#theterrorappreciationweek

[gobnaits]

The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week → March 27: Favorite Main Character

Silna

[cestpasfaux24601]

The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week  ↳  Favorite main character  - Thomas Blanky

[tautline-hitch]

my favourite line is Terror’s foretopmast staysail downhaul because—no, I apologize, I will take it no further. 

there are some excellent lines in The Terror—I think “I am hungry and I want to live” is excellently understated (like i 100% get why the Monologue strikes some people as slightly bathetic, but it works for me); “Close is nothing” remains solid; “Does one not bring one’s habits to Terror” is as I have said I think before a pretty enjoyable exploitation of the inaudibility of italics—but I would like to mention one that is much less of a showpiece and also I think quite excellent:

I don’t know what you’re due.

The barb on it! In the aftermath of the previous episode’s flogging, the crack of the cat is right there. Crozier is at this stage barely competent as a commanding officer, but he is also, perhaps more significantly, no longer functioning as a gentleman; he is not dressing or speaking or conducting himself as a gentleman must. And Fitzjames informs him it’s been noticed in such a perfectly gentlemanly way: this little assertion of class and power, of the hierarchy which underpins every interaction on a warship (and this is a warship, because Crozier by his methods of discipline has made it one). What is a thief due? Well, that depends on his station. What are the conditions for mutiny? Shipwreck, alcohol, flogging—and a captain without authority. Which authority Crozier has just spent on those 16 bottles. 

I love too that we don’t see Crozier’s face; he looks away from us and from Fitzjames as the line is delivered, still in the dregs of the belief he can disguise how far things have slipped. Instead we get that understated, unconvincing “I did no such thing”, cut across Fitzjames’s line and overwhelmed by it; instead we see what he sees, Blanky and Goodsir’s unsurprised embarrassed resignation. Whatever he’d thought he was to them, in this instant he has become a circumstance to be managed: they believe Fitzjames without question, and he is locked out of that circle. This is the moment, I think, at which he understands that he is no longer in control. For Crozier the end of vanity happens here. 

[terribleoldwhitemen]

@the-terror-appreciation-week  → Favorite Scene: “There is time.”

a favorite not just for its unabashed tenderness, but because it was the scene which finally convinced me to watch the show. after seeing this scene in gifs on my dash, I couldn’t not find out who these men were and what they meant to each other.

[zehstern]

The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week Day 7: Favorite fandom creation

Happy Anniversary Platypuses! Thank you for keeping the fandom fed and alive. You guys are incredible, every last one of you.

[the-terror-appreciation-week]

@lafiametta and @arcticelves here with a new fandom event for 2019!

It’s been almost one year since the premiere of Season 1 of The Terror, so what better way to celebrate than with The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week, which will run from March 25th to March 31st. Join in by posting about your favorites! All kinds of posts are welcome, of course, not just meta/analysis, but also any creative works (fanfic, art, etc.) inspired by the day’s category. 

Please tag all your posts #theterrorappreciationweek, and we’ll make sure to reblog them here. And please be sure to follow this blog if you want to keep up with all the week’s appreciation posts!

Schedule: Monday, March 25: Favorite episode Tuesday, March 26: Favorite scene Wednesday, March 27: Favorite main character Thursday, March 28: Favorite minor character Friday, March 29: Favorite ship Saturday, March 30: Favorite quote Sunday, March 31: Favorite fandom creation (art, fanfic, meta, meme, etc. Tell us all about your faves!)

[theendofvanity]

THE TERROR ANNIVERSARY APPRECIATION WEEK

Day Five - Favorite Ship: Fitzcro/Fitzier

“Are we brothers, Francis? I would like that very much.”

[succession]

The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week | Day Four | Favorite Minor Character | 3rd Lieutenant John Irving x

| At length the hill we mounted the crest of it / Walking the rest of it - that’s not the best of it! |

“John. (voice breaking) John.”

