One last burble for the night, about that moment with the feet, which I've watched probably thirty times: things like that hit me so hard in all my feels, no matter the genre or the gender combination: everything all around is chaos and panic and violence, and the only thing these two characters can give each other in this moment is that intent focus, that small gesture, that stillness in the whirlwind, that bearing with-ness.

Feet touching, hands held under a table, looks across a crowded room that say to each other, Do you see that? I do, and I see you.

Augh!

JZ, here, go read this, I read it and thought of you.

JZ, here, go read this, I read it and thought of you.

I read that one last night, and have heart eyes feelings about it.

Oh, that was lovely, and perfectly voiced. It got bumped right out of canon with the very next episode, but it's still absolutely lovely.

Not thread-nannying, but we do have a fanfic thread if people want to get more into recommendations. (Or JZ writing her story.)

Pondering the traumatic last episode--Hec was less shocked by Blackbeard's reappearance than I was, and he noted that if some of the themes of the show are identity and self-knowledge and masculinity, especially getting past the most toxic and self-sabotaging aspects of living up or down to other people's expectations, poor Ed was bound for trouble because he's seen and faced some new/old shit but he hasn't really integrated any of that self-knowledge.

Stede, OTOH, really kind of... has. When Mary laid into him in "Wherever You Go, There You Are," the one word he objected to in the whole rant was "whim." And he was right--his fleeing home and family was abrupt, but it wasn't a whim. Literally all his life he'd been nervous and sensitive and bookish and fully aware that he didn't belong where he was, that he was disappointing everyone around him by simply being himself, but he couldn't or wouldn't make himself into anything but exactly who he was. He spent a long while trying to conform to everything that was expected of him (while still stubbornly reading and fancying his fine fabrics and playacting the adventures he wanted to really be having), and when he finally snapped and left it was a sudden choice but not a whimsical one. He even built himself a goddamn library and a secret extra wardrobe and instituted steady paychecks and PTSD check-ins and bedtime stories, because even if he was going on a perilous and possibly fatal adventure he was still going to do it as exactly that same person he'd been all along.

Ed, though? Absolutely a whim. He was restless and discontent but he didn't have any clear idea of why or of what might relieve that besides, possibly, burning off someone else's face and disappearing into their identity, without any idea of what might come next or who he might be if he wasn't Blackbeard. He boarded the Revenge fully intending to burn Stede's face and take his identity (probably after a little brisk interrogation of the arsehole who'd told him via an emissary that he could go suck eggs in hell), and if Stede had said literally almost anything else when he woke up that's likely just how it might have gone down.

But, like the Dread Pirate Roberts taken aback by Westley saying, "Please," he stopped dead when Stede totally failed to recognize him. And purely on a momentary whim he introduced himself as Ed and went on to have the nearest thing to a normal conversation he'd had in decades. It was fun and weird and everything that followed was fun and weird, but he still had every intention of getting on with the face-burning and identity-stealing at some point, eventually. As obvious as it was to the audience (and to an increasingly rageful Izzy) that he absolutely wasn't ever going to get on with it, it didn't seem to be obvious to *him*, and he never seemed to ask himself why exactly he wasn't getting on with it.

Even on the night of the fuckery, as much as Ed didn't want to and as clearly upset as he was about it, it didn't seem to occur to him that he had the option of simply NOT doing it. If Lucius had staggered in and self-amputated just a few seconds later, Stede would almost certainly have been already dead. Ed was delighted to be interrupted, but without Lucius he almost certainly would've done it; he'd have hated himself for it, but he'd still have done it. Post-fuckery, when Izzy challenged Stede to a fucking duel, he didn't step in and stop it (and this was AFTER the damn bathtub confession and comfort). He didn't want to watch, but he couldn't make himself stop it from happening.

After Izzy lost on a technicality and was banished, the unpacking-all-this-shit-and-doing-the-hard-work dilemma comfortably vanished; Izzy was the Stede-killer, he wasn't, Izzy was gone, problem solved! As soon as it started to look like this might be permanent and some kind of real work might need to be done, he started making noises about heading out on his next adventure. And even after Lucius knocked him over the head with what was actually happening, he didn't *do* anything about it.

Then along came Calico Jack, and it was ridiculously easy to backslide straight back into all the toxic, shitty person Jack expected him to be. (And I loved that, as miserable as Stede was and as clearly as he knew exactly why Jack disliked him so much, he still wouldn't concede so much as an inch of himself to smooth things over and make peace. Fussy jackets, dressing gowns, the whole nine yards. When he was too distressed to deal anymore, he curled up in bed with a book, and when everyone was being complete fucknuggets he busted out a goddamn parasol.)

