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Sep. 6th, 2015 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Hungarians were finally embarrassed into letting the war refugees leave for Austria.
* Every time some BBC or American news person refers to people flee ISIS as migrants, I want to slap them. This isn't just a matter of semantics: war refugees have a whole extra set of rights under International and most types of national law than economic migrants. (And yes, I am not fond of the ways that gets used either. People fleeing because of famine or massive economic disruption are often fleeing for reasons of survival too, but that's a whole other rant.) When you see a news person calling people fleeing IS or other terrible war zones "migrants" instead of "refugees" they are choosing to deliberately downplay and spin the horrors people are fleeing. They are coming because they do not want to be raped or enslaved or torture or maimed or killed. Treating that as a frivolous whim and the war refugees as an invading army of locusts come to steal people's jobs is inaccurate, partisan, and dangerous. It is a deliberate choice to push a nativist, often racist set of talking points while dishonestly hiding that motive and pretending to be objective. They are refugees, so call them refugees. If people fleeing Syria and Iraq right now are not refugees, can anybody be? It is not a “Migrant Crisis,” Damnit! It is a Refugee Crisis, caused in large part by various Western colonial powers messing with border and balance of power all over Africa and the Near and Middle east for literally centuries, with things like us invading Iraq, fucking it up and leaving everything broken amoung the proximate causes. We all bear responsibility and we have a basic human responsibility to people fleeing conflict zones even if there weren’t blood all over our hands.
I particularly want to slug whoever it was covering the funeral
I particularly want to slug whoever it was covering the funeral of that toddler, his slightly older brother, and his mother for the BBC who kept insisting they were economic migrants. They literally died fleeing Syria and even in death, the BBC kept trying to spin them as not fleeing anything particularly bad. Even in death, the BBC could not extend a little sympathy for all the folks risking their lives and drowning all too often trying to get away from something so terrible. Fuck you, BBC!
* "Rally for state secession falls flat:" http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2015/08/29/rally-state-secession-falls-flat/71388448/
* "6 ways climate change is already screwing over Alaska:" http://www.salon.com/2015/08/31/6_ways_climate_change_is_already_screwing_over_alaska/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=Tumblr%20Share&utm_campaign=Tumblr
* TW: Medical Horror. Lizard in Leg. http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/128462669702/vaspider-speciesofleastconcern
* "Arianne Nymeros Martell, A Retrospective: Part 1:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/126096454262/arianne-nymeros-martell-a-retrospective-part-1
* ""Someone told. Someone always tells":" http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/117073-someone-told-someone-always-tells/
* I've been rewatching GoT, despite my fury at the Showrunners and the most recent season in general for a variety of reasons. I have a couple of thoughts now I'm halfway through Season two.
1. Is it just me, or in the opening credits does Qarth look like a bubo in the armpit of Essos? Deliberate or accidental or me just reading into things?
2. People love making fun of Littlefingers sliding accent, and trust me, I'm the last one to give the show runners credit for anything at this point, but let's for one moment give Aidan Gillen the benefit of the doubt. Now to be clear, I don' like to read actor interviews and I have no special incite into Mr. Gillen's process. All that follows is to be taken with a heap of salt. I do know that Mr. Gillen was excellent and subtle acting on the wire and that he managed a solidly realistic accent on that show, despite it being a rather difficult one to mimic, not being one of our broader regional accents, nor one much seen on TV. While Mr. Gillen senery chews in later GoT seasons, my suspicion is that it's an issue of direction, whith the ones in charge wanting his performance broader and more obviously villainous. I make this guess based on the much subtler, lighter performances in the first two seasons and his body of previous work. Mr. Gillen's accent is all over the place in Game of Thrones, right from the start. I observed a particularly egregious example in a long speech last night where he was switching constantly, sliding between two accents, with a lot of odd mixed bits in between. We've all been assuming a Doylist perspective.
