30 and 54 please!

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.

Ooh. Um…

This one:

“This is not about us ! This is not about you!” The words burst out of her, her voice raised. She has been trained not to do this. She has learned, over and over again, but now, here, she is shouting, her anger and pain too much to be confined. “There are people out there now living in slavery – men and women and children who will be separated from their families not by my war but by men of your race who see them as property! Husbands and wives, brothers, and sisters, and grandmothers who will never know freedom because men like you would rather put your own comfort above their lives! You would put my life – my safety above theirs and that is not my role to play!”

It’s not exactly one line, but it’s arguably the easiest paragraph I’ve ever written and one where Madi just – took over and wrote herself. It’s also really, really important, story-wise and just in general.

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Yes. Little things are so, so important. If you want someone to really feel a scene, to be there in their heads, you’ve got to give them anchor points – you’ve got to tell them if a character’s hands are clammy, or if there’s a lantern in the corner that’s making a creak sound with every roll of a ship, or if there’s just total silence other than some sound you want them to hear as if they were in the room with the characters. Don’t just say what’s happening in a scene – describe the little things the way you see them in your head and the way you hear them.

Rogers asks the question. The man standing in the half-light of evening is tall. Rogers can see that – taller than he, even, and blond, and somehow he does not look like a pirate. There is an air about him – one that Rogers recognizes, one that his father-in-law had possessed. It is a kind of faded nobility – the shoulders no longer held straight, hands at his sides not as if they belong there but as if they are used to being active, and yet there is still something commanding in his gaze, (1/)

and yet there is still something commanding in his gaze, and in the tone of his voice.

“Governor Rogers,” he greets. “Oh good. Everyone I want to shout at in one place.”

“You’re him.” Silver’s voice, Rogers thinks once again, is a sound he would be perfectly happy never to hear again.

“I believe you told me to shut up,” he snaps. “Allow me to return the favor. Shut -” (2/)

“You’re him,” Silver repeats, and he can hear the sound of the other man grasping hold of the bars to pull himself up, the chains he is in rattling as he does so. “You’re Thomas Hamilton.”

The man in the shadows steps forward, and Rogers inhales sharply. It is not possible –

“I see James has told you something of me,” Thomas answers, and Rogers can hear his wife’s knitting needles actually cease their clacking for a moment. Everything goes still, and then – (3/)

“I can explain,” Silver starts, and Thomas snorts. He is, Rogers thinks, different, somehow, than he had pictured. There is an edge to Thomas Hamilton – one that Rogers could not have anticipated, and against all odds, he seems to recognize it where Long John Silver patently does not. (4/)

Experience, perhaps – he had had the misfortune of encountering Alfred Hamilton once, and only once, and suddenly he is reminded that Thomas, for all that he had been accounted a good man by those who knew him, is also Alfred’s son. Rogers sits up straighter, gaze snapping toward Silver, suddenly awake and alert and quite completely terrified. “Shut up,” Rogers hisses. “For the love of God -”(5/)

“Shut up,” Rogers hisses. “For the love of God -” “I very much doubt that,” Thomas addresses Silver directly, and somehow – somehow, Rogers knows that he will not be sharing these cells with the ruffian on the other side of the bars for much longer. “Please, though – do tell me why you thought you could abuse and sell the man I love and not have me come for your head.” For the fanfic commentary thing?

ooooh, I am so excited that you’ve chosen this for fic commentary!

I really, really, really love this section. Rogers POV is one that I did NOT expect to have in this fic, but I realized that an outside perspective on Thomas would actually be really useful, because it gives us an idea of what the past ten years has done to Thomas in terms of how he’s perceived by others. It also gives us an idea of how Thomas is going to be seen by people in the next chapter – what it is that Thomas’ cousin Archibald sees when he looks at Thomas, and what Hennessey sees, because the Thomas who has come back from that plantation is not the Thomas that went away and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. He’s angry, here – really, absolutely furious, and I wanted to show everyone what an angry Thomas Hamilton looks like now that we’ve also seen frightened Thomas and joyful Thomas and a host of other Thomases that are equally related to the trauma he’s suffered and his sudden, unexpected removal from that situation.

