#woman in mouseford book 7 was like “i remember making drumsets out of pots and pans as a kid”

[e-adlirez]

Dancing Shadows was wild like they really tried to convince us that a self trained ballerina was better than professionally trained ones lmao

Like that's not how ballet works sweetie😭

DON'T SLANDER CARLOTTA LIKE THAT SHE WAS AMAZING /J

Yeah that's fair, Dancing Shadows does have a cliche plot and it's not very realistic with Carlotta's backstory/development, but you can't deny, the book does earn its place as a golden age book :]

At least in my opinion anyway, the girls' brains were showcased like hell in that book and you love to see it. Also aesthetic, you can't deny the aesthetic

On Carlotta tho, yeah her character in general is probably by far the least realistic part of the book, but even then the focus was more on the judges trying to sabo the competition than Carlotta herself. Being real, her skill in ballet probably would've been more like uh

Okay if we're gonna go with the lore here, she is a self-taught ballerina whose skill allowed her to qualify for this mega-prestigious dance competition, so her skill would be (compared to everyone else in the competition) mid at best? I think? If we disregard everyone being like "beautiful, amazing, prodigy", she'd probably be mid in the competition. Don't get me wrong, that'd probably be a "WHAT" kinda skill level for someone in her situation, but uh yeah with Mice for Dance sabo-ing, girlie probably won't make it past first round, especially if the MfD judges were rig-y enough that only Colette and Violet, both classically trained students, made it among the Thea Sisters in the preliminary rounds, which, funny enough, was what would've happened in the book haha. Rousetti's vote really did carry her huh

Okay ramble over, main thing I liked about the book was the emphasis on the message of "it's not about if you went to a bougie-ass school, it's about if you genuinely care for the art and put effort into it". And the girls big-braining the crap outa getting the MfD judges and competitors exposed for their shenanigans. The switcheroo was a clever one change my mind

Also the theme of where the line where artistic legitimacy is drawn. The book has these debates peppered around about whether or not it truly matters what your background of education is in ballet in order for it to be legitimate ballet, highlighted especially in Vasily and Pyotr's debate, where Vasily believes that ballet should be open to influences from around the world, while Pyotr believes that authentic ballet only exists in the traditions taught in Russian dance schools. It's kind of a debate that happens in all forms of art in some flavor, and in the book, neither Vasily nor Pyotr are proven right or wrong, if that makes sense. Even when Carlotta makes it big, she's still kind of a point in Pyotr's favor, since she's a ballet nerd who studied as much as she could about the tradition and the art in general despite being a self-taught dancer who watched ballerinas dance from backstage and then copied their movements in front of a mirror to the best of her ability. So seeing where artists fall in that spectrum of the debate is something I find interesting (when ignorant idiots aren’t the ones debating).

Edit: I only realized that I didn’t finish the thought last night, how did I only notice it now, I dunno you tell me