Was anyone going to tell me that North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell genuinely slaps or was I just supposed to find that out reading it because I’d heard she was “the Victorians’ answer to Jane Austen” (she’s not??? They’re very different writers, they’re just both women)
Yay! Another one!
That said, that is a strange take about Gaskell I had never heard before :D
If anything in her time she was mostly dismissed as a minor author, and her only work worth something being Cranford (the insidious voice in me tells me it is because it's the less "controversial-political" of her novels. A short sweet semi-autobiographical novel about old town ladies is harmless. But it's also the reason I love it so much). Some of the criticisms are mind-bogging. A critic commented that her, you know, the wife of a minister living in Manchester and ministering to the poor and working class, did not know what was she talking about in Mary Barton and North and South. Others said her characters were one dimensional and lacked natural arcs (Quite the opposite, I find!). She was mostly forgotten until a few decades ago (and gained more popularity because N&S 04 and Cranford 07 were wildly popular), so it's kind of weird to imagine she would be presented as an icon of Victorian response to Austen.
I think she does function as a sort of bridge between Austen and the famous Victorians, like the Brontës, Dickens or Thackeray. I have written a comparison here, but it mainly comes down to:
A) she clearly takes inspiration from Austen. North and South is not Pride and Prejudice, and Wives and Daughters is not Mansfield Park, but you can trace in them those inspirations quite clearly. It's not pastiche, it's Gaskell's own work with its own themes and characters and different dynamics.
B) Her work has a range, from the more costumbrist Austenian tone (W&D, Cranford) to the full on Gothic high drama (The Doom of the Gryffiths). Ruth is reminiscent of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in themes and ideas, North and South has some coincidences that way with Jane Eyre, something like Lois the Witch is reminiscent of the oppressive misery of something like Wuthering Heights, etc, etc.
What does it for me in Gaskell is how central grief is to her storytelling, but that doesn't turn her stories into cynical tragedies. They are an exploration as to how to heal and grow and keep on living with grief, through grief, despite grief. I think that is very unique to her between her contemporaries that I have read (I also think she brings great texture to characters, and an impressive ability to convey extremely dramatic situations into everyday experiences of people).
Scarlet forced me to read Wives & Daughters and I will be forever grateful.
Ted Lasso, the character, is one of the only representations of 'sometimes getting better with your mental health issues means that you are less visibly happy, and that is okay, because you are not required to be happy in order to be loved' out there and I am really discouraged that so much of the audience is angry at that.
I will continue to block anyone who frames Ted's emotional state, however you interpret it at the end of the finale, as the fault of his mother or ex-wife. One other thing I am discouraged by is the eagerness some people in this fandom to find a woman, any woman, to blame for a man being sad.
squaliformes
i’d like to point out that when i made this post, all of these comments were at the top, but now if you look at the thread they’ve been replaced by completely different comments
so please, for the love of god, look at the source link this thread is a neverending source of entertainment. people have added so much fucking shit since i made this
anotheralexandros
I was proctoring an exam for a student today while reading these, and I had to stop because I got to this one and almost fucking died
these are making my day
Okay, this one’s killing me:
These ones got me:
Ooohhh noo I can’t breathe and there are literal tears streaming down my face
Have a very, VERY good laugh people
this post is missing the BEST ONE:
Sleep deprivation is a HELL of a drug isn’t it
These look like the little soot things from that one Studio Ghibli movie.
