(no subject)
* "13,000 people hanged in secret at Syrian prison, Amnesty says:" http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/middleeast/syria-executions-amnesty-international-report/
* "In call with Putin, Trump denounced Obama-era nuclear arms treaty:" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-putin-idUSKBN15O2A5
* "National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/national-security-adviser-flynn-discussed-sanctions-with-russian-ambassador-despite-denials-officials-say/2017/02/09/f85b29d6-ee11-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_usrussia-%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.07f8756a3677
* "Court hands Trump a loss and a civics lesson in ban ruling:"
* "Poll shows worldview gap between Trump voters, Americans broadly:"
* "Trump a one-man constitutional crisis: ACLU executive director:"
* "The March To Impeachment:" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/march-to-impeachment_us_5897b401e4b0406131376a32
* "U.S. appeals court refuses to reinstate Trump's travel ban:" http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/world/trump-travel-ban-decision-us-appeals-court-1.3974941
* "Congress has the power to obtain and release Trump’s tax returns:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/congress-has-the-power-to-obtain-and-release-trumps-tax-returns/2017/02/07/aa53254c-ea63-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?postshare=5731486486568446&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.48b5b77660c2
* "White House says Conway has been ‘counseled’ after touting Ivanka Trump’s products:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conway-may-have-broken-key-ethics-rule-by-touting-ivanka-trumps-products-experts-say/2017/02/09/fd1cc64a-eeda-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.16f97a9beb59
* "GOP lawmaker proposes abolishing Department of Education:" http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/318310-gop-lawmaker-proposes-abolishing-department-of-education#.WJo5NvmB2Lo.twitter
* "Republican congressman says white terrorists are different:" https://thinkprogress.org/republican-congressman-says-white-terrorists-are-different-24c7fc75e255#.q8of5iy2f
* "Sex scandalized Alabama gov appointment sparks corruption outcry:"
* Proof I'm not a Proper Adult #15: The name "Luther Strange" sounds like a cut rate super villain to me.
* Notes from the resistance. Don't give up. http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/157082408247/foxnewsfuckfest-invisiblelad-shanoniusrex
* "Laura Jane Grace - Discovering Gender Identity in "Tranny":"
* "South Africa Shows the U.S. Senate How to Duke It Out:"
* "The Trump Family's White House Hustle:"
* Bronchitis/Sinus infection/Mouth Infection update: It rained and I was able to score emergency cancellation doctor appointment Thursday. I had next to no sleep, but it was clear I'd be in the emergency room if I didn't grab my window. I had to lie down all evening to recover. Squirrel drove me, but it was still a lot of shuffling about while coughing. Thanks to donations the car tabs are covered and I'm only projected to be about 80 under on my bills this month.
Today a friend dropped off some magic soup. I managed about a third of it, and will be eating it all weekend, which is normal for me. (Magic soup is a last resort and thus something I only do once every few years when it gets really bad. I think last time was during the MRSA). My mouth had healed enough overnight for me to chew a little, though I had to take a pain pill after.
The antibiotics are starting to work, but it'll be a couple of days before I know if these are the right ones for this infection set. However, I can't hear my lungs growling, etc when I am still, so that is real progress. I am pretty sure this antibiotic is working for the sinus infection and the sores in my mouth. The small ones have healed over night, the medium ones are down to nuisance and the really bad one is no longer very hot and tasting of serious infection, though it is still swollen and a bit mauled. It's the lungs I'm not sure of. I'm okay if I stay completely still except for my arms, but that is hard to do.
Tavy figured out with previous infections the difference between a normal cough and serious problem losing control of my limbs cough and also the sound I make when I am suffocating. Being a clever little button, he is up and off right away and when it's really bad he waits it out in another room. This is incredibly helpful as there is a lot of uncoordinated flailing and I could kick or fall on him if he clung. He sensibly waits until I quiet to come hang out. When I do get up, I make sure he gets lots of wild rumpus time with the strings to make up for all the still and quiet he's having to be. I'm still to sick to sleep properly, but overall, progress.
