#they dont make men like austen men

[pemberlaey]

i feel really normal about this

#they dont make men like austen men #the inherent power of the word dearest in an austen novel #pride and prejudice #emma #Northanger Abbey #Elizabeth Bennet #mr darcy #Mr. Darcy #lizzy x darcy #emma woodhouse #mr knightley #emma x knightley #emma 2020 #catherine moreland #henry tilney #catherine x henry #jane austen

[moth-in-the-moon]

I get what you mean. I might sound controversial here but Si Spurrier took Chuck Austen's spot in my list of bad Nightcrawler writers for awhile now.

After this tho ? This whole 6$ mess?? I actually prefer Austen to him. It's incredible.

Should have seen this coming, all the clues were there from the start : Nightcrawler's selective memory on everything he went through, none of his friends caring about him (100× worse than Austen on this one), that bit in Legion of X where we could see Nightcrawler's s3xual fantasies which included a woman that straight up looks like Rogue, the whole Mother Righteous deal, the Golden Child in Nightcrawlers (we went all later season Rick and Morty here) and of course the Margali fiasco, to which I'm still going "why just why" whenever I think about it especially after finding out Orchis actually has a magic user (new oc from Dark X-Men) who captured an alternative version of Nightcrawler + Madelyne Pryor before Fall of X went down (so like why tf couldn't they have another oc or just her be behind Legion of X's horn plot instead of the only good parent Kurt has??)

Just get Si Spurrier away from Nightcrawler forever. I'm begging here

Who are you and how did you find me

Outside of getting an ask that isnt from people I talk to on the daily, i assume, uh. Yeah what's been happening to Kurt has all kinda a big mess.

People can like the retcon and more power to them if they do, but I just. personally dont like how it messes with everything (a la Maximoffs arent Magnetos kids anymore, but somehow worse?) Full on explaination of my thoughts under the read more, be warned though, it might be a bit messy just based on it being me trying to collect my thoughts in a written form

Spurrier has made some very weird choices in the comics, definitly, though not all of them suck IMO.

(I'm probably the one person who thought about how Azazel has basically soul magic and how Kurt could thusly have magic aswell, meaning that Hope Sword being a magic weapon that kurt made in his soul (one which he should not have, but apperantly grew back) satisfied me and me specifically beccause AHA magical kurt!)

BUT YEAH NO, they messed up Margali ALOT, which, read the headline she is my girl, I liked seeing her again but WOW did they not understand her and what she does and the way they characterized her could be considered a form of character-assasination and possibly even. downright horrible considering the fact that she is a roma woman (though lets be real there are many issues with how writers treat the romani characters and as someone who is not romani, I wont speak on it in detail now, cause it's not really my place. but like man); Mr Sinisters rule 63 self was a whole thing, again as my headline says, do not like her., i think her character was handled horribly. Plus they made her like. the reason why margali does magic and as the number one margali fan in the world, thats bullshit. Margali has been sorcerer supreme twice, possibly even trice depending on how you read her being guardian of limbo so having her get to that point cause some fuckin Nathaniel Essex clone was like "teehee i actually gave you magic" and then making her take margalis magic and kill her?? It's bad. (also i dont like the way she looks, why would she look so different from other essex clones, its just. aesthetically weird to me); On the note of the nightcrawlers, I actually quite liked them as a concept, though I think they couldve gotten more creative with their designs. Please make them look like more than just character but hit with a blue coat of paint, theyre a mix of two genetic samples, not a full clone of one character. They are in a sense of biology, children of those two characters, dont make them look boring also dont like how two of them had a baby. they both have 50 percent kurt DNA. thats. thats not gonna be a healthy baby. Do like the baby tough, shout out to the god baby, her concept is way too funny to dislike.

NOW, I will say, reading over the stuff again, i feel like its implying that Raven used a bit of the dna from the baron and azazel for the whole, having a baby thing???

WHICH, if I'm reading that right, might actually mean that they just actually did the most insane move of basically going "actually every bio-parent we've ever given Kurt is Kurts Bio-Parent" and I would actually respect that and it would change my opinion on this comic INSTANTLY because this kind of shark jumpery would be amazing.

But either way, I feel like retconning everything is really bad for everyones characterization, especially Destiny and Mystiques, part of it being the "oh we had to leave you cause future vision said so" feels very much like them trying to find an excuse for why they wouldnt raise their child

Idk it feels weird to have him be raven and irenes beloved darling child that they were forced to give up when you have mystique and destiny not really giving a shit about kurt, like ever previously in the comics.

To me it feels empty and almost like a cheap reference. It isnt something easily inserted in todays canon, years ago, when we didnt have all the baggage of years of interactions, you couldve easily added that fact and explained why they left him, but now, its a mess

Plus they JUST brought Az back in the comics in the dark x-men thing, which. feels like really bad timing, if they just let azazel fade from memory and then do the retcon like "yeah kurt just dreamt all of that demon stuff teehee", it'd be annoying but.

He's in comics.

Recent comics.

Why would you remind everyone of his existence, yknow, the man literally made and designed to be kurts bio-dad down to basically being a red Kurt with straight hair and without ectrodactyly. and then. retcon him being the father.

It feels so weirdly timed, did they not talk to eachother when planning these series??

Also I get that not everyone likes Azazel and his deal, which is fair, he's a kinda one note weirdo guy, but idk man. I like him. I think he's funny, I like villains like him being just annoying pests.

ALSO!! Spider-Kurt is actually one of my favourite things recent comics has done, because FUNFACT there's a character who we only ever see the tombstone off on battle world, from a different universe, called Amanda Wagner-Parker aka Spider-Crawler and. I am kinda obsessed with her?? Like. They actually just gave us a hinted at Kurt/Peter kid a tonne of years ago??? possibly??? like that??? and no one ever talks about her So them making Kurt be buds with Peter and hang out was actually catering to me specifically. That was a good idea. Kurt as spiderman with magic powers was written for my tastes and no one elses ever actually

Also uh, all comic characters are technically ocs so being like "ooo new oc from this" feels a bit dismissive to me, just say character

#also pretty sure you dont have to censor yourself on this platform #at least like not in asks #idk man I like azazel and I think just this weirdo dude being kurts dad is funny and a fine choice #big sidenote also I love Golden Child #I think she should come back and become some sort of god-child shes so funny as a concept #let the god toddler be a powerful force brought back into this reality by her own god powers or something #and now they have to raise a god toddler who also glows and floats and has wolverine genes so she probably also has claws #anyway back in my 'one day I'll write character analysis' hole #the dagur and kurt analysees that I keep wanting to write will maybe one day exist #moth answers #moth fuckin. writes a novel more like it

[butchniqabi]

how do you grapple with the facts that the things you enjoy, whether recent media or historical fiction? jane austen wrote a novel centered around a wealthy family whose wealth coming largely from the slave trade is only mentioned in the briefest passing- does this change how you read her books? not meaning this as a gotcha, i was just wondering how you square that with the idea that people "fandomizing" or talking about works with elements of bigotry is harmful

i was dreading answering this initially because i thought id have to make some big eloquent essay but i realized that i dont actually need to do that lol. so, for every person there is going to be a line in which they consider certain media unacceptable for them or for others to consume. for me its like this, @yvesdot mentioned in a reblog that dracula would fundamentally be a different novel if you took away the bigotry, and its true! but if you took away the bigotry from say jane eyre, it would have different scenes and approaches but it would still be the same novel (at least to me anyways. keep in mind others might disagree and theyre like allowed to and stuff). but also just as a black person who has grown up in american society, a vast majority of media out there is racist and cutting all of them out severely limits our options. that Does Not mean that you should just uncritically consume all forms of bigoted media because "well amatullah said its all racist anyways sooo" and that Certainly Does Not mean to not be public about a piece of media's bigotry, especially those labled classics. what it does mean is that personally, there are things i can engage with and enjoy and there are things that i engage with and dont.

also, when i talk about fandomizing what i mean is this: jokes about how dracula is going to destroy britain, woobifying a character who makes blatantly bigoted observations, and fanart of dracula with green-tinted skin and a hooked nose. i find fandoms annoying at the best of times, but my fear (that i discovered was founded) about the fandomization of dracula specifically is that the book's blatant bigotry would either be ignored or ignorantly embraced and people want to focus on two fictional men who they want to swap spit in favor of all the bigoted over and undertones.

#asks #anyways im gonna reblog something cute and then go to bed

[fangirlsovertoomanythings]

Eu postei 6.750 vezes em 2022

Foram 3.020 posts a mais do que em 2021!

