#*psyche

[trickstercaptain-archive]

        so let’s talk about Jack’s brand again. or rather, let’s talk about the complicated relationship that Jack has with his brand, because something I’ve always tried to emphasise on my blog over the years is that, despite the fact that Jack takes ownership over the label of ‘pirate’ that is essentially forced upon him by Beckett and the EITC, he has a much more difficult time reconciling with the physical mark that comes with it ( and that he is actually marked in such a way has a huge impact on his psyche going forward ). there are only a few moments across the trilogy where Jack’s brand is even referenced by him -- all of which are non-verbal, he never once talks about it -- and they are all moments where he looks pained in some way. 

         it’s either emotionally painful for him ( the ‘people aren’t cargo’ scene ), or physically painful if you consider this moment and the fact that hearing Beckett’s name nearly thirteen years after being branded can cause this much of a visceral reaction. it’s very clearly something that still haunts him.

       you can understand why certain characters would wear such a mark with pride because it’s tangible proof of resisting a power structure ( civilisation ) that is inherently corrupt and morally wrong, but there is absolutely no evidence that Jack feels this way about his brand, despite him being fully aware of how depraved the EITC is and being immensely glad that he resisted it and caused problems for Beckett -- and I think there is one main reason for this, and that’s because of the injustices involved in Jack “earning” it. most pirates would be branded because of genuine piratical activities, whereas Jack was branded on a technicality -- that stealing “cargo” ( in fact, a ship full of slaves ) constituted an act of piracy. so it’s not a punishment that was truly earned in the slightest, and that’s the most tragic part about it.

         Jack is also branded at the point in his life where he is only just coming back around to the idea of piracy being his true calling. as much as the moment when he disobeys Beckett in TPOF is Jack’s watershed moment in terms of ditching the lawful merchant sailor act he had been trying to perfect for five years, there still remains the fact that he had actively spent five years denying his own ‘piratical’ urges ( i.e. stifling his own sense of self and self-expression in order to conform to societal norms as much as he can ), and the majority of his upbringing before that caught between believing that he would never make for a decent pirate and also loathing the acts and violence of the pirates around him. this doesn’t just go away overnight. in fact, now Jack just has an indelible mark on his arm telling him that he is one himself, inflicted on him against his will and without his consent.

          of course, he does come to terms with it -- he even takes ownership of the brand at the very end of TPOF, because he gets his ‘sparrow’ tattoo only after being branded, and it is deliberately placed above the brand on his wrist. the function of it is demonstrated in the first movie when Norrington uses it to identify Jack -- he first sees the brand, which signifies a pirate, and then sees Jack’s insignia which identifies him. so it’s a way in which Jack can take back control over his own identity and effectively say to the world that if you’re going to label me a pirate, you can at least learn my name, too.

         so he sort of gets to the point where he believes he’s reconciled with it. but the psychological damage from being branded remains a very unconscious thing in my opinion throughout the rest of his life. it gives him a very difficult and at times self-destructive relationship with the idea of control, in the sense that he is in a constant tug of war between refusing to let others control him, and giving up control in a self-destructive way to others ( this is particularly the case when it comes to his romantic/sexual partners ). so essentially, Jack is about as reconciled as to his brand as he is to the good man in him ( which is ultimately the great dilemma that he wrestles with in the trilogy ). it’s a literal symbol of the inner struggle he has between acting like a pirate and doing the right thing, and it absolutely plays into all of that. it’s something he needs to learn to understand and accept about himself, and i’m forever emotional over it :)))

[mooleche]

*One day I’ll go back to writing

[trickstercaptain-archive]

Hi! You talk a lot about how Jack is attracted to intelligence. I was wondering what kind of intelligence he might be attracted to, if there is a certain kind. Is he particularly more drawn to those that are book smart versus street smart, for example? I feel like there are so many different ways one can be smart so I'm curious to know your thoughts! Thanks! :)

       ahhhh anon this is SUCH a great question and I am so excited to talk about this, since the answer really isn’t all that clear-cut precisely because, as you said, there are many different ways in which people can be smart and Jack recognises this. he knows that you don’t have to be an intellectually-minded person in order to be smart and you definitely don’t have to be that type in order to catch his attention. I mean yes, he would likely be attracted to another ‘mad genius’ type like himself ( although I’ve yet to actually write that kind of ship on this blog ), but the problem that would be raised by that sort of dynamic is whether two mad geniuses can successfully accommodate each other’s egos lmfao. Jack likes to be the smartest person in the room – what happens when there’s someone else there who is potentially smarter than him? 

