#i s2g half the time these two share a scene together it's just like

[mangosaurus]

can we talk about this. can we please talk about this.

[thecloserkin]

book review: Marian Veevers, Jane & Dorothy (2018)

Genre: Biography

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: No

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: Y’all fools: Stanning Lord Byron and his half-sister Augusta whom he didn’t even meet until he was nearly grown, never mind whether he actually knocked her up. Me, an intellectual: William and Dorothy Wordsworth are right there, eloping to the countryside and spending the rest of their days holed up in a picturesque cottage composing poetry.

First let’s have a detour where I yell about Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro). A few of the recent asks about incest vs. the patriarchy got me thinking about this line from Jane & Dorothy: “the malevolent power of married women over their spinsters-in-law.” Between the wife and the unmarried sister it’s obvious who has more power and it’s clearly not the spinster sister-in-law—and yet Guillermo del Toro would have us believe that Edith in Crimson Peak is helpless before Lucille’s resistance to giving up the skeleton key (the one that opens every room in the house). Edith is made out to be the victim of Lucille’s bloodthirsty unhinged jealousy, when she’s not only THE WIFE she’s got ALL THE MONEY, she’s literally holding all the cards??? It doesn’t add up. This biography is the antidote to that. It looks at the paucity of options open to your average 19th century girl who just wants a Room of One’s Own to write in, and situates her bid for freedom in the context of having no good options. The trouble with “Crimson Peak” was not that Edith wasn’t relatable or that I didn’t identify with her; when Thomas tears her down in that faux-breakup speech he attacks her on the terrain where she’s most vulnerable, her abilities as a writer. The trouble with Crimson Peak was that this beat would have hit so much harder had it landed on Lucille, a woman who’s WAY more vulnerable than Edith by dint of having (1) no marriage prospects and (2) no inheritance. Without Thomas this bitch has (3) no survival strategy either! Otoh take away Thomas and Edith is still left with her dad’s $$$, Edith still has Alan waiting in the wings to swoop in & save her, in other words Edith will be just fine. No wonder Lucille feels so threatened!! The situations are not even comparable. Here then is Jane & Dorothy which offers two case studies of women whose impulse to write & create was just as strong as Edith’s, but whose plight was much closer to Lucille’s ie. precarious as fuck.

I picked this book up because it’s actually a dual biography of Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, and I’m a basic bitch and Jane Austen is my eternal favorite. I’m going to focus on the Dorothy chapters but rest assured I read the Jane chapters with equal gusto. Jane Austen (b. 1775) and Dorothy Wordsworth (b. 1771) were both born into the British pseudo-gentry, which means they were too highborn to go and get a paying gig as a governess or companion but not highborn enough to have any independent source of income (neither of them had a dowry settled on them). While the two women never crossed paths, the arcs of their lives run in parallel as they pursue divergent strategies to secure their futures. So the primary imperative here is to avoid a life of domestic drudgery. But the secondary imperative, because these are both perceptive girls with rich inner lives, is this:

For an intelligent woman, confined to a society which denies her higher education and restricts her existence largely to the home, the male companion with whom she shares her life is her chief provider, not only of security and affection, but of intellectual stimulation.

This is a popular romance novel plot, do I want to marry a man who is a bore (possibly also a boor) or do I want to starve hmmmm. The point is that women are frequently starved for both affection and intellectual stimulation, and it’s little wonder Dorothy fell so hard for her brother William when he showered her with both. Dorothy and William were separated as children when, after the death of their mother, she was sent to live with an aunt in West Yorkshire (she was seven, he was eight). Nine years later they reconnected and sparks flew almost immediately. I mean I think their letters speak for themselves:

”the last time we were Together William won my Affection to a Degree which I cannot describe.”

What kind of brother needs to “win” his sister’s affection? Most of them treat sisters like furniture.

”Never have my eyes burst upon a scene of particular loveliness,” he wrote, “but I have wished that you could be transported to the place where I stood to enjoy it.”

standard “everything beautiful either reminds me of you, or makes me want to share it with you” pablum but EXTREMELY effective for all that

but enough he is my brother, why should I describe him? I shall be launching again into panegyric

Dorothy: hahaha but don’t you think my brother was looking mighty fiiiiiine today

”his attentions to me were such as the most insensible of mortals must have been touched with”

”I assure you so eager is my desire to see you that all obstacles vanish. I see you in a moment running or rather flying to my arms.”

