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Title: Changed impressions Post by Tassie_Ellen on Nov 16th, 2003, 1:02am Now before you get too excited - or not - this isn't actually a drabble; rather, a comment on the impressions left by reading 'em! I am loving all the creativeness (is that a word?) on this part of the board, and wish I could contribute myself...but I was reading "Challenges..." this morning, the bit about Mary Lou following in Jo's footsteps as one of the best HG's and having a great gift for understanding, etc (can't remember the exact place, but it's at the beginning of a chapter close to the end) and thinking 'ah, but just LOOK how she turned out!'. Then I realised that I was harking back to ML at Oxford :o Am I the only person being affected in this way? I'm finding that some of the drabbles, especially the SCS ones, are colouring my reading of the series proper. Just goes to show how good the characterisations are, and how realistic the situations in which the characters find themselves. *thank you all* |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Vikki on Nov 16th, 2003, 1:06am I have to confess that I haven't actually read any CS since I started reading drabbles! :-[ I'm a little worried about how will effect my impressions when I do read them again! :-/ Not that I don't love the drabbles of course..... |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by KB on Nov 16th, 2003, 1:08am I have to admit that it's affected me that way, yes. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lisa_T on Nov 16th, 2003, 1:15am *g* It affects me when I'm writing. I have trouble differentiating between real Cs, Real CS, other drabbles, fun drabbles, and what I'm supposed to be doing myself!* BTW, did anyone see the article in today's 'Weekend' with the Daily Mail about Dr Who being revived? I was snickering the whole time to myself! Expecially the bit about the daleks and the cybermen! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lesley on Nov 16th, 2003, 10:01am Have to agree - I find that some of the drabbles have so coloured my perception that I consider they are accurate - then if I read CS itself I find I'm comparing it to the stories read on the board - and finding that the CBB stories win! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by KB on Nov 16th, 2003, 10:07am *lol* So the school is populated by purple llamas and blue chihuahuas, is it, Lesley? ;) :D ;D |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lesley on Nov 16th, 2003, 10:17am *AHEM! I would be seriously affronted if it wasn't that I found that suggestion really funny - have idea of Hilda riding down corridor on purple llama! 8oo* Feel that certain of the SCS threads have coloured my perception - esp 'Fights' 'Tension' 'ML at Oxford' 'Con' 'Matey' as well as some of shorter ones 'Grizel' and 'Staff/Thekla' Also Real CS even though that's my own fault - and couldn't be classed as either SCS or FCS! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lisa on Nov 16th, 2003, 10:22am Yes, I find myself looking for clues in real CS between Nancy & Kathie, following 'An Alternative Romance'! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 16th, 2003, 1:07pm on 11/16/03 at 10:22:56, Lisa wrote:
Has anyone else read 'A World of Girls' by Rosemary somebody? There is a whole section dedicated to poor old Nancy and Kathy!! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by catherine on Nov 16th, 2003, 1:34pm What does it say, Emma? Enlighten us!! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 16th, 2003, 4:41pm When I go home tomorrow I'll type up the relevant section and post it on this board. I remember it looking at the scene in Challenge where Kathie collapses and Nancy comes to her rescue. |
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Title: !Re: Changed impressions Post by Marianne on Nov 16th, 2003, 5:27pm Yes, glad its not just me!!! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by KB on Nov 17th, 2003, 12:22am on 11/16/03 at 10:17:26, Lesley wrote:
Glad I amused you anyway, Lesley! ;) |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Jennie on Nov 17th, 2003, 12:26pm I'm glad I'm not the only one being affected by the drabbles. I've started re-reading the books to get me back on track, with any luck. The problem is that I've only got to log onto here, and it all gets affected again. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 17th, 2003, 1:42pm Right, I'm now going to post the relevant section from the 'A World of Girls' book on Kathy and Nancy. I'm sorry if it offends anyone and mods, feel free to remove it!! None of this stuff is my opinion and the censor will probably edit the text!! *********************************************************** Of all our authors, Elinor Brent-Dyer was uniquely skilled in depicting schoolmistresses. A teacher herself, she had an insider's insight into their ways and feelings, and never hesitated in her stories to show us the mistresses from their own point of view as well as through the eyes of their pupils something rarely attempted by Elsie Oxenham or Dorita Fairlie Bruce, for example. In most of her Chalet books there is a chapter or two where the reader is invited to relax with the staff off-duty in their common room, or to join them in private deliberations over school affairs, or even to take their