Tag: Anonymous

I’m sorry to annoy you, but it really makes me angry to read posts that talk about the shame farm as if it were a holiday village

Me too, Anon. Believe me – me too. I couldn’t possibly disagree more strongly – not only does that treatment of the place ignore the visual evidence we’re presented with in canon, it downplays the horrors of slavery, So, since I’m feeling like flexing my degrees today:

Here’s a little slice of what people forced to work on sugar plantations faced. Warning – this is not for the squeamish, and if you feel like you’re going to be triggered by graphic descriptions of violence or slavery, this is where you might want to hop off this post. I’m putting this discussion under a cut for those reasons, not to spare the feelings of anyone who wants to tell me that Oglethorpe’s plantation is somehow meant to be paradise.

This is a quotation from a man named Sir Thomas Lynch, written in 1672, regarding the conditions on sugar plantations. This pertained, mainly, to slaves working in the West Indies: 

“If a Mill-feeder be catch’d by the finger, his whole body is drawn in, and is squees’d to pieces, If a Boyler gets any part into the scalding Sugar, it sticks like Glew, or Birdlime, and ‘tis hard to save either Limb or Life.”

Here’s another, from a Thomas Tryon (and no, I am not ignoring the irony/horrifying but coincidental fact that both these men are named Thomas and had a problem with how sugarworks were run).

“ the Climate is so hot, and the labor so constant, that the [Black] Servants night and day standing great Boyling Houses, where there are Six Seven large Coppers or Furnaces kept perpetually boyling; and from which with heavy Ladles and Scummers, the Skim off the excrementatious parts of the Canes, till it comes to its perfection and cleanness, while others as Stoakers, Broil, as it were alive, in managing the Fires; and one part is constantly at the Mill, to supply it with Canes, night and day, during the whole Season of making Sugar, which is about six Months of the year".

Source

For a really good look at the whole process of growing sugar cane, there’s a summary here:

http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/west-indies/years-work/

Here’s another horrifying set of descriptions:

“During the rolling season of 1846 his Negro man Jacob escaped with only a dislocated collarbone and “some severe bruises about the head” after he “was cuaght by the cane carrier of the Mill” and “carried with the drum as far as his shoulder.” Some years later, another Palfrey slave “lost his forefinger” when his left hand was “lacerated by the engine.” On another Louisiana plantation a female slave got her dress caught in the mill, and “before the engineer could stop the miller her arm had gone under” as well as part of her ear. As a result, she lost the arm, and the engineer suffered a severely “mashed” foot from “stoping the engine so suddenly.”“

Source

I’d like to draw attention to a phrase there – “only a dislocated collarbone.” Anon – readers – have you ever dislocated something? Ever had a bone out of place? There’s no only about it. In fact, it usually results in screaming in agony until it’s put back in place regardless of what the movies tell you. It hurts, and if you don’t believe me, you can come and listen to my shoulder go click pop crunch thump any day of the week, and that’s just what I suspect is a rotator cuff injury that hurts like anything when the barometric pressure changes.That’s the least of the injuries you’d be facing if you got caught in a sugar mill – or rather, the least of the injuries Madi’s people had to look forward to on the plantations they were being kept on. The least that Thomas and James could look forward to if they had to stay at that place and do Oglethorpe’s bidding and got unlucky or were too tired to be careful (and that happened regularly). Now – let’s talk about the diseases that are endemic to that region and were particularly experienced by slaves.

This article discusses some of the things that slaves at the time faced in terms of disease. Again – it wasn’t pretty. Smallpox, dysentery, tuberculosis, lung disease, parasite-born illnesses – the list goes on and on and on. I don’t doubt that in his time at that plantation, Thomas had seen a lot of death, and that’s even WITH the dubious proviso that they’re being well cared for, which I don’t actually recall anyone saying – only that they were “taken care of,” which could mean a lot of things, but which I’m going to take to mean that they’re generally given food, adequate amounts of water, shelter, and not beaten to a pulp on a regular basis. That last I have my doubts about too, given that we can see the guards carrying cudgels on their belts and carrying muskets, apparently to keep the workers in line.

