anghraine

[anghraine]

Gandalf about Denethor:

‘He has long sight. He can perceive, if he bends his will thither, much of what is passing in the minds of men, even of those that dwell far off. It is difficult to deceive him, and dangerous to try.’

Frodo with Faramir and Gollum:

‘Do you know the name of that high pass?’ said Faramir.

‘No,’ said Frodo.

'It is called Cirith Ungol.’ Gollum hissed sharply and began muttering to himself. 'Is not that its name?’ said Faramir turning to him.

'No!’ said Gollum, and then he squealed, as if something had stabbed him.

:)

#conclusion: denethor/finduilas is monster4monster faramir/éowyn is monster/monsterfucker #why yes thanks to my nap i have had five whole hours of sleep :) #anghraine babbles #jrr tolkien #lord of the rings #gandalf #denethor #denethor x finduilas #team dúnedain #faramir #gollum #frodo baggins #legendarium blogging #éowyn #otp: and the sun shone #deep blogging

[anghraine]

I watched the video with my bff (the one who's been my friend since we were in the same grade in middle school together in NW Washington State) and we agreed it's got big PNW vibes! Super exciting!!

But YES a good portion of the GW2 community has yearned for land spears since the game began, basically, because until this you could only get them as underwater weapons, yet they were the main signature weapon of one of the primary GW1 classes back in the day, the Paragon:

The kodan (the bear people) are already super cool, so I'm hoping they do something interesting there!

But ngl, I'm even more excited for the customized housing instances than the land spears, even as a GW1 devotee. My family got into MMOs via City of Heroes which had very elaborate base building capacities (and even more on the Homecoming no-longer-pirate server), and while I do think GW2 is the superior MMO in many, many ways, we've really missed truly customizable home instances. I hope it's good.

@anghraine saw the trailer for the new GW2 trailer, thought of you so congrats on your upcoming Pacific Northwest adventure

#squirrelwrangler #respuestas #guild wars: nightfall #guild wars #ascalonian grudgeblog #anghraine's pics #anghraine's gaming #guild wars 2 #long post #city of heroes #cascadia blogging

[anghraine]

I hate three quarters of my dissertation (including the fact that it's MUCH TOO SHORT, HOW DO I WRITE SO SLOWLY) but I sent it in to my committee with a separate, anxious "I know it has problems like xyz but I wanted you all to have it by the deadline and everything in it is resolved just underexplained at spots and I wanted to revise more but deadlines and I will totally take advantage of the two weeks afterwards to add and revise more..."

My advisor reminded me it's a major achievement regardless, congratulated me, and told me to rest, lol.

#anghraine babbles #anghraine whines #dissertation hell #ivory tower blogging

[anghraine]

Surprising no one, I'm still thinking about this specifically!!!

I’ve posted the quotes before, but I’m thinking again about Faramir and Denethor and Gandalf:

“Ah well, sir,” said Sam [to Faramir], “you said my master had an elvish air; and that was good and true. But I can say this: you have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, of—well, Gandalf, of wizards.”

He [Denethor] turned his dark eyes on Gandalf, and now Pippin saw a likeness between the two, and he felt the strain between them, almost as if he saw a line of smouldering fire drawn from eye to eye, that might suddenly burst into flame.

!!!

#anghraine babbles #jrr tolkien #lord of the rings #legendarium blogging #faramir #denethor #gandalf #peregrin took #samwise gamgee #team dúnedain

[anghraine]

...speaking of the customizable house co-victory, BEHOLD:

Also land spears! The announcement is here!!

I was thinking about how much I love many of the features of GW2, but also some that I wish it had, and which would be the best. So I thought I'd turn to you all to decide!

