Re-Spinning Fairy Tales: Female Agency, Journeys, and Worlds

For most, the telling and hearing of myths, legends, and fairy tales remain most closely associated with childhood. Author Patricia A. McKillip, however, has made a successful career by taking myths, legends, and fairy tales and reinventing them into elements of her own fairy tale-esque novels. Whether using the legend of Tam Lin, the firebird, the Knights of the Round Table, or the Lady of Shalott, McKillip repeatedly puts her own spin on these tales that may become her entire story or merely a subplot within. McKillip grants newfound agency to formerly damsel-in-distress female characters, allowing them their own hero’s journeys, which frequently results in a duomyth tale between male and female protagonists. She then takes the patriarchal worlds of fairy tales and changes them so that magic, control, power, and knowledge become associated with female characters, abandoning their traditional association with male institutions and characters. In these new worlds, McKillip’s female heroes possess an instinctual understanding for the worlds their journeys take place in, allowing them to more easily deal with the world’s rules and obstacles than their male counterparts, who become blind and unknowing in their new, feminine settings.

These patterns in McKillip’s appropriation of her source material become especially clear in her novels In the Forests of Serre and The Tower at Stony Wood. In the Forests of Serre draws heavily from Russian and Slavic folklore. In particular it borrows from the tale Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird, and the Grey Wolf and the Russian folklore witch Baba Yaga (Pilinovsky 36). The Tower at Stony Wood leans on Arthurian legend for source material and inspiration, reinventing Alfred Tennyson’s poem, “The Lady of Shalott,” and the quests of the Knights of the Round Table in its multiple intertwined narratives.

The first change Patricia A. McKillip makes to the tales she uses is the gift of agency to her female characters, which can be seen especially clearly in her adaptation of “The Lady of Shalott” in her novel The Tower at Stony Wood. In Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” the title character resides inside a tower, weaving images of the outside world she sees through a magical mirror. Should she ever directly look upon the outside world or leave her tower she will die from a spell cast on her. The Lady has no control over her situation, never makes any attempt to find a way to thwart the spell, and finally leaves her tower to die when she sees Lancelot ride by. Lancelot, not her, possesses the poem’s agency. The Lady of Shalott has zero agency and never attempts to gain any.


In The Tower at Stony Wood, McKillip disperses her version of the Lady of Shalott into three women, all of whom possess greater agency than the Lady of Shalott. Melanthos, the most prominent of these three women, lives in the country of Skye. A strong-willed young woman, she spends much of her time in an enchanted tower with a mirror showing images of elsewhere, images Melanthos embroiders before tossing out the tower window as directed by the tower’s magic. Unlike the Lady of Shalott, Melanthos may enter and depart from the tower any time she chooses, in the face of objections from her friends and family who want her to stay away from the tower. While the tower does exhibit an unusual pull over her, Melanthos takes important action outside of the tower, going so far as to find Cyan Dag, the novel’s main character and knight, to bring him to her tower when she believes her mother needs him. Like the Lady of Shalott, Melanthos embroiders what she sees in the mirror. Unlike the Lady of Shalott, Melanthos creates images that serve an active purpose to the plot - they guide Cyan on his quest, reversing “The Lady of Shalott” in which Lancelot’s appearance guides the Lady out of her tower and to her death. In the character of Melanthos, McKillip takes and subverts the character of the Lady of Shalott, twisting her actions and identity into someone fully capable of acting in and impacting the world of her story.


After granting agency to her female characters, Patricia A. McKillip allots a myth or journey to the lead female character, turning her into a second protagonist whose path runs parallel, perpendicular, or against that of the male protagonist. According to Christine Mains, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Brownsville, “The paradigmatic structural pattern of the hero’s quest for identity is Joseph Campbell’s monomyth,” in which, “the hero undertakes many tasks, from battling dragons to answering riddles, receiving aid and advice from secondary characters, and uniting with a powerful figure of the opposite gender in the Sacred Marriage” (25). McKillip takes the “secondary female figures” or the “powerful figure of the opposite gender” and turns at least one of them into a second hero. Princess Sidonie fulfills this role in In the Forests of Serre.

