ohgressfuriosa replied to your photoset “”
Ofc Hennessey knew. And I don’t he wanted to betray James. Fucking Alfred threatened him too.
I couldn’t agree more. I just can’t make Hennessey in that gifset and Hennessey five seconds before The Betrayal match with Hennessey during the scene in his office, and the difference is Alfred fucking Hamilton.
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.
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.
Anon you have given me the perfect opportunity to go off on a meta rant.
So first of all, it should be noted that Flint and Madi weren’t so much starting a war as changing the terms of an ongoing one. Oppression, slavery, the tearing apart of families, throwing people into Bedlam and torturing them because they’re inconvenient…those are, in their own way, acts of war against marginalized people. They are meant to either eradicate these kinds of people or make them conform so that they become cogs in the machine of imperialism. There is this false assumption that neutrality is possible where oppression exists – that’s not true. Its not true in the show and it’s not true today: if you’re not actively trying to dismantle an oppressive system, you are validating it, allowing it to continue to exist, and likely benefiting from it.
And Rogers is the literal incarnation of this oppressive system. He represents everything that Flint is fighting. Flint’s ultimate motivation – the original thing he was trying to do – was to create a free an independent Nassau. That is, a Nassau without British rule, where the laws and oppressions of the British government did not exist. Where a man couldn’t be hanged for loving another man, where madness and homosexuality could not be used as a pretext to imprison and torture a man, where people couldn’t be enslaved. He has been supremely fucked over by the British Empire, and his act of revenge was to try to create a place where the Empire couldn’t reach, where it couldn’t have that kind of power to destroy lives. (And yes, his motivations were’nt pure and altruistic and he wanted revenge, etc, etc, but I’ve been over this before)
And Rogers may have showed up on Nassau with pardons, but let’s not pretend that he would have created anything like that. His ultimate goal was to institute the same kind of tyrannical rule on Nassau that existed everywhere else in the British Empire. I mean, are we under the impression that the people of Nassau would have been somehow free and happy under his rule? He issues a mass pardon, then revokes it for Jack because it’s convenient. His wife holds a kangaroo court in order to convict and hang Charles Vane and Rogers wholeheartedly approves. He uses Max for information and has an agreement with her that she won’t name her informants, then Berringer goes back on that promise. He literally has Nassau razed to the ground when it looks like it might slip out from under his fingers. Can you imagine what it would be like to live on Nassau with him as governor? It would literally be a regime of terror, where people would disappear when it was convenient and anybody could become a pawn or a scapegoat. When I say he represents the British Empire, I mean he represents the worst of the British system that Flint is fighting to eradicate.
Of course, it’s a different question what kind of system Flint would have instituted had he had the chance, and what a free Nassau would have looked like, and of course Maroon society seems to have an absolute monarchy as well. But Rogers very, very obviously represents the maintaining of the status quo of the British Empire, and that status quo is not a pretty thing. He is the incarnation of everything Flint is fighting against – the very incarnation of empire and of oppression.
Anon, I don’t even know. Not making that comparison is like, idk, not analyzing that Pearl in The Scarlet Letter is named for the biblical verse or that Nick in the Great Gatsby is queer enough to sleep with dudes. It’s explicit enough in the text that there is an existing comparison to be made between Peter Ashe and Silver that they use the same dialogue. They use the same justification! Like, I hate Peter Ashe as much as the next person, but he is very clear that he did it because Alfred Hamilton threatened his future and threatened his daughter. How is that any less of a justification than doing it for Madi and the future that Silver wants with her? He is just as clear! He says to Flint that he sees a future with Madi and wants it. It’s right there in the text. It’s not like, “ho ho, i want to find the worst possible read on Silver because he is a mustachioed villain.” It is because everyone has a reason for doing what they’re doing. If you’re extending sympathy to Silver because he is afraid and wants to save Madi and is trying to have a future where he saves lives, you should be able extend that sympathy to Peter Ashe for wanting the same things. If you are using Silver’s practicality as it regards Madi and Flint’s end goals to justify what he does, you should be able to give that same acknowledgment to Peter Ashe who, again, does the exact same thing. Just because we see the fall out of what Peter Ashe does and not the full fall out of what Silver does doesn’t mean that those things don’t happen.
