oleander-neria

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It's quick it's easy it's free - lying down on top of your bedding in your day clothes and just closing your eyes for a bit then waking up five hours later disoriented and dehydrated

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If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

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On some godforsaken whim I actually watched the Netflix Persuasion with Dakota Johnson, and I was genuinely surprised that I didn’t completely hate it? I mean it’s not very good and it’s a dreadful adaptation and an enormous disservice to Anne Elliot and Jane Austen, but I didn’t hate it. I think that there was the possibility to do a Persuasion along these lines and do it well. I kept thinking about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but the not zombie parts. It’s goofy and everything is dialed up to eleven, but it’s still recognizable as a fun, campy take on the story. In its better moments the Netflix Persuasion is the same—specifically the supporting characters. I definitely have room in my heart for a Mary Musgrove who says things like “I’m an empath.” Because it’s true to her character! A lot of the supporting cast felt perfectly like themselves, just with this heightened, tongue-in-cheek contemporary styling. I think these kinds of adaptations can work and be fun if done well. Back when they first released trailers for this movie I remember thinking the “now we’re worse than exes, we’re friends” line would actually be perfect for a Clueless-style teen romcom adaptation of Persuasion. After watching the movie I still think that—a lot of the stupid modernizations actually could have fit just fine in an alternate version of this movie that had a stronger identity and better execution.

The real problem is that this movie fundamentally doesn’t understand Anne Elliot, or the main conflict between her and Wentworth. This movie has never even met the real Anne Elliot. Anne is woefully out of character and her and Wentworth’s story is so mishandled that it drags the whole thing down and turns it into an unrecognizably bad adaptation. If they had figured out how to create versions of Anne and Wentworth along the same lines of what they did for characters like Mary, Elizabeth, Sir Walter, and Mr Elliot this could have worked great. This movie knows how to take an accurate read of a character then turn them into a funny, faux-contemporary exaggeration of themselves, it just doesn’t do that for Anne and Wentworth.

On the other hand, I think it is worth asking whether a funny, faux-contemporary version of a character like Anne Elliot could even exist. Unlike someone like Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies who has character qualities that can be exaggerated for comedy, Anne is such a reticent, gentle, and internal character that perhaps an exaggeration of her just couldn’t be made campy and fun. And if that’s the case, then they simply shouldn’t have attempted a Persuasion with these foundational sensibilities, even if it did give us a perfect Mary Musgrove.

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ANDREW GARFIELD DR. POMATTER WAITRESS

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If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

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Overheard a lady at work say “I just eat salsa straight out of the jar as gazpacho” completely seriously and I feel like that’s the kind of statement that belongs on tumblr

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I wish I could turn off my comprehension of the English language so I could fully enjoy the new Great Gatsby cast recording

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I think praying for someone might be the ultimate Get Loved Idiot

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hi Symph!! thank you sooo much for posting the Les Mis audios! if i were to request anything else, I would say Bring Him Home, Stars, One Day More, and/or the Finale! 🫶🏻

Bring Him Home had a lot of background noise unfortunately - a plane flew overhead, someone’s phone rang, the person next to me was eating popcorn… but I do have it! Here it is, just bear with me on the audio quality:

John Riddle makes you forget any background noise, though! I’ll also get your other requests uploaded in the morning - I can’t possibly deprive you of Jordan Donica’s “Stars”!

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And some lass would win him over. His nature was loving, and he’d find someone to love.

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Look I love Disney movies too, but honestly I am so over the cultural assumption that they are the standard/definitive version of fairy tales

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Apparently I’m in the Rachmaninoff piano concerto no. 2 phase of this quasi breakup.

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Regrettably this is extremely true, and I never fully believe it until I’ve spent significant time away from social media. I’ll be more or less remaining off tumblr at least until Pentecost 💔

Reposting since I couldn’t reblog

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the process of going from "no Lent, only Easter >:0" to "maybe Lent will fix me"

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2023 Reading List

River Secrets (Books of Bayern #3) - Shannon Hale

Heartless - Marissa Meyer

Persuasion - Jane Austen

Something Fresh - P.G. Wodehouse

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Joan Aiken

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

Queen’s Peril - E.K. Johnston (Note: Star Wars)

The Black Arrow - Robert Louis Stevenson

Crooked House - Agatha Christie

The Darkest Minds - Alexandra Bracken

The Wide Window (A Series of Unfortunate Events #3) - Lemony Snicket

Dragonsinger (Harper Hall Trilogy #2) - Anne McCaffrey

The Thief (Queen’s Thief #1) - Megan Whalen Turner

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Coraline - Neil Gaimen

Ahsoka - E.K. Johnston (Note: Star Wars)

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

The Queen of Attolia (Queen’s Thief #2) - Megan Whalen Turner

The King of Attolia (Queen’s Thief #3) - Megan Whalen Turner

Speaking from Among the Bones (Flavia deLuce #5) - Alan Bradley

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Day Boy and Night Girl - George MacDonald

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien (Note: read by Andy Serkis)

