Waiting Impatiently For 'Maleficent'? Read A Book, Have A Cup of Villain Tea...

MALEFICENT BLEND*Smooth and velvety, with a glamourous sprinkling of rose petals.
This blend is elegant with just a hint of something murky, waiting to surface.

Note: All teas shown are by Adagio Teas, the number one tea site that creates teas with pop culture themes. There are TONS of blends and themes here! All version of Disney, of course, but also Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Princess Bride, Sherlock, Buffy, Game of Thrones, Rise of the Guardians, Wonderland, Once Upon A Time, Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars, Grimm, Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, the Tolkien themed, Tales & Tea Leaves and a LOT more. Heck, there's even a Kate Crackernuts tea blend! (Be warned: it's a tea rabbit-hole!)

Fairy Tale Book Lists are popping up all over the place under the "While You Wait For Maleficent" banner.

URSULA BLEND**
Tropical and fruity, this blend
is reminiscent of the ocean, with
just hints of tanginess throughout.
It'd be very helpful if you were
to lose your voice. Not that there's
any reason that'd happen.

Ta da! This is one of those moments where fairy tale writers go - look! They're searching for us again! Not that readers have really stopped. For some time now fairy tale retellings - especially those with a little grit - have been in demand and now, if your book is currently on the shelves with the hashtag of #darkfairytale attached, there's a very good chance you will be making some extra sales this month.

A recent and decent one come from HuffPost HERE. It seemed for a while that fairy tale retelling lists had the same recommendations overall with only a slight variation between them according to the columnists taste. This list, however, has a much more variety - and many newer - books.

Specifically these are on the conflicted protagonist theme and I wasn't surprised to see Gregory Maguire's Wicked topping the list. I did, however, have the urge to give a little woot and fistpump on seeing Angela Carter's fairy tales in there. That will be an interesting fairy tale primer for the unsuspecting! Hopefully they'll fall in love and we'll have more fairy tale friends than ever.


There are NO SLEEPING BEAUTY RETELLINGS LISTED HERE! I wonder why? Or have we just not been as keen to rewrite her story in novel form as much as some others?

CHERNABOG BLEND***
Dark, bold, with hints of cocoa, this blend reflects the night with perfection. Drinking it in the morning may provide difficulties, like a choir singing to try to stop you.

I can think of lots of short stories and some older Sleeping Beauty novels but not a whole lot recently (ie the last five to ten years)... Hm.

Here's the HuffPost list:

(Note, that at the link, there is a very brief summary of the book and why it's Maleficent-esque reading)

• Wicked by Gregory Maguire
• Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce
• Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes
• The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
• Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
• Snow White Sorrow by Cameron Jace
• The WoodCutter Sisters series by Alethea Kontis
• The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
• Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
• Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

THE EVIL QUEEN BLEND*****
This blend is full of the scent
of apples and sugar, a very pleasant
combination in deed. There is just
something bitter in that of
aftertaste that may leave you suspicious.

My pick to add in the "Maleficent-like" vein would be Fairest of All by Serena Valentino. It tells a very similar story, of a hurt woman changing to a downright evil woman from the Queen's perspective so that makes it even more interesting to follow (plus the writing is simply stylized yet poetic and lovely, while the story, no matter the twists it takes, stays very true to the Disney movie).

What would you add to the list, considering people want a Maleficent-like story (according to what we know from the trailers etc so far anyway)?



* MALEFICENT BLEND:  ingredients & lore: blended with black tea, yunnan jig tea, cinnamon bark, ginger root, wuyi ensemble tea, natural blackberry flavor, cocoa nibs, blackberry leaves, natural chocolate flavor, natural cinnamon flavor

teas: mambo, blackberry, chocolate chai

accented with cocoa nibs and rose petals

steep at 212° for 3 mins

** URSULA BLEND: ingredients & lore: blended with yerba mate tea, pu erh tea, apple pieces, hibiscus flowers, rose hips, dried coconut, natural coconut flavor, natural mango flavor, marigold flowers, natural pineapple flavor, pineapple pieces, mango pieces, papaya flavor

