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pirate livebloggin
109
stede and ed at the acacdemy in their separate twin beds (if they were a 50s sitcom). they are not married yet. stede has the upper bunk bed -- this whole thing's been about class for edward; and for stede,his blithe flirtation with edward that makes him completely unreachable. ed wants to love this man but he can't because of class getting in the way (stede's weird manners make ed ever more sure that he's the lower man in their regency romance).
that was weirdly marxist, sorry
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it's really, really fucking funny when "perfect day" starts playing, and the first scene is ed absolutely crushed and someone who we're entirely rooting for as one of our Best Protagonists having the worst feelings ever
and then it cuts to izzy, whose idea of a ruined day is the day when a whole bunch of people tell him he's a stupid little man and disrespect his authority
and then back to ed
these are such disparate actions that 1 is the real emotional state of the song's montage -- "heartbroken" -- with comedy montage scene izzy "i'm a worm nobody likes me :(" -- the convention set up next is to show ed being heartbroken again. but it doesn't. we don't even get a cut back to ed; ed shows up in the middle of the izzy comedy beat and breaks it by walking across stage going :(((((((( very, very loudly. which in this metaphor here is the equivalent of turning up "perfect day (tragic like my life remix)" so loud your mom can't ignore it when she passes by your room
it's so perfectly absurd to break the convention like that and cut the first joke into the second one. ouroboros of emoting, comedy breaking comedy
//
besides stede going back to his "old life" at the end of 1x09, ed also goes back to *his* old life, not actually getting to escape after all. part of his declaration to stede on the beach was "i love you romantically" but part of it also was "this is finally my chance to change. and stede will continue helping me by escaping [with] me at the same time as i do, knowing he's also electrically in love with them (= the both of them, as a couple)"
it doesn't only hurt ed that stede returned home in a their-relationship way
it was also that this avenue of his LIFE closed abruptly and permanently and left him adrift and alone again as he has been as we enter into ed 1x04
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110
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mary's double talk where her voiceover diary says one thing and her lived experience that we see on screen where she's actually like FUCK THIS FUCKING GUY instead of the milder things she says in the voiceover --
-- it's the inverse of stede's "p-p-please, don't hurt me, nigel said, having soiled himself" fantasies about himself
of course his s2 opening fantasy is "i'm a competent man and also a beardy man, whih means a rogue and villain and is inadvertenly giving a lesson on stage kid description of middle-class villany that they wrote as their graduate thesis for some reason
that's the role that stede believes masculinity is in society
and mary's fucking livid about it. she is livid about stede in her life, relationship-ly, certainly; and she's also livid about stede being here and fucking up her newly liberated (edwardian feminist clothed) feminist life. this fucking feudal tool.
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stede's return home also forces mary to be silent at the dinner table (scene "treasure hunting with blackbeard, i discovered... THIS! [orange made of shit])"
there's a reason why it's mary hiding behind the newspaper at that end of the table and throwing it down
is where mary begins openly reject stede's bullshit, stede himself and how he treated her (relationship-ly) PLUS what it means for stede to feel able to come into her house and act a certain way, after she had finally achieved what she wanted from life*because* he was away
BOY that second paragraph got away from me there. i was paraphrasing what 109 literally textually said but pretending that it was Deep and Insightful rather instead of just. the text. OH WELL
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god 1x10 edizzy is right up there with 2x01 edizzy, for me, in terms of insane power dynamics. obviously there's the choking and the toe thing, but the preceding terrified lying about how ed is just fine
izzy trying to withstand edward's mental illness, but whether he tells the crew not to be afraid (in the form of covering for ed in 1x09) or not ("how you doing, izzy?") depends on whether it's s1 or s2.
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god i love jim/olu happening in the middle of 1x10 from out of nowhere. why is jim there suddenly? uh, i guess we'll consider that scene where they and jackie drank with each other to be closure on the jim's "revenge ruins you" arc, and so jim can just fast travel back. true love overcomes all.
