#that's why i see the bathtub scene as singular in nature

[knowlesian]

thinking about ed, and walls that become cages.

because we know ed is young when he kills his father; we can assume he’s just as young when he leaves home. young when he has to start fending for himself and keep the world not just at a distance but learn to bite back without crossing the fine line between being somebody’s eventual and immediate c.o.d.

that takes control. it takes a certain amount of planning. it takes understanding that people see what they want to see unless they’re looking carefully or you give them a reason to do otherwise.

because there’s no reason to disbelieve ed, when he confesses that to stede; we can have our own take on if he's defining murder right, but when it comes to ed the character with his own internal moral structure, he defines it so that the last person he killed personally was his father.

so the years with hornigold, pirate frat bro’ing it up with jack: nobody figures it out. he leaves home barely more than a kid, grows into a man in a culture where his line there would be anything but the accepted norm, and as far as we know nobody ever figures it out. he becomes the legend, he makes izzy his first mate; nobody knows.

he presents himself as blackbeard: legendary pirate. the kraken is his private shame, the thing he tells himself in his worst moments, and ed is who he is when he’s alone. blackbeard bridges the gap, in some ways, at the same time it protects him.

who would think blackbeard doesn’t kill? it’s ludicrous. he’s born of the devil. a million knives and guns and a head made of smoke. he has made himself so motherfucking scary all it takes is the evocation of his imagined wrath to make people surrender.

like ed said: he doesn’t even need to be on the ship.

the parts of piracy ed enjoyed— thinking fast in new ways and not the same old shit, equally new daring adventures, buckling some swashes and having gay sex via swordfights literal and colloquial that aren’t weird and depressing— are now basically all off the table.

he doesn't have to do much but run from one easy win to the next, maybe plot a daring escape in between, but it’s all the fucking same. he built blackbeard to protect himself; his secrets, his tender underbelly. and then he built blackbeard as a channel for his very real anger, because among the many rational responses to a lifetime of unfair bullshit is being pissed off about it.

violence isn’t ed’s instinct, but push people far enough and they push back. physical violence absolutely provided him a shield (nobody suspects the guy who chops off toes and make people eat them of not liking murder, because... that’s fucking terrifying holy shit that is MURDER BASEMENT territory, if you don't know all the secrets ed told stede, or we as an audience saw in flashback)  but it also provided an outlet for that anger.

he's older now; still angry, because the world is still fucked up, but no longer satisfied channeling everything into the same old expected patterns and only letting his other impulses bleed in around the edges until the world (or izzy) reminds him to pull it back in and be who he is supposed to be.

this is the problem of becoming blackbeard so nobody will be able to see ed, and the things he doesn’t want them to see; self-fucking-fulfilling prophecy. he needed blackbeard, once upon a time, but he’s outgrown blackbeard. it always hurt him, but it used to give him things he needed. 

the utility’s gone. all being blackbeard does is hurt him now and he wants to figure himself out beyond the boundaries of his legend but he built the foundations of said legend so well knocking them over also involves toppling pillars of identities that aren't even his.

it is an absolute goddamned pickle of a bitch of a Situation. i enjoy these writers a lot but also: ow?