Fantaghirò (Lamberto Bava, 1991)

I've been thinking about the fact that some readers of Sense and Sensibility don't believe Willoughby truly loved Marianne, even though everyone in the book believes it and the narrator makes it clear how much he cared for her, at the end. And I think this reading of him takes away from one of the messages of the book, which is that love is not enough.

Willoughby loves Marianne, but that's not enough to stop him from hurting her, it's not enough to make him give up his cushy lifestyle and marry her, and it wouldn't have been enough to keep him happy with her long-term. Marianne loves Willoughby, but it wouldn't have been enough for her to be happy with him long-term either.

Edward loves Elinor, but that's not a good enough reason to break his promise to Lucy, because integrity and honor and responsibility are just as important to him. Brandon loves Marianne, but that's not reason enough to court her, because he knows her feelings lie elsewhere and she doesn't respect and esteem him yet.

Love is important to all these characters, and is a vital part in making the marriages that they ultimately end up in strong and happy, but it's not the only thing that makes them work.

Of course, Sense and Sensibility is hardly the only Austen novel to make the point that you need more than love or romance or passion to make a relationship work. But I think it's interesting how we get to see this play out in the villain of the novel. Willoughby does some truly horrific things, but his character shows that even really bad guys are capable of feeling love and guilt and remorse. But none of these feelings are ultimately strong enough to change him. Because love is not enough.

It just struck me why Professor Bhaer in Little Women uses «thou» instead of «you» - it’s because as a German he’ll consider «you» equivalent to the formal «Sie» and try to avoid it with people with whom he is on friendly terms, so instead he translates «du» to «thou». This is supported by the fact that he uses «you» when he speaks to Jo at their first meeting, when they’re still strangers. Little Women from Professor Bhaer’s perspective is just a bunch of Americans insisting on being distantly formal in their address while he thinks they’re on «du» terms.

Walking My Penguin

i am walking my penguin walking my penguin for a few furlongs walking my penguin no madam that is not a euphemism not a euphemism for anything anything at all.. my penguin requires a little decent gentle exercise so taking my penguin for walkies is great and he is unable to lift weights you ask why well because my particular penguin has flippers you try lifting dumbbells with flippers not recommended.. besides that and perhaps because he has put on a little weight his portly gait means his back is bent out of shape somewhere down there his vintage blubber is stoically marinating.. when i walk my penguin in the cold winter weather he dons woolly neon booties with sucker-soled grips so he does not fall over onto the unforgiving icy concrete penguins feet are so unsuited to negotiate human concrete.. and please do not get me started on why pavements do not have under-heated penguin air-bags so where does all our council tax go terrible i know i know.. i am walking my penguin no madam that is not a euphemism not a euphemism for anything you have asked me that once already that makes no sense at all.. and he never lashes on the lamp posts of dogs he is exceedingly well-mannered he stays in his lane and when he takes a shine to a neighbour he drops an egg in their garden for them alpha-bloke penguins have an extraordinary skill set penguin misandrists really need to visit their shrink-vet.. no offence meant madam i am simply walking my penguin only for a few furlongs after all do you not also walk yours yes i should hope so.. and madam i hope you know you should never let your penguin out on its own common sense is not so common now gangster pedigree penguin-nappers are everywhere they even write stupid songs glorifying it all conceptual double-albums about penguins finding themselves are a rare and treasured find the swirly album art work is always immersive and sublime.. yes i know and alas it is not like the days of yore when you could let your penguin out to relax in a deckchair on strawberryfied-krill summer days in the secure knowledge your penguin would always always remain in completely rude health and super-safe apart from when your penguin suffers the irritating seasonal malady of mildly fatal heatstroke..

Source: Walking My Penguin

When Jane says she’s cold while Rochester is holding her hand… and he replies in question, “Cold?”. He can feel she is not, quite the opposite, her hands were very warm (so warm home girl felt feverish and couldn’t sleep all night bc of that stirring passion awakening). The text doesn’t explicitly say this but I think it’s implied. We are reading from Jane’s POV who in this moment is just trying to leave his room bc the feeling of desire is unfamiliar to her at the moment and she wants to avoid it in the present. But the clue lies with Rochester’s reply when he questions her “Cold?”. To Rochester’s silly lil brain Jane saying “I’m cold” translates to “Get away from me you unlovable beast I want to leave now and you’re ugly” in Rochesterian. So he plays along and is like “oh yes yes and standing in a pool! go Jane😐 ( 10/10 acting) obviously Rochester being Rochester does the totally rational thing any normal person would do and leave immediately, go get Blanche and execute plan make Jane jealous. Because waiting until morning to find to your surprise Jane is absolutely down bad simping for you is too long of a wait. Clearly spending roughly a month on this plan is way faster (Rochester math).

Can’t believe Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in the 2000s

And in 2015 Emily Brontë released literary clsssic Wuthering Heights

Thank God someone paved the way for them…

Sorry, still not over Darcy critical-failing that proposal! Not that sorry, though. I have no idea why Pride and Prejudice hits so hard when most of Austen's other novels are like "They're fine! I like them! Anyway..." for me.

But, here's the thing. Darcy is being an asshole. Darcy isn't an asshole, generally, but he's really being one about his whole Regency Era situationship with Lizzie. Like, he rolls in on day one with this giant fucking chip on his shoulder, acts like he's too good for everyone, and why? Well, he's rich, and he's got lofty connections.

