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sharkselfies · 3 years ago

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The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 1

Since some folks requested it on Twitter, I’ve started transcribing The Minds Behind The Terror podcast episodes! Below the cut you’ll find episode 1, where showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh talk to Dan Simmons, the author of the novel The Terror, about episodes 1-3 of the show. They discuss Simmons’s initial inspiration for writing the book, the decisions they made to adapt it into a television series, and the depictions of some of the characters such as the Tuunbaq, Hickey, and “Lady Silence.”

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 1

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Dave Kajganich: Hello! Welcome to Minds Behind The Terror podcast. I’m Dave Kajganich, I am a creator and one of the showrunners of the AMC show The Terror, and I’m here in the studio with executive producer and co-showrunner Soo Hugh.

Soo Hugh: Hello!

DK: And we welcome today the author of the sublime novel The Terror, on which our show is based, author Dan Simmons, calling in from Colorado. Welcome, Dan! Hi!

Dan Simmons: Hi Dave, thank you.

DK: So let’s start with the very beginning. This was a mystery from actual naval history that you decided to transform into a novel that was crossed with Gothic horror. Can you tell us a little bit about where you got the idea from this, how you went about preparing to write it, anything that can give us insight into how you blended all of these remarkable genres into this incredible book.

DS: I’ve known since I was a kid that I wanted to tell a story about either the North or South Pole. And the reason is in 1957, 58, when I was very young, actually I was just a fetus, they had the international geophysical year, and that really caught my imagination. Now the international geophysical year saw cooperation between American and Soviet scientists, it was the height of the Cold War, that’s the first time they submit(?) a permanent base at the South Pole, and I fell in love with Arctic stories. I had one book left on a book contract with a publisher I really liked, and we hadn’t decided what that book was, and I wanted to write a scary story about the Arctic, in this case the Northern Arctic, and that happened because I was doing a lot of research on Antarctica and just couldn’t figure out what the macabre, Gothic, scary part would be. I wanted to put it in, but I didn’t think they’d go for, you know, an eight foot tall vampire penguin.

[laughter]

DK: You might be surprised!

DS: There was a footnote on a book I was reading about the Franklin Expedition, which I had never heard of, and I decided that’s what I was gonna write about, and it had a tremendous amount of the unknown that I could fill in, that’s what novelists love. And so I told my editors excitedly that this was what I was gonna do, I would call it The Terror after the HMS Terror that went with the Erebus, got stuck in the ice, all the crew disappeared in history… And they said no.

[laughter]

DS: ...it was the first time the publishers did that. I said, “Why not? I think it’s gonna be a pretty good novel.” And they said, “Look, nobody’s interested in a bunch of people that’ve been dead for 150 years.”

SH: That sounds like some of our meetings.

[laughter]

DS: So I did what maybe you do, in such a meeting, I just thanked them, and I liked them all, and I had a good dinner(?) and I said goodbye, and bought back my last book on the contract and went out and wrote it on spec.

SH: Well why don’t we take a step back, Dave, and why don’t you tell us about how you found Dan’s book and that experience?

DK: Sure! Dan, you might remember some of these steps from your side of it, which is that originally this was auctioned by Universal as a feature, and I sort of tried to get the rights and was a bit too late, and tracked them down to the producers at Universal who were running the project and got myself hired as the screenwriter for a feature adaptation. By the time I was ready to start actually committing an outline to the paper, Universal had let the rights go because there was a competing project. It was interesting to sort of rack up reasons why people wanted to make it but didn’t feel that they could pull the trigger, and we were so grateful when AMC finally called us back and said, “Look, we’ve figured out a model where we can do this as a limited series,” it really felt like ten episodes was a great length for this, because we could blend genres in a way that, you know, we could unpack sort of slowly, more slowly than a lot of shows would’ve done, and drive the plot as much as we could, like the novel, with character choices and decisions as opposed to just horror kind of entering the frame and taking over for one set piece after another. So it was a long journey, getting this to AMC, but at the end of the day I think we found the right home for it.

DS: I can no longer imagine a two hour version, feature film version of this story, and I can’t imagine a second season of this story, I think it was just right.

SH: It does feel like we did a ten hour cinematic novel.

[audio from the show]

Crozier: Only four of us at this table are Arctic veterans. There’ll be no melodramas here--just live men, or dead men.

SH: Dan, Dave and I talk about how addictive the research gets for this when you start going down the rabbit hole, how did you approach the research?

DS: I think most novelists run into that, but since I write a lot of quasi-historical novels, at least set in history, I get totally addicted to going down the rabbit hole. Readers say, “Well, Simmons’ book is too long, and the descriptions of things are too exhausting,” but I watch your characters go on deck and there are all the things and views and everything that I tried so hard to describe and then people tell me, y’know, “talky, verbose,” and in print I have to do it that way, but you just pan the camera a little bit.

DK: You have words, we have images! For every thousand of yours, we get one!

DS: Yeah.

SH: But I remember this passage in your book where it talks about all the different ices, and you vest it with so much psychological import. We talk about that passage a lot in the writers room, it was one of our highlights, of this is how you do great descriptive writing.

DK: And you made so many parallels between things like the environments of the ships and characters, you built a kind of code book for the show without realizing you were doing it, which is making visual metaphors out of a lot of these things that would normally just be exposition or historical detail.

SH: Well especially between Crozier and the ship, I mean when you hear about Crozier’s relationship with Terror, and you have so many amazing passages about, you know, the groan of the ship and how it, y’know, and you cut to a scene with Crozier and how you feel that the bones of Crozier is embedded in the ship, and we really took a lot from that.

DS: Well I noticed that on one of the episodes where Lord Franklin [sic] is trying to get back in touch with Crozier, you know, trying to be friends with him again, I think it’s a brilliant episode you guys wrote.

[show audio]

Franklin: You’ve succeeded in avoiding Erebus most of the winter.

Crozier: I’m a captain. I’m--I’m peevish off my own ship. I leave it and I hear disaster knocking at its door, before I’m ten steps away.

DS: And that was beautifully written, that. You got so much of Crozier right there.

DK: It was a pleasure to write these characters on the backs of your writing of these characters, because you really--I mean, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, as you know, from having written, you know, a whole long string of historical books, is to make these people’s psychologies feel as modern as they must have felt in their day, while still being able to articulate some of the blind spots of being from the eras they were from.

I’m curious from sort of a history nerd point of view, if people watch the series and like the series, and read the book and like the book, and want to know more about this expedition, what’s the first book about the Franklin Expedition you would point people to? What was most helpful or most interesting in your research?

DS: I apologize, I can’t think of the name of it, but it’s a collection of stories about both the South and North Pole, and so it’s a short section on the Franklin Expedition, but it didn’t make mistakes, and most of the other books that I read, uh, keyed, and videos for that matter, like PBS did a story about the Franklin Expedition, but they keyed off a 1987 attempt by several doctors to figure out what happened to the crew, and they exhumed three crewmen’s bodies from the first island where they stayed the first winter, and those crewmen had only been on the ship a couple of months, but they decided because of a high lead content that the lead had poisoned them and then made them stupid, and made them paranoid and everything, but they didn’t compare that test of lead with any background people in London at the time, and later they did, so I didn’t believe the lead thing.

DK: Well that’s the fascinating thing about a mystery with this many parts and pieces, kind of in flux, is, you know, you can create all kinds of competing narratives about it, and what’s fascinating about writing a fictional version is you can’t have that kind of ambiguity, you have to make a decision. I think people will enjoy very much ways that the show and the book have a similar point of view, and also ways that they diverge in their points of view, because there are so many ways to tell this story--

SH: Well you know how much we invest responsibility in the audience as well, right?

DK: Sure.

