This is URFAVISSTUPID! Which is a blog for cataloguing stupid characters + peoples’ stupid headcanons! This is not a satire or insulting blog, we are trying to advocate for positivity towards people who can be considered stupid in a somewhat silly way. But we are earnest in our beliefs.
We do not like intellectual and sanist slurs (idiot, moron, stupid, insane, nutso, crazy, etc) being used as insults here. We will only be using them positively because being stupid and insane is literally fucking awesome. We will not be using all of these, due to the admins' discomfort with many, but we will be using the terms dumb, stupid, crazy, and insane.
This blog will only be reposting characters that are treated stupid/insane in canon, or if they have average cognitive abilities but can be headcanoned with disability. Smart characters will be rejected if their congnitive/intellectual abilities are relatively high and average, with an explanation provided, but you will always be able to state your case.
And of course, welcome to our blog. :] Smart people and people who think they are smart can stay if you’re niceys.
From their first quiet but traumatic run-in, Wentworth and Anne were perpetually in each other’s company. He and the Crofts were folded into all the Musgrove’s fraternizing, and became an expected part of the family dinners and outings. Since CJ recovered inconveniently fast, Anne had no more excuses to keep her reasonably away from the sociable scene. Whether or not the old feelings were to be revived remained to be shown; being around each other could not help but bring back memories of the old times.
Wentworth’s natural disposition led him to talk at length with his new acquaintances, and to introduce them to his past. Since the year they almost got engaged was also the year he had officially joined the agency, he could not help but talk about that summer. He talked about it smoothly, like a well-rehearsed actor, without a single ‘um’ or ‘like’ out of the word’s proper context. Although his story was flawless and seemingly carefree, his eyes never so much as wandered down to her end of the table. Anne knew that his mind at least had to be leaning her direction while he told his story. She listened and felt the same pain that must have brushed his own heart at the careful omissions and half-truths that allowed him to skate entirely around their relationship. They had no lasting conversations, and there was no meat to their words when they were forced to talk to each other for politeness’ sake. Cold, nervous smiles, and a quick,
“How are you? It seems cooler today,” was as far as things got - never further than the weather. The only exception was at their first evening spent together, a game night at the Musgroves. While choosing teams for Catchphrase, Admiral Croft picked Anne with the comment,
“You must know so many words, with all your reading! The first time I was at your father’s office, I don’t think you ever looked up from the paperwork on your desk. And the next time it was a book, poetry or something fancy like that.” He scooted over on the plump floral couch to make room for Anne, while Wentworth involuntarily asked,
“Your father’s office?” With all the dignity she could muster, Anne replied,
“Yes, my father’s office. I am his assistant.”
“The best secretary in Washington, D.C.!” the admiral proclaimed. “She pretty much keeps the whole city afloat through her work.”
“A big favor to society,” was Wentworth’s only comment before he started picking his team. Anne was grateful for the Admiral’s display of friendship (she did not think he had remembered her from his visits to the office), but she wished he had not brought up her being her father’s assistant. After all her lofty hopes, all of the plans that she had not given up for Cap, now she was a secretary. She could see how it looked, and a part of her longed to sit down with him and explain how the chips had fallen, but from his body language and her own reserve she could not see a realistic situation where that could happen. They had once meant so much in their words and to each other, and now - nothing. Before, at a dinner they would keep returning to each other, having an anchor of someone they trusted and were entirely comfortable with. Now, they somehow managed to always be on the opposite side of the room from each other. Far from being respites, their brief interactions now required recovery on Anne’s part. With the Crofts as the only exception, no other two hearts had ever been so open, so unified; none of the other couples came close to their similarity in taste and opinions, no persons so cherished. Now they were like total strangers. No, it was worse than that; now they could never get to know each other, not in a meaningful way. It was just as good as (or possibly more effective than) a formal estrangement.