* Black Sails XXX:
* I know I keep going on and on about how pretty this show is, but seriously, the Silver being dragged is just gorgeous: the delicate use of light and haze, the interesting camera angles and use of negative space, the careful cutting, the panoramic landscape shot of beach and wrecks.
* Max's confrontation with Mr. Featherstone and Idelle is really clever on her part. They are watching the gallows go up for pirates, and that can't do other than chill their blood, driving home Max's threat. So I misjudged Featherstone, as it turns out. Watching Max accuse them of betraying her by conspiring with and relaying information to the Pirate Resistance, all I could think of is Eleanor's fury at Max selling leads to rival ships, thus undermining her political and financial position when she was Queen of Nassau. Here Max is, in Eleanor's shoes, with cold fury and threats doing what Eleanor once did to Max because they are undermining Max's political strategy. Max having known about it all along means that up until now she was deliberately letting them continue. Up until right now, she has been in a position to switch sides if she needs to. This, and her action later with Silver commit her, likely irrevocably. I am asking myself if it was Woodes Rogers' threat, Max's relationship with Eleanor, her stated reason to Silver (this needs to stop), or practical self preservation motivating her. It could be any or all of them really, or more thing I haven't thought of yet. She's certainly complex enough to work on multiple levels, and very disciplined in what she says to others.
I know I keep going on about the visuals, but I love both the opening shot with the framing designed to be asymmetrical in position and proportion, and little things like the shot from the gallows with the wooden pillar dividing the screen with Berringer's profile dominating the foreground on the left, and the three of them small and full length in the background on the right.
* Eleanor is the Grand daughter of a pirate. I wonder what Richard Guthrie's relationship with his father was like. Eleanor is said to resemble her mother physically. I wonder if her personality doesn't resemble her Grandfather's. She is intelligent, ambitious, ruthless, entrepreneurial, all things that might well fit a man with grandfather Guthrie's back story. Might this also have been part of why her father's attitude to her was so complicated? Did she think back when she was queen of Nassau that if she just accumulated enough wealth and Flint's plan to legitimize the island worked, that she too might become respectable after the fact? "My grandfather was a pirate of another sort. When he was a young man, he swindled a ship, hired it to privateers, and earned a share of their spoils for his trouble.But he had an ambition for something far greater than plunder, a desire to build something more permanent. So, plunder purchased more ships. Ships generated more profits, profits became wealth, which became influence, which became power." This sure sounds like her business plan in season one.
* So much of the Queen Anne's Revenge strategy is bluff and misdirection, which is exactly what Woodes Rogers is doing on the other side. Everyone is shorter of men and stores than they are pretending to be: Rogers, Teach, and the land rebels. Notice Anne pulling a classic Charles vane here: the men talk over strategy. She listens. When she speaks, it's at the end of the discussion with a valid objection, laconically stated. I know I keep harping on this command style and the parallel, but it's about to become important. Notice the men listen and adjust plans based on her objections, the opposite of the way Woodes Rogers and Eleanor Guthrie react to Max's suggestions/objections, even though Max is one of the most talented politicians in the show.
* So we are back to the Madi Scott/Billy Bones/Flint triumvirate. Madi's cast the swing vote worth Billy for incredibly obvious reasons. It's the right thing from a basic decency perspective, especially for people who were enslaved and know how bad it is. It also makes the best tactical and political sense based on the information they have. Unfortunately, they don't have all the information, but I honestly think given what they knew this made sense as a choice.
Madi Scott: "And what choice did I have? The moment we arrived,
it was instantly clear to me…he is the one keeping
this place together. His men look up to him, rely on him, trust him. Many of your men even trust him, as well. He is going to be relevant
to what happens next here. That much is painfully obvious. And your first instinct is to dismiss him. Had I not stepped in, who knows how destructive that could have become for everyone?" We are about to find out, alas.
* "What I do object to, however, is spectacle, certain to increase defiance and anger rather than sooth it. We should be moving past this, not wallowing in it." No one listens to Max. No one ever listens to Max in the Rogers/Guthrie/Berringer camp. "But promises were made by the governor to me, by me to my informants. And if oaths are no longer kept here, if boundaries are no longer respected here, then there is no civilization left here to defend, and I do not know what we are fighting for." She is Nassau's Cassandra. I think her warnings to Eleanor about the danger Captain Berringer poses are spot on and things are going to get really ugly as a result.
