Autumn Sings the Blues

She/her, upwards of 30 on the outside but circa 19 on the inside, a chronically aspiring writer and editor who is allergic to socials and addicted to shiny things in media and art.

[autumnsup]

"At times I wished that writing was my sole vocation, but some force continued to draw me elseward." ~Patti Smith, from Bread of Angels 🎠 Banner image source here 💨 🌬️ PFP: La Bourrasque by Lucien Levy Dhurmer 🍂 🌈 Come find me on AO3 if that's your thing! 🍀

[smallerplaces]

"She had been told that her maternal grandfather, old Amos Wansbarra, had chosen the name for her."

Let's pause ruminate over my theory for where the name Wansbarra comes from. As far as I can tell, it's entirely a made-up name for The Blue Castle. While it's possible to play around with etymologies, it's unlikely that LM Montgomery did, and the effort yields nothing fruitful.

So I believe that Wansbarra is a phonetic(ish) rendering of something more like Waynesboro, Wansborough, or Waynesbury. This kind of spelling shift happens when one generation (or more) is illiterate -- or at least blissfully unconcerned with spelling.

In that case, what is Valancy a phonetic(ish) rendering of?

Valencia. It's got to be Valencia. The "blue castle" that exists in her head is thus "a castle in Spain" (a fantasy, per Merriam-Webster) in the additional sense that it exists in the head of someone named after a place in Spain.

That's a laborious joke worthy of Uncle Benjamin.

[autumnsup]

The Blue Castle, Chapter 12 & 13

I'm still recovering from chapter 11 and have just a couple observations from the next two chapters:

She could not endure many more attacks like that. One didn’t mind dying if death could be instant and painless. But to be hurt so in dying! Suddenly she found herself laughing. That dinner had been fun. And it had all been so simple. She had merely said the things she had always thought.

I'm curious as to what Dr. Trent’s prescription was, given that she’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Surely some kind of painkiller—was laudanum still being used, or other opium derivatives? It's hard knowing that she's lonely and in pain but I'm glad she's enjoying her newfound sense of personal freedom!

On a similar note, from chapter 13:

"There’s nothing the matter with my mind. Though you all think I’ve suddenly gone crazy. Well, I haven’t. I’ve simply grown tired of living to please other people and have decided to please myself. It will give you something to talk about besides my stealing the raspberry jam. So that’s that.”

[absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog]

Blue Castle Book Club: Chapter 13

"You are not--like yourself."

"Who am I like, then?"

I love her so much.

Good for Dr. Marsh. I was not expecting that.

[longstoryshort-143]

the horrors persist but so do books, art, hot chocolate, winter nights, the moon, the sea, the stars, sunsets, literature, libraries, cats, flowers, stories, love and the wistful feeling you get when you finally return home

[coppercatbird]

Certain Peculiarities

@drarrymicrofic | prompt: dream | wc: 500 | rated: mild m

The dreams had begun years earlier. Sometimes lurid, all sweat-slicked skin and desperate moans. Sometimes sweet, hands clasped on dates—one time they went to the zoo. Sometimes a litany of nightmares: the tower. The bathroom. “I can’t be sure.”

The strange thing was, he always dreamt through Harry’s eyes. His own face, lust-blown pupils and pink cheeks; Harry’s thumping heart. Feeling a leap of hope in Harry’s throat as saw himself bite his lip, eyes shining down at a ring as he nodded. The same nightmares, tempered by Harry’s sympathy, regret, pride.

The dreams were an unconscionably cruel move by his subconscious. His mind healer suggested a dream diary; he stopped after a year. It hurt too much, seeing what he could never have, feeling things he knew Harry would never feel. He didn’t need a book about it.

—

A knock distracted Draco from his calculations; he scowled as Harry strolled in.

“Do the Unspeakables need a potion?”

“If they did, I don’t know why I’d know,” Harry said, grinning. Draco rolled his eyes. Less subtlety than an erumpent in a dollhouse.

“Why are you here, then?”

“For you,” Harry said, then flushed.

Draco stared, heart racing. He didn’t let himself speak.

