Anghraine

An anon said (in clear response to this rant):

A big part of the reason that I don't read Forced Marriage P&P fic is because of the almost universal assumption that a pre-Hunsford Darcy would tyrannize Elizabeth, when it's pretty clear from the text that we're supposed to see his relationship with Georgiana (where his affection is always emphasised) and Mrs Reynold's glowing commendation (sweetest-tempered, never had a cross word, etc.) as proof that he's literally the opposite of a tyrant in how he interacts with people.

I replied:

Yes, exactly!

Fans and academics both tend to focus overwhelmingly on what the Pemberley scenes reveal about how Darcy has changed, but Austen dedicates a significant amount of time and space to revealing that Darcy was already different than Elizabeth thought.

Tagged: #tyrannical alpha male darcy is the worst

[ETA 4/2/2024: you can probably guess this, but if you're not particularly familiar with P&P fandom, my anon was referring to a fic trope common to P&P fics called FMS or "Forced Marriage Scenario." This is a fairly specific and formalized genre of P&P fanfic where Elizabeth and Darcy (usually before either has had their character development) are forced into marriage for reasons and they have to learn and grow and fall in love in that context. The reason why they're forced to marry can vary from something relatively believable to comically ludicrous, but it's pretty much always a fairly thin pretext to get them married off before they have matured. At least back when I still read these, FMS fics tended to depict Darcy as much more domineering and "alpha" and generally awful than canon Darcy—most often he is entirely unrecognizable in pretty much the exact way this anon was describing, yet still somehow framed as the only one for Elizabeth.

There are, or were, gentler FMS-adjacent tropes where the appeal is similar, but the author tries to sand down the problematic aspects of it, like AUs where Elizabeth accepts Darcy at Hunsford or shortly thereafter because of [pretext] and you still get the "getting to know each other in the context of engagement/marriage" aspect, but it's voluntary. I do get the appeal of the FMS and its various sister tropes—as a kid, I actually thought it was what was going to happen in P&P itself and was shocked!!!! that they got together in such a different way. But in practice, it's really difficult to manage this trope with P&P in a way that a) makes sense for Elizabeth, b) doesn't make Darcy a monster, c) doesn't fall into weird gender essentialist heteronormative shit, and d) doesn't completely lose the edge. Back in 2006, I was attempting a take on this with Such Terms of Cordiality that completely got rid of the consent issues by having Darcy and Elizabeth meet on much better terms, fall into a sort of calf love that would lead them to voluntarily marrying before they'd had their character arcs, and meant to focus on their clashes and growth within their marriage—but tbh I got distracted by subplots and wandered off.]

I talked a few days ago, under f-lock, about some painful RL experiences around being perceived as deeply boring and incapable of feeling pain (or feeling most emotions, really). And I wanted to make an addendum to that, one that I don’t think really needs the f-lock.

I’ve made many complaints about various fandoms + multifandom spaces and trends over the years, and I still consider most of those complaints valid. Nevertheless, fandom has typically been a much less bleak environment for me.

If someone in fandom finds me boring, they usually do not tell me so, or treat me in a way that makes this apparent. They simply don’t interact with me. And people who do follow me or interact with me don’t do it because of my family’s involvement, or because I’m a package deal with more interesting/attractive/charismatic friends, or because of some other figure in my meatspace life at all. In fandom, none of that matters. At least, it hasn't for me.

Even the followers who don’t particularly care about me as a person are following me for my own sake in some capacity, rather than for the sake of someone else. Sure, some of these will leave if I get super into something they find dull, or stop posting or whatnot, but their interest in my opinions about the thing they’re into is still about my opinions of that thing, or how I express my opinions, or something about my online persona.

And there are also people who don’t share my preoccupation with a current fixation, or don’t find my take on it interesting, and are thus kind of bored, but they like me personally enough to stick around, anyway. This doesn’t usually trigger my “oh no I’m being boring” issues, because if they’re invested enough to stay, despite disinterest in my current thing, they’re evidently still engaged at some level with me.

