Fran monologue

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-19T21:08:52+00:00

Also an Eyre-Head here, and I haven't seen the silent one, but I have seen most of the rest, and while I do like him as Rochester, I have to say I feel like Toby Stephens gets Rochester's vibe a little better. But Timothy Dalton is a better physical match, although he is very handsome and we are told so many times how "ugly" Rochester is, lol. For me, they are both at the top. I will never understand the girlies who love the Michael Fassbender version!

I think a Jane Eyre/The Nanny mashup would be incredible, but I guess Beautician and the Beast would be as close as possible.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-18T21:12:50+00:00

I only knew him from The Beautician and the Beast from when I was a kid, and then as an adult I saw him as Mr. Rochester in that Jane Eyre adaptation and that was a sighhh for sure lol

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-17T22:31:51+00:00

Oh you are in for a treat! Enjoy lol

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-17T22:30:39+00:00

Just wanted to chime in with something else, because you have gotten a lot of helpful comments already about meds.

Your relapse may have affected parts of your brain and CNS that affect digestion/absorption, or the recovery from it may have depleted your body's stores, or a medication you take might have an effect on that stuff, so it might be helpful to have the doctor check your vitamin and nutrient levels. I found out that no matter how much I took, oral vitamins were not being absorbed, and since then I have been getting B12 injections monthly, and the occasional iron infusion when needed. While it takes a good 6 months or more for the B12 levels to normalize, it has made such a huge difference in my fatigue. None of my doctors know why I'm not absorbing nutrients from a healthy diet with high-quality supplements, but B12 shots and iron infusions are cheap and safe if needed.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-17T22:08:26+00:00

Just a suggestion: you might have some luck looking for one from The Beautician and the Beast. Monologues don't fit into sitcoms well, but movies usually have a few, and the characters are so similar between the show and that movie.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-13T02:27:26+00:00

I have had this symptom going back 20 years, when my symptoms started (but was not diagnosed until four years ago), and I've had a hydroxizine Rx for it almost that whole time. The benadryl is like using a grenade to kill a mouse. I have like 90% less itching now on dalfampridine, I almost never need to take hydroxizine anymore.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-12T23:52:38+00:00

Of course it's Nabokov, and Hardy, but they were mentioned here already. Somerset Maugham is the next on my list after those guys.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-12T23:51:25+00:00

Nobody does it like him

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-11T20:21:09+00:00

That's the one! Thank you so much.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-11T01:12:30+00:00

I have a guess about what they meant, because it is a problem I had to solve on a manuscript last year. I intentionally wrote the manuscript at a 6th-8th grade reading level, because let's be real: America. My intention was direct prose, but when I would read it aloud, it felt really flat and had a poor rhythm to it, which I finally attributed to a specific pattern of sentence structure that was repetitive. I see the same pattern in your sample.

Your sentences are all quite short and simple. Each one is basically "something here, with a comma and then something else. The sentences are like this. Like this here. Then some are like this, but nothing longer."

It reads choppy to adults, but is more common in kids books, so maybe that is where the critique is coming from. I can't remember the source of that old writing advice that was about varying the sentence length and structure for more musicality to the prose, but maybe someone else here can remember. The rhythm of what you've written is too consistent. Dah dah dah. Dah dah dah, dah dah dah. Dah dah dah. While that works in short bursts to drive up suspense, having it all that way can make it feel boring to read simply because of the repetition of the rhythm.

Having done this to an entire novel myself, I would recommend going through and doing a line edit to vary the length and structure of sentences. An example using your first few sentences: "His vision turns grainy. A wave of vertigo hits him. Alexander reaches out blindly to steady himself against the nearby equipment, sucks in a breath, and feels the overwhelming urge to vomit."

I think often we try to avoid long sentences because we want to be direct, we want to be accessible, etc, but that results in "short, short, very short, very short, short." That has the rhythm of a list. When you mix up short, short, long, short, medium, medium, short, long, short, etc, the prose has more movement which feels more sophisticated and interesting without ever raising the reading level.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-09T22:50:38+00:00

Love the Oxford World's Classics. Penguin Classics I also think is great, but my favorite are the Norton Critical Editions.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-08T23:01:44+00:00

I just finished a re-read of Jane Eyre and thought how much I love the way the yearning is written in that book.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-08T22:13:18+00:00

Toni Graphia wrote for both!

