officialleotolstoy

[officialleotolstoy]

while trying to make any of the characters in great comet more nuanced is kind of a lost cause due to how out of context it is, the sanitization of pierre truly does kill me because pierre is many things but he is never supposed to just be an explicitly Good Man. and in the case of great comet it truly does feel less like an oversight and more like a conscious decision to make pierre seem less complicated and therefore easier to position as a good, kind, main character when that's just... not who he is. i understand why that's the way that a Musical would decide to position him, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating as a war and peace fan

the specific way that the duel is added kind of baffles me because i do think it benefits from the added context in theory but rather than just providing context it instead warps it and i end up questioning what purpose it really serves? throwing in a random event from literally 5 years earlier in the novel's timeline without adding any of the fallout is such a questionable decision and truly just leads to such a warped perception of hélène and pierre's relationship

by having pierre be certain of hélène's infidelity before the duel with dolokhov, it completely writes over the purpose of the duel in the first place. in the novel, this is the moment where pierre begins hating hélène, where he decides he has to leave and therefore sets off on the beginning of his spiritual journey. it's also notable that the affair is never actually explicitly said to be happening, either. pierre hears a Rumor and he reacts violently to both dolokhov and to her, threatening to kill her and throwing a marble slab at her before leaving petersburg. meanwhile, the musical takes place 5 years later where he has (reluctantly) reunited with her and he's currently [insert the lyrics of 'pierre' here], etc etc. he's resigned to his loveless marriage already, so the duel cannot have anywhere near the emotional impact nor purpose that it did in the novel. so what is its purpose in the great comet???

the easiest answer is that in contextualizes why hélène is so well-suited to be the one to "seduce" natasha and ease her worries about not being loyal to andrei, but even then that was never the way that hélène seduced natasha. she seduced her with her beauty and influence because those were things that natasha admired and wanted. so it's not exactly necessary there. the other explanation is to position her as a more clear antagonist for pierre, but this also just pushes him further into that "bumbling and kind guy who things kinda just happen to" role that isn't entirely inaccurate but isn't really accurate either

you can't have his violence towards her after the duel because the duel in the context of the musical doesn't have the same emotional impact from the novel that led to that outburst but without it and without the context of it being his reaction to a rumor (meanwhile it's blatant and shown directly in the musical, giving him "reason" to hate her), it just positions pierre as a victim rather than a violent participant, which he was. when he speaks to her during the 'find anatole' scene in the novel, she is Afraid of him and she's afraid of him Because he has actually physically threatened her before. taking that kind of weight away from their characters is frankly boring and annoying, especially in terms of the conclusions it leads great comet fans to draw

[officialleotolstoy]

is there a war and peace fandom i need to talk about how smitten rostov is with tsar alexander. where are the war and peace yaoi accounts

[officialleotolstoy]

what really gets me about the whole bolkonsky family gender situation is not just that andrei and his dad expect marya to do a ton of emotional labor (in the narrow sense) and caretaking work for them, but that they never acknowledge even to themselves that this is what they're doing. especially after nikolenka is born, they are both super dependent on her and can't admit it. the old prince makes fun of marya for being an "old maid" but the obvious reason why she's single and living at home into her twenties is that she's the primary caregiver for both an aging adult and a young child. that entire family would fall apart without her! and no one ever says it, to the point that I think a lot of readers even fail to pick up on it.

you kind of expect this from the old prince, because of his abusive enmeshment dynamic with marya (which you could argue stems a lot from the fact that he emotionally and physically relies on her to a level that he can't intellectually handle). but what's even weirder is that andrei also does it. marya raises his son for him and he never once expresses anything like gratitude. they have some cute sibling moments when they're coparenting nikolenka at bald hills, but the dynamic is that marya does the day-to-day childcare and then andrei comes in and overrules her whenever she makes a decision she doesn't agree with. and he's just kind of generally condescending to her in a way that he's clearly picked up from absorbing his dad's misogynist background radiation—there's that one scene where he and pierre come to bald hills and find marya hanging out with some pilgrims, and andrei's immediate reaction is to belittle and make fun of her to a degree that pierre gets a little freaked out by it and apologizes to her for him. and andrei never seems to realize that this is what he's doing, to a level where it starts to seem like cognitive dissonance. it's very...realistic.

[officialleotolstoy]

babygirl Im balding over you

Glue it back on

[officialleotolstoy]

reading classics on my own has intimidated me for a long time but im trying to get over that. so i started war and peace (because of the great comet). this is so fun actually. they tied a bear and a police man together and threw him in the river??? thats so funny. leo i will listen to the rest of what you have to say

[officialleotolstoy]

He is NOT. SKINNY!!! (picks up a chair and throws it at the wall and it splinters into a hundred pieces of wood) AAAAGGHGGGHHHGGGH (rips the glass pane from the window and smashes it over a vase causing both items to shatter into shrapnel) (and the ground is covered in sharp fragments of wood and glass and ceramic and I use my powers to swirl them all into the air launch them directly towards you. For drawing him skinny)

[officialleotolstoy]

i'm going to be real with you i fully believe nikolai rostow is just gay. i'm only on page 935 but i feel pretty sure about this. i think he doesn't like women.

[officialleotolstoy]

no one ever told me how bisexual War and Peace is. like. outright. they're just randomly falling in love with and thinking about fucking other men. okay.

[officialleotolstoy]

sigh......... thry could never handle a diva!.....

kinda lazy just had to draw smth to get started today sigh... :]

[officialleotolstoy]

13, 50 & 81

13. Ghost River by Nightwish

Believe it, we live as we dream

50. Angel of the Small Death and the Codeine Scene by Hozier

Freshly disowned in some frozen devotion/No more alone or myself could I be

81. Right Here In My Arms by HIM

So hard she’s trying/But her heart won’t turn to stone

[officialleotolstoy]

23!!!

Love, the Hardest Way by HIM

Pretty like a flower on a tomb you are/Kissed blue by the last arrows of the sun

[officialleotolstoy]

let’s beat anatole kuragin to death with hammers reblog to beat anatole with hammers

[officialleotolstoy]

and he smiled like his father, if you even care. coldly. maliciously. you told me once a fallen woman should be forgiven but I didn't say I could forgive. that would be so very noble. But there's a war going on. I can't be that man.

[officialleotolstoy]

thought of something more fun. send me a number 1-100 and I'll tell you my favorite lyric from the song that corresponds on my wrapped playlist

[officialleotolstoy]

Nicolas Rostov is gay

[officialleotolstoy]

friendships end. relationships end. fictional man whos doing even worse than you is forever

[officialleotolstoy]

I know very little abt hazbin but this screenshot is killing me. Fuck dude he sure was.