Like I have a lot of thoughts about how living in a child-centric ecosystem has royally fucked up the way we navigate complex issues like intersectionality, accessibility, and equity. And its all this drama about what a playground should look like but its a lot of other things, too.
We built a park last month. It is a 45ft boardwalk on a strip of land that was otherwise unusable. We put in pollinator garden. It is a memorial for the underground railroad.
"A 45ft boardwalk counts as a park now? There's nothing for kids to play on!"
Well, you see, it used to be an empty lot that no one could develop and its right next to a six lane highway, so I actually do not want kids playing there. Its a memorial. Memorials are for everyone, but that doesn't mean they're intended for play.
I understand that all-ages drag shows ar controversial, even if they shouldnt be. But i also get pushback on 21+ shows held in bars because it has windows facing the street and a kid MIGHT see a person in a costume.
There are few palaces in this town where I can go and children are not there.
Children are an easy scapegoat for selfish adults because they have limited ability to speak up for themselves and have few rights of their own. If you dont like something, tell people your kids hate it.
i feel like it's absolutely crucial in the social justice world to take "he a little confused but he got the spirit" and similar sentiments/situations as a Win. intent is so much more important than saying it right the first time! if someone is approaching with scuffed language and incorrect terms but they're visibly being as polite as they know how, that person is a friend and should be treated better than what their words might invite in someone else's mouth.
someone who's confused but who's got the spirit has the best thing, which is respect. the other stuff is secondary. I'd take someone who's messing up but doing their best to treat me respectfully any day over someone who's using the right words to do me wrong.
Also, this is a damn good tool for code switching! Policing language can make your community insular and exclusive, which’ll hinder your ability to reach out and normalize yourself to new people.
Before talking about each member of the titular team RWBY individually, what about them as a group in FRWBY? To put it bluntly, I don't believe that these people would spend time together. So much focus is given to interpersonal drama to the point that it detracts from the fact this is supposed to be a TEAM in a series that explores heroism
In Volume 1 Blake and Yang are immediately at odds with each other due to their different approaches to conflict. Blake wants to avoid stuff unless it's necessary, while Yang wants to charge forward head-on. This seems to stem from Celtic's obsession with "realism" of strangers not getting along
On top of this, Weiss is intentionally ripping the team apart and this is the main focus of RWBY's V1 story. She constantly argues with everybody, refuses to respect Ruby as a leader at any level, the drama going on causes Yang to get blackout drunk to avoid thinking about it, and Weiss is on the verge of getting moved to another team by Beacon's staff due to all the problems she's causing
It got so bad that CFVY is set up by Beacon's staff to try mentoring them to try and have them get along. It didn't work because Weiss refused to change from this. It takes Oz asking her if she thinks he made a mistake to finally make her stop, and this is where she finally tries building a bridge with Ruby
In Volume 6 they're completely out of sync and at each other's throats due to the time they spent away from each other because of Celtic's obsession with "realism." Ruby and Blake outright argue with each other about abandoning Yang, and Blake is appalled that they're letting Roman be with them Oz or no
And yet despite this, a single day spending time together as a second "Best Day Ever" is somehow enough time to repair their relationships and teamwork. They didn't even do any sort of special move training because Ruby's leg is weak from being broken most of the volume. This runs complete counter to FRWBY's own focus on being more "realistic," I don't believe something like this can happen in this story. I could buy it in canon due to its more optimistic and fantastical tone, but not here. It's so out of place
Volume 7 gives us EVEN MORE drama. Everybody has conflicting feelings on lying to Ironwood, they have doubts on whether or not they're doing enough for the world, and they all argue over the various politics-related issues going on this volume. On top of this Yang is worried that Blake might run away again after the disaster of the crashed Schnee supply ship happened. Off the back of Volume 6 having a ton of its screen time dedicated to them constantly arguing, it's repetitive and draining
To be a little fair, we're given more slice of life stuff with the team spending time together to try and balance this out but this can only happen because Celtic cheats by giving himself WAY more runtime than canon. And the infighting ends up sticking with you much stronger because it's conflict
Team RWBY is genuinely the most maladjusted team in the series. Their constant arguing and bickering among themselves is a massive focus in the series, and because of this it feels like these are people that only stand each other due to spending so long together. By comparison JNR had its drama potential killed the moment Pyrrha died, and all the minor teams don't show any signs of anything close to this. Fucking team CRDL seems more well adjusted compared to them in Volume 6
I'm not saying you can't have characters arguing, especially among the main cast. Drama and conflict is a necessity in storytelling hell I welcome it. The problem is it's overdone in FRWBY. Off the back of an entire volume of infighting we get even MORE drama in V7, and with their relationships starting far more rocky in Volume 1, it's just too much
a little comic i started and didnt finish from like April. The basic outline was Qrow trying to talk to Ruby about her demeanor after volume 9. Obviously, this does not go well.
