#anyways rant over i think

[ignatius-pennyfeather-ix]

🗯

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

"You and me, Ethan. Together we go save Rose, and then we can grind Miranda into paste!"

[emmavakarian-theirin]

🐦‍⬛

[theelmoarchive]

Hello tumblr it's been a bit 🔥🔥

I made this like a month ago when i was only halfway through PD season 2, but I actually just finished it completely so it's a little outdated-

Might update in the future who knows

They're all trans btw, if you cant tell 🫶

Ghostknife and William bonus

[gods-favorite-autistic]

To me there’s like a line between the Bad Kids who were always themselves extremely authentically and that fucked them up socially (Riz, Adaine, Gorgug) and the Bad Kids who spent a good portion of their lives playing a part and that fucked them up mentally (Fabian, Kristen, Fig)

[ongoingexperiment]

A dreadful night

[exhausted-undead]

ah, young love (they will hate eachother at some point, pinkie promise)

[wardensantoineandevka]

at the end of the day, for me, the most disappointing thing about C3 isn't the poor narrative structure, the bad pacing where everything feels dragged out and rushed at the same time, or never giving the characters the space and focus to breathe and develop their own centric subplots

it is ultimately that Marquet started off very strong as a setting and did feel like it was making strides to properly draw from its Asian and SWANA inspirations, including with good use of work by other authors and consultants, only for that to rapidly fall off as the Ruidus plot became central and for there to be just as little space for Marquet as there was for Bells Hells as characters beyond carriers of The Moon Plot, with no space to develop and explore either to potential and richness. It's disappointing for Marquet especially, given the continued dearth of Asian and SWANA inspirations in Western AP, and I felt C3 started off promising with Marquet as a grounded and rich location in those inspirations.

I think a lot about Ela Lumas, whose sons' murders is the inciting incident, and how her title Ginang is a Tagalog word and how exciting that was for me personally. The fact that we lost this even as smaller notes, and that ultimately Marquet was supplanted in favor of Vasselheim (not even Issylra as a whole) and Ruidus without any real grounding of why Marquet was the setting in the first place or what Marquet's importance was specifically to the narrative other than "it has to be set somewhere", is just so intensely disappointing to me. The biggest disappointment I have with C3.

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about how deeply lucanis' life has been defined by a lack of control of that life -- as he himself points out, even before the ossuary went and carved the headline out again with big bloody letters. of course he reacts badly to losing what little control he did manage to construct for himself even within those circumstances.

(namely: experience has taught him that things (caterina, loss, pain, love, all horribly and indelibly intermingled) will happen to him whether he wants them to or not and there's nothing he can do about that... but he gets to decide what's let in or out of his soul as it happens, even if he has to close it all down and deaden and numb himself out in the process. (even if that means he drifts further and further away from illario, who's been desperately reaching out and trying to keep hold of him until he finally gives up completely and tries to cut the bond all at once when lucanis doesn't seem to reach back anymore.) it's such rare well-observed freeze logic solidly constructed from the bottom up, I'm still so impressed with it.

the way illario seeks constant external means to cope with caterina's abuse and importance in his life -- he can't win her admiration or acceptance or warmth (or like. acknowledgement even, at times :') ), no matter what, so he goes out and finds those things in others and then disdains and dismisses it for how easily and falsely it's won from them. he plots, he conspires, he tries to beat her at her own game however clumsily, he tries. lucanis doesn't try things that way. he's not about 'how do I improve my situation' by nature, he's 'how can I stop this from getting worse'. he avoids, he internalizes, he hunkers down and makes himself nothing until the pain maybe ends. he's fundamentally not a plotter, he's a reacter. an expert assassin pantser, if you will, to illario's clear and stated exasperation fhsak. man I love them. illario says 'get us out of here!!! if you loved me as I love you you'd help me get us out of here before it kills us both', lucanis says 'there is no other place, there's nowhere to go, all we can do is endure. and if it kills us... well, that's just family. that's what love is (the way things are headed I'll die first anyway so it's fine I won't have to face losing you)', and they're equally baffled and hurt by each other's POV. but they're both right, and they're both wrong. there's no 'right' way to deal with caterina's treatment of them, or their situation. the house always wins, if you pardon the expression. house dellamorte still stands and that is what matters to caterina in the end more than anything.

