pollywiltse

[pollywiltse]

The absolutely crazy-making thing about the Ronald bio is that he constantly says that his focus is exactly what I want in an André bio - his background, his family, the world he lived in, because that gives you a sense of who he was as a person, and one of the frustrating things about the other André bios is that they tend to not give you the sense of someone who lived surrounded and influenced by other people, which is bad in any biography because everyone is, even misanthropic hermit cranks, but it's especially absurd when we're talking about John André, the most social human being in the entire Western Hemisphere.

And then you see the nonsense Ronald actually goes around peddling. Fffffffuuuuuuuccckkkk.

[pollywiltse]

You know, when I said it was good to have an André biography from a British perspective, I meant because the author would have access to sources that it's harder for Americans to get to and because they would be less focused on the Revolution, and especially the Arnold plot, which is honestly less than a third of his life and hopefully more focused on his time before he came to America, about which less is known. I didn't mean "because the Brit would contort him into a Young Hero that bears minimal resemblance to the real John André and then claim his version like that because it was unaffected by American biases (and intellectual integrity, evidently)".

It's especially obnoxious because Flexner and Hatch, despite their issues (Flexner especially needed to chill. out) really did seem to be trying to write fair and intellectually honest biographies about André that weren't solely focused on the Arnold plot. And Flexner's book is actually a joint bio of the two of them, so he could be excused for not caring much about André outside of his time in America. But actually if you look in JSTOR at reviews of The Traitor and the Spy from when it was first published, while the reviewers don't seem terribly impressed about the Arnold sections (they don't think they're bad, just not anything new), they do talk about how Flexner found a significant amount of info about André's early life, including correcting the year of his birth. (I would say you can see this yourself from reading the Sargent and Tillotson biographies, but the Tillotson bio is so pointless I actually can't remember what it was like.)

Also the dude interviewing him is living down to my preconceptions about how little every historian who didn't specifically study André can be trusted when they talk about him.

Starting to listen to this podcast and already wanting to put my head through drywall. Good lord, Ronald, he was a desk jockey. He was an admirable, competent, intelligent person who was also a desk jockey because he was good at it and the army needs people who do paperwork too. (Also I have a feeling that he hated working in the family business because he didn't want to be a merchant, not because he hated paperwork.) He doesn't have to be a super spy to be "worthy of respect". (Honestly, managing to make friends with Henry "Paranoid and Hates Everyone" Clinton is probably a feat more worthy of respect than anything he could have done in battle.)

Also, the fact that he royally screwed up when it came to meeting Arnold doesn't mean that he wasn't generally intelligent and competent. (He evidently did have enough of a reputation for intelligence and good judgement that on the rare occasions he did do something silly, there are contemporary quotes from people going, "......Did he wake up and take stupid pills this morning?") He was doing something he had no training in and evidently not much natural aptitude. He's not required to be magically good at everything or be considered forevermore a pathetic loser. Especially because I suspect most people are not naturally good at what he was being asked to do.

I am so tired of people going "Well this person wouldn't be cool if they were like what they actually were like, so I'm going to make them completely different", especially since a lot of times what that person was actually like is perfectly worth reading about.

Also it's irritating that when he talks about "Monody for Major André" at the beginning he leaves out that Anna and John were really close friends for at least part of John's life (I suspect he did continue to write to her while he was in America), and she wasn't coming in from nowhere to make it all about her. (Also nice sexism there, especially since I don't think it was just her and her womanly lack of knowledge about war going "hdu hang him Washington you barbarian" - see also the inaccurate report of André's last words in whatever English paper it was that claimed he said his execution reflected badly on Washington. André Would Never, but a lot of people on the British side thought it.)

[pollywiltse]

Starting to listen to this podcast and already wanting to put my head through drywall. Good lord, Ronald, he was a desk jockey. He was an admirable, competent, intelligent person who was also a desk jockey because he was good at it and the army needs people who do paperwork too. (Also I have a feeling that he hated working in the family business because he didn't want to be a merchant, not because he hated paperwork.) He doesn't have to be a super spy to be "worthy of respect". (Honestly, managing to make friends with Henry "Paranoid and Hates Everyone" Clinton is probably a feat more worthy of respect than anything he could have done in battle.)

