#but I'm not going to let jock phobia scare me away from a complex and interesting story

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Ok I’m gonna jump on my Calico Jack apologia for a bit here. To be clear I don’t think that Calico jack being mean to Stede like that was ok, it had underlying tones of toxic masculinity and misogyny and a little bit of homophobia and it was uncool, and I think he had the cannonball to the chest coming for what he did to poor Karl. also I think the nickname was a bad writing call. I will not defend this character from those things. What I do want to apologize for is everything else

Ok now with that out of the way because no one on tumblr understand nuance. Here goes. STEDE DID TO MARY AND DOUG EXACTLY WHAT JACK DID TO ED AND STEDE EXCEPT STEDE DIDN’T HAVE AN EXCUSE AND JACK DID!!! Allow me to explain. First off I’ll just acknowledge the way in which Jack was worse. The only way that he was worse in fact. Jack never apologized. Stede did, point for Stede there.

Now brief aside to talk about Izzy Hands (i.e. Calico Jack’s excuse) Izzy is clearly talking about how shitty Stede is to anyone who will listen. How Ed has been seduced by him and how he’s done something to Ed’s brain and all that bullshit. We also know that Jack was sent by Izzy to extract him before the British show up. That was Jack’s mission. Now I want you to imagine that you’ve got an old friend, you and this old friend haven’t talked in a couple years, but you went through a lot together when you were younger. You’re friend’s current best friend approaches you and tells you that they’re currently fighting with your old friend because this friend has a new boyfriend and his new boyfriend is shitty blah blah blah you probably stop listening. But then this friend of a friend who you’re talking to mentions that the new boyfriend has a warrant out for his arrest, and you happen to know that the old friend in question has done something that that they could get put away for life for, and if the cops show up, your friend is defiantly going away for a really long time. The best friend then tells you that he’s made a deal with the cops to get his own record scrubbed in exchange for information about where to find the new boyfriend. What might you do to save your friend from getting locked up for the rest of his life?

Now that you’ve seen things from Jack’s point of view. Jack is no longer trying to maliciously break Ed and Stede up, is he? No he’s trying to save Ed’s life. Could he technically have warned everyone? Yeah. But he doesn’t know Stede, all he knows about Stede is what Izzy Hands told him. And I’m guessing someone like Jack isn’t going to be too terribly charitable to a pirate hobbyist, as is his right, frankly. Stede doesn’t have to do this and he’s putting everyone else at risk by doing it. So if Jack deems Stede to be a liability, which he almost certainly has, he’s going to try to get Ed out of there without Stede figuring out what’s going on, so that Stede goes down and Ed walks, -1 liability that’s gonna get his ass shot. Jack doesn’t know that Ed’s in love. Jack just knows he’s in danger. That is the context in which Jack tells Stede that he doesn’t know Ed at all and pisses on his boots. That is the context in which Jack calls Stede a “Store Bought type” as opposed to a real pirate. That is the context that Jack has.

Another thing I want to touch on is that Jack almost defiantly thought Ed knew what he was doing. I want to remind you of that scene where Ed finds out what’s going on. Jack says “When I heard you shacked up with him I said-” and Ed cuts him off and asks “Where’d you hear that?” and Jack’s eye twitches a little and he furrows his brow and cocks his head in confusion. Then he start’s laughing and says “Took you long enough, the old Blackbeard would have seen me coming a mile away.” Like, he thought Blackbeard knew what he was doing the entire time. He was under the impression that Ed knew and agreed to come with him in full knowledge of that.

Also The entire time he was there up until the point of Ed breaking up with Stede, Ed was having a perfectly good time. He was laughing, and smiling and jumping around and when Ed did give off vibes that he was uncomfortable, Jack laid off. He of course didn’t lay off Stede, but as soon as Ed adjusts himself uncomfortably in the chair and Says “Stede doesn’t want to hear about that.” Jack stops talking, let’s Ed and Stede have their moment, and suggests they do a new activity. He’s not there to bully Ed or make Ed feel like shit. He’s there to cause problems on purpose and get out while the getting's good.

Now I get that Jack was still super manipulative and he still says really shitty things like the whole ‘pirates don’t have friends’ line, which almost definitely  fucked with Ed assuming he wasn’t too under water to hear it. But I think that Jack being kinda Shitty can in fact be forgiven, at least as it relates to Ed and Stede, not as it relates to Karl there is no excuse for what happened to Karl, given that Stede is so much worse to Mary and Doug.

Now that we’ve compared Stede’s POV of the Calico Jack incident to Jack’s Pov of the Calico Jack incident, lets consider Doug’s POV of the Stede Bonnet incident.

I am going to make an assumption about Doug. I will assume he’s a wife guy who loves Mary very much.

So you fall in love with someone, right, you have a lot of common interests, common interests that you have been engaging with for a long time but which they have never really been encouraged for and have even been insulted for at times. They ask you to show them more because you’re the expert, and you do and as you do you very slowly fall in love with this person and they fall in love with you and you get closer and closer over time and everything is going great. Then their ex from a time when they were unhappy and had to hide a part of themself shows up and expects them to be the same person they were when they were unhappy and causes problems when they aren’t that person anymore. Does this sound familiar? It should because that is both the Doug, Mary, Stede dynamic, and the Stede, Ed, Jack dynamic.

Except it’s actually not the same, because the whole time Jack was there, up until the breakup, he was getting positive feedback. Stede was the only one who didn’t want him there. Stede didn’t get any positive feedback. Mary’s friend openly wants to kill him from the moment that he steps in the house. Mary vomits when he shows back up. And when Stede get’s drunk he’s not fun he’s violent. Calico Jack ruined a perfectly good pair of boots, Stede almost ruined Doug’s neck. What Stede did might have been acceptable in Spanish Jackie’s bar I guess but at an art showing in Barbados where Stede (and maybe Evelyn Higs) is the only criminal? That's insane. It’s the moment when Mary decides if she doesn’t get rid of him he’s going to hurt people.

So you know I give Stede credit for apologizing, but he really fucked up, and I think that despite Jack and Stede displaying similar behavior in these two scenes, Jack is fundamentally more sympathetic here than Stede because of their motivations. Jack wants to extract Ed from a life threatening situation. Stede wants to.... ???

Thats the rub isn’t it. Stede’s not doing this because he has some reason for it. There’s no end goal that is ultimately understandable. He just feels weirdly possessive over Mary despite having abandoned her. He doesn’t even want to be in a relationship with her. He just feels like she should be behaving like his wife despite him never once behaving like her husband. If we’re gonna give Jack shit for being casually misogynistic and homophobic and fatphobic for the “Who’s the big gal” comment we have to give Stede shit for being violently misogynistic with his behavior towards Mary and Doug by proximity. Did he make amends, did she forgive him? Yes. Did he redeem himself? Yeah. But there was so much to redeem dude.

Anyway Calico Jack is actually an interesting and complex character who is also a dick some of you were just bullied in high school and are letting your innate fear of jocks and frat boys get in the way of you accepting that. And you’re more willing to let an autistic gay nerd get away with actually terrible shit because he’s on your side of the high school predator pray dynamic that you were supposed to have turned in with your cap and gown.