amongst all this tag policing and other “we own this fandom” bullshit, i’m seeing people publicly refer to anti-Silver fans as morons, stupid, and lacking critical thinking skills etc etc the list of degrading insults go on and on
if there’s anyone trying to reduce the complexity of the show, it’s definitely not us, and it would be fucking splendid if you could stop insulting people who see things different than you (or perhaps… just taking the source material as is instead of twisting it into something it’s not, but what do i know). so Silver made a difficult choice for the sake of the people he loved; guess who else did that? Peter Ashe. he went ahead and betrayed his best friend because Abigail (and presumably his wife) would’ve suffered if he didn’t. and to him, this was considered “the least awful outcome”– one that would at least keep Thomas, James, and Miranda alive. that’s how he conceptualized it in his own mind. that’s how he excused his own actions. and surprise! Silver is doing the exact same thing. and, just like Alfred Hamilton, Silver came to his decision independently, without consulting anyone, and he acted to end the war permanently, quietly, and in a manner of his choosing. for all the parallels that the show keeps referencing, it’s ironic that you lot refuse to acknowledge this one, the one that continuously shows up within the show. it makes me wonder which one of us is actually failing to see the complex nature of what we’ve been shown?
But why does common thinking seem to assume – without any real reason besides blind hope – that Flint and Madi’s war would have succeeded in overthrowing British yoke, abolishing slavery and freeing those millions of future generations from the fate worse than death? Would a crew of pirates and runaway slaves really have defeated the British Empire, the most powerful in the world with unlimited resources at hand?
Because there were other successful rebellions against the British Crown in the same area in the same century. Because the American Revolution succeeded with scarcely more resources than the pirates and slaves could have mustered. The short answer is yes, and the long answer is even if they didn’t succeed, it’s important that someone would have tried, because it would have given others the notion that a rebellion could succeed in the future. The fact that the pirates of Nassau managed to annoy the British into offering the pardons in the first place is, as Flint rightly noted, a sign that England thought there was a possibility they could win, because you don’t pardon people you can successfully put down by other means that will scare other dissenters into backing down.
I mean, also, it was framed within the text as being viable enough to be a threat. Not only is there the economic disruption that a concerted fleet of pirates could enact upon trade in the Caribbean, but very specifically the threat was that with Maroon help, Flint could do what he was speculating and get 1 in 4 newly freed slaves to join their rebellion. The threat of that alone was enough to get the Spanish in Havana to join in; that’s the stick Rogers used to motivate them. None of the imperial powers in the Caribbean could withstand a slave rebellion, especially not one backed by a naval fleet disrupting trade.
And to back up what @flintsredhair says, the other part of the threat they posed was that they stood ready to expose the lie that the British empire was all powerful. Flint knows they’re not, because he was there when they lost Nassau the first time. Madi knows they’re not, because her island even exists in the first place and she’s free. The biggest enemy Flint and Madi faced (and the enemy that eventually defeated them) was fear of Britain’s inevitability. The assumption was that of course Britain would win eventually, so what was the point of fighting now. Institutional inertia is absolutely an enemy and every single time people in the show came close to showing that, they got shot down.
Also on a metanarrative level: there’s no tragedy to that ending if the war is a futile delusion. The stakes at the end have to mirror each other or there’s no narrative weight to what happens. On Flint and Madi’s side, you have darkness and loss now for the hope of freedom later. On Silver’s (and Max and Jack and Julius) side, you have the guarantee of freedom now and the equal guarantee of darkness and loss later. It’s ambiguous, sure, on if Flint and Madi would succeed. But I don’t think it’s ambiguous within the text they they could have succeeded.
See, the thing is, I had. It’s frighteningly easy. 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.
^and I want people to remember this even if their family isn’t shitty. I want people to keep this in mind, because kind, decent people don’t always know the damage they do just telling you it’s not worth being angry about.
‘It’s got nothing to do with you, so why are you angry about it?’ You know what good question I don’t fucking know I’m gonna go and think about it shall I? Good idea.
