No problem at all!

And finally! For the apps & the actual program, I highly recommend communicating your preferred collaboration style/ any accessibility needs so that your mentor can best match and serve you!

Read the MSWLs but don’t get too stressed about absolute fit—all apps go into a pool and we talk amongst each other and recommend reads to one another :)

I would also say make sure the synopsis isn’t a huge dump of all things that happen. I have specific synopsis advice on my sub/stack

Hi Nikki! I have pretty wide-ranging tastes, but I am really drawn to character-driven, genre-blendy stories. So an MC with built-in contradictions they’re trying to work out, or a flip of tropes, or unexpected narrative combos (like a gothic turn to a cozy story) are my jam!

Advice…+

Hello! It is expected that mentees will pull their ms from querying if selected so we can work on revisions together, but manuscripts already queried but not offered on are fine otherwise.

“Ready” for me is a full draft that you’re prepared to collaboratively work on to make it query-ready :)!

🥳🥳🥳

Ooo I like that reading! Honestly the best argument I’ve heard so far to push it into the Victorian Era. I am still left with my question about the exploration (why not an English crew?) and British imperialism, esp if we’re now in the 1850s

shelley was more a Romantic than a Victorian (though she was one of the only ones to live into the Victorian Era!) (and i meant that as a jab at the film’s choices because the Victorian era was more conservative)

Hope you enjoy some parts of the film if you decide to watch!

Totally, ig the sentimentality of mutual forgiveness *was* the more Victorian move 🥲

But also to your point, I think it’s important and powerful that the creature’s only interlocutors at the end are Walton & us. The upshot is a message about OUR responsibility to each other & the marginalized

I won’t spoil it but if you read my thread, a mutual forgiveness scene is very weird! Non-closure is important to the novel

*FRANKENSTEIN SPOILERS*

Okay a final point: ending with a quote from Byron (!!!!) was wild. Why not a quote from Mary Shelley?

YES like ok cool it’s the 1850s—how does that change the themes and convos around ethics and experimentation?

Also related to Henry—would’ve personally liked it to get gayer 🤣 the book is SO QUEER

I was interested in the photography bit, esp since that featured in Crimson Peak too (and is sort of a metacommentary on filmmaking). I wish it’d been carried through more as a theme, maybe as a foil to science? Or a comment on the ethics of « capturing » a creature (in all senses of the word)?

*FRANKENSTEIN SPOILERS*

One change I did enjoy was Elizabeth being freaky!!! Love a freaky woman who is drawn to the monstrous as a critique of the systems that be. This is where GTD shines

*FRANKENSTEIN SPOILERS*

I will definitely be rewatching, don’t get me wrong 🤣 but I felt like the film could’ve kept more of the nuance and critique of the book without losing the melodrama.

Placing it in the Victorian era changes the conversation about science & imperialism as well

*FRANKENSTEIN SPOILERS*

And was perplexed by Walton’s crew not being overtly English, since that dampened the British imperialism critique?

Very meh about the closure at the end too. The creature and Frankenstein mutually forgiving one another made me squirm!

Love these comps, and so excited for you!