OMG BUSH/HORNBLOWER *________________________*

[quigonejinn]

Theoretically, I should start a new LJ for this, but everyone I know who enjoys Hornblower follows this LJ. I also suspect that I'm notgoing to be able to be nearly as invested in HH as I am in SW because holy God, is the canon imposing or what? Not only are the movies so, so, so good and rich and involving, but I've started reading the books, and adlkjg;lkdjf;alsidhg;ladkjf. OMG.



General ship lifenotes

- Young midshipmen get caned if they don't behave/mess up. Heavy punishment: 12 and 12, will cause screaming. Manlier to take them on the legs, but can be administered on the ass, then be taunted about it by the captain, etc. Even worse/more humiliating: being bent over a cannon and having it done to you. Known as "kissing the gunner's daughter." *_* Note, too, the rigging punishment from the first movie/book -- Horatio spread-eagled on the rigging and hanging there until let down.

- Sleep deprivation as punishment. Being woken every hour or being made to stand double watches instead of sleep.

- Service on deck three Sundays a week, remaining Sunday -- no service, instead, a reading of the Articles of War. Article 19 deals with mutiny. Catchall mutiny clause -- if you don't get nailed for acts of mutiny under the previous things, well, anything not caught by the is CAUGHT IN THIS ONE.

Horatio characterization

p.4:

"How are you going to get the men to work [Mr. Hobbs] if you sulk? Get for'rard and see to it."

Hornblower was leaning a little forward as he spoke; the hands which he clasped behind him erved apparently to balance the jutting chin,but his attitude was negligent compared with the fierce intensity with which he spoke even though he was speaking in an undertone inaduible to all except the three of them.

"Aye aye, sir," said Hobbs, turning to go forward again.

Bush was making a mental note that this Hornblower was a firebrand when he met his glance and saw to his surprise a ghost of at winkle in their melancholy depths. In a flash of insight he realized that this fierce youg lieutenantwas not fierce at all, and that the intensity with which he spoke was entirely sasumed -- it was almost as if Hornblower had been exercising himself in a foreign language.

"If they one start sulking you can't do anythign with 'em," explained Hornblower, "and Hobbs is the worst of 'em -- acting gunner, and no good. Lazy as they mak e'em."

"I see," said Bush.

The duplicity -- play acting -- of the young lieutenant aroused a momentary duspicion in Bush's mind. A man who could asusme an appearance of wrath and abandon it again with so much facility was not to be trusted. Then, with an inevitable reaction, the twinkle in the brown eyes called up a responsive twinkle in Bush's frank blue eyes, and he felt a friendly impulse towards Hornblower, but Bush was innately cautious and checked the impulse at once, for there was a long voyage ahead of htem and plenty of time for a more considered judgment.

- Horatio's mathematical gifts. The notion of math being incomprehensible to him is, itself, incomprehensible.

p. 80:

A flying fish broke the surface and went skimming along, leaving a transient, momentary furrow behind it like a groove in enamel.

"Look at that!" exclaimed Hornblower to Bush.

"A flying fish," said Bush, indifferently.

"Yes! There's another!"

Hornblower leaned over to get a better view.

"You'll see plenty of them before this voyage is over," said Bush.

"But I've never seen one before."

The play of expression on Hornblower's face was curious. One moment he was full fo eager interest; the next he assumed an appearance of stolid indifference as a man might pull on a glove. His service at sea so far, varied htough it might be, had been confined to European waters; years of dangersou activity on the French and Spanish coasts in a frigate, two yearsin the Renown on the Channel fleet, and he had been eagerly looking forward to the novelties he woudl encounter in tropical waters. But he was talking to a man to whom these things were no novelty, and who evinced no excitement at the sight of the first flying fish of the voyage. Hornblower was nto going to be outdone in stolidity and self-control; if the wonders of the deep failed to move Bush they were not going to evoke any childish excite in Hornblower, at least any apparent excitement if Hornblower could suppress it. He was a veteran, and he was not going to appear like a raw hand.

- Horatio's seasicknes

- Horatio's burning, burning ambition.

- Horatio taking bath in cold seawater. :D Naked Horatio! And his odd fancies.

- how difficult it is to figure out what Horatio is feeling from the way he acts.

- Horatio turning away from Bush and shouting out an order so that Bush has a moment ot compose himself when the ship runs aground. The importance of composure to Horatio.

- Hornblower and his plotting, thinking, restless brain. Hornblower the "active subordinate."

