#..i think it mentions flint enough to justify tagging him .

[strawglicks]

sometimes i just gotta write/draw them arguing it keeps me going

[fredoesque]

Rules: Choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions, then tag 10 people you want to know better

i was tagged by @unrealwasteland, thank you :)

I choose:

the terror

black sails

disco elysium

the first character you loved:

hickey <3 as much as gay cannibal liar is like. #1 most fredoesque favorite character conceivable, i actually got attached during his very first appearance before any of that was even revealed

silver!! who has the character introduction of all time if you ask me

kim ofc

the character you relate to most:

billy orren bc if i was on those ships i think i'd also die instantly before anything really bad even happened

transgender icon with 5 seconds of screen time mark read. as i am also transgender

trant heidelstam. i love yapping about my niche historical interests

the character you'd slap

kind of a cop-out answer perhaps but now that i've thought of it there's nobody else i'd rather slap: john barrow sr

woodes rogers i hate youuuuu

in a fantasy scenario where i could do this and survive. measurehead

three favorite characters in order of preference

hickey, jopson, dundy

silver, max, rackham

jean, klaasje, kim (also honorable mention the paledriver)

a character you liked at first but don't like anymore

hmm i don't really know if there is anyone. i mean i guess i remember being really charmed by mcdonald when i first watched the terror, and he's way less front-of-mind now but like. i still like him ultimately

thomas hamilton. i wouldn't say i really dislike him now but when he first shows up and flint is revealed to be gay it's this really incredible moment. only past that it turns out he doesn't interest me as much. type of guy who's more interesting as an off-screen haunting yknow?

lena. like many people i had the experience of thinking i was talking to a nice old lady only for her to suddenly drop the most unhinged racist rhetoric on me

a character you did not like at first but now do

ok funnily enough i reallyyy didn't like goodsir when i first watched the show. his hypocrisy and self-righteousness got on my nerves. luckily now i see his hypocrisy and self-righteousness are some of his best traits <3

eleanor in a way. she is such a piece of shit and again can really get on your nerves but also. sooo compellingly written in all her complexities and ugliness and sooo ultimately tragic. but i'm not sure if i ever truly disliked her and i'm not entirely sure i like her now. you get it

jean. i thought he was being a dick at first but i've realized since he was actually entirely justified in his being a dick. also cuno actually he grows on you like mold

three OTPs

hickeytozer, jopkey, rossier

silverflint, maxanor and. ok wild card pick but silver/muldoon. muldoon's death scene haunts me like actually

jeanharry, harrykim, rubyklaasje

i already tagged a bunch of people earlier today and i don't want to spam anyone, so i'm not tagging anybody specific in this. however anyone who sees this and wants to do it, please consider yourself tagged :)

[thevagueambition]

I was tagged by @antirococoreaction to talk about five male characters I love

(God, only five? However will I choose between my boys >_< ?!)

This is most certainly not going to be a literary as your offerings, lmao. When it comes to literary fiction I mostly like Kafka and Kafka, by the nature of his writing, writes thoroughly unlikable characters.

This got way too long bc I’m incapable of not gushing about my faves when given the chance lol 

Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender

It is my enduring opinion that if you want to see a redemption arc done right, look at Zuko’s arc in The Last Airbender. He’s a scared, abused kid who managed to build up personal morals in a system that discouraged them, and was harshly punished for daring to voice them. He’s someone who always wanted to be good, but struggles with defining what good is, given that his culture and upbringing has taught him one thing, but his heart (and his uncle) tells him another, and his new experiences reinforces that. After he figures out what “good” looks like, he’s always held accountable for his past actions. He makes amends, and he accepts it, for the most part, when people aren’t ready to receive them. His anger issues, as well as how he sees himself as someone who had to be hardworking because he isn’t talented (however far from the truth that may or may not be in reality) are also aspects of him that appeal to me and indeed that I relate to. 

Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars

My love for Anakin is not dissimilar to my love for Zuko, though the quality of the writing in question certainly is. I love an edgy boy, is what I’m getting at, I guess :’D More seriously, Anakin’s story is ultimately one about control, which is a subject that interests me quite a bit. Anakin is never, at any point, really in control of his own life. He’s never really truly free. He’s born a slave, he joins the Jedi Order and he becomes Palpatine’s apprentice. He always exists within rigid systems of control, until his very lasts moments with Luke before he dies. With how Palpatine essentially groomed him, thinking of Anakin as equally a victim of Palpatine and a perpetuator of his (metaphorically speaking) abuse is also interesting to me. Certainly his clearly distorted thinking (eg convincing himself he can’t trust Obi-Wan, for instance) is also hugely important to his appeal to me. Also? He’s SO EXTRA I can’t with him lol 

(That’s your LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM you turned off, Anakin!!! I know you’re depressed and dissociated and also The Drama but damn!!!!!!)

Nicodemus Ravens from The Shamer Chronicles (Skammerens børn)

The Shamer Chronicles is a series of Danish fantasy books for kids, and probably the most popular books of that type (particularly the first book, The Shamer’s Daughter). Nico is a major character, though never a POV one. 

Nico was, essentially, abused by his father for not living up to the male gender role. He didn’t want to learn to use a sword, he didn’t want to kill, and his father hated him for it. As a result, he’s a teenage alcoholic and profoundly at war with himself. He constantly have other people telling him narratives about who he is/should be: first, he’s the younger son who should bring his father glory, then he’s the heir unfit for the throne, then he’s, depending on the political position of the character in question, either a monstrous murderer who must be killed by the glorious leader or the rightful heir to throne, a hero ready to bring war to his enemy and liberate his people, then rule them in benevolence.

Nico doesn’t want to be any of those things. He knows who he is, is stubborn about it, but also can’t shake the belief that his relative pacifism is really just cowardice. I’m just going to quote one of my favourite scenes here (forgive the translation, it’s my own, I don’t have the official one at hand):

“[...] They want a hero, I think.”

“Is that so bad? It’s better than being a monster, at any rate.”

“You think? Have you noticed how often heroes die in battle? Of course everyone mourns them afterwards and write beautiful ballads about them, but the heroes remain dead. Stone-dead. And I’m in no hurry to get on my white steed and start slaughtering people until someone better or luckier than I sticks a sword in me. No, thank you.”

He looked both obstinate and shameful, as if he thought he really should get on his white steed and all of that. I could understand why he didn’t want to die, and yet… Well, I think I’d always expected him to return to the Lowlands to fight Drakan at some point.

“What do you want, then?” [...]

“I just want to be me,” he whispered. “Is that so terrible? I just want to be Nico and not a lot of other people’s hero or monster.”

Anyway there are Two Crimes when it comes to Nico: the fact he isn’t gay in canon and how so many adaptations turns him into the Generic Fantasy Hero he’s a very conscious subversion of in the books (the other principle male character is essentially someone who’s hurt by toxic masculinity as someone who buys into it, while Nico ofc is hurt by it because he doesn’t/can’t, so the series certainly had an opinion about it). 

Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter

Dumbledore is, to me, someone who chose what was good for the world over his own happiness. He chose to be the one to dirty his hands, the one two make the terrible decisions, do the terrible things, that were necessary in the battle against facism. There is something very brave and admirable about that to me. It’s not that he never did anything wrong, he certainly did, but again, I think he was very aware of the terrible things he was doing, and part of the reason he keeps everything so close to his chest is because he doesn’t want anyone else to have to make those decisions, to have to feel that blood stain their hands. Dumbledore loves the people in his care profoundly, he loves Harry profoundly. And it kills him to have, as Snape puts it, “brought him up like a pig for slaughter”. 

Whether something is morally justified and whether it’s necessary to prevent evil are two different questions, and I don’t think Dumbledore feels particularly justified, but I do think he does what he perceives to be necessary to prevent facism. And hates himself for the decisions he takes along the way. And all of that comes back to, to some extent, his survivor’s guilt over the death of Arianna and the profound wake up call that was Grindelwald 1) turning on his family 2) being a very violent fascist, rather than just a theoretical one like teenage!Dumbledore was. In his mind, Dumbledore is already condemned for what happened when he was 18, so it’s better that it be he who takes the terrible things upon himself than an “innocent.” It’s better that he try to atone. Dumbledore is working towards a redemption he never (to his mind) arrives at. 

