Tag: writing

Sarcastic Snow White

~ Brooke F. ~ Leave a comment

Sarcastic Snow White

A  beautiful young queen sits sewing at an open window during a winter  snowfall (Why is she letting all the hot air in the castle out and the  snow in? My Mom would yell it me to shut the stinking window! Does she have any idea how much heat costs?! Were you raised in a barn? (Well, this is a fairytale so this may be a possibility…)) when she pricks her finger with her  needle (Smooth one, Queenie), causing three drops of red blood to drip  onto the freshly fallen white snow on the black windowsill. Admiring the  beauty of the resulting color combination, she says to herself, “How I  wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red  as blood, and hair as black as ebony” (Okay, this is kind of weird. So  she can have a daughter to her and say, “I jabbed myself in the finger  with a needle and thought of you!”). Soon after that, the Queen gives  birth to a baby daughter, a beautiful and sweet girl with skin as white  as snow (Unless she gets sunburn of course), lips as red as blood, and  hair as black as ebony. She is named ‘Snow White’.  Sadly, the Good Queen, Snow White’s mother, dies during child birth.

After  a year has passed, Snow White’s father, the King, takes a new and  second wife, who is very beautiful but a wicked and vain woman (Aren’t  all stepmothers?). The new queen, Snow White’s evil stepmother,  possesses a magic mirror (Just a random magic mirror that came from  nowhere), which she asks every morning, “Magic mirror on the wall, who  is the fairest one of all? (Not that she’s self absorbed or anything)”  The mirror always replies, “My Queen, you are the fairest one of all.  (Okay, so the mirror’s a suck up?)” The Queen is always pleased with  that because the magic mirror never lies (Or he’s just a suck up like I  said). But as Snow White grows up, she becomes more beautiful each day  and even more beautiful than the Queen, and when the Queen asks her  mirror, it tells her that Snow White is the fairest. (Snitch)

This gives  the queen a great shock. She becomes yellow and green with envy (That’s  why she’s not the fairest of ’em all anymore) and from that hour on, her  heart turns against Snow White, and she hates her more and more each  day. Envy and pride, like ill weeds, grow in her heart taller every day,  until she has no peace day or night (Because she has a weedy heart.  Ever hear of weed killer?). Eventually, the Queen orders a huntsman to  take Snow White into the deepest woods to be killed (Nice mum, ain’t  she?). As proof that Snow White is dead, the Queen demands that he  return with her lungs and liver (So she can do what with it? Eat them  for supper? By now, I wouldn’t be surprised. This stepmom lady has me  freaked out). The huntsman takes Snow White into the forest. After  raising his knife, he finds himself unable to kill her as she sobs  heavily and begs him; “Oh, dear huntsman, don’t kill me! Leave me with  my life; I will run into the forest and never come back!” The huntsman  leaves her behind alive, convinced that the girl would be eaten by some  wild animal (Like that’s any better). He instead brings the Queen the  lungs and liver of a young boar, which is prepared by the cook and eaten  by the Queen (I’m serious, I have never read this version of the story  before and I just foretold cannibalism).

After wandering through  the forest for days, Snow White discovers a tiny cottage belonging to a  group of Seven Dwarfs. Since no one is at home, she eats some of the  tiny meals, drinks some of their wine and then tests all the beds  (Sounds like Goldilocks to me). Finally the last bed is comfortable  enough for her and she falls asleep (“This bed is just right.”). When  the seven dwarfs return home, they immediately become aware that someone  sneaked in secretly, because everything in their home is in disorder.  During their loud discussion about who sneaked in, they discover the  sleeping Snow White (Who never woke up even though they were having a  loud discussion?). The girl wakes up (Finally) and explains to them what  happened and the dwarfs take pity on her, saying; “If you will keep  house for us, and cook, make beds, wash, sew, and knit, and keep  everything clean and orderly, then you can stay with us, and you shall  have everything that you want.” They warn her to be careful when alone  at home and to let no one in when they are away delving in the  mountains.

Meanwhile, the Queen asks her mirror once again; “Magic  mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?” The mirror replies;  “My queen, you are the fairest here so true. But Snow White beyond the  mountains at the seven dwarfs is a thousand times more beautiful than  you (Tattle tale mirror)”. The Queen is horrified to learn that the  huntsman has betrayed her and that Snow White is still alive. She keeps  thinking about how to get rid of Snow White, then she disguises herself  as an old peddler. The Queen then walks to the cottage of the dwarfs and  offers her colorful, silky laced bodices and convinces the girl to take  the most beautiful bodice as a present (Wait, so Snow White doesn’t  recognize her? I mean, I know she’s disguised but this IS her mother). Then the Queen laces it so tightly that Snow White  faints (This part makes me breath heavily I can picture it a little too vividly.), causing the Queen to leave  her for dead. But the dwarfs return just in time, and Snow White revives  when the dwarfs loosen the laces.