488 posts criados (7%)

6.262 posts reblogados (93%)

Blogs que você mais reblogou:

@dhiibvulk

@thatqueerweirdo

@pencil-pilferer

@astrangergivingthestrangewelcome

@hydepotions

Eu marquei 2.665 posts meus em 2022

#ask - 117 posts

#// bold - 108 posts

#sherlock holmes - 73 posts

#save - 59 posts

#prompt - 56 posts

#// unreality - 43 posts

#acd holmes - 43 posts

#qatar 2022 - 38 posts

#dracula - 38 posts

#lupin iii - 37 posts

Maior tag: 139 caracteres

#divórcio cringe na minha época as pessoas sentavam no sofá e diziam que não dava mais e chamavam um advogado (nunca vi um divórcio na vida)

Meus principais posts em 2022:

#5

This is a strange one, but I believe that we forget how dangerous Holmes is because of his vengefulness. From sending death threats to the KKK to threatening to slaughter a man had Watson died on the scene, he shows an eagerness in doing justice by his own hands that I don't see adapted often, even if that makes him more dynamic as a character. To him, morality isn't black and white and he believes you can do good even if you harm someone, if this someone does more wrong by remaining unharmed.

Think about it: he's not that different from the men he has condemned, he just differs from them in motivation. He can and will commit the same crimes he had people convicted for if he finds it justified, and sometimes his justification is as simple as "this person has harmed someone that I loved". On this case, it is not a statement for a client; it's revenge for his own sake and the sake of the person he cares about. Why does he let some people go? Because he sees himself in them.

What I'm trying to say is that he is a good man, but he's a really dangerous one.

334 notas - publicadas em 7 de julho de 2022

#4

Ver o post inteiro

338 notas - publicadas em 7 de agosto de 2022

#3

The Hound of the Baskerville is just a Scooby-Doo episode. Random guy does something that makes it seem like there is supernatural stuff happening for money. Two not older than 30 years people unravel it. Increasingly wacky and elaborated shit happens during the investigation and yet it is all somehow explained logically. There's a dog somewhere

355 notas - publicadas em 17 de julho de 2022

#2

You gotta love the range amongst the love interests of Jane Austen books. Mr. Darcy is just constantly going "i dont want to talk to her, she's so cool, she is right i need to change 👉👈", and Mr. Knightley is right here going "you spoiled little brat i want you carnally"

559 notas - publicadas em 10 de outubro de 2022

Meu post nº 1 de 2022

Sherlock Holmes is a polyglot, and therefore we as a fandom should make him fuck up the English language more often I believe

608 notas - publicadas em 16 de junho de 2022

Veja a sua Retrospectiva 2022 →

#tumblr2022 #retrospectiva #Minha Retrospectiva 2022 #Sua Retrospectiva 2022 do Tumblr #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[mukhannath]

just as a thought experiment Im putting together a new literary canon of all women, because so many “firsts” were women who were overshadowed by male writers, and i dont like a lot of attempts to diversify the canon so far because a lot of them focus on  modern & contemporary, when women and particularly women of color have been inventing literature for so long. here are my ideas so far.

world’s oldest named writer was Enheduanna, a priestess of Inanna from the Akkadian empire (so by today’s standards a woman of color was the first poet!). we still have a lot of her poetry and the one about Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld is surprisingly readable.

Sappho’s fragments, enough said.

Heian era japanese literature (more non western!).

haven’t read Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki but it’s considered the “first novel”.

Murasaki and her rival Sei Shonagon both have diaries, reading the latter right now, it’s sooo modern sounding for having been written in the 900s. this era of literature was so ahead of its time because it’s all about psychological novel and internal drama, something that it took hundreds of years for the western world to catch up with, and it was invented by women who were writing in their native japanese (men wrote in chinese, which they treated the way europeans treated latin, so men’s poetry from this time comes across as very stilted and formal, and not as modern as women’s literature.) 

Margery Kempe was an english medieval woman who wrote what’s considered the first biography in the english language. it’s not very good but it’s pretty funny and it seems like pretty ahead of its time.

jane austen obviously

saint hildegard of bingen? idk I’ve mostly only read her scientific works not the mystical stuff.

all this is to say that the privilege of Authorship was not often granted to women which is what informed woolf’s quote “anonymous was a woman”. so a lot of stuff like Egyptian book of the dead, Popol Vuh, Beowulf, etc. might have been written by women but we have no way of knowing. I’m also really interested in precolonial literature, but that makes this project/list/thing im working on biased against oral history, which sucks because it means entire continents are underrepresented. the existence of a literary canon is at heart a western concept, because it elevates the written word over oral tradition, and I’m not sure how to fix that. but we can definitely work on the sexism problem for now. 

stuff i havent read but sounds interesting:

Lais de Marie de France

Le Livre de la Cité des Dames - Christine de Pizan: early 1400s utopian literature about an all lady city

poetry by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Jane Anger Her Protection For Women

[lesbianmarrow]

watched legends of tomorrow 3.11. well. Well. okay. i feel like it is my duty as an indian person to break down all the ways in which this episode was or was not racist. however. the episode embarrassed me so deeply and profoundly, down to my bones, that i feel incapable of assessing it rationally. so you’ll have to forgive me for that. i think this is probably the worst episode of the season so far. that doesn’t mean it isn’t a whole lot of fun, or lacks decent character moments. but on the whole it is an utter mess. i’ve been wanting another zari centric episode, but this? be careful what you wish for, indeed. 

okay. okay. on to the actual episode. i like that they addressed the potential ray/nate conflict right at the start because that was my major question coming out of last episode. not thrilled with the no homo jokes the show keeps making with the friendship between those two characters. legends ought to be better than that. i thought zari and nate were cute enough but if they actually get together i might stop liking them. it’s about the pining........

zari getting pestered by all the ladies about her crush on nate was wonderful. loved the line about them not passing the bechdel test. i believe this is the first time it’s really shown that charlie is shall we say sexually liberated. i kind of always assumed she was but this episode hammers that in. though shes only depicted expressing sexual attraction to men in this episode, which i felt was odd since she has been at least implied to be bisexual. feels like this wouldve been the right place to firmly establish that but anyway. loved when sara said zari should have sex with someone who isnt nate bc then if shes still thinking about nate afterward it means shes really into him. cause that’s exactly what sara did with constantine and ava. 

the failed wedding at the beginning was fun. i like that the bride ran off with the scullery maid. this show knows its audience! i like that charlie was so delighted by everybody kissing each other. she’s a demon, no wonder she loves pandemonium. i was surprised when sara said she thought the 2 ladies kissing was hot, but i really shouldnt be. i just get surprised when women on tv are shown objectifying other women in that way. i definitely think it was the right move to only have the women go on the jane austen adventure. loved the “turn around the room” that was so silly. 

zari’s love interest being an indian guy was enough to embarrass me but then they made him a HINDU LOVE GOD........im telling you ive been hindu all my life and ive never heard of a love god. i swear these people are finding the most obscure gods to feature on their tv shows. ok i just googled him and his mount is a parrot which i have to admit is pretty cool but i digress. i don’t have an issue with legends of tomorrow doing a sex pollen episode, because honestly that was feeling pretty inevitable at this point. i do have a problem with them using, i’m sorry, a hindu. love. god. as the catalyst for it. it’s just like wow i really thought we left this sort of racism back in arrow but i guess not huh! i suppose i have to give them credit for having this romance be with zari instead of (shudder) a white woman. it still sucks though. particularly because he sex pollens the whole crew not just zari. 

i assume the writers developed this whole plot by working their way backwards after they decided they wanted a bollywood musical number and i’m sorry but it was not worth it. none of this was worth it all of it should have been scrapped. it was super cool to have zari sing and she did look lovely in the indian clothes but the episode simply did not justify the musical number to me. im not against western tv having a bollywood musical episode in theory but my personal feeling is that if a show does not have a south asian person as a regular cast member then they shouldnt be allowed to do a bollywood musical episode. i dont think thats too much to ask. so yeah i didnt like that part of the episode and i kind of wish i could erase it from my memory but its fine im fine. 

