#flintmiranda

[kairennart]

I was going to say… that perhaps you're more concerned with whether or not people talk about what you and I may be doing behind closed doors… than with what we actually are doing.

[john-silvers]

Her word will be the last word for this place.

[rocks-in-space]

A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails, Halyna Kruk

[Image ID: 4 photos from Black Sails overlain with text. The first shows Flint grasping Miranda's face as she cries. The second shows a close-up of Flint's angry face as he hugs Miranda after Thomas's capture. The third shows Miranda, Thomas, and Flint gazing at each other in their house in London. The fourth shows Flint looking at Miranda's corpse as he lies on the floor of Peter Ashe's house. Text on the images reads, "You and I are one tear, one flesh and blood, one painful memory of the world, shared, like a grave." end ID]

Images from https://fancaps.net/

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

I do not know which is worse... that she perish fighting for Jack... or that she survive without him. If it is even truly surviving, losing half of herself this way.

.

I'm ruined over you.

[benjamikaela]

Was it really more discreet to just do it in the carriage? I refuse to believe they emerged unruffled.

[crepuscularqueens]

“I could close my eyes, but it’s all too late They don’t know anything about me Oh, it’s no surprise I lost my way Happiness will ruin this place”

San Fermin - Happiness Will Ruin This Place

[kairenn-n]

They say I may be making a mistake I would've followed all the way, no matter how far

Halsey, Graveyard. (X).

[olincino]

created for @built-on-sand creative event (ao3 collection)

Prompt: The "everything is the same except that Miranda really IS a witch" AU.

WHAT IF ALL THE RUMOURS ABOUT MIRANDA WERE TRUE.

(ao3)

The face covered in blood in the middle pic is young Toby Stephens playing Coriolanus.

[johnsilvers]

miranda: i can’t live like this, and idk but i suspect you can’t either

flint: *seconds away from bursting into tears* you think

[panicroomsammy]

Good Omens S2 through the lens of Black Sails

At the end of Good Omens season two, Aziraphale talks with a seemingly reasonable representative of the hegemonic power and decides that he can best effect the change he desires by working within the system. Viewers are positioned to see Crowley’s perspective - that Crowley and Aziraphale should run away together - as sympathetic through the framing of the show and to therefore see that Aziraphale is wrong. I am not the first to propose that Crowley is wrong as well, but I will be using Black Sails to argue my point.

Throughout Black Sails the characters are confronted with the same (false) dichotomy that Aziraphale and Crowley face. The plot of the show is set in motion when Flint is sent to help a young lord, Thomas Hamilton, to address the issue of pirates in Nassau. His plan is to grant the pirates pardons and bring them back into the nation rather than killing them as has been the policy of England, however he is still working within the system. While working with Thomas, Flint becomes romantically involved with both Thomas and Thomas’s wife, Miranda. England cannot abide by the plan to pardon the pirates, as a hegemonic power cannot allow any challenge to its power - no matter how small - to succeed. When the nature of Thomas, Flint, and Miranda’s relationship is discovered, it is used to put an end to their plan as this relationship is also a challenge to societal norms that England cannot allow. This attempt to change the system from within results in Thomas’s “death” and Flint and Miranda being cast out. Flint and Miranda now transition to running away from the hegemonic power rather than attempting to change it from within.

Even just this beginning parallels Good Omens in many ways. Crowley is cast out of heaven for asking questions in the beginning, akin to being cast out of the British Empire for questioning their policies. This positions the two powers (heaven and England) as both intolerable of the expression of subversive views. This also means that we know from the beginning there is no changing heaven from the inside, as if this was possible Crowley would not have been cast out. There is also the aspect of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship being considered unacceptable by heaven and hell. Queer polyamory is unacceptable to Great Britain, a relationship between a demon and an angel is unacceptable to heaven and hell.

Flint and Miranda now live in Nassau, a place away from the hegemonic power of England. They spend ten years there, away from the hegemonic power and having successfully run away. Flint has built a legend of himself as a pirate to be feared as a means of securing this existence.

This is where Crowley and Aziraphale are at the beginning of season two - they have successfully gotten heaven and hell to leave them alone, as heaven and hell view them as dangerous due to their failed executions.

Black Sails begins with Flint attempting to secure Nassau further with means to defend itself from England, but Miranda attempts to betray him, asking for a pardon for him so that he may rejoin the empire. This clearly parallels the way that the metatron told Aziraphale he could reinstate Crowley as an angel, and Aziraphale agreed. Flint rejected Miranda’s attempt to procure a pardon for him, and Crowley rejected Aziraphale’s offer to reinstate him as an angel.