* Silver's first tactic is always lies, but failing at first, he adapts. Silver talks his way out of trouble again. Story is his super power. So he tells Israel Hands a version of Israel Hands' story and seduces him that way. Silver says the story is from Flint, but it sounds like something Rackham would say. It is Rackham who kept invoking the Pirate founding fathers of Nassau last season. Flint looks back, but to England, not Teach and Jennings, but Rackham is linked to Vane and Vane was Blackbeard's metaphorical son and thus Israel's rival, while Flint was a relative newcomer to the island and is a more neutral figure to cite to Hands. I think this is like Silver always attributing stories to that that possibly mythical boy at the orphanage, including one they knew came from someone else about pirate hangings. he changes the source to suit the audience, he borrows stories from one person, changes details to suit and attributes them to another. That is totally his seductive lying voice he uses on the men. He flatters, then provokes, then uses that anger against Teach to turn them into allies against Teach. "We are brothers that sail beneath the black. How can a man like that be the best of us? Well, they followed Teach, and where did it lead? An English governor raising his flag over Nassau. Fuck Teach. He was almost the end of us. But now I'm here... and things are about to begin again." He then turns that identification again, harpying on the similarities. If Silver can change from no one to King, why shouldn't Israel Hands? Silver's silver tongue, as beautiful and deadly as a saw-scaled viper. Listening to him here, I think he's truly become the Long John Silver of the books. He's been traveling that way this whole time, but I think this is the moment he truly becomes him. It's terrifying and hypnotic. "I'm no one. From nowhere. Belonging to nothing. I'm a wretch like you. And yet... mountains of gold have changed hands because I chose it. Thousands of men in Nassau are living in fear of my return because I decreed it. Hundreds of dead redcoats in a forest not far from here, because I made it so. I'm the reason grown men lie awake at night. I am a new beginning for Nassau. *shudder*
* Now that I think about it, Israel Hands is in actuality what Long John Silver is supposed to be in Billy Bones' propaganda, though the real Long John Silver is another sort of man entirely.
* In this moment, Billy Bones is as wrong as Flint was last episode. The people who have been enslaved are the only ones who should get a say about this. Flint is likely siding with Madi for the wrong reasons, but Madi is right. Billy is being as pig headed as Flint was, and is emoting instead of thinking. Exactly like Flint. The disaster Madi warned of is the result, and thus it all begins to seriously unravel. Add in the chaos Silver is about to introduce, geometrically worse than the chaos he introduced in episode one, way back in the beginning with the stolen page, and I fear for them all.
* I have written a lot over the last two years about the ways Anne and Charles Vane are/were a lot alike. It's not just that they are abuse survivors who perform a particular type of masculinity very well. It isn't just the ways in which they are vulnerable under the strong but silent type facade. There are also things like them standing or sitting nearly silent in meetings, watching, listening, thinking, and only speaking up when if they have something important to say, which leads people to underestimate their intelligence a lot of the time and similarly people often assume they know what they are thinking/who they are only to discover they were completely wrong when Charles and/or Anne speak or act in ways they don't expect.
That thought has been hanging over the scenes with Anne this season. It has been in my mind in all the Rackham, Anne, and/or Blackbeard scenes in the first two episodes. In the first episode, when Anne called Jack out on nearly getting himself killed to impress a dead man, I swear that's something Charles Vane might have thought or said. Really all it needed was a "Fuck you, Jack!" at the end. I was certainly thinking it throughout the Jack/Blackbeard conversation about Vane.
