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#am i expressing my thoughts right

transexualpirate · 4 months

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hot take but i think that "fictional characters are fictional and liking or disliking them have no real life effect" and "the way you treat certain characters can be an indicative of your character in real life" are statements that can and should coexist

example: character A is violent and makes misogynistic comments. they're still charismatic and their arc is interesting to read/watch. person A acknowledges that the character is bad but they still enjoy consuming content from the character and they do so unapologetically. they're allowed to like the character, especially considering that literally everyone the character has harmed is also fictional. they don't pretend the character isn't violent, or misogynistic, they just like the character despite that. they post about it constantly. this is a neutral action that shows nothing about person A.

character B is a white man that makes racist comments, treats a black person in the show badly and gains money through anti-ethical means. they're still charismatic and their arc is interesting to read/watch. person B claims the character is flawed but overall misunderstood and all their actions are entirely justified. they're allowed to like the character, especially considering that literally everyone the character has harmed is also fictional. person B claims the black character that character B treated badly either had it coming or overreacted. all of person B's favorite characters are white men. person B goes out of their way to justify that all of their favorite characters are actually misunderstood and good people, and more people should like them. this shows that person B likely has some favoritism for white men.

just. you're allowed to like fictional characters even if they're awful fucking people but. and im not sure why this is controversial. the way you interact with media says something about you. this isn't necessarily a bad thing. does this make sense please

#im so so tired #and on opioids #prescribed. please #am i expressing my thoughts right #does this make sese #sense #mine #cw discourse #ig #possibly #why is #the way you interact with media says something about you #a controversial take #long post #discourse

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iamthecomet · 5 months

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!!!

wait but like, if the ghouls hadn't seen humans as anything other than prey they would have no reason to glamour as them, so like they used to disguise themselves as cats, something a little too big and wild to be a housecat but if you look fast enough why would you question it?

as they start to get comfortable they start to take on more and more human traits, showing that they think the humans are part of their pack now

you're so smart comet i'm kissing your brain

I know we talked about it earlier too, but I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS.

Sure the cats are big but they're just cats, right? Forest cats are big. They're not feral though--they don't run or hiss or swat. They watch. It's a little eerie, a little creepy. But Nihil's boys are invested immediately. Terzo catching the eye of the biggest cat, of course. He's black, with a charcoal gray patch on his chest. Dark nose. Vibrant--purple, no they must just be dark blue--eyes. Nihil and Imperator both have that uncanny valley feeling. Like what they are looking at is both cat and not, but they don't seem dangerous. Just a little too sentient. Not pets. Even when that big black cat follows Terzo home one day--he never becomes a pet. A companion, sure. And then when the others start to hang around, they too are never pets. They tolerate attention, they appreciate food. But they cannot be tamed or commanded.

"Typical cats," Imperator says, but Nihil isn't so sure. Wary. Always. And then weird things start to happen. Secondo swears he saw a naked woman out at the lake. Just a glimpse. A moment of eye contact. A ghost? A siren? Seconds later the pure white cat that likes to hang out on the shores pads over to him, nuzzles against him. Looks up at him with eyes that feel a little too familiar. And then there's Terzo's cat--hardly a cat now. Bigger than ever. And Terzo swears the cat--he calls it Omega--talks to him. But that's just silly kid games, right? It's gradual, gentle. Until eventually when they take humanoid forms it feels--normal. Not surprising at all when Omega is suddenly a person--or an approximation of one. Or when that pretty white cat shifts right in front of Secondo and asks if he wants to go for a swim.

#comet writes #octo ♥#I feel like I could write an entire novel about this #I'm not kidding #comet canons #ghost headcanons #Terzo #Secondo #Nihil #Sister Imperator #Omega Ghoul #Mist Ghoulette #ghoul thoughts #ghost thoughts #comet comments #Octo I cannot express HOW much I love this thought #I am smooching your BIG GIANT BRAIN right back #I have so many more thoughts about this OH MY GOD

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foxesandrabbits · 7 days

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Not only Kevin's entire future with Exy, his one purpose, was crushed alongside his hand, but also, for a moment, his life was on the line too. And he was so scared, he spoke and plead in every language he knew, in hopes anyone would help him, and how soul crashing it must’ve been to know that no one would.

