#not only addressing but framing it

[anghraine]

I've been moving and navigating further departmental nonsense etc (my pseudo-dissertation got approved for defending, though! l o l). But it was interesting to see the Worst P&P Takes poll I reblogged accumulating more results and the general tenor of responses in the notes.

I mean, the results are definitely to be expected if you're familiar with the side of Austen fandom doing a lot of the reblogging etc. But still, interesting!

Many Tumblr polls specify that they're asking about personal preferences that may be irrational—favorite/least favorite, coolest/most annoying, or something like that. This one, though, asked for the worst interpretation of P&P, not the most annoying one—and the current leader is "Darcy is never really proud, he's just shy and probably has anxiety" against some very steep competition on the Bad Takes front.

I was thinking about why that seemed a kind of tediously predictable choice even though I agree that the take is wrong, and realized that while I do disagree with the shy Darcy interpretation and I particularly disagree with the specific formulation where he is never proud at all, it ultimately feels to me like a failure of nuance rather than just completely wrongheaded like some of the others. And this is probably my fundamental difference with a lot of Darcy takes I see!

In my opinion, a character who is introverted and who feels awkward in various social situations and who doesn't like common social activities and who has to work himself up to talking to his crush and who is repeatedly suggested to behave very differently in contexts where he's more comfortable being interpreted as shy and anxious is not that big of a leap.

Yes, it's important that he is actually fundamentally confident and haughty, that he makes his personal feelings of discomfort other people's problem, and that he thinks he's such a unique and special butterfly that he doesn't need to even put in an effort outside his personal social circle. But it's a misreading that is easy to follow (and long predates the 2005 P&P, as I've mentioned before!).

The additional misreading that a shy and anxious Darcy is also never proud at all is a much more drastic leap, and in my experience, condemnations of shy Darcy interpretations rarely differentiate between "Darcy is shy as well as arrogant" and "Darcy is shy rather than arrogant" as interpretations (although their basic arguments are quite different). But even that as the worst possible misreading of P&P when Darcy is not even the main character is ?????????

I mean, for one alternative (not even the one I voted for!), the idea that Elizabeth is an author avatar Mary Sue seems a far worse misreading of P&P than basically anything to do with Darcy at all. The center piece of the entire novel is Elizabeth's epiphany of self-knowledge about her own shortcomings that do not particularly resemble Austen's at all, but were ethically a concern for her, and she's a complex, interesting character in general whom Austen correctly regarded as a major achievement. Inverting that into Elizabeth as an improbably perfect, reality-warping self-insert is deeply wrong and frankly pretty misogynistic as well.

(ngl though, it's a little funny to see such a blatantly terrible reading of Elizabeth rank so far behind the shy Darcy votes. I've gotten "does anyone actually think/say that?" so many times on my posts about Austen fandom's prioritization of Darcy's character development over Elizabeth's and yet...)

And even just going with the Darcy-centric misreadings, the idea of Darcy as a "bad boy" seems easily the most absolutely wrong take on him. His pride is at least complicated and the finer points can be fairly debated and it's a quality that actually changes somewhat throughout the novel, and you can have discussion over what happened when, whose testimonies should be weighted more, etc. But there is no point at which "bad boy" isn't utterly wrong for him. However, there's definitely a tendency in some wings of the fandom to find the idea of Darcy being misread too favorably more objectionable than him being read too unfavorably, regardless of the particulars, so it's not a surprise.

I suppose you could argue about what "worst" means in the context of variously bad interpretations. Like, is an interpretation that is about a fairly trivial aspect of the book but extremely wrong about it "worse" than an interpretation that is pretty bad but at least comprehensibly so about something very important?

[black-and-yellow]

Stupid doodles I did because I couldn't get them out of my head

[saintchevre]

Lady Dominion

[bumblingbabooshka]

I will walk down to the end with you / If you will come all the way down with me.

[no1ryomafan]

I’m midway through Giant Robo and as much as I hate to point out something that reminds me of getter bc I say every mecha I’ve watched since has been very different:

I immediately notices two characters who have green hair and not only did I call they were siblings just based off of that but they are related to a mad dead scientist. I am once again wondering if Imagawa had the Kei is Genki plot point from the start and the team still used it after he left because this scarily aligns with what fucking happens later in arma. Like I heard he took his script with him but there is- so much foreshadow in the eps he did to the entire family plot line that unfolds in arma. So many lines Saotome saids about Go alluding to he’s a clone, a line from Musashi pointing out Genki is different, even Genki always had that yellow shirt in group photo that upon a second look feels like a *girl* would wear it and not a boy, but they have the cap still. Not to mention like I’ve said in a couple recent post MANY times is the weird factor that Kei originally was a side character, even my one friend pointed this out. Sure, she does show up in the manga when Sho isn’t around much and she did pilot shin getter during that point, but it’s not like she did much since Ryoma was doing the fighting for that section and then she died.

