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Okay, Pop Pop. Have it your way.

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I’m not married to any of the Blythe/Meredith/Ford children pairing honestly- let’s rearrange them like deck chairs

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Let’s scream with mama

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Rilla of Ingleside Book Club - What I would change

I made a post like this for Anne of the Island Book Club, so here's one for ROI. Nothing too fundamental, just little fixes here and there.

Rilla and Ken - First, I would have them dance together at the lighthouse party--but nothing more. Rilla has a crush on Ken (she had it before the narrative started) and Ken, for the first time, realises she's the prettiest of the Blythe girls, but doesn't pursue anything with her yet, as it's before her character development. She dances with other men, but she and Ken just happen to be together when Jack Elliott brings the news. She asks him whether it will matter to them much and Ken tells her that yes it will, to those that will be able to go, which he won't bc of his ankle, etc. I think it's important that he delivers the line about Jem and Jerry going.

Ken visits Ingleside that summer, sometime between Rilla making her decision to be heroic and Jem and Jerry leaving. She tells him about her plans to organise Junior Red Cross and he is impressed. At the station, as Jem and Jerry are leaving, he notices something in her eyes when he tells her he will try to get the doctors in Toronto to fix his ankle so that he will be able to enlist too. When he comes to say goodbye before his departure to Toronto, while Rilla is at the manse, the message he sends via Nan is that she is plucky to take on a war baby but that he hopes she will remember him among her new maternal duties. They write letters to each other. When he enlists and comes to Ingleside for their date, while Susan is chattering, their eyes meet and Ken winks at her, signalling he finds Susan's talk funny. Both of them try to suppress laughter, until Ken stands up and says "yes, I have no doubt Mrs Albert Crawford would prefer a zeppelin raid over Cousin Sophia's hysterics. Now if you excuse us, I want to take Rilla for a moonlit walk". They have their moonlit walk and laugh about what Susan said, and then Ken does some sweet talking and they'd kiss and he'd ask her to make the promise not to kiss another man etc. That's pretty much it, the rest of the canon is okay. Maybe add a few more lines about their letters, Ken needs to acknowledge Walter's death and also, in one letter towards the end of the war he writes about what plans he has for the two of them--and these plans include little Jims. "I know you care about the child very much." The 2 weeks between his return home and coming to Ingleside could just be him recovering from the war and the voyage home. Or there would be no 2 weeks, he comes to Rilla straight, but she has not heard anything about him and worries something happened to him on the way from England to Canada.

Rilla keeps Jims - there's several options. 1. Jim Anderson is killed in action (easiest, but also laziest fix-it, but then again why not, many men died), 2. he expresses no interest in his son, decides to settle in England with a new wife, but writes to Rilla to send him the soup tureen. Rilla ships it over, wishing the tureen would break on the way. The soup tureen does break. Or it survives and breaks as he unpacks it out of the box. That's funnier, I think. 3. Jim Anderson comes back with his new wife and takes Jims back, but he doesn't change, Mrs Jim 2 finds out she can't fix him, no she really can't, after their baby is born she realises she made a mistake. Susan writes to Rilla, who lives in Toronto with Ken now, about how Little Kitchener is being mistreated, and Rilla and Ken immediately make their way to Glen and take Jims. Ken says: "We are taking Jims to live with us." Susan mentioned that Ken took things 'without too much ceremony' (the Walter, kitten and puncheon of rainwater episode). Mrs Jim 2 returns to England with the kid she had with her husband. Jim Anderson eventually kicks the bucket, either from Spanish flu or gets run over by a car or gets drunk and drowns or whatever.

Jims and the rest of the Ingleside household. I'd like to see him bond with them. One or more of them remark how much they will miss him. "I have grown to look at him as a member of our family," Anne says. "He's practically my grandchild." Gilbert agrees.

