BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER EIGHT, PART ONE
Mar. 5th, 2015 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratIn Ch. 8, Quinn gets more dislikeable, and I learn a whole bunch of shit about his life that doesn't matter and I won't remember (I spared you most of it, be grateful)
BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER EIGHT, PART ONE
- Goblin has always been around him and always been his duplicate, but in terms of personality, desires, etc., he's as different as can be. Quinn can't control him, but if he ignores him hard enough, which is difficult, he sometimes disappears
- Details about him and Goblin, like how Goblin would sometimes throw the clothes on the floor he wanted Quinn to wear that day, how Quinn's first memory is teaching Goblin how to pick up a fork at his third birthday party, etc.
- According to Quinn, Goblin had his own chair, plate, milk, and cake at this party, suggesting that (if Quinn is recalling right) the family did indeed know Goblin was real (or were they just humoring a kid with an imaginary friend?)
- Goblin grabs Quinn's hand and makes him smear his cake, which he'd never been strong enough to do, making Quinn cry and causing Goblin to disappear, which made Quinn very scared. Also everyone (Sweetheart, Pops, Jasmine and her family members who work there) immediately hugged and fussed over Quinn, so he seems to have been very well-loved and well-attended to.
- At an early age, he began to see that Goblin didn't want to share Quinn with the world and was happiest when he had Quinn's full attention, which made him strong.
- Generally happy memories of him and Goblin functioning more or less like brothers, like drawing with crayons together via Quinn letting Goblin move his hand.
- Pops (his grandfather) "never liked Goblin" and was worried "where all this talk of Goblin would lead" so yeah either they knew Goblin was real, or they at least knew that he was more real to Quinn than the average child's imaginary friend is.
- He doesn't remember Patsy until he was four or five and even then he didn't realize she was his mother. When he did see her "I was already afraid that a screaming fight between her and Pops was going to break out." Okay, I emphasize like hell with this. I have a brother older than me by ten years who was...a lot of trouble, to say the least, so a good bit of my own childhood includes being terrified and upset by the fights that transpired between him and my parents. Tension in the household really, really sucks when you're a kid, regardless of if you're the one in trouble or not. This is the first time any type of difficulty has been mentioned in Quinn's life, so I can see how he'd resent her for that, especially if the problems between her and Pops continued; I know I resent the hell out of my brother for what he put my mother through. I don't know what Patsy was up to that made Pops mad at her yet, but even if she wasn't doing anything objectively awful like my brother, I can still see a spoiled young man resenting her for being the only bad spot on his otherwise perfect life, especially since she wasn't smothering him with affection and attention like everyone else in the house, especially the women (grandma Sweetheart + the staff) are described so far as doing.
- Sweetheart had been a debutante in New Orleans, and Pops really liked playing the "farmer" role on the farm even though, as the owner, he didn't have to. Quinn says that he loved Pops and Pops loved him, but that Pops didn't love his daughter Patsy. In fact "I think he loved her as little as Patsy loved me." So we also know that Quinn doesn't think his mother loves him, and he doesn't think her father loved her.
- Quinn says that "Patsy was a late child" and that maybe things would have been different if she'd been a debutante too but that "Patsy had gone country and wild at the same time, and this mixture Pops, for all his country ways, couldn't abide." Well, I'm immediately on Patsy's side here. She shouldn't have to be a damn debutante just to be loved by her own father. But nope, Pops hated her teased hair, short skirts, cowboy boots, fringed jackets, and flashy makeup, and told her that she looked like "common trash" and that her singing was "a bunch of foolishness" and that she'd "never make it". Okay, I can understand an old-fashioned Southern man not holding with any of this. I certainly do not agree with him, but I do understand his disapproval. However, it's still no reason not to LOVE her, just because you don't like what she's doing, so I'm still on Patsy's side and I hope that Quinn is wrong about how Pops felt about her.
- As for Patsy, she said that she was going to "earn the money to get the hell out of here" and I admire that. She wasn't going to use her family's money, which they obviously have plenty of, she was going to make her own doing what she loved and then leave a place that clearly was not kind to her, where, if Quinn is to be believed, parent's love hinges on things like makeup and music. Good for her wanting to get the hell out of a place like that, and for doing it on her own terms so that she's not beholden to her parents for her escape. I like her already just for this. Quinn, however, isn't so admiring, and is more concerned with the fact that she once broke a cookie jar in a fight with pops that was "full of Sweetheart's chocolate fudge, I might add" Priorities! Seriously, just when I was starting to have empathy with Quinn, he's more concerned about losing his grandma's fudge as a little boy than how horribly another human being, whether he saw her as his mother or not, was being treated for no good reason. I am hoping so hard that this is part of deliberately setting Quinn up as a selfish little shit who is going to have a rude awakening and hopefully grow from it. *crosses fingers*
- Quinn does, however, admit that she was a good singer, and that the Shed Men agreed and so did Jasmine and Jasmine's family. But when he actually describes her singing he refers to it as "wailing" so he might not actually be telling Lestat his real opinion. Or maybe he's just being spiteful, I could see that easily.
- Quinn also notes that there was an "endless procession of young men" coming to the back garage to play guitar and drums for her, and I can't tell if them specifically being mentioned as men is meant to imply something or not.
- Goblin liked to dance to Patsy's music, and Quinn would try to dance too, and when Patsy saw him when she came out to smoke a cigarette, she'd scoop him up and kiss him and say how darling and cute he is. According to Quinn though she said these things "as if it were an admission over opposition, but no one would have opposed her in saying it, except her own self." So Quinn thinks she only found him cute in spite of herself.
- The reason for Patsy fighting with Pops was money, because even though there was a ton of money, Pops wouldn't invest in Patsy's band and "Pops made Patsy fight for every nickel". The latter line is interesting to me, because it makes it sound less like Pops just straight-refused to fund her at all, and more like he'd do it but only if she had a big fight with him, and even maybe like he wanted it that way. Maybe that's just me though, but that's what how I read the implication.
- "Sweetheart was far too submissive to oppose Pops at the time of the kitchen quarrels, but Sweetheart did slip money to her daughter."
-These fights were not only upsetting to Quinn, but Goblin as well, who once used Quinn's hand to write 'bad' with a crayon during one, and pulled him away upstairs to his room during another.
- It was through one of these fights that Quinn found out Patsy was his mother; he'd thought she was his cousin up until then. Quinn overheard Pops says that "You don't love Quinn. You don't love your own little boy. There wouldn't be any Goblin in this house, he wouldn't need Goblin, if you'd be the mother you're supposed to be. You're an unnatural mother, that's what you are, and a tramp on top of it."
