Notes and Supplementary Material
WARNING: Spoilers ahead. Do not read if you haven't completely finished reading the story!
introduction / technical / background information / truth and fiction / weapons / magical artifacts / translations / annotations / sources / fun factoids / faq
As I write this it is 9 PM on a cold autumn evening, or what passes for a cold autumn evening where I live. I had the good fortune of finishing all my homework at school today, thus enabling me to arrive home at 3 o'clock, sit down before my computer and write the final chapter of the biggest thing I've ever written.
Dear god, it's big.
I never wanted to write such a large fanfic. By all means, fanfiction shouldn't get this long. If you note the word count below, you'll see why: it's the size of a book. And it's completely unpublishable. Make no mistake about it, I consider it a curse that I get routinely drawn into the fanfiction world when my epic nature can only be satisfied in an original fiction context. The three months I've spent toiling daily upon this story are three months wasted.
Or perhaps not. As I write this the twelfth chapter has gone up on fanfiction.net, and response to the fanfic as a whole has been overwhelmingly positive. Overall I have a small number of reviews for a story that's been up and running for as long as mine, but I suspect that's due to the nature of the story. I know that I, as a reader, would find it a bad omen if a fanfic started out with a fan character.
Will's introduction was a test of readers' faith. I think as a result I might have weeded out a lot of readers that would have liked the greater story, but never got to it because they were hung up battling horrible fanfiction stereotypes. How many readers did I lose making two offspring of the movie characters central players in my story? How many did I lose by having Jack unwittingly hit on his own daughter? How many did I lose with homosexual innuendo, and how many more from so-called homosexual bashing?
It's for these questions that I am forever indebted to Delphine --the real one, not the character with her name-- for putting it all into perspective. Don't I want the readers that are tolerant enough (and can take a lot of abuse) to be the ones to read this story? It's a complicated jumble of a plot that even challenged my tolerance levels a number of times, and I'm the one that wrote it!
So if you've made it this far, congratulations. You've done a lot better than I would have.
Even writing this was an endurance trial. It might come as a surprise to some people that not all words flow readily like water from an artesian well; some parts were incredibly difficult to write, and I don't doubt that those rough spots will show through to the discerning eye. Inconsistencies will probably be a bit more noticable. And repeated jokes? Oh yeah.
The thing to remember is that this is a huge project, almost three times the length of anything I've produced to date, and the only thing to ever merit the italics of a book-sized title. Three months must seem like a ridiculously large amount of time to have started and completed this in, and were this my only preoccupation in life, so it would be, but I am a high school student in my senior year. My obligations to this, not to mention piles of schoolwork, helping to run an anime convention, and my senior project, to say nothing of taking up a side job as a proofreader of high school essays in order to foot the bill of my project, resulted in such an excess of stress that I went blind at one point. Literally.
I often envy writers who are able to take up the task as a hobby and keep it as such without worry of losing the thread halfway. To me, writing, like any project, must be approached with every fiber of your being, and doggedly pursued until completion, or else HORRIBLE PAIN AND SUFFERING will befall you. Needless to say this philosophy is detrimental to my health on a regular basis, but the results are often worth it.
Even still I must confess that any more creative excursions like this when my grades and health are on the line must be prohibited at all costs, so I must take my leave of the creative writing world for the time being. My apologies to my readers, who might have very much liked to see some of the off-sides extras I had intended to write up for different parts in this fanfic, to say nothing of spinoffs and prequels and whatever else that has been requested, but time, as it were, is not on my side.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my unpublishable book. If you have any questions or comments you'd like to send my way, don't hesitate to stop by my website (listed below, hopefully, unless FFN is a bugger) and drop me a line. And remember:
TALLY-HO!
~K.A. Rose
Craptor Productions
karose . com
21 October, 2003
start date: 26 July, 2003
end date: 21 October, 2003
Written entirely in Netscape Composer.
Made for fanfiction . net; also available on karose . com. Link free, but do not redistribute without permission.
Final file size (minus this page): 736Kb
Word count: 109,389
Ocean Soul takes its name from a song by Nightwish. I'd previously used the title of a Nightwish song, "Bless the Child", for a NiGHTS fanfic (no longer available online). Even still, Ocean Soul was intended as a working title until I realized that it actually fit with the story well, especially concerning Jack Sparrow.
Although the song "Ocean Soul" and all other songs on the Century Child CD were played repeatedly during this fanfiction's making, the main source of artistic inspiration comes from "Dead Boy's Poem" off the Wishmaster album, where the term is contained in the lyrics "a lonely soul / ocean soul" near the end of the song.
The story itself was originally intended to be short, about 20-30Kb
at most, focusing entirely on the revelation of Jack's quasi-immortality.
This itself was based solely on a theory of mine (expressed briefly by
Mr. Turner in Chapter IV) brought about after four viewings of the film,
and draws from the following evidence:
-Jack Sparrow was captain of the Black Pearl ten years prior to the film's main start. While the rest of his crew have become undead and thus can't age, Jack was not likewise affected by Cortez's treasure.-Health conditions and the effects of sailing and alcoholism on a person's appearance would render Jack much older-looking than he is if we're to accept his actor's real-life age (40).
