re: this post about rewatching Black Sails, Miranda’s role in season 1 also makes me love one of my favourite Flint speeches EVEN MORE. her relationship with Flint is way more public than i remembered, in a way that ties into the persona he constructs around himself. spoilers up to 3×01 under the cut!
this is all excellent analysis!
another thing that, to me, stands out about flint’s grief over miranda’s death, is the dream sequence in which he says “i am ruined over you”.
now, i’m not a fan of trying to set direct comparisons between relationships, so i’ll leave that aside for another post (one day i might get around to writing that meta about comparisons within black sails, and how sometimes the show flounders a bit btwn its writing and its overall message), but what always always always gets me is this line:
“I was mistress to you when you needed love. Wife when you needed understanding. But first and before all, I was mother.”
there is SO MUCH wrapped up in this line. let’s remember first that this is his subconscious speaking. it’s not miranda’s ghost, it’s flint himself. that means that on some level, flint himself thinks of miranda as not only his friend/parter, but his mother and his wife. setting aside his sexuality (bc i don’t feel like getting hate-mail again, and i am perfectly happy w either bi or gay flint, so hold your insults pls), i think this line is remarkable.
it really portrays just how difficult and plain jawdroppingly complex their relationship is. i am firmly of the opinion that during flint’s formative years he had no sginificant or lasting female presence in his life, as evidenced by his string of unfortunate father figures: the man he calls the closest thing to a father is his superior officer, not his grandfather that raised him or his biological father that sired him. considering that he probably entered the male-dominated navy young, i assume he had few relationships with women in any significant capacity.
ofc this is a bit of wild conjecture on my part, but i hold to it bc it means that miranda is remarkable and important to him in multiple ways: she occupies the places that multiple women would otherwise have held throughout his life. he never had a mother, mistress, wife, and thus, with her strong presence in his life and her role in shaping him (which is significant!) she somehow naturally comes to provide for him all these things, without ever being confined to one. i don’t think it’s as simple as “mother & mistress & wife? does that mean he wants to fuck his mother figure? has odysseus become oedipus???” bc eh. too simplistic. we know black sails routinely does better than that.
again, i think this is something that is largely independent from the question of flint’s sexuality, bc throughout history queer ppl have married ppl incompatible w their orientation for all sorts of reasons (but then again, it also runs w a bi interpretation, so everyone can be happy), but i think it’s also important to acknowledge that this is how flint thinks of her, personally, in the heart of his heart: mistress, wife, mother.
i love flint and thomas’ relationship for how simple it is. yes, there’s lots of societal bullshit surrounding them that makes things hard, and if you think they never had fallings-out or difficulties then i think you’re terribly wrong, but at the same time, these two are the most straightforward example of star-crossed lovers on this show. they hit it off right away, they’re so obviously meant to be it’s almost ridiculous, and in the end even imprisonment and torture and mortal danger and war can’t keep them apart forever. that’s some fairytale stuff right here.
i love flint and miranda’s relationship for how complicated and real it is, and how i will never, as long as i live, be able to really define it or wrap my brain around it. it’ll forever be a scab i’ll keep picking at, and just like that it’ll forever be kinda painful but immensely, weirdly satisfying.
… i’m so sorry for hijacking your post, op. i hope you don’t mind me spilling my feelings everywhere.
Miranda’s role as Flint’s partner
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Meg's Mumbles 