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It's quite obvious, and when Martin calls him out on it Stephen goes scored earth DEAD TO ME about it.
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May 20, 2021 00:02
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Call him a pragmatical clinchpoop and kick his breech
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Jun 10, 2021 02:10
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Master and Commander begins in 1800 if I remember correctly. I was about to pipe up 1801 because in Post Captain Stephen says that he met Jack in "the year one" IIRC, but wikipedia says 1800, so idk what's going on.
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Sep 14, 2021 22:28
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In my recollection there's like one chapter of good Dan Simmons that's almost worth it; the rest is pretty dull. e: in The Terror you knob. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Oct 1, 2021 |
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Oct 1, 2021 18:13
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builds character posted:Jack is miss piggy. This and no other.
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Dec 28, 2021 03:12
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Hot Dog Day #82 posted:It took me the better part of two years, but I finally finished the series tonight for the first time. It’s also the first time in a long time where I felt… depressed isn’t the right word, but forlorn about finishing? The characters in the book were with me during a lonely time in my life, and reading a 20 book series on friendship was helpful to me. I look forward to giving it another read through soon! Good book postpartum is no joke! The happy news is: The A/M books are even better on re-read.
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Apr 5, 2022 12:02
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Yeah I think it's interesting how, instead of being like (buildup, climax, epilogue) per book, they started being chopped up like: ... buildup, climax) (epilogue, buildup, climax) (epilogue, buildup, climax) Which is probably how you want to do it when your main concern is getting the books out the door and you know the publisher will buy another. The Temeraire books also got like that IIRC.
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Apr 6, 2022 00:58
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poo poo's ahoo
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Jun 20, 2022 09:30
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Is there any sign that anyone feels anything about the death of Bonden? I suppose I could rationalize it as: Bonden, being crew, is on the other side of the wall from Jack (and Stephen, by association). Sometimes crewmen die and you just move on. By the time Bonden dies, Jack has seen a LOT of death, and us readers too have seen quite a few characters introduced in one book who get splattered the next, in breathtakingly perfunctory ways, disappearing without a ripple. So what we are seeing as readers is a kind of hard-heartedness of the Royal Navy. I might also argue that the books are basically Stephen's, and Stephen loves exactly two people: Diane and Jack. Bonden is not really anybody to Stephen. Diane is, but by the time she dies Stephen has been so harrowed by her, and his love for her, that his feelings are very mixed, with lots of love but lots of suffering, and what follows is numbness. Whatever remains is drowned in gentlemanly silence. These are aside from, POB just couldn't / didn't want to write it, which is worth consideration too.
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Jul 21, 2022 00:39
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IIRC the Sørlandet videos are okay but there's nothing perfect. When I read the books the first time I also bought an illustrated book on model-making for tall ships that was necessarily detailed and visual and that was helpful to me.
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Jul 28, 2022 02:09
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Land bad, sea good. The battle makes them remember: gents o'er bints.
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Sep 15, 2022 15:08
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Post Captain is a book I didn't care much for while reading, but in retrospect it's probably the best book of the series (so far). one of us
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Sep 15, 2022 19:56
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Before you know it you'll be thinking about sailing downwind faster than the wind.
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Oct 12, 2022 19:00
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jazzyjay posted:I love how throughout all books there is a tension between fighting for duty and glory, and fighting for shares of the spoils. I do love how piratical the RN is shown to be. I wouldn't personally call it "tension" tho -- the base greed and duty/glory mostly seem to dance hand in hand, sharing clothes and finishing each other's sentences!
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Jan 26, 2023 18:50
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Clonfert is a really good portrait of a kind of noble idiot. There's too many bits of good writing in the books to think of. I wish there were more wild actions like the Waakzaamheid fight. But I like Stephen's melancholy musings a lot, like when he is hiking through the woods to Jack's cottage, or when he overhears Jack playing something sad. When Jack's brushes with deep dark emotions it's less cynical and thoughtful, and more just confused, like when he has to stop playing a certain piece of music because he feels like he might go crazy. Or the nightmare of riding a smaller and smaller horse. (My memory is slipping, I may have reversed Jack/Stephen in some of those -- I should reread the books!). But I think the bit of writing that really got me on my first read-through is in Post Captain when Maturin is depressed in Plymouth: "He looked out of the cabin window at the water of the Sound, oily, with the nameless filth of Plymouth floating on it, a bloated puppy, and dipped his pen." That bloated puppy is like a little scrap of a dark haiku.