He asked Jean for help, not really understanding that he was damning them both by speaking french in front of Riko because that moment was it- he was going to die. But they both had their hands tied, not having full freedom to actually act the way they wanted. And how devastating is that? Asking for help, and not receiving it. Watching the person you love the most hurt, and not being able to help them. Both their lives at stake, both unable to do something about it.

At that moment, I think, was when Kevin fully recognized that no matter how Jean felt about him (even when Kevin made him break the rules, like teaching him french), there was always going to be a wall between them in the form of a raven. How he truly learned that Jean wouldn’t go with him that night even if he asked, why he used him, because he knew Jean couldn't allow himself to do it willingly, knowing he was betraying the Moriyamas, their cuts ran too deep for that to happen.

And oh, to see Jean for the first time since Renee rescued him must’ve been so excruciating, “bottomless guilt”, how easy was to be back in the nest tending each other's wounds, and how much he didn't want that to happen ever again.

Once Kevin learned how to trust himself, how to be a little less afraid, how to convince himself that there was more to life that what he had been taught, he truly saw Jean, this person that would have done anything for him, at one point.

Kevin couldn’t rescue Jean once, but he wasn’t going to let that happen again, so he made sure to give Jean the best chance he could find so he could have the same hope the foxes had given him. Even if it was without him.

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cargoshortsenjoyer · 6 months

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This is Herbert West about to experiment on Jeffrey Combs. The concept originally came from @heliojip on here. He hasn't released his image yet though.

I had begun jokingly brainstorming how Jeffrey Combs would react if he was transported into the Reanimator universe and met Herbert. I think he'd escape with his knowledge of how horror movies work and how to act if you wanna be the survivor, and then go eat some keebler fudge magic middles (discontinued). Then Herbert would find him and Jeffrey would have to make up a reason why they look so similar, and he'd tell him that he was his REAL biological dad; the sperm donor to his actually adoptive father. Anyways if you want more of this headcanon tell me, it was fun

#herbert west #jeffrey combs #tell me if i should tag this in any specific way #reanimator #re-animator #tell me your ideas for how theyd interact too if you want #but a contingency in my mind is that jeffrey acts very normal. its a good contrast to herbert and a way to avoid making this weird #unless its already weird. write to me your thoughts!#i used 4 ref images to get this right. im glad i put in the effort #the surgical table doesnt fully follow the ref image but whatever. i still think it looks really good #i shouldve timed myself!! i usually do darn.#i am MOST proud of their faces/facial expressions/likenesses #herb still looks like herb even tho i exaggerated his mouth and nose #just a little but i also wanted to draw relatively realistically #its kinda fun #you have more lines to make a person look like themselves #and of course i love drawing weird perspectives #i also like the lines of the way i drew their hair. especially jeffrey's #dunno how to elaborate on that tho #tell me exactly your thoughts. critique is welcome

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roktavor · 3 months

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...I know it's contrary to that meme I rb'd the other day, but does anyone else have a bad relationship with actually posting fic?

Idk. I happily write, but when it comes to sharing what I've wrote, sometimes it just....takes all the fun out of it. Fills me with dread, zaps motivation, regardless of how kind any comments are - like it's not an issue with reader response at all, it's just smth that's broken in my head.

Like. I haven't heard any other writer feel similarly. But I just rarely want to share anything these days, bc it doesn't feel good or worth it or satisfying anymore...

#I'd like to leave my works somewhere others could possibly take some enjoyment from them #but lately I am like......actually others looking at these feels so so shitty. and idk why or what happened to change me.#notfic #riley rambles #can't even put it into words right and I'm sorry if this is hurtful or unrelatable #I promise it is NOT a problem with the lovely thoughtful readers. it is an issue with ME Idk how to fix #anyway thanks for listening and I apologize in advance bc I will likely chicken out of expressing myself and delete this post later #but I am tired and frustrated and wondering if I'm alone in this or if anyone can relate at all.....

