Transcript: Track 32: Pirate AUs

Episode 32 posted May 13, 2022
Transcript by EllenofOz
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.

[Intro music]

Ellen: Hi everyone. Welcome to the 32nd episode of the Mixtape Book Club podcast. My name is Ellen.

Mal: And my name is Mal.

Ellen: In each episode, we take an in-depth look at different trope or sub genre in the huge variety of Destiel fan fiction. And in this episode, we’re going to take a look at some pirate AUs.

Mal: and to discuss her fic, Of Twists and Turns, we would like to welcome author, Kitmistry. Hey Kit!

Kitmistry: Hi, thank you for having me.

Mal: Oh, Thank you for agreeing to come and talk to us.

Ellen: Okay. So the other fics we’re going to talk about today are: His Right-hand Man by goldenraeofsun, Blow High, Blow Low, and so sailed we, by insominia, and Eye of the Storm by nickelkeep.

Mal: Links to all of the fics that we’re going to be talking about today will be available in the episode post on mixtapebookclub.com, and they’ll be all included in our Mixtape book club collection on ao3. Which is…I don’t know how big that is getting now. I was looking, I looked at it a little while ago, but it’s growing into like quite a little treasure trove of fics now after all these episodes. So that’s good. Good place to go digging if you’re just not sure what you want to read, just go and pick a random one from there.

Ellen: Yeah. Like three or four fics each episode and this is the 32nd one. There must be a lot. Fantastic.

Before we start talking about the fics, we have to say a really big thank you to everyone who has supported us so far in our ko-fi account. If you appreciate the work that we put into the podcast and you want to support us you can go to ko-fi.com/mixtapebookclub and support us as much as you’re able to. You can come and join our discord server and have a chat with us there, or get a bit of a sneak peek into what’s coming up in the podcast.

So just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who’s done that so far. We’ve been overwhelmed.

Mal: We really do appreciate it. So thank you very much. Lovely to have another way to connect with people as well.

Ellen: okay.

Mal: All right. So pirates.

Ellen: Yeah, we can’t go far these days anywhere in the fandom spaces without, finding pirates, thanks to Our Flag Means Death.

Mal: The gay pirates! the other gay pirates (laugh)  

Ellen: yeah. It’s like the supernatural fandom kind of discovered these, this wonderful gay pirate story and just moved into the Our Flag Means Death fandom.

Mal: I think it was just very, yeah, it was very timely for the Supernatural fandom. Wasn’t it? Because we’ve kind of like a lot of us have been through this healing process, kind of where we’ve been kind of grieving, losing our show and been through, been through a lot on the old Destiel ship in the past a year or two,

Ellen: The good ship Destiel…

Mal: Yeah, the good ship Destiel, and then along comes Our Flag Means Death, where they’re just so happy to just have everything there on screen for us to scream at. It’s wonderful.

Ellen: Yes.

Mal: So talking about gay pirates, if you enjoy listening to podcasts, which if you’re listening to us talk, there’s a fairly decent chance that you might enjoy listening to podcasts.

There is one out there now which is posted by the lovely DustyLCanon, who if you’re in the fandom, you, you may know, from during podfics and a Destiel fanfic podcast called Making it up as we go. And with her is Mary… I’m actually not sure if Mary has many other fandom names, but they cohost the Carrying Wayward podcast as well. So two excellent Destiel podcast hosts have come together to do an Our Flag Means Death podcast called The Gentleman Pirate’s Library here.

Ellen: Yeah. It’s a rewatch podcast. So they’re watching, well, they haven’t seen the whole show yet, so they’re watching one episode at a time and recording their observations and reactions to it. There’s three episodes out so far. Yeah. Possibly another one by the time you’re hearing this. And it’s really, it’s really, it’s really good. They both got such beautiful gentle, soothing voices. So it’s really lovely to listen to them speak and talk about what they love about each of the episodes.

Mal: Yes. And we do have a little kind of trailer for that podcast, which we said we would put out there for you, which we will just add to the end of this podcast. So if you want to listen at the end of this episode and see if the Gentleman Pirate’s Library might be for you, then just keep on listening once you’re sick of listening to us, basically (laughs)

Ellen: Don’t stop don’t stop! And if you, if you want to listen to that, like check them out a bit more yourself, then they can be found on all Spotify and all the usual places for podcasts, but on Twitter, their tag is “gentlemanpir8”, which I really love. I think that’s really, that’s very clever.

Mal: Yeah. That’s a cute tag. I like it.

Ellen: So we won’t, we won’t talk about any spoilers for the show obviously, I know that kit you and in Europe and in general, outside of the US… I know we’ve, we’ve had it in Australia on, on streaming TV, but I think a lot of countries still haven’t got it yet. So we don’t want to spoil anything about Our Flag Means Death in particular, but we have some great pirate AUs with Destiel to talk about today.

Mal: yeah! And I for one am very happy that because of that show, we’re now getting more pirate Destiel content because I’ve always been a pirate fan.

Ellen: Not to mention your own new pirate fic!

Mal: No, (laughter) We will not! But, you know how, when you were a kid, like they always say you’re either like a ninja kid or a pirate kid. It’s like ninjas or pirates who would win. I was 100% always in the pirate camp as a kid, I was obsessed with pirates.

Kitmistry: I’m a pirate kid. Definitely a pirate kid.

Ellen: You are?

Mal: Mm-hm. I loved some pirates. I think my pirate obsession as a child though started by watching Muppet Treasure Island when I was like, I don’t know, probably way too young to understand most of the jokes in it. (laughter) Because it’s one of those things where you watch it again and as an adult and you’re like, oh, okay. They let me watch that? (laughter)

Ellen: Oh really? I don’t think I’ve seen it, probably since I was a kid, It’s got adult humor in it, does it?

Mal: yeah. That’s just a few little kind of winks and nods, which I definitely did not get as a child.

Ellen: Right, okay. I think my main pirate thing, like as a child was probably in Peter Pan type, like Captain Hook type things. So the pirates were bad guys to me. Like these days, in media generally since Pirates of the Caribbean, maybe, they’re very romanticized and maybe made out to be honorable people who sort of were forced to take a life of crime on the seas or whatever. But I think in, in reality, possibly a lot of them were actually like really nasty people? In real life.

Kitmistry: I’m pretty sure most of them were criminals, but I think we see them as very free people. Now, nowadays.

Mal: Yeah. The thing is, most of them… I know I’m going to position myself as resident pirate expert, but that’s literally only because of where I live and the fact that Blackbeard is like our only celebrity that’s worth anything.

Ellen: Mal, actually you haven’t told us where you’re recording, you’re coming towards the live from where it happened.

Mal: Yeah. I’m currently as we’re recording, I am in Ocracoke island. So anybody who doesn’t know where that is where Blackbeard was eventually killed in 1718. So yeah, it’s a tiny, tiny little island, but it’s yeah, it’s, a lot of fun if you are a strange little pirate nerd like me, but yeah, that definitely most of them went in the life because they were criminals. However, we also have to stop and consider that a lot of the things that were considered criminal back then we might not actually consider so criminal today. So just because we’re calling them criminals, doesn’t actually necessarily, always mean they were bad people. So it’s kind of an interesting line to draw there, but there are definitely plenty of them that were bad people.

