Bad Wolf

Yeah Mr. Darcy’s proposal was a complete turd and a half but you gotta understand. You got your life together. A good career, stable income, retirement plan, all that shit together. And you meet this girl. And she’s everything. Clever, outspoken, funny, calls you on your bullshit. Grade A cutie, right? And she doesn’t go out of her way to spend time with you but she’s nice, and sometimes you catch her looking your way in a way that makes you think you might have a shot.

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves three more, and two of those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of the two is young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

Yeah, I think I kinda get it

(and the prev tags)

#Pride and prejudice#fuuuuuuuck#Yeah you both kinda stupid#I forgot some shit don’t hate me#Also yes I forgot Mary but I’m gonna say Darcy did too just to cover my ass

…Yeah. That’s just about it, isn’t it?

(And then she nukes him from orbit. Which, despite the absolutely correct summing-up of the background, is still deeply satisfying.) 😏

Most of my lack of sympathy for Darcy in this situation is that Lizzie initially does manage to keep her shit together enough to think "I should be nice" about turning down this bolt from the blue proposal. Before he really unzips and starts taking a piss on her entire family, she feels genuinely bad because she's about to hurt his feelings.

Like, she hasn't done anything to make him think she's actually interested, and critically, neither has he. Our man appears to have come to the conclusion that he can't beat this out of his system and is just going to have to bite the bullet about thirty minutes before he goes to propose. Even by the atrophied standards of the day, there has been precious little that might suggest courtship beforehand.

Mr. Collins*, whose matrimonial hamhandedness had him basically going down the line from sister to sister to their faces like it was a fucking speed dating meet-up, at least gave everyone a heads up and said, "Hey, I think the right thing to do here would be to try and make a match in-house, and I'm coming down to shoot my shot." When he got with Charlotte, it was after a short acquaintance, but he made it plain that he was looking for a wife.

So Lizzie has zero chance to deflect or decline Darcy's attentions in a way that's going to spare him embarrassment entirely. Like that man just marched in (?), announced he was in love with her (???), and gave the most dogshit proposal in recorded human history (?!?!). Even after she's genuinely mad at him for reading her whole family for filth and acting like he's history's biggest martyr for falling in love with her (her! of all people!), she still manages to be like "Oh, wow. I'm... flattered. But no, thank you. Sorry for your life. Sounds like this whole thing shouldn't last too long, though! You don't sound too happy about any of this!"

And then Darcy pitches a hissy! ("And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.")

And that's when Lizzie spends like an entire page nuking him from orbit. That man had an opportunity to be like "Pack it in, boys, we've made a social blunder." and instead decided to pretend he didn't just spend fifteen minutes acting like God's poorest meow meow for trying and failing to fall out of love with the woman standing in front of him.

I mean, whomst among us hasn't immediately shot ourselves in the other foot instead of putting the safety on, but hard yikes, man. I don't think you spent as much time actually thinking about stuff as you think you did, Darcy! I think you might have just been stewing on it instead!

He doesn't actually calm down enough to be like "Fuck. Fuck, why did I say that. Fuck my stupid brain and fuck my stupid life." for like. Weeks.

*Who also fucking forgot Mary, who'd have been at least on paper a very suitable wife for a clergyman.

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."

This is also great Pride & Prejudice posting! Darcy, like many rich people, has trouble with the fact that others have feelings and viewpoints as valid as his own.

Darcy presumably sees his aunt Lady Catherine through affectionate eyes, softening her faults, but doesn’t consider that Elizabeth sees her family through affectionate eyes. Interestingly, we the audience regard Georgiana with sympathy - Darcy’s beloved baby and only sister, admiring of Elizabeth - while we tend to be far less sympathetic to Lydia (Elizabeth’s sister, but with about 5 years and 2 other sisters between them, which gives more scope for annoyance and competition than Darcy’s approximately 12 year age gap with a little girl who’s no threat to the heir or the near unlimited resources in their huge manor).

But Darcy, to his credit, is shown knowing Lydia is a victim like Georgiana, both 15 year olds preyed upon by Wickham. While society at the time meant Lydia marrying her seducer was bad yet the alternative might be worse, I always liked that Darcy’s first impulse was to march in calling ‘Lydia get your coat, we are blowing this popsicle stand!’ It also tells us that had he come too late to save Georgiana’s reputation, he still would’ve tried to get her away from Wickham and make sure she was safe. Perhaps his immediate reaction to Lydia tells us he’d thought about that.

Darcy, a principled guy at bottom, and yes! Elizabeth can either subconsciously sense that despite Wickham’s claims or can tell (possibly by noting his affection for his sister) that if this guy cares about you, he won’t hurt you. And he could have without framing her dad for tax fraud. All Darcy would have to do if he really wanted to marry and/or punish Elizabeth was something entirely legal and socially acceptable: go ask her parents for her hand.

Think how hideous her mother made refusing Mr Collins. As OP says, we see Mr Bennet go ‘oh I can’t refuse Darcy anything, but you—my 20 year old dependent daughter—you can go say no to him after I’ve already agreed to give you away.’ His reaction is whatever at that point because Elizabeth loves Darcy, but earlier in the book Mr Bennet defends Elizabeth from Mr Collins. We know Mr Bennet wouldn’t defend her from Darcy. Mrs Bennet would never stop hassling her. Jane got jilted, all the Bennet daughters have no prospects at this point. Whether or not Elizabeth caved, she would be under unbearable pressure and nobody would think Darcy had done a thing wrong.

But of course Darcy would never. Man has too much pride, for one thing.