#anghraine babbles #anghraine's gaming #ascalonian grudgeblog #poll nonsense #guild wars 2 #anghraine's pics #long post

[anghraine]

I'm so deep into the dissertation that this is how I found out about the new expansion, thank you, xoxo

@anghraine saw the trailer for the new GW2 trailer, thought of you so congrats on your upcoming Pacific Northwest adventure

#a beacon of light in my day ahhhhh #anghraine's gaming #ascalonian grudgeblog #guild wars 2 #respuestas #squirrelwrangler

[anghraine]

I wholly agree with this, and would add:

Even if it were true that Lydia's fate would have been isolating and unhappy for her personally had she taken up Darcy's offer to extract her, the idea that it's actually somehow ignoble for Darcy to use his wealth and reputation to give Lydia an option other than Wickham is baffling. Most girls or women in Lydia's situation would not realistically have had much of a choice at that point. Lydia herself may not care, but there's a reason Mrs Gardiner thinks it worth mentioning that Darcy uses his resources to give Lydia a choice.

We can point to the fact that Lydia is only sixteen when presented with an option that seems boring and embarrassing—that it's not really clear whether she truly has the faculties to make this choice at this point in her life and the injustice of it so profoundly affecting the rest of her life. All true, but giving her a chance to choose something else is still important. Her being so extremely adolescent when she marries does not mean marriage should be her only option!

And I think it's important for Darcy to give Lydia a way out via his own power, wealth, and reputation as far as they can be brought to bear because he has done this before, with Georgiana. There are various reasons it's successful with Georgiana and not Lydia (mostly because he and Georgiana are siblings with a trusting, affectionate, and respectful relationship that Lydia doesn't have with anyone except maybe Kitty, a little—mainly due to her parents' failures where Darcy stepped in as a reliable semi-parental figure at age 23 to 11-year-old Georgiana). Regardless, Darcy taking pains to extract his sister and keeping his mouth shut to protect her reputation while railroading Lydia into marriage would be ... ehhhhhhh.

Beyond that, it's worth noting that Darcy also does not really seem to have tried to browbeat Lydia into the option that he (as you point out, rightly) sees as better for her. He tries to convince her that leaving Wickham is better than a life legally shackled to Wickham because of a choice made at 16, which is both true, and the appropriate response given that he's the only decent, responsible adult in the picture at that point. But once she makes her position clear, we hear:

Since such were her feelings, it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage

He doesn't try to override her decision, terrible as it is. We can wish that another option was seriously available, but he's not related to her and the rest of her family is 100% set on marriage as well, and he certainly has no business forcing her to go anywhere she does not wish. It's difficult to see what else he could have done.

I also definitely agree that he timed his actions well here: tracking down Wickham and Lydia personally so he could present at least some of Lydia's family with immediate relief (and ideally, a fait accompli, though in the event it took more negotiations), and seizing his opportunity to deal with Mr Gardiner rather than Mr Bennet when it would make little difference to the timing is simply smart.

It even arguably reflects his growth, in that while he (justifiably) never thought well of Mr Bennet, judging active tradesman Mr Gardiner as a preferable partner in handling a crisis over an intelligent country squire is not where he was at in his earlier evaluation of the Gardiners' merits. The way that mutual concern for the Lydia crisis cements the rapport between Darcy, a man of aristocratic connections and in many respects, aristocratic power and wealth, with the mercantile Gardiners he previously despised rather than the genteel Mr Bennet, seems significant.

Something about this whole Lydia thing confuses me a little .

Why did Darcy act alone ? Why didn't he inform Mr Gardiner of his involvement since the start not after the situation is settled ?

When he asked Lydia to leave Wickham, why did he expect her family to receive her when the whole town knew ?

I kept reading posts about how noble Darcy is for asking her to leave him. But honestly just because he does not care about reputation does not nobody else does. Heck, the whole family would suffer from social isolation, he is basically ruining what's left of the girls's chances of marrying well. He is not destroying just his own chances of marrying Lizzie, but with almost any gentleman she would ever come across. What was he thinking ?

At least, while married to Wickham, she has her reputation restored and she can go to balls and parties, if she leaves him she would be banished somewhere far away and for the extroverted loud Lydia, this is HELL.

