Okay it killed me when Silver found out about Thomas and was like “okay this is upsetting” and Flint was like “don’t be fuckin homophobic” and Silver was like “no not that you’re gay that I’m so much like your dead lovers. I like being alive”
god the way the finale just looks you right in the camera and says “well? do you believe him?” All four seasons, we’ve watched Silver be the deceiver, the weaver of stories, but never until that clearing on a haunted island are we as the audience so directly implicated. Now we are the ones asked to put our trust in John Silver, the ones that ask ourselves whether we can put our trust in him after all this. Because it’s hard to say which would be more fitting: to accept that he has always been a thing made of lies, or to disbelieve him the one time he is truly honest
Just can’t stop thinking about how Woodes Rogers is literally just 1705!James if he was straight and rich. He’s got all the same ambition, calculation, experience at sea, love of literature, repressed blackout rage, etc. Hell, he even lost a Thomas. At surface level, it sounds like “man a decade ago these two would’ve really gotten along”, but as you start thinking about that, you realize that Rogers is a juxtaposition to represent how important James’ background is to his identity. You cannot separate him from his queerness, nor his class, because that’s how you end up with Rogers instead of Flint. James fighting against him is James fighting against the person he was supposed to be, the person that England wanted to be. And because Rogers takes for granted that he’s never violated the standards of civilization simply by existing, he’s the one that gets to write the book, while Flint is left to steal them.
Watching the first two seasons of Black Sails knowing full well that Long John Silver’s most iconic trait is a missing leg is the same feeling as noticing the little red dot of a sniper rifle following around a character before they do
Black sails was like “gays should be legally permitted to kill people sometimes” and they were right