tannertan36
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Cosmic Funnies
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
oozey mess
Show & Tell
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Jules of Nature
tumblr dot com
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TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
ojovivo
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macklin celebrini has autism
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occasionally subtle
if i look back, i am lost
Keni
seen from Australia
seen from Australia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Guernsey
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Australia
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seen from Australia
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@aubreyad-indexed
one of my favorite running bits in the aubrey maturin series when he's stuck ashore for whatever reason & all his main group of sailors follow him there & live in his house & look after it exactly like they would a ship. it's so good & also funny
all from different books:
this not even mentioning the time they literally took the house apart to clean it properly
also HOW could I forget the effect this has on his daughters' speech patterns lmao:
"oh darling you are home!"
"yes, joy, now take your clothes off"
As Lesueur said these words, Maturin turned in his seat and looked straight at the Apothecary’s Tower: it was exactly as though his strange pale eyes pierced the slatted shutters to the men within and they both silently fell back a pace. ‘A nasty looking crocodile,’ said Giuseppe, in little more than a whisper. [TH]
the french: ah! maturin, a supernaturally cunning foe, the most dangerous crocodile in the nile
He was smiling openly when Stephen walked in, looking shrewish. Like many large, florid, good-natured men, Jack Aubrey was afflicted with an undue proportion of small, pale, meagre friends of a shrewish turn. [IM]
jack: stephen, my dear, my plum, my meager, unpleasant little shrew-man
This is incredibly cute. Sorry for calling you a bastard I didn’t mean anything by it but i DID mean to call you a coward and a liar and i AM ready to strangle you with my bare hands
#this is so fucking stupid of them I love a culture that produces these kinds of apologies. #'hey man sorry I said that thing that was going too far and I didn't mean it personally. my bad? #'I will still be shooting at you/attacking you with a sword about the other things I said of course. you understand? (via @hey-scully-itsme)
INTERVIEWER: Do readers ever find errors?
O’BRIAN: A Cambridge don who interviewed me for the Times diffidently suggested in later conversation that I might be mistaken in having Sir Joseph Blaine attending a performance of Figaro at Covent Garden, for said he, there was no Mozart opera to be heard in London until (I think) 1832.
INTERVIEWER: There’s nothing you can do about this?
O’BRIAN: Wriggle.
INTERVIEWER: How about the material about the sea. Have you ever had that wrong?
O’BRIAN: No.
i’m reading master and commander and oh my god i adore stephen maturin. this tiny man told a giant naval officer he was tapping out of rhythm with the concert they were listening to, got himself invited to a dinner at one of the best inns on the island, snuck some of said dinner out in his pocket in a classic broke-university-student move, has been hiding out in an abandoned church steeple to avoid any confrontation with his landlord, and to top it all off greeted the day by swinging out of his bed, dusting off his coat and saying “Christ. Another day.”
what an absolute mess, i love him.
‘We thought you might like to view our beetles. They are now fully set out for the first time, a most gratifying sight, covering the entire table and the floor. It cannot last however, the gentlemen of the gunroom being so impatient for their supper.’
‘That would give me great pleasure,’ said Jack, with a last searching look under the mainsail to the fully-drawing fore-course. ‘And if the gunroom – after the bugs, of course – would invite me to take a bite of bread and cheese, how happy I should be.’
— Patrick O’Brian, The Reverse of the Medal
‘Why, Stephen, there you are,’ cried Jack. ‘I have not seen you this age. How do you do?’
‘Admirably well, I thank you. My sick-berth gives me great satisfaction. But,’ he went on, turning Jack to the light and peering up into his face, ‘I cannot congratulate you on your looks.’
‘You have never yet congratulated me on my looks at any time: it would make me uneasy if you were to begin now.’
-The Commodore, Patrick O'Brian
sometimes i remember jack aubrey got a sloth drunk out of social awkwardness
the awkwardness was between him and the sloth
For you maybe
[ID: tags reading: #stephen is the one who always SEEMS like he should be relatable #but as it turns out getting a sloth drunk out of social awkwardness is a lot more relatable than #idk performing brain surgery while taking cocaine or whaTEVER #aubreyad /end ID]
ladies, if he's:
small
indefinably odd
ill-looking
he's not your man. he's dr stephen maturin.
ladies, if he's:
as compact as lead
afflicted with vertigo
possessed of two left hands and no sense of balance
he's not your man. he's dr stephen maturin.
ladies, if he's:
a plain bastard at the best
sallow with odd pale eyes, sparse hair and meagre limbs
rather poor
he's not your man. he's dr stephen maturin.
ladies, if he's:
a prodigious physician
not quite used to the ways of the service yet
no great respecter of persons
he's not your man. he's dr stephen maturin.
ladies, if he's:
made a far more unsuitable match than most
too old a dog to give up his tricks
not house-trained
he's not your man. he's dr stephen maturin.
Matthew Benedict’s covers for the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian.
stephen writing the note in “the fortune of war”: dear jack, I was obliged to beat a man to death with a dildo today :/ the french found me out and and have been chasing me through the streets. am now trapped in diana’s bedroom, unable to escape. pls advise. your friend maturin
jack, leaping out of his sickbed like the grandpa in willy wonka: I’LL BE RIGHT OVER WTF-
on all levels except physical i am wearing stephen maturin's woolen garment
With the familiar butt and the balanced weight in his hand, Stephen’s expression changed to one of extreme coldness: his pale eyes fixed with impersonal lethal intensity upon Canning.
