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Something exciting today 😍

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I'm not sure this is strictly related, but I've been tossing around that Rebecca quote for a while now, and the way it plays over this shot of Silver trapped in the rope ladder... Rebecca is the mother of twins, one of whom is Jacob, and I've been wondering if this visual cue is supposed to evoke Jacob's Ladder? Paired with some other religious imagery (such as Silver riding into town later looking like that image of Jesus Christ), and as someone who is not that familiar with Christianity, I'm curious to hear interpretations of this.

So Black Sails doesn't make a point of religion at all, it very notably does not, given how much a part of people's lives it actually would have been. If you read primary sources at the time you can't get away from it. And that's totally fine, valid choice, wouldn't have been better the other way. But then they DO have these scripture quotes from Thomas, his faith and his approach to faith was important. And we have ABSOLUTELY no indication that Flint gives a single fuck, except, season four opens with:

Flint: "And the Lord said unto Rebecca, two nations are in thy womb. Two peoples within you who shall be divided. One shall be stronger than the other. And the older shall serve the younger." Twins... as close as two things can get to being the same one, and what's the first thing they do to each other? Fight over who gets to be the first one to see the light of day. And here I sit at the head of an army of men, each of whom, present company included, has probably at some point considered killing the man he now fights alongside, each of whom, present company included, has certainly considered killing me.

And we pivot directly to Silver saying "If it makes you feel any better, I haven't considered killing you in months," which is such a perfect line because he does not want to talk about ANY of that. And I don't really know where I'm going with this except I just think it's fascinating this way in which Flint is acting like Thomas did, especially relative to Silver. Especially considering the way Silver dismisses it, which feels very much like the way Lt. McGraw would have dismissed it.

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^ Fun little listen about the historical accuracy of Black Sails. Start around the 6:00 minute mark.

I always think it's cool to hear an expert talk about these things, especially when they approach it with an understanding that the show is a story that's going to take liberties, appreciating how it used history to craft that story, while parsing what actually happened (as we know it).

Also nice to hear some commentary here on the brutality of civilization, using stories to cast pirates as villains, the public romanticizing of piracy, all that interesting stuff.

The only thing that bugged me is early on the host mistakenly categorized Israel Hands as a completely fictional character - sorry Izzy!

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Just a casual reminder that if you're a Black Sails fan and like urban fantasy, Luke Arnold's Fetch Phillips books scratch a very specific itch. While there were parts I admit I struggled through, overall I thought they were really fun and entertaining, loaded with all the thematic stuff we love.

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A really long time ago I read a smutty Black Sails fic where they discussed Paradise Lost... I added it to my TBR and just started reading it today. I just wanna say, Black Sails fans are truly the best.

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The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same...

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Free and to none accountable, preferring

Hard liberty before the easy yoke

Of servile pomp...

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Maybe I'm reaching here, but that quote and that essay title had me immediately looking up this scene (for the millionth time) ❤️

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There are an unbelievable number of Silver/Eleanor parallels, both in arc and dialog, that I've been compiling for way too long. That video will probably never be made (or likely already has been) but lawd it's something I think about all the time

hm. it's fun how Eleanor frames the choices she makes leading to Vane's execution as being for Rogers ("I hope that when you wake, you will understand why I did what I did, you will see that it was all I could think to do to protect you… the only way I know how.") and then in literally the next scene Silver tries to frame his decision to beat Dobbs as being for Flint ("If it'd gotten out, what he did, you would likely be stranded back in Nassau. Most of our men would be dead, and those that weren't would be back in those cages right now." "So you sent the vanguard to make sure that he understood this?" "To prevent him from getting any ideas about doing it again, yes.")

