Snowflake #13

[melannen]

I didn't really know what to do with this one, because: emotions? connected to memories? Look I'm lucky enough to be able to connect an emotion to the present ok. Plus - and this has tripped me up before with prompts like this - I feel like most people expect a "favorite memory" to be a thing that you enjoyed while it was happening, but the emotions I have connected to remembering a thing aren't necessarily the same emotions I felt while experiencing a thing? So one memory that sticks is the teacher in fifth grade telling me "the assignment said to write about a good memory, but these are all about times you cried and were sad!" Well yeah, the day I had wasn't fun but the memory I made out of it is, what don't you understand?

(Not to say that I don't also have terrible memories of terrible days when bad things happened and I was sad. But I also have memories of good days when I was happy that are bad memories because of what they're connected to. And when I'm prompted for a "favorite memory" good days that I have good memories of are never the first things I come up with.)

Anyway! That's way off topic so let's just say this prompt is hard, which is why it's one I got stuck on, so here's something that doesn't really fit the prompt, but I had it on my mind, and it's about imperialism, avoidable tragedy, death, rotting ice mummies, and cannibalism, all the sort of things that immediately come to mind when somebody asks me for good memories.

Four reasons I know more than anybody ever should about the lost Franklin Expedition (and one reason I don't.)

1. When I was in elementary school, there was an annual event where the Girl Scouts got to have a campout in the big science museum, and the year I was old enough, I went and I was very excited! As you would be. Unfortunately, when it came time to lay out our bedrolls, the room with the neato physics deelybobbers and thingamajics was already claimed, and so was the room with the models of the Solar System, and the one with the gorgeous math sculptures demonstrating topology and tesseracts, and the one with the jellyfish. So we ended up in the room with the exhibit on mummies. No, this was not the ideal place for a bunch of nine-year-old girls to try to sleep. On the plus side I don't remember any actual mummies. On the other hand, it was one of those exhibits that was mostly giant backlit signs on the walls, and they stayed lit all night. Specifically, I was positioned so as to spend the entire night looking at a blown-up backlit image of one of the Beechey Island ice mummies (Do not google for those photos! Please! it was the one of William Braine that's on Mummipedia I recognized it immediately) alongside text about how the expedition had gone mad with mercury poisoning and then eaten each other.
   
   I didn't sleep that night.


2. Reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture


3. Several of my friends from the heady days of post-movie Les Miserables fandom have spent several years deep in the fandom of AMC's The Terror. This kind of makes sense, if you were in Les Mis fandom because it was a historical costume drama about a bunch of attractive people forced by circumstance into bad choices who all die tragically in the end. (That wasn't why I was in Les Mis fandom.) Weirdly I don't think any of them were even aware of the dS connection and nobody active in that fandom on Tumblr seems to even know who Stan Rogers is??
   
   As a result while I was never particularly interested in watching the show, too much horror in the wrong way for me, I am in fact all in for terrebus-fc fandom (which is one of the only reasons I was able to follow what's going on in Ted Lasso fic.)


4. One of my non-DW fandom friends has a long-standing interest in the Franklin expedition - unrelated, as far as I can tell, to either childhood trauma or dueSouth fandom. I think it might have started with her picking up Lady Franklin's Revenge on a whim? Anyway, she reads all the books that come out and follows the archeology news, and since I was possibly the first other person she mentioned it to who had any idea what she was on about, I am her Talking About The Franklin Expedition person. (Yes, she knows about the childhood trauma, it's fine.) In return she puts up with me telling her all about the lost apocryphal Mallory/Irvine photos, the mysteries of Green Boots, and the Rainbow Valley, so it works out.


5. Here's the thing though: Shackleton and Amundsen were both immeasurably cooler. Scott's expedition was more tragic and everything Vilhjalmur Stefansson did more entertainingly shambolic, not to mention those guys with the hot air balloon for sheer ridiculousness, or Matthew Henson and his crew for a complicated story of heroism, imperialism, and race. And if what you want is ice mummies, unsolved mysteries, and Englishmen dying with a stiff upper lip for an abstract ideal of exploration and honor, let me tell you about Mallory and Irvine.
   Okay, admittedly none of those have the "going mad with mercury poisoning and then eating each other" aspect, but I think the childhood trauma has ruined that for me, and the mercury poisoning probably didn't happen anyway.
   
   I think the most interesting thing about the Franklin expedition - and it's one of the things that fascinates my friend - is that it's still interesting. The lost expedition, and Lady Franklin's dogged attempts to keep it unforgotten, gripped the public imagination in a different way than any of the others firmly enough it keeps bobbing back up to the public consciousness in odd new ways every decade or so. It's a pointless tragic disaster that's always had a fandom, and that's so strange and uncomfortable and interesting.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I learned about the Franklin Expedition because of Due South.

Didn't the ships get discovered again recently?

So sorry about the mummies. *shivers*

[redbird]

I think that was for values of "discovered" that mean "white people noticed what the locals already knew."

[princessofgeeks]

Yes, you are exactly right. I was just being brief. There was a lot of media coverage about it a few years ago which is not the same as a new discovery at all.

[melannen]

I felt like there had been major Franklin Expedition news relatively recently, but I just looked it up and it was before Covid, so.... several years technically, just a month ago in our hearts.

The ice mummies shiver back at you!

[ellen_fremedon]

the emotions I have connected to remembering a thing aren't necessarily the same emotions I felt while experiencing a thing?

Oh I'm so glad it's not just me.

nobody active in that fandom on Tumblr seems to even know who Stan Rogers is??

