![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
No, I didn't forget about it, even with the joys of Persona 4 to tempt me. It came out a little late this week, it seems, but episode ten is up and ready at AnimeSeason.com if you're interested.
Kinda ominous as far as titles go, isn't it?
We open with the kind of scene that one gets in romantic movies: the solitary tree on the hill, under which our hero and heroine stand, looking deep into each other's eyes...it's so stereotypical that even before things get awkward, you know it's a dream. What's interesting here is that it's /Edgar's/ dream, and it turns bad pretty quickly. This is an interesting choice, though: this kind of dream is more likely to be found from the heroine's side, not the hero, and we can see a few of his complexes being brought up: it's dream Lydia that points out that he's never really let her understand him, and that she can't be sure who he's really looking for...following up with the devastating 'please don't hurt me anymore'.
It's worth noting that Edgar's reaction to this is to immediately seek reassurance that he's not forcing her into anything. A reassurance that dream Lydia denies. I suspect that I was right about his reasons for giving back the ring, in light of that.
Edgar's life doesn't really get any better when he wakes up in his bed, alone, with a hazy memory of his rather aggressive (and abortive--although it's not clear if he remembers THAT part) seduction of Lydia, and one of her buttons on his sheets. Guess he won't get to tease Paul anymore about stupid things done while drunk. And, sadly, Edgar is still a bit of a bastard: he questions Raven about Lydia having actually been there, and when she left, etc, etc. Upon receiving worrying answers, he laments, "My first happy night, and I have no recollection of it." (Although, depending on how seriously you take him, that's an interesting way to put it...we've already gotten hints that he's build Lydia up into a bit of a savior figure in his own mind. Someone who's heart is good enough to forgive even a person like he considers himself. He is totally jonesing for some Healing Sex.)
At any rate, Edgar attempts to shift blame, chastising Raven for leaving Lydia in the company of the kind of person he is when he's drunk. Raven, perhaps still smarting from being forced to dress up as Combat Debutante Raven, replies smoothly that he's not much different drunk than sober. Ouch. I have to admit that I love these little flashes of deadpan snarker from Raven; his sprite-enforced devotion to Edgar could be even creepier than it already is, if he didn't have a little fun at his master's expense every once in a while.
Side note: Loyalty, and the ties that bind (magical and otherwise) seems to be an ongoing theme throughout this series. A large part of that springs from Edgar; loyalty seems to be his defining characteristic, for all that he might protest otherwise. And one gets the sense that he is as hungry for /genuine/ loyalty as he is for anything. If so, it throws his relationship with Raven into a rather frustrating light: Raven is compelled to obey him, and Edgar to accept the compulsion, or risk turning the raven sprite loose on innocents. But can Raven be legitimately loyal? It's paradoxically the one bond that Edgar can absolutely trust, in practice, but can never be entirely sure that it's voluntary. A part of him has to be thinking of his own enslavement, and wondering.
Anyway. Back to the mushy stuff. Tomikins reassures Edgar that couples get the proper order of these things mixed up all the time, and everything will be fine once they've lived together for a while. Of course, Tomikins seems to still be under the impression that Edgar is a proper English gentleman, so.
To give him a /little/ credit, he's trying to do right by her. Unfortunately, this is kind of ruined by his utter glee at having scored with Lydia, even if he can't remember it. And then he digs his hole ever deeper by wanting to know exactly how far along they were before he conked out. I'm honestly surprised Lydia didn't supersonic slap him right then and there. What she does do is kick him out: there's no way she's believing any true romantic feelings from him after he fell asleep with Ermine's name on his lips.
Yep, Edgar. You're screwed, and not in the happy fun way. In fact, after this, there may /never/ be happy fun for you. Lydia doesn't exactly trust potential beaus at the best of times, and sad to say, Edgar's never really made the effort to come out from behind the charm long enough for her to trust him. (Why yes, this does echo the dream...his subconscious is smarter than the rest of him, sometimes.)
Cue a short scene of Lydia being cheered up by Nico. Nico is /adorable/. I want a Nico.
Meanwhile, Edgar is getting NO LOVE. I suspect that Raven really, really IS pissed at him. The Earl can't figure out whose name he could have said in his sleep, but Raven is no help...he can think of lots, and even offers to go in alphabetical order. An opportunity to poke at Edgar like this must not come along very often. It's interesting that Edgar takes it as his due; he doesn't get angry, or protest, or even show the irritation that criticism usually brings from him. He just shrugs and moves on...clearly, after being a FAIL in the romantic area, he needs to try and get his adventurer on.
