So, I saw people commenting on the dwindling of LBD fic, which I have also noticed. So it prompted me to finally go and finish this thing I’ve been working on for a couple months now.

I wouldn’t jump right to calling it Dizzie fluff, but it is something.

Words, Words, Words

Lizzie considers herself to be a woman of words, but when the time comes to let William Darcy know how she feels, she abandons the words that have served her so well.

Sleeping Beauty: the One who Took the Really Long Nap by Wendy Mass

Target Audience: Middle Grade

Summary:
It’s not easy being Princess Rose. Especially when a fairy curses you and you find yourself avoiding all sharp objects … and then end up pricking your finger anyway, causing you to slumber for a hundred years or so.

And it’s not easy being The Prince. Especially when your mother has some ogre blood and tends to chow down at the most unfortunate moments. A walk in the woods would help, you think. Until you find a certain hidden castle … and a certain sleeping princess. Happily ever after? Not until the prince helps the princess awaken … and brings her home to Mother.

Type of Adaptation: Retelling with a perspective addition

Holy Unexpected Developments, Batman! Somebody included Perrault’s entirely unnecessary ending – and did it well, too! Color me utterly astonished!

But we’ll get to that.

So, as you may be able to ascertain from the title, this novel is from the same series as Rapunzel: The One With All the Hair. It’s called the Twice Upon a Time series, and it takes fairy tales and rewrites them for a younger audience, but in a way I can completely get behind because Wendy Mass knows how to write for this age group, and she does so very well.

Read more …

So, I’m seeing a LOT of people reacting to the casting of Augustus Waters in the TFiOS movie with “Oh, but he plays Shailene’s brother in Divergent, and that’s gonna be so weird, to see them as love interests, like watching incest!”

…Um, guys? You realize that they’re actors, right? That this is what they do? That being an actor means being able to play a wide variety of different characters and make you forget about the actor in question and just watch the character? If they’d cast an actual brother and sister for Hazel and Gus, I could maybe see your point. Maybe. But these are two actors who happened to play a brother and sister in another project.

The last two shows I did, I worked with a guy named Jeff. In the first, Twelfth Night, I played Viola and he played Sebastian, who are twins. In the second, Bloody Poetry, I played Mary Shelley and he played Percy Bysshe Shelley, who are married and not at all Puritanical or squeamish about their love life and describing and demonstrating it in detail.

You know how many people took me aside after and said, “Great job, Cassie, but, uh, I was really disturbed by the fact that Jeff played your twin brother in the last show, and now he’s your lover. I couldn’t get past that. I couldn’t enjoy your performance.” ?

If you answered “Zero,” Congrats! That’s correct! Zero people. Because we’re actors. And that’s what we do.

So calm down, stop talking about incest, and trust John Green and the casting directors, yes?

alesiakaye:

Tony-winner James Corden will play the Baker who lives next door to Meryl Streep’s Witch.

…

Read @ hollywoodreporter.com

I am entirely behind this decision. Entirely.

Except I don’t know what his singing voice is like, but I’m trusting people.

(via droo216)

Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey

Target Audience: YA/Teen

Summary: The Princess Aurore has had an unusual childhood. Cursed at birth, Aurore is fated to prick her finger at the age of sixteen and sleep for one hundred years — until a prince awakens her with a kiss. So, to protect her, Aurore’s loving parents forbid any task requiring a needle.

Unable to sew or embroider like most little princesses, Aurore instead explores the castle grounds and beyond, where her warmth and generosity soon endear her to the townspeople. their devotion to the spirited princess grows as she does.

On her sixteenth birthday, Aurore learns that the impending curse will harm not only her, but the entire kingdom as well. Unwilling to cause suffering, she will embark on a quest to end the evil magic. The princess’s bravery will be rewarded as she finds adventure, enchantment, a handsome prince, and ultimately her destiny.

Type of Adaptation: Retelling

Oh, Once Upon a Time summary writers, what am I going to do with you? To be misleading is one thing. But to be factually inaccurate about parts of the book? Aurore didn’t spend time outside because she wasn’t allowed to embroider. In fact, her going outside coincided with learning to embroider. And it wasn’t just needles she was kept away from – it was anything that could be considered remotely sharp and/or dangerous. Honestly, do you even read the books you’re summarizing, or are you summarizing from a summary?

Let’s just jump right in.

So, this was one of Dokey’s first offerings to the Once Upon a Time series, and it was the first one that I read. I’ve talked in the past about how Dokey tends to open her novels to this series with some sort of commentary on the nature of storytelling? Well, this novel’s was the first of those that I read, and honestly, while I always appreciate what she has to say, this is the novel where that really fits the best. Because so much about Sleeping Beauty is about how stories evolve over time and turn into legend and myth.

This book is a first-person narration, from our Sleeping Beauty character Aurore, and you can tell from the way that she speaks that she is coming to tell her tale after the events have already happened, after she’s woken up and been filled in on what her story has become. And so this great evolution of her narrative is silly to her, the way details have been changed to fit a little neater into place, the way things get exaggerated and overplayed.

So in the preamble, as she calls it, she pokes fun at that, stating that she has to begin her story with Once upon a time because that’s how stories like this are expected to start, and she wants the reader to think her story is a good one, so she’d better conform to expectations.

Aurore’s voice is just wonderful. She is spirited and feisty, and she speaks her mind. But more than that, she is incredibly conversational. You are always aware that she is speaking this to an audience, telling her story in a way that feels very one-on-one. And a lot of the criticism that I’ve read of this book calls Dokey out for this. It’s not a narrative tone everyone likes.

And I can get where that criticism comes from. This is a very different tone than novels usually take, and it’s not something that goes away. It is present throughout, so if that’s the kind of thing you don’t like, you’re going to not like for the entire book.

Personally, though, I love it. Because Aurore tells stories the way that I tell stories, and I’ve had more than one person I’ve recommended this book to tell me that Aurore sounds like me. I can see it, I guess, and if it’s true, then it goes a long way to explaining why I adore this character and her voice so much.

There are a lot of books I read and love and cannot understand why everyone in the world doesn’t love them as well. This book isn’t one of those. I love it, yes, I adore it and it’s one of my favorites. But I do understand why other people might not like it. Just to get that out of the way.

Read more …

mamaleh6994:

rammi:

Book:

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances.

Movie:

Your hands are cold.

Book:

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Movie:

I love you. Most ardently.

This highlights just one of the many problems I have with the 2005 P&P.