[annerackham]

On the last BS episode

Anne to Max: I hate you and want to kill you, we’ll never fix what’s between us. Go away!

-10 seconds later-

Max: I refused to marry this guy just for appearances, thus fucking up the help from Mrs. Guthrie and leaving Jack SOL even if he does survive killing Flint, and putting an end to the ridiculous plan I came up with and dragged all of you into this. So here’s me fucking you and Jack over once again.

Anne: All is forgiven!!!

Me: WTF????!!!

[kyralyrical]

Yes! Omg, yes! I was wondering why I was the only person who saw it this way! Let's pretend that by some sort of miracle Jack can kill Flint and come back alive, the plan's gone; he would've killed Flint for nothing because there is no plan without Max doing what Grandma Guthrie says!

What gets me is that everyone has made a sacrifice for this war. Everyone. Everyone except Max. Everyone except Max and she won’t get into a pretend marriage for it. Granted, marriage for appearance sucks but, damn it, Anne almost lost her life with her sacrifice, Jack risks his own to make a life for them, Featherstone stands behind him in an impossible mission for either Idelle or the cause, Flint and Silver turned on friends, Silver lost his leg for his crew even when he was deemed to be so self-centred, Eleanor betrayed Vane, Billy got turned on by others because of his attempts to protect and stand beside his men. Max has done nothing for anyone other than herself. Yes, she’s suffered, but it was never because of a sacrifice she made.

Also, Jack brought her off that beach and onto that ship to protect her. He’s protected her because he knows that, despite everything he has done and that despite Anne’s anger towards her, Anne doesn’t want Max killed. But instead of Max taking the high road, being as respectable as Jack, instead of her saying ‘I will make this sacrifice and marry this man so that we can all have a future, so that you can be happy, even if it isn’t with me’ she’s decided that everything can be all for nothing so long as she can still have Anne one day. It’s infuriating because Jack took Anne’s feelings towards Max into account in the way he acted and Max just hasn’t. Max and Anne... that’s really not the love I want to see win out in the end. 

As for Anne, I’m not mad at her extending her hand to Max in that way. Anne has proved to be a good person and she’s not going to easily forget that she loved Max. She doesn’t want to watch someone she cared about hurting. That’s not a bad thing but I think she does need to look out for herself also. I don’t want to call Max and Anne’s relationship an abusive one because it isn’t, but it does show remnants, in my opinion, of the girl who found herself in an abusive relationship all those years ago. ‘I don’t know who broke it first but it broke,’ she said, and that, to me, sounds like a part of her blames herself, much like many abuse victims do. 

[lady-eleanor-vane]

“Eleanor Guthrie had to die because Black Sails never lets its characters off the hook for past misdeeds – and as Max mentioned in 4.04, hers have piled up. Further, before the show truly made itself known as A Tale of Two Pirates in terms of Silver and Flint, Charles Vane was Flint’s primary ideological and narrative foil. Considering the fact that Vane died for killing relatively minor character Richard Guthrie and Peter Ashe died for dooming Thomas Hamilton, it wouldn’t make sense with the show’s established morality system if the person who killed the second most prominent character escaped unscathed.

That said, nobody expected her death to come this soon or be this gutting. Following her Season 3 plot line, I was concerned that Black Sails wouldn’t be able to make me care when her time came. But to the credit of both the writing and Hannah New’s performance, the way it plays out is achingly sad. It’s impossible even for the most Eleanor-averse viewers not to feel moved.

In the end, she didn’t have the most obvious cause of death — revenge from Jack. It wasn’t even a taste of her own medicine in the form of an intentional betrayal from a lover. In the ultimate karmic payoff, after a lifetime of turning on lovers, Eleanor chose the wrong one to be loyal to. Rogers’s betrayal was not done with malicious intent but rather with the carelessly condescending certainty that his plan was better than hers. Eleanor Guthrie, former Queen of Thieves who switched to civilization’s side, was literally killed by the patriarchy. Her death scene itself is intimate and deeply human, but it also speaks to the show’s larger themes about the gnarled and greytoxicity of the patriarchy.