One of the moral and ethical complexities of this show is that you can have good reasons for what you are doing, really sympathetic understandable reasons, and still do terrible things. The good sympathetic understandable reasons don’t make the terrible things less terrible. They don’t make the people who pay the price of them less hurt. Does anyone who burned in Charlestown or any of the other towns Flint sacked give a solitary shit why he did it? No. Is the first runaway slave to get turned away from the Maroon camps or returned as per the terms of the treaty going to give a single fuck that Max and Jack and Madame Guthrie and John Silver made it so that the treaty was part of the terms of surrender in a war the Maroons hadn’t actually lost? I doubt it. Is that person going to care that Julius wants to preserve the things they have instead of risking the future? God knows I wouldn’t.
AND THEN. Yeah, let’s get into Alfred Hamilton and John Silver because this is where I think things get really interesting. Let’s throw Hal Gates in there too, because he does this to Flint as well.
There are three pivotal moments in Flint’s life where someone looked at him and essentially said, “What I want matters more than what you want and I am going to make you go away to get it.” Do they all have good reasons for it? I’m sure Alfred Hamilton thought the preservation of his name, power, and influence was more than enough reason to make an officer from the lower classes and his troublesome daughter in law go the fuck away. But do we think that? No. Because it hurt characters we’re invested in. Because the reason isn’t good enough for what he did and he only ruined three lives. Hal Gates wanted Flint and Miranda to go away because Flint maybe possibly killed Billy and didn’t care about his men. Were his reasons good? Maybe. To Billy, sure. To Dufresne and Degroot and the rest of the crew, yes. Good enough to make it so they thought that Flint should hang for killing him.
So what makes John Silver’s actions different? His reasons are good to him. He wants to save Madi at all costs. He wants not to go to war. These are all fantastic reasons, much like Gates’ reasons are fantastic reasons. Alfred Hamilton’s reasons are excellent reasons to him. But the end result for Flint is the same: he loses all the things he’s worked for, he is made to go away, and someone else dictates the terms of his story.
Silver has his reasons for wanting the war to end. Max has her reasons. Julius has his. Flint and Madi and the pirates and maroons who came to fight England had theirs for wanting it to continue. Everyone counted up the costs to what they were doing and decided those costs were worth it and that put them into opposition with each other. That doesn’t make one side objectively right or wrong. It means that you take the reasons the show presents and compare them to your own ethics and morals and fucking engage with the text on those terms. And, much like the show, everyone watching it has their reasons for their reaction and those reactions are entirely valid based as they are in our own lived experiences and our beliefs and our histories.
This is why that assertion that the people criticizing Silver for what he does in the ending are flattening the ending or losing the moral complexity of it by comparing what he does to previous antagonists really really irk me: the ethical complexity of the show is LITERALLY the point of the comparisons. Good people do terrible things. Terrible people do good things. Everyone contains multitudes. Everyone’s reasons for what they are doing are good and justifiable to them. Whether those reasons are good or justifiable to anyone/everyone else is the one of the points of the show.
Hey! Really good and well discussed meta above, however I’d like to contest something. What Silver did in the end may be comparable to both Alfred Hamilton and Peter Ashe’s actions in terms of “he had his own excellent reasons and so he sent Flint away,” and so they may look similar on the surface but they are absolutely not comparable when you consider the way those characters felt about Flint. Alfred Hamilton considered Flint to be disposable. He probably barely gave him any consideration. Peter Ashe betrayed both Thomas and Flint in the process and separated them for ten years, and when Flint showed up at his door asking for pardons he continued the ruse and thought it a better idea to expose Flint to London’s ridicule and judgement rather than admit to what he did and tell him about Thomas still being alive. (You could argue Silver does this for half of s4 and you would be right. Except Silver comes clean and Peter does not. The threat of Alfred Hamilton no longer exists. He could tell Flint, and yet he doesn’t.)
