light-headed at the touch of this stranger's hand.

[quigonejinn]

In my mailbox this morning, from black_hound who's been telling me about it for a while.:



The following is adapted somewhat from an e-mail that I sent to black_hound over this, and OMG. That picture is so deeply amazing and why I love Cranky Bitch/Archiekins Replacement.

1. Uniforms. The righteous hotness of their military uniforms. I'd be into the slash in this fandom if only for the fact that the men are tricked out in gold and decoration and it all looks SO GOOD and GOD, how undressing a Navy officer that looks as good as Bush must be like unwrapping a glorious, glorious Christmas present.
   
   
2. The fact that Bush got up with Hornblower and got dressed with him and walked him down to the pier and stayed there when he has NO OBVIOUS reasn to be down there except to offer moral support. *weeps* My OTP is ridiculously supportive.
   
   
3. The fact that Hornblower, the tricky bitch, has large-scale body language that indicates he's looking at the Hotspur and acting all delighted, but o ho ho ho. Look at his eyes. That smile don't reach. The eye that's in the light, sure, yeah, that almost kinda looks like he's smiling with it too, but the eye that's a little more hidden? He's trying to gage Bush's reaction and nervous as ANYTHING and trying to hide it, too.
   
   
4. But Bush isn't having ANY of it. OMG. He's so excited. He knows what's going down. Ship! Pretty pretty girlfriend! Hornblower and his funny body language! Just back from a conversation with a Commodore who loves him omg, and Bush trying to hide his glee from HH too -- notice the one-sided smile, and he's obviously biting on his lip becaue of the glee.
   
   Bush is totally the girlfriend who's just sighted the little velvet box being slipped into the picnic basket next to the magnum of champagne.
   
   
5. And, man. Above all, the fact that this totally just whips by 0.0001 seconds flat, and you wouldn't notice it or even see any of it if it weren't for the screencap. I LOVE CANON THAT DOESN'T SUCK. I LOVE CANON WITH SUBTLETY. HOLY FUCK, I LOVE CANON THAT I CAN RESPECT AND THAT HOLDS UP TO MORE THAN FIVE SECONDS OF THINKING. *WEEPS*

Annnnd in conclusion, I'm a big pathetic sap, and since it's now April, it's also now time for me to pull my twice-a-year fic hiatus. I'll do my ioan_ficathon piece, and I'll be around, but no more fic, no more meta posts, no more researchy bits. Not until May.



Fic in progress

- genderfuck (aka: Five Things that Never Happened to William Bush: Horatia)
- Five Things that Never Happened to William Bush: Marriage
- Five Things that Never Happened to William Bush: Peace (Smallbridge, fishing boat, the two-wheeler by the pier)
- Five Things that Never Happened to William Bush: Resurrection (Marie, no Admiral Hornblower, staying in France, riding jaunts by the reiver)
- Sheerness grand theme to "For the Widows in Paradise"
- Preggers Marie.
- from randomalia, Hammond/Bush, Bush and Wellard, Hornblower guilt if going with the Northcote Parkinson story of how Sawyer kicked the bucket. Bush and Hammond getting it on before Hammond gets assigned, and post-Loyalty aftermath.
- Orrock and Hammond. Second-person. Post-loyalty.

Speculative fic ideas

- HH taying in France during FC and never going back to England. Fallout? Stry of Richard Arthur coming to France to see his father or somethign.
- Venice. Rewrite of Crisis.


Other

- Brotherhoood vid of Jean-Francois. Set either to Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" or Dopplebanger - Clint Mansell v. Usher - Reqiuem for Usher. Bring on the incest.

Scene list

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_oggy_/]

i cannot find the words to express my love of the uniforms, i heartily agree with you. i used to walk over to colonial williasmburg a lot just to ogle men in period dress (and the off chance that there might be a young man walking about, most of the interpreters are much older gents).

if you slow certain scenes in those last two movies down, it's just AMAZING the slashy-ness between those two. it's like the actors we're in on all our gushy-ness. (and no, i haven't watch the whole thing on quarter speed, i was looking for that infamous ass ogling).

i love that shot, it's totally a surprise proposal look. :-)

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

The scene in the book is proposal-like enough, right? We don't see HH proposing to Maria, but do get him shyly asking Bush, and man. In the movie, they really amp it up until it's just SO OBVIOUS that they're giddy as sixteen year olds over the propect of having sex in a hammock again.

