#the great snake's bride was.................. interesting. it's about a lady who is sacrificed to a snake god to be his bride

[chadsuke]

Comics Read in 2024:

Dragon Age: The Silent Grove by David Gaider, Alexander Freed, & Chad Hardin (2012)

Dragon Age: Those Who Speak by David Gaider, Alexander Freed, & Chad Hardin (2012)

Dragon Age: Until We Sleep by David Gaider, Alexander Freed, & Chad Hardin (2013)

The Great Snake's Bride Vol. 1 by Fushiashikumo (2023)

The Great Snake's Bride Vol. 2 by Fushiashikumo (2023)

The Great Snake's Bride Vol. 3 by Fushiashikumo (2024)

The Great Snake's Bride Vol. 4 by Fushiashikumo (2024)

My Stepmother & Stepsisters Aren't Wicked Vol. 2 by Otsuji (2023)

My Stepmother & Stepsisters Aren't Wicked Vol. 3 by Otsuji (2024)

[ID: Covers of the aforementioned books. End ID.]

[maddie-grove]

Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up (November/December)

Playlist

“Fallin’ for You” by Sheila Nicholls (The Perilous Gard)

“Come on Over to My Place” by the Drifters (A Gentleman Never Keeps Score)

“Bobby Jean” by Bruce Springsteen (Eleanor and Park)

“Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks (One Perfect Rose)

“A Sailor’s Prayer” by Ann Price and Marilyn Maltzer (Broken Wing)

“Winter Lady” by Leonard Cohen (When a Duchess Says I Do)

“Dance Music” by the Mountain Goats (What Hearts)*

“Sweet Talkin’ Guy” by the Chiffons (Jean and Johnny)

“Know Your Onion!” by the Shins (Lost at Sea)

“The Snake and the Bookworm” by Cliff Richard (Tempting the Bride)

“Everybody Loves Me but You” by Brenda Lee (Someone to Remember)

*I also seriously considered both “I’ll Meet You Halfway” by the Partridge Family and “Sports Analogies” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It’s a complex book!

Best of the Bi-Month

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1974): In the late 1550s, grave, awkward Kate Sutton is banished to a remote castle in the east of England. She’s greeted by superstitious locals, shady servants, an often-absent lord, and the lord’s guilt-ridden (and hot) younger brother. Bored and irritated by all the drama, Kate questions the circumstances of the tragedy that haunts the family. I didn’t have high expectations for this book, which I bought primarily for the gorgeous Richard Cuffari illustrations, but I was blown away. Pope creates a sublimely uncanny setting in a surprising way, and Kate is a wonderful protagonist: principled, rational, and compassionate beneath her no-nonsense exterior.

Worst of the Bi-Month

Someone to Remember by Mary Balogh (2019): In her youth, Lady Matilda Westcott rejected Charles Sawyer’s proposal at the urging of her parents, who thought him too wild. Now she’s fifty-six, loved by her extended family but stuck caring for an unappreciative elderly mother. The marriage of her niece and Charles’s estranged illegitimate son brings them together again, but she never expects anything to come of it...like a total fool. This is a cute novella with compelling family dynamics. I also appreciated the solidly middle-aged protagonists, although Balogh presents them a little too timidly, like a mom trying to get a picky eight-year-old to try asparagus.

Rest of the Bi-Month

A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian (2018): Once-popular Hartley Sedgwick is languishing in the huge townhouse his godfather left him, shunned by nearly everyone for his sexuality. Then Sam Fox, a black pugilist-turned-tavern-keeper, tries to sneak into the house to find a nude portrait of an embarrassed friend. Moved by Sam’s decency, Hartley offers his assistance in finding the portrait. As I explained in my post about my favorite Regency romance novels, I adore this book for the way Hartley and Sam’s love story is mirrored and enhanced by portrayals of many other kinds of love, between brothers and friends and parents and children and neighbors and also one very homely dog. 

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2012): Park, a geeky half-Korean teenager in 1986, keeps his head down and barley avoids outright ostracism in his poor, mostly white Omaha neighborhood. Eleanor, the weird white girl who shares his bus seat, is tormented at school and at home. They have no interest in being friends, but they slowly bond and fall in love over music and comics. What I liked most about this bittersweet YA novel was the ways in which the protagonists improved each other’s lives. With Park and his loving family, Eleanor gets to let down her defenses, while Eleanor’s boldness inspires Park to embrace his differences. I do wish that Park’s side of things had been developed more, however.