Do you know Merry/thiswaitingheart? They regularly post The Terror and Stan Rogers content.

[melannen]

Definitely not just you.

I should look them up! Even if I don't really need more Terror content on my dash. Between them and the people who went to Hannibal, LM fandom has resulted in a perhaps surprising amount of cannibalism content in my Tumblr experience.

[sophia_sol]

nobody active in that fandom on Tumblr seems to even know who Stan Rogers is??

BAFFLING, everyone should know stan rogers but very much especially them!

also wow your night at the museum experience sounds harrowing, my goodness

[melannen]

Not being Canadian I didn't actually know Stan Rogers by name until Due South, even though my parents were into folk revival stuff (I think he was maybe a bit after their musical tastes calcified.) But I am glad I found him, he's great!

It's one of those memories that was terrifying at the time but great in retrospect!

[sophia_sol]

tbh my experience of canada is very much like that episode of due south where fraser starts singing "Barrett's Privateers" and literally everyone on the boat starts singing along on the chorus. Like. Even if you don't know much Stan Rogers, obviously everyone at least knows the chorus of Barrett's Privateers. And it's always funny to remember that the rest of the world doesn't have Stan Rogers nearly so enshrined in their cultural memory!

[redbird]

Thanks for the Stan Rogers earworm.

Seriously--I like that song.

[melannen]

It's a good song! I have it in MP3 and in LP. And stuck in my head.

[monksandbones]

Oh no, memories. William Braine wasn't the Franklin Expedition mummy that was in all, yes, I swear, somehow ALL, of our social studies textbooks starting if not in elementary school then early in high school, but John Torrington was. I had a very "no, don't look, skip that page, don't look... okay I looked" relationship with those pictures.

Edited to add: I googled, obviously. Obviously (see my entire life to date as stated above).

[melannen]

I'm pretty sure my one was Braine, because the name also stuck in the memory as being creepy in its own right, but they are ALL as BAD. WHY was it considered a good idea to put those photos everywhere! The mummies weren't even that old!

It looks like Torrington was found first, which would explain why he got in the textbooks early, but my museum exhibit would have been shortly after the others were first disinterred. I think. There's apparently an old NOVA episode about that. I should -not- go look it up and watch it

[primeideal]

Haha, this is great, because I've sort of been adjacent to the fandom in the sense that I see tags that are RTMI about "a melodramatic group of dudes who all die tragically" and go "maybe I should check that out...actually I think the whole point is that Imperialism Is Bad Actually and I don't really need an evil polar bar or cannibalism to tell me that????" But hard agreed on Shackleton and Mallory! And (to an extent but it's a weird one) Scott! So it sounds like I need to research Vihjalmur Stefansson pronto.

My brother semi-recently (I think this was pre-Covid) was on a road trip with a Canadian friend and came back very into Stan Rogers semi-ironically. "He's like the Drake of Canada."

[melannen]

Most of Terror fandom seems to be in camp "yeah, sure, Imperialism, we done knew, but consider: there are hot guys in Navy uniforms eating each other, angstily." Which valid even if not my thing!


Stefansson probably belongs more in the category of the hot air balloon bros than with Scott or Franklin. A better promoter than explorer, and didn't manage to kill that many people, probably mostly because he did not command his expeditions in person if he could help it. But he sure promoted some badly-thought-through stuff! Wrote compelling books though.

[synecdochic]

let me tell you about Mallory and Irvine.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YES

And, like, the contemporary mysteries around their whole expedition! The conspiracy theories! The drama! The fact that Kodak is specifically keeping certain processes and pieces of equipment around in case anyone ever finds Mallory's camera! The accusations of nationalist wrongdoing! The fact Mallory's body appears to have disappeared!

I am fascinated by Everest dramatics in particular, but Mallory-and-Irving related Everest dramatics are the weirdest.

[melannen]

Yes yes yes! All of this! Also the legal issues around who owns the photos.

The mystery of Green Boots and his strange appearances and disappearances lately is also very good Everest content.

[synecdochic]

YES. Everest drama absolutely fascinates me!

Have you ever read any of the books about Elizabeth Hawley? Now she was a character.

[melannen]

I have read about her in other things - it's hard to avoid - but not any of the biographies on just her. Is there one you recommend?

[synecdochic]

I'll Call You In Kathmandu by Bernadette McDonald is the one I've read! Very interesting.

[sylvaine]

why did I bloody google that

[pauraque]

She warned us not to! I don't know what we were expecting. :|

[melannen]

I did! I warned you, bro!

I thought about leaving it at 'these are pictures of rotting ice mummies that traumatized me as a child' but then I was like no, I need to actually warn them, because people *will* look.

[melannen]

I feel like even for someone who browses Mummipedia for fun, those are the *worst*. They just look like people who went mad from heavy metal poisoning and ate each other.

[kore]

I don't know why but if you find out you can tell me why I did too! //FACEPALM

"ROTTING ICE MUMMIES, DO NOT GOOGLE" I don't know what I expected

[melannen]

Tbf most people's experience of ice mummies is mostly Otzi, and he's not even a little horrible in comparison to Them.

[luzula]

There's a great book in Swedish about the Andrée expedition (the crazy guys with a hot air balloon), written by Bea Uusma who is a fandom-of-one for the Andrée expedition. Her fannishness and enthusiasm really shines through, and I believe she has also done new research that changes the theories about how they died.

[melannen]

Oh cool! I'll have to see if I can add the English translation of her book to my to-read list.

I do prefer her theory on how they died to the others, it's much more suitably epic.

[luzula]

Oh cool, I didn't know it was translated! \o/