@kiralamouse has html and epub files, if anyone is interested!

Epub: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zeZD9TPkyy8Kh0VD3bvJECuSWabzI128/view?usp=sharing

HTML: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FBquTOyoH9tMLUb-d0fjAAog6hXwLojt

Folder they’re stored in, if any poking around is needed: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FBquTOyoH9tMLUb-d0fjAAog6hXwLojt?usp=sharing

(Apologies for any transcription errors - I spotted and corrected enough to be fairly certain there are some uncorrected errors left)

Reblogging because I discovered too many transcription errors for my comfort (a LOT of added or removed paragraph breaks that made dialog hard to follow) so I removed the original docs and replaced them with an improved ones:

All epub docs in folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fXGT5MAzEMHgbHrRdHjb4W56FemiJz4M?usp=sharing

Zip file containing the above epub: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19UJxM2hnHu41ETVuzSSPpfolXBmszVo-/view?usp=sharing

HTML: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1umryKi-2Ak84tUzIU658CeYLr-9sAPMi/view?usp=sharing

Still in the same GDrive folder, so if any other links stop working, the folder should show you what’s there currently.

Thank you so much for doing this!!! 💕💕💕💕

Being an actor keeps me sane. Yeah I have to work a day job but know what? When my day job is stressful and I want to scream I get to go hey wait. I have a scream scheduled at 7:30 tonight. Gotta save up. And then I go back to what I was doing.

I have a scream scheduled, I have a kiss scheduled, I have an argument scheduled, I have a making up scheduled, I have a sing and dance scheduled, I have a get slapped in the face scheduled, I have a cry scheduled, whatever. It’s all good.

Something something the Greeks were right about catharsis.

ohhhhhhhhhh my god and when you argue you always have a comeback, and when you make up there’s no lingering anger, and when you scream you don’t have to hold back, and when you get slapped in the face you know you’re safe, and when you cry you know all will be well.

Oh and if it doesn’t turn out and your character dies or something well then you can go to the greenroom and have a snack and that’s good too.

Everyone saying “oh like bdsm” or “oh like larping.” Yes. Humans thrive on imagination and play in many ways.

Another Spondylus shell ornament, Culture Jama-Coaque, Ecuadorian North Coast 500 BCE - 1530 CE, w3.4 x h6.9 cm. Museo Casa del Alabado / INPC. Listed as a "zoomorphic ornament," but the first thing it made me think of was a male Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens), a native species…

person: reanimating corpses for use in battle is unethical

necromancer: I am recycling

person: now someone has to go and fight the corpses

necromancer: I am also, consequently, creating jobs

you laugh, but some necromancer is out there setting up a PowerPoint presentation

First time trying wet food. They sent one to see if it was safe while the rest formed a council.

big egg

Some real shippy thoughts about chapter 18:

So I missed the fact that this was their first meeting. This is the first reread I realized that.

Ok so before their first meeting Barney and Abel have been talking about Valancy extensively on their little bro fishing trips. Abel is absolutely telling Barney about the family coming by and Valancy standing her ground. You know he told him about the whistling undertaker story. And he’s also talking about how much good it’s done Cissy and how wonderful it is to have the house in order again.

Barney clearly admires her for all of this. He gets what she’s risking with her family and having been on the receiving end of Deerwood gossip he gets that she’s thrown her life away for this. He probably also gets that that’s worse for her than for him as a man in this toxic little town.

He starts to think about her a lot and he thinks about her day to day experience in Roaring Abel’s house vs how she grew up (which obviously he doesn’t fully Get but he at least knows she grew up all proper.)

He chastises Abel about cussing in front of her and Abel cheerily relays the whole “you must use the boot scraper whether you consign it to perdition or not” and the laughing fit they got into over “what use is a rage” “it’s such a damned relief!”

Pretty much the first time Roaring Abel mentions Valancy Barney’s curiosity has him driving by the house that night to catch a glimpse of her. It starts to be A Thing he does every night. He knows the car is loud af. Why won’t she ever look up?

Finally after about a week of this he realizes he’s being ridiculous and goes to talk to her.

Barney’s such a loner and he’s so good at wilderness (even in the Yukon). You can’t tell me he actually needs to drive to the grocery store or whatever every night.

Prior to the start of the book Valancy had only seen him like twice. Our guy does not get out much. He’s absolutely doing that high school thing of driving by the cute girl’s house over and over. He’s such a mess and I love him for it.

@deemoyza innnnnteresting!! I missed that!