One Perfect Rose by Mary Jo Putney (1997): Upon learning that he’s terminally ill, Stephen, the Duke of Ashburton, freaks out and goes on an incognito tour of the English countryside without telling his family. He ends up joining an acting troupe run by the boisterous Fitzgerald family and falling in love with their adopted daughter/stage manager, Rosalind, despite the many reasons they have no future together. (Or do they?) This is a good, old-fashioned weepy romance that’s elevated by Putney’s serious attention to the theme of reconciling with one’s mortality. There’s also some extremely late-1990s New-Age-ish stuff going on, which sometimes felt a little silly but was still charming.

Broken Wing by Judith James (2008): When unconventional countess Sarah finds her long-lost little brother at a Parisian brothel, she’s overjoyed, appalled, and relieved that he was protected by sex worker Gabriel St. Croix. Grateful, she offers Gabriel a reward and insists he come to live with her and her family. This is another tear-jerking, charmingly dated romance; I felt like a teenager again, reading top-shelf angsty fanfiction. It’s best in the slow-burn first half, during which Gabriel must adjust to a massive reversal of fortune after a lifetime of trauma. The more action-packed second half makes great use of the unusual late 1790s/early 1800s setting, but it does feel hurried.

When a Duchess Says I Do by Grace Burrowes (2019): Widowed Matilda Wakefield, the Duchess of Bosendorf, has been on the run since getting mixed up in her diplomat dad’s clandestine activities. An encounter with scholarly Duncan Wentworth lands her a live-in secretarial position at his rural estate. They connect with each other, but how can love grow when they’re the object of multiple sinister plots? While this entry in the Wentworth series is not as incandescently lovely as My One and Only Duke, I’m still a sucker for spooky country houses, responsible-household-management plots, and sad early-middle-aged heroes. Burrowes is also an excellent writer, and I’m glad that I discovered her.

What Hearts by Bruce Brooks (1992): Sensitive Asa excels at school but struggles at home, thanks to his mother’s severe mental illness and his stepfather Dave’s emotional abuse. Divided into four novella-like sections, the novel follows Asa from his parents’ divorce in first grade to his first love in seventh. I liked parts of this weird, sober book when I read it as a kid, and I felt the same this time. It’s got brilliant moments, most involving Asa and Dave’s relationship, but there’s a lot of telling-not-showing in between. Brooks also can’t seem to decide on the time period; it’s probably supposed to be set 1965-1971, but it always feels like 1963, and you can only blame so much of that on the North Carolina setting.

Jean and Johnny by Beverly Cleary (1959): Short, bespectacled, and working-class, fifteen-year-old Jean feels invisible at her high school until handsome upperclassman Johnny Chessler starts paying attention to her. She’s thrilled, but her parents and sister warn against chasing him. I didn’t like this book much in middle school, but I revisited it because it occurred to me that Jean was a lesbian. Having reread it, I know I was wrong on two counts: Jean is unfortunately not a lesbian (she clearly thinks Johnny’s hot), and the book’s not that depressing. Jean’s no sad sack who’s doomed to a life of grimly chaste square dancing; she’s a legit snack who becomes increasingly self-assured and assertive. 

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O’Malley (2003): Raleigh, a Canadian eighteen-year-old, hitches a ride back home from California with some classmates she hardly knows after a meeting with her long-distance boyfriend ends in heartbreak. Lonely and a little disconnected from reality--she maintains the belief that her mom somehow sold her soul, which now resides in a stray cat--Raleigh slowly makes friends with her travelling companions and finds some piece of mind. Although nothing much happens in this short graphic novel, it’s one of the most authentically just-graduated-high-school stories I’ve ever read. I could relate to those feelings of fear and disappointment even in the face of exciting new possibilities.

Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas (2012): David Hillsborough, Lord Hastings, has desired Helena Fitzhugh, first-wave feminist and successful fiction editor, since they were kids together, but he’s always hidden behind insulting remarks. When Helena’s affair with a married man ends in scandal, though, she unhappily accepts David’s offer of marriage in order to cover it up. Then she gets hit by a carriage and loses every memory she formed after her mid-teens, which happens to be when she met David. Thomas always has an engaging style and deals with even outlandish plots in a sophisticated way, and her take on the 13 Going on 30 plot is enjoyable. However, it is rushed at the end.

[aheartofwood]

the king arthur movie is SO BAD, guys.

imagine a baby and a kitten got together and tried to edit a movie with only the vaguest idea of arthurian legend based on the backs of the VHS of the disney version and also the lion king for some reason, and also the barest idea of how human brains can accept and understand editing and narrative. imagine a pretty good video game opening for 2001, but watched thru the haze of a really strenuous flu and it’s rented and ancient and was chewed up by at least two dogs so it’s glitching a lot. imagine a knight’s tale……………Reimagined™ (needlessly) by a team of randos who only speak italian and their ideas are being translated by jen from the IT crowd in that one episode where she pretends she can speak italian. imagine a movie with a budget of four dollars (except the budget was HUGE). imagine an opium dream within a dream of robert downey jr’s 2009 sherlock holmes where jude law becomes a boring, leathery king who has a bad habit of constantly sacrificing the silent women he supposedly loves to an undulating pile of lovecraftian horror water ladies that live in his shame toilet in his penis tower basement ONLY to super saiyan into a really bad DnD dude with a motorcycle-insignia-metal skull head and the torso of two The Rocks smashed together (sorry, The Rock) instead of (a much better) watson. imagine eragon, but somehow exceedingly, fremdschamenly, schadenfreudingly worse. not many things get both german expressions, in a gleefully terrible adverb form at that, but this movie——oh, THIS movie——-deserves them. 

the letters of the opening credits roll (or creep?) across the screen. the kerning is bad. all the T’s have a phallic, buffylike, sword motif going on and it renders the names unreadable. the colors and the blurry shots look like something out of monty python. again, who hired this editor? who watched this movie, kissed their fingertips like an italian grandma, and gently set this eldritch horror adrift on the tides of eternity to be received with fear and loathing by millions of human eyes? the elephants from lord of the rings attack the bridge from legend of zelda, and that red flamey eye guy from eragon (mordred, for some reason, in a shake n bake wig) ?? or possibly from inkheart?? is defeated. remember, we know nothing about these characters. feel nothing for them. and the trend continues. katie mcgrath appears, of course, in her standard and splendid emerald green, and then immediately dies. none of the shots in the first 20 minutes of the movie match up, we go from scenes with several people to ultra close ups of faces—-it’s like the “mmmm whatcha say” SNL skit, but serious. the movie continues to not know if it’s playing itself seriously or if it knows how bad it truly is (how bad me be?)

finally we get ONE establishing shot of a sweeping wall (maybe? the camera never stays still enough to tell) and the audience (five people) grounds ourselves, sort of. we get a whip-fast, but not whip-smart, super evolution of arthur’s childhood, in which he shoves coins into a wall (see kids!!! if u just put YR COINS IN YR WALLS instead of BUYING GODDAMN AVOCADOS, U COULD HAVE A CASTLE!!!!) and hearkens back to his character in pacific rim, bc he’s just a scrappy, vaguely appropriative white guy that loves 2 fight stuff. oh, his mom is killed when he’s young ofc. charlie hunnam eventually fucks off to the island w the sword in the sort-of stone (none of the physics makes sense in this movie?? the sword in the stone dropped into a lake, but is now in a chasm on a different island which shows no sign of the ruins of arthur’s childhood town?? in the final fight scene, charlie hunnam is several floors up from scythe-y jude law, but then suddenly they’re fighting on the top of saruman’s tower  scuse me at the whipping sea-level, then suddenly BACK IN THE TOWER bc i guess it wasn’t destroyed????? bc then it gets destroyed again??) of course, charlie hunnam is the One Man who can Grip the penis sword, even though in an interesting turn of events, They are Testing Everyone by shipping them in boats to the island (this seems like an egregious waste of resources). charlie hunnam got in this unfortch sitch bc i forgot, but the guy who put him on the boat chuckled darkly and said he was “”””getting on a different boat””””, but like, doesn’t everyone end up there?? it had the air of the DMV, on purpose, so why was this a threat? how did he avoid it for so long? are there that many people in the kingdom??? also, if i was him i’d straight up pretend i couldn’t lift it tbh and come back for it when They were getting donuts. oh, another inkheart thing—the BLONDE MOM SURVIVES (!!!??? somehow???? unexplained? she had a HOLE THRU HER BODY??) and maybe has memory loss or something and spends her days being somehow indispensable to jude law despite doing nothing but moving a plate. 