Okay, I'm gonna say something taboo here: Some mothers don't love their children, and I don't think they're inherently bad for it.
We have a big cultural myth around motherhood, specifically biological motherhood, the belief that as soon as the baby is born there's this magical instant bond of deep profound love between it and the mother. And that is true for some women, but not all. And some women who doesn't feel this instant deep special bond feel terrible for it, because of the attitude that it's wrong, unnatural, like Pops says. This is often a big part of post-partum depression, in fact. But in fact, it's perfectly normal for a woman to not love her baby instantaneously the moment it pops out. Plenty of women just need time for the bond to form.
Patsy probably didn't have this time. She hasn't been raising Quinn, she's not even around him that much. She was stated to have no idea what to do with him, so I doubt she was nursing and changing and all of that. Most likely, it was Sweetheart or one of the staff doing that. There's really no particular reason that Patsy *should* love Quinn as a mother; I'd actually be more surprised if she did than not. It's not right to expect her to, or to deride her for it.
Note that I'm not saying I'm opposed to having Pops believe she's bad and unnatural for this; he's an old country guy from what seems to be an uber-traditional household, and this is, as I said, a deeply ingrained cultural ideal. I just want to make it clear that I don't think Patsy's automatically a bad person if he's right, and why that is. Now, just in case this sounds hypocritical after I just got pissed at Pops for not loving Patsy, let me explain why that's different: here, we're talking about natural bonds of love failing to form with a child for what are entirely understandable reasons, mainly that he just came out of her and they haven't had much contact since. That's an understandable thing, and beyond anyone's control. Making deliberate conditions on which your already-existent love for your child hinges, however, is another thing. That's a choice, and that's shitty as fuck. If Pops stopped loving Patsy because she murdered another child of his or something like that, I could understand, but not loving her because she was a teen mom instead of a debutante and wants to be a country singer is just...yeah, you suck, Pops.
- When Quinn heard this, he automatically knew it was true. He also didn't care before about whether Patsy loved him or not, but now suddenly he cared a whole lot and it hurt a whole lot and instantly caused him deep pain. I have no idea how realistic any of this is.
- Patsy ran at Pops with a kitchen knife, he grabbed her by the wrists to stop her, she said he'd better sleep with one eye open and that he was the one who didn't love his child. While I certainly don't approve of patricide in this situation, I'd say she's right that Pops has no room to talk.
- Afterwards, Quinn went to Patsy, who was crying in her garage studio. He hugged her and kissed her and she took him in her arms, and then he told Goblin to kiss her and Patsy screamed for him to "Stop talkin' to that thing. It kills me when you talk to that thing. I can't stand to be around you when you talk to that thing. And then they say I'm a bad mother!" So Quinn stops talking to Goblin and just stays with Patsy for an hour. He recounts that he liked sitting in her lap and being rocked by her and how her cigarette smelled good, and how somehow he knew that this "marked a change of sorts". However, he also says that "I felt a dark feeling when I clung to Patsy. I felt something like despair." Later, Patsy watches TV with him and Little Ida, and they all laugh together and now he feels that "Patsy was my friend suddenly, and I thought she was very pretty, I had always thought she was very pretty, but I loved Pops too and could never choose between them." Given later remarks that he makes as a child pertaining to the appearance of women, and some more quasi-incestuous stuff with Aunt Queen (basically, he sleeps in a bed with her when he's sixteen) I'm kind of side-eyeing this bit about how it seems the best thing he can say about her to put her in competition with Pops is simply that she's pretty. Anyway, from that day forward he and Patsy hug and kiss a lot more, and since "hugging and kissing have always been big on Blackwood Farm, and now Patsy was in the loop, as far as I was concerned." Okay, so things seem alright now. So why does he hate her so much? Guess I'll have to keep reading...
- "By age six or so I had the run of the property" and he says his favorite place would have been the cemetery if not for Goblin. He tells a story I don't entirely understand about how he saw a group of ghosts down there once when he was seven, whom he calls the "Lost Souls", and how Goblin immediately started making frantic gestures for him to go back to the house, but Quinn didn't, and then the Lost Souls faded away and all of a sudden Quinn got really bad feelings about the trees, like really scared of them, so bad that he got dizzy and almost sick, and then he saw the ghosts again, and then he ran to the house like Goblin wanted him to. Sweetheart told him there were no ghosts and to stay away from there, but Big Ramona wanted to know all about them. Quinn has seen the Lost Souls several times since, they just sort of linger and float around and go away, and he's not sure if they even have personalities like some spirits.
- This incident frightened Sweetheart and she decided after this that it was time for Quinn to go to kindergarten. Yeah, I'd say so, I was in second grade at his age, I think. He was enrolled in a private school, but swiftly kicked out for murmuring too much to Goblin and "not being able to cooperate with other kids" plus Goblin didn't like the teacher. This sounds a little less than sufficient to kick a kid out from school to me, but then, I went a public school, so I guess private schools have different standards (plus, Quinn might be leaving his own bad behaviors out, especially in just how he failed to cooperate with other kids---having not ever much been around them before, I bet his sharing skills and such were awful) and he says that he preferred being home anyway and doing things like eating cake icing in the kitchen while the staff sang songs like Working on the Railroad. He was ultimately asked to leave four schools in total (HE FAILS TO SAY WHY, HEIGHTENING MY SUSPCIONS HE WAS AN EPIC BRAT possibly deliberately so in order to keep going back home, since he says that's where he wanted to be)
- Then his Aunt Queen came home and he saw her for the first time. That's interesting, since he mentioned earlier that she was the good fairy godmother in his life, but I guess he wasn't yet telling things in chronological order yet and this is the beginning of that. She was the prettiest woman he'd ever seen, he admired her spike-heel shoes, and she gave him lots of kisses and chocolate-covered cherries. She was in her 70s then, but looked younger than Pops and Sweetheart, who were in their 50s. She dressed all in white, had her room done all in white, and even her nails were white, all in mourning for her husband, but she's decided she's ready for color again and gets Quinn to help her with swatches for new décor and clothes. She notes that she never loved a man before John McQueen and will never marry again, and given that she and Sweetheart are the good mother figures to Quinn and Patsy is the bad, I hope this isn't meant to be a virgin/whore dichotomy deal with them (especially given the choice of white for her, traditionally associated with female virginity---obviously she's probably not an actual virgin since she's been married, but the whole 'only one man, her husband' thing is the next socially approvable step)
- "I remember reveling in her beauty and what seemed the purity of her manner and her words." This is a very odd sentiment for a child. Like odd even for an odd child like Quinn.
