![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
See the ghost fly over the sea
In which I finally get around to writing up a few of my reactions to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Spoilers, spoilers everywhere. Why is it always some unwise hour of the night when I undertake these projects? Oh, right. The brain is nocturnal. Pity about the rest of me.
I had intended to talk more about characters, but perhaps I should get the myth out of the way first. I can say clinically that the first third of the film rather flailed around, plotwise, and the second was essentially a single massive action sequence, and the last was like five different endings all piled one on top of another, and that while at least this time around there were no sequences that I would have enthusiastically junked (cannibal island, I'm still looking at you), the recurring question of how many of the characters were betraying how many of the rest at any given time somehow took up more space than it should have—and yet I came out of the film with a surprising sense of awesomeness. And I think much of this had to do with the fact that not only did most of the characters' lives resolve in reasonable and resonant ways, but the mythological aspects of the world were upheld. That counts for a lot with me.
I am indebted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fleurdelis28 (with whom I also saw the film) for pointing out that while we have been watching Will, Elizabeth, and Jack, what we have been seeing is the final play-out of the story that started however many centuries ago when the goddess Calypso fell in love with Davy Jones and made him the ferryman of the sea's dead.1 He may have been bargaining with Bootstrap Bill and Jack Sparrow and whoever else was unlucky enough to stray across his decks, but she has been arranging her own release—and perhaps their reunion—for some time now. She is the one from whom Jack obtained his compass of the heart's desire, which has led him to all sorts of places that mortals usually overlook or avoid. She resurrected Barbossa not only as a guide to the sea-routes of the underworld, but because nine pirate lords bound her into the shape of Tia Dalma, and only nine can unbind her; she needs him and Jack both, or at least the items in their possession that neither passed on before he died.2 And otherwise her interest in the affairs of the mortal world is exactly nil: the maelstrom into which she dissolves at the outset of the battle between the Brethren of the Coast and the East India Trading Company does not take sides and heals itself up into untroubled sea as soon as Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman have disappeared into its depths; she has at last what she came for.3 Now the rest of the world can get on with its life.
There is also the question of balance. With the binding of Calypso, Barbossa charges, men came to rely less on their seafaring skill and more on the knowledge that a goddess was their ace in the hole—as indeed he himself counted on, facing the East India Trading Company. And the sea itself is out of whack. Davy Jones was supposed to care for all those who died at sea, but he abandoned his responsibilities to become the devil of the sea, who offers men one kind of hell in exchange for staving off another, and so they drift with no one to guide them through the waters between this world and the next.4 The goddess Calypso—which is not even her true name, only the most common name men have for her: many gods and many voices—has been uneasily human since the time of the first Brethren Court, and who knows what damage that has done to the normal course of the tides and the sands and whatever else is governed by the sea? However unpremeditatedly,5 Jones has come to fill that vacuum: "I am the sea." But he is only the heartless, drowning sea. He is shipwreck and desolation and worse things waiting, and while I do not pretend that Calypso is all the shining surface of the sea, she is not malevolent. Freeing her at once renders the world oddly less and more mythical, in that humanity must shift for itself where the ocean is concerned, but the sea has also regained its proper depth. And a ferryman whose honor will hold him to his post and whose heart is safe. More on this next time.
I am now so tired, I don't even have a clever simile. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, there will be some species of follow-up to this post. But not until my eyes stay open of their own accord. Right now, not so much.
Chase the dog star over the sea
Home where my true love is waiting for me . . .
Round the Cape Horn to Valparaiso
—Sting, "Valparaiso"
1 We are not given much information about the general structure of this underworld, but since there does not seem to have been specifically a sea-psychopomp before Jones, we both wondered if Calypso might not have created the position as a way of keeping him with her: essentially she made him her consort, immortal so long as he kept to his post and like to her in power; their τιμαί encompassed both the living sea and the dead, for the indefinite rest of time, whereas they would have had sixty, at the most seventy years together if he had remained an ordinary human man. In theory, this was a better idea than Endymion. But it is Calypso in the Odyssey who laments that while gods take can take mortal lovers with impunity, goddesses are not so fortunate: "And now in turn you gods resent that a mortal man is staying with me: / him I saved when he was aboard a keel, / alone, since with a bright thunderbolt Zeus had struck / his swift ship and shattered it in the middle of the wine-colored sea. / There all the rest of his noble companions perished, / but him the wind and the wave bore and brought here, / him I cared for kindly, and fed, / and would make immortal and ageless all his days." (5.129—136) There is also some fine solar mythology in the sunrises and sunsets to which entry to and exit from the underworld are explicitly linked, and I think Douglas Frame might have some words on that subject.
