Previously: Dirtbag Anne of Green Gables.
MEG: Jo
what are you doing in Father’s office all the time?
[JO kicks her steel-toed boots onto the desk]
JO: writin smut
wanna read it
MEG: …yes
MEG: all right
we’re off to the play with Laurie
JO: don’t wait up
AMY: can I come too?
JO: don’t be ridiculous
AMY [whispering]: I’m going to burn what you love and marry your boyfriend
JO: what
AMY: have such a fun time
at the play
[MEG runs into the room]
MEG: I’m getting married!
BETH: Congratulations!
AMY: Congratulations!
[JO is idly poking at the ashes in the fireplace]
MEG: Jo, did you hear me? Mr. Brooke proposed to me and I accepted him!
[JO draws a dick in the ashes]
JO: I heard you
JO: has anyone seen my manuscript
MEG: no
BETH: no
AMY: no
saw a fire that looked an awful lot like your manuscript though
[The girls are ice skating on the pond]
AMY: i’m tired
i’m tired and this sucks
winter sucks
take me home
[Amy falls through the ice]
AMY: HELP ME
JO: sorry
cant hear you
AMY: CHRIST I’M DROWNING
JO: let me know if you see my manuscript down there
[JO skateboards over LAURIE’s head]
JO: I got your note
you’re not my boyfriend
JO: I got a haircut
what do you think
AMY: oh, Jo!
how could you
your one beauty
[JO climbs into AMY’s room late one night and begins to shave her head]
JO [whispering]: Oh, no, Amy
how could you?
your one beauty
[JO draws a mustache under AMY’s nose]
AMY: who did this
JO: who did what
AMY: THIS
JO: you dont look any different to me
LAURIE: oh, Jo
please marry me
JO: no
LAURIE: but why
[JO strikes a match on LAURIE’s chin and lights her cigar with it]
JO: because that’s exactly what they’ll be expecting
LAURIE: who is ‘they’?
[JO slowly rollerblades offscreen without replying]
MEG: Beth is dead!
JO: Oh, my God.
MARMEE: No, no –
AMY: can I have her room
MEG: Oh, my God.
AMY: sorry
may I have her room
Tags: dirtbags, little women, louisa may alcott, teenage dirtbags
I love you, Mallory.
Is there something wrong with me that I would read loads of Dirtbag Women classics? Or stuff about Dirtbag Women in genreal. I always like the women I’m not supposed to in any show and book, and I feel like I could do with more acknowledgement that women can jsut sometimes be dirtbags in literature and film.
All our antiheros are men lalalala why can we admire and appreciate and fan over the bad behaviour of men but as soon as a woman is anything other than loving and giving and good we throw her to the dogs lalalala
this is totally inappropriate and moderately unrelated, but in the adventure time with fiona and cake tpb, there is an entire comic about how fiona needs a shower, and I adore it.
dirtbag writing and adventure time animation/illustration would be the perfect marriage
It seems like the only female anti-heroes are femme fatales. And all femme fatales must die horribly, reaffirming that the only acceptable behavior for a proper woman is subservience, decorum and virtue.
Or something like that.
THANK YOU FOR THIS. My long-held position of “eff Amy March right to hell” remains unchanged; indeed this has reinforced it.
I was just thinking that you don’t have to change much, if anything, to make Dirtbag Amy…
Your one beauty!!
To be fair to Amy, that line isn’t attributed in the book, so it’s not entirely clear who says it (it’s not Beth, because she speaks right afterwards, and almost certainly not Marmee, so it comes down to Amy or Meg. I think it’s an Amy-like thing to say (overly melodramatic, kind of bitchy), but we can’t be sure!).
Short of LMA coming back from the dead there is nothing that can convince me it wasn’t Amy.
I say that all the damn time.
AMY MARCH is the only worthwhile MARCH. The end. The rest suck.
Jo and Amy forever. Amy isn’t very nice, sure, but at least she’s interesting! Beth and Meg and Marmee are bores.
