January Meme: Silver Thoughts
Jan. 2nd, 2020 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhile it's been now two years since I've (re)watched an episode - must remedy that - , my Black Sails love remains as strong as ever, so when maplemood challenged me to talk about any Black Sails character, and I've covered Max-Anne-Jack, as well as storytelling in general, so: John Silver, Black Sails edition, and his relationship with Flint.
In one of my earlier posts, I said that Silver is both a storyteller and a story, both on a Watsonian and Doylist level (obviously, since he's one of the characters originated in another work), as well as the only main character without a (true) backstory the audience eventually learns, - the bit about him being in an orphanage and observing how an unpopular boy made himself popular excepted, which is likely true - because this is his backstory. Now, in the last two years, I've seen the occasional complaints that Silver in the first two seasons and Silver in the last two seasons don't quite fit, that the lightweight/trickster from s1 and s2 doesn't really square with partner-of-Flint and beloved-by-Madi from 3 and 4 (who also, with some aid of Billy's propaganda, becames a feared pirate), but one reason why I never had that problem is that to me, Silver is essentially Protean in nature. To wit: he's able to make himself fit the situation. This doesn't mean he's always in control of the result, or that he's always an arch manipulator who doesn't feel what he pretends to, au contraire. But it means he's constantly remaking himself, often, but not always deliberately so.
Even at his most lightweight, just-looking-out-for-No.1 in s1, he does use his time being stuck with Randall to observe him, which will come handy later. That he sticks with Flint - and not, say, Billy, or later Dufresne - is at first sound survival sense. The men at this point don't trust him, co-blame him for the Urca quest, and have no reason to spare him, if he makes himself useful to Flint beyond the Urca coordinates, he's got a shot, and he's got the (correct) impression that Flint a) just doesn't know when to quit and b) is smart and ruthless enough to come out on top in most confrontations. When Flint in early s2 tells him he's got to figure out a way to win the men over on his lonesome, there won't be help from him, Silver actually rises to that challenge, though not in a way Flint anticipated, and thus starts to qualify himself as a potential (sort of) trusted lieutenant, while Silver, in turn, gets his key insight that Flint in addition to being ruthless and smart behind the facade actually cares what people think of him. It's the first indication that Flint's pirate persona is just this, a persona - true to an extent, but not all of the thruth, and that he has emotional needs that aren't met by being top pirate alone. Still, at this point Silver is still planning on his post-Flint life to be sooner rather than later, and when he finds Flint has changed the goals on him he has no problem executing a plan behind Flint's back to get his hand on that Urca gold sans Flint. The true shift in their relationship doesn't happen until s3, and can't happen earlier, because s2 Silver still, in his own mind, has genuine alternatives to the life with Flint, and he definitely didn't sign on to Plan Peaceful Nassau Via Reconciliation With The Government and Returning The Money which Flint and Eleanor pursue near the end of s2. But as it turns out, spending an entire season convincing the Walrus crew he has their best interests at heart has inflicted something of a becoming the mask problem of John Silver, and when Vane captures the Urca, he doesn't use his chance at escape but stays. Which leads his his capture, which leads to his losing a leg and being stuck in a situation where he's entirely dependent on both the crew and Flint, who's just lost Miranda and is busy hitting nihilistic rock bottom.
Silver had to change then; he couldn't have continued as who he'd been, because he himself didn't think that was still an option. I think the way his and Flint's relationship starts to intensify would not have been possible if either of them had been in a better condition, come to that, but they both start the season at what makes an all time emotional low (for now) for both of them, they both very obviously need reasons to continue, and when Silver makes the decision to become Flint's next partner - not sidekick or Trusted Lieutenant - , he remakes himself into someone who can be such a partner. Just when he starts his relationship with Madi, he makes himself into someone she can love. I don't think it's a coincidence that both transitions happen at roughly the same time. Motivating Flint to live instead of just giving up, winning Madi over is at first a matter of survival, but not just physical survival (i.e. making it off the Maroon Island alive). I don't think Silver could have continued emotionally without either relationship, or just one of them, not least because from his pov, being exlusively devoted to Flint gets people killed. It's that Flint and Madi are idealists - though Flint is a broken one, but still, he wants more than just burn the world, he wants someone provide him a vision of a better one, whether that's Thomas or Madi - , driven by something that makes them continue to try the seemingly impossible. Many a tv show and movie and movel by now had characters do darkside and discover the allure of ruthlessness, but while Silver certainly learns how to use brutality in the course of the show, though never without a point (see also: Dufresne), what he's exposed to is actually more about the seductive pull of idealists, people driven by a cause.