On one of their first dinner parties all together, much of Wentworth’s time talking was spent explaining basic things to the Musgroves, who had a general lack of knowledge about the real workings of Washington, D.C. To a Washington crowd, his story about being a diplomat without the legal ability to give any details would have brought on knowing nods and winks, but here it was accepted on face value (even by Mary, who was busy carefully avoiding the noodles, or anything they had touched). Once dinner had been cleared away from the wide table and replaced by dessert, the Musgrove girls pulled out the atlas, and had Wentworth show them all the places he had served across the world. The atlas had never moved from its display on the coffee table, but now there was an urgent need for it. Hazel and Louise, although educated, were pursuing a ‘ring by the spring’ mentality with greater zeal than an excellent GPA. Hazel had actually been going out with a Charles Hayter from Maryland, almost to the point of being seriously together. Anne was a little surprised to see how readily she listened to Wentworth’s bravado, how close she sat over his shoulder, with her own happy relationship taking a backseat. On the other hand, Cap was the sort of person that turned everyone into a bit of a flirt; everyone naturally wanted to please him, to be noticed by him, to have him think well of them. He had an unintentional pull on most people, one which was drawing in all of the Musgroves - not that he seemed to mind. Louise dusted off the atlas saying,
“You told me the name of your first post was Aher - Azeb -”
“Azerbaijan,” he said. Taking the atlas, he flipped through confidently until he found the correct entry. “That was a tiny office, really more like an apartment with lots of paperwork and no air conditioning.” After a pause for effect, he added, “And holes in the roof.” At the girl’s surprise, he explained, “The government bureaucrats sometimes entertain themselves by sending the young bucks fresh out of training (and full of plans to change the world) to their most remote, most monotonous offices in the world to push paper and suffer for about a year. I think I did more repair work trying to get us heat or cooling than actual work.” The admiral spoke up from his end of the table.
“You all were lucky to have work fresh out of training. Most college students can’t say the same thing! And the climate of Azerbaijan is not so bad, from what my friends who have served on the Caspian Sea tell me. Nice people, too. You could’ve done worse.”
“I knew I was lucky to be there,” he said seriously. “Those early experiences, and being immersed in a new culture - I would not trade them for a more glamorous first assignment. At the time, I desperately wanted to be out of the country, away from everything I knew. I needed to be doing something significant and meaningful.” With a rueful laugh, “Even if that meant tinkering with utilities for a year.”
“I’m sure you wanted to be out of the country! What would you have done with yourself, with six months on a job hunt?” With a nudge for his wife, the admiral theorized, “If a man does not have a wife he wants to be out and away, doing significant work, I think.” Anne concentrated very hard on her slice of pecan pie. Louise teasingly questioned Wentworth, from whom her attention had not strayed.
“You mean to say you weren’t disappointed, not even a little bit, when you got there?”
“Oh, I knew what I was in for when I packed my bags. Azerbaijan has been made a bit of a legend in the hiring process. It was kind of like taking an umbrella out that you know is old and full of holes. When you get rained on it’s not a surprise, it’s actually kind of funny. The embassy was in such a dry old building, I was the last to experience its wonders. One night an electrical fire started in our file room and burnt the whole building to the ground. It’s lucky I didn’t decide to sleep in the office that night, my eulogy might have been ‘Here lies Frederick Wentworth, who Served his Country for about Five Minutes’.” The Crofts laughed, since the story had been told to them many times, while the senior Musgroves and Anne shuddered quietly, and the girls made their horror known. Mrs. Musgrove, who was seated next to Anne, said,
“Then I guess you went up to Munich. A certain Someone must have been watching out for us, putting you in that city. We will never forget what you did.” Her feelings made her speak softly, and unusual thing for the hardy woman. Between her quietness and his mind being a literal thousand miles away from Rich Musgrove, Wentworth waited for her to fill in the blanks. What service was she talking about?
“My brother,” one of the girls whispered. “Mama is thinking about poor Richard.”
