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stina-is-a-punk-rocker · 3 years

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stephanie perkins: ‘anna and the french kiss’

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Then again, if you’ve read any YA book, ever, it’s fairly obvious what’s going to happen.

I was going to go easy on this book; I really was. It’s really unfair how media aimed at a female demographic is seen as frivolous and vapid, and more often than not bashed and bullied when it comes to reviews. “People actually enjoy this crap?” ask the powers that be. “It’s worthless! Pulp! Dreamy-eyed nonsense only complete nimrods could ever like!”

And I take offense to that. There’s nothing wrong with liking romance or happy endings or stories about cute European boys. I was ecstatic when I stumbled across Anna and the French Kiss upon a chance trip to the bookstore. The cover was… meh (Century Gothic? Really? There were no other fonts?). But I’d heard nothing but praise about the book, and I was prepared to stay up all night and into the wee hours of the morning to finish it.

Admittedly, I was far from impressed upon the first reading. The characters were unlikable, the plot would’ve worked better for less shitty characters, honestly fuck these characters am I supposed to like them, fuck Anna, fuck Étienne, fuck Bridgette, fuck Toph, fuck Dave and Meredith and Amanda and Seany and every other stupid character in this stupid book.

The second time around, I expected to not hate it as much as I did when I first read it. It’s happened- I hated Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda when I first read it, and when I read it again, all that red-hot anger simmered down into an overall dislike. I thought To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was trash at first, and then I read it again, and it got promoted to recyclable waste matter.

I found Anna and the French Kiss horrendous the first time I read it, and then I read it again, and… yeah, it’s still pretty awful.

Le Sommaire:

Anna Oliphant is a seventeen-year-old wannabe film critic who is #NotLikeOtherGirls – so she’s exactly like every other female YA lead. To her credit, she never explicitly says she’s special… everyone around her does.

She has a pretty meh life in Atlanta, Georgia with her mum and little bruv Sean- and then her dad decides to ship her off to France for her final year of high school. I’m not judging Anna for bawling her eyes out on her first day; I’m a huge mummy’s girl myself and I’d probably (definitely) do the same.

Meredith is Anna’s next-door neighbor, who does that thing which only happens in YA where she’s like “Oh, newbie? Let’s be friends!” (Or maybe it does happen irl and I tend to make a bad first impression which is why no one has ever approached me.)

Meredith’s friends are: Rashmi and Josh (who are a couple), and Étienne St. Clair. Guess which one is the love interest.

Étienne is cultured in that white person way where he’s half American, one quarter French and one quarter British. A true international.

But- *gasp*- American-British-French boy has a girlfriend, Ellie.

Anna has an absolutely gorgeous punk rocker (yum) boy with sideburns (yikes) back home named Christopher. Also, Christopher’s nickname is ‘Toph’ instead of ‘Chris’ because he too is #NotLikeOtherGirls. Anna tells us that nothing will happen between her and Étienne.

Anna is wrong.

Meredith has a crush on Étienne. So does the Regina George of the school, Amanda.

Étienne and Anna have some moments ™.

♫ Everyone else in the room can see it, everyone else but Anna ♫

I tear my hair out in frustration.

Several other white boys vie for Anna’s heart. Anna remains blissfully unaware (♫ that’s what makes you beautiful ♫). Étienne (who is still dating Ellie, mind you) is unreasonably agitated by this.

Étienne’s mum has cancer btw, which excuses all the shitty things he does, because he’s just a poor, misunderstood boy.

Ellie dresses up as a, quote unquote, ‘slutty nurse’ for Hallowe’en, though- so it’s perfectly okay to dislike her (even though, in the first interaction she had with Anna, where Ellie meets Anna and Étienne, after Étienne takes Anna to the movies, Ellie is perfectly sweet).

Anna, however, is NOT a slut. Amanda is, though. And Rashmi’s cold. And Meredith’s desperate. And Emily’s a slut, too. And her friend Bridgette from Atlanta is a traitor. Anna has an intense case of internalized misogyny.

Anna’s friend Bridgette from Atlanta is screwing Toph, and Anna throws a fit.

Étienne and Anna have some more moments ™.

A truly chaotic series of events befall Anna. She somehow winds up dating Dave (one from the harem of white boys who likes her) to spite Étienne, she gets into a fight with Amanda, more drama ensues, there’s a hint for a spinoff, Étienne and her kiss, Meredith sees and feels betrayed… several misunderstandings and more bullshit later, Étienne and Anna wind up together, because true love conquers all.

Mes Réflexions:

(If the French is off, blame Google Translate.)

Usually, it takes me half a page of my notebook to scribble down my thoughts about the book I’m reading. This motherfucker took me almost an entire page.

Granted, a solid 30% of those notes are me throwing insults at Étienne, but still. ‘STOP STOP STOP YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND YOU DICK’ counts, right?

(That was #17 in my notes, by the way.)

For the record, I like Stephanie Perkins’s writing. It’s not as over-the-top and unnecessarily introspective as Jenny Han’s in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and the interactions between Anna and her classmates were natural and not the “How do you do, fellow kids?” style of Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. The pacing is decent- I didn’t feel like it was too rushed; not the insta-love trope most YA romances unfortunately fall prey to.

And yet. AND YET.

Anna: “What’s your problem?” Amanda: “You.”

Same, Amanda, same.

