Hush, Hush Redux: Prologue - Part 1
Projection Room Voices: You're redoing this one?
ZeldaQueen: Oh yeah! Greetings and salutations, folks! Welcome to the revamped sporking of Hush, Hush! Some of you may recall when I sporked this the first time around, over at the Realm. Well, I took a look at it, and decided that my sporking skills improved and I missed quite a few things the first time around, so I’d be giving this a second shot. So please enjoy, and -
[Suddenly, the closet door flies open behind her and crashes to the ground. Ket Makura is standing inside of it, spatula between her teeth and an armload of papers clutched to her chest.]
ZeldaQueen: The hell?!?
Ket: *Spits out the spatula* I’m not letting you do this alone. This series is full of religious fail, and I aim to rip it apart. I am personally offended, and I demand satisfaction. I have done research! *Drops the stack of papers with a heavy thud.*
ZeldaQueen: Well, far be it for me to deny you the chance to inflict the torture of badfic upon yourself. And there certainly is quite a lot of religious fail. *holds out hand* Welcome to Hush Hush, Ket!
Ket: *Picks up her things, then shakes Zelda’s hand firmly* Thank you. *Sits beside her* Just a note before we begin: I’m an enthusiast when it comes to religion, especially things to do with angels and demons, but I don’t call myself an expert. Religious studies are not always concrete--to be blunt, it’s hard to get scholars to agree on what time it is. However, I’m here to point out the absolute fail that Fitzpatrick has done with even the most basic of research into Abrahamic religions.
ZeldaQueen: Well, no time to get started on that like the present! Let us begin.
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
Prologue (Part 1)
ZeldaQueen: We open with a quote from Peter 2:4.
Ket: King James version: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;"
ZeldaQueen: Between this and the shirtless winged guy on the front cover, three guesses as to which supernatural beings replace sparkly vampires in this thing.
Ket: Hilariously, I almost picked this up in a Barnes and Noble, once upon a time, as I have a thing for angels. Then I read a review about how ass it was, and was very glad that I didn’t.
ZeldaQueen: Indeed, for like Meyer, Fitzpatrick seems to think that having her characters be angels/fallen angels means she can do whatever she wants with them. That’s pretty obvious from the start, because you see that part about God putting angels who sin into hell? Lies. All of it. God never shows up in this series at all, first off. I have a feeling I’ll be ranting more about it later, but to get it out of the way, no God.
Ket: *Grinds teeth* But we’ll torch that bridge when we come to it.
ZeldaQueen: Indeed. The other thing, which we’ll also be torching more intensely when we get to it is the part about the angels being sent to hell. As we’ll see later, for whatever reasons, the angels seem rather averse to that. But that’s for later! For now, the prologue!
Ket: Let’s get this shitshow started.
ZeldaQueen: Unlike Meyer, Fitzpatrick actually does know the difference between a prologue and a preface. This one starts off in “Loire Valley, France, November 1565”.
Ket: Oh, and for history: 1565 was the year that the Spanish massacred the French in Florida. French Huguenots (Protestants) in specific. Fun.
ZeldaQueen: Well, no pesky history comes into play here! All that matters is the thing everyone in this book focuses on - sex - is going on. Specifically, a nobleman named Chauncey de Langeais is doing a peasant woman on the banks of the Loire River for...uh… reasons. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t it cause problems if a nobleman was seen screwing a peasant out in public?
Ket: Pfft, Zelda. He was noble! How could someone ever make a fuss about him fucking in broad daylight where anyone could catch him? In a Catholic country, no less!
ZeldaQueen: Of course, what was I thinking?
ETA: It has been brought to our attention that "Chauncey" is an English name and not a French name, as Fitzpatrick apparently assumed. Because of this, we shall begin our first count - DID NOT DO THE RESEARCH. You can guess what this one is for.
DID NOT DO THE RESEARCH: 1
ZeldaQueen: Incidentally, it makes even more sense that they’re out fucking right now, because a storm’s rolling in! So they’re all muddy and it’s cloudy and dark, and I’m sure that’s a fantastic way to finish up!
Ket: And get pneumonia and die, but hey! Sex!
ZeldaQueen: Well, they don’t die unfortunately. Instead, Chauncey throws the girl his silver shoe buckle because… uh… I guess it’s supposed to be payment. But she’s not mentioned to be a prostitute. And besides, isn’t it customary to pay with actual money if one has it, which I'm assuming a nobleman would?
Ket: Don’t ask me. This is the same man that is apparently wearing both shoes and boots, because he talks about having muddy boots in the same damned scene.
ZeldaQueen: You’re right. *holds head* If it hasn’t become apparent yet, folks, Fitzpatrick has a peculiar habit. She’ll try to set up a scene, but have something just be… off about it. You can see what she’s trying to do, but there’s some detail that’s just plain wrong. It’s like those “What’s Wrong With This Picture” puzzles, where everything looks normal, except there’s a duck driving a car. So for those sorts of things, we shall introduce our next count - SAY WHAT?
SAY WHAT?: 2
That’s one for him randomly paying with a shoe buckle and one for him apparently wearing shoes and boots.
Ket: And we might as well introduce our third count, too. This is for when someone does something that either the thought process behind it is completely fucked, or there was clearly none at all. Our first count is for Chauncey fucking a peasant in public in the middle of the day, where anyone could see.
ILL LOGIC: 1
ZeldaQueen: So the rain comes pouring in, the peasant girl runs off, and Chauncey starts to walk home. Why is the nobleman walking, you might be wondering. Well, apparently he “let his gelding wander in the meadow”, which means that it’s impossible for him to get it back. So he’s walking home. Alone. In the pouring rain. In the dark.
