#multipart essay

[starghost-fics]

further thoughts on character weakness and desire via OFMD: Edward Teach

previously: intro and Stede Bonnet's self-doubt

intro/reminder: what's this about, eh

Right, so: it’s really interesting to look at a character, pinpoint a weakness, and interrogate all their desires through that quality.

CHARACTER: Desires X, does Y; character's [quality] expresses itself as [generalized action, internal or external] and [method of subverting own desires]

Ed’s side of things is a little more interpretative for me. The show is so much with Stede and his past that I simply had more to work with for the analysis, which let me sketch the framework in the previous post. Yet I don’t have Stede as intuitively in my writer brain as I do Ed; I’d written like 3,000 words from Ed’s perspective before I started on this character interpretation bender? And I think you’ll find the next bit is more The Ed I Wrote rather than strict canonical interpolation.

character study: Ed Teach and self-loathing

When it comes to Ed… oh, Ed:           

desires (the safety of) power, resorts to intimidation

desires novelty, creates chaos

desires fine things, dismisses them in front of others

Ed's self-loathing means there are other things he doesn't let himself desire, like kindness, like softness; he treasures the brief glances of these things he gets but doesn't expect them, doesn't try to keep them, and is knocked sideways when they are freely given to him.

(Doesn’t even bother desiring respect (rather than power) because he thinks of that as another thing he's unworthy of?)

Ed's self-loathing means he may well know his own desires but undercuts them out of defense, of not being worthy of receiving them

Looking at a second character clarifies how the desire pairing works. It’s not that key weakness(/strength) dictates how the desire is inverted. Rather, it dictates what that equation is entirely.

Stede’s self-doubt creates opposites, questioning and overcorrecting his own desires. But if you’re full of self-loathing, what do you think of your own desires? You see them, and they come from deep within you, which is a person you hate, and so you hate and love those desires. You try to fulfill them as you try to deny them. Deny you even have them. Desires get distorted.

A desire for the respect you never had (because you were poor, because you were a child, because you were your mother’s son) mutates into power instead, because power can come through strength and violence, but where does respect come from? Hierarchy, and worthiness, and goodness, maybe. Who would respect you? But you sure as hell can learn to wield power over them.

There are plenty of things that Ed wants and gets. That’s kind of a piratical thing: see a ship, want the ship, take the damn ship!!! But I wonder: did Ed let the best tapestries burn? Did he bloody the silk shirts? The things he does take for his dimly lit cabin, does he let himself enjoy them like he wants to, or does he hide them there, in the shadow of flickering candles and pipe smoke, both loving and hating them? Are they even the things he wanted most?

(By the way, if you haven’t paused the early scenes on Blackbeard’s ship in order to deeply study the barely-visible set design in the captain’s quarters, whoo boy, you’re missing out.)

But just like Stede’s self-doubt is undercut from the moment they meet, Ed’s self-loathing is tempered, too. Where Stede couldn’t hide behind theatricality or run away (because he could barely stand), Ed is overloaded by finery and by Stede’s enthusiasm for it, and for the slightest hint that Ed might tolerate said enthusiasm. It’s bullet point 4, up there: that he is thrown off track by Stede. And in a way, he can let it happen because of that desire for novelty, which hides the fact that Ed is being destabilized in other ways. His self-loathing is tricked and quieted: This is exactly the chaos Ed lives for! Some weird rich guy doing shit Ed’s never seen before! This isn’t the start of a hugely transformative relationship! Right???

So after being clad in fine clothes and given more novelty, having charmed a different kind of attention if not respect, after the suggestion that he is worthy, he can wear fine things, of course Ed steps forward. Of course Ed knows what he wants: this fine person, this gentle man. And of course, at the slightest sign, he remembers he doesn’t deserve it, and bails.

And this is the end of the season, too. He dared to let the soft parts of him want, and the world cut him back down. It’s two poles of how the arc can go: Stede’s self-doubt is quieted, his internal compass validated, and he ends with a hopeful return to what he now knows as his honest desire. Ed’s self-loathing is confirmed, multiplied, and he falls back into the protective habits that deny and twist the desires he can’t destroy in himself.

conclusion: if you want to use this framework, here's an idea

This was kind of about broader writing thoughts at one point. Let me reiterate:

Ask what your character thinks they want. But then: what are they doing about it? Where do they fail in those desires, or shy away from them?

