#on fairy tales

[luthienne]

George Seferis, from Collected Poems; "Last Stop" (tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

[galahadwilder]

Once upon a time.

You just recoiled a little bit, didn’t you. “Once upon a time.” It’s possibly the most-used opening line in any English or German story, passed down to us from generations of families sitting around the fire and telling each other fairy tales.

But it’s old. And everyone’s heard it. So maybe, you think, it’s overused.

You’re not exactly wrong.

But! But. There’s something important, about that phrase. You see, a fairy tale is a fantasy story, but not all fantasy stories are fairy tales. A fairy tale is a TYPE of fantasy story, and it’s too easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “if there’s fairies in it, it’s a fairy tale.”

No. That is not how it works.

There is a difference, between the first lines of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

“When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

What’s the difference? Immediacy. Fellowship opens by telling us exactly who these people are, what they are doing, when they are doing it, and what the location they are doing it is. Hobbit opens with two pieces of information: there is a hole in the ground, and something called a Hobbit lives inside it.

Hobbit is a fairy tale. Fellowship is high fantasy. There’s a difference.

The characters are the same, or of the same families. The setting is the same. But they are completely different genres.

A fairy tale is something that could have happened at any time, in any place, to any person. It doesn’t matter when or where. It doesn’t matter who. It deals in vagueries, in archetypes. Not so much in characters.

Once, upon a time, there lived a man. Not “at 2 pm Tuesday, Harold was having lunch.” Once upon a time.

If you’re writing a fairy tale and you don’t have the cadence of it yet, don’t be afraid of Once upon a time. Is it cliche? Yes. But it helps you establish the voice, the sense of the wonder and the Other. Do not deal in specifics. Not yet. The specifics can come later.

And if you get the cadence down? Eventually, you’ll be able to drop Once upon a time. You’ll be able to move beyond it, so see the horizons past where it will take you.

But you have to start somewhere.

Start once, upon a time.

I promise, if you lose your fear of it, you’ll be able to learn how a fairy tale ticks.

[the-most-sublime-fool]

“Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause the beast shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things. I ask of you a little of this childlike simplicity, and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's Open Sesame:

Once upon a time…”

—Jean Cocteau, opening screen to Beauty and the Beast (1946)

[florilegium-archive]

Layla May Ehsan; Library, Fleet; and Collections, Special, "Fairytales" (2015). 1st Student Artists' Book Contest 2015. 11. https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_bookcontest1st2015/11

[friendrat]

On fairy tales: If you don't have to explain something like indentured servitude to your kid, you are probably telling it wrong.

[frivolous-pastel]

Japanese: "Long, long ago, in olden days..." (昔々)

“once upon a time” in other languages

korean: “back when tigers used to smoke” (호랑이 담배 피우던 시절에) [x]

czech: “beyond seven mountain ranges, beyond seven rivers” (za sedmero horami a sedmero řekami)

georgian: “there was, and there was not, there was…” (იყო და არა იყო რა, იყო…)

hausa: “a story, a story. let it go, let it come.” [x]

romanian: “there once was, (as never before)… because if there wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been to told” (A fost odată, ca niciodată că dacă n-ar fi fost, nu s-ar mai povesti…)

lithuanian: “beyond nine seas, beyond nine lagoons: (už devynių jūrų, už devynių marių)

catalan: “see it here that in that time in which beasts spoke and people were silent…” (vet aquí que en aquell temps que les bèsties parlaven i les persones callaven…) [x]

turkish: “Once there was, and once there wasn’t. In the long-distant days of yore, when haystacks winnowed sieves, when genies played jereed in the old bathhouse, [when] fleas were barbers, [when] camels were town criers, [and when] I softly rocked my baby grandmother to sleep in her creaking cradle, there was/lived, in an exotic land, far, far away, a/an…* (Bir varmış, bir yokmuş. Evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde, cinler cirit oynar iken eski hamam içinde, pireler berber [iken], develer tellal [iken], ben ninemin beşiğini tıngır mıngır sallar iken, uzak diyarların birinde…)

[thestuffedalligator]

I drew this in a fugue state last night

[prokopetz]

I enjoy a joke about fucked up German fairy tales as much as the next nerd, but it's genuinely striking how often the source for the really fucked up stuff turns out to be "yeah, this is only in the Brothers Grimm version and doesn't appear in any extant oral tradition, and we're like 80% sure they added it themselves". To a large extent it's not German fairy tales that are fucked up, it's two specific German dudes.

[fairydropart]

Bumblebee Pup

[julnites]

Red riding hood comic collab with the wonderful @yeehawpim (go check out their blog for loads of great comics!) 🌷 See the layouts he did here!

[thecollectibles]

Art by 冯伟 Feng Wei（c12）

[luthienne]

Jack Gilbert, from Collected Poems; "Myself Considered as the Monster in the Background"

[mysharona1987]

[elleskinner-justart]

Microcomic Summer 2024: The Search for Cindermeowla

Happy Microcomic Summer day!

This year's comic is the Search for Cindermeowla, aka the tale of a prince who isn't very bright.

I had a completely different concept scripted, and then the image of Cindermeowla running down the stairs muscled its way into my brain and demanded context. Inspiration can be fickle that way!

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patreon

[spyres-moved]