Let The Water Wash Away Everything That You’ve Become On Your Knees, Today Is Gone And Tomorrow’s

I'm the breath on your hair, the endless nightmare, devil's lair. Only so many times I can say I long for you The lily among the thorns The prey among the wolves

Wangxian + pretty scenery

Outcast, fallen angel, you are loved. You are forgiven. You are redeemed. You are loved. - The Exorcist [insp]

Truest things in this show always happen in the dark. I didn't miss to notice the black covering most of the picture of both Max and Anne and James and Thomas' first kisses.

Love these gift. The slight look Flint gives Anne (which honestly I had never considered much before someone made me notice the reason behind it)...this show is art.

Black Sails (2014-2017)

@mdzsnet | MDZS Network’s Anniversary Requests ⤷ requested by anonymous: Wangxian + Shrike

I couldn’t utter my love when it counted Ah, but I’m singing like a bird ’bout it now I couldn’t whisper when you needed it shouted Ah, but I’m singing like a bird ’bout it now — Shrike (Hozier)

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Bring down Nassau, maybe you bring it all down.

This scene always makes me laugh. Like...Rogers had it all prepared to discuss the bargain with Flint as "civilized" men and then he just begin saying the last thing he should have if he wanted to have any hope of succeding. Of course he couldn't know, but still that's so funny lol

Poor Flint.

THIS BITCH WOODES ROGERS REALLY KNOWS HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. Wow. You can't just SAY the words Lord. Thomas. Hamilton. like that they're nothing to James McGraw/Flint! And just look at the phrasing of this - "I understand that you knew him."

Lately I found myself thinking about James/Miranda relationship as a reversed version of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story, especially towards the end of it. Not because these two stories match well (they do not) but just because I like making this kind of classical comparisons and I'm stuck from a bit on the fact that, right before her death, for the first time Miranda was the one to refuse the progress to look back at the past. 

After the loss of Thomas, James let himself slip into a darkness comparable to the underworld, a darkness which so often threatened to swallow him whole. He walked on a thin line between a reign of death and an island of life, and if that darkness was that reign, Miranda was his island. 

During their whole journey of processing their grief and climbing their way back to a life that could be called such, she was the one always trying to drag him towards the light. To her, the life that might have been waiting for them in the future was that light, while the past was the darkness, and not because she deemed it forgettable or unimportant, quite the contrary indeed, but because while she knew how to keep and remember the beauty of that past and the light of it, along with the sorrow, she knew perfectly well how different it was for James. How he could remember the beauty of it, of course, but also knew how to put it aside in favor of the rage and the guilt, his gaze clouded by the pain and the unacceptable shame. 

She said it herself: she didn't want to forget that past, not the bright side of it and neither the inescapable sadness of it, its tragedy being the spring of that very beauty, the ruins existing only because there was something precious to be ruined in the first place; and at the same time, what could the dark of it matter, the injustice, the grudge, when it condemned the both of them to never be able to see the light again? 

First time I heard their discussion in ep.VII after knowing the whole story, I wondered how could she ask something like that of him, to forget and pass over what they had done to him just to gain a liveable life, but recently I've actually been wondering : how could she not?

I'm not taking any side in this, as I recognize Miranda's thoughts to be the most reasonable ones as they often are but at the same time I can't say I wouldn't act as stubbornly and desperately as James did in that situation, they're just really different ways to conceive one’s own existence, influenced by their own problems and conditions and mind. All I'm saying is that Miranda was able to see the light even if just from a distance, she was able to hope that one day they would have been able to truly see it. James was never. 

He just lied to himself about the possibility of it. He had plans and tactics and strategies, but for how I see it, those were all desperate attempts to convince himself of the contrary. He couldn't, maybe because of his personality, maybe because he knew that his situation wasn't one that could ever allow him to found real light in that world, maybe just because he loved her less than how much he had loved Thomas, less than how much she loved him, but whichever was the reason, he couldn't afford to see the light after that abyss, and I think Miranda was the first to know that. The one who knew him like no other, the one who loved him like no other. She knew that without help he would have never really been able to reach the end of that dark state of being. And she tried. She tried to help him in so many ways, because she loved him, she really did, and because she had the damn right to claim at least a decent life for herself. 

And here we come to the end, to Charles town.

Charles town could have been her success. Charles town was James’ surrender. For the first time she glimpsed one real chance of having him back, she saw in him the real intention to leave all of that darkness behind, to follow her, not leaving the past behind, never, but learning to move forward, finally allowing her a chance for a new life together. 

He was actually ready to accept even that miserable condition Peter Ashe imposed on him in order to get rid of the darkness, to climb to the light -as short lived as that might have been, at this point- to give Miranda a better alternative than the ones he had been able to grant her up until that moment (as I think his whole Charles town plan was led by the purpose of doing something to save her): as useless as we all know that would have been, accepting that bargain has probably been the most selfless thing James has ever done, even if he did it also for himself in a tired, desperate and contorted way. 

But Charles town wasn't only this to Miranda. 

