[ SECRET POST #5263 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5263 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #753.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/AHaegoY.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it certainly is a controversial opinion, lol

I do get where you're coming from. I think the whole romance does basically rely on us being charmed by Harriet and finding her intrinsically sympathetic and interesting. And, I mean, I do, so it largely works for me, but there is a gap of explaining how Wimsey falls in love with her. And she's only in 4 books, Gaudy Night IMO has a fatal flaw in how it deals with the romance (it resolves everything by changing Wimsey's character), and Busman's Honeymoon is wildly uneven and frequently quite bad, although I personally find most of the Harriet/Peter matter pretty delightful.

But Strong Poison and Have His Carcase are both really good and the treatment of the romance in Have His Carcase, in particular, I think is just phenomenal.

[(Anonymous)]

Remind me again how it changes Wimsey's character? It's been too long since I read the books.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess "changes his character" isn't precisely accurate - maybe I should say that it presents his character in the same way as in every other book, but pretends he's changed. Some of that is because of Harriet's view of him, of course. but personally I just can't help but feel that the emotional resolution to the whole Harriet/Peter relationship is something that Peter as drawn in the previous books should have figured out almost immediately. If Peter is the lover, the skillful amateur who can fit himself into any social situation, the deductive genius, the one who always sees the difficulty, how did he not try this earlier. It just feels like all this idea of Peter's folly and error is at odds with the earlier conflict of his character.

Also, it retcons the ending of Carcase which always bothered me but that's a minor matter.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel similarly. People rave about Gaudy Night so I was really looking forward to it, but other than a nice perspective from Harriet's POV, it didn't really do much for the romance for me. I keep meaning to try the series again but I'm not enraptured by how much of this romantic development happens "offscreen", so to speak.

[(Anonymous)]

Gaudy Night is a great Harriet book, a mediocre Wimsey book, and a shockingly bad mystery novel

[(Anonymous)]

... that fits with what little I recall of it, yeah.

[(Anonymous)]

Harriet Vane is basically Mary Sue and Lord Peter the rich, glamorous husband Sayers wanted but never got (she had a loser whom she financially supported).

[(Anonymous)]

Those elements are extremely textual. I'm not even sure it's appropriate to call it a Mary Sue, it's just what the character's journey is about.