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tartrazeen · 6 months

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I kinda think they should make an autistic Cinderella.

Like with all these modern retellings, why not have one where Cinderella's doing all these chores because she likes the routine, likes knowing her space, and even likes being indoors all the time?

The evil stepsisters aren't evil. One's just an extrovert who wants Cinderella to "be spontaneous!!!" and "make eye contact!!!!" and "go outside to these super cool and fun crowded parties!!!" And the other stepsister is also autistic, but she's spent all her life masking and she's pissed that Cinderella had a dad that let her "be weird" all the time.

The evil stepmother's an Autism Speaks mom who is so convinced that she has the hardest job of all. She and Cinderella's dad maybe bonded over it, and when the dad saw how nicely behaved her autistic daughter was, he thought maybe she'd be a good influence on Cinderella too. They get together, the stepmom starts trying to twist and shape Cinderella too, the dad puts a stop to it because "just let her sweep the fireplace, she likes seeing the progress she makes getting the soot out", and it isn't until he dies that the stepmom gets to really get in there and 'fix' this problem child.

Cinderella's not even forbidden from going to the ball. She's being forced to go. There's been an intense 'education' ever since the ball was announced, and this is the stepmother's chance to soar up the social ladder by showing how 'good' her methods are, so Cinderella's gonna go to goddamn ball and she's going to wear this bad-texture dress and she's going to like it, or the stepmom is going to lock her in a tower for the rest of her life.

Joke's on the stepmom 'cause Cinderella loves that tower, that's where all her coolest shit is, and straight-up locks herself in there after ripping that dress off her skin and escaping.

"Fine, I'll go back to having two daughters," the stepmom says, and drags everyone else out of the house to go to the ball.

Cinderella feels that tragic guilt and internalized sense of failure eating at her, just wanting to be 'normal' like her stepsisters. Eventually she decides she has no choice but to go to the ball, but she has nothing to wear since she ripped her dress up before.

There is another dress. Her extroverted stepsister is loud and always zipping around and torturously dragging her everywhere, but the upside is that she was freakishly focused on finding any kind of dress Cinderella would actually like. It ended up being a nice, loose-fitting dress - not too loose, because the stepsister refused to just put Cinderella in a frumpy rag, but bearable - and it came with some nice, stupidly sparkly, crystal slippers that Cinderella couldn't actually walk in because they sounded like a nightmare on the tile (but they goddamn pretty and the stepsister was like "ok treat yourself lol").

So Cinderella gets the comfiest walking clothes, puts her dress and shoes into a bag, throws some make-up in there too that she'll presumably figure out how to wear when she's outside the castle, and marches her ass to the ball.

They do not let her in lol she's all sweaty and not dressed

Okay, no problem, she can just get dressed outside. That was roughly her plan anyway. She finds a garden, finds a little corner, gets changed, drops her make-up in the fountain, learns she is not wearing those shoes, and still doesn't get let inside because Formal Wear Only™.

She's now stupidly sitting out there - maybe making a few bad attempts to get in - until the gates burst open and someone in a gorgeous, fairy blue dress is storming out, absolutely enraged at the red wine spilled down the side of it. This woman's getting ready to leave, furious that - oh btw everyone's black in this; cinderella, the sisters, the mom, the dad, but for some variety, i'd love the fairy godmother to essentially be some bombastic Bollywood actress who's deliberately in the centre of every frame she's in, even if the focus is supposed to be on someone else - anyway, she's furious that no one in this giant castle can help her fix this, doesn't anyone here know how to clean a stupid stain

Cinderella's like "owo what's this"

So Blue Fairy sees this sweaty teenager creeping up like, "i'll fix your dress if you can get me inside to where the cleaning supplies are," almost like she's here offering a wish, but who's also uncomfortably far away when she first speaks so the Blue Fairy has to be like, "WHAT."

Cinderella goes, "um... i said i could help fix -"

"YOU'RE TOO QUIET, TALK LOUDER."

Cinderella's like :/ but goes closer and starts again.