Her death holds an extra tragic tinge because while Gates, Miranda, Vane, and Teach all died standing up for what they believed in, Eleanor’s capacity for self-delusion lasts until her final breath. Flint’s lie about Rogers’s culpability in the Spanish raid is an act of love, but in true Eleanor fashion, instead of appreciating the love coming from someone in front of her (Max, Vane, and finally Flint), she’s spending her energy on someone who doesn’t deserve it (Richard Guthrie, Rogers).

Teach’s death was the most brutal in execution; Vane’s in impact on the story; Miranda’s in suddenness. But Eleanor’s is the most perfect in its poetic tragedy. It’s senseless in its randomness — because so many people want her dead for personal reasons, but this soldier is not among them. It’s inevitable in its connection to her own choices and history. And it brings her narrative full-circle as she dies with her truest love (Nassau) in the arms of her truest father figure. (Recall that one of her first Season 1 interactions with Flint was a hug). After her rocky Season 3 arc, it seemed impossible that Black Sails could bring Eleanor’s story to a satisfying finish. By weaving in nearly every disparate element of her arc, it does. As usual, never underestimate this show’s absurdly brilliant writing.”

———- Lauren Sarner (XXX). 

[lady-eleanor-vane]

“Eleanor Guthrie had to die because Black Sails never lets its characters off the hook for past misdeeds – and as Max mentioned in 4.04, hers have piled up. Further, before the show truly made itself known as A Tale of Two Pirates in terms of Silver and Flint, Charles Vane was Flint’s primary ideological and narrative foil. Considering the fact that Vane died for killing relatively minor character Richard Guthrie and Peter Ashe died for dooming Thomas Hamilton, it wouldn’t make sense with the show’s established morality system if the person who killed the second most prominent character escaped unscathed.

That said, nobody expected her death to come this soon or be this gutting. Following her Season 3 plot line, I was concerned that Black Sails wouldn’t be able to make me care when her time came. But to the credit of both the writing and Hannah New’s performance, the way it plays out is achingly sad. It’s impossible even for the most Eleanor-averse viewers not to feel moved.

In the end, she didn’t have the most obvious cause of death — revenge from Jack. It wasn’t even a taste of her own medicine in the form of an intentional betrayal from a lover. In the ultimate karmic payoff, after a lifetime of turning on lovers, Eleanor chose the wrong one to be loyal to. Rogers’s betrayal was not done with malicious intent but rather with the carelessly condescending certainty that his plan was better than hers. Eleanor Guthrie, former Queen of Thieves who switched to civilization’s side, was literally killed by the patriarchy. Her death scene itself is intimate and deeply human, but it also speaks to the show’s larger themes about the gnarled and greytoxicity of the patriarchy.

Her death holds an extra tragic tinge because while Gates, Miranda, Vane, and Teach all died standing up for what they believed in, Eleanor’s capacity for self-delusion lasts until her final breath. Flint’s lie about Rogers’s culpability in the Spanish raid is an act of love, but in true Eleanor fashion, instead of appreciating the love coming from someone in front of her (Max, Vane, and finally Flint), she’s spending her energy on someone who doesn’t deserve it (Richard Guthrie, Rogers).

Teach’s death was the most brutal in execution; Vane’s in impact on the story; Miranda’s in suddenness. But Eleanor’s is the most perfect in its poetic tragedy. It’s senseless in its randomness — because so many people want her dead for personal reasons, but this soldier is not among them. It’s inevitable in its connection to her own choices and history. And it brings her narrative full-circle as she dies with her truest love (Nassau) in the arms of her truest father figure. (Recall that one of her first Season 1 interactions with Flint was a hug). After her rocky Season 3 arc, it seemed impossible that Black Sails could bring Eleanor’s story to a satisfying finish. By weaving in nearly every disparate element of her arc, it does. As usual, never underestimate this show’s absurdly brilliant writing.”

———- Lauren Sarner (XXX). 

