Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

An anon asked:

So many people take it for granted that Elizabeth Bennet is Austen's self-insert, and some even criticize Elizabeth as a character for it (e.g. "annoying author avatar Mary Sue"). But in a post you wrote long ago criticizing "Becoming Jane," you argued against that assumption. Would you mind sharing more about why you think "Elizabeth = Austen" is wrong?

I replied:

I honestly have no memory of that post, but I can take a stab at it.

I’ve definitely seen quite a bit of the idea that Elizabeth is more or less Austen herself, transplanted into a wish-fulfillment narrative—even in scholarship. (My first paper in my PhD program went off on a tangent that was basically ‘wtf???’ at scholars doing that.) And I’ll say right off the bat that I think the whole concept is incredibly condescending towards Austen, so I would dislike it on general principle anyway.

That aside, it ignores something that a lot of takes on P&P and Elizabeth in particular ignore, even though it’s the central narrative of the whole book. Yes, Elizabeth is charismatic and witty and vibrant and a truly good, loving person with a strong sense of her own value. She’s almost always likable. In fact, she’s considerably more charming and good-natured than Austen herself seems to have been (making the author insert thing even weirder).

But Elizabeth is wrong.

Not about everything, of course. But she’s so committed to her (frequently reductive) ideas about the world, to her ability to assign people to (sometimes) vaguely accurate categories, to personal charm as the primary index to inner character, to what flatters her vanity, that it leads her to repeated and increasingly significant mistakes in judgment. The turning point of the book is Elizabeth’s realization of this and it drives her character arc from then onwards. And that arc is the main one of the book, which sometimes gets overlooked.

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Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

I reblogged an illustration of Darcy, and tagged it:

#*gasp* an original darcy appears! #i'm so happy haha #also i love how young he looks? i think people forget that he's introduced as a young man and revealed to still be in his twenties

Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

themarydragon replied to this post:

I thought I read somewhere that the actual Austen self-insert was Mr Bennett, Eliza’s dad?

I replied:

If so, they are wrong. Mr Bennet is thoroughly criticized for his irresponsibility and poor treatment of his wife and younger daughters, and ultimately tells Elizabeth that she needs to marry a man she’ll look up to as a superior. His views are definitely not Austen’s.

#also: ANY character as just a self-insert remains super problematic

Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

I reblogged this post and added:

on the bright side: he responded to the email and didn’t seem judgy about my comparative ignorance since I switched concentrations mid-PhD (I explained that I’d done this and doubly appreciated his help because of it)

on the downside: he actually didn’t acknowledge it at all

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Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

elperian replied to this post:

I find most profs are very O_O at students giving them a lot of info all at once, so it could just be that (this has been my experience on both sides). like, they want to get their reply right and distilling the question down to what they need is sometimes a hard mark to hit.

I replied:

True! I think it’s partly “…” because I’m used to lectures about how we always need to be responsive and supportive and nurturing and blahblah, and a lot of the people I know are pedagogy-focused rhet/comp profs and other grad students who are actually that way! But middle-aged lit profs tend to be a bit different, lol.

Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

An anon asked:

AU where due to spirit shenanigans/Varrick's latest invention malfunctioning/etc., series finale Korra winds up back at the beginning of Book 1, right when she arrives in Republic City. Would she try to change anything, or let things proceed as how she experienced it?

I replied:

Oh, I definitely can’t see Korra passively going along with keeping things the same. Off the top of my head, things I think she’d change/try to change:

• the love triangle/quadrangle
• airbending/Avatar training
• communication with her past lives (if they’re restored)
• her general approach to the more benign Equalist sympathizers
• dealing with Hiroshi
• her relationship with Lin
• her relationship with Tarrlok/his approach to Amon
• the trauma and destruction that Amon/Noatak causes and his and Tarrlok’s “escape”; I think she’d try and head off both
• the laser-focus on Republic City; she’d especially have Unalaq+the Red Lotus’s plots in the back of her mind

How successful she’d be is an open question, of course, but I think she’d try and prevent as much harm as possible. I also think she’d have access to airbending and the Avatar State, given that her spiritual state would be basically what it is at the end of B4. She might try and hide it for a little while, but I don’t think for long (Noatak might get a nasty surprise when he tries to ambush her :D).

It’s a really interesting idea, btw.

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Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

I reblogged this quote, which I had earlier posted in August of 2018—

These erudites seem to me more pitiable than happy, since they are assiduous self-torturers. They change, they interline, they erase something and put it back in, they rewrite the whole thing, after rephrasing a passage they show it to their friends and after all they closet up the manuscript for nine years but without ever satisfying themselves—and this for an empty reward of praise from a mere handful of critics.

—Desiderius Erasmus, "The Praise of Folly" (1510)

—and added:

adjkdf;kajf this call-out remains 100% valid

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Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

In response to this quote, irresistible-revolution said:

agshdjdkdkd WIG

I replied:

lol right?