That letter is from William, and you have to remember that William was supposed to be a huge dick who routinely ignored his friends’ missives leaving them in suspense whether he was alive or dead and yet he managed a lively & regular correspondence with Dorothy for years before they moved in together. It’s almost like he treated her … special.

”that sympathy which will almost identify us when we have stole to our little cottage”

These kids are already plotting their elopement jfc! Here are some snippets from Dorothy’s diary from much later, after they have in fact achieved The Dream of their own cottage:

”After dinner we made a pillow of my shoulder, I read to him and my Beloved slept.”

”The fire flutters and the watch ticks and I hear nothing save the Breathing of my Beloved and he now and then pushes his book forward and turns over a leaf.” It is a picture of domestic contentment such as Jane Austen draws to portray a genuinely happy marriage.

”After we came in we sat in deep silence at the window — I on a chair and William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence and love, a blessed hour.”

This is literally #goals. Veevers points out that “the conflation of marriage with home, spinsterhood with insecurity” meant that “William was promising the kind of permanence and safety which women usually found in marriage.” Dorothy really thought she could Have It All: a home of her own and a rich, stimulating intellectual life shared with the man she loved. And she proceeded to spend the rest of her life making fair copies of his poems. Hell, she pushed him to be a poet in the first place (it was not at all clear initially that this was the best plan for William, who could just have easily have embarked on a career as a political polemicist, but it was Dorothy who pushed him to be a poet, Dorothy who spent the rest of her life copying out his verses in her fairer hand). Early on Dorothy & William befriended the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was so envious of their bond that he complained, “You have all in each other, but I am lonely, and want you!” Can you b e l i e v e Coleridge actually said that. If one of you hoes doesn’t write me the William/Dorothy Historical RPF that’s Coleridge Outsider POV I s2g I will do my damnedest to die of consumption.

Veveers sums it up this way: “It was a relationship few women would be able to have with their husbands, for, at the time, the two sexes were expected to inhabit different mental landscapes.” To put it bluntly women had ovaries instead of brains; they just weren’t interested in the same stuff a man was. Otoh you have William and Dorothy Wordsworth, actual soulmates: the historical consensus is there is “some uncertainty as to whether she would be best described as muse, emotional support, secretary or co-author.” And she didn’t hide it, either. This is where you really see the difference between Dorothy, who is so open, and Austen heroines like Eleanor Dashwood (Sense & Sensibility), Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) or Anne Eliot (Persuasion) who also feel things deeply but had to regulate the bejeezus out of their emotional responses. This is Dorothy:

After any separation her joy at meeting her brother again was uncontrollable. “I believe I screamed,” she admitted on one occasion when there were witnesses.

Uncontrollable screaming in front of witnesses every time she’s reunited with her brother??? WE STAN. This is how low Dorothy’s spirits sink whenever he’s gone:

”I slept in Wm.’s bed, and I slept badly, for my thoughts were full of William.”

adkfjdkfjdkfjdk I just want to add that when William is home the floorboards are so thin that she can hear him pacing in the bedroom above hers, so his insomnia keeps both of them up at night but she doesn’t mind, she can’t sleep until he falls asleep, she would probably give up a kidney or a lung if she thought it would sell 500 more copies for him. I’m torn between GIRL HE AIN’T WORTH IT and stanning her even harder for being so ride or die on any topic that touches her brother (later, when he has kids, she decides William’s kids are smarter and better-looking than everyone else’s kids).

This is the most iconic line in the entire book, from a letter Dorothy writes to an interfering relative who deplores Dorothy’s judgment for throwing in her lot with a penniless failson like William:

”I affirm that I consider the character and virtues of my brother sufficient protection”

The icily scathing tone of the setdown is PERFECTION. But also, this just in your brother abandoned his pregnant Catholic mistress in France. You know this. Yet here you are gallivanting around the countryside in his company. In fact, when he proves too much of a coward to tell your uncle himself about the existence of said pregnant mistress—this is the uncle who funded all of William’s education and reasonably expects some return on it—he delegates Dorothy to break the news. Dorothy also winds up in charge of all correspondence with the poor girl, who writes occasionally asking for a little money or when is William coming back to France to marry me, and it’s Dorothy who has to fob her off. And this whole incident—the revelation of the French mistress, the break with the family, William refusing to take holy orders to become a clergyman—is so pivotal in their relationship! They were close before but this is the irrevocable step when Dorothy decides to join her fate to his. And her motivation could not be clearer:

William’s outspoken affection for her seems to have first aroused a reciprocal love in Dorothy, but it was his fall from grace, his isolation and his need of a friend, which provided the final catalyst that raised her gradually deepening affection into wholehearted, single-minded devotion.

