Tag: Anonymous

What do you think about treasure island? And about its links with black sails?

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.

at the end of the show, james flint who refused to bow to the system that ruined his life ends up in a place where he is supposed to toil for the benefit of the said system. because his friend sent him there. to a place that england created for people like him to disappear and never bother her again. england won, because his friend let her win. delivered him to her on a silver plate. returned him to her clutches so he could continue to break his back for her. but it’s ok, it’s love…

Fully and totally agreed. I don’t think I’m ever going to be over the simple fact that after all that struggle, all that sacrifice, all that pain – England won, because one man decided that the fight wasn’t worth it. I find it hugely ironic that the moment someone starts trying to define Silver as a monster in the same derisive, degrading way people have with Flint all his life, he literally stomps that man’s head in, but when James Flint practically begs Silver not to allow the world to remember him as nothing more than a monster, Silver decides that he suddenly doesn’t care about stories. It’s been six months, and I’m still not over this and I don’t suspect I ever will be, because the reality is that he made Flint’s worst nightmare a reality and in the process, he left Thomas Hamilton to remain a slave. I’m sorry, but none of this is any version of love. 

S*lver: I instructed them to kill Captain Flint. S*lver stans: but he DIDN’T mean it, he was trying to save him :(, he knew Flint would survive. So S*lver sent six men to their deaths for no reason then? What a HERO.

*snort* fully agreed, Anon. No matter how you slice that, it’s a shitty thing to do, and a stupid one to boot – Rogers’ only bargaining chip at that point was Madi. He was hardly going to kill her and risk Flint blowing him out of the water. I get why Silver panicked, and I get why he was angry, but let’s not call it what it’s not. In that moment, he was worried about one person – Madi, not Flint.

Sorry to bother you! I really love your last chapter but few things are obscured… would you mind to clarify them for me? How Billy knew that people would be sent on skeleton island? You’ve said, replying to another anon, that madi and flint wouldn’t kill s*ilver, but sending him where’s Billy is not the same as killing him? And last… I have not understand well your position about the war and jack/max legacy. Thank you, if you’ll ever have time and patience to reply to this, as I hope ♡

Thank you! And sure! 

For your first question – I think Billy maybe thought that someone would be sent to find the gold, because he doesn’t know it’s been retrieved – that happened before he washed ashore and woke up, so he’s at a bit of a disadvantage, if anything. He’s paranoid as hell though (and so would anyone be when everyone turned on them en masse on the word of one man the way they did on Billy). Madi and Flint have no way of knowing that Billy survived – the last Flint saw of Billy, he was plunging into the sea from a rather large distance, and for all he knows he either drowned or was shot (in fact, it’s very, very likely). So Madi and Flint have marooned Silver on what they believe is a deserted island. It’s not a death sentence – it’s them putting him in a place where he can’t come back to haunt them and where he has a chance to think over what he’s done, with some small chance of signalling a passing ship to get out of there. They could have killed him outright. They could have handed him over to some place like Oglethorpe’s plantation, but they’re trying to mete out justice without either killing him or doing something absolutely morally abhorrent, and I do believe this qualifies. It’s a lot better than what he planned to do to either of them, in my opinion. 

As far as my position on the war goes – it’s like this, Anon. I think the Maroons had the right to make their own choices without a white man interfering by taking away both the money to do what they wanted and the general they needed to win a conflict of the magnitude they proposed. They might, given the chance, have signed the treaty themselves. Historically, it happened, although several decades on. They might have elected to continue fighting, though, and that too would have been their choice, made with their eyes wide open to the risks it posed. As far as this fic goes – Madi’s people saw the chance to have their freedom guaranteed, their sovereignty respected, and they took it, quite understandably, but this time they get to actually examine their options and make a choice instead of having one forced upon them, and that’s everything that they had stolen from them in canon. 

Jack, Anne, and Max in this fic get pretty much exactly what they get in canon. Featherstone is to be the new governor. Max runs the whole show, and Jack and Anne get to sail the way they want and need to and come home to Nassau when they’re done. Rogers is still out of the picture, just I like to think that in this one, he’s been dumped off in an English port with a chance to run as far as he can where in canon he gets taken to debtor’s prison. I’m not anti-mercy, I’m just anti-forgiving people who aren’t sorry for what they did and show every sign they’ve learned nothing from it. 

The Cup of Their Deserving: 3, 4, 5, 11, 12

3. What’s your favorite line of narration?

Honestly – this is a massive cheat, but I’m overwhelmingly proud of the entire first two chapters. They just – wrote themselves, or rather Madi wrote herself, and I was left sitting back wondering why I had never written her before when she’s just so incredibly self-aware and intelligent and calm even when she’s facing horrible things. 

4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

It’s not so much a favorite line of dialogue as it is a favorite section of dialogue: 

“What were you planning to do if we married?”The question stops him – causes his eyes to widen.

“If we married?” he asks, and she looks down at him, anger forming a hard, heavy knot in her chest.

“If we had married, what do you think you would have done?” she asks again. “I am my mother’s heir. What life did you see for us, if it did not include bearing the weight of a throne? Of a people?”

“I – suppose I hadn’t really considered it,” he answers, and she feels something in her twist at the words. “If we were to marry -” He looks at her with astonished eyes. “I don’t know,” he confesses, and she nods.

“I know,” she answers. “I did not understand Captain Flint at first. I did not trust him for the same reason that I do not trust any of you. He was a man. He was white, and he made promises I did not think he could keep. Promises I did not think he truly meant. Do you know what convinced me?”

Silver shakes his head – and Madi leans in, bending at the waist, her head closer now to his.

