quigonejinn

Awwwww, this post fills me with the love.

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

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. :///

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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!!!! 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

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That fic would rock my world.

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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.

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Including, you know. A son named William.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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the one with the fairy tal ending.

By the Brothers Grimm.

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

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