#how would her character change

[bethanydelleman]

Hello! Hope you don't mind me asking, but do you think Mrs. Norris would be very different if she had children? I don't mean to imply that be a parent make someone a better person... But do you think she would be happier?

I don't mind you asking at all, I love answering what ifs.

I do think that not having children is a key part of what made Mrs. Norris the person. We are even specifically told that her frugality began as a way to prepare for her children, but then those children never came and she just kept going. The narrator also says Mrs. Norris could manage her children on a small income very well, though I'm not sure I'd actually want her as a mother!

Also, while being child-free is a choice today and while some couples were probably pleasantly surprised by not having children, the cultural expectation was pretty strong at the time. While it's never discussed, I am certain that Mrs. Norris felt on some level like a failure as a wife/woman. It is also probably a source of jealousy, Lady Bertram is rich and has four beautiful children.

Something that I think is innate to Mrs. Norris that she is very energetic, like when William is telling his stories:

though Mrs. Norris could fidget about the room, and disturb everybody in quest of two needlefuls of thread or a second-hand shirt button, in the midst of her nephew’s account of a shipwreck or an engagement, everybody else was attentive (Ch 23)

I don't think this is just showing off her helpfulness to the Bertrams, she is that type of person who needs to be doing. Once Mr. Norris dies and she doesn't really have to be a housekeeper anymore, almost all of her energy is directed towards the Bertrams.

Now I do think she'd still be an officious mooch, but how? Would she be educating her children at home herself to spare the expense or would she foist her daughters on poor overworked Miss Lee? Would Sir Thomas sponsor the education of her boys so they could go to school with Edmund and Tom? I could see her going either way.

The real problem is this, if she had children there is no way she'd want Fanny to come to Mansfield. She'd want the child charity for her own kids. A Mrs. Norris with kids would probably be far more comfortable for Fanny, but she wouldn't get to be there. It's a real catch-22.

Lastly, I doubt Mrs. Norris would be so VERY interested in the distinction of rank between a Miss Norris and a Miss Bertram as she is with a Miss Price. So Maria and Julia probably wouldn't be as spoiled and praised by their aunt. She would probably be trying to show off her children so Sir Thomas would do favours for them. She might tell them to lose a game or quiz on purpose to make Maria feel better, but I doubt she'd be shoving her children below her on a regular basis. So the entire dynamic between Mrs. Norris and the Bertrams would probably be much healthier and Maria wouldn't be such a brat.

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[oceanwithouthermoon]

"i dont hate this female character, i just have a nuanced take on her" and the nuanced take is comically stereotypical misogyny

[myokk]

[wishesofeternity]

The thing about HotD is that it while it absolutely minimizes the agency and ambition of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, this is specifically used to glorify Rhaenyra and frame her as righteous while condemning Alicent and framing her lacking. That's the key difference in both their textual portrayals that has directly led to 90% of the fandom hailing Rhaenyra as the second coming of Christ while spewing the most hateful vitriol at Alicent just for existing. But y'all are not prepared for that conversation.

[selenophany]

LAMIA 🪸🌴🪷

original video by Rexlent

𓇼 | Endless Count of Favorite Characters

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Thinking again about the darknesses that lurk underneath the surface of Sense and Sensibility (I have talked before about how Edward despite being the eldest is subjected to what we can argue is emotional and financial abuse by his family for years, and how the Dashwood women are disinherited on a whim of their great uncle), and this time specifically about the Brandons.

We get so little about them, and what we do get about them is all bad:

This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father... At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her... I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained... My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly.

Mr Brandon Sr is shown to us as being a greedy man, a bad administrator of his estate, and a cruel father. His first son seems cut of the same cloth, and his pleasures were not what they ought to have been is one of the most, if not the most sinister line between all the Austen novels. But there's more about him!:

Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief.

The Brandons were married for two years; the colonel returns to England and starts looking for her 3 years later. Young Eliza was then a 3 year old toddler. We are obliquely told that Brandon cut all ties with his brother:

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford.

Eliza is now 17, so the eldest brother died when she was 14, which is 16 years after his marriage with the older Eliza. In that period of time, he managed to squander the whole of her fortune, and put the estate in debt again, as we are told earlier on by Mrs Jennings:

Poor man! I am afraid his circumstances may be bad. The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two thousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. I do think he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else can it be? I wonder whether it is so. I would give anything to know the truth of it. Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her. May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a notion she is always rather sickly. I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams. It is not so very likely he should be distressed in his circumstances now, for he is a very prudent man, and to be sure must have cleared the estate by this time. I wonder what it can be! May be his sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over. His setting off in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the bargain.”

We know the Bennets, with five daughters, and without a saving mindset, still manage to live very comfortably with 2000 a year, and if they had had any mind to save money, they could have provided all five of them with decent dowries/money enough to keep them out of poverty when their father died if they were single. It is clearly not that the money isn't enough, or that Delaford is an unproductive estate; in fact, it is described to us as almost paradisiac:

Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so ’tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! ’tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone’s throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother.

