#batrachised

[thatscarletflycatcher]

can you tell me what your thesis is about if you're willing to share??

Hi!!! Yes, of course! I need to go over and over the description of this thing in order to turn in a precise and compelling project for the board (attempt #3 at finishing this cursed degree, here we go! *sobs*).

My area of interest has always been Medieval Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Virtue Ethics and Aristotelian Ethics-Politics. My very first attempt was writing something on Metaphysics (transcendentals) then Ethics Metaphysics (the role of intellectual intuition in moral reasoning in Aristotelian Ethics, Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics)... Neither worked mainly because a problem when talking metaphysics is... well, there's few words to use and little to say and I have always been a very succinct academic writer (yeah, I know, but it is true).

When I reached acceptance about that XD I moved on to trying something about Aristotelian Ethics-politics. Alasdair MacIntyre is a key author in that area, and he's a favorite of mine because in agreement or disagreement he's thought provoking, he has a sense of humor, and he's a hater of the fun kind. I know it isn't proper to call or pick academic authors because they are fun, but hey, he is. He is a curmudgeonly old man (present tense: he's 95), who kind of manages to disagree with everyone because he hates being put in boxes, but he's also always been very willing and open to listen to other voices and change his opinions on things.

For example, the refinement and reformulation of many ideas between his After Virtue (1981) and his Dependent Rational Animals (1999) came (declaredly) through a reading of certain feminist theory, which brought to the foreground to him how little academic Ethics had focused until that point on disability and caretaking.

He's also always been a versatile author in the sense of breaching the barriers between disciplines for the purposes of philosophical inquiry -After Virtue has a great deal to say about Sociology, and Dependent Rational Animals talks a lot about dolphins XD.

I decided I wanted to write something about this guy, but I got stuck because if you are writing on an author specifically, alone, how do you manage to write something that isn't like, textbook regurgitation? Theoretically I know it is possible, but it was very paralyzing to me all the same.

Enter Elizabeth Gaskell with a steel chair.

I love Gaskell dearly for many different reasons. I love the way in which she writes nuanced, believable, textured characters. I love the treatment of grief in her work, I love the compassion she has for her characters, I love how she makes interesting, central, and natural relationships between parents and children. I love that she's versatile too, and that she saw writing as a vocation, and how she manages to talk about so many different things in a novel without making it come across as didactic or preachy. But one very special thing that has called my attention is her specific interest in communities, and community building through friendship.

Very often her "proposals" of "solutions" to social problems, specifically in her industrial novels, have been dismissed as the utopian sugary pap of learning to share and be nice of someone completely out of touch with reality, but I think those readings are fundamentally missing the framework that makes her ideas make sense and be solid.

As an aside, I feel like that ungenerous reading is kinda rich when Hard Times and its "imagination to power!" concept or Shirley and its marriage solution keep getting praise to this day. You know. It comes across as a bit double standard-y, if you ask me.

But back to topic, guess who did consider friendship, understood as the ties that unite virtuous people in the pursuit of the good for themselves and their fellow men, the very foundation of society, and mankind as essentially social, and therefore for ethics and politics to be a continuum? That's right, my boy Aristotle!

And to that, between other things, when talking about the Aristotelian tradition of Ethics Politics, MacIntyre adds teleological narrative as the element that frames and anchors virtue ethics in this scheme. What is more, he dedicates A CHUNK of chapter 16 of After Virtue to Jane Austen, and why he thinks she's "the last key representative" of this tradition (which has sprung a non negligible amount of scholarship on Austen and virtue ethics).

And I'm persuaded that Gaskell is a significant successor to Austen in this way too, and that the certain sympathy people often perceive between them comes from this aspect (because, in all honestly, it's clearly not about tone or style).

So that's the aim/core of my thesis: to present/analyze/contextualize Gaskell's work within the framework of the Aristotelian Ethics-Politics tradition as understood by MacIntyre.

