Lily Bart, House of Mirth
A villa on the Amalfi Coast, and a envelope full of pocket money, and no company. Give Lily Bart days and weeks to spend to herself, riding a bicycle from tiny seaside town to tiny seaside town, up and down the rolling coastline, spending her days finding deserted beaches where she’d swim with nobody looking. She would find a restaurant that she liked best and every night she would go and get a table for one and sit there with a carafe of wine and eat a different item off the menu. The waiters would flirt with her, and she would flirt back, delighted, but she would never bring company, and she would have an unending supply of good books to prop up against her plate of spaghetti while she ate.
Achilles, The Iliad
A trip to the 21st century. Prague, maybe, or London, some big city where he can wander around being a bored tourist, snapping his gum, picking his nose in cathedrals, snapback on crooked and hopping from foot to foot, looking for a basketball court.
Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, Captain America
Hiking in the Lofoten Islands in Norway. They’d get dropped off in one of the fancy Stark jets and then disappear off the face of the earth. They have big backpacks of tents and sleeping bags and woolen sweaters whose style hadn’t changed for hundreds of years and Steve’s mom’s compass, reclaimed from the Smithsonian. They wouldn’t bother with any electronics, because it didn’t particularly matter if they got lost. Steve brings a stack of postcards and writes to Natasha and Sam, keeps them bundled up for whenever they finally reach a town. They spend days climbing up sheer cliffs and setting up their tents beside remote lakes. It’s too cold for normal people to hike, so they never see anyone else. Sometimes they go days without talking, but Bucky usually whistles.
Stephen Black, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
He goes to Greece and spends days paddling in his austere bathing suit in the shallows, bathing the old aches of his feet. He makes friends with the locals, many of whom, as ever, are in love with him, and who find his polite standoffishness charming and baffling and try to feed it out of him. None of the food turns to dust in his mouth. He sleeps restlessly most nights but whenever he wakes up it’s just the gauze curtains fluttering with a sea breeze, and in the morning there will be fresh markets and flaky pastries and people laughing and flirting with him. He is often asked to dance, but never forced.
Marge Simpson, The Simpsons
A gambling holiday to Monte Carlo, with a rich benefactor who prefers to remain gently unknown (but is probably one of Homer’s aunts). She leaves her room immaculately clean for the first two days, until she daringly leaves a towel on the floor and comes back that night to find a new, fluffy one on the rail waiting for her. It entirely makes up for the fact that she’s lost about $10,000 so far. She barely leaves the casino except to go on two guided tours and one souvenir shopping trip, at which she runs into Edna Krabappel. They get on quite well. They have dinner together most nights.
Sun, Sense8
The rest of the cluster would make a formal agreement not to require her help in beating anyone up for a week, and then ship her off to a villa in a small Mexican town. Lido would occasionally pop in to help her with the language, but mostly she’d wander mute and watchful around warm streets, buying armfuls of flowers to take back to her room. She’d stretch out in the sunny backyard but wouldn’t bother going through her routine much: instead she’d find a hammock to lie in and swing, eyes half-closed, drowsily watching the lives of others play out without any need for her to take control. Her dog would come with her.
Harry, Ron and Hermione, Harry Potter
Nothing to do with camping. You know how Hermione always came back at the beginning of each book brown and grinning from summers in the south of France? Not that, either, it would probably remind her of her parents too much. I think the Golden Trio should go to New York and spend a week sloping around Brooklyn in the summer, eating ice creams and throwing up peace signs in front of the Statue of Liberty. Ron would like the food. Hermione would like the art. Harry would like the way no one knew Voldemort’s name.
Jessica Jones and Malcolm Ducasse, Jessica Jones
Jessica and Malcolm go to Australia. They travel down the East Coast in a very old camper van. Malcolm wears board shorts and Hawaiian t-shirts; Jessica swelters grimly in all black and insists that they stop at bad pubs every night so she can have cheap whiskey, as Malcolm won’t let her have any in the car. They sit on beaches. They clamber through rainforests. They call Trish, dutifully, once every three days to check in. Malcolm gets a bit of muscle definition back from a week of learning to surf on the Gold Coast.
