The Psyche of One Diana Barry

"It's extremely interesting," Anne told Marilla. "Each girl has to read her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls do pretty well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud. Jane's stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them." - Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 26: "The Story Club Is Formed"

This section really popped out at me during my most recent re-listen to the audio book. I've been convinced for years that Diana's mother is, by far, the most evil person in Avonlea (in all the books and movies)- so now I'm wondering how much of that has warped Diana and we the readers just don't see the worst of it. Did we miss out on scenes of Diana torturing small animals or lighting fires around the island? Is there a more devious reason for why Diana seemed to have such ease in adjusting to being a grown proper lady and wife after being Anne's partner in mischief for so long?


Also: Ruby Gillis, you minx you. Writing smut before anyone knew it would be popular.

"Would You Please Call Me Cordelia?" Terribly poetry based on Anne of Green Gables

Would you please call me Cordelia?
On the Lake of Shining Water.
The name Anne doesn't have the same allure.
Lady Fitzgerald- please call me Cordelia.

To despair is to turn your back on God
I'm in the deepest depths of that despair.
I've given myself pea green hair
This is all so tragical and odd.

Oh, Matthew. I'll never forget your kindness
Or stop missing your shyness
And when you bought me that puff-sleeved dress
It made me feel like not quite such a mess.

Is it raspberry cordial or current wine?
Now, Diana, we can't see each other again
Goodbye drunk bosom friend of mine.
Until I save the baby and my rep is on the mend.

Don't eat the plum pudding, Miss Stacy
I was pretending I was about to take vows,
The pudding sauce has a hint of mouse.
But I'm sure it would still be tasty.

Oh Matthew. I'll never forget your kindness.
How you taught me to confess,
And when you bought me that puff-sleeved dress,
It made me feel like not quite such a mess.

I'm sorry, Aunt Josephine, the fault is mine.
But soon you'll think me quite a lamb
You'll even host my stay for the big exam.
This Anne-Girl orphan gets by fine.


Elaine lay as though she smile.
My friends think they murdered me,
Gilbert, what's your water rescue fee?





*I found this among my hundreds of abandoned draft posts and was so amused (I clearly wrote this while heavily medicated and totally forgot it existed).

Yes, I Am Still Talking About Anne Shirley

As I mentioned before, when I'm feeling down I seek comfort in the greatest Canadian heroine of the 20th century: Anne Shirley.

Watching Anne of Green Gables every time it was on PBS (or, even better, on the two tape collection) was a major past-time in my family. My mother loved it. My sister loved it. My godmother was usually the person we borrowed the tapes from. And I had no chance but to love Anne of Green Gables, too.

I was young enough that when I did the majority of my watching of Anne of Green Gables (and the sequel, which at the time was called Anne of Avonlea but has since been retitled to Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel) the follow-up TV series, Road to Avonlea, was still airing on Disney. But Avonlea without Anne Shirley is like a day without sunshine.

So, as I was feeling pretty crappy this past 4th of July as well as feeling rather miffed at my fellow Americans, I decided that I'd watch Anne of Green Gables while drinking a tumbler of Mexican tequila mixed with German cherries and cherry juice. And then I kept watching as the weekend went by. There is very little on television at this time of year, so why not just keep re-watching Anne of Green Gables?

And then I pulled out the old battered copies that my mother had received as a child in the 1950s. With artwork depicting a slender and sleek redheaded woman that looks nothing like Megan Follows and also nothing like any early 20th century Canadian girl I've ever imagined.

The books were a bit of a letdown, the first time I started thumbing through them. I've seen the tv specials so many times in my life- I remember when I used to also get scared when Diana was helping the limping Anne through the woods and Anne would start talking about the ghosts they imagined living there. That's how young I was the first, oh, dozen or so times I watched the specials. So, to go back as an adult and realize that Montgomery's writing isn't exactly the greatest was a little startling. The books are decent enough- it's not like they're terrible, but they're easy reads with a lot of flowery writing. Similar to Little Women, in some respects. There's very little action, however, with a lot of talking and I've come to realize that they're much better when being read outloud. As otherwise I'll just start to glaze over from the plethora of new names and silly little conversations that don't read in my head nearly as entertainingly as Dear Lucy Maud intended them to be.

So, that's how I spent a whole sick day from work this week- listening to the audiobook of Anne of the Island, only to realize that there's no audio version for Anne of Windy Poplars (at least not one available on Audible, iTunes, or even Librivox). It's a little intriguing to realize what was grabbed from Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and Anne of Windy Poplars to make the second television movie and what was kept. There's a rather heart-breaking death in Island that was completely ignored, but I wonder if it would've been worth including. Possibly not The twins, Davy and Dora, were pretty much completely removed and I can't really blame them (although, they did end up on the tv show towards the end). Minnie May Barry ends up basically taking Davy's place.