#pretty rude of erasmus to attack us five hundred years ago

She responded:

that line about locking up a manuscript for years and years where no one can see it…my whole scalp!

I replied:

For me it’s the part about constantly taking things out and putting them back in. Like … wow, Erasmus, that was NOT called for.

Tumblr crosspost (1 May 2020)

I reblogged jubaah's illustration of Tar-Telperiën and said:

#ALL HAIL THE QUEEN #sometimes i just need her on my blog #honestly i love so much about her #her getting precedence over a son bc she was older #her pride #her indifference to elves #everything #i definitely hc her as an aravis type (in the proud and hard but true as steel sense) #but extremely ace #anyway #just ... look at her #she just exudes 'no fucks given' haha so she's a perfect telperiën #and i love her hair!

Tumblr crosspost (2 May 2020)

I have a lot of usernames that I occasionally do something with, but … honestly the best one I've got is tar-telperien.

(With hurinionath and andacielos as the runner-ups.)

#i tried for tar-telperien just on the off chance and then GOT her #i also have tar-silmarien aka WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN #but i think i'm happiest with tar-telperien :) #no slight to hurinionath though

jubaah said:

I still cannot BELIEVE I have nienor and turin-turambar…

I replied:

Haha, good for you!

Tumblr crosspost (3 May 2020)

Every time Denethor bashing showed up on my dash (as on this occasion), I reblogged this quote, which I had originally posted in October 2017:

Denethor was a man of great strength of will, and maintained the integrity of his personality until the final blow of the (apparently) mortal wound of his only surviving son. He was proud, but this was by no mean merely personal: he loved Gondor and its people, and deemed himself appointed by destiny to lead them in this desperate time. And in second place the Anor-stone was his by right, and nothing but expediency was against his use of it in his grave anxieties.

—JRR Tolkien, Unfinished Tales

Tumblr crosspost (3 May 2020)

Sometimes I still think about how Tar-Ancalimë’s son is named Anárion, “son of the sun,” and while (iirc) we don’t know if it’s his birth name or a regnal name, it’s pretty amazing in either case. I mean, it’s very probably:

1) Ancalimë had a baby and was like … hm, I am basically the sun. Anárion it is!

or

2) Anárion decided the name he’d use as one of the most powerful rulers on the earth would be a reference to how cool his mother was.

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Tumblr crosspost (3 May 2020)

I reblogged this post from Oct 2018—

One of the weirder aspects of Tolkien fandom wrt LOTR is the absolute fixation on descent from Elros.

Of course there are contexts where it matters (Elrond!), but Tolkien was quite clear that obsession with descent from Elros was a Númenórean mistake. I mean, morally, but also because within a few generations, their belief in Elrosian difference was factually incorrect. That was long, long, long, longgggg before LOTR.

And yet.

—and added:

#another 'aragorn is more special than ANYONE bc he's descended from elros' was also on my dash #/sighs #elrosian and non-elrosian differences among númenóreans disappeared thousands of years before lotr #also elros has so many descendants in earlier generations that they couldn't fit on one chart #and we're talking thousands and thousands of years after that #it is very probable that all dúnedain and all of their descendants are descended from elros #the stewards are #the princes of dol amroth probably are #which means that théoden and his sisters and all of their children probably are #i've ranted about this before but ... well argh #i like elros as far as possible but... c'mon #(also he had many descendants who were. let's say. not stellar people)

Tumblr crosspost (3 May 2020)

Look, just because one work executed a trope well doesn’t mean that theirs is the only way the trope can or should be executed. Different characters can fall into the same or overlapping tropes without needing to imitate a specific one that’s widely considered to be good. Different arcs that can be roughly categorized together don’t need to be developed in the same way.

It feels like “different characters can be good in different ways, even when they touch on similar tropes” is an incredibly obvious thing to say. But I keep seeing these incessant posts about how The Problem with XYZ is that it didn’t follow the exact beats of [Thing Poster Likes], or how people write X Trope but they don’t do it the way that [Thing Poster Likes] did, and it is therefore Bad.

There is nothing so good that it should form the sole standard of comparison for every other work that deals in any of the same tropes. No, there are no exceptions.

Comparisons are going to arise when tropes are shared, sure; that’s natural enough. But it’s one thing to say that Thing A handled a trope well and is good, while Thing B handled the shared trope poorly and is bad. It’s another matter to say that Thing B is bad because it dared to diverge from Thing A’s take, which is the One True Model that all others must follow. Difference is not inherently bad!!!

Tumblr crosspost (3 May 2020)

I reblogged a post about the types of characters we consistently fixate on, and added:

#lewis's description of aravis as proud hard and true as steel pretty well epitomizes my number one type #and powerful and ostensibly good-natured hero full of conviction who could totally tip over into dangerous ruthlessness #is number two #if there's anything that unifies them it's that these are people who could genuinely be terrors if they took the brakes off #they have the capacity in both power and temperament (however that manifests) #and some of that capacity can bleed through #but it's largely under control - through restraining it or redirecting it - and they end up as instead incredibly /good/ people #though i've certainly also loved villains who start like that but ultimately do lose control of that side

Tumblr crosspost (4 May 2020)

Éowyn is very much a woman of the Rohirrim and firmly identifies herself as one, which is important and sometimes overlooked in odd ways.

