Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i’m researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there’s an awful lot of just, like, “Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else”
I’d have to research this, but I kinda feel that, what with how much the eugenics movement pervaded everything for a huge chunk of recent history, our narrative of how disability was for much of history has gotten a little warped.
I feel like I always heard “yeah they assumed people were possessed by demons Back Then” but actually researching religious history? I’ve found a lot more of people seeing a person showing signs of (what we would call) neurodivergence or mental illness and being like “hm. yea that’s god.”
It’s also definitely like…in the US anyway fundamentalism has absolutely decimated a lot of AWARENESS of what Christianity specifically can look like.
american evangelicalism is based a lot on Belief in your religion as axiomatic Fact and at the same time a very buddy-buddy view of god where Jesus is like, your cool dad. Both of which are not very good for allowing the numinous and divine “mystery” to exist
So I think we assume people throughout history would default to “things I don’t understand are of the devil.” when very often they would instead be “things I don’t understand are of God.”
and they would see someone speak in strange sounds or move his body strangely or respond differently to the world and see something divine in it, and there are instances of this across many religions
@invisibleoctopus There’s this fascinating book about the cultural aspects of how mental illness presents called Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters that is not without its flaws, but that (among other things) discusses how schizophrenic people do significantly better in cultures where there’s a precedent/religious or spiritual explanation for people ‘hearing voices’ and such, because for one thing, they’re not treated as social outcasts for it. Those environments are better equipped to help and accommodate those people on the basis of being able to keep them integrated into a community. At least according to the Ethan Watters guy.
The thing about imagining that autistic children would have been left to die for most of history is just… it’s so lazy. And it betrays a huge failure to understand what autism looks like for autistic people and what daily life looked like in history at the same time. It’s very frustrating.
There’s this weird idea that autistics only develop special interests in this very narrow stereotypical STEM-field domain of life, also, which is total nonsense. Of course religion autistics are a thing. Judaism, too, has a lot of room for autistics: you develop very deep spheres of knowledge, about which you argue constantly, and prayer is sung and you get to move back and forth during it rhythmically.
The other thing that gets me is that it’s not just that there’s historical room to interpret weird behavior as Godly, it’s that autistic people are relatively likely to come up with unusual ideas about people and how people do and should work. If you’re talking about any theological tradition that involves contextual study and argument, you often find a very autistic sort of perspective writing the theology.
Also, just as a general data point: my stepdad, who is in his mid-70s, grew up in a rural farming community, and was never diagnosed with anything, is Obviously Autistic to anyone who knows what autism is.
He can only tolerate about 2 different fabrics against his skin.
And can only eat about 5 foods for obvious food texture reasons.
He hums softly and continually.
He never looks at people.
He has a bunch of other people-related sensitivities, like the inability to tolerate a lot of sounds and nearly all perfume smells.
He has about 3 topics of conversation, which are a) tractors, b) agriculture, and c) Rottweilers.
And you know what? He has had a nice long life of being a Rural Farmer and gets along great with other old farmer dudes who want to talk dogs-tractors-farming with him.
I mean, it’s generally understood that he is Weird, but also that he knows Really A Fucking Lot About Tractors. Which counts for everything in a rural farming community.
It goes beyond lazy into a type of downright cruelty. No matter how autistic people did or did not fit into their communities in the past, chances are someone loved them. When they were little, someone found the clothes they could tolerate and food they would eat and something they could do that matched their interests and abilities. And people married some of them and had children with them. Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least were loved.
We know this because archeology shows over and over again a great level of care and because these traits are still present - they had to get passed on somehow. And we know it because we too feel love for others, despite them constantly failing to live up to any ideal whatsoever.
Anyone who approaches other people with this attitude is only seeking to perpetuate an excuse to be cruel to them. It has nothing to do with what happened in the past and everything to do with what they hope they can get away with in the future. They discount the love that must have existed because it can’t be used against us.
A lot of the “weird things” neurodivergents do would have had really useful and perfectly acceptable outlets in other times: a lot of essential jobs are really “stimmy”, and a person who wants to do them all the time is extremelywelcome to them.
Spinning with a drop spindle? Very much like a fidget spinner
Weaving? Has elements of rocking, arm flapping, and toe tapping, as well as a lovely soothing audio rhythm.