“Right,” Harry said. “What do you know about dreams?”

Draco swallowed, refusing to remember the previous night’s dream: Draco in Harry’s body, licking his own scars with a lascivious groan, whispering into his own ear, with Harry’s voice, how he wanted to—he shook himself.

“Do I look like a dream expert?”

“No. But Hermione is. And I was doing some research”—Draco scoffed—“and she. Well. She found out. When I explained, she gave me a book.”

Draco leant back, arms behind his head. “And you need me to read it to you?”

“No, you tosser, I managed.” Harry’s smile faded. “But … I think you should read it too.”

Draco frowned, heartbeat thudding in his throat. “It’s about dreams.” 

“Yeah. And … other stuff. Anyway, I just—here. I’ll need it back, Hermione’d flay me alive if I—I’ll go.”

Looking far more cowardly than any Gryffindor should, Harry shoved the book across Draco’s desk and fled. Draco tugged it closer.

A Short Treatise with Various Observations and Theories on the Metaphysicks of Soul-Bonds and Certain Peculiarities of Shared Dreams

Draco stared, mouth dry, before noticing the scrap of parchment tucked inside.

Draco— If I’m wrong, this might be the creepiest gift you’ve ever received. I hope I’m right. Can we talk? Tonight, 7pm, my place. —Harry

Draco sat, hands shaking, and opened the book to the first page.

At 6:59, Draco stood, book in hand, at Harry’s door. He took a breath and lifted his fist to knock.

Harry opened the door, rumpled and beautiful. He looked hopeful. He looked frightened.

“They’re your dreams?” Draco blurted. “I—they’re your dreams.”

Harry smiled and reached out. His fingers threaded through Draco’s like on the trip to the zoo they hadn’t yet taken. “They’re our dreams, Draco.”

[directactionforhope]

Every time you catch yourself going, "Fuck, are humans just inherently evil and naturally inclined to selfishness and harm???" you HAVE to remember that that's literally a core ideal of Christianity.

So if it feels inescapable and like evidence of it is everywhere, whether at times or always, that might just because you're in a Western country where you're surrounded by Christians who believe that, fundamentally, in their worldview. And also they talk and make art about it all the time and run the vast majority of news outlets. And spent over a thousand years burning any art or texts that disagreed with them. Etc. etc.

If you're gonna come to as drastic and painful a conclusion as that, at least take the time first to make sure you're not working with biased evidence (surrounded by too many people and cultural products that believe original sin is real)

And if it turns out the feeling WAS partly the result of cultural Christianity, then hey, that's great news, because it means there's that much (and it really is SO MUCH) less evidence that humans inherently suck. Which is good, because we don't

[vasyan-pupkinyan]

ignore that cultural trauma, ask an archeologist / paleontologist.

how often do we find human remains / burials attributable to a peaceful death of old age, or at least to disease / wild animals? and attributable to human violence, i.e. with traces of weapon impacts?

to use an old quote, the last ape became the first human not when he picked up a stick to reach some fruit, but when he used that stick to bash another ape over the head and take away his fruit.

[directactionforhope]

I disagree with pretty much all of that, actually. Modern archeology is only just in the process of pulling itself out of hundreds of years of racism, bias, colonialism, disproven assumptions, widespread graverobbing, and massive, blatant pseudoscience; many ideas and publications in the field that older than about 20 years are of highly questionable provenance.

I personally am much more convinced and compelled by newer theories that, if any piece of technology made us human, it was not the weapon - it was the carrier bag, the story, and/or fire. (But not fire with the primary purpose of violence, mind you - fire with the primary purpose of heat and food and sanitation)

Here's a quote on this from one of my absolute favorite thinkers and writers, Ursula K. Le Guin:

If you haven't got something to put it in, food will escape you- even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning when you wake up and it's cold and raining and wouldn't it be good to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy oat patch in the rain, and wouldn't it be a good thing if you had something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with both hands? A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient. The first cultural device was probably a recipient. . . . Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier. So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women's Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody with in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky...? I don't know. I don 't even care. I'm not telling that story. We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news... It sometimes seems that that story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all , some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we'd better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one's fin- ished. Maybe. The trouble is , we've all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.

