Tale as Old as Time

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

Part I: The Little Mermaid Fanfic

“Margarete!” yelled the prince as he entered the room. That’s not her name, and he knows that, but that’s what he calls her since she can’t tell him her real name. The prince’s coat and hair were wet from the drizzle pouring down outside. The hall was small but cozy and the walls were white. Against the left-hand wall, there was a small wooden sideboard, perfectly polished, with books and a single vase holding blue alliums. “Margarete!” he yelled again.

As he received no answer from his wife, he stumped into the dining room, where he found her very busy setting up the table.

“Are we expecting anyone?” he asked innocently.

The former mermaid turned quickly, scared by that unexpected noise. She realized her husband was standing in the middle of the room and rushed to take off his coat and pull up a chair for him. “Yeah, I think... Your parents mentioned something about coming down here but forgot to specify what day exactly and maybe, I don’t know, like they did a month ago. Was it a month ago? I can’t recall.” Said she in sign language. She had to learn it after she couldn’t communicate with her husband and he couldn’t understand her facial expressions. He sat down at the table where napkins and silverware were scattered in a chaotic order.

“Why don’t you let the servants organize everything?” said the prince sounding bad-tempered. ‘She always tries to do everything by herself instead of using the help, it’s so irritating,’ he thought.

“I had a lot of energy this morning,” she smiled while using her hands, “you know, as I do every once in a while.” She lowered her hands. 'Nothing to do... I can get slightly bored sometimes in this big castle,' she thought. She turned to him again, scared to look at his eyes directly. “Anyways, I thought about trying to clean everything myself while they prepare the food.” He nodded skeptically while his eyes followed her as she walked around the room, carefully and nervously.

The man got up from his chair and walked toward the woman, who was now folding the last napkin. He wrapped his arms around her waist, she gulped, and slowly pressed his lips against her bare neck, making the hairs on her arm bristle. She got away from him, saying that she forgot the cups as an excuse.

“Could you please go up to the attic and get those dishes your mother gave us? The wedding gift? It’s in a wooden box, easily recognizable because of the carvings on the top, very pretty,” expressed with her nervous hands.

“Of course.” His voice sounded slightly annoyed and left the room without further comments.

The woman sat down at the table, hiding her face behind her hands. ‘I shouldn’t have been so disrespectful.' She could almost feel the bruises on her arms and legs and stomach screaming for mercy. She could feel them burning. ‘He’s what I’ve always wanted,’ she reminded herself and stood up to continue setting up everything.

Suddenly, a glass shattered against the floor. It was her fault, her nervous hands can’t hold anything anymore. The little mermaid knew he was going to scream at her, so she had to clean the mess before he would be back.

“What did you do? Look at this mess!” said the prince as he walked into the room screaming, “You can’t ever do anything right, you can’t even talk, you’re completely useless, Margaret.”

She hated every time he would call her that, but she couldn’t say anything. Tears were the only thing sliding down her cheeks. She looked at the glass she was holding in her right hand and thought about setting herself free and end all the suffering, mistreatment, pain, but she couldn’t. He grabbed her arm with such strength that anyone who saw it could swear that he would tear her apart, and she dropped the piece of glass. He dragged her to their bedroom and tossed her to the dresser, where she hit and fell. He then slapped her in the face, leaving a giant, red mark. “Why can’t you do anything right?” Tears and sobs came from her while the repeated kicks, punches, and slaps hit her face, arms, legs, stomach, and back. When he finally stopped, the woman was an amalgam of blood and bruises.

“Clean yourself and get dressed for my parents, Margaret,” he added. He then walked up to the door and closed it with conviction, leaving the world and the freedom away from her.

She couldn’t sleep that night, she kept thinking about everything that happened that day. She put on her best smile to welcome her husband’s parents and acted like her body wasn’t under utter pain, but now she was alone with him, and she couldn’t fake it anymore. She made the decision that has been following her for a long time. ‘Tonight is the night,’ she thought. She got up, changed her clothes, packed a couple more dresses and jewelry to sell and walked out of the room. She knew she couldn’t go back to the sea with her sisters, she didn’t have her fishtail anymore. But she can’t stay with her prince anymore either. She’ll walk to the town and find a job somewhere. She’ll figure it out for herself.

           ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 I decided to do a fanfic about the original fairytale of The Little Mermaid because it’s a story that we didn’t discuss in detail, so I thought it would be interesting to explore the story by myself. I got the inspiration from one of Saint Hoax’s digital campaigns called “Happy Never After.” For this, he edited princess’ pictures to show them being abused in order to create awareness about domestic violence and encourage the victims to report their cases. One of his pieces had Ariel being abused by Eric.

My story occurs in an alternate universe where the prince does marry the little mermaid, and in consequence, she doesn’t die. I did leave the fact that she is mute to be a symbol of the silence that abused victims have to maintain due to the fear they have in their own homes. Because of this, the prince never knew the mermaid’s true name and so he chose to call her "Margaret," removing her from her real identity. Hans Christian Andersen, the author of the tale, was Danish, same as the name “Margaret”, which means “pearl,” therefore from the ocean, where the prince met the mermaid.

I wanted to leave as a moral that not everyone is what they seem, and so it’s better to meet that person before rushing into things. But I also wanted to maintain Hoax’s campaign and give hope to abused victims by showing that they can escape their abusers and that there’s also light where there only seems to be darkness.

[enchantedbyhiddles]

[colorcinabrio]

When you are the person who worked in mostly of the parts of a project:

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

[nickrockatansky]

I’m 100% sure Guillermo Del Toro is one of those who hated the Beauty and the Beast ending because the beast turned human

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

I believe it now

[gaelgarcia]

The Three Amigos winning the Academy Award for Best Director  2013 | Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity 2014 | Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman 2015 | Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant 2017 | Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

The Shape of Water (2017)

When I left Venezuela, it wasn’t a decision my mom or I made. We were forced to do it, it was either that, end up killed, or even worse: seeing my mom go to jail for protesting against an oppressive and authoritarian government. When we see people humans -because sometimes we forget that’s what they are, running to the Mexican border, they’re running from severe national insecurity, domestic violence, abuse, seeking tranquility and peace; they don’t have a choice. People of color don’t choose their skin color, gay people don’t choose who they love, disabled people don’t choose to be judged, minorities don’t wake up wanting to be discriminated against just for the “fun” of it, they don’t have a choice; because believe me when I say that I’d prefer to be with my family and best friends to suffer from the discrimination of someone who considers him/herself superior to me. 

Guillermo del Toro makes an excellent exploration of this point having his major characters representing minorities: the gay community by Giles, blacks by Zelda, and disabled people by Elisa. All of them have their own personalities, background stories, voices, they’re not secondary characters. The fact that the protagonist is a mute person represents progress for the film industry, joining A Quiet Place (2018), where one of the heroines is a mute child as well. We see Zelda as a strong woman who doesn’t pay attention to Strickland racists' comments and is not afraid of standing against her husband in order to defend her friend. We see Giles, a closeted homosexual, who, even though not at first, speaks for what is fair and what it’s not: segregation. What strikes me the most is how all of these characters joined together to defend “The Other” against the white supremacist character, and that’s important because I consider that the only way to know how it feels to be discriminated, is indeed to be discriminated. Guillermo (yes I’m calling him by his first name, we’re in this point of our relationship) makes ambiguous decisions for the viewer to understand according to its perspective, the most important one is about the Gillman; he can easily represent other minorities that weren’t present in the rest of the film, such as Hispanics, other disabled people, indigenous, Middle-Eastern, or Asian people, giving them a voice. TSOW, in contrast to the other monster movies we’ve watched, build-ups sympathy for the physical monster by humanizing him, giving hope for people who feel that otherness that they can find someone that supports them as much as Elisa did with the Asset, and that they will escape from its discrimination and abuse. Moreover, the fact that the Gillman didn’t become a beautiful prince at the end relates to the fact that there is nothing wrong with him and he doesn’t need to change in order to please others. I think the most important message that Guillermo is trying to give with this movie is that minorities must come together, support one another and don’t compete between who is being more discriminate, but rather fight against that evilness, misogynist supremacy that it’s trying to erase us from the planet. 

Lastly (because I think this post is being too long), Guillermo winning the Oscar for Best Picture gave hope to many people, especially to Mexicans, as one of my reblogs established earlier. I personally, even though I’m not Mexican, I feel identified with Guillermo (yes, I’m very aware he is a man and I’m not), but it’s not like there are plenty of Hispanics in the film industry that I could be identified with. We do have Sofia Vergara (Colombian, btw), but it bothers me that she’s always depicted as the sexy, loud latina with a strong accent, and I, even though loud, don’t look like her. So I rather have Guillermo as my inspiration, who after a long list of movies, has become a well-known and praised film director that hasn’t forgotten where he comes from and who is not part of continuing with false stereotypes. And that’s why he is one of my favorite film directors.

