sparkle94

Tricksters are defined by their ability to outsmart stronger authoritative foes with their wits and cunning. They are the embodiment of unpredictability and often operate outside of the status quo of their culture. Anansi the Spider is a prime example of this type of character in the analysis. I intend to explore the origins of Anansi stories and how those stories impacted the modern portrayal of Anansi in the 2017 American Gods Tv series, adapted from Neil Gaimen’s novel.

Anansi Tales Origins

Folklore theorists have traced Anansi stories all the way back to Ghana. The Ashanti people told the stories orally, passing them from one generation to the next. The stories spread to from West Africa largely due to the Slave trade, which is said to have drawn between ten and twenty million africans from their homeland with approximately. six thousand being imported to Jamaica between 1533 and 1807. As well as the Americas where the stories remained a part of the culture of many African slaves. I mention this because the cultural landscape and struggles of the African people during that time does tie into a lot of themes of Anansi stories.

Hi, as a lover of fairy tales. I really love listening, to the Podcast known as Fairy Tales for Unwanted Children. This is a series of original fairy tales written and read by a lovely gentleman named Scott Thrower.

 While these stories do remind me somewhat of Hans Christen Anderson’s style. In the sense that they don’t focus greatly on royalty or tailors who become Kings but instead are more concerned with the common folk. However Scott’s tales tend to go into a bit of a more grey area then Anderson’s more Victorian based morality collection. Drawing heavily from folk tales and fairy tales the stories tend to have dark twists and thoughts on various topics such as death, love, the value of heroism and many more subjects.  

They also introduce delightful characters such as Darkness and the Witch who make repeated appearances in a few tales. Even the characters that get one story are pretty memorable.  I often found myself feeling sorry for characters, which may not have deserved sympathy because they were so well written.

I want to talk more about the podcast but I don’t want to spoil any of the great stories on it, so don’t take my word for it come check out the podcast for yourself.

https://scottthrower.ca 

Hey it’s me Alora Pendrak, I’ve been going back over some classic fairy tales and I realized something, some fairy tale protagonists suck. Some of them even make the actual evil characters look better by comparison. Maybe it’s due to it being another time where cultural ideas were different or the fact the likes of Charles Perrault and the brothers Grimm tended to slap on morals at the end even if the story didn’t have one, but it’s interesting just how many stinkers got a happily ever after. These were the protagonists or side characters, I wanted to drop kick to the moon over and over again.

1. Beauty’s father; Beauty and the Beast

This guy is such a hypocrite he spoils his children rotten and then moans about how he wishes they weren’t so spoiled. Then goes out of his ways to break every hospitality law in the book by stealing the Beast’s Rose. Just because he had to get a rose for Beauty, even if his other children aren’t getting anything and if he doesn’t want to spoil them he shouldn’t of asked them what they wanted in the first place. He’s not as bad as other fairytale parents but this guy annoys me so much with his blatant favoritism but guess who gets to move into the palace at the end, Merchant you suck!

1. Molly from Molly Whuppie

I’ve read a bunch of fairy tale discourse by a bunch of authors.  it’s come to my attention that a lot of people who want to do discourse surrounding the female characters of fairy tales, but due to the complaints about the princesses being perfect, helpless and powerless. I’m actually starting to realize that there is one take on fairy tale princesses that has not been covered. The dark side of the Fairy Tale princess, so I want to talk about something that will horrify some and thrill others. Blood thirsty, and often vengeful fairy tale Princesses.

In earlier versions of the stories aka pre Disney. Fairy tale princesses are not good pure and virtue filled they could be quite nasty, In many older fairy tales princesses would be fine putting their enemies or even possible husbands to death without batting an eyelid. 

In the “12 Dancing Princesses” by The Brothers Grimm a bunch of princesses  sneak out every night, their father discovers this because their dance shoes are worn through. So he proposes a challenge that any man, who finds out where they go, will marry one of his daughters, if they fail their put to death. The princesses not only don’t try and talk him out of it or fess up but they proceed to drug everyone one of their suitors, which results in them dying by their father’s hand. They do this with dozens of them, just so they can go dancing at night.

The leanan sidhe or Dark muse has always been a figure of folklore that has interested me. The Dark muse is popular enough to appear in every Faerie guide  under the sun, articles, and blogs and has made various appearances in media, she doesn’t have the acclaim of say the werewolf but she’s not that obscure either.

 Though she may have existed though oral tradition the dark muse didn’t make an official debut until the 20th century in W.B Yeats work which was inspired by 19th century John Keats ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ poem, but I do believe there were other older sources such as the tales of Succubus. These were sexy demon ladies who drained men through sexual activity in their dreams that were Popular in Medieval Europe.

The Gaelic translation of Leanan sid he translates to lover, sweetheart or concubine. This fairy was popularized as the lover of tortured artists inspiring them creatively but also draining their life force, like some kind of dark manic pixie dream girl. However this was only the case if the Artist accepted her love and became her lover pinning and wasting away for her. 

This was a concept of Medieval Courtly love. That a man would devote his life so wholly to loving a women who could not return his affections that he suffered agony of the soul……as if the flames of Satan were burning his tender buttocks and blah blah, angst angst I refuse to move on.

