#percy yells at cecil scott

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Haven't taken enough psychic damage recently maybe I need to read more Hornblower

#i started commodore i should finish it #<- statements made by guys who just reach a point of mental stability like two days ago and should Absolutely Not Do That #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott

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This is probably Bush and also Pullings's native dialect (though I have many MANY doubts about what exactly the methodology being used here was)

#they have texts and they have informants and they have the informants read the text but i'm not really sure how that's supposed to work #anyways this is definitely the dialect pullings grew up speaking since afaik he's the son of hampshire farmers #apparently chichester is in area 5 as well so also falls under this categorization #this is very unrigorous research btw. please take everything i am saying with a grain of salt i'm just fiddling around with an old book #i'll look for a good basic primer on history/dialectology of english at the library at some point perhaps #i do not have the historical context/cross-references to verify any of this guy's claims #i just really like dialect and english-language ones are so much fun what with all the crazy vowel combos #and apparently lots of rhoticity??? he's claiming this accent was also rhotic which is a little insane #would love to read a history of rhoticity in english tbh #perce rambles #adventures in historical sociolinguistics #percy yells at cecil scott #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense #if you go to the source there's a lot of texts in this section i just picked one

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Okay hear me out. What if Hornblower and Lady Barbara but they're high school math olympians and also have a crazy psychosexual rivalry with each other

#the vibes here are mean girls btw #high school academic competitions bring out insane behaviors and olympiads are even worse. and i want them to have that #lady barbara 'comes from a dynasty of math olympians and has 50x harvard legacy' wellesley #vs. horatia 'public school kid whose school has never even won a math competition but she's gonna win the fields medal' hornblower #(yeah she's trans. she's always trans she has to be trans in that book i'm sorry) #the rivalry never actually comes to anything. or they have like A Single Kiss and then are like what if we never talked about that again #it needs to be extremely early 00s teen girl movie coded. everything is subtext but they're both insane #anyways if anyone wants to write this go wild i have like 60 pages of final papers to get through first :( #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott #disclaimer: i did not do any olympiads. i know a couple of people who know people who did #i did however do trivia which does bring out similar behaviors i think #also sorry for making them american i just knew i'd make a hash of the british school system :// #tbh i think this would also just make a fun movie in general i think it's what the general public needs

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Trying to write Hornblower in the style of Patrick O'Brian truly one of the most harrowing experiences I have subjected myself to ever

#harrowing in a good way though #i am learning a lot about hornblower aubreyad and just how to write in general #it's just very difficult and honestly unclear if it can even be done at all #idk. i do weird things with my excess brainspace sometimes and this is one of them i guess #perce rambles #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense #percy yells at cecil scott #(not yelling at him too much here although in general the exercise does go to show that he can't hold a candle to mr. pob)

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Have been contemplating creating so many Hornblower things in which playing cards are a narrative device/motif that I forgot that CS Forester didn't actually ever do that with them

#i have all these things in my head of like whist actually being used as a device for fate/trickery/foreshadowing #does cs forester ever properly use it like that? as far as i remember he doesn't but i might be besmirching him for no reason #thinking about it very hard re: oracle fic but also have thoughts with rosas rewrite (which is being tabled for now) #plus an art piece which may or may not come to fruition #it's just like. you know what's happening to you partway through a round. and that is either an opportunity or a burden #much like some other things i know. maybe i'm overthinking it though #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott #also shout out to hornblower shining/brilliance imagery as another iteration of this problem but i'm less disappointed about it #though not a day goes by where i wonder what would happen if you put hornblower in a more complex book. he belongs there tbh

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Playing what are probably unhealthy quantities of whist against the computer and it's giving me frightening insight into Hornblower's mind (she's literally insane)

#i get her now. i'm not better at whist but *she* makes perfect sense to me #like i can't see my opponents' next three plays but i am getting vivid flashes of her explaining why everything i'm doing is wrong #this has historically been the part of hornblower i could not capture at all but i get it now. i get it #the strategizing and scheming and quick-thinking part because gotdam you have to be FAST #anyways now i have a cool little autistic trans girl in my head lecturing me on why i'm a fool #and i NEED to go write things involving her asap #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott

