anghraine

I don't even recall who posted this, but apparently at Worldcon, Seanan McGuire presented this simple flowchart to explain what is and is not fanfic:

I have no grievance with McGuire in general, but this is both elegant and quite wrong, IMO. Sorry, my Austen fanfic is very much fanfic (and there's no need to give the P&P "variations" industry any more delusions of grandeur than it already has, lol—those are very much fanfic, too). Some of my fics could also be considered re-imaginings or retellings—First Impressions is the obvious example as a deliberate retelling of P&P with genderswapped leads, rather than a true what-if AU—but they are absolutely fanfic. They're fiction written as a form of fan expression.

Sometimes there is a real sense of difference between fiction of this kind, especially when written in a fandom context that is clearly informed by or in dialogue with other fanworks, wider trends in the fandom or in online fandom in general, etc vs some literary re-imaginings that interrogate the source material but are not really fannish (not even in a fan hatred way). So it's not that I think all fiction of this kind should be defined as fanfic. I think that has to do with the conditions of creation rather than the novelty of the cast, setting, and/or plot. But the defining artistic criteria of fanfic as a form or genre are not determined by externally imposed legal codes or the opinion of the source material's author.

There have been many attempts to develop an authoritative definition for fanfic that ultimately comes down to "can you legally make money off it?" But that is not what fanfic is, and I'm deeply skeptical of conceptualizing genre, any genre, based on whether or when it can be sold. A lot of licensed IP writers seem very invested in distinguishing their work from fanfic—sometimes claiming it's not about superiority (sure, Jan), but it's just very important to them that they not be perceived as fanfic writers. But I'd argue that what makes licensed work fanfic or not isn't actually the license, or it being a professional job for money, but the approach of the work in question. Some IP writers are very much fans and clearly approached the licensed work as a chance to write fanfic about some part of canon they're super into with authorization from a parent company or something (various Star Trek writers seem to be very much of this type, say). Others don't really seem to be approaching their work as a form of fan expression, which is not morally wrong in any way, but definitely different. Going back to P&P, there are some takes that I wouldn't really consider fanfic (unlike the variation industry), just because the authors don't seem to be writing as fans but for some other goal. So you sometimes get P&P sequels that are really different from the fanfic—more literary in some ways, but often less engaged with Pride and Prejudice or its adaptations than the fanfic tends to be and prone to little canon errors that fans don't usually make. It's a little hard to describe but you can usually tell.

In any case: some licensed IP work is fanfic and acknowledged as such by the authors, while some isn't; some fanfic is based on source material that is long out of copyright (and some other things based on the same or similar sources isn't fanfic), and the time since publication does not merit a specific respectable distinction from, idk, normie fanfic by Marvel slash superfans or whoever is the fannish target du jour.

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heget responded to this post:

my off-the-cuff review: costumes and set great, acting and some scenes good, felt that the script didn't give some plots the 'weight/space' they needed maybe?

[ETA 7/11/2024: I still haven't seen it, so I can't judge properly!]

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An anon asked:

Have you seen emma 2020 yet? I'm dying to know your take on it haha

I replied:

I haven’t, sorry!

I’d like to say that it’s the PhD taking up too much of my time, but … lbr, it’s actually that I’ve been watching cartoons for seven-year-olds.

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I've never been the audience for "humorous headcanons that don't quite make sense as part of the joke", and I know that my sense of humor is even more muted than usual because of RL stresses. But even before that, I've been put off by this increasingly common genre of fandom joke post that's like ... "I don't remember/know the canon and I'm not going to check but wouldn't it be hilarious if [thing contradicted by about seven different elements of the story]" that then becomes some inescapably viral fanon. Sometimes the OPs don't acknowledge being unfamiliar with the story (though often they do!), but it's usually fairly clear regardless, and the OPs tend to be aggressively indifferent to the story they're ostensibly talking about. They're not so much in the fandom for that thing as in social media fandom, and it feels like the snarky, joking aspect of these headcanons is partly there to justify neither knowing or caring about the story they're talking about.

Additionally, it seems likes there's really no way to interact with this approach that isn't "yep, hilarious, this is canon to me now" or pedantic nitpicking. I don't even add the pedantic nitpicking in most of these, but some fandoms are more prone to it, and when the OP of this kind of post acknowledges the responses at all, it'll generally be with some tongue-in-cheek "explanation" of why their headcanon actually does work that makes no more sense in terms of the story, but which is presumably funny, and forceful enough to be convincing if you're not particularly into the fandom. Some of them, in fairness, will admit that they simply forgot or don't know the story that well and just thought it'd be funny, or "I choose to reject X because my headcanon is funnier, but I know it's there." But more often, I see half-mocking "actually I'm right [but you're a humorless asshole if you actually engage in any way other than agreement]" defenses.

