28 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 10 Deconstruction in Antifantasy continued

In Ann Radcliffe’s decent gothic romance, it was promised that the heroine would not be threatened of losing her chastity no matter how horrific the danger of being kidnapped by the villains seemed, and in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it was already a tacit agreement from the beginning of the story that the forces of good would triumph in the end. Tolkien did not want The Lord of the Rings to be read as a so-called allegory with some kind of meaning intended behind it, but the minimum “meaning” that exists in the form of an axiom system, which is indispensable as a condition for the existence of a fictional world in the form of a story, inevitably emerges in the process of the reader’s acceptance of the literary work as a possible world. As Tolkien himself says in “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien narrated the story of the magnificent historical world of The Lord of the Rings with the main purpose of fulfilling the absolute grace of a happy end. To use Tolkien’s own words, the raison d’etre of a fictional work was to be a place where the bliss of the “eu-catastrophe” could be enjoyed. This is the convention in the reception of literary works, in which the reflection of how actual facts are laid out in the real world should not have been questioned. Rather, it was the firm recognition that the real world in which we live was exactly like this that provided the impetus for the construction of the imaginary worlds. What is there is nothing but a conceptual contract agreed upon between the author and the reader. Realism in literary works should have been nothing more than possible realism, which is the plausibility of the fictional world, and technical realism as a method of presenting the finely constructed fictional world. The interesting thing about creating a story is that it sometimes distorts reality in a peculiar way and tries to experiment with various coordinate transformations in the real world. Some of the qualities of “science fantasy” that Attebery appreciated by giving them the term “speculative romance” were not limited to highly intelligent conceptual novels such as those created by Hawthorne and Poe, but were in fact the qualities of “fictionality” itself. (note)

note:
CF. Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, p. 163
The deeper implication of speculative activities must be considered focused on the function of consciousness, in the perspective of the wholeness of the universe and its guiding signal hypothetically grasped by the notion of “pilot wave.” Particular qualia making function of each subject of consciousness and attained results of fictional description are closely related in the configuration of phenomenality. The teleological issue of the argument on the relationship between consciousness and fictionality is developed in the author’s study “Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions: Fictional Archetype and Equivalency of a Movie to the Original Novel”, which is shared on Academia in four sections.

First section:
https://www.academia.edu/114744009/Identity_and_Individuality_of_Derivative_Fictions_Fictional_Archetype_and_Equivalency_of_a_Movie_to_the_Original_Novel_1


Also, as Tolkien pointed out, the very act of creating other worlds that are completely different from the real world should reveal the depth of the author’s perception of reality in the process of his construction of “other worlds,” precisely in the index that it is “different” from the reality in which we live. It is Barrie’s proposed game to bring this mechanism of tacit agreement to the surface of the narrative and to re-alter the terms of the contract in the open arena. Moving away from the description of the children returning to the Darlings family, the narrator dares to focus on Mrs. Darling, who knows nothing about the children’s movements.

If we had returned sooner to look with sorrowful sympathy at her, she would probably have cried, “Don't be silly, what do I matter? Do go back and keep an eye on the children.”
p. 137


In this way, Barrie promotes his peculiar method not only to describe what happened in one possible fictional world, but also to describe various other possibilities that could have occurred. The result of his description is not a single world that coagulated in the mind of the author, but a bundle of possibilities in the process of being converged into a fixed mode. (note)

note:
The author has discussed on this peculiar function of fictionality, taking up the filmed version Peter Pan, together with several other works that depict the story of Peter Pan, under the title of “Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions: Fictional Archetype and Equivalency of a Movie to the Original Novel”. The argument on the identity of fictional existences is supposed to have reasonable significance in the study of fundamental awareness and the function of consciousness that is able to make disrupted discourses definitely deviating from actuality.


Barrie’s descriptive act does not specify the object as a single event, but sometimes allows several possible pathways co-existing. Therefore, such a counterfactual hypothetical in a possible world is also mentioned.

