SPOCK: CHILD OF TWO WORLDS
you see me smiling at my phone like a giddy little lovestruck schoolgirl. you ask me if its a boy thats got me smiling like that. i nod and show you my phone. there is a 62 year old man on my screen
im actually not done talking about ed being autistic so here's my incomplete list of evidence
• he has little comfort items like the red silk and stede's cravat that he wears
• tries to "win" social interactions
• he doesn't notice that they're making fun of him in episode 5 until the dinner, and even then he only realizes bc stede taught him what passive aggression looks like
• when antoinette touches his beard he recoils and then everything in the room gets louder, the laughter is more obnoxious, and ed is visibly upset. that's sensory overload for sure
• stede and ed trade advice with each other because they're both autistic and they've picked up on different social rules based on their experiences
- stede teaches ed about "polite society" and things like passive aggression
- the fact that stede teaches him about dining was especially interesting because the rules of dining etiquette are unnecessarily convoluted, even to a lot of allistic people. it feels like a good way to convey how confusing all the unspoken rules of social interaction can be for autistic people in a way that an allistic audience could relate to
- ed does the same thing for stede; he teaches him how to sword fight and the basics of piracy, yes, but he also teaches him the unspoken rules of piracy that most people follow without question. for example, the episode with calico jack when they're leaving the ship and stede suggests going for a nature walk and ed starts to explain that "with this crowd, you probably want something a little more-" before being interrupted. he's teaching stede what "normal" pirates do
• masking!! this is a huge one bc it's kind of ed's whole deal. blackbeard is a persona he developed and puts on so that people will view him in a certain light and treat him accordingly and we only see him take that mask off around specific people, particularly stede. the beard itself is a big part of this for a couple reasons:
- (to clarify, his beard is also a metaphor for his sexuality and coming to terms with his relationship with stede but here im just focusing on this through the lens of his autism)
- from a practical standpoint, it hides a lot of his face. it literally masks his facial expressions to a degree, which can be comforting for some autistic people because we often feel the need to perform emotions in a way that's palatable to allistic people
- when he confesses his feelings to stede, it's after he shaves the beard off. he's fully showing himself to stede as ed and not blackbeard, and even refers to himself in third person ("what makes ed happy is you,") to show that the mask is fully off and he isn't acting as his carefully crafted persona
- finally, in the last episode when stede is gone, he decides to go back to being blackbeard. he puts his metaphorical mask back on. he goes so far as to draw on a new beard to symbolize that he's covering up his true self again. the beard is such an integral part of his persona that it's even in the name!
anyway, ed is autistic and so is stede. thanks for coming to my ted talk
beautiful women named daniel howell are dming me on instagram
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oh no!! the consequences of my own actions!!! it looks like spock talking about balls when i say i like a movie!!! oh no!! this is a travesty!!!
full context below LMAO
Ok so this probably isn’t an original thought. But. Is finger guns for Vulcans just blowing kisses. Like, Kirk does the bisexual “see ya later Spock, pow pow” and Spock is incredibly flattered (secretly, of course) and goes off and squeals into his bedcovers in a very logical way or am I just thinking too deep into this
While we like to joke about Izzy being in the wrong genre, I would argue that there are in fact at least five distinct genre universes in the world of Our Flag Means Death, and all of them have different rules.
Stede Bonnet, and his crew when they’re around him, live in a Muppet movie. I didn’t come up with this analogy but it’s so accurate. Insane physical comedy and comedy-action where no one really gets hurt. Mild peril but you know everything is gonna work out. Terrible puns and sight gags, but room for sweet, genuine emotional moments too. The rules of time, space, probability and logic will bend for a good joke.
Izzy Hands is in a grimdark action/drama where if someone gets stabbed in the gut they will behave normally and fucking die. (Probably slowly and painfully, of sepsis.) Crucially I think Izzy also lives in a genre where you can only be subtextually queer, and violence (done for or with or to each other) is the only acceptable form of intimacy between men. This is why being forcibly dragged into Stede’s world, where everyone is busy having silly low-stakes misadventures and being gay and emotionally available all over the main text–and seeing his Subtextual Boyfriend go into this world and love it–sends him round the twist.
The British, Spanish and other imperialist militaries are in a Master and Commander-style naval adventure where they’re the heroes. This is why they all take it completely seriously when Stede (unintentionally) kills Badminton and takes hostages, even though we can see that he bumbled his way into it ass-backwards. This is also why Stede is so shocked to get actually for real stabbed aboard the Spanish ship. (“Did you mean to do that?”) He didn’t realize until that moment that he’d stepped into a different genre. The stabbing is one of the first Surprise Genre Switch moments we get and in retrospect it’s very important for setting up that in this world, the threat of getting hurt or killed is very real–which we need to understand to know that there are real stakes much later, when Stede almost gets executed by the British.
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this has been in my head for weeks
no you don’t <3
she/they/he - i say funny things about my special interests sometimes dan and phil - star trek - superwholock
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