teas: pu erh tahiti, pina colada, mango mate

accented with ginger and hibiscus

steep at 195° for 4 mins

*** CHERNABOG BLEND:  ingredients & lore: blended with pu erh dante, pu erh tea, black tea, orange peels, cocoa nibs, natural chocolate flavor, blue cornflowers, natural orange flavor, natural caramel flavor, natural vanilla flavor

teas: pu erh chorange, pu erh dante,tiger eye

steep at 212° for 4 mins

**** QUEEN OF HEARTS BLEND: ingredients & lore: blended with green tea, rose hips, hibiscus flowers, apple pieces, orange peels, natural wild cherry flavor, dried cherries, rose petals, natural orange flavor

teas: dewy cherry, blood orange, cherry green

accented with hibiscus

steep at 205° for 4 mins

***** EVIL QUEEN BLEND: ingredients & lore: blended with black tea, rooibos tea, apple pieces, cinnamon bark, natural caramel apple flavor, natural caramel flavor, natural apple flavor, natural cinnamon flavor

teas: candy apple, caramel, rooibos cinnamon apple

accented with aniseed

steep at 212° for 4 mins

QUEEN OF HEARTS BLEND****
Paint this tea as red as you want. With levels of cherry, blood orange, and hibiscus, the longer you brew it, the redder it becomes.

Congrats Catherynne Valente - Hugo Awards 2014 Finalist for 'Six Gun Snow White'

It's official! Catherynne M. Valente is a finalist for a Nebula this year!

Congratulations Ms. Valente. We have our guns, er, fingers, crossed for you. :)

From Subterranean Press, where it was published:

From New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente comes a brilliant reinvention of one the best known fairy tales of all time. In the novella Six-Gun Snow White, Valente transports the title’s heroine to a masterfully evoked Old West where Coyote is just as likely to be found as the seven dwarves. 

A plain-spoken, appealing narrator relates the history of her parents—a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. With her mother’s death in childbirth, so begins a heroine’s tale equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, readers will be enchanted by this story at once familiar and entirely new. 

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):“Valente’s adaptation of the fairy tale to the Old West provides a witty read with complex reverberations from the real world… Any attempt to derive a simple message from this work would be an injustice to the originality of the atmosphere, the complexity of the interplay of its elements, and the simple pleasure of savoring Valente’s exuberant writing.”
From Library Journal: “Valente’s (Palimpsest; In the Night Garden) talent for telling stories that have the cadence and grace of poetry makes her a perfect interpreter of classic stories. Her fans will appreciate the humor and artistry in this imaginative retelling of one of the world’s most popular fairy tales.”
From Locus:“Catherynne M. Valente’s Six-Gun Snow White moves Snow into the wild, wild west and her take on this trope has all that you’d expect: prospectors, duels, horses, and dust. But Valente rips the beating heart out of the old versions of the story, dissects it to see how it works, jams it back into this new tale, and gives it a jolt of juice to bring it back to life. Six-Gun Snow White is a vital marvel.”
From SF Crowsnest:“…any reader who loves magical, poetic prose can dive into this sad and beautiful little story and take pleasure in the author’s elegantly rendered wordscapes.”

Note: The gorgeous cover is by the always-amazing Charles Vess.

Ask Baba Yaga: Where Does All the Time Go?

Baba Yaga by Denise Plauché 

I was on the verge of sending this question to Baba Yaga myself. I feel in serious need of clones, if I'm ever going to do everything I'm supposed to do every day, let alone make better progress on my dreams. A Time Machine would work well too (TARDIS avec le Doctor s'il vous plait!). Baba Yaga is magical and probably has a few tricks up her sleeve but what does she advise when lowly mortals need they need to fold space and time to get things done?

This week's question and answer (via poet and oracle Taisia Kitaiskaia* of The Hairpin):

(Originally posted at The Hairpin HERE)

The image of my head in a stew pot for Eternity wishing I'd done more, certainly makes me feel like I should get off my, er, rump and move it while it's still attached! 

So "capere solis radium", huh? If only I were a morning person. That would help a lot.

