#what’s next? the aubreyad??

[greaseonmymouth]

I had to rush from the library this afternoon to meet a friend but I also wanted to grab something to take home and watch later since I returned all the DVDs I’d already borrowed, so I rifled through the TV series rack until I saw something familiar-but-not-yet-watched, and, well. Who do I blame for this. I feel like somehow this is @elodieunderglass’s fault. I have never seen Sharpe before (much less heard of it until recently) but I sure am about to

[chiropteracupola]

Oh, hello! Will we be friends?

[jack aubrey, requested by @nixtheclause, @nix-xon, and @razerecherche]

[inhales-agressively]

"he has been tortured"

I LEAPT OFF THE COUCH

HE WHAT

HE WHAT

HE FUCKING WHAT

W H A T

[thekenobee]

The fact that a reasonable, sensible, long-suffering Stephen turns into a savage within a second when Jack's life is in peril is very important to me

[quatregats]

Not me writing a thesis-length liner notes booklet for a mediocre playlist of very obscure songs I found that made me think of Stephen Maturin

[johnbly]

i have finished reading all the hornblower books and now must grapple with that fact

[mystery-star]

Drawings - Day 11

And some colored Jack Aubrey for you today!

But I ruined my pen for drawing today and I'm kinda pissed bc of it.

[hgeeky]

My year in books 2024 - book series

Over the year I managed to read 140 books (including audiobooks), not including the 4 I started and still have on the go, and 3 that I started and abandoned.

I read quite a few series, here are some thoughts on those (spoiler free). I'll probably follow up with another post or two for other fiction and non-fiction.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaranovitch

I've now read all 9 of the main novels (although I read the first two in 2023), plus Tales from the Folly and What Abigail Did That Summer, all as audiobooks.

Kobna Hollbrook-Smith is an incredible narrator

I absolutely adore the blend of magic, folklore and police bureaucracy. The acronyms and procedure are set out in a way that feels so true to life - with all the quirks that come with how these things translate into practice. And it makes the magic somehow more believable. Plus the characters are so often charming.

I'm looking forward to working my way through the novellas and graphic novels while I wait for the next instalment.

The Aubreyad/Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian

I managed all 20 of the completed novels, my first complete circumnavigation (at some point I'll try to get my hands on the unfinished 21st book)

This is very much thanks to @elodieunderglass posting about it here, which encouraged me to seek out the audiobooks (my library has the Ric Jerrom ones)

I had attempted Master & Commander once, many years ago, because a lot of my family like the books. My grandfather especially liked them, and I wish I had known him better (he died in 2000). But I couldn't cope with the naval jargon at the time and gave up.

I did enjoy the film, and I've enjoyed Hornblower on TV and the Sharpe books, so I do generally enjoy that sort of thing and the audiobooks turned out to be perfect for me.

Ric Jerrom does a wonderful job with the characters and I could let a lot of the naval jargon wash over me (occasionally I did look things up to try to get a better handle on things).

Jack and Stephen are now my blorbos for sure.

And I absoutely love how much O'Brian managed to fit into these books - the natural history, the mores of the time, even the politics, as well as the action, adventure and romance.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

I find these books rather moving, as well as fun

The combination works wonderfully for perking me up, helping me embrace life and find the joy in it, and that's always worth something

In fact it's remarkably impressive

The blend of characters is wonderful, the range of perspectives and personalities really helps me look at the world afresh, and not take things for granted so much.

Jackson Brodie by Kate Atkinson

I read the first one in 2023, and 2-5 in 2024

I've long adored Kate Atkinson's books, and I've read at least two of the Jackson Brodie books before (1 and 4) but thought I'd give the whole series a go

Perhaps not entirely as successful as some of her other books, I did still enjoy them all. I think Big Sky (number 5) was my favourite.

Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood

I really enjoyed the TV adaptation a few years ago so I thought I'd give the audiobooks a go when I saw that my library has them

They are light and easy-going, with grate narration by Stephanie Daniel

I read the first one last year, and got through 2-8 this year. I particularly enjoyed 3 (Muder on the Ballarat Train), 4 (Death at Victoria Dock), 5 (The Green Mil Murder) and 8 (Urn Burial). I didn't mind a bit that I could remember some of the plots from the TV show.

The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

I gave Gideon the Ninth a go after seeing a lot of posts about it on here, and finding I could get it through Audible plus (which I get occasionally when I can get a discount)

It was an absolute headfuck of a fever dream for most of it and I loved it

Eventually I used some credits to get Harrow and Nona and loved them too. Harrow was also a headfuck but I think I'd got slightly more into the swing of things for Nona.

I went back to relisten to Gideon to see what I made of it, after having more context and it was good in a different way. I enjoyed having more things make sense and I appreciated many of the characters a lot more.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein

When I found out my library had the audiobooks read by Andy Serkis, I thought it would be rude not to borrow them

I enjoyed The Hobbit the most.

I found Return of the King a bit of a slog. It all felt too ponderous when it was focused on humans, elves or dwarves, but fortunately the hobbits, ents and orcs gave it a lot more life and helped get me through.

Edit: Oops I forgot The World of the White Rat!

World of the White Rat - T Kingfisher

I didn't start at the beginning and I've not read everything

I gave the books a go thanks to Audible Plus and now I'm in love with them

Swordheart is my favourite, I've now listened to it twice

I've also covered the first 3 Saint of Steel books and have number 4 ready and waiting

I've also listened to quite a few other T Kingfisher books which aren't in the same world (or at least, not obviously) and loved those too - more on those in a separate post (if I manage it)

[bomberqueen17]

liveblogging the Aubreyad: a snippet from book 4

This is a long snippet that is totally incidental to the plot and does nothing but advance our knowledge of several characters, so of course I could not resist it. Mostly it is an excellent example of what a fucking troll Stephen is.

context: McAdam is the ship's surgeon on a vessel called Nereide, upon which Stephen is being transported to do some intelligence-work. McAdam is another Irishman, from Ulster, and a physician also, of high reputation but fallen on hard times-- his specialty is diseases of the mind, and he remains fascinated by psychological and psychiatric issues, but he himself is now deeply alcoholic to the point of frequent inability to function, though he maintains an unfortunate perspicacity in some matters that perhaps Stephen might wish he did not. He and Stephen do not really get along, and in fact the previous night he had upset Stephen severely. Stephen's good humor, severely tried by recent events, has been restored because he has just been summoned on deck by Nereide's solicitous captain, who is aware that Stephen is a passionate naturalist, to witness a mermaid, who was floating next to the ship as it passed.

McAdam looked singularly unappetizing in the morning light, ill-conditioned and surly: apprehensive too, for he had some confused recollection of harsh words having passed the night before. But, having beheld the mermaid, Stephen was in charity with all men, and he called out, "You missed the mermaid, my dear colleague; but perhaps, if we sit quietly here, we may see another." "I did not," said McAdam, "I saw the brute out of the quarter-gallery scuttle; and it was only a manatee." Stephen mused for a while, and then he said, "A dugong, surely. The dentition of the dugong is quite distinct from that of the manatee: the manatee, as I recall, has no incisors. Furthermore, the whole breadth of Africa separates their respective realms." "Manatee or dugong, 'tis all one," said McAdam. "As far as my studies are concerned, the brute is of consequence only in that it is the perfect illustration of the strength, the irresistible strength, of suggestion. Have you been listening to their gab, down there in the waist?" "Not I," said Stephen. There had been much talk among the men working just out of sight forward of the quarterdeck rail, cross, contentious talk; but the Nereide was always a surprisingly chatty ship, and apart from putting this outburst down to vexation at their late arrival, he had not attended to it. "They seem displeased, however," he added. "Of course they are displeased: everyone knows the ill-luck a mermaid brings. But that is not the point. Listen now, will you? That is John Matthews, a truthful, sober, well-judging man; and the other is old Lemon, was bred a lawyer's clerk, and understands evidence." Stephen listened, sorted out the voices, caught the thread of the argument: the dispute between Matthews and Lemon, the spokesmen of two rival factions, turned upon the question of whether the mermaid had held a comb in her hand or a glass. "They saw the flash of that wet flipper," said McAdam, and have translated it, with total Gospel-oath conviction, into one or other of these objects. Matthews offers to fight Lemon and any two of his followers over a chest in support of his belief.” “Men have gone to the stake for less," said Stephen: and walking forward to the rail he called down, "You are both of you out entirely: it was a hairbrush." Dead silence in the waist. The seamen looked at one another doubtfully, and moved quietly away among the boats on the booms with many a backward glance, thoroughly disturbed by this new element.

