#im going to write this book damn it

[inkprilled]

Screw it , I'm going to write this book.

[vivitalks]

Last night I saw the Great Gatsby musical. Before I went, I reread the Great Gatsby book (for the first time since 11th grade!) to get a refresher on the source material and the original story. Having the book so fresh in my mind made seeing the musical really interesting, and now I am going to do something I never thought I'd do, which is post some lengthy meta about The Great Gatsby. If you haven't seen the musical, this post may still be interesting to read, but it does contain some mild spoilers, so I leave that up to you. If you also haven't read the book, godspeed lol.

There's a lot I could talk about here when it comes to the way the book was adapted for the stage. But there's one particular thing I want to zero in on in this post, and that's the "unreliable narrator" of it all.

In the book, Nick Carraway is our narrator. He's an unreliable narrator practically by default - the idea is that he's retelling events that occurred two years prior, from memory. But even knowing that Nick is probably not reporting all events and characters with complete accuracy, it's hard to know which parts exactly are wrong, or what might have happened in reality, because even though he's an unreliable narrator, he's still the only narrator and this is the only version of events we know. We're forced to take Nick as our surrogate and take him at his word. Until the musical.

(I wondered how the show was going to deal with the fact that the story of Great Gatsby is not only told by an unreliable narrator but also by an outside perspective - generally speaking the events of the Great Gatsby aren't happening to Nick, they're just kind of happening around him. Yet he's the voice of the story, so in that way he's central to it, and I was curious how they were going to balance that fact with the fact that Gatsby is functionally the main character.

I think they struck a really good balance in the end. Nick's beginning and ending lines, lifted verbatim from his book narration, frame him clearly as the anchor of the story - I think that's the best word for it; the audience jumps from scene to scene, many but not all of which contain Nick, but we know that Nick is always going to be where the action is, or that he will at least know about it. He may not be the main character, but he's an essential character. But I digress a little bit.)

The difference between the way the story is imparted to the audience in the book versus in the musical boils down to this: in the book, Nick "plays" every character, so all their dialogue and actions, their mannerisms and the way they're described and reported, it's all informed by the beliefs Nick holds about them. Whether he means to or not, his biases paint certain characters in certain lights, and because he is our eyes and ears to the story, we have no choice but to absorb those biases.

But in the musical, every character is literally played by a different actor. Nick can only speak for himself. Nick can only tell his own parts as they happened. He may be "telling" the story, but we're watching the story. We have the benefit of an unblemished perspective on things - we can watch the events the way they actually unfold, regardless of how Nick believes or remembers they went down.

This difference - between Nick as the narrator and Nick as merely his own voice - is crucial in how the musical develops each character, some of them fairly different from how Nick described them in the book. And there's one book-to-stage change - a fairly small one, all things considered - that, to me, illustrated this difference perfectly.

There's a line towards the end of the Gatsby book. Something Nick says in narration, after his final conversation with Tom Buchanan, talking about how Tom gave away Gatsby's name and location to George Wilson (which ultimately led to Gatsby's death). Nick writes:

"I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

When I read this line in the book, I couldn't help vehemently agreeing. Screw those rich assholes! Money does corrupt! Tom and Daisy ARE careless wealthy people! It was easy to side with Nick, not only because he was the only perspective on the situation that I had, but also because he said this in internal response to a conversation with Tom, who, I think we can all agree, is a major jackass and a deeply unsympathetic character.

But in the musical, this line is spoken aloud by Nick. And he says it to Daisy, in her house, as she's packing up to skip town after Gatsby's death. In fact, he doesn't just say it; he shouts it, visibly and audibly outraged at her audacity to lead Gatsby on, ghost him, skip his funeral, and then move away to avoid the fallout. Nick is angry and highly critical of Daisy. But because we're no longer confined to his shoes, we also get to see Daisy's reaction - not as Nick remembers it, but as Daisy actually reacts. And because of that, we're able to really see, and confirm, that "Daisy is rich and careless" is not the full story.

I have to credit Eva Noblezada for a phenomenal performance (duh). Daisy in this scene is emotional, grieving, and it's clear she has been trying to contain these feelings for the sake of her husband and her own sanity. She's remorseful, not that Gatsby is gone necessarily, but that she allowed herself to entertain the fantasy of running away with him, only for it to be torn from her. She is trying to make the best of her unavoidable reality. And then Nick tears her a new one, calling her careless, accusing her of destroying things and being too rich to care.

And as I watched that scene, I was no longer wholly on Nick's side. I understood that this situation was so much more complex than Nick's chastisement acknowledged. Sure, Daisy wasn't innocent, but she also wasn't the callous rich girl Nick made her out to be. She did love Gatsby. And she also had a whole life with Tom. She had a daughter. She was a woman in the 1920s! That's a kind of life sentence even wealth can't erase.

The way Daisy responded may not quite have landed with Nick (if we consider the kind of fun possibility that the musical is the events as they happened and the book is Nick retelling those events as he remembers them two years later, then clearly Nick's disdain for Daisy's actions overtook whatever sympathy he felt for her), but the musical gave Daisy the opportunity to appeal to us. The audience. Having this omniscient perspective of things allowed us to draw our own conclusions, and I found myself a lot more sympathetic towards Daisy when I could both see and hear how she responded to Nick's verbal castigation.

In the book, Nick is the narrator. In the musical, Nick is a narrator. But he's no longer the sole arbiter of the story. The audience got to make our own judgements on the events as we witnessed them. Every one of us was a Nick - beholden to our own biases, maybe, but at least not beholden to his.