[annerackham]

Shout-out to Anne for being alive and for not giving in to the asshole who sold her out.

[kyralyrical]

Yeah! I'll be so annoyed if these two end up together. While I admire Max for admitting that she can't apologize for what she did, Anne was right in saying that she was never in the right frame of mind about her, and now she knows the extent of Max's actions and she would be wise to keep her distance.

As much as I think Anne might want some revenge against Rogers, I don't think Anne will be happy to find out that she and Jack were on their way to camp, to a small measure of safety, and that Max steered them away from that.

[kyralyrical]

In short, God, I feel like I need a drink after that Black Sails episode and I don’t normally drink! 

Am I the only one troubled by the lack of Jack/Anne or Anne in general in the last few episodes? I mean, yes, I know we have the whole world falling apart around them but...I just need to see more of them. Maybe I should come out of fanfic-retirement and remedy the situation? Highly considering it, that’s for sure. I need to do something to get me through the week!

[erendyce]

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[annerackham]

This person in the Anne Bonny tag was like:

Not to start any discourse but please for the love of god stop erasing Anne’s gayness just because you ship her with Jack, you can still ship them and acknowledge that it was confirmed she’s a lesbian in canon (link) instead of being an asshole and saying she’s bi because she doesn’t fit your idea of what being a lesbian should be like

And I couldn’t reblog the post for some reason… but…

I mean…

Not to start any discourse but please for the love of god stop erasing Anne’s bisexuality. There’s enough of that and enough biphobia in the LGBT community (at least on tumblr, at least from what I’ve seen in the last month alone).

Anne is bisexual in the show as she’s shown to be attracted both sexually and romantically to Jack and Max and probably her ex-husband too since she married him (out of her own free will according to canon or I like to call it, history). Anne Bonny is a real life pirate who’s one of the most famous pirates and pretty much everyone who’s read about her knows she’s bisexual. Like there’s only a handful of pirates who are famous and there’s 2 of them who are women and bisexual and that’s not a secret about that and those are Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

The writers saying Anne’s a lesbian despite the many moments in the show were she’s clearly having sex (of her own free will and enjoying it) with a man and with both a man and a woman at some points in the show, and being in love with a man is bisexual erasure. Also, doesn’t it seem a bit weird to you that they waited so long to say something about Anne’s sexuality? To me it just seems like they’re fishing for brownie points at the end of the show. They weren’t bothered with fans saying Anne’s bisexual during S2 and S3 when she was in a bisexual relationship with Max and Jack at the same time. It’s kinda weird that as soon as she kicks Max out of her life the writers are like “oh btw…“

I don’t know what you think a lesbian is, but from what I know a lesbian is a woman who’s attracted romantically and sexually only to other women. A bisexual is someone who’s attracted to both men and women. Anne, being attracted to both Jack and Max, is bisexual. Saying that Anne isn’t bisexual despite tons of proof of that, is bisexual erasure.

And now some gifs:

[kyralyrical]

I completely agree with you. I'm not saying that Anne never loved Max, I'm just saying that you can't say that she never loved Jack romantically/sexually either. I think when she first started the relationship with Max, she wondered if she'd only been with Jack because it felt natural and because she owed him, because he was all she ever knew since leaving with the pirates. I think a part of her questioned if what she felt for him was love and attraction when she felt like there weren’t any alternatives.

I think by the end of season 2, she accepted that she did love him, that she couldn’t be without him, but that she was going to pursue the relationship with Max because that felt right for her, right for the person she was. But, again, that’s not to say that she didn’t feel anything for Jack anymore; I think she knew that she hadn’t thought she loved him because he was the only thing she had, but that it was a genuine love. 

By the end of season 3, she seems to show that she’s still very much in love with Jack, but, admittedly, beyond a kiss, we haven’t really been able to see to what extent they return to what they had in the beginning. All Anne’s wanted since season 3 is to get away from everything, just she and Jack, and make a life for themselves elsewhere. If she could live without Jack, or if those feelings were the same for Max and her desperation for a quieter life were stronger, she would have just tried harder to leave with Max. But you know what? Max always knew things about Anne before Anne herself knew them; Max knew that Anne couldn’t live without Jack, that without Jack she wasn’t the same person.

