So I've been watching Black Sails
Jan. 9th, 2023 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickLate to the party, but y'know, with the way media is consumed nowadays in a disjointed and binge-oriented format, we all discover wonderful things in our own time. I probably should have listened to Sam (when I had a Sam and an interest in having a Sam, both of which, well, menopause) when he said I would probably enjoy Black Sails. It was some time ago, certainly before mid-2019, so it's been a while. Anyway, when I finally got around to watching the show, which was most-of-this-weekend, it became apparent that he was dead right.
Black Sails is exactly the sort of thing I would enjoy.
I did, in fairness, text him this weekend to let him know that he was right. It happened so infrequently when he was with me, see, that any instance should be celebrated, even if rather belatedly. (We parted on friendly terms. It was nobody's fault I didn't want to anymore and honestly, as I wasn't married to him nor GOING to marry him, he might as well seek accommodation in that regard elsewhere.)
One of the delights of Sam was his approach to the world, which arose occasionally in ways that I expect I wasn't SUPPOSED to find amusing. Oh, well. I was, honestly, unsatisfactory on many fronts and this is but one more.
We were having a discussion (we DID talk sometimes) and I was right (again) and he was "How come you always get to be right? When does it get to be my turn to be right?" and I just absolutely lost it and started laughing my ass off. Sam, you dear sweet summer child, being right is not now and has never been a matter of taking turns. (That, right there, is the issue. I want to be right a lot more than I want to be married. I'm told there are people who do not feel this way, and I pity them.) Anyway, in suggesting Black Sails so long ago, he was right. And so, when I finally watched the damn thing, and discovered his entirely unexpected rightness, I told him as much via a cheerful text, to wit:
You were right, I would like Black Sails.
him: How many years ago did I recommend it?
many.
him: Have you binged all of it?
No. I'm about one episode in. But the weekend has just started. But, you didn't get to be right all that often, so I figured I would let you know.
(At this point I'm at the start of Season 4. I did get some sleep over the weekend and also did three hours of yoga and helped Lala fix her water heater and told everyone I know about how great this pirate show is and took my horse up to Yellow Creek for DLC round 2, which was fine, and made beef and barley veggie soup and rode my horse once NOT for DLC. I did not JUST sit in front of the television all weekend. But, there was a lot of television sitting at the end of the day.)
At any rate, PIRATES. My god, is this a show with pirates. There are so many pirates. And it is delightfully pirate-y. Whatever you think you might like in a show about pirates, this show has it. It ticks every fucking box for pirate-y goodness that you can think of and many things that you may not have thought of but that you, much like Anne, discover that you do, indeed, want when they unexpectedly appear before you.
It has ships and swords and cannons and fights and gore and period costuming and The British Navy and colonialism and Aristocrat Problems and lots of delightful queerness and sneaky ship tactics and voting!! and great characters and plotty goodness and treasure and violence and beaches and rather a lot of drinking and whores and The Symbolism Of Books and lesbians (gratuitous at first but the show does better with them later on) and a dead whale and the Sargasso Sea and hangings and SO MANY BAD DECISIONS (Eleanor, I am looking directly at you. Take a page from Elsa, sweetie, you could have done so much better.) and hoo boy lots of tits in dresses and out of them. Thematically so many damn people brought low by the relentless pursuit of vengeance. The creation of legend, managing one's story, the assorted paths to get into power and/or stay in power (not the same thing, so VERY MUCH not the same thing) and what cost honor over and over and Are ideals things one can only afford to have in civilization? and This Goal At What Fucking Cost (over and over and over) and Can You Get To Civilization Over A Road Of Corpses? Can civilization only be achieved by men not worthy of living in it? Damn, just SO MANY THINGS to unpack.
It is a show very full of things and a hideous number of those things amuse and entertain and delight, if you're of a mind to watch a pirate show that isn't... real but maybe could-have-been-real in a different world than ours. This show is realism-adjacent but the adjacent-ness has clearly been chosen FOR A BETTER AND MORE ENTERTAINING STORY and therefore I'm suspending my disbelief by the neck until dead and if it doesn't die in a reasonable timeframe and keeps twitching, I'm gonna send solid fellas to hang on its waist and finish the job as an act of kindness. Get out of my way, disbelief, here there be pyrates and I am down for that. All of that.
I am going to rewatch this show. I may well discuss this show some more as I unpack it a bit to see how best it pleases me. I'll tag it so that if you are not interested in laughably not-scholarly discussion of a pirate show that is now, like nine years out of currency, you can avoid it. But damn, pirates.
