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Black Sails - Blog Posts
Want to add a favorite not on here-
Agatha All Along
Also I’ll take any excuse to post some Agathario:
me consuming every piece of queer media instead of having a social life:
“they paint the world full of shadows”
black sails, 2014-2017
“dylan thomas,” better oblivion community center
“this is not what i wanted”
black sails, 2014-2017
“seeing a dog in the rain,” laura gilpin
I THOUGHT YOU WERE RATHER AN HONEST, STRAIGHTFORWARD PERSON. I THOUGHT IT WAS YOUR SECRET PRIDE.
black sails (2014-2017) / the great gatsby - f. scott fitzgerald
“For that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that’s where he’d find peace.”
“Black Sails,” 2014-2017
“The Heaven,” Franz Wright
spin the wheel on one of my favourite pieces of media
stole this idea from here.
not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing (so devoted the lines blur)
there is love in this story. even in its most brutal end. there is love in the story. how? where? here: here in me telling it to you, in spite of everything. because of everything.
"This story is a tragedy because it didn't have to end this way."
vs
"This story is a tragedy because it was always going to end this way."
In any other show I'd be pretty mad about a character just blatantly explaining a visual metaphor but silvers' "james flint controls the weather based on how he feels about me personally" is like the funniest possible dialogue so it gets a pass
Go tell them how this woman (and her husband) shaped this man's whole world.
Absolutely yes to all of that. I think the relationship between Miranda and Thomas is way underrated. We don't know much about it, but definitely /there was/ much. I've thought a lot about their dynamics and regardless of if they were romantic or friendly, it doesn't change the fact that the two of them had shared for years a deep bond which probably had changed both of their lives for the better. I've liked very much the word you used ti define them, twins. I've used it many time myself. I totally agree with this it. To me they were chosen brothers who had been lucky enough to find, in the midst of a society meant to cut off their wings, someone who instead was more than willing to help them take flight, and the importance this can assume in the life of people with such personalities and ideas like theirs is priceless.
I love all the relationships that bind these three characters together and sure, James' pain at losing his greatest love must have been terrible, but to me the love that bound Miranda and Thomas was even deeper, for its span if nothing else, just like the love that eventually bound Miranda and Flint at the time of her death was deeper than the love that had bound Flint to Thomas. So I think Miranda must have suffered even more than him for the loss of Thomas, considering also how it had meant for her the loss of all the life she had known. Not to talk about all the situations she had to endure once in Nassau. I mean, it might be me loving this subject, these three characters and their story, but I believe Miranda's sorrow is something people never really talk enough about.
I mean, the way she talks about Thomas with pastor Lambrick in ep.VI? That gave me shivers. What are we even talking about?
flint gifting miranda la galatea - a story involving two friends in love with the same person who agree to not let it interfere with their friendship, and more broadly as a whole, an examination of how different lives intertwine - as a means of apologizing is so impactful it literally gave me new brain circuitry undiscovered by science. just the quiet understanding between them of how much thomas meant to the other, even though their relationships with him were very different. we don't see alot of miranda and thomas together in the flashbacks but from what we do see, it tells us what we need to grasp the depths of her loss and why she misses her life back then so badly.
truly like... he was her twin. they shared such an open, playful affection. there was an abundance of free-flowing admiration in the way they talked to or about each other, they trusted each other completely with their personal lives without reservation, and their mutual happiness together was so transparent and palpable. when miranda walked into the study and they joked around together the room practically lit up (can we blame james for acting like a deer in headlights there). like their free-spirit bestie bohemian vibe was radiant. regardless of whether you interpret their arrangement as a lavender marriage or a romantic/sexual one, it would have been rare for a man and a woman in that era to find a genuinely happy partnership of equals the way they did.
so the few times we see when james oversteps a bit and acts like his grief and anger are more important than hers and miranda snaps back... miranda truly a better woman than i am because i think it would've been valid for her to hit back a little more severely. james was with thomas for ~9(?) months, but what miranda had with him was presumably years.
so when flint gives her la galatea with the inscription "i'm sorry"... yes, that's a well-deserved apology indeed, and now my neurological functioning will never be the same again
Absolutely yes to all of that.
(warning: black sails spoilers)
every time I see a bad Miranda Hamilton take I have to try so so hard not to engage. I see so many people blatantly misunderstand her character or call her ‘annoying’ (especially when talking about season 2 episode 9 and her rant at Peter) and it pains me so much. She is just as much forged by loss as Flint, she is just as traumatised. And, on top of it, she is expected to sit around and wait for deliverance, she isn’t afforded the same opportunity to take matters into her own hands. Call her annoying all you want, but know that you’re wrong. Her rant in s2e9 is not unnecessary and it’s not overly emotional, it’s actually very fucking justified. It’s one of the only times she actually breaks her cool, allows herself to be angry, and she is killed for it. It’s a response to the revelation that Peter, once her friend, sold Thomas out for status, colluded behind their backs with Alfred fucking Hamilton to destroy their happiness. And he dares to claim it was a ‘civilised’ solution? So she says fuck your civilisation. Fuck your solutions. Fuck your pardons, your country, your empire. It should all burn for what you’ve done. And don’t miss the connotations of burning: purifying, cleansing, starting fresh. You know who else was being ‘purified’? Thomas. Rotting in a mental hospital for being queer.
She has every right to be angry. And it makes sense that she is killed for it, as empire cannot abide any challenge to its official narrative. The mere fact of her raised voice is enough to condemn her to death, yet she and Flint are treated as monstrous for their killing of Alfred Hamilton. The man who destroyed their lives and orchestrated their tragedy.