- Quinn tells AQ about Goblin, and he thinks that she did see him just for a moment. She asks if Goblin makes him happy, Quinn explains that Goblin is just always around whether it makes him happy or not, except when he hides, and the Goblin started tugging on Quinn to make him leave the room and Quinn said "Behave, Goblin!" and Goblin got pouty and disappeared. Quinn started to cry, AQ asked why, he told her, she suggested that if Quinn stayed quiet and pretended not to miss him, Goblin would come back. This trick works.
- AQ doesn't mind Quinn murmuring to Goblin when he comes back, and tells Goblin not to run off again. Once more, Quinn is certain she could see Goblin for a moment, though AQ says she can't.
- Quinn says AQ always talked to him like an adult, and I can understand why that would appeal to a child. He also sleeps with her, snuggling and spooning like he says he did with Little Ida, and that Little Ida was in fact "a bit put out over this, since she and I had been bedfellows since I was a baby." Yes, I am so sure that a grown woman with kids of her own is just absolutely disappointed at not having to sleep with the child she nannies anymore.
- AQ took him to New Orleans in her big stretch limo and Quinn spends three paragraphs recounting how there were very beautiful pink petals from flowering trees all over the sidewalk before admitting that this has nothing to do with the story.
- Turns out AQ took him to New Orleans to see a psychologist, whom Quinn complains of as a "very affected and artificial lady" that "wanted to direct things, as I recall" when he tried to play with the room full of toys she had and "bombarded me with soft affected questions in her phony baby voice, mostly pertaining to Goblin." I get not liking being condescended to, I really do, and I certainly get why a child would just want to play with all the toys and not be bothered with questions, but it's so odd to me that even as an adult Quinn still seems peeved that she wanted to talk to him and ask him questions (you know, HER JOB) rather than just let him play with all her toys, and that she dared "direct things" that way. Between this and Sweetheart's broken cookie jar of fudge, Quinn seems like somebody who doesn't let go of the most petty things that made him upset as a child. It makes him come off as a very spoiled man-child.
- She asks him stuff about if Goblin does bad things and "young as I was, I caught her drift." AQ makes a phone call to Pops after from the limo telling him that Goblin is just an imaginary playmate that Quinn has constructed because he's a brilliant child with no real ones. I don't see what's so brilliant about him myself, but I imagine AQ probably saw him through rose-colored glasses, as family members of small children are wont to do.
- Soon after, Pops takes him to another new school, and Quinn "hated it passionately, as I had the others, talked to Goblin belligerently and without cease and was sent home by noon." You know, he has yet to state why he hates schools so much, and I personally think it might have something to do with having to follow rules, listen to adults, and not being treated as super duper special constantly. I could very much enjoy a bratty protagonist that had gotten a very high opinion of himself due to being the spoiled by his rich grandparents and not growing up with any peers around to learn people skills from, personally, so I hope that turns out to be it. It's a good explanation for being a little shit, and it'd give Quinn something to grow from.
- Pops takes him to an even fancier kindergarten, and he hated the other kids and the teacher's voice was grating and she talked to him "as if I were an idiot" and soon enough he was back home "exactly where I wanted to be." Yeah, he's definitely getting kicked out on purpose, and his grandparents need to put their foot down with him RIGHT NOW. Given their apparent total lack of discipline, I don't think they have anyone but themselves to blame if Patsy didn't turn out perfect, I must say. Also, if all these private schools keep booting him, why don't they try something else? I guess it would just be out of the question to enroll him in, the horror, a PUBLIC school?!
- He has a "vivid yet fragmented memory" of being "incarcerated in a hospital of some sort" where he sat in a playroom with people watching him from the other side of a mirror (Goblin told him they were there) and asked him questions like they were his friends. Apparently the biggest question they had for him was asking how he knew all the big words that he did. I find this very unlikely. If you've got a kid like Quinn who is getting constantly expelled and seems to very sincerely believe he has an invisible doppelganger only he can see and communicate with, his vocabulary is not going to be the biggest issue, especially since the doctors would surely know that he was raised in an all-adult household where of course he'd pick up adult-level words and speak more like an adult himself just because that's what he's used to. Their other big question was "You talk of being happy to be independent. Do you know what independent means?"
...what? Okay, I'm not a psychologist of any sort, but this seems an awful weird, irrelevant question to prioritize. I could see questioning Quinn about this as trying to figure out his opposition to being in school, I guess. And that does seem to have been his answer, since he told them it meant "to be on one's own, to be not in school, to be not in this place; and out there I soon went, with the sense that I had gotten my liberty through sheer stubbornness and the refusal to be nice." In other words, literally rewarded for bad behavior and apparently just being soooooo smart that they let him out toot-suite because I guess intelligent children can't have problems or something? I'd be screaming BULLSHIT all over the place except that his memory is fragmented and unclear about this whole place by his own admission, so it probably didn't really happen that way. And then he went back to Sweetheart's arms and he cried hysterically because the whole thing had frightened him so much and she sobbed and sobbed too so I imagine this isn't going to happen again because god forbid ickle Quinn ever be upset by something
-It turns out the hospitalization was Aunt Queen's idea. Pops loudly criticizes her for it, AQ admits that "she had done wrong" and kisses Quinn. Honestly, what I'm getting from this is that anything Quinn didn't like happening is wrong and the guilty party must be chewed out, admit their wrongdoing, and fawn over him, regardless of how much sense their action probably made. I don't think having an imaginary friend requires being observed by mental health professionals, since that's not harming anyone, but getting repeatedly expelled from school for odd behaviors is very much a sign that one's child might have a mental or behavioral disorder and that very much should be looked into as soon as possible so that treatment can get started ASAP. And this wasn't some Bedlam asylum, it seems to have just been Quinn playing with toys under observation and being asked some very non-invasive questions. I'm not exactly feeling sympathy for him acting like it was some great crime he was traumatized by.
- AQ, further seeing how wrong she has been, says that if Quinn loves Goblin than so shall she.
- AQ teaches Quinn to write with crayons, and Goblin writes some too with Quinn's hand, including "Ruby River" which makes AQ gasp. Quinn doesn't know what Ruby River means, AQ says to ask Goblin, Goblin says Ruby River is "the water over which the car drove when we went to school or shopping". AQ looks very serious and asks Quinn how Goblin learned this, Goblin can't explain and Quinn says he thinks Goblin just picked them up from watching and listening. AQ seems pleased and says that make sense. I imagine this Ruby River will be significant in the future, so I will try to remember it. It's a pretty, alliterative name so that should be easy enough.