What if we take a Watsonian perspective? What if we imagine Mr. Gillen is doing it on purpose as part of his characterization? Look at the in universe reasons Littlefinger might talk like that. Petyr Baelish is essentially a self made man. He has stated that he designed his own sigil. (It was in a recent portion of my rewatch, but I can't tell you which episode). He's from a deeply impoverished bit of rocky coastline on one of the poorest bits of Westeros. He's barely noble. The sobriquet "Littlefinger" is a taunt, mocking his size, his low status geographical origin, his lack of social status or fighting prowess to make them stop. We know he hates being called that, but when the nobles do it, he smiles and pretends not to mind as it means they underestimate him. So if you are a rural person, constantly mocked for his origin nearly every time you are addressed by urbane aristocrats with posh accents for daring to make your fortune instead of inheriting it, and for all your hatred and anger over a lifetime of slights, you want to play their game and perhaps be one of them yourself? What do you do? you try to file the edges off your regional accent and try to sound more like one of them. Only it's hard, And especially when you feel something strongly, your accent slips.
Again, I don't know if that's what Mr. Gillen is doing, but what if he is? What if he's doing is giving Petyr Baelish a "tell." Now I'm am wishing I had thought of this earlier so I could track it from his first appearance on. I'm not going to just now as I have a million other things more pressing, but I plan to track it from this point forward and see if it works in universe. The author is dead, after all, and whether it's intentional or not, I'd like it to make in universe sense even if so little else does. (I am judging you so hard, season Five. So hard.)
* Black Sails Rewatch XII:
1. Everything Vane and Flint do this episode is designed to force Eleanor to choose between them, the men pushing so hard against each other, each resolved to deny the other a face saving out, that Eleanor is being crushed between them both as a person and as a Power. It's an intolerable sort of situation where everyone is bound to lose in one way or another even if they "win."
Contrast that with the (admittedly smaller scale) infinitely subtler game that Max and Jack are playing over Anne. They both generally try to win by yielding at key moments instead of coming straight at it. Max seduces, Jack talks. Neither wants to force the issue all away because they both have the sense to fear the nobody wins result. What Max and Jack are doing is diplomacy. Flint and Vane are so pig headed that they can't conceive of diplomatic solution, this from two men who are normally brilliant advance planners and clever politicians on the crew sale. their instinct is to but heads like rutting rams. It takes Eleanor to remind Charles that he can use his words. It is Eleanor who turns the personal into the political, and Flint is made desperate by that political outflanking.
2. I think it is no accent that this is the episode where McGraw loses his head and attacks Thomas' father head on instead of following his own council to Thomas to go carefully. Mostly, we see Flint in tight control of himself. The cracks are rare, as in the final confrontation with gates and it's aftermath. Usually, when events upset his plans, when people cross him, he responds politically. Dufresne took his captaincy and his ship. He calmly took it back in two days using psychology. It doesn't occur to him even once to try that with Vane. He sends Silver out to counter Charles Vane's political attack, but he comes up with no stratagem of his own beyond the straightforward military one. The only other times we see that are the fight over the insult to Thomas and Miranda's honor by that other officer, and the argument with Thomas' father. His lover's character is under attack and his vision for the future threatened in both those cases. I can't help but think something similar is going on with his battle with Charles. It's more than just ego, though there is a bit of that in it. Flint doesn't lose his temper like this over threats to his honor or his life; in those situations he just things harder and manipulates more ruthlessly. He only fights like that for Thomas and Thomas' vision. Flint is a flexible thinker generally, but not here. He has mutated Thomas' vision and the methods involved in response to events. His refusal to beg forgiveness of England has become his refusal to let Nassau beg forgiveness from England; his demand that they ask HIS forgiveness has become trying to force England to ask Nassau back on Nassau's terms. Charles Vane in that fort is an existential threat to Thomas' vision 2.0, and Flint can't see straight. They keep discussing whether Eleanor and Charles' judgement are compromised because of their feelings for each other, but they aren't asking the same about Flint. I keep coming back to Mr. Scott's observation that "because she is compromised, it does not necessarily follow that she is wrong." I think that's a standard worth applying to all three of them. I honestly no longer know who I think is right or wrong here. All three of them are compromised, no one is thinking clearly. That does that mean all three of them are wrong.