The next morning the Queen  consults her mirror anew and the mirror reveals Snow White’s survival  (Snitching mirror! Why don’t you give it a rest?). Now infuriated, the Queen  dresses as a comb seller and convinces Snow White to take a beautiful  comb as a present (Come on Snow White, you can’t be that dumb). She  brushes Snow White’s hair with a poisoned comb, and the girl faints  again (Or not. Talk about learning hard), but she is again revived by  the dwarfs. And the next morning the mirror tells the Queen that Snow  White is still “a thousand times more beautiful” (Okay, sounds kind of like the mirror is rubbing it in here.). Now the Queen nearly  has a heart attack in shock and rage (But unfortunately she doesn’t as  then there would be no villain in the story). As a third and last  attempt to rid herself of Snow White, she secretly consults the darkest  magic and makes a poisoned apple, and in the disguise of a farmer’s  wife, she offers it to Snow White (Snow White, really. You’ve learned  you lesson by now, right?). The girl is at first hesitant to accept it,  so the Queen cuts the apple in half, eating the white (harmless) half  and giving the red (poisoned) half to Snow White (It would make a  interesting story if she accidentally switched up the halves. And by the  way, where the heck do you find an apple with a different color on each  side? Not suspicious at all.). The girl eagerly (and stupidly) takes a bite and falls  into a state of suspended animation, causing the Queen to triumph. This  time the dwarfs are unable to revive the girl because they cannot find  the source of Snow White’s poor health (I would be ready to give up by  now. She’s not worth it if she’s that stupid), and assuming that she is  dead, they place her in a glass coffin.

Time passes and a prince  traveling through the land sees Snow White (Rotting away in her  coffin?). He strides to her coffin and, enchanted by her beauty,  instantly falls in love with her (Falls in love with a dead body?! What  the-?!). The dwarfs succumb to his entreaties to let him have the  coffin (“Look what I got, mom! A coffin with a dead lady in it!”), and  as his servants carry the coffin away, they stumble on some roots  (Clumsy move). The tremor caused by the stumbling causes the piece of  poisoned apple to dislodge from Snow White’s throat, awakening her (So  the coffin doesn’t shatter at all? Tough glass. And so the Prince  doesn’t kiss her to make her awake? Well, I suppose that’s better.  Kissing dead bodies is on an even creepier level). The Prince then  declares his love for her (People in these stories are so shallow), and  soon a wedding is planned. The couple invite every queen and king to  come to the wedding party, including Snow White’s step-mother.  Meanwhile, the Queen, still believing that Snow White is dead, again  asks her magical mirror who is the fairest in the land. The mirror says;  “You, my queen, are fair so true. But the young Queen is a thousand  times fairer than you (Man, what a squealer!)”.

Appalled, in  disbelief, and with her heart full of fear and doubts, the Queen is at  first hesitant to accept the invitation, but she eventually decides to  go (Because they’re gonna have cake!). Not knowing that this new queen  was indeed her stepdaughter, she arrives at the wedding, and her heart  fills with the deepest of anger when she realizes the truth. As a  punishment for her attempted murders, a pair of glowing-hot iron shoes  are brought forth with tongs and placed before the Queen. She is forced  to step into the burning shoes and to dance until she drops dead (Ow,  ow, ow, ow! I definitely did NOT see that in the Disney movie!).

(With the dead body of the Queen laying on the ground, the couple are married. And, um, they live happily ever after? )

Things I, as a bookworm, am upset about

~ Brooke F. ~ 3 Comments

Sequels coming out too far apart that I’ve completely forgotten what’s happened in the first book. Sorry. I’ve moved on. 

Those stickers on the back of books that don’t peel away cleanly. 

When there’s no plot summary on the back of the book and it’s just reviews 

Dog-earing pages??? Like why would you???

That time the library of Alexandria got burned down. 

That annoying eye skip thing I do when I’m reading and I’m excited and my eyes just skip to the dialogue and I feel like I’m spoiling stuff for myself. 

That point of view switch thing happens at the most inconvenient time. 

Weird smelling books. (Books can hold smells. Once I opened one from the library and it smelled like cigarette smoke. Books are supposed to smell like heaven and knowledge.)

Books aren’t waterproof for some reason???? Like, what if I wanna read it in a bubble bath or shower? Or maybe I just wanna protect it from my tears…

Sequels coming out with a different cover design, size, etc.

