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zelda_queen) wrote2010-05-21 04:49 pm
zelda_queen) wrote2010-05-21 04:49 pm
The Legend Of Rah And The Muggles: Chapter One - The House Of Sheridan
ZeldaQueen: Woot, from nuclear holocausts to fairy tales, here we go!
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
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Chapter One: The House Of Sheridan
ZeldaQueen: Well, Stouffer launches us right into the action by introducing us to one Lady Catherine, nicknamed "Cat" since childhood (no, we're never told why), and how she and all of the servants and their families are preparing to escape from the "palatial estate" they all live it. It seems that they live in the nation that the introduction mentioned was going to war (not Auro, the unnamed one) and the enemy is right at the door, breaking in. Fortunately, Lady Catherine, her nursemaid Gwenie, and loyal butler Walter Randolph Winfred Cherrington (no really, that's his name) all know that there are secret rooms and passages beneath the castle (which for whatever reason is named Le maison d'or or "the house of gold") and have stocked everything accordingly for everyone in the castle to hide there. Unfortunately, Stouffer sees fit to interrupt telling the story to gush over these characters, who we know and care nothing about.
It seems that Lady Catherine is a member of the "Royal Family", specifically of the titular "House of Sheridan" and that her parents died of influenza when she was three. The servants all raised her and mostly inherited their own positions and we get a lot of sappy talk about how she sees them as family and loves them and is doing all she can to help them out. Think about Bella describing the Cullens, only with no mention of Adonis. She also is apparently heavily pregnant with twins (no mention of how they know that) and her husband, Sir Geophrey Luttrell, is off fighting in the war.
Gwenie was Cat's nanny and of course "wore her age extremely well" because of course these people are Good and are therefore Beautiful. She also has a daughter named Kathleen who is eighteen works as a maid on the first floor, but she's only mentioned once and I have no idea why she's even named.
Walter, meanwhile, is only four years older than Cat with "youthful chiseled features, dark peppered-gray hair, and piercing blue-gray eyes", as well as a "soft deep voice", and "impeccable taste and manners" that come "naturally" to him. Hooo boy. We get some "subtle" foreshadowing as Stouffer tells us that Lady Catherine always wondered why he never fell in love with any lady before. Uh huh.
We then get a lot of boring talk about how they had all gone ahead and mapped out the secret rooms and passages as well as stocked the place with food and had Walter and Charlie theUnicorn groundskeeper lock up the windows and doors. Because I'm sure that'll keep out an angry mob.
Walter heads on up to Lady Catherine's room and along the way he has a completely random flashback to his childhood in the castle, when he and Cat played together. I'm sure this is Stouffer trying to make this all seem tragic or make Walter feel likable or establish an emotional connection between him and Cat, but we literally just met them! How are we supposed to care about them with the tiniest amount of characterization possible? Anyway, he goes to Lady Catherine's room and goes on some more about how strong and brave she is for mapping out the passageways while pregnant, and then he enters the room and finds her lying on the bed, sobbing "uncontrollably". And his first thought is how she looks so beautiful and vulnerable she looks. No, I'm not making that up. He starts stroking her hair and asking what's wrong and dang if this doesn't feel like the start of a bad rape is love fanfiction. She just keeps crying and doesn't say anything, so he scoots over next to her, cuddles up alongside, and asks her again what's wrong. This time, she stares into his eyes and gives him a letter, which says that her husband died in the war. Oh no! A character we never met and never cared for died! Whatever shall we do?
Walter immediately goes into Dramatic Grief Mode himself and remembers how Cat's husband had ordered him to look after her. He decides that he continue on watching over her. Uh huh, so that's what they're calling it these days? The two go on grieving until they fall asleep, only for Lady Catherine to wake up screaming in the middle of the night because she just went into labor. My, that's quick. Gwenie comes running and sees that there's no time to get a midwife, but fortunately Cat's personal maid Audrey has had two children and delivered several others and is able to take care of it. Hooray for pointless tension! The twins are born and Walter and Catherine are sappy together, blah blah blah, I don't care.
Well time passes and everyone in the castle knows that they'll be needing to dash for the passageways soon. Instead of getting the heck out of dodge though, they decide to hold a feast together and wouldn't you know it, Cat calls for Walter to sit at her side. Stouffer is so subtle with this all, I think I can hear the anvils falling. And we also get a lot more junk about how the servants all love Lady Catherine just so much and how they have everything they do because of her and how much they owe her and this is just boring!
At nine, Lady Catherine puts her babies to bed and has Walter meet her in the Great Room. I can only assume that this is the "receiving room" that Stouffer mentioned in the lawsuit, when naming similarities between this and Harry Potter. Unlike the Great Hall though, this room is full of musical instruments. The two enter, arms interlinked, as they wink at each other and smile and giggle. They also have some "witty" banter in which Catherine says that Walter is handsome and wicked and he replies "Either way, madam, I win, and that is what is important to a man at a time like this". By "time like this", I can only assume he means "being laid under siege with the threat of death looming over". She calls him a "handsome devil". Keep in mind that Lady Catherine's husband died not so long ago, which they both wept their eyes out over.
