#from Mansfield with love

[bethanydelleman]

Hello! Do you have a post where you go into more detail about your thoughts on From Mansfield With Love? I tried to search but couldn't find it. Thank you!

Here it is!

By the way, I use Tumblr Top to search my own blog. Works better most of the time than Tumblr's own search function.

Also, that post is pretty critical, but I would like to reiterate that the production was amateur and I do appreciate the attempt. Modernizing is hard.

[myokk]

fast sketch of ominis & fast intro to the ominis longfic I'm working on!! This is going to be the most self-indulgent pride and prejudice ripoff that ever existed, 100% based on the ominis of my oneshot💘

I am just OBSESSED with exploring the idea that he’s a natural legilimens & OBSESSED with the thought that he thinks too much for his own good🫶🫶🫶

Ominis Gaunt has always suspected he is cold-blooded.

It makes sense, really.

He always seems to be cold: frigid, long fingers that are often stiff and difficult to move; goosebumps raising the skin of his arms and the back of his neck any time he walks through the drafty halls of the dungeons; even his eyes, he has been told, are reminiscent of ice. They are apparently quite unsettling. The only time he feels comfortable in his body is when he basks in the heat of the sun.

His earliest memory is of the cold. It went like this: he was four years old: his older brother, Marvolo, had led him outside as a joke, he swore up and down that it was just a small joke, and how was he supposed to know that poor, blind Ominis would not be able to find his way back home? When his parents had finally found him, his frail mother sobbing and holding his tiny, blue, hypothermic body to her chest, Ominis remembers feeling quite perturbed at the disturbance. Couldn’t he just be left alone, in the silent soft snow?

He does not know if he has ever felt warm since.

As he strides through the dungeons, the copious amount of warming charms he casts on himself do not seem to be enough, but he keeps casting them anyways and also: wrapping his wool scarf more tightly around his neck, quickening his pace in the hopes that blood flows more easily through his limbs, wishing that he had remembered his gloves. Winter is always a terrible time of year (this winter more terrible than usual), and every breath of warm air leaves his lips reluctantly. How he wishes that he could just hold on to it a bit longer and yet the warmth leaves him precisely fifteen traitorous times a minute, the frigid air gleefully entering and burning its way down his throat in response. Maybe it’s a punishment of some sort.

His whole life has been defined by punishments and sometimes he preoccupies himself with the thought that it is the only way he can view the world. Most of the punishments are manifested in curses inherited from his family. (His parents and Marvolo insist that they are gifts, but Ominis begs to differ.)

First, his blindness: the only true punishment-curse that even his family rejects: caused by inbreeding, no doubt. He did not cry after his birth and his mother cradled his tiny body in silent arms, lovingly whispering nonsense-evil-Parseltongue to him but when he opened his eyes and she saw a brilliant celestine blue with no iris, she screamed in horror and shattered the frigid peace of the room. His parents tried everything to fix him, make him whole, throwing money at various possible solutions to no avail. Magically induced disabilities are not, apparently, curable by magic.

Ominis is not sure that he hates being blind, although he suspects everyone thinks that he should. It is as much a part of him as his fifteen-breaths-per-minute, and he thinks that vision is not all it’s cracked up to be. He is always terrified at the thought that his tenuous hold on sanity is only due to the fact that he cannot see, until he realizes he shouldn’t be terrified of hypothetical situations that cannot come to pass. He consoles himself with the thought that maybe, if he has had to give up his vision for his sanity, it is a small price to pay. Although, he also thinks sometimes that it would be nice to live a life without any morality holding him back.

He is entirely too introspective, after all.

It is precisely this introspection that is his downfall in this moment (and his cold blood). Ominis is so busy casting warming charms on himself and thinking in circles that he cannot use his wand to help him sense his environment and so he should not be surprised when he crashes into her.

And yet he is. Terribly surprised.

Maybe if he were not so caught up in his own thoughts he could have paid more attention to his surroundings. Instead, he spent too much time ruminating on his reptilian heritage and has now barreled head first into his arch-nemesis.

Rosalie Harris.

The girl who has stolen his oldest friend from him.

The girl who is currently making angry noises as she clambers to her feet and is picking up the things that he has crashed everywhere. Even if he could see, Ominis is not sure he would help her. Helping her would be akin to betraying himself, after all.

“Hey! Watch where you’re - oh, hello, Ominis.”