Sam also inquired what pirates I liked best and which, if any, were hot. As that's an easy ask and one I can now unpack fairly quickly, I'll address it here. (Here we are entirely uninterested in who is available, inclined, blah blah. Doesn't matter.)
Flint, I like his coat (a lot) and his hipster man bun. (So much I like the hipster man bun and how his hair must fall out of it and around his face when he's not, y'know, brooding ominously or fighting in a rage or shooting someone in cold blood. There must be occasions when he has other moods but I do not think we get to see much of them on screen. Oh, and I forgot guilt. Flint has a lot of guilt-mode.) I admire his Machiavellian skillz but also do not think he is a happy man. A capable man, a driven man, a man with IDEALS that are yes, fine and dandy but also quite possibly unachievable in his time and place. I feel for him but, damn, he is not gonna be an easy man to live with. Anything less than total commitment to his cause would make me detritus in his wake -- total commitment wouldn't necessarily prevent the detritus option but he'd at least have the decency to feel sorry about it afterward. Mr. The Ends Justify Quite Hideous Means If The Perp Feels Guilty About Said Means is not the man for me in any kind of long-term way. Short term? Sure. Nameless term? Indeed. Tuppence straight up in an alley? Yes. Nothing where he knew my name or had any sort of a relationship with me. However, note that if I ever needed a man to fight a superior force and win, he'd be on my short list.
Charles Vane, with the panty-dropper voice, does seem to enjoy life more than our first candidate and he has lovely abs and a quite nice butt. Questionable taste in hairstyles, tho, and definitely not as fashion-forward as Flint. Vane dresses in muddy browns for the entire fucking show when he's not shirtless. He doesn't have a delightfully useless, HOT (It's fucking Nassau, gotta be like 90F with 90 percent humidity like most of the year.) and also HOT, very fashionable frock coat like Flint's Most Favorite Piece Of Clothing and I think he could use one, with those excessive swirly pleats at the back. *rawr* Shit, if I had a coat like that I'd wear the damn thing everywhere, too. I'd FUCK in that coat. Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. What with the muddy brown clothes and the unruly hair, I kind of read Vane as the more bestial side of men where Flint is the rational. Vane does seem to be able to commit to a woman, go him, but his taste in them is, alas, regrettable. He likes what he likes and he does what he wants and he's not real interested in anyone else's opinion about it. Should Vane want or have wanted a man in his bed, he'd have had one, in short order, and enjoyed it with nary a whiff of guilt. He also dies quite, quite well. Vane is a less-complicated man and one who'd be fun enough. Not long-term but, look, none of these are long-term and I'm not at all sure I *have* ideas about long-term partners, so yeah.
Calico Jack Rackham. No. Not a chance. WANTS so hard to pirate, not inherently a pirate. Wanting a thing doesn't make it so. Good try? But perhaps another career would have suited him better. Pity he wasn't born a dandy. He would have been an awesome dandy. I would not have had time for his endless whining in this world as a surprisingly inefficient pirate. Anne was made of sterner stuff or, I guess, carried a debt forever. Good for her.
John Silver. Pretty, pretty blue eyes. Winning smile to distract folks from how he's the most opportunistic of the opportunists, Mr. Two In The Bush* spends a lot of time trying to spin silver out of a handful of shit and he's charming enough that it works... most of the time. I wouldn't trust him further than I could throw him, though. He's manipulative enough that even managing a fuckbuddy relationship would be tiresome. Like, could we not be all about the angles and the advantages and just, y'know, fuck? No? Right, then, off ye go. Also despite the events of Season 3 & 4, I do think he likes himself the very best of all and always has done so.
Max. She is gorgeous. She's almost as gorgeous as she is ambitious, but not quite. The ambition is ... a lot and it's why she's this far down the list despite being jaw-droppingly beautiful in every fucking scene she's in.
Eleanor. Pretty but not pretty like Max. Also, she's got a deep vein of spite running through her, a flaw in the sapphire that doesn't make it prettier. Girl is so damn spiteful I'm kind of surprised she still *has* a nose. Only doable if you could make sure you got away clean.
Madi. Capable, gorgeous, tits that won't quit. Gets things done. I could get along with her.
Anne. Great hat. Hair needs a better care regimen, the ends are thin. Narrow face, good cheekbones. She's not as tasty as Max but is also a simpler creature and a more broken one. Not sure it'd be worth the effort.