Ellen: there seems to be a bit of a theme running through some of these AUs where mainly it seems most of them is Cas in this situation, but he’s a Navy officer who defected or gets captured by the pirates or whatever… that’s in a few different ones. And almost always, Dean is like the pirate captain who’s honorable, and you know, it’s not, I haven’t done like an actual, you know, analysis of them to see which one, which way around it goes in the majority. But it seems like the ones we’ve read in the last couple of weeks, that’s the way round it seems to go.

Kitmistry: From this, from the four that we have now, two of them, Dean is the captain and in the other two Cas is the captain.

Ellen: Oh really? Oh yeah. There we are, that’s perfect!

Kitmistry: But Dean is not in the Navy, I think in any of the fics.

Mal: Yeah. Not many of the ones that we have, but that situation for Cas would have been moderately common. ‘Cause yeah, that happened a lot. There was a lot of, a lot of corruption in the Navy or so kind of like a similar situation to we have for like army veterans today, where people would get out of the Navy, but then there was not a lot they could do afterwards because like their only skills were related to being on a ship. So there was not a lot that they could do. And a lot of them ended up pulling into piracy that way.

Kitmistry: And I think being a pirate, was better than being in the Navy. So that probably was a reason why people chose to change their life.

Mal: Yes. I didn’t know this until this weekend, but somebody told me this weekend that like the main prevailing theory was the Blackbeard was in the Navy up until he became a pirate. So,

Ellen: yeah, I didn’t realize that he was he was from Bristol.

Mal: Yeah, I think he was born in Bristol somewhere around 1680, I think. Ish, not quite sure how old he was, but like 1680-ish. He was born in Bristol, which is where I went to college. So woo.

Ellen: More pirate nerdery! Excellent. I, we like, we didn’t really mean to do two historical fic episodes in a row because we just did Regency, but this, this golden age of piracy is…

Mal: Golden age of Destiel piracy!

Ellen: It’s a little earlier than, than Regency. So this is like around 1700 kind of times. So, and it’s kind of funny because they, in, in Regency fics, they, they often speak in a way, like it’s a bit, it sounds a bit more Jane Austen-y and the language comes through, but in these pirate fics, they don’t tend to do that so much? I’ve found that at least, in these ones we’ve read anyway, there is, there is a lot of the language, like the terminology and all that kind of thing, but in the dialogue and the…the prose…

Mal: yeah, cause there’s the premise, the odd word that they say like here or there, there’s the old word that they say here or there, and I guess that kinda makes sense because they’re not kind of like putting on all the airs and graces for other people, like a lot of people in Regency fics are? They are much more casual, I guess. So maybe that makes sense. But there’s definitely a pirate language, which the different fics use to kind of different levels. Like each of the fics, I think has a slightly different level.

Ellen: I was very impressed with the level of research that has obviously gone into all of these fics. There’s a lot of terminology. I learned a lot of things about ships and you know, even that… we can talk about it later, but how the crews would elect captains or you know, the way they, divvied up the, the booty, like that kind of thing. I didn’t know it was so democratic. That’s really interesting.

Anyway, we should get stuck in, shall we?

Mal: Yeah, let’s do it. Okay. Would you like to read the summary of, Of Twists and Turns for us, Kit?

Kitmistry: Yeah. Sure. So.

When naval surgeon Castiel Novak is captured by the Black Impala pirates, he has no choice but to agree to their terms: He is to serve on their ship for a whole year before they release him. That doesn’t mean he is going to like it, though. Especially when their captain is the embodiment of everything Castiel despises.

Determined to earn his freedom, Castiel settles into the life of an outlaw. When the pirates’ true goal is revealed, though, he can no longer deny that things are not as black and white as he thought they were. And he can’t deny how drawn he is to Captain Winchester either.

Ellen: I love this story.

Mal: Yes. This was so much fun.

Ellen: So this was published in 2019 for the DCBB, 75,000 words long and it is explicit and it contains some really some beautiful artwork by pimentogirl as well.

Mal: Yes. So good. Love their art. This is actually one of my favorite genres of fic, though I have yet to come up with an adequate name for this genre. So it’s like where you have an AU or a historical, whatever it may be, any kind of AU, but then there are some canon kind of like hunting elements worked into it, even though it’s still an AU. And I don’t know what we call that. Please one of these days, can we come up with a name for that? But I like it a lot.

Kitmistry: I guess it falls under the umbrella of a fusion fic?

Mal: Yeah. Kind of because we’ve got those like Supernatural, SPN, hunting parts in it, but it’s definitely an AU.

Ellen: Yeah, It’s a time to sleep.

Mal: Yeah. And there are, there are quite a few kind of fics in this sort of genre out there. I just personally really like it because it gives you that little bit of kind of grounding for the characters. And it’s, I don’t know. It’s just a lot of fun. Like at the end of the day I watched Supernatural, well, one of the reasons I started watching Supernatural, other than like Dean and Cas in the first place was because I enjoyed the monster of the week aspect of it. So whenever there’s like something about the lore or like the monster stuff for over into an AU, I get excited.

Ellen: So Kit, can you tell us about how this fic…what was your inspiration for writing this one?

Kitmistry: Okay. The inspiration was actually their story of Odysseus, which never made it into the final fic.

Mal: Isn’t that always the way? (laughter)

Kitmistry: But it was a good way to start. I knew I wanted to write a story about pirates because I love stories about pirates and we don’t have enough stories with pirates in the fandom.

Mal: Yes.

Kitmistry: So I figured it was time to fix that.

Mal: Yes. Well, I’m very glad that you did, especially with this one, ‘cause I… this is one of those stories that I dug into it and started reading it because it had been on my marked for later since probably since the 2019 DCBBs posted because that’s, that’s how tragic my marked for later list is at this point. So it’s probably been on there since then. And I kept on looking at it and it was just never the right time.

Like I either didn’t have enough time and I just needed something a little bit shorter or it was like I had a whole day or two. And so I wanted like a 200,000 word, you know, something massive. And I was like, no, I really want to read that it’s got pirates in it, and it’s by Kitmistry, and I know I’m going to love it. I’ve got to, I’ve got to dedicate time to that one. And then it was one of those fics where as soon as I started reading it, I just read and read and then I got to the end and genuinely had the thought, or was like, I thought this was 75,000 words and I got to the top and I was like, oh, it was, and it felt like it was like 30 or 40 plus I had just been like bingeing it.

Ellen: It flows so well, doesn’t it?

Kitmistry: Oh, thank you. I’m glad to hear that.

Mal: Yeah, I loved it.

Ellen: It’s got such a lovely enemies to lovers kind of like, they really are antagonistic at the beginning and then over, gradually over the story they get closer. And then yeah.

Mal: I kind of love stories where it takes them so long to get their shit together because through kind of genuine circumstances, enemies to lovers, misunderstandings, having not talked about anything and kind of… I guess in this one, that’s almost a… not really a consent issue necessarily, but there is the fact that technically at the beginning, the way Castiel views things. I think it’s probably important to say that this is Cas POV. So we do kind of see him thinking things through and viewing himself as Dean’s prisoner. So there is a while where, although it’s very clear to the reader that Cas probably has a lot more agency than he thinks he does at the beginning.