      also to add to that, I can’t name a single s/o or love interest of Jack’s, either in canon or on this blog, who is strictly book smart only. I think you have to be a combination of both book and street smart in order to really draw him in. if you can apply your intelligence and use it, whether that is to survive or for things like word play and debating, then Jack will take an immediate interest in you. he likes people who challenge him, who refuse to blindly accept what they’re told ( the only exception being if your muse is in Jack’s crew or on his ship and he’s giving orders ) and who question the world around them. 

       you don’t have to be a genius yourself to attract Jack Sparrow; you just have to be a mix of strong-minded, daring, capable and interesting. and this works both for romantic and platonic dynamics: Gibbs is possibly Jack’s favourite person to talk to or spend time with and yet their conversations don’t involve constantly trying to one-up the other in terms of wit or intelligence ( such as his dynamic with Elizabeth ). but Gibbs is capable, strong-minded enough to call Jack out when need be, interesting ( if you don’t think there are hidden depths to that man then idk what to tell you ), and has the added benefit of being loyal af.

[trickstercaptain-archive]

Who would Jack save if he only could save one of them. His father, Gibbs or Elizabeth?

       oh boy anon. okay so the one we can rule out immediately is Teague lmfao. up against Gibbs or Elizabeth he stands absolutely zero chance of being Jack’s priority, because the latter two are far more important to him and are people he actually considers his family.

      but giving a definitive answer to this kind of question is always very difficult because Jack would actively resist any attempt to be put in a conundrum like this. and if he was put to this kind of decision, he would either summon all of his cunning and intelligence in order to save them both ( and absolutely destroy whoever it was trying to put him to that choice ), or point blank refuse to make a choice altogether – because ultimately someone putting Jack in this situation is doing so as a power play and Jack’s natural instinct is to push back against anyone trying to control him. also, he does not play by other people’s rules.

       so yeah, it’s really difficult to say who he would choose, because Gibbs and Elizabeth mean an awful lot to him in very different ways, and at least at the point I’m writing him on this blog, to lose either of them would break him. the much more likely outcome is that he tries to bluff or second guess whoever it is that’s imposing this choice on him, potentially even by threatening his own life in the process.

     ( if we’re talking in a strictly rational sense though, then Jack’s mind would immediately jump to the prospect of saving Elizabeth over Gibbs – if only for the fact that Gibbs is older and I also imagine Gibbs would encourage that choice. but for all that Jack claims and tries to be a very rational, logical individual, emotion has much more of a strangle-hold over him than he’d care to admit )

[trickstercaptain-archive]

      okay but I don’t really talk enough about just how tempestuous Jack can be? it’s probably because he’s very good at bottling up and forcing down his emotions and keeping his calm in situations ( and in the majority of his important dynamics he tends to be the more rational, level-headed one because he’s very good at seeing the bigger picture and acting pragmatically ). but he has super changeable moods, which is what ultimately makes him so unpredictable ( and is also an absolute gift to me as a writer, because even after three and a half years he still surprises me in threads constantly ). if Jack is in a bad mood, then it’s likely that the entire crew knows about it. everyone always compares the whole ‘changing and harsh and untameable as the sea’ to Elizabeth in the movies which is absolutely right, but that line also applies to Jack as well. even the harsh part -- he is brutally honest, often insensitive and a very difficult person in a lot of ways. he can also still be charming and easygoing and caring, but he is a man full of contradicting personality traits that exist side-by-side to one another.

       you only have to look at how he reacts when he returns to the Pearl after escaping the Pelegostos, which is the first time since his ‘capture’ that he can finally let all of his anger and frustration out ( because he obviously had to act the part of the chieftain in order to survive ). his first instinct is to take out this anger on Jack the monkey, who has clearly functioned since the end of CotBP as an outlet for him. he actually says in the original DMC script that he does it to keep his aim sharp, which I’m sure is true, but it’s also an easy way for him to let that anger out without hurting anyone ( except the monkey lmfao ).

       contrast that to the Locker scene in AWE, where the ‘real’ Jack stalks around the deck taking out his anger ( because damn is he angry in that scene ) on the other versions of himself. he’s shifted from ‘violence towards inanimate objects and/or undead monkeys’ to literally imagining a scenario where he can be violent towards himself ( although his mind is actually producing those hallucinations in order to protect him and stop him from doing himself harm ).

      I think it’s easy to rule Jack out as a very logically-minded person -- which he is in a lot of respects, but at his core he is constantly driven by emotion. in CotBP he is driven by revenge and obsessive anger, in DMC he is driven by fear and desperation, and in AWE his entire internal conflict revolves around stamping out his emotional side completely. he’s someone who very much wants not to be human, to epitomise this amoral trickster persona that’s been built around him, but is unable to shed the humanity in him no matter how hard he tries, and no matter how much that humanity consistently fucks him over.