The thing it never occurred to me to think until I saw XXX, was how much the late stages of Charles/Eleanor look and feel like the late stages of Anne/Max. Season two, the circumstances were completely different, but Anne's vulnerability and something in the way she looked at Max... in retrospect it was very like Charles Vane's vulnerability and obvious adoration for Eleanor. I never saw it then, because of how complex the rest of it was with the threesome and Anne's search for identity after Jack betrayed her, but it is there. Then there is the parallelism in the way Max broke it underground by flickering light without consulting Anne at all about what Anne thought might be best for Anne, that only in retrospect reminds me of Eleanor and Charles when Eleanor freed Abigail. I should have thought of it, but I didn't. Here is Anne, furious about the way Max stood by while all the things with Jack and Charles went down. Here is Jack not sure if Anne really wants Max dead or if some part of her still loves her, the Blackbeard (and most of the rest of us) eyed Charles as the confrontation with Eleanor loomed and it wasn't clear which way Charles would jump if it came to it for all his fury.
I still think Eleanor killing Charles has doomed Eleanor, by the way, and I think Charles knew it. I think Woodes Rogers throwing her hanging Charles back at her only adds to the likelihood that when the Street turns he will feed her to the mob.
Anyway, back to Anne. I think the biggest difference between Anne Bonny and Charles (and Flint, Bones, Gurthrie, Rogers, etc.) is she doesn't have a grand vision for Nassau. She has come a long way from where she was, second only to Max in growth over time. She knows who she is now and what she wants, but for her it's not about power over other people, or grand destinies. For her it is always more personal, to be free and with who she wants to be with, revenge against those who harmed her, not to rule or some grand battle for the fate of the island.
Her fury against Max startled me with it's intensity, but it shouldn't have. What Max did looks so deliberate from Anne's perspective, a premeditated maneuver to remove a rival. It looks bad the way Max's gang rape looked like Charles betraying her to Eleanor, and the way it looked to Max that Eleanor didn't care about the abuse being done her. The history of betrayals, the knowledge of character add up to a completely reasonable judgement, that misses nuance, but is completely understandable in the light of the terrible personal costs inflicted.
"Said if I turned over the cache, you'd be safe. And it ain't just the lie. She tried to take you away from me. When I left that island... all I could think about was having a chance to make her pay... for what she done. Now that we're here... it would be so easy. And I don't wanna do it. Don't wanna live with it after. The sight of her hurt in that way. Just don't want it. That fucking island. Makes you do shit you don't wanna do." She's become so self aware since season one.
* An then we get the scene with Jack Rackham and Edward Teach. Jack passes the Charles Vane mantle to Anne, rightly, I think. "I think Anne is right. She said something to me earlier. She said only a fool would give his life to earn the admiration of a corpse. I wanted to strangle her. But part of me could not help but note in that moment she sounded an awful lot like someone else I once knew, someone you and I both once knew who shared...Anne's mistrust of sentimentality." Teach's story about Charles Vane and the bird of omen is a kind of agreement. "But then, there are other men near Clifton...my... my mother's home...who would've called it a sign of great fortune, an indication from the heavens that someone up there favored our endeavor together. And I asked him what he thought it meant. 'Dinner.'" This reminds me of the wakes I've had for dead lovers, or the way my family mourns. The telling of stories. The touch of humor. The letting go.
"I wonder if he were here now, watching us battle with the choice to kill her in his name or defeat the governor and perhaps therein win the war we all together started, if he might call us fools. And then I wonder if maybe we don't have to work that hard to imagine what he'd say. Maybe we've already heard it, and the only choice is whether we choose to listen." Anne speaks for Charles now, and that seems utterly fitting to me.
* Max's vision for Nassau and her motivation, though I doubt it's all of it. "I am tired of this. This thing that perpetuates itself with anger and bluster and blood. I do not want to be your friend. What I want is for all of this to end. For it to end, you must end. I imagine I have some obligation to surrender you to Captain Berringer, but the spectacle he would make of your trial and execution would only fan the flames of what is burning in Nassau now. I am tempted to put the sword to you and your man both, and bury this story for good, but what am I... if I spend my days pleading for a return to civility and then do dark things under the cover of night?" Max is civilization now, not Rogers, who has gone pirate, but Max, who has every reason to hate it for all the things it did to her. She is for peace and security and stability. I have no faith in that, especially with Berringer around, and i hope she has a go bag and a hoard of ready cash somewhere. Max represents what Thomas, Miranda, and James wanted all that time ago.
