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Sep. 3rd, 2015 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "NYPD arrest human rights lawyer waiting outside restaurant while kids used bathroom:" http://boingboing.net/2014/09/05/nypd-arrest-human-rights-lawye.html
* "Our Black Trans Lives And Human Rights Matter:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2015/08/our-black-trans-lives-and-human-rights.html
* Money cleared yesterday. It looks like I can't pay off the old insurance that went to collections, but once SSI comes in, I'll likely be able to just cover all the medical copays. So yay?
I still haven’t found the missing paperwork I’ve been searching for, I still need to do up the medical bills. I’m going to gamble on fixing my shoes, but the fish don’t get the parts they need, and I’m not getting to fix my birth certificate. Sigh.
Yesterday was nightmarish physically. I am only slightly better today. I wore myself out with bloodwork and necessary errands and had to go right back to bed. At least today i didn't pass out even once from lack of air, but every time I cough or sneeze It's like I'm being stuck with needles neck to elbow. charming.
* Black Sails Rewatch IX:
1. I think the theme of this episode is people grabbing a power base, but having no clear idea what is involved in maintaining it.
2. Duefresne is not a captain. Captains needs to know politics and the commanding of men and sailing and the art of war (not just fighting, but strategy and tactics). He doesn't even have the skills to be quartermaster, which requires command and politics and sailing and fighting. He's an accountant, which is a useful skill, but he's fought one boarding action, doesn't really know sailing or the art of ship to ship fighting with cannons. He has command because the crew is angry enough to give it to him, but how long would they obey a captain that weak? Not long. This is where eight episodes of seeing how complicated the captain and quarter master jobs are pays off. Billy had the right qualities, which is why they were grooming him, but he wasn't even close to being ready for captaincy, and in his last battle we watched him in the process of learning to Quartermaster, under the skilled and firm hands of both Gates and Flint who are really, really good at it. Billy forcing Dufresne into battle to get him blooded was the first step in training him to boatswain, but he's had no actual training at it as yet. So, intelligent and learned as he is, he's not even close to competent to take a command roll.
3. Charles Vane has the fort, but he sees it as an easy ride. Hornigold provided Eleanor with security in the form of armed men and intelligence as well political support. In first season you see him wandering about doing little bit of low key politics around town, which suggests that he's actually doing quite a lot of it on those casual looking strolls that we don't see. Hornigold always knows the mood on the street and he is always turning up with information, advise, and numbers of captains and crews willing to back her plays. Eleanor has taken all the services that Hornigold has unobtrusively provided her for granted and is only now starting to realize how alone that leaves her and thus vulnerable. Eleanor is the captain of Nassau, and in first season, Hornigold is her Quartermaster and Scott is her Boatswain. Now she's lost them both and in their place is Charles who isn't doing any of those things, who stubbornly refuses to lift a finger. (For perfectly understandable reasons, but I've written about that extensively in the season one commentary.) The thing about Charles Vane is, that take away his ship and his purpose, he quickly collapses into a decadent lassitude. He is terrible at idleness, and manning a fort is all about alert idleness. Hornigold was good at it because he was ready for honorable semi retirement. Charles Vane is like some species of shark. When he stops swimming forwards he begins to suffocate. he is brilliant at running a ship, but he hasn't grasped the difference of scale in running Nassau and how complicated it is. He hasn't grasped that being a consort to the ruler of Nassau is way more complicated than the Ranger being consort to the Walrus in taking a large prize ship.
3. Max sees the gold to be made selling tips and completely misses the larger political complications and the greater good involved in promoting the interests of certain captains over others. she knows how to run a tight brothel, but like Vane and Defresne, she's moved into a much larger and more complex system without noticing the difference in scale and complexity.
4. And then there is Anne Bonny and Jack Rackham, out of their depth last season running the brothel and now struggling under the weight of the contempt and anger of other crews. Anne, who only started to realize her sexuality was more complex than she thought at the very end of first season.
* "Black Sails Rewatch VII-IX Chat:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/128134038412/black-sails-rewatch-vii-ix-chat
* Black Sails Rewatch X:
1. I think the theme for this episode is practical small unit politics. So much of this episode is about knowing how particular people will react if nudged the right way. Flint manipulating Dufresne and DeGroot and using them as lever to move the whole crew is an obvious example, as is John Silver's plan to make himself essential using his relationship with Randall and his tongue as the lever. But there is also the power struggle between Eleanor and Ned Low on the one hand and Max vs Jack over Anne. The three of these that resolve this episode all do so because someone thinks outside the box: Flint with his complicated manipulation, John Silver with his reports, and Jack with his proposal and refusal to fight head on. Trickster stories, stories about shifting the ground on which the power struggle takes place. They only work because Flint, silver, and Jack Rackham really know people.
