#he genuinely thinks that given justice and freedom the pirates would go be farmers and tradespeople

[etoilesombre]

Current thing making me insane: Flint’s accent. 

So we know extraordinarily little about Flint’s early history, really. Raised by grandfather, fisherman, from Padstow. That is a very specific location to give us, given vagueness of everything else. 

The interesting thing is, Padstow is in Cornwall. The Cornish accent is by far one of the most distinct British accents, you would absolutely recognize it. And one of the main things you might recognize it from is that it is the basis of the ‘stereotypical’ pirate accent (thanks Robert Newton 1950 TI adaptation Silver). That’s how Flint would have spoken growing up, and he clearly erases all traces of that accent and is doing this very generic upper class London accent by the time he meets Thomas - a natural part of  becoming educated/passing as a gentleman/etc, plenty has been written about that. Flint was not the first transformation in his life, Lt. McGraw was equally created. 

Point being, when he ‘created’ Flint, it would have been VERY easy to revert to an earlier way of speaking to blend in. But he makes the choice to keep outsider status. His vibe remains very much ‘officer and gentleman who has turned to piracy’ rather than ‘naturally a pirate’ although he probably could have picked the latter if he wanted. 

Why? Hm, I started but it got long. Flint and maintaining outsider status is perhaps a separate post. For now I will leave it at: probably some combination of perceived superiority, self punishment, and Miranda. 

[I do acknowledge that Black Sails doesn’t actually do that accent pirates much anyway. I think some of it holds just in terms of class differences though, and still an interesting choice]