- p. 119:

Any officer would want to go, of course, would yearn tobe given an opportunity to distinguish himself, but actuatingHornblower was some motive more urgent than this. Hornblower's hands were at his sides, in the "attention" postiion, but Bush noticed how the long fingers tapped against his thights, restrained themselves,and then tapped again uncontrollably. It was not cool judgment thatfinally brought Bush to his decision, but something quite otherwise. It might be called kindliness; it might be called affection. He had grown fond of this volatile, versatileyoung man, and he had no doubtsnow as to his physical courage.

"I'd like Mr. Hornblower to come with me, sir," he said; it seemed almost without his volitoin that the words come from his mouth; a softhearted elder brother might have said much the same thing, burdening himself with the presence of a much younger brother out of kindness of heart hwen contemplating some pleasant day's activities.

And as he spoke he received a glance in return from Hornblower that stifled atbirth any regrets he may have felt at allowing his sentiments to influence his judgment. There was so much relief, os much of gratitude, in the way Hornblower looked at him that HOrnblower experienced a kindly glow of magnamity; he felt a bigger and better man for what he had done. Naturally he did not for a moment see anything incongruous about Horblower's being grateful for a decision that would put him in peril of his life.

- p. 146:

He had not been able to spare a moment for anything like that, with the whole defence of the fort to be organised. But he could bear fatigue and hunger and thirst, nad he doubted if Hornblower could.

I'll get a drink of water at the well, sir," said Hornblower.

As he said the words, and the full import came to him, a chance in his expression was quite obvious. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips; Bush could see that the lips were cracked and prached and that the tongue could do notion gto relieve them. The man had drunk nothing since he had landed twelve hours ago.-- twelve hours of desperate exertion in a tropical climate.

- p. 147:

[A]s Bush decsended from the platform he saw Hornblower organising other working parties, snapping out orders with quick gestures. At the sight of Bush he turned guilty and walked over to the well. A marine was winding up the bucket, and Horn blower seized it. He raised the bucket to his lips, leaning back to balance the weight; and he drank and drank, water slopping in quantities over his chest as he drnk, water pouring over his face, until the bucket was empty, and then he putit down with a grin at Bush, his face still dripping with water. The very sight of him was enough to make Bush, hwo had already had one drink from the well, feel consumed with thirst all again.

p. 222:

A lob-lolly boy -- sick berth attendant -- came in with a tray that bore a jug and a glass. He poured out a glassful of liquid and with an arm supporting Bush's neck he held it to Bush's lips. At the couch of the cool liquid, and as its refreshing scent reached his nose, Bush suddenly realized he was horribly thirsty, and he drank eagerly, draining the glass.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Lemonade, sir, with Mr. Hornblower's respects."

"Mr. Hornblower?"

"Yes sir. There' sa bumboat alongisde an' Mr. Hornblower bought some lemons an' told me to squeeze 'em for you."

"My thanks to Mr. Hornblower."

"Aye aye, sir. Another glass, sir

"Yes.

p. 250:

They shook hands and parted; it says much for Bush's feelings towards Hornblower htat in the grey dawn next morning he rolled out of his cot and went up on deck to watch the Retribution, ghostlike under her topsails, and with the lad going in the chains, steal out round the point, wafted along by the land breeze. Bush watcher her go; life in the ervice meant many partings. Meanwhile there was war to be waged against bedbugs.

Comments

i bet he slept in his cell until the night A had a fit and they came to get him. and after that :D

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Man, I squealled like a hysterical creature when he asked that. "NO BUT HE HAS ONE RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And you're dead on about the how of Horatio saving Archie being the telling thing. That scene of Horatio with Archie in his arms, right? Anybody else, he would have done the sensible thing and sent somebody out to get a guard or run out there to tell them, but no, instead, in he carries Archie into the cold rain in his arms when Archie is obviously (*@#)@(#*( heavy despite the starvation, and. Yeah.

The sight of Horatio Hornblower being irrational is *_*.

My sister and I were watchign Frogs & Lobsters last night and just HOWLING at Hornblower trying to get his mack on with the pretty French schoolteacher. Like, with that giant honker nose of his bumping into her cheek? Oh, Horatio, sweetheart.

*thinking* The goodness would make all the difference in the end. And man oh man. Yeah, since I was just watching Lobsters, the scene where Horatio calm Archie down? I mean, man oh man. There's the stuff where Archie goes FLYING ACROSS THE BRIDGE to save his captain, and then there's Edrington's classic line, but the part where Horatio talks Archie off the mental pier is just *____*

Physical contact is very important for his recovery! XD

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

And Horatio is completely freaking out when he finally gets Archie onto the bed, when he's telling the Duchess what happened. All big worried eyes and hand gestures. But I really loved the way he sat there and FED Archie, who was just placid about it. <3

And, ahaha, worst kiss ever with French girl. I was sitting there going O.o could they be more awkward? And I'm not sure what he intended to do with her if they had managed to get back to the Indy.

