Movie Monday: The Swan Princess

December 7, 2015November 23, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

I’m just gonna put this video here and I’m not even going to summarize this because I maintain that “This is my Idea” is THE best growing up montage penned to film. You get to know the characters, watch them grow, establish firmly that what they have isn’t istalove (there’s a small element of that when Derrick finally catches on that Odette’s gorgeous, but the narrative backs up the fact that they were raised together and know each other on a level most prince/princess stories don’t).

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Immediately after the song, Odette asks what Derrick sees in her other than her beauty. Odette’s hesitation makes a lot of sense because she’s known Derrick her ENTIRE life and he’s never seemed to notice her before she got pretty, whereas in the song, we see that she was more than willing to be friends with him on multiple occasions. Derrick screws up and asks “what else is there,” prompting Odette to leave and their brief engagement is dashed to pieces.

On their way out of the kingdom, Odette and her father are attacked by “a great animal.”

“That’s twice in one day!”

Meanwhile, Derrick is playing chess with his best friend and trying to ignore his steward’s lecture. One of the things I love about this movie is how well the background characters are fleshed out. I only wish Odette interacted with a single other female character even once in the movie. The evil female character is literally mute and she never even talks to Derrick’s mom. Not once. Not in a single scene.

Anyway, Derrick’s just decided to prove his love for Odette since he’s incapable of vocalizing it, when an injured guard bursts in to tell him Odette’s carriage has been attacked. Derrick rushes to the scene and discovers her father just in time to hear his last words.Derrick’s grief when Odette is lost and his grief for the king seem very realistic, and he’s the ONLY character that seems to grieve (well, other than Odette).His mom instantly goes on with life as though a long time family friend and surragette daughter weren’t just brutally killed in her kingdom.

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The scene switches to Odette and Rothbar, the bad guy. Rothbar wants to marry Odette so he can take over her father’s kingdom. I wonder what happened to Odette’s kingdom though? Like it seems to be an integral part of the villains plan, to take over her father’s kingdom, but the King is dead and the heir is presumed dead. But it’s never addressed again.

Also, I love how important consent is in this universe. The King and Queen worried Odette wouldn’t consent to the marriage with Derrick, and when she didn’t, that was that (though they could force her to spend every summer with him). Rothbar can literally turn people into animals and has a ridiculous amount of power, and he can’t force her to marry him.

Meanwhile, Derrick is practicing his hunting skills on the local musicians. He’s sure Odette’s not dead and he’s going to keep practicing until he’s sure he can take on any great animal.

Meanwhile Odette is making friends with the sentient woodland creatures and making zero effort to figure out where she is. I mean, I get to turn back human she has to be on the lake when the moonlight touches is, but why turn back human? In human form, Rothbar just keeps pestering her to marry him. I’d stay in Swan form until I could *do* something as a human.

Oh, curse caveat, the curse can only be broken when her true love professes his love to the world and does something to prove it. Odette immediately decides Derrick’s her true love, even though she doubted it the day before. But then again, now she’s alone in the world and he’s the only one left that she knows.

The scene shifts to a beautiful duet between Derrick and Odette that I’m just gonna put right here because I love it.

Derrick eventually makes an unlikely connection and realizes the animal is a shape shifter. Meanwhile, Derrick’s mom is trying to marry him off and Odette finally decides to DO something about her predicament and with a risky mission (where she stands watch) she obtains a map.

She and puffin track down Derrick, who meanwhile is hunting a shapeshifter. He spots Odette and determines SHE must be the great animal and follows her back to the pond, shooting arrows all the way. She lands in the water, changes back, and they hug, kiss, and hatch a plan. Derrick’s going to prove his love for her at the ball tomorrow.

Only Odette’s forgotten tomorrow there’s no moon. But Rothbar’s overheard the plan and sings the worst villain song ever while disguising his mute helper as Odette. Fake Odette goes to the ball and everyone’s all “is that Odette?” “I don’t know, we only saw her every summer for Derrick’s entire life and like, 3 days ago.” “Huh, maybe it is her.”

Derrick professes his love to the wrong swan, mortally wounding Odette. Derrick figures out his error and rushes to the lake only to find Odette breathing her last.

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Furious and grief stricken, Derrick goes after Rothbar and in a truly awesome scene with all kinds of callbacks to the beginning, fights and defeats Rothbar with a single arrow.

Returning to the lake, Derrick makes this tearful confession:

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And it’s enough to bring back Odette. They live happily every after.

I love this movie so much. I mean, there’s major plot holes, and it’s missing other female characters, and Odette’s pretty passive, and they didn’t USE the fact that these two characters have known each other their entire lives nearly enough, but it’s a pretty good movie. So glad Bella wanted to watch it.

For Real Friday: How To Tell if Your Holiday is Under Attack

December 4, 2015December 3, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

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We hear a lot about the “War on Christmas” this time of year, so I’ve created this handy questionnaire to help people determine if their holiday is under attack, ranked in order of severity.

Can you answer yes to any of the following statements?