Introduce Mrs Matilda Pitman earlier. To make it less deux et machina. Maybe Rilla passes by their house in a buggy when a wheel breaks and she needs to seek help in the nearest house. Robert and Amelia send her away with rudeness, she tells them off for having no manners, when Mrs Matilda comes out of the shadows, she has been listening behind the door, and commands them to take her in and help. Rilla has Jims with her, of course, and he takes a liking to the old lady. They meet again in town, go for a coffee or tea and Rilla confides her worries to her over Jims and Mrs Matilda makes a note of it. If Mrs Matilda appears before Jem goes missing, Rilla writes to him about her and he responds that he would love to meet her one day. He won't bc she dies, obvs, but he at least knows she existed. The rest is the same as canon.

Susan learns to love Jekyll Hyde. Her hostile feelings towards him ease up after he bites Whiskers on the Moon. Then someone points out to her (I think it should be Gilbert, he is the most sensible one) that Jekyll turning into Hyde when bad war news come might just as easily mean he is pro-Allies as the opposite. One day Rilla catches her stroking him. She writes about in her diary but doesn't say anything and it is accepted at Ingleside that Susan and the cat are no longer at war. Obvs this means he doesn't disappear and when Dog Monday returns, him and Jekyll are on friendly terms.

The war wedding - everything can stay the same except Sir Wilfred's howling. At least he doesn't howl during the ceremony. According to Rilla, Jem would lol over Sir Wilfred's role, and bc I like my guy Jem to have a laugh, I'd let Sir Wilfy howl, but later, when they're eating the wedding feast.

Bruce Meredith doesn't drown Stripey. Rosemary catches him in time and explains god doesn't work like that and orders her husband to educate his son on the matter.

Una gets over Walter. She overhears Jerry and Carl talking after they both return from the front and Jerry remarks that Walter would never love any woman bc he was more in love with his imagination.

Shirley turns 18 in the summer of 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Logically, everyone expects he would want to enlist, he doesn't need to remind his parents that he 'turned 18 last Monday'. Gilbert takes him to the side and says that for the sake of his mother, he should wait until the worst of the fighting is over. Then Walter dies. For Anne's sake, Shirley keeps quiet about joining up, but keeps reading books about aviation. Then, in January 1917 he says "mother and dad, don't you think it's about time I joined up?" Anne has that line about two sons leaving and one not coming back (I just think this line really hits) and the rest is the same as canon.

Mention Davy. In all likelihood he's the one who inherited Green Gables. And probably he'd enlist too. He was 10 years younger than Anne, who was in her late 40s, so he was of the right age. When mentioning the sons of her old friends, Anne first names son of Billy Andrews, which was weird, bc she was not on friendly terms with Billy Andrews. Maybe Ralph Andrews, who might have married Dora (I mean we can assume he did), but then LMM never cared much for Dora. So yeah, what did Davy do, and did Gilbert and Anne stay at GG during that blizzard?

Give us more on Robert Grant. He must be a fine man if he was Gertrude's fiance and I'd like to know more about him. He never appears (the book gives us more on Allan Daly whom Gertrude spent the lighthouse dance with than it gives us about Robert Grant). I'm not saying he has to appear necessarily--there's enough characters already--but just give us some lines from his letters that Gertrude confides to Rilla.

Let Di/Nan go to England to be a VAD. I think it would more likely be Nan, bc of Jerry. Di might have a sweetheart at the front too (someone she fell in love with in Kingsport during her Red Cross work) for all we know. Or both can go. There's so little of them that it makes no difference which side of Atlantic they're on.

Acknowledgements of Jerry x Nan and Miranda x Joe in the last chapter. Make it a part of Rilla's diary entry. She writes about Jem and Faith but not Jerry and Nan, not as a couple. It would be the same for them (Nan will teach while Jerry finishes his degree) but still it would be good to have it confirmed. Jerry and Nan are a minor couple, compared with the others, but it doesn't mean they have to be forgotten. After all, Nan is Rilla's sister. And Miranda must have become a good friend to Rilla, seeing as she organised her wedding and was her bridesmaid. "Miranda and Joe will live at [house], a nurse has been hired to care for Whiskers after his stroke." Miranda decides she's look after her father for long enough and now it's time to be Joe's wife. "Good for her," Rilla writes in her diary.

Let Gertrude Oliver swear. That's it.

