finns det nån därute som kan svara

I think we would all feel better if we thought of soulmates less like there's only one special person for you in the entire universe and THAT'S IT, and more like kindred spirits à la Anne of Green Gables.

Like. Consider that maybe you don't have a single soulmate, but instead, there's whole bunch of soulmates out there just waiting to cross paths with you. Consider that perhaps a monogamous romantic relationship is only one possible way of being together with a soulmate, and that you can even have several soulmates be a part of your life at the same time, each meaning something different but equally as important to you. Consider that spending the rest of your life together with a soulmate is not a requirement, and that just touching each other's lives for a brief amount of time can also hold a lot of power and meaning.

Granted, I'm not good at keeping track of visual details and usually have a hard time remembering the colour of anyone's eyes... but even so, brown turning out to be dark violet of all shades feels somewhat mystifying to me.

Of course in fiction, anyone's orbs can be whichever hue happens to please the author, but I like to keep things grounded personally... and unfortunately, according to all reliable sources I've been able to find, in real life violet eyes only occur in humans due to albinism. (Also, according to one source, real violet is invisible to us, and the colour that's also called purple doesn't exist. Is the purple dinosaur even real or did we all collectively hallucinate him.)

My conclusion: Barney is either a magical being or was born with Alexandria's Genesis. I'm leaning towards magical, seeing how he was already likened to an amused gnome earlier, and also his mysterious animal sorcery.

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The focus is definitely shifting towards Valancy and Barney, but I think the thing I enjoy the most about this chapter is the little glimpse we get of Valancy and Cissy's friendship: Valancy reads John Foster's books to Cissy, who loves them.

This genuinely makes me so happy. I think sharing a piece of art that you enjoy with a friend is such a joy, and it delights me that Valancy gets to expose Cissy to literally the entire oeuvre of her fav author.

~

Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen of heartbreakingly sad fate... and also an old car that makes terrible noises you can hear miles away. Why not.

~

Translation note:

The Finnish translator is sceptical of Barney's violet eyes too, tossing whimsy and Tumblr legends out of the window and just giving him dark blue eyes instead.

"In the long, wondrous, northern twilights––"

This immediately made me wonder, so I checked: on June 9th in Muskoka, the sun rises at 05:31 and sets at 21:02, so they have a total of 15 hours and 32 minutes of daylight. The nighttime comprises 4 hours and 59 minutes of the different shades of twilight (civil, nautical, and astronomical) and 3 hours and 29 minutes of true night.

For comparison: on June 9th in Helsinki, Finland, the sun rises at 03:58 and sets at 22:41, so a total of 18 hours and 43 minutes of daylight. The nighttime is 5 hours and 17 minutes of twilight, without any true night at all.

(It's almost silly how subjective this daylight stuff is. I know that some people living in northern Finland – or in the northernmost parts of Canada, for that matter – think that we here in southern Finland are weaklings for getting seasonal affective disorder even though here, the sun both rises and sets every single day of the year. On the other hand, I genuinely felt a lil bit distressed at how dark the evenings were when I once visited northern Germany – between Helsinki and Muskoka in the summer daylight graph – in July. Anything's normal once you get used to it, I guess.)

So: Valancy and I are getting a nearly identical amount of long, wondrous, northern twilights in June – they're just situated a bit differently, so that sticking to a regular sleep schedule prevents me from enjoying mine almost completely.

~

Both Cissy and Valancy are doing a bang-up job carpe-ing their diems here. If I was Valancy, I think I would be starting to absolutely lose it about now, both about my own time running out now that I've figured out that life doesn't have to be awful all the time, and about my newfound bestie being at death's door. Not these ladies, though! They're just out there, making each day count, not falling into anxiety attacks about their impending untimely deaths.

Then again, I'm sure having a literal deadline makes it easier for Cissy and Valancy to deepen their friendship. There's too little time for the more typical, glacially paced progression where you first spend weeks or months or even years talking about lighter topics before finally delving into more personal subjects – it's either leveling their friendship up every single day or never getting to experience the sort of deep-heart connection they are both longing to have.

In any case, it's really sweet that Valancy gets to find out that Cissy liked her when they were younger (I don't blame her for not figuring it out earlier, I agree with the tags @bewareofitalics put on my chapter 16 post that said Valancy was so used to being not being liked that she didn't even notice when someone actually liked her), and it's admirable how she dares to be so vulnerable and tell Cissy about her Blue Castle.

~

Translation note:

There's a sentiment I've ran across quite often when reading the Finnish women's magazines my mom likes to buy: it's a sign of true friendship when, even after you've spend years apart for whatever reason, you're able to continue your friendship like no time has passed when you finally meet each other again.

That's the vibe I'm getting from Cissy and Valancy in this chapter. Instead of faulting Valancy for never visiting her, Cissy just feels happy that she is here now. As a reader, it's hard not to think how much happier both of their lives would have been if they had been able to stay friends all this time... but it seems that Cissy and Valancy know better than to waste time thinking about that and are able to live in the moment instead.

It does make me wonder, though – it seems like Cissy felt a stronger sense of affection towards Valancy than Valancy ever felt towards Cissy, doesn't it? I mean, Cissy still remembers Valancy being sweet to her, and even Roaring Abel was aware enough of Cissy liking Valancy to roast Valancy about it a couple of chapters earlier ("And she used to like you so well"), but we've been told Valancy thinks that she has never had a friend in her life...

As a lover of Swedish musical theatre and historical fiction that no one has heard of, I'm used to absolutely minuscule fandoms. And when it comes to those, it's often a bit of an opposite experience, actually: it can sometimes make me feel slightly desperate when the only other person that's ever posted in the tag focuses on a completely different aspect of the work than I do, or interprets it very differently. Like... isn't it enough that there are only two of us on the entire planet that enjoy this thing, do we also have to disagree about it? The universe truly is a lonely, dark, unloving place.

But in the book club, there are enough of us that picking out different aspects of the text doesn't feel lonely at all – instead, it feels like we're building a puzzle or colouring a picture together.

I'm starting to feel like in the modern day, Uncle James would be some sort of a far right manosphere neopatriarchal grifter.

I mean, him suggesting locking Valancy up again, then making the "splendid concession" that a person who has made missteps in her life just might still be a human being... unfortunately, though it's been a hundred years, the Uncle Jameses of this world are still alive and well and absolutely everywhere.

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"– –and as for the damage it will do my reputation, why, you know I haven’t any matrimonial chances anyhow, so what does it matter?"

Love to see Valancy taking something her family has used against her and using it against them, and in such a perfectly logical manner too. Really, what does it matter?

Let her say fuck, though.

~