Why on earth should their beds be properly aired, seeing that they left them in such a thankless hurry? Would it not serve them jolly well right if they came back and found their parents were spending the week-end in the country? It would be the moral lesson they have been in need of ever since we met them; but if we contrived things in this way Mrs. Darling would never forgive us.
pp. 137-8


What is depicted in Peter and Wendy is not a linear story consisting of a chain of causal relationships presented as a fixed events accumulation. The depiction of the narrative world is similar to Feynman’s “historical summation method” employed in the attempt of quantum mechanics to describe the trace the existence of electrons, in that it allows a variety of contradictory possibilities to be described together. Borrowing Attebery’s words, the technique of storytelling of Peter and Wendy is developed with an awareness of “the uncertainty of meaning.” This is another quality that counts as one of the metafictional elements of Peter and Wendy. It is worth noting that the predilection of the author Barrie for Mrs. Darling, a character in the novel, is acting as a parameter for these metafictional effects. Mrs. Darling is the embodiment of the new “Savior” as a loving mother who forgives everything, and who is irreplaceable and special one to the author. The author is fully aware of his role as the “author” of the story, and mentions Mrs. Darling.

One thing I should like to do immensely, and that is to tell her, in the way authors have, that the children are coming back, that indeed they will be here on Thursday week. This would spoil so completely the surprise to which Wendy and John and Michael are looking forward. They have been planning it out on the ship: mother’s rapture, father's shout of joy, Nana's leap through the air to embrace them first, when what they ought to be preparing for is good hiding. How delicious to spoil it all by breaking the news in advance; so that when they enter grandly Mrs. Darling may not even offer Wendy her mouth, and Mr. Darling may exclaim pettishly, “Dash it all, here are those boys again.” However, we should get no thanks even for this. We are beginning to know Mrs. Darling by this time, and may be sure that she would upbraid us for depriving the children of their pleasure.
p. 138


The author, who is supposed to be omnipotent, presides over the progress of the work world while considering the feelings of Mrs. Darling, who is one of the characters in the work. This is an obvious logical contradiction. The real world, which is the world to which the author and the reader who reads the work together with the author belong, is being interfered by the fictional world that is being narrated. Here we can detect a pair of propositions that deny each other, with a logical structure equivalent to the paradoxes that often arise in conjunction with self-references. What is revealed there is a peculiar sense that is similar to the Zen Koan paradox, which is obtained through the destruction of logic. This is reminiscent of the structure of the nesting boxes, which had previously been described as a mysterious feature of Mrs. Darling’s mind. Does the power of the maternal principle, which is summed up in the existence of Mrs. Darling, imply that it is capable of intervening relations between possible worlds that should have no causal relationship? Such is the author’s predilection for Mrs. Darling. Does the symbol “Mother” function as a miraculous latent force that can determine the cosmological constant of the work world at will and transcend the axiom system that governs the laws of the fictional world? Strangely enough, thanks to Mrs. Darling’s generosity, the children are free from obstacles in the real world, but at the same time they are forced to experience inconveniences in the imaginary world because of their leader, Peter Pan. A strange reversal between reality and the imaginary world is occurring. After enduring the hardships imposed by Peter as a representative of Nature, free from the shackles of society, the children are allowed to return safely to their petty bourgeois home, where a loving mother, Mrs. Darling awaits. It is Mrs. Darling’s love for her children that has the power to acquit them all. Here, Lewis Carroll’s slogan “love saves everything” introduced in Sylvie and Bruno is followed obliquely. The omnipotence of predilection that overcomes the “paradox of redemption” is forcibly fulfilled here.
However, the author dares to play a false discord with Mrs. Darling.

“But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thursday week; so that by telling you what’s what, we can save you ten days of unhappiness.”
“Yes, but what a cost! By depriving the children of ten minutes of delight.”
“Oh, if you look at it in that way.”
“What other way is there in which to look at it?”
p. 138


It is this kind of ludicrous exchange between the author and one of the characters that makes the most of the fictional nature of the story, which reveals the true essence of Barrie’s work. The author falls from the position of the Omnipotent Creator of the universe to the role of a clown among the characters in the work. The narrator is playing the dual roles of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. After some interaction with Mrs. Darling, the narrator turns his words to the reader.

