anghraine - Tumblr blog

[anghraine]

Last reblog before it completes tonight! Pick your fighter if you haven't :D

I should be working on my dissertation, and have been, but I thought it'd be fun (for me :P) to loop you all in somehow. Therefore I bring you a very silly poll!

*best means whatever it means to you; feel free to propagandize

**yes, I deliberately excluded Shakespeare (from the poll, not the dissertation, lol)

[anghraine]

dontstandmedown replied to this post:

re:tags could you share the playwright you're talking about? :0

No problem! For others, the tags in question are this:

#thinking about this partly because the softer & gentler versions of fanfic discourse keep crossing my dash #and partly because i've written like 30 pages about a playwright i adore who was just not very good at 'original fiction' as we'd define it #both his major works are ... glorified rpf in our context but splendid tragedies in his #and the idea of categorizing /anything/ in that era by originality of conception rather than comedy/tragedy/etc would be buckwild

I am always delighted to share the good news of John Webster! If you're not familiar with him, he was an early seventeenth-century English playwright known for being a slow, painstaking, but reliable writer. He did various collaborations with other playwrights (and acknowledges a bunch of his peers in an author's note to The White Devil, including Jonson and Shakespeare) and wrote some middling plays in various genres that could be more or less termed "original fiction," but he's remembered for two brilliant, bloody tragedies.

The basic premises/plots of both of these were essentially ripped from the headlines of the previous century, and Webster makes zero attempt to conceal that fact.

I couldn't shut up about my guy so more under a cut!

The White Devil is based on the actual murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in the late sixteenth century and the characters in the play are generally given the same or similar names as the real life people in the story as known at the time, so there's no attempt to conceal the play's origins (the anti-heroine/villain???[debatable] is named Vittoria Corombona in the play, for instance).

The original production of The White Devil largely failed, which Webster blamed mainly on bad weather and an audience who just didn't get his ~vision and what he was trying to do. It would not be unsurprising for a contemporary audience to struggle with it given that it's a complicated play in which, among other things, Vittoria is put on trial and rhetorically shreds the underlying misogyny of the entire legal process.

The Duchess of Malfi, generally considered a still greater achievement, is based directly on the murder of Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi by her brothers (it was presumed, likely correctly). Lope de Vega also wrote a play about this tragedy not long before Webster did, though the plays are very different and it's unlikely that Webster would have had the time or linguistic knowledge necessary to read Lope's version. Probably part of the reason for the differences between Lope's and Webster's takes is that Lope had to be careful about the reception by the Catholic Church given that one of the murderers was a cardinal, while obviously an English Protestant like Webster could say whatever he wanted about eeeeevil cardinals.

Webster takes a lot of artistic license, a normal approach at the time to adapting previously-established narratives, but the source material is very recognizable. One of the commendatory verses at the beginning of the play (blurbs in poetic form from other playwrights) is like "I'm sure the real duchess was cool but she couldn't be as cool as Webster's heroine, wow <3". (One of the other commendations is by another fave of mine, John Ford.)

Bosola, the historically mysterious minion of the Duchess's murderous brothers (=Bozolo in the historical narrative) gets an elaborate quasi-redemption arc in the play. And the play is extremely critical of various characters' obsession with and attempts to control the Duchess's sexual behavior (a fixation that is often extremely normalized in early modern British drama, but which comes off really badly here).

Ultimately this obsessiveness leads to her brothers, the Cardinal (=the historical Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona) and Ferdinand (=Carlo d'Aragona) orchestrating her torment and murder in which she emerges with her sanity and integrity intact and dies with dignity. Meanwhile, the Cardinal is exposed as a remorseless villain (he proceeds to murder his mistress with a Bible) and Ferdinand's already-shaky sanity snaps under the realization of what he's done.

Webster's Duchess is often considered the first real female tragic hero in British drama—the tragic is especially significant because tragedy was typically considered a higher art form than comedy and the truly great female characters from that era of drama are often restricted to comedies or secondary roles in tragedy (a marked trend in Shakespeare, for instance). The Duchess in the play is virtuous, strong-willed, witty, and fairly unabashedly sexual in the context of the time, a concept that several hundred years of critics have struggled with. (My favorite OTT complaint is from Martin Sampson, an early 20th century critic who lamented the conspicuous absence of a "strong active man, following righteous things" in Webster's work, to which I say l m a o.)

Anyway, among scholars of early modern British drama, Webster is often considered second only to Shakespeare as a tragedian, on the basis of those two plays. And the modern obsession w/ originality and novelty makes this kind of fascinating, given that his "original" work (in our sense—again, the original vs fanfic dichotomy was not a thing in that cultural context) is sort of meh but his work with pre-existing sources turns them into these staggering dramatic achievements.