She saw his need and responded almost involuntarily. She is a RESCUER.

Dorothy, was in one way, very fortunate to have fallen in love with her brother. “Rambling around the country on foot” with a slightly disreputable brother might bring down the censure of her more conventional relatives, but it was a good deal safer than rambling about with a man who was not a brother.

This is the kind of behavior that if two unrelated people engaged in it must have resulted in the man being honor-bound to extend an offer of marriage, because a woman has nothing if she doesn’t have her virtue. Two siblings roaming the countryside, picking flowers and wading thru streams and stargazing? My god what PRIME fodder for fake married tropes! Just present yourself at the first inn you come to as a married couple and then guess what? There was only one bed!!!!

at Grasmere “there was an unnatural tale current of Wordsworth … having been intimate with his own sister.”

tell me MOAR omg this is so deliciously Gothic i keep thinking about that line from Wuthering Heights “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

at Alfoxton, “the master of the house,” it was said, “had no wife with him, but only a woman who passes for his sister.”

PASSES for his sister trololololol like they don’t act the way you’d expect of a brother and sister, like they’re too into each other.

And it was generally accepted that immorality and radical anti-British sentiment went together.

But really William got much more staid and less radical as he got older, and Dorothy was never political because her energies were centered on William William William. On top of which it’s hard to overlook the fact that William would go into Dorothy’s journals and “borrow” her words and publish them verbatim as his own; he felt as entitled to her intellectual labor as her domestic labor, and there is nothing radically egalitarian about that. So I definitely don’t think this is a case where incest is subversive so much as incest illuminating existing hierarchies & oppressions. Veveers writes: “An unmarried woman’s hold on her own time was extremely fragile. She could be made use of in any crisis, transported against her wishes” to fulfill another family members’ needs. Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra evidently shouldered both their weights when it came to this sort of emotional labor: writing letters of thanks & condolence, minding their brothers’ children, calming hypochondriac aunts down, attending births of little nephews & nieces. Cassandra doing all this extra labor gave Jane the space and time to write. Moreover Jane had formed the ambition to write. Dorothy, on the other hand, thought anything worth saying was already being said by William. And she didn’t have her own Cassandra to share the unceasing burden of housework with:

In fact, the domestic labor and childcare that lay ahead of Dorothy were almost indistinguishable from the duties she had escaped at Forncett rectory. But now she was to be living in a home she had chosen, with a man she loved.

Did it matter in the end, Dorothy’s rebellion? If she’d remained a hanger-on in her uncle’s household, living on his charity, her life would not have been outwardly all that different. I have to believe that her choices did matter, of course. It would be easy to sit here and speculate that if Dorothy had not poured all her mental and physical resources into supporting William’s career, she too might have produced another Pride & Prejudice, but naturally we cannot know that. What we know is that Dorothy and William were 100% in love, a fact that anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension can verify by reading their letters. Why is this not more widely discussed? William Wordsworth was not exactly an obscure poet. The explanation, again, comes back to patriarchy:

The idea that Dorothy might have inspired (or felt) desire at Dove Cottage was as abhorrent to mid-20th century academics as it was to gentlemen of the early 19th century … who preferred to think of unmarried women drooping and degenerating after the age of 25, rather than maintaining a subversive and disturbing sexuality.

