#BLANKY FINDING THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE…..

[mummer]

Watching Terror Ep 9 Need To Self Immolate Right Now Now Now Now Now

[majorxmaggiexboy]

No but in the language exchange au, let Blanky and Jopson find out about Amicia and Hugo's backstory. They'd be climbing over each other like crabs in a bucket trying to go dismantle the inquisition and find a cure for Hugo

[luminiera-merge]

i know i talk a lot about how blanky's stated to be the one character in the terror who never crossed over into horror and i just realised one more detail in. well his final scene. so he finds the northwest passage, right? and marks it on his map. and the fact that even in his last few hours, he STILL feels triumph in it

because the thing is, he can't tell anyone else where it is. he can't walk anymore, even if he DID crawl over to his other leg, get back up and walk back, tuunbaq would get him first. only he knows where the northwest passage is, and he can't tell anyone else. nobody else will ever know

and because he's not in a horror, he doesn't care. put, say, little or dundy in that position, they're going to feel despair at the fact that they found the information this entire voyage was made for and they can't tell anyone. blanky don't care! he found the northwest passage and he's gonna celebrate

[cinematicnomad]

1.09 is kind of insane bc you get all the pain and suffering of fitzjames dying, of hickey killing billy, of bridgens carrying peglar in his arms, mixed with goodsir and hickey facing off against each other...and then three back-to-back near-wordless scenes of goodsir finding the ring, blanky finding the northwest passage, and hickey's men eating billy...only to IMMEDIATELY follow it up with hodgens' insane nighttime catholic communion confession. like!!!

AND THAT'S NOT EVEN THE END OF THE EPISODE

[effemar]

finished watching the terror. favorite parts were as follows: blanky covered in forks, laughing at the northwest passage. "there are other empires". silna's carved ivory figures, the woman and the boat. edward little's last words: "close." worse than nothing. "i still find this place beautiful." the tuunbaq, a sacred creature, dies with lead on its teeth, poisoned by food from a thousand miles away. silna's face crumpling when she sees the butchered body of goodsir. unopened tins of food.

[darkfire359]

Thoughts on e8-e10 of The Terror

(The final entry in my posting saga)

I went in expecting expecting literally everyone to die on this "doomed" expedition. So in that sense, Crozier and Silna surviving meant that things weren't as bad as they could have been. But also... holy shit, Jopson's death was heartbreaking. The fact that he didn't know what happened to Crozier and so he thought he'd been abandoned by his captain was so incredibly tragic. And undeserved! Like I'd argue that Jopson probably dies in a worse way than basically anyone else in the series (maaaaybe not Sir John, but Sir John also got some karmic retribution for disrespecting Silna's dad and for putting everyone's lives at risk). So WHY did Johnson have to die alone, in pain, and thinking he'd been left behind by the man he cared about most? I am so upset by this.

Thoughts on some other deaths:

Goodsir's was not as sad for me when it happened—he at least got to kind of choose how it happened, and it seemed like he'd at least accomplish saving Crozier. Ultimately it seemed like it didn't do that much though, and Silna's reaction to seeing his body was also heartbreaking.

Fitzjames's was sad, but in a more heartwarming way? At least he got to die with someone he cared about next to him. I definitely understand people shipping Crozier/Fitzjames now.

Gibson's death I think I had spoiled a while ago, so my main takeaway was that it was less gay than I expected. Like, it was still reasonably gay, but I expected it to be very gay. The thing that gets me is that I'm not sure whether or not Hickey did it out of love (Goodsir had just explained to Gibson that he was going to die from illness eventually but that he would suffer PAINFULLY first) or pragmatism, because Hickey wasn't in the tent when Goodsir gave the diagnosis. Did he overhear it and want to keep Gibson from suffering? Or was it actually just that Goodsir said that Gibson couldn't haul? Characters having already canonically fucked does NOT stop me from wanting to analyze the homoeroticism of their subsequent scenes.

I feel like the Crozier/Fitzjames death scene and the Hickey/Gibson one were explicit parallels of each other, given that Crozier also mercy killed Fitzjames (massaging the poison down his throat) and Fitzjames tried to get Crozier to eat him. TBH I kind of feel like Crozier should have indeed done so—given that Team Hickey ended up finding Fitzjames's body anyway, it's likely that he got eaten regardless. Surely one wouldn't want other men to be the ones to eat their boyfriend, right? (Relatedly, Fitzjames saying "Use my body!" also sent my mind in directions away from the seriousness of the scene.)