There’s probably kind of an implied consent issue there with anything happening between Dean and Cas, even though that’s not actually really the case at all. It’s just that Cas won’t let go of the idea that he’s there against his will.

Kitmistry: yeah, and it was it was actually important for me that Cas chose to stay on the ship after a certain amount of time, because he did get the choice to leave the, the Winchester pirates and he didn’t, he chose to stay.

Mal: Yeah. And it wasn’t that long into things before Dean kind of basically gave him the option. Yeah. So it was kind of fun as a reader to kind of watch Cas’s thought process, kind of go through those things, going from thinking of himself as a prisoner and viewing things with the view of, okay, well, when we get to this place, maybe I can work out how to escape, to, okay, we’ve got to this place and I’ve been let off the ship. I could escape, but he makes absolutely no effort to he’s just like, ah,

Ellen: I can go any time now. Here I go. I’m going.

Mal:. Yeah, I really can. (laughter)

Ellen: I’ll just watch the romantic moment on the moonlit sea with my pirate captain who I totally not a prisoner anymore. So that you’ve got quite a few, like it’s almost like, a series of episodes basically where they have to go… they kill a bunch of different monsters on the way round. The monsters that you included in the fic are they, are they all like real kind of Caribbean myths or where did you get those things from?

Kitmistry: They’re all real…well they’re not real, they’re actual mythological monsters. They’re not all from the Caribbean though, I think I have one that is from Japanese mythology, I think. Oh yeah. I think I have it in an author’s note somewhere. I remember writing it somewhere. I don’t remember which one it was.

Ellen: Okay.

Kitmistry: And the others I’m pretty sure the others were all either from stories or from movies I watched. So there wasn’t anything that I made up.

Ellen: Well they’re absolutely terrifying, I have to say.

Mal: I’m not going to check, ‘cause it might be, it might be a spoiler. Cause it’s, I think it’s the monsters that are working with… how can I say this in a non spoiler-y way?

Kitmistry: With one of the villains.

Mal: Yeah! With one of the villains, right?

Kitmistry: Yeah. You got the, yeah, that’s the one. That’s the one.

Mal: Okay, right right.

Kitmistry: Oh, but now that I think about it, some Greek mythology did make it in with that villain. Ah, good for me.

Ellen: Oh yeah. Oh, it’s because you had the, yeah. Yes. You have to try not to be spoiler-y as well.

Mal: Yeah. With the, especially the method of the whole thing at the end. It’s very very Greek. Yeah.

Ellen: Actually the battle scenes in general for all of these fics are amazing. Like the, the ship battles, you know, like with all the cannons and the way that the ships are damaged when you have cannonballs coming at them. I haven’t seen that many movies or anything with it where there has been ship related battles, but I’m very impressed with the way that that is described in, especially in this particular story.

Yeah, it’s kind of terrifying when you think about it, like you’re on with, on this huge ship at sea and there’s these bloody cannibals flying at you.

Mal: yeah. The not the not fun way to have balls flying at your face. Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. (laughs)

Mal: But it’s but it’s all written so well that it’s, it’s very clear what’s happening. Like even if you know nothing about boats and you’re like, oh, it’s a floating wooden thing. You can still very clearly picture like everything that’s going on in these battles, which is great. Like that. That’s very good to me. Gotta be good writing to keep that straight.

Kitmistry: There aren’t that many resources about sea battles, which was something that I had trouble with when I was writing.

But then I kept watching that video from Pirates of the Caribbean where they’re like, who was it? One of the Navy guys, and he’s walking down the stairs and the ship is exploding all around him. And that was the vibe I was going with.

Mal: Yeah. Right. (laughter)

Ellen: Well, that definitely came through.

I was going to say something about Sam and his addiction, but I don’t know if that’s too much of a spoiler.

Mal:, I mean, it’s not going to spoil the main plot. So I think we’re probably good to, right. Yeah.

Kitmistry: And I think it’s explained in chapter two or maybe one, so it’s pretty early on.

Mal: I thought that having Sam on board and having him struggling with his… well, even at the beginning, he’s not really struggling with withdrawal cause he’s not even really trying.

But later on we get to that point. But I thought that that was a very cool kind of parallel to canon having that. And it gives you a very interesting relationship between Dean and Sam to work with, instead of just having them being like brothers in arms, they get along and everything’s great.

Kitmistry: And it was also a reason for Cas to be on the ship because they needed a doctor. It’s not like they took a random prisoner and they kept him on the ship.

Mal: Yes. And it’s not just, oh, we need a doctor, but you know, the butcher and the carpenter could probably manage, like they needed, they needed someone who knew what they were doing with Sam there. So.

Ellen: Yeah. And it’s nice that the way that he’s integrated into the crew, like it’s the found family vibes, you know, like he, he helps everybody basically at some time or another and becomes one of the crew, even though he was supposed to be a prisoner.

Mal: Yes. So he ends up helping one of the, yeah. I love the fact that you have Charlie and Joe in this and Cas obviously ends up being one of the people that kind of helps out. Yeah. Posing as men on the ship, because back then it was considered bad luck by a lot of people to have women on the ship.

So, but I liked the fact that Cas kind of finds out. Like you don’t necessarily really get any reaction on that aspect of it from Cas. Like there’s absolutely no, like he doesn’t seem to give two shits either way, whether they’re a woman on this ship, he is more concerned about the fact that the other people are going to create an annoying fuss about this.

Kitmistry: It’s like, he doesn’t care about women either way. He just likes Dean.

Mal: Yeah. And he’s like, well, it literally makes no difference to me. So, eh.  But yeah, I liked that and I don’t know why I found this so funny, but when he there is, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say there is a brief portion in this fic where Charlie is injured and being the ship’s doctor that’s obviously how Cas finds out that it’s, it’s the Charlie that we know. And there’s just like a brief point where he’s like treating her and like considers telling her that he’s only into men as if that would make it more comfortable, just randomly coming out to her while he’s stitching her up.

And I’m like, I’m not sure that would be quite the comfort you think it is in that moment. I see where you’re coming from, but.. like…

Ellen: And I think she, I don’t think she’s worried about that particularly at that time.

Mal: Yeah. Like I can see where you’re coming from with that. But like, let’s not make this about you, Cas. (laughter)

No, it was good. It made me pause to have a little bit of chuckle. It was good.

Kitmistry: Well at least he tried. He tried.

Mal: He did. Yes, he did.

Ellen: I like how you’ve got as a tag in this one, you’ve got “sailing inaccuracies”. Like I feel like every pirate fic or fic that involves, like sailing and tall ships or whatever, has some kind of tag, like I had to include one in my fics that had sailing, and I’m like, “author is not a sailor”. You’re trying to stave off people who are like, “oh, you didn’t describe the mizzenmast properly”. But anyway.

Mal: My favorite tag is “tentacles, in brackets, not the sexy kind”. It says a lot about this fandom that you have to specify. So, yep. Yes. (laughter)

Ellen: That would be a whole different fic.

Mal: Take a bit of a turn halfway through there. No, but the tentacle parts and the monster fighting parts were really well-described as well. I loved the fact that it wasn’t just a case of, oh, you know, this monster bobs up. He’s scary looking. We’ll try and stab him. Like each of the things that they’re hunting is very distinct and like the way that they work, and when they find them and kind of the effect that they have on the environment that they’re fighting in, which I thought was pretty cool. So I liked that a lot.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s beautiful atmospheric writing.

