Tag: js critical

The Cup of Their Deserving (the wages of their virtue) – Chapter 1 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]

Chapters: 1/8
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
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
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) – Chapter 1 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]

Different anon, but I was even reading a Flinthamilton series for Flinthamilton appreciation week no less, and in the LAST one, they not only inserted a tad of silverflint into it, but they had Thomas fucking THANK Silver for what he’s done “for” James. I cannot tell you how grossed out and kind of betrayed I felt

jamesflintmcgrawhamilton:

THANK YOU ANON 

‘oh yeah, thank you for telling my lover that my death was his fault. thank you for leaving me in this place after you found out i was still alive, and not telling him so that he could come and rescue me. thank you for sending him here in chains. thank you for refusing to apologise for it.’ 

fuck that. 

figmentof:

Disclaimer: Contrary to popular (?) belief I don’t actually “hate” Silver. His characterizations make sense and it’s very compelling to watch– what I’m NOT here for, is the constant defense of him by various fans/shippers. He’s allowed to be a flawed character, you know, and people are entitled to feel disdain towards him and his harmful (yes, they are harmful) actions. 

Let’s break it down, then:

In retrospect, this is an odd scene because why would Silver even entertain the idea of them walking away? They should be focused on the war and trying to win, yet he speaks about the two of them walking away unscathed like it’s a certain outcome. And to ask Madi if he would be enough, when he’s well aware of the answer (judging by how invested she is now in her war), is telling. This gets echoed by Flint in 4×10, where he tells Silver that she won’t be enough for him anymore because the war brought purpose to all of their lives. Of course, knowing what we now know with the knowledge of 4×10, Silver has in actuality already obtained information about Thomas and that he is indeed alive and well in Savannah. In his mind, the option of walking away from the war is already set in stone, seeing as he’s got everything he needs to put an end to it– the only question remains is a matter of when.

He knew the Spanish were coming, he knew that there would be massive casualties yet he went along with it anyway. He knows Madi found her purpose as the next Maroon Queen, as this war only solidifies her will to liberate her people even more. He knew, yet he betrayed her anyway– because her legacy, the life of her people, the subsequent treatment of future generations of her people, doesn’t matter to him as much as her life. It’s an utterly selfish act, and it’s an act of someone who refuses to be supportive of the woman he loves, regardless of the fact that perhaps it’ll cost Madi’s life to achieve her goals (collateral damage is a-ok as long as it’s not the woman you love, I suppose?). He, a cishet white man, definitively stripped away Madi’s own freedom of choice and her power as a leader, merely because he doesn’t want to lose her. Her and Flint’s war isn’t important, because the struggles of marginalized people never affected him, and never will affect him. He simply doesn’t care. He’s the man with no backstory, a man who can spin tales to fit whatever narrative he wants to tell, while Flint and Madi’s backstories are the driving force of their character.

James McGraw said it best: “In most cases, a man trying to change the world fails for one simple and unavoidable reason: everyone else.”

Silver, and people like Silver, are exactly the reason why Madi’s people had to suffer for centuries. The curse of the Cishet White Male™.

hiddencait

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reluming:
jadedbirch:

corsaircourser:

…

Ooo Vane/Madi sounds amazing!

I had no idea how much I needed that pairing until I started writing the fic and @bean-about-townn made gifs for it! They work so well together – he’s a former slave, so is she. They would both die for their cause. They’re both very, very effective speakers in their own ways. He’s loud, she’s quiet. They both recognize the line between doable and impossible. And post-finale, Alive!Vane is very much adrift in the same way as Madi – trying to figure out who pulled the rug from under their feet, betrayed by people they trusted, and angry as fuck when they find out that James Flint has been sold like some kind of property when he was their partner and friend and someone they both respected greatly. 