One day they’re eating a gloomy picnic of fish and chips on a pier and a pod of dolphins skim by. Jessica says, “This is bullshit,” and Malcolm nods and yawns and stretches, salt drying on his skin.
Sméagol, The Lord of the Rings
Sméagol goes on a group tour catered for the over-60s demographic called The Magic of Andalusia! There are bright sunny days and informative talks about the Moorish architecture in Granada and a full day spent cheerfully being shown about limestone mountains and pine forests in Cazorla National Park. He makes friends with everyone else in the group and starts a series of rowdy bus songs that everyone harmonises on. Sméagol likes the company best. Gollum likes the seafood.
Bertha Mason, Jane Eyre
She goes home. On the ship crossing she stands at the prow and the wind feels like it’s ripping all the cobwebs and cold and ash out of her mind. She doesn’t sleep very much; instead she wanders the ship at night feeling out all the doorways, checking which ones open for her. She finds the lifeboats. She has a secret pack, and a plan.
Elena and Lila, The Neapolitan Novels
Less of a holiday and more of a corporate retreat, lots of team building activities, lots of cheerful strangers, lots of learning to articulate emotions. They’d probably pike out about halfway through; Elena would give a long, constrained speech about how she felt it did not entirely suit her, nor her friend, and how to understand whether that made it more or less worthy, and would then feel incredibly guilty about having done so. They would go and get coffee in a cafe overlooking flowerbeds. Lila would systematically rip apart the personality of everyone else involved. Elena would listen, and smile with less of an ugly twist than usual.
Ishmael and Queequeg, Moby Dick
A fancy resort somewhere in Thailand. The faker the better. Give them an ocean so flat the idea of sailing is ludicrous, so clear you can see right to the bottom, and populated only with shining – and small – fish. Give them a clean, white-washed room, with a little shelf for Queeqeug’s alter and a king-size bed for the both of them.
*
(image via)
Stephen Black from JSMN!
He sleeps restlessly most nights but whenever he wakes up it’s just the gauze curtains fluttering with a sea breeze, and in the morning there will be fresh markets and flaky pastries and people laughing and flirting with him.
Oh, my heart.
All these characters deserve holidays, but Stephen most of all. He can have a villa and age gently and gracefully on the beach, with people to look after him.
Is this a holiday or a retirement? Because I’m suddenly extremely attached to the idea that he has gotten (spoiler) to the point where he CAN retire.
(more spoilery fantasy from me)
It starts as a holiday, but after his brief control of England and his rule in Lost-Hope after TMWTTDH, the Earth feels some lingering loyalty to him. Uskglass is confused but somewhat charmed by the ‘nameless slave’ misunderstanding and, from a respectful distance, arranges thing so that Stephen’s life falls perfectly into place. It’s all very indirect, as Stephen wouldn’t want anyone meddling (especially magically) in his life again. So things shake down very comfortably for Stephen, and he lives to a reasonable age in happy but never lonely solitude.
no i’m not crying you’re crying
I would like a miniseries of each of these, please. Well, except maybe Achilles. Don’t need any more media about that bro.
They would be very boring and peaceful and delightful to watch. Slow TV.
Excuse me while I send this to all of my friends.
But really how do I ensure that Achilles gets a 9000-year rest??? I recently read Song of Achilles and so my only addition would be hoping that Patroclus would be lazily roaming Europe alongside him.
I JUST realized that when Steve and Bucky settle down (they have too right) it would be in Reykjavik.
I just know this in my bones to be true.
Quite possibly in this house.
They can fight Sirius Black for it.
He might prefer this one, the roof is a bit jauntier.
I rather think they’d go to Alaska.
They speak the language, don’t have to marry a local to be accepted into the community, there’s enough space to truly get lost, tourists are rare or at least avoidable, and nobody would bat an eye if Bucky carried around a ton of weaponry and placed landmines around their little cottage. They would go on week-long bike rides and never notice they’d crossed the border to Canada. They would grow wild beards and Steve would get a small hydroplane for grocery runs.