[anghraine]

Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:

I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.

IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.

I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.

Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).

Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.

At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).

Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.

So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.

Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.

Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).

Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.

The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.

[anghraine]

rubynye replied to this post:

Olaudah Equiano: enslaved as a child, bought his own freedom, campaigned eloquently for abolition, his memoir went through nine printings at least. An erudite Black man from before many people think Black people were invented. I can't adequately express how happy seeing him in your list made me.

Equiano is a truly fascinating, compelling figure. His memoir was assigned in a grad school seminar I took on 18th-century British literature focused on various forms of resistance and dialogue among/between/about the oppressed, and it was really intriguing to read abolitionist poetry and tracts mainly by white English people across the political spectrum of their era and then Equiano's Interesting Narrative. The contrast is incredible.

He's in my dissertation for basically one passage—the account of his capture and lifelong separation from his sister. But it's a hell of a passage.

(Now that I'm thinking about it, he was also in the curriculum I designed when I took over my advisor's upper-division 18th-century class for a semester, and my undergrad students loved the Interesting Narrative, way more than the grad students in my own seminar had. Most of my students had no idea he'd even existed and they just really got into it.)

[anghraine]

#jonathan swift #obviously #english literature #lit major #also where is kit marlow? (via @maykendehoutman)

Not in my dissertation!

I should be working on my dissertation, and have been, but I thought it'd be fun (for me :P) to loop you all in somehow. Therefore I bring you a very silly poll!

*best means whatever it means to you; feel free to propagandize

**yes, I deliberately excluded Shakespeare (from the poll, not the dissertation, lol)

[anghraine]

Congratulations! It looks fantastic.

2006: A conversation with a military recruiter prompts 18-year-old Tessa Halifax to enlist in the US Army after graduation. This pivotal decision takes her from her New Jersey suburb to the streets of Baghdad, as a military working dog handler. In Iraq, Tessa meets disillusioned soldier Ryan Chao. Their experiences as soldiers lead them to make a dramatic departure from the careers they envisioned for themselves. 2025: Tessa’s ultimate goal as Chief of Staff to Vice President Ryan Chao is to help him win the White House in 2028. However, fallout from the events of the 2024 election cause a ripple effect that permanently alters Tessa’s life.  A Box Full of Darkness is an intensely personal story of strength and resilience, of healing and rebuilding after loss, and of devotion to the causes - and people - that matter the most. 

So many of you have read my writing (Strings, Lights in the Shadow, Delicate) over the past several years, across different fandoms. Thank you for being so supportive. All of your encouragement on tumblr and Archive of our Own helped me take the step toward writing an original novel. I'm so excited to share this with you.

Paperbacks are available here and on Amazon. The ebook is also available on Amazon. Unfortunately, Kindle devices are experiencing technical difficulties at the moment, and if you plan on reading on a Kindle device you may want to wait for the next update coming soon. However, the ebook works great on iPads and other browsers. As you can see from the screenshot, the paperback is beautiful and is well worth the wait. :)

Thank you to @chewytriforce for her cover art and design, and @broomchickabroom for her interior design and typesetting!

If you have any questions about purchasing the novel or ebook, please don't hesitate to contact me. ❤️

[anghraine]

I should be working on my dissertation, and have been, but I thought it'd be fun (for me :P) to loop you all in somehow. Therefore I bring you a very silly poll!

*best means whatever it means to you; feel free to propagandize

**yes, I deliberately excluded Shakespeare (from the poll, not the dissertation, lol)

[anghraine]

#idk if people would be naming their children turin but I want to believe it. He deserves something good (via @light-of-the-two-trees)

I shouldn't be on Tumblr rn but I had to dart in on behalf of my faves! We know of three different rulers named after Túrin in Gondor: Turambar, King of Gondor; the Ruling Steward Túrin I; and the Ruling Steward Túrin II, great-grandfather of Denethor. He's pretty evidently remembered with honor there (as well as by his closest kinsman remaining in Middle-earth, Elrond, who praises him by name!).

In the course of digging up the “looks like Elves = fey, super noticeable, often alarming” quotes, I came across a related reference that fills my soul with joy

Okay, so. Supposedly, Elves are the Most Beautiful. And Valinorean Elves are the Super Most Beautiful. And Vanyar are the Ultra Super Most Beautiful.

Meanwhile–

Túrin: *gets called Man-Elf because of his incredible hotness*

Túrin: *can be mistaken for a Noldo aristocrat by Elves*

Finduilas: *sparkly golden quasi-Vanya*

Túrin: wow, she’s practically like a Hadorian

[anghraine]

#so somehow. I'd been under this really weird assumption--maybe just because of which bits of her content I saw popping up on my dash--that A#was mostly book-only LOTR and Silm fandom and had no fucking idea there was this rich. astonishing vein of#Jane Austen#meta on her blog#which I'm now judiciously sprinkling throughout my queue as little presents to mutuals I know are also Austen geeks (via @ravencromwell)

Aww, thank you!