Of course, nobody appointed me god empress of fandom or anything. There's nothing wrong per se with people making posts without being obsessively into the original material or enjoying fandom in a way I don't. But that form of defensive humor really does not work for me. And there's something about an approach to fandom that's dominated by snide, viral BNF humor that doesn't need to make any sense in terms of what it's ostensibly about, that doesn't even need its audience or author to know what it's about beyond the vaguest pop culture osmosis/online memes and is better if they don't, that I find both obnoxious and just kind of ... sad, I guess? I didn't come into fandom in the truly early days, but it was early enough that everyone I encountered had intense feelings about some aspect of the thing they personally had read or seen or heard. Even people with incredibly bad takes seemed to generally be an emotionally invested fan or hater of the actual story.

( Read more... )

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I am pretty sure I stole this from

meridian_rose! I do love me a fic meme :D

Rules: go to your AO3 account and find the following:

1. What rating do you write most of your fics under?

Overwhelmingly general, at 165 out of 222 fics. This isn't that surprising—maybe a bit more than I expected, but I can be a bit skittish about romance for someone who likes it a lot.

2. What are your top three fandoms?

In a totally shocking twist: Star Wars, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, and Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien. The gap between the first two (tied at 67 fics each) and LOTR (27) is pretty vast, and the "real" #3 was the fandom tag for the SW original trilogy specifically. I know I often feel uncomfortable writing Tolkien fic, much more than Austen or SW, despite writing so much meta about Middle-earth, so again, this isn't a big surprise.

3. What is the top character you write about?

I am extremely sure this one is going to be Darcy!

Yup, it was! He's tagged in 53 fics to Elizabeth's 43, with Luke and Leia following closely at 39 and 34.

4. What are the top three pairings you write about?

The first is, of course, Darcy/Elizabeth, the unbeatable victor of all such contests when it comes to me. It has twenty more fics than the runner-up, which of course is Jyn/Cassian (a big gap, though Darcy/Elizabeth has the advantage of very considerable seniority; I wrote my first D/E fic in 2005, while Jyn and Cassian didn't even exist until 2016). The third most-common romantic pairing in my fics is ... honestly, I think it's got to be Cesare/Lucrezia from The Borgias. I know, I know! And yup, it's got 11 fics, trailing behind platonic Luke and Leia fics (12), Jyn/Cassian (19), and Darcy/Elizabeth (39).

5. What are the top three additional tags?

I wondered if the "always a different sex" tag would hit the top three, but let's see ... actually, no! It's only at #4, following from three rather boring winners. My most common additional tag is "Canon Compliant" (71), "One Shot" (66), and "Drabble" (39). I'm guessing there is quite a lot of overlap between these. The only specific premises or subjects to appear in any of the top ten are the genderbending tags (these days I typically use "Always A Different Sex" but I used to use the vaguer "Gender Changes" tag) and the "Brother-Sister Relationships" tag. If there isn't overlap between the two genderbending tags, together they would actually beat out "Drabble" (the usual tag has 37 fics and the old one 14).

6. Did any of this surprise you?

LOL, not really. I am what I am.

Tagging:

croclock,

alias_sqbr,

sixbeforelunch,

elperian,

brynnmclean,

heckofabecca,

incognitajones, and

lizbee, if any of you want to do it!

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Someone on Tumblr left a complaint on one of my posts, in which they went on about how the shy Darcy reading I was discussing (as wrong, but understandable) is so objectionable because it means Elizabeth is not just very mistaken about him, but mistaken about "a poor little shy/autistic man."

Damn, my days of discovering that people who throw fits about autistic Darcy headcanons usually turn out to be seriously gross about autism are certainly reaching a middle.

(My post and the post that inspired it were not about my autistic!Darcy headcanon and did not mention it in any way.)

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Rambling about family relationships based on my research for my PhD exams (16th- to 18th-century British literature):

One of the things that came up in my reading for my exams was, inevitably, ~the rise of the companionate marriage~. The usual framing is often over-simplistic and very heterocentric; people sometimes talk as if there was no concept of marriage involving romantic ties (sometimes even exclusive romantic ties!) until the 17th/18th century or something.

That said, IMO there’s something to it, at least in England. As someone who had mostly done research in the 18th and earlier 19th centuries, 16th-century takes on marriage often sound like they come from Earth 2. Over time, there’s more and more emphasis on the ties of marriage, companionship, and parenthood in cultural discourse, with other family relationships increasingly subordinated to those, even while ideas from earlier periods about the importance of those other family relationships persisted in some ways.

