an unprofitable Dick

◇ Austen/literature sideblog of @thejgatsbykid ◇ he/him, 20s, queer, Jewish ◇

[endlesss-rain]

costume design does owe audiences historical accuracy at least to an extent. what it owes them even more tho, is to look good. imagine lacking historical accuracy and looking like shit. pick a struggle

[bethanydelleman]

A million fan fiction writers may cry, but I must speak this truth: Fitzwilliam Darcy will be the kind of father who gives his children a handshake at Christmas and that is their allotment of physical affection for the year

[bethanydelleman]

"This is my beloved sister Georgiana, of whom I am guardian. I have hugged her once, after Ramsgate. That's enough."

[dionysiaproductions]

[the-grollican]

ishmael using a pseudonym is so funny. like what are you in witness protection? from the whale?

[ellakas]

[ellakas]

[leftontheforestfloor]

This. Is one of the pics in my phone that I will never delete when I'm cleaning up my phone storage. It's just one of those very important images I will always have

[cogentranting]

Mr. Collins would be such a fan of ai. He would love it. He would have it write scripts for him to use for complimenting people. He'd ask it what to do in social situations and then when someone would tell him "I think that's a bad idea" he'd be like "my dear madam it's so good of you to be concerned but I think the highly esteemed Grok knows a little more about this than a lady like yourself" and then he'd go humiliate himself publicly.

[lizormianillustration]

one word from you will silence me forever

[artschoolglasses]

Green Silk Bonnet, 1806-09

From Kerry Taylor Auctions

[riddlerosehearts]

the article i just read about lou alcott (louisa may alcott, author of little women) was wild because it was literally like "he preferred being called lou and his whole family always called him that. he never identified with girlhood or liked feminine things and said he had a boy's spirit and longed to be a boy and believed he was a man's soul put into a woman's body. he loved dressing up as a man and passing for a man and being flirted with by people who thought he was a man. he called himself a gentleman and a father to his adopted children and his own father once lamented sending "his only son" to war when he enlisted in the army as a nurse.

...calling her a trans man is reductive and misses the point of her work though lol she was obviously a cis woman who was speaking figuratively because women in the 1800s weren't allowed to wear pants!"

[luvvema]

Peoples biggest defense is always ‘we don’t know how they would identify in this day’ which IS true but I find it interesting how they have little problem ‘justifying’ Lou’s feelings by calling him a cis lesbian or a nonbinary person or a tomboy.

There’s also so much terf rhetoric towards this subject of Lou’s identity that I’m almost certain it’s just discrimination…

“She was confused”

“She didn’t understand the world properly”

“She was trying to escape oppression”

I don’t know why people are so convinced trans men/mascs existing is anti-feminist but it’s not, people literally parrot misogynistic points just to take away their identity and that should say enough.

We don’t know how he would have identified today, however; we DO know how he preferred being referred to in his daily life and how he saw himself in the past. I think he is owed that much.

[sailor-cerise]

Some articles I found:

"Little Women" author Louisa May Alcott was a transgender man - LGBTQ Nation

“I am more than half-persuaded that I am, by some freak of nature, a man’s soul put into a woman’s body.”

Opinion | Did the Mother of Young Adult Literature Identify as a Man?

Louisa May Alcott felt a strong affinity with manhood.

To family and friends, she was Lou, Lu or Louy. She wrote of herself as the “papa” or “father” of her young nephews. Her father, Bronson, once called Alcott his “only son.” In letters to her close friend Alfie Whitman, Alcott called herself “a man of all work” and “a gentleman at large.”

This is all BARELY mentioned in the Wikipedia entry, so an opportunity there to help fix the representation.

[riddlerosehearts]

ah, thank you, i think that first article from LGBTQ nation may have been the one i read back in july when i posted this! just from quickly skimming over it, it appears to include all these points i mentioned and argues in favor of lou alcott being a trans man—but then includes a section at the end about the idea that "she was just speaking figuratively and saying she was a trans man is backwards and anti-feminist" 🙄🙄 transmascs existing and living their lives is not anti-feminist. saying that someone who called himself all kinds of masculine terms and enjoyed being seen as a man just might have been a man is not illogical or unreasonable, these people are just transphobic.

@chiefexecutiveossomancer asked if i could find the article, and @petiolata also mentioned wanting to read it, so here you go!

[tiffbaxter]

💌Catching Up With Correspondence💌

New illustration I did for my portfolio's contact page!

[amarguerite]

One very stupid thing that bothers me in historical romances and fanfic is the fact that male characters often take off shirts but stay in their breeches. The breeches aren’t the last layer of underwear, the shirt is. The shirt is the body linen— that’s the thing that goes against the skin and is the first thing to be put on and the last thing to be taken off— that’s the thing that is sewn by hand by wife/ sister/ daughter/ mother partly out of a lack of extensive manufacturing but because it is the most intimate layer of clothing and you don’t want a stranger’s work against your skin.

Is it just because to modern eyes it would look silly? Is this a case of “I got too interested in the material culture of body linens in the Regency era and now I know too much to enjoy myself”??

[janey-jane]

bless 2020 emma for giving us a scene of mr. knightly dressing (it was short but loved that it included his valet - upper class men also had help dressing and undressing! - and proper dressing order and him tucking his shirt between his legs as his breeches/trousers go on **infinite chefs kisses**)

we often get scenes of women dressing in period pieces but similar scenes with men are very rare and it's a damn shame.

[kingfucko]

like you got your shirt wrapped around and tucked in to be your underwear... the very act of taking the shirt off to do the anachronistic shirtless with breeches look would be way more complicated than the people who perpetuate the anachronism ever imagined

[amarguerite]

You get it!

[kingfucko]

Period Seinfeld and George is at the diner pub explaining how he tried to take his shirt off to impress his date?? and Jerry's like "ere your breeches?"

"yes ere my breeches"

"why"

"i know not, jerry! i know not - in the fervor of the moment, the fancy seemed appealing! but my notions were - forsooth, i nearly yanked certain provisions clean off"

"yanked off your provisions! he yanked off his provisions"

"NEARLY!"

[godzilla-reads]

If you’re queer, what Shakespeare play did you latch on to in school?

Macbeth

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Hamlet

Romeo & Juliet

Much Ado About Nothing

The Tempest

Other

I don’t like Shakespeare/I’m not queer

Voting ended onMar 21

[nymphpens]

[kcinpa]

Pride and Prejudice 2005 + Onion Headlines, part 3/3

[evidenceof]

costume + color + scene

CHER HOROWITZ and EMMA WOODHOUSE 2/2 Clueless (1995) and Emma. (2020) adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma | Costuming by Mona May and Alexandra Byrne respectively

[taciturn-nerd]

Elinor Dashwood 🤝 Anne Elliot 🤝 Margaret Hale

Handling all the emotional labor for their family