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Favorite Fairytales



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Sat Apr 06, 2019 2:23 pm
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PrincessInk says...



Hey guys! I was just wondering, what are a few of your favorite fairytales? I love them myself so it'll be hard to pick, but here's a few:

-'East of the Sun, West of the Moon'. Questing is lovely and this especially. It's quite unusual among fairytales, I think, because this time it's the girl going to go save the prince and amend her mistakes and not the other way round.

-'Rapunzel'. This is great, but I get puzzled by some of the gaps in the story (re: hence I wrote a retelling based on this fairytale about sisters questing to save sisters).

-'Kaguyahime'. It's kind of sad but I've always been intrigued by it.

How about you?
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Sat Apr 06, 2019 2:27 pm
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StellaThomas says...



East of the Sun, West of the Moon is one of my absolute favourites as well. It has everything that Beauty & the Beast has, but more mystical, more magical, darker, more seductive, and it has polar bears. Sold.

I also like The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Snow White and Rose Red because I love stories about sisterhood and about the close relationships between women (even though I don't have a sister!).

And if the story of Persephone counts, I'll throw that in there too. But only in the ending where she actually falls in love with Hades and then becomes the Queen of Hell. Because that's wicked.
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Sat Apr 06, 2019 4:54 pm
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EternalRain says...



I looove fairy tales.

My dad would actually read me Grimm's fairy tales before bed or stories from the Fairy Books (Blue Fairy Book, etc). I remember enjoying this one story he read but I can't remember it, so maybe I'll look through the books and try to find it.

The Snow Queen is probably one of my favorites, although my perspective on it has changed a little due to Frozen. :/

I also love The Twelve Dancing Princesses! There's many more I love but (from my memory), Rapunzel and The Snow Queen are probably my favorites.
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Sat Apr 06, 2019 6:10 pm
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alliyah says...



Ooooh I'm interested to see what people say for this!!

I used to have a set of cassette tapes with different fairy tales that came with little picture books - and I remember liking The Wild Geese/Swans and Jack and the Beanstalk the best from those. I also liked Stone Soup if that counts as a folk/fairy tale.

I remember very much not liking Goldilocks and the Three Bears I couldn't stand it as a kid, and would start sobbing at the point that Goldilocks breaks the baby bear's chair. I mean who does that? Where are the bears going to sit and eat their porridge now? Tragic.

I was also very scared of the story of Thumbelina as a kid but I like that one more now that I'm older.
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Sat Apr 06, 2019 10:11 pm
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StellaThomas says...



@alliyah - I remember being scared of The Nutcracker and also The Little Tin Soldier in a similar way to maybe how you were afraid of Thumbelina? I wonder why that was!
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Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:23 am
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paperforest says...



I absolutely love fairytales! Picking favourites is hard though. :) @PrincessInk East of the Sun and West of the Moon has always held a certain magic for me! Probably because I first heard it told as an outdoor play in the winter going from scene to scene on a horse driven hay cart (I think I was about five or six), but it's also just a good story, and I love that the girl is the active character in it.

I'm not completely sure if it's the story itself or the idea that it's based on an actual recorded event in history or just the colourful cloak and magical music of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but I've been wanting to try writing a retelling of it for a few years now. I still can't figure out how to do it though. Also Terry Pratchett wrote a great book loosely based on the idea of it, called The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. (Maurice is a cat.)

I grew up reading collection of old English and Irish fairytales, but I can't think of any ones in particular now! I should go reread some of them... Grimm's are also good, sometimes.
  





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Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:09 am
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PrincessInk says...



Ooh the play sounds so cool @paperforest!!
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Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:01 pm
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Lib says...



I'm obsessed with fairytales. Hmm. I think my favorite would be Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin.

I always loved how long Rapuzel's hair was so long, but then I started crying when her hair was cut. Boo-hoo! :(

And then, Rumpelstiltskin. I dunno. I just liked that short man so much. He was mean, sure, but can't a kid like a villain at times? XD

Oh, and if you've read the real story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs... God, it's so terrifying! Thank god Disney changed her story!

Oh, oh! And, the Twelve Dancing Princesses was really good too. I think that was my third favorite after Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin. Yeah, it was. I mean, it is.
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Tue May 07, 2019 12:56 am
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HiddenMask says...



I've always liked the way fairytales are written, with a clean, concise style, but I've honestly never read an original one (Like, not a novel adaptation - GOOSE GIRL IS AMAZING BY THE WAY READ THE NOVEL NOW) and loved it. Grimm's are good, although I did once come across an..... interesting...? Sentence. This is what happens when you try to make things "appropriate".

"When she saw/gave birth to the child, she was so delighted that she died."