SH: In terms of your book and our show as well, we’re not against interpretation, that there’s a responsibility on the audience’s part to put together--we’re not gonna hand feed them. There’ll be some people who put more of an onus on Franklin, and others who would say, “You know, if I was in that position, I probably would’ve made the same decision,” “Oh no, this definitely killed the men,” “No, this killed them!” and that dialogue is exciting, you know, when you read fans talk about your show and your books and really smart, insightful ways.

[show audio]

Franklin: Would it help if I said that I made a mistake?

Crozier: You misunderstand me, Sir John, I--I only meant to describe why I brood, not that I judge.

DS: I don’t worry about who or what my reading audience is. People ask me about that and I don’t imagine a certain reader. But I’ve always tried to write for somebody who’s more intelligent than I am. My perfect reader would be just smart as hell, speak eight languages, you know, have fantastic world experiences, and I want to write something that will please that person, and I think your show does the same thing.

DK: Well we were--that was our motto! We wanted to be sort of the dumbest members of our collaboration and there’s a sort of horrifying moment when you realize that’s come true.

[laughter]

[show background music]

DK: Tell us a little bit about why you made the decisions to tell the story in the order you told it, and whether you sort of felt like there was anything from the way you had told it that we were--or a missed opportunity. We’d love to know sort of what your experience of that was.

DS: I don’t think there were any missed opportunities in terms of not adapting my way of telling it, and I can’t remember all the reasons for why I broke it down that way, some of them were just very localized to, you know, when I was writing that particular bit. But I do know that it gains a lot by being told chronologically the way you’re doing it, so for me that seems now the logical way to tell it again.

DK: Have you ever read the novel in chronological order? When we hired writers for the writers room, we gave them a list of what the chapters were like in chronological order, and I think we asked half the room to read it in your order and half the room to read it in chronological order so we could have a discussion, a meaningful discussion about whether there were things about telling it without being in chronological order that we wanted to embrace or not. It was a fantastic experience and I wonder if you’ve ever read your chapters in chronological order? ‘Cause it’s also a fantastic book!

[laughter]

DS: I haven’t read it that way, they were that way in my mind before I started getting fancy and breaking them up and moving them around in time and space, but I would love to have seen that experiment.

DK: The reason we can get away with it in the show is because there is a loved book out there that people trust, and you know, it is a classic in this genre, so I mean this is a perfect example of, you know, the amount of gratitude we owe the book, because we got away with a lot of things that maybe we wouldn’t have been able to get away with because you came before us.

SH: And speaking of those rabid fans, Dan, it’s been really interesting reading audience reactions to the show from people who’ve loved the books and who just naturally will compare the two, and we’ve been heartened by just how supportive our fans have become--are of the show. There is this controversy, some people like our choice to give Lady Silence a voice and some people feel it was sacrilege to your book, where do you fall on that? DS: At first I was surprised. In fact when you were hunting for an actress for Lady Silence and I read about that, it said somebody who’s fluent in this Inuit language and this Inuit language, and I said, “What the hell?”

[show audio]

[Silna speaking Inuktitut to her dying father]

DS: Having seen her with the tongue and heard her, and knowing the different reason they call her Lady Silence, it all works for me and I was also surprised when Captain Crozier could speak fairly fluent, you know, dialect, ‘cause I had him just not understanding a thing.

[show audio]

[Crozier speaking Inuktitut to Silna in the same scene as above]

DS: I love it when readers get rabid about not changing something from a book, and I have to talk to them sometimes, not ‘cause I have a lot of things adapted, this is the first one, but I love movies. They say “Aren’t you worried it will hurt your book?” and first I explain Richard Comden(?)’s idea that you can’t hurt a book anyway, except by not reading it, I mean the books are fine, no matter how bad some adaptation becomes. Books abide, and so I wasn’t concerned. With the changes that I see, I get sorta tickled, whereas some readers get upset, and they just have that set. So I think that the vast majority of viewers haven’t--well, I know the vast majority haven’t read the book, haven’t heard of the book, probably, they’re gonna keep watching because of the depth of the characters, and that’s based on the first two episodes, and I agree with them completely.

[show audio]

[Silna speaking Inuktitut]

Crozier: She said that if we don’t leave now, we’re going to “huk-kah-hoi.”

Blanky: Disappear.

SH: We get asked a lot of questions about the supernatural element of the show and the way a monster does or does not figure in the narrative, and seeing our episodes, did it feel surprising or did it feel faithful to the way you imagined it as well to your book?

DS: It was surprising to me at how well it was done, because it’s hard, I know, to show restraint in a series like this, and certainly in a movie, but it’s hard to show restraint at showing and explaining the monster.

[show audio]

[ominous music, Tuunbaq roaring, men screaming]

DS: The way you did it in the first few episodes to me were just lovely, just, you know, a hint of a glance at something and then you see the results of this creature, so that’s what I tried to do in the novel, one of the reasons I moved around through space and time, part of what I wanted to do was not cheapen the story and not cheapen the reality of these poor men dying by just throwing in a monster, and so I tried to do it in a way that would not disrespect the true tale, and I believe you’re doing it the same way I tried.

DK: The way you incorporated the supernatural into the book, I mean, I was a fan of it when I first read it. It was jaw dropping the way that it fits so well on a level of plot, on a level of character, and on a level of theme. So when we got the green light to adapt it I was so confident that we were going to be able to do something with it that would be able to be nuanced because the bones of it are so organically terrific.

SH: It helped us know what we didn’t want to do. That formed so much of our conversation, of “this is what we do not want, this is what we do not want,” and slowly you whittled down to getting down to the essence of what this thing had to be.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Another character from the book that really stands out for fans that they are wondering what in the world we’re doing with is Manson. [laughter] And I was curious what you made of the fact that he is pretty invisible in the first three episodes of the show, and that some of his plot beats have been given to a character called Gibson, who I don’t remember is--I don’t think he’s featured very much in the novel. And I wondered if that caught you off guard or if you sort of intuitively had a sense of what we were doing in making that change?

DS: Any discussion of Manson to me leads to Hickey converting him to his future, his tribe, the tribe he wants to have, group of worshippers, that I think Hickey wants to have, but he does it by sex below decks. Hickey’s not gay at all, he’s a manipulator, to me, and he was manipulating Manson who was big and dumb, in my book, he’s manipulating him by this sexual encounter. But I was curious whether you were worried about showing that?

DK: Well, we weren’t worried about showing characters having same-sex affairs or relationships. We wanted to make room in Hickey’s character for actual affection, or if not affection then companionship, or some kind of connection.

[show audio]

Hickey: Lieutenant Irving! I was hoping we’d meet.

Crewman: Mind the grease there, sir.

Hickey: I wanted to... thank you… for your help. For your discretion, I mean.

Irving: Call it anything but help, Mr. Hickey. Please. I exercised clemency for a man abused by a devious seducer.

DK: We wanted to make sure that Hickey had access to command in some way that a steward, an officer’s steward, would be able to provide him, that an able seaman wouldn’t be able to provide him, and that was really valuable to us in terms of charting out all of these character stories, was how does he know what he knows about how command is dissatisfied or where the fractures are if he can’t see them from where he’s sleeps in his cot in the forecastle.

SH: I mean we know that there were relations between the same sex on ships, it just was part of this world. Not to belie that there was serious consequences for it, but you know, we have 129 characters, and we wanted them to feel fully fledged and rich, and, you know, passions do naturally develop and have no characters engaged in sexual relations would have felt just as odd and perhaps even more controversial, and when Irving discovers Gibson and Hickey, his shock is from such a subjective point of view of his moral center. It’s not the camera’s perspective, right? Our camera’s very neutral in that scene. It’s Irving, that character at that point in the show, that is infusing a sense of horror, that’s his horror moment.

