I saw a post saying that Nora bashes on therapy all throughout aftg and generally casts it in a bad light, and I was just like ??? Like, did we read the same books? Because it's made abundantly clear that most of the Foxes love Betsy and don't mind their required therapy sessions, and Andrew literally goes to therapy and visibly benefits from it. He chooses to go back even after he doesn't have to! Even Aaron comes around eventually after we learn that he didn't like it. It's literally only Neil who shows such a dramatic distaste for it, but even then, he still trusts Betsy to help Andrew and Aaron!
So I don't know what books they were reading, but to me, I think aftg actually showed therapy in a pretty positive light, even with the fact that the literal main character didn't like it. Like, not everyone likes the idea of therapy, that's just realistic, and if any character in aftg wouldn't like it, it's Neil, who had so many secrets to hide. And yet, despite that, we still see multiple characters obviously benefit from therapy and Betsy.
252 notes
·
View notes
I’ve been thinking about the development of Elizabeth’s feelings for Darcy in P&P, and one of the things I find really intriguing is how incredibly careful Austen is in her handling of their physical attraction to each other.
A lot of takes on Darcy’s initial attraction to Elizabeth focus entirely on the physical element, but Austen’s description of it folds together his attraction to her intelligence, her expression, her body, and the “easy playfulness” of her manner. Of these, the earliest mentioned is his realization that her face is “rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes” and her eyes are the physical feature that he seems to dwell on the most.
At any rate, Darcy’s attraction to Elizabeth is established early on (Ch 6) and continues as a thread from that point on. And—I mean, even in 1813, it’s one thing to show a man in his twenties being attracted to the pretty heroine. Austen is a lot cagier about Elizabeth’s feelings.
The narrative is structured so that we know Darcy is physically attractive from his entrance in Ch 3, when the narrator refers to “his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien” along with his wealth. But we’re not in Elizabeth’s head at that point, and iirc, she isn’t shown as saying or thinking anything about his physical attractiveness until she blushingly agrees that he is very handsome forty chapters later.
Even there, Austen leaves the dialogue to stand on its own and tells us nothing of what Elizabeth actually feels about it. The conversation moves to Darcy’s personal virtues, which reveal the critical fact that Darcy is consistently kind and good-natured in the domestic sphere. So Elizabeth’s concession that Darcy is physically attractive is narratively linked to the suggestion that he would make a safe husband, emotionally speaking (although her concession comes first, which may be significant).
Between the initial, omniscient narrator-type description of him and Elizabeth agreeing in Ch 43, we do get references to his looks a few times, but during the period of Elizabeth’s dislike, it’s always either through implication or through someone around Elizabeth rather than Elizabeth herself. So Bingley, for instance, jokes about how Darcy is so much taller than he is, but the narrator only remarks on Elizabeth’s assumption that Darcy is offended by this.
We know that Elizabeth looks for a resemblance to Darcy when she first sees Lady Catherine, and finds it, but this isn’t explicitly linked to her conclusion that Lady Catherine might have been handsome in her youth.
Then there’s the introduction of Colonel Fitzwilliam, when he arrives with Darcy, as “about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman.” Obviously the contrast is with Darcy, who is handsome but has less gentlemanly manners, but this isn’t explicitly spelled out. Austen simply says that Darcy “looked just as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire” and moves to the manner of his compliments to Charlotte.
We do get an explicit contrast later, when Darcy, Georgiana, and Bingley come to Lambton (so, after the critical revelations):
Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother; but there was sense and good humour in her face
Austen breezes past this to Georgiana’s manners and Bingley’s arrival. There are a couple of discussions of Darcy’s appearance earlier at Pemberley, but entirely held between Mr and Mrs Gardiner, who admire his figure while Elizabeth is consumed by embarrassment. She mentions that it was obvious that he had only just arrived via horse or carriage, but not how she knows this or what she feels about it beyond repeatedly blushing.
Then they meet again, he interacts with the Gardiners for awhile, and Elizabeth and the Gardiners leave. The Gardiners discuss the encounter including Darcy’s appearance, and Mrs Gardiner—who at this point, still thinks Darcy has mistreated Wickham—first concludes that Wickham is handsomer, then immediately re-considers and decides that Darcy has perfect features, but not Wickham’s angelic countenance. She (Mrs Gardiner) goes on, “He[Darcy] has not an ill-natured look. On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he speaks.”
Elizabeth does not opine on Darcy’s mouth, lol, and instead defends Darcy’s moral character as far as his financial dealings with Wickham are concerned. We don’t hear much more of it apart from that, and in general, we see Elizabeth’s reactions to Darcy more than we hear about them:
Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.
She blushed again and again over the perverseness of the meeting.
The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken.
Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for being so silly!
