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Kestral posted:The correct way to handle Stephen is, "hey man, I like you as a friend, as I've said repeatedly, so let's keep that, and please stop pursuing me romantically or we can't have nice things" and then sticking to that. And if he can't handle it, well, too bad, looks like you're not a good fit for each other as friends. Trying to have it both ways just hurts everyone. Stephen needs to get his poo poo together too and acquire better taste in partners, but Diana bears her share of fault here too. I've always seen part of Diana's story as being that she's profoundly lonely. Her relationships with almost all of her romantic partners are hideously lopsided, where she has to be working the angles constantly to get what she wants from them, and she has the same dynamic in a different way with Mrs. Williams. Stephen is safe, because he doesn't have anything she needs. She absolutely strings him along, but I cut her some slack because I think she's giving in to the need to interact with somebody who cares about her as her - even if she maybe doesn't love him in the same way he does her.
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Sep 19, 2023 17:25
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Woo, Jack has a ship again! A commission! And I'm happy he's not going to be an privateer! ...but oh lord, an experimental weird ship, a boss who hates him, and worse to come. Post Captain is fascinating and excruciating all at the same time.
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Sep 19, 2023 19:53
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StrixNebulosa posted:It drives me perfectly insane that Jack is more concerned about clean dishes and utensils than Stephen, the doctor is. Lister's article on sepsis and the value of sterilizing surgical instruments doesn't appear until 1867. I recall accounts of earlier surgeons preserving blood and gore on their equipment as a sort of signal of their professional experience. Medicine, uh, advanced a lot during the nineteenth century.
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Sep 19, 2023 22:40
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:Lister's article on sepsis and the value of sterilizing surgical instruments doesn't appear until 1867. I recall accounts of earlier surgeons preserving blood and gore on their equipment as a sort of signal of their professional experience. Medicine, uh, advanced a lot during the nineteenth century. I really appreciate that the character gives no shits whatsoever about cleaning his instruments but does about keeping them ruthlessly sharp and making the patient trust that he'll be fast as lightning and give them great value, and is perfectly happy giving seamen pointless treatments if it helps them believe they'll get better.
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Sep 19, 2023 22:53
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He does clean a patient's skin with alcohol before making an incision in at least one scene, IIRC, because he believes that "the cooling effect helps reduce pain" or something along those lines. But yeah, he doesn't have the faintest idea about cleanliness mattering and most of his medicines are just laxatives or things to induce vomiting, and of course opium. Oh, and the scene in some book late in the series where he treats atrial fibrillation with digitalis, which really was a valid treatment, and the admiral so treated subsequently overdosing himself to death in the commonplace belief that if a little was good, more must be better, which is also medically accurate 
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Sep 19, 2023 23:20
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Page 258 out of 496 in Post Captain and okay I confess it. Despite my determined attitude and good cheer I am honestly having a miserable time. I spent the last hundred pages going "when will they get to sea please please please it will be relief" - and oh thank god, we're at sea, I am fascinated by the Polychrest. But instead of the relief - and there IS some of it - it's instead more plodding misery and doom as Jack fails to get his first officer in order (setting the seeds of future disaster), Stephen actually considers leaving and Jack has to (jokingly? seriously?) threaten him to stay on board, and oh god, oh god, it's like being around when my parents are fighting. Everything is tense and uncomfortable - and I know it has to get worse before it's mended. I'm plowing on, I am going to read HMS Surprise soon damnit all, but oh lord this book is just a miserable slog even on a reread. No one is happy for long, not in any real way, and without the Jack and Stephen friendship it's just dour.
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Sep 20, 2023 01:49
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StrixNebulosa posted:Page 258 out of 496 in Post Captain and okay I confess it. Despite my determined attitude and good cheer I am honestly having a miserable time. I spent the last hundred pages going "when will they get to sea please please please it will be relief" - and oh thank god, we're at sea, I am fascinated by the Polychrest. Don’t worry, everything is going to bee ok in the end.
