#flint in front of silver and the queen thinking about how hes gonna say that they cannot save her anyways akdhsksk

[hauntingblue]

"Anne's on death's door" DO NOT SAY THAT

[servenas-inner-fangirl]

Watching Black Sails 3x8

Oh, is that the "Is it gay living in a house" moment that I heard so much about??

Hahaha, it really is Vane at the piano, annoying the hell out of Flint in the process.

"I can't understand how you cannot understand." Ugh, I love the way these two are so similar from the outside, but so different in regards to how they see the world and what they value - except that right now, their goals are aligned anyway.

"You want your partner back, he wants victory" - oh, I think Vane wants Jack back as well, if maybe not quite as badly. He could've taken the cache back last episode, but he didn't, at least partly because he feared what the English might do to Jack in return imo.

I love these little nods between Flint and Vane, the way they work together like they've never done anything else, ugh.

So Jack is not on his way yet. - Hahaha, him talking up the rat like it's destined for greatness!

Also Jack being incarcerated in his own fort is some bitter irony.

Oh, so Rogers is going himself.

"She left the transaction unscathed." That should tell Jack something was up. Anne would've fought to the death for him otherwise.

"You have my word." Your word is not worth shit right now, Rogers.

So the walrus is waiting for a signal out there?

Sure, Madi, that's the only reason you're concerned.

Goddamnit, Flint isn't there for five minutes and already things are starting to fall apart.

The porn is truly back, and I do not mind one bit, for it is better porn than most. - But also, bold of that whore to try to play Max' own tricks on her. Did the madam set this up? - Yeah, and it didn't work.

Eleanor in the whorehouse visiting Max, what a blast from the past. - Oh, that's a nice dress! Max is truly dressing very different from when Eleanor was in this position.

Max truly is upset about Jack, to her credit. Oh, and she realizes immediately that letting the cache go was very unusual of Anne. She's gonna figure out there's something going on... but is she going to say anything? Aaargh, yes.

"Eight? You could have sent a thousand men." My thoughts exactly.

But is it to late or can they still send a rider or backup after them? I know something's gonna go wrong...

So Jack doesn't speak Spanish, but Vane does. Huh.

"I'm sorry. 'If'?" Rogers is catching on fast. And Jack has so much faith in Anne. ;_;

Noooo, so do they have the right route or not?? How good is Featherstone's intel??

Haha, the governor won't be warned just because an idiot in a uniform doesn't listen to two women. Misogyny is gonna make their plan fail and that is divine justice.

"I know the route." Max, I love you.

Ugh, Eleanor and Hornigold, isn't that a match made in hell.

Now Silver knows exactly how Flint feels all the time as captain of this crew.

So what's the solution? Kill all of them? Oooh, Silver is going to bring in Madi, isn't he? Yes!!

Oh fuck, is she going to kill her own man?? Ah no, she's just cutting the rope.

She truly is a future queen.

"When I speak, my men listen." Ooof, the shade.

"Plenty of people know about it, just not you." Hahaha.

Oh, and she doesn't even know Vane is back on the island, right?? For all she knows, he's miles away right now.

Dammit, Hornigold isn't as stupid as he looks.

Rackham sure does know how to tell a story. And now I get why his name is so important to him.

"But Jesus, did I make up a lot of ground to catch you." Daaamn.

But also, are Rogers and James McGraw actually very similar people, except James had a rougher start? "If people knew what you were capable of when pushed"...

Yes, Jack using his opportunity!!

And now to the question I always wanted to ask - can Charles Vane ride a horse?

Is that Flint up front on the white one? Oh, and there's Anne!! Oh, shooting the carriage, smart, but risky.

Hah, whoops, that's Charles! Mistook his hair as red. But that answers my question. And also explains the risk-taking.

Yeees, the two of them are reunited! ;_;

Love the close view we get of Anne's earrings.

"We'll be right behind you" is the really the sentence I do not want to be hearing in a situation like this!!

"Got worried you two'd be lost without me." ;__;

Oh, so that's Jack's chain he's working on, not another chest. That makes so much more sense, and is also much more tragic.

Noooo, Charles!! - But that explains how Rogers could ever defeat him, shooting him from behind like that.