sidewaystime:

the things i think about when i think about thomas hamilton

  • there’s a kind of exile in what happened to him that looks like Miranda’s exile: a loss of power, of influence, the destruction of his reputation and name, loss of the freedom to act in the ways that he was accustomed to doing. The closing in of his world to the environment immediately around him. Miranda says that she felt like Abigail was a clock that had struck its chime (it’s fine. i mean i will never be okay with clocks in this show ever but sure. it’s fine.) and woken her from a  dream. is that what flint’s arrival is like for thomas? 
  • Does he know that James and Miranda were alive? Was he waiting? Or had he let them go and hoped for the best? 
  • sorry i just cracked myself up thinking of Thomas-as-Penelope and the suitors thing and flint’s whole :[ response to that kind of mess
  • i keep thinking of thomas and change. he’s a catalyst for flint, who is a catalyst for literally everyone else. and his fate in all of it is to be confined and regulated in a way no one else really is. he’s an agent of change and he ends up in a situation where there isn’t any nor hope for it really. 
  • and how does he deal with the idea of never being free? if the shame farm’s goal is that people who come there are never seen or heard from again, that those people effectively cease to be, what is the actual psychological effect of living without actually living? Miranda says that there’s no life, no joy, no love on Nassau for them; how much worse is that for Thomas? 
  • Thomas’ WHOLE THING IN LIFE is that he’s about not feeling shame. And then he’s stuck in a place whose whole reason for being is to be a repository of it. The disgraced sons, the embarrassments, the outcasts. The unjustly imprisoned. The whole farm exists as a place where families send people they are ashamed of to make the problem go away. fuck that place. can you even imagine the level of outrage Thomas would feel about the whole concept? He goes from trying to change the world specifically to prevent the damage the old world causes from being in the new world and then he ends up in this place in the new world which is designed to perpetuate and hide the sins of the old? Oglethorpe makes a profit off it and calls himself a reformer and the reform is being less of an asshole than an asylum? The level of “what kind of bullshit nonsense is this?” that he must feel is staggering. Also that it doesn’t help anyone but the wealthy. ao;fjisldfsaljoidfkljasdflkj
  • The stigmatization of queerness as anathema to civilization, that he and people like him are considered to be debris on the march toward progress, the isolation and estrangement from society, the rejection of everything he is capable of for the sake of propriety and the status quo? not to bring this all back to James McGraw, but this is an amplified and external manifestation of James’ whole entire fucking life and Thomas gets to live it for a long time.
  • How much does Thomas quiet himself down as a response to institutionalization? Especially in response to Bedlam and then the shift to the kinder but no less restrictive environs of the shame farm. There’s got to be some amount of that kind of response: a relinquishing of his autonomy and agency for the some of the trappings of civilization or acceptance of this status quo because the alternative can be worse. 
  • What are the lines that can be drawn between Eleanor and Thomas? both of them are children of privilege and both of them have that privilege stripped from them and go to prison. What are Thomas’ responses to that? IDK but they’re fucking profound in Eleanor.
  • I think about this line a lot: “sooner or later, you are going to have to confront these realities, chief among them being that England takes whatever, whenever, however it wants. Lives. Loves. Labor. Spirits. Homes. It has taken them from me. I imagine that it has taken it from you.” That loss (lives, loves, labor, spirit, home) is the motivation behind everything Flint does. Thomas lost those things too. How does that manifest? 2/3 of that trio responded with wrath. 
  • i don’t trust a single word that came out of peter ashe’s mouth. thomas forgave him? mmmmm. maybe. unreliable narrator is unreliable.

kkkorydwen replied to your post “kkkorydwen replied to your post “I realize that it’s Flinthamilton…”

Thanks for the tip, I’ m feeling a bit SilverFlint-overwhelmed lately ‘cause there’s so little going on on the John-Silver-critical side on the fandom, so I might just as well wait for the both to come 🙂 Ceasar speed to you and buckets of inspiration!!!

You and me both! The SilverFlint saturation is real, and unfortunately it’s a lot harder to churn out fanfic angry than it is happy, which is probably why the Silver-critical side of the fandom is still kind of quiet. I’m enjoying the sudden flood of FlintHamilton fic, though, particularly over the last few days – seems like a month is the requisite period for us all to pick ourselves up off the floor and get creating again.

kkkorydwen replied to your post “I realize that it’s Flinthamilton week and I’ve been wanting to do…”

I can assure you I’m ready to wait basically FOREVER for all the long I hope continuation you’re about to write – hope the story IS a long one!!! that’s exactly the mood I was imagining for Thomas to feel, and for James AND him together. It was bound to change them both, to chase their damn lethargy away, and the righteous anger OMG! You’re sooo great in writing this, huge thanks!!! and all that’s been said about Silver, too)

*hugs* thank you! It’s going to be at least eight or nine chapters – I’ve got the outline all written out and chapter 2 is well on its way to being completed. If you like this fic and my take on Silver, you’re going to enjoy the other project I’m working on right now, which I’m hoping to get posted soon so that I can do more with this one!