#Zethu Dlomo

[maraferaventi]

portrait of queen Madi for Black Sails' 10 years anniversary✨🖤

[brotherconstant]

Black Sails • XXIV But the most compelling story requires a villain at its center.

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

[levithestripper]

“I assume he saw value in the tall tales told about me after that night in the tavern. Saw mystery in it, perhaps. use my name upon which to build his story.” BLACK SAILS— John SIlver and Madi in 04x01 “XXIX” for @odysseusilver

[nogoodsheepstealing-greatgrandma]

Missing Women of HOTD - Marilda of Hull

A familiar sight about her father’s shipyards, the girl was better known as Mouse, for she was “small, quick, and always underfoot.”

When Addam was ten and Alyn nine, their mother inherited the yards upon her own father’s death, sold them, and used the coin to take to the sea herself as the mistress of a trading cog she named Mouse. A canny trader and daring captain, by 130 AC Marilda of Hull owned seven ships, and her bastard sons were always serving on one or the other.

That Addam and Alyn were dragonseed no man who looked upon them could doubt, though their mother steadfastly refused to name their father. Only when Prince Jacaerys put out the call for new dragonriders did Marilda at last break her silence, claiming both boys were the natural sons of the late Ser Laenor Velaryon.

On Driftmark, the town of Hull experienced a rebirth. Scores of new ships were built and launched, and Lord Oakenfist’s mother greatly expanded her own trading fleets, and began work on a palatial manse overlooking the harbor that Mushroom dubbed the Mouse House.

On his tomb is engraved a single word: LOYAL. Its ornate letters are supported by carvings of a seahorse and a mouse.

The fleet set sail at mid-year, led by Oakenfist in a galley he named Bold Marilda after his mother.

I can't believe we had to sit through Sharako Lohar the cool lesbian slaver when we could have had this Queen instead.

Both her sons are so proud of their mother and she's clearly so important to them, it's so shitty the show erased her. And then there's 30-year-old Show Alyn giving a speech about going hungry just to rub the salt in the wound - because we can't have Bold Captain Marilda and her fleet of trading ships. It's not as though this season centered around a sea blockade or anything.

We could have had Marilda play an active role in that blockade. Though of course, the entire plotline of the famine in King's Landing was ridiculous. Most of their food comes from the Reach, the Breadbasket of the Realm, by Road. That was why there was a famine in the War of the Five Kings when the Tyrells blocked the Rose Road. But we all knew the writers hadn't really thought the famine through the moment the starving crowd started throwing food in protest-

But if we had to have it, then Marilda could have been the one tasked with delivering the food aid. Or if we focused on the actual effects of the blockade (its impact on trade of goods from the free cities, which would have been more luxury goods impacting the wealthier of King's Landing), we could have had Marilda being the liaison with other disgruntled captains and traders, or the one helping to keep them in line and not break the blockade.

Imagine also if we had a book-accurate depiction of the Sowing of the Seeds (no Squid-gaming a crowd of bastards into a room and ringing the dinner bell for a crazy religious ritual or whatever the show was going for in The Bells Round 2). If instead of divine intervention dropping a dragon on a passive Addam (and triggering Rhaenyra's descent into crazy cult leader apparently) he was actually able to be a character with agency - actively responding to Jace's call for dragonseeds and willing to take the risk. Because he's Bold Marilda's son.

We could have then had Corlys quietly begging Marilda to keep the boys parentage a secret so he doesn't shame the memory of his recently deceased wife. And Marilda says "sure no problem" and then turns around with the baldest of bald faced lies that the kids are Laenor's and watches the succession chaos unfold (until Book Jace of course saves the day with "Yay, new brothers! Please Mom can I keep them?"). Marilda stares Corlys down until he guiltily chimes in to request his 'grandsons' be legitimised.

We could have seen Marilda's guilt and grief at what happens to her bold and daring youngest son - an age-accurate Alyn (14) who eagerly tries to follow in his big brother's shadow and suffers burns for life. Heck, the show could have even paralleled Marilda and Addam at Alyn's sickbed with Alicent and Kylo Raemond at Aegon's sickbed - only with actual love in the room.

We could have had Marilda's pride at watching Addam legitimised and knighted, tainted by sadness at the cost to Alyn, but relief that both her sons survived. We could have had her keeping a recovering Alyn company while Jace trains with Addam and the other dragonseeds (replacing the little brother he lost). We could have had her be the one to confront Corlys for his absence. We could have had Corlys make it up to her by telling Alyn tales of his voyages, offering him an alternative path now that he can't join Addam as a dragonrider.

