OFMD, again
Oct. 10th, 2023 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitAfter rewatching S2E01-03, I have some more thoughts,
1) Erratum: in my earlier reaction post, I misremembered what Lucius says about his experiences after being thrown overboard. He actually says "I passed from ship to ship" rather than "I was passed from ship to ship." I think the implications of sexual abuse are still there in what he says, but less directly so than if he had said "was passed."
2) It occurs to me that the triggering factor in the three major stages of Ed's post-Stede emotional collapse is not Stede, but Izzy.
Back in S1, after Ed returns to the Revenge without Stede, he's an absolute emotional wreck. Which he expresses by crying, moping, writing bad song lyrics, etc. And then, after Lucius's little "you can start over" pep talk, he does in fact try to start over. He comes on deck, he inflicts his song on an audience, and he is gentle and encouraging to everyone. He wants to hold a talent show! He wants everyone to call him Edward!
And then Izzy reacts with disgust. With, in fact, rejection. Blackbeard was my captain, Izzy says, and you're not Blackbeard anymore. And it's only now, with the possibility of losing Izzy as well as Stede, that Ed transforms from someone grieving into someone who's lost his fucking marbles. It's now that Ed becomes violent towards Izzy and his crew, in ways that as far as we know are unprecedented.
So, moving on to S2, we see Ed violent and cruel and still secretly grieving even as he torments everyone around him. Then he shoots Izzy, and (while I'm not convinced he believes that Izzy's really dead, because Frenchie is a bad liar for a con man) we get the next stage of his collapse: he decides to die. He cleans up, cheers up, and goes to get Izzy to kill him, since he can't quite seem to do it himself.
And Izzy refuses. Izzy laughs at him and calls him a coward. So Ed leaves him with the gun and the obvious implication of that, the unspoken almost-order, and he hears the gunshot before he's even back on deck. Izzy's dead (as far as Ed knows). Izzy killed himself because Ed wanted him to. Ed's alone now, in every real sense. There's no one left that he cares about.
And this is when he decides not only to die, but to take everyone on the Revenge with him.
It's interesting, in light of this, to see Stede given all the blame both by characters on the show (Stede himself, Lucius) and by a lot of the fandom. Ultimately, of course, Ed's behavior is his own responsibility and his own fault. But Stede leaving him isn't even the only inciting factor that brings out his rage. It takes Izzy's rejection, as well as Stede's, to break Ed entirely. (ETA: Izzy knows it. "We caused this," he says to Stede.)
3) Before S2 I had thought that my interpretation that Ed loves Izzy too, in some painful, complicated, unfulfilled way, might have been an over-reading of canon. But it looks like, if anything, I imagined less than the canon now implies. Izzy is the great might-have-been of Ed's life. That love, if it had ever become an expressed and acknowledged love, would have been bad for both of them, but it would have been powerful. It is powerful, even in its stunted, sad, can't-quite-say-it way.
I'm no longer sure that Izzy leaving would be the best thing for Ed. (Still probably would be the best thing for Izzy, in the same way the amputation was.) But I'm not sure how they're going to get out of this tangle, either.
4) There are suggestions of Izzy/Fang in these episodes, such as Fang crying for Izzy, and Fang physically supporting Izzy during the escape. I'd be happy for that to develop--I can see it more as a possibility now than in S1--but I hope it doesn't become "the solution" to the emotional mess. The history's too long and the emotions too deep and bitter for another relationship to fix everything. For either Izzy or Ed.
5) Going back to the Ed & Izzy "closure" scene for a moment, I have to mention the erotic implications of Ed's dream that Izzy kills him. "Good for you," Izzy says, and Ed responds "It was good for me." Death is the only consummation of their love that either of them can, at least at this point, imagine. A final consummation, and perhaps a first and only.
It's so sad.
7) Moving on from Ed/Izzy: rewatching made me feel even more strongly that the whole "Ed on the island" sequence is unnecessary. It doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, anything we haven't learned more compellingly in other scenes. I guess it tells Ed some things he didn't already know, but if that's what it was for I wish it had gone further, pushed harder. As it is, it feels a lot like they just needed to keep Ed in the story despite his coma, and to ease into the reunion. It does make sense that they needed to bypass Ed's conscious resistance to seeing Stede again, which would probably have been fierce, but, again, I think it could have been done better.
8) I don't object to the merman sequence. Is it silly wish-fulfillment? Yes, but it's Ed's silly wish-fulfillment, and we know that Ed deeply longs for softness and silliness and romance, and also for someone to catch him as he sinks into darkness. It also revisits Ed's death fantasy way back in S01E03 (note the symmetry), when Ed says he thought he'd die in a cool way like being massaged to death by mermaids. Of course now he'd picture sexy!merman!Stede instead. A merman who's come to save him rather than kill him, and to draw him up into the light and the air.
9) Can't wait to see what's going to happen now that Ed's conscious. Even though I think it's going to hurt.
10) This one's non-spoilery, so above the cut. One of the things I love about writing OFMD fic is how the show's storytelling choices make it possible to play with language. OFMD is, shall we say, historically unmoored, so modern expressions can coexist with period ones. (I like to make the language more archaic even than is historically justified--because I know 16th and 17th century English better than I know 18th century--but it's so fun to be able to play around without worries over accuracy.) Same with language varieties. The actors are using their own accents, improvising in their own English dialects with they improvise, so I get to use British and American and Irish and occasional little bits of New Zealand and Australian Englishes as I please! As sounds good to me! A lot of these characters have been all over the world, picked up expressions from everywhere, so why not? It's like the writing version of "Yes, and" in improv, and it's delightful.
under the cut due to big honking spoiilers
.1) Erratum: in my earlier reaction post, I misremembered what Lucius says about his experiences after being thrown overboard. He actually says "I passed from ship to ship" rather than "I was passed from ship to ship." I think the implications of sexual abuse are still there in what he says, but less directly so than if he had said "was passed."