2 Somehow it makes a bizarre sort of sense that Ragetti's eye should have been one of the nine original bindings on Calypso; despite the frequent presence of curses and maritime deities, there is not a lot of random free-floating magic in this world, and I did always wonder where on earth he'd gotten it.
3 Not to throw my hat into the fanfiction ring, but I think there is a case to be made that their relationship is a valid interpretation of the legend of the Flying Dutchman, or at least the Wagnerian tradition thereof. He finds a woman who knows him for what he is and loves him: and that is also their tragedy, that they do still love one another, even after she has betrayed his love and he has betrayed her trust; that it is her nature to be wild and alluring and ever-changing and it was not his nature, once upon a time, to be cruel. Admittedly it's difficult to pick out her true feelings from their conversation in the hold of the Black Pearl, but when she speaks to third parties like Pintel and Ragetti, she defends him passionately; conversely, I disbelieve Davy Jones when he claims to Will and Cutler Beckett that the only payment he wants is Calypso murdered, and I listen to him when he tells her that his heart will always be hers. And I find it difficult to believe that, once unbound and informed by Will that her lover was the instrument of her imprisonment, she could not have trivially destroyed him if she felt like it. He dies with her name on his lips and her abyss receives him. Who knows where his soul goes after that?
4 Leading one to wonder what curious conversations Will may have on his first day as boatman of the dead: if no one has been bringing them across, then he has at least Governor Swann and Norrington to ferry, and perhaps even Davy Jones himself.
5 I do not believe that his intent, when he asked the eight other pirate lords to help him bind Calypso to her bones, was to take over her powers as the sea; more that in the same way that she considered it a love-gift to entrust to him those who had given up their lives to her, he imagined that in human form she would be more comprehensible, less capricious, perhaps more firmly bound to him: not realizing that the binding was already there. And that while their physical meetings would have been only once in ten years, and that is a difficult way at best to carry on a relationship, it strikes me that in fact she would always have been with him. The Flying Dutchman is a ship that sails not only on, but within the sea, jealously barred from the land, and a beautiful obeah woman is not the sea's only face. He recognizes her in At World's End when the stormclouds gather and the maelstrom begins to form: his face upturned to the rain as he whispers her name is heartbreaking. But I doubt he was thinking along those lines at the time.
I had intended to talk more about characters, but perhaps I should get the myth out of the way first. I can say clinically that the first third of the film rather flailed around, plotwise, and the second was essentially a single massive action sequence, and the last was like five different endings all piled one on top of another, and that while at least this time around there were no sequences that I would have enthusiastically junked (cannibal island, I'm still looking at you), the recurring question of how many of the characters were betraying how many of the rest at any given time somehow took up more space than it should have—and yet I came out of the film with a surprising sense of awesomeness. And I think much of this had to do with the fact that not only did most of the characters' lives resolve in reasonable and resonant ways, but the mythological aspects of the world were upheld. That counts for a lot with me.
