I’ve seen a few ppl mention that Silver’s vague backstory is the reason some fans don’t like him. But I don’t think that’s true. For example, Vane was given an explicit backstory and lots of ppl hate him. Silver and Gates were the only major characters without a backstory. Everyone else was given one and people still hate some of them. Including Flint. No amount of tragic backstory will make them like him. I think the same would’ve been true for Silver if he was given one.

I have to agree. Honestly, for my part, I don’t give a flying blue fuck about Silver’s backstory or lack thereof, and I’ve heard other people who also don’t like him say exactly the same thing. My dislike of him – and theirs – is about his actions in canon, pure and simple. He could have the most complex backstory in the world – one that was fully as fleshed out as Flint’s, and as heartbreaking, and I would still be every bit as furious at him, as I would be at Flint or at any other character had they done the same thing. I am not talking about equivalent actions, because there are none – what Silver did has repercussions that reach down the generations to the modern day world, affecting billions, not just a couple of hundred or thousand people living in the West Indies at that point. My dislike of him is visceral, and it stems from the fact that I forgave him for ages – right up through 4×09, in fact – and then got to 4×10 and discovered that not only had he done the things I had forgiven him for – no. He’d betrayed Madi, and betrayed James, and done it starting as early as 4×04, and intended to do it perhaps since the season began. He’d lied to them time and time again, pretending to be their friend – and then he’d kept the knowledge that James’ husband was alive from him, despite experiencing the pain of losing Madi, and knowing how James must feel about losing Thomas and knowing he could make that pain stop for him. He tore Madi’s dream – the dream of being able to move about the world and not risk being enslaved or murdered merely for the color of her skin – out from under her by ending her war and thus any possibility of making real change. He’d done that to her people, too – her people, whom she held above all, above him, above herself, above anyone, and then he’d told her that he did it for her own good. In what world does “I did it for your own good” encompass “I actively put you at risk by keeping the status quo which is set by a world that wants you dead”? He enslaved James – took away any chance he had of being remembered for who he was instead of allowing society to call him what it liked and do to him what it liked. He took away in the process his freedom, his dignity, and his peace of mind, because I guarantee you that betrayal cemented in James Flint’s head that he could trust no one to care enough about him not to send him away. It’s only what – the third time that’s happened? The fourth? 

I can’t forgive any of that. I won’t, because I understand what they were fighting for and I am furious at Silver’s callous disregard for the danger they faced merely in living in the society he prevented them from tearing down, his backstory be damned. Quite apart from caring about all oppressed peoples, he should have cared enough about them individually to treat them like they mattered more than that. I’m female, I’m Pagan, I’m queer, I’ve experienced oppression at the hands of people who want me dead or worse for those things, and let me tell you – if anyone told me that they thought that they, as a member of a group that is not oppressed in any of those ways, had the right to tell me how to fight for my rights as a human after pretending that they loved and supported me?

That person would be goddamned lucky to just be told to leave my life and never come back into it.