Of course because I am, in Nelly Dean's description of Edgar Linton, a venturesome fool, this is clearly very ambitious, and I am making it worse for myself by doing things like harvesting circa 350 titles for a thesis that won't require more than 50 and that cannot be more than 80 pages long. The clown shoes can be heard from the other side of the world no this has nothing to do with the fact that I don't think I'll ever get a masters or a PhD where I might be able to develop this concept beyond a very summary overview of N&S and maybe Cranford and My Lady Ludlow if I'm lucky.

And that's how I should have sent something to my advisor three weeks ago (I haven't yet) and how I'm half agony half hope about the whole thing, because I'm scared and anxious and full on rowing through Nutella executive function wise. Maybe I should get a rubber duck.

[arizonapoppy]

fake fic title: Three's a Crowd

So I went a little overboard on this:

Three’s a Crowd:

Jane Andrews is traveling on the new trans-Canadian railroad that was just completed to her next teaching assignment. Her elderly chaperone, Mrs. Alexander, is a battleaxe of immovable respectability.

Upon boarding the train, their reserved compartment is occupied by a most vexing man in a battered hat and frayed cuffs who insists it is his compartment. Mrs Alexander says he should buy another ticket or sit in the smoking car. Neither will budge, and they are forced into a stalemate of sharing space for the long journey.

He accompanies them into the stations to eat meals and sits with them making genial conversation. (Mrs Alexander is sure it is to prevent them from barring him from their compartment.)

The Vexing Young Man produces a deck of Happy Families after several hours, inviting Jane to play. She supposes that Rachel Lynde wouldn’t disapprove since it isn’t an actual deck of cards. They pass the time pleasantly as Mrs Alexander snores.

Eventually they reach their destination and part ways. Over the next few weeks, Jane finds life a little flat without her seatmate, whom she learned is a Mr Inglis. As she is wiping the board and tidying slates at the end of the day, she hears a commotion in the entryway.

It is Mr Inglis, who had been searching every schoolhouse in Manitoba (she never said which one). He presents her with a posey of wildflowers and confesses his unwavering respect and devotion, even, dare he say it: love? Will she marry him and join him on his claim?

Jane agrees, but insists she must finish her contract so only after the term is up.

Epilogue: Mrs Alexander eventually discovers his secret. She’s been making polite inquiries after he let it slip he was lately of the Cayoosh District. She is the one who insists that he buy new clothes.

Send me a fake fic ask!

[everythinglucymaudmontgomery]

Tagged by @batrachised thank you girly, it was fun looking through pretty pictures to find these

[mollywog]

💌 for the ask game!!

💌 ⇢ how many unread emails do you have right now? 

Are you prepared to be shocked and appalled?

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

AU game: the grandmother dies when Jane is ten 👀

Five fun facts meme. Interpreted as 'five things that would happen' because I don't know how many of these are, uh, fun. Also it's more than five, because I have no self control.

Jane goes to the funeral, of course. She does not cry. She wears a new dress that Aunt Sylvia bought her, when it became clear that Mother would not be able to pull herself together enough to handle the logistics of preparing her daughter for the funeral. Everyone keeps assuring Jane that the grief she feels is normal, and that she will feel better if she can cry and let out her feelings. She is given a week off school to mourn. Aunt Sylvia offers to let her stay over with them for a few days.

Jane does not tell anyone that, although she does not know the word for what she is feeling, she's pretty sure that grief is not it. She feels very dreadful indeed, that she cannot grieve her own grandmother.

The house on Gay Street seems to have died with Grandmother. Aunt Gertrude fades ever more into the wallpaper. She continues the routine perfectly, almost aggressively. It is as though Grandmother will return at any moment and Aunt Gertrude will not be the one to be scolded by her mother for letting the house go. Mother fades into herself. She stops going out, stops putting on her pretty, expensive clothes, barely leaves her room. She alternates between wild grief and furious merriment, dotes on Jane and refuses to see her each in their turn. Robin is devastated that her mother is dead. Robin is overjoyed that her mother is dead. Robin is finally free. Robin is more trapped than she has ever been.

