#in addition to aligning with flint and silver’s character development

[holychopshopgalaxy]

i don't see enough discourse on the villains of black sails aka Grey Morality: The Show relating to our very human tendency to see those characters and their motives and actions in black and white when we don't treat the heroes and anti-heroes the same way. it's incredibly natural to view, say, ashe, rogers, alfred and hennessey in a 100% evil light because it's comfortable for us to do so but the show tells us all of these characters still had iotas of humanity left within them in spite of, well, everything else, and acknowledging that as an audience is supposed to feel uncomfortable.

let's take alfred, arguably the most despicable character in the show. no need to talk about the darkness of this character because that's obvious. but we are shown there is a sliver of something else going on with him. "if i were an enemy of this family, i'd be telling everyone who pardons a traitor is a traitor". there is a concern of protecting his family's legacy in that statement. now thomas is his family obviously and what he does to him is absolutely brutal. and yet there is a tiny dot of guilt left in his soul to not let him die miserably in an asylum and secret him elsewhere instead. that is human. it is a tiny, tiny piece of humanity. but it is there nonetheless. same exact story with ashe.

now hennessey. again i won't enumerate the dark aspects of this character because we are all aware of them. but what makes the scene in the admiralty so devastating is precisely because there was a genuine affection in his relationship with james. go watch that scene again. he's not entirely unaffected when james recounts "you told me how proud of me you were". hennessey is also a leader. he's not in a position to make choices based solely on sentimentality for one personal relationship, he has the other men under his command to think about. does that make what he does any less despicable and horrible? no. but if you use your brain for a second you can see why he did and said all of that.

rogers. also a despicable character. but we know he is essentially flint's mirror. flint committed atrocities in the name of lost love - so did rogers with his brother. the fact that rogers' brother being named thomas is supposed to beat you over the head with this point. and for everything awful and horrible rogers ultimately did to eleanor, in addition to him disrespecting her memory as a ghost - there was a part of him that did love her. i think that's supposed to be obvious in his interactions with her.

it's worth highlighting that all of these characters are colonizers. and none of these slivers of humanity in these characters negates the monstrosity. they just simply exist side-by-side with it. and that is extremely difficult to admit as an audience. again it's supposed to make us uncomfortable to acknowledge this. nobody wants to recognize common humanity, no matter how small, between ourselves and within our otherwise despicable enemies. but idk what to tell you. that is the reality and the tragedy of the human condition. That is just as true in real life as it is in the story.

if you can sit through what everything that vane did to max in s1 and find him redeemable (which I agree is true), you can use your brain to recognize the villains aren't complete incarnations of satan. we'd rather not recognize this because it's painful for us to see it. it's much less psychologically messy to ignore it. it invites a level of cognitive dissonance which is difficult to reconcile. but almost like that's a major theme of the show even. which is explicitly stated several times. a hard choice, made under great duress, to achieve the least awful outcome. everyone is a monster to someone. they only ever have half of the story, don't they?