"Flesh&Blood" Vol. 7 - Pirate Series Reading Club šŸ“ā€ā˜ ļø ⛵

I started off reading it as Evan, assuming it to be an English name. But Juan might be a better fit. I have no idea though. :joy:

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A good call. I think there’s a lot to read into this part for sure. And everyone should just decide on where they land here. :slight_smile:

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I read it as Juan all the time, and was already confused why an English sailor would have a Spanish name, but I thought they might have had immigrants back then already :rofl:

Now I checked Jisho and it suggested Ewan (you know, like the actor :sweat_smile:) which is indeed pronounced ćƒ¦ć‚¢ćƒ³ :astonished:

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I guess it could be Evan/Ewan then. ^^ I just put on my English loan words-glasses and guessed. But, yeah, it just makes more sense for all the crew on Gloria to have traditional English names. ^^

Not meaning to be nitpicky here, but are you aware that those two are pronounced very differently?

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Nope. :woman_shrugging: At the end of the day, I’m using Swedish pronunciation.

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What would the Swedish pronunciation of these names be? :thinking:

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Ah, that makes complete sense, given that he’s from Scotland or Ireland.

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Ugh; I’m back at work after a nice long December vacation and it’s sucking the life out of me. @.@ 2/3 or 3/4 through chapter 4, I think. Might be a bit slower going for this week until I can re-adjust.

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Okay-dokey, chapter 4 done. Kaito continues to charm the local townspeople. If Geoffrey’s not careful, the landlady will tempt Kaito over to a new career with her soap and fancy shower. :stuck_out_tongue: What shenanigans will happen next chapter, I wonder? :eyes:

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Sadly I don’t speak phonetic script, so for me it’s just what it looks like, Evan. ^^;

SPOILERS below

I don’t see what difference it makes. What you really want to turn back time on, is the confession and knowledge about the truth.

Not sure it’s sold here. But, mayhaps I’ll try to do some local foraging?

My comment is about what’s said or not, but about the type of reactions we get from Kaito. He’s expressing some rather strange sentiments, more in the line of someone that has never done the deed, even by himself. But, really, this is just another Japanese trope of virginity that I find very unrealistic and hard to realte to. Certainly, for someone whose 17 years old, living in modern society, it’s hard to imagine. It only really makes sence if Kaito is truly asexual with no interest in sex, by himself or with others, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at the end of the day.

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I’d be super surprised if it was not sold in Sweden. It goes by a multitude of names, we call it children’s coffee, malt coffee, farm coffee, grain coffee and such things. If you go to the supermarket shelf where they sell normal coffee and then look around, there should be some stuff that is sold as ā€œcoffee imitationā€ or the like; it’s free of caffeine and therefore somewhat popular.

By now my impression is that you and I simply have very different backgrounds and experiences and so for me a lot of Kaito’s behavior is rather relatable (to my own feelings and behavior back when I was his age, and sometimes even now), and for you it’s not, and you find it unnatural. Which is totally fine, of course, I have just realized that we can probably not really get anywhere by discussing about this. You get irritated by Kaito’s behavior, I get irritated by Geoffrey’s :grin: So there’s something in the mix for all of us. :woman_shrugging:

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Chapter 5 done. Looks like everything turned out all right in the end. :melting_face: Of course, who knows what the future brings, but for now everyone’s happy. :3

So today in ā€œfun facts on Tudor Englandā€, did you know that, while the Elizabethans acknowledged the need to bathe in water to clean off, they probably wouldn’t have done so in hot water? I’ve been doing extracurricular reading in my spare time, and according to what I’ve read, according to the medical theory of the day, you get sick when bad air enters your body. What’s one sure way to encourage that bad air? Engaging in activities that would open up your pores, such as taking a hot bath. Apparently steam baths were okay, but hot = :no_good_woman:.

I’m not sure how prevalent soap was in general, but the essential oils Lily mentions were definitely done back then.

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Super interesting stuff.

Made me remember some stuff from studying IdĆ©- och lƤrdomshistoria (which I think isn’t a common subject outside of the Nordic countries, but essentially it’s ā€œThe history of ideas and knowledge systemsā€). There we were taught about Humorism, the idea that the body is governed by 4 types of fluids that had to stay in balance or you’d get sick (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile). It takes a really long time before this view of how the human body works is replaced…basically, leftovers remain even in the 19th century. I remember being taught that small town doctors retained the practice of blood letting for example, even as medicine learnt about anatomy etc.

