I’m back on my dirk gently bullshit so I’m gonna talk about smth I’ve been thinking about for a while

At the beginning of season 1 we meet Todd. He’s not doing well and he wakes up to his car being destroyed by his landlord who is upset about money. The landlord says “you don’t know what happened yesterday! You’re not a historian! Are you a historian?!” We feel sorry for Todd and assume, as the apparent protagonist, he is a sympathetic and good character. We learn later he’s actually an asshole and stole his rent money back from his landlord (not necessarily assholish but now we know the landlord wasn’t just being crazy over nothing). He also lied to his sister

At the beginning of season 2 we meet suzie boreton. She’s not doing well and wakes up to her car being destroyed by her son who is upset about her not giving him money for concert tickets, instead buying groceries. The son says “You’re not a nutritionist! Are you a nutritionist!” We feel sorry for suzie, particularly as she seems to be struggling with an injury and assume that she is a sympathetic character. We learn later that shes actually an asshole, hurt her friends, she caused the car crash that hurt her, was a popular dick in school but after realising everyone hates her, pulls the “poor me” card.

Todd and suzie mirror each other, surprisingly subtly. Both morally grey characters who have done bad things in the past. However, the are approached by different people; Todd by dirk who teaches him to take control of his life by following what the universe says and being a better person, and suzie by the Mage who tells her to destroy people who make her feel small.

They seems so different but so similar at the same time, and ultimately end up different people, one who went down the good path, and one who went down the bad path

Hot take: Goodsir is actually a prig whose goodness and compassion depends on his own moral code, which is shaped by imperialism and Christianity. The disassembly of this moral code is his personal journey and its completion requires the sacrifice of whatever innate kindness characterized him as a cinnamon roll in the first place.

Discuss, but gently: I’m speaking off the cuff here.

I would not call Goodsir a prig, though, regrettably, the definition as contained in my dictionary does describe him perfectly when he is at his worst, which is, “[a] person who demonstrates an exaggerated conformity or propriety, especially in an irritatingly arrogant or smug manner”.  That is he.  That is my darling.  He absolutely is the person he is because he’s a relatively well-off white man in Victorian England, and his social status, not too high up on the ladder and not too low, insulates him from both the expectations that threaten to crush men like James and Sir John, and ultimately render them expendable, and the miserable circumstances that knocked Hickey into the shape we find him in.  Goodsir idealizes and perpetuates the system because he is the system: placed right at the center of it, he can’t see anything else, and is incapable, for the most part, even of self-examination.  I don’t think it makes him a bad person, whatever that may mean, but it limits him, both in imagination and empathy.  Ultimately, he’s only capable of relating to others as they fit or do not his expectations.  His horizons might be a little wider than, say, Irving’s, or, I don’t know, Collins’, because he is a scientist, but that’s a matter of scope of not depth, science in Victorian England being as much in service of Victorian ideals as any other part of society.
Goodsir always had a mean streak.  It was well-concealed, but it was there.  We see early on how he could behave if he felt that he had nothing to fear.  His back-talk to Stanley in “First Shot A Winner, Lads” is so significant because it’s the first indication we have that there’s more to Goodsir than kindness and politeness*: if Goodsir were so correct, speaking that way to his superior would be anathema to him.  Yet, he does it, and for being such a light rebuke, there’s a great deal of venom behind it, and Goodsir says this because he’s leaving for Terror, no longer Stanley’s assistant, and how does Stanley like them apples?  A few scenes later, Goodsir’s semblance of benevolence slips when he shuts down Hickey.  Again, “Does that really work on anyone?”** is not the unkindest thing Goodsir could have said, and Hickey certainly deserves it, but the way Goodsir says it is replete with contempt, and Hickey feels it.  We know that Hickey feels it, because Hickey smiles as he does whenever someone gets the better of him, and Hickey, who never lets anything go, bides his time for a year to deliver the mother of all comebacks to Goodsir.  Again, Goodsir is safe behaving in this way toward Hickey because what is Hickey going to do about it?  Hickey’s nobody, less than nobody since being flogged.  Goodsir can and does hold his tongue when it’s in his interest (when Francis tells him to stay quiet about the lead in the tinned food) or when there’s no undeniable offense (Morfin asking Goodsir if he had ever been flogged), but when he’s able, he’ll tell somebody exactly what he thinks of them.
On a personal note, I’ve never liked the characterization of Goodsir as a ‘cinnamon roll’, as wholly pleasant and decent and unselfish, both because I find it to be inaccurate, and because it’s an over-simplification of a character every bit as complicated and challenging as Francis and Hickey.  The reward in a character like Goodsir is that all that he is isn’t immediately obvious, that getting to the heart of the matter requires analysis of both the text and the reader.  I wonder if the desire to make Goodsir more palatable might not be rooted in the viewer’s desire to believe the best about themself.  Well, I’m awful, and I don’t really mind it.  I love Goodsir the most when he’s the most difficult to love.  I love him all the time.

