Rapunzel Update

Part of the reason I’m posting this is because, unfortunately, I did not get anything written 7 April. But I also thought it would be good update everyone on where my story is at currently.

To be honest, I was seriously considering scrapping the entire thing, even just a couple days ago. I haven’t made much progress on it the past couple months, either, and I recognized a pretty glaring issue I somehow missed the first time around. The way the magic system works, at least when it comes to fairy gifts, involves stealing from someone’s future to give to their present. That involves setting hard, baseline, quantifiable “norms” for such intangible things as beauty, cleverness, etc. And the harder I want the magic system to be, the more well-defined those limits and norms have to be, especially when we get into the idea of witches stealing those from other people to make up for their own deficits. And no matter how I spin that, no matter where I set those bars, it comes with a great number of unfortunate implications that I don’t intend.

That said, my brother—ironically the same one who brought this to my attention—talked me down from the ledge, so to speak, and I still want to try a few things. If I put more of the emphasis on Aurora’s mindset, and (either as part of her arc, or clearly established from the beginning) make it clear it’s okay even if she does lose those things, that could at least mitigate some of the more problematic issues. Will that work with the story? How does that affect the themes I was already emphasizing? I don’t know yet. It’s possible I’ll still wind up scrapping it. I hope not, but who knows? It has been a great learning experience already, anyway; I just want to make sure I have no regrets with it.