#even in a minor capacity

[felrend]

On to new ventures

[nemisisnemi]

PSA/Reminder

its NOT okay to vent about wanting to end yourself in a server that has mostly minors when you yourself are an adult.

NO MATTER if you say it isn't that serious and it's just a casual "drop in" vent and go

[bennetsbonnet]

In preparation for shortly going to see a talk about Jane Austen by historian Lucy Worsley, I finally finished her book Jane Austen at Home (it had been sitting on my shelf for months, I'm a terrible procrastinator).

Overall, I did enjoy the book. I thought that looking at Jane Austen through the lens of the various places she called home over the years and how they shaped her writing was definitely an interesting approach. Though I can't say I learned anything of significance that I didn't already know about her life, it's well-written and researched and I would recommend it if you are not so knowledgeable about her life and wish to discover more.

But I recommend it more for the historical context than the literary analysis as, although it was evident that she is hugely passionate about Jane Austen, her novels and her life, unfortunately, there was a moment where Worsley slipped into that frustratingly all too common trope found in biographies of Jane Austen. Where authors are desperate to prove that AcTuALLy, they, and they alone, truly understand her novels and everyone else has been reading them wrong all along!

I have no idea why so many of those who write about Austen have a tendency to slip into this, is it born out of sheer desperation to prove that they're actually The Biggest Janeite and that the other countless readers who have enjoyed her novels, over the course of more than two centuries, are actually idiots?

Chapter 25 of Jane Austen at Home concluded with the argument that, because the novels tend not to dwell on the so-called "most romantic" scenes (such as where the hero and heroine finally get engaged) taken in combination with the fact that Jane Austen often wrote letters with double meanings (often sarcastic remarks about relatives/friends) that contained passages that would not be picked up on by inattentive listeners upon a first reading aloud, but that later those who were closest to her (such as her sister, Cassandra) would understand, means that, if you want to, you can find evidence that Jane Austen didn't write happy endings for her heroines, actually, and was secretly undermining the institution of marriage!!

Personally, I think that Austen wanted her readers to use their imaginations and had laid the foundations well enough already in the hundreds of pages prior to these moments to convince the audience that, actually, marriage to their respective heroes was a good and positive step for all of the heroines who we've already grown so fond of.

It was a pretty egregious passage on the whole, but perhaps the worst part, to me, was the quotes selected from Pride and Prejudice.

Brace yourselves...

People who see some merit in this argument perhaps don't believe in love and marriage and happy endings more generally, for in Jane Austen's work you find, above all, what you seek. It holds as many different meanings as there are readers. So what is it that these sceptical readers might spot? Lizzy Bennet only marries Mr Darcy with 'uncomfortable feelings' about their differing rank, which 'took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure'.

I audibly gasped. The sentence itself is a little confusing, as I'm still not sure who allegedly has those uncomfortable feelings? Regardless of whether the argument is for Elizabeth or Mr Darcy, I certainly did not recall either of them expressing such sentiments at the end of the story.

So, naturally I went to the novel and this is the passage, right at the end of Chapter 61 which Worsley very selectively quoted from:

Mrs. Phillips’s vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on [Darcy's] forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley’s good humour encouraged, yet, whenever she did speak, she must be vulgar. Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all likely to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley.

The meaning of this passage is to illustrate that, despite a much-reformed Darcy trying his best, even still, there was only so much he could (understandably) take in Meryton before his patience was exhausted due to the vulgarity of Elizabeth's relations. Though he wasn't rude anymore and made an effort with them, he still wasn't exactly comfortable in the company of the Bennets and their relations. Elizabeth understood this, and did everything she could to keep him happy as she accepted that her family could be A Lot too and she knew that he was trying his best to be civil in company with them.

I mean, that's not subtext, it's RIGHT THERE. We are told that the society of Meryton is 'so little pleasing to either,' that both Darcy and Elizabeth cannot wait to retreat to Pemberley. See, they both feel the same. This is no longer a case of Mr Darcy being a snob and Elizabeth feeling desperate to rush him off before he realises 'their differing rank,' as Worsley puts it, will prevent a happy marriage and is tempted to call off the wedding entirely. No, both went into the marriage with their eyes wide open.

Plus, both Darcy and Elizabeth have already overcome 'their differing rank.' It's such a ludicrous argument. Is Worsley seriously contending that the woman who boldly said to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, in the face of overwhelming snobbery and personal attacks,

'in marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal,'

would retain any 'uncomfortable feelings' about her upcoming union to a man of Mr Darcy's standing? The woman who views herself as his equal? I don't buy it.

Likewise, Darcy does get along with some of Elizabeth's relations. It's shown that he does find Mr and Mrs Gardiner in particular to be good company. That is the last line of the entire novel. And let's not insult Elizabeth Bennet's intelligence! She would not have accepted him if she truly believed Darcy was still a snob who thought himself so much her superior.

