Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting to me that I will read a
Speaker 2: source material and I will decide on the things that
Speaker 2: I think are absolutely necessary. But then I'll go and
Speaker 2: I'll read someone else's retelling about rumpelstilt skin and be like,
Speaker 2: they like totally took out the whole baby thing. There's
Speaker 2: no newborn child, there's no bargaining for it. And to me,
Speaker 2: that just like blows my mind, Like it didn't even
Speaker 2: cross my mind to just not include it. I struggled
Speaker 2: for months trying to figure out what I was going
Speaker 2: to do with that, you know, like, what that was
Speaker 2: an option you could just like.
Speaker 3: No, I'm Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the Deep Dark Woods.
Speaker 3: The last few episodes have taken us down paths of
Speaker 3: forgotten slippers, breadcrumb trails, and mischievous helpers. We're starting to
Speaker 3: understand where Brothers grim Tales come from and why each
Speaker 3: of these stories continue to live on throughout centuries. But
Speaker 3: before we get to more stories, I thought it would
Speaker 3: be important to speak to some celebrated authors who have
Speaker 3: taken beloved fairy tales and put their own spin on them.
Speaker 3: Like I said before, fairy tales and their adaptations are
Speaker 3: snapshots of society and our values of what's going on
Speaker 3: in that moment in history. By speaking with authors from
Speaker 3: our era, we can see how their fairy tale adaptations
Speaker 3: reflect this moment in time. Today, I am speaking with
Speaker 3: none other than author Marissa Meyer. Marissa is a New
Speaker 3: York Times bestselling author of The Lunar Chronicles, The Renegadees Trilogy, Heartless,
Speaker 3: The Gilded Duology, and Instant Karma. She is also a
Speaker 3: fellow podcaster with her show The Happy Writer, where she
Speaker 3: interviews other writers about their books.
Speaker 1: And like so many of us, she.
Speaker 3: First got introduced to fairy tales through Disney.
Speaker 2: I can trace back to first seeing The Little Mermaid
Speaker 2: in theaters Disney's The Little Mermaid, and I was like five,
Speaker 2: I think when it came out, and I just like
Speaker 2: was obsessed. And of course then we got the movie
Speaker 2: and I watched it NonStop, and you know, I had
Speaker 2: it all memorized, blah blah blah. And then my grandma,
Speaker 2: who I was also really close to before she passed,
Speaker 2: she heard that I was so obsessed with this movie,
Speaker 2: and so she got me a little book of fairy
Speaker 2: tales and the first story in that book was the
Speaker 2: Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, and I don't think
Speaker 2: she knew how different.
Speaker 1: It actually is from the Disney movie.
Speaker 2: So I read it as you know, five six year old,
Speaker 2: little starry eyed child, and.
Speaker 1: Was just devastated about this story.
Speaker 2: And I was angry and I was upset, and I
Speaker 2: fell like Disney had lied to me, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of traumatical, I guess. But it also then like
Speaker 2: led to all this curiosity and I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 2: but what about Cinderella?
Speaker 1: Did Disney lie to me about Cinderella?
Speaker 2: And so now I have to go off and read
Speaker 2: the old Cinderella, and you know what they did. There
Speaker 2: was things in this that I wasn't expecting and that
Speaker 2: that just continued on for pretty much my whole life.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, that's devastating for like a five or six year.
Speaker 1: Old stopping it's not just story at.
Speaker 3: All, No, No, I mean eventually we all have to
Speaker 3: learn like these things. But like, yeah, whatever, it's it's hard,
Speaker 3: especially when it's the fairy Tales, but it's so funny.
Speaker 1: You bring up Cinderella.
Speaker 3: Was that the first Brother's grim story that you ran across?
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know. I know that after that book
Speaker 2: of fairy tales that my grandma gave me, I started reading.
Speaker 2: I mean, I became voracious reading Brothers Graham, reading folk
Speaker 2: tales from around the world. So I don't have a
Speaker 2: clear memory of what the first grim fairy tale was
Speaker 2: that I read, but I became pretty obsessed, pretty.
Speaker 3: Hard when I was also doing I guess my unlearning
Speaker 3: of Disney Cinderella was the first Brother's Grim that I
Speaker 3: ran across. That was the non disneyfied version, And I
Speaker 3: was like, what, But that's kind That's actually why I
Speaker 3: started this podcast because I love the darker tales. They
Speaker 3: really speak to me more so than the more light
Speaker 3: hearted versions. But that's just that's a personal preference. But
Speaker 3: you know, you're saying having this book, like you just
Speaker 3: wanted to know more and everything, But do you have
Speaker 3: anything specific about like what drew you do these tales?
Speaker 3: Was it the different endings or just I don't know something?
