"Flesh&Blood" Vol. 3 - Pirate Series Reading Club 🏮‍☠ â›”

They were using wooden weapons! They mentioned they had the carpenter make them.

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Aha
I missed that! :eyes: Thank goodness for that! XD Still, sparring isn’t really the first step in learning to use a sword, surely there are much more basic stuff first.

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Yes, for sure Nigel overdid it here, pushing Kaito way too far in his eagerness to get him up to speed. I’m sure both of them learned something from this event.

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So, in Chapter 2 Kaito was mostly out of sight after having received his cold-shower-punishment, and we witness how they capture an enemy ship. I was pretty astonished when Jeoffrey told the cannoniers to aim here and there! I thought the only thing you could do with these beasts was to point them in a direction and have them go off
 but actually controlling to some extent where the cannonball might hit, that was a surprise. Turns out it did not work too well either, so there’s that.

Oh and even before that, Jeoffrey reflects on how he doesn’t want Kaito to see him conquer the enemy because he doesn’t want to be perceived as a brute which might drive Kaito away from him :laughing: Jeoffrey is already deeply involved emotionally :woman_facepalming: Luckily he reflects on that himself, and so the cheesiness fades rather quickly.

After the capturing we have another interchange with Jeoffrey and Nigel. While Nigel is bickering about being made captain of the captured ship (which I think is mega-unrealistic but anyways), Jeoffrey plays another psycho-trick on him to get him to do what he wants. And then even extends them to Captain Miguel! So funny to observe :smile:

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Is it? He needed someone to temporarily take command of the captured ship while they brought it to England, and he couldn’t trust anyone on the captured ship with the command. On Gloria itself Nigel has shown himself to be extremely capable and has presumably been sailing around as long as Jeoffrey, given how close of friends they seem to be.

I finished up chapter 3 yesterday and wanted to confirm some details with you guys when you reach it.

Second half of Ch 3 Confusion

So once Jeoffrey began wining and dining the Spanish captain I started to lose thread of the conversation. Jeoffrey beings fishing for info about Lisbon, as it’s apparently a key location to strike against for the English. The conversation moves to the Spanish Armada, and Jeoffrey apparently finds out that the Armada’s supplies are
something? There’s something about barrels, and how the Armada has difficulty sourcing wood to make them to store their water, and Kaito apparently decides that whatever is happening is historically accurate? Basically that second half of the chapter I was having a lot of difficulty following. If someone could summarize what happened, I’d be really grateful. :pray:

Also, thoughts regarding Kaito’s musings in the first half of chapter 3:

Many thoughts

He’s been concerned for a while now as to why Jeoffrey and the Gloria are apparently not part of the historical record, and is concerned it’s because they meet an early death and are unable to really contribute to the upcoming war. I’m wondering if the case is simply that Jeoffrey was never in a position to be important, rather than dying; like, before Kaito shows up, he gets assignments that never really maneuvered him into the limelight? And now that Kaito’s here, he’s suddenly in a much more important position.

Which makes me further wonder if Kaito’s time travel is going to have unintended historical ripples. Matsuoka seems to be working up to that, and with both England and Spain wanting to use Kaito’s knowledge of the future, I can easily see things changing. I am wondering how Kaito’s going to handle it, given that he can’t actually see the future. If he “predicts” that so-and-so will take up an important position in the war, and that person is, let’s say, assassinated before they can do anything of importance, how does that change the future? What’s his plan going to be when whey ask him who so-and-so’s successor will be?

Has Kaito’s time-travelling already created a parallel world that’s so far only nominally different, but has the potential to really diverge? I’m basing this on Kaito and Kazuya’s conversation in the beginning of book 1, specifically. There’s definitely an argument to be made that Kaito’s time-travelling wouldn’t create time ripples, but for the sake of argument, let’s say he creates an alternate timeline.

On a lighter note, I got a good laugh out of (2nd half of ch. 3) Kaito, having decorated Jeoffrey’s cabin table, takes a step back, surveys his work, and says (paraphrased), “Yep, I could have been an interior decorator in another life.”

I have some sentence questions for chapter 3, but I don’t feel like typing them out right now. :S

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Oh sorry, that’s not what I meant :sweat_smile: I 100% agree with everything you said of course; when Jeoffrey said that he wants to keep the ship, I was like “Yay, and then Nigel gets to be the captain, what a great reward for him!” because Nigel is definitely the person best suited for that job. Now what I thought was super-unrealistic was that Nigel did not go “Aye Aye Sir!” when he was told he would be captain, but instead he was like eeeh mimimi and what if and so on, and Jeoffrey basically had to convince him to follow his order. That sounded really odd to me. (I mean of course it makes sense as this is how the whole narrative is told anyway, but before they were like “everybody needs to follow the orders, and letting somebody speak up will break the morale” so this felt somewhat off - even regarding that they are friends and speak openly with each other).

I started Chapter 3 already but did not get too far yet, so I will look at your questions later.

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Ah, I see what you mean now!

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actually, Nigel has more experience sailing the Jeoffrey, if my memory serves of this being mentioned in the past volumes. Just an interesting footnote really. :slight_smile:

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Not finished with Ch 2, but
 :slight_smile:

Chapter 2 ~ thoughts

This chapter continues where the last one left off: another sea battle is about to start!.