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drabbles-n-doodles · 2 months

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So maybe this has to do with having listened to TMA when it was relatively close to being finished, at least in that it was properly done by the time I caught up to season 5 so I didn't actually have to wait to keep listening to new episodes, I could breeze through as many as I wanted in one sitting.

Meanwhile with Protocol I'm actually listening as each episode is released and I have to wait for a new episode to keep listening.

Anyway I think the point I'm getting at is this is actually the first podcast I've ever experienced in real time and not after it'd already been mostly finished, so the feeling I get every time I get to listen to a new ep is far more visceral and intense than what I'm used to with previous podcasts.

I'm certain I'm not the only person whose Protocol experience is going this way, but, on god, this show has me in a death grip like no other, possibly even more so than TMA did.

I wish I knew specifically what it is about this time around that is hitting on things that properly unnerve and freak me out, whereas TMA didn't even come close to making me all that uncomfortable beyond a meager handful of times. Protocol, on the other hand, has whipped out banger after banger and I am so goddamn unsettled in ways that I don't even have words to describe.

I am both terrified and excited to find out what else is in store.

#having late night Protocol thoughts because i finally managed to get through ep 10 #i finally understand what people mean #qhen they talk about having a pit in their stomach #this show has me genuinely so fucking scared for these characters #maybe its because having a full cast right out the gate makes them feel more real??#idk what it is but i am #so unwell #this is ok to reblog btw if anyone else wants to add to my rambling #i need to yell about this podcast y'all are welcome to join me #tma #tmagp #no spoilers just me trying to express general feelings

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scattered-winter · 1 year

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yeah i’ll bite what’s ur more correct hoo? 👀

for friends who have not yet read the series this is gonna spoil pretty much ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, everything. heroes of olympus, trials of apollo, etc etc so on and so forth. i am full of Opinions and by god's big green tits i'm gonna make them Heard.

alright listen. I have so much beef with heroes of olympus because like. the things it could've been. I'll list all my grievances first to get it all out of my system before telling you about my more correct version. if you'd like to skip the salt and get to the good bits, scroll down to the bolded text xox

gaea was a weak-ass antagonist with no real motivation outside of "she's trying to destroy humanity because she's evil." arguably, kronos was the same way, which when you look at him from a mythological standpoint it makes sense because his whole thing is trying to overthrow the gods (and really, the same could be argued for gaea; mythologically, she tends to cause some shit on occasion). but kronos had the lesser gods/demigods on his side, which added a fascinating aspect to the conflict in the og series, especially since, in the end, percy realized that they were right. everyone who had fought for kronos had justification for it. the gods used them, abused them, and abandoned them, and they were tired of being tools. and percy realized that, and changed the status quo so it would never happen again.

fast forward to heroes of olympus. gaea and the giants are destroying the world...........because they want to. there were no other arguments. there were no other motivations/antagonists to add a more interesting aspect to it. it was a classic good vs evil conflict with little to no grayness which,,,,isn't a bad thing, but it just wasn't as compelling.

camp jupiter. boyyyyyyyy howdy do i have a ramble for that. it's so insane to me that the camp was defended by kids and teenagers when an entire city full of adult demigods was literally just a short hike away from the camp itself ????? like. I get it was because camp jupiter was meant to be camp half-blood's opposite force or whatever but come on. one could argue that camp half-blood is similar because chiron is training kids to go on quests, but like......that's his mythological role. in the myths, that's what chiron does. and without an established city/safe place other than a summer camp, the greek demigods are child soldiers by necessity, but the roman demigods are child soldiers for literally no reason other than that the plot needs them to be. which ,, i'm not saying that's bad. i'm just saying it's not as good as it could be.

also the 7!!!!!!!! THE 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! honestly, I think their whole deal is boiled down to a classic case of TELLING, not showing. we were told all throughout the series that the 7 are all best friends ,, a family, even. we were consistently told that. but there was very little actual instances of this being shown. group interactions were uncommon, and relationship dynamics were limited almost exclusively to romantic relationships or surface-level friendships that were explored only as an opportunity for quips and funny moments, but nothing deeper than that (percy and jason, for example). even the romantic relationship that preceded the series, percabeth, was broken down into a blander, flatter version from before, and both characters suffered for it. piper/jason was also flat and flavorless for most of the series, and frank/hazel is just. a mess. a 13 year old dating a 16 year old is squeamish in any context, and throw leo into the mix to make a weird, unnecessary love triangle, and it's just. even more of a mess. throw in the fact that every single character was motivated purely by romance and romantic relationships, and that every character ended up in a romantic relationship, and well. y'all know I'm aroace, so that's fairly self-explanatory. nothing worse than a piece of media claiming to be found family but focusing only on romance. kill die die die maim tear.