Like, there was a lot of talk about how brothers were supposed to care for the interests of their siblings, especially their unmarried sisters, but there’s also a lot of talk about how that was increasingly not happening, and how the ties between brothers and sisters were becoming less important and less reliable as a "net" for unmarried women.

Men increasingly resented their sisters for taking resources that would otherwise go to their wives and children, or simply denied them meaningful resources altogether in favor of focusing on their own wives/children. It was a really well-established dynamic by the time that Wollstonecraft wrote about it in Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Austen in Sense and Sensibility.

One of the things that S&S highlights is that John and Fanny Dashwood’s son does not need the resources that are denied to John’s sisters. He already has a comfortable separate inheritance. John prioritizes Fanny and Harry over his sisters both because of his character and because doing so had become very culturally normalized by then.

By the 20th century (at least in the UK and US), people prioritizing their spouses and children over their siblings or other connections was and is often going to seem "well, of course they would." But the degree to which that is the case is really influenced by cultural norms and expectations. Going back to Austen (surprise), she has an intriguing passage about it that speaks to the shifts in how the sibling tie was seen and experienced:

An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is so.—Fraternal love, sometimes almost every thing, is at others worse than nothing.

I don’t even have siblings (sort of surrogate siblings, but not people I was actually brought up with), but I do find the evolution and melancholy over this really interesting. And I do think that a lot of the, hmm, enthusiasm over the rise of the “companionate marriage” tends to ignore the cost of it.

Tagged: #i am pretty sure this is why austen keeps returning to darcy's sense of responsibility and deep affection for his sister #and why elizabeth thinks his way of talking about georgiana should have told her about his character #i've seen people be like 'just bc you care about your own family members doesn't mean you're a good person wtf' about that #but it was a big deal at the time! #wickham brings it up as something that people in general praise darcy for too #obviously this was of really immediate concern for austen herself #but plenty of people write about it over the years #and it's just ... idk #complicated

[ETA 5/28/2024: this is actually extremely relevant to my dissertation and something I was literally just writing about today!]

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It feels a bit silly to measure time by fanfic, but according to AO3, it’s been over ten and a half years (!!!!!!!!!) since I finished First Impressions.

I’m just … it doesn’t feel recent, but it certainly doesn’t feel like that long, yet it was one of the last things I did in my all-Austen-fandom-all-the-time phase, before I jumped into SW fandom. And my earliest SW fics are ten years old now (somehow???).

But idk, it seems so strange.

Tagged: #my birthday is in ten days and i'm both looking forward to it and feeling a bit weird about it this year #idk i feel like i should be more ~accomplished at this point in my life #or more something #maybe because the things people point to as accomplishments whenever i mention it #are pretty far back too #in any case objective lengths of time just don't match up with how the passage of time feels and it's weird #might be different if my best friend were here (he was born 11 days after me) but we haven't seen each other for over a year #/sigh

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kungfunurse said:

Hiya! So I’m re-reading S&S (as one does) and I’ve got a couple of questions. 1) Do you think Mr. Palmer is on the autistic spectrum? The way he misses most social cues and whatnot - idk. And 2) Would it have been normal at the time for Marianne to go months without hearing from Willoughby and still not suspect that he’s lost interest, or was this another example of her being lost in fantasy? Thanks!!

I replied:

1) I honestly don’t know. I haven’t read S&S in a long time, so it’s hard to say. I’ll keep an eye out next time, though!

2) Willoughby couldn’t write openly to Marianne without raising very serious general expectations, so that’s probably how she justifies his silence to herself.

As a sidenote, this is why Darcy hand-delivers his letter to Elizabeth—it would be exceptionally awkward for her if he sent a letter. It’s also significant that the Gardiners wonder if he’s going to send a letter/note after Elizabeth when they leave Pemberley—they’re guessing that Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship has advanced much further than it really has.

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I've got a lot of P&P hills to die on, but two ideas I will absolutely reject to the end of time:

1. Darcy or Elizabeth has a redemption arc.

Character growth is not redemption. Even while depicting their parallel character arcs, Austen emphasizes the extent to which they remain essentially the same people in terms of their basic flaws (e.g. Elizabeth's continued misjudgments via reductive schemas, Darcy's cold standoffishness upon his return to Hertfordshire), but also that they were always unusually good people despite their fuck-ups and overall arcs of improvement.