You see the woman had no proper spirit. I had meant to say extraordinary nice things about her; but I despise her, and not one of them will I say.
p. 138


This way, the author, who wants to repay the rudeness of the cheeky children, cannot overcome Mrs. Darling’s affectionate feelings for the children. Mrs. Darling’s predilection for her children was stronger than anything else, and the author’s predilection for Mrs. Darling had already forced him to relinquish control over the world of his work. In the end, against the author’s will, the children’s sheets are properly aired, Mrs. Darling does not leave the house, and the windows are left open. It seems that the children will be able to return safely to their home after they have done everything they can do as they please. The author has no way of staying in the Darlings’ family house any longer to protest to Mrs. Darling. It seems that he has no choice but to return to the children’s ship together with the reader. However, the author speaks to the reader in a regretful manner.

However, as we are here we may as well stay and look on. That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.
p. 138


At this point, the author is now nothing more than a bystander looking at the work world from outside the stage. The figure is reminiscent of the fallen descendants of an ancient god who has lost his authority as the Creator and now act as an outcast in the world he built. The omnipotent author, who was supposed to be a transcendent being in the universe of his work, has completely lost his authority, and not only has he lost the function to advance the story, but he has also been led to the division and dissolution of the personality of the all-encompassing one. This anticlimactic ending was the contraption often found in German Romantic’s literature. It may have been argued that this tendency was dismissed as a degradation of the ideological game of barren irony. It is a fact that we must sometimes admit that there is an element of repulsion like Attebery has shown in the way he has attacked the manner of Beagle’s way of proceeding the description of his work, which at times reveals this kind of metafictional pranks.

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27 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 10 Deconstruction in Antifantasy continued

Wendy in the fictional story is talking about the future of her fictional self, one stage removed in the fiction. It may sound specifically meaningful, but it is not necessary to bring up the strategic techniques of postmodernism and metafiction, in fact, such a reflexive mechanism itself must have been the intrinsic function of the act of telling a story, that is, constructing a fictional world. It would be enough to ascertain that what Attebery calls “non-imitative traditional modes of expression” is being fully exploited. The essence of literature cannot be discussed under the illusion that concepts such as modernism or realism, let alone postmodernism, exist as safe definitions as if they prescribe a solid object as a definite substance. It would be fine if we could reaffirm the dubiousness of the argument that the rise of realism is the birth of a “novel” that depicts the lives and psychology of human beings living in modern society as they are, as is plausibly debated. (note)

note:
The author perpetrated the corresponding task to this issue, in his responsible lecture “Modern and Novel”, adopting Fantasy as Antifantasy as its main text. This lecture was shared on Twitter and the archived data is accessible on Academia.

Modern and Novel:
https://www.academia.edu/72457067/Modern_and_Novel


It was already implied in the first chapter of this study that the term “fantasy” bares a de-illusionizing function on such a rigid view on literary products. Therefore, this book must prove that antifantasy and fantasy are fundamentally equivalent. If we adopt the terminology “fantasy” as a word to describe the appearance of the two-faced deity in the phase of fictionality, it is rather natural that the expression “antifantasy” must be introduced.
The narrator is not only omniscient, but also omnipotent in the operation of the work world. To narrate is nothing but to create a possible world in which the speaker is the Almighty. In this sense, it can be said that the author, who plays the role of the narrator of Peter and Wendy, Hook, who is the main character behind the scenes, and Peter, who is the shadow of Hook, are all bifurcated aspects of the same person. This is because, in the universe that was created by the materialization of the idea of Genesis, all the creation exists as part of the will of the One Creator. That is why the idea of believing in the existence of the Commander of Principles can also claim that “God is in the details.” And the narrator wields full power over the fundamental constants of the universe in this way. It is a description of the crocodile watch that brought Hook a “heroic” end.

