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[skygiants]

I got sidetracked from my quest to read all the way through the Cadfael series for a while, but now I am back on the bandwagon! Last week I read Dead Man's Ransom and The Pilgrim of Hate, which puts me ten books through the series and I think almost halfway done.

Dead Man's Ransom is the one where there's a very dramatic love square focusing on three Welsh kids and the daughter of the sheriff who's being traded for one of the Welsh kids for ransom, but, MORE IMPORTANTLY, it is the one where Sister Avice/Magdalena reappears, who is AWESOME. Avice used to be a wealthy man's mistress, and when that was over she was like "okay, better find a new career! I'm going to go be awesome in a convent now." Examples of particular awesome include:

CADFAEL: "Magdalena?" That sounds . . . weirdly penitent for you.
AVICE/MAGDALENA: Oh, well, all the other nuns were so excited about getting to reform a sinner, I just didn't have the heart to contradict them.

HUGH BERINGAR: I will ride home with you just to make sure you get there all right!
AVICE/MAGDALENA: WHY THANK YOU, Hot Sheriff. >:D I might be a holy sister now, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy looking.

AVICE/MAGDALENA: Well, I'm coming to see you because we had some problems with a band of raiders. . .
CADFAEL AND HUGH BERINGAR: Oh my gosh are you and your nuns okay???
AVICE/MAGDALENA: Oh, it was fine, I organized the nuns and foresters to make booby traps and sent them packing. Uh, the reason I'm here is because we actually captured a prisoner and we figured we should pass him along? :D?

In short: Avice is awesome and I hope she shows up more in later books!

Pilgrim of Hate, meanwhile, is The One With Continuity, where Cadfael is like "hey remember all that stuff that happened in the first book in the series? Yeah, I remember it too! Also remember that [spoiler] of mine? YEAH I REMEMBER HIM TOO. - oh I guess here is some plot. And also, a miracle. Enjoy!" I like continuity, so I have no objection to this.

Anyway, as I read through, the main thing that I have been noticing is how ridiculously dedicated to matchmaking Cadfael is. Half the time he solves the mystery pretty much solely because he is invested in Those Crazy Kids Getting Together! Which is great and all, and certainly fun to read about, but it makes me kind of glad I don't know him in real life.

(BECCA: *has mildly friendly interaction with young man of appropriate age*
CADFAEL: OH HO, I SMELL ROMANCE IN THE OFFING!
BECCA: But - I'm not really sure that -
CADFAEL: Oh I see, you're worried about the fact that he's under suspicion of murder! Don't worry, I will fix that for you.
BECCA: No, in fact my actual objection is that I met him four days ago.)

I mean, can you imagine Cadfael let loose in, say, Revolutionary Girl Utena? He'd witness one scene of Touga hitting on Utena, and he'd have Utena/Touga, Anthy/Miki, Juri/Ruka, and Nanami/Saionji all married off before anyone even had time to say "Wait, I'm a lesbian!"

Comments

[littledust.livejournal.com]

He'd witness one scene of Touga hitting on Utena, and he'd have Utena/Touga, Anthy/Miki, Juri/Ruka, and Nanami/Saionji all married off before anyone even had time to say "Wait, I'm a lesbian!"

I am now imagining a triple wedding in which the priests (played by the Shadow Girls) ask if anyone has any objections! AND THEN THE LESBIAN ISSUE IS RAISED. By Nanami, because she wants to marry her brother, damn it.

[skygiants]

Hahaha that is exactly how it would go down! (Although if it ever did get to the for-real wedding point with Nanami and Touga, she'd panic and run away at the last minute, because ACTUAL INCEST OUTSIDE OF FANTASY IS CREEPY. And then lay a freaked-out egg.)

[littledust.livejournal.com]

Now I want to rewatch Utena, damn it. Then I will read a million fan essays about it (is it real? is everything Anthy's dream/nightmare?) because I am that much of a nerd.

