#because its so fundamentally wrong

[howabhwmwn]

Something is fundamentally wrong with me for real

[xxplastic-cubexx]

talking to my brother about quicksilver and i was like 'ik him and wanda are twins but he exudes little brother energy so much' and my bro Without Hesitation just went 'well thats what happens when you're the least favorite in the family' and he says this to me, the youngest in our family like 🧍‍♂️

[anghraine]

I've been moving and navigating further departmental nonsense etc (my pseudo-dissertation got approved for defending, though! l o l). But it was interesting to see the Worst P&P Takes poll I reblogged accumulating more results and the general tenor of responses in the notes.

I mean, the results are definitely to be expected if you're familiar with the side of Austen fandom doing a lot of the reblogging etc. But still, interesting!

Many Tumblr polls specify that they're asking about personal preferences that may be irrational—favorite/least favorite, coolest/most annoying, or something like that. This one, though, asked for the worst interpretation of P&P, not the most annoying one—and the current leader is "Darcy is never really proud, he's just shy and probably has anxiety" against some very steep competition on the Bad Takes front.

I was thinking about why that seemed a kind of tediously predictable choice even though I agree that the take is wrong, and realized that while I do disagree with the shy Darcy interpretation and I particularly disagree with the specific formulation where he is never proud at all, it ultimately feels to me like a failure of nuance rather than just completely wrongheaded like some of the others. And this is probably my fundamental difference with a lot of Darcy takes I see!

In my opinion, a character who is introverted and who feels awkward in various social situations and who doesn't like common social activities and who has to work himself up to talking to his crush and who is repeatedly suggested to behave very differently in contexts where he's more comfortable being interpreted as shy and anxious is not that big of a leap.

Yes, it's important that he is actually fundamentally confident and haughty, that he makes his personal feelings of discomfort other people's problem, and that he thinks he's such a unique and special butterfly that he doesn't need to even put in an effort outside his personal social circle. But it's a misreading that is easy to follow (and long predates the 2005 P&P, as I've mentioned before!).

The additional misreading that a shy and anxious Darcy is also never proud at all is a much more drastic leap, and in my experience, condemnations of shy Darcy interpretations rarely differentiate between "Darcy is shy as well as arrogant" and "Darcy is shy rather than arrogant" as interpretations (although their basic arguments are quite different). But even that as the worst possible misreading of P&P when Darcy is not even the main character is ?????????

I mean, for one alternative (not even the one I voted for!), the idea that Elizabeth is an author avatar Mary Sue seems a far worse misreading of P&P than basically anything to do with Darcy at all. The center piece of the entire novel is Elizabeth's epiphany of self-knowledge about her own shortcomings that do not particularly resemble Austen's at all, but were ethically a concern for her, and she's a complex, interesting character in general whom Austen correctly regarded as a major achievement. Inverting that into Elizabeth as an improbably perfect, reality-warping self-insert is deeply wrong and frankly pretty misogynistic as well.

(ngl though, it's a little funny to see such a blatantly terrible reading of Elizabeth rank so far behind the shy Darcy votes. I've gotten "does anyone actually think/say that?" so many times on my posts about Austen fandom's prioritization of Darcy's character development over Elizabeth's and yet...)

And even just going with the Darcy-centric misreadings, the idea of Darcy as a "bad boy" seems easily the most absolutely wrong take on him. His pride is at least complicated and the finer points can be fairly debated and it's a quality that actually changes somewhat throughout the novel, and you can have discussion over what happened when, whose testimonies should be weighted more, etc. But there is no point at which "bad boy" isn't utterly wrong for him. However, there's definitely a tendency in some wings of the fandom to find the idea of Darcy being misread too favorably more objectionable than him being read too unfavorably, regardless of the particulars, so it's not a surprise.