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Rilla of Ingleside - Chapter 35

Last day of Rilla-posting :(((

Final Mead mention!! What happened to the Meads whose house Mary and Miller will rent? Choosing to imagine a tragic backstory.

Dog Monday you absolute champ 😭😭😭

Okay what was the logic of having Ken return a FORTNIGHT ago and send no word to Rilla? This bit has always made little sense to me. Especially since he clearly cares about Rilla and comes to Ingleside to see her. Why would he not...tell her he's coming? Was it meant to be some ill-conceived surprise? Is it just for the narrative impact of having Ken appear suddenly? Why could that not have been preserved by him coming to see her sooner? Or, at least, why not have a throwaway line about how he was super sick or something? (Also, why did he come in khaki to Ingleside two weeks after his return? Was this just expected of officers, then?) More questions that answers in the end, but this whole thing was very enjoyable!!

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Realized I never posted this little bit from Readying Rilla. It's clam!

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I showed my cats a photo of Belphie and they laughed at him

hey what the heck man

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Jan van Eyck (Be. 1390-1441)

Detail from the Van der Paele Madonna (1436)

Oil on panel (122 x 158 cm)

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All smooshed up and snoozin against the side of the couch

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OH NO

Okay, experimenting with LMM's cat doodle as a divider! From left to right that's Moon+ Reader on an Android phone, Apple Books on an iPod Touch, and a Kobo (where the illustration is on the next page) (and sadly not in color). I'd like to make the cat a little smaller on phones etc., but then it would be microscopic on the Kobo, so this was my compromise. Thoughts? And are there any other apps people would like me to test, for the cat or in general? I can pass on the unfinished ebook if anyone wants to check how it looks on a tablet or a different ereader.

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the ribbon seals most defining feature, their stripes, take 4 years to develop!

here is a short timeline of their development 🦭

adorable white coat ribbon seal pups. this baby fur is called lanugo.

after around 1 month pups will start shedding their baby fur to reveal a grey and silver coat

young seals with their grey and silver coat

then, the juvenile seals with start to develop their stripes over the next 3 years. they grow stronger with each moult, females can reach sexual maturity before they have fully developed stripes. this mothers stripes aren’t fully there yet.

once they’re 4 years old a ribbon seals stripes will have fully developed.

male and female are easy to tell apart by their coat colour, the males will have bold black and white stripes

whereas the females have more brown/beige/silver stripes

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Okay, experimenting with LMM's cat doodle as a divider! From left to right that's Moon+ Reader on an Android phone, Apple Books on an iPod Touch, and a Kobo (where the illustration is on the next page) (and sadly not in color). I'd like to make the cat a little smaller on phones etc., but then it would be microscopic on the Kobo, so this was my compromise. Thoughts? And are there any other apps people would like me to test, for the cat or in general? I can pass on the unfinished ebook if anyone wants to check how it looks on a tablet or a different ereader.

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“I’m sure we all agree that we ought to love one another - and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that.”

— Tom Lehrer

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They were! From The Road to Oz: The Evolution, Creation, and Legacy of a Motion Picture Masterpiece:

Do you think pedantic nerds in 1939 were complaining that the Scarecrow was out of character, and that Dorothy's hair is the wrong color plus she's 7 years too old for the part, and where the hell is Jack Pumpkinhead anyway

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J-san,

Recently my friends and I were out walking, and we found a cousin looking for his home. We brought him to our house and let him spend the night, and the next day I brought him to the local animal shelter to see if he has a family.

It turns out that he has a microchip-- his name is Angel, and the shelter was able to get him back home to his family safely! He wandered outside and got lost one day, and somehow made it to our neighborhood. I'm so happy that we found him and helped him get back home.

Please enjoy this story, and have a wonderful day!

wow, what a nice story...!

I hope you'd have something soooo happy!

Thanks for sharing it with us!

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“Ariel sold her voice for legs just because of a guy“

Meanwhile Ariel with legs;

Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you don’t get a collection like hers overnight) and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.

Ursula made it more about Eric than Ariel ever did.

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Mona has allowed me to use some potential cat toy funds to preorder as well

her whiskers look like angry eyebrows