I am indebted to
fleurdelis28 (with whom I also saw the film) for pointing out that while we have been watching Will, Elizabeth, and Jack, what we have been seeing is the final play-out of the story that started however many centuries ago when the goddess Calypso fell in love with Davy Jones and made him the ferryman of the sea's dead.1 He may have been bargaining with Bootstrap Bill and Jack Sparrow and whoever else was unlucky enough to stray across his decks, but she has been arranging her own release—and perhaps their reunion—for some time now. She is the one from whom Jack obtained his compass of the heart's desire, which has led him to all sorts of places that mortals usually overlook or avoid. She resurrected Barbossa not only as a guide to the sea-routes of the underworld, but because nine pirate lords bound her into the shape of Tia Dalma, and only nine can unbind her; she needs him and Jack both, or at least the items in their possession that neither passed on before he died.2 And otherwise her interest in the affairs of the mortal world is exactly nil: the maelstrom into which she dissolves at the outset of the battle between the Brethren of the Coast and the East India Trading Company does not take sides and heals itself up into untroubled sea as soon as Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman have disappeared into its depths; she has at last what she came for.3 Now the rest of the world can get on with its life.There is also the question of balance. With the binding of Calypso, Barbossa charges, men came to rely less on their seafaring skill and more on the knowledge that a goddess was their ace in the hole—as indeed he himself counted on, facing the East India Trading Company. And the sea itself is out of whack. Davy Jones was supposed to care for all those who died at sea, but he abandoned his responsibilities to become the devil of the sea, who offers men one kind of hell in exchange for staving off another, and so they drift with no one to guide them through the waters between this world and the next.4 The goddess Calypso—which is not even her true name, only the most common name men have for her: many gods and many voices—has been uneasily human since the time of the first Brethren Court, and who knows what damage that has done to the normal course of the tides and the sands and whatever else is governed by the sea? However unpremeditatedly,5 Jones has come to fill that vacuum: "I am the sea." But he is only the heartless, drowning sea. He is shipwreck and desolation and worse things waiting, and while I do not pretend that Calypso is all the shining surface of the sea, she is not malevolent. Freeing her at once renders the world oddly less and more mythical, in that humanity must shift for itself where the ocean is concerned, but the sea has also regained its proper depth. And a ferryman whose honor will hold him to his post and whose heart is safe. More on this next time.
I am now so tired, I don't even have a clever simile. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, there will be some species of follow-up to this post. But not until my eyes stay open of their own accord. Right now, not so much.
Chase the dog star over the sea
Home where my true love is waiting for me . . .
Round the Cape Horn to Valparaiso
—Sting, "Valparaiso"
1 We are not given much information about the general structure of this underworld, but since there does not seem to have been specifically a sea-psychopomp before Jones, we both wondered if Calypso might not have created the position as a way of keeping him with her: essentially she made him her consort, immortal so long as he kept to his post and like to her in power; their τιμαί encompassed both the living sea and the dead, for the indefinite rest of time, whereas they would have had sixty, at the most seventy years together if he had remained an ordinary human man. In theory, this was a better idea than Endymion. But it is Calypso in the Odyssey who laments that while gods take can take mortal lovers with impunity, goddesses are not so fortunate: "And now in turn you gods resent that a mortal man is staying with me: / him I saved when he was aboard a keel, / alone, since with a bright thunderbolt Zeus had struck / his swift ship and shattered it in the middle of the wine-colored sea. / There all the rest of his noble companions perished, / but him the wind and the wave bore and brought here, / him I cared for kindly, and fed, / and would make immortal and ageless all his days." (5.129—136) There is also some fine solar mythology in the sunrises and sunsets to which entry to and exit from the underworld are explicitly linked, and I think Douglas Frame might have some words on that subject.
2 Somehow it makes a bizarre sort of sense that Ragetti's eye should have been one of the nine original bindings on Calypso; despite the frequent presence of curses and maritime deities, there is not a lot of random free-floating magic in this world, and I did always wonder where on earth he'd gotten it.
3 Not to throw my hat into the fanfiction ring, but I think there is a case to be made that their relationship is a valid interpretation of the legend of the Flying Dutchman, or at least the Wagnerian tradition thereof. He finds a woman who knows him for what he is and loves him: and that is also their tragedy, that they do still love one another, even after she has betrayed his love and he has betrayed her trust; that it is her nature to be wild and alluring and ever-changing and it was not his nature, once upon a time, to be cruel. Admittedly it's difficult to pick out her true feelings from their conversation in the hold of the Black Pearl, but when she speaks to third parties like Pintel and Ragetti, she defends him passionately; conversely, I disbelieve Davy Jones when he claims to Will and Cutler Beckett that the only payment he wants is Calypso murdered, and I listen to him when he tells her that his heart will always be hers. And I find it difficult to believe that, once unbound and informed by Will that her lover was the instrument of her imprisonment, she could not have trivially destroyed him if she felt like it. He dies with her name on his lips and her abyss receives him. Who knows where his soul goes after that?
4 Leading one to wonder what curious conversations Will may have on his first day as boatman of the dead: if no one has been bringing them across, then he has at least Governor Swann and Norrington to ferry, and perhaps even Davy Jones himself.
