Week 5 Story: A Twist on Shrek
Once upon
a time, in a swamp far far away, lived an ogre named Shrek who likes being
isolated and his solitude is ruined by multiple fictional and fairy tale
characters. Amongst those are a donkey and a gingerbread cookie who play
undercover spies to remove Shrek from his swamp as the area is needed to expand
the military grounds for concentration camps. Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel,
Sleeping Beauty were all banished from these grounds and transported to various
concentration camps in the area. Fiona who was part of the evacuation squad was
also an undercover spy whose task was to fake falling in love with Shrek to get
him to move away to have him killed by Lord Farquaad so that Fiona and Lord
Farquaad could live happily ever after. Fiona fakes being captured and is
locked up in a castle in the palace that is ruled by Lord Farquaad in a
beautiful city named Ayodhya which is guarded by an evil fire breathing dragon
that has ten heads. Shrek duels some of Lord Farquaad's men and wins meaning he
has to go rescue Princess Fiona who is one of three of Lord Farquaad's wives.
Shrek leaves on this journey to fulfill the task given to him and he meets head
to head with the dragon named Ravani who tries to kill Shrek while keeping
donkey hostage. Ravani falls in love with donkey and keeps donkey in her secret
chamber and Shrek continues to the tallest room of the palace. He finds Fiona
in human form locked in shackles and chains to the bed and as he slowly tries
to release her from these boundaries, Lord Farquaad locks Shrek in and draws a
circle with magic to lock them both in the room and not being able to escape
for 48 hours. Fiona figures out a way to make Shrek fall in love with her and
mesmerizes him to fall under her spell. Shrek unknowingly follows Fiona and
Fiona’s spell of changing to ogre comes off and she remains human forever which
means she stays with Lord Farquaad and they end up killing Shrek by giving him
onions which are an ogre’s poison. He ends up eating it and choking to his death.
Fiona disposes of the ogre’s body in the dungeon while her and Lord Farquaad
end up living happily ever after. Donkey decides to stay with Ravani not knowing that Shrek has fallen and lives happily ever after with
Donkey.
Fiona and Lord Farquaad end up living happily ever after while Ravani and donkey end up living together happily ever after.
Asha I like how you used Shrek and the characters in the movie in your story. It definitely was an entertaining story, I must say the characters roles were well defined. One suggestion would be to include an author's note that tells me what characters represent what other characters from Ramayana. I was able to infer that Lord Farquaad is Rama and Fiona is Sita but I was unsure if the dragon is the 10 headed Ravana or Shrek is the Ravana ? You might want to include that at the same time have dialogues that would make it interesting as well. One minor addition is to include bibliography of the whole video/book. I would suggest to have paragraphs and few breaks than a continuous long story which brings pause to the story and easy to read. Overall I love the idea.
ReplyDeleteHi Asha, I liked how rewrote a story but a Shrek version. It was a very interesting change to the Ramayana stories and you really used your creative mind to create this story. While I was reading the story, I could tell which part of the Ramayana you were trying to retell; however, there were some confusion as to which characters from Shrek were representing Ramayana characters. The confusion could be alleviated by explaining which characters are who in your author's note. Additionally, you could also add a simple bibliography, so your readers could tell which Ramayana story you rewrote your story over. Did you consider adding dialogue into your story to make it more intriguing with conversations between the characters? I think you should add dialogue into your next story, or even this one! But overall, I really enjoyed reading your story because of how you connected the Shrek characters to Ramayana characters.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost I am a really big fan of the retelling of the story through Shrek too! I also liked the slightly sarcastic humor at the start of the story. Very clever! I would agree with the above statement that, while I could tell what part of the Ramayana you were talking about, I was a bit confused as to which character was who. At first I thought Fiona was Sita and that Shrek was Rama who was trying to defeat Lord Farquaad, but then in the end it appears that Lord Farquaad was Rama…I wonder if maybe Lord Farquaad and Shrek could be brothers like Rama and Lakshmana? Maybe that would add an extra level of detail to the story that could be an unexpected twist? Totally just a thought though! One thing that I think would help so much is an author’s note at the end, just to give the readers something to go off of in the future! Overall though, great job!
ReplyDeleteHey hey, its me again.
ReplyDeleteSo this is a dark take on a childhood classic. I am kinda into it. When I read the words "concentration camp" I was thrown off as i was trying to picture all of the characters in Shrek being compared to WWII. Though then I remembered at the beginning of the first movie there was something similar with all of the fairy tale character stuck inside cages and such. Overall I enjoyed it! I know I am commenting on it a bit late, but oh well.
Hi Asha! Wow, what a throwback! I haven't thought about the movie Shrek for quite some time. I think I have seen his story inspire maybe one other in this class and it makes me curious what about it inspires one to make a connection to our readings in order to create a new story. My only thought is that is like a Western take on mythology which is the topic of this course. Very cool, either way! The way you've taken this and made it into a dramatic re-telling is great!
ReplyDelete