It would be quiet and nice and no one would make them relive thier horrible war memories ever again and they have eight dogs
They would go fishing a lot, and Bucky would barbecue every single day, even in pouring rain, and Steve would gracefully indulge him. They would be kind to tourists who have lost their way, but also relieved when they’re gone again. In the evenings, they’d sit by the lake in silence, sipping their beers, not even complaining about the mosquitoes.
Prince Myshkin deserves a working vacation as caretaker at an idyllic farm for rescued animals.
“Sméagol likes the company best. Gollum likes the seafood.”
I actually just cried out, softly, in a kind of sorrow I’ve never felt before.
I made an “oomph” noise and put my hand to my chest. My husband thought I was choking.
I initially read this as “fictional children” and was so confused when the majority of the characters were definitely not children. (However, they absolutely do all deserve these holidays.)
Yeah, but they’re *my* children.
Oh man, the Bertha Mason one is just beautiful and so painful. I just want all the doors to open to her, and open for her as often as she wants.
And maybe one day, she’ll open the door of her villa to Jane and they will just wordlessly hold each other as they both gently cry, grateful that somebody else can share with them in escaping the abusive sociopath Mr. Rochester.
Of all these, I want a full length Bertha Mason one the most stat. Need, in fact, in my very soul.
She doesn’t sleep very much; instead she wanders the ship at night feeling out all the doorways, checking which ones open for her.
This part brought startled tears to my eyes. I feel like a lot of us do some version of this exercise, whether literally or metaphorically.
Happy, free Bertha! Ishmael and Queequeg together!
Toast, you are stepping up on the comforting items of late and it’s much appreciated.
I would add that Winifred from “Ballet Shoes” gets to stay on Jon Stewart’s rescue animal farm and play and sing off-key and eat lots of wholesome and delicious food and just be a child.
Oh poor Winifred! I wanted to slap Pauline so hard!
Especially now we know she has an offshore bank account!
I hope poor plain-but-brilliant Winifred runs away with plain-but-brilliant Rachel Lennox and they star in a billion movies together and start a new paradigm for beauty because that kind of talent shouldnt be ignored just because they don’t have Alice in Wonderland looks.
Oh god, please someone write this.
The House of Mirth one sounds like the best holiday ever.
Right? I’m dreamily sighing at my desk at the very thought.
Yeah, I actually really want to do that. Oh wait, I actually DID do that in Paris for a few days back in … ugh… 2008. IT WAS AWESOME. I now have a spouse which would make that slightly more difficult!
But Lily would be soooooo bored. She’s not actually an intellectual and she does like a social life. Just not the one her loathsome “friends” provide her. For her, almost any vacation would do so long as she had economic security as the foundation of it.
She’d have friends. Cheerful, entertaining friends who never gossip about anyone and don’t care if someone has coffee with a man. Friends who honestly and wholeheartedly admire each other’s hats. One friend has a yacht, and they go for sunny Mediterranean cruises and nobody insults anybody ever and nobody cares if Lily is lively in her speech and manner, because they know and value her.
These friends are all women, or gay men (“confirmed bachelors”) who flirt just for fun and don ‘t mean anything by it.
Ideally this vacation would end with her getting a letter announcing that she’s won the lottery, or inherited a fortune from a hitherto unknown relative. And then she’d set up permanently in Italy and hire an honest and intelligent secretary to help her manage her finances, write her letters, and schedule her social calls.
All the girls in Judy Blume’s Blubber go on an intense weekend retreat in grade 7, and emerge as a self-loving pack of supportive friends.
YES
Yo, not to make it all about me for a hot minute, but I feel like these are all the holidays my sad non-fictional self deserves.
(No but really, this article is great and hits right in the feels!)
A+ gif
Every Sad Queer From Serious Literature goes on one of those gay cruises together, but a new kind. A better kind, with on-board therapy sessions and quiet soothing music instead of bone-thumping bass and 2 dozen clubs for all the gender non-conforming hobbies they couldn’t do at home. Drinks are free for everyone but attendants are careful about alcoholism. Chi-Chi Devayne is hired and not only does drag, but wanders around being delightful at people.
