#BUT once they sort themselves out

[lynher]

i forgot / didn't realize that imogen and sahar were childhood friends, and when sahar disclosed that imogen was the reason that she knew she was bi in the first place, and i thought that it was during this scene that sahar figured that out

[anghraine]

melyzard replied to this post:

You know, given that P&P was published in 1813 before the 1696 window tax was repealed, she might just be admiring both the outdoors AND the expansive and numerous windows themselves. I mean, good windows really were a big sign of wealth and consequence until 1851 when the tax was finally repealed. But yeah,also,yeah, she's definitely more interested in the outdoors than the Great Chimney Places of the Wealthy

It's true that windows were a major status symbol at the time and long before, but I don't think Elizabeth much cares about that, in all honesty! That is the relevant historical context for Mr Collins's rhapsodies over Rosings' windows, for instance:

she could not be in such raptures as Mr Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh

He's silly but he's not mistaken in identifying the windows as a significant status symbol (which without that cultural context can seem like just another Mr Collins absurdity). But Elizabeth specifically, as a person, is consistently not very interested in these kinds of status symbols (though she knows they're there and understands what they signify). She is attracted to natural beauty and unassuming elegance, which is the overwhelming note at Pemberley:

She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.

Even when it does come to Pemberley's expensive interior, she focuses on the aesthetic dissimilarity to Rosings and, even more, about what is suggested about Darcy's relationships to other people dependent on him (Elizabeth's takeaway from the pretty interior decorating project for Georgiana is "He is certainly a good brother" and not how much disposable income this represents, say).

The fuller quote when she first approaches the window is pretty clear about what Elizabeth is focusing on, IMO:

Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other rooms, these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen.

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[randomtheidiot]

Kalosshipping and Diodeshipping coexistence. Calem and Serena are having a wonderful date together while some loony toons ass shit happens in the background. They are desperately trying to ignore the loud explosions and confused screaming. It’s probably fine.

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[mars-ipan]

some postgame doodles for pride month

[bragganhyl]

oh what I would give for some crumbs about the relationship between Eothas and Magran pre-Saint's War 😔

[nostalgia-tblr]

u know it's a good idea for a fic if it comes to u preceded by the words "wouldn't it be fucked up if"

edit: a relevant meme (worth 1000 words)

[rosicheeks]

Anyone have any easy (cheap) dinners when you feel like shit and don’t want to do anything?

[whimseee]

ok how do I explain this. I hate being called a girl but I like being called a woman because it makes me feel respected. I don’t feel the need to change my appearance with makeup and whatnot to fit into a standard. I don’t like people affixing feminine stereotypes to me just because of my agab. I do not want to be perceived as any sort of gender if that means it’ll influence my interactions with people. I don’t really have a choice in how I am perceived. I only want to be seen as me. I do not think of myself as a woman, nor nonbinary, nor anything else. I see myself as just me. I like how they/them pronouns force people I don’t know that well to stumble a step before judging me. I like it when friends use varying pronouns for me, even ones they make up, because it makes me feel seen and appreciated. I love women so much, I fall in love a little when I notice the color of somebody’s eyes or wonder at what may have drawn her to the earrings she wears or see someone smile at me. I love being included in that world and because of that, like I am a sponge, I soak up womanhood and glow with it because I am so full of love

[derpinette]

sometimes i will get bored & go through someone's entire blog since its creation

[noahtally-famous]

the skave dynamic (in my head)

[mcnuggyy]

just remembered the fucked up dream I had last night where like 99% of the population switched bodies with somebody else somewhere in the world, BUT you weren’t aloud to talk about it at all or say who you really are or what your actual body looks like or else the government(?) would fucking kill you, like there was cameras watching us at all times, and people getting shot in front of us was common, it was very dystopian… but it was kind of an unspoken fact that almost all the people who were doing the best job at pretending to be people they weren’t were all transgender for some reason?? to the point where a lot of us had found ways to talk about it without talking about it and could bypass the cameras and shit… and the like guy who was all behind it had to get involved eventually…and he like started interviewing some of us and finally once and for all had us talk about who we really were and it was very dramatic and emotional but I woke up like immediately after saying what I looked like and who I was so 🤷🏻 who knows what would have happened next LMAO

[spitblaze]

what if my Void and @doktorpeace's Erato had spiderverse counterparts....and they were both spidermen.......and they kissed.........

[stairset]

Starset was amazing as usual last night.

[sophieswundergarten]

Contemplating the fact that, in book one, when Curtain ups the power of the messages and it starts bothering the kids and messing with their heads in the middle of Jillson's, class Reynie's first thought was "Martina's poisoned us".

Like, buddy, why?

It's just such a strange conclusion to jump to (And, yeah, it was the "Poison Apples, Poison Worms" lecture, but still). And the fact that he goes down that road for a minute of trying to figure out how she forced the Helpers to do it or something. Was this a thing you were expecting to happen? Have you been poisoned before? I expected that kind of thing from Kate, but it caught me off guard that Reynie was so convinced that it was Martina