#i have more to say but this post is long enough sorry #legends of tomorrow #zari tomaz #legends charlie #sara lance #syl posts

[bbcsherlock]

ummm dont talk to me unless youve read

Effeminate England: Homosexual Writing After 1885             by Joseph Bristow;                            Secret Selves: Confession and Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Autobiography             by Oliver Buckton;                            Sacred and Profane in Symbolist at the Art             by Luigi Carluccio;                            Virtuous Vice: Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere             by Eric Clarke;                            Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century             by H. G. Cocks;                            Talk on the Wilde Side             by Cohen;                            An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method             by Morris R. Cohen, Ernest Nagel;                            Sex Scandals: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction             by William Cohen;                            London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914             by Matt Cooke;                            Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf             by Mary Jean Corbett;                            American Sympathy: Men, Friendship and Literature in the New Nation             by Caleb Crain;                            Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France             by Thomas Crow;                            Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites             by Colin Cruise;                            Queer Beauty: Sexuality and Aesthetics from Wincklemann to Freud and Beyond             by Whitney Davis;                            Friendship's Bonds: Democracy and the Novel in Victorian England             by Richard Dellamora;                            Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism             by Richard Dellamora;                            "Beautiful, Aesthetic, Erotic." The New York Review of Books             by Richard Dorment;                            Romantic Genius: The Pre-History of a Homosexual Role             by Andrew Elfenbein;                            British Aestheticism and Ancient Greece: Hellenism, Reception, Gods in Exile             by Stefano Evangelista;                            The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society             by Michael S. Foldy;                            The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Volume I)             by Michel Foucault;                            Queer Dickens: Erotics, Families, Masculinities             by Holly Furneaux;                            Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public             by Regenia Gagnier;                            Selected Poetry             by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, David Luke;                            The Story of Art             by E. H. Gombrich;                            Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity             by Ardel Haefele-Thomas;                            Homosexual Desire             by Guy Hocquenhem;                            "Burne-Jones and Gustave Moreau." Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art             by Robin Ironside;                            The Homosexual Revival of Renaissance Style, 1850–1950             by Yvonne Ivory;                            The Symbolists             by Philippe Jullian;                            Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime             by Immanuel Kant, John T. Goldthwait;                            Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire             by Morris B Kaplan;                            Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times             by Morris B Kaplan;                            Painted Men in Britain, 1868–1918: Royal Academicians and Masculinities             by Jongwoo Jeremy Kim;                            Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England             by Sharon Marcus;                            The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Century Britain             by Steven Marcus;                            Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs             by Carol Mavor;                            The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination             by Fiona MacCarthy;                            "The Homosexual Role." Social Problems 16.2             by Mary McIntosh;                            Victorian Keats: Manliness, Sexuality, and Desire             by James Najarian;                            Walking the Victorian Streets             by Deborah Epstein Nord;                            Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture             by Patrick O'Malley;                            The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern             by Alex Owen;                            The Renaissance             by Walter Pater;                            Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History             by Alex Potts;                            Art for Art Sake's: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting             by Elizabeth Prettejohn;                            Art of the Pre-Raphaelites             by Elizabeth Prettejohn;                            Beauty and Art: 1750–2000             by Elizabeth Prettejohn;                            Beauty's Body: Femininity and Representation in Victorian Aestheticism             by Kathy Alexis Psomiades;                            Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas             by Christopher Reed;                            From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and His World             by Allen Reff, Staley Theodore;                            Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman             by Catherine Robson;                            Edward Carpenter             by Sheila Rowbotham;                            Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire             by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick;                            The Epistemology of the Closet             by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick;                            Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle             by Elaine Showalter;                            The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Moment             by Alan Sinfield;                            Aubrey Breadsley: Dandy of the Grotesque             by Chris Snodgrass;                            Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal, and Victorian Letters             by Kate Thomas;                            Cities of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London             by Judith Walkowitz;                            "Queer and Then?." Chronicle of Higher Education             by Michael Warner            

#ok the way this pasted is sending me and i know this is only funny to me but its my blog babe <3 #t

[deathvsthemaiden]

ok wait after u sent me that ask i have to know ur top books!!! dw if u don't feel like it but i would love to hear them 🌷

This is so sweet and considerate! Thank you Eva, you gave me 5 so I’ll try to keep it to that # as well 💖🐰 off the top of my head:

🌷 The Stormlight Archive series, especially the second book, Words of Radiance. Stormlight is like 4 books + 2 novellas right now, and is projected to be 10 books and ???novellas eventually. And on top of that each main book is 1000+ pages and while you can read Stormlight on its own, most of the other books by the author, Brandon Sanderson, are part of this larger fictional universe called the cosmere. Each series takes place on a different planet, and if you are invested in the whole cosmere, there’s Easter egg references to other series in other series. So like! While I rec these books often, most people understandably don’t take me up on it wgshshh 🤭 Sanderson’s non-Stormlight books are all MUCH shorter but also much more flawed imo. Like I wouldn’t count him among my favorite authors were it not for Stormlight. anyway I’m a die hard fantasy fan so the length didn’t deter me, and I picked these up because a friend told me the world building in these books was genuinely unique instead of the typical very lazy maps composed of like. Fantasy Russia and its hostile mysterious neighbors Fantasy General East Asia and Fantasy Africa lol. and she was right! The world building is exquisite and refreshing and almost every character is canonically of color. They live in a society with an eye color based caste system and it’s.., so hard to sum up this massive series with four main characters and a ridiculous(ly fun) amount of plot lines, so I’ll cut this short and say 1) the first book, The Way of Kings, is highly expository but the ending is so so worth it, and if you enjoy the ending you’ll find merit in continuing with the series 2) Words of Radiance is my favorite book so far partially because I haven’t read the newest, Rhythm of War, yet, and also because it’s the book with the most scenes that solidified Kaladin Stormblessed (one of the main characters) as one of my favorites of all time. Another one of the best things about this series is how Brandon Sanderson portrays mental health in very natural ways, and it makes Kaladin’s growth so incredibly soothing to follow (I MEAN. He has low points that sometimes hit too close to home, but it makes you root for him harder) he really is just. Truly my definition of a hero, if we wanna get cheesy about it, and I had to pick one solid example. I love him so much this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg as to why 😭!

🌷Jane Eyre. Silly frivolous teenaged girl that I am this book swept me off my feet when I first read it and I condone every problematic aspect of it❤️ (I DONT ofc but like! I love drama and being played like a fiddle by narratives and the book delivered on both fronts! And it couldn’t have without its unsavory plot twist soooo 😙💖) (the hate this book and especially one specific character gets is funny to me just because like. Hate for the former (imo) usually stems from people taking the book too seriously while simultaneously missing the point (JE and du Maurier’s Rebecca (highly influenced by the former) are oft considered loose Bluebeard retellings for a reasonnnn!) and hate for the latter is usually just like. Warranted and then taken over the top like... he’s just a fake funny little man you guys :( and the book would’ve been boring if he wasn’t so twisted and out of touch and passionate ): not to mention I do personally in a mean ish way think it’s funny how for some people this character is one of the worst examples of men they can imagine. Like good for Them! I don’t want them to have lower standards for horribleness in people But also omg 🤭 it just reminds me of how... irony of all ironies, I’m semi frequently told I’m too harsh on real life men and then when I love twisted ones in books (for being funny and entertaining and good solid characters) I like. get the most interesting side eyes (whether figurative or literal) bwjswnhshe anyway I have nothing against Austen, I definitely enjoy her, but from what I’ve read so far, I prefer the Brontës a lot more... I need adventure! Show me horror show me rot etc etc❤️ also I’m. A stupid sucker so the fact that the book was Charlotte Brontë’s attempt to write a plain looking lady protagonist and to make her praiseworthy and virtuous and worthy of spellbinding romance makes me... 💗💓💕

🌷Keturah and Lord Death — Martine Leavitt. I haven’t seen it officially stated anywhere but to me it’s p clear this book is a retelling of/highly inspired by Godfather Death (the Grimm tale) Very simple, predictable but effective plot, and the characters are just. So much fun. From my url you can probably tell I love stories in which women (or anyone but you know. Death and the Maiden is its own trope for a reason) outsmart/face off against death. If they also k*ss, when done right, I think that’s swell as well.

