#friendliness & were laughing at rather than with you - with the shame of realizing you erroneously let yourself believe you were liked &
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adickaboutspoons · 2 months ago
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Mostly I was responding to the points raised in @scarrletmoon's response, but you raise some excellent points to which I'd like to respond. Feel free to ignore if you're tired of my bullshit. I completely understand the impulse. 1st, you're absolutely right; I was coming across as gate-keepery by saying that I find Stede's eccentricities charming as though that ought be the default experience. For that I apologize. I ought to have taken more care. When I said "And that's valid, but I would say that those are the parts that the crew and Ed grow to love once they embrace those parts of him instead of cringing at them" what I meant to convey is that the experience of 2nd-hand embarrassment when Stede does something that recalls to the viewer times when they have felt ashamed/were made to feel shame because of something they did is absolutely understandable, but we can take heart in Stede being accepted & loved for those parts of him, & find hope that so too may we be embraced for our own quirks & foibles. My intention was to encourage others to be more gentle with & accepting of their own perceived failings, but I can see now that I failed to adequately express that, & for that I am sorry. I do take issue with the suggestion that I am strawmanning, though; I would argue that how one views Stede's motivation & framing absolutely informs the extent to which/moments in which one finds his behavior cringe-worthy. In your original post, you contend Stede is "pretending to be this macho pirate captain who totally knows what he's doing" & your response above adds he's a bad manager & a jerk because he's praising himself & chiding his employees, whom you interpret as him treating as stand-ins for his own children. If that's how you're framing the scenario, then, sure - I can see how his behavior comes across as cringe to you. But that's not at all how I perceived it. I will grant he is pretending more expertise than he actually possesses, but he IS a pirate captain, & as to the attribution of "macho" I absolutely disagree, specifically because he is textually interested in a form of piracy that is not that. Because that is my understanding of the scene, in the debrief scene I see a person excited at the success of what, if Black Pete is to be believed, is their very 1st raid, & doesn't understand why everyone else wasn't also chuffed. He then listens to Wee John' criticism & encourages him to clarify WHY he feels the way he does. When Wee John identifies the lack of a flag as a contributing factor to his disgruntlement, Stede provides materials so they can rectify the deficit. This isn't Stede forcing arts & crafts on these grown-ass men (& Jim) - it's Stede hearing a problem & supplying the means to a solution. Similarly, he hears out Buttons about the crew's dissatisfaction, & tries to rectify it by finding a more appealing target for a raid, even though he obviously feels unequal to the task himself. To me, that's the complete opposite of a bad manager (to me he's a bad manager when he's being dismissive of the crew's input, like the fuckery brainstorming, & even then he climbs down from his high horse & apologizes. Which? GREAT manager!). Where you see Stede infantilizing his crew, I see them taking part in activities that, while generally relegated to childhood, aren't implicitly childish, & of their own volition, & Stede sowing the seeds that will eventually blossom into a found family (not imposing an established family structure). For clarity, I'm not saying my interpretation is objectively right, nor that yours is wrong. I'm just saying framing is going to influence perception of whether Stede's behavior is Cringe, & that's kind of what I was getting at with my myriad examples of Stede behaving "authentically" or "inauthentically" & when that is a viable predictor of a general fandom perception of when Stede is being Cringe. Because I really don't think it is. This is going to continue in the notes because tumlr thinks they can cut my mic.
listen I love stede a lot - I think he's the bravest character in the show. he changes everyone he meets for the better. he embodies what I think of as the thesis of the show. if he wasn't the way that he is, the show would not be very good, imo.
but in ep one he gives his pirate crew notes on the raid they just did as though they were a community theater troupe and his notes were 1) complimenting his own opening speech as "very inspiring" and 2) complaining that that the crew wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about robbing two poor fisherman of a single plant.
during the raid his narration went "some men are born to be pirate captains, others learn on the job. me? well I'm a pretty solid mix of both" as though he has any idea what he's doing.
and AFTER the raid Olu has to gently point out to him that piracy isn't a game to the rest of the crew.
