like i 90% of the time cant physically stand to think about silver but in the end i feel like his character says something about the banality of evil, like all other interpretations bring great stuff to the table, but in the end it was him inflicting his giving up on other people and i cant fucking ever abide by that
Honestly, Anon, this is one aspect of the finale that I can’t help but feel was poorly fleshed out. I get why it was – they only had so much time, but the fact is that Julius appears, is an awesome character for the – maybe five whole minutes of screen time he actually has, and then we never see him again. We don’t see him talk with anyone about the treaty. We don’t find out what would lead him to suddenly trust, let’s be honest, two WHITE MEN about that treaty. We don’t get to hear the Maroons debate the treaty at all, in fact, and I’m not sure that that’s not deliberate as well, because what choice were Madi and her people left with but to accept the terms of the treaty and hope the new governor would in fact honor it? That’s what rankles, more than any of the rest of it – they weren’t given a choice, and I’m not sure that it would have made a difference if Julius DID object to the treaty in any way for that reason. Silver and Rackham both pretty much gambled and outright sacrificed a lot of people’s futures on a big maybe – especially given they’d just captured Woodes Rogers, so they pretty well had to have a new governor willing to go along with their plan because if you think Rogers would honor that treaty after having been bested and captured, yeah no. It really is all up in the air there for a bit in a very alarming way.
hey so im too tired to get annoyed about this right now, but my friend @complaininginthedark wants to so i’m posting this so he can
Yeah so I’m going to answer this since I’m peeved at things today and have the energy to get involved. I don’t want to, I’d rather just get on and “live and let live” since that’s what I’ve been doing so far. But it’s hard when one ship advocates truth and trust and love and devotion as virtues and another showcases lying, manipulation, forced imprisonment at gunpoint, and systematic oppression being excused.
The narrative of Black Sails is on the side of the oppressed and maltreated. It is on the side of the imprisoned, the pressganged, the absued and enslaved. To ignore that and to ally with the character who ignores the wishes of friends and loved ones in those positions is hard to let go of. When S/lver put a gun to James’ head and said “I don’t care”, when he left Thomas imprisoned on the plantation, when be blatantly disregarded Madi’s efforts to free her people, he became a villain. He became a part of the problem. He may have done it out of love but it was for his own benefit, not the benefit of his loved ones.
THEN there are the fandom sides of things. The disregard of Thomas as a driving force behind Flint’s narrative, ranging from ideas that he would easily let James be with S/lver after that betrayal to Thomas beind dead or nonexistant, is insulting to anyone who has been marginalised for their sexuality. Tagging on fics that barely include Thomas mean someone uncomfortable with S/verflint have to scroll through and miss half the fandom content for one of only 3 lgbt pairings in the show. CANON pairings at that. Tagging and searching on Tumblr are different and both suck but content creators are allowed to say “don’t tag this as such and such” without being harassed for it. Fandom is awful anyway I don’t do much other than write what takes my fancy but respect goes two ways.
In short – It’s not about just getting on with things, it’s about realising the people who don’t like S/verflint have reasons beyond spite or malice.
I agree quite completely, Anon. The author reads the show as a call to action, and I could not possibly agree more strongly with that analysis, or their understanding that in all of this, the enemy is the status quo and the inability to dream of something better. If you follow me, then you know what I think of Silver’s actions in the finale, and I think this is a large part of the reason why I feel as I do, because I’m tired – so very tired – of being told over and over again “the society that has tried to grind you down since the day you were born will always stand, there is nothing you can do, it is impossible to tear it down and start fresh.” Honestly, I think Black Sails has proven formative to me in that very way – I don’t know of any other show that has practically taken me by the shoulders, shaken me, and said, “it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to roll over and allow things to stay this way.” I think we all need to hear that right now, as things in my country get worse in leaps and bounds and I find myself asking “what do I as someone who lives in this hellhole do to make this stop?”
There’s a reason that the good, rousing speeches in Sails are given by people like Madi, and Flint, and Vane. There’s a reason that Flint is the protagonist of the show, and a reason that the at least presumptive heroes of the show are all people who have been marginalized, and betrayed, and treated abominably by people in power – explicitly so. Madi and her mother and father and their people have suffered because the people in power desire that they should. James and Thomas and Miranda suffered because they dared to say the poor and disadvantaged are people and deserving of life and decent treatment, and because of the way they loved. Charles died because he, a former child slave allowed to suffer under England’s laws, would not roll over and be England’s slave again and because he repeatedly called on crowds of people to stop giving power to those who didn’t deserve it. Black Sails is a challenge to the idea that change can’t or shouldn’t happen all at once, and a pretty clear indictment of those who cannot or will not envision something better and do everything in their power to prevent others from seeing it either. I love Max. I love Rackham. I even, at one point, liked Silver, but in the end – they’re wrong, their worldview is wrong, and I could do with infinitely less of the same attitude from real people who, like them, can’t or won’t bring themselves to envision a world that’s better and more just and then either help those of us who want it to change or get out of our damn way.
Chapters: 8/10 Fandom: Black Sails Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Captain Flint/Thomas Hamilton, Vane/Madi Characters: Captain Flint, Thomas Hamilton, Madi (Black Sails), Charles Vane, Admiral Hennessey (Black Sails), Abigail Ashe, “Calico” Jack Rackham Additional Tags: So one day after the finale I sat down, and decided to find out what happens if Charles Vane is still alive post s4, you know – presuming he was out of action but not dead, and then the thought hit me that Madi and Vane would make a cute couple, and well here you have the results, not Silver friendly, post finale fix-it, Grieving, found family of a sort, All the people that love James and Thomas come together to rescue them from the shame farm, Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, explicit sex as of chapter 7 Summary:
When he’s transported from Nassau to Jamaica, Charles Vane does not expect to leave the jail in Port Royal alive. When he’s released as part of a prisoner exchange agreement at the end of the war –
There might, he thinks, just possibly be something wrong with him, because he is about to go rescue James Flint from slavery with the help of a princess and an admiral of the English fleet, and he’s not quite certain but he thinks he may even have been sober when he agreed to do it.
Edit: Chapter 6 was missing a bit and I have now posted it. If everyone could just… reread that chapter with the first section, I’d really love you all forever.
g – d i fucking love That Argument between miranda and flint because like… the whole “the door is open. i’ve opened it for you.” thing is a recurring theme throughout the series, with characters doing What They Think Is Best for other characters and then being shown just Why That Was Bad. because of course miranda would try to free flint from this fucking hell he’s in! it’s not at all an Objectively bad thing that she did – the problem is that flint has his own reasons for not wanting that, ones she didn’t understand/know about before
and we see that sort of theme with jack and anne too, with anne questioning whether or not jack ‘saving’ her took something away from her because maybe she was supposed to figure her own way out of it. we see it with vane and eleanor and eleanor demanding that he stops telling her “what it is you think i think”. we see it with eleanor and her father too, i think
and that whole thing is why silver ending the war is such a terrible thing. because it destroys everything flint and madi have been building towards, and even though silver thinks he’s doing it for the right reasons and for their own good, it comes back to the entire theme of Actually These Characters Have Ideological Reasons For Not Wanting That, And You’ve Just Betrayed Them. he overrides their agency, which the entire show portrays as a bad thing (not to mention then sending james into slavery, which is a whole other thing).
Meg's Mumbles 