#bs blogging

[flockofdoves]

it makes me soooooo maddddddd how people watch the show and don't see flints development as a character as he develops a stronger political understanding of how his own experiences with marginalization under empire connect to those of enslaved and colonized people and there's no hope in reform and anti-imperial revolution in coalition and solidarity with all oppressed peoples is the only solution

and then are like well he was just a fucked up violent guy who had to be stopped. but it was okay when he was in the british navy and wanted reform within it [and maybe also will say its okay when he was doing violence as a personal revenge quest with no political aims] but they draw the line at strategic revolutionary action against the british empire

violence that is rendered invisible by hegemony vs the demonization of violence from people subject to that is literally one of the major themes of the show howwwwwwwww are you missing that. most rancid politics in the world to be like well its Good what happened to the maroon communities at the end of all that because violence is bad.

[torridturncoat]

the duality of man:

flints plan: *engineers a plan that relies heavily on reverse psychology to show the crew how they need him as they cycle back once again through stage 1 of 'I hate flint so much' to stage 2 'id suck his dick'*

silver's plan: 'tom fucked a goat. :) XOXO gossip girl'

[fullmetalcommunist]

anyone else just watch 2x05 of black sails and really just losing it even though they knew that was coming jw

[flockofdoves]

I HATTTTEEEE LIBERAL BLACK SAILS FANS. YOU KNOW NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PARROTING SILVERS BULLSHIT AND BELIEVING IT MORE THAN EVEN HE DOES BECAUSE YOU THINK ANTICOLONIAL RESISTANCE IS BAD BECAUSE ITS VIOLENT. FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!

[flockofdoves]

Netflix’s ‘One Piece’ Adaptation Sets Sail on ‘Black Sails’ Ships

Filming in South Africa has a few advantages — including the pirate ships and infrastructure left behind by the Starz series.

hoooly shit...

[flockofdoves]

i realized while watching the end of that video i forgot that after silver tells madi what he did to flint and she realizes he planned to for a long time and tells him to get out, once he's walking away and briefly turns back, right in the center and in the back of the shot theres a foggy mirror reflecting him unclearly. really cool visual composition but also digesting the potential symbolisms of that

[flockofdoves]

ive always just thought that black sails was kind of a nothing title for a show that has so much to it (and also didnt really make sense to me bc their sails literally arent black, thats their flags??)

but yesterday i happened across a summary of some of the founding myths of athens, and in that, crete had been taking 14 young people from athens every year to get sacrificed to the minotaur. theseus and his crew set out on a journey to stop this, and his father king aegeus knew that with how strong theseus was that this was what needed to be done to put an end to this.

but still he was scared of the idea of his son dying in the process, so he asked theseus to put black sails on his ship, and change them to white sails on his way back if he was still alive so he could know before the ship reached shore.

theseus did survive, but forgot to change his sails to white. in seeing the black sails as theseus’s ship came back to shore, aegeus didn’t wait to see, and jumped off a cliff into the sea to kill himself in his grief. the aegean sea was named after him.

so like well. thinking about this in more abstract terms in the context of black sails’s themes of the power of hegemony vs the need for revolutionary optimism. the questions of how much of one's own domesticity they're willing to sacrifice in the face of the fight for a better world and the leaps of faith and hope required to still work towards that better world in the face of that and. Um.

[flockofdoves]

i dont say this as a way of dismissing all criticism because there definitely are interesting conversations to be had about how (if in any particular way) longform serialized storytelling should anticipate certain types of well founded viewer anxieties based in experiences with societal oppression

but also it is kind of funny to me how often when i see people complaining about black sails out in the wild of tumblr replies that theyre like ‘i hate this show because it didnt do [thing it did] so i stopped watching [right before thing happened]’