Speaker 3: And then that spoke to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think, like you, it was the
Speaker 2: darkness a lot of it. I love Disney. I still
Speaker 2: love Disney. I'm definitely a Disney girl at heart, but
Speaker 2: but there's such a difference between you know what Disney
Speaker 2: is giving us, and you know that element pop culture
Speaker 2: versus these old tales that have been around for hundreds
Speaker 2: of years. And I think in our modern society now
Speaker 2: that we're all used to Disney and we kind of
Speaker 2: all have this expectation of like, well, this is for kids,
Speaker 2: and then you read these old dark stories and you
Speaker 2: start to get people thinking, oh, that's too dark for children,
Speaker 2: that's too scary, and I'm like.
Speaker 1: No, children love this stuff.
Speaker 2: They eat it up, they're fascinated by it, and we
Speaker 2: forget that, like a lot of kids have to deal
Speaker 2: with really difficult dark things in their lives, and in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, I think, here we go psychoanalyzing already.
Speaker 2: But it's healthy for kids to be able to see
Speaker 2: some of these darker things happening in this fairly safe
Speaker 2: environment of reading it in a story, in a magical
Speaker 2: story where generally there's a happy ending at the end.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think for me as a kid, I
Speaker 2: liked the dark things. I liked the creepy things. I
Speaker 2: liked the blood and gore. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: at that age I felt like I was maybe pushing
Speaker 2: back against the culture that was telling me I was
Speaker 2: too young for it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready for it. If it was maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of rebellion.
Speaker 2: In there, but yeah, I just thought they were really
Speaker 2: cool and interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, So I've been speaking with a lot of folkloreists
Speaker 3: because that's evidently a job you can have, and I
Speaker 3: definitely know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I was, like I messed up, But so.
Speaker 3: That seems to be a very common theme, is like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's this idea that we have to protect children,
Speaker 3: but actually that's not what. You know, children are a
Speaker 3: lot stronger than we give them credit for, and these
Speaker 3: stories are a way of introducing them to these really
Speaker 3: hard things and these hard ideas.
Speaker 1: That's a safe way to do it, you know.
Speaker 3: Speaking though, of the original Cinderella with the stepsisters cutting
Speaker 3: off parts of their feet to like fit into the shoe,
Speaker 3: you mentioned that the idea for Cinder came to you
Speaker 3: in a dream where she like lost her leg, and
Speaker 3: I was wondering if that original Grim's Tale was any
Speaker 3: inspiration Forcender.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, who knows how our subconscious works, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I definitely by that point had read the Grim version,
Speaker 2: had read Charles Barrow had read a translation of Yashen,
Speaker 2: the Chinese version of Cinderella, from like way before the
Speaker 2: Grim Brothers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean I had a lot of source.
Speaker 2: Material floating around in my brain by the time I
Speaker 2: had that dream, and I had been thinking about fairy tales,
Speaker 2: and I had had the idea for a few months
Speaker 2: that I wanted to write a series of science fiction
Speaker 2: fairy tale retellings, and so that was just kind of
Speaker 2: in my brain and something I'd been you know, brainstorming
Speaker 2: and considering what fairy tales would I do and what
Speaker 2: would that look like in this kind of you know,
Speaker 2: high tech futuristic setting, but things hadn't really started to
Speaker 2: come together into a cohesive story yet. And then, yeah,
Speaker 2: I had that dream about Cinderella. And the dream, as
Speaker 2: I remember, it was very traditional, very Disney Cinderella, like
Speaker 2: big ball gown and she's running away from the castle
Speaker 2: and all of this, and then she tripped on the
Speaker 2: steps and her foot fell off, And when I woke up,
Speaker 2: my first thought was that she was a cyborg and
Speaker 2: it was this like robotic foot that hadn't been properly attached,
Speaker 2: and that's that's how it fell off, and that became Cinder.
Speaker 1: And what's great.
Speaker 2: And I love brain science, and I wish I knew,
Speaker 2: like really understood how brains work, because I'm just fascinated
Speaker 2: by them. But clearly I can almost like see how
Speaker 2: all of these ideas had been jumbling around in my
Speaker 2: brain and just like waiting for that one one thing
Speaker 2: to start bringing them all together. Because as soon as
Speaker 2: I had that idea about doing Cinderella as a cyborg,
Speaker 2: all of these other ideas that I'd been brainstorming and
Speaker 2: working on for months just started to fall into place,
Speaker 2: and I could start to see Cinder and her character
Speaker 2: in her world and how over the course of multiple
Speaker 2: books she was going to gather around this like ragtag
Speaker 2: group of fairy tale characters and they were gonna have
Speaker 2: to go off and save the world and start a
Speaker 2: revolution and it would it really just like grew from
Speaker 2: that seed very quickly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's how it happened.
Speaker 3: So I want to talk about this series a little bit,
Speaker 3: but for our listeners who don't know, the Lunar Chronicles
Speaker 3: is a series of predominantly four books, I know you
Speaker 3: have a few others in there now that follow a
Speaker 3: journey of revolution and mystery and romance through the retellings
Speaker 3: of Cinderella, Little Red, Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and snow White.
