ed genuinely met stede when he looked possibly his worst physical state of his entire life and was like oooohhh baby you could wreck me. something so powerful about that.
Hm. Can we assume that part of why Ed was so extra noodley and uncomfortable and on edge during the treasure hunt… He doesn’t spend much time on land?
He has the sea-est legs of sea legs, and the long trek meant he was basically a bit land-sick and likely putting extra strain on his knee etc?
Added to which, the abundance of insect and animal life was clearly not his usual fare either. As there is a distinct lack of snakes for example on ships normally. XD
But after he has a little sit, and rests his knee/legs, and has a snack and bumps his bloodsugar back up, and flirts with his crush a minute, and gets complimented, then he’s feeling much less shitty, and is much more able to take lucius’s words well and stop being a bitch and play along, etc.
absolutely love everyone who acknowledges ed’s knee! it really means so much!!!!! i’m sure this was posted here somewhere but it makes me so :)
Looking through the comments:
1. Many of us did not notice, It blended in well enough to the general strappiness of the outfit. But I think that actually works well, because like for an in-universe explanation, you wouldn’t necessarily want it to be obvious where your weak point was if you had one. So unnecessary strappiness can potentially disguise visible mobility aid
2. Seems to be also another reference to a mad Max outfit, but like, Even if they chose initially to include it because of this aesthetic they were going for there, that doesn’t like mean it can’t have an in-universe explanation either.
3. Doesn’t wear all the time, but it is part of his like “standard combat-ready uniform”, combat being you know when he’s most likely to do something acrobatic, like swinging/jumping down onto a deck. A move that would probably be highly inadvisable if you’ve got Some flavor of long-term knee injury.
Also though, I haven’t rewatched, but it makes me think of that first moment he swings down and the revenge crew applaud him? And it’s clearly like supposed to be noticeable that what he did wasn’t that impressive but they’re still applauding? Specifically his landing is a tiny bit rough. He didn’t actually like swing that far or land that gracefully.
Which makes sense also if he’s got some reduction in mobility now that he is older and has been doing this ridiculous stuff for years, through many injuries.
What kind of crazy stunts was he pulling 10-15 years before our story begins????? XD
the fact that episode 5 ended with the moonlight scene that david jenkins described as stede fully and completely seducing edward without realizing it while ed was fully aware what was happening and episode 6 opened with the “stab me. run me through” scene is so funny like ed was one hundred percent coming on to him there. just look at the way he showed off his crop top when he said “stab me.” the moonlight scene happened and ed was really like head over heels and his response was to say Please Stab Me
In this essay I will … add to excellent discussion about the companion structures and themes of Episodes 07 and 08.
First, this is inspired by @bookshelfdreamsand@mikimeiko and dedicated to @speckled-jim (and a few other folks, you know who you are, who also like to scream about Izzy the Ratbastard).
As background, please consider this post (Mikimeiko) about Edward and Stede’s fear of losing each other and then follow up with this post (bookshelfdreams) about the themes of loss and abandonment in Episode 07 and 08. This is an excellent addition about Calico Jack’s role in the narrative and between the two of them you will be well-prepared to consider the following:
I will submit to all of you that Izzy Hands and his terrible life choices are the glue holding these companion episodes together, because Izzy planned this situationandhe used his deeply personal knowledge and understanding of Edward to instigate the breakup.
The full arc of these episodes is about loss, abandonment … and betrayal.
Izzy Hands is once again making everything awful and Making It Weird Forever (thanks @knowlesian). Ready to suffer? :D
Proceed past the cut.
Full Disclosure: This is the top-level summary or I’d be here all night.
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07 - This is Happening
A brief summary of the situation between Ed and Stede: they are still deciding whether or not to accept each other and what that means during the treasure hunt. We get the lovely improvisational restaurant conversation, Edward does his ‘please touch my beard’ flirting thing, and then – oh no! The map burns and is ruined!
