Friday, March 7, 2014

The Quest for Skye: Chapter 32

Recap: Skye got sick last week, so now everybody at the lab is REALLY going to try to find a cure for Batten. Not just fake trying like they apparently were before. But pretty much Skye is going to die soon, so that's nice!

This is a short chapter and I could probably bundle it with the next one, but four pages of Skye are just about all I can take for this week.

We open with Morgan once again doing nothing vaguely administrative, just flying kites with Skye on the beach. Seriously, we haven't seen this guy do work ONCE.
“Dad, how high do you think heaven is? I mean, do you think we could reach it with this kite?”
Oh, precocious kids' questions. How adorable.

Skye goes on to say that she has actually seen heaven. Morgan is skeptical, but Skye talks about that painting behind The Locked Door that shows her and the Leontious all chilling in heaven, and she says she had a dream about that right before they went on the cruise, but then she gets quiet and doesn't want to talk about heaven anymore, so she babbles about the wind for awhile.
“Isn’t the wind strange? It comes and goes, but nobody really knows where it comes from or goes to. I mean, where does it start? And when does it end? How does it start, and how does it end? Maybe it’s always there. It’s like that old saying, ‘If a tree falls in a forest when nobody is around, does anyone see it?’ Right, Dad?”  
Morgan thinks this is hilarious, corrects her idiom to "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" at which point she reveals that she knew that's what the real phrase was, she was just joking with him! HA HA HA HA HA!

Now, to be fair, I feel like that could be the kind of ridiculous joke an 11-year-old would think was hilarious, but that is because 11-year-olds have terrible senses of humor.

Skye then gives a sermon on how "words are like windows to the heart," which basically means if you're a jerk, you use jerky words, and if you're a nice person, you use nice words. Morgan is amazed by this wisdom. He clearly has never thought of this.

Then Skye twirls around for awhile with her arms in the air, reciting the "they will soar on wings like eagles" Bible verse. So that's nice.

And then they laugh at cloud shapes.

And then Morgan asks her what she'd do if she had one wish, and she says she'd play piano with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, or:
“Or play Christina in The Phantom of the Opera.” She started giggling again. “With Justin Bieber as the phantom.”
How does this girl get into Phantom of the Opera and not know that the lead character's name is Christine, not Christina? Who else does she want to play, "Eponina" from Les Miserables?

I'm allowed to scoff at that because I WAS into musicals when I was eleven or twelve and DID want to play Christine, but I knew the names of my characters. Of course, I was also not casting Justin Bieber as my leading men...

Tammy shows up and sits with them, but then the kite string breaks and the kite floats away. Morgan tries to chase it, but Skye gets all panicky and asks him to stay with her, and Morgan suddenly realizes once again that soon Skye is going to die.
Suddenly, a thought came to Morgan. Before that day arrives, there is something I must do.
I can only hope he is planning to stage a clinic production of Phantom with Bieber as the Phantom. And all the names pronounced wrong.

(Chapter 33.)

4 comments:

  1. Okay, so that's Christina, Auric ("Do you expect me to sing?" "No, Miss Christine, I expect you to Daaé!"), Randall, Philip, Marge, Debianne, Ormond, Charlotte, Joe, Jane...

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    1. Yes. Yes, that is our cast. I had only gotten as far in my mind as figuring out Christina and Ralph.

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  2. Two things stand out to me. One is that Skye casting Justin Bieber seems inconsistent with her character so far. I picture Rothdiener at the keyboard, pausing and having a Stewie Griffin-style "Who are the kids into these days?" moment rather than bothering to try consider what celebrity crush this kid might realistically have. So far, Bieber seems much too mainstream to really be on Skye's radar. It rings hollow and feels lazy.

    The other thing that stands out is, you're tellin' me that there's an actual painting this family has of themselves in Heaven? I'm guessing either Rothdiener or the Leontiouses (?) aren't all that concerned with Exodus 20:3-6:

    "You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above..."

    So not only is Skye obnoxious, she's blasphemous, too!

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    1. Justin Bieber DOES feel very anachronistic for Skye to like, particularly since the other pop culture references she has made are from well before she was born. Heck, even Phantom of the Opera is from before she was born, though I guess she would have been like 2 or 3 when the movie came out, depending on when this story is actually set.

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