“He was so much steadier, much better at keeping up with me when he was hanging around you. It would’ve been better for him if he had not let the connection fade away.”
For a fraction of a second, a funny expression crossed Wentworth’s face. A gleam in his eye, a quirk at the corner of his mouth made Anne think that he had probably worked very hard to make sure his relationship with Mrs. Musgrove’s most beloved son had died out. Anyone but Anne would not have been able to detect it, much less interpret it. The amusement only lasted for a second, though - he quickly swallowed his smile, got up, and crouched next to Mrs. Musgrove’s chair. His back was to Anne, but he was just next to her. Placing a hand on the arm of the bereaved mother’s chair, he settled there for a while telling her about the genuinely best parts of her son. He spoke kindly, having a care for her poor parently feelings, trying to make her comfortable. He was actually right there - if they had been at a dinner party five years earlier, she might have reached out her rand, rested it gently on his back or shoulder as a, ‘Hey, friend. I’m here,’ gesture. But now she sat bolt upright, facing straight ahead, paying sudden attention to Charles. Or at least, her eyes were. Her ears were practically bent over to the right from straining. Although Anne’s agitation were shielded from him, we must give Wentworth a bit of credit for paying careful attention to Mrs. Musgrove’s sighing over her missing son, who nobody really cared for when they knew where he was. The admiral roamed the room, as if his seafaring self could not stand still. After circling the room once or twice, a quick shake of the head from Mrs. Cross made him come to a standstill. He was right in front of his brother-in-law when his march was suddenly halted, and said to him without the slightest idea he was interrupting,
“If you had been around for one more week in Munich, you would have had to help the Griers family out of that tricky situation at the embassy. You probably would have had to sneak them out of the city, to an airport over the border, just to be safe.”
This brought on an outcry from the admiral, who wanted to know just why Wentworth opposed the idea of being helpful. He defended himself by saying he would never willingly take ladies into his care, particularly in circumstances like that.
“Not for a lack of care for the fair sex - it might actually be the last bit of chivalry I have left,” he tried to explain himself. “If I were to make a trip like that, it would be fast, with no stops, fueled on gas station food. I’ve traveled solo for so many years, I would have no idea how to begin making a woman comfortable in that situation, emotionally or otherwise. And making the embassy presentable for women who did not work there?” he waved his hands, “Impossible. At least, it was in the out-of-the-way places I started in. I would never have a lady staying in our wards, if I had anything to say about it. They were nothing more than hostiles.” In explaining himself, he had only dug a deeper pit (at least, it was a pit in the quicker minds at the table). The wrath of Sophie was brought upon him, in a way that a sister can be all at once wrathful, loving, and pointing out unsound reasoning.
“Frederick Elias Wentworth! I can’t believe you. Mom and I raised you better than this! I have lived all over the world, in all kinds of houses, with varying degrees of safety, and I have never been more comfortable than in our shoddiest little house in the Philippines, even at the Kellynch House,” this with a nod to Anne. “I have lived on the road and out of boxes more than in a single place, and I am physically and mentally sound. Maybe better than the ‘ladies’ who have had the good luck to have men like you shielding them from anything mildly unpleasant.” Wentworth made the mistake of trying to argue back.
“You knew what you signed up for when you married a young Lieutenant Croft.”
“Plenty of women thrive in situations they did not sign up for,” Sophie retorted. “Also, I seem to remember you brought Maria Harville and her three children from Louisiana all the way down to Monterey. Where was this fine ‘chivalry’ then?”
“All from my friendship with her husband. I would bring anything from the world’s end if Will Harville asked me to - it doesn’t mean I did not have reservations about it, but my feelings on the matter did not stop me from driving them and a U-Haul trailer on a very long stretch of highway.”
“I just hate to hear you talk this way, assuming those feelings make you a better person - and that all females are these fine ladies, instead of rational minds inside female bodies. None of us - not one - wants to be in calm water all our days.”
