The reason Silver so frequently resorts to supernatural elements when thinking about Flint and his capacities stems from the fact that he has never had a reason to doubt his own materialistic intentions and desires, but it was Flint who made him value the insubstantial.

Flint was the one to manipulate Sliver to more emotion focused desires, and by his understanding of reality – nobody and nothing human ought to be able to shift another man’s entire life designs so fucking effortlessly. It took years and an entire team of abusers and educators for him to be broken down and remade in the image of Christopher John Hope – so how in the fuck could a single man make so drastic a change so subtly that the victim themself doesn’t even know how much they have changed until it is too late to turn back?  

It is easier to think that something supernatural did it. Easier, to blame a legend for the change than to accept a man had that much power to influence him at all, especially when becoming John Silver in the first place was one of his first acts of agency since Jandro was shattered in the crucible of English assimilation and molded into Christopher. 

It is also why he doesn’t want Flint to know him – why he is terrified to grant that man a window into Christopher and paralyzed by the idea of opening the doors to Jandro. He was able to mold so much, with nothing in his hands that Silver is fucking terrified of what Flint could transform him into with anything more substantial.

Flint has the power to change Silver, while Silver’s only power has been in distracting Flint. Where Silver manipulates the man with motivations he already has, Flint instills motivations that have never before mattered – and that is indeed a terrifying power – so it is no wonder, really, that Silver looks to the ethereal to excuse it. It is straight up less scary that way