“Rosalie,” he says shortly, nodding his head where he thinks she might be standing and stepping to the side. He tightens his grip around his wand, feeling the texture of the wood change from rough to smooth as he runs his thumb down it. Smooth where he always seems to worry it, rough where the wood refuses to yield to the brushes of his thumb.

He surreptitiously casts the spell - he has at least done it so many times he no longer needs to say it out loud - and his surroundings light up. Or, he supposes that is the most apt description, considering he cannot actually differentiate between light and dark. He senses Rosalie’s silhouette to his left - she is standing with her arms crossed and her foot taps impatiently as she waits for him.

Waiting for what? he thinks, slightly irritated. She never seems to leave him alone and he wracks his brain trying to think of something, anything he can say to get rid of her.

Maybe if he speaks in Parseltongue, she would finally be scared away for good. He does not really want that second reminder of his family’s curse, though.

His family preferred speaking in Parseltongue with each other, believing the ability made them morally superior to everyone else and Ominis had not even realized until he had arrived at Hogwarts that no, it was not normal. When his name had been called at the Sorting, furious whispers had erupted amongst all the students, and his every step (terrified, confused, unsure - he had still been getting used to using his wand to navigate his surroundings) to the stool at the front of the Great Hall was plagued with a susurration reminiscent of snakes. Except these whispers, sneaking their way into his mind, had been unkind and overwhelming.

(He had not realized in that moment that he was also hearing their thoughts.)

Maybe now, with Rosalie standing in front of him and just annoyingly waiting for Merlin-knows-what, Ominis should use his Legilimency to find out what Rosalie wants. (He hates it, though.) It would not be difficult. (The thought makes him shiver in horror because he doesn’t want to abuse the ability.) He can feel the edges of her mind, her magic, and all he has to do is reach out - she is right there, and -

“Ominis?”

Her arms are crossed, he hears an impatient huff.

Why hasn’t she left him alone yet?

Hadn’t the Hogwarts Express already left the station, bringing all of the students home for the winter holiday? Ominis had thought he would be one of the only students left in the castle, and if he is being honest with himself, he had been looking quite forward to having the place to himself.

Ominis’s winter has just gotten infinitely worse.

Going to Gaunt Manor for the holidays is out of the question (he will not think about the nightmares that have been plaguing him ever since he received the owl demanding he go home), and Ominis does not want to be more of a burden to the Sallows. They already do enough for him over the summer, and Sebastian and Anne have convinced him to go to Hogsmeade with them at least twice over the next two weeks. Besides, with Anne’s curse progressing, Ominis does not want to be in the way.

“Why are you still here?” Ominis asks. He knows his voice comes across as cold as his blood, blunt, but he cannot help himself. Ever since Rosalie arrived - her entrance to Hogwarts also causing quite the stir - Ominis has been intensely annoyed by her presence. She is too happy. Too carefree. Too…well, everything he is not.

And, she does not seem to leave him alone.

Rosalie is always there, always hanging around Sebastian. (Taking Sebastian away.) He even showed her the Undercroft, which had almost caused a rift in their relationship. Ominis could not believe that Sebastian would be so careless, showing someone who for all intents and purposes is crashing her way into their lives, forcing them to pay attention to her. They barely even knew her, and yet Sebastian thought it was a good idea to show her such a sacred place?

(It does not help that she is intelligent, and Ominis has caught himself on more than one occasion about to ask her about her opinion on something before he catches himself.)

“I was looking for you.”

Ominis tilts his head at that and fiddles with his ring. He considers walking away, leaving -

“I mean…Sebastian said that you were also going to be here over the holidays and since everyone else just left I thought -”

“Thought what?” Internally, Ominis winces at the biting tone to his voice. It came out harsher than he intended, his voice loud and echoing through his mind, bouncing off the cold, stone walls surrounding them.