- This experience also makes Quinn aware that "Goblin was talking coherently in my head" and wonders when that started. Goblin can also put pictures in his head too. He also realizes that though he'd regarded Goblin as inferior before, Goblin is in fact phonetically ahead of him, and remained so for some time. Goblin uses these abilities to help Quinn catch up and learn to write more words himself.
- We learn about all the words Quinn learns to write, like "rice" and "coca cola" how thrilling.
- Quinn confirms that the "Kitchen Gang" (Sweetheart + staff) do not believe in Goblin, even if they think he's been good for teaching Quinn. So yeah, the birthday party at the beginning where Goblin has his own seat and cake was indeed just humoring toddler Quinn then.
- AQ says that Goblin lives in Quinn's subconscious and will probably go away as he gets older. "I knew this was wrong, but I loved Aunt Queen too much to contradict her." Duh, Quinn's always right.
- AQ soon leaves for Madrid with friends, and thus Quinn is need of a new teacher. Having had no luck with schools, his grandparents hire tutors instead. Quinn hates them and so does Goblin and they run them off. Quinn has absolutely zero remorse about how he very deliberately did his best to "frighten them" and how "I did it lustily to break their power" and I just want to smack him so hard. Like, having been a problem child is one thing. I was a problem child, big time. But I regret it as an adult, and am both sympathetic and grateful to the adults who had to put up with me. Quinn doesn't seem sorry at all for having been a little shit, and a DELIBERATE little shit at that (fuck, at least I can say I never did it on purpose) I'm reminded of when the Ingram sisters talked about fucking over their governesses in Jane Eyre, except we weren't expected to like them.
- Oh, and the crimes of these tutors? "They wanted me to color pictures that were boring and to paste strips from magazines on to cardboard." Oh, the horror of arts and crafts! The horror! He also complains that they seemed to think "that a child's mind is different from that of adults." UM. IT IS, QUINN. I can't totally tell if we're supposed to regard Quinn as objectively correct across the board with this, or to think he just thinks this because of course he was such a brilliant little genius (which we've seen...zero evidence of) that *his* mind was like that of an adult so he thinks all kids are like that. Which is also incorrect, even highly intelligent children are still children, your brain literally grows and matures like any other organ in ways that have nothing to do with simply how smart you are. But even if his teachers had been objectively wrong about this, it's still no excuse for Quinn's behavior then or his having absolutely zero apology for it now. I really, really do not like him at this point.
- As for what brilliant little Quinn is up to now that he's left to his own devices again, it seems he's back to running around on the farm, seeing ghosts, and watching boxing on TV with the Shed Men. You know Quinn, maybe they would have started you on something more advanced than coloring if you weren't a seven year old that still hadn't even gone to kindergarten and/or had any evidence to show you were capable of more. Just a thought. Also, let's be real, if they actually had given him something challenging, he'd have just thrown a fit about THAT instead.
- Little Ida reads to him at night and Quinn learns to read a little too and so does Goblin, and Quinn re-iterates that at this point Goblin still learned faster than him, and he can in fact read to Quinn by speaking in his head.
-When Quinn is nine (and still apparently not in school! nor with a tutor!) Goblin begins to write "more sophisticated messages than I could ever written" such as "Quinn and I want to go riding in Pops' truck. We'd like to go to the cock fights again. We like to see the roosters go at it. We want to place bets." Well, I guess this would be beyond Quinn's abilities to write if he's still not been to school and doesn't have any homeschooling besides just getting read to at night. Anyway, Pops points out that Quinn's hand is writing these messages, not anyone else, so he asks to see Quinn write it as Quinn, and Quinn shows they have different scripts. Goblin then uses Quinn to write not to be afraid of him, that he loves Quinn, and that he knows they don't believe in him but that Quinn does.
- And oh yeah, those cock fights? Yeah, little Quinn loved 'em and modern Quinn tells us all about how much he liked to watch the birds kill each other and how pretty they are (you know, before they DIE) and how "it is a kind of American scene which is probably dying out." WOW, WHAT A FUCKING SHAME. My personal favorite bit is "the handlers do everything they can to help the birds. They'll take them by the throat and suck the blood right out of their mouths to give them second wind, and I think they blow in their hind ends too." BEAUTIFUL GOTHIC PROSE, PEOPLE.
Seriously though, am I supposed to believe that the same kid who was distraught over shooting a deer loved watching cock fights? That doesn't jive, Anne. I could believe the reverse, a kid who was fine with shooting deer being horrified by cock fights, but not vice versa (my reason being that the deer has a chance, it isn't in an enclosure, and a bullet wound is a quicker death) I can separate my values from that of kid who was raised by a man who used to breed fighting cocks (which he says Pops did) and not think that little Quinn was horrible for enjoying this as a child, but in terms of writing skill and characterization I do take issue with the idea that, again, this kid who weeps over a deer is fine with the much bloodier and more vicious deaths of animals that he just said he also considered to be very beautiful. I just don't get it.
- He talks a little about how Pops was "a man between worlds" because he could go bet on fighting cocks but then come home and wear a nice dark suit and be all classy and make sure the ladies had set the table with the right china and things like that. He then mentions he doesn't understand why Pops hated Patsy so much for having "gone so totally country" but then suppose it was because she got knocked up at sixteen and "refused to divulge" who the father was...interesting, the implies Patsy knows the dad, she just won't say. I wonder why that is?
Anyway, there's about twenty pages left in the chapter, so I'm gonna leave off here.
BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER EIGHT, PART ONE
- Goblin has always been around him and always been his duplicate, but in terms of personality, desires, etc., he's as different as can be. Quinn can't control him, but if he ignores him hard enough, which is difficult, he sometimes disappears
- Details about him and Goblin, like how Goblin would sometimes throw the clothes on the floor he wanted Quinn to wear that day, how Quinn's first memory is teaching Goblin how to pick up a fork at his third birthday party, etc.
- According to Quinn, Goblin had his own chair, plate, milk, and cake at this party, suggesting that (if Quinn is recalling right) the family did indeed know Goblin was real (or were they just humoring a kid with an imaginary friend?)
- Goblin grabs Quinn's hand and makes him smear his cake, which he'd never been strong enough to do, making Quinn cry and causing Goblin to disappear, which made Quinn very scared. Also everyone (Sweetheart, Pops, Jasmine and her family members who work there) immediately hugged and fussed over Quinn, so he seems to have been very well-loved and well-attended to.
