somethingboutdarcy

[somethingboutdarcy]

“And Rilla, I’m not afraid. When you hear the news, remember that. I’ve won my own freedom here–freedom from all fear. I shall never be afraid of anything again–not of death–nor of life, if after all, I am to go on living. And life, I think, would be the harder of the two to face–for it could never be beautiful for me again. There would always be such horrible things to remember–things that would make life ugly and painful always for me. I could never forget them. But whether it’s life or death, I’m not afraid, Rilla-my-Rilla, and I am not sorry that I came.”

— Part of Walter’s letter he wrote to Rilla while in the war in Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery

[somethingboutdarcy]

'do this merlin!' 'do

that merlin!' and

when i'm not running

around after arthur,

i'm doing chores for

you, and when i'm not

doing that i'm fulfilling

my 'destiny'. do you

know how many times

i've saved arthur's life?

i've lost count. do i

get any thanks? no-

[somethingboutdarcy]

I just wish for one (1) period drama to not show a corset slicing a woman in half with its boning and making her bleed THAT WAS NOT THE PURPOSE OF A CORSET.

First, corsets were not worn in direct contact with the skin, you are supposed to wear a shift under it.

Second, corsets and stays were not meant to make your waist look smaller by breaking your ribs and leaving you out of breath. People used paddings, hoop skirts, and things of that sort to achieve the desirable silhouette. Corsets were a support, and a foundation to make the clothes sit smoother. Cases of tightlacing were not so common.

Third and final point, fashion was one of the only ways for women to express themselves, through colors, accessories, ecc. Tight corsets and latest fashions were often associated with feminist movements and greatly frowned upon by a large part of society.

Y'all have plenty of ways to tell women were mistreated in the past, don't just rely on old misconceptions, please.

[somethingboutdarcy]

the Bridgertons + sibling dynamics per episode 1x03, “Art of the Swoon” [all]

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Colin Bridgerton is an entire mood

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they are filming all the period dramas in that one room with that hugeass painting. are they part of some cult or what

[somethingboutdarcy]

Reign Liveblog - Season 1 episodes 13, 14, 15 & 16

Finally someone made them take out that corny narrator in the intro.

Not Catherine planning her own execution 😭 the only bearable character on this show I swear.

What

They’re going to execute her in the THRONE ROOM? The budget was really short for this one huh.

I’m going to start a petition for Nostradamus to stop speaking like that.

Not Bash showing his Thomas Culpeper side 😳

Wait they changed the story to Mary I naming Mary as her successor?? That don’t make no sense luv.

Bash’s pain is my happiness 😊😊😊

Ohhhhh the Mary I thing was fake my bad y’all

They’re making Bash watch Mary and Francis have s3x WHAT THE HELL 😭 ENOUGH OF THIS ✋

Did they really have people watch the consummation of the marriage? I thought they stopped doing that before the 1550s at least.

Did she just say that man’s name is CARROT?

My sleep paralysis demon

Lola’s pregnant isn’t she. Can these people just have one minute of happiness. 😐

She did not just fall out of a three story window while they were f$cking... goodbye. How do you even THINK of that.

This show can’t decided if it’s a teen drama or a horror slasher

I can’t believe I thought we were finally going to be free of Bash. He was exiled from court yet he’s STILL HERE.

THEYRE GONNA STICK THAT RUSTY TOOL IN- nvm.

These people move on so fast wtf do they even have souls

Why would he risk doing it in front of a window again?? DOES THIS MAN HAVE A FETISH

I’m confused. So, I think what they’re trying to say is that since Clarissa is actually still alive, Francis’ fate hasn’t changed. BUT if she was never dead in the first place, why DID Nostradamus’ visions change?? I need answers.

I was joking when I said Henry had a fetish... my dumbass spoke it into existence.

Shut up Francis

This show has me so paranoid, every time someone gives another person a drink or food I automatically think it’s poisoned.

Why are there so many candles lit??? One wrong move and that whole room is on fire.

Not them sacrificing Thomas Culpeper 😭😭 nobody wants this man

I can’t believe out of all the relationships in this show I’m shipping Olivia and Nostradamus 😐

Hold up is that the girl from Finding Carter??? Girl you can do better than this. 😭

Can’t believe I’m watching the 16th century French court dance to Riptide.