Anyway, if this argument wasn't already weak enough, due to Worsley's selectiveness when quoting from the novel (conveniently she leaves out the end of the 'season of courtship' quote; that, while it may have lacked some pleasure, 'it added to the hope of the future' i.e. that though being in company with her relatives during her courtship wasn't always pleasant, Elizabeth had seen enough of Darcy's altered manners to know that she'd be happy with him) and the fact that when she does quote from the novel, she uses them completely out of context in a weak attempt to back up her points, it is the conclusion is perhaps most unconvincing of all:

But if you follow me this far in the idea that Jane was undermining the very moment where you'd expect marriage to be most praised, there could be an explanation. The same applies to her novels. At first reading, these are stories about love and marriage and the conventional heterosexual happily-ever-after. Only at the second does a sneaky doubt perhaps creep in to suggest that maybe marriage is not the best thing that could ever happen to these women.

What?! Seriously, if you have a 'sneaky doubt' that any of the heroines and heroes would not lead happy lives together, you need to reread the novels! All six are dedicated to showing us why these two people are compatible with each other, and truly love and respect each other in ways that go deeper than any superficial attraction.

More to the point with Pride and Prejudice, I think that any remaining unmarried sisters, upon Mr Bennet's demise, who ended up as spinsters entirely dependant on other men, would maybe have been 'not the best thing that could ever happen' to the Bennet sisters, to say the least.

So, not only is this passage astonishingly poor literary analysis, it's also baffling that an experienced historian would make such an argument... given the historical context of how vital it was for women to marry for financial considerations just as much as romantic reasons.

Ultimately, and although this quote which I'm about to use can be used in the worst context sometimes, especially from thoroughly pretentious individuals, it's still worth concluding with. Jane Austen wrote in a letter to her sister Cassandra, shortly after the publication of Pride and Prejudice:

There are a few Typical errors – & a 'said he' or a 'said she' would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear –  but 'I do not write for such dull elves As have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves.' [The 'dull elves' quote is not originally from Austen, rather she quotes from Marmion by Sir Walter Scott]

Which to me, shows that Jane Austen clearly believed that she did not need to spell everything out for her audience. That we are capable of filling in the gaps for ourselves and that we can understand, thanks to the context of all that has preceded it, that although we do not get to see really anything of the Darcys married life, that they certainly would have been very happy together.

And, most importantly, we can easily understand that Elizabeth did get her happily-ever-after at Pemberley with Mr Darcy. There is no secret other interpretation that needs to be made which claims otherwise.

[fushiglow]

this christmas, i *checks notes* started A Discourse TM by *checks notes* choosing not to include t/b tags on my recent fic and adding a fun little rhyme to explain why.

this fandom is actually insane. the amount of vile things i've seen said about me in the last 48 hours is insane. people will just believe whatever they want and they aren't interested at all in hearing my side of the story.

very over the threshold, actually?

[silentgrim]

loud reminder that i am a full grown adult and my blog is 18+. Minors do not interact!

[savage-rhi]

🫂

[snekdood]

i think the reason ppl get so uppity about you calling a scam a scam rn is bc they feel so powerless about the situation in i/p that they'll take ANYTHING to feel like they're contributing. they dont want to be the bystanders who have no real sway that they are, they want to be the heroes of the story, and if they dont at least have the scams to rely on for their image, how will everyone know how good of a person they are and praise them for saving the day???????????????

[boneheadboner]

More stupid crack garbage abt shit I'll write someday, at 3AM because what is my life

Starring a crack rendition of Baggs and Sonia's first meeting.

Baggs: [Stumbles upon Sonia] What's this? A human I've never met before? Sonia: OH JESUS-- Baggs: [Cheeky] Yes, my dear?

Sonia: Sorry you uh spooked me and-- uh... Wait what? Baggs: ... I was being chee-- Sonia: WAIT WHAT??? Baggs: I-- hmmm.... I haven't quite-- Sonia: READING MINDS??? HYPNOSIS??? Baggs: [Understandably taken aback] ... Exuse me???????