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Sep 20, 2023 02:23
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uPen posted:Don’t worry, everything is going to bee ok in the end. Yeah you just gotta try and bear with it
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Sep 20, 2023 02:46
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Notahippie posted:I cut her some slack because I think she's giving in to the need to interact with somebody who cares about her as her - even if she maybe doesn't love him in the same way he does her. This may be a little heavy for the Aubrey-Maturin thread, but just putting it out there for anyone who needs to hear it: if anyone treats you the way Diana treats these characters, run, don't walk, no matter what you think the reasons for their behavior might be. StrixNebulosa posted:Woo, Jack has a ship again! A commission! And I'm happy he's not going to be an privateer! I wanted him to take the letter of marque so bad, even if it was obviously doomed from the moment it was offered because Post Captain is a book about why we can't have nice things. The description of that ship and its crew sounded great, and I can't wait for Jack to actually get a good ship one day. He's a great captain, give the man something to work with! uPen posted:Don’t worry, everything is going to bee ok in the end. I just got to this about an hour ago and I had to pause and rewind the audiobook from laughing so hard, the narrator kills it with Jack's outburst. Actually that sequence is what I came here to ask about, and I'll put it in spoilers since there's other folks reading Post Captain right now. Three questions: 1) How does the crew of ship of that era end up as immaculately professional as that of the Lively, when it seems like their non-officer sailors are constantly being shuffled between ships, or running away in port, or getting blown up, etc. ? I don't doubt it's possible, I'm just curious about the social / organizational structures around it. Is this in some way related to their extended deployments in the Indies? 2) The description of the Lively's crew as Jack comes aboard was surprising. Are there normally a bunch of small children running around these warships, complete with schoolmaster? I knew midshipmen could be pretty young, but I was thinking 11 or 12 was the lower end, so a thumb-sucking five year old was a surprise. 3) Ship apes  Does anyone know the historical precedent for this? It feels like it must have been taken from actual events, and I'm so, so curious.
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Sep 20, 2023 03:03
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Kestral posted:
1) This comes down to good officers and seasoned crew setting the tone. While lots of the crew did move around, Captains would absolutely have core groups who would follow them. I also think POB romanticizes the difference between a tight ship on long campaigns. 2) The lively at this time was in the channel? Or otherwise near shore? If so then yes, this was not uncommon to have wives and families, small children and private tutors on board. Longer campaigns this was less likely, though you may have passengers of any type on a war vessel. 3. Yep. Monkeys were but uncommon. There's..... Not much to do on a boat and monkeys are funny. Lockback fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Sep 20, 2023 |
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Sep 20, 2023 04:18
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Regarding number 3, I don't know where O'Brian got it in particular, but here's a supposedly-true anecdote I've read: “One of them was a small Lion monkey, of great beauty and extreme gentleness, and immediately after I had been feeding him, Jack [another monkey] called him with a coaxing, patronizing air; but as soon as he was within reach, the perfidious creature seized him by the nape of his neck, and, as quick as thought, popped him over the side of the ship. We were going at a brisk rate, and although a rope was thrown out to him, the poor little screaming thing was soon left behind, very much to my distress, for his almost human agony of countenance was painful to behold. For this, Jack was punished by being shut up all day in the empty hen-coop, in which he usually passed the night, and which he so hated, that when bed-time came, he generally avoided the clutches of the steward; he, however, committed so much mischief when unwatched, that it had become necessary to confine him at night, and I was often obliged to perform the office of nursemaid. Jack's principal punishment, however, was to be taken in front of the cage in which a panther belonging to me was placed, in the fore part of the deck. His alarm was intense; the panther set up his back and growled, but Jack instantly closed his eyes, and made himself perfectly rigid." Mrs. R. Lee. Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals.
