#hornblower not having patronage (not coming from an illustrious enough academic pedigree <- happened to a guy i know)

[quatregats]

Constant need to throw Hornblower into math academia and discover new flavors of how unwell he can get

#the 19th c royal navy/21st c academia parallels are real #he belongs in math academia and also it would make him completely deranged #like consider. sawyer as toxic advisor trying to ice out his grad students #hornblower not having patronage (not coming from an illustrious enough academic pedigree <- happened to a guy i know) #eventually he gets a good job somewhere because he's ridiculously smart and just had bad luck (unrealistic but like the books) #except he can't be happy about it because he has so many years of built-in impostor syndrome and general rat-race toxicity #the worst thing is that he'd care about this so so much more than he did about his naval career and i think it would break him #perce rambles #hornblower #also i need to send him to my undergrad. he belongs there and also it would be guaranteed to make him worse #school where no one understands the concept of self care and everyone is unbelievably neurodivergent #also all of the pure math people are exactly like him (affectionate/deeply concerned)