In regards to his sexuality, Dumbledore was certainly written with the trope of a “tragic old closeted gay” in mind, but of course JKR never made anything much canon aside from his “flamboyant” sense of style (that the movies have ROBBED us of >:( ) and hobbies, so to a certain extent, I get to ignore that homophobic intent. In the books themselves, the only thing you can really read between the lines is that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald, not whether it was 1) reciprocated 2) acted upon, so with only the canon, we also get to mitigate some of the Implications of “Dumbledore dated Wizard Hitler for a while”.... 

I mean I do Love Mess(tm) so Dumbledore having that terrible wake up call is certainly also part of the appeal for me. Personally I enjoy the interpretation that Grindelwald deliberately manipulated Dumbledore’s feelings. 

Captain Flint/James McGraw from Black Sails

BE GAY DO CRIME BE GAY DO CRIME BE GAY DO CRIME BE-- *coughs*

As you might guess from my description of Dumbledore, a lot of the reasons I love Flint are similar to why I love Dumbledore (and Solas, but we won’t go in to Solas rn lol). Flint is also someone who chooses to do the terrible, necessary things, who chooses the fight over his personal moral cleanliness. In a more obvious and extreme way than Dumbledore, certainly, but the principle is essentially the same. Of course, Flint’s fight is personal in a completely different way from how Dumbledore’s is. Flint’s fight is simoultaneously his revenge, a fight against the corrupt system that ruined his life and a fight for something better. Dumbledore is defensive, Flint is offensive. 

The self-integrity he has is truly amazing. He’s cast aside by everyone but Miranda, and yet he never starts thinking he has anything to apologise for. To ask for a pardon would be to ask for forgiveness, and he doesn’t think he needs to be forgiven. Not for loving Thomas, not for anything he did while he was still English. He perceives the reality of the situation, he sees what is right and what is wrong, and he knows that he is the wronged party. He stares at the behemoth of the entire social structure of his world and says: No. You move. I am not in the wrong. England should apologise to me.

Flint is my angry gay dad and I love him. 

I tag (as always, completely optional ^^ ): @teddy-stonehill​ @thebearmuse​ @andvaka​ @solitarelee​ @gallifreyanathearts​ @sinni-ok-sessi​ @melle93​ @papanden​ @seimsisk​

I feel a bit dishonest leaving Grantaire off of this list, lmao, but I talk about him enough as it is. 

Other honorables mentions go to: Enjolras (Les Mis), Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who/Torchwood), Solas (Dragon Age), Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice), Kim Kitsuragi (Disco Elysium), Harry Potter, Remus Lupin (Harry Potter) and my soap boys Robert Sugden (Emmerdale), Richard “Ringo” Beckmann (Unter Uns) and Ben Mitchell (Eastenders). 

[woozapooza]

Black Sails 1x01

Here we go!!! A new show!!! What a good pilot episode. So much happened, I can’t believe it’s only been one episode.

I was apprehensive about starting Black Sails because I’d been anticipating it for months and had built it up in my head. It’s the same apprehension I had starting Wynonna Earp. But once again, I have correctly judged from a tiny bit of information that a show is an excellent match for me. I’m not nearly as good as I’d like to be at following and remembering the events of shows, so after I finished the episode, I recounted as much of the plot as I could remember to myself. While doing that, I realized one thing that made it such a good way to start a show: it’s brimming with the theme of gambling, of making dangerous choices that may pay off hugely down the line or may end in disaster. Combine that with the numerous interesting characters, not to mention the fact that it’s a period drama about pirates I mean come on what’s better than that, and you’ve got the perfect recipe to make me keep watching. I hope everything in the following lil recap/review is factually correct but eh who knows.