And if he wanted simply to recover her, shouldn't he bring a relative alone so they would help convince her, surely that would help.

Honestly, the only sensible thing Lydia had done is refusing to leave him.

Darcy acted alone because he didn't trust Mr. Bennet to be a responsible adult so he waited until Mr. Bennet had returned home before approaching Mr. Gardiner:

But Mr. Gardiner could not be seen; and Mr. Darcy found, on further inquiry, that your father was still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not judge your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as your uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him till after the departure of the former.

which, good judgment there, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bennet sucks.

As for the other thing, Darcy doesn't know what is going on in Meryton, he doesn't know that Mrs. Bennet is stupid enough to scream their bad news all over town. This whole affair could have been hushed up if Mrs. Bennet had half a brain cell. Lydia has family in London, they could have easily pretended that Lydia went to visit them.

Either way, I think in Darcy's mind, being married to Wickham is the absolute worst outcome for any woman. He hates Wickham and he knows all of Wickham's faults. To him, a sixteen year old being stuck with that sad excuse for a human being, forever, is worse than death or a cottage. Lydia didn't agree, but I don't think she's smart for that decision, she's short-sighted. And I'm pretty sure at this point that Darcy would marry Elizabeth either way, he'd probably prefer to not have Wickham as a permanent brother in law.

As for Lydia and the family's reputation, there must have been options or else Darcy wouldn't have given leaving as a choice to Lydia. He is very rich and very well regarded and everyone in Meryton now knows that Wickham is awful. So Darcy says she was kidnapped and is completely innocent and he saved her. Fortunately for the Bennet family, they never go to London, so this gossip will not spread far either way. No one knows who they are. Darcy marrying Elizabeth will give the Bennets the same reputation boost that it did in the original timeline. Lydia may need to lay low for a while, but having two very rich brother in laws can only help her marriage prospects down the line.

As for bringing a relative, I assume Darcy would have done that too if he thought it would help. As we know, it wouldn't have.

#lydia bennet #fitzwilliam darcy #mr bennet #edward gardiner #m gardiner #austen blogging #austen fanwank #pride and prejudice #jane austen #not my meta #anghraine's meta #(a bit!) #anghraine's recs #lady anne blogging #long post #georgiana darcy #mrs bennet

[anghraine]

Hi! I was wondering, sorry for the dumb question, but are Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy hairstyles accurate for the time in the 2005's adaptation of P&P? I always associated 18th century (even the late part) with log hair for men or just wigs, so I'm curious. I associate them more with the 19th century, but I'm sure I'm completely wrong.

Hello! It's not dumb at all, and I only delayed answering because I was busy, but I'm taking a brief break. Disclaimer, though, that I'm not a historian and especially not a fashion historian.

The 2005 adaptation is not aiming for accurate representation of a particular year, but seems to be inspired by the fashions of the late 1790s, perhaps as late as 1800 or so for very fashionable characters. One of the aesthetic concepts behind the costuming IIRC was that it would reflect the era of P&P's original composition by Austen (1796-1797), but also reflect the attitudes of the characters to both fashion and life generally. Older characters wear the styles of their youths (whatever those may be), while even younger ones vary among themselves.

The idea, again going by memory, was that Jane's costumes would be more up-to-date than Elizabeth's and lean towards more early Regency-like hairstyles and delicate pastels, where Elizabeth often wears earth tones and is slower to adopt modern styles (I do not personally see Elizabeth this way, but it's the concept behind her costuming). Darcy starts out as nicely-dressed, but extremely buttoned up (literally), but wears his coat open and in a fashionable vibrant blue when he comes back to Hertfordshire, his hair in more disarray etc.

With regard to hair specifically, the question of accuracy wrt length/powder depends on the character. The hair powder tax that contributed to the change in men's fashion was passed in May of 1795, if I'm remembering correctly. I think the abandonment of hair powder was initially fairly politicized as a form of opposition to Pitt's government, but IMO the Darcys and Fitzwilliams are pretty strongly coded as people who would be in opposition to Pitt, so it's entirely possible that Darcy would have abandoned hair powder and cut his hair off well before the story begins. I have a post about this in relation to book Darcy here, actually.

