to the world we dream about

On a rewatch it's obviously not a surprise, but one of my favorite things about Black Sails S1 is that everybody else (not unreasonably!) handles Flint like a loaded gun and meanwhile Miranda is not afraid of him at all. Genuinely dangerous men carry themselves differently the moment he enters a room, and yet when he shouts in her face she doesn't even flinch. It's absolutely fascinating to watch as a viewer who doesn't know yet what exactly is going on

they're divorced. they weren't even married. this isn't romantic. they're definitely not platonic. they're cinematic parallels. they are fighting the narrative. they slowly built their relationship. they rely and trust each other. they were aggressively thrown into this. they want to bite each other's head off. they kill for each other. they live for each other. they should kiss. they would put each other in a blender. they're insane. they don't even realise. they're fully aware it.

Imagine having a best friend who regularly confesses his weirdest darkest conspiracy theories about your mutually despised very uncanny and murderous leather-loving boss and suddenly losing said best friend of yours permanently to said boss after they went on one singular fishing trip on their own during which all you get to know is that their professional relationship seems to have met with what your best friend demurely calls "progress" and you see that it has fully wiped out from his brain that you both are In a Union together and instead he is now seeming to prioritise your until-recently-Mutually-despised boss' mental and physical well-being over the literal lives of all your colleagues and friends. Imagine confronting your best friend about why the hell he's trying to protect the guy (again, your boss) that killed your adoptive dad who was also his predecessor and he has no idea why he's doing what he's doing and neither do you. Imagine being token asexual pirate of the Walrus crew Billy Bones Manderley

everything is a reference when you're crazy

i know lots of things about black sails were sort of worked out as it went along but it's awesome how much you can see everyone's entire character arcs in like the first few episodes. silver is introduced as a coward and a (literal) backstabber. flint can fight and scheme his way out of anything but collapses when he gets to his gay and bourgeois house. max wants the safety and stability she thinks money can give her but chooses to jeopardize it for love. eleanor is unable to stop fighting even when running is the only thing that could save her. they're so different from the people they are at the end of s4 but so entirely the same

Cackling at Orpheus writing in his little notebook during Chant, so focused, making his song. Wtf is he writing for 18 hours straight while Eurydice dies in a blizzard. La la la

they should invent a term for shipping were I don't think they should be in a romantic relationship however I believe they are each others parasite and separating them is not an option

much like the dual symbolism of the shovel i feel like black sails has this ambiguous take on mercy/forgiveness/redemption where it can be this sort of sacred liberating thing that resists state power and at the same time the most effective enforcer of submission to state power. and it's this duality (along with that of the aforementioned shovel) that makes the ending so ambiguous. not least because thomas hamilton obviously represents both

I hate Rogers but I love the fact that Black Sails is the type of show that gives him a ship called the Eurydice and then has him cause the death of his own wife by going back to her. Rogers never fully trusted Eleanor, and I don't mean he thought she was lying: he could never recognize when she was right and he needed to capitulate. If Eleanor had said "don't turn around and we can make it out of the underworld" Rogers would have been convinced he knew better, and that's why she died.