theoddesttea

[theoddesttea]

really everyone you love has something miserably wrong with them or an obvious flaw that won't ever be fixed but like it's up to you what kind of person you can and cannot deal with. someone in my family has anger issues which I can handle and diffuse with no problem, but a person who can't tolerate yelling could not be close to him. another person I know is very anxious & needs constant reassurance and she gets along famously with gentler and more straightforward people than myself, but I can't handle being second guessed all the time. someone who is loosey goosey with their morals wouldn't bother me, but a person with a profound sense of justice makes me feel afraid of getting on their bad side. none of these traits actually make someone a bad person & just because there are personalities I can't handle doesnt mean I'M a bad person either. litany against callout posts for stupid shit and simple incompatibilities we all have to live on this earth together & need to learn how to deal with each other

[theoddesttea]

and nothing's gonna save you before the curtain call

this is the death of you

[theoddesttea]

i was thinking there's really something in max calling anne "the truest person i have ever known". black sails is a story about stories in many ways, not the least of which is about the stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves in order to survive our own choices. flint and eleanor mostly tell themselves that they are good people and that their 'bad' actions are justified or don't represent them i.e. they are not part of their identity. max cuts off pieces of her identity so that she does not perceive her actions as opposed to her self-concept. silver abandons any definition of his identity so that he can be flexible enough to do anything necessary to survive. and so they choose and they can live with it. but when it comes to anne, she can't do it. when she needs to choose whether to take her revenge on max she says "i don't wanna do it. i don't wanna live with it after". during the show she has been characterised as someone struggling to find her identity, tending to lean on others to absorb part of theirs. and that gradually changes after she meets max, but even at the end of the series it appears to be still a work in progress. yet, even at the beginning, and again throughout the show, even when she doesn't know exactly who she is in all of her facets, as soon as she perceives something about herself, as soon as it surfaces, she honours it. when she realizes she does not want vane's men to keep raping and beating max she does something about it, immediately. when she realizes she does not have it in her to kill max, she stops. she is not able and i think more importantly she does not want to tell herself any lies to live with it. she is similar to silver in that she has run from looking at herself for a long time, but she is opposite to him in that she is probably the character more intentioned to embark on a journey to shine light on her interiority moving forward. she is also the only character, as far as i can think of, that seems to conceptualize the definition of her identity as a process of discovery of a sort of tangible 'true self' that exists somewhere within her and that encompasses every moment of her life, every decision. in that way she is someone that never really tries to be the author of her own narrative, it's almost like for her, her story has already been written. not in the sense that her future is predetermined, but in the sense that she thinks events and choices have shaped her and will keep shaping her as they happen regardless of her will for them to do so. in that sense, when she tries to find herself she is less writing her story and more reading it. while everyone else considers their identity a negotiation between what they can keep in and what they can omit from the narrative they self-create.

[theoddesttea]

iwtv, episode 14 // young man kneeling before god the father by egon schiele

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black sails | moshidi motshegwa as the maroon queen

i've done a few pieces for black sails over the years, but i hadn't done any of the maroon queen yet

which i had to fix, because moshidi motshegwa is just so gorgeous and completely embodies 'regal' in this role

[theoddesttea]

My unpopular take no one asked for is that I actually think Max's arc in season one of Black Sails is really important to a) all the characters involved b) the show's overall story and that c) it wasn't filmed gratuitously

To be clear: If it's not a storyline you're able to watch, or you can't watch the show because of it, that's fine. (I did make a post of timestamps so you can avoid it: the total time covered is about ten minutes.) But the way I see people describe it is starting to become deeply irritating, so here goes.

Spoiler warnings and rape mentions ahead.

First of all: it feels worse than some stuff that's in, like, Game of Thrones, because it's filmed to be worse. They aren't trying to make it remotely sexy, they are trying to upset you. It's why you can never actually see anything: one rape scene has the characters out of focus while Eleanor comes in waving a stick, and the other the camera is focused on Anne outside the tent, listening.