also about the 7, but it seemed to me that.......rick was trying to mimic percy's inner monologue with all of them--the sarcasm, the dark humor, etc. we all fell in love with percy in the og series, and I think he was trying to make us like the new characters in the same way, but in doing so he just made them all mini percys while also sandpapering the real percy. give each member of the 7 a different sense of humor/personality is what I'm saying. come on.

calypso. the only reason she was even in the books was to give leo a love interest, because apparently the single worst thing that can happen to a character is to not have someone to kiss (sarcasm intended). the gods not freeing her from the island just threw literally everything won from the og series out with the trash, and like. we know the gods are just Like That sometimes but look me in the eyes and tell me percy jackson, the boy who had just fought for so long and lost so much to get the gods' heads out of their asses, would just assume they followed through and not even check to make sure that another person wronged by the gods, someone he was very close to, got freed from her prison. that's right, you can't. my percy would never.

in that same vein: caleo. not only was the relationship kinda shaky in the first place because it was only there to give leo someone to kiss, it's also....not very good. calypso spends all her time belittling, talking down to, and sometimes even hitting leo, a character who canonically grew up in an abusive household. idk about y'all but.....an abused character already being thrown into a relationship for no reason, and then having that relationship be abusive?? and portrayed as the height of romance????? not a good vibe. I also really hated how, on top of all that, leo left his found family (canonically the only people who have ever made him feel loved/like he belongs) to go travel the world with calypso. which. another classic instance of familial/platonic relationships always, constantly being on a tier lower than romantic relationships. and y'all know how I feel about that.

the poc characters. I'm not the best resource on this one, since I'm not a poc, but there are plenty of people in minorities who have spoken out on this point, and I urge you to listen to them, because those arguments are all valid ones. (here is a good post that provides a good overview). I also remember seeing a really good post about piper's indigenous heritage as well, but unfortunately it's been lost to the void of tumblr.

aphrodite cabin. rick riordan seems to have this complex where the only female characters he can write about are tomboyish, tough, and badass. which isn't bad, of course, but it becomes a problem when all the more feminine female characters are portrayed exclusively as bullies/wimps. smfh there's more than one type of character in this world, richard

octavian. I get it, I hated him, everyone hated him, but I really can't deny that he had the potential for a compelling story. being manipulated by the oracle spirits into playing right into gaea's hands????? it COULD have been sooooo good, but octavian had hardly any development/focus, and I think him being manipulated only came up once or twice. storywriting equivalent of "he a little confused but he got the spirit."

now, for my more correct version :]

gaea's whole deal is completely different. instead of destroying humanity just because she Can, gaea is destroying the gods because she's furious and grieving her children, the titans. kronos was chopped into pieces and cast into eternal oblivion by the gods and demigods, and the other titans were forced back into subjugation, and gaea, who's been dealing with the gods' shit for thousands of years, has had enough*. so she rallies her other children, the giants, to bring down the gods and western civilization to avenge the millennia of heartbreak and injustice. which, yeah, fair enough. the gods suck and they've done some shitty things.

*this was actually touched on in the books when piper was using her charmspeak on gaea during the final battle. and I don't own physical copies of the books and tried everywhere to find the exact quote but it eluded me so I'll do my best to paraphrase from memory, but piper was sympathizing with all the grief and loss gaea has suffered over the centuries. tartarus banished, kronos defeated twice, etc etc. and I feel like that had potential for gaea's motivations but it was literally only brought up that one time smh

bonus points if there was some nuance to both sides. a few monsters who fight alongside the protagonists because they rely on western civilization just as much as the gods/demigods do, or even some gods or demigods who fight alongside gaea for one reason or another (like octavian, if he had been better developed). something to add some new facets to the conflict, because that was part of what made the conflict against kronos so damn compelling.

