esteven: (Default)
[personal profile] esteven2016-11-15 08:12 pm

Perfect Duet Advent Calendar 2016

Perfect Duet, the comm for all things Master and Commander: Books and Movie, will be celebrating the Advent and Christmas season with a new version of the Advent Calendar 2016.

We cannot do it alone, so we invite you to join in the fun.

How it works:
1) For Dreamwidth, please comment at Perfect Duet here or at Perfect Duet’s sister comm on Livejournal to pick a date.
2) We'll add your name to the list. If someone's already claimed that date, we'll ask you to pick another.
3) If there are still dates left in a few days, you can sign up for additional dates.
4) Spread the word! Let people on tumblr and elsewhere know about the sign-up post!
5) On your assigned day, post something here (and/or at the dreamwidth comm) that's related to Master and Commander. It could be fic, podfic, art, vids, craftwork, meta, recs, anything that will brighten your fellow Aubreyad fans' day. (If you want to post elsewhere you can - just let us know so we can post a link to it here. We'll crosspost links from LJ to DW and vice versa.)

Pray sign up.

We are all looking forward to hearing from you.
dorinda: a tall ship with all sails set (sailing ship)
[personal profile] dorinda2016-08-29 08:20 pm

"No penetration, no sodomy"

In chapter one, Jack and Stephen:

And privately to Stephen he said, 'I repeated your "No penetration, no sodomy", which floored one and all; though I must say that most of them were glad to be floored. I persuaded the others to find no more than gross indecency.'

'And is being towed ashore on a grating the set penalty for gross indecency?'

'No. We call it the use and custom of the sea: that is the way it has always been.'

Cup of tea?

"Boarding pikes and cutlasses have been served out, I am sure? [...] I do not think any truce is possible and you would be killed at once. In an encounter like this one side or the other has to be beaten entirely."
"Sure, you are in the right of it."
Killick put a tray on the earthwork and they sat either side of it, looking over the slip and the busy Dyaks below.
"How is the bosun?" asked Jack, putting down his cup.
"We have sewn him up," said Stephen, "and unless there is infection he will do; but he will never dance again. One of his wounds was a severed hamstring."

The Nutmeg of Consolation, chapter 2.


They already had a game of cricket (in the previous chapter), so here they have to content themselves with DRINKING A CUP OF CALMING TEA while the enemy hacks off their captives' heads on the beach below.
English people being English. It's beautiful.

p.s. Yes, technically it might be coffee. I'm going to believe it's tea, okay? :)

Contubernals

"Another misery of human life," remarked Stephen to the morning darkness, "is having a contubernal that snores like ten."
"I was not snoring," said Jack. "I was wide awake. What is a contubernal?"
"You are a contubernal."
"And you are another."


Stephen & Jack, The Nutmeg of Consolation Ch 2

Aiii, these guys, they are so cute. Sure, there are other fandoms, other OTPs, but none so sweet and funny and downright thesaurusy as these two.

(Also I am way behind with the Read, sorry. Trying to catch up, & posting this here to remind me.)
alcyone301: (cumulus)
[personal profile] alcyone3012015-02-01 02:17 pm

a different world

Yet when he woke in the morning he knew that the ship was in a different world, that she was herself a different world. True, clean, breathable air was gushing down the wind-sail; his whole being was recharged with life.

These confused waking motions were confirmed on deck. The Leopard had sent up her topgallantmasts – it had taken the reduced crew three-quarters of an hour instead of the usual seventeen minutes and forty seconds – and she was running west-south-west at five or six knots under a cloud of sail. A new and brilliant day, a new and healthy sea, transparent tonic air, the ship alive.
Killick had been on the watch, and now he ran forward with coffee-pot and biscuit, laid them carefully in a coil of rope at the appointed place, the limit of the forbidden ground, retreated, and called out, ‘Good morning, sir. This is what we have been praying for.’ Stephen nodded, took a draught, and asked how the Captain did. ‘Which he’s just turned in,’ said Killick, ‘a-laughing like a boy. Says we’ve cleared the doldrums: the true blessed trade, he says, and never will he touch a stitch till we’re at the Cape.’


