u/Mannerpunker

I’m re-reading Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell. The first time I started reading it, I thought the footnotes were a nice touch to the worldbuilding. It gives you the sense that you’re reading a historical account, which is very much the kind of fiction I love.

But then they got longer and longer, whole pages worth, and they started to bug me. Especially when we’re, say, in the middle of the Battle of Waterloo and the action stops for a footnote.

Going through the book again, I’m finding it more fun now that I know the characters and lore, but am still not all that pleased with just how extensive they are!

I wonder if footnotes will catch on more.

What great duos the writers of these shows made for their leads! Of course Interview is from Anne Rice's source material, but they made creative decisions that altered Louis’ race to African American, and moves us forwards in time from the novel into 20th Century New Orleans. Which works to explore how race changes the power dynamics that are inherent to an almighty, immortal vampire and their prey.

It's funny, tragically, the way Jacob Anderson’s Louis de Point du Lac has powers that in any other story would let him act in any which way he pleases, but in early 20th Century New Orleans, he has to deal with the same social pressures as any other African American in Louisiana, that renders him fangless (hehe). And so, much of the conflict comes from Louis being pitted against human obstacles in typical ways of the era, and in which I sometimes forgot I was watching a vampire show at all.

But more than anything, LOVE the comparison Rice makes between the Chevalier de Lorraine in the Versailles TV show and Lestat. They both make such a show of what they are; the Chevalier, the aristocracy; and Lestat, an all powerful vampire in the way Louis can't in the TV, and doesn't want to in the first book. It's all about etiquette and rules and manners!

I’ve heard great things about The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, and was also pleasantly surprised to find out it’s a Fantasy of Manners!

I love finding books that create entire new worlds and operate in a Fantasy of Manners style, it’s a nice change from mannerpunk set on earth.

Have you read it? What do you think about it? No spoilers 😬

Jane Austen typifies the Comedy of Manners genre, which is why the Regency Era is so closely associated with it. But would you ever want to see a Comedy of Manners in other settings? Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell is set just before the era, and I think it's the most successful Comedy/Fantasy of Manners property in the modern day.

So can the genre ever take on another aesthetic? A stronger one? What would it be?

Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Solarpunk etc all evoke specific imagery, and maybe Mannerpunk doesn't need to... but I do wonder what it would be.