#its pirate party time at all fuckin hours in my brain lately

[tinyagitator]

Okay so @scordoesart posted a lovely Bellhands thing the other day and I got thinking again, which can either be fun, or lead to sheer madness and brainrot and this is the brainrot kind of thinking apparently. So I had to write it down and regain some semblance of sanity again.

So, Bellhands is all well and good (and honestly, probably the most likely option for Izzy's long lost boyfriend please cast Matt Berry as Sam, he is so perfect), but then I doodled a little piratey dude the other day, thought he looked like he could be a good boyfriend for Izzy, but he didn't feel like Bellamy to me, and then I thought

Blackbeard is a pirate with a bloody reputation, but a soft side for his beloved.

You know you else had a big, nasty, bloodthirsty reputation?

Charles Vane

Hear me out:

In history, Vane got started sailing around the same time as Stede and Blackbeard under Henry Jennings, and pretty quickly made a name for himself and gained a reputation for like, torturing captured crews, and being the "leave none alive, show no mercy" sort of pirate captain.

So if Vane is a big name in the pirate world, why wouldn't Izzy hear that name and go "that's my boyfriend! He's alive!"

Some pirates likely changed their names to protect their family's reputation, so maybe when they were younger, Izzy didn't know him as Charles Vane?

From what I skimmed on Wikipedia, Vane didn't sail with Hornigold, but we're history inspired here, not completely accurate. I read somewhere that Taika said he read like 4 sentences of the Blackbeard Wikipedia page and decided to just wing it from there, so if it's good enough for Taika, it's good enough for me

So, what if he did? What if he sailed with Hornigold and company under his legal name, and then later changed it to Vane when he started building his own piratey reputation?

Some time after Blackbeard gets to captain his own ship, something happens and Charles gets separated from the crew (arrested? Falls overboard and picked up by a different ship? Idk, something) and Izzy thinks his boyfriend is dead

Maybe Charles has some connections somewhere and talks his way out of being hanged for crimes of piracy, but has a hard time getting back out to sea for some reason. Eventually he does get away and back out to sea where he meets Jennings, and somewhere down the road, he gets to captain his own ship and goes off to try to reunite with Izzy and company.

(side note: at least according to Wikipedia, he sailed on The Lark, The Ranger, The Katherine, and a different ship called The Ranger. Hornigold also had a ship called the Ranger, so there's the basis for my half-assed 'Vane used to sail with Hornigold' theory. I’ve also decided that his ship the Katherine is named after someone he knows. A beloved little sister, maybe?)

Historically, Vane and Calico Jack sailed together for a time. Per Wikipedia, Jack was Vane's quartermaster, and later became captain after voting Vane out of his captaincy. Again, vaguely historically inspired, my vision of Vane (fairly level-headed and laid back, but prone to bursts of anger and murder) probably doesn't like wild, rambunctious Jack too much, and maybe only briefly reunited with him prior to ep 8. So maybe when Charles reunites with Blackbeard and Izzy, there can be a "why the FUCK didn't Jack tell you I've been looking for you, I'm gonna fuckin kill him" moment

Maybe Vane got his violent reputation while looking for Izzy. I'm picturing like, Vane shows up in the republic of pirates, asks about Blackbeard, and the guys there are like "oh yeah he was here like a week ago, you just missed him. No idea where he fucked off to this time", and he starts taking out his frustration on captured ships because his former shipmates are just always slightly out of reach. Or maybe gossip spreads about Ed and Stede taking the act of grace, and Vane starts getting extra passionate about hunting English ships, hoping to find Blackbeard on one of them and reunite with his old friend?

how did Izzy and Charles end up together in the first place? Still working out the details on that one, but it's coming together, just slowly

This may turn into a actual fic some day (probably not, I have no time, nor am I good with words) but for now it's just a jumbly, scrambly list of half-formed ideas that need to be dealt with eventually

#our flag means death #ofmd #Izzy Hands #give this sad little man a boyfriend please #historical accuracy? what historical accuracy? we don't do that here #its pirate party time at all fuckin hours in my brain lately