[skygiants]

Haha, you are not the only one! Last time I was up in Boston genarti and wickedtrue and I ended up rewatching the whole finale, which I hadn't seen since the first time I watched the series five or six years ago, and I was like ". . . I'd forgotten half of this actually happened, except I sitll don't know how much of it actually happened. WAIT I remembered the part about Touga and Saionji's shirts flying off!" I don't think we came to any deep conclusions except that since Anthy's finale outfit is the only sane thing anyone ever wears on the show, everyone else's fashion sense has to be Akio's fault.

(Why don't I have an Utena icon? I ask myself this every time I get into a discussion about it. One of these days I will actually get around to fixing that.)

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

If you don't feel like making any, sorceresses has some good ones.

[skygiants]

Oh, thank you for the rec! (Part of me wants to make some, but the problem is that I know there is a remastered version out in Japan that I do not have access to, which means I know that if I ever load the screencaps I have into Photoshop I will just spend the whole time weeping for what-might-have-been.)

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, the remasters -- while really pretty -- don't fix the terrible animation (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OffModel) in some of the later episodes. Shrunk down (and maybe brightened a bit, in the older version's case) there's really not much difference.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Hee! I totally need to re-read Ellis Peters. (Probably in English this time, though the only three books I own are in translation.)

[skygiants]

Last time I read it was years and years ago, so it is a lot of fun going back through the whole series now! Although I feel a little bit like I'm cheating, because I usually remember just enough to be able to tell who the murderer is from the moment that they're introduced, and then I can never know whether it's my own cleverness at figuring it out or just left-over knowledge from the first time.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

:-D Yeah, I'm often that way with lesser-loved Christies.

[skygiants]

I never read all that much Christie when I was little - I think that's because my nine-or-ten-year-old self was slightly traumatized by And Then There Were None.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I read heaps (and still do, though most of them for the second or twelfth time), but then, I started with Why Didn't They Ask Evans, which is rubbish but definitely not scary, and mostly memorable for its adorable pair of leads. I didn't get to ATTWN until I'd already soaked up a bunch of the "Let's have tea. Oh, look, a corpse. We'd better have another cuppa" ones.

[skygiants]

One of these days I definitely do at least want to go back and read the Tommy and Tuppence books, because from what I've heard they are absolutely up my alley.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Like WDTAE, they fall into the category of "not very good, but the characters make up for it."

Though my favourite when it comes to cast is A Murder is Announced, and not just for the lesbians.

[skygiants]

. . . and yet lesbians are certainly also a draw. *cheerful* *and makes note!*

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Exactly halfway done, in fact, as there are twenty Cadfael books.

There is one non-heterosexual Cadfael-series OTP of my heart, and yes, it totally conflicts with Cadfael's own let's-pair-up-those-crazy-kids modus operandi. But since that particular OTP appears in Book 20, I can't really talk about it here.

I also love Avice. I just reread the first book she shows up in, and she totally stole her scene. (Am I wrong to want a new Cadfael TV series that has Cadfael and Avice as a pair of detectives with a true and celibate love a la Encyclopedia and Sally?)

[skygiants]

Aren't there twenty-one? That's the count I keep getting from the lists in front, but maybe one is a short story.

Hah, I know the OTP you are talking about anyway, though! Either because we have talked about it before or because you requested it for Yuletide one time, I can't remember.

(IF THAT'S WRONG I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT. *_____*)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

One is a collection of three short stories, and none of them are that interesting. And yes, I did write such a Yuletide request, and we may have discussed the matter.

[skygiants]

Oh, good to know. Which book is the short-story collection?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

A Rare Benedictine.

[skygiants]

*makes note* Thank you!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Also I think of Pilgrim of Hate as a sort of retcon. As I understand it, Peters never intended A Morbid Taste for Bones as the start of a series. She read about a particular event, thought, "Hey, that would be a wonderful place to put a corpse," and built the book around it. The problem was, putting a corpse in that spot actually altered the historical identity of Shrewsbury Abbey. Forced to deal with a Shrewsbury monk as her protagonist for the long term, Peters had to find some way to maintain Shrewsbury's holiness. Pilgrim of Hate says, "You know that thing that happened in Book 1? Well, it didn't really matter, and this is why."

