Editorial: Why Maleficent is Disney's Alpha Female

I'm still involved in Camp Nanowrimo this month and preparing for our library's Sci-fi/Fantasy Festival at the end of July. And because of these ongoing projects I'm learning that I have a finite amount of creative energy, hence the series of opinion blogs this month.

But as Kingdom Hearts III is on the horizon (not ours, maybe Trenzalore has at least gotten a new screenshot) I thought it might be fitting to examine Disney's undisputed Mistress of all Evil, Maleficent. And like all retrospectives, we regrettably have to go back to the beginning. Just bear with me.

The Original Fairy Tale

Dear God in Heaven, have you ever tried to follow the original fairy tale? Or the one that was more original than that? Or the first one? As best as we know, the earliest template of the classic tale comes from an early fourteenth century French book series of romantic prose with interludes of poetry called Perceforest. In here we have the tale of Troilus who rapes the beautiful Zellandine while she's in a coma. She gives birth without waking.

In 1634, Itallian poet Giambattista Basile's tale Sun, Moon, and Talia was published two years after his death. Talia is accidentally pricked by a splinter of flax and falls into a deathlike coma. Talia's father decides she's too beautiful to bury and leaves her on display in one of his townhouses. One day a king happens upon her and tries unsuccessfully to wake her. But so overcome by her beauty, he carries her to a bed and "gathered the first fruits of love"; which, as I regret having to point out, is a flowery way of saying rape (this theme is going to keep popping up). Talia gives birth to twins. The king's wife is furious. She tries to go full (not Tyler Perry's) Madea on Talia and her children and have them murdered. When that fails, the king has his wife burned to death, marries Talia, and they live happily ever after.

Two versions and there's still no sign of Maleficent (or her rough draft), but the issues raised by feminist analyses of the Disney version are clearly on display here. The story's 'Beauty' by whatever name she's given is nothing more than an object. In the Basile version, the king's wife is punished for being outraged by her husband's infidelity, whereas the king is treated as if he's the hero of the piece.

I'm not a historian, but my gut tells me that the actions of Troilus and the king were not thought of as objectionable by their respective audiences or authors. Given the history of the way women have been viewed in society, I wonder if anybody even considered that 'Beauty' might have liked some say in what was done to her body. But we'll be seeing more of this topic as we go, so for now let's move on.

The Charles Perrault version is the one Disney seemed to turn to for inspiration. The newborn gets cursed by an old fairy who had resided in a tower for so long that everyone thought she was dead. After six of seven fairy godmothers grant the child gifts of beauty, happiness, rhythm, health, a new car and a college fund, the old fairy loses it. She decides that the candle that burns the brightest should in fact burn shorter (she kind of has a point), and thus the whole spindle thing. You know the rest. Although there is a second act that goes all over the place with an ogre mom and some crap about a pit of vipers; making this the medieval equivalent of Abbey Road's side B.

For all of its shortcomings (and there are many) the Perrault version at least provides a credible motivation for Maleficent's understudy. One of the great fears of the elderly is being forgotten and left to die on their own. Perrault may not show the old fairy much sympathy, but her anger clearly comes from a place of pain. This element may not have been intended by Perrault, and I certainly don't think Walt Disney intended to work it in either, but the echo of pain possibly found it's way into Maleficent's character anyway.

The Disney Version

I tackled this era pretty thoroughly two years ago, but here's the highlights. Maleficent was kind of a hybrid of the two main female villains before her, Queen Grimhilde and Lady Tremaine (sharing her voice actress and model with the latter). She seemed to take the best traits of both, combining the Queen's above-the-law selfishness with the stepmother's patient seething. This film has the unique and instantly iconic dragon transformation preceded by a rare Disney use of the word 'Hell' that nobody has been able to top.

The film has its flaws, mainly any scene that doesn't involve Maleficent. But more so is a bit of character inconsistency that encourages discussion. What exactly was she so pissed about? The official reason is that she wasn't invited to Aurora's christening, but nobody is buying that. This Maleficent is too...grounded to care about something that trivial. Disney left us an unanswered mystery which was probably an error in judgment from the studio, but Audley enough (see what I did there?) it invites the audience into her psyche in a way very few villains do.

One of the reasons Maleficent has such a strong fan base is that everything about her reads as wishing to be understood. Not waiting around for it to happen of course. But one can't help but wonder if there was a deeper conflict with Maleficent that could have been resolved through respect and diplomacy.

Going back to the feminist analysis, Sleeping Beauty provides a dichotomy between Aurora and Maleficent that easily represents a problematic trope regarding the way male film makers portray female characters. Aurora is 'good'. She's also young, passive, powerless, harmless, and beautiful. Maleficent is 'evil'. She's also old, proactive, powerful, destructive, and...you know, let's look at beauty for a moment.

Yes, Maleficent has the traditional face associated with witches but that doesn't exactly disqualify her as beautiful, it only provides a context for beauty that our view on Aurora takes for granted. Maleficent is elegant. Like so many Disney villains, she has a natural charisma. The sheer power and dominance she exhibits all feed into a different kind of beauty. Aurora is beautiful, but quite a lot of what makes her so is the lack of tarnish by any qualities that would detract from her virginal innocence. You could almost say she's beautiful because of what she isn't; most accessibly, she's not Maleficent.

Fun digression: when I worked at Disney World, there were very few Auroras. Cinderellas were everywhere because it was her castle, and her rags to riches story is exactly what Disney wants little girls to buy into. So if you happened to be chosen to portray Aurora in her rare appearances, you were most likely also playing Cinderella some of the time. I once asked an Aurora how she, as a performer, distinguished between the two. She told me that for her, Cinderella was the peasant girl who always believed she was a princess deep down inside. So her interactions with children were very princess-centric. "Oh, you've been to my castle show! Have you met my fairy godmother?" Aurora never thought about princesses until she was thrust into the role. As such, her interactions were less about herself and more about them. "Do you have something fun planned today? Really, EPCOT. What's that?" I always thought that was brilliant considering Aurora's character gives you so little to work with.

The Kingdom Hearts Version

I was so glad to see Disney place Maleficent in the foreground of the Kingdom Hearts series. If we're talking sheer power in the Disney canon, Hades is a god and Chernabog is the embodiment of darkness. But Maleficent is correctly selected as the most active member of the villain's unit to work with/against Organization XIII.

And why is that? Because most of the villains are limited in their scope and use. It makes no sense to have Jafar wandering around Halloween Town, or Captain Hook popping into Wonderland. Maleficent has versatility. She can interact with just about any character and still feel like herself. And when you place her in a grander scope world than Aurora's story, Maleficent almost starts to resemble a protagonist. Hell, in Kingdom Hearts II, she and lackey Pete make a sacrifice that comes across as from-a-certain-point-of-view heroic.

The Once Upon a Time Version

I did not like Kristin Bauer van Straten's portrayal of Maleficent in the show's first season for two reasons. One, she was a throwaway character, and Maleficent deserves better. Two, no way some apple polisher is going to get the better of a freaking dragon. But, you know, the series evolved.

Season four was where van Straten got to shine (and the series peaked). Here we got to see Maleficent as a mother. And my God did van Straten play the most complex version of Maleficent to date! She actually tries to reason with Snow White and Prince Charming. Once Upon a Time has been more hit than miss regarding its adaptations, but they knocked it out of the park with Maleficent. She's not evil, she's hurting. If there's any character arc worthy of a spinoff, it's the dragon lady.

Maleficent

Angelina Jolie is a fantastic actress, but I was not pleased when I heard she was cast as Maleficent. My concern was that she would be playing herself in the role, the way she did with Lara Croft. I was thankfully proven wrong. The movie was far from perfect, but damn if Jolie didn't get the essence of the character down.

The filmmakers have all but confirmed the story they told was a rape allegory; and Jolie has explicitly stated it was how she approached the role. Whether they were deliberately channeling the original fairy tales or not is unclear, but the point is we've come full circle. Except Maleficent has essentially taken the bullet for Sleeping Beauty.

As a man, one thing that really gets under my skin is hearing other men gripe about 'feminist propaganda'. We live in a patriarch society that we have created to be a patriarch. We don't experience that society as the non-favored gender. And any man who is so quick to reduce something to a dismissive label is saying "I can't be bothered to even try listening". The world is changing. Maybe not as much as I thought (#notmypresident), but it is changing and will continue to. And in the meantime, a movie like Maleficent serves a vital purpose in helping us understand a horrible experience that happens to so many people so very often.