Thankfully, they also removed most of the proposals Anne received while at university. The girl has FIVE proposals by the summer she graduates. FIVE. And only one repeat customer!

For what it's worth, the second special is still good but not nearly as good as the original. I would've liked it more if they kept the story in Avonlea or at least on the island. I don't care for all that prep school meangirls nonsense. I would've preferred to see Anne going to her birth place and maybe a bit of Stella and Aunt Jimsie or Miss Lavender and more Marilla and Rachel than we were given. And having Gilbert as a friend for a bit before the whole weird distance-y mooning deal. However, I do love watching Colleen Dewhirst's scenes and trying to guess if she was wearing jeans under her dress or not (apparently, she was at times, I can't blame her!).

"Hello, John Blythe. I'm totally wearing jeans under this dress- want a peek?"

And, of course, the second TV special gets extra points for including not one but TWO members of the Kids in the Hall.

I think the thing that really gets me about the Anne of Green Gables tv specials is that they has no right being as good as they are. If you've ever had the misfortune to see the animated version, you know how terrible it can get. In the animated version, you don't end up loving Anne. You end up wanting to smack her and then kill her, she's so disgustingly ignorantly upbeat.

But Megan Follows has such an amazingly perfect performance in the 1985 special that never makes Anne's flights of fancy sound saccharine and one-dimensional. Anne Shirley may be an optimist and a romantic- but Megan Follows knew as a teenager to play Anne as someone that is trying to convince herself that everything is okay. She knew that the only way an orphan could keep her head up and stay as determined as Anne did was to use her fantasies for escape and for courage.

I think my favorite moment is when Miss Stacy comes over for dinner. Because normally I hate the type of moments like that one. Anne discovers a dead mouse in the sauce for the pudding but, before she can both remove the mouse and fully confess to having forgotten to cover the sauce to prevent that, a comedy of errors results in the sauce being served to everyone for dessert. Then, just as her treasured teacher is about to take a spoonful of cream with a hint of dead mouse- Anne shouts "PLEASE DON'T EAT IT MISS STACY!" and startles everyone into a near heart-attack. She then confesses about the mouse, apologizes for her faults and then, to her surprise, Marilla and Miss Stacy start to laugh heartily at Anne's drama. It's as they laugh that Megan Follows has one of her best moments- Anne struggling to understand her emotions- embarrassment, relief, confusion, and a little bit of weariness at not finding the moment funny despite how much everyone (well, you can't tell if Matthew is in on it) is laughing. It's perfect.

Anne was such a good character to get to know as a young girl. I was never one to "pretend out loud" but I felt like I got to by proxy via watching Anne. As a kid (and, well, as an adult) I was prone to speak flowery a little too often and wrote more than my fair share of bad poetry (at one point, I wrote a freeverse poem for each of the girls in my little middle school clique. All of them pouring my heart and soul into how much I appreciated each girl for her uniqueness. Thankfully, I never showed them to those girls.). Anne got that. Anne was that. Anne was the safe knowledge that it's okay to be the girl that's reading and walking at the same time. Anne was the comfort that it was okay to not yet be interested in boys, despite your friends being completely obsessed with boys. Anne was the distance needed to see that when a parent yells at you, it's often out of fear or worry rather than hatred. Anne was the dream that you don't have to go only as far as people think you will go.

And, most importantly, Anne was the realization that friendships, not romances, are the strongest and most emotional relationships you will have outside of family.

Sadly, the roommate does not share my love of The Anne-Girl yet. Mostly because she has never seen any of it. I will fix that, eventually.

Oh, and you might've realized I didn't bring up the third special. Because there was no third special. Don't be ridiculous. I also tend to feel that Annes House of Dreams and all later books are too boring, though.

Pretty Girls in Puff Sleeves

So, you've seen that Dustin Hoffman clip that's been circulating online, right? If not, here it is.

Now let's talk about that. Because the topic is one that people don't like to talk about. About how a woman's value still rests on her beauty as a major factor. A man can be as fucking grossly ugly as possible, but if he's funny? If he's smart? If he's rich? His worth will always be higher than a woman with the same factors.

Hell, that's sort of where the "Invisible" part of this blog's title comes from. Because some days I do feel that because I'm not attractive enough looking, I am essentially invisible. And how sometimes I'd rather just remain invisible than be seen for what I physically am. I can talk "ra-ra-feminism" all I want, but I still struggle more than I walk the walk. I do still have image issues and self-esteem problems like everyone else. Like what Dustin Hoffman realized when he discovered how lucky he was to be born a man and therefore his looks barely mattered- even as an actor. Everyone knows Dustin Hoffman is tiny and has a big nose but it never slowed down his career one inch because he's a man and that doesn't matter then.