2. I keep coming back to Nassau as a ship Eleanor is trying to command. I have written before about Hornigold as Quartermaster to Eleanor's Captain. She won her mutiny against her father, but is still struggling with her new command. We see Dufresne fail this episode because he's not even a little prepared to be a captain. Eleanor is reminding me here of Billy right before his fall. Eleanor does have a lot of the training and innate skills she needs to be a captain, but like Billy she's just moved up and is still struggling with Command, despite a good knowledge of the rest of the complex business involved. In Episode IX, Charles failed to Quartermaster for her. In Episode X, he stands to Eleanor much as Gates did to Billy in the Andromache battle. He offers her good advice and guidance, but he stands out of the way and lets her succeed or fail on her own merits. This looks like command scaffolding, like Flint and Gates helping Billy learn how to Boatswain and then how to Quartermaster. Charles Vane is teaching her to captain in that very particular hands off way we've seen at work on the walrus when she was functional.
3. The Command path training we so going on in season One on the Walrus is absolutely critical here in season two. We've seen how it works when the system is reasonably healthy. Now in episode X, we see two examples of what happens when it fails. We get Dufresne who is completely unprepared to Captain, having not yet learned how to Boatswain let alone how to Quarter master. He hasn't the boat handling skills (knowledge of wind, wave, and ship), he hasn't the political skills, he has zero experience of command and tends to freeze (So telling, that sailor saying something like "no one's in fucking charge here" right before Flint steps in and takes over in the wake of massive failure). The other counter example is Ned Low's crew. Meek's explanation of how they got someone like Ned in charge was "You can't blame the men. They'd suffered under an awful stretch of captains. Weaklings, frauds, liars. Ned Low, whatever he is, he's none of those things. The men saw him as an answer. But now I fear they cannot see that by supporting him, they may be sowing the seeds of their own destruction." Ned Low is the Walrus' future if they can't form a strong command team the crew trusts. It's also a warning of what happens if a Captain ends up with too much power relative to his crew. As a result, it's both a contrast with season one Walrus and a warning of what Flint could easily be without a strong Boatswain to speak for the crew and Quartermaster to mediate between the two.
4. You can actually see the moment Flint decides to train Silver for command. It's when John Silver shows he can control the men with his little reports. He's already demonstrated a lot of intelligence (map memorizing, etc.) and cleverness (pretty much everything he's done but particularly when the two of them were trying to take the Spanish warship alone), political acumen (all the stuff with spotting the trouble makers and the like.), and now he's show he can use his knowledge of the men to get them to do what he wants. He's demonstrating command path skills basically. He can be taught the navigation and boat handling; knowing how to handle the men is so much harder to teach and depends to a certain extent on innate skills. When Defresne does the ill advised boarding action, there is Flint standing by Silver, quietly teaching him what to watch for during a boarding, much as he and Gates used to do with Billy and much as we see Charles do with Eleanor throughout this episode. Flint is prepping Silver to step onto the command path as he's going to need support when he takes control again, which he is about to do. In Flint's eyes, Silver just turned himself from an annoying liability into a necessary and useful replacement to a command crew that's just been ripped to shreds one way or another.
5. I think Flint has forgotten just how dangerous and unreliable Silver is, despite Silver warning him very clearly just this episode of what he is. Because Silver has been so dependent on Flint for his survival up until this point and because their interests coincidentally align beautifully just now, I think Flint has been lulled into a dangerous trust. John Silver is a sociopath. He is in it for survival and gold. Flint and Randall are tools he can use to get what he wants, but he'll gleefully climb over all their corpses if the situation changes.
6. I've written extensively in the chat I'm going to post about Flint's gambit and the roll of DeGroot in ships politics and Defresne's rise and fall, so I'm not going to rewrite that here.
7. In the London flashback, I keep wondering if the "you were the better man" line as well as the bit about favor is intended to imply Flint is sleeping with Thomas, though the rest of the insult is to Miranda's honor. Is he implying that people know Thomas likes men and that he and his wife share lovers? What do folks think?
8. Gods, the way Charles looks at Eleanor in their last conversation in this episode. That face acting! So many complicated emotions in his face.
9. And Jack's face , when he leaves Max's room, the knowledge on his face that he has wagered everything that matters to him on one throw of the dice.
