#and that fucker badminton but im not tagging him

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

one of my pet peeves for modern aus is the ones where they make izzy ed's best friend or longtime friend because if ed's gonna have one... its jack. it's literally supported by canon. like put izzy and jack next to the revenge crew and your answer for who fits in better is jack, whose only crimes in the show were trying to pull ed away from stede and committing seagull murder (all of which to save ed in a plan IZZY made) im so salty about all the hate jack gets in fics

Oh for sure. My least favoriate thing ever is when people put Izzy in another character's position. Jack is Ed's buddy at the very least. Izzy is just a coworker. Jack is who Ed would choose to hang out with 100% of the time if his options are Jack or Izzy. Also if you're gonna give Ed a best friend who is antagonistic to his new boyfriend, Stede and Jack being mean to each other is so much more fun in my personal opinion because Stede is mean to Izzy and Izzy's head explodes and steam starts coming out of his ears like he's in a cartoon and he yells something incoherent, where as Jack and Stede can have a bitchy little back and fourth that leaves Jack crying for sympathy and Stede's self esteem buried six feet under. It truly is the dynamic ever.

I don't usually have a problem with Jack hate in fics actually because jack is hateable and there often needs to be a villain, and in Our Flag so far the roster of villains has been Izzy, Jack, and the interchangeable badminton twins. Maybe the rich french fuckers but I don't want to give them that much credit tbh. so you know he's one of three and a half bad guys so I get it. However! there is one trope that frustrates me, and I think the main reason that it frustrates me is because its a trope that I hate with all of my guts and is pernicious in the calicobeard tag and that is the idea that Ed and Jack's relationship was non-consentual. There are tons of reasons to hate him, you don't have to turn him into a rapist. That's my pet peeve and my line. Otherwise yeah he's a villain, good. I like it when he causes problems. It's my favorite thing.

That being said I do think he's the most easily rehabilitated villain out of every villain in ofmd (I'm only counting Nigel, Chauncey, Izzy, and Jack as villains.) Simply because he's a pirate that we frankly don't actually know that much about. We don't even know why he's doing this. Yeah Izzy probably slid him a slice of that sweet sweet navy money under the table, but for all we know Izzy had that meeting with Jackie and Chauncey, found Jack afterwards and went "Hey man, so me and Blackbeard are on the outs right now and he's got this new boyfriend who is being super hunted by the British navy, the boyfriend is a rich guy and I know how much you hate those. But anyway Blackbeard doesn't know that Stede is being hunted and I just told them where they can find them so somebody should probably go get Blackbeard out of there and it shouldn't be me, because he's mad at me right now." and Jack said "Oh my god, you made a deal with the british navy? I'm gonna love watching Blackbeard kick your ass when I bring him back here. I'm going to now go do some insane shit to save his life again. Yeah sure I'll make sure the boyfriend dies just so that Beardy doesn't run back and get his ass killed, but only if you slide me a few dubbies for my troubles." It's also possible that he's full chaotic evil joker mode and when Izzy told him the plan he went "Yeah alright, haven't seen Beardy in a while could be funny." We simply do not know. Is he destitute because he's been mutinied three times and he needs the money? Has he never been mutinied in his entire life and he's minted because he's Calico fucking Jack and he's just here for shits and giggles? I tend to go with the "he cares about Ed" reading because I want to fuck him, but it's up to you. His backstory is wide open baby. What we do know Ed likes him a lot actually, Ed cares about him and Stede getting along. We know he saved Ed's life, even if he does hold it over his head because he's a shit head(although how often he does that is also a question mark, there's so much blank space to work with with him, he can be anything you want him to be other than nice).

And you know what, until the thing with Karl the crew liked him too. The crew never liked Izzy, whatever Jack's got going on is way more compatible with the crew than Izzy, and yet I see all these fics and headcanons where the idea that Izzy will stick around after all of this is over is just taken for granted. But they could easily forgive Jack if he sucked Ed's dick, moonbathed with Buttons, and slid Olivia some birdseed because he's funny and cool and Ed's buddy. Where as Izzy can never ever be trusted in a million years, he was never fun to be around, and no one likes him. (I'm sure Jack and Ed have fucked each other over before, they're messy bitches.)

