#i almost posted this to the wrong blog LMAO

[sallymew4]

just some min-su

closeups

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

------------

*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[tennessoui]

it’s like baby gorl there’s no way I, the author who wrote the fic you’re commenting on and who is the intended audience for this comment, am gonna agree with you 😿🙏 some things can just stay on your chest 🙏

[tradingjack]

cringefail late valentine's day posting some rushed kiss studies bc I worked like 36 of the past 72 hours yippee

and I STILL can't draw kissimg this shit haaard how yall do it 😭😭

[same-picture-of-a-rock-every-day]

hi. i wanted to say that your daily rocks give me a sense of a constant in my life. they're the one thing that's always there and doesn't change and seeing the newest post every day has made be feel better multiple times when im just. so tired of the chaos of life. thank you and ily (platonically) <3

feel free to not reply if you dont want to. i just wanted to say how i appreciate this blog and i apologize if this ask makes you uncomfortable.

hello! First of I want to say I am SO SORRY for not answering this (and every other ask in my inbox) sooner, i've been preparing to move to college and life has been crazy, but I want you to know that this ask made my day and continues to do so every time I open up my inbox :)

I started this blog as a joke but honestly all of you being so supportive and kind and funny has kept me going in some really hard times, and you all have been so kind to me when i've forgotten to post things or messed up and its been so fun seeing all your notes and reblog and asks every day. I swear i will do my best to keep posting on this blog for as long as i can because i also need that consistency in my life lol

I hope you are having the greatest day anon, and I love you too (platonically <3)

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Being a q!Pac fan is just non-stop suffering.

He's lost almost every single person he loves and cares about, he got trapped in a Federation building which triggered his prison trauma, and now he's just. Alone. Someone please comfort this poor boy for the love of GOD—

[demo-ness]

saw a post that was like "people who say they're an adult with a job are actually default proship" or something along those lines.

and as someone who has one foot in and one foot out of fandom, i NEED you all to understand: from an outside perspective, THERE IS NO DEBATE HAPPENING HERE. you are two groups circlejerking and occasionally sneering at each other, and you could ostensibly be "debating" about anything, for as much actually seems to be discussed.

nobody is defaulting to having their dick out with either stance. when we notice you we avert our gaze and try to walk faster. do not try to force us to associate with either of you, please

[valenthario]

feeling sooo stuck with my content rn🤪🤪‼️

[tsukasageorge]

magical girl mari sketch! <3

[sentientcave]

WIP wednesday game! i was not tagged but I'm doing it anyway

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs. 1. Sparrow 2. Storm Front 3. It will Come Back 4. American Fireworks 5. Masks 6. Homecoming 7. Fem Soap scenarios 8. The Station 9. Vienna 10. One Night 11. Man Hunt 12. Morgan Price-Riley 13. Cherry Bomb 14. 141 Paranormal Investigators

I didn't add the ones I have no real intention of going back to. Also not going to tag anyone because that's too many. But please do it if you want to!!

[wehaveagathering]

Hey lovely! New flyers fan here and was just wondering if you could recommend flyers blogs to follow 🥰 Want to start lbing with you all because it seems fun

Hi bud!!! happy to have you :0 🧡🖤

honestly? just jump straight into the lb with us on thursday instead! we're playing dallas at home and trying to extend a win streak to five, so it should be exciting >:) you can see us all in real time and figure out who you might want to follow from there! or if you can't wait until then, you can scroll thru the tag right now and see who you vibe with! you can also check out my flyers tag on my blog too, to see who i reblog flyers stuff from and who reblogs it from me. curate your own online experience! the thrill of discovery is greater when unearthed by your own two hands!!!

and last but not least GO FLYERS

[caelumsnuff]

i never really saw caelum as a child even before the timeline was released. however, after its release, it got harder for me to understand other people's insistence on him being a "minor". because if a daemon that coalesced in '99 is considered a child then does that make me, someone born in the early 2000s, a fucking fetus? mouth off all they want, but there's just no way i can see a character who is older than me as some sort of toddler.

Yeah same. He was an adult before the timeline, and he’s definitely one afterwards. Don’t know how people are still calling him underage or a minor or a child. He’s none of those things.

It is kinda funny to watch though! When the timeline came out, a bunch of us said that people were gonna trip over themselves about Caelum shipping, trying to find a way to still crucify it. And here we are!!! We all collectively got hit with Apollo’s dodgeball.