Ket: Because dammit, it’s just too hard to tie a horse to a tree or a post or something!
ZeldaQueen: Not to mention, geldings are castrated horses and are highly valued for being far calmer than stallions. Given how we’re specifically told the gelding is “wandering”, I have to wonder how far the damned thing got.
Ket: I would have found my horse. It doesn’t sound like he ran off; just that he was wandering around, eating grass and not thinking about mares.
ZeldaQueen: So more Ill Logic, then! He decided to just walk instead of get his horse…
ILL LOGIC: 3
ZeldaQueen: In the pouring rain…
ILL LOGIC: 4
ZeldaQueen: Even though he’s a nobleman and thus is running the risk of being kidnapped or robbed or murdered.
ILL LOGIC: 5
Ket: You have to assume he’s dressed nicely. He would be a burning-bright flag for every highwayman around.
ZeldaQueen: Especially since he’s walking home through a graveyard. Yeah, that doesn’t bode ill! Chauncey assures himself that he can basically navigate the place in a dense fog, only to be cut off by the sight of something. And thus, we are introduced to this.
“At first glance what appeared to be a large angel topping a nearby monument rose to full height. Neither stone nor marble, the boy had arms and legs. His torso was naked, his feet were bare, and peasant trousers hung low on his waist. He hopped down from the monument, the ends of his black hair dripping rain. It slid down his face, which was dark as a Spaniard's.”
ZeldaQueen: Christ.
Ket: Uh. You know some statues DO have arms and legs, right?
ZeldaQueen: Yeah, I have no clue what that part meant. Him being stone and/or marble has nothing to do with his appendages!
SAY WHAT?: 3
ZeldaQueen: Also, nice to know that this guy was rocking the low-rise pants look way back in the 1500s. Why do I get the feeling Fitzpatrick was envisioning him on the cover of some heavy metal album?
Ket: Because you’re probably right.
ZeldaQueen: On a final note, hey Ket, didn’t you say earlier that this was the year that the Spanish killed the French in Florida?
Ket: French Huguenots, yes. I really doubt that a Catholic would care--they kind of ended up massacring their own Protestants in 1562, and were at war over Catholism vs Protestantism from 1562 to 1598 (the French Wars of Religion). Now, I know he never says he’s Catholic, but because he’s nobility and not working class, it’s a pretty goddamn good bet that he’s is.
ZeldaQueen: Ah, gotcha. Well, in any case, this fellow is someone who we’re going to end up hating a whole lot. We don’t actually learn his name right now, though. Instead, we get Chauncey demanding to know who the fuck he is. The boy’s response is to smirk, and as long as we’re starting counts, now’s the time for a good one.
JERKASS EXTRAORDINAIRE: 1
ZeldaQueen: You can bet that this one will be seeing a lot of use. So yeah, Chauncey starts pulling rank to get this asshole to answer the question, and the boy just starts taunting Chauncey about being a bastard. A literal bastard, I mean. Not a bastard in the sense of how the boy is acting.
JERKASS EXTRAORDINAIRE: 2
Ket: Here’s another headscratcher: why isn’t Chauncey carrying a pistol? Or a sword, for that matter You would think that going to a peasant area would be all the more of a risk for him, and being armed would only make sense.
ZeldaQueen: He has a sword. He starts to reach for it when he first notices the boy. He just never actually uses it, because upon being insulted as a bastard, his response is to unsheathe it and… just start whining “Take it back!” like a five-year-old.
Ket: Have any of you guys in the audience read “The Three Musketeers”? Or watched the movies? The book is set during this time period. If you did, you’ll remember that D'Artagnan got into three duels in one day, one of them only for bumping into a man and not apologizing well enough for his taste. Duels happened for stupid reasons. I cannot imagine that this putz wouldn’t carve this boy like a turkey for insulting his parentage.
ILL LOGIC: 6
ETA: Ket has been corrected; "The Three Musketeers" actually took place about 80 years later. She assumed it did because of killing Protestants. This is what happen when you assume rather than look up.
ZeldaQueen: Well, given later events, I get the impression we’re supposed to see Chauncey as being arrogant/an asshole here. Because, you know, it’s not like accusing someone of being an illegitimate kid in this time period would cause problems, especially if said kid was the child of a nobleman. It’s also rather hard to see Chauncey as the bad one when this jerkass kid shows up out of nowhere and keeps taunting Chauncey about being a bastard.
JERKASS EXTRAORDINAIRE: 3
“The boy walked up and pushed the blade aside. He suddenly looked older than Chauncey had presumed, maybe even a year or two older than Chauncey. "One
of the Devil's brood," he answered.”
ZeldaQueen: We’re going to learn later that the “boy” looks to be about seventeen. I was under the impression that in that time period, a seventeen-year-old would be pretty much considered a grown man.
Ket: It also implies that Chauncey is only fifteen or so.
ZeldaQueen: That would make sense, given later details, but we honestly don’t get that impression here. It would have been helpful if there was something like him feeling that at age fifteen society now considered him a true man, or something to indicate what was going on in the period.
Ket: I’m not a historian, but I would assume that in the mid fifteen hundreds, Chauncey would be considered a man or nearly so at fifteen, yes.
ZeldaQueen: Indeed. And since we have a post limit here, we'll just take a break and finish this next time. Until then!
DID NOT DO THE RESEARCH - 1
SAY WHAT? - 3
ILL LOGIC - 6
JERKASS EXTRAORDINAIRE - 3
Onward to: Prologue - Part 2
Return to: Table of Contents