Throwback Thursday: Childhood Inspiration
The year, 1998. Wide-eyed, glued to the wooden tube TV, is an almost 10-year-old Gina. On the screen, a little girl’s family is brutally murdered. She’s saved by a young boy, who helps her through the servant quarters. Fast-forward ten years. She’s now a beautiful, independent and feisty woman, with no memories of the past, and he’s a sarcastic con-man with impeccable hair.
Damn, just writing this is giving me the feels. Have you guessed what it is yet? I can tell you, there’s a rumor in St. Petersburg. Yes, it’s Anastasia, a masterpiece of film by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. This film shook my girlhood. I was immediately in love with Dimitri. I watched this VHS over and over, and then the DVD over and over, even as a teenager. Their unspoken growing attraction, their enemies to lovers romance, ugh, it was perfection. His need to protect her, but her ability to protect herself, hot damn! This influenced me as a writer more than any other work has.
Enemies to lovers is hands-down my favorite trope, with friends to lovers coming in a distant second. I will absolutely admit most of my work features this trope. Nothing gives me more butterflies in my stomach than this. That look Dimitri has when he first meets Anya, and she is lined up against the royal portrait. Swoon. I love looks. Looks can tell you so much more than words can. I could do a whole post on my favorite looks in movies (many of them animated). This film has so many looks, so many small moments between them. It rivals any live-action romance.
I could go on forever about this film and its impact on me. But I won’t. I should. But I won’t.
