Thoughts on a Monday
I’ve never been the attention-seeking kind of person. You’d find me in the back of a classroom or off to the side in a meeting. I dreaded having to stand up and deliver a speech.
The night before, I wouldn’t sleep and the day of, I’d be so terrified I’d be sick to my stomach and shaking so hard my entire body trembled.
Yet for some reason I dreamed of being a teacher.
I knew that teachers…
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Levi taking up beading after the war. He's still getting used to the technicalities of his injuries and the new limitations they pose in his life, so he starts looking for ways to keep his hands busy.
Pottery is too messy and strains his back. Knitting and crocheting test his patience just a bit more than he'd like. Baking bores him as he spends enough time in the kitchen as it is in his tea shop.
But beading seems to have hit a sweet spot for him. It's simple enough, keeps his mind at work, and you seem to enjoy it as well. That makes it all the more enticing to him.
He's meticulous about his work. Levi doesn't have a collection of beads; he simply buys what he needs— what he thinks you'll like. He was never one for bright colors, but they look so lovely on you.
The memory of you frowning because you didn't have nice earrings to match with your new dress lingers at the back of his mind. Just a week later, he'd gifted you a new pair of earrings that perfectly complemented the outfit.
He scoffs at himself lightly. Humanity's Strongest spending his new life making silly little trinkets and accessories? It sounded almost ridiculous.
But the twinkle of joy in your eyes, your soft gasps of surprise, and squeals of excitement makes it all so, so worth it.
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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?
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A Reason Why Some People are Bashful
Socially awkward individuals might have grown up in a home in which they are mistreated. Perhaps they’ve been scolded for speaking in the presence of strangers or maybe their classmates teased them mercilessly. They believed that no one cared about them, no one ever asked what they felt about a given subject.
When you’re never asked which flavor of ice cream you prefer or what cereal…
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Bruce awkwardly trying to “dad” Kon is so funny. The batkids would def make black hair blue eyes jokes about it when they realize.
Bruce: so do you like fishing?
Kon: uh idk? I’ve never done it. (And internally he’s wondering if this is some kind of test or bat code) why?
Bruce, already planning a trip to his lake house: no reason
Kon gets details to come to a random house out in the country and thinks it a safe house and comes ready for a mission, only to find Bruce with fishing poles
both dick and clark are watching this happen with a giant bucket of popcorn between them i think.
no but the idea of bruce trying to take kon for a fishing trip is so funny njdksjbk like... its FISHING. you just sit there for a bit. and he's BATMAN. so he'll just be sitting there in silence punctuated by the occasional "hn." or "hrng." as kon, in growing confusion, just Does Not shut up. does batman want to hear about his opinions on the star wars extended universe versus legends canon? probably not but he's going to because kon can't just sit here in a boat with batman in SILENCE, that's basically TORTURE,
but also makes me think of kon doing the move like katara in s1e1 in atla, where he can just. ttk a bubble of water with a fish in it right up into the air. haha look batman i got one!!! what do i do with it??
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