-via Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Originally published 1986, new edition with forewords and commentaries published 2024.

[directactionforhope]

Oh also if any technology did make us human, archeological evidence currently very strongly argues it was when we harnessed fire and invented cooking.

Fire is literally the reason our brains are larger than any other species of ape's, because harnessing fire meant we spent radically less energy spent on digestion - and those excess resources instead changed the evolution of the human brain.

Also fire is probably the reason we're not fully covered in hair anymore, evolutionarily - because we evolved in equatorial Africa, where not wearing a fur coat everywhere was an evolutionary advantage due to, you know, the temperature of it all. Once we could make our own heat to survive the cold nights and winters, less insulation was a huge evolutionary advance in equatorial regions especially

Why Fire Makes Us Human

Cooking may be more than just a part of your daily routine, it may be what made your brain as powerful as it is

Wherever humans have gone in the world, they have carried with them two things, language and fire. As they traveled through tropical forests they hoarded the precious embers of old fires and sheltered them from downpours. When they settled the barren Arctic, they took with them the memory of fire, and recreated it in stoneware vessels filled with animal fat. Darwin himself considered these the two most significant achievements of humanity. It is, of course, impossible to imagine a human society that does not have language, but—given the right climate and an adequacy of raw wild food—could there be a primitive tribe that survives without cooking? In fact, no such people have ever been found. Nor will they be, according to a provocative theory by Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham, who believes that fire is needed to fuel the organ that makes possible all the other products of culture, language included: the human brain. Every animal on earth is constrained by its energy budget; the calories obtained from food will stretch only so far. And for most human beings, most of the time, these calories are burned not at the gym, but invisibly, in powering the heart, the digestive system and especially the brain, in the silent work of moving molecules around within and among its 100 billion cells. A human body at rest devotes roughly one-fifth of its energy to the brain, regardless of whether it is thinking anything useful, or even thinking at all. Thus, the unprecedented increase in brain size that hominids embarked on around 1.8 million years ago had to be paid for with added calories either taken in or diverted from some other function in the body. Many anthropologists think the key breakthrough was adding meat to the diet. But Wrangham and his Harvard colleague Rachel Carmody think that’s only a part of what was going on in evolution at the time. What matters, they say, is not just how many calories you can put into your mouth, but what happens to the food once it gets there. How much useful energy does it provide, after subtracting the calories spent in chewing, swallowing and digesting? The real breakthrough, they argue, was cooking.

-via Smithsonian Magazine, June 2013. Emphasis mine. In the time since this article was published, what was considered a "provocative theory" in 2013 has become a matter of increasing scientific evidence and scientific consensus.

Richard Wrangham lays out his theory as a whole in his 2010 book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.

For more current summaries on the history of fire, and scientific and archeological evidence for its role in human evolution:

Evolutionary fire ecology: An historical account and future directions. August 2023. BioScience, volume 73, issue 8, pages 602–608. Permalink: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad059, paywall-free.

The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process. By J. A. J. Gowlett. June 2016. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, volume 371, issue 1696, epage 20150164. Permalink: doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0164, paywall free.

Or, less scholarly:

Fire and the Brain: How Cooking Shaped Humans | AMNH

It takes a lot of calories to power a human brain. Find out how cooking and gut microbes help us make the most of our food.

[reasonsforhope]

Humans are not defined by our capacity for violence.

Current archeological evidence suggests that humans are, if anything, defined by the hearthfire.

By cooking. By our ability to keep ourselves warm. By our ability to provide for ourselves and each other. By humanity's millennia-long quest to beat back the ravages of starvation and hunger.

By our millennia-long quest to make our lives, and the lives of those we love, more and more into something we can live

[brightlotusmoon]

I found photos of those Pallas Cat kittens born this year and bye I'm deceased

[curlicuetruth]

why do these kittens have the exact same energy as a nest of baby owls

[sanguine-tenshi]

@curlicuetruth you are very right

[curlicuecal]

[naldibutnice]

Pauline Frederick by White Studio, 1914

[marinella-ela]

[my-dailydreams]

[the1920sinpictures]

1920s naughty pic of a teddy-wearing young woman getting out of bed.