2. Darcy/Elizabeth is enemies to lovers.

There's a window of time when Elizabeth genuinely hates Darcy, though even then I don't think she regards him as her enemy. Darcy does not ever hate her or regard her as an enemy, he just initially doesn't like her or find her attractive. One-sided veiled hostility towards a social acquaintance is not enemies to lovers material, sorry.

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In response to this post,

elperian said:

there is that line where jane says ‘nothing could give either bingley or myself more delight. but we considered it, we talked of [lizzy and darcy] as impossible.’ so they do have a textual convo offscreen - but it’s about l/d which is funny in its own way

I replied:

Yeah, that’s what I meant when I said that it’s not that they don’t speak to each other in-story—they must have spoken on numerous occasions, of course, including those ones. It’s that Austen doesn’t bother showing any of those conversations in dialogue (unless I’m misremembering), which I think is fairly suggestive about the novel’s priorities.

rorylgilmore responded [on 5 Jan 2023]:

#same. i don't get it #i like the character of jane #but i'm confused whenever p&p is made to be about the two sisters and their romances as if it was s&s #(yet another reason i'm not on board with grouping all austen novels together) #we don't know enough about jane/bingley to be as invested (from my perspective at least) #still to each their own

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I'm taking a brief break from my dissertation to ... uh, amuse myself by figuring out my readers' ranking of my genderbending fics on AO3.

Rules I'm applying: 1) I'm only including fic verses that are collectively at least 2000 words long because, well, I do have to go back to the diss, 2) verses comprised of multiple fics are ranked according to either the popularity of the series as a whole or the most popular individual fic (depending on which is higher; not combining them because there's a lot of overlap), 3) I'm considering both bookmarks and kudos in my judgment—we'll see if it makes a difference, and 4) I'm ignoring everything with less than 30 kudos and 5 bookmarks.

1. First Impressions | 215 bookmarks | 876 kudos | genderbent characters: Elizabeth Bennet (-> Henry Bennet) and Fitzwilliam Darcy (-> Catherine Darcy)

This is a genderswapped retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in its original period (not really a true "what if"). All stats are specifically for the original (completed) 36k fic. It individually beats out every possible stat for every other fic in the series as well as the series as a whole. (Note: The overall series is 44k words long.)

2. Lucy Skywalker series | 163 bookmarks | 406 kudos (The Jedi and the Sith Lord) | genderbent characters: Luke Skywalker (-> Lucy Skywalker)

This is a genderbent AU that mostly, but not completely, sticks to the rails of canon until the end of the ESB timeline, at which point it swerves into the "real" AU. The Jedi and the Sith Lord is the sequel to The Imperial Menace/the ESB plot, and the third fic in the main series, focusing on the consequences of Vader capturing Lucy. It's technically completed at 70k, but only in the sense that it explores what happens to/with Lucy and Vader until the nature of her captivity fundamentally changes, and everything after that will be a separate fic but hasn't been written yet. Although none of the individual fics have as many bookmarks as the series as a whole, my #2, #3, and #4 most bookmarked genderbent fics are all for the Lucyverse. (Note: the overall series is 129k words long.)

3. Love, Pride & Delicacy | 25 bookmarks | 163 kudos | genderbent characters: Fitzwilliam Darcy (-> Catherine Darcy, for convenience)

This is an actual Elizabeth/f!Darcy "what if" femslash AU rather than a retelling, though a slow one—it's still early in the overall story at 25k. It's also placed in the original P&P setting. There is no wider series.

4. The Lady of Gondor | 25 bookmarks | 119 kudos (we also are daughters of the great) | genderbent characters: Faramir (-> Fíriel)

This is a deeply self-indulgent Aragorn/f!Faramir/Éowyn AU, though it's not only a WIP but split into different vaguely related fics (some of which are also WIPs!) about some aspect of the verse in relation to Fíriel. I think the norms of Gondor and Middle-earth make the gender change particularly significant (in some ways more than any other verse), so actual plot and relationship changes tend to be the focus. The kudos are for the specific linked fic, which is a WIP at nearly 5k and the most Éowyn-centric of them. (Note: the overall series is about 9.5k words long.)

5. The Edge of Darkness | 17 bookmarks | 106 kudos | genderbent characters: Tarrlok (-> Taraka)

This is a genderbent f!Tarrlok AU, though told entirely from Noatak/Amon's perspective, and to some extent more about the impact on him than on Taraka herself (though she's extremely important to the fic). Even more than that, the linked fic is focused on the effect of the change on their family dynamics as children, until teenage Noatak leaves her behind per canon. The fic can look like a retelling à la First Impressions, since the basic plot points don't change, but the larger series is on course to swerve into full "what if" territory as well. However, like First Impressions, these stats are all for the completed opening fic (18k) and not the longer WIP series (32k), which is temporarily paused at the point where 37-year-old Taraka openly identifies Amon as Noatak. CW: child abuse.