Also just the fact Kei is two characters merged into one is something imagawa would’ve done, given his other works he’s Frankensteining all these characters together and Giant Robo predated Arma, it’s not out of line for him to do something like this again especially when he keeps the same story telling beat of throwing his viewers into it and not explaining a thing. (Also I haven’t seen G gundam but KNOW family is a theme there for him too)

I’m always gonna go insane whether or not what we got in arma was actually lacking Imagawas original vision or not but this made me go more insane.

[cypheragent]

i complain a lot about people on here not knowing anything about natives which would be sort of whatever and like on some level i can even understand it but where it becomes an issue to me is how people with little to no knowledge of natives and most issues we face decide to pretend they care every once in a blue moon and end up reinventing the noble savage stereotype in a performative attempt at "allyship"

[all-souls-matinee]

Quick-bite reviews: Lady in White (1988) dir. Frank LaLoggia

Writer Frankie Scarlatti reflects on his idyllic 1960s childhood, which changed the Halloween night he witnessed a ghost reenact her own murder, and was nearly killed himself.

This is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. I was going to compare it to Spielberg in that it handles dark topics through the lens of something very saccharine and nostalgic, but halfway through realized a more apt comparison is Stephen King. I don't want to give the impression that LaLoggia doesn't have a unique voice (you don't get 'weird' without that), but King is all over individual story beats and character relationships; elements being autobiographical and its being based on a local legend only add to that. I do think the funniest difference is that while King imbues his writing with a christian system of morality and spirituality he's extremely critical of the church, whereas LaLoggia adheres to that same system but is extremely Italian Catholic.

(fig.1- sure.)

I mention Spielberg and King, maybe the most popular living American filmmaker and writer, to give an idea of the tone and stress that this is a well-crafted, commercially-minded movie. The weirdness rears its head in two ways:

It's violent in a way I've never seen before. Not something at odds with the movie's goals, but other artists working in this subgenre would probably shy away from actually showing children be stalked, harmed, or killed, and here it's done in a way that lingers and feels uncomfortably real. Most would also probably shy away from the civil rights subplot that goes nowhere and ends with a graphic hate crime. I'm guessing it was a topic on LaLoggia's mind (understandably so growing up in NY in the 60s and working there in the 80s), but it causes trouble in that it starts to call attention to African American absence and systemic racism within the movie's warm depictions of American life, and then doesn't follow through on that attention. I'm honestly still trying to parse it and I wonder if LaLoggia was too; it seems like he realized it was more suited for a central conflict than a subplot so tries to quietly drop it altogether.

It's a mystery that's not on a schedule. To focus on atmosphere over plot gives it the feeling of an indie drama,* which is fine, but the driving force is two concurrent mysteries, so we get scenes where a character will discover a vital piece of information and then instead of following up on it they go to have fun outside with whimsical autumnal music (there's even an early scene that feels so oddly placed it immediately comes to mind as a clue.) Whereas the violence confused me in a negative way this confused me in a very positive one; I kind of loved it. I don't think the solution to either mystery is bad, and I like that the guy wrote a bittersweet coming-of-age novel that's fighting for its life to be an HBO serial killer miniseries.

I mostly just appreciated that Lady in White is so memorable. No idea if it's 'good,' jury's still out, but it has a concrete sense of place and purpose, and that does a lot of heavy lifting in storytelling.

Buy a ticket? I think you have to already like 80s movies and be willing to put up with a lot of bullshit (not mutually exclusive), but if that's the case then yes.

*It was the first and only occasion that a single, feature film was financed [through a penny stock offering.]!

[scattered-winter]

I've stayed silent on this issue for far too long but I have to say it. the way 911 lone star treats tk in relation to owen is fucking horrendous and we gotta get that boy out of that family STAT

[marinsawakening]

[Timmy Turner voice] I wish every Links Meet AU that uses Marin as a phantom to haunt and traumatize Link goes to hell no matter what

[emily84]

no joke, this guy makes some of the best essays on film and tv theory out there (and with no ads!)... this one's on the conservative politics structurally embedded in superhero narratives and the dangers of watching them uncritically.

