Writing Challenge Tuesday: Carried on the Back of a Turtle

Twice in as many weeks, the geek world has been rocked by the loss of an icon. I admit, I wasn’t sure what to say about this last week. What author doesn’t look up to Terry Pratchett? Who didn’t curse and swear when the word of his illness was released?

One of the things I most loved about his work, and still do (because work outlives the man) was his penchant for reimagining. I remember very early on in life hearing the tale of The Little Match Girl. It was this “sweet” story by Hans Christian Anderson which people told around the holidays. And if you’ve ever lived in any sort of poverty situation, it’s not sweet at all. It’s like the demonic lovechild of Ayn Rand meets Fox News and tells bedtime stories.

The gist, for those not familiar, is this. A little girl who sells matches freezes to death on New Year’s Eve, because she can’t go home. You see, she’s afraid her father will beat her for not selling enough matches. She lights one, then another, then another, trying to keep warm. Then she dies and her dead grandmother goes with her to heaven. Now, to be fair, there is some “sweet” stuff in there about her grandmother being the only one who was ever good to her. But the end result of the story is “poverty stricken child dies of perfectly solvable problems and is now noble and heartfelt despite the fact that no one nearby her did a thing to help before she was dead.”

Mind you, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder for that story because I’m not fond of the noble poor person trope. It’s something overused for the purpose of ignoring privilege, which irritates me. All the same, the story is appalling, and it’s one I dread every year around NYE as people dredge out “classics.”

Terry Pratchett took a run at this story once, and I loved what he had to say. I don’t know that I can ask anyone to try and write with his legacy looming, but here’s my thought: Reinvent a story that has an ending you hated.