Tiffany couldn’t quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They’d walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn’t stopped there. But they’d spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who’d been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit.
It didn’t seem fair.
“Oh, it evens out,” said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods.
“You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he’s as mean as a cat, but there’ll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week’s end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I’ll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.”
“You do? What do you do with all that food?”
“Store it,” said Miss Level.
“But you-”
“I store it in other people. It’s amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany’s expression. “I mean, I take what I don’t need round to those who don’t have a pig, or who’re going through a bad patch, or who don’t have anyone to remember them.”
“But that means they’ll owe you a favour!”
“Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.”
“I bet some people are too mean to pay-”
“Not pay,” said Miss Level, severely. “A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.”
“And then what happens?“
“What do you mean?”
“You stop helping them, do you?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor round here. If I don’t help them, who will?”
The implication of Victor being an undergrad in the novel is incredibly funny because, yes, it explains so much of his behavior and audacity, but it also means Victor’s apartment could’ve been some sort of student housing, which means there were other undergrads living there, too.
Which means when Victor wakes up to the Creature standing by his bed like ☺️, and Victor freaks out and runs away, the Creature could have ostensibly wandered into the hallway after him, only to be met with a pack of incredibly drunk-after-an-all-night-1818-rager yet well-meaning frat boys.
Who were so blasted that they were just like, “Dude, what, do you play rugby? Holy shit, he’s fuckin’ huge, look at this fuckin’ guy! Absolute unit!” And they all whooped and hollered and just ushered the Creature into their dorm to keep the party going.
And the Creature was just like, “?????” but very pleased to find other people vaguely shaped like him, so he lets them because he may be just minutes old but he knew early on all he really wanted was one (1) buddy and now there’s, like, a herd of them and they’re all having a blast.
When the guys inevitably pass out, sloshed beyond all sense, he just sits and waits for them to wake up and when they do, later that morning, he’s poking at one of them to make sure the guy is still breathing, and the kid wakes up and yells for a second and squints at the 8 foot-tall (rugby???? player????) guy in their dorm and is like, “Shit, what is that?”
And another one squints at him and goes, “I don’t fuckin’ know, bro, but he can throw us so hard. Did you see how David just…fuckin’…flew out the window last night? Just hurled David like it was no big deal. That was awesome.”
David groans and puts his head under his pillow because his headache is awful but he lets out a pained, muffled, “that was awesome” in agreement.
So in a rare case of wholesome frat boy camaraderie, this herd of college roommate boys, all of whom are dumb as rocks but well-meaning, just take the Creature in because, “There’s this huge fucking monster guy and it’s the coolest thing we’ve ever seen.”
This would possibly mean the Creature is socialized to be a dumb-as-rocks frat boy, but because I cannot allow that to happen and because there is no universe in which he would not be into poetry, he somehow also gets socialized by liberal arts majors and is just as Sensitive™, it rubs off on his frat buddies, who start saying things like, “No, man, it’s Sturm und Drang, it’s, like, the fuckin’ vast rolling of the soul that, like…fuckin’ eschews Enlightenment rationalism.”
But some of the boys’ lingo inevitably rubs off on the Creature so when, months later, Victor comes back to get all of his things with Henry post-mental breakdown, he bumps into a crowd of rowdy guys playfully jostling each other, and that crowd includes an 8-foot tall dude in a letterman jacket holding a volume of Goethe in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other, and he scoffs down at Victor and goes, “Accursed Creator! Why didst thou abandon me in my hour of need? Fuckin’ lame.”
And all his buddies go, “Yoooooo!” and high five.
The Creature in class getting perfect grades as his frat boy besties cheer him on:
THIS!!! @thewhiitelotus ! This is the thing! Look me in the eye and tell me ANY undergrad wouldn’t be stoked beyond belief to befriend an immortal promethean monster. “He’s like a mini kaiju, he’s like the fuckin’ Hulk, he can recite the entirety of Paradise Lost by heart, he rules.”
I can quite literally hear those words in the voices of the undergads i work with lmao. Asking what they did over winter break and they say “oh you know, i saw family and went skiing. Oh and my friends and i also adopted some guy who is actually just a bunch of corpse pieces stitched together by this other guy in our dorm who’s lowkey manic and crazy smart but apparently kind of a dick. We’re taking him traffic cone-sledding tomorrow.” They would adore him. Victor better watch out bc one of these days these unhinged 20-somethings are gonna cover the entirety of his floor in plates they stole from the caf and get the Creature to move his fridge into the shower.
@thewhiitelotus They! Would! ADORE! Him! Not traffic cone sledding!!!!!!!
God, not to condone harmful hazing practices EXCEPT! The Creature enacting them on Victor! Where is your bed, Victor? OH, IT’S ON THE ROOF.
The Creature with all his buddies below yelling, in his genuinely cursed melange of slang, “Now thou mayst reap the fruits of thy terrible labor, creator! Now thou must suck a diiiiiiick!”
The slang is killing me omg. “Thou should have been Unc, creator. But alas, for in the depths of thy heart, thou must be a hater.” And all his bros are booing in the background.
Also now i’m thinking about how there’s a big wooded area on the campus i work on, and how the Creature would be feeding deer berries and having all the birds come land on him and stuff, and all his friends are like how is bro doing that???? Then they all switch majors to wildlife biology bc they want to feed the deer like their new strangely tall undying friend.
“How is bro doing that???” I CAN’T
Frat dude 1: “Bro’s like a fuckin’ princess. Dude, how are you doing that?”
The Creature, as multiple birds eat right out of his hand: “Sit, becalmed, and knowest thou this truth: they held dominion here first; we are merely guests in their domicile. Be chill, man, in the clerb of Nature’s bosom, we all fam.”
@eolewyn1010 CORRECT, if anyone in that book can befriend absolutely everyone, it is Henry Clerval. And then it would stand to reason that Henry befriended the Creature because “he’s a capital fellow and such great fun!” and Victor’s head would just roll right off his shoulders.
ALT