Beyond that, people in fandom don’t typically lecture me on my general demeanor. It’s happened, but not often. In fact, while fellow fans sometimes express respect for my—let’s say, often rather severe manner of presenting myself and my opinions, they don’t generally act like it is required of me to be that way or that it somehow precludes a capacity to feel. We’re all in fandom because we feel things!

And that’s been very powerful for me. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was well into my 20s, while I’ve been directly or indirectly excluded or distanced from many RL social circles ever since I was a child. I’ve certainly been treated as if I and the things I care about are objectively dull and emotionally unengaging.

But throughout my entire adult life, there has always been one glaring exception to this. There really was a social sphere in which my experience of others and of myself could be different. There was fandom.

For all of online fandom’s many, many flaws, this has been part of my experience of it from even before I was an adult—in fact, from the time that I made my first post. At the time, I was extremely shy and anxious, so I lurked a lot, and was very worried about breaking some rule somewhere if I actually said anything on the big scary Internet. But I had feelings. I was in high school and I had such feelings.

Many of these were Pride and Prejudice feelings. In high school, I started collecting copies of P&P just so I could read the introductions/editorial content and see what other people thought about it, since nobody I knew IRL cared about it the way I did. This was both my first step into academia proper and a sort of proto-fannish activity. But my Austen feelings were not actually the ones that propelled me into breaking my self-imposed Internet silence and detachment from online communities. A lot of Austen fandom didn’t really seem like my people. I was also into Harry Potter, but HP fandom similarly did not seem like my people.

Actually, speaking of boring other people, I’m going to be really self-indulgent and rewind even further for THE FULL SAGA of what brought me into fandom.

( Read more... )

heckofabecca responded to this post:

can you explain? ><

I replied:

Annabella Milbanke responded to P&P by saying something to the effect of “the interest is very strong, especially for Mr Darcy.” She also later married Lord Byron and had a terrible marriage. Scholars (and others) occasionally suggest that she liked P&P/Darcy for the same reasons that she was attracted to Byron (though that itself is a whole complicated issue). I think doing that is super gross.

2020 fic writing post!

2020 was not my most productive year, but apart from the general state of 2020, I had a lot to do for my PhD and sleeping problems, so … /shrug. Anyway, this year—

- I got inspired by my “eh” feelings about TROS to outline a big chunk of my f!Luke series, and after (I think) four years of no updates, wrote some eighteen and a half chapters on The Jedi and the Sith Lord in something like six weeks. It’s now 67k.

- I updated my very niche Guild Wars 2 fic, pro patria, a kind of fragmented AU in which the “Missing Sister” option to say that the PC/Deborah are proud Ascalonians has a major effect on the PC’s character and story. I got Althea through a bunch of Ebonhawke/Fields of Ruin stuff, which was 50% of the motivation for writing it at all. It’s now at 89k.

- I finally finished the gift of men, the Eldarion/Faramir-and-Éowyn’s-daughter fic that has been rolling around my brain/Google Drive for years. It’s only a little over 1k, but I was really glad to get it finished and posted.

- I was overpowered with Ascalon/fuck the Searing feelings while playing the original Guild Wars and wrote a fic about the Prophecies PC’s last day (creatively called the last day) before the Searing. It’s also just over 1k and almost nobody read it, but it was really for me, so that’s okay.

- I updated tolerably well acquainted, my canon-compliant book-only P&P fic about how Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy from Pemberley onwards. Lydia just ran off with Wickham and Elizabeth reunited with Jane; I wrote about half of another chapter, but didn’t finish it. The fic as a whole is now 27k, which is kind of astounding to me tbh.

- I’d always thought of my Éowyn-meets-f!Faramir fic, we also are daughters of the great, as a one-shot, but got inspired by their canon scenes to take it further … and then got waylaid by Merry feelings? I don’t know. I also wrote about half of another chapter of this one before exams struck, so that’s partly done. I’d really like to get to the hair mingling scene! Someday. It’s 4800 words.