6. Blood and Fire | 16 bookmarks | 67 kudos | genderbent characters: Tarrlok (-> Taraka) and Noatak (-> Nataka)

This is a dark(er) AU of The Edge of Darkness in which Noatak/Amon is also genderbent, and the bloodbending siblings never separated. Taraka fled home with Nataka back in the day, they only grew closer (...too close), and although Taraka still ended up on the Republic City council, her true loyalty is to Amon. She promptly turns Korra over when Amon shows up, which is where the fic begins; it's told entirely through Korra's attempts to navigate her circumstances as a prisoner of the Equalists. CW: incest, complicated F/F/F dubcon??? emotional bonding kink with occasional violence yet little overt romance and no sex. I am what I am. The stats are for the completed (though deliberately ambiguous) main fic, which is 10k, and not the side fics or the series as a whole (13k).

7. The Queer Rogue One AU | 12 bookmarks | 57 kudos (the words we've both fallen under) | genderbent characters: Cassian Andor (-> Cassia Andor)

This is, on one level, a relatively straightforward genderbent!Cassian AU that is more or less complete at 13k. The underlying concepts are: a) what if my male fave was a hot lesbian and my ship was f/f and b) what if we headcanon every single member of the main team as queer in some capacity :D and c) the SW universe is so blatantly patriarchal in the films that it's a particularly interesting setting for exploring the effects of the gender change on someone like Cassia, a female revolutionary and spy :D :D. It's a little challenging to properly evaluate where it sits wrt stats because I revised the scattered, vaguely connected scraps of the universe into a single fic through both sentence-level revisions and significant additions, but that revision is only on Tumblr (where the link currently goes to, sorry) and my GoogleDrive, not AO3. It's not even a series in my heart! But it is on AO3. Evaluate as you will, but when I finally get around to converting the AO3 version to the correct format this may or may not change. For now this is where it goes by AO3 stats.

8. Daughters of Númenor series | 5 bookmarks | 33 kudos (the voices of the sea) | genderbent characters: all Númenórean throwbacks in LOTR, but specifically Aragorn (-> Aranor), Faramir (-> Míriel), Denethor (-> Andreth), and Imrahil (-> Imraphel)

As might be guessed, this is an AU where every Númenórean throwback mentioned in LOTR is genderbent (in the backstory, this also includes Ivriniel and Finduilas of Dol Amroth, who become Túrin, Prince of Dol Amroth, and Gwindor of Dol Amroth). It's Aranor/Míriel and definitely focused on them despite the broader change (where Arwen is a non-factor for the OT3 in The Lady of Gondor because she went to Valinor with Celebrían, she actually is present in Middle-earth in this series, though unfortunately very straight). While Fíriel in The Lady of Gondor was never expected to be a warrior and gets on reasonably well with Denethor, this AU is more about the broader effects—so even though we rarely see f!Denethor/Andreth, it's significant that she was a trailblazer as a female warrior, loremaster, and ultimately the first female ruler of Gondor, inadvertently laying a foundation that Aranor could build on later (which would have horrified Andreth herself!). The specific fic with the most kudos in the series, linked above, is a nearly 2k fic about the effect of Faramir's canonical visions on Míriel. (Note: the overall series is currently 3k words long.)

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My actual, serious opinion on why Darcy thinks living 50 miles from your family is relatively close while Elizabeth thinks it's far:

Darcy is so profoundly out-of-touch due to wealth, property, influence, his families' status, etc that he truly does not comprehend the complications and expenses of travel for normal people even among the landowning classes. Like, there's all this ink spilled on his status as a gentleman/landowning commoner and what really differentiates a gentleman like Mr Bennet from one like Darcy if anything, and what that would mean in their social context, blah blah. But in pragmatic terms, Darcy's lifestyle and his interests as a landowner have far more in common with the nobility to which he is connected than the typical lifestyles of the gentry.