When Stede ordered Jack off his ship and away from his crew, it was about the most commanding he'd ever sounded--he was still thoroughly Stede Bonnet, but he was also fully the captain--and Jack felt it, and he fucking turned tail and left, sneering and blustering the entire way but not putting up even a token fight. And Ed, who had become Ed on a whim without ever doing the hard work of laying any foundation to shore up that whim and build out from it, didn't really believe himself to be Ed at all and left with Jack because comfortable old habits are easier than hard work.

Finally putting together everyone's betrayal was an ugly bracing shock, and returning to bear withness even if it meant capture and possible execution was huge on his part. And when Stede was facing his own death the next day, he finally found it possible to leap up and stop it, for the first time in many many many attempts on Stede's life.

But still? Still not the hard work. Conscription into privateering was another easy escape--he literally couldn't be Blackbeard anymore, so there was no need to look back on any of it. It was gone, done with, never been. And here, seemingly permanently cut off from everything he'd been before with no way back, he felt fully safe to admit to what Lucius had pointed out ages ago and to act on it.

But as soon as Stede was gone (and gone purely because he had the self-awareness to know he'd wronged his family and, back within a few hours' travel of them, he felt he owed them accounting and amends on whatever terms they needed) it all collapsed, because there wasn't anything solid behind it. And as much as it sucks and breaks my heart and as much as the fannish part of me wants a simple happy ending, most of my other parts admit that Ed and Blackbeard are two very broken jagged masks this poor guy (Edbeard?) is wrecking himself over. If the show is in part about unpacking trauma and figuring out how to be truthfully, non-toxically present in the world (which IIRC Jenkins and Waiti have explicitly confirmed are important themes), then... wherever he goes, there he is, and he's absolutely not ready yet to live forever in a happy ending. At least he knows what it looks like? So I guess we're all stuck with that heartbreaking finale and the hope of a second season.

But I did love Stede's reconciliation of all the parts of himself; he still had to leave his family, likely never to see them again, but he knew himself, and them, better and he was able to do it right and well. And I loved, loved, loved that last image we have of him: standing up in his dinghy, wobbling for a second, and then finding his footing and standing steady and holding up a hand to hail his crew. No ship but that dinghy, but he's truly a captain.

Finally putting together everyone's betrayal was an ugly bracing shock, and returning to bear withness even if it meant capture and possible execution was huge on his part.

Ed came back, but Stede leaves. It's the first time Ed has acted like that for anyone, and to not have it reciprocated just destroys him.

(A note: I did not think that in 2022 I would be wrecked by Taika Waititi's acting, but here we are.)

Ed came back, but Stede leaves. It's the first time Ed has acted like that for anyone, and to not have it reciprocated just destroys him.

Definitely--but I also think he's so totally destroyed because he's pinned everything about his transformation on other people. His notion of who Ed might be without Stede is more a sort of third-gen-photocopy-of-Stede than an actual whole person, and when he's violently challenged by Izzy he just sort of horribly, heartbreakingly collapses.

eta: And, God, yes. I haven't seen such shattering crying since Claire Danes in MSCL. If he and she and Meryl Streep ever did a movie together I would be empathetically ugly-crying for a week afterward.

OK, there's suddenly a lot in this thread to catch up on, so I might have to split this up into a couple of posts. (Have I mentioned how happy it makes me to have a show to talk about with Buffistas again??)

I heard an interview with Rhys Darby in which he talked about *mothering* as one of his keys to playing the role, that every character is a little lost and needs, among all the other loves they're missing, parenting, and for whatever reason seeing it as mothering rather than fathering made the most sense to him as an active choice for Stede

Oh sure, just murder me, why don't you. (Do you have a link? I haven't found that one yet.) I do love that he's such a nurturing, loving presence for his crew (I have a lot of found family feels about the crew), and yet... he abandoned his actual children. That's a hard thing to reconcile, for me. I hope he does eventually manage to build a relationship with them. You can see them approaching reconciliation in episode 10, but then he leaves again, and it just makes me sad for his children that they don't get to enjoy that part of him.