What is the line that connects the desire to their failure to achieve it? It’s probably a key character quality you should jot down.

How do the characters around them upend that key quality? How do they reinforce it? Poke at that to see how it might evolve into an arc: an epiphany, a tragic downfall, etc.

In conclusion, I want to see more Frenchie songs and cons in season two. This has nothing to do with anything. It's just my heart's desire.

[triflesandparsnips]

4. The top three people who touch Stede, or who Stede touches, are Ed, Mary... and IZZY.

Which is pretty impressive, considering these are three people who don't appear in every episode with Stede.

Figure 1. Dreadful enemy is totally cool with staring at hero's mouth.

With regard to Mary:

We know from context that they've had sex at least twice, and likely more often than that due to the age difference between the kids. (They had a daughter first; for the purposes of inheritance, I suspect they had to keep on trying until they had a son.) We could theoretically call the character of Alma between 10 and 13 years old -- meaning that Stede's had at least a decade to get body-comfortable with Mary.

Stede will undress in the same room as her, but that's not particularly special for him (he also dressed/undressed at least twice with Ed, and spent a not-insignificant amount of time bare-chested after Izzy cut his shirt up. For the early 1700s, Stede is remarkably free and easy with showing his body).

They share a bed. His memories show him curled away from Mary in the past, not touching at all, but from Mary's viewpoint he tends to starfish extravagantly. Either Stede's memory is wonky (and it might be), or his sleep behavior could be considered a reflection of his innate wish to touch and be touched, without the fears he carries while awake. (Or maybe he's just a bed-hogging jerk. He can contain multitudes.)

Mary's method of dealing with Stede is clearly one of withdrawal. While she tries to initiate touch with him at the wedding by taking his hand, and she'll gesture into his personal space when she's more in charity with him (when she gives her anniversary gift; on the porch of Evelyn's house), she otherwise tends to leave his presence when she's angry or upset. It's interestingly passive compared to her very direct murder attempt, and also plays into, or was even instrumental in building, Stede's own maladaptive touch behavior.

Figure 2. Standard intimacy in heterosexual marriage.

In a fascinating inversion of the moonlight scene with Ed, when Stede says "May I?" to Mary's heart (the advertisement for her gallery opening), he waits with his hand out for her to give it to him, rather than taking it from her.

I do think Stede is fond of Mary, though, and tried to show it -- specifically, he knelt and got into her personal space when presenting his gift to her (a mirror of his kneeling and suggesting co-captaining to Ed). And I do think they were used to being in one another's personal space when they weren't upset or arguing -- he lets her close enough to cover his eyes for his gift, and when she hugs him, she purposefully does so at an angle and in such a way that he could choose not to touch her directly in return-- which is the kind of compromise one learns to make after a decade, I think. What's sweet, though, is that while he doesn't hug her back, he does lean his head against hers -- accepting the opening she gave him.

Figure 3. The positive results of carefully developed intricate heterosexual rituals.

Welp. Fuck it, yup, we gotta talk about Izzy Hands.

In their first meeting, Izzy uses his sword to undress Stede -- and Stede doesn't retreat. Stede then pushes the point of his knife into Izzy's cheek. This is in contrast to how Stede threatens the French captain in episode 5, where the knife does not touch the captain's skin at all.

And actually, with that introduction, let's also bring in Stede's Thing about angles... Stede starts the scene facing Izzy directly; he turns so he's right-angled to Izzy after Izzy has stripped him. Later, in Spanish Jackie's, they're almost entirely at right angles even as they argue. On the Revenge, they're back to face-to-face when Stede calls him a raging asshole, and the whole duel... well. These two go back and forth between Stede's version of intimacy and everybody else's version of intimacy like someone's flicking a lightswitch.

Speaking of Spanish Jackie's: While Izzy purposefully gets into Stede's personal space to menace him, Stede also gets into Izzy's space (and uses his own taller height to invade further); they notably spend this interaction intentionally getting closer to one another, which is unusual for Stede.