If other people near my residence discover me celebrating said holiday, it is statistically probable I will be tortured, maimed, and/or murdered
I am forbidden to teach my children about my holiday
My children must learn to celebrate (not acknowledge or learn about the existence of) holidays other than my own
I could lose my job if my employer discovers I celebrate my holiday
My religion explicitly forbids me from doing a thing or requires me to do a thing on my holiday, but to maintain economic, social, emotional, or physical well being, I must do/not do it anyway
If I tell others that I celebrate my holiday, I will lose social standing
I am forced to celebrate (not acknowledge the existence of) a holiday that contradicts my religious belief or else I risk physical, emotional, economic, or social consequences
I am forbidden to decorate spaces I control with my holiday’s decor

If you answered yes to any of the above statements, your holiday may be under attack.
Here’s what is NOT an attack on your holiday

Other people can answer yes to more of the above questions than I can and that makes me uncomfortable
Other people, businesses, or agencies do not also celebrate my holiday or force others to pretend to celebrate it to make my month more festive.
Other people do not celebrate it correctly or understand the real meaning of my holiday
Other people do not celebrate my holiday enthusiastically enough
Other people acknowledge or even celebrate other holidays
Other people don’t specifically wish me my specific happy holiday
Other people do not decorate for my specific holiday in spaces that I do not control
Other people decorate for their own holidays instead in spaces that I do not control
Other people do not play my holiday music is spaces that I do not control
Schools and retailers do not acknowledge or celebrate my holiday on days that are NOT your holiday (i.e no Christmas plays or parties on December 16th)
My employer asks that I am respectful to holidays other than my own while in their space or representing something my employer

Please do not say your holiday or religious belief is under attack if your biggest problem is that other people are not making life festive enough for you. It’s incredibly entitled, not to mention it draws attention away from people of all religious affiliations who have are actually putting their lives, health, economic, emotional, or social status in danger to acknowledge their holidays. Instead, do some good. Every time you hear a holiday greeting that offends you, donate your time or money to a religious organization of your choice that uses its resources to help the victims of actual religious persecution. You’ll make the world a better place, and if that’s not in keeping with the holiday spirit, whatever holiday you celebrate, I don’t know what is.

Writing on Wednesday: World Building and Historical Fiction

December 2, 2015December 1, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

One of the panels I attended at #YALLFEST was Moat By Moat: World Building in Historical Fiction, moderated by Libba Bray. Rae Carson, who I already talked about above was also a part of this panel.

A bit about the authors:

0f154bde6523de25a2073ef0e2640203 Gail Carriger– Is awesome! She’s a former archeologist who wrote The Parisole Protectorate series, The Custard Protocol series, and my personal favorite, her young adult Finishing School series. I wouldn’t have considered her series to be historical fiction though. She writes supernatural, alternate history, steampunk. The books are comedies so she noted frequently that people forgive her a lot in comparison to other more serious and actually historic setting driven stories. She did sign my book, but she was on her way out the door when she signed it, so I didn’t have the nerve to ask her to sign my notebook. Loved her outfit, she really dresses up like the characters in her novel.

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Elizabeth Wein wrote the Code Name: Verity series, The Lion Hunters series, and Black Dove, White Raven. I haven’t read her books, but she reminded me a lot of me when she talked about her childhood. The clapping game she and her friend made up for Hamlet’s Soliloquy stole the show. I have a video, but you really have to have been there to fully understand the hilarity.

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Ryan Graudin writes alternate history with a supernatural bent, mostly focusing on “What if Hitler had won.” Her books include All that Glows, Wolf by Wolf, and the Walled City. She’s another author I haven’t read, but she’s definitely been added to my TBR pile.

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Carol Weatherford is prolific and probably the most famous author on the panel. She’s written more books than I can list here. A few of her works include Becoming Billie Holiday, The Library Ghost, and Jazz Baby.

The First question Libba asked was where do the authors begin their world building process. Most of the authors agreed finding the voice of the protagonist was their first step. Once they have a protagonist in mind, the setting, a very specific setting, complete with atmosphere, came next. Gail Carriger said most of her stories begin by her “overhearing” snippets of dialogue between two characters, and before she knows it, the rest of the story fills in. Rae Carson mentioned that one thing that really helps her is establishing limits, what they can’t say, what they can’t do, where they can’t go, whereas Elizabeth Wein said she tends to annotate places that need more research as she goes along, and cautioned that sometimes research makes you procrastinate.

I can definitely believe that. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of research, but I’ve also been in situations where I literally can’t write another word until I fill in those details. So I’d say it’s a mixed bag. One acknowledgement I was happy they made is that contemporary settings demand just as much research and world building as historical fiction, at least initially. The authors talked about how they tied personal experience in with their work, even if historically they can’t relate, there’s always a universal experience.

One thing Ryan Graudin and Gail Carriger elaborated on was the juxtaposition of light and dark, of humor and sadness, to echo each other and really bring each other out.

Some of the sins of worldbuilding they agreed on were…

–White washing

— Sugar Coating

— Self-censoring

–Inconsistency

— Forgetting the other senses

Some other tips they offered were to ignore linguistics until line edits (though they also mentioned no recognizable English would have been spoken in many of their settings, so remember you can take liberties). N-grams Google will tell you when a particular phrase originated.

I found the panel to be very entertaining and informative, even though I don’t write historical fiction. I love reading historical fiction though! One day I may delve a bit into the Trojan War, but for now, I’m happy in my contemporary zone.