[kallimakhos]

the problem with a btvs sports au is that as far as canon interpersonal dynamics go giles is the only person it would ever make sense to put in as buffy's coach but having giles coach a sport is fundamentally and irreparably out of character.

[kallimakhos]

on the other hand the idea that giles was like. a figure skating legend in his youth is really compelling

[kallimakhos]

okay final answer. on her first day at a new school willow and xander show buffy (fifteen years old) (already a very successful skater) into the school library and buffy is like. hang on a second. is that rupert giles? and willow is like. uh yeah it says so on his office? and buffy is like. the rupert giles? and xander is like i don't think he's the anything he just kind of hangs out in the library and gets mad when you don't return the books on time. and buffy is like rupert giles who [insert list of achievements here]? and xander's like that guy? nah. and buffy is like. hang on. i need to talk to him. and goes up to giles and is like "hi. are you rupert giles?" and he looks at her, recognizes her, and is like. who? and buffy rolls her eyes and is like. what are you doing in this library. and he's like. well you see i'm a librarian. and long story short she spends the next at least six months to a year trying to convince him to give her figure skating advice while he tries desperately to avoid her and/or talk about literally anything but figure skating

[kallimakhos]

#yes and giles moonlighted as a very successful street hockey player (ripper) (via @gallopinggallifreyans)

i like this for giving him a secret second shocking backstory after they uncover the first

[teatimewithgiles]

I know this isn't figure skating or hockey, but I always liked to imagine that Giles played rugby while he was at Oxford.

Pictured here is a match between Oxford and Cambridge in 1977, around the time Giles attended.

[autumnsup]

The Blue Castle, Chapter 11, The Aftermath

My last thoughts on Chapter 11 are about Mrs. Frederick and the rest of this cursed family as they deal with the aftermath of Valancy's new IDGAF era. What stuck with me from the following exchange is how Mrs. Frederick, Cousin Gladys, and even Uncle Herbert immediately made Valancy's outburst all about themselves:

Mrs. Frederick was openly in tears. All her defences were down. “I must tell you,” she sobbed, “that Valancy has been acting very strangely for over two weeks now....” “This is bringing on my neuritis again,” said Cousin Gladys, putting her hand to her head. “Don’t cry, Amelia,” said Herbert kindly, pulling nervously at his spiky grey hair. He hated “family ructions.” Very inconsiderate of Doss to start one at his silver wedding. Who could have supposed she had it in her?

And then we get into the Wansbarra lore:

“Everything she said today showed an unbalanced mind. That question—‘Was it a vital part?’ Was there any sense at all in that remark? None whatever! There never was anything like that in the Stirlings. It must be from the Wansbarras.” Poor Mrs. Frederick was too crushed to be indignant. “I never heard of anything like that in the Wansbarras,” she sobbed. “Your father was odd enough,” said Uncle Benjamin. “Poor Pa was—peculiar,” admitted Mrs. Frederick tearfully, “but his mind was never affected.” “He talked all his life exactly as Valancy did today,” retorted Uncle Benjamin. “And he believed he was his own great-great grandfather born over again. I’ve heard him say it. Don’t tell me that a man who believed a thing like that was ever in his right senses."

Consider me intrigued. 👀 I wonder if Pa's peculiarity was rooted in a fascination with reincarnation and Eastern religion in general, the occult, or just a vague sense of mysticism? Possibly all three?

Uncle Herbert, in turn, seems to be intrigued by this new side of Valancy, even if it reflects negatively on the family to some degree:

“I should never have dreamed it of Doss,” said Uncle Herbert. “She has always seemed such a quiet, sensible girl. A bit backward—but sensible.”

I can't quite wrap my head around "backward"--perhaps he means immature or underdeveloped emotionally?--but he hardly seems attached to her sensibleness given his feelings in the last line of the chapter, "thinking that things were rather dull now that Doss had gone." Don't worry Uncle Herbert, things are only going to get more interesting from here!

