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Been trying so hard to play this cool but I'm just so fucking pleased

Something exciting today 😍

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I’m really happy that Black Sails is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, but (predictably) some of the takes I’m seeing online are so busted. It’s wild to me that anyone would complain about the fact that Anne Bonny kisses Jack after she’s developed this life-changing relationship with Max. It’s absolutely wild to see anyone roll their eyes or feel uncomfortable about the fact that Flint has sex with Miranda when he returns to her in season one or that Max is most likely a lesbian but actively has sex with men for pay and knows how to make that pleasurable. It’s crazy to me that some of the very audiences who claim to want queer representation feel so discomforted when they actually see the mess and seeming inconsistencies of queerness that they asked for.

The reality is that there are lesbians who have had (and will have!) meaningful, mutually-gratifying, and deeply sexual relationships with men. There are gay men who’ve enjoyed having sex with women, who are gay as the day is long and nevertheless feel sexually attracted to a woman or two and are nevertheless gay men, full stop. There are gay cis men who are happily married to trans women. There are femme dom tops and butch bottoms and there are mascs who like femme boys. There are non-binary people and trans men who actively identify as lesbians. There are ace and aro people who enjoy thinking about and engaging with sex — sometimes in fiction and sometimes in real life. Queerness, in fiction and in reality, defies neat categorization. That is the beautiful, power, and (perceived) unorthodoxy of queerness.

Now, I’ll say this — do I think the straight men behind Black Sails were actively thinking deeply and insightfully about the paradoxes and fuckery of queer identity when they wrote Black Sails? No! By their own admission, Steinberg and Levine have owned up to the fact that some of the writing of the show was really hinged on their own blind spots as people who are not (to my knowledge) members of the queer community. If I want to be generous, I think that the beautiful mess of Black Sails is that, in not feeling like experts enough to designate specific identity labels to any of their characters, the writers stumbled their way into more authentic representation of lived queer experience, which is to say that the notion that James Flint was actively thinking of himself as a gay man was anachronistic. As many lesbian archivists and theories have noted, the notion of a queer identity — as in, queerness is who you are, not what you do — was patently unthinkable for most cultures in the past. In other words, the idea that Anne Bonny operates in the eighteenth century as a lesbian and thus would not willingly engage in relationships with men is not only untrue of the series, but untrue of most recorded lesbian experiences in the real world. The notion that a lesbian would operate her entire life without engaging sexually or romantically with men is a very new privilege that some of us are very lucky to enjoy, but it is not true for the vast majority of human history — hell, it’s not even true of our present world.

This is all to say that think that there’s something really funny about how we want queer characters to fit into neatly organized boxes. This isn’t a new problem, either. When the show was still airing, the BS fandom would get itself into tizzies about wether or not Flint is gay or bisexual, wether or not Anne Bonny is a lesbian, wether or not Silver is queer when his only canonical relationship is with Madi, etc etc. We’ve been having these discourses for years and I don’t know. I get that much of it is fueled by how badly some people want to see themselves represented in media, but . . . well. The siloing of queer characters and queer narratives into neat little boxes has never felt very authentic to me and nine times out of ten, it’s also just so damn boring.

#as a bi person the messy confusing feelings and relationships meant so much to me the first time i watched this #i totally respect the gay and lesbian interpretations #but rejecting any ambiguity must be a sad place to be #the show lets us choose so many things based on our experiences and interpretations #did flint push billy off the ship? #did flint love miranda romantically? #did anne still hold romantic feelings for jack after her love with max? #did silver tell the truth to Madi about flint at the end? #the beauty is that we can all decide for ourselves and there is no wrong answer

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I think my favorite thing about Black Sails is that it's about... everything? It's about so much. Pirates. Colonialism. Empire. Civilization. Rebellion. Revolution. Politics. Violence. Economics. Slavery. Stories. Villains. Monsters. Narrative. Betrayal. Shame. Sacrifice. Grief. Love. Love. Love.

