#bs meta

[dykementality]

flint is such a nuanced character he literally cant be boiled down to a guy who had a boyfriend once and it went wrong. hes so captivating and his story is so compelling because its much more complicated than whats on the surface. who he became and the crimes he committed were not all an effort against homophobia. so much gets lost by summing it up to just that. he even says so himself in the show, that some things happened completely unrelated to that, because he is human and was in a bad place. his berserk mode was caused by him going through something truly traumatic and it took everything off the axis, including his own perception of himself, of the world, the people he considered friends, morality, justice, everything. some of the awful things he did were just awful things he did. no agenda. and that is good! because it makes him all the more realistic as a person who was hurt and lost. then theres also a good chunk of it that was brought by life leading him further into radicalization, with the anti-piracy measures becoming sterner, the presence of the maroons and intersectionality, the up close effects of colonization, nassau's occupation, the betrayals and sacrifices. reducing all of that to his sexuality is criminal. he slayed and he flopped and he did it on many different fronts and we love him for all of it. keep up

#flint is truly one of the best protagonists i have ever seen in media put some respect on his name #i think some people just dont like the fact that he becomes a big unmistakable RED #bs meta #dan

[nicolos]

been rewatching clips from S2 and thinking about silverflints big fallout which basically starts when flint lies to silvers face and ends w silver lying to flints face

and I think it's so interesting that it's resolved only in 303 when silver says fuck you, im smarter than you think and also we should be friends . because in hindsight I don't think it's we should be friends that gets to flint.

like look. silvers whole thing is using what he knows about people and watching them to get his way. flints is being convincing through power of will and belief. when flint tells silver the gold is still valuable, after silvers watched him convince people things with lies for a season and a half AND been his partner in crime for half a season, he's like cool cool cool, I thought we had a thing but guess not :) this is obviously made worse when Max calls him one of flints men. he's not one of the crew, max, he's his evil little buddy! he doesn't get taken in by flints little ideas and speeches?

ofc right after flint does this again twice in the season: once when he asks him where the fuck else he has people who care what he says (even though it was also true) and again when he was all "hello ~mr quartermaster"

and I think combined w the loss of control and the fact that flints "where would you even go" has become more evident than ever w the leg, silver *has* to get his own back. sure, the truth about the urca gold would out as soon as they got back to Nassau, so he does need to seize control of the narrative, and pretending it was the mens' idea (men whom he chose!) is saving his own skin, but this is the actual moment of fracture for flint. not - i think - because he thinks silver is lying, but because if this is true, silver isn't who he thinks

from his pov silver is useful (and funny and hot) because of his observational skills and ability to see the truth of men. one of the wildest things he does early in the season is ask silver what he thinks of him! and immediately gets upset when silver can identify his problem! SO he's been having a fun and flirty time right until he wasn't (for other plot reasons). i don't think he can fathom that silver knows he's being lied to, because he doesn't think that he's lied; flints whole thing is believing himself very much, to whatever end. but if silver couldn't tell that those guys were (1) unsuitable for their task and also (2) lying to him about the gold being gone, then silver isn't really as good as he thought. and if he can be taken in by one of the crew - that means his being able to read flint and match him isnt because he's partner material, it's just guessing and hoping. he is - after all - just one of flints men!

it's not about usefulness because obviously silver is doing the quartermastering fine, and it's not Quite about the loss of the gold, the whiplash between 210 and 301 - it's because from that pov silvers silly little asides look like trying to be something that he's not. (also because of the grief and rage and depression that he's not interested in looking at, but *is* willing to talk about like a month later after their shark-based heart to heart)

silvers upset because flint is underestimating him is obviously layered, but it's the evenness lost that he seems so deeply aware of. "he had me there, Billy" "i see him! (and he doesn't even acknowledge it!)" theres fear and paranoia and wanting to do his job right, but he is, i think, aware of the reason for this underestimation, and knows and hates when flint is playing him because flint thinks he CAN. the solution to both can only be the awareness that yes, we can deceive each other, no, no one else in our immediate vicinity can, and yes, this is best when we're working together

i think after 303 is also the last time they have any serious lies between them - which is also why the 410 flashbacks bother flint so much, because silver tries to tell him an easy story and a lot of silvers lies are about being small and helpless (in contrast to flints self-beliefs about being big and powerful), and also why nothing flint says after silver finds out madis alive could convince him to do anything but take the most direct way out - because it sounds a lot like "the gold is still a priority"

