#fairy tales

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Fairies - art by John Anster Fitzgerald (1850s-1860s)

[assassin1513]

⚜️The Owl Dream ⚜️

[little-aeronaut]

a little painting study from today

[mysharona1987]

[strangelittlestories]

After shoving Hansel in the oven, the witch turns to Gretel - who is currently fending the witch off with a gingerbread chair - and says:

"I can't believe you thought a trail of breadcrumbs would save you. I mean, honestly, this is a forest! It's full of animals. Honestly, the very idea that a dumb shit like you thought you could get the better of me is absurd."

Gretel hits her in the face with said chair. To be fair to the witch, she takes the chairshot like a champ.

"Ow!"

"Did you know," says Gretel, "that crows are capable of facial recognition?"

"Eh?" Says the witch, clambering to her feet and pulling a candy cane sledgehammer off the wall. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Not only that," Gretel continues, "but they can remember both friends and enemies. And they'll often follow people they remember as friends."

The two fence with their sugared weapons for a moment, before the witch knocks the chair out of Gretel's hands.

"Enough with the bird facts! Honestly, this whole attempted escape has been utter clownshoes. Get in the fucking oven!"

She seizes Gretel by the collar. Gretel immediately sandbags, letting her whole body go limp. This eminently practical defense forces the witch to try and deadlift her. Which is hard, as the witch often skips leg day.

"For example," Gretel says, as the witch struggles and grunts, "if you feed crows a lot of breadcrumbs, they'll probably start to see you as a friend and follow you in the hope of more food."

The witch stops. Outside, she hears the thunder of wings.

"They'll even bring you shiny things they find as presents!" Says Gretel, as a corner of the gingerbread ceiling is suddenly cut away by a large crow with a knife in its mouth.

"Oh shitballs." Says the witch, as the crows descend. "I hope you know this is a great unkindness."

"Technically," Says Gretel, "It's a murder."

[thestuffedalligator]

Out of a moment of aching sadness and fury and manic impulsivity, a wizard turns a killer whale trapped in a theme park aquarium into a human so she can smuggle it out of the park and back into the wild.

[theshadowrealmitself]

Actually this has to be its own post, I hate how people treat the moral of the ugly duckling tale like it’s “don’t worry you’ll grow up to be beautiful”

no!!! It was never an ugly duckling because it was never a duck!!! It was a baby swan!!! A cygnet!!! It was never ugly to begin with!!! People only thought it was ugly because they were judging it by their own standards!!!! The moral is that you aren’t ugly, people just don’t see you as you are!!!!

[readingrobin]

Fairy tale nerds of Tumblr I need your help.

I've been trying to find a fairy tale for AGES, this has been almost a decades long quest. I first read it in a Highlights magazine around the mid 2000s, when the theme was "Fairy Tales from around the World." Now I don't know if this is actually an older fairy tale or just one that was made up for the magazine masquerading as a story from somewhere else. I've done my own research and have come up zilch.

So, this story was about a prince that was cursed to be a wolf until he was able to bite a bride the night of her wedding. Well, it just so happens that such a woman is riding through the forest with her new beau, a very uncouth man that calls her his "little chicken." Long story short, a pack of wolves waylay their carriage, the wolf prince bites the lady, becomes human again, and they fall in love and marry.

And what happened to her original husband?

Well naturally he gets turned into a chicken and they eat him at their wedding feast.

Classic.

if anyone knows the title of this fairy tale or where it may have originated, please let me know! I'd love to see if I can read it again.

[thatdamnokie]

i love you fairy tales i love you folklore i love you myths i love you stories as old as humanity itself i love you oral traditions i love you characters carried through time on my ancestors’ tongues i love you story i’ve seen a million ways and want to see a million more i love you archetypes i love—

[aggelic-yiok]

Christmas?

[hidekomoon]

I did it again (part 1 here) (part 3) (part 4)

1. Godward’s A Fair Reflection (1915) and Waterhouse’s The Soul of the Rose (1908)

2. Frank Cadogan Cowper’s Damsel of the Lake (1924) kissing the lady in Auguste Toulmouche’s The Kiss (c.1870)

3. Waterhouse’s A Song of Springtime (1913) and Auguste Toulmouche’s Woman and Roses (1879)

4. Evelyn De Morgan’s Ariadne in Naxos (1877) with Waterhouse’s Sweet Summer (1912)

5. A woman from Charles Perugini’s Dolce Far Niente (1882) about to wake up Victor Gilbert’s Sleeping Beauty (date unknown)

please reblog if you save! (except terfs, “gender critical” radfems and general transphobes, y’all can block me please)

[dimension20official]

Your reading assignment for episode 1 of Dimension 20: Neverafter

Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

The Frog Prince (collected by the Grimm Brothers)

Little Briar Rose (collected by the Grimm Brothers)

Little Red-Cap (collected by the Grimm Brothers)

[wayward-delver]

“I LOVE THE FOUND FAMILY TROPE!!”

Going to be specific but the decision to make Goldilocks and the Three Bears a genuine family is one of the greatest fairy tale twists I’ve ever seen and will die on this hill.

[the-evil-clergyman]

Illustrations from In Powder and Crinoline by Kay Nielsen (1912)

[artsy-arrowl]

Cinderella marries the Prince, part 1/2

[thestuffedalligator]

The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.

Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.

Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.