#so of course then figuring out what you want to do with flint post canon is necessary

[jaynovz]

In discussions about the finale of Black Sails, one of the things I often see is folks hard-focusing on Flint's fate, in an either-or binary fashion, usually presented as "Which do you believe-- that Silver killed him? or sent him to the plantation?"

Now, for posterity's sake, gonna mention a few things-- first off, that's simply not thinking broadly enough. There are farrrr more than two options here and I've come up with my share of the reallyyyyy bad ones for sure. Whatever your mind chooses, none of those are happy endings anyway, there are bittersweet, bad, and worse endings all the way down. (They are paused, they are in a time loop, and also all endings and no endings are happening simultaneously)

But also, the more cogent point is that, it doesn't actually matter what happened *to Flint* The story is... not actually about him at that point. We have transitioned from Flint as protag to Silver as protag, setting up for (the fanfiction that Black Sails has ended up making of, ugh, king shit) Treasure Island.

And so, I just, don't find it to be of particular interest exploring what we think Flint is actually doing or if he's alive for real. What is EXTREMELY interesting to explore though is how Silver's speech at the end to Madi is sort of giving Thomas back to Flint as a pacifier/comfort object, but how... Silver is giving Flint that thing in his own mind as his own type of pacifier/comfort object.

That's the REALLY chewy bit. What actually happens to Flint is not the purpose of that scene for me, of Silver's recounting of events to Madi. It's more about... projection. It's about how Silver is dealing with whatever happened to Flint/whatever he did.

And I just feel like it's missing the point to focus so hard on if Flint is alive or not.

He is the ghost of the story regardless, that's what's important. He's going to haunt the narrative for the rest of everyone's lives. No one has been untouched or unscarred by coming into contact with Captain Flint; he has a forever legacy. I'm not the first to call him this, but he's Schrödinger's Flint and he's staying that way.

But this?

"No. 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. There is a place near Savannah... where men unjustly imprisoned in England are sent in secret. An internment far more humane, but no less secure. Men who enter these gates never leave them. To the rest of the world, they simply cease to be. He resisted... at first. But then I told him what else I had heard about this place. I was told prominent families amongst London society made use of it. I was told the governor in Carolina made use of it. So I sent a man to find out if they'd used it to hide away one particular prisoner. He returned with news. Thomas Hamilton was there. He disbelieved me. He continued to resist. And corralling him took great effort. But the closer we got to Savannah, his resistance began to diminish. I couldn't say why. I wasn't expecting it. Perhaps he'd finally reached the limits of his physical ability to fight. Or perhaps as the promise of seeing Thomas got closer... he grew more comfortable letting go of this man he created in response to his loss. The man whose mind I had come to know so well... whose mind I'd in some ways incorporated into my own. It was a strange experience to see something from it... so unexpected. I choose to believe it... because it wasn't the man I had come to know at all... but one who existed beforehand... waking from a long... and terrible nightmare. Reorienting to the daylight... and the world as it existed before he first closed his eyes... letting the memory of the nightmare fade away. You may think what you want of me. I will draw comfort in the knowledge that you're alive to think it. But I'm not the villain you fear I am. I'm not him."

This is the speech of a man who is self-soothing, who is spinning himself a tale, who is projecting, who is coping.

and THAT is just, way chewier, innit?

#Now that's just from a canon point of view #once we start to delve into like fan fiction #Because fic must necessarily change the story and change canon because it's creating something new #so of course then figuring out what you want to do with flint post canon is necessary #but for me fanfiction is a different realm than canon only based meta conversations about the show #black sails meta #long post #black sails #john silver #james flint #thoughts #black sails spoilers #I was coaxed into writing my group chat meta into a post by the Committee mwah

[beth-is-rainpaint]

I was so excited when I saw that @aosrecweek is doing another celebration of creations for this year! It also feels really special that I actually have some works of my own to include.

I’m so glad our fandom is still going strong! This show has my whole heart, and I hope creators continue making AoS content for a long time.

My 2021 Fics

“to carry love, to carry children of our own” - written for Valentine’s Day. Fitzsimmons deal with the difficulties of early parenthood together.

“I see my future in your eyes” - written for Fitzsimmons’s wedding anniversary. How they spent three (or five, including the Time Loop) of their anniversaries.

“What They Were Fighting For” - written for the AoS finale anniversary. Missing scenes from Fitzsimmons’s years in space and post-final-mission conversations between Fitz and the team. (I’m going to finish it in 2022 I promise.)

“You Feel Like Home (Home to Me)” - written for @agentofship​ for Fitzsimmons Secret Santa 2021. When Fitz finds a stray puppy, he has to move in with Jemma until they find the puppy’s owner. Surely he’ll be able to keep the fact that he’s been in love with her for years a secret, right?

My Favorite 2021 Fics

by @pictures-to-prove-it​:

“Call the Midwife” - the sweetest, funniest, most chaotic version of Alya’s birth, with Enoch as the titular midwife, of course.

by @bobbiamorse​​:

“i want to sit under my own vine” - a conversation between Coulson and Mack about what it means to be the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

“if lost return to bobbi” - Bobbi tries to prevent chaos when the team goes to Costco. It works about as well as you’d expect.

“bare” - Fitz and Hunter pick out tattoos for each other.

“soup is a lot like family” - Hunter and Coulson make soup together when the rest of the team has the flu.

“something borrowed” - the women of S.H.I.E.L.D. help Daisy with wedding preparations.

“there’ll be happiness after me” - Mack tells Flint about Bobbi.

“hate that falling feels like flying til the bone crush” - Jemma learns how to be a better friend to Bobbi.

“and time’s forever frozen still” - Mack and Huntingbird post-canon friendship.

“i promised myself i wouldn’t let you complete me” - Coulson and May are Bobbi’s foster parents. Truly one of the most beautiful fics I’ve ever read, and it’s not even halfway finished.

by @besidemethewholedamntime​​:

“they danced by the light of the moon” - a hauntingly beautiful recounting of 6+1 times Fitzsimmons danced together.

by @ravenpuffheadcanons​​

“You think I’m not romantic?” - vulnerable, very-in-love, actually-communicative Fitzsimmons at the very beginning of their relationship.

“It’s only a passing thing, this shadow” - missing scene from 1x20, after Fitz asks Jemma for reassurance that she’s not Hydra.

“Somewhere, a Star in the Dark” - Fitzsimmons after three different Christmases at three different stages in their relationship.

by @eclecticmuses​​:

“The Past that Stands Between Us” - a magnificent Fitzsimmons AU of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I am still in awe of how seamlessly canon details are woven into this very AU story.

“Blue Danube” - an AU of season one in which FItzsimmons go undercover as a married couple--and have to hide the fact that they’ve been together since before joining S.H.I.E.L.D.

by @nerdyduckrants​:

“Five Fitzsimmons Christmases + One Fitzsimmons Family Christmas” - my Fitzsimmons Secret Santa 2021 gift, in which Fitzsimmons figure out how to keep their Christmas tradition of a cozy movie marathon no matter what else is going on.

My Favorite 2021 Moodboards

by @2minutes2midnight​​:

Fitzsimmons + Cosmos

Fitzsimmons + Picnic

Fitzsimmons family + gardening

Bobbi Morse + fairy godmother AU

Fitzsimmons family + domestic

Dousy + “Chasing Stars” by Fleurie

Fitzsimmons + baby Alya

Jemma Simmons + flowers

Philinda + Shield academy

Bobbi Morse + details

Fitzsimmons Family for the AoS Finale Anniversary

Fitzsimmons + Friends to lovers AU

Huntingbird + fake dating at a wedding AU

Fitzsimmons + winter walk

Fitzsimmons + celebrating Christmas through the years

by @springmagpies​​:

Favorite Ships: Fitzsimmons

Fitzsimmons + Domestic Bliss

Fitzsimmons + Neighbors AU

Jemma Simmons - Season 7

Leo Fitz - Season 7

Fitzsimmons + Professors AU

Fitzsimmons + Soft

Fitzsimmons + Romance

Huntingbird + Domestic + Orange

Philinda + College AU

AoS Men--Little Women Series: Mack as Mr. Laurence

My Favorite 2021 Fanart

by @eclecticmuses​:

Fitz and Hallucination!Jemma

Ladies’ Night

AoS Team Art Nouveau

The Kissing Bough

by @agentreeb​​

AoS Team for the Finale Anniversary

Jemma Saying Goodbye to Alya

Fitzsimmons’ Wedding for Their Anniversary

Fitz and Alya

by @giorgiaink​​:

Fitzsimmons Hug

Flint

Natalia Cordova-Buckley

by @svenjaliv​​:

Fitzsimmons’ First Kiss

#aos wrapped 2021 #aosrecweek #aos #agents of shield #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d. #fitzsimmons #leo fitz #jemma simmons #alya fitzsimmons #deke shaw #daisy johnson #alphonso mackenzie #yoyo rodriguez #bobbi morse #lance hunter #melinda may #phil coulson #flint #philinda #huntingbird #fic rec #moodboard #fanart

[punkpoemprose]

December 1st- Sparks

Universe: Canon (shortly before Frozen 2)

Rating: G (General Audiences, fluff)

Length: 1849 Words

A/N:Hello friends and welcome to the 2019 Kristanna Advent Fic season! Let’s see how far I make it this year, shall we?

This is just some soft canonverse. You can blame @lukin08 for that post about Anna’s abilities with flint and steel being related to her time spent with Kristoff and I couldn’t not run with it. It was so perfect! This is just all about kissing. Some F2 spoilers if you really squint, but not really.