So fuck your takes. I’m so so fed up of people talking about her as if she’s just some irritating tag along. She is integral to the show’s message, and in this particular episode, Flint’s realisation that empire is not the answer. He learns that, whilst he is villainised for his use of violence in service of a noble goal, empire is allowed to practice violence with no consequences. It takes Miranda from him just as it took Thomas from them both.
I completely agree. It may seem sudden and it surely is unexpected, at least it was for me, but once you know it you finally can put all the pieces into place and that's just wonderful. I love this show for this thing they do of leaving nails all around and then giving wire to connect them all.
And yeah, that episode is not only a great work speaking about directory and scenes and all, but is also what definitely caught me in the Black Sails' web. Sure, the show has a lot of interesting point and themes that keep you into it, but making the main character bisexual in a pirate show and making of his lost love the cause of his whole fight and rage? Well, let's just say that their braveness was definitely rewarded. Absolute geniouses.
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.
In ep.IV they show us this embrace, this beautiful, beautiful and painful scene. Those few seconds hold such a deep meaning…and yet in that moment we do not know ANYTHING about it. So what? Is one supposed to see it and then go on with the show and forget about it, putting it in a corner of their mind with all those “you will understand later” things? Because that’s what happened, the first time I watched this season I completely forgot about it. And that’s such a WASTE! Pretty much all of the Flint/Miranda’s scenes in the first season are a waste, in a way. Please do not misunderstand me, I think those scenes are really amazing and I also think that the timing of the “great revelation” was perfect, I wouldn’t have liked it so much had it come before, and exactly for these reasons I’m saying that those wonderful scenes are “wasted”. Because a lot of those get lost in the first watch, since one can’t understand the importance of them still and so doesn’t even give them the right amount of attention they would deserve. Of course the mystery was intriguing, and something sounded pretty strange since the beginning, but still…STILL. Almost all of the scenes about the two of them or about Miranda kill me on rewatch, knowing their whole story. But that’s the thing, you have to rewatch it to get the complete beauty of them. And I think that’s a shame, because people who like the show but are not obsessed with it as I am would probably never rewatch it, but maybe, if they had remembered or rewatched at least those scenes, there would be one more chance for them to be as obsessed as I am with it.
Really, how beautiful this hug was? An “It’s over” kind of hug, but with a double meaning. It’s over like we put an end to part of our misery, venting our anger on the responsible for it, but also, it’s over like our old existences are over, and we will never be the same persons we used to be ever again. Which is pretty much what happens with every revenge (I’m not judging though). I just love it so much, I wish I had been able to see all of that since the first time I saw it.
Work of art. I feel glad to have this artist both in dolls and Black Sails communities. I couldn't wish for anything better (honestly, I never thought I'd have found BS' custom dolls, and instead...what a gift!).
[id: 4 photos showing a doll sized version of james flint’s copy of meditations. 1st photo: a custom flint doll, shirtless in black pants, holds the book in front of him as if showing it to someone. 2nd photo: taken over the doll’s shoulder. The book sits open on a wood shelf (that looks like a desk to the doll) held open by the doll’s hands to the page with the inscription “James My truest love. Know no shame. T. H.” 3rd photo: the same as the 2nd but this time the book is open to the title page reading “Meditations. Marcus Aurelius” 4th photo: also the same but open to a page in the middle of the book, both sides printed with lorem ipsum fake text. End id]
Took a side quest to make flint’s copy of meditations :) My 1st time bookbinding (since an art class in high school) Yay! And i just happened to have a scrap of (genuine!) red leather that was the perfect size for the cover. The pages are printed on paper i tore out of an old book i was getting rid of anyway, and, in the tradition of barbie books, newspapers, etc, each page is printed with lorem ipsum text.
Definitely a great summary. Love it.
The sad thing to me is that first time you watch it you'll surely miss A LOT of the unspoken. When actually, that's the best part.
the beautiful thing about black sails is that in shape and function it is a show about conversations. a show about talking, a show about dialogues, monologues, the stories told, the war declarations shouted out, the people who are all in their own ways masters of the words. but inherently black sails is a show about things that cannot be said. histories and feelings that cannot be brought to the surface and need to stay unspoken, layers of meaning hidden beneath the text, and the real face of the stories secreted away in between lines. and i think that's so rad
They'll speak of me in whispered tones and say my name like it shakes their bones - a Captain Flint/James McGraw playlist
~[...] 'Cause when I'll stand these folks will run and tell the tales of what I've become ~
My humble tribute to this incredible character and his equally incredible story.
Hope this makes him justice.
Listen on YT:
https://youtu.be/mbedUGAoxr8?si=OSKzJtvjhiDVRt2M
You'll find timestamps, a translation of the italian song and some notes in the comments section on YT.
When Miranda gives back Meditation to Flint in episode XIII, they somehow make you think that he hadn't seen nor read that book in a while. Of course it was related to Thomas and he remembered that very clearly, but Miranda was the one to keep it and she is the one to say it was a precious thing she shared with her husband and all, over the general tendency of Flint to distance himself from the past, if not ideologically at least emotionally. But in truth, in ep. III he got what Miranda was reading from a single sentence overheard through the door...I mean, he had to know that book pretty well to do that. In fact, I've always liked to think about that book as some sort of comfort through the darkest hours for him as well as it was for Miranda, for what it means as an object at least if not for its philosophy which, as much as in line with Thomas' mind , I believe was pretty far from James' point of view.
I'm honestly relieved by the fact that they somehow confirmed this headcanon of mine. Like...yeah, some parts of his mind try to obscure the past in order to survive, but since he cannot separate himself from something which has defined him deeply he may as well find comfort in what is left of it.
That's so heartbreaking, but I love the way they orchestrated since ep.I his whole story.