Anna Oliphant is one of my least favorite leads in a book, ever. Étienne’s even shittier. And it’s not like Nick or Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, or any of the main characters from The Secret History, where readers pretty much unanimously hate them. You’re meant to relate to Anna, you’re meant to find Étienne charming and dreamy. I literally had to put the book away and calm myself down several times- especially in the last quarter of the book.

One of my main gripes with Anna is how… dumb she is. I guess Anna’s “Oopsies, silly me, I don’t know French!” is meant to be relatable to the readers. And some parts (like her not knowing how to order food because she can’t speak French) are plausible, but- sis, you didn’t know how to spell oui? And my idea of a cinematic masterpiece is Kung-Fu Panda, but even a dumbass like me knows that France is the film appreciation capital of the world. And yet Anna, a self-professed film freak, doesn’t?

Of course, Anna’s gorgeous, but she has no clue, because of course she doesn’t- even though she has multiple guys falling head over heels for her.

I’m in a short skirt. It’s the first time I’ve worn one here, but my birthday seems like the appropriate occasion. “Woo, Anna!” Rashmi fake-adjusts her glasses. “Why do you hide those things?”

Étienne is staring at my legs. The scales covering them throb under his intense gaze, and the pincers sticking out of my thighs start clicking rapidly in arousal. My hooves shiver in ecstasy.

… sorry, that’s not funny.

Her friends think Anna’s weird for wanting to write film reviews (which is the most contrived thing I’ve ever heard) instead of being the next Margot Robbie or whatever, but of course Étienne doesn’t and he thinks it’s not weird and cool and that Anna is such a special snowflake.

(Man, I sound like Amanda.)

And then we have this spiel by Anna about how she got into film critiquing (?), because we the readers need to know how special and #NotLikeOtherGirls Anna is.

To this, I say, “Piss off, you pretentious fuck.”

Of course, Anna’s a virgin and she’s never gotten drunk before or worn short skirts- she’s not a slut, she shaves below the knees only.

And would YA really be YA without several hearty helpings of internalized misogyny?

First up, we have the bimbo; the Barbie doll archetype whose only goal in life is acquiring the main guy (who is quite obviously uninterested in her), and making life hell for our protagonist. Amanda Whatsername (is she ever given a surname?) has this coveted role in Anna and the French Kiss. She’s blond (because of course she is); the first time we meet her, she’s in a, quote unquote, ‘teeny tank top’, and she also ‘positions herself for maximum cleavage exposure’. She’s always flipping her hair, getting her grubby paws on Étienne, giving Anna the stink-eye, being homophobic and a grade-A bitch.

Meredith goes batshit when Anna and Étienne kiss, and is very pouty and unhappy during prior Anna x Shittiene moments. Honey… he’s just not that into you. Rashmi’s the Ice Queen reincarnate and halfway to bitchdom. Anna doesn’t go as hard on them as she does on literally every other female her age in the book, though.

Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend.

Anna, hate to break it to you, but not everyone’s a possessive fucking weirdo.

About Cherrie, her ex-boyfriend Matt’s new girlfriend:

And maybe Cherrie isn’t as bad as I remember. Except she is. She totally is. After only five minutes in her company, I cannot fathom how Bridge stands sitting with her at lunch every day.

Her lifeless laugh is one of her lesser attributes. What does Matt see in her?

Even Bridgette, Anna’s best friend from Atlanta, isn’t immune to Anna’s anti-female propaganda. She’s screwing the guy Anna used to like, and Anna, the hypocrite, throws a huge fit.

For context: Bridgette and Toph are in a band called the Penny Dreadfuls (why is it with YA books and horrible band names? ‘Emoji’ from Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was bad enough), and Anna + Matt + Cherrie go to a bowling alley to see them perform. After the performance, Toph announces that he’s sleeping with Bridge, and Anna confronts Bridge… onstage.

“… You’re welcome to move in when I leave again, because that’s what you want, right? My life?”

She shakes with fury. “Go to hell.”

“Take my life. You can have it. Just watch out for the part where my BEST FRIEND SCREWS ME OVER!” I knock over a cymbal stand, and the brass hits the stage with an earsplitting crash that reverberates through the bowling alley. Matt calls my name. Has he been calling it this entire time? He grabs my arm and leads me around the electrical cords and plugs and onto the floor and away, away, away.

Everyone in the bowling alley is staring at me.

I duck my head so my hair covers my face. I’m crying. This would have never happened if I hadn’t given Toph her number. All of those late-night practices and… he said they’ve had sex! What if they’ve had it at my house? Does he come over when she’s watching Seany? Do they go in the bedroom?

I’m going to be sick.

Give me a goddamn break.

Anna, about Ellie:

To my amazement, Ellie breaks into an ear-to-ear smile. Oddly enough, it’s this moment I realize that despite her husky voice and Parisian attire, she’s sort of… plain. But friendly-looking.

That still doesn’t mean I like her.

“Anna! From Atlanta, right? Where’d you guys go?”

She knows who I am? St. Clair describes our evening while I contemplate this strange development. Did he tell her about me? Or was it Meredith? I hope it was him, but even if it was, it’s not like he said anything she found threatening. She doesn’t seem alarmed that I’ve spent the last three hours in the company of her very attractive boyfriend. Alone.

[about Ellie’s Hallowe’en costume] Slutty nurse. I don’t believe it. Tiny white button-up dress, red crosses across the nipples. Cleavage city.

If I didn’t like Ellie before, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now. It doesn’t matter that I can count how many times we’ve met on one hand.