With In the Forests of Serre, McKillip takes the character of Helen the Beautiful and elevates her into the character of Princess Sidonie, the story’s female hero whose quest equals and intertwines with that of Prince Ronan, the male hero. In Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird, and the Grey Wolf, Ivan seeks to retrieve the firebird and along the way must win a number of prizes for other tsars, all of which he manages to keep at the end thanks to the Grey Wolf’s aid. Helen the Beautiful is one of these prizes, a beautiful girl he wins in order to trade for the Tsar’s golden-bridled horse, but falls in love with instead on their journey to the Tsar. Helen has absolutely no agency in this tale. When Ivan’s jealous brothers kill him and claim her as their own, she does nothing but go along with their demands until Ivan, brought to life by the Grey Wolf, returns in time to stop her wedding. The character of Helen truly functions as no more than the greatest of Ivan’s prizes.

Fig. 1. A. Lopatine, Prince Ivan and the Grey Wolf.

Princess Sidonie of Dacia begins McKillip’s tale a prize of sorts, for she is to marry Prince Ronan of Serre to prevent Ronan’s father from conquering her land. She possesses little to no agency when she helplessly appeals to the wizard Unciel to help her, but as she travels to Serre and then discovers Ronan has gone missing, her agency slowly builds along with her journey. Finding the prospect of living with a heartless Ronan unbearable, she undertakes to escape and deal with the dangerous Baba Yaga for the return of Ronan’s heart. Her action prompts the Queen to force Ronan to rescue her and regain his heart, allowing for a shift in power so that Sidonie, in fact, drives the story and the male protagonist’s actions.

In the Forests of Serre combines Ronan and Sidonie’s quests to create a duomyth. Christine Mains suggests that in a duomyth two seemingly separate quests are in fact, “a single quest split between the masculine and feminine aspects of the hero” (29). Ronan and Sidonie both go on journeys that intertwine and become the two sides of a single coin. Ronan must learn to deal with, find, and ultimately heal his heart, which the deaths of his wife and child broke. Sidonie must find herself, seek out Ronan’s heart, and ultimately discover what she is worth. Their potential relationship motivates all of these actions which come together when Ronan tells Sidonie, “‘you’re worth my heart … that’s what you risked your life to get’” (278). McKillip divides the myth between the two characters on each side of a relationship, male and female, Ronan and Sidonie. Ronan and Sidonie can be seen as the masculine and feminine aspects of the hero searching for him or herself as a necessary step on the path to love.

Aside from providing female characters with their own quests in her translation of fairy tales and legends, McKillip also takes the mythical worlds from such stories, which generally possess distinctly masculine qualities, and makes them into what is very feminine, from magic to understanding to power to control. Her main characters are frequently strangers to such worlds, their rules, and their general systems.

The worlds of Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird, and the Grey Wolf and the Arthurian legends primarily exist as patriarchal structures. In the story of Ivan, every character acting to change or drive the story is a man. Ivan’s father sends his three sons on a quest to find the firebird. Other tsars, also male, send Ivan on quests before they will give him what he needs to win the firebird. And last, but perhaps most important of all, the grey wolf, who guides and aids Ivan, is, himself, male. Helen the Beautiful stands as the sole female in the story, and as discussed earlier, she serves as a prize with about the same agency as a trophy or crown.

Men in positions of power dominate the Arthurian legends while women, though significant, hold little sway over their own lives. Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, and Guinevere stand as the four most significant characters. Arthur rules the land as king, Merlin backs him as the most powerful magic user in the land, Lancelot and all of the other Knights of the Round Table take heroic actions recorded in tales, and Guinevere, as opposed to doing anything like the others, becomes the object of desire that rends Arthur and Lancelot apart, until they fight over her. As though she were the bone and they the dogs. In “The Lady of Shalott,” the Lady possesses absolutely no power, and thus no agency. Lancelot, on the other hand, has such power that his mere appearance in the Lady’s mirror drives her to leave her tower and accept her departure’s accompanying death. The balance of power, control, and magic rests solidly with the male sex.

Magic defines the world of Serre and plays the largest role in creating a female persona for the environment. Magic lies at the heart of Serre, and, “‘Serre’s heart is ancient, wild, and very lively’” (39). The wizard Gyre observes Serre “seemed to be patched together out of children’s tales,” and in fact two figures out of Russian and Slavic folklore, and hence, children’s tales, stand at its center, binding it together (39). One, the witch Brume, based off of Baba Yaga, and two, the firebird.

