#change--even drastic and involuntary. which you must learn to recover from and grow past

[bellepeppertronix]

I love that movie and that book, and both are core memory/personality pillars for me.

So, in their defense, I have some thoughts.

Sorry, OP, I have a Lot of Thoughts:

She doesn't understand time.

She doesn't even understand THE PASSAGE OF TIME. Because unicorns are immortal and exist outside of it. In the book, she RUNS FOR A YEAR STRAIGHT, and only remarks that the animals in the lands she passed through "grew long hair, and then it grew short again".

When Schmendrick temporarily changes her into a human, it is jarring and horrifying because UNICORNS HAVE NO FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR A MORTAL BODY. So she could literally feel herself growing towards death. It's heavily implied that unicorns don't even actually need to EAT.

So her transformation is the opposite of the stories where a beautiful princess is transformed into a bird or something, and it's shocking. She's a graceful, beautiful woman, but she is not HERSELF, and the change gives her insomnia, nightmares, and severe depression.

She is quiet and reserved but not rude, ever. At times she is very mildly sarcastic to Schmendrick, but is never cruel. Even to the witch who held her captive, Mommy Fortuna, she is never cruel. If anything she sounds weary and slightly annoyed, that Mommy Fortuna wants to keep her like a living trinket--but then she even warns her that she should not tamper with real immortal beings.

Also, as a woman and a Black woman, I don't know why, but this has always stuck with me: the unicorns are sapient.

King Haggard wanted ALL OF THEM for himself. For the elusive pleasure of seeing them trapped in the surf, too afraid to even step foot onto the shore.

And yet he never would have spoken to them, never would have tried to know or befriend them.

Because they were THINGS to him. He wanted them, all of them, enough to sell his soul (?) To the Red Bull to keep them all trapped there for himself.

It didn't matter to him that they were minding their own business in their forests and glades. It didn't matter that he likely caused a lot of the desolation on his own lands by imprisoning the unicorns in a narrow spit of ocean that only he had access to.

It didn't matter that the unicorns were sapient magical beings at all, because he never bothered to consider them as anything other than playthings and live anti-depressants.

The Unicorn, or Amalthea, then has to walk around in his decrepit castle, full of images of her real self--but caricatures. She has to be I the same space as a man who thinks of herself and others like her as less than animals, more like tokens, and who would happily have his demonic bull imprison her with the other unicorns. She knows that he knows--he looks at her and accuses her of not being human more than once!--but that even seeing her in a human form and theoretically being able to talk with her, he cannot contain his selfishness or meanness. He says he will allow she and the party to stay there and that he will "...look at them...for awhile..."

Even if she wanted to, she could not tell him any of her truths, because he likely would not have wanted to hear them.

Do you think a man who lived like that, would listen to someone tell him about the way their favorite plum tree dropped blossoms precisely into a moonlit pond? Do you think he would have cared at all, beyond his own bitterness and selfishness?

All of this to say that the movie and book are much deeper than "pretty anemic pony plus her wizard and cook friend go to fight an evil king and a fiery bull monster".

Following the author of The Last Unicorn on Facebook is the only thing that makes being on that site worthwhile.

(source)