Tag: Meg answers

What’s your headcanon for the new story? What happens next?

ooh, thanks for asking, Anon! 

So, here goes: for this ‘verse, Hennessey had a brief relationship with James’ mother. He didn’t realize he was gay/ace (I can never decide with him but I lean toward asexual homoromantic). Anyway – they were together, and Hennessey did the thing where he reasoned that he MUST be attracted to her, she was cute and funny and beautiful – and then he got transferred to a different post, and by the time he came back, she’d married another man, probably because she was pregnant with James and that was frowned upon without a husband back then. She died in childbirth, and the man she married was also in the Navy and in no position to raise James, so he left him with his father, Darby McGraw, who raised him and never said a word if he suspected that his son wasn’t James actual sire. Darby gets ill, and James joins the Navy as his stepfather’s apprentice, and then Edward McGraw (the name I’ve assigned for him) dies in battle or of some illness or other, and Hennessey takes James in, never knowing he’s just taken charge of his own son. 

As to what happens next – he. hehehehe. So, this is a universe where the pardons went through without a hitch and that means that a certain Hal Gates is going to be looking for something to do now he’s no longer a pirate and has the paperwork to prove it…..

For anyone who’s looking for the story referred to in the ask, it’s here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14118924

For the 10 questions thing – no.2 and Reclamation :)

Hmm. That’s a tough question, Anon, because I’ve got several, and I’m not even done writing the fic yet! 

So – let’s start with number one. I loved writing the scene where Charles returns to the Maroons’ Island and talks with Jack. It just sets the mood for that half of the fic entirely. It’s Charles thinking “ok, I’m home, thank fuck,” and then finding out that not only is he not home, everything – and I mean everything – is completely wrong in his world. And it also tells us a lot about Jack and where he’s coming from – I realized a few things about him while I was writing that scene.

Number two though – number two absolutely has to be the scene where Madi talks with Hennessey, because again, it tells us a lot about where everyone’s coming from and they’re so very different, but in this they are alike – they miss James, they care about him, and they’re grieving, and they come together in that grief as – not partners yet, exactly, but just as two people who have lost the same person and need answers. It’s really important to me because together Madi, Hennessey, and Charles are all facets of the same stone, and then they get to come together with one singular purpose that’s based around simple human emotion. Also, Madi and Hennessey play off each other well and that dynamic was fun to write.

And finally, last for now but certainly not least, was this: 

“I spoke with Silver,” she confirms. “He is alive.” She does not hear Hennessey breathe a sigh of relief, but she sees his fists unclench and his back straighten, as if a weight had been lifted. Vane, on the other hand, looks more tense if anything. His brows are drawing together – his mouth becomes a line composed out of purest concern and anger, and she sees small lines form at the corners of his eyes as they narrow.  Focused, directed anger, and when he speaks, his quiet growl is almost soothing to the part of Madi that wishes to rip, wishes to tear, wishes to cause mayhem to match the howling in her soul.

“Where is he?” he asks, his tone menacing, and she meets his gaze head-on without flinching, speaking to him directly.

“There is a plantation,” she tells him. She needs say no more – Vane freezes, and Madi holds his gaze, and feels a piece of herself slot back into place at the look in his green eyes.

“A plantation,” he repeats. It is not a question. It is the rumble of thunder that comes before the storm, and she nods, agreeing more with both his statement and the sentiment behind it than with anything else she has heard in the past three months.

“North of Spanish Florida,” she says. “Where they farm sugar cane.” She can see Vane’s eyes widen – can hear the way he stops breathing for a second and then starts again, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.

I love that scene, Anon, because it’s the scene where Madi and Charles really understand each other completely for the very first time. This is a hint of what’s to come – it’s his anger answering hers, and his concern mirroring hers, and the two of them understanding without words what the other is thinking. This is where people are meant to think – you know, that could work, if they haven’t thought it already, because in this moment right here, they’re of one mind. I love their other scenes as well and I loved writing them, but this one really stands out.