Ugh, the way Anne hesitates and looks back at Jack, before riding off! ;_; I can't take this, make it stop!

The fact that Charles even gets a hit in in his condition... truly impressive. Oh fuck, he really almost had him! It's the backup that saves Roger's life. That fucker.

Does Rogers even know who he just fought? But I guess Eleanor gave him a description...

Love that shot of Madi and Silver side by side from behind.

Madi truly is so mature for her age.

Ah, so Silver didn't let Dobbs off the hook after all.

Oh no, there comes Hornigold.

Love to see how much damage Charles did to Rogers. I am a petty bitch like that.

Awww, Flint is actually going back for Charles!! <3

"Charles Vane swinging over Nassau is a statement we cannot afford to be made" - isn't that exactly what Vane said back at Charlestown?

I really do not know if I trust Billy with this mission. But he doesn't have a bone to pick with Vane, right? I mean, apart from the Man o'War thing...

I don't think Eleanor is listening to the rest Rogers is saying right now. She's still hung up on Charles - as she should be.

How come a character I do not like at all gets the whumpiest of scenes? It is not fair.

I wonder if Eleanor would have a harder time resisting that temptation if she didn't have all cause to believe the man she once loved wants her dead - and that this is completely justified.

Ah yeah, and then there was her father's murder, I guess.

Aaaaaah, why does it have to be this way, WHY.

But she still goes to see him.

And THIS is where you end the episode?? GODDAMMIT.

So now they have the cache, but exchanged one prisoner for another. I wonder if this was Jack's cell. I wonder if the rat said Hi...

[beanabouttown]

do you have any super fluffy flinthamilton fic recs? its one of /those/ days

do i EVER (yes, yes i do) 

super fuffy fic rec list down below! (since you said flinthamilton i have only included james/thomas fic, but let me know if you want some fluffy flinthamiltons fic and i can direct you towards some good stuff!) 

Like a ghost. by LittleHouseMouse

It’s the first morning on the plantation after the reunion and Thomas Hamilton is awoken by a sound.

it’s short but sweet and im always here for fic about the first time james and thomas wake up together after the reunion 

I Want To Take Care Of You by Magnetism_bind

James is ill and Thomas just wants to look after him.

post-reunion fluff! flashback to london-era fluff! this fic just makes me happy, and it’s got thomas reading to james, which is always a good thing

Moments by TheAssassinsGhost

“'I can’t believe the days turned into years. I hate to see the moments disappear…‘”

15,743 words, 4 chapters, one of my all-time favourites! various snap-shots into james and thomas’ life after leaving the plantation 

Reorienting by Palebluedot

“Thomas grabs ahold of his holy apparition with both hands and keeps him there, draws him nearer. Let them hold each other until they both bruise, he thinks fiercely, for tenderness needn’t always step light. Love owes them kind wounds.” 

this fucking fic - it’s one of those ‘oh god this is the best fic i’ve read in weeks’ fics. im going to rec a lot of audrey’s fics and they are all as good as this one

Too Fondly to be Fearful by Palebluedot

“A hint of youthful mischief blooms in Thomas’s crow’s-feet as he brushes their toes together beneath the bedcovers. 

“Fancy a moment’s fresh air?”James grins. 

Outside, the scent of the roses hangs heavy as perfume, mixes sweet with every breath of cool night breeze. Thomas settles next to him on the step, barefoot and smiling, his arm warm around James’s waist.” 

james and thomas stargazing in the middle of the night, post-reunion. it’s fucking beautiful and i love it so much 

Things That Grow by Palebluedot

“Weeding, pruning, watering – though the tasks seem never-ending, it’s pleasant, welcome labor, working at a gentle pace, James’s voice as constant as the sun on his back, the sweetness of the roses he tends.

~+~+~+~+~

Something of a companion piece to “Too Fondly to be Fearful,” but can easily be read separately.”

james reading to thomas! happy post-reunion fluff! 

Pathos and Logos by Palebluedot

He should have been on his way ten lost minutes ago. With a sigh, with a parting kiss to the corner of Thomas’s mouth, James at last rises, and the sheets wind tight around his legs. The mattress dips behind him just as his feet brush the floor, and unseen fingers loosely encircle his wrist, keep him perched on the edge of the bed just long enough for a clinging shadow to press against his back, hold him fast about the waist.

