Tag: js critical

shortjohnsilver:

flintsredhair:

ohgressfuriosa:

shortjohnsilver:

Yeah I’m still talking about this, but-

A huge point to be made is the way the narrative obviously views the Shame Plantation we all hate.

It’s played up as a decent place. It’s played up by the writing as being acceptable and non-violent and “there is a place for society’s rejects to go and society is judged by how it treats those it rejects blah blah blah” the narrative and the writers want you to believe that this is an okay place. It’s played up so many times. Even Max, who wouldn’t be able to live with herself for having killed Silver, sees it as a viable alternative free of guilt.

If the writers could help it, you’re not supposed to see this place as bad. And it WORKED. So many Black Sails fans see that as a satisfying and acceptable ending for Flint. God I went to the Thomas Hamilton wiki the other day and half the comments were “it doesn’t matter where he is because he’s with the love of his life! What a beautiful ending! Black Sails watered my crops and painted my kitchen it’s Perfect!” Like criticize Silver all you want but the real problem here is the narrative. Silver is not going to understand or act on the basis that this is a bad place for Flint to go because the narrative does not believe or want you to believe that this is a bad place to go.

Silver sending Flint there was meant to be a decent option assuming Flint became more at peace with Thomas. No it’s not true, but the narrative believed it very clearly and very strongly. It’s pushing that wrongly throughout the entirety of season 4, and it pushes it through Silver as well. The Black Sails writers do not want you to believe they enslaved two gay characters in a terrible place at the end of their story. They want you to believe, and probably even believe themselves, that this is a decent place to spend your life. Silver will never have criticize or considered this to be a bad ending because of who he is as a character, but because the narrative wants everyone to think it’s an okay place.

Logically that being a reason to hate Silver is fine. You can hate him for whatever reasons you want and as flawed as it is writing-wise, it is something he did. But it’s so blatantly clear to me that this is a narrative flaw and not a character flaw. Silver only believes this is an acceptable ending because the narrative does because the writers want you to believe it too. Not because he  thinks this is acceptable– but because he exists in a narrative that also thinks it’s acceptable. Don’t expect everyone to ignore that.

A counterpoint that is also valid.

Which is why I love this fandom.

I’d like to respectfully disagree. 

Honestly, I think the narrative is not flawed. The writing is not bad – in fact, it’s brilliant, but it’s making a point that some people have missed, which is not their fault – it’s easy to do given that as you said, it’s not explicitly pointed out. The point, though, is made way back when Madame Guthrie tells the story about the cat and her son and the husband that won’t stop beating the boy for being kind. The point that she, and Max, and a lot of viewers took out of that, is that some things cannot survive in the world with other things if society is to survive. The point that the narrative is trying to get across, or at least the one that I took away from it, is that society strangles the innocent to preserve the guilty and it will continue until people have the courage to change it. The shame farm is a direct reflection of that disgusting little parable. What is obvious to most of us is that it is not the poor innocent cat that deserves to die there – it is the root cause of the problem, the husband who insists on beating his son for doing what is right. In the same way, what James Flint and Thomas Hamilton deserve is not to be “strangled” by being enslaved on that farm. What should happen is that the society that has brutalized them should be overturned, but what happens is that one man plays the role of Madame Guthrie in this story and strangles the cat instead of going for the root cause, probably because like her he has been conditioned to think that nothing can change. I can’t blame her or Max for thinking as they do – they’ve been shown their whole lives that they are not the ones in control and they view quests to make things change as doomed to failure, just as Silver does, but it doesn’t make any of them right.

*In case you missed it, Madi serves in Richard Guthrie’s role here, and Silver acts to save her, sacrificing her happiness for her life.

I agree with you, actually, and I’m really glad you brought up that cat story in detail because it’s been something I’ve wanted to hear someone mention for a long time, especially in regard to Max’s stance on it. I agree with you that it doesn’t make them right, and overall I lean toward Flint and Madi’s perspective than Silver and Max’s. But I also find both Silver and Max’s stances extremely understandable, and disagreeing with them doesn’t mean hating them, especially Max who had no connection to Flint or Madi and therefore was not betraying them. But Silver because I do believe that he did everything he did out of selfish love and an inability to watch Flint and Madi get themselves killed for nothing, which was the only way he could see it ending. He didn’t believe in it, and in reality, never should have touched it or them. But he fell in love with them.

I do agree that Silver believed in what Max believed. I think seeing Max, and even Julius, was a huge factor in what made him doubt Flint and Madi so much. Two people from the same world as Flint and Madi, who had the opposite standpoint. How hard must it to have been to cede to their ideas because they know better than he, while two people who were in the exact same boat vehemently supported the direction he truly leaned toward? Silver doesn’t give a shit about the world or changing it or who suffers in it if it’s not happening right in front of him. He’s never existed in it. He cares only about Flint and Madi and becomes overwhelmed with the belief that their war is not only pointless, but will be their end.