- At an early age, he began to see that Goblin didn't want to share Quinn with the world and was happiest when he had Quinn's full attention, which made him strong.
- Generally happy memories of him and Goblin functioning more or less like brothers, like drawing with crayons together via Quinn letting Goblin move his hand.
- Pops (his grandfather) "never liked Goblin" and was worried "where all this talk of Goblin would lead" so yeah either they knew Goblin was real, or they at least knew that he was more real to Quinn than the average child's imaginary friend is.
- He doesn't remember Patsy until he was four or five and even then he didn't realize she was his mother. When he did see her "I was already afraid that a screaming fight between her and Pops was going to break out." Okay, I emphasize like hell with this. I have a brother older than me by ten years who was...a lot of trouble, to say the least, so a good bit of my own childhood includes being terrified and upset by the fights that transpired between him and my parents. Tension in the household really, really sucks when you're a kid, regardless of if you're the one in trouble or not. This is the first time any type of difficulty has been mentioned in Quinn's life, so I can see how he'd resent her for that, especially if the problems between her and Pops continued; I know I resent the hell out of my brother for what he put my mother through. I don't know what Patsy was up to that made Pops mad at her yet, but even if she wasn't doing anything objectively awful like my brother, I can still see a spoiled young man resenting her for being the only bad spot on his otherwise perfect life, especially since she wasn't smothering him with affection and attention like everyone else in the house, especially the women (grandma Sweetheart + the staff) are described so far as doing.
- Sweetheart had been a debutante in New Orleans, and Pops really liked playing the "farmer" role on the farm even though, as the owner, he didn't have to. Quinn says that he loved Pops and Pops loved him, but that Pops didn't love his daughter Patsy. In fact "I think he loved her as little as Patsy loved me." So we also know that Quinn doesn't think his mother loves him, and he doesn't think her father loved her.
- Quinn says that "Patsy was a late child" and that maybe things would have been different if she'd been a debutante too but that "Patsy had gone country and wild at the same time, and this mixture Pops, for all his country ways, couldn't abide." Well, I'm immediately on Patsy's side here. She shouldn't have to be a damn debutante just to be loved by her own father. But nope, Pops hated her teased hair, short skirts, cowboy boots, fringed jackets, and flashy makeup, and told her that she looked like "common trash" and that her singing was "a bunch of foolishness" and that she'd "never make it". Okay, I can understand an old-fashioned Southern man not holding with any of this. I certainly do not agree with him, but I do understand his disapproval. However, it's still no reason not to LOVE her, just because you don't like what she's doing, so I'm still on Patsy's side and I hope that Quinn is wrong about how Pops felt about her.
- As for Patsy, she said that she was going to "earn the money to get the hell out of here" and I admire that. She wasn't going to use her family's money, which they obviously have plenty of, she was going to make her own doing what she loved and then leave a place that clearly was not kind to her, where, if Quinn is to be believed, parent's love hinges on things like makeup and music. Good for her wanting to get the hell out of a place like that, and for doing it on her own terms so that she's not beholden to her parents for her escape. I like her already just for this. Quinn, however, isn't so admiring, and is more concerned with the fact that she once broke a cookie jar in a fight with pops that was "full of Sweetheart's chocolate fudge, I might add" Priorities! Seriously, just when I was starting to have empathy with Quinn, he's more concerned about losing his grandma's fudge as a little boy than how horribly another human being, whether he saw her as his mother or not, was being treated for no good reason. I am hoping so hard that this is part of deliberately setting Quinn up as a selfish little shit who is going to have a rude awakening and hopefully grow from it. *crosses fingers*
- Quinn does, however, admit that she was a good singer, and that the Shed Men agreed and so did Jasmine and Jasmine's family. But when he actually describes her singing he refers to it as "wailing" so he might not actually be telling Lestat his real opinion. Or maybe he's just being spiteful, I could see that easily.
- Quinn also notes that there was an "endless procession of young men" coming to the back garage to play guitar and drums for her, and I can't tell if them specifically being mentioned as men is meant to imply something or not.
- Goblin liked to dance to Patsy's music, and Quinn would try to dance too, and when Patsy saw him when she came out to smoke a cigarette, she'd scoop him up and kiss him and say how darling and cute he is. According to Quinn though she said these things "as if it were an admission over opposition, but no one would have opposed her in saying it, except her own self." So Quinn thinks she only found him cute in spite of herself.
- The reason for Patsy fighting with Pops was money, because even though there was a ton of money, Pops wouldn't invest in Patsy's band and "Pops made Patsy fight for every nickel". The latter line is interesting to me, because it makes it sound less like Pops just straight-refused to fund her at all, and more like he'd do it but only if she had a big fight with him, and even maybe like he wanted it that way. Maybe that's just me though, but that's what how I read the implication.
- "Sweetheart was far too submissive to oppose Pops at the time of the kitchen quarrels, but Sweetheart did slip money to her daughter."
-These fights were not only upsetting to Quinn, but Goblin as well, who once used Quinn's hand to write 'bad' with a crayon during one, and pulled him away upstairs to his room during another.
- It was through one of these fights that Quinn found out Patsy was his mother; he'd thought she was his cousin up until then. Quinn overheard Pops says that "You don't love Quinn. You don't love your own little boy. There wouldn't be any Goblin in this house, he wouldn't need Goblin, if you'd be the mother you're supposed to be. You're an unnatural mother, that's what you are, and a tramp on top of it."
Okay, I'm gonna say something taboo here: Some mothers don't love their children, and I don't think they're inherently bad for it.
We have a big cultural myth around motherhood, specifically biological motherhood, the belief that as soon as the baby is born there's this magical instant bond of deep profound love between it and the mother. And that is true for some women, but not all. And some women who doesn't feel this instant deep special bond feel terrible for it, because of the attitude that it's wrong, unnatural, like Pops says. This is often a big part of post-partum depression, in fact. But in fact, it's perfectly normal for a woman to not love her baby instantaneously the moment it pops out. Plenty of women just need time for the bond to form.
Patsy probably didn't have this time. She hasn't been raising Quinn, she's not even around him that much. She was stated to have no idea what to do with him, so I doubt she was nursing and changing and all of that. Most likely, it was Sweetheart or one of the staff doing that. There's really no particular reason that Patsy *should* love Quinn as a mother; I'd actually be more surprised if she did than not. It's not right to expect her to, or to deride her for it.