“Stay a moment longer,” comes the sweet whisper in his ear.

happy London-era fluff - thomas trying to stop james leaving the bed. the first day this fic was posted i read it something like ten times 

Tactile by Palebluedot

“When Thomas opens his eyes, they stare and stare and seem to shine. “I wondered often how this might look,” he murmurs, pushing an errant lock behind James’s ear, fingers tracing over the shell. He looks down at James, adoration writ plain across his face, warm as the candlelight, and this is all still so strange to James, so new.

~+~+~+~

Inspired by bean-about-townn’s post: “Imagine the first time Thomas sees James’ hair out of its ribbon” and a related conversation with blanketed_in_stars.”

okay basically i should just say at this point that audrey (@brightbluedot) is the queen of fluff

Homecoming by Palebluedot

“That smile grows, and Thomas shall never find the strength to disentangle himself now, so he holds on all the tighter – three months, three months stranded with only the memory of James’s face, God only knows how he survived. But no matter. Now that he’s home, Thomas intends nothing less than to reclaim each and every intimacy the sea stole from them.”

look. if you just ignore the fact that thomas is taken away to bethlem right after this, it’s the fluffiest fic you are ever going to read in your life. 

…but if you read it with that in mind, then it will break your heart. so be warned!

Something Old by Palebluedot 

““Do you remember the first time I brought you home for Christmas?”

“The only time, you mean.”

Thomas grins, eyes sparkling with a fondness James doesn’t recall that battlefield of a holiday deserving. “Fifteen years later, that’s still one of my favorite memories of you.””

modern au fluff after james and thomas get married! 

