#eleanor barlow

[reyturnofbensolo]

😍

[brotherconstant]

BLACK SAILS XI. ● XXXVII.

[a-story-is-true]

a story is true, a story is untrue

[on youtube with subtitles]

[mega-ringsandthings-world]

The thing is. The thing is about black sails is. What did they get in the end for all their pain and suffering and blood? Well, nothing. Absolutely nothing. In the end it all came down to nothing and it meant nothing and they were remembered in history as monsters and died as monsters. But yet it meant everything. They failed, every single one of them, but the fact that they failed meant they tried and that meant everything. They failed in the end, so what was the point of it all? Wouldn't it be better off if none of them had tried, if none of them had bled and struggled and fought or even met? But THAT is the point! The point was in the living, not in the dying, not in the failing! It was in the trying! The way they tried because of each other and for each other! The way they tried to beat against something that could not and would not ever move in their lifetimes! Flint tried for Thomas and Miranda tried for Flint and Miranda tried for Thomas and Silver tried for Flint and Mr. Gates tried for Flint and Max tried for Eleanor and Eleanor tried for Max and Charles Vane tried for Elaenor and Mr. Scott tried for Eleanor and Mr. Scott tried for Madi and Silver tried for his men and Billy tried tried tried and the Maroon Queen tried and Madi tried for freedom and Jack tried and Anne tried And Jack tried for Anne and Anne tried for Jack and Anne tried for Max and Max tried for Anne, and Eleanor's grandmother tried for her and Eleanor tried for Woodes Rogers and Woodes Rogers tried for her, and Woodes Rogers tried and Edward Teach tried for Charles Vane and Jack tried for Charles Vane and on Skull island, Silver may or may not have tried one last time and they all tried and it meant nothing and yet everything. Everything. Because the point was not the losing, but that they fought at all to win.

[helbrides]

the greater nassau polycule - black sails s1-4

[faewaren]

Flint is obviously queer, but I tend to view him as bisexual -- when he first becomes entangled with Miranda, there is absolutely no reason for him to do it other than wanting to. It's an objectively bad idea. She's a married woman and he's working for her husband, and despite what Miranda had implied, he hasn't actually confirmed yet that Thomas would be okay with it. He kisses her because she's beautiful and incredibly charismatic and he wants to do it.

Thomas, I feel a little more inclined to view as gay, with his sexuality maybe a factor in his and Miranda's arrangement (wherein she can fuck other people), but he still clearly respects her and loves her dearly. She's someone who understood and supported him before essentially anyone else, and there's a huge amount of fondness in their relationship.

Thomas and his goals guide all of what Flint does later, but Miranda isn't a lesser part of the equation or a third wheel. For years before they met Flint, Miranda was Thomas's Person, and for all the years after Thomas, she's Flint's. They both truly love her. She is deeply vital to both those men and to their relationship with each other. Even if Thomas/Miranda wasn't romantic, it's clearly strong and loving, and they're both deeply important to Flint.

So I'm kind of confounded to see that Thomas/Miranda/Flint has less than half of the works on ao3 that Thomas/Flint does. Like -- why is that? It can't all be from when the fics are set. They can share him, guys.

[pirate-ghost]

- The Freezer Door by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore.

[221bnassau]

Black Sails characters as can you by me pads texts because I was bored and that's never a good thing.

[rackhamish]

Black Sails - Hugging

[billysboner]

i’m sorry as a woman im imagining what it was like for miranda to be completely shunted to the side by flint the moment they arrived in nassau, to go from being her husband and friend’s equal partner in their pursuits to some “fancy bit of puritan tail”. and of course flint says he doesn’t see her that way and of course she knows she’s not a fighter and can’t join him on the walrus but god, to be stuck in that goddamn house away from literally all the action. playing nurse to her new psuedo-husband when he comes home to her on death’s door. and for all flint’s insistence that “these men are dangerous, these men will kill you, you’re safer here while i go out and do all the dirty work”, well… in walks eleanor.

[lamentable-comedy]

I made a supercut of every instance of the word partner (or partnership) in Black Sails... mostly as a side effect of wanting to analyze how the word was used in the show. More information/breakdown under the cut.

"Partner", "partners", or "partnership" is said a total of 92 times in the show, not counting 11 times when it's part of a "previously on". Of those 92 instances, 11 are in Season One, 24 are in Season 2, 33 are in Season 3, and 24 are in Season 4. Some form of the word gets said at least once in all but eight episodes (1x01, 1x05, 3x01, 3x04, 3x09, 4x02, 4x03, and 4x05). The episode with most instances is 3x02 with a grand total of 7. In the video, the clips are arranged in chronological order according to when they appear in the show. I used the transcript site to double-check my work so I'm pretty confidant I didn't miss anything.

