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'The Tales from the Enchanted Isles' illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop, 1926

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Always thinking about Edward Lear. Fascinating man. Painted parrots. Popularized the limerick. Epileptic and almost definitely queer by modern standards. Loved his tabby cat and it was rumoured that he had a perfect copy of his house built when he moved to Sanremo so the cat wouldn’t be confused. He drew himself like this.

He wrote The Owl and the Pussycat and a poem where he described himself as “ill-tempered and queer,” and “perfectly spherical.” I feel like I’ve met several men like this in my life.

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I think one of Pratchett's great skills in writing was being able to make silly things serious, in different ways. Like, there's a fairy godmother forcing everyone into fairystales, how fun! Except in the process, she has stopped seeing them as people. She's forcing people to live lives they don't want to because she decides that's how it has to be. Sometimes she goes so far as to violate her victim's minds and deform and puppet their bodies so they'll play their part right, and anyone who doesn't do their job gets mercilessly killed. And there's a zombie activist named Reg Shoe who buries himself every year out of solidarity for the dead, how funny! Except he is filled with a genuine passion for justice and improvement in the world, and that's why he literally refuses to die. And he buries himself on a holiday that happens to be the anniversery of his own death, and he does it next to the bodies of the friends and strangers he fought alongside, the ones who didn't get to come back, so he spends one day with them. There is still a lot of silliness in discworld, a lot that's wacky and funny, but a lot of it, when you think about it, is oddly beautiful or touching or disturbing or something else entirely.

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Little Mermaid vibes

A Deep Sea Idyll Herbert James Draper

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Once upon an evil...

Today's nefarious force: The Pied Piper of Hamelin

After the Snow Queen, here is our next "villain by adaptation": in the original legend (which isn't even one of the Grimms' märchen) the Pied Piper is an ambiguous, mysterious character - yet, in adaptations, he is often turned into a malevolent power or horrifying creature. Even those that keep his amoral neutrality like to make him very creepy.

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Grimm's Fairy Tales - art by Arthur Rackham (1909)

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TALE OF THE FLYING FOREST comes out two weeks from today! Written by the incredibly talented R.M. Romero and published by Little, Brown Young Readers, this beautiful middle grade fairytale retelling is for anyone who ever wanted to escape into another world. This was my first-ever full book illustration deal (cover art plus 40 interior black-and-white illustrations) and I was honoured to be a part of it :)

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It makes sense given how Hansel and Gretel is one of the go-to fairytales of Stephen King.

Okay, *this* could be interesting...

"This new edition of the fairy tale classic will feature art originally created by Sendak in 1997 as set and costume designs for the Engelbert Humperdinck opera of Hansel and Gretel. The project is in collaboration with the Maurice Sendak Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to preserve Sendak’s work and legacy."

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I JUST made a post about fairytale porn... and in a random Google search, the engine throws this to my face.

If you are interested in the context of this saucy caricature, it comes from this ebay page:

You might know Sendak for his very famous and very bizarre works - from the acclaimed Where the Wild Things Are to the "scandalous" In The Night Kitchen.

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Snow White - art by Yoshitaka Amano 

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one side of this post is the costume design from a big-budget theatrical film meant to live up to the hype of the first animated film ever made for wide-release and another side of this post is the costume design from an abc soap opera where dwarves hatch from eggs and i think you guys will kill me if i tell you which is which

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once upon a time; the only tv show brave enough to ask "exactly how fucked up can we make a family tree without including any actual incest?"

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One day I should make a post about how French media has a sort of specialization in making fairytale porn... Like really. Half of French fairytale media is about sex. It's crazy.

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People talk about Elsa's "Let it Go" moment having killed the men of the Terror and the Erebus, but it goes farther than that. That same historically cold winter of 1846/1847 also caused so much snow that it led to an infamous American tragedy, as I learned when I read the nonfiction work The Indifferent Stars Above.

If Elsa killed the Terror and Erebus men, then she also doomed the Donner Party.

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Updated version of Boy Who Cried Wolf but there are actual wolves every single time and no one ever believes the boy - they get closer and closer every time he tries to warn them, until it's too late and the whole town screams at the boy for not warning them "enough", and blame him for the wolves at their door.

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I found this interesting storybook of Goldilocks and the Three Bears today.

It’s a replica of a 1928 edition with illustrations by Frances Brundage.

Like several early versions of the story, it refers to the bears by their size - the Big Bear, the Middle-Sized Bear, and the Little Bear - instead of by family titles. And instead of portraying them as a father, mother, and baby, it portrays them as a single mother and her two young sons.

I like the way Goldilocks is portrayed too: a wild little peasant girl with long, flowing hair, who’s always carrying and decked with wildflowers and scatters them everywhere she goes.