Also the things people blame her for are all the fault of marmee’s terrible parenting! Amy is spoiled? Well that’s not much of a surprise! When she gets in trouble at school she gets to stay home. When she burns Jo’s manuscript, no consequences. When she gets into lime debt, Meg bails her out. She’s a pet, not a person they make responsible for anything. They make fun of the things she says when she’s being a bit dyslexic, don’t make her have chores, and bail her out. She should be much worse than she is! She should have murdered them all while they slept to get money for lace, based on how they raised her.
As an adult she grows up, and turns into the most interesting and best of them for sure. I think she’s triumphant because basically any other pride in the other characters is completely ground down- Meg gets worn down and poor (although she seems okay mostly), Jo ends up nursemaid to a billion children with a dick husband, and poor beth is killed by her own innate goodness. Amy is the only one who gets away with being happy and has a supportive husband, and even gets points for telling him off when he’s being a twerp.
I re-read both little women and anne of green gables and it’s really appalling how much the books hit you over the head with, “hey if you had fun doing it, you are probably a dirty whore, the message here is learn how to be more meek.” Things I thought of fondly as fun scrapes, in re-reading turn out to be a part where marilla or marmee gets to take a moment and point out how some consequence is truly deserved. “Oh my dear, let us thank god your legs fell off! That will surely help us learn that a lady who walks to town is no better than she ought to be. Now surely we can be content to stay on the sofa and be polite as a doiley forever” “Yes marmee, I think you are right. I was being foolish before and now I see it. I shall aim to be more like the carved wooden dog on the mantel, and do nothing at all and have no needs, and if a child wishes to throw me in the fire, I shall be glad to burn horribly, because then I made the child happy.”
Ahem. Darling, I point you to Vanity Fair. I won’t ruin it by telling you how the plot unfolds, but it is the most glorious celebration of a fucking horrible but deliciously fun woman you are ever like to read.
THE BLUE CASTLE. In which the meekest woman in the world tells all her relatives to fuck off and goes and tells the sexy town weirdo that she’ll be living with him in the woods from now on, if that’s okay.
The Blue Castle has all the wins! In the movie IN MY HEAD Tatiana Maslany and Timothy Olyphant play Valancy and Barney.
Or Callum Keith Rennie, when I’m observing CanCon rules.
I have never forgiven Amy for burning Jo’s MS. She got off WAY TOO EASY there.
But the thing is they let her off the hook! That’s not Amy’s failing, that’s her moms. And they were kind of dickish to her all the time. How old was she? Kids are the worst and they destroy things, especially siblings.
Plus later on Jo gives up her books because it’s vanity thanks to her husband, so isn’t he responsible for burning way more potential future novels? And ones that would probably be better than her first childhood attempt?
Also wasn’t it kind of dumb of jo to burn her drafts when she finished her final version? Seems dumb to me. I always save back drafts of my work products in case something goes wrong, and I don’t think they’re great novels or anything.
Agreed! Dr. Bahr is also a dick. Way to colonize a woman’s voice, dude.
Please keep turning “wholesome children’s literature” into this dirtbag stuff.
I would vote for Dirtbag Gone with the Wind, but Scarlett is already a big gigantic huge dirtbag (as are many other characters) so really Gone WIth the Wind is ALREADY Dirtbag Gone with the Wind. Presto, done!
Total dirtbags the lot of em.
Turning Melanie into a dirtbag and having her bitch slap Scarlett at some point would be pretty awesome, though.
Any point at which Scarlett gets bitchslapped is immediately my new favourite part of the novel.
Am I the only one who was glad that Jo did not end up with Laurie? I always thought that would have been so boring and conventional. Jo is anything but that.
No! I always thought it didn’t work, and I also always thought that her not amrrying him was a nice little stand against the idea that if a man and woman are close they HAVE to be romantically involved. She didn’t love him romantically!
Also, as a girl who could be a bit Amy, I felt sorry for her. She was just trying to figure out who she was and what her palce was in a family that seemed to often treat her with obvious disdain!
I’m fine with Jo not ending up with Laurie, but sticking her with the oldest German man in the world who talks her into giving up her dreams and quit writing novels to have like, seven thousand of his terrible German children was the cruelest thing any author’s ever done.
like, Little Women is canonical Dirtbag Professor Bhaer
JO: I sure do love writing novels
BHAER: Novels corrupt the mind and weaken the spirit. They lead to self-abuse among the young and impressionable.