It's Mary and Frank who keep the house going. Frank runs errands and takes Jane to school and sees to it that she has new clothes when she starts to outgrow her current ones. Mary keeps them fed and stocked and makes sure Miss Robin eats something every day. She lets Jane help her in the kitchen as much as she likes, because the poor child should have something to cling to, with her world in upheaval.

Irene Fraser learns that Victoria Kennedy has died. She makes some rapid calculations and decides that her brother must never know. If he is ever to move on from his youthful mistakes, he must never get wind that there is anything out of the ordinary in Toronto.

But Andrew Stuart bows to no one, and that spring he gets it in his head that he must see his daughter again. Irene tries to talk him out of it, argues and manipulates and, when all else fails, pleads with Andrew to leave the past in the past and let things lie. Andrew will not be swayed. He writes to his wife and demands that she send him their only child. 

Andrew's letter sends the house on Gay Street into renewed chaos. They had just started to claw their way out of the pit, to find a new balance and start living again. Aunt Gertrude continues to live by her schedule, keeping the house spotless and presiding over Jane's evening bible reading. But somehow, without Grandmother, she seems softer. Not more approachable, or kinder, or anything perceptible, but somehow Jane doesn't dread the evening bible session anymore. Mother, meanwhile, is slowly, timidly, starting to emerge from her overwhelming grief. She is fragile still, and rarely gets through the day without crying, but even that seems to soothe her. She doesn't go out, can't bear to face her pretty, glittering friends, not when her feelings are so big and so complicated and so overwhelming, but she resumes some of her correspondence. Jane is still dreadfully worried about her, and conspires with Mary to make all her favorite dishes. She asks Miss West if Jody couldn't come over in the afternoons, after the lunch rush, to sit with Mother and keep her company while Jane is at school, and Mother finds some life back teaching Jody to play the piano and taking her out for nicer clothes. Mary, who sees everything even if she doesn't let on, calls on Miss West and negotiates a fee for Jody's time, so that the poor girl won't find herself punished for wasting time.

When they receive Andrew's letter, they almost lose Robin again. Jane, who is by this point accustomed to thinking of herself as the secret head of the household, takes it upon herself to answer the letter. She shall not go to him, she writes. He has not wanted her until now, and she cannot leave Mother alone in her grief. Please do not write them again.

Andrew does not write to them again. Andrew goes to Toronto and knocks on the door.

It is very ugly, at first. Robin cries. Andrew demands to know why she didn't write to him to say her mother was dead. Robin, in a fit of bravery that could only be fueled by sheer emotional exhaustion, asks why he didn't write to her first, all those years ago, when she left.

The room goes silent. Andrew says he did write to her. Robin says she never got the letter. All three Stuarts, silently and with utter certainty, realize what must have happened to it.

In the end, Jane does go with Andrew to the Island. Andrew invites Robin along too, but she refuses. Better for father and daughter to spend time together without her, since she's had Jane to herself all these years. Privately, she knows that she couldn't bear to exchange so much as one word with Irene Fraser, not when she is so fragile and everything is so new. She and Jane write to each other regularly, and with no forbidden subjects. Jane discovers freedom, true freedom, on the Island, and Robin spends her time doting on Jody and, slowly, venturing out into the world. She wants to be brave for her daughter, wants to have things to write about that won't make Jane worry. To her own surprise, she realizes that, when she can set her own schedule, she does not mind going out. She missed the parties and the socializing, now that she can refuse an invitation when she wants to and choose for herself whether or not to spend an afternoon in. Robin and Andrew slowly get to know each other again, first through Jane's letters and, eventually, through their own correspondence. They continue writing after Jane comes back to Toronto for the fall.

That year, Andrew comes to Toronto for Christmas.

Next summer, Robin and Jody visit the Island for a few weeks.

Slowly, the family heals.

Send me an AU and I'll give you five an amount of things that would happen in it!