Darcy talking about 50 miles of good road being nothing in terms of inconvenience and blithely ignoring the costs of either owning or hiring horses, the complications of maintaining a horse if you do own it, the complications around hiring or owning the vehicle drawn by the horse(s), how much more you'd need to pay in services if you don't own the vehicle/horses, what using that vehicle for travel would entail for the workings of the estate or your trade if your family does own it, the cost of stopping along the way, what's lost by the duration of the journey, etc etc. These are things that even fairly well-off landowners like the Bennets would have to deal with in terms of the convenience of travel on "good road" (and also clues us into the prosperity of the Gardiners). These concerns do not even occur to Darcy as problems to consider. This doesn't represent a malicious, personal callousness so much as the genuine obliviousness that arises from extreme socioeconomic inequality. These kinds of problems simply melt away in Darcy's life (read: there are people who make them melt away) and as a result, he truly does not comprehend the impact of prosaic difficulties on the feasibility of something like travel for people like the Lucases or Bennets. The only calculation of convenience that seems to be happening in his head is the effect of distance and road quality on the timing of the journey.

(I think his confusion at people who have family libraries but aren't buying books at this super important literary moment reflects this as well. Books were still quite expensive at the time. He does not appear to grasp that "always buying books" like he does is literally not an option for most people, even in the gentry. He's right about the important literary moment, but "buying things costs money" is a concept that seems not to even enter his calculus.)

My much less serious opinion on why Darcy thinks living 50 miles from your family is "a very easy distance" while Elizabeth thinks it's far:

His landowning family members don't have to think about these problems any more than he does, and if I were Lady Catherine de Bourgh's nephew, I would also consider living 50 mi away from my relatives pretty damn close.

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An anon asked:

Love what you write about Darcy/Elizabeth! Just curious, what do you think of Jane/Bingley? Do you think they would be a good couple?

I replied:

Thank you very much!

For Jane/Bingley, I think it depends on what you mean by “good.” They’ll be … fine, I think? There’s no real reason for them not to be.

But—well, I’m pretty resistant to the versions/interpretations of Jane/Bingley that I see now and then that are like, “well, actually, they’re very compelling as written and it’s suggested they would have a complex, ultra-passionate relationship!” Different people find different things interesting, of course, and have different headcanons, but … we never really see them interact and IIRC they don’t exchange a single line of dialogue. It’s hard for me to latch onto that as anything but plot and characterization device.

( Read more... )

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An anon said:

I keep wondering about this: How/When do you think Darcy and Wickham's friendship ended? A slow disintegration? A sudden realisation. Did it happen at school? At University? How much time did they spend together? I suspect that how audiences interpret this has a big impact on how they see their characters...

I replied:

It’s possible!

Darcy says that he was exposed to Wickham’s real character as a young man, many, many years earlier, which is vague, but gives us a general idea.

It’s worth mentioning that Darcy is also introduced as a “young man” in the present, so his idea of “many, many years” might not be as vast as it sounds. At any rate, this certainly suggests (or states, rather) that he was an adult when he realized what Wickham was, while his father didn't reach the same realization. That gives us another point on the timeline: Mr Darcy was still alive at this point, so Darcy was 23 or younger at the time (making it 5+ years earlier).

To me, it sounds like Wickham went noticeably wrong in early adulthood, not childhood (so not at school), but very early adulthood. It also sounds like they were together pretty often up to that point. Darcy says:

“The vicious propensities—the want of principle, which he [Wickham] was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend [Mr Darcy], could not escape the observation of a young man [Darcy] of nearly the same age with himself [Wickham], and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments.”

So Darcy and Wickham were around each other enough that Darcy considers his observation of Wickham’s true character to have been inevitable, and their estrangement seems to have followed that. My impression is that they were good friends up to around 20, hung out a lot for a time, but that Wickham soon went down a path that Darcy couldn’t follow or accept. It doesn’t sound like it happened all at once to me, to give Darcy chances to see Wickham’s unguarded moments for some unknown length of time, but it also doesn’t sound all that gradual; Darcy seems to have had a clear (and disapproving) idea of what he was seeing.

At the same time, he kept the whole thing secret from his father—perhaps because Mr Darcy was likely in poor health by then, or because he privately hoped it was a phase (even after this point, he “wished” to believe Wickham was sincere about turning his life around), or some other reason. That’s speculation, but I think we do have a rough timeline for when the estrangement happened.

Tagged: #short version: they must have been young men at the time but also under 23 #so not kids but quite young #anghraine's headcanons #a little!

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An anon asked:

I feel like you've probably been asked this before, but which Austen novel do you most recommend? (I've read p&p and really loved it!)

I replied:

My favorite after P&P is Mansfield Park, but a lot of people bounce pretty hard off of it. It’s longer, more sober, much less classically romantic (I ship the heroine and her rival muuuuch more than the main canon couple), and often considered morally messy.