As to Rogers and Silver and what’s going on with them emotionally – well, for starters, they hate each other. They were never going to do anything else, really – Silver’s a talker and Rogers is raving at ghost!Eleanor, and so I want everyone to imagine here that these two have been snarking at each other for days and driving everyone else, their guards included, absolutely mad. I’d imagine the guards are quite happy to let Thomas in – they’re hoping he can bring sanity or at least take a request to Madi for earplugs!

In all honesty, though, when Thomas reads him the riot act, I think Silver’s just seen the specter of what he was going to do to James and it’s really brought home to him that what he planned was horrifying. It is in no way a mercy – as Thomas tells him, there’s nothing about that plantation that is anything less than hard and soul-crushing and dangerous, and that’s the fate that Silver planned to hand James over to. That’s what Thomas has come through, and this is also Thomas saying to Silver and Rogers too, “I know what you’ve done to my husband. It stops now, if I have to fucking break you to pieces psychologically to make it stop.” Silver clings to denial but ultimately breaks at least a bit. Rogers, though – I think what Thomas says to Silver actually frightens Rogers quite significantly, because he sees in Thomas what he himself could become. This is Rogers’ moment of realizing what England does to men who try to change her even by legal means – what she does even to those with great privilege if they step out of line and it scares the shit out of him. He’s come from a place of thinking like a lot of rich men – that the pirates just made all the wrong choices in life to end up where they are, and Thomas is proof to the contrary. He’s proof that a man can do everything right – everything Rogers himself has done as far as working within the law – and still end up a slave, shoulders no longer straight, hands twitching for work to do, and towering anger that’s strong enough to topple empires included. I’m setting a deliberate contrast in this scene, between Silver who lies to himself regularly and so allows any guilt he feels at his actions to slide away and Rogers who has been screaming apologies to his dead wife and now sees in full just what it is that his enemies have been fighting against without any kind of filter between him and that horrifying realization that he’s been wrong.

The Cup of Their Deserving (the wages of their virtue) – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]

flintsredhair:

Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Captain Flint/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver (past), Madi/Eme (future)
Characters: Captain Flint, Thomas Hamilton, Madi (Black Sails), “Calico” Jack Rackham, Assorted OCs, John Silver (briefly), Woodes Rogers (equally briefly)
Additional Tags: In Which John Silver has Fucked Up, And Madi is not amused, Protective Madi, finale fix-it, Canon Divergent AU, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, If you are a Silver fan this is probably not the fic for you, I cannot emphasize enough that this is not a Silver-friendly fic, please no flak, Madi and Flint both deserved better, Madi to the rescue, Wherein Jack Rackham meets Thomas Hamilton, Anal Sex, Rimming, Slash
Summary:

“If I leave them here, will you bathe on your own?” she asks. Flint does not answer, and she feels something catch in her throat. He will not, she knows – he has not taken the effort to so much as remove his shirt or attempt to deal with his bleeding wounds, preferring instead to sit, exhausted, on the barrel, staring into the middle distance, contemplating God alone knows what. She cannot blame him – there has been much to think on this day. She herself cannot put out of her mind just how close she has come to losing this – to losing him.

Madi decides not to be sent away after her rescue. When she returns to Skeleton Island, she finds a betrayal in progress and takes steps to save her friend and put her people’s choice regarding the war back in their hands.

The Cup of Their Deserving (the wages of their virtue) – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]

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 (the wages of their virtue) – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]

Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Captain Flint/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver (past), Madi/Eme (future)
Characters: Captain Flint, Thomas Hamilton, Madi (Black Sails), “Calico” Jack Rackham, Assorted OCs, John Silver (briefly), Woodes Rogers (equally briefly)
Additional Tags: In Which John Silver has Fucked Up, And Madi is not amused, Protective Madi, finale fix-it, Canon Divergent AU, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, If you are a Silver fan this is probably not the fic for you, I cannot emphasize enough that this is not a Silver-friendly fic, please no flak, Madi and Flint both deserved better, Madi to the rescue, Wherein Jack Rackham meets Thomas Hamilton, Anal Sex, Rimming, Slash
Summary:

“If I leave them here, will you bathe on your own?” she asks. Flint does not answer, and she feels something catch in her throat. He will not, she knows – he has not taken the effort to so much as remove his shirt or attempt to deal with his bleeding wounds, preferring instead to sit, exhausted, on the barrel, staring into the middle distance, contemplating God alone knows what. She cannot blame him – there has been much to think on this day. She herself cannot put out of her mind just how close she has come to losing this – to losing him.

