(no subject)
* "OPINION: America needs more female cops:" http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/9/america-needs-more-female-cops.html
* "How People With Autism Fake It:" http://expatlog.com/2015/09/30/how-people-with-autism-fake-it/
* "These Students Found a Genius Way to Fight Their School's Sexist Dress Code:" http://mic.com/articles/126135/these-students-are-turning-to-the-scarlet-letter-to-protest-dress-codes?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=style&utm_campaign=social
* You know how I hate the HRC as a racist, sexist, transphobic organization that only cares about the interests of white upper class cis men and have been complaining about them for decades? Yeah. "Internal Report: Major Diversity, Organizational Problems At Human Rights Campaign:" http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/internal-report-major-diversity-organizational-problems-at-h#.hf7GV2nEy
* Black Sails Rewatch XVI:
1. I think Abigail Ashe is easy to under rate for the same reasons Miranda Hamilton is. She is traditionally feminine and our culture trains us to overlook her strengths. She is polite, but that doesn't mean she isn't intelligent, resilient, observant, and incredible adaptable. I mentioned in a previous recap the first real things we know about her beyond her existence as an unconscious prize. We know that on awaking from a drugged sleep she immediate assesses her surroundings, and forces herself to eat maggoty bread to keep up her strength. We know that when she heard her captor coming she immediately arranged face and posture to suit what she'd already learned of Ned Low, and that on discovering her new captor Charles Vane, was of a different character, instantly tossed aside that set of behaviors in favor of a set she judged better suited to dealing with this new man she assessed on the spot. You can not tell me that she isn't incredibly bright as well as having really good assessing people survival skills.
I have so many questions now about her life back in England between the death of her mother and the Capture by Low we see in dream flashback at the beginning of this episode. Who raised her after her father left? Boarding School? A relative or series of relatives? She looks so naive and sheltered, but I see survival skills like she has and I think: Here is a girl used to having little to no power over her physical circumstances and who needed to learn to read people fast for physical and emotional safety. She is used to placating dangerous authority figures. I am not saying her circumstances were nearly as rough as those Charles and Anne survived. Likely they underfed her if she was at a boarding school, but she's never starved. She's certainly never been enslaved or married off to a violent rapist at twelve. Nevertheless, I am seeing behaviors I recognize and there are more subtle forms of abuse that could make a girl the particular shade of adaptive and resilient she is. She has all the trappings of the ideal period ingenue, but there is clearly so much more to her.
2. On Flint's ship, we see an adaptation more similar to the one she likely used back home. There she is with Miranda Hamilton, the two of them with their societal masks in place. Miranda is being perfectly ladylike motherly Aunt. Abigail is being dutiful young lady. There close are bedraggled, but they are both wearing their armour of manners. Underneath Miranda's placid exterior, I would lay odds she is gaming out her approach to Lord Ashe. Meanwhile, Abigail is observing and thinking and writing in her journal. We know her mind is never still. I rather love that even Abigail's journal is an unreliable narrator, as she assumes the pirates are going to read it, so we never know how much of her true thoughts we are getting. I'm pretty sure the lines, "But it is only an illusion. And a fragile one at that. My father told me about these men, about their natures, so I know that any appearance of civility from them is but a glimpse of the men they once were. A ghost that shows itself only while the darker things that now govern their souls lay dormant. Though I'm forced to wonder if this illusion is no accident at all, but theater for my benefit, orchestrated by someone so awful, even monsters such as these have no choice but to dance to the tune he plays for them. Which leads me to the one thought I find most frightening and most difficult to dismiss. What happens if that man decides the theater no longer serves his purposes and he lets the monsters loose?" are in part intended FOR THE PIRATES themselves, and if so, that is a pretty clever mind game she is playing there. Also, I'm not entirely sure she is wrong about Flint. He is not what her father said, but at the same time, the good Captain Flint is as much an illusion as his Lt. McGraw mask he greeted her with last episode. underneath is a monster that will sacrifice anyone and anything including himself to his one goal. The illusion is not for her benefit, but for the crew and I think for everyone else, especially Flint, because how could he live with himself if he didn't pretend Lt. McGraw was still alive somewhere underneath, when he's pretty much long dead. her final question, "What happens if that man decides the theater no longer serves his purposes and he lets the monsters loose?" should terrify anyone standing near Flint, and particularly anyone in his way. While he does not pose her the kind of treat Low and his men did, she's not wrong about what is underneath his civilized veneer.