//
... which, honestly. doesn't this argue that ed/stede being handled weirdly and stupidly in s2 IS ACTIONALLY IN LINE with how we just decide it's time for romance to show up in 1x10. don't say they didn't warn you, whatever whatever.
[eta, the morning: but i want to make very clear that jim/olu was the lovely culmination of a very definite arc where the preceding text did the work toward making it happen. they wrote that.]
but i'm pretty sad about how weird and incomplete s2 ed/stede was, too, so please don't think i'm dismissing my sorrow at s2 ed/stede's Getting Together (pirate post-breakup remix) got depicted
//
jeffery fettering plays the same role as "stede fanboy in the pub" as steak knife does in 2x07. why does jeffrey get to live vs steak knife has to die, i think it's bury your gays you guys, let's start wank for *that* vaguely purity culture type reason reason instead of any other ones.
(complain about izzy learning to live his best most fabulous life and giving a speech about how the most important thing is knowing you're part of a community, right before he gets killed, and how dissonant *that* is. it's really not the trope "bury your gays," but it is an (unintentionally?) shitty thing to do to me, personally, considering all the comfort i was getting from this show for helping me be a little gayer)
((SPECTIAL NOTE FROM UNCLE STAN: THIS IS IN NO WAY TRUE! YOU ARE MAD BECAUSE THIS THING THAT HAS HAPPENED HAPPENED TO YOUR FAVORITE CHERACTER, YOUR BOSOM FRIEND. IT FUCKING SUCKS AND YOU THOUGHT THE SHOW WASN'T GOINT TO DO THIS BECAUSE HE WAS ~a~ ~COMING~ ~OUT~ ~GAY~ BUT THAT'S ON YOU, THE SHOW WASN'T AS GOOD AS YOU THOUGHT WHEN YOU WATCHED IT WITH ROSE COLORED GLASSES/ENCHANTMENT IN 2022 BECAUSE YOU DON'T OFTEN SEE THINGS THAT ARE OKAY WITH YOU EXISTING AS YOURSELF))
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"is he as bloodthirsty as everyone says?"
when stede answers "lol not really" he's made a social gaffe, trying to connect with jeffery and The Lads
and then, again, there's this parallel meaning in the secret relationship he's having in his head with ed, "he is so darling."
he is so important to me, and it's important to me that people understand that he's not Like That. (cf the cut from "i don't know, i'm a life is cheap kind of guy" right to stede's "that's not true.") i have to say it even if only i am listening to what i'm saying. ...actually wait, wtf, what *am* i saying? jfc i better ask mary. i'm autistic stede and i approve this message(TM)
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izzy does a stuttering grin (that he can't quite force out) on "there he is. (similar one at "blackbeard is himself again")
same as he does a stuttering cry (that he can't let himself force out) on "to follow my.. fffffucking orders!"
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frenchie shouting "come on eddie!" right after "Edward better watch his fucking step" is even more delightful than the crew shouting "Edward! Edward!" because "Eddie" is that fucking degree more intimate: making up nicknames for people who haven't told you that X is their nickname
(this has nothing to do with izzy calling ed "eddie" as he did back in the day in s2; this is a general observation about nicknamification)
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... crew @ ed, where izzy finds the crew dangerous "hey eddie! sing us another song!" vs. "i have one more song!" @ crew
is this anything
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sorry i can't get over NN's "i die inside every time i think about externalized homophobia, wtf"
(i say, having gotten to the line "namby pamby piiiining for your boyyyyfriend")
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mary is going to stab him "in his earhole." as gertrude did to her husband so gertrude could sleep with her
it's a Doug Thing, you wouldn't understand
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izzy shouting "gentlemen! let's make this special!" is an echo of imaginary nigel's "whwhwhat can i do? don't kill me" except izzy is insanely (literally insanely; who thinks edward has ideas that are this good?) executing blackbeard's ideas
btw what was the perception of what happened the morning after The Toe Thing for the crew? sure they threw away everything in the ship, whatever, but the fact that izzy is able to say "come on, talent show! my god, that sounds fun, let's do it!" and have the crew believe him seems to suggest to them that he's fallen in line with ed on ed being New Ed
there's another weird detail that the crew apparently don't question either: edward didn't appear all day, after he'd finally come out of his room to start doing art therapy with everybody. izzy had them clean ship while edward somewhere out of sight in his awful ("awful" like "stomach churning") black makeup doing other machinations. this suggests it makes sense to everyone that ed's not up with them as they prepare for the show. do they think he's feeling poorly again? are they giving the poor man some alone time to process that they think he needs? *they* may suddenly be confident that edward's not scary, the same day izzy becomes absolute certain that he is
