The Wolf Gift--Chapter 15-16

Valkyrie, the fourth Starbleached Novella...ette...thing...whatever. Valkyrie is now live on Smashwords. Barnes and Noble and Amazon are still processing, but they should be live very soon.

We watched Hansel and Gretel here at Casa CW tonight. It was a movie I was vaguely interested in, in that "Hey, this looks steampunky and cool and a little bit like the Brother's Grim, which was cool in its own atmospheric medocure way" way, but I didn't really know much about it past the trailers.

How did I react to it? Well, in a word:

Let's see, we had RANDOM FUCKING GUNS (I would have given them the things if somebody--say, Leonardo da Vinci or another Brilliant Not-Wizard had been behind the things, but it wasn't just the main characters who had them. EVERYBODY IN THIS MEDIEVAL PERIOD PIECE HAD GUNS) violence that served no fucking point whatsoever (It's going to take a couple decades for the many many many realistic headshots in Schindler's List to wear off. Seeing the cartoon version just kind of agitates things) it stole Sherlock Holmes's soundtrack (In its defense, it also stole Hans Zimmer) the special effects in it went from "Did we raid Dark Crystal's wardrome?" to "Atari" about halfway through, and it had misogyny. Oh, I'm sorry. That was understated.

IT HAD MISOGYNY

Yep. We had the Old Lady Witch, the Confident Female A'LA Ravenna Witch, the Token Lesbian of Evil witch, the White Witch of Virginal Purity The Male Lead Wants To But Will Never Fuck (Seriously. The second she came on screen I thought "She's a witch" and then thought "Cue unicorn" because VIRGINAL SYMBOLISM IS VIRGINAL) and yeah, did I mention the white witch thing? That CLEARLY only existed to mitigate the whole "WE ARE JUDGING PEOPLE'S BEHAVIOR ON THEIR APPEARANCE THEY ARE TOTALLY ARABS BLACK PEOPLE GANGSTERS WITCHES" vibe that wasn't just part of the movie, it was a major fucking plot point? AND DID WE SERIOUSLY DECIDE THAT ALL WITCHES EVER WERE EVIL WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF THE MOVIE STARTING? Did the movie-makers just not get the "This is the IRL religion of millions of people" memo when they decided to blanket-cast witches as the bad guys? I don't know which was it's most stand out feature: That we did the whole "only bad witches are ugly (and bonus points, OLD!)" trope in fucking 2012 or that there was a fucking middle age taser. 

A TASER.

THAT YOU WOUND UP LIKE ONE OF THOSE DYNAMO FLASHLIGHTS.

AND THEN USED TO SHOCK OLD UGLY WOMEN UNCONSCIOUS BECAUSE WITCHES.

THE FEMALE LEAD USED IT TO JUMPSTART A TROLL'S HEART. LIKE IT WAS SOME KIND OF DEFIBRILLATOR. BECAUSE A MOTHERFUCKING TASER IS A DEFIBRILLATOR. EXACTLY.

In short, the movie was nine kinds of painful awesome, and as soon as the riftrax exists I'm going to watch it with my brother because MIDDLE AGE TASER AND WHITE WITCH WITH GATLING GUN AND NO SWORDS I think I'll need to film his reaction and post it on youtube for posterity.

Yes. I love terrible things. Deal.

So how's Ruben doing?

...he's sneaking into Laura's house uninvited.

Let's go back to talking about a shitty fairy-tale reboot. The stupid there was actually entertaining.

Yeah, we get a long tour of Laura's house, and by long I mean we find out the names of the authors of all her books and who painted her cutesy landscapes on the wall. Whoever "Collette D" is, she'd better be either a major character in the novel or Anne Rice's BFF.

Laura comes into the house with her arms full of groceries and sees Wolf!Ruben standing in her living room, uninvited. He calls her beautiful.

The correct reaction to this is to leave the house very quickly, find the nearest projectile weapon and hold it at an optimal angle while dialing the cops, because GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.

Laura, of course, runs into Ruben's arms while sobbing because Ruben is the main character of an Anne Rice novel.

We move onto the sex very quickly. I will note paste it in here, but rest assured, boys and girls, Laura's nipples look like rose petals.

The chapter ends.

Next chapter.

Wolf!Ruben builds a fire because Ambiance. Laura comes down in another blowsy nightgown. Oh good. It's time to bond. 

 Laura tells Ruben people are looking for him. Ruben asks if she isn't scared living alone and Laura pinches Ruben's nipple.

...these people have all the depth of a sheet of saran wrap.

Ruben explains about him killing people because the voices in his head tell him to. AGAIN: CORRECT RESPONSE IS GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.

Instead, Laura uses Ruben's own attack during the death of Marchant to show Ruben that he's actively careful. Because she thinks that Wolf!Ruben rescued human Ruben.

One of my favorite books is Rebecca. The scene where Maxim confesses to murdering Rebecca to Mrs. De Winter comes to mind. Mostly because that book was fucked up on about six levels and it played it perfectly straight on all of them. I am reminded of that because Mrs. De Winter was a superior character to Laura, and we're talking about a chick who was happy her husband killed his previous wife because it meant he could only possibly love her. Mrs. De Winter loved Maxim because she was a co-dependant little mouse and it fit into her character. Laura loves Ruben because Anne Rice can't let a single strong female character exist.

Ruben can now explain that he is "that boy up north" but decides not to, because Human!Ruben isn't interesting enough.

Laura is like one of those women who decides to date a heroin addict because she likes his bad boy persona and she thinks it won't be that hard to help him sober up.

Ruben decides he loves Laura because he's fucked her twice, as opposed to just one time with Marchant. Then he decides he'd like to hunt a bobcat, but Laura might find the blood all icky. Then Anne Rice decides to show up and talk about how "we human beings"  insulate ourselves from life's horrors, because of course we all live in perfect padded mansions and get paid lots and lots of money.

I am running out of fires to tell characters to go die in.

Ruben then leaves to go save Random Victim from Random Criminals, and then to go stay at...oh dear god in heaven, "at the charming and beautiful little hotel called the Mill Valley Inn."


Well, now we know where Anne Rice stays when she has book signings in that part of california.

Having changed back, he goes up to his room and passes out, but not before vowing to see Laura again.

Volcano. Ruben, go die in a volcano.