[mercurygray]

Merc, what kind of Historical Military Man gets the wheels turning for you? What are the markers of 'Oh, that one, that one is now mine'?

Nat, I'm going to be honest, this question provoked something of an existential crisis. so I went back through, like, 20 years of fandom favorites to see if there's a pattern.

Spoiler: there isn't, apart from a perennial need to be different. This is kind of long .

2001 (ish) - Lord of the Rings is coming out, and you are either a Legolas or Aragorn girl. I am deep in my 'not like the other girls' phase and decide Boromir is actually the superior choice here. (This leads me to watch A LOT of period dramas that are probably not appropriate for for me at this age, including Clarissa and Lady Chatterley's Lover.) It also leads me to the Sharpe books, which are great and awesome. Richard Sharpe doesn't necessarily do anything for me as a character, but that gets me into Hornblower, which gets me into the Aubreyad, which leads me to read a lot about the Napoleonic Wars in high school. Cliff-diving into a different historical period is now something I do every single summer.

I also spend about 5 years (2008-2013) writing a 225,000 word fanfic in which Boromir doesn't die.

2010-2015

Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) is really only in the army a brief while but who can say no to the blue eyes and the absolute vibe he has going with Mary?

During the Downton phase I decide to raid the library for other period dramas, again, and watch The Forsyte Saga. Soames Forsyte is not a man you love, but Damian Lewis has A Face and I know he was on Band of Brothers, which the library perennially never has a copy of.

2011

I finally watch Band of Brothers in its entirety my senior year of college and am a little disappointed I appear to be missing large parts of the story. (Future rewatches will explain that this is actually a feature of the show, not a bug.) My recollections of this are hazy, but I'm fairly certain my favorite character the first time I watched this was Lewis Nixon (Ron Livingston). He's dark-haired, he's funny, he's an absolute mess with a trust fund. Dick Winters (Damian Lewis) also has one hell of a face. He's a red-head, he's in charge of everyone else, he doesn't say much, and he is tall. I know there must be fic for this show but am also very, very sure it is shippy in a direction I do not want to read, so I do not go looking for it.

TURN - 2014-2017

Ben Tallmadge (Seth Numrich) is the guy to watch on TURN: he's a lieutenant, he's tall, he struggles with rules, but the entire fandom is also crazy about him and the leading queen bee in the OC end of that fandom is a real pain about it, so I decide I will not be writing for him no matter what it costs me to hold off admitting I want to. However, in the next episode we meet his best friend, Caleb Brewster (Daniel Henshall) who is short, bearded, dark-haired and chaotic. The moment he comes onscreen I love him. Sadly, no one is reading fic for him and this project is abandoned.

In Season 3, we meet the Marquis de Lafayette. Historical Lafayette is a tall, awkward redhead in need of a father figure who makes up for war experience with boundless enthusiasm. His letters home are adorable. Show Lafayette (Ben Wiles) is tall and enthusiastic. I love him anyway and I make it everyone's problem for, like, a year.

2016-2017 - Mercy Street

Henry Hopkins (Luke Macfarlane) is a military chaplain in a hotel-turned Union hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. He's tall, he's a little tortured, and he has a knack for putting others first. Wrestling with some past choices, his romance with Emma Green, the privileged daughter of the family who owned the hotel, is sweet and full of pining. I write so much fix-it fic for them it's not even funny. (I love this show because the female characters I love come pre-installed. Please watch this.)

