[ text | un: trickster ]

[dothelokimotion]

What kind of stories did you grow up with?

What kind of myths and fairy tales were you told?

Comments

[potentialed]

That it is. Rose to popularity thanks to the Grimm Brothers.

The basic gist is that a girl named Rapunzel is locked in a tower and no one can get to her save climbing her long, golden hair.

The longer version involves a candlemaker stealing turnips for his pregnant wife and getting caught because he was in a witch's garden for the turnips. She makes him agree to give them the child when it is born. Of course, the parents don't want that so the witch ends up taking the child by force and locks her away in a tower where no one can get to her.

[dothelokimotion]

[ A shiver runs through Loki, which he immediately represses. ]

Climbing hair does not seem very tractable.

Why did she want the child?

[potentialed]

No, but it was a fairytale so logic and physics tend to go out the door.

The witch? Because she couldn't have one of her own. That's part of why she kept Rapunzel in the tower all her life. So she could have the child's love and attention all for herself.

[dothelokimotion]

[ His fingers still on the keys. Love and attention. A stolen relic. ]

Are there many stories of kidnapping in mortal tales?

[potentialed]

Oh, yeah. In fairytales, books, movies. It's used as a plot device pretty consistently.

Tho fairytales themselves were supposed to be tales of caution due to children or women being in peril most of the time.

Beauty and the Beast has Belle sacrificing her freedom to save her father's life.
Hansel and Gretel are about two kids that are forced out into the woods and end up imprisoned by a witch that wants to eat them.
Cinderella is about a girl forced into cruel servitude by her stepmother after her father dies.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has a young princess fleeing into the woods for her life when her stepmother tries to have her huntsman cut the girl's heart out.
The Little Mermaid has a young woman doomed to die if she doesn't gain a prince's love in a certain number of days after cutting out her tongue to gain legs.
Little Red Riding Hood has a wolf trying to get a little girl into bed with him so he can eat her.

The list goes on tbh.

[dothelokimotion]

[ Wow. Loki isn't sure if he's impressed or a little worried. ]

Was the point of these stories to simply be morbid or to inform of some life lesson and then be needlessly morbid?

[potentialed]

[ Both works pretty well. ]

More of the latter, usually. Most scholars seem to agree on that much with how the telling of the stories tended to change over time. They were a lot darker and more graphic in their inception.

Like with Sleeping Beauty. Princess is cursed to fall into a deep sleep for all eternity and her prince impregnates her while she's asleep and it's no kiss that wakes her up but her child biting her nipple too hard while breastfeeding it.

[ Don't get him started on what Little Red Riding Hood actually means. ]

[dothelokimotion]

Our stories had no such . . . detail to them. Granted, the realm eternal had only one thing in mind. To foster the valor of warriors and nothing else. It is rather fascinating the amount of variety your world has.

Even if they all seem to be rather disturbing.