the 7 would be a found family FIRST, and a group of individuals w romantic relationships SECOND, if at all. percabeth can stay, as long as it's. actually the percabeth we all know and love, not whatever the fuck we actually had. piper/jason is on thin fucking ice, and only happens with the caveat that both their characterizations are my more correct versions (see below). hazel/frank is NOT a thing. piper, annabeth, and hazel have on-page interactions and friendships, and they have conversations about shared trauma and bonding over their common pasts in abusive households and shit like that, instead of talking about boys every fucking time. there are complex and multifaceted interpersonal relationships within the entire 7, and each friendship/dynamic has a chance to shine.

jason and percy. oughhhhhhhhh I have sooo many thoughts about them. they're character foils. percy had to fight for respect. jason had to fight to be treated normally. they're sons of arguably the most powerful gods of all time. they're opposites in nearly every way, but in the very same breath they're mirror reflections of each other*. I'm all for them being best friends, but the "sharing a braincell" himbo thing they had going on? that was played off purely for humor? hell no. they have a very deep and complicated friendship because they recognize themselves in the other and yet they're so completely different that they're on opposite ends of a spectrum. sure, they can hang out and have fun, but at their core, they have both a deep-seated understanding for each other but their personalities also grate a bit because they're so completely different. maybe there's a sideplot of them learning how to get along/be amicable with each other because they're both very traumatized TEENAGERS with so much pressure and stress to deal with, which, combined with the inherent complications of their relationship already, would make them a powder keg ready to blow. and I'm here for that. *the groundwork for their relationship being "two sides of the same coin" was already laid with hera switching them, and even with some characters stating how similar they were in some ways, but of course it was never expanded on so that's why it's here in the more correct version :]

piper. sooooooooo many complicated feelings about her. at first she was a generic Not Like Other Girls type, which. felt soooo cheap to me and is probably why piper/jason felt so. meh. because they were BOTH very flat and one dimensional at first. but in my more correct version, piper and drew were able to bond over being underestimated/ignored as daughters of aphrodite and as women of color, and I also hold the concept of piper being more feminine soooo close to my chest. I love characters who are so tough and badass who aren't allergic to dresses and makeup. her sexuality is also explored/brought up before she suddenly has a girlfriend.

jason doesn't DIE right when I start to actually LIKE him. smh (I'm sorry but it felt SOOO cheap to me. like it was purely for shock value. killing and biting). I do, however, love the concept trials of apollo introduced of jason being much more relaxed and comfortable with himself both as a greek-leaning demigod and as a kid who no longer had to deal with all the weight and pressure of being a Leader (tm). and jason acting more like a greek demigod vs percy acting more like a roman demigod can be another aspect of them being mirror reflections of each other. as percy begins to pick up more roman traits (because i LOVE to study how trauma/circumstances can change a character), jason starts to pick up more greek traits. it's another facet to their very complicated, very deep relationship with each other.

i ALSO love the concept of jason having a villain arc. he was a mirror to luke in so many ways; child soldier, abandoned by his godly parent, huge responsibilities on his shoulders, etc. I'd even argue jason had it worse than luke since he was a son of jupiter and thus had the constant pressure accompanying that. I think he deserved to go a little apeshit instead of that "high priest of the gods" bullshit

leo started out as my favorite, but as the series progressed, his character development stayed right where it was in the lost hero. I would have loved to see him change and grow as a person; maybe having a sokka-style arc where he grows out of his misogyny and sexism, and also gains some maturity (I liked his jokes, but come ON.) he would also have a different sense of humor, because as I said earlier it felt like rick was trying to make everyone into a mini-percy. I would also have loved to see a character not end up in a romantic relationship, since leo canonically had a lot of complicated feelings about family; it would have been great catharsis for me, someone who also has a lot of complicated feelings about family, to see a character I could relate to be able to find a family all of his own, with people he genuinely cared about and who loved him back.

hazel gets more development in how she was literally from the past. she died. I want more development and focus on that smh!!!!!!! how much is different in the modern age?? how many times does she walk down the street and do a double take because something's so completely different??? how many nightmares does she have about dying???????