[freyafrida]

hellooo @batrachised @syncchick @librarylexicon! thank you for asking 🫶

yes, exactly what it says on the tin: a walter/una modern AU! set in the year 2014 because, uh, that was the year i originally started working on the idea (this post is actually about this fic, lmao). that said, i really love 2014 as a setting because it's exactly 100 years after rilla of ingleside starts, so it feels right for a modern AU, you know? but anyway thinking about how i gotta go back and work in more references to "shake it off" and "rude" to capture the zeitgeist.

general plot: una goes to redmond (because she is a girl of the 21st century and college is expected!), she and walter become friends, walter is oblivious/stuck in his ideals of romance and life in general and and doesn't understand that he returns her feelings until there is some kind of rom-com-y misunderstanding or argument. then they kiss in the rain or something, i don't know, haven't made it that far yet lol.

other things i want to cover: i can imagine una majoring in something practical and, in walter's view, soulless (tentatively business? modern!rosemary runs a music store and una works there and is the only one who's willing to take over the store one day), so a bit of a clash there with walter being that english major guy from college, but also growing to respect each other's ambitions and coming to see each other as people. also having fun trying to imagine walter having a phone and texting and what kind of texter he would be (he definitely still writes with correct grammar and punctuation when he texts. modern!walter would've been born in the early '90s so he definitely also complained about chatspeak as a teenager and thought "kewl" was the most injurious thing to ever happen to the english language). modern!una definitely has a tumblr but only uses it to reblog photos of flowers and pretty art and literally never interacts with anyone.

have some snippets! one for each ask :)

(i will talk about the shirley fic separately! 👀 gotta gather my thoughts for that one)

[abramichellemorris]

Tagged by @batrachised thank you girly! It was fun looking through pretty pictures to find these

[clevermird]

writers ask: 6,12!

One day, I will get my shit together and answer ask memes promptly :P 6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

That it's not good. Perfectionism is a huge struggle of mine and any time I find myself feeling satisfied with a story, it sends me into this panic loop of "what's wrong with it that I'm not seeing?". The one exception to this is Silver, Ash, and Bone. I don't know what it is (it might just be that I've gotten enough external validation that I can fight the brain gremlins easily), but that one I'm pretty satsfied is at least decent, and the things that could be improved are that way because I wanted them that way even if they're objectively "worse".

Although I also recently found out that one of my main writing buddies was actively trying to sabatogue me into thinking I needed her help to write, so hopefully with that in mind (and without her whispering in my ear) I can start fighting off some of the brain gremlins with greater ease. 12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

oh, that's a tough one -This is kinda cheating, but I wish I could add illustrations that show scenes and characters perfectly the way they are in my head -To invent a better way to outline. I need outlines, I can't function without them, but I have yet to find or create a system that has both sufficient levels of detail and also has a good visual flow to help me with brainstorming and keeping track of different plot threads and such

-The ability to magically see what people put in private bookmarks on AO3. I just know there's interesting comments on some of them, I don't even care if they're negative I just wanna know!

[healerqueen]

WIP ask game: the sad book!!

Oh, dear.

The Sad Book is the follow-up to the big romantic arc in my main series.

My main couple can't get together during their long slow-burn because of a big reason and a problem that isn't just going to go away after they get together. They have a happy ending when they get engaged and get married, but there's more hardship to come because of this big problem. It means they'll face a lot of suffering together after they get married. And that's what the Sad Book is about. I hate to put my characters and my readers through all that. It's painful for me too. But I think it's necessary. One big point of this particular romantic arc is that there are big obstacles, and their marriage is a big risk. So the sequel (the sad one) is really the end of that same arc. Romance doesn't end with a wedding or a happily-ever-after. It's really about the shared life and often the shared struggles that are part of marriage. I would like to read (and write) more books that are about realistic married life. And I'd like to debunk the myth that all your problems are over once you marry Prince Charming. I'm excited to read and write a book about marriage in general, because books so often end with the wedding. There WILL be another happy ending! This book ends happily. They choose to live happily despite their suffering and pain, and it will be happier again later on. But first there's a lot of anguish for my poor characters. I feel it's necessary to show it in a book after setting up that situation with the rest of their romantic arc. The arc isn't over till we see them go through the thing they chose to go through together.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

top 5 movie scenes 👀

Hi!

