When Izzy first walked out I was worried that he would be made into a joke that the crew would laugh at

but then he started singing and the dancing began and I realized that he wasn’t meant to be a joke at all. This is the most open and happy we’ve ever seen Izzy and the show treated it that way. Not mocking him but instead celebrating this moment.

When we talk about queer representation it’s usually just focused on queer relationships, but what I love about this episode is it shows other sides of being queer. That moment where Izzy saw Wee John doing his makeup and had a realization that he wanted that too? That is what being queer means to me. The crew singing along and cheering for him? That is what being apart of the queer community means to me.

What i love about this show is that it shows queer joy, not in a sanitized way, but in away that is messy, beautiful, and without any mockery or shame.

dramatic eyes. dramatic lips. drama on the cheeks.

sketch

I need y'all to understand how fucking important it is that their lovemaking song was La Vie En Rose.

Those translated covers you hear on TikTok take their lyrics from a Louis Armstrong cover of the original French version sung by Edith Piaf. The English lyrics are beautiful but there are some things lost in translation, which is why I love that they had Izzy sing the original French version while Stede and Ed are making love.

Edith Piaf's version of the song is all about the intensity of love and finding love after a trying time. Her vocals are incredible and bleed all the different emotions she feels while singing. Izzy starts with the English translation of the song, which goes:

But a closer translation to the original French would be:

"Quand il me prend dans ses bras; When he takes me into his arms/ Il me parle l'a tout bas; He speaks to me softly/ Je vois la vie en rose; And I see life through rose-colored glasses."

Obviously this is fine and dandy, but it's the translation of the original French lyrics used later in the episode that really get me. Izzy sings this:

Which translates to this:

"He speaks words of love to me/ They are every day words/ And they do something to me.

"He has entered into my heart/ A bit of happiness/ That I know the cause of.

"It's only him for me/ And me for him, for life/ He told me, he swore to me, for life."

It's that last verse that the English version just wouldn't be able to capture. The translated version of that verse is about angels and love songs and mentions nothing of a vow to love one another for life.

That's what's so special to me about the French version of the song being used in that moment. Edith Piaf sings as a person who has lived through so much pain and suffering (which she definitely did as a French woman living through World War II) and finally finds comfort and peace in the arms of her beloved.

That is ultimately what Ed and Stede are for one another. Safe harbors, calm waters, peaceful days and nights in each other's presence. They bicker and argue and hurt one another, but they always come back together so easily. Stede was hurt and needed reassurance, needed to prove to himself that he wasn't a whim, needed to feel the security of Ed in his arms. And perhaps they shouldn't have gone all the way that night, but they're both impulsive and obsessed with each other and they needed something.

It's that song that lets me know they're gonna be okay. They're intense and impulsive but they compliment each other. They fit together perfectly, and they find comfort in one another no matter what's happened to them in the past. They need their harbors, their anchors, each other. They'd never leave each other behind. They make each other's lives la vie en rose.

(Edit: fixed a translation error)

Y'all realize that there's more than a day between episodes 5 & 6, right? I get that it's weird that Pete and Lucius apparently hadn't told anyone about their engagement yet, but: 1) Ed's cheeks go from looking like this:

to this:

The bruise around his right orbital has completely disappeared, and the one on his left cheek is almost healed, the scab well on its way to a scar. That kind of healing takes at least a week, but it might be as much as a month. 2)

If this takes place the day after ep 5, they JUST went through the adventure of the Cursed Suit, which involved raiding 2 ships in 1 day. And they're already bored? (and spent the night after all that rearranging furniture?)

and 3)

It would mean that Ed was right about only having to wear the penitence onesie and cat bell for one day, and then the crew was apparently totes ok with not only letting him wander around bell-less, but have gone back to calling him Captain:

Edited to add: Ed's not the only one with dramatically altered scars. Izzy goes from looking like this:

to this:

I'm not saying it's a LOT of time, but it's for sure more than just one day.

As devastating as the finale was, Izzy was so good this season!