3. Ah, Thomas, you cinnamon roll!
4. Flint has Honrnigold out Quartermastering for him, taking the temperature out on the street, counting votes for Flint and for vane. Flint is starting to use Silver as a Bosun, continuing the season arc. he asks him for advice, he asks him to understand the crews perspective, he sends him out to politic.
5. Silver keeps telling Flint who he is: that he has no conscience at all, that he is just in it for the gold. Flint keeps ignoring all the warnings and leaning on him anyway. *facepalm* I think it is fascinating that Silver just assumed Flint was like him, only more experienced at pirating. I suspect letting him no different is nearly as dangerous as showing Silver Silver's power. I suspect one of the few constraints on Silver's actions was Silver's assumption that Flint was a better and even more dangerous predator. By showing Silver his conscience, he's told Silver that he's not a sociopath, but merely another normal to charm and manipulate to get what he wants. I suspect that Silver's been so incredibly open and truthful with Flint about Silver's nature because Silver figured that was the best way to get the biggest baddest predator in the vicinity on his side. Now he knows Flint feels things like fondness and insecurity... watch out Flint.
6. We learn so much about Abigail Ashe's character in these first scenes with her. the first thing we see her do on waking is force herself to eat maggoty bread to keep her strength up, presumably in hopes of a chance of escape later. She does what it takes to survive captivity. The submissive posture she takes when she knows a pirate is coming says, "Look at me, too weak and terrified to plan or fight back," but she isn't. She's biding her time. She needs to know where she is and what happened while she was drugged. When it's quickly clear Charles vane is a different sort of man than Low, she drops the posture without a thought and starts pumping him for information, only giving back the minimum she needs to for her own safety, essentially that she's worth ransoming so best keep her alive and presumably not harm her. You can see her thinking frantically as Charles tells her what to write. She's bright and there is steel in her spine. She is easy to underestimate because she is so young, but there is so much grit under the proper young lady manners. As with Miranda, ladylike isn't a synonym for weak. So many shows forget that, that there are all sorts of different ways to be a strong character, female; this show never forgets it.
7. I am charmed by Eleanor stomping along with her entourage of dependent captains.
8. I think that conversation between Eleanor and Miranda is incredibly important, even though it looks like it's not covering much new ground, because it actually is. It explains why Eleanor's position regarding the fort isn't just about her feelings for Vane. She makes a really valid point. She remembers the last Spanish invasion. She's terrified of what happens if the fort falls and they are all left undefended. As Mr. Scott says, "because she is compromised, it does not necessarily follow that she is wrong." As illogical as her political position might look to Flint and Eleanor's dependent Captains it actually is a logical one, which odds are they'd be paying more attention to if they do not suspect her of being clouded by sentiment. They don't challenge her directly the way Vane's man does, but I think it's their in Flint's dismissal of her argument. Again, I can't say if she's right in her weighing of the risks, but she is making a damned good point that no one politically important is actually hearing.
9. It is brilliant that Max' best attack on Jack Rackham is to give him exactly what he thinks he wants. Also, the face acting in the Max telling the sex worker how to get the ship for Jack? Dayumn! Max's impatience with how much slower everyone else is at getting it. The sex worker's blank look. That moment when Jack realizes that not only is Max way better in bed than him, but significantly cleverer and vastly more dangerous all around.
