Friendship is Divine Affection @highlybread - Tumblr Blog

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

By Emily Dickinson

'Hope' is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land— And on the strangest Sea— Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb—of Me.

#Missed having this as my blog header #putting it here for now.#poetry #emily dickinson

tropiyas

necrophilologist

happy pride to them also

gretchensinister

Consider this (based on a conversation I had with some friends a while ago): Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for people who actually like Pride and Prejudice. Look–I tried to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I got about 20 pages in before I came to the conclusion that the person who wrote it did so out of the belief that the original Pride and Prejudice was stuffy and boring. There were out of character vulgar puns. And the trailer for the movie did not convince me that I had missed anything by cutting short my reading experience. So, what I’m talking about here is this premise: the world of Pride and Prejudice, but if you die, it’s highly likely, almost certain that your corpse will get up and try to eat people. But no one dies in Pride and Prejudice, you might say. In fact, few or no people die in any Jane Austen novel. This is true. But people do get sick with some regularity. Imagine the tension added to Jane getting sick after going to visit Bingley if there was the chance that she would become a zombie after she died. Becoming a zombie in an eligible bachelor’s house probably would have seriously wrecked any chances of any of the living sisters ending up with him. Imagine Mr. Collins, as a minister, having the duty upon someone’s death of severing their head with a ceremonial plate or something that would prevent the corpse from rising. Obviously important, but this only makes him more self-important and obnoxious. And dangerous. For you see, in this version, Mr. Bennett, who stays in his office all the time, whose life is the only thing allowing Mrs. Bennett and her daughters to stay in the house–Mr. Bennett is definitely a zombie. He died at home, and Mrs. Bennett decided that, no way were they dealing with this, and so…just started faking it. Jane and Elizabeth know. The younger sisters don’t. In this universe, I think we have to go with zombies that are not any faster or stronger than the humans they were, and in fact tend to get weaker as time passes because their flesh is rotting. And…hmm, okay, how about they are pretty violent upon rising, and for about a week afterward, trying to bite people and spread the infection (even though most people are carriers anyway, but getting a nasty bite from a corpse will give you other stuff that will have you die while carrying the virus). But then they calm down and basically just start sort of attempting to act like they did in life, that is, taking habitual actions with no consciousness, in a depressing and desiccated way. So Mr. Bennett is a zombie, and Mrs. Bennett’s number one goal is to get her daughters married before anyone finds that out. And this, actually, makes Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Collins more frustrating for Mrs. Bennett–obviously Mr. Bennett didn’t tell Elizabeth that she could refuse Mr. Collins, because Mr. Bennett is dead, but Mrs. Bennett can’t say anything or the game would be up. Another question in this version–does Mr. Darcy find out about Mr. Bennett being a zombie somehow? Does Elizabeth find out that he knows and didn’t say anything and this is something that helps repair his earlier actions? Anyway, this is the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that I was looking for.

exigencelost

Okay also: in the original, when Elizabeth walks through the rain all the way to bingley’s to care for Jane while she’s sick, it’s a very dramatic expression of both Elizabeth’s love for her sister and her penchant for flamboyant rebellion, but consider, if there is a chance Jane will wake up a zombie and Elizabeth knows it, how does that change the dynamic? Elizabeth might be going to help take care of Jane, or to *take care* of Jane should things take a more morbid turn…by killing her zombie sister.

This works especially well if zombieism is communicable prior to death; if mr. Bennett is a zombie and only the elder Bennetts know, that means Jane has been pre-exposed and is almost certain to wake up as a zombie should she die in the Bingleys’ care— which the Bingleys do not know. Elizabeth has to forge through the rain to be there in case things get ugly, because she knows that the Bingleys aren’t prepared.

shenzuul

And I think you pretty much HAVE to make Mr. Bennett’s zombie status play a role in how and why Darcy separates Bingley from Jane—the heavy implication behind Darcy’s line about the want of propriety shown even by her father hits Elizabeth like a ton of bricks as she realizes he knows—he knows, and he thought Jane lying to Bingley about it was evidence that Jane didn’t love Bingley—but—but Darcy must not have told Bingley that part of it. Bingley couldn’t keep a secret on his life; if he knew, his sister would know, and word would already be out and they’d have been ruined by now—

