Miranda Barlow - Blog Posts

she's a witch. she's a nice puritan woman. she makes a home – she symbolizes it. she's a wife. a lover. a mother. she playfully critiques the whole english society and rejects shame. she misses joy, and life, and music and i love her So Much

Go tell them how this woman (and her husband) shaped this man's whole world.

Absolutely yes to all of that. I think the relationship between Miranda and Thomas is way underrated. We don't know much about it, but definitely /there was/ much. I've thought a lot about their dynamics and regardless of if they were romantic or friendly, it doesn't change the fact that the two of them had shared for years a deep bond which probably had changed both of their lives for the better. I've liked very much the word you used ti define them, twins. I've used it many time myself. I totally agree with this it. To me they were chosen brothers who had been lucky enough to find, in the midst of a society meant to cut off their wings, someone who instead was more than willing to help them take flight, and the importance this can assume in the life of people with such personalities and ideas like theirs is priceless.

I love all the relationships that bind these three characters together and sure, James' pain at losing his greatest love must have been terrible, but to me the love that bound Miranda and Thomas was even deeper, for its span if nothing else, just like the love that eventually bound Miranda and Flint at the time of her death was deeper than the love that had bound Flint to Thomas. So I think Miranda must have suffered even more than him for the loss of Thomas, considering also how it had meant for her the loss of all the life she had known. Not to talk about all the situations she had to endure once in Nassau. I mean, it might be me loving this subject, these three characters and their story, but I believe Miranda's sorrow is something people never really talk enough about.

I mean, the way she talks about Thomas with pastor Lambrick in ep.VI? That gave me shivers. What are we even talking about?

flint gifting miranda la galatea - a story involving two friends in love with the same person who agree to not let it interfere with their friendship, and more broadly as a whole, an examination of how different lives intertwine - as a means of apologizing is so impactful it literally gave me new brain circuitry undiscovered by science. just the quiet understanding between them of how much thomas meant to the other, even though their relationships with him were very different. we don't see alot of miranda and thomas together in the flashbacks but from what we do see, it tells us what we need to grasp the depths of her loss and why she misses her life back then so badly.

truly like... he was her twin. they shared such an open, playful affection. there was an abundance of free-flowing admiration in the way they talked to or about each other, they trusted each other completely with their personal lives without reservation, and their mutual happiness together was so transparent and palpable. when miranda walked into the study and they joked around together the room practically lit up (can we blame james for acting like a deer in headlights there). like their free-spirit bestie bohemian vibe was radiant. regardless of whether you interpret their arrangement as a lavender marriage or a romantic/sexual one, it would have been rare for a man and a woman in that era to find a genuinely happy partnership of equals the way they did.

so the few times we see when james oversteps a bit and acts like his grief and anger are more important than hers and miranda snaps back... miranda truly a better woman than i am because i think it would've been valid for her to hit back a little more severely. james was with thomas for ~9(?) months, but what miranda had with him was presumably years.

so when flint gives her la galatea with the inscription "i'm sorry"... yes, that's a well-deserved apology indeed, and now my neurological functioning will never be the same again

Absolutely yes to all of that.

(warning: black sails spoilers)

every time I see a bad Miranda Hamilton take I have to try so so hard not to engage. I see so many people blatantly misunderstand her character or call her ‘annoying’ (especially when talking about season 2 episode 9 and her rant at Peter) and it pains me so much. She is just as much forged by loss as Flint, she is just as traumatised. And, on top of it, she is expected to sit around and wait for deliverance, she isn’t afforded the same opportunity to take matters into her own hands. Call her annoying all you want, but know that you’re wrong. Her rant in s2e9 is not unnecessary and it’s not overly emotional, it’s actually very fucking justified. It’s one of the only times she actually breaks her cool, allows herself to be angry, and she is killed for it. It’s a response to the revelation that Peter, once her friend, sold Thomas out for status, colluded behind their backs with Alfred fucking Hamilton to destroy their happiness. And he dares to claim it was a ‘civilised’ solution? So she says fuck your civilisation. Fuck your solutions. Fuck your pardons, your country, your empire. It should all burn for what you’ve done. And don’t miss the connotations of burning: purifying, cleansing, starting fresh. You know who else was being ‘purified’? Thomas. Rotting in a mental hospital for being queer.

She has every right to be angry. And it makes sense that she is killed for it, as empire cannot abide any challenge to its official narrative. The mere fact of her raised voice is enough to condemn her to death, yet she and Flint are treated as monstrous for their killing of Alfred Hamilton. The man who destroyed their lives and orchestrated their tragedy.