10. Is this the most we've seen Anne say in one scene so far? I suspect it is, but I'm not going to measure at this point. It's good to finally see what is going on in her head, the struggle she's been silently having with herself, and what she has decided to do about it. She is so classically "the strong, silent type" that she can be a bit of a cipher. Usually her actions speak for her, or the occasional eloquent glance. People argue about what she is thinking or feeling, but how often do they actually ASK? Her concise assessment of their relationship from her perspective, her brave acknowledgement of how compromised she is say so much about her. Compare with the other compromised characters in this episode: Charles Vane bulls ahead without anyone to check his thinking against except Eleanor, who is also compromised. Eleanor and Flint both go to Scott to weigh their thinking against, her briefly. Flint also goes to Silver!!! to be his measuring stick. Seriously, WTF, Flint! Anne goes to Jack Rackham who loves her desperately, states clearly all she has done for him without question when asked and asks him to watch her back because she's not thinking clearly.
11. This is the episode that introduces Peter Ashe as Thomas Hamilton's "good friend." I'm sticking a pin in this, because the exact nature of Ashe's friendship to the Hamilton's is much in debate and extremely important, I think.
12. It is interesting that it is Flint, with his instinct for political ebb and flow, who correctly identifies Scott as having been the power behind the throne of both Guthries. Richard Guthrie repaid all those decades of loyalty, by enslaving him as a reward. Eleanor still repeatedly tries to compromise his relationship with Hornigold and still leans on him. She likes him, but she still treats him as a faithful servant. My impression is, Hornigold treats him like a man, though I've not a lot to go on there. It is Flint who looks at Scott and sees both a Man and a Power, a subtle one surely, but then Flint has also seen Miranda at work and is not blind to less the blunt and flashy ways to wield it. And Scott is a Power, for all he mostly operates in the realms of advice and intelligence, and he can read the political landscape well. Flint is a man who respects that, even though he doesn't listen. That conversation towards the end reminds me rather of the Charles Vane/Billy Bones mutual respect conversation near the end of season two.
13. I think the theme for this episode is people ignoring advice. James McGraw ignoring his own advice, Flint ignoring Scott, Eleanor ignoring Miranda, Jack ignoring Max, Max ignoring Jack, everyone ignoring Eleanor expect Charles.
* 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
* Every time some BBC or American news person refers to people flee ISIS as migrants, I want to slap them. This isn't just a matter of semantics: war refugees have a whole extra set of rights under International and most types of national law than economic migrants. (And yes, I am not fond of the ways that gets used either. People fleeing because of famine or massive economic disruption are often fleeing for reasons of survival too, but that's a whole other rant.) When you see a news person calling people fleeing IS or other terrible war zones "migrants" instead of "refugees" they are choosing to deliberately downplay and spin the horrors people are fleeing. They are coming because they do not want to be raped or enslaved or torture or maimed or killed. Treating that as a frivolous whim and the war refugees as an invading army of locusts come to steal people's jobs is inaccurate, partisan, and dangerous. It is a deliberate choice to push a nativist, often racist set of talking points while dishonestly hiding that motive and pretending to be objective. They are refugees, so call them refugees. If people fleeing Syria and Iraq right now are not refugees, can anybody be? It is not a “Migrant Crisis,” Damnit! It is a Refugee Crisis, caused in large part by various Western colonial powers messing with border and balance of power all over Africa and the Near and Middle east for literally centuries, with things like us invading Iraq, fucking it up and leaving everything broken amoung the proximate causes. We all bear responsibility and we have a basic human responsibility to people fleeing conflict zones even if there weren’t blood all over our hands.
I particularly want to slug whoever it was covering the funeral
I particularly want to slug whoever it was covering the funeral of that toddler, his slightly older brother, and his mother for the BBC who kept insisting they were economic migrants. They literally died fleeing Syria and even in death, the BBC kept trying to spin them as not fleeing anything particularly bad. Even in death, the BBC could not extend a little sympathy for all the folks risking their lives and drowning all too often trying to get away from something so terrible. Fuck you, BBC!