Speaker 3: So I know you mentioned, you know about how this
Speaker 3: drag tag group of fairy tale creatures get together and
Speaker 3: everyone's like helping sender and figure things out. But how
Speaker 3: did you decide that those were the retellings that you
Speaker 3: wanted to do, Like do they hold any meaning to
Speaker 3: you specifically?
Speaker 2: So the first thing when I decided I wanted to
Speaker 2: try to do a series of futuristic fairy tales, my
Speaker 2: first step was to make a list of my personal
Speaker 2: favorite fairy tales.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, there.
Speaker 2: Was maybe fifteen stories on that list, I'm not entirely sure,
Speaker 2: and just start throwing ideas at it. Like I remember
Speaker 2: rumpel Stiltskin was on the list, and I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 2: maybe he could be an android, or maybe he could
Speaker 2: be an alien from outer space, or you know, just
Speaker 2: like what do you do if it was Sleeping Beauty.
Speaker 2: Maybe she's asleep because she's like a cryogenic freezing chamber,
Speaker 2: and just trying to get ideas for it. The four
Speaker 2: fairy tales that I ended up going with were the
Speaker 2: ones that, like.
Speaker 1: For starters.
Speaker 2: I just felt like I had the best ideas for them,
Speaker 2: and I could more or less begin to see how
Speaker 2: they would fit into this science fiction genre. But then
Speaker 2: also once I had the idea for Cinder and Cinderella
Speaker 2: as a cyborg, then her story very quickly got tied
Speaker 2: up with this evil queen. And I knew the evil
Speaker 2: queen was going to be the evil queen from snow White,
Speaker 2: So of course snow White's going to be one of
Speaker 2: my fairy tales. And in those early planning stages, I
Speaker 2: could begin to see how this evil queen character had
Speaker 2: been meddling with the lives of these other characters, and
Speaker 2: I could see how she'd been messing with Little Red
Speaker 2: Riding Hood's life, how she'd been messing with Rapunzel's life,
Speaker 2: of course her stepdaughter snow White. And so from very
Speaker 2: early on, I could start to see how these four
Speaker 2: stories were going to connect, not so much with Cinder,
Speaker 2: but really a lot of it revolved around that evil
Speaker 2: queen and what she was doing, and why were these
Speaker 2: character is going to hate her to the degree where
Speaker 2: they would actually put their lives on the line to
Speaker 2: try to fight against her.
Speaker 3: So you drew inspiration from lunar chronicles, from fairy tales
Speaker 3: of course, right, But you also mention like Star Wars
Speaker 3: and Firefly, which I love Firefly. But you also did research,
Speaker 3: like you did some heavy research, reading like scientific magazines
Speaker 3: and all of that. Because while these books are like
Speaker 3: fairy tale retellings, they're very much sci fi. What elements
Speaker 3: do you think align the genres of fairy tale and
Speaker 3: sci fi? Because initially they seem like very opposite.
Speaker 1: Ends right of the spectrum.
Speaker 3: But yet you were able to take these two genres
Speaker 3: and I mean it worked wonderfully, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the proof is in the pudding, so they.
Speaker 2: Say, so, I think the biggest thing is good versus evil,
Speaker 2: which you see in Cinderella versus the Wicked Witch, and
Speaker 2: you see in Little Ren versus the big bad Wolf,
Speaker 2: and you.
Speaker 1: See in Luke versus you know.
Speaker 2: The Emperor, and you know, so that's that's I think
Speaker 2: the biggest thing that kind of ties the two together
Speaker 2: and ties lots of genres together. Of course, it's it's
Speaker 2: certainly not just these two, but those are pretty universal
Speaker 2: themes and things that we can all get on board with, Like,
Speaker 2: of course we want good to fight evil, but it's also,
Speaker 2: I mean, you've seen it in fairy tales and you
Speaker 2: see it in sci fi, where, even though that is
Speaker 2: so often the overarching theme, we also get to dig
Speaker 2: in and explore those gray areas what is good and
Speaker 2: what is evil and what happens when those two things
Speaker 2: are not clear cut, and so I love playing with
Speaker 2: those as a as a writer.
Speaker 3: So, so, what do you think it says mixing fairy
Speaker 3: tales with science fiction?
Speaker 1: It says that I'm a nerd.
Speaker 2: Fair. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm curious about a lot
Speaker 2: of things, and you know, in the writing world, we're
Speaker 2: always here to write what you know, and I hate
Speaker 2: that advice.
Speaker 1: My go to is to write what I'm curious about.
Speaker 1: And I think this is stuff is cool.
Speaker 2: I think the idea that we could colonize the Moon
Speaker 2: and like to know that there are scientists trying to
Speaker 2: figure out how we might do that, that that's an
Speaker 2: actual thing people are working on. I think that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Cybernetics and artificial intelligence and all of this.