-Jack's reputation precedes him, and his exploits are well-documented, to the extent that Elizabeth Swann read about him in books as a child. Given that word scarcely traveled fast in the 17th/18th centuries, a generous amount of time must be allowed to account for such wide-spread knowledge of his existence. Additionally, Jack must have performed the majority of his famous exploits prior to being betrayed and marooned by his crew, because for word to spread about him afterwards would have caught Barbossa's attention.
-Jack is well-accustomed to ordering around his former Black Pearl crew to the point that his first instinct is to do so, given the opportunity. Therefore it's unlikely that he had just recently been made captain of the Black Pearl prior to seeking out the Isle de Muerta, because it would not have seemed so familiar if he was returning to something brief after a ten-year-absence. Additionally, the reverence of youth is a 20th-century concoction, and it's unlikely a crew that is predominantly (visually) older would respect a younger captain, even one in possession of age-compensating talent, because the era in which this story takes place valued age and experience.
My friend Mango is credited with the development of the aledged
explanation for Jack's agelessness. In discussing these chronological inconsistencies
with Mango on AIM, he suggested: "Perhaps it was like a venerial disease,
which he picked up in some port? 'Cause that'd be a neat way to pick up
a curse." And hence, the whiny gypsy princess story was born.
As the story germinated, throwing in a Turner child in the effort of finding a way to draw Jack into meeting his old friend again, it was decided that Jack would make mention of the Dread Pirate Roberts, simply as a side-joke. But as my muse and I struggled to find ways to evolve the story into something workable, the Dread Pirate Roberts worked himself into an on-screen incarnation. On my quest for research (for there is a lot to research if you want to make a halfway decent description of a ship) I came across Granuaile, a historical figure simply too cool to exclude, and the rest is history. No, really. That's where I got about 9/10 of the ideas for this.
Although it's no new convention of mine to take normally very G and
PG concepts and make them more serious and violent, this story was actually
intended to be very mild until outside influences interfered, in the form
of the films Battle Royale, Full Metal Jacket, Hard Boiled,
and Mad Max, all of which were viewed early on in the story's development,
and all of which are in their own way very violent. At the same time, a
rereading of Jingo, while more directly the cause of the Detritus
homage scene in Chapter V, also caused the image of a pirate's life to
become more unthinkingly routine and everyday-- even when Inigo is off
slaughtering innocents to uphold his title as the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Some found it absolutely reprehensible, others thought it was hilarious,
so you can take your pick.
What is Real
The pirate havens mentioned in the story --Tortuga, Petit Goave, New Providence, and Barataria-- are all historic places.
Port Royal in Jamaica was (and is) a real place, although it was far from the squeaky clean British colony Pirates of the Caribbean made it out to be. In fact, it was a favorite haunt for pirates, and many respectable people termed it "the Wickedest City on Earth", going so far as to call it a modern-age Sodom. See what I meant by Disney getting a few details wrong?
Blackbeard and his ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, were real. Grace O'Malley (aka Granuaile) was a real Irish pirate, although she sailed during the 16th century and, to my knowledge, only stuck to Irish and British waters. Anne Bonney and Mary Read were also real pirates, who sailed the Spanish Main with Calico Jack Rackman, although there's only moderate evidence that the two were lovers. William Kidd is likewise a historical figure, who, though hanged for piracy, made several attempts to atone for himself. Kanhoji Angria was a real pirate of East India. Kuo Hsing Yeh was a real pirate to sail the South China Sea. There... that's it, I think.
Bombo and rumfustian are real concoctions. Check Annotations for the ingredients.
Maritime astrolabes did play a big part in sailing. They weren't the huge 3D models like the one Jack plays with at the end of the first chapter (which isn't actually an astrolabe, but is commonly mistaken as one), but were like the small disc one he actually uses for navigation.
Some people have complained Mandarin, Captain Kidd's large orange parrot, is a fallacy, but in fact I have found a type of parrot, a Senegal (Poicephalus senegalus) with gray, green and orange feathers, so it's not hard to imagine the orange overtaking the other colors.
Yes, they had watches back then. I know it seems hard to believe.
What is Fake
What, you mean besides the gypsy curses and the magical properties of moonlight and the spirits of dead swordmakers imbued in their masterwork swords?
All right, all right. Here's one for you: most pirates were not formally taught in swordplay. Jack Sparrow was (judging by his lines in the movie), likewise Inigo Montoya, but most would have picked it up as they went along, and their style was mostly akin to "hitting stuff at random."
Pirates weren't such narrow-minded drinkers that they only drank rum. They liked a whole range of alcoholic beverages, including port, sherry, brandy and --wouldn't you know it-- beer.