And ahah. Man, I need to get back to Colonial Williamsburg sometime. :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/_oggy_/]

CW is a kind of crack that you don't miss until you're been away for awhile. when you're there you just kinda have this "oooo, pretty reconstructed buildings....i need a sandwhich i must go to the cheese shoppe." followed by "goddammit, why did i want to get a sandwhich on school field trip day. and will someone please stop that small child from blowing on that fife. gods in heaven, my poor bleeding ears."

and now, i am in great need of a nice, quiet walk through the governer's gardens and the daily canon fire around 4:30pm. and all the free fireworks. free fireworks on the green rock. and encampment weekends, when the groceries stores are filled with people dressed for reenactment. i really should have gotten pictures.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't realize how much I loved the East Coast until I moved away to the Midwest. When even the sky is kind of a different color, you get homesick and homesick quickly. :/

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

Half the reason I'm in reenacting if for the clothing porn. :D

And one of the very few good reasons to embrace the vidding insanity is because you find all the little goodies that get hidden when everything flashes by at 30fps.

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

Fair winds for the rest of April. We'll all be here come May. <3

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

*watches massive low-pressure system swirling around in the South Rhodlantic, battens down hatches and reefs the sails or whatever*

You damn well better be. :D

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Awwwww, this post fills me with the love.

Have a good April. Will miss your fic and meta and general deep-thinking-ness.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Ahaha. Oh, you're not rid of me so easily. I don't know if I could handle leaving fandom totally -- I'll be around with the meta and the wank and the "OMG nolivingman, please give me more of your brilliant crack" *pushes crumpled $20 at you*

And, you know. eeeeee, Hotspur!

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the crack, you have no clue how happy I was to see Pregnant!Marie on the list.

Eeeeeeeeee. Hotspur!!!!!!!!!!! I know you said that FC was your One True Book of the series, but the LtH/Hotspur/Atropos run is just so dear to my heart.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

FC is the book that I have an intense, eternal, shit-crazy, throwing-each-other's-stuff-out-on-the-street, fights-in-restraunts, crazy-sex-in-the-club-bathroom, proposing-on-the-town-square relationship with. Hotspur and I, on the other had, lie around the house on Saturday mornings in pajamas and eat popcorn. For thrills, we hold hands at the movies. Sometimes, we rake leaves together.

It's a very different kind of love, I think. If it weren't for the fact that FC appeals to all my worst and self-destructive instincts (and the fact that it's SO MUCH EASIER to write fic about that period), Hotspur would be my favorite book of the series, hands-down.

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get it. I have that kind of thing for FC too. I know it's unhealthy, but it's hard to resist when you're in the middle of it. *sigh*

LtH is falling in love for the first time. Hotspur and Commodore are comfortable married-type love. Lord H and Atropos are both there for the love of glorious pain and angst.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I cannot say no to a book that has, like. That brilliant description of HH watching the battle from land and Hornblower thinking that this is the last time he'll ever see the sea and hand-holding in the carriage and Hornblower's WRITHING GUILT at Bush being crippled now and Marie and cuddling by the Loire and OMG.

Also, the galloping pain fo the ending, where Hornblower is thinking about Dead Sea fruit.

Lord H (God, that sounds uncomfortably like Preparation H) is like Pain Between Paperback Covers for me. I still get bawly when H is wandering around his room the night of Caudebec and feeling lonely. :///

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

PS: omg pregnant Marie. *___________* You know Hornblower would've loved babies.

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine him having to *choose* to leave France if he knew? OMG the glorious angst and pain. It's just wrong how much I love that idea.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Nnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Him actually leaving a pregnant Marie behind? That's hardcore, yo.

And I mean. Man. That's a hell of an equation for him -- on the one hand, in France, he's got Marie and the Comte and Gracay and the memory of those happy days on the Loire, not to mention BABY. And he's estranged from Barbara like OMGWTFBBQ at the end of LH.

On the other hand, staying in France means that he has to give up Richard Arthur. And whatever career he might have had left after becoming an Admiral. And, really, his entire conception of himself as a man who does his duty, however amorphous that concept may now be in the peacetime Navy.

*heart-heart-heart*

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

There is no end to my joy in all of the potential messiness here.

*edits fr teh stupd*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this for the past day or so far, far more intently than I've been thinking about the paper that I'm suppoedly writing, and man. Maybe it's my tin-hat love of FC, but I don't know if I can convince myelf that HH would've left Marie at the end of LH if she'd been pregnant. The end of LH kind of makes me think that even if HH didn't think she was pregnant, if Marie hadn't died, there was a decent chance that HH would've stayed in France permanently.

And. Man. It really depends on how estranged he was from Barbara at the end of that book, doesn't it? And how much he felt his duty to as an officer.

There are so many ways to play this. Jesus.