[fiftyfathomknit]

The Terror Appreciation Week

Wednesday, March 27: Favorite main character - Thomas Blanky

For today’s theme, I did a swatch of Blanky’s sweater. It’s done in a much thicker yarn than most in the show (the only other sweater that looks to be done in worsted-weight yarn being Hartnell’s), and it’s the only one with colorwork! I like to think Esther made it for him :) 

Top Blanky moments in no particular order:

- “Aye. You trusted Ross, and you trusted Parry” aka seeing right through everything Crozier says and does.

- Looking straight at James while he translates Silna’s questions: “She asked you, ‘why do you want to die?’”, thus explaining the situation AND Crozier’s personal crisis to James as soon as he walks in.

- also on the topic of things Blanky says to James without actually saying them: that look on his face when James asks “would you have done it?” 

- FORKS! And his maniacal laugh the last time we see him.

-“The men think we are under attack.” “We are. Of the most cowardly kind.”

- Tourniquetting his own fricking leg.

[indifferent-century]

“Gentlemen, we always feel worse in the darker months.”

James Fitzjames, Captain HMS Erebus, 1848

—

The Terror Appreciation Week day 2: Favorite Scene

It’s nearly impossible to choose an absolute favorite scene from the entire series—there are so many that stand out. Gore’s party’s arrival and Victory Point. Goodsir and the daguerreotype camera. The funeral of Sir John Franklin. Men singing below deck. The flashbacks to England. Crozier and Fitzjames at Victory Point.

But if I had to choose one (and I know, it’s technically more than one!) I would have to choose the entire beginning of episode 6: A Mercy. Everything before the opening credits is beautifully captured: the way the camera pans around the great cabin, starting with the men’s feet, where we first see Blanky up and about after his display of absolutely mad daring; how we see Fitzjames acting as expedition commander for the first time, and doing a stunning job of it; Blanky telling Fitzjames about Ross and Fury Beach; Fitzjames clearly worried and staring into the fire as he thinks of how he can possibly save the lives and morale of all the men now under his command; and ending with Fitzjames discovering the trunk of Carnivale costumes and staring into a mirror with a mask held to his face.

The way the camera travels upward during the stove scene, in particular, might be my absolute favorite. The first thing we see is the fire, making the great cabin one of the few places of warmth and security left in this place. Then Fitzjames’s hand fidgeting at his side, clearly worried about what the future holds for the long walk he’s just announced, trying to maintain confidence, to his officers. Then finally his expression as he thinks over everything Blanky has told him, and warned him about. This is a man who’s had everything fall into his hands, and yet has to maintain the disposition of confidence that he is both known for, and required to display as an expedition leader—whether he wanted it or not. But he’s James Fitzjames, and he’s going to give it everything he has.

—

Also I really just wanted to draw his amazing coat and waistcoat. I got the proportions wrong, but let’s just pretend that’s camera angle.

Bonus close-up, because my scanner is great. But geez, Tobias Menzies, why is your face so hard to draw?

[gobnaits]

The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week → March 26: Favorite Scene

[cestpasfaux24601]

The Terror Anniversary Appreciation Week  ↳  Favorite scene - "I'm sorry, but we mustn't stop until it is finished."

[tautline-hitch]

From top right: Giorgetti, 1671; Ribera, 1636; The Terror, 2018. Something in the light and the shape of the hands.

Or, should you prefer the secular:

These were not the only occasions of ill-will against Marius; some haughty speeches, uttered with great arrogance and contempt, gave great offence to the nobility; as, for example, his ... telling the people that he gloried in wounds he had himself received for them, as much as others did in the monuments of dead men, and images of their ancestors.

(Plutarch, Caius Marius 9.2, in the Dryden translation because i do not have the energy to drag myself through the Greek on a Tuesday night)

Is this my favourite scene? Probably not; I love very much James with the mask, and “I don’t know what you’re due”; I love Sophia barefoot in the snow; I love (miserably) Silna carefully and awfully arranging the body of the little murdered child; I love the afterimage of The Haunting in Collins’s death; I love Hodgson’s monologue. But the ostentatio vulnerum is on the list, and this post has been sitting in my drafts marked “ugh shut up” since December; this seems as good a time as any!