Anna hummed when she felt Kristoff’s chest press against her back, when she felt his arms wrap around her, his palms gently guiding her hands. She’d initially thought that his offer to teach her some “survival skills” was just an excuse to get her out of the castle and into the woods with him where they could be alone. She should have known of course that Kristoff was always as genuine as he came off, and that he absolutely was bringing her out of the city to learn something. She was finding it anything but boring of course. His hands-on teaching methods were exactly what she needed, and his proximity felt even more special with no prying eyes on them.

“So you have the flint, and the striker,” he was looking over her shoulder as he showed her in the most physical way possible, what she was meant to do. As he brought her right hand, the one holding the steel striker, slowly to the left, which held her flint, he directed her motion fluidly, like he’d done it a thousand times before. Anna realized that he probably had.

“You want to hit the striker against the flint quickly, but you have to hit it on the sharp edge of the flint if you want it to actually spark. The flint is stronger than the steel, the energy you put into the strike is what makes a sliver of the steel break off the striker, and the friction makes it hot enough to light a fire.”

Anna nodded, focusing more on the way it felt to have him holding onto her, how having him teach her something felt like one of the best gifts she’d ever been given, than she was on the task at hand.

It wasn’t really her fault that she couldn’t focus, he was breathing on her neck, and she was wrapped up in him. When they were alone together, she had the unique opportunity to not worry about the world for a while and it was her every intention to savor the moments, to make them last. She never knew when they’d find another moment to escape together, but she did know for certain that he was just as glad for the time away as she was herself.

“Got it?”

“Got what?”

She felt him trying to hold back a laugh, the way his shoulders rose and fell, the way he shifted away from her just slightly like he could distance himself enough in a few moments that she wouldn’t hear his snort. She didn’t mind. Normally she’d give him a pout or at least raise an eyebrow at him, but she couldn’t help but smile a bit to herself. She’d been caught, plain and simple.

“Just try it Anna,” he said as he stepped away from her, removing his arms from her side to step around to her front to watch her attempt.

She frowned at the loss of contact. She thought for a moment that she should have paid more attention so that she could have asked him for several more hand over hand lessons. She wasn’t above playing dumb when it meant there would be benefits like that. She had a feeling he always knew when she did so, but he always played along.

She felt his eyes on her, so she looked down at the flint and steel again, trying to remember what he had said about it while she had been focusing on just how good it felt to have him holding her. She’d watched him do it a few times, and it looked so effortless. She knew that it wouldn’t be, he made a lot of things look effortless that she needed multiple hours to even make a passable attempt at. She didn’t mind so much, because it meant that she got hours with him, and because she knew just how long it had taken him to learn how to do a box step.

Her first strike of the steel against the flint yielded no sparks, and the second attempt she quickly endeavored fared no better.

“Am I not on the point enough?” she asked, recalling what she had listened to, about needing to strike the steel against the pointed edge of the flint. She thought that she had been doing so correctly, but she wasn’t above asking for help. She particularly wasn’t above asking for his help, not when he gave it so freely and with such a broad smile.

She looked to him when she asked and immediately felt the small tinge of frustration, she’d initially felt blossom in her chest fade away. He was giving her a look that said so many things that she was still trying to get used to. It said that he loved her, that he was proud of her, and that he was genuinely happy to be sharing this moment with her. After years of pounding on a door, hoping her sister would give her the affection she sought desperately, after her first relationship turning out to be a lie, she was still sorting through what it meant to have anyone in her life. She saw Kristoff taking it in stride every day, but it in was the moments like this, where they were completely alone and she knew that he wasn’t going anywhere. Everything in her life before Kristoff was flux and secrets, but he was solid and true.

What they had went beyond any romance, any snapshot portrait of a courting couple she’d ever seen. What they had was real.

“No, you’ve got that part right, I think you just need to hit it harder and faster. You’re trying to cause friction so the faster and harder the contact the more likely it’ll work.”

She nodded and focused again on the two items in her hand. She was going to figure it out. She’d taught him how to dance, how to do a proper bow, how to blend into the aristocracy enough that he could begin to feel less uncomfortable when he happened to be around for the reception of whatever dignitary of the week was visiting Arendelle. She could at least learn how to make some sparks.

He took her hands in his once again, this time facing her. His fingers were rough on the backs of her hands, and she thought about all the ways that they were meeting in the middle. He was rough, she needed that in her life. She wouldn’t describe herself as soft, and she couldn’t quite get herself to believe that he needed her in the way she needed him, but that he was always so willing to meet her where she was, to help carry her forward, she had to believe that it meant something more than words could say.

When she allowed herself a glance up at his face, his eyes met hers instantly. There was a gentleness in his expression that she only ever saw him have when he looked at her, and she knew that it must truly be a look for only her because she watched him often. She watched him from across rooms, from across the marketplace, from a castle balcony, from Elsa’s side, from Sven’s back, and he only ever gave that soft, open look to her.

“I know you can do it,” he said quietly, “I believe in you more than anyone or anything Anna.”

Her heart raced. She knew that he didn’t believe that he was good with words, but to be on the receiving end of such a sincere compliment made her melt. She thought that maybe a moment before she would have been able to do it, to make sparks fly, but now she wanted nothing more than to drop both the objects in her hands and grab onto him instead.

When he pulled his hands away from hers, smiling pleasantly as he took a step back, giving her room, the movement of her hands was instinctual. Maybe, she thought, the reason that he could believe in her so strongly, is that when she thought of his belief in her, it made her believe that she could do whatever he thought she could. He gave her strength, he was solid, he was steady, and he was hers.

His face lit up before she even realized what she’d done. By the time she looked down at her hands again, she had entirely missed the spark, but seeing his face, seeing her prove him right and his joy because of it, was more rewarding than her newfound ability to potentially start a fire.

He took a few steps back to her, filling the once empty space between them. She easily slipped the flint and steel into her bag and stepped into his embrace. It was such a small thing for him to be so proud of her over, but she took it. She drank it in and pressed her face into his chest as he wrapped his arms tightly around her.

“Thank you,” she said into his chest, smiling to herself appreciatively.

“Thank you for wanting to come try this with me,” he responded. He had moments where he was almost too humble. She wondered, causing herself to giggle, if he could give lessons in that to visiting aristocrats.

“I like trying things with you. I’m catching up on a lot of years of trying new things.”

He pulled back slightly and her heart fluttered as soon as she saw the playful expression on his face.

“Can we try something then?”

“You know I’ll never say no to you.”

He shrugged at the comment, as if he wasn’t certain of it, but was happy to take the statement in the spirit in which it was given, then leaned down slightly to kiss her.

She tiptoed up to meet him, gladly, and was only slightly surprised to find that he kissed her nose chastely.

It wasn’t necessarily something new, but there was still a playfulness in his eye. She opened her mouth to question it and found herself being lifted from the ground, suddenly, but not at all roughly.

He kissed her then, fully, on the mouth, with one arm on the small of her back and the other under her knees. The realization that he was holding her like a bride didn’t come to Anna until much later, a thought that came with questions she desperately wanted the answers to. In the moment, however, her only thought was to kiss him back, unreservedly.  

“I love trying things with you,” she whispered against his lips.

“Lets hope we never run out of things to learn then?”

She laughed and rested her forehead against his. For a moment they were still, but it was a brief intermission only before he was carrying her to his wagon to kiss her again and to continue to do so until she was senseless.

Even if she hadn’t succeeded on her first try with the flint, she knew that there was a flame between them that never went out.

#kristanna #kristanna advent 2019 #this is so fluffy #the rest of the ideas I have are filth so I had to start out soft #Y'all are enablers and I love you for it

[multsicorn]

What are your top three favorite ships (relationships or friendships) at the moment?

At the moment! That’s a good question (thank you)....

Number one has definitely gotta be Jack/Parse, from Check Please. I can’t believe I’ve been obsessed with this ship for almost three years now! ... and I’ve got a discord where I talk about it more days than not. As to why, ugh, there’s an essay that I keep writing in my head about that... maybe tomorrow I’ll take a break from being almost done (any day) finishing my writing tools and actually write it instead. That’d be fun. Cause the thing about Failing At Life, you see....

Number two as of this week is Flint/Silver (though I believe the usual order is SilverFlint? but anyway) from Black Sails. Friendship? Relationship? Neither really applies to these two, exactly, but I’m very much a fan of something that in many ways resembles a relationship while keeping the shifting balance of power struggle and uncertainty of trust that they have in canon. Which is after all, what I find appealing. Everything from ‘in my head, you are not welcome’ to Flint shooting his own protection... jesus, it’s a lot. I love ships dancing on that thin line between enemies and everything else. (This is the other ship, btw, that I’ve been reading on ao3).

Third!... I don’t have a single good answer, so I’m going to cheat. (Don’t I always tend to do that? Ask me for three things, you’ll get seven. Or none. Cause I got overwhelmed by the seven. But, um, anyway.)

A couple of ships from things I’ve watched now/recently.

Third, cause I do spend more time thinking about it, cause I watched the series over a longer period of time (I do not like the current trend for binge tv... but that’s another post), and cause it has SONGS to listen to/watch forever, is Pearl/Rose from Steven Universe. (Rose/Pearl? idk.) “do it for her! that’s how you know you can win -“... I could quote every line of that song and write an essay just on it too but I will Not. (uh. maybe later. if anyone wants). Anyway - yeah - sure - the Pink Diamond reveal changed a lot of stuff - I really was into the original knight-and-lady dynamic, along with all the added great queerness/weirdness of how gems do things, and the complications of ‘I’ve got to be there for her son’ (also a wonderful! song!!! lol I love musicals). But I’m never gonna say no to adding fucked-up power dynamics in an angsty backstory. Who do you think I am.