This show is on crack

This scene reads very much like the scene in AHS where Sarah Paulson’s like “I put arsenic in the wine... and the pasta.”

WHY DID THEY JUST ZOOM IN ON HENRYS BARE FEET?? EXTREMELY UNNECESSARY

[somethingboutdarcy]

Ok but can we just take a moment to appreciate that moment in Rilla of Ingleside when Susan chased Mr. Pryor (A.K.A Whiskers-on-the-moon) out of Ingleside brandishing a steaming iron pot after he proposed to her??

[somethingboutdarcy]

“There was no crowd at the Glen Station the next morning to see Walter off. It was becoming a commonplace for a khaki-clad boy to board that early morning train after his last leave. Besides his own, only the Manse folk were there, and Mary Vance. Mary had sent her Miller off the week before, with a determined grin, and now considered herself entitled to give an expert opinion on how such partings should be conducted. “The main thing is to smile and act as if nothing was happening,” she informed the Ingleside group. “The boys all hate the sob act like poison. Miller told me I wasn’t to come near the station if I couldn’t keep from bawling. So I got through with my crying beforehand, and at the last, I said to him, ‘Good luck, Miller, and if you come back you’ll find I haven’t changed any, and if you don’t come back I’ll always be proud you went, and in any case don’t fall in love with a French girl.’ Miller swore he wouldn’t, but you never can tell about those fascinating foreign hussies. Anyhow, the last sight he had of me I was smiling to my limit. Gee, all the rest of the day my face felt as if it had been starched and ironed into a smile.” In spite of Mary’s advice and example Mrs. Blythe, who had sent Jem off with a smile, could not quite manage one for Walter. But at least no one cried. Dog Monday came out of his lair in the shipping-shed and sat down close to Walter, thumping his tail vigorously on the boards of the platform whenever Walter spoke to him, and looking up with confident eyes, as if to say, “I know you’ll find Jem and bring him back to me.” “So long, old fellow,” said Carl Meredith cheerfully, when the good-byes had to be said. “Tell them over there to keep their spirits up—I am coming along presently.” “Me too,” said Shirley laconically, proffering a brown paw. Susan heard him and her face turned very grey. Una shook hands quietly, looking at him with wistful, sorrowful, dark-blue eyes. But then Una’s eyes had always been wistful. Walter bent his handsome blackhead in its khaki cap and kissed her with the warm, comradely kiss of a brother. He had never kissed her before, and for a fleeting moment, Una’s face betrayed her, if anyone had noticed. But nobody did; the conductor was shouting “all aboard”; everybody was trying to look very cheerful. Walter turned to Rilla; she held his hands and looked up at him. She would not see him again until the day broke and the shadows vanished—and she knew not if that daybreak would be on this side of the grave or beyond it. “Good-bye,” she said. On her lips it lost all the bitterness it had won through the ages of parting and bore instead all the sweetness of the old loves of all the women who had ever loved and prayed for the beloved. “Write me often and bring Jims up faithfully, according to the gospel of Morgan,” Walter said lightly, having said all his serious things the night before in Rainbow Valley. But at the last moment, he took her face between his hands and looked deep into her gallant eyes. “God bless you, Rilla-my-Rilla,” he said softly and tenderly. After all, it was not a hard thing to fight for a land that bore daughters like this. He stood on the rear platform and waved to them as the train pulled out. Rilla was standing by herself, but Una Meredith came to her and the two girls who loved him most stood together and held each other’s cold hands as the train rounded the curve of the wooded hill. Rilla spent an hour in Rainbow Valley that morning about which she never said a word to anyone; she did not even write in her diary about it; when it was over she went home and made rompers for Jims. In the evening she went to a Junior Red Cross committee meeting and was severely businesslike. “You would never suppose,” said Irene Howard to Olive Kirk afterwards, “that Walter had left for the front only this morning. But some people really have no depth of feeling. I often wish I could take things as lightly as Rilla Blythe.””