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Sep 20, 2023 04:52
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StrixNebulosa posted:It drives me perfectly insane that Jack is more concerned about clean dishes and utensils than Stephen, the doctor is. You sound upset. Try some of this laudanum. Notahippie posted:I've always seen part of Diana's story as being that she's profoundly lonely. Her relationships with almost all of her romantic partners are hideously lopsided, where she has to be working the angles constantly to get what she wants from them, and she has the same dynamic in a different way with Mrs. Williams. Stephen is safe, because he doesn't have anything she needs. She absolutely strings him along, but I cut her some slack because I think she's giving in to the need to interact with somebody who cares about her as her - even if she maybe doesn't love him in the same way he does her. My two cents on this, Diana can be both attracted to dudes with uncommonly genteel bodies like Jack, dudes with absurd wealth and dudes who are smart. And she can be totally screwed over by social circumstance all at the same time. I think folks have pointed out how few options women in this era had but like, SO FEW. Basically all of Jane Austen's books have that same underpinning of "hey, if you don't get married to someone good then you're just hosed forever with no options other than to teach some brats for not very much money and never have anything good sorry." So I cut her some slack for being super frustrated and being young and wanting to bone a bunch of dudes and also not knowing what she wants or, alternatively, knowing what she wants but being unable to have it because she's a woman. She also has to know that her societal value is just beauty and that's going to fade so she has to get while the getting is good. Her world is unfair in a way I've never experienced and much of her behavior is a reaction to that unfairness. Kestral posted:This may be a little heavy for the Aubrey-Maturin thread, but just putting it out there for anyone who needs to hear it: if anyone treats you the way Diana treats these characters, run, don't walk, no matter what you think the reasons for their behavior might be. But also, yeah if someone treats you that way you need to leave. AngusPodgorny posted:Regarding number 3, I don't know where O'Brian got it in particular, but here's a supposedly-true anecdote I've read: “One of them was a small Lion monkey, of great beauty and extreme gentleness, and immediately after I had been feeding him, Jack [another monkey] called him with a coaxing, patronizing air; but as soon as he was within reach, the perfidious creature seized him by the nape of his neck, and, as quick as thought, popped him over the side of the ship. We were going at a brisk rate, and although a rope was thrown out to him, the poor little screaming thing was soon left behind, very much to my distress, for his almost human agony of countenance was painful to behold. For this, Jack was punished by being shut up all day in the empty hen-coop, in which he usually passed the night, and which he so hated, that when bed-time came, he generally avoided the clutches of the steward; he, however, committed so much mischief when unwatched, that it had become necessary to confine him at night, and I was often obliged to perform the office of nursemaid. Jack's principal punishment, however, was to be taken in front of the cage in which a panther belonging to me was placed, in the fore part of the deck. His alarm was intense; the panther set up his back and growled, but Jack instantly closed his eyes, and made himself perfectly rigid." Mrs. R. Lee. Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals. 
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Sep 20, 2023 16:46
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AngusPodgorny posted:Regarding number 3, I don't know where O'Brian got it in particular, but here's a supposedly-true anecdote I've read: “One of them was a small Lion monkey, of great beauty and extreme gentleness, and immediately after I had been feeding him, Jack [another monkey] called him with a coaxing, patronizing air; but as soon as he was within reach, the perfidious creature seized him by the nape of his neck, and, as quick as thought, popped him over the side of the ship. We were going at a brisk rate, and although a rope was thrown out to him, the poor little screaming thing was soon left behind, very much to my distress, for his almost human agony of countenance was painful to behold. For this, Jack was punished by being shut up all day in the empty hen-coop, in which he usually passed the night, and which he so hated, that when bed-time came, he generally avoided the clutches of the steward; he, however, committed so much mischief when unwatched, that it had become necessary to confine him at night, and I was often obliged to perform the office of nursemaid. Jack's principal punishment, however, was to be taken in front of the cage in which a panther belonging to me was placed, in the fore part of the deck. His alarm was intense; the panther set up his back and growled, but Jack instantly closed his eyes, and made himself perfectly rigid." Mrs. R. Lee. Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals. God drat man, loving monkeys. Kestral posted:Actually that sequence is what I came here to ask about, and I'll put it in spoilers since there's other folks reading Post Captain right now. Three questions: There could easily be small children present as an extraordinary occurrence - visiting families while the ship was in port, or even accompanying senior officers while in local waters, would have been common. Not usual for very small children to be taken on long voyages (they could well be born aboard to petty officers' wives or other off-the-books women!). I think the very very young Midshipman there is specifically noted to be an officer's son whose mother has died untimely. Rating him Midshipman would have been an act of kindly corruption by the Captain, because there would have been a minimum age for Midshipmen in the naval regulations, no idea what it would have been. I'd be interested to see what the practical lower limit for Midshipmen and ships' boys was, anecdotally plenty would have been prepubescent. For officers, I know it was common for families with 'interest' (we would say influence or connections) to get their sons to sea nice and early so they had enough time on the books to pass the Lieutenant's exam while younger than the minimum age. But that could also be done by simply puttting the boy in question on the ship's roster while he stayed at home - a dodge which is explicitly mentioned later in the books.