‘It’s a stupid thing to be angry about’—yeah, maybe for you it would be. For me, this is an important part of my life, and I know you don’t understand that.
‘Stop shouting!’ But I wasn’t. ‘I won’t talk to you when you’re like this’ because anything I have to say is inherently wrong and without value if I am angry? Really?
If only ‘I won’t talk to you when you’re like this’ wasn’t backed up with years of ‘that’s stupid’ and ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about that’ and ‘it’s none of your business’ and ‘it doesn’t affect you so stop worrying about it’—if only—
Maybe then I might have read it as ‘take a moment and then come back when you’re not fuming’.
But wait, no, never mind. Even when I come back with a reasoned argument, ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about that, your priorities are wrong.’
No one ever gets to tell you you don’t have the right to feel the way you do. It’s not a privilege. You already do.
parents that try to guilt trip their kids for feeding them and providing a roof over their heads are disgusting like that is ur responsibility as their parent, as someone that chose to raise them, that’s part of the damn job description and in no way do ur kids owe u for that, not even a single bit
I was going to write a massive Anne Bonny essay, but I realised it was turning into a dissertation. Instead, let me just say how much I appreciate this simple representation in Anne Bonny’s character growth.
S1 Episode 1:
Stealth murder kitten, keeping to the shadows, hat pulled low, face almost always half-concealed. Speaks low and gruff as if to disguise her gender. Lurks a lot. Is quiet and quietly menacing. This generally is her default look for a lot of the show.
Through the course of four seasons, she faces her own crew threatening to use her as a sex doll if she doesn’t shut up and get with the programme, forges an alliance with another woman to save the third woman, ends up dealing with a belated sexual awakening thanks to said third woman, is screwed over by her boyfriend, has a journey of self-discovery since she’d never been without said boyfriend, reunites with said boyfriend, is screwed over by her girlfriend, rescues her boyfriend from Evil English Soldiers and leads the vanguard in taking an English ship. Oh and in the final season takes down three English soldiers with a couple of pieces of broken glass where a dozen men had failed.
Which brings us to S4 Episode 10:
Anne, Queen of the Ship. She’s no longer lurking in the background. The hat that once covered her face is pushed back. No more hiding who or what she is. And best of all, when Jack goes off in a huff about his flag, Anne is the one giving the orders and they are being obeyed.
She has gone from being a disrespected shadow who was tolerated by much of the crew because she was good with a blade to a confident woman who is second only to Jack on this ship and everyone knows it.
(Special mention to this shot, though. My Queen on her first command after she has just taken an English ship)
My family is from Nigeria, and my full name is
Uzoamaka, which means “The road is good.” Quick lesson: My tribe is
Igbo, and you name your kid something that tells your history and
hopefully predicts your future. So anyway, in grade school, because my
last name started with an A, I was the first in roll call, and nobody
ever knew how to pronounce it. So I went home and asked my mother if I
could be called Zoe. I remember she was cooking, and in her Nigerian
accent she said, “Why?” I said, “Nobody can pronounce it.” Without
missing a beat, she said, “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and
Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka.”
I’ve worked with many exchange programs on campuses, and they still “encourage” Chinese students to choose English names for their stay in the US. I’ve adopted a rule for myself, I won’t address them with their English name until they’ve told me to stop trying their real name on at least three different occasions. My family is largely immigrant, and while we’ve never had this problem, I don’t think anyone should have to change who they are when them find a new home, even a temporary one. So far, only two exchange student actually wanted to keep their English name, and one of them, Alice, had had Alice for a nickname since she was little.
Don’t know if it’s okay to add this here, but I used to work with a Chinese woman who had changed her name to Angelina for the sake of ease. When she first told me that was what she’d had to do, I asked her for her real name and if she minded me calling her that. She looked so frikkin happy, and it only took about two minutes for me to say it right. It’s not that people can’t pronounce these names, it’s that they won’t. It’s lazy and it’s rude.
It’s also RACIST.
Say ‘racist’.
They pronounce Tchaikovsky and Schwarzenegger just fine.
Meg's Mumbles 