Weeding? Delightful for those who enjoy categorization and sorting.
I had a fatigue flare-up a few weeks ago on the day we were scheduled to clean out the garage, and I couldn’t stand up for more than about 10 minutes. And I thought how fortunate I am to live in an era where most jobs don’t involve manual labor. But then I brought my knitting out, so I could keep my spouse company at least, and you know what? Fuck that attitude. Any society in all of history would have been fucking THRILLED to have someone who is willing to never leave the house, is happy to eat only bread, and just wants to make textiles every waking hour of every single day.
Every society, in every era, needs many different things done. If different people like doing different things, this is to the benefit of everyone in the community. This idea that there’s only one “right way” to be a human, and that anyone who doesn’t fit the mold is “broken” and “wrong” is a very recent invention, stemming from hamburger management and Fredrick Taylor “Scientific Management”, NOTan inherent part of human nature.
As someone who is autistic, I look at most of the monastic Rules, and I think “hey, someone was designing communities for us”. Unvarying structure from day to day, week to week; regular transitions between activities which are well marked; low levels of social interaction; strictly regulated social environments… it’s a wonderful lifestyle for someone who has problems dealing with the whole business of “too many people, too much stimulation”.
Heck, I figure the religious fundamentalism in my mother’s family (they’re Christadelphian) came in via a very canny autistic ancestor, who realised the whole business could be used as a wonderful cover for any strangeness about them. I mean, when you’re part of a religion which discourages eating at the same table as someone who doesn’t believe the same creed as you (and which also gets picky enough about “same creed” to make that capable of meaning “is not part of the same Christian sect or the same ecclesia”), demands you live strictly by biblical rules and so on… well, it’s a wonderful cover for a person who just doesn’t want to deal with other people, and who has a few quirks of their own they want to cover up.
(I have my suspicions about Jean Calvin, the theologist behind all the various Calvinist sects of Christianity, too. Mainly because the theology behind Calvinism is beautifully thought out, logically consistent all the way through, solves the problem of “redemption via good works” quite neatly… and turns into ninety different types of hell the moment it gets run through neurotypical brains).
I am no expert, but as an historian by hobby I don’t think we quite realize how very different our modern concepts of everyday life and of work are from the pre-industrial revolution times and how utterly anti-neurodivergency our lifestyle is nowadays.
Chances are most autistic people would have barely registered as a bit weird.
Like with fabric sensitivity. It’s a noticeable symptom today when we are expected to have a decently big wardrobe and follow fashion trends. It wouldn’t have really registered as an issue when you used to own one or two outfits.
Same with food sensivity. The huge choice of foods available today make sensitivities stand out as problematic. Eating the same few things over and over was just everyday life for peasants.
Neurodivergency and mental illness are still defined in relation to society and society is an ever evolving beast. The kind of behaviors we consider 'ill’ and 'aberrant’ very much depend on what behaviors are considered 'proper’ and 'desirable’.
Don’t forget that today’s schizophrenics are yesterday’s saints and before that oracles and prophets.
Anybody who knows about fabrics want to weigh in?
I have a hunch that home-made clothes would be less hostile to the senses than most clothes bought nowadays. For one thing, they don’t have tags in them.
But with like, a home-made sock, you wouldn’t have such awful bunchy seams at the toes, would you?
Yeah, for most of human history, clothes were made at home by you and your family, or if you had the money, by servants and craftspeople. The point being they were customized to the individual, making it very easy to point out details such as a scratchy seam, and have it altered to be more comfortable.
Now I’m not an expert in historical textiles, but I do have some general knowledge on the subject. People often assume fabric worn by the masses in Ye Olde Times would have been roughly made, but I think you’d be surprised at the quality of craftsmanship. There’s only so many hours you can spend doing something without getting very good at it. If an adult woman has been spinning and weaving several hours a day since she was 10, you can be damn sure she knows how to do it well.
While there are certain common materials that have the capacity to be irritating against the skin, ultimately I think the way they were used probably minimized that quality. For example linen. It’s one of the oldest known fibers, and appears in many cultures across vastly different times and geographic areas. It’s incredibly tough, and is often a bit stiff and scratchy when new. However it can be broken in to create a much softer textile.
