(no subject)
Oct. 20th, 2012 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA Cast of Corbies was always my favorite of the Mercedes Lackey bard books as a kid. Why? Because FAKE SHAKESPEARE is why.
Our cast looks like this:
RAVEN: a ~sexy one-eyed mysterious gypsy musician~ with ~wanderlust~
MAGPIE: a feisty but also sensible but also naive musician who just wants to settle down and have some peace and stability
DUKE ARDEN: a good duke! who is also a good man! Just in case you were wondering!
REGINA SHEVRON: the duke's brilliant actress mistress but they are REALLY IN LOVE!
SOME FREE-SPIRITED MUSICIANS: some free-spirited musicians
SOME WACKY THEATER PEOPLE: some wacky theater people
SOME EVIL PREJUDICED RELIGIOUS PEOPLE: some evil prejudiced religious people
Raven and Magpie are our designated protagonists and therefore designated to have bickery sexual tension, although unless without Mercedes Lackey pointing out that it's sexual tension it pretty much just looks like bickering from people who don't like each other very much.
Anyway, our designated protagonists and some free-spirited musicians meet up with some wacky theater people and promptly get recruited to play music for the local Duke's production of Fake Shakespeare, which is titled something along the lines of As Cymbeline Likes His Twelfth Night.
There they meet Regina! They are initially wary of her until
REGINA: Hey Raven, I guess you probably think I'm pretty high and mighty, what with being a duke's mistress and all.
RAVEN: I mean, I don't know, you seem pretty nice?
REGINA: Well, guess what! I had a rough childhood on the streets!
RAVEN: omg congratulations on surviving your rough childhood let's be besties!
REGINA: :D
This is extra hilarious because this is what Regina does in every first conversation. Witness:
REGINA: Hey Magpie, my empathy sense are tingling. Did you, by any chance, have a rough childhood?
MAGPIE: omg I did I was raised by an alcoholic
REGINA: Guess what! I had a rough childhood too! I was a street urchin!
MAGPIE: omg we have so much in common let's be besties!
REGINA: :D
MAGPIE: You know, I've never had a female friend before
REGINA: Man, you should have told them about your rough childhood! Trust me, it works every time.
(Magpie and Regina don't actually talk onscreen about much besides dudes for the rest of the novel, but hey, that's a Bechdel pass!)
And then everyone spends the next two hundred pages wandering around the theater going "Gosh, wouldn't it suck if this place caught ON FIRE?" and "man, I wonder if the evil prejudiced religious people have the power to set things on FIRE!" with occasional breaks for "Regina looks super hot in breeches, guys. And by that I mean, hot like FIRE."
I'm not going to directly spoil what happens at the end, but . . . three guesses, and the first two don't count.
I will leave you with this piece of excellent relationship advice, direct from Mercedes Lackey!
MERCEDES LACKEY: Incompatible life goals, class differences, solemn vows that you'll never ever get married -- as long as you've been set ON FIRE together, none of these things matter. Recommended for everyone! It's better than couples therapy!
(BECCA: Mercedes Lackey, do you just really, really enjoy ending your books with dramatic cities on fire?
MERCEDES LACKEY: Look, I couldn't get the one thousand elephants, okay?)
Our cast looks like this:
RAVEN: a ~sexy one-eyed mysterious gypsy musician~ with ~wanderlust~
MAGPIE: a feisty but also sensible but also naive musician who just wants to settle down and have some peace and stability
DUKE ARDEN: a good duke! who is also a good man! Just in case you were wondering!
REGINA SHEVRON: the duke's brilliant actress mistress but they are REALLY IN LOVE!
SOME FREE-SPIRITED MUSICIANS: some free-spirited musicians
SOME WACKY THEATER PEOPLE: some wacky theater people
SOME EVIL PREJUDICED RELIGIOUS PEOPLE: some evil prejudiced religious people
Raven and Magpie are our designated protagonists and therefore designated to have bickery sexual tension, although unless without Mercedes Lackey pointing out that it's sexual tension it pretty much just looks like bickering from people who don't like each other very much.