He [Hook] did not know that the crocodile was waiting for him; for we purposely stopped the clock that this knowledge might be spared him; a little mark of respect from us at the end.
p. 134




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26 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 10 Deconstruction in Antifantasy continued

Let us examine a few more examples. There’s a scene where Wendy gets an acorn from Peter instead of a kiss.

It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her life.
p. 32


The narrator and the reader are clearly working together in the process of narrating and reading, foreseeing the progression and conclusion of the storyline. What is presented here is not an underplot scheme set with the intention of convincing the reader later. The result has already been accepted. The following example is no different. On the way to Neverland, the pirates spot Tinker Bell’s light, and the children, who are targeted by a cannon, hide her in John’s hat. However, at John’s request, Wendy carries the hat.

Presently Wendy took the hat, because John said it struck against his knees as he flew; and this, as we shall see, led to mischief, for Tinker Bell hated to be under an obligation to Wendy.
p. 49


While Faulkner’s legendary world was built on a mechanism of mystery in which hidden events behind the work world were revealed before the reader, by the author’s arbitrary manipulation of time axis repeating information exposure and intermittent discoveries by several witnesses in a multilayered manner, through internal monologues of the characters in the work and the facts they discover in their experiences at various occasions; the fictionality of Peter and Wendy can be said to be more self-conscious in its semantic structure. If Faulkner’s attempt is similar to the fictionality construction procedure accomplished in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in that it has the effect of concealing the explicit fictional nature of the work, then the world of Peter and Wendy is more metafictional in that it emphasizes the playfulness of manipulating the fictionality itself. The awareness of non-existence of the narrative world as a story being told, and constructing a pseudo-reality in a possibility phase on the condition of the involvement of reader’s consciousness that is supposed to collaborate in the configuration of the story world, can be seen throughout Peter and Wendy. In this chapter, we will examine the examples of this trait faithfully following the progresses of the text.
When the Darlings learn that something is wrong with their children, they rush home. The narrator describes the occasion:

Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for them, and we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be no story. On the other hand, if they were not in time, I solemnly promise that it will all come right in the end.
p. 39


We’re reading a story. The narrator does not ask the reader to confuse the reality of the story world with the real one. The only thing that the narrator humbly and confidently assures is that an interesting story will unfold if the reader tolerates a “willing suspension of disbelief.” (note)

note:
This is the psychology on the acceptance of the fictionality pointed out by the Romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria. This point of view which is related to another of his points to the latent tendencies of Gothic romance, the desire to overthrow the social system, can be acknowledged to be a reagent to detect antifantasy tendencies that are equally rooted in the depths of fantasy literature.


In introducing the various adventures of the children in Neverland, the narrator is ready to provide several anecdotes. However, the narrator says that it is required, to tell all of them, a book as large as English-Latin, or Latin-English dictionary. (p. 76) After listing a few possible episodes that should be told, the narrator continues:

... but we have not decided yet that this is the adventure we are to narrate....
p. 76


The narrator is still undecided, so he brings up the episodes of how the pirates baked a cake to trap the children, and how Peter saved his friend bird’s nest when it fell into the sea. However, the episode that the narrator actually tells the reader from now on is thus determined.

Which of these adventures should we choose? The best way will be to toss for it. I have tossed, and the lagoon has won.
p. 77


It’s a clever strategy. Some of the information have already been told, even though the narrator says he hasn’t said it yet. The debate over the style of narrative in which “one chooses what one should tell” is referenced to the mechanism of self-referential narrative. This kind of reflexive logical manipulation was a characteristic part of metafiction that Brian Attebery pointed out fully aware of the influence of postmodernism.
(Attebery, Strategies of Fantasy, pp. 40-8 )

At the end of the Lagoon episode, when Neverbird comes to the rescue of the injured Peter, the narrator introduces this method of narration.

I forget whether I have told you that there was a stave on the rock driven into it by some buccaneers of long ago to mark the site of buried treasure.
p. 91


In fact, it is a rather palliative tactic to casually talk about the subject by talking about issues that seem to deviate from the main plot of whether or not the topic is being told, without taking the form of directly narrating the topic. The author’s self-consciousness of his narrative is intense. Wendy tells the stories when she puts the children to bed. Wendy’s stories were based on the children who listened to them. There is another nested box structure here, in which Wendy, one of the characters in the story Peter and Wendy, tells about the children in the same story.