Mal: Yes.

Kitmistry: Thank you. I tried, I tried really hard.

Mal: I love the fact that right up until he is literally face-to-face or like head-to-head, many heads, with his first like monster thing Cas literally just does not believe anything that they’re saying about these monster things. He is literally going out on a hunt with them and still does not believe.

Kitmistry: They’re crazy. They’re all drunk. They’re high.

Ellen: These aren’t real, right? Yeah.

Mal: It’s like, wow. I thought it was just Sam that was high on this ship. Apparently it’s all of them. Yeah. I mean, he handles it. He handles it quite well once he’s confronted with the reality. At that point, I guess you don’t have much choice, like oh, right. Okay.

Ellen: No, at that point he’s got like injured people and things like work to do

Mal: He’s got other things to focus on.

Ellen: Don’t worry too much about it.

Kitmistry: By the time he realizes that the monsters are real, it’s his time to shine on the ship because people are coming back and they need to be treated.

Ellen: that’s right. Yeah, yeah.

Mal: Yes. He’s got that focus. Yeah. Cas is just so likable in this fic though. Like I just, I just really like him in this fic.

Kitmistry: I think he’s very soft in this fic, and I don’t usually write him as very soft.

Mal: He is, but he’s the kind of soft, where he’s soft, but he doesn’t let people walk all over him. Like he’s still kind of got that spine to him, which I like a lot, like, even, even when he’s been captured by Dean. When he’s arguing with him, he just gives back as good as he gets all the time.

Ellen: So it’s like a late-season Cas type thing, rather than an earlier kind of not caring so much,

Mal: then it was so satisfying just the whole world and it’s one of those lovely fics where when the fic finished without spoiling, you know, how it ends or anything, but when it finished, I could kind of very clearly see in my head how the future went for them. Like without being explicitly told that like, oh, they went to this next and then this next, then this next I was left, like perfectly happy and content and having an idea what happened, but being able to imagine it myself.

And I kind of love that in a fic. Like if I end up feeling like I need a timestamp in order to like, know what happens next to them? Then I will just sit there and like itch until I get it. (laughter) But at the same time, I don’t always want to like be told every little detail either because it’s like, well, you know, I don’t necessarily want to see every single life event that happens to them for the rest of their lives. I can imagine some of that. I just want to know that they’re happy. So this was perfect for me.

Ellen: Yeah. very satisfying ending. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that I loved that Cas is a botanist and he, he goes to look at, to pick flowers basically when they go on land, he goes to look at some plants and those, these drawings and build his encyclopedia or whatever.

I just loved that. It was like an extra kind of a, you know, scientist thing that he had.

Kitmistry: I think I think when I was researching for the fic, there was a, I think it was a site it’s not a book. Yeah, probably found it online. And it was basically about how the everyday life of a ship surgeon would be like. And many of them were into botany as it turns out.

Mal: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Cause it would’ve been a lot of, kind of, you know, herbal remedies for things and boil up with this plant and mash it up and stick it on there and hope it does it’s thing. Like, you know, so yeah.

Ellen: And I guess in the 1700s, they wouldn’t have had a whole lot of anything apart from the plants that they found on the islands.

Mal: Yeah. Precursor to modern medicine

Kitmistry: And they… yes. Back then the job of a surgeon or a doctor and the job of a pharmacist or a botanist were pretty much identical.

Mal: That’s pretty cool. Actually. Yeah. Medicine was a little terrifying back then. I was doing some research, the other day for a fic of my own and I was talking to somebody like that works in a living history museum. And so I was talking to them about medicine back then and how terrifying some of it was. And they pointed out that one of the most common treatments for a gunshot wound was to pour boiling oil on it. (laughter and ewwwww)

Ellen: before you’ve pulled the bullet out or after?

Mal: I don’t know. I’m going to look further into the information that they gave me and just sit there and cringe while I do it. Eesh.

Kitmistry: You need to report back with the results.

Mal: Will do. (laugh) So yeah, medicine back then – slightly terrifying

Kitmistry: Also very hit and miss, as it turns out.

Mal: Yeah. For sure.

Ellen: Easy, easy to get infections and scurvy and all sorts of things.

Mal: Sure. Though I did read somewhere actually that people on ships, pirates and stuff, actually probably had lower infection rates than people on land because they… to put it politely, they weren’t sitting around in as much of their own crap as people on land were.

Kitmistry: I can see why that makes sense.

Mal: Like ships were probably actually cleaner than a lot of average, like streets.

Ellen:. Yeah. They would have kept their drinking water and whatever cleaner as well, or they just drank like rum or whatever instead of water, probably.

Mal: Yes. Grog.

Kitmistry: Plus, sea water is actually very good for cleaning wounds and stuff because of the iodine. Yeah.

Mal: Oh, true. Yes. Cool.

Ellen: Well, they were in the perfect place for treating nasty wounds.

Mal: I don’t think we’ve ever gone down a medical tangent while we’ve been talking about fic before, but here we go.

Ellen: It’s fascinating. And kind of really makes you glad to be alive in the modern day.

Mal: Very much. Yes. Shout out to all of our nurses that are listening. I know we’ve got a lot in this fandom, so thank you. Thanks for not pouring boiling oil on us. Go read this fic everybody! If it wasn’t clear from me bingeing it and thinking it was half the length it was, I definitely liked this one.

Ellen: Okay. So His Right Hand Man is by goldenraeofsun. I think we’ve done one or two of Rae’s fics before. This one was actually published a couple of months ago at the beginning of 2022, and it is 17,000 words and it’s rated M and the summary goes like this:

After Sam runs away from home, tired of his life on their failing estate, Dean naturally chases after him – right onto a pirate ship.

Dean doesn’t feel the call of the sea or crave the adventure of piracy like Sam, but he can grin and bear it. He can do anything as long as Sam stays safe.

Then again, Dean might even come around to Sam’s way of thinking, provided he can spend more time with The Seraph’s mysterious captain.

So yeah, we’ve gone into one where Cas is the pirate captain and Dean and Sam end up on his ship as part of the crew.

Mal: Yes. It’s very much Sam that wants to be a pirate or that wanted to go to sea and find out what it was all about. Under the advice of Ruby, if I remember correctly.

Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. But Ruby wasn’t even on the ship in the end, she was just, she was told him to go and do it.

Mal: (laughter) And being Sam, he just did whatever Ruby wanted. And Dean that just, just followed because he had to watch out for his brother.

Ellen: Yeah. And then later, like, this isn’t a particularly long fic. It’s only 17,000, so it gets into the kind of relationship development quite quickly.

But Cas’s hand is injured in a battle and he loses a few fingers. So he asks, because Dean can read and write, he asked him to help him. So there’s a bit of a, through this fic, I was getting real Lucius vibes here. Were you too? Like…

Mal: yes, I was

Ellen: he was doing, he was writing the ship’s log for him and, you know, making snarky comments or whatever. I was just like, oh, I see. I see. Well, this is, this was written before Our Flag Means Death came out. So I feel like rae was like channeling the coming things.