🌷A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khalid Hosseini. By far the heaviest book I will mention in this ask, and I don’t rec it willy nilly for that and a few other reasons. It’s a forever fave to me because I read it at the exact right time in my life, where I was like... noticing a ton of things irl and things at home were tumultuous, and when I saw very similar things unfold in this book while I was being silenced and made to feel crazy by the adults around me, it meant so much to me to see reality as I was experiencing it in real time reflected back at me via this novel. The context of the story is wildly different from my own life and the stakes the characters face are far higher, and it is if I remember right mostly a novel about the horrors of war, which isn’t something I pretend to have any firsthand experience with, but! It was legitimately cathartic to read when I read it, and it especially meant a lot to me at the time that the author was a grown man. Not to mention how my mother is not and never has been a reader, and somehow the one and only book I ever managed to get her to read was this. Hilariously she got mad at me for only (“only”) reading depressing things (there’s... a grain of truth to that but she doesn’t need to know! 🤫) but also... she was hooked I could tell! (I got all tmi explaining this one gag I’m so sorry)

🌷A Slight Trick of the Mind — Mitch Cullin. Retirement-era Holmes! Holmes as an old man! A sad old man who keeps bees!! It’s the novel the movie Mr. Holmes was based off of (haven’t seen it yet) and I was not expecting it to get me all sentimental like it did 🤨😪 but anyway it’s like. A prolonged character study and explores some of the most interesting (to me, anyway) parts of Holmes that are only lightly touched upon in canon, like his occasionally huge follies when navigating his few close relationships and how he copes with them afterwards, his fatigue at the random injustice of the world, how he’s often mistaken both by characters that surround him and people irl as a man without feelings, etc etc. like there’s no Dr. Watson or Mrs. Hudson in this book, and the people he interacts with are almost entirely original characters, but as I listened to the audiobook it barely occurred to me to miss Watson and Hudson (I know! 😦) and the author’s original characters interacted with Holmes so believably that I sometimes forgot they weren’t ever Doyle’s. Def recommend to any flexible Holmes fan that’s not a total stickler for canon (though you don’t actually have to know much about Holmes to read this book and enjoy it! 🐝)

🌷Sleepless — Sarah Vaughn + Leila del Luca. I began with the longest book, so let me end with the shortest. It’s a 2 volume long graphic novel series and that it’s so short is the only long standing, legitimate complaint I have of it! Gorgeous art, really effectively written romance, a dark skinned girl who gets to be the proactive, lively protagonist and stunning, pined after love interest at the same time, a cast of characters that is majority of color, the perfect %-age of drama and angst etc etc. if you can find it via your library or online or smth, you can knock it out in one sitting and leave the experience eternally altered in the funnest way 👁👄👁

Honorable mentions: The Botany of Desire — Michael Pollan, Troubling Love — Elena Ferrante, The Girl from the Garden — Parnaz Foroutan

#asks #book recs #wasn’t sure if you’d read Jane Eyre before so I was vague abt it qgzhshshs #long post

[morwensteelsheen]

Care to expound on Eowyn's relationships with members of Faramir's family? Living or dead, nuclear or extended, canon or au, whoever you want to talk about

yes i can!! god, i love you.

okay lemme start with my AU because that's with im thinking about right now:

denethor: despite, i think, fanon presumption, éowyn absolutely has an icy respect for him. i think she sees in him what she wishes théoden was, although i think she's not quite ready to admit that. i think she comes to quite an uncomfortable accord with him, where they're both ready to deal with one another on their own terms (which, coincidentally, happen to be personally identical terms) but there's never any real affection or friendship between one another. basically they see in each other the other person and it makes them fucking MISERABLE and they try to keep their distances because it's just way, way, way too much. and neither of them are particularly keen on personal reflection.

boromir: god, sorry, in any universe they are definitely pals. boromir is a delight and a king amongst men and éowyn absolutely sees this and admires him. she doesnt love him romantically because she sees too much of her own people in him to ever feel truly free or liberated, but she loves him as a brother and/or as a king and that, truly, is enough.

imrahil: i think éowyn is initially suspicious of imrahil. i think she sees in him a lot of the excesses of gondor and doesn't quite speak his language, but after additional consideration starts to see, in his adherence to norms, a bit of cynicism, which endears him to her. later, when she takes up what is essentially a stewardship of ithilien on faramir’s behalf, i think she starts to rely on him quite a bit, and the fact that he has such a good relationship with her brother only makes her trust him more. 

erchirion: massive playboy in all of my AUs and canon extensions. she likes him cause he doesn't lie about anything, and so they get along.

amrothos: is always clever and more faramir-like in all my estimations, she sort of has a silent accord with him where they dont snipe but they don't actively seek one another's company. faramir loves him because he follows him around and asks him advice, éowyn has this constitutional need to swirly him that she swallows for faramir's sake.

lothíriel: god. i really go back and forth on her, man. sometimes i think of her as jane austen's emma, which is quite fun to deal with. sometimes i can't think of her as anything other than a victim of feudal marriage expectations. typically i imagine she and éowyn have quite a harmonious accord, not necessarily a best friendship as most of fanon has her (or as i have them in willow cabin) but something like being able to get along at family dinners. also in some AUs they fuck because sometimes éowyn just needs to be an out-and-out lesbian and get eaten out by someone who knows what's up. sorry lol

ivriniel: i cant do this because im too drunk. they snipe at each other a lot. nobody enjoys it.

finduilas: god. yeah. this is the big one. i think they're quite similar on base aesthetics (which is why faramir feels comfortable giving her the mantle) but on actual personality they're very, very different. despite what fanon says i think finduilas is quite submissive and really is ready to accept her lot in life, whereas éowyn is very fussy about it.

(i realise i didn’t do canon for this, sorry. ive been explaining all this to my partner for the better part of an hour instead of typing, so this mostly applies to canon too) 

#asks #god thank you op i love you for this #im gonna come back and edit this about a million times this is such a baller question

[sorin-in-the-sixth-sense]

A list of my favourite fictional grey characters (not in order) SPOILER ALERT!

Regina Mills (Once Upon A Time)

There is a reason why Regina is called «The Evil Queen» She was pure evil. A murderer, a kidnapper, a rapist, how could I like her? Well it wasnt before season 3 I started to like her. It took a lot of time. And I suppose I will never fully love her after she raped Graham for...years... and murdered people - children when she was a tiny bit frustrated. I would even say that she is irredeemable. And I thought her redemtion arc was unrealistic in the beginning, and for God’s sake, she should not have been crowned The Good Queen in season 7. But she tried to change so hard for Henry, she tried to redeem herself. Tried to be a good mother for a change. She saved multiple lives and souls. She didnt completely redeem herself, I must admit it. But she tried so hard and I feel like she deserves something from that. She eventually became a very good mother, even though it was a little late since Henry was already 12 when she became one. She was still a bitter bitch and blamed innocent people for unfortunate things that happened to her (Zelena, Mary Margaret, Emma) but by season 7, she became something more than that. She became half good. Grey. And even though she didnt completely redeem herself, she came close. Also, I love her sassy personality, she should be crowned The Sassy Queen, not The Good Queen.

Rumplestiltskin (Once Upon A Time)

The Dark One who after 7 seasons became one of the greatest heroes in OUAT. The man who was known as the village coward because he ran away from the Ogre War and was too afraid to fight for his wife became one of the bravest men. Like Regina, he was a murderer. He was super manipulative with all his deals and the «all magic comes with a price, dearie» thing. He manipulated people into getting themselves killed. Before he became The Dark One, he was a good man with a pure heart. But the power of the dagger took over him and his heart was all black. He was power sick. He always wanted power, but not for selfish reasons. He felt like he needed power to protect his son Bealfire/Neal and his wife Milah, but when he took that power, the darkness came over him and he, after time, became evil. It wasn’t before he met Belle French his heart showed a little bit of light. As he said, she was his light in an ocean of darkness. Their relationship was problematic and selfish in the beginning. He manipulated her into thinking he changed (which you know i detest *cough* James Potter) Rumple loved power more than he loved her, at least in season 4. He too often chose it over her, until season 6 when he started to properly redeem himself. His redemtion arc took over 300 years but it came in the end. His love for her changed A LOT. In the other seasons, his love was unhealthy and selfish. But in season 6 and 7, he changed a lot. This time it wasnt only for Belle, but Gideon too. They helped him let go of power and in season 7, he tried so hard to get rid of the dagger and the power so that he could live a normal life with his family. And after Belle died, he didn’t return to the dagger or the dark side. He helped the good side to defeat Drizella and the other villians in that season. He even became a father figure to Alice. And in the end he sacrificed himself to save Killian’s (Nook) life. And he got reunited with Belle. He is the most interesting character in OUAT, no doubt there.

