can't believe a show based on a videogame (usually games adaptations are notoriously bad, which isn't the case here tho) gave me the beauty and the beast/twisted mirrors/enemies to traveling companions/ruthless antihero+optmistic but still badass heroine who takes none of his shit/age gap but make it sexy dynamic of my dreams. as much as i love maximus and i think he deserves the best writing ever because 1. he's a clever deconstruction of the aspiring Knight bro who's actually a bit of a loser and, as much as lucy, sees the world in black&white at first and then doesn't get what he thought he wanted but what he needs (or at least i hope he'll eventually get it), and 2. he's a cutie and i want an epic love story for him too, it's very funny how they tried to give us a puppy kind of romance and the tumblr girlies still fixated on the "toxic ~she bites his finger off and he cuts hers off and sews it on his hand in what we'll pretend it's a symbolic marriage rings exchange or whatever~ asshole who used to be a nice guy/good girl™ with a lot of spunk and hidden anger but unshakeable morals" kind of relationship.
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"Stede wanted to be a pirate and now he's not going to be one, which is bad."
Did he really want to be a pirate? Stede wanted to be a storybook pirate; he wanted to be the pirate in his games and his imagination, who had swashbuckling adventures. The entire first season deals with him learning what piracy really is. He sees what it has done to Ed, quite literally history's greatest pirate, within the first half hour of their meeting. Most of the fun he has, has nothing to do with actual piracy - it's playing games with his crew, going on treasure hunts with Ed, putting on plays. He likes making up plans, but he doesn't like actual piracy. When he accidentally kills a man, it horrifies him and haunts him, and continues to until the end of the season. He goes to therapy about it.
Into Season 2, the entire point of Stede's piracy is still not piracy. It's to get back to Ed. Stede's fantasy in the beginning is about being the storybook pirate who defeats the villain and runs across the beach to his one true love, who isn't mad at him and never was. It's a fairytale. And even there, reality is creeping in - dream-Izzy tells him, "I didn't make you leave him. You did that yourself." The reality is that Ed has gone into a suicidal spiral, and Stede finds him mostly dead.
The one time that Stede becomes a "real pirate" in the real world, it goes to his head, but it's not even because of his love of piracy. It's because he's suddenly popular. People are buying him drinks and clapping him on the back. No one's calling him "Steve." No one's making fun of him. And still, the only thing he wants to do when he does something cool is go tell Ed about it.
And even then...it's hollow. Everyone around him are sycophants. Ed has left him. His crew are suddenly leaving him. It all ends with him getting his ass kicked by a real pirate. He didn't even like doing the thing that made him popular; he kills Ned Low and runs off to hide. The whole sequence at Jackie'z is a mirror of the sequence at the pub when he goes home - everyone thinks he's cool, but for none of the reasons that are authentic to who he is or what he really wants.
Stede wanted a family who loved him. He wanted friends who liked him for him. He wanted someone to play with. He wanted to marry for love. And he has all those things at the end.
He's not a pirate. He's not having second thoughts.
I'm not sure why this is hard to see.
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This voting period really just feels like im watching a bunch of people force a gay man back in the closet
I know thats not people's intentions but literally how else is he going to take this guilty vote. "I just don't want him to think his lying was okay" he doesn't! And he's not going to think that! He's actively trying to stop lying! All guiltying him will do is tell him he should have kept lying and continuing his relationship!!
"I just want him to have some kind of consequence for what he's done" Was Hinako literally dying not enough??? Sure, he didn't love her, but he still LIKED her. They were friends, they lived together, he married her because he WANTED to love her! He is literally drowning in guilt because of her death, I think he's had enough consequences by now. He might not be wearing his ring anymore, but he still carries it with him, he is very clearly still grieving her death.
"Innocent votes have no effect on him" Yes they will!! It didn't do anything last time because we forgave him for the wrong reasons and because he absolutely hates himself. Assuming we're right about him being gay, which I'm pretty confident we are, having his 'true' self validated rather than his fake one will 100% have a bigger effect on him this time. Guiltying him will only make his self-hate worse and show him that only his false self is forgivable, so he should keep lying to be accepted.
I know most people's intentions are not to make him keep lying, but regardless of whatever intention you have, it doesn't matter how you want him to take it, you can not ignore how he will actually take it.
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