#also prev tags
“no spam liking/reblogging!!” bro what the hell else am I supposed to do? just look at the shit? walk around the antique store without touching or buying anything? that’s not how you run a business.
yo wrestling is supposed to make us feel stuff. like we are supposed to be upset, mad even, & angry. like…that’s the point. if a story pulled you in enough that you’re having big emotions that’s fucking awesome. i’ve fucking cried openly at a live wrestling event because it made me feel so fucking much. that’s the point. that’s why we like wrestling. it’s art, it means something both in a broad sense but also individually.
the moment i felt most connected to wrestling was when i realized it’s really supposed to make you emotional. lean into it. that’s kayfabe. be mad, happy, angry, joyful, sad, whatever it is that wrestling makes you feel lean into it. it’s wonderful. if you’re feeling big emotions right now bc of wrestling i’m so happy for you. it’s the best feeling to lean into this world, to let yourself be in it & very nearly existe in these stories yourself.
im sorry for all my long text post. i can wax poetic about wrestling all day because it’s like just the best art out there to me. like yeah! get those emotions, make me feel & process stuff. give me something i can relate to & fold in to myself. let me sink my emotions into this storyline. it’s not silly, it’s not “being a mark” to enjoy wrestling & actually buy into it like that.
real talk everyone: i know that for many of us, engaging with the characters of Our Flag Means Death through the lens of mental illness/neurodivergence allows us to explore not only ourselves (seeing the self in the other aka the fictional character) but also explore how characters we love can be like us, but especially for white fans, we need to talk about the appropriate ways to do this with characters of color, especially Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach.
there is NOTHING WRONG with interpreting Ed as a neurodivergent character. That is NOT what this post is about.
What it is about is the way that fans, particularly white fans, have been approaching their discussions of Ed and potential neurodivergence in a way that infantilizes and lessens him as a character by virtue of missing what he DOES in favor of listening to how other (white) characters talk ABOUT him
See, there’s this underlying idea that something is “wrong” with Ed. That he’s unstable, that he’s half-insane, that he’s a shadow of himself who needs Izzy or Stede to manage him, that he needs to be fixed, that he’s always on the verge of a breakdown - and I understand that these ideas are coming from a sympathetic and loving place, but they are 1) not accurate to what we see in the show and 2) really infantilizing to Ed as a grown man of color
so firstly, the elephant in the room:
Izzy is the character who spends the most time questioning Ed’s sanity and stability and we have to understand that Izzy is incorrect. Izzy is basing his judgements on the fact that Ed’s behavior does not make sense within Izzy’s worldview, not within the actual realms of reality.
What we see with Edward is a person who is performing at the highest peak of his professional field, with the respect of essentially all of his peers and enemies, with nowhere else to climb, and he is bored. We see that he has unfulfilled emotional needs in terms of wanting companionship, tenderness, and trusting relationships with others. We see that he finds his work an endless, boring grind without life or passion, and that the natural conclusion to that profession is death in the line or duty or in capture by the enemy.
In this context, Ed’s passive suicidal ideation makes perfect sense. His lack of interest in continuing his work makes perfect sense. He is not inexplicable, he is essentially a case study in what happens when a person is severely socially isolated and married to their unfulfilling job that they hate. Ed’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie and all the adrenaline has gone out of his work. He is seeking novelty and interest to respark his old passions.
This is deemed evidence of Ed being “half-insane” by Izzy because it fundamentally opposes Izzy’s own needs and worldview, and thus seems inexplicably incorrect. Izzy enjoys the fact that they don’t have to fight, that the surrenders are easy, that the looting takes little effort. To him, these are all signs of their great success, which makes Ed’s boredom a “mood” that he has to manage rather than a clash of needs and expectations.
Ed wants to meet a new person who’s different and unusual. This, to him, is a worthwhile pursuit, because piracy is boring and he’s already successful at it. To Izzy, it’s a nonsensical waste of time.
Ed is not actually unstable for feeling this way. He’s just not having his intellectual and emotional needs met by his environment, so he’s checking out of the things that bore and depress him. Thinking otherwise is generally just a failure to contextualize his attitude - if you think of Ed as a successful business owner with no challenges in his field, you’d see that he’s essentially repeating the same boring day in the office over and over, with no way out.
After all, retirement for a pirate is death. And Ed doesn’t even have the language to describe retirement until he meets Stede. So he just knows he wants things to change, or end, and death is the only end he can know to anticipate at this point in his life.
Ed also demonstrates that despite his boredom and depression, he’s perfectly capable of managing his day to day life. In Episode Four he makes astute observations of the world around him (correctly gauging the conditions of the clouds and the sea to determine when fog will occur), properly estimates when the Spanish should be closing in on their location, accurately assess a means of keeping track of time for his endeavor, and works with a partner to develop a back up plan. All while managing the emotions of his second in command, who’s flipping out and navigating meeting a new person he’s fascinated by.