I love how readily people take to Oluwande and wonder what his captaincy would have been like;

Yes! Captain Olu 4eva! That was such a lovely scene. He is absolutely giving off "only adult in the room" vibes so much of the time. I hope he gets the chance someday. I did love that he and Frenchie gave all their pyramid-scheme money to the awful aristocrats' long-suffering servants, but I couldn't help feeling a bit of regret that they didn't keep any for themselves. Olu has that line about how most of them are pirates because that's the only option available to them (I'm paraphrasing), and man, a big windfall like that could have meant that he didn't have to be a pirate anymore. OTOH, this way we get to keep him on the show, so...

Ed trying to get Izzy to look at the clouds ("if you'd just put some fucking imagination into it, man")

Hee! I love that bit too. Hey Ed, I know a certain Gentleman Pirate who has just bucketloads of imagination...

that Jim's grandma is fine with their being non-binary but absolutely furious about only one of the seven men on the vengeance list being dead

Yup, that was so wonderful. I hope we get to see Nana again.

Yes, they escalated very quickly to Meaningful Glances.

So, listen, I obviously love The Kiss and the confirmation that we really are going for a romance arc here, but I would have also loved to see even more of a slow-burn development of their relationship. God, the aching tenderness of those glances, the flirty banter, the little touches, the erotically charged stabbing... whew! I could gladly watch like five more seasons of just that. I respect that's not the story they're telling, but I just loved all those moments so much. I mean, the foot touch! "You came back!" Seeing GIFs of that scene on Tumblr is what convinced me to watch the show, and I was not prepared for the very next episodes to turn the tables so thoroughly.

Pondering the traumatic last episode--Hec was less shocked by Blackbeard's reappearance than I was, and he noted that if some of the themes of the show are identity and self-knowledge and masculinity, especially getting past the most toxic and self-sabotaging aspects of living up or down to other people's expectations, poor Ed was bound for trouble because he's seen and faced some new/old shit but he hasn't really integrated any of that self-knowledge.

Yeah, that's a really good point. At first, with the kiss scene, I thought that Ed was a step or two ahead of Stede in terms of knowing himself and knowing what he wants. And in some specific ways he is: the idea of being with a man isn't new to him, like it is to Stede, even though he's never actually *loved* a man before (or anyone, except his mother?), so he understands the nature of their relationship better than Stede does. But by the end of the scene, we can tell that he's actually missing some pieces of the puzzle, maybe the biggest one being that he doesn't clock Stede's discomfort, his hesitation and uncertainty about this plan to run off together. And another piece, I'm realizing now, is that Ed *thinks* he's left Blackbeard behind, but he really hasn't done the work yet to make that happen.

I've been thinking about this scene and their relationship a lot in terms of the tension between fantasy and reality. (Apologize to those who follow me on Tumblr, because I'm copying a big chunk of something I posted over there.) Stede has this fantasy of what pirate life is like, and it’s so real to him that he actually goes out and makes it happen. But he doesn’t just become a pirate like any other; he has the imagination to create something new, to see the things he doesn’t like and ask: “What if it weren’t that way?”

And Ed *loves* this about him. He’s been dying to talk to someone with a little fucking imagination, and here comes Stede Bonnet, who’s bursting at the seams with it. And Stede not only shows Ed his ridiculous dream of a pirate ship, but he invites Ed to join him there – he makes the fantasy of a new life, which Ed desperately wants, suddenly real. Meanwhile Stede gets to befriend the greatest pirate who ever lived (a fantasy, a fuckery) and see beneath the story of Blackbeard to the man beneath.

But once they’re captured, and Blackbeard begins to truly disappear, Stede starts to doubt himself. I think he genuinely does love Ed, but he’s also enchanted by the fantasy of Blackbeard (even if he’s sometimes repelled by the reality of Blackbeard), and it’s a shock to him that Ed just wants to leave all that behind. And now Ed is the one offering up a new fantasy: Run away with me, come to China, start a whole new life with me. But now Stede hesitates. He can’t see that Ed *wants* to give up being Blackbeard for him. All he sees is another fantasy, and he’s worried that it’s doomed to fail just like the last one. And Ed, for his part, isn't seeing Stede clearly in this moment either.

But by the end of season one, Stede knows himself, and he's choosing the reality. I think his journey in season 2 will be not just finding Ed, but truly seeing and accepting both sides of him: Blackbeard and Ed. Stede has to confront the reality of who Blackbeard is before he can truly love the real Ed. And this can't happen until Ed himself integrates both of those sides of himself into a whole person, or figures out which part of each is fantasy and which part is really him.