Despite this initial rejection, in the second season Miranda convinces Flint to attempt reconciliation with England, once again attempting to obtain pardons for all the pirates of Nassau. She tells Flint “there is no life here, there is no love here, there is no joy here” in regards to Nassau. Despite having run away from the empire, their precarious existence is not a happy one.

Others have already written wonderful meta on this, which I am drawing upon, but this is where Crowley and Aziraphale are at the beginning of season two. Throughout season two Crowley and Aziraphale do not have the dynamic that they had for the 6,000 years prior. We never see them sit down for a meal together or have a lengthy conversation. One or the other of them is constantly running off to do something on their own. They are together, but this is precarious and we are introduced to it as it becomes most precarious with the arrival of Gabriel.

Flint and Miranda go to Charlestown, Virginia to speak with an old friend and attempt to gain pardons for the pirates again. The friend demands that in exchange for the pardons Flint publicly confess to all of his crimes, including having loved Thomas. Miranda is outraged by this and is killed for expressing her outrage.

Flint and Miranda attempted to return to the empire and work to change it from the inside once more after they realized that they could not find the fulfillment they desired in running away from it. This did not work and ended quite badly. We can anticipate that of course Aziraphale returning to heaven and attempting to change it from the inside will not go as he plans either.

In response to Miranda’s death, Flint wages all-out war on the British Empire. Meanwhile, another man working within the system succeeded in obtaining pardons for the pirates of Nassau. The two of them speak and Flint says

Thomas Hamilton fought to introduce the pardons to make the point that he could change England, and he was killed for it. His wife and I went to Charlestown to argue for the pardons to make peace with England, and she was killed for it. England has shown herself to me, gnarled and grey and spiteful of anyone who would find happiness under her rule. I’m through seeking anything from England except her departure from my island.

This shows that Flint has accepted that it is not possible to truly change England from the inside. I believe season three of Good Omens will be about Aziraphale coming to this realization regarding heaven.

Another theme that is addressed over and over again in Black Sails is that if one loves one place they will eventually have to learn to love the whole world. The pirates occupy Nassau and begin fighting solely for Nassau. Over the course of the story this expands to the entire West Indies, the entire New World, and towards the end there is discussion of the world as a whole. The pirates also gain allies in a group of Maroons living on an island not far away. The Maroons are governed by a queen who is initially wary of the pirates, but Flint convinces her that the only way to ensure the safety of her people is to defeat England. She loves her people and the place she has made for them, but she was running away from the empire and came to realize that this was not sustainable. Even if you run away, the empire cannot stand even that and it will come for you.

This means that while Aziraphale is wrong to attempt to fix heaven from the inside, Crowley is also wrong in his attempt to run from them. God is by definition omnipresent; there is no running away successfully. Hegemonic powers cannot allow things that challenge them to exist, and we have see this already in the metatron taking Aziraphale back to heaven and therefore neutralizing the threat he and Crowley present.

So what is the third option? I believe Crowley already said it at the end of season one: all of us against all of them. Humanity against heaven and hell. This was not a fight it was possible for humanity to win at the end of season one, but I believe now it is. Crowley and Aziraphale were shown to perform an extremely powerful miracle together in the show, which is what caused heaven to take interest in them again in the first place. Heaven and hell are also both now missing the beings most capable of effectively carrying out an actual war, as Gabriel and Beelzebub have left. This may just be the Black Sails fan in me, but I think that there is a real chance we might get a story of rejecting both working within the system and running away from the system next season.

[sirtadcooper]

Before they took him away, he made me promise him... that no matter what happened next, that you and I... would take care of each other.

[katsofmeer]

miranda and silver as the ones who made/unmade captain flint.

miranda made the protagonist but silver wrote the ending to his story. I’m Unwell About It

[ineedsomecyanide]

black sails (2014-2017) // le pleiadi - vinicio capossela (translated)

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

*explodes for a million years*

[thesamemind]

I always think like, what would’ve been the trajectory of Miranda and Flint’s relationship if you took Thomas out of the picture? Or what would it have been like if Miranda was still alive and had also been reunited with Thomas? There’s a sense that their relationship is defined by their shared loss (Thomas, leaving London, losing the life they were accustomed to) and that they’ve stuck to each other because of this. What would their relationship be like without that?

[swearengen]

black sails “ix.” written by jonathan e. steinberg & robert levine / black sails “xi.” written by brad caleb kane / black sails “xiv.” written by jonathan e. steinberg & robert levine.