Lately, I have been experiencing a lot of "glitches" in my dreams, where I'll notice that my brain is not quite "loading" (for the lack of a better word) the right details - looking at a page and seeing the appearance of text but not intelligible text; not being able to read the titles on a row of books, etc, etc - but not quite getting all the way to lucid dreaming. I've also been having variations on the same recurring dream, where they all have the same characters and themes, but the details are just different enough that I don't catch on until I wake up. It's really annoying because I know exactly what this is about, and there's nothing I can do about it, so I wish my subconscious would leave me alone.

This week, I learned that if you delete the Notepad app in Windows 11, you can access the old Notepad without all the AI stuff because it's built into the system - apparently, they just slapped the new version on top without bothering to change the underlying architecture. (This naturally begs the question of what else in Windows 11 is just surface stuff, but I haven't looked into it.) It's nice to have the old Notepad back without all the "features" in the new version!

The Madoka Magica movie got delayed again - not really surprising, but I think they did intend to release this month because of the timing on all the marketing and collabs. There are lots of conspiracy theories going around, but the simplest explanation is that SHAFT didn't finish the animation (especially the backgrounds) because that's historically what takes the longest and is the most complicated step, especially in a company full of perfectionists with poor project management doing something innovative and ambitious. Given that the Rebellion interviews are full of SHAFT staff saying "I didn't think we'd ever finish it" and "I can't believe we released on time," it's probably more accurate to say that in retrospect, Rebellion is the outlier for only taking ~2.5 years.

There's been some new trailers with more details, but overall, my gut feeling about where this is all going has not changed much in the intervening years. For me, there's the story I want, the story that is possible, the story that is likely, and the story as it actually is, and I'm not sure how much these different circles will overlap.

Ultimately, I think the finished film will be gorgeous (hopefully they tone down the Inu Curry visuals so it's not quite as overwhelming as Rebellion), but I also think it will challenge the audience's assumptions and radically transform the franchise; there are going to be a lot of people who will hate it, especially on first watch. It's astonishing to me that fans of a series famous for plot twists based explicitly on giving the audience incomplete information before adding new details that change everything are going to be shocked and appalled when it happens again, but I feel more certain about that prediction than anything involving plot or character. There are a lot of things that we're wrong about, especially when it comes to Homura and Walpurgisnacht, otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story!

That said, I hope this will be the end of the story, because I don't want to wait another decade for a sequel (and the stakes have gotten so high and the scale has gotten so big that I'm not sure how you escalate any further after this), but the truth is, nobody knows for certain, and a lot depends on Gen Urobuchi's vision and how exactly he decides to execute it. After what happened with Thunderbolt Fantasy, I'm not entirely sure I trust him to stick the landing when it comes to delivering a satisfying ending for me personally, but I remain hopeful nonetheless.

Alternate title: "The author has a lot of feelings about WW1, Part Two". So many feelings. And I can't blame her, war sucks and it was a big deal for everyone who lived through it.

At the beginning, Rilla is 15 and goes to a party at the lighthouse and has a great time, only to learn that war has begun in Europe and all the boys start enlisting. As Canada is still an English colony, the war between England and Germany is an existential threat in spite of the geographic distance, and everybody is highly patriotic about it. The only character who isn't is continually framed as a loser and a hypocrite whom no one likes, so there's not a ton of nuance on that front.

Montgomery was highly invested in following the war via newspapers and so her character do this as well. She also wrestles with her own complicity in sending young men to their deaths by encouraging them to join up via "The Piper" poem and imagery. There is also a lot of "look, we have to make a better world to honor the sacrifices" and "everything happens for a reason" as coping strategies, because "war sucks and bad things happen and the deaths were pointless and in vain" is so existentially threatening.

Anne is there but not a main focus and neither is Gilbert; again, the housekeeper Susan has the most character and personality. I was so startled when Shirley announced he was 18 and going to join up, because he is barely present prior to this point. He's the only Blythe kid for whom I don't have a good sense of his personality because he's generally only mentioned in passing. I get the feeling that Montgomery forgets he exists from time to time, and it shows.

This is the book where we can really see technology in action - there are airplanes and party line telephones (those have been around for a couple of books) and cars and movies and all the tension between modernity and tradition that implies. I think a lot of people loved the original Anne of Green Gables for its "nostalgia" and "simpler times" and one reason this book is less popular - in addition to the heavy subject matter - is that it doesn't do that. People want childhood innocence and funny but low stakes hijinks, and while there is a bit of that here and there, it's all subsumed by the war effort and the stress of not knowing what is going to happen or having much control over it.

Ostensibly, there is a romance between Rilla and Ken Ford, but given that they have one dance and then a big gap followed by a conversation right before he leaves, there's just not much there there - I have to rely on the narrative to tell me it's important, because there's not much to go by otherwise! The book ends with his return and their reunion, but again, Montgomery really isn't focused on the relationship and the romantic lead is once again barely present in the book.

The book ends with the war over and the men returning home and Rilla's "normal" life resuming - but the 1918 flu pandemic was just beginning, so their troubles were not yet over, though they don't know it. IRL, Montgomery's best friend died and she herself was gravely ill, but I don't think she ever wrote about in her fiction.

This is another book that is structurally sound and it does the things that it does very well, but I don't think I would read it again. It's the last "Anne" book in series order, but both Windy Poplars and Anne of Ingleside were written much later to fill in the gaps. Technically, there is another book, The Blythes Are Quoted which is a collection of poetry with Anne and her family as the frame narrative, which was not published in Montgomery's lifetime due to the anti-WWII sentiment. After having lived through the Great War, I don't think you can really blame Montgomery for going, "fuck it, why are we doing this again" but it was not a popular sentiment at the time.