Also, the fact that he royally screwed up when it came to meeting Arnold doesn't mean that he wasn't generally intelligent and competent. (He evidently did have enough of a reputation for intelligence and good judgement that on the rare occasions he did do something silly, there are contemporary quotes from people going, "......Did he wake up and take stupid pills this morning?") He was doing something he had no training in and evidently not much natural aptitude. He's not required to be magically good at everything or be considered forevermore a pathetic loser. Especially because I suspect most people are not naturally good at what he was being asked to do.

I am so tired of people going "Well this person wouldn't be cool if they were like what they actually were like, so I'm going to make them completely different", especially since a lot of times what that person was actually like is perfectly worth reading about.

Also it's irritating that when he talks about "Monody for Major André" at the beginning he leaves out that Anna and John were really close friends for at least part of John's life (I suspect he did continue to write to her while he was in America), and she wasn't coming in from nowhere to make it all about her. (Also nice sexism there, especially since I don't think it was just her and her womanly lack of knowledge about war going "hdu hang him Washington you barbarian" - see also the inaccurate report of André's last words in whatever English paper it was that claimed he said his execution reflected badly on Washington. André Would Never, but a lot of people on the British side thought it.)

[pollywiltse]

I just had this epiphany which I hope to God I'm wrong about. Please please please tell me that D. A. B. Ronald did not logic out that André and Anna Seward must have met at a Shakespeare masquerade ball where John went as Falstaff from The Merry Wives of Windsor and Anna went as Julia from Two Gentlemen of Verona because of the bit in one letter where John tells Anna that he's worried that what he's just written will remind her of Falstaff's letters to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page and the fact that he calls her "Julia" in all of his letters respectively.

Because absolutely nothing about that paragraph had sources, and Ronald claims that those parts of André's letters are references to the supposed masquerade ball, even though I know that Falstaff bit is definitely not, because that letter is readily available online and I've read it, and also I am at least that familiar with The Merry Wives of Windsor to understand his actual reference. (And you can be too, if you spend five minutes reading the Wikipedia summary. But also people in my high school Shakespeare class did the scene where the title characters are like "lol Falstaff sent us the exact same love letter. Let us troll him elaborately".) (Also I swear to God I read somewhere that "Julia" was not an André-specific nickname for her and it was from a Rousseau novel, but I can't for the life of me remember where, so it may also have been from a batshit insane source.)

As hilarious as the mental image of a delicate nineteen-year-old dressed up as Falstaff of all people is.

The Daigler book sucked, incidentally.

[pollywiltse]

Oh lordy, based on the Google books preview of the Daigler book and checking what I think is the bit in Randall he's claiming as the source (p391-392), the "ample documentation to show that André and Peggy were socially close and probably friends but without any apparent romantic or physical interplay[30]" (Daigler, p 152-153) is Randall saying that André wasn't serious about any of the girls in Philadelphia (uncited) and he liked spending time with Peggy Shippen (uncited), "But when Peggy stepped out for the evening, it was more often on the arm of Royal Navy Captain Hammond, who later said, "We were all in love with her" .[35]

The source for note 35 is "Quoted in Flexner, Traitor and the Spy, 203." The pertinent sentence on page 203 is "Lord Rawdon considered her the handsomest woman he had seen in America, and Captain A. S. Hammond of the Roebuck remembered, "We were all in love with her"." This is the only citation for any part of that section. (The party on the Roebuck immediately following and also uncited is Flexner page 204 though.) There is no source for Peggy usually going out with Hammond, and I checked the indexes of Flexner and Hatch for him just to make sure it wasn't in there but uncited by Randall. It's not, and I'm not doing any more of Randall's homework for him because I also don't think there's any evidence about the claims he's making about André's or Peggy's feelings one way or the other (depending on how seriously you think the last Peggy Chew poem was meant).