Re: *edits fr teh stupd*

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

At that point, war's all over but the crying, so he could maybe convince himself that his Duty was done. But the Barbara thing is tough - cause it's not just about her as a person and their love and disagreement; his thing for her was always tied up with his ambition and wanting to have a proper wife, a lady. And even though the war is winding down, he still likes to be top dog - could he put that aside for Marie? I think of all his women, she understood him the best, and loved him for what he truly was, and that he could be himself with her, but he is so bad at knowing who he is (as we discussed the other day), that I'm not sure he'd *get* that about their relationship.

I know this conversation is days old, but I read this today and thought of you

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

I was reading FC today, as you will do, and this paragraph made me go "Aha!" and think that Horatio himself was having to talk himself out of staying with her:

And this question of his never loving anyone; surely Marie was wrong about that. She did not know the miseries of longing he had been through on Barbara's account, how much he had desired her and how much he still desired her. He hesitated guiltily here, wondering whether his desire would survive gratification. That was such an uncomfortable thought that he swerved away from it in a kind of panic. If Marie had merely revengefully desired to disturb him she certainly had achieved her object; and if on the other hand she had wanted to win him back to her she was not far from success either. What with the torments of remorse and his sudden uneasiness about himself Hornblower would have returned to her if she had lifted a finger to him, but she did not.

He was thisclose to the edge; he could have talked himself into it even back then. Maria being pregnant was probably what swayed him; if Marie had been pregnant in LH, damn, he really would have stayed.

Re: I know this conversation is days old, but I read this today and thought of you

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

!!!! Holy fuck. I totally did not even remember that bit. Thanks for pointing it out -- Jesus Christ, I totally had n idea that it was that clear in the text that he'd had it that bad for Marie.

There's also this bit in one of the books after he's married to Barbara where Hornblower talks about how he had to "train" himeslf out of liking soft, fleshy women and into liking Barbara's muscliness. I can't remember what book it's in, man oh man oh man. O_o

Thanks, yo. And never ever ever worry about going back and leaving comments on old threads. I go back and read meta threads all the time. :D

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

That fic would rock my world.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

The notion of writing that fic makes my heart hurt, but man. The crack potential of a nineteen year old Richard meeting his father for the first time in decades in France makes me go O.O. The ride up to the fairy-tale castle, the river on one side, the fields of the village below on the other making sort of an eerie parallel to Smallbridge?

I weep, too, for the notion of Hornblower in France who has had a couple kids by Marie.

Including, you know. A son named William.

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

Including, you know. A son named William.

Because ya know, his ONLY son was named RICHARD ARTHUR. wtf.

i need a t-shirt that says barbara wellesley is a ho.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Every time I kind of start to think that maybe I'm just projecting my rage on behalf of Maria and Bush, who loved HH too much to ever leave him on his ass, that maybe I should just learn to like Barbara because everybody else seems to think perfectly well of her, I think about Richard Arthur.

And my blood just boils. I still can't believe that she had the hump to steal Maria's baby, name him after her brothers, and then get pissy because people think the kid is hers.

Re: i need a t-shirt that says barbara wellesley is a ho.

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

Dude, I can make a fucking laundry list a mile long of the things that piss me off in regards to same.

Ya know, the people that deeply, unselfishly loved HH all end up taking the big dirt nap. The one left standing? Not of the same. I see a sharp demarcation line there. Razor sharp. And all the talking in the world ain't gonna convince me that HH got the brass ring in the end.

Maybe he's gonna talk himself around to the fact that he's happy and he has it all and "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" and all that, but I don't think at the end of 11 books there's any other conclusion, than -- be careful what (you think) you wish for. You just might get it.

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

And all the talking in the world ain't gonna convince me that HH got the brass ring in the end.

I don't share the Barbara rage at all, but even I would never make that statement. Because IMO he made a choice with Barbara based on what he thought somebody like him should want and need, and while I think he did love her, IMO he loved the idea of her, and the image of her, as much as the actual Barbara. And she is so much like him in being reserved that it's safe for him to be with her in the way that it was not with Marie.

And just look at the thing in Admiral H where she tells him he's the only one she ever loved and how outta control happy that makes him. That is not a healthy reaction, even by CBB standards. All that time they've been married, and the fact that HE loved Marie during their marriage, and slept with other women (the Countess and who knows who else?) and he wants to own her all to himself? That's not a healthy love.

Re: i need a t-shirt that says barbara wellesley is a ho.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting comparison to be made, I think, between the scene where Bush comes drunkenly staggering in to give news of the trasure fleet and The Last Encounter. They're both Hornblower at home, in front of the fire, with the family, fairly content. They're also both "weird person comes in and says craaaazy things." And man.