He gathers his minions (also known as Paul and the Scarlet Moon), and they start puzzling over a painting. Seems that it used to belong to Edgar's father, who they figure gave it to Paul's father to protect...this painting might even be the reason why he was killed. Here, Paul shows a great deal of insight: he reassures Edgar that he does not blame Edgar's father for his father's murder. He knows that the Prince is the one behind all of this. See, Edgar? /Someone/ still likes you!
One of the other Scarlet Moon members ignores the male bonding, and points out that it's not a very /good/ painting, what with that big shield taking up the whole center of it. Yes, yes, it's a scene right out of an adventure game. You can probably fill in the details without even watching this part. Side note: the Prince must be fairly old...he seemed to be in full conspiracy and underworld terror mode when Edgar was about five or six, so that was about sixteen or seventeen years ago. Is the Prince even human? If fairy doctors are always human (and Nico didn't seem to sense that the evil blond twin WASN'T human), then it's highly unlikely that he's the Prince, unless the title was passed on.
Ahem. Where were we? Ah, yes. Unearthing the secret of the painting. Edgar notices that there's a message written in very very small letters on the shield: the result is a prophecy and a plea, begging the Blue Knight Earl to destroy the Prince. Yeah, that Prince, also known as the Prince of Misfortune, and the Unblessed.
Only one problem. Well, two: not only is Edgar NOT the 'true' successor to the title, but Ulysses, the one who is, happens to be working for that Prince fellow. Ooops. Edgar goes home to angst about this. He reveals that fatalistic streak again; he seems pretty convinced that he's going to die, and his regret about Lydia being pissed at him turns into relief that they didn't do anything that would leave her a widow or, well, unacceptable for marriage to someone else. It's somewhat of a shame that the sincere side of Edgar only comes out when he's all by himself; had Lydia been listening to his ruminations, I suspect that she'd learn more about him than he's ever been willing to say to her.
All things considered, this is not the greatest time for Ermine to show up. And, we cut back to Lydia.
Didn't anyone ever tell her not to ride fairy horses? Kelpie enters her dreams, and tries to trick her into returning to the fairy world with him. (Now we know what the hypnosis of last episode was setting up, so that it'd be obvious that he could do this.) The gnome of the ring clues her in, and Kelpie indignantly points out that the engagement doesn't matter, because Edgar's about to die. Kelpie damned well should have known that's the one thing that would make Lydia completely bail on him, but one gets the impression that compassion or empathy are not his strong points...he tries, for Lydia, but he's definitely not human.
Lydia is off to the rescue! Along the way, she gets an unwelcome reassurance from Tompkins about needing to be tolerant of hot-blooded gentlemen like Edgar, and is rescued by Paul. Paul is...possibly the least changed by the circumstances of the series. He's a very nice, steady guy, who takes being addressed by fairies he can't see with reasonable politeness and interest. He may still have a bit of a crush on Lydia, but if he does, he hides it well. He fills her in on the prophecy, and they manage to find the amber...it's been used for the pigment of the painting's hair. (I love this, by the way. It's very clever, especially since they've previously established that the only way the amber loses its power is if it's burned. So it makes sense that you could hide it through changing its form.)
Lydia also puts together why Edgar is missing /very/ quickly. She understands him more than she, or he, realize that she does. The rescue party really gets underway, now, with Lydia going after the banshee...
...and Raven wandering the grounds wondering where the hell everyone's vanished off to. Nico tries to charm him with his 'mysterious cat-burglar' outfit, but Raven's pretty well immune. In return, he asks Nico to open a portal to the fairy realm so that he can find his master. Nico reveals that 'she' has only permitted him to open portals for one human: Lydia. (She is presumably the Queen?) Ermine pops up and offers another alternative. /She/ is now a fairy, so Nico could open a portal for her, and she could just drag Raven along.
She shouldn't need to do this, of course. She knows EXACTLY where Edgar is, after all. Unfortunately, they don't know this, and wander off with her.
Meanwhile, Edgar is in the fairy world, and not liking it much. Two moons, and his watch no longer works. He's clearly uncomfortable with the unreality of it, and that doesn't get better when the cute little kid who's been hanging around his club shows up...as we learned in last episode, Jimmy is actually that nasty Unseelie hound who's working for Ulysses. The episodes ends with Edgar managing the revelation pretty well, he smirks and seems amused at the irony of a 'pet dog' disguised as a human.
