Telling Sleeping Beauty

My first non-video game post on this blog, and I feel this is what will cement how incredibly sad I am as a human being. One thing to note is that this is partially based off a previous blog of mine, which can be found here: How to Make Maleficent Sympathetic(-ish).

The idea goes off of the storyteller trying to influence the story into one the character finds more interesting being the main influence of the characters. The tale of Sleeping Beauty, as told by four people who are constantly at odds about how to tell it.

You have four characters: Gilbert, who wants to tell a story of the politics of a kingdom after a GoT marathon; Mary, who wants to tell a romance tale because of her falling for a guy she knows; Phoebe, who wants to tell a story of fairies and magic because she thinks it's really cool; and Conner, who wants to tell a story about evil and darkness as he doesn't want a boring happy ending.

Each one is a storyteller, who has agreed to work together to tell an interesting story, and can take over the narration by saying "change". Naturally, none of them can agree on what the story is supposed to be, and use their characters (Flora, Fauna, Merryweather and Maleficent respectively) as a direct way to none too subtly nudge the story in their direction.

Gilbert introduces a fair, 14th century kingdom with a princess being born and celebrated. Mary introduces a prince who is to be married to her, which Gilbert then elaborates as a joining of the two kingdoms. Phoebe then introduces three fairies, which everyone thinks of as silly, but eventually have to go along with.

Sick of where the story is headed and how slow it's going, Conner interrupts before Merryweather's gift by introducing an evil fairy and sentencing the child to death at 16. Naturally, everyone is angry about this, but can't simply overwrite what he has said, and have to write further in to prevent her death.

The rest of the story goes on in a similar manner, with each person trying to stress their particular element over all the others, with the three writers eventually ganging up on Maleficent to kill off the character and bring the story to a good close. Conner, while annoyed that his character is killed off, knows he would ruin the story too much by simply resurrecting her, and walks away in a huff.

This works in a sort of Mystery Science Theatre fashion to the Disney telling of the story, each person criticising the other's elements while defending their own. The words would have to change significantly, but the basic structure would remain and the focus will remain on the storytellers most of, if not all, of the time. And this would make it cheap.

This ties into the blog I linked to by way of Maleficent not only being a storyteller trying to influence a story, but being the storyteller's deus ex machina used to change the story. She is someone else's bid for control in a self-made world, and who can argue that's not a believable character?