Female pirates were not half as prevalent among pirate crews as this story means to suggest. I knew this when I wrote it. So why did I do it, knowing I was writing a lie? The same reason for Delphine Turner, I suppose.
And though I really hate to buckle like this... There is absolutely no suggestion in the movie that Jack Sparrow is bisexual. His mannerisms are open to interpretation and this just happens to be how I interpret it.
What I'm Not Sure Of
Ship speeds. I wasn't able to get a good fix on just what speed these ships ought to be sailing at, so to avoid biting my own tail I tried to keep dates as vague as possible.
Pirate amnesty. I'm aware that pirates were at some point given offers to relent their pirating ways and be offered rewards to hunt down other pirates, but I'm not sure to the extent to which this was endorsed by the government.
Libertalia. Its presence exists in only one record and a dubious one
at that, so it's possible that the city was nothing more than a myth. The
record in question did name Mission as its founder and Tew as its naval
captain, however, and did say that it was burned down, although at the
hands of Malagasy natives, not pirate hunters.
Please keep in mind I'm not a weapons specialist. These are estimates based on the information available to me.
Jack Sparrow:
Naval Cutlass- blade 61cm; hilt 11cm.
Flintock Pistol- German make; steel.
Spirit Pistol- unknown origin; violet-tinted steel with gold accents; takes various kinds of shots. Classified as magical artifact (see below).
Inigo Montoya:
The Six-Fingered Sword- blade 120cm; hilt 20cm. Classified as magical artifact (see below).
Flintock Pistol- English make; steel and polished maple wood.
Granuaile:
Irish Two-Hander- blade 80cm; hilt 14cm.
William Kidd:
Boarding Cutlass- blade 59cm; hilt 17cm.
Flintock Pistol- English make; steel, polished maple wood with gold accents.
Sword Cane- cane 88cm; 53cm blade.
Delphine Turner Kinsman:
Naval Cutlass- blade 59cm; hilt 11cm
Workman's Dagger (numerous)- blade 15cm; hilt 5cm
William Turner III:
English Rapier- blade 109cm; hilt 18cm.
All magical artifacts are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, based on the apparent benefit they give to the user. (1 = minor benefit, 3 = significant benefit, 5 = deus ex machina.)
Rumfustian: a pirate's drink that speeds the recovery of wounds, but must be prepared by a woman. Rating: 1.
Failsafe Lock: an enchanted padlock that cannot be picked or broken, but only opened with the proper key. Rating: 1.
Treasure Chest: the chest used to contain the jeweled watch. It had a charm placed upon it so that, once deposited in its designated location, only the people specified by the spell-caster (and the spell-caster himself) can locate it. Rating: 2.
Spirit Pistol: of unknown origin. Functions like a normal gun, with a twist. It comes with different kinds of ball bearing shots that, once fired, transcend the dimensions and affect the target on a spiritual level, hence the name. Known shots are "soul," "memory," "health," and "dreams." The effect of all but "memory" are unknown. Rating: 3.
Kohl: the cosmetics worn around Jack's eyes, enchanted not to wash away with water. (It really doesn't. Check the film.) It is unknown whether this is a charm Jack placed upon himself or the result of a mildly annoying curse. Rating: 1.
Map to El Dorado: a map drawn up by Jack Sparrow's guide on the way to the City of Gold. When Jack had outlived his use for it, he placed a tracking charm on it and bartered it off in a port in Spain. It was eventually picked up by the famous marauders, Tulio and Miguel (see The Road to El Dorado). When Tulio destroyed the map, the charm was broken. Rating: 1.
The Six-Fingered Sword: the perfect work of Domingo Montoya, father of Inigo, designed for the six-fingered Count Tyrone Rugen of Denmark (see The Princess Bride). It is imbued with the spirit of Domingo and can guide his son in time of need. Also chooses odd moments to speak with him. Rating: 4.
Seekers: ethereal cannon balls that are able to automatically home in on a target, despite obstacles. Rating: 5.
Beacons: ethereal cannon balls that surround the struck target with a bright white light. Rating: 5
The Spinal Sapphire Necklace: a gift from Ansoni Lunaseer and Matra Tikalus to Granuaile. It isn't magical at all. No, really. No magic whatsoever. Trust me on this. Rating: 0.
Anti-Fire Gel: fire-repellant chemicals. Rating: 1.
The Black Pearl and the Queen Anne's Revenge: alledgedly
sister ships forged of the same strange black wood, origins unknown. Both
ships possess unearthly superior abilities: they sail without wind, are
heavily resistant to damage, and generate fog at random. Rating: 4.
I'm no expert of languages. Most of what you see here was derived from phrasebooks and the dictionary pages you see listed in Sources.
Spanish:
"Hijo de puta" = "son of a bitch."
"Maricon de playa" = "homosexual", but in a rude sense, so meant more like "faggot."
"Su madre era un hámster y sus olores del padre como las bayas del saúco." = "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." (Incorrect.)
Portuguese (courtesy of Babelfish):
"Que este velhaco está falando?" = "What is this whore saying?"
