#I'm going to keep banging on about this

[bethanydelleman]

Darcy’s Excuses

This is the most frequent passage cited to prove that Darcy is shy/socially awkward/introverted. I want to break it down.

“Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better had I sought an introduction, but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers.”

“Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill-qualified to recommend himself to strangers?”

“I can answer your question,” said Fitzwilliam, “without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”

Firstly, Darcy is flirting with Elizabeth here. When he says he should have sought an introduction, he’s trying to indicate that he likes Elizabeth and should not have snubbed her. I doubt he cares about the others. However, he does say what some people use to justify the shy/socially awkward argument, he doesn’t recommend himself to strangers.

But then right away, Elizabeth calls him out, he’s well-educated, why the heck not? Because for context, these people are taught how to converse. Their society has far more “scripts” for conduct than ours. Darcy could easily have gotten through the entire Meryton assembly on canned phrases, just like Elizabeth jokes about at the Netherfield Ball:

“It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”

Now his cousin jumps in, Colonel Fitzwilliam probably gives us the most truthful answer, given what Darcy says about himself later. Darcy doesn’t recommend himself because he doesn’t want to most of the time.

Then we have Darcy again. Now some of this statement does sound a lot like someone who struggles socially, “catch their tone of conversation”, but the second part, “appear interested in their concerns”, that is just basic politeness! “My mom is sick.” “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Many people are actually concerned about other’s concerns, but Darcy in his radical truth telling phase, HE isn’t going to pretend. 

And then we have this passage, which some people interpret as an extrovert attacking an introvert (just TRY to be less introverted):

“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”

Darcy smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.”

This is the key! Darcy will not perform. He knows how, he’s perfectly capable. We see him do it multiple times. Why did he not get through the Meryton Ball on canned niceties? Because to him that’s performing to strangers and he doesn’t want to do it. Why is he so rude to Sir William when he says something trite? Because Darcy doesn’t do small talk, he’s not going to perform. The problem is that small talk is what makes the world go round.

So yes, if you cherry pick from the passage, Darcy seems shy and socially awkward, but if you take it as a whole, the truth becomes more apparent. Colonel Fitzwilliam is probably a more reliable witness here, he’s not flirting! And we know many of Darcy’s other thoughts, he know what he says at the end:

“What did you say of me that I did not deserve? For though your accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”

Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me; though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.

Darcy’s reasons are excuses, when he actually suffers for his behaviour (finally) in the form of Elizabeth’s rejection, he reviews what he has been doing and changes. He doesn’t stop being socially awkward, he just actually puts what he was fully capable of doing into action. Because he has known how to do it all along, he just didn’t bother.

Also, Elizabeth can identify introverts. When she meets Georgiana, she immediately guesses shy and pities her for it. Her beloved sister Jane is modest and reserved. I doubt she’d be shaming someone for having a personality type.

Furthermore, Austen celebrates introverts! Mansfield Park is a whole freaking novel about an introvert who figures out everyone! Fanny Price would have seen through Wickham no problem. Austen knows the values of shy and introverted people. Darcy’s problem therefore is not that he is shy/socially awkward. It’s that he’s a dick about it.

[frogatz]

you'll see them again !

too many thoughts and things done with Intent to fully explain myself . partially bc this was supposed to be much much longer, but i think i would like to play more in the space of post-game loop.

[kangaracha]

daffodil + chan

a song

the prompt: daffodil (a god bows before a mortal)

read it on ao3

---

"You have no power over me."

running through his hands like water, and suddenly the earth is not his to control. The skies do not turn with the twist of his head, lightning does not fork in the air when his eyes, dark as night and yet still lit by some unearthly light, fall upon you, his mouth wide as if to gasp for a breath he cannot take-

And yet, still, it shivers down your spine; the magic that draws you here even as you rip it apart, the prize of your conquest to rip the world into two.

"Take it back," he hisses through his teeth, the ground trembling with every syllable that slides down his tongue. You watch his mouth as it forms the words, the flash of teeth behind thin lips reminding you of the way that the swordsman you'd fought through to get here had smiled at you - the last of his seven challenges, the last of his demons, or angels, or citizens of the sprawling, damned city he claimed as his kingdom.

And here you stood, at the pinnacle of the eighth, and stared him in the eye without cringing away because now you knew the truth. Now you knew that what he whispered in the dark was a lie and what you saw with your eyes wasn't always true, and though he may be a god and a king amongst beings that you could never hope to rival, a god can only hold as much power as you give him. A god can only claim dominion over a beast that bowed to his dogma. 