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Sep 20, 2023 17:21
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Got into a kind of fever this afternoon and zoomed from where I was to the bottom of the book - the provocation of the duel - through the descent (Stephen practicing with the pistols, Jack finding Canning, The rumblings of the mutiny, etc) and then to the action…and oh, the utter dreamlike emotion of watching the Polychrest sink. At this point I think it’s taken on the symbolic place of the scapegoat - with it gone all of my problems are gone. The tension is gone, the hell is over. I still have like a hundred pages to go, but phewwwww
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Sep 20, 2023 22:26
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Yes, YES, when they finally get to the boarding action and they scream "Polychrest!" in fury and agony and hatred of life itself -- you are one of them, you feel it now, you can sew it on your cap.
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Sep 21, 2023 02:04
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StrixNebulosa posted:Got into a kind of fever this afternoon and zoomed from where I was to the bottom of the book - the provocation of the duel - through the descent (Stephen practicing with the pistols, Jack finding Canning, The rumblings of the mutiny, etc) and then to the action…and oh, the utter dreamlike emotion of watching the Polychrest sink. At this point I think it’s taken on the symbolic place of the scapegoat - with it gone all of my problems are gone. The tension is gone, the hell is over. I'm glad you didn't give up. I've read a lot of books in my life and this series is head and shoulders above anything I've ever read. I just want more people to experience it.
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Sep 21, 2023 12:22
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uPen posted:Don’t worry, everything is going to bee ok in the end. Why, god help me, why did Stephen bring a fuckload of bees onto a man-o- war A Proper Uppercut posted:I'm glad you didn't give up. I've read a lot of books in my life and this series is head and shoulders above anything I've ever read. I just want more people to experience it.  Jack on the Lively is so much more in line with the fun of the first book that I'm back to savoring every page, bees and ape's heads and all.
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Sep 21, 2023 15:12
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StrixNebulosa posted:Why, god help me, why did Stephen bring a fuckload of bees onto a man-o- war every British ship of the line was equipped with a dog with bees in its mouth and when it barked it shot bees at you
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Sep 21, 2023 15:24
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buffalo all day posted:every British ship of the line was equipped with a dog with bees in its mouth and when it barked it shot bees at you I, somehow, don't feel that this is true.
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Sep 21, 2023 15:32
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Think of it! Fresh honey!
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Sep 21, 2023 15:58
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StrixNebulosa posted:I, somehow, don't feel that this is true. imagine just throwing shade on O'Brian's research like this, I'm sure if we dug a little we'd find all kinds of evidence of Cochrane having dogs with bees in their mouths
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Sep 21, 2023 17:30
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  (My dog possesses no bee ammunition!)
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Sep 21, 2023 17:33
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That's a good dog.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:12
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Anyone else longing for a philosophical garment for this autumn?