2016 - Dunkirk

I see this movie three times in theaters and love it more each time. Collins (Jack Lowden) is a blonde RAF flyboy with a very adorable face. (Tom Glynn Carney is also a face I like but he's on a backburner for a bit.) I write a lot of fic about it and affectionately refer to this as my first Planes Go Zoom phase.

2020

Two weeks into the pandemic I decide rewatching Band of Brothers is a good idea and buy the book and the DVD set from my local secondhand bookshop like I am doing a drug deal in a parking lot. Two weeks after that I am writing a fanfic for Dick Winters (Damian Lewis) because I am a loon who likes men in charge and painfully slow burns.

2021

Still in the middle of a pandemic I decide to watch The Pacific, because I make good decisions, apparently. Hoosier Smith (Jacob Pitts) is a taciturn, wise-cracking friend of Leckie's who is joked about as being the pretty one. He is. Andrew Haldane (Scott Gibson) is quiet, unassuming, and in charge, and played college football for Bowdoin. Very dad energy. Extremely charming. Dead in three episodes as history intended. Fix-it fic incoming.

2022 Top Gun Maverick comes out. Jake "Hangman" Seresin (played by Glen Powell, who I loved in Hidden Figures and The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society) has a jawline you could cut something with and an attitude. My friends think I am mental. Second Planes Go Zoom phase coupled with Devotion, which comes out shortly after.

SAS Rogue Heroes comes out. I have been really looking forward to seeing Tom Glynn Carney in something else and he delivers. Mike Sadler is blond, extremely good at his job, not capable of suffering fools, and far too attractive for the desert.

2024

We do not even make it out of trailer season before I realize I still have a Thing (TM) for Callum Turner's face, which I have known since he was Theseus Scamander in Fantastic Beasts. Watching The Boys in the Boat before this all starts doesn't help - he has regrettably blond hair but thighs for days and shoulders you could hang the universe on. John "Bucky" Egan, is tall, dark-haired, incredibly generous spirited and nominally in charge. I want all of it. The rest of the fandom does too. I try to make peace with that and write anyway. Third Planes Go Zoom phase.

[pirate-poet]

salt & honey

a year and a half since i thought ‘haha what if jack and stephen aubreyad were in sunless sea’ i have finished the longest fic ive ever written. tune in NEXT WEEK for the posting of the FIRST CHAPTER! and. glossary.

i will be posting either every day or every other day. the whole fic is finished, so if i have to delay posting i wont drop off the map. get excited!

[thiefbird]

im almost up to 3k words already for the next chapter of thy heart torments. i have only written the leadup to what i wanted this chapter to be and i already pared down a LOT of what id originally written. why am i so goddamn verbose when writing for aubreyad

[chiropteracupola]

"I think Maturin as a naturalist kind of verges on the profound... together these two men are a dialectic which will deliver the world we live in, for better and worse. ...you have the scientific, rational, and you have the, y'know, martial... you can plug it into whatever fuckin' dichotomy you want, Dionysus and Apollo..."

— November Kelly, Kill James Bond! s3e8.5: Master and Commander

[kigiom]

@weidli and @reginaldbright and @chiropteracupola tagged me to share the first ten lines of my posted fics! sorry for taking two months but, here we are

Rules: ‘share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway.’

I decided to use the phrase "first lines" fairly liberally, so they're all under the cut!

