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la inhumana hostilidad de mascaras y seres
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despatches on Jack Sparrow being broken down in pairing fanfic, located here. It surprised me, because in truth that's my biggest disappointment with the Pirates franchise - they didn't break Jack Sparrow down.
We keep wanting to have these characters in our shiny things who are bad and brash and silver-tongued. Han Solo, Jack Sparrow, Dean Winchester. There's a definite mystique there. But my instinctual response to that sort of character is to assume that they're wearing a mask, and to want to tear it off of them.
This is one of the things that Supernatural gets just right. They never let Dean get away with it. He has his mask of tough guy with an Impala, no chick flick moments, Daddy's leather jacket, but the show is careful to show that it's a lie. Dean wears his armor of lies to conceal his insecurity, his capacity for love, and his own grief at the loss of any chance at a normal life. Sam sees through his lies most of the time, and when Dean manages to pull the wool over Sammy's eyes the show always paints it as a problem. The whole point of like, at least Season One, is breaking down Dean's machismo mask and exposing him. It's what you might call character development.
I want the same thing to happen to Jack Sparrow. Because if Dean is masked, hoo boy, Jack is nothing but a facade. It's a shiny one, but no one is actually like that. At some point, Jack Sparrow was an ordinary little boy named John, probably with an equally mundane surname, who liked sweets, hated having to do as his mother told him, and spun unrealistic dreams of wild adventures on the high sea. He was no born being all ... Sparrowtastic. That mystique is a built thing, carefully accumulated. I really enjoyed the scene of all the Jack multiples beyond the end of the world, because we got to see Jack as an able seaman, a sailor before the mast as it were. Just a man. Just a boy.
I can see hints of that man in him, and I want to break him open and find out who he really is, find out what it is that Jack Sparrow is working so very, very hard to hide.
My Boy has a character in his novel, a Good Rogue, who ends up literally caught in the encasement of a mask. But I still end up whomping the Boy for leaving Jacobson overly masked in his protective casing of snark and dry wit. It's when you take their masks away that they get really shiny.
I want to see Jack Sparrow as a man, not a myth. Someone insecure. Someone who loves, and is sometimes hurt by love. Someone who can be hurt by other people, who is not yet a demigod. I think that you can only truly love the sea if you bow down before it, declare your own impermanence and imperfection before its eternal immanence. And Jack Sparrow, for all his masks and failings, certainly does love the sea. I feel like breaking him is the only way to advance his character, to discover what makes him tick.
Oddly enough, I think my desire to smash masks is totally unrelated to my usual state of happy h/c consumption. Masked characters are not my Designated Suffering Objects. Again, going back to Supernatural, it's Sammy I want tied to a chair - a desire which the most recent season seemed happy to gratify! Dean is masked, but it's Sam I want to narratively beat up on. I have no hunger for traditional h/c type Jack Sparrow stories. I don't think I would get off on his brokenness, it just feels like the next logical thing for the character.
I have no idea if any of this made any sense, but if any of y'all have or know of fics wherein Jack is broken down to life size, I would love to read them.
*
despatches on Jack Sparrow being broken down in pairing fanfic, located here. It surprised me, because in truth that's my biggest disappointment with the Pirates franchise - they didn't break Jack Sparrow down.We keep wanting to have these characters in our shiny things who are bad and brash and silver-tongued. Han Solo, Jack Sparrow, Dean Winchester. There's a definite mystique there. But my instinctual response to that sort of character is to assume that they're wearing a mask, and to want to tear it off of them.
This is one of the things that Supernatural gets just right. They never let Dean get away with it. He has his mask of tough guy with an Impala, no chick flick moments, Daddy's leather jacket, but the show is careful to show that it's a lie. Dean wears his armor of lies to conceal his insecurity, his capacity for love, and his own grief at the loss of any chance at a normal life. Sam sees through his lies most of the time, and when Dean manages to pull the wool over Sammy's eyes the show always paints it as a problem. The whole point of like, at least Season One, is breaking down Dean's machismo mask and exposing him. It's what you might call character development.
I want the same thing to happen to Jack Sparrow. Because if Dean is masked, hoo boy, Jack is nothing but a facade. It's a shiny one, but no one is actually like that. At some point, Jack Sparrow was an ordinary little boy named John, probably with an equally mundane surname, who liked sweets, hated having to do as his mother told him, and spun unrealistic dreams of wild adventures on the high sea. He was no born being all ... Sparrowtastic. That mystique is a built thing, carefully accumulated. I really enjoyed the scene of all the Jack multiples beyond the end of the world, because we got to see Jack as an able seaman, a sailor before the mast as it were. Just a man. Just a boy.
I can see hints of that man in him, and I want to break him open and find out who he really is, find out what it is that Jack Sparrow is working so very, very hard to hide.
My Boy has a character in his novel, a Good Rogue, who ends up literally caught in the encasement of a mask. But I still end up whomping the Boy for leaving Jacobson overly masked in his protective casing of snark and dry wit. It's when you take their masks away that they get really shiny.
I want to see Jack Sparrow as a man, not a myth. Someone insecure. Someone who loves, and is sometimes hurt by love. Someone who can be hurt by other people, who is not yet a demigod. I think that you can only truly love the sea if you bow down before it, declare your own impermanence and imperfection before its eternal immanence. And Jack Sparrow, for all his masks and failings, certainly does love the sea. I feel like breaking him is the only way to advance his character, to discover what makes him tick.
Oddly enough, I think my desire to smash masks is totally unrelated to my usual state of happy h/c consumption. Masked characters are not my Designated Suffering Objects. Again, going back to Supernatural, it's Sammy I want tied to a chair - a desire which the most recent season seemed happy to gratify! Dean is masked, but it's Sam I want to narratively beat up on. I have no hunger for traditional h/c type Jack Sparrow stories. I don't think I would get off on his brokenness, it just feels like the next logical thing for the character.
I have no idea if any of this made any sense, but if any of y'all have or know of fics wherein Jack is broken down to life size, I would love to read them.
*
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Thanks for the rec, darling, I will investigate. Yes yes yes on "endearingly shy," that's just right.
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