in any case izzy, the only one on deck, is in the difficult position of having to mediate between ed and the crew while lying about how okay edward is again
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s1 izzy is such a little rat
//
there's BOINK type sound effects when lucius gets thrown into the sea and his shoe SPROINGS behind him
and then the music track just cuts to "avalanche" where it turns out ed's had an entire mental breakdown
it's, again, a pretty great juxtaposition. kind of comedic, even
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1x09 ed describes making some poor bloke eating his own toe "as a laugh"
this is very decidedly not a laugh in 1x10
so: is ed breeching the limits of "a laugh" here in this action, or is "as a laugh" a phrase like "technically, the fire killed them" / "no it's about somebody else" in the ed vocabulary of distancing himself from terribleness that comes with terrible, overwhelming emotion
which is also to ask: is this some torture that does on the regular, or is this special intimate torture for his iz?
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"don't forget to chew" is dealt (as a line, as a remark to izzy) with the most exquisite condescension
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it's a great cut from izzy in ecstatic agony to mary in very gently sleepy indifference
SOMEDAY izzy will achieve this. like 2x08, i bet, that's a great time for s2 edward's wife–izzy to achieve the victorious state that s1 stede's wife did!!!!
(HA HA. OKAY)
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pete raising his hand to ask izzy a question ("where's lucius?"): he is the most deferential human on earth. he has fantasies of SERVING blackbeard, not being him. he his power fantasy was BEING AROUND ANOTHER GUY
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i will never, never be over the shot where ed leans forward and we see his blacked-out face for the first time. not chilling to me personally; just the firm full stop of "that was edward. this new shadow figure is new edward"
(and then of course the comedy beat of jim: the fuck's wrong with your face?"
not "why did you make yourself up like this"
rather "why are you grody"
"did you make yourself grody, you idiot clown")
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one time i saw someone say "yeah i read it the first time as edward having a psychotic break, the timewhen he said 'i am the kraken' and absolutely destroyed himself physically; but then i realized it was supposed to be him having an extreme emotional reaction. on the second viewing this became obvious"
and my thought these days is: okay, but it can be both.
his psychosis would include not the delusion "he literally believes he is the kraken" or "the kraken is telling him what to do" as the poster above read as having happened (i'm inferring. the detailsof the break were underdescribed in the post)
instead, the way edward is so suddenly divorced from reality would include
instead the psychosis would include -- as above, still of the psychotic depression variety -- some delusion like, say, absolute surety that he's the worst person in the world who not only is unlovable but deserves no love
it fits the trope / expected story beats "the good guy becomes a villain and then gets a redemption arc" but also is thematic and a great piece of text in its own way, to make *that* part of ed's illness which comes on so suddenly. (blah blah izzy was meanies to him oh wait izzy's been meanies to him a ton on screen in s1 and ed doesn't do this shit, whatever whatever.)
as we know, ed's emotions and his ptsd hit him *hard*; he's primed to suddenly become unmooring from who he was before is real because it hurts that bad
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"yeah, i think we'll all be great" (--stede to doug after doug asks "everything in town's ready to go. Are you sure you're gonna be all right?") -- rhys darby line delivery here evokes feeling of listening to friends on the spectrum speak. no good for me to try pinning down how, i don't think (me: not on the spectrum; different brainweird). just pings me as the same kind of slightly unexpected, one step left of average communication.
in any case it's a lovely moment of him reassuring the people with whom he has a new understanding of what love is (mary, doug). it's such a stede moment, the gentle but heartfelt optimism; here it is finally put to 100% non-comedic use. (for the other end of this spectrum, see: stede getting stabbed and immediately asking "did you mean to do that?")