If you have a problem about how people read the show, what do you think about this gem that I found on a forum,on 4×10:”if civilisations ought to be judged on “what becomes of they unwanted ones”, Flint is judging civilisation on the fact he believes they killed Thomas. Since they didn’t kill Thomas but he’s alive in a relatively humane place, the monster that is civilisation that Flint’s fighting against simply never existed; he was wrong from the start”(1)

(2)I could not believe what I was reading -_-

You or me either, Anon. I just – I’m fairly certain you can see the logical fallacy that is “because this one gay man was not outright murdered but instead sent to be enslaved, that somehow invalidates the fact that a. SLAVERY IS WRONG AND BAD AND HE DID NOT DESERVE THAT and b. There were other people who were, in fact, hanged for the crime of being gay AS HENNESSEY MENTIONS TO JAMES IN THE SHOW and therefore yes, in fact, that civilization that James is fighting very much existed and, in large measure, still exists today. It needed to be fought, it still does – 

*throws hands in the air* James Flint was right and people can fight me.

Can you explain your thoughts on shipping jack/max/anne considering you said you view max and anne as lesbians?

Sure! I think they’ve got a complicated relationship going on wherein Anne and Max are lesbians, but Jack is Anne’s platonic life partner and Max and Jack have a mutual understanding and respect for each other that in some ways surpasses friendship given what they’re willing to forgive each other for Anne’s sake. They’re the definition of “it’s complicated” because while I don’t see Jack and Anne as a sexual pairing after s2, they’re soul-mates. idk – they’re just better together than they could be apart and I think s4 actually proves that. They fall apart, they’re all miserable, and then they come back together and within a few months they’re ruling Nassau together.

you know what? I am white heterosexual and white, I love and I identify with james flint and I do it because the things for and I do it because the things for which he fought are universal For me he is an admirable and inspiring character because despite the injustices he suffered he never lost faith in humanity, that the world can be a better world. and I am so angry that people such as these are misunderstood and crushed, but characters like him make me believe that maybe there is still hope

2/2 same anon, long post is long sorry james flint is so inspirational because he makes me hope that I might be a better person than I probably are

Honestly, I’m fairly certain that’s half the point of James Flint existing as a character. That’s why the character is so revolutionary, or at least part of it – he’s queer, he’s here, and he’s a character who’s absolutely relatable and sympathetic to huge swaths of people, which means that when they see him being mistreated because of who he is, they get the point that queer people deserve better than to be abused like that. I’m glad you find him an inspiration, and I think he’d be glad to hear that too – gods know the man spent enough time trying to get people to see what he wanted for the world and for people like him. Now – go do something for your local LGBTQ+ support organizations and make him proud.

Sorry for the late reply! I’ve read yours and I’m just a little confused so… are you saying that characters like silver should not exist because they are bad examples for the audience (or the readers?)

No – I’m not saying that at all. Silver is a brilliant character, actually. He’s morally ambiguous shading into villainous the longer the show goes on. He goes through one hell of a journey to become the character from a book many of us read as children, and he’s actually an excellent example of a character being relatable or sympathetic – but absolutely, completely not right. The phrase I’m looking for is “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and I think that somewhere in a book of phrases, there should probably be a picture of Silver’s face next to that phrase. He’s a great character – I’m saying that as a fandom there’s a tendency to paint a character as one thing in s1 and then refuse to allow that character to grow and change, yes, even for the worse, as far as our portrayal of him outside the original medium he came from. S1 Silver was stumbling his way through life, getting into messes and getting out again with a grin and a few glib words and maybe a murder or two, but was certainly not a monster or a villain. S4 Silver has moved on apace into being a genuinely scary, certainly manipulative individual who is very short-sighted when it comes to the difference between his needs and wants as regards other people and what those other people have envisioned for their lives and why those things are important to them. Silver’s not a bad character by any means, but our reaction to him and understanding of him as a fandom has proven to be problematic, to say the least in that it’s static and actually sometimes harmful to people who see clearly what he became and have quite rightly said we’re not fond of him as a result.

I don’t know how could you say that you like the finale when you’re writing so many fics and metas to criticize it

Actually, Anon, I don’t recall criticizing the finale.

