rheaitis

I got some interest in a watch-along for the show, through June-August, so I've set up a comm blacksails. It has open membership, so join, and we'll figure out a schedule.

 If i have to deal with another post saying James Flint/McGraw is gay I'll... I dunno, I'll explode into a thousand angry, hissing Rheas and slip into the interwebs with knives between my teeth. Something. God.

Like

• sexual acts and identities of the period in no way map onto current notions of sexuality
• the word you're looking for is 'bi', and possibly 'demi'

We never see the Hamiltons being sexual with each other, so fine, if you wanna argue that Thomas doesn't fuck women, alright. Fine. I would still not call Miranda his beard, since they pretty obviously have at least a romantic bond and that feels like an aphobic requirement to me, but you know what, fine. Arguments about children are extremely invalid tho.

But James! We actually see James having sex with Miranda, for fun, for love, for the sake of continuing an argument. Having sullen making-a-point sex is not proof you're not sexually interested in your partner, it's just proof you're passive-aggressive and Old Married. And, just, he loves her so much, he loves Miranda so much, he's ruined over her death, he's the worst iteration of himself without Miranda's hand on the reins. If his voice breaks when he says "they took my woman, my friend", that is not evidence that he's the Gayest Gay Ever To Gay and doesn't know how the str8s talk about women they love. His wife just died and he's having to turn that into a political flourish, ffs cut the man a break.

It doesn't invalidate James and Thomas' love for each other if they both loved Miranda and she loved them. Poly people exist, and just. She was their wife, she spent at least a decade married to each of them, and they only had a year or two together. Of course James is ruined over Miranda, just what the actual fuck else should he be? That was his wife of a dozen years, with whom he clawed his way out of the rubble of his past life, whom he tried to keep safe and for whom he scraped together little comforts. You wanna look at their affectionate back-and-forth and the bookish apologies and the continued eyefucking and say they're not A Thing and Flint is, what, only servicing Miranda because he feels obligated? For a decade? ffs, if they were only briefly lovers before James/Thomas started up again, why on earth wouldn't they decide Miranda would give herself out as his widowed sister or something?

Augh.

ETA: While I'm all for James' gorgeous relationships with Eleanor and Madi, I'm faintly leery of all the Soft Dad takes on them because they feel very... targeted somehow at positing James as someone whose interest in women is platonic by default and simultaneously infantilises women who are in (at minimum) their mid-late twenties when we meet them. Is Flint old enough he could have been their Dad? Sure. But, like, something feels iffy.