Speaker 1: I just find it engrossing. So, yeah, I being.
Speaker 2: A fan of Star Wars and Firefly, having that in
Speaker 2: my background, I wanted to give my own twist to
Speaker 2: the sci fi genre or the space opera genre, and
Speaker 2: this is what it came to.
Speaker 3: Do you think that part of that is because that's
Speaker 3: maybe where like you see us going, Because a lot
Speaker 3: of times fairy tales and our adaptations are reflections of
Speaker 3: you know, ourselves or society, and that is kind of
Speaker 3: the main reason why I'm doing this show, because as
Speaker 3: time has gone on and all the different adaptations are
Speaker 3: basically snapshots of where society is. So you're not writing
Speaker 3: what you know, but the things that you're curious about.
Speaker 3: Do you think maybe down the road, these are places
Speaker 3: we're headed.
Speaker 2: It's funny, yes in some ways, and know in others,
Speaker 2: it's hilarious now that Cinder came out. Gosh, it's been
Speaker 2: twelve years since Cinder came out, and a lot of
Speaker 2: the technology that I was writing in the book that
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, i'm researching, you know, is where is
Speaker 2: science and technology going to be in one hundred years
Speaker 2: from now? And I'm trying to make it really authentic
Speaker 2: and believable and we've already surpassed him. It's like, wait, no,
Speaker 2: slow down, world. There's things like that that I tried
Speaker 2: hard not to like ever specify this is how far
Speaker 2: into the future it is because we just don't know
Speaker 2: the way that technology is surpassing certainly my expects on
Speaker 2: a very very speedy manner.
Speaker 1: At the same time, there are things that I hope for.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the biggest I don't know fantasies
Speaker 2: I guess in the series is that even though there's
Speaker 2: this evil queen who lives on the Moon and is likery,
Speaker 2: is doing bad stuff and is trying to take over
Speaker 2: Planet Earth, planet Earth itself is in a pretty good
Speaker 2: place in this series, like it has seen world peace
Speaker 2: for more than a century.
Speaker 1: And I love this.
Speaker 2: Idea and I am hopelessly optimistic, and I know that
Speaker 2: people call it naivete, but I like to think that
Speaker 2: we could come to a place where we actually find
Speaker 2: peace on this planet and find a way to not
Speaker 2: have wars and you know, remove prejudice and all of
Speaker 2: these things that plague society today.
Speaker 1: So I like to think that maybe we are hitting
Speaker 1: in that direction.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back with Marissa Meyer. So author Marissa
Speaker 3: Meyer and I were talking about her Center series, where
Speaker 3: she combined four fairy tales and science fiction to make
Speaker 3: a whole new universe. I'm curious when it comes to
Speaker 3: the character development and some of the tension everything the conflicts,
Speaker 3: do those stem from like personal experience or like, how
Speaker 3: much of that might stem from personal experience? Right, Oh,
Speaker 3: got much of yourself as in these characters or in
Speaker 3: these conflicts?
Speaker 1: It varies.
Speaker 2: There's some characters that I relate to really strongly and
Speaker 2: I put a lot of myself into, and then there's
Speaker 2: characters that I don't see myself in so much, but
Speaker 2: that I really admire. A lot of times I'll write
Speaker 2: a character, a protagonist in particular, who has characteristics that
Speaker 2: I wish that I had Maura, or I think are
Speaker 2: just really cool and impressive, or they have skills that.
Speaker 1: I really admire, and so there's a lot of that.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a little bit of wish fulfillment when
Speaker 2: I'm writing and creating these characters. And then as far
Speaker 2: as the conflicts, I've lived a fairly low conflict life,
Speaker 2: and like there's no big revolutions, no big wars, but
Speaker 2: a lot of the internal conflicts you're still facing. And
Speaker 2: so a lot of times we can take things that
Speaker 2: we feel on a small level and then you put
Speaker 2: them into these characters who are experiencing really big, life changing,
Speaker 2: world changing events, and they're experiencing the same emotions just
Speaker 2: in a bigger way. So an example of that might
Speaker 2: be something like periods of my life where I've faced
Speaker 2: imposter syndrome and felt like, you know, you question yourself,
Speaker 2: you doubt yourself. I think I'm a good person, but
Speaker 2: there was that one time I said that really mean thing,
Speaker 2: So maybe I'm not as good as I think. Like
Speaker 2: we've all had those moments. And then you have a
Speaker 2: character like Cinder who's trying to you know, lead this
Speaker 2: revolution and take down this evil queen and she's facing
Speaker 2: really big things, but she still has these internal conflicts
Speaker 2: with herself where she's wondering like, I think I'm a
Speaker 2: good person and I think I'm doing the right thing,
Speaker 2: but also I know that I there's moments where I've
Speaker 2: felt a little power hungry, and there's moments where I've
Speaker 2: done things I wasn't thrilled that I did, and so
Speaker 2: maybe I'm not a good person after all. And so
Speaker 2: you can, you know, use the personal experiences to then
Speaker 2: inspire what the character is going through and hopefully write
Speaker 2: those emotions in a way that readers can really relate
Speaker 2: to even though readers are like, well, I don't know
Speaker 2: what I would do in that situation either.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, that's the thing is like being human, we all
Speaker 3: have these similar experiences, right, It's just like, but to
Speaker 3: like what degree or to what I extent or any
Speaker 3: of that. But I also think that's why I like,
Speaker 3: you know, people love reading and characters.
