#To clarify I love Flint and Miranda I just don't know what to do with this as a source of inspiration | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batsarebetterthanpeople · 2 months

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hi sorry just asking about black sails! i think in not watching the full show the message is missed (no shade here - no show is for everybody). the kiss scene between flint & thomas is in the dark for a reason. darkness itself is used continually throughout the show as a metaphor for queerness, yes, but also freedom & discovery. flint & thomas’ relationship is revealed in season 2 via flashbacks and a book with thomas’ handwriting in, telling him to "know no shame" in regards to the relationship. in the finale of the show, flint & thomas kiss outside in broad daylight. flint's journey to accept himself and what he fights for is the core part of his story, and i don't think that will come across in his season 1 scenes & a gif of a kiss.

as for max, most fans of the show i've spoken to had issues with the sa scenes in season 1 & the attempted pandering to game of thrones. when game of thrones' popularity died out, so did a lot of those attempts at attracting the same audience (thankfully). as a lesbian, i do disagree with the take on max & eleanor though. i did enjoy their scenes and story. i think an 18+ show is always going to have more graphic sex scenes for any relationship - as far as i can remember, max & eleanor have one sex scene in the pilot, and then max has a couple more in season 2 with another woman. i didn't see the sex scenes as pandering to the male gaze so much as i saw them as sex scenes from an 18+ tv show that depicts nudity & sex.

my last point is that while i appreciate the fact season 1 especially might look like queer characters have just been added in, the whole show centres queerness as a topic. flint’s desire for revenge after thomas is what drives him to nassau & piracy, and in later seasons to turn that into a violence against the british empire in general. anne’s s2 arc focused on her discovery of being a queer woman & where that fit into her life when the most important person to her at the time was a man. the show depicts 2 canon, on-screen polycules (max, jack & anne, and flint, thomas & miranda), explores their dynamics with each other and how that relates to their stories. i do think a lot of the messages and themes within the show are overlooked if you’ve only seen the first season - not telling you to watch it if it’s not your style obviously, i just think diminishing it to a show where queer characters were just added to differentiate it from game of thrones is misleading when queerness and the love between these queer characters drives the story.

Ok up front I want to say that perhaps you have a couple points and I'm going to sound mean in the first couple of paragraphs but I don't feel any animosity towards this ask I'm just clarifying my criticisms and also letting you know that I do know more than you think I know, I'll come back around to being nice in the final paragraph I promise.

Lets start with the Flint kiss because I have seen the finale kiss. They do that thing where they tilt their heads to an unnatural degree so you can't see that the actors lips aren't touching.

Second, it wasn't the graphicness of the sex scene that was my problem. They could have shown me pussy and I would have felt less uncomfortable. I think there should be more sex scenes in media, I just think they should be done better than that one was. It was more about the combination of the context of the scene, the way the scene was shot, the amount of time spent on it. Things like that make up the difference between a sex scene that feels fine and a sex scene that feels fetishy. I don't know about the later sex scenes but the one with Eleanor distinctly felt Weird and I would appreciate it if you didn't assume i was talking about sex scenes in general when I'm talking about that scene specifically.

But otherwise yeah, Flint's arc revolves around his relationship with Thomas, I was aware of that when I criticized Black Sails. I think that's part of the problem with them not showing Flint and Thomas's physical relationship outside of two kisses neither of which you can really see. Flint is a major character, his relationship with Thomas drives his emotional arc, and straight and wlw couples are having sex all over the place, why are Flint and Thomas relegated to these two half assed kisses?

Basically I don't think that Black Sails isn't real queer media but I do think it was written by mostly straight people and while it does show queer relationships, it could do a better job in several places. Which is fine I don't think all queer rep has to be perfect but I also think I should get to point out where it didn't work for me and where I felt a certain way about it. If you felt like Max and Anne's relationship was relatable to you as a lesbian or even just that the show was fun to watch that's awesome. Personally I got driven off by it trying to be a GOT clone early in it's conception and I'm not willing to sit through a season of that to get to the good bit especially if I'm gonna be asked to sympathize with characters who explicitly own slaves in the canon of the show along the way, but that's just where my mileage is at. Just because I criticize something and don't like it that much and state why doesn't mean I have beef with the fans or think nobody should like it. As far as I'm concerned Flint is the rightful king of Tumblr.com. I would just appreciate it if the fans didn't lie and start wars with other fandoms, which I certainly don't think you're doing.

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