DS: I’d like to add that it’s not the gay connection that would cause criticism, but I was flayed alive because the most openly quote “gay” unquote character, that is, Hickey, you know, maybe hunting for affection but definitely hunting for power, he’s the only one they said in reviews, and he’s a killer and a bad person, so I’m homophobic, but I was flayed alive for that. The word homophobic appeared in about 80 reviews. Nobody mentioned the purser, who uh--

DK: Right, Bridgens and Peglar.

DS: Yeah. I thought he was a fascinating character. I loved getting glimpses of him in the series because he’s super smart, he’s super wise, he’s probably wiser than any of the commanders, ahd he’s obviously in love with--who is it that he’s in love with in the show?

DK: Peglar.

DS: Yes, that makes sense. And, uh, so Peglar says, you know, “Is this another Herodotus?” and, “No, I’m giving you Swift now,” he’s educating the man he cares for.

[show audio]

Hickey: I understand you cleared up our “association” for Lieutenant Irving? Gibson: You spoke to him.

Hickey: Mhm.

Gibson: Directly?

(beat)

Christ, Cornelius, I’d reassured him.

Hickey: Cornelius Hickey is a “devious seducer.” That was your--that was your reassurance? You’ve got some face, you know that?

DK: We wouldn’t have dramatized Hickey’s story if we weren’t also going to pull in Peglar and Bridgens’ story, because we knew that people, you know, are predisposed to sort of make that kind of quick assumption, and we just wanted to make sure that the show didn’t have that blind spot and reflected the book, which also doesn’t have that blind spot.

SH: We had those same questions with Lady Silence, and I’m sure you did as well. When we meet her, she’s a frightened young woman who’s about to lose her father, and that’s a universal character moment that anyone can relate to, and the otherness is sort of--is secondary, but then once--in the end scene of 1.02, when she’s sitting there grieving her father and then you have that language barrier with everyone else, we worked with Nive on this because we wanted to make sure the language itself was as accurate as possible, so when you say disappear making sure that the disappear in our language means the same thing as disappear in her language. I think whenever you have characters that feel othered in most media and you’re bringing them into your show, Dave and I also just wanted to make sure we weren’t swaying on the pendulum on the other side and being almost too careful about touching them, and with Nive I think when you have an actor of that talent, she was strong, she was representing a voice that she felt very confident in, and that was very reassuring for us.

DS: And it works well, and when her father’s dying, she throws herself on his chest and says “I’m not ready, it’s too soon, I’m not ready,” and I love that in the show because if she’s gonna become a Shaman he’s dying you know it’s not reached that point of education yet where she feels secure and later on you know beyond what we’re discussing today she becomes to me in the show I see her as more and more majestic.

SH: I do love the word majestic ‘cause I think it describes pretty much all of our characters. I agree, I do think there is something very sublime about who they have become at the end because when you go through that much trials and tribulations, it’s this beautiful human spirit to endure.

DS: I think that’s one of the central themes of the story that you’ve brought out so clearly. In most post-apocalypse, you know, terrible situation movies and shows, everybody turns nasty as hell, they start shooting each other, it’s just like WWIII when they should be helping each other survive, and I found even though there was controversy, even though there was opposition in this story, people opposing against each other, still that they rose to the occasion. And that is so rare I think in much media these days or even books where the characters are themselves and they do the best they can, and when things get bad they rise to the occasion.

DK: The first conversation you and I had about the book, you know, I was basically pitching you sort of what I thought thematically the book was about, and I talked a lot about, that in a disaster like this, a kind of moral emergency, that we would get a chance to unpack what is sort of best and worst in these characters’ souls.

DS: I confuse readers often when I was on book tour for this book, and it was a long time ago, I’ve written a few million words since then, but I confused people by saying that if you want a theme for the survival story of The Terror, it’s love. It’s love between the men. And just unstinting love. And this came out in a piece of dialogue, in the first two episodes.

[audio from the show]

Franklin: I’ll not have you speak of him uncharitably, James. He is my second. If something were to happen to me, you would be his second. You should cherish that man.

Fitzjames: Sometimes I think you love your men more than even God loves them, Sir John.

Franklin: For all your sakes, let’s hope you’re wrong.

DS: That to me was right the theme I was working with, and with Crozier who shows it a different way, with Fitzjames who’s struggling to show leadership, and between the men despite their hierarchy and the British hierarchy, the rank and lieutenants and so forth, eventually they come down to loving the men they try to save. And I found that lovely.

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

DK: Thank you so much for listening to The Minds Behind The Terror, join us in our next edition when we talk about episodes 4-6 with the additional guest Adam Nagaitis phoning in from London. We will see you soon!

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

DS: I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter]

#the terror #the terror amc #the minds behind the terror #david kajganich #soo hugh #dan simmons #personal #eps 2-4 should be up within the next couple days here!#hope this will be helpful!#also i am absolutely not a professional lmk if you see any mistakes or think a dif format would be better #and i'll add a google doc link in the reblogs too the tags will just break if it try to add it now

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amisssunbeam · 4 years ago

Text

When (and Why) Hickey Fell in Love with Gibson

Well, it all started when “Hickey” was a child named EC, possibly Edgar or Edward, probably Edward, and the last name was something common, Clark or Carter or Cooke perhaps, as they are amongst the most familiar surnames in Great Britain today. (I myself like Cooke as his last name. See below.)

BTW, there was a time when I was in love with Herman Melville and tried to be very good so I could go to Heaven and escort Herman to all the constant Elvis concerts being held in the serene ethereal. (This was about the same time I mentioned “Elvis Presley” to my husband who thought I said “Melville’s Presley”, which in turn started that heavenly dream I still live in. Elvis IS Billy Budd.) Oh, what is my point? Melville was born in 1819, and so I have decided EC was born in 1820, making him the perfect age to set sail on “Terror” in 1845 (and helps me dope out a time-line for EC’s life).

Was EC abandoned by his mother to a foundling’s home? I’ve no doubt; I think he lived with her long enough to bond (she a hoe; father unknown), and then she left without a word when he was three and a half years old. And did the drunk old men and women who ran the home try to give EC any solace? Of course not. Plus, meals were served on a very erratic basis, which is why Edward and his analogue David Young never got very big. But EC thought of his mother often, sometimes with an enormous anger which caused him to befoul his bedding, sometimes with a longing that causes him to dissociate completely.

Now the drunk old men and women who run the home would prefer that little Eddy not be so needy, but they have a solution. They know a rich man called (let’s say) Captain Autolycus Wilson, who likes very young boys. (Such a cliché.) The drunk old etcs. ask Captain Wilson if he would like to purchase, uh, sponsor very small Eddy with his big blue eyes and reddish blond hair for a handsome fee. Captain Wilson is without a ward at the time, so he agrees to take care of Eddy, whom he calls Cookie. The expected things proceed. Except: Wilson is fond of Cookie, finding him clever and amusing and witty, and Cookie becomes very fond of Captain Wilson, fond to the point of adoration. The Captain sees to his education with private tutors (the less said about what went on with the tutoring the better: too depressing for words). But, despite the buggery and sodomy and orgies (many of which take place at the Captain’s private men’s club, The Sons of Phorcys, before interested audiences), Cookie becomes well educated, and something of a dandy too. These are the gifts Captain Wilson gives him in exchange for his complete oppression and dehumanization.

Okay, we knew it was coming. Cookie begins to show signs of manliness, which means he no longer interests Captain Wheeler. Captain Wheeler goes back to the foundling’s home and “adopts” a likely little carrot top who is nameless to us. But, before he kicks Cookie out, Captain Wilson offers him a drink from one of his cut glass, uh, glasses. Cookie goes completely catatonic.

Afterwards, with a five-dollar gold piece and the clothes on his back, Cookie finds himself on the streets of Victorian London.

It gets worse and then it gets more worse. He is Cookie no more.

So he runs with the dog pack. He steals cheap jewelry and silverware. Steals nice clothes too, so he is always well turned out. (Speaking of dogs, EC doesn’t like dogs. Too many high-tone toffs, too many coppers have sicced huge slavering four-legged beasts on him. Dogs, dogs are shit eaters.)

