Archive of Our Own

so i was thinking about how we were all discussing yesterday how Ed seems to, like, get new fixations that give him a brief bit of joy until they tip him too far into instability and being unreliable and Izzy has to deal with them?

and I was thinking about the fact the majority of us seem to read Ed as having ADHD, and he definitely seems to be depressed, and I was thinking about my own experiences with ADHD and I just… I think if 1x09 hadn’t gone down the way it did, Stede and Ed wouldn’t have lasted anyway, right now?

and, i quickly clarify, i’m not saying in this that Ed doesn’t love Stede or vice versa, and I’m not saying I don’t want to see them together in the end (I do), I’m just saying I don’t think they were (or are) at a place where that would actually happen, and for once I’m talking about something different than the rose-tinted glasses

the thing about how Ed is presented is that he’s bored. He’s had enough of a boring life where everything is the same every day.

The way he describes piracy in the past, when he’s reminiscing with Jack or telling Stede about the life he doesn’t want to go back to, it sounds like it used to be fulfilling for him. He used to enjoy it! He loves a good maim, he cut off toes ‘for a laugh’ (implying it was fun), he and Jack talk excitedly and animatedly about serving under Hornigold, despite it being terrible.

The way my ADHD has presented over the years is this: I have a hyperfixation. It’s usually a TV show or video game, but I’m into it. I’m obsessed. I can’t think of anything else, and anyone who tries to talk to me about anything else finds themselves very disappointed because all I want to think about or do is related to that thing I’m fixated on. After a few days of this, it simmers down to something more manageable (where I am right now with OFMD), and although I’m capable of talking about other things at length, and I’m happy to do other things, I’m still getting a shit ton of serotonin and dopamine from the thing, either by rewatching, replaying, writing fic, reading fic, watching fanvideos, or whatever else.

And then, after anything from a week or two to up to around a year or so, depending on how much Newness I’m able to keep injecting into that fixation (a 5-episode Netflix series no one else watches will last a couple of weeks, an ongoing show that me and my bestie are both into might last a year+), that fixation fades away and I’m left with… nothing, because I can’t even look at the thing now. I’ve wrung it dry. It has no serotonin or dopamine left to give.

That is when my depression cuts in. I don’t see myself as depressed because those feelings only come up when I’m either suffering from PMDD or my fixations are gone and I have nothing to obsess over.

I see a lot of that in Edward. The cycle of needing something to give him newness and excitement and dopamine, the sudden high when you find the thing that makes your brain go brr (Stede and the Revenge, Jack showing up) and the horrible crash once it loses its shine (his depression in 1x03 and 1x04 that is barely noticeable in 1x05-1x09).

I’m not saying Edward doesn’t also have depression, to be clear, I’m sure he does, but I am saying that ADHD hyperfixations are an excellent (sarcasm? potentially) way of masking depression to the point you all but forget you have it until suddenly you’re crashing again and the world doesn’t seem worth existing in because nothing is giving you joy the way your fixation does.

Ed has no joy and no fun in 1x03, it’s why he latches on to the idea of Stede, who seems so fascinating. In 1x04 he lunges wildly from rescuing Stede to discussing suicide to playing dress-up to mourning the idea of dying to being a lighthouse and committing the next chunk of his life to hanging out with Stede. ADHD-ers also hyperfixate on people, and if we let it be that way and not supplement it with other things and interests and treat that person as a full person, not just a fixation, and distance ourselves from that hyperfixation, it can be really toxic for everyone involved.

The way Ed talks about Stede in 1x09 ascribes the full responsibility for his no longer being depressed and being happy and having fun to Stede, rather than the fact he was surrounded by people who treated him like an equal and loved him, and the fact he was doing something new and different. He says 'you’ as the reason the last few weeks have been so good, and as wonderful and romantic as that is (and, again, it is), when you read that through the lens of ADHD and depression you can just… see the crash coming?

