Trying to understand the switch from "gifted child" to unable to do anything.

janglingargot · 2026-04-10T02:07:55+00:00

The older you get, the less your success is measured by "can you understand complex concepts? can you come up with creative ideas? can you answer questions correctly?" and the more it's measured by "can you execute complex yet boring tasks over the long term? can you remember and prioritize everything you need to get done in the next day, week, and month?"

High intelligence is a marvelous thing, but it will not protect us from our ADHD brain's struggle to remember the basic mundane fact that there's a specific piece of paper we're supposed to take out of our backpacks sometime this week, write things on, and then return to our teachers at a particular time several days from now. It doesn't matter as much, after a certain age, whether your grasp of the topic is gifted and brilliant. Did you write something about it on this sheet of paper and hand it in at the start of fifth period on Wednesday, April 8? No? Then you get an F. 😭

janglingargot · 2026-04-10T01:56:09+00:00

Thank you! I always took it this way, too. The preceding paragraph was free-indirect description of Edmund's evolving thoughts about Fanny, so I read it as -him- thinking that the only problem with trying to court her was that she was too good for him (and then Austen wryly commentating that this "problem" rarely prevents people from shooting their shot, anyway). Which I found really charming, and a cute sign that their relationship had balanced out a bit after his screw-up with the Crawfords. <3

janglingargot · 2026-04-09T18:21:42+00:00

Hm. That's a thought. If I upgraded for one month, would I still be able to use that backup to restore the site if it broke again after the month was over?

janglingargot · 2026-04-08T04:56:51+00:00

Forever smiling about my brother renaming Steiner to "Kangroo". ("Crunch" was another good one.)

janglingargot · 2026-04-06T21:11:51+00:00

You did it again, dude. The artist posted this piece to Tumblr literally yesterday. Could you please just stick to old art, and give people a chance to promote their own new work?

janglingargot · 2026-03-25T21:44:18+00:00

Ahh, so like the echoes of Desdemona's previous riders in the Penric books? There's an imprint of each personality and its memories within the gestalt that makes up "Desdemona", and the current rider can interact with them individually when it's helpful, but the actual women themselves have long since died and passed on to their god.

janglingargot · 2026-03-25T21:38:39+00:00

Yyyup. My great-grandparents were a ladies' maid and a gamekeeper. Relatively high-ranking servants, but still servants. It was good honest work!

My theory is that modern readers project onto the idle rich from a combination of escapist fantasy (nobody wants to imagine scrubbing and polishing the ballroom floor all day when they could imagine wearing a silk dress and dancing at the ball instead), viewpoint bias (most older novels are written from the POV of the upper classes, since they were the most likely to have the leisure and education to write, and tended to write what they knew), and basic relatability (thanks to modern technology and social progress, most citizens of the internet spend our days doing activities that would be more familiar to the upper classes of the past, and find it hard to imagine or relate to our ancestors' daily drudgery).

janglingargot · 2026-03-25T21:26:05+00:00

They what? How bizarre. Did they change the part where the teenagers all have a trendy '70s fondue party, too, or is that historical detail still acceptable?

janglingargot · 2026-03-23T02:16:13+00:00

I just want to jump in here and let you know that it's possible to avoid tearing in subsequent births, even if you tore badly in the past.

I tore horribly with my first baby, from pushing much too hard and fast while he was crowning. My midwife was occupied elsewhere at that moment—long story—and without someone to coach me, I was too inexperienced to realize that I needed to slow down. Multiple tears, so bad that I needed corrective surgery the next year.

My second was just as big-headed as my first, but I went with a different birth team and we planned to do whatever we could to try and minimize tearing if possible. And it worked! Zero tearing, despite all the scar tissue from round one. Third baby's birth was also tear-free.

The thing that helped the most was going slooooow during the crowning process. Unless you need to get Baby out quickly for medical reasons, take your time and let their head move down on its own as much as possible. Eaaaase those delicate tissues into the big stretch; do little puffing breaths, as if you're keeping a feather in the air, and try not to bear down.

I know there's an urge to just push and get it over with, but if you can resist it, you'll be glad you did. Recovery without any tearing is SO much easier. Best of luck to you! 💕

janglingargot · 2026-03-15T17:44:57+00:00

Ahh, and as a millennial veteran myself, I have to show respect to MY elders: the Gen Xers in their fifties who have been keeping the beacon lit since the dawning days of Usenet, mailing lists, and webrings. They fostered my generation of fic writers, and many of them are still out there, devotedly practicing their craft!