I'm going to have to watch Lobsters again because I can't remember what he said. The end of that ep is great, too. He doesn't like heights, and he's just had a completely horrible experience, but there he is up in the rigging sincerely *grinning* across at Archie. He's so much more at ease on a ship than anywhere else, where there are no horses, women, guillotines or requirements to be social.

Your icon. <3333333333333333333333333333333333

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Man. My family is working their way through the Hornblower episodes two a night, and we just saw Mutiny and Retribution, and *______________* The end of that episode is just a solid, solid, solid pain. Dilly is telling me that people were upset that Horatio didn't wail and gnash his teeth like he did over the French girl (who my sister has nicknamed Boobies), but man oh man.

That boy is in a whole world of pain. The sheer fact that he's still out of it when Pellew comes to see him with the commission?

Quick question: what's the fanfiction that's worth reading in this fandom? I'm told that most of it sucks and that the characterizations of Pellew will make me thrash on the floor with rage, but yeah. Getting desperate here, guys.

Mademoiselle Boobies!

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Retribution leaves me in a little puddle of anguish. I love the cute way Horatio comes looking for Archie when Archie has gone to the trial, the bemused 'where is he?'. And the fact that Horatio doesn't have a big emo scene at the end is perfect - his pain goes so, so deeply here. His response just ;ajskj;kj. :/ I think it's a combination of the depth of his pain and the maturity he has now.

And yeah, I think we've mentioned before how much time he spends sitting on Archie's empty bed. Time enough for Archie to have been buried, for the entire ship to be re-fitted and painted, the newspaper to be printed and Horatio's new commission to come through. LOTS. And Horatio has gone back to just sit there where his friend was *_____* And Archie is the bravest man he knows? That's saying something.

Fic...I'm still new to it myself, so far. I have seen some of what Dilly might be talking about - Pellew the whipping boy. I like this one: Archie's Three Things; and this one is interesting: Baser Impulses. No good Pellew yet.

She teaches . . . grammmar!

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Thankee for the links -- the second is an awful lot of guilty-pleasure fun. *_*

And you're right. You did point out the time-thing to me. I suspect that I wouldn't have noticed nearly as clearly if you hadn't described it so much.

The lack of good Pellewfic is kind of amazing, really, given how much Pellew loves Horatio. I mean, during Retribution, there's the part where Horatio is talking about getting the gun up the cliff, and Pellew is pretty much SQUIRMING IN HIS SEAT with pride and joy. And oh man. When Pellew has that outburst with the other commodores about how he refuses to let a man as near and dear to him as his own -- and then he cuts off?

My mother has a shaky grasp of English, and we couldn't get subtitles to come on, so she turned to me after that scene and was like *_* Did he mean to say LOVER?

And I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "No, that's ARCHIE." Although I did nudge my sister whenever Archie had one of his little fits about Bush.

Every time he yelled during last night's showing, I thought of you. XD He does have such a fantastic yelling voice. And turnip! Turnips. And his four sisters. <33333333333333333333333333333333333

And bad kissing!

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

It almost seems that there is some blame of Pellew, somehow, for the way Retribution turned out. Which is completely insane; there was nothing he could have done. And yeah, I squee at how clearly he loves Horatio; it makes him so...human? His smirk and the sideways look to the other admirals - and his anger at Buckland for endangering Horatio was completely personal.

Your mum must have had an interesting time of it - you can see where she would get that impression! XD I really like the idea of Pellew as this distant but very much invested father figure. And Horatio really has NO IDEA how much he is cared for by him, and various people. (Did he really need to ask Archie 'why'?) I wonder if there is a lack of good Pellewfic because he doesn't slash well - much of what I have seen is slash rather than gen.

Bush yelling is so great. XD It's just unexpected, his voice, because he's sort of finely-built and restrained. I didn't know he had four sisters! He strikes me as being an isolated person, the type that fits well into the workings of the Navy. Aaaaand I'm holding back on saying much so I don't spoil your enjoyment of the next ep.

man. *_* horatio has a lot of people looking after him. *_*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Jesus, people. Pellew did everything he could. I kept worrying that he would get introuble for being so >:/ LAY OFF OF MY BOY >:/ >:/

And yeah. Four sisters and a mother that have claim on half of his salary as it is, in fact, and in his mental mutterings about money when he gets decomm'd (because the second book is narrated almost entirely from his POV), there's this lovely moment in the book, too, where Maria is fussing over Horatio, and Horatio is like o.O O.o o.O O.O.