The Blue Fairy's like, "HEY MY EYES ARE UP HERE, WHERE EXACTLY ARE YOU LOOKING"

And Cinderella's like omg fml and summons aaaaaaaall the 'training' she got from her mother, slapping on the most perfect mask she had drilled into her, and says clearly and steadily, "Dear madam, I would like to offer a trade. Should you so kindly decide to -"

And the Blue Fairy's like, "ok that's worse, go back to the no-eye-contact thing, hey where are your shoes, there are rocks everywhere, even i wouldn't go barefoot lol"

So Cinderella is about to lose her mind here but she finally gets to blurt out, "Go inside, I'll wash the dress." And it's the very blunt, to-the-point tone that she always uses when her loud stepsister gets in the way of her chores like fifty times, and she can feel her stepmother about to yell at her for being such a disgrace, but she said it nicely forty-nine times and her stepsister keeps walking around the clean floor 'cause "oops i forgot something"...

... but the Blue Fairy's like, "Okay yeah lol just say that why did it take so long, let's go"

Hell, Cinderella could've gone fully nonverbal and just tried to pantomime this - or had some cards specifically about cleaning or something. Go nuts. The point is that Cinderella's "disgraceful" way of speaking (according to her stepmother) was exactly the right way to get her message across this time and the Blue Fairy's happy someone got to the point for once.

So now Cinderella's being led back to the gate and the guards go to stop her, but the Blue Fairy's like, "She's with me. She's gotta clean the dress." The guards start to protest and the Blue Fairy is about to UNLEASH, but obviously this isn't the first time this has happened, so the guards are just go along with it and let them both inside.

The Blue Fairy - since this isn't her castle - just sorta wanders around from room to room looking for something 'cleaning-shaped', while Cinderella hears the cacophony of music and noise deeper in the castle. It's the sort of sound she knows will be physically painful if she gets close enough, and she's dreading having to actually go there soon.

Eventually they find some sort of cleaning room on a random-ass floor of this place - and there's just some guy already hanging out there. And he looks panicked when he sees the Blue Fairy coming in with her big dress, like he knows her, but the Blue Fairy's like, "calm down, i'm not here for you, I'm here to fix my dress."

'Cause she's the fairy godmother, right? She's not Cinderella's godmother. She's this guy's. Who's hiding. 'Cause he's the prince and he thinks it's goddamn loud out there too.

So Cinderella gets to work looking for cleaning supplies and the prince realizes what she's after and hands it to her. She's impressed that he knew what she needed, which sets him off on a long, long, long explanation of the history of this particular supply's cleaning properties. The Blue Fairy lasts for like forty seconds of this and then says, "I love you, but omg, I cannot be trapped here listening to this. Back later, Cinderella, make sure that thing's ready by midnight because i have to give a speech or whatever and the whole thing's ruined if I don't have my dress."

So Cinderella and the prince talk for hours about cleaning supplies (well, the prince talks, and Cinderella's happy to listen as she works on this dress). Then Cinderella tells him about how she got here and her life, and especially about her stepmother, and the prince says his dad is exactly the same way and this whole ball is just to marry him off before anyone realizes he's a 'dud' (according to his dad). It's a great bonding moment.

And then she hears the clock chiming midnight.

And the stain is setting.

And she realizes in horror that the Blue Fairy never returned, so she has to go find her and give that dress back.

She and the prince run out of the cleaning room and to the Blue Fairy's bedroom - but the Blue Fairy isn't there. And at this time of night, the only place she could be is about to give her speech!!! She panics and goes running towards the place she's been trying to avoid the most: the middle of that dancefloor, because that's where the Blue Fairy is supposed to be addressing everyone who showed up. The prince doesn't have time to say anything before Cinderella goes running off, still in her dried-but-sweaty dress, barefoot, awkward half-done make-up that stands out under the ballroom's brilliant lights.

It uhhhhhh

Well.

It goes as well as you'd expect.

The crowd of guests make a path - not for her, but for the prince following after her - and so she finds herself effortlessly trapped in the middle of all of them when she stops. Because there's the Blue Fairy, about to give a speech, and wearing a red dress now.

