Joan Roselle's Brain

[bethanydelleman]

Jane Austen Characters That Give Me Some Queer Vibes

This is my personal list and my personal vibes, I am not saying that anyone else is wrong but giving my personal impressions. They are all headcanon. I am very happy to hear your theories and your vibes!

Sir Walter Elliot, Persuasion: Okay, dude totally has a crush on this Colonel Wallis whom he’s been parading around Bath with arm-in-arm. He is most likely pansexual: attracted to anyone who is a 10/10. Unfortunately he sees himself as a 11/10, so maybe not the best partner. 

Emma Woodhouse, Emma: She feels the need to staunchly defend the beauty of Jane Fairfax. Admires the beauty of both Harriet and Jane Fairfax but does not dwell on Mr. Elton or Frank Churchill, whom she does acknowledge are hot. Either she only has eyes for Knightley or she’s actually got some feelings for women. I will also accept some flavour of asexual/aromantic. Emma has vibes of some unspecified sort.

Charlotte Lucas, Pride and Prejudice: She’s on this list because she must be, she doesn’t actually give me queer vibes. I see Charlotte as highly pragmatic. The fact that she doesn’t consider romance doesn’t speak to me of her being a flavour of asexual or aromantic. I think you can account for Charlotte’s behaviour by her being highly loss adverse. This may be because I would probably make the same decision as her and I have extremely high loss aversion and was very anxious to get married as a young person.

Fanny Price, Mansfield Park: I know what you are thinking, don’t I mean Mary Crawford? No. We know exactly why Mary Crawford wants to be friends with Fanny, she’s bored. Fanny is not bored, doesn’t even like Mary, and views her as competition. And yet, Fanny admires her beauty, loves to look at her, and cannot even explain to herself why she keeps visiting (Fanny went to her every two or three days: it seemed a kind of fascination: she could not be easy without going). I can explain, Fanny! (Now do I think Mary Crawford would be down? Absolutely)

Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice: This guy, he’s got vibes. He’s twenty-eight years old and yet has never really been so attracted to a woman before. He talks about what should attract him to a woman as if it’s a list he’s memorised. I read this very persuasive argument that he’s demisexual and I’m all for it.

Anne Steele, Sense and Sensibility: She is obsessed with Marianne Dashwood. Tracking what clothes she wears, calling her beautiful, wanting to barge in to see her in her bedroom despite rules of propriety. Anne has a very obvious crush on the lovely Marianne.

Edit: I forgot about Tom Bertram, Mansfield Park. What speaks to me there is his inability to read social cues in women, like how he can’t tell if they are in or out. He doesn’t seem very concerned with love at all and prefers to hang with his male friends. Gay vibes.

[rhymeswithrosamygale]

[thesamsungsmartrefrigerator]

I still find it so weird how Alvar and Fitz's relationship (and more specifically their reasoning and peoples reactions to it) is treated in canon.

In Flashback (which is probably the most we really get to see about them at all) Fitz is against letting Alvar back into Everglens grounds, and wants the man put behind bars. Because Alvar lost his memories, every other character continues to tell him that he's being overdramatic/alvar deserves a 2nd chance/he needs to calm down because it's his brother.

Plenty of people have already called out the hypocrisy of Keefe, Sophie, the fandom, etc, in that if this was anyone else but Fitz having this reaction (even if it was to Alvar), the discussion would not have ever gotten to "your being overdramatic" (ie Keefe and Gisela), so I'm not going to go to deep into that.

What annoys me the most, is it doesn't matter that Alvar lost his memories. He still did every single horrendous crime and creepy behavior (I have another post about Alvar’s grooming behaviors). He still did all of that. Sure he doesn't remember it (and indefinite solitary confinement is a blatent and disgusting disregard for human rights) but he shouldn't have been sent back to Everglen.

Why? Because Fitz almost definitely has PTSD. From his reactions to things in later books, his reaction to Alvar/Sophie/Keefe/etc, his emotional issues, and everything that's canonically happened to him in the span of 4-5 years it's not a been leap to assume that.

PTSD is not logical. It doesn't care that the man who groomed your best friends, kidnapped and help torture your only other friend (and the only guy who's actually been nice to you despite you being shit to him), committed several acts of terrorism, lied to your face for years and helped released a plague to wipe out as many gnomes (many of which you would have known, due to the canon volume of them we see at Everglen and the relationships we see that elven children have with them) lost his memory, having him walk around your home is horrible.

Another one of the moments in Flashback that stuck out to me, was how quickly Fitz’s anger at Della & Alden not coming to see him while he was unconscious is brushed off by literally every character. Because it is a big deal that you almost died (and continued to be in dnager of dying, as Fitz heart injury as described in the books sounds a whole lot like a heart attack and he gets them constantly) and your parents- the people who raised you, who "love" you, who are supposed to have your back- are instead at home preparing for the arrival of the man who teamed up with the people who just tried to kill you.

Sophie and Elwins reasoning for this is also so fucking weird. "You were unconscious, there wasn't much to see-" if my friend was in the hospital for non-emergency surgery I would be by their side every second that they wanted me to be, because I give a fuck if they live or die. Sophie brushing this off is also just such a weird thing for her to do, because she calms down and is really happy when she learns her parents cared to come see her when she almost died.

