#poor Jane she didn't even get a quote of her own

[bluberimufim]

Incorrect Quotes (Devourer of Souls edition)

You do not understand how much I love this tag game. I have a huge note in my notes app exclusively dedicated to incorrect quotes for my OCs. Anyway, I was tagged here by @words-after-midnight (check out their post, it's pretty funny), and I'm about to make it everyone's problem.

(Before we begin, gently tagging @pumpkinsplots, @scifimagpie, and @mister-writes)

Theo, in chapter 1: Soooo... you come around here often? Seth: This is my house.

Seth, reading the newspaper: Someone tried to fight the Goddess of Love today. Flick, clearly dishevelled and covered in glitter: Well, maybe the Goddess of Love was being a bitch!

Seth, trying to flirt with Theo: I think both our families suck.

Seth, during the war: Please, I'm begging you, let me heal you. Theo, literally dying: I'm sorry, is OUR soul vanishing? Stay out of it.

Someone: How many kids do you have? Seth: Biologically, emotionally or legally?

Goddess of Time, trying to force Seth to adopt Jane: It's not that she is evil. She just lacks empathy and goes into a dissociative state and commits atrocities.

Flick: Well, remember when Jane gave me a romantic flower bouquet? Seth: Flick, she picked those flowers off the ground.

Flick, after coming to terms with The Curse: Would I rather be feared or loved? Flick: Easy. Both. I want people to fear how much they love me.

None of these are in an order that makes sense, but. You know.

[nthspecialll]

Rockstar's realism slip

Red Dead Redemption is known for being extremely realistic and historically accurate in every aspect from characters, environment, speech and so on which is also why it is loved by so many, however there is one place where they have messed up quite massively and it is in one of the most well loved characters.

Sadie Adler.

Sadie Adler is loved for being a badass independent woman in a man's world doing her own thing after her life was ruined over and over, a trope loved by many and thus excused for being not so well executed and unrealistic.

While women could absolutely make a living as outlaws in the Wild West the Sadie kind was not seen often, instead, we often saw the badass woman leaning into femininity such as Karen or Black Belle.

Real life examples of women outlaws are Pearl Hart who robbed stagecoaches and stole worth 16.226,21 (modern) dollars from a single one and lefr each passenger with one (past) dollars so they could afford food. Belle Starr (inspiref Black Belle) who was known for helping outlaws by hiding them on her farm and later robbing horses, getting known for the quote "next to a fine gun, I love a fine horse." Etta Place who ran with Butch Cassidy, whom Dutch is based on, and is essentially the real life Bessie.

These women leaned into their feminity, even if it wasn't always, but the culture during that time did not allow for people like Sadie, even Arthur takes stabs at her while completely accepting Karen. Another major thing is the background, there is a massive difference between Sadie shooting warning shots at wolves on her farm with zero animals and jumping trains.

The idea of Sadie is great and implausible, even if possible, but the execution is poor, you don't suddenly gain those skills.

But now let's talk about 1907 where she could have had the time to gain these skills, we meet another problem, there were zero female bounty hunters, nish.

"But she could be the first!" Yeah, it isn't impossible, but it is implausible considering culture and a poor choice on Rockstars side considering that there were many badass women at the time living law abiding in ways Sadie could easily have been able to.

Stagecoach Mary was a stagecoach guard, an absolute badass killing or arresting anyone getting near the goods she protected.

Annie Oakley, a sharpshooter, known for shooting ciggerets out her husband's mouth and even the prince of France's mouth!

Calamity Jane, another sharpshooter and frontierwoman who ended up in show-biz because of her masculine attire, it simply wasn't seen that often. (That said she still sometimes wore dresses)

And the thing is, she does talk about working with transport, saying she is considering it, and that she would have been able to, just like Mary, so why Rockstar didn't do that in the beginning is weird to me.

And now to the big slip up that Rockstar made that cannot be defied. She talks about starting her own business, sorry love, you can't, because women couldn't make one before 1980 or so without a man's signature.

I love Sadie, she is great and the idea of her character is great too, but the execution is poor and that is generally why I prefer Karen over her and I wish she had been a bit different and drawn more off real life women.

Belle Starr (Inspired Black Belle)

Pearl Hart

Annie Oatley

Stagecoach Mary

[adragonsfriend]

"If Anakin had just been able to be open about his family..."

Frankly, if Anakin and Padme had been open about their relationship during the war they would've been that couple that everyone knows is pretty but dysfunctional, and whom no one wanted to invite to parties because of the risk of Anakin publicly trying to get into fights.