“O, Wendy,” cried Tootles, “was one of the lost children called Tootles?”
“Yes, he was.”
“I am in a story. Hurrah, I am in a story, Nibs.”
p. 100


It was the typical metafictional structure of the late 20th century that the characters in the story were aware that they were fictional beings, but here one of the characters in the story is pleased to know that he appeared in the story that was being told. (note)

note:
One of the typical instances is found in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. In fact, there is an interesting opinion that it was Beagle himself who first started this presentational innovation. It was stated by Conner Cochran in “A Conversation with Peter S. Beagle”, which is included in The Last Unicorn, Deluxe compilation edition, Roc (2007).


Wendy’s story continues.

“Let us now,” said Wendy, bracing herself up for her finest effort, “take a peep into the future”; and they all gave themselves the twist that makes peeps into the future easier. “Years have rolled by, and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting at London Station?”
p. 101



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25 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 10 Deconstruction in Antifantasy

10 Fraudulent Narration: Deconstruction in Antifantasy

In Peter and Wendy, the narrator frequently appears in front of the reader. For example, when the story shifts to Neverland, the narrator addresses the reader and says: “Observe how they pass over fallen twigs without making the slightest noise.” (p. 55) The narrator also speaks to the reader putting on airs: “When they have passed, comes the last figure of all, a gigantic crocodile. We shall see for whom she is looking presently.” (p. 55-6) And assuming an intimate air, he calls out to the reader. “At once the lost boys -- but where are they? They are no longer there. Rabbits could not have disappeared more quickly. I will tell you where they are.” (p. 56) There are countless examples of such a talkative narrator appearing in front of the reader. However, the author’s method of speaking to the reader in the work itself is not new. If you think about it, the simplest form of narrative would have been that the narrator told his or her experiences to his neighbor. Like the narrator of a folk fairy tale, the author participates in the progress of the story as one of the characters. Furthermore, when folklore fairy tales were told, many of the listeners often knew the content of the story in advance. The narrator must have been aware that he was working on a story about a ready-made fact that had already been accepted by the listener as a myth or legend. The subject matter being told, and the mode of narrative were tacit agreements between the narrator and the listener. This mechanism of information-sharing consciousness can be pointed out throughout the story of Peter and Wendy. Many readers were familiar with the story of Peter Pan, a well-received play that had been staged seven years before the publication of the novel Peter and Wendy. Perhaps because both the author Barrie and the readers of this novel at the time had experienced repeated performances of Peter Pan, the events narrated in Peter and Wendy are often treated as matters that have already been agreed upon by the author and the reader. Similar to fairy tales passed down by the folk people, the act of its reading is carried out in a situational setting of retelling. However, it is also a fact that there is a particular structure in Peter and Wendy that goes beyond the usual mechanism of retelling, in which the author goes beyond his authority as a play-by-play reporter for one of the characters, and is more actively involved in the progress of the story.   For example, when introducing the reader to Hook for the first time, the author begins by saying, “Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook’s method.” The author is clearly self-conscious about the way in which the world of the work is presented when working on the fictional world. Naturally, the narrator is provided with the authority to manipulate the development of the narrative world as he pleases. In addition, the narrator is the only person in the work who is free from textual constraints, placing himself outside the flow of time that proceeds within the world of the work. The day the Darling children leave the house is described as follows:

The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgotten Friday. Of course it was a Friday. “I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday,” she used to say afterwards to her husband,...
p. 19


