#the end of the novel

[bethanydelleman]

I'm listening to Emma as my falling-asleep audiobook right now and I'm thinking a lot about Harriet. The movie adaptations very often have her remaining friends with Emma after the end, but the book says their relationship sank into mere acquaintances after that. Is that a personality thing, do you think, or is it a class thing? And why the difference in the adaptations? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to hear yours.

It is definitely a class thing.

I think one of the reasons Emma can be unpalatable to modern audiences is because it ends with a restoration of a social order that we find repulsive today. How is it fair that Jane Fairfax, born as lower gentry, gets to marry into Enscombe but Harriet Smith, the natural daughter of a tradesman, 'deserves' only Robert Martin and is basically ejected from membership in Highbury's gentry class? And that's a good thing? The adaptations maintain the Emma and Harriet friendship because the way the book ends really appalls a lot of modern readers.

(Also, never really talking about the age difference between Emma and Knightley was a great choice in Emma 2020 because that is not people's favourite either.)

I think the most charitable way to look at it is that Harriet always wanted Robert Martin. She loved staying there over the summer, the family was extremely kind and loving towards her, and her status as a natural child would be largely ignored. Emma's interference gave her ideas above her station... ug, veering into territory I don't love again... but then again, could Harriet have ever succeeded at marrying into the gentry? Probably not on Emma's sponsorship.

There are only two characters that a member of the gentry tries to move from "middle class" (I know it's not really the middle class) to gentry, George Wickham and Harriet Smith. Both attempts are disasters. Captain Wentworth, Fanny/William Price, and Jane Fairfax are all born into the lower gentry and they climb higher, which seems to be fine. There are a bunch of characters who go from extremely wealthy trade to gentry, the Jennings (Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton, and Charlotte Palmer) and the Bingleys. They seem to be fine, Charles Bingley at least is portrayed positively.

I don't know what the message is there. The Gardiners are presented as gentleman-like but have no apparent intentions of jumping class. Does that make them good? As someone raised in Canada whose worldview is rooted in The American Dream Lite, it's hard for me to appreciate the upholding of a classist system. Jane Austen herself was clinging to gentry status by her fingernails, so why does she write a novel that glorifies almost everyone staying exactly where birth placed them? Jane Fairfax can improve herself and be worthy of a rich marriage but not Harriet? I guess Harriet never improves herself much though, but she hasn't had the same opportunities as Jane F...

But then the very next novel, Persuasion, seems very anti-classist!

Something about hubris...

I actually feel sorry for Emma at the end of the book. She got a husband, sure, but she loses a friend. She has Mrs. Weston still, but she'll be busy with her baby, she loses Harriet, Jane Fairfax is gone (again), and she's still stuck in Highbury, which has become worse because Mrs. Elton is there now. She just remains as much trapped and limited as she was before...

Anyway, that is my long and rambling answer. I'm not very happy with the ending of Emma. If someone who does like it wants to defend, you are more than welcome.

(I do think there might be something to like, this is how the class system could work well if everyone actually did their jobs. Knightley is the perfect, model landlord. Cares for the poor, lives at his estate, involved in running it etc. Emma does her duty to the poor, everyone seems to do well under their United management)

[bunnybirds]

In Princess Aster's world, bunnybirds live in contented isolation, keeping themselves detached from the world in order to practice magic. Nothing is ever wrong, and no one is ever angry...even as Aster's people seem to be slowly disappearing. When her father is next to vanish, Aster resolves to find and rescue the missing bunnybirds—even if it means journeying over the rim of the world itself!

My middle grade graphic novel is officially available for preorder! Bunnybirds is a story about trauma, friendship, and my experience with autistic masking. It was drawn entirely with Prismacolor colored pencils and Pandafly markers, with Photoshop applied for color enhancement and text.

Check it out maybe! :D

That last panel with Carlin (the brown bunnybird) facing the corner was directly inspired by this wonderful TMA comic by @nubs-mbee!