10. I keep coming back to the moment during Dufresne's boarding when the merchant captain asks Dufresne if he's Flint. They all know the individual banners of the important pirates. I keep thinking about the power in a name, not just Flint's name either, or the difference between Flint and McGraw, but the other names too. i am thinking about that early episode in season one when some new pirate captain is threatening to take his cargo elsewhere and they tell him the story of the last man who did it. I am thinking of the gravely "Charles vane, of the Ranger" and the man's terror. I am thinking of Eleanor sending that captain out with all his papers in order, but the Guthrie name not being good anymore. I am thinking of what the "crew killer" reputation has done to Jack Rackham. The power of names is so important to survival.
* "My concern with you is over that which can not be known. That thing which arises in you when passions are aroused. Good sense escapes you. All men have it, but yours… yours is different, darker, wilder. I imagine it’s what makes you so effective as an officer, but when exposed to extremes, I could not imagine what it is capable of. And of greater concern, I’m not sure you do either. — Admiral Hennessey to James McGraw in Black Sails, X
* "Black Sails Rewatch IX-X Chat:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/128242261202/black-sails-rewatch-ix-x-chat
* ""Patriarchy Brain” in ASOIAF:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/128147347132/patriarchy-brain-in-asoiaf
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 1 includes an introduction to the “ambivalent sexism” framework and Trope #1: Motherhood.:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/123409023652/got-season-5-sexism-part-1
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 2 includes Trope#2: “Closer to Earth” and Trope#3: “Infantilization.”:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/123922642411/got-season-5-sexism-part-2
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 3 covers Trope #4: “Damsel in Distress” and Trope #5: “Damned by Comparison.”:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/124109868702/got-season-5-sexism-part-3
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 4 covers Trope #6: “Weaponized sexuality/nudity = empowerment” and Trope #7: “Badass women aren’t feminine.”:"
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 5 covers Trope #8: “All women are catty” and Trope #9: “Beauty is never tarnished.”:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/125213217952/got-season-5-sexism-part-5
* "Seven Nation Army - Vintage New Orleans Dirge White Stripes Cover ft. Haley Reinhart:"
* Ebay, One More time:
Lindworm 2012 (LE, DragonCon, Event Exclusive): (Company says: Smoky green leather smeared with crushed grasses and wild herbs). 3/4 Full. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301718133830?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
* 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
* "Our Black Trans Lives And Human Rights Matter:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2015/08/our-black-trans-lives-and-human-rights.html
* Money cleared yesterday. It looks like I can't pay off the old insurance that went to collections, but once SSI comes in, I'll likely be able to just cover all the medical copays. So yay?
I still haven’t found the missing paperwork I’ve been searching for, I still need to do up the medical bills. I’m going to gamble on fixing my shoes, but the fish don’t get the parts they need, and I’m not getting to fix my birth certificate. Sigh.
Yesterday was nightmarish physically. I am only slightly better today. I wore myself out with bloodwork and necessary errands and had to go right back to bed. At least today i didn't pass out even once from lack of air, but every time I cough or sneeze It's like I'm being stuck with needles neck to elbow. charming.
* Black Sails Rewatch IX:
1. I think the theme of this episode is people grabbing a power base, but having no clear idea what is involved in maintaining it.
2. Duefresne is not a captain. Captains needs to know politics and the commanding of men and sailing and the art of war (not just fighting, but strategy and tactics). He doesn't even have the skills to be quartermaster, which requires command and politics and sailing and fighting. He's an accountant, which is a useful skill, but he's fought one boarding action, doesn't really know sailing or the art of ship to ship fighting with cannons. He has command because the crew is angry enough to give it to him, but how long would they obey a captain that weak? Not long. This is where eight episodes of seeing how complicated the captain and quarter master jobs are pays off. Billy had the right qualities, which is why they were grooming him, but he wasn't even close to being ready for captaincy, and in his last battle we watched him in the process of learning to Quartermaster, under the skilled and firm hands of both Gates and Flint who are really, really good at it. Billy forcing Dufresne into battle to get him blooded was the first step in training him to boatswain, but he's had no actual training at it as yet. So, intelligent and learned as he is, he's not even close to competent to take a command roll.