And this is why we LIKE Edgar; he's got nothing /but/ chutzpah, when it comes right down to it.
Kinda ominous as far as titles go, isn't it?
We open with the kind of scene that one gets in romantic movies: the solitary tree on the hill, under which our hero and heroine stand, looking deep into each other's eyes...it's so stereotypical that even before things get awkward, you know it's a dream. What's interesting here is that it's /Edgar's/ dream, and it turns bad pretty quickly. This is an interesting choice, though: this kind of dream is more likely to be found from the heroine's side, not the hero, and we can see a few of his complexes being brought up: it's dream Lydia that points out that he's never really let her understand him, and that she can't be sure who he's really looking for...following up with the devastating 'please don't hurt me anymore'.
It's worth noting that Edgar's reaction to this is to immediately seek reassurance that he's not forcing her into anything. A reassurance that dream Lydia denies. I suspect that I was right about his reasons for giving back the ring, in light of that.
Edgar's life doesn't really get any better when he wakes up in his bed, alone, with a hazy memory of his rather aggressive (and abortive--although it's not clear if he remembers THAT part) seduction of Lydia, and one of her buttons on his sheets. Guess he won't get to tease Paul anymore about stupid things done while drunk. And, sadly, Edgar is still a bit of a bastard: he questions Raven about Lydia having actually been there, and when she left, etc, etc. Upon receiving worrying answers, he laments, "My first happy night, and I have no recollection of it." (Although, depending on how seriously you take him, that's an interesting way to put it...we've already gotten hints that he's build Lydia up into a bit of a savior figure in his own mind. Someone who's heart is good enough to forgive even a person like he considers himself. He is totally jonesing for some Healing Sex.)
At any rate, Edgar attempts to shift blame, chastising Raven for leaving Lydia in the company of the kind of person he is when he's drunk. Raven, perhaps still smarting from being forced to dress up as Combat Debutante Raven, replies smoothly that he's not much different drunk than sober. Ouch. I have to admit that I love these little flashes of deadpan snarker from Raven; his sprite-enforced devotion to Edgar could be even creepier than it already is, if he didn't have a little fun at his master's expense every once in a while.
Side note: Loyalty, and the ties that bind (magical and otherwise) seems to be an ongoing theme throughout this series. A large part of that springs from Edgar; loyalty seems to be his defining characteristic, for all that he might protest otherwise. And one gets the sense that he is as hungry for /genuine/ loyalty as he is for anything. If so, it throws his relationship with Raven into a rather frustrating light: Raven is compelled to obey him, and Edgar to accept the compulsion, or risk turning the raven sprite loose on innocents. But can Raven be legitimately loyal? It's paradoxically the one bond that Edgar can absolutely trust, in practice, but can never be entirely sure that it's voluntary. A part of him has to be thinking of his own enslavement, and wondering.
Anyway. Back to the mushy stuff. Tomikins reassures Edgar that couples get the proper order of these things mixed up all the time, and everything will be fine once they've lived together for a while. Of course, Tomikins seems to still be under the impression that Edgar is a proper English gentleman, so.
To give him a /little/ credit, he's trying to do right by her. Unfortunately, this is kind of ruined by his utter glee at having scored with Lydia, even if he can't remember it. And then he digs his hole ever deeper by wanting to know exactly how far along they were before he conked out. I'm honestly surprised Lydia didn't supersonic slap him right then and there. What she does do is kick him out: there's no way she's believing any true romantic feelings from him after he fell asleep with Ermine's name on his lips.
Yep, Edgar. You're screwed, and not in the happy fun way. In fact, after this, there may /never/ be happy fun for you. Lydia doesn't exactly trust potential beaus at the best of times, and sad to say, Edgar's never really made the effort to come out from behind the charm long enough for her to trust him. (Why yes, this does echo the dream...his subconscious is smarter than the rest of him, sometimes.)
Cue a short scene of Lydia being cheered up by Nico. Nico is /adorable/. I want a Nico.
Meanwhile, Edgar is getting NO LOVE. I suspect that Raven really, really IS pissed at him. The Earl can't figure out whose name he could have said in his sleep, but Raven is no help...he can think of lots, and even offers to go in alphabetical order. An opportunity to poke at Edgar like this must not come along very often. It's interesting that Edgar takes it as his due; he doesn't get angry, or protest, or even show the irritation that criticism usually brings from him. He just shrugs and moves on...clearly, after being a FAIL in the romantic area, he needs to try and get his adventurer on.
