inky [she/her,any]

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Yeah, I realized halfway through my comment that you probably meant that the what happens in the story sucks (like, in-universe) vs the show itself sucks, yeah? I guess we are on the same page haha. And I think the real lib take is that the British Empire is good, actually. Which is an actual take I've seen on Reddit (where else?)

I mean the only successful slave rebellion in the Caribbean was the Haitian revolution a whole century later. As much as I would have loved to see them wreck the british empire, the show does tend to stick pretty closely to actual history. And pirates do end up being pretty much wiped out in a couple of decades. That sense of inevitability, that this is the end of an age, is actually one of my favourite things about the show. But yeah, they definitely could have given more screen time to the maroons (petition to replace every rogers sex scene with more julius please), but that’s really the only fault I find with show? I think in general the show does show pretty well that their anger is completely justified and never condemns their violence.

I mean, not to get too deep into black sails discourse, but I don’t think the show ever presents what happened at the end as a good thing. But considering the historical realities and what happens in treasure island, it was basically how it had to end.

Yeah the first season is pretty rough, unfortunately. But the show only gets better as it goes on. I had to force myself a bit to stick through the first few episodes, but as soon as they actually got out to sea I was hooked.

If you compared pirates to, say, the general population of Britain or France, sure. But that’s not really the point. These are men used to rough, brutal lives. Of course they’d be different from an artisan in London. I think the better comparison would be to merchant sailors or members of the British/French/Spanish navy, who definitely committed atrocities of their own. And looking at it from a larger scale, pirates never brutally colonized large swathes of Africa and the Caribbean, established slavery, or committed genocide. So you know, I’d say any individual atrocities committed by pirates were less than that of the system their more civilized counterparts contributed to.

There’s a part in the article taking about “family vloggers” in general , who title videos shit like “shopping for her first bra!”/“my first shave!” featuring their preteen daughters and that’s just so fucking grotesque. These kids are gonna need so much therapy when they grow up.

Edit: Here’s the quote:

In marketing their videos, the Riches were perhaps simply chasing the same formula other family vloggers were exploiting. Ruby and Kevin Franke, considered in the top tier of family vloggers with 2.44 million subscribers to their channel, 8 Passengers, earned almost 2 million views on a video titled “My First Shave,” which includes an image of their tween daughter on the edge of a bathtub with shaving cream on her bare legs; a video of their son named “Officially Hit PUBERTY,” with a description advertising “voice cracking and sprouting,” has almost 3 million views. (According to YouTube, the videos do not violate the company’s community guidelines.)

Yes! He’s a djinn and the main narrator I think. Glad to see someone has heard of these books!

Okay I have never encountered anyone who has read these novels but The Bartimaeus Sequence is one of my favourite works of children’s literature. I guess since it came out at the same time as Harry Potter and has a boy wizard main character it kinda fell under the radar but other than that it’s nothing alike. (It’s actually good, for one). It’s been a long time since I read it but iirc the basic premise of the setting is that it’s set in a British Empire ruled by magicians who summon (enslave) spirits to do their bidding. And it’s always implied that the only thing that separates magicians from commoners is their hoarded knowledge and willingness to exploit & enslave the spirits — there’s no like hereditary bullshit or inherent superiority or anything. Pretty cool for a kid’s book. Also they’re really funny.

Just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant and it's really fucking good. (I wanted to say that I enjoyed it but that might be the wrong word). It's not a specifically leftist book (it's set in a feudal society) but it talks about race/gender/sexuality/colonialism in a way that extremely rare in fantasy novels. It also understands that you can have a book be dark without just throwing rape and murder and suffering at your female characters, which might be even rarer.

Also currently reading The Wretched of the Earth, which I really should have read before now.

okay but i’ve actually seen people call this “angbang” and that deserves to be known. (for those of us who aren’t Massive Nerds, Angband was morgoth’s fortress.)