*snort* fully agreed, Anon. No matter how you slice that, it’s a shitty thing to do, and a stupid one to boot – Rogers’ only bargaining chip at that point was Madi. He was hardly going to kill her and risk Flint blowing him out of the water. I get why Silver panicked, and I get why he was angry, but let’s not call it what it’s not. In that moment, he was worried about one person – Madi, not Flint.
Tag: Meg answers
One of the reasons I’ll never read Flint as Rage Monster are his dreams. It’s a truest look into the depths of his psyche. And he’s not contemplating the burning of the world in it. Miranda doesn’t say, “Burn the world down, it’s what you actually want” (as Silver claims in the finale). She helps him see that he’s not alone in this fight.
Exactly. When we’re inside Flint’s head, Miranda’s not urging him to vengeance. He’s not contemplating destruction and death – he’s tired, and he wants to be done, and he’s wanted to be done since he killed Alfred, I think. He asks what happens if he decides he wants to stay with Miranda, meaning what happens if he doesn’t want to do this anymore. And when Miranda in his head points him in the direction of people who can help with his fight, that’s him picking himself up off the ground, going “ok, I can do this, I have a purpose,” and from then on, you’ll notice that he changes significantly. If anything, the purpose that he finds in carrying the war forth is what ends the rage monster, as you put it, and that’s why I don’t agree with Silver’s assessment that for Flint, the war is about rage. Maybe it is for him, and he’s projecting more than a bit, but for Flint, it’s about standing up and saying no more.
Maybe people just need to have their partners/family members/friends make the most crucial decisions for them, and see for themselves how well “but I did it for you!” justification works and how much worse it actually makes you feel.
Honestly, Anon – I get where you’re coming from, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I’ve had someone do something very similar to me. I’ve been the one left standing there gaping while someone does something incomprehensibly shitty and then refuses to see that they were wrong (and yes – they too had reasons that I actually understand and can sympathize with but still here we are and their decision was the wrong one and it damaged my relationship with them permanently.) It’s the shittiest feeling in the world. I’m truly glad for everyone that doesn’t understand why I’m not ok with Silver’s decisions that they’ve apparently never had someone do that to them. For anyone who has had someone do that, though, and still supports his decisions – I don’t get it. I’m sure you have your reasons, but I truly do not understand and I don’t think I’m going to or that I want to. I’ve fought hard to get to the point where I understand that I’m allowed to be angry about what happened and I’m not turning back on that now.
I agree with you about flint.I believe that having back thomas and knowing what thomas had to endure and knowing the existence of places as the shame farm would have been one more reason for flint to continue the war and not to stop it. I do not think that living alone with thomas hidden by the world It would have been enough for flint nor thomas.
Thanks, Anon. I really can’t imagine either one of them being happy with that, tbh. I’d like to think that Flint gets them both out of there within, say, a few days of arriving and that they go on to go raise hell somewhere in the world because Thomas has been locked away for ten years. That’s ten years with no writing, no books to read probably – no life of his own and I’d imagine it was torture in and of itself to be denied the right to do something with his life that way. And I will never, ever believe that losing Thomas was Flint’s only motivation for continuing his war – he says as much himself when he tells Silver that he considers that a good man must, having seen what England does to men like Thomas and himself, stand up and fight.
Well, since everyone’s in the mood to quote people behind the characters, how about this one from Luke Arnold himself: “Flint is who we want to be, but Silver is who we are.” There was another interview where he talks about eternal question of idealism (Flint) vs. pragmatism (Silver), but I’m too lazy to look it up.
So – I will admit, there is an element of truth in this, in that Flint is definitely who we want to be. He’s brave, selfless in a lot of ways, and he’s willing to do what needs to be done to bring about his vision – Thomas’ vision – of a better world – one that I think is definitely worth fighting for. He’s got his flaws – plenty of them, and some of his actions are pretty well indefensible, but on the whole, he’s a good man fighting for a cause I can believe in . And I know myself well enough to know that I am not even close to as talented or as driven as he is – you notice I’m not currently burning the system to the ground in pursuit of a better one, and I almost wish I had the courage and lack of give-a-fuck to be more like him sometimes. As to the second part of that statement though, I have one thing to say.