The colour now rushed into Elizabeth’s cheeks in the instantaneous conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the aunt
She had only to say in reply, that they had wandered about, till she was beyond her own knowledge. She coloured as she spoke
I do not personally think there can be much reasonable doubt about whether Elizabeth is attracted to Darcy during this phase of the book. But the narrative does dance around it enough (for understandable 1813 reasons, I suspect, given that Elizabeth either dislikes or hates Darcy for a significant portion of the book) that it’s not at all clear when she begins to finds him attractive, especially given that she does not actually see him between receiving the letter and acknowledging his attractiveness at Pemberley. So I think there are multiple valid interpretations or headcanons one could come up with for that.
369 notes
·
View notes
Honestly, imodna would be a good ship if the shippers/stans weren’t so damn insufferable. I also hate how they act like they are already canon and you can’t ship Imogen or Laudna with anyone else in the group. People got so mad when the conversation in the dust storm happened with Ashton and Laudna because people thought they were flirting. Or when on the first episode of 4 sided dive Marisha asked Robbie if Dorian’s crush was on Imogen, people got so mad at that! I also hate that they call them lesbians when THEY HAVE BOTH EXPRESSED HAVING FEELINGS FOR BOYS! Why can’t they be bi? Or Pan? I also hate how people read into Laura’s micro expressions/ movements, like last episode with the whole leaning shit “oh what was that lean Laura?!! Imogen wanted to kiss Laudna because look at Laura’s lean!” I dread the day that Imogen or Laudna fall in love with someone that’s not each other(especially if that person is a man.) because Marisha and Laura will harassed and hated because they didn’t give the people what they wanted.
oof. that's some frustration you really needed to vent, nonnie, and honestly i get it. full disclosure—my mutuals who are into imo/dna are all lovely, and none of them engage in this behavior. if imo/dna becomes canon, i'll be happy for (and potentially even happy with) fans like that. but enough shippers are doing things like this that it's becoming more and more of a source of frustration and friction as the campaign goes on.
i think a lot of fandom—in general, not just cr—still doesn't want to acknowledge that at the end of the day, they are looking at things like shippers, with a particular kind of confirmation bias. it doesn't make them necessarily wrong or right, but as easy as it can be to get swept up in it, i think it's important to take a step back every once in awhile and re-evaluate.
now admittedly, generally speaking, it takes a lot for me to get really invested in a ship; i usually only have one or two per fandom, even fandoms with tons of characters. i'm generally pretty passive about most ships if it's not the otp; like, vax/leth and pike/lan, for example, didn't need to be romantic endgame for me to enjoy CR1 (and honestly might have been more interesting to me if they hadn't), but perc/ahlia absolutely made the show for me and i honestly think them being together actively strengthens the narrative as a whole.
i say all that to say that for the most part, i very much consider myself to be along for the ride with respect to most relationships in most fandoms. if such-and-such pairing happens, great; if they don't, okay. and with CR in particular, it's such a long-form medium that i know going in that any romance is going to take a while, and most of them probably won't just reach out and grab me.
and as such, it absolutely baffles me to have seen shippers insisting, from the moment the characters first appeared in episode 1, that not only are imogen and laudna canon endgame, they're basically already together and just haven't admitted it yet. i feel this way about dor/ym and callow/moore as well—i saw a post making the rounds that claimed that all three of those ships are "not canon YET but let's be real" and like...why would you set yourself up for disappointment like that? because yeah! all three of those ships could be endgame! but they could also not be endgame. we're less than 40 episodes into a campaign that'll probably run well into the 100s.
i also fully agree with you re: the microexpressions and the cherrypicking, and i feel like a microcosm of this issue can be found in a conversation imogen has with orym early on—shippers latched onto the fact that imogen compares laudna's thoughts to music, something that finally brought her peace after the chaos of the world around her, and completely ignored the part immediately after where imogen says that the rest of the party also feels like that to her. i didn't even know that imogen said that about the whole party until i watched the episode, and to me it's an example of how shippers tend to warp canon interactions to suit a particular narrative in such a way that they become almost entirely divorced from their context.
and from the outside looking in, what confuses me about this sort of thing is like...didn't y'all already go through this? because if my understanding is correct, c2 ship discourse was full to the brim with beau/jes and wido/jest fans dissecting "laura's microexpressions" to prove that jester was for sure in love with our fave, really you guys we swear...and then not only was that not true, but jester also didn't even know about beau or caleb's feelings to acknowledge them at all, and from the actual words that came out of laura's mouth in various OOC moments like on TM, laura just...really really wanted to romance her husband's character in her dnd game and like, that's it. there was never going to be another romantic option for jester as long as fjord was on the table, and that was something that shippers always should have been taking into account.
laudna and imogen are canonically deeply important to each other. they love and appreciate each other very much. that love and appreciation could turn into a lovely romance with a great dynamic, and i certainly don't blame people for being invested in it. but it also could not be romantic endgame, and they remain friends or even get with other people. and as you said, fandom can and will turn nasty about their ships being sunk; we've already seen it happen. there's a certain smug, entitled undercurrent from that particular corner that i have very little patience with, and while i think there's something to be said for deciding to enjoy things in spite of the fandom and just be a cranky old curmudgeon shooing the wank out with a broom, i also understand the response of just "...aight, imma head out".
33 notes
·
View notes