#JM Barrie

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

J.M. Barrie hit the nail on the head with this one....

Vincent Price as Captain Hook (1964)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

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I'll teach you to jump on the wind's back and then away we go.

- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

‘Those who don't jump will never fly’ is a dictum drilled into me from an early age. It’s one I took literally when I learned when parachuting and then later dabbled in sky diving, well before I went into the British army as a combat pilot.

Skydiving provides a unique combination of adrenalin-fuelled exhilaration and perfectly calm tranquillity. While in free fall it's all about the rush - but once the parachute opens and your heart rate steadies, you'll take a moment to gaze around you and see the whole world in a new light. It's beautiful up there, and the experience is about as close to actual flying as humans can actually get.

To the skydiver, ‘flying’ in a plane is akin to ‘swimming’ in a boat. As someone who has flown helicopters I would quible with that simple characterisation but eventually I’m okay to acknowledge there is some truth behind it.

As someone who used to parachute and sky dive as a recreational past time, I can empathise with those skydivers who live for the wind whipping past as they plummet toward the earth during free fall, and the thrill of floating on the air currents once their 'chutes are safely open. They live on the edge, though not in danger - amid the elements, but not at their mercy.

In skydiving, it is the fear response that gradually weakens. During the precipitous descent, the amply tested parachutist can savour the thrill rather than endure the panic. You may never get rid of the butterflies, but you can teach them how to fly in formation.

[ibrainrottomyself]

when i was younger i really wanted disney to create an anime about Peter Pan so i took things to my own hands 😓😓🙏 I tried creating a fake screenshot of a scene that popped up in my head, so i am so sorry if it looks kinda weird hahaha ‼️ might post more neverland related art if this reaches people lmaoaoa [ and yes peter has freckles BECAUSE I SAID SO. ]

( also i need pandom moots real bad so yk, if u are PLS talk to me and dont be afraid to say hi :3 )

p.s bonus ft. wendy & tink my babies

[nikov]

THIS STORY IS ALREADY OVER. NOTHING CAN BE DONE TO CHANGE IT.

peter pan, j.m. barrie / revenge of the sith, matthew stover / war of the foxes, richard siken / saving mr. banks (2013) / wasteland, baby! hozier / the grand budapest hotel (2014) / mystery of love, sufjan stevens / if we were villains, m.l. rio / exile (ft. bon iver), taylor swift / circe, madeline miller / mr. arkadin, orson welles

[masterhallmark]

It's funny how people genuinely think Disney's Peter Pan is a toned down, sugarcoated version of the character thanks to all those YouTube videos and Reddit posts. (And no, it was never a Grimms Fairytale, Peter Pan was the creation of JM Barrie)

Sure, some darker things were left out of the film, but Disney's Peter does a ton of stuff book Peter would consider crossing the line.

Remember when the Mermaids tried to drown Wendy? In the book, Peter chased them off to rescue Wendy. In the film? He laughed then stopped Wendy when she tried to fight back

Remember in the movie how Peter was going to kick Hook off the rock when he was dangling helplessly? In the book, Peter tried to help Hook up because he didn't want an unfair fight! And then Hook took a cheap shot at him, which disturbed Peter to his core because of just how dirty a trick it was.

Remember how the poorly represented natives were treating Wendy badly and making her do chores in the Disney film? In the book, that scene never happened, and Peter had no romantic interest in Tiger Lily at all, so there was no reason for Wendy to be upset. Heck, he mistakenly thought Tiger Lily wanted to be his mom, because he thought that was all girls could be to boys!

Remember how he seemed grumpy the lost boys were leaving? In the book, he gives his backstory on how when he tried to return to his parents, the window was barred shut, and that was what made Wendy decide they needed to go home. Wendy and her brothers were planning on staying as long as they liked before realizing their parents might get over their grief and move on. He warned them of what he believed would happen if they stayed too long. (The narrator does note that it's unknown if Peter was remembering what happened correctly, but that Peter believed it.)

And despite popular belief, no, Peter wasn't killing kids in the book (he almost killed one, but that's because he thought the kid murdered Wendy. The claim he kills Lost Boys when they grow up is from an out of context throwaway line touted on clickbait channels)...he killed pirates, but they were trying to kill him, too (we never find out who actually started the fight. A lot of people assume Peter did, but it's implied he cut Hook's hand DURING a battle, so they might have been at it for a while before the incident)

Disney's Peter Pan isn't the toned down version of the character... he's actually MEANER in the Disney film than in the book! Particularly to Wendy.