frank stays chubby throughout the entire series. he does Not have a sudden glowup where he's No Longer Fat. he also doesn't date a 13 year old godbless

NICO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nico. first of all, him being gay is built up from day fucking one. maybe not said outright for a while, but it's at least CODED. it's not suddenly flung out of nowhere. for that matter, him being forcibly outed against his will is talked about more!!!!!!!!!!!! yes, jason was probably one of the best people he could have been forcibly outed to, but STILL !!! the trauma of having the choice taken away from you!!! especially for someone like nico, who was 1) raised in the 1940s where being gay was practically a death sentence and 2) sooo slow to trust. I need him to have some focus on that shit because it was fucked!!!!!!

in that same vein, solangelo is sooo much different. will solace gets some characterization in the pjo series to build him up beforehand, and he and nico interact a few times on-page in pjo as well to give their relationship some foundation as opposed to just. throwing them together for no reason. I would've really loved seeing them working together during the battle of manhattan!!! nico canonically has an admiration for will's bravery during the battle, and I would've loved to actually. ya know. see them work together on the page. I also think their dynamic has SOO much more to it than "sunshine bf/goth bf" that everyone+rick have turned them into. one of them is the son of death. one of them is a healer. will's probably lost so many of his friends because he was unable to save them. nico's lost so much of himself. they're soooooooo <333 by the time blood of olympus rolls around, they're already good friends, and almost losing each other in the battle only brings them even closer <3

annabeth and percy are still the same fucking couple/characters that i fell in love with in the og series, not the watered down romance we got

the final battle is much longer with much higher stakes (I want the camps having 24 hour watches while waiting for the enemy to attack again!! I want makeshift hospitals!!!! I want!!!!! a war!!! not a battle!!!!!!!!!)

the greeks are actually. taken seriously. on god. they're a highly competent force of fighters, not a bunch of immature idiots. rick riordan i am biting you (derogatory)

#i got kinda sleepytired but <333 here's my more correct version of everything #i might rb with an addition later because this is a Constant Thing in my head.#heroes of olympus #percy jackson #leo valdez #jason grace #nico di angelo #will solace #percy jackson and the olympians #piper mcclean #frank zhang #hazel levesque #annabeth chase #also you'll just have to trust that the solangelo in my head is SOOOO compelling and good #but i ran out of energy to fully express all my thoughts on it #but im right. you know i am.

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wildwren · 1 year

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Some incomplete and perhaps incoherent thoughts on class, race, personhood and women’s sexuality; Tom Jones (2023) in conversation with Fielding’s text

Warning: spoilers for The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Tom Jones (2023)

I’ve been thinking about the changes to Sophia’s story and how they both serve to add dimension to her character and to engage with existing themes of the text in complex ways. In Fielding’s text, Sophia is the white English-born daughter of Squire Western and the offspring of a “legitimate” (but very unhappy) marriage. In the 2023 adaptation, she is Squire Western’s granddaughter, born in Jamaica as the offspring of a non-consensual union between her white slaver father (Squire Western’s son) and her Black mother Beneba. She, like Tom, is a bastard, but she has been legitimized, given her father’s name, and declared sole heiress of her family’s fortune.

These changes don’t make Sophia’s storyline easier to witness — her arc is essentially about violence and the erasure of women’s wills by society, and they now include a racialized component as well. Sophia and Honour experience racial prejudice and harassment while fleeing to London, and Sophia’s entrapment and abuse by Lady Bellaston involves racialized as well as sexual violence, as Lady Bellaston quite literally tries to whitewash her. To make these moments land, the adaptation has endeavored to strike a tonal balance by giving the narrative voice of the story to Sophia herself, consistently framing the action through her gaze, and allowing appropriate space and gravitas for the injustice of her imprisonment and assault. They’ve also explored the text’s existing themes of class, personhood, and women’s sexuality within this new context.