One interesting character, though forgotten because only mentioned in passing, is the Brandon sister. On one of the quotes above we get that she's in Avignon for her health, and we know her husband is wealthy (and probably abroad with her) because it is his estate that the planned picnic is for:

A party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see a very fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a brother-in-law of Colonel Brandon, without whose interest it could not be seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict orders on that head. The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, and Sir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit them, at least, twice every summer for the last ten years. They contained a noble piece of water; a sail on which was to form a great part of the morning’s amusement; cold provisions were to be taken, open carriages only to be employed, and every thing conducted in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure.

It is implied that Brandon and his BIL are in very good terms (and we know he's not afraid of cutting ties with bad relatives), and one can safely guess that at the very least he cares enough about his wife as to have her travel for her health. Another guess can be made about her getting married about 10 years before the events of the book. Whether she lived at home before that, or was at school or somewhere else, it isn't said.

But this way you can feel there's a parallel in a way, between the Brandons and the Tilneys: a greedy, cruel father, a son that follows on his steps, and a younger brother and sister managing the toxicity as best they can. Talking about this with @bad-at-names-and-faces, she brought up the idea that in that scheme, Cathy would be Eliza (if it wasn't her not being an orphan, or a rich heiress, and how that connects with Austen's line about Cathy not being born to be a heroine at the beginning of Northanger Abbey). Certainly part of it is the romantic gothicness of the Brandon backstory, united with NA's commentary on Gothic tropes, but to me it drove home with even greater force how such a situation would break a man; losing Cathy that way would have definitely broken Tilney, and if we had met him 14 years down the line, would he have appeared to the unacquainted much different than Brandon appeared to the Dashwood sisters?

[puppyeared]

i like him

[vyunok-obyknovenniy]

Really happy with how she turned out! I decided to give her some naiad features, inspired by this post and it was really fun! I hc that she can breathe underwater (even though she doesn't have gills. Do naiads have gills?), although I am not sure if she can do it freely or for a limited amount of time 🤔

The fabric piece covering her chest was loosely inspired by 18th century neckerchiefs, because I wasn't sure how the Mycenaean open chest fashion would fly with the censorship here or on other platforms ¯⁠\⁠_(•⁠ ⁠▽⁠ ⁠•⁠;)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[hamable]

It’s really interesting to me how elusive Kipperlily Copperkettle has been throughout what is now the first half of the season.

She’s the closest thing we have to an identifiable Big Bad. She gets established in episode 3 to be constantly vigilant, capable of eavesdropping on anything and everything.

And then she’s physically MIA (iirc) for seven episodes, barring her scene with the food trucks at the start of episode 7. I think she’s said to be present at the assembly this most recent episode (ep 10) but she doesn’t appear to be an active participant in anything. That inaction is eating away at me… bc I know she’s doing something.

Talk about haunting a narrative… I’m constantly aware of her nonexistence. I’m paranoid. With every episode that we don’t hear from or interact with KLCK, she grows more terrifying to me. Brennan made sure to establish right away that she could be listening at literally any point. Riz tried to keep that at the forefront of his mind initially, but even he let that idea fall to the wayside as stress built up and time passed.

I think we’ve settled into a false sense of security in this respect. I think that at any point Brennan can and will drop a KLCK bomb on us and oh boy it’s gonna be deliciously messy.

[randomminty]

Yeahlow

[airawisteria]

[ID: A digital drawing of Tamarack Baumann, specifically her step 3 design. The version drawn is the long haired one with a braid in her hair that has a red ribbon in it. She is wearing a mushroom themed dress with mushroom earrings. She is holding up the ends of the skirt part of the dress to show it off. She has a close eyed smile and is wearing red lipstick.]

[sonknuxadow]

this is probably an unpopular opinion with the amount of "everyone is married with kids" type future aus people make for sonic characters but i cannot see sonic getting married or having a kid ever. if he did somehow end up with a kid hed be the worlds first transmasc absent father or however the joke goes

[clanborn]

i think asc is setting up for froststar (with the caveat acknowledging that the erins will write without regard to actual setup most of the time. and they could also be cowards. so take with a grain of salt). wind had a lot of emphasis on frostpaw standing up for herself and growing confidence and doing this in the context of a leadership role, especially in the windclan scene. sunbeam like specifically notes how frostpaw takes charge of the situation and seems to have really grown into herself. and riverstar and the cats of the park leading her on this journey in order to grow these skills. and i think it makes sense with the extremely religious angle this arc has taken with “evil = defiers of starclan and nonbelievers” and riverclan becoming a mess specifically because they are without starclan’s guidance. so i think it makes sense in this context that riverclan’s chosen leader would be the cat who’s been specifically led by starclan this whole time. and the fact she has tried both a warrior and medicine cat role and has some trouble fitting into both. “look beyond the obvious choices.” frostpaw warrior-healer-prophet leader of riverclan

[quietwingsinthesky]

it ever hit you out of nowhere that castiel is living in a dead guy's body and the show just does not care. it does not care. jimmy novak might as well not exist the moment he or claire is out of sight. cas stole a guy's body and his face and his life, and we can't ever talk about it or discuss it in detail because of how fucking horrifying it is that sam and dean's best friend just walks around in a dead guy suit. there's not even a human soul in there anymore. it's just a corpse. stone-cold body snatcher indeed.