This Is A Great Analysis, And One I'm Very Glad To Read Too. I've Always Been On His Side And Have Always

Black Sails x Oceans Brawl by Cœur de Pirate

Part 1/3 (follows part 2 and 3)

It would seem these monsters are men

Max my beloved <33

"She loved the sea for its storms alone, and the green only when it grew scattered among ruins."

G. Flaubert

Miranda Barlow's aesthetic.

I love so much this character and her story and I think she would have liked very much Madame Bovary if she had the chance to read it.

(We all know what was written in that burning letter, don't we? I think it was important to include that too about her)

reblog if you're gay, not gay, slightly gay, or if you just want to launch donald trump into a dying star

no one will ever know which one

I've always said that, he is immortal. 🙌🏻

(And I refuse to believe that someone like Silver could have been his end, sorry.)

“I have survived starvation, a tempest, pirate hunters, jealous captains, mutinous crews, angry lords, a queen, a king, and the goddamn British navy.” - Captain J Flint, Black Sails (Toby Stephens)

"But I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women and children who lost their lives to men like you. Man and women and children forced to wear your chains. I must answer to them.

And this war, Flint’s war, my war, it will not be bargained away to avoid a fight. To save John Silver’s life, or his men’s, or mine.”

I’d like to start from this beautiful speech from Madi to explain why I think Madi is the war itself. Why she was exactly what Flint needed to start fighting it and why she couldn’t be further away from Silver as a person.

Just because I rewatched the final ep. today and I feel the need to honor the one who lost part of herself in this and to reason about the dynamics among the two persons who might have changed the world and the one who kicked that hope back into the dark corner of the untold.

As always, Flint and Silver’s conversation at the end of ep.XXXVIII made me think A LOT. First time I guess I was overwhelmed by emotions, but this time, between the bitterness of the betrayal and the desperation of Flint's loss, I think I started to see exactly what Silver couldn’t get about the war. Which basically is its meaning.

But let me begin with Flint, because is the character I think I know better by now and because I need to start from a warrior who is not the war itself.

Flint started by fighting a war, another one, an easier one, alongside Thomas. He found himself in that period of time, but he lost that war and the one he loved the most with it. Then he started to fight another kind of war, twisted himself in order to fit into its lines. That war was never about liberation, even if that was what he had been telling himself all along and maybe what he hoped he could eventually accomplish by fighting it: it was just about revenge and something to grab in order to stay afloat. It took him to lost every hope of happiness he had left (Miranda), the last possible meaning of his life and of the person he felt he really was deep inside to see the chance for yet another kind of war. A wider one, a harder one, a most fundamental one. It took him to meet Madi. Knowing her, someone completely different from anyone he had known and fought along in the past, someone who was somehow closer to him as a person than anyone he had ever known (except maybe Eleonor, I’m talking mainly about the pirates. Thomas and Miranda were close to him but not very similar in character I’d say and maybe this is why they got along together so well), he finally had the chance to understand that he was not alone in his misery. She had the courage to be what Flint didn’t even know he could become, the fight not for the fight’s sake but for the outcome, as much as he reputed himself already excluded from it, because however he couldn’t ever be part of anything again, not in the way he had been with Thomas and Miranda. But there’s a difference between fighting just to kill and fighting to save who the one you are killing would have been willing to kill, and Madi represented that change for him.

And the war represented the only meaning he was still able to give to his life.

He is defined by his past, absolutely and mainly, and this makes him both someone with valid reasons to fight and someone with reasons to stop fighting.

In the previous episode we see how Silver instead refuses to be defined by his past, which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how one let that past influence themselves, but that in this specific situation is basically what makes him unable (just my point of view of course) to get the general meaning of that war.

He chooses to erase his experience in favor of the moment, of the future maybe, and this makes him unable (as much as he likes to affirm the contrary, which I had never agreed upon) to understand the minds of the ones who let that experience shape them. And even more, it makes him unable to understand the minds of the ones who don’t need to have cruel experiences behind them in order to feel the fight. That is, Madi.

