@ellynneversweet / ellynneversweet.tumblr.com
I love when people have Very Specific Faces that get them cast as similar characters in movies over and over again.
Watching Tenant of Wildfell Hall and this main dude has Brooding Man In Period Piece Face.
And when I googled him, sure as shit, he’s played Mr. Rochester before.
I knew it!!! That’s exactly what your face and eyebrows belong in! That’s just right!
Pride and Prejudice 2005 + Onion Headlines, part 2/3
MUHTEŞEM YÜZYIL / MAGNIFICENT CENTURY Episode 62 (2012)
In case it helps your decision:
John Scalzi's position is that fanfic of copyrighted material is illegal and a slippery slope to plagiarism: "the fact of the matter is that if you’re writing fanfic, you’re already doing something legally out of bounds. And, really, if you’re already wantonly violating copyright, what’s a little plagiarism to go along with it??"
And that while he personally doesn't mind if people write fanfic for his work (how benevolent!) he still thinks that they're breaking the law, and he doesn't think anyone should care if fic authors get plagiarized. (x)
Anne Rice's position waffled a bit before she died, but when she was against it she was notorious for her legal threats, and she's still on FFN's list of authors whose work can't be written about.
Diana Gabaldin also said fanfic was like "someone selling your children into white slavery." Yeah.
Anne McCaffrey changed her mind on what fans were "allowed" to write several times, ranging from "nothing" to "no porn" to "OCs only!" to "only on fansites I've personally approved" to "no crossovers" to "your OCs can only ride certain colors of dragon if they meet my requirements" plus more I'm probably forgetting. She got pretty specific.
scalzi just posted this on bsky:
The Diana Gabaldon one is also missing the VITAL context that she compared fanfic to white slavery and rape when her main character is a very direct expy of a 1960s Doctor Who Companion and IIRC she sent a copy of her book to the actor.
Guess what happens to the character in her book.
I've read half of one John Scalzi book, and it's the one that has a note at the front that it's an affectionately intended rewrite of a science fiction novel from the 50s that he liked, implicitly into a modern style incorporating additional ideas he had about the concept.
Like. That's a fic. It's indistinguishable from loads of fics I've read except that he presumably got permission of some kind so he could publish.
Obviously he considers this a much more profound difference than we tend to; we're like 'this allows you to sell it without concealing the derivation' and he's like 'no this makes it legal for this story to exist.'
Don't know what he means about 'saying mine and walking off with all your pretty toys.' Like, everything else in his policy at the link is rational and reality-based if a little obnoxious and condescending (which is also how his narration is, so at least he's consistent) but in what way does he think he's capable of 'taking' his ip away from fandom if he feels like it?
Is this a veiled way of saying he'll sue, or is it just impotent posturing?
It would tie in with his confidence in the poll quote that fic is very clearly illegal; he doesn't personally object to its existence and considers it a compliment, but he likes knowing it's Very Illegal and he has the power to banish it with the power of copyright, should it offend him.
Consider:
You died with a remarkable fortune and no heirs. You grant your wealth to two rivalling schools in the same city, under one condition: One of them must always keep your preserved skull. They may keep it on display (therefore attracting interest and potentially fame to the school) but that always raises the risk of students of the other school stealing it. The students and staff of the other school have not only the right, but the duty to do so at any opportunity. Nobody can be arrested for this unless they're caught breaking some other law.
Ideally, the students of the two schools keep stealing your skull, back and forth, forever. The culture of both of the schools is enriched by this activity, the students are too busy engaged in these harmless shenanigans to drift into worse habits and behaviours, and you get to be included in countless nonsensically frivolous heist operations whose sole purpose is to bring more fun into the world.
The trick to stop being so introvert is getting friends who are even more introvert than you, so you have to stop being so introvert and become the extrovert of the friend group because otherwise no one will order the pizza
“no matter how badly you think you’re doing it, someone else has done it a lot worse and been fine” is applicable to a wide, wide range of things and i say it to myself all the time
"bigger idiots than me have done it" is a phrase I live by
Ladybugs ride on wind currents to the mountains so they can hibernate under the snow during winter. If you even care
Okay i know i myself have made jokes on Mr Darcy hating to spend time with Mr. Collins but. I feel like of the two of them Darcy is probably significantly less annoyed than Lizzie by Collins simply bc 1) he never received The most obnoxious proposal in the world from him 2) the combination of Darcy's superior rank and his not being an Elegant Female puts him in a position to just tell Collins to stop talking and probably be thanked for the privilege. Darcy probably just lets him talk for five minutes and then is all "hm. I'd like to meditate on that in silence for a while. Very intriguing." And gets like an hour of peace
Alternatively Lizzie is just openly blatantly rude to Collins and when he looks at Darcy like are you gonna control your wife?? Darcy just shrugs like. It's her house man I'm not the boss of her.
