#just to post complete nonsense about me

[tiger-moran]

How are random people managing to find posts I made like 7 years ago

[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?

[britneyshakespeare]

also in a very real way being a soap opera actress is kind of like. one of those half-baked dreams i have that i will never ever pursue. like if someone offered me an open role on a daytime soap opera wo having to audition i would absolutely accept. i would be like hell yeah id love to act these melodramatic dialogue scenes day in and day out. i cant tell u why. so i cant imagine someone doing that and then just moving onto being a serious actor in big high budget things and having legitimate fans who arent old ladies who watch abc every weekday at 2pm. a part of me is like why would you even wanna do that?

[coquelicoq]

Il y a les nuits où il se réveille d'un cauchemar, le regard frénétique, les poings serrant les draps, soufflant à perdre haleine. Ces nuits-là elle l'étreint ; elle fait de petites bises sur son crâne ; avec son pouce elle caresse sa nuque couverte de sueur, tendue et tremblante. Quand il revient à lui-même, elle le chevauche, appuyant fort sur son corps avec tout son poids ; elle prend son visage entre ses deux mains ; elle pousse son front contre le sien, en répétant : "T'es à moi, à moi, à moi, à moi," jusqu'à ce qu'elle voie la chaleur dans son regard, jusqu'à ce qu'elle sente la réponse de son corps sous elle.

Elle le nique vigoureusement, ces nuits-là. Elle mord son épaule sans qu'il doive lui en demander. Elle le fait crier son nom à elle, pour l'empêcher de crier ceux de ses proches perdus. En lui coupant le souffler par amour, elle écrase le souvenir de ce qui l’a fait par terreur. Leur sueur s'entremêle, le stabilisant, le liant au présent, à ce lieu, à elle. Quand il se rendort, épuisé, des fourmis dans les membres, son cœur bat fort à cause de leur amour, leur amour et rien d'autre.

Dans la paix qui suit, elle passe les doigts le long des balafres sur le dos de son bien-aimé, écoute son haleine qui s'équilibre, se concentre sur sa propre sueur pendant qu'elle s'évapore dans l'air frais de la nuit.

[lightbulb-warning]

<3 is a smile and <\3 is also a smile. to me. hope this helps!

[blitz0hno]

Me pondering: kids are capable of going through and understanding complex problems and their feelings should be taken seriously when it counts.

Me practically: who are all these annoying fucking kids in the milgram fandom and why are they posting the worst takes and most irrelevant bullshit I've ever seen ever???

I think these are valid to coexist.

[questinwitchface]

Rereading my Grease AU in preparation for posting tomorrow, and giving myself a pep talk about how sometimes fanfiction can just be for fun, and it doesn't have to be perfect, and it's okay if I wrote it just to make myself smile during a hard time earlier this year and now I'm just sharing it in the hopes that it'll make someone else smile during hard times now. Not all my writing has to be my best writing. It's okay if some writing is just to play. Telling myself this over and over and over.

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

klapollo could be the funniest ship ever, but no one wants to hear it.

[skitskatdacat63]

I know it would literally never happen, but whenever the speculation of who the next James Bond will be comes up, I can only think about how I would sell my soul to get a butch lesbian James Bond 😣

[nostalgia-tblr]

everyone has these thoughtful reasons and careful media analysis to make their point about why sylki will/won't "be endgame" and thus it's okay (or not) if they argue a bit first and i am slightly ashamed to admit that my entire thought process thus far has just been "well there's six episodes to fill, of course they'll drag the romance plot out as long as possible." :'(

[cuteniarose]

@katkastrofa: *forgets a few OCs when making a list because it’s been a long day, she’s tired and brain farts happen to everyone occasionally*

[yappacadaver]

the absolute fucking speed with which he hangs his head when rebecca's like "pfft normal. right."

[imflyingfish]

I gotta be less hard on myself. Annoyingly i know that my best work comes from when i am hard on myself. But i keep stopping myself from doing things i want to due to perfectionism. Annoying.

[googlein1942]

ive been so into rdr2 lately and i keep thinking about public nations verse where people making historical games/movies/shows/etc. consult nation people on historical tidbits and accuracy and whatnot, so queue Alfred “Favorite era of the US was the wild wild west” Jones finding his way to rockstar studios to help them out with the game accuracy/go on about whacky people he met during those days while the studio is just like write that down write that down

[coquelicoq]

In talking about Chaucer (p. 74), I said that, in general, puns and verbal connections of sound were unimportant and not to be sought out; and now, you will say, I have been using them to explain cruces in Shakespeare. Alas, you have touched on a sore point; this is one of the less reputable aspects of our national poet. A quibble is to Shakespeare [Johnson could not but confess] what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind.... A quibble was for him the fatal Cleopatra for whom he lost the world, and was content to lose it. Nor can I hold out against the Doctor, beyond saying that life ran very high in those days, and that he does not seem to have lost the world so completely after all. It shows lack of decision and will-power, a feminine pleasure in yielding to the mesmerism of language, in getting one's way, if at all, by deceit and flattery, for a poet to be so fearfully susceptible to puns. Many of us could wish the Bard had been more manly in his literary habits, and I am afraid the Sitwells are just as bad.

William Empson, 7 Types of Ambiguity, ch 2 pp 100-101

i'm sorry this is so fucking funny. that pathetic loser shakespeare who loved puns so much it cost him everything, except of course his status as the most famous, most read, most immortal english-language author of all time. but everything else, he lost and it's all because of how weak he was to resist a pun :/ pouring one out for my sad little girly man who could have had it all if only he was better at writing, the thing he is the most famous guy in the world for.

even empson, who disagrees with johnson that shakespeare "lost the world", is like, too bad our favorite poet is susceptible to the thing that made him famous :/ really tragic that the guy whose wordplay we've been talking about for 300 years likes wordplay :///

also i can't get over writing a book about the types of ambiguity and NOT INCLUDING PUNS?? sorry but puns are ambiguous! that's where their juice comes from! imagine liking ambiguity so much you write a book about it but never mention puns except to dunk on them. imagine being a POET and POETRY CRITIC who looks down on sound-based ambiguity! could not be me!!

[dredshirtroberts]

people?? being niceys to me???? for no reason except loves me?????????????

it's more likely than i think, apparently.