#beverly cleary

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary (1955)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onApr 1

[pastrypen]

HELLO LOVELIES!! this is a fic about Guide, a Bonnie version of Loop from the very cool and incredible @startagainaprologue 's Bonnie Looping au In Recipes And Repitition!

(Thank you for letting me write this sm. Squeaks joyously)

Note before you begin: Guide is using the name "Guppy" at the moment and lives with Nille and Bonnie

forgive any typos i was excited

It was such a small thing, that set you off.

"Guppy, did you clean your room like you said you would?"

Being back "home" was surreal. You didn't even remember where each room was. After so many years of hard frozen brick the softness of the pillows and blankets and carpets and wallpapers felt wrong. This place had stayed the same, but you'd changed.

One thing about you had apparently stayed the same, though. Promises you can't keep.

"...Well, it's Bonnie's room, so I don't have to," you say rebelliously.

Nille's face twitches for just a second. You can tell that statament bothers her for a lot of reasons. "You and--you two agreed to take turns," Nille admonishes.

You feel your tail spark with frustration. You kind of think it's neat having a tail sometimes, but right now it just pushes you deeper into distress. "I shouldn't HAVE TO!" Your voice raises and trembles.

"Oh boy, here we go," you hear Nille mutter.

"HEY!" You're so mad. How dare she talk about you like you're not even here? "SHUT UP!"

"Guppy, you're upset, I need you to take a deep breath with--"

"NO! NO, I'M NOT UPSET! I JUST DON'T WANT TO CLEAN MY STUPID ROOM, STUPID!" Your eyes fill with tears. You don't think she's stupid, she's wonderful. What's wrong with her? Why are you so dumb?

Nille looks hurt for a second. You hurt her. "Bonnie, please--" And then she gasps, clapping her hands over her mouth.

Bonnie. It rings through your ears. The world grows fuzzy around you. Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie. You feel nothing, no connection to your body. Bonnie Bonnie Bonnie Bonnie Bonnie BONNIE--

She takes a step toward you, and you turn around and flee.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Nille knocks on the door to the room you usually share with Bonnie. "Guppy, sweetheart, please talk to me," she pleads.

You open the door. You can't look at her face, so you just stare at her shoulder and remember the time you were nine and she wrenched it working at the smithy. What a different person you were, then.

Nille walks in. She opens her mouth to say something, and then sees the tote bag on your bed, along with the clothes, the toothbrush, the comic books...

"I'm running away to the House of Bambouche," you tell her. "And if you try to stop me, I'll get an at-tor-knee."

Nille stays very quiet for a few moments. You soothe your wild, flailing guilt by reminding yourself that this is the last time this has to happen. You're obviously not capable of doing anything but making everyone get hurt so long as you're here. This is the only choice. And you have to do it now, while Bonnie is at school, so they can't make you stop.

Finally, she says, "Guppy, I love you--"

"Don't you get it!?" Your anger arcs like a sword. "NOTHING YOU SAY IS GOING TO MAKE ME STAY, PETRONILLE!!!"

Moments pass as you let that decree settle. Finally, sounding exhausted and defeated, she says, "If I really can't stop you, at least let me help you pack. You don't have everything you need."

...It's true you forget stuff a lot. At least, the old you did. Once you went on a sleepover and forgot your pajamas. Besides, you guess maybe this can be closure for her. "Okay, fine," you mutter your agreement.

The two of you get to work. Nille grabs snacks for if you want a taste of home. Lets you have Bonnie's roller skates for if you want to travel quicker. Reminds you to pack floss. You try to shove things into your pack, but she stops you. "Pack heavy things at the bottom," she tells you. "It helps because of...weight distribution."

For a while as you work together, it's almost peaceful. Like you're just...leaving for summer camp. You can't quite imagine yourself going to summer camp or being a normal kid, though. You're crabbed up and you know it, but somehow right now it feels okay to just let yourself be that. If it weren't for the grief tearing you up, you'd feel okay, you think.

But at last, the final page is turned, the final oddity stuffed into the tote bag, and it's time to go. Nille doesn't try one last time. She just watches, gaze flitting between you and the bag quickly.

Part of you wants her to scream and cry and beg you to stay. But.

But you don't want to see her hurting.

You grasp the straps of the tote bag and lift it up.

...?

You grasp the straps, and--

You can't lift it. You can't--what?

You remember Nille telling you to pack heavy things at the bottom. Your heart does a flip and you turn to face her. "You...made it...too heavy...on purpose," you say slowly.