And, fourth... Allison & Vanya (or possibly Allison/Vanya? I’m not definitively opposed) from The Umbrella Academy. ... The thing with the ordering here is that while I spend more time, I am sure, thinking about Rose/Pearl, I am more likely to read, and to read about, Vanya and Allison. So. ~shrug emoji~? And - the thing there - this is exactly what I said when liveblogging the show, I’m not sure I can be more specific - is “he made me his accomplice,” is “you left” - “I didn’t want to leave *you*”. I. just. okay. I did not grow up in an academy for superheroes, obviously, because those don’t real, but the way this show depicted a group of people dealing with their shared fucked-up childhood and family, was very extremely excessively #relateable to me, and Vanya and Allison most of all. That book! All those deliberate (and sometimes overly much) attempts at friendship! The near final confrontation and the actually final confrontation!!! I am making so much sense!!! ... but, anyway. When I first dug through the ao3 tags they were dire; I hope there may be something better now. And I want to do Something... I don’t know what... but Allison is not, I’d imagine, going to be sanguine about having her throat cut! for fucking ever. And Vanya’s not going to be quite as apologetic as she probably should. And I’m okay with incest - if someone else goes there - it’s not a hard no for me, generally, but since my feelings about this show are so very much, personally, about family... I don’t know if I’ll want to go there myself. Then again, the actresses are *damn* pretty, so maybe, lol.

(Honestly, I just? Don’t have the same ‘as long as it’s porn or angst or ideally both give it to me’ um, lack of standards at least at the start for f/f ships I love as for m/m. And I need material to fan the flames of fannishness. Hence, 1, 2, 3, 4... but I love these things, so I’d like to figure out how it can work for me.)

Anyway! I promised you seven, didn’t I? I can’t count. I meant six. Because, after, I love my old ships just as much, I think about them just as much, as newer ones. (No, not Glee. That’s just on my blog cause it’s still on my dash after all this time).

Fifth... I still think about my John Laurens (not anyone else’s, really, but mine), just about every fucking day. I left Hamilton fandom quite decisively, several years ago, for several reasons.. (oh, the ship is Hamilton/Laurens of course), but I can never shake that story I was gonna write and will never write. Apparently. - It goes like this.

John Laurens was trying to die in the war. For good reasons - his apparent utter inability to change anything in the world - (I know that’s not a good reason! don’t talk to me!) - and for worse ones (being gay, his lover married, feeling so guilty about the former that he wanted the latter, oh, John). He almost succeeded, at the very last minute - in history he did succeed. But in my AU, he wakes up - the war’s over - and he’s gotta figure out What To Do Next. “Dying is easy, living is harder,” yeah? One of the (many many many) things I loved about Hamilton is how it went in on that, only not for Laurens, of course, cause he died... and that’s the story that keeps singing in my brain; there are, fractally, lots of details, of course, but that’s the outline, the story of this ship.

Six! I need to finish this post. It is 1:24 am. So the fact that Roy/Ed from Fullmetal Alchemist (it is really a very great show - ships aside, when I rewatch, I just love it) is still enough of a favorite that I wanna count it will. Lol. Stand mostly on its own. I have been rereading rainjoys’ corpus of fic for them continually for a dozen years now. And just a few days ago I was talking irl about this great idea I had for a roleswap AU... even though it was inspired by shippynes, the AU itself isn’t shippy. It’ll, also, be a different post! And I love magic science and geniuses who disobey their commanders and it is 1:30 am goodnight <3.

#forever fave #no i’m not tagging all the ships and characters right now #i love... things #eta also i would love any more questions ;) #to answer tomorrow morning!

[jadedbirch]

ARTIST CLAIMS ARE NOW OPEN!

If you have questions about some of these fics before signing up and want us to follow up with the authors, please shoot El an email.  Otherwise, read all 24 of these, and email in your top 4 picks!

SUBMIT CLAIMS BY APRIL 23rd

1. Good ships scuttled on the deep

His fingers follow flecks of blood down to the point of his captain’s cheekbone. A thin pink scar, no wider than John’s fingernail, marks Flint’s pale skin. Flint’s eyes close completely. “I thought it was a welcome,” John says. Silver and Flint become lovers following the battle on Maroon Island. S4 AU with established silverflint relationship and some canon divergences.

2. Pray For The Wicked On The Weekend    John Silver spends his days in a faded green pickup truck filled with salt-loaded shotguns and silver and holy water on the back roads of the United Stated hunting monsters and demons and things that go bump in the night, and he’s fine with it, because it’s the easiest way to forget what he’s lost. But there’s something coming, something that he can’t face alone. So where else would he turn but the best Hunter the US has ever seen. Even if no one has heard from James Flint since Thomas and Miranda Hamilton went missing.

3. patron saint of lost causes

It takes two weeks to get Flint off Skeleton Island. Or rather--it takes two weeks for the island to let them go. In which Skeleton Island is a living character and brings a host of nightmares through the mist which force Silver and Flint to confront the dangers of their minds. Featuring surreal dreamscape horror as Silver literally battles figures from his murky, unnamed past and Flint moving through a river of blood and ghosts until he and Silver finally meet in the middle. Influences include Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone and Maria Luisa Bombal's work.

4. Let It All Unbreak You Post season four. Alone in taverns, at different points in time, Flint and Silver ponder what went wrong with their different relationships. They drink, remember and regret. They reflect upon the little they had together, and regret not making it work after the war with Madi or Thomas, while knowing very well that the very reason it all went wrong is that they had changed too much, had given each other too much, yet were not brave enough to admit it to each other when it was still time.

(Ships: Silverflint, flint x miranda x thomas, flint x thomas, silver x madi) (Angst, definitely not fix-it, no happy ending)

5. Pirate Sex is In Vogue

My fic is a modern AU primarily through email correspondence between Silver and Flint, although other mediums (such as texting and phoning) will be introduced as the story evolves. Silver is a crack erotica writer and Flint is the librarian who just wouldn't showcase his books at the Nassau Public Library, despite the insistence of the latter. They become unexpected virtual pen pals after Flint sends a heated rejection letter and grow closer through their correspondence, helping each other confront the inner demons of their personal lives. There will be polyamory, since Flint is involved with Thomas and Miranda by the time he and Silver fall in love.

6. Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more

In the year 1725, or thereabouts, John Silver finds himself driven by a winter storm into an inconsequential little port town, barely a speck on any civilised map. Returned to the life of a drifter, tired and rough around the edges, he is resigned to waiting for the weather to pass before he can sail on again to the next town, and the next, and the next. That is until he overhears a conversation in the inn about a local fisherman, one Captain Barlow, and his tall tales of tempests and becalmings, devils and sharks, and Silver finds a new future opening up to him, haunted by the spectres of his past. Whether landed in this place by fortune, or fate, or even divine intervention, he finds he cannot leave again without following this trail that leads from an old and half-forgotten tether knotted deep between his ribs to somewhere that feels familiar and safe, like home. The way won’t be easy; it’s paved with notable absences and painful unspoken truths, and there’s as good a chance as any that he’ll find a knife to his throat before he can so much as say ‘Long time no see, Captain’. Still, all roads do seem to lead to them baring their souls to one another in the dark, and Silver would be lying if he said he hadn’t missed it.

7.  An Epilogue

After the events of Treasure Island, John finds James and Thomas. There’s a gradual awkward descent to domesticity when pirates retire. Madi brings Jim Hawkins with her from London. This is the ultimate fix it where there are no unanswered questions and everyone lives happily ever after. SilverFlint, SilverHamilton, SilverFlintHamilton, SilverMadi

8. Stealing Hearts

A 1920s AU with Flint as a mob boss, fighting a corrupt police force/police system, and Silver as a thief who gets caught up in all of it.  

9. Space Raiders of Nassau

The space station Nassau is in open rebellion against the interplanetary Imperial Alliance.  Captain James Flint is in deep shit for rearranging the face of a fellow raider captain.  As punishment, Nassau's leaders assign an inside man to his crew, with a very convincing cover story (that they're married). Complicating things further is the fact that Flint's shifty new husband, John Silver, knows a lot more than he's telling about their secret mission. Their own survival as well as Nassau’s future depend on how successfully they can navigate the dangerous skies… and each other.  

10. The Pirate Captain's Wedding Once he has his hands on the thief Flint is willing to do whatever it takes to get the page from him. And then Billy & Gates say marriage is the only solution left on the table. Or rather matelotage – the time honored pirate form of matrimony. Billy says it’s the only way to regain the crew’s trust, by marrying one of them, and Gates agrees. For once Flint’s desperate enough to agree to it. He never expects to actually fall in love with the little shit. Canon-Era Season1/Season2 AU– with angsty developing feelings, public consummation, & There Is Only One Bed night after hot sticky sweaty night. 11. The devil's gotta' earn

Supernatural AU. James Flint has been a hunter for over a decade now and he knows people join this profession for plenty of reasons and few of those are happy ones. Some people just seek the thrill, some want to protect the so called innocent, some - like him - are out for revenge and John Bloody Silver apparently is just trying to get rich. [Borrows mostly from first seasons of Supernatural, little to no prior knowledge of this show required. Miranda lives, Thomas tragically does not. Lots of angst, few monsters of the week and a demon or two.]

