Laura Bloomfield, Author at The Orbital

Do Adaptations Ruin Our Favourite Books?

21Jun

By Laura BloomfieldNo Comments

Do Adaptations Ruin Our Favourite Books?

Book to movie adaptations often walk a very fine line between good and bad. They can, thanks to avid fans, be quite dangerous to produce. Perhaps ‘dangerous’ is a strong word, but reactions to adaptations like the 2010 Percy Jackson movie demonstrate that one can never underestimate the connection between a fan and their favourite book. If the adaptation fails to meet expectations, it can be devastating for both the fans and the pockets of Hollywood executives. An optimist would argue that adaptations have inherently good intentions. They seek to bring a work to life and build on the world that an author has created. This can be particularly magical in a fantasy genre – the Harry Potter film franchise did an excellent job of capturing Hogwarts, and seeing such a place conjured up on th...

Dark Academia and the Elitism of Education

Search ‘#darkacademia’ on Instagram, Pinterest, or Tumblr, and you’ll be graced with pictures of candles, leather bound books, typewriters, handwritten letters, turtlenecks, and gothic architecture, all filtered through the same brooding colour palette. These images are representative of an online aesthetic movement which focuses on romanticising education through (ironically) a rejection of technology. Novels like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villains, and movies such as Kill Your Darlings (2013) and Dead Poet’s Society (1989) all play a huge part in defining dark academia on the internet. Quotes, gifsets, and screencaps abound, and Daniel Radcliffe’s portrayal of a young Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings has been the subject of many fashion inspiration p...

Studytube: Helpful or Dangerous

By Laura Bloomfield In the last few years, StudyTube has boomed, with videos gaining thousands and thousands of views. However, it’s worth wondering whether StudyTube advertises unhealthy study habits which viewers may feel they have to copy in order to achieve certain grades. The ‘Study with Me’ videos are some of the most potentially damaging videos I’ve seen on YouTube. Content creators post up to 12 hour study sessions. This has the possibility of making students feel like they need to study for equally long to achieve the same grades as these StudyTubers, which is not the case. These long study stints aren’t always healthy. We need breaks. On the flip side, these videos do have the benefit of making viewers feel like they have a study companion which can motivate people to cont...