It would have been a hell of a lot more engaging than Dull 30-year-old Alyn having what feels like the same conversation with Corlys over and over again about that time he was the sailor who pulled him from the sea-

Or Less Dull But For Some Reason Younger Addam, who talks about wanting an opportunity for glory but ultimately is a passive character who gets a dragon landed on him. Contrast to Nice Man With Wife And Sick Daughter Hugh, and Funny Drunk Ulf - two white men who we are for some reason following instead of Nettles, and who actually get to make the active decision to go claim a dragon. Because they get to be written with motives and agency.

Considering the treatment of Laena, the erasure of Baela's personality, the decision to merge Nettles with Rhaena, the dullification of Alyn and Addam... and considering the rush to shower attention on Hugh and Ulf and genderbent Sharako Lohar and Gwayne Hightower of all people...

It does lead me to conclude that any potential interest the writers may have had in adapting certain characters... abruptly vanished the moment a certain casting decision was made.

[longlukearnolds]

I'm in love with this woman. that's all, I just wanted you to know that.

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Zethu Dlomo-Mphahlele: March 31, 1989

[wheresmyfuckintea]

rewatching black sails (help) with my bf and i'm reminded again how good the acting was. casting director had bills to pay. zethu dlomo is dressed in the same simple clothes as everybody else and yet, you can tell madi's a princess at first glance.

[bookwyrrm]

Personally I hope they get as many Black Sails actors in the Percy Jackson show as possible. Mostly because I really want to see Zethu Dlomo as Athena!

[noybusiness]

Madi's speech about all her ancestors who had lost their lives to the slave trade and that being bigger than any one person was so on point. I was really disappointed and upset when the fight gets abandoned by the end of the series thanks to John Silver's unwillingness to see things through.

So I will fight this thing rising up in me, eager to see more blood spilled today, and I will serve them by minding their future and doing the hard thing that will lead to the outcome desired by all of us.

[brotherconstant]

BLACK SAILS • XXV.

They will not trust you nor even acknowledge the existence of this place to anyone other than my husband, and he's too weak to leave our care. So we will have to send the next best thing. She will help you get what you need, but one more thing. I know your way is to invest a captain with unquestioned authority while in battle, but this battle is ours as much as yours. My word and your word will govern in concert or not at all. And when I'm not present, that word shall be given by my daughter.

[heycarrots]

Great news, Black Sails Nation!

Reading Between the Lines Podcast is now available on YouTube with closed captioning!

All episodes are uploaded and live now! I’ve had quite a few people who are interested in the podcast, but are dealing with auditory processing issues or hearing impairment and still wanted to enjoy the discussions (the stories themselves are, of course, all readily available on AO3). It’s not a plain text transcription format, it’s still captions running at the speed of the episodes, but it’s a start!

I’ve been struggling with lack of available closed captioning with both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. YouTube has finally both solved that problem and opened up the podcast to a much wider audience.

Join us for stunning fan fiction, deep analytical and personal analysis and commentary on the series and fascinating and touching insights into each author’s personal journey with the show and their approach to the craft of writing.

For those of you who have been listening along with us since Episode One last year, thank you so much! I can never fully express how much your support means to me and how important this podcast is to me, personally.

Let’s dive right in!

[tvxcue]

whenever i go on the black sails wikipedia page and scroll down to accolades and see literally NOTHING but technical categories i just have to sit in silence for a bit bc genuinely how the fuck did that happen. not even a fucking NOMINATION. nothing for writing, nothing for acting, NOTHING. like that's actually real.

[heycarrots]

The truth of this statement, OMG!

Having a man (metaphorically) hold you at knife point in a place you are (metaphorically) tied down to and force you into doing the emotional labor of listening to him be unhappy about his life is the universal female experience. Standing in solidarity with Madi's patience here.

[hypacias]

ZETHU DLOMO-MPHAHLELE as MADI BLACK SAILS SEASON 3

[thematicparallel]

hey remember when luke arnold of black sails john silver fame wrote a book series (actually ongoing) that's basically an interpretation of the themes from black sails. the shame the monsters the Betrayal. then he made the protagonist this loser man who is dog-motif'ed to hell (the name's Fetch. it gets worse from there) & his main driving forces are his two most beloved people, both of whom are versions of madi and flint. who also coincidentally are described to look like his previous co-stars zethu dlomo-mphahlele & toby stephens. anyway. fetch phillips book 4 titled whisper in the wind out in april 2025