[defiledtomb]

hellooo, I hope you're feeling well! I was wondering however if ouroboros was still being worked on or if it's on hiatus. Hope I wasn't rude in asking

I don't feel it's rude, after all, I have been keeping the development close to my chest. It is still being worked on, edited and transferred into renpy with graphics and soundbytes galore! However, right now, since about three weeks back, I left my partner of 8 years in the middle of the night with just a change of clothes, my dog, and a laptop. I'm struggling hard but putting on a brave face-- right now I'm coming up with a concept of something else to work on until I get a proper apartment and can get my stationary PC back so I can get back to work on ouro. I'll make a proper post about it tomorrow, so keep an eye on this space!

[stevethehairington]

really fucking sick and tired of people who really fucking love the eddie book jumping on people who don't like or are even remotely critical of it's posts and like crusading their opinions around from the top of their high horses and shoving it down our throats.

if you like the book, great! that's awesome! love that for you! i am genuinely glad that you were able to find good in it and enjoy it!!

but not everyone did, and not everyone is going to agree with you. so, instead of going on some grand crusade where you find every single post that includes anything even remotely negative or negative adjacent or even neutrally critical and spending ALL this time and effort trying to provide unwanted rebuttals to every single thing, maybe you should just stay in your lane and find people who DO like the book and chat about it with them.

because i can PROMISE YOU, none of us appreciate it when you come onto our posts and start accusing us of "hating on" the author or "being rude" about her and her work and RIDICULOUS shit like that.

being critical of something and pointing out it's flaws is NOT inherently hating on it. i, frankly, do not know where people got that notion, but it's not fucking true so can we fucking quit assuming it is? and, critiquing something is also NOT the same as saying this is shit and it sucks and the author is a piece of garbage. again, where the fuck that came from is beyond me. you can be critical of something and still enjoy it. as soooo many of you love to point out, it's not perfect, why should it be perfect? so D U H. of course that means criticism can and should arise???

also. hot take (by which i mean ice fucking cold because it's NOT a fucking hot take), but going around toting FALSE facts as part of your "defense" does not make you or your argument look good. you, like the author, should maybe do a basic fact check first. 🙃

tldr, if you like the book, that's genuinely great, but stay in your fucking lane and stop seeking out posts from people who didn't like it to start shit in the notes.

[ace-with--a-mace]

i hate ai so bad not just because it's morally evil or that its going to take over the human race, but i truly think people are so stupid for using and engaging with generative ai. i have classmates who cant write emails without having chatgpt write and proofread it for them. i know people who only use gauth ai to do their math work and then wonder why they dont understand the material and are failing the class. i have friends who will bash ai generated slop to hell and then in the same breath claim that ai songs and ai generated deepfakes of vines are the funniest thing on the internet.

i hate how every app, every website, every store and every ad pushes ai in my face. i hate how its the main selling point of products, every company racing to add their shitty ai generated virtual assistants onto every device that i own. i hate the excessive imposure of ai in every crevice of my life. i hate how i have to look at every miniscule detail of artwork on pinterest to see if the pin was made with purpose and soul or if it was a prompt churned out by a machine. i hate how people are publishing ai generated books, making ai generated songs, writing ai generated movies, and talking to ai generated people. i hate how this parasite can weasel its way into every aspect of content creation and that there is no way to escape it.

i hate character ai, meta ai, snapchat ai, whatever the name of elon musk's ai assistant is called, spotify ai, google ai, and any other ai agent meant to replicate real people.

i believe that the growing reliance on generative content is going to create generations of incompetent people who are unable to discern real from fake, who wont be able to think critically, engage with media intellectually, or learn to learn from their mistakes. i fear that this is going to leave people more susceptable to scams, political propaganda and misinformation, while also influencing them to be dismissive of real talent and real heart and real effort and real connections and everything that makes humanity good.

i pray that people will wake up soon and see how amazing it is to think for themselves and create for themselves and learn by themselves and realize that shedding their dependency of ai will make them better in the long run

[atinycelery]

Me being so petty because my TPT dream was wrecked, hating on other Jurdan fans, generalizing them into one group of people that made Holly write a disappointing TPT because of their obsession with Jurdan content and demanding Jurdan contents, not caring about the real main characters of TSH duology which are Wren and Oak, they deserve better :

THIS IS NOT ABOUT THEM

[ivoryratdoggerythethird]

"wan is therapy for bsd fans <3" SO THAT WAS A FUCKING LIE

[werehamburglar]

chuck tingle, the genius that you are

[cerealmonster15]

IM STILL AGONIZING OVER IT i even checked and i think the ONLY TIME I briefly BRIEFLY mentioned was in ch3, a short mention of silver falling asleep on kalim's shoulder. so like at least i didn't 100% forget it at all but like i def forgot A Lot

[dirthavarens]

I haven't wanted to write fic in years, but the itch is here.

[fdrsamericanflagduckfloaty]

SCREAMING INTO MY HAND HITTING THE TABLE CRYING STIMMING REELING C R I N K L I N G MICROWAVING COMBUSTING DEMATERIALIZING

[heartfeltletters-written]

honestly hozier had no damn right to make such a heartbreaking album with such a crazy concept.

Who the hell makes an album about the circles of hell based of dante's inferno.

[compacflt]

recalled today that the plural form of court-martial is “courtS-martial.” oh and it’s always hyphenated. utterly devastated

[happywitch416]

"I don't have speak with animals cast and yet this jackass is still talking to me."

[dallonwrites]

flash and micro era is commencing right now i listed them out and there are at least eight ideas at different stages bouncing around in my brain. we are so back

[rig-a-rendal]

OH should I do another silly little fashion video based on my actual book?