The Screaming Staircase - Blog Posts
"I disobeyed the first, most crucial rule.
I hung back at the doorway, hesitant and afraid."
Yet another thing I find absolutely wonderful about how Jonathan Stroud wrote Lucy Carlyle is how he betrays her with the narrative.
In The Screaming Staircase, at the start of her story, Lucy gives us an idea of how she wants to be perceived; unaffected, unbothered, unburdened by fear or particularly revelatory emotions. She drops horrifically painful realities about her childhood on us as if she were describing a dull gray rock she found on the ground. She tries very, very hard to school her emotions around Lockwood and George. And if she had been written by anyone else, she might have fallen prey to the "strong independent female character" tar pit of a stereotype.
But then along comes Annabel Ward's ghost.
And the narrative looks at Lucy and says "I know how you wish to present yourself, but that's not who you are."
And Lucy is repeatedly shown to be incredibly Sensitive in so many ways. She is under the influence of the ghost of Annie Ward, but the emotions are still partly Lucy's. And most of the time she has the emotional intelligence to differentiate which feelings are hers and which ones are Annie's, and where they overlap. She chokes up with empathy on multiple occasions in the process of uncovering what happened to Annie Ward. She becomes enflamed with the desire for justice for someone who was murdered decades before she was born. She's shown that by her very nature, her emotions are her strength and not her weakness. Because she has a narrative that loves her and isn't lazy about her. She is the narrator and she tells us who she is, but the narrative shows her and us who she really is.
I always draw Annabel Ward when I feel uninspired
It's October and I am reading Lockwood&Co right now so I drew Annabel Ward
(I also can't believe that I firstly post on tumblr in 2023...)
During the creeping shadow
Lockwood: what's the easiest way to steal to steal a man's wallet?
Lucy: knife to the throat?
George: gun to the back?
Holly: poison in his cup?
Kipps: you're all horrible
"Here you are," I said. "All yours."
I've been having a lot of fun playing around with markers! I decided to try drawing the part at the end of Lockwood & Co. book one. I've never really tried such intense shading before but I think it turned out pretty cool! :)