This fic doesn’t just live in my brain rent-free, I’m pretty sure I’m paying a 30-year fixed mortgage on it at this point
You've made him incredibly relatable (so much so that I'm starting to wonder that if perhaps I am insufferable to the people around me?)
I worry constantly about turning into a full-blown Higgins apologist, because I also find him weirdly relatable, but I have to wonder if that’s because Western social norms have us trained to empathize with sad and lonely men, to the specific detriment of women around them. That being said, Higgins is a human being—complex, sympathetic in some ways, flawed in others, and importantly, an unreliable narrator in the way we all are. We have blind spots, we’re too forgiving of ourselves, too critical of others, we protect our psyches from the worst truths about ourselves, and sometimes details escape our notice. He’s been knocked out of his usual orbit, and isn’t really operating at full power, crucially.
Eliza has her own memories of him (and she is also a human being, which means that she doesn’t always tell the truth, either), so it isn’t so much that you’re secretly insufferable as you’re just seeing Higgins through a generous lens.
scene where he runs out of the opera to have what we would call a panic attack
He’s fascinating, and so rife with problems (there’s that Western lionization of the problematic man again). I prefer Hadden-Paton’s version to Rex Harrison’s because Harrison always came across as too remote, almost like he was amused that he was in a movie. Hadden-Paton gave him social anxiety and the sense that he’d been sleepwalking through life for a long time, which feels like it should have been in the text from the beginning. (But it’s a comedy, says Shaw.)
Higgins is definitely depressed, and living in a society totally incapable of helping him. He’s suffered multiple panic attacks, and is experiencing dissociation episodes in response to trauma. His mother recognized something was wrong, but he’s so annoying, and you get the sense that she’s never understood him and is beyond sick of his shit, so the most she could ever do was force him out of his comfort zone and into hers. Cecily just happened to get ahold of him at the right moment, otherwise I don’t think he would have been at all receptive to going from no women friends to three.
(and the fact that it is still going is just, awe-inspiring to me tbh)
Sometimes I feel guilty for releasing a meandering chapter that’s literally just Higgins thinking sad thoughts to himself, and then I go back and read it and am like oh no wait this is actually important to his character development. The first 16 chapters are slow for a reason, which is that Higgins needs his hand held for even the tiniest, slightest revelations about himself.
Cecily exposed herself as an American
What I like the most about Cecily, Penelope, and Vivienne is that they’re all just as fucking weird as Higgins is, in various ways. Cecily’s greatest strength is her capacity to play things as they lay, which sort of inoculates her against Higgins’ worst impulses. Higgins has a very strict set of personal boundaries, and yet somehow I can’t shake the notion that he’d get along on some level with Bohemians and avant garde types. He wouldn’t be able to live in artistic squalor (jesus CHRIST), but other wealthy eccentrics seem like they’d be his tribe.
the whole conversation Higgins had with Vivienne about conducting an affair, because it felt so very true to his character and the way you built Viv up to be
The funniest comment I’ve gotten so far was an angry complaint about Freddy and Eliza, a canonical couple in the Shaw story, making out and having some innocent flirtations, while this story is tagged Eliza/Higgins. But no one has said anything about Higgins having an affair with another woman.
Higgins's relationship with women in general
There’s an early throwaway line in the play/musical about how he’s taught American heiresses and was able to fend off their charms, comparing himself to a block of wood. That could be interpreted so many ways (including a context, I think, where Higgins turns out to be gay), but to me, it comes across as an admission of guilt disguised as bragging.
everything from the descriptions of the field of linguistics to the modes of transport to the fashions and the historic events feel just so true to the era and I have no doubt in my mind that you have put a lot of time and effort and passion into creating this masterpiece.
Thank you! I’ll be vague, but my real-life job involves primary source materials from the Modernist Era in particular, so I don’t have much of an excuse to be inaccurate, even though I probably get a lot wrong. I hate that I spend hours of my life looking into dumb throwaway shit like train time tables and how Tube station names changed over time, but having that wasted time acknowledged makes me feel a little better.