-- DI ch. 5
alcyone301: (jack and stephen)
[personal profile] alcyone3012014-10-03 09:07 am

Jack is like Shakespeare

[Jack] said to Plaice, ‘Well, Plaice, at least some good has come out of this: at least nobody will ever be able to say, “Poor old Plaice is down to his last shilling.”’

‘How do you make that out, sir?’ asked Plaice, closing one eye and smiling in anticipation.

‘Why, because there are three of ’em screwed to your head, ha, ha, ha!’ said his Captain.

‘You are not unlike Shakespeare,’ observed Stephen, as they walked back to the cabin.

‘So I am often told by those who read my letters and dispatches,’ said Jack, ‘but what makes you say so at this particular moment?’

‘Because his clowns make quips of that bludgeoning, knock-me-down nature. You have only to add marry, come up,or go to, with a pox on it, and it is pure Gammon, or Bacon, or what you will.’

‘That is only your jealousy,’ said Jack. ‘What do you say to some music tonight?’


- FSotW, ch. 5
alcyone301: (Default)
[personal profile] alcyone3012014-07-21 09:53 am
Entry tags:

Sophie in a very few words

I desire you will not top it the Othello, brother, for shame: stuff on you. If any man so far forgot himself as to make a licentious suggestion to Sophie, she would not understand him for a week, and then she would instantly lay him dead with your double-barrelled fowling-piece.

-- from Treason's Harbour, chapter four.
alcyone301: (diiiiivesplash)
[personal profile] alcyone3012014-02-19 11:21 am

Chess with invalid!Stephen

Stephen was a wretched patient; sometimes he looked to M’Alister as an omniscient being who would certainly produce the one true physic; sometimes the ship resounded to the cry of ‘Charlatan’, and drugs would be seen hurtling through the scuttle. The chaplain suffered more than the rest: most of the officers haunted other parts of the ship when the convalescent Maturin was on the quarterdeck, but Mr White could not climb and in any case his duty required him to visit the sick – even to play chess with them. Once, goaded by a fling about Erastianism, he concentrated all his powers and won: he had to bear not only the reproachful looks of the helmsman, the quartermaster at the con, and the whole gunroom, but a semi-official rebuke from his captain, who thought it ‘a poor shabby thing to set back an invalid’s recovery for the satisfaction of the moment’, and the strokes of his own conscience. Mr White was in a hopeless position, for if he lost, Dr Maturin was quite as likely to cry out that he did not attend, and fly into a passion.


-- from HMS Surprise, chapter eleven
alcyone301: (a sailor's life for me)
[personal profile] alcyone3012014-02-19 11:00 am

Chess and Cards

For many years they had played chess, with fairly even fortunes; but they played with such intensity, being extremely unwilling to lose, that in time it came to resemble hard labour rather than amusement; and they being unusually close friends remorse for beating the other sometimes outweighed the triumph of winning. They had also played countless games of piquet, but in this case luck ran so steadily in Stephen’s direction, good cards and sequences flocked to him in such numbers, that it became dull; and they had fixed upon backgammon as a game in which the mere throw of the dice played so large a part that it was not shameful to lose, but in which there was still enough skill for pleasure in victory.

- from Clarissa Oakes, chapter four
alcyone301: (Default)
[personal profile] alcyone3012014-02-11 10:13 am

Queeney's marriage; Stephen's voice

'Dear Queeney. I thought she was to be an old maid, though she was so pretty; for how could any man make up to a girl that knows Hebrew? It seemed a sad pity: anyone so sweet-tempered should have a prodigious great family of children. But, however, here she is married to the admiral, so it all ends happy … yet, you know, he is amazingly ancient – grey-haired, rising sixty, I dare say. Do you think, as a physician – I mean, is it possible …?’

‘Possibilissima.’

‘Eh?’