Note that I'm not saying I'm opposed to having Pops believe she's bad and unnatural for this; he's an old country guy from what seems to be an uber-traditional household, and this is, as I said, a deeply ingrained cultural ideal. I just want to make it clear that I don't think Patsy's automatically a bad person if he's right, and why that is. Now, just in case this sounds hypocritical after I just got pissed at Pops for not loving Patsy, let me explain why that's different: here, we're talking about natural bonds of love failing to form with a child for what are entirely understandable reasons, mainly that he just came out of her and they haven't had much contact since. That's an understandable thing, and beyond anyone's control. Making deliberate conditions on which your already-existent love for your child hinges, however, is another thing. That's a choice, and that's shitty as fuck. If Pops stopped loving Patsy because she murdered another child of his or something like that, I could understand, but not loving her because she was a teen mom instead of a debutante and wants to be a country singer is just...yeah, you suck, Pops.
- When Quinn heard this, he automatically knew it was true. He also didn't care before about whether Patsy loved him or not, but now suddenly he cared a whole lot and it hurt a whole lot and instantly caused him deep pain. I have no idea how realistic any of this is.
- Patsy ran at Pops with a kitchen knife, he grabbed her by the wrists to stop her, she said he'd better sleep with one eye open and that he was the one who didn't love his child. While I certainly don't approve of patricide in this situation, I'd say she's right that Pops has no room to talk.
- Afterwards, Quinn went to Patsy, who was crying in her garage studio. He hugged her and kissed her and she took him in her arms, and then he told Goblin to kiss her and Patsy screamed for him to "Stop talkin' to that thing. It kills me when you talk to that thing. I can't stand to be around you when you talk to that thing. And then they say I'm a bad mother!" So Quinn stops talking to Goblin and just stays with Patsy for an hour. He recounts that he liked sitting in her lap and being rocked by her and how her cigarette smelled good, and how somehow he knew that this "marked a change of sorts". However, he also says that "I felt a dark feeling when I clung to Patsy. I felt something like despair." Later, Patsy watches TV with him and Little Ida, and they all laugh together and now he feels that "Patsy was my friend suddenly, and I thought she was very pretty, I had always thought she was very pretty, but I loved Pops too and could never choose between them." Given later remarks that he makes as a child pertaining to the appearance of women, and some more quasi-incestuous stuff with Aunt Queen (basically, he sleeps in a bed with her when he's sixteen) I'm kind of side-eyeing this bit about how it seems the best thing he can say about her to put her in competition with Pops is simply that she's pretty. Anyway, from that day forward he and Patsy hug and kiss a lot more, and since "hugging and kissing have always been big on Blackwood Farm, and now Patsy was in the loop, as far as I was concerned." Okay, so things seem alright now. So why does he hate her so much? Guess I'll have to keep reading...
- "By age six or so I had the run of the property" and he says his favorite place would have been the cemetery if not for Goblin. He tells a story I don't entirely understand about how he saw a group of ghosts down there once when he was seven, whom he calls the "Lost Souls", and how Goblin immediately started making frantic gestures for him to go back to the house, but Quinn didn't, and then the Lost Souls faded away and all of a sudden Quinn got really bad feelings about the trees, like really scared of them, so bad that he got dizzy and almost sick, and then he saw the ghosts again, and then he ran to the house like Goblin wanted him to. Sweetheart told him there were no ghosts and to stay away from there, but Big Ramona wanted to know all about them. Quinn has seen the Lost Souls several times since, they just sort of linger and float around and go away, and he's not sure if they even have personalities like some spirits.
- This incident frightened Sweetheart and she decided after this that it was time for Quinn to go to kindergarten. Yeah, I'd say so, I was in second grade at his age, I think. He was enrolled in a private school, but swiftly kicked out for murmuring too much to Goblin and "not being able to cooperate with other kids" plus Goblin didn't like the teacher. This sounds a little less than sufficient to kick a kid out from school to me, but then, I went a public school, so I guess private schools have different standards (plus, Quinn might be leaving his own bad behaviors out, especially in just how he failed to cooperate with other kids---having not ever much been around them before, I bet his sharing skills and such were awful) and he says that he preferred being home anyway and doing things like eating cake icing in the kitchen while the staff sang songs like Working on the Railroad. He was ultimately asked to leave four schools in total (HE FAILS TO SAY WHY, HEIGHTENING MY SUSPCIONS HE WAS AN EPIC BRAT possibly deliberately so in order to keep going back home, since he says that's where he wanted to be)
- Then his Aunt Queen came home and he saw her for the first time. That's interesting, since he mentioned earlier that she was the good fairy godmother in his life, but I guess he wasn't yet telling things in chronological order yet and this is the beginning of that. She was the prettiest woman he'd ever seen, he admired her spike-heel shoes, and she gave him lots of kisses and chocolate-covered cherries. She was in her 70s then, but looked younger than Pops and Sweetheart, who were in their 50s. She dressed all in white, had her room done all in white, and even her nails were white, all in mourning for her husband, but she's decided she's ready for color again and gets Quinn to help her with swatches for new décor and clothes. She notes that she never loved a man before John McQueen and will never marry again, and given that she and Sweetheart are the good mother figures to Quinn and Patsy is the bad, I hope this isn't meant to be a virgin/whore dichotomy deal with them (especially given the choice of white for her, traditionally associated with female virginity---obviously she's probably not an actual virgin since she's been married, but the whole 'only one man, her husband' thing is the next socially approvable step)
- "I remember reveling in her beauty and what seemed the purity of her manner and her words." This is a very odd sentiment for a child. Like odd even for an odd child like Quinn.
- Quinn tells AQ about Goblin, and he thinks that she did see him just for a moment. She asks if Goblin makes him happy, Quinn explains that Goblin is just always around whether it makes him happy or not, except when he hides, and the Goblin started tugging on Quinn to make him leave the room and Quinn said "Behave, Goblin!" and Goblin got pouty and disappeared. Quinn started to cry, AQ asked why, he told her, she suggested that if Quinn stayed quiet and pretended not to miss him, Goblin would come back. This trick works.
- AQ doesn't mind Quinn murmuring to Goblin when he comes back, and tells Goblin not to run off again. Once more, Quinn is certain she could see Goblin for a moment, though AQ says she can't.
- Quinn says AQ always talked to him like an adult, and I can understand why that would appeal to a child. He also sleeps with her, snuggling and spooning like he says he did with Little Ida, and that Little Ida was in fact "a bit put out over this, since she and I had been bedfellows since I was a baby." Yes, I am so sure that a grown woman with kids of her own is just absolutely disappointed at not having to sleep with the child she nannies anymore.
