gosagacious

[gosagacious]

Oh, yay! :D

I watched this cartoon when I was very little, and the image of the witch turning to stone really stuck with me too.

Fairytale nerd side of tumblr, i really need your help

Ok so, when i was little my dad used to tell me a version of Hansel and Gretel where the witchs house was surrounded by gingerbread men that would warn the siblings to not come in but they ignore them, the story goes along as it normally does, but the witch gets turned into gingerbread herself and with that it's revealed that all those gingerbread men outside were lost children and with that happening to the witch they come back to normal.

I know my dad did not make it up because i vividly remember an animation, that i can't find for the life of me-

I thought about it recently while talking to a friend, and he said that he was also told that version, so it is more widespread than i thought ( Which i only thought wasnt because i never see anyone mention it )

And obvioulsy I can't find it

Where is this version from??? I could find a movie screenshot with the gingerbread but it's live action. Did my brain make the animation up??? I don't think it did because i vividly remember the witch turning into gingerbread

So... Please??? Anyone else know what i'm talking about?? Fairytale nerd tumblr help a girl out 😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏

[gosagacious]

What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

[gosagacious]

Oooh I haven't heard of this variant before!

The only thing I can think of is the 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon "Babes in the Woods" which takes some elements from Hansel and Gretel. The witch in this version turns children into animals. After Hansel and Gretel free the other children, they get the witch to fall into her own cauldron and she turns to stone. So not gingerbread, but sort of the same concept?

Fairytale nerd side of tumblr, i really need your help

Ok so, when i was little my dad used to tell me a version of Hansel and Gretel where the witchs house was surrounded by gingerbread men that would warn the siblings to not come in but they ignore them, the story goes along as it normally does, but the witch gets turned into gingerbread herself and with that it's revealed that all those gingerbread men outside were lost children and with that happening to the witch they come back to normal.

I know my dad did not make it up because i vividly remember an animation, that i can't find for the life of me-

I thought about it recently while talking to a friend, and he said that he was also told that version, so it is more widespread than i thought ( Which i only thought wasnt because i never see anyone mention it )

And obvioulsy I can't find it

Where is this version from??? I could find a movie screenshot with the gingerbread but it's live action. Did my brain make the animation up??? I don't think it did because i vividly remember the witch turning into gingerbread

So... Please??? Anyone else know what i'm talking about?? Fairytale nerd tumblr help a girl out 😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏

[gosagacious]

still don’t get why putting ice cream on a dessert makes it muslim?

[gosagacious]

Boring, realistic explanation: Male characters in Star Trek: The Original Series are wearing visible eyeshadow in some shots because 1966 was right in the middle of the transition from black-and-white to colour television in America, and TV makeup artists were still adjusting to the fact that stage makeup is easier to see in colour broadcasts.

The truth we know in our hearts: Male characters in Star Trek: The Original Series sometimes wear eyeshadow because the future is fabulous.

[gosagacious]

It’s so funny to imagine Wicked from the perspective of one of the normal students at Shiz. There’s this girl and she’s weird and an overachieving nerd and no one likes her, but then the popular girl becomes best friends with her overnight so you guess she’s chill now. They might be sleeping together but no one’s really sure. They’re also low key dating the same guy but you’re not clear on if it’s a polycule situation or a love triangle. Whatever. You’re just trying to study for finals. Your history teacher gets arrested and no explains why. You just hope this won’t effect your grade in the class. The weird nerdy girl gets a letter from the president inviting her to come see him. Wow, that’s exciting. She and her maybe-girlfriend go off to the capitol and you go back to homework and dorm room parties. One day later one of your professors is on the national radio saying that the weird nerdy girl, who used to be her favorite student, is now a terrorist, has stolen the nuclear codes, and is on the run from the government. You are still expected to show up to class tomorrow.

[gosagacious]

I love fairytale and myth retellings.

Retellings that faithfully adapt every inch of the original and flesh it out to new depths.

Retellings that turn the original on its head, lovingly parodying it or showing things in a new light.

Retellings that take just a few elements and run wild in a new direction with them.

Retellings from another character’s point of view.

Retellings that redeem the villains. (But not retellings that take good, kind, heroic characters and set them up as evil or stupid. Redemption arcs and misunderstood monsters are my story catnip, but not at the expense of characters I already love.)

Retellings that shift genre – contemporary fiction, sci-fi, urban fantasy, you name it.

Retellings set in carefully researched historical worlds.

Retellings set in vividly imagined fantasy worlds.

Really anything, so long as there’s a good story told with a love for the original.

[gosagacious]

Peanuts + Calvin and Hobbes crossover!

Competitive Business

Lucy vs Calvin… who would win?

[gosagacious]

Guys... I think that I just found the goofiest Cetus design to ever exist:

It looks like the sea monster version of Sussie from Amazing World of Gumball. I wish this was an offense but it's just an observation. I cannot even look at Cetus' face without hearing her scream in my ears.

Eh, at least the gorgons actually looked accurate!

[gosagacious]

singing lessons

[gosagacious]

I am not saying there HAS to be a connection but by Gods I DO see it! I DO see the connection!

Dunno I DO live for the theory that Athena was connected to as far back and being connected to iconography!

Also I would love to see more art representing Athena with her Aegis of snakes and even better some animatic or animation showing her snakes animating/coming to life from her robe to be used in battle or for intimidating her opponent!

