#i'm fighting the temptation to add more qualifiers to 'healthier' bc everything with them is a mess all the time. love them <3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hey-scully-itsme · 1 year

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okay so I’m 100% on board with the jokes about how stephen maturin kills a guy with a 'phallic paperweight' because they truly are funny as hell but also I’m fascinated by how the scene actually goes down. Bc he DOESN'T kill the guy with it! he just knocks him out. What he does kill him with is a lancet.

Given that, every other time it comes up, he draws a VERY hard line at using the tools of his trade as a physician to kill, it's actually super relevant to where he's at in that scene and in Fortune of War in general that that's how it goes down. lines are blurring, certainties are being erased, and everything feels out of control. huge fan of how well that scene conveys those ideas.

#the scene imo is very firmly grounded in the pain and disorientation of his changing feelings towards diana #so how i read that scene is that it's pointing towards the pain of apparently falling out of love being like some kind of emotional surgery #stephen has to go through this pain in order to be capable of a somewhat healthier relationship with her in the future #i'm fighting the temptation to add more qualifiers to 'healthier' bc everything with them is a mess all the time. love them <3 #but one of the problems with their early relationship is stephen building a pedestal for her that rivals the fucking tower of babel #and is equally damaging to any real communication between them #like they never quite manage to communicate with each other (diana has to practically hand him a script in the surgeon's mate)#but i think stephen seeing her at a low point for both of them takes off the blinders #and afterward he's able to engage with her a little more as a human and not some capricious goddess of the hunt #these are just general musings not coherent thoughts or i'd make a separate post lol #the fortune of war #the surgeon's mate #also the pocket lancet thing makes me think of seward in dracula which cracks me up

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