"Vamos discutir um tratado agora." = "Let's discuss a treaty."
Gaeilge:
"Póg mo thóin" = "Kiss my ass."
"Cronaím thú" = "I miss you", which is present tense. Jack needed past tense.
"Tá tú gin h-álainna" is gibberish. However, "tá tú go h-álainn" = "you're beautiful."
"Tá tú glan as do mheabhair" = "You're crazy."
"Cá bhfuil an Caiftín Kidd?" = "Where's Captain Kidd?" (May be wrong.)
"Ni cá bhfuil an Sasanach." = "I don't know where the Englishman is." (May be wrong.)
"Muidne ag éirí go dona liom." = "We're not doing very well." (May be wrong.)
"An ea?" = "Is that so?"
"Tchim..." = "I see..."
"Arbith, arbith. An taobh contráilte." = "No, no. Wrong side."
German (courtesy of Babelfish):
"Kapitän! Kapitän! Blick dort! Es gibt ein Boot, das in Richtung zu uns kommt!" = "Captain! Captain! Look there! There is a boat coming toward us!"
"Haben Sie irgendeinen Tabak für ein rauchendes Rohr?" = "Do you have any tobacco for a smoking pipe?"
Munchausen's Drinking Song: See Annotations
Latin:
"Homo Homini Lupus" = "Man is a wolf to man."
"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum" = as translated
in the fanfic, except "testiculos" doesn't quite come out the same
as Read says.
"'Rum 'n' gunpowder.'"
Legends of Blackbeard, perhaps the most famous pirate to ever have lived, report the captain drank rum mixed with gunpowder, among other strange things.
"'Bottle of bombo last me the night.'"
Bombo was a favorite drink for pirates, made from rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg.
"'Oh, don't ye start in about the bloody planks!'"
As a matter of fact, there has only been one documented occasion where pirates made anyone walk the plank. I suspect they just did it out of a weird sense of humor.
"Stede chanced a glance toward young Will."
Stede is named for Stede Bonnet, a real-life pirate who captained the ship Revenge. The ship was later renamed Royal James after Bonnet went "legit."
"'The Black Pearl was headed for Barataria back from Nova Scotia when we came by the storm that did your ship in.'"
Barataria was the name of a pirate's cove located south of New Orleans. It's named for Panza's imagined island kingdom from Cervantes's Don Quixote because it was so hard to reach.
"'...Sails luffing aback.'"
At a loss for genuine pirating phrases, I resort to a game I affectionately call "K.A. picks random sailing terms and throws them together." Luffing refers to how sails flap in the wind, and aback means the wind is blowing towards the ship instead of behind it.
"'...and the French are expecting us to defend it from the English, except on those occasions when it's the other way round.'"
Tortuga did indeed change hands numerous times during the age of Caribbean piracy, and whichever country was owning it at the time expected the pirates to defend it from its enemy nations. Except when Spain had it, where they just ran the pirates out instead.
"'...Baggywinkle afloat.'"
Baggywinkle is described as chafing gear made from old ropes.
"...the leader of the boys he worked with, a German named Goethe... with a ten-year-old named Patinkin and a thirteen-year old named Ashton Trinity..."
All writers experience that time, I'm sure, when they're sitting there at the keyboard at an absolute loss for character names, and the only thing coming to them are the surname of their favorite German author, the actor that played Inigo Montoya and a character from The Matrix...
Goethe, incidentally, is pronounced "gurr-tah". Just FYI.
"...went down into the kitchens to prepare rumfustian..."
Another real pirate drink, made from raw eggs, sugar, sherry, gin and beer. I'm not aware of it containing any magical properties.
Anamaria's line about how a woman needs to prepare it traces itself back to an email survey response I sent to a friend. I was sick of doing these personal surveys as myself, so I answered as Jack Sparrow (which is why half of my answers just worked their way into pick-up lines). Under favorite drinks, I, as Sparrow, listed rumfustian, adding "but only if made by a fine lass, elsewise the mixture comes out all wrong."
The dead pirates.
Thomas Tew and "Calico" Jack Rackman were real pirates. Bikke and Zidane Tribal are pirates from the Final Fantasy videogame series (well, Zidane was actually just a thief, but it's not much of a stretch). Baron Munchausen of German legend wasn't necessarily a pirate, but he did have his share of outlandish adventures that involved a good bit of plundering.
"'I saw you the other day when we attacked that fishing boat on the way to Pasalacqua.'"
At the risk of poking one too many holes in my own fanfic, I should note that there is no Pasalacqua on the route the Black Pearl is sailing. Rather, I'm a Green Day fan (scoff if you must), and while writing this section, I was listening to 1039 Smoothed-Out Slappy Hours, which includes, yes, the song "Going to Pasalacqua".
"...the pirate captain Reno and his ship, the Elena."
The names of two of the Turks from Final Fantasy VII. Also, Captain Valentino, while theoretically a reference to a whole slew of things, takes its inspiration here from Valentino Martinez, a character from my comic, Faust for Kids (based on the drama by, guess what, Johann von Goethe).
