Merida is the brave Scottish princess who just wants to be in control of her own life in the Disney animated film Brave. But as a princess, she has almost no control. Her mother tells her what to wear, where to go, what to do, even when and who she’ll marry. Merida isn’t ready for marriage now, maybe not ever. Her destiny is boxing her in. She needs to change that fast, but how? Magic of course! Merida meets a witch who agrees to give her a spell to change her mother, thereby changing Merida’s fate. This time, in a brand-new Disney Twisted Tale, Merida messes everything up by using the spell on herself! Now Merida’s changed everyone’s fate, and she realizes that things may have been better before. Can she change fate back to its original plan, or has she ruined everything for everyone? Find out in Fate Be Changed by Farrah Rochon!
[Warning: My review of Fate Be Changed may contain some spoilers!]
Merida decides to twist her own tale in Fate Be Changed
Merida wishes she’d been born as someone else. Don’t get me wrong, she loves her family and would miss them if she were someone else, but she really hates being a princess. She hates the lessons, she hates the responsibility, she hates the clothes, and she hates the traditions.
Especially the marriage traditions. Especially the one that says she has to marry the winner of the highland games, at just fourteen! She wants nothing to do with any of it. Merida just wants to ride her horse and shoot her bow. So she decides to do just that and win her own hand in marriage at the games. She succeeds, but it throws the whole kingdom into chaos.
Since that idea to gain control of her fate didn’t work, Merida looks for another way. She finds one in the form of a witch. The witch offers her a spell that will change her mother, which Merida assumes will then change her own fate. But she gets to thinking, perhaps she should just skip a step and change herself? So she eats the little cake that contains the spell instead of giving it to her mom. And gets very sick before passing out.
The major ripple effects of Merida changing her story in Brave
When she wakes up, she doesn’t know where she is, but there’s a girl there that she’s never met before. Merida has never heard of a princess Elinor, although the clan the girl is from is the same as her mothers. Only her mother’s clan was destroyed back before Merida was born. Even more strange, Elinor has never heard of Merida or her father’s kingdom before, either. What is going on?
As Merida gathers more information, she comes to the realization that the spell the witch gave her, sent her back in time! Princess Elinor is actually her mother! Now Merida has to figure out how to get back to her proper time.
But there’s a bigger problem. Merida managed to go back to the exact moment that her parents originally met. Her presence stopped them from meeting. And there is no love lost between their two clans. Now the chances of them meeting each other, let alone managing to fall in love, are practically zero. Obviously, this has some major implications for Merida. But the ripples of her parents not uniting will affect more than just her, as she begins to see.
So Now Merida has two missions. She still needs to get back to her own time. But she can’t leave until she manages to bring her parents together. And they hate each other. Oh, and did I mention there’s a deadline! She has to figure everything out before the summer solstice that’s just two weeks away!
And Merida thought being a princess was hard. She’d give anything to go back and just argue with her mom (her adult mom) again. Merida is learning to appreciate her life a lot while she’s stuck in the past, and she’s also coming to understand why her mother is how she is. But will any of that help her to mend what she broke, get back home, or ultimately change her fate?
An ancient Back to the Future for this Disney Twisted Tale
I couldn’t help but feel like a lot of the premise of Fate Be Changed was drawn from the movie Back to the Future. Like Marty McFly, (Irish, not Scottish, although that would have been funny), Merida travels in time and interferes with her parents’ cute-meet. Like Marty, she takes the place of her father in the meeting, being injured and having her mother nurse her back to health when originally it was her father who was injured and nursed.
Both Merida and Marty also have to try and get their parents together. And it seems like both their parents want nothing to do with each other. And both have a hard deadline they are up against. Plus, they both have to also figure out how to get back home after getting their parents together. And both return to dramatically better lives thanks to their interference. There’s even a Doc Brown in Fate Be Changed in the form of the witch that sends Merida back and helps her get back home.
See, very similar. Of course, Elinor doesn’t fall in love with Merida, so that icky incest plot is thankfully dropped. But that doesn’t mean that Fate Be Changed isn’t an original story. Indeed, it’s a better “meet your parents” story than Back to the Future.
You see, in Back to the Future, Marty spends the whole time trying to change his parents to improve his life, and he does. But he doesn’t actually change anything about himself (it takes him two more movies and lots more time travel to manage that) but Merida does change in the course of this story. She learns from her experiences with her parents, not only about why they are the way they are, but how she personally can be a better person. It’s her personal growth that makes Fate Be Changed a better story and one definitely worth reading.
Rating: 8/10
Fate be Changed by Farrah Rochon is now available where books are sold. Are you planning on picking up this new Disney Twisted Tale? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus or in The Cosmic Circus Discord.
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