I fantasize about their break-up. How he could hurt her, and she could hurt him, and all of the ways I could hurt her back. I want to grab her Parisian-styled hair and yank it so hard it rips from her skull. I want to sink my claws into her eyeballs and scrape.

It turns out I am not a nice person.

YOU DON’T FUCKING SAY.

Emily Middlestone bends over to pick up a dropped eraser, and Mike Reynard leers at her breasts. Gross. Too bad for him she’s interested in his best friend, Dave. The eraser drop was deliberate, but Dave is oblivious.

One of the juniors, a girl with dark hair and tight jeans, stretches in a move designed to show off her belly button ring to Paul/Pete. Oh, please.

And I’m meant to like this character? I’m supposed to root for her?

I’m not saying every girl in the book should be perfectly sweet and friendly- that’s just not realistic. But when Anna has something judgmental to say about every other young female character… maybe she’s the problem.

In fact, the only girl I recall getting a pass is Isla Whatsername. And why do you think?

Brilliant.

And now we have the amalgamation of almost every fanfic boyfriend trope from 2014, Étienne St. Clair. Brown-eyed Harry Styles. I can’t fucking wait.

Étienne could’ve discovered the cure for cancer, or abolished poverty, or volunteered at animal shelters in his spare time. He could’ve been the most virtuous guy around (fret not; he decidedly isn’t). And I still wouldn’t’ve thought of him as the man of my dreams because HE HAS A BLOODY GIRLFRIEND.

I mean, which girl doesn’t want her boyfriend to say:

“I cheated on her every day. In my mind, I thought of you in ways I shouldn’t have, again and again.”

Fuckin’ smooth, bro.

“No matter what a terrible boyfriend I was, I wouldn’t actually cheat on her. But I thought you’d know.”

Such a gentleman!

“So you can keep dating Ellie, but I can’t even talk to Dave?”

Étienne looks shamed. He stares at his boots. “I’m sorry.”

I don’t even know what to do with his apology.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. And this time, he’s looking at me. Begging me. “And I know it’s not fair to ask you, but I need more time. To sort things out.”

And this gem:

“If you liked me so much, why didn’t you break up with her?”

“I’ve been confused. I’ve been so stupid.”

*me, banging pots and pans together* F U C K Y O U

“Ellie’s not like you, Anna; she’s a slut and a whore even though I’m the one who’s been thinking about another girl inappropriately and I’m the one who gets my knickers in a twist when another man glances in your direction because my masculinity is extremely fragile and I’m a total hypocrite and a dickhead.”

I mean, he didn’t actually say that, but that’s the gist.

WHILE DATING ELLIE: he gets Anna a book of sexual love poems, he calls her attractive (“Any bloke with a working prick would be insane not to like you.”) multiple times, he gets jealous whenever another guy so much as breathes in Anna’s direction and constantly interrupts such interactions, he’s been ditching his friends for his girlfriend but suddenly decides he prefers a new girl over said girlfriend, he thinks bread pudding tastes good- in conclusion, he is a Massive Fucking Prick. Though in hindsight, him and Anna deserve each other. They’re awful.

I had loads more notes taken down (Anna using Dave; “The important thing is this: Dave is available. St. Clair is not.”); the implication that cheating is okay because Ellie is bad or whatever, even though the sudden change in her character seems contrived because she was perfectly okay with Étienne and Anna hanging out before; how my blood boils whenever I read an American book and American girls are like “oOoOh AcCenT!!!1!!1!!”; me reading “DAVE SAYS YER A SLUTBAG” in Hagrid’s voice; the sheer atrocity of the name ‘Étienne St. Clair’ (sounds like a caricature of a French person)… but this ‘review’ is already pushing 3k and I can’t be fucked to expand on any of those points.

Verdict (which is apparently the same in French):

Who needs Christopher when Étienne St. Clair is in the world?

Speak for yourself.

#books #book review #anna and the french kiss #Stephanie Perkins #french #france #parisian #paris #YA #young adult #romance #teen fiction #bad books

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parabcllums · 4 years

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⧼ phoebe tonkin, cis female, she & her / mr rattlebone by matt maeson + oversized t-shirt containing the entirety of the ‘cool girl’ monologue over a lacy black thong, sheer black tights that have been pulled at all the seams with a shadow of ouroboros inked high on pallid thigh, chipped nail polish and fingers covered in dirty bandaids and stubbed out cigarettes in an overflowing ashtray & the best fake orgasm a man could hope for. ⧽ ━━ let me tell you a thing or two about MONICA LAUREL “NIKKI” BARTON. the TWENTY FIVE year old child of BARNEY BARTON is a UNDERGRAD at paragon academy and WAITRESS in town, and has sometimes been referred to as THE AMY ELLIOT DUNNE. they’ve always seemed very SELF RELIANT & RELENTLESS, though i’ve heard that they can be pretty SARDONIC & REACTIVE, too. it’s common knowledge that they have the ability of VIOLENT SELF DESTRUCTION & WICKED SEXUAL PROWESS ; guess we shouldn’t get on their bad side, huh? redirect to her stats page HERE and her pinterest board HERE.

what did you EVER do to deserve THIS? in all PROBABILITY, something terrible.

