Pansies (Spires #4)
Chapter Sixteen
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Chapter Sixteen
1 . Paragraph begins with: Alfie rolled Fen onto his back…
Alexis: My god, these two are horny. I had forgotten how completely horny they are.
2 . Paragraph begins with: He followed her into the hall…
Alexis: Goddamnit, I miss wallpaper. It’s just not a thing in the south. I mean, it makes every room that isn’t enormous look over-decorated and cluttered, but it’s so fucking extra.
3 . Paragraph begins with: “Wha?” His exclamation brought them both up short.
Alexis: I don’t know if the good room is specifically a northern thing or a working-class thing in general. It’s exactly what it suggests: a room for guests that is fiercely guarded by the home owner.
4 . Paragraph begins with: “Have you seen me decking?”
Alexis: Okay, I keep wondering what is the most South Shields line in this book, and I think this might be it.
5 . Paragraph begins with: “Y’know I love ye, don’t ye?”
Alexis: Ouch ouch ouch. Even from the future, this scene hurts. I normally don’t write so overtly about queerphobia, not because I don’t think it’s, you know, important, but because I don’t want every book about queer people to have to be about queerphobia. Like, while it may be something many of us experience in some form or another, it is not the defining feature of our lives and shouldn’t be presented as such.
But I think with Pansies I was trying to explore queerphobia from various perspectives, none of them entirely straightforward (I mean, even what happens in the next chapter has its complications). With Alfie’s parents, I didn’t want a situation where they were overtly rejecting him for being gay—more sort of implicitly rejecting him in ways they don’t fully understand, and he doesn’t know how to address, even though he’s trying here, bless his heart. I also wanted to look at the ways that parental rejection/queerphobia could coexist with a genuine conviction of love. Because I think Alfie’s parents really do love him, and I think Alfie believes that too; it’s just they’re also hurting him very deeply.