3. Charles Vane has the fort, but he sees it as an easy ride. Hornigold provided Eleanor with security in the form of armed men and intelligence as well political support. In first season you see him wandering about doing little bit of low key politics around town, which suggests that he's actually doing quite a lot of it on those casual looking strolls that we don't see. Hornigold always knows the mood on the street and he is always turning up with information, advise, and numbers of captains and crews willing to back her plays. Eleanor has taken all the services that Hornigold has unobtrusively provided her for granted and is only now starting to realize how alone that leaves her and thus vulnerable. Eleanor is the captain of Nassau, and in first season, Hornigold is her Quartermaster and Scott is her Boatswain. Now she's lost them both and in their place is Charles who isn't doing any of those things, who stubbornly refuses to lift a finger. (For perfectly understandable reasons, but I've written about that extensively in the season one commentary.) The thing about Charles Vane is, that take away his ship and his purpose, he quickly collapses into a decadent lassitude. He is terrible at idleness, and manning a fort is all about alert idleness. Hornigold was good at it because he was ready for honorable semi retirement. Charles Vane is like some species of shark. When he stops swimming forwards he begins to suffocate. he is brilliant at running a ship, but he hasn't grasped the difference of scale in running Nassau and how complicated it is. He hasn't grasped that being a consort to the ruler of Nassau is way more complicated than the Ranger being consort to the Walrus in taking a large prize ship.
3. Max sees the gold to be made selling tips and completely misses the larger political complications and the greater good involved in promoting the interests of certain captains over others. she knows how to run a tight brothel, but like Vane and Defresne, she's moved into a much larger and more complex system without noticing the difference in scale and complexity.
4. And then there is Anne Bonny and Jack Rackham, out of their depth last season running the brothel and now struggling under the weight of the contempt and anger of other crews. Anne, who only started to realize her sexuality was more complex than she thought at the very end of first season.
* "Black Sails Rewatch VII-IX Chat:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/128134038412/black-sails-rewatch-vii-ix-chat
* Black Sails Rewatch X:
1. I think the theme for this episode is practical small unit politics. So much of this episode is about knowing how particular people will react if nudged the right way. Flint manipulating Dufresne and DeGroot and using them as lever to move the whole crew is an obvious example, as is John Silver's plan to make himself essential using his relationship with Randall and his tongue as the lever. But there is also the power struggle between Eleanor and Ned Low on the one hand and Max vs Jack over Anne. The three of these that resolve this episode all do so because someone thinks outside the box: Flint with his complicated manipulation, John Silver with his reports, and Jack with his proposal and refusal to fight head on. Trickster stories, stories about shifting the ground on which the power struggle takes place. They only work because Flint, silver, and Jack Rackham really know people.
2. I keep coming back to Nassau as a ship Eleanor is trying to command. I have written before about Hornigold as Quartermaster to Eleanor's Captain. She won her mutiny against her father, but is still struggling with her new command. We see Dufresne fail this episode because he's not even a little prepared to be a captain. Eleanor is reminding me here of Billy right before his fall. Eleanor does have a lot of the training and innate skills she needs to be a captain, but like Billy she's just moved up and is still struggling with Command, despite a good knowledge of the rest of the complex business involved. In Episode IX, Charles failed to Quartermaster for her. In Episode X, he stands to Eleanor much as Gates did to Billy in the Andromache battle. He offers her good advice and guidance, but he stands out of the way and lets her succeed or fail on her own merits. This looks like command scaffolding, like Flint and Gates helping Billy learn how to Boatswain and then how to Quartermaster. Charles Vane is teaching her to captain in that very particular hands off way we've seen at work on the walrus when she was functional.
3. The Command path training we so going on in season One on the Walrus is absolutely critical here in season two. We've seen how it works when the system is reasonably healthy. Now in episode X, we see two examples of what happens when it fails. We get Dufresne who is completely unprepared to Captain, having not yet learned how to Boatswain let alone how to Quarter master. He hasn't the boat handling skills (knowledge of wind, wave, and ship), he hasn't the political skills, he has zero experience of command and tends to freeze (So telling, that sailor saying something like "no one's in fucking charge here" right before Flint steps in and takes over in the wake of massive failure). The other counter example is Ned Low's crew. Meek's explanation of how they got someone like Ned in charge was "You can't blame the men. They'd suffered under an awful stretch of captains. Weaklings, frauds, liars. Ned Low, whatever he is, he's none of those things. The men saw him as an answer. But now I fear they cannot see that by supporting him, they may be sowing the seeds of their own destruction." Ned Low is the Walrus' future if they can't form a strong command team the crew trusts. It's also a warning of what happens if a Captain ends up with too much power relative to his crew. As a result, it's both a contrast with season one Walrus and a warning of what Flint could easily be without a strong Boatswain to speak for the crew and Quartermaster to mediate between the two.
