#ofmd analysis

Dante in Canto V of Inferno (Divine Comedy) would still like folks to understand fixating on the two damned-lovers and ignoring the details that the artist is putting in there for you to catch about how they are damned because they won't change the toxic patterns that got them there in the first place. Also, they can't because they are in hell, and hell is like that. That Dante-the-writer had Dante-the-character swoon over those same two damned-lovers (because Dante-the-character is on a journey of moral correction) is hilarious, but doesn't make it any less the point of that section of the work, but I digress.

As a career, I am very aware that folks love to misinterpret what is meant to be very clear instructions. Of course, I'm writing policies and procedures, which is a bit different from writing fiction, and is worlds away from creating a t.v. show. But that's the life experience that I always bring to literary analysis. Frequently, people choose their interpretations to fit what they want to see, and that's part of being human.

I've seen a fair number of folks interpret Izzy's redemption arc in S2 as one of a queer man struggling with disabilities and mental health issues whose struggle is made meaningless by his demise. Which sure, you could interpret it that way and in that it's coming from I'm sure an emotional place, I get it. And hmmm… I might give this interpretation more credence  if I hadn't read a lot of Izzy analysis for S1 that was wildly different than the text.

So let's take a step back. 

First, know the rules of the literary universe: OFMD is a show where the reality is not ours. It is either the Core Universe or something very close to it. BTW: If you've never heard of Core Universe or read the seminal BtVS+HtLJ "When Hellmouth's Collide" (https://www.ltljverse.com/index2.htm), a Core Universe is one where everything lines up. Row boats are magic, and where there is a Badminton, he will accidentally stab/shoot himself. 

Terminology more befitting of that fancy literature degree might be to say that OFMD functions along the logic of Magical Realism. Characters will appear briefly for the purposes of the story and then disappear not to be mentioned again (Nana, Calico Jack, Mary Read & Anne Bonny). Things align because they are meant to align. It is a universe where the Gravy Basket is a real place, and meant to be taken seriously.  It's also a universe where a man may become a seagull, because he loves the sea. You change for love, but the ways you change may be positive or toxic. 

They can result in a bird that never gets to know rest. Always flying over the sea. Or they lead to becoming a bird, who can float in the sea or land on a unicorn's leg. 

Transformation. 

Anyway, S1 - Stede commissioned a ship with secret passageways. It did not have a buxom mermaid on the prow, nor something more befitting a ship named the Revenge. He commissioned a unicorn prow and went off to become a pirate. 

A not particularly violent pirate. But a pirate who didn't have a problem with the violence of piracy. See Stede telling Lucius (hardest working man on the ship in S1) to take notes during a violent raid where the show's logo was literally carved into the chest of a dead man. 

BTW: The tone about violence is darker in S2, but the violence was there in S1. It was just presented in a more whimsical way. The nose jar was full of noses in S1. We heard about Blackbeard's violence. A man was skinned alive off screen, but we focused on the Prussian (but also sort of French) party. 

What Izzy needed to be redeemed from was established in S1. The problem is that folks who interpreted Izzy as a) the central focus of the show and b) a put upon manager just trying to do right by his crew (or as one Tumblerina referred to him as the man/father of the family going out to hunt - excuse me while I vomit - and support his family as men must do), are not going to understand what Izzy's S2 arc was all about. 

Ed and Stede are the main characters in a romantic story. There are other characters with their own arcs, but they are the main characters.

In S1, Stede created a safe space where characters had a chance to breathe for the first time. Possibly ever, and as a result revisited parts of themselves they'd lost. Wee John got back in touch with his roots as the son of a seamstress. Frenchie got back to what he loves, scamming the rich. The Swede sang like a siren of the sea, because it doesn't always have to be scary. 

Ed had his first good time in years. After expressing suicidal ideation to Izzy because of his terminal boredom in S1.E4 - Discomfort in a Married state, Ed found himself some balance. Some sweet marmalade. 

Ed and Izzy were in a toxic relationship that only reinforced their toxic behavior. And yes, I'm going to overuse the word toxic. While piracy is a place where you can go be yourself and shag whoever you want (whatever happens at sea stays at sea), it's not a place where you can be soft. Gentle. Emotionally open. Available. 

Ed's only path out that he could see at the time was to plan to skin the face of the man who built a ridonculous boat with a unicorn on the prow and wear it for the rest of his life. A plan to send Stede to Doggy Heaven. 