Also, blessed be Doug Jones for re-creating once again a Gillman after Abe from Hellboy.

[abrillherrera]

“Every day on social media, every day in our lives, we are taught to fear something, fear the other, fear the other religion, the other immigrant, the other gender, and it’s a time to embrace the fact that there’s no us and them but only us, and that’s all we have.”

— Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director from The Shape of Water

[rqgnarok]

an ode to the oscars, from a mexican viewer

here’s what’s up:

there are many points i want to cover about last night, but to begin with, the fact that there was a mayor latino presence during the ceremony of the oscars warmed my heart to oblivion. oscar isaac, gael garcía bernal, guillermo del toro, lin manuel miranda, salma hayek, lupita nyong’o, rita moreno, natalia lafourcade, eugenio derbez, eiza gonzález, all of them who have worked their asses off to get where they are right now and i could not be prouder of seeing them in an event of which donald trump was banning them about a year prior.

it matters. as a mexican myself, seeing all these people at such important events makes me feel so happy that we’re being included, specially during times of darkness, hatred and separation. during the “remember me” performance my dad got all excited and exlaimed: “its as if they were back in mexico!”. to see our culture influence so heavily on something like this, las flores de cempasúchil bursting from the ceiling, natalia’s dress, gael garcía’s green, white, and red ribbon, the dancing and the scenario, the music… i saw my country correctly represented at the oscars, and back home, this is one of the greatest achievements we’ve been able to accomplish.

the cries of “viva latinoamérica” and “viva méxico”, the profound thanks of the coco creators to méxico is a small but sure step towards the inclusion we need, specially during the times in which immigrants are seen as criminals, rapists, drug dealers… to be awarded for the art we create in such highly manner is, literally, everything to us. it means a lot.

 also, the gael garcía and oscar isaac hug, i am s o f t ™

[spookyscaryscully]

Guillermo del Toro: “Makes literally anything”

Me:

[herbalbutch]

Tbh, I think my favorite part of The Shape of water was the subtle dig at white gay entitlement.

It first comes up when Elisa is flipping through the TV and sees the footage of peaceful black protesters of the Civil Rights movement. Giles says he doesn’t want to see that and insists she changes the channel. Until this point we’ve seen his character as slightly self absorbed, in the way some academics tend to be, but it’s seen as just an endearing quirk of his personality. However, in this scene he is complicit in ignoring the struggles of African American citizens in a direct parallel to the way the white queer community often ignores racism within and outside of our communities. While not being explicitly racist like some of the other characters he is still turning a blind eye on another minority community because it’s presence is “disturbing.”

This changes later, at the diner, when we see Giles come to a realization after the waiter he was crushing on refuses to serve a black family. When he shames both Giles and the family, Giles is forced to realize the oppression of others. While this obviously doesn’t make him “a great ally to the black community” just for pulling his head out of his ass, it’s important to see in a movie so focused on the struggles of minorities in a cis/white/straight/Christian/capitalist America, make a nod toward the intersections of privilege.

It’s such a clever way to tie this issue into the greater theme of the movie, that could have so easily been cut. Anyway, the Shape of Water is more than that movie about a lady wanting to bone the fish man and I recommend you give it a watch.

[stuckinreversemode]

Guillermo del Toro on Winning Oscars & After Parties

[write-bout-idiots]

The best thing about Coco and Del Toro winning Oscars is that now everyone in México is sharing success stories of other mexicans and posting motivational videos about how we can do anything we want because we’re bien chingones.

Representation matters, kids.

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

Talking about representation today and why it’s important

[laguerradelasgalaxias]

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) || Crimson Peak (2015) || The Shape of Water (2017)

dir. Guillermo del Toro

[abrillherrera]

“My movie is called ‘The Shape of Water’ because water like love, it has no shape. When it appears it can be in the shape of someone from your same gender, with a different language and culture, with a different age. It can appear in a thousand shapes, but in the end, you recognize it.”

— Guillermo Del Toro, Mexican film director from The Shape of Water

[papertownsy]

When you win the biggest award of the night but gotta check in case they make last year’s mistake

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

I’m so in love with him

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

Too many emotions going on here

[taleasoldastimeuf-blog]

Alguien no puede ser tan hijo de puta en la vida

#icanonlyexpressitinspanish #imsorry