"The other had curly red hair and a long scar going from her nose to her bottom jaw."
A description similar to that of Emeraldas, a space pirate from Reiji Matsumoto's Harlock anime and manga (note also Harlock's cameo in the meeting of the Brethren of the Coast).
"'Like daisies!'"
I wouldn't include this, except I know this is such an obscure reference that most people wouldn't get it.
In Disney's Mulan, Mushu, the pint-sized dragon, reports that the Bad Guys are "popping out of the snow! like daisies!" Being as "popping out the snow" means much the same as "climbing out of the woodwork", the connection between this and "like daisies!" is obvious.
That, and it's something I've always wanted to say.
"'S'enchanted.'"
While writing this story, Robin, one of my schoolmates, came up to me and asked, "Why doesn't Jack's make-up wash away when he goes in water?" I was very busy at the time, and seeing as I didn't expect it to be taken to heart anyway, I told him: "It's magical."
It sorta stuck.
"'Bear in mind I have Sicilian Reasoning on my side.'"
During the 1999 computerized rock-paper-scissors tournament, Roshambot, at the University of Alberta, the winning bot (titled "Iocaine Powder") owed its high success rate to an algorithm its creator dubbed "Sicilian Reasoning" to predict its opponent's next move.
Strange things you find while researching...
"Two of the Cottons died out of crew protest."
The description of the parrots' death comes from a story I heard, about bored sailors feeding bread soaked with a carbonated fluid to seagulls to watch them explode. Apparently, birds can't get rid of the gas in their stomachs resulting from this, and there's only one way the gas knows to escape. I don't know if it's true or not.
Also note that the birds that die here are numbers 3 and 7, making 37, a recurring number in Kevin Smith's New Jersey trilogy of movies.
"...Inigo was noticably taller than him."
Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya)'s official height is 6'. Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow)'s official height is 5'10".
So in other words, not noticable at all. What this is, in point of fact, is an unfortunate moment of the author speaking through the character. As many who know me will agree, I'm very competitive about height, and hate being on the lower end of the scale for men (even if I'm tall for a woman). The whole fixation is maginified by Japanese anime and manga, that routinely depict couples with the dominant member as taller than the submissive member, as a sort of visual means to convey the relationship. As anyone who has regretfully gotten too into anime will tell you, it's hard to break free of psychological conditioning like this.
"'What are you doing with a Zoo of Death anyway?'"
Anyone who's read Goldman's The Princess Bride knows that when I discuss the Zoo of Death here, I don't mean the actual Zoo of Death. Rather, the entire set of references is intended for the reverse-Princess Bride readers (people who watched the movie before reading the book), who I've discovered usually get a tremendous kick out of the name. It is pretty snicker-worthy.
"Pirates did what pirates did best, which was pillage, plunder, rifle and loot..."
From the first verse of Disney's "A Pirate's Life for Me".
"'It's Rinoa's Gigue. Popular Irish song.'"
Actually, no. This is a reference to the Irish gigue (also jig) performed in Final Fantasy VIII, during a scene where Squall and Rinoa are sort of prodded into going on a date (which is not, to my knowledge, titled "Rinoa's Gigue"). I mention it here because this is the song I listened to while writing this part of the scene.
"'..."when a pirate dreams, he's not dreamin' he's died and gone to Heaven, he's dreamin' he's gone back to Libertalia."'"
This was actually something said of New Providence, but I thought it would apply to Libertalia more.
"...Although she acknowledged it might just be the Tuatha de Danann's quirky sense of humor that was to blame."
It wasn't until I started receiving mail about this that I realized that I'd unconsciously slipped in a reference most people wouldn't get. It's not an injoke, remarkably enough-- the Tuatha de Danann are basically the gods of the Celtic pantheon.
"'The Q.A.R.' ... 'Come again?'"
A deliberate reference to a certain acronym in The Princess Bride:
Buttercup: "Westley-- what about the R.O.U.S.es?"
Westley: "Rodents of Unusual Size? (shaking head) I don't think they
exist."
The Brethren of the Coast.
Hands and Mission are historical. Munchausen is from Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Fei of the Thames is a reference to Xenogears, Harlock and the Arcadia are from Arcadia of My Youth (and others), Lunaseer, Tikalus and the Catilina are fancharacters of mine (see below), and Laguna and Squall are two characters from Final Fantasy VIII.
"'I know that's you, Lunaseer!'"
Of course, no fanfic that goes on as long as this one can do without a cameo from the author's flagship AU fic series. Note, however, that in my fanfics, Lunaseer's ship is called the Harlock, which was changed here for obvious reasons.
The lines Lunaseer is speaking here are Falsaen, a made-up language of the denizens of False Nightopia (from the videogame NiGHTS), although Lunaseer's last line, "beian suro, Sparrow!" is a pull from the game. Reala, one of the stage bosses, announces "beian suro, NiGHTS!" before fighting. According to Sonic Team, this means "let's fight, NiGHTS!"