(PS. To the person who wrote the question: Choose the masquerade ball!)

What do you think of Baba Yaga's advice?

Want to ask Baba Yaga a question of your own?

You can!

There's now an email address where you can send your questions

directly to Baba Yaga herself.

AskBabaYaga AT gmail DOT com

To encourage Baba Yaga to continue imparting her no-bones-about-it wisdom (ok, there may be some gristle in there... bones too), I suggest we not to leave her box empty... 

Thank you Baba Yaga (& Taisia).

* Taisia Kitaiskaia is a poet, writer, and Michener Center for Writers fellow. Born in Russia and raised in America, she's had her poems and translations published in Narrative Magazine, Poetry International, and others.

Ravens Are Big In Hollywood Right Now (In Case You Hadn't Noticed)

We have raven-like wings looming everywhere in LA at the moment and yes, it's supposed to be ominous and an ill omen. Not a big brain twister since crows, and particularly ravens, are fairly large carrion birds. They're big, noticeable and generally where they are, there are dead things. Put a human form in the middle and you have something very akin to an angel of death...

It's very interesting that suddenly three prominent marketing campaigns are using almost identical imagery in the same period of time - like there's a "conspiracy of ravens" (pun intended) descending on LA.

But there's more to it, as any good symbolist will be aware. Crows and ravens are uber-smart, and thought of as a trickster form (you saw the recent article about crows proving the Aesop's Tales correct, right?) and have that uncanny ability to know stuff we don't, meaning they're the keepers of mysteries (both light and dark by the way).

Odin was known as the Raven God and he had many daughters, called valkyries (often depicted just as Maleficent is when she has her wings, before turning to the dark side), who could take raven forms, while in Greek culture the raven was associated with Athena and Apollo. That's right, the raven was as solar-symboled animal! It was associated with illumination and wisdom, but, being rather conversational was punished for getting a little too chatty about things it shouldn't and Apollo burned its feathers black. (There's a great article HERE that details a lot of how the raven was seen in different cultures - definitely worth a look if you love corvids!)

Since one of these prominent ads is for the soon-to-be-released, Sleeping Beauty re-visioning, Maleficent, I thought I'd share a couple of raven-associated tidbits from behind-the-scenes of the movie I've come across in the past (and kept my links for) that I never figured out a good reason to post before:

First, from Sam Reilly, who plays Maleficent's right-hand raven:

Says Riley, “I play a raven – I’m Angelina’s lackey, basically. No, there are worse jobs. She’s not Method. She’s very nice. She took me under her wing, so to speak. We had a great time.” He refers to his character as a “mird,” which is part man, part bird.

And a brief story from a UK net maker who was called, out of the blue, to construct some raven-catching nets for the film:

Briar Rose Productions, the UK company handling the British filming at Pinewood, wanted Mr Leadley’s firm Caedmon Nets to make four lightweight nets which are used in the movie to catch ravens. “I took the call and really thought it was a wind-up from one of my mates,” said Mr Leadley, the managing director. "Then they followed it up with an email, and we realised it was genuine. They said it’s for an actress to catch a pair of ravens – I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t realise the ravens, and catching the ravens, was an integral part of the film and where the characters stem from. I think she’s throwing the net.” Mr Leadley, 48, who runs the business with his wife Diane, got to work straight away but the nets were too heavy. “We made the first versions from sisal (natural fibre rope), but they were just too heavy for the actress to handle so we sourced some lighter-weight spun flax from Egypt,” he said. “The four nets are all eight feet square, two with a two-inch, and two with a three-inch mesh. “We had to be careful about things like the colouring of the flax – the nets had to look authentic in the movie’s medieval setting. We can’t wait to see them in action.”

While crows and ravens will always be popular with filmmakers and ad designers, whether it's the basic pop culture surface association and familiar ominous symbol it's generally taken to be, or whether they're looking to layer their meanings a little more, it's still pretty weird to turn around and see different incarnations of the same symbol everywhere you look.

What do you think it might mean?

(That is, apart from the distinct possibility that a single agency pitched the same concept to multiple companies, who all coincidentally decided to use it at the same time...)

