#they've made mistakes and absolutely some of those mistakes contributed to me being this way

[townofcrosshollow]

Got a new, extremely serious, life changing diagnosis yesterday and when I got home my dad was like "You know what that means? DISABILITY TAX CREDIT!" and y'know what he's right and he should say it

[bullagit]

my friend you are so refined. nice to see posts appreciating stede every once in awhile lol love to clown on the dude but i also feel like the fandom has pushed me into full apologist mode too. like yes he’s wack he has problems but i am also so bored of reading the same takes over and over about why he needs to castigate himself for absolution or be responsible for the actions of other adult human beings lol. ik this is kinda spicy lol but just wanted to let u know ur appreciated

its always rad to know you're not alone in these takes!! i dont consider it spicy at all i think it's completely valid tbh. this got way longer than i planned hold on if u want the tldr its that you are right

anyway at this point im gonna stop even doing the like, "i know stede [xyz about flaw or mistake he made]" preface when i type up meta, unless i'm posting specifically about his flaws or mistakes. 🤷

especially if what i'm writing is about ways stede has been legit wronged, or how parts of fandom only seem to invoke historical accuracy/paying attention to very specific minutiae when it's done in a way that makes stede come across as way more self-aware and self-important than he is in any canon capacity lol. i get tired of meta and interpretations where everything bad that happens in stede's relationships is solely on him, and reconciling is solely on him, and maintaining is solely on him!

these characters are all flawed human beings who bring their baggage to relationships. all of them. and those relationships are two-way streets, from the issues to the repairs. and it's unfair to see it whittled down to like... thoughtful fleshed-out considerations of ed and mary and their circumstances/points of view and how that contributes to their actions, occasionally to the point where even THEIR missteps are suddenly recontextualized to be technically stede's fault. while stede gets surface-level bad faith takes that ignore the context of his actions and the history he has that contributes to his issues. they've all done things that were hurtful, they've all done things they need to work through.

like. just because mary says stede left his family on a whim doesn't mean that's literally what he did! we know full well it wasn't some idle whim he had. the thing is, demonstrably, she and stede do not really know or understand each other. to HER understanding, it was a whim. to stede it was fumbling for hold of a lifeline after a lifetime of slowly drowning. and it doesn't make it less of a terrible thing that he left his family without a word in the night. and it doesn't make it less of a terrible thing that she literally tried to murder him without a word in the night. in the same way that just because they were able to come to an understanding at the very end of the season, it doesn't mean that they could have magically had a satisfying life together If Stede Had Only Been More Open Sooner.

and just because stede did something that broke ed's heart doesn't mean it's stede's fault that ed, a 40+ year old man, attempted the murder of people he knows stede cares about. in the same way that while izzy pushed ed’s buttons and was generally fucking awful to ed in the aftermath, it was ultimately still a choice that ed made to maroon the crew and literally throw lucius overboard!

(and like, i think there's a lot to be said about the fact that if stede had straight-up been intercepted more permanently in some way, if he'd not shown up bc he was hurt/killed/captured/etc, ed's assumptions-- the fact that he at no point seemed to consider that something could have gone wrong with their little plan-- and ultimate awful reactions would have played out the same way. i think there's a lot to be said about the fact that he historically seems to have trouble picking up on stede's issues; being so in love with the whole forest that he tends not to pick up on the state of the individual trees that form it, etc.

but god that's a whole thing i don't even have energy for that rn)