It is still a commonly held misconception that the spoken lines in NiGHTS are in English, albeit hard to decipher. The thought that inhabitants of a dream land might have their own language seldom occurs to people.
"'Play it again, Samuel.'"
"Play it again, Sam" is a line often attributed to Casablanca, even though this is incorrect. (The line is actually from the Marx Brothers' A Night in Casablanca.)
"'No, better yet, what country is he from?'"
People will claim this scene as being a nod to That 70's Show, but seeing as I don't watch that, I'm able to say it's a nod to my screenplay, TRIP HAZARD.
"'Denmark, Fezzik. When you're speaking English, it's Denmark.'"
In the early pages of The Princess Bride, author William Goldman describes Florin and Gilder as being "between Germany and Sweden." Well, look at a map and tell me just what lies between Germany and Sweden. That wily Goldman.
"'You're a real--' 'Undine, yes.'"
An undine is a water elemental. They have no set form, although they're very often associated with mermaids, and are almost exclusively female. They're emotional and very motherly and comforting; I used to converse with one myself (you can believe that or not, I don't particularly care).
In Lunaseer and Tikalus's own stories, the two are magic-users that hail from the salamander and undine schools respectively. Because they are non-human creatures in their natural state, it wasn't much of a step to actually make them elementals for the purpose of this work. In fact, I liked doing it so much I had to force myself from making Ocean Soul into one very long Lunaseer/Tikalus-related soap opera. Well, maybe not that far, but I was prolonging their involvement more than I needed to.
Maybe I'll write about these two in depth someday. I'd like to put my sailing knowledge to use to something other than this single fic, and "taking up piracy as a form of courtship" sounds like such a silly Lunaseer-type thing. He's really quite sweet when he's not bullying people, you know.
Munchausen's drinking song.
I was taking German in school at the time of writing. While some of the early lines, mostly Goethe's stuff, were Babelfished, a lot of the later lines were actually hand-composed. This here is a real song I memorized for class, and translates thusly:
"My hat has three corners,
Three corners has my hat;
If it doesn't have three corners,
Then it is not my hat."
See? German drinking songs have such simple lyrics.
"'Skellington Jack, they call him. The Pumpkin King.'"
The protagonist of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, of course.
Since Pirates of the Caribbean's release, many fans have noted distinct similarities between Jack of NBX and Jack of PotC, most notably when Jack reaches his skeleton form-- for obvious reasons.
"'I've heard the Grim Reaper's named Jack.'"
And this a nod to the webcomic Jack, about the scariest bunny Grim Reaper you'll ever see.
"'Ever been to a play?' 'Saw Hamlet once. It had kings in it.'"
The astute reader will notice that Jack has already given evidence of this. Recall his mention in the earlier chapters of "shuffling off this here mortal coil."
Yes, I planned that all along. *shifty glances*
"'How's about we give 'im a fighting chance and do 'im left-handed?'"
A paraphrase from The Princess Bride:
Inigo: "I'm going to do him left-handed."
Vezzini: "You know what a hurry we're in!"
Inigo: "It's the only way I can be satisfied. I use my right -tchk-
over too quickly."
Taking quotes out of context = fun.
"'Your data cluster is m1n3!'"
Jack here, whoever Jack happens to be at that point, is falling into l33t5p34k ("leetspeak"), an oft-abused internet dialect originally used by hackers as protective measures against government busts, and nowadays used mostly by kids that read Megatokyo. Even still it is a distinctly internet-founded slang, easy to recognize and read, and cannot by any means be successfully verbally pronounced.
Personally I believe anyone who traverses the internet world should
be fluent in l1t3 l33t and at least proficient with |V|3d1u|V| l337, although
I don't really see a point in |-|4R|>(0R3 |_337...
As said previously, this fic represents more hours of research than anything else I've ever written. Here are my major sources.
Books:
Southwestern Volume Library (Vol. III - Maps and Study Aids), coordinated by Brian Goudreau.
The Princess Bride by William Goodman.
Jingo by Terry Pratchett.
Men, Ships, and the Sea by Captain Allan Villiers.
Websites:
Pirates and Privateers, maintained by Cindy Vallar: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/6236.
Schooner & Sailing Terms, maintained by Tom Van Oosterhout: http://www.schoonerman.com/sailingterms/.
HRW World Atlas, maintained by Mapquest: http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/world.htm.
All Things Naval and Piratical: http://www.revenants7th.com/naval.htm.
The Astrolabe, maintained by James E. Morrison: http://www.astrolabes.org/astrolab.htm.
Conversion: Knots to MPH: http://boguewx.navy.mil/Conversions/knotstomph.htm.
Irish Gaelic Translator, maintained by EOC: http://www.irishgaelictranslator.com
The Alternative Spanish Dictionary, maintained by HC: http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Spanish.html
English to Portuguese Dictionary, maintained by Carlos A. Bertulani: http://www.if.ufrj.br/general/dictionary.html
Babelfish: http://www.babelfish.altavista.com.
