#hannah complains about people complaining about dmtnt.txt

[lighthouseborna]

i am thinking about. how henry spends the entire movie proving he is capable and also correct not as a matter of conceit but in order to accomplish his goals and how most of the people in the movie call him 'boy' anyway as a way of undermining him but actually it's not until the actual dad figures in the movie take control of the situation for the sake of their kids that you see that kid side of him (the 10 year old going 'I want you to come home' while soaked and shivering) again, like.

the movie goes: Here He Is

and then nine years later it's all certainty and brashness

and people are calling him "boy" but who are they talking to because it's not him, surely?

not this young man pushing and pulling and powering forward, everyone else in tow, surely?

and then it's like. oh There He Is

[lighthouseborna]

unpopular opinion time but there is concept art of carina on the star/gem island in pants and like, pirate gear? and im actually really glad they did not do that and she stays pretty classically dressed because while i don't think she's opposed to like. wearing clothes suited to tasks (or, as she does in her lil solo novel thing, to get her way (she sneaks into a mens-only university auditorium thing by cross-dressing)) i feel like? she's not really challenging her status as woman but where a woman's status sits.... yknow?

[lighthouseborna]

you know on a note of "other media inspiring me in regards to this one" i actually haven't stopped thinking about this line

and it's written from a very long lived character talking about the short lives of humans (and, in particular, she herself lost a(t least one) child who was an infant) but also gosh it's just so true and it brought me again to. How often I see criticism of DMTNT specific to the genre of "Elizabeth wouldn't do nothing" which. As ever brings me to-> raising her son as a single mother with no living family to fall back on in an age openly hostile to unmarried* women who have children is a weird thing to call "sitting around doing nothing" but ok.

(*because her marriage would not at all be recognized if for no other reason than that they didn't have a single actual dedicated witness, but also so many other reasons)

but the real point being actually. The way nobody accounts for? Having children will change you?? LIke I'm not saying she returned to colonial society because I just don't think that would happen (and there's no evidence that strongly enforces it. Literally we know nothing about how Henry was raised other than 'obsessed with pirates and rescuing his father.' We quite literally don't know what life he led other than what is explicitly shown in the movie and the one (1) line that would have firmly identified it was the only thing cut from a particular scene, ergo they left it ambiguous on purpose for you to fill in yourself! As so many of us had already done! Your anger about this is stupid!!!! anyway)

the. im trying to get to. I agree, Elizabeth would have wanted to do (and very likely Did do) something about Will but the thing is is. Elizabeth had Henry. to think about. to worry about. to raise. no father to shelter her no mother to guide her no siblings to lean on. she had. to build and build and build, no matter if you put her in a colony or some random fishing village where neither england nor the pirates could come looking or if you stuck her in the center of shipwreck with that title crowned on her brilliant head the fact is she has. to. build. she has to build a (bassi)net for her son, to keep him safe. to love him and to teach him and to let him be wild in a way that didn't teach him lessons of concealment as she learned, or abandonment as will learned, or fearful unbelonging as jack learned- she built him. a home and a life and love!!!! love!!!!!!! so much stupid love did you watch this movie did you hear him talk? i know im biased but come on there's no way to miss it he is so loved and looked after and he's educated and he's strong and tall and by all accounts strapping and handsome and has oh so clearly never ever wanted for anything but the father he cannot have so of course he becomes obsessed with this and the point is is Elizabeth! had! Henry! and I think. every single post about why DMTNT killed her character with a cameo, simply do not consider this enough or even at all when they say those things. She did not do nothing! No matter which version of canon you decide to fill in you cannot say she did nothing becuase there! is the boy! who proves you wrong!!!! right there in living color and with all the audacity of a child who knows he is cherished!! what do you mean she wouldn't do nothing?! of course she didn't! and of course she didn't go galavanting off into that blasted horizon because she. had. henry. and if she did to him what had been done to her with her mother's death, done to will when his father abandoned him, done to jack by a family who handed him off like something unwanted, who would she be then but a betrayal of her very own loyal and savagely loving self hmm?????? when has elizabeth swann ever not done the Most for the people she loved???? of course she stayed and loved him. he is not immortal and neither is she.

[lighthouseborna]

i just think to insist on going "actually carina is a constellation lol" is to insist on saying their world is our world when that just blatantly, with evidence, isn't true

[lighthouseborna]

so here’s the thing the things is. even if (and i don’t think this is what happened but even if-) elizabeth really for real did not take to the ocean again and remained on shore at the lighthouse, she wasn’t “sitting around doing nothing” she was literally being sole income earner and home maker and raising her child as a single mother in the goddamn 1740s with zero living family to offer her any additional support and the action heroine bias shows so bad in the way that is completely overlooked and that’s that on that actually

[lighthouseborna]

today’s hot take is: carina and elizabeth are really only alike in their  “woman-born-in-the-wrong-time-period™" aspect, which is not at all even a little bit something unique to elizabeth (literally an entire sub-genre of story, even), and outside of that carina’s the most like jack, and all of the “can’t just rehash elizabeth” “she needs to be less like elizabeth” (“cheap will and elizabeth” lol what) takes are not only stupid, they’re reductive and a little bit sexist

elizabeth starts the franchise as our romantic as fuck idealist and has to temper that with some realism to grow into herself vs. carina, a day 1 ground floor realist and skeptic who has to grow in the direction of faith and belief in things

elizabeth, who holds her wiles close and plays them careful and clever, is a thousand times more subtle of a person than carina, who wields her knowledge like a goddamn ACME hammer in a cartoon bit (affectionate)

elizabeth who is wanted and coveted and chased and used as a bargaining tool and-- growing into her agency and independence and carina who is independent out of necessity and belittled, begrudged, denounced, running so hard for someone to pretty please just want her and want to keep her like,,,,,,,,,,

i can absolutely say more but this is already way more of a post than i was planning lmao

[lighthouseborna]

also ..........nothing about that script or movie “makes carina look smart” by having other characters be inappropriately stupid, it’s literally all a consistent character trait of her assuming no one else will understand the minutia of what she’s talking about because it’s a niche field of study; or that, if they do, they will undercut it because she is a woman— and then the movie goes on and she is frequently (constantly) being belittled, ignored, and ignored-then-objectified despite that she is, at every juncture except the one about the ghosts, correct in her information (if somewhat hostile about it (but can you really blame her?)) thereby proving her right to make those assumptions in a vast majority of cases 

[lighthouseborna]

i don’t know who needs to hear this (cough, confessor #244, cough) but both this

and this

appear to be the dead reckoning method of navigation, which is fully distinct from celestial navigation 

this is the only time we see either of them doing any form of navigation that isn’t solely based on the compass™, and if that is both of their preference (which is implied, given both these scenes take place at night and neither of them make use of the stars overhead or a sextant) then they may not be that familiar with celestial navigation 

and also not every sailor on a ship knew how to navigate. or even read. respectfully, in a strictly literary and academic sense, most pirates were dumb (but so were a lot of people; education was for the upper classes) literacy skills were the exception, not the rule

and even if you were to point out “but Barbossa mentions he knows which stars to follow home”, whichever of murtogg or mullroy or whatever their names are says “sir there’s no island on any map to support what (Carina) says” thereby exemplifying that he does know what celestial navigation is, and where it’s pointing, and that it’s not pointing at anything, ergo, to his preception, the thing they think isn’t real, isn’t real

also potc is 18th century media