[beforeifadedaway]

Your makeup running down your face The way you fuck, the way you taste

[itspileofgoodthings]

Also it’s really fascinating because in a certain way Austen finds the trope of redemption through romance/good girl fixes bad boy dead but in an even realer way Henry is just the wrong candidate for it. Or, to be even more accurate, the setup of Henry and Fanny is the wrong match for it and that’s what makes it funny. The truth is that Henry objectifies her, NOT physically. His appreciation of her beauty is hands down the most romantic thing he feels for her but he objectifies her morals and her goodness, in essence: her character. He, and in a different but equally real way Mary treat Fanny like a doll and every time she does something of quality they react with surprise and delight as if a doll had done it. The fact that the surprise and delight are genuine makes it worse because it’s even more objectifying. They’re like “look at the doll speak! The doll said something incisive and profound! The doll doesn’t even know of what quality she is made because she’s so simple! Noble simplicity!” And it is objectively condescending and—not to beat a dead horse here!!!— truly objectifying. They both see and sense her superiority to the rest of Mansfield but that doesn’t mean that they treat her like a person. Henry makes much of her, refuses to listen to what she actually wants, enlists Sir Thomas against her, feels no scruple whatsoever about putting pressure on her, and doesn’t know her well enough to know that she does “know her own mind” despite not knowing her own manner. He’s also the wrong candidate for this trope because he’s too knowing and observant. He KNOWS he’s in the trope. He’s kind of like “hmmm Fanny redeeming me, Fanny changing me, wow, love to consider it from a moral aesthetic point of view, what a flower in her cap that would be and how it would stick it to the rest of the Mansfield crew” and so he’s not set up to be surprised or charmed into compassion and real love 1) because he’s self-aware of the good it would do him and 2) because he gets ahead of the good by manipulating it for his own schemes. Alleviating boredom/sticking it to Mansfield and co. being the two main ones for as far as I can tell. He even knows that if he just waits, if he just holds out that “absence, time, and distance,” as he says, will speak for him. Will clear his way. Will work on Fanny’s heart. Because it IS a powerful trope for a reason! And especially if Edmund was out of the picture re: Mary what else would there be for her to do? But that’s the thing. He SEES the truth of it and sees the inevitability of it but only because he’s thinking of this in terms of winning—winning her, but also just winning at the scheme, pulling the con. True love doesn’t do that. The absence, time, and distance of which he’s speaking would be enacted by someone with a loving heart in such a different way because it would just be the simple act of compassion and not wanting to trouble the beloved that would be the motivator. It would be Darcy going back to his normal life after the Hunsford proposal with no intention of winning Lizzy back or determination to pursue her or need to clarify anything past the letter but still with love in his heart for her. Henry doesn’t have that love and never did and so cannot be changed by it. He plays the stakes of it all like a game and because Fanny isn’t playing it at all he loses, in every possible way.

[farosdaughter]

MANSFIELD PARK (1999, dir. Patricia Rozema)

[bennetsbonnet]

Finished re-reading Mansfield Park today and I enjoyed it significantly more the second time around. This time I read an annotated version edited by June Sturrock, which also had some helpful appendixes of contemporary sources at the back on relevant topics to aid my understanding. I appreciated parts of the plot that totally passed me by the first time, especially the chapters dedicated to the staging of the play.

The first time I read it I was quite disappointed at the ending. Not just because I didn't grasp the context, but I felt like the final chapter was very abrupt and it sort of frustrated me because I was sat there like, 'is that it?!'

However, knowing how it ended I did enjoy the plot far more. This time, I could see how Edmund did care for Fanny from the start. I still wish she didn't end up with him, as I really like her and I felt like she deserved better BUT the ending isn't as terrible as I remembered. I wouldn't choose it for myself or for her really, but she was happy enough living close to Mansfield Park and far away from Mrs Norris. Plus, in the end her worth was realised and she was valued, as she always deserved!!

Objectively I can see how well-written it is and how difficult topics are tackled in the plot, but I think subjectively I just find too much of the plot far too depressing to come back to often. However, I think this will be far from my last re-read of it and I definitely have a deeper appreciation for the one Austen work I was always pretty prejudiced against!

[junewongapologia]

On The Origin Of The Species was feasibly published within the lifetime of Edmund Bertram, and you just know he would have been insufferable about it.

[omjitskailay]

I love this picture so much

This poor man is so excited about having a beautiful woman on each arm

meanwhile the woman are telepathically making out

[tadpal]

YESSSSS TOM IS ILL ITS FINALLY ALL HAPPENING

[itspileofgoodthings]

also while we’re here when Fanny is leaving some social event (can’t remember what) and Henry gets her shawl for her and he’s prompt and quick and dexterous and romantic and she’s just like “sigh. wish it was Edmund.”

