Stufff and Nonsense

[theo_harrison]

I realise I've gone a bit quiet with no explanation, well I got roped into NaNoWriMo because my bff 'needed moral support'. Of course Mr. I Need Moral Support has just passed the 20k mark while I'm staring at 8k and whimpering a lot. Bastard

Comments

Re: Edited because of keyboard problems the first time

[theo_harrison]

I love the 'Shivering' one because I love that sense of there always being two ways to do things. It just appealed to me when I was younger. I think that's one where I really love the message. :D (if you haven't read it, the basic storyline is that an innkeeper's son has no fear. He keeps hearing patrons telling scary stories, and they all talk about shivering, and he desperately wants to know what it feels like, so he sets out to find what it is. Whenever he asks someone for help with this, they send him off on a terrifying quest, so he stays at haunted houses, plays bowls with a demon using a human head, etc. etc. always winning riches, castles, etc. because he has no fear. Anyway, it ends up with him in his big castle, with all his riches, married to the wisest and most beautiful woman in all the land, but he's still in a funk because he still doesn't know what shivering is. His new wife asks what's wrong, and he tells her the whole story - at this point I like to imagine her rolling her eyes - so while he's asleep in bed that night she dumps a bucket of ice water over him and he wakes up shivering like a leaf. And then they live happily ever after.)

I love Beauty and the Beast, but I'm trying to fit it into something other than Romance and I don't think that's going to work. I'm toying with supernatural romance, or maybe even m/m romance could be interesting, idk...

I don't think I've read "The White Cat", I'll have to find it. :D

LOL, I had the same issues with Jack and the Beanstalk. XD It's just that moment of "hang on, why is this okay again? Dear parents, this message does not mesh well with the other morals you've tried to instil in me..."

Oh god, oh god, oh god, I wasn't going to venture into fanfiction for these, but House and Sleeping Beauty is a beautiful concept in all ways.

I like the sound of that one. :D My friend M (the villain in my opening post) has written a Heroes fic where Sylar recounts the plot of season 1 to his kid as a fairytale and I love that, it's what gave me the idea to do this in the first place (hilariously, Mac has already had a review telling him that that's not how season 1 happened. It was just perfect, I mean, if someone can't spot that a villain telling his kid his bloody and murderous adventures as a bedtime story is a potentially unreliable narrator I don't know what you can do for them. XD)

Re: Edited because of keyboard problems the first time

[nenya85]

I found “Shivers” online. (There’s something enchanting about the idea of online fairy tales.) I think his wife lived up to her reputation as the wisest woman in the country. I love the way everyone's being all metaphsical or whatever and she simply comes up with the most practical solution!

“Beauty and the Beast” would be interesting as a m/m romance because so much of the fairy tale is so tied up with very traditional images of masculinity and femininity, and yet so much of it is about family, honor, friendship, and keeping trust - things that don’t belong to any one gender - that it would be interesting to see that translated without the traditional male/female imagery. I have to admit I would be tempted to make it about classism or economics (lol).

I’m not sure why I like “The White Cat” as much as I do. It’s one of these fairy tales where people run around collecting random objects for no go reason other than that the king wants these totally ridiculous items. And that’s before one of the princes falls in love with a cat. *Why can I hear FFR demanding a bestiality warning?)

Yeah, never quite figured out the moral of Jack and the Beanstalk either. I incorporated that one in a story, and the only question the guy hearing it can come up with is “How did they clean up the giant?” which was actually something I wondered as a kid. I have an amazing illustrated version where in the final scene you see bits of busted up giant strewn all over their land (lol).

It’s funny: I’ve never seen “Heroes” but my twin cousin (we were born three days apart) loved the first two seasons. She lives in a different city, but we see each other a few times a year, and while we were sitting around cooking, she’d describe the show and go into these long analyses of the characters. So my associations with the show are incongruously domestic and cozy. I hear the word Sylar or Mohinder and can smell garlic and herbs simmering. But the idea of Sylar telling the first season as a fairy tale sounds wonderful!

I think though, people in general have a lot of trouble with unreliable narrators. I tend to write in a first person point of view, and tend to have multiple narrators (believe me if there was a bingo card for every FFR rule I’ve broken, I’d not only have bingo, but would have covered the board) because I like the idea there is no one absolute truth. But when my favorite character leaps to some totally ridiculous conclusion, I always get someone writing in to explain why whatever conclusion he’s arrived at isn’t true. Which is accurate but besides the point. One thing I love about writing and then hearing from people though is that you get such an intimate view of what a story looks like inside of someone else’s head. I love reviews where people bypass me as the middleman and go straight to yelling at the characters.