Youdelight-itolerate - Steena Longstocking

I'm not sure if fans of the show without ADHD understand this, but when Ed says he's bored he's not normal person bored.

Neurotypical people, or so I'm told, experience boredom as a temporary state. They can resolve it with a wide variety of activities. For those of us with ADHD, though, boredom feels like a life sentence. Firstly, we can't resolve it with just anything. Our brain wants ONE EXACT THING and won't accept anything else but also won't tell us what the one thing is. We can try dozens of things and still feel bored, even days later, if we can't find the right one.

Second, we have time blindness! If a neurotypical person is bored for an hour, they probably think it's a really long, unpleasant hour. Us ADHDers feel that hour as an eternity. It's torture for an unknown amount of time that feels like forever. It SUCKS.

Third, and maybe most importantly for Ed, neurotypical people don't understand what ADHD boredom is like. My mom still thinks I'm fucking with her when I say I prefer physical pain to boredom. I prefer ANYTHING to boredom. I think Ed exists in much the same space, and there is NO WAY Izzy understands. Izzy would have been confused, maybe even angry at Ed for trying a million different hobbies and raid plans and fuckeries to find the one thing that his ADHD brain needs to cure the boredom. Izzy probably rolled his eyes and scoffed.

For Ed, boredom isn't a minor inconvenience. It isn't a bad day. It's an endless torture. No wonder he'd do anything for the most interesting man he's ever met. No wonder he's broken when that boredom is forced back onto him.

[plays the addams family theme]

‘When you find somebody who absolutely gets you, that is a beautiful thing, and it is hard not to want to be in the presence of somebody who really, truly understands you. It’s a rare, rare thing…’ ~ Bryan Fuller

I've got gay pirate brainrot

there is no cure

Look, I love Stede Bonnet but so many fanfics and aus make him way too nice. Like sure he reads the crew bedtime stories but also when he heard the Swede’s teeth were falling out he was like “idk thoughts and prayers I guess, I’m going on a date.” He made Lucius wear an all white outfit to the Republic of Pirates and got mad at him when it got dirty. He insulted Roach’s cake!

Stede isn’t nice! He’s insane! He almost faints when his crew is getting ready for a raid but then when Blackbeard’s crew does a raid he’s like “oooh Lucius note the gusto” as Lucius nearly throws up next to him. He willingly picks severed noses up off of the ground but wants to know if the army has less scratchy blankets. Twice he finds out someone was going to murder him and both times that makes his relationship with them better.

He’s insane! He’s a huge bitch! I love him!

i could rewatch their first real conversation in stede’s cabin all day. it’s the recognition, baby. it’s ed reassuring stede instantly about his crew, ed being careful how he touches stede, ed daring to pick up the cashmere and touch it to his cheek. it’s stede reassuring ed that he’s a good man, stede accepting ed’s interest in the cashmere and realising they have something to share, stede daring again, again, after all the mockery he’s suffered for being himself, to be himself for this guy. this strange good man who is more gentle with stede than anyone has ever been in all his life.

hey, do you wanna do something weird?

they have already done it. it’s been five minutes and they’re in fucking love. 

I couldn't find this MST3K clip anywhere, and I NEED it when I'm feeling steady as a goat and flying over trout. And I hope it will show up in searches for the dozens of us, I'm sure, who search for it.

"He is really good!" "Good? He's the BEST!"

Hmm, any one notice this?

So a while ago I wrote a meta about how Stede isn’t actually oblivious to his feelings towards Ed, but I was really thinking about it at work today and honestly… Ed kind of is.

I know the running joke of Stede effortlessly being the most objectively romantic human on planet earth by sheer accident is hilarious. But did you ever notice that when Stede is actually trying to be loving on purpose, Ed Doesn’t Get it?

We can assume Stede started the ritual of them eating breakfast together cause it’s his quarters, and the intimacy of that clearly went right over Ed’s head cause he let Jack invade it without a second thought. Like Ed, honey, did the implications of a man wanting to eat breakfast with you and only you every single day seriously never register to you??

Stede plans a whole day together “treasure hunting” when he wants Ed to stay. The whole “you wear fine things well” business was pure oblivion on Stede’s part, this is him flirting. And he’s trying so hilariously hard to make this ridiculous idea work, but Ed still doesn’t get the gist. Luckily Lucius I-need-a-fucking-raise- Spriggs is here to save the day and clue Ed in to what at least this particular situation means.

…Which makes the gears clearly turning in Ed’s head during this moment absolutely precious and hilarious. Now he knows what’s going on. He sees that Stede’s excited to spend time with him in particular just like Saint Augustine, I mean a bunch more people will be also there this time, but still! And I’m sorry but the brief look of pure “Ed Exe has stopped working” when apparently the first thing Stede could think of was swimming is criminally underrated.

And look at that fond little smile it turns into, Ed knows full well that man has some cute little swim costume squirreled away somewhere ready to go after pulling an entire safari outfit out of his ass last episode 😂

Ok ok enough teasing Ed, back to the point.

We know Ed’s love language is physical touch. Stede’s is less talked about but I firmly believe his is quality time. Just like Ed is touch starved, Stede is shown to desperately want someone to spend time with. But that’s not just the way he receives love, it’s how he gives love too.

His way of saying I love you is to say “That’s me.” He’s the one who breaks the lock on his own bathroom door. He’ll be the one to show up at Ed’s restaurant and look at all the little Knick knacks in his gift shop on a slow day. Stede wants to be the one who’s there, who makes sure Ed doesn’t have to cry by himself, or feel silly about something he loves and put a lot of work into. He doesn’t ever want someone so deeply precious to him feeling as unwanted and isolated as he did back in Barabados.

And Ed ends up missing so many of these intentional gestures. Which isn’t a BAD thing, I just love all the little intricacies of two people with completely different love languages somehow making it work anyway. I think that’s part of why the bathtub scene felt so profoundly intimate, because their love languages work seamlessly together and they end up emotionally on the same page.

Ok it’s late so bear with me as I try to articulate this.

Every day I am thinking about the way Ed says, “Oh shut up” in response to Stede saying, “I’ve only got stupid ideas.”

It’s something about his exasperated tone, his furrowed brows, the way he looks at the ground instead of Stede, how he’s one second away from rolling his eyes. In this moment he is simply a man with his best friend who he is trying to make feel better and the best friend is ruining his attempt. Real “no one is allowed to talk shit about you, not even you” energy.

And obviously Ed is in love with him there but there’s just something very special to me about how even without taking romantic feelings into account, there’s affection and camaraderie there, so much that he feels real annoyance when Stede gets too down on himself. That special type of annoyance, the type that doesn’t spell out abandonment, but rather the type where he wants to shake Stede and say, “see what I see for once, you wonderful idiot.”

To paraphrase a quote from Parks and Rec: he loves him and he likes him.

It is so important to me that he just. Genuinely fucking likes him.

Me to me

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2.01) “WHAT CAN THE DAMNED REALLY SAY TO THE DAMNED”