"Flesh&Blood" Vol. 4 - Pirate Series Reading Club 🏮‍☠ â›”

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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You know what‘s really weird, I’m currently driving around France (will report on La Rochelle later :star_struck:) and occasionally I turn on the radio for a little bit. Turns out most of the radio channels I tune into have a lot of talking and almost no music, but I don‘t mind, makes for some nice listening practice at least :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Today’s station was called „Culture“ and when I turned it on, they talked about Shakespeare and his use of fools in his works :exploding_head:
Unfortunately I didn’t understand too much as I’m currently suffering from 30 years of neglecting the language and then wiping out anything that was left with 5 years of studying Japanese :grin: but I am slowly slowly recovering, so if I happen to hear something like that next year, I might actually be able to report on the contents


(on the other hand, I might actually need to read some Shakespeare soon
 I hope that will be faster than reading Japanese :crossed_fingers:)

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Ack, this reminds me. I saw Much Ado About Nothing this past Saturday, and it was awesome! I wasn’t able to take pictures, unfortunately, since they weren’t allowed, but I can assure you the play was a ton of fun. Just a fun romcom; easy to see how he’s maintained his popularity through the ages.

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Chapter 11 thoughts

There’s a heart to heart moment when Kaito gives encouragement to Shakespeare which I thought was heart-warming :relaxed:

Obviously, having made a good impression during the play, and winning the favor of the queen, means Kaito also has drawn the ire of others, envious of him. The royal court seems to be a snake pit, and Kaito has been thrown into it. :slightly_frowning_face:

it was for the best that Kaito wasn’t forced to become a clown. :clown_face: playing a simpleton sounds like something Kaito wouldn’t be able to do convincingly. ^^; Then again, it sure sounds like playing the fool isn’t going to be easy either, with all the dislikes Elizabeth has for certain types of jokes. >_>

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Chapter 12 thoughts

Childish men are the worst! >:

Things were looking to become very complicated for Kaito to navigate and off the bat, he’s targeted by Elizabeth’s lover, trying to get a rise out of Kaito. *sigh

The talk of dancing got me into research mode!

Some of the most notable dances of the Elizabethan era High class dances were Paval (which required procession of men and women who only slightly touched their fingers), The Galliard (quick and energetic dance), The Almain (preformed with keyboard and lute instruments), The Volt (only Elizabethan dance that allowed embrace of dancers), The Gavotte (very popular medium tempo dance that incorporated kiss as one of its moves), The Courant or Courante (slow moving French dance) and Ballet (which was imported from Italy and danced by both novices and professionals).

http://www.dancefacts.net/dance-history/elizabethan-dance/

Seems to have been a slight misunderstanding on the part of Matsuoka-sensei here. Elizabeth asks for a quick song, but names Courant or Courante as the dance, which is considered slow paced. XD not easy to tell, to be fair, if you listen.

Apparently, this is the dance in question! XD

Gavotte:

I only knew about gavotte from before.

Okay, back to reading
 :books:

Edit:

Kaito seems to love living on the edge! :sweat_smile: Not that I would have fared better, desperately trying to remember a song to entertain with, probably choosing the first one that comes to mind that I thought I remembered the lyrics to. ^^; Still, teasing Walshingham doesn’t seem like a sound move going forward. He clearly doesn’t need much to resent you or to actively try to do away with you. :fearful:

Getting Queen Elizabeth as your godmother isn’t a half-bad deal, tbh, even if you don’t truly believe in god. ^^’

Well, that ended with a serious cliff-hanger! :man_climbing:

But, it certainly makes you wanna continue reading the next volume! Smart move Matsuoka-sensei! :+1:

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\o/ Congrats on finishing, ekg! The last few chapters go by quick, huh?

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Thatšs how I interpreted that sequence as well. She gave him a hefty reward of gold coins.

It ended with the threat of Kaito ending up in prison.

Yes, this was also put forward as a plan, partially to appease Walshingham so he wouldn’t be able to accuse Kaito of being a heretic.

Thanks! And, yes, they swished past in a blur! XD

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Finished volume 4!

It feels like a lot happened in this volume in a pretty short period of time. That made it easy to get through pretty fast but I do feel like it was a little much at times. Kaito job changed from a cabin boy to a court fool to an actor/court fool, there was also some big relationship development before that and now it seems like Kaito might be in one of the biggest pinches he’s been in so far. I did get a feeling after there was some development between Kaito and Jeoffrey that since things seemed to be going well their situation might take a turn for the worse but I was not expecting “falsely accused of murder might get thrown into prison and tortured” levels. :fearful: Poor Kaito can’t catch a break. I’m definitely going to start volume 5 right away because I need to know how this is going to be resolved.

Now that I think about it I think this is part of what made this volume feel like so much to me. Makes me really grateful for Wikipedia and for everyone here gathering such great information.

I feel the same, especially in the last chapter I feel like there was a lot going on there without much time to dwell on what was happening.

That was my first thought when this part came up, I hope what was used on Kaito wasn’t the kind that was mostly lead :fearful:
It was interesting seeing more of what the process of makeup was like back then, I can’t imagine how heavy it must feel to have beeswax and egg white on your face let alone trying to remove it without soap.

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