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And most wickedly I did as I sailed
Just got back from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with my family. I realize that I am building up a positive backlog of posts that must be made about this, that, or the other, but I must here take a moment to say:
DAVY JONES' SAILORS.
DUDE.
Whatever the flaws of the overall film, that entire thread just made me smile. Stellan Skarsgård's Bootstrap Bill plays right into one of my favorite character obsessions, and if someone was going to fuse the legends of Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman (not to mention Koschei the Deathless), this was actually quite a good way. It's the combination of metamorphosis—so long under sea that the sea has changed them into itself, like something out of Patricia McKillip or Caitlín R. Kiernan—and moral compromise, tarnish and sea-change. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala might say: kicked me right in the squid.
Er. So to speak.
DAVY JONES' SAILORS.
DUDE.
Whatever the flaws of the overall film, that entire thread just made me smile. Stellan Skarsgård's Bootstrap Bill plays right into one of my favorite character obsessions, and if someone was going to fuse the legends of Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman (not to mention Koschei the Deathless), this was actually quite a good way. It's the combination of metamorphosis—so long under sea that the sea has changed them into itself, like something out of Patricia McKillip or Caitlín R. Kiernan—and moral compromise, tarnish and sea-change. As
matociquala might say: kicked me right in the squid.Er. So to speak.
no subject
I love this version of Davy Jones. That said, for a number of reasons (upon which I will not expound unless you wish spoilers; or have you seen the film?), it's Bootstrap who's taken my heart.
You have a lot of the sea in your poems and stories--has any of this folklore appeared in them?
I've never done any work with Davy Jones. To be honest, I'm not sure how much folklore the character has to himself beyond casual references—Davy Jones' Locker, down to Davy Jones. Here he's been fused with the Flying Dutchman, and impressively well. But the idea of transformation under sea, pearls for eyes, coral for bone, kelp where there was hair and an anemone beating for a heart, those images have always fascinated me. I'm not sure how much it shows up in my published work, but some of the earliest fiction I ever tried to write (so very badly) contains sea-change.