I've only recently realized that this underlying fact might be why Anne of Green Gables is often my default comfort story.

People spend so much time making sure to tell Anne that she's worthless- saying that just by being an orphan she's not worth the trouble ("Anne Shirley is a conniving manipulative child, she's pulled the wool over your eyes!") saying that by not being a boy she isn't worth adopting ("You don't want me because I'm not a boy?"), saying that her red hair and freckles are ugly ("Couldn't you send her back?/Her looks are certainly nothing to consider/ she's terribly skinny and homely/ Her hair's a red as carrots" all said in seconds by Rachel Lynde) saying that because she has a temper she isn't worth giving a chance ("That's the kind that puts strychnine in the well!"), saying that he imagination and dramatic ways are silly ("I can't imagine how I let that child worm her way into my affections), and so on.

And she just takes it all and fucking trucks on until everyone is in love with her.

Until they realize how smart she is ("You're a credit to us all and we're all proud of you."). Until they realize how sweet she is ("I thought Marilla Cuthbert was an old fool when I heard she adopted a little orphan girl. Now I see now which of us was the old fool!). Until they realize how talented she is ("After standing first at Queens, you can do no wrong in this community!"). Until they realize that she's going to be able to do things and go further than all the "proper" girls in Avonlea ("Matthew and I are both proud of her. She has the talent to make something of herself.").

And then, suddenly, she's beautiful in their eyes.

Of course, she was beautiful all along anyway. Megan Follows is no slouch and the illustrations on my old copies of the books are all lovely looking redheaded women, too. But I've always adored redheaded women.

I guess I just don't understand beauty. I've always thought my older sister was beautiful and envied her. Her athletic and properly shaped body. Her thick light brown hair that wasn't so dark that hairstyles got lost in it. Her freckles. Her graceful way of dancing and moving. Hell, even the shape of her smile. Everything about her that we didn't share in common, I envied. Wishing and hoping for the day where I'd magically wake up to look like her.

But I'll never forget being about twelve and having my mother tell me that she never really felt my sister was beautiful. And then continued the thought to tell me that I was beautiful. It just left me perplexed. What made her feel the need to say either thing? Was it that I looked more like both my mom and my dad than their other daughter and it was some weird genetic thing? Did she worry that my self-esteem was low and think that saying that would help? She told me that while I was an awkward greasy chubby twelve year old. Then again, my mother was an unbalanced bi-polar mess at the time- so I really shouldn't be trying to figure out what was going on in her head.

But then, years later, I remember listening to my sister and my brother-in-law discuss how they needed to find a cute girl to hand out fliers for a club event they were promoting. I suggested a mutual friend that was extremely social and they both went, "Weeeeell, she's kind of ugly." I stared at them as if they had said, "Weeeeeell, she's got that third eye in her nose that freaks people out." I still would never classify her as "ugly". Not even close. I can't understand why they were both so quick to say she was not pretty enough. This is the type of girl that can make friends without speaking the same language. She has shining eyes and a great smile. She's fit and wears great clothes and jewelry. She wears maybe a little bit too much make-up but that's perfect for a club. I can't understand what makes her ugly in their eyes.

Then again, up until I was about fourteen, I was totally with Anne Shirley on her love of puff sleeves, so... what do I know?

I think the main issue now is just that her hair wasn't yet big enough? Also: it's very "I'm a tea cozy"-esque.

Post-C2E2 Regrouping and Conference Recovery

As my previous two posts might've suggested, C2E2 was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Possibly just too many people. Too big of a crowd. And the fact that I couldn't turn my neck to the left for most of Saturday.

Oh, and the CTA not putting up signs earlier about how they were shutting down the Wells Street bridge as of Friday night. Thanks. That made us a littler crankier than usual.

On some less pop culture-y notes, I'm just going to do a general post-convention wrap up. My job requires me to work at a handful of conferences at convention centers every year and I've gotten so I have a bit of a recovering process when it comes to them.

1) Hydration. Conference centers are very drying. McCormick Place is actually one of the better centers at keeping this from being a problem, though. But it still isn't that great. Also, I was fasting on Friday (I had blood tests done right before walking down the street to hop on the con shuttle) which also resulted in me just not taking much of anything in until later in the day, since water was getting boring fast.

2) Washing the convention grime off of you. This is especially important with comic conventions, folks. ReedPop tried their best to get the word out there to folks that two of the basic steps for going to a con are showering and deodorant but it's not going to reach everyone and those of us that did shower then also end up smelling like the non-showering folks anyway. I was dead on my feet Saturday night but there was no way I was going to bed without at least washing off all the excessive make-up, pollution from my face and plopping on a gentle over-night clarifying mask. I then spent most of Sunday scrubbing and moisturizing every bit of me down to rubbing coconut oil into my toe nails. I started Sunday with a shower and then also ended it with a shower.