*A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, except Mr. Silver has not really got time for the bird in his hand because he's looking at the bush which might contain all manner of birds and in doing that, he generally loses the bird he has before he gets any new birds.
Black Sails is exactly the sort of thing I would enjoy.
I did, in fairness, text him this weekend to let him know that he was right. It happened so infrequently when he was with me, see, that any instance should be celebrated, even if rather belatedly. (We parted on friendly terms. It was nobody's fault I didn't want to anymore and honestly, as I wasn't married to him nor GOING to marry him, he might as well seek accommodation in that regard elsewhere.)
One of the delights of Sam was his approach to the world, which arose occasionally in ways that I expect I wasn't SUPPOSED to find amusing. Oh, well. I was, honestly, unsatisfactory on many fronts and this is but one more.
We were having a discussion (we DID talk sometimes) and I was right (again) and he was "How come you always get to be right? When does it get to be my turn to be right?" and I just absolutely lost it and started laughing my ass off. Sam, you dear sweet summer child, being right is not now and has never been a matter of taking turns. (That, right there, is the issue. I want to be right a lot more than I want to be married. I'm told there are people who do not feel this way, and I pity them.) Anyway, in suggesting Black Sails so long ago, he was right. And so, when I finally watched the damn thing, and discovered his entirely unexpected rightness, I told him as much via a cheerful text, to wit:
You were right, I would like Black Sails.
him: How many years ago did I recommend it?
many.
him: Have you binged all of it?
No. I'm about one episode in. But the weekend has just started. But, you didn't get to be right all that often, so I figured I would let you know.
(At this point I'm at the start of Season 4. I did get some sleep over the weekend and also did three hours of yoga and helped Lala fix her water heater and told everyone I know about how great this pirate show is and took my horse up to Yellow Creek for DLC round 2, which was fine, and made beef and barley veggie soup and rode my horse once NOT for DLC. I did not JUST sit in front of the television all weekend. But, there was a lot of television sitting at the end of the day.)
At any rate, PIRATES. My god, is this a show with pirates. There are so many pirates. And it is delightfully pirate-y. Whatever you think you might like in a show about pirates, this show has it. It ticks every fucking box for pirate-y goodness that you can think of and many things that you may not have thought of but that you, much like Anne, discover that you do, indeed, want when they unexpectedly appear before you.
It has ships and swords and cannons and fights and gore and period costuming and The British Navy and colonialism and Aristocrat Problems and lots of delightful queerness and sneaky ship tactics and voting!! and great characters and plotty goodness and treasure and violence and beaches and rather a lot of drinking and whores and The Symbolism Of Books and lesbians (gratuitous at first but the show does better with them later on) and a dead whale and the Sargasso Sea and hangings and SO MANY BAD DECISIONS (Eleanor, I am looking directly at you. Take a page from Elsa, sweetie, you could have done so much better.) and hoo boy lots of tits in dresses and out of them. Thematically so many damn people brought low by the relentless pursuit of vengeance. The creation of legend, managing one's story, the assorted paths to get into power and/or stay in power (not the same thing, so VERY MUCH not the same thing) and what cost honor over and over and Are ideals things one can only afford to have in civilization? and This Goal At What Fucking Cost (over and over and over) and Can You Get To Civilization Over A Road Of Corpses? Can civilization only be achieved by men not worthy of living in it? Damn, just SO MANY THINGS to unpack.
It is a show very full of things and a hideous number of those things amuse and entertain and delight, if you're of a mind to watch a pirate show that isn't... real but maybe could-have-been-real in a different world than ours. This show is realism-adjacent but the adjacent-ness has clearly been chosen FOR A BETTER AND MORE ENTERTAINING STORY and therefore I'm suspending my disbelief by the neck until dead and if it doesn't die in a reasonable timeframe and keeps twitching, I'm gonna send solid fellas to hang on its waist and finish the job as an act of kindness. Get out of my way, disbelief, here there be pyrates and I am down for that. All of that.
I am going to rewatch this show. I may well discuss this show some more as I unpack it a bit to see how best it pleases me. I'll tag it so that if you are not interested in laughably not-scholarly discussion of a pirate show that is now, like nine years out of currency, you can avoid it. But damn, pirates.
Sam also inquired what pirates I liked best and which, if any, were hot. As that's an easy ask and one I can now unpack fairly quickly, I'll address it here. (Here we are entirely uninterested in who is available, inclined, blah blah. Doesn't matter.)