[bethanydelleman]

Okay, so listen, I do respect this sentiment

HOWEVER

I am kind of getting annoyed by all this focus on the men needing fixing and how hot it is that the men fixed themselves because Jane Austen wrote just as many women who need reformation as men. Pride & Prejudice is about 2 (two) people, a man and woman, who both need to change. Emma is the only one who needs to change in Emma, Mr. Knightley's arc is pretty much just about realizing he loves her anyway. Both Mary and Henry Crawford need to change in Mansfield Park (and they don't) and it's the male character, Edmund, who is saved from an imprudent "I can fix her" marriage, Fanny just says no. Marianne in Sense & Sensibility does need to grow up and Willoughby can't be fixed so she should choose the man who doesn't need fixing.

I realize on some level that the audience is mostly female but isn't it kind of toxic to imply that women don't need to grow and change and learn? Because I know I do. What happened to humility?

[warrioreowynofrohan]

In another note on Mansfield Park – the thing that bothers me most about Henry Crawford is that he is doing, repeatedly, exactly what Willoughby did to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility: charm them, get them to fall in love with him, give them all the social signals that he is about to propose marriage, and then drop them and act like they were reading too much into it. From the way he and Mary talk, he’s done this to dozens of women. Willoughby differs in that he ended up actually falling for Marianne, whereas Henry does not fall in love with his conquests (until he tries to play this trick on Fanny, who remains unconquered).

And we hate Willoughby for what he did to Marianne! Marianne’s experience with Willoughby came near to being life-ruining, she was so devastated by it.

Willoughby is worse in his seduction and abandonment of Eliza, Colonel Brandon’s ward, but not in any other respect.

And the excuse made for Henry Crawford seems to be the assumption/assertion that these offscreen women were all silly, shallow, and vain, and only their pride was hurt. But there’s no reason to actually believe this! It’s just placing the blame for Henry’s actions on the people that he’s mistreating and making miserable.

It frustrates me to see this written off as “flirting”. It’s much more than that! When he toys with Maria at Sotherton, he is telling her in clear symbolism that she should drop Rushworth for him and, if she does, he will marry her. He is lying. And saying of all the women he’s lied to, “They should have known better,” is not remotely an excuse.

[idiopathicsmile]

I've been thinking about American diner lingo lately.

Like, relaying an order for poached eggs on toast as “Adam and Eve on a raft.” Or “shingles with a shimmy and shake” for buttered toast with jam.

(I personally learned about this phenomenon as a very young child because we had a picture book where a bear and an elephant are roommates and temp workers and they get a job at a diner for a while. Couldn't tell you why this streamed back into my brain like a week ago, but here we are.)

I'm not sure I can articulate this but there is something so beautiful to me about it. We as a culture know so little about its origins—maybe the 1870s, maybe the 1880s—or even really why it exists.

Wikipedia (yes I wikipedia'd this, yes I feel actual embarrassment about the lack of academic rigor in this aimless tumblr post but also there is also just not a ton of information on the topic) suggests that some diner lingo might've been mnemonic devices for short order cooks to remember specific dishes but honestly scroll through any list and you'll find it mostly isn't that. What it reads like is bored food service workers, mostly in the 1920s through 1970s, looking for a way to amuse or at least entertain themselves.

Milk is “moo juice.” Jell-o becomes “nervous pudding.” Black coffee is “a mug of murk.”

Western history loves its individual heroes, but my guess is the practice arose organically at multiple luncheon spots across the US. We don't know the names of the servers and cooks who came up with the terms but a few of the terms have survived, in a fashion—as wider used slang (“Joe” for coffee), as a vintage-y affectation in quirky restaurants of the present, and in compendiums of self-consciously useless factoids (oysters wrapped in bacon are transmuted into “angels on horseback”). It's something about the ordinary people of the world of the past, the tiny fossils we leave behind without even knowing it. One unknown day in history, someone then working as a diner employee thought to call a tall stack of pancakes “Jayne Mansfield” because for some reason it made their day a little better, and this somehow caught on to the point where I can, without doing much work, still find multiple written sources insisting it happened. It wasn't a marketer or a CEO somewhere, it was just a bunch service workers passing the time and leaving the slightest little linguistic footprints behind.

I don't know. Imagine if one of your inside jokes from work was still being spread by offbeat trivia lovers a hundred years from now.