JO: Oh. But I —
BHAER: Enough. You will marry me, and wipe the crumbs from my beard, and homeschool our many sons. Put all of your work aside, it is garbage and I hate it.
JO: Right-ho.
FIN
I’m glad I’m not alone in hating Prof. Bhaer and everything he stands for.
“Artistic ambition and an energetic spirit are just unfortunate side effects of not having enough RAMBUNCTIOUS MALE CHILDREN to keep you busy here I’ll get you a bunch of such children.”
Truth!
I actually really love Little Men but I have never been able to reconcile the two different Jos. In my head they are different women.
Yes, two women who just happen to have the same name. Total coincidence!
I also love both books, but clearly feisty Jo March didn’t grow up to be Frau Bhaer. I mean, come on.
Yeah, the professor is really not the best choice for her at all.
I always had a sneaking early feeling that Jo miiiight prefer the company of women and if it had been a different time maybe she would have been single for a while and then met the perfect girl (a down-to-earth artist) and they live in a messy house together doing their creativity and loving each other and petting their cats.l
Yes this is so much better! Prof. Bhaer is the worst.
Professor Bhaerd, am I right?
Something like those artist girls in An Old-Fashioned Girl. Bess and Becky? I totally ship them with Jo.
Why else would they have cast Katharine Hepburn?
Did you ever read Little Men. They run a groovy hippy-dippy boys school in the house she inherited from the nitchy aunt, AND, she keeps writing.
NO I have strong feelings about this too. She straight up DID NOT LOVE HIM LIKE THAT. That is okay! Men and women are actually allowed to be friends without getting married. And also, not everyone marries their childhood sweetheart (oh hey, Harry Potter, I see you there), it is OK. Who wants to marry their brother or brother-figure? No no, no thank you, I liked Laurie and Amy much better. After they both grew up a bit (Amy got exponentially more sensible and I think mastered an excellent roll-eyes, and Laurie got over his weird European-gentleman-phase), and Amy had to weather her grief apart from her family and a long way away, I think they made a good match. Although I like to imagine Amy as doing a lot of “Really. Really? Really, Laurie?”
Like, a Jo who doesn’t marry Laurie and becomes a beloved lady novelist who lives alone, or perhaps with a delicately-featured lady companion (BECAUSE SHE’S A BIG MO) in a Walden-style retreat somewhere in Vermont, who’s a kickass maiden aunt and does things like ride trains by herself and occasionally show up in public wearing trousers and smoking cigars? Yes, I am definitely cool with that. A Jo who doesn’t marry Laurie because she wants to marry some old, shitty dude who thinks novels are trashy? SHE MARRIES JONATHAN FRANZEN AND THAT’S NOT OKAY.
Prof. Bhaer sucks, forever and always, the end.
In Louisa’s defense, I think she was pressured to make Jo marry. I think she never wanted her to.
Well, we are talking about a book series that she didn’t want to write, hated the fandom of and seriously considered just killing everyone off to spite all the letter writers who kept trying to tell ehr how to write it, so I think it’s a fair bet that if she was made to marry Jo off, she’d do it to a guy that her whole readership would go ‘wait, what?’ to.
Yeah. I have such mixed feelings about the books because of that. But I still want to be Jo when I grow up.
ETA: Even married a (future) professor of German descent. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, though.
Never forget that Professor Bhaer was once played by the incomparable William Shatner, in the 1978 Little Women TV miniseries: http://youtu.be/gAei_NV4Zcc
SHE MARRIES JONATHAN FRANZEN.
I will never see these novels the same way again.
😀
Wiki w/o commentary: “In 2010, Franzen’s glasses were stolen, then ransomed for $100,000, at an event in London celebrating the launch of Freedom”
Just bigging up Emily of New Moon all over this thread:
DEAN PRIEST: I am a creepy older guy who’s been perving on you since you were TWELVE. I love that you’re so talented and spirited and artsy, but you know what would be so much better? If you stopped being all those things. You must stop writing because it takes you away from me.
