Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

how are you going with Master and Commander?

I finished it back in October! It remained tremendously charming, slightly diminishing returns after that first heady rush of WHAT THE SALTY HECK, these chaps be smitten!!, but that would honestly be impossible to avoid because my god that beginning began.

And truly I probably just got acclimated because latter portions included such instances as when Stephen is up on deck idly chattering about his emotions in an alarmingly unmanly way, if I recall something about how curious it is that he was so terrified during the storm last night but now he’s looking at birds and feeling fine, and all the sailors are staring at each other in a silent panic of “we have to figure out how to get him to stop talking rn, he’s OUR embarrassing magical doctor and we must protect him from himself, oh thank fuck a SAIL, SAIL-HO YONDER, Stephen look!” Obsessed.

Oh, and very related, a terrifyingly good moment on Twitter the other day when Russell Crowe floated that another Master & Commander movie is not off the table, in amazingly florid and suggestible language, and Taika Waititi, noted Understander Of Exactly What’s Up, *liked it*. Dream with me.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Haha, I too keep preserving the master&Commander books I haven't read yet! But I refuse to think that this makes me a weirdo because the series is just too *short* when compared to how good it is.

darkartsandcrafts replied to your post: Jack Aubrey (look I HAD to)

I am definitely the same kind of weirdo; if I hate a book I’ll read it very fast instead of actually abandoning it, but if I’m really enjoying it I might stop half way through and put it aside for years.

This is just…such a heartwarming moment of weirdo solidarity, I feel like I’m in company now and it’s so nice

The other thing I do, and I do feel this possibly coming on here, is what I did with the last of Russell T Davies/David Tennant’s run on Doctor Who, which was to stall and parcel out for weeks, and then, in sort of the emotional equivalent of pitching down a flight of stairs, watch the last three all in one night in a kind of tumbling panic.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sherlocks-freebitch asked:

Jack Aubrey (look I HAD to)

wellntruly answered:

I have read slightly less than half of Master and Commander because I keep preserving it like some sort of weirdo, but I feel decently confident in saying

Jack Aubrey’s favorite Star Trek Captain is: Captain James T. Kirk. He’s got the dash, he’s got the glory, he is overly attached to his ship’s surgeon. Picard is too responsible, Sisko too stationary. Janeway is his second, and actually Voyager could maybe be his fave series, as I think the long-haul journey structure might appeal to him.

Anyhow thank you for reminding me stop fooling around and just read Master and Commander, which is what I want to be doing anyway.

>> New Game: Send me a fictional character and I’ll tell you their favorite Star Trek Captain

[wellntruly]

Update: god the Sophie really is the Enterprise of the 18th century Med. Stephen was just trying to figure out how to remedy a man being ostracized by the crew for having alien beliefs, when Jack sent a messenger in with the excited question of, quote, “would you like to see something amazingly philosophical?” It turns out to be a fantastical sea creature.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sherlocks-freebitch asked:

Jack Aubrey (look I HAD to)

I have read slightly less than half of Master and Commander because I keep preserving it like some sort of weirdo, but I feel decently confident in saying

Jack Aubrey’s favorite Star Trek Captain is: Captain James T. Kirk. He’s got the dash, he’s got the glory, he is overly attached to his ship’s surgeon. Picard is too responsible, Sisko too stationary. Janeway is his second, and actually Voyager could maybe be his fave series, as I think the long-haul journey structure might appeal to him.

Anyhow thank you for reminding me stop fooling around and just read Master and Commander, which is what I want to be doing anyway.

>> New Game: Send me a fictional character and I’ll tell you their favorite Star Trek Captain

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

She was a remarkably dry vessel too, observed Jack, as she climbed the creaming slope of a wave, slipped its roaring top neatly under her bows and travelled smoothly down into the hollow. He stood with an arm round a backstay, wearing a tarpaulin jacket and a pair of calico drawers: his streaming yellow hair, which he wore loose and long as a tribute to Lord Nelson, stood straight out behind him at the top of each wave and sank in the troughs between - a natural anemometer - and he watched the regular, dreamlike procession in the diffused light of the racing moon. With the greatest pleasure he saw that his forecast of her qualities as a sea-boat was fulfilled and, indeed, surpassed, ‘She is remarkably dry,’ he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him.

‘She - is - remarkably - dry.’
Stephen frowned impatiently: this was no time for trifling. -

Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander (via quotingobrian)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sherlocks-freebitch asked:

DID YOU JUST USE LEEWARD THOUGH I'M SO PROUD

YOU BETCHA. Although perhaps I should mention, I do come from nautical people! My dad lived on a sailboat for two years, and raised us on the water as well. Like I’ve known starboard is right and port is left since I’ve known right and left. But while all boats have a starboard, not all boats have a frickin main topgallant staysail or whatever, so those have been some new pieces of vocab I’ve had to add to the ol maritime bank.

Anyway what is basically happening here with reading Master and Commander is that it’s calling up the parts of my brain formed in my Saltwater Youth.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Pleasss tell us more abt that nautical romance master and commander, it sounds like Good Funny Times

Indeed it is!!!! And I highly encourage you and really everyone who likes a) joy, b) the sea to immediately find themselves a copy, which should be pretty easy as this series has been popular as heck for like forty years. Maybe this is the best kept secret in literature? Conceivable. 