Would the shorter hair have looked like Matthew Macfadyen's in P&P? Probably not exactly, but it's not so different from hairstyles that can be seen in paintings at the turn of the (19th) century, and Bingley's odd hairstyle also seems to deliberately refer to the oddities of this transitional era of fashion. Bingley could have still been wearing powdered, longer hair at the time, but I can easily envision him imitating Darcy even if he doesn't care about the politics of it. So late 1790s versus early 1790s does make a difference!

The novel, incidentally, does reference Mr Bennet still using a powdering gown, as I mention in the linked post. This doesn't have to mean he's still powdering his hair, and I think he would be exempt from the tax anyway if he still wished to, but it's entirely possible for P&P to take place at a time where some men would powder their hair and others wouldn't.

#i do think darcy is fully capable of getting passive-aggressive haircuts tbh #anon replies #respuestas #austen blogging #pride and prejudice 2005 #anghraine's meta #fitzwilliam darcy #lady anne blogging #fashion #eighteenth century blogging #austen fanwank

[anghraine]

I've been moving and navigating further departmental nonsense etc (my pseudo-dissertation got approved for defending, though! l o l). But it was interesting to see the Worst P&P Takes poll I reblogged accumulating more results and the general tenor of responses in the notes.

I mean, the results are definitely to be expected if you're familiar with the side of Austen fandom doing a lot of the reblogging etc. But still, interesting!

Many Tumblr polls specify that they're asking about personal preferences that may be irrational—favorite/least favorite, coolest/most annoying, or something like that. This one, though, asked for the worst interpretation of P&P, not the most annoying one—and the current leader is "Darcy is never really proud, he's just shy and probably has anxiety" against some very steep competition on the Bad Takes front.

I was thinking about why that seemed a kind of tediously predictable choice even though I agree that the take is wrong, and realized that while I do disagree with the shy Darcy interpretation and I particularly disagree with the specific formulation where he is never proud at all, it ultimately feels to me like a failure of nuance rather than just completely wrongheaded like some of the others. And this is probably my fundamental difference with a lot of Darcy takes I see!

In my opinion, a character who is introverted and who feels awkward in various social situations and who doesn't like common social activities and who has to work himself up to talking to his crush and who is repeatedly suggested to behave very differently in contexts where he's more comfortable being interpreted as shy and anxious is not that big of a leap.

Yes, it's important that he is actually fundamentally confident and haughty, that he makes his personal feelings of discomfort other people's problem, and that he thinks he's such a unique and special butterfly that he doesn't need to even put in an effort outside his personal social circle. But it's a misreading that is easy to follow (and long predates the 2005 P&P, as I've mentioned before!).

The additional misreading that a shy and anxious Darcy is also never proud at all is a much more drastic leap, and in my experience, condemnations of shy Darcy interpretations rarely differentiate between "Darcy is shy as well as arrogant" and "Darcy is shy rather than arrogant" as interpretations (although their basic arguments are quite different). But even that as the worst possible misreading of P&P when Darcy is not even the main character is ?????????

I mean, for one alternative (not even the one I voted for!), the idea that Elizabeth is an author avatar Mary Sue seems a far worse misreading of P&P than basically anything to do with Darcy at all. The center piece of the entire novel is Elizabeth's epiphany of self-knowledge about her own shortcomings that do not particularly resemble Austen's at all, but were ethically a concern for her, and she's a complex, interesting character in general whom Austen correctly regarded as a major achievement. Inverting that into Elizabeth as an improbably perfect, reality-warping self-insert is deeply wrong and frankly pretty misogynistic as well.

(ngl though, it's a little funny to see such a blatantly terrible reading of Elizabeth rank so far behind the shy Darcy votes. I've gotten "does anyone actually think/say that?" so many times on my posts about Austen fandom's prioritization of Darcy's character development over Elizabeth's and yet...)