Conclusion

In the end it's not to suggest that Maleficent is destined to be a purely feminist icon. More accurately, she has the flexibility of character to be whatever she needs to be to whoever she needs to be it for. Good versus evil is a story that has been told to death. That grey area in between has so many possibilities, and it seems to be the direction our stories are going.

The strength of Maleficent in the classic film is that we're not clear why she's evil. And as we revisit her further and further away from it, we begin to wonder if she really is evil at all. Yes, she calls herself the Mistress of All Evil, but that could mean anything. It could mean she is born out of evil, or has dwelled within it so long that she has become its guiding force. Or perhaps it's a label that was given to her that she now wears proudly like a scarlet letter 'A'. In my Disney fan fiction series, I approach it as if Maleficent is a dam controller responsible for holding evil back, and having to decide when to release the floodgate and in what dosage.

My sense is that our dragon lady is only getting warmed up. Now that Maleficent portrayed her as the protagonist, I hope this affects the way Kingdom Hearts thinks about her. She's the only villain in the game series that has any claim on being a playable character. And damn it, she's earned it.

So what makes her Disney's alpha female? You know, I really have no idea. It may not be something that can be reduced to a simple statement. But probably more than any other character in the studio's history, Maleficent represents the tip of an undiscovered iceberg. And that by itself means she's at least a step ahead of the rest of us.

Editorial: How the Odyssey2 Created Magic

What could be more fun than a stroll down Nostalgia Avenue? Alone? At night? With a dead car battery and no cell phone? I don't know why you'd be carrying a dead car battery, but put it down and let's talk video games.

Our species is one of narrative. It's in our nature to weave stories; given any two variables and we'll certainly draw a connection between them regardless of how absurd. I mention this because I'm a child of the seventies and a teen of the eighties, and my personal development quite coincidentally mirrors that of video game history, and I think I've got some old war hero stories for you.

My family didn't have the Atari 2600, or as we called it back then "Atari". We invested in the Magnavox Odyssey2, known today as that thing that was on the market back then that wasn't the Intellivison. Much like many Nintendo systems that followed, the Odyssey suffered from the lack of third party support. As such, you could conceivably collect the whole set of 56 games on 46 cartridges if you didn't mind owning a lot of trash (kind of like baseball cards).

You may not have experienced the 8-bit era yourself, but you've no doubt seen images. That paints a pretty accurate picture of what we were playing; hardly jaw dropping even by our primitive standards. But we weren't concerned about jaw dropping graphics. We were captivated by the fact that we could control what we were seeing on our TV screens! I don't even think remote controls had been invented yet.

And the Odyssey2 had some gems, games with rudimentary layouts that you could inadvertently sacrifice hours of your life on. Fun fact: in my mid twenties I dusted off the old Magnavox and inadvertently sacrificed hours of my life on it. In other words, they got some real mileage out of the minimalistic tools at their disposal.

So I wanted to take some time out of my busy schedule to honor some of the unsung classics that never achieved 'giant' status but certainly belong in a museum.

Computer Golf!

If there are ever two words undeserving of an exclamation point when put together, it's these. There wasn't much that stood out about this game, but it gives me a chance to mention a few important specs. The Odyssey2 had two primary sources of input from the user; a pair of single button joysticks, and a qwerty keyboard for educational games (yeah, that tried to happen even the late seventies). Hence the 'computer' in the title.

The golfer was an all purpose character I refer to as Sprite Guy. If you've played the original Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, Cranky mentions having to deal with a two sprite walk back in his day. Sprite Guy is who he's referring to. Sprite Guy was perpetually frozen in profile with his (what passed for) arms held out like a zombie. The only thing that change was his legs that would move apart every alternate frame to create the illusion of running or standing as need be.

Sprite Guy was the William H. Macy of 8-bit games. He could appear in any context and play whatever role was needed. And in Computer Golf! he had the distinction of being a much shorter tempered golfer than his Atari counterpart (which Odyssey had blatantly ripped off). Bounce your ball off a 'tree' and Sprite Guy would strike the ground repeatedly with his club in an unsportsmanlike manner. It was a little thing, just a touch of humor from the faceless developers, but it was one of the earliest examples of a game character with personality that would become so important down the road.

Smithereens!

This one required two players. On each side of the screen is a medieval tower (if you kind of squint), and behind each tower is a Sprite Guy with a catapult about half his size. There is also a moat right in the middle of the screen. The object is to pull your joystick away from your target and release it with careful timing to hit your opponent's tower. Too soon and you land in the moat. Too late and you miss wildly, or with a bit of luck might hit your opponent's catapult or your opponent, putting both temporarily out of commission. You can, and will, accidentally destroy your own tower.

Now I want you to think about how simple of a setup that is. This- was our Super Smash Brothers. Carnage, bloodless violence, skill, and a bit of randomness; we were entertained for hours. But the fun didn't stop there, because we had the added layer of "The Voice", a hardware add-on that is probably owed some residuals from Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.

I saved up my own allowance money to throw down seventy bucks on this upgrade, but it was so worth it. "The Voice" provided artificial speech for several Odyssey2 games, and for Smithereens! it was a running commentary from an outside observer. Hit the moat and you were treated to a man mimicking a splashing sound or drowning "Gl-l-l-l". Launch your rock off screen? "Come on turkey, hit it!" Take a boulder to the face? "Ouch! Help!" The game was inherently funny, and "The Voice" acknowledged that the game knew it. Back then, that was called innovation.

K.C. Munchkin!/K.C.'s Krazy Chase!

I mentioned this little guy in my Pac-Man blog a while back. K.C. Munchkin was Pac-Man with a happy face and antennae. Atari had exclusive rights to port Pac-Man to home consoles (and dear lord did they screw it up) while Magnavox beat them to the market with an obvious knock-off that was superior in every way to what Atari gave us. In the end the courts unfairly ruled against K.C. I mean, sure, the intellectual property was appropriated, but it's no different Mr. Pibb taking the Dr. pepper concept or Disney reworking Kimba the White Lion.

The coolest element of K.C. was the level editor, which you could design using the keyboard. I was prone to building a single tunnel that linked all the munchies linearly while the munchers were given the rest of the negative space to wander aimlessly in. Power gaming at it's finest! It was only through glitches that I'm not still playing my masterpiece today.

Krazy Chase gave us the Draterpillar as the antagonist as kind of K.C.'s F.U. to Atari's Centipede (and no, I didn't plan out that anagram). The "Voice" guy is back, but he's less MST and more softball bleachers dad. "Run!" "Hurry!" "Watch out!" Um, thanks, I can figure the threats out myself. But even if the overall quality of the sequel had ebbed, the little guy himself was a trip. If Pac-Man was William Hartnell, K.C. Munchkin was Patrick Troughton. Just, you know, awesome. Hey, speaking of timelords...

Attack of the Timelord!

Right behind Galaga, this is the greatest Space Invaders styled game ever created. You only have a fleet of eight ships to shoot down in each level but those punks can move! They snake around the screen frantically, only getting dispersed if you happen to hit the lead ship.

But strangely enough, you're given better rewards for shooting down their incoming missiles than in taking out the armada. It starts easy enough with a cluster of three white darts that rain straight down. But level two introduces the red dot homing missile that doesn't quite line up with your laser blast. Round three gives the green x's that land and then roll about a fifth of the screens length in your direction; you don't want to be in the corners anymore. Although if you really want to feel like a daredevil, slide your ship under them at the last possible second to confuse their tracking, they'll roll a little in the wrong direction before adjusting. Last and certainly the most high score inducing are the purple diamonds that behave like homing missiles on a caffeine binge.

Now if obliterating half a box of Lucky Charms isn't interesting enough for you, there's the character of the Time Lord, who appears before each stage to mock you (or just gnash his teeth if you didn't buy "The Voice"). "Defend your world!" he challenges you. "Goodbye earthling!" he threatens (either to destroy you or leave Facebook). And my personal favorite that I know I'm not hearing correctly, "Mop-head human!" Who you calling mop-head, laser breath? But when you get to the fourth stage, an odd thing happens. Old laser breath starts respecting you. "You're a worthy opponent!" With the full understanding that at some point you're going to eventually lose (these games didn't have victory endings) that's kind of a feel good way to watch your home world perish.

