Once Upon A Time… (the fairytales and folklore thread)

*casually eats foot*
i'm reading the reviews of this book on amazon now and "this author takes a lot of liberties" is a complaint that seems to come up a lot lmao
(it didn't cross my mind to check beforehand, bc the overall rating was pretty good, but yeah he seems to punch up the stories wherever and however he feels like it, which makes for an entertaining read but yeah not great for facts)

 

It's ok! This sort of thing comes up a lot with mythology. And it's honestly kind of a mess to work through, even after you've spent years with it. Which keep in mind is the one reason I was like hrmmmmmm about that.

 

I really wanna write some more fairytale AUs, but I started a series of ones for Hetalia and I can't really do any more of the fairytales I've found because I hate turning anyone into a villain in that. Bah.

 

Now I want to do a retelling blending "The Wedding of Mrs Fox" with "The Fox's Wedding", which is, uh, not the same.

 

A massive gripe I have with modern versions of Rumpelstiltskin is that they miss the very obvious implication that Rumpelstiltskin's intentions with the baby were not benign adoption, or the queen could have just pointed him at the nearest orphanage. In various translations he's either an "imp" or a "troll"; the latter are famous for eating children, and the former are actual albeit weak demons - he even bursts into flame or falls (back?) into Hell at the end in some versions!

 

Also it seems someone else stole my idea above regarding The Wedding of Mrs Fox, in a way. Doo de doo, casually reading BDSM fairytale Kindle porn OH HAI HAVE SOME COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY GRAPHIC SNUFF WHICH IS AGAINST AMAZON'S RULES, WAS NOT WARNED FOR OR FORESHADOWED IN THE LEAST, AND HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE STORY. Gah!

Come to think of it, Rumpelstiltskin kind of comes across as a fairytale Nice Guy. "She won't give up her symbolic virginity even after all I've done for her!"

 

Yeah, one of the things I'm pretty sure Once Upon A Time does reasonably well is that their version of Rumpelstiltskin is actually deliberately making it seem like he's creepy and ominous when he asks for a person's firstborn child, and it's very much not supposed to be seen as a good idea or a morally-pure thing to do. He's testing to see what limits the person has, and whether they're (by his standards) good parents. He's still a horrible dick, but he's pretty obviously hoping that they'll push back on giving him that and offer something else as payment instead; part of his viciousness in enforcing his contracts is due to being really angry at the people who are willing to offer their kids in exchange for some kind of power (and he really, really hates people trying to weasel out of agreements they made, when they knew what they were agreeing to).

(Caveat: most of my knowledge of the show comes from second-hand info and reading other people's recaps of the show; I haven't actually watched much of it myself yet.)

 

The Korean fairytale The Fox Sister kind of confuses me. The kumiho states that she only needs one more liver to become a human, but she's a shapeshifting illusion-spinning killing machine, so why the hell would she want to be a human? One version says she wants to be a human because humans can get whatever they want from God, but it also says God sent her to the family in the first place to punish her father's ingratitude, and if she's as smart as fox spirits are supposed to be you'd think she'd notice the obvious be-careful-what-you-wish-for thing going on there.

 

Little Red's hood was supposed to be a part of the sexual metaphor involving victim-blaming her for wearing immodest clothing, but if one takes the story on a literal level it IS pretty damn stupid to wear bright red in a green forest that's full of things that want to eat you.

 

True! But I could also come up with a pretty logical justification for wearing bright, bright colours in a forest full of dangerous things with just two words: hunter orange.
(Okay, more accurately, two words and then an explanatory infodump about them. Basically, bright red? Relatively easy to get, as a dye, and relatively easy to make sure it sticks to fabric and stays throughout repeated use and washing. Bright oranges - particularly the shade of bright orange used in safety gear for hunters - are a little harder to get; I think (but am not entirely sure) that a true 'bright orange' dye requires working with metals. Being easily seen, in an environment where everything is shades of green and brown, means it's really easy for anyone out hunting to go "oh, okay, that's not a valid target, better not shoot in that direction". So it would be very easy to say that Little Red was wearing that hood so that she wouldn't startle any hunters or be accidentally targeted as she walked through the woods to Grandma's.)

Of course, this adds a new layer of victim-blaming onto the metaphor: "you did something that was supposed to keep you safe, but it didn't, so you must have done it Wrong somehow".

 

True. Come to think of it, the original had the antagonist as a werewolf; real wolves can't distinguish red from green, so if those were all she had to worry about, she'd have been fine.

 

When HCA wrote The Ugly Duckling, had he ever seen a cygnet? They're just like ducklings but bigger and easier to hug!

 

I mean, yes, and I would add a level of IRL Bird Logic to that - Cuckoo chicks stay in the nest and get fed by their host parents because bird brains don't go okay this does not look like one of my kids it's weird and strange and Wrong. Bird brains go OMG MY CHICK IS HUGE AND STRONG I MUST BE THE BEST PARENT ALL MUST LOVE AND FEAR MY MONSTER SON.

A duck with an accidental cygnet in her clutch would adore him, she might think he was a bit lanky and be concerned when he started honking rather than quacking, but she would absolutely dote on him.

As far as actual stories go, I'm really fond of the slightly weirder ones, from any culture? Prince Lindworm is def one of my favourites from the european section, and I really like 'Just So' stories, like Why Dogs Sniff Butts (Native American), or How Kangaroo Became (Native Australian).

Come to that, I learned a lot of Native Australian stories growing up where I did. Tiddalik's a classic, so I might tell it if nobody else has heard it before?