i cannot explain the rest of the plot, because i do not understand it. charlie hunnam just EXPERIENCES things with a world-weary, almost kingly worldliness, despite flashing in between being an innocent farm boy who doesn’t wanna do anything and a self-assured wisecracking hustler. there are some good jokes about boring white dude names in a medieval setting, and no more humor forever is allowed in this movie or any movies ever again. a chris parnell lookalike with a hat says he can shoot 75 yards but not 175, then shoots 175 with absolutely no introduction/buildup/continuance/jokes and spends the rest of the film as robin hood. there are some other dudes?????? more women (the brothel ladies that rescue arthur from the river ((not unlike….the prince of egypt…..)) are killed to further manpain, including lucy, who is Special for an unexplained reason. jude law murders his daughter (i guess???), who has a russian name and a tendency to sit around and stroke birds and stare sappily out the window (i feel u, johanna). everyone is wearing medieval versions of suits. there are many iterations of snake, ranging from economy-sized snake to a Giant Fuckmaster Snake Mother. at least five cloaks are cast off. eric bana becomes a literal rock. everything has the vague, shuddering feeling of an improv show where everyone wants the final word/bit. there is grit, there is dirt, there is snake blood, and there is clanking. so much clanking. charlie hunnam is bravely hurling one-liners but no one is listening. what is the sound of only one hand on excalibur???? apparently not as powerful as…………T W O hands on excalibur. 

the editing continues to be bizarre. they keep trying to do the inception thing where they talk about the plan while showing the plan, therefore (in inception, correctly) allowing us to get to the good parts, but there ARE NO GOOD PARTS or even parts at all and they don’t fully commit to the dang method anyway. the shining light of the film, an unnamed mage woman with good bone structure and sweet harem pants (and who COULD have at least been set up as morwen but was not) who can possess animals and also make a lot of dust fly around behind her, becomes charlie hunnam’s spiritual guide?? sort of?? maybe love interest??? she seems to have no interest in him or inhabiting the worldly narrative/plane of this movie. i do not blame her. anyway, she’s got the eagles from LOTR on her side. she dopes the shit out of charlie hunnam (again, why) with a literal snake and he solves his daddy/uncle issues (line @ jude law: “”””you created me”””””) in an incomprehensible nonlinear part of the narrative (she was captured, but i guess jude law let her go before hunnam got to the castle???? bc he’s Not So Bad After All? bc he was bored? eating a sandwich? fuck idk so she could have met him in the middle of fuck knows? i mean if they have medieval lyft or medieval twitter DMing or something??)  also, he may or may not have gone to a ””””””DARK””””””””island, but he did NOT solve his daddy issues there. he did, however, fight some rodents of unusual size from the princess bride. 

ok that is all the energy i have; this movie has sapped me, i am nothing in the great maw of its terribleness. other stuff happens. we have a happy ending, with 4/6ths of the Round Table built (literally and figuratively), and some Vikings conceding to charlie hunnam for no other reason than he’s a bro, i guess. line: how do u scam money out of a viking? u talk to them. SEE MILLENNIALS ALL U HAVE TO DO IS TALK AND PPL GIVE U MONEY or be born the true heir to the throne of (fake england). 

the worst part is that i don’t understand how jude law, who is 44, looks the same the entire movie and watches as charlie hunnam, who is 37, grows up and eventually challenges him. eric bana, who is 48, doubtlessly had fictional charlie hunnam arthur at like 27-35, making jude law the same age in that fiction. i guess men can just ???? play any age????????? forever??????? honorable mentions: the soundtrack, jude law’s eyeshadow, and the preview for atomic blonde.