unfortunate attraction to problematic men

sita//south asian//she/her//currently obsessed with shirley jackson, uquizzes, lace, and angry girl music main is @elycr but i never post there

[heterodickpaper]

ur girl made another uquiz!! i spent sm time on it pleaseeee take it i think it's very fun but i'm probably biased...take it urself and decide if i'm right!!

obviously i am no trained professional this is all just for fun but i hope it is a fun quiz <3 follow me on tumblr @elycr or my reading/writ

[heterodickpaper]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

for tsh/donna tartt, dark academia, 80s movies, british all-boys schools, and communism enjoyers, id like to recommend the 1984 film another country, featuring a very funny gay rupert everett, young cary elwes, and communist colin firth! also recommending my fic of it because although its on life support it is straggling along and may soon be updated! it's very self indulgent but i suspect fans of the movie will appreciate my interpretation

[heterodickpaper]

haiiiiii

[hangsawoman]

shirley jackson t-shirts

[heterodickpaper]

Does anyone want 2 beta a fic i wrote 🙏🙏🙏

[heterodickpaper]

what’s the general consensus on why Henry killed himself? asking bc i have a pretty concrete theory but idk if it’s a new one or not so pls Lmk!!!

[heterodickpaper]

hi i took your uquiz the other day & im still thinking about it. something about the phrasing of the questions && your little writing excerpts was so nice to read idk i loved it

this is so sweet…Omg thank u

[heterodickpaper]

bro i had the clearest most greatest analysis of Henry’s suicide that i was all ready to write out and then i forgot it…god hates me and wishes i was dead

[heterodickpaper]

licherally following for the reference to Hangsaman in ur uquiz... thank you for spreading the good word

ANOTHER HANGSAMAN FAN 😧😧😧literally pleaseeee dm me if u wanna talk more abt it one of my favs oat. Also check out my analysis if u scroll a little down if u want!!!

[heterodickpaper]

ohhh my god I just took the “falling in love and I’ll diagnose you w/ a problem” quiz and bro your writing about that girl and the word lovely? you’re a genius. you’re literally a genius. i admire how you write.

This is toooo sweet 😭😭😭this ask literally made my month <3333

[heterodickpaper]

rereading tsh…possible judy poovey essay coming soon 🤭 look out 4 faux-intellectual pretension and mb even a deeper dive into classism and racism thru glamorization of the western literary canon all thru the lens of richards condescension toward judy vs his idolization of henry. also richards own internal struggles with class and how he tries to escape them by intellectualizing himself…Maybe even a look at the “academia aesthetics” that are so pervasive online…

should be a fun time!!!

[caramelbyblur]

where is my pippa and boris gossiping over evening drinks content. where is my brother/sister pippa and theo sleepover content. where is my boreo uncles looking after pippa’s kids content. WHERE IS IT

[heterodickpaper]

IVE BEEN SAYINGGGG IT WAS ALWAYS PIPPA

[draculagerard]

Fuck personality tests. Who comes to your mind when I say "Michael"

[chernychnyi]

for @sneakydraws who wanted to see some dad decker!

[heterodickpaper]

i saw ur post about how u've been very into shirley jackson recently, and i just finished hangsaman and was wondering what ur general thoughts on it are? i loved we have always lived in the castle and the haunting of hill house, but i found hangsaman quite different in its structure and was left feeling a little confused. idk i just wanted to know other people's thoughts on it, as i did think it was interesting and am intrigued!

AGH i'm so glad u asked bc i looooooove love love hangsaman i think it might be my fav shirley jackson book (mb second to whalitc) and i have so many thoughts on it! mostly i absolutely adored all its observations abt life as a woman (one of my fav things abt shirley jacksons writing is the way she articulates thoughts and feelings in such a fantastic and cutting way). so it would help if i knew a little more abt what particularly confused u but i'm gonna assume it was the third act? with the whole forest scene & such

analysis below (TW mention of SA)

so the way i interpreted it is that throughout the book natalie has been going a little crazy? she was always a little out of it (esp with all her fantasies in the beginning of the book with the detective and all) but i think her breakdown was definitely accelerated by the SA she probably experienced at the end of act 1 (i say probably only bc the book is pretty vague abt it). we get a few clues that she's spiraling, like the insights into her private diary ("dearest darling most precious natalie, it's me, your most darling precious special natalie" & such) and her strange experiences with the whole stealing thing. i think she's unsure of her place in the world but instead of trying to find it she retreats into the place where she's most comfortable: her mind. i think the climax of the forest scene with tony harkens back to the SA scene in the forest at home—except this time, natalie takes control of the situation and tony disappears (i agree with the theory that tony is Natalie’s imaginary friend, an amalgamation of both her desires and her trauma. Tony allows her to be close to someone without compromising her privacy or safety). When she leaves the forest, natalie feels mature, unafraid, and comfortable in her isolation, having finally faced her past and conquered it.

