#unless it’s fun ��😩 but now it’s an exception and not a given

[variousqueerthings]

OK we finished the episode

idk if it's better to do this before watching the final episode, because i assume it'll contain REAP-RRRR-CUSHNS but I'm gonna do it now

um. idk. bro i think you misread trauma bonding and guilt as love? literally gets triggered into seeing snow falling when he thinks about her 🤪😩

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS:

why was she there? TO FUCK HIS SHIT UP THAT'S WHAT (woo). Ok, no seriously, she is there to have her cake (frame fraser and get her revenge) and eat it too (keep that sweet canadian cutie with her). she's a fucked up lil gal and I do like that (but i will get into some of the bits that made me hmmmm) (her fucking shit up is great tho!)

why was she so quick to fall into his arms after he put her away?see above. she genuinely did want to get him. the other pertinent question is "how does this work with the ways in which i read fraser's state of mind and how she uses that against him GIRL TRIED TO KILL DIEFENBAKER??? FRASER WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

what is she hoping to get out of him in part 2, considering how part 1 ended? bonnie and clyde situation. actually most of my Stuff with this episode doesn't have to do with her writing (except for the last scene, i was a bit eh on that, tbc)

will we get more context for their emotional connection outside of the story about the snowstorm? no. it really is that. i should add actually that there is also the guilt of him giving her up afterwards and that sets up a lot of her both Wanting him (he's a fucking specimen + mythical being wrapped up in a cutie-patootie overly earnest packaging) and Hating him (he put her in jail/he's also just... fun to poke at) so will leave it there for a second, because that is Her... now what is up with Him?

THE OTHER QUESTIONS:

how do i feel about the pacing? so episode one improves with episode two, and there are hints in there that things are Off, but mainly. MAINLY I'm talking about the sex scene (ofc i am). so a lot of this is related to fraser-Thoughts about how he feels OOC (unless he doesn't 👀 because she's fucking with him and his feelings and manipulating him into feeling real bad about everything), but it's the difficulty in establishing a real bond between these two that feels real, and while it was obviously important for her to be in his apartment, i think they fell for a classic tv-laziness of "if we just tell the audience + show a little easy montage of them idk. watching tv and play some sexy feely 90s music to do the shortcut" and it's not that I'm against a sex-scene per se (i read asexual aromanticism into waaaay flimsier texts, this one is still pretty darn solid) if she'd come in and been vulnerable and they'd made dinner and she'd given the sob story and he'd fallen asleep and then she'd washed her prints and left and in episode two, when she's at her most "fragile" (or so he thinks) she pushed that into sex.. I think that would have been stronger. played more into her manipulative plan, the ways she has him on a string, the mixed up feelings of trauma and guilt and naivety and hope he has also it would have evened out the episode lengths

how do i feel about how this interacts with previous text vis a vis fraser's emotional internality? ha so, i hmmm... on the one hand the OOC'ness feels like it wasn't totally intentional -- that is the writing also wanted the whole cake + eating it situation, in that it wanted to explore him being used and manipulated by this woman in a way that also kind of wants the whole thing to have an air of "pure love" to it that doesn't gel entirely with the actual text. that is, there could have been more ambiguity to some of it and it wouldn't have weakened anything, it may have been more obviously an abusive/manipulative Thing, but... it kind of already is on the other hand that's what's really fun to read into this dynamic. she really genuinely wants this man, but entirely on her terms. and meanwhile fraser is totally turned around and doesn't know what he wants, so she calls the shots, which is why she's in control of the narrative for so long. she fucks with him by appearing over and over and disappearing in order to stir up all those old memories, that shit is targeted to get to him (and the snow! the snow OH MY GOODNESS that was FASCINATING - bro that reads like a fucking trigger, not love) and to add to that, there's the speech to his dad (which again, part two being what ties it all together) about how his dad never knew his mother and how that ties to love, and I've gotta rewatch that scene, because I think that's what ties it together. his dad asks if it's snowing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I've connected the dots, but I'm not 100% sure if it's all the dots intended but. I have a bias duh) (the dots are that fraser and sex still don't mesh, and fraser was never in love with her) (we'll get to The Train)

how do i feel that this progresses the wider story thematically? I actually cannot answer this until the next episode at least

what do i take from the victoria and fraser relationship? see all of above points, but mainly: I like it. there are a lot of ways one can take it, but mainly I was very happy about her being genuinely quite a nasty person. she tried to kill diefenbaker, she was willing to put ray in prison, she wanted to take everything away from fraser in order to make him totally dependent on her. that's exactly what i wanted -- do I think they reneged on that a bit at the end with the train and made it kind of... try Not to be the fucked up thing that it is, but more of a tragic doomed love. that shit is only doomed and tragic because this woman is a terrible terrible person + manipulative bastard (which is based) (and also because fraser is aroace) (theres a dark!fic in there where she somehow gets fraser with her -- maybe he does get on the train and ray misses and she just. completely destroy him. because that's what she likes to do with him) (it kind of speaks to "the wild bunch" -- if that was civilisation trying to destroy his soul, this was a literal person trying to do the same. and he has so little idea of his own internal self that he has no idea how to stop her or even to stop her. ray was right to try and shoot her)

