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In CotBP, where the criticism that James is boring is most likely to come up, we can see in his introductory scene that James is head over heels for this woman by Regency standards. I mean, the unflappable, highest ranking Naval officer in Port Royal is reduced to a stammering, awkward mess around Elizabeth. If this were an Austen novel, y’all would be fucking swooning.

And what of the deleted scenes? (Don’t even get me started on this, I will rant for hours about how salty I am that they cut them.) We see James agonizing over the fact that he believes Elizabeth has only accepted his proposal as a means to an end. His stony veneer cracks, and we get to see him vulnerable!

‘Is it so wrong that I should want it given unconditionally?’ is such a fucking incredible line, and in a period drama, would be seen as a declaration!

But James isn’t in a period drama. He’s in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride. The film is an unapologetic mishmash of genres, and he has committed a cardinal sin by falling in love with Elizabeth, a modern character. She practically rolls her eyes at his heartfelt confessions! She wants nothing to do with his subtle emotional advances!

While, in a Austen novel, James Norrington would have been the clear hero and most obvious choice for Elizabeth to make, she is completely uninterested because he’s made the mistake of being period appropriate and not a product of the early 2000s like the rest of the main cast.

And the worst part is…once James changes so that he fits into their world…he is killed.

But that’s a discussion for another time.

I don’t believe Elizabeth did anything wrong either. Or, that is to say, that she didn’t do anything that wasn’t completely within character. She IS ruthless. She’s mercenary and calculating and cunning and she’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants. And to have a female character like that in a modern major motion picture franchise is a SPECTACULAR thing.

I LOVE Elizabeth Swann. I ADMIRE her. If I told her to her face that I’d die for her she’d respond ‘you will’ and that is so fucking amazing and cool and sexy. All hail the Pirate King.

But this post isn’t about Elizabeth or her character. This post is about James. And we know for a fact his character is out of place in this film because he was originally written to be a secondary antagonist, a much more villainous and unscrupulous character. More like Beckett than the James we know.

But after Jack Davenport was hired into the project, James’ writing was changed. He brought this whole other layer to the character that had to be explored: the Jane Austen Hero, if you will. But Elizabeth Swann is steadfastly NOT a Jane Austen Heroine. She was written in the early aughts for a modern audience in a movie based on a theme park ride.

There is a tendency among fans (and I would argue among people in general) to see things in terms of black and white. As such, I’ve seen a fair number of people reading a post like this about James getting the short end of the stick and to assume that must mean the op is anti-Elizabeth. Or anti-Will. Or anti-whatever. But the tragedy of James’ story isn’t that Elizabeth has wronged him, it’s that she hasn’t. And he accepts it, takes his broken heart, and promptly ruins his entire life about it.

But that’s the topic for another post.

May death find you quickly if you bring them to harm.

…Sometimes how quickly I read leaves me sad, when it’s a book this lovely, where both the story & the sentences themselves sing.

It’s like a really good run on a new route~ despite all the trees & paths & sky & air burning down your throat, and taking note of all these things and thinking “oh, that’s nice, oh I’ll remember that, ooh I should write that down”, all your thoughts still arrow towards the finish, and being done, and you can’t forget about being done. And then when you finally are, no one else really wants to hear about your run, even though it might have felt like the most real part of that day. And of course you can go out & run it again, sometimes even right away, and spot new things, but usually you’re tired & empty for a while & the excitement of the first route is right out of reach. 

That’s something like what good books are for me the first time through, at any rate.

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)