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but for real that flashback in 409 is so raw i almost can't bear to watch it. silver looking down and ashamed as flint rebukes him for his manipulation and he gets ready to take whatever words flint wants to inflict on him. until flint takes it a step further and guesses at the secret meaning of silver's self-insertion into the story (that is to get the edge in a possible fight), that maybe silver himself had not fully realized was there. because they are still friends here and silver threw up a shield by instinct as a safeguard, but he does not really want flint to think that of him, that he would harm him, he would never do that, he is not like that. and he has had flint's good faith for so long now that the idea of losing it-- he's almost on the verge of tears, "slow down, I-" he chokes on it. he can't even finish. and flint is so attuned to him at this point, so singularly focused and attentive that he turns from calmy suspicious to placating in an instant and treats him with such careful tenderness ("i am not angry with you") that it cracks silver open and gets him to admit the realest thing he has ever said in the entire show. that he does have a story, he just wants no one to know it. and at this point flint relents because he can see silver cannot bear this. but the fact that he was even able to get him there, to even name a past that he had always tried his best to pretend did not exist, to conjure an outline of it if not to fill it out. i think it's the deepest into silver that anyone, probably even madi, ever went.

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Miranda: Forever Invisible

This is going to be long and kind of rambly because I didn't feel like editing it. Also: here be spoilers.

There's something terrible and interesting about the way Miranda is doomed to be a ghost in her own story, the fandom, and Treasure Island (because she's not canonical, despite the connection between BS and TI). She is both haunted by and haunts the narrative; she is largely absent from meta-discussions (I have not seen a SINGLE post about her outside of Tumblr); and has minimal presence in fanvids/fanart/fanfic (Madi suffers from a similar affliction but for different reasons).

It's both frustrating and also so fascinating that both textually and fandom-wise Miranda is most present when she isn't. When people write metas about Flint and grief post s2, and how SilverFlinty it is that John helps him through his depression and suicidal tendencies, or even just bemoan the loss of his hair-- that's all because of her. Her love and loss drive the plot in a very real way that, if you know what to look for, is undeniable but invisible to outsiders. The outline of her (like Thomas) is there.

Miranda changes Flint's path at least four times directly that we know of (seducing him, telling him about Lord Alfred Hamilton's ship's location, the Boston Pardons situation, and persuading him to go to Charles Town). Whether that's acknowledged by fans or not, it's true. After my first rewatch, when I actually knew the full story, I got that Flint cared for her from the beginning. But in case I hadn't, it became explicit and unavoidable after her death. In s3e3, Flint tells Miranda's ghost/hallucination/spirit: "When I lost Thomas, I raged. I was distraught. I wept. But with you, I’m ruined over you." Just because their love was quieter doesn't mean it was less important.

I would personally lean toward describing Flint as Bi if you pressed me to assign him a modern sexuality (rather than thinking of homosexuality/queerness as an act like it often was historically), but I've never been 100% certain of that. (Just like BS' ending. Does John Silver [redact] Flint or [redact] him to [redacted]???). Like a lot of the show, it's open to interpretation.

However, I do think it is disingenuous to point to the one explicit and full sex scene we get between Flint and Miranda and say, "He's clearly gay! Look how bad their sex is." I think the 1705 flashbacks show enough physical chemistry that that isn't a solid argument. Also, I (and others too) read that one bad-sex scene as a reflection of their mutual grief over Thomas. Plus, even if Flint was only sexually/romantically interested in men, he still loves Miranda and is in some kind of involved and mutually fulfilling (at least in the past) (queer platonic) partnership with her. He, Thomas, and Miranda are a trio. BS is full of queer trios: Jack/Anne/Max; Woodes/Eleanor (past / and &) Max; Silver/Madi (/ ? or &?) Flint.

This has been said before, and I'm sure better worded too, but it's also tragic how she never gets to be right and enjoy it. Flint very rarely enjoys being right (and you can debate to what extent he's right about many things; I think the War was entirely justified), but we're clearly meant to root for him. I'd say he morphs into more of an overtly positive figure mid-s3 onwards. Despite the show's tragedy, Flint gets to enjoy a few key and decisive victories. Miranda never does.

When she is arguably most victorious (chewing Peter Ashe a new one in Charles Town), she is killed. Miranda is anointed by her tragic foresight and becomes almost untouchable because of it, morphing into an Icon, patron Saint of Lost Lovers, empty of personhood. And then, in season four, her house burns down, so there aren't even any mementos left. She's erased from the narrative physically and psychologically (who remembers her aside from Flint, Thomas, maybe Silver via proxy, and possibly Abigal Ashe)? Who writes posts about her, draws fanart of her, makes edits and videos with her? She's invisible. She's ignored. She's a ghost.

