Episode 053 - Chance Alone: Green Serpent Part I

Episode Features
Appearance of a pre-Boatwatch boat
 * No ramblecast featured
 * Start of the first anniversary event
 * Start of a four-parter
 * First event to feature a guest podcaster: Dani
 * Dani was the first guest podcaster featured on the show, and also the only podcaster featured twice, both for d'Oulnoy stories
 * This story was read in a day and released throughout a single week, which is an old practice. Now multi-part episodes are released week by week.
 * Kicks off a tradition of reading long works of d'Oulnoy for anniversaries

Featured Story
The Green Serpent was chosen by Tyler and Gordie off-air from a list of d'Oulnoy titles. The story is an original work by said mad baroness. France is the country of origin. No ATU is mentioned, but it was apparently inspiration for Beauty and the Beast. Also seems to be Sleeping Beauty fanfic with elements of The Lindwurm

Overall Plot

 * The story starts out kind of like Sleeping Beauty but with twins. A queen has twin daughters and she invites 12 fairies to give fairy gifts to the kids. Magotine, an ugly old fairy who is like a foot tall, shows up and is mad that no one invited her. Fun fact: Magotine is d'Oulnoy's oc and Maleficent/Carabosse's sister, which makes turns the Sleeping Beauty parallels into Sleeping Beauty fanfic.
 * Throughout the dinner, Magotine finds little things to get pissed off about, like being too short to stand at the table and see over it, and also being last to bother with a basket of freebies and them all being gone by that time. She even gets pissed when the queens tries to give her gifts because she already has stuff like that at home.
 * Magotine turns the food into snakes and everyone evacuates the room, except for Magotine and of course the babies who cannot walk. She gives one of the babies an increasing ugliness curse and is about to give the other baby the same curse when the other people come back into the room and shoo her off. She breaks a window and escapes like a champ.
 * The fairies read the ugly baby's fortune and says that she'll be happy someday, but when the mom asks if she'll ever get over her uglyness they're just like 'ugh, so anyway, happiness'. The mom sends them off with some gifts.
 * The mom names the ugly daughter Laidronet which means ugly and the pretty daughter Bellotte which means pretty.
 * When she's like a preteen or something Laidronet exiles herself to an old castle next to the water.
 * A few years later she misses her family and visits home. Only it's her sister's wedding and everyone is pissed to see her because she's even uglier. Her parents offer her some passive aggressive compromises, like watching the ball from the shadows or staying with them for a day. She says no, so her family gives her some hand-me-downs. This pisses her off even more.
 * This excursion seems to have nothing to do with the plot
 * She goes back to her castle. A while later, she's bored and walking through the woods and runs into the titular Green Serpent, which is a big hairy snake with wings. It says that it's also cursed but Laidronet does not hear his words and freaks out. She goes back to her castle and hides until she gets bored and takes another walk. This time she finds a fancy golden boat. She gets on it and it starts to sail away until she loses sight of land.
 * She decides she's ready to die when the snake swims up and offers to save her. She tells him she'd rather die so he goes away. A random disembodied voice- unknown if magical or her conscience- tells her that the snake is a good person and less ugly than her. She doesn't take to this well.
 * The boat breaks and the snake saves her. He declares himself to be a 'nice snake' but she wants none of it. Night falls and, with no shelter, she wraps the petticoat around herself. Carmen breaks for this episode.

Discussion Points

 * Anniversisode
 * Introduction of Dani
 * Rock-a-doodle left a lot up in the air, mostly because Gordie doesn't remember it
 * Voldemort's cooler brother
 * What is the nature of a fairy gift?
 * The invention of the noble profession of party planning
 * Jewel-encrusted footie pajamas
 * Going back to a dangerous situation because you're bored
 * Do snakes feel like wood?
 * Shipwreck meet-cute
 * Nice-snakes always finish last
 * Stuck on a rock
 * Pretty in Teal
 * All snakes have been people so far
 * Tell-not-show intelligence
 * An Ocean-Serpent riding magic witch lady
 * The D'oulnoy expanded universe
 * Proto-fanfic
 * Psychoanalyzing d'Oulnoy from her stories

Notable Quotes

 * Tyler: OK because I feel like if they said that "Your baby has two feet because I made it so", I'd feel like they were just lying.
 * Dani: I'm just saying this snake has got some nice-snake syndrome going on and I will not put up with this bullshit.
 * Cricket: Mrowww! (as Carmen declares she's finished reading for this episode)