Rec Roundup

[delphi]

A roundup of OFMD recs I've made recently in my journal:


Untitled Ed/Izzy Gifset by cbsjaneeyre
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Izzy Hands/Edward Teach
Medium: Graphic/Gifset
Length: 3 gifs
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: angst, unhappy ending, declarations, heartbreak, loss
Artist's Caption: love shouldn't hurt like this.

Description:

The first gif shows Izzy fighting both tears and comfort as Fang tries to hug him in the 2x01 scene where Jim, Fang, Frenchie and Archie try to stage an intervention about his relationship with Ed. The second shows Izzy struggling to declare his love to Ed later in that episode (caption: "I have...love for you, Edward"). The third is from 2x03 and shows Izzy in the brig, leaning back and silently weeping as he sits with the belief that he not only helped kill the man he loved to save the crew, but that the crew will now die all the same because of his choices.

I love (and hate, in the best of ways) the painful triptych created here through the scene choice, positioning, and colours. In the middle is the moment of Izzy finally getting the words out, golden light coming in through the papered-over windows behind him. On either side is the before and after, both of them less saturated, nearly greyscale. Before: Izzy struggling not to let his feelings out, fighting against those who are trying to help him. After: the tears coming freely and with awful resignation as Izzy bears the full weight of not having been able to help anyone in return. His love couldn't save Ed, couldn't save the people he felt responsible for, and ultimately won't be able to save him. Still, for whatever it's worth, his relationship to the pain and to himself is changed.


Untitled Modern Ed/Izzy by fleethall
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Izzy Hands/Edward Teach
Medium: Art
Length: 1 piece
Rating: NSFW (sex, no direct nudity)
My Bookmark Tags: pwp, romance, ambiguous ending, established relationship, au: modern, intimacy, bdsm, collars, leashes, leather, public sex, impact play

Description:

A red-lit monochrome drawing of Ed getting sucked off by Izzy in a bathroom stall. Ed is shirtless under his leather jacket, and Izzy is bare to the waist, a leash trailing over his shoulder and his flogging scars on full display. Ed is clutching Izzy to him tightly, and Izzy has an arm around him and a hand pressed to his stomach.

This is just hot. The poses, the setting, the palette, the re-contextualization of Izzy's canonical scars—the implication of what we can't see and the passion and intimacy of what we can. Neither character's face is showing, and yet everything they're feeling just pours off the page.



A Body in Heaven and a Mind Full of Dirt by DisasterShipBlonde (archive-locked)
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Ship: Benjamin Hornigold/Izzy Hands
Medium: Fic
Length: 3172 words
Rating: Explicit (Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings)
My Bookmark Tags: pwp, character study, ambiguous ending, unrequited/ust, backstory, fantasies, ogling, power dynamics, sexuality, bdsm, coming in pants, consent play, objectification, size difference, underage
Summary: Young Izzy watches his captain being measured for a suit, and quickly tumbles into a detailed size difference daydream.

Excerpt:

As Izzy folds the coat and returns to his chair, Captain stands before the tailor’s screen of mirrors and allows the little man to work his magic. It’s odd to see someone touch the captain, Izzy realises. He doesn’t take lovers, at least not in public, and anyone stupid enough to lunge at him during a raid quickly learned the immensity of their mistake. Hornigold is the first captain Izzy has served who hasn’t patted his bottom in passing, and he’s grateful for the reprieve – it’s fucking exhausting to run a ship by day and please a ravenous captain by night. Still, watching a stranger run a tape measure over the impressive topography of Hornigold’s body is... unnerving.

Shoulders, waist, inseam, throat. The tailor charts each hill and valley of muscle and sinew, keeping his findings inside a discreet pocketbook Izzy feels an odd compulsion to peek into. The soft sounds of the tape measure slipping through the tailor’s deft fingers is working strange magic on Izzy’s idling brain. Now that he's not running around, obeying orders and barking his own, he's free to sit and stare at Hornigold's tall, durable figure for the first time, and it's a strange feeling... like floating outside of himself. One mustn’t stare on deck, of course, but now, in the silence of the tailor’s shop, Izzy feels something akin to permission.

Sometimes a character thinking about a filthy situation is even hotter than the character being in a filthy situation, and this story is one of those times. Young Izzy goes on a deliciously salacious and revealing mental journey as he imagines being fully used by his big cruel captain—knowing that he shouldn't be doing so while in the same room as the man, but unable to help himself. There's some really tasty stuff going on here about freedom, subjugation, and the places they converge and reverse in consent-related fantasies, and it's also just plain hot.



His Look by house-afire
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Wee John Feeney & Izzy Hands
Medium: Fic
Length: ~1100 words
Rating: Teen
My Bookmark Tags: character study, happy ending, missing scene, identity, gender, starting over, friendship, bathing/grooming, queer community, theatre
Author's Summary: Prompt: 100 words of trying it again


Excerpt:

It's hardly his first Calypso party. Not even the first one with all the foofaraw; even harder-edged crews like a good masquerade every now and then. But he’s never been one of the gilded boys, light dancing off his spangles. He used to just drink and watch them, something in his chest yawing about at the sight. They were just pretty pieces of paper tossed about in the wind, he told himself back then: flashy but with no weight to them. You couldn’t rely on lovely things.

This is a gorgeous missing scene from Calypso's Birthday, where Izzy and Wee John are getting into drag for the party and talking about performance, being seen, and just being. The author has an incredibly deft hand with metaphor, working with a set of imagery that lands in the perfect place for Izzy's self-awareness—one concerned with the practicalities of sailing and survival, of the essential material of things, of the simple existential experience of weight—and they bring just as much depth of characterization to Wee John in his pragmatic responses to Izzy's inner turmoil. I love everything about this.