In as much as it is possible to attribute prescient thematic points to the sort of madness Fielding was writing, there is an ongoing critique throughout the text about the artificial construction of personhood based on class, and particularly the relationship between class and women’s sexuality. Even in the novel, both Tom and Sophia are subject to conditional personhood — Tom due to his status as a low-born bastard, and Sophia due to her status as a woman. But this parallel takes on new meaning in the adaptation. Sophia’s new backstory means that now both lovers have been “rescued” from the conditions of their birth by benefactors to whom they owe their gratitude: Sophia to the grandfather who brought her across the ocean, Tom to his adopted father Squire Allworthy, who raised Tom as his son but never as his heir. Of course, both Tom and Sophia are betrayed by these benefactors as soon as they fail to meet the requirements of their conditional personhood. I appreciate how this adaptation brings attention to Allworthy’s hypocrisy as well as Squire Western’s, as it makes the parallel more coherent. It’s because of this conditional personhood that Tom and Sophia are even able to fall in love in the first place — all those intimate hours together are only allowed because Squire Western doesn’t fundamentally see either of them as full people capable of their own wills.

Tom is marked from birth as less than a full person, by nature of his association with his “ruined” mother (a teenaged serving girl presumably impregnated by her middle-class master). His “base” nature is further reinforced by his continued association with other “ruined” women. His status as a gentleman (or lack thereof) is fundamental to his identity and entirely outside of his control. Whether by the manipulations of Mr. Blifil or the willful bias of others such of Allworthy, Tom’s actions are consistently interpreted in the worst possible light, cyclically upholding the assumption that he’s not a “proper” gentleman after all.

Of course, Tom still gets away with quite a lot (he is a handsome white man after all!), no more so than at the story’s finale, when he himself is legitimatized and all is forgiven, doubly proving Fielding’s point. If it feels contrived that Squire Western should immediately and inexorably reverse his opinion on Tom as a match for Sophia, it’s because it is contrived. Squire Western’s refusal of Tom never had anything to do with his personality, charm, sentiment towards Sophia, or personal honor, but merely his lack of sufficient legal personhood to match Sophia’s. It’s a frustrating feature of the story that in order to deliver Tom and Sophia to a happy ending, Fielding must in the end uphold the very systems he spent much of the novel’s breadth critiquing. However, I do believe it’s meant to land with some irony. And there are some nice touches to Fielding’s execution of the twist — for instance, that Tom’s legitimacy comes from his relationship with his mother, not his father, who in fact does not matter at all.

Of course, Sophia’s arc is also very much about the relationship between personhood, class, and sexuality. She has the status of personhood by virtue of her wealth, but keeping it is dependent on her consenting to marry within her own class. Her sexuality is so constrained and controlled that her desire for Tom is described by Aunt Western as “monstrous inclinations” and is at one point compared by Squire Western to beastiality. To marry Tom would mean relinquishing her own claim to personhood, a fate so unthinkable that neither Sophia nor Tom ever seriously consider it beyond a few passionate outbursts. When Sophia flees Somersetshire, she is not running to elope with Tom, only to buy herself more time to make Squire Western see sense and hold off her marriage to Blifil.

There’s a certain aspect of this drama that is a bit hard to buy, especially for modern readers. Sophia is an heiress — she’ll inherit her own wealth. She’s in love with Tom, who is one of her father’s dearest friends. Why can’t everyone be happy? Aside from the reasons stated above and the constraints on Sophia’s sexuality that exist already in the text, the adaptation has added additional context. As a Black heiress, Sophia’s status as a legal person in English society is already so fragile that Squire Western and Aunt Western feel justified in acting to preserve that personhood by any means possible — namely, by securing her marriage within her class against her will. In the show’s first episode, Squire Western says to his sister: “My girl is beautiful and she is rich. Who cares if she be Black and a bastard too?” to which Aunt Western replies, “Good lord, Brother. The world may care rather a lot.” The fact that this personhood does not include the right to consent is already explored in the novel, but the adaptation includes the arc of Sophia grappling with the knowledge and grief that her mother died while enslaved.