... i mean we do cut to the guys explicitly telling us they're going to drop a piano on stede as part of this gentle and loving plan; as always, ofmd stays silly ;P
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"farewell, bonnet's playthings... on to the next" reminds me horribly of "i have one more song!" for some reason here. something about edward declaring out loud that he's a villain-y villain forever, vs the climax of izzy's arc about being in love with the crew; but then the future proves you horribly wrong
the next beat in ed's story, where it's structered as good guy -> villain -> redemption
vs. the beats in izzy's story, villain -> redemption -> dying tragically
you'll notice how i'm not even wanking here about how we're missing a lot of the details / strong ideas in several of these story beats
namely i'm not wanking about "ed's 'redemption' is just magically bestowed on him rather than being a journey, as the word 'redeption' in this literary context demands" and "izzy's tragic death is actually just dying and it's missing the 'tragic'"
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#fuckin 2x08, i tag this thought again. i can't look at meta that includes 2x08 without tagging it as 2x08. i don't want to encounter it in the wild. one thing we did in the jim moriarty... canyon... in our corner of the sherlock fandom was tag the worst and most upsetting jim scene there was, #asylum scene, because it hurt most of us crazies so bad. i know i can't request people to tag 2x08 like that, but fuck if it doesn't hurt me the same way as that asshole asylum scene did. it's a completely different fandom social situation (and also not 2014, which was peak tagging triggers upon request). it'll just float across my dashboard now and again.
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201
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... sorry, just.
"i never made you leave him. you did that yourself."
the psychosexual energy of it. the way that we didn't get to see it in season 2; 2x05 was incredible, showstopping, etc, but it was a completely different stede/izzy dynamic
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i so wish izzy had gone to stede to beseech him to help him get ed back in his right mind
that was such a good fanon trope
//
2x01 izzy being dead on screen whimpering "twaaaaat" -- a pretty funny beat -- turns actually mean, given the repeat of the 2x01 scene in 2x08.
1, "stede and ed reuniting in a True Love kind of fashion" turns out, in the repeat, not to be particularly earned in reality; they've not really untangled a lot of knots that the 2x01 anxious fantasy suggested were on stede's mind
2, izzy's death is even less meaningless in reality than in stede's imagination.
narrative in imaginary version of sequence: stede reunites with ed in a fantastic sequence of true love -> stede kills izzy -> izzy is bitter in his victory (twaaaaat) -> stede reunites with ed as a hero
stede's imaginary great thing comes true (reunites with ed) but his old fantasy of izzy dying also comes true? like, what.
(i know i know the thing that's changed is that izzy's death elicts the reaction in stede not "righteous triumph" as in 2x01 but "extreme sorrow in the face of this cruel tragedy," whatever, i don't care)
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so many voiceovers are just fucking lies and it's really funny. "we've really come into our own, as a team," stede says, in his message in a bottle to ed. we don't get to hear his voiceover where he says "nigel died as he soiled himself" to narrate 1x01; that turned into a carefully constructed story between him and lucius that we didn't get to hear until 1x09 when chauncy read it out loud; we do understand that stede tells himself stories in order to keep afloat, a lot of the time.
and yet, i still believe izzy was being sincere in his v/o starting 1x06. he doesn't have the guile to be double-talking in 1x06. he is too earnest, evil bitter heart on his sleeve
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sorry. sorry. the 2x01 wedding is so bleeding cool
(bleeding: with additional denotation of bloodshed)
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watching fang "am i crushing you?" -- the crew here is being calm and collected and queer and supporting their family together like that: i grow weak in the heart, jealous. longing.
this is a very drunk watch-thru, i stress. also the love is important.
//
finally halfway throuh 2x01 (13 min) stede's voiceover becomes truthful. (as he speaks to ed's picture instead of just in his head. is that something?)
(further incitement to think about this: stede in 1x10 "how was your day... ed?" to the orange)
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and then i fell asleep. this was actually a great saturday night, i loved this