#& i just think blackbonnet should be unhinged and a horror to witness. together <3

[bookshelfdreams]

Hi, if there is (going to be) an essay on lighthouse/kraken to mermaid evolution will you share it with us?

Wish you a wonderful evening!

& @roseinmyhand

awww don't enable me (jk I love to be enabled)

I know people like to interpret the Kraken/Lighthouse metaphor as a dichotomy between Ed and Stede - dark vs light, depth vs surface, the coast vs the open sea, the unknown vs the guide, and so on. We like it when characters contrast, and so, compliment and complete each other.

But I think the Kraken and the Lighthouse are codifications of the similarities Ed and Stede share. Emotionally, both struggle with the same thing: loneliness, denial of personhood, the feeling of not being understood and truly seen.

Lighthouses are heavily associated with isolation. The job of a lighthousekeeper is a lonely one; he is supposed to keep his post no matter what, to set aside his own needs and comforts to provide a service to the people who might - not even are, might! - be out there, looking for his light. There is a reason lighthouses are haunted places, associated with madness. Isolation will literally cause lasting psychological damage, and the one who locks himself in this tower to make sure the coasts are safe to sail risks his life, his health, his sanity in service to others.

This is what Stede sees himself as: Someone who is trapped by duty to perform a role that slowly kills him. And even though both the priest who introduces this metaphor into his life and Mary talk about them being lighthouses for each other, Stede says he alone was supposed to be one for my family. Even in this huge estate, with all the comfort money can buy and surrounded by his beautiful family, he feels cast out and disconnected. What he wants, his own happiness, is unimportant, only that he fill the role society has cast him in, no matter how painful he finds it.

And then there's Ed. Ed who, at first glance, seems to have everything anyone could want, too. His name alone strikes fear into the heart of anyone who hears it, he is successful beyond the wildest imagination. He has respect and reputation; by all metrics he truly made it. But he, too, is unable to really connect to anyone. He has no peers on his own ship and the one person who should be his confidant and right-hand man rejects him when he wants to share his thoughts and interests. Nobody really seems to care about Ed. People care about Blackbeard, care about him being a good pirate, and he is good at it! He doesn't feel crushed and suffocated in his life as Stede does in his. But we should not forget that this is not a life Ed chose for himself. He was pushed into it at a very young age, by a horrible act he felt he had no choice but commit.

Away from the cosmos of his own ship and crew, people do not even really see him as human. He is a fucking viking vampire clown, a bloodthirsty killer, spawn of the devil, his eyes are coal and his head is smoke. The whole time he knew Stede, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, was waiting for him to see what he really is (a monster, that's what people like Stede always end up thinking), and then when he seems to do just that? When Stede rejects him, after he has layed himself bare, after he just started to believe that here might be one who really gets him, like no one has before?

Ed just sees proven true everything he has always believed about himself. He isn't a person who can have fine things, sweet and gentle things, the world will never let him have them. It wants to dehumanize him? Fine, let them do that, he will become the thing under your bed, the creature that drags innocent sailors into the depths. He will never win acceptance, let alone love, but he can force people to fear him and by whatever god is listening, that's what he will do. He will retreat into the dark abyss, alone, because a legendary monster needs no company, and feels no heartache.

One might see how both these ways of conceptualizing the self through metaphor might be a little bit maladaptive.

So. Mermaids.

A lot of people (especially children and teenagers) who are marginalized and/or feel disconnected from their peers will develop a fondness for certain mythological creatures at some point in their lives. Witches, faeries, vampires, mermaids. Creatures that are almost human, but not quite. A thing that moves like you and speaks like you but isn't you - a thing that's strange and alien.

A creature walking among the humans undiscovered.

Mermaids especially have stories of that sort associated with them. A beautiful person with an ethereal singing voice, that will eat you if you dare get too close. A pretty maiden at the dance, the hem of her dress perpetually wet: If you go home with her, she will drag you to the bottom of the river. Someone who sheds their scales like a mantle, whose touch will always be cold, who may have a tail and fish skin only once a month, a year, a decade, and who will leave you if you ever dare to see the true form of them.

Creatures that make ships crack up on the rocks.

And yet. That are social and never alone, are they? Beautiful and mysterious, feared, but it's a fear tinged with admiration, with envy. With their own societies, their homes that can't be reached by air-breathing folk. Mermaids are creatures both of the depths and the surface, who live as they please. Who are ungovernable.

This, I think would make for a beautiful resolution to both Ed's and Stede's character development. Reject the expectations that hurt you, embrace the weird and strange (the queer things) about yourself, but recognize there are people who will be your allies if you let them. Society thinks you are a monster (and I think it's significant that they both get called monstrous), let them think it. It doesn't mean they are right when they call you worthless. You will find your own gang of monsters to be weird and terrifying together.