However, one useful trick he learns from the dog pack is to hang around taverns, especially those catering to sailors who have returned to shore. He likes to chat with the sailors and hear their magical tales of life on the vast blue sea as he picks their pockets. These stories are why E.C. decides to dab Cornelius Hickey and put him in Regent’s Canal.

“You’ll be gone how long, Cornelius?”

“At least a year! And then I’ll be in Hawaii. Oahu.” His Irish accent is quite pronounced.

“Aren’t they cannibals who live there?”

“I think they prefer fish.” Both giggle.

“In other words, they’re Catholics!” EC says.

More giggles. “See, here are my sailing papers!”

“Look, you already got paid!”

“Yes, a handsome sum. Speaking of which, let’s have another drink.”

“Just a small ale for me.” EC takes a deep breath. “I bet your mam was glad to see your pay!”

“Me, I keep my money. I was a foundling, see.”

“I lived in an orphan’s home too.” (EC thinks to himself: I will always live in an orphan’s home.) “So when do you sail?”

Then there’s a small slice of time and the ex-Cornelius Hickey lies bleeding at the bottom of Regents Canal.

(There’s a great fic which gives more details about this event on A3O: “Skinned Snakes” by @willowbilly)

There’s not much variety on a ship; sailing and caulking is boring. So no one should be surprised that the new Cornelius Hickey grouses.

But one day, he shares a joke with Billy Gibson, and Billy laughs and says, “Now, that one’s worthy of Shakespeare.”

Hickey is pleased and intends to make Billy laugh again.

What was the joke? What is the joke in any office setting? Most office jokes are about those other people in The Office, who get to be more and more “other” as the jokes continue (think of Jim and Pam against Dwight), until Hickey and Billy have their own little two-man Eleusinian mystery cult going on.

They sit together at what serves as the library table and look at picture books together. Perhaps it’s a book of engraved Biblical illustrations. Hickey points at one and whispers, “Look, Billy, there’s Lieutenant Irving walkin’ on water in his nightshirt!”

Billy gets a bad case of the giggles.

Weekes is sitting nearby and hears them. “What’s this, laughin’ at the Holy Scriptures? Do you want the ship to sink?” (Weekes is like the Dansker in “Billy Budd”, a quiet type who utters oracular remarks and tries to keep the superstitious young sailors under control.)

Hickey and Billy like to look at maps too, especially maps of the Pacific. They move to a more secluded place to share their secret dreams. They decide they’ll jump ship in Oahu and live in the sun and sand forever.

“Bugger the officers, Billy!” Hickey whispers. “‘Orlop!’ I’ll feckin orlop ye, Irving!”

Hickey’s minor blasphemies appeal to Gibson, who must also feel underappreciated.

(By the way, Melville was discharged in Maui in 1843 where he worked as, among other things, a pin-setter in a bowling alley before he returned to New York in 1844.)

But more than jokes happen. Billy sews a nice shirt for Hickey and knits him a warm red scarf. “Look here,” Billy says to the other sailors sitting around. “Now doesn’t Cornelius look smart!” They all applaud, somewhat sarcastically, but Hickey is pleased.

It appears that Hickey can sit in Billy’s little cabinette, I won’t say anytime he wants, but he CAN sit there. Which is where the friendship goes to the next level. Again, there isn’t a lot to do on an exploration. I like to think of Hickey and Billy sitting right beside each other, CURTAIN OPEN, Hickey making his small jokes, perhaps about Mr. Diggle’s bad bread, and then he puts his hand on Billy’s knee. When they hear someone coming, Hickey rapidly removes his hand. With this negative evidence, Billy learns what Hickey meant by touching his knee.

The first kiss: this is as tricky in fan fic as it is in real life. How do you know when to take that first step? My experience has been that it is “The Man” who kisses first. (Don’t get mad! Last century, when I was getting kissed, that rule of courtship was ratified in iron.)

We can imagine that Hickey finds the simple warmth coming from Billy’s frame . . . nice. Better still, he has no obligation to be (or do) anything to Billy. He is free with Billy. One night in May 1847 on Billy’s little cot, the bedtime bells ring (I don’t really know ships work), and Hickey says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Billy,” and, because it’s been building inside him for several months, he leans over to the seated Billy and kisses his cheek. Billy looks up in pleased surprise (giving Hickey the same look he gave him when Hickey put Young’s ring on his finger).

I will now commence to use @starbuck’s excellent timeline to date the next steps of their relationship. “Go for Broke” is September 1846. Eight months later (plenty of time for a courtship) is “The Ladder” which I like to think of as the SEX-isode; by this time Billy and Hickey have become very experienced in their buggery.

So just let me make up some stuff. In that sexy sexy month October 1846, they get to first base (they make out until their lips are chapped.) Second base occurs in early November 1846 (running their hands over each other’s quivering but clothed skin). Late November 1846 brings a firm third base (petting to orgasm: yup, that was a phrase much in use when Mamie Eisenhower and I were college roommates). And on Christmas Day 1846, HOME RUN is achieved in costumes and crannies as drunken sailors overwhelm the air. Hickey and Billy are in love! They run up and down the deck with the snow falling on their pink boyish cheeks. Young, beautiful, in love, just the two in their icy mystery cult.

Uhoh, here comes June 1847 and “The Ladder”. Now you know goddam well Irving isn’t going down to the orlop deck just to “find” the “caulker’s mate”. He’s been smoldering over his suspicions for months (he and Hickey exchange stink-eyes all the time at Sunday services). Finally, Irving gets a double-header: he achieves a major vicarious thrill AND a chance to save souls at the same time!!!! Still, Hickey and Gibson are busted.

Stuff happens, Silna and Sir John and Tuunbaq, all that arga warga. Not to mention, Gibson’s nervous conversation with Irving. Which Hickey sees. (Notice how I rigged the timeline to make sure Hickey got to see Gibson’s postern “all winter”, i.e. the winter of ’46-’47.)

Hickey is angry, but he never learned how to express anger towards someone he loves. First he reverts to an infantile state; then it seems he finds a new love: The Captain.

The Captain offers him a drink. A drink! Who would do that but a devious seducer! Hickey scours his brain. What do you say to an Irishman? “Here’s to us Micks!” OH GOD OH GOD HOW COULD HE BE SO STUPID! THAT HAS TO BE THE STUPIDEST THING ANYONE HAS EVER SAID TO ANYBODY!!!!! OH GOD! But Crozier’s face doesn’t freeze, doesn’t close down; it’s still open and pink. EC will remember that.

Now, because I pledge allegiance to @rhavewellyarnbag and all that he stands for, I will also assert that Francis is a three-beer queer. And if it weren’t for that Bible-beating bastard Irving barging in on them, who knows what would have happened next?

Hickey keeps trying to shine up to the Captain; he brings him a trophy, the guilty Eski girl. But then there is that unfair cross-examination by Crozier and his big shiny toff buddy. I have to say, I feel for Hickey in this scene. He really thought he was being useful to Crozier, and Crozier is completely dismissive. How often have I misunderstood what other people wanted from me! They quarrel, Hickey loses his cool and ends up getting flogged. Oh, sure, there’s worst things than bein’ lashed, but still . . .

Then there’s the tobacco. Just as you and I would, Hickey uses Occam’s useful razor and sees the tobacco as a love gift from . . . Billy. Billy! Billy the steward with access to supplies! Billy must still love him!

Sound the music cues, for here comes the bride! In the next episode “First Shot a Winner”, Hickey marries Billy. The reasons for this marriage are numerous (hey! Just like real life!), but one reason is Billy’s ability to spy on those in command.