Sawyer/James Ford (LOST)

Sawyer is without a doubt one of my fave characters from LOST (after Charlie and John) in his background, he was a thief and manipulated woman to believe he loved them, just to take all their money. (Maybe except Cassidy, since he fell in love with her later, but he still manipulated her AND got her pregnant) He’s a real asshole. Buuut - then he became an entirely different (and better) man. He meets Kate Austen and I feel like his love for her changes his character. In the beginning he was a bit of a perve with her (i mean, walking straight towards her completely naked...) he doesnt develope much in the 1 season, but later (beginning in the 3 season) he becomes quite selfless and protective. In season (was it 4? I dont quite remember) he falls in love again with Juliet Burke, and heeeeell, she was good for him. He also developes a nice relationship with Claire Littleton (platonic) he becomes protective of her. He attemts to comfort Hurley after Charlie’s death. In the rest of the seasons he is the born leader. He puts the team before himself (like when he sacrificed his chance to escape the Island) and in the paralell universe he is absolutely the best.

Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

Okay, no he’s not exactly a grey character since he’s a lot more dark than light, but I love him too much to not put him here. Differently from the other character I’ve mentioned above, Heathcliff doesnt have a redemtion. He died an awful person. He abused and manipulated a lot of people. Before he became this asshole, he was a much better person. He was an ass to those who deserved it (Hindley, That bitch deserved to die so young. Edward was a kind man, but I don’t like him, sooo... nevermind) The way he treated Isabella was sickening and awful, she had every right to leave him and take Linton away and hate him. I Don’t like Isabella, but she never deserved to be treated that way. His love for Cathy was unhealthy, but it was true and he would do so much for her. (They kinda remind me of Snily, so ofc I ship it) Heathcliff went through so much trauma in his life and never recovered. After Cathy died, he was practically dead too, then he killed himself years later. His life made me cry for days, especially the ending. He is such an interesting character with so many layers.

Ulrich Nielsen (Dark)

(Before I say anything, I haven’t finished the entire show yet, so this is gonna be short and probably not 100% correct)

To be honest, I don’t like Ulrich at all as a person. I look at him and I see a fully grown up man with no remorse for what he did to Regina as a teen. He cheated on his wife with a woman he didnt even love. He tried to murder a CHILD who hadnt done anything wrong (yet) because he thought he was going to kill his brother and son in the future (okay, i get why he did it. He was desperate to get Mikkel back and the whole time-tarvelig thing was extremely stressfull) BUT HE COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING A LOT LESS HARMFULL TO PREVENT EVERYTHING TO HAPPEN. Despite this, i love him as a character. He is so interesting and there are times were I have to remind myself why i dont like him. He is brave and intelligent and... so fucking hot as a teen.

Hannah Kahnwald (Dark)

(Again, havent watched the whole show yet)

This girl is MESSED UP. When she was fourteen, she accused Ulrich of being a rapist, which is a very serious accusation and then blamed it on Regina who she knew was a victim of Ulrich and Katharina’s bullying. She is a home-wrecker, and when Katharina found out about Ulrich cheating on her with Hannah and confronted her, Hannah blamed it on Ulrich and said he pressed her and that she wanted it to end, but he refused or whatever, i dont 100% remember the conversation. But she was also a very good mother to Jonas and she was so sweet to Mikkel/Michael. She is a bitch, so much that its impossible to not like her.

Severus Snape (Harry Potter)

Saved the best one to last. The guy my whole account is about, ofc he’s on this list, and ofc this is gonna be the longest text.

This guy is a complete asshole. Always has been, always will be. He bullied Harry and Co (mostly Harry and Neville) he was a bitter and sarcastic bitch. He used to be a follower of Voldemort. Even in his youth he had a lot of flaws. We all know he became the bastard he was due to childhood trauma, mental illnesses and manipulation. I believe he had depression, grief and PTSD. At least in his 20’s he was suicidal, and I believe it remained like that til the day he died, because he had no one to help him or give him support. He turned to the dark side in an attemt to make his life better (as many members of gangs do) but he only stayed like that for two years, which is extremely impressive if you know what kind of person Voldemort is. As a 21 year old, Snape was a very different person from what he was as a 38 year old. If he was the way he was as a 38 yr old when Lily, James and Harry was in danger. First of all, he wouldnt start to try to save Lily by asking Voldemort, he would have went straight to Dumbledore, probably with his own brilliant plan on how to save them. Second, he wouldnt hesitate for a second to save James and Harry to. In canon, he needed to have a personal reason to save them, which was Lily’s feelings I believe. As a 38 yr old, he risked his life to save people he hated (Lupin) This is a great character developement. He went from being a selfish bitch, to become a selfless asshole. He was that kind of person who did anything in his power to protect someone, even if that person had nothing to do with winning the war and had nothing to gain himself.

#OUAT #regina mills #rumplestiltskin #mr gold #belle french #lana parilla #robert carlyle #LOST #james sawyer ford #sawyer #kate austen #juliet burke #wuthering heights #heathcliff #catherine earnshaw #cathy #catherine linton #dark #ulrich nielsen #hannah kahnwald #katharina nielsen #harry potter #severus snape #lily evans #snily

[ihavetogogh]

alright, I wasn’t technically tagged in this, but @the-chesapeake-shipper did a vague-tag to all mutuals yesterday, and 🥺 I’m bored. thank u for ur generosity

rules: tag people you want to get to know better!

your name and then what you would have named yourself: well... coincidentally, i did choose my name a few years back. i’m darcy (yes, after mr. darcy. no, i do not regret it). HOWEVER there are times when i wish i had chosen a name that paid homage to my Japanese heritage. i recently learned that my mom had planned to name me kimiko hunaya and there are lots of days where i consider it because i know my great grandmother approved of it

astrological sign (sun/moon/rising if you know): will someone at a higher level of gay please teach me how to do this stuff???? i’m a capricorn, but i don’t know if that’s sun, moon, or rising

when did you join tumblr and why?: oh god.... way too young? i think i made my first blog in eighth grade. so 2011. mostly because i wanted to be an edgy tween reblogging quotes

top five fandoms: i have to narrow it down? this list is in a constant flux but at this exact moment: nbc hannibal, star trek, tolkien (i cant bring myself to say lotr while the silmarillion still holds most of my heart), the man from uncle, and x-men (but exclusively for erik’s turtlenecks)

top five favorite films: the normal heart, princess mononoke, star trek: the voyage home, the phantom thread, and the pride and prejudice 5 part mini-series that we’re all going to pretend is a movie because i never watch movies...

go to song when you want to Feel something: depends on what i need to feel, but if we’re talking about Yearning(TM), lover please stay by nothing but thieves

what’s your religion or faith if you have one?: i was raised mostly with catholic influences and some shintoism/buddhism. i vacillate between total nihilism and the concept of divinity in nature and the infinite cyclicality of energy and life??

a song that makes you feel seen: anything keaton henson has ever written? beekeeper is a very enduring song from when i was younger that still hits me right in the gut even if i dont feel the same way as i did back then. a more currently relevant song would be garden song by phoebe bridgers

if you could have any career: if i could be the person i want to be rather than the person that i am, i would be a university english professor, preferably at some old university where everything is a little drafty and the campus library has high ceilings and ghosts that stretch back to time immemorial. sharing a love for literature and storytelling has always appealed to me, and if i could, i would spend the rest of my life in academia

do you have a type: men who are too old for me and women who intimidate me 😔

what does your heart/soul yearn for?: faust. all i want right now is to sit down in my library with goethe, tchaikovsky playing in the background. where’s mephistopheles to give me a special witches brew so i have all the time in the world to glut on the passions of humanity?

if you had to describe yourself in 5 words to someone who doesn’t know you: book hoarding bisexual literature student???

favorite subject in school: english, but i also love history (especially art history)

where does your soul feel most at home?: sitting on the end of my grandparent’s crumbling dock, feet dangling in a lake that made it’s home in some scooped out part of the north cascade mountains. everything is still except the whisper of the air through the pine needles and the slap of water against the shore. my grandma and i had wine and charcuterie for lunch and now my grandpa’s talking about his painting—something that straddles the line between the familiar and the surreal. it’s a very comforting memory

top 5 fictional characters: aragorn, son of arathorn, king of gondor; hannibal lecter; jim kirk; thomasina from tom stoppard’s arcadia; lyra belaqua from his dark materials

top 3 moments in a show that made you ugly cry: did you mean when boromir dies in fellowship???? he’s such a tragic character, and sean bean was the perfect casting decision. uuuhmmmmm hannibal tenderly and erotically gutting will in his kitchen. it’s one hell of a sex scene, that. aaaand the ending of your lie in april. i have nothing else to say on the matter

the earth, the sun, the moon, or the stars: has to be the stars (moon, please forgive me....)

