Things I made today

[sabotabby]

 1. Charoset that looks like vomit but tastes roughly correct:



It's a bit boozier than I remember it being. Probably because all the recipes call for Manischewitz, which has been banned in my household ever since I became a grown-up who lives on her own and drinks actual wine.

2. This logo for my new baseball league:


For those of you who aren't Canadians, it's a reference to this. I want to make baseball jerseys or hoodies or something. After I've cleaned up the design, anyway.

3. A difference in the lives of children. :)

In other news, I still have massive feels about the Black Sails finale so anyone who wants to talk about it with me, please please please. Also, I'm wondering if I should end my paid account on LJ and get a paid account on DW to get more icons.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

Will there be actual games of baseball, or is it just a good reason to carry a bat?

[sabotabby]

Naturally. I am a huge fan of all the sportsball.

Also, thanks and you rock.

[ironed_orchid]

<3 <3 <3

[lapinlunaire]

Isn't that what baseball is? My understanding of the game is that people swing bats around and then run in circles and throw themselves on the ground just to make people cheer.

[sabotabby]

I think that's how it's supposed to go.

[rdi]

That is an awesome logo. I’d sign up for a hoodie.

Yay for making a difference in the lives of children. They are the future after all.

I haven’t watched Black Sails but now feel I should.

[sabotabby]

I'm looking into getting them printed.

So Black Sails is near perfect in ways that one wouldn't expect. It starts out with "yay this is a silly fun swashbuckling show" and quickly becomes a series of "I can't believe they went there holyshit." The first and last season have some wonkiness but the payoff is amazing. And really not what I expected, considering that the fates of almost all the characters are a foregone conclusion.

[smhwpf]

Aaah, it was awesome, was it not? (Black Sails). You were right, Flint was capable of happiness! Amazing how they pulled off leaving Flint, Silver, the Maroons, Jack, Ann, and Max in a good place, and Woodes Rogers in a bad place, while not messing with either history or fictional canon too much.

Was Silver right to do what he did? He was manipulating everyone, but he was surely correct that the war Flint and Madi wanted could only have ended with massive loss of life and almost certainly the brutal crushing of the Maroon communities as well as the pirates. But Madi had a right to feel betrayed.

It's amazing just how many times everyone betrayed everyone else, yet you can still sympathise with most of them as characters. (Well, not really Woodes Rogers. Glad he came to a bad end.)

Silver got more and more awesome. And I love Max. Even though she did betray the pirates. (Again, understandable from her pov. What, another fucking war? Do. Not. Want.)

What was your take on it all?

[sabotabby]

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS

So as much as Silver was right about the inevitability of the outcome (and as much as a viewer I'm pleased to see his Machiavellian tendencies being used towards an ending where everyone lived happily ever after), he was wrong to take the choice away from the Maroons and Madi in particular. Remember, she's not just a damsel in distress—they made that clear repeatedly—she's a military leader, and the person that the community has decided is best equipped to decide if they go to war or not. We as viewers know that there was not a combined Maroon-pirate revolt that drove the British out of the Caribbean, which makes him far more sympathetic as a result. From her perspective, this is the best shot they have ever had at ending slavery. He has far less to lose than any of the Maroons do—he could die and lose his friends and the love of his life, but they're facing maybe centuries of their entire people being enslaved. A brutal, endless war may be a better option than that if there's even the possibility of victory.

I'd have liked to see a scene between Flint and Julius. Without it, we don't know to what extent the Maroons are okay with the treaty. If there's an internal coup with Julius as leader, it is still horrible (and sexist) for Madi, but at least they have some self-determination and it's not a white guy deciding what's best.

I struggle to think of a single other show, ever, which has given us a queer antihero with ideas that are radical even to a contemporary audience, had them do a bunch of terrible things in the name of a cause, and then given them a happy ending with the person that they love, and this show did it twice. (Ann/Max/Jack being together at the end isn't shown on screen, but Ann and Max got the beautiful reconciliation in the penultimate episode, so I'm going to go with the OT3 still being together and possibly becoming an OT4 because lol "Mark" Reed.) Like I can't get over how gleefully happy this makes me, and how utterly surprised I was by it. I was gearing myself to see Jack or Flint die in the finale—not because it makes sense historically/fictionally, but because that's how stories like theirs always end. Thomas being alive was a fan crack theory after S2; again, not something I'd expected to see at all. And they completely made it work and it was wonderful.