Note: It's my understanding that in its ineffable wisdom, FFN deletes
all urls I've posted here. Follow the trail to my website's version of
this page if you're curious in learning more from these sources.
--My friends, who had no knowledge of my fanfiction project, asked me for obscure nautical definitions I would not have known if not for my research. The Ruby Slipper Effect!
--The RIAA announced its own pirate amnesty program around the same time I was writing about the historical one. History does repeat itself!
--Chicago's "Cell Block Tango", a song about murderous wives, came on my Winamp playlist just as I was introducing Anne Bonney and Mary Read.
--By the end of the story, my Winamp playlist had been increased by about 200 entries. All sorted by folder and filename, the #777 entry was Nightwish's "Ocean Soul".
--I went temporarily blind as a result of writing this.
--I wrote far ahead of my posting schedule. In fact, I finished writing the epilogue on the day that chapter 12 went online. This is why I was never able to take any of the fic suggestions posted in reviews.
--Delphine's face scars are modeled after the appearance of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Sally is Jack Skellington's love interest.
--Contains phrases in seven different languages. The only phrase (in an actual language) constructed by hand and not from a phrasebook or translator is Munchausen's drinking song.
--Delphine is never once directly referred to as Jack's daughter.
--Contains direct pulls of lines (and many many paraphrases and story devices) from Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's other movies: Shrek, The Mask of Zorro, Aladdin, and The Road to El Dorado.
--Ending song was originally "Casualties" by Red Delicious, which was
played extensively during the burning of Libertalia and the death of Jack
Sparrow, and fits the flow of the credits far better. However, it was scrapped
when it was decided that the song was too depressing. The song that replaced
it, "Melodies of Life", the title theme of Final Fantasy IX, was
originally intended to play with the epilogue.
Q. How accurately did you portray the historical characters?
A. There is some evidence to suggest Anne Bonney and Mary Read
were lovers, but other than that, most of the historical characters' lives
and personalities are completely fabricated. So much for research.
Q. When does the story take place?
A. 1700s-1730s, the end of the Golden Age of Piracy.
Q. There is an anachronism in (such and such chapter)!
A. Yes, and? The Port Royans in PotC had shoes with velcro. Elizabeth
wears a bra. The language is far from time-accurate (the word "hijack",
for example, didn't appear until more than a century later in North America,
and did not until recently refer to anything but wagons). Don't tell me
about anachronisms.
Q. Why did you make (such and such character) gay/bisexual/evil?!
A. I played the characters how I felt they should be played.
Q. How do you write? (Yes, I have gotten this one.)
A. My answer will, in fact, be different than the average "there's
no one way to eat a Reeses" answer. I write mostly at the behest of a muse
named Cassandra. She cooks up the story, I just put it down in words. More
often than not I tweak things as I write, because the grammar looks stilted,
or I had a spontaneous idea on taking the conversation in a different direction,
but overall I stick to an internal script.
Q. Why PotC/The Princess Bride?
A. It was an accident, honest.
Q. No, really.
A. Because Cassandra thought of it? My muse is very proficient with
crossovers. My most successful work to date is a Good Omens/Dogma
crossover called "One Big Happy Pantheon", something heralded as a marvel
and a stroke of unlikely genius, even though it's plainly obvious that
the two sources have so much in common to start with. That's all a crossover
takes: finding a common thread and building up your story around that.
Just be glad I haven't written the Battle Royale/Harry Potter crossover
yet.
Q. But WHY those two sources specifically?
A. I told you, it was an accident. Just trust me on this.
Q. Why, why, WHY all the Christian references?
A. *exasperated sigh* Because it's appropriate for the time and place,
sillies. It's not as if I'm trying to spread gospel through the characters.
This is how it was back then. You can't skimp on details just because
you might offend someone. Cutting away during a sex scene, all right, that's
just good manners, but what did you expect me to do? Cut someone off every
time they use the dreaded G-word? Criminy.
Q. What country ARE Lunaseer and Tikalus from?
A. Ansoni Lunaseer is a fire elemental (salamander) from Rome, Matra
Tikalus is a water elemental (undine) from Atlantis. Both being ethereal,
their true homeworld lies somewhere else, and they have their own language
unique to that of the rest of the earth.
Q. Why did you post one chapter ahead on FFN than your own website?
A. To milk reviews. Yes, shameless, I know.
Q. Do you have a sequel planned?
A. Dear gods no. I haven't the time for it. There were plans
for a second PotC fic, although it was mostly a silly parody, and would
have required yet more research and time that I don't have. It would've
been called "Hackers of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Perl". Funny,
no?
Q. What about off-shoots and prequels?
A. We'll see. At the moment I am abstaining from creative writing due
to schedule conflicts with my school work.
Q. Where can I find more of your work?
A. Check out my website at karose . com. All that I've ever written
and is available online can be found through there.