You can also see it in 1x10. I stand by my meta that Ed is masking as Stede when he takes Stede’s place as Captain, draped in fine things, eating marmalade and talking about feelings with the crew, but if you look at that from an ADHD-er with their hyperfixation ripped away context, it’s very similar to how it feels to me to be fixated on, say, an online video game, to the point of playing it 12hrs a day, and then the internet gets so slow you can’t, and so you’re scrabbling for crumbs like reading about other people’s games and looking up discussions of how to play better. You can’t get the full 'hit’ of the fixation, and you’re desperately trying to still get something from it, because you’ve been getting all of your dopamine and serotonin from it up till now and suddenly some outside factor has ripped it from your grip. Ed draping himself in Stede’s things and eating his marmalade and living in his ship and trying to be him reminds me of that.

The nice thing about all of this, is that when they’re reunited the fixation will, hopefully, have faded down to something more manageable, and that means they can come together on a more even-keel, with Ed seeing Stede less as a dopamine dispenser and more as a person that makes him happy in a more well-rounded way. More than that, hopefully Ed can find fulfillment and what he needs before he reunites with Stede, so Stede can just be a brick in the wall of his mental health, rather than the entire structure. He was making good strides towards that when he was being pseudo-Stede, because he was filling his life with people and hobbies outside of Stede himself, and that was good!

Until the kraken thing, of course, but I’m sure we can get back there eventually!

anyway this brought to you by the person who decided to watch OFMD with her mother who has <1hr free every day and so had to eke it out over about two weeks while trying very hard not to sob in between episodes because of how much i wanted to binge the whole thing in one good and how awful i felt to be kept away from it by a hell of my own making

(my mom loves OFMD too. i watched 1x01 alone, then half of 1x02, then decided it was so good i wanted to share it with her, and she actually enjoyed 1x01 more than i did, she was in absolute hysterics over stede’s antics, whereas i just found them very amusing. it made the show even better to watch, so i have no regrets, but boy was that fortnight hard for my brain)

This got lost in my box somehow because I am positive I was awake 11hours ago but somehow I did not see this? Okay, whatever, at least it made it to me eventually lmao

I’m going to show you some caps from that scene because I promise you Izzy felt the full depth of “haven’t tried dying yet” and just went into instant denial over it because of how painful the concept was to him.

(Tumblr: You can only have 10 images sorry.
Me: I will dual you outside of a chick-fil-a, square up.)

I’d like to note here that Ed, much like the rest of us Mentally Ill Bitches, knows there’s something wrong with him. “I shouldn’t be bored. I’m fucking Blackbeard.” He knows something is fucked up in that skull of his, but unfortunately it’s 1717 and he’s a man so he can’t be diagnosed with hysteria and nothing else has really been deduced yet, so he’s stuck just knowing his head’s a mess and he can’t fix it. Which, uh, is a really fucking depressing thought actually!

Izzy is also the one that gives Ed the idea of suicide, and that’s… a whole new thing for Izzy to have to chew on, you know?

First time I went back through this scene, I focused on the fact Ed hones in on suicide as a notion to end his boredom, then meets Stede and, before Stede introduces him to the idea of retirement, he tells him he’s ‘been thinking of packing it all in’, implying he’s been genuinely considering yeeting himself into the abyss. Which was painful in itself.

But rewatching this scene with the singular purpose of honing in on Izzy and Con O'Neill’s excellent micro expression acting even in the shots where he’s turned away or blurry?

Agonizing, thank you.

This one especially. The furrow in his brow. The soft intensity in his eye. He’s just heard his #1 person in the world say he’s thinking dying could be the next big adventure because he can’t stand living anymore and he inadvertently put the idea in his head. Babygirl is suffering.

God, this shot.

And then, coming back to my Cinematography Commentary™, this is another long shot from far away that makes you feel how isolated and alone Izzy feels. Delightful!

And then he writes it off and goes into denial because what else is he meant to do there? And goes to put the little ship away respectfully because Edward likes it lmao.