If there are no trans women available for the role for whatever reason, cis woman over cis man any day. I'm very staunch in this opinion. I've heard the argument of "but what if her not passing or not transitioning is important to the story?" Well then great- dress her up in men's clothes, awkwardly bind her chest, and have her pitch her voice down. It'll convey how awkward, depersonalizing, and humiliating a transfeminine experience.
GRABS you by the THROAT. stop using "narcissistic", "slow", "depressed", "bipolar", "schizophrenic" and the literal R slur (i'm not saying it.) etc etc etc as insults. I don't care if you're neurodivergent and doing this you're still an ableist prick
a lot of people assume psychosis hallucinations are super intense all-consuming horror movie shit like the memes about the hat man or always horrible debilitating things that make you dangerous to be around
but in my experience 95% of my hallucinations are getting spooked by very clearly hearing someone knocking on my door or calling my name from another room or hearing footsteps walking behind me which are "just" my brain recreating the horror of an abusive childhood
i *have* gotten the "bugs crawling all over me" hallucination once or twice though and yeah that one is exactly as terrible horrible as it sounds AUGH
(not trying to put you on blast specifically, you're just a good example to jump off of)
media and pop culture hypes up psychosis a lot as The Worst That Can Happen out of sanism, so even when you try and filter that cultural bias out you still assume it's based on something
when, no, psychosis is actually very simple: it's just hyperactive pattern matching. it's your brain's signal-to-noise ratio being off balance, it's seeing images in random static. it's not always this special uniquely big thing, it's in fact quite mundane a lot of the time.
no one is immune to psychosis, it's not purely the realm of the insane. anyone is one bad night of sleep or one bad case of food poisoning or one bad fever away from being just like me on my worst days.
and this, indeed, is why solidarity with the insane is so important: you, yes you too, are just one bad day from joining us, and no perceptions of being a "temporarily embarrassed sane person" will save you from the oppression of the psychiatric institution.
I know that sometimes the hesitation to use mobility devices is about how it looks, both aesthetically and in terms of 'am I a strong person, worthy of existing'.
Canes come in a HUGE variety of colors, styles, materials, and ways to decorate it. As long as it's the right length, sturdy enough for your weight, and has a non-slip tip there's a good chance it'll do for you*.
Additionally: there are a lot of assholes that don't want you to take care of yourself this way. People who use accessibility aids despite the social pressure not to and their own internalized ableism are powerful people.
Additionally additionally: You are not taking anything away from anyone else when using your own personal cane or rollator. You're just making it easier for other people to exist while using them.
Most importantly: Anyone who thinks accessibility aids are bad for you is a person who is not good for you. Fuck'em.
*For tumblr contrarians: if you need something more specialized than the kind you see in the drug stores, you'll know it. Plus, those can also look cool.
Just so we’re clear, if I point out that you did something racist, that’s not the same as me thinking you’re irremediably terrible. You did a racist thing.
You think you don’t do racist things, homophobic things, etc? You do. I caught myself in fat phobic and homophobic lines of thinking/speech just this morning. I’m fucking gay married. Nothing disqualifies you from acting in a way that reflects the society you exist in. We are obliged to fight it. Why not fight it in honesty and with camaraderie?
Meanwhile, I am a mere mortal with misophobia, so I think if your extradimensional energy entities are going around calling my world the "flesh world" or something equally squicky, I should be allowed to bite you.