Figure 4. Eighteenth-century Spy vs Spy get into one another's space and very heterosexually do weird things with their faces.

There's a fascinating parallel in episode 6: the only two skin-on-skin touches are when Ed leans his forehead against Stede's hand in the bathtub... and when Izzy punches Stede in the face with his bare fist.

The majority of Stede's acts of violence happen against Izzy, and the majority are either symbolically or explicitly (within the context of the show) intimate/sexual.

And we finally get to Ed. I'm not even going to try and categorize this shit. If you go to the raw data you can see the whole shebang, so I'm just gonna give the highlights now that I've gone over Stede's multifaceted Touch Stuff. Particularly notable moments will be in red:

Dreaming and waking up: Stede gasps/flinches simultaneous to Ed's hand lifting as he wakes; Stede sinks down away from Ed's hand when Ed stops him from rising; it's possible that Ed helps Stede as Stede dresses into his breeches and then again into Ed's clothes

The leap year mistake: Stede is touching the capstan when Ed leaps onto it; Stede does not move away; Stede slides an elbow onto the capstan while Ed is sitting on it; when Ed realizes his mistake and gets down, Stede lifts a hand as if to comfort and/or stop him but puts it down again; Ed touches the capstan while Stede is still doing so and slides his hand on it while circling to leave

Figure 5. The start of the complex capstan flirtation.

The lighthouse: Stede sets down his lighthouse painting such that it touches Ed's leg; Stede gets mouthfuls of alcohol from same bottle Ed was drinking from; Ed hugs Stede from the side, hands on Stede's bare upper arm (Stede is happy but does not reciprocate)

Looting the French ship: Stede doesn't flinch in surprise from Ed entering his personal space from behind; Ed gets further into Stede's space to knock books from Lucius and grazes against him

Teaching dining: Stede withdraws and moves away in face of Ed's anger, then steps forward to "fix" the situation; Stede rights Ed's chair but releases it before Ed touches it

Moonlight scene: Stede pulls silk from Ed; Stede gets into Ed's personal space; Stede tucks silk into Ed's waistcoat pocket; Ed approaches but Stede stiffens; Ed claps Stede's arm instead of falling onto his mouth

Ship life: When Stede sits on deck next to Ed, one leg is extended toward Ed while the other is folded under, and Ed leans toward Stede while laughing (it's also possible that he puts his hand on Stede's knee, but off-camera) -- Stede also leans in as he laughs

Practice fight: Stede and Ed practice with swords; Ed threatens Stede with gun; Stede stabs Ed; Stede unexpectedly embraces Ed in an effort to hold him up (but notably his hand flutters uncertainly before actually committing); Ed and Stede talk closely while Stede holds him up

Figure 6. Ridiculous man leaves handsome pirate hanging unsupported on his sword for several moments because he somehow doubts that handsome pirate really wants to be embraced by ridiculous man.

Tub Scene: Stede knocks down the washroom door to get into Ed's space; Stede kneels next to tub and touches edge; Stede moves hand closer along the edge; Stede puts his hand on Ed's shoulder; Ed rests his forehead against Stede's bare hand

Morning routine: Stede hands Ed a cup of tea; Stede and Ed speak closely in each other's personal space; Stede lets the lace of his cuffs brush Ed's arm several times (unusual for Stede)

Figure 7. Gentleman drags lace of sleeve over arm of local heartthrob like a debutante brushing her skirts against the handsomest man at the ball, the flirt

Snake eating: Stede and Ed's pant legs graze slightly while sitting on log; Stede asks Ed to come closer and cleans his beard

Co-captains: Stede kneels behind couch where Ed sits sideways (right angles); Stede rests his bare arm against Ed's; Stede resettles his bare arm again against Ed's

General Ed behavior with Jack around: Spends a lot of time touching Stede to placate or show his affection, which Stede permits and sometimes provides opportunities for (such as leaning on the stair baluster in front of Ed, giving Ed the chance to lean on it too)

Cove plans: Stede leans in to offer Ed a nature walk, but then leans away when Ed demurs

Yardies: Ed and Stede start by grazing clothing and hair to look at Roach in the water but when the camera cuts back there is significant space between them and Pete has his hands on both their shoulders

Bathroom break: Stede technically permits who he thought was Ed to be in his personal peeing space (which is apparently a Sacred Space, or so I've heard from cis dudes?)

