#reading about the franklin expedition is a good way to start crying about people who died 175 years ago

[jaggedcliffs]

Currently getting emotional over this paragraph from one of Dr. Goodsir’s chapters in The Terror (the book version): 

“With the Exception of brothers serving together on this Expedition  -- and Thomas Hartnell lost his older brother on Beechy Island -- there are no relatives who will ever come out here on the ice or onto this Terrible Island of wind, snow, ice, lightning, and fog. There is no one to identify us when we fall, much less Bury us“ (chp. 33, p.440)

Because Robert Goodsir -- Harry Goodsir’s little brother -- did go to the Arctic to look for the Franklin Expedition. But the search parties that he was a part of never made it as far as King William’s Island. He never found his brother.

And while one of the two bodies found and brought back to England in 1869 is most likely Harry Goodsir’s, that fact wasn’t discovered until 2009 -- before then, it was thought to be Lieutenant Henry Le Vesconte’s body. Robert Goodsir and the rest of their family wouldn’t have known they’d found Harry’s body. They wouldn’t have known they brought him back.

[sunlaire]

different anon. but experiencing something similar as someone who watched the terror bc of my dash and got sucked into reading articles, listening to a podcast, reading scripts. i’ve heard a) not to read the book version of terror for uh, reasons, and b) that the book erebus is pretty good? do you have any other recs for someone getting started?

YES OKAY! so I've been working my way slowly through this post, it's a recommendation of not just Franklin Expedition, but other polar books. I have to read Erebus yet but the other two they have listed for the FE are really good! "May we be Spared to meet on Earth" is a book full of letter written for and by the members of the expedition. It puts you right there with them. You get this private glimpse into who they were and for me that's my favorite part of learning about this stuff.

But listen, if you perhaps are interested in reading about a different expedition, I REALLY recommend "Madhouse at the End of the Earth." The book is fun. There were so many moments that made me actually laugh. And there were parts that overwhelmed me and made me cry. And it's written with so much attention paid to who these individuals actually were, as people. what they were feeling and thinking. It blew me away. (I desperately wish someone would make an in depth show about this expedition. It would be beautiful 😭) and because it was such a fun read, I think it's a perfect book to break into other eras of polar exploration. Sigh, I'm this close to rereading it actually. My mom has been listening to the audible version, and she said its very good, so if you're into that <3

[annecoulmanross]

A Re(sponse)-Re-Re-Review, Re: The Terror (2018)

I’ve recently read through all of the gorgeous review posts of The Terror (2018) from @rhavewellyarnbag​ and I just want to say that I think they’re incredibly beautiful and thoughtful responses to this show – all three amazing rounds of them.

I started out simply collecting quotes that were amusing to me, but my notes document very quickly became full of my own responses and confessions. Basically, I ended up making my own response/review of the whole thing, which is what you’ll find in this post.

So, thank you @rhavewellyarnbag​ for your many insightful thoughts about this show and my responses are below the cut! (Also, your repeated efforts to drive Goodsir to the hospital are a truly noble service, and bring me comfort in these dark times.)

01x01 – “Go For Broke” (One, Two, and Three) 

“Ciaran Hinds looks like a grand old walrus.”

This was the line that made me realize I needed to start keeping track of quotes that made me laugh like a seal barking.

“‘You should cherish that man.’ I cherish that fucking line of dialog. I don’t even mean it in a filthy way. That line is so goddamn sweet, I could punch myself in the face.”

Amongst all the beautiful content produced about this show, almost nothing will ever surpass, for me, this description of this line of dialogue paired with that post about “Idiot Boat Caesar, who knows a slow-burn when he sees one.” Sir John has an astonishing capacity to be truly warm on rare occasions, and this is one of the few scenes in which we really get to see James experience that warmth, both genuinely and, here, in the form of a truly gentle, well-meant rebuke that probably cuts James far more than we see.

“This is an interesting scene with the diving suit. This could potentially go very badly. The man in the suit may be dispatched by the mysterious horror following them, or, in order not to give it away, and to show a scientific curiosity, he may die of decompression of the suit.”