Now, I won’t pretend that Hickey thinks this, but I DO! Hickey will never never never forgive Crozier and determines to destroy him. Then he HE Hickey will become King of the Expedition, just like Crozier is now, and Hickey will even have his own super-tall willowy delicate queen at his side.

It doesn’t work out that way, as we know, because nothing ever works out. Still, Hickey loves Billy to the end, taking Billy’s head in his hands to say good-bye as lovers do. The stabbing is a favor to the suffering man, and, if the murder turns out to have its useful aspects, well, so be it.

That’s my story, and, being a Libra, I can be easily persuaded that I’m wrong about everything.

---------------------------------

dedicated to @rhavewellyarnbag, @blazingadam, and @wildcard47

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glass-es-say · 6 years ago

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The Fitzjames Sweater: a Terror conspiracy theory

Do you like your meta long and stupid? And full of not-really-mystery about a single item of clothing? Then boy do I have a meta for you; the center of which is James Fitzjames’ sweater—and the identity of its final owner.

(Half meta-analysis, half conspiracy theory, half absolute blithering nonsense under the cut, lads.)

Now, this is a pretty distinctive sweater, especially in an expedition full of grey and navy arans. There are a couple of specific design elements (best outlined in knit-the-terror’s posts) that make it easy to identify The Sweater once it ends up on Le Vesconte: the side cables, the gansey-esque top and bottom, the ribbing patterns on the sleeves. The short neckband also visually distinguishes The Sweater from the cowl-necked white sweater Mr. Collins is wearing (also I think that one gets pretty soundly torn apart when Tuunbaq eviscerates him).

All of this is great and wonderful. However. What I’m most interested in is the cuffs.

These are double-length cuffs in a 1x1 rib with (perhaps anachronistically) a thumbhole knit in. Fitzjames wears the cuffs folded up most of the time, though if you turn up your brightness and squint you can spot that they’re all the way down at the time of poor Morfin’s death.

The garment construction appears to be such that sleeve was worked flat and them seamed into a tube—the thumbhole then just being part of the seam that wasn’t sewn up. (Why you would make a sleeve like this is beyond me—seaming sucks and it would literally be just as easy to add the thumbhole in when knitting in the round, but I suspect it has something to do with how they produced the no-doubt 10+ versions of this sweater they needed for filming.)

So, we’ve established some key characteristics of The Sweater that help us identify it. We’ve determined that it ends up on Le Vesconte after Fitzjames’ death. (Actually, Le Vesconte’s wearing The Sweater + waistcoat when Fitzjames collapses, so presumably James gives it away before then.) But can we show that anyone else has worn it? (Spoilers: sort of, but also yes.)

The morning after Silna leaves the Inuit village, when Francis is running around trying to figure out which way she went, he’s wearing the above outfit. His left hand is gone at this point, so his sleeve is tied up at the wrist, but there, covering his right hand… is an extra-long white sweater cuff with a thumbhole.

The image quality isn’t great here (the cameraperson decided to focus on the acting instead of a sleeve cuff for some reason) but when you look at all the angles next to each other, the resemblance is pretty obvious. Either there was always another long-cuffed white sweater on the Franklin Expedition that we are never shown, or Francis has at some point picked up The Sweater and is wearing it under his slops.

You can see a sliver of neckband underneath all his other layers in the picture above, just like with James.

Now, my main hurdle in 100% proof that this is The Sweater is, actually, also my most definitive proof: the thumbhole. (My gift and my curse…my blessing and my burden...)

Assuming James hasn’t folded his cuffs to intentionally obfuscate, it’s pretty clear that each sleeve has one—and only one—thumbhole along the inside seam of the sleeve. It’s a logical assumption—I have no clue why you’d put a thumbhole on the outside of the sleeve because, like… that’s not where thumbs are.

By the time Francis is wearing the sweater it’s pretty beat up, so there are a number of noticeable holes in the cuff rather than just the one. (As we see from Le Vesconte’s shot at the beginning of this post, the rest of The Sweater is faring a pretty similar fate. My poor knitter’s heart is weeping.) While some of the holes have a fuzziness around the edges that indicates fraying, there’s still one hole with a cleaner, more finished edge that would indicate its identity as the real, intended thumbhole.

The problem is, it’s on the outside of the sleeve. Crozier appears to be sticking his thumb through another, accidental hole on the opposite side of the cuff. Even if The Sweater was worn inside-out and/or backwards, he shouldn’t be able to wear the thumbhole on the outside—at least, that’s what I thought. Then I tried putting on a sweater with only one hand. (It’s called field research, please don’t judge me.)

Basically, it’s really easy to get a sleeve twisted when you pull on a sweater, especially if it’s made to fit someone with a different physique. Without the opposite hand (or using your teeth, I guess), it’s basically impossible to untwist it, a difficulty that I imagine is compounded if you’ve already hooked your thumb through the cuff in the wrong place. I personally hate the feeling of a twisted sleeve, but Francis has just woken up in an unfamiliar place and honestly at this point in his life he might’ve just shoved the sweater on and called it a day.

Plus, we see the left cuff on Le Vesconte earlier and the thumbhole appears to be on the outside. The sleeves on this sweater are consistently Way Too Long, so it’s possible things just got twisted around whenever an actor would put it on and they left it that way for realism’s sake.

We don’t see Francis in it after the scene in the Inuit village, but like, even if The Sweater was still wearable after another two years, Francis is pretty well covered by his fur parka. (Also… just saying… the emotional implications of a moment where the last remnants of James Fitzjames unravel under his fingertips are uh… pretty juicy.

James has holes in him and so does his sweater.)

So! I think it’s fair to say that, at the very least, the sweater Francis is wearing is supposed to be the Fitzjames Sweater, as shown to the best of my ability (and screencap resolution). I won’t call it “beyond a doubt” but I think it’s a pretty strong foundation—which is good, because here is where my knit-wear based fever dream starts to, uh, unravel.

My initial assumption after realizing Crozier had the white sweater at the Inuit village was that he pulled it off Le Vesconte after Little’s death. (And idea which cannot help but conjure the morbid image of Crozier undressing a body beset by rigor mortis with one hand…. Or asking Silna for help.)

The tangle in this theory is that I went back and looked at the first few “travelling with Silna” scenes, initially for proof that Francis doesn’t pick up The Sweater until the Little Camp—and found the opposite.

There’s no sign of The Sweater on Francis before the Tuunbaq showdown, but he has somehow acquired The Sweater before finding the body of Le Vesconte. The same identifying features I’m using for the end scene are all there, so. Can’t really deny that. (The best view we get is from the sad dead Jopson hair stroke, which also dates the timeframe a lot better then an ambiguous “Crozier walking around” screenshot.)

(For what it’s worth, the thumbhole arrangement appears to be done properly this time. Or at least, the hole on the outside of the arm is the frayed “accidental” thumbhole.)

To clarify the timeline:

Fitzjames has The Sweater.

At some point before James collapses, Le Vesconte acquires The Sweater.

Francis is kidnapped by Hickey’s camp. He does not have The Sweater, or at least not visibly.

Le Vesconte (and sweater) leave the sick (including Jopson) behind and head off toward the eventual Little camp.

Tuunbaq showdown. Francis spends some time in recovery.

We can assume that at some point during this bullet point or the next Le Vesconte and buddies die.

Francis and Silna leave the Hickey camp, find the abandoned men and sad dead Jopson. Somehow Francis has acquired The Sweater.

After this, Francis and Silna find the Little camp, presumably including a dead Le Vesconte and The Sweater.

(You could argue that Le Vesconte actually ended up staying with the sick but Francis’ is wearing the sweater when he first sees Jopson so he would have had to have it before finding them.)

(Also, I have suspicions that this figure leaving the sick camp is Le Vesconte.)

So! There is an indication that, at the same point in time, both Crozier and Le Vesconte(‘s body) were wearing a version of The Sweater. If from this point forward we consider the sweater Fitzjames is seen wearing to be the “true sweater” and the extra to be the “double sweater”, then I see four possibilities:

Option One: Francis already had the sweater double.