I suppose you could argue about what "worst" means in the context of variously bad interpretations. Like, is an interpretation that is about a fairly trivial aspect of the book but extremely wrong about it "worse" than an interpretation that is pretty bad but at least comprehensibly so about something very important?

[hangmanapologist]

i have been ghosted by another man 🫶🏼 maybe love isn’t meant for me but that doesn’t make it any less painful or harder to question my worth as a person!

[mamawasatesttube]

i have to speak my truth. i think timkon clone baby aus fucking suck

[solivagantingrebel]

hey guys who wants another round of tmi

[dovahvhenan]

idk i feel like some of you went into veilguard expecting it to be bad and to not like it, so therefore everything the game does is already painted by your preconceived negativity. so things that are neutral or just ok are automatically bad for you, and things that are good are dismissed or overshadowed because it doesn't line up with your negative framing. and it's entirely unfair. the game isn't perfect but it really isn't as bad as some of yall are making it out to be.

[slime-crafters]

Honestly love when video games use it/its for the player character

[sendmyresignation]

truly nothing on this earth is more foul than supernatural familial abuse discourse but specifically the discourse people have about if sam or dean "had it worse" like ok cool you have already missed the point of this show very hard.

[carlyraejepsans]

with toriel and asgore it's like. they're both flawed and their flaws parallel one another, but they're not EQUALLY flawed... like..... come on......

[just-your-average-tangerine]

I have a love/hate relationship with reading. Because I do love to read, I always have. But also, it makes me feel very stupid, I feel like I'm barely literate. Like I can read the words and understand the story being told. But then I see people making connections and extrapolations, predicting things based on foreshadowing, etc. And it makes sense to me once it's explained, I can see where they got that, but I never in a million years would have come up with that myself.

And I keep trying to find ways to improve that, but all the advice I can find is "read as much as you can, in a variety of styles and genres," but I already do that. I've been reading anything I could get my hands on since I taught myself how to read at 4 years old. Obviously, that's not working.

[butchnavi]

can i say something that might get me cancelled if i said it irl. why are we (indians but more specifically the indian governement) so obsessed with border and military disputes our country is literally twice the size of the entire continent of europe and/or the cumulative size of oceania and the americas put together population wise. as far as i know most of the people from these territories aren't really begging to be a part of india either why do we need such a massive fucking military budget over this shit "they can't stay independent pakistan or china will pounce if they don't belong to us anymore" don't you think that's THEIR choice and prerogative. they aren't asking to be a part of india. "if pakistan gets kashmir they will keep taking and taking and india will be in ruins" you sound like a conspiracy theorist. kashmir has never unanimously wanted to be a part of india. don't we have enough problems to worry about people are literally starving and homeless everywhere in our country. decentralisation isn't the worst thing that could happen to a territory right now we're too big and diverse a country is an indian identity we're forcing on them really the most important thing right now

[wolflover33100aj]

[ Ranting ]

Tired of people saying Indigo Park is a cashgrab, mf it's free!

The only reason why there's merch was because fans wanted it, people were buying bootlegs so the only thing they could think of was to put out official merch and that money is going into the game, I have never made a game before but I assume it's not easy and it costs too, paying the voice actors and people who helped work on it

It's also a passion project

[pelleas-at-castle-nox]

5e is so fun when you don't have bitches in your ear telling you it's the worst thing ever

[finalgirlminamurray]

28 days later is one of the few modern classic horror movies i haven't seen and don't plan to. it's just the kind of zombie movie that very much is not my thing. i guess i'm just one of those boring traditionalists who prefers "slow zombies" to "fast zombies". although i did really love train to busan. it's just that the kinds of movies they make with "fast zombies" tend to be inherently less interesting to me

i do think it's funny that of the two films credited with basically redefining the zombie as a concept for their era (night of the living dead and 28 days later), the creators have both been pretty adamant that the creatures in their films are not zombies.

[diddlesnap]

I think there were some serious growing pains when katniss and peeta were starting to "grow close" again.