Lucius helpfully clues in Ed to the fact that Stede has set up this very Stede-directed adventure for him. Edward has heart eyes 100% of the time because this is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever tried to do (while being a lovable pure idiot about it). God, Stede is the most cinnamon of rolls. And Edward makes an effort to be sweet in return (Lucius reinforces this; it’s so fucking brilliant that Edward still threatens to stab him in the ‘fuckin face).
Did you notice that it’s an Izzy-style threat? A bit softer and gentler, but still with admirable cursing and pitch-perfect comedic timing.
Which brings us to Izzy.
Izzy is conspicuous by his absence. Where would Edward go if Edward left? Back to Izzy and the ‘next adventure!’ And it wouldn’t much look like this very impractical treasure hunt with a petrified orange as the prize.
If we compare the prizes Izzy recently took: one of Stede’s hostages, a Spanish warship, and The Revenge, itself. All very respectable (except Stede; Izzy put him back!)
Izzy, after trying to ‘put Stede back’ post-duel scene: None of this is going how I planned. I hate my entire life and my best friend just banished me from the ship. What is a first mate going to do without a captain to serve?
“This is Happening” is where we see Edward and Stede begin to recognize their relationship while Izzy experiences the full-on terror of his identity being stripped away. Read: loss and abandonment. Izzy is experiencing both of these in the background, and it’s this terror of losing Edward and of contemplating a future without that relationship that prompts him to FUCKING CALL UP CHAUNCEY FUCKING BADMINTON.
Izzy. What the fuck.
08 - We Gull Way Back
Now for a quick linguistic aside on the episode title that you need to understand before we proceed further. “We Gull Way Back” is directly referencing three things:
1. “We Go Way Back” = Calico Jack is Edward’s old friend, buddy, and ex-lover.
2. “Gull” = the Death of Karl and Buttons’s fabulous ability to hex Calico Jack. It’s a weird reverse ex(orcism). Yes this is a pun. Shoot me.
3. “Gull” = an archaic term for “to trick, to subvert, or to fool.” This last theme is where Izzy Hands comes in and it’s a direct title reference to his role in this episode and in setting up the entire circumstances of this arc without being present on-screen. Because David Jenkins is brilliant.
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You may be wondering: Ferus, if Izzy doesn’t show up in this episode, what are you going to analyze?
Ready to be fucked up? Because this has been fucking me up all day. Brace yourselves. Recall all the previously cited meta about Calico Jack and the role he plays in questioning Stede’s identity and making Edward think Stede couldn’t handle the old days?
Izzy knew:
All of Edward’s history
What Edward’s reaction would be to seeing this old friend and ex-lover
What Calico Jack would think of Stede
What old hobbies Jack and Blackbeard used to share
The story of Blind Man’s Cove, that Jack once saved his life there, and that it had no escape routes
That neither Stede nor the rest of the crew would suspect this trap (because none of them know Edward and their history as Blackbeard as well as he does)
That this trap was calibrated specifically and personally to trick Edward into being the one who took Stede to a place where the English could catch and execute him
It’s fucking me up so bad, fam.
It’s not just a betrayal, it’s probably one of the most intimately personal and subtle betrayals I’ve seen depicted on screen.
What the FUCK, Izzy. No shit Edward was right to punch you right in your fucking face!
And it’s the first time we really see Edward lose his temper with Izzy, by the way. Foreshadowing the descent into The Kraken we get in Episode 10.
Izzy set up the whole fucking thing and he’s paying the price.
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Additional Disclaimer: If you’d like very specific dialogue and scene examples of how all of the above is working, my ask box is always open for screaming about Izzy Hands. My word is not definitive in any way, shape, or form. If you also like to scream about Izzy Hands please know that I am very friendly and open to being challenged, contradicted, dismantled, or otherwise appropriated with or without credit and/or reference. I love OFMD a totally normal amount.
