skygiants

December requested posts thing the second: five most cracktastic plot twists I have ever encountered, for rachelmanija. HOO BOY.

Okay, first of all, I am in no way guaranteeing that these are the actually the five most cracktastic plot twists I have ever encountered, because I'm sure as soon as this goes up five people will remind me of five more EVEN MORE CRACKTASTIC plot twists, to which I will say "I HAD COMPLETELY BLOCKED THAT OUT OF MY HEAD AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR REMINDING ME." This is just five reasonably cracktastic plot twists that I can come up with off the top of my head.

1. Since rymenhild has asked me to talk about the Company books later on this month, I may as well set the stage here for things to come: ( series-destroying spoilers, SERIOUSLY KAGE BAKER WTF )

2. I think Sheri Tepper only gets to be on here once and I honestly can't decide which was weirder, the time that evil undead university professors took the conjoined twins and separated them into screaming body parts in boxes before they turned into, respectively, an bird-person and an otter-person or the time that humanity's only hope was to join the civilization of sentient squids under the ocean so they could give birth to mer-babies. But honorable mentions certainly go to the time the magical Native American heroine turned out to be a sentient lizard-person who magically removed the sex drive from the human race (Gibbons' Decline and Fall) and the time Beauty from Beauty and the Beast was kidnapped by documentary filmmakers and taken to a dystopian future before learning that all horror writers automatically went straight to hell (Beauty).

3. Did anybody else ever read a set of kid's books about Finn mac Cool? One of them was called The Wizard Children of Finn and it was a fairly normal book in which a couple of kids go back in time and have adventures with Finn mac Cool and the preteen girl kind of crushes on him before discovering that he is her ancestor. Mildly awkward! Then there was a sequel whose name I cannot remember, in which the kids travel back in time again, get turned into birds, and discover that their mother also traveled in time, got turned into a deer, hooked up with Finn (who is also her ancestor) (after turning back from being a deer), and gave birth . . . to two babies . . . which Finn named after that cute girl he met one time and her younger brother . . . before mother and babies all fled forward into the future to allow for the cycle to repeat. SUCH AN INCREASE IN AWKWARD IN SUCH A SHORT SPAN OF TIME.

4. A lot of really weird things happened in Mawaru Penguindrum, but I can't talk about the weirdest and most horrifying because WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THE FROG. I will instead talk about the second-weirdest, which is the time it turns out ( spoilers...I guess? ) No, I'm lying, that isn't even anywhere near the weirdest plot twist.

5. I know, I know, we are all tired of hearing about the pig-dragon boyfriend of doom. AND YET I CAN'T NOT. To make up for it, please have some more cracktastic plot twists courtesy of a request from the last time I did a meme of this nature three years ago.

If anybody else feels inclined to try and top these examples from the top of my head, PLEASE DO.

I SWEAR TO GOD, this is my LAST Mary Brown reread. NO MORE. But my copy of Playing the Jack finally came in at the library, aka The One With Cross-Dressing And Syphilis, and I couldn't not read it.

And for the record: I can totally see why I loved this book as a kid. Not only is it better-written than most Mary Browns and contains (wonder of wonders) more than one sympathetic female character, but it is entirely free of magic unicorn rings and sexy dragon-pigs; the only nod to sff is that the heroine --

-- sidenote: the book plays coy about the fact that "Zoroaster Mortimer" (YEP) is really Zoe Mortimer for the first hundred pages or so, but given that the front cover spoils it I don't really feel bad about it --

-- anyway, the heroine is sort of very slightly mildly psychic, but this basically has no effect on the plot. ANYWAY. What I started to say is Playing the Jack is that rare piece of work, a female picaresque narrative, in which Our Lovable Rogue of a Heroine bounces around taking a bunch of different identities and a bunch of different love interests and meandering cheerfully around the edges of conventional morality until she gets her happily ever after. Like, Tom Jones and Candide are the influences here. The only recent similar story that I can think of is the Bloody Jack series, which is even more traditionally picaresque because Jacky cares even less about conventional morality and has about twenty more love interests of both genders. (Needless to say, I love the Bloody Jack series.)

. . . ON THE OTHER HAND, there is the terrible love interest, and the whole super bizarre section set in the brothel. And, let us not forget, the syphilis. ( Plot summary under the cut! )

You know how sometimes you all of a sudden remember the existence of an author from your childhood, and you go, "really? Was the heroine's love interest actually a pig that that turned into a dragon? Did the fairies seriously turn out to be aliens that made them do it? Did the villainness have sex with an evil broom? Did that really happen?"

So when I went home this weekend I did my best to see if I could locate my old copies of Mary Brown's novels. The only one I have so far found is Strange Deliverance, which I remembered as "the fairies are aliens who make them do it," but I FULLY BELIEVE THE OTHERS EXISTED AND I WILL LOCATE THEM. (Though if anyone else has read any of Mary Brown's books, corroborative evidence is also welcomed.)

Anyway, my memory is not quite accurate about Strange Deliverance; the climax turns out to involve fairies vs. aliens who make the local kids do it, or at least turn up with some experimented-upon fetuses in HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES after entrancing the local prom queen and her hapless boyfriend into going up to the fairy circle (where the aliens are currently hanging out) and playing "Sleeping Beauty" every couple of months.

Oh, also, everything takes place in a post-apocalyptic town with a eugenicidal dictator. Aforementioned dictator helpfully reveals his fascist eugenicidal ambitions in the prologue.

Then we have a timeskip; midway through the book, our protagonists are SHOCKED when someone points out that in a town where no disabled infants survive a day past their birth, the only gay couple disappeared in mysterious circumstances a few days after making their sexuality public, and the only people of color who were in the town's original population never married or had children despite marriage and children being compulsory for everyone else, this MIGHT be part of the all-powerful town dictator's sinister design!

(There is black character in the book. She is the Magical Herb-Woman who lives just outside the town and provides helpful, sage, unselfish mystical wisdom to all of the white kids who are our protagonists.

There are also disabled characters in the book. They are mentally disabled twins, innocent and completely indistinguishable souls who are so naively devoted to Prom Queen that they follow her around, carry her stuff, and trot nobly and self-sacrificingly with her into ill-advised fairy circle alien experimentation shenanigans. The narrative is very eager tell you about all the times they comically mess up their words.)

Anyway our actual protagonist doesn't really do much except go to mandatory sexy summer camp with her boyfriend and think half-worried and half-judgmental thoughts about Prom Queen. Eventually she gets a magical unicorn ring, but that's not really . . . important . . .? GIVEN THAT THE MAIN PLOT INVOLVES ALIENS AND POST-APOCALYPTIC DICTATORSHIP. ( Spoilers I guess. )

MARY BROWN, you guys.