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darkfire359 · 4 months

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Thoughts on e8-e10 of The Terror

(The final entry in my posting saga)

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

Thoughts on some other deaths:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of Hickey, some obligatory Hickeyposting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#the terror amc #the terror #cornelius hickey #thomas jopson #francis crozier #james fitzjames #billy gibson #harry goodsir #lady silence #edward little #thomas blanky

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solomon-tozer · 3 years

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Reasons to Mutiny

There was some chat about this on discord on Friday so I'm just rambling/expanding on things I was thinking about then. I mean, why do it? Why abandon the people you know? Why take your chances outside the larger, structured group in an inhospitable place that wants you dead?

These are just my thoughts, and how I look at/understand the actions of those who mutinied—you don't have to agree and tbh I'm gonna ramble so I probably won't make sense anyway.

1. Fear/Desperation

The main driving factor is the desire to live (we'll set aside Crozier and Goodsir for now). The ship has been beset, there's no sign of a thaw, people are getting sick and dying, you know scurvy is coming for you, along with starvation, if you don't do something. The simple act of making a choice and doing something that feels proactive is undoubtedly appealing. You want to live. This smaller group of more able-bodied men is likely to travel faster (of course, just one or two falling sick or being killed will change that, but when you're desperate you make decisions for now, not for later). Tuunbaq will hopefully stay with the bigger group, with the easy pickings.

You just want out, and fast. Given the chance, you take it. A group is hightailing it out of there in the middle of Tuunbaq attacking in thick fog? Probably a good idea to get the fuck out of there, because you don't want to die.

Plus, they have guns and will probably let you get your hands on one.

2. Distrust of Command/Command isn't in Command

Crozier strikes me as a difficult captain to follow—another captain who is as wonderful as he is fallible. He knows his stuff, yes, but he doesn't go out of his way to endear himself to the men in the way Franklin and Fitzjames did. His protection of Silna confused and unsettled a lot of the men who didn't want her there (because let's not forget this is happening within the context of the British Empire, and there's clear fear, hatred and disdain for non-European cultures the men don't understand—and don't want to understand, with a few exceptions).

All but ten of the men wanted to berth on Erebus when given the chance (and taking a poll of the men right after a lashing wasn't very strategic). Crozier isn't popular. He's the captain of the ship that saw Heather, Strong, and Evans attacked/killed and three men flogged in one evening. After that, he disappeared even further into drink, and then disappeared entirely thanks to drying out (which probably wasn't widely known, but his absence would have been noticed, and some were probably smart enough to guess—Gibson, knowing his habits, would have put two and two together, so there are definitely men who knew). Crozier is supposed to be in command, but he's absent.

In the case of Des Voeux, don't forget that Gore and Franklin were killed within days of each other, then Crozier sent Fairholme out to lead the rescue party immediately after Franklin's funeral (and Gore didn't even get a eulogy). This somewhat covers le Vesconte's actions too, once Fitzjames dies. Erebus was left with just a captain, and one lieutenant. To officers on the Erebus, there was likely a sense that they were disposable, and Crozier was protecting his own. Crozier then later, disrupting the entire social structure and system, promoted his own steward to lieutenant, rather than Des Voeux, who had been on a career path to becoming a lieutenant.

There's also the fact that Tuunbaq isn't dead. There's been no plan of attack that's resolved the problem. A petty officer and two other men did more to try and fix the problem than the officers did, and it's revealed that Crozier wasn't even going to tell the men the fate of the rescue party. Crozier's plan is also to rely on the help of the Inuit if they come across them (see the point above about fear and suspicion of other cultures). Fitzjames ordered Carnival, and look how well that went. Things are fast falling apart, and command don't look like they know what they're doing. It's easy to question them, and start thinking 'if they'd done x, then y would have gone differently...'