Monkeyshines!

Sprite Guy is back! And he's...okay how do I explain this? You and your buddy are zookeepers, maybe? Some fairly versatile yellow monkeys are loose. And it's up to you pick them up and throw them. And then they get pissed, turn red, and try to beat you into paralysis. I have no idea, maybe this was a long lost gladiator game?

So, yeah, that sounds pretty stupid, but damn if it wasn't something special. The monkeys had minds of their own, four in all. They would dance, laugh at you, hang from bars over head, typical monkey stuff. You wouldn't actually pick them up so much a you would let them crawl on you and then start jumping in place to keep them on you. This game would never be made today.

So what we did was use the real time level editor to take overhead bars away from the monkeys while they were on them to eventually get all four to fall on the same hopping Sprite Guy. Then we'd build an escape route for the second guy and minimize the monkeys' access to where he was hiding. Then we'd let hopping Sprite Guy rack up as many points as possible by throwing all four monkeys downwards and holding the button. This caused four angry monkeys to bounce off the ground and back into Sprite Guy who would keep taking advantage of the glitch as-he-was-dying. The second Sprite Guy then spent a few suspenseful minutes trying to avoid four hostile monkeys who took this act personally for some reason. Then repeat with the survivor. It was the single most awesome suicide pact, and I'm certain the Sprite Guys shared a plot with only their high score on the headstone.

Take the Money and Run!

You know I've counted five Odyssey2 games in total that don't feel the need to emphasize their thrills with an exclamation point. Some of my personal favorites purely by title are Keyboard Creations! Pocket Billiards! Turtles! and one I've actually played, Pachinko! which really does live up to it's self-hype.

This is a two player game, but for a change Sprite Guy is your antagonist(s). You and your friend are playing a pair of characters affectionately named Lumbering Oaf Man, or Lom. You're in a randomly generated K.C. Munchkin-esc maze designed for Sprite Guy. Lom is two and a half times the size of Sprite Guy, which means you're going to be hitting your head.

Fortunately the joystick's button allows you to duck, which slows your movement some but gets you through tight spots. The object is to get money, a life's lesson for us all. When Sprite Guy is white, it means he's worth money. The amount he's worth runs down like a timer, and he starts off very fast but gradually slows to a crawl. When Sprite Guy is pink, the opposite happens. he represents income tax. Here he starts out slowly with the higher amounts but gets faster and greedier as the counter goes down.

That's pretty much the intended game play, but there were a few quirks that made this game really special. One was learning the algorithms. Tax collector Sprite Guys would often get stuck running in loops that could protect you. And glitches. If you pressed Lom against the wall in a lower corner you could make him vibrate, which had the inconsistent advantage of tax collector Sprite Guy not actually being able to reach into his pocket. This same glitch could be used in a few other creative ways, like hitting the wall and moving slightly up or down would cause Lom to slowly creep the wall in the opposite direction. Player one could actually slip into the money counter area where Sprite Guys couldn't go. I can think of few childhood experiences more frustrating than me straining my hand muscles trying to avoid my tax collector while my buddy casually wandered around in the safe zone singing "I'm in the money."

But the best element of all was the way Lom moved. He had at least a four frame walk (a luxury) where his arms swung freely. The guy just looked groovy as he roamed. And there was a sadistic delight to be had positioning him under a low bar and watching his head get batted over and over. Lom may have been the first video game doofus; just so inherently laid back you couldn't help but love him.


So that's my memory lane jog; old school stuff, but true gems. Although if you're familiar at all with the Odyssey2 library you may have noticed a curious omission from the games I've discussed. And yes, there is one more game that I believe is the actual diamond of the whole system. I was going to include it here, but this blog got a bit longer than I'd planned, and I feel it deserves a bit more attention than I can give it right now. So be on the lookout sometime in the future for a retrospective on dungeon crawls. Until then, always make time for play.

Shows in Need of a Reboot: Snarfquest

One thing right out of the gate: no, this was never a show. I've just had quite a bit of success with my previous blog Shows in Need of a Reboot: Ranma 1/2 that I'm less than compelled to mess with the formula.

In the mid 1980's (essentially the time period where nerd culture developed its autonomy) Dungeons and Dragons was experiencing the apex of its alternative-to-mainstream identity, complete with a Saturday morning cartoon; that's when you knew you'd made it. This was also a golden period for magazines. Movies were being released at a manageable enough pace for the satires of MAD to stay fresh. Will Shortz's creation GAMES was deconstructing common magazine facets in the name of puzzle solving. And at the heart and hub of every role player's connection to a perceived community of passionate clerics and paladins was Dragon.

Dragon magazine was D&D's expansion pack, fleshing out new monsters, character classes, fiction, even new approaches to playing the game. The artwork was magnificent and the adventures that were semi-regularly published rivaled many of the official modules of the time. And if you didn't connect with anything else in a particular issue, you could always rely on the final couple of pages to justify your continued subscription.

For three reasons. One, "Dragonmirth", a series of (usually) single paneled comics related to fantasy gaming; conceivably a precursor to The Far Side. Two, "Wormy", a better-than-it-ever-needed-to-be exploration of D&D's most famous members of the Monster Manual and what their private lives might consist of. "Wormy" was abruptly discontinued mid story arc(s) when artist David Trampier left TSR (the circumstances of which will likely remain a mystery) and went into seclusion until his death in 2014. Three (and this is what all this has been leading up to), "Snarfquest".

Larry Elmore is one of fantasy's most recognizable artists. If you've ever been to a gaming convention or browsed through D&D books at the bookstore, you've undoubtedly come across his work. And once you have a passing familiarity with Elmore's style you can naturally single his drawings out from a lineup. It's not that his work is deliberately distinctive, most fantasy artwork tends to conform to a certain visual vocabulary, but a Larry Elmore piece just has a certain beat to it that I'm sure someone smarter than me could explain. I don't know of any other artist who can capture that ~pause~; it's a moment where something life-changing has either just happened or is just about to, and the whole story is reflected in the central figure's expression and demeanor. Suffice to say, Elmore's artwork has graced many a cover of Dragon.

"Snarfquest" was a chance for Elmore to relax a little and presumably have a bit of fun. The serial ran for several years in the mid-eighties until Elmore admitted (in-universe no less) to simply not having the time or strength to continue it amidst the rest of his professional obligations. But I say "Snarfquest" is a real gem that deserves to be reworked into a (probably animated) series; maybe Bruce Timm's interested? Let me explain why.

The comic series

Snarf is a Zeetvah (Google it), with an anteater-like snout, bat-winged ears, and a personality kind of akin to Daffy Duck if he weren't corrupted by Hollywood. After the death of his village's king, it's decreed that any Zeetvah can lay claim to the throne, with the ruler selected based on how much treasure and/or heroic deeds he or she can acquire over the following year. So Snarf sets out on his titular quest and meets a colorful cast of characters based on, and pushing against, your typical fantasy quest tropes.

What works

It's a great premise for one thing. Treasure for the sake of it was an instant cliché whenever the first story of greed was written down, but treasure for a higher goal is engaging. Despite the fact that Snarf starts off a bit on the amoral side you can't help but root for him. He's inexperienced and prone to attracting challenges beyond his skillset, but you have to admire the 'I can't believe that actually worked' methods he uses to overcome them.

Larry Elmore's drawing style is wonderful. The characters are incredibly expressive, and many panels are laugh out loud funny with or without the dialogue included. "Snarfquest" has been favorably compared to Jeff Smith's "Bone"; and I totally get it, but I see a bit more Bill Watterson in it (or "Snarfquest" in "Calvin and Hobbes").

Also a lot of the characters draw you in. Pick a favorite: Prince Raffendorf (a one-eyed human turned into a giant rat), the evil time-jumping wizard Suthaze (whose introduction involves teleporting into his tower while riding a motorcycle), Willie (the dragon who believes he's a duck), Leech (the in-house voice of MST3K), or Aveeare (a stranded robot from the future who nearly usurps Snarf as the series protagonist). And then there's Telerie who I'll be saying more about shortly. For now just remember her name (no, I don't know which syllable is supposed to be emphasized). Even Dorque da Wanderer left a bit of a smile on my face.

