frandroid

What are you currently reading: A Michael Crichton novel, Pirate Latitudes. I know, I know. The recommendation came through a commenter on the Straight Black Sails group, too, which should have been warning enough. It contains many of the bad sexist/racist tropes you expect from pirate novels, though not many references to slavery or black people in general, I think? One character has a name, but keeps being referred to as "The Jew". This was published in 2010, not 1974... Also, the novel is realist for about 2/3rds of the way, but because Crichton got even lazier in his writing, at that point a pentagram is drawn to calm down a hurricane, and then afterwards our pirate crew meets a kraken. It would have been basic writing to link the two events (i.e. invoke the devil, face a creature from beneath) but that connection isn't even made. Also, most of the killing happens not in valiant sword combat, but when people are drunken/ly asleep, because our pirates are always attacking places with much larger crews/garrisons than pirates on hand. So crafty! The one good thing I got out of this book is an explanation of what breeching a cannon entails. There's a bit of decent naval combat writing but in the end everything is mostly about our good Captain and his smart associates thinking of engineering solutions from a century ahead to resolve their present-day problems.

Speaking of Black Sails, I'm now at Season 4 of my re-watch, along with the Fathoms Deep podcast, and it's A Lot of Podcast. The podcast started after S3 was out, so the main host had watched the show a million times and was able to provide lots of guidance on details and make lots of in-depth connections as they were going through the episodes from S1 thru S3. For S4, they put out the podcast as the episodes were coming out, so there's less in-depth analysis, and more first impressions. One part I'm enjoying is listening to their speculation on what's going to happen in future episodes. One other thing that's interesting is that the podcast got more popular and at that point they were able to get some cast (including Toby Schmitz, sabotabby !), writers and directors on the show. (They're seriously fangirling over the actors, which is a bit annoying as a listener...) They even got one of the showrunners to come in for an interview. Looking forward to more interviews once they've finished the series so they can comment on everything without spoiling the future.

*** ETA: It turns out that this novel was found in Crichton's papers after his death. So even he had recognized that it wasn't that good, but obviously his estate only saw dollar signs. :P

Straight and queer Black Sails fandoms hit differently...

So not only there's a Black Sails fancast, but it's still active: they published an interview with Toby Schmitz (Jack Rackham, duh) and Craig Jackson (Featherstone) just last week!

Fathoms Deep: A Black Sails Podcast
@BlackSailsCast

76 episodes... As if I didn't have many hundreds in my podcast queue already!

Schmitz is so fantastic in the series... Right now I'm in the love triangle (?) episodes with Anne and Max and almost all of the play is done through his face... It's cool to see him as a non-muscular, not-very-masculine pirate, trying to make it on his wits alone. I mean he's not unlike John Silver that way, but Silver is still just an opportunistic, accidental pirate at that point in the series, while Rackham is more ambitious, has fallen from a higher position, and has fully embraced the pirate life already.

I've downloaded Hornblower as a next series to watch, because old school maritime warfare. And also Summer of Rockets, because Toby Stephens. No idea when I'll get to any of this...

Am I the only one to notice that Eleanor Guthrie is recycling beer in her inn in Season 1?

So huh, Toby Stephens is Maggie Smith's son. And Robert Stephens', who was apparently a big deal in British acting, but whom is unknown to me. (I'll check this film out to get acquainted with him, I think.) Anyway, born from acting nobility.

For her part, Clara Paget (Anne Bonny) is literally nobility, her father being a marquess. Which is pretty amusing.

Black Sails is SO GOOD!! Just finished Season 3... Love the philosophizing between Silver and Flint so much. :)

I was perusing Wikipedia on Charles Vane, Woodes Rogers, Edward Teach, etc. today... So much of the actual or supposed history woven into the writing of the series, it's fun. (I must say I did not picture a bewigged Charles Vane though!! Zach McGowan has convinced me to grow my hair longer. Since I have a long beard, I'll have to decide whether I go Teach or Vane in the end... Maybe if I can make some slow-burning fuses??)



Now the only thing I'm asking is for in Season 4 is for Flint to get a little more gay, is that possible? Because Toby Stephens with that shaved head... UNF.

So upon sabotabby's repeated references, I started watching Black Sails, and it's the absolute bomb. I mean I can't really hide my weakness for pirates. (See my collection of political theory books about piracy, and my obsession with the Monkey Island games...)

So I kept thinking I had seen Toby Stephens before; he reminds me a fair bit of Hugh Grant, but I knew it wasn't simply that. Then this morning as I was ruminating over that in the bathroom, it came back; he was starring as Danton in the play Danton's Death, which F and I had seen at the National Theatre in London. Other than being a handsome fella (the real Danton was ugly as fuck), he delivered a pretty awesome performance. We were sitting high up in the rafters but his performance still reached us.

Max's character is awesome but I find Jessica Parker Kennedy's French accent to be such a porny stereotype as to be distracting.

Zach McGowan's face (Captain Vane) reminders me of a former boss I've had, who was entertaining but rather creepy towards women... and minus the abtastic body of course.

Yet another series to kill my sleep... Damn you!