Speaking of scenes where someone sadly and homoerotically holds their BF, the Bridgens/Peglar stuff was also sad and sweet. Probably if I rewatch the series and actually pay attention to them more earlier, it would be even more so.

Now I'm sad about Jopson's death again because he was all alone and abandoned. :'(

Also it's sad that Little died without ever being able to tell Crozier that he TRIED to rescue him. I initially thought that Crozier legitly wanted the men to go south, so the fact that he'd been misleading Team Hickey and had actually been counting on Little to rescue him was tragic.

Blanky’s death seemed like the happiest—he got to finally discover the Northwest Passage, while wearing his WTF fork outfit. Good for him, that badass deserved something cool.

My friend that I was watching with hates Hickey now and so was happy when he died. I was fully expecting Hickey's crazy murder schemes to come up at some point and so my opinion on Hickey didn't change that much. I do think it would have felt weird for the plot to *not* have Hickey die though.

Speaking of Hickey, some obligatory Hickeyposting:

I love how he somehow manages to be comic relief in addition to being the primary villain. I laughed my ass off at the reveal that he murdered a guy and stole his identity completely unnecessarily, out of a mistaken impression he'd get to summer in the Caribbean. Also the scene where he started singing while all of his men were panicking about the Tuunbaq was black comedy hilarious.

Way before this episode, I saw some shots of him with a noose around his neck. I assumed I'd been spoiled for his death scene. Then I saw those shots tagged as being from e8, and I figured that I probably hadn't been. I was correct! (Later I got spoiled on the real death.)

Crazy as he is, I feel like he had to have been like, "Wow, um, okay," when Crozier's approach to cannibalism was to cut off and eat Goodsir's raw, calloused, foot skin.

I didn't initially appreciate how TINY he is. There was a scene where he was standing in between Gibson and someone else and he was just soooo much shorter than both of them. So brave of the creators to canonically make him a top.

I expected him to kill more people. I think Gibson might have even been the only person he *directly* murdered in these three episodes? He definitely caused quite a lot of trouble though.

I think I got trolled into thinking that the Tunbaaq would die from choking on Hickey's evil evil soul, rather than choking on a literal chain. Whoops.

I was surprised that Hickey didn't bring up more audience-compelling points during his hanging speech. Or maybe I was surprised that Crozier was as straightforwardly good as he turned out to be? I think it might've been cool if Hickey had been able to call out Crozier on real flaws, rather than mistakenly interpreting his plan to resign and lead a team south as something selfish.

[nopickls]

anonymous asked: blanky + complementary colours 

send me a colour meme!

[slow-burn-sally]

(Almost) Everyone dies in The Terror, and that might sound pretty bleak. Ok... it is pretty bleak, but... each character dies in their own way, and each for their own reasons. Each death scene is different, and evokes subtly different emotions, and are often used to communicate different things. 

Sir John’s death feels like a punishment for his ignoring Francis’ warning and for not ordering his men to treat Silna and her father’s father’s body with more respect. 

Hornby’s death, collapsing from the extreme cold, helps hammer home the point that the cold is unimaginable in its intensity.

Evans’ death helps further the idea that the Tuunbaq is intelligent and messing with the crew. 

Morphin’s death helps support the plot point that the cans of food are poisoned with lead. 

Stanley’s death shows the audience how deeply disturbed he’d become, and serves as the catalyst for Crozier’s announcement that they must leave the ships and walk south. 

McDonald’s death was..... just pointless and horrible. Hickey should have aimed higher with the knife. I know you’re short, my dude, but come on. 

Irving’s death leads the crew to uncover Hickey’s crimes, and to prove to the audience how far Hickey is now willing to go to get what he wants and gain control of the situation. 

The deaths of the Inuit .... well... they fall into the McDonald category. They serve to illustrate just how dangerous Hickey has become, but they feel the most unfair out of anyone in the show, and are definitely among the most heartbreaking.

James’ death is soft and intimate and it drives home how close Francis and James have become. It is by far one of the best deaths in the show. James checks out early, avoiding a lot of pain, and dies in his friend’s arms in a lantern lit tent, private and secure, after being told that he’s admired by Bridgens and that there will be poems written about his life. Yes, we all love James, and I wish he didn’t die, but he got a comparatively good death.

Same with Henry Peglar. He died in a private place, attended to by his love, John Bridgens. 

Bridgens’ death is basically the height of romance. My bae died, so now I can’t go on. His dignified (if probably painful and protracted) death was Romeo and Juliet as fuck and I can appreciate that.

