a potentially unpopular hot take here but the thing about stede unhinged rage energy in the show is that heās been trodden on and laughed at and kept out of the room his entire life, heās been made fun of and disrespected, heās experienced hate and violence against him, and itās easy to slip past his rage in the show because it isnāt rage for the sake of rage, itās rage for the sake of healing. he stands up for himself and his crew and for ed. he gets angry because heās been treated this way his whole life, and heās fucking done with it, and heās fucking done with it happening to anyone else. when stede lashes out, he does it in this context - never against anyone who didnāt deserve it. itās easy to slide over stedeās rage in the show because it doesnāt work to destroy or to limit stede. it works to heal him.Ā
thereās a lot of commentary out there that wants us to turn the other cheek, to swallow down our anger, to moderate our tone when we react to our own marginalization: queerness, race, class, more. and our own histories: intergenerational traumas and social expectations. stede bonnet says fuck that. iām a pirate now. not all anger is destructive, and iām gonna go ape shit. sometimes allowing ourselves to feel anger - to acknowledge how fucked up something is, to not swallow ourselves down - is what we need to heal from our trauma.Ā
the biggest point in the show where anger becomes destructive is, as many people have noticed, the burning of the french ship. but itās important to note, i think, that stede doesnāt set the fire. stede just exposes the group to one another, and then he sits back and laughs, because he knows exactly what they are and what theyāll do to themselves. he knows that itās their anger - based on greed and competition and infidelity and lies - that starts the fire. and itās clear from the scene with our crew escaping and with abshir and the other servants escaping that they couldĀ escape. to the extent that anyone dies on that ship, which is not actually established by the narrative, itās their own destruction. they could escape, but itās their own anger that keeps them trapped.Ā
this works because stedeās anger is portrayed alongside and in specific relation to the rejection of toxic masculinity. stedeās rage is not about becoming out of control and lashing out unnecessarily and hurting the people around him. he wields it very narrowly and pointedly. stedeās rage is about kindness and love and acceptance as a radical act, even when heās fucking pissed, because his anger demands more - he demands respect from nigel badminton, who laughs at him and calls him a coward and rejects his stance toward non-escalation (with an unintended consequence), he demands respect from izzy, who hates him for everything he is in terms of softness and flamboyance, he demands care from calico jack, who is careless with his crew, he demands compassion from the french, who are compassionless to ed, he demands significance from doug, who has replaced him so entirely and who seeks to dismiss stedeās anger at the life he was forced into with mary. (doug is also the best example of stede losing control, and itās noteworthy i think that stede rejects his own reaction immediately and goes to lengths to make amends.) stedeās rage is about protection, and about standing up against people who want to grind you down with bigotry and intolerance, and about choosing to be soft because you know what itās like when the world is so fucking hard.Ā
stedeās rage is about allowing himself everything heās been told he canātĀ and asking, just like he does in the very beginning: why?Ā and what if it werenāt like that?Ā
