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THIS ANIMATIC IS SO GOOD

I feel like it encompasses a lot of how Stede affects others in the show, and kind of shows more how they see him in light of his actions.

I love Stede as a character because he's so complex, and he makes so many mistakes out a misguided sense of helping others. He also just wants to be happy, and while he doesn't necessarily want to hurt others to make that happen, he inevitably does by not thinking through his actions.

I think this animatic does a fantastic job capturing those aspects of Stede, and the cute little hopeful air of "it's not perfect but it's better" at the end is just mwah *chef's kiss*.

And the art is amazing! The color symbolism is flawless! The set up of every shot is so purposeful and creates such a sense of what the creator is trying to portray... I think I'm in love 😍

Anyway, check it out, it's pretty awesome and deserves more recognition.

Also I do just really love this song too, and it's so perfect for Stede. Alright, I'm actually done now lol

Edit: nvm not done. I'm rewatching it and I LOVE IT.

Thoughts: this animatic also does a good job of showing how unfair the whole situation is for Mary too. She tried to make their marriage work, even though she was unhappy too. And then Stede just left her alone, a (now) single woman with two children to take care of, in a time when women didn't get the same respect and support that men did. Then, to top it all of, when Mary finally has it all figured out and can live just find, better in fact, without Stede, he COMES BACK. And he just tries to continue where they left off, like he never even left, and it's really not fair to Mary. It works out eventually, and quite well too, for them, but before then Stede just continually screws Mary over.

And I think the animatic also kind of shows how, while Stede is off having his adventures and falling in love, Mary doesn't get any of that for a while. Stede's living his dream, he's free from expectations and society, and he had to sacrifice his family for that. I'd say it's super selfish, but I truly don't think Stede realizes how his actions affect others on a larger scale. The animatic also shows this a bit, because throughout it, while Stede's having a great time, he's completely oblivious to how unhappy his crew is. In a similar way, when he leaves his family, while he's enjoying piracy, Stede doesn't really spare much thought towards his family until someone shoves it in his face. Sort of out of sight, out of mind. He does the exact same thing with Ed, when he leaves him. It's not that Stede isn't thinking of them at all, but it's like he thinks time has sort of...stopped when he's not there, and so the consequences simply aren't a factor.

SPEAKING OF I love how Stede's obliviousness is played in the animatic. Again, he's just so unaware of how he affects others. He may understand it in a logical, technical manner, but outside of that? He doesn't even notice until it's explicitly told to him that his crew is planning to mutiny. He's their captain, and he treats it like some kind of show or character that he can just shed and forget about when he goes to his cabin. Now that can be directly attributed to how he was raised, but it's also simply an issue that I think causes some of Stede's problems in the show. If life is but a pageantry, then there are no real consequences to what your character does, right? It may also be why he couldn't recognize love at first, because if life is a show then those very real feelings don't hold as much weight. I think when Stede becomes a pirate, a dangerous profession with REAL consequences, and he actually has to face those consequences, he starts to understand a bit more how real life is, especially outside of high society. And when he talks to Mary, that only confirms what he's begun to learn. Granted, I don't think he's completely got it down yet, but it's growth and it is an improvement from the Stede who abandoned his family with barely a second thought.

Also, can we just talk about how much this highlights how Stede's coping mechanism is just running away? Clearly I have a lot of thoughts about his ha.

Also, in the animatic, the scenes with the Badminton twins are absolutely gold, especially with Chauncey. I love the lyrics that were chosen for his part. It sort of shows a shift in the animatic, where Stede begins to think "he could be wrong," and starts trying to go back and fix his mistakes. Again, he's not magically better because he still leaves Ed out to dry, but he's realizing that he has hurt people by leaving.

And then, after that, the scenes with Ed! Amazing! They really show just how abandoned and cast away Ed feels, and highlight how he feels that he was only kept around when he was "of use" and it is just fantastic how the creator showed these emotions.

And again, the one part where Stede is the main singer, the one time we get it from his perspective, we can see he begins to understand the depth of what he's done to the people he cares about, and how he's overwhelmed and recognizes he needs to fix things. This marks another change in the animatic, because now Stede is being active and working towards reconciliation, rather than just acknowledging he did something wrong. This is a huge moment in his character arc, and this animatic does such a good job of showing it. He makes things better, and then becomes "someone new" and actively works at fixing what he knows he broke. IT'S JUST SO GOOD 😭

And then the end is just fantastic.

So, sorry for ranting, but I had a lot of feelings.

I like how this reads- a lot. I feel like if Izzy and Ed had "talked it through", things might have been very different. But, based off of snippets and vaguely insinuated backstories, it makes me wonder if Izzy had been brought up ignored. Watching his interactions with Ed during the first season reminds me of myself when I try to talk about serious subjects and people just brush me off for "fun" or "different" things. "You just know everything about anything". I get irritated, snippy even. Izzy tries to keep his cool, but he also tries to herd Ed away from the "fun" and "different" things because it's not serious- and these distractions in their world are very life-threatening.

As much as I've understood from the lack of backstory, Ed's straying from his persona towards Stede and his little quirks could be seen as a threat to Izzy and Ed's relationship- more than just what we see with Blackbeard- and as well as their actual lives.