I think the reason FFVII has continued to resonate with me and many other fans for so long is because of its themes, and how grounded they are despite taking place in such a bizarre sci-fantasy world.
One of the big ones is identity - the question of who gets to tell you who you are. The game rejects the idea that anyone has one true, immutable self, while still demonstrating the importance of agency in the process of constructing, expanding, and evaluating the self. The self is mutable, but you still need some degree of sovereignty over it in order to participate honestly and consistently in relationships with other people.
Cloud and Sephiroth both struggle with identity in ways that are, intentionally or unintentionally, reinforced by the people around them.
Cloud's identity is fragmented throughout much of the game. Sephiroth takes advantage of this consciously and maliciously, yes (and with quite a bit of externalized trauma reenactment/repetition compulsion). However, Cloud's allies reinforce his fragmented identity in their own ways, too.
Tifa knows something is wrong, but she doesn't know why, and therefore avoids confronting the issue directly for as long as she can because she is absolutely not equipped to deal with what could happen if she spoke up. Aerith doesn't know that Cloud's memories are entangled with Zack's, but her attachment to Zack is a significant building block in her bond with Cloud, and likely the reason why she takes an interest in Cloud to begin with. The rest of the party, to some extent, also relies on him being The Ex-SOLDIER - the person with insider knowledge about Shinra and Sephiroth.
None of this is malicious. They're all well-intentioned people who genuinely like and care about Cloud. But their limitations still have consequences. Other people can participate in constructing your sense of self without intending to, simply because they are relating to the version of you that they can perceive. This has both positive and negative consequences.
When Cloud finally gains an understanding of what happened to him, he does not revert to the 16-year-old infantryman who was experimented on in Nibelheim. He doesn't uncover some pristine, original "true Cloud" underneath everything else. Instead, he becomes capable of operating and cooperating in a more stable and grounded way because he has a fuller understanding of what happened to him and can finally participate in determining what he does with that knowledge.
Sephiroth's story is a much darker variation on the same problem. He was raised in Shinra's custody as an instrument of war and a symbol of scientific progress rather than as a person. His sense of identity and self-authorship were effectively put on the back burner for much of his life. Then, in Nibelheim, the question of who he actually was suddenly became unavoidable, and he responded by allowing that question to consume him. The contents of the back burner boiled over with catastrophic and far-reaching consequences.
His tragedy isn't simply that he discovered something terrible about his origins. It's that, having spent most of his life being defined by other people, he responded to that loss of authorship by constructing an identity of absolute certainty and imposing it on everyone else.
Cloud and Sephiroth therefore move in almost opposite directions. Cloud begins with an identity he has assembled from other people's expectations and eventually becomes more capable of determining who he wants to be. Sephiroth begins with an identity largely imposed on him and responds to that realization by trying to impose his own understanding of identity and existence onto the entire world.
In both cases, the problem isn't that the self is mutable. The problem is what happens when you lose the ability, or refuse the responsibility, to participate in determining what that self becomes.
Another big theme in the game is the instrumentalization of life versus the intrinsic value of life.
Shinra exploits the literal life essence of the Planet for profit. Their interest in the Cetra is limited to understanding their connection to the Lifestream not so they can learn from or respect that connection, but so they can reproduce or exploit it for their own purposes. They turn people into military instruments and then market them as celebrities, while offering those people very little in return. They mutilate or outright destroy communities like the Sector 7 slums, Corel, and Gongaga for their own convenience. Characters like Hojo (and, in more complicated ways, Gast) often approach other living beings primarily in terms of how they can further scientific progress and understanding.
Sephiroth is simultaneously Shinra's greatest weapon and one of the people most deeply victimized by them. He eventually goes on to instrumentalize other lives himself, using Cloud, the Black Robes, and even the Lifestream as means toward his own ends. He feels entitled to the world itself based on his understanding of and connection with Jenova. In that sense, Sephiroth becomes another expression of the same basic logic he was subjected to - other living things become valuable insofar as they can serve a larger purpose.
