Pirate, Extraordinaire // Sequel to Take Off Your Dress, Pick Up A Sword

note from the author

after that short and underwhelming chapter, you now get a gratuitous author's note <3 if you don't care about my potc & writing thoughts, scroll down to the bold words for info about the sequel.

first -- thank you to my sister and to my friend p for betaing and supporting me! thank you to @Rosebud1208 for making gorgeous fanart of joanna! thank YOU from the bottom of my heart for reading this far! i love you! if you commented i love you even more!! it's been a blast (and a challenge!) to write this. i'm so happy i get to share with y'all.

time to talk about potc too much <3 i'd like to discuss the changes i made from the movie to my version (i criticize these movies because i love them so much ok!! i want what is best for them)

jack has some ooc moments in dmc; at least, they don't fit with my characterization of him. his incompetence as a captain really grinds my gears. why did the writers make him so bad at it. you think this man became a pirate lord by acting a fool? you think he'd go through a traumatic mutiny, chase after his ship for ten years, and then act like a fool to his crew...? nah. in the same vein, the writers were on some acid having him abandon the pearl during the kraken attack!! jack is under significant stress in dmc but jack would never, under any circumstances, abandon the ship he spent ten years chasing. the ship he traded his soul for.

i have some non-jack-related issues with dmc, too...for instance, they really gloss over the death of 80% of the pearl's crew at the cannibal island. i wrote in a funky lil funeral (rip queen anamaria). on a separate note, i thought it was odd how bitchy will was right off the bat when he's reunited with jack after the cannibal fiasco. i saw your lil blush when jack complimented your hat in cotbp, mr. turner. so i wrote out a more heartfelt reunion.

i think about these movies too much! enough about that. time to talk about myself <3

i had so much fun slathering foreshadowing and symbolism all over this baby. some of my faves...joanna stomping on jack's sandcastle! "joanna woke slowly, draped over her bedmate like a shroud." a shroud is the fabric used to cover a dead person! joanna steals the letters of marque from jack while talking to him; later, she steals the handcuffs from elizabeth!

my greatest challenge was balancing many characters at once, especially jo and lizzie, since they sometimes serve a similar purpose. i hate to steal the spotlight from elizabeth for joanna -- i love lizzie and her arc and her relationship with jack -- but i realized mid-writing that it made wayyy more sense for jo to kill jack than for elizabeth to. and it was fun to write <3 yes gurl! violence murder kill!

(also speaking of joanna and elizabeth. i hope joanna's lil crush on elizabeth comes across. joanna is a bisexual queen (and so is jack!) but that's not rly something i can mention in the narrative, since these 1700s bitches don't even know what that word means.)

concerning a sequel...it's definitely in the works, but my life is absolutely crazy right now. my mental health is currently at an all time low, due to a multitude of factors, but mostly online school has done a number on me and preparing for college has me stretched thin. while writing fanfiction is a favorite pastime of mine, my writing can't be used to prepare for my future and unfortunately, i don't have a lot of headspace for anything that isn't college right now.

when i have time, i will dedicate time to writing part three. i want to write part three so bad! i know exactly what joanna's path will be and i can't wait to share it...but it might be a few months. i'll post here when the sequel is up and announce it on my profile. if you want, i can pop you off a message when i post it.

update 12/08/21: i have a MASSIVE prologue written, but life and writer's block is getting in my way! joanna is on my mind and i hope I can share the rest of her story with you someday. thank you so much for your support!

to conclude...thank you so much for reading and supporting me! it makes me happy and makes me want to write more. love <3