In no particular order:

Ian and Toula share a moment between their wedding and the reception in My Big Fat Greek Wedding

This is probably my favorite scene in the whole movie. It is the moment where despite all the differences of background and life experiences you know that Ian and Toula will be alright and will grow and learn together moving forward through whatever life throws at them. You can't say the scene is sexual, you cannot say it isn't sexual; it's full of tenderness and comfort and serenity, and you get the sense that they love the whole of each other. Romance peaked here. Positively criminal that I had to upload the clip myself because apparently no one has done this on Youtube? THE BETRAYAL.

George Bailey gets hit by the pharmacist in It's a Wonderful Life

This movie is well known as a tearjerker for a reason, but as a person who first watched it as an adult, this (3:30 onwards) was the scene that made sob my heart out. And it is very rare for a movie to make me cry like that. There's something about kid!George's goodness and the pain he's going through that just... wrecked me.

Burial at sea in Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World.

Master and Commander, no matter how much praise you get you'll never be overrated, and one could pick so many brilliant scenes from this movie, but this one in particular... it's something very difficult to describe about the way it shows this metaphor of the "slight veil" that both separates and unites life and death, the strength of the bonds created by life in a warship, and the ways in which grief and hope can reach us all across ranks. And it's also just an intensely beautiful and touching scene.

Anton Ego is chest-kicked in memory back to his childhood by Remy's ratatouille in Ratatouille

It's such an effective little moment, and it is seared in my brain as the first vivid experience in my mind of the power of cinema to provoke emotion, only reached in animation (for me) by the transformation scene in The Princess and the Frog, Eugene and Rapunzel's sacrifice scene in Tangled, and Mirabel and Alma's reconciliation in Encanto.

Jo has a an experience of grief and healing and writes Little Women in Little Women (1994)

It is no secret how much I love this movie XD but this moment in particular can be so personal. Jo goes up to put away Beth's last belongings, as a burial of sorts, in the deepest point of her grief for her sister and the dark realization that they will never be all together again in this world. But then, there in the garret where memories are stored in the objects that witnessed them, it's not death but life that she finds in the recollection of the love that made their lives growing up and made them them (it's not just that she writes, but that we hear with her the voices coming alive). And she writes to recordare, to pass all those things through her heart again, and as the season changes outside, so it changes inside as her mourning lessens (she's gone from black to light grey), and when she finishes her story and ties it up with a bow, she puts a flower, the same flower prof. Bhaer gave her, on it: she can now look forward to whatever the future brings her.

It captures the same feeling of Josh Groban's Awake to me, specially those last verses that go "and I will remember/oh, I will remember/all the love we shared today.". The 2017 adaptation also does something very similar, when a writer's blocked and grief stricken Jo goes to her father for advice, and he tells her to "sift down through your heart, through all the pain, and grief. There are words there. There's a woman there, and it is you. . say you were happy once. Say there was a laughter. Say it that is true." but we are talking movies today!

Anyways. Deeply meaningful scene to me about love and loss and what they make of us.

Ask me my top5/top10 anything!

[firstelevens]

ask game: 14 and 15!

14. If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, such as comic or film, which fan fic would you pick?

I was going to say the Bake Off AU because I'd like to see some of those baked goods brought to life, but actually, I would LOVE to see by land, by sea, by dirigible in a visual medium.

By virtue of Ty and Tandy's powers just looking very cool onscreen and the really changeable nature of settings like the Dark Dimension, I got to write some spooky atmospheric stuff and some fun action-y moments and I think all of those would come off very well in a comic tbh. (Especially the weird London-but-not-really bit from chapter five. I love a creepy city vista; it gets me every time.)

15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters?

Titles are honestly my greatest foe! Usually I try to go in for a song lyric that captures the vibe, but sometimes there's a theme I have to stick to, like with the Bake Off AU and its dessert/baking-adjacent titles, and then I end up having painted myself (and Emma) into a corner.

(Also, by the time I get to throwing a title on the fic, I'm usually so tired and eager to get it posted that I can't be bothered to overthink it, so that's nice.)

[arizonapoppy]

ask game: 10 and 20 :D

Hello Batrachised! Thank you for the ask!

