My garden of musings

No. I shall explain. Also, ug this term is horrible but this does actually come up a lot so I'll get into it.

Here is the top definition of a "pick me" girl from Urban Dictionary:

A pick-me girl is a girl who seeks male validation by indirectly or directly insinuating that she is “not like the other girls.” Basically a female version of a simp. Characteristics of a pick-me girl: lets men walk all over her because of her “CaReFrEE” demeanor, only hangs out with men because they’re “unproblematic”, exerts qualities/characteristics of her male counterparts that were not initially present to be more likable and relatable to them, etc.

This is a rather big literacy problem. You're talking about Leia. The person who lived nineteen years under a galactic dictatorship. The princess who used her privilege to learn about how it affected others and fight against it. The nineteen year old girl whose ship was captured, all her crew murdered, was tortured, and then saw her planet, her family get blown up before being sent to wait for her execution. The person who was in charge of sending soldiers to their deaths. The woman who saw her friend and partner be tortured, frozen in carbonite and sent to die. Who was put in chains and sexually harassed. Who then learned that the monster who hurt her so badly was her biological father. That Leia.

You think that Leia's anger is irrational? unexplained? biological? misunderstood?

I know I spend more time than most thinking about Leia and have rewatched the OT a bunch of times, but I'm begging you... this is basic media engagement. What are you not seeing?

In the animated film, the gargoyles often disrupt the story and make the tone a bit inconsistent.

in der glockner, the gargoyles are less disruptive and more helpful to Quasimodo. Plus they look cool.

In the 2014 musical, there are about 30 gargoyles, which take the form of the on-stage choir. These extras constantly narrate what the audience can already see. The excess narration also destroys the role of Clopin. He is the narrator ... sometimes? Usually it's statue number three or what have you.

I find them to be far more distracted than the 3 gargoyles of the original film.

1. Everything going on in the stained glass window.

Your eye is naturally pulled to the prince in the middle, but there is a lot happening in the window. Who are those two dogs, why are they wearing studded collars, and why are they the only ones looking directly at the prince?

2. The hungry cat. 

There is a cat dangling off of the fish the woman on the left is trying to get for a cheaper price. He must be very hungry.

3. Belle’s dried flowers.

Belle is drying flowers by hanging them from her ceiling. Now that we know this, we somehow love her even more (something we did not think was possible).

4. Beast definitely did not decorate this room.

The fireplace is framed with gold hearts, there’s a floral pattern on the chair, a portrait of a woman in pink, and a still life with flowers. Is this Mrs. Potts’s doing?

5. That’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” behind Cogsworth!

How have we never noticed this famous (Baroque) Vermeer before??

6. Speaking of which, this painting to the left of Lumiere also looks familiar… 

Yup. It’s “The Laughing Cavalier” by Frans Hals!

7. Belle and Beast’s dinner menu.

Is it just us or does it look like this meal is entirely comprised of cake, pie, and jelly?

8. Gaston seems to have a devil horse. 

Let’s consider what we’re seeing here: Gaston’s horse has red pupils and its nostrils are filled with flames. Devil horse is the only logically conclusion.

9. There is a man stuck the stone pillar on the right side of the doorway.

How did he get up there? We know the enchanted objects wreaked some serious havoc, but what happened??

10.  There’s a golden swan to the very left of this frame.

I’d like to talk about something that’s has been bothering me since the movies came out. Throughout the 20+ years of this fandom existing there has been more or less a kind of unspoken tolerance between sapphic fans that loved the story being centered around two gay/bi women and the neurodivergent and disabled community that found a deep connection to the story as they saw themselves represented in Elphaba, or the supporting characters struggles. Because the story at the end of the day is not just “about the girls stupid” its a story about struggles of being othered and the toll it takes on someone that just can’t be…normal. Neurodivergence, depression, and disabilities both congenital and later acquired are thematically represented in their character arcs.

For many who her story resonates with, Elphaba losing, isn’t a study of how radicalism accomplishes nothing and she should have followed Glinda if she wanted to change things, its a completely relatable outcome to someone that has been there, who has the stakes set up so thoroughly against them just because of who they are and its something they can’t change, so they have to work 10x harder to prove themselves capable, and still lose in the end. For me as a early diagnosed ADHD-inattentive/OCD comorbid I feel for her struggles where you give 100% of yourself to something you believe in only to f*ck it up in planning or execution to where it spirals in the most self sabotaging way.

And before you go “oh girl your projecting onto Elphaba, you ‘outcast rebel weird girl” lets look at some of her qualities and why she’s so relatable to the neurodivergent community: Elphaba’s overly sincere, incredibly empathetic, irritatingly inflexible, and (more-so in the musical) emotionally volatile and can be seen as lacking emotional regulation, she also misses social cues, big ones….