TEDDY: I am a hot sensitive artist your own age who deeply respects you and your work. Which of us will you choose?
EMILY: The older creepy guy! That’s the right answer, isn’t it?
EMILY: I mean it seems like it’s … sort of… the done thing, in this kind of book. Marrying the actually cute love interest is bad. I don’t want to let the side down.
EMILY: Wait.
EMILY: This is a terrible idea. My foot literally almost fell off from how terrible an idea this is.
EMILY: I’m just going to stay single and write a bunch of novels.
EMILY: Actually I’m going to marry the hot young artist AND write a bunch of novels, I mean in addition to the ones I already wrote. We should keep the house the creepy older guy was going to give me, though.
TEDDY: Do you not love how I, the sexy young thing who completely supports your writing, am called Teddy?
EMILY: I DO. In your FACE, Jo March!
OH MY WERD THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER Seriously I am dying of laughter right now. (reading this thread for the first time because of the “best of” posts and I love this too much not to comment even if it is almost a year later)
laurie’s too needy but that doesn’t mean amy should win. marry him for his money, jo! people do it ALL THE TIME. then throw him into the lake so he loses his memory and has to live in a swiss sanitarium while she supports herself with his money. it’s what he would have wanted. jo/laurie’s money/power of attorney ot3
Amy should win. Amy is the best.
HECK YEAH
AMY ALREADY HAS PERFECT HAIR AND A DARLING NOSE AND SHE PAINTS REALLY WELL AND MARRIES A DUDE WITH MONEY- WHAT MORE DOES THAT INSATIABLE MONSTER WANT??
I don’t particularly think she loved either one of them, but if she was going to follow ~*the conventions of the day*~ anyway, Laurie would take her all over Europe and sup[port her writing and Bhaer sucks the fun out of every damn thing. I’d still rather Laurie.
The problem is I think she did love Bhaer in that girl goes off to college and falls in love with her professor because he is so brilliant kind of way. The crappy part was writing a whole book showing how happy they turned out to be. I think it would be more like the “Modern Family” where Claire goes to her college reunion and finds out her professor has married one of his students. His wife is so miserable and he is so oblivious.
Cheers for Amy!
I always knew I was supposed to like Jo, but I have always loved Amy best (we share a name! she wins the book! who gets Europe and Laurie? Amy!!) Plus, her room is so cute if you go to visit the house in Concord-she drew on the walls.
AMY SUCKS EGGS
*Skateboards in cackling and throwing limes*
Amy rocks! She’s the coolest. She’s the only one who isn’t a sanctimonious tiresome windbag.
Wins the book? Amy’s girl-child is sickly while Jo has two strapping boys. JO WINS EVOLUTION.
Bess survives! She’s annoying and prissy but beloved! Especially by Dan (which always seemed creepy and weird to me).
Any kind of Girl > Icky German Boys
sorry anyone who names her child “Teddy Bhaer” fails at childbearing, childrearing, art, literature, morality, love, and life itself.
To be fair, stuffed bear toys weren’t called teddy bears at the time Jo March Bhaer was naming her children in the1860s. Such toys were only marketed as teddy bears beginning circa 1906 (so named after U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt).
I have heard that historical n ote before but do not believe it. what I do believe is the only reason Alcott could ever have given that guy that incredibly ugly name was so that she could name Jo’s daughters Polar and Grizzly but then backed down at the last minute because how could you put something great like that into such incredibly awful books, it just wouldn’t fit right plus, why give Jo daughters when you could give her boring stupid sons instead, she said to herself.
THANK YOU, YES, AMY IS TEH AWESOME, readers who don’t realize that have been so sucked into the Cult of Jo that they don’t realize that the huge reason that Amy and Jo are rivals is that they are WAY TOO MUCH ALIKE, right down to being true artists, more ambitious than anyone else in their family, fundamentally unwilling to settle down into a life of drudgery and boredom. And they both suffer equally awful fates in the book — abandoning their artist dreams and entering marriages that transform them into totally different people — but it is comforting to know that that is not what happened in real life. Louisa continued to write and May, a successful professional artist, sometimes even illustrated for her, BOOM. (And then May died after childbirth and Louisa raised her daughter, but I try to stop thinking about that before I get that far.)