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Apr 8, 2023 21:06
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AngusPodgorny posted:on the same level of meticulous historical writing
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May 9, 2023 17:39
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The problem with Diana is that we're told she's fun and dashing, but we're not really shown her being fun and dashing, except when she's mashing the run button to dash away from Stephen. (Ok, she's a little bit dashing in America. Though I don't think the American escapades are very good, so I try to forget about them.) I think it's also a little bit unfortunate that both Diana and Sophia seem to be objectively breathtakingly beautiful. I think it masks how weird Sophie is. Well, the books are not exactly a deep study of sailors' relationships with their wives, or other women. But yeah, as has been said, in general A/M is not exactly a wealth of deep characterization. Except for Stephen, who is pretty deep. (I don't include Jack because he's still fairly simple, and on top of that, I think over time we mostly see him filtered through Stephen.)
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May 30, 2023 01:29
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quote:But his uncanny seamanship, leadership, political acumen at sea, his competence as a musician, his correspondence, the way he can host a dinner and resolve issues among officers and crew, his ability to sail, gun and command his ship He captains real good, which covers almost everything you said. Beyond his captaincy, I think Jack's a well-drawn sketch of a kind of oafish ruddy country gentleman, who is vivacious and good-hearted enough to make up for the crime of being so English. He's a well drawn character, he's a good character, but I still think he's... straightforward... in what he's about. And I think that as the books go on, he becomes more external, but that's my reading, shrug.
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May 30, 2023 07:09
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Sinatrapod posted:You could even say a fair amount about how Jack experiences more growth and change than Stephen does throughout the series, we just don't get to view it from behind his eyes. He goes from a very advanced seaman with no other intellectual merits to an accomplished author of mathematic and astronomical works, he comes to love his son who is in every way unacceptable as even company, much less family to his society. He goes from being pretty wishy washy on the subject of slavery to utter contempt when faced with the realities of it. Hell, in the first couple of books he's constantly tripping over his tongue because lambasting the Irish is so ingrained, but that slacks off almost entirely over the course of the books. None of these are growth in a literary character sense, imho. After the first book with James Dillon around, Jack's papist-hating pretty much 1-1 corresponds to Stephen fat-shaming him and I don't think it's personal growth so much as a lack of Irish lieutenants to get pissed off about it. He is never challenged by accepting his son; he's easily able to display a warm, full acceptance of him. This is to Jack's credit, and it's the same thing that allows him to disarm and befriend Stephen in the first book. It's part of what makes Jack lovable and great -- but still IMHO not the kind of growth you are talking about. TBH I think it backs up my points more than yours. (And then the son kinda fucks off and doesn't matter.) Jack's journey on slavery goes from, "idk I'm a Tory" to like, "Phew slave ships are awful! What bad naval practices -- I guess slavery is pretty bad after all! Still, not gonna lie, would be nice to have a slave around the house, heheh." The shallowness of his change is explicit, and a kind of cynical comedy. (You could say, though, it reflects the POV of a friend who loves someone despite a lack of respect for them along some axes, and would note and remember such utterances and consider them telling...) And Jack's mathematical accomplishments don't matter at all. It's a cosmetic detail. Doesn't POB admit in some foreword that this was a correction once he found out how mathy navigation really was? It's just "perfect captain" extended to a new realm. (See also when boxing suddenly exists, and we find out Jack loves boxing a lot and has opinions on some historical boxing figure, and then when that's over boxing goes back into the trunk and never matters again.) When a new topic is introduced and a character is slotted into an appropriate and predicable relation to it, is that growth, or is it just turning the crank? There's two good counters to me that I can think of. You could argue that because Jack is SO well sketched out that there's a certain depth to that. The quantity becomes a quality. I think that's fair though I don't think just listing stuff will prove it's true. The other counter is actually just agreeing with me harder, lol, by pointing out that if the book is significantly filtered through Stephen's bias and POV, then for example the short shrift given to Jack's math deeds looks like a pettiness of Stephen himself, a minimization of accomplishments by an imperfect but dedicated friend. So, if Jack is portrayed shallowly, then maybe that's part of Stephen's narrowness, and we're supposed to try to see past that to know Stephen and Jack better by the perceptive, but not flawless or unbiased, ways that Stephen sees Jack. By getting to know Stephen we can subtract him to find Jack.
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Jun 1, 2023 15:57
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I like the film, but I don't like it much as an adaptation. Somehow the thing that annoys me most is the touch of OH OUR PRECIOUS LADS kind of juvenile propaganda framing. (I think maybe book enjoyers don't notice that framing because we're like: Yes, these are my precious lads.) Vs the books where like midshipmen drop like flies and there's not really time to mourn the dead ever... and generally there is no hint of the idea that glory makes it all worth it, there is no soft focus or silent slow mo struggling. The (lack of) sentimentality in the books is important and interesting I think. (NB gentlemanly humanism is not the same thing.)
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Jun 30, 2023 16:37
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We all know it's true in our hearts: Diana taught Sophie how to masturbate.
