#ramiro deserves a medal for putting up with him that is all

[macbeth-s]

they were wild for this xxx [tags by @atleastistillhaveyou]

[tortoisesshells]

top five 1899 characters and/or top five scenes from 1899!

unfortunately, I cannot shut up about 1899. to save your dash, it's all under the cut. tl;dr: I fucking love Maura Franklin.

TOP 5 CHARACTERS: (1) Maura Franklin: she's unhinged. she's the only sane man. she's suffered more than jesus christ. she's caused everyone else to suffer more than she has (maybe). she'll never let go. she has to let go. she accidentally keeps committing adultery with the walking talking open wound masquerading as an authority figure. stealth pants. possibly understands far more than she ever lets on. The most character of all time.

(2) Eyk Larsen: so far past his breaking point that it's almost comic. who put this man in charge of a ship and 1500 souls? If 1899 is a story about grief, then he gets so many of the great character beats about it. He'd practically dead himself. He's going to drink himself into an early grave. A shell of a man with a single, half-deranged thread of hope. A man who was saved from inspiring the worst kind of dad issues in his daughters by their horrible and premature deaths. If his story on the Kerberos is completely disconnected from his reality (whatever that is) I think he should be allowed to commit murder.

(3) Ramiro: I don't know what I can say about him that you and others have not said more eloquently than I, but: a man who is destined to keep secrets - not only his own; a man who deserves rest but is not allowed to, either by his own moral compass or the intolerance of the world around him. everyone wants him as a confessor and confidante, but he struggles to find that for himself! he shines in the crisis, but you wish he didn't have to. I hope there's a version of reality where he and Ángel get to sit in the open sun and enjoy a quiet afternoon.

(4) Jérôme: local man forced to abandon perfectly good Count of Monte Cristo plot by supernatural vicissitudes and his own sense of rights and wrongs. I think he should get to get Lucien with the hammer. I think he and Clémence should ride off into the sunset together. I have no idea how he and Clémence got out of Ling Yi's memories, but I think something horrible and plot-relevant happened in there and I'm raging against the heavens that we'll never get to see the full scope of their escape into the boiler room. He doesn't seem to be running away from his past as much as the others, and sets aside his sprint towards rightful vengeance as soon as he sees the miseries of his past playing out again. I still don't know what I believe his original plan was - murder? simply throwing the medal back in Lucien's face? Did he know himself? G O D.

(5) Ling Yi: I, too, enjoy hiding in small spaces, though I'm more partial to handy closets than miscellaneous equipment lockers. She's isolated from her mother by the great secret they're carrying between them, from any common ability to connect to anyone else, from her own sense of self. It's understandable that she tends to expect the worst, all things taken together. If all this has happened before, how many times has she not been able to say goodbye, either to Mei Mei or to her mother? How long has she been staring the end, not of her physical life, but her life as Ling Yi, in the face?

TOP 5 SCENES: (1) "Have you ever lost someone? It's like you're dying with them. They can move on. You're stuck." I've rambled at length in the tags but: Eyk Larsen's whole life as Captain of the Kerberos is one great circle between Southampton and New York, over and over, without end. He cannot escape it. He cannot, except temporarily, escape his grief over the loss of his family and his failures as a husband and father to have done something. And yet (as we know) none of this is real, and all of this is Maura's doing - maybe. Maura, rightly, looks as though she's been gutted: this is her grief reflected back to her. She cannot move on, and because of it, they're all stuck.

(2) I am a giant sucker for well-done SFX, and the Kerberos descending through the maelstrom into the archive left me gasping. Ling Yi's - resignation? - to seeing the impossible spooling out in front of her, when she's lost the only other person on the ship who cared at all for what she thought makes spectacle into tragedy.

(3) The multiple-way conversation between Ángel and Ramiro and Eyk and Eugen about the survivors aboard the Prometheus having need of a priest in the first-class hallway: the multiple conversations being had at once, the switching between languages, the claustrophobic framing, that Ángel, who has not exactly shown himself to have much care for Ramiro's opinions thusfar, shows himself instead to be frightened and a little desperate to not rock the boat (sorry, couldn't resist) and still concerned for Ramiro's well-being as the masquerade seems to be getting out of hand. There's so much going on in such a little scene!

(4) Maura, wondering where everyone on the Prometheus went, immediately asking Eyk how hot the boilers run - skipping right over that it would be significantly easier, perhaps, to throw bodies overboard than cremate 1500 people. I love how your mind works, Miss Franklin. You're terrifying. (actually, the whole sequence of Maura and Eyk immediately deciding to lie to each other rather than converse is a delight. for a given value of delight.)

(5) The fight on the stern of the Kerberos at the end of the mutiny: the lighting! the drama! the spectacle! the realization that all is lost before the significantly worse realization - they are so far beyond the boundaries of the possible, and whatever controls this place is not operating by known rules! The many reunions mid-fight! Iben wins by being willing to murder a child!