Valerie

Just had a bit of a meltdown.

I'd put together my new demo and was writing emails for it to send to various folk, and realized I needed a quote from V FOR VENDETTA.  I'd forgotten that the quote wasn't included in the movie, and if I had remembered that anyway, I'd already packed up the novel, but I streamed the movie looking for the quote, and came up on Valerie's Letter.

As far as I am concerned, it is one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction, ever.  I totally believed she was in a death camp, like Evey, and that she had written the letter to her just before dying. And when V revealed he hadn't written it, it broke my heart, because I believed that too.

I believed a fiction.  I've never done that.  The characters, so real in my head, how could they not be true?  But they weren't.  They were all just things made up in Alan Moore's demented head.  A head which also devoted over a dozen issues of a brilliant original comic Promethea to explaining all the levels of sex magic, so there's also that to consider.

It is a story of true love.  Valerie will not give up her love, even after being betrayed.  I hate to say it, but I know the feeling.  I reject what people said about him.  I told myself they were trying to console me.  That they were trying to ease my pain.  They did not realize how much it hurt to hear such things... because if what they were saying was true, it meant I was the idiot.  I was the stupid and selfish person, too, waiting in the shadows for a love that would never return.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.