warsawmouse:

flintsredhair:

buildarocketboys:

I’ve read a few fics where Thomas is very well behaved at the plantation and sometimes talks to Oglethorpe about books and stuff. And while I’ve enjoyed those fics, I don’t see it that way.
I see Thomas, once he’s been removed from Bedlam and taken to the plantation and had some time to sort of semi-recover (in a place where, while he’s doing backbreaking work every day, he’s not locked in a cell and being tortured frequently in the name of therapy) being really, FURIOUSLY angry.
Thomas not being polite and pacifying, not holding his tongue about the injustice he and his fellow inmates are facing, because what good did that do him before? He TRIED playing politics and changing the world in a way that society deemed acceptable, and his own father locked him up in Bedlam for it.
So Thomas takes every chance he can to make things harder for his captors, to piss them off, make their work harder, complain and rile the other prisoners up with his words like only Thomas can. Because even if he can’t escape this place, even if he thinks he has nothing to escape to, thinks James and Miranda are dead – he’s not going down without a fucking fight.
Thomas Hamilton as angry and bitter and ready to fight as Flint is, but with less outlet for his searing rage.
Thomas Hamilton who, when James is brought in, in chains, after the initial blissful reunion, is as ready as James is, if not more so, to burn that fucking place to the ground.

#thomas hamilton#flinthamilton#I love my sunshine son#my feisty sunshine son#honestly Thomas is in no way docile or a pushover#and I understand the idea some people have that Bedlam might have broken him – in spirit and mind#but while Bedlam is obviously gonna be a trauma he carries for the rest of his life#I just see Thomas getting fiercely fucking angry about it more than anything#also he may not have James’s fighting skills but he is RIPPED from working those fields all day#between his words and James’s tactics#I’d say it takes them…a week at most to turn that plantation to ash#good fucking riddance

via @buildarocketboys

idk if the showrunners had any other motive besides a name drop in making this particular historical figure to be Thomas’ jailer, but -for the sheer plot potential- i am trilled by the irony of it.

here’s Thomas, released from betlehem into the hands of someone who holds many of the same ideas about rehabilitation of criminals that he himself espoused,
at the point when he -after experiencing a life on the other side so to speak- had been forced to re-examine his beliefs to say the least

i do think there were book discussions. i don’t think that would indicate Thomas is any less angry, radicalised, disilussioned, or in any form compliant.

he’s just using his best weapons

now this can be taken in several directions, depending on where you’d like to take this plot-wise,
but i think we’re due some extensive fandom meta on the “original” James Olgethorpe’s politics, (and i’d dearly like a stab at London-era Hamilton’s as well, while we’re at it)

See – here’s the thing though. The Oglethorpe in the show isn’t real-life Oglethorpe, and it shows. You’re right – real Oglethorpe seems to have been a good man, much like Thomas in wanting to create real change. Show Oglethorpe is… not. Not at all, because where real Oglethorpe wanted to give people a chance at a new life and reform England’s prisons, show Oglethorpe is basically providing a service for the rich and powerful wherein troublesome people disappear never to be seen again. Show Oglethorpe’s little speech about “human debris” makes my skin crawl because it doesn’t seek to address the problem the way that real Oglethorpe did. Show Oglethorpe is a detestable little man who is doing the opposite of what Thomas wanted in that he’s treating the symptoms of the disease without ever addressing the root cause of it. He’s allowing English society to forget the people it’s hurt and keeping those people locked up. That’s not creating a life for them. That’s not freedom – it’s a cage, albeit a cheaply gilded one. If show Oglethorpe were doing half of what real Oglethorpe did, he and Thomas would still have things to argue over, but it would be less an argument and more a discussion, whereas I think if Thomas and Oglethorpe as he stands in the show were to talk, nothing Thomas had to say would be anything he’d want to hear and vice versa. Real Oglethorpe was the founder of a colony and wholly opposed slavery, whereas show Oglethorpe is a slaver, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And I get why the show writers maybe thought it was a good idea to have him there, I’m certainly glad they found a way to have Thomas be alive, but I can’t shake the feeling that real James Oglethorpe would be disgusted by this approximation of himself and the perversion of his ideals.