Fun fact: one of my great-grandfathers apparently died of decompression from using an early-model diving suit. I learned this when I was word-vomiting to my mother about The Terror. I am now even more terrified of historical diving suits. All diving suits, really.

“If James’ characterization plays around with gender, it does so in this sense: James is constantly acted upon, by the bullet that wounded him, by the disease that fells him, by others’ opinions of him.”

Watch me attempt to cite your reviews of the The Terror in a dissertation, because everything about this description is exactly the gender framework around which I’ve draped the two historical men with whom I’ve fallen in love, one being my actual subject of research, the other being James Fitzjames.

“I’ve previously compared James’ bravery, his very person, to a woman’s beauty: bestowed upon her, not earned; understood to be temporary; dependent upon others’ admiring, desiring of it. Does James exist when no one is around to observe him?”

I adore everything about this description and also it makes me cry.

“There are a great deal of unfortunate classical references in this episode.”

This is my entire mood about The Terror, always. The nods to Philoctetes and Medea as components of the Argonaut myth that Sir John invokes are also distinctly worth exploring in this context, though I’m not going to do so here because the Argonautica (broadly speaking) is not my speciality.

01x02 – “Gore” (One, Two, and Three)

“James and Sir John are about the same height. They look not dissimilar, which James probably liked.”

Oh James.

“Strangely, [Sir John] doesn’t seem particularly pleased with James, who adores him.”

It’s true, and it’s quite painful. I don’t think Sir John is a good role model for James, but it doesn’t lessen the fact that I know James is perceptive enough to know that he’s not being adored in return, and that’s a brutal thing to know.

“You don’t have to be a drunk redheaded sea captain to see that James is empty, hollow, aching, desperate to be the things he tells you he is, desperate to see himself reflected back at himself. Desperate to be loved.”

I have a type, and this is it, apparently.

“Goodsir is a character from another sort of work, entirely. That’s its own kind of tragedy, the tragic juxtaposition. Goodsir is a sweet, gentle, utterly ordinary little pudding, an incidental character plucked from a more innocent narrative, and he’s no-doubt going to die horribly.”

This is the early impression of Goodsir, before any of us see what’s beneath Goodsir’s surface, but it’s also not wrong at all. In another sort of work (perhaps, as noted, a work by Jane Austen), Goodsir is (uniquely, among these men, perhaps) capable of living a sweet, gentle, utterly ordinary little life, with a more innocent narrative.

“It’s strongly implied that Irving’s imagination is so open that he has to work to close it.”

That’s certainly true of the historical Irving, as I read it. I have many more complex thoughts and feelings about Irving now than I did after just watching the series through the first time, but I’m not sure whether that’s because his story-line is actually rich, or because I’ve come to like him separately. (Unlike, for instance, Fitzjames, whom I have come to adore separately, but I can safely say does also have a rich story-line in these ten episodes.) The real Irving is more elusive than I think I at least gave him credit for originally.

“Oh, James Fitzjames, you overly-familiar little strumpet, you.”

I’m sobbing.

“Scurvy doesn’t care what kind of person you are.”

In many ways this is true, because we do see scurvy acting indiscriminately on different men, here, without a care for age or station or morality. But also scurvy, in this narrative, attacks most vividly those with some sort of previous wound that the scurvy can reopen. Notably James, but also Morfin, whose flogging-scars we never see but can assume from his conversation (also, for that matter, Jopson, who, historically, had a major scar on his leg, of unknown origin). Scurvy may not truly care what kind of person you are, but if you’ve led a dangerous life, scurvy has one more way to hurt you.

“Who among us has not been desperate to discuss our interests, to the point where there is almost a flirtatious edge to the broaching of the topic?  One must be careful, so as not to give away too much, both for the gentle handling that one’s interests require, and for the sake of not alienating some poor rando who made the mistake of asking a bland, vague question simply to be polite.”

Ah, so I see you understand, then. I’ve taken to apologizing in advance of discussing the gorier elements of the Franklin expedition, as though I’ve exposed myself in public. (But seriously, this is the most excellent description of the discomforting feeling of very more obsessed with something than is socially acceptable.)

01x03 – “The Ladder” (One, Two, and Three) 

“John Ross is the Jacob Marley figure, I take it.”

