#black sails discourse

[mahlikes]

#there is always something super delicious to me about this scene #and the wildly opposed ways if interacting with the world that they espouse #because miranda is just sitting there like we get to live our life and it requires saying something you don’t mean so who cares #because she’s never been able to inhabit a world that cares about what she has to say #so she’s never said anything to the world and meant it #vs flint who still! still! wants the world to accept him on his terms #and in a lot of ways is still striving for the legitimacy granted by society#maybe legitimacy is the wrong word #the acknowledgment that he has a grievance and that he has been done wrong and that he is justified #that he occupies a space that needs to be reckoned with #vs Miranda’s trying to navigate a world that doesn’t see her as worth reckoning with #and there are so many answers to this over the course of the show! #I love them your honor ( @sidewaystime )

BLACK SAILS | 1.07 ○ VII

[knightofmordred]

so incredibly tiring to see people invalidate the queer-ness of black sails, particularly with the women. it makes zero sense to claim that the show is 'only really gay' in the second season when flint and thomas' relationship is revealed.

you have gay women in the first episode.

max literally is so in love with eleanor that she begs her to run away from nassau. yet this isn't classed as 'gay' for you? what do queer women have to do in order for you to validate them 💀

[calentvre]

that one person in the replies of the black sails vs ofmd poll arguing against black sails being "an actual queer show" is being deliberately obtuse and a troll but i can't sleep so. sure. i'll say why dismissing black sails like that is intellectually dishonest

defining how black sails is a "queer show" or how queerness is written into its core is i think explained best by the other things that black sails is about. queerness is but one among the show's most important themes, that all overlap and intersect each other

on the societal level: hierarchies of power and influence - hinging on wealth, status, gender, reputation, et cetera. transatlantic empires - colonization, slavery.

on the personal level: identity, image - the performances we put on for others, safety, independence, dependence on other people. the narrative of a life. how human life resists narrative payoff. becoming, then bearing the burden of what you've become.

in general: stories - the power they and the act of telling both hold. the truth and its importance; its irrelevance. reasons. consequences. inevitability.

black sails is about all these things and it connects the threads between them with precision, narrative grace and emotional payoff. it is a tragedy about disenfranchised characters that are navigating their wants and needs in the face of various expectations, crafted with historical plausibility in mind.

if it's somehow still unclear how queerness ties into the show's themes... it is insulting and frankly absurd to denigrate the queerness of the show with arguments dismissing flint's struggle just because there wasn't on-screen sex between men. flint not being straight is only the backbone of the plot! and reducing wlw relationships that span the entirety of the show's four seasons into "male gaze fodder" or whatever is an incredibly disingenuous take that not only glosses over how multifaceted and integral their characters are but also reveals the bad faith nature of these arguments. the first season featured a lot of sex and violence, sure, to lure in a mainstream (GoT era) audience, but the mere existence of a wlw relationship alone? what about anne and max building their trust and love, balancing against duty and image caters to the straight man, exactly?

yeah, black sails does not really play for representation points - instead, it has real things to say: about fighting against a rigid society that would rather get rid of you. about choosing either idealism or pragmatism in the face of oppressive forces. about escaping your identity or holding onto it and the violence and freedom concealed in each choice.

[prouvaireafterdark]

[v333nus-demilo]

a few personal highlights in the notes of That Pirate Battle Post from the last few hours:

[max-nolastname]

aang having a code against killing makes sense because as the last airbender he carries the weight of his entire peoples and culture on his wee shoulders, and that includes respecting and valuing all life. it is core to his being, and him finding a roundabout way to solve the issue of killing ozai makes sense both as an airbender and for the story. we find out later in the kyoshi series that murder literally inhibits your ability to airbend, hence kyoshi and her mother's use of fans! and dont bring your utilitarian "oh we can save more lives by killing one person" into this, because sure that can work for another show but not this one!! it is literally the core thesis of the show! have some media literacy my god

[purgaytorysupremacy]

I just started the series finale of Black Sails and if Thomas Hamilton is the prisoner they’re looking for on that farm I’m going to DIE.