Also, while we're at it, Tinkerbell didn't betray Peter in the book. Hook had accidentally stumbled upon their hideout after accidentally sitting on their chimney, which was disguised as a large mushroom.

Hook was also trying to poison all the Lost Boys btw, so don't believe that "hOoK wAs TwYinG tO sAvE ThEm uwu" crap.

[not-wholly-unheroic]

A Comparative Analysis of Hook’s Ship and Cabin in Popular Media Portrayals

Part 4: Peter Pan (2003)

P.J. Hogan’s 2003 film is full of life and color, and Isaacs’ Hook is likewise a colorful character who, though grounded in reality, most definitely has a flair for the dramatic and a taste for the finer things in life.

Like the other Hooks we have seen thus far, Isaacs’ Jolly Roger appears to be the large stereotypical pirate ship that all children think of, despite the impracticality of a slower vessel in actual piracy. (By this point, I think we should just assume that all Hooks go for form over function when it comes to their choice of ship.) It’s a gorgeous ship, and I do wish we got more close-ups of the outside of this particular Roger so we could see more of what’s going on with all the decorative work on the outside of the cabin and the figurehead, etc. One thing, though, that stands out about this ship is that the mainsail itself has a giant skull and crossed swords on it. This would be completely impractical for any actual ship, as the enemy would see them coming and know they were pirates right off the bat…lending credence to the idea that this ship (and this Hook) may be deeply shaped by the children’s imagination. Then again…what else should we expect of a pirate ship whose name itself is the Jolly Roger?

The shots we get of the inside of Isaacs Hook’s cabin reveal the living space of a man who is accustomed to a decadent lifestyle but not so over-the-top as to be entirely unrealistic. While his beautifully decorated harpsichord is the centerpiece of the room, we also notice that he has several tables, a couch, and a globe.

This is about all we can tell from the in-film shots of the cabin, but some promotional material and a pirate-themed hotel that purchased a few set pieces from the film and set up their own room to mimic Hook’s can give us a few ideas about what the rest of the cabin might look like. (Big shout-out to @annabellioncourt for providing several of these bonus material images!)

In the one promotional photo, there is what looks like a lute, perhaps, in the background. I also love the little detail of the skull and crossbones on the candle stand…and his li’l stripey socks.

Here we can see the full-sized bed with a gun and what looks like it might be an Eton crest over it. (Note that if you pay close attention in Hook’s intro scene in the film, you will actually see that the tattoo on his left arm is an Eton crest as well.)

Isaacs Hook also has a self-portrait in his cabin, it seems…which interestingly has a date on the frame of 1742. This is about the most specific we get with ANY Hook as far as time period goes. This is after the Golden Age of Piracy had really already come to an end, though it’s technically possible he might still have been “Blackbeard’s bosun” depending on his age, as Blackbeard’s career ended in 1718 in a battle off Ocracoke Island, NC. Isaacs himself was around 40 years old when the filming was done, so if we want to assume Hook was around the same age when he came to Neverland and the portrait was done shortly before then, he would have been around 16 at the time of Blackbeard’s downfall. A bit young but…it’s possible if he started his career at sea early. Cabin boys usually started out around age 12 but could be as young as 8-ish on occasion. However…this wouldn’t really track with Hook being an Eton student. Assuming he actually graduated, he would have been at the school until he turned 18. So while Isaacs Hook may have very well been a sailor or even more specially a pirate prior to Neverland…he likely wasn’t a peer of Blackbeard or the other more well-known pirates of the early 1700s.

One last thing that is interesting to me is that in addition to the more standard weapons/tools like chains, guns, and boarding axes that we see in some shots, this version of Hook keeps what looks like an entire small cabinet of various tinctures and powders. At least the one of them which he removes is poison, but one wonders….are they all different kinds of poison? Or are some, perhaps, medicinal in nature or for recreational use?

As a whole, Isaacs’ Hook is, I think, perhaps one of the most realistic portrayals of the character. While there are some highly fanciful aspects to his ship—like the giant skull on the mainsail—much of his personal space has the lavish furnishings one might expect of someone with an aristocratic background without feeling too entirely impractical. Add to that a concrete date on the portrait, and I’d say this Hook is more grounded in reality than nearly any of the others we’ve encountered so far.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

I know I’ve spoken about my issues with ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ (2023) before, both in my initial thoughts post about the film after it released and a couple of smaller comments since, but I’ve realised something this past week after rewatching the original Disney cartoon and the 2003 non-Disney live-action while sick, and I feel I need to talk about it.

