#The Price of Freedom

[staytrueblue]

Soaps “let me finish him” is demonic

There is something to be said to Soap not hesitating to bring him down to the ground. In front of his Captain, in front of his Commander.

Price once said “it needs violence and timing and I can do both.” Soap has violence but apparently Price thinks the timing isn’t right. Because a Sergeant shooting a HVT (high value target) who’s in custody, in the skull on a plane just because he’s angry at him probably has a lot of paperwork attached to it…..

[sharksliveinspace]

In another universe 🪽

[alpaca-clouds]

Wait! So, nobody knows there are Pirates of the Caribbean books?

So, a week ago I learned that... really nobody bloody knows about those books? Really?

I knew that Disney really had not done their part in advertising those books, only to then be very surprised to learn that the books did not sell. Like, duh, Disney, in a pre-tiktok world, you cannot just assume that people will find out about those books you publish, if you do not tell anyone about it. Unbelievable, isn't it?

But yeah, indeed. There are a couple of pirates of the Caribbean books. Now mind you, most of those books - or rather: all but one - are "young reader" books, so they are not particularly challenging in terms of language, or story. They have been released under Disney Press and mostly have been marketed through Scholastic back in the day. (As such, it will not surprise you to learn: None of these books ever was translated into any non-English language.)

Only one book I would actually call GOOD. The one that was not targeted at kids. However, I will say: I had fun with all of the books back in the day. They were fun books, that often did immitate the voice of the characters rather well, and gave some nice interesting background to the universe as a whole. So... Let me talk about the books a bit.

The Jack Sparrow Series

The Jack Sparrow series is the longest series among the Pirates of the Caribbean books, that basically go into Jack's life as a teenager. Long story short: Growing up as Teague's son, he kinda rebels against his father a lot. Thus, he runs away as a young teen and finds his own pirate crew. Most notably among them of course a certain Bootstraps Bill.

There are a couple of other characters in this. We see for example the young Annamaria, and some other background characters from the movie as crewmates. We also see his first meeting with both Norrington and Gibbs in those books.

Additionally these books (again, this is a fairly long series) go a lot furhter into the Nahua gods and how they cursed Cortez, as Cortez's ghost is a recurring villain in those books. And yes, this quite clearly says: Jack knew the gold was cursed. He knew from the beginning, but it is one of those common themes: Nobody ever listens to good old Jack.

It should be noted: These are books for fairly young readers. Meaning: The prose is fairly simple as it is aimed at a very young reading level. Meaning, too, that the books are fairly short. For the books of this series I usually needed about two to three hours per book to read it from beginning to end. I would guess most of these books are about 30-40k in length.

Now, compared to the other books, these apparently did not sell that bad. I would argue that this mainly is because even if the kids who found those books at Scholastic did not need to be very invested in the franchise to read those books. They were fairly nice child friendly Pirate adventures.

The books are named:

The Coming Storm

The Siren Song

The Pirates Chase

The Sword of Cortez

The Age of Bronze

Silver

City of Gold

The Timekeeper

Dance of the Hours

Sins of the Father

Poseidon's Peak

Bold New Horizons

The Tale of Billy Turner and other Stories (anthology of the side characters of the series and what they do after the end of the series.)

Now, the books are technically out of print by now. Though I think these are fairly available in libraries still - and go for fair prizes on used book portals. So these are probably the easiest books from this list to get.

The Price of Freedom

Now, chronologically the next books that came out for Pirates of the Caribbean, is also the one actual adult novel. The Price of Freedom. If you wonder where you know the name of the author from: A.C. Crispin is fairly known for her writing of extended universe material. Most notably she has written the Spock series for Star Trek and the Han Solo trilogy for the Star Wars books, though I guess those are among the "Legends" now.

This is actually written as a proper novel - and a long novel at this. The book has more than 600 pages.

This story starts out with Jack Sparrow having joined the EITC. Having worked for them for a couple of years now, he is by now the First Mate on the ship The Wicked Wench. When the ship gets attacked by pirates, the current Captain suffers a heart attack and dies, making Jack finish the trading route on his own. Eventually he makes port in Africa, where the current overseer of the EITC hears of this: Cuttler Beckett. He invites Jack to his mansion, realizing the two of them have much in common. Most notably, they both believe in the magical things out at sea - and that there is indeed a magical island somewhere out there.