This is, additionally, absolutely delightful to me given that Tolkien was actually my first online fandom (I've been ranting about Gondor since 2003! what is linear time), but I've been much more associated w/ Austen fandom since c. 2005. I love Austen, I'm writing a dissertation in which she figures heavily, I always go back to the Austen well and appreciate everyone who's here for Austen discussion (including you!), but it's always fun and refreshing when the first association is something else.

It's 11 PM, but one of my favorite little Darcy/Elizabeth moments happens while she still hates him and thinks he's a depraved monster, and I find it really entertaining.

It's during the Kent section, when Darcy calls at the parsonage and finds Elizabeth alone. During a longer, awkward conversation in which they both deeply misunderstand each other, they have this tiny interchange:

[Darcy:] “This seems a very comfortable house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to it when Mr Collins first came to Hunsford.” “I believe she did—and I am sure she could not have bestowed her kindness on a more grateful object.” “Mr Collins appears very fortunate in his choice of a wife.” “Yes, indeed; his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding—though I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr Collins as the wisest thing she ever did."

So: they are in Mr Collins's house. Darcy tries to re-start the conversation with a polite nothing about the house. Elizabeth agrees about Lady Catherine's micro-managing, but can't resist the chance to make a sly jab at Mr Collins (who is not present) to Darcy (a genuine villain, as far as she believes).

Darcy's reply looks a bit like an attempt to redirect the conversation into safer waters (they can agree that Charlotte is cool!). But although his remark is only somewhat related to what Elizabeth said, I think it's a natural follow-up in his mind because he is also insulting Mr Collins, if more subtly.

He could have praised Mr Collins's judgment in choosing Charlotte or just said something nice about Charlotte; he doesn't. Instead, he suggests that Mr Collins's choice of Charlotte was a matter of good fortune—or chance, as Charlotte herself would say!—on Collins's part. Darcy and Elizabeth both know Collins is a fool and that his choice of a woman like Charlotte says nothing about his judgment, only about his good fortune. (Elizabeth has even better reason than Darcy to know how much Collins ending up with Charlotte was lucky for him, but Darcy can see it anyway.)

Darcy's phrasing gives him some plausible deniability, but I think he's generally quite careful with his wording and the implicit insult to Mr Collins is not accidental.

Elizabeth, I think, takes this exactly as intended. She's not at all confused about where this tangent came from or offended by it or anything. She readily seizes on the new line of conversation as encouragement to keep insulting Mr Collins and his appeal to women with functioning brainpower.

Elizabeth is pretty scrupulously polite in general, so I kind of love that she just starts venting about her absolute contempt for Mr Collins and the Collins/Charlotte marriage to Darcy in the middle of a tense and weird conversation in Mr Collins's house. And I love that Darcy, who is otherwise more or less dog-paddling his way through this conversation, is like "yeah, your friend seems really cool, that dumbass is lucky he accidentally chose someone with a brain."

Elizabeth: "Right? And, let me add-"

(Is it a bit of an asshole move on both their parts in the context of that scene? Yeah, I think a little. I also love it! Please trash-talk obnoxious hosts in their own parlours for the rest of your lives.)

[anghraine]

I know most of you aren't here for my Legend of Korra villain feelings in 2024, but ... lol oh well. I took a break from my dissertation yesterday to write six pages of meta about LOK's main villains and why I think LOK is better for them despite its flaws and frequently uneven execution.

This had always been a show that, for all the centrist trappings, was willing to transform its own setting. It might tapdance around this in awkward ways, like with the offscreen transition to an elected non-bender president, there might be unpleasant side effects like the spirit vines in Republic City, the more drastic changes might be unpredictable or frightening for the characters, and people don’t always know what the political changes they advocate will lead to, as with Zaheer inadvertently setting up the conditions for Kuvira's rise. But I think the overall arc of the show is one of broad and sometimes drastic social change towards a better world.

[anghraine]

Hey, thank you very much for the shout-out!

Every time I poke at Love, Pride & Delicacy I'm like ... okay, I've written 25k/6 chapters about the effects of a female Darcy on P&P and yet Catherine Darcy has only just shown up in person in the last chapter, which I posted a year ago, and the story is really just getting started at this point.

But I'm really fond of it and have a lot of plans and emotions around it, so thank you again! I really appreciate it.

16, 24, 42 for fic writer asks!

How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

😬um well ... In Ellipsus (cloud-hosted doc service I switched to a few months back) alone, I have 8 in-progress fics. In Google Docs, there are ten more and counting. Whenever I have an idea for a fic, I start a new doc for it.