I think we all know at this point, it starts out as 2014 Starz trying to compete with GoT. There are valid criticisms to be had about this show, certainly, as is true of anything. 

To those who would claim it's not queer enough... I'd counter that's because it's ultimately about so much more than just that. It is never just one thing and it's not meant to be. Some of the characters are queer. Sometimes it's a really important driving part of the character and plot. Sometimes it's in the background. Sometimes those themes are what it IS about. Sometimes it's not. It matters, and it permeates, but it is also just one important part of a larger complex story.

Ok ALSO (and then I promise I’ll shut up and dive in to the celebratory rewatch): EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE that Black Sails only has queer subtext (and let me make it clear, it absolutely is not true) that still doesn’t invalidate it as a piece of media?? The queer characters aren’t the only reason we love this show. We love this show because it’s beautiful.

It’s heart-wrenching. It dares to ask the questions “what if your civilized society isn’t all that civilized? Who does it leave behind? Whose blood is it built on? What lengths will people go to and what will they sacrifice for even the tiniest bit of agency and freedom in a world that is actively trying to kill them? Are they justified? Can you even make that judgment call?”

It’s a story about storytelling. It has narratives within narratives and foils and tragic flaws and parallels and overarching themes that begin in the very first moments in episode one and last all the way to the end. It’s a Greek tragedy put to the screen. It’s still so hopeful somehow, even when so many things fall apart. It’s the epitome of “the love may not have been enough but it’s important that it was there.” The writing is wonderful (mostly, I have a few hangups but that’s not important here), the cinematography and score is almost reverent. People who worked on this show still gush 10 years later about how it was their masterpiece.

Those headlines of “the best show nobody watched”? There’s a reason for that. Those of us who love Black Sails love it passionately, and the complex and wonderful queerness of it is only one of the reasons.

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I accept all interpretations on the ending, and I personally love living in the ambiguity, but does anyone else think Silver is giving 'Briony at the end of Atonement' vibes?

"I did not kill Captain Flint. I unmade him. The man you know could never let go of his war. For if he were to exclude it from himself, he would not be able to understand himself. So I had to return him to an earlier state of being. One in which he could function without the war. Without the violence. Without us. Captain Flint was born out of great tragedy... I found a way to reach into the past and undo it."

"I couldn't any longer imagine what purpose would be served by it... by honesty. Or reality.

.... So, my sister and Robbie were never able to have the time together they both so longed for and deserved. Which ever since... I've always felt I prevented. But what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I'd like to think this isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness."

#black sails #john silver #atonement #briony tallis

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So with Black Sails now on Netflix I just want to talk a little bit about my favourite monologue from the show….

Charles Vanes monologue to Flint when there in Miranda’s House.

Yes I know it’s the ‘is it gay to live in a house’ speech but as I’ve gotten older it’s come to mean a lot to me I guess.

Because it’s asking the question, what would we do, we the people who live in the safety and comfort of our homes, our communities, the safety provided to us by the state, do to keep that comfort? To keep ourselves in the familiar comfort of civilisation and what that comfort requires from us. For us to look past and ignore. A question I think is more important now than it was a decade ago.

“Give us your submission, and we will give you the comfort you need.”

I think it’s a monologue most comparable to Max’s speech to Anne at the beginning of season three when she speaks of what home means to her and in an way Madi’s voices speech to Rogers in season four. They know what was required to build that home, a question that I think is very important for those of us living in the West to ask ourselves, particularly with our counties histories of colonialism.

Idk but when I’m thinking about the big theme of civilisation in the show this is the speech, alongside Max’s that comes to mind. Because all these character have been hurt and rejected by civilisation in one way or another but I think out of all the characters, even Flint, Vane and Max get civilisation best of all in a way. Vane because he wholeheartedly rejects it and Max because she most of all understands what was required to build that room in the first place.

Just yeah. The ‘is it gay to live in a house’ speech always gets me because it’s the civilisation speech to me. It’s defiantly the one that’s made me sit down and think the most.

