@holyblanchett : Someone Said Rio Closes Her Eyes Because She Can't Stand To See Agatha In Pain, And

Miranda was always what Flint needed, and to her last moments, she remained exactly that. Flint needed a sacrifice to his cause, a martyr to fight in the name of, and that’s what Miranda became.  Because ten years and Flint was still fighting the trappings of civilization for all Miranda said that he had abandoned it. Because Miranda was civilization. She and Flint and Thomas were all parts of some unique machine, and Thomas might have have been been the engine in the machine, and Flint the weapon, but Miranda was the outer shell, the body, the thing that upheld both those things. She was music and bitter hope and china cups and antiseptic on Flint’s wounds. She was someone to bring home books to and someone to write I’m sorry to and someone to say, “you’re getting blood on my floor.” She was the last person who had any idea whatsoever of James McGraw, the only person who knew him as James McGraw, who once called him lieutenant, who once knew what he looked like in a navy uniform, who once knew what he looked in like in the candlelight of a London drawing room. And in turn, he knew her. Knew her as the woman she once was, knew how she looked in fine silks and jewels and pearls in her hair, knew what she looked like with Thomas on her arm, who knew her as a wife and socialite and lady and a scandal, as all the things she never was on Nassau.    And if Flint was ever to try to take true and exiting revenge, she needed to die. Because as long as she was alive, she was the promise of civilization, of peace, of memory, for Flint to return to. And that’s what she realizes when she puts her head down in Peter Ashe’s drawing room and asks him about the clock. The façade of civilization, the dinner, the pleasantries, Flint and Ashe shaking hands, the talk of a trial, a pardon, it needed to be broken, because in that moment to allow it to exist was intolerable. And she broke it, destroyed it with six words. But she was civilization, and she destroyed herself. 

So beautiful and hearwarming! It would be amazing if Madi went freeing them, I think the three of them would make a great squad.

They deserve that freedom and the happiness which comes with it. Sometimes is useful to read things like this. It makes one feel better, even if I can hardly imagine it coming true.

Happy Thomas Resurrection Day

I wrote a little short thing in celebration. All prompts to be handled shortly - I’m in a writing mood!

It has been a long time since Thomas Hamilton had the luxury of caring about smells. He recalls his first night in Bethlem Royal Hospital all too well for so many reasons, but high on the list is the appalling stench of the place. He recalls retching over and over again that first night - soiling the rough uniform they had forced him into and earning himself a qualification as a messy patient, something which he had come to regret in later months as he sat in his cell, dressed in little more than rags, huddling in the straw. He has long since learnt to disregard any and all smells that might have disturbed him in his former life - and so it takes him quite by surprise when the scent of the sea, complete with its faint edge of the dead things that have washed up overnight but without the heavy reek of the Thames, strikes him all at once. He breathes it in, and feels something in him ease- as if it had taken this to assure him at last that he is still breathing, still here -

Still tangible and alive.

“Thomas?” James asks, and Thomas shakes his head, struck speechless as he stands on the shore for the first time in years, staring at the ship that is going to take them away from this shore - away from all that they have both suffered and into a new life.

“Forgive me,” he croaks, and swallows hard. “Forgive me,” he repeats. “I - had no idea not smelling tilled earth any longer would affect me this way.”

James blinks.

“There’s - a strange sort of symbolism in that, I suppose,” he acknowledges, and Thomas stands, dumbstruck for a moment at the eloquence of his husband’s statement.

He has been dead to the world for ten years. He has smelled earth - worked it, been covered in it for so long. His fingernails have been crusted with it, his hands turned black and brown as it’s been ground into his skin. He’s been buried - buried before his time, before the breath has left him, with no coffin, even, to shield him, and he suddenly feels as if he has just, finally, burst free of his premature grave only to find himself not thirty feet from freedom such as he has only dreamt of in his fitful, disturbed coma. He turns, and kneels, allowing the sea water to run over his fingertips, then raises them to his nose. He is alive, and he suddenly wants to splash out into the swell, bathe himself in the ocean, allow it to wash the past ten years off his beleaguered, dirt-encrusted skin and his battered psyche.