3. Now we have Flint tell Abigail Billy's back story: a manipulation of his own. Rather than try to exonerate himself, he describes the injustice done to another man, one closer to her age, a story designed to elicit pity and to show the pirates are men like any men, driven to this life by complex circumstances. It is very clever. Politics. He is trying to win her help for his side, for Thomas' vision still. To Miranda he later admits, "There are good arguments in defense of him. For some of his deeds, perhaps for most of them. But there are some things that Captain Flint has done that cannot be defended." He is too self aware to defend himself honestly and so he makes Billy the face of wronged pirates, the poster boy for his plea to Abigail that they are still human. His worry is how Peter Ashe will judge him, but it is Abigail he is pleading to as well here on his ship.
4. Mr. Scott: the second man clever enough to notice how terrifyingly dangerous Silver is, talking to Billy, the first one to spot it. "When Captain Flint first arrived on this island, he gained influence faster than any man I'd seen before. Or since. I heard men say it was because of the violence. I heard them say it was his charm. But it was clear to me the reason why he was so good at bending men towards his will was he knew the power of a story and how to harness it to his own ends. That man there, I would argue, may very well be his equal." Stories are one of the oldest and I would judge the most powerful tool humans have ever invented. Billy correctly identifying you "Can't trust a fucking thing out of his mouth." Mr Scott correctly pointing out, "But the power of the telling that is clearly his. At the moment, he's using it to help the captain. But God help us if he ever realizes what else he could use it to accomplish." And of course the next thing we see is Silver trying to intimidate the Scouts into not giving away the truth about the Urca gold, which is the set up to one of them killing the other just because he said "That man has the potential to be a very real problem for the two of us." The episode that teaches Silver the extent of his power. "Let me see if I have this. Flint gives an order, but to get you men to follow it, I need to come down here, put on a show, and convince you it's in your interests. But I give you a look and you're willing to murder a man over it?" *wince* And the idiot Scout thinks Silver has his best interests at heart. As if he isn't so much worse and more dangerous to them than the monstrous Flint.
Seriously, the structure of this show is gorgeous.
5. Which brings us to Jack, Max, and Anne. "For so many years, I knew her.Perhaps the only one who truly knew her. But for weeks, with everything we've been through, everything she's done she's a fucking mystery to me. So now I realize two things are possible-- One, something has changed within her, something so significant that she's turned into someone I barely recognize, or, two it was a fantasy that I ever knew her at all." I am of the opinion that the latter is true. If he really knew her, he would not have misread her when it came to Max's imprisonment by Charles' crew. He wouldn't have made the myriad missteps that brought us to this point. I would argue he only ever really saw the surface of her, that it never occurred to him to think deeper, and Anne being the traditional strong silent action hero type never spoke up to correct his impression until the speech when she asked him to watch her back with Max. Typical Jack, not to think through the deeper implications until she was gone. (Yes, we know she is coming back, but he doesn't). I think Jack's fundamental problem is that he's intellectually lazy. He is used to skating by on looks, luck, and a clever tongue with Anne's blade to back him if that isn't enough. He's always thinking short term gain or short turn escape from the frying pan his being too clever by half got him into and not thinking ahead to what happens next. He's good at checkers, but folks like Flint and Vane and now Max? They are playing four dimensional chess. He takes Anne for granted and never really LOOKS at who she is below the surface because until recently she has behaved in ways that were reasonable predictable to him. Her having a complicated inner life took him entirely by surprise. I love his character design, because it does a beautiful job of showing how someone not traditionally masculine with a relaxed idea of gender roles generally and a liberated view of women can still have unexamined sexism that periodically bites him in the ass.
6. Speaking of intelligent people thinking ahead: Eleanor hiring the old madam to hire Max's girls to spy on Max. It's politically and psychologically astute of her. Eleanor never is going to live down the whole once impulsively deposed Charles Vane thing is she? People keep turning up expecting her to do it again.
7. How classically tragic that their vengeance against Lord Hamilton on Thomas' behalf is the thing that dooms their efforts with Peter Ashe. I love Miranda accepting her share of the guilt, because she easily could have left it all on his head. it was flint's hand, but they both willed it so.