Points in favor:

This gives the fun image of Crozier and Fitzjames showing up to the expedition on day one and staring horrorstruck at each other like “we wore the same dress!??!!”

You change. No you change! No you change!!!

Points against:

We see Francis in all kinds of informal dress and never see him wearing it. I’m not actually sure we ever see him wearing a sweater, period. Man hates being cozy, I guess.

There is literally no way costume design would have done this. Like, it beggars belief.

Option Two: Someone else (at the Hickey camp) had an eerily similar sweater that Crozier felt justified in taking.

Points in favor:

It doesn’t show up until he and Silna go back to the Hickey camp, so it’s unlikely that he would have gotten it earlier and just been carrying it around without wearing it.

They did seem to just leave all their stuff lying around, so Francis wouldn’t have to pull it off a dead body, which is a lot more palatable.

If the sweater was a standard “baby’s first officer sweater” present, Hodgson could be a candidate for the true owner.

Points against:

“Baby’s first officer sweater” is just like… not a thing the Victorian Royal Navy did. Also, we never see any of them wearing it, so.

Why wouldn’t the owner have worn it to the Tuunbaq showdown? I get that they’re all wandering around in their shirtsleeves but if someone had a sweater that was remotely still wearable, I feel pretty confident in thinking they aren’t just going to leave it lying around.

Option Three: Actually, Le Vesconte’s sweater is the double.

Points in favor:

Obviously Henry and James got them as best friends forever tokens and whenever they notice they’re wearing them at the same time they spend like, two minutes just hugging each other and saying “bro. bro. bro!”

It absolutely infuriates Francis.

This implies that Francis (or possibly a Hickey camp member but uh… unlikely) got ahold of the Fitzjames version after his death. James isn’t wearing it when he collapses (god… think of the blood stains…), so it would have been as easy as packing it up once he’s dead.

Francis is either in slops or in shirtsleeves after this point so if he keeps the cuffs folded up and his slops collar buttoned (which he does) then we might just not have seen it?

Even if we assume Le Vesconte’s sweater is a different one, there’s still pretty strong evidence James wasn’t buried in his sweater—see the above point, and also the fact that it doesn’t later show up on Hickey’s person. That’s a nice sweater, man, even if it’s fraying, and if I were already stealing a dead man’s boots I would’ve taken the sweater too.

Points against:

Le Vesconte is wearing The Sweater when James collapses—Fitzjames, notably, isn’t. (James mentions the heat as a reason why he can’t keep walking, so he might just not have been wearing it?)

God, guys, I don’t know that much about the Victorian knitting industry but the idea of two bros going out and getting matching sweaters seems… implausible at best.

Option Four: Making a TV show is hard and keeping track of all the details is harder and someone just accidentally put Jared in the sweater five minutes of screen time too early and we were past the time for reshoots and just assumed that no one would be neurotic enough to notice this.

Points in favor:

Script supervisor is like, a really hard job and if this is your biggest slip up then honestly? Who even cares.

Points against:

I care. I care very much.

But which option could be the truth? What conclusions have we formed from this tedious trek across the frozen wasteland of HD screencaps? What horrors have we (me, literally just me) wrought in the name of split-second costume design based character choices? Could Crozier have somehow gotten The Sweater from Le Vesconte after Tuunbaq dies but before reaching Little’s camp? Is there another, actually viable explanation for the mystery of the twin sweaters? How many good fics/headcanons could come from any of these options? I don’t know! Please discuss!

(For however much it matters: my personal favorite is Option Four. None of the others seem a terribly plausible story justification, and also I like the emotional weight of Francis picking up the sweater as a memento of JFJ—or the intention of it, even if continuity gets a little screwy.

Also, if no one writes fic about this then I will be forced to and who really wants that?? Write this fic for me and save us all the turmoil.)

(A thousand props to @knit-the-terror for sussing out enough details that I could even make an argument focused around the cuff of a sweater. Please forgive my corrupting your research for a frantic fever dream rant about something that mostly doesn’t matter.)

#this is my magnum opus and my greatest shame #the terror #meta analysis #james fitzjames #henry le vesconte #francis crozier #that sweater lasts longer than most of the cast #and I love it just as much

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mifhortunach · 5 years ago

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@thaliatimsh - im so sorry!!!! a vague ‘riffing off of (tm)’ what i was saying? (trying to say) last night - but Mostly// word splurge everywhere :/ - unsure if theres either a/t Clear or!! tbfh a/t of worth here, but yk :T :S !

thaliatimsh said: I thiNK you are RIGHT re: distance n i wonder. … why. Considering distance in gibson bein murdererererd scene… tins of mystery… (like a week previous MAX). I wonder. Why. Im not very good at bein clear anyway im. Fffff.

=> fgksdhfg, idk if youve had the same thought w this as i have, or mabs,, its lead to/from the same thought but like. Hickey’s plan was always probs gonna end/hinge a lil on cannibalism? [‘Lads Gotta Eat! People Made O’ Meat!’; Hickey’s Personal Sledge Hauling Song, 1847.] Ofc they all already know tht the cans are making them Weak & WEird™ .

so im Not getting confused!!! Just #FAx: at some point theyre gonna run out of food With Them, so Options~: 1) take tins proffered by crozier, 2) somehow they manage to find game! 3) boys were made for eating

So assuming tht no ones gonna keel over anytime soon, theyre deffo gonna have to kill /Someone/

Once gibson ‘runs out’ [[ :(( ]], they gotta go back to tins, or they gotta get another Body p much. ppl who CAnt be ate!: Hickey (ofc), Diggle (For Now/, until Armitage gets his HACCP qualifications), Goodsir (butchers are hard to train up, lads might get queezy chopping up their M8s)

Gkdsfhgk, distance as a food preparation method, a book by cornelius (EC) hickey !! - is what im TRYINBG to get to as my point !!! jfc, idek

but idk if thats rly necessarily a v strong (or tbf, Accurate) Take yk? i gotta think it over, & leave this pot boiling someplace else temporarily or smth

=====================

[[i think,, what i meant w/ Deliberateness, as much as i like. ½ tried to articulate it there last night (& now having read over a lil of tht, have v little clue WHat Exactly i was trying to be saying there tbfh), is that Of Fckn Course// hickey is deliberately setting him Apart “DELIBERATE isolation of hodgson during that scene (plate, cutlery, separate space, different /meat/)” like u said!! But i think up Til tht point, its one of those weird cases where its not being Enforced~ as such? [tht might just be my own reading tho? Which are.. while Not ~Notoriously Off-Base? But often taking the ‘’wrong part’’ of a thing as the important element, or just straight up Confused, rip lmao]

Like /Like/. The Hodgester™ has just turned up into a place already filled w dudes who are all a lil asshole-ish & starving! - & enough of them are running from a hierarchy issue, rather than a deep abiding love for EC, i suppose? Uhm - && they all wanna Be There (for want of a better descrip/). So, i was ½ at it thinking(?) abt if it was mayhaps (originally) one of those things where u accidentally(?) isolate yrself from the rest of the group bc u dont wanna bother/intrude/dont feel welcome [The Sk00l Feelingz] & thru that slight gap you end up falling thru the cracks as twere & /Actually/ becoming Set Apart.

&& like. Idk, on #mutineers side; hes just turned up! Hes Hierarchy!! & yk still,,, Officers/Men Divide~ the line drawn in the 6ft X 4ft ice-cave separating the messdeck & the wardroom ! which despite no longer /Rly/ being in place now, or honestly nearly as much as gone post-walkOut, has gotta be subconsciously embedded ? dunno [tbfh, im word vomiting rly Badly// now - i think u were & Are!! Right abt it, & yr fic Felt Right// abt it!! Which means it may as well be True & Canon & Real, etc: Often Always thinking abt the different ways of saying lieutenant, oof :( ] ]]

maybe what i mean is like; I'm Not Sure! (personally :S ) if it started out Accidentally, Deliberate Banal, or Deliberate Malicious, yk??