It’s worth taking note that while Kaito might be romanticizing about pirates, Jeoffrey and the Gloria aren’t pirates. After all, they’re commissioned by the British crown to carry out hostilities against Spanish ships. In other words, Jeoffrey is a privateer (which he tells Kaito, p 35). It’s a pretty big differentiation.

Kind of interesting, but on page 40 Natsuki-sensei actually explains a nautical term in-text. :eyes:

ă‚±ăƒŒăƒ–ăƒ« Cable, short for cable length:

In any case, after some cannon bombardment, Gloria manages to get close enough for Jeoffrey to shout/ask the enemy ship to surrender. Turns out the captain knows a little English and so, things doesn’t end up with a total blood. :sweat: :relieved:

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I got another chuckle after Jeoffrey and co. boarded the Stella Maris and assured the captain they were formally licensed. “Don’t worry, this is entirely legal.” :stuck_out_tongue:

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So thinking about this more, maybe the argument between Jeoffrey and Nigel was just between themselves? In lower voices or something. I’m trying to remember now myself if that was specified, because you’re right: there’s been a lot of hullabaloo about rank and seniority already before this.

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I was wondering about that as well
 next time I will pay more attention to these details. Still, Nigel feels a bit as if he likes to complain
 :woman_shrugging:

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He does, haha. Maybe he’s the high-strung type?

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I’ll keep a look out for it, when I get there! ^>^

That’s my picture of him at least. Straight-forward, high-strung, keeping himself reiled in but also making sure others are sticking to the rules, demanding but also caring in his way.

He’s a great contrast to Jeoffrey! XD Leisurely, dandy, lax about many things, always trying to get what he wants, enjoying life to the most!

Just my personal readings and vibe of these two. I don’t really have specifics to point to here. ^^;

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Finished Chapter 3! Feels like I’m really starting to pick up speed. Maybe it already shows that I’ve started to learn Flesh&Blood vocabulary :thinking: :joy_cat:

I really like how Kaito puts so much effort into decorating the room, even thinking back to how his mother decorated rooms for tea parties and stuff! And he made a big impression on both captains for sure :joy_cat: Also how he gets what Jeoffrey is aiming at, and that he unknowingly helped a great deal with that by making the Spanish captain really feel at ease. Well done!

Second half confusion

First I was also confused about that talk about the barrels, but then in the end it all made sense. Here is the story:

So the thing is, that in the real history (back then) Drake captured a ship that was on his way to Lisbon, and burned it down. Turns out that ship had barrels on board. Due to those barrels having been burned, and due to the fact that they need to import them from Southern Spain as there is not much forest around Lisbon, the Armada had water shortage on board and the sailors fell ill (just like Jeoffrey & co. before) and they could not sail fast enough/were weak in combat etc. etc. Now what Kaito doesn’t know: did Drake burn down the ship with the barrels on purpose (because he knew what would happen then), or was it just pure chance, from which the events spiralled forward? But what he does know is that he may not alter history (time traveller’s paradox) and so he must make sure that the ship gets burned and that history takes place exactly the same as in Kaito’s history books. That’s why he chats Jeoffrey up and tells him that story and convinces him to seek out and attack ships that don’t have jewels and precious stuff on board, but that are loaded with barrels.

On Kaito's thoughts

From the second half of the chapter, it sounds as if he is pretty well aware of these effects, and so I suspect he will be very cautious not to change history. So far, as he is on the “winning” side of the whole war, that should be fairly easy to do because everything will work out well already without his help. But it’s definitely a thing he needs to keep in mind more and more. I’m curious to see which effects this will have!

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Second half confusion

So Drake burning the ship has already happened in-novel? How does Kaito know?

Wow, I didn’t get any of that. :\ Will 100% need to go back and re-read.

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Second half confusion

Ah, sorry, I guess I was too quick with my explanations! (So difficult to talk about the two histories. We need good names for them.)

Actually, that happened in the real history (in Kaito’s history books), and Kaito knows it must happen again. But because he does not know whether Drake did this on purpose, he must make sure for it to happen again so that he ends up at the same events and thus with the same history (to avoid the time-traveller’s paradox).

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Second half confusion

Aaah, I see. So to recap: Jeoffrey grills the Spanish captain about the situation in Lisbon. I didn’t fully follow the conversation there either, but Jeoffrey seems satisfied with the result. Kaito decides to push Jeoffrey to target non-treasure ships based on his previous thoughts on maintaining the status quo. Jeoffrey sees the wisdom in this and seems to agree it’s a good idea. Is that about right?

I swear I read this chapter; I have no idea why my reading comprehension suddenly flatlined here. :sob:

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Second half confusion

I’m not exactly sure whether he is happy about what he heard, but at least he does not press on any more. (Maybe I missed one or two aspects of that conversation as well.) Bottom line: It’s very difficult to get into the harbor as it is not on the coastline but a bit upstream, and even when the enemy manages to get into the river, maybe the wind turns and they cannot proceed. So I think that was valuable information for Jeoffrey at least.

Yes, because he must make sure that those barrels get burned.

Yep! That fits my understanding as well.

It happens :woman_shrugging: I sometimes have that as well, and when I look at it the next day because I want to ask a question about it, it’s all clear all of a sudden :grin:

Probably when you read it again tomorrow, you can afterwards tell me where my misunderstandings were :rofl:

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