#it’s not super well laid out it’s just a chaotic bunch of prose im expressing myself through

[electric-friend]

i’ve got so many unfinished fics in my drive and maybe even one published one where someone calls stede strong and brave for maintaining his softness even when life pushes back.

recently i feel like stede made a choice ed and izzy have both made in the past that they’ve always wished they never did, and stede could have been spared from. at the very least i think it hurt ed to see the version of himself he hates in stede. he probably thinks stede wanted to become that man for reasons other than stede has been bullied his entire life for being inadequate and told a man a bit like blackbeard is a real man.

call me crazy or whatever but i actually think a major thing that should be communicated between ed and stede is something on stede’s end. his trauma and his feelings and his issues. as it stands now, i don’t think ed understands what’s going on with stede. i don’t think he understands the person stede really wants to be. i don’t think he understands stede’s own issues of self-doubt and stede’s insecurities. hell i don’t think ed even has that much of a grasp of how unpopular and disliked stede has always been his entire life. and i think maybe if stede explained himself better, ed would understand more of what was going on. that he wouldn’t be seeing stede as manifesting something he wants to escape from, he would see stede as someone he needs to help escape with him.