Anyway I do want to impress upon you all that while I was paraphrasing last time, I was not re-motely exaggerating. To make this point I’m just going to share with you two visibly real passages from the opening couple pages of Chapter 4 that killed me in numerous and personal ways:

WHERE 2 BEGIN. The naval chain of command, the la petite mort bit…. This book is a whole gift.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sherlocks-freebitch replied to your post “Astonishing things that are happening so far in Master and Commander:…”

I am DELIGHTED you are reading these, the writing is such a joy

hello-delicious-tea replied to your post “Astonishing things that are happening so far in Master and Commander:…”

THE MOST CHARMING BOOK SERIES EVER. YOU WILL READ IT AND LOVE IT AND IT WILL BECOME A MINOR/MAJOR OBSESSION BECAUSE IT IS SO LOVELY.

also you will learn an ungodly amount of very accurate information about ships

copperfire replied to your post “Astonishing things that are happening so far in Master and Commander:…”

THE BEST OF SERIES (and also very good for teaching you lots about ships and sailing)

You all are so adorable, I am very hoping I soon know all the ship words. Actually your enthusiasm has inspired me to go back and again sit dizzily with Stephen on the maintop while the young aspiring officer tells us all about the sails, and try to iron them down a bit better. I do know my favorite nautical term so far and it is “abaft” – lord love a preposition.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Astonishing things that are happening so far in Master and Commander:

I don’t know what I was expecting, given that the entire world plus the back of my copy sincerely calls this the “Aubrey-Maturin novels,” which we all know is just because they hadn’t thought to use a /, but still I was not prepared for this book to literally open with a meet cute. Specifically, a meet cute wherein our solid sea-honed ~presence~ of a British Royal Navy Officer is so overcome by the beauty of the music recital he’s attending that he cannot help banging his fist upon his knee to the melody, and is promptly and devastatingly shushed by this intense little slip of an Irish physician, upon which Jack Aubrey’s response to being sassed by Stephen Maturin is to have even more feelings than he was already having about the music, and then less than 24 hours later run up to him in the street, effuse how very sorry he is, and invite him to become his best friend. And THEN it comes out that this skinny doctor is actually wasting away on account of the patient he’d come to Minorca to treat having died without paying him, and is now sleeping in the fucking abandoned ruins of a chapel up on a hill and calling all his animal roommates by their Latinate names and hasn’t really eaten in god knows when, and Jack is like OMG NO, OMG NO COME LIVE ON MY NEW SLOOP WITH ME AND I’LL FEED YOU ALL THE TIME, and Stephen’s like Could I Possibly? and Jack’s like YES!!, and then rushes around getting his snug little boat ready while daydreaming about when he can get Stephen aboard and at last have someone with whom he can share his thoughts and joys and feelings about beautiful music. And then in Classic™ Plot™ Jack sends a messenger to tell Stephen that he’s going to miss their next meal because he’s taking his ship out for a test sail before they embark, but Stephen DOESN’T GET THE MESSAGE and comes down to the docks with his wee bag to see Jack’s ship sailing away and thinks, I paraphrase but only barely: “this is what I get for thinking I might at last have something nice, I cannot believe I allowed myself to lower my defenses so completely because now I am Heartbroken,” and palely glares the fuck out of the poor kid who finally rushes up to give him the message that Jack’ll be back to fetch him in a couple hours.

Other things that have happened include three four separate mentions of, to use the parlance, sodomy, including the Confirmed Gay aboard having already developed a crush on golden-haired Commander Aubrey. Meanwhile our absolutely hapless Dr. Maturin is belowdecks cracking his head into a low beam so hard he sees stars and then valiantly pretending he’s not dazed when Jack bounds down to happily offer him eggs and bacon and coffee.

And then the other 30% of this is long streams of sailing words that I do not know yet. I AM HAVING THE BEST TIME.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

UNcelebrating now that since I moved my wifi has apparently been doing some impossible thing where I was getting internet with zero data having ever passed through my modem, and last night it finally stopped doing…that. The troubleshooter people are completely mystified and are sending someone over, but that won’t be until tomorrow, and I am very :/// But after the wrench this throws in my plan to keep catching up on Twin Peaks this week (an episode of which I somehow streamed last week WITHOUT ACTUAL INTERNET), this may end up being pretty okay. I have all sorts of non-net things to do around my apartment still, such as last night when I finally unpacked all my books. And speaking of books, those great things that you don’t even have to plug in, several of you will surely be pleased to hear that I finally started Master and Commander over the weekend! Evidently I was waiting for the right time and the right time was sitting by the ocean in a creaky chair at my family’s beach cabin, the hanging haze from the fires in British Columbia making the air smell even more strongly of salt and sand. Anyhow I’m only 15 pages in because I had to go get ready for another wedding, but this is already A++ classic Tarra reading material. It literally opens with a diagram of ship sails, which is how you know you’re in for a fine literary experience.