#Folk tales

[dinoberrypress]

Little Wolves is crowdfunding NOW!

It's finally here, y'all! The crowdfunding campaign for our tabletop RPG of folk tales, fae queens, and werewolves is live on Backerkit~

Support our work here!

From the award-winning publisher behind Motel Spooky-Nine, You’re In Space And Everything’s Fucked, Dinocar and more, Little Wolves is a tabletop role-playing game about adventuring through a realm of folk & fae as shapeshifting werewolves.

In Little Wolves, you’ll craft real-world paper masks that represent their characters, modifying them over the course of their adventures to reflect the marks their experiences leave on them while transforming between your Wolf and Mortal forms!

The crowdfunding campaign aims to bring the game’s vivid world to life in an 8.5” x 8.5” full-color perfect bound book loaded with gorgeous art from a team of 4 artists accompanying setting & mechanics from award-winning designers Julie-Anne Muñoz and Nevyn Holmes. 

The crowdfunding campaign launches May 14th, running through June 11th, 12pm US Central with an initial funding goal of $19,500 USD with plenty of stretch goals to unlock for more art, more content, and even an expansion!

Making masks & shifting forms

In your Wolf form, you have access to the benefits of your beastly Attributes, can sing magical Spellsongs, and can resist harm with your Resolve. In your Mortal form, you'll switch your Attributes, Spellsongs, and Resolve out for strong, flexible Mortal Powers that can turn the tide of any situation they're used in. Through character advancement, you can strengthen yourself as you see fit. Perhaps you favor one form over the other, or you may switch between them frequently. The choice is yours.

The Enchanted Forest

As you explore this dense forest you'll meet the powerful and mysterious Queens and aid them, and their courts, through all manner of quests and favors. As a werewolf, you're uniquely gifted in traversing the forest, capable of making it to every edge of the woods, meaning that only you can learn its deepest secrets.

✨ A free demo/quickstart for Little Wolves is available to download and play, get it here! ✨

[phantomrin]

Inktober 2023

Day 18 - The Mistress of the Copper Mountain

"And she herself, she jumped up and took hold of the rock with her hands, then she skipped on to it and started running about on all fours like a lizard. And instead of hands and feet she had little green paws and a tail came out and there was a black stripe that went half way down the back, but the head was still a maid's."

(P.P. Bazhov "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain")

[illustratus]

A Saint, from the 'Jackdaw of Rheims' by Briton Rivière

[enchantedbook]

'Folk Tales from Around the World' by Alenka Sottler

[writingwithfolklore]

Writing Legend and Folklore

                Unlike mythology, legends are more rooted in historical events and may even have recorded, proven details. Your legend will likely feature real humans as characters experiencing something that happened in a real place in your world. The fun things about legends is that often the truth of the past has been twisted and changed over time. While it’s important for you as the writer to know the absolute truth about your history, your characters may never learn the truth behind the legend, or may trade slightly different alternate stories.

                Legends reflect the values or fears of a society. Much of Folklore comes from parents intending to shield their children from danger—whether going out at night and getting snatched by the boogeyman, or wandering too close to the rapids and being dragged in by a dangerous Kelpie. So start with a real value or danger, and begin to embellish.

                Maybe in your world society really values compassion. A tale may start out with someone hoarding resources and ignoring those in need which then manifests a shadow monster that gobbles both them and their riches right up! Name the monster, and you have a campfire-worthy folk tale for your characters to tell late into the night.

                Or, if your legend has no moral or lesson, it may feature something unexplainable that happened to real people. Stories you hear of disappearing cities or villages come from this place—people witnessing something or experiencing something they can’t explain, and creating a story to explain it anyway.

                The original teller of this story, or the original source, should be difficult if not impossible to track down, to make sure it remains shrouded in mystery.

                Does your world feature any legends or folktales? Let me know!

[thebeautifulbook]

FOLK-TALES OF BENGAL by Lal Behan Day. (London: Macmillan, 1912). Dozens of Illustrations by Warwick Goble

source

[allgirlsareprincesses]

A Tale of Two Disguises: Fairy Tale Motifs in Bridgerton Season 3 (Part 1)

It’s Polin Season! In the midst of this Friends to Lovers renaissance and rewatching the Carriage Scene™ for the 847,000th time, I find that I MUST give the fairy tale meta treatment to our beloved Bridgertons. Not only did the show explicitly relate its central couple to the Eros and Psyche myth, but there are a number of other fairy and folk tale motifs scattered throughout the season.

While we only have the first four episodes so far (Shonda, you cruel, cruel tease!), it seems clear that the theme of the season is disguise. Our leading man and lady have both put on masks to protect them from society, but those are slowly being peeled away as they draw closer together. I would argue that aside from Cupid and Psyche (ATU 425), the story also relies heavily on Cinderella (ATU 510), both romances in which the true self is revealed.

