#also i dont think hornblower in the books is gay per se but theres way too much going on with that | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

isaacathom · 6 months ago

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i dont post my hornblower readthrough thoughts here as much because theyre usually just 'weird chapter' or 'oh that was cool! i liked that' but i will say im genuinely really enjoying hornblower in the west indies. its fitting, i think, that the series starts and ends, chronologically, with anthologies.

#also i dont think hornblower in the books is gay per se but theres way too much going on with that #i think his persistent imposter syndrome leads him to be very consumed by what others look like #and because he predominantly interacts with men this leads to him constantly appraising their attractiveness in his head #but he does this with women too. first thing he does to barbara is think she looks mannish or something.#the exception to 'i dont think hes gay' is bush but bush does 90% of the lifting in that relationship until Lord Hornblower #where suddenly horatio develops an awareness of his wants and needs. spends a whole chapter being lonely about it. wild #the chapter where hornblower gets captured by pirates in HWI is the main reason i thought about it haha #because spendlove is definitely straight and so is hornblower. and yet... ?#lots going on in that chapter with those two. i settled on interpretting hb as paternalistic about the whole thing #because if someone wanted to argue that his feelings about his secretary are more complicated than that. godspeed #i have one chapter of HWI left to go and then ive read all of hornblower aside from a few of the short stories #but the ones ive missed are the ones that get retconned a bit. like His Majesty and the one about a spanish ship #ill do a sweep for those later i think

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