Three things meme

A meme from sholio , in which I asked for and received three things to talk about "that I may or may not know or care about." I was given:

1. Alexander Hamilton (the real person, not the fictional one!).

When I was in high school I was given Gore Vidal's novel Burr, and subsequently became obsessed with the contemporary-at-the-time controversy over who fired first at their duel. I spent something like a month reading contemporary accounts of the duel, arguments and theories about the duel, etc. For some reason my high school library had a lot of material on that, and this was pre-ordinary people having internet access so all my research was done via dusty books that had probably never been opened before or since. The whole thing was one of the few times I actually enjoyed myself while on my high school campus, although to be fair all of those times also occurred in the library.

I eventually came to the conclusion that Burr had fired first, and Hamilton had fired as a reflex when hit, which was why his bullet was so far off the mark (IIRC, it hit a tree branch way above Burr's head.) As for Hamilton's intent, hard to say as he could have either been bringing his gun into position to fire at Burr or to delope. Again IIRC, at the time I thought it was probably the former as all the people arguing that he meant to delope tended to portray him as a total saint and I didn't think he was, which made me doubt their arguments in general.

And that was the extent of my interest in Hamilton until Hamilton.

2. fireflies.

I have never seen them but have always wished to. I love glowing natural phenomena in general, but have never seen any of it: no phosphorescence, no fireflies, no Northern Lights. Hopefully some day.

Fireflies specifically are very associated in my mind with certain media: nostalgic anime about happy childhoods gone by, and also southern Gothics. When I think of them, I picture animated Japanese children in idyllic landscapes, or hot and humid southern nights perfumed with magnolias, while inside the house an intricate drama involving drunkenness, incest, and murder is playing out.

3. tentacle accidents.

sholio and I watched The Umbrella Academy together and really enjoyed it. This delightfully coincided with the Hurt-Comfort Exchange - those poor kids could really use some comfort. One of them, Ben, 1) was mysteriously dead and a ghost, 2) had tentacles. While musing about how he died, we wondered if it could have been an interdimensional tentacle accident, and promptly added "tentacle accident" to the tagset. Sadly I don't think anyone used it.

If you would also like three random things to talk about, just let me know!

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