Mal: Prophetic. I loved it. So I got like halfway through. I wasn’t even halfway through, but to the point where Cas was injured and he hurt his hand and then the pun within the title became apparent I was just like, yes. (laughter)

Ellen: When you realize what the title means…

Mal: yeah, it was like one of those, like, “oh, they said the title!” moments apart from, “oh, there’s a pun in the title!” I love it.

Ellen: Oh. And they do have actually quite a few punny kind of, or not necessarily punny, but canon kind of lines in this one as well.

Mal: yeah. I love the little kind of references and, and canon bits in this one. Yeah. Nice sweet. And this one does have kind of like a nice little, little twist at the end, which is nice. So.

Kitmistry: I really like the end of this one. I feel they all get the ending that they deserve.

Ellen: Yes. Yeah. It’s wrapped up quite neatly considering that’s fairly short, so they couldn’t draw it out too much.

Yeah. And we’ve also got Jack in this one being his adorable self.

Kitmistry: Oh right. I’d forgotten about Jack! I really liked him in this one. I really like how, I guess this might be a little spoiler, but at first the while Dean is helping Cas, he has to step out of the cabin and Jack comes in and then it’s like, what’s going on here? Isn’t he too young for you? Maybe? He’s a kid?

Ellen: He thinks there’s something funny going on.

Mal: Yeah, he gets totally the wrong impression. Yep.

Kitmistry: But there’s nothing, there’s nothing happening there.

Ellen: He’s teaching Jack to read!

Mal: Yes. Dean quite rightly kind of doesn’t have a very good impression of Cas for a little bit there. But yeah, they sort that out soon enough.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t want to give too much of this one away because it does have a great twist. But this was the main ones that had a lot of the democratic nature of, of the pirate ship and whatever. ‘Cause Cas was elected as the captain and the quartermaster was, you know, they had a set kind of way to divide the loot up and stuff. So yeah.

Kitmistry: And I think this one was the fic where they mentioned about insurance on body parts you lose? Because I know Cas got money for the fingers he lost.

Mal: Yeah, yeah.

Ellen: Pieces of eight.

Mal: I thought that was quite cool.

Ellen: Yeah. Interesting. I mean, I wonder how many of the pirate ships actually did that kind of thing? Because you know, it’s a dangerous profession, I guess if you’re going to start offering insurance for missing body parts, then you have to make sure you’re actually getting some loot in order to pay, pay your share of it.

Mal: Yep.

Kitmistry: But that also gives the crew an incentive to actually go out there and steal other ships because that’s money that goes there directly to their pockets. And it’s also money that they will take if something happens to them.

Mal: Yeah. Certainly nobody else back in those days had health insurance. So…

Ellen: That’s right! I’m sure plenty of people made lots of money out of it

Mal: in certain ways they were, they were definitely quite progressive back then with the gay marriage and the health insurance (laughter)

Ellen: in this particular fic, there, there they do have, it is like marriage equality. Like, you know, several of the suitors that Dean was looking at were men as well.

Mal: Yes. This one does have that, not just the historical concept of the pirate marriage, but actually within the fic world as a whole, this one seems to have it, so, yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. Which is always nice. Then you don’t have the, you don’t have so much of the pining, like “we want to be together, but we can’t because I have to get married to a woman.”

Mal: Yeah. Yeah. I enjoy it both ways. Like sometimes it’s nice just to kind of read a story and kind of take a break from that. But I also enjoy the kind of realism sometimes in the added extra kind of pining and angst and the kind of respectful realism of it in historical fics, I guess. So I like it both ways and it was nice to have this one, just have a break from that and have that not be the issue, because there’s always an issue with these two, but sometimes it’s not that, so it’s great.

Kitmistry: Well, they did have an issue this time, just not with their ?.

Mal: Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Kitmistry: And not to spoil the twist, but I really like how it was resolved in the end, like how they ended up together by the end of the fic. Right. I liked that. I liked it.

Mal: Yes. Cause there’s one of those fics where you definitely kind of, you have a little, a moment or a little section where it’s not necessarily clear how it’s going to end up. Well, you have faith that it will cause the author tells you that it will. It’s at one point you’re like, I can’t see how this is going to end well, and you’re like kind of watching the… or at least for me, I’m like watching the scroll bar at the end, like about the edge of the page, like, Hmm. How much further we got to sort this out? This one, this one does it well, it’s very satisfying. And like you said earlier, it feels like everybody gets what they deserve in this one. Including Jack, which is great.

Kitmistry: Yeah, yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. We can’t say more about this one without spoiling it as well. Cause it’s not very long.

Mal: Yeah, definitely don’t want to spoil the twists on this one. But Cas’s crew are great in this one, I really like his crew. Yeah, especially as Dean and Sam volunteer to be pirates at the beginning, but because Dean has a big mouth, he makes it very clear he doesn’t want to be there. (laughter) So it’s kind of a very interesting dynamic that they have with the crew at the beginning, where Sam’s trying really hard to fit in and Dean is doing it just because Sam’s doing it, but isn’t necessarily being very polite about it.

Ellen: So it’s sort of like a much more compact enemies to lovers type situation. He really doesn’t want to be involved. But quite quickly becomes like a part of the crew.

Kitmistry: I feel like that fits a lot with canon because Dean tends to be like that. Sam is usually the one who is very social and I don’t know, he has a lot of friends, but he definitely knows a lot of people and Dean doesn’t exactly fit in with them, but then he ends up being closer with them than Sam is.

Mal: Yeah, Dean feels like that person who can like put on a mask and socialize and do things and perform when he needs to. But he has very few like really close, actual friends that he trusts and like really brings in. Whereas Sam seems kind of easier to get along with in a lot of ways, so.

Okay. So the next thing we’re going to talk about is Blow High, Blow Low, and so sailed we by insominia.

This one’s from 2020, so it’s again… I was gonna say relatively recent. We’re in 2022 now aren’t we?

Ellen: Yeah, 2020 was ages ago now. if it doesn’t feel like it. (laughter)

Mal: Time! (laughter) Yeah. This one is just under 35,000 words. And the summary goes like this.

Dean Winchester is not the first pirate Captain Castiel Novak of Her Majesty’s frigate The Seraph has been sent to capture, but he may very well be the last.

When fate (and a cannon) conspire to bring them together Castiel finds that Dean and his crew are unlike any pirates he has ever encountered. Drawn into a conspiracy that threatens everything Castiel believes in, Castiel must decide where his true allegiances lie. In the meantime, he must survive his time with the very pirate he was sent to capture, which seems unbearably easy when Dean insists on being so completely charming.

Yes. So…

Ellen: He is charming in this one.

Mal: He is very charming in this one. And I almost felt a little bad for Dina’s some points in this one, just because Cas is so determined to think badly of him. And at the same time, if Dean had just explained…(laughter)

Kitmistry: Dean was very (indistinct) to Cas what was going on. You could have just told him from the start…and avoided all that.

Mal: Yeah.

Kitmistry: But I guess Dean doesn’t like to talk. So…

Mal: yeah. And it, I kind of feel like for part of it, I sort of got the feeling that it was like, he wanted to see if Cas even wanted to know. Like, whether Cas even cared or was just going to write him off completely. But he definitely could’ve spoken up way before he finally did.