McKillip bases the witch Brume off of Baba Yaga, transplanting her into the tale of Ivan and the firebird and in doing so creating a dominant female presence that defines her world in a story previously filled by strong male and weak female characters. Brume’s forest domain, in particular, reveals her connection to the witch Baba Yaga from Russian folklore, as well as her importance to a novel titled In the Forests of Serre (Pilinovsky 38). Brume is, obviously, female, and interestingly enough traverses the range of femininity, appearing at one time an ugly, fat hag, and the next a shockingly beautiful woman. She is “the Mother of All Witches,” the first and foremost object of fear in Serre’s forest, the one person who, “with her in front of [Ronan], he had nothing else to fear” (1, 2). Yet, the characters of In the Forests of Serre continually return to her, for they all become wrapped up in the world of Serre, a world that revolves around local magic that all comes back to Brume and the firebird. McKillip adds the character of Baba Yaga to the tale of Ivan and the firebird, and in doing so she creates a dominant female presence in the story, one who overshadows the male rulers, the prince, and every other significant male character from the original tale. At the end of the tale, Prince Ronan even goes so far as to say, “‘leave my father to Brume,’” recognizing in her a force dominant over the powerful King Ferus (291).

The firebird serves as Brume’s counter, a mythical creature McKillip both feminizes and grants greater importance to in her tale. The firebird reveals her female nature when, “She stood at the road’s end, in all her wild beauty of fire and ivory, bird and human” (159). The firebird is the object of desire, the witch Brume the object of fear and repulsion. As Ronan states when Gyre gives the firebird’s egg to Brume, “‘you have given the most beautiful thing in the world to the most hideous thing in the world’” (285). In Ivan’s quest, the firebird lives as the possession of a tsar and is neither identified as male nor female. While Ivan’s ultimate goal, the firebird fails to play a large role in the story, serving primarily as the instigator for a series of adventures. In McKillip’s novel, the firebird not only becomes human, but plays a role just as large as that of Brume, which is to say, Brume and the firebird stand as the most significant characters McKillip’s heroes encounter, the personifications of the world of Serre. The firebird enchants Ronan and other characters, brings Ronan, Sidonie, and others to the witch Brume, saves Ronan from the wizard Gyre, and generally weaves its way throughout In the Forests of Serre. Where Brume exists as a character of opposition Ronan and Sidonie must deal with and overcome, the firebird ties the characters and storylines together, bringing them where they need to be how they need to be and changing them through its very presence. Ultimately, the witch Brume and the firebird transform the patriarchal world of Tsarevitch Ivan into a world defined by female magic, the world of Serre, which Brume and the firebird embody as recognized by Ronan when he sees them, “wearing one another’s faces … and their faces became indistinguishable in his heart’s eye” (286).

McKillip also feminizes the patriarchal worlds of fairy tales by granting control, knowledge, and power to the female characters who define her worlds, as she does in The Tower at Stony Wood. Her novel The Tower at Stony Wood possesses a single, male main protagonist in the character of Cyan Dag, a knight in the mold of the Knights of the Round Table. The female characters he encounters include Melanthos and Sel, two of the three characters influenced by the Lady of Shalott, both of whom possess greater control, knowledge, and power than the Lady of Shalott. Both Melanthos and Sel can enter and leave their tower at will, despite its magic bindings. Sel, in fact, destroys the tower when she rediscovers her magic and leaves for the underwater kingdom she came from. Cyan grabs onto her in an attempt to hold her back, only to be dragged with her and ends up, “racked like a fish out of water, trying to breathe” (220). Cyan later tells Melanthos, “‘it was you who called her back,’” and had Melanthos not called Sel back to land, Sel would have pulled him under, drowning him, unaware of his presence (257). The Lady of Shalott, in contrast, cannot even leave her tower, let alone destroy it, and Lancelot draws her so powerfully she leaves her tower to die. In an utter reversal of roles, Sel nearly kills Cyan because she does not notice him holding onto her. “‘Thank you for finding me again,’” Cyan tells Melanthos when she comes to guide him back from a tower he leaves, further reversing the Lady of Shalott scenario and further demonstrating the control, power, and knowledge McKillip grants to the female characters who define her worlds (257).