#jui speaks #this got ...long #black sails #bs meta #or smth! #john silver #james flint #silverflint

[mega-ringsandthings-world]

Miranda was always what Flint needed, and to her last moments, she remained exactly that. Flint needed a sacrifice to his cause, a martyr to fight in the name of, and that’s what Miranda became.  Because ten years and Flint was still fighting the trappings of civilization for all Miranda said that he had abandoned it. Because Miranda was civilization. She and Flint and Thomas were all parts of some unique machine, and Thomas might have have been been the engine in the machine, and Flint the weapon, but Miranda was the outer shell, the body, the thing that upheld both those things. She was music and bitter hope and china cups and antiseptic on Flint’s wounds. She was someone to bring home books to and someone to write I’m sorry to and someone to say, “you’re getting blood on my floor.” She was the last person who had any idea whatsoever of James McGraw, the only person who knew him as James McGraw, who once called him lieutenant, who once knew what he looked like in a navy uniform, who once knew what he looked in like in the candlelight of a London drawing room. And in turn, he knew her. Knew her as the woman she once was, knew how she looked in fine silks and jewels and pearls in her hair, knew what she looked like with Thomas on her arm, who knew her as a wife and socialite and lady and a scandal, as all the things she never was on Nassau.    And if Flint was ever to try to take true and exiting revenge, she needed to die. Because as long as she was alive, she was the promise of civilization, of peace, of memory, for Flint to return to. And that’s what she realizes when she puts her head down in Peter Ashe’s drawing room and asks him about the clock. The façade of civilization, the dinner, the pleasantries, Flint and Ashe shaking hands, the talk of a trial, a pardon, it needed to be broken, because in that moment to allow it to exist was intolerable. And she broke it, destroyed it with six words. But she was civilization, and she destroyed herself. 

#black sails #black sails meta #bs meta #captain flint #james flint #james mcgraw #miranda barlow

[randomishnickname]

The main deck as a stage - thoughts on S101

Rewatching S101 for the first time in years and I have some thoughts on the ending. Mainly, the reason why Billy, when handed a blank page, goes along with Flint’s wishes and pretends it’s the stolen one.

Thing is, it makes no sense that after what happened on Harbor Island and with Richard Guthrie, Billy'd be very convinced of Flint's Urca de Lima plans. He's seen Flint at his most unhinged and manipulative just a few hours ago! He hasn't had time to think the entire endeavor over! I don't think that, when handed the page, he makes the split decision that

Flint's pursuit of the Urca is worth lying to his brother-in-arms,

he shares Flint's worries about soon-to-be English colonization attempts or

Singleton's death on false pretenses was a necessary evil

The face of a man thoroughly convinced of Flint's leadership

Instead, I think Billy was being typecasted by Flint and reacted accordingly.

Flint sets up a scene: an initiating event (Singleton steals from his crew!), a conflict (trial by combat!), a climax (Flint kills Singleton as punishment for the theft), a clear resolution (Flint returns the stolen page to his crew!). As soon as Flint wins the fight the page being the stolen one becomes the logical conclusion, the satisfying outcome. The righteous man killed the duplicitous man, justice has been served. It's what the audience, waiting with bated breath, very clearly expects. It ties everything together.

And Billy, when he accepts the page from Flint's hand, is handed a role exactly as clear: deliver that bit of information to the audience.

Enter scene: confused boatswain

Except the page is blank.

"Flint? What's my line?