There's a reason that Rhys Darby was the only person capable of playing Stede without making him seem like a total dick. And I think that's bc Rhys was able to convey the idea that Stede's behavior in the first few eps is coming out of this deep sense of insecurity - he's doing some Stede-y things (flag making! paying the crew! bedtime stories!) that are great but he's also pretending to be this macho pirate captain who totally knows what he's doing. And it's the pretending that makes people cringe with second hand embarrassment. While also, often, seeing themselves in it and feeling a great deal of sympathy for Stede about it.
The reason Stede is like this is because HE thinks there's something deeply wrong with him, a belief that has been solidified by everyone around him his entire life, and therefore he needs to do everything he can to hide that deeply wrong thing about him. When he unpacks that and embraces the things about himself he originally thought were embarrassing (being weak, pathetic, soft, etc), he can stop pretending. And that's when other characters grow to love him! And so people will sometimes call him cringe because they aspire to be cringe like him, to embrace the parts of themselves that they were punished for and live more authentically.
because he changes! that's the point! he moves from cringe (pretending to be someone he's not) to cringe (being true to himself, always a deeply vulnerable thing to be) and it takes a lot of hard work. that's what makes me LIKE him as a character. that's what I think makes him the bravest character on the show. because he doesn't start out perfect. he's a puppet who grows into a real boy and that means that for a period of time he was a puppet, and that's okay.
#In your posts you say 'it's the pretending that makes people cringe with second hand embarrassment' & ''cringe' comes from when#you are trying to pass yourself off as something you’re not *& failing*.' I really can't say I agree. This is what I was trying to get at#when I was talking about the battle robe scene. Stede is pretending bravado when he calls the garment he put on to comfort himself#a 'battle robe' and when he asks for a 'refresher' on defensive maneuvers but no one is fooled by this affectation - not the audience & not#Jim & Olu. But this isn't the part of the scene that's Cringe even though Stede is pretending to be brave & failing badly.#The part that's Cringe is when he tries to claim affiliation with a group to which he doesn't belong & puts Olu in the position of having t#nicely explain why he's wrong. It's not the pretending that's Cringe it's the unexamined privilege & putting someone in an awkward position#I would argue that Cringe comes from the sympathetic recognition that someone is doing something they shouldn't & how you would feel#if you were in their place. I would like to share one of the times I find Ed Cringe that I don't normally see discussed in those terms#in fandom at large; the montage part of the French Party Boat scene when Ed is clowning around. I find this scene hard to watch because I#am intimate with the scenario of thinking you're among friends & being encouraged to act out only to find out later they were only feigning#friendliness & were laughing at rather than with you - with the shame of realizing you erroneously let yourself believe you were liked &#lending credence to the idea that you're *deserving* of derision by people who already held you in contempt by making a fool of yourself.#Again - not saying mine is the correct interpretation of this scene - just explaining how I perceived it.#Because my point is not that Ed *IS* Cringe in this moment but that we should all examine WHY we find a character's behavior Cringe.#WHAT about that scenario invokes that reaction? What messages have we internalized about Correct Social Behavior that is prompting it?#Are those messages valid? Are they something we want to continue to reinforce or would we be happier if we let them go?#This is what I meant when I said we should be cautious about trying to jam all the iterations of Cringe under a single umbrella term.#& why I think it's not useful to reclaim Cringe as an unambiguously positive term.#Because there ARE times when that Cringe response is identifying an actual social transgression.#I'd never say Stede is *never* Cringe 'cos there are times when he absolutely is. Like the 'one of the guys' part of the battle robe scene#When he says he's not a colonizer before the tribal council. Other times? That's more fungible.#& is going to depend a lot on the person perceiving the Cringe behavior & their own internalized deal.#If someone says 'Stede is Cringe & I love him' & means 'I love that he's unapologetically himself & loved for it & wish I was less worried#about what people think so I could be free to express myself like him' that's beautiful & I wish them luck & every happiness.#If what they mean is 'Stede gives zero fucks & has no filters & we should all be more like that' that's not just objectively untrue#it's also not how social contracts work. SOME filters are GOOD. Being aware of which ones you've internalized#& whether they're useful for you or holding you back is also good.#If what they mean as I've unfortunately seen all too often & makes me suspicious when I someone use Cringe as a blanket descriptor of Stede#is 'Look at that buffoon go. What a loser.' Meet me in the Denny's parking lot. I just want to talk. And keep some gates.
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