I know it's been a few months since you've updated
No one is more furious about this than I am, I have rewritten chapter 25 three times now, I am the angriest dog in the world about this
the D. E Ireland books
Oh shit, yes! I loved those books, they are MUCH more thoroughly researched than this. They are legit mysteries with lots of twists and turns, and I came out of them convinced that someone should have taken the characters and done a set of TV movies or a network procedural.
Eliza and Higgins are very different people in the Ireland books. One thing that I really appreciate about the 2018 revival is that it put a strong emphasis on Eliza being an intelligent woman who discovers that she enjoys learning, which is something sorely missing from a lot of MFL content out there. Sadly, a lot of writers (including Ireland) tend to pigeonhole her as a Vogue-obsessed clotheshorse, which I think comes primarily from the movie's Edith Head costumes, whereas I always want her to be more focused on her education. That’s just my little criticism, though. I am eternally sad that Ireland stopped writing after only 4 books, because I’m convinced that Eliza/Higgins was their long game. When you read the first one, it will spoil a plot point for this fic, so fair warning.
Glad you liked it! Thanks for the lengthy comment, it was very nice to read.
You're very welcome! I love commenting on fic I've enjoyed this much and while I never expect a response, receiving a reply like this and getting more lil nuggets of insight into your writing process makes my heart sing 💕
And I can definitely see what you mean about Western society's lionization of lonely men. I'm not particularly fond of them irl, and I see what you mean by the generous lens, but I was also recently reflecting about how so many of my favourite characters have similar archetypes to Higgins (there is one element that he lacks compared to my faves which, uh, came up in the first Ireland book which I finally got to read yesterday and I didn't expect to be called out by a novel like this -- is this the plot element that comes up later? 🤔👀)
I never had the chance to watch the revival, being on the wrong side of the planet (but I actually was in NYC last year! In September... so close yet so far), but I've looked up a few clips and gif sets and am just trying to imagine Hadden-Paton's stage presence. Even coming from an angle where I'm only really familiar with Harrison's performance, the fic still really works, physical differences aside, just one must dig slightly deeper underneath the layers. But they're still there and that's fascinating to me!
I also want to thank you for putting the mental image of Higgins living in artistic squalor in my head because you're right he would never but I do very much appreciate that this fic has allowed him to find his people, in a sense; it's very heart-warming!
And omgg, people complaining about brief Eliza/Freddy in a fic like this... I wish I could understand but I do not. Like, despite the fact that they've only interacted in flashbacks the whole story is clearly shaped and moulded around the gaping hole Eliza left in Higgins's life (and how said hole reveals just how shaky his foundations are in general!)
And that makes sense, regarding with your career! At least you can be content with knowing that only other people with such backgrounds would be able to pick out any inaccuracies? (I do not know if that is actually reassuring or not 😅)
I just love seeing all the different subtleties in how different people write/portray different characters, whether in adaptions or transformative fanwork so I'm just rolling around in all these different takes and I love what you're doing with Eliza!! I can totally empathise that the next chapter (if my suspicions are correct which they may totally not be) would be a difficult one to write, but you could update a year from now and I feel like I would still be here eagerly waiting 🙏🏽
I didn't Ireland stopped after the fourth book because it was released so recently! I will do my best to savour them, then 😄 (And based on my impression of the first book I very much agree with you on the endgame trajectory -- there's just so much UST between them I'm 😍)
Hope you're having a good holiday season if you celebrate, and all the best for 2021!
Comment on To my bitter fate, and my secret thoughts
valadilenne on Chapter 24 Sat 19 Dec 2020 07:08PM UTC
Last Edited Sat 19 Dec 2020 08:19PM UTC
Comment Actions
ziskandra on Chapter 24 Mon 28 Dec 2020 10:19AM UTC
Last Edited Mon 28 Dec 2020 10:20AM UTC
Comment Actions