Speaker 1: They always see some parts of themselves within them. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to like just give her listeners quick heads up.
Speaker 3: There is a little bit of a spoiler for the
Speaker 3: end of the Lunar Chronicles here, because I accidentally did
Speaker 3: a spoiler the other day and someone was not very
Speaker 3: happy with me. One of the folklores I spoke with.
Speaker 3: Her name is doctor Gina Jorgensen, as she's another guest
Speaker 3: on the show. But we are discussing about how in
Speaker 3: these original fairy tales, the end goal essentially was for
Speaker 3: these women to get married, and that was their happy ending, right,
Speaker 3: that was They've made it, They're successful, that's it. However,
Speaker 3: and the Lunar Chronicles, Sinder decides to say on Luna
Speaker 3: to help the country get back on its feet. First,
Speaker 3: then she tells Prince Kai, who is the Prince of
Speaker 3: the book that you know she'd be happy to come
Speaker 3: and meet him later. I'm curious, what was your reasoning
Speaker 3: behind that ending? It's not the atypical for Cinderella.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, of course, if we think why in historically in
Speaker 2: fairy tales, why was the ending get married, find a prince,
Speaker 2: get married, live happily ever after. And of course, through
Speaker 2: most of human history women had so little power, and
Speaker 2: one of the few ways a woman could be cared
Speaker 2: for and know that she didn't have to worry about
Speaker 2: am I going to eat? And am I going to
Speaker 2: have shelter and like these basic human needs was to
Speaker 2: find a husband and fingers crossed, he's a nice guy.
Speaker 1: And so it makes a lot.
Speaker 2: Of sense that for so much of history that was
Speaker 2: the focus for a lot of these fairy tales. Well,
Speaker 2: nowadays this is not, you know, the be all end all.
Speaker 2: We can have a career, we can make our own money,
Speaker 2: we can buy our own homes and run our own businesses,
Speaker 2: and finding a husband is not the thing that means
Speaker 2: we're going to survive and we're going to be okay.
Speaker 2: So on like a thematic level, it just didn't make
Speaker 2: sense that had to be the thing that Cinder was
Speaker 2: working toward this whole series, like, Okay.
Speaker 1: She beat the queen and she won the war, but
Speaker 1: does she get the prince?
Speaker 2: Like, that's not the important thing that we're looking at here,
Speaker 2: And so so I definitely wanted to end it in
Speaker 2: a place where she is in a position of power,
Speaker 2: but also in a place where she gets to make
Speaker 2: her own decisions, because for much of the series, especially
Speaker 2: in the first book, she was seen as a lesser
Speaker 2: citizen and there was a lot of prejudice against her,
Speaker 2: and she.
Speaker 1: At one point her body is like literally sold to.
Speaker 2: Science, And so I really wanted to show that Cinder
Speaker 2: was independent and on her own and she didn't need
Speaker 2: Prince Kai, she didn't need marriage. That said, I am
Speaker 2: certainly a romantic, and so we imply, of course that
Speaker 2: sometime after the end of the series she and Kai
Speaker 2: will get married, after Luna's been taken care of and
Speaker 2: her responsibilities are fulfilled, not because she means him, but
Speaker 2: because she loves him and he loves her.
Speaker 3: You've pretty much already spoken to this, But why do
Speaker 3: you think that, especially with fairy tale retellings, why do
Speaker 3: you think that the endings are changing Fairy tales.
Speaker 1: In general change.
Speaker 2: They change because society changes and what we are craving
Speaker 2: in our stories changes, and that's honestly, I think that's
Speaker 2: my favorite thing about fairy tales is to look at
Speaker 2: them across history and to see what are the things
Speaker 2: that have not changed in hundreds of years and in
Speaker 2: some cases in thousands of years, Like we still have
Speaker 2: the Lost Slipper, we still have the going to a
Speaker 2: ball or a festival. We still have these things, and
Speaker 2: yet what is different, what has changed?
Speaker 1: And I just think that's so interesting.
Speaker 2: They're like little snap and I think you kind of
Speaker 2: called it this earlier. They're like little snapshots of society
Speaker 2: and where where we are at the time that that
Speaker 2: story was written.
