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parf-fan · 6 years

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Halloween 2018

I had hoped to have this finished and posted last week, but it took longer to write than I'd planned (and also I got sick, which slows everything down). As it is, it only went through two-and-a-half drafts, so it is not the most well-written thing I've ever posted, for which I apologize.

This full-on essay is a critique of the 2018 Halloween scenario. As such, it contains spoilers – major freaking spoilers – below the cut. I beg of you: if you've not yet attended the Halloween event, DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE. Even if you can't go, but plan on watching videos of it, wait to read this until you've watched the videos. Not simply because of spoilers, but also because I do not want my opinions to affect your initial viewing. You have been warned, and I entreat you to heed it.

Any critique worth its salt begins with the strong points, of which there are many, and I should like to talk about them anyway.

Half the new plot is awesome. Midsummer-Night's Dream is my shit, and I am beyond stoked about the inclusion of its characters. Even on the second day, when I knew it was coming, I could not stop myself from physically bouncing up and down in my seat from excitement at the introduction of Titania and Oberon.

The manner in which the ridiculous weather we've had all season (plus rehearsal month) was worked into the plot – not merely lampshaded or joked about, but as an actual plot-point – may be the biggest stroke of genius I've experienced at the Faire to date. It is clever as heck, and adds an extra level of immersion.

SIX MONARCHS! Oh, poor poor Kensington. He didn't even freak out, he skipped directly to dead-inside acceptance.

The moment at King's Court in which the faerie monarchs are magic-tugging the goblet – and by extension, Triboulet – back and forth stuck out at me because of the excellent physical acting of Joshua Kachnycz. He left absolutely no doubt that he was truly being magically pulled.

Likewise, Joshua's quick-change into the guise of Puck seemed exemplary to me (at least when both fog machines were working). True, he did not change his whole attire, but in proportion to the parts he did change or add – in the middle of the stage, too! - I think he did it quickly and well.

Triboulet being Robin Goodfellow is not only totally in keeping with his character, but also bears out something he told me in Gauntlet once, something I meant to make a post about but never got the chance while I was thinking about it. I had asked whether he had any genuine loyalty to Spain, or whether he was merely in it for the pay. He responded with something along the lines of “Who said anything about pay?”. Upon asking him to elaborate, he indicated that he was never hired by Spain, but rather was bent on causing chaos for the sake of chaos, stirring up shit for the pure fun of it. That was when I knew that he'd be revealed as a faerie trickster come Halloween, but I didn't suspect Puck specifically until about two minutes before the reveal. tl;dr, Triboulet as Puck matches perfectly with how I've been interpreting him all season.

Furthermore, the fact that it's Puck causing the primary mischief enables me to utter such phrases as “everything's Pucked up”, “Puck this”, “you motherpucker”, and “Puck you”. It is the stupidest play on words possible, and I love it, and will likely not stop using it until everyone in the shire hates me or the season ends, whichever happens first.

Everything involved in deciding the fate / punishment of Puck is just beautiful. From seeking asylum in England, to being reduced to prose (which, mood), to throwing himself on Titania's mercy after learning about Jane's past, just all of it. Side-splitting, well done.

THE NEW WORDS TO THE ROGUES' TREATY-SIGNING SINGING! Oh my gosh. When I realized what was being sung, I laughed very loudly and fairly long, probably confusing a few patrons who didn't notice the difference, possibly irritating some, definitely killing the moment for a few. I love it. I love it immensely and will never be over it. For any who didn't notice or couldn't make them out, the new words are “Nosferatu, some spooky dudes,” over and over. It is comedy gold, for the scene is so solemn and gratifying, and the new words sung in total seriousness, and with no specific attention called to them. Comedy freaking gold, I tell you.

The mid Parting-Glass speech. Holy shit. Just. Fuck me up, I have Emotions. A lot of emotions. I already almost cry upon hearing it, I'm gonna fuckin' bawl my eyes out on the last day. Fuck.

The entire plot with Titania and Oberon and the conflict over the seasons and said conflict spilling over to harm the humans is spectacular, and I love it. But the other new plot? Not so much at all. Why? Distilling down every issue to its core, the thing in common with them all is this: it's just bad writing.

What the wine plot tells me is that the writers' first impulse upon being presented with multiple lead romantic relationships is to do some sort of love-triangle-square bullshit. Yet love-triangles/squares are boring and overdone, and present no challenge in terms of devising conflict. They are uncreative. And basing full half your plot around them is simply poor storytelling.

