Damn fairy tales, you scary!

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Hannah-Alexander's avatar
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Okay, so I tallied up the votes and it's a straight draw between all of them bar the mucha princess ¬___¬;; Lol! I've got quite a bit to draw then haha! I'll be getting started on that soon. I've already partly sketched out the FMA fanart, and an original samurai piece. Hopefully they'll be done soonish.

Another thing... slightly random. Anyone else notice how frickin' terrifying fairy tales can be sometimes? I know the large majority of fairy tales were written in a time where strong religious values were upheld and society in general was very strict, so there's lots of... 'you must be good or else!' vibes going on. But seriously.

Examples? I was terrified by 'The Red Shoes' as a child. Anyone ever heard of it? To put it shortly, it's about a very vain litte girl who tricks her adoptive mother into buying her some lovely red shoes. She neglects her duty to go to church and attends a party instead. But when she begins to dance, she can't stop. She dances through the countryside, day and night, through wind, snow and rain, while being dragged through bambles that tear her skin until she bleeds. Her adoptive mother dies, but she can't go to the funeral. She begs a woodsman to cut off her feet and he does so with an axe. Yet still her amputated feet continue to dance. Now on crutches, she attempts to return to church but the dancing shoes, amputated feet still inside, bar her way. She eventually gets in, but once inside she's so overhwlemed she dies.

Now, am I the only person who thinks this is a slightly messed up story to tell to CHILDREN?? The image of her amputated, bloody feet dancing through the woods TERRIFIED me. The thought of the woodsman chopping off her feet TERRIFIED me. Now I get the whole Catholic message it's getting across but sweet tap-dancing christ, did they have to scare everyone so bloody much in the process???

And of course there's everybody's favourite, 'The Little Mermaid'. Except Disney has a habit of Disnifiying everything so when I read the original story I was pretty grossed out. To mention a few: she gets her tongue cut out and commits suicide at the end! They keep repeating over and over again that MERMAIDS DON'T HAVE SOULS. Yeah, Disney, why didn't you include that little gem in the film, huh?

And let's not leave out Rumpelstiltskin, where at the end of this charming fairytale, the dwarf reaches such a fit of rage he tears himself in two and falls into the fires of hell. Yeah. Sleep well, kids! And don't ever buy shoes 'else I'll have to cut your damn feet off.

Before anyone says anything, no I don't scare easily, but I do find these fairytales disturbing. I did as a child and do today.

So tell me, which fairy tales did you find the most frightening? Or the weirdest, at least. I'm sure there's loads more! Leave a comment :-)
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irishgoddess1712's avatar
how bout Snow White? in the story she was SEVEN! and it sa id nothing about her aging so... creepy much? And in the little raven the girl was still in arms (meaning she was a baby) when she got turned into a raven by her mom because she was misbehaving. Way to go mom. and then it doesn't say much about the passage of time so we don't really know how old she was when she got married. But even in the Disney Snow White, she's way too young for that prince. and the age of consent when Snow white was originally written was seven and when the movie came out i think it was like 16 or something. so yeah, there's load's of pedofilia going on in fairy tales. oh and beauty and the beast the original novel was a romance novel! it was rewritten by another person, Madame le Prince de Beaumont, to be a kid's story.