But the whole idea that she’d be !!!!! at seeing anyone with Númenórean or Elvish blood is so weird to me. Like … presumably she’s seen her reflection?

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Tumblr crosspost (5 May 2020)

adjfk;af trying to think up a justification for my 17th cent literature list other than “well, I’ve got a 16th list and an 18th list and it felt weird to skip over a whole century”

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Tumblr crosspost (5 May 2020)

I reblogged a selection of quotes from various poets about the sea, and added:

#tolkien ghost-wrote this

Tumblr crosspost (6 May 2020)

It’s kind of amazing how, in FOTR, Boromir:

• is introduced as some guy from the south
• is told that his people are decayed, weak, and racially impure
• hears unjust suspicions of their smaller ally
• is later described as one of two men, with the clarification that the other one, Aragorn, is ‘of the folk of Westernesse,’ as if Boromir isn’t
• has the Ring eating at him
• is remembered, by someone who only knew him during this period, as having a “kindly manner”

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Tumblr crosspost (9 May 2020)

One of the interesting things about Théoden’s restriction on entry of any non-Gondorian who doesn’t speak the language of the Mark (assuming I recall it correctly) is that he is probably not a native speaker, himself.

Before Théoden was born, his father Thengel noped out of Rohan, went to serve the Steward in Gondor, married a high-born Gondorian lady, and had three children there, including Théoden. Thengel only reluctantly returned to Rohan when the Rohirrim summoned him to take up the crown. (We don’t know what Morwen, Théoden’s mother, thought about it, but she was the one who had to leave her homeland for a place where her husband didn’t want to go even to be king.) Théoden would have spent his early years with Westron and Sindarin around him, not Markish (or whatever they call it).

It’s possible that Thengel saw to it that his elder daughters and Théoden were taught the language of the place they would one day return to, but not at all certain. We know that Thengel insisted on “the speech of Gondor” being used in his house as King of Rohan, which seems a frankly extraordinary thing to do (linguistic use is very politically loaded! especially in Middle-earth!). If he insisted on the use of Westron or Sindarin in Meduseld, it doesn’t really seem likely to me that he’d have used Markish in Gondor.

Théoden was still a small child when the family went to Rohan (he had two more sisters born in Rohan, including his beloved Théodwyn, Éomer and Éowyn’s mother). He would have learned Markish once there, certainly, and it was presumably the younger girls’ native language. It’s not that he doesn’t speak it himself! But it is interesting that the language that he himself would have had to learn becomes the marker of who authentically belongs in the Mark.

Of course, this policy is partly (perhaps mostly) due to Gríma’s influence. But nevertheless, Théoden is so much King of Rohan, in many ways an embodiment of the Rohirrim in the wider narrative, and his court seems deeply rooted in the culture of Rohan in marked contrast to Thengel’s.

And yet Théoden was born in Gondor to a Gondorian Dúnadan and a prince who assimilates into Gondorian culture to such a degree that he doesn’t want to be king of his own people. I just … wonder about what Théoden even thought of the whole situation, and what led to the choices he made about how he would rule Rohan, and how it impacted his relationship with, say, Rohan-born Théodwyn and the upbringing of her children as well as his own.

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Tumblr crosspost (10 May 2020)

Re: Théoden, my headcanon is that he was always something of a people person, apart from the period of Wormtongue’s sway over him. He was aware of how people regarded Thengel: often with admiration, but sometimes with a certain ambivalence, too.

There were those among the Rohirrim who felt that Thengel didn’t quite belong to them, that he didn’t value their ways and history and language as he did Gondor’s. And, well, they weren’t entirely wrong. Théoden was very conscious of both these things, and of their reservations about him: that he would be as Thengel again but more so, with Gondor in his earliest memories and his blood. They respected Gondor, but as a noble and faithful ally with their own ways and customs, not superiors to be imitated.

Théoden himself loved his father as a man and a king, and didn’t breathe a word of judgment—but in the secrecy of his heart, he meant to be a different sort of king when his time came, a true lord of the Eorlingas, down to the bone.

Tumblr crosspost (10 May 2020)

diocletianscabbagefarm replied to this post:

fun trivia but apparently only Theoden spoke Sindarin and Gondorian, but not rohirric

I replied:

I don’t remember Tolkien ever saying that tbh. Théoden instituted a requirement that every person allowed entry to Rohan had to speak the language of the Mark (we don’t know what it’s called), unless they were Gondorian.

Tumblr crosspost (11 May 2020)

Voice acting is so surreal. I’m playing GW2 and at the phase where I deeply resent one of the main characters … but his VA voiced one of my favourite characters from Avatar and I’m just aghhhhh.

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