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Reviews I chuckled at or like agreed or whatever (lol) part 5

Pt 6

Pt 7

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) + letterboxd reviews

How’s that for entertainment?

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) // Guy Ritchie

Oh, and you have a new code name. Code name? Yes, rather a good one: U.N.C.L.E.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.LE. 2015 | dir. Guy Ritchie

Rukia Kuchki, the cute-gushing Reaper girl

ID in alt text. Click for better quality.

Please like and/or reblog if you save! Thank you!

These idiot spies have enraptured me in heart and soul, so I just had to make some edits/collages/phone backgrounds for them! Hope y’all enjoy em <3

Someone on Reddit keeps getting recommended the Jane Austen subreddit despite knowing nothing about Jane Austen, so they posted an Ask Me Anything. Best response so far:

Sorry JA, no longer a truth universally acknowledged.

I have an idea which might make things quicker.

EMMA. (2020) Dir. Autumn de Wilde

I actually adored this movie

EMMA. (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

Playing around with new brushes in Procreate. I think I may have liked the lineart better... ohh well....

Darcy: do you want to dance?

Elizabeth: why, so you can judge my dancing? Ha! Nice try! I'm not falling for that

If I have already posted I am reposting

artist: @dar.a_art

every now and then i think about pacific rim and go dreamy-eyed and possessed by the urge to rewatch it. it's arguably the best concept for a blockbuster ever made. mecha/kaiju anime meets top gun meets soulmates AU. the fate of the world depends on you processing your trauma by mind melding with your crush in order to pilot a giant robot that beats up sea monsters. oh and the robots have cool names also. i hope whoever was in the room with guillermo del toro when he came up it immediately kissed him on the lips

tfw u die n then u come back and then theres another guy tryna kill u

Unhelpful Dramione Summary #24

The Darkwood Wand: Teenage boy goes to absurd lengths to get laid.

Going to do a few non-Silm posts. In addition to Tolkien and many other authors, I’m also a fan of Austen and the Brontës, and what’s a blog for if not to talk about things you like?

Character Types in Jane Austen’s Novels

While many writers repeat character elements across their novels, Jane Austen does it to a higher degree than most. The major characters in her novel can be placed in several recurring character types, which remain highly consistent across books. However, she succeeds in doing this without repeating the same stories; the differences in her books come from the shades of the difference in the characters and the situations in which they are placed.

I’d say that there are two main female and three main male character types. (I’m going to cover Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. It’s been ages since I’ve read Persuasion, so I’m leaving it out.)

1) The first female character type is the witty, lively, opinionated young woman. This covers Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennett, Mary Crawford, and Emma Woodhouse. They are all intelligent; lively conversationalists with strong opinions and, often, quick wits in expressing those opinions; somewhat willing to challenge social conventions; and, on the whole, active and vigorous types. (Well, Marianne is when she isn’t moping.) Often, they are not quite so clever as they think they are.

2) The second female character type, in contrast with the first, is reserved, quiet, generous-spirited, responsible, dutiful, broadly convention-adhering, and with great - though rarely shown - depth of emotion. This is Elinor Dashwood, Jane Bennett, Fanny Price, and Jane Fairfax.

3) The first male character type is the romantic counterpart to the second female one: agreeable, well-meaning, but a little weak-willed or weak-charactered. The key examples of this type are Edward Ferrars and Mr. Bingley. Edward is strong-characteredin some respects (his refusal to abandon Lucy even at the cost of disinheritance) but weak-charactered in others: he develops a relationship with Elinor without telling her he is already engaged, and becoming engaged to Lucy is the first place was a foolish decision. Bingley allows his friends to convince him to break things off with Jane even though he genuinely cares for her.

4) The second male character type is the romantic counterpart of the first female one: reserved, intelligent, with high standards, quiet but deep-running passions and strong principles. This is Colonel Brandon, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Knightly.

5) The final major character type is what I’ll called the Rake. Willoughby, Wickham, and Henry Crawford. Passionate, charming, shallow, superficially attractive, sexually unprincipled, and predatory. (Willoughby and Wickham also have histories with Brandon and Darcy in which they preyed on a female relative of the latter.) The second female character type is often at least initially attracted to this type: Marianne falls head-over-heels for Willoughby; Elizabeth is, initially, pleasantly flattered by Wickham’s attentions; and Emma flirts, albeit unseriously, with Frank Churchill, to the distress of many involved parties. Mary Crawford is the exception, as Henry is instead her brother, but the exception helps prove the rule - these two character types have some level of rapport in terms of personality.

Mentioning Frank brings me to our two edge cases. Frank is a combination of the first and third male types - he’s fairly shallow, careless, charming, but unlike the usual Rake characters he’s genuinely good-hearted, only somewhat weak-charactered, in line with the first male type. His romantic connections fit this combination: he flirts with Emma (and she with him), in line with the Rake type, but ends up with Jane Fairfax, in line with the first male type.

Edmund Bertram, I would say, is a combination of the first and second male types (hence his attraction both to Mary Crawford and later to Fanny Price - and theirs to him). He’s kinder and more easily empathetic than other characters of the second male type, but like them in being intelligent, determined, and principled.