[purplepenguintime]

Thank you for finally giving them a happy ending 

[zuzu-draws]

Long-Haired Obito Art Request for @lucynda ! Your ask was a bit too long for me to post so i'm answering it in this way ;D This version of Obito is like...one of the most vicious and brutal renditions of him ._.

[cursed-nyxan]

This mortal took a break from their work requirements. And what are they gonna do? FINALLY FINISH A DATE WITH DEATH

[barawrah]

beloved

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

forever obsessed with dynamics between vampires, specifically that of a maker and fledgling, as a way to explore abuse. the creation of a vampire itself can so easily be a literalization of the lasting impacts of trauma and also much more simply the ways a perpetrator might shape their victim’s very identity. the extremes of isolation in the way that the new vampire, in most narratives, must cut all ties to their mortal life, or else go through an elaborate charade to maintain the facade of humanity, while forever still being removed from it. and the sheer dependence and vulnerability of being in an entirely new state of being, wholly uncertain of what it entails, and relying on another person to define… everything.

[meltedmush]

[anothersuperstition]

will you welcome your extinction in the morning rays?

[coveredinsun]

i’ve seen gimleaf fics where they each try to find out how to court by the other’s traditions. and i love those, so i think they ought to be taken a step further. and i think the way to do that would be, naturally, to make bagginshield real. allow me to explain why. ahem. after the ring is destroyed, girlfailure legolas spends two weeks poring over The Ancient Texts and stressing because his one (1) friend who WOULD help him (that’s aragorn) knows jack shit about dwarves beyond the surface (no pun intended) (well gandalf knows things but gandalf is a bitch) (he would just smile at legolas knowingly and wish him good luck instead of giving him answers).

so alas, girlfailure “shit tier ass elf” legolas is left to like, idk, sulk or something in the garden he starts at the Bestie Residence in minas tirith. and after like 2 days sam’s had enough he’s like “dude your vibes are upsetting the plants.” and legolas is like “my bad bro. it just seems i know nothing about dwarves which i probably should’ve thought about before, by elf standards, getting hitched in vegas.” and sam is like “oh dwarves? just ask mister frodo ^_^ he knows tons about dwarves!” and legolas is like “what the shit? him in particular? why does he anything about dwarves?” and sam leans in reaaaalllllll close and whispers behind his hand, “well you see mister elf, mister legolas, sir, there’s always been a very healthy amount of rumors that go around in the shire about mister frodo’s uncle, mister bilbo, and the letters he used to exchange with a certain king under the mountain.” and legolas, who was THERE, is like

[nonexistent-alfa]

LCF readers at the start of the story when the side characters mistook Cale to be a "good person": pfft, you fools. You couldn't have been more wrong about him. You've all just been scammed. That guy is only using you for his own benefit.

LCF readers a few hundred chapters in: wait- they actually were kinda right?? We were the fools who got scammed into believing whatever he said? Goddamn.

[penguin-stars]

You know one of my favorite things about this novel?

Is that Cale (Well, Kim Rok Soo) actually acts his age (36)

I personally haven't read many Isekais aimed at male audiences, so I can't speak for those

I have, however read quite a bit of Otome Isekais

And one of the things that annoys me the most about the genre, is when the protagonist, usually an adult woman, gets reincarnated into a baby, a child or a teenager and you sometimes forget their actual age because some of the things they do, some of the decisions they make are /baffling/ when you remember they're a grown ass adult

But with Cale is quite the opposite, people around him are often left scratching their heads at some of his actions and level of maturity ("Aren't you supposed to be 18-20?")

Hell, one time he told Raon that he is "30 years older than him" only to remember mid-phrase that nope, he's actually supposed to be only 15 years older

-Spoilers for P1-

And it's also very funny when Alberu finds out that Cale is, in fact actually older than him, his reaction is pure gold because he's supposed to be the hyung around here you know?

[a-wondering-thought]

The end of Austen books always makes me laugh a bit because its just like, yeah some people got married, some other people got outcasted from society forever, this person died, no we cannot unpack any of that, no more dialog i cannot write any more of that

[etrevil]

Get yourself a man convinced you're human no matter what

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."