And Bush is, like, tugging him out the door and being like "My sisters always do that" and "IGNORE THEIR CRYING. THEY ALWAYS DO THAT :D"

(Oh, British Naval officers doing the emoticons. But it's true. Even when he's a total grim jackass of a captain in, like, the fifth book? Even though he totally mentally disses Bush's ability to form proper plans, Horatio puts up with a comparatively enormous amount of sass from him anyways, and he talks all the time about how. . . horny-handed Bush is.)

You know, it's really interesting Horatio would read Maria fussing over him and trying to take care of him as, initially, nothing more than friendship. It really fits into the whole notion of how unsuited he is for making relationships outside of the Navy -- because really, in his brain, it seems like she's just watching out for him in the same way that other people watch out for him. It's just how his relationship and his style of leadership works, y'know?

And it turns that she has interest of another sort. There's good fic to be had about using that to tell a slash story about how Horatio ought to have read more into the way that some of the men who've cared for him. XD

Guuuuh, your iconnnn. <3

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

And when the officers get put ashore, they only get half-pay anyway. O.o Considering Bush must come from a pretty modest background (his uncle is a blacksmith, right?), that must leave him short a LOT.

I think Horatio doesn't even really understand what it means when people look out for him. He seems to interpret it as being purely the generosity of others or because they need his skills/work, or because of some failure on his part. He accepts it from Archie because they have a particular friendship. He actually seems to think Archie is the only one who *cares* on a personal level, when really he has Pellew, Matthews, Styles, and Bush after a time. And Maria. So yeah, your idea of how he misinterprets the attention of others is really spot-on. He has these ideas about how things should work and they hinder his understanding of what people actually want from him - especially outside the little world that is his ship. And then he tries to conform to expectations of society which is just bad. *__*

"Horny-handed" - that probably doesn't mean what I think it means, right? O.O XD

well, I like to think that it does. :D :D :D

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Bush tried twice, valiantly, to make polite speeches to his [dinner] neighbours, putting a terminal 'o' on the ends of his English words in the hope that so they might be transmuted into Spanish, but the blank stares of the men he addressed reduced him quickly to stammering inarticulation.

I LOVE THIS MAN. I LOVE HIM SO GODDAMN MUCH.

And yeah. Horatio is so completely incapable of reading how people feel about him. There's this one bit in the books where, like, Horatio has his first command? I don't know whether it's in the movies or not, but because Horatio has just gotten married and is a new captain to boot, he doesn't have much money, so he has, like, no furniture in his cabin.

And after a few weeks of seeing their captain MANFULLY try to tough it out, one day, Bush comes up to Hornblower and is like AHEM COULD YOU LEAVE YOUR CABIN FOR A MOMENT SIR.

And when Horatio comes back, he finds that Bush and the other guys from the wardroom have fitted the place out with little curtains and cushions stuffed with oakum and a bit of canvas painted with blue and red roses.

Sure, Horatio doesn't shout or berate them, but Horatio just kind of stares at the whole assemblage, dismisses them, and only realizes a couple hours later that they did this because they liked him and not for some other reason. It makes him all fuzzy, but man oh man. Poor, completely emotionally retarded Horatio. I think that was the most telling scene for me about how difficult it is for him to process things that have to deal with happy things and that don't, like, nine-pounders and keeping leeward and prize money.

. . . Also, whenever I think of Bush, I have this total mental image of him with cushion parts on his knees and a needle in his teeth and him yelling at Gerard a little because Gerard's stiches are too far apart and all the stuffing will come out if the Captain actually sits on them <333333333333333333333

Annnnd I'm off to go argue with my mother and sister as to whether Ioan is attractive or not watch the last two episodes with my family, so feel free to talk about it all you wantafter this. XD

I am so retardedly excited you are watching them! <333

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, that is the BEST image of Bush ever. I love the idea of him arbitrarily adding an 'o' to everything, and also HANGING LITTLE CURTAINS. <33333333 See also: Hornblower, Married to.

Horatio probably thought they were having a laugh at his expense, or that they thought he was somehow lacking as a Captain, and that he needed help. Didn't Archie say something to the effect of YOU DON'T GET IT; WE LOVE YOU, before he died? Yeah.

When I started watching HH I caught a snippet of Great Expectations on tv, where Ioan was Pip, and he looked lovely. Especially when he was reading aloud in Latin or something. :D I'm kind of disappointed that Archie never spoke in another language on the show seeing as Jamie Bamber is apparently a super language whore.

For when you have watched the eps: did you want to smack Horatio in the head? Many times over? ://////