The day that I start to be Silver is the day that I want someone to punch me so hard my ancestors feel it. If you follow me, you know how I feel about him as a person. I’m not going to go on a rant, but… no. I am not Silver. ‘nough said.
Your top 3 episodes from each season of Black Sails.
ooh, tough question, Anon! I might actually have to rewatch the whole series to answer – how terrible! =D
From Season 1 – I really, really love the first episode. It just – sets the scene so nicely and it had my attention from moment one. And then of course we have 1×06 and 1×08, both of which were favorites of mine because there was just so much going on and I look back on them now and think wow – what a masterful job they did of setting up themes that were going to appear again in the show (not to mention that Flint spent a lot of those episodes being fascinatingly complex and awfully pretty).
And then we get into Season 2 and – well, where do I start with S2? It’s one of the best seasons for me personally, and I love all of it to tiny pieces, but my favorite episodes from it have got to be 2×01 through 2×05. I can’t choose between them, they’re all too good, I’m sorry, I’m claiming five favorites from this season instead of three, because there’s nothing about the London flashbacks that I don’t adore. It’s wonderfully politicky, and complicated, and heartfelt, and I adore that whole story arc. And then, of course, you have the fact that those episodes contain James Flint at his most amazingly intelligent and dangerous and really makes you understand why people fear and respect him.
Season 3 actually personally was not my favorite season, especially not at first. I like it better now, just it needed time to grow on me. I really, really love Flint’s speech to the Maroon Queen in 3×05 about “lives, loves, labor, spirits, homes,” because it’s everything that he believes in – literally everything, all in one speech. It’s the crux of what he’s fighting for, right there, and it’s a vision of a world that I find damn near impossible to look away from because it’s worth fighting for. Similarly, I love Vane’s speech in 3×09, because it’s a reminder that power derives from the consent of the governed, and that how we respond to fear is a choice, which I think is a powerful reminder we all need right now. Finally, last but certainly not least I love the tavern scene in 3×07, because that version of Long John Silver is the one that I recognize from Treasure Island. That is the man that had Billy Bones quaking in his boots twenty years on, and it really sets him up as Flint’s equal in rage and as the darker figure that he’d been growing into all that season. The John Silver that walked out of that tavern, book in hand, scares the shit out of me and that’s what he’s meant to do.
For Season 4, my favorite episodes have got to be, in order, 4×04, 4×02, and 4×10. I remember watching 4×04, getting to that part and sitting up, making an inhuman noise, and then going “WHAT??!!!!” They got me. They got me good, because I was about in the same place as James, thinking Thomas was dead and I’d never see him again in the series, and then they did that. It was a great moment. 4×02 I loved because – well, because that’s probably the last time I could like Woodes Rogers and Eleanor together even a little. For a little while there, they had something that was starting to be good, and I really, really felt for her when he left because there was just a sort of foreboding that she was never going to see him again. It was really well acted, it was heart-rending, and I also liked the talk that Jack and Teach had in that episode re: Vane and the conversation that Rackham had with Anne about Max. It was an episode with some really good character development. And then of course 4×10, you know why I like it already, but I’ll say this as well – I’ve never known an episode of a television show to affect me that deeply. That episode grabbed hold of me, shook me by the shoulders, and snapped, “wake up, damn it, it’s time to remember how to fucking FEEL things again!” And even if I don’t like 100% of the things that happened in the episode – even if they ripped my heart out of my chest and had it for dinner, pretty much – I can appreciate the power of the story they told and the way that it affected me and a lot of other people. I mean – it’s what, four months later, and we’re still arguing and crying and not ok as a fandom? That’s one hell of a story, regardless of how you feel about any aspect of it.
Why some people ignore the character development of Flint?He is not the same of the early season 3, that man would kill the undervilles , that man wouldn’t made the deal with Eleanor and most important he would to kill silver . If the only thing he wanted was revenge and destruction would have been easier
Honestly, one of the best parts of s4 for me was seeing that character development. You’re right – if s3 Flint had walked onto the Underhill plantation, Underhill and his wife would both have been dead the moment one of them pointed a gun in Flint’s direction. S3 Flint likely would not have made a deal with Eleanor, nor would he have told her the truth about the distance needed to send a shot across the bow of Rogers’ ship, nor would he have made a lot of the decisions s4 Flint made in an attempt to save lives. S4 Flint is much closer to s1 Flint in terms of who he is as a character at that point and actually a bit closer to James McGraw in terms of the decisions he makes if you ask me.