(Also let me point out that Randall may be under the impression the only reason a man and a woman don't date is because the man isn't interested, but if Peggy was regularly going out with Hammond, that doesn't necessarily mean André wasn't into her. He may be nearly a real life Gary Stu, but that didn't stop him from falling in love with a girl who didn't reciprocate before. .......Who was also a beautiful and intelligent blonde 17-year-old who then went on to marry an older widower with several children. Type?

I'm not actually suggesting André went around suffering from deep unrequited Peggy Shippen-love since I don't really think he did. I'm just pointing out that the evidence Randall is citing doesn't actually show what he's claiming. Especially because he's not citing any evidence.)

But anyway, this is in no way, shape, or form "ample documentation" proving anything about André and Peggy Shippen's relationship and if this is what Daigler thinks counts as "ample documentation", I suddenly understand why everyone thought there were WMDs in Iraq.

Ok, fine, I think it's pretty clear the first part - they "were socially close and probably friends" - has supporting evidence (though he really could have just said friends). It's the second bit that's the problem, and also based on the comment on JAR I remember seeing (but I can't find again so maybe I'm insane), he was claiming there was ample documentation for that. Which there is not.

[pollywiltse]

Ok, let's go through Randall's take on André. I will attempt to not reference any new (and actually cited because sometimes he doesn't do that the bastard) research from the Ronald bio as something he should have known, since that postdates the Randall bio so it's not fair, but everyone else through Hatch is pre-Randall so they're fair game.

Actually I'm going to try to stick to Hatch because he's the soberest.

p 376 - "André's father, a wealthy Huguenot importer, divided his estate among too many sons to leave them any choice but to work. As a result, André seemed consigned to life in a London countinghouse, despite his aristocratic pretensions."

Andre's father had two sons. He left (this is in Hatch, and probably Flexner, but I only looked at Hatch) £25000 - which I'm pretty sure wasn't his entire estate - to be divided equally among his five children, three of whom were girls, when they came of age. (Flexner says each kid's share was equivalent to $100,000 and this was in 1953 money. The internet tells me $1 in 1953 is something over $11 today, so if this is right - and that if is doing some heavy lifting because I'm pretty sure monetary conversion across time periods isn't straightforward at all, each of the André children would have inherited the equivalent of about a million dollars. You can in fact live on the interest of a million dollars, just not an upper middle class lifestyle in a major city, especially if you want a family. Also holy shit £2100 - which is what André was planning to pay for a major's commission before the French captured Grenada - is a shitton of money.)

So the first sentence is a combination of wrong and misleading. As for the second, while you had to have a fair amount of money to buy a commission in the first place (see the previous paragraph), you did actually get a salary as an officer, and also André was getting income from the family business even after he stopped working in it, otherwise the loss of Grenada wouldn't have affected his income.

Also page 376 - "A brooding young man" - hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha - I'm sorry, I just laughed so hard I vomited. I see the problem here. You seem to be writing about a completely different John André.

p 377 - While it's very much not unbelievable that André spent at least some of his spare time wandering around the theater district, I'm pretty sure that this is actually taken from Hatch speculating about the many things André could have done as young man in London in 1768. This is not something we actually know happened.

more 377 - "his two older sisters" .....no. Unless this is a supremely badly worded way of saying "the older two of his three sisters" (I realize that's clumsy too, but at least it has accuracy going for it), but I'm not feeling that nice, especially because I know what's in our future.