What makes this especially striking is that FFVII repeatedly presents forms of value that cannot be reduced to usefulness. People matter because they are people. Communities matter even when they aren't economically productive. The Planet is not merely a resource because it produces something humans want. Relationships matter even when they don't advance anyone's goals. Life does not have to justify its existence by being useful.
Identity asks what happens when people are denied authorship over themselves. Instrumentalization asks what happens when people and things are denied value beyond what they can provide. The two are deeply connected. When a person is valued primarily for what they can do, their identity becomes easier to define from the outside, and their autonomy becomes easier to disregard.
And this connects to another recurring theme in FFVII - the limitations of individual perspective. The game is deeply suspicious of the idea that any one person, institution, or ideology can possess the whole truth. At the same time, it doesn't treat individual perspectives as meaningless! Quite the opposite - each person has access to parts of reality that others cannot see, and understanding becomes possible through bringing those partial perspectives together.
Cloud has memories of what happened in Nibelheim, including Sephiroth's downfall, but he doesn't have the whole story of what happened to him there. His memories contain pieces of the truth, but without the context to connect those pieces correctly, he cannot understand his own experience.
Barret has firsthand knowledge of Shinra's exploitation and destruction of nature and communities, but possesses many blind spots when it comes to their more classified experiments and their consequences.
Tifa has known Cloud since childhood, perhaps better than anyone else in the party, but she doesn't understand what happened to him or have any idea of how to deal with it. Her knowledge of Cloud is intimate but incomplete.
Aerith has a special, innate connection to the Lifestream as a Cetra, but being the last of her kind, her understanding of what that connection means is limited. She possesses knowledge that nobody else can access, but that doesn't make her omniscient.
Sephiroth is the clearest example of what happens when partial understanding hardens into absolute certainty. He gains an understanding of himself as being fundamentally connected to Jenova, a being of unfathomable power, but as his certainty within that understanding crystallizes, he grows further and further from his own humanity. His mistake isn't simply that he learns something false - it's that he takes what he has learned and treats it as sufficient to explain everything else.
The answer FFVII offers isn't to distrust individual perspectives, but to recognize their limits. Cloud needs Tifa's knowledge of his past. Barret needs the perspectives of people whose experiences with Shinra differ from his own. Aerith's unique connection to the Planet gives the rest of the party something they could never understand on their own, just as their experiences give her perspectives she cannot possess by herself.
No one person has the whole picture. But that doesn't mean the picture is unknowable. It means we need other people to see more of it. Which brings me to the theme of connection versus isolation.
There are threads of this theme throughout the game, but Cloud and Sephiroth's narrative-foil/mirror-image relationship acts as the big neon sign for it.
Cloud is capable of pulling the pieces of his fragmented identity back together and becoming stronger for it because he is surrounded by people who, however flawed, care about him deeply. He starts off aloof, fragmented, and somewhat isolated, but is able to overcome that isolation through connection with others. His direct exposure to the cosmic soup of the Lifestream initially renders him a helpless, mumbling blank slate. Tifa helps him resolidify his sense of self not by telling him who he is, but by giving him the safety and context he needs to encounter himself again.
Sephiroth, by contrast, grew up profoundly isolated and, while he had periods of time in his life where he formed connections with others, they didn't last. He became progressively more isolated, leaving him with fewer relationships capable of challenging, complicating, or expanding his understanding of himself. Without those connections, the question of who he was became more urgent, and when he encountered what he believed to be the truth about his origins, there was no meaningful community around him through which he could process it. Instead, his understanding hardened into certainty, and that certainty hardened him against other people to a point of no return.
In that sense, Cloud and Sephiroth are almost opposite examples of what happens when a person encounters an identity crisis. Cloud is eventually able to tolerate uncertainty, accept that his understanding of himself was incomplete, and let other people help him reconstruct it. Sephiroth responds to uncertainty by seeking absolute certainty, and to isolation by trying to make the entire world conform to his understanding.
The difference isn't that Cloud needs other people while Sephiroth doesn't. They both needed other people. It's that Cloud got those connections in time and ultimately allows his connections with other people to remain connections between distinct individuals. Sephiroth did not get that, and he increasingly treated other people as extensions of his own narrative.