Speaker 3: I spoke with Marissa about her Guilded duology books. We
Speaker 3: talked about it in the last episode about Rumpel, but
Speaker 3: it's a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin where the mischievous helper is
Speaker 3: actually the good guy, a prince no less, and he
Speaker 3: and his kingdom have been put under a curse by
Speaker 3: a demon king that the miller's daughter helps him break.
Speaker 3: I asked Marissa what inspired her to write Guilded.
Speaker 2: With Guilded, I had, I think I'm going to guess that,
Speaker 2: young Marissa. The first fairy tale I ever wanted to
Speaker 2: retell was Rumpelstiltskin. That's before I even like could have
Speaker 2: comprehended writing an entire novel. I'm thinking like when I
Speaker 2: was eight, nine, ten years old and like writing short
Speaker 2: stories and then the very beginning of my artistic journey.
Speaker 2: I loved and hated rumpelstilt Skin. It was one of
Speaker 2: my favorite stories, but also one of the most frustrating
Speaker 2: stories because I felt.
Speaker 1: Like it had so many plot holes.
Speaker 2: I felt like it left me with so many unanswered
Speaker 2: questions and pretty much my whole.
Speaker 1: Life for at least the last you know, thirty years.
Speaker 2: It was just in the back of my head as like,
Speaker 2: I need to do something with that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I finally did and yielded.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's so funny, because I feel like Rumpelstiltskin isn't
Speaker 3: typically people's like go to stories. I know, I kind
Speaker 3: of obscure a little bit. I feel like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: feel like it's a bit on the back burner. So
Speaker 3: I really love to hear this. Other than having plot
Speaker 3: holes or any in everything, is there something else up
Speaker 3: to you to this particular tale.
Speaker 1: Uh, I mean, it's weirdness. It's a weird little story.
Speaker 2: And as we talked before, you and I we like
Speaker 2: the weird ones, the dark ones.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean a lot of it was the
Speaker 1: unanswered questions. I wanted to know more about rumpel Stiltskin.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know how he got this gift of
Speaker 2: being able to spin straw to gold that's never really explained.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know what he was gonna do with
Speaker 2: the baby, Like, in the end, he really wants this
Speaker 2: child and bargains with the young Queen to get her
Speaker 2: firstborn child.
Speaker 1: But we have no idea why. It's like, is he
Speaker 1: gonna eat the child?
Speaker 2: Does he want it for some sort of black magic?
Speaker 2: And then there's like that little optimistic part of me that's.
Speaker 1: Like, maybe he's just lonely, he just wants to be
Speaker 1: a dad, And so I really wanted to know about that.
Speaker 2: And I think, honestly, I think the thing that bothered
Speaker 2: me the most about it was it when you read
Speaker 2: rumpel Stiltskin. Clearly the intention is for the reader to
Speaker 2: see rumpel Stiltskin as the villain of the story, and
Speaker 2: in the end, she's married to this king and Rumbell's
Speaker 2: Stiltskin is defeated and she gets to keep her child
Speaker 2: and she's now married happily ever after.
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, this king, this king is
Speaker 1: a bad dude.
Speaker 2: He took her from her family, he locked her in
Speaker 2: this dungeon, he ordered her to do this impossible thing.
Speaker 2: He threatened to kill her multiple times. And now we're
Speaker 2: supposed to be like.
Speaker 1: Oh, yay, they're so happy.
Speaker 2: I just did not buy it, and that really really
Speaker 2: bothered me. And again, I love this story, like this
Speaker 2: was one of my favorite stories that I think in
Speaker 2: part part of the reason that I loved it so
Speaker 2: much was because even as a kid, my little writer
Speaker 2: brain was like thinking of the other options.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: When I decided I was going to retell rumbel Stiltskin,
Speaker 2: that's probably the first thing that I knew I was
Speaker 2: going to change. I knew that I was going to
Speaker 2: have the king be the villain and rumbel Stiltstigen was
Speaker 2: going to be the hero slash love interest. And so
Speaker 2: that was kind of the twist that grabbed me from
Speaker 2: the beginning and then ended up turning into this story.
Speaker 1: I agree with you.
Speaker 3: So, with all of your retellings, how do you decide
Speaker 3: what you keep and what you create? And why are
Speaker 3: those the elements that you choose to keep important to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a good question because it's interesting to
Speaker 2: me reading other fairy tale retellings, because for me, that's
Speaker 2: step one.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do retelling of this story.
Speaker 2: The first thing I do is I go and I
Speaker 2: read the source material, and a lot of times I'll
Speaker 2: go and read multiple versions of a fairy tale and decide, Okay,
Speaker 2: if I'm doing Rumpelstiltskin, what to me are the most
Speaker 2: important iconic elements.
Speaker 1: Of this story.