One that I was intending to write for AUpril but probably don't have the time to do by the 21st (it's not even started) is a kind of reversal of the one I did where Ed's an Edwardian female impersonator. It's a genderbend, and Ed is a suffragist who's respected by the other very serious suffragists. Stede is a reasonably successful male impersonator, going on the vaudeville stage in trousers and singing love songs about girls. The other activists find her offensive because the general public basically thinks that that's what they are (women who want to wear trousers and "be men"), but Ed is fascinated. She meets up with Stede and Stede puts her in pants, which she loves.

This came about because I wanted to do the original fic but with a genderbend, made Stede the impersonator so it's not a retread, and then realized I could explore an aspect of the bent gender stuff I haven't gotten into so much: Stede as the more GNC one.

Worst writing advice anyone ever gave you?

Not given to me directly, but the idea that you should write every single day, and if you're not feeling it you just need to dig deep and have discipline. There are some days when I simply cannot write, whether from an emotional issue or because of executive dysfunction, and forcing myself is just upsetting and/or a waste of time, because it generally prolongs the non-writing mood. If I chill out and recharge, in a day or two I can usually write again.

What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

The last fic I was reading is Love, Pride & Delicacy by @anghraine, an exploration of Pride and Prejudice if Darcy were a woman. It's fascinating and so well-written - I very much recommend it!

The last fic I read to completion is The Philadelphia Chicken Man by @lookinglass-fic. Ed eats a rotisserie chicken every day to rediscover himself. I also recommend it!

ask me questions!

[anghraine]

hello! I LOVE your series on ao3 about vanessa/juana's births of the Borgia children, she's one of my favourite characters and there's so little written about her. do you think you'll ever complete the series with the arrival of Lucrezia?

Oh, thank you! I was really fond of my Vanozza fic, though unsurprised that it was largely overshadowed by the others. I did have a plan for the rest that I never got around to, and ... hmm, it's hard to say. I'm more likely to finish that one than any of my other Borgias fic, but if I do ever get back to it, it will be awhile.

[anghraine]

I’m seconding the anon who says they value your opinion on all things fandom! I actually have mini crises when I read one tiny thing on your blog I might disagree with because I love 99.9999% of it and treat you like gospel so then I have to remind myself that I am allowed to not agree all the time (that is how much I respect your takes, especially on Tolkien and Pride and Prejudice!!)

Aww, thank you! Yes, I support you (and everyone) also forming your own opinions, but I feel the compliment. :)

[anghraine]

I just wanted to drop in this message to say I always enjoy reading your thoughts about things, whether they’re about fandom or other stuff (and whether I agree or not). Through my years on Tumblr, you’re probably one of the blogs I followed the longest. I’m dropping this message now because of everything that’s happening with Tumblr so I don’t know if you will be here much longer so I wanted to express my appreciation while I can. I’m sorry if this message is awkward.

Thank you very much, anon! This was a truly lovely message to receive and I very deeply appreciate it.

I don't plan on deactivating or anything like that, fwiw, and (as you can see!) I still check my activity bar and my dash. I am making a fairly conscious effort to lower my Tumblr-exclusive activity while I back it up/to rely more on Dreamwidth in general for the sort of writing I would have once only posted here (and I'm also trying to finish my dissertation, lol). So that's why my activity has gone so sharply down.

Stuff that I think might be relevant to you all will still be linked from this account, but Tumblr has demonstrated such little respect for its users that I don't really feel great about posting more long-form things over here. I am pretty sad about it, honestly, so it was really nice to receive this at a time when I'm not being particularly entertaining.

[anghraine]

Thank you very much! This is one of my favorites of my own fics, so I really appreciate the rec (and being tagged in it!).

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor & K-2SO Characters: Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, K-2SO (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Cybernetics, Friendship, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Dorks in Love, Serious Injuries, Hurt/Comfort Series: Part 2 of now you’re the future Summary:

After narrowly surviving his injuries on Scarif, Cassian wakes to the loss of Kay, uncertainty about Jyn, and a damaged spine.

(Direct sequel to threshold of a dream.)

-

from @anghraine

[anghraine]

Very serious post:

The bff and I were thinking of alternate names for our country (the USA) but are currently favoring "Under-Canada."

We are in no way biased by growing up on the international border, where basically anything you could get on the US side you could also get on the Canadian side, but it would be better and less expensive and more fun to get to.

[anghraine]

On Tumblr (of all places), I saw another nonsense anti-fanfic screed that took no account of the long and complex history of directly re-purposing stories to create other stories in dialogue with previous ones, and pitched an early modernist fit about it on Dreamwidth. Same stuff I've said before, really, but now with more King Lear!