spookyviper-deactivated20161219
Thank god for Russian dash cams to bring us wonders like this
they’re saying it’s 3am and they’re so tired and lets just drive and get out of here and then it happens and they’re like ‘well that woke me up”
This video has given youtubers permanent strikes on their account for violent content. Reblog violent content on your dash TODAY
RTÉ Lifestyle: Award-winning actress Siobhán McSweeney on why she turned down designers for the 2023 #BAFTATVAwards ❤
Naming the female razor brand Venus is so personally offensive to me....you think Venus the goddess of love and sex and beauty was shaving her PUSSY? Go kill yourself
Some gay men really put 0 hours of work into unlearning their hatred of women’s bodies and anatomy it’s embarrassing. Like i’m super fucking sorry that you’ve got a pussy ick thing going on but i got over it after like one conversation with a friend and you’re 29 years old publicizing your pussy ick on twitter dot com dot gov posting about how super fucking hard it is that trans men are also in gay bars and that’s Not Valid because ewwww they have vacheena which is the opposite of gay eeewwwwwww! And you have to let everybody know that you’re gay not because you like men but because you hate pussy so much it makes you transphobic. Like how can you even continue to serve cunt in such a state
To my gay brothers, especially to those of you who are younger and more directly under this pressure, I hope you feel no guilt or shame for not wanting to sleep with someone of the female sex, for feeling uncomfortable or repulsed at the idea of having penis-in-vagina intercourse. This is woke homophobia. It's not okay for someone to guilt or shame you for having the sexual boundaries surrounding your sexual orientation that you have, or to coerce and pressure you into heterosexual sex. You are fine the way you are.
Some ppl will read "publicly declaring how much you hate vaginas or resent trans men in gay spaces as a way of socializing as a gay man is transphobic" and reinterpret that as "they're trying to make us have sex with them".
I tend to think this is due to wilful misunderstanding, because claiming we are trying to "make you sleep with us" is such a violent and potent tool to use against us, to get us excluded and otherwise participate in our genocide.
Let me make it real simple for you. Some gay men bond and socialize by talking about how vaginas are disgusting. This needs to stop. And you need to grow up enough to realize that declaring that pussy is soooo yucky is not the same thing as declining to have sex with people with a pussy. Any adult should be able to realize that.
I left a support group for gay men with my particular disability because of the constant banter about pussy being gross, despite repeated requests to cool it. The group had claimed to be trans inclusive. It wasn't, obviously. Later it turned out it was also moderated by racists and they were declining membership requests from Black men. It all goes together. It's all pieces of one big disgusting ideology.
So grow the fuck up.
Just to note, I have in fact had gay dudes in my life try to bond with me through queer culture by talking about how pussy is gross. I am a butch queer woman. This doesn't seem to matter: it seems that guys like this only really interact or think about interacting with straight women and cis gay men, and they tend to assume that strategies for one or the other of those categories will work for me. Protip: doesn't work that way, bucko!
These gentlemen are inevitably confused and taken aback if I object to this, because in their non-work lives apparently they never hang out with anyone but other cis gay men and maybe a couple other queers who tolerate this shit. So let me make this clear: performing exaggerated disgust at how gross you find my genitals is not a way to make fucking friends. It is not cute. It is not fun. It is not cheeky.
I always want to tell them: if you don't stop, I'm going to have to explain this to you and let you sit in uncomfortable silence while I explain all the weird things I do not like about male bodies, which is a thing I do not bring up often and particularly not ever around my dude and transmasc friends for the simple reason that their bodies do not exist for my pleasure. I don't have to like their bodies. I just have to like my friends. It's hard for me to like my friends when they're telling me my body is gross, which is what you're doing. If I need to do the same thing to get it through your head that this feels bad, I will, but I hate having to do that. So please just think before you speak, yeah?
That one scene in Pekka’s house be like
(i had to)
I have a vivid childhood memory of a commercial that I am now realizing could not possibly exist.
A guy and a gal are on a porch at what is clearly the end of a young love date. She is leaning against the house while they share a long passionate kiss. They break apart and smile at each other when she says "well I suppose I should head inside..."
"what's the hurry?" He responds. "Hey.... How bout a blowjob?"
She seems shocked! "Oh no! We couldn't! What if?"
"common!" He responds "no one will know! Everyone's asleep"
She is all "oh I don't know.... Are you sure?"
They fuss like this for a bit
As he is responding the door opens and a younger teenage girl steps out in her pj's and says "Dad says 'give him a blowjob, or I should, or if he wants, dad will come down and give him one. Just for the love of god get off the intercom'"
Like.
I know that can't be real. But I swear I have had this memory for years. I think the ad was for a doorbell intercom system? How. How would that have made it on to tv in the 90s? Could that even air today? Where did I see this ad? Wh
i don't think that was a real commercial, but that was a viral video. like, 2003-ish