I wish I could say that William and Dorothy grew old together at Dove Cottage. What actually happened is he got married (she talked him into it—she chose a mutual friend of theirs whom they’d known for ages) and accidentally fell in love with his wife oops. His new wife was neither young nor pretty, in fact she was painfully plain, but that William became genuinely attached to her there can be no doubt. Dorothy continued to live with them and look after their children until her death. So I think we have avoided the worst case scenario, the malevolent-power-of-the-married-woman-ruins-her-spinster-in-law’s-life scenario: This is what happened to Jane Austen when Jane’s father unexpectedly announced his retirement, uprooting Jane and Cassandra from the Steventon rectory where they’d lived all their lives and forcibly removing them to Bath, where Jane was so miserable she did no writing for years. All this upheaval on account of Jane’s brother and his wife wanting the Steventon rectory and its income for their own! The accursed woman was probably measuring the drapes before she’d moved in. Anyway, it is fortunate this open enmity did not characterize Dorothy Wordsworth’s relationship with her sister in law; they were fast friends and they remained friends after the latter’s marriage to William. But instead of William-and-Dorothy forming the nucleus of life at Dove Cottage now it was William-and-Mary, and if this did not sting at least a little Dorothy would not be human. She had been supplanted in William’s heart. I CRY.

Because I’m literal shipper trash I want to end on the bittersweet note of SIBLINGS EXCHANGING RINGS AS A SYMBOL OF COMMITMENT EVEN THO THEY CAN’T LEGALLY GET MARRIED. This is Dorothy’s description of the morning of William and Mary’s wedding, right before they leave the house to attend the ceremony:

”I gave him the wedding ring—with how deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before—he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently.” It might be said that William married her before he married Mary, and that Dorothy was making a promise in that upstairs room try like the one Mary was about to make in church.

it’s been two months since I read this book and i’m STILL SCREECHING byeeeee

[sanctimoniousscrawlings]

Prompt #1 : Lull of the Forest

 Greenvale is quaint. At least that’s what the townsfolk say. Personally, I’ve never been fond of life here. Half the people here are ignorant and bigoted. They’re nosy and self-serving. Nine times out of ten I’ve found that the thick veneer of kindness and good ol’ fashioned neighborliness is born of duplicity, and to be quite honest it’s exhausting.

 I’ve been saving money to leave since I turned sixteen and got my first job in the town’s only book store- a tiny thing, barely larger than my room back in my apartment. I’ve been thinking of moving to a big city- it may be too crowded for my taste but I’ve found that it has the opposite vibe to small towns. People start out assholish and then turn out to be kind. It’s a pleasant surprise.

  Here I am ten years later with only half the cash I would need to get my own place somewhere I’d actually like to be. I’m scrolling through real estate sites and beginning to reconsider the whole roommate thing, much as I revile the thought of having to live with random strangers when my phone pings. It’s my best friend, Demeter.

 D: omg Riley did you hear  Me: oyg did I hear what?  Me: and are you sure I can’t convince you to come with me  D: Dylan is gone and certainly not, you know I can’t stand urban environments  Me: pls tell me he absconded from the woods with his tail between his legs and the only thing he left behind was a trail of urine  Me: I really don’t want him living next door to me again  D: ...  D: i heard the fairy house is a pretty grizzly scene  Me: wow  Me: guess i won’t have to live next door to him after all. neat.  D: i know he was an asshole but do you need to be so blase about it?  Me: only as much as he needed to chase me with a MIG torch  Me: look, i know you aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead (but honestly he shouldn’t have been such a dick) and I wouldn’t wish death on anyone- but I definitely don’t have to care that he’s gone  Me: besides, he probably pissed off whatever’s in those woods. haven’t you noticed that when the people who live in that house are super cool, the hidden folk just play (mostly) harmless pranks- and they have never ever attacked children  D: no, they just kill the parents and steal the kids  Me: the bad parents. We both know the Bonners were abusing their kids. And pretty heavily. How many times did you call cps on them?  D: ...monthly. But that doesn’t make it right. Those kids are probably scarred for life- and scared.  Me: maybe. I think I might try buying the place tbh- I don’t even have half the money for a place in any of the cities I wanted to move to but I have more than enough for that place. It’ll be a dent in my funds, but I think it will be worth it.  D: what  Me: hear me out: I’m a misanthropist. They are clearly also not fond of people. Maybe we’ll get along. Plus, I can keep the deed to this place to protect the forest from the idiots in town moving in.  D: First of all that’s a stupid idea. Second of all, you’re too kind to be a misanthropist. You’re just a curmudgeon. A philanthropic curmudgeon.  Me: what  Me: that doesn’t even make sense  D: you’re grumpy af but I’ve never seen you do anything to cause even the people you hate the most harm. Hell, how often did you help Dylan with his homework or share your food with the delinquents who couldn’t afford lunch when we were in school.  D: the whole “I hate humankind blah blah blah destroy all humans” thing is just a front because you always had this complex about helping everyone and it kept backfiring. And then after Ashe...  Me: sorry, Demi, gotta go. I’ve got paperwork to fill out.  D: DON’T YOU DARE MOVE INTO THAT HOUSE I S2G RILEY ANDREW FERGUSON

 I know she cares but I really can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got a house to buy.