* "Rally for state secession falls flat:" http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2015/08/29/rally-state-secession-falls-flat/71388448/
* "6 ways climate change is already screwing over Alaska:" http://www.salon.com/2015/08/31/6_ways_climate_change_is_already_screwing_over_alaska/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=Tumblr%20Share&utm_campaign=Tumblr
* TW: Medical Horror. Lizard in Leg. http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/128462669702/vaspider-speciesofleastconcern
* "Arianne Nymeros Martell, A Retrospective: Part 1:" http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/126096454262/arianne-nymeros-martell-a-retrospective-part-1
* ""Someone told. Someone always tells":" http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/117073-someone-told-someone-always-tells/
* I've been rewatching GoT, despite my fury at the Showrunners and the most recent season in general for a variety of reasons. I have a couple of thoughts now I'm halfway through Season two.
1. Is it just me, or in the opening credits does Qarth look like a bubo in the armpit of Essos? Deliberate or accidental or me just reading into things?
2. People love making fun of Littlefingers sliding accent, and trust me, I'm the last one to give the show runners credit for anything at this point, but let's for one moment give Aidan Gillen the benefit of the doubt. Now to be clear, I don' like to read actor interviews and I have no special incite into Mr. Gillen's process. All that follows is to be taken with a heap of salt. I do know that Mr. Gillen was excellent and subtle acting on the wire and that he managed a solidly realistic accent on that show, despite it being a rather difficult one to mimic, not being one of our broader regional accents, nor one much seen on TV. While Mr. Gillen senery chews in later GoT seasons, my suspicion is that it's an issue of direction, whith the ones in charge wanting his performance broader and more obviously villainous. I make this guess based on the much subtler, lighter performances in the first two seasons and his body of previous work. Mr. Gillen's accent is all over the place in Game of Thrones, right from the start. I observed a particularly egregious example in a long speech last night where he was switching constantly, sliding between two accents, with a lot of odd mixed bits in between. We've all been assuming a Doylist perspective.
What if we take a Watsonian perspective? What if we imagine Mr. Gillen is doing it on purpose as part of his characterization? Look at the in universe reasons Littlefinger might talk like that. Petyr Baelish is essentially a self made man. He has stated that he designed his own sigil. (It was in a recent portion of my rewatch, but I can't tell you which episode). He's from a deeply impoverished bit of rocky coastline on one of the poorest bits of Westeros. He's barely noble. The sobriquet "Littlefinger" is a taunt, mocking his size, his low status geographical origin, his lack of social status or fighting prowess to make them stop. We know he hates being called that, but when the nobles do it, he smiles and pretends not to mind as it means they underestimate him. So if you are a rural person, constantly mocked for his origin nearly every time you are addressed by urbane aristocrats with posh accents for daring to make your fortune instead of inheriting it, and for all your hatred and anger over a lifetime of slights, you want to play their game and perhaps be one of them yourself? What do you do? you try to file the edges off your regional accent and try to sound more like one of them. Only it's hard, And especially when you feel something strongly, your accent slips.
Again, I don't know if that's what Mr. Gillen is doing, but what if he is? What if he's doing is giving Petyr Baelish a "tell." Now I'm am wishing I had thought of this earlier so I could track it from his first appearance on. I'm not going to just now as I have a million other things more pressing, but I plan to track it from this point forward and see if it works in universe. The author is dead, after all, and whether it's intentional or not, I'd like it to make in universe sense even if so little else does. (I am judging you so hard, season Five. So hard.)
* Black Sails Rewatch XII:
1. Everything Vane and Flint do this episode is designed to force Eleanor to choose between them, the men pushing so hard against each other, each resolved to deny the other a face saving out, that Eleanor is being crushed between them both as a person and as a Power. It's an intolerable sort of situation where everyone is bound to lose in one way or another even if they "win."
