yeah, i’m sure whatever left these scars wasn’t ‘that bad’
im sure being branded was a right picnic
im sure this kind of work was a walk in the park
whatever left him “so goddamn afraid"? probably just him being dramatic. im sure when he talked about “the visit from the taskmaster in the dead of night” he was just exaggerating.
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Black Sails Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: James McGraw, Thomas Hamilton, Admiral Hennessey Additional Tags: Wherein fun is had with snow, wherein James and Thomas are fiends, and Admiral Hennessey has wicked aim with a snowball, bitty James and Thomas, continuation of Good Fortune Attend, AU, Pre-Canon, Found family fic, Fluff Fic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff Series: Part 2 of To Drive the Cold Winter Away Summary:
Thomas had always loved the sound of snow falling off of something. He loved the gentle silence of it. He loved the sound it made when it landed on more of itself, but most of all –
Most of all he loved the sound it made when it hit the back of Admiral Hennessey’s unprotected neck.
So I just realised why James is so insistent that Silver making people believe something doesn’t make it true. Because if it is true, then England making the world believe that he is a monster makes him one. In the same way that he believes England is not inevitable, he believes that the power of the stories that he and Silver both use has limits:
It is natural for men new to power to assume that it has no limits. Trust me. It does.
And I think that the root of their different perceptions of how important this is has a lot to do with the effect that the stories told about them had on them. Silver said he was:
No one. From nowhere. Belonging to nothing.
But the stories told about him made him a King; gave him power, respect, and love. Whereas James already had those things – Thomas calls him:
A rising star with a bright future in the Admiralty.
Yet because of the stories told about him and his relationship with the Hamiltons, he lost all of that.
Once it had been applied to Thomas, once our relationship had been exposed, defiled, scandalised… everything ended.
Yes, James does use stories like Silver does – but not against people he cares about. And he doesn’t ever seem to believe that other people believing his stories makes them real – he actually seems to reject that idea.
In season 1, Silver says:
Guilt is natural. It also goes away if you let it.
That’s obviously not true, and I think on a deeper level, even he knows that – but he seems determined to believe that it’s possible to just let go of things like that; guilt, his past, etc. which perhaps explains why he seems to think it’s possible that Billy, James and Madi could forgive him for what he did to them in s4. But they can’t let go of their past experiences – of what he did to them – and honestly, I don’t think that he can either.
Meg's Mumbles 