To Catch A Star (Emily of New Moon)

[edonohana]

Title: To Catch A Star
Fandom: Emily of New Moon, by L. M. Montgomery
Spoilers: This is an alternate ending for Emily's Quest, so spoilers for about the first third, then it goes AU.
Word count: 1800
No warnings.

Note: Happy birthday, sartorias! It's your Con Or Bust story!

The poem is by Basho.

Comments

[sienamystic]

Oh my lord, I love this with all my heart. It's perfect. They're perfect.

And...as a very quiet Dean-fancier, for fear of being called names...I like what you've done with him and his relationship with Emily very much.

[rachelmanija]

Thank you!

I have very mixed feelings about Dean. On the one hand, in some ways he was very good for Emily. On the other hand, he committed the most awful deed in the entire series. I figured he at least deserved to be depressed in congenial surroundings.

[sienamystic]

Yeah, there is a lot about Dean that, reading as an adult, does not exactly sit very well. But when I first read the books, I identified so much with Emily, and Dean is exactly the type of fantasy man I had concocted for myself - somebody to see my Super Specialness and who would take me around the world to see vistas in the moonlight, or what have you. It's funny how, decades later, you find those things sticking with you.

[rachelmanija]

Dean really is a great fantasy figure for a twelve-year-old. I adored him when I was that age. Then I re-read the books, and went, "Hmmm." And eventually, "Yikes!"

[sartorias]

When I read these as a teen, it was the first time I ever really felt as if the author had stuck her hand into the story, willfully yanked things around to be the way they "should" be, and then pulled it out.

In other words, I couldn't believe that Dean would do that thing. Not the Dean that encouraged her all along. I felt like he was taking over the story, but Teddy was the conventional hero, and so things had to be yanked into line.

Rereading it many years later, when they were reprinted, I had more problems with Dean, like his fixation on a kid. Euw. Euw. But as a kid that seemed perfectly fine because the meaning of it whizzed over my head.

Anyway, now I have an ending that I like better than a retrofitted Dean.

[dichroic]

Cheer up, there's always Barney, who saw was really was there and supported it in Valancy. In an age-appropriate way, if a bit rabid on secrecy. And who still took Valancy off to see the world.