#and frenchie knows how to calculate the odds. i dont think he's going to do nothing.

[chuplayswithfire]

Sometimes I think about the fact that Frenchie sets the stage of Our Flag Means Death's world by starting us off with a song about how the world of pirates is a short and violent one, but how, despite that, it's still a desirable life, because it's "short but nice".

Our heroes do not live in a muppet world of pirates expecting long, happy lives and favoring cheerful shenanigans, and it's Frenchie who reveals that to us. It's also Frenchie who says, when asked about someone returning from a raid mentally devastated, that they should "bottle it up". It's Frenchie who sees a fancy party full of bigoted wealthy whites as an opportunity to make some money in a way that humiliates the fucks who wanted to humiliate him and Oluwande. And it's Frenchie who asks if Blackbeard and Company are going to kill them when the Revenge has been occupied.

Frenchie, despite his lighthearted demeanor, is pretty damned astute. He's clever and quick to evaluate the odds, and he does it without getting grim and bitter and overcautious. He's having a blast of a good time not because he doesn't know piracy is dangerous, but because he does and he's determined to make a good time of it anyway.

In another words, he's a pretty good choice to be an anti-Izzy Hands, at least in terms of helping out a captain. I don't know what Ed will do with Frenchie in season 2 now that the sewing is done, but I imagine he took Frenchie instead of Wee John, even though Wee John has the neater hand at sewing, because Frenchie is the person he saw running a scam and getting away clean, Frenchie is the one who saw *Ed* upset and immediately validated the source of the emotion (they're such dicks about spoons!), and Frenchie knows how to be a pirate.

He just knows how to have fun with it, too. If Lucius is an emotional counterpoint to Izzy (shoulder angel vs shoulder devil), then Frenchie could very well be a piratical counterpoint to Izzy, pointing out ways that they can find the balance between the softer, gentler life Ed hoped to find with Stede, and the grim, bloody realities of a pirate's life, so it can be short but nice. Because Ed's life, after all, has not been very nice.