BTW: This is why Izzy uses the line in S2.E3 - the Innkeeper, that they put Ed down like a mad dog, so that Stede could reply that they sent Ed to Doggy Heaven. Reiterating this concept of piracy as violence, as taking away faces / identity / lives, but also losing one's own. Forgetting even what day of the year it is. Also revealing that Stede knew about Ed & Izzy's plan to murder him, send Stede to doggy heaven, and had moved on. 

This is also why the respite in S2.E4 - Fun and Games is so critical. Mary Read/Anne Bonney are portrayed as direct parallels to Stede/Ed. They are selling what are, no doubt, the spoils of their piracy. But they've chosen a remote location with no community, but each other and a life where they are not actually communicating. Which on its surface is where Ed and Stede end up, and yet…the Revenge can sail back. They are on the shore facing the sea, not in a jungle lost from a clear view. I'll quote the relevant Dante in just a bit, never fear.

Ed and Stede's new inn has the potential for a solid foundation, because the unicorn has been planted firmly in the ground, and if we get an S3, I firmly expect the unicorn leg to have transformed into a tree, because I've read a lot of medieval literature and that's how that sort of thing works. 

Well, it could be a penis tree (this was a thing in medieval marginalia), but somehow I don't think it will be. 

 But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Back in S1, the plan to murder Stede and take his identity broke down despite Izzy trying to perform an intervention to get Ed back into the toxic soup, and ended with Ed curled up in a bathtub and opening up about murdering his father. An image the show chose to flash on the screen multiple times in S2 just in case folks forgot that this was a traumatizing event for Ed, and was itself the culmination of years of traumatic abuse at his father's hands. 

Just as Stede kept flashing back to the moment his father tells him what it is to be a man, and kills an animal, the blood splashing on Stede's wee little face. 

That this is the point of the show. Transforming past trauma. It's there. You always carry the scars. Sometimes, you decide to tattoo yourself with the image of the thing you fear, and then the thing you fear is always there, but you've got to keep moving forward. To stay in one place, to stay trapped in the same emotion/action, is hell. I've read a lot of lit crit of Dante's Inferno. Trust me, it's the same thing.

Izzy's redemption arc is firmly based in the events of S1E6 - Here Dragons Be, because it's where the pustule of his relationship with Ed breaks. His attempted intervention fails to get Ed to kill Stede, so Izzy tries to kill Stede. Not realizing that a) Stede is a main character and b) this is a Core Universe show. Where it's possible to win a duel by being stabbed in the left side of your gut and stay there for many hours and not die. So he loses the 1 thing that defines him, his job. 

Izzy's redemption arc is firmly based in the events of s1E8 - We Gull Way Back, where he enlists Calico Jack to lure Ed off the boat (with all the toxic masculinity that entailed) so that the British could show up and shoot the head off the unicorn, and kill Stede. So Izzy can crawl back into his old patterns / job / life. 

Izzy's redemption arc is firmly based in the big drama confrontation in S1E10 - Wherever You Go There You Are, when as a person whose entire identity is tied up in being Blackbeard's First Mate and after realizing that he couldn't cut it as a captain on his own, he does whatever the f- he can to get Ed back into the toxic soup so he can get his old role/job back.  

This isn't to say that Ed's off the deep end actions in S2.E1&2 aren't his own choices. He is a main character. His emotional arc is one of the driving forces of the show. But they are the choices of a man who wants to die. After a lifetime of violent action that had been increasingly drowning him, he wants to die in the violence of battle, but the enemy are never good enough. He wants Izzy to kill him, but Izzy won't. Until he does…sort of. He wants to die in a storm. He's carving notches on his wall hoping to lure Ned Low to him so that he can die in pain. But Ed is the devil and does not die.

Except Ed's not the devil. He doesn't have a head made of smoke. He's a man. Not a fisherman. Not a fisher of men, and what an interesting attempt to go Christ himself off into the wilderness only to be fired for not being that good at it, and then receive his letter from the deep. 

Because in a show full of magical realism, the bottles with messages will reach the intended recipient eventually.

"In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to say what that wood was. So savage and harsh and strong, that the thought of it renews my fear. It is so bitter that death is little more so. But to speak of the good that I found there, I will tell of the other things I saw…and like one with laboring breath comes forth from the deep onto the shore, who turns back to the perilous water and stares, so my spirit still fleeing turned to gaze upon the pass that has never left anyone alive." Dante, Canto 1, Inferno. 

Instead of dying, Ed goes not to Purgatory (sorry I'd quote the opening lines, but Inferno actually works better here), but to the Gravy Basket, where he confronts the spirit of Hornigold. Dead spirit. Aspect of Ed's self. Both. Neither. Hated. Self. Unkillable. 