If that’s not your thing, you might want to try Persuasion. It was written towards the end of Austen’s life in the later 1810s, whereas P&P was first written in the mid-1790s, so it’s very different in some ways. It definitely engages with a changing world where P&P really belongs to an earlier era. But it’s interesting, and IMO very touching in its own right.

heckofabecca said:

my 3 favs <3

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I have a longer post in drafts about it, but … one of the things I really enjoy about Austen is that she doesn’t hold back judgment of her characters or even altogether deny them agency (though her fandom sometimes does!), but she also frequently goes out of her way to highlight the experiences that have influenced their development into who they are.

Especially (though not exclusively) when it comes to her main characters, her good people aren’t good because they just had the innate moral fortitude to shrug off their upbringings or the things that have happened to them, which seems to be a lot of people’s idea of goodness. Austen main characters are good people and they’re impacted by their experiences and have qualities (often flaws) that clearly arise more out of upbringing than any essential underlying characteristic. Goodness isn’t just about super-resilience, but neither is experience wholly defining.

It’s not at all restricted to Austen, of course, but even now (…particularly now), it’s so refreshing.

Tagged: #i'm so tired of the resilience narrative or blank slate narrative #and i was thinking of how elizabeth/darcy is one of comparatively few ships i'm really into where the characters #are just about squeaky clean—and i think part of it (aside of their general magnificence lol) is it's not a magic resilience thing at all #she is extremely clear about the ways in which they have been influenced—mostly for the worse—by their experiences #they're allowed to be good AND to be affected by their lives in natural ways #shouldn't be as refreshing as it is but it's one of the things i keep going back for

[ETA 4/30/2024: I was also thinking about Mr Collins, of all people—Austen doesn't justify him in any way, obviously, but also doesn't try to pretend that his upbringing and history aren't what made him who he is. The effects of education, upbringing, and general history on people's characters and morals are a constant preoccupation of her books, IMO.]

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Current Music: Still Within the Sound of My Voice (Linda Ronstadt)

Digging up the links to so many DW tags got me wondering what tags I've actually used more than any others over here. It will probably look different after I'm done cross-posting, and maybe I'll check again then. But as of right now, the evening of 29 April 2024, this is every tag I've used over 100 times since my first post on 19 July 2009—

A. Tags used over 500 times:

1. #site: tumblr

This is far and away my most commonly used tag (used 1739 times), mainly because I've been cross-posting old Tumblr posts to Dreamwidth for years now, but also because I use it for every post referring to basically anything going on at Tumblr as well as the cross-posts.

2. #fandom: star wars

This feels like the "real" #1 tag, used 668 times and beating out all other fandoms (and indeed, everything). I suspect this is partly because I got into SW after making my DW account, but at a time when journal fandom was still quite active, so one of my most intense periods of SW fannishness was based here (or synced with lj, so the content is here as well). And then when you add in SW cross-posts and "overflow" material from Tumblr once Disney SW got kicking, especially after Rogue One, it's enough for the SW tag to jump ahead of every other tag but the Tumblr one.

3. #genre: meta

I periodically whine about feeling like I'm perceived more as a meta writer than a fic writer, even though I care more about fic and derive far more joy from it ... but I've tagged 667 posts with the meta tag and far less with any fic-related tag. In fairness, I originally conceived as "meta" as basically any post talking about a canon or fandom that wasn't fic, no matter how abrupt, so things I wouldn't really describe as "meta" these days fell under the tag until pretty recently. Even so, I've posted a lot more serious meta than fic!

4. #fandom: austen

The only surprise here is that this one wasn't even higher. I've tagged 640 posts with it over the years, and if you've followed me on Tumblr for awhile, you know there's only more coming. I'm pretty sure it'll beat out SW in the end for sheer quantity.

5. #fandom: middle-earth

While the previous three tags are clustered pretty closely together, there's a jump from the 640 Austen posts to a mere 505 Tolkien posts. This is partly because a bunch of my Tolkien stuff never made it onto Dreamwidth (that is, it happened on sites that are now dead or on lj before Dreamwidth was ever founded, or much later, was posted over at Tumblr and much of it hasn't made its way back over here). It's still one of my biggest fandoms, obviously; SW, Austen, and Tolkien will probably always be the Big Three for me.

( Read more... )

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I’ve gotten a bunch of new followers recently and I’m not sure why—but regardless, hi!

[ETA 4/28/2024: I'm cross-posting this one mainly for record-keeping purposes, though I've added Dreamwidth-relevant clarifications in brackets. I've also been recently fixing, consolidating, and adding some DW tags for a more consistent system over here, so some older posts are only under the tags for the relevant fandoms and characters rather than the specific book, show, or film they're referencing. Anything Austen-related is under #fandom: austen, say, but many of my older Pride and Prejudice-specific posts don't have the P&P tag because I instituted the specific tag more recently.]