12. touch me James is a widow, bartender and owner of the gay-bar “The Rainbow“. After Thomas' death it had been John who had lift him up. One day one of his usual dancers - because what is a gay bar without your occasional striptease - can't perform. John offers to fill the space and James has to face that John is more than just a friend. Slow burn and StripperJohn!AU

13. Adamantine Flame Flint is a forest god called The Flame and Silver is part of the cult that worships him that resides on the fringes of the underworld. 14. [Title TBD] Silver never met another werewolf before. Well, realistically, he knew he must have because he wasn't born a werewolf so someone had to have done this to him. But that didn't count since his memory of the whole incident was lackluster at best. He knew others had to be out there somewhere though and he wanted to find at least one, just to know he wasn't all alone. Flint was surrounded by werewolves all his life. Always part of a family, always knowing someone cared for him. Knowing he had someone to care for. The memories were as vivid as ever, of a time when he cared for someone. But they were gone and he knew he was meant to be all alone. 15. set my soul on fire

Nothing quite like getting out of prison to make a man feel like pulling off the biggest heist you’ve ever heard of. But he can’t do it alone - he’s going to need some money, a plan, a crew, and of course, his partner. His incorrigible, oral fixation-having, blue-eyed devil of a partner. Who is this smooth, seasoned con man with his eyes on the prize? James fucking Flint, naturally. And his partner? John Silver.Viva Las Vegas, baby.

16. cat dad

Modern au. Flint's life is fine. It's quiet and it's fine and he's fine. Well, except that his upstairs neighbor is a dick and his relationship with Miranda is strained and maybe quiet isn't all it's cracked up to be. But then a one-eyed cat enters his life and with it one John Silver. Flint's not sure how he feels about that, but he's working on it. Plot includes cat shenanigans, cooking, fluff, and feelings. 

17. [Title TBD]

A post-canon rendition of the Silver and Flint reunion wherein rather than seeking each other out the two are brought back together by outside forces. There’s a wedge of sour history and new lives built between them but love and desire become hard to deny when every path you set out on to leave someone behind sends you hurdling straight back to them. Treasure Island divergent/ignorant, though I pull some things from TI including the bird. (Includes SilverMadi and FlintHamilton as side-pairings, warning for canon Black Sails side-character death.) 18. The Spark

it's a Girl Genius AU

That's it, that's the whole shtick. It's basically the plot of the show, but clockwork-punk with mad geniuses (of course Flint is one), Urca being chock full of Aztec tech a'la Mysterious Cities of Gold, and dr. Howell and colleagues taking medicine to some quite Frankenstein levels - convenient with so many characters who should know better than to fucking die.

Also John Silver might be a construct.  The prosthetics are not nearly as complicated as in treasure planet, but at least one person has a gun arm? dirigibles are "Supposed Not To Be Invented Yet", but not for the lack of trying. Silverflint revolves around having "The Spark" and personhood and is shaping up heavier than i intended... luckily they will have plenty of people to set them to rights - i'm aiming for a happy polyfamily forming in the background.

19. he’s funny that way

1920s Atlantic City. Everybody knows the only way to leave crime boss Eleanor Guthrie's business is through a funeral - either delivering the sermon or laid out in the casket. Still, Flint leaves anyway, because he likes to make his life as difficult as possible. Case in point: his new partner, the scruffy, irate, one-legged racketeer with a pretty mouth, a quick tongue, and a rye recipe even Pussyfoot Johnson wouldn't spit out. His new partner's making sure he's not joining the church and taking a celibacy vow anytime soon - but will anyone be able to save Flint from his early - or long overdue - grave?

20. Ship to Wreck 

"I don't know if you've noticed, Doctor," Silver snaps, incredulous, "But every moment the Captain is unconscious in that bed is another step away from five million fucking dollars. As if that weren't enough, we're locked in a ridiculous show of force with a madman who seems keen on blowing us sky high unless we concede to his demands; we've got a crowd of men up top losing their Goddamned minds because they've been promised a fight that we cannot presently even hope to deliver; and--" Silver pauses, exhaling hard. "Actually, you know what? There is no and.  I’d say that’s about enough shit to make us all a little tense, wouldn’t you agree?" "Hm," Howell says, mildly. A post 204 fic in which: Flint gets a fever, Silver has a panic attack, and Howell gets a migraine. Includes, among other things--Silver trying and failing at playing nurse; Silver trying and failing at controlling his feelings; Flint being dazed and delirious and soft; some singing, some yelling, and heavy doses of mutual pining. Love, obviously, turns out to be the best medicine. 21. More Than One Odysseus

Reunion fic, about two years after 4.10. Quite a lot of talking and a little of the following: fishing, sex, hunting, bathtubs, Jewish surnames, books, stories and Terra Australis. Canon-compliant, not TI-compliant. A few animals killed (for food, not sport).

22. Seedlings

"If there's anything I can help you with-- Or if you'd like to order flowers for an upcoming occasion--"

"All right, honestly?" Handsomely disgruntled customer looked Silver dead in the eye and said, "I'm looking for a gift that says, 'You are making a dreadful mistake, and you will regret these actions for the rest of your days. Call me when you've figured out what a fucking hash of things you've made.'" He spoke the way some people chewed tinfoil.

Silver felt two things: lust like a plague of locusts, and the words 'uh-oh' waft through his brain.

On the second anniversary of the worst day of his adult life, John Silver─temporary florist, burgeoning gardner, and former thief─meets James Flint. It is only love at first sight for one of them. (Or is it?)

23. The Curse of Aeaea

Inspired by the connection between Flint and Odysseus: Silver and Flint find themselves dealing with a very Circe-like situation. Once the curse affects Silver, they have to figure out a way to end it or be trapped on an island that’s not on any map.

(Animal Transformation, Body Horror, Poor Coping Mechanisms, Circe’s Curse, Odysseus, Post-Season 2, Pre-Season 3)

24. With Strange Aeons Months after the disappearance and presumed death of Captain Flint and Long John Silver, Max smuggles Jack and Anne to Oglethorpe’s plantation. Thomas learns that not only do the three of them have a friend in common, but he is not the only one whose dreams are haunted by a strange city and a terrifying name. Meanwhile, Flint and Silver try to escape an island trapped in time, impossibly built and impossibly old. Along the way they’re forced question reality, each other, and themselves.

And in his house in R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. (Prior knowledge of Lovecraft is fun, but not required.)

#sfbb2018 #silverflint #art claims

[utopianparadoxist]

[3. Earthbound - The two Yaldabaoths, Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]

[Spoilers for Earthbound:Beginnings, Earthbound, & Mother 3]

Most know by now that Earthbound is referenced every time we say the word “Homestuck”. It’s built into the name: To be Stuck at Home. To be Bound to Earth. 

And fittingly for a reference which such pervasive impact on our understanding of the comic, Homestuck styles itself as a spiritual successor to Earthbound in a number of ways. 

Both Earthbound and Homestuck begin with a set of four kids who go on an adventure together. Both feature kids with psychic powers, friendship, and the meaning of growing up. 

But there are three particular similarities to Homestuck that I want to present you with here. In these three areas, Homestuck and Earthbound/Mother are notably alike:

The Characters:

1) Both feature a unique execution of dramatic tension and narrative stakes for the characters.   The Player:

2) Engage in heavily metatextual, diegetic relationships between the World/Story and The Player/Reader. 

The Antagonists:

3) Are God-Like, Authoritarian powers that cannot engage with ideas. In other words, they operate as Yaldabaoths.

These antagonists are who I want to talk about first. We will proceed from number 3 up to number 1, talking about the context of the games and tying it into the comic further as we go. I’ll ask you to be patient with me if you don’t see much about Homestuck at first--there’s a lot of setup work to do. 

Without further ado, let’s begin.

3) The Antagonists.

Side A) Earthbound - The War on Giygas.

Earthbound is the story of a boy named Ness, and his neighbor, Pokey Minch. One day, a meteor lands in their town, a time-traveler called Buzz Buzz appears from within. Buzz Buzz tells Ness he has come from a bad future, where an alien overlord named Giygas has cast the world into eternal darkness. Only Ness and his prophecized friends can stop Giygas.

From then on Earthbound is mostly a fun, sweet adventure romp for our Protagonists. Pokey goes on an adventure of his own, acting like a cruel child whilst striking deals with agents of Giygas and steadily gaining more and more power, both in business and through the dark forces Giygas employs.

Then we skip ahead to the very end of Earthbound. Where we get one of the most horrific and memorable boss sequences in gaming. 

Giygas is explicitly unfathomable, indescribable: Giygas is Eldritch in the true “Man was never meant to see this” sort of way. Giygas isn’t explicitly A God, but rather an alien. But he certainly acts like a God. His influence makes inanimate objects animate, makes animals aggressive, lures people into cults and evil deeds. 

He’s tapped into the centers of power and wealth in society. Giygas is nowhere, and yet everywhere. He is, in short, the God of the material world Earthbound’s kids wander through. Their Yaldabaoth.

And interestingly,  as with Yaldabaoth, Pokey describes Giygas as being “an all-mighty Idiot”--unaware of himself or what’s happening around him. 

Giygas shares similarities with Bastian and Caliborn, too--in Earthbound: Beginnings, he’s driven insane by a song that reminds him of his mother.  Like Bastian, Giygas has connotations of warped, eternal childhood.  But unlike Bastian, Giygas does not escape his damnation until he dies. 

