That answers the question steepholm asked me below. I didn't remember Colin and Mary not being cousins, but I don't automatically think of cousin marriage as incest, so the relevance might have passed me by; I remembered that Dickon died. The thing is that from our point in history, WWI would always have been waiting for these characters even if Burnett didn't know it, so I understand that any future fic has to take it into account, but I also object to any forecast that resolves them from three inseparable friends into a dyad and a fridge. I think of them as an emotional OT3 if not necessarily a romantic one and I don't want any components dropping out.
Oh, it wasn't the World War I framing I had an issue with, just the decision to, as you say, fridge one and canonically entangle the other two in an exclusive romantic relationship. As a child, I knew them all to be best friends, and as an adult I recognize them as an OT3. If I were inclined to seek out futurefic in the fandom, I'd be looking for them as a threesome. I would still have been cross had Dickon lived and Mary and Colin been paired off, but really, Dickon was the wound and Mary/Colin the lemon juice, there.
This is reminding me of how much the musical of The Secret Garden annoyed me with "Lily's Eyes," because the whole point was that Colin has his mother's eyes—agate-grey and fringed round with black lashes, looking gaily out of her portrait as his look unhappily out of his face and his father can't bear to meet them. Change that and you change the whole dynamic between them.
Hmm. In that case, I'd best warn you that the 1993 movie goes the route of Mary looking like the mothers, and Colin's father not being able to look at him because he doesn't look a thing like their mothers. It's a rather odd choice, because Colin looks exactly as he should, and Mary's just a bit darker than the book, and the actress playing the mothers is a brunette we barely glimpse, so telling us Colin has her eyes and Mary has her mother's face shape and coloring would have worked fine. Or, y'know, casting a fairer actress as the moms (or putting a wig on her). The dynamic functions the same in the movie, however, so it's not as big a change as it could have been, and John Lynch and the young actor playing Colin really make their scenes work (and John Lynch's reaction to Mary due to the resemblance is note-perfect).
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Oh, it wasn't the World War I framing I had an issue with, just the decision to, as you say, fridge one and canonically entangle the other two in an exclusive romantic relationship. As a child, I knew them all to be best friends, and as an adult I recognize them as an OT3. If I were inclined to seek out futurefic in the fandom, I'd be looking for them as a threesome. I would still have been cross had Dickon lived and Mary and Colin been paired off, but really, Dickon was the wound and Mary/Colin the lemon juice, there.
This is reminding me of how much the musical of The Secret Garden annoyed me with "Lily's Eyes," because the whole point was that Colin has his mother's eyes—agate-grey and fringed round with black lashes, looking gaily out of her portrait as his look unhappily out of his face and his father can't bear to meet them. Change that and you change the whole dynamic between them.
Hmm. In that case, I'd best warn you that the 1993 movie goes the route of Mary looking like the mothers, and Colin's father not being able to look at him because he doesn't look a thing like their mothers. It's a rather odd choice, because Colin looks exactly as he should, and Mary's just a bit darker than the book, and the actress playing the mothers is a brunette we barely glimpse, so telling us Colin has her eyes and Mary has her mother's face shape and coloring would have worked fine. Or, y'know, casting a fairer actress as the moms (or putting a wig on her). The dynamic functions the same in the movie, however, so it's not as big a change as it could have been, and John Lynch and the young actor playing Colin really make their scenes work (and John Lynch's reaction to Mary due to the resemblance is note-perfect).