Speaker 2: I want to include the necklace in the ring that
Speaker 2: get bargained away. I know at some point we're going
Speaker 2: to have a newborn baby, or at least a bargain
Speaker 2: for a newborn baby. There has to be a question
Speaker 2: about the name that to me, that's a huge part
Speaker 2: of the Rumpelstiltskin's story is why does he keep his
Speaker 2: name hidden? What does it mean? Why is that important?
Speaker 2: There's gonna be spinning straw into gold. So I figure out, like,
Speaker 2: what to me are the really iconic things about this
Speaker 2: story that make it this fairy tale, and to me,
Speaker 2: cannot be taken away. And if you take them away,
Speaker 2: they're no longer this fairy tale. Now you're writing something
Speaker 2: totally different.
Speaker 1: And then I start kind of building off of that.
Speaker 2: Once I know what things I want to keep, then
Speaker 2: I figure out how am I going to change them.
Speaker 2: I know that I want the maiden in question to
Speaker 2: have a necklace that she's going to bargain with Rumpelstiltskin
Speaker 2: for where did that necklace come from, why is it important?
Speaker 2: What's its significance? And it kind of starts to build
Speaker 2: its own story off of that, and eventually you hope
Speaker 2: that all of those threads tie together into something that
Speaker 2: makes sense.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of my process.
Speaker 2: But as I was gonna say before, it's so interesting
Speaker 2: to me that I will read the source material and
Speaker 2: I will decide on the things that I think are
Speaker 2: absolutely ne But then I'll go and I'll read someone
Speaker 2: else's retelling about rumbelstilt Skin and be.
Speaker 1: Like, they like totally took out the whole baby thing.
Speaker 1: There's no newborn child, there's no bargaining for it.
Speaker 2: And to me, that just like blows my mind, like
Speaker 2: it didn't even cross my mind, it just not include it.
Speaker 2: I struggled for months trying to figure out what I
Speaker 2: was going to do with that, you know, like what
Speaker 2: that was an option you could just like no include it.
Speaker 1: One of the things.
Speaker 3: That I've noticed with a lot of the modern adaptations
Speaker 3: is that these retellings, as we've said a couple times already,
Speaker 3: really choose to explore the gray. It's no longer just
Speaker 3: like Stark, this is right, this is wrong, or these
Speaker 3: characters that were portrayed as wrong were like but.
Speaker 1: Were they really you know, I'm kind of curious what
Speaker 1: your thoughts and like, why do you think that is?
Speaker 3: Like what is causing that shift in these stories to happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when we're doing retellings, we just have
Speaker 2: a lot more space to explore than someone writing a three.
Speaker 1: Page fairy tale has to explore.
Speaker 2: And then I don't I can't speak for everyone, of course,
Speaker 2: but for me personally, I think the gray areas are
Speaker 2: really interesting and that's what makes us human.
Speaker 1: You Know.
Speaker 2: We can say we try to be good people, we
Speaker 2: try to do the right thing, but there's not a
Speaker 2: person among us who doesn't have something that we regret
Speaker 2: or some time that we, you know, recognize, oh, I
Speaker 2: could have behaved better there. So that's such a universal thing.
Speaker 2: And also when you start looking at at other people,
Speaker 2: it's really really easy to cast judgments and to look
Speaker 2: at someone else's actions and label them as good or bad.
Speaker 2: But I think by and large, we're very rarely right
Speaker 2: about that. I think it's much more true to life
Speaker 2: if we recognize, like, well, I don't like what that
Speaker 2: person did, but wouldn't it be interesting to know their
Speaker 2: reasons for it?
Speaker 1: And when you start.
Speaker 2: Digging into the reasons and then what is motivating a
Speaker 2: person to do things, suddenly there's a story there, and
Speaker 2: suddenly it kind of forces us to question, well, that
Speaker 2: might change my opinion, or now I have to question, Okay,
Speaker 2: if I was in that situation, how would I have
Speaker 2: handled it? I mean, things are just so rarely black
Speaker 2: and white, and that's just true about humanity. And so
Speaker 2: that's to me far more interesting than writing characters who
Speaker 2: are entirely good or entirely evil.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back with my interview with author Marissa Meyer.
Speaker 3: Author Marissa Meyer has been a fan of fairy tales
Speaker 3: since she was a kid, so I asked her why
Speaker 3: does she think the Brothers Grim stories specifically stand out.
Speaker 2: I think because there are themes and ideas in them
Speaker 2: that people can relate to, no matter what year they're born,
Speaker 2: no matter where on this planet they were born. There
Speaker 2: are things that are just universal to the human experience,
Speaker 2: and these stories boil them down to things that we
Speaker 2: can all understand.
Speaker 3: And why do you think storytellers like yourself revisit these
Speaker 3: tales time and time again?
