#which is exactly why Max rejecting this is so radical

[starbuck]

“You'll be right back in the parlor room listening through a crack in the door to where the real business is being done. Back to where you started before you brought Mother and myself here and we made you into the man that you always insisted to them that you were.”

The fact that Eleanor’s mother was apparently the driving force behind building-up the Guthrie trading company in Nassau before she was killed in the Spanish raid is a VERY interesting detail when you consider the scene in 4x08 where Marion Guthrie attempts to set Max up with a man who she claims would “listen to [her] as a wife” and allow her to wield the true strategic power.

Because we also know that, when Richard initially pushed the move to Nassau, Eleanor’s mother didn’t want to go because she felt it would be too dangerous. And yet one of the perks Marion lists about the man she recommends to Max is “His family would be relieved beyond measure that he'd found himself a future far away from their business.” So to me, Marion becomes a slightly sinister figure in the formation of Eleanor’s parents’ relationship when I imagine her introducing Eleanor’s mother to Richard, fully aware that he had ambitions of going to Nassau to try to “prove himself” (and secretly wanting rid of him), but neglecting to mention this to her and instead claiming, as she did with Max, that he’d do whatever she said and that she’d retain autonomy.

I do think that Marion, as a woman secretly wielding power, does like the idea of other women doing the same and legitimately wants to encourage their success but, at the same time, her primary concern is making money which is exactly why she has no issue giving Max a shove towards the same precarious position that got both Eleanor and her mother killed, so long as it means their very profitable partnership can move forward. 

#black sails #which is exactly why Max rejecting this is so radical #it's honestly one of my favorite things that happens in the entire show #i have more to say about this that i'll save for later #but yeah i'm just Very Interested in Eleanor's parents' relationship and the way it mirrors hers with Rogers #i haven't brought it up much bc i don't want it to be interpreted in a Gross Way #but it’s Very Deliberately Paralleled in the show so 🤷 #but yeah there was something Not Great going on there between Richard and his wife #when Eleanor says that Richard’s ‘self-serving lies’ are ‘the manure from which [she] sprouted’... Like. there’s Something there... #bs LB #(sort of... I wrote this last night and couldn’t decide if it made sense so I threw it in my drafts lol) #but I think it’s good so here we are!

[im-the-punk-who]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#thomas hamilton #black sails #long post #black sails meta #black sails discourse #anyway thinking about this A LOT in writing doubting thomas #in trying to show the WAYS in which thomas is juwst as flawed as anyone else and just - the ways in which he learns that #and has to reckon with it #anyway i love thomas a lot because i relate to him a lot and like thats all you can do in fandom you just #*Sees character you relate to* and you grab hold with your teeth and hold on for dear life #also this post is long enough but i think a LOT about how thomas is sort of the stand in for oglthorpe #since historical oglethorpe was a staunch prison reformer and abolitionist once he figured out what the horrors of colonialism were about #how he tried to reform prisoners and give them land and a new start in georgia(sound familiar?) and worked SUPER closely with #the native americans and actually WORKED with them and traded with them ad asked for the land and WAS GRANTED it instead of stealing it #and how he was lifelong friends with ayuba and when ayuba was like 'hey these white guys in london are makign me nervous' #he helped to pay his way back to africa #and for thomas to end up on (a bastardized version of) his plantation i think #is a clear indication of where thomas would have been going and probably where he ended up #(Also all of this is NOT a 'you gotta like thomas' thing like - i realize there are very real reasons why people just Wouldnt Jive with him) #but this is mostly in response to a post about how everyone seems to think thomas is perfect and no one criticizes him #so here is me criticizing thomas #we can love things ad still acknowledge the probematic aspects of them #also i know some of this directly conflicts with an earlier post i made about thomas NOT being a colonialist #call that personal growth and changing our opinions based on multiple conversations where people made me put my money where my mouth is #SORRY ABOUT THE GIANT POST IM GONNA PIN TO MY BLOG #milos black sails meta

[scifimagpie]

