Organically Grown

But. Like. Why is that everyone’s go-to.

I have read the original book. Peter is manipulative, Peter is selfish, Peter is so fundamentally a child that it hurts. But he’s not evil. He flatters Wendy into going to Neverland with him because he’s convinced that she would love it there, because he loves it there, and she just needs a push. He is the kind of child who thinks that what makes him happy would make everyone else happy too.

(And he’s right, Wendy loved Neverland.)

He kills pirates, yes. He also goes out of his way to make it sporting and is horrified at the idea of attacking one who was sleeping. He and Wendy get trapped, about to drown, and when a chance of rescue arrives he sacrifices himself to save Wendy without a single hesitation. He thinks playing schoolboy is an awesome game. He cries for his best friend, Tinker Bell, and frantically begs the world at large to save her from poison.

He’s bossy and kind and always wants to be in charge of the game and is really bad at considering that other people have their own opinions. He makes friends with mermaids and has horrific nightmares and invents the “Second to the right and straight on till morning!” off the top of his head because he’s embarrassed he doesn’t have an address (which the narrator then notes is nonsense and you would never get to Neverland that way).

Everything always has to go his way because he is nine years old and that is the point of the book.

Meanwhile Tinker Bell’s main plot in the book is trying to kill an eight year old girl for daring to look at Peter. Why don’t the retellings ever make her the villain?

And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"

And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this

And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff

And the parents are like

Stop lying!!!

And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)

But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.

Anne Carson (2009)

Arthur S. Way (1898)

George Theodoridis (2010)

Ian C. Johnston (2010)

E.P. Coleridge (1910)

Theodore Alois Buckley (1892)

John Peck, Frank Nisetich (1995)

R. Potter (1906)

M. L. West (1987)

William Arrowsmith (1958)

Philip Vellacott (1972)

Michael Wodhull (1782)

Kenneth McLeish (1997)

David Kovacs (2002)

Andrew Wilson (1993)

Wonderland/Looking-Glass are books of weird nonsense. That's all. The most violent thing in the books is the Queen of Hearts shouting "off with their heads!" but it's also stated in the books that "it's all in her fancy," no one ever gets executed. They just play along to placate her temper. It's hilarious. A close second would be the entire Duchess, Cook, and baby/pig sequence, which definitely showcases domestic/child abuse, but again, is played off so comedically, it's hard to justify the other Violent and Dark variations of Alice, which rarely feature those characters anyway.

Whereas Oz and Peter???? Murdering, kidnapping, and horrific imagery left, right, and center! Both intentional or otherwise!

Peter cheerfully terrorizes Captain Hook on the daily, nearly loses the Darling children in the abyss of space on the way to Neverland, and is canonically described as "thoughtless" towards others because to him, it's all a game.

Dorothy, while innocent in her own right, unwittingly kills a woman upon entering the Land of Oz, and we later learn that the Tin-Man was literally chopped to pieces and slowly rebuilt into a body of tin to stay alive. Not to mention the horrifying lady with the room full of heads that she wears on a whim! (Anyone who's seen Return to Oz knows I'm talking about Princess Mombi; in the third book, Ozma of Oz, her name is Princess Langwidere.)

So some guy in Michigan in the US has just found a letter in his grandmother’s house; it seems to be a pen pal letter from 1973ish, and it’s from a young Welsh girl. In it, she lists:

Her name, and the names of her brother (Gwynedd) and sister (Catrin)

Their ages

Where she lives in Wales (Denbigh)

Her hobbies, including horse riding and reading pony books.

So this American dude decides to take a photo, whack it on Twitter and ask the only Welsh person he knows if there’s any way to track this Welsh girl down, because you know, ALL WELSH PEOPLE KNOW EACH OTHER, OBVIOUSLY

Except

I am furious to report that it has worked

Welsh person he tags doesn’t know, but takes up the challenge. Someone reckons the Catrin might be a woman who translated a hymn book once, and checks the foreword to see that the dates and ages do seem to be about right. Someone else suddenly has a brainwave - wait, isn’t she the mother of Steff, the comedian?

My husband gets tagged, takes one look at this letter, and is like “That is 1000% my aunt.”