With Raven and Apple at a total standstill, it’s up to Lizzie to help determine who will be the next yearbook editor… Wonderland style!
You may have noticed Hunter's new outfit in the previous (well, our previous) episode - he, Lizzie, and Cerise were in a three pack that nearly no one got, exclusive to Target - Tri-Castle-on. And that about sums it up, moving on to the episode!
Apple and Raven are still sniping about the yearbook. That's about it.
Maddie says "Why can't you two figure out how to be friends?!" which is interesting. Raven was willing to politely disagree when it came to Apple wanting to ruin her life, but they're acting curt over a fucking book.
Lizzie jumps in with a way to resolve their problem - a croquet - duel!
The mallets are motif-ied and everything.
They travel all over campus the next morning, playing Croquet. There's a little moment where Raven hits Grimm with the ball, and Ashlynn and Hunter applaud lol
Raven and Apple end up tying...becoming co-editors.
And the news was met by a resounding "Who cares?"
So nothing really changed, and all of that was for nothing. Thanks for wasting our time.
I really think Lizzie's outfit is plum adorable, it's absolutely the thing I can see some stuffy, croquet playing princess wearing.
Save Me, Darling!
I almost put the webisodes in the wrong order so that's why this is a little hackneyed.
Darling Charming uncovers her heroic side after a wild dragon sets his sights on her friends forever after.
This girl is Darling Charming, Dexter's twin sister and the White Knight of Wonderland. Her entire shtick was that she did not want to be a helpless princess, and ... it actually was handled not in a hamfisted way, but in a way that made her many people's new favorite character. I honestly forgot about her, but I do respect her.
She's really introduced in Way Too Wonderland - she sneaks there and dons armor to fight ... things, and helps Ginger out as she goes there for....some reason honestly I Don't even remember. But she pulls an "I am no man" in the middle of a fight.
Darling gets a book - A Semi Charming Kind of Life - where she hides her talent and stands in for Dexter during some kind of Knight Games as well as in Jousting class.
A lot of people prefer her Dragon Games doll to her Sig, but I like her Sig just fine. Not the face so much, it looks too mature.
It's Damsel in Distressing class. That's right, class.
Madam Maid Marian - we finally see her, and part of me is disappointed that she is not a fox. As in, the animal. She looks fine.
I like her dress.
She tells the girls (Some of whom don't even have dragons in their story, some of who aren't even princesses!) to look their best when their princes come to rescue them, and Raven rightfully points out that's bullshit before Apple tries to tell her differently - but she can't being scared by a large dragon's roar.
I'd say 'what happened to being empowered girls, Cedar', but who says sometimes you don't want someone to rescue you? You can't right all the wrongs of this world by yourself.
Also, Ash, you have a boyfriend...right?
Also, Ash, you have a boyfriend...right?
Darling says that a princess retains the element of surprise. She would know, wouldn't she.
Madam Maid Marian tells her to go fetch Daring, to practice rescuing them. Instead, she goes and dons the armor herself...
Makes sense if you saw Way Too Wonderland.
Oh, silly me, that would make too much sense.
An alert on her phone goes off - "The dragon of Withering Heights is coming to get us all! There's a level five dragon alert!"
The real dragon burns the poor little fake one, and everyone runs for cover.
Ouch.
Darling (who everyone thinks is Daring) comes and gathers Raven out of harm's way, and then returns to fight the dragon.
Daring takes the credit and even he doesn't know what he did, and calls to Darling to be grateful she doesn't have to do anything. She rolls her eyes, closes the locker, and goes to class.
It's never revealed to Ever After at large that Darling is a knight. Just one more thing I wish had happened. This franchise really took too long to put the 'write your own story' thing into action, it ended before anything was resolved.
Rosabella's Animal Rescue / Rosabella and The Beasts
The latter is what the Wikia calls it, the former, officially. I don't know why.
Rosabella organizes a page-ripping search party after Faybelle casts a devious spell over the enchanted forest animals.
Equal Rights for animals are important to her, but it's never stated if she goes to bat for non-human non animal beings, like the trolls and orcs. In the books, I think so, but she gets two webisodes before a bigger role in Epic Winter, and that's really kind of it for her.
Her outfit is okay - her boots and glasses are awesome, and I love the red and gold as a concept - but I always found her dress ugly. Anyway, onto the episode.
Rosabella is being nice to animals and kissing them (on the head!!!! get your mind out of the gutter) and stuff and Darling is like "....ew."
Faybelle flies in, angry that she got detention from Professor Rumplestiltzkin, in what is probably his first actual non-over the top punishment he has given in this series.
Look closely at her locker lol
"Like some kind of..."
"Beast of burden?" Finishes Rosabella.
"Yeah -" Suddenly struck by an idea, Faybelle flies off...
Later, Hunter is looking for Pesky the squirrel, and other students chime in with the fact that their pets are missing too.
Rosabella quickly organizes a search party, and we see flashes of the students searching.....and Apple and Raven are still taking photos! Honestly who could care at this point!
Ashlynn says she can't even find her animal friends in the forest, then Cerise gets the idea to sniff them out! At this point how no one figured she's part wolf is beyond me.
They find Faybelle watching animals spin gold for her. She insists that it isn't what it looks like...but it is. Like some of these are her fellow students, c'mon!
"You must think I'm a bad fairy," She looks down.
"I see some good in you."
This is the beginning of an inkling that, even though she is very proud of her heritage and the evil she will do, that for now, she doesn't have to be 100% cold and selfish.
Still, she gets a new punishment of cleaning out the unicorn stables.
You know, if the franchise wasn't dead, I probably would have tried to cosplay as Faybelle to a con.
Darling is SUCH an awesome character, and really could have been the centerpiece for the entire franchise- people LOVED the idea of her. That EAH is so "traditional fairy tales" made her "Well I'm NOT a Damsel In Distress!" thing a lot more entertaining than if it'd been Yet Another New-Take-On-Fairytales, because this this case, the characters are LITERALLY supposed to act exactly like fairy tale characters. So the subversion makes a lot more sense, since it's a central theme over "well all our Princesses can ninja-kick now".
ReplyDeleteBut yup- too little, too late. She gets only a short on-screen appearance in "Way Too Wonderland" (the beginning and the reveal at the end, though she's the White Knight the whole time), really is only a minor character in "Dragon Games", and doesn't show up in "Epic Winter". So we only got a handful of dolls of her, and she doesn't take the "Main Character" role she seemed destined for.
Never mind that the characters are still "supposed to play Damsels In Distress" even though the Storybook of Legends isn't a thing anymore. They NEVER EVEN TOUCH ON THAT AGAIN- that was like the central cog in the entire story!!
It's things like that which make the show kind of suffer- I've tried to get people into it, but those little logic-gaps make it very clear to people that nobody thought through the meta-plot, and this was "just to sell dolls". The studios seemed to do what they could to make it fun, but way too much was left behind.
I would have really liked for Darling to be the catalyst for change instead of Raven. LIke, it's not a big shock that the dark coded girl doesn't WANT to be evil and just live her life.
DeleteA pretty princess eschewing standard tropes? Yeah, please. She's got far more of a reason than Raven - Darling doesn't want to be underestimated or helpless. Raven just wants to....what?