SECTION ONE OF TWO: BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings: talk of alcoholism, drug abuse & dealing, death, murder, jail, physical assault / abuse and attempted sexual assault

only daughter of barney barton aka trickshot ( a barely functioning alcoholic ) and jacqueline taylor ( a barely functioning addict of whatever she could get her hands on quickest ), MONICA LAUREL BARTON was born on the fifth of october, 1994, in waverly, iowa.

up until she was three years and two months old, monica lived with both her mother and her father in a rundown farmhouse on the edge of town that had most certainly seen better days. it was never perfect - but in those first few years that flew by far too quickly, there was a kind of balance. it WORKED. barney had his issues. jackie had hers. but they were TRYING. jackie had been clean for six months. barney was more on the wagon than he’d been in twenty years. and then - like so many addicts before him, and like many more that would come after - he fell off of it again in a spectacular fashion, going on a weekend bender that didn’t come to an end until he stumbled in on the tuesday morning right before monica was supposed to be dropped to playschool. he toppled into and knocked the rickety kitchen table and proclaimed, LOUDLY, that the baby could have a day off and spend it with her pops - and as jackie tried to hold her out of his reach ( and the range of his alcohol soaked breath ) she had an epiphany. SHE COULDN’T DO THIS. monica deserved better.

she had two bags packed with essentials just an hour later, and after loading up their shared car, left with monica in tow - never stopping to look back or reconsider. they settled in iowa falls.

she’s four, five, SIX, and her memory of her dad is dim, if not completely gone. she’s growing up, FAST, and jackie can barely keep up - and sometimes, barely keep it together. a prescription pill here and there takes the edge off enough to get by. monica is walking and talking and conversing now and she asks sometimes where her dad is and why he’s never come to her recitals - she imagines, like every little kid in her situation would, all the things her dad would do, and all the things she’d show him, and yet when he turns up out of the blue in a wrinkled old suit, a court order in his hands that says he now gets supervised visitation - she’s suddenly struck shy.

it takes a lot of those supervised visits for her to open up to him. he’s not exactly what she always imagined her dad would be - he doesn’t always know how to respond and never has any ideas for the games they can play in their few hours together - but she makes do. she realizes that he doesn’t know the rules of monopoly or the life game so she asks him to read to her instead, and over the next few years, they got through a lot of books that way, TOGETHER. it was nice.

she was eleven when her mom died. she came home from school early, and she didn’t get a reply when she shouted her greeting. she searched all of their tiny little house, jackie nowhere to be found, and when she came to the bathroom door that wouldn’t budge, she KNEW she had to call someone. the first person to come to mind was her dad. she remembers sitting on the steps out front, while he broke down the door that was locked from the inside - she remembers hearing his shout, and then his cries, and then, a little while later, the ambulance sirens as they approached the house, but it was too late. when she thinks back now, she understands the word OVERDOSE. at the time, it didn’t really click.

a lot of things had to be smoothed over following that. she couldn’t just go home with her dad - no matter how much she had cried and begged as the cops had led her to their car, KICKING AND SCREAMING AND BITING, to wait for social services. over the months that followed, monica was shuffled from foster home to foster home while barney fought the courts. she wasn’t a prime adoptee, so he had THAT in his favor - but there was a lot of hesitancy in allowing him full custody when he hadn’t had that sort of access to her since she was three years old. too much hesitancy, in fact. not a single person he came up against thought he would be a suitable guardian, and no amount of appeals were overturning the initial NO.

monica was old enough to understand, when her dad turned up in the middle of recess and urged her to leave with him, that it probably wasn’t a good idea. but he was the only familiar thing she had left. he was her DAD. so of course she went with him - against court rulings she didn’t have any knowledge of - and after an extended stay in california ( she remembers the beaches, and the ice cream, and how it was the last time she and her dad were really HAPPY ), they made a triumphant return to the now uninhabitable barton farmhouse, in waverly, where she hadn’t lived in YEARS. as they had pulled up in their tiny little car, he had turned to her with a bright eyed smile and said they could fix it up together again - just like he and her mom had, years before. the caravan out back was only supposed to be temporary. it WASN’T.

in spite of that, they had a few months of perfect serenity. for a while, barney held it all together, and monica got to just be a KID. then he fell off the wagon again - LIKE CLOCKWORK - and things changed. they always had a couple of months peace before a great many more months of chaos, and over time, monica learnt to be the grown up. she was old enough now to know that wasn’t right, but young enough, and with just enough experience of the system, to know that she didn’t want to go back to it - and it wasn’t great, but at least she was with her dad, right? and sometimes, SOMETIMES, she’s lucky enough to be sent away. sent to the OTHER barton’s.

the weeks and months that she would sometimes spend with the other side of the barton family are now memories that monica holds close to her heart. they’re something that she SMILES at, when remembering, in spite of herself. they welcomed her with open arms. uncle clint was always kind, and aunt bobbi…- at a time when monica needed an older woman in her life, aunt bobbi was everything she could have wanted and MORE. she wishes she could have been better, for them.

she wishes she hadn’t ruined things.

fast forward again. she was a bratty fifteen year old with a tongue sharp as a knife and a new name, now, given to her by her new favorite cousin - NIKKI. it was meant to be a name of love, but it fit the image that she had cultivated for herself. more out of school than she is in it, she’s a party girl. AT FIRST, she drank at them to be a part of the IN CROWD that never really did accept her, and then, she started to take a little bit of something stronger to help her have a good time, and then a LOT of something stronger when she realized it would help get her through the sleepless nights and days when she was taking care of barney and making money i the last deadend job she had instead of going to school. she was far too young to be so exhausted and taking on all these roles that she shouldn’t have had to, just to get through life, and they didn’t really have all that much money, so when a friend of another ex tells her about a job she could do INSTEAD of waitressing or delivering newspapers, she was ALL over it.

the first time she meets CALLUM MAARX, it’s in a denny’s parking lot. he’s easily TEN YEARS her senior, but she’s flattered by the attention that the overly charismatic man she shakes hands with gives her, honored when he calls her PRETTY, touched when he says he knows that she’s a SMART girl. she was. but not smart enough to say no to waverly’s most DANGEROUS drug dealer.