* And the end of the episode sees Goodsir begin his experiment on Jacko, which is a necessary evil, lacking the technology to isolate and identify what could be making the sailors ill, but Goodsir is still capable of watching an animal slowly die of lead poisoning.  He grieves, he feels helpless before his own inadequacy, he fears that Jacko might have died in vain, but it’s still something that he did.

** It may simply be a quirk of Paul Ready’s speaking voice, but when Goodsir says ‘work’ to Hickey, the vowel sound, I don’t know if it flattens or broadens, but it changes, and Goodsir’s pronunciation sounds a little less refined.  Maybe, as with Jopson, all is not as it seems with Goodsir.

@ferylcheryl

I think the vexing thing is that he does develop past that but in doing so sheds many of the qualities that so endear the audience to him in the early episodes. The man we see comfortlessly delivering Gibson’s death sentence is not priggish, exactly, but nor is he effusing about the splendor of dying as he did with Young. Nor would I call him devout—or, at least, I’d argue that he’s devout to the extent necessitated by the church as a socioeconomic institution. 

Goodsir does change, dramatically, between David Young’s death and Gibson’s.  When the latter occurs, Goodsir’s already been through the shared* trauma of the expedition, but now he’s been kidnapped.  Now, he’s alone.  That’s the point.  We see in The Terror what becomes of people when they lose everything that was holding them together- community; friendship; faith; hope- and as it transpires… it’s not pretty.  If Goodsir doesn’t offer Gibson peace and heavenly choirs as he did David Young, I think it’s because Goodsir feels abandoned by these things.  The next episode sees Goodsir asking Francis, in all sincerity, if there is, indeed, a God.  The trappings of religion are one thing, but personal belief is another, and Goodsir loses both. 

* And I think this is important, because bonds between people, members of a community, are what The Terror is all about.  People need each other.  People aren’t interchangeable.  In the strictest sense, Goodsir is part of the community formed by the Merry Mutineers, but he’s not there willingly, and he doesn’t care for these people or agree with their aims.  Goodsir does believe in duty, and as miserable as he is, he examines Gibson, gives an honest assessment of Gibson’s condition, but kindness is extra.  Kindness requires something to feed it, and Goodsir has nothing left.  Finally, the mystery of Dr. Stanley is solved.  We have some idea of how he got to be the way he is.  I don’t know if we would have accepted the explanation if it hadn’t played out on Goodsir, whom we’re prepared to stay with and care for.  A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Obviously, I’m grotesquely and unabashedly biased, but I think that Goodsir is one of The Terror’s greatest creations.  He’s exactly what you want him to be- kind and decent; caring and compassionate; inquisitive and helpful- and he’s everything you’d rather he weren’t.  He’s the benevolent face of Victorian prejudice and expansionism- worse, the unquestioningly accepting, morally unsophisticated one.  His good will is condition; the quality of his mercy is strained.  He’s not wholly objective, not terribly enlightened when one gets down to it, as much a product of his environment as Francis or Hickey.  Yet, there’s no real sting in Francis’ cruelty, for when we meet him, he’s a miserable drunk who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.  Nor does it does come as a surprise when Hickey shows that he knows exactly what it takes to survive.  That Francis is wiling to humble himself and put others first, that Hickey has a heart, these are the surprises, pleasant surprises, and we earn them, following Francis and Hickey through the story.  You’re set up to care about Goodsir, who is so ill-equipped for the expedition, who watches David Young die screaming and in the next episode falls flat on his face while trying to haul a sledge with the other men, to want to protect him, so it comes as a shock that he’s capable of unkindness, of hurting others intentionally, that he doesn’t really learn much about himself, and what he does learn kills him.  Francis and Hickey can only rise in our estimation- sometimes they do; sometimes they don’t- but Goodsir has a long way to fall.  If he disappoints us, do we still stick with him?  As usual, it’s less the answer we arrive at that matters than that we ask the question.

so i came to the end of my third watch of the terror last night and by the time i reached the very final scene i felt violently projected into this sense of simultaneous calm, grief and great emptiness, which is probably exactly what the directors wanted the viewer to feel at that final moment of the show. it did very much feel like my heart would burst from all the emotions i was feeling at that moment and it kept me awake most of the night. 

anyways, it brings me to what i wanted to talk about, without exactly knowing if this was what kajganich and hugh had in mind, but that really struck me: the various states of ecstasy we see the characters in throughout the show, and the way the spectator is as a consequence enraptured, willingly or not, into this same ecstasy. cw for mentions of recreational drug use and abuse, cannibalism, suicide and spoilers under the cut. 

