#it was just like. ilse wouldn’t be the type to become a mother. ergo she wouldn’t be a mother

[no-where-new-hero]

I need to know more about this attempt at a fourth Emily book

Oh gosh, I really haven’t thought about this for YEARS, this was a product of me being like 15 and naive enough to try and write an Emily x Dean happy ending without realizing that a purely romantic Dean was neither in the spirit of how LMM wrote him nor very interesting.

Basically, I erased a few of the years that passed between Ilse calling off the wedding and Teddy coming back to New Moon, so that the year after Emily and Teddy married, WWI began. Naturally, both Teddy and Perry would have been drafted. I envisioned Ilse moving back to PEI, and she and Emily would do comic and Rilla-ish things for the war effort. Meanwhile, Dean—who of course wouldn’t have been able to fight—comes back as well. He writes a book of pacifist poetry or something not particularly patriotic, which doesn’t endear him any better to the locals. In my teenaged mind, he and Emily would then resurrect something of romance. Whether or not it’s actively something consummated, Emily would have betrayed Teddy in spirit if not in body.

Now, though, if I were to follow this war-themed plot thread, I think I absolutely wouldn’t go that route. I think Emily’s attitude to Dean and to herself would have completely changed as she grew older and seen more of the world. She would understand him better and perhaps pity him just a little—she was so nearly him, losing the love of her life to someone else. I’m not entirely settled about how Dean would react to this change: On the one hand, I’m tempted to think that he would miss not being able to patronize her anymore (I'm sure he would try and it wouldn't work the way it used to). As with many Gothic pairings, their relationship relied on inequality. On the other hand, if underneath his possessive jealousy he really does care genuinely for Emily—which we might infer if only from the final scene when he admits that she can write—they might be able to negotiate a new kind of friendship, where Dean can claim his corner of her life without it being unnecessarily fraught. Even now, I'm not sure how much of this is possible--despite Emily's newfound cynicism, she still seems a bit naive at the end of EQ about what he intends about claiming a corner of her home--but I do believe that her own literary achievements would be able to help her hold her own against him.

In the end, I always intended Teddy and Perry to come home—as much as I enjoy tragedy, I couldn’t sacrifice either in good faith—though I assigned Perry many heroic war wounds. Emily also would have written a Great Canadian Novel based on the war that would have been set up as a counter to Dean's pacifist poems. In some ways their literary output would mark more than anything the divergence in their lives.

Thinking about this now is really interesting though in terms of our previous discussions of Walter in a pairing with Dean! I’m tempted to start writing fanfic scenarios about this instead now.

#i originally wanted to write an Emily bk 4 because i found another fanfic for a bk 4 somewhere on the internet and hated it #HATED IT #i think i was irrationally biased against it because ilse has a child and in no universe did i think that was in character for her #i did not contemplate the implications of a society before widespread birth control where she might not have a choice #it was just like. ilse wouldn’t be the type to become a mother. ergo she wouldn’t be a mother #tbh I almost think she would be the type to get an abortion but that’s another issue #i'm also convinced that the same fic included an endgame for dean with a character from the anne universe #but it wasn't even a more kosher romance like there was still an age gap problem and that was weirder to me without the tenuous excuse #that in emily dean had found something like a soulmate #lmm lockdown #emily of new moon #emily starr #dean priest #teddy kent