Note: aren't the wallpapers awesome? You can find out more information about the line and the designer HERE.

Disneyland Paris: The raven hidden in the wings of La Galerie de la Belle au Bois Dormant 

Household Tales: Easter, Baba Yaga & The Monster Chicken

Bunny Beware by Michael Sowa

A little treat from my household to yours.

You've probably heard of Baba Yaga and her hut on chicken legs. But did you know the hut has its own story? 

The chicken-legged house spends all year long seeping up the magic leaking out of Baba Yaga's kitchen and one day each new Spring (a day we call Easter), there's finally enough in its bones that a wondrous thing happens. The hut shakes its walls and shingles into feathers, breaking enough of the spell keeping it chained to Baba Yaga's bidding, to transform into the strangest half-house, half-chicken monster anyone has ever seen. 

Having picked up a few tricks living with its Master, the hut always manages to escape, forcing Baba Yaga to give chase. For a whole day, the Monster Chicken plays a mischievous game of hide-and-seek, dodging the Yaga's flying mortar and pestle by hiding in the yards of good-hearted children. Wherever it sits and makes a hurried nest, it leaves monster eggs as thank you's for the household's hospitality.  

Hut on chicken legs during the spring nesting season
Divo-Ostrov", Saint-Petersburg

At the end of one whole day and one whole night, however, the hut is tired and has enough of running. Baba Yaga catches up with it and drags her little house back to their home in the woods. There it gives one great shake before turning its body back into a hut and settling into a good long sleep, dreaming of the next year when it can run on its own again.  

But even though the hut is sleeping, sometimes the dreams are so strong, it gets up on its legs, stretches them out, turns around and settles down again, without even waking up...

Note: My son adores this tale of ours (though if any of you have had visits from the Monster Chicken  my son would LOVE to hear about it!) and looks forward to visits from the Monster Chicken even more than the Easter Bunny. Frankly, I think the Easter Bunny is tickled to have the magical company in our yard every year. 

Mystic Chicken by Ekaterina/Philieria

 Do you have a personal 'Household Tale' of your own you'd like to share? Write to fairytalenews AT gmail DOT com. We'd love to share your personal traditions and stories.

New "Maleficent" High Res Eye Candy

Not much to say except, this is really a good looking film. And high res shows us a lot of the awesome design details on the fabrics, the accessories and in the background too.

(Although, truth be told, I just can't get completely onboard with these fairies. Why did they proportion/disproportion them like that?)

And I do love those thorny gates... (I wonder what they did with them after filming was complete?)

If you like changing your wallpapers, these will fit the bill! Click on the images to enlarge. (Some of these are HUGE!)

Enjoy! I know I am.

There are these too, although not as high res, they're pretty nice as well:

BREAKING NEWS: Maleficent Spoiler Thread Discloses Interesting Use of Fairy Tale, Myth & Legend (and, Of Course Spoilery Things) Note: Any spoilers here are hidden

So here's an interesting development.

The IMDB message boards are buzzing today as spoilers are leaked in an effort to put to rest any concerns people might be having about the movie (aka damage control from the giant "investors concerned" headlines that have been prominent the last coupe of weeks), particularly in turning Maleficent into some benign, essentially good person who's misunderstood and killing the reason she's resonated with people for so long.

 While there are a ton of spoilers in the thread there are some very interesting fairy tale, myth and legend notes included as well, which I will get to in a minute. First - where this is coming from.

Here's info about the source:

I happen to work at Disney corporate and have not only been authorized to "leak" this info here to gage audience response, but will be "leaking" even more in the next couple of weeks.  

He's also one of the attorneys on the film. 

Here's the reason Disney authorized an underground "leak":

someone private messaged me to ask why i'm posting this, and i got permission from my supervisor to address it here, in the interest of fairness and disclosure.  

the studio has asked me to do a minor form of damage control and clear up some prevalent misconceptions about the film, on a grass-roots level - "grass-roots" in their opinion meaning the imdb message boards. there have been some very negative outlooks and expectations being spread about the film around the internet - which i really have no problem with - freedom of speech and freedom of expression being in fact my legal speciality - however, my goal here is to create more positive word-of-mouth for a film i think really warrants the exposure and deserves to get a good vibe. 