Blindsided by this, everyone's eyes on him, unable to come up with a replacement script from the get-go, Billy goes the path of least resistance and acts out the play according to everyone's expectations. He's carried by the momentum of the story. He's just a hapless stage prop. Yet.

It's the first of many, many times we see the ship's main deck turned into a center stage with Flint (and later Silver) as the showmaster, pushing narratives to enforce his agenda, a game at which he excels.

do Hamlet next babe, you wouldn't even need a new shirt

That man, in a mere minutes after deducting the thief must still be around, devised this exact scene set up and gambled that its dramatic impact would be strong enough to sway Billy. And he was right!! Flint is phenomenal at this game from the get-go, that's his real gift, even more than his fighting prowesses or strategic cunning. A lesser show would let us (the real audience) savor his victory, reflect upon its cleverness and await what comes next.

But then ... after the theatralics, histrionics, the fights and blood and epic grandiloquence acted out in full sunlight ...

We cut to backstage. The brothel, Jack, Anne and Max, hidden in the shadows behind the curtains, ready to rewrite the narrative.

Enter scene - the new playwright

The curtains are fucking red y'all!!!

@urcadelimabean

#this fucking show. they set those themes from EP 1 AAAAAH #black sails #billy bones #meta #black sails meta #bs meta #black sails s101 #captain flint #flint #bs max #jack rackham #anne bonny #my posts #also i need more AUs where Flint's an actor or smthg similar. That's his big gift

[threadbareturnbacks]

Dooley's Screen Worn Stunt Double Wardrobe Set

#black sails #black sails costumes #black sails details #black sails meta #bs meta #bs dooley #going through some old costume inspo and saw this and the brain rot said: That's a Black Sails costume #and sure enough it was #love the diamond weave on the pants and the closeup shot of the fabric #they had a lot of that diamond weave fabric I'm certain you can see it in a lot of Elanor's costumes as well

[calamitys-child]

It just makes me so worked up that like. They put Skye Boat Song in EPISODE TWO. PLEASE okay its under the cut cause its long as fuck but PLEASE listen to me im gonna start biting things because

Skye Boat Song wasn't written until a century and a half after Black Sails is set. The event that Skye Boat Song is about didn't happen for forty years after Black Sails is set. The original song is about Bonnie Prince Charlie fleeing the English after the massacre at Culloden and is intended as both mourning the dead and rallying rebelling Scottish troops to war. It was then rewritten by Robert Louis Fucking Stevenson to be about the loss of innocence and mourning a past self and just.

Listen. I need everyone to hold the image of Flint screaming You tell your governor in your mind for a second and look at the oldest version of the lyrics:

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,

Onward! the sailors cry;

Carry the lad that's born to be king

Over the sea to Skye.

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,

Thunderclaps rend the air;

Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,

Follow they will not dare.

Many's the lad, fought on that day

Well the claymore did wield;

When the night came, silently lay

Dead on Culloden's field.

Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep,

Ocean's a royal bed.

Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep

Watch by your weary head.

Burned are their homes, exile and death

Scatter the loyal men;

Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath

Charlie will come again.

And if you'd indulge me one moment more in this little exercise, picture Silver alone on those cliffs with only Stevenson's version for company:

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

Say, could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day

Over the sea to Skye.

Mull was astern, Rum on the port,

Eigg on the starboard bow;

Glory of youth glowed in his soul;

Where is that glory now?

Give me again all that was there,

Give me the sun that shone!

Give me the eyes, give me the soul,

Give me the lad that's gone!

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,

Mountains of rain and sun,

All that was good, all that was fair,

All that was me is gone.

Of course that song travelled 150+ years back in time to play in 1715 Nassau. After all, Silver did.

