I Am Notoriously Ignorant About The French Side Of The American Revolution So My Watching Experience

i am notoriously ignorant about the french side of the american revolution so my watching experience was me being pleasantly confused and just going "lafayette lafayette!" whenever he popped up. i wonder if they'll ever cut to him in america - and if so, maybe we get a few moments with washington or the gay trio? that honestly probably wouldn't be a good decision and just take away from the actual plot and flow of the show but the heart wants what it wants.

Watched the first episode of Franklin last night.

The usual dramatic liberties have been taken, of course, in things like condensing characters and events, but it has an authentic feel and shows a good deal of respect to its historical source material. The costumes and sets are just beautiful (we'll forgive a few wonky cravats and collars).

I'm surprised by how much I like Michael Douglas in the title role, though he's a little too serious most of the time. Since all the other characters are dialled to 11, it makes for a curious contrast since we're used to seeing Franklin as the stand-out wit. Hopefully he warms up!

Beaumarchais is delightfully camp, and Lafayette is entirely charming, spilling over with teenage enthusiasm and earnestness. Louis XVI tinkering at his workbench was a 11/10 detail. Vergennes is subtle and sensitive.

All in all, a very enjoyable viewing experience so far.

nobody talk to me spotify shuffled my playlist and played "seven", the ultimate alexander and edward stevens song. i'm in my dr. ham & dr. neddy feels rn 😭

And I've been meaning to tell you I think your house is haunted Your dad is always mad and that must be why And I think you should come live with Me and we can be pirates Then you won't have to cry Or hide in the closet And just like a folk song Our love will be passed on Please picture me In the weeds Before I learned civility I used to scream ferociously Any time I wanted I, I Sweet tea in the summer Cross my heart, won't tell no other And though I can't recall your face I still got love for you

Or have you forgotten those Vows of eternal Friendship, which we have so often mutually exchanged? I am perfectly at a Loss I assure you, my Dr: Hamilton, to account for your Silence.

faramir was my boy and i still love him so much. honestly should've looked closer at myself when i obsessively reread the scenes where his crazy dad was being mean to him.

Had a debate with a friend and now I gotta know

please reblog for larger sample size, my friend bet me no one would say Gimli and I wanna prove her wrong

wtf was hamilton actually like

yet another long rant about how little i really know about hamilton! this is in regards to his personality because i can't get him down. i can't figure out what he would've been like in everyday life.

for any historical figure, we take explicitly documented traits and build off of them. even if it's clumsy, i'd be confident "predicting" how washington & jefferson usually act, etc. but for some reason, ham's characterization is all over the place. his recorded personality traits, also mixed with his political attitudes, often conflict and authors end up leaning into certain parts. for instance: there's flirty & flamboyant ham. there's prideful, arrogant, standoffish ham. there's bumbling politics ham, obtuse and belligerent 24/7 - aka musical ham, but that was an intentional choice. there's even kind and warm ham, which definitely seems accurate for his family and close friends least.

was he loud and intense 24/7? or was that just him during work, since we also know that he had a habit of mumbling to himself and looking like a daydreamer to spectators?

some people said that his general countenance was serious and austere, but we also know that he could be a charmer in social spaces. he was described as feminine but also as "martial". some have written that there's an "simplicity" in his manners, and a clear openness, but we also speculate that he closed off some part of his emotions after laurens' death. he was constantly worried about his loved ones' health, like him tucking in judge ford, but we also know that he could ghost people mercilessly. was he guarded or was he not?

i guess i can pinpoint how he might have interacted with select people, like eliza, his children, washington. but i don't know which side of him was shown in the majority of his interactions - what the "real" him, or at least common him, would've been.

one of my fav descriptions of him notes how even his speech fluctuated:

“His language is not always equal; sometimes didactic like Bolingbroke’s; at other times light and tripping, like Sterne’s. His eloquence is not so defusive as to trifle with the senses, but he rambles just enough to strike and keep up the attention...His manners are tinctured with stiffness and sometimes with a degree of vanity that is highly disagreeable. “

and i recall another anecdote about how he was serious and made intelligent conversation at dinner, but became more of the flirty charming persona afterwards while socializing.

like all human beings he was multifaceted, but damn. i really can't confidently say "oh if you ran into hamilton in the street he would be really polite/reserved/kind/charming."

i guess all of this goes to say that this guy was insanely complex and i'm not sure if anyone, let alone himself, really figured it out. that's definitely why i'm interested in him as a figure, but ugh. frustrating when i'm writing and can feel myself slipping into a common ham archetype that i don't think is 100% accurate. and we didn't even get into how much of that is "real" or - adams' version.

alex & eliza strikes again: revolutionary use of freeze frame epilogue narration

spoiler warning for alex & eliza love & war, if there's anyone who cares enough about that book to need it lmao.

i fucking love the second book in the alex & eliza trilogy because right at the end of part 1 (didn't even realize there were parts until i was told it was the end of part 1) it has a whole-ass epilogue montage like those corny sitcoms that freeze frame and go: "johnny would go on to become the world's greatest ice-cream test taster".

one moment we're going through what is supposedly a historically accurate story where after the battle of yorktown, aaron burr tells betsey that alexander is alive by delivering a letter where her husband, the quintessential 18th century man, writes:

"pack your bags, my dearest! we are moving to the city! - A."

and the next, we're suddenly in italics for around 20 pages of a textbook recounting of the next few years - the author throws away all the historically accurate emotional moments like laurens' death. absolutely incredible.

also: there's no philip? we have a mrs. schuyler birthing scene but there is no mention of the hamilton couple's first child. i'm so confused. where on earth is philip hamilton, and can we put up a missing child poster for him?

so here's a little taste of what the epilogue section reads like:

“Chief among these visionaries was Alexander Hamilton, whose accomplishments during the Revolutionary War would soon be overshadowed by the work he did for the budding republic. ”

oh i'm sorry 5th grade social studies textbook. this isn't foreshadowing, this is straight up telling the reader what's going to happen next lmao.

hamburr is losing and we have to do something about that rn