&& Whether its been a gradual progression, or happened much more Starkly when they decided to captainnap crozier, or spatchcock chicken gibson & other stuff? dunno

((i gotta [REally Gotta//] rewatch the last couple of eps, so i get the planning/timing etc right in my head? bc idr if the plan to marry tuunbaq was ‘hatched’ pre or post captainnapping, or if they were related At All -> do feel like the hermitage i mentioned going on has gotta be extended just so tht i can think things into #clarity, as well as actually watch the show again before making up shit, lmao))

--- thinking abt:

possibly hodgester’s confession & inability to kill hickey in contrast w fitzy’s confession & offering up of his body? but idk what that IS or MEANS, or if its even THERE [yr talk of him as,, ‘the average mans james fitzjames’ is,, im Lov,, Truly Banger & Deeply Upsetting :( ]

smth poss to be said abt how Much// of what george says/dialogue is abt food & his big monologue is abt cannibalism & transubstantiation yk? Idk [hodgester, location: North Artic Circle, likes: etymology, religious guilt, languages, musical instruments, food & learning abt how its prepared :(( ] other than, yk, Mood, Big Same There Lads

===

To Conclude, yr 100000% right, Magnus Manson Good Boy, Packed The Plates & Forks

#ppp #lb #long post /#thaliatimsh #* i think what I'm meaning w the isolation as meat prep - bc idk if thats clear to /ANYONE/ but me - is tht w/o gibson's oh so generous deat #*death - they'd've had to get someone to eat sooner rather than later? & it DOes// :( make sense to start w someone who isn't close w #*close w the rest of the gang #but ofc!! thats Speculation!! and Depressing Speculation @ that!! - obvs would eaten the dead 1st idfk #i v v v much hope this is okay? dunno - both in terms of Action & Content erhm #i dont wanna accidentally come across s dickhole megee yk #id have left until i was Surer (TM) but it just wouldntve happened yk? idk #. im gonna.. go back to this mabs once I'm clearer & cleaner abt what I'm taking fromit & post Actually Rewatching The EPs omg #[showing my hand Terribly// here im SO! Unsure as to how to read a lot of either george/later eps/scenes]#[idk how much attention i was rly Paying @ the time for one thing & bc idk. having a lil pre-knowledge of parts kinda changed the viewing ]#*[the viewing sitch - so like. I'm STILL! not 1000% certain on what I'm meant to take from the confession scene yk? its abolsutely ]#[WOEFUL! but idk what i meant to read/take from tht other that I'm now Weeping & Rending my hair + garments yk]#[[couldnt articulate thouhghts wrt mutineers & etc beyond: god!! teh marines had a shit time of it which ill totes admit might need to do ]]#[[better]]#terror meta #bc its good to keep things in the same place & One DAy~ ill vom smth REadable

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myxcenterxstage · 6 years ago

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Meta: Priscilla's Motivation in Survival Mode ... and a whole lotta analysis

Author’s Note: This meta is primarily focused on v: Sail On, but can also reflect her character motivation in other verses.

TLDR; just jump to part 3 for the survival mode motivation stuff. But parts 1 & 2 help it make more impactful sense.

Part 1: A Character Analysis Pre-Franklin Expedition

So, let’s first take a quick look at Priscilla’s “Prologue” - her life growing up under the guardianship of her Uncle Charles Kimbleton.

Priscilla’s personality is slightly different in her verse v: Sail On. SLIGHTLY. She’s still her kind, buoyant and quirky self, but she’s also a lot more badass. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and isn’t interested in her debutante ceremony or who she’s going to marry. Nope. In this verse, Priscilla’s free-spirited “Wild Child” side is more prominent with her insatiable sense of wanderlust, wanting nothing more than to indulge her obsession with exploring the world as her Uncle Charles’ second-in-command and record their discoveries as a Natural Historian.

She imagines herself as the heroine of her own story she’s going to write about someday, or at least tag along for a grand adventure with like-minded people until she can accomplish that.

Besides v: Sail On being a great high seas & survival story, I like to think it has an underlying coming of age aspect where Priscilla comes into her own, because, granted, she’s a mess of contradictions.

She’s afraid of commitment and marriage… but she’s a hopeless romantic.

She’s a bit of a rebel to Victorian stereotypes… but she’s so self-conscience of what others perceive of her even if she claims she doesn’t care.

She’s independent… but is so vulnerable and impressionable and wants to be rescued by a hero that’ll sweep her off her feet.

She knows who she is and what she wants… but keeps seeking validation from others.

She’s insightful and a delight to be around and sometimes wiser beyond her years… but is emotionally immature and has a track record of recklessly foolish & impulsive decisions.

She has the courage to stand up to always do the right thing… but when she’s faced with a challenge she runs away from it.

Do you see where I’m getting at?

(I guess you could leave it as she’s a complex character… or I’m still trying to fully grasp her personality as an OC. I’d love some feedback on these ‘contradictions’!)

Part 2: The Aftermath of Uncle Charles’ Disappearance

So, Uncle Charles. He doesn’t physically appear in this verse per se, but boy does he remain an indirect main character.

No matter where in the world they were, Uncle Charles was Priscilla’s ‘home’. He was her bodyguard, her mentor, her storyteller, her shoulder to cry on, and most importantly her conscience to curb her foolishness as she was still growing up. The Kimbleton family isn’t exactly small, but Charles was by far the most genuine. Charles wasn’t just an uncle - he loved and cherished Pris as though she was his own daughter. (Since Charles was a widower who never remarried, I think that’s why Priscilla maybe even learned to cope with grief in this verse surprisingly well all thanks to him too.)

Uncle Charles was certainly one of the biggest influences in Priscilla’s life, and who encouraged her curiosity and scientific obsessions contrary to other relatives who wanted to repress it in favor of her becoming the stereotypical Victorian house-wife.

Unfortunately, Charles was also someone she lost at all too dependable a time. And it was probably a bigger catastrophe than whatever happened to her parents that brought her into Charles’ custody to begin with. Everything that represented her sense of security was ripped away from her, and she was left with a void she didn’t know how to fill.

Even at the urging of her other relatives, she refused to host - or attend - the funeral held in honor of Charles years after his disappearance. Maybe, just maybe, he would come back. Maybe, even against all odds.

But she didn’t know. What was closure? A part of her didn’t even want to believe he was gone.

And now without him, she became an open target of vulnerability.

This also begins a new, very prominent flaw in Priscilla’s character: her strong sense of denial and running away from her problems given the quickest opportunity. Left to her own devices Priscilla tries to hold on to every good thing her Uncle raised her with, all while struggling to cope with loss and fend off her inevitable foolishness.

Part 3: Franklin Expedition Disaster & Survival :: From glory... to desperation… to reality.

Okay NOW. Finally to the part we’ve all been waiting for!! THIS is what I had the Eureka for earlier that started this whole meta to begin with!!

So, fast forward to Priscilla running away from scandal and boarding the HMS Terror. She feels she struck gold by being able to follow her dream and her “running away from home” paid off. Fast forward again from the new friendships Priscilla makes and secret crushes and buds of platonic cuteness and everything happy in Baffin Bay etc.

Fast forward again to Priscilla hearing Sir John’s announcement about them sailing straight into the ice pack since they’re so ‘close’. Fast forward again through Priscilla’s impression of Sir John unraveling once they’re stuck in the ice.

At that moment, nothing was more terrifying than the great unknown to Priscilla. She had no place to run.

Parts of her personality she didn’t know existed came out after the ships were stuck in that ice:

Bitterness. Anxiousness. Volatility. Fragility. Restlessness. Fear.