The more I think about these themes, the more I think they aren't really separate themes at all. They're different expressions of the same underlying idea - living beings cannot be fully understood, defined, or valued from the outside. You are not an isolated, self-contained thing. But neither are you merely a component of some larger system. You are an individual whose existence is meaningful partly because you can enter into relationships with other distinct individuals.
A person is more than the identity someone else assigns to them. A living thing is more than what it can provide. An individual's perspective is more than a disposable fragment, but it is also never the whole picture. And connection with other people is not about absorbing them into ourselves or making them conform to our understanding of the world so much as it is about allowing distinct people to encounter one another and change what they know.
Shinra repeatedly violates these principles by treating the Planet, communities, and people as resources, experiments, weapons, or data. Sephiroth takes that logic and turns it inward and outward at once, becoming increasingly convinced that his own interpretation of himself and the world gives him the right to determine what everything else is for. Cloud's story, by contrast, is ultimately about becoming capable of existing as himself without having to exist alone.
And I think that's a big part of why FFVII continues to resonate with me. Beneath all the mako reactors, alien parasites, and giant swords, it's a story deeply concerned with a very ordinary question - how do we remain ourselves while living in a world full of other people, other lives, and things we can never completely understand?
Its answer isn't isolation, and it isn't surrendering yourself to some greater whole. It's connection without erasure. It's recognizing that other people are real, valuable, and capable of seeing things you cannot, and allowing that to make your understanding of the world larger rather than making your own sense of self smaller.
I like narratives where the true self does not exist, and I realize that Pacific Rim very lightly touches on that with how drift partners change and influence each other over time.
Today I understood why Mr Bingley is important for 'Pride and Prejudice.' Of course I've heard that he's Mr Darcy's foil and he helps us see that Mr Darcy lacks manners. And probably we need him to see a man whose character trait is quickly deciding to leave a place and who might never come back, and who also - I don't know - can easily get under the influence of his friends.
And I have always seen him as a very insignificant side character, and I never understood why there was even a need for him; like why Jane Austen of all people would write such a lacking(?) side character. He is not really a commentary on something. He's just fickle.
And was there even a need for Mr Bingley & Jane's love story? They're basically 'love at first sight, destined for each other' and they look quite out of place among the other three couples -- Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, Lydia and Mr Wickham, Charlotte and Mr Collins -- that are all a commentary on love and society.
Today I understood that had there been no Mr Bingley Jane would've married Mr Collins out of obligation as the eldest sister and that would have been a very different book that didn't feel like such a happy story by the end of it (my Mom calls it a fairy tale), had only one of the sisters (Elizabeth) landed herself a love match.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is an undercurrent to Jane's story that is about her being an angel and that their love with Mr Bingley is a dream that rarely comes true, I don't know. But still, apparently Mr Bingley is not as inconsequential a character as he has always seemed to be.
Sorry to highjack your post with an essay, but there's actually a common misconception here that I really want to breakdown.
One of the things that it isn't easy to notice these days is that Jane and Bingley actually are a commentary on love and society in exactly the same way the other couples are. It just isn't as obvious because the expectations and discussion over how people are meant to behave when in love has vastly changed in two-hundred years.
Jane exemplifies a common standard for young gentlewomen of that era: be demure (but never cold), friendly (but not too friendly), reserved about your true emotions (but always pleasing to everyone), appear grateful for every civil interaction a gentleman offers you (but never seeking or desperate for them), etc. She's beautiful, yes, and unfailingly kind, but her 'perfection' for contemporary readers would've gone far beyond that.
Because in many ways, Jane is the perfect gentlewoman. All those impossible virtues of good sense and perfect goodness and eternal gratitude and elegant grace are united in her. And in the Jane and Bingley love story Austen asks the question of how that behaviour, however generally admirable, can function in reality and then explores some of the drawbacks.