Collins’ death is another on the unfair list. Poor guy. At least he went out blitzed off his ass on coca wine. His death also illustrated the fact that the Tuunbaq is a soul eater.

Jopson. I can almost not talk about Jopson’s death. Super duper unfair. Basically just used to illustrate how much Jopson loves his captain and to have his heart broken into a thousand pieces before he dies. Lump him in with McDonald and Collins. Poor babieees.

Goodsir. A very upsetting death, but he goes out like a motherfuckin BOSS. His death is as productive and logical and poetic as it’s possible to make a death, and it’s probably among the top three or four deaths in the whole series. He checks out early just to help take down Hickey’s crew. Cinnamon Roll has spice!

Little’s death. Not as bad as it could have been. He at least gets to be with Crozier at the very end and doesn’t have to die alone. But still... poor meow meow. Poor Edward. 

Hickey’s death. Just pure entertainment. He deserved it. It was epic. It also has the added benefit of proving that he’s an egomaniac and not very smart. 

Blanky’s death. Hands down the best one in the show. Wrapped in forks. Smoking a pipe. Giving the Tuunbaq the world’s biggest proverbial two finger salute. He set it up himself and did it to help save the crew. Bonus: finding the Northwest Passage. Thomas Blanky, I applaud you! 

[thealogie]

BLANKY WAS THE REAL FINAL GIRL THE WHOLE DAMN TIME???? TFW YOU’VE LONG FORGOTTEN THEY WERE HERE TO FIND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE AND BLANKY CASUALLY FINDS IT???

[annecoulmanross]

In which the author does a philoTerrological Analysis, feat. color-coded Charts™️ [link to pdf version]

a fill for @theterrorbingo square “scientific observation” because God knows I spent more time on this than I have on certain things that I’ve called a Terror bingo square in times past and! It’s good! To sometimes! Push the boundaries of fanwork! (This is a meta, I’m just gonna call this a meta. Good? Good.) 

The data contained in these charts comes, in part, from this lovely post by @handfuloftime and this brilliant addition by @catilinas – I was inspired to make this because of a lovely message from @glorioustidalwavedefendor (thank you!) 

So, what on earth are these charts, and what do they say about AMC’s The Terror (2018)? Find out, below the cut! 

BASICALLY this chart is my way of visualizing every time the words “Name” / “Names” / “Named” (&c.) or “Call” / “Calls” / “Called” (&c.) are used in The Terror. There are two charts – on the left, the “Name” chart, on the right, the “Call” chart, both organized the same way: the rows correspond to episodes (episodes are only skipped when no variation of the relevant words appear), and the columns correspond to four “categories” referring to the object being “named” or “called.” These categories are:

Named Individuals (i.e. named in the show AND with their name known to – or immediately learned by – the character speaking.)

Unnamed Individuals (i.e. unnamed in the show – like Goodsir’s “Inuk man,” aka the historical Eenoolooapik – or unnamed with respect to the character(s) speaking, such as David Young is to Goodsir and Crozier in episode 10 – because they’ve forgotten – or as Silna is to Lt. Little in episode 3.)

Non-Human Things / Beings (i.e. ANYTHING non-human, from summer to God.)

Undefined and/or Groups (i.e. things that are less clearly separated out than the other instances of “named,” and “called,” which largely have a single person or thing as their object; this is a loose category and there are “groups” that sometimes slip out into the “individuals” columns.)

As I noted here, the issue of “who gets a name” breaks down into these numbers – pulled from the first chart, columns 1, [2] and (3) – ignoring column 4:

(3) [David Young]

(2) (God)

(2) James Fitzjames

(2) [Eenoolooapik]

(1) Edward [Little]

(1) The Barrows / (the Admiralty)

(1) Lt. John Irving

(1) William Wentzall

(1) (summer)

(1) Sir James Ross

I think it’s interesting that, if you remove unnamed individuals [David Young and Eenoolooapik] and non-human entities (God), Fitzjames is the only person about whom “name” is used more than once. BUT it’s Fitzjames using that word, “name,” and he does so twice in quick succession to reach that total – “My name… Even my name was made up, for my baptism.” Which makes “Myname Evenmyname” into a sort of proxy for “James Fitzjames” itself – equally artificial, like Odysseus’s moniker OuTis = NoMan. (And now, as per tate’s tags, “odysseus son of laertes snipes me with a bow and arrow” but at least I can die knowing that I, at least, have managed to mention the cretan lie.)

