name and speak to him like an equal, and the almost deadened look on ed’s face as he allows lucius to twist in the wind, letting the gift lucius gave him die to an down to ember until the mood shifts and ed shoves him over the side all do a lot of painful things to my heart. ouch.

also: lucius is alive, his shoe goes flying and does a ZOOM WHOOSH thing, there’s a whole sound!!!!! he clung to the rope or the side and he is now in the walls eating paper. the end.)

which brings me to: one gun, one knife, and gloves that keep a barrier between ed and everything he touches.

we don’t see ed’s face in full, not once in this scene; we see the whole of the cartoon, but only fragments of the man. his body; his weapons. his cheek, as he draws back on the beard that made him safe. we see his eyes reflected in an implement of violence and of penetration, as ed tells himself: i am the kraken.

not blackbeard, a mantle that in some ways allowed ed to try and bridge the gap between ed the man and ed the monster, but the kraken.

this is how he heartbreakingly survives everything going to shit at once, naming himself all monster and no man. stede didn’t see enough worth sticking around for in the man; the world keeps demanding the monster.

and izzy. sad, cruel, suffering izzy: izzy wants the monster.

and now, ed’s going to give them all what they want.

let’s see if they choke on it.

that’s right. let’s do this: the Weird Vore is nigh.

this scene is very jesus-flavored. there are jesus sprinkles atop this horrifying sundae of pain and a crunchy jesus shell coating. this shit is like... thirty one flavors of super gross in the most catholic and subtextually gay way possible.

so obviously, i fucking love it.

izzy is posed on the bed in a way everyone dragged to mass and forced to stare at a bleeding, ripped white dude in an equally white loincloth would find familiar. (izzy’s is black, which is a neat inversion as well as a hilarious nod to the white hat/black hat cowboy movie politics that in some ways helped build our cinematic language on these things.)

his feet are bare, his legs are bare, his chest is bare. he’s almost naked; he’s vulnerable. open.

in polar opposition ed is armored up and closed off. he touches izzy: izzy does not touch him. his hands are going to stay clean under their leather, no matter what he does next.

and what he does next is use some big fuckin’ scissors and make himself a diy first communion starter kit. he’s got body and oh boy does he have blood, and izzy ever so kindly holds his mouth wide fucking open while he screams, a parishioner waiting for the host.

he’s held edward up as his god. now, after all izzy’s years of service and suffering, edward’s going to be his priest, too. and why not? this is what izzy wanted, wasn’t it?

unfortunately: yeah. stede got what he wanted and was properly horrified to see the rot at the bottom of it all. izzy, on the other hand? after years of waiting at edward’s elbow and watching him cut off other men’s toes, loom up over them and force them to swallow, izzy has played himself some very, very stupid games.

and worst of all— he is so, so very happy that he is at long last going to receive his very stupid prize.

ed always knows what to say to put izzy off when he won’t quit it and give ed a little breathing room. the trick is telling him what he wants to hear in that moment. i’m not interested in stede, oh no. i’m going to kill him, and then i’m going to prove i don’t care that everybody talks shit about you literally shitting your pants last time you babysat alone. i need you, i hate you, i want you to go, i wish that you’d stay.

he also knows words aren’t going to cut it, not this time. if he wants izzy to back off enough to let him breathe, he’s going to need to give him more. izzy wants the monster; ed will be nothing but the kraken.

so who takes izzy’s toe? who makes sure ed doesn’t have to be the kind of alone that doesn’t come complete with a crowded room to be alone in, the monster or the man?

the answer is once again just yes, because on this show it’s almost always both/and, not either/or.

half-truths, half-lies. it’s like arguing about the existence of ghosts or god, determining where the exact ratio sits, like trying to find a way to measure and quantify love so you one hundred percent absolutely no doubts know it’s the kind that won’t crumble and leave you in more pain than before you had anything to lose at all.

ed is edward is blackbeard is the kraken is ed, on and on into forever.

we are a choir, a mob, a whole fucking world, even when we are all alone. we contain multitudes; i draw a breath, you draw a breath, and the people we were crumble to dust and then linger in the corners, haunting us with their presence and the ways we can’t ever go back to who we were before, not really. no matter how hard we try.

we die and become new people a million times, every day, until we don’t.

so who exactly is it that rests his hand on izzy’s chest, right over his heart? who clamps the other over his mouth, as gentle as izzy’s notions of love are not? and who feeds those notions to a man who only wants ed when he’s not the entirety of ed, making sure he chews them up good so they don’t get stuck in his throat? who subtextually fucks izzy through the mattress, and who hates himself the whole time because none of this was what he wanted?

all of them, all at once, because it’s all ed or none of it is. like the ghosts of the people we were, the gods we own or love we can be sure isn’t a lie— either it’s all real because you can’t prove it’s not, or it’s all bullshit because you can’t prove it’s not.

we want things to be simple. we want there to be An Answer, so we don’t have to exist in uncomfortable, ambiguous spaces.

fortunately, ofmd is pretty fucking comfortable in those spaces.

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #this is so long i have no idea how it happened it's like. 5k for five minutes of screentime #this is what i have been training for i guess #THESE WRITERS FUCKIN SUCK I WILL FIGHT THEM THEY ARE MEAN #like what the fuck how DARE THEY #ugh ed makes my heart hurt i just want him to have some room to breathe and figure his shit out #SOMEONE LET ED HAVE A NAP AND A BREAK 2KFOREVER #if you made it through all this: sup #you are my Real Ones #my ofmd meta #this fucking show is like. yeah. i have a lot to say

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