A helicopter sweeps in and whisks Queer Teen Characters In Repressive Small Towns away before their authors can subject them to a Tragically Young But Beautiful Death. Everyone on the ship is waiting on deck with cake and champagne when the helicopter makes its weekly delivery (but the kids are free to skip the welcome party and head straight to a secluded hammock with a relaxing ocean view, if they like). Some of the older folks don’t really “get” them, but they put on a hell of a talent show in the ship’s dinner theater.
The ship holds an extensive photo collection. “Who are all these people?” A sultry young duke tries to look too bored, to full of machismo, to really care.
“Those? They’re our alumni. And friends,” said the attendant leading her to her cabin. “They wanted you to know you’re not the only one, and that happy endings are possible. Love, even, if you’re lucky.”
He produced the keys and politely pretended not to notice the guest struggle with tears. He’s been there, once. He’ll, they all had … but maybe, someday, the tears would seem a fantasy.
My tears are not a fantasy. They are so, so real right now.
I wish I could hit the thumbs-up button on this a million times.
I never would have categorized Marge Simpson as a Sad Fictional Character but now I see it is %10000 true.
Yes! I’m so happy imagining her amazement at finding the new clean towel and realizing that for the first time someone is going to clean up after her instead of the other way around.
I’m imagining her communicating with her family solely by postcard and turning off the TV as soon as she sees Kent Brockman’s face on it. She does not need to know how Springfield is falling apart without her, this time.
(I hope she found a nice loom-weaving club at the resort, too. She was so happy weaving on the loom!)
Honestly that bit was so in character that I could 100% picture it being part of a Simpson’s episode.
I’m not convinced it hasn’t already been in an episode.
I think it has! When Marge broke her leg and had to convalesce, maybe?
It has. Season 3’s “Homer Alone”. She has a nervous breakdown and goes to a spa called Rancho Relaxo. She orders a hot fudge sundae and a bottle of tequila from room service and watches ‘Thelma and Louise’ on Pay per View. It was glorious.
Oh and “I wasted my life” etc….
My ex and I went on a vacation once; he had picked a place that only made up the rooms on alternate days. I almost wept (this was when the kids were wee, and much more of my time went in to cleaning up after them). I don’t think he ever truly understood that THAT’S THE REASON HOTELS ARE MAGIC. (And of course, the reason why you tip housekeeping EVERY DAY.)
I remember once having a minor epiphany when someone pointed out to me that, of the entire huge cast of The Simpsons, Marge is the only one who ever seems to doubt or question her place in life and/or her perception of herself. She’s never quite happy, and the older I’ve gotten the more glaring that has seemed. I want this reality for Marge more than anyone.
this is pretty true of Lisa as well…except that she knows who she is. She got a note from Mr. Bergstrom.
Well, now I’ve made myself cry.
MR BERGSTROM
I died at Lily Bart, and came back to life at Bertha Mason.
Ishmael and Queequeg. Words fa
Was typing
Words fail
And they actually failed.
So so lovely! I had feelings and they were good ones.
BERTHA *cries*
She deserved so very much better than she got. She needs her home, and love, and freedom and care.
I just emitted the dreamiest possible sigh, sitting at my little desk, in a stretch of gray and unending days. Yes. Yes please.
~~~sigh~~~
why isn’t this its own massive subgenre of fanfiction
It could be!
This comment just reminded me that I actually wrote a nice vacation fic for Han and Leia back in the day. Aww, my young self.
Don’t fret my dear. If you look closely enough, you’ll realize it IS a subgenre of fanfiction.
[goes back to reading h/c fix-it fic]
I am here for all the cozyfics. All of them.
ok but that Steve and Bucky one legit made me cry? What are these feelings that I am feeling?
*sobbing eternally into the void*
This is just delightful and perfect and I love it with all my heart.