Diversity Isn't Enough: The Importance of Radical Inclusion

Hello hello! Well, a friend of mine has now been to 78 agents and gotten as many rejections. Surely, this indicates that the book is simply Not Good Enough, right? That's the thing. I've read it, and the book is excellent. Featuring a character with PTSD, who is both gay and from a mixed heritage background, it's full of funny moments, intelligent thought experiments about robotic consciousness, and has a very solid mystery through the core. The cast is populated by well-rounded and differentiated characters - of mixed abilities, genders, ethnic heritages, and sexualities. And in this setting, their societal and work crew composition is pretty normal. So in addition to featuring a robot love story and a murder mystery, there are plenty of moments where the night crew assembles, and a deaf character sits at a table with a young hijabi clinic worker and her mechanic girlfriend, and two divorced people who remain friends, as well as the main character - all so they can play cards in the park, out of the sight of a nearly omniscient AI. The thing is, while audio-visual projects - which often spring from book series these days - such as A Wrinkle in Time, American Horror Story, Sense-8, American Gods, The Adventure Zone, Welcome to Night Vale, Penumbra, Who Fears Death (Nnendi Okorafor), Steven Universe, Blackish, Dear White People, Master of None, Switched at Birth, Fresh off the Boat, Luke Cage, Dark Matter, The Expanse, and Westworld include cast members of many shades, there's still a focus on able, attractive, mostly straight people - not to mention that in more than a couple of these, white characters still end up dominating front and centre roles. Yes, this is getting better, but there seems to be a genuine fear of addressing the (surprisingly large) populations of trans and genderqueer, aromantic or asexual, Deaf, visually impaired/blind, and visibly and invisibly disabled people. Not to mention that a lot of these populations intersect. I personally know plenty of people who are people of colour, genderqueer, and disabled. I've read articles by a surprising number of genderqueer, mentally ill people of colour. Add present and former sex workers to the mix, and you have a pretty good sampling of humanity.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that these diverse shows, which are not radically inclusive yet, are only the tip of the iceburg. Producers and studios and publishing houses tend to hire just one or two people to demonstrate their wokeness, and keep the rest their content steaming along as though it's business as usual - teen YA love triangles, stubble-covered male power-fantasy thrillers, gritty sex murder mysteries, soft and juicy chick lit, spicy supernatural sex romps, and tooth-gritting fast ship space porn.  I've edited these books, read them, and enjoyed them - but the fact remains that the market's determiners keep orienting themselves to what they think is a safe bet, an easy seller. We still live in a world where an alternate history series where the South won was greenlit by HBO. So yeah, Nnedi Okorafor's series is getting a production deal, but so is a slavery fantasyland series. So is Ready Player One, too. A Minecraft book by Max Brooks is at the top of the bestsellers right now. So yes, diversity's making inroads, but The Problem Is Not Fixed. Radical inclusion, i.e. just treating people like people, and writing stories where non-white, non-able, non-cisgender, non-heterosexual, non-Christian people are allowed to exist and be in starring roles is absolutely revolutionary. 

Ready Player What, now? 

For those not familiar with RPO, it's basically a pop culture slurry of references; another Teenage White Boy Saves The World book, with virtual reality, and somehow he's the only one who knows Stuff About the Eighties - and Steven Spielberg is attached. You'd think he'd pick a more challenging project or have better taste, but no, fanboy fantasy it is. The biggest problem is that people think Ready Player One is like, subversive somehow? Or self-aware? But it absolutely isn't. It's sincere. Max Brooks is one of the guys who launched the zombie craze--he's very good at commercial writing, to the extent that he's actually a Name, but yeah, he's not exactly known for challenging or artistically mold-breaking projects. And all of this would be fine, except that it, and the dozens of imitators who crop up to try and skim that flavour, crowd out the more innovative and interesting projects.

Is this another Commerce vs Art rant? 

Absolutely not. It's not that Commerce and Art are Enemies. Heck, it's *fine* to monetize the daylights out of something. Art's relied on Commerce for basically all of modern history. If it wasn't Commerce, it was religion. But - the problem is *how* those selections are done, and the way people trust their preferences to be free of bias. Which just isn't the case. It's OKAY to have biases. The problem is that we treat a certain kind of bias as objective, and it gets far, far more sway over the stories that get told than anything else. To the point where just including people is considered revolutionary and gamechanging. Simultaneously, there are so *few* of these inclusive stories that individual properties are often torn apart for being 'not good enough'. Yet meanwhile, mainstream stories with sparkling white casts somehow get a break. But including people is how you GET different kinds of stories. Now, to be clear,  I LOVE the Hunger Games. A lot. But we have a market where agents are like, 'eh, this sold, let's get ten more that are basically variations of this flavour'. There's very little willingness to risk the core of the market, and it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle of, well, crap. Like, if you go to a corner store you can buy some chips. And chips are good, I like chips, but even if you put zesty spice or cool ranch or sour cream on them, they're *still* chips. they're not zucchini chips, or sweet potato crisps, or whatever, ya know? The problem is that the market tends to focus on chips, and assume nothing else will sell...

Wat do? 

The solution is simple. Readers have to step outside their comfort zones - unfortunately, the readers who might not even read this blog are the ones I'm addressing - and writers and publishers have to band together. There is definitely a need and an audience for diversity, and moreso, radical inclusion. People often talk about 'not seeing colour', which is an issue I won't even get into right now, and complain that they want stories that are 'normal', and aren't focused on 'identity politics'. That's the most bitter irony of all - these stories exist, and they're fun and delightful. And yes, inequality issues do crop up in some of them, because of how those issues affect people's lived experiences - but a lot of the time, people across the ability, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality spectrum just want to have fun. A transgender plus-sized psychic lady who talks with the dead to solve murder mysteries? Yes. A deaf Chinese-American engineer who discovers the secret to time travel and accidentally changes the course of history? Definitely. A love story featuring an asexual mobility-impaired Indian woman and a Zulu warrior king from an alternate world? Why not? *** Thanks for returning to the nest. Leave a comment and say hi! I want to hear from you. Keep up with the new releases by getting on the mailing list. Buy my books on Amazon, and keep up with me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!

#diversity #trans #lgbtq #hbo #stories #radical inclusion #ableism #sizeism #prejudice #science fiction #fantasy #nnedi okorafor