Comments | valancystar: Dear Yuletide Writer

valancystar

Dear Yuletide Writer

Oct 14, 2013 21:31

Dear Yuletide writer,

Edited on 21st October to fix HTML, apparently I can't use LJ-cut rights after more than 10 years on LJ. Now all my fandoms show. Last ight I had all these great ideas about what edits I should make to this letter, but now I can't remember any of them... Could be they werne't so great, of course. I did add a little bit to the ( Read more... )

dear yuletide writer, yuletide

Comments 4

evelyn_b October 20 2013, 21:50:16 UTC

You are requesting Dora fic and have a Valancy-based username,

therefore

I love you

that is all.

Seriously, I love LM Montgomery way more than most people, but the way she treats the characters she's decided are uninteresting breaks my heart. Dora especially because she's SO YOUNG and the narrator never gives her a chance.

anyway, just Dear Author stalking; don't mind me.

valancystar October 23 2013, 06:53:05 UTC

Thanks for your comment! And sorry I took a while to reply, I've been exhausted like crazy, took me ages to even get my letter up...

It's always so nice to find someone else who agrees with me on this. It always bothered me how she treated Dora especially, because she's just a child and doesn't get a chance to show anything of herself - she hardly has any spoken lines most of the time, we're only supposed to trust the narrator that she's so incredibly boring, and Davy's harsh treatment of her really gets downplayed because he's oh-so-mischievously-lovable. I adore L.M. Montgomery, but this has always bothered me especially because with other characters she can be so good at showing how there's a lot more to them than how it seems at first, and how incredibly complex people can be. Maybe you can kind of tell Anne of Avonlea is only her second novel and she wasn't particularly inspired to write a sequel at that point... But she didn't try to fix it in the later books either. And yeah, she can be kind of unforgiving towards anyone she ( ... )

evelyn_b October 23 2013, 14:52:14 UTC

Yeah, she's really inconsistent about how much sympathy she's willing to dole out and to whom. I have many feelings about that which maybe I should wait until a non-work day to explore. . . :-/

Valancy and Dora are really two sides of the same coin, aren't they? Only Dora planned her escape so neatly that none of the Cuthbert-Blythe connection ever knew there was anything to be shocked about. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Seriously, The Blue Castle is so good, even the ridiculous ending where everything turns out to be true at once. I want to make 100 movies out of it and watch them all back to back. And it's one of the few LMM books where modernity is liberating and fun and can be negotiated on the heroine's own terms instead of being represented by unreliable ocean liners and Cousin Andrew ruining your farm. And Valancy is just the best. :D

valancystar October 25 2013, 05:29:32 UTC

If you want to write our your feelings about that, I'll be the most interested to read them whenever you get around to it! I pretty much grew up with her books and I adore her, but at the same time, frustrations!

And ooh, I like your idea for Dora! If nobody writes me that scenario for Yuletide, maybe I'll explore the idea myself. ;-)

I think The Blue Castle gets away with the perfection of its ending more easily than many other stories would get away with such an ending, because it still has humour and Personal Growth and such in it. I kind of want to know what happens to Olive at the end of it, though - she's starting to seem decidedly peevish at the fiancé who makes her wait for so long. :-P And that's an interesting point about modernity, I hadn't even though of that in particular, but you're right that it's the only book where modernity is liberating rather than an enemy! I totally understand why LMM had an issue with the changes brought into the world (hers and the world in general) by the early 20th century and especially by ( ... )