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i do love the terror bc it has that insane “characters who know theyre in a story” trope that makes me crazy but in wildly different ways. crozier knows from the beginning theyre in a tragedy and hes powerless to stop it. until carnivale james thinks theyre in a high adventure story of which he is the protagonist and this is just his prologue and he slowly comes to realize and accept that it’s crozier’s tragedy. and hickey thinks hes the protagonist of some kind of bizarre cosmic horror story that will be read as religious text in a thousand years once he’s managed to eat the sun but he is just a rat in the ships hold.

“We were interested to know, in the writers’ room, at what moment each character stepped from a high adventure story into a horror story, and that’s obviously different for every character. And we knew there were going to be a handful of characters who refused, Blanky at the top of that list. He never enters the horror story; he wouldn’t dignify a horror story with his participation, ever, so he stays in the adventure story ’til the very end.

But we also knew we wanted a character to — Hickey being chief among them — who just already start the show in a horror show, and he’s in a survival story when we meet him and has been for years.”

-David Kajganich

My favourite thing about the Expanse is that like, emotionally? it goes right to the point of no return, and then it has the goddamn sense to walk it back. Season 1 and season 2 is a familiar story: hero encounters danger, the stakes get higher and higher, hero starts making increasingly alarming moral compromises to try to defeat the danger. There was a point on Ganymede when Holden was chasing the hybrid, when the Weeping Somnambulist was taking off not knowing if the Roci would be there to protect it, when I was like. Holden, you disaster man, if you don’t turn back I will never forgive you.

But he turns back! He chooses to be there to protect the refugee ship instead of trying to kill one loose hybrid, and then in the season 3 finale he and Naomi go up to the Behemoth’s command deck and you see him look at Naomi - Naomi who walked away, Naomi who refuses to kill another innocent, Naomi who doesn’t carry a gun - and you see the moment he makes the decision to throw his gun away and walk towards a firing squad, hands up, hoping they’ll hear him and Naomi out before they shoot. “We’re scared. We're hurt and we are reaching for violence cause we can’t figure out what to do, but just this once, can't we try something else?” Thing is, we know Holden was officer track before he was discharged, we saw how quickly he incapacitated that Martian mutineer (without killing him!) and how he took down that UNN ship like ten times the Roci’s size without killing anyone. Holden’s good at violence! I’m pretty sure he could have come up with a plan to subdue the control deck without killing them, given a few more minutes. But he chooses to talk. And while everyone’s deliberating Clarissa activates her murder implants and yeets herself across the command deck, and it’s not really clear at that point if she’s starting to believe Holden or if she still wants to kill him, and it’s not really clear from the camera angle what she’s moving towards and honestly my first thought was that she was moving to take down the guards. But she goes for the electric panel and flips the buffer. All those chemicals in her bloodstream making her temporarily very, very dangerous, and she uses them to power down the Behemoth and save everyone instead of bashing some more heads. That means something to me.

And it doesn’t come out of nowhere, you know? It starts with Miller dragging his pet nuke into the heart of Eros and the timer goes off and you can see him hesitating over the snooze button. You can see him hesitating to use another act of violence and make the choice, instead, to take off his helmet and comfort proto-Julie. You can see it in Naomi’s monologue in the season 2 finale, as she’s telling Holden she doesn’t know if the cold war and the violence against the Belt is ever going to end, superimposed over a shot of Bobbie in her MCRN power armor reaching a hand out to help Chrisjen stand up, and Chrisjen is staring up at her like she’s a miracle because she is.

The Expanse is a story where a lot of people try to do better. It doesn’t careen into increasingly grimdark bullshit just for the shock value unlike some shows that will remain unnamed. It actually leaves room for some goddamn hope and it’s so incredibly refreshing.

EDIT: I FORGOT THE CAPTAIN OF THE MCRN HAMMURABI BUT SHE’S ONE OF MY FAVOURITE SUPER MINOR CHARACTERS AND I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT HER REFUSING TO SHOOT AT THE UNN SHIPS.

I love this analysis. It shows that at its core, the expanse is about how others bring out the best in us. Holden is Quixote. He is a dreamer. Always looking to the sky. Wanting a big adventure. He is a foil to Miller because he is both feet firm on the ground, cynical detective. The fact that they were born in the sky and on earth, to showcase that gap in who they are? Brilliant. And then, they rub off on each other, Holden becomes colder, to the point that it drives off Naomi, who fell for the man who wanted to do the right thing.