 For the next two weeks, I avoid Demeter. I love her but she’s overbearing sometimes and I’m not gonna let her talk me out of this. All the paperwork is taken care of and fortunately, my lease was ending at the end of the month so this should prove to be a smooth transition. All my packing is complete and I get to move into my new place in another few days.  My shift ended at the bookstore so I head back to the apartment only to find a grey slip of a man waiting for me.  “Riley Ferguson, there you are. Your presence is required at the law office of Paz & Squalor. If you have some time to accompany me there, I urge you to.” His voice was strained and gravelly. “It concerns the property in the woods.”  “Sure thing. Let’s go.” I wonder if there’s a hitch in the bureaucratic workings and if there is I’m damn well gonna sort it out.

 An hour later and I’m in Ms. Paz’s office. She peers across the desk at me with a grave look on her face and I can see that she’s mulling something over. The look of concern in her eyes is disconcerting.  She starts abruptly, clearly having decided to get on with whatever I’m here for. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ferguson.”  “Loss?”  “Dylan Daniels. You are Riley Andrew Ferguson, correct?”  I nod, but the confusion on my face doesn’t assuage her concerns.  “He left the house to you in his will. And everything in it.” She opens a dwarer of her desk and pulls out an envelope, clutching it to his chest. “He also left you this.” She extends the envelope across the desk. “Sorry it took so long to get this to you. The police only found his will a few days ago- everyone was unaware he even had one until then. I just need you to sign some things.” She pushes a stack of papers and a nice pen across the desk. I’m too stuned to respond. “Riley.” She pauses and reaches a hand across the desk to squeeze mine. “I know this must be very hard for you. Take all the time you need.”  The next few hours are a blur. I find myself at my desk, clutching the sealed envelope. There’s no way this isn’t some sort of prank. He probably has the entire town in on it- they have always distrusted me here. People gossip about what sort of mental issues I may or may have. “He has the autism,” is the most favored line I hear from the elderly ladies at the old rumor mill. I am a hundred percent sure they don’t even know what autism is- and to be honest that gets to me far more than them actually suggesting I’m on the spectrum. There are worse rumors of course. I have schizophrenia and murdered my own family in a hallucination. Or I’m a sociopath and did it in cold blood. Of course, it doesn’t matter that I was asleep in the back room at work at the time- trying to avoid going home. My boss is a little scenile and his word isn’t good enough to assuage the good people of Greenvale.  They’d probably accuse me of doing Dylan in, too, if it weren’t for his proximity to the woods.  Deep breath. I open the envelope. There’s a letter inside. When I pull it out, another piece of paper drifts down to the floor. It’s stained with graphite- the pencil must have been smeared. I reach down to pick it up and freeze before I can. I recognize my own writing on the small paper. What the actual hell?  I pick it up and read it, wracked with anxiety. It’s a poem. It’s a poem I wrote in eighth grade. A flashback takes me back to when I wrote it. My first real crush on a guy. It was a boy I had P.E. with every year of middle school. I had just started dating a girl I rode the bus home with when I realized that I liked this guy and the poem quite bluntly reflected the turbulent emotions I was feeling at the time. I had a firm grasp on metaphors but even now subtly and nuance elude me when I experience emotion- which happens far more often than I would prefer. More importantly, why would he have this?  How did he even- I’m hit with another memory. I wrote that the day that little demon stabbed me in the hand with a pencil. I still have the black mark under my skin. Bastard gave me my first tattoo. He must have taken it from my binder when I was in the nurse’s office. Okay. But why would he keep this? It was fuel he could have used to burn me before I came out my senior year.  I remember the letter. With some trepidation, I begin to read it.