We actually see Charlotte allude to this directly in chapter 6. When Lizzy is happy that "Jane united, with great strength of feeling, a composure of temper and a uniform cheerfulness of manner which would guard her from the suspicions of the impertinent," Charlotte famously rebuts:
"It may perhaps be pleasant," replied Charlotte, "to be able to impose on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten a women had better show more affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on."
This exchange isn't just iconic (and, in my opinion, a mark of Austen's genius for all it conveyed), it's a debate about society and its ideals vs the reality in practice. Since society has changed readers tend to see it purely as a commentary on Jane/ justification for why Darcy interpreted her the way he did/ foreshadowing for Charlotte's own choice, but it wasn't only that. It was calling out some downsides to women being perfectly composed at all times when the man they're in love with is a decent guy who cares about things like 'whether his affections are welcomed' and isn't so self-centred as to not have doubts over how someone who doesn't reveal much might actually feel. It's actually a testament to Bingley's character and general concern for others that he doesn't just assume that 'of course she likes me, she's polite and friendly to me,' when doubts are raised. You know who wouldn't have doubts? Arrogant and self-centred people whose priorities aren't others and think only about what they want. Though not directly said in the text, the Jane and Bingley temporary break-up does call into question whether behaving in this admirable way might actually push away the most considerate and thoughtful suitors.
And though I know modern readers are very prone to judging Bingley harshly for not returning quickly to Jane, keep in mind we live over two centuries later in a far more individual-focused society with different values. In the text Lizzy, who we all know has no qualms about being angry at others, ceases to be mad at Bingley almost as soon as she receives Darcy's explanation. He's not condemned by either her or the text for being persuaded that Jane was indifferent to him, and Lizzy actually comes to believe it's understandable.
I think another thing we've lost with the passage of time is just how bad the Bennets could be seen as. While Mr Bennet lives they're rich, top 0.2% rich for England in that era, and yet the daughters will have next to nothing for their class/upbringing and weren't taught many of the housekeeping/economic skills they'd need for a realistic future. I've talked more in depth about what they should have been saving according to contemporary accounts and done some maths here and here but the gist is they should've easily been six times as rich as they are. Let's not forget the lack of education too. I said it in one of those posts, and I'll say it again, if you knew a top 1% family who were constantly flirting with bankruptcy and 2/5 of their children were barely educated you wouldn't be wrong for thinking there were some serious problems in that family. Then there's the social vulgarity/silliness, but that translates much better to modern audiences so I won't go into that anymore than to say that decorum was a BIG DEAL back then and who you were 'connected with' could very literally affect your standing in society. Darcy and Bingley's sister's were snobbier about it than they should've been, but the core reasons for concern were actually valid. Even Lizzy very quickly saw the justice in Darcy's logic once presented with the facts so bluntly.
Bingley noticed these things, as everyone sensible did, but he's just too generous a person for that to matter enough to stop him from wanting to marry Jane. It was only being persuaded that she genuinely was indifferent to him that made him put aside his hopes.
We should also keep in mind that it wasn't just randoms who were doing the persuading, it was Bingley's best friend (who is used to believing himself an authority on others - a flaw he has to overcome in the course of the novel) and his sisters (whom everyone considered close friends of Jane and who would've seen her more than Bingley). Their motives were jaded by prejudice but for many contemporary readers these would've been the most reliable advisors anyone could have in matters like this.
Given the delicacy of the subject it's not like he could directly ask Jane herself until the actual proposal, or even begin acting more markedly and hope she responds in kind (the impropriety of which is similar to what we see with Marianna and Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility). Even when Lizzy knows Bingley liked Jane, knows that Jane still feels the same and suspecting that he does too, she doesn't so much as think about giving him a hint when she sees him again in Derbyshire. It simply wouldn't be proper, it's up to his intimates to speak with him about it. So, if Bingley wanted an outside opinion Darcy and his sisters were it; and, on paper, they're very good advisors on the topic of whether Jane liked him.