[trickstercaptain-archive]

“Is Jack Sparrow your real name?” “As far as I know, it is. Never saw it ever recorded anywhere, of course.”

       okay so I wanted to talk about this particular quote from TPOF because of two things. firstly, because I wanted to point out that this is the canon I’m sticking to as far as the origin of Jack’s surname goes. as far as I write Jack, he has always had that name and wasn’t labelled ‘sparrow’ in one of the most contrived set of circumstances ever by an enemy of his -- plus, I’d already figured out headcanons ages ago in regard to why Jack had the ‘Sparrow’ name and from whom he got it ( his mother ), and I prefer them much more to canon so disney can fight me on that, frankly. but anyway, salt about DMTNT aside, I also wanted to draw attention to this because I think it says something really interesting about Jack’s attitude towards his own name.

       considering that Jack has always lived outside of civilisation, there is no official record of his birth or of his birth name, nor was he born into status or privilege so he carries no prestige with the name that he has. plus, his name is entirely different to Edward Teague, his father, which is also important because it only contributes to the feeling that Jack has about his name not meaning anything. by the usual laws of society in the 18th century, Jack does not have the Teague family name, meaning that he can’t really be considered an ‘heir’ if pirate society was to mirror civilised society -- and he definitely isn’t, instead being treated more like an illegitimate child. throughout his childhood and early adolescence he’s pretty much forbidden from being referred to as Teague’s son. he at least has the benefit of being a protege, groomed in Teague’s own image, but Jack doesn’t necessarily feels like he belongs in the family. he still feels like an outsider because he’s not explicitly acknowledged by Teague as anything other than a boy that has been taken on board his ship and offered a life as a sailor.

       also, it’s important to point out that, had Jack not been acknowledged even as a protege, he could have been cast out completely and thrown in an orphanage if Teague had willed it -- and Jack knows this. he knows and believes that he’s not entitled to anything remotely ancestral in regards to his family tree, and feels like he should consider himself lucky that he was taught how to sail and how to rig a ship and came out the other side of his adolescence as a man with skills in a profession to make up for his lack of status. one of the most important things about Jack? he’s a self-made man. he was not handed anything on a plate during his upbringing, and this is why I’ll fight anyone who states that Jack is lazy because he worked fucking hard during his youth thank u

       anyway I digress. at this point, Jack’s name means nothing -- and, by extension, he means nothing. people on Shipwreck, particularly the Brethren, don’t even always refer to him as Jack Sparrow, but as Teague’s protege or Teague’s whelp. a lot of the time, he’s defined in relation to his connection to Teague, but not as a blood relation. so, what does Jack set about doing once he’s free of the controlling atmosphere and environment he grew up in on Shipwreck? he sets about trying to make his name mean something:

He sharpened one with his penknife. Then he returned to the logbook, and with light, sure strokes, he drew the pencil lead sideways over the page. The faint indentations left by Sparrow’s quill showed white against the gray of the pencil’s lead.

Captain Jack Sparrow…Captain Jack Sparrow…Captain Jack Sparrow… Cutler Beckett counted. It had been written no less than twenty-three times, in various sizes and styles. Some of them were block letters, others in Sparrow’s own rather nice penmanship. At least one of the names and its accompanying titles was not only in block letters, it was in all capitals.

        I really love this part of TPOF because it tells you so many things about Jack, chief among them that he’s like an eight year old who’s just been given a new pen and stationery and sets about practicing their signature all over the paper lmfao. it tells you just how much Jack wanted to be a captain ( and that Jack has rather nice handwriting in Beckett’s opinion ), but also how much importance he places on his name and people knowing it. much the same thing happens in the movies, but it all starts here with Jack resting a lot of his self-esteem in being known and in having a name that people recognise. and, better yet, to be known as Jack Sparrow or, even better, Captain Jack Sparrow, is to no longer be known as someone belonging to or with a connection to Captain Teague. 

       this is why I feel like being in the EITC did do Jack some good, for all that it cost him a lot in the end. being in the EITC where he wasn’t judged for his familial/blood connection did give Jack the freedom to establish himself as his own person, free from the prejudices he faced in Shipwreck Cove. I’m sure he was prejudiced against at times in the EITC for being lower class, but I definitely don’t think it was nearly as severe considering that he climbed the ladder and became a captain in the space of a mere five years. professionally speaking, he thrived in that environment.

       basically there is so much I can say about Jack claiming his name for his own and using it as a declaration of the self, and how it links to the whole idea that he is surrounded by controlling influences in his younger life ( Teague, Christophe and Beckett being the main three ) and manages to break free of all of them and establish himself as an individual in his own right. he carries the scars of these attempts to control him, both literal with his ‘P’ brand and other scars, but also emotional if you consider how similarly Jack acts in certain respects to Christophe ( there’s a reason why movie!Jack and Christophe initially appear as similar characters B)) ) and just. it’s SO important to who Jack is tbh