Literary Romps @literaryromps - Tumblr Blog

THE MANY FACES OF ELIZABETH BENNET

Greer Garson | Pride and Prejudice (1940) Elizabeth Garvie | Pride and Prejudice (1980) Jennifer Ehle | Pride and Prejudice (1995) Aishwarya Rai | Bride and Prejudice (2004) Keira Knightley | Pride and Prejudice (2005) Ashley Clements | The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-2013) Anna Maxwell Martin | Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) Lily James | Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) Mary Mattison | Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical (2020) Poppy Gilbert | The Other Bennet Sister (2026)

#pride & prejudice by jane austen #we've seen 6/10 #1995 one is so special to me still

queenklu

so i hear tumblr's dying and this moby dick meme idea has lived in my head for literal years...

#moby dick by herman melville

unicorn-wrath

freddiebeg

Ash mambo durbatulûk, ash mambo gimbatul, Ash mambo thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

#lotr

peatbogpirate

Two Towers reread silliness

[Part 1] [commissions open!]

#the lord of the rings #jrr tolkien

barghesthowls

Today I noticed that they bury Lucy Westenra on the first day of Autumn. When darkness begins to grow as light (the meaning of her name) disappears.

#dracula by bram stoker

kaban-bang

no fucking way holy shit

l8too

Happy 21st night of september to all of us who celebrate it

#lord of the rings by jrr tolkien

carefulzombie

people who get so hung up on the blood type conundrum in dracula get annoying real fast. they all have the same blood type through the power of friendship stop asking questions okay it’s FINE

#dracula #dracula daily

bladefucker2

"You can't ship that, that's unethical and abusive!" Oh baby that's the only reason i find it interesting. Imagine playing toys with a plain white brick. My toys have multitudes. My toys are how i reach further dimensions.

#Howard roark #Peter Keating #the fountainhead #Ayn Rand

frodo-of-the-nine-fingers

you can just feel the self-congratulatory glee of whoever named this paint this color, like they truly thought they were so funny and i think you're so funny paint color naming man good job paint man

the-real-seebs

never use this color on a wall you're going to be living with for a while, it looks okay at first but holy shit man

boomcomplains

Okay, but don't leave this in the tags, man.

#the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

drawing-dinos82

decided to compile a list of all Victor Frankenstein’s medical symptoms and why they occurred. I’m only on page 49 but I have 24 things listed and many concerns for this fictional man. He convulses and has tachycardia a lot.

#frankenstein by mary shelley #victor is a little bitch baby

biglawbear

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

biglawbear

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

biglawbear

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

biglawbear

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

#lord of the rings by jrr tolkien

flagellant

we dont really talk about it but HP Lovecraft just kinda looks like the guy who'd write all that shit like have you seen his portrait photo that man looks like he'd get a blue ribbon at the county fair for "soggiest, shakiest rabbit"

flagellant

this is the face of a man with social anxiety and racism so bad that the life he lived is scientifically indistinguishable from the average Amnesia: The Dark Descent protagonist

knightofleo

The racism was a load-bearing beam.

#h.p. lovecraft

himedanshihozier-moved-deactiva

would you guys read a book about an anthropologist who falls in love with a reanimated bog body?

yes

no but you should still write it

HUH?!?

kay's button do not press

Voting ended onMay 30, 2025

trying to determine if this is something people would be interested in. feel free to reblog if you want.

literaryromps

Accidentally hit "no"!!!!! Give us the bog smut pleeeease

specialagentartemis

“Be curious about what you’re writing about” is not stock Common Writing Advice but it really, really should be. There are a lot of written works that fail due to the authors just being obviously incurious about what they are writing about.

wizardshark

Yeah we've all seen the opposite though. I do NOT need 10 pages of information on the Paris sewage system mid-story

azeofspades

Maybe YOU don't. Coward

wizardshark

Victor Hugo isn't going to fuck you!!

largishcat

he would if he was alive. man was famously A Slut

#les miserables by victor hugo

ellynneversweet

Darcy’s introduction in Pride and Prejudice is really ‘what if you had just had the worst month of your life because your ex-bestie tried to lover boy scam your baby sister out of her share of your dad’s life insurance and your friend dragged you to a shitty party in a dive bar in the neighbourhood where he’d just signed a short term lease, and you decided to let your bad mood show because you were never going to see any of the assholes in this stupid shitty bar EVER again. And your friend ended up making out with a girl he’d just met there while you were stuck talking to her sister who was less cute and then her mother appeared and started trying to matchmake and started saying how if she was twenty years younger she’d clime you like a redwood and ooooh is that a black Amex, guess the next round is on you hahhahahahaha, while her other sister (how many fucking sisters does she have?!) flashed an obviously fake ID at the bar and ordered six vodka-diet red bulls and no one in her family except the less-cute sister even tried to stop her. And you went home and consoled yourself that you would never see any of these people again but then you met them over and over again because they live next door and your friend and the cute sister keep meeting up to make out but not actually date and then. You fall in love with the less-cute sister because it turns out she’s really witty and charismatic but she already knows and remembers and resents the fact that on a day when you were in a shitty mood you called her mid out loud in a dive bar.’

#pride and prejudice by jane austen

firawren

Mr. Bennet: Sure, I haven't taken care of my daughters' financial security, but have I at least taken care of their education? No. But have I taken care of their emotional needs? Also no. But have I been a good protector and supervisor? I'm afraid not. However, have I been a good example for my children of being a kind and respectful spouse, parent, and all around human being? No again. But through it all, have I nailed being funny? Yes. And isn't that the most important role of a father after all?

#pride and prejudice by jane austen #oh you NAILED it