#okay I know John wasn't a loyalist

[sappymix1]

as someone who literally learnt eeuu history because of hamilton What's up with mulligan

I pulled out my laptop to type this so sorry for the sporadic autocorrect capitalization lmao

okay so the thing that bothers me about him is that I feel like he's such a random person to include. Hamilton, Laurens, and Lafayette were an established friend group like they were Washington's aides and kinda like the dream team of the fucking continental army you know lmao. like they existed as a trio. mulligan on the other hand as far as im aware was not part of that group at all. he and Hamilton did have a significant relationship like they lived together, he helped Hamilton enroll in university if I remember correctly, and his impact on Hamilton becoming involved in the revolution is really significant, but he just wasn't part of that friend group!! I don't really know anything significant connecting him to Lafayette and Laurens at all

he's such a random person to include and I think there are other people who would have been a better fit. ben tallmadge is the first that comes to mind -- he was also one of washington's aides and he ran the Culper spy ring so you'd still have the spy connection. I don't know if he was at Yorktown (I was going to say he was bc oh he was in the Yorktown episode of turn but the more I think about it I think they gave him Laurens' role bc I remember both the initial anti John Laurens erasure discourse immediately followed by the pushback that people only care bc of Hamilton lol) but I think in terms of fitting into the group of Laurens, Lafayette, and Hamilton, he makes way more sense than mulligan.

otherwise if the spy part in Yorktown was so important, I would rather they have somehow found a way to shoutout James armistead Lafayette. tldr bc idk how well known he is -- he was an enslaved man who escaped his loyalist owner and spied for Washington, he was the only successful (continental at least; I don't remember if the British had any?) spy out of Yorktown, and after the revolution when he was not awarded the freedom he was promised, he and the marquis de Lafayette fought with the us until he was freed, after which he took the last name Lafayette in the other Lafayette's honor. like he was the one who was actually successful!!!! why are we hyping up the flop guy sm

and I think with the James armistead Lafayette point specifically it comes back to something that kind of annoys me about Hamilton in general in like the larger meta of American revolution scholarship and popular media. its a pretty regressive take on the history overall -- a "great man" biopic when the field in general is moving more towards broader narratives and particularly highlighting the experiences of under represented groups (ie women, native Americans, enslaved/formerly enslaved people, loyalists, people outside of Boston lmao) and causes of the break in the relationship between Britain and the colonies beyond the typical sons of liberty style patriotism. so like I really wish that they had taken the opportunities to highlight some of these lesser known experiences when possible. there were a lot of black men in particular who were involved with the continental army and often involved in espionage specifically. like even if they wanted to keep Hercules mulligan so badly, he worked extremely closely with an enslaved man he owned, Cato, who was literally crucial to his spy work because Cato was able to exploit his position as an enslaved person to be less suspicious to the British while acquiring information and it seems so neglectful to exclude him.

anyway yeah that's it lmao

[goodshipsdont-sink]

High School Hockey Team- Lams

Alexander Hamilton plays for the revolutionaries rep hockey team, and is assistant captain.  He’s surprisingly not a rough player, but often mouths off to the refs, resulting in him often sitting in the penalty box. Plays center forward.

George Washington is coach of the revolutionaries, and is Alex’s step dad, but doesn’t treat him any different from the other players.  Gets mad when Alex yells at the refs, and when the defense does nothing.

Lafayette is the other assistant captain of the revolutionaries, and has to wear a bandana to keep his hair tamed under his helmet during games.  He skates with finesse and has excellent stick-handling skills.  Plays right wing.

Hercules Mulligan is the goalie for the revolutionaries, and is like a brick wall.  Most of the team’s games are shut outs because he barely lets a puck through.

Angelica Schuyler is the team captain for the revolutionaries, and is the all-time point leader for the entire league.  She played girls hockey with her sister for some time, but University scouts would be looking for players this year, so she tried out for the boys league, and made it.  Washington was so impressed by her skills, he made her captain.  She plays left wing.

Charles Lee is talented enough to be on the revolutionaries, but despises the coaching style.  He had wanted to be captain for his grade twelve year and was extremely upset when he found out the title went to a girl.  He often starts fights on the ice, and spends as much time in the penalty box as Hamilton. Plays defense.

