Giant Disney Princess Crossover Story

So this is a discussion that sort of grew from the "Why do girls like princesses" thread, and I wanted to move it here.

The basic premise is this: We have all (or most) of the Disney Princesses in a giant crossover facing a common foe. This is supposed to emphasize their uniqueness and fight against their genericizing by the marketing department of Disney.

Along the way, I also thought of making it a story where all the instrumental characters were female. Maybe all the characters, period. I want to see how it would work out - there are certainly plenty of action movies with no women, so why can't we ladies have something like that?

edited 24th Jan '11 9:39:12 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

I'm not sure a "no male characters, period" policy would come across as authentic. If we get a glimpse of the princesses' normal lives at all (before they are thrust into their adventure), at the very least the princes will have to make a token appearance. Having all the movers and shakers be female would certainly be valid, though.

Are we talking about a potential Kingdom Hearts idea?

edited 24th Jan '11 9:58:36 PM by ArgeusthePaladin

No. No Final Fantasy characters. If we went that way, all the fanfics would be about them and not the princesses and we can't have that.

@Kara: That's a good point. It would come across less like a story and more like an experiment in writing a story. But of course, even though this will be mainly about female characters, I don't like the kind of stories that sit there and lecture us about Girl Power, so I really don't want to explicitly state that. The priority here is thinking of an awesomely cool plot, of course.

So: Do we want a new villain, or an old villain resurrected?

Edit: Sudden flash of inspiration from reading "Cupid and Psyche": We could make our villain some sort of goddess who's jealous that the princesses are getting all the hero worship and not her.

edited 24th Jan '11 10:05:49 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

I think the villain should at least be female, otherwise lol

Seriously though, I have said this in the MMFRPG thread and I'll say it here - Disney Princesses are next to useless in a fight that does not involve some sort of Deus ex Machina on their favor. They have little to no combat capabilities and most oftenly had to rely on other, probably guys, to bail them out.

Sorry, I like my female protagonists who can fight, drink, and not need to rely on someone else to get things done. Like, you know, Tifa and Lightning.

edited 24th Jan '11 10:06:59 PM by ArgeusthePaladin

@Mellon: Definitely. The villain is definitely a "mover and shaker" in the story, after all.

Edit: @Arguesthe - Mulan is one huge exception, and so is Rapunzel. Tiana didn't have much chance to show her stuff as a human, but as a frog she kicked ass. And if we're going to make Nala the team pet or something, she's a lioness. In addition, other princesses such as Belle can contribute with brains instead of brawn. It doesn't have to be a shoot-em-up we're writing.

edited 24th Jan '11 10:08:41 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

I think the villain should at least be female, otherwise lol

What!? And deny girls the opportunity to see one of their own take down a bad man? Hell no!

Mulan can do friggin kung fu. I bet Pocahontas knows how to use a bow and arrow.

I don't know if you guys saw Cinderella 3, but at one point she totally saves herself from a rampaging sentient evil carriage xD. It was strange.

The fact remained that a large proportion of the classical princesses weren't all that.

Well, since this is a controversial issue Imma gonna step out very, very quietly.

It's probably best to create an entirely new villain. I see three possibilities for re-using a villain, none of them ideal:

1. If we were to use the villain from one of the Princess movies, the implication would be that that particular Princess was our most central protagonist. I don't think that's what we want; I think we want this to be an ensemble piece with all the Princesses sharing the spotlight more-or-less equally.

2. The obvious variation on the above idea is to use a coalition of all the villains from the Princess movies, but I think that's a little too obvious. Not to mention, it's been done.

3. On the other hand, if we tried to avoid the spotlight problem by using the villain from a non-Princess movie, it would just seem random and leave people wondering when the protagonist of that villain's film was going to show up.

There's one other option, which would be to pick some kind of universally applicable "ultimate evil" type character who wasn't actually the antagonist of any specific movie (Chernabog springs to mind, though I'm sure there are others).

But, I think creating an original villain would be better.

Or we can just resort to zombies.

*raises hand*

I have a suggestion of sort.

Maybe we're going about this backwards. We should decide what the villain wants—once we have that worked out, we'll know who we need to use invent.

Here's a radical idea: maybe the villain wants to corrupt the Princesses. Why? Who knows? Maybe it's just For the Evulz. We can figure that out later; the upshot for now is that she believes by forcing the Princesses into an adventure where they must be active and take care of themselves and fight, their pure little souls will be sullied.

I'm wondering if a relationship drama would work — i.e. it's a tragedy of manners and social graces with the princessex. The villain would be like another princess; yet deep within, she is a manipulative bastard, the controlling bitchy sort, who would stoop down to having the other princesses ganging up on those she doesn't like. Sort of a deconstruction of the need to conform.