Yes! Amy forever!!
I love Amy forever. I am just popping up to support you and her and to get out of this comments section before I get emotional about it.
[clings]
come to the Amy March Apologist clubhouse, we are the only ones invited.
You’re always my rock whenever this comes up! Oh, broodinghunx. Want to go boating with me? Take an oar. Sit close.
ah, how pleasant. [pulls out the pickled limes and lobster]
I just KNEW you’d be in these comments somewhere, I can sense Amy March hate for miles away.
Hey, look over there! Is that three men in a boat I see, accompanied by a dog? IT IS INDEED! I bet those guys are fun and have a delicious lunch that would go well with these limes and lobster…
OH NO NOT THE TINNED PINEAPPLE
The chapter where Adult!Amy discovers her talent has limitations is one of my very favorite chapters in the book.
Amy is the exact same because she is the truest literary dirtbag.
Hahaha, Amy was my favorite when I was a kid solely because she was “the pretty one.” I had problems.
i’ll give amy march this: she makes me so thankful i never had any goddamn sisters.
I am the second-oldest of four sisters, and I approve this message. Little sisters are the worst.
Suck it, older siblings
-the youngest child, the second sister
Little sisters rule!
I am the elder of two sisters, and while my little sister was a PITA when we were little, she totally kicks ass now and we are very close friends. It probably helped, though, that she never threw any of my manuscripts into the wood stove.
i’m sure you raised a great younger sister by throwing something she loved in the fire first so everyone understood how things were going to be in your house
To be fair, I do get along with my sisters now (and have totally forgiven them for losing my copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail). It helps that we all live in different time zones, though.
Yeah, my older sister and I are very different and we didn’t really get along very well until just after I had graduated college. It came to a head one night – we were at a dinner, she said something condescending to me, I cried excessively and could not calm down due to then-undiagnosed PMDD.
My middle-child brother intervened, turned to her and said, “To be fair, you do speak to her like she’s still 12 years old.” She stopped doing that cold-turkey (and drunkenly apologized years later ) and we’ve been great ever since.
DON’T YOU GET ME STARTED ON THIS
WE WILL NEVER AGREE ON THIS
I DISAPPROVE OF WHAT YOU SAY BUT WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH, etc., etc.
jo and amy are like harry and voldemort NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES
and actually that’s kind of how it works! amy goes to europe and marries a meal ticket, jo marries an old man who won’t even have the decency to die and leave her a pile of money, no one is happy
I’m just never ever reading any of the sequels because I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.
meanchelled came to visit me around the holidays last year and we watched Little Women (the 90s version) together because we both love it, but we had forgotten this ETERNAL BONE OF CONTENTION and things got a tiiiiiny bit tense. We can, of course, always agree that Claire Danes needs to knock it off so I can stop all this crying.
remember that part (I think it’s this part) where Beth gets the piano and starts, like, smile-sobbing? NOOOOOO STOP, MY FACE
hahahahha i still remember saying amy “wasn’t that bad” through my teeth clenched tighter than my asshole
true love <3
I mean, we both hate Samantha Mathis.
Off topic but kind of not: I salt-preserved some limes recently, and they are GREAT – could these be the same things as pickled limes? They are so perfume-y and wonderful if a little unappealing looking, but I can definitely see getting in trouble over them. Though I don’t know if I would eat them plain. WHAT ARE PICKLED LIMES does anyone have a recipe.
Also I would follow dirtbag Jo to the ends of the earth.
I have no recipes, but can you share yours for salt-preserved limes? What do they taste like?
Bonus anytime snack: Cut up some mango into cubesque pieces. Put them in a bowl. Sprinkle with a wee bit of Lawry’s seasoning salt. Taste something even more amazing than plain mango.
