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[riyirowe]

So, for the past week we had Sleeping Beauty playing on some of our display tvs at work. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it happens to be my favorite Disney animated film. Mostly because I think that Maleficent is arguably the best animated villain ever. But it has also been putting thougts in my head

Comments

[fresica]

Maleficent is the last great Disney villain! Everyone after her was cliched and stupid! Maleficent rocks! I like the idea of her as Unseelie, too... that opens up a whole lot of possibilities, doesn't it? hm...

[riyirowe]

Oh, I don't know...I liked Ursula, too, I just have less pathos for her (that is the right "-thos" right?). And I can't think of anymore off the top of my head, but that's ok. And yes...I love her as Unseelie. And damn it, now that I threw Ursula into it, I want to write her as something, too, but not necessarily as her own story, maybe as Maleficent's sister whose death is the final blow that smashes her sanity into tiny little pieces.

[fresica]

I don't know, I think compared to Maleficent, Ursula is a bit two dimensional. Although, it would be interesting to see something expanding on her comment about her people ruling the ocean, or whatever that was...

[riyirowe]

I don't recall that comment, I may have to research. And no, Ursula doesn't inspire me the way Maleficent does. And yeah, she doesn't really ever have any moments. Though I do remember one image (we are playing The Little Mermaid on some of our portable DVD players). Where her shell necklace thing is broken and Ariel gets her voice back and Ursula yells "Eric, get away from her!" and then she grabs her throat, surprised. That moment made me think. And maybe I am just really interested in the "bad guys" right now, but I was like, why is she surprised. She had to have felt her power escaping. She must have known that if Ariel has her voice, she doesn't anymore. But what if she used to have a beautiful voice. Or maybe once she was a girl a lot like Ariel who was rejected, or confined, or something by father/lover/boy and gave herself to the darker powers and was transformed by them into what she is there.

I probably shouldn't watch anymore disney movies while this whatever-it-is is sitting in my head.

[riyirowe]

I don't know if I will actually follow through on this any time in the near future. And I know that I need to find sources other than Disney, because Disney bastardizes pretty much everything. But I did look through some of the Sleeping Beauty tales that are older, and I like Maleficent better than any of the other evil fairy versions. Though, Wiki is probably not the only source I should look through. I have a good ten tabs of Sleeping Beauty and fairy tale related stuff open in my browser right not...yay for center click new tab!

And I love you, too.

PS: Have you seen Across the Universe?

[lurker2209]

Have you ever read Orson Scott Card's [i]Enchantment[/i]? It's my favorite retelling of Sleeping Beauty ever. It's a sci-fi treatment of the Russian version of the story, with the prince as a modern day Ukrainian grad student. The witch is Baba Yaga from Russian folklore. The setting is very realistic, early Christianized (but only barely) Russia. It's a fun read.

[riyirowe]

I like Orson Scott Card, but some of his books I just can't read. I loved the Ender's Game series (both of them) and I really like The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, but I couldn't get into his alternate history of the revolutionary/civil war (I don't remember which) period. But I shall have to try that one out.

[lurker2209]

Yeah, I went through a phase where I read a lot of what he wrote, but the library didn't have the first book of that alternate history series so I skipped that one. OSC is kind of uneven, in that some of his stuff I absolutely love and some of it is really weird and doesn't quite work.

[mabthefey]

So I got to thinking about the gifts of "beauty" and "song". What if those gifts encompased more than the surface implication.

what if beauty included inner beauty, a sense of the artistic, and creativity. And maybe the ability to find beauty in the common things.

And What if song included Harmony (the ability to get along with others), rythme (finding the natural cycles of things), and a sense of timing.

[riyirowe]

I really like that viewpoint. It works in many different ways. It makes me hate the fairy godmothers just a little bit less, lol.