Semper distans

She/her•Multifandom•Mainly reblogs ngl

[unhappytogekiss]

a new reality tv show called So you think you can write Doctor Who

twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street

a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode

judged by solely by christopher eccleston

this is how you find the new doctor who showrunner

[insertfunnysayinghere]

On a more positive note, I'm excited to see everyone's creations during a potential "Wilderness Years 2". Last longterm hiatus, we had Robert Shearman doing his thing and feminist icon Evelyn Smythe. It's open season. You can do whatever you want. Go buckwild. Make the Doctor a two-headed centaur with an emo companion from 2050 who vaguely resembles Victoria Pedretti. It's our canon now. Our Doctor Who.

[insertfunnysayinghere]

You can tell Doctor Who has lost so much of it’s cultural capital because it’s been sent into essentially another wilderness years, and it’s not even trending here: the once home of SuperWhoLock.

[insertfunnysayinghere]

Currently, we’re all Charlie Brown.

[maneeyansf]

New to bridgerton fandom, just want to drop a piece about my dear Eloise.

She's so trap and sad this season, it makes me angry-sad.

I feel most of the time, she has a sense of direction to go to but now she is a bit hopeless. I think she saw all people around move on to being happy this their lives, and she cant because she has 0 freedom to do anything.

And it's in large part because she deeply loves her family. Because the one time she did something for herself and truly enjoy it (make a friend and go the radical meetings) it immediately was used against her family.

If it wasn't for her, she could have try to run (like Cressida) and gain some form of freedom like the modiste or that artist who become model to have access to lessons. She's the most likely to pretend to be a man imo. But she wouldn't do anything that cause them harm.

Don't know how writers will resolve all that and keep the fantasy but they better do something

[eloisesharpes]

lately, many fanfics are exploring how isolating and lonely eloise's life would be as a spinster; not her fault, but a punishment by society because she refused to follow what they considered the only natural path for her to take, becoming a wife and a mother

it hurts a lot to realize that I feel very similar to that; I do have a job, I earn my own money, I live alone, I do my own things, I went to university, I got a masters, etc., everything society now encourages me to do as long as I do become a wife and a mother at the end. but just like eloise, I refuse to do what's expected and society still isolates me for that, two hundred years later. everyone I know is married, dating since high school, with or without kids, getting pregnant and being so excited about it. events are for couples, for their children, shared experiences, complaining about their partners, sharing the struggles of raising kids. and there's no room for me. it still feels like punishment for choosing a different life since life around me was never meant for someone like me

[1-jar-of-stars]

On Friendship.

[suchastrangemess]

@giles-cxrey

[dollypopup]

to me, Eloise's story is, in many ways, a tragedy. an elegy to girlhood and rebellion. the girl who one said 'suppose I want to fly'. the girl who dressed as Joan of Arc. the girl who spoke of wanting to attend university, of not wanting children, of fairness and the rights of woman. we watch her get cut down smaller and smaller until it feels like what's left is more a shell. not a growing up, but a growing in.

the people who are saying that Eloise falling in love is just a well known trope in this kind of genre miss the point. the ones who say that Eloise can still be a feminist and a mother and wife are missing the point. of course she can. many, many well known feminists are wives and mothers.

but they fought, and continue to fight, for women to be able to choose that path, if they so desire it.

and Eloise doesn't. she does not want the life she is being, inevitably, yanked toward. I'm sure the show will depict her happy. I'm sure the show will depict her fulfilled. I'm sure the show will even say she's the happiest and most fulfilled she's ever been and oh, how silly she ran from this for so long.

but Eloise is more, now, than just a character in Bridgerton. in many ways, she is one of the few characters who has transcended the show. she represents the countless women who put their girlhood dreams of freedom and equality on a shelf, who slowly, ever so slowly, became crushed beneath the boot of patriarchy. who conformed. because otherwise, what is the outcome? there is little choice but to conform. in that slow, dripping, insidious violence so many of us face. what she says does not matter. no one wants to listen. her anger, her sorrow, her flailing against the system she is trapped within- all washed away from her until her rebellion and righteous fighting spirit is bloodless and limp.