He’s walking there after their initial meeting. Rattling by in the car every day for a week was absolutely just to get her attention.

Just realized that John Foster is the one keeping Valancy's hopes and dreams alive. . . one might even say, fostering them.

The Blue Castle is a proof that you can have an "I save me" heroine forging her own path, but also have a knight coming to her rescue when needed.

This “can I acquire merit” is an interesting phrase. Any thoughts?

My theory is that he says it that because he knows of Valancy's reputation and is trying to get ahead of her.

Explanation: the Stirlings are known in Deerwood, (minor spoiler) mostly for their pride. Barney, knowing this, and knowing how the town sees him, wants to avoid being looked down on.

At this point in time, he doesn't really know her or how different she is from her family, except for that she smiled at him that one time. So he asks her this in a slightly mocking way and when she responds sincerely it surprises him. It's also after this and after seeing what Cissy and Abel think of Valancy that Barney calls her a "brick" and is genuinely enthusiastic to have her around.

This “can I acquire merit” is an interesting phrase. Any thoughts?

Offhandedly, I assume it might have been a saying at the time the book was written/set. But to me it sounds incredibly chivalrous. Something like, "can I win your favor?" or "would this please my lady?" I can imagine him saying it in a playful, possibly flirtatious, tone, which Valancy, too caught up in actually speaking to the Barney Snaith, doesn't quite pick up on.

Today's The Blue Castle research is Valancy's green crepe dress. So first, here are a collection of descriptions of the dress:

There's been a lot of talk about how the timeline of this book is a little all over the place. I found a collection of fashion sketches from 1912-1950 from the Brooklyn Museum that gives a wide range of fashion from the time. Here are some drawings that I think with some adjustments could match Valancy's dress, or at least parts of it. I will say I'm not a seamstress so I'm not sure if these would work with crepe fabric.

First up: 1914 dress goes to show that a lower waist still did occur in the 1910s, even if it was more rare than the empire/natural waist. Imagine it in green with the sash around the hips being replaced with the "girdle of crimson beads"

Here's an evening dress from 1915 that can also with some adjustments could fit the description. The tie at the waist here could very much match the "beads" as it looks more narrow. The skirt is likely more full and embellished, but I do like the top as Valancy notes that her "neck" is showing but nothing more than that.

An afternoon dress from 1916 that will require a bit of imagination with colors as this is all black.

1918 day dress that might be my favorite. The colors would have to be switched, but overall this has the right shape to it to me. Plus there's a hat that works with the hat Valancy has!

1920 day dress. I like that this one is a bit more simple, which makes it feel a bit more likely an ordinary person could have a dress like this, again with a change of colors.

1920 evening dress. This one is fun because it's green just like Valancy's crepe dress. I think the only note is that the girdle would be red and not quite as voluminous at the side. This is another one of my favorites, maybe because the model is giving Valancy vibes.

1921 day dress. This is a bit more of a toned down version of the previous one, again with some imagination about the sash being red and beaded.

1921 day dress. I think with just some shorter sleeves, this one works well with the description given. I know she doesn't have flowers as her belt, but also I wouldn't be mad if this was the design for a movie.

Blue Castle chapter 20

“If she only had a necklace or something. She wouldn’t feel so bare then. She ran down to the garden. There were clovers there—great crimson things growing in the long grass. Valancy gathered handfuls of them and strung them on a cord. Fastened above her neck they gave her the comfortable sensation of a collar and were oddly becoming. Another circlet of them went round her hair, dressed in the low puffs that became her. Excitement brought those faint pink stains to her face. She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.”

So I realize these are garden flowers, not wildflowers, but it does seem like Valancy ignoring John Foster’s dictum against picking flowers is the first sign that this may not be the best idea.

“Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party “up back” might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn’t be.”

We don’t get glimpses of it very often, because she’s framed as childlike and delicate in contrast to Valancy growing into womanhood, but Cissy is much more worldly than Valancy. She was much, much less sheltered growing up and she has seen and experienced much more. Even aside from, you know, motherhood, she has been to raunchy parties and she went out of town to work, and meanwhile Valancy has stayed in her mother’s house and been to terrible picnics and pieced quilts. Cissy’s story feels like a reminder of reality amid Valancy’s unfolding fairy tale: sometimes you leave home and you find your Blue Castle, and sometimes you leave home and you just… don’t. It gets destroyed or you never find it or you think you’ve found it and it turns out to be a lie. It’s like those ‘Cinderella marries the Prince and it turns out he sucks’ stories, except less smug about it.