And there are fates even worse than death. Such as the fate reserved for Pokey Minch, who against all odds, is the more interesting of the two--and the more relevant for Homestuck.

Let’s talk about Mother 3.

Side B) Mother 3 - No crying until the end. 

Mother 3 is not as happy a game as Earthbound. Where Earthbound concentrated it’s gloom and despair into intense climaxes while being generally upbeat, Mother 3 is bittersweet and tragic throughout--though still plenty beautiful and joyful when it wants to be.

Like Homestuck, it has an unusual structure of Acts--8 instead of 7, but also of variable lengths, including a chapter that takes up almost half the game. Playable characters vary with each section, but the bulk of the game features Lucas, his dog Boney, and their friends Duster and Kumatora. So again: Four protagonists.

Set in the post-apocalyptic Nowhere Islands, Mother 3 tells the story of the fascist, totalitarian Pig Mask Army’s encroachment onto the idyllic, peaceful lives of the Nowhere Island natives. 

As it turns out, the Pig Mask Army is led by the megalomaniacal dictator Pokey (Japanese name “Porky”) Minch, who discovers the ability to travel spacetime and escapes the final battle against Giygas. 

Since then, he’s traveled countless worlds and lived through millennia, conquering and exploiting all unfortunate enough to be caught in his way. 

All the while, never truly growing up. 

Sound familiar?

Now, one interesting parallel about Pokey is what he does to the world he rules over. Just Lord English does to the Troll’s universe--and more indirectly, to both Human universes--Pokey manipulates and exploits The Nowhere Islands through a number of tools. 

He’s got the authoritarian power regime also in place on Alternia, of course. But Pokey dabbles in genetic modification and playing with the nature of life as well, just as both trolls and humans were genetically exploited by Lord English’s agents. Most of the enemies in Mother 3 are chimeras: amalgams of animals and machines, cruelly spliced together. 

And Pokey also attempts to shape culture on the Islands to his liking, distributing “Happy Boxes” that look like televisions and seem to encourage a sort of shift towards crass materialism and an acceptance of the Pig Masks’ fascist dominance.

I note these similarities mostly because through Pokey we get a direct linking between the idea of a God-Like Yaldabaoth figure and the idea of a tyrannical, authoritarian dictator. 

This is an area of Lord English’s insidious evil mostly delivered to the audience through implication and background information, so I think it’s worth the time to draw it into focus. 

And the similarities between their atrocities might give us some context between the similarities at the end of their stories. Because, again like Lord English...

Master Pokey can’t die. 

But he is defeated, as his machine runs out of power.  And so, lacking other options, Pokey plays his trump card. 

One that proves to be the end of his influence in the story. 

"Oh, my! As evil as old Porky here is, I feel bad for him now. It's true that the "Absolutely Safe Capsule" that the Mr. Saturns and I developed together can protect one from every manner of danger. It IS an absolutely safe capsule, but once you enter it, you can never exit it... Even what's outside of the Absolutely Safe Capsule is absolutely safe. I did tell Porky in a hushed voice that he shouldn't use it yet... But all he can do now is live for eternity inside the capsule, in absolute safety. Who knows, in a way, he may've gotten exactly what he wanted. What do you think? Is it wrong of me to think this way?" — Dr. Andonuts

Once Pokey seals his life into the capsule, there’s no longer an out for him. Not ever again. In a way, Pokey’s fate may indeed be one worse than death. And it’s one that seems to be echoed by Lord English, since after all...

Lord English cannot die, but he is defeated.

Specifically, Act 7′s visual language suggests he’s pocketed in the Black Hole that Alt!Calliope created. As a Black Hole is a gravitational singularity, once there, Lord English would be trapped--no amount of Time powers would let him come out, and First Guardian powers would no longer work either, since they rely on the Green Sun’s power.

An immortal, tyrannical kid--denied his playground for eternity. Pretty fitting, I think.

But Lord English is only one part of the story, and I think the relationship between the protagonists and the Player/Reader is the more interesting area of Earthbound to explore. Because...didn’t I mention?

In the Mother series, there is another God. 

It’s you.

2) The Player

Both Earthbound and Mother 3 explicitly address your existence in the context of their worlds. Both games, in fact, pause entirely just to ask you your name. In Earthbound, this role is taken by Tony, Jeff’s canonically gay friend. He calls Jeff, and in the process brings up a prompt for the Player to input their name. This can seem like a bit of cheeky fourth-wall breaking, but consider: 

You are the unseen hand behind the characters’ every action. You lead them through their world just as Giygas does for Pokey. You’re never viewed, but always present, witness and privy to all things. 

And in the final boss battle (you did watch that, didn’t you?), when all else fails, Paula’s prayers reach the people of Earthbound who care about the four chosen children...including you. Your name is the final name given, praying for the protection of Ness and his friend. Your prayers are the power that end Giygas.

Mother 3 makes it even more explicit. In this game, you’re asked your name by an unseen voice, while Flint prays at an altar in the only Church in the game. Depicted on the front of it are the Light and Dark Dragons of Nowhere Island, the latter of which is the subject of an apocalyptic prophecy we’ll talk about soon. 

A good question to ask at this point is: Why does this matter? And the answer is that because we’re given the God’s-eye view of these games, the context of our engagement with them is diegetic: explained by the narrative itself.

Like Bastian reading The Neverending Story, we’re not just observers consuming the content of these games. At least as far as the stories within are concerned, we are active participants. We are part of the story.

And this is true of Homestuck, too. Doc Scratch is a smarmy asshole, but he directly acknowledges the reader. He even credits us with more of an impact on the story than our protagonists.  And on some level, this is true. 

We HAVE had a direct impact on the story, through command prompts and fandom memes and all sorts of other engagements that ended up shaping the way Homestuck has been told. We’ve always been part of the narrative. 

Hell, we’ve always been depicted in it. The MSPA Reader is a template, a schematic stand-in for all of us, just as the Human characters we love are blank templates for a multitude of more specific body headcanons.

And this has important implications for how we, the readers, might best engage with Homestuck. 

Because the fact that our window into its world is diegetic means that it is presented through us through an explicit frame, a frame that is narratively constructed. 

And frames have limits. 

1) The Characters

Whenever I hear people say Homestuck is a tragedy, or that it’s headed for a sadstuck ending with the Beta kids stuck in the Juju in the Masterpiece, I honestly can’t help but laugh. You don’t need alternate timelines and sacrificial lamb versions of our protagonists to secure a happy ending in Homestuck. 

Homestuck itself is practically a loop of impossible-seemingly, absolute-dooming circumstances...

met by perseverance and good cheer.

And when all’s said and done, the story pretty much always breaks in favor of the latter. Remember that one of the fundamental rules of Homestuck’s universe is the “Do As You Will” principle--everyone always gets what they want. 

Caliborn gets to be LE, as does Gamzee. Arquis gets to fulfill the out-of-nowhere heroic destiny he wanted, and finally proves himself to the Alphas in an act of atonement. Lord English gets his eternity of destruction, and Vriska gets to be the great Hero she always wanted to be.

But our protagonists? The Alphas and Betas? They just want to live in peace. Their desires are compatible with the wills of all the other characters. 

Lord English’s will is not, and he’s trampled the agency of every other character a million times over to get where he is. That’s what makes him a tyrant, and that’s what dooms him to his Absolutely Safe Capsule. Karma is an established force in Homestuck, and LE will pay his due.

And in this extremely-dire-until-the-very-last-second approach, too, Homestuck seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

Because this big buildup to a Big Dramatic Tragedy of an ending is pretty much exactly Earthbound’s M.O. 

Earthbound’s final boss isn’t just one of the most horrifically well-executed eldritch monsters in gaming history. It’s also set-up as what amounts to a suicide mission.

Earthbound’s protagonists time travel to a monochrome greyscape (in robot bodies) fully knowing there’s no way back from their battle with Giygas. And the battle with Giygas does indeed kill them--here you see the wreck of their robot selves. It’s pretty much deus ex machina when their souls wander back into their bodies shortly afterwards.

Even more interesting to me, however, are the parallels we find to Mother 3′s ending.

I’m going to take a time out from Homestuck for a second and talk about Mother 3 for a second, because this moment is too important to me to waste frivolously, or subject to my overwrought explanatory dialogue with without giving you the option to watch a scene that’s Undertale-level good. 

Unless I’ve already succeeded in getting you to stop reading, drop everything, and go find a translated version of Mother 3 now (you can’t play it in english without emulating, since it was never released in the US), I would really appreciate it if you took the time and sucked up the spoilers and watched this ending cutscene.

It’s a work of art. A heartrending, heartfelt symphony to the pain of loss and the fear of something changing forever. Mother 3 is a game about the Apocalypse. A game about CAUSING the apocalypse, to be precise. 

Your final moments with the game are spent watching Lucas pull the final needle that binds a dragon bigger than the world, and the only hope is that Lucas’ good heart will pass on to the Dragon and make a good new world to come.  Nothing else is certain. 

And the shots we see aren’t encouraging: Immediately after pulling the needle, the world begins to fall apart. Earthquakes rise and wreak havoc. Twisters of water dominate the sky and ocean. Meteors fall from the sky, and as if rising from an enormous egg, a vast, black back archs out from under the world we came to love.

And then we cut to black, and the End screen pops up. We never see these characters again. Only...