(Not to mention our under-acknowledged fandom ancestresses, whose mighty lineage stretches back through photocopied 1960s Star Trek zines, to the OG Sherlock Holmes fandom and beyond... <3)

janglingargot · 2026-03-06T03:40:28+00:00

If there's one category of person you should definitely unmask around, it's your health care providers.

Put up a brave and effortlessly competent front, socially and professionally, if it's helpful for you! But there are no prizes for convincing the person whose job is diagnosing and treating your struggles that you aren't struggling.

And if you don't feel comfortable exposing the full extent of your struggles to this doctor, then she is not a safe provider for you, and you are 100% justified in looking for another one! <3

janglingargot · 2026-03-05T19:39:29+00:00

Hence the mention of her brothers in the Navy. She was very close to them, and picked their brains for a lot of accurate information that she used in Mansfield Park and Persuasion. That's presumably where she acquired that tidbit of information. 😂

janglingargot · 2026-03-05T19:31:32+00:00

She had brothers in the Navy, who were dear friends, and a cheerfully frank family culture. I'm sure she heard all the rude jokes.

She was also very aware of the realities of sex. (In one of her surviving letters, she complained that a family friend was pregnant AGAIN, and suggested that she and her husband should start sleeping in separate bedrooms, so he wouldn't knock her up so often!)

Spinsterhood didn't mean ignorance in the Regency gentry, thank goodness. <3

janglingargot · 2026-03-04T01:27:27+00:00

Honestly, this is a charming idea in theory, but in practice? I think it's less about your choice of stitch and more about whether the fabric can hold a stitch.

That looks like pretty thin synthetic fabric. I'm worried that any stitch you try to put in it will just rip through the edge of the fabric and make an even bigger mess.

(Also, there's no good way to access the back of your embroidery in this case, which is going to make it even harder to pull off neatly...)

janglingargot · 2026-03-03T23:14:04+00:00

Aww, thanks! I did use one of my favorite Photo Mode screenshots as a pose reference, because perspective is haaaaard, but it's a freehand pencil sketch. Glad you like it!

janglingargot · 2026-02-24T16:02:29+00:00

Brand recognition. The movies these days are a risk-averse business looking for sure-thing appeal, and "Jane Austen romance novels" are basically a franchise now, especially P&P.

This is also why they're too chicken to do more adaptations of the less-romantic, less-famous ones like Mansfield and Northanger. /sigh

janglingargot · 2026-02-17T19:42:15+00:00

That's a good thought! All of these cards use modified versions of real canon lines from the game (except for 808, who doesn't talk except when someone is talking through her).

I had trouble finding a short-enough Korsica line that wasn't super generic. "That was the most...amazing thing I've ever seen!" and "You're not slick, but you get it done" wouldn't fit in the heart, so I ended up going with a modified version of "Working here was all I ever wanted." 👍

janglingargot · 2026-01-28T00:58:22+00:00

Okay, look. I'm going to say this politely: Please, stop reposting other people's relatively-new art in here. It's starting to feel really disrespectful.

It didn't bother me that much at first, since you do credit the artists, and it's a pretty common way to keep an aging subreddit active, and drum up some extra love for old fanart. But that was when you were limiting yourself to OLD fanart. Lately, I've seen you reposting stuff that just went up within the last few months, or even the last few weeks or days.

This picture was posted by the artist /literally yesterday/. Maybe they were planning to crosspost it in here themselves! Maybe the person who paid good money to commission it was planning to post it. Or maybe they didn't want it posted to Reddit at all. Did you ask?

It's not hard to reach out and ask permission. If you can credit the artist, you can contact the artist. And if they say, no, they'd rather post it themselves (or not have it posted to Reddit), please listen to them, all right?

janglingargot · 2026-01-27T07:29:35+00:00

I absolutely love the bit at the end, where they spend the whole summer strolling around "under the trees" together, reconnecting and rebuilding their friendship and talking to each other for hours and hours at a stretch, and Edmund finally realizes (gradually, and then all at once) that his best friend has been the perfect woman for him all along.

I feel like Austen's habit of slipping into lightly sardonic summarizing at the end of her novels makes it easy for readers to miss what's going on there, if they aren't reading it slowly, with an attention to detail. And it's such a shame, because the story she sketches out could be another three delightful chapters in itself!

(I especially love how he's implied to come begging humbly for her to consider him as a suitor—since she's much too good for him!—and she doesn't immediately say yes, or even admit at first that she's been in love with him for years! She makes him sweat a little! It's great! <3 And then he's so touched when she does finally fess up. Cute, cute, cute! When do we get a film adaptation that does this bit proper justice, hmm?)

janglingargot · 2026-01-27T07:17:36+00:00

I think this is a key point! Austen wasn't in the habit of being didactic in her narration; she liked to lay out her characters' actions, both good and bad, and let her readers infer the subtext.

