Nerding Day: The Squire and the Scroll 🌭

It’s a glorious Nerding Day miracle, for today we celebrate the three pillars of nerding: Christianity, High Fantasy, and Virginity. You may remember author and champion of unfucked holes, Jennie Bishop, who wrote The Princess and the Kiss. It was a story about a princess saving her first kiss for marriage written like an allegory, but it actually was about saving your first kiss for marriage. In 2004 she wrote a version for boys, only this time it was definitely an allegory. Maybe. Let’s see if we can learn the rewards of a pure heart in The Squire and the Scroll.

As a frequent reader of religious texts, I don’t find Christians to be good at allegories or symbolism. Mostly because you never know when they’re going to call those things “fundamental truths.” Plus, Christian art tends to be nonsense because they usually take existing creations with their own metaphors and meaning and change one of the words to “Jesus.” For example, “Jesus” but it’s the Frasier font or “Jesus Christ in a pot, that’s some wet ass pussy.” This book suffers from that shit, absolutely, but I don’t think Jennie Bishop would be a good author even if she dedicated her life to normal books. To be clear, no one is capable of crafting a good fantasy story around selling virginity to men. But this dim, crusader-brained dingbat? She is a confused baby left to die in a hot car full of typewriters.

Jennie dedicated her book about never, ever having sex to her husband, who has his own inside-joke, fantasy-themed virginity catchphrase. Sorry, that was a wordy way to put it; sort of like an author writing a 27 word dedication when they could have simply said, “I CUT OFF YOUR NUTS, RANDY.”

Randy, this is catastrophic. The first time he sheepishly asked his wife if she came, she said, “Not only did I not do whatever that is, I am going to dedicate my life to making sure no one else experiences this. I don’t care if it takes years, I will find a way to tell even children you can’t fuck.”

So once upon a time, a king was in charge of a magic lamp that kept everyone in his kingdom pure. Jennie mostly means celibate, but I get the idea she’d be okay with any way you wanted to interpret the word “pure.” This joyful kingdom doesn’t have any good falafel carts or jazz clubs, is what I’m getting at. I don’t know why I’m being cute. Hey, Jennie. You missed responsible sex education and hit Christofascism, you smooth pelvised monster.

With all the storytelling skills of a gorilla caught skipping sign language class, Jennie explains how an evil dragon stole the kingdom’s purity. Does this mean, on leathering wings and with dreadful magic, it fucked each and every person? Or did it merely fly around announcing that fucking was possible? Maybe none of this is allegory and it really was a magic lamp. I admit I have no idea. Jennie is building this story backwards from a religious certainty that her idea of “purity” is important, so none of it is really coherent or convincing. I only know this is about virginity because of the book jacket, promotional materials, and the author’s lifetime of public advocacy against sex. Without all that, I’d interpret this as a dragon stealing, like, the kingdom’s ability to say “Merry Christmas” or their zoning restrictions against drag performances. This feels like a medieval retelling of Footloose, except I don’t think Jennie agrees with Kevin Bacon about who the bad guys were in Footloose.

A lifetime of not being fucked and also not understanding metaphors means Jennie makes a lot of very horny, unintentionally funny word choices. This isn’t the best example, but when the brave knight and his pure, pure squire acquire their first treasure, she says they “split the underbrush” and “found a bag of wool” which is exactly how C.S. Lewis would describe your first time going down on a satyr. I just realized I haven’t talked much about the story. Let’s catch you up.

So the squire lives his life by the commands of a purity scroll. It’s the same scroll everyone in the kingdom is meant to live by, but he’s the only one who takes it seriously. He and the knight are attacked by evil, lustful whispers and he remembers the scroll’s First Command: “Listen only to words that are pure.”

You’d think this would mean ignoring temptation. However, Jennie is a Christian and sometimes her metaphors are literal, so this command means to take the wool out of your inventory and use it on your ears. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything that this desperately unfucked author had the heroes overcome their first obstacle by stuffing each other’s holes.

After hiding from the sexy noise, the two pure adventurers find a shield outside a cave. “These are helpful,” explains the man who didn’t pack any shields for his dragon fight. “This reads like a novelization of a point-and-click adventure,” explains the man who noticed these virgins are finding items and then using those items at the very next location.

In the very next location, they are tempted by evil gems. The squire remembers the scroll’s second command, which is now referred to as a rule: “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.”

Do you know what this means? It means Jennie got so lost in the parable that her instruction manual for purity is no longer a way for the reader to live their life, but an extremely specific set of instructions for the characters to survive this one adventure. This kingdom has built itself around these commandments and the second one is only useful for getting through its evil gem cave.