Because obviously the Blue Fairy wouldn't just go give a speech without wearing clothes (even though she literally yanked her blue dress off to give it to Cinderella to clean). And obviously the Blue Fairy had more than one dress.

And everyone is staring at her now.

Not at the Blue (Red?) Fairy, but at Cinderella, holding a crumpled blue dress to her chest and looking horrifically out of place.

She runs, and the people don't make a path for her like they did when she had the prince in tow, which also implies that the prince isn't running after her this time. She hears her name being called but she doesn't stop running, and doesn't even feel how badly her feet hurt until she's halfway home.

Her stepfamily finds her, riding home along the same road. Her stepmother is absolutely livid at this embarrassment - not the least of which because Cinderella is still holding that dress, having effectively stolen from the castle. Her stepsisters are reacting differently. While her stepmother goes on about the travesty Cinderella truly is, how she'll always be like this, how she should never have even bothered trying to help Cinderella at all...

... her stepsister - the autistic one, hearing every single thing her mother is saying - calmly steps out of the carriage and takes off her shoes. She gives them to Cinderella, and the stepsister puts on her own dress shoes instead. Still kind of a snob about it (because personalities don't instantly change), she tells Cinderella, "Unlike you, I actually learned how to walk in heels. So you can wear my slippers. I can't believe you got this far without any shoes."

And the stepmother's demanding that her daughter get back into the carriage, to not let all their good work go to waste by being "just like Cinderella".

And there's a whole lot that the stepsister looks like she wants to say.

But being a good snob about it, she only says, "Walk, Cinderella. It's what embarrassments do."

They walk the rest of the way home together. It's some damn good bonding between them.

When they're home, the stepmother's nowhere to be seen, but Cinderella's stuff has been piled in crappy bags on the front step. The other stepsister's waiting there too, looking like an absolute mess. She was the one who bought Cinderella that other, comfier dress, and if she'd known it would've been why Cinderella got in and got caught up in that situation, she wouldn't have done it.

Cinderella explains the thing with the Blue Fairy, and how she got in because of her own experience and skills. She doesn't blame the other stepsister for trying to be nice in her usual, loud, in-everyone's-face kind of way.

The snobby stepsister does chide the other one for buying those ridiculous glass shoes for Cinderella without even showing her how to walk in them. And the other sister's like, "they were sparkly okay?? you know i'm always buying that stuff when i see it >:( hey where are they"

And it turns out Cinderella left them both at the castle. Probably in that cleaning room, along with her other stuff.

But the three sisters are closer than ever, finally feeling like three sisters for the first time. And they end up banding together the next day, with the loud sister willingly causing distractions to keep the stepmom away from the other two, and the snobby sister staying snobby but... y'know... finally letting herself relax enough to go barefoot that day too (v scandalous 👀)

They put that whole night behind them outside of the fun stories they can tell. The snobby sister says her fancy headpiece/tiara thing actually covers her ears on purpose, because yes, everything was exactly that loud. The loud sister says she barely noticed, but she barely notices most things lol great food though :D And Cinderella tells them both about the prince and the cleaning supplies, and they talk about how much it must suck to be royal and need to hide in a corner somewhere, but get berated by the king for doing it. That's rough, so it's almost a relief that things went so badly that she kept him too distracted to pick a wife. What if it'd been one of them? Loooool

Meanwhile the stepmom is in pleasant hysterics over how everyone sees how hard she has to work to control her awful daughter uwu

Eventually, there's a knock on the door. And who is it but the Blue Fairy, now wearing a green dress, and who's been wandering from house to house for the last couple of weeks. She's trying to find who this mysterious girl at the ball was, since Chatty Cathy there never thought of asking for Cinderella's name and she feels just awful about how the night ended. She'd completely lost track of time and totally forgot Cinderella was even still there! She didn't mean to do that, and she changed her dress so she could still go to the party in the meantime, and then suddenly it was midnight and she had to give her speech. She's very sorry.

