YES i've been thinking about this for DAYS
lots of them have awkward teeth or "unusual" face shapes, and basically no one is hollywood fit, there are multiple fat characters who are never made the butt of the joke for it, the older characters have lines and worn skin... like...
it reminds me of this excerpt from the tragedy of heterosexuality, tbh. how queer spaces, unlike straight ones, get to glory in the body as desirable because of its "flaws" and "gross" details. straight cis norms would have the body be reduced and purified before it can be gendered and made desirable, and we see it all the time in mainstream media: shaved, toned, slimmed, tanned, made up, with all the sweat and filth and disability and fatness and gender abnormality stripped away. women waking up already wearing mascara, men dehydrated so their abs pop on camera.
and this show has none of that. your point about black pete is exactly it! and about the styling, too! in this interview, Maher, Foad, and Schutte mention that the actors were involved in creating and designing their own characters, and it shows! they were there to convey character and personality, not to be convenionally hot or just fade into the background.
And yeah, obviously Blackbeard decked out in all his black leather is both hot as hell and slightly satirising a silly trend ("I have one knife and one gun, just like everyone else!"), but it still has its idiosyncracies, especially as the show progresses. even some of his tattoos are faded or a bit wonky! and I don't think Vikings would've had the guts to put any of its brooding badass heroes in little beard bows and purple crop tops and pretty half-up hairdos.
and it applies to things like accents, too! I've mentioned before about how one of the things I fucking adore about the show is that everyone's just using their natural accents! there are kiwis and aussies and americans and regional british accents and - just, regional accents!! the only accent used as a joke is the Swede, for heaven's sake! everyone else's is just a real detail of a unique person with their own background and perspective.
obviously, among the Brits especially, this also ties into class, and how a pirate show gets to lean heavily into focusing on working class characters, but it goes further than that. no one's doing a silly "yarr, pirate" accent. no one's putting on working class airs or smoothing out regional differences. again, there are real new zealand and australian accents in the mix. !!!
and they're all hot as hell! and they find each other hot! they're normal people with normal quirks, and they're still desirable and funny and (sometimes) competent. they're just human. they're just guys. <3
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