Tag: js critical

comtessedebussy:

flintsredhair:

So – I recently saw a post about Silver’s actions in the finale of Sails being the equivalent of a friend who stops a speeding car full of people from driving over a cliff despite them being utterly convinced the car will survive the impact, and I couldn’t leave it alone. OP – I’m sorry. Please feel free to skip this post if you’d like – I had to get this off my chest and I’m putting it under a cut because it’s just me bitching and (sort of) disagreeing with you.

Afficher davantage

So I totally agree about Silver’s privilege and Flit and Madi both fighting a war against the oppression both of them have faced, which people like them will continue to face but

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no problem! See – the thing with Silver’s actions is not that I disagree with the fact that the war was unwinnable. I think he was probably right on that score. Sooner or later, they were going to lose, and I think that the Maroons probably made the right choice in taking that treaty for the sake of their people. My beef is that they weren’t given a true chance to choose. They were presented with the options Silver wanted them presented with, having deliberately sabotaged any real chance at a choice by removing Flint from the playing field along with the cache they would have used to finance the said war. He rendered the war a non-possibility because he was afraid Madi and Flint would die, and not once did he think to himself – these people have the right to choose whether or not to keep going with this without my interference as an outsider. Just – it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because he is white, he is in effect making a decision for an entire people not his own, not to mention people in Flint’s situation, because this is as much about his experience of discrimination and marginalization as it is Madi and her people’s. Silver hasn’t experienced life through their eyes, he just thinks he’s seen through Flint’s because he put his rage glasses on for a month and then got to take them off, which is something Madi and Flint can’t do with their race or sexual orientation. 

So – I recently saw a post about Silver’s actions in the finale of Sails being the equivalent of a friend who stops a speeding car full of people from driving over a cliff despite them being utterly convinced the car will survive the impact, and I couldn’t leave it alone. OP – I’m sorry. Please feel free to skip this post if you’d like – I had to get this off my chest and I’m putting it under a cut because it’s just me bitching and (sort of) disagreeing with you.

Here’s the thing – if we’re going with the car metaphor – it’s not just about the car. It’s about the millions of people who are going to die or spend their lives enslaved if that car doesn’t get to the bottom of that cliff asap. It’s about the fact that the car is filled with volunteers who don’t think their lives are more important than the people they’re saving, and it’s about the fact that even if Silver as the metaphorical passenger knows that the car is not going to survive the impact with the bottom, there are probably ways to stop the car that are gentler than forcing the wheel over so far that the driver’s side strikes a tree and the driver is harmed irreparably (yes, even if he’s reunited with his long-lost husband when he gets to the frankly scary non-voluntary care facility where he’ll be spending his days) while his screaming best friend sits in the back seat, unable to do anything and is left with emotional scars that will last a lifetime. I mean – I can see both sides but the one side has made a conscious choice to try and help thousands of people just like them, having themselves been made the victims of discrimination and prejudice. The other side is looking at two people and deciding that their decisions and wishes don’t matter worth a damn because he personally can’t bear the thought of them dying, and to keep them from dying, he hurts them both in the worst way I can think of. Furthermore, he does this from his lofty position of not having a stake in the war they’re fighting and therefore not understanding that he does, in fact, have a shitton of privilege that they can’t possibly dream of which blinds him to the reason this is so important to them. I can understand his motives, but the choice was not his to make and his methods are quite frankly just wrong. Free will and choice are important, as are dignity and ideals and freedom, and Silver’s choices took all those things away from people he claimed to love.

bean-about-townn:

Madi and Flint acknowledging how their past motivates them + not understanding why Silver would betray them 

#john silver critical#yeah im basically just interested in how madi and flint just. don’t understand how silver could betray them – their cause#and then i realised: him being a straight white man probably had something to do with that#yeah – silver just deciding for a black woman and a gay man that the cost of fighting the people who have been oppressing them#and people like them#is too high#isn’t something i can support#or forgive really#black sails#madi scott#james flint via @bean-about-townn

I’ve read a meta about BS finale, the author thinks that Flint’s revolution failed because Flint chose Thomas .I’m not sure to have watched the same show. What do you think? thanks

To say that Flint chose Thomas is to imply that a choice was offered, when from where I’m sitting, a threat was issued. The “choice” was Thomas and enslavement/imprisonment or death, and when Flint evidently chose death (remember Silver saying that it took great effort to corral him?) even that was denied him (not that I’m not glad about that at least). Just – Silver’s actions were gross no matter how you look at it, and it’s not that Flint made a choice to end his revolution, it’s that that choice was made for him. In what way does being dragged North in chains resemble a choice having been made? 

bal-lantine:

Watching John warm up during his speech to Madi at the end of the finale takes on such a sick cast once one is no longer shuddering in tears and shit, oh my god. I mean – he starts out fine. Has the appropriate emotional beats one might expect from such a story and character.