The other important thing to note about these charts is that they’re color-coded by who is speaking, so each character who uses “name” and/or “call” more than once gets a unique color (blue for Crozier, teal for Goodsir, purple for Fitzjames, yellow for Hickey, &c.) In the “names” chart on the left, what this shows us is that Crozier & Goodsir do most of the “naming” at the beginning and end of the show, and Fitzjames does most of it in the middle. (Crozier & Goodsir also never “name” already “named” individuals, whereas Fitzjames almost exclusively does so, and in the one instance where he “names” an undefined group, it’s because he’s lamenting that said undefined group is composed of “men” who “need names yet.” As tate said, “fitzjames is both named And called things because as much as his identity is “””deceptive”””, it doesn’t have another secret double-self, it only hides parts of itself.” Fitzjames lives in a world where things are neat and orderly and can be defined; he never once truly strays from this – though I think few of us think of him as fervently religious, the text does reinforce that Fitzjames sees the world as following a divine order: from “More than God loves them,” to “What in God’s name is happening here?” and back again to “More than God loves them,” before ending with that heartbreaking last, “God wants you to live.”)

OKAY time for the second chart aka the chart on the left aka the “calling” chart. 

This is based HEAVILY on this incredible post by @catilinas (though I did put back in the “all 12 times it is used to mean shout or summon” because I think some of those are…. shrimpteresting.)

The issue of “who gets called (both named OR summoned)” breaks down into these numbers – pulled from the second chart, starting with just people, i.e. columns 1 and [2], for now:

(4) Aglooka (or, well, the same two times twice, because the scene’s repeated)

(4) Crozier (Francis vs. Captain)

(3) Goodsir (Harry vs. Doctor)

(1) Hartnell

(1) Crozier’s head (“Sir John will have your head.” Dare I say…. caput Crozieris = caput Ciceronis? Sir Pompey will have your head... if he doesn’t lose his own, first.)

(1) [Silna’s tribe]

(1) [the old lad on the Prince Regent the doxies used to call ‘Six Pounder’]

(1) Fitzjames

(1) [another shaman]

(1) “A man called Cornelius Hickey”

As tate said, “i do think there is Something going on w the fact that ‘call’ is only used multiple times this close together for a) aglooka and b) this scene [don’t ever call me francis again], and Both are wrt crozier, and both involve him Not being / not wanting to be Called by his actual name.” There IS something going on, and I propose that the missing piece is that, just like w/ “names,” Crozier & Goodsir are tied together – Goodsir is to “Harry vs. Doctor” as Crozier is to “Francis vs. Captain,” but flipped: Goodsir wants the intimacy of a first name, while Francis (initially) rejects it; but they are both stripped of their titles regardless – by the end, Goodsir insists that, “If ever I was a Doctor, I am one no longer,” and Magnus Manson says to Crozier, “Mr. Hickey says I'm not to call you ‘Captain’ any more.”

AND next we tally tate’s 8 singular “Things” (aka column 3)

(1) watch duty

(1) David Young’s liver (“you wouldn’t call this cirrhotic”)

(1) Irving’s ‘discretion’ (“call it anything but help, mr hickey”)

(1) Inuktitut

(1) Nunavut

(1) “this thing [Crozier] calls truth”

(1) Victoria, Texas

(1) The Northwest Passage (“his own chilly shortcut to china, he calls it”)

To which we can also add “Things” that are “called” as in “summoned,” rather than “called” as in “named.”

(2) the Tuunbaq (“Haven't we been calling it right to us all day?” / “So call it with me now, boys.”)

(1) the cannon (“[Mr. Blanky]’s calling for the cannon [for to shoot the Tuunbaq]”) 

While I don’t have any additional thoughts on this collection of objects in and of themselves, I think we do need all of them to get the full picture of the chart esp. re: the color-coding of the speaking characters. Basically, when we look at who is using “call” repeatedly, it’s a 4-(or 5-)part narrative arc:

[Rae] (aka the translator, whom I’ve “named” John Rae for simplicity) & James Clark Ross (at the very beginning)

Goodsir, LOTS of Goodsir (color = teal, episodes 1-5)

Crozier, LOTS of Crozier (color = blue, episodes 5-8)

Hickey, running the gamut from “this thing [Crozier] calls truth” to summoning the Tuunbaq (color = yellow, episodes 8-10)

(The 5th part comes in when you take into account the repeated Rae & Ross scene in episode 10.)

So uhhhh that’s a classical ring composition folks: 

[Aglooka] 

“Goodsir, the Good Sir,” 

[Crozier] 

“E.C. who Is Not ‘a man called Cornelius Hickey’” 

[Aglooka]

The narrative backbone of this entire miniseries is the idea of what you are “called,” (Crozier) and the details are fleshed out by how you are “named” [or, perhaps, unnamed.]