#black sails #bs rewatch #bs ii #john silver #james flint #bs meta #black sails meta

[intyalote]

whether or not it’s true the story silver tells madi about flint’s fate in the finale says so much about the three of them and how they understand each other. s4 silver loves madi and comes close enough to losing her that he understands s1 flint who loved thomas and lost him and wanted to see the world burn for it. but though silver has learned to understand love he hasn’t learned to understand ideology and so he can’t understand that s4 flint has grown past that (from losing miranda/meeting madi/everything that happens to them in s3) and truly believes in defeating england not just for revenge but for a better future for the pirates and maroons. he really thinks that giving thomas back to flint would solve everything. and it might have, once, but it doesn’t anymore and madi can see that because she does understand s4 flint, in ways that silver is fundamentally incapable of, which is part of why she’s horrified by the plantation story when silver intended it to comfort her.

#and there's also a delicious ironic twist to silver presenting a plantation as salvation to a woman who leads escaped slaves #but silver starts out self-interested and ends self-interested except the few people he loves are now absorbed into that #his priorities are static and his beliefs are static and he can't understand that it isn't the same for flint #he never really learned to watch two points at once #he sees flint's past but not his present #he doesn't understand character development #and he has no politics in a story all about choosing politics over love of course he breaks it in the end #black sails #bs meta #my meta

[zutarawasrobbed]

Oma & Shu parallel: Scarf

There’s been a long-standing theory in the Zutara fandom that Zuko and Katara are the reincarnation of Oma and Shu. I wanted to add evidence from the live action that confirms it.

I would like to point out the slow motion of when Katara passes him, and he reaches out for the scarf. He looks mesmerized, as if he’s getting lost in a memory. He then proceeds to follow her.

In episode 4, we hear the story of Oma and Shu, and I noticed something very familiar in one of the designs. Oma wears a prominent scarf that flows behind her, just like Katara’s did when she walked by.

This scene is filmed and directed to draw our attention to Zuko’s fixation on the scarf and Katara herself. The slow-motion sequence of Katara walking by, her scarf flowing behind her, and Zuko reaching out to touch the scarf, is highly charged.

My theory for his reaction is that he sees a scarf similar to one he wore in his past life on his reincarnated lover, flowing the same way it used to on him, only this time it’s in her color instead of his. Something in his subconscious tells him to reach out and follow her, and I highly doubt it was simply because of his motivations to capture the Avatar.

*Edit:

I will make a longer more detailed post in the coming days, but I would like to point this out before then. Think of this as a synopsis.

#we ride for scarf #scarfgate #also #let’s go lesbians!! #zutara #already starting my metas #back on my bs #avatar the last airbender #spoilers #atla live action

[neofolk-telvanni-wizard]

*proceeds to rant about humankind on omnichan*

(idea for the last line came from here)

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #overwatch meme #ramattra #zenyatta #genji #my memes #i gave up on this game after ov2 release but bliz added edgy gigachad omnic i waited for 3 years #and he's great so i'm back on my daily overwatch bs #genuinely hope ramattra survives current meta

[digitalafterlife]

hey insane doctor who people. remember the snowman scene in the church on ruby road? there was no baby in the pram 👀 instead of a baby it was “shopping” . tags i left on a gifset then realised fuck it, it deserves its own post

gift-wrapped baby that’s not a baby. saved by the doctor from imminent mortal danger but the snowman was hollow on the inside too…

#starting to think when the season is over we’ll be coming back to these moments and marveling at all the hidden foreshadowing that was #obscured by the on-the-nose heavy-handed Wait For The One Who Waits bs #dw #doctor who theory #doctor who meta #ruby sunday #the church on ruby road #doctor who series 14 #fifteen #fifteenth doctor #ncuti gatwa #russell t davies #doctor who #space babies #the devil’s chord

