#they are not great literature

[abovethemists]

I’m sorry, I just think it’s hilarious when anyone in the Bridgerton fandom dogpiles on one specific character as being “problematic” especially ones who haven’t really been in the show yet because, my brothers in Christ, every one of them is problematic.

The books were written in the early 2000s and it shows. Most of the men have daddy trauma that “excuses” their bad behavior. Simon lies to Daphne and uses her naïveté to his advantage. Anthony threatens Kate on their wedding night in the book that she can’t deny him his marital rights. Benedict won’t take no for an answer when Sophie refuses to be his mistress and is an all around dick about it. Colin is angry and jealous that Penelope is more successful than he is and he gets real uncomfortably rough with her a few times. Phillip wants Eloise to parent his kids so he doesn’t have to and is also kind of a dick. I don’t remember enough about the last three books but I’m sure there was problematic stuff in them as well. All the characters think about choking each other a lot for some reason. These characters are flawed and get better! That’s part of the fantasy!

The thing is, the show is better in a lot of ways. They left out a lot of the shitty things Anthony did (though getting all the way to the altar with Edwina was a new kind of hell). There’s every reason to believe they’ll do better with Benedict, Colin, Phillip etc.

This was mostly prompted by seeing so much hate for Phillip specifically when all he’s done in show so far is step up and take care of his brother’s kids. I get that Eloise in show is very different from her book counterpart and people think show!Eloise and Phillip would never gel. I agree. They wouldn’t. Which is why show!Phillip is a different character as well. I see so much more grace for all the other dudes and I want to say give show!Phillip a chance. He might be adorable.

[incohorace]

what studying literature feels like

[soracities]

Julia Armfield, from "The Great Awake" [ID in ALT]

[elainiisms]

*me at the club* so does anyone wanna discuss queer undertones in classic literature?

[deviika]

F. Scott Fitzgerald // Daniel Kahneman

[crimsonclad]

I keep seeing Takes about how recent media like Glass Onion and The Menu aren’t taking “eat the rich” seriously enough to launch real change or revolution and like?? yeah??? popular crowd-pleasing entertainment where horrible rich people Suffer A Comeuppance for the pleasure of an audience is one of the oldest tropes in all of human history???? It is a crowd pleaser! It is the bread (ha) and butter of the Western canon! It is in Chaucer it is in Dante it is in Shakespeare it is the stuff of Dickens and 95% of Agatha Christie and almost every teen movie ever made??????? “look at these horrible rich idiots and hypocrites…and now enjoy their DESTRUCTION” transcends time and space and historical moments! It is so strange to be surprised that Hollywood returns to this well without any intention of seeking anything more transgressive than an audience having a hearty chuckle lmao

[linnytheseagull]

More classic literature YouTubers because it's so funny to me

Bonus content:

[epiph-annie]

breathing dreams like air

[natylureechidna]

Three horsemen of horror visual novels

[beatricethestrange]

I might make a part two because there's a lot more I wanted to put.

[plesiosaurchestra]

what if gatsby was a mushroom and he called people “old spore” instead

[nanamis-username]

daisy 🥂

[iamnotshazam]

there is something deeply wrong with nick carraway in gatsby. motherfucker has been disassocating probably since the end of the war. he watches a marriage almost implode in front of him and in the stunned silence afterwards tells the awful husband, "oh yeah i just remembered today's my birthday"

i dont think casual and high school level discussions focus on how deeply weird nick must be in person and how that affects scenes? i vaguely remember analyses usually focusing on daisy and tom and gatsby but they all use nick as a barely functioning soundboard for horrible behavior and when he doesn't say anything are probably thinking "well nick seems so chill he would stop me if this was Truly Weird" and nick is meanwhile staring off into the distance thinking about what he ate last tuesday and that green eyed bilboard

edit: right and the accident literally happens next page so the weirdness of nick is probably skipped over by most readers

[sanguine-prince]

i’m sure i’m not the first to say something like this, but let me tell you about my poc-passing-as-white jay gatsby headcanon!!

for some background, in the 1920s there was an interesting shift regarding (white) skin tones. previously, tans were viewed as a sign that a person worked out in the fields, and therefore a trademark of the lower class. however, slowly after the industrial revolution, it increasingly became a representation of luxury, since the rich upper class would have the time to lounge about and sunbathe at their leisure.

i say all this to show that a poc gatsby would have the ostensible class and wealth for a tan, which would ‘excuse’ a slightly browner skin tone in the public eye.

(the 20s was also the setting of passing by nella larsen, so that’s neat.)

in my vision, he’s biracial (maybe his mother was black & his father was a german immigrant) with skin light enough to pass for white.

the fact that nick states that gatsby keeps his hair neatly groomed and cut might be to prevent it from curling up.

additionally, i think it could contrast tom’s white supremacy & his fear of poc social progress.

it would also create a deeper divide between gatsby and daisy, and once again the contrast between him and tom. in my mind, daisy wouldn’t know about it until the point where tom reveals everything about gatsby’s bootlegging etc. with jay revealing it to her in the car ride back (oops then she hits myrtle).

then, when she chooses tom and the life of comfort, wealth, status, etc that their marriage offers, she also rejects not only gatsby’s new money but also his race.

it’s a lot more thematically significant for the american dream as well—it’s still unattainable and essentially tainted by capitalism, and it also emphasizes that it’s restricted to the white upper class. social mobility only becomes available to gatsby when he disguises his racial identity.

similarly, it fits with gatsby’s identity reconstruction—the quintessential american is white, rich, and educated.

daisy and tom have that ticket into society because they have that inherent thing that he will never have—pedigree, in both class and race. that’s something that even nick has.

(in my mind, he tells nick all about it the night before he dies & nick understands as best he can and doesn’t think less of him, because it further highlights the differences between his & gatsby’s relationship v. gatsby’s relationship with daisy; namely, the transparency -> acceptance give-and-take that he and daisy never had. because of having to hide himself from daisy in order to maintain her affection, he builds an expectation that he must be someone that he is not as well as developing a transactional definition of love (he gives, and people love him as long as he can continue to give) in order to be loved. therefore, nick’s immediate curiosity and fascination with who he truly is is foreign to him. not to get too into their dynamic lmao i just think it’s really interesting.)

finally, the very last part where nick is sitting and looking at the bay and thinking about the first immigrants and their dreams and how gatsby embodied the purity and naivety of those dreams is further exemplified by his racial ‘otherness.’

and there’s,,, technically nothing in the book to explicitly refute this from what i remember!

(n.b.: it has been a hot second since i’ve read tgg, so lmk if i’ve got anything wrong!)

[quotespile]

But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory — letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go? He was gone, so it couldn’t change, it couldn’t turn to indifference. I was stuck with all that love.

Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

[thepersonalquotes]

If an eagle is teaching you to fly, ignore the advice of turkeys.

Matshona Dhliwayo