itsybitsylemonsqueezy:

Some Important Things I Need To Say About Edward Nygma:

• Ed is very likely autistic and does not process emotions the same way neurotypical people do. He’s not good at reading others’ emotions or understanding his own. This means he has TERRIBLE, impulsive reactions to just about everything and he doesn’t think things through.
• Ed is in love with Oswald, he just doesn’t know it yet.
• His attachment to Kristen Kringle, and to an even greater extent Isabella, is a performance. He’s reading from a script, following cues, behaving as he believes he’s supposed to behave in this situation. But with no real grasp of what his feelings actually are, again, because he struggles to read and understand them.
• Witness how Ed hasn’t mentioned Kringle hardly at all since killing her, and how short-lived his guilt was. How quickly he jumped from sorrow to gratitude, with almost no refraction time.
• Witness how Ed BARELY mentions Isabella the ENTIRE time he’s torturing Butch and Tabitha, how he gets way more wrapped up in the actual design of his plot than misguided revenge. How he doesn’t even THINK to make sure Butch has actually done it, doesn’t ask about details of the killing, or accuses him properly, which is how he is so taken aback when Butch lies about it.
• Witness how, while no doubt Isabella’s murder is one of many reasons Ed is hopping mad at Oswald right now, he doesn’t confront him on it at all.
• Edward Nygma is a man who does not know himself hardly at all. He was so shocked by ENJOYING killing, not the murder itself, which was heavily premeditated, but the enjoyment of it, it drove him into a self-schism.
• Ed has no schema for affection and Oswald’s love doesn’t manifest in cues Ed knows how to recognize. Ed has no way to read Oswald, nor to read his own attachment to Oswald because he cannot fathom this kind of romantic attraction, he had no idea it existed.
• So, when Ed says, “You’re my best friend as well. Remember that.” He is telling the truth.
• He is not emotionally savvy enough to manipulate Oswald this way
• And deep down, Ed cannot kill him because he loves him. Ed knows this now. He can’t put words to it, he doesn’t know what it is, he can’t articulate it. But he knows he can’t kill him, doesn’t want to kill him, and this is the best way he can express it.
• Not to say that he’s not MAD, not to say that everything he told Barbara isn’t ALSO true, and he’s going to DELIBERATELY AND WITH GREAT MALICE AFORETHOUGHT MAKE OSWALD’S LIFE A LIVING HELL. But… these two expressions are not mutually exclusive. Especially in the mind of a poor Edward Nygma who cannot parse emotions well enough to understand that hate stems from love.
• But that doesn’t change the fact that Ed wanted Oswald to know, and to remember, that Ed considers him his best friend. Whatever Ed does now will be in that lens for Oswald. No matter what shit Ed pulls, and BOY there will be a lot of it, Ed wants Oswald to remember that he’s his friend and to bank on that.
• Arguably, this could be to paralyze Oswald so he won’t retaliate. But that requires a sophisticated amount of emotional manipulation for the one person Ed has ever truly loved. That requires deliberately breaking a man he couldn’t watch die.
• We will see what happens, if Ed’s hatred and anger blinds him to the point that he would hurt Oswald like this. But… Ed didn’t have to say that. Ed could have left and still hurt him. Ed can do everything he’s about to do and it will still gut Oswald. But saying that… is a promise that he will come back. If Oswald can just wait, can sit there and take everything, and trust in Ed… the way Ed trusted him, so completely… then Ed will come back to him.
• Because one day, in this long, violent, painful process, Ed is going to realize he’s in love with Oswald. That he’s been in love this whole time. That that’s the reason he’s doing all of this. And when he realizes it, he’ll come back. We just have to wait.