Every time I think of Charmed Life
Feb. 1st, 2025 09:27 amI'm unfortunately hit by the reminder that Janet has no reason to keep Gwendolyn's secrets. Which means that none of that book should have even happened, because even if Janet had decided to play along for fun and adventure at the start of the book, she's a sensible and caring young girl, she clearly would've come clean as soon as it was obvious that they were in over their heads and Cat might actually die. (Again.)
Normally I'd say that we're trapped by genre conventions, as always, because no responsible adults would ever have let any of that happen at all - but then, this is DWJ, so that doesn't have to be a concern if we don't want it to be. (Also: Seriously, Janet just abandoned her home and her parents to be with Gwendolyn's brother and nobody says anything about this? Well, I guess she had no choice in the matter, but still. Responsible adults would've been concerned about this, and I like to believe that in real life even DWJ, with her own parental issues, would've realized how really weird that is!)
This post is brought to you by the person in /r/whatsthatbook who was trying to find Charmed Life, and incidentally slandered the Chants as not having switched to stainless steel because they were "too rich" to think of not using silver silverware. No, they didn't switch to stainless steel for the same reason they didn't switch to wood or aluminum utensils, because that would've been slightly weird and it took Janet, for whom it was not weird, to see the solution to Christopher's silver allergy. I only bothered solving that post so I could correct the poster's dire misunderstanding of the situation.
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Normally I'd say that we're trapped by genre conventions, as always, because no responsible adults would ever have let any of that happen at all - but then, this is DWJ, so that doesn't have to be a concern if we don't want it to be. (Also: Seriously, Janet just abandoned her home and her parents to be with Gwendolyn's brother and nobody says anything about this? Well, I guess she had no choice in the matter, but still. Responsible adults would've been concerned about this, and I like to believe that in real life even DWJ, with her own parental issues, would've realized how really weird that is!)
This post is brought to you by the person in /r/whatsthatbook who was trying to find Charmed Life, and incidentally slandered the Chants as not having switched to stainless steel because they were "too rich" to think of not using silver silverware. No, they didn't switch to stainless steel for the same reason they didn't switch to wood or aluminum utensils, because that would've been slightly weird and it took Janet, for whom it was not weird, to see the solution to Christopher's silver allergy. I only bothered solving that post so I could correct the poster's dire misunderstanding of the situation.
( Read more... )