Sunshine Challenge #2

[pensnest]

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.

Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like

I'm going to be a bit wayward over the Journalling part of this challenge, but I think a bit of romantic fiction does squeeze into the category, so here goes.

Beast and I have lately started watching Bridgerton. I don't think it was the reason we decided to spend a little while chez Netflix, but it was one of the first things that sprang to my mind, at least.

Note: we have only just finished the first season. No spoilers, if you can remember what happens when!

So. It's much what I expected—tosh, but agreeable tosh, and very pretty. Never was wisteria so vibrant.

It strikes me that it was written by someone(s) who spent quite a lot of time watching period dramas and not enough reading Georgette Heyer. They are highly enthusiastic about a society in which there are slightly different rules applying to pure young ladies, along with much prettier clothes*, and very fancy houses. I cannot talk about the original author, but the creators of the show were not much bothered about the actual details of those slightly different rules, or the expectations of the pretty clothes. When you shoot in a collection of English stately homes, they're going to look pretty much as we'd expect... although they ought to be, hmm, fresher, on the grounds that for that generation the average decor of a grand house was current, not Old And Venerable unless you were very unlucky. Trivial details like whether a Duke would bring his makes-a-living-boxing acquaintance to socialise with the ton are simply not important. Of Course a Nice Chap would invite his pal to the ball, just as a Viscount could perfectly easily present his opera singer to, say, his mother. Let us not be prejudiced against the Lower Orders, if indeed we are going to acknowledge that there are Lower Orders.

And why does none of the women wear a hat??? Seriously?!?

In short, it reminds me of the kind of fanfic that is extremely enthusiastic on the subject of Romance and All Its Difficulties and oh, the delicious Distressing Misunderstandings, but not that keen on doing a lot of research. Like, I mean, what has happened to the Prince Regent? Surely he'd be hobnobbing with the toffs at least some of the time and being obnoxiously Prinny? Well, perhaps later. We've only just finished season one. It is certainly, uh, refreshing to witness sex scenes involving Regé-Jean Page naked pulling out and ejaculating into an handkerchief.

This first season's Primary Couple did well, overall. Although really. What about a story in which the Duke suggests they pretend to be interested in one another and the young lady very sensibly says, "No, Sir, for that way lies madness eventually either you shall have to sheer off and leave me in the humiliating position of failing to catch my anticipated husband, or I shall have to sheer off and be forever known as a jilt. In either case I should be mocked and gossiped about, although of course there would be very little inconvenience to your Grace. Perhaps we should simply agree to disagree and spend no further time together." I admit that if Daphne (and Simon) had behaved with a modicum of common sense, it would have required somewhat more authorial consideration to figure out how to get them together, but, really! In a Heyer novel, being apparently courted by a Duke was not going to improve a girl's chances of matrimony with not-a-Duke, because they wouldn't expect to be able to compete. Quite so.

Still. They did all right. There was lots of Talk, about Feelings, and I didn't quite get to the point of longing to smack anybody... I hope Miss Thompson will come to be content with Substitute George. Pen, I hope, can do better than Colin, who is still in the puppy stage and is going to have to find his own opera singer/modiste to teach him his business before he can go a-courting. I was a bit disappointed that brother B's apparently slashy vibes with Sir Henry the artist came to nothing. So far. (Wasn't he the dishy one Lady Mary Crawley inexplicably passed on, in Downton?)


* That nice YouTube lady (Bernadette?) who does period clothes would probably be very acid on the subject of being laced brutally into a corset. Instead of being so tightened that one could not breathe, a Regency woman would be in something less restricting, though it acted more like a push-up bra with a shapewear element to it. How else could all those breasts be so close to those chins? Methinks the director/writer had been influenced at a vulnerable age by Gone with the Wind, but failed to notice that when you are wearing a tube instead of a giant floofy bell, there really isn't much point in giving yourself a tiny waist. It was fine to be comfortable, and it was a helpful style for an unfortunately enceinte young lady, since practically everybody looks pregnant in those things. Although Lady Featherington does not seem to have got the memo about gown shape.


The love poem is going to have to wait.