Contrast that with the (admittedly smaller scale) infinitely subtler game that Max and Jack are playing over Anne. They both generally try to win by yielding at key moments instead of coming straight at it. Max seduces, Jack talks. Neither wants to force the issue all away because they both have the sense to fear the nobody wins result. What Max and Jack are doing is diplomacy. Flint and Vane are so pig headed that they can't conceive of diplomatic solution, this from two men who are normally brilliant advance planners and clever politicians on the crew sale. their instinct is to but heads like rutting rams. It takes Eleanor to remind Charles that he can use his words. It is Eleanor who turns the personal into the political, and Flint is made desperate by that political outflanking.
2. I think it is no accent that this is the episode where McGraw loses his head and attacks Thomas' father head on instead of following his own council to Thomas to go carefully. Mostly, we see Flint in tight control of himself. The cracks are rare, as in the final confrontation with gates and it's aftermath. Usually, when events upset his plans, when people cross him, he responds politically. Dufresne took his captaincy and his ship. He calmly took it back in two days using psychology. It doesn't occur to him even once to try that with Vane. He sends Silver out to counter Charles Vane's political attack, but he comes up with no stratagem of his own beyond the straightforward military one. The only other times we see that are the fight over the insult to Thomas and Miranda's honor by that other officer, and the argument with Thomas' father. His lover's character is under attack and his vision for the future threatened in both those cases. I can't help but think something similar is going on with his battle with Charles. It's more than just ego, though there is a bit of that in it. Flint doesn't lose his temper like this over threats to his honor or his life; in those situations he just things harder and manipulates more ruthlessly. He only fights like that for Thomas and Thomas' vision. Flint is a flexible thinker generally, but not here. He has mutated Thomas' vision and the methods involved in response to events. His refusal to beg forgiveness of England has become his refusal to let Nassau beg forgiveness from England; his demand that they ask HIS forgiveness has become trying to force England to ask Nassau back on Nassau's terms. Charles Vane in that fort is an existential threat to Thomas' vision 2.0, and Flint can't see straight. They keep discussing whether Eleanor and Charles' judgement are compromised because of their feelings for each other, but they aren't asking the same about Flint. I keep coming back to Mr. Scott's observation that "because she is compromised, it does not necessarily follow that she is wrong." I think that's a standard worth applying to all three of them. I honestly no longer know who I think is right or wrong here. All three of them are compromised, no one is thinking clearly. That does that mean all three of them are wrong.
3. Ah, Thomas, you cinnamon roll!
4. Flint has Honrnigold out Quartermastering for him, taking the temperature out on the street, counting votes for Flint and for vane. Flint is starting to use Silver as a Bosun, continuing the season arc. he asks him for advice, he asks him to understand the crews perspective, he sends him out to politic.
5. Silver keeps telling Flint who he is: that he has no conscience at all, that he is just in it for the gold. Flint keeps ignoring all the warnings and leaning on him anyway. *facepalm* I think it is fascinating that Silver just assumed Flint was like him, only more experienced at pirating. I suspect letting him no different is nearly as dangerous as showing Silver Silver's power. I suspect one of the few constraints on Silver's actions was Silver's assumption that Flint was a better and even more dangerous predator. By showing Silver his conscience, he's told Silver that he's not a sociopath, but merely another normal to charm and manipulate to get what he wants. I suspect that Silver's been so incredibly open and truthful with Flint about Silver's nature because Silver figured that was the best way to get the biggest baddest predator in the vicinity on his side. Now he knows Flint feels things like fondness and insecurity... watch out Flint.
6. We learn so much about Abigail Ashe's character in these first scenes with her. the first thing we see her do on waking is force herself to eat maggoty bread to keep her strength up, presumably in hopes of a chance of escape later. She does what it takes to survive captivity. The submissive posture she takes when she knows a pirate is coming says, "Look at me, too weak and terrified to plan or fight back," but she isn't. She's biding her time. She needs to know where she is and what happened while she was drugged. When it's quickly clear Charles vane is a different sort of man than Low, she drops the posture without a thought and starts pumping him for information, only giving back the minimum she needs to for her own safety, essentially that she's worth ransoming so best keep her alive and presumably not harm her. You can see her thinking frantically as Charles tells her what to write. She's bright and there is steel in her spine. She is easy to underestimate because she is so young, but there is so much grit under the proper young lady manners. As with Miranda, ladylike isn't a synonym for weak. So many shows forget that, that there are all sorts of different ways to be a strong character, female; this show never forgets it.
