c'est la vie

One of the most interesting abandoned places - Church in St. Etienne, France

Mini Gardens on the Move: Japanese Landscapers Transform Truck Beds Into Bucolic Worlds 

Jenny was originally designed to be a shape-shifting superhero; her “pigtails” are rocket thrusters, and her entire body can morph and shift to create weapons. Given her standard appearance is more to look like a humanoid girl, it seems reasonable that that’s an appearance she chose, rather than her default, especially because we know she can modify her appearance however she likes, albeit restricted to her two base colors unless she gets a new paint-job.

Though her mother learns to be more supportive of her later on, Jenny was originally confined to house arrest save for doing her job, supposedly because the world around her wouldn’t accept her.

She is canonically six-foot-six, which is rather tall, though it seems the average height of humanity has also gone up. So it’s not too uncommon for other men to be taller than her, but she’s also taller than most people. She has so far only dated other men who are taller than her.

She gains two different disguises for looking human. The first one doesn’t pass at all, while the second passing one convinces her to behave like a normal human girl, whispering into her ear to not only look, but behave like a “normal” girl, even if it’s not in her best interests.

It’s evidently quite common for androids to be made from different base personality points- Kenny, a boy she dated for a little while, was a re-purposed dog robot, and still carried over some of his dog traits.

The two most popular girls in school specifically have it out for her, because she’s a robot “pretending” to be a girl.

I’d suspected Jenny was trans coded for a long time, but this scene was what had me 100% convinced. 

Prior to this episode Jenny had always treated Ms. Wakeman as her mother, always referring to her as “mom/mother”; which caused Wakeman to be mocked by her peers. Ms. Wakeman was typically cold towards Jenny, always referring to her as XJ9 (essentially Jenny’s deadname) and usually treating her as nothing more than a defence droid. But in this scene Ms. Wakeman is actually seeing Jenny in danger and rushes to protect her, finally calling her “my daughter” for the first time. As soon as she does, the pure joy and amazement in Jenny’s voice just makes my heart swell. 

— Sylvia Plath (via hplyrikz)

Clear your mind here

and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.

but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.

time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.

as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.

cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.

so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.

summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.

this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.

cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…

from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…

after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.

aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.

time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.

one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.

she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.

she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.

years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.

two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.

or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.