As a result, it’s little surprise that many readers are invested in Mary and Edmund, because they’re not so far different from Austen’s succesful couples. It doesn’t hurt that some of Mary’s actions that are treated as warning signs - like criticizing her uncle for taking his mistress into his house while his wife (Mary’s aunt, who she was close to) was still there, or making jokes about church, or using amateur theatricals as an excuse to flirt - don’t feel very serious to the modern reader, and in the first case feel outright laudable. Plus she’s lively, witty, energetic - even kind, so long as kindness poses no real inconvenience to her. She is Lizzy Bennet without the morals, and Austen’s way of showing how necessary those morals are when her deeper flaws come to light (being fine with her brother seducing random women, abetting his attempt to break Fanny’s heart, hoping Edmund’s brother will die so she can be rich). And in another way, she’s a female Willoughby, torn between the prospect of a modest lifestyle with someone she has real feelings for, and the luxury, license, and wealthy lifestyle she’s accustomed to. Like Willoughby, she likely wouldn’t have been truly satisfied with either outcome.

These character types also illuminate why certain relationships don’t get off the ground. Henry Crawford is unsuccessful in charming Fanny Price because she’s the wrong character type for him - she doesn’t find superficial charm and flirtation attractive. But Austen also deliberately contrasts Henry with Darcy - he’s trying to win over a woman who dislikes him by changing his behaviour to amend the personality traits she dislikes, and he does a great favour for one of of her siblings, and he is notably courteous to her embarassing relatives even when they are crass. However, the entire feel is different. Darcy makes Wickham marry Lydia not to make Elizabeth feel indebted to him (as is the case with Hery getting Fanny’s brother promoted), but because he cares for her and doesn’t want her to be unhappy; he deliberately hides his intervention from her. (Also, Henry’s action costs him nothing.) And, just as importantly, Lizzy’s correct critiques of Darcy are founded on his snobbish behaviour; her aspersions on his fundamental character are proven false. Fanny objects to Henry’s bad character; no amount of charm can remove that complaint.

The second female type and second male type also seem to mesh quite well as friends: Elinor and Brandon develop a good friendship, and Mr. Knightley has a very high regard for Jane Fairfax. (These two are also my favourite non-canon pairings. I’m never really forgiven Emma for deliberately breaking up a nice couple who care for each other on the mere basis that the man *horror* works for a living. And I love Jane Fairfax and want good things for her.)

By playing with these character types, Jane Austen lets all her characters be foils for each other and allows the more subtle differences among characters of the same type to drive different directions of the plot.

After a reread of Persuasion, I’m thinking about how it relates to Austen’s character types discussed in this post. It stands out from S&S, P&P, and Mansfield Park in not haveing a ‘charming rake’ type as the main male antagonist, but instead a reserved, intelligent, courteous, cold-blooded and selfish man. There is no counterpart to Willoughby, Wickham, or Henry Crawford.

Instead, if Mr. Elliot is a counterpart to any of the characters in Austen’s other novels, he feels like a dark mirror of Darcy. They are both reserved; both (at least at the time of the main plot of the book) place a high value on social status, and look down on commonness and vulgarity. However, while Darcy’s arrogance makes him rude, Mr. Elliot has impeccable manners; and where Darcy in has strong principles and treats the people for whom he is responsible well, Mr. Elliot is a hypocrite and, though voicing good principles, is in fact cruel and uncaring to those who are dependent on him. Mr. Elliot is, really, the type of person that Wickham portrays Darcy as being. The other thing that brought this comparison to my mind is Mrs. Smith’s description of the friendship between her husband and Mr. Elliot, which very much recalls the one between Bingley and Darcy (as an additional note, both Mr. Smith and Bingley are named Charles):

From his wife’s account of him she could discern Mr. Smith to have been a man of warm feelings, easy temper, careless habits, and not strong understanding, much more amiable than his friend and very unlike him - led by him

I think this all goes with one of Austen’s common themes, and one that is especially important to Persuasion - the importance of not marrying in overmuch haste and without good knowledge of and, at a minimum, respect for your partner. Darcy is decidedly not like Mr. Elliot in character - but at the time if his first proposal, for all Elizabeth knew he might have been.

And on the flip side, Frederick Wentworth is not like Willoughby or Wickham - but given the short time Anne had known him when he first proposed, he might have been, and Lady Russell certainly sees that danger. He is, at that time, daring and charismatic, but not prudent, having saved none of the money that he won in his naval career. There’s also another reference to the ‘charming rake’ type in that, like Henry Crawford, he for a while courts two sisters, the elder of whom is attached (though, unlike Maria Bertram, not engaged) to another man. In Wentworth’s defence, he isn’t aware of the latter, and isn’t trying to make them both fall in love with him, just being his (naturally charming) self, and keeping his eyes open for who he might like to marry; and he very nearly gets himself badly entangled and, later, freely acknowledges that as his own fault. Really, Wentworth has elements of all three of Austen’s main male character types, and is the better for it. (Anne herself has, I think, the most in common with Elinor Dashwood in being the only sensible and intelligent person in her family, and in being very perceptive, and with Fanny Price is being rather quiet and imposed upon.)

