#Toby Barlow

[prairiegh0st]

Crimson Enclosure

[thegoblinemperor]

Sharp Teeth By Toby Barlow

One of my favorite things about this book and what I think is perhaps the most interesting is the narrative choice to discard the "wolf" part of "werewolf" in favor in dogs. They are, of course, not quite dogs, something a little more, which gives Barlow his in to talk mythos, Coyote and the prime mover, to tie in Mexican and Native American legends. But choosing dogs brings the story closer to home, brings in themes of trust and domestication, the way we bring dogs into our homes and let them lay before our fires, give them food and let them play with our children, all the while (willfully?) neglecting the wild in them. It draws a parallel, I think, between this hidden, unseen, ignored threat that is the dogs and also is the people, the potential for violence inside us all that we, as both a society and as individuals, like to pretend doesn't exist. Barlow writes, "The heart is quite comfortable with secrets", and then later "but then she settles down, / remembering that, in fact, she / is what the world's afraid of".

I also really appreciated the setting (the southwestern US/northern Mexico), which pulled the book firmly away from the fairytale wolves of the north and Europe and directly into the territory of the coyote. Away from the loyalty, the elegance, the clear danger, and into the vicious, the clever, the loner, the dusty trail and "ancient trickster bones". It feels leaner, tougher, more desperate, and it shapes the tone of the book into that southwestern gothic americana, the gas stations and the cacti and the sun-bleached desert bones, where your gangs are less the girded steel of city drive-bys and more the drug runners, the border cross, the heads left as equal warning and threat.

he knows that it's impossible to tell a wolf from a man if he keeps his chin up and his teeth clean

Original Goodreads review here. 6 June 2017

Rating: 5/5

[shishiiba]

“I love you.” Words, those simple clumsy clay blocks that one hopes will support such enormous walls. "I do, I love you." Words, the small weak things that come tumbling out of men.

“Sharp Teeth” by Toby Barlow

[stuckwiththephobia]

one time I looked up the ratings of each episode of black sails. I expected to see s2e5 near the top, but I wasn’t exactly surprised when it was actually at the bottom (free us from the clutches of homophobia man). I read some of the comments and they were saying that the reveal felt out of nowhere. Okay, so actually you just have no media literacy skills. For me, the revelation made so much sense that I experienced something akin to ascension. I felt I had unlocked all of the knowledge there was to unlock. My whole engagement with the show changed. That thing that had been bubbling under the whole time, in every interaction between Miranda and flint, in every mention of Thomas, in every display of rage from flint, in each one of his desperate schemes.

I just find it so hilarious that people thought it was out of nowhere? Louise Barnes and Toby Stephens were actually the only two cast members aware of the backstory from the beginning of the show, and you can see it so much in the way they act their characters. So much unspoken, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Season 1 ep 7 — that whole altercation they have where he refuses to apologise to England, the way she says ‘if he were here he’d agree with me’, the tension of it all. The note Thomas wrote in the front of their copy of meditations? It’s so obviously not out of the blue, it’s set up so brilliantly so as to evade perception but also to lodge itself in your brain before you even know what *it* is.

Tom Hopper (Billy) said it was the best episode of television he’s ever seen. Literally years later, in a promotional interview for the umbrella academy. I agree wholeheartedly.

saying that it was out of nowhere is just wrong. It’s either a) just a guise for your homophobia or b) a betrayal of your evidently terrible media literacy and critical analysis skills.

When I saw the episode so many things from season 1 finally clicked in to place inside my head. The enigma of Flint, for the first time, began to slightly unravel.

[cuthalions]

I have known you like no other, so I love you like no other. LOUISE BARNES as MIRANDA BARLOW & TOBY STEPHENS as CAPTAIN FLINT BLACK SAILS (2014 - 2017)

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

[tobys-walrus-crew]

Guys! We're doing a thing! Come join us in the thing!!!

PS. Reblog to spread the word! Tag to reach Black Sails fans!

[liviladoodles]

I’ve been working on this on and off for weeks and I’ve struggled to get it to a place I liked. I greyscaled it after the colors weren’t working… tonight I altered the shape and lo big black coat emerged. Ok, I can let it go!

[tiofrean]

So I made those some time ago because I was possessed by the idea of my darlings as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Sooo...

Flint - War "[...] a red horse went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from Earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him." The fiery red of destruction and blood spilled during war; Flint punishing England for its sins.

Silver - Conquest "[...] a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer." Seen as both Christ and Antichrist in interpretations, symbolizes war for the higher cause, just as the King of Pirates.

Madi - Law-giver "[...] a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand." The Law-giver interpretation imho fits better than Famine, since the Apocalypse is about judgment, and there is no judgment in famine, just death, a plague. Law-giving on the other hand...

Miranda - Death "[...] a pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him." Death ruled by the means of the other three Horsemen - my mind went to Miranda, the one considered to be the witch who commanded Flint, who put into motion various plot points.