What doesn't work

I obviously don't have access to Larry Elmore's brain, but based on the way the narrative plays out I imagine he was kind of making it up as he went. This gives the story a really nice unpredictable quality but it also leads to some inescapable rough spots. Side characters appear out of nowhere and are unceremoniously dropped. Certain obstacles that have a buildup are suddenly deemed irrelevant. And there's the fate of spaceship pilot Fred which never sat well with me.

The 'Snarf who would be king' arc wraps up in what could be considered Act One. Act Two involves Snarf and Telerie time traveling to Aveeare's period (the future) for significantly weaker motivations where they encounter a new cast of characters that don't really add up to much. In fact there was only one really memorable scene in Act Two that managed to uncover what the story was really about.

In other words, it's a good story overall, but the great characters and ideas of the first act are just begging to be better. They demand a finesse that Larry Elmore truly couldn't afford to give them the first time around. And not that I have any sway with anyone who could do anything about it, but Snarf and company are at least calling to me to open up a discussion about them.

What would I revise?

Two words. Telerie Windyarm; a surname ridiculous even by fantasy standards. Telerie is a competent warrior. When she first meets Snarf she's at the presumed end of her own offscreen adventure. I originally thought she had no backstory until I went and looked it up. It turns out she has a rich backstory that gets waved away in a few sentences (something about a stolen sword, her father, and a betrayal by Suthaze's more powerful but less interesting expy Whats-his-face the Grumpy).

Telerie quite accurately resembled a lot of the exercise models of the eighties, in build and hair. Funny looking Snarf was pretty easy for the average nerd (mostly presumed to be male) of the time period to see themselves reflected in. The relationship between these two characters is ultimately what Snarfquest is about, even if Elmore himself hadn't planned it that way.

So in the revision, Telerie needs to be front and center from the get go in her own fleshed out quest running concurrently with Snarf's. It would be through Telerie we would understand the structure of the world in which Snarfquest takes place, i.e. the hierarchy of races and classes, and how the fantasy 'rules' apply. Then through Snarf we see how difficult for someone on the low end of the totem pole to muddle through the world. Snarf is at his best when he's a step behind, while Telerie is usually a step ahead.

It was at the romantic angle between Snarf and Telerie where Elmore excelled, mainly because it wasn't simply a case of opposites attracting. Telerie believed in Snarf before he believed in himself, but his motivation to live up to the way she perceived him actually made him better. But Telerie's draw to Snarf was implied a lot more than explored, and it's here that the story deserves some intentional choices.

The fantasy world no doubt views Snarf as beneath Telerie's station, and even Telerie demonstrates a discomfort at saying the L-word, at least until Act two when she thinks he's been killed (arguably the best couple of panels in the whole series). Her initial pleasantness towards him is similar to that of a pageant contestant who is trained to exude congeniality combined with the way people react to hounds that are just so cute. But she also sees who he is when his back is to the wall, which may have an honesty that most people she deals with don't show. The changes in both of them are gradual, but in the end it's realized that the 'quest' of the title isn't about becoming king or reclaiming treasure but finding the life that matters to you.

Every character is judged based on believability. Good characters feel real. Great characters feel metaphorical. Snarf and Telerie are good characters with a potential for greatness when they're together. Elmore did a good job, especially considering he was making it up as he went. But the adventure just calls for a revision to help it achieve greatness. Keep the characters that work, even if only sporadically. Lose the ones that don't (B. B. Bird was a waste of space). And always keep the characters driving the story.

So You're Locked in a Room...

I'm really fortunate to have a job that I love, in this case working as a library assistant in the Adult Fiction department. It's given me a few surprise creative outlets that I'm rather proud of, with another batch around the corner at our third annual Sci-fi/Fantasy festival this July.

One of the things we tried last year was a pair of room escape games (which were really popular). I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. But just in case, the rundown is like this. You go with a group of around eight people (strangers, if you don't think to bring anyone with you) to a preexisting location designed to look like whatever fictional setting the room is themed for. Then you get locked in, and are given a time limit to scrounge the room for clues to unlock cabinets and so forth. If you escape, you get to feel superior to everyone around you. If you fail, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you took seven other schmucks down with you.

I've never been through one of these games myself, but I've certainly played every room escape game I've found online. I don't know what it is, there's just something satisfying about pretending you're in a precarious situation with your brain as your best/only tool. And so what I wanted to share for this blog is the approach I've taken to write up the premises of our past and future room escapes.

The easiest setup is the one that started the Saw franchise, where multiple people wake up in a room of deathtraps with no memory of how they got there. It's a simple formula and it's accessible to everyone. Of course being a public library, there is a degree of horror we don't need to delve into. So the compromise point is to create a template of characters for the participants to 'play' and thus laugh sadistically about the deaths thereof.

Here is the first example.

Alien Invasion

This is it. Officer Elliot Hayes spent his final weeks researching the aliens from within this bunker. You will be safe here, but you need to understand that the invasion cannot be stopped. Once this door closes, it’s very likely that the people in this room will be all that remains of humanity.

Officer Hayes was working on something. We don’t know what it was, but we believe he left it in the lock box here in this bunker. But none of our staff have been able to get it open. You’re more than welcome to try; in fact I truly hope you succeed, and that there’s something in there that might prevent this catastrophe. But do it fast!

If you don’t have something that can counter the invasion before it starts, I strongly recommend you not open the door again. At best you have forty-five minutes. If I don’t see you again, welcome to your new home.

This was actually a store bought room escape kit with a built in premise. It was given to me to rewrite, and I pretty much left the concept as is; just tightened it up a bit. It illustrates all of the elements that have to be conveyed to a group in a short amount of time.

1. Who they are -in this case some combination of scientists and military personnel, which helps make the premise work naturally. There's no reason random civilians would be entrusted with humanity's last hope.

2. Why they are there -if you're using the 'serial killer has locked you in a dungeon' that's all the information you need. The game benefits from having a relatively believable crisis or setting to pull it all together (you're on an island with a volcano about to erupt, your room is losing oxygen, you're a thief racing against the alarm, etc.)

3. What they need to find -the macguffin specific to the room that identifies the group has won the game. Maybe it's the key to the door or a jewel. If I remember correctly, the Alien Invasion premise had some kind of biological weapon in the trunk. I personally felt that the scene worked better if the participants didn't actually know what was in the trunk, they were just operating on hope that it wasn't something stupid.

4. What happens if they don't -a majority of room escapes use the 'solve it or die' motivator, which instantly felt like a cliché to me. I'm pretty sure Alien Invasion originally ended this way. I liked it better where the group would live but entombed in a bunker indefinitely. It had a bit more of an emotional punch to it.

And that brings me to our second game from last year. Dr. Johnson was also store bought. Unlike Alien Invasion, Dr. Johnson's premise was a freaking mess! It was something like, he was teaching a class but then walked out to go teach another class at which point the people inside found out he had infected them with a zombie virus; it was needlessly complicated.

So this one took a little more work on my part, but I felt like I cracked it pretty well. Notice the couple of sentences only set the mood without providing any information to the participants? I wanted to create a sense of threat.

Dr. Johnson 

I am very sorry for the tragedy that has befallen you. Rest assured that Dr. Johnson WILL be found and dealt with accordingly, if that’s any consolation.

The bad news is, he has infected all of you with a virus that at best will kill you in 45 minutes, and at worst may turn you into a zombie. I’m afraid I’m only authorized to lock your entire group in this quarantined space, which I’m sure you recognize as Dr. Johnson’s office.

Rumor has it, Dr. Johnson was working on an antidote. I assume it would be here somewhere. If you can find it, by all means use it on yourselves. Just know that in 45 minutes an armed unit will be here to handle the situation. If you’re not cured by then…well, just, best of luck to you.

It really made me feel good when I got positive feedback from the staff members who had to read out the premise for each group. I feel like one of my strengths as a writer is in dialogue, probably from my acting background. And I really like that Alien Invasion and Dr. Johnson had two different voices to them.

So for this coming festival I was assigned to come up with the premises from scratch. I wanted to do something that I hadn't seen done over and over, and I also wanted to capture the spirit of our festival as well as I could, i.e. doing something both science fiction-y and fantasy like. My coworker Madalyn and I kicked around a couple of ideas about time traveling, which granted us the opportunity to incorporate the future and the past in one swoop.

Time Agency

Attention Time Agents: Thank you for your assistance in apprehending the infamous Chrono-burglar Gil Terrence, a commendation has been noted on each of your records.