Don't get me wrong at all I think Anakin and Padme have the potential to be a good couple that that good for them and the people around him, I love the ship in general (even and sometimes especially for the fact that it's a messy one), I think they're characters with great chemistry and enough overlapping values to work together. That said:

We need to stop with the idea that openly having a family (while simultaneously being a Jedi or not) would've automatically fixed a single one of Anakin's issues.

This is going to get spicy and not be as well written as my usual kind of post, cause I'm tired of this idea. Fight me if you wish (but before you do, think really hard about whether this post is actually mad at you or if it's talking about someone else).

If you're familiar, Jane Austen put it best in Sense & Sensibility in this conversation where Elinor (the main heroine) and Marianne (her sister) discuss Willoughby (the man who played Marianne, unwittingly actually fell for her, then left anyway when an opportunity to marry rich came along, and afterwards came to confess than he was miserable despite his new wealth and now believed he would've been happier if he'd married Marianne and been comparatively poor),

Marianne's lips quivered, and she repeated the word, "Selfish?" In a tone that implied, Do you really think him selfish? "The whole of [Willoughby's] behavior," replied Elenor, "From the beginning to the end of the affair has been grounded is selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections (he intended to play Marianne), which afterwards when his own were engaged made him delay the confession of it (he didn't tell Marianne he actually fell for her when he had the opportunity), and which finally carried him from Barton (he left her when the opportunity to marry rich appeared). His own enjoyment, or, his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle." "It is very true. My happiness never was his object." [said Marianne] "At present," continued Elinor, "He regrets what he has done, and why does he regret it? Because he finds it has not answered towards himself. It has not made him happy. His circumstances are now unembarrassed (he's rich now), he suffers from no evil of that kind, and he thinks only that he has married a woman of a less amiable temper than yourself (he doesn't like his new rich wife). But, does it follow, that that had he married you, he would have been happy? The inconveniences would have been different. He would then have suffered under the pecuniary distresses, which because they are removed he now reckons as nothing. He would've had a wife of whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would've been always necessitous, always poor. And probably would soon have learnt to rank the innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far more importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a wife." --Chapter 47

(Please excuse any mistakes in the quote, I was typing it out from listening to the audiobook)

Point being, circumstances do not automatically change people. We largely create our own realities and our dissatisfactions with those realities. A greedy person who refuses to change themself will be dissatisfied no matter what they gain in life.

And Anakin is greedy when is comes to his relationships. Not for money, but the way he wants people to make him feel. It's the whole arc of his character over the prequels and the originals. He learns to love selflessly from Luke, right at the end of his life. It's so important. It's the most important moment in the whole of Starwars, and to claim that Anakin was loving well before that moment diminishes it. Anakin's love for Padme did exist, and it had its good moments, but it was not selfless or giving like his love for Luke became in that moment.

Being open about his relationship with Padme would not have changed that quality of it. Openly having kids would not have changed the qualities in him.

Could he have found the people and time and motivation to face and deal with his issues while having a family, especially if the war somehow ended? Of course.

But having bio kids wouldn't've fixed him any more than having a padawan did. Being with Padme openly wouldn't've resolved the fact that she has a job she cares about , and is a full person who can't cater to his feelings all the time. ("Nothing matters more to me than the way you make me feel.")

Side note, but the utter hypocrisy of criticizing Yoda for assigning him a padawan and then turning around and saying, "but if he'd just not had to hide that he was having kids..." is wild. A knight raising a padawan is going to get a so much communal help and oversight from the community around them (as we see in clone wars), as oppose to a parent in a nuclear family format. If Anakin was "too young and totally unprepared for a padawan," and "Yoda shouldn't've done that," then Anakin was infinitely less prepared to be responsible for actual infants.

The only way being able to be open about his marriage would've helped him is that someone outside the relationship might've tried to step in and been like "please get help." And frankly, that's not actually anyone outside the relationship's responsibility to do. Also, Anakin displays plenty of red flags that have literally nothing to do with his relationship with Padme that people advise him to deal with, which he does not deal with.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Anakin could've left the Jedi. He was free to put down his laser sword and have the househusband arc he deserved at literally any point. And frankly, if his ONLY two options (and this is absolutely a false dichotomy) were commit mass murder or "fail" his duty to the Republic by retiring, I think we can all say which of those is better--both for the Republic and, for Anakin's soul or whatever.