The British: when Ed's boot touches his shoe, Stede purposefully lifts his own foot to rest his stockinged ankle on top of Ed's boot-tip (very direct compared to Stede's usual plausibly deniable physical overtures)

Camp: Stede sits on Ed's bunkbed; unclear if Ed taps Stede's knee when offers to fold his clothing (if it does, it's off-camera)

The kiss: Scene starts with Stede curled up tightly on the beach, knees up and elbows tucked tightly in; Ed sits closely to Stede, at which point Stede lets his elbows wing out into Ed's personal space; Stede leans in to whisper; Ed kisses Stede (at a right angle again) with his hand on his face, shoulder, sinking down Stede's back; Ed shifts to get closer to Stede and make the angle between them more acute; Stede shifts to lower and open his knees; unclear if Stede touches Ed's knee (off-camera, could be part of his own shifting position); 💖Stede kisses back💖; after the kiss they settle back, widening the angle again slightly but remain curled in toward each other; Ed is holding Stede's hands (Stede is not grasping back, his hands appear to be folded into Ed's); very subtle leaning back from both of them for remainder of scene (indicative of concerns after the fact, or just necessity of filming? unclear)

Figure 8. Deeply surprised middle-aged man suddenly discovers that kissing someone back is actually an amazing goddamn idea, holy shit. Was this always possible? Could he have been doing this this whole time?

...And that's it. That's the whole thing.

✨~Stede is fucking weird about touch.~✨

Please write more things that address this issue, I beg of you.

-----

-> Review the raw data and notes

-> Go to part 1: Stede wants to be touched, but is afraid of it.

-> Go to part 2: Stede will avoid touch to protect himself.

-> Go to part 3: Stede has found/developed "safe" ways to physically interact with people.

[triflesandparsnips]

3. Stede has found/developed "safe" ways to physically interact with people.

Whomst among us hasn't, really.

Figure 1. Two men decide to be friends in a totally normal manner and not at all after a life-changing 24 hours of wild shenanigans.

Stede has figured out some Safe Social Touching:

Specifically, hand shakes. He can do those. He can stick out his hand first, or he can accept someone else's. The majority of any skin-on-skin contact he has with his crew comes when Ed invites everyone to come and shake Stede's hand in episode 4.

(We do see that Stede prepares his bare hands for fisticuffs with Jim, which I am choosing to call another Social Touch based on how/where Stede would've learned it.)

Stede also shows his own social displeasure with hand shakes. He only offers his hand to Calico Jack after Ed's introduced them; he doesn't offer his hand at all to Doug. (He does, however, offer his hand to Izzy following their initial meeting in episode 2. And Izzy declines to take it.)

When Stede interacts with the crew -- and sometimes with Ed, in the beginning -- he often does so in a way that can read as patronizing in the literal sense: a careful idea of fatherhood.

He bends over into people's spaces when teaching or monitoring -- specifically the flag crafts and the lesson on fine dining. (This is an interesting reversal of Father Bonnet's idea of how to "nurture" and care for tiny Stede, with the bending down and yelling in his face.)

Stede invites Jim and Olu to sit on his couch with him by patting the cushions, settling Olu's cushion behind him, and then patting both their thighs twice. He then spends the rest of the conversation with his hands clasped together, not even touching them when they're all startled by the cannon fire. Is that initial "sit with me" junk particularly father-like? Nah. Is it paternalistic? ...Frankly, kinda yeah.

Lucius is a weird one here. He's consistently referred to as "the boy," even though he's of an age with several other members of the crew. His role on board is that of, apparently, the scribe Stede narrates his journal to (which comes off as a "how to be a pirate, the stede bonnet way" kind of educational text). However, Lucius is also someone that Stede is remarkably free with in terms of touch and emotional truths -- Stede will let Lucius touch him comfortingly, and with Lucius Stede confirms the kind of feelings he has for Blackbeard (or what he thinks his feelings are, at any rate). Something something queer family something.