[ksfoxwald]

The Blue Castle - Chapter 11

I am once again in awe of LMM's ability to keep me absolutely riveted by the absolutely dullest family dinner (though of course that is partly because Valancy is ready to cause some chaos and merely biding her time.)

"The greatest happiness is to sneeze when you want to."

I don't believe we've had the Stirlings' opinions on sneezing specifically yet, though I think we can hazard a guess; and perhaps it is related to all of them fretting over Valancy potentially getting a cold. Still, I'm mostly reminded of Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood, when Mordion says that the worst part of being a brainwashed murderslave is not being able to laugh at the people who controlled him.

Where did the dog bite you? "Just a little bit below the Catholic church." "Is that a vital part?"

Valancy you are ten times funnier than Uncle Benjamin and your relatives don't deserve you.

"Oh but you know we are all dead, the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried, and some aren't - yet. That is the only difference"

The chapter started by relaying all the relatives going through all their usual motions, telling all their same anecdotes and jokes over and over. Like the Stirlings are all just ghosts haunting themselves.

"The very idea of a man named Snaith!" said Second Cousin Sarah. "Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!"

I mean, she has a point. "Snaith" might be the least sexy name I've ever heard.

"People who don't like cats," said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, "always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."

Well, we can check "strong feelings about cats" off our bingo card, along with this gem:

"She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies."

(what are they having for dessert, anyway? Salad is salad and lamb is lamb, but what is "dessert" here?)

And what is the origin of the name "Wansbarra"? I'm assuming Anglo, but it looks odd.

Anyway I want Valancy to be my plus one at all my family functions now.

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Blue Castle Book Club: Chapter 11

The dinner party continues ("dragging its slow length" which is the first of several wonderful turns of phrase in this chapter) and Valancy moves from observing to participating. In the last chapter she said she was "quite prepared to talk if occasion offered", and the occasion promptly offers.

The greatest happiness discussion is one of those fun character-crystalizing scenes. In order, we have:

Aunt Mildred, who last chapter was distinguished by her overbearing insistence on flaunting her husband and children, now piously declaring that the greatest happiness is to be a loving and beloved wife and mother.

Aunt Wellington and Olive both have material happinesses, perhaps influenced by the fact that they are from the wealthy branch of the family. (I can't find the post rn, but someone wrote a great breakdown of Olive and her wasted potential, including the fact that her college offers an arts and music track that she seems not to have taken. It's likely that she would have been exposed to a lot of music while at college, and I think it's a telling character moment that she specifically wants to be a famous singer. Olive has lived her whole life on display, so of course her greatest happiness is to be on the biggest possible stage. (Luisa Tetrazzini is the singer she references. Wikipedia says her career started in 1890 but she didn't become known in England until 1907, which does not help at all with dating the book!))

Cousin Gladys, of course, brings up her medical concerns, and how you feel about this is entirely dependent on whether you believe them to be genuine or not. I think LMM does not particularly believe in them, but it's up for interpretation. I don't think I have any strong feelings one way or the other.

Cousin Georgiana mentions her dead brother, which may be the first time one of the Stirlings has actually expressed open affection for someone else. Every other instance of someone praising others has been presented with an air of humblebragging, whereas Georgiana seems genuine in her grief, if a little dramatic. Which is very in keeping with her personality.

Aunt Alberta's "the poetry of life" and her subsequent hasty deflection are hilarious and I love her. Vaguely deep bullshit is precisely what Uncle James deserves.

And then Amelia, the hypocrite, who declaims loftily that she finds her joy in "loving service to others" while being possibly the nastiest of the lot. She possesses not a jot of self-awareness, and it has led her to become an absolute monster while being unshakably convinced that she is the victim in all situations. I know people like that, and they are always awful to be around. Also fodder for the cursed James/Amelia ship that she is the one who rose to his challenge of "elevating the conversation".

Valancy, meanwhile, has no interest in participating genuinely in this stupid game and is done dissembling. She says precisely what she thinks, at the moment she thinks it. And the sneezing, of course, is emblematic of the bigger constraints that have bound her all her life - even something as involuntary and instinctive as a sneeze has been forbidden. So of course the greatest happiness is to be permitted to exist precisely as you are.