Similarly, one of the things I most admired about the main season was the presence of conflict without a joust to the death. Setting up the Joust and conflict without the promise of fatality is more of a challenge, and therefore the successful result is more engaging. I take no issue with the fact that the Ultimate Joust is generally to! the! death!, but greatly admired the achievement of pulling off the plot without it just this once. So when the Halloween Joust was revealed to have returned to its deadly state, I was let down. If nonlethal Ultimate Jousts were a more common thing, perhaps I'd not be so upset about this. But I believe this is the first one I've seen, and we all know it'll be to! the! death! once more next season. Which I will have no problem with. But returning the promise of fatality this season is a step backwards in quality.

During main-season Joust, I frequently found myself just beaming at the field, happy to watch six knights, all honorable in-universe (or so it seemed) and out, doing what they loved without filtering their enthusiasm through masks of hate or greed. It was so wholesome a thing to be able to Favor any knight in wholly good conscience both in-universe and out. Sure, Henry and Francis were being prideful idiots, but not so seriously that it compromised their morality overmuch, and thus I gladly Favored them. I would not expect this of Joust every year, but I loved that it was so this season. I loved that pure moment of contentedly smiling over the field, filled with love for all those riding upon it. And I hate that I've been robbed of that moment three weeks too early.

The pre-joust dialogue was not between Francis and Henry. I mean obviously, it wouldn't be, since they were both enchanted. But it didn't even sound like enchanted versions of them talking. It was straight-up Don Alonso and Sir Robert. Literally. Every word they said was the exact same stuff we hear from the Bad Knights, complete with the promise of drinking wine from hollowed skulls. Perhaps it was just because I was already in a disappointed state of mind, but it just didn't seem effective.

The point that may gall me the most as a storyteller: the solution to saving the day came out of fuck-all nowhere. It was not hinted at, foreshadowed, or set up in any way. Because I'm extra salty, let's look at some recent previous plots for a moment. In Halloween 2016, the thing mentioned several times throughout the day was that Excalibur could only be pulled from the stone by one worthy to rule England. Catherine drawing it forth thus fulfills a narrative promise. In Halloween 2017, the point stated several times throughout the day was that Rumple could not be harmed by mortal man. Thus, when Catherine successfully breaks his power, we understand why she is able to. Main season 2018, the recurring thing throughout the day was the back-and-forth between the jesters. Thus, we can track the point to which Jane arrives at in shooting Triboulet.

But Halloween 2018, what is the point mentioned repeatedly? What do the antagonists / new characters emphasize? That the mortals cannot throw off the magic of the wine before sunrise. What, then, does that indicate? What is the logical storytelling resolution of that? That a faerie will be the one to undo it, or at least enable the humans to. That is the narrative promise. The fact that the mortals are able to break it on their own doesn't make sense, and cannot in any way be predicted or deduced or traced through after the fact from anything elsewhere in the plot. That's poor storytelling, mate.

The Halloween plot is meant to up the antie. To take things to the next level. To be grander, more sweeping, more epic. That's a simple fact of its existance. And this year, the writers' idea of grander and more epic was to go from friendship-love saving the day to romantic-love saving the day? NO! FUCK YOU! You know better, I know you do! Romantic-love is not inherently stronger or more important or more valid or more valuable than friendship-love, and I've always treasured the Faire as one of the few settings in which I can count on that truth being understood. This is a betrayal.

Besides, the power of true romantic-love saving the day is amatonormative and just so. fucking. overdone.

My next point involves a different point, one I'd been meaning to write about since week one but never had time to. I had truly hoped that the Chessmatch would be between the queens. That's one of the things that made 2017 work so well. The king got to win his glory at Joust, and the queen got to win her glory at Chess. It balanced them out, and ensured that one ruler did not appear more plot-important than the other. And so it should have been this year. When I saw that it was not so, I took some consolation in the knowledge that the queens would at least have their moment in saving the day in Halloween. But they didn't. I mean, Catherine was the first to throw off the effects of the wine, if you count that, but it's not really the same. The queens were both wholly robbed of any opportunity to display their prowess and win their own triumph, and I am very much not okay with that.

Which brings me to the subject of the queens. It may be most effective for this next point to quote directly from my stream-of-consciousness bullet-point brainstorming of all the issues I found with this scenario.

YOU MADE THE QUEENS FIGHT i will never forgive yo[u]

WHY DID YOU MAKE THE QUEENS FIGHT

LIKE REALLY

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT THAT THEY WERE ENCHANTED, I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT IN-UNIVERSE RIGHT NOW

HOW DARE YOU BREAK THAT BEAUTEOUS, WONDERFUL FRIENDSHIP AND SOLIDARITY WE’VE BEEN TREASURING ALL SEASON AND LONGING FOR FOR SO LONG

AN[D] OVER FUCKING ÉROS????? ARE YOU SHITTING ME

As the Halloween Chess initially unfolded before me, as the kings' tempers rose and they became more and more volatile toward one another, I was already thinking about the post I would write about the new scenario, and I noted that I would include something about how I was glad that at the least they didn't have the queens turn on one another. I made specific plans to mention that as a silver lining, a partial saving grace. And then they fell to the quarrel/fight scene between Hermia and Helena, and all I wanted to do was scream and throw things and, in hindsight, cry.