A Conspiracy of Kings (Queen’s Thief #4) - Megan Whalen Turner

Rebel Rising - Beth Revis (Note: Star Wars)

Thick as Thieves (Queen’s Thief #5) - Megan Whalen Turner

Return of the Thief (Queen’s Thief #6) - Megan Whalen Turner

The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events #4) - Lemony Snicket

Two Tales from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Arthur Conan Doyle (Note: The New Catacomb & The Beetle-Hunter)

Moira’s Pen (Queen’s Thief) - Megan Whalen Turner

The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales from the Old French - Arthur Quiller Couch (Note: illustrated by Kay Neilsen)

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) - J.R.R. Tolkien (Note: fan-made audiobook by Phil Dragash)

The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings #2) - J.R.R. Tolkien (Note: fan-made audiobook by Phil Dragash)

The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings #3) - J.R.R. Tolkien (Note: fan-made audiobook by Phil Dragash)

The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1) - Johnathan Stroud

Partners in Crime (Tommy and Tuppence #2) - Agatha Christie

The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe

Rebecca - Daphne duMaurier

Dracula - Bram Stoker (Note: Dracula Daily)

Afterworlds - Scott Westerfeld

The Whispering Skull (Lockwood & Co. #2) - Johnathan Stroud

Uneasy Money - P.G. Wodehouse

Renegades (Renegades Trilogy #1) - Marissa Meyer

Archenemies (Renegades Trilogy #2) - Marissa Meyer

Total: 44

Favorites: Persuasion, Queen’s Thief

Honorable Mentions: Lockwood & Co., Something Fresh

Further notes on LOTR: Andy Serkis is great but I thought his Hobbit was just fine, not remarkable. A little disappointing. Phil Dragash never disappoints and I truly think his audiobooks are the ultimate way to experience the trilogy (provided one likes the Peter Jackson movies).

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Can’t believe I never noticed that in the Baryshnikov Nutcracker the little dance that Clara and Drosselmeyer do with the nutcracker doll in the beginning is a mirror of the pas de deux (trois) they do in the end

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One of my personal nitpicks for historical fantasy is a lack of servants, staff, subordinates, and... idk... subjects? Like, their absence is not... a total dealbreaker for me, depending on the situations the characters are in and whether or not I can just assume that other people are there in the background... but so many of the protagonists in historical fantasy stuff are higher-ranking (very often royalty), and/or have busy jobs, and/or have enormous houses that would necessitate having at least part-time staff.

Like, girl, you should have a maid! WHERE is your chaperone?! WHO is driving this carriage?! Where are your footmen? Are you trying to imply that a WEALTHY DUCHESS is taking a CAB?! You know that you probably have tenants, right? Where is your steward?! Where is your lawyer? Your accountant?! (Like, yeah, you're not going to have your lawyer living in your house, but you HAVE one, right???)

Or, man, you're supposed to be a military commander and you don't even have a single secretary?! Where is your SQUIRE?! (In the spirit of historical fiction, I am jumping wildly across time periods with every sentence here.) Man, I know you aren't looking after your own boots. Where are your GUARDS?! Who set up this tent for you?! Who is looking after your horse?! Who is making and carrying the incredibly valuable maps people are recklessly stabbing daggers into?!

SOMEONE has to be scrubbing these floors and delivering the mail and cooking the meals and doing laundry, and they're probably all DIFFERENT people! My dentist has at least three different receptionists and we can't even get ONE for our court wizard here? A sorcerer's apprentice to take notes? Someone like Sherlock Holmes could get away with just having a housekeeper and taking taxis, sure, but your character is supposed to be a KING?! Why is he answering his own front door? He's going to get assassinated. His SERVANTS should have SERVANTS.

Like, yes, I understand that a lot of servants in certain places at certain times were supposed to make their labor invisible, but there have always been servants who still had to interact directly with the masters of the house?! Yeah, there are potentially really messy ethics here, class divisions are bullshit, but I don't think that completely ignoring the reality that humans have ALWAYS been doing work for other humans (even if it's just having a collective cooking pot for the group and the cook not necessarily being subservient to anyone, shared or delegated work is an integral part of all communities) is better than just including some well-paid and well-treated servants and employees? Because a complete absence of them, especially where logically for the worldbuilding there MUST be servants (and probably exploited servants for some particular worldbuilds to work), often makes me think that your main characters just don't care enough to notice the "lower class" people or know their names.

Also, even Frodo Baggins had a gardener and Samwise Gamgee might be the best damn character in the story?! Sam saved the world?! Servants are PEOPLE. Servants are often the funniest and most interesting characters, tbh, with the most to say about a society and its workings (yes, Discworld is a very good book series, highly recommend), and also the joke of some romantic scene being carefully orchestrated by a stage crew of servants frantically diving into bushes to stay out of sight never gets old to me. Teamwork makes the dream work!

I don't want to gatekeep historical fiction, especially not historical fantasy, because the worlds don't necessarily have to conform to our own and may have magic and characters are often in very unique circumstances, but... sometimes I pick up a story and it's like... "Author, please tell me that you know there is a difference between a butler and a valet?!"