Never forget how to be angry. Never.
See, the thing is, I had. I really, truly had. I wasn’t originally planning on doing a response to this, even though I appreciate the support greatly, but I decided to because this needs to be said.
The thing is, it’s frighteningly easy to forget that you have a right to be angry. It starts with a simple phrase, and that phrase is, “I can’t afford to feel this right now.” It starts with the understanding that expressing your anger is just going to get you hurt, and it continues when you start telling yourself that your reaction was overblown – that you had no right to react the way you did, essentially. That even though someone did something shitty to you, they had their reasons, as if that somehow makes their behavior ok, because it has to be ok, because fuck, who else have you got that even pretends to give a shit about you? It continues when “I can’t afford to feel this right now” becomes “I shouldn’t be feeling this at all.” It continues when the people around you validate that feeling instead of telling you you have a right to not be ok with what someone’s done to you – instead of acknowledging the shitty behavior and ensuring the person responsible experiences some kind of consequence from someone other than the person they’ve hurt. It continues when you start hearing, “but they’re family!” as if being related to someone negates the fact that they’re a shitty human being. It continues with being hushed, and silenced, and told to calm down, and generally refused any kind of expression of your pain with the people you’re supposed to be able to trust.
What I’m saying, Anon, is that holding onto anger can be a difficult proposition under the right circumstances and it’s super important to be there for people when they tell you that someone’s done something terrible to them or help them find someone who can be there for them if you can’t do it yourself. It’s important to let them have their rage, because otherwise they wind up, like me, forgetting that there are options other than knuckling under and taking people’s shit because they’ve been required to do so far, far too often.
Whenever someone says that Flint/Madi/Maroon Queen could not win, I remember this: “Nobody will believe it’s possible until we show them. But when that day comes, you know what they’ll say? They’ll say that it was inevitable.”
I couldn’t agree more. If there’s anything history has shown us, it’s that that fight was not, in fact, unwinnable. I get why certain characters believed it was. I get that they had valid reasons for thinking that, but I disagree with them pretty firmly, not to mention that even if the fight couldn’t be won, it still needed to be fought. There are things worth dying for.
What do you think about this? J Steinberg: I think there was an awareness that when watched in a certain way there was so much tragedy already in the ending. Of all the people who were lost and weren’t there anymore, and how close they were to something historically meaningfully that got bargained away, that to then pile that on with even more misery just felt unpleasant
I think it sounds like an acknowledgment that in fact, if looked at from literally any other perspective than “no more people died in the last episode, wheee!” the end of the show is a tragedy. Flint and Madi were betrayed by the one closest to them, and all their work was essentially thrown out the window as if it meant nothing when in fact it could have meant everything to generations of people. Flint is enslaved, Madi’s left with her authority undermined among her own people, her lover become foreign to her, standing there telling her that he’s sold her friend.
When you get right down to it, the list just goes on and on. The Walrus crew is dead, the ship itself is blown up, Silver throws away an entire life he could have lived with people who would have cared about him, loved him even, and all for a scant few years of peace in that area before the British Empire decided it wanted its islands back. All of that – for what? When they could have had so, so much more. Yes, Flint is alive. He’s also being locked away from the world, condemned to be nothing more than a monster in a children’s story, exactly the way he feared, what he stood for forgotten, his reasons disregarded, no progress made, all those people he lost dead for nothing. Vane is dead, and nothing came of his death, not the revolution he wanted to spark, not the abolition of slavery, not even safety for Eleanor if he still wanted that. Eleanor died, and Nassau burned again, and the slaves on those plantations suffered horribly, and for fucking what? For one man to say, this fight isn’t worth fighting, it doesn’t matter to me, I’m ending it. For he and Max and Madame Guthrie to decide to strangle the cat rather than dealing with the root cause of the problem to begin with, as if there were only one solution to the riddle?
Meg's Mumbles 