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Hornblower but I make him talk like this

#yeah yeah this is a rural/working class accent and he's a middle class doctor's son i know #at least it could explain the rhotic slip-ups committed by ioan gruffudd in the show #(which are my beloved btw <3 choosing to consider them conscientious objection to the most english guy to ever english) #(i know that's absolutely not what they were but listen. radical linguistic praxis makes it bearable okay) #anyways i'm sure that hornblower has *some* kentish features in his speech #they're all so mean to him about being the son of a country doctor he has to show a slight phonological coloring in some situations #but also for legal reasons this is entirely a joke #i do think it's a pretty dialect though! i like the way it sounds when i try to read the scrunkly pre-ipa here #perce rambles #adventures in historical sociolinguistics #<- making this a new tag because i feel like it's its own rabbit hole #percy yells at cecil scott

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I am kind of fascinated by the Hornblower-not-matching-his-setting, though. I think that's actually been one of the things that I've thought about the most, especially in books where it's been particularly egregious (Beat to Quarters/The Happy Return, Ship of the Line, etc.). Did Forester just happen to stumble upon a brilliant character and, not realizing what a brilliant character he was, just carry on unknowingly writing him into his Swashbuckling Adventure Stories? Did he know that Hornblower was so delightfully complex but didn't know what to do with him? Did he know what to do with him but couldn't? It's also interesting to think about in the context of canon—how much of the Hornblower we see is also distorted through the lens of being a Hero of Our Glorious British Empire? How much more cruel or ignorant does he become from other perspectives? Yes, he has moral dilemmas, but if we step outside of the moral dilemmas as the books present them, what other narratives might we see?

#this is what i mean by these books not being easy reading for me #like idk man they should not be thought provoking but sometimes reading things by guys you dislike makes your brain muscles stronger #when i say 'reading between the lines' i do not just mean on a queer level #actually a good deal of the reading between the lines i've done has been with all the people he's interacted with #and the way the narrative sets up particular moral dilemmas in particular ways to serve particular plot ends #but in reality i entirely disagree with everything that's going on there and it's fun to think about what happens when you break free #of those dilemmas. except it's also a lot of work #like augh. these books are extremely taxing i can easily read them in like a day but thinking about them takes all my strength #and then on top of that they make me insane i have to put the book down and scream every five seconds at just. The Hornblower #EXTREMELY delightful thinking fodder though. why? who knows but they sure are #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott

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Every time I have to use the canon-consistent name for places in the Iberian peninsula which are not the official name I lose ten years off my life

#okay fine i will write lerida because you put it there. but is that even what you wanted mr. o'brian sir #honestly stephen is writing in his diary i might just keep it lleida #for the roses fic i just gave up at one point (<- evidenced by this sentence. it's gulf of roses why did he call it rosas bay) #but i don't respect cs forester and he doesn't understand catalanism so whatever #pob would know better so i can only assume it's period-accurate for talking in english :/// but grrrr i don't like it #(i am keeping figueras/rosas/etc bc that's consistent w period catalan spelling from there) #(but lerida??? no. no please no please don't make me do that) #(also ampurdá i can do but ampurdán get cancelled) #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense

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Okay I'm normal now (I'm not but I'm going to be brave about it)

#hornblower will get into your brain and he will never leave #begone creature. i have professional and social obligations #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott

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Very funny how neither CS Forester nor Patrick O'Brian were buried in England. Guys really said yeah I'll write about it but I don't like it that much

#it makes sense for both of them they seemed to like their adopted countries better and pob seemed halfhearted about englishness anyway #but it is very funny that they spent a whole lot of their lives in the united states and france respectively #this re: discussion of the guys' graves and whether or not to visit #i'm going to go to cotlliure this summer though my parents refuse to believe me but i'll make it work #french can't stop me it's just badly pronounced catalan and i'll only speak to old people if i have to #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense #going to go to sleep before my powers of speech get any further disjointed goodnight

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I know that this is an act of the most extreme hubris and I expect to be struck down for it sooner or later, but what if....I attempted to write Hornblower in the style of Patrick O'Brian....