It’s about Wendy Moira Angela Darling.

While I stand by that Ever Anderson was one of the highlights of the film and that she did a great job as Wendy, the Wendy in the film is not really the Wendy seen in Barrie’s book, nor the one in the play and other films adaptations. It’s a very different character in a lot of ways, and while it’s normal for characters to differ from adaption to adaptation - especially over the course of 70+ years - I feel like the Wendy seen in the 2023 is more like Jane, Wendy’s daughter, from Disney’s Return to Neverland sequel in 2002.

Let me preface by saying that I actually love Jane in the sequel as a character - I see a lot of myself in her, and while the sequel in itself is not really my favourite, I do have some nostalgia for it because I grew up with it and it’s a cute little story. I like that Jane is actually different from Wendy in a lot of ways; she’s a lot more headstrong and more of a tomboy, and while she’s also a storyteller at times like her mother (mostly to her brother Danny), she is a lot more practical I think and seems to be opposite to Wendy in that she’s trying to grow up too fast. Wendy believes in Peter Pan and doesn’t want to grow up, meanwhile Jane believes Peter Pan to be silly childish nonsense, that she has to grow up quickly and be more adult due to the war/her father being away - Wendy says to her, “you think you’re very grown up - but you have a great deal to learn”.

Obviously the 2023 Wendy doesn’t want to grow up, that’s still the same, but in terms of personality, temperament and the way she treats her brothers after the broken mirror incident (blaming John for it), she reminds me more of Jane than Wendy. Like Jane, she also doesn’t seem to have a good time going to Neverland (at least not at first?) and she seems to take on a lot more action than Wendy did in the animated film.

Of course, it’s not the first time that we’ve seen Wendy wielding a sword and fighting pirates - the 2003 Wendy was shown to play with wooden swords and use real ones, even remarking, “who are you to call me ‘girlie’?!”. I’m not saying that Wendy can’t be a sword wielding girl and fight because she can, it’s one of the additions I love the most about the 2003 film.

The problem with the 2023 version of Wendy is not her being a main character (she has always been a main character), nor her sword fighting and being generally bad-ass - it’s the erasure of the other qualities that make her Wendy Darling.

One of Wendy’s primary character traits is her mothering nature - she is very motherly to her brothers, and when she hears that the Lost Boys don’t have a mother, she’s aghast and agrees to be their mother. The whole “Peter is father, Wendy is mother” idea is clearly a reference to how kids in the playground will play games like “mummies and daddies” - kids imitating what they see around them. It’s all a big pretend game in Neverland for fun. It’s also undeniable that Wendy pretending to be the Lost Boys’ mother is clearly reflective of her own mother, who she adores and is portrayed as the loveliest lady ever, and how she’s imitating Mrs Darling in a lot of ways during this “game” - singing to them, telling them stories, medicine etc.

Some would argue that Wendy is “forced” into being the “mother” and that while all the boys are off having fun, she’s left playing house, which I understand. But what a lot of modern audiences and filmmakers don’t understand these days is that motherhood is NOT an anti-feminist idea - there seems to be this view that portraying a girl wanting to be a mother or expressing the wish to be married/have children is some old-fashioned misogynistic notion, which is absolutely bizarre to me.

As a feminist myself, I believe that there is no clear cut definition of “womanhood” or what it means to be a strong woman with autonomy. Some women want to have careers and not have children, and that’s fine; some women want to have children, that’s fine; some women want both, and that’s fine. What matters is that it’s the woman who is deciding what she wants.

For me, Wendy has always been this remarkable and extraordinary character to look up to because she chooses to grow up - and for her, that means having her own children to tell her stories to. That’s what she wanted, that’s why she went back to England, and that’s part of her character arc, realising that by growing up she has things to look forward to.

For some reason, when 2023!Wendy thinks “happy thoughts” to make herself fly when being walked off the plank, her vision for the future that she looks forward to involves piloting automobiles that haven’t even been invented yet and then dying alone? Which… I mean, if that’s how someone wants to live then fair enough but that’s not Wendy. That’s not the Wendy Darling I grew up loving.