The closest betrayal to Silver’s is probably Gates. Gates loved Flint, in some ways, and Flint loved him in some ways. This betrayal is also completely different to the ones mentioned above. I think its doing a disservice to both Gates and Silver to throw them together into this pile of shit.
Silver literally reunited Flint with the man he loves. Silver did the exact opposite of what both Peter and Alfred did. It still served to take Flint out of the picture but it still has to be taken into consideration when judging the moral rightness vs. wrongness of his actions, and especially when considering their relationship. It’s not the same thing. It’s not. It might stem from the same motivation (to protect their own), but the way they go about it and the repercussions that Flint ultimately faces is completely different. It is absolutely a betrayal, but it’s not of the same kind. Gates and Silver both loved Flint, and wanted on some level to keep him safe. This is an aspect that needs to be considered and I don’t think that’s contestable. It’s still paternalistic and it is most definitely robbing Flint of any agency, but the underlying relationships between these characters definitely have to be considered. That’s what’s being flattened when both Silver and Gates are lumped together with Alfred Hamilton.
Let’s also remember: Silver sent six men to kill Flint and tried to kill him himself literally hours before he reunites him with the man he loves. Reuniting him with Thomas wasn’t the goal, which we know because he doesn’t do it when Flint is of use to him; reuniting him with Thomas was the carrot to keep him away from restarting the war.
But in the end, i would argue that whatever the feelings motivating the actions don’t actually matter to the person being disposed of. We don’t know how Peter Ashe felt about James McGraw or Thomas, just that when weighed against his wife and daughter, they were worth less to him. Flint, when weighed against Billy, was worth less to Gates. Flint, when weighed against Madi’s survival, was worth less to Silver.
The relationships are context for the tragedy but they don’t actually change the action.
I’m not saying they change the action, I’m saying they should change the way the action should be judged. In the same way Flint killing Alfred Hamilton and Flint killing Gates is not the same thing.
I also fundamentally disagree that Thomas was a….carrot. I think if the only goal was to keep Flint from starting the war, Silver could have just killed him. That’s surest possible way to keep him from restarting the war, wouldn’t you say? Why bother keeping him alive? Why bother hunting Thomas down? Why bother offering days and weeks and months of your time to convince Flint to let the war go other than just outright shooting him? Why bother taking Flint to Savannah at all? All of this is active effort in the middle of a war. Keeping him alive is Silver going out of his way to keep him alive.
The way I see it, if Flint is alive, re-uniting him with Thomas was at least some part of the goal. If the goal was to get rid of him, there’s a sure fire way to do so. If Flint is alive, there is something that stays Silver’s hand. There’s is something that has him hunt Thomas Hamilton down, there is something that has Silver go on the ship to Savannah and deliver Flint to Thomas. That’s a thing that should be considered. That’s the way I see it. I don’t understand at all how that can be ignored. There’s complexity here that is being missed out on. That’s the whole point.
This is addressed in the show. The reason Silver can’t kill Flint is named Madi, who would have continued the war in his name if Silver had martyred him by shooting him. I don’t deny that he cared about Flint or that Flint cared about him, but that wasn’t what stayed his hand, as evidenced by the fact that literally a few hours earlier, he was fine with sending men to kill Flint and then tried to do it himself. The difference is that in the time between then and the end of the finale, Flint had very publicly won a major battle in the war against England and had the loyalty of a lot of people from that, which meant that he could no longer be painted as a traitor to the cause. Instead, he had to be gotten rid of in a way that made it seem like he’d disappeared willingly. No one’s ignoring the complexity of anything, we’re simply saying that Silver had reasons other than fondness to do what he did.
Esp yes to what @flintsredhair said above:
The difference is that in the time between then and the end of the finale, Flint had very publicly won a major battle in the war against England and had the loyalty of a lot of people from that, which meant that he could no longer be painted as a traitor to the cause.
Silver could not afford to let Flint become a martyr or be seen to be betrayed.
As for the grand gesture of reuniting Thomas and Flint- however late, at however convenient a time- please let us not forget that it was essentially condemning Thomas and Flint to a life of slavery. Oh it’s dressed up and made to look palatable: but it is NOT a paradise of any sorts, from any angle. It is a slave labour camp that we know houses not just murderers but also people who are ‘inconvenient’- i.e. those who have not committed any crime at all, except that of violating society’s codes.