And then he listens to her and becomes better.

This change back to who he is, allows Clarissa to see a man who isn’t what she imagined. She hated this pompous, self-aggrandizing dick. Because she thought Holden was a liar and a criminal. She thought his image was an act. Then she  finds a man that carries the weight of the universe on his shoulders and its breaking him. She sees that he’s the kind of idiot that rushes into things because he cares about the human cost. Others wanted to say, we won’t act until we know it will benefit us. Let’s hash out how to divide this so we can come out a bit more on top and he’s like, people are in danger.

Holden always wants to do the right thing, but he has learned that sometimes you have to wait to do the right thing and sometimes you just act. Avasarala taught him that even if you give everyone the information, it could be the wrong thing to do. Morally, it might be right, but the butcher of Anderson station will show you that if you act on wrong information, even when “right” you can become a monster. You could just be a tool. His need to help has been weaponized before, hell it started the whole series. But it has also changed others.

I like Bobbie as a foil to him. They are both knight tropes. He is the dreamy, head in the clouds type of knight. The idealized version. Bobbie is the real deal. The knight that killed and did the wrong things sometimes. All in the name of the greater good. She is the hammer. She is not afraid to kill first because she trusts the MCRN to work for the people. They all have one goal. She believes in Mars. And then she realizes that she is an expendable weapon. Her foil could also Amos. She is a less “I am that guy” version of him. She believes in family. The army killed her family (her squad) and she is lost. Like Amos, she finds someone she loves and trusts to follow their moral compass until she re-calibrates hers. Avasarala was her Holden. Someone that knew more and wanted to help Bobbie reach the truth.

This series showcases how we can all be good and we can all be better. If we don’t trust ourselves, we can find others to show us how to be better, until we internalize that and we are always the best version of us. Sure, Holden is Quixote, but he didn’t slay the dragon or save the princess by himself. And if he hadn’t been there, others would have picked up the mantle. Maybe not as fast, maybe not in the same way, but others were poised to do good, even with the odds stacked against them.

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. 

#also of course “she asked you ‘why do you want to die”’!! exquisite. #and i would also love to know what follows ‘we both know what is happening’ #that must have been a hell of a conversation however long it lasted. #(i love too that francis has been testing the elasticity of polite society essentially since we met him and this is the moment it snaps) #(his boxer’s bounce and his come-on-then nod) #(the dual effect of his look-round before he throws that punch: #half can you believe this shit (they can) #and half dirty fighter’s fake-out.) #(lovely.)

obv im only like halfway through the season but hickey is so interesting 2 me as a character who reflects back at others what their actions imply but don’t make explicit and is punished for it… like first caught having sex with a man in an extremely homoerotic environment and being threatened with corporal punishment, and then kidnapping a girl who had already been traumatized and intimidated by other members of the crew and who the officers were planning to kidnap the very next day.. like he literally just did what they were going to order before they ordered it, but in such a brutal and impulsive way that it was made disgusting and shameful to those who would have condoned that same act under only slightly different circumstances… hickey as mirror…. hickey as sacrificial victim, drawing all sins into himself to be exorcised from the whole crew… hickey as someone who doesn’t bother to conceal the sex and violence just beneath the surface of the colonial project and who is punished for his lack of discretion…

The reason why NBC’s Hannibal found such a huge female audience is because Fuller’s/Mads’ Lecter is not a male power fantasy: he’s a female power fantasy.

He’s not a broody snippy git whose appeal is assumed apriori and who in real life would drive away absolutely everyone he met (e.g. any sad manboy ever trotted out as a lead by Moffat).

He’s not an “aspirational” over-muscled hulk.

He’s not a fighter for ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ for whom bodies are just collateral on his path to heroic self-actualization

This Hannibal is the Head Bitch In Charge.

He is independent to the n-th degree. He lives to please himself and no one else. He is fabulous. He shamelessly geeks out over obscure and refined pastimes and shares them with friends. He is the Queen Bee of his social circle. He takes any excuse to treat himself, but he also has perfect self-discipline: gym is not optional. His time-management skills are superhuman. He can decorate and keep a house like Martha Stewart, hold down several jobs, and practice multiple hobbies daily.

(And what are his hobbies, aside from slaughter? Cooking, foreign languages, drawing, playing musical instruments and composing. And clearly clothes shopping. He is probably on first-name basis with the best tailors and cordwainers in town. Contrast with Will, whose hobbies are stereotypically masculine: fixing motor boats, fishing, playing outside with his dogs.)