Personal headcanon is that Darcy just keeps doing what he did the first time Collins approached him, aka suffers in silence for two minutes and then just turns around and leaves without a word, while Collins “feels that he has every reason to be pleased with their conversation”. Once Pemberley and Rosings are back on speaking terms, Lizzy discovers that she can do the same thing without Collins getting butthurt, bc she is after all the niece of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Although tbh, Collins doesn’t bother Lizzy too much, bc even he finds it slightly embarrassing that he once told the future Mrs Darcy that she was never gonna get a better offer than himself. He probably ends up apologising to Mr Darcy for the presumption. “Your choice of wife is most fortuitous, and I would offer my humblest apologies that I once implied, or rather insinuated, that her marriage prospects were not … that she might not look forward to such elevation as she has now been granted in marrying such an esteemed personage as yourself.” Meanwhile Darcy is just standing there like “aPolOgIZe tO LiZZy, noT to mE”
My own personal headcanons in addition to this are 1) that Collins finds Lizzie and Darcy's marriage DEEPLY suspicious and is bringing peak Weird Little Man energy to his attempts to investigate this mystery and find... Something. He doesn't know what, but something. Maybe Darcy is being blackmailed, or mind controlled. Who's to say. And 2) Darcy finds out about Collins's proposal FROM Collins, leading to a very "you said WHAT to my wife" "well she wasn't your wife at the time" "that is NOT the point sir" kind of exchange. At which point Darcy is no longer able to calmly zone out for the duration of their five minute interactions his chill is gone
Also having just reread the last like 7 chapters of the book, Darcy fully stops talking to Lady Catherine for MONTHS bc of the way she wrote about Elizabeth i have no doubt that hearing Collins blithely recount his Extremely Impertinent Proposal would have Darcy on the verge of violence. Furthermore, given that Mr. Bennet likes to a. visit Pemberley when he's least expected and b. cause problems on purpose, obviously the way it goes down is that Mr. Bennet, imposing on Darcy's hospitality at the same time as Mr. Collins, casually brings up That Time Collins Almost Married Lizzy, encourages Collins as he digs his own grave recounting the proposal, and then sits back to enjoy the show.
I wish you'd write a fic where the Bennets were a family of Regency artists, with Mr. Bennet a semi-respected member of the Academy, and his daughters various minaturists and portrait painters. I suppose to keep everyone in the same segment of Regency culture, Mr. Darcy would then be a fancy history painter who's been to Italy and won awards, who's captivated by Elizabeth Bennet's singular ability to paint lover's eye jewelry.
OH FUCK YEAH that would be so good! Mr Bennet would I think be a Hogarth type better known for his low brow satire than his very good portraits with a massive chip on his shoulder because he mostly self-taught, Jane would do Mary Cassat (wrong era but still...Vigèe Le Brun often did the same sort of thing but Cassat was more domestic) mother-and-child portraits? Kitty would keep sneezing all over her practice still lifes full of flowers because of an undiagnosed allergies. Mary...would do really stiff neoclassical things and be hugely uncomfortable with anatomy. Lydia would try and set herself up as the next Lady Hamilton.
And yeah Darcy would be a history painter! Sulking about how he keeps having to put off visiting Paris because of the damned war and all that. The big revelation could be that while he’s a huge dick to his artistic rivals and has a low opinion of ‘crafts’ (in character both for Darcy and, uh, artists of this era generally) he has a wildly good reputation with models for being respectful and paying really good rates and having a handily child-proofed studio for when you can’t find a babysitter. Colonel Fitzwilliam could...do some sort of engineering maybe. Comes from the sculptor side of the family but pivoted into more lucrative firearm designing. (Maybe. I’m not sure how closely the various ‘works with brass’ fields were interconnected. Hogarth was I think an apprentice silversmith for a while.)
...would I dare make Wickham a transplant from baroque-era Italy who is better known for getting into violent fights than salon exhibits? He’d be a fan of Caravaggio for sure.
