Whimsywitch journey @theprincessbard - Tumblr Blog

TRICK OR TREAT (1952)

The Crone Becoming

From childhood, we learn to fear and destroy the crone, or to pity and ostracise her. The Crone is not something to aspire to. She is an outcast. She is evil and dangerous, and she is someone you do not want to become, for society will turn against you.

Growing up is realising that the fairy godmother was the crone to the maiden energy of Cinderella. But she is never given that title because we need to villainise the crone. We can’t spell out that the crone can be a force for good. The crone is the tool to grant the maiden power and transformation. She is a two-dimensional plot device. Ugly, wicked, cruel and selfish.

Why does the Fairy Godmother do what she does? Where does her power come from? What did she live through that now she makes it her task to aid and mentor those who are yet to rise?

And who is the enchantress who comes to teach the beast a lesson? What does it say that she must shapeshift into beauty and assumed youth to be taken seriously and treated with respect! Because old is ugly and is to be avoided. Our value is in our youth and beauty for the enjoyment of the beholder, and in our ability to bear the children of their legacy.

Growing up is realising that Endora was right. Samantha married a walking red flag who wanted his wife to diminish herself and become less for the sake of his ideals and his wants. She was not an opinionated, abrasive, old crone. She had the wisdom to know better, and the rage to push back at a society that wanted to make powerful women less.

Hitting perimenopause is understanding what the crone truly is and can be, what that transition means in shedding the energy of maiden and mother. The crone is power tempered with wisdom, and a deep rage that fuels the fires that would burn away the darkness. A crone will burn the world down and recreate a new one, a better one, she will empower the maiden and the mother who come after her to find their power and understand themselves, and know that the true understanding and transformation for most will come when the final shift comes.

The crone is the high priestess and the tower, she is death and judgement, the moon and the world. She brings her world and herself into focus, she lives for her true purpose and authentic self, and she tolerates nothing less than she deserves. Therefore, she will not let others accept less. She does not filter herself to make society comfortable. She does not make herself less to make it easier for others to use her.

And this is why we are taught to fear her, why we are taught to avoid becoming her. The crone is an unstoppable force, and she knows this world can be better, should be better, needs to be better.

It took beginning that transformation to truly understand the magic of the crone, and well, maybe they were right to fear us, but they will no longer destroy us or those who come after us. When I stand tall in my power and smile, I hope it makes them uncomfortable. I will be diminished no more.

#crone #perimenopause #transformation #blog post #jaide dee

nudityandnerdery

Happy anniversary to Zero Cool.

cookie-sheet-toboggan

Air Himbo

Water Himbo

Earth Himbo

Fire Himbo

immaplatypus

@crvggio I’ve been laughing at this for 47 years

demigoddessqueens

And the Avatar

an-eldritch-nightmare-deactivat

Reblogging again because that last addition is IMPORTANT

mypunkpansexualtwin

But when the world needed him most, he pulled the wrong lever...

lady-byleth

Why do they even have that lever?

miss-nerd-alert

Well done everyone, 10/10 post

tainted-scholar

Rewatching Treasure Planet (great movie, watch it) made realize something about the way that stories convey information to their audiences. There's been a lot of discussion on the overuse of plot twists and how many stories prioritise surprising their audience over telling decent stories. However, if you instead reveal the "twist" to the audience before it becomes known to the characters, you can build tension and stakes. Treasure Planet comes right out and tells you that Long John Silver is the main villain almost immediately after his introduction (And even before he's introduced we're warned about a cyborg, so you'd have to be pretty dense to not put 2 and 2 together and realize he's a bad guy). So when the audience watches him and Jim bond and grow closer, it builds tension for when Jim finds out and it highlights the tragedy of their friendship, because we all know it's not going to end well. Then, after the truth is revealed, stakes are created because we want the friendship between Jim and Silver to be repaired, because we know it was real, but we don't know if can be after what Silver's done. And all of this would have been lost if Silver's true nature had been a cheap plot twist. The tragedy would be completely overshadowed by the surprise and betrayal, and any investment in their relationship would have been built on the false impression that Silver was a good guy.

