Pirate!Recs, and ooooh! Meta on Elizabeth and Norrington

[dwgm]

Recs:

woolymonkey has written a hilarious pair of post-Locker fics, First Nut Out of the Locker (from Jack's pov) and Second Nut Out of the Locker: Like Nuts for Bananas (from Barbossa's pov). They are slashy, yes, but sooooo much more than that.

bravenewcentury wrote, per my request on her "Give me a topic..." meme, of Pirates and Pietists, about religion in the era of PotC -- very interesting post, as are artaxastra's comments.

And then, fabu posted some meta on female characters yesterday, calling into question fans who label female fanfic characters "sluts" or "whores" for sexual behaviors, anything from mere flirting onward, that would be given a pass, or even be applauded, in a male character. Post and comments (which are well past 250 now) are really interesting.

Her post isn't specific to PotC, but there is a great deal of discussion of Elizabeth's flirtatious behavior with Jack in Dead Man's Chest, and whether Elizabeth then has the high moral ground and any right to call Norrington on working for Beckett as she does in AWE.

Elizabeth's flirting with Jack in DMC is, yes, Elizabeth using her feminine wiles to get Jack to answer her challenge to be the good man she trusts he is. He starts it, in both the "Persuade me" scene and in the "Curiosity" scene, and she gives him tit for tat, playful - in a way she never is with either Will or Norrington -- with a serious undertone. In their final encounter, she initiates the seduction as time is of the essence and her reasons involve life and death: he must act the good man or they are all doomed.

There are some vocal critics of Elizabeth's behavior in DMC, seeing her flirtation as immoral since she's engaged to Will, and her actions in kissing Jack and chaining him to the mast as betrayal and murder.

Now, as I understand it, flirtation was practically an artform in the society in which Elizabeth Swann moved. It's likely she was coached in the rules pertaining to same as she prepared to make her debut as a young woman of marriageable age. A woman had very few weapons at her disposal in those times, but that was one of them. It's true that she's engaged to Will, but on the other hand it's no random male she was flirting with, it was Jack, a man who saved her life at least twice, a man with whom she was marooned on an island alone, a man she feels she can trust, when it comes down to brass tacks. He's also a man who knows the rules as well as she does. I find their verbal sparring completely in character, and not inconsistent with behaviors condoned at that time.

As for her chaining him up as Kraken bait, I can't see that she had much alternative if she wanted to give the rest of them a reasonable chance at escaping death. She was right: the thing was after Jack, and his plan to use the heart to control Jones and the Kraken had failed, thanks to Norrington. Due to Jack lying to her about having nothing to do with Will's sojourn on the Flying Dutchman, and Jack's efforts to abscond while his crew and friends fought the monster for him, Elizabeth decided she couldn't trust him to do the right thing in this instance and took action. That this action caused her great personal grief, and might even be seen as morally reprehensible in some quarters (including her own), was beside the point. She did what was necessary. What a (wo)man can do. Pirate! And that's what she's "not sorry" about.


Speaking of Norrington, there is a tendency among some fans to consider his descent into scruffiness in DMC as OOC. I love Norrington as much as anyone (and was quite upset that they chose to "off" him in AWE), but I must say (and have said before in various debates) that he was no White Knight in CotBP. From his first lines he is of the snark, seeing pirates and the law in stark black and white. He treats with utter scorn and instantly condemns the man who's just rescued his prospective betrothed from otherwise certain death, ignores Will's suggestion that Jack be questioned about the Black Pearl's whereabouts either out of jealousy or contempt of Will, would have sunk one of his own ships rather than be bested by a pirate, and ignores Jack's advice to return to the Dauntless to fight Barbossa's men, resulting in additional deaths. He does have many good qualities, and it's a great concession to give Jack that one day's head start. But to say that he's incapable of ruthless and even obsessive behavior in carrying out what he conceives to be his duty is to dismiss much of what made him interesting as a character in CotBP. Like all the others, Norrington is a mixture of good and bad. I personally didn't care for him much until a) we got the deleted scenes on the DVD, inclusion of which would have made him a much more sympathetic character (which may have been part of the reason they were cut) and b) I started reading Sparrington fanfic in February of '04, after which I could definitely see that there was more to him than had met my eye. But Sparrington in those early days, as someone noted in fabu's post, often showed Norrington in a harsher light, which was true to CotBP canon. The very best Sparrington fic took the time to justify his gradual acceptance of Jack as a good man.

One more point: much is made of that "hurricane off Tripoli", some holding to the opinion that Norrington would never try to sail through a storm of that magnitude to catch Jack Sparrow. But it occurs to me that weather prediction was far from the (more or less) exact science that it is today, and even today there are ships that get caught in terrible storms for one reason or another. What with determination, Sparrow possibly taunting him for months, and his willingness to take a risk, Norrington may have lost that game through sheer bad luck, and then (of course) blamed himself for the loss of his ship and the men on her. Thinking his life in ruins, I can see him falling apart, at least temporarily, and I can certainly see him trying to rebuild his life and his honor by siding with Beckett, who had been given authority by the crown. By the beginning of AWE he realizes he may have erred, and when Elizabeth tells him of her father's death he knows he did.

Comments

[gwynevere1.livejournal.com]

Well, Norrington doesn't know that's what Beckett's going to do. As far as we can tell, he's never met the man before, and he's certainly got no way of telling what Beckett intends.

::nods:: That's just how I interpreted his actions, too, especially given the cut scene from DMC (http://community.livejournal.com/jackdav/135922.html), where Norrington presumes that Beckett wanted the weapon of mass destruction heart in order to destroy it, not use it.

[the-dala.livejournal.com]

*lightbulb goes off* Oh, so that's where that picture comes from! I don't know how I managed to miss this for so long, but thank you for linking to it! It renders the sword-returning scene in AWE superfluous, which is a shame because I really like that moment between Swann and Norrington, but I love the idea of the cut scene and the thing with the map.

[sixpences.livejournal.com]

Ooh, cheers for that link- I knew about the cut scene and I'd seen some of those pics, but I'd never read the script before. Very interesting stuff indeed.

I agree with the_dala about the map stuff too- filling in the map is such a heavy theme for Beckett in DMC that it's kind of a shame that they didn't at least keep the line about it being finished once he's got the heart.

[gwynevere1.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking about this some more last night, and, if nothing else, we definitely know that Beckett doesn't know James, because he had to ask if James is present when he waives about the warrant for James when he first arrives in Port Royal. The only people we can tell know Beckett from before are Jack and Weatherby.

(Aw, man, now I'm imagining Beckett/Swann slash. That's just not right! See what you've done to me fandom!)

There's also no reason to think that James realizes that he's putting Elizabeth in danger from the Kraken when he takes the heart, because he probably doesn't believe the Kraken exists, anyway. He has a Scully-esque skepticism about the supernatural, in general, and sure as hell doesn't believe anything that comes out of Jack Sparrow's mouth. If anything, James knows he's drawing the undead crew of the FD away from Elizabeth by taking the heart, which does, temporarily, put her out of harm's way.

[gwynevere1.livejournal.com]

filling in the map is such a heavy theme for Beckett in DMC that it's kind of a shame that they didn't at least keep the line about it being finished once he's got the heart.

I won't be terribly surprised if it is restored in an extremely expensive Extended Edition at some point. :)