aes

i’m laying on the floor, it is 2:30 AM, i’m thinking about the softness of ed, the desperate desire to be known, to be seen and how that plays in to his relationship with stede as well as his relationship with izzy + the rest of the crew as time goes on.

aka ed and his complex relationship with his sense of self, the persona of blackbeard, and the fear / thrill of being known.

aka this is the name meta ig

i wouldn’t describe edward as a private person, he is clad in mystery, sure but there is a certain degree of himself in everything he does, even as blackbeard. blackbeard is a smokescreen, a persona built around him like a wall, it is still varying parts of edward sprinkled in, almost like hints of his true self that he is waiting for someone to call him on. in some parts, blackbeard is just ed, quick on his feet, loyal to a fault, a brilliant tactician but in others blackbeard is the kraken, it is the monster suit that ed wears. the problem being the seams are frayed and sometimes he can’t tell where he ends and the other begins, and sometimes it feels as though the façade is slipping, and this creates a problem in which ed has a hard time distinguishing what is him, and what is blackbeard when the two are both just him.

hc + scent ??

                            he’s always been fond of floral scents, they remind him of his mother, of the spray of perfume that would follow her home after working in some noble house. though he also likes the smell of citrus, and has a deep love for the hint of salt on the ocean breeze. ed has an affinity for natural smells, for nature, or rain. though the smell of gunpowder and fire scratches an itch for violence they can’t quite describe. he doesn’t mind those smells. but he is around them so often they’re a bit mundane.

                            blackbeard smells like seasalt, when he first meets stede he smells like tobacco, the smell is stuck in his hair, in his beard, it’s not quite a sour smell, but an earthy one, he smells like smoke and rum, like gunpowder and leather. it’s a very masculine scent.

                            as they spend more time on the revenge ed begins to smell cleaner. more like lavender soap, like the ocean, it’s a fresher scent, softer around the edges though the hints of smoke are still there, the smell of leather and gunpowder just beneath the surface. edward doesn’t know how to describe it, the feeling that comes along with that smell. the feeling of belonging.

                         after his return to the revenge, edward smells like citrus, he smells like flowers and seasalt, like melted wax and burnt paper, but more so he smells like stede. draped in his clothes and hiding away in the library, spending every moment surrounded by the gentleman pirate’s belonging. to ed, he smells like home.

… and the thing is, Ed is so lovely that we kind of dismiss all these statements the same way Stede does? They’re treated like comedy beats or tall tales at most. We’re kind of asked to forget and ignore them as being inaccurate—despite the fact they’re often coming from people who know Ed VERY WELL, much better than Stede knows him and for much, much longer— and we’re still being told to ignore them aaaalllll the way up until Ed’s heel turn back into the Kraken (a form of Blackbeard that might arguably turn out to be a way worse version than even the hair-raising rumors we’ve heard before this point).

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder? • Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

You wear fine things well.