[maureen2musings]

Misty mornings on Skye

daniel_casson

[robinsfinds]

reading email || 2006

[shesnake]

There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.

[fruitgravies]

codependent 🐰🦊

insta • twt • bsky

[guccifloralsuits]

If THE modern translator of the OG Odyssey text wrote this about my film adaptation I’d kill myself

Emily Wilson you’re goated

[ladytharen]

She absolutely destroyed Nolan in this review O_O

"Without a tub of wax for my ears – which Himesh Patel’s ever anxious Eurylochus, Odysseus’s doomed right-hand man, uses to sail safely past the Sirens – I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples. But unlike Matt Damon, the wax-free Odysseus who is tied to the mast as he is conveyed past the Sirens (naked ladies reclining on some uncomfortable-looking rocks), I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion."

and

"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem."

Well, that tracks for a Nolan film -

"The couple have no chemistry and nothing in common. Throughout his wanderings, the uxorious Odysseus clings to a little doll figure, intended to represent his wife (like the spinning top clutched by Leonardo di Caprio in Inception); the real woman is barely more interesting."

Yikes -

"If you’re not going to compose a script in Homeric Greek, or even in metrical English verse, you might as well use something like conversational American English. But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat."

The lines she calls out in this section will probably make a least a couple of my friends laugh incredulously -

"I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."

....oh my GOD, EMILY -

"The most troubling ethical problem with Nolan’s Odyssey concerns the decision to film part of the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara, thus normalising the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people. It is particularly galling that Nolan used this land simply as a visually striking backdrop for a film that centres, aggrandises and redeems the hero of a territorial war on account of his belated and partial acknowledgment of his own guilt."

And deepest respect that she didn't fail to mention the film's colonialism in production. You can tell she added the very last paragraph saying "'thanks for maybe getting people interested in classics" only because an editor begged her to say something - anything - nice about the movie.

[bigleoenergy]

I wont give you credit for making a character black if you're just going to humilate her at every turn. Rhaena Targaryen was beloved in the Vale, she was catered and comforted. She lived a life of luxury.

Hotd has her eating thrown up lamb, dirtied, starved, hair cut, slapped, and wearing rags. They made her the cause of Jaces death so casual viewers would hate her instead of the greens. So Rhaenyra could hate her and her sister over Alicent for Jaces death. It's actually so sick to witness this humiliation ritual and character assassination.

And no shade, but Heleana should canonly be losing her mind by now. She should be disgusting because she hasn't bathed for days due to going insane. But of course they arent going to show her like that.

[izloveshorses]

'theatre is dying' okay but everyone is flocking to see a beautiful hit musical now that it's been released in the cinema, something more affordable and accessible to most people, and ticket sales in the west end in particular have spiked

'cinema is dying' okay but everyone is flocking to their local cinema to see a beautiful hit musical, and so many have shown up this weekend that licensers decided to extend its theatrical release for another week, a massive rarity in the current climate

maybe the answer to saving art is... seeing art?? and making art accessible??

[mynorthernattitude]

"listen to your body"

my body: go get a cinnamon roll the size of a tire

[miamaimania]

“Cows Up High” ~ Maharashtra, India ◆ They know where the ridge goes; we don’t

[bethanydelleman]

To get Caroline Bingley's character right, you have to understand that she is a foil for both the Bennet sisters and Mr. Darcy.

She is the more rational choice for Darcy vs. the Bennets. She has education, manners, a fortune, and clearly, relatives that he likes. So many fan fiction authors make her vulgar and/or unfashionable, but she isn't! That is why Darcy enjoys hanging out with her in the beginning; he would not have her at his house if she was embarrassing. Even when angry with Elizabeth, Caroline does not dare go further in attacking Elizabeth at Pemberley. She has self control. She understands boundaries, which Jane and Elizabeth mostly do, but the rest of the Bennet family struggles with. This is why she's a foil for them.

As for Darcy, at the beginning, Caroline is a nearly perfect mirror of his opinions and snobby attitude. She is doing this on purpose as a way of flirting, but it's probably pretty close to her real personality anyway. She's right that Darcy looks down on Elizabeth's uncle being a lower class lawyer. She's right that he finds the Bennet family intolerable to marry into. However, as Darcy falls in love with Elizabeth and then reforms, Caroline's mirror distorts. That shows his growth in the novel. She, like Elizabeth, fails to update her priors, though to be fair to Caroline, she didn't build her knowledge of Mr. Darcy on first impressions. It's harder to change her mind because she did once know him very well.

Side note: this is also why people woobyfying Darcy hurts Caroline as a rational character. They start in a very similar place and love mean girl gossiping together, then he changes. When Darcy's flaws are erased, it makes Caroline look super irrational and much crueller.

Lastly, Caroline is above all else, pragmatic and strategic. She does not hold grudges once it becomes more advantageous to drop them. She would never, ever, now that she is connected by marriage to the Bennets, mock them in public. Because that reflects on her! Caroline would be in London talking up that the Bennets are a very old gentry family with an ancient estate or something. She's going to be giving them a PR makeover to all her fancy friends because they are HERS now, for better or for worse and whether she likes any of them or not. Yes, in private she might be mean, as she is in the novel, but again, she's not vulgar and she has nothing to gain in public. She has manners, she has self-control; being a mean girl doesn't override that.

