Madness is such a hard thing to define, which makes it such an easy label to affix to one’s enemies. Once it had been applied to Thomas, once our relationship had been exposed, defiled, scandalized, everything ended.
#I DON’T KNOW WHAT POSSESSED ME TO DO THIS!!!! what is wrong with me?!?! SO MANY THINGS!!!#>:’(#I think the scene with hennessey and alfred is probably the hardest scene for me to watch in the whole show#despite miranda’s warnings james was SO completely blindsided#he really had NO idea that the man who he considered a /father/ figure#was leading him to that room like a lamb to the slaughter#and he truly just realizes all at once that his whole entire world has just…ended#‘EVERYTHING ENDED’ he tells silver. everything. /EVERYTHING/.#watching him stand up against the wall and panic is honestly too painful. I feel like I can’t breathe every time I watch it.#[CROAKING SOUNDS]#on a semi-brighter but still Disastrous and Painful™ note#I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE THE SCENE ON THE RIGHT HAPPENED!!!!!#I WATCHED LITERARY LEGEND CAPTAIN FLINT COME OUT TO LITERARY LEGEND LONG JOHN SILVER OVER A FLICKERING FIRE ON ACTUAL TELEVISION#WITH MY ACTUAL EYEBALLS#what a time to be alive!!!!!!#I need a minimum of ten more Thomas Conversations 😡#if season four doesn’t heavily feature john lying awake at night tormented by questions such as ‘but what was thomas’ favorite soup’#then I don’t even know anymore folks @candlewinds
#well ok then#I’ll just go and quietly elmo on fire in the corner#the bit about James being led like a lamb to the slaughter is so true and so horrible#damn I need to go read that fic where he meets Hennessey again#and kills him#because fuck Hennessey#he doesn’t get enough hate#Alfred Hamilton was quite clearly a massive cockwomble who deserved everything he got#but Hennessey’s betrayal of James was far worse in some respects#he was supposed to be a father to him#he fucking called him ‘son’ seconds before destroying his life#and acting as though it was some sort of great mercy James should be grateful for that he wasn’t being hanged#ughhhhhh#and yeah that shot of him standing helpless and panicking#as his stomach drops through the floor#and the voices fade out and you can just hear his breathing#noooope#I cannot believe what this show created from a character who was barely more than a ghost in Treasure Island#oh god (@old-long-john)
Ok – first off, before I say anything – I hate what Hennessey did here. It was wrong. It was fucking awful, and James deserved better. Here’s the thing about Hennessey, though – he’s not just acting as a father, he’s acting as the commander of a fleet full of men, some of whom are, by sheer statistical probability, also gay as fuck. If he had defended James in any way in this scene, with Alfred right there ready to raise havoc, he’d have been condemning those men as well by raising the question of whether or not the Navy was harboring men the law looked on as criminals. I think Hennessey probably did everything he could to keep James from getting hanged, but at the same time, he had to look out for his men. He couldn’t afford to tell Alfred where to stick it, not even for James, because allowing Alfred to raise questions about the Navy’s enforcement of the anti-sodomy laws was to start a witch hunt that would have ended with the entire Navy firmly in Alfred’s pocket out of fear of being called a sodomite and hung for it.
Meg's Mumbles 