To begin with, Colin arrives back in town with a flirtatious new swagger, but apparently no intent to actually court a mate. In this way, he is very similar to the mythical Cupid, who is described as:

“that winged lad, the naughty child who has been so spoilt that he despises all social restraint. Amed with flames and arrows he flits in the night from house to house. He severs the marriage-tie on all sides; and unchastised he perpetuates endless mischief.”

Now I hear you, you’re saying that sounds nothing like Colin! And yes, but the point is that he has no qualms about flirting with one lady after another (or bedding prostitutes), metaphorically slinging Cupid’s arrows everywhere he goes, because that is the role he believes he must perform. The point of his character in Apuleius’ narrative is that Cupid has power over gods and men, to make them fall in love with one another, but he himself is never prey to such feelings.

UNTIL. His mother, Venus, tells him to make the beautiful Psyche fall in love with a monster. In some versions, simply the sight of Psyche is enough to make Cupid fall in love. In others, he accidentally pricks himself with his own arrow when he sees her, thus becoming the victim of his own schemes.

Similarly, Colin agrees to help Penelope find a husband, but soon finds that he himself has fallen in love with her. There is even a subtle reference to this when he gifts Gregory the bow and arrows. In the shot, Gregory turns with the bow pointed directly at Colin. He is in the sights of Cupid’s bow, about to be hit with his own weapon!

Once Cupid has fallen for Psyche, she is borne upon the wind to his palace, where she is served by invisible servants and her new husband visits her only in darkness when she cannot see him. By these means, he keeps his true identity hidden, leading Psyche to eventually question whether she has indeed married a monster. In her fear, she brings an oil lamp to his bed, and when she sees that he is in truth the handsome god Cupid, she accidentally drops hot oil onto him. Thus injured, her husband awakes into the realization that she has betrayed his confidence and uncovered his identity.

Similarly, Colin is concealing his true self behind the mask of the rake, hiding his desire for emotional intimacy even from Penelope. Not easily fooled, she writes as Lady Whistledown questioning whether this is in fact his true self. Once their “lessons” begin, Colin rather scandalously invites her into his home (his palace), a place that only intimate family members should be allowed. He then asks her to imagine invisible guests and musicians, just like Cupid’s invisible retinue.

Then, Penelope discovers his diary, just beside the lamp as Psyche also discovered Cupid’s true self. The shadow husband thus revealed, Colin appears and is furious at Penelope’s apparent betrayal. He knocks over the lamp and is injured by the shards of glass, just as Cupid was injured by drops of oil. This wounding is a critical part of animal husband tales, where the heroine approaches him with “flame and steel,” painfully stripping away his mask or animal skin so that it is impossible for him to hide from her.

Typically, at this point in the tale, the husband would flee, but Colin stays. There is still another betrayal yet to come with the revelation of Penelope’s alter ego, however, so I would not be surprised if we yet saw Colin retreat from her in pain, even temporarily. Further, the betrayal typically happens as a result of the bride’s lack of faith in her husband, so Penelope will need to learn to fully trust Colin as well.

The Cupid and Psyche tale is of course explicitly referenced in the dance performed at the Queen’s ball. To the extent that the dance is a retelling, it seems to focus on the ending of the tale, when Cupid awakens Psyche from a deathlike sleep and then raises her to Olympus, where she becomes a goddess as well. This then is where we are headed: the revelation of Penelope’s secret may cause her to fall into a metaphorical death state (maybe the fainting scene in the trailer?), but Colin’s love will ultimately lift her up to her rightful place among the gods.

Another interesting feature in Apuleius’ story is a moment when Cupid’s mother Venus offers a reward for the capture of Psyche, in punishment for wounding her son:

“Ho, if anyone can produce in person, or give information as to the place of concealment of a certain runagate princess, a slave-girl of Venus, Psyche by name, let him hie to Mercury the crier at the rear of the Murtian Sanctuary, and receive by way of reward seven times a Kiss of Bliss and once a Kiss honeyed-beyond-measure by the interjection of her alluring tongue.”

Basically, Venus places a bounty on Psyche. And WHO in the Bridgerton cast has explicitly associated herself with Venus? None other than Queen Charlotte, whom we know from the Part 2 trailer will be offering a reward for the identification or capture of Lady Whistledown. In the tale, Venus plays the role of an avenging goddess who is enraged both by insults to her family and by romances that occur without her approval and orchestration. Once again, this sounds exactly like Queen Charlotte, so expect her to play that destructive goddess role throughout much of the season.