Only we do get to talk to them. Once this question mark pops up, you can move around in this black screen-with ‘You’ represented by the END? depicted- and occasionally, you’ll bump into...words. Words that say things like:

And

You get glimpses of things you can’t talk to, like...

And best of all, this is where the game brings out its ace.

Because this is where the name you gave in the church comes into play. At the end of it all, all of the characters in the cast not only tell you they’re ok, but recognize you. Thank you. Love you. Treat you like a friend, say goodbye, invite you back over, and wish you well in life.

In Mother 3, you play as the God of the old world, the world bound by the rules the cast had to play by. By playing through to the end, you set them free. 

And by treating you as a real part of its world, Mother 3 invites you to consider its characters a real part of yours. Invites you to think of them not as characters, but as friends. As people.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because Undertale built a whole damn game out of the concept.

But the same approach has always been in Homestuck’s DNA. These characters were always people first and characters second, and we were always privy to a limited frame.

That frame is Homestuck, which until The Masterpiece and Lord English’s defeat, has belonged to Caliborn. This has always been the story of his circle--the Alpha Timeline--and the context it crafts out is his childish empire.

Next time, we’ll talk more about Homestuck’s Gnostic themes, and just what it is *exactly* that our protagonists are escaping from. 

For now, I’ll leave you with this song. 

If this piece interested you in Mother 3, I suggest checking out Tom Ato’s legendary fan translation for the game. Mother 3 is a masterpiece, and I owe both it and Tom Ato my life in some ways. It’d make me really happy to know even one more person has been touched by their work because of me. 

[Master Post]

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

Keep rising.

#Homestuck #Earthbound #Mother 3 #Gnosticism #My MSPA Analysis #Lord English

[fansplaining]

Hi guys! I recently marathoned Black Sails and i loved it! the only thing I'm sad about is that i didn't watch it in real time... I don't care if my ship is cannon, but I found that seeing it all at once means i know what happened to everyone, and I'm having a hard time shutting it off. I want to be into it, bc there are so many characters and ships i like in BS, but i don't know how to make the story feel open for exploration. any ideas or thoughts on how to incept myself into BS fandom?

Hello! Of course Elizabeth is answering this. This is a GREAT ASK, thank you, and not just because the entry point to this question is Black Sails ⚓⚓⚓. 

(I’ll have you know this is one of, like, three gifs of Flint smiling in the entire series. I also googled “Black Sails happy” and…no one looked happy.)

OK so it seems like there are a few things going on here. Apologies for taking what’s ostensibly about one show and turning it into something broader, but I think it gets at fundamental questions of fannish engagement, so I’M GOING IN.

1) Watching/reading a series all at once 

Flourish and I talk about this one a lot, because we (and many others) have observed that younger/newer Harry Potter fans approach characters and plot elements VERY differently than we do, and we chalk a lot of this up to reading the books as a complete text versus reading it with miserable long gaps in which to turn over every freakin detail only to have 75% of it jossed when the next book came out. In 2002 I legit read this one page of Dumbledore dialogue in GoF 100 times thinking there was a clue that was just…under…the surface.

I think that with some texts and with some fans, the serialized nature of TV and book series are the way in—we climb into those gaps and lingering there, waiting and obsessively turning things over and imagining all the branching possibilities, all the future reveals, all the resolutions, is part of the pleasure. I sure as hell wouldn’t have fallen for Sherlock if I hadn’t shown up to poke at the gaping emotional wound between s2 and s3. (Frankly if you showed me all four seasons at once I’m not sure I’d even like the show—my lingering emotional loyalty was the only thing that kept me saying anything nice about s4.) 

If I had not watched Black Sails all in one go it would have been LITERAL TORTURE FOR ME. I had to pause for a week while traveling and I started to read fic that actually spoiled parts of the fourth season WHOOPS. :-/// But I can also understand how watching it all in one go wouldn’t give you enough space. But then, we watched the same way and I am deep in it, plotting out fic and everything. So maybe… 

2) A complete text can stay with you but might not give you a way in

This happens to me with books *all the time*. I’ll read something that shakes me—I’ve often used the metaphor “knocks your world off its axis” when describing a really great book, like it can be the subtlest tilt and you’ll feel like everything’s changed. I think it’s pretty normal for texts to stay with you? If they’re good or if they touch you in some specific way? Especially if you’re fannish and really feel the media you’re consuming.

But one thing I often find about books is they’re more…complete. Even when television shows end properly, rather than being cancelled, they might stretch for longer than what was initially planned, for example, so it doesn’t feel like the arc of the plot was as carefully constructed—often it can’t be, especially with long-running American shows (and of course with classic episodic television, say, a monster-of-the-week show, it’s not even structurally designed to have the same sort of ~ABCDE structure as a novel might). 

Black Sails is not one of those shows—they knew they were bringing the story to a close, and the entire show rests on carefully-plotted narrative arcs. (Not to mention there was an actual ~canonical endpoint for all the Treasure Island characters, ie where the book begins (like, sort of). I mean, there were also canonical endpoints for Jack, Anne, Vane, Blackbeard, Hornigold, and every other historical figure, but…)

Over the years I’ve joined fandoms for WIPs as well as finished products, and often for me fandom’s been a way of trying to mend the wounds of a media property I found incomplete, either narratively (with bad writing) or literally (like, when a show ends abruptly). I think for some fans, this is a crucial piece—they say that when they find something too complete, there’s nothing to mend. 

3) Different modes of fannish engagement

So here’s another thing I’ve observed—different friends have different definitions of “fandom.” So people are like, “Oh yeah, I’m in the fandom, I love that show!” And I find out that means they enjoy the show and livetweet it and look at some gifs and that’s that. Which is totally fandom! And then there’s me, nodding nervously as I debate mentioning that, “Oh yeah, I’m in the fandom, I love that show!” for me means “THIS IS THE ONLY THING I WANT TO THINK ABOUT, HELP ME, I AM DROWNING.” It’s funny, sometimes I think about archetypal nerdboy fandom and its dick-measuring fact recitation, and then I think about all the times I tried to read the room to see if it was safe to let another person know how much I thought about something I loved, how much I felt about it. Even in totally fannish spaces, I still hesitate. :-/

There have been some things in the past few years that I’ve really enjoyed and toyed with checking out fandoms for, but what I’ve come to realize over the years is for me, it needs to be like falling in love. I think for some people, interest and obsession grows, and for others, you fall in head-first. And for others still, it depends on the thing. 

I understand this ask might have been specifically looking for resources or suggestions and while I’d just say if you’re not feeling it in this way, that’s cool, there are lots of different ways to fan, and you can keep thinking about something even if you aren’t drawn to, say, create transformative works about it? But maybe I should say something about Black Sails in particular…

4) Black Sails-specific: unreliable narrators and transformative works

If anyone hasn’t finished Black Sails, stop reading here, I’ll keep it vague but there’s only so much I can do. This is one thing that’s especially interesting to me about this ask: while I’m going on about how final and precisely plotted it all was, it’s not…that final. Because the entire point of the show is about narrative, right? Who gets to write them, who gets to own them, how they can be manipulated, how they shape “civilization.” Characters constantly talk—and constantly show—how both Flint and Silver (and, like, most of the characters, from Max to Thomas to Vane to Woodes Rogers) are these masterful shapers of narrative. Flint is the victim of clashing narratives: what’s actually happened to him, what he tells the world he’s doing, what he’s actually doing (note that explosive scene when Miranda calls him on this, ahhh I love Miranda). But the show’s choice to shift to Silver’s narration to wrap up events is a really fascinating one: the man who works so hard to obscure his past, laying out the narratives of the future. Should we believe him? 

I recommend this interview with creators Johnathan Steinberg and Robert Levine—the Flint section at the start is really delightful if you’re into artists being super into open-interpretation of their work. “Do we have a sense of what we imagine is happening?” Steinberg says when asked if we should believe Silver’s speech to Madi. “Yes, but if I was someone else, I wouldn’t want to watch it with my interpretation coloring it.” They talk about how this is essentially a transformative work (they don’t use that term)—a certain decision “made sense as a way to both acknowledge the book and spin it.”

So this is like the literal opposite of, say, JK Rowling, who seems intent on letting us know every freakin detail of canon and post-canon and seems genuinely unhappy at the idea that people will interpret things in ways that “aren’t true.” (At least in interviews I’ve seen/read of hers in the past few years.) Steinberg and Levine seem to be the ultimate “open to interpretation” guys, which really is like this big blank slate for fandom building on and playing with this world they’ve created. That being said, if oppositional fandom is your cup of tea—if you love fic and fandom as a corrective, as a way of wrestling a creator over the text—then the, “Go for it, interpret however you want” thing is probably not super appealing. 

This is the first time in my entire fandom life, going on two decades now, that I have simultaneously been really satisfied with a show’s ending and still wanted to write and read fic. And that seems…weird to me? So I don’t think it’s that weird that it wouldn’t work for someone. TL;DR: I’d just say if it happens, it happens. But it’s OK to love something and not find a way into the fandom. But if that changes for you, I’ll be there. :-)

#asks #black sails #black sails spoilers #fandom #fanfiction

[thefvckingwarship]

because the sea and the rocks don’t feel pain

So, uh… Since Painter!Flint is now officially canon, in response to this post, I couldn’t help but write a small thing about it. This got hella angsty. 

