#bicera

Guys I just had a complete Shellstrop style “holy motherforking shirt balls” moment at work about Donnie’s unusual speaking patterns. You know, when he does this:

This tendency to narrate his actions in the third person or verbally say onomatopoeias in place of the sound is uh… well it’s autistic right? Look it features in literally every compilation but no one knows why other than “vibes, sometimes it just be like that 🤷”

But NO. No it NOT be like that. I finally know what this fucking nerd is doing, hear me out…

… he’s scripting.

Think about it. You know what else describes action, emotion, and sound in purely words? Books. He has these little speaking quirks, yah, but if you actually zoom out and see the whole picture, Donnie talks like he’s a narrator. This makes a SHIT ton of sense considering we already have textual evidence that he engages in scripting behavior (more specifically some possible echolalia. See: saying “New York! What a Town!” in any situation something kind of abnormal happens after he hears Splinter say it with the exact same infections and everything.)

And we also know from the mystic library that Donnie actively seeks out and enjoys reading. So it stands to reason an autistic 14 year old who likes to be left alone to work on complex machines a decent amount and takes pride in his intellect would model the way he communicates off of written media as opposed to tv or his brothers. He could fill his social tool box with lines from Jupiter Jones and Lou Jitsu movies, but he may think it would give him less of a chance to properly express his capabilities.

Books are also the only form of media that can literally just tell you flat out what a character’s expression or emotion is supposed to be without it being awkward, which would be really appealing for Donnie. What solidifies this for me is the fact that at least once he verbally says “sad face emoji”, which could not have come from a novel or textbook. But we often do flagrantly use emoticons as tone indicators, and Donnie is constantly on his phone.

I think he’s definitely aware that this is not a regular way of communicating, but he’s clearly also self aware of his issues in getting his emotional meaning across and receiving input back. So it stands to reason he would accommodate this in a way that, yes, makes him sound odd, but is at least effective.

Now for my final little “I’ve connected the dots. I’ve connected them” moment, I headcannon that Donnie learned to read before he fully got the hang of speech. Aside from… literally everything I just said, he uses sign language to tell the squirrels to blow up his treehouse in that one episode. But he does the sign for “make” a bit incorrectly (there should be a slight twist in his upper fist), which leads me to believe he was probably taught baby sign out of necessity rather than being fully proficient in asl. This is fairly common for autistic children with speech delays.

Not sure why this is literally the first thought I had in the morning but let’s roll with it cause I think I’m onto something here.

This scene is a parallel to the one in episode 2 where Black Pete is telling a ghost story, both stories are about Blackbeard. Cause do you remember the defining feature of the first tale?

His head is made of smoke. Something that confuses Stede the same way the hook headed man later confuses Frenchie and Roach. Hooks in particular are very childishly easy to recognize as a pirate symbol, with most people immediately thinking of Captain Hook from our fairy tales.

“But do his eyes also float?”

“Doesn’t make any sense, how does he eat?”

“How does he kiss?”

The theme of episode 6 is essentially how Ed’s been slowly stripped of his personhood over the years, something he perpetuated at first as a maladaptive coping mechanism but now the severity of this isolation is catching up with him.

It doesn’t matter that he’s in his most vulnerable state, the Dutch sailors still run in fear cause all they see is a symbol of piracy. Ed’s face is invisible. Stede and later the crew as well are concerned with things like the characters’ eyes being visible, how they eat, how they kiss, things that not only make someone human but also indicate their physical and emotional needs are met.