For centuries it was the go-to material for lightweight clothing throughout Europe. Prior to the introduction of cotton everyone wore linen undergarments. Heavier materials like leather and wool were usually limited to outer layers. Since undergarments acted as a buffer against sweat and oil produced by your body, they needed more frequent cleaning. So basically, those tough fibers were getting beaten into submission in the nearest river on a regular basis.
TLDR; Yeah textural sensitivities were probably easy to accomodate, even if you didn’t have access to fine silks and the like.
growing up being autistic but not knowing is just *hiding in room while people are over* *getting tired and needing to recharge after the smallest chores* *getting called a gifted kid* *knowing that you’re “weird” because people are making fun of you but not knowing how to stop being weird* *having adults tell you how “mature” you are* *getting in trouble for not doing work* *convincing yourself that you’re just lazy and stupid because you can’t make yourself do work* *getting really invested in “weird” media*
I need you to know that growing up autistic and knowing is pretty much the exact same except some adults were nicer to me about those issues.
what you need to understand about recommending a show to me is that no matter how much we both know I’ll like it, I can’t watch it until the Neurodivergence Department in my brain approves it. I don’t know when that will be, and I don’t have any more control over it than you do.
i wish all “body language experts” on youtube, tiktok, and all social media a very Die
not only is it a stupid pseudoscience that is based on ableism and western centric ideals, these people are ghouls who latch onto every controversial subject or person in the spotlight in order to churn out content about how someone’s quick blinking means they’re really a monster with 590492341 mental illnesses (which is what makes them inherently a monster), passing off their vibe and clout farming as Scientific Evidence. they literally salivate for a new person to be at the center of controversy so they can make millions of view and thousands of dollars over their babbling that their new target is a Narcissistic Abuser. and you literally cannot convince these people’s fans that this is utterly fake and also abbhorent behaviour to farm money and fame over others’ misery. they + these social media “therapists”/doctors/health and legal professionals who do the same online are utter scum who are gleefully making money off suffering. but i have a special kind of hate for the body language experts.
and this isn’t just about the heard/depp trial either. these fuckers have been doing this in True Crime TM communities for a while now. they’ve also been the ones boosting the harassment of random people on tiktok like the couch guy and that trans woman who was just dancing in her basement. they make money and clout off all of this. they push so many ableist, racist and transphobic ideas onto people who just drone on about how body language PROVES somebody is lyuing or a serial killer. they ruin lives.
i wish all of them a genuine and heartfelt very die
There’s a popular post going around that’s like “well tone indicators are helpful for people for anxiety because some people need stuff like “ /nm (not mad)” or “ /nbh (nobody here)” and I absolutely get it because I have an anxiety disorder but like. You can very much add that on the text of a message itself and it will be way more clear and accessible than expecting them to memorize this whole new fabricated code.
Which one do you think will be clearer, faster to understand, and more direct to the point:
“oh my god someone is pissing me off /nbh”
“oh my god someone (not from this server, don’t worry) is pissing me off”
or
“have you done the dishes? /nm
“have you done the dishes? don’t worry, im not mad, just wondering”
You can be mindful of someone else’s needs and talk to them in a way that is respectful and understanding of those needs. The key is communication. Expecting people to memorize a lot of abbreviations is like the contrary of accessible.
I personally don’t like them because they’re at the end of a sentence - I’ll have already read “did you do the dishes?” in an interrogative tone, but only putting the tone indicator at the end means I’m already annoyed in response by the time I get to it.
These two issues are why I prefer ye olde tone indicators from the late 90s/early 00s. If you enclose your sarcastic comment with fake HTML tags such as <sarcasm>This is a sarcastic comment.</sarcasm>, then your readers already know the tone of voice before they’ve read the statement.
I’m really bad with the modern Twitter /nbd tone indicators at the end of a sentence, especially anything more complicated than joking or sarcasm. Half the time I simply don’t see them, and the rest of the time I can’t remember what they mean.
This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!
Huh
this!! I swear I lost like all my friendships bc of this, like I had a group of friends in hs that one day I realized “huh I haven’t talked to this people in a while” and popped in to say hi and they were all awkward?? because they hadn’t seen me in a while?? and that’s when I realized that friendship works different for them?? I was like yeah I haven’t talked to you in like four months but it’s not like I’ve forgotten about y'all why would anything change, and they were all like we haven’t talked to you in four months why are you here again acting like nothing happened? and it was really confusing for me
YEAH! THAT!