Everyone gathers in the room and the servants randomly start gravitating towards the various instruments and start playing Pachelbel, Canon D, which I guess exists in this world. Sure, why not? Cat and Walter of course start dancing and other servants join in and we get a whole load of bull about the two staring into each others eyes and whispering in "a poor attempt at Shakespearean delivery" how the other is so wicked. Oy...
Well this scene is interrupted when bombs start to drop. No, literally. Everyone starts panicking and racing for the secret passages and there's some "tense" stuff where Gwenie is trying to get the babies and Catherine shouts for Walter to get inside and I really don't feel any sympathy for those idiots. They knew they were going to be under attack soon, would it have killed them to, you know, stay near the entrance to the secret rooms?
Well, everyone is safe and Lady Catherine starts boo-hooing and clinging to Walter and sobbing about what will become of them all and if her babies will survive and I honestly don't care, thank God the chapter's nearly over. We get some stuff about how Walter took care of the twins while Cat slept, however one day she asks to be alone with them all day. Stouffer informs us that she "had made a decision, the most difficult decision she had ever made or would ever have to make" - she was going to put her babies on a raft and send them adrift to sea. Because that's never been done before in literature. Nope. Apparently Cat is expecting more nuclear bombs to drop and knew what the radiation would do to the twins.Turn them into Muggles, it would seem. For serious though, I don't know what range the radiation from a nuclear bomb would have, but I find it hard to believe that a raft adrift at sea with no steering or motor power would get to any safe distance, especially since the bombs are apparently going to be dropping any day. Well, whatever! We get some stuff about her finding the Convenient Water Route from the secret passages and Stouffer attempts to be poetic by talking about how some thorn bushes growing along the way bloody her hands and the blood runs out into the water when she puts the babies on the raft. We then literally get a checklist of her emotions, specifically that she's angry her husband died (yes, how dare he?), terrified for the lives of her children, and sad because she suspects she's falling in love with Walter and doesn't think she'll have very long to be with him. "Suspects"? If she honestly isn't certain, from all of the hints she's been dropping, she's either a horrible flirt or a complete idiot. Or both.
Anyway, she puts the babies on a raft and also puts a box of jewels and a note from her with them. Oh, and apparently the raft is covered with lily pads. Just because, I guess. She then covers them with a silk quilt (which is strangely missing in the illustration), and sends them off to sea and goes running back to Walter.
I also feel it's worth mentioning that none of the people in the chapter (besides the babies) show up again. At all. Gwenie, Lady Catherine, Walter, Charlie, Audrey, and Kathleen? Hope you weren't particularly fond of any of them, because we never see them again. Either they all die miserably or live happily ever after, your call.
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Onward to: Chapter Two: The Light
Back to: Introduction
Back to: Table of Contents
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter One: The House Of Sheridan
ZeldaQueen: Well, Stouffer launches us right into the action by introducing us to one Lady Catherine, nicknamed "Cat" since childhood (no, we're never told why), and how she and all of the servants and their families are preparing to escape from the "palatial estate" they all live it. It seems that they live in the nation that the introduction mentioned was going to war (not Auro, the unnamed one) and the enemy is right at the door, breaking in. Fortunately, Lady Catherine, her nursemaid Gwenie, and loyal butler Walter Randolph Winfred Cherrington (no really, that's his name) all know that there are secret rooms and passages beneath the castle (which for whatever reason is named Le maison d'or or "the house of gold") and have stocked everything accordingly for everyone in the castle to hide there. Unfortunately, Stouffer sees fit to interrupt telling the story to gush over these characters, who we know and care nothing about.
It seems that Lady Catherine is a member of the "Royal Family", specifically of the titular "House of Sheridan" and that her parents died of influenza when she was three. The servants all raised her and mostly inherited their own positions and we get a lot of sappy talk about how she sees them as family and loves them and is doing all she can to help them out. Think about Bella describing the Cullens, only with no mention of Adonis. She also is apparently heavily pregnant with twins (no mention of how they know that) and her husband, Sir Geophrey Luttrell, is off fighting in the war.
Gwenie was Cat's nanny and of course "wore her age extremely well" because of course these people are Good and are therefore Beautiful. She also has a daughter named Kathleen who is eighteen works as a maid on the first floor, but she's only mentioned once and I have no idea why she's even named.
Walter, meanwhile, is only four years older than Cat with "youthful chiseled features, dark peppered-gray hair, and piercing blue-gray eyes", as well as a "soft deep voice", and "impeccable taste and manners" that come "naturally" to him. Hooo boy. We get some "subtle" foreshadowing as Stouffer tells us that Lady Catherine always wondered why he never fell in love with any lady before. Uh huh.