Riley,

 I was really hoping to tell you this in person. Frankly, I’ve been trying to for years but you evaded me at every turn. You can’t evade me at this one, though. My death ensured that- that is unless you’re not reading this and I misjudged your caliber on the whole fairy house thing. I don’t know, I figure you’d thrive there for some reason. I think Walt Whitman said something about the strongest tree in the forest is the one that sprouts against all odds.

 My eye twitches at the butchering of the quote and that he confused Walt Disney with Walt Whitman, but I carry on.

 Anyways, sorry not sorry for rambling. I like you. No, that’s putting it mildly. I think I’ve been in love with your weirdness since we first sat together in that class. I had hoped you wrote this poem about me but was too afraid to ever ask you about it. I know it’s no consolation for the animosity I displayed toward you, but I was just so terrified. Your presence left me unsettled and we got stuck together so much after that. So I reciprocated and instilled the fear in you that you put in me. It was wrong and I really am so sorry. Now you know how I feel, though. I bet the creatures of the forest got me. If I’m right, you owe me a kiss when next we meet, wherever that may be.

         Love,              Dylan Daniels. P.S. And I mean love. P.P.S. I know I got the quote entirely wrong. I bet you did that thing where your eye twitches when you can’t correct someone cuz you’re frustrated. That will be another kiss. P.P.P.S. No dictionaries were harmed in the writing of this letter. P.P.P.P.S. Well, I might have lit one on fire after.

 I feel disgusted after reading the letter. He was an asshole and a creep.  A knock at the door startles me into yelping. I catch my breath to answer it and Demeter pushes her way in.  “Sit. We’re talking.”  I do as she says; I’m still reeling from everything I just found out and Demeter is the last person anyone should ever piss off. She may be a kindly teacher and a great friend but not even the gods can save someone incurring her wrath.  “You got the house, didn’t you.” It clearly wasn’t a question but I nod quietly anyways. She sighs. “Well, if anyone from this town could thrive there it would be one of us, but still. What were you thinking?”  I stare into the nether. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t even want the house now,” I murmur. “It’s tainted. He even ruined the fairy house for me.”  “What do you mean? You knew he had lived there when you made the ridiculous plan to swoop in on it.”  I silently proffer the letter and poem without looking at her.  She lets out an incredulous whistle. “Well... He tried to put his heart in the right place. I think. Ooh, girl, this boy was a mess.” She pauses, squinting at the letter. “Wait. Did he leave you the house? Holy hell.”  Demeter stayed the night.  I woke up the next morning to a note on my bedroom door: I’ve reconsidered the roommate thing. Be back soon, packing my stuff.  If they didn’t already, the townsfolk were about to think Demeter insane, too.

 Days later and we were moved into the house, though I was still uneasy. He left a lot behind- including some nearly new furniture. Probably for the best given how spartan Demeter and I both lived. I brought a desk and computer while she brought house plants and a bed.   The house was old and quirky and had an air to it that we both adored. The rear garden was pressed right up against the old forest; with the fence having rotten away long since the tenants before Dylan had lived there, a new one was half built in its place- and wildflowers had overtaken most of the space. All except for one tree that sat in the center of our new yard, between the forest and the house. The entire rear half of the house had large beautiful windows that faced the forest, as well as a massive section of glass doors that opened up to the rear garden, almost like an entertainment area, thanks to the simple stone porch.  “Oh, I am so fixing this up.” Demeter sounded giddy, standing in the decrepit garden. “We’ve totally got this.”  “I hope so.” I can’t shake the uneasy feeling I’ve had all weekend. “I’m heading in to set up some of my supplies.”  I leave Demeter to her own devices and get to work in the back room with the enormous glass doors. After a few minutes, it feels as though the very air is weighing on me. I open the doors wide, not paying any mind to the dangers of the forest. Let them come, they’d probably make better company than 99% of the good townsfolk of Greenvale. The invigorating scent of the forest fills the room and I’m suddenly in the mood for oil pastels.

 It’s been a week now and I still feel trapped whenever I’m in the house. I feel as though I’m being watched any time I’m on the property. The eyes from the forest seem more curious than anything- it’s inside that I feel I’m in danger. After going on an unnecessary shopping trip for the umpteenth time since moving in, I decide to be productive and prepare a basket of food for those that dwell in the forest. Fruits, nuts, pepitas, and even some actual food I cooked up. I set the basket out back, near the treeline, and go back to the room I claimed for my studio. When next I look outside, the basket is empty and moved closer to the house.  I hope they enjoyed it.

