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https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS8xyonem/

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Oh my heart

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Extremely self-indulgent sketches of my favourite stinky pirate man <3

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CAPTAIN FRECKLES

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modern flint enjoys his mornings in peaceful silence

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It’s that time of the year again :)

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[insp]

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So I’ve been thinking a lot about Thomas Hamilton (lmao what else is new) but specifically in the ways in which he’s flawed. Because he is flawed. We always like to say no one in Black Sails is totally good or bad - and I absolutely think that is true, and applies to Thomas as well.

The main criticisms of him seem to be his idealism and the ways in which he supports the colonialist empire. That he was incredibly privileged, and that the people he surrounded himself with were not even close to good people.

(Especially valid since the Enlightenment thinkers he is touching elbows with are the ones who started arguing for why slavery was Actually Good and caused a lot of the social problems that still extend to today in terms of ableism and homophobia and racism and like you name it the Enlightenment thinkers probably helped.)

And all of that is absolutely true when we first meet him - especially in his first interactions with James, Thomas comes off as kind of smarmy and the exact kind of person we all love to hate - someone who is privileged and doesn’t even realize how much. And reading him as the ‘benevolent colonialism’ character is totally valid.

In the show’s overt text, he appears as a foil to the blatant colonialists - Alfred, Woodes, etc. The ‘at least he’s better than these guys’ guy. And he is a great commentary on the Enlightenment as a whole, on how privileged people can mean well and still fuck up, and still be wrong. Because his plan with James is absolutely not the end all be all. It’s flawed - it supports the empire and doesn’t(blatantly) take into account slavery or indigenous genocide or any of the supports that would be required for it to function. And also because he frankly expects a *lot* of James that he has no right to expect. “I need someone who is willing to put his career on the line for the plan I want to enact” is not exactly the sexiest of pick-up lines when you’re talking to someone whose career is literally the only thing he has, T.Ham.

I like to sort of affectionately call him the sexy lamp, because at first glance he seems to be this very static character whose only trait is ‘good’ who is the MC’s motivation for everything(and his ‘reward’ at the end) but not really much else. And he does fit a lot of the tropes of The Love Interest.

But the real ‘problem’ I suppose, is that we never get to see him grow out of any of that. We do see him start - the Thomas Hamilton who sniffs around James’ past and thinks he knows All About Pirates and that “The New World Is A Gift, Lieutenant” is not the same Thomas we see in his final moments in London. But with the other characters, and particularly Flint, we get to see that arc of growth and reasoning through a microscope, whereas with Thomas it’s all subtext.

And that’s not to double down on the ‘Thomas is perfect’ thing. I do genuinely think he, just like all the other characters in Black Sails, has things that are good and bad about him. And like, particularly the colonialism thing - all of the characters in Black Sail function within a colonialist system - Thomas more closely than most of them. Possibly the only ones who wholly reject the system are the Maroons(Julius in particular), I could see an argument for Vane, and *maybe* there’s an argument for Flint as the very end of the series. All of the others - Silver, Jack, Max, Eleanor, Flint, etc, and yes, Thomas - all function within the society they were raised in and the biases inherent within it. 

And breaking out of that is incredibly hard to do. Since the entire finale of the show has to do with what an empire will force us to choose between, and how for some, personal sacrifices are not allowable to forward a movement, I think it’s fair to say it might even be impossible for some of them.

But the thing that I personally love about Thomas (and Flint) that is missing in the others is the *acknowledgement* of that. Thomas flat out says he knows he is privileged. He asks James to help him, because he recognizes that he is not capable of seeing the solutions that would really be helpful. And I think someone like that given access to people with real world experience of the horrors of colonialism(someone like Mr. Scott, or the Maroons) would absolutely be open to changing when he is proven he’s wrong, and sacrificing his personal comfort in order to help those who have more to lose. 

Thomas may have been an idealist, but I don’t think he was at all naive about what he was risking. It would have been impossible for him to be, with everyone around him(Miranda, Peter, James, etc) telling him what is at stake for him personally. And I think there is a very real discussion to be had about him being willing to put other people’s safety on the line(Miranda) for his idealism. But he absolutely knew the risks of what he was doing, he just thought it was that important to try.

*That* is what speaks to me about Thomas’ character. That when he is shown he’s wrong (with the hanging of the pirate and James showing him that society ‘needs it’s monsters’) he changes. He’s willing to fight for what he sees as injustice. The thing that speaks to me about Thomas isn’t that he’s perfect, it isn’t that he is some magical paragon of pureness that even through his immense privilege managed to come out Good uWu. It’s that he realizes that he is *not* perfect, that the *World* is not perfect, and makes genuine efforts - in the best ways he knows how - to change that and to affect the world around him. To make changes that would genuinely benefit society and people(as he understands them). He learns, and he tries to grow, and he tries to use his power to make things better. 

And again, he fails. He does fail. His goal was to change England and to make them realize that a system of government that survives based on the subjugation of The Other was wrong, and he fails at it. But he tries, and he does realize the problem. And that’s all we can do, yeah? Just….all we can do is fucking try our best, admit when we’re wrong, and try to do better. He is a reminder that those in a place of privilege need to use it: that we need to care about things that don’t necessarily effect us because it’s what’s *right*. But also that we’re going to fuck up just by the very nature of our privilege. That we all, no matter how ‘good’ we want to be, have unlearning to do, and sometimes our best isn’t going to be good enough. 

Sometimes our best is still going to hurt people. Thomas is a reminder that we all intersect on so many different levels and that sometimes we see it and sometimes we are blind to it, and that you have to listen and actively seek out people who intersect with the world differently, and above all you’ve got to be kind, and you’ve got to realize that the only way to exist radically in a world that wants to separate us is to live without the shame of failing. Know no shame - the shame of failure, the shame of not being perfect, the paralyzing fear that we are never going to be good enough. Because we’re not. We’re all flawed. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. 

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Toby Schmitz’s reading first paragraph from The Last Smile in Sunder City on “The Sunder City Spectacular” with Luke Arnold.

For @garneteve

#voice of gold #smooth as silk #aussie actor #aussie director #I could listen all day

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*sitcom music starts playing*

#Black Sails #Jack Rackham is my Daddy

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“If you’re going to behave like children, then I will be your daddy!”

- Jack Rackham, to a room full of pirates in Black Sails season 3, just before Teach comes in and announces that Captain Flint is ‘dead’… which of course leads to this (crack) scenario:

It’s time for “Nassau’s Next Top Daddy!”(for Vane)

Please do not repost :)

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🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 

#annebonny

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Captain Jack Rackham and his fashionable assortment of sun glasses - Part 2

(inspired by the post imagine black sails. everything is the same, but jack wears a different pair of these in every episode) (Part 1)

#this needs to be a thing #rackham

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treasure island but everytime the notorious and supposedly dead captain flint is mentioned, there’s a cut to james flint mcgraw and his husband thomas hamilton living a happy gay life together and doing cute things.

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FLINTHAMILTON

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST AU

without that transformation because James loves his gentle beast as he is. He loves Thomas’ sharp cheek bones, pointy ears, veiny bald head and those spiral-shaped  wrinkles on his throat.

Thank you, Linda from RPJ’s fb fan page for your screen cap that inspired this whole thing.

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black sails meme: [2/5 characters] “you people, incapable of accepting the world as it is,” says the man to whom the world handed everything. if no anne, if no rescue, if this is defeat for me, then know this - you and i were neck and neck in this race right till the end, but jesus, did i make up a lot of ground to catch you.