Also I have a thing where I just put the people on pause. If I don’t see them or contact them, my brain kinda put them in stasis. I don’t think about them nor misses them, and I stay on what I last knew about them (how they look, what they study/work). So when we meet again I’m like “wait, you’ve aged?” and I have the same familiarity with them thanI had before.
Anyway all my mutuals I haven’t messaged in forever - this is why
oh my gods this makes so much sense??? there are people who i haven’t talked to at all for literally over a year and we’ll pick up like nothing happened, but for their people it’s just like…… falling apart but onesided???? i think we’re still on the same level but actually we’re strangers??
Ohhhhhh
OHHHHHHHHH….
Ok but listen, on the other side of this, as a person who moved hundreds of miles away from everyone i knew and then became a hermit for several years, it was SUCH A FUCKING RELIEF to get in contact with an old friend and have him be like, “my friendship levels do not degrade, so in my mind we are still awesome close buddies” and i almost fkn cried. I thought he would be mad or would have moved on because i had slacked on my reaching out to him and staying in touch and doing all the friendship things. But NOPE. 800 miles of distance, depression, and life changing circumstances didnt steal our friendship and i am SO GRATEFUL.
I have literally no friendship degradation whatsoever. I will not have spoken to someone for 5 years or more, and they’re still as much a friend to me as if I had only seen them yesterday. I’m just very bad at communicating if someone is not in my direct orbit. So when Sonja reappeared on this site I basically screeched into her notes like a banshee because I was delighted and we picked straight back up where we’d left off.
Happy to go on the record that I don’t expect regular contact and will welcome hearing from people after a long time
……. I just realized why cons are such a huge deal in the hacker scene and why so many of us are ride or die for people we only see every 1-3 years.
“Excellent! I will see you for three days of hijinks and then not for two years! I love you!”
I feel like if you solve one issue you fall into another. You either crave people too much or you are reclusive. You’re either manically happy or depressed. You are either a fitness freak or a slob. What is the ideal life? Where is that line that tells us what’s balanced? What is the indicator of it?
When I’m annoyed and people try to console me I feel annoyed and tell them I wish they’d rather not. But if they listen soon I start to feel like no one cares about me and feel lonely.
Anybody else feel me? Tell me I’m not the only one being weird like this.
Perks of having a “out of sight, out of mind” brain is you can mute, block, ignore, cut off anyone who’s pissing you off and your brain’s gonna be like “yay im happy now :) ”
You ever notice how people use the excuse of “that’s just how they are” for shitty and toxic behaviour but never for people who are introverts, ND or just doing something harmless. Then it’s “change them, "fix” them".
Something little made me spiral and sent me into meltdown so now im listening to music and drawing to help me calm down. What do u do to calm yourself out of a meltdown?
this is a positivity post for neurodivergent folks who don’t ‘pass’ as neurotypical. if you:
- have a full-time assistant or carer - have a speech impediment or are nonverbal - stim in public - have meltdowns in public - only talk about your special interest - can’t live alone - have an intellectual disability - can’t work or go to school - go to a school for disabled people - use AAC or a talk board - don’t leave the house - have very repetitive behaviors - can’t mask
or anything else that makes it hard or impossible to mask or seem neurotypical, i see you and you deserve respect and visibiltity <3
some of you may’ve heard about that fancy “bionic reading” typefont thats supposed to be easier for neurodivergent people to read (if you’re unfamiliar, it bolds the first few letters of each word to make it easier to follow)
well guess what, its locked behind a $500 a month API to write in because fuck you!
introducing, Not Bionic Reading! it is literally just the bionic reading typefont but for free. god bless neocities
people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good
it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”
people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.
And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.
Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.
Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.
This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.
Other people have probably written about this, but the intersections between neurodivergency and being aro/ace have been on my mind a lot since I found out I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the different types of discrimination I face play into each other.