For all we know, Izzy is only this way because Ed was the one person who did listen to his consulting. (Calico Jack, on the other hand, maybe not so much, in my opinion.) And to see someone he had spent his entire adulthood and basically devoted himself to just up and find a new "plaything" can be detrimental to someone who had only one thing to hold onto. Even if they were romantic or platonic, Izzy could very well be jealous and scared that the one thing he had was leaving him, especially with the responsibility of keeping Blackbeard's name.

They're both traumatized and couldn't balance it out with their own personalities. It may have worked in their prime, however, I feel like Izzy really put it in perspective with his talk about retirement with Stede. Izzy only sees his own demise in his future- Ed saw repeating scenarios, longing for change. Being a pirate was a serious commitment he had, much like upholding Blackbeard. For Ed, I feel like the whole Blackbeard thing was another one of his whims. He only stuck to it because Izzy made him- it was the one thing he was able to keep him focused on.

I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling incoherently at 5 in the morning about something random. But, still. Miscommunication was most definitely an issue that caused plenty a problem for their already rotting relationship.

Hope you don't mind my reply- I tried to keep it as coherent as possible in my sleep deprived delirium.

“You worship the sun, but you keep feeding the dark.”

Thoughts on Ed, Izzy and Miscommunication.

“Drowning in the Sound” by Amanda Palmer is not on my list of go-to Blackhands songs, but that line above sums up Izzy so well for me, and a comment on my most recent fic update got me thinking about one of the more controversial lines from the finale.

“I fed your darkness.”

First things first: I'm not a canyonite, but I do unapologetically love Izzy as a character and do not buy into the narrative that he was an abusive manipulator and Ed was a helpless victim. If that makes you decide that I'm a dumbass, feel free to scroll on past. You're not gonna like the rest of this post.

We good? Okay.

So I know a lot of people hated that line and that scene in general, for a lot of reasons I won't get into here, but I wasn't one of them. While I don't agree with the Izzy=Abusive Manipulator takes, I also don't agree with the interpretation that Izzy was 100% the victim and Ed was a monstrous abuser. To me, their relationship was always a complicated, messy arrangement between two deeply flawed people, with far too many unspoken assumptions at its core. And one of the things that made it so fascinating for me was Izzy's ability to harm Ed when he thought he was helping him.

Look. I fully believe that at one point in time, these two loved each other. By the time we meet them in canon, the foundation of their relationship has rotted, but they are both self-actualized enough to leave a situation if it truly never made them happy.

That doesn't mean I think they were ever explicitly a romantic couple, or ever physically intimate (I actually think that never happened in canon.) But they loved each other once, and tried to show each other that love, and they are both so. Fucking. Bad at it. Or at least, they're bad at understanding how the other interprets the ways they say "I love you."

Take Ed. Yes, he uses a lot of physical touch, but I think Ed's truest way of expressing affection is inviting someone else to play with him. That's why he falls so hard for Stede- he's the playmate Ed never had, the one person who's always ready to give him a "Yes, and." And we see this in his interactions with Izzy in s1e4- calling Izzy to check out things he thinks are cool, trying to get him talking about the shape of the clouds. He's inviting Izzy to play with him, and it's going completely over Izzy's head, because Izzy doesn't want to play! He's at work! Now's not the time, Edward! But that's the thing- they're Blackbeard and Izzy Hands. They're never not at work. And that's what causes Ed's despair and Izzy's frustration to build, because they don't know how to interact with each other outside the context of their jobs.

So what looks like love, to Izzy?

My guess? Bonnie & Clyde. Natural Born Killers. Thelma & Louise. Us against the world, baby. Life is cruel and short, and ends violently, but at least we've got each other. We don't get info about Izzy's background, but his interactions with Ed vs. everyone else, and especially his possessiveness of Edward behind the Blackbeard persona, suggests a man for whom personal relationships are Serious Business. It's not about fun. It's about survival.

I think to Izzy, being someone's only safe person to be around, being the only two people in the world who understand each other, being constantly under threat and prepared to kill to protect one another, is heart-stoppingly romantic.

But it's not romantic for Ed at all. It's terrifying.

Ed's worried he's unlovable. He's worried he's a monster deep down. It's not going to make him feel safe, to be told that there's only one person in the world who really gets him. It's going to feel terribly isolating, and on top of that, it feels so serious. Ed doesn't want a relationship rooted in violence- he grew up around that, and it destroyed his family.

And Izzy has no idea.

He doesn't know about any of Ed's baggage with his father, or the self-esteem issues that make him worry he's unlovable. He doesn't know how alone it makes Ed feel to be told there's no one like him, even in the context of a compliment ("the most brilliant sailor I had ever met") or how triggering it would be to watch one person he loves hurt another (how could Ed not have been thinking of his parents during the duel scene?)

I think a lot of people assume that when Izzy says "I fed your darkness," he's referring to the "namby pamby in a silk gown" scene. But that was Izzy in a state of near-panic, desperate to say something that would get Ed to take him seriously, and I don't think that's what their relationship normally looked like.

I think Izzy fed Ed's darkness "for years" by telling him, through words or actions, that there was only ever the two of them, that they couldn't trust anybody else, that one of them would die defending the other.

"I fed your darkness" was Izzy realizing that to Ed, that didn't sound like, "I love you." It sounded like, "Without me, you're completely alone." And being alone is the thing that frightens Ed the most.