Unfortunately Mr. Terrence has managed to stash something of importance to the timeline in 1842 Victorian England, and as per emergency protocol you all are being rerouted there now. We’ve isolated the temporal flux to a single room in London but our scanners are already picking up too many anomalies to pinpoint the location.

Your mission: Find the item and get out. Do not open the door. Do not speak to anyone through the door. Pretend the door doesn’t exist. Just get whatever the item is within forty-five minutes, or time will rewrite itself and you’ll be stranded in Victorian England. Good luck agents. May time be on our side.

We decided instead of having a staff member read that out every time we're going to play a video recording, and dress it up to look Tomorrowland-ish. I wrote that one with kind of a Disney attraction pre-show vibe in my head.

I haven't mentioned brevity yet, but yeah. You want to hit the bullet points quickly and clearly when doing these things. This last one you'll notice is a tad longer, but I thought I could get away with it since I had a particular character in mind. If you've played Portal 2 then you're familiar with Cave Johnson's mannerisms (courtesy of the incomparable J. K. Simmons). What we've decided to do for this one is record it as an audio track. Guess who's going to be doing a really terrible J. K. Simmons impression.

The Relic

Greetings archeological adjuncts and unpaid subordinates, welcome to your first real field test! This is Julian Glenn up on the surface, I’m the one who signs off on your course credits. Sorry about that last tremor, we hope nobody was banged up too badly. But rest assured, we’ve got the software updated now and we’ll be able to monitor seismic shifts with more accuracy than we were before.

Here’s the bad news. That plate rupture triggered a geothermal flare; or in layman’s terms, it sparked a fuse. You know that sealed cavern we sent you down there to excavate? It’s going to be blowing up pretty soon. The good news is, our expert translators finally agree that the ancient tribe who lived in these caves hid a pretty valuable relic down there. Which means we’ve got one shot at preserving history. And you’re it.

Now I know what you’re grumbling. You’re thinking…caves, explosions, could be dangerous, right? Well guess what, this is archaeology! No guts, no glory! You’ve got a solid forty-five minutes. It’s a risk I’m willing to take; now you go on in there and make me proud! Give us a buzz when you’ve got something to report and we’ll pull you on out of there.


So by all means, if you're planning any kind of program involving a room escape, feel free to take anything from this blog (just bear in mind the first two are based on existing games while the latter two are completely original). It's been a fun writing exercise. If any of you have your own ideas for room escapes, I'd love to hear them. And I'll probably revisit this blog after the festival to tell you how the attendees responded.

Disney Princess 201: The Renaissance Trilogy

So you remember that blog I wrote almost a year ago about the classic Disney fairy tales? You don't? Well there's the link, nine words back. If you have trouble counting, here it is again. In fact, here is three more times. Now you have no excuse. Read the damn blog.

Finished? Boy that was a long blog. What the hell was I thinking? Moving on.

The 1980's was the decade of prosperity for just about everyone. Except the Disney company. The parks were doing fine and the Touchstone label was churning out some decent hits, but the animated films were thought of as yesterday's medium. Don Bluth had somehow cracked the market that Disney was losing ground in, giving us successful whiny kid voice actor classics An American Tail and The Land Before Time. And that was pretty much it for animation.

Then Who Framed Roger Rabbit hit the screens in 1988. And that was a big deal. Certainly not a flawless movie, but when Mel Blanc and Mae Questel are acting in the same film as Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, you know something special is happening. And with the resurgent interest in classic animation, it was time for Disney's Renaissance to begin.

The Little Milkmaid (1989)

Walt Disney had originally not wanted to make another fairy tale film after Snow White out of concern that the Disney name would become too synonymous with Princess stories [your laugh here]. In a way I don't blame him for trying to avoid getting locked into predictability. And you also have to factor in that the three classic princess films were VERY flawed movies, who wouldn't want to branch into other territory?

Then came Ariel. Unlike princesses of the past, Ariel had some real assertiveness to her. Yes, she made mistakes (she was sixteen) but that's what classic stories are about. We see ourselves reflected in the POV characters making impulsive choices and go on the journey with them as they writhe in the consequences. For someone who lives underwater she's got some real fire in her, and it's a delight to watch it -what's the word? -burn.

This was the film that broke the mold and restructured the Disney template for animated stories that continues to this day; namely by embracing the trends on Broadway to full effect and using those tropes to their best advantage. You have the 'I Want' song, the showstopper, the love song, and the third act where the music tends to get out of the way of the plot.

If you cared enough to read the liner notes for Little Shop of Horrors then you might have recognized the names Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, but this was the film that made their talents inescapable. From the first time you saw the movie in the theater, you knew the soundtrack was destined to become a classic right alongside Mary Poppins. One of the biggest criticisms about musicals is the way the action typically has to come to a screeching halt while the performers yammer on about whatever metaphor they think love feels like. In the case of The Little Mermaid this is not a problem. Each song serves a purpose other than to simply appear on the CD.

"Part of Your World" is probably the slowest paced, but it allows us a chance to spend time with Ariel. We know her better after that song than we did before. Similarly, "Under the Sea" establishes the Atlantica status quo that Ariel is told she should be content with but ultimately cannot be. I don't know how many musicals will include deal-with-the-devil numbers, but every one of them will be overshadowed by Pat Carroll's "Poor Unfortunate Souls". The sorely upstaged love ballad "Kick the Girl" (that's the version that always plays in my head) has a layer of suspense, in that Sebastian nearly ends the movie twenty minutes early. Even the sort-of bonus track "Les Poissons" is a joy in its own right, utilizing a crowning moment of awesome for sampling the Can-can.

The story, as you know, is adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen tale, taken from his "Collected Stories With F U Endings" anthology. There's a rumor that Andersen hated children, (like more people should) but I daresay I've never supported the theory that children need to be blindsided into the realization that the world sucks. Our fiction is supposed to be where things make sense. And the Disney company always understood this. So even though the entire second half of this film is fabrication, it works, damn it.

Now there have been some criticisms spilled into this movie's ocean that are worth sorting through. The first is a complaint is that Prince Eric is a bore. And...yeah, kinda. Disney had a long standing difficulty with making adult lead characters interesting, and The Little Mermaid was only the beginning of the transition. Eric is essentially Fred Jones from pre-revival Scooby-Doo; he has a personality, just not much of one. But give him credit, he's a hell of a lot more charismatic than Channing Tatum.

Another issue people seem obsessed with is talking about phalluses. Snopes has covered this topic pretty well. You were wrong. You had fun being outraged. Now move past it.

But the most legitimate complaint is with Ariel herself, in that she never learns anything from her film (apparently a reaction by the Nostalgia Chick). For that I say two things. One, Ariel isn't obligated to learn anything considering she was right and her father was wrong. Two, I would argue that she actually learns plenty, the movie just doesn't waste time pointing it out. In the end, this is one of my all time favorite Disney films.

Bratty and the Boast (1991)

I know so many people who love this movie, and that's fine. We all have our favorites. But I've also seen message boards, Facebook posts, Youtube videos and so on proclaiming this film the greatest. Thing. Ever. And it quickly gets under my skin. Every time I hear someone refer to this film as 'perfect' I start to feel venom forming in my throat. So let's back it up a bit.

I saw Beauty and the Beast in the theater in 1991 like I was supposed to, and came away feeling "eh, it was okay." It just never pulled me into it. I thought the opening sequence was pretty creative and had a theatricality to it. But from there I just felt like I was having to look through someone else's wedding album; it looked beautiful and had a technical precision, but I didn't see my own memories or find any pictures of me.

To this day people won't shut up about this movie, and I'm left with two questions. What are they seeing that I'm not, and why do they not notice the glaring weaknesses that I do? Well let's start with the things I commonly hear people cite as the standout qualities; the movie is beautiful, Belle saves the Beast, Gaston is the best Disney villain, and it has the greatest soundtrack.

The movie is beautiful, I'll give it that. But it doesn't strike me as beautiful in any special way. The computer generated animation was on display much more so than anything that preceded it, but I don't find it jaw dropping. Maybe it's just a matter of preference, but for me it's not the most important element.

So let's discuss our heroine. Belle is pretty, and she's an intellectual, and she's an outcast, and she's the voice of reason. It's almost like we're going down the checklist to make sure she's as strong a character as possible. But here's the deal, I don't find her relatable. The female characters in Disney's canon who take me somewhere do so through their flaws; Alice, Meg, Anna, Mulan, etc. Belle just never struck me as an actual character, but more as a concept. I don't really know what she wants except something 'more' which is a tad undefined.