10: Favorite classical literature.

This is hard! I'm going to say Jane Austen's Persuasion. I love the story, and we had to study her narrative technique in my English Novel class. The way she phrases things and jumps in and out of people's heads without you noticing is a masterpiece.

20: Where and how do you find new books to read?

I don't have a set way of doing this! I have a librarian friend who recommends new manga series to me. I also find books through the Washington Post book review section. Another way I find books is that the Dragon Con YA Lit panels usually wrap up with recommendations, and I pick things that my favorite authors recommend or that a lot of authors recommend amongst themselves.

Anyone else want to send an ask? Here is the prompt list

[mollywog]

fanfic ask: #1!

Thank you for playing @batrachised

1. What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today?

The first chapter of Misadventures was my first fic and I think I could do it, but there would be a lot of cringing. I also think there would be lines that surprised me as not being terrible… how about you?

[discoevsky]

you seem like a person with fantastic taste in books so I would love to know your favorite (I'll cheat and say non LMM) ones. Signed, curious and ready to read.

You don’t know how long I’ve waited for someone to ask me this. These are only a handful and I tried to keep it varied to give you different options based on your interests. Hopefully I didn’t scare you off 😅

Fiction:

The Leviathan Series by Scott Westerfeld (the audio is superb)

Emma - Jane Austen

Deerskin - Robin Mckinley

Chalice - Robin Mckinley

Rapunzel’s Revenge - Shannon Hale

The Ramona Quimby series - Beverly Cleary (the audio books are superb)

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

The Raging Quiet - Sherryl Jordan

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Our Spoon Came from Woolworths - Barbara Comyns

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

No longer Human - Osamu Dazai

Crackpot - Adele Wiseman

Twelve Angry Men - Reginald Rose

The Dark Road - Ma Jian

Small Beauty - Jia quing wilson-lang

Green Grass, Running Water - Thomas King

Sula - Toni Morison

Song of Solomon - Toni Morison

Nonfiction:

The Soul of an Octopus - Sy Montgomery

Gathering Moss - robin Wall Kimmerer

Toto-chan: the little girl at the window - Tetsyko Kuroyanagi

Pirate Woman - Laura Sook Duncombe

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

fic ask game: 3, 18, 19!!

Finally getting to these after, uh, too many days. Sorry!

3- What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer?

I can write description if I try! I've always struggled with it, and I still tend towards 'people talking in an undefined liminal space' if I'm not careful, but really taking the time to sit down and figure out both how to write scene description and how to place those descriptions within a larger narrative has been really helpful.

18- What was the hardest fic to title?

Ties That Bind, Bonds That Strengthen. Because it was for the fic exchange, I didn't worry too much about titling it for most of the writing process, but I kept expecting something to jump out at me as I wrote and nothing did. I finally had to sit down over the last weekend before the deadline and figure out something. I went with that title because I wanted to nod towards Barney's canon line of love being a bond in a bad way. Because the story is so much about how love strengthens and uplifts, I wanted to both reference Barney's line and subvert it -- yes the characters are bound to each other, but that's not a bad thing.

19- Share your favorite opening line

I've already shared this one, but I think the Kilmeny WIP opening still wins: "Eric Marshall's life ended on a perfect April afternoon."

2023 in review Fic Asks

[volturialice]

Violence ask: 20 and 24!!

oooh good ones. in the interest of some genre diversity I'm gonna answer these for Twilight and the Emily books here goes

20 - part of canon you found tedious or boring

Twilight: apparently I'm in the minority here, but the part that's...boring. everyone else on this webbed site seems to love the long descriptions of Bella chopping vegetables or whatever, but not me, sister. also the vampire-less part of New Moon ok sue me

Emily books: there were some definite lulls in Quest, particularly the bit where she's engaged to Dean which I found boring right up until it Wasn't

24 - topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

Twilight: to save us all some time here I'm just gonna link Princess Weekes' "confederate vampires" video

Emily books: I'm not in the fandom, such as it is, but I don't have to be in the fandom to know it's Dean

send me 🔥 choose violence asks 🔥