Nille just nods.

"You know you didn't stop me, right? I can just--I can just take the stuff out!"

"Are you going to?" Nille asks quietly.

... "No." You admit that and every bit of meanness and strength leaves you. You wail and fall to your knees, but before they can hit the carpet Nille catches you in a tight hug and whispers comforting words. You scream and sob and wrap your arms and your tail around her.

"I hate feeling like this," you cry.

"I know. I hate you have to feel like this, too. But I'm not giving up on you, Guppy. Okay?" She pulls away and you whimper, but she just did it so she could hold your face and press your foreheads together. "Not if you lose your temper, not if you change even more, no matter what you've been through, you're precious to me. Got it?"

You nod, heart bursting in your chest, and maybe you don't have one but that's how it feels anyway, and she hugs you again, and you feel her shaking. "I'm...so relieved that worked," she admits breathlessly. You feel hot tears land on your head.

Both of you still reeling from fear and guilt and sadness, the two of you sit down on the bed and cling to each other, humming a tune the fishermen use to keep time, until Bonnie comes home.

(ending note: thx for reading about the sillies! also before you praise me please note that the "packs heavy things on purpose" is shamelessly taken from the Ramona Quimby books by Beverly Clearly because I'm the biggest book nerd I've ever met)

[batrachised]

Writers have minds like scrap bags! Always collecting things, storing them away, and waiting to use them in a story.

-Beverly Cleary

[oldshowbiz]

1986.

[thesobsister]

The girl and her cleavage are not in the video; they are just a lure. This is a guy who goes by "Lord Vinheteiro" and whose YT channel features both quasi-serious and full-on jokey music videos, e.g., "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on tuned rubber chickens.

Normally, not my cup o'tea, but I clicked through for Research. And it paid off. Because almost all of these "10 Songs You've Heard But Don't Know the Name" show up in classic Warner Bros. cartoons. And it got me thinking about the ways in which classical music (and poetry) were so much more a part of the general cultural knowledge of adults and kids back in the '30s and '40s.

For, poetry was still memorized in school back then (I posted about it here earlier this year), and certain chestnuts of the classical repertoire, including certain opera arias and pieces, were tunes people hummed or whistled alongside the pop hits of the day.

"The March of the Toreadors" from Carmen, for example, trickled down into pop culture. Beverly Cleary's 1953 novel Otis Spofford features the titular boy singing "Toreador-a, Don’t spit on the floor-a. Use the cuspidor-a. That’s what it’s for-a."

Or, recorded in 1949 and released four years later, the classic Spike Jones version of Carmen. In tone, it twins MAD magazine, which just beat it into the world, and anticipates The Firesign Theatre's aural antics by 20 years:

Relatedly, that Chuck Jones could produce an entire cartoon parodying Wagner or Rossini says it all.

What's Opera, Doc? - (1957, Restored) : Warner Bros. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

*Restored HBO Max (Max) US printCopyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purpose

Rabbit of Seville - (1950, Restored) : Warner Bros. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This cartoon is set to the tune of the overture of The Barber of Seville.

The impossibility of that happening today is unfortunate. While some may celebrate the Death of the Canon and whatever danger cultural works by European authors, artists, or composers may symbolize, it also means that we in the United States no longer have anything like a common heritage culture.

A large number of people being on the same social platforms or using the same memes isn't quite the same because it's not transgenerational in the same way—kids and adults alike were more or less familiar with the arias that Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny parodied—and is certainly more transient.

How many people today remember the Numa Numa kid or "Leeroy Jenkins"? And even if a few early-Internet artifacts like Doge or "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" are still in use, it's not a body of culture in the same way.

The question then becomes: Is this disappearance of a common cultural language symptomatic of 1) the devaluation of canonical European-origin culture or 2) the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. educational system to teach this knowledge or 3) a single corpus' inability to maintain primacy in the face of thousands, if not millions, of alternative and competing cultural items in the intervening half century, or, 4) U.S. society's own fragmentation? And what is the impact and significance of the loss of a common cultural storehouse and vocabulary?

[abigailspinach]

I’m on like day 10 of this cold and I am so over it. 🤧😷🤕

My sweet dog who is normally within ten feet has decamped to the guest bedroom for days. LOL she can’t nap when I am making such a racket.

[briabooknerd]

[picturebookshelf]

Ramona Quimby, Age 8

Story: Beverly Cleary -- Art: Tracy Dockray Original Edition: 1981 -- This Edition: 2006