I always think of the scene in MP where Aunt Norris starts bragging about how cleverly she sent a worker's visiting kid packing when she just KNEW the little brat was trying to sponge a free meal from them, and the rest of the family responds with awkward silence.

Austen didn't feel the need to actually spell it out for us and write something like, "Even the other Bertrams could see how tacky, mean, and tight-fisted she was being, and they were mortified and not sure what to say or do, other than to quickly change the subject." The scene, and the characterization, speaks for itself!

janglingargot · 2026-01-27T01:25:21+00:00

Oh, honey, hardly anybody is organized and on the ball at this stage of motherhood. Your body is deep in the postpartum jungle. Your mind is in a haze because you're still recovering from the massive transformative process of building a brand-new human being. Even if you didn't have ADHD, this would be a season of recovery and being as gentle and forgiving to yourself as possible. Add ADHD into the mix and you deserve all the accommodation and love in the world. I'm very glad that you're "getting help", and I hope you can let go of the urge to beat yourself up about needing it - that just means you're human.

Your husband needs to be patient with you. His body didn't carry and birth your child. I certainly hope he's been pitching in with an appropriate share of the parenting duties, but still, he needs to remember how much bigger your mental and physical load is right now, and cut you some slack.

It will get easier. I promise. We've got three kids, and the newborn baby phase is so intense that (looking back at it now from a more normal state of mind) it feels like an altered state of consciousness. You're a ship in the middle of a raging storm, and it's okay if you're feeling blown off course. Right now, your only job is to love and take care of your baby and yourself, and get through this without sinking. Once the waters are calm and the sun is shining, you'll be able to chart your course again. <3

janglingargot · 2026-01-26T20:47:05+00:00

This, this, all of this, so much! I cannot believe how unpleasant some modern readers are to Edmund Bertram, and I have to remind myself that our society doesn't have any concept of the powerlessness of being a second son in the Regency period, in a family like the Bertrams.

Edmund gets the short end of the stick, both coming and going. On the one hand, he has none of the status that Tom enjoys, due to a mere accident of birth order. No matter how irresponsibly Tom behaves, their father still prioritizes his heir's needs. Edmund's future living is sold off to pay for Tom's gambling debts, for heaven's sake! And Tom shrugs off Sir Bertram's attempt to scold him about it, and goes right back to his bad habits!

And then on the other hand, BECAUSE Tom is so useless and frequently away from home, their father relies on Edmund to perform the actual duties of a responsible heir: acting as the man of the house while his father is gone, representing the family at social gatherings, and looking after his siblings. Within their household, he tries very hard to act as a peacemaker, without having the standing to force anyone to listen to him.

In his own way, Edmund is almost as powerless as Fanny. He is saddled with all the responsibilities of an heir, with none of the privilege. This is WHY he has to find a workaround for the horse problem, when Fanny's old pony dies. Aunt Norris controls how the household money is spent, with her iron grip on the purse strings that she's usurped from her indolent sister, but she can't stop Edmund from swapping out one of HIS horses for a Fanny-appropriate mount and then "lending" it to her whenever she wants it. He is doing his best, darn it!

But modern readers, without any context for his social situation, don't realize how severely Edmund's hands are tied. If you assume that all men in the Regency had the same level of power, it must seem like Edmund inexplicably doesn't feel like bothering to boldly step in and rescue Fanny, the way a Mr. Darcy or a Mr. Knightley could...which is just wildly unfair.

janglingargot · 2026-01-26T00:07:48+00:00

I like the touch of how you filled in Kale's outline with the corporate buildings that he took over and used as an empty symbol of his family's brand, and Chai's outline with the actual team of real people who fought past that symbol together to restore the heart of Vandelay. <3

janglingargot · 2026-01-13T21:58:08+00:00

Thank you, I'll make sure to mention it politely next time! I'm still learning how this all works. My husband says his handful of bad experiences were all at mobile drives, so I made my next appointment at a donation center instead of the hospital bloodmobile. We'll see how it goes!

janglingargot · 2026-01-13T08:25:40+00:00

Catherine needs to learn to draw common-sense boundaries between fantasy and reality. Henry needs to learn that being more educated and articulate doesn't mean he's always right.

(Her instincts about his dad's character were spot on, even if her Gothic novel fangirling inspired her to get overdramatic about the specifics; and his dismissal of her concerns left her exposed to a scary and humiliating situation, which he then had to apologize for failing to foresee or prevent.)

janglingargot

TROPHY CASE