- I haven’t posted much of it (just this) or named it, but I started a fic about Darcy’s family (canonical and head-canonical) reacting to his engagement to Elizabeth/Elizabeth herself. It’s part of the tolerably well acquainted continuity, I think, and a kind of fun experiment with different voices. It’s 1500 words so far.

- I started a fic about Faramir’s birth and early childhood, but it stalled partway through dealing with tiny Faramir’s first dream of Númenor. I might get back to it someday. It’s 1300 words.

- I also brainstormed a Star Wars/Dungeons and Dragons fusion where Anakin is an aasimar (as are Luke and Leia), but the composite setting drifted far enough from either that it became an original fic in a universe powered by the blessings/curses of the gods. It follows a sorceress of the god of the Void who takes on the care of a troubled demigoddess. I wrote a ton of background material, but only 1200 words of actual fic.

- After only cutting things out and fixing the gaps for years, I wrote two full chapters of my original fantasy novel; I’ve decided to take out a big chunk of one of them, but even so, it’s very satisfying, and (after a lot of cuts) brought the whole thing to 72k.

And I think that’s everything!

One of the things I love about Darcy canonically having to work himself up to talking to Elizabeth when he first gets interested in her is that … honestly, it’s not that his feelings for her at that point are all that strong.

I mean, it takes him time to get there! He’ll later say that falling in love with her happened gradually. He’s just kind of reluctantly intrigued when he has the genius idea that maybe listening to her talk to other people will make it easier to talk to her himself. A great passion for Elizabeth isn’t making him like that; his own personality is.

There are also later events and conversations that suggest he is genuinely awkward and uneasy around people he doesn’t know well or isn’t comfortable with, and a few occasions when he talks about jarring people in general. Those aside, though, his “what if … I just listened to her talk …?” lightbulb moment always has a special awkward turtleduck charm for me.

And it’s all the more delightful because he is otherwise a stubborn, straightforward, frequently arrogant human being. But when he’s out of his depth, he’s really out of his depth, even when he’s trying harder. And even then, Austen is insistent on this as a character detail alongside his ultra-competence in so many other ways and … what a fave!! <3

Tagged: #have i mentioned lately that i love book!darcy a LOT??? (she says after having monologued about him for 15 years) #and it's always kind of amazing that he's been so influential and there are so many characters like him but also ... they aren't really? #the blend of assurance and awkwardness is just really hard to carry off imo and she does it /so/ well #where i think a lot of derivative and adaptational versions end up skewing strongly one way or the other #anghraine's meta #sorta #since i don't have a tag for just throwing squee at the page :P #ALSO this is why elizabeth going from 'maybe you should just try :) harder :)))' to trying to shield him is always so dear to me #like #if he's not really awkward and uncomfortable Deep Down then it makes that part of her arc really odd and disconcerting #but if he needs to actually put some effort into social things AND they're genuinely difficult and draining for him #then it becomes this sweet mutuality thing and one of my top fave things about the whole ship #:)

A fic meme, grabbed fromshadaras!

Name:

Anghraine / Elizabeth

Fandoms:

Tolkien, mainly LOTR; Austen, mainly Darcy/Elizabeth; Star Wars, mainly Skywalkers and Jyn/Cassian

Where you post:

Wherever I happen to be active, but also at AO3 under anghraine.

Most popular multi-chapter fic:

Season of Courtship, the Darcy/Elizabeth engagement fic I wrote 15 years ago (but revised … maybe 7-8 years ago?). It was surpassed for a long time by some other fics, but picked up a ton of kudos/bookmarks this year for some reason, so now it’s well ahead of the rest in both bookmarks and kudos. [ETA 3/17/2024: the gap has only widened since then, idk why.]

Favorite story you’ve written so far:

That’s hard to say … I’ve written a lot. In some ways, my short P&P sequel The Letters of Elizabeth Darcy, 1796-1798 will always be a fave because it came out so closely to what I wanted it to be. But the dearest to my heart are probably always going to be my Lucy Skywalker series starring f!Luke, and my f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth fic, First Impressions.