even more 377 - and especially because he just claimed that Julia was André's nickname for Honora to "mask Honora's name from a world that was, in fact, not interested". It was actually Anna's nickname and I swear to God I've seen someone claim that it wasn't merely André's nickname for her, it was a name she adopted because of the Rousseau novel La Nouvelle Heloise, which I suppose I have to read now. I hope it's less wretched than Jennie Grenville. Unfortunately I can't find this in the Kairoff book and I know it's not in any of the André bios. As for the rest of that sentence, I'm perfectly aware that Anna and André, especially 19-year-old André, were very extra, but dude, you pulled that out of your ass entirely, and you kind of sound all BEC about him right there. Also we have no idea how André and Honora's engagement ended (tbh I have doubts about how official the relationship ever was), so it's incorrect to say her father broke it off.

finally made it to the end of 377 - lol did he just say André sailed for America right after purchasing a commission in the 23rd in 1771? lol he did. André, who spent all of 1771 in England and had promoted himself into the 7th months before he left England in the completely opposite direction in 1772, is very confused. It's like Randall is using Anna "he joined the army and immediately went to America because Honora married another" Seward as a source and getting her incorrect claims wrong.

To be continued......

OK, I'm looking at the Google preview and why the actual fuck is Daigler citing a Benedict Arnold biography for "a comprehensive look at André's background and personality" especially when it's not like we're hurting for André biographies out here?

Especially because I'm looking at the section of the Randall bio of Arnold where he's giving André's background and I already see an error on the first page. (Also I already know there's a section in this that would have made me throw it across the room if I hadn't been reading it on my computer.)

[pollywiltse]

OK, I'm looking at the Google preview and why the actual fuck is Daigler citing a Benedict Arnold biography for "a comprehensive look at André's background and personality" especially when it's not like we're hurting for André biographies out here?

Especially because I'm looking at the section of the Randall bio of Arnold where he's giving André's background and I already see an error on the first page. (Also I already know there's a section in this that would have made me throw it across the room if I hadn't been reading it on my computer.)

[pollywiltse]

I really really want someone from, like, the CIA to talk about what André and Arnold did wrong when they met in person, and I got so excited because Alexander Rose cites a piece from like the 60s by some CIA dude that sounded like it was just that, but then I found it online and it was just a basic recap of what happened.

I also really really want someone who works in counterintelligence to talk about whether or not Arnold was giving off a whole Soviet parade's worth of red flags even before he married Peggy Shippen, because both the British and then later the Americans were totally blindsided, but I have a feeling that people trained in modern counterintelligence might have been like, "yeah no, they probably should have seen that coming".

Actually I think what I'm looking for is the Kenneth Daigler book, though I'm pretty sure I've seen him comment on a Journal of the American Revolution post insisting that there's evidence that André and Peggy Shippen were never into each other, which I think is too strong a claim for what actually exists, so he may piss me off, especially because I see in a review that he said André had "poor judgement" and "lack of basic intelligence professionalism", which is completely true, but also he lived in the 18th century and had no training. I hope Daigler isn't going to hold him to the standards of someone from modern times who was trained and also has an extra nearly 250 years of intelligence mistakes to learn from.

I want "this is where he made a mistake", not "this is where he made a mistake and what a giant fucking moron he was". Especially since I think that while it's pretty clear he had no natural talent for what he was up to when he got caught, I also think that he was intelligent, conscientious, hard-working, and incredibly good at getting along with people, so with actual training, he'd probably end up being a perfectly competent intelligence officer, if not a genius-level one.

(Were Peggy Shippen and John André each other's One True Love? I highly doubt it. Were they fucking? Lol I would cheerfully bet money against it. Did they have a not particularly serious, non-exclusive flirtation that she and probably also he got over pretty quickly after the British left Philadelphia? I think this is a fairly reasonable assumption to make based on the little we know. The problem here is that every time I see people speculate on their relationship, it's like the two options are ONE TRUE LOVE COMPLETE WITH PREMARITAL SEX or NOT ATTRACTED TO EACH OTHER AT ALL. Like, come on, people, you live on Planet Earth and interact with other humans.

I assume.....

You have to have noticed there are more options for relationships than just those two. Like I have a literal Asperger's diagnosis and I spent half my life reading trash Edwardian novels where those actually are the only two options instead of dating actual humans and I still know that's not what it's like in the real world. What's your excuse?)