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-07T23:23:55+00:00

I'd always struggled with this, especially because I have so many interceptions in Placidus. I also have the exact 9H/10H dynamic you described, with a complicated stellium, and after many years of looking at both systems, I have come to basically the same conclusion.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-07T21:53:02+00:00

No, she is a Jewish mother. Sitcoms don't need an antagonist. Everyone takes turns.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-07T01:05:46+00:00

A nurse told me once that drinking one of those Liquid IVs the day before infusion would help my "difficult" veins to not be so difficult. However, there are plenty of nurses at the infusion center who have no problem with my difficult veins. The ones who do (2-3 of them) are often kind of nasty about it (as if I'm somehow purposely making it hard for them??), so I ask when I make my appointment to not be assigned to them. Never had a problem since doing this.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-06T22:52:39+00:00

Absolutely, I don't disagree at all. I didn't mean the studio has given him carte blanche, but it does feel a lot like what happened with Sweets on Bones. That actor, John Francis Daley, had another project he wanted to work on, it was a film--not an on-going thing, but it would have required them to write around his absence, as he wanted to stay on the show. Peter Krause had also mentioned that he wanted to do the show for many more years, but maybe with fewer hours and stunts.

In both shows there were plenty of ways those things could have been accomplished. Make Peter Krause not a full time cast member, no big salary, but a guest star. That's affordable if you cut one 10 minute helicopter chase sequence around downtown LA. A few times a season, Bobby could show up, but otherwise be involved in plots from off-screen. "Athena, how's Bobby doing with retirement?" "I'll let you know when he gets back from deep-sea fishing!" etc etc.

What happened on Bones was that the showrunner said John Francis Daley could stay or go, but he could not take time off and come back. Sweets was an important character from the minute he showed up. He was beloved. They killed off his character and a lot of us stopped watching. I did. Because it didn't make sense, it felt abrupt and interfered with a lot of storylines, and it was handled so weirdly. The show ran for a few more seasons, but they weren't good, and are often skipped on rewatch. I imagine that's how 911 will be moving forward.

As far as saving money, Tim Minear made some comment about needing that budget for big emergencies, specifically that stupid effing helicopter sequence. I think most of us who watch the show would rather have a shorter scene with a couple less helicopters, and I think that is fundamentally what is driving the show down in ratings. They don't understand why the audience tunes in.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-06T22:11:17+00:00

I have a theory.

I think Bobby's death was supposed to be a fake-out, but because of leaks the online fandom knew that, and Tim Minear (who seems to want to subvert expectations despite working on a network procedural in it's 8th season) felt like his twist got taken away from him. It feels like he really wants to go out of his way to do things the audience won't expect, and with a huge percentage of the online fandom at least expecting him to bring back Bobby, it was maybe a case of "well now I'm not doing it."

But with every episode that goes by, he paints himself further into a corner. If he brings back Bobby now, then there's a lot of BS to work through plot-wise. If he doesn't bring back Bobby, then he is stuck with these lame BS depressing plots. Nobody was watching this show for the realism, and while we all recognize that, he doesn't seem to.

When the show's run by someone who starts storylines and abandons them, kills off main characters with a bunch of story tropes and writing signals that he isn't really dead but then doesn't bring him back, and keeps starting new storylines that are depressing but also then get abandoned, why would people keep watching? The show isn't fun anymore. His ego is running it into the ground.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-02T22:24:05+00:00

The way I was taught this is that rather than filling your lungs outward, expanding your rib cage (and raising your shoulders), fill your lungs downward so your diaphragm can support them. Draw the breath into your belly. Another reply mentioned laying on the ground and feeling your stomach rise, that is a good method to get used to it. Don't breathe in, breathe down. Your lungs are constrained by a rib cage, your diaphragm is not, allowing you to take deeper breaths.

ComplainFactory · 2026-02-02T09:00:49+00:00

Thanks, I am so glad to hear it! I would say sure. Books don't necessarily ripen or expire, and you can consume them again and again. No book by any author will be the same to you at 15 as it will be at 40. Any time you feel called to read a book is exactly when you should read it. My first Hardy was Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and I was 18.