Yes, Fitz did tell Della and Biana to leave, that he was okay, when he was awake for .2 seconds. As someone with a little brother, I garentee you Fitz "just watched his sister almost die and loves her to death" Vacker wanted Biana to leave because he didn't want her to see him like this. Fitz is prideful as fuck, but he also has a piss-poor self esteem (yes, these can co-exist, they normally do). He doesn't want his sister to see him half dead the way he had to see her half dead, he also doesn't want her to see him weak. Della on the other deserves her own post (mostly about how she only shows up emotionally/literally for Fitz when he's literally on his deathbed then immediately stops).

After all of this, then send Fitz home with his fucked up heart and leg and echos- which gives him heart attacks/palpitations when he feels strong emotions- to Alvar.

They really just went "Ah yes, lets send the traumatized child with PTSD who's healing from disabling injuries- one of which casues heart problems when he feels strong emotions- back home to look at the face of a man who would 100% trigger his PTSD. Yep no issues there" then were confused why Fitz was angry, unstable, irritatable, irrational, and violent.

It's not like they couldn't have move him somewhere else either! Tigren doesn't like the kid but he takes in enough strays that he could've given him a bed. Elwin is more then fine becoming dad #3 for Keefe when the kid needs a place to stay.

Idk, Fitz has the patience of a Saint man, I would've killed Alvar in his sleep

[nonbinaryjudean]

OCD things that you don't hear about:

episodes of paranoia, delusions, and dissociation

cyclical thoughts/spirals

magical thinking

episodes that can be very similar to psychosis or mania

attributing human emotions to inanimate objects

dermatillomania and trichotillomania

false sensations (like bugs crawling on skin)

paying way too much attention to very small things

physical health issues caused by compulsions

symptoms that are "problematic" (doing things that are considered "wasteful", needing reassurance or validation from others...)

extreme, deep, dreadful fear of things that can't truly be explained

disconnect between emotional and cognitive/logical responses or thoughts

contamination fears

problems with addiction and dopamine regulation

other people trying to force exposure therapy onto you without your consent and it making your anxiety way worse

list making

[beemovieerotica]

dear people with OCD: the next time you have spiraling & intrusive thoughts, what-ifs, or catastrophizing scenarios, I am sending a cardigan-wearing 46-year old NYU professor directly into your brain and he says "Aaaaand scene!!!" and he claps his hands slowly. and he says "Wow. Wow. Powerful stuff. Evocative imagery. A little bit post-modern, a little bit hysterical realism in the vein of Don Delilo but let's pause right here." and you will recognize your thoughts as a perplexing avant-garde film shown to an audience of 15 liberal arts students who are now trying to get a good grade and sleep with their professor.

[rhymeswithrosamygale]

This is funny, but it's also dangerously close to being a mental compulsion. A less funny but safer alternative is to just say "I'm noticing that i'm having thought X, and I don't know if its true or not" because it helps you to de-identify yourself with your intrusive thoughts,

[rhymeswithrosamygale]

Ok, so I know he's awful and we hate him, but does anyone else ever think about how heartbreaking Corvus Crow’s story is. 

Imagine that you’re a kid, and your brother is cursed. He’s going to die on his birthday as a young child. And sure some bad stuff happens around him sometimes, but really nothing that awful, so you think, maybe the curse isn’t real. Maybe he's gonna live. Because you know your brother, and you know your mother, and there’s no way she’s just going to let him die. But then he does. And now you see things a little differently. But you move on. You get married, you start a family. And then your daughter is born cursed. And this time you know better, but you still look at her, and you just see your little baby, and she can’t really be cursed can she? And then your wife dies. Because yes this little baby is cursed, and now not only have you lost your wife, your daughter is as good as dead too. So you ignore her, you don't get attached, and a while later you remarry, and your new wife has all these visions of you as a picture perfect family, and she thinks if she can just fix your daughter, make her more palatable or whatever you can all be that. But that was never the problem, the problem is she’s dead, or as good as, and no one can fix that. She wants to have kids but you're scared, what will happen to them? What if they’re cursed too? What if your daughter’s curse kills them like it did your first wife. Too much could go wrong. You want to wait until after the curse is gone. It’s gotten easier to forget that the curse is your child now. You just have to wait it out. But your wife still wants to have this perfect blended family, so when she gets pregnant a year before your daughter is set to die you think fine. It’s just one year, what’s the worst that can happen. And then things change. Eventide comes early and suddenly it’s your daughter’s last day, last meal, soon her last breath. Your wife still wants everyone to be a family, so she chooses this ill-timed moment to announce her pregnancy, and now your daughter thinks she's being replaced, as if there was ever something to be replaced in the first place. And then she’s gone. Three hours early, and you’re relieved, because it’s finally over, and you can forget this whole thing. But your mother won't let you. She keeps talking about her, she puts her massive portrait right smack in the middle of the hall of dead crows. So you forbid everyone from talking about her, demand she be forgotten, not knowing that you are enacting your dead daughters worst fear, and not caring either. 

But the thing is she’s not dead. Never was, your mother saved her like she did your brother, and if only you hadn’t been so sure you’d lose her, you might have never lost her. 

[rhymeswithrosamygale]

Modest Mouse and Finding Beauty In Futility

Introduction:

“To be or not to be, that is the question,” or to quote Modest Mouse, “Ice age, heatwave, can’t complain/ If the world's at large why should I remain,” Both of these questions get at the ultimate question: What is the point? In the first three songs from the Modest Mouse album “Good News for People Who Love Bad News” the point is pointless. All three songs find their beauty in the futility of day to day life.