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Question for those who are more literary than I - I recently read Don Quixote for the first time, inspired by Black Sails to pick up some classics this year. Upon finishing, I can't recall coming across the line that Madi quotes to Flint: "Too much sanity may be madness - and maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."

Does anyone know where this quote is actually found? I'm wondering if it just bypassed me completely, maybe it's phrased differently in this translation, or if I'm mistaken and it's not actually from Don Quixote? (Or as I always thought it was called as a kid, Donkey Hotay!)

Google leads me to believe this quote is actually attributed to the 1960s musical adaptation, Man of La Mancha?

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there is nothing important that does not include you

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I’m really happy that Black Sails is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, but (predictably) some of the takes I’m seeing online are so busted. It’s wild to me that anyone would complain about the fact that Anne Bonny kisses Jack after she’s developed this life-changing relationship with Max. It’s absolutely wild to see anyone roll their eyes or feel uncomfortable about the fact that Flint has sex with Miranda when he returns to her in season one or that Max is most likely a lesbian but actively has sex with men for pay and knows how to make that pleasurable. It’s crazy to me that some of the very audiences who claim to want queer representation feel so discomforted when they actually see the mess and seeming inconsistencies of queerness that they asked for.

The reality is that there are lesbians who have had (and will have!) meaningful, mutually-gratifying, and deeply sexual relationships with men. There are gay men who’ve enjoyed having sex with women, who are gay as the day is long and nevertheless feel sexually attracted to a woman or two and are nevertheless gay men, full stop. There are gay cis men who are happily married to trans women. There are femme dom tops and butch bottoms and there are mascs who like femme boys. There are non-binary people and trans men who actively identify as lesbians. There are ace and aro people who enjoy thinking about and engaging with sex — sometimes in fiction and sometimes in real life. Queerness, in fiction and in reality, defies neat categorization. That is the beautiful, power, and (perceived) unorthodoxy of queerness.

Now, I’ll say this — do I think the straight men behind Black Sails were actively thinking deeply and insightfully about the paradoxes and fuckery of queer identity when they wrote Black Sails? No! By their own admission, Steinberg and Levine have owned up to the fact that some of the writing of the show was really hinged on their own blind spots as people who are not (to my knowledge) members of the queer community. If I want to be generous, I think that the beautiful mess of Black Sails is that, in not feeling like experts enough to designate specific identity labels to any of their characters, the writers stumbled their way into more authentic representation of lived queer experience, which is to say that the notion that James Flint was actively thinking of himself as a gay man was anachronistic. As many lesbian archivists and theories have noted, the notion of a queer identity — as in, queerness is who you are, not what you do — was patently unthinkable for most cultures in the past. In other words, the idea that Anne Bonny operates in the eighteenth century as a lesbian and thus would not willingly engage in relationships with men is not only untrue of the series, but untrue of most recorded lesbian experiences in the real world. The notion that a lesbian would operate her entire life without engaging sexually or romantically with men is a very new privilege that some of us are very lucky to enjoy, but it is not true for the vast majority of human history — hell, it’s not even true of our present world.

This is all to say that think that there’s something really funny about how we want queer characters to fit into neatly organized boxes. This isn’t a new problem, either. When the show was still airing, the BS fandom would get itself into tizzies about wether or not Flint is gay or bisexual, wether or not Anne Bonny is a lesbian, wether or not Silver is queer when his only canonical relationship is with Madi, etc etc. We’ve been having these discourses for years and I don’t know. I get that much of it is fueled by how badly some people want to see themselves represented in media, but . . . well. The siloing of queer characters and queer narratives into neat little boxes has never felt very authentic to me and nine times out of ten, it’s also just so damn boring.

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I think my favorite thing about Black Sails is that it's about... everything? It's about so much. Pirates. Colonialism. Empire. Civilization. Rebellion. Revolution. Politics. Violence. Economics. Slavery. Stories. Villains. Monsters. Narrative. Betrayal. Shame. Sacrifice. Grief. Love. Love. Love.