When I have work conferences, this is still a must due to how active I am (usually running all over the place all day when no one else is) and end up doing a coconut oil and sugar scrub in the hotel each night to refresh myself.

3) Rest. Maybe you don't need this one as much as I do. But I couldn't turn my neck to the left for most of Saturday, though, and my face was way too tired to emote again for a couple days. Add in the walking to public transportation and either standing in crowded spaces or sitting in crowded spaces- I need to just spend a day in bed and spread out (as much as the cat would let me, that is) and rub out some sore muscles.

4) Space. Holy mother, I need space from people. My senses needed to de-activate a little. I may have spent it listening to Things You Missed in History Class episodes and reading Anne of Green Gables.

Close Your Eyes and Think Of Anne Shirley

"I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond." - Anne Shirley, Chapter 13 of Anne of Green Gables

I possibly think of Anne of Green Gables too often. If there is such a thing. The above quote is not especially important in the grand scheme of things or even the grand scheme of the fictional life of Anne Shirley, but it's one that bounces in and out of my head with some amount of frequency. And has nothing to do with the picture I've chosen from the classic TV special, other than how I always was amused with the thought that Marilla decided to give Anne some fringe when she had to cut the green out of her hair.

Of course, I think of Anne's quote about diamons when I see almost any precious stones matched with their proper names for the first time. I've never been one to really pay attention to them, as I like glass pearls for my jewelry and my birthstone is the color of B12-infused urine (also known as "topaz"). So, the one year I went to the Gem Show in Tucson and found myself surrounded with little (and gigantic) stones I was unfamiliar with, Megan Follows's voice saying that line was ringing through my head all day.

But it's not just that. Anne Shirley, although she is fictional, is speaking for readers in that moment. Those of us that grew up with our noses in books and knew the meaning of words we had never heard outloud. Knew of hundreds and thousands of items outside our daily lives only by the beautiful twists of words an author had used to describe those items. And where the author failed to describe an item enough- either for assume the audience would know or to be vague enough to let the reader fill in their own gaps- images still appeared in our heads. Forming an alternate reality for each reader, where the spaces were filled with details that had to come from their specific history and life.

Colin Shepherd has a piece in The New Yorker today about a similar issue. Except instead of diamonds not living up to expectations, he writes of the Met and how it's missing something he desperately wanted, an item of mythology in his childhood: the bed that Claudia picked out for sleeping in when she and her brother ran away to live in the Met in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The Met no longer has that specific bed on display and it's resulted in the museum becoming a sore spot for Shepherd, for crushing his hopes of one day being able to see that same bed that Claudia described.

And, in this era of visual adaptations of everything, the quote also comes to mind almost every time a beloved book is adapted into film, television, comic book, ect and what-have-you. It came to mind, most awkwardly, when a portion of Hunger Games fans reacted not-so-well to finding out that they had managed to just not realize that Rue was black when they read the books and then made racist fools of themselves for complaining about the casting of Amandla Stenberg.

But, even so, their complaints would not have suddenly become justified if it had turned out that Rue had at some point been described as having light skin. Because it's a little ridiculous that something like the Hunger Games in those books, which specifically pick two random kids from each of the districts in what used to be North America, would have that many caucasian-y looking kids selected. But... whatever. That's an argument for another day.

The point being: that twelve-year-old Anne Shirley just assumed that diamonds, the beautiful rare stone that was mentioned so much in stories, would be purple. Because that was what was beautiful to her. And that realizing that diamonds were not purple made her feel like her world fell appart for a day. Maybe she didn't realize exactly why, and maybe I'm reading too much into Lucy Maud Montgomery's writing, but in more recent years that moment has struck me as Anne realizing that what she values isn't eye-to-eye with what the world at large seems to value. And she was scared and sad to realize that.

It's like the moment where you realize that racists still do really exist. Or, say, the moment you realize that some small minded person was so offended that a teacher grieving the death of her mother happened to give another woman's name as her partner in the obituary that the small-minded person wrote to the teacher's Catholic school and got her fired after 19 years of employment. And that small-minded person and the school feel that they can rationalize their spiteful hateful decisions by claiming that loving the people you love falls under "immorality or serious unethical conduct" yet sending a hateful letter to get someone innocent fired from their job- that's not also immoral or seriously unethical? I know the parent is not an employee of the school, but they should be ashamed of themselves.

That people like that still exist... it's like discovering diamonds aren't purple.

To end on a less "gah, people are awful" note: The Canadians are planning on making a 13-part new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. Your mileage may vary to the point of still thinking that counts as "gah, people are awful". But... hey, there are worse things.

This post went in a million directions I didn't intend to originally send it in.