red pen period – books i never wrote

Well, Darci, you should really have been able to tell from Karl’s deranged monobrow that he wasn’t quite right in the head. I don’t even know whether it’s a monobrow or whether he’s just been carving random shapes in his forehead with the sharp object he is now pointing at his crotch. (Do it, Karl! your severed penis in a box is going to be so much more impressive a love token than that lame red rose!)

This is another of those creepy stories where I appear to believe that ‘leading boys on and breaking their hearts’ inevitably results in getting raped/stalked/murdered. I really don’t know whether my mind was warped by reading YA novels, or women’s magazines, or some unholy combination of the two.

and he’ll kill to get her… When this doesn’t work, he kidnaps her

This segue cracks me up, it’s so casual. I really want to know who Karl killed and why he thought this would persuade Darci to give him another chance. Or possibly it was his attempt at killing that didn’t work, so he thinks kidnapping will be easier. I don’t know why Darci’s hair is longer post-kidnapping, either she has been in captivity for a while or he has given her forcible hair extensions.

I’m not that worried about Darci, to be honest. Her chin looks like a deadly weapon. Evidently my thirteen-year-old self thought plectrum-shaped skulls were beautiful and ankle socks were cool. Note also the shoulder pads. (It was 1990-ish. I feel that shoulder pads should have gone by this stage, but then I did grow up in a cultural backwater where people wore shellsuits well into the 21st century.)

Hmm, torn between two equally shitty titles, what am I to do? I know, use them both! If Shakespeare can do it, so can I!

The teeny-tiny mask thing and oversized babygro-with-wellies ensemble sported by Peter dates this to the first Gulf War. Sky News was always on about chemical weapons, and as I was only thirteen I believed everything they told me. So war in the 21st century is going to be a nightmare, as opposed to, say, the fourth century, when it was obviously fun. And it is still going to be a male-run affair, in spite of the fact that Leni is some inches taller than Peter and looks considerably harder.

OMG is that a CND symbol she is wearing? That is adorable. My vision of this millennium involves the CND, side ponytails, shoulderpads and handwritten ‘correspondance’.

(Well, I was right about the shoulderpads.)

As Florence and James are Leni’s great-grandparents, presumably he must survive to procreate in spite of the horrors of war / his weird moustache? Way to kill the suspense there. If Leni’s great-grandad had been killed in WWII she would know this already. So maybe it is Leni’s blossoming love with her ‘distant cousin’ that gets snuffed out by trad trg tragedy? I’m not sure I really cared, even then.

Tag: red pen period

oh no she didn’t

war is hell