We then get a lot of boring talk about how they had all gone ahead and mapped out the secret rooms and passages as well as stocked the place with food and had Walter and Charlie the
Walter heads on up to Lady Catherine's room and along the way he has a completely random flashback to his childhood in the castle, when he and Cat played together. I'm sure this is Stouffer trying to make this all seem tragic or make Walter feel likable or establish an emotional connection between him and Cat, but we literally just met them! How are we supposed to care about them with the tiniest amount of characterization possible? Anyway, he goes to Lady Catherine's room and goes on some more about how strong and brave she is for mapping out the passageways while pregnant, and then he enters the room and finds her lying on the bed, sobbing "uncontrollably". And his first thought is how she looks so beautiful and vulnerable she looks. No, I'm not making that up. He starts stroking her hair and asking what's wrong and dang if this doesn't feel like the start of a bad rape is love fanfiction. She just keeps crying and doesn't say anything, so he scoots over next to her, cuddles up alongside, and asks her again what's wrong. This time, she stares into his eyes and gives him a letter, which says that her husband died in the war. Oh no! A character we never met and never cared for died! Whatever shall we do?
Walter immediately goes into Dramatic Grief Mode himself and remembers how Cat's husband had ordered him to look after her. He decides that he continue on watching over her. Uh huh, so that's what they're calling it these days? The two go on grieving until they fall asleep, only for Lady Catherine to wake up screaming in the middle of the night because she just went into labor. My, that's quick. Gwenie comes running and sees that there's no time to get a midwife, but fortunately Cat's personal maid Audrey has had two children and delivered several others and is able to take care of it. Hooray for pointless tension! The twins are born and Walter and Catherine are sappy together, blah blah blah, I don't care.
Well time passes and everyone in the castle knows that they'll be needing to dash for the passageways soon. Instead of getting the heck out of dodge though, they decide to hold a feast together and wouldn't you know it, Cat calls for Walter to sit at her side. Stouffer is so subtle with this all, I think I can hear the anvils falling. And we also get a lot more junk about how the servants all love Lady Catherine just so much and how they have everything they do because of her and how much they owe her and this is just boring!
At nine, Lady Catherine puts her babies to bed and has Walter meet her in the Great Room. I can only assume that this is the "receiving room" that Stouffer mentioned in the lawsuit, when naming similarities between this and Harry Potter. Unlike the Great Hall though, this room is full of musical instruments. The two enter, arms interlinked, as they wink at each other and smile and giggle. They also have some "witty" banter in which Catherine says that Walter is handsome and wicked and he replies "Either way, madam, I win, and that is what is important to a man at a time like this". By "time like this", I can only assume he means "being laid under siege with the threat of death looming over". She calls him a "handsome devil". Keep in mind that Lady Catherine's husband died not so long ago, which they both wept their eyes out over.
Everyone gathers in the room and the servants randomly start gravitating towards the various instruments and start playing Pachelbel, Canon D, which I guess exists in this world. Sure, why not? Cat and Walter of course start dancing and other servants join in and we get a whole load of bull about the two staring into each others eyes and whispering in "a poor attempt at Shakespearean delivery" how the other is so wicked. Oy...
Well this scene is interrupted when bombs start to drop. No, literally. Everyone starts panicking and racing for the secret passages and there's some "tense" stuff where Gwenie is trying to get the babies and Catherine shouts for Walter to get inside and I really don't feel any sympathy for those idiots. They knew they were going to be under attack soon, would it have killed them to, you know, stay near the entrance to the secret rooms?
Well, everyone is safe and Lady Catherine starts boo-hooing and clinging to Walter and sobbing about what will become of them all and if her babies will survive and I honestly don't care, thank God the chapter's nearly over. We get some stuff about how Walter took care of the twins while Cat slept, however one day she asks to be alone with them all day. Stouffer informs us that she "had made a decision, the most difficult decision she had ever made or would ever have to make" - she was going to put her babies on a raft and send them adrift to sea. Because that's never been done before in literature. Nope. Apparently Cat is expecting more nuclear bombs to drop and knew what the radiation would do to the twins.
Anyway, she puts the babies on a raft and also puts a box of jewels and a note from her with them. Oh, and apparently the raft is covered with lily pads. Just because, I guess. She then covers them with a silk quilt (which is strangely missing in the illustration), and sends them off to sea and goes running back to Walter.
I also feel it's worth mentioning that none of the people in the chapter (besides the babies) show up again. At all. Gwenie, Lady Catherine, Walter, Charlie, Audrey, and Kathleen? Hope you weren't particularly fond of any of them, because we never see them again. Either they all die miserably or live happily ever after, your call.
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Onward to: Chapter Two: The Light
Back to: Introduction
Back to: Table of Contents
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