Now, Cuttler Beckett has two slaves working on his estate, that he suspects of stemming from that island, and he has a plan: If Jack saved those slaves, they might be willing to tell Jack about that magical place - and if Beckett then is able to find the island, he could not only proof his family, that he is not insane, but also gain the Lord title, he has been trying to get for so many years.

As I said: This book is actually really good. Like, sure, some things in it have not aged perfectly, I generally have to say it still aged fairly well. Most notably for a book that came out in 2011 is that the main relationship in this book is a polyamorous relationship between Jack and two non-white women.

(It should be noted: It is fairly clear in the books that Jack is mixed race and at the very least quarter-Black. Think of that what you will. This is not really white-washing of a character, given that indeed the authors of the screenplay wrote him as white - but books then gave his mother African ancestry.)

Sadly, nobody fucking knows that this book exists, because Disney has not marketed this back when it came out AT ALL. This book's release was so underadvertized (even though it released basically at the same time as the 4th movie), that several book logistics companies had not stocked this at all. So, obviously this book did not sell at all, and never got a second print, making it expensive as fuck. However, you can borrow it in several libraries still.

Due to the bad sales and the fact that Crispin was diagnosed with cancer not long after the book came out and died of it, we sadly never got a sequel to this book, which means that we also do not know how the story of certain characters end.

The Legends of the Breathren Court

Rob Kidd, who wrote the young Jack Sparrow books, was also hired to write another series of books that were once more aimed at young readers.

The plot is basically like this: Jack had gotten himself a curse - which is bad. But there are even worse news: He needs the help of the other pirate lords to safe himself. The only good news: He has the Pearl now, the fastest ship in the Caribbean, thanks due some minor magical upgrades. But it is not going to be easy to convince the other pirate lords to help him.

Now, I should say: This series sold by far the worst. I would argue the main issue is, that these are kids books, but take place when Jack is in his 30s. While the Jack Sparrow books could be easily understood by kids, who had nearly no idea about the plot of the movies, you do need to understand the movies for this series rather well. So yeah. The book series was cancelled halfway through, though Robb Kidd did those fans of the series a solid, by convincing Disney to allow him to at least provide the last few books as epubs on his website. :)

Still, the series was cut down due to the cancellation. So the ending is a bit... chaotic.

The series is made up of the following books:

The Caribbean

Rising in the East

The Turning Tide

Wild Waters

Day of the Shadow

These books are usually available easily online. Not to buy, but, you know... Through other means.

Some thoughts in the end

I am honestly kinda sad, that the entire thing with those books never went anywhere. Disney did want at some point to get an extended Universe going for Pirates of the Caribbean, with more lore and everything. Back in the day there was also a game in development, that was supposed to be a AAA single player experience - but basically they cancelled it pretty much last minute. :/ And it is kinda sad.

I do think that this franchise could have been very interesting - if Disney did not rely too much on Jack Sparrow as a character. Now outside of Depp being a misogynist pig who needs, but refuses therapy, I do think that generally speaking the franchise would have been stronger, if they did not construct everything around this one character. Because fun fact: We do not have a whole lot of seafaring fantasy stuff out there and the worldbuilding in those books is really super interesting.

Some part of me wants to write a sequel to Price of Freedom - but I doubt that anyone is ever gonna read that, based that nobody knows the book xD

[hugh-b-like]

I adore Sonia's first outfit in this episode, it really IS tragic that it got torn to shreds. Smh.

[renee-writer]

The Longest Day

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial #308 prompt The Price of Freedom

WC: 130

CW: Descriptions of war

Picture via Pinterest

The price of peace was paid in the blood of thousands of young men. So many stormed the beach on that longest day. Eighty-one years ago, men barely old enough to shave entered France via Normandy. The ocean turned from blue to red as their blood flowed. Still, the greatest generation kept coming. Men after men, full of grit and determination, trudging through their fallen soldiers towards the German infantry.

