Tag: words
Literally the only three things you need to know about Jane Austen
1. Her first major novel (Northanger Abbey) was written solely because she was so salty about how dramatic and cliche and formula Gothic novels were. You know what I mean. Every castle is foreboding. Every villain is awful but can’t bring himself to kill the heroine because she’s Too Pure. Every middle-aged female companion wants to do the heroine in. The heroine is Pure and Perfect and Is Good At Everything Young Women Should Be and recites quotes and/or the Bible whenever she’s in danger and that makes everything better. All butlers are evil. Jane Austen wrote a book specifically to go “THIS is how NORMAL people react to things!!!”
2. “She never changed her opinion about books or men”
3. “As a girl she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances” and you know what that means. Jane Austen started off writing smut fanfiction. If that’s not writing reassurement that you can be great no matter what you choose to write, I don’t know what is.
(Both quotes from the Penguin Classics version of Northanger Abbey)
While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.
Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)
One thing I was thinking about today was Alexander Pierce. I feel like one thing that’s been under-discussed in Cap 2 meta (at least, from what I’ve seen on my dash– maybe it’s been talked about elsewhere!) is the privilege of Alexander Pierce, a privilege that is very deliberately communicated onscreen.
Pierce, as a character, is visually distinctive: he’s not just an older white man, but a very specific genre of older white man. His three-piece suits and tortoiseshell glasses suggest a fondness for the styles, at least, of some happier past: the gentlemen’s era (to me located sort of vaguely pre-Philby) when men like him knew how to be graceful with power, because it was something that came naturally to them, something they would never have to demand. His charm, his generally pleasant demeanor are of a piece with this– after all, as he himself tells Steve, he’s the diplomat: the one who keeps his hands clean while Nick Fury does what needs to be done.
I’m very powerful about my weaknesses. I can do what I do wrong better than anyone.
Carrie Fisher (x)
Chris Pine refuses to answer the question “Would you swipe left or right for Anna Kendrick on Tinder?” and instead gives this response
If you don’t believe Russian fairy tales are hardcore, remember that in “The Death of Koschei the Deathless”, Prince Ivan first encounters
Princess Marya Morevna amid a field of corpses spanning from horizon to horizon, which turn out to be an invading army that the Princess has just slain in battle, apparently single-handedly. She then invites him into her tent and spends two days and nights banging his brains out, and that’s how he ends up getting married.(Later, the Princess goes off to fight another war and leaves Ivan to look after the housekeeping, with strict instructions not to go into a particular basement. Of course he disobeys, and finds the eponymous Koschei the Deathless bound in enchanted chains, because apparently keeping immortal sorcerers chained up in your closet is just a thing that you do when you’re
Princess Marya Morevna. The subsequent accidental unbinding sets off the main plot, making this tale one of the relatively few instances of the traditional forbidden-room device in which the disobedient spouse is the husband rather than the wife.)
Why I:
- A) love “Fairy Tales,”
- B) Love Russian “Fairy Tales” in particular, and
- C) Look askance at anyone waxing poetical about “Fairy Tale Romances”
Also, check out Vasilisa the Beautiful
Yeah, “Vasilisa the Beautiful” is also a pretty good one – though personally, I prefer the versions where it’s clear that Baba Yaga is fully aware that she’s being used as an unwanted stepchild disposal service, and she resents it, so she’s torn between free child meat and taking the opportunity to give the stepmother an ironic comeuppance. You don’t often get to see her conflicted like that!
Beautiful woman with fire-shooting skull on stick? I’m pretty sure several of my followers want to be her.
Baba Yaga is so important and also let’s not forget how many Russian folktales involve people losing their hands in an almost Star Wars-like amount because its a damn lot.
You’re in charge of assigning every child on Earth the monster under their bed. One child in particular has caused every monster assigned to him/her to quit. You decide to assign yourself.
Case: #273402
Status: Disastrous.I stare at the file and realize I have no options, over the last 2 years every monster assigned to Charlotte Dower has quit, every last one. Her first monster; a giant goldfish-faced humanoid named Bubba, had been with her for four years, and then she wasn’t scared of him anymore. After that it was a string of different common, uncommon, and rare monsters… I even assigned a sentient sock monster to her. He came back crying!
I look on my tablet, only one assignable monster left; myself. Field work has never been my cup of tea, but desperate times call for desperate measures. So at 8:03 pm, after Mrs. Gideon tucks in Charlotte and her little brother Daniel; I slither into the space beneath Charlotte’s bed.
Across the room underneath Daniel’s crib is a rookie, Chico, a standard Creep kind of monster.
I turn my attention to the bed above me, Charlotte is still awake but barely, I reach up over the bed and run an ice cold finger over her cheek, silence, so I do it again.
“I’m not afraid of you monster!” She whispers, but her voice is shaking. I can see a small clock on the wall 8:14, a door somewhere in the house slams and there is an audible hitch of breath from above me. A few minutes go by I can hear Francis Gideon yelling at his wife. There are heavy footsteps on the stairs, and loud panting breaths, Charlotte scrambles off the bed and…
She. CRAWLS. Under. The. Bed. With. Me.
“Move. Over!” Charlotte hisses at me. I do.
The door to the bedroom slams open and I smell the stench of human intoxicants before the man even steps inside.
I know why Charlotte isn’t afraid of any of my monsters; she’s afraid of her own.
Francis reaches a hand under the bed and I thrust my wrist into it, he starts to pull, I slither out.
“What the…” I cut Francis’s next words off by unfolding to my full 12 foot height. Looming over the drunken man I caress my cold fingers down his face.
“If you ever touch, scare, or harm my child again, I will find you, and I will do the same to you, for all eternity.” I promise to him.
As Francis runs from the room he soils himself.
I pull Charlotte from under the bed, tuck her back under her covers and kiss her forehead goodnight. “I’ll be back tomorrow night, sleep well darling.”
Charlotte Dower is my child, I am the monster under her bed.WELL GODAMN, WE HAVE OURSELVES A WINNER
Holy shit I’m gonna cry that’s beautiful.
Every single cursed moment of my tumblr existence has led me here. I am whole. I am complete.
*mad cackling*
My anger is justified.
(via theijeoma)
You have to get married young. Otherwise you get too smart and you don’t do it.
my grandmother, voicing concerns about my marital status (via petals42)
ealdor 