soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2011-06-11 11:52 am
sophia_sol) wrote2011-06-11 11:52 am
Eagle eagle eagle
Just watched The Eagle today, finally! It was...well, I enjoyed it! Not exactly a good movie, but fun. Marcus was surprisingly endearing in his straightforward earnestness. Esca was lovely. But there were so many things wrong with this movie, I can't even. Not least of which is, MY GOD that was the worst-planned quest ever. And in the book they were actually clever about how they did things, both the searching and the stealing! Which meant that in adapting the book to make a movie, they made deliberate choices to make the characters look less clever? IDEK.
Other random thoughts:
They killed the kid! NOOOOO! *sadface forever*
"So what now?" "You decide." ALKDHJSLDKJF. Not the happy gay farmers ending, but I LOVE IT ANYWAYS. And then Esca's smile. :D
Oh my god, if I had any interest whatsoever in writing a humiliation kink I'd be changing my chosen bingo line SO FAST. Marcus + humiliation would work so well. Just for the record.
And now, have a random stupid little ficlet.
THIS IS NOT THE EAGLE FIC I MEANT TO WRITE.
Freedom
Esca rather liked it among the Seal People. It wasn't home; nothing could be home. Rome had destroyed any chance he had at feeling at home again. But it was...familiar, in enough ways. He'd had dealings with the Seal People before, and knew their customs, which were, after all, not too different from his own.
Rome was foreign, and anything else was comfortable by comparison.
He hadn't intended for things to go this way. He was going to lead Marcus on a merry chase all over the north until he finally got tired of his bullheaded quest.
But then they were surrounded by the Seal People, and he had to improvise. It had worked out rather well, all things considered.
So here they were: Esca, accepted among them, able to be a real person again after so long under the heel of Rome; and Marcus, nothing but a bad-tempered slave.
His honour bound him to Marcus, he knew, and he could not change that. But it was good to act, at least for a little while, as his own man. And so when Marcus looked betrayed, when Marcus glared at him with suspicion, when Marcus was filled with deadly anger, Esca -- Esca said nothing.
If he truly wanted to, he could have found the time to have a private conversation with Marcus, and tell him that this wasn't a betrayal but an act. He could even have told Marcus in public, because as long as his tone was properly harsh and superior the Seal People would have no idea what he was telling his slave.
But he couldn't bring himself to do it.
These days were for himself, an unlooked-for final time to be Brigantes before returning himself to Marcus and to Rome -- and he could pretend, he could almost pretend that he meant to stay.
Other random thoughts:
They killed the kid! NOOOOO! *sadface forever*
"So what now?" "You decide." ALKDHJSLDKJF. Not the happy gay farmers ending, but I LOVE IT ANYWAYS. And then Esca's smile. :D
Oh my god, if I had any interest whatsoever in writing a humiliation kink I'd be changing my chosen bingo line SO FAST. Marcus + humiliation would work so well. Just for the record.
And now, have a random stupid little ficlet.
THIS IS NOT THE EAGLE FIC I MEANT TO WRITE.
Freedom
Esca rather liked it among the Seal People. It wasn't home; nothing could be home. Rome had destroyed any chance he had at feeling at home again. But it was...familiar, in enough ways. He'd had dealings with the Seal People before, and knew their customs, which were, after all, not too different from his own.
Rome was foreign, and anything else was comfortable by comparison.
He hadn't intended for things to go this way. He was going to lead Marcus on a merry chase all over the north until he finally got tired of his bullheaded quest.
But then they were surrounded by the Seal People, and he had to improvise. It had worked out rather well, all things considered.
So here they were: Esca, accepted among them, able to be a real person again after so long under the heel of Rome; and Marcus, nothing but a bad-tempered slave.
His honour bound him to Marcus, he knew, and he could not change that. But it was good to act, at least for a little while, as his own man. And so when Marcus looked betrayed, when Marcus glared at him with suspicion, when Marcus was filled with deadly anger, Esca -- Esca said nothing.
If he truly wanted to, he could have found the time to have a private conversation with Marcus, and tell him that this wasn't a betrayal but an act. He could even have told Marcus in public, because as long as his tone was properly harsh and superior the Seal People would have no idea what he was telling his slave.
But he couldn't bring himself to do it.
These days were for himself, an unlooked-for final time to be Brigantes before returning himself to Marcus and to Rome -- and he could pretend, he could almost pretend that he meant to stay.
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(I really enjoyed how clear the dynamic is in the movie -- it's always hard to tell from fic how much is fanon, but I absolutely adore how they both struggle with it UNTIL the point Esca goes, "Screw it. Heel, Marcus." Or something to that effect. <3 )
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So in the book, Marcus and Esca grow close and grow to trust each other during the time that Marcus is healing from his injury, so that by the time they set off on their quest they are basically bestest friends. And Marcus gives Esca his freedom BEFORE they even leave on the quest. So the book's slash dynamic is LOOK HOW SUPER CLOSE THESE TWO GUYS ARE. NO, CLOSER. In comparison with the movie's THEY HAVE TO RELY ON EACH OTHER BUT CAN THEY TRUST EACH OTHER WITH SO MUCH ANGER/BITTERNESS/RESENTMENT? It's best-friend-slash versus enemyslash.