So here is my painting of his beautiful look in episode 6 :)

Just gotta give a shout out that Stede’s very first (#1) suggestion about what to do with the guilt loot is to buy clothes, which is totally 100% for the sole benefit of his only-ever-been-in-one-outfit-and-one-outfit-only bf and def not at all about I’M A BIT OF A CLOTHESHORSE Stede and all the outfits he can buy for himself while dressing Ed up in a pretty women shopping montage

If nobody's going to upload all of Izzy's La vie en rose to youtube, then I bloody will

And here's just the French number

Israel "Izzy" Hands showing up on deck serving cunt with this look, tenderly singing La Vie En Rose, then facing down torture with a flippant "whatever this is, it's just gonna turn me on"?! Sir?!?!

Con you fucking King. No one else could do it.

I have digested episode 6 and 7 and taken some time to think and my overall feeling about the episodes is this:

Discomfort. And I think that's the takeaway we're meant to have.

The circumstances under which Ed and Stede for slept together feel off and I feel this is by design.

This wasn't, 'I love you, lets share this as an expression of our love and trust when we are both ready and willing.' It was 'Help me, I just murdered someone and I need to feel anything other than what I feel right now.'

But Ed loves Stede and he knew they were headed here anyway right? A bit more time wouldn't matter and Stede needs him right now so, yeah. Lets do this.

It is very telling that they don't speak. There's silent communication, a desperate grab, a wall slam, a pleading look, a nod and then they fall into it.

Stede didn't speak at all because he knew if he did he would have to let himself feel everything he was avoiding.

Ed didn't speak because he tried and Stede shut it down.

The night was beautiful and I don't doubt they had fun. But it was missing something.

No Gnossiene number 5. Because it was sex. Not lovemaking.

The framing of Ed having his back against a wall, and then the only other scene we see, they are not deepening that passion, but instead we watch as they pause with Ed sitting on the bed watching Stede close a curtain on them both... Oof.

The thing that sticks out to me in Episode 7 is that Ed and Stede are always apart from that point forward. There is a heap of distance between them on the bed. They sit apart at the bar. They moved too quickly, never got fully comfortable with each other and now they've retreated back to their respective comfort levels as they were before they had sex and it's discordant and feels weird, because it's supposed to.

After the euphoria of them finally having sex has worn off, I am afraid I have to agree with Ed.

It was a mistake.

They would both have been better off if they talked about how Stede was feeling, if Stede hadn't shut Ed down when he tried to open a dialogue. I'm not blaming Stede, please understand, there were two consenting parties here and Ed could have shaken his head at Stede just as easily, but he's still bad at communicating his boundaries and knowing what he wants.

The show intentionally gave us:

-Here's Ed learning patience is important when you really want something.

-Here's Ed communicating that to Stede.

-Here's Stede and Ed forgetting that lesson because Stede is in pain.

-Here's a demonstration of why this isn't a good thing.

We wanted a mature relationship for these two and now we must wear the consequences.

Sigh, bring on the 'sure to be devestating' finale.

i think the most important thing abt Ned's death (other then stede 100% inventing walking the plank) is that Ned pointed to how Ed didn't want him to do it, that he only loved him because he wasn't a real pirate.

But Stede did it anyway because for him his goal was being a pirate BEFORE HE EVER MET ED

I think this happens in the fandom a lot where we attribute everything Stede does back to ed which really does take away a lot of Stede's agency i think. Being a pirate is STEDE'S dream. Dueling Izzy and running to meet ed on the beach is STEDE' S dream. He's allowed to want things Ed doesn't, i think the show is stating that pretty explicatly that this is / is going to be a pain point in their relationship.

Ed doesn't want to be a pirate anymore and he sees Stede's want for something he once had as meaning they're incompatable. He doesn't give Stede the chance to compromise. So in a way Ed is doing what Ned said he would, not being interested now that Stede's a real pirate (not a correct read by any means but im thinking of how stede might feel, in that moment, and why his immediate thought is to retreat to people who LOVE that he's a pirate and look up to him.)