Charles town was the discovery of the betrayal, because I believe she understood it all the moment she first saw that clock, I'm sure of it. Charles town was her umptheen attempt and her umptheen sacrifice. 

I think that must have been to her a similar quest to the Maria Aleyne's one: respecting James by telling him the truth, something he deserves to know, even knowing how he will react to it, knowing how impossible it would become for him, then, to go on with his plan, granting him a one way ticket to that darkness, or keeping him in the dark, bearing alone the weight of that knowledge, accepting to live with the helplessness to remedy that fatal injustice, only in the hope to finally make him reach that light?  

Would Orpheus reveal Eurydike a truth which risked pushing her back into the underworld just because it might be right for her to know it?

Still, things had been different, more desperate, back to the Maria Aleyne. Now the chance to succeed was real. 

And at first she made that difficult choice, which was selfish in a way, but definitely selfless in another, all at the same time.

And she did it because she loved him. 

She loved him so much that when she glimpsed, in that light, the prospect of losing him, she had to recognize that that light was -as James would have put it in the future- only their light, the light of a world the two of them couldn’t be part of anymore. 

She loved him so much that she had to look back. To the past, to him, because her James was still behind her, still in the dark, the only place where he was allowed to stay, and only that version of him was the one she truly loved. She loved the real James, with all his broken parts, not the one that could be seen under the lights of their lies. 

So she couldn't help giving up that false light, because she had wished for tranquility, a normal life -as probably anyone in her conditions would have done- but she was not disposed to give up the man she loved in order to gain that, as she hadn't been in the past, when the prospect of the future had been only dark and still she had not deserted the ones she loved. 

And when she turned back, this time trying to shield him from that light, the darkness at the pit ended up swallowing them both. 

Miranda died, and James was dragged back full force and imprisoned into the worst version of himself, the ruthless, autodestructive one. 

There are two versions of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I think that the two of them taken together perfectly represent James’ reaction to her death and its circumstances.

In Virgilius’ one, Eurydice slightly resents Orpheus for his action, for his “folly” -as it is called- and (if we may call it that) for his selfish gesture of looking back, that she paid with her second chance to be alive. 

After Miranda's death, James dreams of her reminding him how he had resented her “because they were so close” and of course since that's a dream is what he knew he had felt. But that was…collateral to the condition he had been left stuck in. That was the childish resentment of having explicitly denied something he knew deep down he couldn't have. 

In Ovidius’ one instead Eurydice doesn't blame him because she can't resent being loved, and I think this is what James really felt. After all, looking straight at the truth of the situation and looking back at their shared history, I think there were no ways for him to actually, rationally resent her. (And in fact in his last dream about her she uses a past tense, “you resented me”, hinting that was something he had felt only in the moments when he was at his worst as when, always in the dream, he heard her apology).

Moreover, I think he perfectly understood the meaning of those last moments of hers, how important it was to her to make her voice be heard in that moment. In fact, despite the clear and growing doubt and rage (and worry) on his face while Peter and Miranda spoke, he didn't say a word, he let her speak, despite knowing the risks  and I think this is amazing and just proves how beautiful and respectful their relationship was, and that there were no way he could actually deem her responsible of their failure in that mission (doomed to failure since the beginning ‘cause of the truth).

What hurts even more about her death is the fact that it looks like they got closer to each other once again during that trip, as they hadn't probably been in years, and then…everything got lost forever.

I loved all the hints to Eleonor's true nature that are given in ep.4x6 (the one of her death), at least the one that I think it to be. I felt like in the end she came back to what she used to be, somehow (even if she never really changed, she was just pretending), and as always, everything ends just like it started (even if not exactly).

First Flint asked her if it would be impossible for her to join them once again and yes, I think that would be impossible because she had lost and given away way too much as a price to her previous life as a “pirate”, but the thing is that the independence of the pirates is in her true nature. And she claims it back each time she is left by her own or just each time she has the chance to. It happens for different reasons and under different motivations, but basically it's just breaking free from any kind of power which may try to control her.

In fact, she regained control on the situation as soon as Rogers went away, even if she did it for him too.

I think she was just searching for a wayout after all, because all her life she had had to be with the pirates’ side or with the “civilized” side but neither of them could offer her the freedom she really needed.

And I believe that with Madi she found a third way. It's very endearing to me how soon and naturally they get close to each other once again after so many years.

When she talks to her she says:

“I've found myself thinking about it. Of walking away from Nassau, from England, from civilization. One can be happy that way, can't they? A life of isolation and uncertainty as long as it is lived with someone you love and who loves you back. It is possible, isn't it?”

This is her third way. And I think that by this point (having almost nothing to lose anymore and feeling deep inside of her the real possibility of WR's betrayal) she was seriously contemplating the possibility of just leaving it all behind and going away with Madi, back with the only family she had ever known.

And it's so sad because she tried as a ruler, tired as a daughter, tried as a friend and tried as a lover, tried as a wife and tried as a sister and in the end it was never enough and way too much at the same time.

…yeah, they have been too mean to her. She deserved at least the chance to try as a mother.

Go tell them how this woman (and her husband) shaped this man's whole world.