arachnophobia

Hmm, that text isn’t exactly readable, being a) cursive and b) shitty biro with random blots everywhere, but the gist is that a spider gets struck by lightning and…

Somehow the spider and the ghost of lonely Arabella had combined to make a new human being

Somehow? That’s your attempt at a scientific explanation for this crackfic? I don’t know how this even issued from my brain, given that I have never taken drugs in my life. Actually what is blowing my mind even more than the whole concept of spider-ghost-girl is this:

Ariane sends herself to school, where she is bullied.

No shit. She’s going to school for fun? I suppose it must be in order to meet people, or to satisfy a deep hunger for learning, but it still reminds me of that bit in Twilight where Edward turns out to have been in high school for like a century and my immediate response was ‘wow, he must be really thick.’ I am obviously shooting for ‘Arachne’ with the name and not quite getting there.

So then she pals up with the quiet fat girl in glasses, punishes the bullies a bit, but:

Soon Lynda is trapped in a tangled web as she hears the house is to be demolished, and the story of Arabella…

Ooh, get me with my painfully obvious metaphors. This is hurting my brain. Is it me or does Ariane look disturbingly like Cher, with her see-through spiderweb top and mad hair?

it's Cher, in a see-through spiderweb top and mad hair

You see? People are scared of spiders for a REASON.

irrelevant junk

This wouldn’t fit on the scanner because it’s foolscap. It wouldn’t fit in my ringbinder either. Annoying.

The detective’s name is making me think of this stupid epitaph:

Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a 44.
No Les. No Moore.

Maybe that’s meant to fit with the whole noir-ish feel I’m trying to get going here, with nightclubs and random references to the Mob? Either way, it fails.

So, anyway, here be spoilers. Obviously I didn’t want to give away the big plot twist because that’s not what blurbs do. But Sheila’s ‘bizarre’ ‘secret’ is… she was assigned male at birth. Shocking, huh? You weren’t getting that vibe from her drag queen stagename, makeup and costume at all, were you? I don’t know why the police failed to figure this out at the autopsy and had to get the info from her sister. The murder must have been really horrific 🙁 I have a vague idea that the murderer may have been an ex-lover with objections to Sheila’s trans-ness, but since I was steering clear of spoilers I can’t remember. Oh well.

I feel bad for Sheila that not only is she dead as a result of a probable hate crime, but her case is being handled by a police officer who seems more interested in perving on her sister. Plus, his unprofessional conduct is hampering the investigation, as Jacey is withholding vital evidence in case the bad people hurt him. Um, he’s a cop. Dealing with dangerous people is sort of his job.

Mainly, this production screams out to me ‘I just got a new set of Berol felt-tips and I’m going to use them!’ There is something so retro about the lettering in the title, I almost love it. Almost.

(Oh, and when I first heard of Macy Gray I was like ‘OMG she has nearly the same name as the sister in that shitty crime story I thought up several years ago.’ My brain is full of this irrelevant junk.)

celtic pollyanna and the evil twin

three people in felt pen, one male, two female, accompanied by title Songs of Caged Eagles

This one is laid out like a small child’s newsbook — pic on the top, words below — so I’m going to transcribe the text and give you a running commentary. Woo!

When Alistair returned to his beloved Highlands to take over his father’s croft, he brought a surprise — a new wife. Welsh-born Meredith was confined to a wheelchair, but accepted it cheerfully and soon won the local’s hearts. It was easy to see how Alistair had fallen in love with his ‘Merry’.

Jesus, it’s a Celtic Pollyanna. Nicknamed Merry. Do you see what I did there?

But Meredith was often lonely at their isolated farm. Although the doctors advised against it, she and Alistair started trying for a family.

I do not feel loneliness is a good reason for having a baby against medical advice, assuming of course that said medical advice is more substantial than ‘you can’t breed ’cause you’re disabled.’

As soon as she became pregnant, her twin sister Madolyn turned up — causing havoc.

YAY EVIL TWIN!

With her wavy black hair and strikingly green eyes, Madolyn was almost dangerously beautiful.

Not evident from the wonky-mouthed, scant-chinned portrait of her, but never mind.

She led the local boys a merry dance, letting them fall in love with her then ignoring them.

That’s the worst it gets? I suppose that’s why she’s only ‘almost’ dangerously beautiful.

And all the time Meredith was reminded by her sister’s presence of the freedom she had lost. What made it worse was that it was Madolyn’s carelessness that crippled her in the first place…

But of course.

