- betray him
- put him in chains
- let him go on thinking the love of his life is dead
- tell him it was his fault that everyone he cares about dies
- threaten him with his worst nightmare
- leave the love of his life in a prison so as leverage to keep james there
#here’s a list of things that someone who loves Silver would never do: #remind him that he is a worthless piece of trash who nobody gives a fuck about outside of nassau #ask him to give up the life of a woman he loves for the greater good #lie to him about supporting his plan to save his girlfriend #manipulate him in all possible ways to make him see their point of view #i mean #if we’re going to be critical #let’s not forget that Flinty is just as fucking bad #and then I can’t really see why you would be angry with the one and not the other (via @ilackallhonour)
hi, i assume since you added these tags that you’re actually interested in my reasons? i also disagree with some of the points you’ve made so i’ll take this chance to explain why.
alright – so ‘remind him that he is a worthless piece of trash who nobody gives a fuck about outside of nassau’ that was back in s2. please remember that at this point, silver was either just about to or already had sold the location of the orca gold to max and jack, betraying not just flint but the whole crew. they were not friends at this point. hence why i didn’t add things like ‘stole the schedule, tried to sell it to jack and vane, succeeded in selling the location to jack and max, etc.’ EDIT: also, i assume you don’t mean to imply that this is equal to silver telling flint that thomas and miranda’s deaths were his fault? bc flint really isn’t wrong when he reminds silver that he wouldn’t matter like he does in nassau anywhere else. but silver is completely wrong in saying that it’s flint’s fault thomas and miranda are dead. one is probably true. the other is a lie. they are not the same.
‘ask him to give up the life of a woman he loves for the greater good’ – it’s more complicated then that and you know it. also, flint wasn’t asking silver to let madi die. his plan was always to rescue madi in addition to keeping the cache. and let’s also not forget that madi wanted to give up her life for the greater good. she wanted to give up silver’s life for the greater good. flint was right when he said that ‘it if costs the war to save her, you’ll have lost her already’
flint tried to save madi without giving up something that meant more than their lives to both of them. silver… didn’t tell flint that thomas was alive, despite knowing the pain it would have spared him, and didn’t rescue thomas himself, despite knowing exactly where he was for ages.
‘lie to him about supporting his plan to save his girlfriend’ – so… like silver lied to them both about supporting their war? like silver lied to flint about supporting his plan?
‘manipulate him in all possible ways to make him see their point of view’ – ??? how???
another thing to remember:
- silver, 4×06: I know what flint is
- flint, 4×08: you are the best of us
…yeah, those things are totally the same
‘I can’t really see why you would be angry with the one and not the other’ – because silver let flint think that thomas was dead for longer than he had to. because he then put him in chains and sent him to a plantation to work as a slave. because he left thomas to the same fate. because when flint told him about thomas, his reaction was ‘it’s your fault’. i understand that not everyone agrees with me, but this is how i feel.
Hi, thanks for your reply. I know that Silver’s actions are not pure.
I’m not disagreeing with that. And yes, saying Thomas and Miranda and Gates died because of Flint’s actions is way harsh. But he’s become the way he is because of a traumatic past, same as most of the other characters. Who knows what made him say something so heartless. But it’s easy for me to empathize with him, he’s desperate to stop Flint and Madi because (I believe) he genuinely loves them, and they are the only two people in the entire world who returned his love, perhaps for the first time in his life, and he becomes possessive and selfish and makes bad decisions. I don’t think it’s possible to be completely selfless in any relationship anyway. It’s a delicate balance between people.
And if I think about my own loved ones sacrificing their life for a cause I don’t believe in (because Silver doesn’t believe in the war), I think I would have made similar decisions. Should he be despised for them and the things he said at certain points? Nah, I don’t think so. I think the friendship between Silver and Flint was based on genuine and good things, but ultimately they couldn’t understand each other and lost their balance, but I don’t believe it was just Silver who is to blame for that. Or if there is any blame at all, because they can’t help but to be the way they are. Hey, I get that some things are completely unacceptable and unforgivable to you; I am a soft fool who is quick to let things go 😉
Can I just chime in for a second?