Or, a good book with a bad cover design.

Reading a really good book and loving it but knowing in the back of your head you’ll have to find one just as good if not better in the future and that will lead to overall discouragement and kick me into a reading slump and notice how “you” and turned into “me” because in reality I am very much talking about myself cause I do this all the time ya feel me?

The Sarcastic Little Mermaid

~ Brooke F. ~ Leave a comment

Gather round children and hear a tale! A tale of how a mermaid loved a prince so much, that she was willing to dump her entire family and fishy friends for him only to die tragically (spoiler alert!)

Ladies and gents, I present: The Sarcastic Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid (She has no name. Just “The little mermaid”. What would her name if she wasn’t little? The medium mermaid? The big mermaid? You can’t just boil people down to fry sizes!) dwells in an underwater kingdom with her father (the sea king or mer-king), her dowager grandmother, and her five older sisters, each of whom had been born one year apart (Her mom had like NO rest at all between children). When a mermaid turns 15, she is permitted to swim to the surface for the first time to glimpse the world above, and when the sisters become old enough, each of them visits the upper world one at a time every year (Two of them at a time is not allowed because why?). As each returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the world inhabited by human beings (“It smells of rotting eggs and you get sunburn! Ain’t earth great?”).

When the Little Mermaid’s turn comes, she rises up to the surface, watches a birthday celebration being held on a ship in honor of a handsome prince, and falls in love (By looking at his face of manliness) with him from a safe distance (Okay, so if you’re at a safe distance, how can you even tell what he looks like in the first place? And even if you can, talk about SHALLOW!). A violent storm hits (Out of nowhere. Apparently the dude in the crow’s nest was taking a nap or whatever), and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from drowning (Wait, he’s on a ship and he can’t even swim. Get a life jacket!). She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple (What temple? Wouldn’t she have to like, walk TO the temple? Bad architecture design to put a temple right at the waters edge, just sayin’). Here, she waits until a young girl from the temple and her companions find him. To her dismay, the prince never sees the Little Mermaid or even realizes that it was she who had originally saved his life (wasn’t like he was unconscious or anything).

The Little Mermaid becomes melancholy and asks her grandmother if humans can live forever and if they can breathe under water. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolks’ 300 years, but that when mermaids die, they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven (So who REALLY gets the raw end of the deal here?). The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul (She wants a soul? Not creepy at all!), eventually visits the Sea Witch in a dangerous section of the ocean (And that would be where? Marina trench perhaps). The witch willingly (*Ominous music*) helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue (And they made this into a Disney movie. Totally kid friendly material there! “I’ll give you my tongue and you hand over a leg and we’re even”). The Sea Witch warns that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea (Unless you go swimming or buy some scuba gear). Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body (Okay, ow), yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before (What does DANCING have to do with anything? I should hope you can WALK). However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives and as though her toes are bleeding (And she agrees to this?). In addition, she will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her (Oh…okay?). Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die brokenhearted and disintegrate into sea foam upon the waves. (Welll this sounds like a wonderful deal that couldn’t possibly grow wrong! Where do I sign?)

The Little Mermaid agrees to this arrangement (Yeah, dump your family and life for a prince you met from “a safe distance” with only a slight chance of winning his love and you will most likely die alone and broken hearted. Sounds fair) and the Sea Witch cuts off her tongue. The Little Mermaid swims to the surface near the palace of the prince and drinks the potion. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace (Alright, everyone in the story is officially just plain upright shallow. Great moral here), even though she is considered by everyone in the kingdom as dumb and mute (I can vouch for the dumb part. Still can’t believe she went through with it). Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step (Lovely). Soon, the Little Mermaid becomes the prince’s favorite companion and accompanies him on many of his outings. When the prince’s parents order their son to marry the neighboring princess in an arranged marriage, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him (But you were unconscious! What?). It turns out that the princess from the neighboring kingdom is the temple girl, sent there only temporarily to be educated (On what, may I ask? Taking, er, temple classes? I don’t know). The prince loves her, and the royal wedding is announced at once.

The prince and princess celebrate on a wedding ship, and the Little Mermaid’s heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has sacrificed and of all the pain she has endured. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters rise out of the water and bring her a dagger that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long, beautiful hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the dagger and lets his blood drip on her feet (Again, totally kid friendly. Disney accidentally left out THAT part), she will become a mermaid once more, all her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life in the ocean with her family (Whom she dumped for a shallow prince whom she met from “A safe distance”).