A lot of the time the relationships that get called partnerships also get referred to with other terms (friendship, alliance, husband/wife), either at different times than they're called partnerships or in conjunction with the term, but "partner" as a term interests me because it is non-specific in a way that allows for it to hold a lot of different meanings, sometimes all at once. Black Sails is clearly very specific about what terms are used for relationships, just as it is specific about what name a character is called by, and often there is significance placed on moments when a relationship is called a partnership. (Miranda and Flint in 2x06, Jack and Anne in 2x10, Flint and Sliver in 3x03, etc.)

SO I've made a full chart with details on each of the 92 instances which you can look at here. It has the episode each instance is from, who says it, and to what partnership they are referring. Generally this is pretty straightforward, though sometimes a character is directly referencing one partnership in a way that implicitly applies the label to another, i.e. when Silver says he's "not the first to have been a partner to [Flint] in this way", he is referring to himself as Flint's partner, but also implicitly stating that Gates and Miranda were each Flint's partner as well. Whenever this happens I've noted it in the chart. I've also noted when characters are speaking hypothetical partnerships that do not (yet) exist, or do not (yet) exist in the form they are currently discussed, and when partnerships are referred to in the past tense.

Highlights of some stuff I found interesting:

Silver and Flint are referred to as partners (or as having a partnership) a total of 7 times, and implicitly labelled as such once. This is more than any other partnership between individuals, and depending on how you count more than any partnership between groups, too (see below). The first time they're ever referred to as partners is by Silver in 3x03

Jack and Anne are just behind them with a total of 6, followed by Eleanor and Rogers with 5

The individual relationships between Jack and Max, and between Max and Anne are each referred to using some form of partner/partnership three times, and Jack, Anne, and Max a group of three are referred to using the term once by Max and once by Jack-- though when Jack uses it (while speaking to Marion Guthrie) he doesn't specify who he's speaking about could arguably also be including Featherstone, and possibly Idelle

The pirate and maroon alliance is referred to using partners/partnership 6 times (7 if you count one instance where Flint is used as synecdoche for the pirates as a group), and there are two instances of partner/partners being used when discussing another person or group joining the alliance (Jack in the first case, and Julius and his men in the second), for a total of 9 times that some form of the alliance is discussed using partners/partnership

Other than Flint, the only person who is ever referred to as Silver's partner is Max

Eleanor says partner (or some variation) more than any other character, for a total of 14 times. Runners up are Max (12) and Vane (9)

4 out of the 9 times Vane uses partner/partnership, he's talking about a partnership between Eleanor and someone, though that someone is not always him. Of the remaining 5 instances, two are in reference to his partnership with Teach and two involve Jack in some way (one with the two of them and Flint, and one in the context of Jack joining the pirate/slave alliance)

Max never uses the word partner to describe any relationships that she is not directly a part of, unless you count one instance of speaking broadly about her own experiences in a way that also includes Eleanor's (when she says the chair "demands you win partners" to get it)

Flint doesn't say any form of the word partner until 3x05, though before that point there are other people who call him their partner or apply the term to relationships he has

Thomas says "partner" a total of 3 times, two referring directly to Flint and one speaking generally but in a conversation about a partnership between him and Flint. Miranda says "partners" twice, both times about herself and Flint

"Partner" is used as a verb exactly once, by Madi

Madi, Mr. Scott, and the Maroon Queen each only say partner(s) once (they're not the only characters who only say it once, but i did think the family pattern was neat)

[reyturnofbensolo]

[brotherconstant]

BLACK SAILS XI. “You conspire with my father to sabotage our plans. You betray our trust. You cause almost irreparable damage as a result. And when Flint, the most feared captain in all creation, comes to confront you about it, you destroy him. Now I hear in the wind that in his absence you've begun to forge new alliances with his enemies. [...] Yet here you sit, brewing tea as if none of it ever happened. And I'm forced to wonder exactly what it is you hold over Flint that makes everything I've seen possible.” “You don't know what you've seen.” “You didn't betray him?” “I don't believe I did, no. And if he's being honest, neither does he.”

[a-story-is-true]

this is a show about love

[on youtube with subtitles]

[meyerlansky]

timestamp roulette: BLACK SAILS EPISODE XIII↳ we'll get through it. always do, don't we?

[misterflint]

black sails / althea davis, kinder than man