When Ahsoka lost faith in the Jedi she was brave enough to make the decision to leave and find her own path. She left and discovered she still wanted to help people, just in other ways. Literally no one (in world or fans) considered her a failure for opting out of being a soldier in the war. Anakin could've done the same, and it was only his own ideas about status and attachment and violence (and yeah some genuine sense of duty too) that stopped him from doing so. In fact, he is the one to yell at Ahsoka that "The Jedi are your life!" Because he wants her to stay in his life.

Romantic relationships don't fix people.

Becoming a parent doesn't fix people.

People can fix themselves. When they do, it's often partly so they can be better to the people in their lives, be those spouses, friends, children, whatever--but the relationships themselves, the presence of those people in and of itself, is not what does the fixing.

It's effort. The genuine effort to act better. To follow their best impulses over their worst. To take themselves out of risky situations. To build good habits.

The idea that Anakin had to have a spouse, or had to have children in his life either to be happy or to not murder people is Hollywood and/or Sith propaganda, and we should treat it no differently than any other, "her magical vagina will cure him of his issues," or, "let's have kids to save our shitty suburban marriage," narrative.

[janeeyreheresy]

The Engagement

Jane wants Rochester to reassure her that there is no other woman. He does. She believes him.

Readers, I'm exhausted.

I just want to:

See Jane Run by Joy Fielding is, incidentally, a domestic thriller. This is not one, but a modern retelling of Jane Eyre would be well written as a domestic thriller. (I know of The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, but I haven't read it.)

Jane does not run--yet. She tells her new fiancé they were seen kissing by the good Mrs Fairfax, and would he explain the situation to her. So Edward goes to announce their engagement to Mrs Fairfax. Jane then goes to see the good lady herself. 

Mrs Fairfax's Warning

At last, someone with some braincells! Mrs Fairfax is bewildered. The first thing she says is that the Rochesters have always been proud and the father of the present Mr Rochester liked money and was always careful. 

Mrs Fairfax: "He means to marry you?"

Jane: "He tells me so."

Not "yes, he does" but "he tells me so." It's like she doesn't believe him either.

Mrs Fairfax points out the inequality in position and fortune and the age gap. Jane protests that Rochester is as young, and looks as young, as men of twenty-five. 

No, he doesn't.

Cue Lord Ingram, Henry and Frederick Lynn cackling with laughter.

Mrs Fairfax asks if he truly means to marry her for love. 

Mrs Fairfax asking all the right questions.

Poor Jane gets teary eyed again (he does bring out the floodgates in her, huh?). Mrs Fairfax explains that she means that Jane is very young and very inexperienced with men (FACTS) and quotes the old proverb that not all is gold that glitters. Jane, hurt, asks if she is that unlovable. Mrs Fairfax says that no, Miss Eyre is very good and improved of late and:

"Mr. Rochester, I daresay, is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a sort of pet of his."

He has a pet already, Pilot the dog.

I like this conversation, especially everything Mrs Fairfax has to say. She has been worried for a while about Rochester's visible preference for Jane and wanted to warn the girl, but didn't want to be impertinent, as Jane has always behaved properly and modestly. The night before she was looking for her all over the house, only to observe her enter with the master and them kissing. Even though they're engaged, Mrs Fairfax still warns Jane to keep him at the distance and distrust herself and him. 

I interpret this as her advising Jane not to have sex until the wedding night. 

Now here's a fucking good quote. 

Jane is unsettled by the housekeeper's words, her happiness dampened. Rochester plans to take her to Millcote in his new carriage, to buy her some new dresses. Adele runs to her and begs to be taken with them. Jane, thinking about Mrs Fairfax's warning, persuades the Roch to take Adele with them. He reluctantly agrees. After all, she is soon to be his.

The High Street Hell

Shopping turns out to be a horrible experience for Jane. She hates every minute of it. She has no time for pretty dresses and jewels. She wants to stick to boring blacks and greys. The pretty colourful gowns are just not her.

This is where the class divide that Mrs Fairfax spoke of shows most. Lady of Thornfield Hall should wear pretty gowns, she should have pretty jewellery. Blanche Ingram would know this, any other lady of the merry company would know this. Rochester, who sneered at Blanche because, according to him, she only wanted him for his fortune, picks a plain little governess in drab clothes over the high class lady--yet he takes that drab little governess to shop for glorious gowns of the high class lady.