Eye of the Beholder by Palebluedot

“Open your eyes for me, love,” Thomas reminds him, voice husky, and when he does, the first thing he sees is Thomas’s reflected grin, hungry as the gaze that caresses every inch of skin from James’s parted, panting lips down to his flushed and leaking cock. “Just look at you,” he sighs in James’s ear before he trails imprecise, open-mouthed kisses back down to James’s throat.

~~~

alternatively, that time bean was like “so what if they fucked in front of a mirror” and I was like “shit what if they DID”

i still maintain that this 100% happened at least once. (porn. really, really amazingly written porn. and so very fluffy) 

A Stranger at his Door by theflowercrownedking

“Silver comes looking for Flint. Thomas answers the door.” 

not one for fans of silver, and i fucking love it. thomas is clever, thomas isn’t expected to forgive silver for selling james into slavery and leaving them both in the plantation, and it ends with james and thomas snuggled up together in bed. what’s not to love? (i saw this fic just when i went to go through my bookmarks on ao3 to make this list, and im gonna be honest with you anon, i read it twice through before i could get back to putting together these recs)

Keeping him Safe by theflowercrownedking

“In which James manages to keep his werewolf nature a secret, right up until the moment he has a nightmare and shifts in Thomas’ arms.” 

i mean there’s some angst when it changes to james’ pov, but thomas, as always, is a ray of sunshine who illuminates james’ tragic life and it’s beautiful 

The Throes of Fever by theflowercrownedking

“In which James is feverishly sick, and convinced Thomas is an angel sent to care for him.” 

…i went to try and find a quote to put here to show how wonderful this fic is, but. it was all so good i couldn’t pick a single thing, which means you will just have to take my word for it!

Cache of Gems: Tumblr Ficlets by AstronautSquid

“An ongoing collection of the occasional short scenes I write for tumblr.

Varying ratings, check the chapter title!” 

second chapter is brilliant porn, but the first chapter is fluff and i love it so much - and only partly bc it’s a little bit my fault 

i am absolutely happy to read fic of James just staring at the back of Thomas’ head for an hour. who isn’t?? 

kinky nsfw ficlet 1 by @complaininginthedark

Anonymous asked: for the kink thing - cockwarming, if youre into it? your writing is amazing btw

aaahhhhh thank you so much!!!! I’ve already played with the idea of cock warming for these two simply because I think James is a little touch starved most of the time and is easily overwhelmed and needs grounding a lot. So here is my take on it.

it’s so very fluffy and i love it 

“I’ll keep you safe” by @complaininginthedark

bean-about-townn asked: ooh, 66 (“I’ll keep you safe”) for flinthamilton, which would. also be great for aftercare after the reunion (sorry im obsessed with the concept now. ur last fic was too good i can’t stop thinking about it)

aaaaaaaaah i prompted this and it’s still one of my favourite bits of writing in the fandom 

Vulnerable by khazadspoon

James needed to feel the sharp sting of his hand, the bite of his teeth, the grip of ropes at his hands and feet.

And Thomas would do anything, anything, to give James peace. Even if that peace was brought through pain.

– Post series, Thomas takes care of James after a rough night. Aftercare and comfort because I love these two too much –

it’s so fluffy and beautiful and it’s one of my all time favourites. no explicit sex, though the implication is there

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! by NahaFlowers

It’s snowing outside and Thomas wants to go out and play in the snow, despite it being the dead of night. James’s protests are feeble at best - he can’t deny this man anything. Just cute fluff. Written for penflicks on Tumblr.

look. let’s be realistic. it doesn’t get much fluffier than thomas carrying james to bed 

Till Death Us Do Part by Palebluedot

And there’s that ache, and there’s that sweetness, and lord, James really would swear in the eyes of God that he cannot bear to live without him, wouldn’t he?

~+~+~+~

Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder: a triptych.

james thinking about marriage in london, nassau, and after the reunion. the first and third parts are the fluffiest fluff ever to fluff, but the middle will break your heart in the best way 

Something like Home by enthugger

Sober, James thinks that Thomas Hamilton is brilliant. He is safe and warm and his presence is a soft glow that brightens the ridged structure of James’ mind. Drunk, he believes that Thomas should own the goddamn world.

imagine me making a sound akin to the sound one makes when seeing a particularly adorable kitten, and you’ll get an accurate idea of my reaction to this fic 

you are a constellation by ohCaptain (AngryPirateHusbands)

fluffy porn about thomas appreciating james’ freckles, absolutely lovely! 

im sure there’s more but im tired now. i hope your day gets better soon anon!

[qqueenofhades]

Black Sails s4/finale thoughts

Okay, so I caught up on episodes 4x05-4x10 with @thelittleschemer​ over the past few days, and as such finished the season/series. Now I have many thoughts and need to write them down, welp.

I held off on finishing the show because I didn’t want it to interfere with what I had planned for TDH, and I can definitely say that it did not change anything about what I had worked out for the ending of said fic (which I really need to get around to doing soon). I was pleased to see that there were/will be a few points of concord, but yeah, TDH will definitely remain its own entity/story.

Tagging @prairiepirate​ and @ransomideas, who have expressed interest in my thoughts on said subject, heh. Under the cut for length and possible unpopular opinions.

