#also I saw someone on TV tropes go 'maybe Jimmy abused curly like he did with Anya' and it pissed me off immensely

[shelbswastaken]

I feel like all the people trying to come up with tragic Freudian excuses as to why Curly went easy on Jimmy are ignoring how horribly exploitative the Pony Express is and how willing they are to pin any fault on the crew.

Like this is a company that doesn't let anyone get more than five hours of sleep while on a job, literally docks the entire crew's pay if they don't get along well enough and whose strategy for dealing with mutinies boils down to "put a single gun on board, give the captain full right to fucking execute anyone who disobeys and pray they don't go mad with power", do you honestly expect them to react well if they found out someone on one of their ships straight-up raped a colleague?? No wonder Curly became such a conflict-adverse doormat, when pretty much every sign of difficulty or friction can result in a pay cut I imagine most people would behave the same