Now I don't think Jack's getting rehabilitated in cannon, in fact we're probably never gonna see him again. I'm hoping for a flashback but I won't hold my breath. It's part of why I'm writing I'm Not Going Anywhere. Because somebody needs to put this man through the st*ddyhands treatment and it's not gonna happen in the show, so it is the realm of fanfiction and no one else is doing it. Jack was fucking built for an enemies to lovers because he's the kind of man who stands too close to his romantic rival at the urinals to prove his dick is bigger. Enemies to lovers is incredibly fun to do with Jack and Izzy because Izzy is eminently bullyable and also the kind of guy belongs in one of those "don't bully me I'll cum" shirts, but it can also be fun to do with Stede "pissboots" Bonnet. I'm not sure if INGA is going that direction I haven't decided yet, but someone should do it post haste I'm so serious.

I don't necessarily want everyone to see him how I see him. I'm fine with being his only apologist. back in april the universe decided he'd gone long enough being the most hated character and decided he needed one apologist and it spun the wheel of OFMD fans and it landed on me and I became the public defender appointed to him. I am over worked and underpaid and he is a terrible client. I have made him take a plea deal on the Karl murder charge.

This has gotten unhinged thank you for letting me chew on Calico jack for like 25 minutes.

[bookshelfdreams]

Here with another Thing I Just Noticed: I can't get a decent still frame of it but if you look at the mantelpiece behind Badminton (in the shot where hallucination-Nigel turns into actual-Chauncey) in the opening of ep9 when he's questioning Stede, you can see three small framed portrait sketches I'm fairly certain are of i. Louis & Alma, ii. Stede on his own, and iii. Mary with the kids; poignant enough in and of themselves, but the way the shot is arranged, Badminton is also framed by the decorative... I think it's meant to be a trompe l'oeil window and curtains? in a very portrait-like pose and idk what but such a purposefully arranged shot is conveying Something that I'm sure others have had more coherent Meta Thoughts on before.

ooh good eye! i didn't notice that at all, unfortunately I can't provide screenshots that are hd enough to really say for certain but I think you're right?

That's definitely Alma and Louis on the left (though considerably younger than they are in the show; I think that's Louis in front and he looks no older than 3); then yes, that could be Stede in his own frame and probably Mary and the kids in theirs. (If anyone has more hd images, I'd be thankful)

It's a really nice detail! Ed's past has come back to haunt him, literally. I love how the show keeps reminding us that Stede's cardinal (and really, only) sin is abandoning his family. Or no, failing to connect to his family, his wife, in the first place. Look how Mary is presented - together with the kids, as a unit. She's not his partner, he doesn't see her as adult on her own, she's a role she fullfills in Stede's life. His wife. The mother of his children.

And I'm not calling him a misogynist here. He was clearly very deeply unhappy in his marriage, and not ever able to voice that. The only time he says as much (understated but still) - "It's not your fault! I was just uncomfortable in a married state!" - he's delirious with fever and talking to a hallucination. He can only admit this in his own head, and even then he's downplaying his own pain. To him, Mary is the embodiment of the marriage; she's not her own person, an adult he might have an adult relationship with. It never occurs to him that they could be on friendly terms, even though Mary keeps trying to reach out to him (sorry for linking my own post).

In Stede's mind, Mary is constantly linked with Badminton and his father, as just another bully, as someone who makes him feel inadequate and lacking. Even though that's clearly not what is really going on (because Stede is an unreliable narrator!), at least not consciously on her part. She actually wants to make that marriage work. It's just that Stede is so used to being made to feel that way, it's how he sees her (even in this shot; Stede and the kids look away from Badminton, Mary looks at him).

But of course! The beauty is! His family isn't actually there. It's just pictures he put there himself. He's carrying the image of them with him, but it's not necessarily who they are in real life (esp the kids - that's not the age he left them at; that's not who they are anymore). We do not see him interact with his family until ep10; until then, we only have Stede's memories. And it's not until then that we truly understand how wrong he was, about them, about his own place in their life, about the impact his loss would have.

Badminton though? (Both of them?) Yeah, we see him. We hear him speak. It's hard to empathize with him, and we're not meant to; even when he keeps reappearing with his sword through his skull, it's more absurd and a little ridiculous, than horrifying. He's an ass and continues to be an ass, even after his death. Good riddance.

The pictures though? That's what Stede really feels guilty about and what he needs to fix.

And then he does.

Poetic cinema <3