So here, 1.6K, mid-S1, featuring Flint angst, Flinthamilton flashbacks, Silver being a little shit, and Gates trying to be supportive. Most of it is under a read more! Crossposted on AO3

Silver was surprised by what he discovered in the captain’s cabin. He had always thought pirates were illiterate monsters who liked treasure and rum, hardly interested in things like art or literature. After the terrifying stories he’d heard of Captain Flint, he’d never have imagined seeing half- finished paintings and a shelf full of books among his possessions.

He studied the painting upon the easel. It wasn’t of the sea, but of cliffs and forests that Silver himself didn’t find at all familiar. Looking across the table, he saw many books he didn’t recognize, some looked to be in spanish. Silver was hardly the reader himself, so he wasn’t sure what he was expecting.

A particular book on the shelf caught his eye. It wasn’t the book itself as much as the loose pages sticking out of it. As he pulled it out he realized the thing was covered in dust, and Silver started cleaning it with his sleeve. It seemed to be an old half-filled log book that had been repurposed.

Looking inside he found some old sketches. Many were of landscapes and the sea, the various shapes of clouds and waves. Moving through, Silver noticed there were several done on a thicker paper that seemed to have weather poorly. The first he saw was of a woman, she looked like a younger Eleanor Guthrie. As Silver flipped it over he noticed the date, October, 1707.  

Suddenly he heard the door to the cabin open. Silver quickly slammed the book shut and tried to hide it behind his back. To his misfortune, it slipped out of his hand, sending pages of drawings across the cabin floor.

 Silver was somewhat relieved to see that it was Gates that had stumbled upon him, and not the captain himself.

“What are you doing, you shouldn’t be in here!” the man began, with look of frustration combined with shock.

Silver darted his eyes between the pages littered on the floor and Gates.

 “What are you doing in here?” Silver tried to respond, even though there was really no point.

Gates only sighed at him before approaching the mess. “Here, let's clean this up before the captain realizes you saw this.”

“The captain’s rather odd, isn’t he?” Silver began as he gathered the papers. Gates didn’t respond.

 Amongst the papers, Silver saw more of the aged drawings, more portraits. There was a particularly smudged one of a couple smiling, several more of a woman with long dark hair, all dated before 1708. He noticed another of the same woman, but the setting was different, a look of sorrow across her face as she sat in front of a window.  

Moving further along the floor, Silver noticed several pages that showed a man, many pages smudged, his face slightly different in every one. Gates snatched the page off the floor before Silver could reach for it to take a closer look.

 “I’m not entirely sure what you’re referring to.” Gates responded to Silver’s earlier question.

“Oh come on, he reads books, he draws, and rather well at that, not the mention the way he speaks,” and the way he lies, Silver began as Gates cast him a frustrated look, “hardly what I’d expect from a pirate captain.”

“I’d be more careful about what you say,.” Gates said, taking the book and the remaining pages from Silver. “You’re lucky Flint needs you for the schedule. Let’s hope he doesn’t change his mind if he discovers you were digging around in his things.”

Silver opened his mouth again to speak, but before he could, the door opened again. This time it was Flint.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” the captain said, looking at Silver before scanning the two men and the book Gates was holding.

“I came looking for you,” Gates started, but Flint wasn’t concerned with him. Silver could tell by the cold eyes that now met him.

Flint took the book from Gates, and Silver found both the man staring at him.

“Alright, we better leave,” Gates said, he grabbed Silver by the arm and motioned towards the door.

Silver took a look at Flint before he proceeded towards the door. He wondered whether it would be wise to speak to the captain about any of this.

He stopped, looking back at Flint, “You know, it’s too bad you stopped drawing portraits, those are quite good, better than I’ve seen anyone do in a while.” 

“Just get out.” Flint didn’t even look up at him, but Silver could sense the rage in his voice.

Looking back one last time before Gates dragged him back onto the deck, Silver saw Flint  was still stood there, running a hand over the cover of the book.