[pollywiltse]

I was semi-reading Valiant Ambition and honestly I feel like it's indicative of something wrong with modern society that so many people seem to be treating The Character Assassination - sorry, The Execution - of John André as a reliable source and a sane and reasonable assessment of André's character by someone whose hateboner isn't visible from space. It's not even like John Evangelist Walsh is an expert on the 18th century or the Revolution or André. It's like all these people prefer the idea of André as this manipulative-except-somehow-not-when-it-counts sociopath to someone who was, in fact, just that charming even though the evidence really points to him being just that charming.

I'm not just saying that because I'm an André partisan - 1. I've been in fandom for years; I know what unhinged hatred because some character wronged your fave looks like (where "wronged" doesn't necessarily mean actually did something bad as opposed being the canon love interest of the other half of your OTP or being more popular among the rest of fandom than your fave); 2. John Evangelist Walsh literally makes stuff up to make André look bad. Like I can give you specific examples where he makes claims that have no supporting evidence or conflict with the evidence that exists; and 3. I think D. A. B. Ronald's André-can-do-no-wrong version is equally bad, just in the opposite direction, and I would pay money to watch them cagefight. (Unfortunately Walsh is dead and if someone develops effective necromantic technology, I'm not wasting it on some obnoxious writer. I'm bringing André back.)

Tbh I feel like it was probably a warning about life in general that the two André books I know of that were published in the 21st century are this and the batshit Ronald bio. Like Flexner and Hatch aren't without flaws, but at least you get the feeling they're trying to be intellectually honest, even though Flexner needed an ancient Roman slave whispering in his ear "Remember thou art not clairvoyant or a novelist" the entire time he was writing. (Honestly I think even Sargent was attempting to be intellectually honest. He was just, you know, Victorian. The Tillotson bio is such a non-entity I can't even remember my assessment of it.)

I realize Philbrick's degree isn't in history, so you can sort of argue he doesn't count, but Richard Welch, who did the (disappointing, insufficiently proofread) modern Tallmadge bio is a literal history professor and he seems to have uncritically accepted Walsh's assessment of André as well.

I'm also confused why Philbrick (and this is actually kind of a Ronald problem too, except in a 4-d chess conspiracy theory way) seems to think that Arnold didn't care about André getting back safely. I think it's far more likely that neither of them knew what they were doing, that Arnold didn't realize that Joshua Smith was going to leave André partway through (because I think there's at least something of a modern consensus that if Smith had been with André, Paulding et al would have recognized Smith and not stopped them, but also if Smith was still there, André probably would have been less likely to tell them that he was a British officer), and that he overestimated André's ability to make it back to British lines in disguise. (I think for two reasons - one, that André clearly wasn't stupid, and two, I kind of have this theory that Arnold would have managed to make it back, because Arnold was a good field officer, which presumably requires the ability to think on your feet, but there's not really any evidence to think that was one of André's particular skills. And people are bad at realizing when other people can't do stuff that's easy for them. Also Arnold was better at threatening people than André.)

Like 90% of military (and political) history seems to be people in over their heads flailing desperately (plus personal drama), and that's probably a low estimate.

Also, is there evidence of Arnold being the unreasonably jealous type? Because I've read significantly less about him than about André, but honestly my impression of him when it came to his wives is that he'd literally have to walk in on them having sex with a lover to believe that they were cheating and then he'd probably cry a lot and wonder what he did wrong (and maybe then shoot the boyfriend, but I'm not sure he'd be fazed enough by one of Peggy's old flames that he would risk 20000 pounds and possibly his own skin by not making sure he got back safely, especially when there's really no reason to think that Peggy was into André at this point in time).

[pollywiltse]

I'm really sure there was a quote somewhere from a letter Robert Townsend sent to Benjamin Tallmadge where he said that he had never been as sad at the death of someone who was really just an acquaintance as he was at John André's death but I thought it was in the Welch bio of Tallmadge and I can't find it. Maybe it was in the Alexander Rose book? Which I would have to get out from the library to check.

