Snow White & the Huntsman Fic: rooted, not adorning [Snow White/Huntsman; PG-13]
I have had this fic posted for days but the DW post unfinished, because I was seemingly unable to write this post without also writing the 'why I wrote this/movie reaction thoughts' part too. I do wonder sometimes why all the women-centric fic I write ends up meta. Or feminism. Or meta and feminism. And then I remember, 'oh yeah society'.
Title: rooted, not adorning
Fandom: Snow White and the Huntsman
Characters/Pairings: Snow White, Huntsman, little Snow White/Huntsman
Rating: PG-13 for some adult themes
Spoilers: Movie spoilers!
Content notes: References to past implied threat of non-con.
Wordcount: 1,900 words
Disclaimer: Belongs to Universal Pictures, Rupert Sanders, other people.
Summary: Now that she is Queen, she finds it hard to put away the blade. Post-movie.
rooted, not adorning on AO3
I haven't really decided what I thought about the film yet, which is probably why I ended up writing fic. Conflicted, I think. There were parts that I liked a lot, and a lot of things which didn't work as a whole.
This one I will keep saying until someone listens to me: no more fucking love triangles. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the movie was presumably also going to have a 'Prince' as well as a Huntsman and therefore there would be romantic conflict. To be fair to the film, it's not actually a conflict that's acknowledged within the film very often, and it's not one that is resolved in story. But it distracted me. Then, the last time a fictional love triangle didn't make me want to throw something through a screen/throw the book through a window was probably Superman Returns.
The film tossed a lot of ideas at the screen - including some pretty interesting ones about feminism and women's power as it relates to women's beauty - but didn't really know how to bring them together. Ravenna (the evil Queen) is definitely a force in the film, and her motivations are probably clearer than anyone else's. (Although she is still, y'know, a villain. Not unlike Loki, her being badass charismatic does not mean we should be rooting for her to win. She killed a bunch of people.) Still, I was interested in the women's village, and the backstory hinted at with Ravenna, and the whole idea of her being 'the Queen the land deserves'. It just didn't tie together properly to the end.
There are a couple of huge logic-gaps. Why does Ravenna keep Snow White alive at all? It seems to come as a surprise to her that Snow White is the threat and the answer to her problems, so it's not like she was keeping her alive in order to better eat her heart later. Finn, however, is the worst with the idiot-ball. It's like the writers knew that the Huntsman had to threaten Snow White, and then change his mind, but couldn't decide how to do that. So Finn reveals, before he has Snow White, that Ravenna is playing the Huntsman and has no way of bringing his wife back. There's no reason on earth for him to do that. There's also no reason for him to tell Snow White what the Queen was planning for her, especially if he is (presumably) trying to skeeze his way into sleeping with her before dragging her off. And then he tells the Huntsman about killing his wife.
Pacing is all over the place, which leads me to my other big gripe and I thought maybe it was just me reading the advertising wrong but I checked the advertised synopsis and Huntsman 'trains Snow White' is heavily featured. Snow White moves from a girl who has her knife taken away from her so she won't hurt herself (grr...) to a woman in mail leading a charge, and the only thing that happens in between is that the Huntsman tries to show her how to move her foot when she's blocking someone. Yes, other things happen plot-wise, but at no point when they're walking up LOTR-like mountains could we have had a scene where they spar together so she's less likely to get herself killed?
I think part of the problem is that their idea of Snow White herself was unclear. The magic around her is never really explained, her effect isn't explained (she brings Greta's youth back, she can heal aches but not wounds?) and they didn't know how to get her from a girl to be saved by Chris Hemsworth doing an inexplicable accent (he has a variety of regular accents! Which he exhibits later in the film! The voiceover one is just odd) to the saviour of her people. That is frustrating, and not in any way Kristen Stewart's fault.
[Sidebar: Kristen Stewart is awesome and gorgeous. She says things like 'Whereas I sit there [in an interview] and look a little bit too serious, and as soon as that happens then you're uncomfortable and you don't want to watch. It's also weird talking about projects as an actor because you're so in them. I would prefer to write a paper and deliver it to everyone via e-mail.' Oh baby I know. Look at this slideshow. Look at her here being Joan Jett with Dakota Fanning's Cherie Curry. I'm not saying everyone's reaction to her should be 'okay, so still queer then', but I know mine is.]
Anyway, the film is gorgeous. Colleen Atwood's costumes are beautiful beyond belief. Everything she gives Charlize Theron to wear looks like it belongs in a painting. The design work on the fairyland is lovely (except for the fairies in the birds, which are creepy and odd).
I'm kind of intrigued at the way the film handled the kiss. Which feeds into the love triangle thing, which I know I said pissed me off, but still interesting. The thing is in-story, no one knows why Snow White wakes up. Outside the story, the audience takes her waking up at the Huntsman's kiss as indicative that he, not the Prince, is her true love, but as far as anyone in the story knows, it's just Snow White being magic. That twists up the story some. And while I still wish the story didn't have a love-triangle, it also doesn't resolve it. That may be inadvertent subversion of the trope - the filmmakers wanted a sequel so they left loose ends - but it still leaves the end of the movie as Snow White's coronation and her awkward eye contact with the Huntsman, rather than a kiss or a wedding. It leaves things very open. Hence fic. And frustration. But mostly fic.