Sonia: UH UH UH BAGGS-- SHIT. SANS??? WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS? My head is NOT a good place to peek into. Baggs: How the fuck did you know my-- Sonia: TRUST me on this one, Source; I LIVE IN IT. I'D KNOW. Baggs: .... Nevermind, you'll probably give an excuse, I'll check myself. Sonia: WAIT DON'T-- Baggs: It can't be that-- [Baggs proceeds to read her mind... Only to be overwhelmed with The Peanut Gallery of all Peanut Galleries, the entities. All trying to talk at once, and there's also some growing-louder eldritch voices sprinkled on top of the mental shit sundae]

Baggs: Sonia: Baggs: Sonia: Baggs: Sonia: I tried to warn you. Baggs: [DEEP INHALE] Baggs: My dear. Baggs: I am around at minimum fifty people a day. Baggs: With not only hearing their prattle out loud, but hearing their thoughts leak into my mind almost as loud as they speak. Baggs: And when you work in a well staffed laboratory, around many so-called brilliant minds, and their flawed calculations? Their absurd conclusions? Their completely off-the-wall, out-their-ass charts? Baggs: Hearing so much audibly and mentally on a daily basis would drive most mad. Baggs: And that, my dear, is nothing compared to how fucking loud everything I heard in your mind is for the mere moments I glimpsed into it. Sonia: I did warn you. Baggs: Yes, and I have a migraine now. But with that being said; Baggs: My STARS, How do you-- Are you fucking OKAY?! Sonia: .... You know, no one's actually asked me that, about that specific problem. Baggs: [Staring at Sonia and shaking his head slowly in absolute disbelief] Sonia: .... Mmmmm.... Y'know what? I don't think I am. Baggs: [IMMEDIATE SHARP INHALE AND MASSAGING HIS NASAL BONE] Sonia: Yeah.... Uh... I think I might need therapy? Oh... Ohhh... Maybe not. Yeah the things I've been through and seen? Sonia: [Hissing as she inhales through her teeth] Yeeeah I don't think there's a therapist that wouldn't immediately shove me into an asylum. Baggs: ... I think, without a shadow of a doubt, I'm doing you a favor.

[boypussydilf]

*vibrating in place* i love media analysis i love to think about storytelling conventions, the means by which stories are told, the impressions given by sharing information a certain way and the reasons to share it in that way, the author’s intent and the way they did or did not communicate it and the reasons they either succeeded or failed,

[lazaruspiss]

i was born to get 3 notes an hour at most. that post has consistently pushed 100 everytime it gets picked up.

[butchlifeguard]

I HATE FANDOM WANK YALL ARE UNHINGED. VERY NEGATIVE BTW

[swagyna]

why the fuck is the sun in my kitchen.

if i can't find a lightbulb that doesn't have the lumen equivalence of polaris, im not going to be able to function in my own home.

[inky-plum]

two squids in a squod .🦑.🦑.

[moths-in-a-coat]

and when i mean i believe in inherent human rights, i mean i believe human rights are non conditional too. everyone is deserving of what i believe to be the bare minimum (again, the right to housing, food, water, healthcare, etc.). there’s nothing an individual can do that will make then underserving of those rights

as much as i say i believe certain people should die, i don’t think they should be stripped of their human rights. i don’t believe they should be starved, i don’t believe their access to seeing a doctor should be stripped away, i don’t believe they should be tortured. i genuinely wouldn’t wish that on anybody

when i get to the point in which i think some people are better off dead, it’s because i think they’ve caused so much damage, and they’ve proven that they’re not going to stop or have just never even shown genuine remorse for their actions with the intention to do better. it becomes a matter of this person has proven time and time again they have no problems deliberately harming people and not caring that their actions are leading to many, many deaths and misery. it is at that point that i honestly see death as a hope that those actions will stop because i genuinely cannot see those certain people changing their ways in the future

and with my belief for inherent human rights, i also believe that everyone has the capacity to change. i believe everyone inherently deserves to be given the chance to be better. this doesn’t mean they should be forgiven, but it means i would rather the world gain a person who is actively trying to atone for their actions and is actively trying to be better to the world, then someone who continues to cause harm, or even someone who does die with a legacy of harm

[zorthania]

A piece about survivors guilt.

This comic isn't perfect. I started it back in October 2023, and every time I picked up my pen, I wept.

I bring this to you today, on 9/11, in hopes that you reflect on this day a little differently than how most Americans would. Let it move you to continue to boycott, protest and challenge your family, friends and colleagues. You have a bigger impact than you would believe.

Thank you for reading this with an open heart.

From the river to the sea...

I'd like to bring to attention the fact that the figures depicted above are a gross undercount of the actual number of deaths. I scoured the internet high and low to source my findings and not a single one could break down the devastation that befell an individual ethnicity. Instead, they lumped a bunch of ethnicities together, provided a general timeline, and called it a day, reinforcing the sheer scale of dehumanization propagated in the west. The only consistency between all the articles I looked up was the 4.5 to 4.7 million figure I've included above, and even then, they were all published by western media news outlets... the very same that have been so unreliable and complicit in the genocide of Palestinians today. So I have to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

We are not just numbers.

All of us have ambitions and desires and lives worth living.

With that said, this is your friendly reminder to:

Donate an e-sim

Donate to PCRF to provide Palestinian children aid

Donate to Pious Projects to provide woman with feminine hygiene kits

Donate to CareForGaza to provide food to displaced families in Gaza either through their Gofundme or their paypal

Donate to any of the vetted gofundme campaigns on GazaFunds to help Palestinians trying to flee Gaza.