best parts - fraser confronting his dad. actually all the fraser and his dad scenes, also when he cries - ray. everything ray. ray forever. ray feeling sad and abandoned. ray threatening to kill her. ray putting everything on the line for fraser. ray in part two never doubting fraser for a second. ray knows fraser dammit!!! your own thesis about knowing and love is right there (ok i'm chill) RAY SHOOTING HIM!!!!! ARGH!!!!!! - the story fraser tells the priest. that was all soooo the Dynamic i wanted. the fear and conviction that they were going to die, the kinkiness of putting the hands in the mouth to keep her warm, the guilt that they had this intense moment and he still gave her up, the half-remembered poetry he'd mentioned before, the way he feels kind of crazy thinking about her (because she's out to drive him crazy), i definitely want to listen to that again - the whole bit when she's talking to him through the peep show window up to her kicking him out of the car, everything ramping up is Great and it really solidifies her and her relation to fraser and how she uses him

weakest parts - sex scene just a bit silly and not quite believable in terms of structuring - i just don't buy that ray's reaction to fraser missing work because of a woman would be elation, not because of queer reads, but because it's so blatantly out of character for fraser that it should have provoked a bigger reaction of disbelief, either for positive or for negative. we do get a bit more of that in the second part (when he threatens her), but yeah, it just feels a bit too much like it's playing into the heteronormative shorthand that having sex (with a woman) -- no matter how abnormal for a specific individual -- is the normal thing to aspire to/has created a normalised state of affairs, even though it... obviously hasn't, as witnessed by the whole rest of the episode (and the fact that he didn't go to work is a red flag that something is wrong) - there is some wishy-washy stuff the whole way through in terms of failure to Commit to just how fucked up everything is, as witnessed by ray's initial reaction. at heart, the show does think that sex/romance is normal, and so, fraser has been abnormal the whole time and it wants to create some kind of core of explaining that through a True Tragic Love, while also wanting to play around with some quite fun "what if the villain is into the hero, but is still, inherently, the villain" which we also saw done very well in shows like elementary (not quite like, say, x-men, where magneto believes in a cause, I mean a villain who Is Just Bad) - this mostly evidenced by the train at the end, it's just a bit weak. either she's trying to manipulate him by returning to "sweet and vulnerable" which i truly just don't think he should've fallen for again, (that's the "normalisation" part of it all, it really is love, blablabla) or like. she should've tried to force him on somehow. or a mix of the two, depicting her honest desperation, and also her ruthlessness to play with his feelings in order to get what she wants, because like. she shot diefenbaker. she framed ray. she almost destroyed fraser's whole reason for being

CONCLUSION: I'll wait and see where the next episode goes, but there's a lot to play with in this

i will obvs still be reading him as aroace. now he's just super super traumatised about it, oh well. that's so sad, i need to read/write fic about it

[theinheriteddutchess]

Again, before internet some things were better, like not knowing much about your crush and blissfully unaware of any negative aspects unless it became a huge scandal.😭

I don't care about what adoption it is all love as I get to see it! It's over if he favorite stories and Mr. Darcy hasn't become famous for nothing. I love him. I love it when people are honest and blunt and no one might get them but they have the biggest heart. It's still a thing in society, pretend to be nice and people like you, be yourself but awkward and people are quick to villainise you.

The right book, but also the rest in your mind. I'm so distracted or anxious that it's hard to sit with a book. Or there's to much outside noise, or someone wants to talk. I miss the past where I could get lost inside a story and couldn't put it away. But the fun of finding that book... Of holding it in your hands and watching the cover over and over again through the story, like you wanted to find clues and details and picture what the world looked like inside the story. 😩

I can't completely blame Shakespeare for the time he was in, everything far in the past is so completely different from us. People often didn't age much, lots of death, reproducing being a big, if not most important, part of life. I am not perse comfortable with it because it's😐, but I can't hate on someone where during the time it was common or acceptable. I'm just glad it isn't like that anymore. I have not read Romeo and Juliet... And the whole theme of it makes me think it isn't for me. Having such easily preventable deaths is though, but I think it was meant as a warning. Young love isn't always the most stable or healthy, miscommunication, fighting... and the innocent take the fall. But what I hate more is how a lot of men write women and still to this day view women very weird and describe them in ways that it's clear they don't really see or talk to, or value women.

(also think of the many royalty who were arranged during childhood/infancy, or the old men being given young wives... It is gross and wrong to us, but if we had been born then, we would have accepted it as normal, and if we didn't, we might not have much choice. If I really think of it I'm very disgusted, but I try to see it as something that then was something going on. And please not ever again!)

Sanditon I watched because that guy was in it, I recognize him from something, but don't know what from. And I really wanted to see if they would get together. I liked him. But then I missed most of the other seasons except a few random parts when I was waiting for another program to begin. I might watch it from the beginning of they rerun it.

Now I'm kind of curious if the book can be hunted down somewhere, or maybe u should raid my sisters collection😉 between the two of us we should have most if not all of them, might be under a different title though.

In return from anon, I present you Jane Austen bucky

Well hello handsome!! If I don’t see Sebastian in a period piece 😤😤

[suth-sardian]

idk why but as i develop Tuya more and more, i feel like him being easily scared doesn’t align with my view of him anymore? it just seems like such a random trait for him to have and doesn’t really like, add much to his character (imo, at least)… maybe i’ve forgotten the gap moe i felt when i first started to believe in it, but i feel like Tuya would be more interesting without a fear like that, instead having ones that go with his character better