— Rilla of Ingleside - Chapter XV - THE VALLEY OF DECISION

[somethingboutdarcy]

“The step was half sunk into the earth and mint grew thickly about and over its edge. Often crushed by so many passing feet it gave out its essence freely, and the spicy odour hung round them like a soundless, invisible benediction. Ken looked up at Rilla, whose hair was shining in the moonlight and whose eyes were pools of allurement. All at once he felt sure there was nothing in that gossip about Fred Arnold. ‘Rilla,’ he said in a sudden, intense whisper, 'you are the sweetest thing.’ Rilla flushed and looked at Susan. Ken looked, too, and saw that Susan’s back was turned. He put his arm about Rilla and kissed her. It was the first time Rilla had ever been kissed. She thought perhaps she ought to resent it but she didn’t. Instead, she glanced timidly into Kenneth’s seeking eyes and her glance was a kiss. 'Rilla-my-Rilla,’ said Ken, 'will you promise that you won’t let anyone else kiss you until I come back?’ 'Yes,’ said Rilla, trembling and thrilling. Susan was turning round. Ken loosened his hold and stepped to the walk. 'Good-bye,’ he said casually. Rilla heard herself saying it just as casually. She stood and watched him down the walk, out of the gate, and down the road. When the fir wood hid him from her sight she suddenly said 'Oh,’ in a choked way and ran down to the gate, sweet blossomy things catching at her skirts as she ran. Leaning over the gate she saw Kenneth walking briskly down the road, over the bars of tree shadows and moonlight, his tall, erect figure grey in the white radiance. As he reached the turn he stopped and looked back and saw her standing amid the tall white lilies by the gate. He waved his hand—she waved hers—he was gone around the turn.”

— L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

[somethingboutdarcy]

Day 5: Still trying to forget that Walter is dead. Stupid book.

[somethingboutdarcy]

Anne of Green Gables

was good, sure, but who’s going to have the balls to produce Rilla of Ingleside, the story of Anne’s daughter that’s set during WWI? It has romance, history, a very faithful little dog that always makes me cry, heartbreak, clairvoyance, Anne’s sarcastic housekeeper, and a jerk everyone calls Whisker On The Moon. 

[somethingboutdarcy]

Tbh, if we don't get AWAE renewed, I would love for someone to make a series based off Rilla of Ingleside (I just finished it today and I loved it)

[somethingboutdarcy]

(Rilla of Ingleside spoilers ahead)

Walter Blythe's death in the First World War symbolizes the death of the old, "romantic" world (which he himself treasured) through the ravaging of Europe and the creation of a Lost Generation of writers traumatized by the war and unable to experience the hope and joy of a young person in another time, whose writing reflects these influences (unlike Walter's before and even during the war). In this essay I will

[somethingboutdarcy]

Just give us a film adaptation of Rilla of Ingleside!! We deserve it. We need to see Anne and Gilbert’s children portrayed on screen, WW1 from Rilla’s point of view, we need to see Susan Baker, Miss Cornelia, the Merediths and the beautiful seaside of Glen St Mary. 

[somethingboutdarcy]

I restarted my teenage tradition of doing a reread of Rilla of Ingleside every year around Remembrance Day. It's unique in that way things have of being the Only One once you add enough adjectives to it, being:

Fictional

Canadian

Written by a contemporary

An account of women in WWI

I read it because it always hits a lot harder than battlefield memoirs - for so many reasons, I would never have gone to war, but I would absolutely have had my heart ripped out by those who did.

It's interesting, reading this book published a scant 5 years after the end of the war and written by someone who lived through it, to see which bits of the propaganda they still believed. Perhaps the fact that it was a woman writing, and not seeing the humanity of the others on that battlefield, accounts for some of the unquestioning fervour of its support for "king and country"; it talks about going to war in order to wipe evil off the earth, but only Walter seems even to partially understand that said evil didn't live in the hearts of the people getting blown to bits on the field.

It's interesting, too, reading it in the middle of a pandemic - there's no mention of the Spanish Flu, since the book ends right about when the war does, but... there's a lot of processing of that state of constant tension. The feeling that everyone, consuming the news obsessively, is turning into a general/epidemiologist, without any of the real expertise that entails or any of its ability to help the situation you find yourself in. And of course, it comes back again and again to the contrast between doing your chores and waiting for earth-shattering news to once again blow your world apart without changing any of its particulars.

I don't know that it helps, to know that this isn't the first or only time everyone has had these exact feelings? But L. M. Montgomery has always had a path to my soul and in some way perhaps it's cathartic to get my heart ripped out for the sake of someone fictional.

[somethingboutdarcy]

“‘Yeth,’ said Rilla.”

— L.M. Montgomery, from Rilla of Ingleside