Curate, connect, and discover
Ok- so I have been scrolling through posts for Cinderella’s Castle like a crazy person. Like you do.
Most of the posts are people squealing over their favorite bit currently, or just in general how much they loved it.
However-
Every one in 20 posts has someone expressing disappointment, and finding it lack luster.
It seems like you either are salivating over how good it was, or bored, and annoyed no one else was.
The main complaint seems to be “the characters are flat compared to other shows.”
As someone obsessed with fairytale fantasy, I just needed to come on here and say…
No duh.
Fairytales are not about the character as a person. They are about the person as a symbol/theme. Any detail about them suddenly humanizes them and makes them that much more relatable. But they are never, I repeat, NEVER, a fully realized person. Even in more modern fairytale adaptations, you don’t come for the character, you come for the story as a whole, and stay for the character’s “vibe” that allows you to create elaborate back ground details in fanfiction. The whole appeal of a fairytale is “less is more.”
Ella was raised as a Lady. She likes to paint. She sees herself as brave and tough, and wants to stop evil even if it kills her. She is clever and kind and has dreams. She is utterly practical in accomplishing her goals. She loves her family and friends deeply.
That is all we know.
We don’t know her favorite color, or if she’s a jazz girl, or even what she wanted out of life before this all happened, only that she misses her family.
That is the POINT. Ella, the cinder girl, the girl of ashes, is EVERY YOUNG GIRL WHO IS RAISED IN ABUSE. That is why the tale of Cinderella exists. So grandmothers and mothers could instill in children the deep knowledge that they deserve more, can survive, and do it without letting it break them.
Cinderella is someone you know because she is not pinned down with details. She just is.
Every character in a fairytale is that.
The stepmother is the abuser.
The Troll is a ruling class not from here.
The Princeton a fairytale is an escape and a stamp of approval of your morals. Not his own person. He is Deux Ex Machina. The fact that he HAS a personality here and it is awful is a subversion and holding up Ella’s personal determination over higher approval. She doesn’t need someone else’s approval to prove she is doing the right thing- she knows it, and holds it like the starlight in her hand. And that is GLORIOUS.
The Griswald sisters are a show of how even when you are utterly destroyed by evil, the fact that you were bright, and good, and true MEANS SOMETHING and still helps make the world better.
The frog knight is kindness repaid, and to not judge by appearances.
The mouse squire is that willingness to do something, even if you don’t have the skills, is important. Is worth something. (I saw someone talking about Crumb serving no perpose because he did not effect the plot. Of course he didn’t. The point of him is that he was WILLING, and that alone made her life better. And whimsy. Sometimes in genre, a thing is just for “vibes” and that’s what makes it genre. You cannot have fantasy without whimsy. He be whimsy.)
Even Tadius is a newer symbol of the “faithful servant.” Who does he serve? The Prince? The people? By following orders, or by using his wits?
And the Fairy Godmother. There is so much happening there, I could do a whole TedTalk. But basically, the fairy godmother is Help. It is offered help. She offers it because Cinderella was kind and had an anger in her screaming for justice. The fairygodmother in any story shows up to reward a virtue that the mc takes for granted. They don’t feel worth of the help, are even inclined to turn it down. The point of Cinderella is you TAKE THE HELP. Pride be damned, self worth be damned, you take it and you USE it to make things RIGHT.
The point is this:
A fairytale is about the themes. It is ABOUT the message. It is ABOUT how older themes get changed to fit modern understanding and turn into new themes.
What they did with ash and fire and starlight was incredible. The fact that they brought Fairy Godmother back to the Fairy who is a Mother Goddess was breathtaking because it made Cinderella’s quest for justice holy, not just empowered.
These characters are not flat. They are given thier depth by their role and themes rather than by the plot or personal details.
If you were bored by this, you don’t like fairytales. You may enjoy some of the trappings, but would like it better in a fantasy styled romance or drama, which is not the same thing.
This is not “connecting to humanity by connecting to a character not you.”
This is “connecting to something deeper and more than all of us put together through the use of symbology.”
Maybe that ain’t for you. Maybe you prefer to explore all this plane has to offer. That’s totally an acceptable preference. But don’t come in here and call it a bad show. It’s just not your genre.
(Also, since ya’ll seem to call out Hatchetfield stuff too- maybe you just don’t like genre centric stories 🤷🏻♀️)