Also, idk, this may sound Strange and Weird to people on this site, but y’know what? True Love does not make up for everything else wrong with this world. At best, reuniting Thomas and Flint helps in the sense they no longer have to face the world’s injustices alone (esp in the case of Thomas, in Flint’s case it is more complex- he is denied one kind of solidarity and given another), but it does not change the fact that those injustices exist and must be faced and lived with and fought against. Sending Flint to the slave camp sends him to a place where he is possibly literally without any resources to fight. You’ve devastated him emotionally, robbed him of his allies and friends and then- sent him into enslavement and it’s supposed to be magically OK because…True Love???
Thomas and James are people who existed before they met each other, who had principles and causes and ideals before they met each other; yes they probably profoundly shaped each other’s thinking: but they exist outside of their relationship with each other too. So think on that for a second or five and then consider what it means to keep these characters in perpetual enslavement and then call that A Good Thing just because they are together.
and told him what to do with the cache. The first time Silver went along with Flint’s plan, clearly against his instincts, and ultimately paid a heavy price for it as he had to sacrifice someone close to him for it (regardless of what we think about Billy, he still considered him his friend). And Flint and Eleanor’s plan blew up in their faces spectacularly. I don’t think anybody could have predicted the Spanish invasion, but ultimately it had been fundamentally flawed from the beginning,
because as Jack pointed out at the beach, it completely misjudged Rogers’ character. So when the situation repeats itself, and this time the personal stakes for Silver are even higher, he does go with his instincts. Sorry that this is so long-winded, but I just wanted to provide a different perspective:)
I agree with all of this, yes. I think there might be even more to Silver’s behavior because he’s being extremely irrational and emotional over the whole situation and I think we might find out more about it when they introduce his backstory. This can’t be just about his undying love for Madi, although that is the main motivator. He’s been struggling with trust during the whole series, but especially this season when the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for him. He cares for Flint, he trusts him, but every decision Flint had made so far was approached with caution and a significant amount of doubt on Silver’s part because he finally, intimately understands how important this is to Flint and it clashes with Silver’s perception of the situation. He’s not convinced anymore that what Flint wants is the same thing he wants. Essentially, they’re the same person now, both driven by love to the point it makes them reckless, except their motives are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Flint can’t stop the fight because he loves, Silver can’t start the war because he loves. But what I find so god damn heartbreaking about all this is that, regardless of Silver’s instincts, regardless of their emotions, every action leads to the same outcome – the war.
(I’m going slightly off topic now)
Flint had tried to go for peace, twice, and both times it blew up in his face and advanced their war. Had Silver not agreed to the cache exchange the first time, it wouldn’t have changed much either. They would’ve defeated Rogers perhaps, but that wouldn’t have stopped the upcoming war. In fact it would’ve set it in motion. The pirates and the maroons were already gathering on the island
with the idea to unleash hell on the colonies when this went down. Silver’s instinct in this matter now is purely acted on for personal reasons. He’s not thinking about the bigger picture anymore, he’s emotionally compromised and it’s clouding his judgment. He’s forgetting that this war is not just Flint’s war as he keeps stressing out. It’s his too, it’s Madi’s, it’s her mother’s, it’s every man and woman’s who have agreed to join the cause. He’s forgetting that Flint and Madi both have a responsbility now. As I said once before, Flint got cornered by his own agenda. He set this in motion (on Silver’s insistence!!) and he now has to play the part. Yes, Flint is also driven by personal (romantic) notions, but it’s equally understandable because he’s been fighting for ten years now, it’s all he knows. He could’ve let go before, he did let go for a while, but he can’t now. Not when he has a countless army at his back. ‘’Things have changed.’’ Not only is it expected of him to lead them, he wants to lead now. It’s like he’s been given the victory on a platter and the hunger is stronger than him. (However, I do believe he’s still the more rational of the two at the moment and that his concern for Silver and Madi is 100% genuine.)
