lizardrosen - Tumblr blog

[lizardrosen]

plot update from 130 pages into the book:

sophie is kicked out of the house when her stepmother figures out that she went to the bridgerton's masquerade, and there's a two year timeskip. it is now 1817 and she's working as a housemaid in wiltshire, and benedict happens to be invited to a party at the house where she works and gallantly rescues her before she's attacked by the host and two other men :/

benedict is just getting over a head cold and when they're caught in the rain as he's bringing her to stay at his country house, My Cottage, it develops into a full-blown fever, classic romance trope, they both say some embarrassing things that she hopes he won't remember in the morning, he lends her a pair of breeches to wear since all her clothes are wet, and while she's watching over him he's dreaming of his Mystery Lady In Silver and begs her to kiss him. she's also found a sketch of herself at the masquerade in his sketchbook

they have just been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree, no-nonsense caretakers of My Cottage, who are feeding and questioning them

i happened to acquire 'an offer from a gentleman' recently, and 1. benedict's got a cinderella plot, which is inherently lowkey queer, 2. the sentence "benedict was a bridgerton and while there was no family to which he'd rather belong, he sometimes wished he were considered a little less a bridgerton and a little more himself" 3. in his very first scene violet maneuvers him to dance with penelope (she asks him to dance with prudence, and he opts for pen instead, which is what she wanted lmao)

HAHAHA so glad you're reading it so I don't have to! I have heard very mixed things about that book, including some dubious sexual choices.

Is Benedict the Cinderella figure in this story? I thought it was Sophie. (Sophia?) If it's her, not sure how that's queer?

[lizardrosen]

I dont know what to say. I’m at a ,’ , |,’_’ for words

[lizardrosen]

If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

[lizardrosen]

At times, she grew serious and looked thoughtfully at her little black dress. Cosette was no longer in rags; she was in mourning. She was issuing from utter poverty and was entering on life.

(Vol. II, Book IV, III: “Two misfortunes equal one happiness”)

i love the shift here, from “in rags” to “in mourning”. when your sole focus is survival, to the point where it is your only purpose, things like mourning do not exist. it’s completely inaccessible to you. the full spectrum of human experience was denied cosette by keeping her basic needs unmet.

[lizardrosen]

every time i get tagged in a post or reply by a mutual or someone i follow, a part of me goes "friend!! we are friends?! friend likes me!?"

truly, i am a golden retriever

[lizardrosen]

The littlest things we know to be small = debut literary fiction

The dark wife: thriller, adapted into a Hulu original

The mailman’s niece = historical fiction

The mailman of Warsaw = also historical fiction but about war

The gate of wind = fantasy

The gate of wind and bones = young adult fantasy

A gathering of pelicans = mystery, part of a long running series that takes up a whole shelf at the library

The Group Project Partner Gambit = romance with a cartoon cover

Wendy Jenkins is Scared of Commitment = romance with a cartoon cover of gay people

[lizardrosen]

NICOLA COUGHLAN as PENELOPE FEATHERINGTON BRIDGERTON | Season 2

[lizardrosen]

when ur reading fanfic and one character was cooking and the other comes up to them and they start making out and everyones like starting to take their shirts off and the author STILL hasnt mentioned anyone turning off the stove

[lizardrosen]

I don't CARE what genre your fictional world is, put a talking skeleton in it NOW

[lizardrosen]

What does lampshading mean?

Lampshade Hanging (link is to TV Tropes) refers to directly bringing attention to a trope or implausible plot development, either for humor or to point out your own flaws before anyone else can - in this case, Bridgerton itself blithely ignores the historical context that second and third sons usually became soldiers or churchmen, so in my bridgerton/hamlet fic I had Benedict think of that tradition while characterizing Laertes - if he's not a soldier, at least the role he plays can be, which also explains what he's doing in France.

[lizardrosen]

@glintglimmergleam i'm lampshading the fact that neither benedict nor colin is a priest or a soldier, and that's 100% because of you.

also the other day i found a book about the period before wwi, 1890-1914, and one of the excerpts in the front of the book mentions "Ladies driving in their victorias drawn by smart, high-stepping cobs with a 'tiger' sitting very straight with folded arms beside the coachman on the box" and i went "hey!! 3gee talked about that earlier!" and got very excited

[lizardrosen]

thinking about this in terms of kinzo. forced medical normalization that kinzo never received. normally where this would be seen as a good thing in this kind of narrative here it feels less..straightforward

[lizardrosen]

thinking about Her (barbara walsh joanne)

[lizardrosen]

lmaoooo, one of those passages i've already written in a totally different part of this fic, and that version was better in every way and fit the other context better. i've been working on this story for two years now, with a lot of scenes and specific moments circling in a holding pattern in my head, waiting for me to finally make them real, and sometimes i forget that i already have.

i somehow ended up with three separate passages that are variations on the same theme and plot development, and now i'm trying to reconcile them and figure out what order to put it all, and deciding if i should just Get Rid of one of the parts. they all accomplish slightly different tasks for character work, but he only needs to come to this realization once, so i'm going to have to choose. somehow.

[lizardrosen]

i somehow ended up with three separate passages that are variations on the same theme and plot development, and now i'm trying to reconcile them and figure out what order to put it all, and deciding if i should just Get Rid of one of the parts. they all accomplish slightly different tasks for character work, but he only needs to come to this realization once, so i'm going to have to choose. somehow.