The beginning of many intriguing resonances between this show and Dickens’s Christmas Carol, and I think, one of the most elegant. The actor who plays John Ross would be an excellent Jacob Marley.  

“Jopson would not talk about Francis’ drinking! You take that back, Gibson.”

This is what I adore about Thomas “Mr. Hears Everything” Jopson – he’ll only ever tell things about others to Francis; he’d never tell things about Francis to others. That’s a moral compass upon which we can unerringly rely, and one that is in no way affected by the magnetic changes at either pole.

“The spyglass sticks to the skin above Francis’ eye, as though it wished to force him not to look away.”

This is an amazing take, especially re: the way spyglasses are used to show foresight and the future in this show. Francis is forced to know look at what is coming for them, the future that waits ahead, hungrily salivating for his men.

“James is completely shattered, but he looks luminously beautiful.”

He does, doesn’t he?

01x04 – “Punished As A Boy” (One, Two, and Three)

“Lady Jane’s response is: ‘Fuck you. I know Charles Dickens.’”

Much as I detest Dickens, and much as I have my own problems with Lady Jane, she is never anything less than badass, particularly here.

“Lady Jane, clad in burgundy, ‘the wine-dark sea,’ stands between Francis and Sophia.”

Oh good god that’s it, though? It was through Lady Jane that I first found the Franklin Expedition, oh, four years ago (it feels like four hundred), and the first thing I ever said about the matter was “I’m confident that she knew Greek.” I’ve never been able to prove it, but she writes, in her letters, like someone who reads Greek. Lady Jane is well and truly our Homeric Hera. Brilliant and vengeful and matronly and brutal. I do adore her.

“Of course Goodsir’s never been lashed.  He’s a nice man.  He’s probably had the opposite of a flogging.  People probably throw roses at him when he walks down the street. I know I would.”

I’d be happy to attend this rose-throwing Goodsir-parade. I already have a bad habit of bringing roses to the pseudo-graves of historical men whom I love; we can add Goodsir to the list without too much hassle.

01x05 –  “First Shot’s A Winner, Lads” (One, Two, and Three) 

“[Re: James and “Your nails are a terror, Mr. Wentzall]…the checking of collars and fingernails is a very maternal duty.”

I love spotting feminine traits in James, but what I’m getting out of this is actually imagining James’s adoptive mother Louisa Coningham examining the fingernails of a very young James. It’s an adorable, if slightly tragic, image.

“Irving doesn’t seem like a hard man, but like a man trying desperately to be hard, and often failing. He should have forgotten about the navy, stayed on land, gone to France and become an early Impressionist painter.”

This fantastic description of Irving makes it even more tragic that he DID try to forget about the navy and stay on land, and it didn’t work. Canon divergence AU where Irving moved to France instead of Australia?

“We’re told, repeatedly, including by Goodsir, himself, that Goodsir isn’t a doctor.  It’s a fundamental misunderstanding: people think they know who Goodsir is, or who he wishes to be, but Goodsir has no desire to be anything but what he is. Perhaps appropriately, it’s Hickey who recognizes and names Goodsir (“You’re an anatomist.”) One may say that Hickey ‘reads’ Goodsir. Though, Hickey’s understanding is, as it often is, flawed.  He may know what Goodsir is, but he doesn’t know who Goodsir is.”

I very genuinely wonder – did Goodsir want to be thought of as a doctor, by any of them? What were Goodsir’s thoughts and preferences on the matter?

01x06 – “A Mercy” (One, Two, and Three)  

“What Sir John left them was a means of dissembling, a facade. Cheer in a cheerless time, which holds the dangerous allure of forgetting.”

This is perfect, because Carnevale, at its center, is “the dangerous allure of forgetting,” in no small part because, structurally, Carnevale fills the role of the Homeric island of the lotus-eaters. (It is also a labyrinth, though, and that’s an interesting doubling.)

“The half masks in the trunk have the semblance of the faces of dead men we’ve seen. The creature has the habit or practice of biting a man’s head in two, or biting off part of the cranium.”

I had never noticed this but it’s entirely true.