The consciousness of time in which past and future depicted in the story are equalized as the content of the same legend, can be seen here. The effect of temporal fluidity on the process of reconstructing the narrative world in the reader’s mind brought about by the narrative manipulation was a typical example of the modernist style. It was also a method often tried by the novelist William Faulkner, who later led the modernist trend as one of the Lost Generation writers. In Faulkner’s case, the work of creating a myth was carried out by highlighting the existence of a pseudo-legendary history called the Yoknapatawpha saga that underlies each work. In the case of Barrie, on the other hand, he referred to the information disclosed in the play Peter Pan, which had previously been staged by his own hands, as a legendary fact for the novel Peter and Wendy, and opened up a space for presenting new literary work through the mechanism of retelling the legend. Conversely, it can be said that the novel Peter and Wendy mythologized the content of the play Peter Pan. Faulkner has brought his method of storytelling to the forefront of the creative act as a new experimental technique, but in the case of Barrie, the artifice is even more subtle because it is carried out in a modest and casual manner.

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24 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 9 Good Form and Reflection -- Captain Hook’s Melancholia concluded

For Hook, who has given up hope for life, his wish is no longer to destroy this demon. Hook’s only hope is to get Peter to play “bad form.” Hook sets fire to the ship’s powder magazine. If ever you can see Peter’s panicked look, the purpose will be achieved. “In two minutes, the ship will be blown to pieces!” shouts Hook.

Now, now, he thought, true form will show.
p. 133


However, Peter emerges from the powder magazine with the shell in his hands, and calmly fling it overboard.

What sort of form was Hook himself showing? Misguided man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathising with him, that in the end he was true to the traditions of his race.
p. 133-4


The author seems to be sympathetic to Hook, whose pride has been trampled on, his authority has been destroyed, and he has finally reached his final moments. Hook no longer sees children mocking him. His heart goes back to his nostalgic school days, when he was pure and untainted.

...his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up for good, or watching the wall-game from a famous wall. And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his socks were right.
p. 134


The author gave Hook a final chance to play as the villain in the story. He was allowed to avoid the “bad form” of surviving and the aesthetic end of ruin was offered as grace. Here’s the author’s last words to Hook:

James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell.
p. 134


When the author mentions Hook directly, he has a interesting tendency to make a gesture of degrading him more than necessary. In fact, this is probably the result of the author’s disguise who instilled his own thoughts into the character of Hook. We cannot help but point out here the distortion of the author’s mind. Another aim of this chapter is to point out the perversion in the author’s manner as he narrates the story in front of the reader, to outwit the author’s deception, and to reveal the truth that has been cleverly hidden. So, it is impossible not to suspect traces of disguise in the words of the author, who says “Some like Peter best, and some like Wendy best, but I like her best.” (p. 139). Barrie does not dare to challenge the industrial capitalism represented by the modern vulgar middle class, which imposes despair on faith and even more desire on material life. Because Barrie knows of Oscar Wilde’s example of playing a dandy who mocked the vanity of the Victorian age but ended up as a clownish loser. Barrie does not dare to turn his back on “modern” popular tastes, and depicts the tiny, winged fairy Tinker Bell, who may be attractive to easy public desires. Lewis Carroll, a precursor of antifantasy, is said to have made a mockery of faith in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871), but Carroll did not necessarily attempt to deny faith itself. In addition to demonstrating skepticism and ridicule of customary faith in those works, Carroll later tried to explore a new faith in “Love”, in Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893). Lewis Carroll, who was a friend of George MacDonald, who could be said to be the founder of typical fantasy literature, was also a literary figure who left a strong influence on 19th-century fantasy literature in a certain respect.
In contrast to these pioneers of fantasy literature, Barrie was a pioneer of 20th-century modernism literature with his peculiar irony and sober nihilism. As a next-generation fantasy writer following in the footsteps of Lewis Carroll and George McDonald, Barrie brilliantly illustrates in the form of “sincere nihilism”, the ironic mental attitude of modern man after Romanticism’s lofty metaphysical attempt to restore spiritual order in the chaos of the modern world through means of returning to Nature and the unconscious, has been miserably abandoned by the intellect. Barrie’s particular style, which seems to manipulate wanton fantasy like parlor magic, succeeded in opening up a new perspective of antifantasy in a unique work named Peter and Wendy, which is actually a brilliant fruit of cleverly manipulated ideation.


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