Hm.
I do like Irish fairytales, they're always interesting and the magic is so random it's sometimes absolutely hilarious. The Twelve Dancing Princesses is a really interesting and unusual one. Frankly I've sort of had it with most English fairytales, ever since I got to the bit where a prince was hunting, saw a doe, and was like "OMG she's tots a cursed princess!! BROS, let's go HUNT her!! It's not literal stalking if it's done LOUDLY, am I right??"

Cue annoying airhorns. Anyways, this turned into a rant about all the fairytales I dislike, so let's mix it up by actually saying the fairtyales I enjoyed. How novel. I've always loved The Goose Girl by (I think?) Shannon Hale. Also Ella Enchanted is a really good one - it makes the old Cinderella story interesting, and actually kind of good. I did always sort of wonder why Cinderella doesn't just steal some decent clothes and run away. I do like the..... Twelve Geese/Swans? Is that right? It's never been really retold in a way that satisfies me, though. It's got the seeds of a really compelling story and yet NO ONE EVER USES IT! Hmph. I like fairtyales in general, though I've never truly come across one that I love as much as a novel adaptation.
  





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Tue May 07, 2019 1:58 am
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PrincessInk says...



omg @HiddenMask The Goose Girl is one of my most most most favorite fairytale retellings ever <3 <3 And Ella Enchanted is really great!
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Thu May 23, 2019 5:43 pm
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TinkerTwaggy says...



Favorite fairy tales? Hmm, let's see...

•Bluebeard.

Because I find Bluebeard's deadpan attitude towards killing his way-too-curious-new-wife absolutely hilarious. It's the first fairy tale I actually read, it's a very stressful one, but I couldn't help but laugh at the dude's behavior because usually villains and killers in those are like "Muhahahaha I'll eat you and then I'll kill your loved ones!" But this dude is more like:

"Oh. You've opened the one room in the house I specifically forbade you to open, and now you saw all the dead bodies I keep in my basement. Welp, guess you'll die!"

"NO PLEASE I WON'T TELL ANYONE!"

"Yeah, you should've thought about that one before disobeying my very simple order. But no no, you have to die, now. You can go perform a final prayer or something, though."

↑ It... I dunno, it just cracks me up.


•Then there's La chèvre de Monsieur Seguin, which you could translate to la chèvre de Mr. Seguin. It was originally a short story but got itself an adaptation as a children's fairy tale.

Long story short,
Spoiler! :
Blanquette is a pure white goat that this farmer named Mr. Seguin has, and like six goats before her, she gets really bored of her life in the dude's place. So, she asks to go to the mountain to have fun, he says HECK TO THE NO 'cause there's a wolf there. He locks her up, but she manages to escape anyway.
Blanquette has a jolly good time at the mountain's top but eventually comes the night, and Blanquette realizes that she really doesn't want to go back down because she's free now and freedom is awesome.
So, the Wolf arrives, and Blanquette engages in a night-long battle with it since she figured that if she can survive until the next day, she may be able to go back or escape. When the day comes, though, she's so exhausted that she just lets the wolf eat her.


↑ Love this fairy tale mostly because I was reeeeally getting sick of the Wolf being used like some incompetent super-powered being in other tales, but in this one? ANTAGONIST: WINS! WHOOOO! FINALLY!
I also really like the whole "freedom comes with a price" lesson in this story, as well as the idea of prey fighting its predator for it.

•Then there's the Hare of Inaba (Kojiki ver.). Long story short,
Spoiler! :
Inaba H. needs to cross some land but below said land is a clan of shark-like monsters that dwell in the waters between one side and the other. Inaba H. is like "Hey, dudes! Let's check which among the hare clan and the shark clan has the most people!" And so the sharks line up while the hare hops on top of all of them to "count them", but as he reaches the last one he's like "HAH! You fools! I totally tricked you into doing this and now I'm about to cross!" aaaand the last shark chomps his fur clean off.

Inaba H. is eventually helped by the story's main character, who gave him advice on how to get his fur to grow back super fast.


I like this one specifically because it shows one of my favorite personal lessons of all time:
"Callin' all tricksters. If you're about to finish a genius plan and waste the smug butts of your opponent thanks to said plan, SHUT UP, SILENTLY FINISH YOUR TRICK AND MOVE AWAY WHEN YOU'RE DONE SO THAT YOU MAY LAUGH TO YOURSELF ABOUT YOUR OWN GENIUS WHEN NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU AND RUIN IT."

So, uh, yeah! Personal fairy tales. I'll have to go take a look at the Arabian Nights, though. Methinks I can find some awesome gems in that collection.
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Sat Jun 01, 2019 4:34 am
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ScarlettFire says...



I have always loved Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel, also Rumplestiltskin. To be honest, there's SO MANY that I love that I can't possibly name them all. Plus, I have a weird love of the darker versions, which probably says something about me. XD
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