“Francis is bracketed by Thomas’, neither one of them a doubter.”

I will SCREAM

“‘I don’t like to hear a woman laughing now.’  I suppose it’s fortunate that Jopson’s professional life allows him to be around men, exclusively.  What would Jopson have done later in life?  Marriage is obviously out of the question if women’s mirth causes him such distress.  Would he have stayed on boats?  Francis promotes him to lieutenant, but would that have made him happy?  He has a love of, an instinct for caring for others that obviously can’t be transposed onto a marriage, both because of Jopson’s limits and because of Victorian gender roles.  The best possible course for Jopson would have been valet, a gentleman’s gentleman.  His rank and background would have made him an asset, and no more devoted valet would there have been.”

The fanfic writes itself. (I have nothing to say yet, I just adore this speculation; more below, though.)

“The drop of blood falling from James’ hairline onto the mask’s cheek to make a kind of morbid beauty spot is a gorgeous image, like a piece of decadent poetry.”

I personally find James unbearably beautiful, and the whole extended sequence with the dress and the drinking and the blood dripping is so subtle and lovely and I think, like with poetry, what we get out of it is never simple.

“James is dressed as Britannia. Which makes James mother to them all.”

Though I, selfishly, would have loved to see James in something more scandalous than his Britannia costume, I think it’s symbolically the best possible choice for him. This is an outfit that is technically crossdressing, but it’s very subtle thanks to the choices James makes – we don’t see any dramatic woman’s wig or other feminine elements. This is an outfit that reminds the men of home; reminds James of home, and of his adoptive mother, whose poetry was full to the brim and spilling with Britannia.

“Blanky looks great. I wonder if the visual reference to the Ghost of Christmas Present is intentional.”

I’ve always assumed he was meant to be Bacchus, but of course the Ghost of Christmas Present has more than a little Bacchus in him also. All of these Christmas Carol overlaps are exceedingly interesting – John Ross’s Marley warning Franklin’s Scrooge, and now the Ghost of Blanky Present reminding Crozier that others are – for good or ill – having fun without him.

“One may imagine that Edward has disguised himself as someone who enjoys parties.”

OH GOD.

01x07 – “Horrible From Supper” (One, Two, and Three)  

“Hickey can’t move on from humiliation, because he would see that as more humiliation. Keeping the humiliation alive in his mind is the only way to gain some mastery over it. He holds the wound open, so that no one can deny that it’s a wound, that it happened, that it mattered, that he matters, but it means that he can never heal, never be whole. Scurvy.”

The Hickey/Fitzjames parallels are STRONG here. Also, this resonates really well with a conversation I had with a friend about Eleanor Guthrie from Black Sails – she’s unable to move past being hurt and I just can’t fault her for it, even as her stubbornness just hurts her more. And I feel that sympathy for James, too – he’s bottled up so much hurt inside, and it has kept hurting him his entire life. If Hickey didn’t “hold the would open” by, you know, making wounds in other people, literally, I’d probably even feel bad for him.

“There is an emotional and psychological toll, which Francis tries desperately to reduce by keeping the men together, reinforcing the bonds between them, persistently humanizing them.”

The Jopson’s promotion scene warms me on cold nights. That’s all.

“Jopson’s role is the opposite of Lady Silence’s: the fact of her gender alters nothing about it; Jopson’s informs it.  Make Jopson female, and he clearly functions as Francis’ wife.  If Jopson is male, though, what is he?  A paid servant, in the literal sense, but his obvious pleasure at caring for Francis long ago eroded the patina of duty.  I think we can safely say that Jopson loves Francis, loves and cares deeply for him.  Is invested in Francis’ safety, well-being, happiness.  Enjoys the details of his service to Francis, beyond the enjoyment of a job well-done.  Add a sexual component, and it becomes a marriage.  Leave it out, and the relationship is something else.  Drop Jopson into a marriage with a woman, and he becomes a husband.  Leave him with Francis, and he remains Francis’ wife.”