I guess, translating this viewpoint to the matter of hot baths, basically, you wouldn’t want your body to sweat a lot back then. Instead you should avoid allowing your fluids become unbalanced. ^^;

Edit: Actually, they used a different translation on one university website: History of Ideas and Science | University of Gothenburg

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Ooooh my god. I need to go back and write up my thoughts about chapter 6, but who cares about sex when we could be talking about the fact that (major chapter 7 spoilers) Lily is also a time traveler??? If I weren’t so tired and didn’t have work tomorrow, you couldn’t pay me to put the book down. :sob: I’m not all the way through chapter 7 as it is yet, but I just had to get this off my chest.

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Riiight?!?! I hope youā€˜ll forgive me now that I got all excited back then :joy_cat:

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So I haven’t read any more yet and won’t be able to until I get off work later, but I wanted to jot down my chapter 6 thoughts now before it gets lost in the shuffle of chapter 7.

So this chapter of Kaito finally ā€œchoosingā€ Geoffrey/the 16th century was really interesting, and really makes me think that he’s going to have a legit opportunity to return to the 21st in a future book. Set up the heartbreaking choice scenario now + keep Kazuya in the loop so he stays relevant, and it’s a slam dunk. I am curious if this will, in a roundabout way, give us more information on these dreams Kaito’s having. If they’re nothing more than him mourning his past, then I would expect them to fizzle out now that he’s consciously decided to move on (so it seems, at least). If they’re really psychic dream visions of some sort (which I do think they are), and if there’s a decrease in them, then perhaps they’re still linked to his regrets. If they don’t decrease, or end up increasing, then there’s a further mechanic at work here; maybe that time slip is unstable or something. Personally I’m in the camp of ā€œthe mechanic of interesting plot development is in effectā€, so Kaito’s got nowhere to run, lol. I do wonder if he’ll ever tell Geoffrey or Nigel about the dreams.

Next: I’m glad everything basically went well for Kaito and Geoffrey in regards to their attempt. Any issues seemed like something they could easily get past with more practice. :person_shrugging: I will say I was pretty surprised to have gotten such an explicit sex scene for what’s essentially a light novel; I was honestly expecting something way more vanilla and/or a fade to black kind of thing. Kudos to you, ę¾å²”å…ˆē”Ÿ (and her publisher most of all :P).

It wasn’t really specified in the chapter, but I wonder if Geoffrey was keeping Kaito’s OG personal belongings in his third, off-limits chest, since that’s the only one Kaito hasn’t had access to here up until now. Is his old Hawaiian shirt in there? :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m super curious if this is ever going to be something. Like, by the point the war is over and Geoffrey and co. are free, how far in the books is that? To be honest, as much as I’d love to see Kaito panic and try to talk his way out of, ā€œactually Geoffrey, we really don’t need to visit my home country I probably can’t understand the Japanese spoken there anywayā€, I’m betting Kaito will have confessed his deep dark time-traveling secret before then. :thinking: That moment has so much drama potential it’s gotta happen, right?

Haha, I was thinking the same thing. ā€œDang Geoffrey, are you reading a cheat sheet or something?ā€

Some intro chapter 7 thoughts while they’re still spinning in my mind; all speculation/questions may be of course answered after I read further:

  • I’m actually really really glad that Lily is a time traveler for the specific reason that it now makes sense why she would go out of her way to have her husband build her a shower, of all things. Like, when I originally saw the shower thing, I was thinking, ā€œman, this feels more contrived than usual for this series. What’s next, is Kaito going to introduce rice to England to enlighten these poor starving Englishmen and then the isekai really begins?ā€.
  • Interesting that Lily saw a fairy circle through her time portal. I stopped reading in the middle of her talking about it to Kaito, so I’m sure this’ll get answered in, like, a paragraph, but I’m wondering about the significance of her and Kaito’s two wildly different mundane time slip visions. Wild guess: it’s a vision of the next time/place the time slip will re-open to the original time. So for Kaito, it would re-open on the eve of the war breaking out, when Sir Drake’s bowling.
  • Lily casually talking about her friend Edith getting burned at the stake was pretty eye-opening. Really makes you realize how generally sheltered Kaito is even now: he got lucky enough to get picked up by a crew who all like each other and spends most of his time isolated from 16th century English society on a boat.
  • Very interesting that Edith describes Sam as like a soul mate to her, and that she wonders if the time slips lead people to their fated partners consistently. Makes you wonder, right? I mean, Vicente was the first person Kaito met here… :eyes: The Vicente stan will be quiet now And Geoffrey speculated that Nigel was the first person to like Kaito… :eyes: Nigel stan go stand in the corner. Guys, we need to spread the good F&B word so we can read amazing fanfiction where Kaito hooks up with the other guys. :open_mouth:
  • I wonder if ę¾å²”å…ˆē”Ÿ is a big music lover? I thought it was hilarious that Edith’s first questions to catch up with the present were, ā€œMusic question, music question, oh yeah is Elizabeth II still alive?ā€ I guess at that point, having lived in 16th century England for decades, most of her past life has really faded for her. Not the music, though.
  • Man, it’s just so brilliant to introduce other time travelers. Like, for me it’s one of those things that makes logical sense, but as a book reader I’m trained to see the protagonist as unique. I’m hoping/expecting we won’t meet many/any other time travelers, because then it suddenly becomes kind of a drag. Does make me wonder what other times people have gotten dumped in. Any in the future, I wonder?

