Taylor Swift having the balls to tell Joe Alwyn “do something, babe, say something, lose something, babe, risk something” when he’s the one speaking up about Palestine and she isn’t in fear of risking her career or whatever will never not be funny to me
One of my favorite moments while reading Emma is when Mr. John Knightley is absolutely flabbergasted that Mr. Weston would rather attend a party with several people than sit at home near a fire.
You and me both Mr. Knightley
Mr Bennet has a close relationship with Elizabeth and provides amusing observations on the folly of human nature BUT he is a terrible husband and father who consistently neglects the women who rely on him for absolutely everything; Elizabeth and Jane turned out so well in spite of him, not because of him.
Mrs Bennet's behaviour is understandable given the era in which she lived and the subsequent pressure she was under to get her daughters married well, which wasn't entirely for vanity reasons given that Longbourn was entailed BUT she was still fundamentally vain, ridiculous and rude; such pressure, even combined with an absent husband, still does not make her behaviour justifiable, nor her a sympathetic character, as she enabled Lydia (whose subsequent elopement with Wickham almost ruined the family) for far too long.
Mr Collins is unfairly portrayed as a middle-aged sycophant in most adaptations, rather than the young clergyman who sucks up to his patroness in pursuit of a more lucrative living that he was BUT he is still a ridiculous character who you are not meant to feel sympathy for when Elizabeth rejects him; he is rude, hypocritical and thinks of himself far too highly considering how vapid he actually is.
Caroline Bingley is often too harshly judged as a 'pick-me,' even though her relentless pursuit of Darcy is understandable given his wealth & status and how important it was for women to make a good marriage BUT she was still rude, vain and treated Jane terribly; plus she was a hypocritical snob, given the manner in which she looked down upon the Bennet family's relations despite the Bingleys' own background in trade.
Elizabeth is incredibly witty, courageous and endearing and instantly likeable which makes Darcy's slight of her at the Meryton assembly all the more of an affront to us as readers BUT, while it explains her dislike of him, she is no means perfect herself; she had far too much misplaced pride in her ability to successfully read others' characters and consequently ignored positive accounts of Darcy in favour of believing the deceitful Wickham, given her prejudice against the former.
Mr Darcy was harshly judged by Elizabeth, even though there are many more sympathetic elements to his character than immediately meet the eye BUT he was not shy or innocent; he was always a haughty rich man who had never been told no, thought far too highly of himself and, ultimately, thoroughly deserved to be rebuked and subsequently made to reform his character.
Every desi man who complains about women being able to pick and choose their partners while they’re lucky to find any girl at all, needs to be reminded that they brought this upon themselves after decades of female feoticide and infanticide. It’s just demand and supply.
On the second viewing, I realized that House of Usher is also a story about how Boomers made a deal with the devil - an easy life with the consequences to be paid by future generations. Gen X got to reap the most benefits from this deal - got to live longer and get more established and see where they were supposed to be able to get before they got cut off at the knees. Millennials got less - struggling to establish themselves in careers when the world is falling apart, ending up in weird digital jobs like streaming video games or throwing parties, retreating into nihilistic hedonism to deal with it. And Gen Z - poor Gen Z may not even get started, so many of them struck down before they can even really live by war and climate change and gun violence and disease. They're young enough and innocent enough to see what's wrong with the world but not powerful enough to fix it. And then the Boomers sit back and complain about how it's everyone else's fault - that they're all greedy and lazy and the cause of their own destruction - and refuse to hand over power when they should, choosing instead to collapse the entire house around them in their senility.
Had no idea that TIME Person of the Year was a popularity contest.... Coz no way Taylor Swift deserves that with all that's going on and all that's happened this year
it really is crazy how quickly people were willing to just let chatgpt do everything for them. i have never even tried it. brother i don't even know if it's just a website you go to or what. i do not know where chatgpt actually lives, because i can decide my own grocery list.
the thing about the "um excuse me if you're as poor as you say you are why don't you just sell all your most treasured possessions" thing that people love to trot out as some kind of "gotcha" is that they do not acknowledge how fucking soul-crushing it is to be in a situation that is already destroying your mental health and then be forced to sell one of the few things in your life that still bring you joy
I love seeing list memes where someone makes a "le cool people vs le cringe" and they obviously skew it so they barely scrape by into the cool kids club
I think one of the most damaging ideologies towards children is the conviction that having children isn’t a calling but a moral obligation.