#not a day goes by where i don't think of this or any of the adjacent speeches at some point #the things it took to make that room possible they were awful things #the measuring of lives and loves and spirits #this is how they survive

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Just a reminder that this lovely video exists. From the description:

A video essay about how Black Sails, a show about queer pirates and revolutionaries, became the most underrated series of the decade - and Game of Thrones became a mess. Let's talk LGBT representation, battling colonialism, and the problem with adaptations.

#black sails #this is the video that convinced me to watch black sails #spoilers galore but holy shit it still hit so hard

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In honor of Black Sails coming to Netflix, I put together a leetle trailer.

ETA: very very light spoilers, more like a general series trailer

#black sails

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instinctually i adore john silver because i find him so relatable. but then im like, id never do half the shit that insane man does. and then im like, wait, IS HE relatable?? or is this just what john silver does? his effect on people? like, is this how the crew feels about him...? am I the crew???

flint is only relatable bc we get so much insight into his past & what drives him. but silver is relatable bc that's how he survives

#apply this logic of sympathy to almost anyone else in the show and that's why it is ELITE

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"Money!" cried the squire. "Have you heard the story? What were these villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?"

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

(Epilepsy warning: flickering lights from 01:17 through 01:22 (if your display shows countdown timestamps, then 02:18 through 02:13))

[video description: a Black Sails fan video. Music is "Leaving the Old World" by Bytheway-May. Voiceover excerpts from the Treasure Island audiobook read by Michael Page.

The video fades in on Jack Rackham waiting in the Guthrie mansion in Philadelphia. A girl comes down the stairs and they converse: Girl: Is it true? Jack: I'm sorry? Girl: Uh, is it true… that you've come from Nassau? It's true isn't it? You're one of them. You're a pirate.

Instrumental orchestral music begins and the scene cuts to a view of the Walrus as it sails into the Skeleton Island bay. A voiceover asks, "Have you heard the story?"

Flint thumbs the edge of the missing page from the Urca schedule and his voice asks, "So you think that they see me as the villain in this particular story?"

Drawings of exaggerated pirate stereotypes blend with ghostly images of Flint in his more piratical moments. The voiceover asks, "What were these villains after but money?"

Flint asks Silver, "Why would you do that?" Silver responds, "You mean aside from the share of gold I'd get out of it?"

Miranda explains, "To show you a way out of all this, to free you." Flint demands, "A way out? Have you no memory of how we got here? What they took from us?"

Hornigold says, "I promised my men that if they stayed with me, they'd be soldiers again, that they'd be part of a rebel navy fighting a war to restore a rightful king."

Eleanor says to Vane, "…no more fighting, no more leads, no more chasing our fucking meals."

Silver continues, "…one big prize. And with it freedom."

Flint says to Anne, "We're all in this for our own reasons. You want your partner back. He wants victory. I want to set my home aright."

The music begins to swell. Billy tells Silver, "One more thing. No one gets any special treatment from you of any kind. No extra rations, no preferences in cuts of meat. Not for me, not for the quartermaster, not for the captain. Here, every man is equal."

Flint says to the maroon queen, over images of Julius, Billy, Vane, and white men in chains hauling lumber, "For every man in your camp, there are thousands somewhere in the West Indies living under the same yoke, chained in fields, pressed on ships, sold into indenture."

Max pleads with Eleanor, "We can have a life together. And it can start this very minute. All you have to do is say yes."

The music softens. The maroons are gathered happily around a large cooking fire, smiling and talking, and then we see Madi's face. She says, "But I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes."

The video fades to black and the voiceover asks, "What did they care for but money?"