 I get home earlier than Demeter and begin to make a habit of leaving food out for my new neighbors- including a dish of milk on my window sill. Each day, the basket is returned closer and closer to the house. I begin finding gifts of seeds, flowers, and odd trinkets in the returned basket. Demeter joyously nurtures the seeds into all manner of strange and exotic plants.  One day, when the house is feeling particularly stifling, I decide to go to the forest edge to get away from it. I find a cozy spot beneath a tree and start writing. I hear the basket being moved but I’m too in the flow to pay any attention- that is until I notice a curious fox looming over my notebook. I don’t want to spook it so I continue writing. Eventually, the fox lays its head on my wrist, watching the pencil soar across the pages. I suppress the urge to make a high pitched noise in joy at this blessing.  My trips to the forest edge became more frequent- as did the fox’s joining me. I started bringing treats for my new friend who cozied up to me as I worked. One day, when Demeter was out later for student conferences, I went out to the back porch- still outside but sheltered from the storm that had rolled in. I mistakenly drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain- and far more easily than I could have fallen asleep inside the house.  I awakened to find myself wrapped in a fine silk cloak lined with the softest fur I have ever felt in my life- and I pet a lot of cats. I also note that I am now inside and the doors are shut. It’s already morning, as well.  Demeter is in the kitchen, making herself a quick breakfast before she heads off to work.  “I’m glad to see you made it home safely. Did you bring me inside?”  “What? No, you were asleep on the floor when I got home last night. I feel like it’s the first time you’ve slept since we got here.”  I grunt noncommittally and leave the room.  Later on, I return the cloak, folded in the basket with yet another assortment of tasty goodies. This time I'm reading rather than working on one of my projects. The fox returns once more and- to my joy- curls up in my lap. I stroke his soft fur while I read and eventually I can hear the soft contented snoring of my vulpine buddy. I'm so comfortable that for the second day in a row I make the mistake of falling asleep outside.  This time, as the beams of morning sunlight drift through my eyelids, I’m in my room. The luxurious cloak is covering me once more and the fox is curled up next to my head. The Prompt Next

[rigginsstreet]

this got SUPER long so its going under the cut but this is the f*lice rant i was talking about lmao enjoy! (full disclosure i also end up going on a fredsythe rant because i gotta, ok. yall gonna make me sit through this stupid ass storyline when a better one is RIGHT FUCKING THERE so yeah, im mad. fp jones also likes men get over it.)