5 I do not believe that his intent, when he asked the eight other pirate lords to help him bind Calypso to her bones, was to take over her powers as the sea; more that in the same way that she considered it a love-gift to entrust to him those who had given up their lives to her, he imagined that in human form she would be more comprehensible, less capricious, perhaps more firmly bound to him: not realizing that the binding was already there. And that while their physical meetings would have been only once in ten years, and that is a difficult way at best to carry on a relationship, it strikes me that in fact she would always have been with him. The Flying Dutchman is a ship that sails not only on, but within the sea, jealously barred from the land, and a beautiful obeah woman is not the sea's only face. He recognizes her in At World's End when the stormclouds gather and the maelstrom begins to form: his face upturned to the rain as he whispers her name is heartbreaking. But I doubt he was thinking along those lines at the time.
no subject
no subject
Thank you. It really is worth seeing; I was prepared for the issues with pacing and plotting, but the level of intelligent myth took me by surprise. I hope you enjoy it likewise!
no subject
no subject
They are not the only characters who interest me, but I love how their story stands behind all the others. Even the song "Hoist the Colors," which is universally recognized as a call to freedom and the song of pirates across the globe, is itself a retelling of the binding of Calypso:
The king and his men stole the queen from her bed
And bound her in her bones
The seas be ours, and by the powers
Where we will, we'll roam
Fact has passed into folklore has passed into obscurity; I doubt any of the condemned men and women who sing "Hoist the Colors" in defiance of the East India Trading Company know or care about the identities of the "king" and the "queen" or the meaning of the phrase "bound her in her bones," but what they are singing is not a metaphor. This is how men mastered the sea.
All at once there broke into the age of baser ore
every crime: shame and truth and loyalty fled
and in their place came cheating and trickery
and plotting and violence and the wicked love of having.
The seaman spread his sails to the wind—nor did he yet
understand them well—and keels that before had stood
on high mountains now leapt on unknown waves.
—Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.127—133
no subject
And what a perfect quote. Darn it, you've got me all thinky again, and not about the thing I was supposed to be thinky about . . .
no subject
no subject
I love when big-budget summer blockbusters turn out to be movies that repay second and third viewings.
no subject
no subject
I love how their story turned out: I would not have pegged Will as the replacement for Davy Jones (my bet was actually on Norrington), but looking back it makes a great deal of sense. Now Will has a seafaring job for which his oddly unalterable sense of honor is well-suited, and Elizabeth has the wild rover's life to which she has always been well-suited, so that he is in no danger of abandoning his post from heartache and she remains as married to the sea as any pirate who ever sailed; their keeping faith with one another is what holds the worlds together. And the same holds true for the other characters involved in that moment of changeover. Captain Jack Sparrow may lie to you, double-cross you, steal all your sea-charts and drink all your rum and obnoxiously correct your pronunciation of "egregious," but he will not accept immortality over the body of one friend and the misery of another; and it is peculiarly in keeping with their prior relationship that when all the crew of the Dutchman crowd instinctively around Will ("Part of the ship, part of the crew"), it's Bootstrap who cuts out his own son's heart, to seal the binding and save his life. And you just know that between the pirate king and the ferryman of the dead and the entire crew of the Black Pearl, Will and Elizabeth's son is going to have a hell of an upbringing.
no subject
I also wondered if they weren't going to go the Elizabeth=Calypso route, though I suspected it would probably be Tia Dalma. I like what they did end up doing with Elizabeth, and that it was Jack's vote that gave her the rank, when he'd experienced firsthand what kind of pirate she is, what she'll do to keep her treasure and keep it safe. There's no one better to carry the title and to carry the heart of the captain of the Dutchman.
no subject
I was operating on the tragic-love parallel, but I love how in the end Norrington's arc had much less to do with his feelings for Elizabeth and much more to do with his own stubborn loyalties, some to other people, some to his sense of self. ". . . I'll take that as a 'no'."
I like what they did end up doing with Elizabeth, and that it was Jack's vote that gave her the rank, when he'd experienced firsthand what kind of pirate she is, what she'll do to keep her treasure and keep it safe. There's no one better to carry the title and to carry the heart of the captain of the Dutchman.