[viralarcadian]

the way some people decorate their islands on new horizons is identical to the way disney designs their theme parks. they are too powerful

[genderqueer-karma]

tumblr fix your shit before i find y’all’s hq and stab your ceo. idc. because y’all are playing games with these ads now

idk how to explain that i would rather jump off of a cliff than buy a pin that says “i support settler-colonialism and here’s a pin to prove it.”

THE FUCK DO I LOOK LIKE ????

THE “CONFLICT” BETWEEN THESE TWO PARTIES IS NOT EQUALLY MATCHED!!! PEOPLE ARE LITERALLY GETTING KILLED IN THE STREETS FOR WANTING TO STAY IN THEIR OWN HOMES!!! THEY WILL LITERALLY BE PEACEFULLY WORSHIPPING AND LOVING AND CARING FOR THEIR FAMILIES AND ALL THOSE BEAUTIFUL HUMAN THINGS AND LIVING THEIR LIVES… WHILE RISKING BEING MURDERED JUST FOR EXISTING IN A PLACE THEY ARE INDIGENOUS TO.

“ISRAEL”, AS IT EXISTS NOW, IS NOT THAT OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. THE PEOPLE WHO CURRENTLY RESIDE THERE AFTER TAKING OVER IN 1947 ARE DOING TO OTHERS WHAT THEY SUPPOSEDLY DIDN’T WANT FOR THEMSELVES: TO BE MISTREATED JUST FOR EXISTING AND WANTING A PLACE WHERE THEY WOULD BE SAFE.

so, no. i won’t really “stand” for israel. i don’t want that fucking pin and if i see this ad again i’m buying a ticket to california or wherever the fuck and stabbing the ceo (or whoever!! i don’t give a fuck!!) of tumblr 1,947 times.

good morning, everyone.

[muffinapologist]

so glad making fun of The Good Doctor has come into the popular zeitgeist bc frankly they got away with that shit for way too long

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[emeryleewho]

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

[shotmrmiller]

Simon who works for UPS. He delivers packages as per usual and ends up at your house. He picks up the massive box with ease from the back of his work truck, barely a grunt in effort, and places it down at your front door.

He knocks because goddamn fucking company demanding signatures for packages people buy is just absurd.

Then you open the door.

Maybe it's just him, who's a burly man with shoulders that're too broad and height that in some entrances he has to duck lest he smacks his forehead on the door frame but you...

are small.

Soft looking thing, too. Hands look smooth and delicate; probably never lifted anything heavier than a grocery bag. Fragile, like the contents inside the box you've ordered.

"Sir?" your voice is soft, gentle; just like what you look like.

"Need your signature for this, apologies for the bother, ma'am."

The signature machine is already small on its own, but in his bear-like hand, it's dwarfed. It lets him hold it in its entirety, so that your fingers are forced to brush against his to sign.

Skin is like the finest silk, and so very warm against his leathery flesh.

Polar opposites.

He thickly swallows the pooling saliva in his mouth.

"It wouldn't be too much trouble to, uhm, help me bring that in, just right here by the couch."

A shame the living room is right by the entrance.

"I can do tha'."

He bends his strong legs, curling his fingers under the bottom of the box and lifts on an inhale.

Simon doesn't miss the way your pretty eyes widen a fraction at his strength, either.

As you take numerous strides, it takes only three of his to reach the couch and stand before it.

Bitty.

"Right here is perfect, thank you."

The box thuds on your white tile floor when he places it down, and quickly turns to leave, but bumps into you instead. You yelp and stumble backwards as if he'd pushed you back with two hands.

Puny.

"Apologies," he murmurs while steadying you by gripping your forearm firmly.

Apologies, because sorry implies regret, which he doesn't have. Certainly not when he's got a tiny feel of your soft body against his sturdy one.

He reluctantly lets go, and heads for the door, not wanting to make you any more uncomfortable. (or scare you off so soon- he's only just laid eyes on you)

"Thank you for the help! Have a good day!"

Simon gives you a small wave and hops into the drivers seat.

His day is already that much better, especially since his sharp eyes noticed a lack of jewelry on your left hand.

He's already memorized your address, too.

Simon tells himself to wait at least a week before 'mistakenly' dropping off a package at your house.