Spotify Wrapped Memes : @walkpathe ( Edward ) For Izzy # 44 My Limb By Hayley Williams

🪐 — spotify wrapped memes : @walkpathe ( edward ) for izzy # 44 ▶ my limb by hayley williams

❝ IT'S FUNNY — ❞ izzy speaks the lie with bitter irony in his tone, both of them well aware that there is precious little humor to be found here. ❝ of the two of us, you always were the gentle one. ❞ over his long years spent as blackbeard's sword, izzy had always known that he might one day pay a heavy price for his devotion to the defense of their shared myth. he had accepted the potential cost to himself years ago, the price one he was more than willing to pay to keep them safe. but what he'd never expected was for the worst hurt he had endured by far to come from his captain's own hands. & despite his stubborn desire to ignore the loss, it seemed that a wound took twice as long to heal when it was inflicted by someone you loved. ❝ when we first met, you were like a shy little rabbit, teething on a shotgun. ❞ his phantom limb tingles with an itch that can no longer be scratched.

❝ you know, i actually thought you’d be dead by now. ❞ 🪐 — @smokedanced ▶ izzy hands for stede bonnet

          ❝ WELL, I'M SORRY TO DISAPPOINT YOU. ❞ stede can't help but puff himself up as he speaks, pride at the single successful raid they had carried out with the new crew configuration causing confidence to bloom in his chest. the crew themselves seemed to be adapting to the arrangement rather nicely ( & clearly there was no love lost between them & edward, given all they had endured these past months ), most of them now scattered across the deck divvying up the loot without complaint. izzy seemed to be the lone holdout, remaining stubbornly bitter & impossible to please — despite surprising stede with by voting along with the rest of the crew for ed to be banished from the ship. the look of perpetual irritation on his face had become almost comforting in its own way, a reliable constant to count on as they found their footing again. 

                            not that he would ever say as much out loud. instead, he turns away from the other man to gaze out at the sea through his spyglass. the horizon stretches unbroken, not another ship nor a speck of land in sight. & even still basking in the glow of of his recent success, stede is starting to feel restless again. the truth is that concern about where ed is & what he might be doing seeps back into his mind the moment the action falls quiet, no matter what he does. but stede pushes the thoughts away with some force — ed simply couldn’t stay here, not when everyone aboard still distrusted him so. he knew that. but he also knew that they would find each other again. & for now, his place was here : with his crew.

yet despite being returned to his station as captain at last, despite a successful raid under his belt, stede finds he has little clue what he should be doing in these quiet moments when the sea is calm. with ed banished & buttons gone, izzy is certainly the most qualified sailor aboard. & loathe as stede was to admit it, the man was rather good at his job. the honest truth was that stede likely couldn’t do this without izzy's help. yet he doesn't know how to ask for such a thing, the man's foul attitude making any conversation challenging to broach. ❝ you know, it’s quite poor form for the first mate to be actively rooting for his captain’s death, don't you think ? ❞ he says, irritated & still unwilling to look at the man beside him. ❝ why even stay aboard if that's how you feel ? just hoping to be around to bear witness to my inevitable failure, is that it ? ❞

spotify wrapped has arrived. send me a number from 1-100 for a starter based on that song, or a lyric from it, or send a 🎁 for me to shuffle.

🪐 — STEDE BONNET: 𝕊𝔼𝕏, 𝔾𝔼ℕ𝔻𝔼ℝ & 𝕃𝕆𝕍𝔼 ℍ𝔼𝔸𝔻ℂ𝔸ℕ𝕆ℕ𝕊 𝔽𝕆ℝ ℚ𝕌𝔼𝔼ℝ & 𝕂𝕀ℕ𝕂𝕐 𝕄𝕌𝕊𝔼𝕊

bold what does apply to your muse, italicize what applies in sometimes / some verses, strike through what never applies & leave regular what's indifferent to your muse!

