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Research Scholarship Idea Help?

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Matilda

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Alright, I really don't know if this is the right place to post this thread, but if not then I trust the awesome moderators to take care of it ;).
So I'm going to enter a scholarship contest which I normally try to avoid, but this looked too cute. You have to create a Disney type princess (make up her name, three traits that describe her, her superpower/skill, her goal, what's stopping her, and how she overcomes it.).
So I wanted to enter one with a strong, independent princess overcoming ptsd, but I can't think of a clever way to do it. Any ideas? (And I already checked the ruled, it said nothing about there being a rule against asking help :) ).
 
<grin> Standard Disney Foruma... Most of the characters have murdered parents.

Although some parents simply die sometimes in the backstory, while others are killed as part of the plot. Meanwhile, kidnap is another common theme; both of main characters and their loved ones (when a loved one, there's usually some sort of torture involved)... as well as occasionally slavery, war, torture, attempted rape... Disney really is past master at singing happy songs while people are burning alive. Lol. And these are the sanitized versions of these stories!
 
Evil stepmom, there are a few of those, including Cinderella and Snow White. Or you could go the orphan route, tormented in orphanage, having been found wandering in street as a toddler, only to find later she was lost as a child and finds out she has royal lineage.
 
Interesting. I think so many of the fairy tales fit well with trauma themes. They are inherently screwed up but make sense to our psyches because of the fantastical connection to everyday realities. Snow White...horrid jealousy. She wasn't allowed to grow up. She had to go to sleep. And Sleeping Beauty too...hello, dissociated? How many of them somehow had to go into a deep sleep on their way to adulthood? My version: blackout drinking.

Anyway, I don't have ideas. But I can say I had a hard time writing some sort of story about my stuff in college because I was in the middle of it. I couldn't see a resolution. So try to imagine a fairy tale version of what you'd wish for your own healing or view the princess subject as purely another subject with her very own story. To me the Judith Hermann model of recovery makes sense (getting safety first, then processing, then reconnecting with the world...or something like that), so you might look for some sort of structure and weave a story around that.

I'd love for her to not have her happy ending by not finding a prince to bring her back to life, but by her feeling whole within herself...and maybe getting a Ph.D. But that would be my twist. Princess stories are all great in the middle and then I feel like they just suck in their resolution.

Good luck!
 
@FridayJones You literally made me snort!

I understand that they recently found a bunch of 'lost' Grimm Fairy tales.

That said, I was a morbid little kid and read the origional versions when I was young

There was one about a princess who was off to meet and marry her prince riding astride a talking horse and accompanied by her maid-in-waiting. The maid-in-waiting forced the princess to change identites and then she cut the head off the talking horse to keep it from telling on her. Meanwhile, the real princess was turned into a scullery maid and treated pretty terribly.

The horse's head for some reason was kept alive and mounted in the stable. It lamented what had happened to the princess and gave her instructions on what to do to get back at the maid-in-waiting.

In the final scene, the false princess was asked what should happen to someone who had decieved everyone the way she had done. She described a gruesome scene where the person (she thought it was the princess) would be pulled apart by horses.

This turned out to be the false princess's fate.
She got hers in the end.

I liked the story because the dethrowned REAL princess had to take back power and do so with cunning. No laying in glass coffins or waiting to be rescued. She took matters into her own hands.

I wish I could remember the name of that story now...

Gotta love a Grimm story.
 
A princess in a war torn land. The story of violence against women. She overcomes the crimes committed against her by a minority's faction that is intent on destroying the honorable values of her ruling family. They all get knocked off but she survives and assumes her position as benevolent queen who restores democracy and women's rights. Not because she is beautiful but because she is smart and righteous, kind and courageous. There are enough allies in her queendom to help restore her land through altruism. Not because some prince falls for her!
 
OK I loved all of your responses!!!! :)
There's not much space so they just want very general information and, no worries @Chava the goal is for her to not be finding the prince be the main theme. I really like these though. I want to go down the empowerment route...so I'll see what happens. Feel free to suggest more though, I'm really enjoying this! :D
 
Hahaha @Solara all I can picture is a mix of wonderwoman and one episode of Futurama that I saw a few years ago (sorry I can't even remember the name). Disney should really make a really tough and edgy woman with feminist ideals. I mean brave and frozen are on the right track, but I found them pretty annoying
 
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