Run-down: my name is Elizabeth and I’m a 30-odd, US American PhD student. I study 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century British literature, primarily 18th [ETA: and early seventeenth, these days]. I also kind of hate academia at this point, lol, so you’ll see a lot of complaining about it unless you block #ivory tower blogging [DW tag: #uni and academia for anything related to academia, while #complaining covers exactly what you'd expect].

I talk reasonably often about mental health issues; I have autism, bipolar II, and anxiety, and my general tag is #rare breed of attack unicorn [DW tag: the same; I also tend to tag the specific disorders more often over here, since I don't have to worry about them going into a site-wide autism tag or whatnot; e.g., posts about anxiety are tagged with both #rare breed of attack unicorn and #anxiety].

I write original fiction in addition to fanfic and angst about it; the tag is #original fic rambles [DW tag: #original fiction, though plenty of it is either locked or under a different account], and vaguer or more general writing stuff is just #writing [DW tag: the same]. Rambling about my fanfic is under #fic talk [DW tag: #genre: fic talk, usually accompanied by a specific tag for the fic or verse, such as #fic talk: lucy skywalker for my f!Luke Skywalker fics].

My main fandoms and other tags include:

( Read more... )

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I've been thinking about ways in which Austen criticism has often fallen down wrt class analysis. Back in the 90s Julia Prewitt Brown wrote a "review" that is actually a guided tour through the failings of feminist analysis of Austen due to many things, but one of them was a failure of substantive class analysis in terms of gender. But I still see a lot of what she was talking about in both academia and more fandom or pop culture oriented interpretations—I'm inclined to think particularly when it comes from a contemporary US perspective.

I have way more thoughts about this than I have time to articulate, but I think US fans and academics in particular (though not exclusively) struggle to understand class in Austen's novels or other literature of the time in a way that is not simplified and enormously dependent on largely unfamiliar formal or legal categories rather than complex, sometimes contradictory or unpredictable, highly, highly striated structures that a quick consult of population breakdowns or tables of precedence is not going to explain. And at the same time, I think we (speaking as a US American!) often focus on the more (to us) exotic elements of 18th and early 19th-century British class dynamics rather than analyzing those dynamics in terms of class interests. These interests aren't purely financial (the understanding of class priorities purely in direct financial terms also seems very much a US perspective on it—maybe not exclusively again, idk).

Easy example, but: analysis of class in P&P tends to focus overwhelmingly on questions of exact legal status, precedence and large-scale categories (military, clergy, gentry, upper vs lower servants...), and reported income. And those things matter, for sure. But this tends to neglect how the characters perceive their own class interests (and how accurate their perception may or may not be), who their "natural" allies are, what larger social structures they benefit from or fail to benefit from (again, not only financially, though also that), their conflicts and alliances. Anne de Bourgh and Charlotte Lucas likely have either the same or quite similar ranks in formalized terms before Charlotte's marriage (as daughters of knights*) and are just about exact contemporaries, but the class structures around them are very different in ways that extend even beyond Anne's vast inheritance and Charlotte's lack of one. The image of Charlotte standing in the cold wind while a closely supervised Anne talks at her from her phaeton without any awareness of Charlotte's possible discomfort makes this seem especially stark.

This is even more glaringly apparent in something like William Godwin's Caleb Williams, in which the terrifying, relentless extent of aristocratic power over common people is represented by a country squire with six thousand a year. Legally that squire, Falkland, is no less a commoner than Caleb himself (relatedly, every member of the extended Fitzwilliam family appearing in P&P are also legally commoners). But that doesn't tell you anything about the sheer degree of power afforded Falkland and what six thousand a year signifies beyond direct buying power (that is very wealthy for the country gentry of the 1790s; it turns out a major part of his income, significantly, derives from slave plantations rather than his property in England; moreover, Falkland is able to bring power to bear everywhere Caleb goes in a way that only partly involves direct purchases).

I do seriously have to go write other things, but I wanted to get some part of this out of my head before I forget.

*Anne de Bourgh could be the daughter of a baronet rather than a knight, and thus higher-ranking than Charlotte in terms of strict precedence, but a) the distinction in precedence is so unimportant to understanding what she represents in class terms that we aren't told, and b) Sir Lewis is more likely to have been a knight than baronet IMO from what contextual information we do have.

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Entries tagged with fandom: austen

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Fifty miles of good road!

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