Black sails gay characters

It is a debate fundamentally doomed to failure, because its basic premise is a flawed one: the value of queer representation should not and cannot be measured by the thoughts of those who misunderstand it at best, or act as queer oppressors at worst. While explicit representation is undeniably important, overemphasizing it as the only valid way of canonically conveying queerness runs the risk of devaluing the inherent, inarguable canonicity of other methods–or losing acknowledgment of what makes them beautiful and valuable to include at all.

Including subtext and queercoding in stories encourages mutual conversations rather than passivity–conversations between a piece of media and its audience members, between one audience member and others, between one audience member and their internal self, and so on.

Eleanor chooses power, only to see everything she built—including her relationship with Max—crumble soon afterward.

Black Sails is, of course, an entertaining piece of media even from a surface level perspective, and how deeply a person examines the media they consume is always optional. As they reflect and reveal each other’s traits, the resulting parallels between the more openly queer and the more subtly queer relationships highlight what the deliberate similarities can tell you about both.

The point is that there is no single or correct answer, and queerness as an umbrella concept is somewhat less about what one is specifically, and rather more about what one is not (namely, cisgender and/or heterosexual). As a result of his choice, Flint loses everything and leaves England to become a violent outlaw.

Such tools of the trade were invented to and are still used to navigate around imposed restriction and censorship of stories. For most, that superior way is considered to be “explicit representation,” often defined more or less as “queer content so obvious and loud that even cisgender heterosexual people can’t argue against its validity.” Interestingly, different people have different ideas of what, by this metric, constitutes as “good enough.” As a result, the goalposts seem to always be moving, and are based on the shifting sands of personal opinions.

Having sex?

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Often compared to Game of Thrones, Black Sails ran for four seasons from 2014 to 2017 as a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

The historical fictional nature of the show sets it in the early 18th century during the Golden Age of Piracy, and while there are depictions of real historical figures, Black Sails takes many liberties with these characters.

In addition, several of the characters on the show are gay or queer in some way, reminding us of the sexual fluidity of pirates in Our Flag Means Death.

Black Sails is many things: a manifesto demonstrating the power of solidarity between the oppressed in the fight against white supremacy; a commentary on how the history of the marginalized is a narrative manipulated by those in power; and a story about stories–to name only a few. Brought to Nassau as a little girl, Eleanor manages to cobble together a criminal empire based on selling stolen pirate goods.

She thinks of Eleanor and demands to be given both power and her lover—or only Anne.

Flint, meanwhile, gets his own second chance. She’s brought on as a welcoming gift for John Silver when she makes herself irreplaceable using blackmail and her connections in Nassau. What do you take from it? She was born into slavery which led her into a life of sex work.

But like any invitation or challenge, the choice is left in the hands of the viewers. But is being remembered correctly—and making an indelible impact on history—worth a life defined by a violent struggle? Hell-bent on a rebellion against England, Flint’s new best friend (Treasure Island‘s Long John Silver) offers him a choice between giving up the war effort and reuniting with his lover, the English nobleman Flint had thought to be long dead.

Queer love, identities, and relationships are no less valid or impactful–or, in the case of fiction, no less canonical–for sometimes remaining somewhat undefined or understated. Simultaneously, when care is taken to define them, there is power in acknowledging such specificity without losing sight of how it does not or should not compromise the solidarity found in the community.

This is the value in subtext and queercoding as deliberate media languages.

In one of the show’s final scenes, when Long John Silver is working hard to convince Captain Flint to give up his war against England, Flint replies with, “This is how they win, you realize.”

Long John Silver has tasted resistance to the empire and would rather rather bury his sword and live happily with his wife.

Black Sails’ creators understood that intimately, and used it to inform and enrich their story, while also doing justice to their characters’ situations and dynamics with realistic–and thus, sometimes understated and complicated–portrayals.

By giving up the fight, Flint seems to say, you’re resigning yourself to letting them twist our stories and erase the parts of us they don’t want to remember.