part in an interaction with a girl or girls. Across a series of nearly 60 books we get to know some of the long-serving staff such as Miss Wilson and Miss Annersley pretty well. We know what they look like, their histories, temperaments, idiosyncrasies. We know where their emotional ties lie and how these change over the years. There is good reason to believe that the presentation of adults in girls' school stories is more important than that of girls because it offers truly alternative role models for readers. Girls cannot usually choose whether or not to go to boarding school and live like their storybook heroines, but they may have some choice about their future careers and lifestyles. By depicting adult women outside marriage in an attractive light, school story writers may provide an alternative vision for girl readers. Girls may learn that not only is it possible to find fulfillment in careers but that spinsterhood does not necessarily leave a woman in an emotional vacuum; she may find not only companionship in the women around her, but also love. It is true that Miss Wilson (in Gay from China, 1944) feels it necessary to compare her situation with that of Jo, a wife and mother, almost as if the former is a mere substitute for the latter. But a later friendship between two Chalet School mistresses is presented with no such apology. The relationship of Nancy Wilmot, maths mistress at the school from the thirtieth title, and Kathie Ferrars, her assistant from the thirty-seventh, runs as a constant theme through all the remaining books in the series. It is accepted, even taken for granted by both staff and students. Miss Wilmot and Miss Ferrars are a fixture, a certainty, in these pages; it is inconceivable that either of them should ever marry or leave the school. In this sense their relationship represents an interesting development on Miss Wilson's story; Miss Wilmot and Miss Ferrars belong to a younger generation (Miss Wilson actually taught Miss Wilmot when she was a pupil at the school) and, surprisingly, for the books in which their story unfolds were published in the 1950s and 1960s, theirs is the more explicit partnership. Because it features always in the background of the plot, one could easily miss the significance of this relationship; yet I would argue that its steady development and constant presence through successive books impart a message which, though subliminal, makes its point as effectively as if it formed the main focus – perhaps more so. For that reason I think it worth spending some time here examining the relationship as it emerges and grows within the last 22 books in the Chalet School series. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 17th, 2003, 1:43pm Nancy Wilmot is one of a select group of teachers who are Old Girls of the school, though in her case it was for a very brief period when the school she attended across the lake in the Austrian Tyrol closed down and was taken over by the Chalet School. She was then in her final year, a prefect, described as plump, good-natured arid lazy. She detested maths and described herself as 'the world's worst dud at languages'. The war finds her in the WRENS but she subsequently graduates in, remarkably, maths, and even more remarkably, eventually returns to the Chalet School (where the ability to teach in three languages is a prerequisite) as its maths mistress in its first term in the Swiss Oberland. She is now described as 'plump' and 'pretty'; all traces of laziness seem to have gone, though she remains relaxed and cheerful. Kathie Ferrars arrives at the school two years later as The New Mistress at the Chalet School (1957). Fresh out of Oxford, she is about ten years younger than Nancy Wilmot, and is described as small, attractive though not pretty, with bobbed, brown hair. Her first friend at the school is the history mistress, Biddy O'Ryan; but Biddy is shortly to marry and leave. ('Oh!' It was all Kathie said, but she felt a sudden disappointment.') The friendship with Nancy Wilmot develops more slowly. When the prefects entertain the staff that first term, 'Kathie found herself making a threesome with Biddy O'Ryan and Nancy Wilmot.' Biddy and Nancy also start her off skiing before breakfast so that she should not appear a complete novice in front of the girls. By her second term at the school Kathie Ferrars has clearly been set up as Elinor Brent-Dyer's model teacher. She is already: a great favourite with the girls. . . . They liked her crisp way of dealing with them and, while they admired her and enjoyed the friendliness she showed them out of school hours, they remained in sufficient awe of her to take no liberties with her. . . . She was willing to listen to the girls' side of a question and they had always found her strictly just. The Chalet School specialises in mid-term expeditions to places of interest and Kathie is scheduled to take her own form, Intermediate V, to Solothurn. At the last minute Nancy joins her: her extra coaching has been cancelled because the pupil concerned has toothache, 'so I decided to make the most of it and come with you.' 