#rip karl

[nerd-elf]

The Stede effect

[patchworkpiratebear]

I thought I had finished the series of OFMD-themed "Lik The Bred" poems... but then I realised I CAN DO ONE FOR KARL! (because he's got a short name that fits this format)

I love him 💔

[b4g3lbit3s]

yeah izzy’s death was sad but what about karl’s 😔

[rodent-residence]

Karl update:

Unfortunately, Karl isn’t showing any signs of improvement, even with the medication.

Over the past few days I’ve gotten up at night to find Karl gasping for air and sneezing in the lower part of his cage. I would take him to the bathroom at late hours of the night and run some hot water and let the room steam up but it didn’t help much. His appetite slightly decreased and he hasn’t been going to the bathroom properly either.

I went to the vet on Friday and told them how the medicine hasn’t done anything and how his health has gotten rapidly worse.

Due to his age and the lack of response from the medication, the only other option they have is to euthanise him.

I’ve spent the last few days grieving and thinking about it and i think its for the best that he’s put to sleep. He has had so many complications over the past few months it feels wrong to keep him alive and suffering.

———

Rest well sleepyhead, may the stars and the gods above hold you in their arms more loving and tenderly than i ever will 💜🐀

[nicnacsnonsense]

I know we’ve discussed Stede’s black shoe ribbons here as possibly being his sign of mourning his break up with Ed, but I just had a thought. What if he’s wearing them for Karl’s funereal? 🥺

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

I think there's a not insignificant number of people in this fandom who I agree with virtually everything about the show on but who knee jerk reaction blocked me in may or June because I said "lmao I'm a Calico Jack apologist" (<- only half joking)

[foolishgamers]

THERES NO WAY KARL JUST DIED AGAIN

[megamyceted]

KARL HEISENBERG resident evil village, 2021

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I’m going to give you ideas for creative projects beyond your skill level

[lilithism1848]

[nicnacsnonsense]

Yes to all of this! Stede wanted a community where people would be supportive, caring, responsive to each others needs. A community where everyone can be soft or “cringe” or societally non-conforming and still be accepted for who they are. Since he could not find such a community, he decided to build it himself. And this absolute mad lad actually pulled it off.

Talk it through as a crew (not for me, though, just for you)

I know we give Stede a lot of grief about being emotionally constipated. He insists everyone “talk it through as a crew” and promotes and encourages everyone else’s emotional honesty, but has never met a feeling he can’t repress. He has all the emotional transparency of a particularly robust brick wall. But can we talk for a minute about how literally everyone in his life has led him to believe that sharing his feelings is not to be tolerated, much less encouraged?

From the first flashback we see of little baby Stede, he’s being taught suppressing his emotions is the correct course of action. He has an obvious honest emotional reaction of fear and disgust when his father beheads the goose right in front of him, blood spattering his face and clothes. He gasps and turns away, squeezing his eyes closed, and burying his face in his hands, whimpering. His father instantly and coldly chastises him for doing so. “Open your eyes, child. This is what a man’s work looks like,” Father Bonnet says. “Your natural impulses are wrong, actually; suck it up, buttercup, and be a man” he means.

By the time we see him at school, Stede’s peers have upped the ante. Instead of just a sharp reprimand for daring to find happiness in a flower bed, the other boys reward his transgressive joy with physical violence - chasing him down, lashing him to a rowboat, and hurling rocks at him for sport. The message is clear; softness and weakness are not to be tolerated. Any trespass is to be hunted down and beaten out of you.

Once we get to his engagement, we can see the effects the long-term application of enforced emotional suppression has had on Stede. The hesitancy with which he suggests, “I just... I thought that when I did marry it could be for love,” is heart-breaking. It’s almost a question rather than a statement. He’s tucked into his corner of the very narrow carriage, not even letting his arm brush his father’s lest he invade his space. He doesn’t even LOOK at his father until he’s done speaking. Yet even as meek as his request is, he's still met with a derisive sigh, as though his father can’t believe his son STILL doesn’t know better than to indulge in these emotional extravagances.

Everything we see of Stede’s childhood is angled at showing him just how much he needs to deny and hide his true self to be found even base-line acceptable. Social obligations before self interest ALWAYS. Bend yourself to fit, or we will BREAK you into the right shape. Make yourself smaller. Learn to want less.

Is it any wonder that Stede enters the married state almost entirely emotionally checked out? He’s learned the lesson well that his only safety is in suppression and self-isolation.

Sadly, once he’s married, things don’t get much better.

I want it to be clear that I’m not blaming Mary for her reactions to Stede’s indifference and distance. Anyone would be frustrated if they tried to make the best of a sub-optimal situation only to find the person who is supposed to be their partner doesn’t seem inclined to contribute much of anything to the proceedings. Unfortunately, the ways in which Mary vents her frustrations reinforce the lessons of Stede’s childhood.