And even just going with the Darcy-centric misreadings, the idea of Darcy as a "bad boy" seems easily the most absolutely wrong take on him. His pride is at least complicated and the finer points can be fairly debated and it's a quality that actually changes somewhat throughout the novel, and you can have discussion over what happened when, whose testimonies should be weighted more, etc. But there is no point at which "bad boy" isn't utterly wrong for him. However, there's definitely a tendency in some wings of the fandom to find the idea of Darcy being misread too favorably more objectionable than him being read too unfavorably, regardless of the particulars, so it's not a surprise.

I suppose you could argue about what "worst" means in the context of variously bad interpretations. Like, is an interpretation that is about a fairly trivial aspect of the book but extremely wrong about it "worse" than an interpretation that is pretty bad but at least comprehensibly so about something very important?

#i remember years ago mentioning that i disagree with the darcy 'shy-ites' but am more opposed to the 'anti-shy-ites' #but was not exactly clear on why apart from their tendency to frame the anti-darcy position as more rigorous and less informed by adaptatio #(this was the case even before the 2005 came out but vastly more so afterwards and deeply annoying as a lesbian fan of the book) #(lesbian is pertinent because many dismissive anti-shy-ite takes assume that more positive interpretations of him #are based on attraction to a particular actor playing on him rather than the text. also it's more acceptable when it's colin firth somehow) #in any case for me it's like ... yeah i think the shy!darcy crowd is wrong but only because it's more complicated than that #not because it's completely baseless #and 'shy rather than proud' is truly wrong but there's enough emphasis on him being different than elizabeth thought all along that i get i #elizabeth as a mary sue or bad boy darcy or actually it's about toxic masculinity etc are just fundamentally wrong in a very basic way #that no amount of nuance or discussion of vocabulary can really address #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #lady anne blogging #long post #poll nonsense #anghraine rants

[anghraine]

#damn hard to choose but i respect op choosing violence #not really surprised by how low the worst darcy takes are lol #poll nonsense #elizabeth bennet #fitzwilliam darcy #lady anne blogging #austen blogging #austen fanwank

[anghraine]

Hi I asked about Numenorean pregnancy like… a month ago lol. It triggered a lot of interesting thoughts about my favs, the Gondoreans and specifically the house of Hurin lol. It’s kind of insane drivel so I won’t put it in here, nonetheless a belated THANK YOU!!! For the detailed and thought provoking response!!!!

I hope your PhD wraps up nicely and you can thoroughly celebrate all your accomplishments ☺️ another enormous CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!🍾 🎈 to you!!!!

Thank you on all counts! I actually wanted to continue the longer conversation going on at my blog, but haven't had the time/focus for obvious reasons (I'm also moving tomorrow... RIP, lol).

But thank you again! <333

#anon replies #nice things people say to me #team dúnedain #númenórë #legendarium blogging

[anghraine]

Embarrassed that during mumblety years of being a Middle-Earth nerd I missed the thing about Pharaonic Egypt and the Dunedain. The details of transplanting a culture into a different climate fascinate me. What from your reading is particularly Egypt-inspired about the Dunedain? Or can you throw me a link? Now I am imagining Aragorn with hair pomaded and wound around sticks to make long curls. Maybe long at the temples and a bit shorter around the back.

Tolkien made this very easy to answer, happily. In Letter 211 of The Letters of JRR Tolkien (pg 281), he said:

"The Númenóreans of Gondor were proud, peculiar, and archaic, and I think are best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms. In many ways they resembled ‘Egyptians’ - the love of, and power to construct, the gigantic and massive. And in their great interest in ancestry and in tombs. "[…] I think the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle. The N. Kingdom had only a diadem (III 323). Cf. the difference between the N. and S. kingdoms of Egypt."