As for the writers comments. Writers... We’re weird creatures, honestly. We spend so much time in our own heads, creating these characters from nothing and ending up with a million different thoughts and scenarios, that we tend to make a mess of it when we open our mouths and try to talk about it on the fly because our minds are filled with the million scenarios and not always quite what we’ve perceived of the story in our writing. This isn’t to give any less credibility to Jon Steinberg’s comments but what I mean to say is that a lot of things happen over the course of writing a story; you think it’ll be one kind of story but when the characters take over, in the course of the writing process, it becomes something else, a whole other monster. There’s not a doubt in my mind that, when the writer’s were exploring it in season 2, they thought that it was going to be one thing, that it would be revealed that Anne had a greater love for Max, that there’d be a distinction made between the type of love Anne had for Jack and the love that Anne had for Max. But, in the end, through the course of the seasons after, that’s not how it turned out or, at least, that’s not at all how its been perceived so far.

I love that LGBTQ relationships are being represented in the media, I’ve shipped so many myself, and never would my intention be to straight-wash it, to dumb it down, make it seem of any less importance, to do anything of the sort. But love is love, these characters are people and many don’t label their affections this way. I am sick of watching people set up teams against one another, of them erasing parts of a character/person, or making excuses for those parts of those characters, in order for them to fit on their ‘team’ of being a gay character or a bi character or a trans character or any other character. Can we not just all be happy that different forms of love are being represented? 

[kyralyrical]

100 books, 99 cents. Limited time! https://hdtk.co/cKfwk

[kyralyrical]

Random OTP Meme

1. Riff/Cain

2. Cassian/Jizabel

3. Tala/Bryan

4. Haruka/Michiru

5 . Berthie/Carnelian

1. do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 5?

I don't remember what point this was in the manga exactly. Almost as soon as these two were in a panel together, I was slashing them. I don't know why because Berthie is so mean and almost abusive to Carnelian but he also has these random little sweet moments that I feel like he's reserved just for him ever since his unrequited love for Lucille.

2. have you ever read fanfiction about 2?

Absolutely!! My bestie and I would go back and forth, writing oneshots for them. Probably one of my most treasured memories.

3. has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr id?

Nope! Mostly because they're an 'old love' of mine; they're treasured but they're not so relevant that I'd have them on those things.

4. if 3 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

They'll be back in each other's arms tomorrow; I'm sure of it.

5. why is 1 so important?

They're only all I've ever wanted when I've come to love... That's all. Well, maybe with a happier ending. But, still, they were together in the end and that is beautiful!

6. is 4 a funny ship or a serious ship?

A serious ship, but they make a funny and interesting pair.

7. out of all your ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

Probably 1 (Riff/Cain) or 4 (Haruka/Michiru). They're just... That's true love.

8. of all the ships, which ship has the strongest bond?

Again, 1 and 4; it's too tough to decide.

9. how many times have you read/watched 2’s fandom?

I think I've read that manga more times than is advisable for one's mental health...

10. which ship lasted the longest?

I never stopped shipping any of those so... All of them.

11. how many times, if ever, has 5 broken up?

One would argue that, based on their arguments, they were never truly together. Countless times, would be the easy reply, but they're relationship is complicated ^_^

12. if the world were suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 1 or 3?

3, definitely; they could kick ass. They'd be a real fighting duo. The couple that lays together slays together.

13. did 4 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

They wouldn't openly deny it, but they're not the type to show it off too much either.

14. is 5 still together?

Currently? Yeah, but give them five minutes.

15. is 1 canon?

I don't think the mangaka would ever deny it.

16. if all five ships were put into a couple’s hunger games, which couple would win?

In the final, it would come down to Bryan and Tala and Berthie and Carnelian; I think they're all bloody mental and would try to tear each other apart. Probably Bryan and Tala would win, because Carnelian might wear Berthie down after a while...