[lesbianaglaya]

blanky finding a fucking northwest passage on his little suicide mission alone to die and marking it on his map and tossing off his false leg and smoking his pipe and laughing. scenes of television that make you feel fucking deranged.

[catilinas]

it’s time to think about the symbolic value inherent to telescopes

a telescope lets you see what is far away but that you can’t necessarily Reach. if you look through a telescope you can see ahead but become blind to what is on either side of you. telescopes let you see the future. a telescope is also a way of focalising events through a character’s perspective. Does One Really Need To Prove That Telescopes Are Symbolic? last time i rewatched the terror i made a list of what i’m fairly sure is Every Single Telescope. Here Is That List:

1 - collins watches terror do some signalling. about Ice

1 - crozier watches erebus do some signalling. about Dinner. these two telescopes are a pair! you could say that they focalise each ship’s view of the other’s priorities, especially since this is the Start of the First Episode

1 - collins (again) watches the boat approaching erebus with young on it. when erebus gets jolted by ice in the propeller He Drops The Telescope. what does the Disruption to collins’ sight mean? saw a post talking abt the idea that orren’s corpse is a hallucination and that seems Related also

1 - hartnell borrows the telescope tozer borrowed from irving to look at some ice in the dark. what (if anything) he sees is left open. first appearance of The Irving Telescope!!! this is also at the same time as young seeing/hallucinating things, so there’s a contrast between sight of supernatural and lack of sight of a natural explanation. maybe they are using the wrong methods for seeing the future. or maybe bcs it’s irving’s telescope (=view more metaphorically?) and since he thinks Ghosts Are Fake, hartnell wouldn’t see anything ghost-adjacent

1 - blanky and crozier look at some ice. i like this one bcs telescopes are for seeing the future but they are talking about the past. does this equate the future and the past and mean you should read the current expedition in the past failed one? Yeah Probably

1 - fitzjames looks through a telescope at the ice they are now frozen in. when franklin comes on deck he Stops doing that. franklin prevents fitzjames from being able to see what’s on the future (bad times)

3 - crozier watches franklin being About To Get Killed. the telescope freezes onto his eye. this reminds me of franklin’s line about crozier seeing them “already in need of saving,” since crozier is now. literally Seeing him, in need of saving. also if a telescope injures you that means the future will probably hurt. also i think the Circular focalisation here can definitely be compared to franklin’s perspective before falling down the fire hole, which is a kind of telescope that shows you the underworld.

7 - the Whole Scene with irving and the telescope. sharing names and then food and then, via symbolic telescope, perspectives. unfortunately there is nothing to See through this telescope bcs hickey has run off to do crime: irving and kooveyook see Nothing because they’re about to die and so their futures are now Empty; irving seeing Nothing is also relevant bcs he Doesn’t see hickey when he Really Should. which you can then compare to a) when hartnell Doesn’t see anything through the same telescope, but maybe should have, and b) when irving (no telescope though) sees hickey with gibson (does he See though?) when he maybe Shouldn’t Have.

8 - shot of the telescope by the bodies of the dead netsilik. this is the only telescope i’ve noticed that is There but not Used. dead people can’t see the future, but also it being Unused means nobody is seeing the murdered netsilik’s Perspective in the following scenes

9 - i can’t remember who says “we’re glassing every horizon.” no actual telescope :(

9 - blanky finds the northwest passage! this is the one where seeing the future doesn’t mean Getting to that future. knowing a thing but not being able to do anything about that thing is a lot like recording a thing for an audience of You Only (and also…… the viewer), which is the same as blanky’s memorialisation via map

9 - telescope no.12: the confusing one. maybe ice is melting through a telescope but maybe that is a lie but maybe it is Not a lie but also being used in a lying way like i admit i don’t really get this one. telescope machine broke

10 - last view through a telescope is an approaching tuunbaq which is like. the futures coming at you really fast and it’s pissed off. hickey does not realise how pissed off this future is at him specifically; he can see it but fails massively to know what it Means. maybe he would know ore about seeing the invisible world and all that if he hadn’t skipped that speech to shit in gibson’s bed.

another thing to Consider about this list is that almost half of the telescopes are in episode 1! like it makes sense to have none between 3 and 7 (It’s…… Dark. metaphorically also while crozier is off doing his katabasis) but that is a Lot for one episode. personally i think it’s part of the set of Omens in episode 1. but who knows!!! also please tell me if i missed any telescopes...... i want to Know

[luminiera-merge]

thinkin about the ending to the terror again (ie the final shot of we are gone) like

honestly, this was the best option for crozier, and that's the most heartbreaking thing. a lot of people interpret his expression as peaceful, but i always interpereted it as haunted. there is no way back for him. even if he goes home, there's nothing.