That man was full of mystery. Just when Silver thought he had a reading on him there was something new that changed his view entirely. Now Silver was determined to figure him out.

~~~~~

The dark green cover of the book felt rough under his hands. He remembered when he first found it, perhaps the first thing he ever stole. It was smooth back then.

James hadn’t opened the thing in a long time, never truly looked at the paintings contained within in it in years. Now the pages where all rearranged, likely upside down and all out of order.

He remembered the book Thomas had bought him back in London. It was a gift, something he would never have been able to afford on his own. The first and only true sketchbook he had ever owned.

“You never told me you could draw, James!” Thomas said, excitedly, looking through the pages James had shown him.

“Well I did say I liked to sketch. I didn’t think it was relevant, my lord.” James responded.  

He had recently attended the salons at the Hamilton residence. Several artists had presented their works. Mid- conversation with Thomas, James had mentioned that he did enjoy drawing himself and then Thomas had asked if James would be willing to share some of his drawings.  

“Yes, sketch, you never said you were this good! These are marvelous! Miranda, you’ve got to take a look at these.” Thomas said, motioning to Miranda, who had been playing the harpsichord for them just before.  

“It’s hardly anything, my Lord, I simply enjoy drawing from time to time.” James responded, trying not to blush. He had never really made a habit of showing these things to people, it was a rather private activity for him.

“James, both Thomas and I were schooled in drawing, but I doubt either of us could manage to capture something so well.” Miranda said as she held up a drawing of a young woman.

James remembered her, she had offered to pose for him and flirted shamelessly. He recalled she was rather disappointed when their time together had ended when the drawing was finished.  

“The detail, the shading in the hair, you are full of surprises, Lieutenant,” Thomas continued. “When did you begin?”

 “Oh, as a child, my grandmother used to draw, she suggested I try, it’s been something I’ve done ever since.”

“Might I suggest, James, if you wish to, of course, draw something of Thomas and I?” Miranda asked, looking up from the pieces she was holding.

“That is a wonderful idea, dear!” Thomas added before James could respond.

“I suppose I could,” James said, with a smile.

“Where would you like us?” Miranda asked, standing up from her chair.

“By the harpsichord, both of you, that would be excellent.”

“I’ll have to get you some proper supplies one of these days, so you don’t have to keep using that parchment,” Thomas added, as he went to join Miranda.

 “Captain, are you alright?”

James remembered again where he was. Looking around, he wasn’t sure how he ended up sitting at his desk, with the page open to the drawing of Thomas and Miranda. He had lost himself in the memory. Carefully, he closed the book.

“Captain?” Gates continued, more urgently this time.

“Yes, Gates, what is it?” He responded, not wanting to be fully drawn out of the memory quite yet.

“No one’s seen you for a while, just wanted to check up on you after, well, the incident earlier.”

“Ah. I’ll be out shortly.”

As Gates went to leave, James stood to return the book to the shelf. His fingers brushed the spine again. James closed his eyes again for a moment.

“It’s wonderful, James, you’ve captured my likeness so well. This is perhaps the best portrait anyone’s ever drawn of me.” Thomas said as he looked at the drawing over his shoulder. 

The drawing showed Thomas lounging on James’ bed, reading a book.

“Well, I’m certain no one else would attempt to draw you with this little clothing on.” James responded, with a smug grin.

That only makes it all the more accurate,” Thomas whispered before kissing James’ neck. “Now, come back to bed with me, you can draw me however you like later.”

Thomas turned to face James, taking his head in his hands and kissing him softly, before taking James’ hand and pulling him towards the bed.

 There was an agonizing pain in his chest. James let go of the book, trying not to let out a cry. Standing up straight, he tried to hold back the tears. Perhaps it was best if he left that book untouched again for a while.  

#flinthamilton #my fics #fic ideas #james flint #james mcgraw #thomas hamilton #john silver #hal gates #miranda hamilton #OH GOD I AM CRYING #SOMEONE COME HOLD ME #OR CRY WITH ME #LIKE JUST WHEN I SAID I NEEDED TO FOCUS ON MY OTHER FICS I COME UP WITH THIS #WTF ME #WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK #or like just come message me if you want to talk about actual canon artist!flint in any context happy ot sad

[redwhale]

Ye Olde Flint ‘n Finale Interview Round-Up.

Finale interview round-up post. Whilst there does seem to be some intenional thematic ambiguity to the final Flint/Silver scene, the showrunners also seem to have continually placed an emphasis with specifically bringing Flint to Savannah to set up his Treasure Island fate. Since Thomas’ return is linked to Flint’s fate, I’ve left in quotes regarding him, too. Choice quotes before the cut, and more excerpts/article links underneath the cut. EW: Did you always know you were going to have the Flint-Thomas reunion? Or did that happen organically? Yeah, something like it. I think there was a deliberate choice in season 2 not to show the body which, if I’m an audience member watching a show, I’m always at best suspect and I assume they’re not dead [if there’s no body], no matter how many people tell me otherwise. So we had a vague sense that that was a thing that was going to come back in some shape or another. I think it was sometime during season 3 when this version of it started to materialize and to have an ending that would marry us to the book [Treasure Island]. At the end of the book, it’s recounted by other people that Captain Flint died in Savannah alone, which begs a lot of questions: How did he get there? What was there that was worth retiring from his career? It seemed like that was starting to tick off a lot of boxes, in terms of how to make the transition from show to book make sense.

Lauren Sarner/Inverse:

LS: In your words, what is Flint’s fate?

Jonathan Steinberg: The crew’s understanding of Flint’s fate in Treasure Island is that he dies alone in Savannah in an emotionally not good place. How did he get there? We like the idea of a story about how he was put there as an act of mercy. It turns into loneliness later on, presumably when Thomas dies of old age. That made sense as a way to both acknowledge the book and spin it. To take something that seems like a neutral piece of story about where Flint ends up to be an artifact of this emotionally fraught moment between Flint and Silver. Silver is facing the choice of having to kill him or not. There’s this choice made to create a different story.

LS: But is the story true? After the camera cuts away from Flint and Silver, the men see birds fly up from that area as if Silver does shoot that gun.

Steinberg: There’s a lot of things they could have been reacting to. It was deliberate to have there be no sound to allow for interpretation.

Robert Levine: There’s a choice on Madi’s part about what Silver’s telling her. We wanted to put the audience in the same place of having to make a choice about believing Silver or not.

Do you believe him?

Steinberg: Do we have a sense of what we imagine is happening? Yes, but if I was someone else, I wouldn’t want to watch it with my interpretation coloring it.

TV Insider: Was there really a place in the colonies that rich Brits sent their wayward, i.e. gay, children?

Levine: The founder of the Savannah colony was a reformer who wanted the colony to reshape how the world treated those deemed as dangerous or different. That was a basket we could put Thomas in, and then we had the thread to use for Silver to end Flint’s war without necessarily ending Flint. It also helped Flint find his way back to McGraw [the compassionate man he was before his vengeful turn into Flint.] It’s bittersweet; there’s tragedy in it but renewal as well.

DEADLINE: One of those themes was the one of love and redemption, especially for Toby Stephens’ Flint. After what looked for sure to be his death at the hands of Silver, we see him transported to a reformist penal colony in what is now the state of Georgia and reunited with a kiss and an embrace with Tom Hamilton. Why was that the end for Black Sails’ most dominating character?

STEINBERG: Among the things that we felt from Treasure Island we wanted to respect the cannon and work the show towards was this very specific and very odd mention of the end of Captain Flint, which is only told through hearsay in the book. It explained to be that Flint died alone and in a really rough way in Savannah, and it did feel specific and something that we wanted to try to make some sense of and give some emotional context to.

I also think the idea that we would hear from Thomas again has been around for as long as Thomas has been around. I think we largely subscribe to the idea that if you don’t see a body in a show, it doesn’t matter how many people tell you they’re dead, they’re not dead, and it was just a question of how and when he would return.

DEADLINE: You really mix history and Stevenson’s fiction there…

STEINBERG: Well, there was this historical reality that felt interesting, that Savannah and the Georgia colony began, in some part, as a prison reform exercise. It was a way to create an environment in which prisoners were treated more humanely than they were in England. So, when you add those two things up, the overlap in that Venn diagram starts to look at lot like Thomas Hamilton, and it just felt clean. Especially in a show that has always been about balancing history and this fictional world from Treasure Island that, at the end, they were touching again. That there was a moment in which it felt like both halves of the show had their moment to have a part in Flint’s end and to have a part in sort of putting him in the place that he’d stay until the book starts.

Collider: Do you think that Silver would have eventually come to the same conclusion about what he was going to do with Flint, or was his decision influenced by constantly having people in his ear about it?

STEINBERG: I don’t think it’s a choice he would have made, 10 episodes ago. It feels like it’s a choice that was made only because of the two massively formative relationships that have developed and become that way, in Season 4. A lot of the people who were in his ear were largely manifestations of the voices that he was already hearing in his own head, giving him that internal conflict, whether it’s Billy or Hands or Madi, or whomever. It just felt right, as a way to finish telling his story, that his story ends with him conceiving of this act of mercy. It felt like a way to spin the way you find these characters in Treasure Island, in a way that felt interesting and a little unexpected.

Collider:

How did you come to decide that this is what Flint’s fate would be, and that we would be left questioning whether or not that’s really the truth?

STEINBERG: When you read the book, you’re told that Flint died in a very specific way, and it’s a way that doesn’t immediately suggest story. He died alone, some indeterminate period of time after the exciting stuff happened, and he died in a very lonely, sad place. When we talked about planting flags in the ground of things that we considered to be canon, and you have to account for them, that was one of them. It felt like it was important, and it felt like a challenge to figure out how we could acknowledge that and also make it work for us, and recontextualize it and make it a bit of a mystery. There’s a lot of people telling a lot of stories in Treasure Island, and a lot of people telling stories in this show. If this show is about anything, it’s about the fact that narrative can be a very powerful thing, when used properly. So, it felt right that the ending was steeped in that idea. Deadline:

DEADLINE: Having started Black Sails 20-years before Treasure Island is supposed to start, you brought the series finale right to the brink of the book, was that always the intended ending of the show?

LEVINE: You know, our goal with the ending was to get as close as possible to Treasure Island. It was to try to leave you in a place where you could finish the show and then start at page one of the book, and start reading it, and have it not only make sense in the narrative sense, but also be something of a new story for you. Because now you could fill in a lot between the lines in terms of the characters, and their relationships, and their histories.

I think, in some cases, we wanted it to feel like even if our story was ending properly for the sake of Treasure Island, that for some of them, life goes on.

IGN: IGN: I was surprised that everyone made it out of the series finale alive and, for the most part, with happy endings. What was behind the choice to not load up on the death on your way out? Jonathan Steinberg: I think there was an awareness that when watched in a certain way there was so much tragedy already in the ending. Of all the people who were lost and weren't there anymore, and how close they were to something historically meaningfully that got bargained away, that to then pile that on with even more misery just felt unpleasant. And not true. I think the show's always been a tragedy but I don't think there's ever been a feeling of wanting to wallow in it. And so I think some balance in that sense felt right. And only some of it was really our choice. By the time you get to that point in a story, the characters are talking to you a little bit about where they belong. I think the endings all felt like everyone was where they belonged. We had some say in it, but a lot of it was just letting it all be what it wanted to be at that point. IGN: Over the course of the show, were you always determined to drive everyone up to the doorstep of Treasure Island? Was it the case where if you'd read the book then fine or did you always have the goal of leading us into the novel in specific ways? Levine: I think the latter for sure. That was always the intent. In practice, it wasn't an easy thing to do. The book, when you really start to get granular with it, there are some things that are easily understood and some things that aren't. Obviously, he was just writing his own story and now here we are trying to graft ours onto it. It was certainly the topic of a lot of conversations and a lot of planning, trying to get our ending to a place where it could be as close as possible to the ideal. Which is that you've watched the show and then you pick up the book and can seamlessly continue with the story while also feeling different because you know all these motivations and backstory from our show. It now informs everything there. It was just a matter of grinding it as close as possible as we could get it to be while also making sure we were delivering a satisfying ending for the characters of the show. I feel very happy where we got. We have Billy Bones in a place where it sort of makes sense that he ends up where he ends up in the book. And Silver and Flint. Madi too, I think you can understand her to be the person that's referenced in the book in a way that makes sense. I feel like it's good. I give us a B+. [laughs] IGN: Flint found Thomas, after all these years, but he's also a prisoner now. But is being back with his true love worth it? Is that all that matters to him? Steinberg: I think we spent a lot of time this season exploring that question. Is it enough if you are forced to give up everything but you are given the connection you've been seeking in order to be fulfilled - is that connection enough? I think, in some way, that question is explored a number of times in the last few episodes and we get different answers. And I don't necessarily think that at the end of that finale those answers are fully cooked. I think they're situations that people have chosen for themselves or have been chosen for them, in which they're going to find out. In that moment, it's emotionally effective I think. To see them back together again. And to see Flint in that place. Hollywood Reporter:

HR: How beholden were you to the fates of all the characters in Treasure Island?

It depends on which one, it depends on the details. We tried to have a fair amount of discipline about certain elements of that book and treat them as canon and things we just had to find a way to make sense of. There are some other elements that I think are relayed through unreliable narrators in the book or seemed, to us, to be part of a narrative that was clearly embellished from some history that came before it. Part of the process of trying to land this story into that book was about sorting out the two and figuring out what really is canon. What's Long John Silver's story? It's not necessarily something to be taken at face value. But it was a challenge. That book doesn't contemplate 40 hours of story that come before it.

HR: Did you always know you were going to reunite Flint with Thomas at the end, or did that idea come about later in the writing process?

We had a sense in season two when he died off screen, that any character who dies off screen, you're taking the word of the messenger as to whether or not it actually happened. As someone who watches these stories and reads these stories, it feels unlikely that it actually happened. We knew we weren't finished with him. And then at some point in season three we realized it would be reasonably late in the series when he came back, so in season four it felt right. And it wasn't a choice he would make, it was a choice made for him. TV Insider: TV Insider: The series ended with several characters, including Silver and Flint, sacrificing their revolutionary dreams to be with their true loves. Are you saying that love tops every other purpose—whether fighting for freedom or revenge? Steinberg: Since Season 2, at a basic level, the story has been about the tension between a domestic life and comfort and the desire for meaning and glory and change on a massive scale. A number of the endings are about that choice made by these characters. Or the choice made for them.  TV Insider: Like Silver made for Flint. Why did you decide to reunite Flint and his presumed long dead lover Thomas Hamilton (Rupert Penry-Jones) on a Savannah prison farm?  What do you expect fan reaction to be? Levine: I think fans want Flint to find some measure of peace in this world. The fate of Thomas was always a bullet left in the gun from the time we left his actual death offscreen. The question was when and what would be the most effective way to deploy that plausibly and meaningfully. (There is some really beautiful Silver and Flint discussion across all the finale interviews, and how their relationship can be read, and it’s all very much worth a read. This post was a bit too long already, so I sadly left the excerpts out.)

#black sails #black sails spoilers #captain flint #flinthamilton #thomas hamilton