it also fits so well b/c like... their core wounds are that illario is the least favourite and is constantly dismissed, so he has to prove to caterina again and again that he matters. not even that he's worth love or respect or warm regard, but that he's here at all and as such should be considered. he has to shout 'in case u forgot I EXIST!!' at the top of his lungs or else be rendered nothing within the family structure (and himself, because it's all about family, that's all that really matters. in some weird twisted way I think caterina openly declaring him before all the other crows to still be of house dellamorte -- and no one from house dellamorte kneels -- is kind of a victory for him, as much as it's also a furthering of a prison sentence and public humiliation. house dellamorte brainfuckery goes hard.). lucanis is the favourite, and it's the double-edged sword that he gets all the affection and attention but also all the control and impossible expectations. drowning under all of that constant stress and close evaluation, his brain whispers 'I don't exist' to try to escape, to hide and hold on to the deep parts of himself that are crucial to life but not part of the perfect grandson caterina demands of him as the price of her love.)

I think a lot about how what seems to disquiet lucanis the most post-ossuary (as it would anyone with that psychological makeup) is the dissolving of internal boundaries and control he's been relying on, which is part of what spite symbolizes. his anger and reactivity has seceded from the union to the point of personification as a little guy (a little guy he resents and fears for his unpredictability and invasions into regions of his psyche he wishes to stay frozen and barren, and yet cares about deeply, loves! and also constantly dismisses and frequently helplessly lets down unless he's helped to learn to do otherwise. does this remind you of another relationship in his life, perhaps. it makes me feel nuts to think about the illario/spite parallels thanks for asking), and now that little guy is out there running the show freely the moment he glances away or closes his eyes. literal nightmare scenario I feel for him so deeply. so much of his coping is predicated on being able to Not do or feel or want certain things, and that's out the window now, Spite has Opinions. Spite refuses to stay wisely in place even if that place is hell on the logic that if you move you could find yourself in a place that's even worse, somehow. Spite actually wants to experience the world, however fucked up and scarring the way he arrived here, not just endure it. Spite means he has to face that maybe illario wasn't wrong all those years, at the same time as having to admit and face what illario has done to him, and figure out what to do about any of it.

anyway. mary kirby ma'am that's some good fucking metaphor work. thank you, and sorry about all the shit that happened

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[lesbianjackies]

i did NOT just see someone complain that s3 is “reducing lottie to her mental illness”……….. oh my fucking god two episodes in and the horrible takes are already rampant

[befuddled-calico-whump]

anyone who calls service industry jobs unskilled labor has never watched a teenager wrangle a burrito the size of an infant into one square foot of aluminum foil

[alexandriaellisart]

team meeting

[burningcheese-merchant]

Merchant I just wanted to say that you're one of my favorite if not favorite Tumblr blog and one of the people that got me really onto crk,and I wanted to thank you for the banger post and for making Pepperjack .that guy is all on my sketch books

They stole their parents' weapons so they could pose for you and also because their parents' weapons are really cool

I know you only mentioned Jack but Paneer wanted to be in the picture too. She's great, too :( none of y'all love her enough, it's always about Jack smh /j

I'm happy you like my stuff so much ❤️ it means a lot to know that there are people that actually want to put up with me and my nonsense lol. I hope and intend to keep entertaining and inspiring you all for a while yet!

[bryverros]

im soooooo normal guys

[bennetsbonnet]

It's surprising and, perhaps, a little depressing for a book so ostensibly beloved and held up as one of the finest in English literature, that Pride and Prejudice is so widely misquoted and misunderstood. It seems to be primarily viewed as a romance in the public's imagination, rather than the comedy of manners it truly is.

