the beginning of hope

one of my favorite flint-isms is the way he always pretends that whatever situation he's currently in is the ideal situation for them to be in. he says 'we have nassau. we are strongest now.' and then he loses nassau and he's like 'just because we lost nassau doesn't mean rogers has nassau. he is still trying to get it under control. therefore, he is weakest now, and we are at our strongest.' and then rogers gains control of nassau and flint is like 'now that rogers is in control of nassau, he believes he can take it for granted. so he won't see us coming. therefore, we are strongest right now.' and somehow you find yourself nodding along every time.

the thing is sometimes black sails plays its tropes and parallels to famous literary works completely straight and sometimes it subverts them and sometimes it does a secret third thing. so it's impossible to say what happened

like the case study for this i think is when it was playing a montage of flint beating silver in practice sword fights before they were going to fight for realsies and i was thinking okay. i know this trope. it's going to be a montage of him getting better but not quite winning and then he wins this real fight because of what he's learned. and then i started second-guessing myself like yeah but this show is savvy about its tropes. it might be trying to lead me to think that silver is going to win but actually flint does because Stories Aren't Real Life Stupid -- the blacksails writers. and i went back and forth on this torturously until the duel never happened because both of them got distracted because the walrus blowed up which of course i did not predict at all

like the thing is. if you don't see the body it's a fakeout death. black sails does this multiple times and it's infallible except when maybe it's not. billy wasn't dead madi wasn't dead so thomas hamilton isn't dead. except maybe they were doing it to create the false impression that thomas hamilton wasn't dead by creating a predictable formula and making you fill in the gaps yourself with what you think should be there. but maybe it's baiting you into expecting a subversion. maybe something else happened. what do you want to have happened. what do you think is a Good Story. what do you think is in line with the Themes and Characters. what do you think is More Realistic. no matter what you choose they got your ass

i guess what i mean is that the second you think anything happened you're weighing in based on what you think a story should have in it and you've already lost

the problem with that being of course that it Is in fact a story. consciously so

"all you ever do is complain" that's not true. I also resent.

its not even shipping its just posting what they did

speaking of hedging, one criticism i always hate that's often levelled against people doing media criticism or analysis is variations on "oh they think all their opinions are correct" yeah i'd hope so--don't understand why someone would hold an opinion they think is wrong! i hate the culture of endlessly qualifying everything you say to mollify an interlocutor who feels like your strongly held opinion is an imposition on their free will and i think nobody ought to bend to it. make your criticisms and points with your fucking chest. if you think you need my permission to disagree with me then you will die my thrall and be buried in my tomb