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Sep 21, 2023 18:19
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Post Captain complete, thank god, what a weird book. I'm happy to have it behind me, and I'm happier still to have HMS Surprise at hand. I'll start soon - might take a quick detour into a Nero Wolfe - but I brave more ship action already. God, the sequence with the Lively was fun! It astounds me how understated the huge movements are. Do we witness Jack and Sophie making their promise? No! Do we spend more than a page on Jack realizing that Stephen is a spy? No! We spend like a thousand pages on details you wouldn't think would matter compared to the seismic shifts in the relationships of the main characters. It's so - so - listen, as a huge romance reader fan, it's so odd! If you handed this novel to any other romance author and told her to rewrite it, while we'd maintain the horrifically painful (and lovely) opera sequence, and we'd likely lose a whole lot of detail, by god we'd open up entire new rafts of finding out how Jack and Sophie talk to each other and feel and carry on. Mind you, we'd probably wind up in the lands of The Flame and the Flower which can be overwrought as hell, but historical romance novelists have never* shied from doing research. (*If they have I do not care.) Oh I'm rambling. Point is. Post Captain is a weird-rear end novel and I'm so happy to finish rereading it. Onwards! Onwards to better things!
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Sep 21, 2023 21:57
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That whole things left unsaid is one of the things that really blew my mind in the series,I don't think I've ever seen another author so that. There are so many things that happen over the years that you only kind of learn about later or need to infer. O'Brian absolutely does not insult his readers' intelligence.
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Sep 21, 2023 22:03
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A Proper Uppercut posted:That whole things left unsaid is one of the things that really blew my mind in the series,I don't think I've ever seen another author so that. There are so many things that happen over the years that you only kind of learn about later or need to infer. O'Brian absolutely does not insult his readers' intelligence. The number one example of this that springs to my mind is what happens after they get shipwrecked toward the beginning of…uh…the fortune of war? cannibalism????!
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Sep 21, 2023 22:36
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buffalo all day posted:The number one example of this that springs to my mind is what happens after they get shipwrecked toward the beginning of…uh…the fortune of war? cannibalism????! Yea, it was Awkward Davies I think and they just casually mention it a few times later.
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Sep 21, 2023 23:49
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buffalo all day posted:The number one example of this that springs to my mind is what happens after they get shipwrecked toward the beginning of…uh…the fortune of war? cannibalism????! If you want to try and find the passage, http://www.singularityfps.com/pob/
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Sep 22, 2023 00:14
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Anyone ever read Testimonies? Another good example of things left unstated.
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Sep 22, 2023 04:49
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I also finished Post Captain tonight, and god I am so relieved to be out of it. HMS Surprise has me excited because I remember that being the name of Jack's ship in the Master and Commander film, so I'm guessing it's one of the iconic JackShips of the series and hopefully is not a floating misery like the Polychrest. I'm curious, is there any fan attempt to assemble a timeline for these books? I'm sure it would be kind of a nightmare, since I recall commentary to the effect that the author lamented not setting it all several years earlier because there were too many events to realistically fit into the time period he was covering. Still, there's a lot of what seem like references to obscure real-life events that I'd like to look up at some point, and even a rough timeline would be a good starting point.
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Sep 22, 2023 07:39
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buffalo all day posted:The number one example of this that springs to my mind is what happens after they get shipwrecked toward the beginning of…uh…the fortune of war? cannibalism????! I dunno, I think the one that stood out there most for me was Diana dying out of nowhere.
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Sep 22, 2023 11:12
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3 Action Economist posted:I dunno, I think the one that stood out there most for me was Diana dying out of nowhere. My opinion is that that's just another example of O'Brian's willingness to use off screen deus ex machina to both cause and resolve problems for the viewpoint characters. Jack's father was another big example of this. It flies in the face of storytelling convention by which the readers expect the characters to have some agency over things, and it's also kind of lazy, but O'Brian wanted a shortcut to the story he wanted to tell and so he took it.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:38
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Kylaer posted:My opinion is that that's just another example of O'Brian's willingness to use off screen deus ex machina to both cause and resolve problems for the viewpoint characters. Jack's father was another big example of this. It flies in the face of storytelling convention by which the readers expect the characters to have some agency over things, and it's also kind of lazy, but O'Brian wanted a shortcut to the story he wanted to tell and so he took it. I don't know, I feel like "poo poo happens" is a big theme in the books, and is both realistic and sets the series apart from books which try and have everything fit into a neat narrative. Like HMS Surprise They sail halfway across the world to deliver an envoy and then he just dies right before they get to their destination, so they just turn around and head back again Mauritius Command Jack has pulled his fleet back from the brink and is ready for the final assault and then an entire armada shows up and takes his job away Sometimes people die and everyone just has to deal with the consequences, good or bad, even if those deaths aren't really connected to anything else that's happening.