But I don’t think he believes Flint needs to be killed or even removed the way Max and Guthrie do. I also don’t think he gives a shit about the restoration of Nassau or Jack and Max’s plan. He has three things on his mind.

1. Jack wants to kill Flint for this plan. It’s a plan that will put him in power and seal his name into history. It’s unlikely very much will stop him from destroying Flint for this, and that puts them at war with Jack. Which, isn’t a huge problem in reality, but it’s another enemy on the pile.

2. The destruction of the war. Silver doesn’t believe in this war, you’re right. He agrees with Max. He wants to believe in it, I think he’s always wanted to, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t face that until 410. Until he realizes he doesn’t just not believe in it, he believes it’s going to destroy everything he cares about.

3. The best way to end it. Not for England, not for Nassau, not for Jack or Max’s plan, but for Flint and Madi.

I don’t think the writing overall is bad. But it is flawed. I just think it’s important to consider that Silver really did not need to send Flint away forever. He didn’t need to kill him. He didn’t need to do anything except change his stance and start speaking against it and the pirate King would be gone, as well as well as his most promising connection to the maroons– the one among them the maroons had mostly strongly come to trust.

But Flint would have died fighting him, and everyone else who agreed and followed him away from it. Madi may have very well done the same.

My argument isn’t that Silver would not have sent Flint there. That’s where Thomas was. And it was a place Flint could stay with Thomas and perhaps find peace and lose a need for this war that Silver was destroying, if he was ever going to. If Silver needed to remove Flint, even just temporarily, it was the best place for him to go. Not because it was secure or would keep him away, but because Thomas was there.

My argument is that if the narrative understood that this wasn’t a happy ending for Flint, Silver would have also understood that, and would have had no reason not to remedy the situation once the war has dissipated. But the narrative wants you to believe that plantation is Thomas and Flint’s happily ever after. It doesn’t consider anything else, and therefore Silver is never shown considering anything else.

Even though I believe logically, and based on Silver’s intelligence and care for Flint, he would have.

I get what you’re saying. Really, I do, but I think what I really am trying to say is that yes, Silver’s version of the story is meant to show the plantation as a good place, but what the entire narrative of the show is leading us to is the reality of the situation. It’s asking us to distinguish between what Silver’s story is and what’s truly happened and to be horrified rather than defending his actions as being in any way acceptable and it’s a bar that a lot of people are tripping over, unfortunately. The narrative is about shame, and what society considers unacceptable and whether or not that society is right, and I think the show’s answer is a resounding no. That’s why Woodes Rogers is there as a character. It’s why Alfred Hamilton and Peter Ashe are there – to show us that the society that Silver and Max and Madame Guthrie view as immutable is deeply, horrifyingly WRONG. I get why Silver did what he did. I get why Max and Madame Guthrie are the way they are, and I think what kind of irks me is that their perspective is being accepted as right by so many people when that’s not the message that’s being imparted here.

As to Silver and whether or not his character writing was flawed at the end – again, we’re going to have to agree to disagree, because honestly I see the finale as the culmination of four seasons of John Silver failing to get the point that survival is not happiness. It is not the ultimate good – there are other things that are more important, and what he does at the end of the last episode proves that for all he’s changed, he still hasn’t gotten that. He hasn’t realized that making sure someone is alive is not the extent of what love is supposed to look like and I think he only starts to realize it when Madi won’t forgive him for what he’s done. That’s the first moment that he starts to understand that He Fucked Up and I think it’s going to take him a very long time to truly understand why she is so very angry at him.

comtessedebussy:

gaygingerpirates:

Since this is relevant again

However I feel about silver sending flint to the plantation, I can only logically accept that he 100% planned on locking him up by force for the rest of his life. No happy, relaxed farming, and no chance of escape.

Whether or not his decision was justified, it’s clear that silver’s priority was stopping flint and therefore the war (for selfish reasons, for flint’s own good, because it was unwinnable, whichever) not giving him peace with thomas. If he was aiming purely for the latter, as many people have pointed out, he could’ve freed thomas himself. But even with thomas, he knew flint still would have been a threat, so he locked them both up.

I’ve seen some people argue that silver knew flint would eventually break out (as most of the fandom also expects), or that it’s a progressive place and therefore would have little security, but if silver’s priority was to stop him and the war, why on earth would he risk his escape (and him returning even more pissed off than before)? Therefore he HAD to make sure he would stay in that plantation for good. And he knows what a fight james can put up. So he would have to make sure that the plantation was able to keep him locked up forever – through physical force.

Right or wrong, heartbreaking or heartless, THAT is the choice that silver made.

