It appears that page has gone truly lost. This will not be as great or funny as the first time I wrote it, but the ideas should be the same, here we go.
I started out by trying to make amends to first film Puddles. She was not an empty character. I addressed her directly. You had your own conviction/morals and stuck with them all the way. That is admirable. You would not help your sister both out of the care you have for her and the people/land. It must have taken a lot of strength to make such a decision. I can imagine that seeing you sister decline and turn more evil was very painful. I would have liked to see a scene which shows the toll Mab’s change takes on Puddles. Sleepless, teary nights until she has to, for the sake of everyone, bring about her sister’s end by telling Merlin how Mab can be defeated.
Now for Merlin’s Apprentice’s Lady of the Lake and her ‘plan’.
Although the Lady put on a powerful knowing enchantress mask for this episode, to me it very much feels as if she still goes where the water takes her. I am referring to the helping the Saxons take over Camelot thing. I don’t really see her have much of a plan. However much she looks like she has one/pretends to have one?
I vaguely remember her saying something about cleansing the land by doing this.
She turned ‘evil’. Okay. So she did the same thing her ‘evil’ sister did. Create a child.
Again a conscious decision, acted out by using magic. I can see no clear future plan for the child, something Queen Mab did have. If we look at what the Lady does though: the exact opposite of her sister.
Create child, provide him with a good and loving upbringing (in the land of Magic was her intention, then Ambrosia because Mabsie wanted the best) when he is ready, give him all the power he could ever need use, result: refuses.
Create child, give him to the first person you meet and never check on him again, next help the land to ruin, make sure that he grows up in a miserable world. As a result when you return to him, he will be grown up, know nothing about you- not influenced by an Ambrosia’s opinion-, will be (hopefully) completely enchanted by the idea of power and wealth. He will want to join you as opposed to well-raised Merlin who knew by then that true happiness could not be found in magic. But neglected to see that it can be found in Mab. Personal opinion coming through again.
Lady would have her company, Jack would have a better life away from the hellish world (that he would never know she had part in creating). They could live away from all that.
Oh Merlin, if only you’d liked Mab’s realm.
Of course Merlin was created to be intelligent. I wonder how much magic modelling went into creating young Jack’s blueprint…
What ruined her supposed plan was Merlin’s influence, by extent Ambrosia’s.
Sleepyqueenie nods in agreement with Himiko’s post and applauds!
“did she give Jack up because she realised that a part-human child would not be able to live under water?” Interesting theory. We have no clue of how great her powers are at this point. If she could have granted underwater life or not had Jack not been born with it.
“Was she aware that his adoptive father had died, and that he was living rough?” I think not.
“There really did need to be more focus on the Lady and on Merlin in order to make their stories make satisfactory sense, never mind the fact that they were the best actors in the piece.”
You do have to use big actors/talent if you can and your heart is in the project. They were incredibly lucky to get them both back for the sequel. The script really is the problem. You should want to show off your version of these famous Arthurian characters. Sequels have a tricky balance to find between the familiar what we did last time and something new to enjoy and freshly tantalize. Some of the same is good but don’t overdo it and how not to add too many new things either. ”We’ll have the Merlin voice-over narration again.”
Please give Sam and Miranda something challenging. Not just “Can you scream the way you did when you were Mab? This will work. “
The panel I spoke of on faeries was entitled “Faeries”. It had about 6 members. I’ll have a quick google. I think someone’s not on this list, sorry.
Susan Bartholomey, Jim Butch er, Jaine Fenn , Seanan McGuire and Raven Dane who moderated.
All authors of fantasy novels that feature faeries. I have not read a book by any of them yet. From what I understand, they each write a different genre from the others which also shapes their fae. It was an interesting mix. It was a joy to hear them share their, sometimes greatly varying, opinions. Urban faeries, tricksters, the traditional ones, cruel, gorgeous, Tinkerbell, time differences, appearances, their psychology/logics, everything about fae was addressed, even the really big topic sex. It is then that the magic word –for Merlin fangirls like us- fell: Queen Mab. Incidentally, should I misquote in my retellings I apologize. This is how I remember the panel. The person bringing this name into the fascinating panel talk: Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden files. From what I looked up: a massive bookseries on present day supernatural detectiving. His main character slept with Mab. HA –someone is smart- He explained that his main character does not see it as/does not think of it in such wordings as sex. To him it was something different, the Mab-experience he called it. Which is I suppose something strange that just sort of happened.
His Queen Mab is a also lawyer in the modern world. How nice to have a job beside being queen. Would we like our Mab if she was different? What would she be like in this time? We probably talked about this before. Or… what if our Queen of Darkness was a blonde?