First thing’s first: I have way too much reading and viewing
material to spotlight on the blog, so I’m going to be focusing on that stuff
rather than taking in a lot of new material.
That said, let me break down how things are going and what we may expect
in the future:
Folk Tale Secret
Stash: Secret Stash is the one I started this blog with and in some ways
one of my favorites. There is a slight
problem, though. I haven’t really read
any of my folk tale books in a while. I’m
working my way back into rereading them, but it’s going to take a little bit of
time. So, the Secret Stash columns may
be a bit few and far between for a while.
They’ll never go away completely, though.
Fantasy Literature
Rewind: Rewind should go on as it usually does. I have some stuff lined up. I have My
Own Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. There’s also some stuff I need to reread in
order to spotlight it like The Wind in
the Willows by Kenneth Graeme and the fairy stories of both Oscar Wilde and
Frank Stockton. I’m also considering a
couple of less orthodox posts. I’ve been
considering touching on some more 20th Century stuff that we
probably know best from movies like Bambi
by Felix Salten, One Hundred and One
Dalmatians by Dodie Smith and Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. I’ve
also been considering a look at the rare pieces of adult literature that
sometimes work their way into people’s fairy tale canon like Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William
Shakespeare (and yes, I do already own most of these books I've mentioned). I know this seems like a
lot, but I got kind of fired up by getting to read The Jungle Book again. So,
it’s going to take a while to get to it all.
Some stuff may wait until I can tie it in with the inevitable movie
remakes that will happen.
Also, some fairy tales fall in a space between these two
like those of Giambatista Basile and Charles Perrault, so if I write about
those they’ll probably just be stand alone posts rather than under one of the
title cards.
Fairy Tale Media Fix:
Media Fix is another one that likely isn’t going to change much. There are a few fairy tale inspired movies
that are coming out. So, I’ll review
those. I’m going to try and keep it
focused on stuff that’s based on actual folk-derived fairy tales, though. You’ll notice that I opted not to review the
new Jungle Book movie despite the
fact that I loved it. Instead, I decided
to write a FLR about the book that inspired it.
This is largely just to keep me from being overwhelmed. I also want to do more “Tales from the $5 DVD
Bin” because there are just so many bad or cheap fairy tale movies and cartoons
out there. You may be seeing one of
those sooner rather than later.
Four-Color Fairy
Tales- Honestly, unless you count all of Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales series, fairy tale comics can be a little bit few
and far between. So, this is actually a
column that I’m going to expand in scope to include stuff based on children’s
literature. There’s some stuff out there
with interesting titles like Peter
Panzerfaust and Pinocchio the Vampire
Slayer. I’m also probably going to
shine the spotlight on some graphic novels that were created directly for the
book market rather than for the comic book specialty market. Also, there might be some retro reviews for
stuff like X-Men Fairy Tales and Lullaby.
The Stuff of Legends-
We are so close to the end of The Stuff of Legends. The idea for it originally came from my
desire to write about characters like King Arthur and the Pied Piper, but then
I expanded it to twelve different legendary characters. It was also designed as kind of a counter to
Folk Tale Secret Stash because other than one or two characters, all the
characters I wrote down were pretty famous.
I’ve written about ten of them so far and have two to go. After that, I’m considering a revival but not
right away. If I do, there will also be
a slight format change so that I can talk about different types of legend s
(ghost stories, urban legends, tall tales, cryptid legends) as well as
legendary characters.
The Top Seven- The
Top Seven pretty much exists for those rare moments when I feel like being
Buzzfeed. So, the lists will come when
the idea strikes me. They take a lot of
work to research and arrange. So, that
is a factor.
Once Upon a Pixel- This
has been the title I’ve used pretty much every time I’ve focused on video
games. So, I’m probably going to start
giving this one an actual title card. I’ve
been considering doing pieces on folklore references that show up in classic franchises
like Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon. I
also do want to do something with Song of the Deep when it comes out, but it
will depend on whether I can get access.
Otherwise, you probably won’t see this column too much. There are time, money and hardware issues.
Fairy Tale Fandom
Book Report- Now this is where the big changes are probably going to come
into play. I never really planned on
focusing on contemporary fiction because there are so many blogs that already
focus on that. It originally came about
just because I wanted to talk about the Sisters
Grimm series of children’s books by Michael Buckley. However, it’s also the one that gets people
to contact me and ask to review their books.
The truth is that I’m not crazy about doing it. I prefer digging up the retro stuff. It might be a different matter if I made any
money off this blog, but I don’t. Also,
my disinterest kind of harms the people asking for the reviews too. Once I have the review copy on my kindle, I’ll
end up leaving it to sit for months if I’m not excited about reading it. By that time, the book is “cold” and my
reviewing it does little to help their initial publicity. So, I’ve decided that in the spirit of this
particular blog I’m going to refocus on the weirder fairy tale adaptations for
this column. The ones that mash things
up with other genres or do crazy twists to the concept that really catch my
attention. Basically, expect more stuff
like The Lunar Chronicles and Time Lord Fairy Tales and less stuff
like The Northlore Series or The Ugly Stepsister. If someone does want to pitch me a book to
review, they should definitely be on their A game and be prepared to catch my
attention. First rule of thumb: try to
avoid a pitch that uses overused words like “dark”, “twisted” or “fractured”.
That’s about it. I’m
thinking about a few other things. Once
Stuff of Legends is done, I’m thinking about doing a limited run series in
which I try to make recipes inspired by fairy tales (I even have a crock pot
recipe called Cinderella Stew). I want
to do a post on fables the same way I did one on nursery rhymes. This summer I also want to visit some of the
local amusement parks that use fairy tale themes and take some pictures for a
spotlight post. I’ve also considered
tackling some bigger issues like cultural appropriation in regards to fairy
tales and storytelling, but that would take some big time research. As usual, my posts will continue to be
exploratory in nature. I just get an
idea, research it and post my thoughts.
If anyone has any ideas, thoughts, comments, concerns or you
just want to get on my case for wasting a week doing a “housekeeping” post, let
me know in the comments below.