7. I am charmed by Eleanor stomping along with her entourage of dependent captains.
8. I think that conversation between Eleanor and Miranda is incredibly important, even though it looks like it's not covering much new ground, because it actually is. It explains why Eleanor's position regarding the fort isn't just about her feelings for Vane. She makes a really valid point. She remembers the last Spanish invasion. She's terrified of what happens if the fort falls and they are all left undefended. As Mr. Scott says, "because she is compromised, it does not necessarily follow that she is wrong." As illogical as her political position might look to Flint and Eleanor's dependent Captains it actually is a logical one, which odds are they'd be paying more attention to if they do not suspect her of being clouded by sentiment. They don't challenge her directly the way Vane's man does, but I think it's their in Flint's dismissal of her argument. Again, I can't say if she's right in her weighing of the risks, but she is making a damned good point that no one politically important is actually hearing.
9. It is brilliant that Max' best attack on Jack Rackham is to give him exactly what he thinks he wants. Also, the face acting in the Max telling the sex worker how to get the ship for Jack? Dayumn! Max's impatience with how much slower everyone else is at getting it. The sex worker's blank look. That moment when Jack realizes that not only is Max way better in bed than him, but significantly cleverer and vastly more dangerous all around.
10. Is this the most we've seen Anne say in one scene so far? I suspect it is, but I'm not going to measure at this point. It's good to finally see what is going on in her head, the struggle she's been silently having with herself, and what she has decided to do about it. She is so classically "the strong, silent type" that she can be a bit of a cipher. Usually her actions speak for her, or the occasional eloquent glance. People argue about what she is thinking or feeling, but how often do they actually ASK? Her concise assessment of their relationship from her perspective, her brave acknowledgement of how compromised she is say so much about her. Compare with the other compromised characters in this episode: Charles Vane bulls ahead without anyone to check his thinking against except Eleanor, who is also compromised. Eleanor and Flint both go to Scott to weigh their thinking against, her briefly. Flint also goes to Silver!!! to be his measuring stick. Seriously, WTF, Flint! Anne goes to Jack Rackham who loves her desperately, states clearly all she has done for him without question when asked and asks him to watch her back because she's not thinking clearly.
11. This is the episode that introduces Peter Ashe as Thomas Hamilton's "good friend." I'm sticking a pin in this, because the exact nature of Ashe's friendship to the Hamilton's is much in debate and extremely important, I think.
12. It is interesting that it is Flint, with his instinct for political ebb and flow, who correctly identifies Scott as having been the power behind the throne of both Guthries. Richard Guthrie repaid all those decades of loyalty, by enslaving him as a reward. Eleanor still repeatedly tries to compromise his relationship with Hornigold and still leans on him. She likes him, but she still treats him as a faithful servant. My impression is, Hornigold treats him like a man, though I've not a lot to go on there. It is Flint who looks at Scott and sees both a Man and a Power, a subtle one surely, but then Flint has also seen Miranda at work and is not blind to less the blunt and flashy ways to wield it. And Scott is a Power, for all he mostly operates in the realms of advice and intelligence, and he can read the political landscape well. Flint is a man who respects that, even though he doesn't listen. That conversation towards the end reminds me rather of the Charles Vane/Billy Bones mutual respect conversation near the end of season two.
13. I think the theme for this episode is people ignoring advice. James McGraw ignoring his own advice, Flint ignoring Scott, Eleanor ignoring Miranda, Jack ignoring Max, Max ignoring Jack, everyone ignoring Eleanor expect Charles.
* 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
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-07 03:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-09 10:00 am (UTC)