I feel like this post needs bullet points to make it more clear, so if you don’t mind me adding on, the options are: 

  • Silver believed Thomas alone was enough for Flint to give up the war, because all he wants is Thomas, but he enslaved them anyway (believing they were capable of breaking out, but still forcing them to have to do it, risking their lives and potentially risking Thomas’ injury or death and thus pissing James off 10000000 times more) 

  • Silver believed Thomas alone was enough for Flint to give up the war, because all he wants is Thomas, but he enslaved them anyway (not believing they were capable of breaking out and condemning them to a life of slavery and imprisonment)

  • Silver believed Thomas alone isn’t enough, so he locked James up in a plantation no one ever leaves so that James doesn’t return to fight the war

I’m sorry, but none of those options do Silver any favors. Two of them are “he enslaved his best friend for the rest of his life” and the third is “he enslaved his best friend and forced him to break out, risking the life of the man he loves most in the world and started this war for in the first place.” 

And, to summarize: it really, really doesn’t matter whether James broke out the next day, because we’re talking about Silver’s behavior here. 

#yeah i don’t think you can assume that silver had any intention of flint escaping #there are too many unknown factors for silver’s desired outcome if that’s the plan  #is flint okay with what he did or pissed off  #is that actually t.ham on the plantation or did oglethorpe lie
#what are thomas’ inclinations about the shame farm  #the shame farm as a solution to silver’s problems only works if he assumes that’s where flint is going to stay  #because otherwise yeah #just free him give them a bunch of money and send them on their way
     #(not that madi would have agreed to that)
#that whole plan falls apart if flint gets out  #because then the assumption has to be that flint will peacefully retire from the account the way they’ve told the story #because you’ll note
                   #NO ONE TELLS THE TRUTH #jack rackham could easily have said to mme guthrie that flint was in prison
  #but he told the retirement story because THAT is the story that defuses the war #that is the story they want getting out
             #and it doesn’t work if there’s any chance that flint could come back to refute it  #i mean yes removing flint as a weapon on the field is one part of it 
#but to take the heart out of the war they need for flint to have given up  #and for all that he tells madi the truth because he knows she won’t believe that flint gave up  #(she wouldn’t give up why the fuck would flint?) #but he has to assume that she would try to get him out  #so either he thinks he can block that attempt forever  #or he does in fact think that once you go in those gates you might as well not exist anymore
#because you cannot materially affect the world from there

More than thousand of people (S3 Madi: “There are 1,000 men and women here”) gathered on Maroon island. Sailed there from all over the New World (“They came from other islands, the colonies, maroons from camps like this one, pirates from as far away as Massachusetts”). All to join the revoltion. One John Silver decided he knows better…

comtessedebussy:

I couldn’t have phrased it better myself. John Silver made the decision to end this war on behalf of thousands upon thousands of people, as if he was actually a king who had that right. 

Also: Silver justifies this by saying that Flint’s war is a nightmare that he’s ending. I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve come to this conclusion: he doesn’t end a nightmare. He chooses one nightmare over another. Because you know what else is a nightmare? Slavery. Colonialism. Anti-Sodomy laws. “Hospitals” like Bethlem for disabled and mentally ill people. People who speak out against the status quo being made to disappear. Young children being kidnapped because their parents are agitators and sold into indentured servitude. 

Silver might be ending the particular nightmare of Flint’s war, but he’s not actually saving “lives” or “loves” with it. He’s just condemning them to death and suffering in a different way. They might not die in literal battle, but they will spend their lives toiling for an empire that treats them like property. They’ll continue to be killed in accidents on sugarcane plantations. They’ll die from injury and overwork and from being punished. Families and lives and loves will be separated, lost to the nightmare of imperliasm and slavery, as slaves are sold for profit, ripping apart families. 

The idea that silver was saving lives and ending a nightmare rests on the premise that ending the war returns everything to some kind of neutral position, but there is no neutral position. To give up the war is to stand by and allow the horrors of civilization to be perpetuated. 

And yes, I don’t think Flint was fighting this war because he somehow believed in freeing everyone for the sake of equality; I think he just wanted to stick it to England. That doesn’t actually matter, because the end result would have been the same: the kind of emancipation that, in history, mostly happened 200 years later, but which was possible within the canon of black sails at that point in time. Within the canon, Flint’s war had a chance, and Silver made the choice to end it and to allow things to return to the way they had been – even though every single character on the show, himself included, probably, has suffered due to the way that things are. Jack, Anne, Max, Eleanor, James, Thomas, Vane, Billy – every single one of them has suffered at the hands of civilization as an oppressed individual in some way. We’re told their backstories, and they’re all the same – civilization screwed them over – and Silver makes the choice to allow that to continue. 

oscarspoe:

If we are to truly reach a moment where we might be finished with England, cleared away to make room for something else, there most certainly lies a dark moment between here and there. A moment or terror where everything appears to be without hope. I know this. But I cannot believe that that is all there is. I cannot believe that we are so poorly made as that. Incapable of surviving in the state to which we are born. Grown so used to the yoke that there can be no progress without it.