This reminded me so strongly of Joanna Russ’s short-short story “It’s Important To Believe”, in which time-travelling aliens go back to 1941 and rescue Virginia Woolf from suicide by drowning. It’s short enough to quote the whole thing, but I expect that would be a copyright violation, so I’ll just sample:
“That they plucked her from the muddy pond where she lay, breathing life back into her. That they emptied the stones from her jacket pockets. . . . That they fed her and she didn’t refuse, no longer believing the body to be horrible. . . . That she asked for her manuscripts and they had them.
That they went there.
That it was a good place.”
I never saw this before. I love it. Thank you so very much for pointing us towards it.
I note that the story is partially dedicated to Allie Sheldon, who is presumably the gender-defying writer sometimes known as James Tiptree Jr.
Indeed it is. I love the confluence of Russ, Tiptree, and Woolf, three such amazing women writers.
This gave me such a strong and unexpected rush of feeling. I am processing right now. How beautiful and heartbreaking all at once, and I really do want to believe.
These are just so kind.
While I know Holden Caulfield is kind of terrible, I also just want him to be able to spend a week somewhere in the woods with kind adults who listen to him and answer both his literal questions and the unspoken questions that lurk underneath.
Yes this.
Oh and those boys from the Goldfinch, who I just got so tired of reading about as they orchestrated their own miserable lives so never finished the book and now I can’t even remember their names because they made me sad.
I like to imagine that in the end Main Character doesn’t marry Whatshername (but breaks off the engagement in a respectful and dutifully sorry way, not the explosive way that probably happens) and instead runs off to the mountains with Russian Rebel Teen and they live happily ever after in a cottage together, hiking and drinking and swimming and fishing and all that, with the painting hanging on the wall, slowly fading more and more from the early morning sunbeam that shines on it through the window.
And Whatsername meets a nice young society lady-or-man who values her for HER, not just for the comfort her family once provided, the nostalgia of a pre-explosion New York childhood, and the stability that she represents like Main Character did.
(I know the real ending can’t possibly live up to this, and even though now I am curious what it was, I actually just want to live in this headcannon instead.)
I mean I read Catcher in the Rye expecting to hate Holden but instead I spent the entire book almost crying about this poor isolated kid and how desperately he wanted someone to actually listen to him and validate his feelings.
Yeah, it always surprises me how much hate Holden gets because he is terrible in the way that teens are fundamentally terrible, but most of them grow out of it. The tragedy is he probably never will because he has no Stern but Kind Adults to snap him out of it.
Well I think at the end of the book he’s narrating from a hospital where he’s being treated for tuberculosis and the clear mental breakdown he had over the death of his brother, so I think eventually he does have some kind adults actually help him.
Yeah, I feel like Nurses in the 1960s would mostly be like they are today. Calm, sensible working class middle aged women who are very nice but aren’t putting up with crap from you.
Holden wouldn’t be nearly so terrible if this had happened to him.
I think this is the most soothing thing I’ve ever read. I’d like one of these for every sad fictional character.
Please send Miss Bates (from Emma) on a lovely holiday next. Surely someone will be able to look after her mother so that she can have a few weeks away?
Jane Fairfax needs a vacation, and an independent fortune at the end of it, so she doesn’t have to marry Frank Churchill unless she truly wants him.
Earlier in the past season of The Walking Dead I just wanted everyone to plant sorghum, keep bees for honey, harvest and roast root vegetables, practice tai chi and quietly remember those they lost. Raise the babies. Make a few more. I would STILL WATCH AMC– I would still watch.
Vanessa Ives, Penny Dreadful
You might find this surprising, but Vanessa Ives takes a train all the way to the south of France, where she then gets on a boat to cross the Mediterranean to Morocco. She’s never been to a desert before, and while it doesn’t stop her from wearing black either, she covers her hair with a black lace scarf to protect it from the sand and relishes the feel of the dry heat on her skin. She pays a local to take her out into the desert to find fattail scorpions, one of the most venomous in the world, and she coos at them like they’re tiny fat puppies. None of them ever sting her, even though she gets dangerously close.