[terribleoldwhitemen]

@the-terror-appreciation-week  → Favorite Main Character: Francis R. M. Crozier, Esq.

[bro-stoevsky]

It’s still @the-terror-appreciation-week and Sophia I’m sorry to call u a minor character but today’s minor character day and

I love one (1) Sophia Cracroft! In a show where a LOT of the characters display amazing emotional maturity, Sophia is in 304 when a lot of the folks start out in 201. It’s not a lot of emotional maturity For a Woman of Her Time it’s just like, in general. Remember this ? Sophia Cracroft would not do that.

So Sophia Cracroft is interesting because she should be providing us with context on Crozier’s motivations, but she isn’t symbolic. Crozier figures large in her life but that is just a challenge she’s dealt, not her reason for being written into the universe. That was a weirdly pretentious sentence. I just mean like she’s interesting and well-treated by the story even if she doesn’t wear any fucking socks. 

I don’t want to be like “I love this character because she COULD be conventional but she ISN’T” but I do think it’s worth pointing out that in her literal first scene she could have been flattened into a Type and it didn’t happen. 

In the tableaux vivants scene, she’s given every opportunity to show the audience that Crozier’s advances are entirely unwanted, and though he is her uncle’s friend he’s an old creep and she would rather be shopping online for blue dresses decorated with lilies the size of her literal head. She need only cast a pleading look to the audience and we would be like yeah i know, we get it, men suck and send her a fake text so she could leave. She doesn’t, she keeps watching Crozier as he does some whispering with Ross, happy for him to have a friend and enjoying his company:

Then she stares him down supportively until Ross coaxes him into standing up:

It’s the first of a few scenes of the genuine affection between them, and it comes through powerfully. They do make each other happy. 

For a lot of people, in any era, that’s kind of it and you’re like “I guess this is my life now!” but what I like about Sophia is that she isn’t willing to float along that way, even though it is certainly the easiest, most (19th century voice) amenable, and least awkward choice. She knows exactly what marriage is and how much it will take the wheel of her life if she lets it. She knows what she needs emotionally and she knows Crozier well enough to speculate accurately about what parts of him might be able to change, but is thrown into conflict because she seems to love him enough to hear him out and weigh his own self-knowledge against her own. 

She’s willing and able to advocate for her own needs even though it means hurting someone she does love, and she does so honestly, carefully, but firmly. And note that not one of her objections is like “but society!” or “but the Franklins said no!” they’re all about her needs, her judgement, and her conclusions. 

And when it becomes clear to her that she may have exerted undue influence on Crozier she owns it and doesn’t try to downplay it for her own comfort, she seems to confront herself in her own mind:

She could be like “yikes but ANYWAY” -- but instead she does a very honorable thing which certainly will not be understood in parlor rooms or by gossip. She devotes all the benefits of her position and all of her access and a great deal of her time to marshaling Crozier’s rescue. Like yeah she’s supporting her aunt, but we know why she’s there. 

As I said before it’s very easy to like women who appear unconventional in eras of extreme social severity, especially since they’re easy spokespeople for the audience’s viewpoint which is usually “what the f u c k.” Sophia does that a couple times, like when Franklin is like “you won’t find turning Francis down FUN” and you can see her soul leave her body and roll its eyes so far back they stick. Or when Barrow is trying to snob Lady F about geography and Sophia hops in with even more geography. Or when she’s like “I don’t get this mania for the passage.” or THIS: 

under WHAT circumstances YOUNG LADY

AND ANOTHER THING WHERE’S HIS JACKET

ANyway those moments are all cool but Sophia is more than just That Role. She’s honorable and forthright and self-reflective, and moves within her world without excessive compromise or being overcome by it. And when something so monumentally tragic happens to someone she loves, she steps forward and revises her priorities.

And she really likes blue!

g o d

the 1840s

sure were an era

Love you Sophia wear some fucking socks

[theendofvanity]

THE TERROR ANNIVERSARY APPRECIATION WEEK

Day Three - Favorite Main Character: James Fitzjames

"A man like me will do amazing things to be seen."