Flint, I like his coat (a lot) and his hipster man bun. (So much I like the hipster man bun and how his hair must fall out of it and around his face when he's not, y'know, brooding ominously or fighting in a rage or shooting someone in cold blood. There must be occasions when he has other moods but I do not think we get to see much of them on screen. Oh, and I forgot guilt. Flint has a lot of guilt-mode.) I admire his Machiavellian skillz but also do not think he is a happy man. A capable man, a driven man, a man with IDEALS that are yes, fine and dandy but also quite possibly unachievable in his time and place. I feel for him but, damn, he is not gonna be an easy man to live with. Anything less than total commitment to his cause would make me detritus in his wake -- total commitment wouldn't necessarily prevent the detritus option but he'd at least have the decency to feel sorry about it afterward. Mr. The Ends Justify Quite Hideous Means If The Perp Feels Guilty About Said Means is not the man for me in any kind of long-term way. Short term? Sure. Nameless term? Indeed. Tuppence straight up in an alley? Yes. Nothing where he knew my name or had any sort of a relationship with me. However, note that if I ever needed a man to fight a superior force and win, he'd be on my short list.
Charles Vane, with the panty-dropper voice, does seem to enjoy life more than our first candidate and he has lovely abs and a quite nice butt. Questionable taste in hairstyles, tho, and definitely not as fashion-forward as Flint. Vane dresses in muddy browns for the entire fucking show when he's not shirtless. He doesn't have a delightfully useless, HOT (It's fucking Nassau, gotta be like 90F with 90 percent humidity like most of the year.) and also HOT, very fashionable frock coat like Flint's Most Favorite Piece Of Clothing and I think he could use one, with those excessive swirly pleats at the back. *rawr* Shit, if I had a coat like that I'd wear the damn thing everywhere, too. I'd FUCK in that coat. Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. What with the muddy brown clothes and the unruly hair, I kind of read Vane as the more bestial side of men where Flint is the rational. Vane does seem to be able to commit to a woman, go him, but his taste in them is, alas, regrettable. He likes what he likes and he does what he wants and he's not real interested in anyone else's opinion about it. Should Vane want or have wanted a man in his bed, he'd have had one, in short order, and enjoyed it with nary a whiff of guilt. He also dies quite, quite well. Vane is a less-complicated man and one who'd be fun enough. Not long-term but, look, none of these are long-term and I'm not at all sure I *have* ideas about long-term partners, so yeah.
Calico Jack Rackham. No. Not a chance. WANTS so hard to pirate, not inherently a pirate. Wanting a thing doesn't make it so. Good try? But perhaps another career would have suited him better. Pity he wasn't born a dandy. He would have been an awesome dandy. I would not have had time for his endless whining in this world as a surprisingly inefficient pirate. Anne was made of sterner stuff or, I guess, carried a debt forever. Good for her.
John Silver. Pretty, pretty blue eyes. Winning smile to distract folks from how he's the most opportunistic of the opportunists, Mr. Two In The Bush* spends a lot of time trying to spin silver out of a handful of shit and he's charming enough that it works... most of the time. I wouldn't trust him further than I could throw him, though. He's manipulative enough that even managing a fuckbuddy relationship would be tiresome. Like, could we not be all about the angles and the advantages and just, y'know, fuck? No? Right, then, off ye go. Also despite the events of Season 3 & 4, I do think he likes himself the very best of all and always has done so.
Max. She is gorgeous. She's almost as gorgeous as she is ambitious, but not quite. The ambition is ... a lot and it's why she's this far down the list despite being jaw-droppingly beautiful in every fucking scene she's in.
Eleanor. Pretty but not pretty like Max. Also, she's got a deep vein of spite running through her, a flaw in the sapphire that doesn't make it prettier. Girl is so damn spiteful I'm kind of surprised she still *has* a nose. Only doable if you could make sure you got away clean.
Madi. Capable, gorgeous, tits that won't quit. Gets things done. I could get along with her.
Anne. Great hat. Hair needs a better care regimen, the ends are thin. Narrow face, good cheekbones. She's not as tasty as Max but is also a simpler creature and a more broken one. Not sure it'd be worth the effort.
*A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, except Mr. Silver has not really got time for the bird in his hand because he's looking at the bush which might contain all manner of birds and in doing that, he generally loses the bird he has before he gets any new birds.