favorite tv show meme || Black Sails

↳[1/10] scenes: Silver and Flint in XXXVI

#dispatches from the angry gay pirate future#i really hope that this moment tears john silver up inside every time he thinks about it#this guy with no reason to have any faith in anyone#puts his faith in madi and himself#and meanwhile silver is like hey i am going to betray you#and everything you stand for#and also her#but then i guess a lot of people assume flint is lying here or something#which i guess sure#if you’re john silver#either you think flint is lying#or you think his judgment is terribly compromised if he can’t tell you’re about to betray him#except why would he#silver did everything he could to put himself into the same camp of people that made it so flint did have faith in others#he did it deliberately and he did it with the express purpose of making it so flint wouldn’t want to kill him#and he’s sitting here listening to this#knowing that whatever faith flint has in him is the tool he’s using to set him up twice#also this fuckign speech of flint’s is the goddamn best#against all odds you come out of your life unable to believe people are so poorly made as to not want to grasp at freedom when it is in fro#s4 is a rollercoaster of feelings via @sidewaystime

Can we please stop having this argument over whether what S*lver did was right?

Heavily John S*lver critical below the cut:

At the end of the day, you know what John S*lver did? He:

a. sold his closest friend into something that is so damned close to slavery that I’m only making the distinction because black people on that plantation would have been treated even worse

b. left Thomas, an innocent man, in a horrible place – go ahead, try to tell me that camp was somehow a merciful option. look up “accidents, sugar plantations” on google and tell me what you find. In case you can’t be bothered, here, click on this: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/archaeology/caribbean/plantations/caribbean35.aspx

c. made a black woman’s decisions for her and effectively shoe-horned her people into signing a treaty that they might otherwise have rejected. He robbed them of a real choice by removing their best general and the money to wage their war all at one time.

d. betrayed the trust of the woman he loved, leaving her wondering just how long he had been planning to turn on her, and undermined her effectiveness as a leader at the same time. He pretty much told her “you’re not capable of making good decisions for yourself, I know best, live with it.” Does this sound healthy to anyone?

e. refused to apologize for any of it. Is not even remotely sorry for what he did, and refuses to leave when the woman he did this to is justifiably angry and tells him to go multiple times. No does not mean convince me, and yet he hangs around as if she might change her mind if he just refuses to listen to her for a bit longer.

f. condemned countless people to live as slaves, since the war was aimed at ending slavery and S*lver ended it peremptorily without so much as a by your leave, and before you tell me how many lives Madi’s war would have cost, let’s talk about the millions that died over the next hundred and fifty years or so because of the slave trade.

g. told Madi what he had done to Flint and then expected her to be less angry, as if SELLING HIM was somehow going to make her less angry than him being dead.

What he did was not right. It was not ok. He was participating in slavery, pure and simple, by enabling it and by directly being responsible for selling a human being as if he were property. I don’t particularly care what his reasons were, that kind of behavior is never, ever acceptable, and trying to pretend that what he did was ok is reprehensible.

Show Chapter | Archive of Our Own

flintsredhair:

Chapters: 9/10
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Captain Flint/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver (past)
Characters: Captain Flint, Thomas Hamilton, Madi (Black Sails), “Calico” Jack Rackham, Assorted OCs, John Silver (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.

Show
Chapter
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Archive of Our Own

Show Chapter | Archive of Our Own

flintsredhair:

Chapters: 9/10
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Captain Flint/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver (past)
Characters: Captain Flint, Thomas Hamilton, Madi (Black Sails), “Calico” Jack Rackham, Assorted OCs, John Silver (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.

Show
Chapter
|
Archive of Our Own

Show Chapter | Archive of Our Own

Chapters: 9/10
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Captain Flint/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver (past)
Characters: Captain Flint, Thomas Hamilton, Madi (Black Sails), “Calico” Jack Rackham, Assorted OCs, John Silver (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.

Show
Chapter
|
Archive of Our Own

comtessedebussy:

(As a note, this is John Silver critical. Consider this a warning)

I’ve come to the realization that the reason I have such a problem with Silverflint is that it is, essentially, an abusive relationship. **

However, given that everyone on this show is a dick, I’m not sure why it bothers me so much with Flint and Silver in particular. Possibly because everybody invests so much time/effort/admiration in their relationship as if it’s not fucking problematic. Sure, ship whatever the hell you want but like can we just recognize that it is not a healthy relationship? 

**yes, John Silver had a traumatic childhood and is generally traumatized and doesn’t know how to care about people and is Bad At Relationships and is figuring it out as he goes. People who have been abused often end up being abusers. This is all true. It explains his behavior. It does not excuse it. 

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