Okay, first and foremost: Overall, I really liked it. The writing generally remains some of the best on TV, the acting is phenomenal, and as usual with Starz’ historical dramas these days, the production value is jaw-dropping. The sets, costumes, ships, etc are all just so real, and it definitely set up well for Treasure Island. It finished off its narrative arcs cleanly (or mostly so) and it continues to provide some excellent meaty commentary on the nature of stories, who tells them, who remembers them (hums “Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story” because lbr, theme song of this whole show) and the roles we play in creating and managing and remembering our own. This show was (and remains) incredibly intelligent and complex and subversive, you have to pay attention to all of it or you’re going to miss important plot developments (and probably still be confused on a few points) and it’s otherwise not at all what you’d expect from the premise (and first few episodes). As I said, just overall really impressive on many levels. The final few episodes also had a very POTC feeling to them, with mysterious islands that nobody can find, ghost stories, swashbuckling sea battles, hidden treasure, and so forth, and that was a lot of fun.

That said: Time to deconstruct it!

My main issue with the second half of s4 was that they seemed to throw all constraints of time/space/travel out the window, especially when it involves the characters sailing long distances at sea over incredibly cramped time-frames. Possibly writing TDH has made me too well-informed in said matters, heh, but they’d have us believe that Jack sailed from Nassau to Philadelphia, back to Nassau, out to Skeleton Island, and then back to Philadelphia in what.... a week? It’s been hard to gauge a reliable timeline for the show, since they’re moving historical events around freely and playing fast and loose with the facts to tell a good story, but we have the Maroons arriving and Madi’s mother saying that pirates from as far away as Massachusetts (which made me briefly hopeful for a Sam cameo, I AM NOT GONNA LIE) have heard of the fall of Nassau and have come to fight. In what... again, a day or so? I realize it’s important to keep the plot moving, and that nobody is actually going to watch two weeks of Jack and Anne stuck on a ship on the way to Philadelphia (although lbr, it’s probably still amusing), but for a show that has prided itself on its gritty realism, it kept taking me out of the story because I was all, NO WAY THEY’RE THERE ALREADY. WAIT. WHAT. THEY’RE BACK AGAIN? OKAY THEN.

(Aka, every historical/historical fantasy show has to contend with the fact that they need to get characters/news to places faster than historically accurate transport can actually take them, so things get compressed and skimmed over and squashed together, etc. It wasn’t enough to ruin anything for me, but I did keep noticing it, so yeah.)

My other issue was the involvement of the Spanish. Once again, I understand the narrative choice behind the decision: they needed a wild card/way to shake things up/break the standoff between the English forces and the pirates, and re-change the balance of power on Nassau. However (and I feel like they were aware of it and tried to finesse it to some degree in the narrative) are we really supposed to buy that the Spanish hate pirates just that bit more than they hate Rogers, agree to sail to Nassau, sack the place good, and then.... pack up and leave, never to be seen again or to have any further involvement with trying to reclaim the Urca gold (which would at least be a full-circle thing)? Within the span of an episode? I feel like the writers needed the shakeup, and to obviously provide an impetus for Rogers’ poor decisions to blow up in his face, but they knew they didn’t have time to adequately deal with the outcome, so we had the Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition and then poof, gone. This connects to the other sense I had, which was that they knew they had to wrap things up for the final season and find a way to stop a full-out war from happening, so the Spanish had to disappear after their use as a one-off shit-stirring device, the Maroons and the pirates and the English had to hastily make treaties to avoid said war, and despite a few really excellent action scenes, it still felt, idk, a bit... anti-climactic? As if they wanted a relatively happy ending for these characters (which is understandable) but didn’t have time to play everything out, so it just got compressed and a bit watered down.

Speaking of characters...

I love that the show has such intensive character studies/conversations/setpieces. However, I also feel as if the pacing ended up being a bit off as a result. We kept having long, multi-minute scenes of just two characters talking to each other (and again, exchanging important information in most cases, so you can’t really tune out), followed by a brief action scene, usually followed by yet another long dialogue scene. It’s always enjoyable to see the acting chops on display (I mean, these are not easy scenes to work through and require a lot of line memorization and facial nuance and other skill), but at several points I was wondering when everyone was going to stop talking and get back to the issues at hand -- as noted, if they’d cut some of the talking and focused on solving their plot problems, it could have flowed somewhat more smoothly. It felt as if they went too often to the well of “flashback followed by voiceover explaining plot twist” and had to TELL us information rather than SHOW us. Which again, it’s a good problem to have when your narrative is rich and complex and intelligent and has a lot of moving pieces, but again, everything could just be a bit, well, tighter. At least, that was the overall impression I was left with.