John Laurens uses hockey as a safe way to let out his pent-up anger, and he too often engages in fights on the ice.  He had only moved from South Carolina this year, so he knew nobody, and the only hockey team that had an open spot were the loyalists, the revolutionaries rival team.  He plays right wing.

Samuel Seabury is captain of the loyalists, but is a terrible skater.  The only reason he made the team and was awarded his position of captain was because he sucks up to the coach.

George King is the loyalist’s coach, and couldn’t care less about his team.  He makes no effort to coach, yet gets angry when his team loses.

On the first revolutionaries versus loyalists game of the season, Hamilton is in the penalty box within the first ten minutes.  He doesn’t hear the remark that Lee made about Angelica, a comment about her inability to play because she was a girl.  John did hear, and was outraged at blatant sexism towards someone on your own team, so he punched Lee in the face.  This got him a seat in the penalty box.

John looks at the boy who sits on the other side of the glass, and his breath is taken away.  He makes a mental note to try and talk to this guy after the game.

[elrondsscribe]

What is a plot that you think went effectively nowhere in Turn, or wasn't realized properly? For example, I that Robert Rogers starts feel auxiliary in the third season onward.

Oh honey, how long do you have?? There were legitimately so many plot threads left dangling that could've really had the potential for something really good!

For one, Nathan fucking Hale! He gets what I consider a passing mention, almost entirely in service of creating a parallel for the death of John Andre in S3 and giving Ben some anti-Brit angst. That's it. The real Nathan Hale's death was a huge deal in the Revolutionary War and impacted the way that both sides went forward with spy work -- if you're gonna make a show about Washington's most famous spy ring, and Benjamin Tallmadge is (debatably) going to be one of your leads, you can spare more than a passing mention for his close friend Nathan Hale.

For another thing, the sewing circle that Mary and Anna attend all of twice in S1! They introduce it as a way for Mary to accidentally spill the news about the gravestones, and then poof! Never a mention of it again! Is this a spy show or what?? Let the sewing circle become its own potential information exchange circle -- heck, you can even do the 'jealous two-faced bitches all around' thing if you wanna!

Or how about this: the entirety of Abigail's story?? Like, to this day we don't know who Agent 355 was. You make the choice to envision her as an educated enslaved woman. Okay, great -- post of story potential there. But if you're going to do that, you have to commit. If you want her to be a dedicated Patriot spy, you gotta give her good reasons for wanting to do that when her obligations run out. And if you don't think you can do that, then don't make her Agent 355. Just don't. Write her as a white woman, and let Abigail be doing a bunch of dangerous shit because her actual enslaver is forcing her to. Oh, but that would make the worst parts of slavery really prominent, and we don't want to do that, do we??

But I think the abandoned or snipped threads that tend to piss me off the most have to do with Ben's character development. For example, do you remember the scene in S4 where Washington tells Ben the truth about Nathan Hale's Fake Last Words? Did you know there was a deleted scene filmed for the first episode of S3 that has all the same character beats, down to some of the same dialogue? Ben could have learned this lesson about spycraft and honor a good season and a half earlier!

Or how about the time in S3 in 'Many Mickles Make a Muckle' when Billy drops a line that the cinematic language treats as Super Fucking Significant? Ben's expression changes while the camera zooms in and the music gets all Ominous -- like, 'ooh, is Ben maybe realizing something is up with the Arnolds?' And the first time I saw that, I was like, 'ooh! Ben's gonna Detect Something with his Spycraft!' But nothing came of it! Nothing!!

But the Ben plot thread that had the most potential, the handling of which pissed me off the most? The Sarah Livingston arc.

Now, I wanna say up front that I'm not crazy about the way that I've seen a lot of people in the Turn fandom react to Sarah and the Sarah/Ben association. Like, I get being queer and projecting onto him, or just straight up thirsting for him, but the level of vitriol I've directed toward a female character for having sex with a man they felt entitled to really rubs me the wrong way.

Having said that, the way the show itself treats Sarah is shameful. They throw her at Ben for all of two episodes, and then fridge her in the worst way (a r*pe-murder scene? Fucking really?!) just to have Ben Angst! Like, y'all had this golden opportunity to have Benjamin Tallmadge, this preacher's boy, really question his own morality, and the relative morality of his cause -- this opportunity to give some real characterization to a Loyalist who has real cause to hate the Patriots, a woman no less -- and y'all squander BOTH of these things??