#A modern retelling of a classic

[shesamreads]

Ooo, Helen is vying for Ares' position. This will be interesting.

I thought this story was going to be between just Achilles and Patroclus, but Katee is throwing Helen into the mix.

You know, it's funny. I didn't plan on using this for the PopSugar Reading Challenge, I was just finishing the series. But it's funny how many prompts it fits! That happened a lot last year, too.

[cannibalistic-vampirefag]

romeo and juliet modern retelling where instead of poison juliet jumps off a cliff and then romeo follows her but she actually had a hidden parachute so there's the split second where they're looking at each other and then she opens the parachute while he keeps falling. and post.

[wuntrum]

bro last night was a sims 2 machinima

[linddzz]

hello, here for your opinion on odysseus! have you read madeline miller’s “circe”? if so, what did you think of odysseus?

Ooooohhhhhhhh you're nudging at a pandoras box asking me my opinions of Madeline Miller 🙃

To answer while holding the full ranting instinct back on a leash (partially bc I legit don't have much time for much typing rn AND I know lots of people like MM and idk I generally don't enjoy making people feel like they shouldn't like a thing, but I also love being salty and this is my constant internal struggle):

With a lot of her characterizations I feel like M.M. either goes too hard making them sympathetic (Circe and Patrocles being the top contenders who come to mind) or she swings too hard the other way. Odysseus is like....fine? He's not outright terrible? But he does fall into her "they are either sympathetic (cougboringcough) beauties with maayybe a couple Tragic Flaws (that are barely flaws, goD why couldn't she just let Circe have full agency and purposely curse Scylla why can't maybe Penelope be as much of a scheming suspicious fucker as her husband GOD these "feminist retelling" authors are too cowardly to touch Medea-nonono the rant is leashed I'm staying on target!) or they are horrible awful people." But she's made so many comments that make me baffled about her academic background in classics (why would you say all the gods are sociopaths Madeline??? that is an actual ancient cultures religion you're trashing??? do you not get how gods are used narratively in stories is not the same as they're worshipped esp in a religion without strict canon??? You know how we all understand that Paradise Lost isnt Christian canon what the F-Not ranting not ranting I'm good!!) lmao. She seems to fall into the common take I see where modern Anglo morality is projected on the characters divorced of the time/culture/narrative they are set in, and then go "omg how did people think this was a hero?"

Anyway I just don't see how people can look at Odysseus being a scheming ratfuck compulsive liar (who is also a great warrior in violent times bc it...was a warrior society who told his story) and go "um he's terrible why would anyone like him as he is originally????" while MCU Loki was so popular they kept bringing him back from the dead to continue being A Scheming Little Bastard.

(EDIT: uh tldr is I read Circe. The entire experience was me going "oooo it's about to get good" and then realizing that Circe is just boring the whole time. Came out the other end with more feelings about how M.M. writes women than Odysseus, but her Odysseus is part of a trend of doing a lot of black and white morality shenanigans)

[trans-cuchulainn]

i have a note in my phone that was meant to be for keeping track of my opinions about various retellings so i could eventually do a round up and recommend them but is PURELY just me bitching about them at this point

it's fun to see the common threads in my bitchiness tho. "why the fuck is merlin ENGLISH" being one that shows up a few times

[samglyph]

Hadestown… good

[francesderwent]

I can’t take it anymore.

you realize, don’t you, that they haven’t made a good muppet retelling since 1996? I understand that Jim Henson had already died at that point, but a lot of the old guard was still deeply involved. and his son directed both A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, and he hasn’t been involved in anything since, except in an executive producer role.

the Muppets themselves--the characters, the puppets--have a kind of magic. sure. but the fact that I haven’t seen anyone on here mention Muppets Most Wanted ever, let alone the NBC series or the Disney+ “improv” show, means that their magic has a limit. the story has to be told by somebody who gets it. the Muppet properties that we all know and love were made by a group of friends, many of whom had been working together for literal decades. you can’t just expect whoever’s calling the shots at Disney to throw Kermit and Gonzo into your favorite classic novel and create something of the same caliber, let alone with the same heart.

[eoneill18]

I want a modern retelling of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where Dr Jekyll is just a chill dude, with some issues. And Mr Hyde is a snobby, Victorian era Gentleman, who struggles to keep his disgust in check.

basically,

Jekyll: Sup

Hyde: Unhand me you peasant!

[woodsteingirl]

compiling these btw. okay i guess…

[shesamreads]

Is Rupert a vampire that turns into a mosquito? Is someone going to die in the bread oven?

I lost my dad to cancer. I know that everyone grieves differently, and losing a spouse is different that losing a parent, but Rupert is being absolutely awful. Even using that as an "explanation, not an excuse" is bullshit.

Also, this is how I'm picturing Rupert

(Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows) (I'm woefully behind on this show)

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OH DAMN. GET FUCKED, RUPERT

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Ok, but you haven't bought the house and you haven't paid for the house and you have even PUT AN OFFER IN ON THE HOUSE. How do you figure it's yours, Rupert?

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oh shit

OH SHIT

did Michael kill Rupert? Is he going to cook Rupert in the bread oven? Will anyone miss him, since he works for himself and he's a widower and he "wants to leave the UK"?

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Ok, Michael. Make your lies believable.

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This novella has a lot of Lamb to the Slaughter vibes.