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* 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/1870335.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* "In call with Putin, Trump denounced Obama-era nuclear arms treaty:" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-putin-idUSKBN15O2A5
* "National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/national-security-adviser-flynn-discussed-sanctions-with-russian-ambassador-despite-denials-officials-say/2017/02/09/f85b29d6-ee11-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_usrussia-%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.07f8756a3677
* "Court hands Trump a loss and a civics lesson in ban ruling:"
* "Poll shows worldview gap between Trump voters, Americans broadly:"
* "Trump a one-man constitutional crisis: ACLU executive director:"
* "The March To Impeachment:" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/march-to-impeachment_us_5897b401e4b0406131376a32
* "U.S. appeals court refuses to reinstate Trump's travel ban:" http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/world/trump-travel-ban-decision-us-appeals-court-1.3974941
* "Congress has the power to obtain and release Trump’s tax returns:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/congress-has-the-power-to-obtain-and-release-trumps-tax-returns/2017/02/07/aa53254c-ea63-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?postshare=5731486486568446&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.48b5b77660c2
* "White House says Conway has been ‘counseled’ after touting Ivanka Trump’s products:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conway-may-have-broken-key-ethics-rule-by-touting-ivanka-trumps-products-experts-say/2017/02/09/fd1cc64a-eeda-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.16f97a9beb59
* "GOP lawmaker proposes abolishing Department of Education:" http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/318310-gop-lawmaker-proposes-abolishing-department-of-education#.WJo5NvmB2Lo.twitter
* "Republican congressman says white terrorists are different:" https://thinkprogress.org/republican-congressman-says-white-terrorists-are-different-24c7fc75e255#.q8of5iy2f
* "Sex scandalized Alabama gov appointment sparks corruption outcry:"
* Proof I'm not a Proper Adult #15: The name "Luther Strange" sounds like a cut rate super villain to me.
* Notes from the resistance. Don't give up. http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/157082408247/foxnewsfuckfest-invisiblelad-shanoniusrex
* "Laura Jane Grace - Discovering Gender Identity in "Tranny":"
* "South Africa Shows the U.S. Senate How to Duke It Out:"
* "The Trump Family's White House Hustle:"
* Bronchitis/Sinus infection/Mouth Infection update: It rained and I was able to score emergency cancellation doctor appointment Thursday. I had next to no sleep, but it was clear I'd be in the emergency room if I didn't grab my window. I had to lie down all evening to recover. Squirrel drove me, but it was still a lot of shuffling about while coughing. Thanks to donations the car tabs are covered and I'm only projected to be about 80 under on my bills this month.
Today a friend dropped off some magic soup. I managed about a third of it, and will be eating it all weekend, which is normal for me. (Magic soup is a last resort and thus something I only do once every few years when it gets really bad. I think last time was during the MRSA). My mouth had healed enough overnight for me to chew a little, though I had to take a pain pill after.
The antibiotics are starting to work, but it'll be a couple of days before I know if these are the right ones for this infection set. However, I can't hear my lungs growling, etc when I am still, so that is real progress. I am pretty sure this antibiotic is working for the sinus infection and the sores in my mouth. The small ones have healed over night, the medium ones are down to nuisance and the really bad one is no longer very hot and tasting of serious infection, though it is still swollen and a bit mauled. It's the lungs I'm not sure of. I'm okay if I stay completely still except for my arms, but that is hard to do.
Tavy figured out with previous infections the difference between a normal cough and serious problem losing control of my limbs cough and also the sound I make when I am suffocating. Being a clever little button, he is up and off right away and when it's really bad he waits it out in another room. This is incredibly helpful as there is a lot of uncoordinated flailing and I could kick or fall on him if he clung. He sensibly waits until I quiet to come hang out. When I do get up, I make sure he gets lots of wild rumpus time with the strings to make up for all the still and quiet he's having to be. I'm still to sick to sleep properly, but overall, progress.