Uncle Gardiner could be a jeweller! The families met while Mr Bennet was doing a less-prestigious but more realistic for a broke teenager apprenticeship. Lizzy gets special rates for setting her miniatures. (Would it be realistic for anyone to have done a side-business in cameo making? The tools are fairly specialised I think...)
They could all meet at whatever the English equivalent of the the Salon de Refusés was, where Darcy is being a picky bitch about everything. BUT I can’t figure out what to do with Bingley. I tend to associate him with the new money that came out of the Yorkshire cotton mills, which would suggest he’d be in the tapestry business, but I don’t think tapestries were much in vogue at the time (or made in England). Although if he WAS he ans Darcy could be collaborating with Darcy doing the cartoons. Or he could the indulged arty child of a successful a textile merchant father (it happened a lot! Van Dyke, I think? And that victorian painter who did stripey dresses that I’ve forgotten the name of), in which case he could maybe have spent some time in India as a kid and developed an appreciation of Mughal miniatures and fancy jewel cuts which are AMAZING.
More thoughts: The Bennet daughters — or at least Elizabeth and Jane — could have a reputation a bit like Thomas Gainsborough’s daughters, where he frequently painted them (fully clothed) growing up and they’d be recognisable to people familiar with artist!Mr Bennet’s work. And a Jane who is still very classically beautiful would I suspect have an ~interesting~ relationship with her own face, given how usual it is to use yourself as a reference as a student or when you want to try a Stupid Expression. She’d draw her little sisters, too. (‘Hold this candle Lizzy I need to check the light.’)
... Oh my God, Mary as a botanical illustrator. Like Sarah Drake or Françoise Basseporte. Mr Bennet: "Well they are incredibly boring pictures, but I suppose in this context that is a virtue. At least she has some idea of perspective." Some painters also worked with archaeological remains etc, and I suppose provided it all pre-dated Darwin Mary's religious feeling would not be outraged.
Kitty possibly ends up painting fashion plates for ladies' journals, since the still lifes are a very sneezy non-starter? She knows a lot about fashion and Mr Bennet teaches her enough about engraving after the Lydia Fiasco that she can do the etching herself.
I'm rewatching Pride and Prejudice 2005 and the framing of that oddly-staged scene at the end where Darcy proposes strongly suggests that (immediately after bursting into the Bennet household in the middle of the night, interrogating one of the daughters of the house at top volume while her baffled family eavesdropped, and sweeping out in fury) Lady Catherine DESCENDED ON NETHERFIELD IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS to vent her rage at Darcy. Which means Bingley must have either been awake for this conversation - did she interrupt late-night billiards and tipsy delight about Bingley's accepted proposal? - or have been woken up to deal with this whole fuckin'... situation. I mean can you imagine that from Bingley's point of view?
BINGLEY: Lady Catherine! What an unexpected -
BINGLEY: I trust you find Darcy well, I hope no, um, illness in the fa-
BINGLEY: ... Lady Catherine perhaps you would like to have this conversation with Darcy somewhere more private?
BINGLEY: ... Darcy I think your aunt is overwrought, I'll speak to the housekeeper and -
BINGLEY: - Darcy, you proposed to Miss Elizabeth and you didn't tell me?!
BINGLEY: Your ladyship I am sorry to hear you have taken all of Hertfordshire in distaste, but really -
And then I assume she either shakes the dust of Meryton and its environs from her feet entirely, slamming the door behind her, or goes up to a guest bedroom? Because she must have driven through the night, and those horses must be exhausted. Could she have continued on to a posting inn?
Did she, in fact, go to bed rigid with rage and receive the news that Mr Darcy had actually gone and PROPOSED to Elizabeth Bennet and had been accepted along with her breakfast the following morning?
BINGLEY: This is either the best or the worst shooting party I have ever organised.
Pride and Prejudice 1995 text posts, part 1 of ?
an underrated detail in pride and prejudice is that elizabeth bennett was home alone on the day darcy proposed because she had a headache. can you imagine. this was in the pre-painkillers era. you're at home with a headache and then this asshole walks into the room and tells you he loves you and wants to marry you even though he hates your whole family and you're beneath him. imagine having to deal with that while also having a headache. she doesn't even have ibuprofen
My eternal Pride& Prejudice headcanon is that Darcy had a kind, if rather formal and stiff, proposal prepared the first time he proposed to Eliszabeth but the moment he saw her his brain deleted all relevant information as well as the last few struggling social skills and out came every single reason against a marriage to Elizabeth which he had contemplated in preparation of defending his choice to Lady Catherine.