Let me take a moment to reiterate. I fucking love Midsummer-Night's Dream. It is my absolute favorite of Shakespeare's plays, it's the first play of any kind I ever saw, it was a facet of my childhood, and I was in two separate productions of it. And in that play, the quarrel/fight between Hermia and Helena is one of my favorite scenes. It's so much fun to perform, and gave rise to my tagline: though she be but little, she is fierce. But that scene has no place here with these characters.

This then brings me to my next point. In-universe, none of the fighting makes sense. Since the looks matched up, everybody's wine!love was requited, and nobody felt a claim on someone another now wanted. I've watched Chess all four days, and the three most recent days, I've made active effort to track the development of the conflict, having not understood it before. But I still cannot see what they are fighting about. Yes, it was stated that the wine would fill the drinker with rage, but what we saw between the kings in the main season, that was rage. This is rage combined with a massive fuckin dose of irrationality. The reasoning gone through to arrive at both the brawl and the joust comes down to insane troll logic. This is the second thing that bothers me the most as a storyteller. If Oberon's line about the wine had simply included a mention of irrationality along with the rage, the whole conflict would seem a lot less bullshit.

And now, the third thing that bothers me the most as a storyteller: you guessed it, the cup. Listen, Dumbshow-lampshading the utter lack of mention or explanation of the cup following King's Court does not make it good storytelling. Last year's lampshade about the treaty worked because we'd already had a whole main season about that. But the cup was just. abandoned, and not long after being introduced. Of course I see the need for something to call the faeries to the shire, but you can't take the entire inciting macguffin of so primary a plot and so thoroughly ignore it for the rest of the story.

This is even less excusable when considered with the fact that there was ample opportunity to keep the chalice involved. Simply have it present at Chess, mention in the preamble that the match is partially for possession of the cup (albeit maybe temporarily), and add a line to Triboulet's toast-proposing, something about the toast also being in anticipation of the victor toasting his opponent's health from the goblet. Once the wine takes effect and everything starts going to shit, the kings no longer care about the cup. The cup should then also be present at Joust, since the faerie monarchs are wagering possession of it on said game. It doesn't have to be made a fuss of, it just has to be there, and probably spared a few words in the part of the recap given by Titania and Oberon. This would at least settle the plot point, if not resolving it, and actually turns it into something of a successful red herring. At the start of the Chessmatch, the audience is expecting a continuation of the plot from King's Court, not a sudden love-square. Reprising the chalice at the beginning of the match would bear that out, lulling the audience in to a false sense of plot-security, if that makes any sense. The wine plot is then eased in rather than sudden; not because it begins any subtler, but because the fakeout plot lasts a little longer, and overlaps.

And a final, less significant note: the fae don't look like fae. They pretty much look human. Oberon looks his part a little better, 'cause he's got slightly odd eyes and an unusual crown, but that's it. And Titania simply looks like a human in an orange dress and flower crown. True, the style of her dress is not of the English Renaissance era, and that makes her stand out a bit, but it isn't disquieting. At least the two previous years, the faeries have been visually off-putting, disturbing, unsettling, bordering on creepy. This post says it better than I can, so allow me to quote from it:

also i think that for me personally you are not doing midsummer night correctly AT ALL if you haven’t put a lot of work in on the part of the actors and costumers and makeup and other elements to make sure that the fairies are as unsettling and otherworldly and uh FAE as possible. the fairies aren’t supposed to be cute. titania should strike fear into the audiences’ hearts just by being onstage.

All in all, I have never been so disappointed in something from the Faire. I am heartbroken, in a way. This universe, the Megan-Zach universe, has been so very good from the start, and has just built exponentially the entire time. There was the 2016 main season, and that was friggin' fantastic. Then the 2016 Halloween plot, and that was even better. Then there was 2017 main season, and that was better still. The main season plot gave way to the 2017 Halloween plot, and bloody hell that was even better! Then there was the main season 2018, and holy fucking shit on a stick, that was freaking incredible! And then there's the Halloween 2018 plot – which, nope. They'd been building and building these three seasons and now, in this final moment, they partially blew it. I've been informed that this is the last year of Megan and Zach as our monarchs, that this is it for this universe. And this is not the note anybody – actor or patron – deserved to end on.