* Black Sails XXX:
* I know I keep going on and on about how pretty this show is, but seriously, the Silver being dragged is just gorgeous: the delicate use of light and haze, the interesting camera angles and use of negative space, the careful cutting, the panoramic landscape shot of beach and wrecks.
* Max's confrontation with Mr. Featherstone and Idelle is really clever on her part. They are watching the gallows go up for pirates, and that can't do other than chill their blood, driving home Max's threat. So I misjudged Featherstone, as it turns out. Watching Max accuse them of betraying her by conspiring with and relaying information to the Pirate Resistance, all I could think of is Eleanor's fury at Max selling leads to rival ships, thus undermining her political and financial position when she was Queen of Nassau. Here Max is, in Eleanor's shoes, with cold fury and threats doing what Eleanor once did to Max because they are undermining Max's political strategy. Max having known about it all along means that up until now she was deliberately letting them continue. Up until right now, she has been in a position to switch sides if she needs to. This, and her action later with Silver commit her, likely irrevocably. I am asking myself if it was Woodes Rogers' threat, Max's relationship with Eleanor, her stated reason to Silver (this needs to stop), or practical self preservation motivating her. It could be any or all of them really, or more thing I haven't thought of yet. She's certainly complex enough to work on multiple levels, and very disciplined in what she says to others.
I know I keep going on about the visuals, but I love both the opening shot with the framing designed to be asymmetrical in position and proportion, and little things like the shot from the gallows with the wooden pillar dividing the screen with Berringer's profile dominating the foreground on the left, and the three of them small and full length in the background on the right.
* Eleanor is the Grand daughter of a pirate. I wonder what Richard Guthrie's relationship with his father was like. Eleanor is said to resemble her mother physically. I wonder if her personality doesn't resemble her Grandfather's. She is intelligent, ambitious, ruthless, entrepreneurial, all things that might well fit a man with grandfather Guthrie's back story. Might this also have been part of why her father's attitude to her was so complicated? Did she think back when she was queen of Nassau that if she just accumulated enough wealth and Flint's plan to legitimize the island worked, that she too might become respectable after the fact? "My grandfather was a pirate of another sort. When he was a young man, he swindled a ship, hired it to privateers, and earned a share of their spoils for his trouble.But he had an ambition for something far greater than plunder, a desire to build something more permanent. So, plunder purchased more ships. Ships generated more profits, profits became wealth, which became influence, which became power." This sure sounds like her business plan in season one.
* So much of the Queen Anne's Revenge strategy is bluff and misdirection, which is exactly what Woodes Rogers is doing on the other side. Everyone is shorter of men and stores than they are pretending to be: Rogers, Teach, and the land rebels. Notice Anne pulling a classic Charles vane here: the men talk over strategy. She listens. When she speaks, it's at the end of the discussion with a valid objection, laconically stated. I know I keep harping on this command style and the parallel, but it's about to become important. Notice the men listen and adjust plans based on her objections, the opposite of the way Woodes Rogers and Eleanor Guthrie react to Max's suggestions/objections, even though Max is one of the most talented politicians in the show.
* So we are back to the Madi Scott/Billy Bones/Flint triumvirate. Madi's cast the swing vote worth Billy for incredibly obvious reasons. It's the right thing from a basic decency perspective, especially for people who were enslaved and know how bad it is. It also makes the best tactical and political sense based on the information they have. Unfortunately, they don't have all the information, but I honestly think given what they knew this made sense as a choice.
Madi Scott: "And what choice did I have? The moment we arrived,
it was instantly clear to me…he is the one keeping
this place together. His men look up to him, rely on him, trust him. Many of your men even trust him, as well. He is going to be relevant
to what happens next here. That much is painfully obvious. And your first instinct is to dismiss him. Had I not stepped in, who knows how destructive that could have become for everyone?" We are about to find out, alas.
* "What I do object to, however, is spectacle, certain to increase defiance and anger rather than sooth it. We should be moving past this, not wallowing in it." No one listens to Max. No one ever listens to Max in the Rogers/Guthrie/Berringer camp. "But promises were made by the governor to me, by me to my informants. And if oaths are no longer kept here, if boundaries are no longer respected here, then there is no civilization left here to defend, and I do not know what we are fighting for." She is Nassau's Cassandra. I think her warnings to Eleanor about the danger Captain Berringer poses are spot on and things are going to get really ugly as a result.