4. You can actually see the moment Flint decides to train Silver for command. It's when John Silver shows he can control the men with his little reports. He's already demonstrated a lot of intelligence (map memorizing, etc.) and cleverness (pretty much everything he's done but particularly when the two of them were trying to take the Spanish warship alone), political acumen (all the stuff with spotting the trouble makers and the like.), and now he's show he can use his knowledge of the men to get them to do what he wants. He's demonstrating command path skills basically. He can be taught the navigation and boat handling; knowing how to handle the men is so much harder to teach and depends to a certain extent on innate skills. When Defresne does the ill advised boarding action, there is Flint standing by Silver, quietly teaching him what to watch for during a boarding, much as he and Gates used to do with Billy and much as we see Charles do with Eleanor throughout this episode. Flint is prepping Silver to step onto the command path as he's going to need support when he takes control again, which he is about to do. In Flint's eyes, Silver just turned himself from an annoying liability into a necessary and useful replacement to a command crew that's just been ripped to shreds one way or another.
5. I think Flint has forgotten just how dangerous and unreliable Silver is, despite Silver warning him very clearly just this episode of what he is. Because Silver has been so dependent on Flint for his survival up until this point and because their interests coincidentally align beautifully just now, I think Flint has been lulled into a dangerous trust. John Silver is a sociopath. He is in it for survival and gold. Flint and Randall are tools he can use to get what he wants, but he'll gleefully climb over all their corpses if the situation changes.
6. I've written extensively in the chat I'm going to post about Flint's gambit and the roll of DeGroot in ships politics and Defresne's rise and fall, so I'm not going to rewrite that here.
7. In the London flashback, I keep wondering if the "you were the better man" line as well as the bit about favor is intended to imply Flint is sleeping with Thomas, though the rest of the insult is to Miranda's honor. Is he implying that people know Thomas likes men and that he and his wife share lovers? What do folks think?
8. Gods, the way Charles looks at Eleanor in their last conversation in this episode. That face acting! So many complicated emotions in his face.
9. And Jack's face , when he leaves Max's room, the knowledge on his face that he has wagered everything that matters to him on one throw of the dice.
10. I keep coming back to the moment during Dufresne's boarding when the merchant captain asks Dufresne if he's Flint. They all know the individual banners of the important pirates. I keep thinking about the power in a name, not just Flint's name either, or the difference between Flint and McGraw, but the other names too. i am thinking about that early episode in season one when some new pirate captain is threatening to take his cargo elsewhere and they tell him the story of the last man who did it. I am thinking of the gravely "Charles vane, of the Ranger" and the man's terror. I am thinking of Eleanor sending that captain out with all his papers in order, but the Guthrie name not being good anymore. I am thinking of what the "crew killer" reputation has done to Jack Rackham. The power of names is so important to survival.
* "My concern with you is over that which can not be known. That thing which arises in you when passions are aroused. Good sense escapes you. All men have it, but yours… yours is different, darker, wilder. I imagine it’s what makes you so effective as an officer, but when exposed to extremes, I could not imagine what it is capable of. And of greater concern, I’m not sure you do either. — Admiral Hennessey to James McGraw in Black Sails, X
* "Black Sails Rewatch IX-X Chat:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/128242261202/black-sails-rewatch-ix-x-chat
* ""Patriarchy Brain” in ASOIAF:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/128147347132/patriarchy-brain-in-asoiaf
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 1 includes an introduction to the “ambivalent sexism” framework and Trope #1: Motherhood.:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/123409023652/got-season-5-sexism-part-1
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 2 includes Trope#2: “Closer to Earth” and Trope#3: “Infantilization.”:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/123922642411/got-season-5-sexism-part-2
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 3 covers Trope #4: “Damsel in Distress” and Trope #5: “Damned by Comparison.”:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/124109868702/got-season-5-sexism-part-3
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 4 covers Trope #6: “Weaponized sexuality/nudity = empowerment” and Trope #7: “Badass women aren’t feminine.”:"
* "GoT Season 5 & Sexism: Part 5 covers Trope #8: “All women are catty” and Trope #9: “Beauty is never tarnished.”:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/125213217952/got-season-5-sexism-part-5
* "Seven Nation Army - Vintage New Orleans Dirge White Stripes Cover ft. Haley Reinhart:"
* Ebay, One More time:
Lindworm 2012 (LE, DragonCon, Event Exclusive): (Company says: Smoky green leather smeared with crushed grasses and wild herbs). 3/4 Full. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301718133830?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
* 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