Let’s start with Flint. The trope of angsty morally dubious loner captain dude, while cool in theory, does not always go over well for me (see Jack Harkness and Mal Reynolds, neither of whom is as questionable as Flint). But I think in Flint this trope (which probably has a name, or at least is an amalgam of a few tropes that have names) may finally work for me, and I’m not just saying that out of ginger solidarity, nor just because aesthetically Flint is #goals. Flint has been “gambling” for months before the show even starts: he’s been going after ships that don’t seem like good targets because he thinks they’ll lead him to the jackpot, the Urca de Lima. The result of him keeping his plan secret from the crew is low morale and the threat of mutiny. Flint has to walk the line between keeping the crew satisfied and pursuing a goal that will more than make up for the toll its pursuit takes. He fails to walk this line, but Singleton’s mutiny gives Flint the opportunity to change tactics while still very much gambling: by accusing Singleton of stealing the Urca’s schedule, he gets to fight and kill Singleton (he also had to bet on Singleton choosing a duel over a trial, but I’m assuming he knew Singleton well enough that it wasn’t a risky bet) and pretend to recover the schedule from Singleton’s corpse. Until he produced the blank sheet of paper, I really couldn’t guess whether he actually suspected Singleton or he was just looking for an excuse to put down the mutiny. I didn’t expect the trick with the blank paper. Flint may be the main character but you can’t always see into his head, so I expect he’ll be a lot of fun to watch. I enjoy his cleverness, his ruthlessness, and his moments of vulnerability. I’m still unsure whether he meant it at all when he apologized to the crew for keeping secrets from them. I’d like to think it wasn’t a complete lie, even though it was also a ploy to get them to like him again, but it’s not like he’s stopped lying to them. He has his crew’s loyalty back—fortunately he was right to gamble that Billy would play along and pretend Singleton really did have the schedule—but it will only last so long before they realize he doesn’t have it. He also has to hide the fact that Guthrie, who was key to getting the ship, is a) under arrest and b) so far, unwilling to help. Will Flint get the schedule for realsies before the crew figures out that he lied to them again?

Lying now and hoping he’ll have the means to make up for it later is not the worst thing Flint does in this episode. It’s the killing of Singleton that really shows that he’s not a straightforward hero. I wouldn’t say mutiny justifies murder, but then again I’m not a pirate. I also wouldn’t say theft merits the death penalty, but that’s how pirates do. What I’m getting at is, Flint may do questionable things (like, in addition to the very fact of piracy), but he’s not the only one. I guess pirates have their own morality and just because Flint does things I wouldn’t do doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some kind of code. He even acknowledges, speaking to Billy, that pirates have a way of life that makes sense to them but not to mainstream people (I know I’m making pirates sound like hipsters but it was the first phrasing that came to mind): “men who keep what is theirs and fear no one.” 

Speaking of Billy the boatswain, I really like him as well, and not just because he’s played by Tom Hopper. His type of gambling has to do with how much of his faith and loyalty he’s going to put into Flint. He pretends that Flint was correct to accuse Singleton of theft, but he’s by no means a sycophant. When Flint is brutally interrogating Richard Guthrie and tells Billy to point the gun at Guthrie, Billy has no problem pointing it at Flint instead. So if Billy is playing along with Flint’s scheme, he must have weighed the options and decided this was best. Billy, like Flint, thinks, speaks, and acts for himself. Also, he looks like Tom Hopper.

Silver is a bit of a weird character because he’s to some extent our point-of-view character, but he’s also absent for large parts of the episode. Regarding his role as the audience stand-in, it was cool to show him discovering all the information about the Urca de Lima at the same time that Flint’s voiceover was explaining the same information. Regarding Silver’s personality, I really enjoy his unapologetic selfishness and self-preservation. Everyone on the show has their ways of looking out for themselves, and for Silver, that happens to mean hiding below deck, killing the cook (in self-defense, to be fair), stealing the Urca’s schedule because he knows it’s valuable even though he doesn’t know why, and pretending he’s a cook so he gets to join the crew of the Walrus (I’m looking forward to find out whether he actually can cook). But when Flint kills Singleton, do I dare see in Silver’s face a hint of remorse that his actions might have gotten someone killed, or do I need to be more cynical? Anyway, his main gamble is to hold on to the schedule rather than hand it over to Flint. He also has to make the gamble to trust Max.