the show does to Eloise what the world does to so many women- silences them, and hushes them, and tells them they are wrong. but she's not wrong. she's not wrong for being terrified of childbirth, for not desiring it, especially in a time when it has such a high likelihood of resulting in her death. she's not wrong for raging against being forced to speak only of 'acceptable' things, embroidery and dances and gossip, when other topics are only confined and barred from her because she's a woman, of finding so many women in her life, who are not as enlightened or already crushed or kept in the dark purposefully, frustrating, for wanting to push back against the system she is ensnared inside of, for criticizing it. she's not wrong for pointing out the realities of marriage for women.

women were property. that is the life she lives. upon marrying, she becomes the property of, essentially, a stranger. all she owns, all she is. hardly even a person. why should she not fight against that?

feminists get married. feminists have children. feminists find much joy in these pursuits. but let's not mince words here. historically, what women faced at the hands of their husbands was horrific. and we had no protection from them. there is a reason killing one's abusive husband is such a trope, historically. and people are so fast to point out how feminists can be married and mothers, when many feminists also remain single and childless. but one outcome is considered significantly less acceptable than the other. it isn't that Eloise is in a romantic show and so of course that will be her outcome. it's that Eloise lives in the world she lives in. and Eloise flays it open for us to see how absolutely brutal it is. how cruel. how choiceless. how narrow.

she does not even get to know what sex is. she does not get to go to university. or travel. she does not get to attend rallies or clubs. she does not get to know what she so desperately wants to know. we watch her world collapse in on her, the walls cramping closer and closer. we watch her crumble. give up on her dreams. even her best friend keeps her in the dark after she's married. the female solidarity that Eloise believed them to have in Season 1, that they both would find out how one came to be with child so she could prevent it from happening to her, is gone. Penelope knows. And Penelope does not tell her. her siblings know, and her siblings do not tell her. her brothers get to party and drink and explore themselves, they get to go to beautiful places and learn about them, drop out of school on a whim, have relationships with no permanence, use their money as they please with no one to bar them from doing so. and Eloise?

Eloise gets to comment on the unfairness and then be dismissed and disregarded. Eloise gets to bang her fists against the glass until she tires. Eloise gets to ebb away, piece by piece, chipped at and ignored, until she's quiet. Until she gives up. Until she loses the battle and has no taste for the war. Until she tries to make connection after connection, but is ultimately pushed to the margins, those relationships fraying or thinning. Until she's alone and the only pathway to the world she has left is one in which she marries, puts her girlhood dreams and rebellion forever on a shelf, the way Violet did, and accepts that she's lost. that the fight she fought was always a losing a battle. that there was never any hope of her winning, no matter how ardently she tried.

and you want to tell me that's not heartbreaking?

[havingapoemwithyou]

The Next War by Ursula K. Le Guin

[never-sated]

"The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well."

- Tales From Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

[writingdose]

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

the only thing AI checker does is harm genuine artists and people in general too.

[lucerants]

Francesca Bridgerton and Michaela Stirling falling in love on my TV screen during Bridgerton season 5 #confirmed.

[kaijuno]

[fairycosmos]

for about a month in the early 2010s people used to say things like climate change is real and gay people deserve rights. does anyone remember this

[eloiscbridgerton]

#RIP eloise bridgerton you would've loved having good writers

[redxluna]

When I tell you I went from, "Oh, that's a cool name drop!" to a slow, dawning horror as the scene progressed. It really does feel as if someone in the writers' room did a quick Google search, saw a name, and just went, "Good enough!"

And, not only is this a take that does not fit for (the) Mary Wollstonecraft...we're really going to use a writer, immortalized for her feminist works, to promote the idea that you can't "value love" if you remain too independent or feminist? Because, while that might not have been the direct intent, that's definitely how it felt.

[wintersoldierfell]

you've heard of death of the author, now get ready for death of the audience: where instead of basing your reaction on a thousand uninformed opinions online, you actually read the text and engage with it

[wintersoldierfell]

girl help there's people on this post who can't actually read my text