And of course, not only does the fact that Darcy, who owes their family nothing, has kept and continues to keep this secret for them even after Elizabeth’s refusal deepen the gratitude she begins to feel for him after the letter of explanation, but it also liberates Elizabeth to fall in love with him. Because Elizabeth-who-wants-to-marry-for-love would never be happy marrying someone who didn’t know the family secret in advance. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood because she couldn’t be satisfied with having to hoodwink someone to have their hand, but also couldn’t put her family at risk by trusting someone who wasn’t bound to them by more than an engagement. (Maybe she was even tempted to confide in Wickham at one point, and hasn’t Darcy’s letter proven she was absolutely right not to yield to that passing thought.) But Darcy figured it out himself, and he’s kept her trust, and she could fall in love with him without guilt—if she hadn’t already turned him down.

AND THEN LYDIA HAPPENS. And Darcy realizes immediately that Mr. Bennett can’t do anything to recover her—and if Mr. Bennett doesn’t do anything about Lydia, Mr. Collins might become suspicious, or even just officously involve himself, so find out the while thing. When Darcy blames himself for not revealing Wickham’s character, it’s with a much more immediate sense of urgency. It’s not that the other sisters’ marriage prospects being ruined may impoverish them down the road—it might immediately drag them all into destitution. That’s why he rushes off to go look for Lydia himself.

atyourperil

is anyone here ready for fat transgender summer can we give it up for fat transgender summer

anyataylorjoys

The Watermelon Woman (1996) dir. Cheryl Dunye

boxeater2000

Having lesbian friends feels so healing. I love u lesbian friends.

victusinveritas

Meet Pando, not a forest but a single tree. Every trunk of the Quaking Aspen is genetically identical & connected by a single 80,000 year old root system, making it one of the largest and oldest living entities on Earth!

#really excited by the idea that i might actually one day go visit utah and meet Pando 🤩🥰😍🤩🥲

rudjedet

Writing smut and writing fight scenes are two sides of the same coin: without emotional depth, either becomes nothing more than a bland technical dissertation on which body part goes where.

spicymotte

Here's the Princess Mononoke comic I made for the @ghiblifanzine :) Been thinking a lot about how San found her place in the pack as a young half-human, half-wolf child and how her family loved her from the very beginning!

Aftersales are open now until July 1st!!

kexytimes

"Priam's wretched wife lost all she had, until at last she lost her human form."

filmphotofranz

#happy pride!

demilypyro

little miss martyrdom bait wants to sacrifice herself for the needs of others

quietwingsinthesky

its so weird to me that cis people will dislike their name so ardently and yet. not change it. you guys know that’s an option, right. no one can make you keep the shit name your mom gave you. no, not even her.

penrosesun

One of my friends in undergrad changed his name because he didn’t want to bear the name of his abusive and absent father. It’s been years since he did it, and he still says that it was the single best decision of his life.

One of my friends in high school changed his named as soon as he turned 18, so that the ethnic name his family gave him was finally the name reflected on all of his paperwork. He told me that he understood why his parents had given him an “English” name, but that he felt that if he needed to assimilate in order to succeed, then that was a type of success that he didn’t want.

When I was on my way home from the courthouse after changing my own name, I got into a conversation with my rideshare driver, who was extremely interested once I told him what I was in court for, and wanted to know how I’d done it, how much it cost, was it difficult, etc. It turned out that his girlfriend had chosen the name “Yo-yo” when she came to the United States, unaware of how rare that was as a name, and that she was frequently made fun of because of it. Neither one of them had realized that a name change was so easy, and he told me he was excited to let her know that she had options.

There was an intern at a summer job I had once, who changed her name to be the same name, but a different spelling. She said that she had no idea why her parents had spelled her name so oddly to begin with, and suspected that it was just an honest mistake either by them or by some nurse, but it had been a headache for her entire life, and it was a huge relief to not need to be correcting people’s spelling on important documents anymore.

One of my exes legally changed his name to have an exclamation point, because he liked to sign his name with an exclamation point.

You can always change your name if you don’t like it. You always have that option. It doesn’t matter why – it can be conformist or anti-assimilationist, serious or silly, a minor change or a major change. Your name is yours, and you have every right to change it to be whatever you want.