So: Missed or misplaced? No. Went into instant denial because it was too much for his already traumatized brain to bear? Absolutely. We talk a lot about how Izzy already has his own trauma and mental illness, whether it’s from headcanons like @treesofgreen’s re: sa, or just from a long life of piracy which has been established to be fucking terrible (beatings etc from Hornigold) and Izzy’s clear class dynamics, but we don’t really talk about his trauma and mental illness in relation to managing Ed’s, and honestly? It’s not a surprise that there’s a step too far for Izzy’s brain to handle and it’s, “Edward wants to kill himself.”

therefore when Ed actually *does* fuck up the date, izzy cant ‘fix’ it, having been reassured ed wasn’t too bad off by the oh plan to Kill Blackbeard and be Bonnet.

The plan to kill Stede comes after the lighthouse, so this is a slightly incorrect timeline. Izzy spends this entire episode in a state of “we’re all fucking going to die” up until Ed does his flouncy little, “Frankfurters!” declaration in the fog, at which point he’s so relieved and happy that Ed is still the genius he knows he is and that Ed had a plan to save them all along, and then Ed says, “Furthermore, it’s a full moon–” and Izzy’s life turns upside down again because Ed fucked that up and they’re all going to die after all.

God, yes.

When you think about it, the entire of season 1 is Ed unwittingly replacing Izzy with Stede and not realizing the effect that might have on Izzy!

Ed and Izzy have been companions, working side-by-side together for what’s implied to be years, possibly even decades. And then Stede Bonnet shows up, and Stede is not even a good captain, and Ed is all, “Oh yeah, call me Ed, and we’ll be co-captains!”

Like… in the context of the romance and the show, this is great and I love it, but from Izzy’s point of view this is mind-numbingly baffling and probably quite insulting. Stede didn’t even replace him as first mate, he jumped right over that rung on the ladder and became Ed’s co-captain.

Ed says, “I need you here,” and offers Izzy his own ship once Stede dies, but he doesn’t kill Stede, and ends up co-captaining with Stede (and yes, the co-captain conversation doesn’t happen until Izzy has already left the ship, but they’re already showing being co-captains, and Ed has already repeatedly put Stede in charge of everyone and everything, so even without Izzy being privy to that explicit conversation, the context is very evident), and when Izzy challenges Stede to a duel and loses, the fact is that Ed probably could have overridden the rules of the duel as captain and had Izzy stay aboard.

But he didn’t.

Because by then, he’d replaced all of Izzy’s functions and place in his life with Stede, and Stede gets even more than Izzy ever did!

I’m gonna do a separate post about the timeline of the show because it’s senseless and I want to pull some kind of logic from it, but Ed says in 1x09 that “These past few weeks have been the most fun I’ve had in ages, years, maybe ever,” and he means the time he spent with Stede. If we take that at face value and forget how many full moons we’ve had on the show, it means that in, what, 2 weeks? Ed had totally replaced Izzy with Stede and changed his mind from “I need you here” to letting Izzy row off into the sunset in a dinghy.

But when Ed comes back at the end of 1x09, he says, “Izzy, I’ll take tea in my room,” both effectively putting Izzy back where he belongs and stopping them all from throwing Izzy into the ocean (which, he did not have to do, really. He could have said, “Lucius, when you’re done with that, bring tea to my room,” and that would’ve been implicit permission to yeet Izzy overboard).

So when a while later, Ed tells Izzy to have Lucius sent in, and confides in and talks to Lucius…

Yeah, I imagine Izzy lost his god damn mind about that because, frankly speaking, the odds of Izzy yet again being replaced are, at this point, pretty high, and it makes perfect sense he would see it that way.

I’ve also seen people suggest that Izzy can read and write (and I implicitly suggested it in my own semi-joke post that Jim and Stede’s voiceovers are both their diary entries, in whatever capacity, and that implies that Izzy’s voiceover at the start of 1x06 is also a diary entry), which would make the odds of Lucius being a replacement right hand even higher.

I think I’d blow up too.