8. Early in the episode, Miranda said, "It's like she's some sort of clock that's finally struck its chime and woken me from this dream we've been living, reminded me how many years separate me from a world I still think of as home. How unrecognizable the woman I am now would be to the woman I was then." And now we see Lord Ashe, figuring out who he's looking at across the years. How much longer it takes for them to realize what they are looking at.
9. I love Jack just going up to the fort to knock on the door and ask, with the skeptical Mr. Featherstone. There's a nice little piece of exposition about what would normally happen to someone who failed the way Charles failed along with a brilliant bit of foreshadowing for next episode in Jack's line about the power of Charles will.
10. Charles manifesto matters. "I was once a slave. I know too well the pain of the yoke on my shoulders and of the freedom of having cast it off. So I'm resolved, I will be no slave again. And as I am free, I hereby claim the same for Nassau. She is free today, and so long as I draw breath, she shall remain free.Richard Guthrie was engaged in an effort to see her return to the rule of a king, to see the yoke returned. He betrayed Nassau, and thus, as always, to traitors. As far as you and I, I was warned about you, warned you would betray me. I'd hoped you and I shared a love to make such a thing unthinkable. I'd hoped those warnings were wrong.But I know you too well, so I prepared in case they were right." What Charles does is every bit as political and every bit as personal as what Flint is doing. Their positions are both valid and in utter opposition to each other. This is what I love about this show best. With the exception of Ned Low, there are opponents rather than villains.
11. I think the theme of this episode was the power of Story: Abigail's story of her captivity. Flint's use of Billy's story to change how Abigail sees them. Vane's manifesto, which is a kind of Story. The story Jack told himself about who Anne was. The way Flint sees his story. Silver's use of Story to manipulate. Etc.. The way some stories kill. Of course you could say that about second season generally.
* I officially like the new criminal Minds Character.
* Seriously, the more I see of Walter Blunt's relationship with his manservant, the more I think there is a Dhraegon/Flox vibe there.
* Ebay, One More time:
A Low Candle-Lit Room 2013 (LE, Yules): (Company says: Candle wax and waxen "skin," rotting leather and reeking damp wood, and the ashes of a yawning, cold fireplace.). 3/4 Full.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/301757378182?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help
* A list of LGBTQA Charities to donate money to instead of seeing the racist Stonewall Movie that decided to portray a black trans woman activist as a cis white man. http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/562498.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* "How People With Autism Fake It:" http://expatlog.com/2015/09/30/how-people-with-autism-fake-it/
* "These Students Found a Genius Way to Fight Their School's Sexist Dress Code:" http://mic.com/articles/126135/these-students-are-turning-to-the-scarlet-letter-to-protest-dress-codes?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=style&utm_campaign=social
* You know how I hate the HRC as a racist, sexist, transphobic organization that only cares about the interests of white upper class cis men and have been complaining about them for decades? Yeah. "Internal Report: Major Diversity, Organizational Problems At Human Rights Campaign:" http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/internal-report-major-diversity-organizational-problems-at-h#.hf7GV2nEy
* Black Sails Rewatch XVI:
1. I think Abigail Ashe is easy to under rate for the same reasons Miranda Hamilton is. She is traditionally feminine and our culture trains us to overlook her strengths. She is polite, but that doesn't mean she isn't intelligent, resilient, observant, and incredible adaptable. I mentioned in a previous recap the first real things we know about her beyond her existence as an unconscious prize. We know that on awaking from a drugged sleep she immediate assesses her surroundings, and forces herself to eat maggoty bread to keep up her strength. We know that when she heard her captor coming she immediately arranged face and posture to suit what she'd already learned of Ned Low, and that on discovering her new captor Charles Vane, was of a different character, instantly tossed aside that set of behaviors in favor of a set she judged better suited to dealing with this new man she assessed on the spot. You can not tell me that she isn't incredibly bright as well as having really good assessing people survival skills.
I have so many questions now about her life back in England between the death of her mother and the Capture by Low we see in dream flashback at the beginning of this episode. Who raised her after her father left? Boarding School? A relative or series of relatives? She looks so naive and sheltered, but I see survival skills like she has and I think: Here is a girl used to having little to no power over her physical circumstances and who needed to learn to read people fast for physical and emotional safety. She is used to placating dangerous authority figures. I am not saying her circumstances were nearly as rough as those Charles and Anne survived. Likely they underfed her if she was at a boarding school, but she's never starved. She's certainly never been enslaved or married off to a violent rapist at twelve. Nevertheless, I am seeing behaviors I recognize and there are more subtle forms of abuse that could make a girl the particular shade of adaptive and resilient she is. She has all the trappings of the ideal period ingenue, but there is clearly so much more to her.
