Quickly, links

[selenak]

Black Sails:


Talking with ryda_wong about Max, Idelle, Charlotte and why the two scenes of Idelle confronting Max in s2 re: Anne and Anne about Charlotte in s4 has reminded me of this meta I've been meaning to link for ages:

In praise of Charlotte: Female legacy on Black Sails

Also, have some fanfiction, this one about Miranda:

And swallowed darkness whole:


Moving away from pirate fiction, you may or may not have heard that on Sunday night, coalition negotiations (which were ongoing since the election this fall) came to an abrupt halt when the FDP walked out. Now while this is indeed serious, I can't believe the hyperbole in the foreign press. No, this isn't the biggest crisis in post war Germany. (I'm not expecting British or US journalists to be experts on decades of post WWII Germany, but you'd think at least that bit about a certain wall being built in the early 60s, or the Chancellor's right hand man turning out to have been a Stasi spy in the early 70s, triggering events culminating in Willy Brand stepping out as Chancellor, would have stuck in mind. And that's before we get to the terrorist-ridden 70s themselves (this year, we had the 40th anniversary of the so-called "German Autumn" of 1977). Anyway, this article puts current events in a welcome perspective for the English speaking world.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Also, have some fanfiction, this one about Miranda:

And swallowed darkness whole:

Thank you for the link; that's phenomenal.

[selenak]

You're welcome. For as long as it was possible, I always requested Miranda stories for Yuletide, and never got them, but every now and then fanfiction about her shows up in which she's allowed to do more than squee about the perfection of James/Thomas.

[rydra_wong]

*sighs* Oh, FANDOM.

I mean, if ever there was a canon that endorsed OT3+ as an option, and that loving someone doesn't mean you can't have an equally deep relationship with someone else -- you'd think fandom might grasp the idea that you don't have to undercut or sideline one pairing in order to promote another ...

(I have already gathered from seeing the fringes of wank on Tumblr that a lot of people didn't, of course, so this is largely rhetorical sighing.)

[selenak]

Yeah, no kidding. Black Sails is so good about showing this. With Anne, Jack and Max, too, and of course with Flint, Silver and Madi. I'm hard pressed to think of another show which is so good at giving us complicated, intense relationships for its regulars as opposed to promoting one relationship between two people as superior to all others and exclusive.

[rydra_wong]

I mean, I'd guess that part of it is the sheer scarcity of actual canonical queer representation, so everyone clutches at it like starving people fighting over scraps, and there's the temptation to go JAMES AND THOMAS HAVE THE PUREST TRUEST LOVE IN THE WORLD, NO OTHER LOVE COULD EVER POSSIBLY EQUAL THEIRS.

Nonetheless.

[selenak]

Quite. I remember in the s2 to s3 hiatus time, there were several stories quite insistent on the point that James' shock to Miranda dying and his outrage thereafter was utterly and solely because of the "last living remnant of Thomas" factor, that to his mind, it was Thomas' body etc. Couldn't have anything to do with Miranda as Miranda, the woman he'd been living with the last decade and who changed as he did, whom we'd just spent lots of episodes seeing him interact with. And then, when early s3 made clear that he was mourning for her, there was actually talk of how this was "erasing" Thomas and making Flint het and why didn't he have hallucinations of Thomas etc. etc., why didn't he tell Silver it was Thomas he loved, not Miranda, with ample accusations of "queerbaiting" thrown in. (Which only stopped when the second half of s2 had Woode Rogers bring up Thomas by name in his conversation with Flint, and then when Flint told Silver the truth about his relationship with Thomas. Now obviously that revelation is being built up to, and I think if you have a minimum sense of character and drama you'd know that Flint wouldn't just tell something like this to Silver as soon as they came back from shark hunting, but no, it had to be a sinister plot. Sheesh.

Now me, I had been afraid that Miranda, once dead, would be forgotten, and at best get a few dialogue references a la Mr. Gates, so Flint's hallucinations and all the things they indicated about how he saw Miranda were more than welcome, as was having Louise Barnes around a while longer. And I had predicted the big reveal before it actually came. (Because of Miranda's few phrases about her husband in s1, which did not sound at all like the story Richard Guthrie had heard.)

[rydra_wong]

And I had predicted the big reveal before it actually came.

So I noted! Actually, I should link you to into this thread where I ended up quoting you about that, in the middle of some random pondering:

https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/533692.html?thread=5996988#cmt5996988

[rydra_wong]

On this note, in case you haven't seen it, video evidence of a Dudebro in the wild being profoundly confused about what could possibly be going on in ep 2.05:

http://notkatniss.tumblr.com/post/167103276806/my-favorite-tv-phenomenon-is-dude-bros-watching-ep

He's sighing over the inscription in the Marcus Aurelius by the end, so not hostile, just -- prior to the kiss, he can't generate any explanation for these Mysterious Clues the ep keeps giving him. WHAT COULD IT ALL MEAN.

It's a fascinating and entertaining example of the way people (especially presumably-straight Dudebros) are trained to not read increasing closeness and intensity between two men as possible romantic build-up. Anything but that!

[selenak]

Yup, that was the reaction of a lot of male reviewers back then, alright. :) (Who'd previously declared they couldn't see the point of those arbitrary flashbacks to Flint's past, couldn't we get some more present day Flint vs Vane fight action?

Now I wonder how said presumably straight Dudebros dealt with Spartacus, which was the previous historical tv made by STARZ and definitely aimed for the Dudebro market, and got it, while still providing m/m same sex relationships (plural)between male regulars, no less. With on screen kissing, sex scenes and love declarations, so you really could not be in denial about it at any point. Maybe the difference there was that the gay gladiators were not only shown as gay from the start, with no "reveal" scene? Or that Spartacus himself is absolutely straight. (Or maybe he isn't, but we only see him with women, and given this is a show with explicit m/m scenes, that does support the assumption more than a canon where there aren't any gay scenes at all.) Flint, as the leading man and raging badass in chief, was probably the guy most dudebros identified with/wanted to be. (Yes, there was Vane, but Vane through most of s1 is losing, and in a funk.)

Or: the sole sympathetic bisexual on "Spartacus" is Saxa, a minor female supporting character. The heroic male characters are either in het or in same sex relationships, but never both. To some people, not just dudebros, the idea that you can be bi still seems to be harder to grasp than that you can be gay. (And while Flint reads as primarily gay to me, his relationship with Miranda could have confused the dudebros.)

In any case: it really is fascinating how far spread the conditioning to NOT read clues when they involve two people of the same gender still seems to be, once you leave the female part of fandom...