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth: http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/165110.html |
comments. Please comment there using OpenID or signed anon.
Title: rooted, not adorning
Fandom: Snow White and the Huntsman
Characters/Pairings: Snow White, Huntsman, little Snow White/Huntsman
Rating: PG-13 for some adult themes
Spoilers: Movie spoilers!
Content notes: References to past implied threat of non-con.
Wordcount: 1,900 words
Disclaimer: Belongs to Universal Pictures, Rupert Sanders, other people.
Summary: Now that she is Queen, she finds it hard to put away the blade. Post-movie.
rooted, not adorning on AO3
I haven't really decided what I thought about the film yet, which is probably why I ended up writing fic. Conflicted, I think. There were parts that I liked a lot, and a lot of things which didn't work as a whole.
This one I will keep saying until someone listens to me: no more fucking love triangles. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the movie was presumably also going to have a 'Prince' as well as a Huntsman and therefore there would be romantic conflict. To be fair to the film, it's not actually a conflict that's acknowledged within the film very often, and it's not one that is resolved in story. But it distracted me. Then, the last time a fictional love triangle didn't make me want to throw something through a screen/throw the book through a window was probably Superman Returns.
The film tossed a lot of ideas at the screen - including some pretty interesting ones about feminism and women's power as it relates to women's beauty - but didn't really know how to bring them together. Ravenna (the evil Queen) is definitely a force in the film, and her motivations are probably clearer than anyone else's. (Although she is still, y'know, a villain. Not unlike Loki, her being badass charismatic does not mean we should be rooting for her to win. She killed a bunch of people.) Still, I was interested in the women's village, and the backstory hinted at with Ravenna, and the whole idea of her being 'the Queen the land deserves'. It just didn't tie together properly to the end.
There are a couple of huge logic-gaps. Why does Ravenna keep Snow White alive at all? It seems to come as a surprise to her that Snow White is the threat and the answer to her problems, so it's not like she was keeping her alive in order to better eat her heart later. Finn, however, is the worst with the idiot-ball. It's like the writers knew that the Huntsman had to threaten Snow White, and then change his mind, but couldn't decide how to do that. So Finn reveals, before he has Snow White, that Ravenna is playing the Huntsman and has no way of bringing his wife back. There's no reason on earth for him to do that. There's also no reason for him to tell Snow White what the Queen was planning for her, especially if he is (presumably) trying to skeeze his way into sleeping with her before dragging her off. And then he tells the Huntsman about killing his wife.
Pacing is all over the place, which leads me to my other big gripe and I thought maybe it was just me reading the advertising wrong but I checked the advertised synopsis and Huntsman 'trains Snow White' is heavily featured. Snow White moves from a girl who has her knife taken away from her so she won't hurt herself (grr...) to a woman in mail leading a charge, and the only thing that happens in between is that the Huntsman tries to show her how to move her foot when she's blocking someone. Yes, other things happen plot-wise, but at no point when they're walking up LOTR-like mountains could we have had a scene where they spar together so she's less likely to get herself killed?
I think part of the problem is that their idea of Snow White herself was unclear. The magic around her is never really explained, her effect isn't explained (she brings Greta's youth back, she can heal aches but not wounds?) and they didn't know how to get her from a girl to be saved by Chris Hemsworth doing an inexplicable accent (he has a variety of regular accents! Which he exhibits later in the film! The voiceover one is just odd) to the saviour of her people. That is frustrating, and not in any way Kristen Stewart's fault.
[Sidebar: Kristen Stewart is awesome and gorgeous. She says things like 'Whereas I sit there [in an interview] and look a little bit too serious, and as soon as that happens then you're uncomfortable and you don't want to watch. It's also weird talking about projects as an actor because you're so in them. I would prefer to write a paper and deliver it to everyone via e-mail.' Oh baby I know. Look at this slideshow. Look at her here being Joan Jett with Dakota Fanning's Cherie Curry. I'm not saying everyone's reaction to her should be 'okay, so still queer then', but I know mine is.]
Anyway, the film is gorgeous. Colleen Atwood's costumes are beautiful beyond belief. Everything she gives Charlize Theron to wear looks like it belongs in a painting. The design work on the fairyland is lovely (except for the fairies in the birds, which are creepy and odd).
I'm kind of intrigued at the way the film handled the kiss. Which feeds into the love triangle thing, which I know I said pissed me off, but still interesting. The thing is in-story, no one knows why Snow White wakes up. Outside the story, the audience takes her waking up at the Huntsman's kiss as indicative that he, not the Prince, is her true love, but as far as anyone in the story knows, it's just Snow White being magic. That twists up the story some. And while I still wish the story didn't have a love-triangle, it also doesn't resolve it. That may be inadvertent subversion of the trope - the filmmakers wanted a sequel so they left loose ends - but it still leaves the end of the movie as Snow White's coronation and her awkward eye contact with the Huntsman, rather than a kiss or a wedding. It leaves things very open. Hence fic. And frustration. But mostly fic.
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth: http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/165110.html |
comments. Please comment there using OpenID or signed anon.