Perhaps the conflict would start off like this — there is an upcoming ball where princes from around the world congregate and dance and marry with the princesses.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a shortage of princes as of late.. (or something else for that matter.)

edited 25th Jan '11 8:49:57 AM by QQQQQ

How about a ressurected Judge Doom who wants to pave over the princesses' land to make way for a freeway and gathers them all at a ball so he can take them out in one fell swoop?

I think having the plot revolve around relationship drama would defeat the purpose of giving them a cool action-y adventure.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just the originator of the idea.

Fun fact—in all the marketing for the Princesses, you never see them looking at each other. Something about dominance, the way you're not supposed to look a dog in the eye.

Which neatly segues into my suggestion. There are too many dizny dogs to mention, so how about a pack of dogs as the villain's "army"? They terrorize the countryside until they meet the Princesses, who naturally charm them into submission.

Or you could go the Cujo route: a rabid poodle pens them in their carriage on a dark forest road until they find some clever way to circumvent it.

Or they all go to the same dog show with their various pets (there's always an adorable yet spunky critter in a dizny movie). Another contestant may be cheating, so they have to uncover the shenanigans.

Or the usual villain for each Princess switches to another Princess, which turns into a round robin as the Princesses gradually assemble to find the ultimate enemy is ... Walt Dizny, frozen as in the urban legend but still aware. He wants to purge his empire of all the new phony schmaltz that has been perpetrated in his name and replace it with old phony schmaltz. While Howard the Duck and Donald Duck fight in a steel-cage death match, the Princesses must choose sides: old vs. new or all vs. Walt.

Snow White and Cinderella (and maybe Aurora, I can't remember how she was with critters) can charm/enslave/convince animals to do their bidding. I don't think dogs will work.

Okay, what about this being the premise: All over the world, the princes are going missing. It's the perfect crime, except for one clue left behind, like a signature. This whole thing is organized by the villain (who would have to be some sort of sorceress/goddess) to get the princesses to go out and search for their husbands. The villain's motivation? As Kara said, to corrupt the princesses by forcing them into ever more desperate and morally questionable means to save their husbands. The villain tries to get the pure and sugary sweet princesses to turn on each other, their kingdoms, and their families because she believes they're all Yanderes at heart who would go crazy for True Love.

Awesome. Make it canon.

We do need to establish why she wants to corrupt the Princesses, however. Maybe there's a prophecy that only a maiden of purest heart can bring about her downfall. Maybe the Princesses have some sort of inner magic of which they are unaware, and if their purity is compromised, she will be able to steal it from them.

edited 25th Jan '11 7:20:03 PM by Karalora

Or maybe it's because she wants reveng on all of them. Here's a villian I've bene building in ym head for a long, long time.

• takes deep breath*

Maleficent was first, the evil witch with magical powers, but after her defeat as dragon, she dragged her carcass into the sea, where she used the last of her powers to overthrow antlantica nad became Ursula. We all know how that turned out. Following her defeat by E Ric, Ursula awoke on the shore, with few memories of what had happened to her—transformed into a human. She rmembered a little fo the insane amount of power she once held, and this, as well as her always present vanity, led her to marry Snow white's father, so she could have access to his library of books—particularly the books of power. Snow white's story took place, and the witch fell over a cliff and onto a cliff side, landing almost on top of a magical flower which healed all wounds and granted youth. In the centuries before Rapunzel's story, the witch made a stop off in France, and did some transmogrification practice. She was chased away by a good fairy, one of her old Nemeses, and the Beast was left to work out his own story. finally came Rapunzel. After Rapunzel's tail was through, the witch now more mortal then ever, faded into the shadows, to seek her revenge.

You can make her as powerful as you wish, and name her whatever you want. I just thought it was an awesome idea, and I'm sure there's more ways to weave her into other princess stories.

I believe we can have the relationship drama in conjunction with the adventure; this can make it all the more fun. Why don't we try this twist with the villainness — let's say this "big bad" feels she has found enlightenment in some wishful thinking. Wishing to introduce this thinking for the good purposes, "Big Bad" decides to provoke the princesses out of their ol' boring day-to-day lives; stealing their raison d'etre of their prince. ("You don't need a prince. You can be better than this.")

"Big Bad" leaves a note for the princesses, to come and journey beyond the ends of the World for their kidnapped princes — which in fact, "Big Bad" offers the princes the utmost courtesy and kindness while they're in her care. Journeying along, I think tensions can arise as say, Snow White does not like Mulan's rough handling of the fighting, or something to that matter.

I myself like a touch of ambiguous morality in my stories — where the "Bad Girl" is not so clear cut to be made killed/defeated/Dropped off a ledge into the endless mist/etc. Possibly, the Bad Girl does mean well — but her good does not necessarily mean good for others.

Her name is Ophelia.

edited 25th Jan '11 9:43:15 PM by QQQQQ