3. Different worlds

The navy was held together by a rigid structure, and it existed and functioned that way for a reason, but at the end of the day there was a clear difference between the men and the officers. Given the increasingly bleak, desperate situation, for some it was more important to adhere to the structure, but for others the us-versus-them would have mattered more. I think it would have been important for some to be with people they felt comfortable with and trusted, and those things don't necessarily cross class divides.

4. Disillusionment

I'm looking directly at Solomon Tozer here. Heather's death changed him, and there are others who would have had the same reaction to watching their friends die in varying, horrific ways (Heather was also going to be abandoned, which Tozer realised the moment Crozier announced they'd be walking out). I think it reaches a point where something in you switches off, and you lose faith in the thing you're supposed to be serving. It does tie back to command being incapable of dealing with the situation, yes, but there's a different note to this point—it's like an exhaustion, things tarnishing, the scales falling away from your eyes to reveal what (to you) looks like the truth. Again thinking about Tozer, if you've given so much and it's all been for nothing, what does it matter anymore? The system isn't giving back, it was all an illusion anyway.

Jopson's promotion is likely to have been jarring too, because things like that just weren't done. Things are falling apart. This isn't the world you know.

5. Allegiance

Magnus and Armitage are examples of characters who may or may not have mutinied if they weren't so loyal to others. I could make an argument for Gibson feeling some sort of loyalty to Hickey too. This ties with friendship and making a choice to be with people you're familiar with, yes, but there's more of a 'where you go, I go' to it that would be very hard to break. Even if you think what someone's doing is wrong, chances are you might end up following a very close friend, or lover, in the hope of keeping them safe or changing their mind. Or, simply, you don't want to be without them. This isn't the time to go breaking bonds like that—you stick together.

6. Accident/No Choice

Diggle and Hodgson were accidental mutineers—Diggle was straight up roped into it, and Hodgson came across Hickey's group after running off in the fog (the tent scene and subsequent 'bagsy not Hickey!' during the hunting party is another post that already exists somewhere). By that point, there wasn't much could be done. Goodsir was taken against his will too. There was a lot of confusion at the time the mutineers split. It would have been easy to run off and get lost, and at that point there isn't really the luxury of being fussy about which group you tag along with.

I'm also just going to point out that, at this point, Tozer had no choice either. His decisions led him to the point where there was no going back (unless he wanted to go back to the gallows). He had to run, because he was dead if he didn't. It's very unlikely he would have stayed if given the chance, but he didn't have that option.

7. Being an outsider

I feel, for some reason, like this is the most important point. If you look at the men in the mutineers' camp, they're pretty much all outsiders. You have a few marines, who were neither here nor there in the navy. You have three stewards who, again, were neither here nor there in the social structure. Hodgson ends up there, and he's definitely an outsider, never quite fitting in. Magnus only seems to be given the time of day by Hickey and Hodgson (remember Carnivale), and he was certainly treated cruelly by Irving. Golding was the only ship's boy from the Terror still alive (and Strong was 'like a rock' to them, and he's dead too). We have also, of course, Hickey, who truly doesn't feel like he belongs anywhere and wants to escape it all. The camp is populated predominantly by a bunch of misfits, who through fate, nature or misfortune have ended up on the outside of the system anyway. Some of them didn't start there, but they certainly ended up there (Tozer, for example, was friendly with others even if he was separated by being a marine).

At the end of the day, everyone is trying to make the best out of a bad situation, in a way that makes sense to them at the time.

(I'll probably think of more reasons and details later, because that's the way of it, but these are the main ones that come to mind just now.)

#the terror amc #mutineers #terror meta #just my thoughts idk #i like how you can take characters who DIDN'T give in to these reasons and look at them too #like hartnell #it's all a series of choice really unless you had no choice #some felt like they had no choice #also pointing out that a lot of men probably felt better with access to guns #which they couldn't get in the main group #all the characters - mutineers and not - are wonderfully nuanced and delightful to consider #anyway here are some thoughts i'll go away again now

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