In her subverted worlds of fairy tales, McKillip’s female heroes inevitably grasp the world and its rules more quickly than their male counterparts, who frequently become blind or unknowing along their journey. This becomes particularly clear with In the Forests of Serre, with the duomyth of Ronan and Sidonie. Ronan, unlike Sidonie, has spent his entire life in Serre, so it stands to reason he ought to understand and deal with it better than she. But it is Ronan, not Sidonie, who rides over Brume’s hen and fails to find a way to appease her without endangering himself and his men, so that at the end of their encounter Brume curses him. Ronan, not Sidonie, becomes enchanted by the firebird, and Ronan alone makes the terrible mistake of trading his heart to Brume for his freedom. In his inability to deal with Brume and leave the forest Ronan becomes unknowing and his enchantment by the firebird blinds him even to Sidonie’s presence.


In contrast, Sidonie enters Serre for the first time in her life and avoids Brume until she decides to trade for Ronan’s heart. When Sidonie does decide to find Brume, the firebird guides her to Brume’s cottage, instead of enchanting her as it did Ronan. Sidonie enters and attempts to bargain for Ronan’s life. Failing in that, Sidonie remembers a “scene from one of Auri’s tales” and tricks Brume into demonstrating how to cut her own hair before pinning Brume to the floor with her own scissors (274). Ronan could have remembered a tale to help him; he tells his mother, “‘you used to tell me tales of her; that’s how I recognized her’” (11). Sidonie only fails to escape from Brume because Ronan runs in to rescue her as she runs out, and the two collide in the process. McKillip’s female characters possess an instinct and understanding that allows them to handle the magic, power, and knowledge of their worlds, all characteristically female after McKillip’s subversion, in ways her male characters simply fail to use.

McKillip’s appropriation and reinvention of fairy tales possess importance outside of her work as well as inside. Fairy tales, though fantastical and unreal, inform people’s worldviews as they grow up, frequently teaching lessons and morals even as they fill children’s heads with wondrous tales. While many tales have one specific lesson in mind, they all teach many more unconsciously. If the traditional gender roles of fairy tales are subverted so that female characters gain greater agency, it should benefit society as the unspoken lessons regarding gender become more balanced and reflect the understanding of gender society possesses today. McKillip’s own work undoubtedly remains too advanced for little children, but the potential remains for her to be at the forefront of a new trend in fairy tales, and even with older audiences the potential for impact remains.

Ultimately, McKillip’s use and changing of fairy tales, their female characters, journeys, and worlds reflect some of the modern world and attitudes society possesses today. Tales play a key role in shaping perceptions of society and the world, continually adapting as time goes by. McKillip serves the natural progression of tales by relocating many old tales often forgotten today and putting her own spin on them. The end results include many fine novels that capture much of the feel of the tales they originate from, despite the changes they undergo. For that, at the very least, the literary world owes a debt to Patricia A. McKillip, as it does to everyone who contributes to its ever-growing body of literature.



Works Cited

Heiner, Heidi Anne. “Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf.” SurLaLune Fairy Tales. 10 July 2007 .
Lopatine, A. Prince Ivan and the Grey Wolf. 14 Nov. 2008.
Mains, Christine. “Having It All: The Female Hero’s Quest for Love and Power in Patricia A. McKillip’s Riddle-Master Trilogy.” Extrapolation. 46.1 (2005): 25-35. Proquest. Leavey Lib., Los Angeles. 4 Nov. 2008 .
McKillip, Patricia A. In the Forests of Serre. New York: Ace Books, 2003.
McKillip, Patricia A. The Tower at Stony Wood. New York: Ace Books, 2000.
Pilinovsky, Helen. “The Mother of All Witches: Baba Yaga and Brume in Patricia A. McKillip’s In the Forrest of Serre.” Extrapolation. 46.1 (2005): 36-49. Proquest. Leavey Lib., Los Angeles. 4 Nov. 2008 .
Tennyson, Alfred. “The Lady of Shalott.” The Lady of Shalott. 13 Nov. 2008.