Jane feels uncomfortable about all that money and wishes she had a fortune of her own, albeit small.  And then she remembers the rich uncle in Madeira. She decides to write to him about herself and her upcoming marriage. I don't know why she didn't think of it sooner. Whether she's marrying Rochester or not, it's the right thing to do to contact him, and not just because of the money. Consider that the moment Aunt Reed told Jane this uncle wanted to adopt her, she believed her stint as a governess at Thornfield would soon come to an end. She didn't know where her next job would come from. It was the perfect time to look up a lost relative. Had she written to him straight away, she'd have gotten a response sometime between her return to Thornfield and Rochester's proposal. She'd have known she was an heiress, and would have shut the douchebag up. I am a woman of wealth, now, if not of beauty (because that always needs to be stressed, her lack of beauty), you will not mess around with me any more, sir! 

Sigh. What could have been.

Jane is determined to continue working as Adele's governess until the day of their wedding, and agrees to spend only evenings with Rochester, as was their custom. She refuses to dine with him. Rochester grumbles, but she sticks to her guns. Good for you, Jane. Still, she worries he is becoming too much to her, her whole world. Well, she's not wrong. At the same time, though, from the way she narrates, it sounds as if she's not that thrilled about marrying him. Once the month of courtship is over, she says:

"...there was no putting off the day of the wedding."

She doesn't even like to think of herself as Mrs Rochester. 

Then, something happens that causes her to spend the last day before her wedding wrapped in anxiety instead of excitement. 

[growingstronglikeahighgardenrose]

Will Charlotte get a choice?

Is Colonel Lennox even a real contender or is he a liar whose backstory will come back to bite him? Spoilers up ahead, obviously.

Lennox, I admit, makes a dashing first impression. He's charming, he's funny, he's got abbs, he shows genuine interest in Charlotte and says he admires some spunk and independence in a woman, and he has quite good game.

Obviously both Charlotte's potential suitors, Lennox and Colbourne, have some history. Even with each other. The actors admitted in the interviews that Lennox and Colbourne had a - and I quote - "spicy" relationship.

So what's going on? Here's what we know:

Lennox encourages Tom to gamble

Lennox trusts Edward (not a good look)

Lennox is a war hero

Lennox "does not have that pleasure" of a wife and child, or so he tells Charlotte, Georgiana and Alison

Colbourne is a conservative recluse who has lived on the outskirts of Sanditon for "some years"

Colbourne had a wife who died under mysterious circumstances

Colbourne daughter Leonora looks to be younger than 10, probably 7-8. He also looks after his brother/sister's daughter Augusta, who says she's been living in the "prison" that is Colbourne's house for a few years

Colbourne says something about "trust me miss heywood, I know what happens when a woman falls wrong of society's expectations" which gives us the idea that Colbourne knows a particularly sad story about a woman who didn't adhere to the rules of society and paid the price.

In episode 3 Lennox accuses Colbourne of stealing his wife

Lennox and Colbourne have their real first showdown at Lady D's garden party in episode 4 (according to episode descriptions) where they will shoot arrows

According to the episode 5 description, he and Colbourne will fight about Charlotte

Okay, Sanditon, from its very first season, has always used plot points and story beats from the finished Jane Austen novels. So let's play "who is it" with the characters and plot points, and try and guess how the story might turn out from there. My apologies beforehand but I avoid Mansfield Park like the plague so if there's parallel's from that book, I can't see them.

A character that's associated with gambling, getting a poor girl pregnant and having no qualms with dropping her, and having an unhappy marriage is Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility. Willoughby loathes Colonel Brandon, whom he calls old and boring and accuses of making excuses to skip out on fun gatherings. So we have a rogue calling an honourable man who is busy with cleaning up Willoughby's mistakes (i.e. helping Eliza after she was impregnated by Willoughby) bad names.

Wickham is a very charming military man who wasted his inheritance on gambling and big expenses and now has to be in the army to have some form of income. He talks very well of himself and very poorly of Mr. Darcy, whom he accuses of cheating him out of his inheritance. So we have a character accusing another character of something they didn't do.

We have an honourable military man in the shape of naval captain Frederick Wentworth, he is handsome, charming, well off and is straightforward about looking for someone to marry. He holds grudges towards those who go against his convinctions. This could be the case if Lennox is an honourable man.

Colbourne can, as far as the Austen spectrum goes, be compared to Mr. "I don't like public gatherings" Darcy who is bad at expressing himself and is accused by Willoughby of "stealing" something. Colbourne can also be compared to Colonel Brandon in that he's an older, quiet man who is at present taking care of a child that's not his own (Augusta, and perhaps, ...) and tries to stay away from the drama. Just like Brandon there was a tragic woman in his past who suffered the consequences of not adhering to society. Brandon was in love with his unfortunate woman, perhaps Colbourne was as well... Perhaps the woman he was speaking of was his wife.

