(no subject)
Wow, this post has been sitting in my e-mail in-box for a few weeks. Should probably go ahead and post it...
As proof of the level of insanity in my life, I offer up the fact that I didn't get around to watching Sunday's episode of Once Upon A Time until Tuesday evening. I wonder if The Littlest Black will ever appreciate the sacrifices I make :) And not just any OUAT episode, but the mid-season return, Rumpelstiltskin meets Grima Wormtongue episode. My current favorite Trickster character meeting up with the first character I ever posted fic for--my fannish heart swells.
Well, sometime Tuesday night I had collapsed on the couch with the remote within arm's reach and finally got my shot at Mr. Gold's back-story. And it was indeed as delightful as I had hoped. I think my favorite thing was perhaps the fact that we got to see Robert Carlyle playing what amounted to three different characters in one--Fatherly!Rumpelstiltskin, Mr. Gold, and Imp!Rumpelstiltskin.
I'd like to think I'd still love OUAT even without Rumpelstiltskin. And I would certainly enjoy it. But I have such a weakness for witty villains who have complex motivations (and are played by actors with accents...)
Rumpelstiltskin's story has a special place in my heart for two reasons. It and Little Red Riding Hood are the first stories I remember hearing where I felt as though I were disagreeing with the accepted interpretation. I just wasn't feeling what I thought the author likely intended me to feel. I suppose those little moments are the things that make for an English major... In LRR I always felt sorry for the poor, hungry wolf who was acting as nature intended by eating a little girl who didn't have sense enough to follow her mother's explicit instructions. (And how on earth could Granny--a grown woman who lived in the woods--not have sense enough to keep the door locked when a wolf came knocking?)
Rumpelstiltskin gave me even more problems. I was deeply troubled by the fact that the Miller's Daughter seemed quite delighted to marry the king who was willing to chop off her head if she didn't spin straw into gold. Add in the girl's willingness to barter with a child AND then try and go back on the deal and she did not come off as a character I had much sympathy for. (Even as a child I took vows/promises very much to heart.) I seriously thought that the baby would be better off in a hut in the woods with Rumplestiltskin than stuck with those two losers as parents!
Wow, I'm realizing I was was quite a judgmental child when it came to characters in fairy tales when I put that all down in black and white...
Rumplestiltskin was also the subject of the first "alternate telling" of a fairy tale that I came across. "Truly Grimm Tales" by Patricia Galloway still holds up well to me even after years of reading the Windling/Datlow collections. I still remember standing in my childhood public library, picking that strange little book up and reading "The Name" before even checking the book out. In it a crippled nobleman's son falls in love with poor girl. The nobleman forbids them to marry, and buys the girl a husband (a miller) when she becomes pregnant by 'Pel. In "The Name" Rumplestiltskin is spinning straw (actually swapping out the straw for the remaining family gold he inherited. But as he says, the king is a greedy man and didn't care that the gold didn't look "spun") for his own daughter. In the end he has to decide whether to hold the girl to her bargain so he can raise his granddaughter as the child he never knew or send a messenger to the queen letting her know "that elvish name of which my father was so proud." I remember standing in the library, feeling my heart break over that story, and in my mind it has remained the "real" version ever since. It was also my gateway to alternate versions of fairy tales, and perhaps the first time when I saw that other authors had sympathy for "villains" in the same way that I did. And to someone who grew up in the days before internet fic writers delved into the "nice" sides of "bad" guys it was truly earth-shattering to see that.
As proof of the level of insanity in my life, I offer up the fact that I didn't get around to watching Sunday's episode of Once Upon A Time until Tuesday evening. I wonder if The Littlest Black will ever appreciate the sacrifices I make :) And not just any OUAT episode, but the mid-season return, Rumpelstiltskin meets Grima Wormtongue episode. My current favorite Trickster character meeting up with the first character I ever posted fic for--my fannish heart swells.
Well, sometime Tuesday night I had collapsed on the couch with the remote within arm's reach and finally got my shot at Mr. Gold's back-story. And it was indeed as delightful as I had hoped. I think my favorite thing was perhaps the fact that we got to see Robert Carlyle playing what amounted to three different characters in one--Fatherly!Rumpelstiltskin, Mr. Gold, and Imp!Rumpelstiltskin.
I'd like to think I'd still love OUAT even without Rumpelstiltskin. And I would certainly enjoy it. But I have such a weakness for witty villains who have complex motivations (and are played by actors with accents...)
Rumpelstiltskin's story has a special place in my heart for two reasons. It and Little Red Riding Hood are the first stories I remember hearing where I felt as though I were disagreeing with the accepted interpretation. I just wasn't feeling what I thought the author likely intended me to feel. I suppose those little moments are the things that make for an English major... In LRR I always felt sorry for the poor, hungry wolf who was acting as nature intended by eating a little girl who didn't have sense enough to follow her mother's explicit instructions. (And how on earth could Granny--a grown woman who lived in the woods--not have sense enough to keep the door locked when a wolf came knocking?)
Rumpelstiltskin gave me even more problems. I was deeply troubled by the fact that the Miller's Daughter seemed quite delighted to marry the king who was willing to chop off her head if she didn't spin straw into gold. Add in the girl's willingness to barter with a child AND then try and go back on the deal and she did not come off as a character I had much sympathy for. (Even as a child I took vows/promises very much to heart.) I seriously thought that the baby would be better off in a hut in the woods with Rumplestiltskin than stuck with those two losers as parents!
Wow, I'm realizing I was was quite a judgmental child when it came to characters in fairy tales when I put that all down in black and white...
Rumplestiltskin was also the subject of the first "alternate telling" of a fairy tale that I came across. "Truly Grimm Tales" by Patricia Galloway still holds up well to me even after years of reading the Windling/Datlow collections. I still remember standing in my childhood public library, picking that strange little book up and reading "The Name" before even checking the book out. In it a crippled nobleman's son falls in love with poor girl. The nobleman forbids them to marry, and buys the girl a husband (a miller) when she becomes pregnant by 'Pel. In "The Name" Rumplestiltskin is spinning straw (actually swapping out the straw for the remaining family gold he inherited. But as he says, the king is a greedy man and didn't care that the gold didn't look "spun") for his own daughter. In the end he has to decide whether to hold the girl to her bargain so he can raise his granddaughter as the child he never knew or send a messenger to the queen letting her know "that elvish name of which my father was so proud." I remember standing in the library, feeling my heart break over that story, and in my mind it has remained the "real" version ever since. It was also my gateway to alternate versions of fairy tales, and perhaps the first time when I saw that other authors had sympathy for "villains" in the same way that I did. And to someone who grew up in the days before internet fic writers delved into the "nice" sides of "bad" guys it was truly earth-shattering to see that.