So fuck your takes. I’m so so fed up of people talking about her as if she’s just some irritating tag along. She is integral to the show’s message, and in this particular episode, Flint’s realisation that empire is not the answer. He learns that, whilst he is villainised for his use of violence in service of a noble goal, empire is allowed to practice violence with no consequences. It takes Miranda from him just as it took Thomas from them both.

In ep.IV they show us this embrace, this beautiful, beautiful and painful scene. Those few seconds hold such a deep meaning…and yet in that moment we do not know ANYTHING about it. So what? Is one supposed to see it and then go on with the show and forget about it, putting it in a corner of their mind with all those “you will understand later” things? Because that’s what happened, the first time I watched this season I completely forgot about it. And that’s such a WASTE! Pretty much all of the Flint/Miranda’s scenes in the first season are a waste, in a way. Please do not misunderstand me, I think those scenes are really amazing and I also think that the timing of the “great revelation” was perfect, I wouldn’t have liked it so much had it come before, and exactly for these reasons I’m saying that those wonderful scenes are “wasted”. Because a lot of those get lost in the first watch, since one can’t understand the importance of them still and so doesn’t even give them the right amount of attention they would deserve. Of course the mystery was intriguing, and something sounded pretty strange since the beginning, but still…STILL. Almost all of the scenes about the two of them or about Miranda kill me on rewatch, knowing their whole story. But that’s the thing, you have to rewatch it to get the complete beauty of them. And I think that’s a shame, because people who like the show but are not obsessed with it as I am would probably never rewatch it, but maybe, if they had remembered or rewatched at least those scenes, there would be one more chance for them to be as obsessed as I am with it.

Really, how beautiful this hug was? An “It’s over” kind of hug, but with a double meaning. It’s over like we put an end to part of our misery, venting our anger on the responsible for it, but also, it’s over like our old existences are over, and we will never be the same persons we used to be ever again. Which is pretty much what happens with every revenge (I’m not judging though). I just love it so much, I wish I had been able to see all of that since the first time I saw it.

When Miranda gives back Meditation to Flint in episode XIII, they somehow make you think that he hadn't seen nor read that book in a while. Of course it was related to Thomas and he remembered that very clearly, but Miranda was the one to keep it and she is the one to say it was a precious thing she shared with her husband and all, over the general tendency of Flint to distance himself from the past, if not ideologically at least emotionally. But in truth, in ep. III he got what Miranda was reading from a single sentence overheard through the door...I mean, he had to know that book pretty well to do that. In fact, I've always liked to think about that book as some sort of comfort through the darkest hours for him as well as it was for Miranda, for what it means as an object at least if not for its philosophy which, as much as in line with Thomas' mind , I believe was pretty far from James' point of view.

I'm honestly relieved by the fact that they somehow confirmed this headcanon of mine. Like...yeah, some parts of his mind try to obscure the past in order to survive, but since he cannot separate himself from something which has defined him deeply he may as well find comfort in what is left of it.

That's so heartbreaking, but I love the way they orchestrated since ep.I his whole story.

I was on pinterest and this detail (first image) of a bigger painting (second image) named 'The Jolly Boat' by Albert Lynch caught my eyes, 'cause it reminded me so much of that scene (third and fourth images) with Flint and Miranda on the run from London.

Now seeing the whole painting I can see the man is not looking behind but to the ship they are going towards (in the detail it wasn't so clear since there is also some land visible in the background), but still there's something in the facial expression of the two which definitely make me think about them. Something in the way the man looks haunted and the woman looks emptied, and they still are so close to one another...

It's so beautiful. Just like Flint and Miranda's relationship is to me.

It's the way they and the people who know them refere to those years in New Providence as a dream.

Some say it was a nightmare, and yes, it probably was, especially for James.

But you can't find in a nightmare someone who is so similar to you that you end up so often being unable to face for the fear of facing your same insecurities. You can't find someone who choses to walk by your side for the whole, dark and unsteady road toward a blurred, almost impossible future, just to make it possible for the two of you. You can't find someone who choses to love you without restrain, and to trust you, in the name of that love, giving their own life away in the hope that you will save yours.

This, you may find only in a dream. This is what they both did, in their own way, for one another. Miranda understood it. James almost did.

It's the way you go from bright colors but cold lights in 1705 to dark colors but warmer, secret, intimate lights in 1715.

Really, that's all.

It’s like she’s some sort of clock that’s finally struck its chime and woken me from this dream we’ve been living, reminded me how many years separate me from a world I still think of as home. How unrecognizable the woman I am now would be to the woman I was then.

Black Sails x Oceans Brawl by Cœur de Pirate

Part 1/3 (follows part 2 and 3)

His smile😭😭 it was never again so bright.