- AQ took him to New Orleans in her big stretch limo and Quinn spends three paragraphs recounting how there were very beautiful pink petals from flowering trees all over the sidewalk before admitting that this has nothing to do with the story.
- Turns out AQ took him to New Orleans to see a psychologist, whom Quinn complains of as a "very affected and artificial lady" that "wanted to direct things, as I recall" when he tried to play with the room full of toys she had and "bombarded me with soft affected questions in her phony baby voice, mostly pertaining to Goblin." I get not liking being condescended to, I really do, and I certainly get why a child would just want to play with all the toys and not be bothered with questions, but it's so odd to me that even as an adult Quinn still seems peeved that she wanted to talk to him and ask him questions (you know, HER JOB) rather than just let him play with all her toys, and that she dared "direct things" that way. Between this and Sweetheart's broken cookie jar of fudge, Quinn seems like somebody who doesn't let go of the most petty things that made him upset as a child. It makes him come off as a very spoiled man-child.
- She asks him stuff about if Goblin does bad things and "young as I was, I caught her drift." AQ makes a phone call to Pops after from the limo telling him that Goblin is just an imaginary playmate that Quinn has constructed because he's a brilliant child with no real ones. I don't see what's so brilliant about him myself, but I imagine AQ probably saw him through rose-colored glasses, as family members of small children are wont to do.
- Soon after, Pops takes him to another new school, and Quinn "hated it passionately, as I had the others, talked to Goblin belligerently and without cease and was sent home by noon." You know, he has yet to state why he hates schools so much, and I personally think it might have something to do with having to follow rules, listen to adults, and not being treated as super duper special constantly. I could very much enjoy a bratty protagonist that had gotten a very high opinion of himself due to being the spoiled by his rich grandparents and not growing up with any peers around to learn people skills from, personally, so I hope that turns out to be it. It's a good explanation for being a little shit, and it'd give Quinn something to grow from.
- Pops takes him to an even fancier kindergarten, and he hated the other kids and the teacher's voice was grating and she talked to him "as if I were an idiot" and soon enough he was back home "exactly where I wanted to be." Yeah, he's definitely getting kicked out on purpose, and his grandparents need to put their foot down with him RIGHT NOW. Given their apparent total lack of discipline, I don't think they have anyone but themselves to blame if Patsy didn't turn out perfect, I must say. Also, if all these private schools keep booting him, why don't they try something else? I guess it would just be out of the question to enroll him in, the horror, a PUBLIC school?!
- He has a "vivid yet fragmented memory" of being "incarcerated in a hospital of some sort" where he sat in a playroom with people watching him from the other side of a mirror (Goblin told him they were there) and asked him questions like they were his friends. Apparently the biggest question they had for him was asking how he knew all the big words that he did. I find this very unlikely. If you've got a kid like Quinn who is getting constantly expelled and seems to very sincerely believe he has an invisible doppelganger only he can see and communicate with, his vocabulary is not going to be the biggest issue, especially since the doctors would surely know that he was raised in an all-adult household where of course he'd pick up adult-level words and speak more like an adult himself just because that's what he's used to. Their other big question was "You talk of being happy to be independent. Do you know what independent means?"
...what? Okay, I'm not a psychologist of any sort, but this seems an awful weird, irrelevant question to prioritize. I could see questioning Quinn about this as trying to figure out his opposition to being in school, I guess. And that does seem to have been his answer, since he told them it meant "to be on one's own, to be not in school, to be not in this place; and out there I soon went, with the sense that I had gotten my liberty through sheer stubbornness and the refusal to be nice." In other words, literally rewarded for bad behavior and apparently just being soooooo smart that they let him out toot-suite because I guess intelligent children can't have problems or something? I'd be screaming BULLSHIT all over the place except that his memory is fragmented and unclear about this whole place by his own admission, so it probably didn't really happen that way. And then he went back to Sweetheart's arms and he cried hysterically because the whole thing had frightened him so much and she sobbed and sobbed too so I imagine this isn't going to happen again because god forbid ickle Quinn ever be upset by something
-It turns out the hospitalization was Aunt Queen's idea. Pops loudly criticizes her for it, AQ admits that "she had done wrong" and kisses Quinn. Honestly, what I'm getting from this is that anything Quinn didn't like happening is wrong and the guilty party must be chewed out, admit their wrongdoing, and fawn over him, regardless of how much sense their action probably made. I don't think having an imaginary friend requires being observed by mental health professionals, since that's not harming anyone, but getting repeatedly expelled from school for odd behaviors is very much a sign that one's child might have a mental or behavioral disorder and that very much should be looked into as soon as possible so that treatment can get started ASAP. And this wasn't some Bedlam asylum, it seems to have just been Quinn playing with toys under observation and being asked some very non-invasive questions. I'm not exactly feeling sympathy for him acting like it was some great crime he was traumatized by.
- AQ, further seeing how wrong she has been, says that if Quinn loves Goblin than so shall she.
- AQ teaches Quinn to write with crayons, and Goblin writes some too with Quinn's hand, including "Ruby River" which makes AQ gasp. Quinn doesn't know what Ruby River means, AQ says to ask Goblin, Goblin says Ruby River is "the water over which the car drove when we went to school or shopping". AQ looks very serious and asks Quinn how Goblin learned this, Goblin can't explain and Quinn says he thinks Goblin just picked them up from watching and listening. AQ seems pleased and says that make sense. I imagine this Ruby River will be significant in the future, so I will try to remember it. It's a pretty, alliterative name so that should be easy enough.
- This experience also makes Quinn aware that "Goblin was talking coherently in my head" and wonders when that started. Goblin can also put pictures in his head too. He also realizes that though he'd regarded Goblin as inferior before, Goblin is in fact phonetically ahead of him, and remained so for some time. Goblin uses these abilities to help Quinn catch up and learn to write more words himself.
- We learn about all the words Quinn learns to write, like "rice" and "coca cola" how thrilling.
- Quinn confirms that the "Kitchen Gang" (Sweetheart + staff) do not believe in Goblin, even if they think he's been good for teaching Quinn. So yeah, the birthday party at the beginning where Goblin has his own seat and cake was indeed just humoring toddler Quinn then.
- AQ says that Goblin lives in Quinn's subconscious and will probably go away as he gets older. "I knew this was wrong, but I loved Aunt Queen too much to contradict her." Duh, Quinn's always right.