A large part of these misconceptions are admittedly, due to its various adaptations. I think a lot of people are surprised when they read the novel for the first time and discover that Mr Collins does not possess an affinity for boiled potatoes; that the proposal scene does not take place in the rain; that the second proposal is not made by Mr Darcy stumbling over his words at dawn and, ultimately, that he does not emerge from a lake in a wet white shirt. Nor is he really a brooding romantic hero.

The adaptations have had such a huge impact on the popular perception of Pride and Prejudice, that all of these products can be found on only the first two pages of an Etsy search of the title. All very nice products, I am sure. However, none of them contain quotes found in the original novel:

(quite why you'd want to be seen in a 'barely tolerable' hoodie I don't know but... each to their own... )

I question how widely-liked the actual novel is, if those who are keen to walk around in merch or decorate their homes inspired by Pride and Prejudice, are doing so with references that are nowhere to be found in the book's pages. Adaptations are part of many of our paths to falling in love with the novel; they were part of mine. But there are so many hilarious quotes contained within the first few chapters alone, you soon realise that nothing can live up to Austen's quick, witty dialogue or her observational comedy.

Yet, even when the novel is correctly quoted, it is not always done in an apt manner. Jane Austen was deemed important enough by the Bank of England to warrant her own banknote. Released in 2017, it looks like this:

I remember the controversy about the portrait, and how little it actually looks like the only (incomplete) drawing we have of Jane (which was said by those who knew her to not even resemble her all that well), but that's another matter. I'm most interested in the quote from Pride and Prejudice beneath it:

Let's put the quote in context. It is taken from chapter 11, and spoken by Caroline Bingley who is trying, unsuccessfully, to capture the attention of Mr Darcy.

Why did she pick up a book? Because Mr Darcy did:

'Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same'

How much enjoyment did she derive from the book? Not a great deal, apparently:

'Miss Bingley’s attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr. Darcy’s progress through his book, as in reading her own; and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her question, and read on.'

And now comes the actual passage from which the quote is taken, which tells us why Caroline chose that particular book:

'At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, “How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."'

On the surface, such a quote—especially taken in isolation—would invariably lead you to believe that said character was an avid reader. However, the context demonstrates that Miss Bingley is far from a bookworm.

If you were left in any doubt, however, her next action surely confirms it:

'No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest for some amusement'

As soon as Caroline realises that her quest to capture Mr Darcy's affection is futile, she throws her book away entirely; perhaps there are more enjoyable pursuits than reading, after all.

So, a quote deemed to have such importance as to be immortalised forever alongside Jane Austen on the currency of an entire nation (the design of which will likely be used for several decades) is so important in the context of the novel that it is... uh... *checks notes* ignored entirely. Right.

I mean, I don't necessarily understand why the quote had to be about reading but if it was, I could argue that a quote from Mr Darcy in chapter eight, about how extensive reading improves the mind could be far more sincere. Or why not one of the numerous lovely quotes from the novel? Obviously, an agenda was set and a quote needed to be found to match it.

Still, it is quite ironic indeed that reading actually opens your eyes to how ridiculous a choice of quote was made.

Anyway, what is my overarching point? Well, I think, largely due to its various adaptations, a majority of people believe they know the story of Pride and Prejudice. But shockingly few, despite it being consistently ranked as one of the most popular books, actually understand it on the level which it deserves to be.

This post was not intended to bash adaptations, it is absolutely fine to like them! But they are, by their very nature, going to differ from the book. That is inevitable. Yet, I think it's quite sad when people watch a film or series and believe they can possibly understand the story on the same level. Spoiler alert: you cannot. I know books are a luxury and reading is time-consuming, but Pride and Prejudice is out of copyright now. PDFs are abundant, as are audiobooks if you cannot sit and read!

Put some time and effort into understanding the novel. I promise not a single second of it will be wasted; you will gain a deeper admiration for Jane Austen's talent as an author, and you will fall in love anew with the many wonderful characters she so beautifully brought to life.