We have no context for her reaction to Stede’s comment about Arthur at the dinner table - perhaps it’s the first time he’s bothered to say anything in a conversation that she’s single-handedly kept going for some time - perhaps they had an argument earlier and this is the first thing he’s said since - perhaps they had established a turn-based answer system and he was stepping on someone else’s turn. But whatever the reason, by refusing to acknowledge him and very pointedly moving on, she’s signaling that his participation is not welcomed. By association, his preoccupation with soft and kind things is judged just as unacceptable here as it was to his schoolmates.

The reticence with which he introduces the idea of taking the family to sea calls to mind the same hesitancy with which he posited the notion of marrying for love. His voice is soft and he positions himself below Mary in an almost supplicating posture, mostly looking at her out of the corner of his eye. In his mind he’s proposing a way to make the family situation in which he feels trapped work - finally contributing an idea about how to make the best of their sub-optimal situation. In Mary’s mind, it’s yet another instance of him tuning her out, hot on the heels of his clumsy, half-insulting reception of the painting she had been so excited to gift him. It’s perfectly understandable that she loses her temper and yells at him, but doing so only serves to shut Stede down as surely as the childhood castigations he suffered at the hand of his father. Immediately his body-language becomes withdrawn and shuttered, hands folded in front of him and head down, and his speech becomes higher-pitched, halting, and hesitant - hiding as much as he can lest he further provoke her.

Is it any wonder he pretends everything’s fine when Mary later makes the opening salvos of an honest dialogue about their feelings about the marriage? She’s shown him that she’s not a safe person with which to share his honest feelings. So it’s the old routine instead - learning to cry silently so you don’t bother anyone with it, or worse, get yelled at for it. Breathe through your mouth so they don’t hear how stuffy your nose is. Make up sufficiently plausible excuses to give them the option of ignoring what they might have heard if you get caught.

Stakes get even higher once he’s gone to sea. Stede wants to try a new, more gentlemanly sort of piracy, and approaches his crew as “supportive, caring, and responsive to their needs” - the kind of emotional support he wishes he had been afforded. How distressing it must have been to him, then, to learn these were the exact reasons his crew was contemplating mutiny. That because of his emotionally supportive approach, they viewed him as unacceptably “weak… craven, [and] ill-equipped to lead men.”

After the accidental death of Badminton, Stede learns that the situation is even more dire. It’s not just mutiny on the line; according to Olu, “everyone up there wants [Stede] dead.” The only way to avoid being murdered and to earn the respect if his crew is to suppress his emotions, and pretend the most traumatizing thing that has ever happened to him is not just fine, but on purpose, and something to be proud of.

So of course “talking it through as a crew” applies to everyone except Stede. The crew have expressed that they are literally willing to mutiny and murder him if he lets his real feeling be known.

Alas, even Ed is not a wholly safe harbor for Stede’s emotional expression. Upon their first proper conversation, after Stede awakens from his stab-wound induced fever-dreams, he is able to safely share his secret passageways and wardrobe indulgences with Ed, but when Ed later introduces the theme of “feel[ing] trapped’ and Stede clearly starts to physically open up, and hesitantly starts to share: “Yes. I have... I very much have felt that way…” Ed is so caught up in his own shit that he doesn’t realize that Stede was on the verge of confiding something even more intimate than his hidden wardrobe. Stede has learned well how to make himself smaller. He gives Ed room to rant, but his own confessions go unvoiced.

There’s a similar mechanism at work prompting the miscommunication that leads to the tragedy of the season. After the kiss, Ed is jubilant - caught up in the excitement of the moment. He starts spinning his grand plans, and doesn’t recognize that, in deference to Ed’s exuberance, Stede is Not Saying some very important things. Multiple times during the exchange, we see Stede looking away from Ed, his body turning away, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed together. This is not the face of enthusiastic consent.

Even when he says yes, he’s excited and smiling, but his lips are so tightly pressed together there’s no way he could say any of the things he very clearly needs to be saying.

So, yes. Stede could be better at expressing his feelings before they get so overwhelming that they explode out of him. But before he can do that, he needs to have a space where his emotional well-being and possibly his very life are not imperiled by doing so. And I really hope he gets it next season oh, my very dears, because I want a Stede-in-the-bathtub scene to mirror Ed’s. I want it like burning.

[patchworkpiratebear]

[prickly-pickle-cat]

[Watches my moldy babygirl fail to catch a fish with a knife] "I want that one."

[toalltheangels]

This has been one of my hyperfixations for a while and I love that it is becoming more popular lately

[saltyseadogsworld]

Some of us are tryin to bask in moon glow! 🌕💕

Art by @overbearingwatch / @agirlamonggeraniums :)))

[elfiewhore]

Remember! Proposing with a ring is a practice made up very recently by marketing companies to sell more rings to people. It's capitalism at its finest working it's way into our most precious of bonds.

Propose with adoption papers instead!