♡   SEXUALITY: queer / gay / lesbian / bisexual / pansexual / omnisexual / asexual / androsexual / demisexual / fluid / non-labelled / graysexual / gynesexual / homosexual / monosexual / polysexual

♡   GENDER IDENTITY: cisgender / intersex / gender-nonconforming / transmasc / transfemme / transman / transwoman / nonbinary / gender-fluid / genderqueer / agender / demi-girl / demi-boy / bigender / pangender / omnigender / two-spirit  

♡  DATING PREFERENCES: monogamous / ethically nonmonogamous / monogamish / relationship anarchy / open relationships / polyamorous / doesn't date / dates casually

♡   ATTACHMENT STYLE: secure / anxious preoccupied / dismissive avoidant / fearful-avoidant / disorganised

♡   SEXUAL INCLINATIONS: sex favourable / sex adverse / sex indifferent / hypersexual / sex-repulsed / bottom / top / versatile / vers bottom / vers top / service top / power bottom / stone top / pillow princess / submissive / dominant / switch / brat / baby girl/boy / soft dom / pleasure dom / caregiver

♡   LOVE LANGUAGES / STYLES: words of affirmation (giving) / quality time (receiving) / acts of service / receiving gifts / physical touch / activity / appreciation / emotional / financial / intellectual / physical / practical

♡   PHYSICAL ACTS OF INTIMACY: holding hands / kissing / cuddling / massages / bathing together / washing partner's hair / skin on skin contact / forehead kisses / playing under the table (e.g. hand on thigh, footsy etc) / playing with partner's hair / playful tickling / seeking them out in bed to hold / eye contact / reading or singing to your partner / being read or sung to / napping together / couch cuddles while doing separate activities (head in lap etc)

♡    KINKS & TURN ON'S: dirty talk / quiet in bed / loud in bed / having hands pinned / pinning partners hands / having hair pulled / pulling partners hair / being watched / watching their partner / voyeurism / receiving oral sex /  giving oral sex / receiving penetration / giving penetration / praise kink / biting / marking up your partner / being marked up / impact play / edge play / teasing / being teased / using toys on their partner / having toys used on them / choking / being choked / being restrained / restraining their partner / shibari / breeding kink / piss kink / worshipping their partner / being worshipped / humiliating / being humiliated / degrading / being degraded / pegging / being pegged / frotting / face sitting / dom/sub dynamics / DDLG dynamics / aftercare / anal / bdsm / light bondage / outdoor sex / sensory deprivation / roleplay  / rough sex / threesomes / wax play / sensory play (eg. pinwheels etc) / knife play / blood play / caging / cbt / sounding / collars / exhibitionism / rimming / pet play / dressing up for partner / partner dressing up for them / daddy kink / mommy kink / master/slave dymanics

Tagged peer pressured into it by : @shadowcovcn Tagging : feel free to steal it from me, pals !

alright ! i've had a full 24+ hours to Process — which may have involved a bottle of prosecco ( i don't drink btw ) & going through a few waves of tears — & i'm here ready to talk about the finale. of.md spoilers below the cut, obviously !

some things i actually did like ( a short list ) :

the plot on paper. the beats of a good story were there but it was so rushed through & poorly executed that it just felt messy, unearned, slapped together.

ed thinking stede is dead & disassociating so hard he goes on a rampage & murders several of the soldiers in very sexy ways, ie: bayonet flip. also ed coming out of the ocean like aphrodite, ready to murder in his black leather. slay.

jim & archie kissing Like That before going to battle. also jim throwing knives from in the trees. very hot, powerful trans energy there, i really enjoyed it.

unfortunately everyone on the crew looked very sexy in stolen navy uniforms.

spanish "you best believe everyone in this household is poison trained" jackie.

zheng existing ( i would like to formally request a whole show about her )

stede yelling 'for love !' when attacking the british. romantic stede my beloved.

most of izzy's main dialogue — especially telling ricky that what really matters about piracy is belonging to something in a world that has told you that you are worth nothing. & yes, even most of of his conversation with ed. izzy telling him it's ok to just be ed ? killed me. & blackbeard was both of us ? don't even. i did want him to apologize to ed properly & am still glad that he did but be careful what you ask your god for am i right.

the final panning shot of the crew on the revenge. beautiful shot despite it all.