* Silver's first tactic is always lies, but failing at first, he adapts. Silver talks his way out of trouble again. Story is his super power. So he tells Israel Hands a version of Israel Hands' story and seduces him that way. Silver says the story is from Flint, but it sounds like something Rackham would say. It is Rackham who kept invoking the Pirate founding fathers of Nassau last season. Flint looks back, but to England, not Teach and Jennings, but Rackham is linked to Vane and Vane was Blackbeard's metaphorical son and thus Israel's rival, while Flint was a relative newcomer to the island and is a more neutral figure to cite to Hands. I think this is like Silver always attributing stories to that that possibly mythical boy at the orphanage, including one they knew came from someone else about pirate hangings. he changes the source to suit the audience, he borrows stories from one person, changes details to suit and attributes them to another. That is totally his seductive lying voice he uses on the men. He flatters, then provokes, then uses that anger against Teach to turn them into allies against Teach. "We are brothers that sail beneath the black. How can a man like that be the best of us? Well, they followed Teach, and where did it lead? An English governor raising his flag over Nassau. Fuck Teach. He was almost the end of us. But now I'm here... and things are about to begin again." He then turns that identification again, harpying on the similarities. If Silver can change from no one to King, why shouldn't Israel Hands? Silver's silver tongue, as beautiful and deadly as a saw-scaled viper. Listening to him here, I think he's truly become the Long John Silver of the books. He's been traveling that way this whole time, but I think this is the moment he truly becomes him. It's terrifying and hypnotic. "I'm no one. From nowhere. Belonging to nothing. I'm a wretch like you. And yet... mountains of gold have changed hands because I chose it. Thousands of men in Nassau are living in fear of my return because I decreed it. Hundreds of dead redcoats in a forest not far from here, because I made it so. I'm the reason grown men lie awake at night. I am a new beginning for Nassau. *shudder*
* Now that I think about it, Israel Hands is in actuality what Long John Silver is supposed to be in Billy Bones' propaganda, though the real Long John Silver is another sort of man entirely.
* In this moment, Billy Bones is as wrong as Flint was last episode. The people who have been enslaved are the only ones who should get a say about this. Flint is likely siding with Madi for the wrong reasons, but Madi is right. Billy is being as pig headed as Flint was, and is emoting instead of thinking. Exactly like Flint. The disaster Madi warned of is the result, and thus it all begins to seriously unravel. Add in the chaos Silver is about to introduce, geometrically worse than the chaos he introduced in episode one, way back in the beginning with the stolen page, and I fear for them all.
* I have written a lot over the last two years about the ways Anne and Charles Vane are/were a lot alike. It's not just that they are abuse survivors who perform a particular type of masculinity very well. It isn't just the ways in which they are vulnerable under the strong but silent type facade. There are also things like them standing or sitting nearly silent in meetings, watching, listening, thinking, and only speaking up when if they have something important to say, which leads people to underestimate their intelligence a lot of the time and similarly people often assume they know what they are thinking/who they are only to discover they were completely wrong when Charles and/or Anne speak or act in ways they don't expect.
That thought has been hanging over the scenes with Anne this season. It has been in my mind in all the Rackham, Anne, and/or Blackbeard scenes in the first two episodes. In the first episode, when Anne called Jack out on nearly getting himself killed to impress a dead man, I swear that's something Charles Vane might have thought or said. Really all it needed was a "Fuck you, Jack!" at the end. I was certainly thinking it throughout the Jack/Blackbeard conversation about Vane.