1. There’s a familiar face sitting in his usual spot when Thursday sidles into the pub on a Saturday evening. / Morse looks pale, shabby, his shock of ginger-ish hair already going grey at the temples. Jesus Christ, Thursday thinks, standing stock still on the corner to his usual alcove in the tiny pub, it’s only been two years. (rockets for mary, Endeavour)

2. "Here's to looking at you," you say, raising your glass. / He's too tired to say anything, you can see that. He's swaying a little and his eyes are bruised, the vivid blue of his irises glassy. He's clutching his own glass like a lifeline. You wish your heart wouldn't do ten backflips in a row every time you see him. (it walked out of the light, MASH)

3. “Why are we here again?” / It’s the first thing Hawkeye’s said in a while. BJ looks over at him, surprised, only to find him trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. (all singing must now be howling, MASH)

4. Don't go, he begs. / BJ looks at him. BJ smiles. He's getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and he's waving across the endless expanse of washed out brown and grey. (all that is gone (and all that's to come), MASH)

5. “Ain’t you cold out here?” / Stephen made a harrumphing noise and kicked at a loose bit of gravel. / Behind him, Jack sighed and stepped closer. (thirteen angels standing guard ‘round the side of your bed, the aubreyad)

6. “Would you ever grow your hair out?” / Keith made a considering noise into Ewen’s chest. He was lying half on top of Ewen and clearly beginning to fall asleep, even though he was still in shirt and breeches. (I'm going home, no more to roam, The Flight of the Heron)

7. “Does it hurt?” / For a moment, his fingers hover over the scar; Livesey makes an aborted noise under his breath as Trelawney traces a fingertip gently over the smooth, livid skin. While not large, it’s raised and almost knotted, uneven round the edges. (and we march on, hand in hand, Treasure Island)

8. After a day's chasing, they had boarded their prize. From the opposite deck, in a brief lull, Jack had looked over and seen Stephen crawl up onto the deck of the Surprise (even though he should have been below - why hadn't he stayed below?) and stand his ground, cat-quick with a sword, sharp with a pistol; for a blessed second they saw each other across the distance, then Stephen had grinned viciously and disappeared. Jack had been glad to see him alive and dangerous, unspeakably so, even though Stephen on deck in battle made him anxious - why was he not with his patients? Why was he not safe below decks? (for grief to refrain, the aubreyad)

9. Francis passed him an apple. / Their fingers brushed and lingered. James had started noticing this more and more, these little touches, sitting at their table in their kitchen in their house. How they almost always sat next to each other rather than opposite, for a reason James chose not to examine for the sake of his own sanity. How their knees would touch under the table, how their elbows knocked against each other, too, how their hands brushed with no gloves or layers of fabric in the way now. (undertow, The Terror)

10. “We’re too far from the sea.” James said one day. / He was standing on the garden lawn and staring out over the hills as he said it. The farmers had been digging as of late, for what purpose exactly neither of them had bothered to ask. However, they did know that that was the reason for the faint smell of silt and sea that permeated the air, stronger on the breeze. (we sell our lives to the sea, The Terror)

I don't have the braincells for ten people but I'm gonna tag (sorry if you've already done it!):

@edge-of-green @riot-in-bloom @someawkwardprose @terribleoldwhitemen @phoenixflames12 @valley-o @rhaill and @starsreside (I hope the last three of you have published works but I know you write at the least)

[quatregats]

hello Please Please do tell us about your 'the famous flower of serving men' story for the aubreyad (judging by the folk song alone I am intrigued!!)

...also I am of course interested in hornblower the tank engine.

The Famous Flower of Serving Men Aubreyad Crossover is entirely the fault of me getting brainworms about that song and then making it about my blorbos even though it is patently Not About That. It's somewhat of a fantasy AU and it is considerably less Bleak and Bloody than the song, which for those who are unfamiliar is about a pretty awful situation (warning: it is 10 minutes long and will put you into a trance despite being Bleak and Bloody), but otherwise it has a lot of what it says on the tin. Also I wrote it while reading Canigó so some of that might have seeped in. Here is a snippet:

One day in the early fall, the king was preparing for a hunting trip. The kingdom was at peace: the harvest had been bountiful and the people were content. The borderlands to the south were full of thick forests and fine game, and the king longed for a ride through the fresh air of the mountains before winter set in and confined him to his halls. “I’ll be back in a fortnight,” he said. “And I’ll leave the house to you—I hope you’ll keep it in good order.” His friend’s face looked oddly drawn and tight. “I will keep it in as good an order as I have every day, and I do not need your prying eye to help me,” he bit back. “It will only be a fortnight,” the king said, unsure of the source of this sudden displeasure. “And I will tell you of all the birds and beetles and snakes when I return.” “Sure, and I will be happy to hear of them,” the man agreed, but the unhappy look did not disappear from his face even as the king rode away the next morning at dawn.