You see now that you are no beast. You are no believer in any lie he utters to the darkness.

"Take it back," he says again, the note of his voice changing. He pleads, his brow furrowing and his shoulders curling in as if waiting for the final blow. "Take it back now, before it's too late."

"I can't," you tell him, and you watch him fall to his knees, and you know that it's wrong and your heart pounds in your chest and it

like the ground does at the impact of his knees, crumbling into the pieces it was in when you first took his hand, alone on the side of the road with only one thing to call your own. And what was that thing, the little warmth you'd held to your chest in the dark and the cold? What had you traded away for the comfort of the house that crumbled around you now? Why had you destroyed him to get it back, where was it now, why did it not appear within his hands at this, the hour of his reckoning?

"Please," he spits into the cold ground, the dirt and the leaves and the curl of ivy that grows up the walls around you, old and ancient and not yet sprouted from its roots all at the same time. His hands curl in the dirt like he can reach down and pull the earth to him, like he can stop the wane of his power if he just tries to hold on a little bit tighter. "I know what you want, and I don't have it. I can't lose-"

Broken, fragile thing. Small god of limited earth, crouched at your feet like he might worship you instead. You'd thought him all-powerful once, and then you'd thought him severe and his servants and beasts and playthings petty, and then you'd thought him

because he'd smiled at you in the garden that bloomed from his own hands when you expressed your desire for a flower to tuck in the braid of your dark hair, and his hand had been soft in yours, and when he looked out across his kingdom and the clamouring faces of the people he'd brought to live there, he'd looked at them the same way that he'd looked at you.

Beneath your foot, the ground cracks, fracturing outwards like a spiderweb. It's your heart, you realise morosely, sinking from your chest and into the depths of the earth, disappearing with whatever he'd taken from you; and it was a wretched thing and it had betrayed you a hundred times over, but you still mourn at the loss of it and all the dreams it had carried with it. It blooms in your flowers in the corners of the room, embeds itself into the land and sings along with the song of his power, a thing you can hear but cannot touch, a beast once born that now does not belong to you.

"I'm sorry," he says, his breath like mist in the cold air, and even without your heart, you can't bear to see him so cold.

Your hands reach for him without permission, your body kneeling in the dirt before you can stand your feet firm upon the earth and refuse to move. He flinches away, but your fingers are soft upon his chin and the curve of his jaw, gentle when they brush the soft dip of his neck. "I only wanted to know what it was," you tell him with a voice that cannot hold itself steady. "I thought if you loved me, you would give it back." It's the only voice you have - you are not like him, or like Felix, speaking with many tongues. You don't have any power of your own.

"It's because I love you that I can't give it back." His voice is hoarse, every word a knife that he swallows without ever once flinching. "It's because I love you that I couldn't tell you what it was."

"But didn't I deserve to know?" you question. "Doesn't my life belong to me?"

Finally, his eyes rise, looking up at you with a fire that belies the cold of his skin. "Of course it does," he gasps, and his hand reaches up, dirt-stained fingers dragging at your cheek. "That's why I gave it to you, and I never asked for anything else."

"But you wouldn't give back what you took in the first place."

The sudden violence of his voice crumbles the walls and fractures the sky, the clouds blooming te dark colours of a bruise. The absence of his hand on your cheek stings in the cold; his face turns away, screwed up in regret and a pain he won't allow you to feel. You lurch forward before he can disappear, drawing him into your arms; stiff shoulders, spine of beaten steel, slow beat of a heart you once held in your hands. 

He'd stood so tall and unmoving in the morning light, when you'd first walked down this path, and now in the dark of the setting sun and the ending of the earth, his weight slumps into your grasp, his resolve melting into the warmth of your body. "I didn't want you to suffer again," he says to the soft cotton of your shirt and the curve of your collarbone, his breath a whisper against your skin. "I couldn't watch that, when you asked me to make sure it would never happen again."

Surprise comes in the pause of your breath and the still of your arms, the jump of a heart you're not sure you still possess. "I asked you to make me forget?" you question the world behind his back, and into your neck, he sighs.

"You couldn't forget," he murmurs. "She was dead before I found you, and when I took her from your arms - you couldn't forget. There was nothing I could do to fix what had been broken. And then you begged me to let you forget, so I remembered her for you." He pauses, his throat hitching like he's swallowing something down. A sob maybe, or the tears he will never let fall. "I can't give her back though. She's not here anymore."