I think we all know at this point, it starts out as 2014 Starz trying to compete with GoT. There are valid criticisms to be had about this show, certainly, as is true of anything. 

To those who would claim it's not queer enough... I'd counter that's because it's ultimately about so much more than just that. It is never just one thing and it's not meant to be. Some of the characters are queer. Sometimes it's a really important driving part of the character and plot. Sometimes it's in the background. Sometimes those themes are what it IS about. Sometimes it's not. It matters, and it permeates, but it is also just one important part of a larger complex story.

Ok ALSO (and then I promise I’ll shut up and dive in to the celebratory rewatch): EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE that Black Sails only has queer subtext (and let me make it clear, it absolutely is not true) that still doesn’t invalidate it as a piece of media?? The queer characters aren’t the only reason we love this show. We love this show because it’s beautiful.

It’s heart-wrenching. It dares to ask the questions “what if your civilized society isn’t all that civilized? Who does it leave behind? Whose blood is it built on? What lengths will people go to and what will they sacrifice for even the tiniest bit of agency and freedom in a world that is actively trying to kill them? Are they justified? Can you even make that judgment call?”

It’s a story about storytelling. It has narratives within narratives and foils and tragic flaws and parallels and overarching themes that begin in the very first moments in episode one and last all the way to the end. It’s a Greek tragedy put to the screen. It’s still so hopeful somehow, even when so many things fall apart. It’s the epitome of “the love may not have been enough but it’s important that it was there.” The writing is wonderful (mostly, I have a few hangups but that’s not important here), the cinematography and score is almost reverent. People who worked on this show still gush 10 years later about how it was their masterpiece.

Those headlines of “the best show nobody watched”? There’s a reason for that. Those of us who love Black Sails love it passionately, and the complex and wonderful queerness of it is only one of the reasons.

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I accept all interpretations on the ending, and I personally love living in the ambiguity, but does anyone else think Silver is giving 'Briony at the end of Atonement' vibes?

"I did not kill Captain Flint. I unmade him. The man you know could never let go of his war. For if he were to exclude it from himself, he would not be able to understand himself. So I had to return him to an earlier state of being. One in which he could function without the war. Without the violence. Without us. Captain Flint was born out of great tragedy... I found a way to reach into the past and undo it."

"I couldn't any longer imagine what purpose would be served by it... by honesty. Or reality.

.... So, my sister and Robbie were never able to have the time together they both so longed for and deserved. Which ever since... I've always felt I prevented. But what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I'd like to think this isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness."

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So with Black Sails now on Netflix I just want to talk a little bit about my favourite monologue from the show….

Charles Vanes monologue to Flint when there in Miranda’s House.

Yes I know it’s the ‘is it gay to live in a house’ speech but as I’ve gotten older it’s come to mean a lot to me I guess.

Because it’s asking the question, what would we do, we the people who live in the safety and comfort of our homes, our communities, the safety provided to us by the state, do to keep that comfort? To keep ourselves in the familiar comfort of civilisation and what that comfort requires from us. For us to look past and ignore. A question I think is more important now than it was a decade ago.

“Give us your submission, and we will give you the comfort you need.”

I think it’s a monologue most comparable to Max’s speech to Anne at the beginning of season three when she speaks of what home means to her and in an way Madi’s voices speech to Rogers in season four. They know what was required to build that home, a question that I think is very important for those of us living in the West to ask ourselves, particularly with our counties histories of colonialism.

Idk but when I’m thinking about the big theme of civilisation in the show this is the speech, alongside Max’s that comes to mind. Because all these character have been hurt and rejected by civilisation in one way or another but I think out of all the characters, even Flint, Vane and Max get civilisation best of all in a way. Vane because he wholeheartedly rejects it and Max because she most of all understands what was required to build that room in the first place.

Just yeah. The ‘is it gay to live in a house’ speech always gets me because it’s the civilisation speech to me. It’s defiantly the one that’s made me sit down and think the most.

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Just a reminder that this lovely video exists. From the description:

A video essay about how Black Sails, a show about queer pirates and revolutionaries, became the most underrated series of the decade - and Game of Thrones became a mess. Let's talk LGBT representation, battling colonialism, and the problem with adaptations.