In all cases this much is clear: the first person who accuses the other of being bad, is usually the person who has the most dirty laundry. Lennox can also already be compared with more of Austen's rakes than her heroes. The precedents set by Austen don't look great for Lennox. Everything depends on...

The wife: this will be the big drama point in the backstory of our male heroes. Did Colbourne steal the wife? Such an accusation would drive Charlotte away from Colbourne, but would it be true? And if it's true, are there circumstances in which that would be acceptable?

To answer that question, let's look at the cheaters of Jane Austen:

A lot of cheating in Mansfield Park, all bad. They get their comeuppance and it's not forgiven

Lucy Steele does not cheat on Edward Ferrars when they're married, but they were engaged when she switched brothers and decided to marry Robert Ferrars instead. Breaking an engagement was very scandalous. If you were engaged, you were as good as married, it would warrant someone saying "you stole my wife". It would also cause a woman to fall from grace and not be welcome in polite society. And well, Colbourne is quite a recluse. Could that be because he and his wife had quite a shameful elopement?

Eliza Brandon was unhappily married to Colonel Brandon's brother and started cheating. His brother divorced her and she was left pregnant and penniless, ending up in the poorhouse before being rescued by Brandon. I think the chance is very slim the showrunners would have one of the people pursuing Charlotte be an actual adulterer. Most watchers would find that quite unforgiveable, but what if Colbourne was the Christopher Brandon in this story? What if Colbourne was in love with Lennox's wife before and during when they were wed? What if, once Lennox divorced his wife, Colbourne saved her and her baby from the poorhouse and married her so the baby could have his name? A very sweet thought, but I doubt Lennox would then say Colbourne stole his wife.

As to non-cheating but still quite unfortunate women who were "stolen":

Georgiana Darcy was seduced and was almost married to Wickham so he had access to her wealth. Colbourne is wealthy. Was that money acquired through marrying the woman Lennox wanted? Orrr did Lennox try to marry a wealthy woman for her dowry, but did Colbourne prevent them from eloping?

Eliza Brandon the second was seduced by Willoughby, made pregnant, and left behind, thinking WIlloughby would come back to marry her once he had found some money. Could Lennox have left the woman Colbourne stole in such a state? Did Colbourne, like Brandon, sweep in and rescue her and bring her to his estate? Perhaps the Eliza 1 and Eliza 2 stories were merged for Colbourne: what if Colbourne loved Eliza, but Lennox seduced her, engaged her, but compromised her honour before going off to fight at Waterloo, promising her that once he was a war hero he would be able to marry her? Colbourne, hating what Lennox did to the woman he loved, could quit the army, pick her up, marry her and pass the child off as his own. Leonora is around 7, the Napoleontic wars raged quite heavily around the time of her birth, it could be.

How did these two men actually meet? When did the drama start? All Austen books point towards two options:

The story either starts when Colbourne swoops in and steals Lennox's fiancée or wife, the way it happened with Eliza 1 and Eliza 2

Or the Darcy-Wickham route where they went to school together/grew up together/did something together. This is the most plausible route. Why? Because Little Leonora wears a redcoat uniform. Where did she get that? The answer is so simple: from her father. Lennox and Colbourne were in the army together, before Colbourne left for dramatic reasons that probably tie in with the "stolen wife".

Conclusions:

Most hints point in the direction of Lennox and Colbourne being two friends or acquaintances who fell out so drastically about a woman (broken off engagement and marrying someone else, cheating and being divorced while pregnant, ...) that Colbourne probably left the army for it. The woman ended up living or being with Colbourne, birthed a child and she later wound up dead. Colbourne clearly loved the woman as her portrait still hangs in his home. Colbourne is clearly the richer of the two frenemies, and Lennox doesn't like him and tries to slander his reputation. That calls for Willoughby and Wickham parallels. Colbourne does his best to keep details around his marriage and himself vague for outsiders, it's clear he's protecting a secret with a certain kind of discretion, something we've only see Darcy and Colonel Brandon do. It makes me think that perhaps the marriage was a rushed affair, or perhaps the timeline of the pregnancy and the wedding didn't add up because the woman was already pregnant. Perhaps the woman's mysterious death could be a suicide because she was ostracized by society for breaking the rules. After the drama that happened with the "Stolen Wife" Colbourne tries to lead a quiet life and tries to keep his charges/children from becoming like the "stolen wife"/ tragic tale.

In any case, it gives the idea that when truth comes to light, Lennox will probably not look like the greatest guy. And that does make me feel conflicted, as it means Charlotte didn't get to choose. She just got one asshole, and one decent bloke.