Ellen: This story had so much lovely detail. I got very engrossed in this one last night when I was reading it. So it is like, you know, nearly 35,000 words, but it was like the opposite of the way you sped through Twists and Turns and felt like it was shorter. This one, I couldn’t, when I was halfway through, I was like, oh, how much more have I got to go? But there was quite a lot to go. It was not, not because it was slow or anything. It was just because there’s so much beautiful description and detail about what was happening that I found myself taking my time with it a little bit. I don’t know. It was interesting.

Mal: yeah. I found that this one, it kind of almost the same. I felt that this one felt longer than 34,000 words. I think it was just because there was such like a complete world in it. It didn’t feel like a short fic so once I read it, yeah, we’ve got one that like just pulls you in and felt like super-fast because you couldn’t put it down. And then another one where, even though it is shorter, the world-building and everything in it is so complete, but it still feels like a bigger fic. So it can go either way.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, both brilliant fics. It just happened to be different writing styles, I guess. But this one’s like Cas is like a, a Navy captain who is charged with capturing pirates and he is injured in and taken in by…I’m not, I’m not sure how, like he gets injured, but how does he end up on the pirate ship?

Mal: Uhhh, he goes, he goes overboard.

Ellen: Because the rest of the ship is okay.

Kitmistry: I think he falls into the water and the pirates fish him up. If I remember correctly.

Mal: Yeah. He is hit in the head and pushed overboard. So basically I think it happens right at the beginning. So it’s probably not a spoiler to say that there is a, like a mutiny on his ship. And somebody is trying to make it look like he was dead. And they failed in the actual dead-ing part. So…

Ellen: yeah. That’s right. Yeah, so we’ve got Dick Roman, who’s the big, bad guy in this one. And it turns out that Dean and his crew are sort of on a revenge mission kind of thing. I don’t want to give away any more than that, but that part of the story I found that it was quite a surprise when we got there. I was like, oh, that’s an interesting twist. So I don’t want to spoil any of that, but I really liked that, that section.

Kitmistry: I really liked that this fic deals with something that we don’t usually see in pirate fic. I guess it’s not a spoiler if I say that it deals with slavery, because it’s in the tags. But I do, I do like it.

Mal: Yes, yes. So, because obviously it’s something that was very prevalent at the time, and that was very closely linked to piracy, because, whereas we were saying earlier that a lot of pirates were criminals. That is true, but a lot of them also kind of like the other half were escaped slaves.

So it’s kind of something that is quite closely linked in a way. So

Kitmistry: I also think insominia mentioned in the author’s note that they actually know a lot about pirates? They had it somewhere, somewhere, somewhere.

Ellen: Yeah. I remember that one. They’d been asked to write this fic about pirates, but the person who gave the prompt hadn’t realized that, that they actually know quite a lot about pirates.

Mal: That’s awesome.

Ellen: And that’s really obvious in the fic as well. Like they use a lot of the terminology and the, you know, saluting the quarterdeck and all that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, you added extra colour.

Mal: That sounds amazing. I just want, I just want to go out for a drink and pick their brain now. Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. It was definitely an enemies to lovers. Seems like a common theme in most of these, they start off as enemies.

Kitmistry: Yeah. This is the third one that his enemies to lovers?

Mal: Yes. Great. Compelling.

Ellen: I think they all are!

Mal: Yeah. It just works with the piracy thing a lot. Doesn’t it? Because they’re not, yeah. They’re not very chummy or they don’t think of them as being, like…

Ellen: A lot of the time one of them has been captured, or… All pirates are enemies with each other until they’re friends.

Mal: I suppose it’s no fun if they start off as mateys. They’re suppose to end that way. (laughter)

Ellen: There’s some amazing some delicious smut in this one as well, which even though it has a mature tag, it is quite explicit as well, just as a slight warning there, if you, yeah.

Mal: It’s there, so the mature tag is there for a reason.

Ellen: it’s on, it’s on the explicit side of mature, for sure. Yeah. I get the impression that even the captain’s cabin wouldn’t have been a very large space, like as it is in Our Flag Means Death, maybe he only had like a, a small bed that possibly didn’t actually fit two people very well. So I don’t know how that worked.

Kitmistry: Is this the one where they share the captain’s cabin? Or is that the other ones?

Mal: Yes, I think so. I think they do in this one.

Ellen: Yeah, they do. They do share it even before they get together. I think Cas sleeps in there as well. So it must be fairly large.

Mal: The logistics of sleeping arrangements on a pirate ship are pretty interesting. Think about how narrow the beds and things must have been just squeezing two fully grown men in there.

Ellen: Yeah.

Kitmistry: I also really liked the battles in this one. Again, I don’t want to spoil it, but the one where Cas charge of the crew, I guess, I really loved how he handled that.

Ellen: Yeah. That’s that sounded like there was a lot of research that went into… Even just describing that kind of thing is difficult to do properly.

I think, I mean, I have no idea if they got it right. Even so how many experts would be reading it would be able to tell if it was wrong? But it, it was clearly explained in a way that you could see what was happening.  Really well done.

Mal: yeah, I think this is the only one that we have read. I’ll just, I’ll be vague about it, ‘cause I don’t want, I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s the only one that we’ve read that featured a duel of any kind as well, which I thought was a cool detail that we don’t often get in historical fics. We get them mentioned sometimes. But to have one actually go through with happening was pretty cool to have in there. And kind of as a reader keeps you on the edge of your seat for a minute because…

Ellen: oh my God, I was actually biting my nails in that bit, I was like, oh my God, what’s gonna happen? Yes. But yeah. That’s all right. Happy ending! Happy ending.

Mal: Yeah. This is a great story for the hurt/comfort fans.

Ellen: Yeah, there’s quite a lot of hurting and comforting.

Mal: And then at the end, the wonderful comforting with lots of words. We like that. They can finally make with… What, what is it about Dean Winchester when we write him? Like, when those words finally get out, then it’s like, just like a cork coming out of a bottle. You’re like, all right. Okay. Bless him.

Ellen: We never really got to do that in the show. Maybe a little bit.

Mal: We just want to give that to him. No, it’s lovely. It’s very well done. And believable in this because of the situations that they have been through to get there. So yes, loved it. The ending of this was brilliant.

Ellen: Nothing particularly supernatural about this one. It’s all, you know, non magical.

Mal: Yeah. People are the monsters in this one. Yeah. Which I must admit, I do enjoy a good people are the monsters fic sometimes. Humans can be far worse than far worse nasty things.

Is there anything else I can say about this, which isn’t going to give everything away? I thought, well, my favorite character in this was Balthazar. I really liked him.

Kitmistry: Oh, I loved him too.

Mal: Yeah, he was done. He was done really well. There was a tiny little detail that was mentioned, which made me absolutely fall in love with him in the, I think something about they met when they were super, super young and it was Cas’s first time on a rowboat and he had to hold back Cas’s hair ‘cause he was being sick. And for some reason that was just charming. Like, I’m pretty sure that was this one. I was just sitting there like, Hmm.

Ellen: Was it this one or a different one where he gets on the ship because he’s seen a few of them and he sees Benny and he’s like, hmm.

Mal: that’s this one.

Ellen: I just love Balthazar. Such a great character. And I think the fact that we didn’t get a whole lot of him on the show just means you can make him just about anything you want in a fic too.