Vanessa Ives in Morocco is my new personal aesthetic
(spoilers) You know, I always want to send sad fictional characters into therapy and Season 3 Vanessa Ives is one of the few characters WHO MADE THAT DREAM COME TRUE
In like, the best way possible too, because PATTI LUPONE IS LIFE.
All of these made me happy, but the Ishmael and Queequeg one especially. The completely translucent sea you can always see the bottom of! The king-sized bed!
Although I think Hector needs a vacation even more than petulant man-baby Achilles. Priam, too. Give that poor guy a break.
Yeah Hector definitely needs a vacation! A vacation FROM Achilles in fact. And from Paris of course.
Priam needs a vacation from *all* of them. As does Andromache.
This is so lovely. Thank you for giving Stephen Black the lovely vacation he deserves.
I want one for Sonya from War and Peace. And Sonya and Uncle Vanya from Uncle Vanya. And Sonya from Crime and Punishment? Man, I never noticed how rough Sonya has it in Russian lit.
Maybe they can go somewhere together.
The Sonya Retreat for Victims of Russian Literature. It’s in a shady glen in between beautiful mountains. Everyone has enough to eat and the firewood never runs out. There are no aristocrats and no serfs, but there are also no chapter long diatribes on communism. If you wander into the woods there are beautiful, interesting men who will fall in love with you if you want, and won’t if you don’t want. They are not fickle, or alcoholic, or consumed by passionate misery. You will begin to suspect they are not really Russian, but you find you don’t care.
And then Will Graham has a lovely dinner, none of which is people, and watches the sun set over the forest, which is not full of nightmare wildlife.
Will is surprised to find out that Alana and Margot vacation separately. But they’ve never been the kind of couple who had to be together every second. Margot, in particular, needs her space, and needs for her world to be as big as it can be. So she goes to Spain, while Alana goes to the cabin with Will. They’re quiet, most of the time, because Alana has never been about forcing Will to talk. They go fishing every day and cook what they’ve caught for dinner – a simple fish fry at first, but then some more complicated recipes Alana would like to try. In the evening they sit on the porch and have a glass of wine from her own personal collection.
The wine is not people.
It is not people. Nothing on their table has passed through Hannibal Lecter’s hands, or ever will again.
Sometimes they pair Alana’s fancy wine with PB&J’s, just out of spite.
Achilles should go to Berlin. I hear the club scene is fantastic and that there are a good number of gay clubs. He should meet a nice guy and spend a while travelling with him across Europe.
(Soylent Green, 1973) Shirl and all the rest of the sex slaves in that fancy apartment building knock over a bus, flee the city and build a feminist utopian commune. Renunciation of the patriarchy is a basic requirement for entry, no cookies are given for agreeing that women are human too, and no one has to have sex with anyone they don’t want to have sex with ever. Oh, and there’s ungodly amounts of jam. Like, all the jam you could ever want.
Helen of Troy, Guenevere, Dierdre of the Sorrows, Snow White, et al, at an all-girl Hawaiian resort where nobody is especially bent out of shape about who’s prettiest and who isn’t, and nobody is warring over who gets to marry them without asking them who they’d prefer. It’s all mud baths and surfing with well-sculpted lesbian instructors.
Anna Karenina takes both her children to a very quiet seaside resort town where there are no people she knows. They have a maid who magically arranges the troublesome logistics. They bathe every day in the sea and eat a lot of potato soup and black bread and sliced cucumbers. Vronsky is nowhere to be found, but after sitting in the sun for hours, painting watercolors of the sea birds, Anna realizes she doesn’t care in the slightest. Anna buys shiny sand pails for her children, who use them to bring her limpet shells and periwinkles they find on the beach.
This is beautiful!
Eleanor Vance escapes Hill House and drives away, not back to her sister and her brother-in-law but to a little cottage in the countryside. There are sunflowers, and a drowsy cat, and people passing by pause to appreciate her(but never stay and talk).