When Madolyn turned her cat’s eyes to Alistair, Meredith couldn’t cope. She worried about leaving them in the house together when she went into hospital to have her baby.

I have a plan! Your evil twin has already been staying with you for months… why not just kick her out? She put you in a wheelchair. She is lucky you are angelic enough not to mind too much and are still speaking to her.

Then the baby was born with a slight mental handicap —

I have approximately four million problems with this plot development, chief among which is that it is a newborn baby, so how can they tell? It may be natural to assume that any child born into this family is going to be pathologically stupid, but you cannot make this diagnosis before it has even failed to hit any developmental milestones. Also that the doctors were right and any kid born to a woman in a wheelchair is inevitably going to be defective. Ugh.

— and a guilty Madolyn confessed tearfully to seducing Alistair.

Evil Twin FTW.

Meanwhile, Scotland wanted independaence from the United Kingdom — and the spirit of change wafted through the lonely hills.

What has this got to do with anything? Oh, maybe it’s a Theme. Like Meredith is representative of Scotland, or possibly Wales, getting repeatedly fucked over by Evil Twin/England. Or perhaps she wants a divorce from Alistair and Evil Twin the same way Scotland wants one from the UK? I don’t really see how the handicapped baby fits into this schema. Maybe it is the Isle of Man or something.

And the bewildered, tragical Meredith wandered with her baby, and wondered what to do…

I am having a really hard time picturing wandering around in a wheelchair if you have a baby in tow and live on a lonely hill. It seems like it would be a fairly major operation. Has she even bothered to ask Alistair what went on? Evil Twin could easily be lying. Lying is what Evil Twins do, when they are not busy maiming or ignoring people.

asking for shit

NO THEY DO NOT and your boyfriend Den should be killed forthwith, along with whoever made that monstrosity Bridget is wearing. It looks like I couldn’t make my mind up where her legs should end and kept adding extra bits. (Maybe I should have done that with Jane.)

As if poor Bridget has not suffered enough having to wear purple and aqua… trouser… things, she then gets punished for being nice to the school pervert by being raped by said outcast, and then BLAMED FOR IT by her so-called best friend who is basically running around at this point going ‘nyah nyah, told you so’. What the hell is Ann doing telling Den about her best friend getting raped anyway, ugh. I hate this girl, with her big poppy eyes and look of faux-concern. She has no chin either.

In spite of Ann’s smugness I don’t see how Bridget could have known what was coming, since all Matt has done prior to becoming a rapist is ‘try’ to grope her, clearly not succeeding even in this limited aim. Oh, I forgot, Ann can ‘see him getting excited.’ (Not being the most streetwise of adolescents, I am not sure I meant what this actually means. Never mind.) So yeah, Matt has a history of failing to grope his female classmates and has had a public hard-on or two which Bridget just finds amusing… this is not saying ‘future rapist’ to me, it is saying ‘teenage boy’.

Ann seems more interested in victim-shaming and gossiping with her no-good boyfriend than oh, I don’t know, telling somebody in authority or supporting her best friend or plotting revenge on the rapist…  I don’t know, this is just depressing me now. I was a reasonably switched-on fourteen-year-old (no, really, I was, I read newspapers and got As in everything) and yet I was still coming out with this horseshit. It is a pretty minor example of the mindwarping damage done by living in a rape culture, but it is an example nonetheless.

God, I hate the world sometimes.

war is hell

Hmm, torn between two equally shitty titles, what am I to do? I know, use them both! If Shakespeare can do it, so can I!

The teeny-tiny mask thing and oversized babygro-with-wellies ensemble sported by Peter dates this to the first Gulf War. Sky News was always on about chemical weapons, and as I was only thirteen I believed everything they told me. So war in the 21st century is going to be a nightmare, as opposed to, say, the fourth century, when it was obviously fun. And it is still going to be a male-run affair, in spite of the fact that Leni is some inches taller than Peter and looks considerably harder.

OMG is that a CND symbol she is wearing? That is adorable. My vision of this millennium involves the CND, side ponytails, shoulderpads and handwritten ‘correspondance’.

(Well, I was right about the shoulderpads.)

As Florence and James are Leni’s great-grandparents, presumably he must survive to procreate in spite of the horrors of war / his weird moustache? Way to kill the suspense there. If Leni’s great-grandad had been killed in WWII she would know this already. So maybe it is Leni’s blossoming love with her ‘distant cousin’ that gets snuffed out by trad trg tragedy? I’m not sure I really cared, even then.

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