The relationship between Sophia and Squire Western is one of my least favorite parts of the novel, but the changes to Sophia’s backstory add some additional context and complexity, and some careful tonal choices go a long way. It makes sense, after all, that Sophia would feel some devotion for her doting grandfather, her last family member not bound by lived experience to her memories of Jamaica and her slaver father. At the same time, the adaptation never minimizes the fact that Squire Western still sees Sophia as a form of property — the granddaughter he brought across the ocean at great expense, the last living reminder of his slaver son. In some ways, they’ve made him less awful — he’s certainly less explosively violent than he is in the novel, wherein he hits Sophia, verbally abuses her to a much more intense degree, and regularly threatens her with death. But the implicit violence of his banal small-mindedness is not erased.

Aside from the issue of Sophia’s forced marriage, which is cut-and-dry violence, their relationship seems to evoke some of the painful and complex dynamics that can arise from interracial adoption. Squire Western declares himself to love and cherish his perfect, beautiful Sophie, and Sophia has an honest experience of feeling loved by him, but ultimately, he doesn’t really understand her experience or her pain, and he makes no effort to.

Just as Tom’s happy ending must uphold the very systems that have oppressed him, so too must Sophia’s. In the novel’s finale, Squire Western does not receive any comeuppance for his role in the drama, despite acting as much a villain to the lovers as Lady Bellaston and Mr. Blifil, both of whom receive their just desserts. Within the context of the story, there is no ending for Sophia wherein she disowns Squire Western and lives out her days as an independently wealthy woman. Her happy ending can only exist when her will and Squire Western’s will align, which is made possible by the novel’s final twist. In the end, Sophia must live with the complexity of her relationship with Squire Western, not overcome it. I’ll let you decide how you feel about the adaptation's handling of that. I’m still not sure how I do.

I can never get to the end of this story without wanting to write fic about it, specifically about Sophia’s trauma, and how that might impact her relationship with Jones and with Squire Western going forward. I wrote fic about it when I finished the book and I’m writing fic about it now in the context of the show’s canon and characters. In some ways, the ending leaves more questions for me than it leaves neat conclusions. Whether that’s a strength of the story or a weakness is, I suppose, a matter of taste. The adaptation put a lot of love into rendering Sophia’s arc and illustrating her experience in this 18th-century world. It centered her voice and her gaze as much as possible, and it gave the spotlight to Sophie Wilde’s performance, which is the ultimate heart of their story. For all of those reasons, I appreciate it as an example of race-conscious historical drama and as an adaptation engaged in post-colonial dialogue with the English literary “canon.”

Whether it ultimately succeeded in giving Sophia all the justice she deserved, I’ll leave to voices other than my own.

#tom jones #tom jones pbs #tom jones 2023 #the history of tom jones #sophia western #tom jones itv #henry fielding #tom jones meta #my meta #oh im anxious about posting this one #just a lot of thoughts and feelings and always the doubt whether im the right person to express them #but of course i am very open to good faith discussion about any and all of this

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march-harrigan · 1 year

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After a year of searching and hoping and thinking it most likely wasn't gonna happen, I FINALLY HAVE HIM AND I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER! He's so beautiful and high quality and has this nice weight to him that makes him pleasant to hold! And oh my GOD have I been waiting a good while just to hold him!

And he was just in time for tea! (No seriously, I was making tea when he arrived and no sooner did I have him out of the box than the kettle started to whistle. Jervis "The Mad Hatter" Tetch was, quite literally in time for tea)

Thank you again so much to @riddle-me-ri for sending the listing link that made this possible! And to my dad who helped me with the money(as I was a bit broke due to the season)! I couldn't ask for a better Christmas/birthday! ♥

#jervis tetch #mad hatter #dc mad hatter #btas #figure collecting #toy collecting #collectibles #I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM #HE'S PERFECT #THAT DEVIOUS/SMUG EXPRESSION #I KEEP PICKING HIM UP TO EXAMINE EVERY LITTLE DETAIL #I CANNOT BELIEVE I ACTUALLY HAVE HIM IN MY HOME #AND CURRENTLY ON MY DESK NEXT TO MY OTHER HATTERS #WHAT A LOVELY TRIO THEY MAKE #might post pictures of them all together at some point #BUT ANYWAY THIS IS THE ONE I THOUGHT WAS A PIPE DREAM AND I AM JUST #IN A VERY EMOTIONAL STATE RIGHT NOW #IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY

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