Speaker 2: For me, because I love the familiarity of these stories,
Speaker 2: and I love that they do have these kind of
Speaker 2: built in themes and these universal themes. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, you can take them and they're like little
Speaker 2: frameworks that as a creator, you've got this kind of
Speaker 2: built in skeleton of a story, but then you can
Speaker 2: expand it beyond that to be anything. And so it's
Speaker 2: this great creative challenge for me to take what's already
Speaker 2: there and write something that readers will feel is both
Speaker 2: familiar and yet unlike anything.
Speaker 1: Else they've ever read before.
Speaker 3: Okay, And I feel like stories are reflections of ourselves, right,
Speaker 3: Like we write or we read so we can learn
Speaker 3: about ourselves, like in safer ways, like we were talking
Speaker 3: about like the kids earlier, right, like learn about like
Speaker 3: the heartships of the world. So what do you think
Speaker 3: these tales tell us about who we are?
Speaker 2: I think that fiction in general puts us into the
Speaker 2: shoes of other people and puts us in these experiences
Speaker 2: that we may never actually experience in real life. But
Speaker 2: it forces us to ask the question what would I do?
Speaker 2: And I think that sometimes we're surprised by those answers,
Speaker 2: and sometimes reading a story changes us and who we
Speaker 2: were before we read the story, and what we would
Speaker 2: have answered to that question might be different after reading it.
Speaker 3: And finally, why do you think the Brother's Grim fairy
Speaker 3: Tales will live on?
Speaker 1: Well, we've lasted this long. No, they're not going away.
Speaker 2: I think they'll continue to change, and I think that
Speaker 2: there will be whole generations that know them as the
Speaker 2: Disney movies or maybe even.
Speaker 1: As the mrsa. Meyer fairy Tales.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but there are going to people be
Speaker 2: people like you and me who are so curious about
Speaker 2: the older versions and want to dig a little deeper.
Speaker 2: And for me, like I'm currently reading the complete collection
Speaker 2: of the Brothers Grim to my nine year old daughters
Speaker 2: and because that to me, that's important, Like I want
Speaker 2: them to know the Disney movies are great, that's wonderful,
Speaker 2: but I also want to show them the other versions.
Speaker 1: I really love that.
Speaker 2: I absolutely love that so also great because they're so lucky,
Speaker 2: all of them. There's like two hundred and fifty and
Speaker 2: I've never sat down and read all of them, and
Speaker 2: so there's in reading over it. It's been fascinating to
Speaker 2: me and how there's some stories that you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I can totally see why nobody cares about this one
Speaker 2: and nobody's ever heard of it.
Speaker 1: But then there's other.
Speaker 2: Stories that are so good, and I'm like, how how
Speaker 2: has this one not been as popular as like Jack
Speaker 2: and the Beanstock.
Speaker 1: Honestly, like that's like us, that's an undertaking. I forget
Speaker 1: about Jack and the bean Stock. It's not my favorite.
Speaker 1: It's not my favorite.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's okay, but yeah, because like someone gifted me.
Speaker 3: It was I think a family member years and years ago,
Speaker 3: like the Collected works, right, and I remember like I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna read all
Speaker 3: of these and I remember getting into it and I
Speaker 3: was like this is not gonna happen. Yeah, Granted, I
Speaker 3: was like I think in my teen so I was like,
Speaker 3: this is boring.
Speaker 1: This is boring, you know, like kind of one of those.
Speaker 3: But yeah, So honestly, like I give you mad prouts
Speaker 3: for doing that. I think that's great. And that also,
Speaker 3: like your daughter, your daughter's right that they also get
Speaker 3: to experience that too. So that's it's been really really fun.
Speaker 2: We're I remember maybe like a third of the way
Speaker 2: through the book now, but it's it's hilarious because of
Speaker 2: course there's patterns, and they have now picked up on
Speaker 2: some of the patterns. And at one point one of
Speaker 2: my daughters, I don't remember what story we'd finished, but
Speaker 2: she goes, Mom, why are these stories always about death?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it is. It is amazing reading
Speaker 1: all of them back to back.
Speaker 4: You're like, yeah, there's like a lot of death, a
Speaker 4: lot of blood, and a lot of gore. It's they're
Speaker 4: very very violent, they're gruesome, they're they're pretty rough.
Speaker 3: They're they're very rough. Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: joining me. I super appreciate it. This has been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: So it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: You learn more about Marissa Meyer and her books on
Speaker 3: her website. Marissameyer dot com. That's m A R I
Speaker 3: S S A M E y e r dot com.
Speaker 3: Next time, My what.
Speaker 1: Big eyes you have? Grandmother?
Speaker 3: The Deep Dark Woods is a production of School of
Speaker 3: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It was created, written, and hosted
Speaker 3: by me Miranda Hawkins. Senior producer is Gabby Watts. Executive
Speaker 3: producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon barr Els Crowley, and Maya Howard.
Speaker 3: Theme song was composed by Jesse Niswanger, who also sound
Speaker 3: designed and mixed this episode.
Speaker 1: You can follow the
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