Cinderella doesn't hear any of this, because it's the stepmother who actually answers the door. The stepmother asks why the Blue Fairy thinks this is the house, and the answer's that everyone in town has been pitying and praising the stepmother for having to care for the girl who ruined the royal ball. It's great too, because the prince really took a liking to this mystery girl, and the king was so relieved that he's willing to marry them today if it's possible. How did they get along so well in just a night? "some people just have those vibes tbh"

The stepmother knows exactly what vibes the Blue Fairy means.

And she goes to collect her snobby daughter instead, setting Cinderella to work by conveniently knocking something over that's gonna need some time to clean.

"Here's my strange, darling daughter who captivated the prince," the stepmother says. "One look into her eyes and you'll see exactly what vibes she and the prince apparently share."

The Blue Fairy shrugs and looks (btw a reminder: everyone's black) at the stepsister, who's gotten comfortable enough not forcing herself to stare unblinkingly into other people's eyes that it startles her enough to drop her gaze. Very similar.

The Blue Fairy kind of goes like, "🤔 was that her? Wait, I've got these glass shoes. Do they fit?"

And yes they fit. That's how the stepsister was able to give Cinderella her slippers. Their feet are the same size.

So the Blue Fairy goes, "🤷🏽‍♀️ works for me" and the stepsister goes, "wow I can't believe the prince liked me when we barely spoke a word" and the Blue Fairy's like, "I knooooooww he just talks so much sometimes 😭" and off they go

The other two sisters don't find out for a while. It's sudden, sure, but the ball was to marry the prince off. It looks like the royal family got what they wanted, and the stepmother has turned her sights onto truly 'fixing' her 'problems'. Turns out the loud stepsister wasn't safe either. She's been too loud and too zippy for too long.

It isn't too long before there's another knock on the door, though. It's the prince this time, finally here for himself. Turns out - shockingly! - people with 'vibes' aren't interchangeable, and while the snobby sister may be autistic... she's still kinda snobby. She absolutely hates talking about cleaning supplies, for one thing, which is sort of a quirky lifelong unshakable interest of the prince.

The stepsister wasn't pleased with the mix-up, but she wasn't going to lie about it. Maybe if this had been before that heart-to-heart on the walk back, but she's changed, and she tells the prince about Cinderella. And then rips him a new one for being so ungentlemanly that he didn't even ask a lady for her name before she left the ball, and let her leave just because the lights in that ballroom hit him with a cow-sized migraine. Despite the tone :/, the prince agrees :/, he supposes :/. And then he sets off to find the real lady he met that night.

The first thing they do is talk about how the dress turned out. Perfect! Absolutely perfect! It went right into the Blue Fairy's closet with all the others, never to be seen again, but it was perfect!

The second thing they do is talk about how those cleaning supplies worked a lot faster than Cinderella could've led someone to believe. It sure does seem like she drew it out enough to talk to him. Maybe she was also enjoying it?

The third thing they day is set the record for the kingdom's longest goddamn marriage vows, which they think are super interesting but nobody else does, and the Blue Fairy lasts for about ten minutes before she's so bored that she can't keep sitting there. They're the first royal couple to ever have an intermission at that part, and they're the only royal couple to have not even noticed.

The two stepsisters get some of the best seats in the house. The snobby sister even catches someone's eye, who's quite pleased to look down on those who can't manage to tell forks apart or appreciate the social script for events ameng high society. The loud sister was making new friends, stopped everything to get into the fountain and retrieve a make-up set, hopped back out and went back to her conversation like nothing ever happened, and only kinda regretted it when she put her stuff down on a table and completely forgot it was there. :/ The Blue Fairy did that shit all the time though, so she got her back with a fully upgraded set. 👏🏽

And the stepmother, definitively daughterless and not invited, spent the rest of her days wondering how her ungrateful children could've cut her off so coldly.

YAY THE END

#my stuff #good job tartra #is this anything?#it might be #Cinderella #but everybody's black #and autistic #or has adhd #yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

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