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Sep 22, 2023 15:53
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You could probably make a thematic argument that the capricious and arbitrary nature of some of the major events mirrors life aboard ship somewhat. Sometimes a ship just gets wrecked by a storm, no matter the skill of the officers and crew. The sea doesn't give a poo poo about you. Sometimes the dice don't go your way and you get sniped by a random cannonball (Bonden  ).
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Sep 22, 2023 17:44
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I agree with both takes here - I think one of the things I love about the series is the way that sometimes the narrative pivots suddenly on something introduced completely from left field and often either happening off-screen or covered entirely in a single sentence. I think that's a deliberate style choice by O'Brian, both in a Hemingway-like focus on stripping the story down to its bones and letting the reader interpret the characters' internal experience of liberation/despair/whatever and also as a theme about the vagaries of fate. Stephen's quote about "All all of a piece throughout/thy chase had a beast in view/thy wars brought nothing about/thy lovers were all untrue" illustrates that directly I think. At the same time, I totally think O'Brian also uses some of that as a plot device, and in particular like Kylaer mentioned General Aubrey is a little egregious for that since he appears to mostly exist off-screen as a tool for dialing up/down how much political trouble Jack is in.
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Sep 22, 2023 17:59
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Chiming in with another report of "I just finished Post Captain", I mentioned earlier that this was my second attempt and now that I am through it I like the book much more now that I have finished it. I'm not sure I have anything unique to add that is different than the other observations, except perhaps that when I inevitably return to the series I think I will actually look forward to re-reading. There is a LOT of stuff happening to the characters in this one and certainly stuff I missed on my first reading. It will be interesting to see how I'll see the book on a re-read, however distant that may be. Also, I mostly am commenting because I found it interesting that 3 (?) of us have just finished the book in a 48 hour period. There must be something in the air.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:12
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HMS Surprise, when I first tried it all those years back after finishing Post Captain (angrily, bored, ready to give up on the entire series), opens in (spoiling for the other.. two? three? people reading it) what should be a harsh, unhappy manner. Jack is hosed for money again, his father has cast debuff -100 on his career, Stephen is let out to dry, and we get... Jack basically unhappy at sea and about to be boatless, Stephen captured, and woe woe woe. I remember dropping this book in disgust because it really looked like it was going to be Post Captain 2: Misery comes 'round again, watch Jack get assigned to the HMS Polychrest again somehow. This time, wildly, it's the same sequence of events but I can already feel the upswing? Like, not to downplay the trauma - Jack in a sponge-house (whatever that is), Stephen tortured and with his hands hosed :C - but somehow I can tell, by the mood or the writing or something, that everything is jauntier. The humor feels fresher, and I know of course that HMS Surprise is a pretty important boat, and the back of the book says they're going to India (oh god, Stephen and Diana...) - and it just feels better to read! I'm happy, I'm not slogging, I'm enjoying myself. And like. I'm even enjoying the Stephen / Diana dynamic now, and not thinking "oh no" but instead, like, "oh NO" as I eagerly await the coming brooding from Stephen. I think it helps that master spy Joseph is so intensely into bugs. I respect that in a man.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:03
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A sponge house is a debtor's prison where they squeeze you like a sponge for every last farthing if you want food, laundry, or a nice room with a shithole beg pardon.
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Sep 23, 2023 04:32
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There are a lot of wild highs and lows in the series for the main characters, but on the whole things eventually work out in a good way. I'm on my second go-round and the lovely things that happen definitely got me down again but remembering what happens later makes me feel a lot better about it. Hopefully that's not too much of a spoiler.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:55
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