Scummie on main

roblox rolls out their age group system, and you can no longer talk to any adults on the platform. you can only talk to people in person, i.e. your parents, who are horrid. now you're back at square one, being helplessly abused. to make it worse, you're homeschooled, as I was. you can't reach out to anyone at school for support either.

or maybe you're not homeschooled, and you ask your pronouns to be used at school. it goes well for a while, and you feel some relief.

then your state passes a bill that requires forced outing. your teachers report to your parents that you've been trying out a different name and pronouns.

they pull you from school, send you to boarding school or conversion therapy, and force you to attend private schools in the future that match their values.

you are entirely under their control. you could've made connections with other adults, ones willing to help you out. to treat you like a human, give you access to life saving care. and it's stripped away, you're alone, and everything feels hopeless.

The breeding of the astrophage to make fuel for the spaceship took so much energy that Eva Stratt paved over half of the Sahara desert, causing the weather to change in Africa and Europe. She blew up Antarctica to speed up global warming so they wouldn't die of cold before the probes could return. Stratt is playing supervillain with the Earth in the hopes that at least half of humanity would survive. After sending the three astronauts to certain death, her job is to keep humanity together for long enough to save the sun.

I think it adds a lot to her decision to send Grace away. Yes, it was cruel, but she knows what is coming for her and perhaps many of the people on the Hail Mary project. She is going to hold Earth and humanity together for decades, as people blame her for destruction and as nations in all likelihood go to war over scarce resources. Then, even if they succeed, she will probably be vilified or even executed for what she did.

"Look Charles, there are five of them, four are pretty, they all have different personalities so there must be one who clicks with you, take her off my hands."

"Yes, Mr. Bennet STILL refuses to let me take them all to London. I could get these girls married off so quickly if I could get them there, you cannot even imagine."

You get me @captain-kit-adventuress

I think they might actually get along. Caroline is very good at mirroring people, as she does with Mr. Darcy, and she'd quickly catch on to Mr. Bennet's way of cynically mocking those around him and join in. Caroline is well educated and intelligent enough that Mr. Bennet would probably enjoy talking to her, even if she's not quite at Elizabeth's level. And I think with Caroline getting the house in order, Mr. Bennet might be less likely to retreat to the library.

i always thought that was what louisa hurst was for, besides being her sister, lol.

but honestly, if caroline wasn't in london much because mr bennet hated it, i'm not sure louisa would be so content to stay at longbourn as she is at netherfield, so if the hursts go back to london, i think caroline would naturally look to one of the girls to fill that role, and who better than kitty, who's already had so much experience at it with lydia and is still in some way of being influenced by caroline?

i've always read caroline bingley not necessarily as mean and horrible like a lot of people say, but snobbish and self-centered, which is quite different. she'd want good matches for the girls for its own ends, but she'd be thinking of herself, too, because good matches for the girls reflects well on caroline. after all, what an accomplishment, to get happily- (or at least well-) settled those particular five girls, who started out with so little to recommend them! and as i said before, it's not like she wouldn't use it to help herself, either, by building the added social caché into the caroline empire, because being a person of high influence in society, even if only behind the scenes, was just as important then as it is today. imagine being able to say that you had the ear of the prime minister because your stepdaughter married an important MP or something! now imagine four more super important sons-in-law as well; caroline would dearly love being at the centre of that.

caroline would probably care about their happiness, too, if for no other reason than even one unhappy or ill-suited marriage would reflect poorly on herself, and three or four would put her own social position on much more precarious footing. unlike mrs bennet, who's ready to dump most of her girls, excepting jane, with the first decent man who gives them a second glance; this only reflects mrs bennet's own poor judgment in marrying off her girls, which is also a judgment on her. it's why she says that jane marrying well will put the other girls in the way of marrying rich men, both because of the social networking, and because it will help raise the social standing of the rest of the bennets. even if caroline thinks the same thing, she'd never be so crass as to say it out loud, because people knew how the system worked and didn't need the reminder. it's just mrs bennet bragging about her eldest in ways that actually hurt her chances rather than increasing them.

Anyway, yes, it is in Caroline's interest to get the girls good matches, which reflects well on her and gives her more social networking.

HOWEVER, the AU I originally proposed is ILLEGAL since Charles Bingley would be the Bennet girl's uncle by marriage and I'm pretty sure that is not allowed. So Caroline Bingley could be an older cousin, same personality, still works. Ou, cousin and ward of the Bingley family, so her, Charles, and Louisa still grew up together but everything is legal. And she still has her 20k because I need to work with that.

In no particular order within tier

Edits added in blue based on your reblogs and careful consideration

Top Tier:

Mr. Mainwaring: to have the near undying loyalty of the exceedingly selfish Lady Susan, this man must be a sex god

Henry Crawford: he knows he’s not handsome, he wants women to love him, he’d put in the work. Also one of the only men to be rated by a woman who has had sex before

Henry Tilney: he cares about things women like, high emotional intelligence, and extremely kind

Frederick Wentworth: passion and experience (I imagine), also has high emotional intelligence when he’s not being a dufus

Colonel Brandon: passionate, thinks about other people’s feelings a lot, self-sacrificial

John Knightley: I think there’s a good reason that they keep banging out those kids

Admiral Croft: I cannot believe I left him off, obviously amazing in bed because he respects his wife as his equal and is very fun. You are telling me they spend all their time together and don’t have amazing sex? No freaking way!

grace is kept in a clear, airtight container filled with a completely different environment with a carefully maintained life-support system that, should it fail, he will quickly die.

Hey, YOU KNOW IT!

Marianne Dashwood, living a plot perfect for a tragic death by illness to preserve the beauty of her first attachment and disappointment? Nope, she lives and loves with her whole heart again. Maria Rushworth, the fallen woman who cheated on her husband does not die for her crimes or even fall into poverty or prostitution, her father and Aunt Norris will provide for her. She is punished, but she's protected. Lydia Bennet? Her two sisters will provide for her for the rest of her life. Her husband's debt will not destroy her. Miss Bates? There is an entire community around her no matter what happens and her newly rich niece will provide. No woman is even left as a governess, Miss Taylor is Mrs. Weston, Jane Fairfax becomes Mrs. Churchill instead. Mrs. Smith is pulled out of her indigent state by Anne and Wentworth.

The only woman Jane Austen allows to suffer a terrible fate is off-page and dead long before the novel begins: Eliza Brandon. Eliza Williams, her mother's affair baby, is ruined by Willoughby. Colonel Brandon could easily have washed his hands of her and her affair child, but he doesn't. Eliza Williams is going to be okay. Her child will be okay.

Antagonist women never fall into poverty or die for their crimes, most of them are even in loving marriages. Fanny Dashwood is cruel to her mother and sisters-in-law, one could imagine her falling low in karmic retribution, but no, she's fine. Lady Susan, the delightful anti-heroine, marries a baronet at the end of her novel. No punishment looms on the horizon for her promiscuity and deception. Caroline Bingley has a loving family that will never turn her away and an independent fortune. Mary Crawford has a loving sister. Isabella Thorpe may have lost the big prize, but she has her mother. Never is a woman thrown to abuse or poverty, even when they have attacked other women. The only punishment would come from their own conscience or regret for the goodness they have thrown away.