So – I recently saw a post about Silver’s actions in the finale of Sails being the equivalent of a friend who stops a speeding car full of people from driving over a cliff despite them being utterly convinced the car will survive the impact, and I couldn’t leave it alone. OP – I’m sorry. Please feel free to skip this post if you’d like – I had to get this off my chest and I’m putting it under a cut because it’s just me bitching and (sort of) disagreeing with you.

Here’s the thing – if we’re going with the car metaphor – it’s not just about the car. It’s about the millions of people who are going to die or spend their lives enslaved if that car doesn’t get to the bottom of that cliff asap. It’s about the fact that the car is filled with volunteers who don’t think their lives are more important than the people they’re saving, and it’s about the fact that even if Silver as the metaphorical passenger knows that the car is not going to survive the impact with the bottom, there are probably ways to stop the car that are gentler than forcing the wheel over so far that the driver’s side strikes a tree and the driver is harmed irreparably (yes, even if he’s reunited with his long-lost husband when he gets to the frankly scary non-voluntary care facility where he’ll be spending his days) while his screaming best friend sits in the back seat, unable to do anything and is left with emotional scars that will last a lifetime. I mean – I can see both sides but the one side has made a conscious choice to try and help thousands of people just like them, having themselves been made the victims of discrimination and prejudice. The other side is looking at two people and deciding that their decisions and wishes don’t matter worth a damn because he personally can’t bear the thought of them dying, and to keep them from dying, he hurts them both in the worst way I can think of. Furthermore, he does this from his lofty position of not having a stake in the war they’re fighting and therefore not understanding that he does, in fact, have a shitton of privilege that they can’t possibly dream of which blinds him to the reason this is so important to them. I can understand his motives, but the choice was not his to make and his methods are quite frankly just wrong. Free will and choice are important, as are dignity and ideals and freedom, and Silver’s choices took all those things away from people he claimed to love.