Some other rapid-fire observations, because this is getting long:

-The men of the Stirling clan demand respect without returning it. Benjamin demands that Valancy treat him with respect, defined here as "not talking back" and Wellington states that he "does not argue with women" as a way of silencing her without engaging with her words.

-Georgiana is, as ever, wonderfully dramatic, but also, amusingly, correct about one important thing: "I felt he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions."

-Uncle James' quote is from Shakespeare's King John, which I do not know well enough to comment on further. The Stirlings do like their Shakespeare though. (Although it looks like Georgiana's later "charity thinketh no evil" that she attributes to Shakespeare is actually a bible quote. At every turn, the Stirlings are shown to be less cultured than they believe themselves to be.)

-"That was exactly what they were and not one of them was fit to mend another." I love this observation and how sucinctly it sums up and dismisses the whole clan. They are all of them bitter, broken people and as a result they can only create other bitter, broken people. It's a family-wide crab pot, and the only way to truly grow or heal as a person is to get out completely.

-I love the post-Valancy family conference. This is the first moment we see the other side of Amelia, and she is abruptly toothless. She has gone from the undisputed tyrant ruler of her home, who causes her dependents to bow to her every whim, to a sobbing, helpless mortal who crumbles instantly when her daughter made a scene and is no longer under her thumb.

Only two colors in this chapter:

-spiky grey hair

-flushed scarlet

Valancy is still surrounded by her colorless family, but she is suddenly starting to bloom.

[thedogbard]

blue castle book club

CHAPTER 11

“-Squeezed some of them actually to death, my dear.”

“Boys will be boys,” reminded Uncle Herbert tolerantly.

This is…disgusting. I’ve got nothing else to add. I just hate this, this entire attitude, so much. I’ve read similar in Agnes Gray and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other books, and…ARGH.

“The greatest happiness,” said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, “is to sneeze when you want to.”

This is exactly the sort of thing people think and rarely say, especially at that kind of dinner. Well done, Valancy. If I’d been there I would not have been able to keep a straight face.

“No.” Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. “But I can tell you where you’ll find a beauty parlour in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins.”

I do not even have words for this. Valancy has to be one of my favourite characters of. All. Time.

“You can’t spank her.” Cousin Stickles was much agitated. “She’s twenty nine years old.”

“So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty nine,” said Valancy.

See! There’s advantages of being twenty nine years old! Because nobody can do anything but writhe in their chairs while you finally let loose with everything you’ve spent your entire life suppressing.

“What has he done?” Valancy asked suddenly.

One thing I love is that Valancy is - to some extent - aware she has a crush on Barney, and obviously that is why she thinks about him and why her hero in the Blue Castle resembles him - and it’s all because he gave her one friendly, non-judgemental grin - but I think that even if she hadn’t crushed on him at all, she probably still would’ve said this and pointed out that they’re just gossiping without any cold hard proof.

He looked enormously pleased over the managing to work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for the chance.

Oh James…just you wait…

“I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw.”

This isn’t a huge passionate declaration. This story is not a great soap opera of confessions and Shakespearean tragedies. I love this sentence, I love its simplicity, I love how Valancy thinks his face is interesting - not even handsome, just interesting. It feels incredibly acceptive and not at all shallow. Did I ever mention, by any chance, how much I LOVE this book??

“I don’t mean to hush,” said Valancy perversely. “I’ve hush-hushed all my life. I’ll scream if I want to.”

No notes. 10/10 defiance.

“But I’m not a young girl,” retorted Valancy, uncrushed. “Aren’t you always rubbing that into me?”

Again, 10/10 BRILLIANCE.

“...which is an unpardonable sin, of course, in your little snobocracy.”

Why isn’t that still a word? Let’s reintroduce it. It deserves its place in the English dictionary.

Uncle Herbert was thinking that things were rather dull now that Doss had gone.

What a funny chapter ending - especially since he was the one who noticed her in the beginning of the last chapter and gave her some extra chicken.

I LOVE this chapter.