(hah, yeah. Oh, movie! Oh, Esca and Marcus!)
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That actually sounds totally adorable. Does Marcus also have some semblance of proper motivation in the book or is it still mostly Honor blabla? Hee, it is kind of funny they made it enemy-slash instead of friends-slash... But wait, Esca is still on top, right? D:
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Marcus' motivation in the book IS still pretty much Honour Blah Blah Blah. BUT he goes about everything in a sensible way and plans ahead and everything. And his fixation on honour isn't nearly as huge as it is in the movie.
The dynamics in the book in terms of toppiness are also somewhat different. Marcus, for instance, is actually NOT a repressed sub. But Esca's a bit more difficult to read in this respect. Well, Esca in general in the book is more difficult to get a handle on -- the book is very definitely All About Marcus. You could read Esca as a happy sub, actually, although then that can get into skeevy territory with respect to the inescapable slave/master thing, with both of them buying into Rome's ideas about proper roles of slaves and masters. (and being freed doesn't actually free the ex-slave from the power dynamics of the Roman master-slave relationship)
So wrt the book I'm happier to read Marcus and Esca as a relationship that's not about power dynamics, unlike the movie version of the relationship where the D/s is totally a thing.
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Sensible!Marcus sounds very different from Movie!Marcus *g* I might actually be curious about seeing that.
Hmm... I am slightly disappointed about Marcus not being a sub in the book -- but it makes total sense that he wouldn't read that way, whereas it's easier to get into unintentional D/s vibing with movies. I can understand about not really liking the power structures of traditional Roman society; it could get pretty skeevy.
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In terms of accuracy -- I believe from what I've read other people say that it's pretty good at the accuracy thing a lot of the time, but that there's occasionally also stuff that she definitely gets wrong. Hmm. I was sure I'd bookmarked some meta on the subject, but apparently not! So I can't speak to this in any greater detail.
Unfortunately I'm PRETTY IGNORANT when it comes to roman and british history/culture of the time, so I can't say anything about it myself.
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(and my bookshelf is a total mess right now or I'd just dig the book out and check. I would organize it, except that to do so I need a second bookshelf. *headdesk*)
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Hee, I am sorry about the continued dismal state of your bookshelf. Here's hoping you can get it sorted soon!
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Yeah, unfortunately I probably can't do anything about my bookshelf till September when I will be moving again, hopefully this time to a place with slightly more space. So in the meantime I just look at my collection of books and despair. Ah well, such is life. (and it would even maybe be okay if I didn't KEEP ON ACQUIRING BOOKS.)
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(Some of those letters are pretty endearing. Just imagine a bunch of Italians stuck in a wet English winter -- I feel kind of sorry for them, despite the whole world-conquering thing.)
Hee, I refuse to feel sorry for you for acquiring new books. New books are lovely, don't even pretend ;oP
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(those letters do sound pretty endearing!)
Yeah, not gonna lie, new books are always awesome, even if I have to resort to stacking them on the floor. (my newest acquisition: a complete Hans Christian Anderson collection, super cheap from a thrift store! It excites me.)
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Well, if it's only until September, that must make it a bit easier to live with. (Um, you know I have a ginormous H.C. Andersen thing, right? He is my hero. I devoured a 400+ page biography about him last summer. He is such a woobie, and potentially ace (certainly entirely homoromantic). He is a giant woobie! I wrote a ridonculous fic about him! *flails a little*)
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(I mostly just know him because I have a ginormous fairy tales thing. So.)
ALSO, I was somehow entirely unaware that you wrote a fic about him -- I just read it, and it is adorable!
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The biography I read is actually translated. It is by Jens Andersen, and it's available at amazon.com for pretty cheap, jfyi ;o) I highly recommend it, it's a thoroughly researched piece of work and Jens Andersen (no relation, btw) is himself an excellent storyteller.
Even though people are most familiar with Andersen's fairy tales (which are awesome and work on so many levels), he was actually terribly prolific and wrote drama, poetry, and novels -- beside staggering amounts of letters, and daily journal entries. I find his drama especially interesting for how his contemporaries scorned it -- they frequently accused him of plagiarism, and he did 'borrow' a lot from other writers, but he always put different spins on it (usually horribly weepy Mary Sue spins, see above re: woobie).
He was quite the character, a very gentle person who was prone to great bouts of sadness if he felt at all disliked. He loved entertaining, but people would sometimes feel he was 'too much', which would make him sad (and sometimes scarily vindictive). Basically he was a prime drama queen <3 Um, yes, I am quite caught up in this Author Cult, but he was just so presh!
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Your talk of the other things he's written has got me curious about what my new anthology includes, so I just went and checked. It has more than just his fairy tales, but no poetry, drama, or novels, alas! Apparently it's the complete "stories" of Andersen, not the complete works. Ah well.
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Hee, I am not surprised you only got his complete stories. The Danish Philological Society edition of his complete works takes up some 19 volumes, I think, and that's excluding his letters and diaries *g*
Oh, and he did paper clippings and decoupage. Here's an example. And there are plenty more here (sorry it's in Danish, follow the links that have "samling*" in the title).
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And omg, that paper-cutting hobby is adorable!