Finally, of special note in this paternalism category is when Roach has let the prisoners go off by themselves in episode 2 -- Stede approaches him and telegraphs a very heavy Serious Moment of Disappointment by putting his hand on Roach's shoulder. This is disciplinary!Stede, and it's markedly different from how other people on the show (including Stede himself, with Ed) may clasp one another's shoulders.

Figure 2. Local captain gears self up to be Seriously Disappointed with someone.

When Stede tries to indicate closeness to someone, he's starts off pretty weird about it (and continues weird about it, tbh).

Stede tends to kneel next to someone when he's trying to specifically show fondness or closeness. We see this when he's presenting the model ship to Mary and in how he plays with his children in episode 4; we see it when he comforts Ed in episode 6; again in episode 7, when he kneels behind the couch to offer Ed co-captaincy; and again in episode 10 when he kneels beside the bed to wake Mary up.

Figure 3. A closeted man tries very hard to show as much physical intimacy as possible to the mother of his children and wife of many years.

We also see the reversal of this, though, which is why I'm calling it deliberate -- he stops kneeling when Mary shows displeasure at the model ship.

This kneeling action seems to be a way for him to give the appearance of closeness while not actually committing to it. For his own safety? For the other person's comfort? No clue. It's weird. But he does it a lot.

Stede approaches intimacy from an angle-- which is to say, Stede finds that being at a right angle to someone is a fairly safe way to be "in" someone's space without getting too close (and inviting the possibility for either violence or rejection).

180 degrees (side by side) is the safest of all possible angles, since it allows the other person to choose not to interact with Stede at all: Stede and Mary when they meet; Stede and Ed sitting on the ship's deck; at the Bridgetown tavern counter when Jeffrey approaches.

However, Stede's go-to "intimacy" angle is 90 degrees: he's at right angles to Ed during their dawn breakfast; is drawn into a right angle during their kiss; is drawn to sit at an angle to the men at the table in the tavern (the widest degree of which is 90); Mary and Stede hug at right angles; Stede wakes Mary up the next morning at a right angle.

"Intimacy" here has a lot of meanings, and not always positive ones-- Stede himself turns the 180 degree pissing contest with Calico Jack into a right angle as he confronts Jack about Ed.

Stede's angles gets more acute the more certain he is of his physical reception with someone (or if he's feeling confident enough to try and invite someone closer, for good or ill reasons): when he and Ed are laughing together while sitting with the crew on the deck they're turned more acutely toward one another; during Stede and Ed's kiss, he turns himself to make the angle more acute; Stede's children are angled closely toward him when they're ripping Stede's clothes for his faked death.

Figure 4. Two good friends angled toward one another and maybe also one of them is touching the other's knee, you know, like friends do

Close face-to-face interaction tends to be either highly practiced (handshakes, disciplinary action) or a form of violence (Father Bonnet's face-to-face yelling, Mary's directly-across-the-table displeasure, the mocking Bridgetown man at the tavern table, Ed's "stab me" homosocial bro attempt at intimacy, and, again, disciplinary action).

However, with regard to creating "safe" circumstances for himself: There's a level of comfort Stede seems to feel around those he believes can't hurt him and, frankly, people of color. This is something I'd like to get other people to weigh in on, particularly in light of the results below:

While Stede doesn't directly touch the (white) English prisoner in episode 3, he does loosen the gag and use the intermediary object of the leash more than a little -- it shifts back and forth between his and Lucius's hand at least twice.

Izzy is white, but he's also lowerclass and a first mate rather than a captain -- Stede can be "safe" getting into his space. The same thing occurs when Stede is at his angriest with Doug, Mary's painting tutor -- despite having far greater provocation from any number of people from his own class.

Stede is perfectly capable of avoiding most touch, even the grazing kind that I would think otherwise unlikely in a busy scene -- notably when he's walking around and dodging people in the Republic of Pirates and in the Bridgetown tavern scene. However, on the Revenge, Stede regularly gets into people's spaces or permits them into his space... and the numbers suggest that with the exception of Lucius, Stede is largely touch-averse when it comes to the white members of his crew.