I'm still not over Alexander Rose claiming that André was engaged to Anna Seward. Like you could have read any bio of him ever instead of the source you ended up using and you would have known that was wrong, dude. At least he doesn't claim she dumped him because he wasn't rich/upper class enough, I guess?

[pollywiltse]

Wait, back in the first season, why did André go, "A toast! A toast to draw attention to the terminally under-prepared Continental soldier attempting to infiltrate our ranks by pretending to be a Coldstream Guard whom I shouldn't want anyone else to notice because I have big plans for him and whom I have inadvertently seated within easy stabbing distance of the weirdo who's been eyeballing him the entire evening because he's using his fork wrong"?

His turn holding the Idiot Ball, I guess.

[pollywiltse]

The other big reason being that I'm not sure most people's key takeaway from having someone tell them they weren't going to kill them because the time for killing people was over blah blah blah and then shove an apple in their mouth - twice - would be anything about mercy. I do like the idea of Simcoe learning completely the wrong lesson from that interaction though.

Simcoe: "You know, Hewlett, you taught me a lot that day."

Hewlett: "I'm gratified to hear that."

Simcoe: "Yes. I learned that fruit-based humiliation is a more satisfying and effective way of defeating one's enemy than mere murder, because death is over quickly and suffering ends, but one's foe is forced to remember being helpless - humiliated - weak - with an apple in his mouth - for the rest of his life."

Hewlett: "........"

Simcoe: "Also I learned I like ball gags."

Hewlett: ".......I've made a terrible mistake."

Back in the first season it is incredibly....tactful of Anna to say that Simcoe's in Heaven when she and Abe think he's been killed.

Also while asking your friend to shoot him in the face may be arguably the most effective way of dealing with the enormous creepy stalker who lurks outside your room at night and holds a gun to your boyfriend's neck when he tries to break up a bar fight, normally people who aren't Simcoe don't escalate to murder quite that quickly. (Ok, Mary Woodhull might.)

[pollywiltse]

Incidentally Simcoe's relationship with Anna is one of the big reasons I don't believe it when the actor/writers are all like "Hewlett shows Simcoe mercy by not killing him and it makes Simcoe realize that mercy is its own kind of strength so now he can turn into the functional human being that was the real John Graves Simcoe see we didn't write ourselves into a corner."

Half his problems aren't because he believes mercy is weakness. Half his problems are because he doesn't understand that things like lurking outside your crush's door in the middle of the night are terrifying, not romantic. Reevaluating his moral code isn't going to magically give him social skills.

I also have this mental image of him in England going, "It would be wrong of me to murder the rivals for this woman's hand, but if I terrify them so badly that they run away and never come back, that's fine. See? Mercy."

Back in the first season it is incredibly....tactful of Anna to say that Simcoe's in Heaven when she and Abe think he's been killed.

Also while asking your friend to shoot him in the face may be arguably the most effective way of dealing with the enormous creepy stalker who lurks outside your room at night and holds a gun to your boyfriend's neck when he tries to break up a bar fight, normally people who aren't Simcoe don't escalate to murder quite that quickly. (Ok, Mary Woodhull might.)

[pollywiltse]

There was an Entertainment Weekly interview with JJ Feild back in 2016 where I really thought he said that Turn had decided that Clinton and André were in a relationship, but frankly given the expression on André's face after he hands him the glass, it looks more like André is reluctantly putting up with Clinton grabbing his ass for the sake of his career. (I guess this is actually "the Clinton pod person" and "the André pod person" since neither of them seem to have that much to do with their historical counterparts. Also almost all of the historical claims JJ makes in that interview are somewhere between "uh, not quite" and completely wrong.)