‘Possible è la cosa, e naturale,’ sang Stephen in a harsh, creaking tone, quite unlike his speaking voice, which was not disagreeable. ‘E se Susanna vuol, possibilissima,’ discordantly, but near enough to Figaro to be recognized.

‘Really? Really?’ said Jack with intense interest.



- from Master and Commander, chapter four
alltoseek: (Default)
[personal profile] alltoseek2014-01-25 07:03 pm

Sophie and the Riding Crop

POB doesn't often provide us with two POV's on the same scene, and this is such a fun scene to get both sides of:
This is where I come to sit when I cannot bear it any longer in the house,' she said, pointing to a little green-mouldy Grecian temple, leprous and scaling. 'And this is where Diana and I had our quarrel.'

'I never heard you had quarrelled.'

'I should have thought we could have been heard all over the county, at least. It was my fault; I was horrid that day. I had had Mr Bowles to endure all the afternoon, and I felt as though I had been flayed: so I went for a ride as far as Gatacre, and then came back here. But she should not have taunted me with London, and how she could see him whenever she liked, and that he had not gone down to Portsmouth the next day at all. It was unkind, even if I had deserved it. So I told her she was an ill-natured woman, and she called me something worse, and suddenly there we were, calling names and shouting at one another like a couple of fishwives - oh, it is so humiliating to remember. Then she said something so cruel about letters and how she could marry him any moment she chose, but she had no notion of a half-pay captain nor any other woman's leavings that I quite lost my temper, and swore I should thrash her with my riding-crop if she spoke to me like that. I should have, too: but then Mama came, and she was terribly frightened and tried to make us kiss and be friends. But I would not; nor the next day, either. And in the end Diana went away, to Mr Lowndes, that cousin in Dover.'

...

'I come from Mapes. They told me you were here.'

'Did they tell you of my battle with Sophie?'

'I understood there had been a disagreement.'

'She angered me with her mooning about the lake and her tragic airs - if she had wanted him, why did she not have him when she could? I do loathe and despise want of decision - shilly-shallying. And anyhow, she has a perfectly suitable admirer, an evangelical clergyman full of good works: good connections too, and plenty of money. I dare say he will be a bishop. But upon my word, Maturin, I never knew she had such spirit! She set about me like a tiger, all ablaze; and I had only quizzed her a little about Jack Aubrey. Such a set-to! There we were roaring away by the little stone bridge, with her mare hitched to the post, starting and wincing - oh, I don't know how long - a good fifteen rounds. How you would have laughed. We took ourselves so seriously; and such energy! I was hoarse for a week after. But she was worse than me - as loud as a hog in a gate, and her words tumbling over one another, in a most horrid passion. But I tell you what, Maturin, if you really want to frighten a woman, offer to slash her across the face with your riding whip, and look as if you meant it. I was quite glad when my aunt Williams came up, screeching and hallooing loud enough to drown the both of us. And for her part she was just as glad to send me packing, because she was afraid for the parson; not that I would ever have laid a finger on him, the greasy oaf. So here I am again, a sort of keeper or upper-servant to the Teapot. Will you drink some of his honour's sherry? You are looking quite glum, Maturin. Don't be mumchance, there's a good fellow. I have not said an unkind thing since you appeared: it is your duty to be gay and amusing. Though harking back, I was just as pleased to come away too, with my face intact: it is my fortune, you know...'
alltoseek: (Default)
[personal profile] alltoseek2014-01-03 06:58 pm

To Speak of Obligation

Desolation Island, Chapter 1:

'Alas, Jack. What I have is all bespoke, locked up in Spain. Indeed, I am so short in England that it is my intention to beg you to lend me, let us see - 'consulting a paper, 'seven hundred and eighty pounds.'

'Thank you,' he said, when Jack came back with a draft on his banker. 'I am obliged to you, Jack.'

'I beg you will not speak nor think of obligation,' said Jack. 'Between you and me, it would be precious strange to speak of obligation.
alltoseek: (Default)
[personal profile] alltoseek2013-12-27 06:19 pm

On the Impossiblity of Endless Puddings

'You and Martin may say what you like,' said Jack, but there are two ends to every pudding.'