Added 12/02/03:
Q. Why did Mr. and Mrs. Turner's, their son's, and daughter's hands
bleed after Will became first mate? (submitted by Mollymo)
A. The bleeding scar thing is actually a nod to Tim Burton's Sleepy
Hollow, wherein Johnny Depp's character, Ichabod Crane, finds his old
scars breaking open anew as his nightmares worsen. The event in this fanfic
actually has little to do with Will III, but rather is indicative of Jack's
own choice to tie up loose ends in his own life as he steps into the final
spiral leading him toward death.
Q. What happened with Jack and Inigo at the end of Chapter XX? (submitted
by wellduh)
A. That's a matter of speculation. Like with my other ambiguous homosexual
romance, "Twin Kings" (Invader Zim fandom), I felt the need to cut
away from a scene before a reader's suspicions could be confirmed one way
or another. So, in essence, NOTHING happens after that point because nothing's
written there, therefore it doesn't exist. However, two continuations were
considered:
1) Jack climbs to his feet,
stalks away, laughs, and the two get drunk until they fall asleep, and
that's it.
2) Inigo interrupts him
with a kiss and what happens after that can't be contained in a PG-13 rating.
So you can opt for either of those, make up your own, or just cease
to worry about it.
Q. Where did you learn the Irish Gaelic used in the story? (submitted
by Tinania Lindalerial)
A. I didn't. I worked solely from translators and phrasebooks. (Check
list of sources for links.)
Q. Are "undines" another term for "elves"? There is some context to
suggest this. (submitted by Tinania Lindalerial)
A. No, undines and elves are two distinct magical creatures. As explained
before, undines are water elementals. In my NiGHTS fanfiction series,
Dream Revolution, elves were another species of elemental that represented
holy light. Each of the elemental breeds (there are six) are headed by
a king or queen elemental that is largely human-shaped, but with distinctive
ears. In this frame both elves and undines would be identified by their
style of ears, but the two could be distinguished from each other relatively
easily.
Q. Your story is contradicted by (such and such deleted scene) on the
Pirates
of the Caribbean DVD.
A. Y'know, I had this very same argument with people over in the Invader
Zim fandom over my "Twin Kings" fanfic. It goes like this: what makes
the final cut is canon. That is the storyline that the filmmakers approved
of and by cutting stuff out they were telling us it's okay to forget about
that. Therefore, deleted scenes, omitted script pages, et cetera, are not
canon and do not need to be adhered to.
Added 12/05/03:
Q. Are you aware that Baron von Munchausen was a real person? (submitted
by Pyper)
A. Yes, I was aware. However, his incarnation here is based solely
on Gilliam's film interpretation, so I couldn't rightly claim that I was
using a historical figure. This is the same issue I dealt with with my
graphic novel, Faust for Kids, and the historial Johann Faust.
Q. Your Babelfished translations are off. (submitted by Pyper)
A. When I was writing this I showed some of the translations to a Spanish-speaking
friend, who remarked upon the same.
"You're still gonna put that in, right?" she said.
"I am? Shouldn't I correct it?"
"No. Keep it that way. That way someone will come
up to you and proudly proclaim that they caught your error. It'll make
them feel good about themselves. Don't you like giving your readers a nice,
warm, fuzzy feeling inside?"
And there's your answer about why the translations
are off.
Added 01/05/04:
Q. Are you aware of contradictions present in Goldman's Buttercup's
Baby?
A. I've only just now acquired a copy of The Princess Bride
that contains the extra chapter. Based on this new information I must make
one retraction, one semi-retraction, and one stubborn denial.
1. Semi-retraction: It was my understanding that
Waverly was a boy, not a girl, and I sought to correct this in my story,
until I discovered I never identified her sex in the first place. So yay
for ambiguity.
2. Retraction: Evidence in the new chapter now indicates
beyond a shadow of a doubt that Inigo Montoya is, in fact, heterosexual.
Which is rather depressing, and also leads to point three...
3. Stubborn denial: There have been many instances
in the fanfic where I opted for one canon over the other, movie versus
book, and I see no problem in picking and choosing my canon here. So in
my mind, I don't need to change or admit inaccuracy on anything. Nyah.
Want to submit a question for the FAQ? Leave a review on FFN or drop
me a line in email.
And now, I really would like to sleep.
Thank you all very much for reading this far. I have nothing else to offer you but gratitude for reading my words with patience and appreciation, even if you disagreed or had qualms with what I've said. Hopefully you derived some enjoyment from my words, and hopefully the story changed your perspective the same way it changed mine.
I'm not sorry about anything I wrote. I retract none of it. Neither do I feel any of it merited a rating above PG-13, for the scale on which books are rated is different than movies, and if I could go so far as to get the size of the book, and this is bound to be better than a lot of published work out there, then I believe I qualify purely on principle.
So, you just read a book.
Goddamn. I just wrote a book.
That's kinda scary.
~K.A. Rose
22 October, 2003
6:13 AM