Author: Matthew Rivera (Page 2 of 9)

https://www.win.tue.nl/~marko/latex/exercises/day2/snowwhite2.pdf

Story Proposal: The fairy tale I decided to reimagine is snow white and the seven dwarves. Rather than have it take place in a western setting, I decided to have it take place in feudal Japan, where stories of the Samurai, Ronin and Ninja as well as supernatural beings such as Kami, Oni, and Kappa were heavily fantasized. In this tale there is no prince and the Snow White Character is reimagined as a young woman who has been trained in the art of the samurai and the dwarves are reimagined as Korpokkur, or dwarves who live in the northern Japanese Islands. In this rewrite there is no prince .

Story: Like in the original, the Queen of Japan will wish to have a daughter of divine beauty and it is later prophesized by a blind oracle ( in the original it was a mirror) that she’ll unite both the humans and mystical beings of the Japanese islands. She later dies giving birth. The Emperor later remarries to this woman of royalty and while people think she is a demon disguised as a human being due to her truly wicked nature, she is just an evil human being. Like in the original, she orders a huntsman (in this version a Ronin) to kill Snow White in the forest due to her disdain of demons and Kami to regain his honor and a hefty pay. Refusal to take a child’s life and realizing the new Empress’s wicked ness and evil puts her into hiding and both are now on the run from the Queen. The Queen beats the blind oracle into telling her who the most beautiful woman of there is and where the ronin is hiding where she orders a trickster spirit to hunt down and kill them both. They are tracked down and the ronin is killed but Snow white manages to barely escape to another island where she finds the seven dwarves, who were good friends with the ronin and offer to complete her training and hide her if she completes certain tasks for them. Not sure where the poison apple will fit in yet but at the end Snow White comes back and kills the queen and stops her evil plan witht he seven dwarves and Japan is saved and enters a pax romana of some sort. Good ending.

Characters:

Snow White- still thinking of a Japanese name for her. She is bright ,sweet, often rash and is of beauty

The ronin- Reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s character Sanjuro. He is stern, strict, and means well for young snow white and makes the ultimate sacrifice to make sure her destiny is fulfilled

The seven Dwarves- often mischeivous, grumpy, and overall isolated, they are very protective of snow white and complete her training.

The Evil Empress- the queen who is jealous of snow white’s divine beauty and prophecy to unite all of Japan and has a huge disdain for all mystical spirts.