#rather than on Stede and whoever else to understand he doesn’t mean it and not take it seriously

[nicnacsnonsense]

You know, I think part of the reason Ed doesn’t realize how shitty Calico Jack is being particularly to Stede is that Jack is using a different kind of passive aggression than they type Ed learned about with the jerks on the French Party Boat. Both Jack and the FPB people are using passive aggression by way of saying mean things but with plausible deniability, but how they create that deniability is different.

On the FPB they are all disguising their cutting remarks with politeness; the literal meaning of the words they say is neutral to positive, and it’s only from tone and other context clues that we can infer that it’s actually meant as an insult. When Gabriel says Ed has an interesting manner of eating, theoretically interesting is a positive word, but we can tell what he actually means is something closer to undignified (I think that’s probably the least charged word I could use for what he’s getting at).

Jack by contrast uses the just joking approach, where he’ll make his mean comments but in a way where he can pretend that he’s just being a bro, palling around and razing his bros. And Ed does seem to be aware that the things Jack says could be hurtful if taken the wrong way — look how quick he jumps up to assure Stede that Jack is just joking when he calls Stede “the big gal” — but it doesn’t seem to occur to him that maybe they are actually meant to be taken the wrong way. After all, how could Jack be secretly trying to say something mean when he just says the mean thing straight out like that?