In most situations it would be a massive character flaw to think 'I don't care what all my closest family/friends/her friends say, I'm going to persist in thinking this girl likes me against their advice.' Keep in mind they knew each other for six weeks and he's never even been alone with Jane. His sisters have though. There's also a commentary in there on the moral pitfalls of influencing someone at all (which is explored in far more depth in Persuasion) but Bingley is never called wrong by the text or characters for not jumping to the assumption that his friend's being an arrogant snob and his sisters are bitchy snobs. A rich man who recognises he can be wrong is a good quality even today, and if we think in contemporary terms (and remember he's only 22) I don't think it's at all unreasonable that he was persuaded.
Which brings us to his whole personality: Bingley is in many ways a perfect gentleman socially. Charming and civil to everyone, uniformly good-tempered, and other than offending one or two young ladies by not asking them to dance, commits no social sins. He's also praised for being friendly and obliging - the latter being another trait which, as Jane Austen does with Jane's praised traits, gets explored via its weaknesses. Arguably the novel is one long exploration of the weaknesses of various traits, most notably those in its title, but this is already too long for that tangent.
Bingley's also very new money. Outright called the first gentleman (remembering that that word meant something very specific about education, dress, behaviour, poise, etc in that era compared to today) of his family, and his father was in trade. In a time where the middle merchant class was still establishing itself as worthy of being treated with respect by their 'betters' (and the mere fact of Darcy's close friendship with Bingley is the first clue that he's not as arrogant and snobby as Lizzy believes) his perfect upholding of an amiable ideal is a commentary in itself. Especially when we see Lady Catherine and Darcy, with their impeccable bloodlines, commit social faults arguably equal/worse to Mrs Bennet (herself not born into the gentry class and a negative example of social mobility to contrast Bingley's positive example) and Mr Collins. The highborn character who does embody appropriate social graces, Colonel Fitzwilliam, is interestingly not landed himself and needs an occupation.
Modern readers, without such a class based society which focused on social graces, are also less understanding of that 'obliging' aspect of Bingley's personality. But this was a time when, generally speaking, the richer and more important you are the more likely you are to get what you want and everyone else fell into line. It was so common that it wasn't even really critiqued heavily by Austen, some people were rich and had the means to do as they wished through money or social credit, and others followed if they wanted to be involved at all. We see this casually mentioned when Colonel Fitzwilliam says "I am at [Darcy's] disposal. He arranges the business just as he pleases;" which also helps us understand that the Colonel probably didn't have the income to own his own carriage or easily rent one to travel (which was EXPENSIVE). That context, of rich men not only ruling the world but also getting to decide what other people (in the Darcy/Colonel Fitzwilliam case, even older and higher-born people - and Bingley was younger and new to the gentry) do in their leisure time through virtue of their wealth, is the context we need to view Bingley in. Though Darcy was undoubtedly more important Bingley was still 2-2.5x richer than Mr Bennet and thus everyone else in the neighbourhood excepting his friend - and yet far from being the standard rich man who began dictating the social scene and choosing what to do without consideration for others, he was obliging. He matched what others were doing, had consideration for them, participated as though grateful to be invited instead of entitled to it. His obliging nature is part of what sets him up as a true gentleman and far more worthy than others who only adopt some of the social graces and miss how it's meant to apply to their whole character.
His personality is actually a very interesting study in what makes a gentleman a gentleman, and argues that the real qualities which matter have nothing at all to do with connections or family history. It's also an analysis of what obliging personalities can fall victim to, even when they're sensible, as Bingley is said to be. His whole character ties in directly (as does Wickham's more overtly) with Darcy and Lizzy's own journeys with true gentlemanlike behaviour and character. It's just not in a way which is at all easily noticeable to modern eyes without a background understanding of the society he functioned in, nor is it something directly depicted in the adaptions.
Anyway, sorry for the hastily typed essay and I hope I've convinced you that Bingley and Jane are an exploration of love and society just as the other couples are, and also a rather pointed social commentary on behavioural standards and changing class lines through social mobility. For all that Jane Austen's writing feels comforting and sometimes quite verbose, she actually fit an immense amount of commentary and meaning into every aspect of her books. Jane and Bingley are absolutely no different.
Scooping this into the archives cause this was good good shit, you’ve voiced passive thoughts I’ve had on this for YEARS in a way I would have never been able to articulate so well in a hundred years.
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