Stede knew Ed was starting to get disenfrancised with the pirate life when they met, Ed knew Stede had been doing this pirating thing for, what? Less then a month? Ed promised to teach him pirate stuff in exchange for gentlemanly stuff, but i don't think they were in love just yet, very obviously crushing, but they hadn't built that love between them just yet. They had no idea what this was going to turn into, hell a lot of signs point to Stede being under the impression Ed and Izzy were in a more explicate romantic relationship.

Nether of them knew where they were going in life just yet.

it was, quite frankly, the worst fucking time to try and start a reletionship.

And I think when Stede threw that vilon, after being told that he'd loose Ed's love in exchange for getting wht he always wanted, was a challange. To Ed. He said here i am. Love me as I come or not at all.

and Ed failed that challenge.

something about la vie en rose. anne's "artsy outsider" remark. young izzy singing je ne regrette rien at spanish jackie's. young ed looking at him from across the bar like "that guy. i need him as my first mate"

One thing that I really appreciate about that scene at the end of S2E6 is that before Stede goes in for the kiss, he hesitates for a moment, waiting for Ed to give him the okay. You can see Ed gives a small nod, and it’s only after that that Stede kisses him.

I still think that it probably wasn’t the best idea for them to go so fast with their first time, but I do love that they had that little moment of consent.

ofmd s2e6 spoilers!!

THIS IS WHY WE REWATCH EPISODES PEOPLE!!!! BECAUSE EPISODE 6 OPENS WITH A SHOT OF A LIGHTHOUSE!!!! AND I DIDN'T NOTICE THIS THE FIRST TIME AROUND AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Not just ed SEEING izzy, but also ed making sure IZZY sees him seeing him and approving/supporting. It’s that mutual importance between them.

There’s also a connection between the way izzy looks to ed/ed toasts izzy and in the next episode ed looks to izzy/izzy tells ed to follow his feelings. Both of them still have the need to look to the other to see what the other thinks of them, they need the support but they’re also afraid of the pain that’s been there in the past, and now the other is automatically affirming and supportive of their expressions.

(just my replies to this post, putting it here since it’s kind of a separate thing I want to be able to look at)

@bogeymangrandy I’m sorry - I know it’s prolly bad Tumblr etiquette to address a reply in a whole new post, but this is kind of too big an answer to address in the space a reply offers.

So the weird, shitty unchecked racist stuff isn’t JUST contained to episode 5. In episode 3, Izzy says Ed “was a wild dog, and we dealt with him like one.” It’s to set up the “doggy heaven” line, which is doing some heavy lifting in terms of conveying to Izzy exactly how much Ed trusted and confided in Stede, but referring to a MOC as a dog, especially a wild one, is still fucking gross, and, worse, it’s only part of a pattern of racist sentiments. In episode 6, Izzy tells Ed “I thought you were Roach” - that old “they all look alike to me” chestnut. Thanks, I fucking loathe it.

But episode 5 is particularly packed with troublingly racist bullshit, and carries with it connotations for the wider season.

The most straight-forward is when Stede tells Izzy that Blackbeard “credited you with a lot of his skills,” and then “you taught him everything he knows.” If it’s meant to be read as true, it’s attributing all the talent, skill, and brilliance of a MOC to some white dude. But even if it’s meant to be read as Stede flattering Izzy to get what he wants out of him (which I think it is - the whole thing with the fog in season 1 episode 4 kind of hinges on Ed having knowledge and skills that Izzy does not), it’s still not great because it means Stede thinks stroking some mediocre white guy’s ego is worth more than Ed’s reputation, which means he learned nothing from the tavern scene in season 1 episode 10 where he similarly disparages Ed’s reputation for the gratification of his white compatriots.

Similarly, consider him shouting “those fucking barbarians!” after the mostly POC (and Pete) crew rip his red coat, and compare to “You savages!” in season 1 episode 2 when Stede thinks the indigenous people who have captured him have roasted Wellington and Hornberry on a spit. But at least in season 1 Stede gets rightfully called out for being a racist. Season 2 has yet to push back.