[aidenwaites]

The tragedy of watching two very good video essays only to discover its the only two video essays the creator has made so far

[thebaronmunchausen]

will file under "beacon of hope for Philippine cinema"

[bookishlyvintage]

Today's Book Look: Lord of the Fly Fest [x]

[suits-of-woe]

im sick of classic lit retellings trying to make the characters better (read: more palatable by modern standards) i want retellings that find new and fascinating ways to make those bitches worse

[emberuby]

in your arms forever — masterlist | p.js

warnings: sexual and violent content (mdni!!), heavy angst, fem! reader, arranged marriage au, old money au, greek mythology modern retelling, classicism, infidelity (slightly), some fluff, second chance romance (kinda?), sort of urban fantasy, warning will be updated as more chapters come out

summary: modern retelling of the greek myth of eros and psyche. where jongseong is the heir of aphrodite corp. and you are the daughter of a wealthy business owner. due to the vengeful ways of jongseong's mother, her and her son blackmail your father in exchange for your hand in marriage, threatening the stability of your life, including your relationship with park sunghoon. (this story is based on many of the romance novels i love to read <3)

note: i have some experience with writing but this is actually my first fan fiction so please be patient with me!

series taglist: @nshmrarki, @strxwbloody, @anittamaxwynnn, @heeheeyeoiizz01, @star4rin, @yohanabanana, @lilyuwon, @delvziion, @tinyteezer, @partiallyderived, @liebe-love, @honeybunnee, @tmtxtf, @yunjinhuhjennifer, @jaehyuniewifeu, @heelovesmeknot, @a-l-i-y-a, @littlebambi1302, @shawnyle, @taerifin

prologue. chapter one. chapter two. chapter three. epilogue. — wip

[princesssarisa]

My post about whether or not Lydia should be saved from Wickham in modern Pride and Prejudice retellings has gotten more likes and reblogs than I expected. It's made me think of another possibility of why Austen didn't save her from him.

Presumably, Lydia and Wickham's marriage could have been avoided in only three ways that would have left Lydia's reputation intact. The first is if they had only been planning to elope, but it was prevented, as with Georgiana. The second is if they had been found earlier and separated before Lydia lost her virginity. Or else Lydia could have listened to Darcy and left Wickham, and then Darcy could have used his influence to protect her honor: e.g. by claiming that she was kidnapped, or by arranging a decent marriage for her.

If Austen had wanted to make any of those choices to free Lydia, she could have done it without drastically changing the plot. But if she had, it might have felt a bit too "literary" and unrealistic.

I've just been re-watching some of Dr. Octavia Cox's literary analysis videos on YouTube. They reminded me that Austen always loved to skewer the tropes and clichés of other literature, especially Gothic melodrama, whether in outright parody or in subtler deconstruction.

Dr. Cox's video on the elder Eliza's fate in Sense and Sensibility particularly highlights this trend in Austen. She argues that Eliza's story is a classic, clichéd Gothic melodrama (a beautiful orphan, an abusive uncle, thwarted romance, forced marriage to a cruel man, a "fall" into a life of "sin," and ultimate illness and death, all narrated by Colonel Brandon in heightened, poetic language), and that Austen's point in including it was arguably to highlight that this wouldn't be the fate of her heroines. Marianne comes close to it with Willoughby and with her near-fatal illness, but in the end she's saved. Austen's point was arguably to say "Yes, I know all about this type of melodrama, I know all the clichés, but I'm relegating it to the backstory, because that's not what I want to write."

(I don't know if everyone would interpret the elder Eliza's storyline this way, but it's how Dr. Cox reads it.)

Maybe with Lydia's fate, and with the backstory of how Georgiana was freed from Wickham, Austen was doing something similar.

I'm not enough of an expert on Georgian literature to know if the rescuing of girls from predatory men with their virginity and honor intact was a cliché or not. But it does appear in late 18th century comic opera. For example, Mozart's Don Giovanni: the title character is the ultimate womanizer, but he has no success with any of the women he tries to prey on over the course of the opera. His seductions are stopped by the timely, chance arrivals of his enemies, his victims get away unscathed, and he pays for his crimes with his life in the end. Or The Marriage of Figaro: the Count's designs on Susanna are thwarted, and he's humiliated and forced to beg his wife's forgiveness.

If stories of womanizers being thwarted and punished, and their female victims saved with virtue intact, were as common in the literature of the day as they are in opera from that era, then maybe Austen used Wickham and Lydia to deconstruct them.

We definitely see some skewering of poetic cliche in the fact that despite Mrs. Bennet's fears/hopes, Lydia's honor is saved with a bribe instead of a duel.

Maybe like the Eliza backstory in Sense and Sensibility, the backstory of Georgiana's near-elopement can be read as a more perfect "literary" example of a girl escaping a cad's clutches. The elopement was thwarted partly by pure chance, as Darcy paid a surprise visit just before Wickham and Georgiana meant to run off, and partly because Georgiana was a “good victim,” whose conscience got the better of her and who chose her family and honor over her whirlwind romance.

But similar luck isn't on Lydia's side, nor does she make the right, “virtuous" choices. Darcy doesn't find the lovers until Lydia has already been living with Wickham, and like a typical reckless teenager, she cares nothing for either her reputation or her family compared to her infatuation with him. So Darcy is forced to bribe Wickham to marry her, Wickham goes unpunished except that he loses his hope of marrying rich, and all the characters have to live with the results of the scandal for the rest of their lives.

By having Georgiana's successful escape from Wickham be mere backstory while foregrounding Lydia's lack of escape, maybe once again Austen was saying "I could have freed Lydia this way – I know the tropes other authors might have used to free her – but I'm a more cynically realistic writer than that, so I won't."

I have no idea if this is valid or not, but it's a theory.