Beneath her thin veneer of mandatory bravery and blind desire to wish things could turn for the better was a mess of emotions she was so desperately trying to suppress. Almost overnight she picked up random nervous habits. Outbursts of skittish laughter, speaking her mind out of place, trivial chatter, zoning out. Sporadic enough to not be of concern, but noticeable to those who knew her well. And all the while she had this gnawing sense of jitteriness to always do something amidst constantly feeling so helpless.

As the tragedy continues, she grows quieter - her radiance dimmer. Her optimism that was fueled by denial slowly comes crashing down into the reality of the frightening dark caverns of her own mind. Writhing in bitterness over Sir John’s hubris that sentenced them all to death, she had begun to realize that she too perhaps had made an impulsively reckless mistake to volunteer herself to begin with.

And once the Tuunbaq attacks begun, she quickly realized they had no place to hide either.

So there was only one option left: she had to fight to survive.

And this, my friends, is when the lioness was awoken. While her struggle between the solace of denial (which still fueled her optimism outside of a genuinely happy moment) was ever-present, and her blind wishful thinking might have helped her to not cripple under from the stress… when backed against the wall of brutal truth she was beginning to realize she had no choice but to unavoidably reckon with herself, which was long overdue. Admit their predicament for what it was, admit her decisions and behavior as a runaway was foolish, admit her feelings of lostness in a cruel world, and admit even though she was not strong enough to face London’s gossip of her she never should have acted so rashly with herself in retaliation. (Let alone other things she may or may not have done on the voyage... to be determined)

But at least in this dead end, she wasn’t doomed to navigating it alone.

After losing her only family, she had gained a new one on this expedition. 129 new family members to be exact, regardless of how well or little she knew them. No matter how many lives she grieved each passing week, she wouldn’t have wanted to trade anything to not know those she especially held dear. And collectively they all shared one supportive notion in common: They needed to survive.

And then, after a burdensome night when she had hit an emotional breaking point and poor medicinal side effects induced a fevered outbreak where she was delusionally mistaking Captain Crozier for her Uncle Charles… the following sober morning she came to an unexpected realization.

Call it the beginnings of madness from the lead poisoning, or her desperation to hold on to whatever threads of hope she possibly could, but a new question of ‘what if?’ became her new obsession:

What if Uncle Charles was in fact still alive? Just like them?

Somewhere, someplace - it felt almost tangibly real to her. The years of disappearing from the face of the earth and civilization - and yet still not dead.

Thus, her own independent motivation to survive against all odds in these Arctic conditions emerged. It fueled the promise she made to her new friends that they’d press on. Ignited the motivation lent her by others. She found a new purpose: not for only herself in the end, but for those who mattered to her.

And if Charles had the strength to survive wherever he was all this time - then she would do the same. And maybe, just maybe if in these years her Uncle returned home - just like Priscilla knew they could eventually, someday - she would want nothing more than to live so she could run into his loving arms once again.

Come what may, she would march on. She wanted to live. To survive. To love. And most of all, she wanted to make sure her new family would too.

#meta #v: sail on #HCs #Y E S #F I N A L L Y #the terror au

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awellboiledicicle · 6 years ago

Text

I had a The Terror dream that my brain took a hard right turn on part way through, but treated very seriously and idk. under the cut for an amusing dream that was very confusing

i had a dream that somehow i was a sailor on one of the ships in The Terror, and all went as usual till we’d been in the ice about 3 years?

I could speak Inuktitut and was with Goodsir and the others when Silna’s father was shot and i tried to explain we wanted to help and we were so, so so sorry. When Goodsir said we should take him back with us, i helped carry him and kept asking Silna what we should do if he died? Because i knew something was deeply off about this whole situation?

I talked to her while we went back, and i felt the compelling need to ask her how many things she’d like from the body, how we should treat it and if she’d like him back if something happened? Like i was very intensely gripped with the need to make sure her father and she were taken care of?

She seemed to appreciate it, and once he’d passed i insisted on taking the last few idols from the body to her--in spite of what the others said while sewing his coat up? And like, i was entirely convinced that we were going to give her a sled or help her carry him out to be buried? And on the way to the other ship to give her the idols, i felt like Shit Was Wrong. Like the world felt like it jerked five feet to the left? And i was suddenly terrified of everything to do with the snow? And i took off in a blind run to the ship and the guy on watch asked if i was drunk, because i tried to scale the snowramp instead of going up? And then he was intensely convinced i’d seen the ‘bear’ and all i could do was say “We need to run, run, now--” They shuffled me below decks and told me i wasn’t to leave till i had the right of it again? But by the time i calmed down, my head had started pounding and it was hard to not yell when someone came to check on me? And Dr. Stanley kept flatly informing me that there was nothing medically wrong and that i needed to perhaps get more fresh air. Because my pulse was, apparently, normal and my fever literally died whenever someone tried to check it? I was given extra watch because it was his opinion that i was trying to get off duty for a while? And like, while i was on watch, so was Hickey and he was trying to be Coniving or at least, trying to not stand there quietly during watch. It was dog watch, super early, and he made the offhand comment that he’d kill for a hot drink? And like, by that time i’d mellowed but everything felt very familiar-but-not? So when he said it i said “Same here” but then had the intense desire to run away? Like not specifically from him, but that end of the ship? So i made an excuse to move away--”thought i heard something aft”--and then Shit Went Down? Like one of the other men on watch got taken, then it came at me? But i was just holding my shotgun like “fuckfuckfuck” and it paused, then roared at me and lunged onto the man behind me? It absolutely came after me, it just looked... confused? Like it knew something about this that i didn’t, but also that i did? I ended up going through the rigging and it got tangled up, before snapping through and by that point i had made it down below deck to get backup? I think Hickey ~luckily~ hid under a lifeboat. Like it ran off after we all swarmed out but like. I went to Goodsir after everything calmed back down and went “Doctor, i feel strange.” “How so? Did you find something wrong after things calmed? How is that fever?” “It’s not that, and not even the bumps and cuts from.. the creature. It’s that, rather, that i think i feel odd about.” “The creature? That feeling might simple be fear, nothing to be ashamed of.” “Oh, no, i know fear. I understood that. Its... Doctor, i feel like i know that creature.” “Know it?” He put down whatever he was fussing with at that point and looked very confused. “Did you read about it? Was there some legend you heard?” “No, not... not like i’d heard tell of it. It was like i had seen it before. And i don’t mean when it took Gore. I. I feel like i know what it is.”

We talked at length until word came that they’d collected Silna and i went with Goodsir to Terror to see her? Like it was much the same, but it felt off. By the time we’d lost Sir John and abandoned ship, it really went off the rails.

We all--the entire crew left and silna-- fell through a giant crack that opened in the ice? But instead of just, you know, having to climb out or dying down there, we discovered a giant set of doors? Silna shook her head when asked if she knew what it was? But like i felt compelled to step forward and i said i knew what it was? And i just knew how to open it, but the mechanism was broken so Blanky reccommended we blow it open, and well it worked? And inside it was a bunch of ruins like. Imagine the Dwarven ruins in Skyrim. That was almost literally what we were going through? But it was warm and people were just kinda going “well, this is weird as shit, but it’s warm and there’s water. And like, Crozier insisted i explain what the fuck this place was, because he’d been up here before and this is New. I just said i didn’t know either, i just felt we should go in a certain direction? And we did, out of sheer “why not?” And like the tunnels were leading south, so we ran with it. Hickey tried to betray us like half way through and i believe i literally killed him via broken machine to the head because nope niope. And like, the tuunbaq was still following us, but it was infinitly better at wandering the halls than us, and there were... things down there. The others called them spirits, and i was just. “these are falmer. brain, why did you do this” and then i realized i had that thought and woke up before i could find out WHERE it was going with this.

#long post #mok dream adventures

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