This was a creative piece based on Snow White that I had written for school and I thought I'd post it up here to see what everyone thinks of it :D since it's a post-modern (or textually dynamic, according to the BOS syllabus) creative, I hope it's not too confusing (since it took me a TERM, which is around ten weeks, to understand the topic), but everything gets cleared up at the end! :P So... hope you enjoy it, but if you don't you can always press the back button to escape this weird creative, right? ;)
Anyway... enjoy!
You had bought an adaptation of Snow White on your way home from work, a thin paperback, easily read within an hour. You pick it up, fully intending to submerge yourself entirely into a fantasy world in which princes and princesses run amok, creating various disasters that result in a threat to their lives, but, due to the timely intervention of a fairy godmother, always end up living happily ever after. You wish you could also have a fairy godmother that would make your life as carefree and as happy as those in the stories, but this is the real world. But you are getting off-track. All you need to know is that you want to read this collection of fairytales now. You have not read a fairytale since you were a child, and you are full of the innocent anticipation that also filled you back in those happy, long-forgotten days.
Now you are thinking on the right path.
You contemplate sitting in a chair, but you prefer your bed. So you walk over to the bed, lying down on your stomach, propping yourself up with your elbows and place the book down on your pillow. You are comfortable now, so you open the book. You flick past the title pages, and you reach the first line, and you begin to read.
Once upon a time, on a snowy day, a queen sat her window, gazing out onto snow-covered fields. The harsh landscape evoking a contemplative mood in the queen, she began to think about the problems plaguing her, the most pressing being her lack of children. Sighing, she said, "If only I could have a daughter (for this was a kingdom where a prince or princess could inherit the throne), with lips red as a rose, hair black as ebony, and skin white as snow." Immediately after she uttered these words, the thorn of a rose vine twining near her window pierced her finger. Drops of the queen's blood fell, staining the virgin snow beneath her window with three spots of brightest red.
In due time, a baby girl was born to the queen. The princess had hair as dark as the night sky, skin as white as the finest china and lips as red as an apple. The queen clasped her daughter to her and cried, "My daughter's name is Snow White." With that, the queen breathed her last.
The king, devastated at the loss of his queen, immersed himself with his work...
There is something digging into your stomach. You move to fix it, but... it is not pressing. All you need to do is read the story. Just read the story. Unwillingly, you ignore the irritating thing and continue reading.
...the stepmother stood in front of her mirror. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"
"You are the fairest of them all, my queen."
The queen smiled, satisfied, and walked over to the window. "You hear that, my dearest?" she said, smiling to the sky. She could see her king smiling down at her from heaven. "I'm the most beautiful of them all."
A clatter sounded in the courtyard. Her smile disappeared into a frown. "What is that Snow White doing?" she exclaimed. "Does she want to stain my dress, making it fall onto the ground like that? Does she want to detract from my beauty?" The queen was uncomfortably aware of the girl's blossoming beauty, which might one day rival hers, or worse, surpass her own...
...Snow White screamed. There were shadows everywhere; red eyes glowed from the dark, menacing tangles of branches. She ran, blind to everything in front of her. Her fear only enhanced all the terrors that the forest was hiding. She fell and sprawled over the leafy ground; a particularly prominent tree root had been lying in the middle of the path. Snow White crawled up, panting. She could only hear her own rasping breath, covering all other sounds in the forest. She could only feel the chilling wind blowing past her, raising her skin with goose bumps. She could only see the shadowed trees, extending in all directions. "Help!" she cried. "Somebody, help me!"
You hate this version of the fairytale; you throw the book to the ground. How can someone be so pathetic? Do princesses always rely on other people to fix their problems? Annoyed at this pathetic attempt of an incompetent author, you breathe life into the characters. They become malleable tools, ready to be used by you to suit your very whim.
You begin to change Snow White.
...she could see her king smiling down at her from heaven. "I'm the most beautiful of them all."