While animal husband tales focus on the revelation of the true man behind the beastly disguise, Cinderella tales center around the exposure of the true bride. A typical Cinderella story includes the following:

Persecuted heroine, usually by family

Help or helper, usually magic

Meeting the prince, usually with true identity disguised

Identification or penetration of disguise, usually by means of an object

Marriage to the prince

Throughout all three seasons of Bridgerton so far, we can clearly see Penelope being persecuted by her family, with her wicked mother and two foolish sisters easily fulfilling their quintessential roles.

As for the helper, Penelope has had several, but her most notable is Madame Delacroix, who both assists her caper as Lady Whistledown and then also supplies her with her transformative new wardrobe. In this way, she fulfills the role of the Fairy Godmother to Penelope’s Cinderella.

Meeting the prince of course is somewhat different since Colin and Penelope have known one another for years. Still, it is true that Penelope’s full identity has been disguised, since she has hidden her role as Lady Whistledown from him and the rest of the Ton.

Identification or penetration of the disguise has not occurred yet, in my opinion, but it likely will in Part 2 of Season 3. In the book, Colin follows Penelope and discovers her secret, and it may be that something similar occurs in the show. It’s unclear yet as to whether there may be an object involved, although if there is, I suspect it may be an issue of Whistledown itself, or perhaps the pen she uses to write it. Further, Eloise is heard in the trailer giving Penelope a midnight deadline to tell Colin the truth, just like how Cinderella's magical disguise will fall away at midnight.

And of course, we know we’re headed toward the eventual marriage with the prince! But meantime, there are a number of other familiar features of the Cinderella tale, not least of which are Penelope’s three separate flights from three balls. She runs first from Lady Danbury’s Four Seasons Ball, then again when her arrangement with Colin is revealed, and a final time after Debling turns her down. In some versions of the fairy tale, Cinderella actually does attend three different balls, fleeing from each one before midnight and only losing her slipper on the last one.

Of course, while she leaves behind no shoe, Colin races after Penelope each time, and finally catches her carriage on the last one, kneeling before her and confessing his feelings. This, like the relation to the mythical Cupid, leans on Hunter/Huntress motifs common throughout folklore. Often, one lover will chase after the other, and then they will trade places and the hunter will become the hunted. And only very rarely do these lovers come together as equals in the end.

So I will end there for now! Cannot WAIT for Part 2, after which I will try to update this with any new observations!

[thefugitivesaint]

Nikolai Kochergin (1897-1974), ''The White Deer- A Latvian Folk Tale'' by Fainna Solasko, 1973 Source

[trollmaiden]

Would you still love me if I was a A large serpentine creature born to mortal parents who didn’t listen to the advice of a old crone and thus borne me (Cool & reptilian) and my younger brother (normal & boring), and I disappeared to woods after my birth only to return when my brother is about to get married so I can throw a hissy fit because I wasn’t married first, but each and every time my parents found me a spouse I ate them and after the third or second time of eating them they decided they couldn’t give me another noble /or royal spouse so they went to your father (a shepherd) and arranged our marriage, and you go to the woods and met a old crone (the same crone my mother spoke to) and you tell her about our engagement and how I ate my last two fiancées and you think I’ll eat you too (this is absolutely 100% true) and she gives you a list of things to do for our wedding night and we get married and your wearing all of your clothes at the same time and this begins a really long strip tease where each time you take off a article of clothing I have to shed my snakeskin and once you finally take off all your clothes you take out the whip you soaked in lye and whip me, put me in a bath full of milk, and then put me to bed, so when they find us in the morning we are both alive and I’m no longer a man eating snake

Would you still love me then??

[mamaangiwine]

Honestly? I think there should be more folk horror cinema inspired by The Bible. This shit is so eldritch and it goes hard.

[dinoberrypress]

Little Wolves: A Realm of Folk & Fae, crowdfunding on May 14th!

Prepare to venture into the mysterious lands of The Enchanted Forest; Little Wolves, a tabletop role-playing game set in a realm of folk and fae from Dinoberry Press, is crowdfunding on Backerkit starting May 14th!

Make masks, befriend queens, and help the denizens of The Forest thrive!

Sign up now to help us bring this mystical world to life!

[stone-cold-groove]

Illustration from the Czech book Wacky Fairy Tales - 1965.

[phantomrin]

Inktober 2023

Day 21 - Marya Morevna

Ivan-tsarevich asks, "If there's a man alive, answer me! Who defeated this great army?" A man alive answers, "This great army was defeated by Marya Morevna, the fair princess."

("Marya Morevna". A.N. Afanasiev's collection of Russian folk tales.)

New stuff available to my Boosty subscribers ;) https://boosty.to/phantomrin

[illustratus]

Scheherazade and the Sultan by Alfred Choubrac

[victusinveritas]