2. On Flint's ship, we see an adaptation more similar to the one she likely used back home. There she is with Miranda Hamilton, the two of them with their societal masks in place. Miranda is being perfectly ladylike motherly Aunt. Abigail is being dutiful young lady. There close are bedraggled, but they are both wearing their armour of manners. Underneath Miranda's placid exterior, I would lay odds she is gaming out her approach to Lord Ashe. Meanwhile, Abigail is observing and thinking and writing in her journal. We know her mind is never still. I rather love that even Abigail's journal is an unreliable narrator, as she assumes the pirates are going to read it, so we never know how much of her true thoughts we are getting. I'm pretty sure the lines, "But it is only an illusion. And a fragile one at that. My father told me about these men, about their natures, so I know that any appearance of civility from them is but a glimpse of the men they once were. A ghost that shows itself only while the darker things that now govern their souls lay dormant. Though I'm forced to wonder if this illusion is no accident at all, but theater for my benefit, orchestrated by someone so awful, even monsters such as these have no choice but to dance to the tune he plays for them. Which leads me to the one thought I find most frightening and most difficult to dismiss. What happens if that man decides the theater no longer serves his purposes and he lets the monsters loose?" are in part intended FOR THE PIRATES themselves, and if so, that is a pretty clever mind game she is playing there. Also, I'm not entirely sure she is wrong about Flint. He is not what her father said, but at the same time, the good Captain Flint is as much an illusion as his Lt. McGraw mask he greeted her with last episode. underneath is a monster that will sacrifice anyone and anything including himself to his one goal. The illusion is not for her benefit, but for the crew and I think for everyone else, especially Flint, because how could he live with himself if he didn't pretend Lt. McGraw was still alive somewhere underneath, when he's pretty much long dead. her final question, "What happens if that man decides the theater no longer serves his purposes and he lets the monsters loose?" should terrify anyone standing near Flint, and particularly anyone in his way. While he does not pose her the kind of treat Low and his men did, she's not wrong about what is underneath his civilized veneer.
3. Now we have Flint tell Abigail Billy's back story: a manipulation of his own. Rather than try to exonerate himself, he describes the injustice done to another man, one closer to her age, a story designed to elicit pity and to show the pirates are men like any men, driven to this life by complex circumstances. It is very clever. Politics. He is trying to win her help for his side, for Thomas' vision still. To Miranda he later admits, "There are good arguments in defense of him. For some of his deeds, perhaps for most of them. But there are some things that Captain Flint has done that cannot be defended." He is too self aware to defend himself honestly and so he makes Billy the face of wronged pirates, the poster boy for his plea to Abigail that they are still human. His worry is how Peter Ashe will judge him, but it is Abigail he is pleading to as well here on his ship.
4. Mr. Scott: the second man clever enough to notice how terrifyingly dangerous Silver is, talking to Billy, the first one to spot it. "When Captain Flint first arrived on this island, he gained influence faster than any man I'd seen before. Or since. I heard men say it was because of the violence. I heard them say it was his charm. But it was clear to me the reason why he was so good at bending men towards his will was he knew the power of a story and how to harness it to his own ends. That man there, I would argue, may very well be his equal." Stories are one of the oldest and I would judge the most powerful tool humans have ever invented. Billy correctly identifying you "Can't trust a fucking thing out of his mouth." Mr Scott correctly pointing out, "But the power of the telling that is clearly his. At the moment, he's using it to help the captain. But God help us if he ever realizes what else he could use it to accomplish." And of course the next thing we see is Silver trying to intimidate the Scouts into not giving away the truth about the Urca gold, which is the set up to one of them killing the other just because he said "That man has the potential to be a very real problem for the two of us." The episode that teaches Silver the extent of his power. "Let me see if I have this. Flint gives an order, but to get you men to follow it, I need to come down here, put on a show, and convince you it's in your interests. But I give you a look and you're willing to murder a man over it?" *wince* And the idiot Scout thinks Silver has his best interests at heart. As if he isn't so much worse and more dangerous to them than the monstrous Flint.
Seriously, the structure of this show is gorgeous.