I'll add that, more generally speaking, Tolkien is emphatic that Gondor would be geographically Mediterranean, though he pretty evidently was thinking more of locations lying within modern Italy and Turkey. He specifically said that Minas Tirith would be at approximately the latitude of Florence, Italy, while the ancient and still critical Gondorian port city of Pelargir would be at about the latitude of Troy, in Turkey (while elsewhere comparing it to Venice, Italy). He also compared Minas Tirith to both Rome and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

There are more quotes and citations about Gondor's inspirations according to Tolkien here.

#also aragorn is not a gondorian dúnadan though he might have adopted their aesthetic as king! #jennyislander #respuestas #ondonórë blogging #legendarium blogging #letters of jrr tolkien #gondor #team dúnedain #jrr tolkien

[anghraine]

Amusing myself with this not remotely exhaustive misuse of GoogleDocs tables

#tragically the weird stuff is barely here ... pregnancies. placing virtues or curses. different but cool relationships w/ horses #anghraine babbles #anghraine's pics #legendarium blogging #deep blogging #rohirrim #ondonórë blogging #gondor #lord of the rings #jrr tolkien

[anghraine]

"Young she was and yet not so. The braids of her dark hair were touched by no frost; her white arms and clear face were flawless and smooth, and the light of stars was in her bright eyes, grey as a cloudless night; yet queenly she looked, and thought and knowledge were in her glance, as of one that has known many things that the years bring. Above her brow her head was covered with a cap of silver lace netted with small gems, glittering white; but her soft grey raiment had no ornament save a girdle of leaves wrought in silver."

#this is SUCH a delight #already told op about all the things i like but ... the fabric is so soft! the braids and net so cool! the design so canonical! #arwen undómiel #legendarium blogging #legendarium art #peredhil #jrr tolkien #lord of the rings

[anghraine]

#interestingggg #i know that i'm younger than you by decade but not by how many years! #meme prattle #meme #sqbr #respuestas #poll nonsense

[anghraine]

Okay SO I was thinking about this years-old post again and I would keep most of it as is, except for two things:

No saving throws, that should come from the class (paladins and artificers are fairly likely).

I would handle Foresight differently; Númenórean foresight is not on the level of 5e-style Portent. I would replace it with Beast Mastery, which is canonically attested, and should be a gentler, kinder variant of Dominate Beast.

Of course, the idea of Powers of Mind and Beast Mastery being mutually exclusive is flawed given that Númenórean characters who have one ability typically also have the other, so I'm still contemplating that...

The power in my town went out for two and a half hours, so I glanced through my copy of The Dungeon Master’s Guide and got to thinking about what sort of stats I would give a (more or less “true”) Númenórean.

It wouldn’t be balanced, but Middle-earth isn’t balanced, so:

+2 to CON +1 to STR +2 to either WIS, INT, or CHA (depending on spellcasting subtype, chosen at level 3)

Age: Númenóreans mature at the same rate as other humans until reaching adulthood, when it slows drastically. Ordinarily, they reach old age only around 10 years before death, which depending on the era, ranges between about 100 and 300(?) years.

Alignment: Númenóreans are usually Lawful, but there are known exceptions.

Size: Númenóreans are (by fiat) medium. Their height typically ranges from six to seven feet, sometimes rising to between seven and eight feet.

Speed: 40 feet, due to their size.

Staunch Will: Númenóreans are resistant to psychic damage and have advantage on saving throws against being charmed.

Saving throws: CON, INT.

Keep reading

#legendarium blogging #númenórë #team dúnedain #dungeons and dragons #anghraine babbles #anghraine's gaming

[anghraine]

@brynnmclean:

#'thengel's monsterfucking legacy' is KILLING ME elizabeth#i am laughing SO HARD#lord of the rings#dunedain#numenoreans#truly cackling

Normally I'm happy to leave many of my thoughts in the tags, but I'm currently in a moment where I felt that was the one that absolutely needed to be in the main body of my reblog :P

#brynnmclean #respeustas #nice things people say to me #legendarium blogging #deep blogging #team dúnedain #:D :D :D #thengel #ondonórë blogging