go be with your brother now @jartnell - Tumblr Blog

It's ice mummy time 24 hours a day 7 days a week in my head

#this is about jartnell primarily but also jorrington and liam braine #and thomas morgan. sure why not #he was only a few years late to the party

5280ft

the-golden-vanity

marshmallow--galaxies

ive been thinking about how jirving's prejudice kind of differs from the other characters in the show. most of how the other characters (jfj, hodgson, little, etc) express prejudice is through a sense of vitriol and fear towards the inuit, and generally considering their fellow white people to be more civilized. in contrast to this, i think its interesting to think about how jirving does what a lot of ultra religious white people do, especially in that time period, of creating multiple outgroups within the larger ingroup (of white people) in order to bolster their sense of moral superiority that their religious fervor relies upon.

we see jirving creating outgroups for gay people with all the stuff with hickgib, but we also see him create an outgroup for "blasphemers" through his behavior towards manson. even though manson wasn't really doing anything wrong, jirv hears the word "ghost" and goes from 0-100 instantly (though if we're being honest jirv is always at like at least a 30). he gets so so mad very easily at his fellow white people, but his tone about the inuit is always surprisingly respectful, like when he says in ep 4 they should ask the indigneous people about the tuunbaaq. a very level headed and reasonable take with no hateful language, which contrasts very starkly with jfj’s behavior in that same scene.

i do think this can be easy to interpret as Woke White Boy Jirving, but it makes me think about christian missionaries and how they wormed their way into the lives of various indigenous communities by sort of trojan horsing their colonialism by cloaking it in kindness. basically i think jirving's tone toward the inuit is so cordial bc he doesnt think they are people in the same way that white people are, so he doesnt hold them to the same standards that he holds hickey and manson to. he kind of treats them like animals to be trained/children to be taught. ultimately I think his character really effectively does the necessary job of illustrating the different forms of racism colonizers can demonstrate.

werewolfsone

To narrow down a much larger commentary to mostly a joke phrase, I think this is why Jirv being a victim of white-on-white crime was so notable. And overall, why the last couple episodes devolving into white-on-white crime atrocities (in my head, my shorthand for this is "true crime" as a genre) comparable to what Hodgson mentions his relatives supposedly witnessed in the Americas. The dramatic irony of their aggressors being of their own culture, and Jirv being the starting domino in that chain (and not seeing it coming at all) is, narratively, extremely significant. To me this is a story of extreme ignorance by people who will never be able to recognize it as such... even while having enough sense of the power structure they benefit from to twist it to their own advantage (Jirv coming after Manson for basically nooooo reason except as OP so eloquently put it, to create out-groups)

paramaline

henry le vesconte is THE funniest character on the terror bc his scenes (as i remember them) are like

smarmily eating a biscuit while his commanding officers bicker

eavesdropping on franklin ripping crozier a new one and then zooming away from the scene of the crime at top speed

that really goofy forelock tugging gesture he makes at crozier after franklin dies

the moment we find out james’s nickname for him is DUNDY

getting his frostbitten toes snipped off but in like a comic relief kind of way?????

when he finally speaks it’s to say “alright lads we’ve got a bit of a benjo planned” which is THE most victorian thing anyone has ever said

and then we don’t see much of him after the ships are abandoned, until OUT OF NOWHERE he starts peer pressuring people into abandoning the sick to die, and like i just think it’s wildly hilarious that the foppish background comic relief character is the one who finally snaps like that