Mal: But what we did get of him was so distinctive that we can take that distinctive part and apply it to kind of almost any version of him. And it still feels like the him that we know

Ellen: it still feels like him.

Mal: Yeah. Because what we got was so distinctive, but so little. Yeah. I love it. He’s a great character to play with them. I love him.

Ellen: He also doesn’t take any of Cas’s shit. Like he’ll, he, he sort of like, “are you serious?” Like Cas says something, he just goes, “are we really doing this right now? Okay, let’s go.”

Such a dry character.

Mal: Yeah. He’s second in command, but you almost get the… that’s the word yeah. He’s, he’s so dry. And you almost get the impression that he is going along with him, but only because he agrees with him in the first place. It was like Cas is just kind of lucky that he doesn’t disagree. Really.

Ellen: like “look, I know you’re the captain and this is a stupid idea, but we’re going to do it anyway because you’re the captain, okay.”

Mal: And he just refuses to call him Cas in front of everybody and just continues calling him Cassie regardless. Yeah. I also really liked Crowley in this one because I love it when an author can write a Crowley where… because it’s very easy to just make Crowley like a straight villain or just give him like a hero arc, but personally I love it when you can have Crowley as that very kind of morally gray. Like you’re never quite sure whose side he’s on, but you know, for sure he’s on his own.

Ellen: Like he’s gonna get something out of it in the end.

Mal: Yeah, exactly. And I thought that this fic did that really well because even by the end of it, I’m like well, yes, Crowley helped them there, but only because they helped him there and so, was he good? Or was he bad? Who knows? He was very much just himself.

Ellen: It’s good characterization.

Mal: Yeah. Good fic. Go read. Did enjoy. So this is why those are kind of, even though, I guess you would call it like a mid-sized fic, like 35,000. It’s not super short, but it’s, it’s not a long, long fic. But as far as like plot wise, I feel like the pacing was quite quick. So you weren’t kind of waiting around ages for things to happen. We would, I was just kind of getting lost in Dean and Cas’s relationship in the meantime. It was lovely. So yeah, lots happens in this one.

Ellen: Yeah. We’ll just, we’ll just quickly mention one more. It’s only a shortie¾shorter at least than the other ones. Eye Of The Storm by nickelkeep was published in 2020 as one of their Storytime stories on the Profound Bond (discord) server. It’s 11,000 words and it’s explicit.

And the summary goes:

When a threat from the past returns to the Kingdom of Winchester, Crown Prince Dean takes it upon himself to get rid of the problem and prove himself worthy to rule. However, when the crew and Captain of the commandeered ship Heaven’s Wrath aren’t at all what Dean thought they were, Dean starts to second guess many of the things King John has spread over the years.

Captain Castiel Novak, along with his ship Heaven’s Wrath, has been on the run for over a decade. After a much-needed stop in his home Kingdom – and hostile territory – Winchester, a chance encounter threatens to destroy everything he’s built.

Will the tumultuous waters be too much for Dean and Castiel to handle? Or will they be able to find comfort in the eye of the storm?

That’s a pretty great description of what happens.

Mal: that, that does describe this pretty well. Good job, nickel. Okay. I suck at summaries. I need to get nickel to come do mine.

Ellen: So we’ve got the prince.

Mal: Yeah. So this is really, I guess, quite, quite different to the other ones. Yeah, it takes a really different kind of way to get to the piracy part.

Ellen: It’s like a fantasy kingdom of Winchester. Rather than being… I don’t think they actually mentioned like anything about Earth or the Caribbean or England even like, I think…

Mal: Wholly its own its own thing. With a king John, that’s not very popular. And obviously we have prince Sam as well and… Just kind of looking to see what’s tagged… I won’t spoil what any of the other characters are, then, other than obviously Cas is a pirate and captain of the other ship and all the other characters like Charlie and such like that and Mick, and everything, they’re all tagged, but it doesn’t tell us what they are. So I’m not going to spoil that.

Ellen: Yes, the crew is very good in this one.

Mal: Yes. I like it.I like this tag. Your author is not a sailor.

Ellen: Oh yes. The author regrets nothing. Yes, there is boat sex in this one.

Mal: I love that tag. Oh, the way that can horrifically go two ways, as far as the internet is concerned, but sex, sex on boat.

Ellen: Yes, We will say without spoiling anything. Obviously you can tell from the summary that Dean does sort of discover that the pirates are actually good guys. But but John does get a bit of a serve in this one here. He kind of, he gets what’s due. And it’s a very satisfying ending.

Mal: Yeah. It’s another fic where it’s kinda like every, every character seems to get what they deserve, both the good and the bad in this case, everyone gets what they deserve.

Kitmistry: It’s just not the happy ending for everyone.

Mal: No, but they do get what they deserve.

Yeah, I enjoyed this fic and I think this was done as part of nickel’s Storytime series. And this is one of those where I feel like if they wanted, they could almost turn this into like a, full length, like big chapter fic if they wanted. Cause like the concept it’s has so much to it. It’s great. And it has like layers to it. It’s not just a straightforward, you know, “Off Dean goes to the ship, and falls in love with Cas”. It’s like, there’s more, there’s more to it than that. So

Kitmistry: This also has a very good twist at the end.

Mal: yeah, exactly. And they managed to fit all of that into what was it? 11,000 words? Yeah. Yeah. 11,000 words. So, which is always amazing to me because these Storytime ones do tend to be shorter because of the way that they are done. They’re kind of just all done in one kind of…

Ellen: yeah, because they write them, write them as they’re posting them in discord right?.

Mal: Right. Written live, I guess, would be the best way to term it. So they do tend to be kind of like (shorter), this is a good length and the fact that they managed to execute this concept within that length, I think is amazing because I think if I, if I had attempted this concept, we’d be at like 150- 180,000 words, and I’d still be talking to myself in the corner. So great job getting it and making it feel whole and complete within 11,000 words is fantastic. I think

Kitmistry: And for also giving us a great sex scene.

Mal: Yeah. Can’t miss out on that part. So

Ellen: yes. I totally thought that someone was going to walk… into it. Like, um, guys?

Kitmistry: You’re not alone (laughter)

Mal: Admit it, you wanted someone to walk in

Ellen: Yep, I was waiting for someone… (laughter)

Mal: Yes. And this is kind of semi public, I guess. Well, I guess the ship is private, but people could…

Ellen: It’s a public location, I guess

Mal: A public location on a private ship, (laughter) but yes, it’s creative, I like it.

Ellen: We better quickly…

Mal: Yeah, I suppose we’d better

Ellen: Recommend a few other fics.

Mal: pirate time!

Ellen: I’ve got a few, well, two. I’ve got one that I just read earlier, ‘cause it’s only a fairly short one.

This is Of Barnacles And Joy by you-can’t-spell-subtext-without and this is actually a, a Supernatural and Our Flag Means Death crossover. So. I’m not sure… I don’t know if there’s a time-travel element involved, but somehow Cas and Dean are working a case in Florida and they, they run into basically Ed and Stede on land. Like they, they find them and Lucius is there too. And they, the three pirates kind of talk Dean into the fact that Cas is in love with him and he doesn’t realize. It’s just gorgeous, like they they’ve got all the characters, like spot on. It’s really, I enjoyed this a lot and it’s funny too. It’s got like… there’s one point where like close to the beginning where Dean says something, he gets injured and he says something about only being a flesh wound and Cas doesn’t understand. And then he goes, “you know, the, the Monty Python fic I made you watch it”. I mean, the, the movie, you know, the film. It’s just little, little canon things that come in and it’s like, ah, I understand that reference! But it’s only 12,000 words but a bit of fun and a really funny crossover. I enjoyed that.