Here's the IMDB thread link. Please note that THERE ARE A LOT OF SPOILERS in the pages at the IMDB thread! Read at your own discretion. While the entire plot, the twists etc aren't fully revealed, there's a lot more here than you usually see:

Maleficent (2014) : 2 weeks to first dragon reveal! SPOILERS...

Possible spoiler: (Highlight to read below! There are crown images at the head and tail of the possible-spoiler sections)
♛___________________________________________________________________________♛
Yes - they're talking about Maleficent as a dragon. Remember there has been speculation about the one we've seen looking rather avian? Well that's because it is. And that one is NOT the Maleficent dragon. We'll be seeing Maleficent-as-dragon in the last marketing push before the film is released.

IMDB POSTER:When you say "maleficent's dragon" do you mean her dragon form and that she turns into a dragon not just her crow?DISNEY CORPORATE GUY:exactly.this was a fairly recent decision to include the maleficent dragon at the end. investors recently got scared off because the first four drafts only had Diavel transforming into the dragon at the end, and in the latest draft, he even sacrificed his life so that Maleficent could escape at the end...but the investors, from what i've heard, thought that this would be a major let-down for fans hoping to see the big dragon fight at the end, and watching Maleficent become the villain they remembered her to be. So...they tacked on a second ending, and, after Stefan dies, Maleficent now does turn into the giant dragon and fight prince philip, etc. the model of the Maleficent dragon i've seen looks amazing...similar in texture to the Witch-King's dragon-thing in LOTR, but with the features of the classic Maleficent dragon... 

♛___________________________________________________________________________♛

Now, about the fairy tale relevant stuff. It's pretty awesome. (Try not to squee too much.) I really hope this is addressed in the Art of/Making of book when/if (please!) it's released. I'm using excerpts, cobbled together to not give away too much, even if you do highlight and read everything, so if it seems a little disjointed it's because you're missing some of the between conversation. (You can read it all on IDB of course.)

Note: ANY MOVIE SPOILERS WILL BE MASKED so you can choose whether or not to read them.

DISNEY CORPORATE GUY:

Woolverton actually admitted recently to using the Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen as inspiration, even though the characters are so dramatically different...the story of Stefan and Maleficent was actually inspired by Spenser's The Faerie Queene inasmuch as i have heard at the conference table (specifically Arthur the Golden Knight's pursuit of his would-be lover, the Faerie Queene). Quite a sly, subtly move...considering the Faerie Queene is such an obscure piece of lit...

♛ also, as far as i know we do NOT see her in the forbidden mountain castle - ♛that part's been rewritten to keep her more of a creature of the woodlands, of the realm of faerie...in line with Spenser and other myths of course...♛although i do admit that seeing her in that castle would have been badass!

Maleficent... is still a tragic villain at the end, constantly defeating herself by giving in to aggression and fear and hatred. 
From what i've seen, this has the potential to be quite powerful - it takes the Wicked-type reimagining of a wicked witch to a level Wicked was afraid to go - by choosing to have Maleficent end up AS the villain. 
But after all, isn't one of the main reasons to see a movie like this anyway? The whole point is to see WHY someone went bad, NOT to see that they were really just a nice, peace-loving fairie all along, and misunderstood and given a bad smear campaign after their eventual defeat. 
By the end of the film, we should be rooting for Maleficent to walk away from it all, and keep peace in the land, but alas, she chooses poorly. And becomes the physical manifestation of the thing she most truly hates. ♛
Iron is deadly to Maleficent and her people, but of the human inhabitants only Stefan really knows that...the faeries do too, and use this to their advantage..when they feel they have no other alternative.