[dykementality]

anyway, remember when max and silver were subjected to the terrors of life at a very tender age and went on to become the weirdest most traumatized siblings of the bahamas. remember when max would stand amongst the heat and the bugs and the filth on her toes to see inside and remember when the only meaning divined from silvers past was that the world is a place of unending horrors. im trying to say that when max was a kid she learned that peace was born from awful things and that meant home. and she decided then that shed do anything to be inside that home, even the awful things. and when silver was a kid there was no peace anywhere. not outside the room and not inside. there was only the horrors so there was never a reason for him to want to be inside. do you see. max drowning the damned cat and silver saying "theres always a way out" is their ethos. she hungers to be inside because she knows she deserves something good, something better. it was like, there's horribleness here and it is in my way, but i will climb on top of it. i will look back at it one day through the windows. silver needs to be outside because everything hes got was conned out of the world. he has no idea he can even have good things or how to want them. to him it was like, this horribleness looks something like me. i can wear it, this heat and the filth and the bugs, and hide in it. if there was ever a room, he was always running away from it

#then put love in the equation. put love on the way of their respective praxis lol silver never had a chance #this post needs bibliographic references tbh this has been on my mind since that one jui video and tabby's post of maxsilver looking at/away #from the camera #bs meta #dan

[kuzuyamii]

any play, performance, or game is a cage because it's played by the rules written by someone else or whatever black sails is about.

#black sails #bs #edit #mine #meta #tv show #show #book #treasure island #james flint #john silver #long john silver #miranda barlow #max bs #character

[thresholdbb]

what's the threshold theory

There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.

If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.

#every day is threshold day #tldr threshold cemented the time travel shenanigans #we're not counting her disparagement of time travel in relativity i know it's technically before threshold #but they've messed with the timeline so much that her past timeline is also changed. #Time travel is funny because the past is the future the future is the past #so while relativity comes before threshold in the prime timeline her timeline has also been changed in a way that it wasn't before threshol #we could chalk it up to a writing oversight but this is more interesting #not to mention her uncanny luck with the Borg which I think ties in as well #it's part of why her instinct is so strong #also the bio neural gel packs but that's a different theory #listen she's amazing with or without having seen all of time and space but she has seen all of time and that must have affected her somehow #those little salamander babies also have all of the cosmos in their mind #tried to explain as concisely as possible but it is part of my overarching theory #she doesn't second guess herself nearly as much following their jaunt into transwarp #I have more but I'm trying to be brief cause it's written up partially in my drafts somewhere and i have some things i need to do today lol #meta #Star Trek voyager #Kathryn janeway #threshold day #did you expect me thresholdbb to not have a serious threshold theory? #listen I can make anything nonsense and turn anything into a serious theory I was known for this kinda bs in grad school #I wrote a 25 page paper on NOTHING once #I wrote a paper about how corn fields were super gay and it made my professor cry I can spin the bullshit it is one of my skills

[pumpkinhimiko]

Since the post about differences in translation in regards to Kaito and Kokichi's relationship was unfortunately deleted, I've taken it upon myself to make my own for posterity's sake.

NISA: Geez… you're such a naive dude.

OG: 。。。ったく、テメーはピユアなやろうだな。/ …Geez, you're such a pure guy.

A pretty well-known change that makes Kaito sound more insulting then he does in the original. Kokichi's response was also altered not only in the text, but in the voice acting; in Japanese, he sounds uncharacteristically emotionless, rather than annoyed like in the dub.

NISA: Well, we come from different backgrounds. So for now, let's agree to disagree. No one's ever called me naive before. And from Kaito? Seriously?

OG: まあ、百田ちゃんとオレの話が合わないのわ最初あきらめているけど。。。 / Well, I'd already given up on seeing eye to eye with Momota-chan since the beginning… ピュアなんて言われてのわ初めてだよ。オレみたいに嘘つきがさ。/ But that's the first time someone's called a liar like me pure.

Kaito goes from telling Maki to let Kokichi go or he'll die, to telling Maki to let Kokichi go so she won't get executed:

NISA: Maki Roll, cut it out! You'll get killed if you don't!

OG: ハルマキ、もうやめろ！それ以上やったらマジで死ぬぞ！/ Harumaki, stop already! Any more than that and he'll seriously die!

