Words for Your Companions: Five Vingettes of Walter Blythe

[ineptshieldmaid]

1. Honour

When you’re very young, you don’t realise that some things are shameful. Oh, you know, when they first call you ‘sissy Blythe’, that you are somehow cut down, made less. But you don’t quite know why, and you don’t know by what standard you are failing.

And so when Jem comes to your rescue, barrels into the middle of them, and

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid]

I did good?

Love you too. And Walter also, although his reality impairment is no good reason for putting you first. I mean, obviously you couldn't compete with Edmund, and he's fictional too.

[ineptshieldmaid]

I consider this an achievement, particularly considering that my thought patterns kept getting derailed by Neighbourhood Moron Music.

EXACTLY.

[tarimanveri]

Ooh, ever so much love for Walter! I really like the way you bookended this with the two second-person passages about courage - I think it kind of echoes the way L.M. Montgomery foreshadowed Walter's death throughout Anne of Ingleside and Rainbow Valley. Rainbow Valley has always been my least favorite of the series, but I ADORE what you've done with it here in making it into an Arthurian court. Of course Walter would be the bard! And aww, no Rilla, because she's too young. And Una! And I LOL'ed really hard at "Admiral Shakespeare Drew the Gallant, defender of the Seven Seas." Bertie Shakespeare Drew FTW!

[ineptshieldmaid]

Bertie Shakespeare doesn't get enough love, I feel.

Rainbow Valley might actually be my favourite - I know it's not particularly good, as a book, but I LOVE Faith Meredith. The Meredith kids are much better constructed characters than the Blythes, I think. And far more fun. :D

Thanks for reading :)