[gosagacious]

Something fascinating about Perseus is that his famous journey is a stitching-together of two separate myths.

First he kills Medusa, then on the way back he takes a random diversion to slay a Ketos and rescue Andromeda. This is hardly unusual for Greek stories, which often feature random diversions, but what interested me is that both seem to actually be explanations for things rather than the usual “a hero killed a monster here and that’s why these particular random crossroads are cool and important” formula these things follow.

First, the story of Perseus and Medusa is connected to the image of the Gorgon, a heavily widespread artistic motif. The gorgoneia are hideous heads that adorn architecture, shields, and coins all over Archaic and Classical Greece. They seem to have served a similar function to gargoyles in Christian myth, driving off evil spirits with their fearsome visage. And Perseus cutting the head from Medusa was the tale of how that icon came to be. Well, that might be a bit backwards: the story would’ve been around for quite a while during the Dark Age before it was written down in the 7th century BCE, around the time those gorgoneia started appearing.

Andromeda is entirely unconnected to this except by the single thread of Perseus himself. This is epitomized, in my opinion, by the recurring indecision over whether Perseus killed the ketos with his sword or with Medusa’s head. Did he even have Medusa’s head in the early tellings of the story? Were they connected later? Because what’s interesting about the story of Perseus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Cetus, is that you might recognize all of those names from the stars. Every single character in this myth was a constellation!

Except Phineas, screw him I guess.

Of note, none of the characters from the Medusa adventure are constellations. Not Danaë or Polydectes or Dictys or Medusa herself, all of whom were much more important to Perseus’s life than Cepheus who did absolutely nothing even in the one story where he matters. Unlike Heracles, whose whole life is an extended constellation myth, Perseus has this one incident, but it’s a dense one, producing five whole star formations from a single monster fight.

It’s hard to figure out when and from what this would’ve arisen, given all these transformations happened during the Dark Age before the reinvention of writing. Nonetheless, this is a great example of the evolution that I find incredibly compelling about studying mythology. Every tale has its seams, stitches haphazard or clean, reminders that this was a living culture and all of these stories we might fall into the trap of treating as fun fictions with quirky characters were as real as any of our modern religious texts and histories.

[gosagacious]

in my opinion, many modern greek retellings/stories inspired by greek mythology don't fail because they're inaccurate. they fail because they have nothing new to say.

i don't mind changes to the original myths, as long as they make sense and they have a narrative purpose! i understand that making changes is sometimes necessary to convey a certain narrative, especially to modern audiences.

is epic the musical mythologically accurate? hell no! but the changes serve to tell a specific story and to convey a certain message. also, epic the musical is self aware about its "inaccuracies". and the music just bangs.

is hadestown accurate? no! does it make the change that I always dread, removing the kidnapping from the hades/persephone myth? yeah. but hadestown is barely about them, and it uses greek mythology as a "narrative frame" to tell a certain story. it has a point. it has a message.

what are stories like lore olympus trying to say? what is the messagge of the hundredth persephone/hades retelling? what are we supposed to take from them? "don't listen to your mother she's a bitch"? "mothers are irrational and you should forsake her for a man"? very feminist.

why are we still doing the medusa "feminist" retellings? it's BEEN done. too many times. and they're ALL the same. it's a worse crime than being bad: they are boring.

i'm tired of retellings that are just "what if this very famous story was THE OPPOSITE and the protagonist was an ASSHOLE the whole time and the villain was MISUNDERSTOOD and the real VICTIM" okay but why. why would that be the case. what's the point of the story you want to tell. or do you just want to use shock value.

of course, i dislike retellings that are so different from the myth that they go AGAINST the spirit/message of the original, because in that case what's even the point of retelling the myth? just tell an original story. but i would take stabbed poseidon and capitalist hades any day over the same basic story of medusa being a girlboss or demeter being bad because of... reasons?

tl;dr: stop being unoriginal and tell a good story. or at least an entertaining one. i beg you

[gosagacious]

Wisptober Day 14: Layers

“A young woman cloaked in layers upon layers of colourful shawls wanders the empty streets of an emptier city.  She dances nimbly through the odd spires sprouting from the pavement and hums a sort of hissing tune.”

ALMOST CAUGHT UP! Going to post todays one in a few hours.:)

[gosagacious]

-Medusa-

I've had this sitting around as a sketch for awhile, finally had time to finish it! Hoping to do more mythology illustration this year.

[gosagacious]

Young Medusa

[gosagacious]

Last night I ended up reading one of my unfinished WIPs, almost 50k words. It was weird because I did enjoy some of it, but I could tell my heart hadn't been in it and I hadn't really known what to do with the story. It was also really clear from some of the tangents it took that it was reviving my interest in one of my older WIPs, backburnered at the time. I did remember that this project was what got me to go back and rewrite and finish that one - still one of my favorite projects and one I'd like to publish one day.

I'd also had a vague memory that I'd loved the dynamic of the two main characters of Unfinished Project, and I'd basically pulled that wholesale into the novel I'm writing now (murder mystery, fantastical royal court, goofy boy and straightforward serious girl navigating it all). But it was interesting to go back and read it and see the beginning sparks of those characters.

I don't know if I'll ever touch the unfinished project again, it may never see the light of day, but it was cool to see a snapshot of my older writing and to find the DNA of other projects threaded through. Always save your old drafts!