🏴‍☠️ IC contact; Duplicity

[calicoat]

INBOX text / audio / video / action "Captain Jack Rackham. Leave a message, or speak to me face to face like an adult." code credit

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text | @J.IRVING

[extramuralise]

What do you think of these Designs for our Flag. Don't worry, I've kept your concerns in mind this time.

[ 📎29128JHGFA083_bannersketchcomp.jpg; assume these are all ink/watercolor sketches etc. ]

[calicoat]

[ Well. It’s better than the crosses he came at him with last time. Would have had them looking like damned crusaders. ]

I don’t understand it. The skull and the dove are powerful symbols on their own, but together, they don’t make sense.

[extramuralise]

And if it were to be just one or the other. Am I correct in assuming you've unilaterally already chosen the Skull?

[calicoat]

For Heaven's sake, John. Obviously. 

If you want the dove, sell me the story.

The flag that I sailed under for a decade, which you are so opposed to, tells a story. The skull as a warning, the knife as liberation, and the heart as brotherhood among the crew.

The art that represents us must mean something. So tell me, because I don't see it.

[extramuralise]

There is no "story;" a dove symbolizes a great many Important Things. Freedom; Navigation; Hope; the Soul.

[ Also peace, purity, love, grace, gentleness, and a few other things Irving is conveniently choosing to omit because otherwise Jack will almost certainly shut him down for it not being scary enough... ]

It's the perfect symbol for our voyage - what better Omen could we possibly ask for. And what better message could we hope to convey toward any other Islands we'd be looking to seek Asylum with?

You wanted a Skull, so I added one for you. I chose those [ awful! ] colours for YOU, Jack. It's called a compromise!

[calicoat]

What are you even doing, if there’s no story? Do you really see me and my position as so lowly and craven that you would hand me gibberish, rather than meet me there?

Has it occurred to you that we could run into something hostile instead, that would see us as an easy mark? There’s that damned ghost ship around somewhere, in case you’ve forgotten.

You want a compromise, sell it. You’re the quartermaster, that’s your job.

[extramuralise]

It is not GIBBERISH!

Of course no Flag we design now will have all the history and meaning of decades flying; the only reason your Banner even has a story is because it already existed, Jack! But we're not sailing out there to relive your Glory Days, what we're doing here is something completely New - completely ours, and the rest of the crew's that we've built here. If that doesn't merit sailing under its own Banner then what will?

No I've not forgotten - I added the Skull, didn't I? But a dove stands for the very same thing that your precious knife does, and even more besides. We are NOT making a decision based on what could intimidate a shipful of blessed GHOSTS and a SEA MONSTER!

[calicoat]

My GLORY DAYS, as you so disdainfully put it, were not even under that banner, or the city would not have given it to me to hurt me, John. I have proposed it in tribute to the man from whence this scheme was born in the first place, but I have never been opposed to a new one, providing that the messaging is clear and coherent.

I would rather impress the fucking kraken than make a decision based on what might offend Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, an institution which does not exist here, has done more damage than every pirate crew combined from Avery’s to mine, and would have killed you too, had Hickey not beaten them to it.

｟ 1/2 ｠

[extramuralise]

Well you're certainly MORE than welcome to offer me feedback that's actually helpful next time, rather than demand I construct you an entire blessed Mythos about it!

Oh and lest I neglect to mention, get rid of the dove but leave the Skull - I'm not going to redesign for you another Pirate Flag!

Exactly what is so incoherent about it in the first place??

｟ 2/2 ｠

[extramuralise]

[ But then... a long sequence of the typing bubbles bouncing and then disappearing follows, carrying on that way for a few minutes before it disappears again, and stays gone.

Then, several minutes later still: ]

Do not speak to me that way.

[calicoat]

Oh, please. I’m not asking you to write the fucking Iliad, just tell me how the two relate, and if you can’t, find a pairing that does!

What way is that? Like I know where that poison in your head comes from?

[extramuralise]

Fine then, I WILL.


I beg your pardon. The what in my head.

[calicoat]

The poison. The same shit that makes you ashamed of what you really want, and kept you from being honest about you who are, even to yourself, that makes you still uncomfortable in your own skin.

You're not pissed off at me about the fucking skull, you're upset because England shipped you off to your death for just the chance that a handful of rich men might get richer for it, and you can't muster up the balls to be angry at them for it. You don't like that there are men who can, you don't like that it upsets the balance of things, and you don't like that I am proud to be among them. You are so uncomfortable with it that you would rather cling to those things which do not even exist here than fly a symbol of the rebellion that you, more than most, are owed.

That poison.

[extramuralise]

[ At least this conversation isn't happening in person, so Jack is denied the potential satisfaction(?) of getting to see Irving's jaw drop upon reading all that. It hurts, but probably especially because, though he'd deny or disagree with most of it, he can still recognize an uncomfortable amount of truth there, too. ]

Is that really what you think of me.

[calicoat]

[ It wouldn't be satisfying, to see him look like he's been slapped, because he's not saying it to hurt him, or to shock him, even if it does. He's saying it to wake him up. He's had so much patience with this shit, but right now, with the clock ticking and Anne still asleep, he doesn't have the time. It goes beyond the damn flag, but reflects on how they're going to run this ship together. They need to be on the same page, and as Jack's the only one here who has captained a ship of any kind, it is, by necessity, his page. ]

I think you're afraid to let go of that conditioning, because you know no other way to be.

Tell me I'm wrong.

[extramuralise]

We are not discussing this, Jack.

I refuse to have this conversation with you as long as you continue to behave like such a surly little ruffian.

[ Which is not to say that under regular circumstances he would be opposed, at least, to considering it. To beginning to circle the idea. But right now he's Big Upset. ]

[calicoat]

I'm not being any surlier than you are.

[extramuralise]

You wrote that I haven't the b**** to feel angry with the Royal Navy, and that they'd have killed me if not for Hickey having already murdered me first. That my head is filled with poison. I think you owe me an apology.

[calicoat]

They would have. Your entire crew is dead. In the eyes of the Royal Navy, and of England herself, you were expendable. They told you to go where no man should go, refused to heed the signs urging them otherwise, never came to your rescue, and couldn't even be arsed to feed you anything but lead. Your death, Jopson's death, all of them, are on their hands.

Why the fuck are you not angry? Poison is the only way I can even attempt to explain it.

[extramuralise]

No, Jack. Whatever circumstances might have led to and fostered it, my death is still on Hickey's hands. My hunting party had found help, and food, just before it happened. Some of us might still have lived if not for him, no matter how bleak our situation had been before.

And stop saying that!

[calicoat]

Is that really why you're not angry? Because SOME of you MIGHT have lived, if the stowaway you had mutilated hadn't acted up?

I'm not saying that he is without fault, but that he made it onto the Terror in the first place is just another way the Navy failed you.

[extramuralise]

The stowaway that I had mutilated.



Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you don't always KNOW how I feel, Jack.

[calicoat]

Tell me, then. The truth, not the company line.

[extramuralise]

I don't have to tell you everything.

[calicoat]

And I'm the surly one.