[cuchufletapl]

I get the feeling that Miss Crawford is going to pull some shit in the future that will do irreparable damage to her relationship with Fanny and the Bertrams—because the Crawford siblings in general are clearly meant to be a reproach towards young rich people who are flighty and disrespectful to the traditional values of English rural landed-gentry, and in particular I think Mary is a foil to Fanny, who is the heroine framed to be in the right morally and behaviour-wise—but I've wanted them to kiss since Mary asked Fanny to help her run the scenes her character in Lovers' Vows had with the love interest, and considering how I nearly lost my mind with the scene above, the shipper in me has fully awakened and is not letting go for now.

UNEXPECTED YURI IN A JANE AUSTEN NOVEL

[cutiepieloves131]

𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓑𝓮𝓪𝓾𝓽𝔂 𝓞𝓯 𝓓𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓱𝓪

Aaliyah 🌟 Dhanistha Ascendant

The most famous and charismatic stars of the bunch, Dhanistha represents the bombshell beauty and not to mention classical beauty. Their face shape tend to be rectangular or triangular, with a broad and defined jaw. They're the type of beauties that inspires the entire world, you could say that with the power of stardom and fame they naturally have many in awe wanting to photograph, be noticed, and associated with them, it's really amazing when after their death they'll always be remembered and be the main topic of multiple conversations around the world.

Gigi Hadid 🌟 Dhanistha Moon

The lips are medium to full that's long, downturned giving off a pouty, moody, and tempting look. Dhanistha is not just popular but extremely entertaining, it's not them that's popularized but their beauty is as well, all they have to do is walk into a room or building and they'll have onlookers jaws dropping and captivated by their stunning visuals.

Chung-ha 🌟 Dhanistha Sun

Their eyebrows are full, bushy, rounded, and high-set making them look a little intimidating in a kind of sense because of Mars influence. The Saturn influence however gives their faces structure and defined cheekbones, with Mars and Saturn combined with this nakshatra Dhanistha receives facial features just like victorian secret models it's also no wonder why a lot of models have Dhanistha prominence in their charts.

Jayne Mansfield 🌟 Dhanistha Moon

Dhanistha women possess voluptuous and shiny hair like the yoni animals which is the famle lion, female celebrities that's involved in the iconic hair flipping scenes of movies and shows are Dhanisthas. Men and women of this nakshatra remain relevant in the eyes of viewers with their charming and abundant energy they know how to put on a show immediately grabbing the attention from dozens of people. Similar to Rohini everyone loves and adores them so much that it can turn into obsession living rent free in the minds of a large number of the masses.

Rosé 🌟 Dhanistha Sun

I also noticed Dhanisthas noses are narrow and upturned, it's usually sloped down. Their eyes are small to medium in size tending to be hooded sometimes but I also see a light gleam in them, Dhanistha women gazes are incredibly fierce and dominating leaving individuals to be astonished and fully beguiled by the power these stars hold in the eyes, it's a whole lot similar to a predator watching their prey every move.

Sophia Loren 🌟 Dhanistha Moon

The smiles are beautiful and gummy (Like trine Mrigashira and Chitra) with amazing whitened teeth, their chins are flat appearing to shortened the lower part of the face. Dhanisthas holds significant star power and grace, they know how keep those in power or higher positions entertained by their natural enthusiasm and skills, Dhanistha men and women are found in the music industry and kpop industry, many is starstucked by their presence, aura, and beauty. They're truly born to be famous and in the spotlight.

[oolonginus]

Thinking about this piece I drew back in April/May of the most tender moment in Inferno 9. Virgil and Dante still barely know each other at this stage in the journey, so when they run into their first real conflict at the gates to the City of Dis, their dynamic is tested (this is the subject of the first comic I posted here, also about Inferno IX.

The moment when Virgil protects Dante from the threat of Medusa is tense because it is unclear whether or not the will of God is absolute. Is Dante’s journey to the top of Paradiso fated, or will he be forced to turn back like Orpheus, or worse, be trapped there forever in the mire of acedia in which he started?

Regardless of the significance of Medusa, Virgil doesn’t yet trust Dante to protect himself in the hostile world of Inferno. This is what makes the moment where he not only spins him around and tells him to cover his eyes, but THEN places his hands over Dante’s to make triply sure, so loving.

Mandelbaum translation from Digital Dante

Dante and the Gorgon Within—Margaret Nossel Mansfield

Epic Tradition and Inferno IX—David Quint

Dante outfit reference from the painting Dante presenta Giotto a Guido da Polenta—Giovanni Mochi