Dreamed We Drove Past An Store Called Something Like Ineffable Auto Parts And A Farm Called Boyfriends

Dreamed we drove past an store called something like Ineffable Auto Parts and a farm called Boyfriends Gentlebeard and one more I can't remember

btw I AM SO obsessed with this picture that hozier posted

Do you write music with the view of being politically active and delivering a message or does it just happen and the rest follows? 

calico jack sympathy is a very rich vein for emotional ed whump btw. not saying anyone needs to sympathize with jack at all bc he DOES suck and personally idc enough abt jack to sympathize with him for his own sake, but there is actually textual support for a sympathetic cj read. canonically he has the same traumatic pirate background as ed and the two of them went through a rlly rough time together. we have direct support from the show that jack’s rejection of anything “soft” or “weak” comes from hornigold—the very first mention of hornigold in the entire show is when jack sees the breakfast table set for ed and stede and starts teasing ed for it with “just the two of you? hornigold would shit himself.” plus ed tells stede “jack’s always been emotional” and “he can come on a bit strong but he’s insecure” which strongly implies that ed has seen a side of jack that we don’t get to see in the one episode where he shows up. it’s a side that very well might be completely gone now that jack’s a grown adult man but to me it runs counter to the text to claim that ed’s assessment of jack is completely wrong and this vulnerable side of jack never existed in the first place.

so anyway one possible angle here for sympathizing with jack as a vessel for whumping poor ed’s heart is the tragedy of two kids going through something awful together and not being able to count on each other during the whole experience. being trapped in a physically and emotionally abusive environment together and empathizing when the captain singles one of them out bc they know firsthand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hornigold’s ire, but at the same time they’re not able to ask each other for support bc what if they use that vulnerability, that plea for comfort, as a weapon against you? what if you try to offer them support and comfort and they push you away? what if, when you DO rely on each other for support, your captain sees that bond and uses it to torture you both even further?

and what do you do if you both comfort each other, you both take care of each other, and then one of you fucking dies? because that’s how it goes—most of the pirates ed knows are dead, a pirate’s life is short but nice, the only retirement they get is death, you’re not likely to avoid near-death experiences in their line of work, heading towards a raid with the one hope being that a certain death ain’t slow. and it’s not just raids, either: your captain might have you keelhauled for a minor offense, might starve you for a week if you laugh at him during a speech, might feed you a live crab for nicking some rations, or maybe a disagreement with another crew member could turn into bloodshed. maybe someone will push you overboard for shits and giggles. what do you if you’ve found comfort with a crewmate, and then that crewmate dies? how do you cope? you’re probably better off not letting yourself care for anyone, rejecting people’s pleas for support or intimacy or friendship, because it’ll hurt less when they inevitably end up dying horrifically just like everyone else you’ve ever cared about.

and then the other big ed whump angle here is watching someone you know experience horrific trauma with not only fail to process the trauma in a healthy way but also become a worse person as a result of it. like ed knowing firsthand just how awful everything jack experienced was and remembering exactly what it looked like every time hornigold beat the spirit out of jack when he was ultimately just a vulnerable kid. ed hearing jack say some toxic macho bullshit and knowing exactly where jack learned that and how much it hurt for 20-something-year-old jack to absorb that lesson—and more than that, ed remembering when he used to believe that exact sort of toxic shit. and ed feeling like he can’t hold it against jack if he doesn’t grow bc he sees so many similarities between him and jack, and the only reason he was able to heal and become a better person is bc he met stede—and it’s not like stede was the only person in the whole world ed could’ve connected with, he had an entire ship full of kindhearted doofuses ready to offer him emotional support and he betrayed all of them because the recent back-to-back backstabbing compounded on a lifetime of trauma and made it impossible for ed to trust them. how can ed blame jack for rejecting opportunities to heal when ed did the same thing? when he can remember watching firsthand as years of abuse caused jack to gradually close himself off, the worst part of it being that it was like watching his own reflection as he also hardened under the pressure of just trying to survive another fucking day? how can ed judge jack, when jack is who he might’ve been if he’d never met stede?

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