Except who's he rolling with right then? His spineless dustmop of a bestie and his bestie's godawful sisters. Bingley's the sort of guy who can be peer-pressured out of being in love!

Like, you know that thing where you have a friend, and they introduce you to another friend, and that friend is such a wet sock that you find yourself reevaluating your friend because they're hanging around with this guy? Like, okay, Darcy, do you have friends, or do you have toadies? Is this your bestie, or did you find a gentleman's companion that you didn't have to pay?

Later on we meet his aunt, who's the goddamned worst.

Like, we all hate Mr. Collins, right? This woman has Mr. Collins over twice a week for a quiet evening of performative dickriding. That's the kind of taste Darcy's family has. Voluntarily spending hours with Mr. Collins on a regular basis.

There's no talking about Mrs. Bennet's lack of decorum or matrimonial grasping or entitlement without talking about Lady Catherine flying in on her broom to scream at her nephew's fiancee, right? Especially considering that her basis for doing so is a cradle engagement that she seems to have never spoken to her nephew about as an adult and a fucking rumor that she assumes pertains to Lizzie.

She doesn't even talk to her fucking nephew before spending half a day in a carriage to make a blazing spectacle of herself in front of the entire Bennet household! He finds out she did that afterwards when she tries to make him break off the nonexistent engagement that she's announced to half the fucking kingdom by that point.

I mean, unexpected point to Mrs. B, who notably did not even walk down the road to Netherfield to act disappointed at anyone.

Also hard to get on too high a horse after Georgiana's near-elopement with the country's biggest asshole! Like, oh, the Bennet sisters are embarrassing? The Bennets lack propriety?

Buddy, you hired a sex trafficker to look after your sister and then your sister almost fucked the one-man-crime-wave son of your late property-manager. And you didn't even manage to hush it all up properly! Sure, he's keeping your sister's name out of his mouth, but he's running you down like a dog in every other respect to the whole county!

Like, "Oh, look at me, I'm Fitzwilliam Darcy! I'm not going to lower myself to correcting any of The Plebes who now think I deliberately misadministered a will to fuck over The Help out of cheapness and spite, especially when all it would take is one conversation with That Fucker's commanding officer, but god forbid I ever have to go out in public with a Bennet! I might die of shame and secondhand cringe!"

So he's got all of that going on, and then he busts in on Lizzie with a proposal that's got huge "I don't consent to being attracted to you" energy and runs her entire family into the ground. This is after Lizzie's spent approximately three centuries being negged by his mannerless nightmare of an aunt, so that's at least one extra level of "Really, bruh?" in there.

And then he fucking claps back at her rejection! Instead of going "Oh. Huh. Whoops. Guess I'll just have to go marry one of the other ten thousand women lined up waiting to marry me!" he's like "What the fuuuuck did I ever do to you, you fucking menace?". At which point she checks him so hard he spends the next three months bluescreening and looking up how to be polite to people you haven't already known for five years.

So like I said, he is being an asshole here. He knows how to act right, he just hasn't bothered to do so once since posting up in Netherfield because idk, he's on vacation or some shit.

Critically! However upsetting Lizzie finds The Proposal Incident (half-hour crying jag, spends the rest of the day hiding in her room), she is at no point worried about Darcy's subsequent behavior.

This is while she still thinks he genuinely did Wickham dirty and before she's had a chance to get character references from the 500 people working at Pemberley. This is the guy about whom her dad later says "Kidding-not kidding I can hardly say no to this rich fuck, can I?" when asked for his blessing. This is after Mr. Collins literally said "I've heard no means yes these days" to her fucking face and then her mother tried to make her marry him anyway.

She preached a full on sermon about the man's shortcomings to his face immediately after saying she wouldn't bounce on his dick if it was the last one on earth and after the adrenaline crash wasn't like, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck my entire life, he's going to burn down the vicarage and frame my father for tax fraud."

Everything that she's seen with her own eyes about this snobby bastard tells her he's not going to go crying to his aunt and get her cousin's patronage revoked. He's not going to go out of his way to fuck her or her family over. He's pissed, and he was definitely playing the ass with that proposal, but he's not going to lash out over it.

So this is Lizzie seeing Darcy at Peak Asshole, with extra assholery that he didn't even do but he couldn't be bothered to tell anyone he didn't do, and Lizzie's still like "omg you're such a fucking prick, how do you even get out of bed in the morning" instead of "Well, RIP to my prospects, there's no way that man doesn't have the lot of us consigned to a convent by parliamentary decree now."

stamps 🪷

I love this quote. But at the same time - EXCUSE ME? I’m going half crazy with the fact that Charlotte Brontë DOES NOT think happiness is a potato, EVEN THOUGH she came to Belgium in 1842, where - SINCE THE LATE 17TH CENTURY - they were already making FRIES (aside from the whole France vs. Belgium as the inventors of fried potatoes dispute).

Ma’am? EXCUSE ME?

Maybe that’s why Lucy got sick of loneliness. A walk in the garden is a wonderful thing, but what would be a better balm on your achy heart??! Watching the bees buzzing around or EATING SOME TASTY DELICIOUS FRIED POTATOES?

Well. That’s the end of my crash out. Lunch?

“Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”

– Villette, Charlotte Brontë

Just found Hugh Grant’s Reddit AMA from 2014, featuring such gems as “I love to kill” and “I will pour almost anything down my throat”

Source: Hugh Grant Reddit AMA