Madi, too, has to play her part in this. She’s not just an extension of Silver here, she’s her own person and this war is simply too important because despite everything she’s still a queen of her people first. What I found interesting was how Silver acknowledged this, that she matters in this war as much as any of them do, and yet he knowingly disregarded her decision on the matter by doing what she wouldn’t want to do. Flint, on the other hand, didn’t. He was right in his assumption that Madi wouldn’t permit Rogers to separate them and we know this because Mr. Scott warned her that if turned against each other, the damage Silver and Flint could do would be off the charts and they cannot allow that. She cannot permit that without risking the lives of her people. And we also know this because Madi told Rogers that she will die fighting against his regime (however, I believe that in that moment she didn’t want to give Rogers the satisfaction of having won, and if given the choice between an unwinnable war and peace with a loved one (what Eleanor talked about) she’d have chosen the latter (or she might not even be given a choice)).
The point is, both Silver and Flint are being stupid in their decisions. Flint, as rational and smart as he is about the importance of the alliance, won’t be satisfied with Nassau anymore because there’s a chance at more, and Silver is disregarding the inevitable, essentially turning against everyone and destroying their ranks because he can’t lose the person he loves. Madi might not agree with either in the end. It’s not certain whether she’d agree with Flint’s decision to exceed the parameters of the war and risk all their lives, and because Silver went against her beliefs and completely disregarded the alliance that she worked so hard on salvaging I can’t imagine she’d be pleased with him either. Whatever happens now it’s gonna be a damn roller coaster ride that goes straight through hell, no doubt.
Sorry that got longer than I expected too, I was mostly just trying to piece the story for myself. I might be wrong in my assumptions here because the story from this point on is completely unpredictable and everything changes so quickly I’m struggling to comprehend the narrative because we’re missing the vital pieces of the puzzle. Phew.
Exactly. If they were just going to have Silver question whether Flint would ever give up the war for anything, they didn’t need to have him ask Max which families in London had used that plantation, or even have her mention it. This is headed somewhere – particularly because this has always been a story about stories and that’s all Thomas’ death has ever been – a story, one mentioned by Richard Guthrie who quite demonstrably does not have all the facts and backed up by a letter from a man who lied with every breath he ever took. Peter Ashe could have said the sky was blue and he’d have been lying about it somehow.
I know you’re all fucking deceased at this point and probably have no idea what to believe but I’m just gonna say it because I know a lot of people are feeling the same
Even if they brought Thomas back it doesnt make it ok for them to just make silverflint platonic. Not after 4 seasons of relationship development and build up, not to mention the amount of paralells we’ve been given with them and other canon romantic couples. Toby saying that Silver is the love of Flint’s life without them being canon and flinthamilton being endgame just doesn’t add up
The only way I can see any of this making sense would be if they were to make Silver and Flint’s feelings for each other canon, and the tragedy of it all in the end being James choosing Thomas and John choosing Madi
“It is some kind of hell to be forced to choose one irreplaceable thing over another”
I definitely agree that using possibly!living!Thomas to invalidate the Silverflint would be a shite move. But I think at this point Silverflint IS canon. Does Silver have sexual feelings for Flint? We don’t know, we don’t know if he’s wired that way. Does he LOVE Flint? TOO-FUCKING-RIGHT he does.Their feelings for each other are absolutely canon.
Now, I want to see Silver pound that freckled ginger ass into the bed as much as the next gal, plus like, queer representation and shit, but if we say that Silver – who is looking at his partner and first/only friend, and basically saying “I want to save you from this war by giving you the thing you love most in this world” – does not, purely and irrevocably love Flint simply because he may or may not want to smooch the man is really selling such a wonderfully written character short.
Maybe we need to stop thinking “platonic” and start thinking “agape”?
Agape works and I said pretty much the same yesterday about Silver saving Flint from war and giving him his lost love back. To me silverflint is canon,has been for a very long time because it doesn’t matter if any kissing happens onscreen-the deep connection they share,the relationship they have built,the love…it’s all real and there. Tho I do think Flint IS in love with Silver, but expects nothing but friendship in return and he is fine with that.