In Darcy’s defence re popping the question abruptly, he did think they were taking romantic strolls.

ELIZABETH: I love walking in this particular place. HINT: Stop coming here. DARCY: oho my lady and I have an assignation. DARCY: we now regularly rendez-vous to appreciate nature. I 100% understood her charming flirty hint and am a prodigious loverboy. ELIZABETH: oh no our 5th awkward surprise meeting. How does this keep happening!

It is hilarious to think of Elizabeth returning proposal fire with ‘I do not rejoice in a connection to Lady Catherine, whose wit and manners are so inferior to my own, but I GUESS I’ll marry you.’

— Jasika Nicole, Alice Isn’t Dead

The new, updated version of my Dream Library print is available here with 3 background colour options!

Which would you most want? I would personally love to read the potentially award winning book that I occasionally have vague ideas about writing..

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This print was very popular on my shop for a couple of years, which I’m delighted about, I’m only slightly annoyed that it’s stopped selling now that I finally ordered a hundred copies of it. Oh well.

Working on some new art to go up soon, but this is discounted a bit in the meantime, catch it now before it’s gone for good!

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my favorite college class was a lit class called something like "the aesthetics of narrative". I don't even remember.

it was taught by a professor who had us all call her nancy. she was tiny and quite old and walked with a cane and she was the most terrifying professor I ever had. she did not let anyone get away with anything. it was a discussion based seminar and you had to be ready to back up your readings of the text.

one class session right before a break, she asked one guy pointed question after pointed question until he cracked and admitted he hadn't done the reading. she looked around and asked who else hadn't. a few people raised their hands for fear of also being called on and cross-examined.

then she kicked out everyone who hadn't done the reading.

thankfully I am the kind of goody-two-shoes who always did the reading, and I also really liked that book, so I got to stay and witness her little giggle when they were all gone. she looked around at the remaining seven or so of us and went, "I like to do that once a semester. keeps you on your toes."

anyway I really wish the rest of the world had a nancy experience. do the fucking reading if you want to be part of the conversation. support your statements with the text and if you can't, you can get up and leave and come back next week when you've done your homework.

Hello, person with a degree in criminology here.

This is true. This is not only true, but it's four times truer than you think it is. This is widely documented.

Thank you for your time.

Oh wow, I came across my own dash. Hello old, but incredibly correct and cool/attractive me!

Me: I don't get it. I thought I was doing a lot better than I was a few years ago. I'm like 10 times more on top of things than I used to be. How does everything feel terrible now?

The Tiny Me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear Who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers: Boss, it's the fascism. You're completely gunked up with cortisol due to the fact that your entire daily life is now underscored with a haunting awareness of the rapid erosion of your rights, dignity, and any and all social safety nets, and you're also bearing witness to the most vulnerable people immediately being persecuted. This creates a natural stress response that basically means you're going to continue having memory and organizational problems, as well as emotional imbalances.

Me: BUT I HAVE A BULLET JOURNAL AND I MEDITATE NOW.

Tiny OSHA Me: BOSS, THE FASCISM.

Every day now

I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad

In case you're curious here's what I mean.

Renaissance(distinct lines, stability and the individual man):

Baroque (bold, chaotic, dramatic):

Romantic(romanticize the simple hard working life):

Do you see the difference?

this post has re-wired my brain in the best way

Is anyone else just... exhausted?

Everyone living in the USA needs to inform themselves about "crisis pregnancy centers." They're not legitimate medical facilities and typically only have a nurse on staff, if even that.

"Crisis pregnancy centers" are UNREGULATED organizations that present themselves like medical facilities and often offer medical advice and information, but they are staffed by volunteers many of whom are not medical professionals, typically funded by churches and pro-life orgs, and exist to convince people not to have abortions. They often give "patients" misinformation and lies about abortion, contraception, and pregnancy.

These organizations often take the place of legitimate medical facilities particularly in impoverished areas despite being essentially fake medical clinics that offer few services and that are not bound to ethical or sanitary guidelines of real clinics.

A "crisis pregnancy center" in Kentucky was recently in the news because a nurse who volunteered there found that trans-vaginal ultrasound probes were being sanitized using disinfectant that was both expired and totally ineffective against HPV, a common sexually transmitted infection, meaning the clinic could have given their clients STIs with their shitty unregulated sanitation practices.

My MOM visited one of these "centers" when she was pregnant with me (a planned and wanted pregnancy) because she didn't know it was fake and unregulated!

People deserve real healthcare, not lies, randos dressed up in white coats, and disease-spreading, unsterilized equipment like it's the 1700s.

Transgender: 0

#SundaySermon

Source

Source

...*sigh*

*taps mic*

THE ERA OF VANISHING HAS BEGUN

They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.

Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.

She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.

Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.

They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.

A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS

Alireza Doroudi is gone too.

He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.

ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.

Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.

Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.

These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.

They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.

WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME

While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.

In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.

In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.

And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.

This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME

Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.

This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.

They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.

The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.

This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.

They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.

SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.

There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.

ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.

They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.

We cannot let them win.

This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.

This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.

Let the record show:

They took people.

And we did not look away.

We saw it.

We named it.

We raised hell.

And we did not stop.

(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)

Hayao Miyazaki on AI

This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy

Always reblog flash debate

on it boss

reminder that the presenter says "oh, shut up" not "can it"

Native French speaker here. "Ta gueule" is actually more like "shut the fuck up" in terms of level of disrespect

also worth noting is that the "are you happy" is the correct gender

official linguistics post