[jacks-shades]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dressing Room 3.3 (@dressingroom3.3)

This being my first contribution to Tumblr

Thomas Hamilton's salon, London, circa 1705, colorized.

(I'm terrible at technology and this is the only way I could share this. Anyway, these guys are amazing so at least you get to see their profile :))

[sirtadcooper]

Before they took him away, he made me promise him... that no matter what happened next, that you and I... would take care of each other.

[asthevermincrawls]

today I checked out 3 library books and the very nice librarian helped me get a library card and put a book on hold. after that I bought a watering can for $3 for the plants in my room. nothing particularly remarkable about today but I want to remember it

[giddlygoat]

@tobywtfman

guy who plays albums on mute, it was never really about sound for him as much as feeling a sense of progression through a series of named durations

[shishiiba]

he knows that it's impossible to tell a wolf from a man if he keeps his chin up and his teeth clean. fact

“Sharp Teeth” by Toby Barlow

[heycarrots]

Importing my Twitter musings for maximum emotional damage. I’m . . . sorry? 😬

@jaynovz actually inspired this because we were talking about memories and trauma and how they relate to Silver in our chat for her episode of Reading Between the Lines Podcast. She mentions memories in a vault, which got me thinking about how James is doing the exact same thing. Oh! Which made me realize something else! Holy shit . . . that’s WHY he prods Silver for his past! That’s why he tells him how important all parts of him are, his present, his past, his trauma, it’s all important to embrace. Why?? It’s a lesson he learned from Miranda. One of the last.

Okay, I’ll stop screaming and just continue with my Twitter thread . . .

Once again thinking about how those flashbacks dance around James’ and Thomas’ love story up until episode 2X05. You can certainly hold to the belief that the only reason was to drop that twist mid-season, but let’s think about how we engage with memories.

Some memories are so overwhelming that we avoid them. We don’t have time for them. We tuck them away in a drawer in the darkest corner of our mind where we are convinced we will be safe from them. That’s all well and good if those memories aren’t shared with anyone else.

The flashbacks, we realize very early on, aren’t simply exposition. They exist in Flint’s present reality; memories triggered by Flint’s quest seemingly nearing its end . . . Thomas’s dream finally within his grasp. Equally important, they are triggered by Silver.

It’s very important to remember that we don’t get a single flashback until they are triggered by Silver working with Flint. He begins to remember Thomas because Silver reminds him, not of Thomas, but of himself. He’s now understanding how much of Thomas he’s embodied himself.

In season one, Miranda chastises James for never addressing his loss. For tucking Meditations on a shelf and hiding it away from himself. He’s angry not just because she shared that book with Richard Guthrie, but because she’s reminded him of its very existence.

The flashbacks are all from Flint’s perspective, as he’s focused on his goal. He’s remembering their vision for Nassau, pushing on that bruise to continue spurring him onward, no matter the cost, no matter the casualties. He never brings up Thomas by name. Not once.

It’s Miranda who brings him up by name. Miranda who is desperately trying to get him to remember the love. Remember the true reason he’s doing what he’s doing. She knows he can’t. It’s too much. It’s too painful. And so every single flashback is from Flint’s perspective . . .

Until episode 2X05. When we see that dinner scene with Alfred Hamilton again, when we see that first kiss, it’s Miranda who is thinking of it. That’s HER memory of it because James still can’t look at it. It’s like staring into the sun.

The writers weren’t skirting around the reveal, it was simply being told to us by a character too traumatized to give us the whole story. We needed Miranda’s perspective. She hands him the book and it’s the inscription that finally breaks him. Finally gets him to open that drawer.

But the memories tucked inside that drawer are not Miranda’s. He doesn’t go back to the dinner scene, to that kiss. What we see is what Miranda didn’t see. We see James’s memories of the book.

He couldn’t look at that book because it wasn’t the memory of a tender first kiss at dinner, it was the unbearable intimacy of sharing that book, the private intimacies and love that’s had time to breathe for a bit. Miranda calls it shame because she doesn’t have those memories.

So while it’s true that Black Sails was planned to build up to this reveal from its infancy, it’s equally true that James’s story is told in one of the most organic and ultimately honest narrative arcs I’ve ever seen.

So much of the beauty of this show is derived from the absolute mastery of the writers creating at the very peak of their craft and we should all remember that, during a time when those same creators, who have given us so much, are fighting to be compensated fairly.

Black Sails is the gift that keeps on giving, and onion one might never reach the center of. Considering all of this, I’m beyond excited to see what we are served up with the Percy Jackson series. If it’s anywhere close to the quality of Black Sails, we’re in for a real treat.

[tobys-walrus-crew]

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Anyone up for a Valentines Day game? Idea by @ithika

Share a Black Sails gif with your “Roses are red…” verse. 🌹🏴‍☠️

Example: Roses are red Deep is the cut Stitch me up, darling My love language’s blood!