When Buttons gets closer to Stede during the mutiny discussion, Stede verbally holds his ground but tenses up and leans away from Buttons as he gets into Stede's space. In the same episode, Stede only bends down into Wee John's space after he's set up this paternal-teaching craft situation, and Wee John is temporarily recategorized as a child rather than bloodthirsty pirate. With Buttons, we have exactly one other touch (when Stede's given the bottle of booze from Buttons following the duel in episode 6) -- and we don't get any other touch with Wee John for the rest of the season. Similar numbers play out with the Swede and Black Pete. In contrast, the numbers for Olu, Roach, and Jim are significantly higher, and Frenchie is fairly up there as well.

Figure 5. Local captain bravely manages not to run away despite approaching Scotsman who's getting much too close, to be honest

The greatest amount of skin-on-skin contact, along with a hefty dose of emotional trust, Stede has with anyone is with the elderly tribal member from episode 2. It's deeply weird. We don't get anything similar anywhere else, with the exception of Ed's kiss (a man of color) and Mary's hug (a woman over whom Stede has legal and social power).

-----

ONWARDS:

-> Review the raw data and notes

-> Go to part 1: Stede wants to be touched, but is afraid of it.

-> Go to part 2: Stede will avoid touch to protect himself.

-> Go to part 4: The top three people who touch Stede, or who Stede touches, are Ed, Mary, and Izzy.

[triflesandparsnips]

2. Stede will avoid touch to protect himself.

And we're back! in Part 2 of the "stede is weird about touch" pirate data science smorgasbord.

Figure 1. Two people very comfortable with physical interaction.

This one's hard to pin down, but: Stede is simultaneously afraid of people touching him, and he doesn't trust that people actually want him to touch them. This ends up showing up in Really Weird Ways (several of which can be attributed to trauma, fear of retribution regarding his queerness, or hooray, both.)

Stede will frequently pull himself away from potential touch (leaning away when Buttons gets close during the mutiny talk; clasping his hands away from Jim and Olu on the couch; pulling away and closing himself off from Mary; leaning back from Ed when Ed declines a nature walk; staying in his room and reading while Jack is on board).

Stede engages in a lot of plausibly deniable touch. These include things that could be seen as accidental, such that no one can think he's "asking" for the touch, and therefore he can't have that request rejected (letting his arms or legs brush against Ed's, letting his lace sleeve drape on Ed), as well as openings Stede will leave for other people to touch him (putting his elbow on the table beside Mary when giving her his gift, leaning on the newel post directly in front of Ed when talking to Calico Jack, shifting out of a closed position into an open one when Ed sits next to him on the beach).

A related kind of plausibly deniable touch? The use of objects instead of his own body. He'll touch things rather than people -- he'll use things to touch people rather than touch them himself.

Even when people do choose to touch him, he rarely reciprocates (Ed's lighthouse hug, Ed's post-kiss handhold, Mary's hug).

Figure 2. Local hot pirate holds weirdo gentleman and then hugs closer to gets his hands on some of that bare rich-person bicep; weirdo gentleman happy but deeply uncertain how to respond to positive touch, wonders if raising bottle and holding onto rail appropriate, if better to spit or swallow (the booze)

The number of people Stede actually touches skin-to-skin (or hair-to-skin, whichever), deliberately, is shockingly few.

The first time he chooses to touch someone's skin/hair, outside of the elderly tribe member in episode 2, is episode 7 -- he lightly whacks at Lucius's arm, cleans Ed's beard, and then when kneeling next to Ed at the end he settles his bare arm against Ed's once and then a second time.

Why the sudden change in behavior? Possibly because he believes they actually might be okay with him touching them, thanks to the events of episode 6: Lucius both taps Stede's arm and pats his chest following the duel, and Ed chooses to lean his forehead against Stede's bare hand.

