Hi! I love your analytical posts about My Dark Vanessa. I was wondering what you thought about Ms. Thompson, specifically her relationship with Strane. Do you think there was something going on between them, or was it simply Vanessa projecting her own insecurities about her place in Strane’s life onto her?
Hi ! Thank you so much, i'm glad you enjoyed them!
About Ms. Thompson - yeah, I honestly do think something was going on between her and Strane. Not necessarily a full relationship, but there’s definitely a level of intimacy and flirtation that Vanessa picks up on. Even KER mentioned in an old (now deleted) Tumblr post that Strane was trying to cultivate a “more acceptable” relationship with Ms. Thompson - a grown woman, someone he could use to mask his real behaviour. She said in earlier drafts he even showed up at her dorm room. So the intention was definitely there.
And when you reread the book with that in mind, the difference in how he interacts with her vs. Vanessa is really obvious.
He never makes Vanessa laugh. That alone says a lot.
And she’s also on a first-name basis with him, which Vanessa never is:
You know what before you asked, I never had strong feelings about her, but now i see clearly how she actually was one of the people who was closest to the situation between Strane and Vanessa and what she did (or didn’t do) starts to annoy me so bad. For example, when Vanessa hints that she and Strane are “close”:
Her first instinct isn’t to check on Vanessa. It’s to email him:
This whole email chain drives me insane. Because yeah, she couldn’t have known he was a predator — but she immediately frames Vanessa as the problem instead of considering for even one second that something might be off with him. Meanwhile, look how a different teacher reacts to the same situation:
Their first instinct is to question him, not Vanessa. She immediately picks up on how strange it sounds. Meanwhile Ms. Thompson hears the exact same thing and her reaction is basically “hmm this girl has a crush, better warn Jake 😊”. Like… be serious.
This is why she frustrates me so much in hindsight. She was Vanessa’s dorm parent. The adult who should’ve protected her.
And what gets me even more heated is thinking about the after. The book makes it clear she stayed quiet:
Because she didn’t just miss the signs in 2000 — she stayed silent even after the truth was basically common knowledge. Jenny literally tells Vanessa later:
So if students knew, the teachers absolutely knew too. Ms. Thompson included.
And what about 2007 when Taylor came forward? We don’t know if Ms. Thompson was still there, but I’m talking about the whole staff now. How was anyone ok with a man who’d been accused twice still teaching? Like Strane says, his colleagues didn’t start avoiding him until five girls came forward in 2017. Not after one. Not after two. Only when ignoring it became socially impossible.
So yeah, I do think there was something going on between her and Strane — at the very least flirting, closeness. But what matters more to me is how she behaved around Vanessa. She was one of the adults closest to the situation and she still completely failed her. Even if she didn’t know exactly what was happening, she sensed something was off. She just chose to funnel that suspicion into protecting Strane instead of a student under her care.
Sorry for rambling but your question unlocked a whole new level of annoyance I didn’t even know I had 😭 and ALSO sorry for late reply… I swear I’m not ignoring people, I’m just chronically disorganized.
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