These are qualities that have resonated with fans for decades before the movie was a thing, and since it came out we have lost something tragic in the fandom. The theater gays and the outcast weirdos who have loved this story since they were children were suddenly drowned out by some of the new fans that were either fans of Ariana, pink aesthetics, edgy bully gays here for Yuri and nothing else, or identified with popular influencer vibe Glinda radiates effortlessly, none of which is very compatible with the original community, and any push back resulted in social media dog-piling, reddit downvoting, and often popular backhanded think pieces that try to bury anyone that clashes with their own interpretation.

If this is the case, then why is Mary apparently eager to show her and Jane everything that she's been up to the moment they get back from Netherfield, evidently in the full confidence that they will listen to her ("They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to")?

Where, for that matter, is even one piece of evidence in the text that Mary is particularly ignored by anybody?

Elizabeth never tries to guide or discipline Kitty and Lydia.

That's not her job.

Yes, she quite literally does ("Elizabeth had frequently united with Jane in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine and Lydia; but while they were supported by their mother’s indulgence, what chance could there be of improvement?").

Elizabeth thinks she's better than Jane, like when she says "I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh."

I'm going to need you to go to the dictionary and look up the word "joke" for me.

Elizabeth is a gold-digger, like how she loved Darcy after "first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley."

The point here is that seeing Pemberley gave her a better idea of him as a prudent, responsible, tasteful, unextravagant, conscientious man—it isn't just that he owns a lot of stuff.

You cannot convince me that if you found out you had passed up the chance to live amongst every possible comfort and beauty of architecture and nature for the rest of your life, you wouldn't briefly be like "oh damn"

I'm going to need you to go to the dictionary and look up the word "joke" for me.

Elizabeth thinks she's a better judge of character and circumstances than Jane is.

Perhaps at the beginning of the book. Later, she castigates herself for having "disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameless distrust."

Jane doubted Wickham's story about Darcy, not because she could discern that he was a liar, or that there was something suspicious about the story, but because she would deny the truth of any story that alleged that anybody had done something wrong. I can't see that "nobody would really do that! just go to aunt Phillips's and lie!" is a good read on the situation, and in fact her opinion does not end up being correct (Darcy has not been misrepresented to Wickham by interested parties, nor was their mutual dislike occasioned by any kind of mistake).

Elizabeth doesn't listen to Miss Bingley's advice about Darcy and Wickham, even though Miss Bingley has been his close friend forever, and she doesn't know him at all.

You mean the bit where Miss Bingley said "I pity you, Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite’s guilt; but really, considering his descent, one could not expect much better"? That's the advice that you think Elizabeth should have listened to? That? That's the advice? That's the advice she's at fault for disregarding? That advice?

Elizabeth is a pick-me when she says “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”

Where do I start here.

I feel like you've got to be white because this is not a usage of the term "pick-me" that is conversant with its origins.

Elizabeth saying that she doubts the existence of this uber-"accomplished" woman only counts as dissing other women if you agree with Miss Bingley's implication that women's worth and value lies in whether or not they tick off various skills on a list of "accomplishments." Aka you have missed the point of this scene.

Choosing a man whom you know full well is an obnoxious idiot to not only be your permanent life partner, but the lord and master of your life, who will have total legal power over you and your children, whom you won’t be allowed to say ‘no’ to having sex with, and who will expect you to follow all his orders and guidance? I think it’s fair to be shocked and upset when a friend does that.

While of course Charlotte makes the best of her marriage and isn’t ("yet") unhappy in the end, I still don’t think Austen portrays it as a perfectly fine, valid life choice. Does “constantly having to manipulate your husband to interact with you as little as possible” sound ideal in any way?

*Elizabeth is selfish not to marry Mr. Collins when it would have saved her mother and sisters from impending homelessness.

No one was ever going to be homeless - that’s just Mrs. Bennet catastrophizing. At worst, they would have just become dependent on their relatives.

Mr. Bennet’s death isn’t “impending.” He’s probably in his 40s (since he married his wife out of blind youthful infatuation) and is in perfect health. People lived to old age in the Regency era more often than stereotype says.

See above for what marriage actually meant for a woman in that era, and what marriage to Mr. Collins in particular would mean.

*Elizabeth victim-blames Lydia and abandons her after her marriage.

It's made very clear that Elizabeth pities Lydia. Yes, she is "disgusted" when she sees Lydia's total lack of remorse for what she did to her family, but isn't that valid, since they would all have been socially ruined if Wickham hadn't been bribed into marriage?

What on earth makes people think Elizabeth abandons Lydia? She often sends her money, and though Wickham is banned from Pemberly, Lydia sometimes visits by herself.

*Elizabeth is a Mary Sue.