This is what I find so fascinating about Jopson – everything about his identity has the potential to be contingent, to change, but as the expedition’s tragedy unfolds, we see all of the possible threads of Jopson’s future cut off, one by one. From the beginning, Jopson can’t be female, and thus can’t serve a wifely role in British society, even though he’s clearly fit for it. We learn that Jopson has some very specific PTSD triggers related to women that might prevent him from ever being married to one, even if he wanted to be. Jopson seems to wish to continue serving Francis in perpetuity, to continue being as close to a wife as Francis will ever have, but Francis, sober, no longer needs the same kind of care that Jopson used to provide, and, eventually, Jopson becomes unable to care for Francis at all, so that Francis has to care for him. Jopson is all change, all tragedy.

“I would like to thank the director, cinematographer, anybody else who may be responsible for that stunning shot of James in profile. James really is beautiful, even, maybe particularly, at this stage of his infirmity. I’ve said it at other times, but there’s something, well, I suppose, romantic about his illness, because he is young, and beautiful, and heroic, so desperate to be loved, and so loved, in the end.”

*sighs* I’m not okay about James.

01x08 – “Terror Camp Clear” (One, Two, and Three) 

“I don’t know how I didn’t notice before, but James is a leggy creature.”

I will still treasure the term “a leggy creature” when I am in my grave.

“Sir John was not a top, and I know that for a fact, because I just got Lady Jane on the Ouija board, and she told me.”

I WILL SCREAM.

“[Francis] doesn’t look on James as a sick person in need of careful handling. There’s no sense of the separation necessary for pity between Francis and James. He is this way toward James because he cares about James.”

I know we all joke about the quote “it’s rotten work” / “not to me, not if it’s you,” but this is what that quote has always meant to me (the Anne Carson of it, that is, not the original Greek). Caring for someone via pity, via distance, takes effort, is painful, is rotten, even though it is sometimes worth it. Caring for someone via care, via love may still take effort, and may still even be painful, but there is no separation, no alienation, from the service of providing care. That’s where Francis’s tenderness comes from, I think. That closeness.

“James, you big, beautiful racehorse.  Even chapped and cracked, he’s radiantly beautiful.  He has such a warm quality.”

In the confessional spirit of this review, I will admit: I find James more attractive than I am capable of expressing. The interesting thing, to me, is that I don’t have the same response at all to Tobias Menzies or to any other character I’ve seen him play. He’s a great actor, certainly, but he doesn’t do it for me. But James does. I’m still puzzling this out.

“James’ bravery is treated somewhat like a woman’s beauty, in that he believes it to be conditional, temporary. It’s dependent on others’ appreciation of it; when he’s alone, James doesn’t feel brave.”

I will say, admitting that it’s probably James’ femininity that is attractive to me gets you a long way toward understanding why I do find him so terribly appealing.

“Oh, please, baby Jesus, don’t let Jopson flip. Jopson’s one of the few things I have left to hang onto, here.”

Jopson will never flip, such that Jopson’s death really is the point of no return, here. He’ll die before he flips. (Notably, it’s important to be clear that by “flip,” I mean turn his loyalties away from Crozier. I have reconciled myself to the idea that, though Jopson is upright and innocent in a way even my James isn’t, he is capable of violence and even unjustified, offensive violence. But only ever in the service of his captain.) And again here, Jopson very well might not be immune to the seduction Hickey’s definitely attempting, but bending to Hickey’s wiles means betraying Crozier, and that’s an impossibility for Jopson.

“Bridgens, who’s a cozy old piece of furniture…”

….and Henry Peglar would like to sit on him. (I get it Henry, I do.)  

01x09 – “The C, the C, the Open C” (One, Two, and Three) 

“Oh, Bridgens. Where’s Henry? Where did Henry go?”

I think a real triumph of this show is getting you to know, by this point, that when you see Bridgens, you should ALWAYS ask yourself, “Where’s Henry?” Because yeah, “They are each other’s loved one,” and there can’t be either one of them without the other. Bridgens knows this, and makes himself into a memorial for Henry. The only kind of monument Henry Peglar can ever have: Bridgens, with his own body, preserves Peglar’s words for the future, for us. I’m just going to cry for Bridgens and for Peglar for a minute, that’s all. Please excuse me.

