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[gremlines]

today i'm thinking abt black sails and its portrayal of The Other

the way flit has always been other, either by society's design or his own. a working class naval lieutenant surrounded by the sons of landed gentry. the way he holds himself as other from the rest of nassau & the pirates, even from those like hornigold who (to my memory) are also ex-navy (or at least ex-navy coded??)

the way madi, miranda, eleanor, max, and anne are all Other for being women in a male-dominated space, but how eleanor is less Other for her whiteness and wealth vs madi (and to a different degree, max) who are on the other end of the spectrum as being enitrely othered by the dominant culture. versus miranda who COULD be like eleanor but chooses to hold herself as other.

the otherness even of those you'd expect to NOT be other, like vane - very traditionally masculine, but still other for his anti-slavery stance.

that one scene where rackham is in boston talking to socialites and you can FEEL how OTHER he is. the way the people in boston talk abt pirates as distant and different and Other. an intentional separation - an intentional Othering - by so-called civilization toward those they deem dangerous. the Othering of flint & vane at charlestown, where only abigail ashe sees them as people and not as Other

something something civilization wants you to cling to its light, but there is freedom in the darkness!!

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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.

[gremlines]

Concept: After the one two punch of Tain’s death scene and the official augment reveal, Garak and Julian Do Not talk about it directly for a long long time, but Julian does pointedly assign Frankenstein for their homoerotic book club lunch after Dr. Bashir I Presume. Garak is…Untroubled. 

(“Monstrous fathers create monstrous sons all the time without ever resorting to anything so dramatic or crude as lightning rods and graverobbing, my dear Doctor. Why, in some families it’s practically a tradition. A family trade, honed to perfection over the span of generations.”

“Yeah?” 

“Could anything but such an iterative process explain the existence of Skrain Dukat, do you think?”

“Hah! You know what, you may have a point.”) 

It’s about. The mutual ‘We may both have been made into different kinds of monsters at the hands of our fathers and yeah I guess that kind of sucks. But at least at the end of the day neither of us is Gul Dukat’ emotional security of it all

[gremlines]

ok but WHERE is the black sails / pjo tv crossover slash au where flint really is poseidon!!!!!

[gremlines]

i'm also rly emo abt how hadestown is a story told over and over hoping the ending will be better and then for one tine (reeve's last show) they get a happy ending that makes me want to eat gravel!!!!

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in "green light" daisy's line is "buried you in my heart / as i moved on" while gatsby's is "as i CARRIED on" which foreshadows the confrontation im act 2 where it's clear that gatsby has only loved daisy this whole time, simply carrying on, while daisy built a life with tom and had MOVED ON and can't pretend otherwise anyway lyricist nathan tysen u should be proud of ur work

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doodles

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i think nu trek has a bad case of relying too heavily on established canon and not allowing itself to be fun and zany and weird

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Star Trek makes me soooo crazy cuz you got Picard saying things like "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose."

And Data saying things like "I would gladly risk feeling bad at times, if it also meant that I could taste my dessert."

And Bashir saying things like “You can't go through life trying to avoid getting a broken heart. If you do, it'll break from loneliness anyway."

And Odo sayings things like "It has been my observation that one of the prices of giving people freedom of choice is that sometimes they make the wrong choice."

And I’m just supposed to be normal about it???

[gremlines]

everyone is a monster to someone / there is a spectre haunting europe

[gremlines]

Oh, how times change...

The Voice Fanzine | Caren Parnes, 1986

[gremlines]

u kno what drives me absolutely feral. the series of flashback snippets of thomas hamilton in his shirtsleeves, in what looks like the rented rooms of a navy lieutenant - definitely not the glamour of the london house of landed gentry - and he looks so soft and in love. and the sound is so gentle that in my memory it's almost entirely silent. and it's just three tender moments forever immortalized. and the scene looks worn and soft, like the pages of a book so well-loved it was either constantly handled or locked away. and i don't know which is more terrible - that james thinks of thomas always, or that james tries to think of thomas never

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hey ok i've thought about it. the Big Case happens bc pike takes them to like. a conference or smth when the murder goes down and the colony leader asks pike for help bc he's a starfleet captain

and initially kirk and the other mentees aren't meant to be involved but then kirk learns it's tom leighton and kirk gets himself involved and there's a tense scene where kirk asks to speak w leighton bc leighton won't talk to pike but "we went to summer camp together we're friends" and pike is like "u think he'll talk to u bc u went to SUMMER CAMP together" and kirk is like "yes" in his best no bullshit voice and pike is like "uh huh"

also i've thought more abt the mccoy-as-paulette thing and i realize that this casts jocelyn as the shitty ex and joanna as the dog and like this is why bones is only NARRATIVELY paulette bc we do not demonize jocelyn in this household they were both trying their best and it just doesn't work out

anyway when spock finds kirk struggling a little w the coursework or smth (it's bc he's finally being challeneged and he's not used to having to work hard at his academics, u kno usual gifted child nonsense) and then this exchange happens like

spock: if you are so easily discouraged at the first signs of hardship, why choose command track?