issues i had ( a longer list ) :

the editing ? why so many harsh cuts ? the way it was spliced together only contributed to the chaotic & disjointed feeling. & of course, the pacing. i think these two issues are connected & probably not the fault of the writers themselves. the show clearly really needed all 10 episodes to do what it really wanted to do, & this finale is just begging for that lost hour of screentime.

it wasn't even a good fuckery lol.

i wish lucius & pete's wedding had been... idk, just more. something more akin to calypso's birthday, a proper celebration for them. i also wish they would have given an indication they're still poly. "i now pronounce you mateys" was good tho.

ed apologizing & saying i love you & stede not doing either one in return. stede not being sappy in his irl fantasy ? impossible, im really confused by that choice.

0 resolution for stede's entire arc ? 0 indication of self reflection on his part ? & thus no resolution for the primary conflict of the show's central relationship ? they didn't even talk about their future, it just cut to them standing there & stede saying "so i guess we're innkeepers now" as if that's all he would have had to say about that ? i know that this show handwaves away a lot of things, like travel times & the realities of sailing, but i thought the story was literally about this relationship, & we don't get to see them decide on what their future together will look like. it's framed as stede just kinda going along with ed's latest whim ( since you know, they've always worked out soooo well for him in the past ) even though it's the exact opposite of what he's been moving towards personally lately, all without even saying a word about it ? i'm not even saying that i don't like this ending, but it just again felt so unearned.

very little actual resolution for ed's arc. his whole deal this season was about deciding who he wants to be, but he flip flops every time something doesn't go his way & the episode gave us no reason to think that would be different now with their inn. also he just killed a bunch of soldiers after having serious trauma surrounding the act of killing throughout the entire series, but i guess we're just supposed to believe that's ok, he's totally fine, he's an innkeeper now ! (will say more on this topic in the final section.)

poly things not being handled well or outright forgotten about. like olu / jim / archie / zheng has all the potential in the world for a beautiful poly love story & we barely got to see them interact together at all. & to think i was all :eyes: when izzy was dubbed the unicorn because i actually thought for a few episodes there that they might be doing the same thing for polyamory in s2 that they had done for queerness in s1, showing the audience that it's ok to see ourselves in stories & not just on the fringes, we're not stupid or freaks reading into something that isn't there. but turns out, it wasn't there, & i was the freak & the clown all along. live & learn.

the elephant in the room ( rip izzy you beautiful freak ) :

here's the thing. obviously i was never going to be happy that they killed my most favoritest old man. the fact that he's dead just when he found something real to live for is literally heartbreaking to me. but i could have swallowed it as a natural & important part of the narrative if one small thing was done differently: izzy could have had an actual sacrifice. & not for ed, but for the crew. after his speech about living for the crew, him choosing to act in a way that compromised his safety but earned their freedom would have felt like a completion of his arc. but instead it was a stray bullet to the left side which he earned in stede's so-called suicide mission ( don't even get me started on that line given where izzy started this season ), an injury which the show has told us previously is 100% survivable.

in the crew sacrifice scenario izzy could have acted as the symbol of piracy itself, a way of life that is dying. he is, after all, The Pirate (aside from blackbeard himself) on the show. & he has a history of letting shit slide that kinda doesn't align with the way of life they're trying to build on the revenge, not just in s1 but also in the scene with lucius in s2 ("& you? are you happy with all this?" "well, this is a pirate ship, & i'm a pirate so... yeah, i'm good with it.") ricky says they are at "the end of piracy" & izzy is the last REAL pirate (including ed because at this point as he is moving away from that life). & as izzy himself says in s1, "the only retirement we get is death." izzy also shows pretty intense self-preservation, & most of his shitty actions in s1 are motivated by often misplaced survival instincts, ("i'm not dying. not for you & not for that ponce,") so having him go against this longstanding character trait to protect the crew would have felt earned after his dramatic growth. it could have worked. it still would have hurt, but it could have worked.