#just because that quote that i posted a few days ago has really been making me think about things #mostly due to the brilliant notes on it which have all been very insightful especially re what makes the aubreyad so damn good #anyways i can't write this is why it's an act of hubris but i did write a thing so i'm going to share it anyways #ship of the line was fine. it pissed me off a tiny bit less than beat to quarters #but also like mr. pob loves the mediterranean so unbelievably much and it infuses his writing and i miss that #so therefore mediterranean be upon thee <3 #perce rambles #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense #percy yells at cecil scott #<- personal hornblower tag since that's what it amounts to mostly

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Beloved mutual experiencing the pain of CS Forester writing things about Spain and I am relieving every single moment of reading Ship of the Line in vivid detail

#*disinters cs forester from his grave just to start shaking him vigorously* DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHERE SPAIN IS SIR #god. if he had not managed to create the worst-adjusted most genderful weird little gay guy i would be a straight-out hater #as it is i am still mostly a hater but hornblower has me in a death grasp and i can't escape #i do start wriggling with rage every time i think about sotl though. and the ferrol interlude as well #things that were wasted on this fool. *I* would have known what to do with ferrol #there are also like 5 stages of specifically cs forester writing about spain grief that are apparently the same for everyone shdfjsdf #glad if you guys didn't take psychological damage from reading that book but it still haunts my every waking hour #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott

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Thought I had managed to figure out the whole timeline of where Villena had been during the war and now I'm going back through all the sources I have saved and I feel like nothing is matching up at all with what I have in my head

#gaslight gatekeep girlboss i guess. thanks brain #villena my poor wet cat of a guy. peak example of he should be at the club #i'm pretty sure he's my age or younger #and he is not built for this he's built for being a twitch streamer who goes to andorra to commit tax fraud and complain about catalan #i've become a little fond of him now that i've saved him from mr. forester's clutches though. his head is so empty but it's okay #anyways i'm frustrated bc i swear i found his regiment and all but now i can't find it >:'0 #need to do what i did for that american civil war project freshman year where i found the regiment my fictional guy was in #by triangulating the only missouri german regiment that was at the battles we needed to include #and then found a literal description of an actual event and found where he would have been standing and what he would have seen #and wrote a whole fake journal entry about it despite never having been within 50 miles of missouri #in case you're wondering. yes i'm like this all the time. for free even #and i NEED to know where villena has been this is vital information #i'd also like to find stuff on attempts on roses if i can. i found the battle the final showdown in ship of the line is based on though :') #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott #(sir you ought to thank me for how much i am dredging up your silly little guys)

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Thinks very hard about this re: Ship of the Line

#i want some excuse to use this in something i doubt it's contemporary but it still fits well #mayhap i will expand my aubreyad-ification and throw it in there #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott

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Hornblower (TV series) would be greatly improved if it just abandoned the books altogether and instead turned into a show about Hornblower and Bunting getting into an exceedingly ideologically-charged relationship

#bunting should become an anarchist and he should make hornblower have a dilemma or two #i know that technically hornblower does have a dilemma or two over him in the show but like #(1) they should have sex over it #and (2) it should be an actual dilemma. not a coward cop-out dilemma. i want to examine the ramifications and the ethics #obsessed with whatever they had going on and i would like it elaborated on #also yay! we continue the streak of percy's favorite guys in hornblower are the ones who it refuses to depict well! #she's giving nothing! i'm going to have to daydream things in my head! #perce rambles #percy yells at cecil scott #<- origin of the evil #side note but she really was serving looks that whole episode. i hate how pretty she was in her stupid little hat and quarantine hair