The Beast fares both better and worse in terms of clarity. His motivations go from 'Why have you come?' to 'Get out!' at the drop of a hat, finally landing on 'Now you're my prisoner.' Um...what? Does he even have a goal, or is he just doing whatever the plot requires? And no, that's not complexity of character, that's sloppy writing. Belle saving the Beast looks innovative on paper but the execution of it is poor because the film never nails down its characters.

Gaston at least makes his intentions a bit clearer even if the film just kind of decides that he's become a straight up villain without earning it. I feel like he would have been a better silly villain like Captain Hook than the animal they tried to pass him off as at the end. I think the problem was that they removed his teeth throughout the first half of the film, presumably to avoid having to animate sexual assault in a G rated movie. That choice is fine, but you can't have it both ways. During The Mob Song it's as if we've switched scripts out. And why in all of his overconfidence as a hunter does he need support to hunt the Beast if not just to have the en masse confrontation with the furniture?

I don't love the soundtrack, and I barely even like it. The title song is a complete bore to me, and I'm happy to skip Something There entirely. Belle is a spectacle in its visual context, but taken on pure audio  it sounds bigger than it is. And I daresay The Mob Song is a melody that just doesn't stay in my head.

And then we have the showstopper Be Our Guest. After much thought and soul searching I've decided this song actually offends me. For one thing, NOBODY loves to serve that much. You could argue that the furniture was so bored out of their minds that any outlet would turn into a production, but that's not how it comes off. It reads as each of these characters had a childhood dream of being able to cook and clean for someone of higher status than them, which is inherently problematic in a family film. The other thing, the song is literally about nothing. Under the Sea helped its plot by Sebastian portraying the ocean in its coolest light and still failing to convince Ariel to accept it. Be Our Guest just puts the plot on hold so, I don't know, Eisner could have the theme park commercial he demanded.

Here's the ultimate issue. I think there was a really solid film being developed but the script was one draft away from completion and Disney executives rushed it. A lot of the elements of that solid film made it into the final cut, and that's why so many people love the movie so much. But I thinks it's also important to acknowledge that the movie isn't perfect and could have been so much better with a rewrite that addressed character motivation.

Gaston: his goal is to marry Belle. In a TV series, characters get to swap out goals once in a while, but in a movie you get one. Every choice he makes needs to further that one goal. Do all the terrible things he does behind her back and then swoop in as the 'hero' to fix it, and show that Belle is smart enough to see through his bullshit. Beast: he wants to break the curse. Okay, he sees how smart Belle is. Take her into the room with the rose and show her why he is the way he is and the time limit he's on. What exactly is love? What kind of love breaks the curse? Where the hell is this enchantress now? Let's see them work through the challenge together. Belle: pick one. Either she wants more than her provincial town OR she wants to see her lunatic father earn the respect he deserves; the latter is the more useful choice for this particular story because it creates tension of where her focus has to be. Don't try to create a role model for girls, just create a strong character. The girls will decide who they want to be.

Malady

It's funny how Jasmine is the one major princess in Disney's lineup to have originated in a film that was clearly aimed at boys. And here's a thought (since Disney's being so live-action remake happy), give us a version of the story using Jasmine as the protagonist. Call it Princess Jasmine. That would almost make up for the failure that is her character in the animate film. You know the sexy lamp test? If your female lead can be replaced with a sexy lamp without altering the plot then you've neglected your responsibilities as a writer. Well, Aladdin has an actual sexy lamp in it that has more effect on the plot than Jasmine.

So docking the movie an entire letter grade based on that lost cause, what's left for us? There's the good. Alan Menken's soundtrack is his A-game, as there's not one song that doesn't stay in your head forever. There's an inspired casting of Gilbert Gottfried that makes you both like and hate Iago in all the right ways. And there's Jafar, who became an instant top-tiered Disney villain for being precisely as over the top as he needed to be.

The decent. The story works just fine. Occasionally Aladdin's choices are unconvincing. The whole 'Genie I can't free you' was destined to backfire and everybody in the audience was at least two steps ahead of the plot by then (never a place a film wants to be), but it holds together well enough and hits all the beats it's supposed to.

The rocky. Genie's hijacking of the movie. You can't fault Robin Williams for doing exactly what he was brought in to do, nor Eric Goldberg for animating the hell out of it. But I don't think writer/director/producer duo Ron Clements and John Musker were prepared for the impact Genie would have on the overall balance of their film. Aladdin stops mattering once Genie shows up, and despite how much fun the movie is in the end it still feels like a wasted potential.

Compare it to The Sword in the Stone. Here you have Merlin who is arguably as powerful and equally scatterbrained mentoring a young King Arthur. That story isn't about how Arthur becomes king, it's about how he becomes a good king. Aladdin doesn't have any goal beyond banging the hot chick despite the clear poverty rampant in the man-child Sultan's kingdom.

Wouldn't it have been cooler to see how easily power corrupts decent people, where he doesn't realize it at first but each wish Aladdin makes gets him closer to becoming the villain of his own story? Then what if that realization come right as he's about to make his third wish? And instead he wishes for the Genie's freedom in an attempt to avoid that fate. Just some fan fiction thought.

The movie as is is fine. It's fun. It's exciting. But it's honestly nothing more than that. Aladdin is the kind of film you quote a lot but you don't really discuss. Yep. That's pretty much it on Aladdin.

Conclusion

This was, and still is, Disney's big three; ignoring The Rescuers Down Under (a hidden gem). The Little Mermaid remains one of my all time favorite Disney films, and in my opinion the least flawed. I felt like they hit a bulls-eye at a point in their history where they'd been hitting haystacks. Beauty and the Beast was a slightly harder target without a bulls-eye on it that they barely grazed and then went on record claiming they'd hit the bulls-eye. Aladdin was a bulls-eye from about half the distance of The Little Mermaid. And Pocahontas was a target that the rain knocked over.

Editorial: Why Does Sailor Moon Resonate?

I graduated from college in 1994 with a degree in Liberal Arts, which meant I was destined to have a few years to myself. It was right around this aimless period in my life that the anime scene started finding its foothold on western culture. The timing was a perfect match for my age bracket, having spent my childhood in the arcade and formative adolescence on the golden years of MTV.

At the time there wasn't much to choose from. There was Ranma, Akira, Project A-ko, and a bunch of harmless sounding titles with the 'absolutely not for children' label taped across the cover at the video store (it only took one overly curious peek into the contents to understand that warning was issued by a very sad adult whose optimism was NEVER coming back). There was actually a point where one could have watched every anime VHS tape available in the area and still had time for the handful of sci-fi programs that aired among the paltry 56 channels.

And then USA started airing dubs of Sailor Moon.

Magical Girl stories date as far back as 1953 in Japan with the Princess Knight manga, and there was in fact a successful run of the concept in the 70's and 80's. But Sailor Moon not only revitalized the concept in the early 90's but it re-envisioned the tropes to be more than full length commercials for toys. Even more so, Naoko Takeuchi's creation became an international flagship for fantasy anime, and heavily influenced much of what has followed it.

So why did Usagi-chan catch on so strongly cross-culture, so much that she has a whole other theme song in Germany? And why has the male audience embraced her with relative comfort? Or more close to home, why after two and a half decades am I still imagining what I'd do as the show-runner of a live action reboot of the series?

Perfect Timing

Anime tends to draw the attention of the misfits, which is practically the entire nerd community. In the 90's, the lot of us still had a fondness for animation, but with the exceptions of The Simpsons and Batman: The Animated Series there wasn't much geared towards us. Disney was having its renaissance but most of what was available reminded us that we were essentially interlopers on the younger crowd's turf. But at the same time we'd also contracted the animation bug. The X-Men's Saturday morning cartoon often aired ongoing story arcs from week to week, something that made the 'soap opera' concept kind of cool for the first time.

I think my father stumbled across the USA airings of Sailor Moon, and became interested in the grander plot line that wove through the monster-of-the-week episodes. Soon we figured out how to intercept the satellite feed that sent the following week's episodes to the local affiliate and began binge watching the show every Monday afternoon.