I’ve been infantilised for pretty much my whole life because of my neurodivergency. The way I tend to act, and the things I tend to struggle with, mean I get treated like a weird excitable kid who doesn’t understand how the world works. The fact that I’m also aromantic and asexual is viewed just another facet of this “immaturity”. So the idea goes: of course Iwouldn’t be interested in romance and sex. How could I even understand such adult topics? I’m just a kid who gets distracted by butterflies and likes to infodump about history. Isn’t my innocence so endearing?
Instead of my orientation being taken seriously, it’s belittled and taken as a confirmation that I’m just childish and strange. This has led, on several occasions, to people assuming it’s just a symptom of my neurodivergency that needs to be medically addressed.** Aromantic and asexual people already face excessive questioning about our orientations and get told the cause must be [insert diagnosis or symptom of diagnosis here]; being neurodivergent makes this exponentially worse, because the underlying assumption is that I can’t have the agency or the self-knowledge to identify this way. After all, I’m just a weird kid, aren’t I? I need other (read: neurotypical and allo) people to explain everything, even my own experiences, to me.
This infantilisation made it particularly hard for me to come to terms with my orientation, because I didn’t want to prove everyone that they were right. For years, I pushed back against the way I’d been treated by seeking out the one thing that would make me an adult in others’ eyes - a romantic and sexual relationship. It hurt to realise I didn’t actually want that deep down. It felt like being told I really was that weird kid, tolerated but ultimately babied. It’s taken a lot of work to accept that the way I am doesn’t make me any less mature and deserving of respect.
There isn’t really a conclusion to this - mostly I wanted to post about my experiences as someone who is both neurodivergent and aroace, and the issues I’ve faced because of it. If any other aro/ace neurodivergent people would like to add to this or share their own perspective, I’d love to hear it.
**A lot of neurodivergent people do consider their experiences of attraction to be linked to their neurodivergency, and that’s obviously cool and valid. That’s not what I’m talking about here. My point is the systematic pathologisation of aromanticism and asexuality and the denial of my ability to define myself.
This is (perhaps unfortunately) a very relateable experience. It’s not something I really accepted personally until recently, but in hindsight, many of my interpersonal conflicts stem from others misreading my neurodivergence. My arospec and acespec experiences are furthermore dismissed because they are assumed to be part of my neurodivergence.
It’s definitely hurtful, especially because (for me) some of my beliefs about relationships maybe influenced by my neurodivergence. Parts of how I experience my identity are probably tied into my neurodivergence. And other parts of it seem entirely separate. I think those are both valid experiences, but both of them are belittled for different reasons.
Thank you for sharing this; I’m glad I came across it and had the spoons to add on. (Hopefully that’s all right - I can always make my own post.)
This is very interesting for me to read, and I’ve had a very different experience with the way people treat my orientation and neurodivergence. I think there are three big reasons why I’m treated so differently. First, I’m AMAB, large, and hairy. Second, while I’m aro, I’m not ace, and I’m partnering and romance-favorable and have had a lot of partners. Third, my neurodivergences manifest a bit differently from either of yours.
I’ve never been called immature or infantilized for my orientation or my neurodivergence. I’ve been called a lot of demeaning (or intentionally demeaning) or dismissing things, but never that. I think it’s worth examining why, because femme AFAB people especially receive a lot of that kind of thing that masculine people don’t. I think stories like this, from marginalized people, reveal depths to the insidiousness and harmfulness of misogyny that may not come up with straight white able neurotypical gender-conforming women.
What I have been called, both because of my orientation and my neurodivergence, is unmasculine, unaggressive, stoic, uninvolved, unemotional, uncaring, unsupportive, detached, and aloof. While those first two are absolutely true and accurate adjectives to apply to me, they were intended to be bad and insulting, but to me they are big compliments. The rest, though, aren’t even remotely true, and anyone who spends any time getting to know me at all knows I’m the opposite of all of those things. But because of my neurodivergence, I don’t express being highly emotional, deeply caring, and intensely involved the ways that neurotypical people do, and this comes up in intimate relationships quite a lot.