[pinimi]

everyone stfu challenge

[prymith]

completely missing the flint/stede poll war because I blocked the ofmd tag is both personally on point AND now providing me with endless entertainment as I try to find the original post and instead keep running into hysterical takes.

[blackfilmmakers]

Idk I think seeing the Black Sails and OFMD people harass each other over who has the gayest slave masters or whatever is pretty funny

[johnsilvers]

when i say flints bi i don't mean it literally when i say flint is gay i don't mean it exclusively what's not clicking

[bigwizardhat]

the ofmd v. black sails discourse is so funny but mainly because of the creator of the poll claiming not to really care about either show and then pissing and shitting and vomiting blood on the floor when people didn’t like their fav

and then equating the cancellation of a gay pirate show to the murder of gay people and rise of conservative fascism

and then telling black people that they need the allyship of racist white people and they should excitedly lap up every crumb of representation they can get because “ofmd is not the reason cops kill black people on sight”

and then getting mad at everyone else for taking the poll “too seriously” and declaring stede the winner of the gay pirate poll out of spite towards a problem of their own making

[notyourdeliveryservice]

I wish Captain James Flint was real so I could go back in time and tell him that 65 countries now celebrate independence from Britain :///

[dykealloy]

“one show is a drama and the other is a comedy” if you don’t understand the humour in black sails that’s on you

[intertexts]

funniest shit about black sails is how the first season was like. packed full of sex scenes like ohhhh ok that kind of pirate show. & then it turns out all the sex was like narratively load bearing all along!

[cantsayidont]

Black Sails

I don't think I can write a proper review of BLACK SAILS because that would require rewatching all of it, and the last time I did that, I couldn't get through all of Season 1 because of the truly punishing level of sexual violence, but I have several overall comments:

The sexual violence is really a lot. It's somewhat less pronounced in the later seasons, although the later seasons also expect you to buy a sort of face turn for Charles Vane, who is chiefly responsible for the punishing degree of sexual violence in the first season.

It is exhaustingly overwritten, especially in the final season. It's like being trapped in your home with the members of an MFA writing seminar who follow you to the bathroom and the kitchen and attempt to impute complex character nuance to your choice of toothbrush and pizza toppings. Given how clumsily written recent teevee often is, the writers' determination to build a thematically complex narrative is admirable and all, but EVERY conversation in the later seasons is layers within layers of rhetorical jousting for meaning, and it's just wearying. Sometimes less is more, and I'm not convinced that a narrative in which a cigar is never just a cigar is categorically better than a story that eschews all nuance.

The brutality of the violence can get oppressive, even for the kind of show it is. There were various points where I ended up muttering, "Is this really necessary?"

It doesn't actually line up with either TREASURE ISLAND (to which it's notionally a prequel) or the real history of the historical characters. At points, it acts like it's going to, but it doesn't, and its attitude toward both the Stevenson novel and the history of the period is kind of like Quentin Tarantino's. I don't especially care about TREASURE ISLAND (it was never a favorite even as a kid), nor do I care much about real-world pirates, but the lack of congruity becomes distracting. I would be fine with the show taking a "This is what the characters in the book later say happened, but what really happened is …" approach, but it doesn't even do that. Why?

Its version of Long John Silver is the least-interesting and least-compelling character, especially if (like me) you are wholly uninterested in shipping Silver with Flint. Long John Silver is generally the hub around which adaptations of TREASURE ISLAND revolve, since he is in that story the most interesting and charismatic character: obviously treacherous, but not wholly unsympathetic; crude in speech and full of blarney, but more cunning than he lets on. The BLACK SAILS Silver is a weirdly taciturn twitchy little weasel, and of course, like most of the show's characters, he talks like he's in an MFA seminar. There's something to be said for playing a character against type, but Silver is one of the biggest incongruities between BLACK SAILS and TREASURE ISLAND, which I thought was a puzzling choice.