“Sophie,” the admiral tweaked her shoulder with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “when he has a wife himself, he will change his tune.”
“He’ll have to correct that attitude before he can get one worth having,” Sophie laughed. “But I do believe you’re right.”
“We need to stop this right here!” Wentworth exclaimed. “Once married people decide to attack me with ‘You’ll think very differently when you are married’, all I can say back is ‘No, I won’t.’ Then it just goes back and forth until it devolves into Yo Mama jokes, which will not be pretty, since Sophie and I share a mother.” He stood up, and helped Mr. Musgrove clear and wash the dessert dishes (Mrs. Musgrove, being of old Southern tradition, could not be brought around to use paper plates, not even the pretty ones from Tuesday Morning).
The evening ended with all of them trooping down to the park, where a brass band composed of mostly retirees was playing old-timey swing songs. One of the band members was a new friend of Anne’s, the butcher from the Piggly Wiggly. Since Mary had very specific requirements for the kind of meat she ingested, Anne and Mr. Miller had spent a few long spells together, to ensure a satisfactory experience for her. Both playing and turning pages proved to be too big of a challenge, and after seeing Anne sitting on the lawn, Mr. Miller called her over to help. A precarious lawn chair was pulled up for her, and she began to follow the music. While the couples in the park swayed back and forth, Anne watched Mr. Miller for a violent bob of the head, which was the indication she should flip the page. The band was playing for a happy, rowdy-with-joy kind of crowd that whooped and hollered at the end of each piece. Even Walter and CJ hopped and spun around in a bizarre imitation of dancing. Lightning bugs glowed with abandon, and the warm air encouraged the merry crowd to stay late. No one seemed happier than Wentworth, surrounded solely by girls who admired him and people who thought nothing but good of him. While the girls had to sit a while on the grass, shooing crickets away and waiting for their turn to dance, he never sat down. It became a little difficult to track the notes because her eyes misted over several times, obscuring the notes and words to the old love songs, which now seemed to mock her. She was just glad to be busy - all she asked in exchange was to be unobserved. He charmed and spun and swayed in a way that was familiar to Anne, but a million miles away from how she was feeling. She found him looking over his partner’s shoulder at her once, probably trying to find the old structure amongst the pale ruins. Later, she knew he must have asked about her, because she hear Louise answer a little too loudly,
“Anne, dance? Never, I think she stopped dancing in elementary school, and gave it up for books. She always finds something to help the musicians, or picking the playlist. She is really good with music, I don’t think she ever gets tired of thinking it through for us.”
Before they parted, he did talk to Anne once. During the short intermission she had gone back to their picnic blanket to check on CJ’s shoulder. When she got back to Mr. Miller and his french horn, Cap was seated next to the old timer, making a new friend and asking about song requests. Seeing her, he stood up in the middle of the conversation.
“I’m sorry, this is your seat.”
“No, you don’t need to rush - take your time -” But none of her sputterings could convince him to sit back down. While the band struck back up (playing As Time Goes By for yet another dose of cruel irony), the Musgrove and Croft families retreated. Mary had begun to worry about the effects of all the mosquito bites she was acquiring, and the Musgroves had a big day planned. While her family walked back up the hill, Anne maintained her post, thinking that if this was to be the flavor of her and Wentworth’s interactions, silence would be better than this distant, dead politeness.
For the record, Azerbaijan is a real place worth Wikipedia-ing. As is Tuesday Morning. Thanks to my five readers for sticking around!
Oh, stupid pride it just can't hide the holes inside my heart
'Cause I need you here with me
Oh, I wish that I could take it back, I'd go back to the start
And tell you all the things that I feel
'Cause everything is different now
I'd really like to tell you how
How I wanted you here by my side
I know what I said but I lied
It looked like a laugh but I cried
'Cause I wish I could push rewind