Another good example of this is Titanic. Even if you were somehow ignorant of the ship's sinking, the film makes sure you know that it sank with its framing device of Old Rose telling her story to people salvaging the Titanic's wreak. And Titanic's plot structure could only possibly work if you know the ship is going to sink. I'm not just talking about building tension, tragedy, and stakes for the characters like with the above example, I mean that if you didn't know that the Titanic was going down walking into the film, the abrupt shift from romance to suspense-disaster would be an increadibly tough pill to swallow. But it works because we expect it. You don't walk into a film called Titanic without expecting the damn boat to sink.

However, the sad thing about both of these examples, is that despite all the benefits that came from telling the audience these things ahead of time, I think the main reason the creators didn't make them plot twists was because they couldn't have. Treasure Island is the single most influential piece of pirate media out there, and you'd have to have been living under a rock for over a century to not know the Titanic sank. So, the writers had to work around the fact that these important turning points in the narratives were common knowledge, and they wound creating incredible stories as a consequence.

I want to see more of this style of writing in stories where the writers aren't forced to do it. We've clearly seen that you can tell some really damn good stories by giving information to the audience before the characters learn it, and I just wish more works would do that instead of trying to surprise people with shocking twists.

skeleton-richard

@the-golden-ghost !!!

laropasucia

This is also why most adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde don't follow the mystery plot structure of the original book, since everyone already knows they're the same person, no one will be surprised by that twist nowadays.

As a consequence, most adaptations of the story are told mainly from Jekyll's point of view, and the conflict between Jekyll and Hyde becomes the main story, which makes for really compelling drama!

beleester

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!” In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

--Alfred Hitchcock, on the difference between surprise and suspense.

forest-woman

Collection of vintage French fairytale books

blu3b3rryj4mp1r3

beanie baby dragon is crossing your dash

victusinveritas

There's more:

ofishal-fish-posts

With more and more Ao3 authors restricting their works to the archive (due to AI scraping), they're going to be losing guest interaction. And probably generally feeling down because. You know. AI is stealing their hard work.

So! Now is a great time to stop by your favorite authors/stories and drop them some comments! They really appreciate it!

boyslit

also put in a request for an ao3 account if you don't have one! an account will let you make bookmarks of your favorite fics, store a reading history of fics you read while logged in, set a profile picture, all sorts of goodies :)

fourohfourlifenotfound

I know the invitation wait list numbers look intimidating, but it maths out to like 12 days rn.

ofishal-fish-posts

That's not that long! Plus there's a lot of folks in the notes with invites offering them to people who don't have accounts!

Readers: Make an AO3 account!

Authors: Restrict your works to the archive!

elventhespian

“We dropped different numbers of balls at different rates, different heights. We had a ramp. The ramps were at different angles, trying to get the most out of the balls as they hit the actors. After doing the tests, we figured out 35 feet above the deck of the ship was the height we needed our nets. We had these three big nets that held almost 80,000 per net. The balls dropped 35 feet into ramps that projected them towards the stunt guys. It just knocked them over. It was pretty spectacular.”

-Mark Hawker, SFX Coordinator for Pirates of the Caribbean

“It’s amazing to see a bunch of 40 and 50-year-olds turn into three-year-olds all of a sudden. Everybody had to pick up blue balls, hit the other guy in the head. It was like, ’Is it time for the parents to come pick up the kids?’”

-George Marshall Ruge, Stunt Coordinator for Pirates of the Caribbean

elventhespian

#what a cool way to film waves crashing over a boat!!!

Shame on me for not clarifying from the beginning, but this set up was not meant to simulate water. This was to help the SFX team animate the part where the sea goddess, Calypso, turns giant in visual call-back to ancient Greek pottery, and then escapes her human body by exploding into a quarter million crabs.

On Pirates 1-3 if they wanted a big wave to go over the boat, they just straight up dumped giant bucket-tanks of water over the actors (they did this to Kevin McNally and Orlando Bloom in the first movie) or blasted the hull of the ship with water cannons ❤