The tribal member in episode 2 could, admittedly, be considered an enormous outlier: we see Stede's head on the elderly man's bare thigh, he touches the man's hand twice (though once is a social handshake), and claps him on the back once. He's also very much in the tribal member's personal space as part of these interactions. It's significantly more direct, intentional physical interaction than Stede shows with anyone else, including Ed.

Figure 3. White guy uses man of color for emotional support and to make personal breakthroughs with the help of "native wisdom" or some shit, wtf.

I think a key thing here (and which I hope to get more evidence of in season 2) is that, presumably, Stede was invited to enter into the tribal member's space. As in, deliberately asked and perhaps even drawn down into it. With this active invitation, Stede can trust that his touch was allowed, and so he went with it, demonstrating that, frankly, Stede isn't really touch-averse -- he's touch-starved, but afraid to rectify that due to his traumatic history with touch.

(Could Stede be okay with touching the tribe member for a different reason? Yes, absolutely... and we'll get to it.)

All that being said, though, be wary of any kind of touch -- or lack thereof -- that appears in Stede's memories, flashbacks, or dreams as proof that he doesn't touch people or that people don't want to touch him. He is an unreliable narrator. He may be imagining a withdrawal of touch (or the opposite!) in order to justify his own feelings.

When Stede remembers his relationship with his family in episode 1, the first memory the audience sees is him physically separated from them at a dinner and excluded from their general conversation. Later, we see the same dinner, but he's seated beside his daughter and everyone's laughing together.

Even more fascinatingly, though: In episode 4, when he fever-dreams the memory of marrying Mary (as part of his "how did I get here, why did I run" montage), she goes to take his hand and he keeps it limp in her grasp. Later, in episode 9, when Stede is actively remembering the same moment from his wedding (and his guilt about hurting the family he cared for), his hand is actually holding Mary's -- his thumb is up and over the back of her hand, and his fingers are tight around hers.

Figure 4: Dead-fish hand as part of totally normal wedding interaction.

Figure 5: Active hand-holding that seems to contradict previous dead-fish memory, what is real, who knoooows.

What does this mean? Why does he do this? Does he have a "real" memory that he tends to interpret differently depending on what he's feeling, or does he genuinely have broken memories (similar to how he genuinely hallucinated the dead Nigel Badminton)?

The fact that this memory-shenanigan happens at all is, I think, a key part of Stede's entire Thing with Touch.

-----

ONWARDS:

-> Review the raw data and notes

-> Go to part 1: Stede wants to be touched, but is afraid of it.

-> Go to part 3: Stede has found/developed "safe" ways to physically interact with people.

-> Go to part 4: The top three people who touch Stede, or who Stede touches, are Ed, Mary, and Izzy.

[triflesandparsnips]

stede bonnet is weird about touch

The beginning of a four-part journey of overwhelming nonsense, featuring more research than was strictly necessary. But fuck it, here we go.

Figure 1. Local man commits to least possible physical interaction imaginable with new fiancee.

Because it was driving me bananas that I was picking up on this thing that very few others seemed to notice, and also because I am desperate for a particular brand of hurt/comfort Stede-fic in this fandom:

I watched the entire series again and made up a bunch of charts detailing all the ways Stede is touched, touches others, and the degree of "closeness" of those touches.

You can find the finished product here -- first page is an overview, and remaining pages are breakdowns of each episode, including notes. If I missed something, or you disagree with a classification, pop in a comment. (You can also see my progress and original notes here.)

Broadly, though:

Stede is both touch-starved and touch-sensitive. And you can see it on the screen.

Because there's so much here, this essay got ridiculously fucking long. As such, I've divided it into four parts -- links to each section will be at the bottom of each post, but I encourage people to engage with whatever part of it they want.

Why is this important, though? Why go to all this trouble?

I think this behavior tells so fucking much about Stede, and that understanding his relationship with touch is crucial to getting a more rounded idea of his character.

I'm this close to calling it criminal that we aren't more thoroughly acknowledging how much nuanced work Rhys Darby and his various scene partners put into this, holy shit.

I want to see this in fic, damn it.

And with that, finally:

✨~My evidence, let me show you it.~✨

-----

1. Stede wants to be touched, but is afraid of it.

Stede expects either violence or withdrawal from loved ones (or ones he's supposed to have a close relationship with, at any rate) if he's done something to displease them.