-H.M.S. Surprise, Patrick O'Brian
‘But you will never dislike a little blood and slime.’
Stephen was not a heavy, impercipient man in most respects, yet he had known Jack Aubrey all these years without discovering that he disliked even a very little blood and slime extremely: that is to say, cold blood and slime. In battle he was accustomed to wading ankle-deep in both without the least repulsion, laying about him in a very dreadful manner. But he could scarcely be brought to wring a chicken’s neck, still less watch a surgical operation.
-The Wine Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian
Stephen looked at him curiously. He was bolt upright, larger than life, and he seemed fairly to glow with light. ‘It was a necessary stroke,’ said Stephen.
‘Indeed it was,’ said Jack. ‘I do not know much about politics, but it was a damned necessary stroke for me. No, I don’t mean that,’ he cried, seeing Stephen jut out his lower lip and look away. ‘I mean she let fly at us, and if we had not replied, why truly, we should have been in a pretty mess.’
-Post Captain, Patrick O'Brian
The Fortune of War
So I’m reading The Fortune of War (Aubrey-Maturin #6) for the very first time ever (I know. I’m taking hellishly long with this series), and I regret not having picked it up sooner, because the first chapter is hilarious.
The opening scene with the admiral alone had me in stitches.
Here’s Jack failing (as usual) to get his idioms straight as he reacts to hearing that his men are to be put into a different ship:
“Oh, come sir,” cried Jack. “My lieutenants - and Babbington has followed me since my first command - my midshipmen, and all my bargemen in one fell sloop? Is this justice, sir?”
“What sloop, Aubrey?”
“Why, as to that, sir, I do not mean any specific vessel: it was an allusion to the Bible. But what I mean is, that it is the immemorial custom of the service…”
The “immemorial custom” quickly becomes a running theme:
Jack and the Admiral had known one another off and on for twenty years; they had spent many evenings together, some of them drunken; their collision therefore had none of the cold venom of a purely official encounter. It was none the less eager for that, however, and presently their voices rose until the maidens in the courtyard could clearly make out the words, even the warm personal reflections, direkt on the Admiral’s part, slightly veiled on Jack’s, and again and again they heard the cry “the immemorial custom of the service”.
Culminating in this, almost Austen-like exchange:
“And I know very well that you have always taken good care of your youngsters. The immemorial custom of the service…”
“Oh, f– the immemorial custom of the service,” cried the Admiral: and then appalled at his own words, he fell silent for a while.
Eventually the admiral gives in, because:
“You remind me of that old sodomite.”
“Sodomite, sir?” cried Jack.
“Yes. You who ware so fond of quoting the BIble, yuo must know who I mean. The man who wrangled with the Lord about Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham, that’s the name!”
Speaking of the service… the Captain of La Fleche, a musician, regrets that his piano is out of tune, by casually commenting that
but it is a sad jingling little box, after all. How I wish I could press a piano-tuner.
No one bats an eye at that, because that’s how they do it in the navy. Just kidnap the people you need.
And that’s after the bit where one of Stephen’s wombats is revealed to be eating Jack’s hat:
“Killick, Killick there: what’s amiss?”
“Which it’s your scraper, sir, your number one scraper. The wombat’s got at it.”
“Then take it away from him for God’s sake.”
“I duresn’t, sir, said Killick. “For fear of tearing the lace.”
“Now, sir,” cried the Captain, striding into the great cabin, a tall, imposing figure. “Now, sir” - addressing the wombat, one of the numerous body of marsupials brought into the ship by her surgeon, a natural philosopher - “give it up directly, d’ye hear me, there?”
The wombat stared him straight in the eye, drew a length of gold lace from its mouth, and then deliberately sucked it in again.
And then, of course, we eventually switch POV to Stephen and are greeted with this line:
“Wallis,” said Maturin, “I am happy to find you here. How is your penis?”
Men. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mr Wallis’s delighted smile changed to gravity; a look of sincere self-commiseration came over his face, and he said that it had come along pretty well, but he feared it would never be quite the member it was.
I also can’t believe I forgot how married Stephen and Jack are? Such as when Jack asks Stephen to “be civil” when they meet the Captain of the ship taking them home (and then he’s so proud when Stephen proves himself to be the perfect gentleman).
And then there’s this bit from Jack’s POV:
Dr Maturin came aboard in his usual elegant manner, kicking the port-lids, cursing the kind hands that propelled him up the side, and arriving breathless on deck, as though he had climbed the Monument at a run.
And that’s only the first chapter. And I didn’t even mention “the lesser of two weevils.”
This also involves Maturin lamenting that he has fallen out of love with Diana, he only persistently enjoys her company, worries about her safety, and trusts her with his life in fraught situations… argh, WOE, the love is gone.
And, when she comes out of the study of her Spymaster boyfriend, its locked desk rifled and a French agent dead on the floor with his throat neatly cut be a scalpel, and asks him if he’s a spy…
He says, “Me? No, not a spy, not at all. Ahaha.”