The first thing that stood out was the voice acting. Not everybody was spot on, but they had Terri Hawkes in the lead role. Some of the lines they gave her were flat out atrocious, but Hawkes could make anything sound convincing through sheer energy. I had only recently become interested in the art of voice acting, and I quickly realized that Terri Hawkes deserved to have a school on the subject named after her.

Even when the plot (usually) came off as superficial, I found myself rooting for both the character and her voice actress. It turns out the behind the scenes production of the dub was an absolute mess, and in retrospect it's amazing the thing came together at all. And maybe that taps into an axiom for the way nerds experience entertainment. We seem to love something more for its flaws, possibly because we see it as a reflection of us.

Off-Target Audience

Something else I found oddly engaging was that I didn't understand who the show was meant for. It didn't seem like it was for kids, at least not for American kids. Or more accurately, it didn't seem like the kind of show networks and parental groups would ever give kids enough respect to handle. Out of that confusion I didn't feel like an outsider by watching it, or at least any more of an outsider than anyone else.

As it turns out, Sailor Moon was meant for Japanese girls who were between 12 and 14, and that by itself is an interesting insight into the difference between our culture and theirs. There are some intentionally uncomfortable moments in the plot where characters in the grey area don't get what they deserve. I don't know if Japanese children are raised in such a way that they're prepared to process tragedy on their own by that age, but if I had a daughter I expect we'd be having some tough conversations in response to the show. Healthy ones to be sure, but I might be having to admit that I don't have all the answers.

Bad is Better

There's no way to say this without lobbing criticism at Takeuchi herself, but her villains were all one note. Don't get me wrong, she more than makes up for it in other areas; her magic girl plot is much deeper than it ever needed to be, and nobody draws manga more 'magic' looking than Takeuchi. But her baddies really miss the mark. The anime started making some changes to that. In season one, there are a couple of points where I found myself kind of rooting against the scouts, and by season two I was ready for the villains to hijack the whole show.

In addition to obsessing over anime, in the 90's I'd gotten back into role playing (2nd edition D&D remains the superior version, suck it feats table!) right around the time Planescape hit the market. We have an ongoing campaign involving the multiverse and space/time/plane travel. After a while we stopped even figuring up stats for characters and just jumped into the voice of the characters. Guess who started showing up in the campaigns?

I honed in on Queen Beryl, because I believed then what I believe now; used in the right way she could be as iconic as Maleficent. If I get started talking about the way I reworked her backstory this blog will never end, so instead let me use the Beryl of the cartoon as an example of why the show pulls you into it.

You watch the dub, you laugh at the endlessly creative insults hurled among characters (monkey twit is my personal favorite). But unconsciously you sense that there's more that's meant to be going on. Partially because the Japanese version was edited down, and some awkward cuts definitely catch your eye. But also because you feel that you're only getting the iceberg tip of the story. It's like the bait that hooks you.

The villains are very well designed, and once the anime took over they got an upgrade in sympathy. It makes their deaths all the more disenchanting. I'm sure I'm not the only fan of the show who has declared their intention to rewrite the story where Queen Beryl survives the ordeal.

And the Stars Will Show

In the end, I think what really hooks us is that Sailor Moon hits the sweet spot between simple and complex. Our species loves its mythologies, and nothing grants us the perfect blend of freedom and structure like the planets in our solar system. They're out there in space, but they're close by. What if each of those planets was given a personification? Then what happens if those personalities walk among us, and attend high school, and read comic books? What's the story that brings that into being?

Sailor Moon does what the classic stories and modern myths do, it plays its story both big and small. For every gaping hole in the plot's logic, it practically invites you in to fix it yourself. It's a show that may inadvertently be satirizing itself well before any of us ever sarcastically remarked who we intent to punish in the name of the moon.

But more importantly, we have the character of Sailor Meatballhead herself. She's the kind of hero who is both archetypal and unique at the same time. We've seen plenty of heroes who charge in like Rambo, and nearly as many Inspector Clouseaus who stumble their way to victory. At her core, Sailor Moon is a goofball. She has more power inside her than she realizes or wants, and when the cosmos has her backed against the wall she always does what her intuition tells her to. But she never let's it change her.

It's kind of a strange thing to take away, the idea that not changing (or changing very little) could be the heroic trait. But that's what makes her special. She was fine the way she was at the very beginning. Any sudden arrival of a talking cat, or multiple threats to the universe itself, or behind the scenes upheavals among the English writing staff just roll off her back. In the end she remains a goofball through and through, and we can't help but admire it.

Chasing the Rabbit: Chapter Fourteen -Bullying a Dragon

This has been the roughest chapter to write, which may very well be a factor in why I had that huge gap in the series. I know the ending that this fan-fiction is pointing towards, and I know a couple of the stops along the way, but the rest of it has been kind of 'okay that's a decent pause, now I need to bring in this character and nudge the action in this direction'.

So for the past several months I've known that I really needed to check in with Bugs. And what can I say? His dialogue and mannerisms really don't come naturally to me the way Meg and Daffy just roll off my fingertips. It's also pretty challenging trying to translate ANY of the Looney Tunes timing in written form, much more so putting them on Disney's property. Suffice to say, I'm rather pleased to be fourteen chapters in and this thing hasn't completely fallen apart yet.

I want to draw your attention to the wonderful website KenNetti which has an incredibly thorough and insightful tribute to Snow White's Scary Adventures, the setting of this chapter and my personal recurring nightmare. I always try to include as many nods to Disney's history as is feasible, and KenNetti's site essentially handed me the elements that got the ride moving again. So thank you for being so passionate about Disney's definitive house of horror; I've learned many new things from you.

Click here for the table of contents.

The foul odor of marsh filled Maleficent's nostrils as she stared at the castle's outer wall. The passageway inside was clearly meant as an exit only, and everything from the disorientingly insufficient light to the wail emitting from the forest behind her gave the dark fairy pause.

She wasn't used to not being in control. And this structure, which seemed to be daring her to venture inside, had her at a disadvantage. But if her information was as correct as her instinct, this was where she needed to go. But Maleficent had no intention of being taken by surprise in such a place. Instead of blindly wandering into the open passageway, she turned her attention to the barely noticeable nook in the castle wall just to the right. Nothing was there, but Maleficent sensed it had some cunning purpose meant for housing an ambush to those who would exit the castle properly.

Maleficent found her eyes unable to accurately gage the distance of the landscape beyond, and a tap of her staff revealed that she was in fact standing mere inches from a wall that had been decorated with images of a hill beyond, like a painting. She must be at the edge of the artificial world.

A familiar squawk caught her off guard, and she nearly threw a lightning bolt in its direction. It was a raven. Not hers as she would have hoped, but a wild one, with its jaw gaping at the sight of her.

"Shhh," she attempted soothing the bird, "Have no fear, little one."

When the raven had quieted, she extended the back of her hand as an invitation but the creature flew away. She let her eyes follow it until it was out of sight. "Never admit your limitations," she offered up to it before turning her attention back to the passageway and stepping into darkness.

Intuition had paid off. She wasn't able to scry into more than one place on the island at a time, but she'd received much by regularly checking in on the two girls who had stumbled across her. The one called Alice had proven to be the more useful, as her propensity for reading and her inability to keep her discoveries to herself provided Maleficent with a steady stream of information.

The surrounding landscape leading to this castle matched one of the blueprints Alice had taken an interest in, and both the interior and exterior were designed to be a journey of horror. To what end, she didn't know. Alice's random musings to Megara had suggested people were naturally attracted to that which frightened them. It was a paradox that Maleficent could never fully comprehend.

But what mattered was that the castle had a history of revision, and one particular revision allegedly held a secret. What the secret was, Alice (and as such, Maleficent) didn't know; but with the signs pointing both towards and away from said location, Maleficent wasn't about to let an opportunity reach the untalented hands of someone other than her.

The corridor led her into a small alcove containing a cauldron. A quick examination revealed little as to what the pot was used for, but the nearby shelf suggested someone had been dabbling in magic recipes who had no business doing so. There was the sound of a crash coming from the nearby shelves, even though they remained intact. Likely a ghostly echo.

Maleficent felt a stirring in her gut as she stepped into the next area, which was a dungeon that held the remaining skeletons of former inhabitants. The stirring was something she couldn't explain. It was almost a feeling of familiarity that wasn't; as if at one point this place was meant for her. Insulting, she grimaced. These creatures had been left to rot. The work of someone with low ambitions.