SHE wasn’t dealing. that was what she told herself. it wasn’t so bad when SHE wasn’t the one working a street corner and waiting for people to come on by. she was just moving his gear from place to place for him - delivering the sales wherever they needed to be. sometimes that meant skipping school for a couple days to catch a bus across the next state. sometimes it meant feigning interest in visiting the other barton’s, just so she could be nearer to whoever it was she needed to see. sometimes it was the guy next door, and she didn’t have to go ANYWHERE. she never knew, for sure, where she was going or what she was doing until she got a text to say she was needed, but she didn’t want to know, either - something told her, even then, that the less she knew about what she was doing, the BETTER. she was sixteen, when she decided to drop out of school and quit her small town jobs to start working for callum FULL TIME.

she realized, at a point, that callum got paid a whole lot more than she originally thought based on her ‘wage’ for each bag she delivered. she had been grateful, of course, at least at first. the huge amount of money coming in meant she had been able to fastrack some of the ‘never completed’ renovations on the house - she and her dad were able to move in, in that first year, and out of the caravan that she had been BULLIED for over the previous few years. but she got greedy. she was trusted, by then, enough that she thought she could get away with skimming a little powder off the top in lieu of paying for her own growing habit - and she got a BLACK EYE for her efforts, and a tarnished reputation that would come back to bite her, later.

she was a MULE and an ADDICT. she wasn’t trailer trash, anymore, wasn’t the girl that she had always been TEASED for being, but in a lot of ways, she was WORSE. back then, though, she still had HOPE. she believed the best of people. when her high school invited her back for prom, nikki knew it was a mistake to go, but she had never been to a DANCE - and she really, truly, thought that it would all be OKAY. she goes in a dress that probably cost a lot when it was new but was a hand me down, and she facetimes her aunt to show her what makeup she had done, and when she gets there, she flies under the radar - keeping to herself, and really attempting to ENJOY the night. she gets voted prom queen. she protests, but the crowd is impossible to push against, all the fellow students she had left behind making her head towards the stage where the head cheerleader, the SHOE IN, declares her WHITE TRASH QUEEN and shoves a scepter made of beer cans into her hands while her friends place a crown made of the same atop her head. she had always been quick to RAGE. always had trouble, keeping herself in line. her first instinct was to throw both back at the girls who had given them and exit for the nearest bathroom, to cry. her second, as discovered an hour later, when the would have been prom queen went looking for her boyfriend, was to bang the prom king in the backseat of his car. her third, ejected from the prom once and for all, was to head to CALLUM’S PLACE and ask for something STRONGER. something she had never TAKEN before. that night is the first night she tried coke. it’s not the last.

she turned nineteen. it felt like every weekend, she was bailing barney out of the local jail. she was running drugs across a couple towns, or even a couple STATES, and during the days when she WASN’T being a MULE she was working as a chef in a shitty two star restaurant that hadn’t seemed to care she had no qualifications to be working around food. she had received her GED, and she was taking online courses because a part of her was hoping she could still make something of herself, but she was acutely aware, now, of the fact that she was living a life no one would have been proud of. and things got worse. somehow, they still could.

she realized what her dad did for a living for the first time when his “friends” turned up one afternoon, while she was trying to nap on the couch. she’d only seen them a few times before, and had always been told to leave when they were visiting. more often than not, her dad would disappear with them for a couple days and come back with more money than she could make in a year - but it was always gone quicker than she’d ever have spent it. something must have changed. she wasn’t being told to LEAVE.

instead she sat in and she listened to them talk about their next heist. SHE WEIRDLY WASN’T SURPRISED. they left and came back the next day, and this time nikki served them food, and when there was a break in the conversation as they all went quiet, trying to work out how they could get past a certain level of the security that had them BAFFLED - she dropped a suggestion. it was a good one, and she was allowed, if not ENCOURAGED, to make more. before she knows it, she’s fallen down the rabbithole and pulling off the rare heist with them - all the while continuing to run drugs and doing all the shitty stuff she’s always done, pulling herself in every direction to make things work.

and then she had just turned twenty one and she had a moment of epiphany, not unlike her mother had years before. as she’s looking down at the plans for the next job and whittling the time away until she has to go and pick up her next delivery from callum, she realizes, blankly, that something had to give. she was doing jobs more often now with her dad and his “friends” ( she learned there were airquotes around that word the first time one of them put his hand on her ass during a meeting, as she went around the room with a cheap cheeseboard. no friend of your dad’s would ever do that ) but she’s built up quite the reputation for herself, running drugs for her OWN “friends” ( she’s always known the airquotes that are there. ever since that first and last time, callum had been suspicious of her - and every so often over the years, he’d get it in his head that she must have stolen some of the product to fuel her own habits or even taken some of the money for herself, and she had broken ribs and fingers and bruised eyes and chipped teeth aplenty to show for what had happened each and every time ) - and something would have to give. at this point, she knew she was tempting fate, and eventually … fate was going to bite, hard.

