[Previous entry: "Up to my armpits in leeches!! :O"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "You can feel the Fall..."]

09/24/2004 Archived Entry: "Strange dreams...."

I woke up from a really strange dream this morning...

A king was having an affair with a wicked sorceress although he had a queen and a young son. The queen rather suspected, but didn't want to believe it until the sorceress among all the court tells them all of an old tradition that the king had failed to tell them all of. She rediscovers the urn of the former king (or kings, it was a really large uncovered urn with black, shiny and coal-like ashes) and explains the old tradition. The king had been long avoiding this tradition and failed to ever have told his queen about it. The tradition was that when a king is wed, if his queen were to place the ashes in the traditional chalice (it looked like the urn, only much smaller) and drink it in wine then if the king loved her she would be blessed. But if the king did not love her, she would be cursed with a poison that made her die slowly.

So now the king, amongst all his court, is faced with holding to tradition. He needs only a word from his wife to not proceed, but she's heartbroken already and wants the truth known that he does not love her. So she willingly takes the chalice from the sorceress and drinks the ashes. Instantly upon drinking it, she turns pale and looks ill. Now she knows the truth and so does their son, only about fourteen or fifteen years of age, who had been watching the whole scene. The king panics! He didn't want his queen to die, even though he didn't love her. He still wanted to care for her and the young prince. But the prince is furious! His own father betrayed he and his mother and he wants revenge!

Guards hold him back and the king knows what must happen next if they hope to lift the curse off the queen. The prince must kill his own father and destroy the line. But he's much too young and too inexperienced to fight the king -now-. The sorceress, wicked as she was, wants the prince killed but the king won't have it. The sorceress flees in her anger and rather than killing his son, he lets the queen leave with her maidens and gives the prince to a mysterious blue woman.

Yep, a tall woman with blue skin and dressed in a deep, evening blue with wine red boots and cat's eyes. He tells her to take the prince away and that's where I woke up...

Pretty cool, huh? I wish I knew what happened after that. John suggested I write it down so now I am. It's amazing what sorts of stories my own mind can conjur when I'm not even controlling it! I wish I was working at an animation studio, I'd love to make this story real. *sigh* It's so frustrating not to have the resources. It's so sad that the soul of Disney Studios was totally destroyed. I wonder if this is how Roy Disney feels now... It makes me feel so sad.

But there's still Studio Ghibli! And Pixar and Dream Works! I wish the list went further, I'm hoping that maybe it will now that the American audiences are realising it's -okay- to enjoy an animated feature. The magic of storytelling shouldn't belong to just one person or one form of media. It's stupid to think that animations are just for children. The only reason it seems that way is because mostly children still hold their sense of wonder.

It makes me want to pool all the talent I can think of.... Brian Froud, Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, the Hensons, Miyazaki, and even those I've no knowledge of.... Just pool it all up and then watch it burst into colors. Has there really been a collective film like "Fantasia" since the time it came out (1940's, I think...)? I know the Matrix cartoons were extremely impressive, but not particularly targeted so that it spoke to all ages. I know that Aardman Studios (did I get that right? I'll have to go look it up later) had some really fun stuff, like the Mark Twain claymations.

I think people are forgetting that it wasn't -just- state of the art that made a film phenomenal. You need only look at the new Star Wars films to realise that cramming tons of special effects don't make the movie that much more valuable. Storytelling is the key, the story and can we relate to any or all of it? Were there characters that had a history so intriguing that you kept asking "Why did they do that? Why do they speak that way?" after you watch it and then go out and find the answers?

Man, maybe I'm in the wrong line of work...