Note: the pull of idealists, not of their ideals. And up to a point. Which is why Silver ends up saving both Flint's and Madi's lives at different points in the finale and loses them. Because even a Protean nature has limits. He does love them, but the one thing he couldn't change about himself was putting a cause above the individual attachment. So is he, at his core, the quintessentially selfish looking-out-for-No.1 guy who claimed to be a cook when the Walrus captured the ship he was travelling with? Yes and no. That earlier man wouldn't have bothered to save anyone but himself - he'd have left both Madi and Flint to their respective fates. ( Flint, as Flint, was doomed either way, independent from what Silver chose to do, due to the Guthrie demand.) Which, ironic enough, might have permitted Flint to pull off his gamble of saving both Madi and the revolution. (Whether or not he himself would have survived.) It's that Silver changed enough to care about these particular two people that means the ending of Flint as Flint - whether or not James and Thomas will leave Georgia five minutes after the finale, Captain Flint won't be resurrected again - and means the end of Madi's war.
In one of their (hilarious) early s2 scenes, Silver listed to Flint all those things he wasn't too keen on - the sea, pirates, Flint himself. Naturally, this means by the end of this story and in the next one, i.e. Treasure Island, he'll be so much of a pirate that he'll leave his civilian existence (and bank account) behind again, return to the sea, and spend the rest of his days with a bird he's named after Flint.
One could almost think a feverish Silver was onto something when in early s2 he ascribed divine powers to Flint...
The other days
maplemood challenged me to talk about any Black Sails character, and I've covered Max-Anne-Jack, as well as storytelling in general, so: John Silver, Black Sails edition, and his relationship with Flint.In one of my earlier posts, I said that Silver is both a storyteller and a story, both on a Watsonian and Doylist level (obviously, since he's one of the characters originated in another work), as well as the only main character without a (true) backstory the audience eventually learns, - the bit about him being in an orphanage and observing how an unpopular boy made himself popular excepted, which is likely true - because this is his backstory. Now, in the last two years, I've seen the occasional complaints that Silver in the first two seasons and Silver in the last two seasons don't quite fit, that the lightweight/trickster from s1 and s2 doesn't really square with partner-of-Flint and beloved-by-Madi from 3 and 4 (who also, with some aid of Billy's propaganda, becames a feared pirate), but one reason why I never had that problem is that to me, Silver is essentially Protean in nature. To wit: he's able to make himself fit the situation. This doesn't mean he's always in control of the result, or that he's always an arch manipulator who doesn't feel what he pretends to, au contraire. But it means he's constantly remaking himself, often, but not always deliberately so.