This would make me sad and uncomfortable if it was the real André, especially because he was really not in a position where he could piss Clinton off. He was a brevet major, not a real major, so if he ever left Clinton's family, he would get booted back down to especially junior captain (because he had gone down in seniority when he was playing musical commissions so he could stay in America and his brother could go back to England), possibly with a black mark against his name for the next time he tried for a promotion to major because London was still pissed he tried to jump the line the first time. (Clinton tried to promote André to actual major around the time he also was appointed deputy adjutant general, but Lord Jeffrey Amherst, who had to approve it, pitched a fit and said neither of the Andrés he could find - John and his brother - had been a captain long enough and Captain André wasn't getting promoted, whoever the fuck he was, so screw you.) There's a bit in Hatch where he quotes from one of André's letters to a family member (Hatch thinks his uncle John-Lewis) where he's explaining how the commission swap is good for William's career, but uh, oh yeah, it's kind of not so great for him: Should he fall from favor, or should Clinton be replaced, he could "stagnate", as he puts it, at "the bottom of the captains, with the retrospect of my disappointment for the amusement of my leisure hours." This is probably not unrelated to his poor life decision to go meet Arnold himself. (The bit where Clinton periodically tried to ragequit was presumably not doing great things for André's stress levels either, especially because it took months to find out either way. I'm semi-convinced that the reason André spent a significant part of the last year or so of his life being sick was caused by having to deal with Clinton. That or malaria.)

Fortunately the real André got promoted because he was intelligent, hardworking, freakishly good at getting people to like him, and if we're going to be completely honest probably a little bit of a brownnoser, not because he was having a sexual relationship of dubious consent with his boss. Also his career seems to have been on a basically vertical trajectory even before he met Clinton, and Grey was actively shoving him under Clinton's nose so he would be able to stay a staff officer when Grey went back to England.

But as for Turn!dré, the idea of that particular cliche being especially long-suffering while his boss sexually harasses him is hilarious, because André looking like he's about five seconds away from putting either his own or someone else's head through the nearest wall is one of the funniest things about the show.

("It's almost eight. At eight o'clock, he's going to walk in, and come up behind me, and smell my hair. I don't know why he wants to smell my hair. It's the eighteenth century and none of us have washed out hair in months and scented pomades can only do so much, especially when their base ingredient is lard. But he's going to smell my hair anyway. I hope he enjoys it. And then he's going to go sit down at his own desk and I'm going to open the bottom drawer, take out that bottle of wine, and have my fifth drink of the day. From the bottle. In plain sight. Because I don't care. There are his footsteps. Here he comes. Five, four, three...")

[pollywiltse]

I'm taking this class about TLS and all I can think about is how André and Tallmadge and everyone else who had to deal with communicating secretly during the Revolution would react to modern encryption.

"Wait, I don't have to do anything, it just happens in the background, and if it's set up properly no eavesdropper can understand it? Wait, you can set it up so even if someone gets the key in the future they can't decrypt it?"

Also, André: "I studied math in Genev- oo, not this math."

He could probably understand it though.

(Actually I think there are a lot of types of math that you can teach to some level in like middle school but are only introduced in college. I'm not sure if asymmetric encryption is one of them, but I think a lot of computer-related math is.)

[pollywiltse]

I feel like the writers were going for "Mama Bear" with Mary Woodhull but kept accidentally ending up with "kind of a sociopath", the same way Bram Stoker was going for "devoted helpmeet" with Mina Murray but accidentally ended up with "literally Batman". (There's one point in Dracula where it turns out Mina has memorized the timetables for, like, every railway in the UK in case Jonathan needs to take a train at the last minute for his job. That level of prepared is not a supportive wife. That level of prepared is Batman.)

[pollywiltse]

Back in the first season it is incredibly....tactful of Anna to say that Simcoe's in Heaven when she and Abe think he's been killed.

Also while asking your friend to shoot him in the face may be arguably the most effective way of dealing with the enormous creepy stalker who lurks outside your room at night and holds a gun to your boyfriend's neck when he tries to break up a bar fight, normally people who aren't Simcoe don't escalate to murder quite that quickly. (Ok, Mary Woodhull might.)