If Ed were half as unstable as some posts postulate (or as Izzy assumes), then he wouldn’t be capable of all of this. Again, Izzy thinks that Ed is insane because he’s not in on Ed’s inner workings. He doesn’t know that Ed has a plan, he doesn’t understand that Ed wants to explore a different life (because Izzy can’t imagine a life outside of piracy), and he doesn’t understand why Ed sees anything of value in Stede. Ergo, he thinks Ed must be losing it.
But again, the story shows that Ed isn’t losing it at all, he’s just having fun. He doesn’t need to be managed, he’s managing himself just fine. He’s just not managing himself in a way that his coworkers are expecting.
Assuming otherwise is to disregard that he’s clearly still highly cognizant of the world around him and fully capable of interacting and engaging with it.
The bathtub scene is another area I’ve seen people bring up to support this, and I’ll be frank, it baffles me. The bathtub scene is not written as though this is a common occurrence in the life of Edward Teach. it’s framed as a PTSD flashback brought on by the trigger of the Kraken and the stress of Ed feeling as though he needs to commit his second ever murder, of a man he doesn’t even want to kill. The breakdown isn’t a regular occurrence, its a lowering of walls after a frightening reminder of what Ed clearly sees as his greatest sin - murdering his own father.
It’s just. I don’t know man, that’s not his every day. We learn that Ed takes precautions to ensure he doesn’t have to kill, and that he’s avoided that all these years. This breakdown is essentially because he’s revisiting that trauma again in a way that directly opposes the conditions of his original traumatizing incident. Where Ed murdered his father to defend himself and his mother from a terrifying aggressor, here he would be killing his friend who he has already started falling for and who treats him kindly for nothing more than selfish personal benefit (and peer pressure).
These are not every day circumstances in the life of Edward Teach.
And finally, his breakdown at the end of the series - Blanket Fort Ed is literally just going through the motions of a break up. He’s crying in the club (blanket fort) of comfort, wearing his exes clothes because they’re more comfortable than his, eating tons of marmalade, and writing bad, sad poetry. This is literally just Been Unexpectedly Dumped 101. That gets turned up to 11 though after Izzy confronts him and he hears the sound of the crew calling for him. Izzy has put Ed in a mindset where he must again hold doubt and mistrust for the people around him in his heart (thus interpreting the crews calls for Eddie to sing them a song as mockery) while at the same time making it clear that he’s worthless as an individual.
It’s a direct attack on his self-esteem, and his newfound sense of having a solid foundation gets ripped from under his feet. He goes on the offense, but now, back in a world that doesn’t satisfy his emotional or psychological needs, and having been made aware that it IS possible to have those needs met, but that HE, Edward Teach, simply isn’t allowed to have them met, he’s now in despair.
But despite all of this! He’s still not incapable of taking care of himself OR in need of a caretaker. We see that he’s still taking care of business, that he’s still active on the crew and directing change, and that he’s capable of planning and executing courses of action.
At no point in the series is Ed in need of a manager. Yes, in some ways, he directs Izzy to act as his hands (especially early on), but that’s more because Izzy’s job is to be his hands than because Ed needs someone to take care of things for him. He’s delegating the boring work he doesn’t want to do to his assistant.
There is a tendency in general to assume that people of color are less capable, less rational, less intelligent than white people. I doubt anyone is thinking of this intentionally when they suggest that Ed relies on Izzy for his day to day care, but that’s kind of what’s implied when it’s implied that Ed can’t handle his daily affairs without any evidence that he’s actually incapable. The assumption that Ed is being corrupted by Stede or led astray or can’t determine for himself what’s best are actually examples of Izzy infantilizing Ed too. Stede gets in on that in Episode 9 as well, when he agrees that he’s ruining Ed instead of acknowledging that Ed is a grown man capable of making his own choices.
Both of the main white men in Ed’s life think him incapable of making choices for himself. The difference is that Stede does it in a moment of trauma, and Izzy kinda does it because he doesn’t understand that other people can have different worldviews without there being a definitive right and wrong answer. There’s a racial element to it that’s absolutely intentional on behalf of the writing team, but that I don’t think is getting picked up by all of the fanbase.
Edward Teach is the man, the myth, the legend. When we talk about him, we have to consider his behavior from the perspective of the man, himself, not the myth or the legend as interpreted by the characters around him. When we write about Ed’s mental health and psychological state, we need to make sure that we’re centering Ed’s own behavior and reasoning and considering what actions he’s taking on screen, not the way he’s interpreted by the people around him.