There’s a post going around talking about how much people appreciated Blackbeard’s leg brace as a mobility aid in a character like him and it got me wondering how many people watching the show are familiar with Mad Max beyond the most recent installment. I know that there is a general awareness that Blackbeard’s outfit is an homage to Mad Max but like…is everyone APPRECIATING what a brilliant choice it is on multiple levels???
Mad Max’s Road Warrior look is an iconic bit of 80s action movie nostalgia. It comes from the second Mad Max movie and is, in and of itself, a brilliant piece of visual storytelling (a hallmark of Mad Max movies as a whole) because it sums up Max as he is at the end of the first movie: a man in mourning whose physical and mental trauma is made explicitly visual by the knee brace that alludes to the climactic showdown of the first movie.
However, because the broad cultural understanding of any character will always sand off the details of that character, the popular read on Max is that he’s a cool action hero. So, Blackbeard’s clothes are pretty instantly recognizable and immediately give the viewer, at the very least, an idea that Blackbeard is supposed to be an ass-kicking bad-ass. So far so good - we’re tapping into the persona that Ed wants to present as Blackbeard.
What people tend to forget is that Mad Max is pretty explicitly a series of stories about a man who does NOT want the role he’s been given in the story. Max is not mad-as-in-angry, he’s mad-as-in-crazy (there’s a whole other conversation to be had about how those movies handle mental health but that’s another kettle of fish). Trauma breaks Max and the rage-fueled revenge bender of the first movie leaves him at his lowest point, providing no catharsis. It actively makes him worse in every way and the movies never suggest otherwise. He doesn’t even begin to heal or move past that until arguably the third movie, but more realistically the fourth. Throughout all four movies, Max is defined as a character who is trapped in the role thrust upon him and largely cannot form close connections with the people around him because of that. He is not a person, he is violence personified and he hates it.
The Mad Max movies have always been, at their core, about masculinity and its relationship to violence and heroism. Part of the reason Max is read so incorrectly in pop culture is that the movies do have a lot of blood and violence and Max dishes out his fair share. These are the parts that stick in the mind long after the movie is over. The problem is that every other moment in the movies makes it clear that doing these things is harmful to Max. After the first movie he goes out of his way to avoid violent confrontation. In fact, he even actively avoids helping people who are presented as “good” because he knows that the weight of their problems will fall solely on him, without regard for what it does to him.
Ed’s entire arc in OFMD is about his relationship to his own masculinity and his relationship to violence, the latter being something that is explicitly performative for him. He embodies a persona of toxic hyper-masculinity but claims that he’s never killed anyone since killing his father. He’s willing to utilize violence but it’s clear that he doesn’t enjoy it the way people’s mythologized conception of Blackbeard would make it seem like he should. He sheds some blood, lets other people do the killing and no one notices the slight of hand involved there - the fuckery, if you will - because he’s so good at presenting himself as the kind of man they want him to be.
Not for nothing, Mad Max is also a series of movies that is very interested in gender, sexuality, and queerness. Not necessarily always in a positive way, but certainly it is a central theme through all of the movies, because sexuality is inextricably tied up in white, Western views of masculinity. I’ve long felt - and I think the text does support this, albeit perhaps more through accident than intention - that one way to read the original Mad Max is as a movie about a man struggling to accept that he may not be straight. I personally read Max as bisexual but that’s a whole other post to make.
All this to say: I don’t think Blackbeard’s Mad Max look is just a funny gag and the visible mobility aid is just one part of a broader context that it’s working in. It’s an incredibly astute allusion to another piece of media that has grappled with the central themes of Ed’s character and provides us with a ready-made visual to signal exactly what we need to know about Ed as a person.
i don’t think anything has ever been more attractive than the “no im blackbeard…. shh” and the wink after “i never left”
The softness of his eyes when he whispered that ‘Shhh’ like it was a secret between them??? OMG, it is a true mistery how Stede did not collapse then and there, let alone how he didn’t know he was gay / in love until later on.