They refused to back down knowing the price of freedom was worth the cost.  They fought so their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren wouldn't have too. 

They fought to stop the camps. 

They fought…

Now it is our turn. The children of their children’s children. Now matter the cost, the cost of freedom is worth it. It is always worth it.

[m1nt-33]

Jack making out with Esmeralda in his dads cabin in his pantry when his dad is in the same room is never not gonna be crazy to me

Not to mention Teague unknowingly playing romantic music for them

[the-blackened-pearl]

shower thought:

the Pearl was a sunken ship right. and she was scorched black by the fires beforehand. so she was still scorched when she was raised up by Jones.

my inquisitive thought was: wouldn’t the scorched wood make her unseaworthy? surely you gotta replace it at some point even if it wasn’t done right away?

or…is she always seaworthy, despite her scorched exterior? does the scorched wood even need to be replaced because of the fire? is this because she was raised up by Jones, making her supernaturally fast — and perhaps even supernaturally seaworthy, with it?

these are the thoughts that stalk me.

[ellena-asg]

Gosh, I love these moments in the books where Jackie meets new people (the characters we know from the movies), looks them up and down and of course there are comments in his head and also: he behaves like some age radar. I mean, he looks at a person and is like "yeah, they're X years old" 😂

Jack in Sins of the father, seeing James: Oh a fellow kiddo! Hmm, a bit younger than me. Hmm, ten years younger. Oh, look how he's hanging on to his papa's coattails! Poor boy, so scared! And so sad. It's so fucking sad that he is so sad. And he's crying!!! His papa is bad. Very bad. I feel you, boy! Death to all bad papas.

Jack in The price of freedom, seeing Barbossa: Big hat. A very big hat. Okay... this guy is... One of those arrr pirates. He will knock your teeth out, just because, on a whim. Old. Like, 20 years older than me. Cornwall accent. Ugly clothes. Ugly face. Hm, he's got piratey weapons and all that stuff, they're good. Wait, is he crying?! Is that guy really crying? Cause he lost a monkey? A Polly what... What the...???

Jack in Sins of the father, seeing Gibbs: What the fuck, why is that guy *OFFICER HELLO!* so nice to us pirates??? A rum trafficker? Okaay. Now, let's look at him. Hmm, he doesn't look like a pirate for sure. But hell, this man doesn't look like he's from the Navy either. Hmm, he's old. No, is he old? I think he is. No, wait... What happened to my age radar? Okay, he's older than me, obviously. But how much? Who fucking knows. His face... I've got the feeling his face is older than him. Wait, what you mean I know this guy? I don't know this guy! He knows me, there's a difference. What, he was at shitty Old Bat's (grandmother's) barbecue birthday party? No, I was a small bean, I don't remember. So is he a double agent... Is he more with us... Or what?

[before-the-black-pearl]

More like anyone in Jack’s family but this is so little Jack coded

😂😂💀💀

[rpgcovers]

The Price of Freedom: Gamemaster Pack ~ West End Games (1987)

[poledn1ca]

Hihi

[norringtonvibes]

(Spoilers for Pirates of the caribbean - the price of freedom)

Somehow, I just felt sorry for young Beckett while reading these parts...

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[daughter-of-sapph0]

drew my OCs, MJ (blonde woman) and Abby (redhead).

check out The Price of Freedom on ao3. chapters five and six dropping soon

honestly this was just an excuse to practice drawing realistic hands. (and MJ in a tank top 😳)

[zenzeroruletheworld]

do you remember when Christophe left Jack to die on that little boat and then Robby joined him and they spent 5 days on that boat before they found land?

This is what I think happened on that boat in those 5 days

[m1nt-33]

I love the price of freedom sm

[the-blackened-pearl]

sometimes I remember the ring Amenirdis gave Jack, and get sad because Beckett threw it into the sea, and therefore Jack’s lost his only way of finding Kerma 😔

THEN I REMEMBER IT WAS TOSSED INTO THE SEA.

THE SEA.

AND WHO DO WE KNOW IS THE SEA AND LIKES COLLECTING RANDOM SHINY THINGS.

CALYPSO PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU 🙏