instead, the way it is actually framed, the narrative actively robs izzy of this symbolism & instead makes his death entirely about ed & ed's relationship to piracy. having him die in a random incident & then having his death scene be followed up by ed finally "officially" (for the third time) giving up piracy honestly flattens everything i find interesting about them as characters & their dynamic to each other.

ed & izzy have very clearly been in clearly a mutually toxic codependent relationship (platonic or otherwise) for decades, but the framing of izzy's death being the only thing that can free ed from piracy (& blackbeard) turns izzy from a complex character of his own into a 2-dimensional plot device. & if izzy truly couldn't exist without blackbeard, then it would make sense — but we've just seen that he can, actually ! that he is a person outside of that relationship, despite what he himself thought for most of his life ! that they can both exist outside of them, & there is a very real possibility that neither of them actually need blackbeard anymore. so instead his death feels cruel to me. & because we know this is the show where injuries simply don't matter unless we need them to, we know that this was a conscious choice, that the writers genuinely felt he had to die for the story (ed's story) to continue.

& you know, that's fair on some level. he's the lead after all. but i also think this framing is actually kind of reductive to ed's character ! i don't write ed, but part of what makes him so compelling to me is that he is... kinda a "bad person," but he wants to be better. he's extremely complex. he has trauma & big feelings & he doesn't always act on them in the right way. & he feels guilt & remorse — he knows he has done wrong in the past & wants to be better, even if he doesn't always know how. & izzy has admittedly been an obstacle to him reaching that end in the past, but to frame it as if ed's actions were because of izzy, & actually izzy was making ed be blackbeard & manipulating him into doing bad things that he didn't really want to do, then i guess now that izzy is dead ed is free to skip off into the sunset happily ever after with his man ! the bad influence in his life finally gone, so he is all healed ! never mind that his most recent return to piracy & killing spree as blackbeard had literally nothing to do with izzy & everything to do with thinking he'd lost stede again. never mind that ed's trauma has its roots in things that happened to him before izzy (his father) & things that also happened to izzy (hornigold). nope, izzy was the real shackle all along. he has to die so ed can be free, & he only ever existed solely to develop ed's pain. that's what this narrative feels like. & i just... don't like the taste of it on any level. izzy says himself that blackbeard was both of them. so why does izzy have to die while ed gets to move on, given they both have shown the capacity to do so ?

the bit that i think i like least about how it's executed is izzy saying "i want to go," especially considering how he & ed are both shown to be actively suicidal in the opening of the season, & he has since started to regain his self confidence from that lowest point. & maybe that line could be read as him just trying to soothe ed in the moment, but idk, it rubbed me the wrong way for him to say he still wanted to die when in fact he had just found something he actually wanted to live for.

so ! i think that's all i have to say about that ! if you've made it this far, thanks for reading ! i'll be working today on writing up a basic canon divergence for both stede & izzy, since i don't like how either of them ended the season out. sorry, but stede's simply not ready to give up pirating just yet, even for ed. & in my head, izzy is fine because he was shot on the left side & "science" tells us there's nothing important in that half of the body anyway. : )

anyway, the only time we ever see izzy's right hand without the glove is in that scene belowdeck when ed asks him to shoot him & he refuses, & during the storm scene directly thereafter where he does shoot ed to prevent him from destroying the ship & killing the crew. pretty incredible that the only time he ever shows his hand (literally speaking) is during the climactic moment of breakdown of his relationship with ed.

what's even more interesting is that in the scene with him & ed belowdeck, you can see that he has a little red heart tattoo on the junction of his right hand & thumb to match the black spade on his left. notable here that ed has a spider tattoo on his hand, which he says that he covers with gloves because he's afraid of spiders. in contrast, izzy has a heart tattoo on his right hand, which is always covered except in the above noted exceptions. the symbolism is not subtle. this is a man who guards his love from being seen, literally & figuratively hides his heart because he's afraid of love — until he finds himself in an active a life-or-death situation where there is no other choice but to face it & act on it.

there isn't a brand there as far as i can tell... but it's my blog & i do what i want, so i'm probably still keeping my back-of-hand deserter's brand headcanon, at least in most verses. his right hand has both the brand & the little heart tattoo (to me).