I can't stop having feelings about Stede Bonnet, particularly regarding the scene with Badminton right after Ed calls for the Act of Grace.
Stede spent his whole life being told that he wasn't good for... anything really. That he was too weak, too soft, too effemminate. Society rejected him for so long that, eventually, he rejected society. And when he realized that the pirate world was just as violent as the one he'd run from, he said No, not here, what if it weren't like that here? Because, as the captain of his ship, he could do it. He could create a small society of his own that was kinder. And initially his crew rejected him! He was a terrible pirate and captain.
BUT
He won them over in the end. He got his crew to love him not because he changed that much (although he did improve his survival skills and gained some much needed confidence) but because they realized they actually liked his managment style more that Izzy's traditional one. And then of course there's Ed. Ed, who fell in love with Stede from day 1, exactly because he was so soft and so different.
Despite what society had told him all his life, Stede managed to get both familiar and romantic love without having to change himself.
And of course, all the characters who represent classic, toxic masculinity just don't get how this could happen. Izzy is constantly puzzled by Ed's affection for Stede, so much so that he truly does not expect Ed to call for the Act of Grace; he unironically tries to talk Ed through accepting Stede's death as inevitable. Jack does not expect Ed to swim back to a trapped ship just so he can be with Stede. And Badminton, well, Badminton says it very clearly, doesn't he? "Why do you show such loyalty to this, this... nothing!"
To men who believe in toxic masculinity, Stede is nothing. He's a failure. They truly cannot see anything worth loving or admiring in him, and that's why they can never see what's between Ed and Stede as love, no matter how plain it is for everyone else (hello Lucius) to see.