Fic you were nervous to post:

Hmm. Perhaps Better Choice, my very flawed Faramir-goes-to-Rivendell fic, which is the first fic I posted anywhere. I thought of we get dark, only to shine because of its many taboos, but Borgias fandom was so nice that I don’t think I much worried about it, beyond hoping people would read it. IDK … I’m a very nervous person, and I definitely am on the edge of my seat after I post a fic, but I don’t think I’m usually nervous about posting fics in this sense.

How you choose your titles

They’re usually general statements of what the fic is about (“Redemption,” “Anomaly,” The Jedi and the Sith Lord), references to a quote from the canon (Season of Courtship, tolerably well acquainted), or excerpts from songs (“But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell,” “like a storm in the desert”).

Do you outline?

Sometimes—I have some things that just start with an idea, others where it’s pretty clear in my head, but I ultimately work best when I have the structure and some details all sketched out.

Complete fics:

169, says AO3. Mostly one-shots, of course.

In progress:

Posted WIPs that I have active plans to continue at this time: once I’m writing fic again—Lucy Skywalker, tolerably well acquainted, and Fíriel (f!Faramir) are at the top of my list!

Posted WIPs that I have given up on: I’m terrible at really giving up on things, tbh. I always have scraps that I poke at and things like that. Such Terms of Cordiality is vanishingly unlikely, though.

Exchange fics due soon/unrevealed: none. I had the sense (speaking for myself) not to do exchanges this year.

WIPs that live in my fanfic folder and are incomplete and who knows when they’ll be finished: not a whole lot, actually, in the sense of things that haven’t been posted. I mostly do post my WIPs. I’ve got the companion fic to my Darcy-Fitzwilliam headcanons in the folder—we’ll see how that goes.

Coming soon/not yet started: hahahaha, nothing. I’ve got quite enough to be going with.

Do you accept prompts: not exactly, these days. I don’t mind them, and if they inspire me, I’m glad to write when I can spare the time, but at this point they don’t usually kickstart me and I just feel vaguely guilty when they do but I don’t have the time/energy, so I don’t actively invite them.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write:

It’s not a story, but there’s a scene in the Fíriel-Éowyn-Merry fic that I’m reallyyyyy looking forward to (though it only has Fíriel and Éowyn in it).

Tagging, if you want to do it: elperian, incognitajones, irresistible-revolution, kaz, ncfan

I’ve talked about this a million times before, but every time I see arguments about which broody adapted Darcys are better, I just think of:

“I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,” said Darcy.

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

Darcy only smiled.

-

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”

“And yours,” he replied, with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”

-

“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.”

He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said.

-

“What think you of books?” said he, smiling.

“Books—Oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings.”

“I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”

-

“It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far.”

As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she understood.

-

“Indeed, Mr Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire—and, give me leave to say, very impolitic too—for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such things may come out as will shock your relations to hear.”

“I am not afraid of you,” said he smilingly.

-

“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.”

-

Elizabeth walked on in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested her—and she beheld a striking resemblance of Mr Darcy, with such a smile over the face as she remembered to have sometimes seen when he looked at her.

-

she sat in misery till Mr Darcy appeared again, when, looking at him, she was a little relieved by his smile.

LET 👏 DARCY 👏 SMILE 👏

Tagged: #not tight brief smiles either #darcy smiles enough for it to show up in a /painting/ #or at least he used to and still does around elizabeth #yes he's a fundamentally serious person but not anywhere near to the degree of the adaptations #thanks for coming to my talk and goodbye

I reblogged a meme asking us (all of fandom-oriented Tumblr, I guess) to reblog with a quote from our favorite character in the tags, without saying the character's name. I added:

#i will only add god bless you

[ETA 3/9/2024: I am going to tag it correctly on DW for organizational purposes and because lbr you all know who my fave is.]

In response to this post, kungfunurse said:

That sounds super fun - where can I find that to listen to?

I replied:

https://youtu.be/B1eTVI7oScw

And elperian said:

the only p&p I know you to love unequivocally is the original :P

I replied:

this is very true

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