And with that out of the way. I think it's very essential to understanding Max as a character that she walks into Vane's camp knowing full well how it's going to go down, because the alternative is to be entirely dependent on Eleanor (who wants to stay with her, who wants to take care of her.) Max goes nuclear to ensure that not only can that not happen, Eleanor knows that Max doesn't fucking want it. She's cutting off her face to stick it to her nose. And she knows it, and recognizes it, probably regrets it, and then tells herself that she isn't going to make decisions based on her feelings for other people anymore--and that guides most of her decisions until the end.

And then how the other characters react is also insanely important. Eleanor really does try to do what she thinks is right by Max. She basically sets Vane up to die and holds island commerce hostage over it...up until it's really going to cost her, and that's when she buckles.

Hornigold, meanwhile, doesn't even understand why Eleanor is upset in the first place. Silver convinces Eleanor to give up because Eleanor asks him to, and he's perfectly happy to do it because all he wants is to stay alive. I'm not even sure if Flint knew anything was happening beyond "free ship," but I doubt he'd have cared. Jack is happy enough to use Max to keep the remaining men on the crew, viewing it as an somewhat unpleasant necessity (gee when does he do that again later) up until the point that continuing to do so would get Anne killed, and that's when he buckles. (For all that he's the only man on the show who really lets women boss him around of his own free will, it's not like he winds up in that position from feminism and purity of heart.)

And then there's the Anne of it all. We're introduced to Anne as a "one of the boys" archetypes that would, in most shows, scorn characters like Max. Except she doesn't. She's the one person who DOESNT give into threats and pressure. She risks her position with the crew and then goes to team up with Eleanor, a woman she fucking hates, to do some truly spectacular mass murder. It's part of why Max develops feelings for her and it's certainly why Max lets her literally get away with doing murder in her brothel in season 2.

Which gets into how Max's decision to go with Vane's crew is the domino that sets off a million other arcs: I wrote a canon-divergence fic that didn't include it and it was surprisingly hard to get people roughly where they were supposed to be. It's why Noonan dies, and Max becomes Madame, and is why the rest of Max, Anne, Jack, Featherstone, and Idelle's stories go the way they do. It's how Billy ends up quartermaster on the Walrus, which leads to him falling off the ship which is why Gates turns on Flint. It's why Vane goes to meet up with his white-dreds buccaneer buddies and is able to hold the bay hostage (which, is ultimately, why both Hornigold and Eleanor end up dependent on Woodes Rogers and why all three of them die.)

Obviously the writers could have gotten there another way if they'd wanted to--but I keep seeing people say the storyline was totally unnecessary to the plot and it, uh, wasn't. (I am not convinced these people have watched past episode 2, though.)

[theoddesttea]

i think of this ProZD video constantly its always so fucking funny

[theoddesttea]

Apparently some folks have never had the opportunity to see the black sails special features. See the notes...

[theoddesttea]

Jessica Parker Kennedy as Max (the best character) from Black Sails. I started this two and a half years ago and abandoned it because I had anxiety about drawing her hair. Turns out her hair was actually fun to draw; what I *should* have had anxiety about was that fucking sheet.

[theoddesttea]

Pokémon AU

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Karaoke

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funky little cheetahs

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open a new window somewhere in the world. 

[theoddesttea]

the only coping mechanisms black sails characters know are

- gay sex

- repressing every emotion

- mass murder

[theoddesttea]

watching black sails is like i agree with flint. i think flint is delusional. i live in a society. i am bound to my shame. i am free of my shame. i am writing a twelve-page essay. i hate john silver. i love john silver. i am no better than john silver. i am having a crisis of identity. the concept of “identity” isn’t real. the ending is mercifully hopeful. the ending is deeply tragic. i want to rewatch black sails. i cannot rewatch black sails.