I was successfully kept on pins and needles over Madi’s fate (I had a few choice words when it looked like she was dead) and I hope she and Silver do end up together (I think it’s implied she does come back to him at the end) because I really like that relationship for both of them. It added a bit of selflessness and sympathy to Silver’s otherwise completely self-interested character, as did the scene where Flint presses him to explain his past and he doesn’t; we can tell he simply wants to forget everything that existed before Long John Silver (and I love how both that persona and “Captain Flint” were treated and twisted as distinct narrative entities for both characters) and that his life has probably been incredibly tragic too. He’s just dealt with it differently than Flint (which again, fits with them well as each other’s foils/yin and yang.) Their conversations/one-on-one faceoffs were some powerhouse acting from both Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold, and I appreciated the way things came full circle between them/to the logical end, but with a twist and with callbacks to their relationship in the pilot (as well as Silver finding the cook belowdecks). Madi is also generally a queen of everything and I love that she, a dark-skinned African woman, was made a central love interest and given emotional and narrative power/sympathy in her own right, and that the subject of slavery and her telling off Rogers to his face remained front and center. The show has always been so good with that (and LGBT representation, to the point where it’s a shorter list to think of who ISN’T LGBT than who is) and I really appreciated that.

On the subject of Rogers: Luke Roberts did an incredibly good job. Like damn. You can see the anger and insanity and grief rising and rising in him, but he’s almost scarier because it never breaks the dam entirely, because he’s always (almost always) self-controlled and dangerously calm and driven to do whatever he has to, and yet has no qualms with absolutely anything that is going to take. I was yelling at him for being the worst (and as noting, side-eyeing the decision to involve the Spanish both on a story and a meta level), and rooting for him to get his just desserts, but also genuinely being scared of him and respecting that he was good at what he was doing. You’re aware that he CAN hurt/kill/otherwise cause serious problems for our faves, and you’ve seen him do it, sometimes in gruesome detail. So yes, he served as an effective villain. You never could relax with him on screen, or be quite sure which way he was going next.

As for him and Eleanor, I’m still not entirely sure what to take away from that. I never bought that she genuinely loved him, as Eleanor is way too selfish to do anything, even a relationship, without personal benefit, and she got together with him in the first place as an alternative to incarceration/hanging. Even Flint questions whether her relationship with Rogers is somehow different from all the men she’s bragging about overcoming. Eleanor’s motives/nuances remained opaque until the end -- I believe that she wanted to rule Nassau again, and that she wanted to survive (hence the sad irony in her fate: that everything she did and everyone she sold out trying to save her neck led to her dying anyway) and that she saw in Rogers a way to do it. Likewise, I think he loved the idea of controlling Nassau through her more than her, and that it was easy for both of them to attach their feelings about ruling/controlling this place to the person of the other, to the point where even they might have been fooled/willing to believe it was true (if somewhat twisted) love. Hence as well why neither of them ended up in charge of it, she died, and he was ruined by his wife’s family, but not the wife he expected.

Jack and Anne were, as usual, fab, though as noted, their Super Speed Ship Travel had me side-eyeing hard. I noticed that their story, at least for now, ended far more happily than it does in history. Glad that Max got the chance to come out on top (I never ended up fully connecting to her as a character, but she’s definitely a BAMF).

Billy.... damn. Talk about a 180. Going from the man willing to do anything to keep your crewmates safe from Flint, to shooting them down in the water aboard a boat full of redcoats? Not cool, bro. Not. Cool. (Though I did enjoy the final face-off between him and Flint on the yards.) When that’s contrasted with Flint giving orders to make sure everyone is evacuated from Nassau and nobody is left behind, it strikes you how much they’ve changed places and how Billy has become objectively no better -- indeed, possibly worse -- than Flint, and doesn’t even have Flint’s self-awareness to know it. He has gone down a road by himself, by choice, and which fits fairly well with his upcoming role in Treasure Island/estrangement from the others (real talk, how does he get off?) but which made him pretty hard to root for by the end. I also think it’s no accident that he got paired with Rogers. Both characters are convinced they are acting for a greater good on their respective sides, but both are willing to do anything to achieve it, stubborn and independent to a fault, and unwilling to take any responsibility for their mistakes.

And okay, so... Flint.

He is my favorite and as such, I’ve had to save him for last, since I probably have the most thoughts/investment on the end of his story. In a nutshell: I have mixed feelings. I was convinced that he was going to die for most of the season, so I am obviously happy that he got some measure of solace/happiness/reunion at the end. However, I am also not sure that it wouldn’t have worked better for him to die, or at least leave his fate more open-ended. Hint that Silver wasn’t telling the whole story and that Flint was still alive, but for it to remain ambiguous where he went or what he did or why.

