Road to Avonlea
Jan. 4th, 2025 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engIn your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
You know what? My fannish origin story is my fervent childhood certainty that Stuart was all wrong for Felicity. I've decided.
I grew up watching Road to Avonlea, which was a Sullivan Films/CBC/Disney/Telefilm Canada production based on the novels of L.M. Montgomery. Red dirt, sea, and poofy sleeves for days.
My family was mildly obsessed. The series finale was a big deal in my house along with the lead-up to it. The lead-up brought on and heavily featured my childhood anxiety that Felicity would marry the wrong man.
Was Stuart fine? Probably not. Not many men are. But did I make up the part about him giving Felicity the house that he'd built, imagining raising their children therein, when she broke off their engagement? Like, that's a really nice gift. It was a really nice house. She did, in fact, keep it. (A house!)
BUT STUART WAS ALL WRONG FOR FELICITY.
Because he was not, and this is critical, Gus.
Gus lived in a light house, for years, Gus lived in a light house and excuse me I have just found out that Michael Mahonen was twenty-six years old when he was cast as Gus Pike, which means he is in fact still too old for me. I could have sworn Gus Pike was, like, fifteen, maybe seventeen at the start of the series and this has been a shock. (Why did I genuinely think that a twenty-six year old man was a child? Was it because I had no concept of age? Did he somehow look fifteen at that age? How?) Anyway Wikipedia describes him as a vagabond and a sailor with a Maritimer accent and, y'know, sometimes you just want a vagabond sailor with a Maritimer accent. He and Felicity have a slow burn romance. The slowest burn.
I think this is maybe what has ruined all television series for me. Like, do I want the lead to find love? Yes, absolutely, but if it isn't a six season long voyage with her/their end game love interest being a minor character in every season, then: what is this dross that you're presenting me with?
(Spoilers: she ends up with Gus.)
He's a sailor, he goes to sea, he becomes blind, he needs therapy. He probably doesn't get therapy but in the final episodes Felicity tracks him down - she goes on a sea voyage and tracks him down because they are in love and he's been assumed dead but she gets a lead and she is gone, she is leaving Stuart and finding Gus and yelling at him and dragging his ass back home to marry him. Were they engaged before this? Probably, but I don't actually remember.
Anyway, they get married. Possibly Hetty gives him away? I am very sketchy on the details here. Maybe Felicity goes to yell at Hetty about not missing her wedding? Hetty is there and it's good.
AND THEN THEY GO FILL THE HOUSE THAT STUART GAVE FELICITY WITH ORPHANS. Because Gus is an orphan, and I'm not crying. No one's crying. There are no tears. The emotional manipulation is too heavy-handed, probably. THE END.
Anyway, that scene with Stuart showing Felicity a beautiful house in a sun-drenched clearing covered with flowers lives in my head alongside this memory of my childhood self being absolutely furious that the story was going in this direction. Road to Avonlea is my earliest memory of that kind of deep emotional investment in a narrative.
You know what? My fannish origin story is my fervent childhood certainty that Stuart was all wrong for Felicity. I've decided.
I grew up watching Road to Avonlea, which was a Sullivan Films/CBC/Disney/Telefilm Canada production based on the novels of L.M. Montgomery. Red dirt, sea, and poofy sleeves for days.
My family was mildly obsessed. The series finale was a big deal in my house along with the lead-up to it. The lead-up brought on and heavily featured my childhood anxiety that Felicity would marry the wrong man.
Was Stuart fine? Probably not. Not many men are. But did I make up the part about him giving Felicity the house that he'd built, imagining raising their children therein, when she broke off their engagement? Like, that's a really nice gift. It was a really nice house. She did, in fact, keep it. (A house!)
BUT STUART WAS ALL WRONG FOR FELICITY.
Because he was not, and this is critical, Gus.
Gus lived in a light house, for years, Gus lived in a light house and excuse me I have just found out that Michael Mahonen was twenty-six years old when he was cast as Gus Pike, which means he is in fact still too old for me. I could have sworn Gus Pike was, like, fifteen, maybe seventeen at the start of the series and this has been a shock. (Why did I genuinely think that a twenty-six year old man was a child? Was it because I had no concept of age? Did he somehow look fifteen at that age? How?) Anyway Wikipedia describes him as a vagabond and a sailor with a Maritimer accent and, y'know, sometimes you just want a vagabond sailor with a Maritimer accent. He and Felicity have a slow burn romance. The slowest burn.
I think this is maybe what has ruined all television series for me. Like, do I want the lead to find love? Yes, absolutely, but if it isn't a six season long voyage with her/their end game love interest being a minor character in every season, then: what is this dross that you're presenting me with?
(Spoilers: she ends up with Gus.)
He's a sailor, he goes to sea, he becomes blind, he needs therapy. He probably doesn't get therapy but in the final episodes Felicity tracks him down - she goes on a sea voyage and tracks him down because they are in love and he's been assumed dead but she gets a lead and she is gone, she is leaving Stuart and finding Gus and yelling at him and dragging his ass back home to marry him. Were they engaged before this? Probably, but I don't actually remember.
Anyway, they get married. Possibly Hetty gives him away? I am very sketchy on the details here. Maybe Felicity goes to yell at Hetty about not missing her wedding? Hetty is there and it's good.
AND THEN THEY GO FILL THE HOUSE THAT STUART GAVE FELICITY WITH ORPHANS. Because Gus is an orphan, and I'm not crying. No one's crying. There are no tears. The emotional manipulation is too heavy-handed, probably. THE END.
Anyway, that scene with Stuart showing Felicity a beautiful house in a sun-drenched clearing covered with flowers lives in my head alongside this memory of my childhood self being absolutely furious that the story was going in this direction. Road to Avonlea is my earliest memory of that kind of deep emotional investment in a narrative.