Nnnot sure what’s happened six months ago…? Anyway! Time for your weekly sword training session, go get changed or whatever you poofs do. Hurry up, he doesn’t have all day
How to Take Care of Your First-Mate Who Has No Self-Care Skills 101. 🧜♂️🦄
(You cannot tell me that Izzy put an extra pillow under his own leg during the cursed suit try-on scene. I won't believe you. I've had this headcannon since the day S2E5 aired, so I had to draw it into reality! 🧜♂️🦄)
doodled a bit to warm up before getting back to commissions (went through some traumatic shit irl, needed a pause)
recently finally watched Beetlejuice musical and got homosexually obsessed with alex brightman (hence the guilty favorite one too)
the grip that man has on me......................
Ed canonically rode Jack's chode so hard he almost snapped it
Stede and Mary had THEE most awkward, lacklustre lights-off sex
Izzy is theeeee slut of the Republic. Everyone gives him mad respect because they know he can take them (not in a fight)
None of them are each other's 'first' by a long shot! They're all experienced, for better or for worse. With the exception of Stede, they've probably had objectively BETTER sex with other folks than a fumbling first time with each other.
But you cannot convince me that this fumbling first time between the three of them when they're all well into middle age, wasn't the best sex of their lives.
Stede and Ed do this cute little dancing around each other courtship thing with fabrics and candlelit dinners and You Wear Fine Things Well.
Ed and Izzy have this achy horny tender codependent hateful loving dynamic. They're the most divorced unmarried and the most married unmarried people on the seven seas. I have love for you I loved you best I could ouch ouch ouch.
Meanwhile Stede and Izzy are like. Fuck NASTY in the first chapter. Complete bitch4bitch energy. Izzy calls Stede a stupid motherfucker in front of seven other crew members with a mouth that still tastes like Stede's balls. The girls are fightiiiing. 'Don't look at my fucking boner when we fight' only they're BOTH hard and they're BOTH looking. And then Stede shows Izzy one (1) tenderness and it all falls apart.
Got randomly annoyed, crawling out of my hole to bitch.
S2 really did kill Ed as a character for me. He just...sucked, so outrageously.
It's one thing to have a subconscious death wish that causes you to put yourself into situations where you're likely to die It's something else to be so much of a pathetic coward you'd rather methodically feed your first mate his own toes than pull the trigger yourself.
I'm supposed to feel sympathetic to Ed due to his suicidal tendencies, when his suicide attempt ended with most of his crew dead? It was just lucky they were found The crew were starving to death, resorting to eating raw seagull.
He couldn't even apologize to Izzy properly. He only showed open affection when he was crying on his own behalf because he didn't want to be left alone. Couldn't even say something meaningful at the funeral.
Then there's the whole fisherman thing. He was passionate enough about this that he wanted to leave Stede to take up fishing, but he didn't learn. He didn't work hard. He didn't treat his employer with respect. He wasn't even really aware of his own incompetence.
As fucked up as it sounds, it made Ricky's comment about Izzy being the brains behind the operation and Stede saying Ed told him Izzy taught him everything he knows sound like canon??? Where is the brilliant pirate Blackbeard, and what is he capable of besides lots of murder?
Because the whole sympathetic not killing trait is gone to. He's just cool with it now for no particular reason.
The fact that Izzy of all people managed to integrate with the crew indicates a remarkable lack social intelligence, regret, and effort, tbh. I mean, it's Izzy. What did Ed do? Help fund a party the crew came up with with treasure the crew earned with their own labor under appalling working conditions under Ed?
In an effort to get Izzy fans cancelled by The Daily Mail, I'll be sending the first wave of these out tomorrow. Get your order in today to be among the first to sport this fine commemorative sticker featuring the nation's sweetheart. £1 or pay-what-you-like, shipping anywhere from the UK.
Goodbye Wigan's rose
May you ever grow in our hearts 🥺🥀❤️🩹
sad stizzy flavour where Ed wants to keep Izzy in his front yard like a dead pet dog - but after the crew has gone and it's just the three of them left on their little island, Stede quietly asks what IZZY would want.
When Ed remains insistent (not because he's a bad guy! Dude's just grieving!) Stede sneaks out in the middle of the night to dig Izzy up and lay him to rest at sea.
Only obviously, Izzy has a Mermaid Moment and comes to life in Stede's arms.
OK, but ignoring the whole weird Stizzy thing for a minute, let’s discuss that little arc with the training montage.
Because of course we see Izzy failing utterly at training Stede, and we see confirmation that Stede is not good at that kind of physical action: we see him unable to throw a punch, unable to hit a target, unable to swing on a rope. There’s no buildup cuts where he gets gradually better at it (as there usually is in training montages) and we never see anything that implies that Izzy helped him get better (not least because there’s no point later on where we SEE him being better). But we do hear Stede say that “his body takes over” when he gets into the midst of action, and he points out that he did indeed defeat Izzy in a duel.
Later, we see Stede defend himself—he punches the guy who attacks him from the wardrobe before Izzy can even get his sword out. He turns and fires the gun in the air before any of the more experienced pirates can move to defend him. He does, in fact, respond quickly and effectively in the heat of battle. Which he has always done—he draws a knife on Izzy the first time they meet. Doug grabs his shoulder and he moves to defend himself.
At no point do we see that Stede’s technical skills have particularly improved—he tries the same moves with Zheng that he did in the first duel with Izzy and he loses to her. He gets his sword stuck in a guy’s stomach. But what we do see, and have seen, consistently through both seasons, is Stede’s ability to survive. He’s not predictable, he’s not technically skilled, and he NEVER learns those skills with any degree of proficiency. But he is very adept at survival. He uses his unpredictability to his advantage and he makes it out alive. Not only that, his intuition and inventiveness help OTHER people to survive.
Stede didn’t win the duel with Izzy on a technicality; he won according to the rules while at the same time ignoring all the rules of dueling (he doesn’t know them!). He doesn’t survive in spite of his lack of technical skills; he survives because of that. And there’s no such thing as surviving on a technicality—you’re either alive or you’re dead, and Stede’s alive.
Which is exactly what Ed says to him when they first meet: “Most of the pirates I know? They’re dead. So you’re doing a lot better than them.”