17. has anyone ever tried to sabotage 5’s ship?

They could have tried but I wouldn't have even noticed; I was blinded by their awesomeness.

18. which ship(s) would you defend to the death and beyond?

All of them! Probably Haruka and Michiru the most because they're the ones that are most certainly canon and I would hate anyone who uses the dub as an excuse that they aren't.

19. have you ever spent hours a day going through 3’s tumblr page?

I did that once! There's not enough of them to spend any longer than that.

20. if an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the five ships to break up forever, which ship would you sink?

I...refuse to answer this. Nope. I won't. I shall not. I will not. I refuuuuse!  

[negative-pessimist-deactivated2]

Hi please keep the families of those in the missing flight QZ8501 in your thoughts okay 

[garrulus]

Fitzwilliam Darcy’s inner struggles: 6/?

(first) previous / next

[thebooker-deactivated20160630]

I would really appreciate if you guys helped me and either participated or promoted my Read For Mental Health Week campaign. I know that this will never be as popular as readathons or my other posts on bookshelves or whatever, but it is something that it is so important to me. Whether you have...

[okaybutanime]

Secrets Clad in Light on Sale

If you’re looking for a good LGBT book to read, that’s also historical and just plain interesting then check out this book called Secrets Clad in Light by Kyra Gregory. It’s really good and it’s discounted right now~ A saaaaale!! XD 

Check it out!

(I personally love this novel XD)

[okaybutanime]

I’ve started a gofundme in hopes of getting donations to study abroad in South Korea. Though I’m a French major and I love the French speaking world, I really hope to study at Yonsei University in South Korea to participate in their intensive Korean language study program. Any little bit helps and...

[kyralyrical]

The Little Mermaid Reference in Frozen?

So (almost) everyone has heard the theory that Frozen's storyline was entwined beautifully, and tragically, with the stories of The Little Mermaid and Tangled. But could it be that it's not the only connection to The Little Mermaid?

A childhood fairytale, The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christen Anderson and first published in 1837. The Snow Queen, the fairytale that Frozen is loosely based on, was also written by Hans Christen Anderson, published in 1844.

Now, if you've never read the original version of The Little Mermaid, I suggest you do that. If you choose to spare yourself from that beautiful heart-ache, allow me to tell you myself...

At the end of the Hans Christen Anderson tale, the Little Mermaid is devastated after being unable to win the prince's heart, watching him marry another. Broken-hearted, she's given the opportunity to gain a full life, free of agony and the ability to seek out a new love if she will only slay the prince that she loved so much and let his blood drop onto his feet. But she loves him too much to do it. At dawn, she jumps into the sea and her entire body dissolves into sea foam.

The connection made in Frozen comes from our snowy little friend, Olaf: "Some people are worth melting for."

Perhaps some people may see it as small. Some people may see it as meaningless. For me, it's a lovely reference to a classic fairytale from my childhood. 

[kyralyrical]

Da Vinci's Demons S02E09 Thoughts

This episode really is one of the best of this season and that's really saying something when the past six episodes have been quite fantastic. The acting is absolutely impeccable from the entire cast and the writing is brilliant and so full of twists and turns that just keep you guessing, with scenes laid out so strategically to allow the storyline to flourish. As always, the music is just so beautiful and really adds a whole new dimension and feel to this period drama.

I would say that my one and only gripe is in an aspect of the writing; I feel like the alliance between the two great minds, Leonardo Da Vinci and Girolamo Riario, was such a fantastic aspect of this season and the character of Riario has developed quite a bit. Personally, I think it would be a mistake if that alliance was severed, if the two went back to opposing sides and if Riario returned to the days of being misguided in his search for forgiveness. I feel as though, from a writer's perspective, it is easy to do something that has been done before and so may be a bit of a cop out. I just think that Riario's character has developed beyond that to a certain extent and that writing choice is a poor one. I hope I am wrong. 

[kyralyrical]

Reviews for one of my books, Chameleon. Feeling really blessed. http://amzn.to/10E6gib