The thing it never occurred to me to think until I saw XXX, was how much the late stages of Charles/Eleanor look and feel like the late stages of Anne/Max. Season two, the circumstances were completely different, but Anne's vulnerability and something in the way she looked at Max... in retrospect it was very like Charles Vane's vulnerability and obvious adoration for Eleanor. I never saw it then, because of how complex the rest of it was with the threesome and Anne's search for identity after Jack betrayed her, but it is there. Then there is the parallelism in the way Max broke it underground by flickering light without consulting Anne at all about what Anne thought might be best for Anne, that only in retrospect reminds me of Eleanor and Charles when Eleanor freed Abigail. I should have thought of it, but I didn't. Here is Anne, furious about the way Max stood by while all the things with Jack and Charles went down. Here is Jack not sure if Anne really wants Max dead or if some part of her still loves her, the Blackbeard (and most of the rest of us) eyed Charles as the confrontation with Eleanor loomed and it wasn't clear which way Charles would jump if it came to it for all his fury.
I still think Eleanor killing Charles has doomed Eleanor, by the way, and I think Charles knew it. I think Woodes Rogers throwing her hanging Charles back at her only adds to the likelihood that when the Street turns he will feed her to the mob.
Anyway, back to Anne. I think the biggest difference between Anne Bonny and Charles (and Flint, Bones, Gurthrie, Rogers, etc.) is she doesn't have a grand vision for Nassau. She has come a long way from where she was, second only to Max in growth over time. She knows who she is now and what she wants, but for her it's not about power over other people, or grand destinies. For her it is always more personal, to be free and with who she wants to be with, revenge against those who harmed her, not to rule or some grand battle for the fate of the island.
Her fury against Max startled me with it's intensity, but it shouldn't have. What Max did looks so deliberate from Anne's perspective, a premeditated maneuver to remove a rival. It looks bad the way Max's gang rape looked like Charles betraying her to Eleanor, and the way it looked to Max that Eleanor didn't care about the abuse being done her. The history of betrayals, the knowledge of character add up to a completely reasonable judgement, that misses nuance, but is completely understandable in the light of the terrible personal costs inflicted.
"Said if I turned over the cache, you'd be safe. And it ain't just the lie. She tried to take you away from me. When I left that island... all I could think about was having a chance to make her pay... for what she done. Now that we're here... it would be so easy. And I don't wanna do it. Don't wanna live with it after. The sight of her hurt in that way. Just don't want it. That fucking island. Makes you do shit you don't wanna do." She's become so self aware since season one.
* An then we get the scene with Jack Rackham and Edward Teach. Jack passes the Charles Vane mantle to Anne, rightly, I think. "I think Anne is right. She said something to me earlier. She said only a fool would give his life to earn the admiration of a corpse. I wanted to strangle her. But part of me could not help but note in that moment she sounded an awful lot like someone else I once knew, someone you and I both once knew who shared...Anne's mistrust of sentimentality." Teach's story about Charles Vane and the bird of omen is a kind of agreement. "But then, there are other men near Clifton...my... my mother's home...who would've called it a sign of great fortune, an indication from the heavens that someone up there favored our endeavor together. And I asked him what he thought it meant. 'Dinner.'" This reminds me of the wakes I've had for dead lovers, or the way my family mourns. The telling of stories. The touch of humor. The letting go.
"I wonder if he were here now, watching us battle with the choice to kill her in his name or defeat the governor and perhaps therein win the war we all together started, if he might call us fools. And then I wonder if maybe we don't have to work that hard to imagine what he'd say. Maybe we've already heard it, and the only choice is whether we choose to listen." Anne speaks for Charles now, and that seems utterly fitting to me.
* Max's vision for Nassau and her motivation, though I doubt it's all of it. "I am tired of this. This thing that perpetuates itself with anger and bluster and blood. I do not want to be your friend. What I want is for all of this to end. For it to end, you must end. I imagine I have some obligation to surrender you to Captain Berringer, but the spectacle he would make of your trial and execution would only fan the flames of what is burning in Nassau now. I am tempted to put the sword to you and your man both, and bury this story for good, but what am I... if I spend my days pleading for a return to civility and then do dark things under the cover of night?" Max is civilization now, not Rogers, who has gone pirate, but Max, who has every reason to hate it for all the things it did to her. She is for peace and security and stability. I have no faith in that, especially with Berringer around, and i hope she has a go bag and a hoard of ready cash somewhere. Max represents what Thomas, Miranda, and James wanted all that time ago.
*****
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