I think for us, what made it compelling, is the cruelty of it. It is so clearly designed to tell a story about Rogers’ capacity for violence and his dominance over them, in what was meant to be a very bloody victory for him. I think what became complicated for us was, not only did it need to do all the things Dan mentioned in being a big noisy death for Teach but it was also important somehow that Teach save Rackham’s life. In a moment where Teach is bound and mostly dead and lacking really any agency, that was hard to do. This idea that just by not dying he saves Rackham’s life felt right. And I think as a Rogers story it was interesting in that Rogers thinks that he’s the star of the show and thinks he’s the one everyone’s going to be talking about tomorrow. And just by not dying, Teach becomes the star of the show and kind of makes him a hero in the moment when he’s supposed to be a prop. You understand why Rogers has to walk away and cut his losses and risk losing the narrative he was trying to tell.
Jonathan E. Steinberg, about that scene
There are some great quotes in this interview, but this is one of two specific ones I want to talk about.
I love this quote. Because it shows that the creators understand the point of having such a gruesome scene. It is there to bring the story forward, which is great, and highlight the cruelty of Rogers in a way which had not yet been made clear to us.
But, as they say, it’s also fundamentally about agency.
Agency is a word we use a lot on tumblr when discussing in fandom. Usually it’s applied to female characters’ narrative and how they’re handled. But here it is also an absolutely perfect word to describe what is going on.
In a scene where Rogers should have all the agency, all the power, Teach takes command of the narrative. Through doing that, he ends up saving Rackham and probably most of the crew.
Rogers was so sure of how this would go, and the longer he drags it out, the more he loses control of it. Teach might be bound and tortured, but by every round of it he survives, he’s taking agency away from Rogers in front of all his men. In the end, Rogers can’t continue without completely losing every ounce of credibility he had. Him shooting Teach is a victory for Teach. Teach was in command the entire time at the end. He forced Rogers to admit defeat by going up and shooting him. He also stopped Rogers, whether knowingly or not but simply by persisting, from doing the same to the rest, and to Rackham specifically, because Rogers would not have been able to withstand another failure like that. Rogers was drained of all his will to show off how in power he was.
It reminded me of that scene in Jesus Christ Superstar (yes, I just made that reference), where Pilate orders the flogging of Jesus, and the longer he goes on the more painful it becomes for himself, in the end it’s even hard for the person flogging. Not to say Blackbeard is Jesus, and Woodes Rogers is far from Pilate, or showing any of the complicated emotions afterwards that he does, but he was very close to making Teach a martyr.
What was supposed to be his big victory turned into something small and insignificant that only made Blackbeard’s legend greater. The gore and horror in that scene worked not for shock but to highlight for us as an audience both to what length Rogers was willing to go out of desperation, and how badly Rogers was losing, because Teach pulled through. What was supposed to be a power demonstration turned into a demonstration of weakness. They highlight to us that this type of violence is not normal, it’s not by the book, and they do this through the horrified looks and silent acting from those standing around. These characters who’ve done terrible things are all standing around and looking in disgust and horror.
That’s how you do a scene like that.
(via mynameisjohnsilver)
hawkbi-pierce
replied to your post “so, does hands recognize flint/mcgraw back from the day, or..,,,?”I didn’t even think of this jfkdlsajfdklsa;
undiscovereduniverse replied to your post “so, does hands recognize flint/mcgraw back from the day, or..,,,?”
oooh interesting question!! Flint has changed a lot in those ten years, so I think not?
to be fair, i doubt mcgraw came face to face with the pirates? or? do we even know?
Well – from the way he talks about what happened to Thomas and Ashe, I don’t think he ever actually met the pirates in charge of the island – in fact, I get the impression that he might have gotten as far as maybe Port Royal and turned around, having heard what went down (because a Royal Navy ship turning up to an island newly inhabited by a bunch of pirates would not have gone over well). I also did some math. Thomas says that he was away for three months. That means it took him roughly six weeks to get there and six weeks to get back, and let me tell you, for that time period, that was making good freaking time. He wouldn’t have had any time to linger or really meet with anyone for more than a day or two.
Meg's Mumbles 