By the way, the knight doesn’t care. He’s already spending the money. He’s like, “Kid, I have done way worse things than look at cave faces.” Is this a metaphor for anything? I guess in context it probably means he’s going to put his dick in one of their mouths? I’m… hmmm. No, I don’t think I’m kidding. This is a sincere interpretation. Anyway, he of course dies horribly.

Driven mad by the beautiful toothless mouths of the cavern, the knight denounces the teachings of the scroll. The shield he picked up turned out to be a nightvision shield, which is suspiciously lucky. I highlighted the words “fought to stop his horse, but to no avail,” which is suspiciously how Tolkien would describe a Hobbit trying to keep a boner under control.

“I have noticed the scroll in my belt, and I’m grasping it tightly,” is how Robert Jordan would DM a cosplayer.

The only thing the squire has left is his well-grasped scroll, so he’s about to die of thirst. He comes across a filthy pond of dead fish and wonders if his faith has any tips. It does! The third rule of the scroll is “Keep the unclean far from your lips to guard the wellspring of your life.” I think the author is trying to say we shouldn’t even do mouth stuff, but her writing is so elegant it can also refer to not drinking from a toxic fish graveyard.

The boy, mindful of the allure of temptation, finds a flask of water labeled PURE and immediately drinks it. It’s possible this could be dumber, but I’m not sure how. The scroll, a nonsense document of no help to anyone in or out of this story, is being praised by its own author for being useful and wise. So far we’ve learned to only listen to, look at, and suck on pure things. This is how a hungover girl finds her way out of a fraternity basement, not any kind of philosophy.

The squire comes to a fork in the road. The dry way is fine, while the wet way is obviously quicksand. Using the wisdom of his virginity scroll, he chooses wet. And he gets rock hard. There’s no official rule in the scroll for this, but if there was it would be “Always bet on wet.”

The actual fourth rule is “Breathe only that which is pure,” and whether you think I’ve been fair to this stupid fucking book or not, I think we can all agree this is no longer any kind of metaphor. How would a prospective virgin even use this in their sad life? Do you avoid perfumes? Moist feet? Wafting pubic scents? Speaking of disgusting, the squire enters a yawning chasm to pluck a rose and stroke his parchment. This is all gross. This is how George R.R. Martin would smell a panty.

Luckily, the squire’s plucking and sniffing gets interrupted before he loses the fight to stop his horse. It’s the dragon offering him a deal. He’ll give the Lantern back, but the boy will have to… I guess in the context of this story, give up his virginity.

Okay, so I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’ve fundamentally misunderstood something. But this is a story about resisting sex until marriage. The scroll represents the boy’s purity and the dragon represents temptation. And the dragon is saying “give me that sweet virginity and I’ll give you the lamp.” The boy says no, but then… does? He takes the scroll out of his pants, it transforms into a sword, and then he plunges that sword into the dragon’s body. That’s unambiguous. That’s fucking. That’s how any good dungeon master would describe dragon sex.

This is the hard, wet climax of the story and our hero is whipping out his virginity to penetrate temptation with it. And it cannot possibly be what the author intended. This woman set out to explain why celibacy is important, never did, and accidentally killed her purity allegory with an underage boy’s penis. Everyone knew going in she was going to fail, but this is a true wonder. This is like an orthodontist leaving for work and mistakenly eating a box of diarrhea in a dimension without teeth.

The boy’s sword goes flaccid after he pulls it from the spent dragon, a detail Jennie included to make sure we understand: it was his dick and they fucked. And we don’t make it three sentences before someone is on their knees in front of him, begging for that sweet purity. I’m not crazy, right? This is horny as fuck. This is how George R.R. Martin describes what his characters are eating.

For saving the kingdom and becoming a man, the squire is given a virgin. This isn’t a metaphor or any kind of lesson, Jennie just doesn’t know when to end a story and truly believes a woman is an appropriate prize. This might also be nothing, but the knight is back on his knees again, yearning for those turgid words of purity.

The slow death march of this story’s denouement continues, and we learn that the squire has started a whole virginity club to protect the kingdom against future horny monsters. These men are dedicated to the rules of the scroll, which again, are four pointless clues for navigating a trip to see the dragon their boss fucked to death. This kingdom’s entire philosophy makes more sense as a warning label on toilet cleaner.

We’re still going! On the merciful final page of the epilogue we learn the squire’s virgin wife knew how to please him because she fucked by way of the scroll. Let’s go over the rules one last time. Don’t listen to anything gross, look straight ahead, don’t put anything gross in your mouth, avoid inhaling toxic fu– oh my god oh my god, I’m fighting this horse to no avail! No avaaaaaaaail!!!!

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