Hannibal is not young, but he wears his age gracefully. He regrets nothing, like an embodiment of Piaf’s “Non, rien de rien”. His hair is perfect because he clearly spends time in front of the mirror styling it, not because the show’s producer wanted him to look effortlessly cool (*cough*Sherlock*cough*).

He never, ever loses his temper in public, as if he knows that the world/audience will not fawn over him for trying to assert himself through vulgarity, posturing, or volume - all the typical ways in which men like to hijack and dominate conversations.

He can dispatch a creepy stalker like Franklyn with a single neck twist, with no consequences. A sweet fantasy, indeed. If only real life stalkers were so easy to dispose of.

Hannibal’s victims - those who were not killed in self-defense or as ‘murder presents’ for Will - tend to fall into two categories: other killers who act like *they* are the baddest bitches in town (Gideon, Tobias, the mural guy) and people who disrespect him. Of those, there are surprisingly many. In fact, it seems like the very esteemed pillar of Baltimore society Dr. Lecter goes through life constantly being dissed. This is rather puzzling. Hannibal is a tall good-looking white gentleman who speaks like a professor, dresses like a count, and drives a Bentley that costs more than people’s houses. And yet something about him prompts many people, especially in the service industry, to be rude to him.

But he doesn’t confront these “pigs” (already a gender-loaded term, even though it gets applied to victims of both sexes) in a head-on, macho way. Instead, he bides his time and dispatches his prey through some kind of a sneak attack. His preferred philosophy of fighting is “feminine”: assume your opponent is physically stronger and don’t try to out-muscle them. (Even if his opponent is much smaller and weaker, like Chilton.) Subterfuge, ambush, sedatives - Hannibal wins his fights by fighting on his own terms. Nevertheless, if a man should come at him with a weapon, he defends himself with perfect adroitness: Tobias, Jack, Mason’s henchmen, etc.

Even some aspects of Hannibal’s relationship with Will would make more sense if he were female. In particular the issue of, well, issue. Hannibal is clearly Not Okay with Will having children with anyone but him. This is somewhat odd for a man, especially one who seems to have never wanted kids before this. But it makes sense for a woman just past menopause: fate finally delivered her dream partner, but it’s too late to have a family. And so Hannibal sets up the dominoes for Margot’s pregnancy to be terminated practically as soon as he learns of it. If he can’t have Will’s kids, then no one can. They may be adopted, but they have to be *theirs*.

It also makes sense that when Hannibal discovers Will’s treachery, he goes full Medea on him. Killing the man’s children is common to cultural narratives of wronged women all over the world. It’s often the only leverage they have over the men, the only way they can exact revenge. Hannibal can take much more than Abigail from Will, but she is the only thing he can take that truly matters.

Bonus exercise for the reader: imagine a version of the show where everything is the same, but Hannibal is played by Meryl Streep.

Or even just swap Mads Mikkelsen & Gillian Anderson places. Let her be Hannah Lecter; let him be Dr. Bennett Du Maurier, her wary shrink. Both the characterization and plot still work almost 100%.

I wrote this before season 3, and I just want to point out something that happened on the show afterwards. We saw Hannibal engage in more stereotypical male combat: protracted, hand to hand, with improvised weapons. Once against Jack and once against The Great Red Dragon. 

Both times, Hannibal was smaller and physically weaker. In Mizumono, he only got to Jack through cleverness; physically, Jack could throw him around like a rag doll. When they met again in Italy, Jack kicked his ass so thoroughly Hannibal had to save himself by falling out the window and hobbling off. Same with the Red Dragon: had they gone head to head, Hannibal would have been thoroughly pwned. 

Bryan Fuller described Hannibal and Will fighting to “two jackals trying to take down a rhinoceros”. He might as well have said “two women trying to take down a man”. 

So are you saying that they are a gay couple who is in the same time a lesbian couple

yes.

I love this. It’s a woman’s show in so. many. ways.

For me (apropos of nothing), the scene in Antipasto when Prof. Sogliato humiliates Hannibal is EVERYTHING. In that moment, Sogliato is every dick who name checks a badge at an academic conference and dismisses you with a glance. Who doesn’t take you seriously because you’re ‘just’ a woman. And when he turns around and starts reciting Dante… in that moment, he is me and I am not prepared to get too worked up about Sogliato’s inevitable demise.

this analysis is SO spot on! OP’s comment about Franklin really struck me - I could never pity him like so many in the fandom do, because that’s what I saw him like: the creepy, obnoxious dude you were taught not to antagonize just in case. His demise at Hannibal hands was… cathartic.

This is so fucking good and reminds me I need to continue my live blogging of season two.