However, the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his new bride (Whoa. Creeper alert!), and she throws the dagger and herself off the ship into the water just as dawn breaks. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warm sun and discovers that she has turned into a luminous and ethereal earthbound spirit, a daughter of the air. As the Little Mermaid ascends into the atmosphere, she is greeted by other daughters who tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul. Because of her selflessness, she will be given the chance to earn her own soul by doing good deeds to mankind for 300 years (Not long at all! By the way, how can she do good deeds if she’s dead?) and will one day rise up into the Kingdom of God (One day. But for now she will live out her days in pain and suffering. Yeah, she totally lived happily ever after).

The Sufferings of a Writer

~ Brooke F. ~ Leave a comment

1. Staying up til two thirty in the morning on a school night because you’re in the middle of a really exciting chapter.

2. Carrying a notebook and pencils/pens everywhere you go.

3. Getting a really good plot idea out of nowhere and having to drop everything to jot it down.

4. Eavesdropping on people’s conversations for dialogue ideas.

5. Getting a new computer and being thrilled at the prospect of all that free file space, and then having half of it filled up with Word documents within a month.

6. Having so many Word documents that you don’t even remember what some of them are..

7. Becoming stunned whenever someone asks you what your book is about (as if you could sum it up in a sentence, right?).

8. Being given an assignment to write a two-page short story and turning in a twenty-page one instead.

9. Envisioning a cute/funny scene in your head during a boring class and suddenly someone asks “What are you smiling about?” and you have to stammer something dumb.

10. When someone tells you your sad scene made them cry and being like “YES! VICTORY!”.

11. When you’re confused about something, putting two characters together and having them fight about it.

12. Being able to turn everything that happens to you into a scene for your story.

13. Getting inspiration not just from English class, but also from History, Biology, Foreign Language, Art and Math.

14. It annoys you when people use the wrong form of ‘you’re’ and ‘their’.

15. You correct people’s grammar in your head.

16. You know every little thing about a character… except their name.

17. It makes you slightly concerned when people look in your Google history that they will question your mental health.

18. You question your own mental health fairly often.

19. When someone walks in and you’re in the middle of writing you’re like:

GoawayI’mnotdoinganythingsuspiciouswhileIminusmyworddocumentveryquickly

20. You want to get (or already have) a sign on your door that says ‘For Your Safety, Do Not Disturb the Writer While She is Inspired.’

21. When someone suggests you edit out a part of your story that part instantly becomes your favorite part.

22. All your favorite songs either remind you of a scene or a character in your story (or perhaps inspired them).

23. Complimenting your looks, skills and personality are all right, but when someone compliments your writing without knowing it’s yours, your day is made.

24. You want desperately someone to critique your writing and at the same time you don’t.

25. You have that one character (maybe more than one) that you know better than your own family members, sometimes better than yourself, that one that you love so dearly and you can see them in your head and hear their voice like they’re actually there and they’re so real to you.

26. You feel guilty when you have to do something mean to a character you like.

27. You love all your characters, even the ones that readers aren’t supposed to like, even the ones that you know you’d hate if they existed, because you understand them.

28. Putting your character in a tense situation makes your heart speed up.

29. You have conversations with your characters in your head (and sometimes outside ).

30. You have a quirky thing you do that gets your creative juices flowing and inspires you, and if anyone else knew about it they’d think your insane.

31. You cry when you have to kill your favorite character.

32. You critique other people’s books while you’re reading them.

33. Everything inspires you some days, other days you can’t get a good idea for the life of you.

34. You get all excited to write before you do it, but when you actually sit down and open the Word document, you get about one sentence done in an hour.

35. You join rpg’s for ‘writing practice’ because partly you can make up characters that don’t have to be super complex, partly you don’t know what’s going to happen so it’s a challenge there, and partly they’re just fun.

36. You’re that person who writes paragraph-long texts with perfect grammar.

37. Your characters show up in your dreams from time to time.

38. You get inspiration from your dreams.

39. You have a Word document open at this moment.

40. You’ve smiled and said ‘That’s so true!’ to most of these.

Is the Glass half-full or empty?

~ Brooke F. ~ Leave a comment

Is the Glass half full? Is the Glass half empty?

But doesn’t it depend? If you filled up the glass to the halfway point, wouldn’t you be more in inclined to say it is half full? But what if you filled it up and then poured out half?  Now it seems half-empty.  I guess how a person sees their glass depends on the circumstances around it and their particular glass… so maybe it’s not quite as simple as sorting people into optimists and pessimists. It’s true that maybe some of us are better at seeing the silver lining and others. Maybe some of us are natural born cynics. And maybe the human psych is just a little bit more complicated than that…

But all that being said don’t forget to drink your water in the first place. And I’d recommended doing it through a crazy straw. Cause those things are awesome.