grahamgore

[grahamgore]

who of u in edinburgh rn visiting dean cemetery bc we found ur bob goodsir and irving notes 🥰🥰

[grahamgore]

Rossier Exchange is back for 2025!

Rossier Exchange is a prompt-based gift exchange focused on Rossier, ie the relationship between James Ross & Francis Crozier of AMC’s The Terror Season 1 (2018)

Sign ups are now open on our AO3 Collection, and will remain open until June 14th!

Signups close: Sat 14 Jun 2025 11:55PM EDT Assignments sent: by Thu June 19th by 11:55PM EST Assignments due: Sat 23 Aug 2025 11:55PM EDT Works revealed: Sun 24 Aug 2025 10:00AM EDT

Signups are on our Ao3 collection!

[grahamgore]

oh my favorite trope? two people who go through something so unique and agonizing and entirely beyond words that they have no choice but to create a bond that transcends all other types of love, thus acting as the sole point of understanding for the other person in a world that cannot fathom what they’ve been through

[grahamgore]

surely no one in academia cares at this point

You must understand that historians are not allowed to cum unless they're calling someone a crackpot fraud.

[grahamgore]

Poem 1 of December's daily poem challenge.

By Meggie Royer

[grahamgore]

hey girl did you know that uhhhhhh on the eve of your departure i sat beside you on the kitchen floor you said darkness has no virtue of its own it’s only darkness what is lost is lost you were tired of metaphor i once crawled along the ruins found you up above the timber line where the mountains stood before us like a bride narrow wide the sun was honeycomb it turned your white hair gold i don’t want your voice to move me i don’t want to be cracked open i don’t want the knot to loosen in my throat to place a landmine down a rabbit hole i am no pale-faced saint i’m like a dog always barking at a ghost

[grahamgore]

Enough! Melshi! I said, that’s enough!

[grahamgore]

If you had to get a tattoo from the last show you watched, what would it be?

[grahamgore]

"What if it's just us? What if we're the only ones? Somebody's got to tell people what's happening back there… One of us has to make it."

ANDOR, 1x11, "Daughter of Ferrix" (2022)

[grahamgore]

Acting like there needs to be a single unified fandom consensus on imagery and fanmade lore and symbolism and things left ambiguous in canon and the like with no deviation will kill the patient she needs a ton of different interpretations that all contradict each other to live

[grahamgore]

the crews of TERROR vs EREBUS: officer edition noticed a lot more people watching the terror recently so i made a gif guide to help differentiate all the cold boys! this and this face chart are also super helpful and funny

[grahamgore]

just thinking about how the limited array of historical materials of the franklin expedition can be defined by its lacunae and what wasnt left behind or what will never be found. so much so that the old conventional western approaches to historical study - through archival written record - are insufficient and we have to approach the expedition in other ways. erebus and terror waded through the arctic for the glory of empire at the expense of the inuit people (and all other victims of british imperialism at that point) - only for its men to come to the same historiographical fate as the histories of many colonized peoples in the past few hundred years. because it's the same story for many of us - either our precolonial histories were burnt and destroyed by colonizers, or they didnt fit in the model of conventional western historiographical standards in the first place, like oral history. the hubris of empire doomed the expedition, and for the longest time the hubris of empire could not comprehend the expedition's ghosts. i mean, it's crazy that they only found the physical shipwrecks in the past ten years because the research efforts finally listened to inuit oral histories who had been saying the same thing for decades. we're still discovering a lot of new things about the expedition because we've been gradually moving a bit away from just western standards of knowledge and research.

[grahamgore]

james fitzjames did expect to be remembered. he was an affluent historical figure in Britain during the height of imperialism. he shared tutors with princes. he actively and gleefully participated in imperialism. he actively and gleefully turned himself into walking propaganda for the british empire. his tragedy is that he failed and instead of being walking propaganda, be became a lurking insecurity.

fitzjames was particularly well loved for embodying imperialist ideals of the British National Body. there are posts going around about how he was affable and well liked and likely didn't expect to be remembered. this could not be further from the truth. he expected to be remembered and he was. as second in command of one of the two ships in question, he has been a figure of note since his disappearance. we have access to his letters because he was determined to be important enough to preserve them. every single thing about fitzjames telegraphs immense cultural and social privilege and part of the reason that he is remembered is because of the british inability to comprehend how and why he and his compatriots failed. rather than being a success and exemplar of the british national body as he expected, he became its greatest insecurity. at no point has he been forgotten. his commander is one of the most famous british explorers of all time. he just wasn't henry hudson because they failed and died instead of bringing information back for the crown.

fitzjames regularly threw himself at dangerous and notable expeditions to map new lands or open new trade routes because these stories were incredibly important to the british political imagination and discourse. he was additionally politically well placed and attended eton college. he was stationed in malta with the head of the british mediterranean fleet (a sign of high regard) and abandoned a position on a flagship to take part in the Euphrates expedition opening a steam route to mesopotamia. he was well liked and well known throughout the discovery service because he had the connections necessary for rank along with the ability to project a perfect National Body. he was not an everyman or an outsider or in any way unaware of his public persona.

fitzjames is remembered (and remembered well based on tumblr's reaction) because he was among those swashbuckling heroes whose embattled body provided "evidence of the resilience, ingenuity, and staunchness associated with British national character" that proved the british empire's supreme and godly right to conquer and civilize the entire planet. at the time, he needed to survive and bring back information to prove it. now we're granting it to him 179 years later after his empire has already (for the most part) fallen.

do not end up so deep in the blorbo sauce that you reinvent british imperial propaganda from the 19th century for real historical figures. james fitzjames' joy at participating and being notable to the british imperialist ego is a sign that he was a racist historical figure that participated guiltlessly in the atrocities associated with his station and rank in the british empire. we like tobias menzies and gayboys in tv shows, not actual imperialists, right? right?????

SOURCE: White Horizons: the arctic in the 19th century british imagination by jen hill

[grahamgore]

aren't you supposed to be talking to me about the virtues of mercy? i see. is that what you'd prefer?

From (2022-) | 1.03

[grahamgore]

Log of HMS Terror, Saturday, 25th September 1841:

Punished Thomas Jopson, Captain's Stew[ar]d with 36 lashes, for Drunkenness when on duty.

[grahamgore]

Because they have been out of copyright for a while, because the scans that tend to go around are unsearchable, and because I need something to launch with, I’m giving you: those letters written by James Fitzjames on the 1845 Franklin Expedition that everyone loves to talk about! 

Originally published in The Leader and Nautical Magazine (1852) after being edited for publication by William Coningham.

Read the letters on Arctonauts!

[grahamgore]

sorry boss i can't come in today. yeah they positively identified james fitzjames's remains and his bones have cut marks consistent with cannibalism