There are some silver linings though, and I should be remiss to not mention them. (Though most of them are not significant enough to be true silver linings, but rather what I refer to as pewter linings.)

First, I am pleased that they retained the bout of flyting. As the day is no longer saved by Jane, the back-and-forth between the jesters is no longer necessary for the plot, and as such, neither is the flyting. It has been one of my favorite moments all season, and I am grateful that they left it there. Particularly when considering that they had to remove the sample performance of an out-of-house performer in order to make time for the new segment. I think that a good decision.

At the end of the chessmatch, Puck announces the upcoming joust through an entertaining impression of Kensington. Even if I weren't staying through the wine-affected monarchs' end-of-game bullshit in order to experience the faerie/weather plot, I'd stay just for that impression, because it's hilarious.

Getting to see Catherine wielding a sword at Joust almost makes up for a third of the wine plot. Despite the awfulness of what enabled that moment, the moment itself is hecking fantastic.

After the faerie wine has been dispelled, Henry has a line saying that the enchantment could not have made him behave like that unless he already had the potential to do so. This bears out an crucial point in the series of fic I'm (still) working on about the Bavarians. I had already decided that faeries cannot manipulate anyone – physically, mentally, or emotionally – into doing something that the person in question did not already posses the capacity to do, and though it's not exactly a plot point, or even stated directly in the fic, it's very important to me, and is sure as heck gonna be mentioned in the author's notes. So it was rather nice for that to be confirmed as canon.

At Finale, the human queens sometimes acknowledge that there was potential for them to have looked at each other after the wine. Moreover, they also acknowledge that that course of events would have been at least slightly less awful, and do not seem averse to the notion that this hypothetical version of events would've led them to become enamored of another woman. This acknowledgment does not make up for too much, but it does help a little.

The real silver lining, though, the closest thing the wine plot has to a saving grace, is Sir Walter. It wasn't just a matter of his reactions to everything being entertaining, as they always are, but genuinely interesting. This line of plot takes his role as only sane man to the next level. He went beyond “how can I salvage this festival day” to “how can I save these four people and both their realms from war and ruin”. It was no longer a matter of stress for him, but of the wellbeing of two nations and all those therein. This conflict threatens more people and more peace more than any conflict he's experienced here before (that we've seen), and that change altered his actions and reactions in a very tangible way. It was quite enjoyable to see him go from just stressing over the day to stepping up and actively trying to change the course of events, even in conflict with the orders of his rulers. He flat-out refused to announce the joust, for one. And even during the final battle of Joust, he kept putting himself between the queens, knowing that it would result in his ass getting kicked. If they're teamed up hurting him, they can't hurt each other.

There's also the extremely interesting fact that half the time the faeries did any sort of magic that physically manipulated the mortals (freezing everyone, making everyone fight each other in aid of the kings), it didn't seem to have any effect on Kensington. Now, granted, I may just be looking at the wrong places at the wrong times on this one, but if absolutely nothing else, I know he is definitely unaffected by the everybody-fight-each-other enchantment. This is both fascinating and really cool to me, and has the potential to open up some compelling character details. I think I may sometime compile and run through a list of the different potential explanations I've thought of for this. (I'm sure it won't be too difficult to guess my favorite possibility even without seeing what all I've come up with, but it should still be a nifty post.)

Overall though, despite these pros that would've been impossible without the wine plot, the wine plot is, to my mind, terrible. It is not badly executed, of course. Far from it. It is executed brilliantly and beautifully, and truly the actors and stagecrew and sound and effects teams have my admiration no end. But being well-executed doesn't make the writing any better. It is poorly-written, overdone, borderline cliché in places, and did not add to or enhance my experience. I know the writers are capable of better, and cannot for the life of me determine why they settled for something so frustratingly mediocre.

How do I know it's bad writing and not just a plot I don't like? Because when shit started going down, I became angry at the writers, not the characters. That is the ultimate test of quality. If something you don't like is happening in a story and you become angered at the people within the story, then what is happening makes sense, and does not jar you from the world of the story, although you disapprove. If something you don't like is happening in a story and you become angered at the writer(s), then what is happening does not make sense, and you are jolted out of the world of the story, remembering it to be fiction.

I hate the wine plot, and what's more, I hate that I hate it. I wanted to love the Halloween plot in its entirety, and hating so much of it just breaks my heart. And in total honesty, I know that certain people were eager to see my reaction to the new plot, and I expect that they're at least somewhat crestfallen that I detest a good bit of it, and that knowledge just makes me even sadder about the whole thing, and I'm angry that it fell out this way, and I'm let down, and I'm disappointed in the writers, for – not to sound like a broken record – I know them to be capable of far better than this.

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