I really want the cabbage merchant from Avatar: The Last Airbender to go on a nice quiet temple retreat somewhere in the mountains. Adventuresome children are strictly banned from the premises. There is never any yelling. Nothing gets knocked over or broken.
I support this.
At the start of The Legend Of Korra, it’s shown that he went on great success: The Cabbage Corporation is now a major technology firm with a statue of their founder outside the building.
In his room there is a fruit bowl. He piles up the oranges into a perfect pyramid, and they always stay exactly as he left them.
I could read/write a million of these. They are so delightful.
May I submit Obi-Wan Kenobi for your consideration? Sun and sand! A nice warm place, away from all the drama in his life, where he can catch up on his reading, go for long walks, and get a tan…wait, I guess he already got that.
This article was just wonderful.
Also, that one line about Hermione’s parents actually made me cry. I don’t why I never realized before now that she may not be able to un-Obliviate them. I’m still crying.
She CAN because she’s HERMIONE.
Her and Ron take a few weeks after all the dust has settled and go to Australia to find them and figure out how things stand with themselves. The Grangers are living in a leafy suburb outside of Melbourne with a new dental practice and a small curly haired dog called Hermes. Removing the spell isn’t the hard part, it’s getting them to stop being mad at her afterwards. It’s Ron, incredibly, that smooths things over. He takes a quiet moment and tells the Grangers what happened to them, to his family and their friends, and how scared and brave their daughter was. They understand. They’re still angry but they understand. They decide to stay in Australia, they have a dental practice after all, and a dog and have you ever tried to take a pet on a 25 hour flight? It’s madness. They won’t let Hermione help with magic, they never do again. Maybe they’ll be there for good, maybe it’s just for now, while they try and get their heads back together. Australia isn’t very far away, magic wise. Ron gets the worst sunburn ever seen by man. They eat a lot of Greek food. Things work out ok.
(Harry is a little miffed by Ron and Hermione going without him but he knows they need it and he needs some time to think about what his life is now. He goes house hunting for a place that all his friends can live in, or stay in if they need to. He hangs out with George a lot, who needs time away from his house and his memories)
Because you totally asked me for half a page of fanfic I’m so sorry.
No no, don’t be sorry, half a page of fanfic was exactly what I was hoping to get out of this article
I support this.
May I submit Obi-Wan Kenobi for your consideration? Sun and sand! A nice warm place, away from all the drama in his life, where he can catch up on his reading, go for long walks, and get a tan…wait, I guess he already got that.
This part brought startled tears to my eyes. I feel like a lot of us do some version of this exercise, whether literally or metaphorically.
Arwen Undomiel: In between periods of sorrowfully pining away in Lothlorien, recalling what once was and now is lost forever, she visits her grandkids in Minas Tirith, parties in Osgiliath, and enjoys seeing all the new things.
Yes! I find myself wishing movie endings to so many of the stories I read here.
Dare I mention the ongoingly-tragic Winchester team? I haven’t watched since season 7, but I think I can safely assume that everything is still Very Bad and everyone keeps dying.
How ’bout Sam, Dean, and Cas just get a spa day. Or, you know. Year.
The cynical harpy in me wants to point out that none of this would be happening if TV nowadays wasn’t so hell-bent on the Everyone Dies trope/Trauma? What Trauma? kind of thing. But c’est la vie-as long as somewhere in the literary imagination, my favorite protagonists can get a hug and some rest…I’ll be content.
Capitao America
Capitao America
My ex and I went on a vacation once; he had picked a place that only made up the rooms on alternate days. I almost wept (this was when the kids were wee, and much more of my time went in to cleaning up after them). I don't think he ever truly understood that THAT'S THE REASON HOTELS ARE MAGIC. (And of course, the reason why you tip housekeeping EVERY DAY.)
This is after Bertha BURNS IT TO THE GROUND, right? A strong gust of wind saves her from the impact of the fall. And she’s off.
This is after Bertha BURNS IT TO THE GROUND, right? A strong gust of wind saves her from the impact of the fall. And she's off.
Besides, by now the Grangers have already experienced at least one Australian Christmas and may never go back to the cold, short-day kind.