“Do you think,” he asks, taking a deep breath, “that there’s time for a bath, before we leave?”

James looks at him, and then at the water.

“That’s going to be colder than you think it is,” he warns, but doesn’t sound like he has any real expectation of dissuading Thomas from his goal. In fact, he’s looking at the water speculatively himself, and then at Thomas, who grins at him.

“I might need supervision,” he says. “I think you should come and make certain I don’t drown.”

“We have a few hours before nightfall,” James agrees, and Thomas feels a thrill of possibility run through him - even as he recalls that they are not entirely alone.

The ship in the bay, after all, will not surrender itself to two men. Thomas turns toward their ragged crew of escaped convicts, and the stronger men that Madi has brought with her to their rescue. He looks to Madi herself, who stands, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

“I will take the men further up the inlet,” she says to both of them. “Do not make me come looking for you in the dark.”

James blushes - actually blushes, and then the princess turns, and walks away, and Thomas’ grin widens.

“Shall we?” he asks, and James gives a huff of helpless laughter, and then they are both laughing, stripping their shirts off and going splashing into the water. There will be grime in their hair tomorrow and they will both need a new set of breeches, but for now, they are joyful, cleansed with the salt, renewed, refreshed -

Resurrected.

If you ask me, the three of them deserve a whole show just for themselves. Like...only fragments in only five episodes? Absolutely not enough.

RUPERT PENRY-JONES as Thomas Hamilton, LOUISE BARNES as Miranda Barlow, and TOBY STEPHENS as James McGraw in Black Sails, Chapter XI.

This is great! 😍

Love her so much🖤

i really love to make collages with aesthetics for characters uu

marie-joseph sanson, «innocent : rouge.»

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Yeah, it's not really fair, right? I watched ep.1 years ago thinking I was going to see a pirate show and then said 'pirate show' turned into a social analyses of humankind throughout history, pushing me to do social/historical/political/ideological reflections I never felt the need to do before in my life.

Yeah, that's not fair, that's Black Sails.

:) come closer I’m just a normal pretty-good raunchy pirate adventure macguffin caper show I’m just a regular little “prequel to treasure island” Im not a thesis about the very nature of fiction itself or one of the most devastating brain rewiring existential things you’ll ever watch or anything that’s ridiculous. come on pspspsps you can trust me

Just one moment of peace.

Part of this was just me wanting a bit of an extra challenge as an art project to take my mind of things, part of it was digging through my bottomless reference folder for something completely different and getting stuck with an idea about Flint and his horse? And, really, the need for small comforts, I guess.

Anyway. I like the idea of him being secretly fond of that horse, of giving it some ridiculous name that nobody would get but Thomas (although Miranda probably does, and just pretends she doesn’t). And of him taking comfort in the warmth and solid presence of another living creature, of him allowing to let the mask slip and be gentle for a moment. It’s a simple comfort, and one I can see him craving when he has so little comfort left.

When Miranda gives back Meditation to Flint in episode XIII, they somehow make you think that he hadn't seen nor read that book in a while. Of course it was related to Thomas and he remembered that very clearly, but Miranda was the one to keep it and she is the one to say it was a precious thing she shared with her husband and all, over the general tendency of Flint to distance himself from the past, if not ideologically at least emotionally. But in truth, in ep. III he got what Miranda was reading from a single sentence overheard through the door...I mean, he had to know that book pretty well to do that. In fact, I've always liked to think about that book as some sort of comfort through the darkest hours for him as well as it was for Miranda, for what it means as an object at least if not for its philosophy which, as much as in line with Thomas' mind , I believe was pretty far from James' point of view.

I'm honestly relieved by the fact that they somehow confirmed this headcanon of mine. Like...yeah, some parts of his mind try to obscure the past in order to survive, but since he cannot separate himself from something which has defined him deeply he may as well find comfort in what is left of it.

That's so heartbreaking, but I love the way they orchestrated since ep.I his whole story.

They’re scheming

That's amazing😂

So… I tried to make a thing.