I love Max too. She's only ever been about survival—all of her power plays are in the interest of survival—because as a queer WOC born into slavery she has never had the privilege of ideals. Her betrayals are entirely forgivable in that context, and I'm so happy to see her on top with her badass new advisor.

[lapinlunaire]

I'm not Canadian and I understood the reference. I feel super proud of myself right now, in light of recent events that have made me feel like an ignorant idiot. :')

I don't know anything about baseball but I would wear something with this design on it and be a hipster.

[sabotabby]

To be fair, I know very little about baseball. I'm proud that you know the reference!

[ironed_orchid]

My friend marina wrote an article about Black Sails for Vice! 'Black Sails' Depicts the Untold Story of Queer Pirates.

Marina is one of my favourite people to read for fannish meta about tv shows that I love despite them being ridiculous.

I am not remotely caught up yet, I should fix that by watching S2 ;-)

[sabotabby]

Your friend is correct.

The weirdest thing about Black Sails is how ridiculous it's not. I figured it would be good silly fun, like Musketeers, but no, they're totally serious about loosely depicting history and breaking your heart.

S1 is the weakest; from there it gets better, with the odd stupid thing in S4 while they try to get all the characters into place. I mean. You haven't even met Madi yet!

oh hai

[rydra_wong]

(Here via content search but I know we have assorted mutual friends and have seen each other around, so hi. *waves*.)

Are you still interested in talking about Black Sails? Because I am VERY MUCH SO.

My recent screamings (and spamming of people with semi-related extracts from The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic) can be found under the tag here:

https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/tag/pyrates

Re: oh hai

[sabotabby]

*waves excitedly*

Yes, I've seen you around! And also, I am always down for both Black Sails talk and The Many-Headed Hydra talk, since I've been meaning to read the latter forever.

Re: oh hai

[rydra_wong]

The Many-Headed Hydra is really fascinating! Has its moments of being scattershot or where I think an interpretation is reaching, but basically I loved it and ate it up like cake and found it very moving and inspiring. Very Christopher Hill.

And I don't know if the Black Sails showrunners read it, but they must certainly have read Rediker's pirate-specific work (e.g. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age -- I need to spam with some bits of that too ...), not least because I know they did a tonne of reading and he's inescapable in the literature.

So you get the added bonus of going "oh, that's where they got that from!" or "shit, I thought they totally made that up but no".

They play fast and loose with details of historical figures' lives and so forth, but their pirate sociology is pretty solid.

Re: oh hai

[sabotabby]

I loved Villains of All Nations and I'm sure the showrunners read it; if nothing else, it seems to be the inspiration for Flint's crusade.

One of the most entertaining parts of watching the show was looking up all the historical figures and flipping out over what was actually true and gaping when they toned down the actual details of their lives were too ridiculous to seem realistic in a mostly-serious TV show (I'm looking at you, hat-thief Benjamin Hornigold).

Pirates: a self-deconstructing media

[rydra_wong]

Ah, right, I hadn't realized you were already onto Rediker. The piracy section in The Many-Headed Hydra is pretty much straight from his work, so won't be new if you've already read that, but it's really interesting how they situate it within a broader context and the things they connect it to.

The hat-stealing, OMG yes! Or the pirates whiling away the time by putting on a play about being tried for piracy; that's my personal favourite, I think (but something that would have been too on-the-nose meta even by Black Sails standards).

I'd seen a mention of it before (here), so was delighted to find the text in Rediker, and thoroughly impressed by how good it is. I had not expected that drunken pirates would have had such strong sketch-writing skills!

Re: Pirates: a self-deconstructing media

[sabotabby]

Far too meta but you know it would have been hilarious if it had ever happened on the show. It's enough to tempt one into fanfic, except that I feel that it might seem too ridiculous even for that.