-all his friends and crew are gone

-even today, people believe in "captain goes down with the ship" as absolute. he would be scorned by the public for being the last one standing. remember how hickey got support by spinning the narrative that crozier was going to escape by himself, abandoning his crew? i really doubt he'd be able to dissuade the public from believing he did that

-his stories wouldn't go down well. remember how john rae, despite being the one to confirm the fate of the terror and the erebus, was smeared just for reporting the cannibalism? crozier would have had that SO much worse

-nobody would believe anything about tuunbaq. none of it

-the families of the dead would very likely be out for his head, as a matter of fact. he didn't have the favour fitzjames had

-tbh, who'd even want to hire him? he's an older man who may not even be considered reliable anymore. no way he'd find work after that. only blanky knew of the northwest passage, and crozier didn't really gain any vital information about the northwest passage

-cracroft would NOT want him back after coming back without sir john.

-as a matter of fact, lady jane's inevitable wrath would definitely have made him wish he'd stayed in the arctic if he'd gone back. she would absolutely have ended his career if none of the above didn't

[thomasblanky-moved]

theres something poetic about blanky being the one the find the northwest passage but i cant quite put my finger on it

[septembriseur]

A comprehensive theory of The Terror, pt. III

One of the most central themes of The Terror is the importance of language and, most specifically, of names. This theme begins to assert itself in episodes two and three, where we are introduced to the idea that Crozier is one of three men on the expedition who can communicate in Inuktitut, and also see the rise to prominence of two characters for whom names are a complex matter: Silna and Hickey. I want to deal with Hickey (or rather “Hickey”) separately, as IMHO his lack of a name is inseparable from his role as an embodiment of chaos. However, I will talk about more general questions of language and names here.

Crozier “gains” a language (demonstrating his command of Inuktitut at the end of episode two) just before we begin to see that some members of the crew are losing language (midway through episode three). After Franklin’s death, Morfin begins to sing “The Silver Swan,” but stops when he realizes that he cannot remember the words. This is the first sign of the lead poisoning that will gradually begin to afflict various members of the crew, a symptom that becomes fundamentally tied to the loss of humanity— particularly in the late moment when Fitzjames, writing a postscript to the note at the cairn, cannot remember the month in which Franklin died (though he knows the date), or in the later moment when Goodsir, just before his suicide, finds that he cannot remember David Young’s name. (Compare this forgetting to Crozier’s delirious recitation of the crew’s names while he is recovering, an act of insistent remembering, or Goodsir’s determination to learn Inuktitut from Silna, which is linked to his awareness of her as a human being and his longing to know her as one.)

Obviously, language is foregrounded in another element of the story: the Netsilik shamans who have the keeping of the tuunbaq cut out their own tongues and offer them to it. That this act is specifically tied to language is suggested by the fact that when Silna’s father dies, before she has cut her tongue out, she attempts to stop speaking— a choice that leads the crew of the expedition to refer to her as “Lady Silence,” or simply “Silence.” In fact, it seems like her inabiiity to stay silent, and her reluctance to cut out her tongue, may be part of why she is unable to successfully take control of the tuunbaq. So there is something about speaking that renders one incapable of performing the duties of a tuunbaq-keeper, and I wonder if this has to do with the identification of language with humanity. One of the powers traditionally associated with the shaman is the ability to move between forms (specifically into and out of animal forms) and it seems like the tuunbaq-keeper is expected to give up the role of a human in order to be able to commune with the tuunbaq and, perhaps, prioritize its survival over that of humans. 

Because the shaman is meant to balance and sustain the health of the whole Arctic ecosystem, right? When Silna meets with the Netsilik man about the catastrophe, his primary concern is not how to kill or remove the men of the expedition from King William Land, or even how to save his village, but how to mediate with the tuunbaq to ensure that balance is restored throughout the island. This makes sense on a purely practical level: it’s not about a hippie-dippie idea of Indians loving the Earth, but about the fact that the Netsilik live in an extremely precarious environment and know that their survival as a people is dependent upon ensuring that everything else in that environment continues to survive. 