I will give the show full points, too, for historical accuracy in that Oglethorpe’s plantation is not a cotton plantation. At this point in American history, the British were attempting to colonize the area north of Spanish Florida. This was in direct response to the Dutch colonies’ success in farming sugar cane and the equal success the British and Spanish were having in other colonies which was making them big profits. Oglethorpe’s plantation is located, as we’re told, in Savannah, which is exactly in the right region for them to be farming sugar cane, and in fact we are shown the canes growing in the field during the reunion scene. 

Even were all of this not true, though, Anon – the point is that both James and Thomas are being held against their wills. We see James being walked through those gates in heavy chains. We know for a fact that Thomas is being kept there against his will, because if he were not, I can guarantee you he would have come looking for James and Miranda years ago. Max says it herself, and Oglethorpe echoes the thought – the plantation is a place where people “cease to be.” It’s meant to be a place where people go to be forgotten – to be wiped out of their own stories, to be wiped out of history entirely. There’s nothing about being forgotten that’s good – not when the forgetting is not by choice. 

What I’m getting down to, Anon, is that the shame farm is not a good place. It’s spoken of in the narrative as a place that is an alternative to death, but neither of the people using it as a get out of hell free card are without reasons to lie to themselves about the nature of the place. Max needs to believe that she would have been sending Silver to a place where he could be comfortable, and Silver very much needs to believe the same thing in order to live with himself after what he does to James. To some extent, maybe he needs to believe that survival is always preferable to death – he certainly seems to not understand that there are things in life worth dying for and not to be lived without, or he wouldn’t do what he did. 

The fact is that I don’t care how tolerant Oglethorpe is toward his workers’ sexualities, he’s still keeping men in a damn sugar cane plantation and forcing them to do a very dangerous job in a dangerous place.

Is it just me or the place where the action takes, uh, place… effects our outlook? I mean… If Black Sails took place in India during British colonization and it was a story of a failed revolution there, for some reason I don’t think there would be any questions of “Should they have rebelled? Was it worth it?” You know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean, Anon, but somehow I’m not certain that the place would have made much of a difference. The fact is that the debate over whether rebellions and revolutions should have taken place happens pretty much anywhere there is a revolution, and it is fueled by the simple fact that to people who have never been oppressed, the idea of armed revolution seems like an extreme reaction. People who have never faced death or torture for being who they are do not understand that there comes a point at which words are not enough, and a lot of people who HAVE faced oppression of that sort have families to consider whom they are rightly concerned for, because to them, a failed rebellion means death. I can see what you’re saying – in India, rebellion against the British empire worked eventually thus proving that such an endeavor was a possibility and no one today doubts whether change was possible, whereas in the Americas, we still very much have slavery at an institutional level in the form of the American prison system. It seems like an impossible pursuit, thus, I think, fueling at least part of the debate about “could Flint and Madi’s war have worked.” Still – I’m fairly certain we’d be having this debate over any historical piece, especially about India, since India as a country didn’t gain their independence until after WWII. 

can i just say that after rereading a cup of your deserving for the fifth time, it is my favorite black sails fic and i cannot WAIT to see if there will be a sequel

Aww, Anon, I would hug you if I could! Thank you so much for the kind words – I’m honored that it’s your favorite fic in the fandom! 

As to a sequel – I am very, very open to the idea of a sequel, honestly, because I like where we leave the characters and I have a couple of ideas for where I could take them next. Nothing’s fully formed, but I’ll certainly give it some thought!

No black sails this year :(

That is a sad truth. No Black Sails this year, but Toby Stephens is in fact going to be in a version of Lost in Space that’s being put out by Netflix, so we have that to look forward to. I’m also far from finished writing fic for this fandom – my to do list is a long one, and I’m sure the same is true of other writers in the fandom. Never fear, Anon – if the Tolkien fandom is still alive and kicking seventy years from when the original books came out, I think we can manage!

fic ask: 14, 15, 19, 23, 25

14 and 19 I’ve answered here.