Nearly every memory of Stede's father involves this on some level: blood on Stede's face (and castigating him for his squeamishness), yanking Stede's arm, bending over and getting into his face specifically to yell at him, and not looking at Stede when Stede's essentially asking for comfort prior to his marriage.

Some of Stede's memories of Mary at the dinner table show her as angry and physically distant from him (regardless of whether that memory is an accurate one). This is repeated later in episode 10 when we see her and the children again on the opposite side of the table.

The anniversary gift scenes in episode 4 are particularly telling: When Stede gives Mary his gift, he starts by dropping to a kneel next to her, his arm up on the table near her -- and then Mary, over the course of realizing what he's done/doing, proceeds to retreat from him three times -- once a little ways, then again farther to the other side of the chair, and then finally leaving her chair entirely to face him. As Mary does that, Stede mirrors her retreat, a few beats behind and in reaction to her withdrawal, finally standing from his kneel, curling into himself, and losing his consistent eye contact with her.

Figure 2. Totally okay and not-at-all concerning body language in response to an upset life partner.

Ed reinforces this belief when he leaves the Revenge with Jack (immediately after Stede has actually expressed anger at someone he believes is Ed's friend).

Considering all this, when Ed almost immediately runs off to find a dinghy in episode 10, leaving Stede alone right after he's participated in an act that's transgressive on multiple counts (gay AND cheating on his wife, tsk tsk)... well. It may not be what Ed intended, but there's a bit of Stede's brain that thinks "Ed left; therefore I did something wrong."

Interestingly, this means that Stede will sometimes initiate the withdrawal if he perceives that someone's displeased with him.

This could be for a couple of reasons: if he does it first, it makes it a choice on his part rather than a rejection on theirs; likewise, if he does it first, then perhaps that might placate the other person (by removing his "wrongness" from their presence). Most likely it's some kind of inseparable combination of the two. We see how this maladaptive practice bears out with:

Mary presenting Stede his anniversary gift. At the start of the scene, he stands next to her, leaning in slightly, with his hands to either side; when he realizes he's insulted her, he doesn't step away but he does clasp his hands in front of himself, effectively removing the possibility that he might accidentally touch her skin (or she, his).

Stede leaving Mary and the children.

Stede offering Ed a nature walk. Ed demurs (using language that implies Stede's suggestion wouldn't be acceptable to various people) and Stede actually subtly leans away from him as his smile drops. You can see it below, particularly if you keep an eye on his relation to the rope in the background between them.

Figure 3. The subtle tragedy of a man whose best friend has just said that maybe his interests aren't actually that cool.

Almost as soon as Ed lets go of Stede's face following the beach kiss, there is a very slow distancing happening between the two of them.

Stede leaving Ed.

Finally, one of Stede's ways of withdrawing from someone else's "space" is by losing eye contact.

This is something he developed after childhood -- while in flashbacks we see that tiny Stede holds eye contact solidly with Father Bonnet (and only turns his head away when he's shocked by the goose's violent death), by the start of the series he's pretty awful with it (dropping his gaze when Olu shakes him; closing his eyes to hide from the Nigel "ghost"; eventually dropping his gaze when Mary yells at him about the model ship).

He improves over the course of the show and as he gains confidence, though it's easiest to tell in scenes of threat/violence where he would previously have dropped his gaze-- this includes his steady stare at Calico Jack when he orders him off the ship, his violent twist of Doug, and his anger at Mary after the murder attempt.

However, when he feels uncertainty, that trouble with eye contact comes back again... including, unfortunately when Ed asks him to run away to China.

Figure 4. Local baby gay in middle of sudden revelation as to own sexual orientation is faced with object of said revelation asking for a life-changing decision instead of just, like, double-checking the kissing thing some more

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ONWARDS:

-> Review the raw data and notes

-> Go to part 2: Stede will avoid touch to protect himself.

-> Go to part 3: Stede has found/developed "safe" ways to physically interact with people.

-> Go to part 4: The top three people who touch Stede, or who Stede touches, are Ed, Mary, and Izzy.