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if you're still doing them... john silver for the character ask meme

yes i am!! also this is @ the anon who asked for silver as well! get ready for some YELLING about my son who is 12 snakes in a trenchcoat!

1. probably the first thing is that he really is 12 snakes in a trenchcoat, and by that i mean, he’s INCREDIBLY manipulative. that manipulation has its limits (you can’t actually control everything around you and if you think you can then you’ve bought your own con) but those limits are pretty far. he prides himself on always being twenty steps ahead of everyone else, and i think a lot of the time, he is. i actually find silver to be a very difficult character to write (compared to, say, thomas or madi, both of whom are much easier for me to understand) because this is such a big part of him - he doesn’t think about the “right thing” to do, usually or almost ever. he thinks about the best way to get what HE wants to happen, to actually happen, regardless of morality. i’m sure he knows, for example, that stealing or lying are “wrong” but his morality doesn’t really work that way; as long as he makes it out of a situation, ideally with the upper hand, it doesn’t matter to him how he gets there.

2. generally, he’s someone who is very desperate to completely control his own life. when he’s backed into a corner i don’t think he gets angry; i think, as mentioned above, he gets desperate to find a third way, another outcome, one where he can control the variables. this ties into his whole “i come from nowhere” thing - he can shape himself into whatever the situation demands, up until there arises a situation which overcomes him (e.g. when his leg is about to be cut off and he keeps saying “i don’t want this”). he’s not motivated by love or friendship, really, until season 3. before that, even with the crew, he’s motivated by the promise of the cache and the idea of getting the hell out of dodge. sure, he has a basic distaste for death and murder (muldoon, the crewmates who steal food in 3.3), but he kills a guy in his first scene!!! because that’s the clearest way out he sees! he wants to get his and get out, until circumstances out-maneuver him and he loses his leg. still, “there’s always a way out” is something we hear him say in season 1, and that’s something that doesn’t really change even through the traumatic amputation. we can draw a direct path from that statement to his exchange with flint in the cage in season 3, everyone’s favorite “nothing is inevitable” bit. he needs control over his destiny - that’s why “we will take care of you” is so terrifying to him. he doesn’t have the self-confidence that he is capable of x and y and z that flint has - he’s convinced that he is nothing and comes from nowhere, and all he has is ultimately himself. that’s all he can really protect.

3. that all said, when he cares, he cares A LOT. he may not really give a shit about “being a good person” but he cares a hell of a lot about keeping himself and his people alive. i’ll say a bit more about this in the miranda meta i’m writing (i’m working on it!!! all the metas are happening!! ..probably over the weekend) but i think that the scene where miranda’s talking to eleanor about how she didn’t REALLY betray flint is very similar to the scene where silver is talking to madi about how he’s not particularly sorry for what he’s done. granted, silver’s bullshit about “unmaking” flint is uhhh, bullshit, but he did what he did out of love, just like he brought the cache to trade for madi out of love. i don’t think he would have been able to shoot flint on that island. i just don’t buy it. that provocation, too, is a desperate act on the part of silver to save someone he loves - two people he loves, both of whom he thinks are going to martyr themselves for a cause he doesn’t believe in. he makes that choice - he decides he’d run the risk of waiting forever if it means both of them get to live. i can’t fault him for that! i really can’t! he doesn’t give a fuck about the war but he gives SO MANY FUCKS about madi and flint surviving. i could dedicate twelve pages to how much he loves them both but i think it’s pretty obvious to anyone who watched the show. for him, it comes down to the fact that if they die, he can’t apologize to either of them. he’d rather spend his life apologizing than being haunted by ghosts whose demise he could have prevented. that’s part of why flint is so quick to say “i probably would have done the same thing” - flint knows what it’s like to live with the weight of “what if i could have saved them.” silver kills the dream but very likely saves their lives. that’s his way out because he doesn’t care about the dream; he cares about madi and flint.

clearly i can never shut the fuck up so that’s where i’ll stop, but if i kept going, the next thing would definitely be “john silver probably had a super fucked up past that he refuses to acknowledge, which is also fucking him up, and he would benefit greatly from therapy.” ~THANKS AS ALWAYS FOR READING MY RAMBLING I LOVE YALL~