Kaito's response to Maki saying he shouldn't have cooperated with Kokichi is translated to sound like he was pestered into it. In the original, it sounds like he's seriously reflecting on Kokichi's state of mind throughout the game.

NISA: It was kinda hard to ignore such an annoying guy. Geez… I wonder how far ahead he planned this evil scheme of his.

OG: 。。。あいつわそんあ易しいヤツじゃねーよ。/ …He wasn't that simple. まったく。。。どこからどこまでが計算だったんだろうな。あいつの悪巧みわよ。/ Man… I wonder how much of it he'd planned out. For that cunning scheme of his.

And of course, Kaito's final words on Kokichi were made to sound a lot harsher.

NISA: He was a lying sack of shit.

OG: 。。。あいつは筋金入りの嘘つきだったぜ。/ …He was a liar to the core.

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa killing harmony #drv3 #ndrv3 #kaito momota #kokichi ouma #oumota #doretalks #meta #translation bs

[lovegrowsart]

it's pretty wild to me that people don't see that aang running off to save katara in CoD is his luke in empire strikes back moment, where he runs headlong into his want and attachment and he's narratively punished for doing so and not learning his lesson - aang runs after katara despite guru pathik's warning, like luke runs after leia and han from yoda on dagobah despite yoda's warning; similarly, as a result, things go to hell in ba sing se like they do on bespin - aang enters the avatar state before he's ready and gets killed, and ba sing se falls to the fire nation, luke fights vader before he's ready, loses a hand, and symbolically commits suicide after vader tells him he's luke's father.

the difference between their character arcs is that george lucas and co. actually went thru with luke's hero's journey and understood the fundamental difference between attachment and love, whereas I don't think bryke understood this difference and then dropped this from aang's arc pretty much completely and replaced it with aang digging in his heels into his want and attachment and he gets rewarded with energy bending from a lion turtle, the avatar state from a random pointy rock, and his forever girl from the self-indulgent white men that couldn't bring themselves to give their hero a compelling character arc that meant he might not have gotten everything he wanted at the end.

#the wasted potential of aang's arc gets to me so bad #the narrative and thematic set up is entirely there and they just shove it in the bin lmao #it especially irks as someone raised buddhist and dealing with writers that invoke these themes out of a fascination #with the religion and philosophy but then a complete unwillingess to actually commit to what those themes require of the character arcs #anyway sorry to say it #but zuko's arc does a better job embodying buddhist themes than aang's does in the end #despite all misappropriated aesthetics to the contrary #aang critical #but its really the writing like i LIKE aang i love his potential i hate how self indulgently he's written by the end of the show #atla critical #meta* #holly talks bs #also yes it would've been better narratively for aang katara zuko to the go the way of luke leia han #even if katara couldn't have been revealed as aang's surprise secret twin lmao #the thematic conceit of the triangle is the same in that luke and aang get over their infatuation with the first pretty girl he sees #and becomes the hero he needs to be #meanwhile hanleia and zutara are saving each other and being cool and kissing #anyway

[whoopsitswincest]

I don't even have a problem with dean/cas as a ship. It's lovely. I can see it - i really can. Under different circumstances, I might even love it and be obsessed with it.

Those different circumstances being if Dean and Cas were in a completely different show. Cause in THIS show, Dean and Sam, as written by Eric Kripke and portrayed by Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, have such palpable chemistry that it reached through my laptop screen and punched me in the gut.

I'm like, "aw yeah Dean would be so cute with that gay angel! Too bad he's desperately, wretchedly, fatally in love with his little brother though. Sorry Cas, it's not your fault. You never even stood a chance."

By the time Cas arrived, it was way too late. I had already seen how deep the codependence went. I already knew that there was no hope for Sam and Dean. I already knew that their love was terminal. It's not that dean/cas isn't appealing. It's just...impossible.

#samdean #wincest #text posts #my bs #meta #sam x dean #deansam #dean/sam #dean x sam #sam/dean