And, well, for your interest in Hornblower the Tank Engine, I will provide you with a Rev. W Audry-style beginning-of-book letter, since I have almost finished writing this lad and will try to publish it soon-ish:

Dear Reader, Some of you have been asking about a little tank engine named Hornblower, who has been very hard at work on the Indefatigable Branch Line as of late. Some of you might have heard of his adventures with Exploding Bridges or Plague-Ridden Cattle. Not many people, though, know about his time at the dockyards, and about how he went up against a very dangerous engine and nearly won. He told me that story last September, and his Controller thinks that he has been such a Useful Engine as of late that I should tell it in a Book. We both agreed that he was Very Brave, and we think that it is high time other people thought that too. We hope you enjoy his story. Sincerely, The Author

[jus-alilcomforblelad]

intro

hey, call me ernie 👍

this'll be reblogs w/ jaunty tags

and the occasional original post if i dare? (is my humour for you? find out next on--)

(99% of posts are fandom-oriented--if not, it's tagged #ernie-general)

(heads up that i try not to reblog long posts--my scroll wheel is dying, as is my hand)

anyway, here're my main special interests if someone wants to froth at the mouth together over favourite characters, read heavily into scenes or commiserate over investing too much into fictional people:

currently spinning in my mind microwave (chronological order as accumulated, ed. 24-Nov-24): - aubreyad (books, 2003 film; oh uhuh okay, *jackles voice* sTePhEN?!) - botes in general? (also see ship media inc. aubreyad, the terror, ofmd, hornblower, star trek arguably) - (~) star trek (tos; wacky adventures in space based around scientific exploration?, it's been another bbc sherlock interest situation with aos i feel) - psych (man, mildly autistic superdetectives everywhere has never been more real, the holmes of it all)

my most consistent spins: spn (regrettably) sherlock holmes (primarily acd, elementary, granada, lenfilm, and nrh) clue

(tag index + total spins below cut (ed. 21-Jun-24))

~

complete(?) list of spins:

my tv show spins: a kind of spark (a+ autistic rep) bbc ghosts community daredevil dirk gently's holistic detective agency good omens julie and the phantoms merlin sherlock holmes sleepy hollow spn star trek the terror what we do in the shadows the witcher (for jaskier and the setting) zoey's extraordinary playlist

my video game spins: la noire the last of us life is strange (1 and bts) the walking dead

my musical spins: be more chill beetlejuice dear evan hansen newsies

my film spins: bill bright young things clue master and commander

~

blog-specific tags index:

(i go by this post for writing text and image IDs)

(my spoiler tags are the media tag then 'spoilers' e.g. '#bbc ghosts spoilers')

(my trigger warning tags start with 'tw')

(in my intro current spins: no symbol means it's sticking around, ~ means i'll prob go off it soon/less interested in it atm though still a bit)

#ernie-speaks posts by me

#ernie-spin-cycle posts for changing between spins, or talking specifically about spins

#ernie-autistic-things posts to do with me being autistic

#ernie-general posts outside of fandom entirely

#ernie-mutuals posts that are asks by mutuals or commented on by mutuals

#fandom nonspecific posts fandom-related but not tied to one specific fandom (even if my tags are fandom-related)

#multifandom posts that involve multiple fandoms (not inc. '#fandom nonspecific' or tags that cause multifandom)

#[would pin] posts that i would pin if i didn't fundamentally require this organising post to explain myself

#ernie-pause posts involved with taking breaks from tumblr

#ernie-wait that's me my peer-reviewed posts (not public prob)

~

cool, that's, yeah, okay, bye o/