Retrospective: The Last Great Trick of Brer Rabbit (Patreon)

So...I have a certain itch that needs scratching sometimes:  I have a love and appreciation for folk and fairy tales.  It's the language and the flow of things.  So many of the best old stories have both a theatricality and a kind of casualness. These things are meant to be read aloud.

And trickster stories? OMG! Don't get me started. I love stories of the clever defeating the strong.

So of course, eventually my brain got to thinking about the old folk tales and fables made famous by Uncle Remus (and made infamous by Song of the South).  But how to include my signature niche?

My mind went to the Briar Patch.  I thought about all the dynamics in this niche were.  Some were soft and cuddly, others are humiliating and traumatic. And how I've gotten comments over the years about how some of the darkest stuff I've written make other people's brains go brrrrr...  

One man's trash is another man's treasure and all that.

That got me thinking about the briar patch.  Brer Rabbit's signature move is pretending something that is good for him and bad for someone else is the other way around.  Boom. I could have both.

The thing is, there wasn't a character in the mythos that I cared to use as the maternal figure.  So I created my own.  Kangaroos are associated with caregivers, due to the pouches.  And both rabbits and kangaroos have big feet and hop.  It wouldn't be THAT much of a stretch to do a variation on the "mistaken identity" trope.

There were no kangaroos in the deep south of Uncle Remus's time, but who said this had to be that time.  Whether they were archetypes, avatars, spirits, or just living cartoon characters, there were precedents in stories of old legends keeping up with the times (or perhaps struggling to).   

So boom. Modern day.  Kangaroo.  World is getting smaller.  Rabbit escapes his old nemesis and is mistaken for a Joey by a motherly kangaroo...and finds he quite likes it, despite the initial culture shock as it were.

But I still needed a fun ending.  Escaping wasn't enough.  Antagonists would need to be dealt with.

Then I remembered something I read about Looney Tunes.  In what cartoon historians call the "Duck Rabbit Duck Trilogy" between Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd; a particular dynamic was laid out.  You had Bugs Bunny, the trickster who knew how to manipulate the interactions to his advantage. Then you had Elmer Fudd, the physically dangerous one who had no idea he was being manipulated. And for the true comedic star, there was Daffy Duck, who was just smart enough to realize that manipulation was occurring, but not clever enough to know how to manipulate it back to his way.

I re-watched some clips from Song of the South, and realized that Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer were just as much archetypes, and that Rabbit, Fox, and Bear would fit the shoes nicely.