favorite kind of weather: when everything is poised on the edge of a storm. the air is perfectly still, and you can smell the rain and the lightning. the sun low enough that there’s nothing but a glow of light at the bottom of the cloud bank

top 3 characters you kin with: elizabeth bennett.... clearly; will graham.... less clearly; and leonard mccoy, ultimate mom friend

favorite medium of art: subtractive sculpture mediums, especially marble, and oil painting. give me all that classic art

introvert/extrovert/ambivert: i’m a big, dumb introvert

a favorite literary quote: i could... spend hours answering this. since i’m thinking of stoppard and his horribly underappreciated plays, we’ll go with my favorite quote from arcadia: “We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?”

some of your favorite books: the hobbit (tolkien), cloud atlas (david mitchell), the goldfinch (donna tartt), broken monsters (lauren beukes), the amber spyglass (phillip pullman), the paper menagerie (ken liu), the vintner’s luck (elizabeth knox), wuthering heights (emily bronte), pride and prejudice (jane austen), lolita (vladimir nabokov), crimson petal in the white (michel faber), sharp objects (gillian flynn), life after life (kate atkinson), the picture of dorian gray (oscar wilde), arcadia (tom stoppard), faust (goethe)

if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?: a townhouse in edinburgh scotland, someplace just big enough for all of my books and a dog and cat. or that town int he netherlands where there’s no cars and everyone gets around by boat. i don’t drive, so that sounds like such a dream??????

if you could live in any time in history, when would it be?: i don’t think i’d like living in any other time, honestly... as a nonbinary person... but i would love to pop into the victorian era for a visit. i want to sit in on a victorian salon, listen to poets read their work and look at art and just generally enjoy the beauty of it. but i wouldn’t like to live then for long

if you could play any instrument masterfully, which would it be?: the cello please and thank you

if you have one, what mythological god or goddess do you feel a connection to?: i vibe pretty hard with persephone...

oh my god, this is so long, but LASTLY, favorite recent selfie in your camera roll: two because why not?

[princelee-chang]

🛰️🦕🗼⏳

🛰️ - what do you think of space? is it cold? frightening? or is it just something new to funnel your curiosity into?

it does seem like vast and empty and daunting but at the same time idk to me there's something so peaceful about its vastness and endlessness like the way the ocean is deep and wide and y e s space is frightening in a beautiful way i think its unsettling and eerie and like what an aes good for her dot jpeg

🦕 - what/how does prehistory make you feel? if you came face to face with a prehistoric creature, how would you react?

I HAD A MASSIVE DINOSAUR PHASE YOU DONT EVEN KNOW I WOULD LOVE TO SEE A DINOSAUR ANY KIND OF DINOSAUR I WANNA SEE I ALWAYS WANNA SEE like MAN i am first in line @ a time travel machine. and anything abt prehistory always manages to makes me feel so small but not in the insignificant way but like the idea that the world at one point was allowed to just BE probably at its most beautiful and terrifying and untainted like w o w i would Love to see mother nature just off the shits at its peak

🗼 - what fills you with awe- technical advancements or natural displays?

natural displays ALWAYS. austen truly made some points when she said what are men compared to rocks and mountains

⏳ - how long does the day feel to you? what are the longest parts of the day? what do you feel this says about you?

oh m a n.

its just Eldest Daughter things tbh that my days are always so l o ng tho at the same time like it also feels like i havent got nearly enough time. the mornings start out fine where im the only one awake and its me and my coffee and my chores and ive grown fond of that time to myself i love that quiet where its still dark out and everyones asleep but then either when everyone starts waking up or i hear those dreaded jingle of keys ( if both my parents have work ) it feels like someone's just smashed the fast forward button and just like that 3-6hrs would be gone bec its a mad rush to get everything and everyone else sorted so i can get to what i want ?? but at the same time i feel like thats the l o ng e s t part of my day bec im waiting to get to me and its just kdkdkdkkdkd hhhhhhhhhh. and like even tho the time after dinner slows down and is """"" my time""""" so much of it is stolen still and w e l l what that says abt me tho hmmmmmmmm I Am Looking Away I Do Not See

#ILY JO YOU ALWAYS ASK THE REAL SHIT #maiaanswers #asks #ask to tag #just in case kdkfkfkfk #long post

[bbclesmis]

Andrew Davies on Les Miserables: ‘I’m rescuing it from that awful musical’

Give Andrew Davies a piece of classic literature and he will show you the erotic desires and deep-rooted anxieties that lurk beneath. Think of the passions he unleashed in the nation’s living rooms when he sent Mr Darcy for a dip in his full-blooded 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or the consternation he provoked when he inserted a spot of incest into War and Peace in 2016.

Yet even to Davies, a new adaptation of Les Misérables – which he claims “will rescue Victor Hugo’s novel from the clutches of that awful musical with its doggerel lyrics” – posed a challenge. Perhaps the biggest question was how to represent the sexuality of its two principal characters: Jean Valjean, the prisoner who breaks his parole (played by Dominic West); and his nemesis, Javert (David Oyelowo) the policeman who hounds him until the end of his days.

Over tea in central London, Davies tells me that he was surprised to discover that, in Hugo’s 1862 novel, neither character mentions any sort of sexual experience, leaving the 82-year-old screenwriter wondering, at least in the case of Javert, whether it was indicative of a latent homosexuality.

“His obsession with Jean Valjean represents a kind of perverse, erotic love,” Davies says. He doesn’t stop there. In capturing the febrile atmosphere of post-Napoleonic France, he also shows how the innkeeper’s daughter Eponine (Erin Kellyman) expresses her desire for the earnest student Marius (Josh O’Connor).

“One of the best things Hugo does is to have Eponine tease Marius with her sexiness because he is a bit of a prig,” says Davies. “So I have introduced a scene where Marius, even though he is in love with Cosette [Valjean’s adopted daughter], has a wet dream about Eponine and feels rather guilty about it. I think it fits into the psychology of the book.”

Another problem that needed solving was Cosette, “a pretty nauseating character in the book”, whom Davies has made “strong and optimistic, rather than just an idealised figure who doesn’t add anything at all.” In the past, he has spoken about how he has turned the more saccharine depictions of 19th-century womanhood he has found on the page into women with the power “to disconcert men”, by injecting into them a little of his own mother’s character. I ask if she also makes her presence felt in Les Misérables. “I don’t think so. Was she like Madame Thénardier?” he wonders, referring to the sometimes violent innkeeper’s wife, here played by Olivia Colman. “No, that would be awful. Although she was quite keen on smacking people. The women in this book are not terribly complicated.”

I suggest that this might not sit well with modern viewers. “Well, I suppose Fantine goes on one hell of a journey,” says Davies, effecting a cod-American accent. “She develops a sort of animal ferocity and that is all because of how she has been treated.”

Davies’ childhood sounds rosy by comparison. No sooner had he started at his Cardiff grammar than he wrote a naughty poem about two of the modern language teachers, which went around the whole school in samizdat. He recites it for me:

He kissed her, she kissed him      

back.  

He took her knickers off and put    

them in a sack.

She took his underpants and put    

them in her bag.

He said: “Excusez-moi, but may I    

have a shag?”

After that, his writing career settled into a slow burn. He studied English at University College London, then moved to Kenilworth, where he met his future wife, Diana Huntley (they have been married since 1960 and have two children) and began teaching literature at the Coventry College of Further Education. He wrote the odd TV play and a whole host of radio scripts – sadly, now all deleted. One 1972 play about wife swapping, Steph and the Single Life, received complaints from those who denounced it as “obscene, disgusting rubbish”.

More solid success came to Davies in the Eighties, most notably with his greatest original work, A Very Peculiar Practice, based on his experiences at Warwick. Heavy on existential gloom, it concluded with the campus being sold to a private American company, which turned it into a defence research base. Never has a series ended to quite such a peal of mirthless laughter and its extraordinary scheduling (9pm on BBC One) was, thinks Davies, a mistake.

At that point, it was hard to imagine that Davies would, a few years later, be the person to turn costume drama into sportive heritage TV. His Middlemarch came first, in 1994, and was followed 18 months later by Pride and Prejudice, one of the most popular TV series of all time. I wonder how he feels about Nina Raine’s forthcoming small-screen adaptation.

“I am very excited about it,” he says. Then he adds, “even though I wish her all the best, I hope it’s not as popular as my one. It gives me so much pleasure when people say, ‘I was feeling rotten and so I just went to bed and put on Pride and Prejudice’. People use it to get over bereavements – I’m better than a priest!”