Yes. And beautifully said.
no subject
Elizabeth's piratical nature is probably my favorite thing in the movies. I've given it much thought. *G*
no subject
I came out of the theater thinking that he had been summarily dismissed by the story, and it annoyed me very much.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes—he even says specifically that she delights in giving men what they think they want, and then tormenting them with it for the rest of their lives; which is as good a description as any of the bargains he makes with his crew.
no subject
I have no memory of any reference to Calypso in the previous movies (maybe it happened, I just don't remember it) so the whole goddess plot seemed like a big non sequitur to me.
no subject
See, I wouldn't have recognized that at all. Awesome.
I have no memory of any reference to Calypso in the previous movies (maybe it happened, I just don't remember it) so the whole goddess plot seemed like a big non sequitur to me.
I don't think the name "Calypso" was mentioned in the second film, but I had already been associating Tia Dalma with the nymph of that name from the Odyssey (and Circe as well), so I didn't have any trouble adjusting when it turned up here.
no subject
as had I.
I loved reading this post and the comments,
no subject
no subject
Yes. And in the interests of accuracy, it seems that
no subject
no subject
no subject
I know how you feel. Too often I find myself posting things after 5am.
I can say clinically that the first third of the film rather flailed around, plotwise,
I felt completely disconnected from the movie during the first third. The execution scene at the beginning seemed like it had potential to be good in a grim way, but the pace was artificial and the kid's voice sounded too professional in a modern way. And I wish they'd get away from lighting just about every night scene with orange and blue. And though I love Chow Yun-Fat, he seemed a little superfluous.
and the second was essentially a single massive action sequence
I wish there'd been better sword fights. That's one thing all the Star Wars prequels have over the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. For the most part, the action sequences were good enough to keep the plot moving satisfactorily, but there was nothing really ingenious about how any of it was filmed, and it often felt too artificial to resonate on its own.
and the last was like five different endings all piled one on top of another
I agree with one review I read that complained about how most of the ships at the end just sat around, not doing anything. But I liked Orlando Bloom's Grey Head Scarf of Death.
the recurring question of how many of the characters were betraying how many of the rest at any given time somehow took up more space than it should have
I felt like the writers were constantly asking themselves, "I guess they're pirates, but are they piratey enough?" For my money, once they'd established a pirate U.N., they ought to've just given up on treating them as any kind of traditional pirate.
and yet I came out of the film with a surprising sense of awesomeness.
I liked it, too. For me, it was mainly the look and feel of some of the characters, especially Davy Jones and Calypso. And I loved several of Elizabeth's outfits, especially that frock coat she's wearing during the climax. With her lovely big eyebrows, she kind of reminded me of how I used to try to draw Nesuko.
facing the East India Trading Company
I have to admit, I found Lord Cutler Beckett's death to be one of the great, unintentionally funny moments in recent movie history. During the ridiculously overlong sequence of his ship getting blown up while he walked in slow motion I could feel waves of apathy washing over the audience. I have a feeling there are a lot of people who never figured out who he was or why he mattered to the plot. I saw the movie with my parents and sister and at dinner afterwards, during a conversation about the movie, I suddenly interjected, "So, how about that East India Trading Company, huh? Wasn't that something? Boyo . . . " I was met with blank looks all around.
Not to throw my hat into the fanfiction ring
Heaven forbid.
Leading one to wonder what curious conversations Will may have on his first day as boatman of the dead:
Hehe.
Nice review. I liked the movie, but I enjoy reading what you write about Davy Jones and Calypso a lot more.
no subject
He was very superfluous, and I would like to have seen more of him; Sao Feng is positioned as a force to be reckoned with in the waters around Singapore and an intriguing new presence in the cast, and mostly what he does is die under the mistaken belief that Elizabeth is Calypso. I also had a little trouble with the intensity of his interest in her. It may not be common knowledge that Calypso's last lover ended up as the captain of the most famous cursed ship in nautical lore, but it does not take a genius to realize that forcing a goddess—especially one with such power over life and death—is not a bright idea. This is what bound Ixion to a fiery wheel and trapped Theseus and Perithoos in the underworld and I'm sure there are analogues in Chinese myth. Seriously.
For the most part, the action sequences were good enough to keep the plot moving satisfactorily, but there was nothing really ingenious about how any of it was filmed, and it often felt too artificial to resonate on its own.
I maintain the wedding scene was awesome. "You may now kiss the . . . You may kiss . . . Just kiss!"