Interestingly, I also get complimented a lot because of these same traits. I’m often called wise, “an old soul”, observant, patient, and eloquent because I see things from an outside perspective and take time to think before expressing my thoughts. People ask me for advice about romantic problems frequently and tell me my advice is particularly insightful, even though most of the time it can be boiled down to one of three things: “Have you asked directly for what you want?”, “Have you expressed your feelings directly and clearly?”, and “Have you explicitly discussed that together or are you making an assumption?” Neurotypical alloromantic people get really wrapped up in the social scripts of romance and expression and forget to be direct and clear, and that can give people like us some big advantages in communicating and building relationships, at least if we can convince the neurotypical alloromantic people in our lives to challenge their own assumptions and take what we say about ourselves and our own experiences as true and literal. We can ask them to do that, and if they don’t, that’s their failing, not ours.
Direct byproduct of being neurodivergent and growing up isolated from your peergroup is having no idea when it’s appropriate to define someone as your friend
Is this person I met yesterday my friend? What about this person I’ve been talking to every day for three months? What about this person I’ve known since middle school? Is friend a title I have to earn? What are the limits of friendship? Is it a static state, make-or-break, or is it some endless dance-dance-revolution style cavalcade of prompts and challenges and social cues I have to hit perfectly to keep it up? Does it bend? Does it break? I don’t fucking know man I just work here.
There’s something very neurodivergent loves neurodivergent about Ed and Stede’s relationship that makes me a tad giddy.
Everyone talks about how Stede is a funny little eccentric man bringing his special interest to life, but in many ways, Edward’s been doing quite the same thing. Everyone we’ve seen has said that Blackbeard is THE pirate captain- no one is doing it like him. He’s nailed pageantry in the form of the art of fuckery, and combined that with his absolutely vast navigational knowledge. I mean, he saw a ship and some wonky clouds and could pinpoint to the SECOND that they would all combine. Ed then shrouded his knowledge in exceptional artistic displays! He’s incredible.
They’re both unconventional and off-beat characters going at pirating in entirely unique and outlandish ways- and when they meet? They both fall in love with each other’s quirks and interests. Ed’s plan crumbles as he realizes that he’s actually finding something very special in this bizarre little man- and likewise, he immediately lets his mask down. And Stede? He sheds the myth of Blackbeard the moment that they play dress-up in episode four. He doesn’t maintain society’s perception of the man and in an instant clocks the genuine nature underneath. He sees Edward’s art of fuckery and his incredible captaining skills and wants to know everything. When it comes to showing Edward love, he extends his special interests and quirks to the man- from the fine fabrics to the treasure hunt! Edward reciprocates in much the same way- showing off with the art of fuckery [which he was right in knowing Stede would adore] and ensuring Stede’s knowledge by prompting him to STAB him… that amount of trust and care after a week of knowing each other.
For both of them, their whole lives have been spent getting ridiculed for one facet of themselves or another. Specifically, the aspects of themselves that they believe are the truest versions of them. They mask, or exacerbate, and most everyone in their lives have either brought the image or told them outright to maintain it. They’ve forever been given the message that people want you when you’re acting- people don’t want you with your mask down.
But Ed and Stede, these two unconventional pirates? They see each other and see these quirks not as flaws or flights of fancy- hell, not even as childish- but as coveted, valuable, LOVABLE qualities. When Edward finds comfort in the rather exquisite cashmere, Stede smiles and offers him MORE. He encourages the comfort and interest. When Stede shows Edward his library, the auxiliary wardrobe, all these niche interests and ideals that everyone else has belittled him for, Ed thinks it’s heaven and he tells him as such.
They’ve got a long journey ahead of them, but as an autistic guy who’s been in and out of masks for two decades, and who’s forever been told by everyone around them that all the traits that make them unique are in fact detrimental- that to wear a mask is the only way to be loved- there’s something really very poignant in Edward and Stede’s romance.
And in addition:
Even attributes such as Stede’s unwavering headstrong nature aren’t shot down by Ed. He finds it amusing in episode seven- “is he always this highly strung?” and eventually gets into the whole thing and ENJOYS IT! But it’s never a point of… “why is he so highly strung? will you just pack it in?” etc, etc & the same goes for Ed and his little maiming tendancies. In the bathtub scene, Stede’s approach is akin to “I know, and I don’t mind, that’s you” and god bless his little tailcoat straight up says “I’m your friend.” Like, yeah! You are two funny little dudes and you ARE friends! Soon you’ll be kissing on a beach! Hell yeah!