- AQ soon leaves for Madrid with friends, and thus Quinn is need of a new teacher. Having had no luck with schools, his grandparents hire tutors instead. Quinn hates them and so does Goblin and they run them off. Quinn has absolutely zero remorse about how he very deliberately did his best to "frighten them" and how "I did it lustily to break their power" and I just want to smack him so hard. Like, having been a problem child is one thing. I was a problem child, big time. But I regret it as an adult, and am both sympathetic and grateful to the adults who had to put up with me. Quinn doesn't seem sorry at all for having been a little shit, and a DELIBERATE little shit at that (fuck, at least I can say I never did it on purpose) I'm reminded of when the Ingram sisters talked about fucking over their governesses in Jane Eyre, except we weren't expected to like them.
- Oh, and the crimes of these tutors? "They wanted me to color pictures that were boring and to paste strips from magazines on to cardboard." Oh, the horror of arts and crafts! The horror! He also complains that they seemed to think "that a child's mind is different from that of adults." UM. IT IS, QUINN. I can't totally tell if we're supposed to regard Quinn as objectively correct across the board with this, or to think he just thinks this because of course he was such a brilliant little genius (which we've seen...zero evidence of) that *his* mind was like that of an adult so he thinks all kids are like that. Which is also incorrect, even highly intelligent children are still children, your brain literally grows and matures like any other organ in ways that have nothing to do with simply how smart you are. But even if his teachers had been objectively wrong about this, it's still no excuse for Quinn's behavior then or his having absolutely zero apology for it now. I really, really do not like him at this point.
- As for what brilliant little Quinn is up to now that he's left to his own devices again, it seems he's back to running around on the farm, seeing ghosts, and watching boxing on TV with the Shed Men. You know Quinn, maybe they would have started you on something more advanced than coloring if you weren't a seven year old that still hadn't even gone to kindergarten and/or had any evidence to show you were capable of more. Just a thought. Also, let's be real, if they actually had given him something challenging, he'd have just thrown a fit about THAT instead.
- Little Ida reads to him at night and Quinn learns to read a little too and so does Goblin, and Quinn re-iterates that at this point Goblin still learned faster than him, and he can in fact read to Quinn by speaking in his head.
-When Quinn is nine (and still apparently not in school! nor with a tutor!) Goblin begins to write "more sophisticated messages than I could ever written" such as "Quinn and I want to go riding in Pops' truck. We'd like to go to the cock fights again. We like to see the roosters go at it. We want to place bets." Well, I guess this would be beyond Quinn's abilities to write if he's still not been to school and doesn't have any homeschooling besides just getting read to at night. Anyway, Pops points out that Quinn's hand is writing these messages, not anyone else, so he asks to see Quinn write it as Quinn, and Quinn shows they have different scripts. Goblin then uses Quinn to write not to be afraid of him, that he loves Quinn, and that he knows they don't believe in him but that Quinn does.
- And oh yeah, those cock fights? Yeah, little Quinn loved 'em and modern Quinn tells us all about how much he liked to watch the birds kill each other and how pretty they are (you know, before they DIE) and how "it is a kind of American scene which is probably dying out." WOW, WHAT A FUCKING SHAME. My personal favorite bit is "the handlers do everything they can to help the birds. They'll take them by the throat and suck the blood right out of their mouths to give them second wind, and I think they blow in their hind ends too." BEAUTIFUL GOTHIC PROSE, PEOPLE.
Seriously though, am I supposed to believe that the same kid who was distraught over shooting a deer loved watching cock fights? That doesn't jive, Anne. I could believe the reverse, a kid who was fine with shooting deer being horrified by cock fights, but not vice versa (my reason being that the deer has a chance, it isn't in an enclosure, and a bullet wound is a quicker death) I can separate my values from that of kid who was raised by a man who used to breed fighting cocks (which he says Pops did) and not think that little Quinn was horrible for enjoying this as a child, but in terms of writing skill and characterization I do take issue with the idea that, again, this kid who weeps over a deer is fine with the much bloodier and more vicious deaths of animals that he just said he also considered to be very beautiful. I just don't get it.
- He talks a little about how Pops was "a man between worlds" because he could go bet on fighting cocks but then come home and wear a nice dark suit and be all classy and make sure the ladies had set the table with the right china and things like that. He then mentions he doesn't understand why Pops hated Patsy so much for having "gone so totally country" but then suppose it was because she got knocked up at sixteen and "refused to divulge" who the father was...interesting, the implies Patsy knows the dad, she just won't say. I wonder why that is?
Anyway, there's about twenty pages left in the chapter, so I'm gonna leave off here.
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Date: 2015-03-06 02:18 am (UTC)Quinn's a turd who probably thought he was too special to learn basic arithmetic, his family's obnoxious and incesty, but most of all I wonder why Anne Rice thought all this information would be good for the reader to know. It's like one of those super-long RP applications from a 13-year old who thinks their OC is the coolest ever.
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Date: 2015-03-06 04:51 pm (UTC)Omigosh, you're right, there's no instance of him learning math at all! And since he was so exact about all the words he learned to write and at what age (seriously, who remembers that? I sure as hell don't and what's more, I don't think it's relevant to my life story) I can't imagine he'd have left math out if he did learn it. Great, now he's gonna wreck the whole farm when he inherits it because he can't manage the accounts and the people he pays to do that will take advantage of him. I downright HOPE this happens.
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Date: 2015-03-06 09:54 pm (UTC)No math, science, history, art, music, etc. Quinn has a big vocabulary, so I assume he's read a lot, but reading a lot isn't the same as learning about literature either. And he never has to work at anything at all. Even with Goblin, Quinn's life sounds completely boring. No wonder he's glommed onto Lestat. Quinn's so empty and dull, someone from the outside world who's had adventures must be like a god to him. Not that I think that was intentional on Anne Rice's part, because I think we're supposed to like and even admire Quinn -- but maybe she'll surprise me.
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Date: 2017-08-03 07:02 am (UTC)Can I also say it grates on me that Patsy, despite her fancy pants origins, somehow talks "country" even when worried by supernatural angst. To show her trashiness I guess.
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Date: 2017-08-09 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-08 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-15 07:58 am (UTC)Sorry this is coming off a little PSA-y, but it really infuriates me that once again Ms. You are Interrogating the Text From the Wrong Perspective can flick her hand and punish people (google Pandora papier-mache if you are unaware of the damage she can inflict) without any repercussions. This is the only time I will ever wish I was famous so I could give Anne Rice a taste of her own backlash. Also note the irony of this woman supporting Stop The Goodreads Bullies who are very ironically a bunch of cyberstalking bullies themselves. I hate her. I hate her so much right now that LKH isn't even holding a candle to it in this moment.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-09 12:15 am (UTC)