I love them so much, we had finally got them so close in this scene and then...

Black Sails | XVI.

Lately I found myself thinking about James/Miranda relationship as a reversed version of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story, especially towards the end of it. Not because these two stories match well (they do not) but just because I like making this kind of classical comparisons and I'm stuck from a bit on the fact that, right before her death, for the first time Miranda was the one to refuse the progress to look back at the past. 

After the loss of Thomas, James let himself slip into a darkness comparable to the underworld, a darkness which so often threatened to swallow him whole. He walked on a thin line between a reign of death and an island of life, and if that darkness was that reign, Miranda was his island. 

During their whole journey of processing their grief and climbing their way back to a life that could be called such, she was the one always trying to drag him towards the light. To her, the life that might have been waiting for them in the future was that light, while the past was the darkness, and not because she deemed it forgettable or unimportant, quite the contrary indeed, but because while she knew how to keep and remember the beauty of that past and the light of it, along with the sorrow, she knew perfectly well how different it was for James. How he could remember the beauty of it, of course, but also knew how to put it aside in favor of the rage and the guilt, his gaze clouded by the pain and the unacceptable shame. 

She said it herself: she didn't want to forget that past, not the bright side of it and neither the inescapable sadness of it, its tragedy being the spring of that very beauty, the ruins existing only because there was something precious to be ruined in the first place; and at the same time, what could the dark of it matter, the injustice, the grudge, when it condemned the both of them to never be able to see the light again? 

First time I heard their discussion in ep.VII after knowing the whole story, I wondered how could she ask something like that of him, to forget and pass over what they had done to him just to gain a liveable life, but recently I've actually been wondering : how could she not?

I'm not taking any side in this, as I recognize Miranda's thoughts to be the most reasonable ones as they often are but at the same time I can't say I wouldn't act as stubbornly and desperately as James did in that situation, they're just really different ways to conceive one’s own existence, influenced by their own problems and conditions and mind. All I'm saying is that Miranda was able to see the light even if just from a distance, she was able to hope that one day they would have been able to truly see it. James was never. 

He just lied to himself about the possibility of it. He had plans and tactics and strategies, but for how I see it, those were all desperate attempts to convince himself of the contrary. He couldn't, maybe because of his personality, maybe because he knew that his situation wasn't one that could ever allow him to found real light in that world, maybe just because he loved her less than how much he had loved Thomas, less than how much she loved him, but whichever was the reason, he couldn't afford to see the light after that abyss, and I think Miranda was the first to know that. The one who knew him like no other, the one who loved him like no other. She knew that without help he would have never really been able to reach the end of that dark state of being. And she tried. She tried to help him in so many ways, because she loved him, she really did, and because she had the damn right to claim at least a decent life for herself. 

And here we come to the end, to Charles town.

Charles town could have been her success. Charles town was James’ surrender. For the first time she glimpsed one real chance of having him back, she saw in him the real intention to leave all of that darkness behind, to follow her, not leaving the past behind, never, but learning to move forward, finally allowing her a chance for a new life together. 

He was actually ready to accept even that miserable condition Peter Ashe imposed on him in order to get rid of the darkness, to climb to the light -as short lived as that might have been, at this point- to give Miranda a better alternative than the ones he had been able to grant her up until that moment (as I think his whole Charles town plan was led by the purpose of doing something to save her): as useless as we all know that would have been, accepting that bargain has probably been the most selfless thing James has ever done, even if he did it also for himself in a tired, desperate and contorted way. 

But Charles town wasn't only this to Miranda. 

Charles town was the discovery of the betrayal, because I believe she understood it all the moment she first saw that clock, I'm sure of it. Charles town was her umptheen attempt and her umptheen sacrifice. 

I think that must have been to her a similar quest to the Maria Aleyne's one: respecting James by telling him the truth, something he deserves to know, even knowing how he will react to it, knowing how impossible it would become for him, then, to go on with his plan, granting him a one way ticket to that darkness, or keeping him in the dark, bearing alone the weight of that knowledge, accepting to live with the helplessness to remedy that fatal injustice, only in the hope to finally make him reach that light?  

Would Orpheus reveal Eurydike a truth which risked pushing her back into the underworld just because it might be right for her to know it?

Still, things had been different, more desperate, back to the Maria Aleyne. Now the chance to succeed was real. 

And at first she made that difficult choice, which was selfish in a way, but definitely selfless in another, all at the same time.

And she did it because she loved him. 

She loved him so much that when she glimpsed, in that light, the prospect of losing him, she had to recognize that that light was -as James would have put it in the future- only their light, the light of a world the two of them couldn’t be part of anymore. 

