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Favorite Sega Character: Losers Bracket Round 4

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It is what it is

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HAPPY 413 time for my yearly tradition of being too lazy to think of an Epic Composition and instead doing a silly crossover pic instead

bonus labru doodle under cut:

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I was born hungry

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trying to describe black sails to people is my personal sisyphean task. “it’s a pirate show” bad. “it’s functionally a prequel to treasure island but also it’s not at all” bad again, and also confusing. “it’s about pirates trying to destroy western civilization” mostly only true of the second half of the show and also doesn’t fully capture what i love about it. “it’s a pirate show about the power of stories, how civilization uses shame to keep people in line and turns them into monsters, and the power of queer rage. it’s got some of the best acting, writing, everything of any show i’ve ever seen.” the most accurate, but way too long and makes me sound pretentious and insane. send help i just want to talk about my favorite show.

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STAR.SUN.MOON

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i KNOW i’ve said it before but the delivery of “well what the FUCK did you think was gonna happen” sends me EVERY time

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CHARACTER DOOODLZ 🏴‍☠️ 🌴 ❤️❤️❤️

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Persuasion Check of all time

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hey who has a screenshot of that toby stephens tweet about his earring. you know the one,, it contains the words "an old hole, still open, from my youth." i need it for science purposes

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black sails elysium

YOU- "We must unite under our own king."

BILLY- "We have no kings here." He is looking at you with unease. The fact that Richard Guthrie is lying in this boat and bleeding out unsettles him, more than he'd say in words.

PERCEPTION [Challenging: Success]- No, it's not the sight of Richard Guthrie that unsettles him. It is the sight of you.

AUTHORITY [Trivial: Success] - What does he know? Remind him who you are!

SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] - He is a smart man. Surely he understands what is at stake here. You can reason with him.

"Shut up and row."

Don't say anything.

[Authority - Heroic] Remind him that this is all for a Greater Cause.

AUTHORITY [Heroic: Failure]- Time to remind him of how Great the Cause is and who runs the damn show here.

"I am your king."

Wait a second, won't that make me sound like a delusional megalomaniac?

YOU - Wait a second, won't that make me sound like a delusional megalomaniac?

AUTHORITY - Oh, is there anyone more qualified around? What is this, a tea party? Come on, have some backbone!

YOU - "I am your king."

BILLY - He is looking at you in disbelief.

SUGGESTION - Maybe you shouldn't have said that.

AUTHORITY - Maybe you should say it again.

Say it again.

Do not say it again.

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Black Sails (2014-2017) is the prequel to Muppet Treasure Island (1996) to me btw.

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In discussions about the finale of Black Sails, one of the things I often see is folks hard-focusing on Flint's fate, in an either-or binary fashion, usually presented as "Which do you believe-- that Silver killed him? or sent him to the plantation?"

Now, for posterity's sake, gonna mention a few things-- first off, that's simply not thinking broadly enough. There are farrrr more than two options here and I've come up with my share of the reallyyyyy bad ones for sure. Whatever your mind chooses, none of those are happy endings anyway, there are bittersweet, bad, and worse endings all the way down. (They are paused, they are in a time loop, and also all endings and no endings are happening simultaneously)

But also, the more cogent point is that, it doesn't actually matter what happened *to Flint* The story is... not actually about him at that point. We have transitioned from Flint as protag to Silver as protag, setting up for (the fanfiction that Black Sails has ended up making of, ugh, king shit) Treasure Island.

And so, I just, don't find it to be of particular interest exploring what we think Flint is actually doing or if he's alive for real. What is EXTREMELY interesting to explore though is how Silver's speech at the end to Madi is sort of giving Thomas back to Flint as a pacifier/comfort object, but how... Silver is giving Flint that thing in his own mind as his own type of pacifier/comfort object.

That's the REALLY chewy bit. What actually happens to Flint is not the purpose of that scene for me, of Silver's recounting of events to Madi. It's more about... projection. It's about how Silver is dealing with whatever happened to Flint/whatever he did.

And I just feel like it's missing the point to focus so hard on if Flint is alive or not.

He is the ghost of the story regardless, that's what's important. He's going to haunt the narrative for the rest of everyone's lives. No one has been untouched or unscarred by coming into contact with Captain Flint; he has a forever legacy. I'm not the first to call him this, but he's Schrödinger's Flint and he's staying that way.

But this?

"No. 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. There is a place near Savannah... where men unjustly imprisoned in England are sent in secret. An internment far more humane, but no less secure. Men who enter these gates never leave them. To the rest of the world, they simply cease to be. He resisted... at first. But then I told him what else I had heard about this place. I was told prominent families amongst London society made use of it. I was told the governor in Carolina made use of it. So I sent a man to find out if they'd used it to hide away one particular prisoner. He returned with news. Thomas Hamilton was there. He disbelieved me. He continued to resist. And corralling him took great effort. But the closer we got to Savannah, his resistance began to diminish. I couldn't say why. I wasn't expecting it. Perhaps he'd finally reached the limits of his physical ability to fight. Or perhaps as the promise of seeing Thomas got closer... he grew more comfortable letting go of this man he created in response to his loss. The man whose mind I had come to know so well... whose mind I'd in some ways incorporated into my own. It was a strange experience to see something from it... so unexpected. I choose to believe it... because it wasn't the man I had come to know at all... but one who existed beforehand... waking from a long... and terrible nightmare. Reorienting to the daylight... and the world as it existed before he first closed his eyes... letting the memory of the nightmare fade away. You may think what you want of me. I will draw comfort in the knowledge that you're alive to think it. But I'm not the villain you fear I am. I'm not him."

This is the speech of a man who is self-soothing, who is spinning himself a tale, who is projecting, who is coping.

and THAT is just, way chewier, innit?

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you watch black sails, it rewires your brain, and then what. what now. every queer abalysis of media sounds superficial. I want - I need, sometimes - to compare movies and TV shows to black sails so I can make a point, but I can't, because like, five people have watched it. And now what. I try explaining the monster metaphor and how minorities shouldn't conform, but no one gets it. so I just sound like I'm being insane. Which I am, but it has a point and a rationale. And then some media comes out and everyone treats it like it's revolutionary in how it portrays queernes but you've seen it before and you've seen it done better, more carefully, more genuinely, but you can't say anything lest the fans of this new media accuse you of being a prejudiced asshole. And maybe you are. Maybe you're expecting too much of media that should just be allowed go exist as it is. But if that media is putting itself forward as some kind of metaphor for how queer people are treated in society, and it comes to a certain conclusion, and you're queer, aren't you allowed to disagree with that conclusion? Aren't you allowed to think it's shallow at best and homophobic at worse? So you just watch black sails and go insane. and let the cycle repeat over and over. and it's still just you and those five people.

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black sails syphilis spread chart