Then, there’s the portrayal of retributive justice (the idea that, for justice to be served, a transgressor has to be punished). We start the episode with Ed in his penitence onesie and cat bell. And there is that whole Biblical connotation of sackcloth as an expression of humility, but it also calls to mind the ill-fitted and low-quality material of prison uniforms, with the cat bell as a low-tech ankle monitor, uncomfortably tight and alerting everyone to his position at all times. I’ve seen his non-pology framed as a corporate “apology” and I do think that’s mostly what they’re going for here, but there’s also an element of the preformative penitence that prisoners are forced to undergo during parole hearings. This is Ed being punished for his Kraken-era transgressions.

Now compare to how Izzy, a white dude, has been offered rehabilitative justice this season - never had to grovel, never had to debase himself, never even had to offer a single word of apology for any of the dire shit he inflicted on the crew in season 1, but was nonetheless given the unconditional support and resources he needed to transform into essentially a completely different person. 

It’s not just the races of the people upon whom these different modes of justice are being implemented that is significant - it’s also the races of the aggrieved parties in how they respond to the “justice” imparted by the retributive model, because we also see two direct, individual applications of retributive justice in the episode; Ed offering Lucius to push him overboard, and Fang describing how he brutalized Ed’s body after Jim knocked him unconscious. With Lucius, we see that he experiences a momentary thrill of vengeance, but almost immediately it flares out, and he’s still just as traumatized as before, and perhaps even more obsessed with Ed. Clearly, for him, a white dude, this primitive, Hamurabian form of justice does not give him closure. With Fang, a MOC, it’s the exact opposite - Ed terrorized him, he beat Ed up, and now they’re sweet.

In isolation, this wouldn’t read as implying that white people are more “civilized” and “evolved” than POC - except all the other POC that Kraken!Ed tormented are also seemingly fine now. Jim and Archie are immediately laughing and joking about torture after the non-pology, and Frenchie is debuting a new fancy cat flag and pointing out that “at least he’s wearing the sack” when Lucius starts freaking out about Blackbeard being back. There’s also a running through-line across several episodes about the supremacy of white, colonial values and civility, but I’ll get back to that in just a moment.

Because now we have to talk about the matter of the curse. Because, again, we’re seeing a break-down across racial lines. Team Curse is Jim, Archie, Olu, Frenchie, Roach, and token white guy Pete (the Swede having abandoned the crew for his new paramore, Buttons having transmogrified, Lucius busy being traumatized elsewhere, and Wee John just MIA). Team “Curses aren’t real” is Izzy and Stede. So this isn’t like season 1 where everyone is just kinda hilariously science illiterate and superstitious (like with the “not a mermaid” conversation) - instead, we’ve got a group of superstitious POC vs. the rational, enlightened White Dudes. And the White Dudes are unequivocally correct. Peanuts ARE a serious allergen (and a legume, not a bean). Yeast is what causes bread to rise, not fairies. Ergo curses AREN’T real, and the crew are being irrational. So when Stede relents at the end and agrees to give up his suit, it’s not him conceding that there is validity to his POC crew’s worldview - it’s a white dude condescending to the poor, simple-minded, uncivilized folk even though he’s for sure in the right. Isn’t that just SO magnanimous of him? Isn’t it awfully white of him?

And given that the White view is the Right view in episode 5, we have to start interrogating the other places where that idea shows up. In episode 1, we hear a white priest bloviating about how "The natural condition of humanity is base and vile. It is the obligation of people of standing, such as yourselves, to elevate the common human rabble through the sacred transaction of matrimony.” Normally (and at the time when I first watched it) I would clock this as CRITICAL of the tendency of predominantly white cultures to be self-congratulatory of how THEIR ceremonies are so much more CIVILIZED than those of the savage  - as though they invented the concepts of commitment and monogamy, and as though those concepts are inherently better than the alternatives. But then we have Ed, a MOC, issuing an objection - not to the specific union, but to the concept of a nice, white wedding in general, followed by a raid that Jim later comments on: “Is it just me or was the wedding thing a bit over the line?”