Artist's Statement

The whims of my fleeting thoughts prevent me from writing most stories. The process of artistic creation, or storytelling through writing, in my case, may be more accurately described as the process of dismissal.

When I decide to sit down and come up with a new story, at some point I inevitably let my mind loose to chase down ideas, words, fragments of thoughts as though it were a playful dog chasing butterflies or leaves blowing through the air. Many, many things come to mind, then, and most of them I dismiss and forget as quickly as they arrive. Waiting until the glimmer of an undeniable idea catches my attention and keeps my free spirited thoughts returning to it.

Usually my fascination centers around a combination of action/situation and character, the first firmly delineated if lacking in details, the second a vague sketch. Something about the combination must hold me still, at which point I play with it as though it were clay or Play-Doh, molding it into many different shapes for a certain time, after which I take inventory of what I have, decide what I think of the ideas, decide what I want, and for the first time purposefully direct the creation of my story.

At this point my perpetual interest in connections vs. isolation begins to shape my action or situation and character around it, provided it wasn’t already built into my initial conception of character or situation. Usually the idea of connections between people, or their absence, is not built into the action or situation that captures my interest.

As I begin to pencil in my vague sketches of characters, this element almost always appears as part of their core identity. Does a character need or want to connect? Is a character isolated? Most frequently I examine the desire to change from isolation to connection, which may result in action that may, in turn, result in success.

My own experiences, the experiences of others I’ve observed, and those of stories I’ve known, in that order, inform my focus and exploration of isolation and connection. They shape my own perception of the idea, and with that perception informing me I find and create characters whose wants and needs revolve around their connection or lack of it to others around them.

At the same time, I develop a vague or tentative conception of my plot. Once I have both my characters and this plot conception I focus on inserting my characters into the plot and modifying the plot around their identities, wants, and needs, all of which return to the idea of connection. As the two coalesce I begin to write, and my story takes on physical definition before coming alive.

City of Ember

I have never read Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember. So I can’t approach the film version of City of Ember, directed by Gil Kenan and written by Caroline Thompson, with the knowledge of what this story originally was. I think in this case that may be a boon of sorts.

I’ve read in various reviews that the movie’s lost much of what made the prose story great. I’m entirely willing to believe that – rarely have I read a book and then seen the film version and not considered it inferior to the story in its original medium. But I find that I’m actually somewhat glad not to have read the novel first, because this way I think I can appreciate the movie for what it is, rather than what it may have failed to live up to.

First, while the movie may have lost much of what made the book special, it effectively cast my mind back to William Nicholson’s Wind on Fire trilogy. These novels bear a number of similarities to the City of Ember storyline, from a fantastic world, to children who break the rules of their city and eventually leave it to save their people, to a pair of main characters, one boy and one girl, and so on. And while the original plot certainly contributes to the similarity, I believe Gil Kenan and Caroline Thompson accomplished something by duplicating what I imagine is also the feel of Jeanne DuPrau’s novel.

I’m guessing several aspects of the film allow for the translation of this feel onto screen. One, the world itself has been visually transposed onto screen in marvelous fashion. The yellow light of the world itself, coming from many, many yellow light bulbs would have to take first prize. But after that come the sets, the costumes, and the look of the characters themselves. Everything puts the viewer into another world, another life on a visual level. Everything seems to fit and provide a certain texture very appropriate to the story, right down to Lina’s bright but worn red messenger outfit. The actors’ faces themselves – both say quirky and bright and not your perfect Hollywood beauty. As is appropriate for a story of an underground city that not only has no idea of the existence of a world on the surface, but whose only sources of light are thousands of yellow light bulbs strung from wires and placed on and inside buildings.


The pacing felt appropriate to me, neither too slow nor too fast, and the plot ran much the way I’d expect the plot of a similar story in prose to run. Little mannerisms and activities, like Lina’s pedaling to play the voices from their old answering machine and her semi-salute to the messenger head/dispatcher, came naturally and smoothly. And the cast makes the most of what they're given to create characters with some depth to further draw the viewer into the City of Ember.

