forever we try

Finished Black Sails! ...And the fourth season (especially the season/series finale) was so good I can't think of much else to say; it was incredibly well-plotted and ridiculously satisfying and if you love pirates or Treasure Island or gritty, playing-fast-and-loose-with-the-facts period pieces or complicated, not-necessarily-heroic characters who grow and change over time or lots of canonically queer characters or unexpectedly hopeful endings or any of those things in any combination, just watch it. Do not pass go, watch it and then come back here and we can talk about how amazing it is.

I actually wanted to do a from-episode-one rewatch as soon as I finished the last episode, and luckily for me my sister also wanted to start watching it, so we're working through about an episode a night (she works and I'm heading back into classes next week). It's interesting, having just blown through season 4, to go back to season 1 and see how different everyone is starting out: Eleanor's more or less secure in her role as the head fence/pirate queen of Nassau, secure enough to be a little cocky about it; Max sure isn't guileless but she comes across as much more innocent. Silver is a little shit (enjoyably so, but still); Jack is either going through a rough patch or nowhere near as competent as he thinks he is (yet); Vane is also nowhere near as competent as he thinks he is; Anne is exactly as competent as she thinks she is but saddled with Jack and Vane (and also about to be thrown into a major tailspin re: Max). Season 1 is also a good bit funnier than, I think, any of the other seasons--there's that absolutely hilarious part during negotiations in the third episode when Gates has to keep pulling Flint outside to remind him to at least try to be diplomatic. Come to think of it, a lot of the humor in the first season is thanks to Gates. He's a wonderful character, and knowing how the season ends I'm appreciating him a lot more this time around. 

You get the sense in the first season that everyone is just starting to get a feel for these people and how they interact with each other and what their core characteristics are. Sure, the main pieces are already in place, but the tone is a little more unsettled and a little more fluid...is it a funny, swashbuckling adventure story (sort of a TV-MA Pirates of the Caribbean minus all the magic) with some darker undertones or are the darker undertones the whole point? I mean, obviously there are plenty of dark and tragic and horrible things going on from the beginning, and though the later seasons get darker none of them are hopeless or humorless, but the first season, and, say, the first three episodes of the first season especially (right up until the last couple scenes of episode 3) feel lighter by comparison in a way I obviously didn't catch on to when I first watched them.

Oh, and of course now I have an ungodly amount of Black Sails fics saved to my "Marked For Later" list on AO3; I've been working my way through and might try to have a rec post up at some point. So far this one is a great exploration of the Jack & Anne & Vane relationship pre-canon, and this one focuses on Abigail Ashe (one of my favorite minor characters) finding her way forward after season 2. 

Derry Girls! On Sunday I figured out season 2 had dropped on Netflix and spent a very enjoyable evening marathoning the whole thing--it's only six episodes long, like the first season, and each episode is only around thirty minutes (so, in terms of bingeing, practically nothing). Season 2's still got plenty going for it on the black humor front, but it's maybe not quite as focused on the people-doing-awkward-insensitive-or-downright-terrible-things kind of humor as the first season; not that those kind of situations aren't there (Clare tries to connect with a Protestant boy during their Friends Across the Barricade weekend trip and ends up freaking out when he [apparently] says he hates all Catholics; Joe still hates Gerry for no good reason; Aunt Sarah wears a floor-length white ballgown to a wedding with predictable results), but they're all mixed in with a lot of warmth. This time around there are even more great friendship moments, and also the whole set-up continues to be heartwarming in a low-key way--like, it's never pointed out that the Quinns are more or less a second family for Clare, Michelle, and James, but they absolutely are. Also, for all that Joe keeps sniping at Gerry, everyone actually gets along pretty well for one big family forced to share one small house. Things can get tense, but at the end of the day they stick by each other and love each other. (Another really cute moment is when Orla invites Joe to the prom as her date, since "everyone kept saying you have to ask a fella you really like, and he's the fella I like the most.") And of course Sister Michael is and always will be the best: "You will go far in life, Jenny, but you will not be well-liked."

After stalling out a bit I have seasons 3 and 4 of Black Sails checked out from the library. I'm hoping to finish them before school starts back up (three more weeks?!). I'm expectedly super invested in Anne and unexpectedly super invested in both Jack and Jack/Anne; Silver's also grown on me a lot since the first season, where he wasn't a bad character (imo, anyway), just one without any human connections at all. He was completely in it for himself, and even though he still is, a bit, in his own way he's genuinely loyal to the crew by the end of the second season, and they're loyal to him--the season 2 finale caps off with the most heartwarming amputation scene ever (maybe the only heartwarming amputation scene ever?) and in season 3--though I'm not very far in yet at all--he seems like he's trying to do right by them, as opposed to just do right by himself. He's still Silver, though, so who knows.