REALLY.! This mango snack is so intriguing! I’m going to have to try that immediately! For preserved limes (or lemons) (or maybe any citrus but I’ve only really done limes and lemons):
Take a glass jar with a screw-on lid and sterilize it. Take a bunch of limes, and like. . . quarter them, but not all the way, so they’re attached at one end, like a little citrus flower. Pack them into the jar, one layer at a time, and pour a load of sea salt over them, at each step. Jam pack that jar full of salt and limes, and really smush them down. Let it sit for a few hours: at this point, enough lime juice should have been expressed to cover all the fruit; if this is not the case, then squeeze yet more limes to get enough juice so that all the salt-packed limes are submerged. Let it sit at room temperature for a week or two, and then refrigerate. The limes will take on a really heavenly, perfumed scent and the peels will become sort of translucent. (Home fermentation tips: acid + salt will absolutely kill any botulism, and it’s important that no fruit be exposed to air in order to prevent mold issues. If mold shows up, discard everything!)
You can use them in any thing that calls for lime juice or lime zest. You can use the peel or the pulp or the juice, but use less than the recipe calls for, as the flavor is quite concentrated and you’ll definitely need to adjust for salt. I’ve been using the same 2 jars of limes and lemons for most of my citrus needs for the last 6 months, and I’m about half way through the jar. It’s hard to describe the flavor: it’s floral, and complex, and just like. . . extra. LimesPlus. I get, it, Amy March, I really do.
Thanks for this! It would work well with lemons, of course, but would it work with toher very acidic fruits too?
(must get a jar with a screw on lid and at least two more bags of limes)
Also: I have fermented so many non-acidic things. Homemade saurkraut is so unbelievably good. Fermented brussels sprouts, on the other hand, smell like distilled farts. In theory, you can ferment almost anything with just a salt water solution, but it can get a little bit fiddly depending on your native flora and fauna and temperatures and humidity, so I like to use a bit of a starter to get things going. My starter is something called a ginger bug, and there are many online instructions to get you going. You can also use the ginger bug to make home-fermented sodas, which are GREAT in the summer time. Check out Sandor Katz’s “Wild Fermentation”: it’s a wonderful read, fermentation tips aside. He is a very interesting gentleman who has led a very interesting life.
Other citrus might be a little too sweet, but you could certainly try! The preserved lemon is traditional in Moroccan/other North African cuisine. There are also spicy pickled lemons/limes that you get with Indian and Pakistani foods that my mother LOVES, but I don’t know how to make them.
Wow thanks! I will try this when I can get all this stuff together.
Also, weird question because I am stupid.
You say to cut them like a flower? When you layer the limes is it juice side down or juice side up, or as a, like, whole lime with all the cut pieces pressed together?
This is not a weird question, nor a stupid one! You just want to get as much surface area in contact with the salt as possible, so I do juice-side up and make sure to get salt into the crevices. You could also quarter them, but the original recipe I used said to do it this way, so I do? Because of. . . no real reason. Just quarter them! It’s probably easier!
OK, that makes sense. I’ll try it flower-way in one jar and quartered in another and see if it makes a difference.
SCIENCE!
Mallory I loved this but WHERE ARE THE LIMES
MEG: make your own jam, losers
lights a cigarette
More dirtbag Meg!
That bastard stole her glove, after all.
MEG: Babies? What babies?
(with apologies to Kate Beaton)
I just love that Amy’s reaction to Jo’s haircut is just canonical. Amy dirtbag is so canonical.
yes, yeeeesssssss.
more dirtbags please.
I saw two unrepentant teenage dirtbags this wkd! Imagine: Red light in Orange County (obviously): 2 blonde teenage girls, hair lazy/ messily in a bun + oversized neon sunglasses + SMOKING CIGARETTES IN DADS RED CLASSIC CONVERTIBLE just NOT GIVING A FK. It was transfixing. Fkin Hell Yeah!
Imagined Dialogue: “Want to go get high?” / “Yeah let me text Tyler” (Sharp illegal U turn from the left lane — which actually happened)
fuckyeahsocal 😀
Bah! I also had a TDB sighting this weekend! Walking my dog down Park Avenue (NYC). Four teenage girls walking ahead of me (abreast, of course). All wearing identical black lycra legging-pants, variations of black jackets, dirty shooties and Converse. Lots of braces. All with waist-length, stringy, dirty hair.