Anyway, our designated protagonists and some free-spirited musicians meet up with some wacky theater people and promptly get recruited to play music for the local Duke's production of Fake Shakespeare, which is titled something along the lines of As Cymbeline Likes His Twelfth Night.
There they meet Regina! They are initially wary of her until
REGINA: Hey Raven, I guess you probably think I'm pretty high and mighty, what with being a duke's mistress and all.
RAVEN: I mean, I don't know, you seem pretty nice?
REGINA: Well, guess what! I had a rough childhood on the streets!
RAVEN: omg congratulations on surviving your rough childhood let's be besties!
REGINA: :D
This is extra hilarious because this is what Regina does in every first conversation. Witness:
REGINA: Hey Magpie, my empathy sense are tingling. Did you, by any chance, have a rough childhood?
MAGPIE: omg I did I was raised by an alcoholic
REGINA: Guess what! I had a rough childhood too! I was a street urchin!
MAGPIE: omg we have so much in common let's be besties!
REGINA: :D
MAGPIE: You know, I've never had a female friend before
REGINA: Man, you should have told them about your rough childhood! Trust me, it works every time.
(Magpie and Regina don't actually talk onscreen about much besides dudes for the rest of the novel, but hey, that's a Bechdel pass!)
And then everyone spends the next two hundred pages wandering around the theater going "Gosh, wouldn't it suck if this place caught ON FIRE?" and "man, I wonder if the evil prejudiced religious people have the power to set things on FIRE!" with occasional breaks for "Regina looks super hot in breeches, guys. And by that I mean, hot like FIRE."
I'm not going to directly spoil what happens at the end, but . . . three guesses, and the first two don't count.
I will leave you with this piece of excellent relationship advice, direct from Mercedes Lackey!
MERCEDES LACKEY: Incompatible life goals, class differences, solemn vows that you'll never ever get married -- as long as you've been set ON FIRE together, none of these things matter. Recommended for everyone! It's better than couples therapy!
(BECCA: Mercedes Lackey, do you just really, really enjoy ending your books with dramatic cities on fire?
MERCEDES LACKEY: Look, I couldn't get the one thousand elephants, okay?)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-20 11:12 pm (UTC)When I read A Cast of Corbies, I had the strong suspicion that Josepha Sherman had done most of the writing, because the writing style is off-kilter in a not-particularly-interesting way, and the only really good lines are blatantly stolen from Shakespeare and some folksongs.
Then again, I've read more of Lackey's worse books since then. The author of Intrigues, The One In Which Our Young Herald's Entire Interior Narrative Is Written In Painfully Bad Dialect, may certainly have had something to contribute to the prose style of A Cast of Corbies.
That said, the Oh No The Theatre May Possibly Catch Fire Because of Evil Not!Christians plot of Corbies is fairly entertaining.
Also, the Good Freethinking Gypsies and Artists !!! vs. Evil not!Christians Who Hate Aliens plotline of the Bards series is ... more than a bit problematic, on many, many levels.
I have just realized that I wrote half this comment in Title Case. I blame Mercedes Lackey. And possibly Josepha Sherman too.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 12:35 am (UTC)The whole GYPSIES VS. FAKE CHRISTIANS thing gets more problematic every time I read one of the books -- not least because Mercedes Lackey didn't even bother to thinly disguise her Gypsies. Because it's not like that's a real culture or anything anyway, right?
no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-20 11:50 pm (UTC)I don't know.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 02:22 pm (UTC)but man the only thing I remember about Mercedes Lackey is that one series where I thought the ladies should've kissed. oath something?? oaths were involved, that's all I know. anyway, I was saddened when it became apparent that the kisses would not happen. :(
no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 02:37 pm (UTC)And then bickery sexual tension and she and her love interest somehow magically get over their completely incompatible life goals because ROMANCE whatever.
OATHBREAKERS! Yes that was the one where kisses did not happen because one of the ladies was ~magically asexual~. But they were totally girlfriends.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 04:37 pm (UTC)REGINA uses TRAGIC BACKSTORY!
It is SUPER EFFECTIVE!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 03:36 am (UTC)MERCEDES LACKEY uses PLOT RESOLUTION BY CITY ON FIRE EX MACHINA!
it's . . . . sort of effective . . . I guess?