Lissa Bilyk

Esmeralda, The Heroine of Smouldering Sensuality

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is Disney’s thirty-fourth animated feature film and focuses on the story of Quasimodo, a hunchbacked and deformed bellringer living in the Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s based (dare I say loosely? The endings are completely different – it’s Disney, after all) on the book by Victor Hugo (who also wrote Les Miserables) and although our ‘princess’, Esmeralda, doesn’t end up with the protagonist, she does play an important role in a film that explores racism, bigotism, and mob mentalities.

The book is set in 1482 and I don’t know enough about European or French history to confirm if the film is as well. It certainly has a 15th century feel to it and the irrational hatred of gypsies reminds me of the Christian’s response to the Jews in Venice circa 1600. Esmeralda is a young gypsy dancer, and being utterly gorgeous she helplessly seems to attract the attention of all sorts of men. She’s also fiercely independent, strong-willed, quick-witted with an acid tongue: all good traits to have in a heroine.

Another good skill: medieval pole dancing.

Defiant

When she attracts the attention of Frollo, the paedo ugly evil old judge of Paris (and Quasi’s captor mentor evil bastard surrogate father), she also incurs his wrath by openly defying him and rescuing Quasi in his very first time outside the Cathedral. When Frollo orders her arrest, she not only kicks all their asses and escapes, but takes refuge in the Notre Dame Cathedral, and when Captain Feeble Phoebus enters to arrest her, she kicks his ass. Literally. OK, not literally, but she does defeat him in armed combat, which is pretty awesome for an uneducated, untrained gypsy dancer from the streets. See why I love her?

Bam! Right in the noggin! (BTW I can't believe I found this picture)

Trapped

To save her life, Captain Feeble says that she claimed sanctuary, which inside the church protects gypsies from evil bastards. That’s where Quasi’s mother was trying to go at the beginning of the film when Frollo stopped her. Also, inside the cathedral is the only place the Archdeacon has authority over Frollo, and he basically tells Frollo to fuck off and leave Esmeralda alone. Frollo posts guards at all the exits, trapping her inside the Cathedral. Esmeralda thinks she’s going to catch claustrophobia so she sings a song to God. Then she discovers this is where Quasimodo lives and they bond.

Did I mention she has a kick-ass goat as her animal pal?

Escape

Quasimodo helps Esmeralda escape the Cathedral. Frollo starts experiencing ‘man reactions’ to thoughts about her and sings a song about how she’s a witch seducing him, you know, with her sexy dancing and her pretty eyes, and her absolute hatred of him. Convinced his ‘man reactions’ are unnatural he decides to burn down the city looking for her. Yeah, it makes sense, I know. Esmeralda runs across Captain Feeble being heroic and heroically injured, and saves his life, taking him back to Quasimodo because, you know, she can’t take her new boyfriend to the Court of Miracles because he’s… what… blonde? But she trusts the hunchback enough to tell him how to find the Court… which is exactly what they do when Frollo announces he is attacking it at dawn.

Captured

Because Quasi and Captain Feeble can’t tell when they’re being manipulated, they inadvertently lead Frollo’s guard to the Court of Miracles where Esmeralda is captured. Frollo offers to make her his mistress, and when she politely refuses by spitting in his face (great aim!) he burns her at the stake. Well, Quasi doesn’t like that (because he’s fallen in love with her) so he rescues her and climbs the Notre Dame Cathedral a la King Kong with his beauty in his arms. Frollo lays siege to the Cathedral while Captain Feeble, the gypsies, and the civilians who have realised Frollo is an asshole try to defend her. After a tussle high above the crowd, Quasi saves Esmeralda, Esmeralda tries to save Quasi, Frollo falls to his death which is entirely his own fault, and then Feeble finally shows some kind of use besides being Esmeralda’s love interest and saves Quasi’s life. Esmeralda and Captain Feeble receive Quasimodo’s blessing, which is really sweet of him because he’s totally in love with her as well.

It makes me wonder. The Disney heroines always end up with the good-looking blokes. Even when Belle fell in love with the Beast, he turned back into the human Prince; when Tiana fell in love with Naveen the frog, he turned back into the Prince; and Jasmine chose handsome Aladdin even though he wasn’t a prince. So my question is: could Esmeralda have ended up with Quasimodo? I certainly expected it when I was a child. I was conditioned to believe the hero of the piece could get any girl he wanted, even if she was beyond his means (sweet Belle, royal Jasmine, hard-working Tiana). Disney dramatically changed the ending: how hard would it have been to write in a Quasi-Esmeralda romance?

I carved a teeny tiny doll of you. Sometimes I make her do stuff. That's totally less creepy than breaking into your house and watching you sleep, right?