You push him upright, your hands on his shoulders, his neck, his face. Brushing away the hair that falls in his eyes, wiping at the blood that drips from the cut on his cheek. "Why didn't you tell me?" you ask, because the answer is incomprehensible. "Why did you let me go this far?"

"Because I was scared," he admits, and his teeth clench and his spine stiffens against the urge to hide away from you again. "Because I'm a wretched, evil, stupid thing who thinks they can-"

His words die in your throat; vile, wretched things that you store away to spit out later, into the ground where they belong. He is none of that; he is soft, and hesitant, until your fingers find the sharp curve of his hip and the lines of his back, dragging him closer and his lips open like there is nothing in the world to devour but you and

[yangjeongin]

[111/??] GIFS FROM EVERY SKZ-TALKER: skz-talker ep. 11

[neverevan]

not to be mean but if they killed tommy, buck would never get over it no matter what he felt for him and we'd have to see him grieve for like 5 seasons before he'd ever be ready to love again and we don't have time

lmao i mean it would never happen in canon based on the way they all talk about this storyline, but in fanfic realms I love me some pain 🫶

[izzyspussy]

i think a lot of people have never been in a truly desperate situation but think they have, and this causes them to pass really harsh judgment on people who made bad choices when either irrational or having no good choices to pick instead, and i really wish people could get some fucking self-perception and work on their compassion skills and not fucking do that as much anymore

[bookwyrminspiration]

rolling up my sleeves as I open my doc before writing another variation of the exact same fic I've written a dozen times before

[feliz-navidad]

vent post in tags

[lady-harrowhark]

it is once again time for the semi-annual expedition across pinterest in search of a picture that i'm not too self-conscious to take to my hair appointment

over the next two days, i will inevitably come to the conclusion that what i actually want is a different face and hair type entirely

[canibalistic-brownie]

I have to keep reminding myself that none of y'all know me in real life and even if you think what I'm writing is cringe, its not for you, its for me. But h-h-h-h-holy shit is it hard to get out of that mindset of anxiously wondering what other people will think of your writing the entire time.

[aligatorrageinator]

And that's how her egg cracked I would know, I was there.

[bitegore]

every so often i have to really wonder about the people who watch me talk about how badly i want someone to let me hurt them and fantasize about murdering imaginary characters i like and somehow assumes i'm a sub primarily and wants to be killed and chased and not, like, do the killing and chasing

[miabrown007]

a minute of silence to my skills to estimate how long a project is ever going to take

[dayurno]

manga kevin ass length hair waist on fuck blue lives dead milf ponytail like it was serious for him. it was really serious. being riko's attic wife was a full time job and he was committed

[girlyliondragon]

Real talk the thing about making extremely complicated/complex and flawed characters (especially those greatly based off yourself to the point they're your self-created comfort character) that you've grown to be extremely proud of thinking of their stories, is that you also know that there are people out there that will absolutely villainize the fuck out of them or try to 'reason' that they are completely irredeemable even in instances where they have no control over their life and act accordingly or even are pushed into situations where they didn't want to be to begin with or are even trying to be better than they were before even when they have gone through and still go through moments of relapse like any troubled character would in an attempt to make them feel real and it actually really fucking scares me.

I can't give details, but it's like. It's obvious they, the character, aren't a good person, not as a whole anyways and aren't meant to be, in fact said character sees themselves as the worst to exist because in their eyes they deserve every bit of punishment after everything they've done because they are forced to be stuck in the past and mask themselves unhealthily due to repeated mistakes and not wanting to do them again despite making achievements to move on and be happy and despite some telling them that they're doing a good job despite everything and that they deserve to be happy and meaning it rather than trying to placate them, it's obviously up for people to decide their own perception OF that OC from what they read of their story bits to decide whether they like the character based on what they read of them or not, because flaws and shit like this is very compelling to many, myself included.

But at the same time I'm super nervous about the idea of expanding on said character and showing their maladaptive coping mechanisms and behaviors and bad moments alongside their good moments because a lot of people on the internet, especially the very loud ones have no fucking concept of the varying shades of grey morality in the slightest. Even in cases where they are in fandoms with characters with many different forms of grey morality, like it terrifies me that someone could potentially misread everything and ruin my desire to make this OC I'm vagueing about want to not only move on and be better, even if they have to start from the bottom again sometimes, but redeem and even forgive themselves in their own eyes in the process and start anew, just because people have a black/white mentality that they force onto at the expense of others doing so. It really ruins character exploration and growth.

[robotpussy]

anyways about my eviction. the literal reason why I'm getting evicted is that my landlord doesn't want to deal with complaints anymore so I'm the one who is getting the shove <3