This obviously is a strange place to be for my favorite, but after a season of fairly hard-hitting emotional moments/notes and some pretty bloody action, I almost feel like they chickened out of killing Flint at the end and wanted to give him some happiness instead -- aka, an unexpectedly sunny “Everyone Lives!”-type finale for what has been a pretty dark show. Which again -- I have no problem with, because heaven knows the man deserves some happiness, but I still found myself vaguely unsatisfied with how it was pulled off. See above for my feelings on how well they dealt with the legends/personas of “Long John Silver” and “Captain Flint” in their own right, and I did appreciate that the end of season 2 (Flint wants to leave it behind and settle down with Miranda, but she’s killed) was paralleled with the end of season 4 (Flint does get a chance to leave it behind/is reunited with Thomas). However, on a narrative level, this... doesn’t quite work for me, because Thomas was never built up on-screen to be a character capable of carrying this emotional weight. We saw him only in a few season 2 flashbacks. We saw a bit of his and Flint’s relationship and how that backfired, but all we ever really knew about Thomas mattering to Flint was that we were told he did. We cared about Thomas because we cared about Flint and Miranda, but there was never really enough for him to become any more than a motivating/backstory figure in Flint’s own story.

Hence, I feel as if Thomas worked better as such (a backstory figure) rather than as Flint’s presumably somewhat-happy ending. Yes, I am a diehard Flint/Miranda shipper, but I was more invested in Flint and Miranda’s relationship because of all the time the narrative spent on making me care about it. We saw them together for two seasons. We saw their arguments, their disagreements, their tender moments (”I was hoping to have you all to myself for a few days”/”I recognize you, do you recognize me?” will never not kill me). We saw Miranda fighting to be with Flint and reminding him that she has been loyal and devoted to him for ten years, and him finally accepting that and letting her come with him to Charlestown and the two of them planning to make their home together and leave piracy behind... only for, yeah, welp, noooo. We saw Miranda’s relationships with other characters and we saw her own struggle in how exile had changed her and the sacrifices she had made for allowing Flint and Thomas to be together and the blame she took for the scandal. We had Flint wanting to die and be with her and his flashbacks/dreams of her for half of season 3, and him even saying that this was worse than losing Thomas (”But you... I am ruined over you.”) In other words, I was invested in them because the show spent so much time making sure that I was. I cried out loud when Flint compared Silver’s apparent loss of Madi (the woman he was willing to give up the war for/wanted to be his wife) to his own loss of Miranda. Flint and Miranda were both real characters in their own right, and Thomas just by nature of his role in the story was someone that they had lost and whose memory they still honored. To pluck him out and make him alive again seems a bit, well, pat.

Don’t get me wrong, my super bi ass is definitely incredibly appreciative that Flint, a bi character who has had two great loves in his life (Thomas and Miranda) ended up with his same-gender partner, and that they got to be reunited on screen. But I also feel as if the most poignant and fitting end for his story would either for him to explicitly die, and for his reunion with both Thomas and Miranda to take place in the afterlife (I so wanted that scene of the three of them together again/Thomas and Miranda being there to finally bring Flint back to them) or for his fate to not be spelled out, as it is in Treasure Island. I.e., for it to be pretty clear that Silver didn’t kill him and let him go, but for us not to know where he went or why, and that is why the legend remains and lives on. That way they can have the symmetry of him letting the persona of Flint “go back to the sea,” and to also keep the tragedy and romance and true loss of his story. He HAS changed forever in being Flint. He can’t give that up, he can’t wake from his nightmare. He’s lost everything and everyone (including his ship, poor Walrus). The ending with Thomas was nice enough, but again, I don’t care that much about Thomas in his own right, because the narrative never spent time on making me do that. I am happy FOR Flint because I love him and I know it’s what he would have wanted, but I don’t feel the gut-wrenching relief/sadness/cry-for-days-but-love it that I would have with Flint dying and finally getting to be with both Thomas AND Miranda again, and for us to see them once more as a threesome and a whole. Again, I feel like they ducked out of bringing Flint’s story to a sadder and arguably more fitting end, and while I can’t argue with my fave getting to live, yeah.

Anyway! Damn. That was a long-ass meta. As I said, overall I did like it very much, I certainly had feelings, and the rest of the show was generally so well-written that I can forgive them some pacing and plot hiccups here and there in this season. As I said, this is absolutely one of the smartest and most subversive and diverse shows on TV, and I am sorry to see it end. I would watch the shit out of Treasure Island if they do it (as I think they were kicking around). I just wish they could have hit some even more powerful notes in a few places. But thanks for the great adventure.