Is saved by a goldfish incarnation of Stede. 

But just as the imaginary as Stede's vision of what / who he thinks he needs to be for Ed, this is not true. Life being what it is, Ed and Stede rush when they need to go slow. They break apart because they are saying words, but the other person is hearing based on their own interpretation. 

BTW: The clue Dante-the-writer gives the reader in Canto V of Inferno is how one of the damned lovers, Francesca, explains how she hooked up with her brother-in-law, Paulo. She describes reading an Arthurian romance. She and Paulo kissed when Gwenevere and Lancelot kissed in the story. Except the version they are reading (and Dante tells the reader which version this is) was intended as a cautionary tale. Also, Paulo and Francesca were real people who were murdered by Francesca's husband when he caught them together. So there is that too.

I always like it in fiction when characters misinterpret each other because they hear based on their life experiences and don't hear the things that are said/unsaid based on the life experiences of the other person speaking. That's good writing. It's also how we end up with wildly varying interpretations of works of fiction.

But I digress.

Izzy's S2 arc is that he must let go of his relationship with Ed and turn to others. He must learn to let go of toxic masculinity and let in softness. Not weakness. Water is not weak, but it is soft. Calypso, goddess of the sea, is not weak. Her birthday is whatever day you need it to be. She is vast and deep and soft and relentless. 

In Ro-sham-bo, it's a shame that there is not a gesture for water. Because it is not paper that defeats stone, but water that wears away the stone. Of course, scissors wouldn't do much to water either, so that would sort of break Ro-sham-bo, so I suppose it must stay as it is.

It is through a craft's project that the crew of the Revenge find healing. Turn Izzy into the unicorn. A unicorn that Izzy's own actions caused to be decapitated with a British cannon ball in S1. That Izzy rendered legless (drunk). But the Revenge is a boat. They just need to swim/sail. It is through a craft's project that Izzy is able to offer healing to Lucius, who in turn is then able to turn their art away from fixating on Ed, and the trauma that he's been through and back towards love, and Black Pete. 

But it's not possible to see Izzy's S2 arc, if you didn't interpret S1 Izzy as needing to go through his own gravy basket. 

That Izzy dies because his transformation is necessary. He can't leave Ed, and if he doesn't leave Ed, then Ed can't stop being Blackbeard. The kracken. He literally tells Ed this as he chooses to transform. To free the world of Blackbeard, so Ed can be Ed. Yet, I've read so many posts by folks saying, "But why did he have to die?" Which sure, you can choose not believe what the character says while dying.

Which is a narrative privilege. To get a good dying speech. "There he is" get to be transmutted from an attack to an actual seeing. The larger than life concept of a smoke headed pirate can waft away.

Stories are hard to kill. They live on long past us, and as long as someone is remembered, especially in a universe like OFMD, we live. 

Though always reject the gift of a clock. That's someone telling you that you've only got so many hours left of life. If you are a character in a story. 

Thus the other parallel in this season is Izzy to Auntie and Ed to Zheng Yi Sao. Auntie must allow Zheng softness. Izzy must go through a sea change to something new and strange. Also, this would be a case of Doylistically the writers needed to line up Olu with Stede for that to work, and thus the new configurations of Olu and Jim's relationship, which, shrug, could be poly. Could be friends to lovers to friends.  Woulda, coulda, had more time, but that's on Max for not giving us 2 more episodes.

Prince Richard was trying to become a concept, but was too in love with the mechanics of it. Stede was trying to become a concept too. Found his fame, and all too quickly the toxic end of that particular route. Magical Realism was on his side until he tried to face down Zheng Yi Sao, the Queen of Pirates, and then the rules of the story weren't. Because those clocks were ticking. Everyone was in a very dark wood. The memory of blood splashed on Stede's face as a little boy was a warning. It was a reminder. It was the wrong lessons we take from our childhood and must unlearn to become whole.

Having the final shot of the show being Buttons landing on the unicorn leg as a reminder that this is a show about transformation. One thing becoming another thing. Somewhere the dead are dancing in Calypso's court. A dance below the sea and on the sea and with the sea. While the living keep sailing on their magic ship to do…I don't know. 

Because the Golden Age of Piracy is coming to an end. They'll go create new worlds and new places to be. Transforming.

If we get no more of the show, this is a resolution.

Since I've been quoting Dante, I'm going to end this with the final vision in Paradiso. Because folks who haven't been reading my analysis for the last 30 years / read it, may not realize that the Divine Comedy (a story that begins in sorrow and ends in joy) ends with the vision of a 3 way rainbow.