even now - nikki can’t believe she was wrong. she thought it would be shield, or another government branch, who’d catch them out on one of the heists and haul them all to jail. there’d been times where they were only two steps ahead and had almost been able to TASTE the shitty prison food, they were THAT close to getting caught. she’d always sort of believed that was going to be what happened, and she’d let her guard down back home. she was waverly’s best drug runner - she’d stopped thinking that that part of her life, and CALLUM, were even a danger to her. that was a mistake.

here’s the truth: a guy in iowa city, a loyal customer of nearly eight years, had finally hit the bottom of what had seemed like an endless supply of money to waste. he had 180,000 of a 200,000 bill - meaning he was 20,000 short. nikki didn’t realize. it wasn’t her job to count all the money she was being given - she just had to get it from a to b.

here’s the truth that callum convinced himself of as he drove to her farmhouse at 3:40 am that same night, FURIOUS: she had obviously been given the 200,000 by his loyal customer, and she’d taken twenty thousand and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

her dad was out, drinking somewhere in town, or maybe already safe in a jail cell for the night. she didn’t know. a part of her didn’t care, either. she was asleep on the couch when he pulled up outside. when the furious banging had started on the door she had assumed that it was her dad, after forgetting his keys again. him, or the cops, hauling his ass home.

sleepily, she had gotten up and went to open the front door - but as soon as the lock was undone, it was pushed VIOLENTLY into her, and she couldn’t regain her balance in the time that it took for callum to launch himself at her. they fell, him on top, his weight CRUSHING. he had always had a temper. a BAD ONE, like HER. she hadn’t always known - had once thought him CHARMING - but all the injuries she had ever been given at his hands, all the times she had found herself in a&e over the years since she had started working for him, they could all attest to the truth. this was different, though. this was MURDEROUS, a kind of rage that she had NEVER seen before, and it was obvious that before they got to the finale, he had thought of one OTHER way that he could make back the money he thought she had stolen.

nikki wasn’t much of a fighter. she had never been formally trained, sloppily using her fists to solve her problems, but never really knowing how to land her shots PROPERLY. but she was a SURVIVOR. that had shown itself clearly enough throughout the years. she had survived the system for the three years she was in it. she had survived her dad, and her life, and she had pulled together SOMETHING out of nothing for herself. even SHITTY, her life was her own. she struggled beneath him and he hit her, over and over, but between it, he was finding a way to begin tearing at her clothes - making his way THROUGH them - and gods, she wasn’t going to let this happen. she REFUSED. there was an old iron doorstop in the front hall, that had been in the house since her grandparents had owned it. things were happening FAST, he was already at her underwear, she could barely move, but she stretched her arm as much as she could, grimacing through the pain, and she REACHED, and REACHED, and strained her fingers as far as they could go -

she was a SURVIVOR. she wasn’t going to die. she wasn’t going to let him get what he wanted, either. she doesn’t remember actually hitting him with it. she doesn’t remember how she KEPT hitting him with it, tears streaming down her face, until he fell away from her and she was able to move away. he wasn’t moving. a half an hour later, she was sat on the front steps of her house, just like she had when she was eleven. WAITING. except this time, she was drenched in blood and tears and waiting on the cops that she had called, not her dad, and the person that was dead inside wasn’t her mum, but CALLUM.

she didn’t get much of a fair trial. it was far too cut and dry. on the stand, everything came out - all the things that she had been involved in with him, all the things she had done without - and since he couldn’t face HIS crimes, she DEFINITELY needed to face hers. she was sentenced within a month to seven years, minimum, without a chance of parole.

she served three and a half. then, in january this year, the door to her cell swung open and she was told that she was being handed over to SHIELD custody. some sort of a new SCHEME. nikki hadn’t signed up for any - and knew she wasn’t likely to have been considered, even if she had - and naturally, her survival instincts kicked in. she kicked and screamed and kept telling them she WOULDN’T go -

and inside the room she was lead to was a shield agent. they wanted information on TRICKSHOT - still at large, under the radar ever since his daughter’s arrest. they figured she would have everything they needed, and they told her she could WALK FREE ( or, well, more free than she was at present moment - she would have to stay at PARAGON ) if she told them what she knew about charles barton and his associates. she would have been a fool not to agree.

SECTION TWO OF TWO: POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS / WANTED

foster families she lived with for a time, between ages 11 and 13 ! she bounced from home to home a lot, so she’s prob.. stayed w a lot of ppl.

a tutor !

party squad ! i have a wc for four ppl i think that she parties with, but.. gimme.

old clients ! people she would deliver to, people she rubbed shoulders w cause they knew callum. if ur character is ANY sort of a gang member, then we could prob work smth out where callum.. worked w them or smth!

flings ! current, previous, whatever

i think it’d b super fun to have that guy she slept w at prom sksk he was prom king , was dating the girl who crowned nikki ‘white trash queen’, and ,,, kinda lowkey got used , but like , it’d be FUN .

hmmm ANYTHING.

#sidekick.intro #⌜ ･ﾟ ☆ ･ * parts of her died in the house she grew up in ― biography. ⌟ / barton.

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ainosalms · 6 years

Text

11/27/2017: Writing about Gone Girl

Date and time: 11/27/2017, 2 hours

Activity: I wrote a review about the book I just finished, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. There’s a synopsis of the book and some of my own opinions too.