And if you or someone you know sees or experiences a hate crime and can afford it, SUE. This is a more effective use of your money than most realise. The reason zionists act with impunity is because of the normalization of white supremacy and oppression of ethnic minorities. Challenging that in any capacity tells them that there are consequences to their actions and makes them think twice before engaging in hate crimes and helps raise all of us up against the systems currently in place that let them get away with it.

If you can't donate or spend any money, you can:

Do your daily clicks.

Boycott targeted companies on the BDS list (if you're like me and you don't want a single dollar to go towards anything supporting Israel right now, you can use Bdnaash to double check what products are okay to buy, but the BDS list is sufficient as it is a strategic attack and proven very effective thus far)

Flood your representatives emails and voicemails with how you won't be voting for them unless their politics align with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Attend a protest, be LOUD.

Challenge your circle of friends, family and colleagues with conversations about Palestine. (THIS IS THE MOST UNDERRATED AND MOST EFFECTIVE THING YOU CAN DO)

and if you're really up to, be disruptive in any capacity that you can think of towards major corporations benefiting from this onslaught. (i.e. halting military manufacturers from production + shipments, sticking boycott stickers on products at your market etc)

And finally, if your country wasn't mentioned in the above excerpt, it was no deliberate omission on my part and I encourage you to come forward and tell your story about the suffering of your people so that this may be a learning opportunity for everyone.

You are seen.

You are not alone.

Thank you again if you've read this far.

From the river to the sea...

[thebibliosphere]

Whenever I post about house stuff there’s always some well meaning people and the occasional vindictive shit head who thinks we didn’t have our home inspected before we bought it.

We did. It passed the private inspection we paid for in order to get our mortgage and two inspections done by the city.

The problem with my house is that it was owned by a landlord who did all kinds of illegal and sketchy shit to maximize capacity and resale value but also would require you to take down walls to find. And for those of you unaware, they don’t let you walk around with a saw and cut holes to inspect behind the drywall.

The shithead hid things behind fake walls. Literally. He put a bunch of chemicals and paints into a crawl space then drywalled over it. There is drywall on top of drywall (or there was before we took it down). He put carpet over the asbestos tiles—which is technically fine. It’s safer to seal asbestos away than remove it… except he also covered the drain for the house so the basement floods and then the carpet rots and in turn starts breaking down the asbestos tiles, making them into a hazard. He built the basement himself so that the drywall was sitting on the concrete slab—something we couldn’t see without removing the trim—causing them to wick moisture from the floor and rot until we had black mold everywhere.

The electric parts that were visible were all up to code, but again, anything that could be hidden was done so, hiding shit like a dishwasher that had been hot wired into the wall through a light plate fixture under the sink. Or the 240v socket that used to power an electric stove which had been pulled through the floorboard to power the tumble dryer. (Or the gas stove that we swapped for electric because it kept trying to kill us and then we realized he’d run a gas pipe from the water heater to power it. The plumber swore a lot about that one when he finally realized that one.)

Plumbing all looked good until you realized some of the new pipes were just pvc cut to go around the old lead pipes. Something you couldn’t see unless you got up close and personal during the inspection, and we’re talking up on a ladder jiggling the pipes around which is also generally something don’t let you do. Not to the extent we would have needed to.

The man was unhinged. And there’s very little we can do about it because we signed an “as is” thing on our mortgage thinking most of the repairs we’d need to do would be minor. Only to find out the house which looked fairly modern and well kept on the surface was actually a fucking Saw trap. And now because of all the shit we’ve uncovered, we have to fix it before we can sell it because no one in their right mind will buy a house with declared asbestos—even predatory developers hesitate on that one.

So if we’ve got to fix this place up, we’ll fix it up for us because god knows, even if we managed to sell this place, we can’t afford the mortgage rates right now. (And while yes, apartments are an option, they make my MCAS a lot less stable because you can’t control the shit your neighbors use, nevermind things like a shared laundry facility where everyone wants to smell like “a spring summer breeze” that to me smells like death by fragrance induced anaphylaxis.)

So yes, we’re stuck with this place. For now. A place we had inspected multiple times and were still let down by the reality that people hide things and will do so in the most imaginative ways possible if it means they can make a profit.

The furnace dying the instant we moved in wasn’t a good sign, but shit happens. That’s home ownership. The gas leaks we had last week? Also home ownership. It had passed yearly inspections up until now. Appliances break down and require maintenance, especially gas ones. In an ideal world we would have gotten another five years out of the furnace, but alas, it chose death so we had to yeet it.

So, yeah, if you’re the shithead currently going off in my inbox about “stupid people winning stupid prizes” I’ll take that apology now.