And, consider, in season 1 episode 3, Jim drops this line on Olu when he points out that Jim killed one of Jackie’s husbands: “We live in a state of nature.” So the “natural condition” is intrinsically tied up with that hyper-violent pirate lifestyle, and if even one of the practitioners thereof is clocking it as “a bit over the line” - does it not follow that the bloviating priest was RIGHT? That the white man sure DOES have that burden to take up, doesn’t he?

Which is exactly what Ricky is proposing in his little speech in episode 6: "It's up to us fine gentlemen to stand up against this modern piracy and stay vigilant". And we KNOW that Ricky is full of shit. We KNOW that he’s backing up his racist agenda with a self-serving, revisionist narrative. But maybe it would be better if he also didn’t, maybe, have a point? I guess what I’m saying is that I really miss the days when a racist got a knife through the hand or their ship burned down and it was something to be celebrated, and that I’m not loving the idea this season that maybe the racists are kind of in the right.

Unpopular Opinions on 2x6!

I was in and out of WJW yesterday, but was it said who (Max or DJenks) initiated the 2x6 rewrite? I know Max is to blame for the truncated episode count and episode length, but the makeover-pressure storyline of the original 2x6 maybe just was not working and they decided to correct?

We don't know exactly what "makeover" entailed, but Ed already found Stede attractive under any circumstance (the hanged and sickly look of 1x4, still trying to kiss him after seeing him in that ugly af wig for most of 1x5, that adventurer outfit in 1x7 that did no favor for his legs, etc.) and Stede was already confident enough to try for sex in 2x5. I'm not sure what would have been the point of a Stede makeover, whether it was to make him more "manly" or more "fancy" or more "pretty and gnc" or more whatever was going to be used. The thing that was holding Ed back was wanting to be careful and fear of being hurt again; a Stede makeover wouldn't have helped that, and the crew intervening would have done more harm than good. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Really, the only thing Ed/Stede-wise I'm missing in 2x6 is some degree of sexual tension and a slow dance, dammit. Oh, and really more segue scene in going from on deck, to below deck, to on deck with Ned Low. That was weird.

But, here's the thing: Stede is underdeveloped in S2 compared to Ed. I wrote this thing between the releases of 2x7 and 2x8, and this is the biggest failure that Max gave OFMD in this time truncation. (And the biggest failure from DJenks + company in response is spending so much of the premium screen time on Izzy instead of killing him off early, but I digress...)

This is what I ended that post on, and I stand by it:

I think it should be noted that as of the end of 2x7, Stede is the only crew member who hasn't had mental reflection and/or therapy in Season 2. He realized Mary, Alma, and Louis didn't need him and he was in love with Ed in 1x10, but the voice calling him a child with a toy, an idiot, weak, and ugly is still there.

This is why we need an S3!!!

So, on the lost makeover scene, Stede is the only character that has explicitly had body image issues (from what I remember...), so I really could do without a makeover scene, especially with Stede getting dumped the next episode just a few hours after sleeping with Ed the first time. If Ed had given given him cute reassurances that no makeover was necessary, the dumping would have been even worse! If the crew had pressured the sex in any way, that dumping would have been EXTRA even worse!

I think the makeover/cupid stuff was best left out of canon. I'm sure it would work in a fanfic, but in the placement of the canon story, I don't think it belonged. We REALLY needed more time between "take it slow" and The Banginging (just like we needed more time in the cocaptains era), but 8 episodes, I enjoy the beat breakdowns they chose in the time they were allotted,

Getting more into unpopular opinion territory: I don't care in the slightest that polycule scenes were cut since that storyline is so incredibly uninteresting to me; I don't mind it, but I just don't miss it when it's not around. We don't know who made the call on cutting the polycule scene(s), but IMO, gay Die Hard with Lupete was way better than anything the polycule could have done. And moving the Lupete wedding to the end made the season end on a higher and more hopeful note.