Now you know the classic animated ending and there has been worry/concern/speculation about how true this reinvention is going to be. I think people who read a lot of fairy tales and understand myth will be pleased with the final direction they took - though it was apparently difficult to choose. The reasons and pop culture influences on why are below (and they might surprise you) and they hint at an interesting new direction for Disney storytelling (at least in their films):

as far as i know -- they restructured the story to make it much more non-linear - now, rather than appearing about half-way into the film, the christening scene pretty much opens the film...we are introduced to Maleficent as she is presented in Sleeping Beauty, and then go back in time to learn, as Paul Harvey would say it..."The Rest of the Story." 
♛i'll admit, it is a risky move for the studio to kill her off at the end...but hopefully it will now come off more as a shakespearean tragedy to some degree...her death, while sad, is portrayed as justified...and brought about by her own lack of self-regulation... 
the studio and investors were torn between having a Wicked-ish "happier" ending and a darker one where the protagonist really does turn into the villain and even dies at the end. 
I'll tell you what made the difference - and very ironic, in one sense - the ending of AMC's Breaking Bad and the amazing popularity of that show. 
Before that, the prevailing attitude among studio heads and investors had been that audiences wouldn't really be that interested in seeing a character turn completely evil without some sort of redemption at the end. After Breaking Bad all that changed, and now Disney is trusting (fingers crossed!) that families and mainly kids, will be intrigued, entertained, and not turned off by such an ending. Plus, Disney also doesn't have to deal with the problem of ret-conning the original film at all - the original film, now, can be viewed as a fairly truthful film, but a propaganda piece made by the winners to villainize Maleficent. 
Trust me, it's a much more powerful film now than it was shaping up to be before. 
But thanks to Breaking Bad, and the incredible viewer response, Disney's decided to move the film into more risky territory and hope they get lucky in doing so. 
I think they will :)♛

So there you have it - along with a lot more, if you'd like to read it HERE.

Personally, I'm in the yay category on this news. It's much more in line with true fairy tale sensibilities and more in line with the messages I want my son to be exposed to. People get hurt, make bad choices and there are repercussions. While there are Disney movies that say this, the endings tend to water down the message drastically. I like the risk they're taking on this one!

If Merida Came To Storybrooke...

Modern Merida - Amy Pond (Doctor Who) style - OUAT Fan Art by John Raptor

... what would she be like?

It's so very, very unlikely but wouldn't it be interesting to see Merida grown-up and still rebellious, becoming Janet from Tam Lin in Storybrooke? Perhaps even getting pregnant (or related metaphor) and saving her own-chosen true love from a fate worse than death (ie fairies)?

And think of the potential for magic effects and costume possibilities (because we all know these are important considerations): fairies, an enchanted midnight parade, Celtic influence and superstitions, Tam Lin metamorphosing from one being to another in Janet/Merida's arms (you'd have to include a bear in the middle there of course). There's so much to play with and best of all it works with either world because it's such a human story yet has an actual, very annoyed, Faerie Queen.

Although Brave is mother-daughter focused, the themes of the story are in many ways very similar to those of Tam Lin.

Merida has to hold on with everything she's got, and she has to see her mother inside the bear, with her heart, to break the spell. (Heck there's even a conveniently placed water well for Merida/Janet to douse a flaming sword in!)


Merida goes about her rebellion and her drive to break the spell very similarly to Janet as well. From the cockiness and headstrong actions of a strong-willed fiery red head coming into - and expressing - her adulthood, to how much she would risk, to how deep her bravery really goes and in the deepness in her love/bond.

Also, if Merida were a Janet-character, you could even substitute her mother for the figure of Janet's father, since their view on responsibilities and lineage etc are very similar.

I hadn't thought about it so much before but perhaps that's one of the big reasons I've grown to love Merida so much. She's like a slightly-younger Janet. With serious archery skills.

By the way - there are more Merida channeling Darryl Dixon pics (from The Walking Dead) by cosplayer Zoisite-Virupaksha HERE. It works ridiculously well. Between discovering a Merida/Tam Lin/Doctor Who cross-over potential and Merida being ready for the zombie apocalypse, (this modern Merida HERE by an unknown artist, is pretty great too), I'm on the verge of petitioning OUAT creators Kitsis & Horowitz to just go there already!

(And now I need someone to do some Merida as Tam Lin fan art to make my day...)

Merida cosplay by Hidden Writer Spirit