5. Which brings us to Jack, Max, and Anne. "For so many years, I knew her.Perhaps the only one who truly knew her. But for weeks, with everything we've been through, everything she's done she's a fucking mystery to me. So now I realize two things are possible-- One, something has changed within her, something so significant that she's turned into someone I barely recognize, or, two it was a fantasy that I ever knew her at all." I am of the opinion that the latter is true. If he really knew her, he would not have misread her when it came to Max's imprisonment by Charles' crew. He wouldn't have made the myriad missteps that brought us to this point. I would argue he only ever really saw the surface of her, that it never occurred to him to think deeper, and Anne being the traditional strong silent action hero type never spoke up to correct his impression until the speech when she asked him to watch her back with Max. Typical Jack, not to think through the deeper implications until she was gone. (Yes, we know she is coming back, but he doesn't). I think Jack's fundamental problem is that he's intellectually lazy. He is used to skating by on looks, luck, and a clever tongue with Anne's blade to back him if that isn't enough. He's always thinking short term gain or short turn escape from the frying pan his being too clever by half got him into and not thinking ahead to what happens next. He's good at checkers, but folks like Flint and Vane and now Max? They are playing four dimensional chess. He takes Anne for granted and never really LOOKS at who she is below the surface because until recently she has behaved in ways that were reasonable predictable to him. Her having a complicated inner life took him entirely by surprise. I love his character design, because it does a beautiful job of showing how someone not traditionally masculine with a relaxed idea of gender roles generally and a liberated view of women can still have unexamined sexism that periodically bites him in the ass.
6. Speaking of intelligent people thinking ahead: Eleanor hiring the old madam to hire Max's girls to spy on Max. It's politically and psychologically astute of her. Eleanor never is going to live down the whole once impulsively deposed Charles Vane thing is she? People keep turning up expecting her to do it again.
7. How classically tragic that their vengeance against Lord Hamilton on Thomas' behalf is the thing that dooms their efforts with Peter Ashe. I love Miranda accepting her share of the guilt, because she easily could have left it all on his head. it was flint's hand, but they both willed it so.
8. Early in the episode, Miranda said, "It's like she's some sort of clock that's finally struck its chime and woken me from this dream we've been living, reminded me how many years separate me from a world I still think of as home. How unrecognizable the woman I am now would be to the woman I was then." And now we see Lord Ashe, figuring out who he's looking at across the years. How much longer it takes for them to realize what they are looking at.
9. I love Jack just going up to the fort to knock on the door and ask, with the skeptical Mr. Featherstone. There's a nice little piece of exposition about what would normally happen to someone who failed the way Charles failed along with a brilliant bit of foreshadowing for next episode in Jack's line about the power of Charles will.
10. Charles manifesto matters. "I was once a slave. I know too well the pain of the yoke on my shoulders and of the freedom of having cast it off. So I'm resolved, I will be no slave again. And as I am free, I hereby claim the same for Nassau. She is free today, and so long as I draw breath, she shall remain free.Richard Guthrie was engaged in an effort to see her return to the rule of a king, to see the yoke returned. He betrayed Nassau, and thus, as always, to traitors. As far as you and I, I was warned about you, warned you would betray me. I'd hoped you and I shared a love to make such a thing unthinkable. I'd hoped those warnings were wrong.But I know you too well, so I prepared in case they were right." What Charles does is every bit as political and every bit as personal as what Flint is doing. Their positions are both valid and in utter opposition to each other. This is what I love about this show best. With the exception of Ned Low, there are opponents rather than villains.
11. I think the theme of this episode was the power of Story: Abigail's story of her captivity. Flint's use of Billy's story to change how Abigail sees them. Vane's manifesto, which is a kind of Story. The story Jack told himself about who Anne was. The way Flint sees his story. Silver's use of Story to manipulate. Etc.. The way some stories kill. Of course you could say that about second season generally.
* I officially like the new criminal Minds Character.
* Seriously, the more I see of Walter Blunt's relationship with his manservant, the more I think there is a Dhraegon/Flox vibe there.
* Ebay, One More time:
A Low Candle-Lit Room 2013 (LE, Yules): (Company says: Candle wax and waxen "skin," rotting leather and reeking damp wood, and the ashes of a yawning, cold fireplace.). 3/4 Full.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/301757378182?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help
* A list of LGBTQA Charities to donate money to instead of seeing the racist Stonewall Movie that decided to portray a black trans woman activist as a cis white man. http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/562498.html. Please comment there using OpenID.