“The day we thought you died in the harbor. You went under. Do you recall?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Of course I do. It was -”

“That day,” she tells him, her voice still low and somehow disconnected from her. “That day, Captain Flint proved himself to me. Do you know how?”

Silver shakes his head again, and she searches his eyes. He truly does not know, she thinks – does not understand.

“He left you there,” she answers, and watches something that she would swear is old grief, old anger flash through his eyes. “You went under the surface of the water. We watched it happen – and I saw the moment that Flint knew. I saw him start to come after you – and I also saw the moment he knew that he could not. In that moment when he might have proven to me once and for all that pirates are not to be trusted – in a moment where he wanted more than anything to act in his own interest -” She shook her head. “I watched that moment dawn and I saw the instant when he put aside his own desires to see to those around him. It is why I trust him – why I listen to him. And why I will never call you husband.”

These lines are the heart and soul of the fic, really – they tell you in one section why it is that Madi is so angry at what Silver has done, it tells you a great deal about her relationship with Flint, and it touches on the larger reason that what Silver did was not ok. Also, it shows what Madi is like when she’s angry, which is not something we get to see very much of – she’s furious, here, and heart-broken, and coping the best way she knows how, and this isn’t kind. It’s the furthest thing from it, she’s trying to hurt him because he hurt her, which is not something that she normally would allow herself in any context other than this one. I’m also unreasonably fond of this: 

“These men will be accompanying you,” Flint said, and Jack suddenly recalled where he had last seen all three before. “They came with us out of Nassau when the Spanish took it, and since they’re all mutineers, they have a vested interest in not being delivered to Philadelphia’s harbor. If you so much as attempt to give the order to turn North from your destination, one of them will slit your throat and then all three will see to it that your task is completed so as to stay in my good graces and earn a place among us. Do you understand?”

These lines are absolutely Flint, completely and totally, and I had nothing to do with them, he just popped into my head, told me the plan, and I grinned and wrote it because damn that man is good!

5. What part was hardest to write?

It’s a toss up between the second chapter and the tenth, because chapter 2 is Madi continuing to function even though her heart is breaking and chapter 10 is Thomas trying to do the same, and hurting them hurts me. Both chapters are absolutely necessary for character development, but oh gods I wanted to find both of them a blanket and tell them it would be alright and someone else would handle things.

11. What do you like best about this fic?

Can I say everything? Am I allowed to say everything? I basically love this fic so much – it’s some of my best work, in all honesty. It’s fiery, it’s passionate, it’s everything I needed to say post-finale, and it feels like the ending that the characters deserved, at least in part.  

12. What do you like least about this fic?

I can wish that this fic were less controversial. It’s 2017 and the statement “slavery is slavery, it is wrong and should be fought at every opportunity” should not be controversial. 

Hiii historic questions!! :)) how did you know that Thomas plantation is a sugar one? Can you bring me the references?

My references are as follows: the literal sugarcane that is growing behind them in the following two gifs: 

See the guy with the machete behind Thomas in the second one, cutting down canes? See the piles of the stuff lying in the cart? Now, here’s a picture of actual sugar cane:

Also, here is a section of a book discussing how the British tried to set up sugar plantations in Georgia and failed – this is right around the right time for them to have been doing that: 

https://books.google.com/books?id=2iuMhk2bNlcC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=georgia+sugar+plantations&source=bl&ots=U6CMHTYsca&sig=nWmQ34vVojIrKG7UGvEAP99A7Ts&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii0Naeu5XWAhUGSyYKHUZuBP0Q6AEIhAEwDA#v=onepage&q=georgia%20sugar%20plantations&f=false

In conclusion – Oglethorpe’s plantation is a sugar farm, which is to say it’s dangerous as fuck. Here is a link to my source on that: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/archaeology/caribbean/plantations/caribbean35.aspx

So s*lver insted… Will die or he’ll be sent to the plantation?

I really don’t think I’m going to go for either option, or that James and Madi would either. They don’t want him dead – they loved him, once, and they’re both better people than to commit the very same crime that S*lver did by trying to sell James to the plantation. No – I think he’s getting marooned somewhere and it will be up to him to make his own luck from there on out. He wanted out of the war – he’s getting his wish, just not the way he wanted it. 

1, 5, 10 – Kat

5 I’ve answered here: http://flintsredhair.tumblr.com/post/164579332807/3-5-7-for-the-writer-ask-meme and 10 is here: http://flintsredhair.tumblr.com/post/164578475347/10-for-the-writers-ask-meme

1. what are you currently working on?

So, I’m sure you all know about Cup of their Deserving, which is my fix-it fic for the finale. Basically, Madi makes the decision to go back to Skeleton Island, catches Silver about to drag Flint to the plantation, and shuts down his bullshit before it can properly get started, and then they get to deal with the aftermath. I’m currently writing the final chapter of that. I’m also trying to finish up Full of Grace, which is a fic where James and Thomas are both sent to Bedlam and Miranda and Admiral Hennessey team up to bring their family home. I’ve got a project that’s been languishing for a while called And the Sea With Its Deepness, wherein James is sent to Bedlam instead of Thomas and Thomas is forced to go to Nassau as governor. We find them ten years later, when Thomas is fighting to outlast a siege of the island, Miranda has become a pirate captain, and James is finally, finally found having been pulled out of Bedlam long after everyone thought him dead. I’m also working on the side on another fix-it set post-canon wherein Charles Vane is alive and Not Amused at the end of the war. He, Madi, and someone from Flint’s past team up to set what they can to rights when they find out Flint is not dead. I’m also in the outlining stage for a sequel to Battle Raven. Oh, and there’s a quick fluff fic that I’m working on for @penflicks.