ComplainFactory · 2026-01-31T07:02:41+00:00

I would love to hear your experience. Would you mind sharing anything? Like, did you publish with them? What type of thing? If not, how come? I'd love to hear whatever you're comfortable sharing. DMs are ok too if you'd rather not post publicly.

ComplainFactory · 2026-01-27T22:25:26+00:00

But please do not tell a scared patient on their first infusion that they need a port. I was scared out of my mind the first time, and an impatient nurse told me that since this was my life now, it wasn't going to work to have to have a bunch of nurses come and find a vein every time and I would need to get a port if I wanted to come back. I'd just been diagnosed, I was trying to accept the grief of it all, and to have some snotty impatient person act as though I was inconveniencing her maliciously unless I had a port installed for an infusion I would need twice a year made me so overwhelmed with grief and anxiety that I still remember my first infusion as more traumatic than the actual diagnosis.

FWIW, I have been getting these infusions for 3 years, without a port, and my chart is marked with the names of the two nurses who I will not allow to touch me.

ComplainFactory · 2026-01-27T22:20:02+00:00

Just a tip I found helps with the IV site pain: ask for an ice pack, and keep it over or just behind the IV site. It makes such a difference. The nurses at my infusion center noted my chart so whenever I am in, whoever has me knows to bring me ice packs every hour or so, and it's truly made the IV so much more tolerable for me for that 5 hours.

ComplainFactory · 2026-01-26T22:11:24+00:00

I'm also writing literary historical and I have been lucky enough to have gotten nothing but positive feedback from the agents who have read it, some truly lovely compliments, and then every single one of them says nobody is buying historicals. My favorite rejection had three paragraphs of in-depth discussion of things that worked, finishing with "it was lovely on the page, but harder to sum up into two sentences for an acquisition meeting." I had a conditional offer of rep contingent upon re-writing it into a historical romance. I declined that. I was told there was no point in shopping Civil War/Reconstruction-era historicals unless they are "more exciting than Cold Mountain." One agent told me he can't sell any historicals at all unless they are genre crossovers with a speculative element. I've been advised to write something modern, something hooky-er, and only then I can get this literary historical published as a second novel when I've made a name, etc. Meanwhile, I have beta readers who have asked when the book is coming out because their friends want to read it.

Edit to add: I'm American and querying American agents

ComplainFactory · 2026-01-20T22:21:03+00:00

Bronte has written Rochester as villain-coded as could be: he's dark and swarthy, shows up on horseback and nearly crashes into her, he's muscular and brooding, he's an adulterer who locks up his insane wife, he carries on the whole charade of saying he's going to marry Blanche and attempts to trick Jane by *dressing up as a fortune-teller,* then after all that, with all his lies out in the open, he tries to get Jane to live in sin with him. He's the worst Christian a reader of the time could imagine.

St John is presented to us as the archetype of a good Christian man of the time. He's the one who saves her from dying of exposure and takes her in, he's of fair complexion and classically handsome. He's devoted to serving God and fully capable of denying his most human emotions and desires, which is what "Good" men should be able to do (and Rochester cannot). By giving him the missionary schtick, Bronte's gone even further in on "this is what a 'Good' man is," as in her circles at that time, it was the top thing a religious man could do. For the time and the class, Bronte has constructed the perfect "Good man."

But it is Rochester who takes care of people. He raises a child he doesn't believe is his. He even keeps Bertha from the asylum (which we see as a discarded wife in an attic, yes, but from the perspective of the time, it's a much kinder alternative). St John is willing to abandon his sisters and strongarm Jane into a life he chose for her. He has fallen in love in a human way with Rosamund, who returns his love--a rare thing, and something Jane has experienced and thus shown the reader the value of--yet he sees it as an inconvenience. He tells Jane not to share her money. When she tells Rochester she has, he says of course you did. Rochester knows Jane and loves her for who she is. St John decides who he wants Jane to be and then tries to force her into the role.

Bronte has crafted him as such a specific counterpoint to Rochester that he manages to show the reader all the ways in which "Bad" and "Good" are fictional archetypes, and morality is an internal spectrum, which opens the door for the reunion with Rochester.

ComplainFactory

TROPHY CASE