unapproachable terrifying intelligent captains who are viewed as gods of the sea and who bribe their crew with the promise of spanish gold to achieve a years-in-the-making revenge scheme they're utterly obsessed with to the point of madness
[re flint talking to the maroon queen in 3.5] ok it fucking sucks but this is how solidarity works a lot of the time. white man proposes widespread slave revolts for his own tactical reasons, and then afterward grows to give a care while in the process of working toward his own ends. it doesn't make the caring not genuine, but wow that is clearly the trajectory.
They really went to Toby Stephens and said, “We’re imagining the saddest man—completely regret ridden, absolutely terrified of his own passions, but also weirdly “dark nautical” in theme.
And Toby Stephens went, “That’s actually kind of my specialty.”
If we were able to take Nassau, if we are able to expose the illusion that England is not inevitable, if we are able to incite a revolt that spreads across the New World...then yeah, I imagine people are gonna notice.
i am once AGAIN thinking about the scene in black sails where flint has just been forced by miranda to confront his overwhelming grief over losing thomas, which has been fueling his unholy rage for the past two seasons. flint is sitting there, having a flashback, drowning in the tragedy and injustice of his gay lover’s death… then vane bursts into the room like a roided-up kool-aid man and immediately tries to kill him. 10/10, flawless tonal whiplash, one of the funniest moments in the entire show.
Ask a historian, “What was mankind’s greatest invention?” Fire? The wheel? The sword? I would argue it’s history itself. History isn’t fact. It’s narrative, one carefully curated and shaped. Under the pen strokes of the right scribe, a villain becomes a hero, a lie becomes the truth.