“Hartnell watches Bridgens pick up Peglar, Peglar’s arm around Bridgens like, ‘… Wait a minute…’ Hartnell also misses Hickey’s innuendo about Armitage.  Tom Hartnell tragically has no gay-dar.”

Oh precious Hartnell. This lack of gay-dar is part of why Hartnell had to get written out of what I’m currently writing (I’m sorry Hartnell! It’s not you it’s me.)

“There’s something of a horrible wooing about it: Goodsir, like an unwilling bride, forcibly taken from his own people by unscrupulous men, installed in as luxurious surroundings as can be had, with his trousseau, for the purpose of catering to an unspeakable hunger.  His innocence is taken from him, and he’s turned against himself. His body is stripped naked and consumed.”

(a) What a horrible and horribly accurate description. (b) This is another one of those places where this show is unafraid to place male characters into narrative metaphors of womanhood. For me, the most vivid is always Jopson, but Goodsir is also often made to face this sort of feminine role, and for Goodsir it’s so much more often about violence and shame.

“James says “I’m not Christ,” before he tells Francis to feed the men his body.  It seems like something of a non sequitur, until one imagines James’ train of thought.  As the impulse to give his body to the men occurred to him, so may have also come a last flicker of self-mockery: “What, James, do you think you’re Christ, now?”  So that his announcement that he’s not Christ comes in response to this: he knows who he is, and who he isn’t.  Finally, he knows this.”

I think that’s exactly what went through James’s head. And more than that, I think back on that beautiful gif-set that placed James’s “I’m not Christ” beside Francis’s “Like Christ, but with more nails.” Francis, whose self-hatred is clear and undisguised, begins to heal by recognizing what is Christ-like in himself: his suffering, and the compassion that is borne from the suffering. James, whose self-hatred is buried under masks and lies and stories and gilded dresses, begins to heal by admitting what is not Christ-like about him: his mortality, his humanity; and that doesn’t make James any lesser, and James finally, finally begins to see so.  

“Can’t Jopson’s story end differently, this time?”

That’s what hurts. In no version of this story that happens with Hickey AND the Tuunbaq AND the inevitable deaths of 129 men, should James die any different, or Goodsir, or Bridgens. If they were going to die, they should do so showing bravery and brotherhood; agency and defiance; commitment and love. There are other men who deserved so much better than the ignoble deaths they got (Irving comes to mind) but Jopson is the warmest light and receives the coldest death. There’s no reason for his story NOT to end differently, except for the sheer narrative cruelty of it all. The Terror is brilliant because it knows to reserve this sort of agony for the worst possible gut-punch. Any more than one, or maybe two, utterly, pointlessly cruel deaths, and we would be immunized. But we have no immunity to prepare us for the dizzying nausea of Jopson’s death.

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.  Death, ultimately, isn’t mysterious. Whatever might happen to one afterwards is immaterial to the living, still bound to this plane of existence.  One may fear it, but once it happens, it’s over.  Love is a way of life, though.  It changes over time.  It changes the person who feels it, and the person they feel it for.  Both Francis and Jopson were changed by their love for each other.  Jopson goes to one mystery still in the grip of the other: it’s Francis he sees, reaches for, cannot touch.”

Jopson’s death is still haunting me. It’s like Tantalus, all that food that would save Jopson’s life, if only he could eat it, and yet he crawls right past, toward Crozier. What does that say about Jopson? The way the world tortures him is to hold Crozier just outside of his reach – what on earth is Jopson being punished for? (These aren’t intelligible thoughts anymore; I’m just broken-hearted for my boy.)

“In a narrative that encourages empathy for everyone and everything from a colonial expedition to a monkey to an eldritch monstrosity that rips men’s heads off, why should Hickey be exempt?”

A beautiful way of putting it. I’m still working through my initial disgust at Hickey, but intellectually, I can’t help but agree.

01x10 – “We Are Gone” (One, Two, and Three)

“…the experience of being through so much with these characters that I care about so much has been like living several lifetimes.”

My mother, who has not yet watched this show, told me recently that she thinks these characters have become my family. In part, this is due to the historical research I’ve been doing on the real men of the Franklin expedition, but the show played its own large role in making me fall in love with these men, making me desperate to live as many lifetimes with them as possible.