Mal: I’ve got one I’d like to recommend as well. I will start with Say You’ll Remember Me by zation. This is an older one. It’s from 2015. So this is a pirate AU where Dean is trying to rescue Sam. And it is quite angsty, this one, smutty and angsty. So if you want a pirate au that is kind of a little bit more…has that bit more sadness and pain because I know some people love it. Then this is probably the one for you. It’s 27,000 words, I think 27 and a half. Yeah. And I really, I really enjoyed this one. Like sometimes when you, you do want a bit of angst and a little bit of pain and everything before they get to some semblance, some semblance of togetherness and happiness then this will scratch that itch.

And I always enjoy zation’s fics. So Say You’ll Remember Me, it’s going to be a rec from me.

Ellen: Well, I’m going to give a shout out whether you like it or not to Shiver My Bones by Malmuses.

Mal: I have a blanket here. I can crawl under it you know?

Ellen: There’s only two chapters posted so far. It’s going to be amazing, especially since she’s done all this, like you know, Blackbeard research. So, you know, we’ll be waiting for that to come in.

Mal: Some of it written on location!

Ellen: Oh yeah. I hope so. This, this is like a multimedia experience because you’ve got, not only do you have the story itself, but you’ve got some Lizlee art in there and a podfic version as it’s coming out from roadtonowhere. So you can listen to it!

Mal: Which is amazing. I do have to like speak out and give a shout out on that one because it is brilliant. Like he really went all out on that one. It’s great. Even, even has the sea shanties in it, which I like fully expected him to just skip but know him and fancyfranzi who was also tagged. Brilliant job. I’ve been kind of like listening to the move excessively ever since. So yeah,

Ellen: well, yeah, there I will say that in a lot of the other fics that we read for this episode, there weren’t that many sea shanties in them. Like they did sort of maybe quote a few of them at the beginning or whatever, beginning of chapters or whatever. But, but I think you’re bringing like an important pirate lore, you know, we need the sea shanties! You got them in there.

Mal: Well, I’ll be inflicting them on people anyway. So I’m glad at least somebody is happy about it.

Ellen: Okay. I’ll let you off the hook now I won’t say any more about that but go and read it everybody! Everyone who’s listening is probably reading it anyway. So it’s all good. Any, any other ones that you would either of, you would like to give a shout out to?

Kitmistry: There’s one I want to read. Which I haven’t yet, but I’m sure it’s great because I’ve seen some of it, but I think it’s only for registered members on ao3.

Mal: Oh, one of the ones you have to log in for, okay.

Kitmistry: Let me login and see… Ocean’s Brawl by FeaRauko, if I’m pronouncing that right. And this one, again, deals with slavery as a theme with pirates

Ellen: I’ve got that one on the list, yep

Mal: All right. I’m going to give another shout-out as well. This one is called Angels of the Sea and it’s by HollyBlue2.

So this one is also a little bit older. It’s from 2016. And it was a DCBB back then. So it’s 53, almost 54,000 words. So this is one where the pirate ship, the Archangel, which is run by Cas is, is boarded by Sam and Dean as stowaways. ‘Cause they are trying to hide from the people who killed their father.

So as they hideaway in the storage room of the ship and when they discovered somebody, I think it was Raphael yeah. Raphael wanted to have them killed, but Cas… his heart is just too big to kill them. So their lives are spared. They have to join his crew and it, it, it also involves a story thread involving Dean’s amulet and kind of using that as like a… almost has like a part of the Caribbean feel where they’re using the amulet to like, find like a hidden island and treasure kind of thing. Like it’s, it’s very kind of adventure feeling this, this fic.

Kitmistry: I like that.

Mal: Yeah. I definitely, definitely recommend it. It’s fun. And hollyblue2’s fics are always a good read. I think they just, the pacing is always good and fun and I enjoy them. So go and get this one to try. I’m trying to recall who the art was by. ‘Cause it was a DCBB…ah, here we go: lennyways did the art in that one, it is it’s beautiful.

So yeah, there’s a, there’s a whole list of pirate fic that we dug up, which obviously we will put on the blog so that people can dig through.

It’s got the most, I can kind of recommend. And stick on there. And a lot of them, I said, usually when we are kind of like adding all these fics on the end, there’s a lot of really short ones, like, like one shots, 2000 words, 5,000 words. A lot of these pirate fics I noticed are actually kind of like chunkier. They’re like over 20,000 words, you can really get your teeth into them, which is great. I love it. I guess I probably, because of all the world building, right. There has to be like a certain amount of world building evolved with putting these characters on a pirate ship. So, yeah. That’s probably why, but that’s why a lot of the recommendations this time are going to be a little bit longer.

Not all of them. There are some short ones in there too. So we will go ahead and put a big list of those on the blog.

Ellen: Okay. Thank you very much Kit for coming to talk to us today.

Kitmistry: Thank you for having me.

Mal: Yeah. Lovely.

Ellen: Very welcome. Have you got anything coming up that you’re working on at the moment that you’d like to share with everybody? Working on some bangs or..?

Kitmistry: I’m trying to finish my DCBB for this year. Hopefully I will get it done this time, hopefully. And I am also working on a demon hunting academy fic, But that might be…

Mal: Ohhhh that sounds fun!

Kitmistry: Yeah. And that might be a bit long before it gets posted.

Mal: Hey, I like long. All good. Excellent!

Ellen: We’ll look forward to that. All right. So if you’ve got any suggestions for other fic that we could you know, pirate fics that we’ve missed that you’d like to tell us about or anything else you’d like to talk to us about, you can do that under our social media accounts are pretty much mixtapebookclub on all of them. Or you can email us: contact at mixtapebookclub.com or you can chat with us on discord either in profound bond discord server, or in our own discord server, which you can get to via our ko-fi… I don’t even know what the word for that is. Like account?

Mal: subscription, I guess that sounds like a weird way of putting it, but yeah.

Ellen: Subscription, yeah. Okay. Thanks everyone for listening. And we’ll talk to you again soon.

Mal: And as always, remember that the story isn’t over until we say it is.

[outro music]

[gentleman pirate’s library trailer]

Katie: We would like to introduce you to The Gentleman Pirate’s Library, a podcast covering every episode of the HBO show, Our Flag Means Death. I’m Katie…

Mary: And I’m Mary, and every week for 10 weeks, we’ll be taking you on a deep dive into one episode of the pirate show with a growing fan base.

Katie: Over those 10 weeks, you can expect a lot of silly, funny and heartfelt conversations about characters, narrative, and queer representation and the historical context of the show.

Mary: Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, make sure to leave us a rating and a review. It helps more people find us. You can find us on Twitter at @gentlemanpir8. That’s the word gentlemen, P I R. And the number eight.

Katie: You can also email us gentlemanpirateslibrary at gmail.com.

We cannot wait to see what trouble we can get up to on the high seas.