[de8thm8rt]

omg it cracks me up everytime i see reductive posts going “they’re monsters, your mad about the monster show, where monstrous things happen.”

lol no, i think people are more upset by what they feel like is balant south asian and anti black racism on screen and in the writers room. they’re also upset by poor pacing, a poorer quality of writing and production as well as character assassination.

people are upset that a show they loved that tackled issues of race now seems hellbent glorifying and uplifting those issues. Merrick and her grandfather loving the racist bigot tom anderson and thinking he was funny. Daniel calling Louis “louisiana fried chicken.” Lestat calling Louis a “cancerous jackal.” The list goes on and on.

to take valid criticisms individuals hold for this season regarding its handling of race and reduce it to “not being able to handle the monsters being monsters.” Is so fucking obnoxious and insulting to all the reasonable gripes people have with this season. you enjoyed okay. but when other people are listing their reasons for disliking something you can either ignore entirely or take the actual time to understand their perspective instead of immediately getting on the defensive.



[userarmand]

this being buzzier than anything we got in s3 in terms of romance

[kosmogrl]

What does RPF stand for?

real people fucking? i think

[ourholiestlove]

the more i think about the butcher shop scene in ep 7 the more i hate it. it has very racist undertones (are they even undertones at this point? or direct aggressions?), it’s unnecessarily cruel to louis and out of character for armand, but it’s also… so ridiculous. it’s almost comedic. it looks like a skit. all the close-ups to armand’s face, the evil laugh, the reveal that he’d put the steins in between louis’s to fuck with him… it looks like a parody of s2 ep 5. it’s like they recognised the love for the loumand fight scene and decided to replicate it without any sort of soul or meaning behind it. and the result is hollow, empty and ridiculous

[ex-riddlecats]

i'll be honest it gets kind of annoying when ppls immediate canned response to an m/f ship is "she deserves better" because over half the people who say that then proceed to hyperfocus on some yaoi with the man involved and never give the woman a second glance. forgive me but i think she deserves better than being girlbossed off screen and never mentioned again

[kiwimintlime]

*feministly*: women should never be centered in stories because Bad Stuff™ might happen to them

[imaginesapphics]

Absolutely insane to me that episode 7 of the Vampire Lestat is basically just a clip show of the earlier seasons with some new stuff sprinkled in. It’s almost as if they’re trying to tell the audience “wow haven’t we been on such an incredible journey?”

When in reality, editing the show in this way only calls to attention the sharp drop in quality between seasons 1 and 3. Like wow you didn’t need to remind me that this USED to be one of the most well crafted and captivating series on television, I already knew that, but thanks for screaming it at me anyway?

[neverloumandover]

I know we've all said it before, but I keep seeing people be... like that for some reason.

Writing racist characters is very different than having racist writers. In good quality tv, even within —especially within gothic horror— there should be someone challenging such characters. Have someone call Daniel out on his racist bullshit. Have someone call Lestat out on not taking accountability. Even within his narrative, especially within his narrative, having an opposing force is not only interesting but it's necessary to build a story right. But instead what do we have? Louis apologising to Lestat all the time for some reason. Claudia lied about the threat to make Lestat look bad as if he was an angel before that. Armand.... he went from passivity and reaction to malicious planning for no reason.

Why couldn't Daniel focus on trying to break Lestat down? Why couldn't Louis call him out on the company he chooses, and the words he uses?

Why couldn't Louis just have his own damn arc? Why did it have to be a way back to Lestat in the most humiliating and ooc way possible? Louis could have been building his own empire. He could still be drawn to Lestat but have a realisation that their problems never really went away? When he killed Bruce, I thought he'd continue doing that, killing vampires like that, which would lead him to eventually work with Armand.

And Armand would be killing fledglings here and there to clean the mess Lestat is making. Perhaps even fledglings that were made before Lestat started this. And perhaps some vampires that deserved it. Perhaps he would no longer care about their "rest". And then he runs into Louis... and they have a common goal. They have to face each other. Actually talk about the bdsm dynamic (if you're so inclined on them never having done so before). Have Louis admit he hurt Armand but the way Armand hurt him was so so much worse (we both drew blood but those cuts were never equal). Have them fight over killing a vampire, call each other out on false purpose and hypocrisy...

Do something good with the damn story. It's still full of messed up characters and dynamics, it's still about vampires, but it's also interesting cause you get to explore morality within a different frame (another interesting subject could be "are the farms much better than killings? Are the humans really willing?" "Is it better to kill a monster than someone random? Who are you to judge — anyway), have flawed characters that are complicated and make sense.

Don't have a female black character be just manipulative and say things to absolve the white man. Don't make the male black character have no personality (we don't see him care about anything really, even after Claudia he was thinking about Lestat) and reduce his deep love and empathy for others (Daniel, Armand, Claudia, even Lemuel) to nothing just cause you want to have him back with Lestat. Don't make the muslim brown character Jigsaw but without a true motivation and also make him to never have loved anyone truly.

Tldr; TVL is not just gothic horror that we simpletons don't get. It's bad written, deeply racist (and homophobic and sexist) gothic horror (is it even that??)