Language focus: Writing, vocabulary and grammar of course. I mostly used bab.la and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for those two. I tried to write with no stress, meaning that I just wrote down my thoughts at first and only after I was finished I started to worry about the grammar and making corrections. I think this way of writing suits me better than trying to produce grammatically correct text from the very beginning.

Reflection: I liked writing this! I also have to admit that it is easier to write about something when the memories and feelings are still clear in my mind. That’s always been my problem, finishing projects. The longer I procrastinate, the harder it becomes to start. I also did the editing on the same day so the text wouldn’t become a scary monster, something I feel embarrassed about. And look at me, now I have a finished text and it only took me two hours. The next step would be really planning my texts and writing several versions, I think.

Here’s the text:

Gone Girl – a book review

As one part of my ALMS independent studies I read Gillian Flynn’s thriller Gone Girl. It has become very popular in the few years since its publishing, and I had been meaning to read it for a while. I had somehow managed to stay clear of spoilers, even though the book has also been made into an even more popular movie.

The first part of the book consists of a married couple’s stories of their life together. The book follows the husband, Nick Dunne, beginning from the day his wife, Amy Elliott Dunne, goes missing. Every other chapter is a diary entry of Amy’s. It becomes clear very soon that at least one of the characters must be lying, since their stories are so contradictory and they both seem to blame each other for their marital problems, at least for the most part. As a reader, I’m soon faced with a question: do I trust either one of these characters, and if I do, which one?

My first impression of Nick is that he must be the liar. He seems arrogant, somewhat self-centered and childish. Even the police officers are quick to guess that he’s the baby of his family. I think he’s responsible for his and Amy’s problems, especially after he confesses to having had an affair with one of his students for over a year. I don’t know if he’s responsible for Amy’s disappearance, but he’s definitely not a very likable guy and seems a bit shady too. To be perfectly honest, I’m not too fond of Amy either. The book showcases seven years’ worth of her diary entries. In the beginning she’s already over 30 years old, and having that in mind she seems really childish too. She goes on and on about how she’s find the perfect guy (Nick, that is) and seems to be dedicated to making her husband’s life perfect, at least for the first few years of their marriage. It just doesn’t seem entirely believable. Amy is, after all, a New Yorker, a writer, someone who’s never been in love before and has despised her friends’ mediocre, cliché relationships. And now, at thirty, she’s over the moon because of some guy she meets at a party? It’s a little too fairytale-like to be true. So I guess she’s not being honest either, but why would she lie in her personal diary?

Now, the second part of the book is where the plot twist is presented, or at least one of them and in my opinion it’s also the biggest one of all. It turns out that Amy’s diary was all fake, she had actually written it all in the last year, after she’d decided to frame her cheating husband for her murder. And indeed, even though in the diary she tries to understand his husband and his bad temper, Nick does come off as the bad guy. The book continues to follow Nick’s hardships as he slowly and little by little finds out about Amy’s elaborate scheme which she has planned for over a year, ever since Nick’s extramarital affair began. Nick has been completely oblivious to the fact that Amy has known about it all along. To his dismay, Amy turns out to be some kind of a sociopath, and she’s planned her own murder so well that Nick’s guiltiness looks obvious both to the police and to the public. To make Nick seem even worse, she’s also faked a pregnancy using her pregnant friend’s pee. And oh, of course they happen to live in a state where death penalty’s in use.

Towards the end of the book, I think the natural reaction for the reader is to start hating Amy, not just because of what she’s done to her husband but because she fooled everyone, including the reader who was eager to believe the kind, if a little foolish, missing and probably dead wife. It also turns out that this isn’t the first time Amy’s done horrible things to people who had disappointed her in some way. For example, a little before she and Nick started dating, she accused a guy who wasn’t very into her of date rape, and destroyed her friend’s life by accusing her of stalking and all sorts of creepiness. Her plans had always been perfect so that the person being punished came off as crazy if they tried to prove their innocence. Seeing Nick being blamed for Amy’s murder very publicly made them think that this might just be another one of Amy’s crazy plots, but they were afraid to speak up even years later, because they just didn’t want Amy and her devious plans back into their lives.

For Nick, however, the situation is a bit more complicated, because he knows he’ll be arrested if Amy doesn’t resurface soon. So he starts acting remorseful in interviews so that Amy would forgive him and come back to her (to be killed, he swears to himself). And for some reason that works! That’s another thing that feels very hard to believe. No person in their right mind would come back after setting up such a foolproof plan. But I guess we have to remember that Amy is not necessarily in her right mind, and she believes she can talk them both out of the mess she created. The bigger the lie, the harder they want to believe it, you know. So she comes running back to Nick (after killing her former lover who had been taking care of her in a loving but very creepy manner, of course).

I wanted to believe that Amy couldn’t talk her way out of this one, there’s no way she could explain everything as the plan was very complex. But yes, you guessed it, she somehow can. She’s in love with Nick again now that he has ditched his lover and promised to be an excellent husband - on national television! Nick finds himself serving a very different kind of death sentence as he realizes he’ll never be able to leave Amy and live as a free man. And to make sure he won’t leave, Amy gets herself pregnant using Nick’s sperm she had been storing, because of course she has, why not. In the end of the book they’re starting over, living their horrifying, happy family life Amy had always dreamt of.