This is not arrogance. Davies may be sharp, naughty and ironic, but he is embarrassed by anyone who makes a fuss over him. He worries that this month’s documentary about his work, Rewriting the Classics, is “a bit effusive”, and he seems too pragmatic to be affected by writerly insecurity. Is he sensitive?

“I am much less sensitive than I used to be. I remember being cast down when I had a play that went to Broadway,” he says, referring to 1980’s Rose, which starred Glenda Jackson as a schoolteacher and closed after only 68 performances. “Column after column was spent saying how terrible it was. I couldn’t eat solid food for a week.”

He had a similarly bruising experience with the film industry. A decade ago, Davies admitted that he was disappointed that his movie career had not been more buoyant (Bridget Jones’s Diary was a rare success). Talking to me now, however, he is more sanguine.

“And that’s because the writer is king in TV. In film, all the stories that people say, that they pay you a lot of money and treat you like s---, are true in my experience. I have been sacked from several movies without being told. You meet someone at a party and you say you are working on a picture and they’ll laugh and say, ‘No, you’re not.’ It’s not terribly nice.”

Two more Davies adaptations will be shown next year – of Austen’s fragment, Sanditon, and of Vikram Seth’s epic A Suitable Boy. He would love to adapt more 19th-century classics (Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Trollope’s The Barchester Chronicles are top of his list) but before that, we can look forward to his version of the Rabbit Angstrom novels by John Updike, an author whose perceived misogyny might not seem an obvious fit in today’s cultural climate.

“There are a lot of grim things said about Updike at the moment, but he is a wonderful observer of how we all behave,” says Davies. “I don’t think writers are there to be role models, they are there to say what the world is like from their point of view.”

If the number of irons he has  in the fire makes it sound as though Davies is spreading himself too thinly, he displays an air of toughness despite his advancing years and a recent double hip replacement. “I don’t feel old. I had my one-year check-up yesterday and my surgeon pronounced that he was pleased with his work. My hips are good for another 10 years.”

As well as his prolific adapting, I wonder whether Davies has the desire to tell the story of his own life. “I really ought to,” he says. “I would like to start with my parents’ lives, in the early days of their marriage, because something went wrong there.” I ask why and Davies lowers his voice almost to a whisper.  “I think it’s probably something to do with sex.”

Ben Lawrence, The Telegraph, 22 December 2018 (x)

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #Andrew Davies #Interviews #articles

[simptasia]

For the Happy Headcannons, 13, 15, 16 for Desmond Hume, Charlie Pace and Kate Austen (don't feel like you need to do all three if you dont want to)?

nah, i’ll do everybody (ba-bum-tsh). thanks buddy!

How do they like to provide for others?

desmond: i remember dessie getting all bummed out because he couldn’t afford a 5 dollar photo (bruh for 5 bucks you should get 3 photos or something, like a package deal, that sucks) for penny, so penny paid for it and that wounded his pride. now he doesn’t come across as the type to be feeling like this for sexist reasons. his pride isn’t wounded because penny, a lady, has more money than him. his pride is wounded because penny, the person he loves dearly, has more money than him and he feels he should provide for somebody he wuvs

which is built from his lack of self worth. feeling like, if i cannae provide, what i am worth to a relationship. which is sad. also something about honor

not helped is that penny is boss rich and desmond is apparently not doing so great money wise. so that wounds his pride but not in a chauvinist way, which is great because otherwise des would be a lot less likable

so in short, financially. out of fear and insecurity

charlie: now this is something. a thing about charlie is that he wants to care for those he loves. he wants to take care of claire. and when he fell in love with lucy, he wanted to take care of her too. and lucy was rich so i dunno what the fuck he meant by that. im not sure what he means. protection? just the concept of love in general? we know he wants to care for claire, but im not sure what he means

i think thats just what love feels like to him. love = feeling a profound desire to Care For somebody. which to be fair, is true. this doesn’t have to translate into literally doing something. tho charlie does watch over aaron sometimes so claire can rest. he’s gotten claire food and medicine. they sleep near each other. charlie would kill for claire, he would die for claire. in fact, he’s done both. and on a much less wholesome note, he’s also weirdly possessive of claire. due to rampant insecurity on his part. protectiveness mutated into being controlling

it’s sad, but true

so with charlie, what is i think, is that he really really REALLY puts a lot of value on playing the Husband Role (and father role if applicable) in somebody’s life

kate: protect protect protect must protect. i’ve talked about kate’s protectiveness in conjunction with women a lot, which is born from growing up seeing her mother be abused. and being abused herself. so she’s Extra protective and supportive of other women. but as well as that, she’s plenty protective and supportive of men too. within reason, if a dude (jack, sawyer) needs calling out, she’ll do it. but kate has ride or die level loyalty to those she cares for. (she also goes into Mom Mode with daniel because daniel has that effect on people)

but what does this on point character analysis have to do with what she wants to provide? well, what im saying is, if you’re friends with kate austen, and even more so, if kate austen LOVES you, you would have like the best support system. not financially but emotionally (compassion, backs you up) and physically (this bitch can FIGHT). she’s not a pushover with those she loves, but her heart bends to them pretty easily. see: jack, claire, sawyer

i don’t think this is a conscious thing, she’s just naturally good, whether she believes that or not. so she provides support

what fandom do they write fanfic for? give us a small sample

ajhfakhlsfdkhsahad firstly, no. secondly, im not doing that

now, say this was modern era and charlie existed in our time with our fandomy outlook. i have no idea what fandom he’d be in but i know what kind of fics he’d write. songfics. and this fucker is the type to write poetry on his blog. all mopey and ~deep~ kinda stuff

have no idea what kinda media any of those three would be into tho. desmond and kate aren’t really into TV.  i can’t even imagine them watching TV

which household chore do they privately love?

desmond: i can’t picture des loving a household chore, or even liking one. but he doesn’t dislike any either. he’s more matter of fact about them, really. like, well, this has gotta be done, no use complaining

charlie: growing up he never did a chore (because mama megan was very doting) until he and liam went to live on their own so he hates them all so he’s ugggghhhh about it. (only at home around liam, he’s not kinda complain around girls he likes because that’d make him look bad). like, im picturing charlie making his bed or cleaning the dishes and whining about it the whole time (”liiiii, this is killing me” “aww, is washing mugs too hard for your delicate hands, baby brother?” “shut up!” “no you shut up and we’ll get a takeaway after” “fiiiiine”)

he’d do his chores but he’ll be a bitch about the whole time

very on brand for a northerner

kate: domesticity used to really freak kate out due to trauma but once she actually got into it, she likes making breakfast. she’s not good at cooking, but breakfast is easy and there’s something… nice about it. i know making breakfast isn’t a chore, it’s more like a standard part of being alive but… yeah

#lost headcanons #theres pretty much nothing for the second one but the amount in the first and third one should make up for that #talker32332

[fangirlsovertoomanythings]

🖊 because i dont know enough about your ocs to ask for one in particular sjbdhfbf

So one day I was listened to She Likes Girls, as one days, and I thought about making an OC. I already had two victorian-era lesbians to go, as I've noticed that a lot of the queer or queercoded stuff from that era is between two men - these two women are Ping Nguyen, who is called Charlotte Simmons by The Whites TM, and Nancy Lee; Ping is half-vietnamese and half-english, but since she was born in Vietnam only to be taken from it at a young age, she feels a lost connection that she desperately wants to have again with her homecountry and Nancy Lee is from a wealthy but neglectful family, being often seen as not-so-bright because she's forgetful and innatentive at times due to loads of stress.

Ping's father wants her to marry a MANLY RICH MAN and thus comes lord Henry Dalton - yes, as a half reference to Dorian Gray but trust me the joke is that he's the polar opposite. He's interested in Ping and does that awkward thing where it's onesided pining and the person pining tries to talk to the other but the other is just "please leave me" in increasingly subtle but serious hints. Until Henry caught Nancy and Ping together, being very close friends and hugging each other on the mouth, and though he felt a little betrayed he stopped his advances on Ping and stayed on his corner because that's the right thing to do y'know. He eventually agrees to have a lavender marriage to cover Ping up, since even if wlw couples didn't have it AS BAD as mlm couples legally in the victorian era, she's already frowned upon for a lot of reasons and she's afraid. They become partners in crime after that in a way; and the rest is just the actual meaty part of the plot and not the Jane Austen Gossip part of it

#ask #// bold

[gracemerc4-blog]

When words fail, music speaks.

