silver being set on being made of moments, of being moments, on transcending what is past and an eventual nameless trauma: all of it is narratively meaningful, it is a piece of a larger thing that is beautiful by it, but it is, emotionally, part of what made it so incredibly easy for me to run completely out of sympathy for him when i also realized, rationally, that he didn’t deserve it
silver is the one transgression to a show full of people whose pasts direct them, and because of his singularity and because of the way he uses it, his detachment from his past can be misconstrued as power or emotional mastery, or even just as special, but in truth it’s just that, detachment, apathy, it’s someone being small either because of a self-imposed lack of a past tense itself or because of a past tense he denies (himself and us), a past we know isn’t larger than himself because he clearly cannot understand (or care for) the difference between wanting to change an unfair system and meaninglessly raging at a meaningless wound, a past i do not think we are meant to be burdened with inventing or even inventing the weight of, and that i certainly struggle to care to make up for him when i watched so many viscerally inspiring marginalized characters undergo a detailed hell on my very screen and crawl out of it a force and an hymn
Tag: js critical
god it didn’t even hit me last night how long silver had known where thomas was, that he brought the possibility up before flint to gauge his reaction and saw his face at that moment and his desperation in insisting that it is impossible that thomas is alive, that he heard flint say how thomas would not let him give up the war for his sake and saw how badly flint needed to hold on to that, then resumed to do what he had done, thinking it benevolent.
thinking it a solution, thinking it the thing to end flint’s pursuit of righting the wrongs of the british empire, instead of seeing it as it is: flint’s anger is not specifically about losing thomas, it is about the system that made it impossible for him to have thomas.
silver broke the trust of the person who, despite knowing better because life taught him better, trusted him wholly. and he knew that that’s what he was doing, he talked about exactly this to madi. and he believed he was different from all the other people because he did it out of a sense of rectitude, he gave flint his thomas back, and he kept the world calm.
but he still held that same system against flint, sustained it. he found a loophole and thought it enough. he always thought about “being enough” and couldn’t see that in this world, enough is not enough. he still took away from flint the possibility of reclaiming the history, truth, self that the system took from him and from thomas and from miranda and from countless people.
he gave flint an ending to his stolen story. he did not give him his story back.
silver could have gotten thomas out of there. silver could have let flint get thomas out of there. he chose to use this information to end what thomas started, what flint desperately wanted to carry out with him and then for him and then by virtue of him. i can’t even begin to imagine what that moment of forcing flint into surrendering by using thomas went like and i don’t want to because it was either flint gives up a fight that was already lost thanks to silver and reunites with thomas – his love, his life, his truth – or flint keeps up the fight he knows is lost while knowing that he is also giving up his love, his life, his truth. whatever silver might think, this is not equatable to what he went through with madi. this is crumbling to pieces everything flint had worked for (everything that had a chance of making a difference to that Bigger Than A Person thing silver cannot understand) and then offering him one single piece to keep, the one single piece that no one would ever be able to take away from him, the one single piece that is the cornerstone of it all. but he will keep it to himself. history will not be altered. the future will not be altered. only the now, which silver thinks is the only time to care for.
silver could have listened to what madi wanted, needed. he thought keeping her alive was the most important thing while she was sick and tired of what this life looks like not for her, but for her people, for the generations of voices crying in her head. making her agree to this treaty which woodes rogers had offered, knowing that this treaty frees some with the blood of those who won’t be freed, because he wanted to keep her alive? yes, unforgivable. selling the cause for a single soul who does not want the cause to be sacrificed for her, who would sacrifice herself for the cause, just because you cannot understand why she would do that, just because you cannot see past what you would do, what you want, what you need? might be relatable, might be understandable, but still it is justifable that for madi it is unforgivable.
silver could have actually been the friend and trusted partner that flint truly believed in. silver could have been the proof flint held on to that the chaos of the aftermath will not last forever. silver could have been so many different things and so many different people.
but he chose to be the cook who stumbled into a revolution and just wanted to survive at any price.
he believes there is no narrative, that the world is made out of coincidences, that life is not a story that someone tells. but we don’t know his history, we don’t know his true self; all we know is the narrative that he constructed, of the cook who stumbled into a revolution and just wanted to survive at any price. and all people will remember is the story of Long John Silver, the man who had destroyed all who were close to him.
Reclamation – Chapter 6 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]
Chapters: 6/9
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), John Silver (briefly), 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
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.
Reclamation – Chapter 6 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]
James + talking about Thomas’ death to people who know that Thomas is alive
idk if someone has said this before but what julius says to flint
in 4×07 is literally what happens between flint and silver just episodes later“what happens when our enemy realizes that all it needs
to do to defeat us is to take away that common cause? turn one
against the other. and when that happens as it is all but certain to
do which of us standing here are likely to be the ones who benefit
and which the ones sold back into their chains?”when
the common cause between flint and silver changes, when what they
want starts to shift and silver turns on flint, silver was the one who
stood to benefit from it and was a major player in getting the treaty ratified and ending the war while flint was the one who was literally sold in
chains.
Reclamation – Chapter 5 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]
Chapters: 5/9
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), John Silver (briefly), 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
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.
Reclamation – Chapter 5 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]
“How would you feel if the one man you thought would never betray you did? If he purchased for himself a future through that betrayal?”
I’ve seen them. I’ve seen how they see us. We aren’t criminals to them. We aren’t even men. We’re animals.
#so yes ive been having feelings about james and how his greatest fear is exactly what happens to him#just. this fucking character is so important#a gay man who fights not to be dehumanised#that’s why it’s so upsetting that he goes down in history as either a traitor or a monster. an animal. less than a man
Reclamation – Chapter 4 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]
Chapters: 4/9
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), John Silver (briefly), 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
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.
Reclamation – Chapter 4 – DreamingPagan – Black Sails [Archive of Our Own]
Meg's Mumbles 