15. something you learned this year

Hmm. I think I learned a lot this year as a writer, but the thing that pops to mind is “if I can see a scene in my head, then there should be enough detail on the page that my readers can see it too. If I’m imagining a candlelit room, people reading shouldn’t be imagining a sunny day.” I think I’ve gotten better at focusing on little things in order to bring people into the moment I’m describing.

23. fics you wanted to write but didn’t

Hmm. I keep wanting to write the Whitechapel crossover and I haven’t done yet. Similarly, the sequel to Battle Raven is burning a hole in my drafts. As far as fics I wanted to write and probably won’t now, though – hmm. I honestly can’t think of any. 

25. a fic you read this year that you would recommend everyone read

Revenant by Beth Winter. It’s a Flinthamilton reunion AU set post s2 and… look, that’s my revolutionary darlings, ok? It’s got Vane, Abigail, Thomas, and James, and they’re all in character, and Thomas gets to be angry about what’s been done to him and definitely changed by it in a way that’s very believable. 

Fanfic End of Year Ask

fanfic end of the year asks: 3, 12

Yay! Thank you, Anon!

3. Favorite Line/Scene you wrote this year:

It’s a really tough choice, but this one from Cup of Their Deserving probably wins the prize: 

“Oh you’re not really getting it are you? No, of course you’re not. Let me use small words this time.” He stops, takes a breath, and continues. “This place – is a prison. By logical extension, the people you’ve elected to keep incarcerated here are your prisoners. They’re sent here from England – from families that find them inconvenient, from prisons where they’re being held for crimes you consider easily overlooked in the face of your grand mission – which is to say, crimes of necessity – and kept here by way of force and the surrounding terrain, such that should they choose to leave, they have no way of doing so and nowhere to go if they should manage to escape. You can dress it up all you like, but you’ve still got them tilling your fields whether they like it or not, working for a pittance, denied the right to live their lives – simply put, you’re a slave driver – nothing more, nothing less. Oh, no, you don’t beat them – never that, but as a friend of mine once reminded me, a slave is a slave and it doesn’t matter what else you do as long as they’re denied the right to leave. Worse, you’ve elected to lie to yourself about it in order to sleep at night, and one day – one day quite soon, one hopes – it’s all going to come crashing down around your ears. There – perhaps that’ll get the point across to you. Remind me, Mr. Oglethorpe – I really must return here the next time I’ve a bowel problem as you, I’m certain, can be relied upon to give me the shits.”

Then again, there’s this one from Battle Raven:

“They took him from us,” she says, her voice shaking. “They stole him from his family and locked him in that horrible place, and I want them all to regret it. God help me, James – I want every last one of them to know that they took a good man and killed him and that I am coming for their heads, because I will not allow them to whisper that I hurt my husband one moment longer. I want them all as furious as I am at the men who did it, if not because they understand who Thomas was, then because they fear me – because they fear us, and we would not be threatening them if he were still alive. I want them all to pay dearly, and every day I think it, I can hear Thomas chiding me about doing things for the right reasons and I don’t care.” 

12. Favorite Character to Write this year: 

This one’s easy. Madi, hands down, because stepping into her head is just… calming. There’s nothing in there that’s not in its proper place, it’s calm, it’s quiet – she’s just a gift of a character to work with, because she has this absolute understanding of who she is and what she deserves out of life and what she has to sacrifice in order to be that person. I frequently find myself writing her and having her do and say things I wouldn’t think of, but she does, because as mad as it sounds, she’s always about three steps ahead of me.

Fanfic End of the Year Asks

I love that Dufresne says “He likes his books” with an eyeroll. He could have said it with a shrug and it wouldn’t be as much fun. Flint’s love of books must be so ridiculous that it warrants an eyeroll. lol

Since that’s coming from literally the only other lettered man on board – you’re absolutely right! I’m imagining book nerd James McGraw surfacing every time they’ve taken a prize, leading to him spending hours perusing the captain’s library instead of helping to move cargo or do literally anything else. Imagine Gates coming in to find James surrounded by books he’s pulled off the shelves, giving him a look like “you know you can’t possibly carry all of those, right?” and getting the stubborn “they’re coming with me” look in return.