“But what could she do? She must stay to the end. Abel could not leave till then. And that would probably be not till three or four in the morning.”

There’s been talk in the tag about Abel’s negligence in inviting Valancy along, and I think this sentence is really where that negligence comes through. It almost certainly did not even once occur to Abel that, if she went, Valancy would not be able to leave again. Abel does what he likes and bows to no one, and I don’t know that he realizes how different things are for other people. It’s not that Valancy is feeling too polite to leave or bound by social niceties or doesn’t want to offend her host, it’s that she has no way home. It’s stay or walk twelve miles home in the dark through the woods. That’s not really an option.

“After her feeling of relief her next feeling was one of annoyance with Barney for coming there unshaved. Surely he might have enough self-respect to groom himself up decently when he went to a party. There he was, bareheaded, bristly-chinned, in his old trousers and his blue homespun shirt. Not even a coat. Valancy could have shaken him in her anger. No wonder people believed everything bad of him.”

Valancy, girl, he practically sprinted over here to save you the second he heard. Cut him some slack for not changing his clothes first.

A thing I realized this read-through is that John Foster is not against picking all flowers. He’s specifically against picking the rare wildflowers that grow in the forest. Meadow flowers and clover and garden flowers are all fair game.

From a modern conservation standpoint he has a point. The only wood flower I know about is the lady slipper orchid and it’s really endangered (probably wasn’t though in the year of “nineteen and some odd.”)

They look like lungs to me:

I googled wood flowers in Muskoka and:

So those sorts of rare plants are what John Foster was saying not to pick. In the book Valancy picks narcissus and clover and other things all the time which was confusing until I realized it’s just the wood flowers you shouldn’t pick.

Some real shippy thoughts about chapter 18:

So I missed the fact that this was their first meeting. This is the first reread I realized that.

Ok so before their first meeting Barney and Abel have been talking about Valancy extensively on their little bro fishing trips. Abel is absolutely telling Barney about the family coming by and Valancy standing her ground. You know he told him about the whistling undertaker story. And he’s also talking about how much good it’s done Cissy and how wonderful it is to have the house in order again.

Barney clearly admires her for all of this. He gets what she’s risking with her family and having been on the receiving end of Deerwood gossip he gets that she’s thrown her life away for this. He probably also gets that that’s worse for her than for him as a man in this toxic little town.

He starts to think about her a lot and he thinks about her day to day experience in Roaring Abel’s house vs how she grew up (which obviously he doesn’t fully Get but he at least knows she grew up all proper.)

He chastises Abel about cussing in front of her and Abel cheerily relays the whole “you must use the boot scraper whether you consign it to perdition or not” and the laughing fit they got into over “what use is a rage” “it’s such a damned relief!”

Pretty much the first time Roaring Abel mentions Valancy Barney’s curiosity has him driving by the house that night to catch a glimpse of her. It starts to be A Thing he does every night. He knows the car is loud af. Why won’t she ever look up?

Finally after about a week of this he realizes he’s being ridiculous and goes to talk to her.

Barney’s such a loner and he’s so good at wilderness (even in the Yukon). You can’t tell me he actually needs to drive to the grocery store or whatever every night.

Prior to the start of the book Valancy had only seen him like twice. Our guy does not get out much. He’s absolutely doing that high school thing of driving by the cute girl’s house over and over. He’s such a mess and I love him for it.

Valancy: *in the middle of a Love Epiphany*

Barney: hot air balloons tho

Barney’s reaction to Valancy not loving her mother is EVERYTHING.

Women are still shamed to this day for not loving their mothers. “But she’s your mother!” people gasp in horror. It’s like the quote earlier in this book “you can only ever have one mother!” Mothers are sacred and it doesn’t matter what they do, you’re wrong and ungrateful for not loving them, especially if the abuse is solely emotional like Valancy’s.

Valancy’s done pretending and if she’s gonna be friends with him she wants to get this out of the way so she doesn’t have to worry about shocking him later. And he is so very unshocked.

He flips the shame around. It’s not something Valancy should be ashamed of. It’s something Mrs Frederick should be ashamed of. And more than that it’s a huge loss for her. He’s saying “you are worth so much and it’s the biggest loss in her life that she doesn’t get your admiration.” Valancy’s affection isn’t owed to anyone and Barney is telling her that and also he prizes it highly.

I don't know why but I love the way Barney words this