#it has a completely different tone but thats the stand in! for horatio calling for him tenderly!

[isaacathom]

i have genuinely so many thoughts about how the book Lieutenant Hornblower was adapted and how most of the changes work, when accounting for the fact it must necessarily leave Bush's POV in order to work as television, and how those changes end up fucking over Bush's character in the movies, and how he was further pilfered by the series' decision to maintain characters like Styles and Kennedy. There is so much going on in there. Unfortunately, I don't yet own a copy of Lieutenant Hornblower, and having to constantly borrow it from my library is a faff and prevents me using post its to mark important passages. :(

#i also last read lt hornblower over a year ago at this point #analysing the intersection of bush and kennedy is particularly ripe since kennedy DOES NOT EXIST in that book #and barely exists in the book prior. he's in two chapters. he has like 5 lines of dialogue. he probably gets killed in france #but in Lt you can understand the impulse! because other than bush and buckland? there are two other lts who arent important #so scrapping them in favour of an existing character you cobbled together for the series? yeah! yeah!!! #but they can't give archie the fate of either of the scrapped lts. bc itd be utterly ignomious #one of them gets cut in half by a cannonball. the other dies offscreen during the prisoners revolt on the renown #so they shift the circumstances of the firsts' death to a sequence with bush (the anchor thing) #and they alter the latter to remove archie from canon before he completely breaks the events of Hotspur #but THEY ALSO take actions from bush! and give them! to archie! #and it has a marked effect on bush's character in those two movies! #and when loyalty/duty are more “faithful” to the books re: bush's characterisation its jarring! #*shaking the books* i have so many thoughts #hornblower #“what does styles have to do with it” changes how he relates to the crew. #also they give the cradling bush scene to styles instead of horatio which is Funny as hell but also ;-; #it has a completely different tone but thats the stand in! for horatio calling for him tenderly! #but they couldn't give that scene to horatio because he was about to have a similar thing with archie. :(