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Aug 7, 2023 12:19
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I loved Post Captain when I first read it, but I had depression brain, and Stephen's nadir was like sickos.gif for me. Every now and then I remember the dead puppy floating on the Plymouth. And also his suicide attempt on the Goodwin Sands, which may be the kind of thing other people miss as well, or perhaps deny. (I think that was in PC? Not sure anymore, past due for a reread tbh.) vvvv It reads as veiled impulsive suicide attempt to me, but yeah Stephen can probably explain it to others, and perhaps even himself, as going to get his (lead-soled) boots. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 01:56
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Diana deserves better than the average POB-reader's opinion, I think. I'd say it's mostly Stephen's fault for pursuing her unreasonably, but she should see they are a terrible match. She uses Stephen, but Stephen begs to be used. I like to think that he sees her too much through his naturalist eyes; she is a perfect creature he wants to witness and in some abstract sense capture and own. Ultimately, she is the hero in her own story, which we don't really get to see. A friend of mine floated a fun theory about Diana -- she's a spy (for the French, let's say). There's no direct support for this in the books, but on the other hand it fits so well. E.g. how she is always running off in seemingly random directions (much like Stephen...) and attaching herself to influential political players. If Stephen's ignorance seems unlikely, well, a) this is a man with a strong capability for lying to himself, and b) it's a classic spy story trope to miss the traitor under your nose and close to your heart. I think it's a fine theory which I don't believe at all. It's a great premise for a fanfic.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:20
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Genghis Cohen posted:I love the whole bit of the hardened salts' universal reaction to Maturin leaving the girls at an orphanage, which is on the face of it a proper and responsible thing to do. "What, in a place like this!?" It's very efficient story-telling, communicating the awfulness of the colony, the decency of the sailors and their acceptance of the girls, and how Stephen's attempt to do the right thing has gone astray. In the later books there is an arc of Stephen learning to accept responsibility, I think. I had forgotten about the girls & the orphanage, but there is also the reason he was in Australia in the first place: to rescue Padeen, whom he has slowly realized he was kinda responsible for. A lot of the later books to me is about Stephen kind of "assembling his family". (Whereas Jack gets very little growth during this time, just like repeated nightmares of dwindling, riding a shrinking horse. I suppose he settles into his ancestral power a bit, becoming a judge, but it doesn't seem to increase Jack's happiness.)
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Sep 18, 2023 20:04
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Yes, YES, when they finally get to the boarding action and they scream "Polychrest!" in fury and agony and hatred of life itself -- you are one of them, you feel it now, you can sew it on your cap.
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Sep 21, 2023 02:04
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I've enjoyed Dead Calm and All is Lost, which are modern sailboat movies, but still very much sailing movies. Submarines are way easier to film. Das Boot has all the nautical fun anyone could ask for. It's kind of interesting as a bookend to A/M now that I think about it.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:36
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Conversational questions carry with them some implied right to know the answer. Especially in a society with more exposure to hierarchy and authority, I can see it rankling. Questioning is what you do to a servant who has hosed up and might be trying to evade notice. So who the gently caress are you to question me?
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Dec 6, 2023 20:42
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Well you could talk about music, books, etc.; you could talk about news and politics -- the dashing exploits of certain naval captains perhaps; you could talk about interesting practical developments that are changing society in interesting ways; you could just gossip about ones peers or servants; you could muse on morality, or Character: whether this or that was indicative of one's character and the goodness or badness of that; you can tut tut and tsk tsk and praise and laud away the hours; you can say how all this bores you and wouldn't you rather like to go take in a more interesting sight and go stare at a bird or tree or some poo poo just as an excuse to not be trapped in a room having these excruciating conversations forever.
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Dec 6, 2023 22:56
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The KillJamesBond! podcast has done an episode on the movie. They respond a lot to movie-Hollum's fate to decide against the "dudes rock" Twitter consensus and the very shallow analysis of the professional critics.
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Dec 14, 2023 14:16
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Abi is a theater kid. Theater kids can't be expected to understand things properly.yaffle posted:Also, they want me to download an app so I can point out their many mistakes, but gently caress that.
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Dec 15, 2023 02:31
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Jack may have fought at the Nile but Stephen lives there every day.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:32
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I know in my soul she did something reckless and stupid in the carriage ride that caused the accident; or, failing that, said something so awful that Diana chose murder-suicide.
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Feb 24, 2024 02:05
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A Real Horse posted:So my dad and I do a two person book club, and my most recent pick was Master and Commander. I am 40 pages and I’m going to have to read this entire series, aren’t I? It is already an absolute delight to read. Yes you will. If you get bogged down in the second book, keep at it; the remaining 18 will be more to your liking.
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Mar 9, 2024 22:12
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