Chapter 2: Duchess Swan's Lake / Cerise's Picnic Panic / Kitty's Curious Tale +1 more

Another three-fer of a post because the next post...is Thronecoming! My favorite special!

Duchess Swan enlists the help of Ashlynn Ella and Hunter Huntsman to save her beloved Enchanted Lake from pollution.


I like this episode for a lot of reasons;

• Duchess
• Ashlynn
• Reaffirming that Ashlynn is the nature princess and Hunter swears to protect wildlife too.
• The fact that a problem isn't solved by Apple for once.

While dancing on her lake, Duchess ends up slipping in pollution from a local restaurant ran by The Marsh King, and she vows to take action.

If EAH had been more successful, we would have probably gotten a SDCC Black Swan Duchess doll. Oh, what could have been :( 

She confronts the Marsh King and his greasy spoon diner restaurant, and he says that it's simply the price of doing business and goes back to cook food and pollute. 

I don't give a hoot, I am going to pollute. 

Duchess goes to Raven for help, but she won't after Duchess encouraged a unicorn to poke her. Gee, big deal, the world certainly deserves to rot for that.

Caption fun.

She goes to ask Dexter for help next, but he too refuses after she stuck his glasses into a seeing-double potion. I like that her response is more or less 'But did you die?????? No????? ok.'

You very rarely see back shots of these girls. This is cool.

She goes to Ashlynn, who doesn't even bother trying to be polite and goes to close the door in her face.

lmao you know what, this rewatch has improved Ashlynn immensely in my eyes. I never thought she was terrible but she was always one I forgot. When Duchess says that the lake is in trouble, Ash says she'll go get Hunter.

"Great, because, at first I was like, why would I even ask Ashlynn -" and then she gets the door slammed in her face.

Her design is so pretty!

They use Pesky to distract the King and go into the restaurant...which is in a horrible, unsanitary condition, and they call the health board and the police to arrest him.

 You know, the health inspection crew have cool designs.
Dr. Magigold and Dr. Spellanor. Though Spellanor is my headcanon name for Farrah's mother but whatever.

The news reporter outlines the story, and turns attention to the hero of the tale - "and who do we have to thank for all this?"

"It was me...I saved the lake, all by myself. Duchess Swan - remember that name, people!"

 I'm more interested in the fact that there's like...seven different news outlets. Book End is a Village, I expect one at most. Though I can guess that the one with the FV on the microphone is probably something like Fairyvale, which is a dumb name. Feyvalon would be cooler.

Back in the student lounge, Ashlynn and Hunter are like "...Really bitch.", and Duchess looks at the camera and goes "Like you didn't see that coming," and the webisode ends.

Frankly, all she had to do was sneak in and record, the only thing the other two really did was get the squirrel to provide a distraction. Duchess very well could have done this by herself. I do like how she was still painted as a self-serving antihero.

Cerise's Picnic Panic

Hunter Huntsman tries to save Cerise Hood and her mother from the Big Bad Wolf when he unknowingly stumbles upon their family picnic in the Enchanted Forest.

Things keep going slightly wrong for Cerise all day, but she keeps a positive attitude.

There were three height sizes in the world of EAH - 

Short - The Wonderlanders (besides Alistair) and Nina Thumbell

Regular - nearly everyone else.

Tall - Duchess, Cerise, I believe Jillian, and a short term character who will damn us all to hell later.

The Note 7 in action.

She tells Raven that she and her parents are going to have a picnic in the Enchanted Forest after school, which is sweet! And Raven cautions her to be aware of people watching like Kitty.

We finally get a visual representation of Mr. Badwolf on the screen (again) as he yells at Hunter;

👀

So I guess EAH has magical fabric that stretches with people's transformations, otherwise his clothes would probably be ripped to shreds by the end of the day with all this off the cuff transformation.

Not that I'd like to see that.

(But I would.)

Hunter says that even though he's a professor, his behavior isn't acceptable. I'm glad someone realizes it, but what are you doing about Rumpelstiltskin? Not a damn thing. 

Anyway, he says that he is sworn to protect helpless damsels!

  A sorceress, a wolf girl, and a dude with an axe.

We're better than you.

After school, she goes into the forest to see her parents, and you see (and hear) Red Riding Hood herself;

Once again, she actually looks like an adult, because the small thin woman / big hulking man dichotomy girls' cartoons love doing is irritating as shit hi every Disney Princess movie except Mulan, Princess and the Frog, and Frozen. 

Yeah, Frozen actually did something decently besides the first song. The queen might have looked like her daughters but she didn't look like her husband's child.

 Moana improves on it slightly. Honestly this isn't even a huge bucking of the trend but it's better than those.

But then, Hunter shows up, swearing to protect "This fair - but not helpless - Riding Hood!"

Cerise then has to pretend that she and her mother were in some sort of danger. It's not the story yet, who cares? Maybe Hunter should have asked why Mr. Badwolf was meeting with a student in the middle of the forest. They could have framed it as a parent-teacher conference. 

Red gets in on the shtick too, and Badwolf seems disgruntled that he has to do this shit, but he complies

After the fake runoff, Cerise pushes Hunter into a neighboring alcove, Mr. Badwolf comes back, and they eat their meal.

I kind of wish they would have told Hunter about the secret. With an explanation, he probably would have kept quiet.

Kitty's Curious Tale

Is Kitty Cheshire a Royal or a Rebel? That’s tough to cat-egorize.

I assure you, it does not matter. 

The narrators decide to categorize the children as Royals or Rebels but can't decide where to put Kitty, so they watch her throughout the day.

tldr; Kitty isn't going to tell because what fun is that. I love her voice, it's like Harley Quinn trying to imitate the Cheshire Cat.

There's also Cupid Comes Clean...Kinda, and literally who gives a flying pegasus feather.  It's more Cupid/Dexter/Raven nonsense, I'm not screenshotting that.