Sorry but there's literally nothing new inventive shocking or compelling about a storyline where two grown ass straight MARRIED adults are pining over each other because they had some weird romantic connection nearly 30 fucking years ago that may or may not have resulted in a fucking teenage pregnancy that im sure NOBODY wanted like yall really out here wanting me to believe what? alice cheated on her boyfriend and got knocked up by a dude who represented everything she was trying to get away from? and she told hal the kid was fps but never told fp himself? because that makes all of ZERO FUCKING SENSE! even if they wanted to throw out “well alice and hal were broken up at the time” its still SO out of character for alice like i know she had her wild child serpent days but its not something she looks back on with fondness so why the HELL does anyone think its a good idea to set her up with the fucking LEADER of the entire GANG are you all sniffing glue?? and then theyre trying to sit here and vilify hal so that we root for alice to hook up with fp in present day? the fuck outta here im not about to sit and cheer on alice’s character regression. first of all yall need to stop getting mad at 17 year old hal for not wanting to be a father and handling this situation poorly he was a TEENAGE BOY i know yall think everyone needs to be pristine angels from birth but thats not how life works and second of all he has every right to be sketched out that his daughter brought forth her long lost brother to fill in the void polly left, especially when the first time hal sees chic hes fucking BLEEDING after being attacked for god knows what reason in hals mind like... im team hal on this one he’s the only one with some self preservation alice and betty about to get themselves killed i s2g all these dumb ass decisions are being made, which in itself is bad enough, but to make it so obvious that this is all being done to eventually prop up a ship that is the very definition of fan service, is beyond ridiculous and terrible writing. like i get it. madchen and skeet are hot and have chemistry (which...btw....literally all the parents have insane chemistry with each other but no focus on the boring obvious straight pairing i guess but oh do not worry i have more to say on that later) i get it. but what is the purpose of that if you cant write an interesting story? and dont get me started on how shoehorned this recent ~connection~ is like yes i admit in s1 i got vibes from them (which, stay on this blog for 5 minutes and you will soon realize i can romantically/sexually connect pretty much any pairing amongst the parents because, like i said, they all have insane chemistry and they all say weird shit to each other). but i cannot believe yall sat here and thought the whole sexual frustration comment after fp got out of prison or the “leave him” exchange felt authentic??? like is it me? am i the one in the twilight zone? somebody help me out here. alice and fp in s1 couldnt stand each other and now shes all joking about his sex life ?? fp almost started a huge fight during that dinner with her and hal and the kids and yet im supposed to believe he’s been pining after her all these years?? like maybe id have an easier time believing this shit if i hadnt seen how he interacts with fred (oh yes. we’re going there because im tired of this HETERO NONSENSE GOING ON ALL THE TIME IN TELEVISION WHEN THEYVE LITERALLY SET UP BETTER OPPORTUNITIES FOR SAME SEX RELATIONSHIPS IM IN A MOOD SO WE’RE GOING ALL OUT) but to close off this part of my rant (oh and i didnt even touch upon how gross itd be for betty and jughead to share a sibling lmfao but that should be self explanatory): there is literally no conceivable way for this shit to go down and not make me lose respect for alice (fp i can give a slight pass to on the front of he and his wife being separate, but even then if he goes after alice while she’s still with hal....you done fucked up). first of all, going after your daughters boyfriends/ex boyfriends father is weird. second of all, if chic is in fact hals son, then they need to work on bringing the family together. hal is not a lost cause. chic is creepy as hell if anything i can see him pulling some shit that brings betty hal and alice closer together but no that makes too much sense so the writers probably wont do that! so theyre either gonna continue to push hal out so that itll be “acceptable” for alice to run to fp, or hal has to literally just fucking die and then what? alice goes to fp in her time of grief? im gonna throw up. 

and now on to the gay shit

im supposed to compare f*lice and fredsythe scenes and come out thinking alice was the one he was in love with? bitch WHERE? fp has a sordid past with both alice and fred for different reasons. we dont know the full extent of what happened with alice (if anything but for the sake of predictability that i know to expect from a cw show, lets say they do) but given how they interact with each other we can assume it was bad. and we all know fred and fps history and how dark that got for fp (like i literally wrote up a whole thing about it if you want a link i’ll send it to you) and yet no matter the past, fp had probably his most lightest moment of the show with fred. he was willing to drop everything and help fred and soon as he asked (which, btw, fred didnt even ask for help. fp knew he was in trouble and that was it. thats all he needed and he was there for fred). THAT is love, ok. THAT is a relationship worth delving into beyond 2 friggen episodes in season 1. And yes this same storyline thats been given to f*lice with this whole adultery nonsense, but with fp and Fred, would actually be interesting because two gay kids in the early 90s actually have a valid reason for not being together and not ending up together. and then you add on that fps from the south side and fred the north, and that makes things even more complicated for them because then you can have a whole scenario of fp thinking hes not good enough for fred and ending things because of his own insecurities, his way of trying to push fred towards a better life... like THAT makes sense. even if fred and fp were never a thing and you just went with fp being in love with his best friend all these years and he could never have him (which still makes sense because i mean come on, freds casanova ways in high school with the ladies? fp sitting on the sidelines trying to be a supportive best friend but dying on the inside, never telling fred how he feels?) not to mention like half the serpents are gay as hell and there would be such a great story to tell for why all these gay south side kids end up in the same gang under fps wing, because he’s making up for his own shitty upbringing, he wants these kids to know someones looking out for them like...if the writers need plots and backstory I can give you them for free it really didn't take a lot of brainpower but no by all means tell me how the two ~straight~ kids who grew up on the same side of town under virtually the same circumstances, one of whom wanted NOTHING MORE THAN TO SHED HER SERPENT IMAGE AND CREATE A BETTER LIFE FOR HERSELF, and the other who keeps going on about wanting to put his family back together, had such a tragic backstory and its not just a blatant midlife crisis on both their ends. please. by all means. enlighten me. 😒