I have a confession to make, Little Red Riding hood is my favorite fairy tale. In all of its forms cute and childish cartoons to the more adult 2011 Little Red Riding hood movie to the Play into the woods, to the various oral stories written down by different authors to modern rewrites.   Even before I was old enough to get the darker implications of the story there was just something chilling about a polite wolf who leads a little girl off the path with the intent to devour her and her sweet Granny.

While older versions of the story are more interested in what Red shouldn’t have done. As Charles Perrault himself puts at the end of his version of the story. “Moral; children especially attractive, well-bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may provide dinner for a wolf.” However in modern times we are far less interested in what rules were broken and ponder a much deeper question. Who exactly is the wolf?

The answer to this question depends entirely on the adaptation. The 2011 version really taps into this theme with the whole movie constantly playing with the audience. As Red riding hood is given reason to suspect almost everyone in her town of being the werewolf. I could honestly talk about who is the Wolf is in any one of the hundreds of adaptations of the tale.

Hans Christen Anderson’s the Snow Queen was published in 1845. Its originally seven short stories strung together and it’s one of the handfuls of Anderson’s fairy tales to remain popular in the public eye. This story had been adapted time and time again for both the pleasure of the reader and casual movie goer. The basic premise of the story is a girl named Gerda goes to rescues her childhood playmate a little boy named Kay who has been taken away by the Snow Queen. This is the character, I want to examine today since this is my late Christmas character study. Yeah it’s been a busy couple of weeks. So without further ado let’s take a look at our leading lady.

Gerda is introduced with her grandmother and her childhood friend Kay with the old women giving exposition by telling them about the Snow Queen. Later Kay and Gerda are outside during the summer kissing and singing to the roses; yeah I’m not making this up that’s what it says. Anyway “The little girl had learnt a hymn in which roses were spoken of, and then she thought of their own roses, and she sang the hymn to the little boy, and he sang too:—“ This line suggests that Gerda is often the one who takes the lead between the two of them.

i thought now is the perfect excuse to do something i’ve been meaning to do for a while, make a list of female characters from fairy tales and folklore that are bad asses.  Why,because i’m kind of annoyed at the misconception that all fairy tale heroines are all useless milksops. So here are 10 examples of fairy tale/folktale ladies who were far from useless. 

10. Tiger Lilly from JM Barrie’s Peter Pan 

I get she’s controversial to say the least and i’ll admit having Tiger Lilly and her tribe praise Peter as the great white Father (yes that’s an actual line from the book, Disney actually made the Native American depiction less racist believe it or not) is what rock bottom looks like.    But lets focus on the positive,  this Indian Princess is still hardcore she sneaks onto Captain Hook’s ship with a knife between her teeth ready to do some damage. 

Though she gets captured due to greater numbers.  Tiger Lilly refuses to so much as flinch when Hook and his crew try to drown her even though its stated in the novel she believes that dying by water means she can never find peace in the afterlife. Despite being scared, Tiger Lilly refuses to die in a way that isn’t part of her warriors code.  

Faeries 

Faeries stay children for a week and by the end of that week are youths, unless they take a month to grow.  Then they will stop growing at middle age.  Other supernatural beings view the fey with contempt, seeing them as useless creatures due to viewing them as  perpetual children  whose great power is wasted on immature whims and fancies.

Faeries are physically and mentally immune to each other's magic but much like humans that doesn’t stop them from harming each other. They are also bound by every oath they take and face severe consequences, if they break their deals. 

Their weaknesses are iron and rosemary. All fairies have the ability to lay curses, the gift of tongues and to create illusions and appear invisible to the human eye.   The faeries fled the human world into a  space of their own creation that allowed them to hide from the humans and their magical allies with the aid of the werewolves. 

Half breeds- any magical creature who is half faerie their characteristics include being less vulnerable to faerie magic than other species and being able to use their magic against Fairies and to even see straight through Faerie magic and illusions. At one point in time the fey indentured them to use as assassins  which is why the Monarchs of Faerie banned the practice all together.  

Sirens 

Reaper awoke, the back of his head throbbing, fighting a wince he pressed a hand to the back of his dark brown hair there was a bump. Someone had taken him from behind. Was it luck or did his attacker know his regeneration abilities did not affect his skull? A failsafe in case he had proved too much of handle by the one who created him. Reaper scowled, thinking about him always put him in a worse mood. At least the damage wasn’t too bad, thought Reaper moving his fingers, counting them and looking at them just to be sure. He glanced around him, yes  he was in a cell. 

“Hello!” called a voice, Reaper looked over, there was another boy next to him, shorter and more slender, his raven hair tied back into a topknot, he wore a lot of white powder and rouge on his face but it was peeling off to the point where Reaper could see the yellow hue’s of his skin. Seelie Court, Reaper realized, noting the other boy's monolid eyes and the smell of fresh grass and blooming flowers that wafted from his skin. 

Also a noble, Reaper guessed by his brightly colored ivy vine pattern doublet covered by light green silk waistcoat and the slightly ruffled collar that surrounded his throat. He was shivering more than Reaper despite having more layers; definitely a spring faerie. 

“Do you know who took us?” Reaper asked him noting the boy's lack of bump.