celtic pollyanna and the evil twin

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.

16 June 2010 0

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.

12 June 2010 0

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.

1 June 2010 0

over the moon AND deliriously happy

Basically, I stole this from Neighbours. This is the Paul Robinson/Christina Alessi storyline with the roles reversed and the twin taken out. Perhaps I felt my oeuvre was getting slightly twin-heavy. It also sounds very Anne of The Island, though to be fair to me I’m not sure whether I’d read that yet. Doesn’t ‘end[ing] up in a romantic attachment’ sound about the least most romantic thing ever? No wonder Anne-Marie and Andrew are putting it off as long as possible.

So the moronic nature of this plot is not entirely my fault, though I am to blame for thinking it worthy of blurbification. Like if Anne-Marie just got tired of her flatmate’s failure to put out and decided to make him jealous, that might have been mildly interesting (only mildly, mind); but no, she has to be unexpectedly swept off her feet by Mr Perfect. I’m thinking if she’s deliriously happy to be marrying Duncan she was never really that into Andrew; he was just her back-up option in case nobody better came along. Andrew sounds pretty passive-aggressive, with his feelings of being ‘strangely cheated’ and his silences when she’s wittering on about her wedding. He needs to move on. You snooze, you lose. But no, he has to try it on with her the night before her wedding. Classy guy. Wouldn’t the time for a drunken snog have been, oh, approximately three days after you moved in together? just to get it out of the way?

OK, hands up who thinks Anne-Marie is going to choose the flash newbie over the ‘good friend’? This fails as a cliffhanger for anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of romcoms and/or soap operas. She should not be marrying anyone in that dress. Eew, the inexplicable green streaks in the skirt and the ugly sleeves, it burns.

Actually, nobody who thinks side ponytails are a valid hairstyle option for their wedding day should be getting married, as their judgment is clearly shot to hell. This is especially true if they happen to have no ears.

30 May 2010 0

selling your knees for drugs

‘Classical story’ is invariably shorthand for ‘I ripped off this plot from somebody else who already did it better’. I have never read The Prince and The Pauper, nor seen the film, but clearly I had read a blurb for it in the back of one of my beloved Puffin Classics and this is my unique take on it. Sigh.

I feel that Jane and Gina may have had some unique form of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome whereby Gina monopolised all the hair. Clearly being homeless and miserable has a terrible effect upon your hair, not to mention your ability to apply mascara; though judging by the state of their mother, this may be inherited. Why is the homeless girl bothering with eye makeup and red nail polish anyway? Also, wouldn’t she have sold the bit of bling around her neck for food or drugs by now?

I do not understand why Gina’s fantastically rich adoptive parents only adopted the one twin. This makes no sense. Was deadbeat mother with the identically tiny wonky mouth insisting on hanging on to Jane? Or was there another set of prospective parents lobbying to bring one up in poverty, and social services thought ‘yeah, this will make an interesting social experiment’?

I love that Jane’s home (a.k.a. cardboard box) is attached with a wriststrap, presumably so that nobody will steal it. Obviously it is much more valuable than the Love Locket. I don’t exactly get how the Love Locket is constructed, when you close it won’t the heart be hanging side on to the chain rather than facing front? Where is the hinge? Had I never seen an actual locket?

Aw, poor Gina. Luxury is always empty, isn’t it? OK, so obviously her adoptive parents are totally evil and her legs are abnormally short and she has no knees (well, I am assuming this based on Jane’s appearance, but maybe Jane sold her knees for drugs) but still, girlfriend, look at your fabulous bouncy voluminous hair!

And wow, their parents. If that was my true identity, I wouldn’t want it. No wonder Gina has substituted them with a string of on-trend blue plastic beads, to match the earrings hanging from the side of her skull. WHY DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE NO EARS.

26 May 2010 0