sigaloenta:sigaloenta:I’m so excitedso far the set-up is sliiiiightly too heavy-handed, but the West
sigaloenta:sigaloenta:I’m so excitedso far the set-up is sliiiiightly too heavy-handed, but the West Side rich-kid game is on point, and the narrative voice is, on the whole, pretty good.ok so far the main things that strain disbelief in a major way are:1) I get that it’s a weird private school but seriously the student Honor Council has the power to issue suspensions? 2) It’s set in the present day (characters take Uber, for example) but social media doesn’t appear to exist. No one has facebook or instagram, or even sends text messages or snapchats. Again, these are extremely privileged rich American high schoolers in the year 2017 or so. 3) Here’s another way that the setting feels more like the 90′s and even 80′s “YA” novels set in high school that I read in the late 90′s and early 00′s: zero academic pressure. We hear barely anything about AP (or more likely IB) classes, let alone intensive extra curriculars, charitable projects, exam prep., intensive strategizing and coaching for college applications or any of the things that go along with affluent education. Again, this is supposedly a very elite private school in one of the wealthiest parts of a major US coastal city. But the kids appear to be under less pressure – never mind being groomed for their supposed futures as Ivy League-educated world-rulers – than I was at my decidedly mediocre public school in the non-elite suburbs of a “flyover state” a decade ago. 4) I get that the model is not even Tacitus/Suetonius/Dio but rather Graves. Still, it grates just a tad that Tiberius is being portrayed as the Dumb Brutal Jock. Jock, sure (just ask Velleius!). But this is a guy whose favorite poet was Lycophron, whose hobbies included out-pedanting pedants, and who was famous for being deliberately unreadable the better able to watch what other people would let slip. Hashtag #TiberiusTruther I guess. -- source link
#i claudia#tiberiolus meus