A fifth TDB of identical description exits a fancy doorman building and the group greets her, “Hey, it’s been so long!” They talk for moments before one says, “We have to go, but I’ll text you!” and the foursome continues down the street, leaving TDB5 in the dust.
oh geez!…. I just hear that song from Arrested Development from when Gob gets sad. “Hello darkness my old friend…”
“sorry, may I have her room” is killing me right now.
I was chuckling throughout this whole thing and then I got to that line and LOST IT.
MEG: Oh my gosh, Jo, you’ve burned off a chunk of my hair!
JO [quietly]: You’re lucky that’s all I did.
Now get over here, Amy, I’m gonna put your foot in plaster. NO REASON.
Dirtbag Little Prince, PLEASE.
I probably will not do that because I’m trying not to overlap with the Texts From series TOO MUCH and I already did Texts From the Little Prince AND Texts From Little Women, so
Oh, I think I missed the Text from the Little Prince! hooray, more to read!
DIRTBAG LITTLE HOUSE NEXT
YES
I really want to see Dirtbag Laura’s commentary on blonde vs. brown hair, and also something about spatball. Most of all, though, I want Dirtbag Mary and the other Dirtbag Ingallses. (Dirtbag Pet and Patty?)
For a long time [exit, pursued by a bear] was my favorite stage direction, but it has been overtaken in my heart by [JO slowly rollerblades offscreen without replying].
How about [JO slowly rollerblades offscreen without replying, pursued by a bear]?
[JO notices bear, considers speeding up, thinks “nah”]
Amy lost any claims to my sympathy when she burned that manuscript. I wish Jo HAD shaved Amy’s head.
Since we’re talking Alcott, Dirtbag Old-Fashioned Girl would be pretty spectacular.
DIRTBAG EIGHT COUSINS
This was my favorite part:
AMY: CHRIST I’M DROWNING
JO: let me know if you see my manuscript down there
Dirtbag Amy remains as horrible as she was in the book. Dirtbag Jo ascends to a new plane of AMAZING.
<3 U JO
Wait, hasn’t this been published already?
Nope, just on Mallory’s twitter.
No ma’am! I did an early draft round of this on Twitter about two weeks ago, though, so if it looks familiar that’s probably why.
CHRIST ANDY I’M DROWNING
yeah well if you see my gournal don’t read it it’s for me myself and i
I second Dirtbag Little House, because the Mother deserves some backtalk
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
But yes can we all agree that a modern-day Jo would be writing ALL KINDS of embarrassing fanfic
She and Anne Shirley’s Story Club would be ALL about the fanfic.
Jo DID write all kinds of dirtbag stuff for the pulp presses, to pay the butcher’s bill and so on. As did her creator.
Dirtbag Boxcar Children? Dirtbag Ballet Shoes?
OMG YESSSS Dirtbag Boxcar Children.
I saw a great pair of teen boy dirtbags at the grocery store this weekend! They were each sitting on their skateboards, rocking gently as they chatted in the soda aisle. I tried to get a photo but they scooted away before I could capture their essence 🙁
I also realize now that they were almost certainly there with one of their moms.
BETH: what are we getting marmee for christmas?
JO: marmee
[JO takes a long drag on her cigar and blows the smoke in AMY’s face]
JO: the fuck can’t we call her mom like normal people
BETH: i’m going to sew her some handkerchiefs
AMY: fuck marmee
i want to buy some pencils
this sherlock fanart won’t draw itself
MEG: where the hell is my glove
how can i show my face in public with only one glove
LAURIE: my creepy live-in tutor stole it last summer
MEG: what
what the hell does he want a single glove for
LAURIE: [makes j/o motion]
you MAY draw a dick in the ashes.
Dirtbag Secret Garden?