No, I won’t show the Esmeralda-Captain Feeble kiss, because I am protesting their relationship. I like to pretend she dumps him and goes running back to Quasi to send the audience a message of, “It doesn’t matter what you look like, it’s what inside that counts.” i.e. “It doesn’t matter if you’re born horrifically deformed and have no self-esteem, even the most beautiful and lusted after girl in Paris can still fall in love with you.”

No? You still want the picture? Fine.

They Googled WHAT?!

On Twitter I regularly tweet the spam I get here on my blog. I’ve decided to do a post about some of the weird search terms that have led people here as well. Sometimes I just think to myself, ‘They Google WHAT?!’

Perverted Disney – I wish I was making this crap up

snow white necrofilia
f word in little mermaid cover
princess fucking with seven dwarfs
disney princess gone bad
beast fucking beauty fantasy
trashy disney princesses

Feminism – I’m so proud these people came to my blog

dude in distress in tv series – When you figure out what it is, let me know!

woman rescues man – This is my sort of thing!

Storytelling – Because it’s a writing blog, duh!

a story where a character writes something – Can’t help you there, mate.

princess diaries queen clarisse fanfiction – Oh my gosh, I should totally take part in this!

Random – I… just…. I have no words.

sims parents on fire/sims on fire – Dude. Sadistic much? Set fire to your own Sims, don’t go looking for someone else’s pictures.

happy unicorn farts – I hope you found what you were looking for.

throwing babies – GET OUT OF MY BLOG. OUT. NOW.

i feel like am fighting a losing battle – Me too mate, me too.

Foreign Cover Friday: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Foreign Cover Friday is a weekly meme hosted by The Reading Fever, where foreign covers of the books we know and love are spotlighted and discussed. To join, either pick your favourite foreign cover, or pick many foreign covers, and start discussing!

This week we’re going with a book that I only gave three stars to, Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth. It’s a zombie novel. There. I said it. It’s also YA. And – bonus – it’s a YA zombie novel written for girls. Yeah, I had issues with it, but my review isn’t the point. The point is the pretty, creepy covers. So here we go!

In Mary’s world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future—between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

This is my cover: the UK Young Adult version. I can’t tell what the red things is supposed to be. A flower? Feathers? If it was even vaguely reminiscent of the plot, maybe i could tell. But there are no flowers or feathers in the book, so I don’t know what it is.

Seriously. What IS that thing?

This is also a UK cover. I didn’t see it in my book shop otherwise I probably would have picked this one. Has anyone worked out what the red thing is yet?

This is two more English-language covers, and I think they’re American. The one on the left is paperback and the right hand one is hardcover. I love the paperback with the creepy fingers of the trees covering part of Mary’s face, but I’m not sure how I feel about the hardcover. I don’t think I’d like it on my shelf. It’s a little too creepy with Mary on the cover there with that sullen expression and bland clothing.

This is the French, German and Czech versions. While the French version doesn’t do anything for me, the German one is gorgeously creepy with Mary’s hair in the wind, the beautiful trees in the forest and those figures in the background. And the Czech version is classy and nice, and I’ve seen that model used somewhere else as well…

Translation
French: Forest of the Damned
German: The Forest: Forest of a Thousand Eyes
Czech: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

This is the Italian, Polish and Swedish versions. I am in love with all of them! They are all so beautiful – I love the colour themes of brown, blue and green. I love all that hair with the flowers and leaves in the Italian version. I love the background of the forest one one side and the ocean (recurring imagery) in the Polish version, and I love the silhouette of the tree with the green sky and the almost-full moon in the Swedish version. They’re all gorgeous.

Translation
Italian: The Forest of Lost Loves
Polish: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Swedish: The Sharp Tooth Forest

This is the Dutch and Greek versions. I think this Dutch cover just fails. The clothing she’s wearing is just too modern and too bright a green to make me believe she’s running from anything post-apocalyptic. The Greek version, on the other hand, is eerily beautiful. The green leaves (which remind me of eucalyptus leaves but hey, I’m not a botanist) covering the face of a girl so we can’t tell if she’s pretty or not, and that beautiful blue eye.

Translation
Dutch: The Claws of the Forest
Greek: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

What are your thoughts?

Which covers do you like? Which do you hate?

Check back at The Reading Fever for her Foreign Cover Friday!

Disney Dissection: The Lion King

I know, I’m clever, right? I ran out of Disney Princesses (official) to talk about. I tried watching Peter Pan to talk about Tinker Bell but her role is so minimal and quite frankly kinda boring that I didn’t feel I could write a post to justify her. I also tried watching Robin Hood to talk about Maid Marian, but I turned the movie off part way through. It just didn’t interest me, and I knew I couldn’t write anything interesting for you, my readers. Maybe because those films were specifically about boys, or written so long ago, that the girl time is just minimal and whatever time they do have, they’re not particularly inspiring.

