I was catching up on Variety articles this week and read a commentary about the latest installment of Divergent. “Allegiant’s” performance has some on Wall Street doubting that Lionsgate has figured out a formula for young adult films — something it seemed to have discovered in the wake of “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight,” its […]
It all started with pimchie flowers. The Blue Sword is one of my favorite books and a few years ago I finally got it into my bookclub for everyone to read the wonder that is Robin McKinley. And for about 20 minutes at the beginning of our discussion, all they could talk about was pimchie […]
For several years I’ve thought about the distinction between myth and fairy tale. It’s an interesting conversation and this is just a blog post on what could probably be an entire college course. In some ways the two might seem unrelated. Especially since we exist in a culture that recognizes the stories that are myths […]
I know it’s not a proper fairy tale but Enchanted was really the first movie that set me down the path of understanding the fairy tale legacy. I know a lot of people love this movie, and this post isn’t meant to diminish that in any way because it is a fun, sweet movie. The […]
We have this false idea that fairy tales are about weak and passive heroines, damsels in distress. So we are always fighting against a fairy tale legacy that doesn’t exist. The interesting thing about The Snow Queen is that most retellings center their story around the villain rather than the heroine. Hans Christian Anderson’s story […]
I really wanted to pull off a sci-fi fairy tale legacy. How cool would that be to look at a sci-fi story that’s really a fairy tale and explore how it fits into or defies the fairy tale legacy? But I couldn’t find one. Mostly I looked at tv shows because that’s my favorite sci-fi […]
I have an 80% rule when writing. It is the supporting caveat to all my other writing rules. You could say, though I call them all rules, that it turns them more into guidelines. Because the 80% rule is that I only follow all my other rules 80% of the time.The thing is, writing is […]
I’d watched a few episodes of Girl Meets World with my nieces and nephews. Mostly out of curiosity because I loved Boy Meets World so much as a kid. I noticed it was on Netflix the other weekend and since I had unpacking and cooking and things to do around the house, I thought it […]
We have this false idea that fairy tales are about weak and passive heroines, damsels in distress. So we are always fighting against a fairy tale legacy that doesn’t exist. Snow White is a bit of a confounding fairy tale and in 1937, Disney did it no favors. We all know the essence of the […]
We have this false idea that fairy tales are about weak and passive heroines, damsels in distress. So we are always fighting against a fairy tale legacy that doesn’t exist. The Twelve Dancing Princesses was one of my favorite stories as a child. I liked the dancing and the sisters and that it seemed different […]