I can see your point. Really, I can. I can see Silver’s motivations, and I can understand why he thinks that he needs to stop Flint and Madi’s war, even if I don’t agree with that choice. But I think we’ve got a false equivalency problem when we start comparing harsh words/manipulative tactics to one person selling another into slavery. That’s the point at which I, and I think most sane people, draw a line, and I’m pretty sure that if you think about “things you would be willing to do to your loved ones to keep them safe,” you’d draw the line there too, or at least I really, sincerely hope that you would because wow. I’m furthermore pretty sure you can see the difference between “lying to keep someone safe” and “lying about something precisely because you’re already planning on literally selling your best friend.” That’s the point at which it crosses over from a manipulation (still pretty unacceptable in my book since it’s taking away choice) to an outright betrayal, and no, I’m not going to be forgiving Silver for it any time soon (or ever), and this doesn’t even get into the difficulties I experience when I start trying to forgive Silver taking the choice away from not only Madi and Flint but Madi’s people, as well. In short – there’s a big difference here between Flint and Silver manipulating each other and Silver actively betraying Flint by selling him and making it so that he becomes to history exactly what he was afraid of – nothing more than a monster.
Of course 🙂 About the selling into slavery… yes, it is a labour camp where James and Thomas are not free, but I don’t think they will be treated cruelly there judging by the things the owner had to say. As far we know they will lead a fairly okay life there. And okay, let me just examine my own feelings here. If I had to choose between subjecting my loved ones (idk, I’m now thinking about my mother or my partner) to more suffering, war and certain death on the one hand, because that is what Silver believes lies in store for them, or a prison where they would be together with someone they care about and where they would live a restricted but safe life… yes, I think I really would choose that second option. Honestly, is that so terrible? Would Flint rather be dead than locked up with Thomas?
About Silver turning Flint into what he was afraid of, wasn’t it Flint himself who turned him into that monster?
He could have chosen to leave with Miranda and live a quiet life in exile. His own actions as a pirate started the story of Captain Flint and that story would not have changed if he’d gotten and won his war.
It’s more tricky when it comes to Madi. I agree with you that things are different when it comes to her situation and I really do feel so very sorry for her. I know I am a privileged person and I have not experienced anything remotely like the oppression Madi and Flint faced, so perhaps it’s easy for me to say I would never sacrifice as much as they would have and that what Silver did was only reasonable. So yeah, perhaps I am insane =P Always a possibility.
……..it doesn’t matter how they are treated, what matters is that they can’t leave. that they are forced to work for no wages. and just think about thomas for a moment – because not only has silver condemned Flint to this life, but Thomas as well. And Thomas never did anything to deserve that. And the things that the owner had to say quite frankly made me sick –
What’s to be done with the unwanted ones? The men who do not fit, whom civilization must prune from the vine to protect its sense of itself. Every culture since earliest antiquity has survived this way, defining itself by the things it excludes. So long as there is progress, there will always be human debris in its wake, on the outside looking in.
i mean?? what the fuck?? and anyway, it wasn’t a binary choice – imprison flint with thomas, or allow the war to continue. silver clearly believed (as do i, honestly) that flint would give up the war for thomas. so why not just free thomas?
Exactly. That speech was ten thousand kinds of fucking gross, and it all boils down to Madame Guthrie’s cat metaphor and why that too is fucked up as hell. First off – yes, I do believe a society should very much be judged by the people it excludes. If your society is excluding people based on things like skin color, religion, sexual orientation, etc – let me be really clear. That makes your society extremely fucked up, and yes, people should be judging the hell out of that and probably burning that fucker to the ground to build something better. Second – if your solution for how to treat the excluded includes locking them away so that the people who have made their lives miserable for no good reason other than their own greed and xenophobia don’t have to see them, that too is fucked up beyond belief. I cannot possibly be clearer about the difference between Thomas’ and James’ plan to offer pardons to men who had been driven to the edges of society so that they could come back on their own terms versus Oglethorpe’s solution, which is to take men like that and lock them up working for him for a pittance, unable to leave, unable to form meaningful relationships with anyone outside the plantation – unable to live their lives, in short. One of these approaches begins to address the systematic injustice faced by the poor at the time and brings to light the source of the crimes being committed, and the other takes people who have already been ground under England’s boot and forces them to stay there for the rest of their lives. Don’t even get me started on the parallels between this and the modern American prison system – just don’t.
Meg's Mumbles 