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I'm gonna need someone to stitch together the shots of Glow Up Penelope sweeping into the ballroom in slow motion to the sick drum-build-into-guitar solo opening from Money for Nothing.

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Four hours left!

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Reblogging for the new timezones!

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Also, does anyone else play the Terrible Recorder Cover of My Heart Will Go On as a send-off when they break a beloved mug beyond repair?

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In regency times when someone would convalesce at someone else's house or at an inn, especially if that included them being unconscious for some amount of time....how did they handle that person's bladder and bowel stuff? Was that just considered a normal part of care from the woman of the house and her servants, like were they taught linen changes the way nurses are today? Or were they all left to just figure it out once it happened do you think?

The thing with being unconscious for a long time is...you're not really going to be eating and drinking much. Like they might wet your lips to try to hydrate you, but they won't risk you choking on anything more, and don't have ways of giving nutrition by other means that we have today, so normal bowel and bladder function would cease pretty rapidly, and at that point you've got bigger problems than what happens if you wet the bed, like you're gonna be dead soon.

Housekeepers and servants would definitely have a handle on changing bedlinens and maybe absorbent padding for invalids with bowel-control issues, (or say for people who have given birth/having post-partum bleeding or other uterine discharge issues while bedridden,) but they'd probably have some kind of bedpans or focus on getting someone up and moving enough to at least get onto a chamber pot ASAP.

I'll be honest, I work in healthcare and when it comes to incontinence, if you're not keeping someone clean and dry and repositioned while they're also bedridden, you're very quickly going to get bedsores, and if THOSE aren't kept clean, you're going to get an infection, and again, in the Regency era, you're very soon not going to have to worry about long-term incontinence in a bed.

Back then, if you largely stop moving/pooping/drinking on your own, you're going to be very dead very soon.

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Which Austen adaptations do you think are the most overrated?

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I'm rereading S&S and wanted to figure out how badly of the Dashwoods were with 500£ a year. How small is that budget for 4 women to live on? Is Sir John being about as generous to them with all his help as John Dashwood initially wanted to be when planning to give each of them an additional 1000£?

I've seen estimates that for a single gentleman to live with the leisure befitting that station (that is, simply not working to earn an income,) would cost about 250 pounds a year, and that's without any 'unnecessaries' like a horse and extra servants. So presumably renting some modest city lodgings and having decent clothes and genteel food; maybe a housekeeper and maid-of-all-work or something (but a servant's wages and the rental of an entire house would take a LOT of that budget, so we're talking maybe some rented rooms and shared landlady/maid services with other tenants.) He absolutely would not be entertaining in his own home.

So when you double that and consider that four women will be living on it...yeah, things like beef and sugar are going to be very very dear. Like the Bateses in Emma, the Dashwood ladies would probably rely on gifts of meat and produce from kind landowning neighbours, and all those dinners and parties Sir John invites them to up and the big house will absolutely save them money on their food budget and give them access to society they otherwise could not afford to mix with.

Elinor would 100% be trying to sneak some leftovers into a Tupperware she brought in her handbag.

A thousand pounds is probably more generous than the help Sir John is giving them; but the point is more that Sir John is actually helping them, while their half-brother is doing dick-all after talking about helping them and being actually generous. Fanny talks him DOWN to "presents of fish and game when they are in season" and then there's zero indication they ever do any of that. (And in practical terms, sending fresh meat or fish from Sussex to Devonshire is just not going to happen before the meat rots.) So Sir John is doing the barest minimum which Mr. John Dashwood decides to do and then...doesn't/cannot.

I think the point is that what people actually will commit to doing matters far more than whatever they may talk of doing.

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Do we know what Sir Lewis de Bourgh's exact rank is? Is he a knight or a baronet?

I've always seen him categorized as a knight.

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Happy Rational Creatures S2 Premiere Day!

I recommend watching with closed captioning on for some fun moments. ;)

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so... any thoughts on the new Persuasion (if you've watched it ofc)?

Not seen it yet, planning a watch-party with friends!

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Why was Emma heir to Hartfield instead of Isabella?

They were both the heiresses to the estate in terms of fortune; though it's my understanding that Hartfield the property will pass to the eldest of their sons, in this case, Isabella's boy.

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May I ask your thoughts on Lucy Steele? I really like Elinor so I disliked Lucy on my first readthrough because of how she kept rubbing her engagement in Elinor's face, but I feel like I'm being unfair to her given that she has if anything fewer resources at her disposal than the Dashwood girls do.

Personally I love Lucy for being an audacious bitch who goes materially unpunished. There are shades of Lady Susan in her but I feel like Austen saw that a side-character was as far as she could push that limit. (And Lucy is certainly two-faced but her betrayal of her betrothed isn't as unchaste as we see in other self-serving women in other novels.)

The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

Just a masterwork of praise undone by the utter disdain of the final word in the sentence.

I'm not saying Lucy is a role model for ethics but she's a hoot and will go far in life. She's a proto-Becky Sharp and I wish that Austen had lived longer and written many many many more novels, and had more opportunities and more boldness in what she could publish to give us more of these magnificent vamps.

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There's a controversy about Sanditon where the girls wore their hair down. Was that done?

No, but they're far from the first period drama to fuck around with hair because they want to present the fantasy version of Regency the target audience expects to see.

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Thoughts on Joel Kim Booster's "Fire Island"? It's his adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, from the perspective of a gay Asian man combatting stereotypes in the queer community!

It's not available to me legally in Canada so I haven't got around to seeing it yet. :(

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When referring to the Emma movie, what do you mean by "Mia Goth" Styling?

They forgot to give that poor girl eyebrows.