He gathers his minions (also known as Paul and the Scarlet Moon), and they start puzzling over a painting. Seems that it used to belong to Edgar's father, who they figure gave it to Paul's father to protect...this painting might even be the reason why he was killed. Here, Paul shows a great deal of insight: he reassures Edgar that he does not blame Edgar's father for his father's murder. He knows that the Prince is the one behind all of this. See, Edgar? /Someone/ still likes you!
One of the other Scarlet Moon members ignores the male bonding, and points out that it's not a very /good/ painting, what with that big shield taking up the whole center of it. Yes, yes, it's a scene right out of an adventure game. You can probably fill in the details without even watching this part. Side note: the Prince must be fairly old...he seemed to be in full conspiracy and underworld terror mode when Edgar was about five or six, so that was about sixteen or seventeen years ago. Is the Prince even human? If fairy doctors are always human (and Nico didn't seem to sense that the evil blond twin WASN'T human), then it's highly unlikely that he's the Prince, unless the title was passed on.
Ahem. Where were we? Ah, yes. Unearthing the secret of the painting. Edgar notices that there's a message written in very very small letters on the shield: the result is a prophecy and a plea, begging the Blue Knight Earl to destroy the Prince. Yeah, that Prince, also known as the Prince of Misfortune, and the Unblessed.
Only one problem. Well, two: not only is Edgar NOT the 'true' successor to the title, but Ulysses, the one who is, happens to be working for that Prince fellow. Ooops. Edgar goes home to angst about this. He reveals that fatalistic streak again; he seems pretty convinced that he's going to die, and his regret about Lydia being pissed at him turns into relief that they didn't do anything that would leave her a widow or, well, unacceptable for marriage to someone else. It's somewhat of a shame that the sincere side of Edgar only comes out when he's all by himself; had Lydia been listening to his ruminations, I suspect that she'd learn more about him than he's ever been willing to say to her.
All things considered, this is not the greatest time for Ermine to show up. And, we cut back to Lydia.
Didn't anyone ever tell her not to ride fairy horses? Kelpie enters her dreams, and tries to trick her into returning to the fairy world with him. (Now we know what the hypnosis of last episode was setting up, so that it'd be obvious that he could do this.) The gnome of the ring clues her in, and Kelpie indignantly points out that the engagement doesn't matter, because Edgar's about to die. Kelpie damned well should have known that's the one thing that would make Lydia completely bail on him, but one gets the impression that compassion or empathy are not his strong points...he tries, for Lydia, but he's definitely not human.
Lydia is off to the rescue! Along the way, she gets an unwelcome reassurance from Tompkins about needing to be tolerant of hot-blooded gentlemen like Edgar, and is rescued by Paul. Paul is...possibly the least changed by the circumstances of the series. He's a very nice, steady guy, who takes being addressed by fairies he can't see with reasonable politeness and interest. He may still have a bit of a crush on Lydia, but if he does, he hides it well. He fills her in on the prophecy, and they manage to find the amber...it's been used for the pigment of the painting's hair. (I love this, by the way. It's very clever, especially since they've previously established that the only way the amber loses its power is if it's burned. So it makes sense that you could hide it through changing its form.)
Lydia also puts together why Edgar is missing /very/ quickly. She understands him more than she, or he, realize that she does. The rescue party really gets underway, now, with Lydia going after the banshee...
...and Raven wandering the grounds wondering where the hell everyone's vanished off to. Nico tries to charm him with his 'mysterious cat-burglar' outfit, but Raven's pretty well immune. In return, he asks Nico to open a portal to the fairy realm so that he can find his master. Nico reveals that 'she' has only permitted him to open portals for one human: Lydia. (She is presumably the Queen?) Ermine pops up and offers another alternative. /She/ is now a fairy, so Nico could open a portal for her, and she could just drag Raven along.
She shouldn't need to do this, of course. She knows EXACTLY where Edgar is, after all. Unfortunately, they don't know this, and wander off with her.
Meanwhile, Edgar is in the fairy world, and not liking it much. Two moons, and his watch no longer works. He's clearly uncomfortable with the unreality of it, and that doesn't get better when the cute little kid who's been hanging around his club shows up...as we learned in last episode, Jimmy is actually that nasty Unseelie hound who's working for Ulysses. The episodes ends with Edgar managing the revelation pretty well, he smirks and seems amused at the irony of a 'pet dog' disguised as a human.
And this is why we LIKE Edgar; he's got nothing /but/ chutzpah, when it comes right down to it.