kirk: well really i'm here to win back my ex

spock: you enrolled in a highly selective and notoriously difficult academic program to... impress a former lover?

kirk: yes

spock: that is most illogical reasoning

bc spock thought that kirk enrolled in starfleet to like. follow in his father's footsteps or smth but rly kirk did it bc gary mitchell said "i'm going into starfleet and breaking up w u bc despite being george kirk's son you're also a delinquent with no aspirations" and kirk was like fuck you i'll show you aspirations bc kirk also u kno has major abandonment issues

and then kirk is like "well why did YOU join starfleet" and spock had a that's so raven-style flashback to giving thr high council the proverbial middle finger and says "it was the most logical course of action" and kirk is like "....uh huh"

star trek aos legally blonde au

jim kirk goes to starfleet academy to win back his ex, gary mitchell, via academic excellence in the command track. kirk (and gary but that's less impt) get recruited to work under pike's mentorship, and meet his other protege, science track cadet first class spock who has a 🎵 chip on his shoulder 🎵 and who initially butts heads w kirk but they end up working closely together under pike and it all comes to a head when kirk finds out pike knew his dad and kirk thinks he only got the mentorship bc of nepotism (no sexual assault in this pls and thank u!)

and uh idk the Big Case they end up working on involves tom leighton (narratively as fitness instructor brooke windham) who has been charged w murdering actor anton karidian

featuring leonard bones mccoy as the begrudging roommate but narratively as paulette, uhura narratively as vivian (but not as gary's girlfriend), carol as kirk's friend from back home (narratively the delta nu girls), and whoever u want as delivery man brandon

[gremlines]

star trek aos legally blonde au

jim kirk goes to starfleet academy to win back his ex, gary mitchell, via academic excellence in the command track. kirk (and gary but that's less impt) get recruited to work under pike's mentorship, and meet his other protege, science track cadet first class spock who has a 🎵 chip on his shoulder 🎵 and who initially butts heads w kirk but they end up working closely together under pike and it all comes to a head when kirk finds out pike knew his dad and kirk thinks he only got the mentorship bc of nepotism (no sexual assault in this pls and thank u!)

and uh idk the Big Case they end up working on involves tom leighton (narratively as fitness instructor brooke windham) who has been charged w murdering actor anton karidian

featuring leonard bones mccoy as the begrudging roommate but narratively as paulette, uhura narratively as vivian (but not as gary's girlfriend), carol as kirk's friend from back home (narratively the delta nu girls), and whoever u want as delivery man brandon

[gremlines]

the way people notice the surface level of jim and spock and allow that to blind them to the true deeper and more important traits!!!!!

i've been thinking so much about how kirk is just thought of as this gung-ho action hero, and those who see deeper will see the intelligence and tactician's mind. and how spock is shuttled into the role of smart man stick-in-the-mud, occassionally seen also as a little snarky or perhaps just.

but i also think about how we don't talk enough about like. the core of them? the driving character traits?

because yes they are those things, but i think at their CORE, kirk is kind and spock is loyal.

i think sometimes modern interpretations miss this and that makes me so upset!! a lot of aos kirk's actions are just so callous and unkind? and don't get me STARTED on the whole spock cheating thing!!!!!

like babes did we not watch the same show?

[gremlines]

James T Kirk would fistfight William Shatner on sight but he would give Chris Pine a kiss on the mouth

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interesting take but to some extent i disagree??

bc we see in VOY that janeway and chakotay decide not to pursue a romantic relationship (at least officially and on screen) because of their positions as captain and xo. and we see janeway struggle with finding intimate romantic connections, as exemplified by the time she "falls in love" w a hologram.

and the context in which sisko exists also makes a difference. he's captain of a space station, near civilization, where he is not the only authority for lightyears. of course it's easier for him to find romance outside of his chain of command - there's people he can and does interact with on a daily basis who fall under that category!

and if we mean family outside of a romantic sense, i would also argue that kirk and picard have that too? the kirk-spock-mccoy triumverate and the entire found family dynamic of the enterprise-d bridge grew count as family!!

Funny how TOS and TNG have captains condemned to be alone and single forever and ever because Being a Captain is a Responsibility You Don't Have Time For That and then VOY and DS9 were like "actually, captains can have families and care for them and it's compatible, they will have tragedies but not this one".