Even at his most lightweight, just-looking-out-for-No.1 in s1, he does use his time being stuck with Randall to observe him, which will come handy later. That he sticks with Flint - and not, say, Billy, or later Dufresne - is at first sound survival sense. The men at this point don't trust him, co-blame him for the Urca quest, and have no reason to spare him, if he makes himself useful to Flint beyond the Urca coordinates, he's got a shot, and he's got the (correct) impression that Flint a) just doesn't know when to quit and b) is smart and ruthless enough to come out on top in most confrontations. When Flint in early s2 tells him he's got to figure out a way to win the men over on his lonesome, there won't be help from him, Silver actually rises to that challenge, though not in a way Flint anticipated, and thus starts to qualify himself as a potential (sort of) trusted lieutenant, while Silver, in turn, gets his key insight that Flint in addition to being ruthless and smart behind the facade actually cares what people think of him. It's the first indication that Flint's pirate persona is just this, a persona - true to an extent, but not all of the thruth, and that he has emotional needs that aren't met by being top pirate alone. Still, at this point Silver is still planning on his post-Flint life to be sooner rather than later, and when he finds Flint has changed the goals on him he has no problem executing a plan behind Flint's back to get his hand on that Urca gold sans Flint. The true shift in their relationship doesn't happen until s3, and can't happen earlier, because s2 Silver still, in his own mind, has genuine alternatives to the life with Flint, and he definitely didn't sign on to Plan Peaceful Nassau Via Reconciliation With The Government and Returning The Money which Flint and Eleanor pursue near the end of s2. But as it turns out, spending an entire season convincing the Walrus crew he has their best interests at heart has inflicted something of a becoming the mask problem of John Silver, and when Vane captures the Urca, he doesn't use his chance at escape but stays. Which leads his his capture, which leads to his losing a leg and being stuck in a situation where he's entirely dependent on both the crew and Flint, who's just lost Miranda and is busy hitting nihilistic rock bottom.
Silver had to change then; he couldn't have continued as who he'd been, because he himself didn't think that was still an option. I think the way his and Flint's relationship starts to intensify would not have been possible if either of them had been in a better condition, come to that, but they both start the season at what makes an all time emotional low (for now) for both of them, they both very obviously need reasons to continue, and when Silver makes the decision to become Flint's next partner - not sidekick or Trusted Lieutenant - , he remakes himself into someone who can be such a partner. Just when he starts his relationship with Madi, he makes himself into someone she can love. I don't think it's a coincidence that both transitions happen at roughly the same time. Motivating Flint to live instead of just giving up, winning Madi over is at first a matter of survival, but not just physical survival (i.e. making it off the Maroon Island alive). I don't think Silver could have continued emotionally without either relationship, or just one of them, not least because from his pov, being exlusively devoted to Flint gets people killed. It's that Flint and Madi are idealists - though Flint is a broken one, but still, he wants more than just burn the world, he wants someone provide him a vision of a better one, whether that's Thomas or Madi - , driven by something that makes them continue to try the seemingly impossible. Many a tv show and movie and movel by now had characters do darkside and discover the allure of ruthlessness, but while Silver certainly learns how to use brutality in the course of the show, though never without a point (see also: Dufresne), what he's exposed to is actually more about the seductive pull of idealists, people driven by a cause.
Note: the pull of idealists, not of their ideals. And up to a point. Which is why Silver ends up saving both Flint's and Madi's lives at different points in the finale and loses them. Because even a Protean nature has limits. He does love them, but the one thing he couldn't change about himself was putting a cause above the individual attachment. So is he, at his core, the quintessentially selfish looking-out-for-No.1 guy who claimed to be a cook when the Walrus captured the ship he was travelling with? Yes and no. That earlier man wouldn't have bothered to save anyone but himself - he'd have left both Madi and Flint to their respective fates. ( Flint, as Flint, was doomed either way, independent from what Silver chose to do, due to the Guthrie demand.) Which, ironic enough, might have permitted Flint to pull off his gamble of saving both Madi and the revolution. (Whether or not he himself would have survived.) It's that Silver changed enough to care about these particular two people that means the ending of Flint as Flint - whether or not James and Thomas will leave Georgia five minutes after the finale, Captain Flint won't be resurrected again - and means the end of Madi's war.
In one of their (hilarious) early s2 scenes, Silver listed to Flint all those things he wasn't too keen on - the sea, pirates, Flint himself. Naturally, this means by the end of this story and in the next one, i.e. Treasure Island, he'll be so much of a pirate that he'll leave his civilian existence (and bank account) behind again, return to the sea, and spend the rest of his days with a bird he's named after Flint.
One could almost think a feverish Silver was onto something when in early s2 he ascribed divine powers to Flint...
The other days