[babisawyer]

can we please just let the fucked up and grotesque stay fucked up and grotesque.

[freezerbnuuy]

The Simblr Cycle

Paid creator acts up for the 19348th time, site-wide outrage

Everyone pissed off about paid creator

Vague appreciation posts for free CC creators (but they still get fuck-all in terms of reblogs or exposure)

Everyone points out the fact there are places to get this paid CC for free

Paid creator releases new set, gets thousands of reblogs and everyone is putting it on their sims and in their houses and on their Simblrs and basically doing free advertising

Free CC creators go back to getting fuck-all in terms of interaction

The rest is under the cut.

For a site full of people obsessed with the ideal of a person who does no wrong, y’all are sure as shit in love with the people who cannot do anything right whilst the good folk get bugger-all!

When do people stop paying shitty creators and when do these same people stop freely advertising for them as well? 💀 And when it comes to when they fuck up, you know what they say about there being no such thing as bad pubilicity. There’s no way these people will actually be booted from the community because of the price tag making it look more special and desirable, and because people refuse to check out places like Rebels and DHM where you can get all this shit for free.

They can do whatever the fuck they like at this point because the callouts will only summon their white-knights and the rightful reblogged callouts and warnings will only get them more advertising - because most people only care about pretty desirable things and for whatever reason will gladly tolerate shitty business practices from these people.

So many decent folk and passionate folk in this community get nothing except empty vague mass reblogged messages about how much people love their creations whilst the scamming cunts get all the constant attention and advertisement. And all free creators get is pitiful exposure, none of the excited ‘look at this cool CC so and so made!’ and all they get is taken advantage of by paid creators. Don’t be surprised if even more free creators like myself leave the community because they’re tired of it. Scammers in the Simblr or wider CC community and thieves have fucked this up for everybody. Paid content has ruined the TS4 community, but at the same time the whole community almost revolves around it despite it.

Everyone talks about how people making stuff for free or just doing stories and challenges are the backbone of this community and then it entirely becomes about the paid creators. Again. And again and again and again, and it’s never-ending.

EDIT: Please stop following my account since I am a retired creator who doesn’t upload anymore. I appreciate it but I am no longer posting Sims content to my blog. You are welcome and encouraged to reblog my Gaza / Sudan fundraisers reblogs however.

The funny part is, I got more notes on this one rant post in 3 days than I did across most of my actual Sims content for months, with the exception of 1 or 2 semi-popular pose packs, lmao. Like I said, paid creators run the place at this point. This entire community revolves around paid creators and awful business practice and behaviour now, and with TS5 cancelled they’re here to stay for a much longer time than we’d hoped for. Good luck to all of the gameplayers, storytellers and free creators. You’re going to need it.

Since this post is getting so much traction, let's be outraged about something more important for the New Year - the ongoing genocide, war and famine that a lot of people have conveniently forgotten about. Don't turn your back just because it isn't happening in your country / to people like you / to people you know or can relate to / because you're too busy pointing out others not doing enough when you yourself are doing nothing.

Donate to a fundraiser for someone in the middle of war, genocide, or famine.

There is a whole list here to choose from for donations to Gaza.

There is also a gathering of fundraisers for the people of Sudan and Friends of the Congo.

You can also search the relevant Tumblr tags to find other fundraisers.

If you cannot donate, reblog some individual fundraiser posts or posts focusing on a fundraising organisation.

[jevilowo]

I love dates in the tf2 lore. I love knowing exactly when stuff happened. Which makes THIS THING I JUST FOUND a BEAUTIFUL MIRACLE

You've seen this image before, but have you noticed the dates on the prison card thingies? Presumably this is written the American Way (the writers are so american they make Scout and Sniper both call their mothers "mom" despite preferring "ma" and "mum" respectively, as shown previously SEVERal times), so Spy and Scout were arrested on

The 7th of September, 1972.

We can do a lot with this information.

Mann Co was taken over by Grey and Olivia half a month before this: roughly the 23rd of August

Contrary to popular belief, most of the comics have to take place in 1973! Seeing as 6 months after late August is late February.

This also means Scout had to have been born in 1946/7. Not sure about Sniper, I have yet to overanalyse the New Zealand timeline paragraph. I'll get to it eventually.

