There's good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.

See, part of the conceit of the PotC trilogy is that all myths are true. Nearly every supernatural element in the franchise has a root in some real world mythology or pirate lore, although some of them are mashed together.

Another thing is that they take place at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, and the more the map gets filled in, and the more the Royal Navy takes power, there less room there is for the mystical and supernatural in the world. This is explicitly called out in At World's End with the death of the kraken:

Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place. Jack: The world's still the same. There's just... less in it.

The only way to access the world of the supernatural is through the supernatural itself. You can only get to the Isla de Muerta with Jack's compass that points to whatever you desire, or if you already know where its is. You need Tia Dalma's map to find the edge of the world. To access the supernatural, you need to already be immersed in it.

I feel like the answer is no.

Did Norrington just, like... find it in there? Like, he's in the cabin later that night looking for his good pen to write everything down before he convinces himself it was all an elaborate hallucination or for his stash of the strongest liquor money can buy, and there's just a severed pirate arm in the drawer.

*opens drawer, sees severed arm*

"Yeah that checks out."

see this is a perfect example of what not to do with a hate ask.

poorly matched to hate target: the suicide bait is a classic of anon hate, but it's a rookie mistake to deploy it against just anybody. any careful look at my blog would see that i am incredibly egotistic--using a hate tactic better suited to a blogger with low self esteem is just sloppy.

too generic to sting: this ask mentions no specific details about any problematic behaviour, annoying personality traits, or my personal life. since it feels like it could have been sent by anyone to anyone, it's difficult to take it personally.

cultural mismatch: 'cunt' probably comes across a lot harsher in your cultural context. however, i live in the UK, so i get called and call other people a cunt every day. as such, you're left with a lackluster ending for a very weak ask overall.

How do you think the anonymous asker feels about OP?

How does OP react to this message? Why might she have reacted this way?

Why exactly is this message "poorly matched to [its] hate target?"

Why exactly is this message "too generic to sting?"

What is the "cultural mismatch" OP describes in this message?

What is Tumblr University? Why does insomniac-arrest reference it?

Discuss with a mutual: how do you make strong anon hate?

Additional question:

What do you think might have been my initial reaction to seeing the notification shown below?

The kiss of death only works when she’s on a boat (she never kissed Will on a boat until their wedding)

When the effect does kick in, the killing is preformed by the crew of the Dutchman.

When Jack died, he was killed by the Kraken, summoned by Davy Jones.

When Sao Feng died, was by the damage from the canons of the Dutchman

When Norrington died, it was by Bootstrap Bill, a member of it’s crew.

And when Will died, it was directly by the hands of Davy Jones.

One more thing that has struck me as odd is when she interracts with Davy Jones, he acts as if he’s seen her somewhere before. When the Empress crew point her out as the captain he has a sort of “wtf, you, you are their captain?” reaction, now you could just shake that of as Davy Jones being a misogynistic but i don’t doubt he’s seen female pirate captains before, given how long he’s lived. And when they come face to face on the Dutchman, it feels like a meeting between sworn long time enemies (at least to me).

"Elizabeth had become so disillusioned with the whole idea of pirates. And now here Will is finally stepping up and becoming the romantic pirate hero that she dreamed of meeting when she was 12 years old. It’s the guy who breaks the laws for what he believes is right, not for his own gain but for other people… That’s the romantic image and that’s what Will becomes. He’s the first and only pirate in the movie who is actually a pirate-movie pirate."

Some people call this fandom dead. I choose to call it ✨️ vintage ✨️

potc + text posts part 18

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

I keep imagining him, but his face is a worm on a string instead lmao

Thanks anon, cursed idea

yknow when you wake up in the middle of the night & anxiously check on the person next to you to make sure they didn't randomly die in their sleep