…Have you ever talked to someone you love, someone really close like family or a longtime friend, and realize as the conversation is happening that they are lying to you?

It can feel almost like a glitch in reality.

Or perhaps, as the promise of seeing Thomas got closer, he grew more comfortable at letting go of this man he’d created in response to his loss.

Somehow, in the middle of a sentence, you realize the person you know so well has departed from your shared path of understanding. And you’re left watching them in confusion and maybe nascent worry as they continue to smile and speak.

The way John suddenly smiles and hitches himself forward and starts in, “the man whose mind I had come to know so well, whose mind I had in some way incorporated into my own. It was a strange experience to see something from it, something unexpected…”

Idk. I don’t have an explanation for this strange feeling. It just struck me again how monumentally fucked up Silver is at the end.

He’s painting a good story, because that’s what he always does. But it’s just hitting me that the good story is literally all he has. All he’ll ever have. He was so scared of reality, he never let any of his stories grow into something real.

In the same way that random white dudes in the government should not have a say over what I do with my body (i.e. right to choose) or whom I want to love/marry (i.e. marriage equality), even though THEY probably think they know better and are doing it for my own good (but fuck you), exactly the same way Silver had no right to make that decision for Madi and the Maroons. Okay I think we’re done here. XD

Exactly. Thank you for the backup – apparently I’ve ruffled some feathers saying that Silver’s gross. Let me repeat it for the ones in the back – SILVER HAD NO RIGHT TO MAKE THE CHOICE HE DID. Don’t like it, don’t follow and please get out of my grill.

“every privilege in the world as a white male” – Except Silver is quite visibly disabled. Also, I think we often neglect the impact that classism had in the 18th century, when the aristocracy was still alive and well in the West. So no, Silver doesn’t have all of those privileges. That’s not to say that Silver ISN’T better off than a one of the Underhill’s slaves or one of Madi’s people; but I don’t think it’s fair to ignore these things, either.

It’s a point. Silver might not have everything or even close, but he did have a great many advantages that Madi or her father would not have had in so-called civilized society, making the war for freedom very much not his war in that if it died then and there, he could still move around in the world very much as he had up to that point, whereas for Madi and her people, if the war ended, it meant something quite different. I’m not going to keep squabbling over this, Anon. Quite simply, Silver made a decision that was not his to make by taking away a choice that was previously in play, and yes I do think it was a shitty thing to do and a form of crime against the entire Maroon people, not just Madi, because while the war might have had a price that was too high to pay, it was their decision whether or not to pay that price, not his.

Madi was also making the decision for her people who we never actually got to see agreeing or disagreeing with it as her word was final. They did not live in a democracy. Her mother was also not amongst the scattered objectors. The first democratically voted decision actually was for the treaty Silver manipulated into play. It would not have been the same as a pirate war. It would have been torture and horror for all slaves, no matter if they wanted it or not.

Agreed. It was a decision that should have been made among the Maroons, and while I can’t blame Madi for refusing the treaty under the circumstances it was offered, once it was in play again, it’s something she needed to consult with her people about. And yes – I’m not sure that things would have played out as she and Flint had intended, for precisely the reasons you mentioned, but again – Silver is not the one whose people had been enslaved, and he sure as hell did not have the right to take away their choice by removing Flint from play. That was not his decision even slightly. Madi and her people all had the right to make an informed decision based on what they had in front of them and all the resources at their command, not based on one man’s manipulative tactics fueled by his fear of losing one person. I’m not saying that this would have gone as planned, just that it was a possibility that could not be ignored and should not have been taken out of their hands by someone who had no stake in the larger cause and every privilege in the world as a white male.

jadedbirch replied to your post:
Its just that you seem to be a-okay with the…
Yeah, come on, the decision to surgically remove Flint AND the cache undermined any real chance of a Maroon resistance. This white boy made the choice for them before the treaty was ever put forth. The SAME TREATY that Madi refused twice. Fuck you, poodle. I love your face, but fuck you.

Thank you. It’s not that I think that the war should have continued, necessarily, it’s that I think that Silver did not have the right to ensure that it would not.