“Why does Goodsir do it, though?  He seems to have made up his mind before Francis appears, and with Francis comes the hope that Edward will rescue them.  If anything, Francis’ presence makes Goodsir more resolute.”

As another dear friend said, Goodsir definitely had the plan in mind before Francis showed up, but the plan needed a trigger: it needed Francis, a good man worth dying for. Someone for Goodsir to look at and say, “Maybe my actions will help this man.”

“I think I just confessed to being in love with a man who doesn’t exist.”

Ahh, this lovely club. Even the men I’m in love with who actually lived two thousand years ago don’t really exist, at least not in the way I love them.  

“The Terror is like a play put on by a theater company that has no female actors, so all of the men must play female roles…without any women to place in certain contexts – caretaker; lover; victim; object of desire – those dramas necessarily play out on the bodies of the men.”

Watch this space. The Terror is a classical Greek tragedy, and I can prove it.

The description of Goodsir’s preparation for death is richer and more complete than anything I will ever write. GO READ IT.

I also think it’s fascinating to see this scene through the eyes of a reviewer who readily admits “This is an unusual case. I like Goodsir. I don’t usually like the men I’m looking at. I care for Goodsir.” I confess that, though I also like and care for Goodsir, when I am looking at “eroticized male bodies” in media, I only really “feel at home in a text” when I also like and care for those men. If a male character is too morally objectionable to me, I find no erotic appeal to viewing him, because I am so distracted by my own sense of his evils. I simply cannot find anything to pull me, aesthetically or sexually, to someone like Hickey. (I can never find anything sensually appealing about Hickey/Tozer, for instance.) I am pulled to James, in contrast, because he is beautiful to me visually, and because his life (as far as I can see) shows me a person who cared, who tried, who loved. Who is worthy of my care and trust.  And though I don’t think I’m in love with Goodsir in the same way than I am with James, I care deeply for Goodsir and thus can find the appeal in watching him, visually.

“‘There is wonder here.’/ ‘Then, there will be the angels.’ The first thing angels ever tell any human being who beholds them is not to be afraid.  Wonder isn’t always delightful, isn’t always something that humans can understand, or possibly, even, survive.”

Fear is something I don’t often enough examine closely with this show, though it is so terribly central. “Be not afraid” and “We have too much fear.” How can one dispel fear? Wonder obviously isn’t enough; wonder might even make it worse. Being told not to fear rarely works out so well for those visited by angels. I think, sometimes, that all we can do is – as Peglar does – admit to those we love that we have too much fear, and hope that they can help us carry it.

I can’t NOT give you the end of the first round of these reviews, because, like the description of Goodsir’s preparations, it’s literature: 

“The Terror, a show taking place one hundred, sixty years ago, manages to be timely without even trying.  Lead poisoning.  Environmental catastrophe.  The baggage of colonialism.  The treatment of indigenous people by white people. Information and misinformation.  What it means to be a leader.  What it means to be in a marriage.  The role of women in society.  Gay marriage.  Income inequality.  Ethical consumption.  Consumerism. Members of the armed forces working far from home.  Mental health. Addiction.  All of these fit neatly into what can also be taken at face value, a well-constructed and -acted tale of adventure and loss set in a faraway place and time.  The Terror never tries to force meaning on the viewer, never struggles under the weight of its lofty aspirations- because it has no aspirations.  It’s an utterly guileless production, seeking nothing but to present its characters and situations honestly.  In doing such a simple thing, it has created the world.”

And, finally, I leave you with: “I’m not looking for a way out.  I just want more time with the characters. I don’t want to leave them.” To me, this gives an answer to David Solway’s question “Do you have a tolerance for ongoing narratives which generally turn out to be the same narrative?” And that answer is “yes.” I think there’s a tolerance – or, even, a hunger – for ongoing narratives that turn out to be the same narrative, in this fandom, because why would anyone want a way out anymore, if it means the end of our time with these characters?

I know I don’t.

“The end of The Terror isn’t a sad end, nor is it a hopeful one.  It’s not even properly an end, because we know what comes next. What comes next? Well, we do.”