The music returns in earnest with dramatic drums and violins. Anne crawls across broken glass in the hold of a ship. Scott chokes a guard with the chains binding his wrists. Flint says, "Defined by their histories…" Vane stands at the gallows. Silver argues loudly with Flint, "I let you try it your way! I did trust you. But I am through wagering with her life now." A hooded Teach is dragged across the deck of a ship by a rope around his ankles. Flint continues, "…distorted to fit into their narrative." Flint drives a sword into the belly of Peter Ashe. Eleanor desperately picks up a pistol and fires it at the Spanish soldier attacking her. Flint rises to his feet in the forest on Skeleton Island, continuing, "…until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children."

The music climaxes and fades to gentle piano. The video fades to black for a moment, then shows an old pirate leaning against a railing on a ship. The voiceover asks again, "Have you heard the story?" It returns to Jack and the girl in the Guthrie mansion. Girl: I heard… Jack: Hmm? Girl: He sometimes butchered his enemies for amusement, made stew of their flesh. Flint stands over a cowering Alfred Hamilton. Vane, covered in grave dirt, rises over the corpse of his childhood tormentor. Girl: He was truly an animal. Silver cries out in pain and anger as he crushes the skull of Dufresne with his iron foot. Jack: Stew? Girl: Mh-hmm. Jack: I'm… I beg your pardon, but you believe this? Girl: I read it in a newspaper. Jack: Oh. Girl: Mm.

Silver stands in the forest on Skeleton Island, tears in his eyes, jaw clenched. The voiceover asks, "For what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?" The music fades away. Distantly, Israel Hands, Ben Gunn, and two other pirates turn toward a sound in the distance on the island.

/end description]

#the exquisite devastation of black sails never ends and i never want it to

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So late to the party, but the tears I had in my eyes while reading this silly pirate book Treasure Island for the first time, doing my Black Sails fangirl homework. The great well of emotion I felt when they talk about Flint's villainy, or refer to Silver as a monster, or sensing Flint's spectre haunting the story, or Hawkin's recognizing Silver's desperate scramble to survive. The way everything in this simple little story is completely recontextualized just to break my heart.

"You have heard of this Flint, I suppose?"

"Heard of him!" cried the squire. "Heard of him, you say! He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed, Blackbeard was a child to Flint. The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him, that, I tell you, sir, I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman. I've seen his top-sails with these eyes, off Trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that I sailed with put back-put back, sir, into Port of Spain."

"Well, I've heard of him myself, in England," said the doctor. "But the point is, had he money?"

"Money!" cried the squire. "Have you heard the story? What were these villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?"

What indeed, what else could it have all been for?

#black sails

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#Black Sails #😭

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who a creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to women, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

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Something exciting today 😍

#black sails #black sails tattoo

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hey just browsed through your black sails costuming posts, which ar so amazing! and i was looking for more anne bonny costuming but could find only one. i thought maybe i overlooked? any help would be greatly appreciated x

Here they are, links below! Not as many posts for Ms. Bonny, I'm afraid, her costuming wasn't as varied as some others characters (and I also I did her posts back when I was first finding these things so I was still figuring out how I wanted to share and format them).

If you Google "Black Sails costume (actor's name)" and click on the results of a site called Worthpoint, you'll find a treasure trove! Costumes and props and accessories, all photographed in great detail for a previous auction.

https://www.tumblr.com/blerdeblerdeblerr/725003471292596224/black-sails-costumes-anne-bonny-1-of-3?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/blerdeblerdeblerr/725003672907612160/black-sails-costumes-anne-bonny-2-of-3?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/blerdeblerdeblerr/725003788422873089/black-sails-costumes-anne-bonny-3-of-3?source=share

#black sails #black sails costume

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A few visual parallels:

#black sails

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The Traitor Baru Cormorant is like if the themes from Black Sails met the themes from Red Rising but the main character is a lesbian accountant. And I'm here for it.

#Wish I could remember who recommended this book #Honestly it hasn't been my favorite book #but ooh do i love stories about empire and rebellion and control thru economics and the brutal cost of freedom #black sails #red rising #baru cormorant

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Found this today. The final intro visuals rock but I'd love to see all the concepts they pitched!

#black sails