I’ll start by saying that as a kid, I liked Treasure Island. I read it, I shivered at the appropriate bits, and was absolutely goddamn creeped out by Long J*hn Silver, for all the same reasons that the character in Black Sails gives me the shivers from time to time. There are moments in Sails where I look at Silver and I absolutely see exactly the same character that I got to know and came to fear in Treasure Island. If you want an example of one of those, let’s talk about the tavern scene, the scene where he meets with Max in s4 after getting captured by Hands, and the way he handles Dobbs in s3. In that, Black Sails and Treasure Island are very much recognizable as happening in the same universe. When it comes to Billy, though – I really, really have trouble seeing Billy Bones from Treasure Island in Billy Bones as he appears in Black Sails, but then twenty years and rampant paranoia of the sort Billy seems to have developed in s4 will do that to a man, I suppose. It’s not all that far of a stretch, just I have trouble picturing it for some reason. As to any mention of Flint, though….
*sighs* Treasure Island, friend, is a lot of the reason that I want to rage and scream and cry over what happens to Flint in Black Sails because the man we get glimpses of in Treasure Island is a ghost story. He’s a monster used to scare the gullible and the guilty into submission. He’s a tool in someone’s toolbox as they try to get the treasure so many people sacrificed so much for for themselves. Captain Flint of the novel is a man who murders six men and thinks nothing of using their bodies for markers leading to the treasure. He’s a drunk who dies screaming for rum, a boogeyman never actually seen but only imagined and I just – I can’t stand it. The bastards won, Anon. They fucking won, after all that pain and all that suffering. They did that, they painted him as the fucking villain, as the monster, as nothing more than a greedy pirate obsessed with gold and slaughter, and I hate it. And yes, I realize that Black Sails is derivative of Treasure Island and to stay faithful to the novel they had to go there but I still fucking hate it because there’s not a single thing of the man we came to know and most of us came to love in the character from Treasure Island – not one.
tl;dr: Treasure Island has very definite links with Black Sails, and I do love those links actually, even while I’m still very not ok with the difference between book Flint and Sails Flint for reasons that are less to do with bad writing and more to do with what the character from Sails deserved. Also I want to know how Sails Billy got off that island and became Treasure Island Billy.
Flint never gets to rewrite his story, because he leaves Flint behind on Skeleton Island.
Billy, feeling betrayed and jaded, uses his powerful use of propaganda making to smear Flint’s name. Plus, he never got to see James behind the mask of Flint…
Flint did not go to that plantation, James did. He left it all behind, and let everyone else take the story with them.
I will say that I love how Silver in TI names his loyal parrot Flint. It is touching, it shows he misses his captain, in a way (at least to me).
I’d argue that Billy has very little to do with how Flint is remembered and that Silver has everything to do with it. Whatever you think of Silver’s reasons for doing what he did, the fact remains that he forcibly removed Flint from his own narrative at a crucial point and ensured that he would remain thought of as a monster. He says as much to Flint when Flint calls him on that – it’s in his “I don’t care.” By the time Billy Bones gets off that island, Silver’s told his story, painted Flint as having abandoned his own allies, and consigned him to monster-dom. Regardless of how you frame that – it’s Silver, not Billy or Flint himself, that creates that tale. James might have decided that there was no point in trying to change anyone’s mind once he got out of that plantation with Thomas – that much I will grant.
Idk, just going based on what the strengths were of the characters. Billy Manderly was known to propogate. Silver is too busy crying over Madi not forgiving him for betraying the cause. I feel Silver at the “I don’t care” point is tired of the story mattering at all. He literally says so.
At least James got his hubby back.
Yes, Billy was damn good at propaganda, but Silver was shown to have the same skills back in s2, and let’s face it – he’s the man that everyone trusted enough to turn even on Billy in s4. Also, Billy wasn’t around to tell people what happened to Flint – Silver was. Silver may be done with the story mattering, but in order to get to the point where it doesn’t matter, he first has to create an ending. And he does. His ending is that James Flint is selfish and/or delusional, a man who left his cause, abandoned the fight, retired after being convinced no one wanted him or his ideas. Jack says it to Madam Guthrie – the official story, spread by himself and Silver, is that Flint has disappeared into retirement or just left, and Billy has nothing to do with that tale since he’s not there to spread it. He may have helped bolster it after the fact, but he didn’t create it. There were already stories about Flint being spread (and Billy may have had a large hand in those), but what Silver and to a degree Rackham do just seals those tales as truth, without Flint having the chance to prove them wrong. It’s a form of violence, especially against a queer man who had an absolute horror of being seen as nothing more than a villain. And yes, he got his husband back – that’s wonderful, and maybe in the end he viewed that as being enough (provided they actually get to leave the plantation – if not, then he literally has no choice in the matter and I refuse to contemplate that), but it doesn’t change what was done.
Meg's Mumbles 