once upon a time
Dec. 4th, 2021 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliwhen wishing still did some good. . . .
It's remarkably easy to retell fairy tales and have the characters tell fairy tales where life was so magically easier than their current day. Have them tell one of the days where a character's wish is enough to make things happen. A father wishes his sons into ravens, and years later, when one son says that if their sister has found them, they are freed -- and it's so. Where a child, described in text as "ordinary" can wish himself and the queen whose child he was passed off as (instead of the marvelous children she had said she would bear, whom her sisters tried to murder).
As long, of course, as you don't tell those tales. Then, the wishing does tend to be a transparent and inexplicable plot device. Hard to work with. Easier to use one of the variants where the effort is greater.
It's remarkably easy to retell fairy tales and have the characters tell fairy tales where life was so magically easier than their current day. Have them tell one of the days where a character's wish is enough to make things happen. A father wishes his sons into ravens, and years later, when one son says that if their sister has found them, they are freed -- and it's so. Where a child, described in text as "ordinary" can wish himself and the queen whose child he was passed off as (instead of the marvelous children she had said she would bear, whom her sisters tried to murder).
As long, of course, as you don't tell those tales. Then, the wishing does tend to be a transparent and inexplicable plot device. Hard to work with. Easier to use one of the variants where the effort is greater.