A lot of my issues with the 2023 version of Wendy do in fact link with other issues of the film in general: the Lost Boys including girls, for example. Like I get wanting to be inclusive, and I 100% wanted to be a Lost Girl growing up, but the Lost Boys are boys for a reason (“girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams”), and when Wendy arrives it’s a huge deal because they’ve never actually lived with girls before, and the only concept of girls they have is their memories of “mother”, which is why Wendy becomes their mother figure - because they literally don’t have any other female figures in their lives to compare her to other than the tiny scraps they remember of their mothers.

There’s also the issue of the thing prompting Wendy not wanting to grow up being changed; in the original, it’s because it’s her last night in the nursery and moving from the nursery - aka the room she has spent her entire life thus far in - to her own room is a HUGE transitional worry that a lot of kids probably go through (usually it’s in the form of moving from toddler beds to big kid beds but still). In the 2023 version, she’s being sent off to boarding school for some reason which doesn’t really make sense to me because the Darling parents a) are so poor they have to have a dog as a nursemaid and b) love their children so much that they would never do that to them. I’m not saying that being shipped off to boarding school ISN’T a worry for a young girl or a huge deal, but it isn’t one that I think necessarily fits with the story.

There’s the fact that Wendy is no longer the storyteller; in most versions, the reason Peter visits the nursery is because he likes her stories. Instead, the reason he comes to the nursery is not because he likes her stories but because he used to live in the house? And instead of bringing her to Neverland to tell stories, he comes to take Wendy away as he apparently heard her saying she didn’t want to grow up? It just doesn’t sit right with me, but maybe that’s just my opinion.

Also, for some reason, Wendy and Peter don’t actually seem to like each other at all in the 2023 version - I’m not saying there should have been romantic hints or whatever, but even just in a friendship way they really don’t seem to care in any way about each other. They just seemed rather indifferent towards each other, and it’s kind of jarring to see.

In some ways, I feel like 2023 Wendy was made a little too bad ass and on the nose super feminist: “this magic belongs to no boy!”, slapping Peter across the face (which was just…??? Why?!?!), constantly criticising Peter/Neverland, having WAY more action and heroic moments than Peter Pan himself… maybe in a different story it could have worked but for this one, it came across forced at times, like they were intentionally trying to show “look! Look how badass she is! She can fight off grown men all by herself! She doesn’t need a boy to help her! She can do everything by herself!”

This is why I feel like the 2003 version of Wendy is the best one (so far): while they modernised her slightly by making her sword fight and express an ambition to write novels about her adventures, she was still a storyteller and motherly figure to the Lost Boys/her brothers. For me as a child, seeing Wendy be the storyteller and her journey of acceptance about having the grow up was really important to me because I could completely relate to it.

Of course, I recognize I’m very biased because this is the one I grew up with (along with the animated Wendy of course) so I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts!

[tofangirlonly]

Forever upset at whoever was in charge and looked at Jeremy Jordan as J.M. Barrie and said he is not absolutely perfect for this role.

[yen-sids-tournament]

*Finals:* Tinker Bell v Rani

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

New booktok from Luke Arnold! He's reading Peter Pan by JM Barrie for his The First Page of Pajama Party.

[dolls-self-ships]

HE'S SO SILLY

I AM IN LOVE WITH HIM

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

JM Barrie hit the nail on the head with this one...

[adaptations-polls]

Which version of this do you prefer?

This poll is a part one poll; there will be a second part with some further adaptations posted at some point in the future

*Please see under the read more for a note about the "original" work

Normally I put notes in the tags, but this is a large enough one that I wanted to put it on the post itself: the "original" work here is a little complicated, because Barrie wrote a couple different versions and they're very interconnected in ways that makes selecting an original a bit tricky. To the best of my knowledge: Peter Pan as a character first shows up in Barrie's book The Little White Bird, from 1902, in chapters called "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" (the book is not exclusively about him, however). Then in 1904, Barrie writes the play "Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up", which *does* center the character. *Then* in 1906, the chapters from The Little White Bird are expanded into their own book, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. And then finally in 1911, the play's storyline is also used for the book Peter and Wendy. Because of this interconnectivity between versions (as opposed to them just being clear sequels/spinoffs/etc) and the fact that different adaptations don't all unanimously use one of these as their main source point (and some use multiple), the original listed here is encompassing all of them by just being "original literary works".

[ibrainrottomyself]

dare i say the never girls fandom

[illustration-alcove]

Karl James Mountford's illustrated book cover for J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

[masterhallmark]

I figured out the real reason Captain Hook can't beat Peter Pan

Hook is a Fighting Type, and Peter is a Flying Type.

It's Pokemon logic.