Re: McKinley: Where in the world are the McKinley fans?

>Just out of interest, what do you find the most appealing about the
>fairytale anyway? I'm interested because I'm writing a short novella for my
>Honours - joining the ever-increasing list of people who have dabbled in
>rewrites....

Hmm.... This may sound childish and corny. I think I like fairy tales so
much because so many of them are about transformations or coming-of-age
stories. A lot of times I feel like growing up is kind of like a quest,
and fairy tales make me feel that it's not such a scary thing because
things will be o.k. if you just be true to yourself, do the best you can,
etc., etc.. (And i feel growing up is pretty scary; there are times when i
have wished that i can skip the next ten years of my life so i can skip all
the fumbling towards being adult and just KNOW what the heck i am doing.)
Ug. I am expressing this very badly. Am i making any sense?

This is why i like re-tellings so much better than the originals. In the
original, the main character is usually way too virtuous. (I don't mean
that I don't like nice people, just that when someone is INCAPABLE of doing
the wrong thing, somehow there's no achievement in doing the right thing.)
Annoys me the same way Nancy Drew annoyed me when she learned to play the
bagpipes in one afternoon and used it to solve the mystery the next day.
In the re-tellings, the heroines are normal people. Most of them are nice,
but they are not the repositories of all virtues. (This is why I really
liked Janet in Pamela Dean's _Tam Lin_. She's neurotic, not particularly
understanding, but she means well and she tries really hard.) And I like
the fact that when they make a choice, there are consequences that they
might not want that they'll have to live with. Like Janet's pregnancy, or
Beauty in Rose Daughter giving up being wise and famous. sort of like
fairy tales with a dose of reality.

tawen, who'll be really embarrassed tomorrow to have written this drivel.

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Received on Fri Aug 6 21:52:41 1999