She peered into the gem on her scepter to check in on the girls, who were apparently out of breath. For whatever reason they had ventured into the forest and had yet another run in with someone or something that they were unequipped to handle. Megara panted, "Remind me why we left the safety of the mansion," to which Alice volunteered her theory that one of the distant mountains appeared to have a human carved structural support to it, no doubt containing some clue to the island's mystery. Well that was fortuitous timing, thought Maleficent. She would have to commit Alice's discovery to memory.

Maleficent turned her attention back to the skeletons. Each one no doubt had been placed there for a reason. One had perished reaching for a water jug that was out of arm's length. Another lay stretched out on a rack, forgotten. There was one chained to the wall behind what at first appeared to be a fairly large symmetrical spider web, but closer inspection revealed the strands to be made from iron, which she had no intention of touching.

"Hello," she spoke out loud without realizing it. "And who is this?" The figure was chained against the wall with arms stretched wide apart and manacles at the wrists and ankles. His skull hung downwards as if he was still in agony. His feet were not touching the ground, which meant he'd been left to hang where he was until his death.

It was not the gruesomeness of the figure that had caught Maleficent's eye, but the feasibility. Stripped to the bare bones, as it were, the skeleton's...skeleton could support its own weight, but the addition of muscles and skin would have to have dislocated one or both shoulders in the process. Maleficent placed her fingers under the skeleton's chin and gently and looked into his empty eye sockets.

"You were hated deeply, weren't you." She examined the bars in the grate behind the skeleton and found markings where iron had rubbed against iron, and two chains dangled freely a few inches below his hands. So that's it then, she thought. He used to have a collar that bound him to the prison.

A quick search of the floor revealed its location. The collar had been casually dropped about a foot away from its owner. Maleficent tilted her head to read the inscription on it. Prince Oswald. The name meant nothing to her at this time, but the fact that someone had gone through the trouble to identify the corpse clearly had a significance. Maleficent took a step back from Prince Oswald to examine him fully. "How did you get out of that?" she wondered aloud.

"Eh," came a smug voice behind her. "Looking for this?"

She turned around to face the culprit, only to find herself staring at a rabbit. It stood upright like a man and came to half her height. He must have been the recipient of a half-curse. The rabbit held a golden key which he haphazardly tossed in the air and caught; deliberately testing her.

"Hand that over now," she demanded.

"Havin' a key in a dungeon? There's laws against that kinda thing. You could get yourself locked up." He tucked his fingers into the fur around his neck and pulled it away from his skin as if was a shirt collar, into which he let the key disappear.

Maleficent couldn't decide what to make of what she'd just witnessed. This enchantment was no kind of magic with which she was familiar. "What are you supposed to be?"

"Supposed to be?" He batted his eyelashes. "Me? I'm supposed to be in Pismo Beach, home of the Wild Monkeys of 67. You?"

Maleficent opened her mouth to speak but he rabbit instantly cut her off.

"Wait! Don't say a word!" An instant later she found herself seated at a table that hadn't been there before. The animal had his ears wrapped up like a turban and he was waving his gloved fingers around the orb on her staff. "I see you've travelled a great deestance, searching for sometheeng no? But I can see what you are lookeeng for. Eet ees close. So close. Eet ees..." he abruptly dropped the fake accent and held out his hand "$5.99 for the first minute. Be sure to get your parents' permission before using their credit card."

She yanked the staff away from him and glared down from her full height. "Do I strike you as amused?"

"Amused?" he said nonchalantly. "I wouldn't say amused. I'd say you strike me-" The rest of his sentence was cut off by the loud whack of her staff on his head. He wobbled in place for a few seconds before recovering. "Well that was a carefully timed break in the record".

"Now hand over the key," Maleficent ordered. "I won't ask again."

He leaned against the dungeon wall. "Look lady, for the past two days I've been shot at, trampled and chased by boiling lava; and for no good reason! If you want the key I want answers."

"You are in no position to demand anything. Don't be a fool."

"Fine. Point taken," the rabbit sneered, and in one swift movement he'd placed a jester's hat that he clearly didn't have before on top of Maleficent's headpiece. "You can be the fool."

The annoyance was beginning to take a toll on Maleficent's composure as she snatched the hat off her head and it instantly burst into flames in her fist. She would have erupted herself were it not for the plastic ring that had just sailed across the room hooking one of her beloved horns. Two more followed in succession.

"I did it!" the rabbit cheered. "That's two prizes! I'll take an explanation and a plush flamingo for the missus." He wasn't expecting a green bolt of lightning to come streaking at him, and he barely managed to dodge it, singeing the fur of his tail. "This is why people think these games are rigged!" he called from the hallway.

Maleficent was reluctant to use her ability to blink in such a tight space, but the rabbit was fast and she wasn't thinking strategically. With a mild clap of thunder, she vanished and reappeared further down the corridor about where she'd predicted he was. She didn't see him at first, until he came gliding in from the side hanging by an apparatus in the ceiling. His sudden appearance startled her, even if she would never, ever admit to it.

The rabbit scurried further down the hall, quite proud of himself when Maleficent appeared a second time in front of him. He skidded to a stop trying while to rack his brain for a quick idea. "Did they add more of you to match the one in Tokyo?" he asked rhetorically hoping the confusion would buy him a few seconds. Green flames flared on both sides of her, and he began to suspect that he may have antagonized the wrong person this time.

A sharp turn to the right and he found himself running straight towards one of those cells, which wasn't a good sign. But when Maleficent made the error of teleporting in front of him again, he slammed the bars shut. She made a move in his direction but recoiled before her skin touched the iron. The rabbit didn't know what the problem was, but he wasn't going to question it either.

"Aye, a fool y'are Sheelah Sugrue!" He retrieved the gold key and dangled it in front of her. "A meddlesome is she? This time we'll be throwin' away the key!"

Maleficent bit her tongue as the obnoxious creature scampered away muttering "A'right, show's over folks," to whatever audience he was imagining. Blinking through the iron was out of the question, so she had to regain her focus to morph into her wisp form. It took a little bit longer than usual, what with her rage bubbling over, but moments later she was a glowing green sphere drifting cautiously between the bars. Even as a wisp she could feel the threat of burning from the metal, like acid.

Having cleared the bars, Maleficent remained as a wisp until she arrived into the next room (a throne room from the looks of it). It had only been a few seconds, but being a wisp helped her clear her head. The rabbit was cunning, but he'd caught her off guard. That wouldn't happen again.

She resumed her natural shape and held still, feeling the energy of the surrounding area. The rabbit was close by. No sound of feet. He wasn't running. He must be trying to outwit her again.

Maleficent stood with her back to the throne, peering down the furthest hallway out where a large mirror hung on the wall reflecting back into the throne room. The angle didn't allow her to see what was around the bend in the corridor, but something about the reflection struck her as odd. A second mirror hung on the wall directly behind her, next to the throne; she could see her back in the reflection of the reflection. But something about the shape seemed a little off.

She slowly turned around to see the mirror behind her only to discover that it wasn't a mirror at all, but a gap in the wall. And standing there in a black robe mimicking her movement was the rabbit, in the most superficially thin disguise she'd ever envisioned someone would attempt. He must think me an idiot, she thought. And without a word, she sent a stream of electricity into the rabbit's body, causing his very skeleton to glow inside his skin, until he finally collapsed into a pile of soot.

The key that Maleficent sought, despite having no knowledge of its purpose, hit the stone floor with a soft thud. She retrieved it and brought the item to her eyes. So much effort for something so trivial, she thought, and turned to leave the wretched place.

She'd only made it halfway across the throne room when the unmistakable ears of her most recent headache perked up in the real mirror's reflection. "Of course you realize," he said with more volition than before, "this means war."

Why the rabbit wasn't dead was of no interest to her. But why he wasn't backing down, that gave Maleficent a bit of sadistic joy she rarely allowed herself. She stared down at the creature with venom in her half-smile. And she transformed. And grew. Her magnificent wings sprouted and her tail wrapped around the inside walls of the room to where the tip almost touched the throne itself. Her face's expression carried over into a crinkle of her new jaw and massive snout that could only read as 'you were saying?'.

The rabbit's posture had not changed but his volition from moments ago was nothing more than an echo. "Bye-ee" was all he could say before diving through the hole in the wall faster than he'd ever moved before.

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