The tuunbaq, too, is part of that environment (which, arguably, is why Silna faces such serious consequences for “losing” it). I think this is important to emphasize, because one of the central ideas in The Terror is that the Netsilik know what the tuunbaq is, while the Europeans do not have a name for it. For the Europeans, it is a thing that is not-a- animal-yet-not-a-man, and thus something that completely disrupts their way of categorizing/naming/ordering the world. Their attempt to import or impose their world-system onto the Arctic fails, and their inability to give a name to the tuunbaq (and therefore allot it a proper place in the world) is symbolic of this. They can’t name the tuunbaq, and so it destroys them. As the story progresses, they can’t name anything at all: the whole world collapsing around them as the result of this hole punched in the system; the slow realization that they do not know the positions and relations of anything around them, that they do not know their own positions and relation.

(A scene that illustrates a related point, interestingly, is the one in which Goodsir attempts to explain their mission to Silna in episode four. “We’ve come here to find a way through to China,” he says. “And India. A victory for the Empire it would be, to find a way. A passage. A Northwest Passage. For our economy. For trade.” You can see the futility creep across his face as he realizes how meaningless these words are in Silna’s world. They don’t refer to anything. They have no use.)

Only Crozier is ultimately able to find a harmonious role to play in the Arctic— something that seems to happen because two interlinked qualities: his understanding of right relationship, and his ability to speak Inuktitut. I say that these two things are interlinked because we see them connected in three characters: Blanky, who also understands Inuktitut, sacrifices himself to protect his shipmates and is rewarded with a glimpse of the Northwest Passage, and Goodsir, who begins to learn Inuktitut from Silna, not only is the most consistent exemplar of moral behavior but also likewise sacrifices himself. 

Interestingly, although it would seem consistent with Goodsir’s behavior to imagine that he has certainly tried to learn Silna’s name (and we do see him sort of gesture feebly at her in an attempt), it is Crozier that we are shown asking her name, and it is Crozier who is eventually granted it upon his integration into a Netsilik group. The ability to name her thus comes simultaneously with other kinds of information: how to behave, how to live. In fact, this point is foregrounded in the fact that the lesson of her name is almost immediately followed by the lesson that she must leave Netsilik society, because she has lost the tuunbaq, and “this is the way.” This is the right way of behaving. “Everyone accepts this.” To be able to name things means to know how to act towards them, and among them.

Of course, this raises interesting questions about Hickey— a character who, ultimately, never has a name. But he deserves his own post.

[bro-stoevsky]

Are you ready to hear me lose my absolute mind over my favorite scene as a part of the deeply enabling @the-terror-appreciation-week​ 

it’s Franklin’s funeral from The Ladder! Which means I’m going to talk for 100 years about the lead-up to this  and the scene itself. Didn’t you do this yesterday? You may wonder. Not these scenes I didn’t. Yesterday I talked for 100 years about different scenes, which makes this OK, and normal. Even fun and lighthearted.

There are a lot of great scenes in this show obviously but this one will always be my favorite, it’s so laden with meaning and warring perspectives. That it’s Crozier reading a service Franklin wrote in much different circumstances than he imagined is especially significant!!! Delicious, delicious significance. 

Franklin probably intended it to be comforting, full of reminders that God is close by and always watching them, as well as inspiring -- Jacob’s Ladder is, after all, a story about God keeping his promise to Jacob’s ancestors. It’s easy to see Franklin intending that to prick everyone’s spirits with the crazy understanding that the Northwest Passage is somehow their right to discover; something owed to them that will soon be delivered. Remember in David Young’s funeral he did the same thing where it was like “sad about him but one step CLOSER TO THE PASSAGE” 

But in the context of its delivery -- a Franklinless world where, after the funeral, no further attempt or mention is made of finding the Northwest Passage -- it does an incredible job of amping up the dread. The parallels between Bethel and their unplotted location (as Franklin puts it, “no house, no hearth”) are exaggerated, as is the symbolic nature of the ladder. This is, after all, a story from Genesis, when God had approximately zero problems chatting with people any old time, one on one, physically present, while they were awake. But the ladder, the thing that leads away from the “terrible place” Jacob is stuck, is only a dream. And that’s the part that becomes most significant in the context of this scene which I want to print on a silk rug and roll around on like Becky Sharp in that scene in the Reese Witherspoon Vanity Fair movie where her rug unrolls on the street and she just rolls around on it. Just. Like. That.

This scene, as well as the preceding episode, does a great job of making it clear that Franklin’s viewpoint of destiny and metaphor and Biblical parallel is direly unsuited to the situation. The listeners feel that they are actually in a terrible place, geographically and in terms of the options remaining to them. And they need an actual way out. Not a dream, not the unseen but immediate presence of the invisible world. The disparate dawning of this understanding is apparent on some of the guys faces. 

