Golden Boughs Retirement Village
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The Golden Boughs Retirement Village is a prison masquerading as a retirement home for fables in the Fables spin-off Jack of Fables. It is run by a man called himself Mr. Revise. The name is an explicit reference to The Golden Bough, a lengthy study in the comparative mythology, religion and folklore of hundreds of cultures, from aboriginal and extinct cultures to 19th-Century faiths.
[edit] The Facility
Some of the Fables who are imprisoned were The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow, and Dorothy Gale, the Cat and the Fiddle from Hey Diddle Diddle, Little Tommy Tucker, The Walrus and the Carpenter, and the little oysters, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, the Black Sheep and boy from "Baa Baa Black Sheep", Mary, Mary, still quite contrary, Humpty Dumpty, Raven, Wicked John, Alice, Mother Goose, a large family from the poem "The Road to St. Ives", Cuchulainn, the Jersey Devil, an unnamed Innuit boy, the tooth fairy, Mustardseed, Peaseblossom, Moth, and Cobweb from A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Cottingley fairies Lola and Doris, John Henry, Pecos Bill, and assorted Munchkins. Another prisoner is an old man named Sam who couldn't remember if he was a Fable or not, since his story was almost completely forgotten. He was later proven to be Little Black Sambo, as the tigers chasing him were turned to butter as in the original story.Later on, Lady Luck is captured after a tip supplied by the Pathetic Fallacy (see below) at Jack's behest.
It should be noted that the character Wicked John bears an uncanny resemblance to Jack, appearance-wise and personality-wise. John has stubble and long hair tied in a ponytail (albeit his is brown), his clothes look messed, he's usually seen carrying around a case (a guitar case while Jack carries around a suitcase), is known to hit on hot women, and acts like a tough guy. What's also interesting is that Jack is a nickname for John. This may be due to the fact that "Wicked John and the Devil" and "Wicked Jack" were different titles to the same story written by Richard Chase (folklorist), the writer of "Jack the Giant Killer".
The facility is also home to a man who calls himself the Pathetic fallacy and appears to have the powers of that concept. While he does Revises' bidding and appears to have his trust, he is also kind and sympathetic and has (seemingly) aided the escape plan. It is not yet explained if there are other personifications of literary concepts in the world, if he and Revise are of the same stock, or how someone with the power to (theoretically) bring any inanimate object to life and make it obey can be confined to the retirement community.
The Golden Boughs resembles The Village of The Prisoner in some ways, and as he escapes from the Golden Boughs, Jack Horner explcitly makes the connection in a narrative aside to the reader about the place "in the British TV show" guarded by the evil "weather balloon."
[edit] Leadership
[edit] Mr. Revise
Mr. Revise is a man who runs the Golden Boughs Retirement Village. He may or not consider himself a fable but he apparently has a great deal of supernatural power. He considers his role to be "neutering" fables partly by stripping them of their darker elements. He informs Jack that "with the dull shears of time and distance, I will snip away at your virility, your power". His stated goal is to rid the world of magic. He had been close to accomplishing that before the Fabletown refugees made their way to this mundane world. He somewhat resembles Walt Disney. In light of Mr. Revise's intention to "destroy magic" it is worth remembering that The Golden Bough was originally written by Sir James Frazier to show that even the "enlightened" faiths of the 19th Century were descended from the most superstitious and primitive. Like Frazier, Mr. Revise may be a "modernist" who wants to abolish superstition. "Golden Boughs" has another advantage as the name of a prison: it does sound like a contemporary nursing home with a sentimental name.
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