I Want More Pirate Fantasy

Me original plan was to speak to ye ‘bout AI, and related things, perhaps tying in Person of Interest. But in the voyage of preparing for that Saturday Note, I sailed into a rabbit hole that was, uh… it not be a route I advise anyone sailing. And I grew weary of hearing any talk of AI, as I imagine you might be these days, too.

So, today being International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I thought I’d theme me Note over something related to gentlemen of fortune. I pondered writing the entire thing in Pirate Talk, but I reasoned it would be a pain to do and I’d rather be keelhauled than just say what I wanted to.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra announced their tour dates, too.

On Pirate Fantasy

I be wanting more pirate fantasy.

Alright, I want more pirate fiction in general, although in that case it’s more of a matter of just finding it. And I guess there’s more pirate fantasy out there that I just haven’t picked up yet. Fine, okay. I still want more out there, and I’d absolutely love for it to become more mainstream. Pirate fantasy! Not just historical fiction, but fantasy–set in either the real world, or an invented one. The subgenre has everything that you could possibly want in an adventure story: journeys on the high seas, with guns! Swords! A crew of misfits! New lands! Fighting against the powers of overbearing empires! 

It’s all there for the taking! 

[I’m pretty sure someone out there is going to tell me to read One Piece–buzz off! I’m not going to go through a bajillion-volume long manga! I don’t have so many other things that I want to do with my time instead!]

Science-fiction is also kind of exempt from this desire. I’ve noticed that in things like space-opera, ‘pirates’ tends to be a catch-all term for generic thugs we need to harass the heroes while they’re out in space or time or something. Yeah, obviously, in a setting with laser guns, a guy waving around a cutlass isn’t going to be too practical, but it’s really disappointing when you tell the audience our heroes will fight pirates, and they’re disposable mooks. I still haven’t forgiven Legends of Tomorrow, a show about time-traveling superheroes, for introducing Time Pirates and making them the most forgettable bad guys on the show. So no, no sci-fi.

Except for Treasure Planet. That one can stay.

And also: NOT ROMANCE. There is a lot of pirate romance out there. As you know, I’m not against a romantic subplot being in a book I’m reading, I just tend to avoid romance as a genre itself. 

Fantasy. I want fantasy. I want to see pirates sword fighting with enchanted swords, I want to see great big monsters of the sea, I want to see ghost ships straight out of maritime legends, I want to see buried treasure! I mean, yeah, I’m kind of just listing out things from Pirates of the Caribbean, I will admit that, but that’s because while those movies definitely have flaws (and  I prefer to not acknowledge that the fifth one exists at all), it managed to brew a pretty good cocktail from the essence of pirates stories and get the feel just right, even if the Plotting left something to be desired. And aside from more stories like that, I’d like someone to take those ideas, and combine them with the standard tropes of heroic fantasy thrown in there, like fighting against an evil empire, or prophecies, or storming the villain’s castle, or nonhuman beings to build out the world.

Like, imagine the story of a chosen one, except he (or she!) is a member of a pirate crew. Imagine if mermaids filled the role that elves often do in standard fantasy. Imagine if the evil overlord rules from a castle in an archipelago, or heck, maybe even the mother of all warships in a floating fortress. Imagine wizards doing all kinds of stuff with gunpowder in battles. Imagine legendary gunsmiths doing what magical swordsmiths are doing in all kinds of epic fantasy.

I’ve said this before: epic fantasy doesn’t need to be in a magic version of medieval Europe (or, let’s be real here, medieval England). Usually I drive this in the direction of non-European cultures; however, you can also do things with this in settings like, say, a magic version of the Golden Age of Piracy, and I would absolutely love it if it was done well. 

It would just be really, really, really cool.

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