Let’s take a look at what everybody’s doing:

Crozier is sad but also he’s focused on reading. Fitzjames is sad but he keeps looking at Crozier like u better fuckin read it good

Collins losing hope, Le Vesconte regular sad, Stanley inscrutable: 

Blanky stoic, Jopson mentally cheering on Crozier who is doing a great job reading that Victorian handwriting: 

Fitzjames overcome by the beauty of Franklin’s description of the known world: “with its rocks and moon.” Poetry, he thinks. The world does have rocks and a moon. Chi renda a me quell'uom?

Crozier’s voice cracking thinking about “all the people we know, have ever known, and ever will know:”

Hickey getting ready to shit in Gibson’s bed and presumably wipe his ass with Gibson’s glove:

Do I wish this scene was not cut through with Hickey shitting in Gibson’s bed? I do. Do I know what it means? Not really? Some kind of contrast between the baseness of Hickey’s actions and the high-mindedness of a funeral, showing the ends of the spectrum of humanity? Too visually boring to just show the funeral? Shocking us with how much Hickey really does not give a single fuck about society’s rules and virtues? Foreshadowing the inevitability of Gibson’s similarity with the rats he described as “swimming in our filth....devouring each other”? What are birds?

We Just Don’t Know. 

Now because this is TV and the episode is called The Ladder, let’s take a look at all the ladders in the episode:

(1)

Concluding the plot of Silna’s father from the previous episode, we see the ghastly sight of the fire hole where Franklin has instructed his crew to take the man, in a horrifying contrast to the “mercy” he showed in a previous burial ashore. All the other dead after they left open water have been stored on the ship. Into this fire hole a piece of ship’s rigging extends, presumably (?) in case anyone fell in during its maintenance:

Either way it’s clearly a ladder, and it is clear where it leads: 

Franklin takes this ladder down with him, as well as the bucket of coals they used to keep the hole open:

(2)

I’m pretty sure this is just an innocent ladder, but nevertheless, it does scoot by behind Irving and Hickey having their watercolors conversation: 

(3)

Listen I have no idea what in absolute Fuck Hickey is saying at the best of times, but his little “you don’t know what you’re missing” speech to Gibson in their breakup talk is interesting: 

I can’t think how this is contributing substantively to the motif. It’s more likely that he’s taken Irving’s suggestion of “climbing exercises” to heart and his actual plan to relieve the boredom of being stuck in the ice while simultaneously being E.C. Hickey is to.......somehow worm his way to the top? of the expedition? but it is interesting. 

(4)

Listen I know this isn’t a LADDER (what if I didn’t and you were like........do we tell her.......) but it is the closest we come to acknowledging what is ACTUALLY needed -- a physical way out. Whether you call that a ladder, a staircase, or a road, Crozier Gets It:

This post has been sponsored by theladders.com: Exclusive Job Matches in HR, Sales, Finance, Tech & Marketing. Approved Recruiters. Not really!

ANYWAY this is my favorite scene. I love it. I love it to SMITHEREENS. 

Addendum: 

Here is the full text of the service, proving once and for all why I’ve never been good at transcribing (I can’t punctuate), but here for your reading pleasure: 

“In his flight, Jacob lighted upon a certain place and tarried there because the sun was set. He thought it a terrible place. No house, no hearth. But that night he dreamed: a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reaching to the heavens. Behold, the Lord stood above it, and He said: 'I am with thee and will keep thee in all places wherever thou goest, for I will not leave thee.’ And in Jacob’s dream he saw the invisible world, companion to the known one we perceive, with its rocks and moon, its ice fields and brute animals, and all the people we know, have ever known, and will ever know. So complete it would seem to leave no room for its invisible brother world which is yet more immense than the one we see. For in this world dwell the angels who keep us, the Lord who will not leave us, and the departed, who though cleaved from the frame that carried them, yet live. The newest to their ranks our bright captain, Sir John. Who in the virtue and strength of his every gesture showed himself the elect of the Lord, destined to reign with Christ forever. The invisible world of spirits, though unseen, was present for Jacob -- not future, not distant, but present. And it is now, and it is here, among us if we open our eyes and see His truth amongst us.”

And HERE is the paper Crozier was reading from -- notably it is missing “the Lord who will not leave us” and the stuff about Franklin being the “elect of the Lord” etc etc -- though the latter stuff is probably something Franklin wrote anyway, just on a new page.