Max, who is pretty mysterious so far but very alluring, likewise has to gamble to trust Silver. I like their dynamic—good teamwork from two blatantly self-interested people. Her acquisition of the schedule parallels how Silver got it: he could tell the cook really wanted to hold onto it, she could tell he really wanted to hold onto it. Both of them are clearly good at identifying where profit lies and getting there. Silver says that when he sees an opportunity for gain, he can’t help but take it; when given the chance to back out of a partnership with him, Max isn’t tempted, which suggests that she is much the same. As for another of Max’s relationships, as I have said, one of the reasons I wanted to watch this show was that I knew it had quality gay/bi content and WOW it turns out they hit you with it right in the first episode! I ship her and Eleanor by default (and because of the line “Max is your harbor,” I’ve decided my ship tag will be “all I want is to be your harbor”) but their interaction was mostly sex, so I hope we get to see more depth to their relationship soon. However, one of the episode’s few tender moments was Max’s concern when she saw the bruise Vane left on Eleanor’s face, so that bodes well for her and for the two of them.

I think Eleanor might be my favorite character so far, largely because Hannah New is very attractive when she’s swearing. And in general. She gambles by funding Gates’ efforts at bribery (making their interaction also a gamble for Gates) and oops she almost won that gamble but not quite. She also has to choose between loyalty to Vane and loyalty to Flint. She chooses Flint. We’ll see how that turns out. She is undoubtedly and unapologetically self-interested, but without crossing the line into immorality. (I mean immorality relative to the show’s baseline morality.) Same goes for most of these characters, now that I think about it, including Max. In addition to their similarities, these ladies balance each other: Eleanor is gruffer but more emotional, while Max is more subtle and more sanguine. Ship ship ship.

While watching The 100 I often wondered if Roan was just a boring character or if there was an innate boringness to Zach McGowan. Now I can declare that Roan is just a boring character. Vane is not boring. He’s pretty frightening, really. Maybe ZM should just only ever play villains? I don’t know. Anyway, despite being set up as the antagonist, I’m not yet convinced that Vane is really much worse than Flint. We shall see. He’s got a plan of his own, though it doesn’t really fit the gambling theme: he tried to engineer the victory of Singleton’s mutiny so that, once the crew of the Walrus realized they no longer had a competent captain, they’d defect to Vane’s crew. That didn’t pan out since Flint took down Singleton and made up with his crew, but Vane didn’t really lose anything, at least not as far as we’ve seen. For that reason, he’s probably the character who came out of the pilot looking the least vulnerable.

Gates, like Flint, feels like a character type I have seen before: the practical, long-suffering but loyal second-in-command to the headstrong, risk-taking team leader. The only other example I can think of is Bennet Drake from Ripper Street, but I think I’ve seen it elsewhere as well. Gates is the one who puts into words the theme I’ve been talking about: he tells Eleanor that if she loans him money to ensure Flint retains the captaincy, it will be an “investment in the future.” I’m looking forward to seeing whose investments pay off and whose future wins out.

There’s a lot of conflict already, but there’s a lot of overlap of characters’ traits, I guess because they all know this piratey world quite well and what kind of person you have to be to survive and to thrive. Basically, the first episode sets up a rough world where everyone is looking out for themselves and making difficult choices that they think are for their own good but that might have explosive consequences down the line. We get a glimpse of what these characters want and what they’re willing to do to get it. Also there are pirates. What’s not to love?

WHO DOES RACKHAM REMIND ME OF? I looked up Toby Schmitz’s filmography and I don’t think I’ve see him in anything else but I swear he reminds me of someone!

Best dialogue of the episode:

Gates, to Billy: You’re a highly regarded member of this crew. The captain regards your input more than you know.

Gates, to Flint: Billy’s going with you.

Flint: Who’s Billy?