She loved him so much that she had to look back. To the past, to him, because her James was still behind her, still in the dark, the only place where he was allowed to stay, and only that version of him was the one she truly loved. She loved the real James, with all his broken parts, not the one that could be seen under the lights of their lies. 

So she couldn't help giving up that false light, because she had wished for tranquility, a normal life -as probably anyone in her conditions would have done- but she was not disposed to give up the man she loved in order to gain that, as she hadn't been in the past, when the prospect of the future had been only dark and still she had not deserted the ones she loved. 

And when she turned back, this time trying to shield him from that light, the darkness at the pit ended up swallowing them both. 

Miranda died, and James was dragged back full force and imprisoned into the worst version of himself, the ruthless, autodestructive one. 

There are two versions of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I think that the two of them taken together perfectly represent James’ reaction to her death and its circumstances.

In Virgilius’ one, Eurydice slightly resents Orpheus for his action, for his “folly” -as it is called- and (if we may call it that) for his selfish gesture of looking back, that she paid with her second chance to be alive. 

After Miranda's death, James dreams of her reminding him how he had resented her “because they were so close” and of course since that's a dream is what he knew he had felt. But that was…collateral to the condition he had been left stuck in. That was the childish resentment of having explicitly denied something he knew deep down he couldn't have. 

In Ovidius’ one instead Eurydice doesn't blame him because she can't resent being loved, and I think this is what James really felt. After all, looking straight at the truth of the situation and looking back at their shared history, I think there were no ways for him to actually, rationally resent her. (And in fact in his last dream about her she uses a past tense, “you resented me”, hinting that was something he had felt only in the moments when he was at his worst as when, always in the dream, he heard her apology).

Moreover, I think he perfectly understood the meaning of those last moments of hers, how important it was to her to make her voice be heard in that moment. In fact, despite the clear and growing doubt and rage (and worry) on his face while Peter and Miranda spoke, he didn't say a word, he let her speak, despite knowing the risks  and I think this is amazing and just proves how beautiful and respectful their relationship was, and that there were no way he could actually deem her responsible of their failure in that mission (doomed to failure since the beginning ‘cause of the truth).

What hurts even more about her death is the fact that it looks like they got closer to each other once again during that trip, as they hadn't probably been in years, and then…everything got lost forever.

Oh my, gimme them back😭😭

They are so beautiful, my favourite ship from this show❤

These two ruined my life and I just want them to be happy. 

"These violent delights have violent ends,

And in their triumph die like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume."

Romeo and Juliet

FlintHamiltons paintings aesthetic.

Two different worlds entwined by the strings of fate. I thought this ship deserved such kind of artistic tribute.

That last gaze between them...the complicity, the understanding, the solace, the love between the romantic kind and the friendship and way above both of them...one of the best couple ever❤

I found it, Miranda. Parrish’s ship? You found the schedule?

for @ellelan

It absolutely is one of my favourite episodes too, even if it's so sad. Like...Miranda /shines/ (she always does, but damn, here she is *blinding*) and the closeness between her and Flint is so evident here, two survivors who has become each other's survival until one of them is not anymore.

My goddess, it hurts so much.

Episode 17 of Black Sails is peak television. It's arguably my favorite episode of the show and Miranda's death (I didn't put the entire thing because it's too long but it's so fucking great, the scene itself for me starts when she asks about the clock) is my favorite in the history of television: how we are lead to it throughout little moments in the episode, how it happens and the massive implications it has on Flint as a character and in the show itself.

Because this is it, Flint was betrayed a second time. Every time he tries to do the right thing, it backfires. And now he has lost the only person as important to him as Thomas, there is no one who really knows him anymore.

He now has no reason to hold back anymore.

PS: If Gates and Billy made me sad, you wouldn't believe how devastated I feel about Miranda and Thomas.

"What's going on in this house is not a simple affair." ~ she said.

"It is not." ~ he replied.

I think what he really meant here was not "it's something worse", but "it's something more". It's something that changed our whole lives.

Even if I can't help blaming him in this scene for not listening to her, I have to say that his way of feeling things deeply without ever letting them show completely is so precious to me.

This conversation is perfect, seen in the aftermath.

It perfectly depicts these two amazing characters in all their shades.

"She loved the sea for its storms alone, and the green only when it grew scattered among ruins."

G. Flaubert

Miranda Barlow's aesthetic.

I love so much this character and her story and I think she would have liked very much Madame Bovary if she had the chance to read it.

(We all know what was written in that burning letter, don't we? I think it was important to include that too about her)