To link with my previous post ( https://www.tumblr.com/dragonsinthedarkness/758840316125216768/from-the-moment-he-started-speaking-i-couldnt?source=share ), in that infamous conversation in the last ep. Silver confesses he felt the war only (or especially, but I’d say only) when he lost Madi, because he felt the need to honor her sacrifice, avenge her lost and everything Flint had been doing for years, and the point is that that war was EXACTLY that. It was answering to the multitudes of voices who had undergone all that suffering and that demanded justice for it. It was trying to accomplish that as few others as possible could undergo that same fate.

And the point I want to make is that Madi was not only a warrior but the war itself because she felt those voices and the need to answer to them EVEN IF she had never personally experienced such tragedies. She was raised with the Guthries, then in the camp, she had probably even had the chance to be happy in her childhood, but this didn’t prevent her from developing the knowledge of that evil or the responsibility to fight it as leader of her community and as sisters of all the ones who had suffered before and may suffer again.

She wasn’t defined by her own past, but she brought on her shoulders the most painful and important legacy and decided to honor it.

And one may ask for justice for what happened in their own lifetime with a single chance of succeeding, that can make a great warrior of them, but those voices REACHED BACK CENTURIES, as she said. Her justice, their justice, would have been hopeless as long as something bigger as that war started to change things, and this is exactly what Silver couldn’t understand.

Now of course I know changes don’t happen overnight because “the world is too strong for that”, but I’m talking about their reality in that age right now and I think that as much as a war couldn’t have probably changed things, it would have been a beginning at least. A scream echoing in the night of their existences who would have maybe be heard, and as long as even a single person was able to gain goodness from it, it wouldn’t have been in vain.

As I believe all their efforts had not been in vain, despite the outcome.

For one hour, a month or a year (to improperly quote Silver) of freedom.

For one single moment of victory, of light in the dark.

Rio and Agatha - Star Crossed Lovers

[translation] MXTX Interview - TGCF questions

this is rlly for everyone to love hc more TT // split by general/book1, book 3 spoilers, and book 5 spoilers via headings (though all are minor spoilers imo, except for the one in bk 5?)

there’s another question that pertains to TGCF’s comments, which I found interesting but have left out for now because it’s very very long. it’s half translated, so maybe i’ll finish it later

CW: domestic violence, Q.21 suicidal thoughts

the mdzs parts were prev translated here by @bigbadredpanda

original interview here

reposts and translations OK, but pls give credit!! twt @/uooongs, tumblr @uoongs, ig @/duoj1ao

GENERAL / BOOK 1 REFERENCES

Q14. TGCF characters’ heights?

Xie Lian 178cm (but can perfectly seem like 180), Hua Chen 190 (first appearance as a cute fresh youth was 185cm), Jun Wu 191, Feng Xin 188, Mu Qing 188, Mo Shui 189, Shi Wudu 187, Shi Qinxuan 186 (woman form 176), Pei Ming 188, Ling Wen 180, Quan Yizhen 184 (but has a very tall presence), Yin Yu 186 (but miraculously no matter how tall he is it’s hard to notice this person).

PS: Yu Shi [rain master?]’s cow is 150 without standing up

Q17. What was XL doing after his second time getting banished to the human realm? What was HC doing? Why couldn’t he find XL? HC previously swore to not let XL know he’s protecting him, so why did he decide to meet XL again after 800 years?

XL tried doing other jobs, but all didn’t go too well, and would bring sadness/strife to others, so could only collect trash by himself.

HC was looking for him while also working on his skills + earning money, expanding his power, and worked hard to become the strongest dude!

Really, it was because XL’s luck was so terrible and stuck to him so closely that he couldn’t meet HC. Actually, many times they almost saw each other, like in Banyue, and also when XL was Fangxin head priest, but both times they just missed each other. Finally XL ascended by himself and CEO Hua couldn’t contain himself and rushed over.

Continua a leggere

“his relationship with thomas hamilton– the initial friendship– and them then becoming lovers is sorta’ like– it was the realization of himself. i think he became himself with thomas hamilton. he finally could be who he– his potential was kind of unleashed with hamilton.” - Toby Stephens (x)