So I’ve gone back to the 90s Disney films to talk about the representation of the heroines of those films. And the first one in a very small line up is Nala. The Lion King was the highest grossing animated film of all time until Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo. The Lion King is still the highest grossing traditionally animated film of all time in the United States. It won Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (Can You Feel The Love Tonight).

The Lion King was, for a long time, my favourite film. I swear I used to watch it every day when I was a kid. At last count, I owned the film soundtrack, the Broadway soundtrack, and the soundtrack to the direct-to-video sequel. I love everything about this film: the music, the characters, the scenery, the cast, everything – EXCEPT the minimal screen time of the female characters. Which is why it’s so great Nala actually rocks in her screen time.

She is just a big pretty kitty (with a personality and intelligence and warmth and kindness. I mean, she’s not ONLY pretty. She’s the whole package).

I know. She’s not even human. But at least she becomes a queen at the end of her film. She ‘marries’ her prince (king) and in the process becomes a queen, even though – through a very twisted turn of incestuous events that I don’t know the canon reasons for because I’m not a part of The Lion King fandom – she technically should be Simba’s half-sister or at least cousin. The reason being (based on actual lion behaviour) is that when male lions take over the the pride they systematically kill the cubs to bring the lionesses back into heat. There is no chance that Nala is the cub of a lion other than Mufasa or Scar.

Eyes UP, Simba. She doesn’t even have boobs!

But semantics aside, and despite her minuscule screen time, Nala is actually a pretty awesome role model.

When she’s a cub, she’s physically stronger than Simba and bests him in their wrestling matches. Yes, she does follow his lead: but it’s his movie, he is the one who needs to create the conflict. She’s there to add emotional depth to the conflict – Oh no, Simba’s in trouble and his recklessness has put his girlfriend in danger! But really, Nala was pretty excited to visit the Elephant Graveyard as well. She didn’t actively encourage Simba to do the wrong thing, but she was there to add oomph to the first conflict (the second being the stampede).

Putting not one, but TWO cubs in danger (when one of them is totally innocent) just makes us care more about the cute cubs.

When Nala’s an adult, she suddenly appears again in the film having stumbled across Simba’s friends. She says she left the pride to find help, because Scar’s regime has left the land destitute and the lions and hyenas starving. The Broadway musical version of the film adds an extra spin: she’s actually run away from Scar’s promiscuous proposition to bear his cubs. You know, because she’s the only young sexy lioness in the pride. Once again, she bests Simba physically. She’s totally kick-ass that way.

Despite her small role, Nala is one of the more kick-ass Disney heroines.

Nala also serves as the voice of Simba’s absent parents. She doesn’t understand why he won’t return home – and it’s Simba’s fault, because he never tells her he believes he killed his own father. But Simba needs to be told this twice more – once by a monkey with a stick and once by the ghost of his father who appears in the clouds in only like THE BEST SEQUENCE IN ANY FILM EVER (not just animations). Seriously. This scene is the ONLY reason The Lion King was my favourite movie for night on seventeen years. (Until Tangled.)

I’m totally giving you the scene so you’ll cry along with me, even though it has nothing to do with Nala.

Afterwards, when Simba returns to the Pride Lands, Nala chases after him. Once again she plays support, rounding up the other lionesses while Simba confronts Scar. But don’t assume just because she’s playing second fiddle that she’s not invested, no way. When Scar confesses to his involvement with Mufasa, Nala is the first lioness into the fray, taking names among the hyenas. She’s a warrior lioness, have no doubt.

The Lion Kiss. LION KISSES! Yeah, they’re totally making out.

The Edge of Darkness is now available internationally for the Kindle!

Hi lovelies.

I bit the bullet and did a Kindle version of The Edge of Darkness. I don’t know why I hesitated on doing it, it turns out it’s just as easy to self-publish on the Kindle as it is on Smashwords and CreateSpace. Here are the new places you can download an ebook of my sci-fi novel.

Amazon.com for $3.43

Amazon.co.uk for £2.16

Amazon.de for EUR 2.99

Yay much?

I believe there might end up being some price fluctuations or inconsistencies because I’m looking at the price of the US edition while I live in the UK. I wanted to sell it for $2.99, which will be the Smashwords price at the end of the month (currently it’s $1.99) but I think it’s due to added taxes that the prices have been bumped ever so slightly. I’ve heard that Amazon, in their infinite wisdom, like to price-match, but because my Smashwords edition hasn’t gone through to their expanded distribution yet (Barnes and Noble, Kobo etc), they’re not going to drop their prices until it does.

We’ll just have to wait and see!