They're so different in both tone and style and, like. Everything. In the scene from Hotspur, Hornblower is reading the Chronicle with the fire and being his usual muttery cranky self and getting it awn with his wife while the baby sleeps and the mother-in-law is away, and then his delightfully drunk friend shows up and HH gets to grin about that. And then, he finds out there will be babies! And true to HH form, he feels all weird about that. It's warm and cozy and full of the crazy.

Even if you account for the fact that CSF had to take a bit of a different tone because he wants to give us an overview of where HH is in his life now/doesn't have 1834234 chapters to work with as scene-setting -- man, that Last Encounter setting feels so stiff and formal and cold. The big image that we get of Barbara in that story through HH isn't of the smiling, sweet wife in his arms, her face quite transfigured with happiness -- but, you know. Of her whipping her reading glasses off so that she won't be embarrassed in front of visitors (which is kinda cute, but suggests distance, watching, and is so different from what he has with Maria) and, also, the fact that the President/Prince of France has sent her sapphires to match her eyes.

Totally different worlds. Totally. And I guess it says a lot about me that I'd rather have the first, with all of the crazy and the less-than-perfect-happiness than the second, even though it is, literally, the one with the fairy tal ending.

Re: i need a t-shirt that says barbara wellesley is a ho.

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

the one with the fairy tal ending.

By the Brothers Grimm.

And to seal the deal a steamtug with the name Temeraire? *woe*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

What is that you're saying? I do remember, though, there's an episode in Hornblower in the West Indies where they see a steam tug named Temeraire, and Hornblower tells one of the middies to go down and fetch Captain Bush because ahahah, well, he's going to want to see this? :>

And yeah, the HH plotline reminds me a lot of the Brothers Grimm with a dose of Hans Anderson heartache.

[phantomsangel.livejournal.com]

HAHA. That is quite possibly the greatest screen cap and analysis of said screen cap I have ever seen. <333

Also? One more topic on my research paper and then I am free to write porn!

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Porn! Porn! *sings the porn song*

And that screencap is TOTAL LOVE. That entire wharf scene is total love. :D

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

And this is why I should read your newest post before sending comments that say OMG WRITE ME FIC. Just ignore my pawing. :>

I love your list re the pic, ys to all of it. HH is absolutely scoping out Bush's reaction. Oh noes, what if he doesn't like me our new home? That whole scene just screams marriage proposal.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

He's totally worried that Bush will reject him because the diamond in the ring isn't big enough/the new house doesn't have enoug guns. "Oh noes, I should have gotten the princess cut. :/" I like to pretend that Hornblower actually dropped down on his knees and took off his hat to propose. :>

And ahahha. NO WORRIES. I do not mind being pawed at to write. Particularly by you. And definitely not if it gives me permission to think about the filthy, of movie!Bush taking an hour out from the prep of the Hotspur to fuck future middies, whether he's thinking of Horblower or not. OMG.

A neat little framing device for that story, by the way, would be to set it up in terms of Bush comparing Wellard, Hammond, and the midshipman that Hornblower must have been.

princess cut ;akskjs

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

A neat little framing device for that story, by the way, would be to set it up in terms of Bush comparing Wellard, Hammond, and the midshipman that Hornblower must have been.

I was thinking that when I read that poem I posted -- the 'you remind me of the dead' or whatever. And how BOTH Wellard and Hammond die, and how that reflects on Hornblower: how good he is, but also, how vulnerable (in a different way to what we were talking about before).

*is talking crap, needs to go do work*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that when I read that poem I posted -- the 'you remind me of the dead' or whatever.

Holy fuck! I didn't think of that at all. Holy fuck! I'd just been thinking about how it might apply to Bush, post-Loyalty, thinking back to when he watched Hammond sleep in that Portsmouth inn, and ;glkjdf but oh man. It fits with Bush watching Hornblower sleep so well.

You are a genius. *is attempting to do work now, too* <333333

[byandby.livejournal.com]

I think that I love you for this. Because everything is just so true.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I think I love you for being so kind. *jams her tinhat WB/HH hat further on her head*

[spacekat13.livejournal.com]

After reading heaps of stuff on hh_slash, I really can't read the books in the same way!! Or watch the movies either, for that matter. All kinds of things pop out at me, esp. H/B moments!! This screen cap is a great example!!! I am sooooooooooo excited to have finally have found a place where people also 'see' these things :p

Oh, and I Love LOve LOVE your first comment about the uniforms. Men in uniforms (esp. old-navy) = yummiest of yummy stuff

P.S. I friended you, if you don't mind :)

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

No problem. :) I mean what I say in the LJ info about friending away, and I'm glad that you're enjoying the HH books. <333 Have you managed to stay spoiler free about the ones that're left?

[spacekat13.livejournal.com]

Reasonably. I have just started Commodore today, so it is probably only about a week until I have finished them all anyways :)