'Oh, good!' Kathie Ferrars and Nancy Wilmot were very good friends, and it would certainly be more fun for the younger mistress to have one of her colleagues with her. Two books later the relationship is fully established: Kathie is described as Nancy's 'great friend and coadjutor'. This term Vb is off to Zermatt with Mademoiselle and Miss Ferrars for half-term. Nancy, whose plans to visit Biddy O'Ryan (now married and the mother of twins) have fallen through, asks if she can join them. Very properly she makes her request of Mademoiselle, who is the senior of the two; but she happens to be sitting next to Kathie. Brent-Dyer often uses conversations between members of staff as a device to further the plot through their comments on the girls. With increasing frequency in the Chalet School books these interchanges occur between Nancy Wilmot and Kathie Ferrars. Nancy remains placid and relaxed: she 'had the reputation of being one of the most easy-going mistresses imaginable, as a rule, though she could always pull in the reins when she felt like it. ' When Kathie is ground down by the responsibility of producing the Christmas play, Nancy is sympathetic and supportive: 'Hey, Ferrars, my love! Don't you want any Kaffee und Kuchen?' 'Nancy! How long have you been here staring at me?' 'Oh, about two minutes. Come on and stop looking as if you had the cares of the world on your back!' But she engages seriously with the problem, which concerns two of the girls who refuse to act properly in one scene. 'What's gone wrong with them?' 'I haven't a clue! 1 rather think,' Kathy [from now on she spells her name this way] said, stopping at the head of the stairs to lean against the banisters and look up at her big friend, 'that there's some sort of private feud going on there...' They discuss it, and Nancy advises her to 'give the whole thing a rest till next week and hope for the best.' |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 17th, 2003, 1:45pm And Nancy slung an arm round her friend's shoulders and ran her along the corridor to the Staff sitting-room where Kaffee und Kuchen was in full swing. She brought two cups of Mdlle's [sic] unsurpassable coffee and the plate of cakes over to the corner where Kathy Ferrars had subsided and then stuck into the conversation. . . Book by book, further details of the friendship come to light. The bedrooms of Kathy Ferrars and Nancy Wilmot, we are told, are at the same end of the staff corridor; in a later book we learn that the rooms adjoin. At every staff gathering, formal or informal, Kathy is to be found sitting beside Nancy 'as usual'. Always described as 'great friends', they are always together outside school hours, attending lectures in Basel on Friday evenings, leading the salvage operations when the school dinner is ruined by vandals, rescuing two girls and the school cat from the snow-covered roof. By the fifty-first book in the series they have bought a car together and go off together in it. Any ramble or half-term excursion worth recording is led by them jointly: 'Oh, good! We've got Willy and Ferry for staff. . . ' Something interesting is happening to their appearance, at least to Nancy's. From girlhood 'plump' and 'pretty', she is now 'big' and 'sturdy' and, it seems, increasingly masculine in demeanor. Suddenly she is six feet tall, with 'long arms' and 'powerful shoulders' - useful for rescuing girls and cats off roofs - and a dab hand with the lasso - useful for saving another girl's life by hauling her up a cliff. We learn that she grew up with five brothers who 'insisted I mustn't grow up a sissy'. This is in stark contrast to Kathy. 'The long and the short of it!' Margot Maynard giggles to her sister Con. Miss Wilmot was both tall and broad while Miss Ferrars was on a miniature scale. But there was more to it than that. Nancy Wilmot was fair with blue eyes and honey-coloured hair under her big hat. Kathy Ferrars was brown-eyed, brown-haired and brown skinned. Nancy was a placid, happy-go-lucky creature, though she could be as icily dignified as anyone when she chose. Kathy was quicker in movement, thought and temper. By the time this book appeared Brent-Dyer was not writing as skilfully as she had done in her prime, and her books made greater use of stock situations and characters. It may be that Miss Wilmot, who once had nothing of the masculine about her, became confused in Brent-Dyer's mind with other big characters like Tom Gay and Dickie Christy who are seen as having a masculine style to go with their masculine nicknames. Perhaps in linking her with Kathy Ferrars, Brent-Dyer felt the need to develop her into a butch counterpart to the smaller, younger woman. But this was surely not a conscious decision: Nancy keeps her feminine name and her prettiness. Meanwhile the relationship with Kathy develops and deepens. In the fifty-third book there is a 'monumental' row over a caricature of 'Ferry' on the blackboard, and 'Willy' is 'mad'. 'Oh, well, she had a cold coming,' Judy said tolerantly. 'A 'flu cold, too. I expect she was feeling upset anyhow and that caricature of Ferry was the last straw. She and Willy are great friends, you know. In the fifty-fifth book, Miss Annersley goes off on a tour with other headmistresses of schools around the world. Miss Wilmot is appointed to act in her place for the term. At the beginning Nancy's cool, relaxed manner deserts her and, unlike the headmistresses in practically every other school story, she is shown to be 'as nervous as she could be and was devoutly wishing that she had never agreed to take on this job'. 