Now, I think Gillian Flynn is an amazing writer. She clearly knows how to surprise and how to play with a reader’s feelings. She must have known that the reader will be quick to blame Nick, they even talk about in the book how everyone always knows the husband is the murderer from the beginning. However, the book left me feeling a little underwhelmed. At some point I realized that things were happening very quickly, there were surprises around every corner, and that didn’t stop until the last page. The story just started to feel like a soap opera. I think Amy’s master plan, the police investigation and Nick’s despair wouldn’t have been more than enough for one book. And just that one big plot twist. It felt overdone, especially Amy’s pregnancy at the very end.

Another problem I had with the book were the characters. None of them felt relatable and I didn’t really feel sympathetic towards them. I guess the reader was supposed to like Nick despite his major flaws and I do think that he didn’t deserve such a terrible fate. But he just didn’t seem interesting or special in any way, which is also why I don’t fully understand why Amy wanted him to herself so much. Amy, on the other hand, was very interesting, but understanding the trail of her thoughts was hard. She didn’t feel plausible. The supporting characters came off as very caricature-like. There were Nick’s horrible father, loving (and dying, of course) mother and a twin sister who was very “one of the guys” and also Nick’s best friend. There was Nick’s mistress Andie whom he literally described as “an alien-fuck doll of a girl”. Seriously. And then there was also Desi Collings, Amy’s former lover who never got over her and wanted to take care of her twenty years later when she was still married to another man, because she was just that gorgeous. The story can be incredibly good, but if the characters don’t feel real and likable, it won’t make a big impression on me.

All in all, I’m glad I read this book and I’m glad it wasn’t the typical “the husband did it” kind of story. Maybe my expectations were too high since a lot of people seem to like this book. It didn’t feel like the “thriller of the year” as someone from Observer says in the front cover, it felt more like something you could buy from an airport and read on a vacation. I don’t normally read thrillers at all, so this was something I’m not used to. I think I’m going to try another book from Flynn and decide if I like her as a writer after that.

#writing #reading #vocabulary #grammar

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parabcllums · 5 years

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⌜ PHOEBE TONKIN, CIS FEMALE, SHE / HER | angel of small death and the codeine scene by hozier, melancholic, the amy elliot dunne ⌟ ⏤ blink and you’ll miss MONICA LAUREL BARTON, the TWENTY FOUR year old daughter of CHARLES BERNARD “BARNEY” BARTON ! they’re an UNDERGRAD student at paragon academy, and i’ve always found them to be pretty SELF RELIANT & RELENTLESS, though i’ve heard that they can also be really SARDONIC & REACTIVE. i don’t think getting their way is a smart thing to do - everyone knows that their ability is SEXUAL PROWESS & VIOLENT SELF DESTRUCTION. redirect to her stats page HERE and her pinterest board HERE.

what did you EVER do to deserve THIS? in all PROBABILITY, something terrible.

SECTION ONE OF TWO: BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings: talk of alcoholism, drug abuse & dealing, death, murder, jail, physical assault / abuse and attempted rape

she had two bags packed with essentials just an hour later, and after loading up their shared car, left with monica in tow - never stopping to look back or reconsider. they settled in iowa falls.

the weeks and months that she would sometimes spend with the other side of the barton family are now memories that monica holds close to her heart. they’re something that she SMILES at, when remembering, in spite of herself. they welcomed her with open arms. the kids, her cousins, became her BEST friends - ESPECIALLY ava. uncle clint was always kind, and aunt bobbi…- at a time when monica needed an older woman in her life, aunt bobbi was everything she could have wanted and MORE. she wishes she could have been better, for them.

she wishes she hadn’t ruined things.

she was a MULE and an ADDICT. she wasn’t trailer trash, anymore, wasn’t the girl that she had always been TEASED for being, but in a lot of ways, she was WORSE. back then, though, she still had HOPE. she believed the best of people. when her high school invited her back for prom, nikki knew it was a mistake to go, but she had never been to a DANCE - and she really, truly, thought that it would all be OKAY. she goes in a dress that probably cost a lot when it was new but was a hand me down, from ava, and she facetimes her aunt to show her what makeup she had done, and when she gets there, she flies under the radar - keeping to herself, and really attempting to ENJOY the night. she gets voted prom queen. she protests, but the crowd is impossible to push against, all the fellow students she had left behind making her head towards the stage where the head cheerleader, the SHOE IN, declares her WHITE TRASH QUEEN and shoves a scepter made of beer cans into her hands while her friends place a crown made of the same atop her head. she had always been quick to RAGE. always had trouble, keeping herself in line. her first instinct was to throw both back at the girls who had given them and exit for the nearest bathroom, to cry. her second, as discovered an hour later, when the would have been prom queen went looking for her boyfriend, was to bang the prom king in the backseat of his car. her third, ejected from the prom once and for all, was to head to CALLUM’S PLACE and ask for something STRONGER. something she had never TAKEN before. that night is the first night she tried coke. it’s not the last.

SECTION TWO OF TWO: POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS / WANTED

foster families she lived with for a time, between ages 11 and 13 ! she bounced from home to home a lot, so she’s prob.. stayed w a lot of ppl.

a tutor !

party squad ! i have a wc for four ppl i think that she parties with, but.. gimme.

flings ! current, previous, whatever

hmmm ANYTHING.

#⌜ ･ﾟ ☆ ･ * parts of her died in the house she grew up in ― biography. ⌟ / barton.

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