'I should be the last to deny it,' said Stephen. 'If a pudding starts, clearly it must end; the human mind is incapable of grasping infinity, and an endless pudding passes our conception.'



The Ionian Mission, Chapter 4 (near the end)

All the Erudition in the World

With Stephen it was entirely different. Jack loved him, and had not the least objection to granting him all the erudition in the world, while remaining inwardly convinced that in all practical matters other than physic and surgery Stephen should never be allowed out alone.

The Mauritius Command, chapter 2.

(posting this here so I can find it again!)
sid: (m&c Jack Aubrey big hat)
[personal profile] sid2013-03-21 07:51 pm

Jack's flowered silk dressing gown

The bell struck; and at the pipe of the bosun's call the hammocks came flying up, close on two hundred of them, to be stowed with lightning rapidity into the nettings, with their numbers all turned the same way; and in the rushing current of seamen Jack stood tall and magnificent in a flowered silk dressing-gown, looking sharply up and down the deck.

Chapter Five
HMS Surprise
esteven: (Default)
[personal profile] esteven2013-01-12 06:07 pm

Cur-tailed Dog Watches

This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches -why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?"
'Why,' said Stephen, 'it is because they are curtailed, of course.'
A total blank. Stephen gave a faint inward sigh; but he was used to this.


:)

Post Captain
Chapter Twelve
sharpiefan: Line of Age of Sail Marines on parade (Marines)
[personal profile] sharpiefan2012-11-10 11:30 pm

Quick question

Which book was it in where the parody on the Commander in Chief and his dictates, based on the biblical story of King Nebuchadnezzar and the Golden Image shows up?

I've just come across a reference to it in a book on the Marines, in a section on Admiral Jervis, Earl St Vincent, and want to re-read it.

(The quote referring to it, from The Formative Years 1803 to 1806 by Lt-Col Brian Edwards, RM:

Though he [Admiral Jervis] did have a sense of humour, it apparently took the form of schoolboy pranks prom a position of prefect - summoning all Chaplains to the Flagship by boat in choppy seas, or sending for his Senior RM Officer, who had no watchkeeping duties, in the middle watch so that he might smell the scent of oranges wafting from the Spanish shore. Jokes against himself were no doubt risky but those of similar schoolboy derivation might amuse; the junior lieutenant, who composed a parody on the Commander-in-Chief and his dictates, based on the Biblical story of 'the Golden Image that Nebuchadnezzar the King had set up', was invited to dinner and unexpectedly provided with a copy of his own work to read aloud over the port; having had his fun, the Earl then sent the young man on three months leave 'to entertain those at home as much as he had been entertained' and with an invitation to dine with him again on his return.)
alltoseek: (Default)
[personal profile] alltoseek2012-10-22 12:47 pm
Entry tags:

Published Book By Dr S E Maturin

From the film's deleted scenes, chapter "Shipboard Life":

Bonden reads out the title, we are shown the subtitle and authorship:


DISEASES
MOST USUAL AMONG
SEAMEN

====================================================

AN Examination of Existing Conditions with particular
attention
given to the Pervasive Corrupting Influence
of the GROG ration.

====================================================

BY DR. S. E. M A T U R I N.
Of TRINITY COLLEGE, Fellow of the ROYAL SOCIETY

====================================================

FIRST EDITION




If anyone has a screencap I would be happy to add it!

The Butcher's Bill

This is the link to the wonderful work that is The Butcher's Bill over on the Patrick O'Brian Compendium, listing all the injuries and deaths that appear in the canon.


Also, if I can do it, I might try doing a visual representation of Jack's scars as he gets them - but I'm promising nothing... :D
esteven: (Default)
[personal profile] esteven2012-08-11 04:32 pm

Master and Commander - Patriotism

With the revolution in France gone to pure loss I was already chilled beyond expression. And now, with what I saw in '98, on both sides, the wicked folly and the wicked brute cruelty, I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have -for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.'
'Patriotism will not do?'
'My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.'


(chapter five)