I recall criticizing the actions of a character in the finale and during the rest of s4. I recall criticizing the way the fandom has reacted to the actions of that character, but I do not ever recall saying that I considered the finale bad in any way. It’s brilliant, frankly – anything that makes me react the way I did and has me still talking about it seven months later has to be something pretty special. It’s complex, it’s heartbreaking, it’s wonderful in the fact that we all got something we never expected to get – a semi-happy ending for a character that quite frankly I expected to be mourning by the end of the series. I loved the finale, but I did not love the fact that while I saw a man get the love of his life back but at a truly horrifying, to me unacceptable cost and be betrayed by someone he trusted, other people seem to have seen that character being forced into slavery as an act of love. I did not love the fact that while I watched a woman’s lover turn on her and treat her very, very poorly – even arguably abusively – other parts of the fandom seem to have disregarded her worth and decisions in much the same way to say that her lover did the right thing in treating her like her needs mattered less than his.

Do you see the difference? I can love a thing but not love the actions of a specific character or the way the fandom reacts to them.

What do you think about treasure island? And about its links with black sails?

I’ll start by saying that as a kid, I liked Treasure Island. I read it, I shivered at the appropriate bits, and was absolutely goddamn creeped out by Long J*hn Silver, for all the same reasons that the character in Black Sails gives me the shivers from time to time. There are moments in Sails where I look at Silver and I absolutely see exactly the same character that I got to know and came to fear in Treasure Island. If you want an example of one of those, let’s talk about the tavern scene, the scene where he meets with Max in s4 after getting captured by Hands, and the way he handles Dobbs in s3. In that, Black Sails and Treasure Island are very much recognizable as happening in the same universe. When it comes to Billy, though – I really, really have trouble seeing Billy Bones from Treasure Island in Billy Bones as he appears in Black Sails, but then twenty years and rampant paranoia of the sort Billy seems to have developed in s4 will do that to a man, I suppose. It’s not all that far of a stretch, just I have trouble picturing it for some reason. As to any mention of Flint, though….

*sighs* Treasure Island, friend, is a lot of the reason that I want to rage and scream and cry over what happens to Flint in Black Sails because the man we get glimpses of in Treasure Island is a ghost story. He’s a monster used to scare the gullible and the guilty into submission. He’s a tool in someone’s toolbox as they try to get the treasure so many people sacrificed so much for for themselves. Captain Flint of the novel is a man who murders six men and thinks nothing of using their bodies for markers leading to the treasure. He’s a drunk who dies screaming for rum, a boogeyman never actually seen but only imagined and I just – I can’t stand it. The bastards won, Anon. They fucking won, after all that pain and all that suffering. They did that, they painted him as the fucking villain, as the monster, as nothing more than a greedy pirate obsessed with gold and slaughter, and I hate it. And yes, I realize that Black Sails is derivative of Treasure Island and to stay faithful to the novel they had to go there but I still fucking hate it because there’s not a single thing of the man we came to know and most of us came to love in the character from Treasure Island – not one.

tl;dr: Treasure Island has very definite links with Black Sails, and I do love those links actually, even while I’m still very not ok with the difference between book Flint and Sails Flint for reasons that are less to do with bad writing and more to do with what the character from Sails deserved. Also I want to know how Sails Billy got off that island and became Treasure Island Billy.

at the end of the show, james flint who refused to bow to the system that ruined his life ends up in a place where he is supposed to toil for the benefit of the said system. because his friend sent him there. to a place that england created for people like him to disappear and never bother her again. england won, because his friend let her win. delivered him to her on a silver plate. returned him to her clutches so he could continue to break his back for her. but it’s ok, it’s love…

Fully and totally agreed. I don’t think I’m ever going to be over the simple fact that after all that struggle, all that sacrifice, all that pain – England won, because one man decided that the fight wasn’t worth it. I find it hugely ironic that the moment someone starts trying to define Silver as a monster in the same derisive, degrading way people have with Flint all his life, he literally stomps that man’s head in, but when James Flint practically begs Silver not to allow the world to remember him as nothing more than a monster, Silver decides that he suddenly doesn’t care about stories. It’s been six months, and I’m still not over this and I don’t suspect I ever will be, because the reality is that he made Flint’s worst nightmare a reality and in the process, he left Thomas Hamilton to remain a slave. I’m sorry, but none of this is any version of love.