period-dramallama

Book that was bad: this sucked 👎

HOW FUCKING DIFFICULT IS IT TO NOT HUMILIATE A PRINCESS AT THE GODDAMN DINNER TABLE

NATALIE PORTMAN as ANNE BOLEYN

"He, at the same time being a very successful man of the cloth, was also the great politician of his age, really. He was like a chess player, except - it's a very critical game of chess, where if you make the wrong move, it's death, if you make the right move, it's glory. But he served, above all, the king. He loved the king, and the king loved him. But finally, as happened very often in the reign of Henry VIII, things started to go awry." — Sam Neill on Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

RIP SAM NEILL (1947 - 2026)

The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.

And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.

They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.

And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.

Now that being said.

My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then

Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have:

Sir Henry Irving as Cardinal Wolsey for a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VIII’

pick a number...

Which of your fics is your favorite?

Which of your fics is your least favorite?

Which of your fics is criminally underrated?

Which of your fics surprised you by how much attention it received?

Which of your fics is the funniest?

Which of your fics is the most serious?

Which of your fics is the most crack-like?

Which of your fics did you spend the most amount of time writing?

Which of your fics did you spend the least amount of time writing?

[Asker's choice: specify the fic you want to know more about.]

...and pick a letter...

a. What is something you wish more people noticed about it? b. What is something you would do differently if you were to rewrite it? c. What do you think makes it deserving of love? d. What is your favorite line or excerpt from it? e. Are there any lines or sections that you think don't belong in it? f. Which character (POV or not) was your favorite to write? g. Which section was most difficult to write? h. Which section was the easiest to write? i. Did anything substantial get cut from it? j. Describe it badly.