I have to admit, I found Lord Cutler Beckett's death to be one of the great, unintentionally funny moments in recent movie history. During the ridiculously overlong sequence of his ship getting blown up while he walked in slow motion I could feel waves of apathy washing over the audience.
It works oddly well as symbolism—he always has been disconnected from his environment; he is not a man of action, he is a man of business, and when his complex and ruthless intrigues fall through, he is utterly blank—but in terms of a real firefight, yeah, he'd have been blown to splinters in a second.
I liked the movie, but I enjoy reading what you write about Davy Jones and Calypso a lot more.
Heh. Thanks . . .
no subject
It seemed like there were a lot of interestingly designed, but ultimately pointless characters, like most of the Pirate U.N. I even wanted to see more of Keith Richards.
I maintain the wedding scene was awesome. "You may now kiss the . . . You may kiss . . . Just kiss!"
I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't wanted to see her in a fling with Jack Sparrow so badly. You know, it's interesting to think about the fact that Sparrow casually mentioned having slept with Calypso. I sort of wonder if that explains anything about him. Ploughing the seas, indeed.
he always has been disconnected from his environment; he is not a man of action, he is a man of business, and when his complex and ruthless intrigues fall through, he is utterly blank
Yeah, he certainly seemed like a real and valid character. I even liked the actor.
There is a cynical little voice in me who suggests the reason the movie ended up being about one corporation against another is that these films are so commercial that corporate culture is the only cultural perspective the filmmakers can honestly speak from.
no subject
I'm not sure they were pointless; I loved how although they were onscreen for maybe five, ten minutes total, each was clearly a fully-fledged character of whom we were only seeing glimpses (Sri Sumbhajee's falsetto-high voice means that he must be no one to trifle with, or how else would he have risen so far in a profession that seems to demand the charisma to command loyalty, Capitaine Chevelle paints his face as though he were still a nobleman and has a heated feud on with Captain Villanueva, presumably due to their competing interests in the New World, and so on). And they were not set up with the same expectations as Sao Feng, whom I legitimately thought would have more to do than pass on his piece of eight to Elizabeth.
I even wanted to see more of Keith Richards.
Yes. And that the Pirate Code, to which characters have referred over the course of the films with greater or lesser degrees of seriousness, is a physical book in his keeping: he seems to be very rarely consulted, but when it happens, his word is literally law. I love how much it looked like something that generations of pirates had compiled, commented on, and probably rewritten over the years, with different pages in different hands all pasted into a single codex.
I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't wanted to see her in a fling with Jack Sparrow so badly.
I didn't mind, because I was never sure if she was in love with Jack for himself, or in love with him for what he represented: freedom, the sea, a pirate's life for me, all of which she now has in her own right and on her own terms. In the same way, I think her role as pirate king—which I see no reason to believe she will give up, no matter that she will be raising a child for the next ten years—frees her to decide that she does love Will, and not just the streak of lawlessness in him that attracted her at the end of Curse of the Black Pearl. She no longer needs to look for piracy by proxy. She is the real thing herself.
You know, it's interesting to think about the fact that Sparrow casually mentioned having slept with Calypso.
And surviving more or less unscathed. I wonder if he had any idea who she was at the time . . . It does suit him and his mythology.
Yeah, he certainly seemed like a real and valid character. I even liked the actor.
Cutler Beckett turned out to be so much more interesting than his initial position in the story promised (although I suspect I do not want to know the official backstory between him and Jack Sparrow, since the nebulous implications of an actual person underneath the cool insistence on "just good business" are perhaps more intriguing). We never hear him raise his voice. And the moment a broadside hit the Endeavor and knocked him off his feet and Jack Sparrow shook his hand on their bargain all in the same moment, I think that was the first time I felt sorry for him.
no subject
That's true.
And that the Pirate Code, to which characters have referred over the course of the films with greater or lesser degrees of seriousness, is a physical book in his keeping:
That was funny, though I had a hard time buying it, though that may've been just me. Certainly there have been criminal organisations with long and elaborate traditions, like the Japanese yakuza (I had interesting links RE: yakuza, but LJ won't let me post them).
I guess I personally prefer to think of pirates as being far more disorganised.
no subject
They do seem to get into a lot of brawls around their conference table . . .