A clatter sounded in the courtyard. Her smile disappeared into a frown. "What is that Snow White doing?" she exclaimed. Snow White, hearing her stepmother's voice, looked up from the fallen clothesbasket and smiled, a tainted twist of the mouth that warped her face into something different.
"Who did you just call Snow White?" the girl asked, with an evil grin. "Let me tell you, dear delusional stepmother, I am not Snow White! I am The Joker!"
You have always liked The Joker, who did everything to combat the people standing in his way with his own two hands. Snow White was starting to get on your nerves, with her ways of hiding behind other people instead of facing her stepmother directly. You are always the one cheering The Joker on, underneath the louder screams from the people who support Batman, believing good will always defeat evil. As a replacement for Snow White, he is perfect.
You are getting sidetracked. Go back to your story.
The scarred, wild-haired figure of The Joker burst out from Snow White's slender form. In an instant, he leapt up to the window of the queen, staring into her terrified face.
"Why so serious?" The Joker asked with a maniacal grin, twirling a knife with one hand, its blade flashing in the sun.
What should you do? The Joker, although awesome, does not seem to be meshing with the story very well. The story has begun to take a rather unpleasant turn. How about...
Snow White pulled out her sword. "You will never trick me with an apple!" she cried, and lunged at her stepmother, her sword aimed at her heart, only to be hastily parried by the queen. The queen stabbed at Snow White in retaliation. Her features elongated and darkened, until she was a tall Italian man with pride as his shield and hatred in his heart. She looked down at herself. "Same person. No difference at all. Just a different sex." And so he slashed his sword at Snow White, but the normally large, hazel eyes had become an obsidian black. They were Tybalt and Mercutio, duelling in the dusty streets of Verona.
Maybe re-reading Romeo and Juliet last week were not such a good idea: you seem to have absorbed more than just entertainment from the Bard's most famous work. You try to go back to the original story...
Snow White stared at the apple. "Ooh... it looks so good." The queen cackled, hidden in her disguise.
"Of course it is. I picked it."
Snow White reached out and grabbed the apple. "Sorry, we're kinda short on money right now. Thanks for the apple." Quick as a flash, Snow White locked the door in the queen's face.
The queen trembled with fury. How dare the chit steal her specially prepared apple! And without paying too! "If you don't come out, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!"
No, no, no, you scream in frustration. This is all wrong! You cry. This is not supposed to happen! You enter into your story again and again, trying to change the story back into its original form. But the words are different, the characters indifferent to your pleas, no matter how you force or reason with them. You stare at the book, frustrated at its unwillingness to co-operate with you. You had initially breathed life into the characters so that they could be manipulated by you, but now... they are having too much fun deciding their own fates, following their every whim, to listen to you.
You groan and enter the story once last time, to try look for the original characters you know are somewhere within your mind. You begin to search, looking even in places so small even an ant cannot fit, let alone a full grown character, but they are hiding so well from their rampaging incarnations that all trace of them has vanished. You cover your face with your hands. What have you done? Why did you meddle with a perfectly acceptable story, intent on changing the seemingly incompetent story with the truly incompetent meddles of a reader?
Where are you, my fairy godmother? My knight in shining armour? you cry. Save me from this mess!
I cannot bear for my beloved reader to feel so distressed over her mistake. There is only one way, one drastic method, to help her, and that is to take this document and delete it from my database, erasing it from my computer's memory, never to see the light of day again. Then I will place my hands upon this keyboard, open up a new document, and write:
You had bought an adaptation of Snow White on your way home from work, a thin paperback, easily read within an hour.
And there you have it! So... what did you think? Please send me a review and tell me! I'd love to hear what you think about it!
It sucks though, because I can't put the last line on a different page, which I did my exam by writing it in a different booklet and made me feel like I was wasting paper since one booklet=two pieces of paper, and I was only writing one line... and it's not really a new chapter and so doesn't really work as a second chapter (I've tried that, but now I change my mind :P so it's now part of this chapter) and so I'm sorry people for not being able to give you the whole effect :(
Anyway, yeah... That's all I have to say. I hope you enjoyed that :) See you!
et-r