[heterodickpaper]

Another thing that I at first felt was left unfinished was the Arthur Langdon storyline, but I don’t think that anymore bc of the way I interpret it:

Arthur is in many ways a version of Natalie’s own father: he too brings out her desire for male intellectual validation. I kind of want to do a whole analysis of her character and her relation to men (that quote about daughters bonding with fathers against mothers in the hopes of being spared the same fate comes to mind) but that’s irrelevant here so.

The way I interpreted Arthur and Elizabeth’s storyline was that it’s meant to be an exploration and explanation of what Natalie’s own parents relationship was like before she came into being, and how it soured. In Natalie’s mother’s monologue, she warns Natalie against men like her father, because they are condescending and untrustworthy. Natalie sees her father with an arm around a much younger woman at the garden party, which echoes Arthur’s nonchalance and even encouragement towards his female students’ flirtations.

The Arthur storyline seems to end very abruptly; the last time we see him, he mentions that he and Elizabeth are having a child together, and he’s unhappy about it. I think the reason why we don’t get any more development of his storyline past this point is because we know what happens now: this is the part where he and Elizabeth become Natalie’s own parents: bitter and discontent, bound together by a child.

My overall interpretation of the book:

What I struggled with and what I believe a lot of people struggle with is that Hangsaman seems not to really have a narrative arc; rather, it’s fragmented, and each part feels unfinished. The more I reread it, though, the more common threads I discover throughout each act that tie the whole story together and show Natalie’s development as a character.

The whole book has two major themes: Natalie’s (lack of) sense of self, and her experience with and around girlhood and womanhood. Part of her dissociation from herself I think stems from the trauma she experiences in the first act, but more I think comes from her disconnection to the role she will be expected to play as a wife and mother. Whether consciously or not, she’s absorbed her mother’s sadness, and despite going against her advice by falling for Arthur Langdon (aka a man only distinguishable from Natalie’s own father by his age) she ends the book content in her isolation. She’s belittled and condescended to a lot in the first two acts, either by men for trying and failing to be like them, or by women (like Vickie and Anne), for failing to fit the role of the demure and attractive girl. In the third act, she rejects both her dream of being a renowned and respected writer like her father, and of being the beautiful wife of someone like Arthur Langdon. Instead, she chooses to retreat into her own mind: she rebels against the unfair and rigid rules set for her by going to the only place where she can make her own.

Throughout the book, Natalie tries to conceptualize herself through others’ eyes, confusing her reflection with others’ imagining that she is not in fact herself but a character in someone else’s dream. In the end, she realizes she alone decides who she is. Ultimately, Hangsaman is a subversion of the coming of age trope: Natalie sees her options for the future, watches the women around her live them, and refuses them all, taking agency and coming into her own as a woman defined only by herself.

[heterodickpaper]

i saw ur post about how u've been very into shirley jackson recently, and i just finished hangsaman and was wondering what ur general thoughts on it are? i loved we have always lived in the castle and the haunting of hill house, but i found hangsaman quite different in its structure and was left feeling a little confused. idk i just wanted to know other people's thoughts on it, as i did think it was interesting and am intrigued!

AGH i'm so glad u asked bc i looooooove love love hangsaman i think it might be my fav shirley jackson book (mb second to whalitc) and i have so many thoughts on it! mostly i absolutely adored all its observations abt life as a woman (one of my fav things abt shirley jacksons writing is the way she articulates thoughts and feelings in such a fantastic and cutting way). so it would help if i knew a little more abt what particularly confused u but i'm gonna assume it was the third act? with the whole forest scene & such

analysis below (TW mention of SA)

so the way i interpreted it is that throughout the book natalie has been going a little crazy? she was always a little out of it (esp with all her fantasies in the beginning of the book with the detective and all) but i think her breakdown was definitely accelerated by the SA she probably experienced at the end of act 1 (i say probably only bc the book is pretty vague abt it). we get a few clues that she's spiraling, like the insights into her private diary ("dearest darling most precious natalie, it's me, your most darling precious special natalie" & such) and her strange experiences with the whole stealing thing. i think she's unsure of her place in the world but instead of trying to find it she retreats into the place where she's most comfortable: her mind. i think the climax of the forest scene with tony harkens back to the SA scene in the forest at home—except this time, natalie takes control of the situation and tony disappears (i agree with the theory that tony is Natalie’s imaginary friend, an amalgamation of both her desires and her trauma. Tony allows her to be close to someone without compromising her privacy or safety). When she leaves the forest, natalie feels mature, unafraid, and comfortable in her isolation, having finally faced her past and conquered it.

[heterodickpaper]

trying 2 write a kitsey/pippa fic would anyone read it…

if so can one of u help me what year would kitsey have been 14-15 i could do the math but I don’t want to <3