…I think that’s all I have for now. I’m sure there’s other thoughts I’m forgetting, but even just a bit of chapter 7 has got me spinning. Awesome stuff! Apologies for any weird typos, guys; just went in one straight shot here. At least I’m not typing on my phone this time; this post’d be nigh unreadable…

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Hahaha absolutely! :rofl:

I must say I was also pretty surprised about that, in a book that is theoretically geared towards non-adults. (I had accidentally read a spoiler in a review a few volumes back where the comment was that Vol. 7 is basically porn, so I was prepared at least.) Dunno how strict the rules are for written text without pictures, though (as one can usually only imagine things that one has an image for in the mind) :woman_shrugging: and I mean, compared to e.g. Murakami whose sex scenes read rather like anatomic dissections, it was still pretty vague…

I wondered about that as well! As sometimes a whole book covers only a few days, it’s possible that time actually progresses pretty slowly through the books.

And on top of that, we don’t really know (yet) how far ę¾å²”å…ˆē”Ÿ got in the timeline she had envisioned for the series… :cold_sweat:

I think Edith and Lily are spinning a bit too much for you right now :sweat_smile: I’m sure you’ll get around to sorting this out.

I still haven’t given up all hope on our å…ˆē”Ÿ :rofl:

Funny, isn’t it? It never crossed my mind, and I was also thinking like ā€œomg she’s overdoing it a bit now with the shower and shampoo and stuff :roll_eyes:ā€ and then BAM! And from that moment on, I was like ā€œoh yes sure, why notā€ :rofl:

You mean in the context of the time travels in this series? That’s the funny part: Lily tunneled around 30 years ago, and landed in the 16th century 30 years before Kaito. This means these worlds are running exactly parallel. Apparently it’s not that people can jump around to any random year, it always has to be 320 or so years back. The question is, why would that be? :thinking:

OOOOOHHH maybe this is so that they are guaranteed to meet in the past as there are only exactly two parallel worlds? And going back and forth would always take you from the one of the two worlds to the other. So maybe Kaito is not going back to the 21st century but will get a visitor at some point? :exploding_head:

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Off-topic

…I just had to quote this; that paints quite the vibrant picture, haha. At the risk of getting a bit off-topic, are sex scenes a relatively normal part of his works? I feel like I don’t usually hear that much of that aspect of his works.

Chapter 7 reply

There sure are some wild plots twist in this story! XD

Chapter 6 reply
So many great thoughts and speculations! Thanks for sharing all of that! ^>^

I think its worth trying to understand what light novels are. They’re merely a serialized book publishing format, published in magazines that are usually specific in both who their target audience is (including age and gender) and what sort of genre to expect among the multiple authors and stories published weekly or monthly. Later on, these stories are then re-published in volumes, much in the same vein as manga being first published in chapters in magazines, then republished as volumes.

Violence, drugs, explicit scenes etc. appear in light novels just as in other forms of publications. Especially for BL, but also light novels aimed at male readers, they tip into that erotica territory fairly frequently is my understanding. Especially for shorter light novels (single volume-publications). Or they may dip into kink-territory, as light novels just in generally move below the radar of ā€œseriousā€ literature, and so can cater to much more specific audience preferences, even if the readership is fairly small for such a thing.

At the end of the day, there are some truly crap light novels out there, but also pretty good ones, like Flesh & Blood, being an example of! ^>^

EDIT: Which is also why light novels are prone to recaps and catching the reader up on the last events (if the last time you read a chapter was 1 month ago). I don’t think Flesh & Blood is doing that terribly much, but I have seen some pretty bad example of it. Usually, the author will edit the original text to better suit republication as single volumes, but some authors don’t bother much with it and might retain a lot of repetition of facts and story recaps.

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