Madi decides not to be sent away after her rescue. When she returns to Skeleton Island, she finds a betrayal in progress and takes steps to save her friend and put her people’s choice regarding the war back in their hands.

The Cup of Their Deserving (the wages of their virtue) – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]

bean-about-townn:

FIC TRAILER: The Cup of Their Deserving (the wages of their virtue) by DreamingPagan

“If I leave them here, will you bathe on your own?” she asks. Flint does not answer, and she feels something catch in her throat. He will not, she knows – he has not taken the effort to so much as remove his shirt or attempt to deal with his bleeding wounds, preferring instead to sit, exhausted, on the barrel, staring into the middle distance, contemplating God alone knows what. She cannot blame him – there has been much to think on this day. She herself cannot put out of her mind just how close she has come to losing this – to losing him.

Madi decides not to be sent away after her rescue. When she returns to Skeleton Island, she finds a betrayal in progress and takes steps to save her friend and put her people’s choice regarding the war back in their hands.

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)

So rogers is are going to be sent in the plantation? Or to bedlam?

No-that’s what he fears, though, that someone in England may decide that instead of trying him for treason, it would be more cost-effective and less embarrassing to do to him what was done to Thomas. Ironically, his best chance for avoiding that is now to help them to get the terms of the treaty reworked and then throw himself on the mercy of the people he tried to stamp out. I’m big on redemption through fixing what you broke, and before you ask what the difference is between Rogers and Silver in that respect, I really don’t see Silver ever apologizing for what he did or being able to fix it if he were sorry because it’s just too big. Basically I think the difference is that we see Rogers being haunted by the consequences of his actions and apologizing to Eleanor whereas Silver very specifically says, “I’m not sorry,” and waits for Madi to come around to his way of thinking instead of acknowledging that he’s done anything wrong.

I’ve read your addictional chapters and I don’t understand… madi with eme? Rogers as a good person? I’m quite perplexed…

Re: Madi/Eme – I’ll be honest, Anon, I’m not quite sure what you’re confused about. Madi being bi? Her not being with Silver? Honestly there’s not that much there to understand – I have no reason not to have Madi be some flavor of not-straight, and therefore I’m setting her up for a nice, fulfilling relationship with someone who will treat her right since her last relationship very obviously did not work out.

As to Rogers – if it helps, I wouldn’t say he’s being a good person even now. He’s being a self-interested one – one that can see that he’s in a Very Bad Situation politically and personally, and all too likely to lose his head to one side or the other unless he does something helpful and now. He’s also just had a wake up call regarding the rule of civilization in the form of listening to Thomas talk about what he’s been through – I think the prospect of being sold to such a place himself would scare the shit out of Rogers, because he’s a disgraced nobleman of sorts himself and that could be him. Basically he’s taking steps to save his own ass, quite independent of any kind of empathy for anyone (which I don’t believe him to possess a great deal of, or if he does, it’s reserved solely for people that he actually cares about).

tl;dr: Madi/Eme is a thing because why not and Rogers is not a good person, he’s still a dick, just at the moment he’s doing something advantageous to Madi and company because he wants to stay alive and not enslaved and because Thomas manipulated the shit out of him.

So – people who have read Cup of their Deserving – tumblr fam – friends, probably not Romans, and fellow citizens of this hellsite – do I do a really long chapter for the penultimate chapter of CotD, and make you wait a bit longer, or do I do two shorter chapters, albeit the first one sans the ass-kicking that I’ve promised you due to the cutoff point?