You know what I hate Amy for? This line: “Talent isn’t genius, and you can’t make it so.” Well, maybe you can, maybe you can’t, but you know what’s a great plan for definitely never producing genius artwork? Giving up trying when you’re something like NINETEEN YEARS OLD AND PERSUADING YOUR COMPOSER BOYFRIEND TO DO THE SAME. After that conversation Laurie goes through this opera he’s working on and is all, “Oh, writing operas is hard and this isn’t perfect and also I seem to have written a bunch of Mary Sues, fuck this whole thing, trying to improve is vulgar anyway.” YOU ARE TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD. YOU WROTE AN OPERA. PRETTY MUCH WHATEVER IT’S LIKE YOU ARE DOING OKAY. OF COURSE IT’S FULL OF MARY-SUES, YOU ARE, AGAIN, BARELY OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK. Way to tell generations of children to give up on art the moment it gets hard, Alcott. And of course Jo and Anne of Green Gables gives up writing, too.
The weird paradox of all those classic books about how, when it comes down to it, you should not write books. Thank God for Emily of New Moon.
tbqh as someone who’s been a huge Anne fan since age 9, I never got the impression that she really wanted to be a writer all that badly. She definitely was no Emily of New Moon, who was totally consumed by her passion for writing and truly had a calling for it. Anne was p. much a literary dilettante who liked to dabble in fairytales and wrote a half-decent poem or two, that’s all. I see it as close to the way that I wrote fanfic and the odd original story for most of my teens. Some were cringe-worthy and some were alright. But eventually I realized that I had no real talent for writing, nor the self-discipline or desire to really put my back into it and *develop* that talent. I don’t really consider that “giving up on art.” More like becoming aware of your own limitations and reprioritizing.
What Anne really wanted was to find TWOO WUB and have half a dozen children and be the mother she never had. In “Anne’s House of Dreams” Gilbert teases her that a woman with her intellect and a Bachelor’s degree should be a leader in social/intellectual circles instead of being a housewife and her response is basically “Nothing could really make me as happy as being your wife right here in this armpit of a fishing town.” And there’s nothing wrong with that! There’s nothing inherently non-feminist about wanting to be a SAHM. That’s actually one of the things I love about LMM’s books – that the women’s sphere of childreading, marriage, household duties, gossip, quilting bees, whatever, is described in such glorious detail and presented as important and deserving of being written about.
THIS GOT LONG, SORRY. And it’s not about Little Women at all. I just have a lot of feelings about Anne!
Well … I’m kind of with Gilbert there, is the short answer to that. She seemed such a “kindred spirit” to me as an eleven-year-old, (books, poems, stories, words, kind of scatty but still academically successful) and unrecognisable as a young woman. Diana to me seemed the kind of girl who wrote a few stories because her friend was doing it and it was enjoyable enough and she wasn’t incapable of it, but who was never really going to pursue it and would probably always devote herself happily to domesticity in later life. But Anne seemed as if she was going to do something other than follow the exact same life-path everyone else was on. But she didn’t, and I can’t totally wave away the disappointment.
But seriously…Dirtbag Emily Byrd Starr & Co would be AMAZING. Dirtbag Ilse?? please god yes.
YES. I didn’t like Dirtbag Anne, because I am apparently way more attached to that book than I realized. But Emily of New Moon is perfect for the dirtbag treatment. Plus, I need someone to make fun of creepy old dude (I do not remember his name). My only real memories of reading those books was spending a great deal of time completely skeeved out by him. Now I need to reread those books.
I’m pretty sure Ilse is already dirtbag.
I’m in a theater production of Little Women right now… and I’m Aunt March. Now I understand why Aunt March has such a low opinion of all the girls.
YES. I didn't like Dirtbag Anne, because I am apparently way more attached to that book than I realized. But Emily of New Moon is perfect for the dirtbag treatment. Plus, I need someone to make fun of creepy old dude (I do not remember his name). My only real memories of reading those books was spending a great deal of time completely skeeved out by him. Now I need to reread those books.
dirtbag jane austen books would actually make my life. elizabeth “badass” bennet and emma “whogivesashirt” woodhouse.
same with dirtbag jane eyre.
Check out the Carol Burnette Went With The Wind. Costumes by Bob Mackie and all of your dreams come true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjUYw2HKB7o
OH MY WERD THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER Seriously I am dying of laughter right now. (reading this thread for the first time because of the "best of" posts and I love this too much not to comment even if it is almost a year later)