Literally the only three things you need to know about Jane Austen

via http://ift.tt/2qWVbZJ:
scripturient-manipulator:

1. Her first major novel (Northanger Abbey) was written solely because she was so salty about how dramatic and cliche and formula Gothic novels were. You know what I mean. Every castle is foreboding. Every villain is awful but can’t bring himself to kill the heroine because she’s Too Pure. Every middle-aged female companion wants to do the heroine in. The heroine is Pure and Perfect and Is Good At Everything Young Women Should Be and recites quotes and/or the Bible whenever she’s in danger and that makes everything better. All butlers are evil. Jane Austen wrote a book specifically to go “THIS is how NORMAL people react to things!!!”

2. “She never changed her opinion about books or men”

3. “As a girl she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances” and you know what that means. Jane Austen started off writing smut fanfiction. If that’s not writing reassurement that you can be great no matter what you choose to write, I don’t know what is.

(Both quotes from the Penguin Classics version of Northanger Abbey)

No but seriously, Northanger Abbey is the funniest book ever. The narrator of the book is trying so hard to make this a gothic novel, but keeps on getting thwarted at every turn due to the characters being too sensible. Take when Catherine sees Mr Tilney with another woman.

Narrator: How our heroine must be feeling! All these lies, these deceptions, she must retreat of faint on the spot-

Catherine: This must be his sister!

Narrator: … goddamn it. *scraps entire subplot*

But at the same time everybody in the book is cheerfully reading gothic novels and enjoying them thoroughly, even Mr Tilney, and the one person who scoffs at them (John Thorpe) then proudly boasts that he ‘only reads books by (famous gothic authors)’.

And on top of everything, there is a gothic novel going on in the story, but the main character isn’t Catherine, it’s Tilney’s sister. She ticks off all the Gothic heroine traits- dead mother, wears white, doesn’t read novels, goes for long gloomy walks, her father won’t let her marry the man she loves- but we don’t actually get to read that story because the narrator affixed herself to Catherine instead, much to her dismay and our amusement.

It’s just absolutely genius from start to finish.

Fallout 4 tv shows

via http://ift.tt/2sJEti2:
skull-bearer:

Nate and Nick would watch every episode of Brooklyn 99. Nick because it is detective thing, Nate because the pilot had two black guys actually having a conversation, and they would both entirely do Ray any day of the week. 

Preston and Piper sometimes sit in, but it’s like watching a sitcom from Mars and Nick and Nate keep having to stop the holotape and explain what the hell is going on.

Star Trek, though, goes like hell. Everyone loves Star Trek. Nate is the only one who actually watched any of the episodes (repeatedly, and all the movies, and the books, he may have owned Spock ears).

It was just after they’d finished a Star Trek marathon, which was alas interrupted by a Super Mutant attack. They were dragging the bodies into the compost heap, and Preston sorta grinned and said “Bet they never had to do that in that tv show.”

Piper shook her head. “Wonder if we’d be on the stars by now.”

And Nate, Nate felt his mouth dry and he remembered something really, really important about the lore. He moves his mouth, tries to find the right words.

“Well,” He heaves the dead mutant dog on the firepile. “Nah, they’d be about here.”

They looks at him. “That’s part of the story.” Nate continues. “They had the bombs too. Then some- people-” the whole genetic engineering thing sounds a little too much like synths and Nate quietly confines Wrath of Khan to the dustbin of memory. “Take over the world and massacre a lot of people. So actually, we’re doing better.”

There’s a odd, long silence, everyone is looking at him. Nate runs back through the last few minutes. He doesn’t think he said anything too bizarre?

“They had a nuclear war in that story?” Preston says softly.

“Um, yeah, and a lot of genocide. Which hasn’t happened yet. Because this world is nice.”

“So we could still-” Piper points up, the stars are tiny, white pinpoints.

“Oh yeah.” Nate shrugs. “I mean, there’s a smashed flying saucer we could learn from.”

Preston and Piper stay there, looking up, for a very long time.

Updating because the one other Companion who watches Brooklyn 99 is X6 and no one can tell me different. He’s convinced Holt and Diaz are Coursers.