Medic implies in comic 6 that our mercs have worked together for "at least eight years", while talking about the lore breaking Demo eyeball halloween thing. Assuming the "at least" confusion is over the 1972 Halloween they missed while not working together, the Teufort Nine were hired in 1964.

(I've almost mentally rationalised the lore breaking eyeball as a thing they do at like 4am after regular Scream Fortress shenanigans. Almost.)

Scout claims he has known Ms Pauling for six years. During the War! update, Demoman is unfamiliar with Ms Pauling (he knows she works for the administrator, but thats it), so we can assume that is the point she started working more closely with the mercs, and also 1966/7

I really need to go back to actively working on my timeline instead of passively wondering at 11pm "hey what time of year is it in the comics" and going down a rabbit hole.

Uh if you want to build off this, feel free to, but tell society twas I, the great and nobel Jevil_Owo, who first conceptualised all this.

UPDATE! This post seems to be picking up reblog steam again, so now is a good time to say I was WRONG about the mercs being hired around 1964.

This blog post from 2009 claims the WAR update took place in 1962, meaning the mercs have to have been hired in early 1962 at the latest.

Seeing as Scout would have been 15/16 in 1962, and as that's kind of the youngest one can be hired for just about anything, I'd assume it actually is 1962 they were hired. Ok thats enough I just felt it was my duty as Person Timelining to update people on this Discovery.

SECOND UPDATE!!

Okay this is lowkey blowing up again and I just wanted to add that Valve themselves are not aware of the comics taking place in 1973. Idiots! This is why "7 years later" is 1979 instead of 1980 like it should be. Sigh.

I had already figured that out from a few other things (see the timeline in my pinned post, I point it out a couple of times), but this solidified it lmao.

[twopoppies]

hey love, i hope this arrives in one piece and nothing is cut off, as i am not sure anymore how much i can write in a tumblr ask. just to be sure, my message ends with a ":)"

i'm a larrie since 2013, but went on a work-related tumblr break in 2018 (i work in the music industry). i returned to tumblr last week, amidst deep shared grief 💔 to find solace in community. as i tried to cheer myself up by going through my favorite blogs (like yours, it's so wonderful) and trying to catch up -especially about Harry&Louis things that i missed in the last years-, i found the posts really feel like little nuggets of joy and i'm so grateful for that. so i decided i finally want to add to it, now that my industry commitments have downsized significantly. i haven't shared this in almost a decade (never online anyway) and it's not big news or anything, but whenever i remember it, it just makes my heart glow. so, one of my closest work-friends in the industry back in the days (and i'll use neutral pronouns to protect them) did two tours with them in 🦘 in 2013 and 2015. our shared work ethics and also contracts obviously forbade us both from sharing almost all of what was seen or heard (concerning the artists' personal business), but my friend knew i firmly believed Harry and Louis to be together, just closeted (and we both knew this sadly was very common in music or the film industry; meaning mgmt iron-closeting non-straight male artists was completely and automatically still considered The Norm back then, especially with male artists doing these kinds of numbers and having that large of a young fanbase). i never indulged in my reasons or theories, because i felt like i had a professional reputation to uphold and also with me being queer and in the closet as well, it felt too personal to discuss, back then. during the first tour in 2013, we didn't text much, they just said the band was all very friendly and crew was professional, they seemed "like family". the schedule was "brutal". and security constantly needed to be "tightened", due to invasive people trying to steal or replicate tour passes. i didn't ask my friend about Harry and Louis specifically --but admittedly we also weren't that close of friends at that point. during the second tour in 2015, we were though, and only a few days in, they out of the blue texted something that made me smile so wide, i honestly think my cheeks are hurting to this day. :D i quote: "hey so those two louis and h. can't tell you more but you weren't wrong!!!" i replied with ":DDDDDDD" (honestly felt like sending a million heart emojis instead) and about an hour later they sent "every here knows too!!!" and a correction: "everyone" and to this day, almost 10 years later, I keep these imessages saved, because it made me so happy. and i hope that sharing my time-capsuled precious memory will make someone else happy, too. their love is truly something so special. oh, and one of the two was really unlucky at the pokies (slot machines) and quite a sore loser, haha. I always guessed it was Louis, but I don't know. :)

🥹 Oh, we really needed some happiness around here. Bless you for sharing this.

Also, I tend to agree with you that it was Louis on the slot machines. LMAO!