Saoirse Ronan and Harry Treadaway both do fine jobs portraying Lina and Doon. Lina’s energy and charm appear easily and Doon’s desire to fix the city comes across nicely, as well. The film never overtly creates great depth to either character, but that’s because of the script and possibly editing decisions. Enough is provided to give each a distinct feel and sense of realness, and then the film moves on. The entire movie revolves around these two characters, so everyone else pales in importance. Bill Murray plays the city’s mayor, and personally I found his character both interesting and amusing. Tim Robbins claims the role of Doon’s father, and managed to give me a distinct impression of his character with very, very few minutes of screen time. Again, shortages in character depth should probably be attributed to the scenes actors were given to work with.


Now, with all of this said, I believe it’s time to get back to what the film really is. It’s a contained, grungy but bright fantasy world housing a plot that goes like this: the generator powering the city’s lights is failing, a girl finds a lost box meant to guide the people of Ember out of the city and back to the surface of Earth, and she and a boy take the clues and attempt to find the way out of the city, against the wishes of various persons within Ember. It’s a puzzle hunt, and if that doesn’t interest to you, don’t go to this movie. The plot is neither overly complex nor overly deep or dramatic. I’d guess it’s been simplified to prevent snags and slow-downs and allow viewers of all ages to understand what’s going on with little explanation.

City of Ember, the film, is something like one of those sparkling gem stones you might find in a quasi-science childrens’ store. It sparkles, the colors are fascinating, and for what it is the gem stone is a marvel of nature. City of Ember is great for what it sets out to be. Just don’t come expecting what it’s not.

Hayao Miyazaki: Impacting Worlds

Depending on how familiar you are with Japanese anime, you may or may not have heard of Hayao Miyazaki, a famous anime director whose films Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away both became the highest grossing films in Japanese history at the time of their release. Impressive, yes, and I’ve only seen a handful of his many successful and acclaimed films. Nevertheless, I’d like to share some thoughts on his work and recommend spending the couple hours it takes to watch one of his films.

I find Miyazaki interesting first for the fact that as both writer and director he possesses a great deal of control over the outcome of his films. And having seen Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle, I believe distinct patterns and an authorial voice emerge. His films seem to dance with one foot in the realm of childhood, the other in adulthood. In Princess Mononoke cute and harmless forest sprites mix with poisoned boar gods and decapitated soldiers. Morally ambiguous “villains” create interesting character dynamics and raise questions regarding characters’ choices and the “right” course of action. Kushana of Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind seeks (spoiler alert) to use the Giant Warrior to burn away the Sea of Decay, thereby saving humanity, but she and her men will do whatever it takes, including killing Nausicaa’s father and taking Nausicaa hostage, to accomplish their goal (end of spoiler). Complex characters and morals abound, yet their depictions feel clear and clean. And a pure desire for good seems to hop from one character or another, giving them a distinct feel I haven’t noticed elsewhere. Oh, and his worlds are fun and interesting to explore. Imagination and creativity abound, and a new, good, engaging world is one of my favorite things to find in a story. Just take any of the films I’ve mentioned and you’ll see what I mean.

In terms of story art, I generally look for art that encompasses and impacts me, whether by my emotions or in some other manner. Miyazaki’s films often do both to varying degrees. Princess Mononoke draws the viewer into an epic world capable of swallowing any number of viewers at once. Ashitaka’s departure from his village and subsequent discovery of the world allow the viewer to discover everything beside him and feel everything he feels. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind also takes place in a large world but failed to draw me in as completely. Instead I recall how clearly I felt the impact of violence in the film. The most powerful moment for me comes when Nausicaa launches herself off her glider at men hurting a baby ohmu, arms and legs eagle-spread in a gesture of peace. After one man refuses to shoot her the other shoves him aside and fires. In silence we hear Nausicaa cry out as the bullets hit her suddenly bloody shoulder and foot. She collides with the men, overturning their basket-like aircraft as her own glider veers off into the distance. The images have yet to leave me.

While none of Miyazaki’s films have ever made it onto my forever changing list of favorite films, I highly recommend him to anyone who’s unfamiliar with his work and is not turned off by animation. I find his creativity and vision truly marvelous and can’t think of any other filmmaker who’s created so many amazing worlds as Miyazaki.

*As a side note, the fifth Miyazaki film I’ve seen is My Neighbor Totoro, but that was years ago and it bored me as a child. I’ll watch it again someday. But maybe you’ll watch it first.