When words fail, music speaks.

Music has long been used as a creative outlet for people to express themselves. Through the use of songs, people can really express their feelings and show the world who they truly are, no matter how complex. The main protagonist of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, is a very complex character. Elizabeth is confident in who she is, and unlike the other women of her time, wanted to marry a man for love instead of money. Her independence and loyalty shine throughout the novel, however, her quick-to-judge attitude is also displayed in the novel. The following playlist represents Elizabeth Bennet as a loyal, confident, and independent yet judgemental woman that did not conform to the societal expectations for women during this time.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Fs6RHqvbA3ZwEpMqB46OG?si=7tDgV-jiQESR8cryVDFJ8g

Elizabeth Bennet does not care what anyone else thinks and stays true to herself. When her sister Jane falls ill at Netherfield Park, Elizabeth walks there herself to make sure she was okay, causing herself to arrive with “weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise” (Austen, 33). Upon entering the house, she is judged by Miss. Bingley and Miss. Hurst for her messy attire, as women are not expected to dirty themselves on three mile walks during this time. Despite their judgement, Elizabeth does not mind her dirty clothes. Elizabeth’s attitude towards judgement calls to mind lyrics from “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett, “A girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do, an' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation.” Elizabeth does not care about her dirty appearance or about what the other women had to say about her.

Elizabeth is confident in who she is and she is not going to change for anyone, even if she is not considered an “accomplished woman”. When Elizabeth visits Jane at Netherfield Park when Jane is sick, a conversation begins about what makes a woman accomplished. “In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Hurst's accusation that Elizabeth is unladylike leads to Miss Bingley's listing of the attributes of an ‘accomplished” woman: music, dancing, drawing and the modern languages, together with “a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions’. But Bingley and Darcy rate sisterly affection and extensive reading more highly” (Harris). Elizabeth comments that she has never met a woman with all of these traits and she does not think they exist. This comment implies that Elizabeth thinks Darcy is being too demanding and that his standards are too high. “Superficial Love” by Ruth B. includes the lyrics, “I wanna know when I'm looking at you, that you don't only see the things you want to 'cause I'm not perfect, I'm flawed. And if you don't like that, get lost” (B., Ruth). Elizabeth acknowledges that men should not demand a perfect woman because no woman is perfect. Elizabeth would believe that men should love women despite their flaws and without ridiculously high standards.

During the early 1800s, women would try to get married to men that had money in order to get a better life for themselves. Marrying for love was rare. But Elizabeth does not want to get married to just anyone. Elizabeth was proposed to by Mr. Collins, the man that would inherit her family’s Longbourn estate. By accepting his proposal, Elizabeth would have not had to worry about money or becoming an old spinster that is looked down upon by society. Instead, Elizabeth rejects this marriage proposal because she does not want to marry just anyone. As TLC once said, “I don't want no scrubs, a scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me” (TLC). Elizabeth wants to be loved and respected, not just married for money. Elizabeth turning down a man that will soon become wealthy is unheard of during this time period. Even her best friend Charlotte Lucas takes the opportunity, as Mr. Collins proposes to her next. Pyeaam Abbasi shares the same sentiment about Elizabeth rejecting the marriage proposal, stating, “Elizabeth stays a rebel, an individual respecting her own feelings more than respecting what the society expects her to do—to marry a rich gentleman” (Abbasi). By not marrying rich, Elizabeth goes against societal expectations to be her own person. Going against the status quo of marriage and not marrying for money is also a theme in the song “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” by JLo, with the lyrics “All that matters is that you treat me right, give me all the things I need that money can't buy” (Lopez).

Elizabeth Bennet is fiercely loyal to the people she loves. When her sister Jane becomes sick at Netherfield Park on a visit to Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth walks three miles to Mr. Bingley’s estate just to make sure her sister is okay. Elizabeth’s loyal nature causes her to deeply care about the people she loves. The hit song “Stand by You” by Rachel Platten includes the lyrics, “Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through hell with you, love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you” (Platten). This song is about loyalty and being there for someone when they really need it, just like Elizabeth is there for the people she loves.

Intelligence and independence are some of Elizabth’s main traits. Elizabeth is a very intelligent woman. Miss Bingley describes Elizabeth, stating, “She is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else” (Austen 37). Elizabeth’s intelligence and confidence prompted me to add the song “Run the World” by Beyonce to her playlist, which includes the lyrics, “Boy, you know you love it, how we're smart enough to make these millions” (Beyonce). Elizabeth also knows that she does not need a man to be happy. “I Don’t Need a Man” by The Pussycat Dolls is also included in this playlist, including the lyrics, “I don't need a ring around my finger to make me feel complete”(Dolls). Elizabeth is very independent and does not need to rely on a man to be happy, which is why she rejects Mr.Collins, as she is perfectly fine being happy on her own. She is not the type of woman that would just sit still, look pretty, and be as accommodating as possible like the other women of this time. “Sit Still Look Pretty” by Daya includes lyrics about not wanting to just be a pretty object for men to look at. The song includes lyrics such as, “No, I don’t wanna sit still, look pretty” (Daya). These lyrics fit Elizabeth well because she is very much her own independent person and would not make herself smaller to appease someone else.

Although Elizabeth has a lot of great qualities, she is not perfect. Elizabeth does have a predisposition to be judgemental. When Elizabeth first meets Darcy, she judges him prematurely and thinks that he was a proud and disagreeable man. However, her opinion begins to change once she visits Pemberley House. All of the workers that maintain Pemberley speak of Mr. Darcy in the highest regards, describing him as “the best landlord and best master that ever lived” (Austen 239). All of the praise for Darcy makes Elizabeth question if she really knows him at all. The song “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band is all about judging someone prematurely and wrongful judgement. Some lyrics include, “The sign said ‘Long-haired freaky people need not apply’ so I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why. He said "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do.’ So I took off my hat, I said ‘Imagine that. Huh! Me workin' for you!’” (Five Man Electrical Band). A song about judgement fits perfectly into this playlist because of Elizabeth’s tendency to judge prematurely.

Despite Elizabeth’s judgemental tendencies, she finds love in the place where she least expects it. Following her visit to Pemberley, Elizabeth begins to realize that Darcy really is not as arrogant and disagreeable as she thinks, and she falls in love with him. “I Found” by Amber Run is a song about finding love where you least expect it, with the lyrics, “I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be: right in front of me. Talk some sense to me” (Run). Elizabeth finds this love where it “wasn’t supposed to be” because of her initial prejudice against Mr. Darcy. At one point, she even tells Darcy, “you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry” (188). Falling in love with Darcy is the last thing Elizabeth expects to do, so “I Found” perfectly explains her new found romance.

Work Cited

Abbasi, Pyeaam. "Aggression or Regression: A Comparative Study of Heroines in The Mill on        the Floss and Pride and Prejudice." k@ta lama [Online], 16.1 (2014): 54-60. Web. 15 Nov. 2020

B., Ruth.  Lyrics to “Superficial Love.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Ruth-b-superficial-love-lyrics.

Beyonce.  Lyrics to “Run the World (Girls).” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Beyonce-run-the-world-girls-lyrics .

Daya.  Lyrics to “Sit Still Look Pretty.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Daya-sit-still-look-pretty-lyrics .

Dolls, The Pussycat.  Lyrics to “I Don’t Need a Man.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/The-pussycat-dolls-i-dont-need-a-man-lyrics .

Five Man Electrical Band.  Lyrics to “Signs.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Five-man-electrical-band-signs-lyrics .

Harris, Jocelyn Margaret. “Jane Austen and Celebrity Culture: Shakespeare, Dorothy Jordan and Elizabeth Bennet.” Shakespeare, vol. 6, no. 4, Dec. 2010, pp. 410–430. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/17450918.2010.527364.

Jett, Joan.  Lyrics to “Bad Reputation.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Joan-jett-bad-reputation-lyrics.

Lopez, Jennifer.  Lyrics to “Love Don’t Cost a Thing..” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Jennifer-lopez-love-dont-cost-a-thing-lyrics .

Platten, Rachel.  Lyrics to “Stand by You.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Rachel-platten-stand-by-you-lyrics .

Run, Amber.  Lyrics to “I Found.” Genius, 2020, https://genius.com/Amber-run-i-found-lyrics .

TLC.  Lyrics to “No Scrubs.” Genius, 2020,https://genius.com/Tlc-no-scrubs-lyrics .