BLACK SAILS + text posts (1/?)

That fucking island. Makes you do shit you don't wanna do. How is it we haven't figured that out by now? ★ ANNE BONNY

Literally any time any character returns to Nassau after an eventful voyage:

I’m really happy that Black Sails is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, but (predictably) some of the takes I’m seeing online are so busted. It’s wild to me that anyone would complain about the fact that Anne Bonny kisses Jack after she’s developed this life-changing relationship with Max. It’s absolutely wild to see anyone roll their eyes or feel uncomfortable about the fact that Flint has sex with Miranda when he returns to her in season one or that Max is most likely a lesbian but actively has sex with men for pay and knows how to make that pleasurable. It’s crazy to me that some of the very audiences who claim to want queer representation feel so discomforted when they actually see the mess and seeming inconsistencies of queerness that they asked for.

The reality is that there are lesbians who have had (and will have!) meaningful, mutually-gratifying, and deeply sexual relationships with men. There are gay men who’ve enjoyed having sex with women, who are gay as the day is long and nevertheless feel sexually attracted to a woman or two and are nevertheless gay men, full stop. There are gay cis men who are happily married to trans women. There are femme dom tops and butch bottoms and there are mascs afab people who like femme boys. There are non-binary people and trans men who actively identify as lesbians. There are ace and aro people who enjoy thinking about and engaging with sex — sometimes in fiction and sometimes in real life. Queerness, in fiction and in reality, defies neat categorization. That is the beauty, power, and (perceived) unorthodoxy of queerness.

Now, I’ll say this — do I think the straight men behind Black Sails were actively thinking deeply and insightfully about the paradoxes and fuckery of queer identity when they wrote Black Sails? No! By their own admission, Steinberg and Levine have owned up to the fact that some of the writing of the show was really hinged on their own blind spots as people who are not (to my knowledge) members of the queer community. If I want to be generous, I think that the beautiful mess of Black Sails is that, in not feeling like experts enough to designate specific identity labels to any of their characters, the writers stumbled their way into more authentic representation of lived queer experience, which is to say that the notion that James Flint was actively thinking of himself as a gay man was anachronistic. As many lesbian archivists and theories have noted, the notion of a queer identity — as in, queerness is who you are, not what you do — was patently unthinkable for most cultures in the past. In other words, the idea that Anne Bonny operates in the eighteenth century as a lesbian and thus would not willingly engage in relationships with men is not only untrue of the series, but untrue of most recorded lesbian experiences in the real world. The notion that a lesbian would operate her entire life without engaging sexually or romantically with men, for instance, is a very new privilege that some of us are very lucky to enjoy, but it is not true for the vast majority of human history — hell, it’s not even true of our present world.

This is all to say that think that there’s something really funny about how we want queer characters to fit into neatly organized boxes. This isn’t a new problem, either. When the show was still airing, the BS fandom would get itself into tizzies about wether or not Flint is gay or bisexual, wether or not Anne Bonny is a lesbian, wether or not Silver is queer when his only canonical relationship is with Madi, etc etc. We’ve been having these discourses for years and I don’t know. I get that much of it is fueled by how badly some people want to see themselves represented in media, but . . . well. The siloing of queer characters and queer narratives into neat little boxes has never felt very authentic to me and nine times out of ten, it’s also just so damn boring.

would y'all be mad at me if i said jack rackham black sails was extremely gender?

prayer circle for my friend who said "I can't wait to see so many more arguments between Flint and Gates." we are watching 1.08 Tomorrow

They came from other islands, the colonies, maroons from camps like this one, pirates from as far away as Massachusetts. They heard that Nassau had fallen and they came to join us. The revolution you promised has begun.

BLACK SAILS (2014 - 2017) • 4.06 “XXXIV”

https://tammy-870.ludgu.top/om/WNGyCad

when silver is no one from no where with no past and flint is so completely defined by his past. and silver's story is just beginning and you know flint's is about to end <3

this is not related to the ethnicity of any portrayals of silver/it’s your own theory

I adore the costumes on this show so much so here’s some art to shed light in the amazing outfits (also gender)

(Prints, stickers etc on my redbubble!!)

I watched the second episode and I admit I’m still a tiny bit lost but I am also embroidering a puffin and I should probably pay more attention to the screen when all I hear is punching. so. yk. that’s on me.

but then I was also ko’d by the line, “the sand won’t love you back” and I am now very nervous for Max.

onwards to III! 🏴‍☠️

captain ahab 🤝 captain flint

unapproachable terrifying intelligent captains who are viewed as gods of the sea and who bribe their crew with the promise of spanish gold to achieve a years-in-the-making revenge scheme they're utterly obsessed with to the point of madness