Rereading The Ladies of Grace Adieu

[prodigy]

"He is blushing," said Jonathan Strange, raising his eyes from the newspaper. "We have come, Henry, with the sole purpose of seeing Miss Parbringer (of whom you write so much) and when we have seen her, we will go away again."

"Indeed? Well, I hope to invite Mrs Field and her niece to meet you at the earliest opportunity."

"Oh, there is no need to trouble yourself," said Strange, "for we have brought telescopes. We will stand at bedroom windows and spy her out, as she goes about the village."

Strange did indeed get up and go to the window as he spoke. "Henry," he said, "I like your church exceedingly. I like that little wall that goes around the building and the trees, and holds them all in tight. It makes the place look like a ship. If you ever get a good strong wind then church and trees will all sail off together to another place entirely."

Jonathan Strange is basically from another planet. This is why he is the best. Regency-set books are full of male characters who are irritating macho douchebags dark and brooding, or at best, manly and honorable (yawn); if only more of them were complete space cadets. He's like the lost, ginger Lovegood.

Comments

[leia_solo]

I've been meaning to read this book. I'll have to get around to buying it because it looks like it's right up my alley.

[prodigy]

It is really good! As is obviously my opinion! I recommend it, it is just really delightful and haunting and gorgeous.

[relia]

And Blakeman.

[gogollescent]

GOD, RIGHT. "The lost, ginger Lovegood"-- no, shit, that's perfect. He could wear radish earrings except they would clash with his hair.

[prodigy]

He's the biggest Ravenclaw. His whole storyline is about how Ravenclaws are only ultimately compatible with other Ravenclaws, even if they already have really tolerant Gryffindor girlfriends, even if the other Ravenclaw is the biggest asshole in the world and has a really tolerant Slytherin boyfriend themselves

omg it's even called ravenclaw

that seriously only just occurred to me

[gogollescent]

SDKGJLKD? OH NO. oh you're…. completely correct…… wow I wish Ravenclaw's colors had been WHITE and BLACK instead of that bronze and blue stuff but uh anyway I just. Yes. Except I would argue for Arabella being a Hufflepuff, she's a little too levelheaded and generous for Gryffindor

unlike, say, Emma Pole, her really intolerant Gryffindor girlfriend

wow

I reread this book like a month ago but maybe I will do it again, it is better than being carried back to the Lord of the Rings by a Hobbit-induced nostalgia wave

[prodigy]

I reread it early last year (I think I have tl;dr under my 'books' tag somewhere if you backread?) and then in bits again for Yuletide, so yeah I have ~feels~ on the matter. I can see that re Arabella; I could see her as Gryff in the way that like, Remus Lupin is a Gryff, I don't think Emma would respect her if she didn't have SOME hardline principles and standards--god, Emma Wintertowne is the best Gryff though, #killallmen.

If the TV series gives us just one thing I hope it's a gif of Emma Pole trying to kill Norrell with #MISANDRY on it.

[gogollescent]

Yeah, I mean, there's loads of latitude within any given house, and Arabella in the Lupin mode I can see, although I would pin Stephen Black more for that type, actually. And I am honestly so excited for tumblr to make a million gifs of Emma Pole. And to do that thing where they make the really attractive photoset and then tag it with several hundred words of puerile pseudo-poetic rambling about how great and inspiring x lady character is and how she is their queen, which I have trouble with when it's, like, Cersei, but could totally accept for Lady Pole, in the crowded square, with the revolver.

[prodigy]

Hahaha oh my god the reductive facile "tag rambling MY QUEEN" thing about characters like Cersei, IT'S SO CONDESCENDING, I just... I could go on more about it but it's just so... patronizing. Thank you for being on the same page, it drives me crazy.

(Stephen Black is totally a Gryffindor, but then again I have like, a fic bouncing around in my head which is just a short legendarium of the fairy king of Lost-Hope mythologizing him into a figure of the Raven King's magnitude in the centuries following JS&MN's story? I just love the idea that he becomes this great and terrible demigod and that the theme of abandonment of his people/absence plays out also in the sense of maybe he's regarded as this mythological king of downtrodden lower-class Brits and black Londoners and shit and people for whom Englishness is fraught and bitter, so in the 2000s it's like "where is Stephen Black then, when is the last time he helped us."

... also I want to write blurbs referencing urban legends where he sleeps with a bel homme sans merci Raven King so yeah

wow I'm not even trying to maintain continuity of thought at this point)

[gogollescent]

TAG META IS MY WORST ENEMY. I grumble about it all the time and am sadly unable to be nicer even when in the same internet zone as people who write it. It is the worst when it's in Celebration Of Awesome Ladies, but also pretty awful when it's strewing Biblical metaphors randomly across the bottom of a picture of any given character with a piece of fruit, or falling off a building, and-- and--… I have a lot of pent-up bile on the subject, is what I am trying to say, despite the fact that I release it at every opportunity. Excuse me. I'll stop now.

(please write that fic, oh my god. OR I MEAN. I need to stop heedlessly urging you to write highly specific fic for tiny fandoms that get no readers, but… it's a compulsion… yes I just want Stephen Black to be an incredibly important crossroads king and get bent into all manner of footnote-worthy anecdotes and legends and wow, okay, in modern times--it could be like Neverwhere but actually good!!)

[prodigy]

TAG META IS THE WORST, THE WORRSSSSTTT. To be honest, so is Tumblr meta in general; I wish people tagged things "shitty but not technically offensive analysis of something that isn't wrong enough for you to argue with without looking like a douche with no tact so you'll have to grit your teeth and ignore it and possibly paste the link to someone you know and complain pettily in the IM window" so I could Tumblr Savior it.

"Like Neverwhere but actually good" is so much of what I want out of urban fantasy and never get.

[gogollescent]

HAHAHAHA. Yeah, if only. Alternatively, if only it were possible to pick at people's analyses relentlessly without looking like a douche. And being a douche, I guess. :( I would be on that.

Among my first experiences with explicitly labelled Urban Fantasy was Holly Black's ~~grody faerie underworld stuff, which, followed up shortly after by Neverwhere, gave me the sadly misplaced conviction that a considerable amount of urban fantasy would deal with shifting halfworlds clinging to the underside of this one and competing present-day mythologies, and that somewhere in the mass there was therefore something that was bound to be awesome, and then… this story doesn't really have a conclusion, except perhaps "I tripped over Harry Dresden once and fell flat on my face." Alas. It was probably painful.