2) It occurs to me that the triggering factor in the three major stages of Ed's post-Stede emotional collapse is not Stede, but Izzy.
Back in S1, after Ed returns to the Revenge without Stede, he's an absolute emotional wreck. Which he expresses by crying, moping, writing bad song lyrics, etc. And then, after Lucius's little "you can start over" pep talk, he does in fact try to start over. He comes on deck, he inflicts his song on an audience, and he is gentle and encouraging to everyone. He wants to hold a talent show! He wants everyone to call him Edward!
And then Izzy reacts with disgust. With, in fact, rejection. Blackbeard was my captain, Izzy says, and you're not Blackbeard anymore. And it's only now, with the possibility of losing Izzy as well as Stede, that Ed transforms from someone grieving into someone who's lost his fucking marbles. It's now that Ed becomes violent towards Izzy and his crew, in ways that as far as we know are unprecedented.
So, moving on to S2, we see Ed violent and cruel and still secretly grieving even as he torments everyone around him. Then he shoots Izzy, and (while I'm not convinced he believes that Izzy's really dead, because Frenchie is a bad liar for a con man) we get the next stage of his collapse: he decides to die. He cleans up, cheers up, and goes to get Izzy to kill him, since he can't quite seem to do it himself.
And Izzy refuses. Izzy laughs at him and calls him a coward. So Ed leaves him with the gun and the obvious implication of that, the unspoken almost-order, and he hears the gunshot before he's even back on deck. Izzy's dead (as far as Ed knows). Izzy killed himself because Ed wanted him to. Ed's alone now, in every real sense. There's no one left that he cares about.
And this is when he decides not only to die, but to take everyone on the Revenge with him.
It's interesting, in light of this, to see Stede given all the blame both by characters on the show (Stede himself, Lucius) and by a lot of the fandom. Ultimately, of course, Ed's behavior is his own responsibility and his own fault. But Stede leaving him isn't even the only inciting factor that brings out his rage. It takes Izzy's rejection, as well as Stede's, to break Ed entirely. (ETA: Izzy knows it. "We caused this," he says to Stede.)
3) Before S2 I had thought that my interpretation that Ed loves Izzy too, in some painful, complicated, unfulfilled way, might have been an over-reading of canon. But it looks like, if anything, I imagined less than the canon now implies. Izzy is the great might-have-been of Ed's life. That love, if it had ever become an expressed and acknowledged love, would have been bad for both of them, but it would have been powerful. It is powerful, even in its stunted, sad, can't-quite-say-it way.
I'm no longer sure that Izzy leaving would be the best thing for Ed. (Still probably would be the best thing for Izzy, in the same way the amputation was.) But I'm not sure how they're going to get out of this tangle, either.
4) There are suggestions of Izzy/Fang in these episodes, such as Fang crying for Izzy, and Fang physically supporting Izzy during the escape. I'd be happy for that to develop--I can see it more as a possibility now than in S1--but I hope it doesn't become "the solution" to the emotional mess. The history's too long and the emotions too deep and bitter for another relationship to fix everything. For either Izzy or Ed.
5) Going back to the Ed & Izzy "closure" scene for a moment, I have to mention the erotic implications of Ed's dream that Izzy kills him. "Good for you," Izzy says, and Ed responds "It was good for me." Death is the only consummation of their love that either of them can, at least at this point, imagine. A final consummation, and perhaps a first and only.
It's so sad.
7) Moving on from Ed/Izzy: rewatching made me feel even more strongly that the whole "Ed on the island" sequence is unnecessary. It doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, anything we haven't learned more compellingly in other scenes. I guess it tells Ed some things he didn't already know, but if that's what it was for I wish it had gone further, pushed harder. As it is, it feels a lot like they just needed to keep Ed in the story despite his coma, and to ease into the reunion. It does make sense that they needed to bypass Ed's conscious resistance to seeing Stede again, which would probably have been fierce, but, again, I think it could have been done better.
8) I don't object to the merman sequence. Is it silly wish-fulfillment? Yes, but it's Ed's silly wish-fulfillment, and we know that Ed deeply longs for softness and silliness and romance, and also for someone to catch him as he sinks into darkness. It also revisits Ed's death fantasy way back in S01E03 (note the symmetry), when Ed says he thought he'd die in a cool way like being massaged to death by mermaids. Of course now he'd picture sexy!merman!Stede instead. A merman who's come to save him rather than kill him, and to draw him up into the light and the air.
9) Can't wait to see what's going to happen now that Ed's conscious. Even though I think it's going to hurt.
10) This one's non-spoilery, so above the cut. One of the things I love about writing OFMD fic is how the show's storytelling choices make it possible to play with language. OFMD is, shall we say, historically unmoored, so modern expressions can coexist with period ones. (I like to make the language more archaic even than is historically justified--because I know 16th and 17th century English better than I know 18th century--but it's so fun to be able to play around without worries over accuracy.) Same with language varieties. The actors are using their own accents, improvising in their own English dialects with they improvise, so I get to use British and American and Irish and occasional little bits of New Zealand and Australian Englishes as I please! As sounds good to me! A lot of these characters have been all over the world, picked up expressions from everywhere, so why not? It's like the writing version of "Yes, and" in improv, and it's delightful.