On the whole, this combination of characters makes the book feel less on the side of intelligence and judgement, and more on the side of a warm and open heart, in making for happiness, whereas S&S and P&P focus more strongly on the need for ‘sense’ and intelligence. Intelligence may well be a necessary quality for a truly good marriage, but it is not a sufficient one, not when it is combined with a cold and selfish heart.

I would give anything to watch/read/head a comprehensive analysis of the dramione fandom. Like how/if famous fics influenced the fics that came after them. Trends through the years. The main differences between fics written before the HP books were completed and after the fact. Character arcs and how commenters reacted to them. Some other aspect I wouldn't even think to note... It would be so interesting!

I can't give you a proper analysis but I can't try to answer your questions.

Many authors will tell you if another fic specifically inspired them. There were a few that were inspired by "Manacled" by SenLinYu. A few people wrote sequels to "Master" by Akashathekitty, with her permission.

With regards to trends, whenever a new trope pops up, many people write about it. Marriage Law started in the Hermione/Snape fandom in the mid-00s, but somehow came across here and has been a very popular trope in the fandom since. In the early 00s, when Harry Potter fanfiction started, many Dramione fics were very OOC. They didn't include Voldemort. They had the Malfoys not being involved in the war. A lot of the stories were based in Hogwarts and were very "high school drama teen romance" types. You also have a lot of very AU fics popping up in the late 00s/early 10s. Like fics, where authors include their own magical systems, their own magic theory, and wandlore.

As the books and movies came out, authors started to change their themes to reflect canon. So you started to see more war Era fics, more darker themes, and what we will call true to character fics. Fics with Draco being a death eater, fics with Hermione being on the run, fics showing the war and battles and strategies and the horrors of war.

By the time the movies were completed, there were still a lot of war fics, but you started to see more post-war fics. Fics of what happens now. Year 8 fics, head boy and head girl fics, the character being working adults, Draco getting his redemption, etc. Of course, all these tropes mentioned were being written about since the beginning, but to me this is what I saw more of as time when on.

As for feedback/comments, I think as time went on, people got nicer in their comments and remarks to authors. If you look back at older stories, people didn't hold back when it came to the comment section. They were mean and insulting. As time went on, people became nicer and more careful with what they said. Also, more people were giving constructive criticism rather than "i love this!! <3".

Another thing that changed over the 2 decades of dramione is the quality of the stories in terms of planning, writing, spelling and grammar, and length. Before no one had a beta, now it is seen as a requirement. Some even have multiple betas. People will definitely call you out if you have plot holes, if something doesn't make sense, etc. Authors put in a lot of work into writing their fics, planning in advance about what is happening in their stories and their characters. Some even take weeks of planning before even writing something.

How a person advertises their stories have also changed. With social media being very prominent in our society, a lot of authors use it to promote their stories, give readers sneak peaks of new chapters, make moodboards to give readers a better idea of their characters, the moods, the setting. They commission artwork for their stories, and someone might even do it for free. They are able to reach out to their fans and directly talk to them. Before, you just posted a story online, and that was it.

The hate and negativity of the fandom have also changed. Before, no one cared for fanfiction in general. People thought it was weird, and those who read or wrote it were also weird. But as time we on, nerd/geek culture became more popular, and people expressed it more. People got a better idea of what fanfiction actually is and started to get into it. So, more people were exposed to non-canon ships, which led to people not liking it and more hate to anyone who did.

Social media also allowed fans to have a community where they can talk about fics, critique it, and help each other out. But of course, this led to bullying someone for liking one fic over another. It led to insulting authors for writing about a particular topic, and it led to people getting together to make sure someone who they didn't like didn't get readers. It led to people just up and leaving the fandom because people just constantly picked on them.

For the character of Draco, as time went in, his characterization went from "normal" school bully to indoctrinated racist young boy. Authors gave a better background to his character, which explained why he did what he did. They humanized him and started to write realistic ways in which a person like him can change. Also, as people in the fandom grew up, people started to understand the themes and characters of the original books better, so we too saw that it's not black and white when it comes to Draco. So we have a lot of support to authors who wrote a Draco the we saw him, which led to newer tropes in the fandom popping up, like Draco going to Azkaban for a few years, Draco becoming an Auror, Draco being involved in chariry work.

That characterization of Hermione to me hasn't really changed. She was always a fan favourite. Older stories were a bit of a self-insert. They also had her character being very "Mary Sue" like. You still see that now sometimes. I think authors have also done a good job in keeping her very much like her character in canon.

Of course, this is just what I observed over the years. I started to read Dramione fanfiction around 2008-2009, so we'll over a decade in the fandom, I've seen a lot. But this is just my experience and my POV.

- Lisa

Hermione Granger character sheet. 📜🪶

Draco Malfoy character sheet.

Trying to make him look somewhat the same all the time. 🥴