[skygiants]

That is fascinating, and makes a lot of sense. ("NO SERIOUSLY WE CAN STILL HAVE MIRACLES I SWEAR") One of these days I should actually read up on the historical Shrewsbury Abbey, because now I am awfully curious.

[ceitfianna]

The matchmaking also happens a lot in older mysteries, I think its part of how some of those writers like Christie and Peters thought about things. I love Avice so much, she's just so badass.

[skygiants]

It does make the stories very neat - all loose ends wrapped up in a tidy happy-ever-after. But it seems to be a special passion for Cadfael. Like, in Dead Man's Ransom, as soon as the kid mentions that he has a fiance, Cadfael IMMEDIATELY starts worrying and fretting about whether their relationship will be happy and how can he get them to be happier together and so on, and it's like - Cadfael! You just met the kid! You are not responsible for his future happiness! IT'S OKAY.

Avice is so amazingly awesome.

[ceitfianna]

Cadfael I think likes the young people to have what he didn't so he sets them up.

It is very silly but he clearly enjoys it and usually there's romance there.

He didn't set up the couple in One Corpse Too Many they kind of did it themselves. So at times, he just nudges them along but yes he does like his couples.

[skygiants]

Oh, the couples do totally do it to themselves, too. Cadfael is just very, very invested. *laughing* He is the definition of the TVTropes term Shipper On Deck.

[ceitfianna]

That's a great ship name and I think it also fits Miss Marple very well.

Ngaio Marsh isn't quite as bad with her couples, usually its a matter of they're already there but they need some help.

I think those cozy mysteries are where my love of incidental romances came from. I think I need to go reread some Cadfael soon. In terms of historical mysteries, I've found the Benjamin January series and I wish I'd started reading it ages ago.

[skygiants]

Oh man, the Benjamin January books are awesome! I am most of the way through them now - I think I have three left. I really like the characters and the complexity of the historical period.

[ceitfianna]

I'm partway through the first one and they're so good.

Yes, she's done her research and the characters feel so real too.

[skygiants]

The first one is one of my favorites, but, uh, there are special reasons it appeals to my interests that I will not spoil for you. >:D (I am also a big fan of the one that takes place at the opera house.)

[oneechan19.livejournal.com]

*snickers at the last bit*

[skygiants]

Next time, on Crossovers That Should Never Really Be Imagined: NCIS comes to Gold Crown Town, attempts to solve Mytho's not-exactly-murder de-heartification. Fails. Miserably.

[oneechan19.livejournal.com]

*CRACKS. UP.*

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

Half the time he solves the mystery pretty much solely because he is invested in Those Crazy Kids Getting Together! Which is great and all, and certainly fun to read about, but it makes me kind of glad I don't know him in real life.

*snort* I never thought of that before, but you're totally right.

But I know enough people like him it probably wouldn't be all that different from some of the interactions I have in real life. *g*

[skygiants]

Hah! Point, and at least Cadfael has the advantage of being an adorably wacky monk to counterbalance all the matchmaking.

[lacewood]

Oooh, where does Sister Avice first turn up? I read the first book and liked it, but didn't get around to the rest. Maybe I'll just skip ahead to the AWESOME NUNS. (I would have kept reading if I'd known there were awesome nuns ahead!)

[skygiants]

She's introduced in The Leper of St. Giles, where she is a brand-new nun but still awesome, and then becomes REDOUBLED AWESOME in this book! (Awesome nuns are the best.)

[miseline.livejournal.com]

LOL. I love it. As usual you put these things so well. :)
Oh, I never really paid much attention Cadfael's dedication to matchmaking specifically. I guess it's just that I'm a sucker for that sort of thing, so I just accept it.

[skygiants]

Heh, thanks!

I don't think I picked up on it when I was younger and reading - I was just like, 'oh, obviously every book has to have a ~romance~! - but these days I sort of can't help but be like, "gosh, there sure are a lot of star-crossed lovers running around Shrewsbury . . ."