'I must have been out-of my mind when I agreed to it,' she complains to her 'bosom friend' Miss Ferrars. Kathy is deeply sympathetic: 'Poor old girl!' Later she gains confidence, and whenever she has to deal with school problems, her friend is there to talk things over with her. Soon after this, however, Kathy is rushed to hospital to have her appendix out and Nancy loses her support for the rest of the term. The incident where Kathy is struck down with a severe attack of appendicitis in front of her class is perhaps the most intimate testimony we have of the friendship, and for that reason worth recounting in detail. Nancy, happening to be 'striding down the corridor at that moment', hears a commotion in the classroom and enters to find her friend writhing and crying out with pain. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 17th, 2003, 1:47pm The Head was beside her at once. Waving the frightened girls back imperatively, she bent over her friend, asking, 'Oh, my dear, what's wrong?' She sends some of the girls to get help and dismisses the rest, but one, Victoria, stays in case she should need another messenger. Miss Ferrars was in severe pain and once her defences had slipped they had gone altogether. She was moaning at intervals and the Head's face when Victoria glanced at her was a revelation to that young woman. 'I - I'll just wait outside the door, Miss Wilmot,' she said. 'I can hear if you call.' She slipped away, leaving the door slightly ajar and Nancy Wilmot, along with her friend, thought no more about her. 'Kathy - Kathy darling!' she said. 'It's all right. Matey will be here in a sec, and the doctor, too.' She took one of Kathy Ferrars's slim hands in hers and was quite as frightened as the girls, the hands felt so weak. The next moment she gave a squawk, for a fresh pain shot through Kathy and her grip tightened until the signet ring Miss Wilmot always wore was cutting into her flesh. This is surely an unusual scene to find in any school story, let alone one written in the mid-1960s. It is unusual partly because it represents a very clear statement of love between two women. Although, as we have seen, Brent-Dyer often focuses on the staff, it is rare for their private dramas to be pushed to the fore like this, and rarer still for her to show any girls as privy to them. Fortunately, Kathy recovers from her operation, and after her eventual return to the school the relationship resumes its comfortable continuity. In the fifty-seventh book Nancy and Kathy go off to Zug and Zurich with Upper IV for the last half-term in the series. They have now been together for six years, and all the signs are that they will stay together, a settled pair in a community of women for the rest of their working lives. It is not my intention to question whether Brent-Dyer meant to portray Nancy Wilmot and Kathy Ferrars as lesbians; we cannot know this, and in any case it seems irrelevant. There are aspects of the relationship depicted which, if we were dealing with real people rather than characters in a novel, would tend to suggest it was sexual. It is, however, unlikely that even a sophisticated writer would deliberately depict a lesbian relationship in a book intended for the juvenile market in the mid-1960s; and Brent-Dyer was not, as her biographer has pointed out, a particularly sophisticated writer. In any event, it is doubtful that a girl of the 1960s would have perceived the relationship as lesbian; she would probably not even have known - I certainly didn't - that lesbianism existed. But a girl would have read this as a picture of love between women - and doubtless Brent-Dyer intended to convey this real love, sufficient unto itself (needing neither men nor children), comfortable, constant, supportive, and accepted. As a model of love it is completely successful - a great deal more successful, it has to be noted, than the idealised marriage of Brent-Dyer's heroine Jo Maynard. The bosom friendship of Kathy Ferrars and Nancy Wilmot is something young girls could both understand from their own experience and aspire to in adulthood. It offers an alternative to marriage as an emotional goal to strive for. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lisa on Nov 17th, 2003, 4:08pm Wow, Emma, did you type all that out? Thank you! I found that really interesting. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 17th, 2003, 5:10pm No I used my scanner!! Much easier and faster!! ;) |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lisa on Nov 17th, 2003, 5:15pm Oh, the technologically minded! Thanks anyway! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Lisa_T on Nov 17th, 2003, 6:20pm Thanks, Emma! That was interesting reading. I'm pleased they didn't decide to place a lesbian subtext on it- I think that given the books, the time etc that was unlikely. I'm glad it's simply presented as a case of geunine love between women, without any sexual undertones. After all, most women have friends who they love, even if they don't explicitly say so but which are certainly not sexual in nature. I find it rather annoying sometimes when all friendships between women are presented that way, and also (from a historical perspective) it's too easy for modern readers to read letters etc between women from say, the 18th and 18th centuries and decide from the gushy emotive tone that ergo, the women in question had a homosexual relationship! This is not to say that some did not; but to present all close relationships between women as being sexual in inspiration gives as skewed a picture as the other extreme. Anyway, this is getting OT. Out of interest, I wonder if Catherine_B read this before writing Alt Romance? How long is she in Uganda for anyway? |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by KB on Nov 17th, 2003, 9:29pm And it was so nice of the censor to leave it untouched! ;D Thanks for sharing it with us, Emma. It was certainly very interesting to have all those bits and pieces of the book together. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Jennie on Nov 17th, 2003, 9:48pm Yes, I do hate the way that close relationships are always judged to be sexual. I have a very close male friend, and people always assume that we are sleeping together, but we aren't, he's my strength and support, and I try to be the same for him. I was even asked if we are married! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Susan on Nov 18th, 2003, 3:39pm Thanks Emma. It does help to read another person's views on the subject. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Esmeralda on Nov 18th, 2003, 8:14pm Thanks for supplying that Emma, it was very interesting, and I'm glad I have had the opportunity to read it. As far as changed impressions go - I have to say that I haven't really sat down and read any proper CS books since I started reading drabbles, although I have skimmed through them looking for information, but I suspect that when I do I may find them inferior to some of the drabbles which I have read on here! I have to admit that I'm worried that the other drabbles might be sublinimally(?) influencing Tensions, I am trying very hard NOT to copy anyone, but if I have done so accidentally, I apologise profusely. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Emma_N on Nov 18th, 2003, 10:52pm on 11/17/03 at 21:29:58, KB wrote:
My main concern when I posted the stuff about Nancy and Kathy was how the censor would alter what was written. I was really pleased (and shocked!) to see that it was left the same!! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Rachael P on Nov 19th, 2003, 1:55pm Thanks, Emma - fascinating! I have to admit I've been re-reading the books since New Mistress and if Nancy and Kathie can get on the same trips together etc, they certainly do! And I agree that Nancy does get taller and more masculine-looking!! Maybe it was EBD's subconscious at work ....! I have always loved their relationship and am very happy for them on whatever level it actually is ..... and I very much like the idea of it as a model for love .. Tassie_Ellen - I am definitely affected by the drabbles and find it increasingly difficult to separate the two! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Tassie_Ellen on Nov 20th, 2003, 10:04am ...and I probably should have added that in some cases, the drabbles are (oh no :o ) better...at least in my humble opinion. It's really fun to see the different ways you clever ones have developed the characters, and how much that development increases the way your readers feel about them - especially poor Reg! |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by keren on Nov 20th, 2003, 10:20am for more interesting articles like the one posted here, you can find Ju Goslings Internet site and read the essays she wrote abbout the CS and girls school stories (there is a link from the bettany press site |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Tassie_Ellen on Nov 21st, 2003, 6:10am How many of you have read Chalet Girls Grow Up? I haven't myself, except for the one chapter that's on (I think) the NCC site, but presumably the happenings in that would also change the way you think about the EBDs. Don't know if I want to read it, really, although for curiosity it might be interesting - if I could get hold of a copy, that is. Ellen *who has just realised that this is my 50th post :D * and while some of you might think that's not much, it's a lot for me... *enjoying myself tremendously reading* |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by KB on Nov 21st, 2003, 6:29am Well done, Ellen! *applause* The chapter from CGGU is also on the Transcripts and Links site. I've avoided it myself, but there are plenty of other people you can talk about it with. There is also a thread in the Random Archive that addresses the topic. |
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Title: Re: Changed impressions Post by Carolyn P on Nov 21st, 2003, 2:36pm CGGu treats some of the same subjects we do in the drabbles, but not in as sympathetic light. Having read it I do find my mind going to it every so often when reading drabbles, but I actually prefer the drabbles because in the serious one's we try and keep the characters in line with EBD and how they may have developed in different circs. I think CGGU becomes too set in the real world, and her characters seem to change and harden in a way END's characters can't. I've only read a few EBD CS books since beginning to read drabbles and I find it doable, but I think they are an easier read in some ways, maybe because we are so familiar with them. What I have found is that re reading them for info/background for a drabble is very different than reading them for simple pleasure. |
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