I’m unironically imagining Ed with Captain Picard’s sci-fi fishtank in his cabin with no explanation of how or why he got it and I’m losing my mind thank you for that

But yeah, I agree. I think the place that Izzy’s plan fumbled was actually Jack’s response to Stede, not Ed’s place in any of it. Ed followed Izzy’s plan flawlessly without knowing, but when Jack was trying to rile Stede up, he actually couldn’t? He spent the whole of 1x08 trying to get Stede to break character as Nice, but Stede was placid and nice the entire time, even showing kindness towards him (“How about we take you somewhere you want to go and cheer you up?”) despite hating the guy’s guts and thinking his crew was likely justified in trying to drown him.

Jack calls him ‘the big gal’ and Stede just smiles it off. Jack is 50% responsible for destroying his belongings and Stede smiles that off too. Jack talks over him at breakfast, ignores everything he tries to say to chime in, and Stede just keeps smiling and trying to be a part of it. Jack gets him alone so he can try a new tack and he flips a coin when he says he and Ed had fucked in the past and asks if Stede is doing that now: Stede will be homophobic or Stede will be jealous, but either way, Stede will react! But Stede doesn’t react. Stede, in fact, says that Ed’s business is his business, isn’t creeped out or disgusted by the idea that Ed fucks men, and says he isn’t jealous at all, so it’s fine (although I think his little strop after was because he was jealous, and until that point he simply wasn’t enjoying what Jack was bringing to the day, and after that he felt threatened and jealous).

Jack keeps on prodding Stede, likely trying to get Stede to lash out and throw Ed off the ship, and he even kills Karl, which I truly think was deliberate, in an attempt to rile Stede, but Stede doesn’t rise to the bait. Stede meets him with politeness and a placid attitude, and the only time he actually gets a reaction is Stede tells him to get off his ship, and even that is said nicely and politely, just with the firm hand of a captain who will absolutely have his crew throw you off his ship if you resist.

Jack then swaps tactics again and just has Ed leave with him, which works because Ed was already feeling insecure because Stede didn’t like how he was presenting himself.

It’s only once they’re in the dinghy that Jack finally snaps in his frustrations because he really hates Stede and hates that he couldn’t get under his skin. It’s that that causes Ed to go, “Wait hold on what?” and realize it was all a trap.

And that is because Izzy didn’t know Stede would be like that, because when Stede hates Izzy he calls him Iggy and is a complete bitch to him (and I love him for it honestly, it makes me laugh every time). Izzy assumed Stede would be like that to Jack too!

It suggests that Ed has been experience a lot of indecision and uncertain overall, imo. I get the sense that maybe once Ed sank into his depression and lost interest in piracy, he would occasionally become interest in novel things, trying to find something that would bring new meaning into his life.

Total agreement yeah. Half of Izzy’s tension and anxiety and stress comes from the fact he’s been Ed’s SSRIs, adderall and bullet journal for god knows how many years, trying desperately to keep him afloat and let him indulge what he needs to indulge to not go so depressed he ends up offing himself, but also balancing that against not letting him go off the rails so hard he puts everyone in danger.

So I wonder if the attempt to kill Stede wasn’t much of a break of pattern. Izzy has said, “I am going to destroy/murder this because you can’t and we need to move on with our pirate lives,” and Ed has responded with, “Okay… :/” And maybe by failing shut this behavior down, he’s reinforced Izzy’s idea that this is part of his job description. Like Izzy is acting more and more out of line because Ed has repeatedly fail to draw lines.

Yes!!! You even see it towards the end of 1x08: Izzy draws his sword to challenge Stede. Ed says, “Izzy, we’re not doing this!” Izzy says, “You’re not doing this. I’m doing this.” and Ed…does nothing more. He doesn’t step between them and say, “I said no.” He doesn’t say that he doesn’t want Stede killed. He just stands there and stresses and angsts and gets upset, but he lets it happen!

He even lets Izzy stab Stede!!!!

He’s definitely been inadvertently (or, possibly, knowing Izzy wants what’s best for him, less inadvertently) reinforcing Izzy dealing with all of his problems.